Internet Scofflaw

Todd Zywicki wants to set the record straight about an inaccurate AP story on mortgage walkaways.

Patterico catalogs a year’s worth of errors and lies by the LA Times.  It’s an amazing list.  What’s even more amazing is he does it every year.

(Via the Corner.)

If Israel is at war, it also must be time for the media to start making stuff up. Here’s the first example, from the Washington Post: Israel Rejects Truce, Presses on With Gaza Strikes. How they could “reject” a truce, when none was offered, is beyond me. (Via LGF.)

UPDATE: Mea culpa, I didn’t read carefully enough. The rejected truce was proposed by France, not Hamas. Still, it might have been worthwhile for the Post to mention that both sides rejected it, not just Israel.

Power Line names its dishonest journalist of the year.

I refer, of course, to Dan Rather and his faked documents about George Bush’s National Guard service. Dan Rather is trying to promote the idea that the documents were never proven to be false, and NPR is happy to be of service in his endeavor. (Via LGF.)

It’s complete nonsense. The documents were shown to be bogus in a variety of ways, most obviously by the typography, but also by formatting and content. Although it has been suggested that typewriters existed that could have produced documents somewhat like the Rather memos (this is disputed), and Killian (the purported author) might even have had access to such a machine, it beggars belief that Killian would have used such a machine to produce a typeset-quality memo to file that no one was ever supposed to see. (Never mind that Killian’s family asserts he never wrote such memos in the first place.)

But even if we suppose that Killian might have used such a machine capable of kerning and superscripts, it has never been plausibly suggested that he would have (or even could have) used it in a manner that precisely matched Microsoft Word’s default settings:

Neither let us suppose that suppose that Rather (the hero of NPR’s story) was an innocent dupe in the affair. For example, Rather endorsed CBS’s claim that the documents were obtained from an unimpeachable source (pdf, pages 164-166). In fact, as Rather well knew, the documents were obtained from a man named Bill Burkett, who is (to put it delicately) a nutcase.

Moreover, let’s not suppose that the whole affair resulted simply from overzealous pursuit of a big story; it was clearly an attempt to influence the election. CBS agreed to Burkett’s demand to coordinate the story with John Kerry’s campaign. (See also the Thornburgh report pages 64-65.)

POSTSCRIPT: The Rathergate affair transpired before I started this blog, so I want to thank Rather for reviving it and giving me a chance to play. NPR, on the other hand, should be ashamed of themselves.

In an interview with Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, CNN’s morning anchor John Roberts was deeply offended by the suggestion that he might support a candidate.  Wurzelbacher laughed out loud at Roberts’s statement “Hey, I’m not out there stumping for anybody, I’m a journalist.”

Wurzelbacher backed off, saying that he didn’t know about Roberts specifically.  He needn’t have.  As Glenn Reynolds reminds us, John Roberts was the one who committed a classic Kinsley Gaffe by saying “we” when asking Paul Begala how Democrats should respond to Republican attacks.

The vaunted army of editors and fact checkers misses another one.  (Via Instapundit.)

All is forgiven.  The LA Times in 2006:

[Business columnist Michael Hiltzik] could no longer write credibly about duplicity in the business world. There’s no place, he said, for dishonesty under the Times banner.

The LA Times in 2008:

Michael Hiltzik, one of the paper’s most prolific writers and distinctive voices, will return to being a columnist for the Business section.

(Via Instapundit.)

KHQA, a CBS affiliate serving western Illinois has retracted a month-old story about an Obama-Blagojevich meeting:

KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday.

The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date.

JammieWearingFool has a screenshot of one of their stories. (Via LGF.)

Now I assume that KHQA is telling the truth (now), because otherwise they are throwing away a great scoop. Also I think Obama is too smart to deny a meeting known to the press. But, why then did they report it in the first place? It would seem that someone was making stuff up.

ASIDE: KHQA calls this a “clarification”. I guess there’s no such thing as a retraction any more, because if there were, this would surely be one. Also, their article didn’t “suggest” that a meeting was scheduled; it openly asserted it.

A NYT story on the debut of the Zeus directed-energy weapon makes a minor error:

Sci-Fi Ray Gun Debuts in Iraq

I tremble to type this, but here goes: The ray gun has finally become a reality.

At least that’s what the Economist reports. It says a “directed-energy weapon” named Zeus (presumably because of his fondness for hurling lightning bolts) has been deployed in the back of a Humvee in Iraq. It’s being tested by soldiers who are using its laser beam to detonate roadside bombs from a safe distance of 300 meters.

