Internet Scofflaw

As part of an AP article about Roman Polanski’s effort to be released on bail (seriously!), they write:

Polanski pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sentence him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation.

This is false. As Patterico documents, the judge never agreed any such thing.

(Via Patterico.)

Oh geez, the New York Times has this to say about the Hadley hack:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

If the documents were illegally leaked CIA documents containing information sensitive to national security, the New York Times would be the first to publish them.

(Via Ed Driscoll.)

Last September, Media Matters wrote:

On September 23, Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey reported that ACORN official Lavelle Stewart “told me this week” that when conservative videographers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles came to Stewart’s ACORN office in Los Angeles disguised as a pimp and prostitute, Stewart “tried to get the ‘prostitute,’ who claimed she had been beaten by her pimp, to go to a women’s center.” Stewart’s reported statement and a police report filed by officials at ACORN’s Philadelphia office undermine O’Keefe’s and Giles’ claims that they were never rebuffed at any of the ACORN offices they visited, and the videographers have yet to release the Los Angeles and Philadelphia videos.

In writing so, Media Matters showed an amazing credulity. Lavelle Stewart’s claim surely contradicted O’Keefe and Giles, but did it really “undermine” them? Only if you’re inclined to accept the word of ACORN. Considering how ACORN has lied every step of the way, one ought to be reluctant to do so.

ACORN’s Philadelphia defense was debunked last month, when O’Keefe and Giles released their Philadelphia video, which showed them not at all being rebuffed.

Now it’s Lavelle Stewart’s turn. The latest ACORN video shows not only that Stewart did not rebuff O’Keefe and Giles, it shows that her conduct was the most inexcusable yet. It is on Stewart’s now-thoroughly-discredited word that Media Matters, and LA Times columnist James Rainey, hung their entire case.

It’s fun to see Media Matters get egg on their face again. (I really couldn’t care less about James Rainey.) I’m puzzled, though. Why would they put themselves out on a limb like this, accepting crediting ACORN’s word when they have repeatedly lied since the beginning of the affair?

Look, I understand ACORN a little. They look ridiculous when they repeatedly lie, and each time Andrew Breitbart releases a video that exposes their lie. But ACORN has a lousy hand to play. They either need to clean up their act (apparently out of the question), or try their best to play defense.

But Media Matters is not at the center of the affair. They didn’t have to get involved. They could have preserved what credibility they have but staying out of it, or at least by injecting an appropriate note of skepticism. Instead, they jumped in with both feet. They credulously accepted ACORN’s word, despite their repeated dishonesty, and rejected the word of O’Keefe and Giles. They made themselves a laughingstock. Why would they do that?

(Via Patterico, via Instapundit.)

I don’t know what’s more pathetic, the fact that the Associated Press assigned eleven writers to fact-check Sarah Palin’s new book (Did the AP assign even a single person to fact-check Barack Obama’s book? After some googling, I can’t find any hint that they did.), or the thin gruel they came up with.

Here’s the first instance in the AP says her book “goes rogue on some facts”:

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking “only” for reasonably priced rooms and not “often” going for the “high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.

THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000.

So she didn’t “often” stay at expensive hotels, but on one occasion she did. This doesn’t contradict her in the least.

Another:

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, “you’ll have to be brave enough to fail.”

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring Obama’s stimulus plan—a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts—and the federal bailout that President George W. Bush signed.

Palin’s views on bailouts appeared to evolve as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said “taxpayers cannot be looked to” to bail out Wall Street.

The next month, she praised McCain for being “instrumental in bringing folks together” to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said “it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in.”

With only a sentence fragment’s worth of quotation, the AP is asking us to trust their characterization of the book to be accurate. I’m unwilling to do so, but for the moment let’s just stipulate that it is.

Many people’s opinion of the bailout changed over time. In my own case I was convinced at the time that it was necessary, but the scheme later turned out to be a fraud. The bailout was supposedly necessary to buy up “toxic assets”, but not a single cent was ever spent that way. Instead, the money was used to buy equity in banks and various companies. It’s not a contradiction to support the use of TARP to buy toxic assets, which might well ultimately have turned a profit, but then oppose its use to buy corporate equity.

And while President Bush and Secretary Paulson deserve most of the blame for TARP’s misuse, President Obama’s hands are not at all clean. A large chunk of the automakers’ bailout was given by Obama, at a point at which it was already clear that the money would never be repaid. (Okay, it was pretty clear all along.) (UPDATE: There’s also the fact that Obama took the person responsible for the AIG bailout disaster, Timothy Geithner, and rewarded him by making him Treasury Secretary.)

Perhaps the best one is the one they conclude with:

PALIN: “Was it ambition? I didn’t think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons.” Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But “Going Rogue” has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

Beautiful. They write “THE FACTS”, then a colon, and then two sentences that contain no facts! In their opinion, Palin’s book contains all the unspecified characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto. Let’s suppose that that’s true — insofar as it’s far too vague to contradict — how does that contradict Palin’s claim of purpose over ambition?

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Fox News notes:

Reviewing books and holding public figures accountable is at the core of good journalism, but the treatment Palin’s book received appears to be something new for the AP. The organization did not review for accuracy recent books by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, then-Sen. Joe Biden, either book by Barack Obama released before he was president or autobiographies by Bill or Hillary Clinton. The AP did more traditional news stories on those books.

The Columbia Journalism Review calls Citizens Against Government Waste “an obscure tea-bagging operation”. Setting aside the offensive and biased nature of the description, CAGW is hardly obscure and it pre-dates the Tea Party movement by decades.

(Via FutureOfCapitalism, via Instapundit.)

The LA Times corrects some of the errors in an op-ed on the ACORN scandal:

An Oct. 22 Op-Ed article about the community group ACORN stated that, in two ACORN offices, staff members offered advice to a pair of videographers posing as proprietors of a prostitution ring. While tapes of all the offices visited by the pair have not been released, it is clear from those that have been that ACORN offered advice in more than two offices. The article also said that the pair were “kicked out” of most ACORN offices. Because unedited versions of the tapes have not been released, it is unclear how the encounters ended, but it is unlikely they were ordered to leave most offices.

The thing is, these facts are common knowledge among anyone who followed the ACORN scandal. The editors should have caught these “errors” before the piece was ever printed in the first place. The fact that they did not indicates that the LA Times’s editors haven’t the slightest clue.

Moreover, Patterico points out additional “errors” in the piece that the LA Times chose not to correct.

(Via Instapundit.)

The LA Times’s on-line headline:

Dem score congressional victories in California, N.Y.

Pathetic.

(Via Instapundit.)

The New York Times originally made the following observation, as part of its story on President Obama’s trip to Dover:

The images and the sentiment of the president’s five-hour trip to Delaware were intended by the White House to convey to the nation that Mr. Obama was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste.

That sentence has now been removed, and people are wondering why.

(Via Hot Air.)

It looks as though CNBC is trying to earn the White House seal of approval. In an interview with Charles Gasparino (whom I’ve never heard of before) on the market impact of the administration’s pay limits for bank executives, they interrupt Gasparino four times when he started making remarks critical of President Obama. (Cue to 2:10 for the first one.)

Time’s Joe Klein writes:

Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.

You know there must be Democrat in office when the media is writing seriously about sedition. Just a year ago it was the press’s job to hold the government accountable.

Of course, Klein isn’t able to cite any example of Fox’s reporting that is “hateful crap” or “flat out untrue”. The one example he does mention, Fox News’s exposure of the radicalism of Van Jones, was neither.

And that’s revealing. What are upsetting Klein (and the White House) aren’t false stories, but true ones. They don’t want media scrutiny on this administration, because the public is seeing how different it is from what they were promised.

(Via the Corner.)

Maureen Dowd used her column last week to attack Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter. Mary is starting a consulting firm and rumor has it that her father approves of the enterprise, which apparently is enough for the alleged sins of the father to visit on the child.

Dowd also gratuitously reminds us that Mary is a lesbian, which has no bearing at all on the column, and even titles her column after a bizarre sexual practice supposedly practiced by lesbians. So let’s not forget which side it is that has no problem appealing to prejudices when it serves their purposes.

(Via Power Line.)

On June 3, MSNBC Rachel Maddow stated on-the-air that Rush Limbaugh said that Martin Luther King’s assassin should get the Medal of Honor. It took her 138 days (that’s four-and-a-half months) to retract the lie, and grudgingly at that.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph reports:

Anita Dunn, a senior White House aide, has boasted of how Barack Obama’s presidential campaign managed to “absolutely control” the press during the 2008 election.

The top campaign strategist who has shot to attention recently as President Obama’s main attack dog against Fox News, the conservative-leaning cable network, was speaking at a conference in the Dominican Republic in January.

“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” she said.

I’ll be interested to see how the press responds to this. What is their purported journalistic integrity worth to them?

Anyway, this gives us a new perspective on Anita Dunn’s attacks on Fox News. She says Fox News isn’t a real news agency, which probably means they weren’t able to control it.

UPDATE: Fox News says that the White House opened its war against them because they (Fox) had the temerity to fact-check their guest from the White House:

The video drew attention after Dunn kicked off a war of words with Fox News last Sunday, calling the network “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” The White House stopped providing guests to “Fox News Sunday” in August after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Chris Wallace’s interview with Duckworth is here, and she certainly did get raked over the coals. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you don’t have your facts straight?

To sum up: The real press is controlled. Reporting facts the White House doesn’t want people to hear is “opinion journalism masquerading as news”.

