“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." — Attributed to Mark Twain

Now this is the kind of thing that the "Jimmy Olsens" at the Arizona Daily Star should be reporting on but never do — because it is being done by their colleagues in the mainstream news media.

The GOP noise machine has created an entire lie out of thin air: the notion that the President's visit abroad to India is going to cost $200 million a day. It's insane. It's a lie. And its leaking into the "mainstream news media" reports without any fact checking or debunking of the lie.

The "Minnesota Loon," Rep. Michele Bachmann, was interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper where she accused the Obama administration of taking a $200 million a day trip to India. Michele Bachmann Accuses Obama Administration of Taking India Trip at Cost of $200 Million a Day:

Looks like this is the latest Fox/right wing meme of the day since Hannity was attacking the White House for this as well. Media Matters has more on where this attack came from, and surprise, surprise, Drudge was involved along with a bunch of the other right wing screechers out there.

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It turns out the source of this unsubstantiated claim is not from Politico. It's from an Indian news report. And the original report is actually from an anonymous Indian source, allegedly an Indian provincial official. How he would know how much President Obama's trip is costing, I'm not sure.

After the interview, we went back, asked the White House for further details. They said — quote — "The numbers reported in this article have no basis to reality. Due to security concerns, we're unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it's safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated."

As for how inflated, we can get some idea from Bill Clinton's similar Asian trip as president, which is widely considered the most expensive ever. The estimated bottom line for that trip, $50 million, and not per day, but for the entire trip.

The folks at politifact.com call bullshit on this right-wing screecher lie as well. PolitiFact | Rep. Michele Bachmann claims Obama's trip to India will cost the taxpayers $200 million a day:

To say this figure — $200 million a day — has made the rounds in the blogosphere would be a huge understatement. It has been repeated by nearly every conservative pundit in the land: Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge. Always with a healthy dose of indignation.

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Actually [the] figure that came from just one source, a news agency in India, relying on an anonymous source. It was then repeated thousands more times in the blogosphere and over conservative airwaves.

The claim that the U.S. would be spending "a whopping $200 million per day" on Obama's visit to Mumbai, India, originated in a report from the news agency Press Trust of India. It was an estimate attributed anonymously to "a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit." Maharashtra is a state located in western India.

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James Gerstenzang, a former reporter who covered numerous foreign trips by presidents for the Los Angeles Times, laughed at the $200 million a day figure, which he guessed was probably "inflated by a factor of 10." And the claim about the entourage of 3,000 also seems grossly inflated, he said. He noted that any members of the press traveling with the president pay their own way, so that's not a cost borne by taxpayers.

"It really bothers me when numbers like that get thrown around by both sides for political reasons, without it being backed up," Gerstenzang said.

Veteran reporter David Jackson, who has traveled on a number of foreign trips by presidents, wrote for the USA Today, "No, President Obama's trip is not going to cost $200 million a day."

"That figure — first thrown out by a single Indian media outlet and now viral on conservative talk radio — is wildly, wildly off the mark."

And basing the claim on an estimate from an anonymous state government official in India is dubious at best.

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White House officials say details about foreign travel — including the cost — are not released for security reasons. So we don't know the cost to taxpayers of Obama's trip.

But we think Bachmann and others have a responsibility to back up statistics they cite. And in this case, the backing appears to be one news story, relying on an anonymous state government official in India. People familiar with presidential travel say that estimate is way off, and they question how a government official in India would know anyway. And a report by the independent GAO backs that up: A trip to India by Clinton, regarded at the time as perhaps the most expensive in history, was estimated to cost $50 million, or $10 million per day. That alone should cause someone to question the $200 million a day figure. In short, we don't see any evidence to back up this statistic. And we rate Bachmann's claim False.

And yet I have heard this "$200 million a day" lie repeated today in cable news broadcasts citing "some sources say…". That source is the GOP noise machine that creates propaganda for its conservative media network of talk radio and Fox News which then gets picked up in the echo chamber of the "lamestream media." Yet another epic media fail.

UPDATE: Better late than never. The Arizona Daily Star has this fact check piece from McClatchy News Service today Obama trip is costly, but aides call $200M per day 'inflated':

The conservative blogosphere and media megaphones are trumpeting "news" that President Obama's trip to India will cost U.S. taxpayers $200 million a day, but there's no basis in fact for the reports, and history suggests they're false.