(Via Instapundit.)

It’s reasonable to assume that the Zeus is in Iraq; that’s certainly the only reasonable place for it to be. But the Economist (as I noted two weeks ago) doesn’t actually say that. It only says:

At the moment, there is only one Zeus in the field. It is sitting in the back of a Humvee in an undisclosed theatre of war.

A minor offense, to be sure, but the NYT story does little other than repeat the Economist story, so it doesn’t seem like too much to hope that it could get it right.

It’s not exactly timely, but with the election over, the Washington Post ombudsman can admit that their coverage was a teensy weensy bit slanted toward Obama.

Still, she fails to acknowledge the most amazing incident in the Post’s election coverage, when they sided with Obama over their own reporting, and faulting John McCain for quoting the Post’s story on Obama’s link with Franklin Raines.  In the same incident, they were also unable to report accurately on the contents of their own newspaper.

(Via the Corner.)

CBS looks at the question everyone is asking:

How Obama Can Win Over The Media

No, they’re not being ironic.  Jonah Goldberg adds: “Next in the series: ‘How Obama Can Win Over Blacks, Upscale White Liberals and Chicago Activists.'”

It’s not often said as forthrightly as that. Video here.  (Via Instapundit.)

The NYT’s vaunted army of editors and fact-checkers strike again:

The parade drew fans from beyond the region, too. Greg Packer, 44, of Huntington, N.Y., drove in for Game 5 of the World Series and stayed for the celebration. He arrived on Broad Street near City Hall at 5 a.m. to secure what he considered the best spot.

“In New York right now, we have no Mets, no Yankees, no stadiums,” he said. “I came here to represent and cheer our neighbors.”

What’s wrong with this? Just this:

He’s not just another face in the crowd at concerts, book signings, and sporting events. Somehow, over the course of 10 years, one man has managed to become the media’s go-to guy, quoted more than 100 times in various publications, including several prominent newspapers. Greg Packer is the “man on the street.” . . .

While Packer says “honesty is very important to me,” he does admit that about 5% of the time, “I’m making stuff up to get in the paper.” A Boston newspaper, for example, quoted him as saying he had a ticket for the 1999 baseball All-Star Game there when he really didn’t. . .

In June 2003, the Associated Press circulated a memo instructing its reporters not to quote Packer in any more stories, saying the media had been over-relying on him. Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has deemed him “the entire media’s designated man on the street for all articles ever written.” Sheryl McCarthy, a columnist for New York’s Newsday, said, “The fact that Greg Packer’s quotes have turned up everywhere suggests that man-on-the-street interviews are worthless.” . . .

“I do not think members of the press are pansies, but there are times when I go home and laugh because I can’t believe that I made the newspaper pages again,” Packer says.

(Via Patterico, via Kausfiles, via Instapundit.)

Yet another study shows that media coverage has favored Obama:

Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

ABC’s “World News” had more balance than NBC’s “Nightly News” or the “CBS Evening News,” the group said. Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns. The center didn’t evaluate programs on CNN or MSNBC.

“For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain,” said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. “If you watch the evening news, you’d think you should vote for Obama.” . . .

ABC recorded 57 percent favorable comments toward the Democrats, and 42 percent positive for the Republicans. NBC had 56 percent positive for the Democrats, 16 percent for the Republicans. CBS had 73 percent positive (Obama), versus 31 percent (McCain).

Hume’s telecast had 39 percent favorable comments for McCain and 28 percent positive for the Democratic ticket.

It was the second study in two weeks to remark upon negative coverage for the McCain-Palin ticket. The Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded last week that McCain’s coverage has been overwhelmingly negative since the conventions ended, while Obama’s has been more mixed.

(Via Instapundit.)

That’s 65% positive for Obama, versus 31% positive for McCain. The Pew study that the article alludes to came up with different absolute numbers (presumably due to differences in methodology) but agreed that the media is biased more than 2-to-1 in favor of Obama, finding 36% positive for Obama versus 16% positive for McCain.

It’s also interesting that the network-specific results align perfectly with the Groseclose-Milyo measure, with CBS furthest left, then NBC, then ABC, then Fox.

AFTERTHOUGHT: In all seriousness, I suppose we ought to congratulate ABC. Despite being only slightly more ideologically moderate than NBC (according to Groseclose-Milyo), ABC managed to be much more fair, with a 15-point Obama bias compared to NBC’s 40-point bias. (Suggested slogan: “ABC News: less unfair than you’d expect!”)

