COMPLETE TRAIN WRECK: CNN Health Care Ruling FAIL, Full Video

CNN and Fox News were left with egg on their faces on Thursday, as they got the Supreme Court's ruling on President Obama's health care law wrong.

The trouble started early for CNN. Congressional correspondent Kate Boulduan read out part of the Court's ruling, which said that the individual mandate could not be upheld using the Commerce Clause. Disastrously, though, it failed to pick up the other part of the ruling, which said that it could be upheld as a tax.

"Wow, that's a dramatic moment," Wolf Blitzer said, as a chyron saying "SUPREME CT. KILLS INDIVIDUAL MANDATE" flashed on the screen.

"The Justices have just gutted, Wolf, the centerpiece provision of the health care law," John King said, adding that it was a "direct blow to President Obama."

Later, Boulduan returned to correct the initial report. She said that the Court had released a "very confusing large opinion" and that on the second read, it was apparent that the network had gotten it wrong. "The entire law has been upheld, Wolf," she said.

She said that the decision was "thick" and "legally dense," scanning the papers on-air.

"It's a huge, huge victory for President Obama," Blitzer said.

Later, the network's chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin explained the snafu, saying that the intricacies of the ruling had tripped people up.

"Five minutes into Chief justice Robert's opinion, you would have asked anyone in that room whether this law was going to be held unconstitutional, I think we all would have said yes," he said. "But we were all sitting there, we had to sit till the end, and this turn of events surprised me, that's for sure."


- Huffington Post

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[TheCia999]

Liberals ripped the conservitards a new asshole.

[Mark R]

If CNN had just flipped over to MSNBC, they would have gotten the story right. Idiots.

[fleetadmiralj]

The thing here is that this is clearly an issue of the people reading the opinion not fully knowing what the issues at hand were. They assumed the commerce clause was the only issue when it wasn't. Even I knew it could be upheld either under the commerce clause or the taxing power. How the person in charge of reading the opinion didn't know that, I don't know

[Michael Davis]

I was at a bar in DC the night before and one of Chief Justice Roberts assistants had a few too many and blabbed to whoever would listen that he had upheld the mandate as a tax. The media should get drunk more often. Might learn some things.

[00Eregos00]

You have to LISTEN and understand politics, its not something everyone understands. I actually sought out this video just to see how epically CNN botched this up

[mgsimba1]

what a clown show!

[RainbowMuse2]

No matter how many times I see this it always make me smile.

[talkinboutjon]

Both CNN and Fox dropped the ball on this one.

[HPhenomenal]

fucking idiots.

[IAmNotAFunguy]

I actually knew Fox News was liable to lie and changed the channel to CNN when the new broke to make sure the news was right. Big mistake...

[Chris Kelly]

well the fact that they reported that it was unconstitutional before correcting themselves seems just like a tiny bit of a fail.

[Actionboy619]

fucking boring wheres the fail?