UPDATE: It’s not just Fox News’s allegation. Anita Dunn did specifically tie its boycott of Fox News to Wallace’s fact-check of Duckworth:

DUNN: . . . Major [Garrett] came to me when we didn’t include Chris.

KURTZ: Chris Wallace DUNN: In the round of Sunday shows, Chris Wallace from the Sunday shows. And I told Major quite honestly that we had told Chris Wallace that having fact-checked an administration guest on his show, something I’ve never seen a Sunday show do, and Howie, you can show me examples of where Sunday shows have fact-checked previous weeks’ guests.

Additionally, I wouldn’t really call what Wallace did “fact-checking”. A typical fact-check is done afterward, and doesn’t give the subject a chance to respond. What Wallace did would better be described as “asking questions”.

Too good to check:

In a dramatic shift, the Chamber of Commerce announced Monday that it is throwing its support behind climate change legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate.

Only it didn’t.

An email press release announcing the change is a hoax, say Chamber officials.

Several media organizations fell for it.

A CNBC anchor interrupted herself mid-sentence Monday morning to announce that the network had “breaking news,” then cut away to reporter Hampton Pearson, who read from the fake press release. . .

In a story posted Monday morning, Reuters declared: “The Chamber of Commerce said on Monday it will no longer opposes climate change legislation, but wants the bill to include a carbon tax.”

Reuters updated the story to acknowledge the hoax, but it was too late: The Washington Post and the New York Times had already posted the fake story on their Web sites.

Despite the story being completely implausible, Reuters, CNBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all ran this story, and not one thought to fact-check it. I guess they really wanted to believe.

(Via the Corner.)

Jay Nordlinger writes:

I keep hearing that Glenn Beck is just a blowhard opinionist, contributing nothing but hot air. If that is true, why do we keep learning news from him? About Van Jones, about ACORN, about Anita Dunn . . . I mean, isn’t that the New York Times’s job? No? What a strange era we’re living in.

Guys like Glenn Beck are trying to break stories, while the NYT and its ilk are trying to conceal them. I’ve never watched Beck, but maybe I should start.

I was away back when this happened and forgot to blog it when I got back. A revealing incident with the Guardian:

The Guardian was forced to amend an article on past Nobel Peace Prize winners on its Web site on Friday after it omitted the names of Israel’s prize winners.

Following the announcement of US President Barack Obama’s winning the 2009 prize, an article written by the newspaper’s news editor Simon Rogers listed the names of all Nobel Peace prize winners since the award’s inception in 1909. However, all of Israel’s prize winners – Menachem Begin, Yizhak Rabin and Shimon Peres – were omitted.

In the 1978 entry, Menachem Begin’s name was missing, with only Egyptian president Anwar Sadat listed. The same error occurred in the 1994 entry with Yasser Arafat the only entry and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres missing. . .

In a statement on Friday, the newspaper blamed the mistake on a “technical issue,” saying the names was accidently omitted.

A technical issue deleted all three Israeli winners, and only the three Israeli winners? Not buying it.

So Keith Olbermann says that tea partiers are engaging in “political terrorism” and asks why they should be viewed any differently from Hezbollah or Hamas. Oh, I can see a few differences, such as the minor detail that Hamas and Hezbollah exist to kill innocent people and the tea parties are a peaceful protest group.

In the NYT’s article yesterday about the White House’s new war on Fox News, it mentioned that the White House cites favorably the St. Petersburg Times’s Truth-o-meter. Specifically, the White House mentions a Truth-o-meter purported debunking of a statement Glenn Beck made about “a White House staffer”. The White House was not specific as to which staffer, but the Truth-o-meter conveniently collects all its Glenn Beck evaluations on one page. Let’s take a look.

ASIDE: I have never watched Glenn Beck, other than a few clips that have gone around the internet, so I have no opinion about his general truthfulness. In fact, I never even heard of Glenn Beck before a few weeks ago. However, I do have an opinion of the general truthfulness of the White House, so I did have some idea what I might find.

I’ll assume that the St. Petersburg Times can be trusted to quote Beck accurately and in context, which might or might not be justified. I’ll set two statements aside because I’m not familiar with the facts. The others are:

• Beck says that 45% of doctors say they will quit if health care reform passes. This is not quite true. In fact, 45% of doctors say they will consider quitting, which is an important distinction. The Truth-o-meter calls the statement false, which of course it is. They would seem to be right in this case, until you note that the Truth-o-meter uses a whole spectrum for its evaluations, not simple binary. In light of that, they should have said something to the effect of “not quite true”. (They also raise issues with the IBD/TIPP poll’s methodology. Those issues seem far-fetched — TIPP is a well-established scientific poller — but in any case, it’s hardly fair to park such issues at Glenn Beck’s door.)
• Beck says that Van Jones, the former White House green jobs czar, is a self-avowed communist. He certainly used to be. But the Truth-o-meter calls the statement “barely true“. Why? Because he didn’t prove that Van Jones is still a communist, and has spoken favorably about exploiting the business world. Here, the Truth-o-meter has ventured into the realm of opinion. In my book, if you publicly call yourself a communist, a nazi, or an Islamist, we are justified in assuming you still are unless and until you publicly disavow those views. The Truth-o-meter makes no suggestion that he has.
• Beck says that Van Jones signed a truther petition. This is entirely true. The Truth-o-meter calls it half true, because the petition’s most incendiary claims were made by insinuation rather than outright, and one sentence taken from Beck’s discussion suggests that its claims were made definitively.
• Beck claims that John Holdren, the White House science czar, proposed forced abortions and sterilization to control population. I guess it depends on what you mean by “proposed”. In his book he discusses those schemes, among others (such as an armed world government to enforce population limits). Some schemes get his nod of approval and some do not. According to the Truth-o-meter, the abortion and sterilization schemes did not get the nod of approval, and on that basis, they call Beck’s statement not only false, but “pants on fire“. Apparently, the Truth-o-meter is so confident that “propose” means “advocate” and not merely “consider” that they move this statement from true all the way past technically false to outright lie. The New Oxford American Dictionary disagrees; it defines “propose” to mean “put forward (an idea or plan) for consideration or discussion by others”, which is exactly what Holdren did.

To summarize, of the four Glenn Beck statements, one is slightly wrong and the other three are true. The Truth-o-meter rates them “false”, “barely true”, “half true”, and “pants on fire”. Clearly, the Truth-o-meter is useless. No wonder the White House likes it.

When MSNBC is caught promulgating fabricated quotes, this is all the retraction you can expect:

Limbaugh denies he said quote, ‘slavery has its merits,’ it was a quote that appeared on MSNBC this past Monday and Tuesday. MSNBC attributed that quote to a football player who was opposed to Limbaugh’s NFL bid. However, we have been unable to verify that quote independently. So, just to clarify.

(Via Instapundit.)

I particularly like the closing “just to clarify”. Since when is “it was completely made up” a clarification?

UPDATE: CNN’s Rick Sanchez finally sort-of apologizes. Not on the air though; on Twitter.

Michael Wilbon, Washington Post sports columnist, writes:

I don’t listen to [Rush Limbaugh’s] show because his comments about people of color anger and offend me, and I’m not easily offended. I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things he has said over the years; I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) that he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word.

But Limbaugh has long history of the same insults and race baiting, to the point of declaring he hoped the president of the United States, a black man, fails.

Limbaugh’s long history of racist comments offend him, but he can’t produce a single example of one, nor will he even try. Just trust him.

Oh wait, maybe he will try and given one example. Limbaugh wanted the president to fail. Obviously only a racist could want an extreme leftist president to fail in his efforts to remake the country. If that’s racism, then I’m sure Limbaugh does indeed have quite a long history of it.

(Via the Corner.)

Otto Reich is complaining that an NYT article about him lobbying for Honduras is full of errors. He concludes:

All the above is on the record and I urge you to print it in the interest of journalistic objectivity.

Heh, good one.

Chris Matthews fantasizes on-the-air about Rush Limbaugh’s murder. Isn’t there supposed to be a part of your brain that keeps you from expressing every evil thought that pops into your head? I guess Matthews doesn’t have that part.

Various media outlets, including CNN and MSNBC, are attributing bogus racist quotes to Rush Limbaugh. This story is all over the place, but Gateway Pundit seems to have the best synopsis.

Some times it’s said that a story must have been “too good to check”, but I don’t think this fits into that category. This one must have been “too good to think critically about for even a moment”. If anyone had done so, they would have realized that if Limbaugh had really said these things, his career would have been over back when he said them.

BONUS: Ed Driscoll thinks the quotes came off Wikiquote (a cousin to Wikipedia). ‘Nuff said. (Via Instapundit.)

POSTSCRIPT: If you want to see a sleazy sorta-retraction-but-not-really, check out CNN’s Rick Sanchez here. Sanchez tells his audience that Limbaugh denies the particular quote, but adds that Limbaugh has also said a lot of other similar stuff. He doesn’t elaborate on what that might be.

UPDATE: Here’s CNN’s Rick Sanchez making stuff up (cue to 1:00):

(Via the Telegraph blog.)

Also, Mark Steyn summarizes the new script for race carding:

Step One: You can’t say that. It’s racist.

So you don’t. Next:

Step Two: You’re using “code language”.

As I always say, “code language” is code language for “I’m inventing what you really meant to say because the actual quote doesn’t quite do the job for me.” Still, you steer clear of “code language.” So then:

Step Three: We’ll just concoct it out of whole cloth, and, after running for a week with “Slavery Advocate Wants Medal of Honor for MLK Killer”, our fact-checkers will confirm the accuracy of that statement by citing something you said about Donovan McNabb or Obama’s economic policy. Close enough.