Fox News did better still. Despite being only slightly closer to center than ABC (on the other side, of course), they managed a mere 11-point McCain bias.

UPDATE: The Pew study covered only newspapers and cable news, while this study covered only the evening news on the broadcast networks and Fox. Thus, their data sets were almost disjoint (intersecting only on Brit Hume), which is probably the primary explanation for the difference in absolute numbers. Also, since the newspapers are generally more ideologically liberal than the networks (other than CBS), it explains why Pew found even more bias than this study.

Michael Malone writes a withering indictment of his own profession. I’m not sure the halcyon days he remembers ever actually existed, and I would focus more on inaccuracy than bias, but he’s got his own perspective.

What I found most interesting is his theory about where things went wrong:

Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay-out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway – all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country . . .

(Via LGF.)

A new Pew study reports that McCain’s media coverage has been overwhelmingly negative: 60% negative to 14% positive. Obama’s, of course, has been positive: 36% positive, 29% negative.

But, not to worry:

So do these numbers reveal a pro-Obama bias? Not necessarily, according to the study’s authors.

I’m reassured! Okay, they actually do make an argument:

Rather, they say, the statistics “do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begat winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions.”

While McCain left St. Paul, Minn., with mostly positive coverage, Obama started out the same period with mostly negative press. But as things turned in the polls, and especially in articles about detailing the electoral map, Obama’s coverage became more favorable.

(Via LGF.)

But this is crap. I do remember a brief period in which the media was being kind to McCain, but it ended before the polls started to turn. Obama decided to be “more aggressive” and accuse McCain of rampant dishonesty, and the media went along with it despite the opposite being true. The most memorable incident from that period was when the Washington Post sided with Obama’s spin over its own reporting.

In fact, I would say there was a causal relation between the polls and the coverage, but going the other way. At the GOP Convention, when McCain got to speak to the American people without being filtered and distorted by the media, he went up in the polls. The media was furious. Doesn’t America know that Obama is supposed to win? How dare McCain be up in the polls?! They were determined to fix the problem and they did.

Many media outlets simply ignored Biden’s comment about Obama’s inexperience triggering a crisis, but that wasn’t proactive enough for NBC and MSNBC. They covered the story, but rather than play than the Biden comment in question, they played a much less damaging Biden comment, and pretended that it was the newsmaking one. They then juxtaposed it with McCain’s response, without any indication that it was not the remark McCain was referring too.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Biden’s crisis comment was given in Seattle, and the less damaging (steel-in-his-spine) version was given (according to Breitbart) in San Francisco.  But MSNBC further obfuscates the affair by labelling the San Francisco remark as given in Seattle.

Today, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was pressed on this, and didn’t seem even to know about the Seattle remark!  (Via Instapundit.)

Can we call it a cover-up yet?

In an interview with Sarah Palin, CNN‘s Drew Griffin quotes a story from National Review:

CNN: Yeah. Governor, you’ve been mocked in the press. The press has been pretty hard on you, the Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.

Palin: Who wrote that one?

CNN: That was in the National Review, I don’t, have the author.

Palin: I’d like to talk to that person.

Well, sort of. In fact, really not at all. The actual article, by Byron York, opens thus:

Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle. In fact, Palin may have it even worse than Quayle, since she’s taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well. . .

Yes, there are legitimate concerns about Palin’s lack of experience. Who wouldn’t, at the very least, wish that she had more time in the governor’s office on her résumé? But a look at Palin’s 20 months in power, along with interviews with people who worked with her, shows her to be a serious executive, a governor who picked important things to do and got them done — and who didn’t just stumble into an 80 percent job-approval rating.

(Emphasis mine.) York’s story is the exact opposite of that portrayed by CNN. Those words were a sarcastic defense of Palin, mocking those in the media, like CNN, who call her incompetent, stupid, unqualified, etc.

Clearly, Drew Griffin failed irony.

UPDATE: Heh.  This post was linked from a test preparation blog, under the title “Related blogs on reading comprehension.”

The NYT’s executive editor Bill Keller admits (queue to 42:13) that he uses their front page to retaliate for criticism:

Question: When they jam the ref as they did with you; when McCain’s people complain and attack the Times, does that have any impact on you?

Bill Keller: My first reaction when they do that is to say, what’s the toughest McCain piece we’ve got and let’s put it on the front page tomorrow, just to show them that they’re not going to get away with that.

(Via the Corner.)

