Bloggers Once Again Eat the MSM's Lunch

Backcountry Conservative has the timeline of the GI Joe Hostage Crisis. As one would expect, the MSM winds up looking like a bunch of fools for swallowing another story they undoubtedly deem "too good to not run"--the bogus claim of an American soldier being captured in Iraq.

Here's the summary (please shoot over to Backcountry Conservative for the definitive timeline complete with all the links):

2:05 PM EST Reuters carries a claim by a militant Islamic website which includes a photo allegedly of a captured American soldier with a gun to his head before a black banner with Arabic writing on it.

2:10 Wizbang! and Drudge run the photo.

2:35 Wizbang! and The Jawa Report doubt the authenticity of the photo and question whether it was Photoshopped.

2:42 Michele from A Small Victory finds a GI Joe doll which looks exactly like the "soldier" in the photo and posts a link to its image at Wizbang! (She notes it was actually a couple of other posters at Fark who figured this out but doesn't indicate the time).

3:15 CNN notes the "soldier" doesn't seem to be wearing U.S. military gear.

4:00 The Associated Press finally notes the uncanny resemblance between the "soldier" and an action figure.

To sum up, it took the blogosphere 37 minutes to definitively debunk this photo as a hoax. It took the MSM over 2 hours to do the same, despite having had opportunity to catch this BEFORE putting it over the wire.

So much for superior editing and fact-checking.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Update:

Michele's post was actually at 2:32, not 2:42. That means this was busted faster than Domino's delivers---27 minutes.