UPDATE: This is well put:

If they said, “Rush is a bit bombastic and we think it would be a distraction from football,” then there would be no cause to complain. But they didn’t say that. They said the man was a racist and an advocate for slavery, which is a lie. They created a division, and then complained that Limbaugh is divisive. And in the process they have reinforced the stereotype of conservatives as racists.

It is sad when lies succeed and the truth does not. It is outrageous that these race-baiting bigots in the sports media managed to successfully slander a man.

Fareed Zakaria, writing in Newsweek:

Recall that George W. Bush’s approval rating on Sept. 10, 2001, was about 40 percent. After 9/11, it quickly climbed to 93 percent.

Really? In what poll? Peter Wehner points out that Gallup had President Bush at 51% on September 10, 2001. Maybe he’s referring to some long-forgotten Newsweek poll? Newsweek’s polling is by far the worst (as judged by its election predictions), so it’s plausible that it could have been an 11-point outlier.

ASIDE: This doesn’t really undermine Zakaria’s point, which is the existence of a rally effect, but he still should get the facts right.

Clark Hoyt, the NYT’s ombudsman, dedicates his latest column to defending his paper’s treatment (and, largely, non-treatment) of the ACORN scandal. It’s standard fare from Hoyt so I won’t bother unpacking it. But, he does make one outright error:

Conservatives have accused Acorn of voter fraud, but it has actually been charged with fraudulent registration, not stuffing ballot boxes. Prosecutors have said that Acorn workers were not trying to influence elections but were trying to get paid for work they didn’t do by writing fake names on registration forms.

Oh really? What about the case of Darnell Nash of Ohio? ACORN helped to register him nine times under various names, and last August he pled guilty to casting a fraudulent ballot. There’s also the case in Troy, New York, where an ACORN-linked organization forged dozens of absentee ballots.

That’s two one documented cases, but even setting those aside, Hoyt’s contention is laughable. In 2008, ACORN submitted hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registrations. We’re supposed to believe that none of those were intended to become actual votes? Please.

UPDATE (11/23): Contrary to reports, Nash was not convicted of casting a fraudulent ballot. He was charged with doing so, but plea bargained it to fraudulent registration.

The NYT silently replaced its original piece on President Obama’s Olympic failure with a new one, rewritten to soften its implied criticism and remove some facts unfavorable to the administration.

(Via Instapundit.)

A New York court has thrown out Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS.

This is interesting. Roman Polanski, a movie director who has been on the lam since pleading guilty to statutory rape in 1978. (Testimony indicates the crime was far worse, but statutory rape is what he was convicted of, so we’ll go with that.) For the past 30 years, Polanski has been living in France — who refused to extradite him — making movies and travelling internationally, but avoiding the US and UK.  Last Saturday, Polanski was detained for extradition by Swiss authorities. A variety of people are horrified by this development, apparently believing that three decades in France is punishment enough.

One such person is Anne Applebaum, a columnist and blogger for the Washington Post. Applebaum called the arrest “outrageous” and said that Polanski has paid for his crime in “many, many ways”. For example, he was unable to go to Hollywood to receive his Oscar. Well, boo hoo. She also said his decision to flee justice was mitigated by an “understandable fear of irrational punishment” because he was a Holocaust survivor. So surviving the Holocaust is a get-out-of-jail-free card? I suspect that most Holocaust survivors would be offended at the idea.

Here’s where the Applebaum sub-story gets interesting. Patterico (a blogger who works for the LA DA’s office) revealed that Applebaum’s husband is the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who is personally lobbying to get Polanski released. (Polanski is a dual citizen of France and Poland.) Applebaum was happy to disclose her connection to Sikorski a week ago when it made her sound important, but did not do so in this case where it gives her a conflict of interest.

In response, Applebaum wrote another post expressing her deep offense at the suggestion that she had a conflict of interest. Following the standard playbook, she began her rebuttal by quoting an offensive piece of hate mail and insinuating that it is typical of the response. With the context established (people who disagree with her are evil), she then addressed the Sikorski angle. The most relevant portion (as quoted by Patterico) read:

Also, when I wrote the blog I had no idea that my husband, who is in Africa, would, or could do anything about it, as Polanski is not a Polish citizen.

(You won’t find this sentence in her post now, as I explain below.)

Her claim that Polanski is not a Polish citizen is simply wrong, but beyond that, Patterico pointed out that the Washington Post article linked from her original post reported the Sikorski angle:

Polanski also received support from Poland. . . “I am considering approaching the American authorities over the possibility of the U.S. president proclaiming an act of clemency, which would settle the matter once and for all,” said Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, according to the PAP news agency.

Subsequent to that, Applebaum revised her defense to read:

However, I will also note that at the time I wrote the blog item, I had no idea that the Polish government would or could lobby for Polanski’s release, as I am in Budapest and my husband is in Africa. (My editors later added a link to a news story that mentioned him.)

She made this substantial revision without marking an update, which is very shoddy practice in the blogosphere, but we’ll set that aside. What are we to make of her defense? There are two possibilities. First, she could be lying. Second, she is telling the truth and thoroughly incompetent. Let’s run down what she is asking us to believe:

• She spouted off without familiarizing herself with the facts (Polanski is a Polish citizen).
• She has less idea what her husband is doing in regards to the very subject she is writing about than an unrelated blogger. In fact, she has less idea than anyone who reads her own newspaper.
• She wrote her blog post without including a single link to any news story covering the affair. The post’s sole link was added by her editors.

In short, Applebaum wants us to believe that she blogs without making even a cursory effort to know what she is talking about. She might do better to say she lied.

POSTSCRIPT: Since it won’t do for me to go on at such length without expressing any opinion on the underlying controversy, I’ll just say that rapists should always be brought to justice, even if they avoid capture for thirty years. If there was some sort of misconduct in the case, as Polanski’s apologists allege, a court is the only institution competent to consider it. Also, the victim’s wish that Polanski not be punished is not germane. There may be crimes for which the victim’s reluctance to pursue justice is dispositive, but statutory rape is not one of them.

(Via Instapundit, who adds: You can tell a lot about a governing class from who it’s willing to cover for.)

Clark Hoyt, the NYT ombudsman, has a formula when addressing complaints about his newspaper’s misconduct. First, he admits the paper made a mistake, then he denies it did so in bad faith. But lately, he’s had cases in which the NYT’s bad faith has been so blatant that it’s been necessary to withhold some of the facts. A few weeks ago, he did so in a small scandal involving David Pogue, the NYT’s technology columnist, and now he’s done so in the ACORN scandal.

He begins his latest column this way:

ON Sept. 12, an Associated Press article inside The Times reported that the Census Bureau had severed its ties to Acorn, the community organizing group. Robert Groves, the census director, was quoted as saying that Acorn, one of thousands of unpaid organizations promoting the 2010 census, had become “a distraction.”

What the article didn’t say — but what followers of Fox News and conservative commentators already knew — was that a video sting had caught Acorn workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes.

As James Taranto points out, this is only half true. Indeed, the NYT’s version of the AP article did not say anything about the sting. But the AP article did:

ACORN fired two employees who were seen on hidden-camera video giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman who pretended to be a prostitute. Fox News Channel broadcast excerpts from the video on Thursday. On the video, a man and woman visiting ACORN’s Baltimore office asked about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman’s income. An ACORN employee advised the woman to list her occupation as “performance artist.”

In a statement, ACORN Maryland board member Margaret Williams said the video was an attempt to smear ACORN, and that undercover teams attempted similar setups in at least three other ACORN offices. Williams said no tax returns were filed and no assistance was provided.

The NYT actually edited the AP article to remove the information explaining the controversy. (“All the news that’s fit to print”!) That fact alone makes the denial of bad faith unworkable. No wonder Hoyt keeps it from the reader.

This incident, like the earlier Pogue incident, makes it crystal clear that Clark Hoyt’s job has nothing to do with holding his paper accountable. His purpose is to cover for his paper’s misdeeds, in order to reassure the NYT’s remaining readers that it is behaving responsibly. In other words, he is just another dishonest NYT journalist.

Dan Rather was just as bad at telling the truth in 1963 as the day he finally got fired. (Via the Corner.)

Scott Johnson is accusing the Washington Post of  inventing a James O’Keefe quote to make him appear to have a racial motive in exposing ACORN.

UPDATE: The Post corrects:

This article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O’Keefe, did not specifically mention them.

(Via Power Line.)

I guess in journalist-speak “incorrectly said” = “made up”.

UPDATE: More.

(Previous post.)

The New York Times has broken its silence on the ACORN scandal, and they pretty much tell the story straight. I suppose they deserve a little credit for that, even if the story ran on page A14.

Nevertheless, there is one paragraph that is worthy of note:

In a statement over the weekend, Bertha Lewis, the chief organizer for Acorn, said the bogus prostitute and pimp had spent months visiting numerous Acorn offices, including those in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia, before getting the responses they were looking for.

You’ll notice that the NYT does not use a direct quote. The full statement is here, and this is the relevant part:

This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.

(Emphasis mine.) You’ll notice New York on ACORN’s list of places where the sting had failed, but it was left off of the NYT’s version of the list. Why? Because New York is the one that proves ACORN’s statement was a lie. Immediately after ACORN released its statement, O’Keefe released the video of his visit to a New York office.

Leaving New York in the list eliminates the value of ACORN’s statement as a rebuttal, so the NYT struck it. Most organizations don’t get such a favor.

