The San Francisco Chronicle blindly passes along protest canards

The San Francisco Chronicle, although the major newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area, is basically fish wrap.  Today’s front page story about the protests at town hall meetings, in just the first few paragraphs, reports as true proven lies:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent her chamber home for the summer recess with a list of talking points to respond to constituents’ questions about pending health care legislation.

But those traditionally sleepy town hall meetings have become rowdy shout-fests across the nation, including Northern California, with opponents hanging members in effigy and mocking them with Nazi and devil imagery in an effort to derail discussions of health care.  [As Kevin Ryland carefully documents, the charge of Nazi imagery, which originated with Nancy Pelosi, seems to be a Pelosi fantasy that is unsubstantiated by even the most fervently anti-conservative, pro-single payer medicine news sources and blogs.  This doesn’t stop the Chron from repeating this vicious slander as the God’s own truth.]

They’re organized in part by conservative think tanks like FreedomWorks, which offers tips on how to disrupt a meeting (“Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early,” says one) and helped in some cases by anti-tax “Tea Party” sympathizers.  [Here’s another canard, and Mary Katharine Hamm completely debunks it.  There is no evidence for astroturfing here.  Even one second of decent research by someone who purportedly makes a living digging for the truth should have revealed that this is a lie from start to finish.  The reporter is simply regurgitating false Democratic party talking points and pretending they are news.]

The same “news” story repeats at length Pelosi’s charge that this is all “astroturfing.”  Interestingly, the reporter apparently made no effort to talk to conservatives to see what their view is about the concerned citizenry pouring into these townhall meetings.