Interestingly, although the NYT’s ethics policy does forbid retaliating against uncooperative sources, it does not appear to forbid retaliating against news figures that criticize the Times. I guess that makes it okay.

UPDATE: The preceding exchange was interesting too (queue to 40:16). In it, Bill Keller argues that the NYT has done more tough pieces on Obama than McCain, but admits that they were in the “early spring”, before the nominees were decided. (That is, back when they didn’t matter. Or, more cynically, back when they served to ease the path for Hillary Clinton, the then-inevitable Democratic nominee. Also, back when McCain was the left’s preferred Republican candidate.) Keller says that they are planning to run a special section reprising their earlier reporting on Obama. Even if they actually do so (most likely on November 5), that’s a poor substitute for running new stories on matters that have surfaced since the spring.

In Clark Hoyt, the NYT has finally found the ombudsman they’re looking for: a man who (to maintain credibility) occasionally will gently chide the paper, but will not hold the paper to account for its extreme partisanship. It’s not working — the credibility part, that is — but that doesn’t really matter to a paper that didn’t even see the need for an ombudsman for the first 153 years of its 157-year history.

Yesterday Hoyt published his latest column, on an article about which he received complaints from liberals. (Via Hot Air.) Liberal complaints are the holy grail for a man in his position, because he can set them off against conservative ones to claim balance. But those complaints (that an article said a few positive things about Sarah Palin) are just the entry point to his thesis: it’s our fault. The Times isn’t biased, we just don’t like the news.

According to Hoyt, the NYT has made two mistakes in its election coverage this year: rejecting the McCain op-ed, and running a thinly-sourced hatchet job insinuating that McCain had an affair. As for the rest, Hoyt writes:

Bias is a tricky thing. None of us are objective. We like news that supports our views and dislike what may challenge them. We tend to pick apart each article, word by word, failing to remember that it is part of a river of information from which facts can be plucked to support many points of view. Perversely, we magnify what displeases us and minimize what we like.

That is true, to some extent, which is a reason why, on this blog, I don’t write much about media bias (other than quantitative analyses). Of course there is media bias in favor of liberals; it’s ridiculous to deny it, but it’s so subjective that it’s not fruitful to complain. Moreover, journalists are entitled to their biases; that’s what freedom of the press is really for.

Instead, I write about media failure, that is, inarguable misconduct by the media. Usually this takes the form of stories that are not merely biased but inaccurate or misleading: they either report outright falsehoods, or make allegations unsupported by their reporting, or carefully omit key facts. I also occasionally comment on other media malice and hypocrisy, when I think it’s inarguable.

Since I started this blog last March, the New York Times has provided my richest vein of media failure material. As just a sampling, during that time the NYT has: invented a McCain gaffe, called academic freedom for a Republican “inexplicable”, falsely accused McCain of corruption in regard to land-swap legislation, construed the Iraq surge as failed using carefully selected numbers (and refused to correct), confirmed an outlandish anti-American claim by Jeremiah Wright, given MoveOn.org a special deal on an ad attacking General Petraeus, misreported the corporate income tax in a manner favorable to Democrats, inaccurately reported that Sarah Palin belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party, inaccurately reported that Palin cut Special Olympics funding, promoted the Wasilla rape-kit lie, posted an incorrect transcript of the VP debate (unfavorably to Palin), misreported the substance of a charge that Obama interfered with Iraqi negotiations, and emailed schoolmates of McCain’s daughter looking for dirt on his wife.

All of this misconduct was hostile to Republicans. Can Hoyt cite comparable misconduct hostile to Democrats? (And would he want to?)

Sorry Mr. Hoyt, I don’t think it’s all in my head.

ABC News cited Obama supporters as “experts” in a piece downplaying the importance of ACORN’s criminal activity. This deception is particularly egregious:

“There’s no evidence that any of these invalid registrations lead to any invalid votes,” said David Becker, project director of the “Make Voting Work” initiative for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Becker should know: he was a lawyer for the Bush administration until 2005, in the Justice Department’s voting rights section, which was part of the administration’s aggressive anti-vote-fraud effort.

Sounds like a Republican, right?  Actually, not so much:

Omitted are the facts that Becker is a Berkeley graduate that also worked in the justice department for the Clinton administration. After leaving the justice department he spent nearly two years as the director of People For the American Way, a Tides Foundation project that monitors the activities of right wing groups, and has partnered with left leaning advocacy groups such as NARAL, NOW, the ACLU, the NAACP and the AFL-CIO just to name a few.