ACORN, by the way, has removed the entire statement from its web site.

POSTSCRIPT: The NYT article also contains this gem:

Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, called the tactics used to go after Mr. Jones and Acorn “McCarthyite,” and said the critics were harping on minor failings and distorting records that over all were admirable. “This is dangerous stuff,” Mr. Borosage said. “I don’t think progressives will sit back and let this gain momentum.”

Hmm. Abetting the importation of child sex slaves from Central America is a “minor failing”?

(Previous post.)

UPDATE: Duane Patterson noticed the same thing. (Via Power Line.)

The age-old question regarding media failure is its cause: incompetence or malice? Charles Gibson, the ABC anchor, made the case for incompetence when he said this morning he didn’t even know about the ACORN scandal, or the Senate’s vote to cut off ACORN’s funding.

(Via the Corner.) (Previous post.)

The LA Times admits that its story on Al-Kidd v. Ashcroft was completely wrong.

The NYT managing editor explains why they didn’t cover the Van Jones controversy until it was all over:

One reason was that our Washington bureau was somewhat short-staffed during the height of the pre-Labor Day vacation period.

(Via the Corner.)

One imagines that if a senior Bush administration adviser had been revealed as a raving lunatic, the NYT would have found a way to free up someone to cover the story.

UPDATE: A New York Post column takes a look at the stories the NYT was able to cover while it was ignoring Van Jones. (Via Instapundit.)

With a Democratic administration now in office, the New York Times is now highlighting the bright side of high unemployment:

How can you tell that we’ve gone from a Republican to Democratic administration?  Reading the New York Times provides readers an instructive guide for unemployment coverage.  Gone are the snarky references to “McJobs” in a Republican recovery, when unemployment was at 5.4%, or political criticism disguised as pseudointellectual etymology when it was at 5.8%.  Now, the NYT highlights the blessings of unemployment when it reaches 9.7%, especially to community organizers-cum-politicians.

Interview enough people, and you can find someone to say anything, such as:

For some of the jobless, the experience has triggered a profound reassessment.

Yukyong Choi, 36, a former litigator who has not worked in a year, is now an unpaid volunteer for P.J. Kim, a City Council candidate in Lower Manhattan.

“One thing that I’ve discovered through this process is I don’t really want to go back to that life,” Mr. Choi said. “That was a life filled with 18-hour days, and having to work with people you may not enjoy. It’s not the money anymore; I want to do things that will have a real effect on people’s lives, as opposed to just trying to get a company out of a situation.”

There’s an interesting kerfuffle going on in Mac-land:

• David Pogue, the New York Times technology columnist, writes a review of Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system. He gives it a glowing endorsement, saying that “paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer.” In passing that he mentions that he experienced a few “frustrating glitches” in various non-Apple programs. No big deal.
• Pogue expands on the “frustrating glitches” to Venture Beat. It turns out they are serious, of the you-can’t-do-your-work variety.
• People wonder why Pogue would write such a glowing review for a product that doesn’t work right.
• It turns out that Pogue has a book deal to write a how-to for Snow Leopard, so he has a financial incentive to encourage people to get it.

At this point Clark Hoyt, the NYT “public editor”, enters the story. As usual, Hoyt defends the column. But here’s the interesting part: he doesn’t let on what the controversy is about. He mentions that Pogue has a conflict-of-interest between his column for the NYT and the book deal, but frames it as a hypothetical issue rather than a real one. He does not mention that the controversy arose because Pogue found serious issues with the product and failed to mention them in his column. If one only read the NYT, one would never know that there’s a real issue here.

Via Colby Cosh, who remarks:

Once again, Cosh’s Law of Newspaper Ombudsmen holds true: we are supposed to believe they exist to defend the interests of the reader against those of the newspaper, but their actual job is precisely the opposite.

(Via Instapundit.)

Mickey Kaus thinks the NYT is still obscuring the reason Van Jones resigned. In its story on the resignation, the NYT offers:

Van Jones . . . signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East.

Kaus adds:

Reading that, would you realize the petition was a Truther petition? You might think Jones simply made the standard argument that Bush shouldn’t have used 9/11 to help gin up the Iraq War–as opposed to suggesting that Bush “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war,” which is what the petition actually said.

I think this may just be shoddy writing, rather than misinformation. After all, “allow” can be used without the secondary “to provide”, to mean “allow to happen”. Let’s observe how the same sentence reads with a comma:

. . . whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001, to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East.

Advantage: punctuation!

This time I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and dismiss this as merely bad writing and editing.

(Via Instapundit.)

Here’s an amusing instance of the evolution of a remark from what was actually said to the New York Times’s reporting.

Mark Steyn:

Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.

Mark Steyn, as reported in Media Matters:

Obama’s stay-in-school speech is part of “cult of personality,” though not on Kim Jong Il, Saddam scale.

Mark Steyn, as reported in the New York Times:

Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader.

Media Matters gets it right (setting aside the spin of calling it Obama’s “stay-in-school speech.”), and the NYT links to them, which makes it hard to understand how they got this wrong. Unless they weren’t really trying.

UPDATE: Once the error is in the New York Times, lazy reporters around the world pick it up.

UPDATE: Not only has the NYT not corrected yet, they’ve repeated the error.

UPDATE: The NYT has now issued a correction. (It took them five days; only three days longer than it took them to correct the name of a quoted parent from Curtis to Curtiss.) The correction itself has pretty much the complete truth, but the corrected story still gives the erroneous impression that Steyn was comparing Obama to Kim and Saddam. I guess that is as close as the NYT is willing to come to the truth.

Of course, the NYT wire is halfway around the world while the correction is lacing up its shoes, as minor papers repeat the NYT’s faulty reporting.

Here’s the worst case of media dishonesty I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s saying a lot. MSNBC films a man who showed up to a health care protest with a rifle strapped to his back and then uses that as evidence for a narrative about racial hate groups who will inevitably try to kill the president. They begin this way:

Yes, there are Second Amendment rights for sure but also there are questions about whether this has racial overtones. I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs.

This is complete crap in the first place. But, in fact, the man they showed with the rifle was black! (This YouTube video makes the man’s race clear.) Knowing that wouldn’t support their narrative, MSNBC filmed him in a very unnatural way (from the back and from the torso down) that avoided showing any skin.

POSTSCRIPT: I do wish that people would observe a little message discipline. Strap on your weapon for a gun-rights rally, but leave it behind (or carry concealed) for a health care rally. Otherwise you’re playing into the hands of these liars.

UPDATE: Weakest spin ever: “Contessa was speaking generally and not about that specific person with the automatic weapon.”

NBC Nightly News, in a recent piece insinuating that health care protesters are somehow sinister (headline: “Healthy Debate?”), used a follower of Lyndon LaRouche as an example of a conservative critic inspired by Rush Limbaugh:

Much of the passion and protest comes from conservative voices opposed to the Democrats’ plan for a goverment-run option for health care. [Image of a poster showing Barack Obama photoshopped with Hitler mustache.] Some anger on display gets stoked by the provocative megaphone of Rush Limbaugh.

It’s not easy to see on television, but the bottom of the poster makes clear its provenance. At the bottom of the poster is the inscription “LAROUCHEPAC.COM”.

Needless to say, Lyndon LaRouche is no conservative. LaRouche is an eccentric, extreme socialist, ostracised even by the Democratic party that he claims membership in. Just as needless to say, NBC News is not unaware of this.

So why did NBC try to pass a LaRouchite off as a conservative dittohead? Did they really fail to read the poster they were putting on the air? Unlikely. More likely, they thought it would feed their narrative, and no one would notice.

A Washington Post headline:

In the Senate, Small States Wield Outsize Power. Is This What the Founders Had in Mind?

Er, yes. Next question.

(Via Hot Air.)

POSTSCRIPT: To be fair, the article’s author clearly knows this, so I guess this is a case of a ignorant headline writer. This hardly excuses the author, who seems set to discard a 200-year-old system of government because small states are obstructing the current president’s agenda.

AFP describes last Wednesday’s anti-Zelaya demonstration in Tegucigalpa this way:

Hundreds of white-clad demonstrators on Wednesday protested against Zelaya’s return in the capital, where the situation has become increasingly polarized.

“We don’t like you, Mel,” one banner read in Wednesday’s demonstration, using Zelaya’s nickname.

Zelaya’s supporters meanwhile have announced their own demonstrations.

(Emphasis mine.)

A photograph of the demonstration suggests that there might have been a wee bit more than merely hundreds in the demonstration:

(Via Instapundit.)

The CBO report that health care “reform” would push costs up, not down, was a big blow against Democratic efforts to take over health care. Big news? For most newspapers, yes, but for not the New York Times. The “paper of record” buried the story in the middle of the paper, and gave it a misleading headline to boot. What bigger news was the NYT dedicating its front page to, leaving no room for the day’s top political story? President Obama addressing the NAACP.

(Via Hot Air.)

(Warning, the volume on this clip is set very loud.)

Hot Air has more. (Via Instapundit.)

More faked photos in the New York Times. (Via Instapundit.)

The Plain Dealer’s ombudsman, Ted Diadiun, is getting grief for insulting bloggers without the slightest idea what he’s talking about. This caught my eye because it wasn’t long ago that I caught Diadiun lying about the Associated Press’s style guide as pertains to assault weapons.

Newsweek catches a minor error by President Obama:

“I don’t know if anybody else will meet their future wife or husband in class like I did, but I’m sure you’ll all going to have wonderful careers,” the president said.

