The Media and Mark Kirk

[erpowers]

It is interesting the way the media has treated Mark Kirk as opposed to the way they treated Richard Blumenthal. I do not watch the news 24 hours a day, but I do watch the news every day. However, I have only heard about Mark Kirk and his misstatement about his military career today. He admitted making the misstatements last week. In additiion, I only found out about Kirk's misstatements by accident due to my conducting a google search for another topic.

When it was reported by the New York Times that Richard Blumenthal had made incorrect statements about his military career it was reported on numerous occasions on numerous news shows. This was even though it was reported that Blumenthal has publicly acknowledged months before and on other occasions that he had not been deployed to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. On the other hand Mark Kirk, last week, was force to acknowledge that he had made multiple misstatements about his military career, but I have yet to see any stories on the media concerning Kirk's multiple misstatements. I mentioned multiple twice in that Blumenthal only misspoke about one point in his military career. Blumenthal only made misstatements about whether or not he had been deployed to Vietnam. Kirk, on the other hand, made about four misstatements about his military career. Kirk either claimed or alluded to the idea that he was deployed to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He also claimed that he had won an award that he had not won. Furthermore, he claimed that he had been shot at although that was not clear. Finally, he exaggerated his work at the Pentagon. He does work at the Pentagon once a month, but it seems his work there is not as important as he first tried to alleged.

If the media really cares about discussing individuals who exaggerate their military careers they should be discussing this story just as much if not more than Richard Blumenthal's case. Mark Kirk has put forward more misstatements about his career than Richard Blumenthal.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/06/more_mark_kirk_mistakes_on_ira.html