Are we watching our media’s most disgusting exhibition of partisan excess in history? I don’t have the historical perspective to say, but we’ve got to be up there.

Power Line reports that the NYT emailed schoolmates of John McCain’s 16-year-old daughter looking for dirt on his wife. If there’s any doubt what they were looking for, simply look at the tone of the article they produced (without any help from Bridget’s schoolmates). It is shockingly nasty, particularly for a candidate’s spouse. It reads almost like a Keith Olbermann piece.

Meanwhile, vast swaths of Barack Obama’s history, swaths with real public-policy import, are left unexamined. The media has its priorities.

UPDATE: The New York Times defends its piece, calling it “completely fair, respectful — even empathetic.” I’d hate to see a disrespectful piece.

UPDATE: The NYT’s own ethics policy says: “We do not inquire pointlessly into someone’s personal life.” I guess emailing McCain’s daughter’s schoolmates must have been really necessary.

Dana Milbank, one of the media’s most infamously biased reporters, tells a tale:

Arlington, Va.: The Secret Service has now labeled the “kill him” report as unfounded. Why isn’t The Post giving this report as much coverage as the original false report received?

Dana Milbank:

Glad you asked, because I saw this earlier. This is actually about the incident in Scranton, not the one in Clearwater, Fla, that I wrote about here.

I wasn’t at the Scranton event, but I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they’ve started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty — protecting the protectee — and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it’s unfounded because the reporters can’t get close enough to identify the person.

Notice what Milbank is claiming. He’s not just saying that the Secret Service is keeping the press from interviewing the crowd, he specifically accuses them of doing so in order to deny that the crowd is saying vulgar things. By implication, he is also saying their denial is a lie; why else would they need to conceal the truth? Furthermore, he is implicitly accusing them of dereliction of duty, since this sort of cover-up is probably incompatible with their duty to protect Obama.

The Secret Service says it’s not true:

But the Secret Service says Milbank has it wrong.

“It’s not a function of the Secret Service to prevent or limit reporters from interviewing the people at events,” said Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan. “We’ve never been asked by any campaign to do that.”

Donovan said that at rallies for all the candidates, the Secret Service sometimes separates the press corps that is credentialed to cover the event—known as the pool—from the general public. That is for logistical and security reasons, he said.

“Being in a press pool gives them special access,” said Donovan. “But the other side is that they have to stay together. You keep national press away from the local press for the same reason.”

Any journalist can get around these restrictions simply by attending the rally as a member of the public rather than a part of the press pool, he said.

Of course, Milbank is saying that the Secret Service is lying about the Scranton incident (even though he admits he wasn’t there), so he’ll probably say they’re lying about this as well. My inclination is to believe the Secret Service.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Milbank’s accusation doesn’t even make sense. Even if we suppose that the Secret Service is trying to protect McCain’s candidacy, why would they go to such lengths just to conceal that some yahoo was yelling crazy stuff?

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, the Clearwater incident that Milbank alludes to is in a vitriolic column he wrote attacking Sarah Palin. In it, he reports (if we believe him) another “kill him!” incident, but in that one, by his own account, the imprecatory exclamation was directed at unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, not at Barack Obama. I suspect that this will become a point of some confusion.

(Via Instapundit.)

The idea to a fact-check is to report the actual facts, not to echo a campaign’s claims. CNN doesn’t seem to get this:

The Statement: During an October 15 presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain attacked Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama for his stance on abortion. “Sen. Obama, as a member of the Illinois State Senate, voted in the Judiciary Committee against a law that would provide immediate medical attention to a child born of a failed abortion,” McCain said. . .

Verdict: Misleading. Obama voted against the legislation, but said doing so was not a vote against caring for the children, because there was already an Illinois law that required treating babies born alive during abortions.

(Via the Corner.) (Emphasis mine.) I suppose this is literally accurate. Obama did say that, but it isn’t true. The Illinois law did not protect babies born alive; that was precisely why the legislation was written.

This isn’t the first time that CNN’s “fact-check” has accepted Obama’s word as fact on this very subject. Back in August, Obama’s story on born-alive was different. At the time, he was claiming that the legislation lacked a provision protecting Roe v. Wade. That wasn’t true, but it didn’t stop CNN from repeating Obama’s claim as fact.

Obama’s position on this issue was indefensible. He favored leaving babies to die when they had been born during botched abortions. All he can do is obfuscate, and hope the media plays along. Clearly he needn’t worry about CNN.