In fact, he did not meet her in class:

The thing is: Obama didn’t technically meet his wife at school. Although both are Harvard Law School grads, Michelle Obama got her degree in the spring of 1988 while her future husband didn’t actually start school there until later that fall. (He graduated in 1991). The Obamas officially met in Chicago in 1989, when the future president was a summer associate at the Sidley Austin law firm and Michelle was assigned as his mentor.

Now, I don’t care in the least whether Barack Obama remembers how he met his wife (although his wife might care). But Newsweek apparently can’t bear to see their hero trapped in even a minor, unimportant falsehood, and felt the need to spin for him:

Was what Obama said wrong? Technically no, considering Obama was still going to school when he met his wife.

You can be as “technical” as you like; this is simply wrong.  Meeting while you’re in school is not the same thing as meeting in class. This is spin, and poor quality spin at that.

(Via the Corner.)

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times ombudsman, dedicates his latest column to a defense of the paper’s conduct in the affair of the kidnapping of David Rodhe, a New York Times journalist. Rodhe and one of his companions, an Afghan journalist, escaped and are now free.

I hadn’t heard of this affair, and that’s by design. In an effort to protect its employee, the NYT went to great lengths to suppress any mention of the kidnapping not only in its own pages, but elsewhere as well:

The Times went to extraordinary lengths to quash the Rohde story and to shape information that might be available to the kidnappers on the Internet. Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, was enlisted to keep word of the kidnapping off that site, even as user-editors tried to post it. Michael Yon, an independent journalist, posted an item on his blog in March and was quickly asked to take it down, which he did.

Michael Moss, a Times reporter, edited Rohde’s biography on Wikipedia to highlight his reporting that could be seen as sympathetic to Muslims and to remove the fact that he once worked for The Christian Science Monitor. Moss wrote similar information on Rohde’s Times Topics page on the paper’s Web site. He and Catherine Mathis, the Times’s spokeswoman, even persuaded a group of New England newspapers to remove Rohde’s wedding notice and photos from their Web site so the kidnappers would not have personal information they could use to pressure him psychologically. I found this last action troubling because The Times takes a hard line against removing information from its own archive.

Much of the column is dedicated to an explanation of why the NYT was willing to go so far to protect its own, while simultaneously reporting on other middle eastern kidnappings, including a U.S. soldier. Hoyt claims that the NYT would be just as willing to protect others, if it had only been asked. Readers will decide for themselves how much they believe that.

It’s well and good that the NYT wanted to protect its people. But it’s important to note the flexibility of the NYT’s dedication to The Public’s Right To Know. When running a story would endanger people, the public’s right to know depends on who those people are.

(Via Hot Air.)

Judge Alex Kozinski has been unanimously cleared of misconduct by a special committee of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The background is here. Briefly, Kozinski was accused of making sexually explicit material available on a public web site. In truth, Kozinski had an improperly secured private file server on which some member of his family had stored some distasteful (but not illegal) files among many other innocuous ones.

In its opinion, the committee not only cleared Kozinski of misconduct, but criticized the press for misrepresenting the case:

In June 2008, a public controversy followed the publication of a Los Angeles Times article that alleged the Judge had maintained a publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photographs and videos. The Judge requested this investigation into his personal conduct.

Some media reports in June 2008 suggested that the Judge maintained, and intended to maintain, a public website, as that term is commonly understood — a presentation of offensive sexually explicit material open for public browsing. This investigation has established, however, that such a characterization is incorrect.

The LA Times was principally responsible for the story, and even now refuses to correct the record. In its story on the court’s report, it bizarrely fails to mention that Kozinski was cleared, instead preferring to focus on the fact that court admonished Kozinski for failing to quickly fix the problem once he became aware of it.

Beyond that, the LA Times not only failed to report that it had been rebuked by the court, but actually repeated the misrepresentation that drew the rebuke:

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was admonished by a panel of his colleagues, in a report made public today, for posting sexually explicit material on a publicly accessible Internet server.

First of all, this statement is literally untrue, in that Kozinski was not admonished for saving the material, but for failing to promptly rectify the situation when he became aware of it.

More importantly, it implies that the material was placed there for public consumption. It does so in two ways: through the choice of the inaccurate word “posting,” and through its description of the server as “publicly accessible” rather than as “improperly secured.”

This is some of the most flagrant media dishonesty you’ll ever see without forged national guard documents. Bury the lede, bury the rebuke of your reporting, and repeat the smear that drew the rebuke. That’s the LA Times.

This sounds bad:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’m sad to see this happen. The Washington Post has been the most respectable of the liberal daily papers.  I’m also surprised to see that the Post has learned nothing from all the news it covers:

In response to requests for comment, The Post issued a statement that stopped short of canceling the event.

Kris Coratti, communications director of Washington Post Media, a division of The Washington Post Company, said: “The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. . . As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this. We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that The Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate.”

If these people read their own paper they would know how this always goes. They are going to have to cancel the event eventually, and the sooner they do it, the better off they’ll be.

UPDATE: The Post’s publisher has read the writing on the wall and cancelled the event.

Drudge reports that ABC is giving the president a primetime special to push his health care plan:

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, [which will] exclude opposing voices on the debate.

(Via the Corner.)

ABC News responds that, although the president will be the only one responding to questions, they will make sure the program is fair. To suggest otherwise is “quite unfair.” Well, that’s a relief.

Seriously though, there is one way they could persuade me that this will be fair, and that would be to put John Stossel in charge of the program. I won’t be holding my breath.

POSTSCRIPT: It used to be that I had a fair amount of respect for ABC News (although even then, not enough to give this travesty a pass). But they never corrected Charles Gibson’s outright lie in his Sarah Palin interview last year, so not any more.

David Letterman jokes about Sarah Palin’s 14-year-old daughter getting “knocked up” by Alex Rodriguez during a Yankee game. Har har har. (Via Instapundit.)

POSTSCRIPT: Mass Backwards says that the New York Times whitewashed this bit out of the monologue transcript. (Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Apparently it was CBS, not the NYT, that edited the joke out of the monologue. Also, the NYT says they would have deleted it if CBS hadn’t. Their printing of monologues are routinely edited for taste, so they aren’t supposed to be transcripts. Fair enough; the NYT is cleared of the whitewashing charge, this time. (Via Tim Blair, via Riehl World View, via Instapundit.)

CBS is on the hook, though. Someone at CBS recognized that there was a problem enough to edit the transcript, but (if Letterman is to be believed — a big if) no one told Letterman there was a problem until days later. Letterman, for his part, refused to apologize, and said that the joke was intended to refer to Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, rather than her 14-year-old daughter, and was not intended to imply a rape, statutory or otherwise.

That doesn’t really make sense, since the older daughter wasn’t at the game, but suppose we take him at his word. This joke is still in appalling taste. David Letterman apparently feels that it’s fair to tar Bristol Palin as a slut because she had a child out of wedlock, and did so without her even being in the news. In fact, in another joke, Letterman went so far as to call her a prostitute. (Via Hot Air.) If Letterman hates Sarah Palin, that’s fine, but he should leave her children out of it unless her children are actually in the news.

We’re seeing an amazing double standard here. People have been drummed off the air for far less than this. But when it comes to Sarah Palin, it seems you can say literally anything.

UPDATE (6/15): Letterman apologizes.

Speaking on Hardball, Evan Thomas slipped and said what he actually thinks. Usually journalists won’t allow themselves to say something like this out loud:

In a way, Obama is standing above the country. Above– above the world. He’s sort of God.

In context, he was comparing Obama to Reagan, who, being a mortal, was concerned with America. Obama is above that. According to Thomas, that’s a good thing.

Yesterday, the LA Times alleges the following statement from Sen. John Cornyn:

Only days earlier, Cornyn said in a radio interview that it was “terrible” for conservatives to be attacking Sotomayor as a “racist.” But today, the senator did not reiterate those sentiments and pledged that he and other Republican lawmakers would probe deeply into Sotomayor’s past comments and rulings to see if her heritage colors her ability to make fair decisions.

You’ll note that they were unable to produce a direct quote. That’s because, Cornyn said no such thing. In fact, throughout the interview, he said the exact opposite.

Tacitly acknowledging the error, the LA Times later removed the statement. They did so silently (of course) but Patterico has the screenshot.

Riehl World View spots a dishonest hit piece at the HuffPo. (Shocking, I know.)

Since the Riehl World View post, the HuffPo has improved its headline a little bit, replacing its original false headline “Rob Portman Escorted Out Of VA Hospital For Campaigning” with one that merely insinuates a falsehood “Rob Portman Leaves VA Hospital After Being Told That Campaigning There Is Illegal.” The new headline is technically truthful, in that it accurately expresses the chronological order of two unrelated events.

(Via the New Ledger, via Instapundit.)

The Independent, a British left-leaning paper, doesn’t understand America. Its recent article on Scientology on trial in France opens:

The Church of Scientology in France went on trial today on charges of organised fraud. Registered as a religion in the United States, with celebrity members such as actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, Scientology enjoys no such legal protection in France and has faced repeated accusations of being a money-making cult.

(Emphasis mine.) (Via the Corner.)

That’s not how it works in America; we don’t register religions here. Scientology is protected, not by some sort of government registration, but by the First Amendment.

Of course Scientology is a preposterous fraudulent cult, but that’s beside the point. Cults are legal in the United States. What will bring Scientology down is its history of imprisoning and killing people.

Yet another bogus NYT story:

Edmund Andrews, Times financial reporter, is promoting a new book claiming to detail his personal journey through the dark underside of easy mortgages and financial distress.

