By The Huffington Post News Editors
The reporter who says he inadvertently started the bogus “Friends of Hamas” rumor about Chuck Hagel has some advice for conservatives in the media: try using Google.
Dan Friedman, who covers Congress for the New York Daily News, joined HuffPostLive host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin Wednesday to talk about how he thinks a couple of jokes he sent to a Republican senator’s aide wound up fueling the false rumor that Hagel might have received money from the Hamas-loving association. Most notably, the rumor wound up in a piece on Breitbart News, and rocketed around conservative media circles. The problem? “Friends of Hamas” doesn’t even exist, something Slate’s Dave Weigel showed was pretty easy to figure out.
After Friedman’s piece was published on Wednesday morning, Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro, who wrote the original Hagel story, posted a follow-up defending himself:
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Ever wonder how unconfirmed rumors snowball into political