The press has breathlessly reported that Joe the Plumber, a private citizen who impudently asked Obama an embarrassing question, has tax liens. This is important information and the public has a right to know. People with tax liens have no place engaging in our public discourse, even at a rope line.

Obama’s campaign treasurer also has tax liens? Yawn. How could it serve the public good to report that?

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Actually, it wasn’t even a rope line. Obama came to his home, in a house-to-house campaign stop! He didn’t seek this attention at all. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: McCain comments:

Last weekend, Senator Obama showed up in Joe’s driveway to ask for his vote, and Joe asked Senator Obama a tough question. I’m glad he did; I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions.

The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.

In last night’s debate, Obama tried to put McCain on the defensive by bringing up the allegation that someone at a McCain rally yelled “kill him!” when Obama was mentioned.

It’s totally stupid to try to pin on a candidate the actions of a few supporters of no particular importance, particularly for someone in Obama’s position.

But, worse than that, it turns out that the story isn’t even true:

The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Obama’s name a man in the audience shouted “kill him.”

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

“I was baffled,” he said after reading the report in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.

He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than Singleton.

Slavoski said more than 20 non-security agents were interviewed Wednesday, from news media to ordinary citizens in attendance at the rally for the Republican vice presidential candidate held at the Riverfront Sports Complex. He said Singleton was the only one to say he heard someone yell “kill him.”

“We have yet to find someone to back up the story,” Slavoski said. “We had people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it.”

(Via the Corner.)

In the NYT Politcs Blog, Michael Grynbaum writes:

Underscoring the McCain campaign’s aggressive attacks on Senator Barack Obama’s character, Gov. Sarah Palin accused the Illinois senator today of “putting ambition above country” at several private fund-raising events in Ohio.

In making her remarks, Ms. Palin cited a disputed report in The Washington Times today that said Mr. Obama, on a trip to Iraq with other members of the Senate, had encouraged an Iraqi official to delay an agreement that would extend the presence of American troops in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s campaign denied that claim, as did other attendees on the trip. . .

The Obama campaign, which faced these allegations in mid-September, reiterated its denials today. It called them categorically untrue, citing spokesmen for other senators who attended, including Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, and Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, who agree that Mr. Obama informed the Iraqis at the beginning of the meeting that the United States spoke with one voice on foreign policy and he would not contradict the Bush administration.

This is simply untrue. At the Washington Times article made quite clear, it was reporting on a telephone meeting with Iraqi leaders in June, which is entirely separate from the trip of Senate members in July. The July trip was the subject of a controversial column in the New York Post. Grynbaum apparently assumed the Washington Times was writing about the same thing, without ever bothering to check.

What I’m really curious about is whether the Obama campaign’s denial that Grynbaum reports actually happened.  Such a denial makes no sense, since Hagel and Reed were at the July meeting, not the June meeting.  While it’s certainly possible that Obama’s campaign issued a nonsensical denial, I think it’s just as likely that Grynbaum invented the denial that he thinks Obama will/should issue.  Moreover, he doesn’t include any direct quote from the Obama campaign, and it’s hard to believe he would forgo such a quote if there was one.

(Via JustOneMinute, via Instapundit.)

Best of the Web today notes that CNN and ABC draw opposite conclusions when fact-checking a McCain statement from the last debate:

In Lebanon, I stood up to President Reagan, my hero, and said, if we send Marines in there, how can we possibly beneficially affect this situation? And said we shouldn’t. Unfortunately, almost 300 brave young Marines were killed.

CNN says it’s true and ABC says it’s false, while agreeing on the same underlying facts. Best of the Web explains:

Here is CNN explaining why McCain’s statement was true:

The U.S. Multinational Force operated in Beirut, Lebanon, from August 24, 1982, to March 30, 1984, as part of an international peacekeeping operation in the war-torn country

McCain was a freshman member of the House of Representatives in September 1983 when it approved legislation “that would invoke the War Powers Act in Lebanon and authorize the deployment of American Marines in the Beirut area for an additional 18 months,” the New York Times reported.

The resolution had the backing of House leaders of both parties and President Reagan, and it passed by a vote of 270 to 161, the Times report said. But McCain “argued that his military training led him to oppose the continued deployment of troops in Lebanon,” the Times reported.