The NY Times gave him space in the NY Times magazine to talk up his story and his book. But missing from the story is any mention of the fact that his wife has filed for personal bankruptcy not once, but twice. For a story about personal finances, that is a staggering omission, leading to some absurd phoniness in the Andrews tale.

(Via Instapundit.)

How did the book happen?  Clark Hoyt, the NYT ombudsman, explains:

In the fall of 2007, Andrews went to his editors with a book proposal. He wanted to tell how the subprime mortgage crisis happened — greedy lenders, regulators who looked the other way and people like himself who made foolish choices.

Though the timing was terrible for The Times — Andrews was the main Washington reporter on the story — he burned to illuminate a national crisis through his personal experience. And he had another strong reason: He needed money.

“I was desperate,” he said. He still is. Seven months behind on his mortgage, he may lose his home unless “Busted,” which comes out this week, is a hit.

So the book arose in circumstances that maximize the likelihood of an ethical breach, and was nevertheless okayed by the editors. Thanks for the explanation. I have to say, Hoyt has a unique ability to write defenses of the New York Times that make it seem even worse than before.

CNN’s efforts to block bloggers from posting video of their reporter, Susan Roesgen, making an ass of herself while “reporting” on tax day tea parties have failed.  (Via Instapundit.)

(Previous post.)

I’m no fan of Harry Reid, to say the least, but this AP story on three supposed Reid gaffes just isn’t right. The first two “gaffes” (regarding the health of Democratic senators) are dubious, and unimportant even if he was wrong. Then, the substantive one:

Reid also mangled his party’s position on the congressional news of the day, that Senate Democrats would join their House counterparts in withholding the money President Barack Obama needs to close the Guantanamo Bay prison until Obama comes up with a plan for relocating its prisoners.

But Reid went further than saying he wanted to see a plan for the money before Congress approves it. “We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States,” he said.

No one, of course, was talking about releasing terrorism suspects among the American populace. Imprisoning them, perhaps, but not releasing them.

I truly wish this were true. We certainly shouldn’t be talking about releasing terrorism suspects among the American populace. But we are:

Attorney General Eric Holder said some detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may end up being released in the U.S. as the Obama administration works with foreign allies to resettle some of the prisoners.

The gaffe here belongs to the AP, not Reid.  As far as Reid goes, I just wish we could trust that he really means it.

The AP reports:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution.

Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to The Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

The newspaper issued a formal correction on Monday and corrected the version that appears online.

Interestingly, though, Dowd contends that she didn’t actually do anything wrong.  First, let’s look at the actual copy.  Here is Josh Marshall’s version:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Here is Dowd’s version (from a screenshot here):

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

I’ve marked the changes in bold, and you can see that the two are virtually identical. There’s no way to deny that this passage was cribbed from Marshall. Here’s where the story gets interesting.

Rather than simply say that she meant to credit Marshall and made a mistake, she tells a different story:

josh is right. I didn’t read his blog last week, and didn’t have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now. i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me. we’re fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

As Plagiarism Today observes, Dowd is claiming that she remembered 41 words verbatim from a 43-word quote that she heard spoken aloud once in the middle of a conversation, when the person who spoke it was also repeating it from memory. That simply isn’t believable. But perhaps by “talking to a friend” she actually means receiving email from a friend.

Anyway, let’s accept Dowd’s story at face value. Suppose Dowd did believe that those were her friend’s words, rather than a prominent blogger. Did she obtain permission to use her friend’s words? It’s not plagiarism only when you copy a prominent blogger. It’s very hard to believe that the friend would have given her permission to use his words in a column without it occurring to him to mention that they were not actually his words.

But let’s set that aside as well. Let’s assume that Dowd obtained permission to use her friend’s words verbatim, and the friend simply forgot that they weren’t his own words. This is the best possible light we can put Dowd in. Under all these assumptions, is what she did okay?

In an academic setting, it is certainly not. You can’t claim someone else’s words as your own, even with their permission. If you quote someone, you must make it clear that it is a quote, and give proper attribution. The failure to do so is plagiarism.

But, for the New York Times it seems it’s okay. Politico’s Michael Calderone put the question to them:

That raised other issues about whether it’s common practice for Dowd to use entire passages from friends in her column without attribution. And when I sent a follow-up email about this to Dowd, she didn’t respond. . .

So I put the question of whether this is common practice for columnists before Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal, who passed me along to PR. But now I’ve now received a statement supporting Dowd from spokesperson Diane McNulty.

Maureen had us correct the column online as soon as the error was brought to her attention, adding in the sourcing to Marshall’s blog. We ran a correction in today’s paper, referring readers to the correct version online.

There is no need to do anything further since there is no allegation, hint or anything else from Marshall that this was anything but an error. It was corrected. Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends. Anyone with even the most passing acquaintance with Maureen’s work knows that she is happy and eager to give people credit.

I don’t understand how the fact that Marshall has no problem means the Times doesn’t do anything further. The paper has its own standards to upkeep regardless of who’s complaining or not.

I think Calderone is right (except for the part about the NYT having standards to maintain). What we have here is a black-and-white case in which Maureen Dowd knowingly was using someone else’s words without attribution. The New York Times, when asked specifically about the matter, says that’s okay. One might think that, in the wake of the Jayson Blair fiasco, they might be a little more cautious.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s not relevant to the plagiarism, but it seems necessary to mention that Marshall’s remark is BS.  Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002.  At that time, the Bush Administration was already actively deliberating what to do about the Iraq problem.  When else were they going to interrogate him?  You can’t interrogate someone you don’t have.

CBS’s Mark Knoller tried to explain this, but his explanation boils down to “we’re not supposed to stand up, but for Barack Obama we forgot.” I don’t think that really changes much, although I suppose it makes it unconscious adulation for President Obama, rather than an intentional slight to President Bush.  I’m not sure which is worse.

(Via BOTW.)

Business and Media writes:

On CBS’s May 3 “60 Minutes,” correspondent Scott Pelley, who once compared global-warming skepticism to Holocaust denial, gave the plaintiff of a $27-billion frivolous lawsuit against Chevron a public relations victory with his report.

Pelley’s report featured a suit filed by the Amazon Defense Coalition, a group described as “eco-radicals,” who are trying to squeeze $27 billion from Chevron for environmental cleanup that the nation’s government signed off on more than a decade ago. Pelley described ADC as working on behalf of 30,000 villagers, although there are only 48 named plaintiffs, to win funds for so-called environmental damage in Ecuador’s rain forest from then-Texaco Petroleum’s (Texpet) operation of oil well sites.

Business and Media documents several dishonest elements in the piece, just one of which being:

Throughout Pelley’s account, footage was shown that included at least 13 images of currently polluted pits, none of which were Texaco-remediated sites, but weren’t attributed to PetroEcuador either. According to [Chevron representative Donald] Campbell, the polluted sites Pelley featured were PetroEcuador’s Lago Agrio 5 and one of the Shushufindi sites.

“In Texas, for example, pits like this one are supposed to be temporary, isolated from fresh water, and soon after emptied and backfilled,” Pelley said, showing a site PetroEcuador had agreed to remediate under their agreement with Texaco. “But in Ecuador this pit has been here for 25 years and we found it’s actually designed to overflow into streams.”

Only 10 seconds of footage was shown from only one Texaco-remediated site, but Pelley had told Chevron he was too busy to visit a Texaco-remediated site personally.

“If Pelley would have spent 60 minutes at a Texaco-remediated site, he would have had a different story,” Campbell said.

That’s in part because PetroEcuador has a horrendous environmental record with more than 1,000 oil spills since 2000. In 2006, BusinessWeek said the company had “suffered an oil spill every two days this year.”

(Via Power Line.)

UPDATE (6/9): The Economist gets the story straight.

Alphecca points out a column by the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s ombudsman.  In it, he justifies the Plain Dealer’s use of the term “assault weapon” by passing the buck to the Associated Press:

Taking its cue from that, the Associated Press Stylebook defines assault weapons as “firearms that feature two or more accessories such as a detachable magazine, folding or telescopic stock, silencer, pistol grip, bayonet mount or a device to suppress the flash emitted while shooting in the dark.”

This is basically the definition of “assault weapon” that was dreamed up by President Clinton in 1994.  Many have noted the dishonesty of that definition, since the word is used precisely because of it sounds dangerous, but the actual definition is essentially cosmetic.  (ASIDE: Merriam-Webster’s dictionary has a fairly useful definition for “assault rifle”, but sees “assault weapon” as a largely meaningless word.)

On closer look, the Plain Dealer’s definition is not only dishonest, but nonsensical.  According to that definition, isn’t nearly any semiautomatic pistol an “assault weapon”?  Firearm? Check. Detachable magazine?  Check.  Pistol grip?  Of course!  Language clarifying that a pistol’s grip doesn’t count as a “pistol grip”? Apparently not.

So it sure seems like the Plain Dealer and the AP are being profoundly stupid here.  But here’s the interesting part, according to Ask the Editor at APStylebook.com (search on “assault weapon”), it’s not true:

What is AP style books definition of an Assault Weapon? And how can a firearm be defined now? Since the Assault Weapons ban sunsetted how can we decribe scary black guns? – from Denver, Co on Mon, May 15, 2006

An assault-style weapon is defined as any semiautomatic pistol, rifle or shotgun originally designed for military or police use with a large ammunition capacity. (See the “weapons” entry in the AP Stylebook.)

This is fairly close to the Merriam-Webster definition of assault rifle, and bears no resemblance to the definition claimed by the Plain Dealer’s ombudsman.  Assuming APStylebook.com can be trusted, it looks like two counts of foolishness for the Plain Dealer, and the AP is off the hook.

