Christ, what are they teaching kids in journalism school nowadays? 

Greg Sargent has a post highlighting the latest absurd GOP attack on Nancy Pelosi.  I know Nancy Pelosi attack stories are a dime a dozen these days, but what is telling is how uncritically the Associated Press picked up the "story" and ran with it?  Republicans are charging Pelosi with adding $25 million to the budget for renovations to the San Francisco waterfront solely to pump up the value of various rental properties owned by her husband while Pelosi is on record as saying the Port of San Francisco requested the funding. 

Basically, what we get is another "GOP charges this and the Pelosi people deny the allegation" trope or as I like to call it, another "there's a controversy here, the end" story.  Interestingly enough, Greg notes that there is no indication that AP bothered to verify if the Speaker's defense of her actions held up?  They reported the controversy but never bothered to call anyone in San Francisco, yet alone the Port of San Francisco, and when Greg called, guess what, yep, the Port of San Francisco requested the funding, the decision making was generated by local agencies and the request was passed up throught the mayor's office and local city and county government? 

I'm sorry, I know a lot of reporters work on deadline but isn't that basic Journalism 101, try to verify whether allegations are true before going to press?  And wouldn't it have been a much bigger story if you'd bothered to call the Port of San Francisco and they said, we don't know what you're talking about and this is Nancy Pelosi's project all the way?  Instead we get crap like the "Speaker wants the biggest plane the military has to commute home" stories or "Barack Obama attended a radical islamic school when he was younger" stories.  It shouldn't be up to bloggers like Greg Sargent to follow up on these things, that's your job!  Maybe this is just my opinion, but Christ you'd have had to have slept through the last six years not to know that much of what you'll hear from Republicans, from the White House to the Congress, doesn't hold up to even a tiny bit of scrutiny or verification, in fact the US Attorney hearings among others make that abundantly clear, so how about more real reporting and less passing on the gossip of the week, huh?