http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060113/ap_on_en_tv/tv_colbert_vs_ap_2NEW YORK - Stung by a recent Associated Press article that didn't credit him for coining the word "truthiness," Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert has struck back.
The world's oldest news organization, Colbert says, is the "No. 1 threat facing America."
On Wednesday evening, Colbert placed the AP atop the Threat Down segment of "The Colbert Report" show. What was No. 2?
Bears.
In October, on Colbert's debut episode of the "Daily Show" spinoff, the comedian defined "truthiness" as truth that wouldn't stand to be held back by facts. The word caught on, and last week the American Dialect Society named "truthiness" the word of the year.
"The fact that they looked it up in a book just shows that they don't get the idea of truthiness at all," Colbert said Thursday. "You don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut."
Colbert, who referred on his program to the AP omission as a "journalistic travesty," said Thursday that it was similar to the much-criticized weapons of mass destruction reporting leading up to the Iraq War.
"Except," he said, "people got hurt this time."