(Via Instapundit.)

Denmark’s Picture of the Year competition asked photojournalists for their raw files, before photoshopping.  Good thing.  (Via Instapundit.)

CNN is using bogus copyright claims to try to suppress videos of its reporter Susan Roesgen making an ass of herself at the Chicago Tea Party.  (Via Power Line.)

Those who want to restrict guns in America keep pushing the canard that most guns used in Mexican crimes come from the United States, such as in this AP story:

Mexico is the main hub for cocaine and other drugs entering the U.S., and the United States is the primary source of guns used in Mexico’s drug-related killings.

Despite its vigorous repetition by dishonest politicians and press, it’s not remotely true, unless 17% is considered most.

This is just an instance of the classic story of looking for your keys under the lamppost because the light is better there.  U.S. law requires guns to have markings that often make it possible to trace them, so while the vast majority of Mexican crime guns can’t be traced, the tiny fraction that are successfully traced usually come from the the U.S.

In an AP story on the DHS “rightwing extremism” report, the writer seems not to have actually read the report in question.  The story describes a key footnote this way:

In a footnote in the report, right-wing extremism was defined as hate-motivated groups and movements, such as hatred of certain religions, racial or ethnic groups. It went on to say, “It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

The footnote is hardly the limit of the report’s shoddiness, but it is one of its key offensive elements, and the AP’s description makes the footnote sound better than it is.  After all, hate groups are bad.  If they’re the only ones getting slandered by the DHS, maybe it’s not something to get exercised about.  But the report’s definition of right-wing extremism is not limited to “hate-motivated groups and movements.”  The footnote, in its entirety, reads:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

(Emphasis mine.)  So the report casts its net much wider than hate groups.  According to it, anyone who supports federalism is a potential terrorist.

NBC is worried about bias on one of its cable networks.  Not at MSNBC, the network of anti-Republican screedmongers Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, which never even saw the need to apologize for Matthews editorializing “oh god” when Bobby Jindal responded to the president’s budget address.  No, the problem is CNBC, where a couple of hosts have been critical of the president’s insanely reckless fiscal policy.  The NY Post reports:

THE top suits and some of the on-air talent at CNBC were recently ordered to a top-secret meeting with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to discuss whether they’ve turned into the President Obama-bashing network, Page Six has learned.

“It was an intensive, three-hour dinner at 30 Rock which Zucker himself was behind,” a source familiar with the powwow told us. “There was a long discussion about whether CNBC has become too conservative and is beating up on Obama too much. There’s great concern that CNBC is now the anti-Obama network. The whole meeting was really kind of creepy.”

(Via JammieWearingFool, via Instapundit.)

As a child, the standard cry whenever you lose something is “who stole my pencil?” (or whatever).  To a child, it doesn’t occur that he simply forgot where he left it, it must be the fault of some malicious external actor.

Keith Olbermann, it seems, never grew up.   Olbermann blasted Twitter as the “worst person in the world” when he learned that it had allowed someone else to open a Twitter account in his name.  That someone naturally had to be Fox News.  (Those guys are always stealing Olbermann’s pencils.)

As it turned out, the Twitter account was being run by Olbermann’s employer, MSNBC, which was running it to promote his program.

(Via IMAO, via Instapundit.)

Remember, the superiority of newspapers over blogs comes from the layers of editing.  (Via the Corner.)

Israeli campaign against Palestinian terrorists last December brought, as it always did, stories of Israeli war crimes.  The New York Times ran a story on Israeli “excessive force and wanton killing,” based entirely on hearsay and rumor.  These sorts of stories always turn out to be false, and this one is no exception.  An IDF investigation found no evidence that any of the incidents happened.  (Via Power Line.)

The striking thing here is that papers like the NYT, after repeatedly being used by anti-Israeli agitators, continue credulously to  report their stories, which invariably turn out to be false.  One might draw the conclusion that the NYT is more interested in attacking Israel than it is in reporting the truth.

Paul Beston explains how the Pentagon’s ban on media coverage of returning war dead came to pass:

Many who opposed the ban believed that it originated with George W. Bush’s administration. But its true origins lie elsewhere, with another President Bush—and with an instance of media bias so odious that it is better called propaganda.

In force since the outset of the Gulf War in 1991, the ban was triggered by an incident in the aftermath of the invasion of Panama ordered by President George H. W. Bush in December 1989. According to the New York Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller:

In 1989, the television networks showed split-screen images of Mr. Bush sparring and joking with reporters on one side and a military honor guard unloading coffins from a military action that he had ordered in Panama on the other.

Mr. Bush, a World War II veteran, was caught unaware and subsequently asked the networks to warn the White House when they planned to use split screens. The networks declined.

At the next opportunity, in February 1991 during the Persian Gulf war, the Pentagon banned photos of returning coffins.

Writing in the American Journalism Review, Jamie McIntyre, a former CNN senior Pentagon correspondent, makes clear that the president was unaware that while he was conducting his press conference, “the first casualties of the assault were arriving at Dover, and several television networks (ABC, CBS and CNN) had switched to a split-screen image, juxtaposing the jocular president against the grim reality of the invasion he ordered.” McIntyre then writes ruefully: “It was the beginning of the end not just of live coverage, but of any photography or media coverage of war dead returning to the United States.”

It’s hard to think of any White House that wouldn’t have responded defensively to the media’s manipulation of such solemn images. But writing all these years later, neither Bumiller nor McIntyre finds it worth noting that three networks blatantly attempted to humiliate the president of the United States in creating such a toxic juxtaposition. From their perspective, what drove the ban was President Bush’s “embarrassment,” not the media’s naked attempt to defame a political leader.

(Via LGF.)

Nothing much has changed.  The very reason that liberals opposed the ban was they wanted to using returning war dead in propaganda against President Bush.  But, with President Obama now in office, it seems unlikely that the media will make much use of the policy change.

So says ABC anchor Terry Moran:

In some ways Barack Obama is the first president since George Washington to be taking a step down into the oval office.

In a strange way, I know what he means.  Before he took office, he was a near-messianic figure who could do no wrong (in the ideas of media sympathizers like Moran).  Now he has to govern, which involves making actual choices that disappoint his followers, and involves being held to account on broken promises.  Poor guy.

But I still don’t understand the comparison to George Washington, who turned down the chance to be king and became president instead.  At least, I hope I don’t understand it.

Vicki Iseman’s lawsuit against the New York Times never had much of a chance.  Given U.S. libel laws, it’s nearly impossible for a public figure to obtain a judgement against a newspaper for defamation, particularly when the defamatory material is merely implied.  This is as it should be.  We don’t want to see the press intimidated out of publishing negative stories, and the marketplace is punishing the NY Times in the appropriate way, by plunging subscription rates and ad revenues.

So, it wasn’t very clear what Iseman expected to get from her lawsuit.  Some supposed that she wanted the chance to dig through the Times’s records during discovery, and others supposed that she wanted some sort of official concession from the Times that its story’s implication was false.  As far as I know, the closest the NY Times has come to such a concession are some mildly critical comments by its ombudsman.

Now that the lawsuit is settled, both parties are in the victory-claiming phase.  Naturally, the Times says it is vindicated.  According to Greg Sargent, Iseman says (through her lawyer) that she was looking for an official concession, and got it:

The Times memo [arguing that the settlement vindicates it] says in passing that a “note to readers” will run in tomorrow’s paper, and the Times says the note will merely repeat what the paper has already conceded about the story in past statements.

But Iseman’s lawyer, W. Coleman Allen, Jr., claims that the statement is a concession by the paper — and that it’s the concession Iseman sought. He asserts that the statement goes considerably further than anything the paper has said before and that it was agreed upon by the two camps after negotiations. He sends me a copy of the statement that will run tomorrow:

An article published on Feb. 21, 2008, about Senator John McCain and his record as an ethics reformer who was at times blind to potential conflicts of interest included references to Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. The article did not state, and The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust.

Allen says that the line her camp had sought was this one: “The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust.” The original article didn’t state an affair or an unethical relationship outright, but it seemed to imply both; this statement seems like a straightforward statement that neither happened.

“That was what we were particularly interested in,” Allen says. “We’re pleased that the lawsuit was able to be resolved successfully, with the complete vindication that Ms. Iseman sought in filing the lawsuit.”

(Via Instapundit.)

There’s no way to know what Iseman was looking for, and a lawsuit seems like a lot of effort just to obtain a retraction of an implication.  (But I suppose wealthy people make these sorts of calculations differently than I.)  Nevertheless, the question remains, has the New York Times previously conceded this?

I certainly never heard that they did (outside the ombudsman’s column, anyway).  Now that Iseman’s attorney’s statement has attracted the attention of the blogosphere, I’m sure someone will go through the archives and find out who’s right.

The Huffington Post uses a doctored video to smear Fox News’s John Gibson.  (Via Instapundit.) Huffington has a retraction up now, so we can take this claim as corroborated.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m not giving this the Media Failure category.  The Huffington Post fancies itself a newspaper, but it’s really a group blog with airs.

UPDATE: Breitbart.tv tracked down the doctored video to its source, who appears to be blameless.  (Via Hot Air.) He says he only made it for a few friends, and added clear annotations indicating it was not what Gibson actually said.  Somehow the annotations disappeared by the time it was posted on TV Newser, which may well have been innocent incompetence.  The Huffington Post isn’t off the hook, though; if they fancy themselves a newspaper, they need to learn to check original sources.