But here is how ABC concluded it was false:

This is an issue that came up in the first presidential debate, as well. And in both cases, McCain exaggerates his position. Marines were already in Lebanon when McCain arrived on Capitol Hill in 1983, and his vote was to prevent invoking the War Powers Act to extend the Marines already deployed. McCain did vote against that, but as he did in the first debate, McCain is wrong to imply that he opposed sending the Marines to Lebanon.

Note that these two “fact checks,” despite reaching opposite conclusions, agree on the underlying fact, namely that McCain voted against what CNN calls the “continued deployment” in Lebanon.

ABC has a niggle–that the vote was not on the initial deployment, which occurred before McCain took his seat in the House. ABC does not mention that when Reagan deployed the Marines in August 1982, he did so on his own authority. Congress’s 1983 vote on “continued deployment” was the first time lawmakers weighed in on the subject.

I would add that if you accept ABC’s reasoning, then Barack Obama is lying every time he says he opposed the war in Iraq. We were already in Iraq when Obama took office in 2005. If you accept Obama’s statement (as everyone does), you have to accept McCain’s as well.

(Via Instapundit.)

What do you do when Obama’s remarks don’t match the events of the day? If you’re the LA Times, you edit the events.

Yesterday, John McCain finally began to highlight the Democrats’ culpability for the financial meltdown through their support for irresponsible policies at Fannie and Freddie. (Background at this thread.) That same day, Obama claimed that McCain is avoiding talking about the economic crisis due to his weakness on the issue. As a mainstream media Obama booster, you want to make Obama look good. But how do you support his talking point when it’s manifestly untrue?

If you’re the LA Times, you selectively quote McCain’s speech to remove any mention of the economy, and then you can uncritically repeat Obama’s claim that McCain isn’t talking about the economy.

(Via Instapundit.)

Patterico’s quixotic mission is to get the LA Times to correct its errors, and he occasionally succeeds.  On this occasion, the LA Times concedes that it was wrong and McCain was right: the President can fire the chair of the SEC.  Of course, no one is paying attention any more, making this retraction little help to McCain.

(Via Instapundit.)

Michael Ledeen notes that the transcript of the Vice-Presidential debate is in error at the New York Times and at CNN. As you might expect, the error does not favor Sarah Palin.

Both transcripts render part of one of Palin’s answers this way:

. . . And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people. . .

When what she actually said was:

. . . And I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people. . .

(Emphasis mine.) This site at the NYT makes it easy to confirm this. Scroll through the transcript on the right to Palin’s answer at 11:42. (No way to link, alas.)

Obviously, the omission of those two words changes her answer considerably, and not for the better. If these errors were simply mistakes, wouldn’t they occasionally favor the Republican?

POSTSCRIPT: Jonah Goldberg also notes a more minor transcript error.

UPDATE (10/16): A week-and-a-half later, the NYT has fixed its transcript, but not CNN.

Biden wins CNN’s VP debate focus group by an “overwhelming” vote of about 12 to 11.  If the facts don’t support your narrative, ignore them.  (Via Instapundit.)

The Boston Globe is the latest media outlet to peddle the allegation that Wasilla made rape victims pay for rape kits. It is a lie, and it’s been debunked so thoroughly that the Globe has no excuse. It was never Wasilla policy to charge for rape kits, and it never happened. Just to pile on, here’s two more debunkings. (The latter one also traces the the origin of the lie. You’ll never guess.)

We’re beyond the normal operation of media failure here. The Boston Globe is knowingly printing an outright lie. (Spare me the protestation that they might merely be making a mistake. The Globe is a news organization; of course they know.) What we see here is the Globe is running a dishonest attack ad, on the editorial page, for free. As Glenn Reynolds put it, they are simply functioning as an arm of the Obama campaign.

(Previous post.)

At Instapundit:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: “Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.” I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

Despite my antipathy for the media, it’s a spectacle I never thought I’d see: A candidate so vulnerable on so many substantial and ethical issues, with no experience to speak of, who accuses all his critics of lying, is nevertheless the darling of the media, who give him a pass on nearly everything while savaging his opponent, mostly dishonestly.  I’ve complained about the media in the past, but it’s nothing like what we’re seeing today.  They are determined to drag Obama across the finish line, and it looks like they will succeed.

I’m glad these bastards are going out of business.

Canadian Public Broadcasting apologizes for a vicious, inaccurate attack piece on Sarah Palin. (Via Instapundit.)