Reuters opines:

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is mounting a last-ditch effort to free a captured Israeli soldier by blocking an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until Hamas agrees to release him.

Whether Olmert’s brinkmanship can produce a breakthrough in the few weeks he has left depends on Israel making difficult concessions that could bolster Hamas, and on the Islamist group taking a gamble on the Jewish state keeping its word. Many diplomats are sceptical all the pieces will fall in place.

Hamas has no faith that Israel, which is about to change governments, will abide by commitments under the proposed ceasefire, mainly to keep Gaza’s border crossings open, if captured soldier Gilad Shalit is freed.

(Via LGF.)

Reuters is just being ironic, right? They aren’t actually accusing Israel of not keeping its word, are they? The Palestinians never satisfied their obligations under Olso, or under the “roadmap”, or under any of the umpteen cease-fire agreements they’ve negotiated with Israel.  And they aren’t actually accusing Israel of “brinkmanship”, when it’s Hamas that’s been holding a kidnapped Israeli for over two years.

Who can blame him?  Why not, if the press lets you get away with it?

Politico reports:

Time’s current issue is chock-full of Callie Shell photos, the news magazine benefiting from her incredible access to the first family on inauguration day. But on Jan 5, Shell took pictures in a very different role than her journalistic one—allowing her work to be sent out as official White House transition press releases.

Shell’s dual roles have blurred the lines of journalism, leaving Time embarrassed and White House photographers stewing.

The article continues:

[The day after the inauguration], Time.com published the first photo of Obama in the oval office—a much-talked-about shot of the new president on the phone at his desk, coolly breaking Bush White House tradition of appearing sans jacket.

Conversely, three wires services—the AP, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse—were not given access to the oval office, as is customary on day one, and later refused to distribute the White House-approved photos.

Michael Oreskes, the AP’s managing editor for U.S. News, called the approved shots “visual press releases.”

Oreskes comment hits on a common double standard between print journalism and photo-journalism. Of course, a newspaper editor wouldn’t plunk a White House press release verbatim on page one, but it’s more acceptable give A1 real estate to a White House-approved photo. . .

In Shell’s case, her friendly gestures—whether photographing the girls or giving away pictures—has seemed like a too-cozy relationship to some in the press corps. 

“The real problem lies in the perception,” said one White House photographer. “Do [readers] think when they pick up Time magazine they are getting objective coverage?”

Look, this isn’t hard to understand.  Shell does some moonlighting work for the Obama transition, pro bono.  The Obama White House, in return for the favor and because it knows Shell’s work will be favorable, gives Time exclusive access to the Oval Office on inauguration day.  Both Time and President Obama win.  Journalistic integrity loses, but it usually does.

In 2001, Democrats force a one-week delay in the confirmation of the Attorney General.  The Washington Post reports:

Vote on Ashcroft Is Delayed a Week; Democrats Cite Need for More Review

In 2009, Republicans force a one-week delay in the confirmation of the Attorney General.  The Washington Post reports:

Republicans Obstruct Holder’s Path to Justice Dept.

‘Nuff said.

(Via the Corner.)

Reuters reports:

President Barack Obama’s inauguration generated an unprecedented 35,000 stories in the world’s major newspapers, television and radio broadcasts over the past day — about 35 times more than the last presidential swearing-in — a monitoring group said on Wednesday.

The Texas-based Global Language Monitor said there had also been 6 million new Obama-related mentions on the Internet since December 31.

By comparison, the last U.S. presidential inauguration, of George W. Bush in January 2005, resulted in about 1,000 stories in major media worldwide, Paul JJ Payack, president of Global Language Monitor said.

(Via Instapundit.)

The evening before the inauguration, one of the cable news networks (MSNBC, I think) had hours of continuous coverage of the gathering crowds, a story of minimal newsworthiness (not to put too fine a point on it).

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of this.  The press can report on whatever they want.  Let’s just set aside the myth of an objective press and admit that journalists are partisan.  There’s nothing wrong with an openly and admittedly partisan press, and media bias would be a non-issue.  (Media inaccuracy, on the other hand, would still be a serious problem.)

POSTSCRIPT: In a related item, Helen Thomas — known as the dean of the White House press corps — tells an interviewer that journalists must be liberal; an objective journalist is either unthinking or uncaring.  And there’s also this related item from December.

Perhaps the Washington Post should factcheck before it publishes, rather than after:

A Jan. 7 Page One article incorrectly described current and former intelligence officials as believing that the CIA suffers from incompetent leadership and low morale. The sentence should have said that the officials expressed resentment about such suggestions.

(Via Instapundit.)

By the way, page one corrections go on page two, of course.  You wouldn’t want to call attention to them.

Part of CNN’s defense of its fake video of a child supposedly killed by an Israeli missile was that a director at Shifa Hospital (where the child supposedly died) vouched for the incident.  At the time, I doubted the credibility of this doctor, and it seems I was right.  Israeli intelligence says that Hamas’s leadership is now housed in a bunker beneath Shifa Hospital.  (Via Power Line.) If true, and I’m inclined to believe it, it is very unlikely that the hospital’s director is independent of Hamas (even if he wanted to be).

(Previous post.)

More interesting facts have come out regarding CNN’s fake video from Gaza. LGF has published evidence that Mashharawi (the videographer) and Mads Gilbert (the communist, pro-terrorist Norwegian doctor who supposedly tended to his Mashharawi’s dying brother) already knew each other. Both were involved in a Tromsoe-Gaza friendship society (Tromsoe being Gilbert’s home town). Since the organization could not have been a very large one, it seems certain they had met long before the supposed incident.

Also, in CNN’s bizarre defense of their piece, they rebutted the allegation that Mashharawi is involved with Hamas web sites:

Martin said accusations that Mashharawi owns a company that hosts Hamas Web sites were falsely based on Mashharawi having worked at a company that created the PS suffix to allow anyone of any political persuasion to create Palestinian Web sites.

In fact, LGF’s claim is that Mashharawi was the General Manager of a company that hosts Hamas web sites. That claim seems strongly supported by documents showing that Mashharawi is the General Manager of the Gazan company Nepras, and Internet records (also here) showing that Nepras hosts Hamas web sites.

But, in a newly embarrassing revelation, it turns out that Paul Martin, the man who CNN used as its character witness for Mashharawi and who CNN used (above) to rebut the preceding allegation, also has his web site registered by Nepras.

There’s not more than one degree of separation between any of these players.

POSTSCRIPT: None of these facts are necessary to identify the video as a fake. One viewing is sufficient for that. But they do indicate who CNN is in bed with in its Gaza reporting.

UPDATE: Paul Martin responds.

(Previous post.)

(Via The Inside Job, via the Corner.)

The actual projection, 2.2%, is still pretty grim, but at least it leaves us with a positive economy.

Two days ago I noted a fake video aired by CNN of a child supposedly killed by an Israeli “rocket”. CNN now insists that the video is genuine. (Via LGF.) They give us no good reason to believe them though.

First they offer a character witness, one Paul Martin, who says that the videographer (Ashraf Mashharawi) is an honest guy who wouldn’t lie. But we have no particular reason to believe Martin either, particularly since he is Mashharawi’s employer, and therefore has a vested interest in his credibility. Also, a director at the hospital (or at least someone CNN identifies thus) says it happened just as the story says. Whatever.

On the implausible content of the video itself, CNN offers this:

Responding to accusations that the resuscitation efforts of Mashharawi’s brother appeared inauthentic, Martin said that, based on his years of reporting from Gaza, doctors often go through such efforts even with little hope that a patient can be saved.

Oh please. I can believe that a doctor might carry out CPR on a likely hopeless patient, but if so, he’s going to carry out CPR. No doctor is going to waste his time on a CPR-ish pantomime of no medical value. He’s got other things to do with his time. (The video shows the resuscitation effort consisted of half-hearted chest compressions and no ventilation at all.)

CNN offered nothing in regard to the most damning evidence against the video, the fact that the roof where the boy was supposedly killed had quite obviously not been hit by a missile. (Cue the video to 1:13 to see for yourself.)

UPDATE: Still more questions are being raised about the video: Riehl World View points out inconsistencies in the timeline between different versions. (Via Instapundit.)

(Previous post.)

A CNN video of a hospital scene in which a child supposedly dies from wounds suffered at the hands of Israel is an obvious fake. LGF had the story first, and there’s more at A Blog For All (via Conferederate Yankee, via Instapundit.) You can see the video at YouTube.

CNN has pulled the video, but at this hour they’ve left the story up. That’s simply dishonest. If you know the story is false, you take it down. (You should also issue a retraction, but never mind.) You don’t leave the story up, minus the evidence that proves it false.

CNN should know better than this. Palestinians are infamous for their staged propaganda videos, as Pallywood carefully documented:

But with CNN’s history of cozying up to villains to maintain access, I suppose they are merely playing to type.

UPDATE (1/9): CNN still has the story up. Meanwhile, David Bernstein noticed something else bogus in the video:

What hasn’t gotten attention is that the broader story told by the photographer to the CNN reporter is seemingly rather obviously false propaganda. From the video:

Reporter: “Mahmoud and his 14 year old cousin Ahmed were allowed to play on the roof…. Now they are both dead.” Mashharawi: “The Israeli plane targeted them with a small rocket just for them, just for them, and killed both of them.”

So the allegation is that not only did an Israeli plane purposely target two children playing on a roof, but did so with a special, small rocket that it apparently reserves for killing children on roofs without creating any of the obvious signs of serious damage to the building that a missile would cause.