A New York Times editorial promotes the myth that Sarah Palin’s Wasilla charged rape victims for rape kits. It’s not true. Slate has the latest debunking, but it appears that nothing can stop this smear. The editorial contains quite a few errors/lies, and the facts are simple:

• There is no record of a victim ever being charged for a rape kit in Wasilla.
• It was never Wasilla policy to charge victims for rape kits. For a time, the chief of police did have a policy of trying to bill insurance (which is also stupid), but there was no policy of billing the victim if that claim was denied.
• Sarah Palin has given a direct answer on the subject, despite the editorial’s claim that she has not.
• An Alaska law that prohibits charging victims for rape kits was not directed at Wasilla.
• Sarah Palin never banned any books as mayor. (Lord knows what this has to do with rape kits, anyway.)

(Via Instapundit.)

The McCain campaign released a statement this morning:

Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis — weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual — since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times’ reporting, Mr. Davis has never — never — been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with…Paul Begala.

Again, let us be clear: The New York Times — in the absence of any supporting evidence — has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain’s long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.

To the central point our campaign has made in the last 48 hours: The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide.

Therefore this “report” from the New York Times must be evaluated in the context of its intent and purpose. It is a partisan attack falsely labeled as objective news. And its most serious allegations are based entirely on the claims of anonymous sources, a familiar yet regretful tactic for the paper.

We all understand that partisan attacks are part of the political process in this country. The debate that stems from these grand and sometimes unruly conversations is what makes this country so exceptional. Indeed, our nation has a long and proud tradition of news organizations that are ideological and partisan in nature, the Huffington Post and the New York Times being two such publications. We celebrate their contribution to the political fabric of America. But while the Huffington Post is utterly transparent, the New York Times obscures its true intentions — to undermine the candidacy of John McCain and boost the candidacy of Barack Obama — under the cloak of objective journalism.

The New York Times is trying to fill an ideological niche. It is a business decision, and one made under economic duress, as the New York Times is a failing business. But the paper’s reporting on Senator McCain, his campaign, and his staff should be clearly understood by the American people for what it is: a partisan assault aimed at promoting that paper’s preferred candidate, Barack Obama.

In fact, if Fannie and Freddie were somehow indirectly supporting McCain, they sure didn’t get anything for their investment. McCain cosponsored the bill to rein in Fannie and Freddie, but was stymied in that effort by Democrats, who overtly accepted huge sums from Fannie and Freddie. The rest is history.

As for the idea that the NYT is an advocacy organization determined to boost Obama, that is too obvious to discuss. But, I don’t think that it’s a business decision, at least not a good one. By becoming openly partisan, Sulzberger is sacrificing his company’s most valuable asset.

How much is the media in the tank for Barack Obama? So much that they won’t even stand up for their own reporting.

The McCain campaign ran an ad criticizing Obama for his ties to a central Fannie Mae figure, for which they relied on two Washington Post stories. Obama accused McCain (not the Post) of lying. Then, the Washington Post backed up Obama, and faulted McCain for relying on their reporting. Amazing.

Additionally, as I noted earlier, the Post was initially unable to report accurately on the contents of their own pages. Originally, their “fact check” reported that the Post story appeared in the Style section, when in fact it appeared in the Business section. The “fact check” has now been silently corrected.

Politico reports:

Al Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” star now running in a high-profile Senate race in Minnesota, helped craft the opening sketch mocking John McCain that kicked off the NBC comedy show Saturday, according to two well-placed sources inside the network. . .

Franken’s input to the show blindsided his campaign staff, who have been forced to explain away some of the more crass and profane parts of his past writing and acting that have been used as fodder against him in a state known for its polite manners.

A spokeswoman for Franken, Colleen Murray, first said the Democratic Senate candidate “didn’t write anything for SNL tonight.” But pressed if he was involved in the show or had been in contact with staff members, Murray admitted Franken had a role in Saturday’s program. . .

Word that the network’s signature comedy show has allowed a liberal Democrat Senate candidate to shape content mocking the Republican presidential nominee may fuel sentiment that the network is sympathetic to the left.

Yeah, I’d say it just might.

(Via Althouse, via Instapundit.)

The AP has a story about how Sarah Palin supports building a new bridge to Anchorage, Alaska. The AP calls it “a bridge to her hometown of Wasilla.” Power Line points out it’s nothing of the sort. This map (provided by Power Line) shows the proposed bridge and its relation to Wasilla:

In fact, Wasilla is landlocked, and the proposed bridge is nowhere near it. Also, it’s pretty clear that the bridge (and the proposed road) would benefit everyone north of Anchorage, by significantly cutting driving times between Anchorage and points north. So yes, Wasilla would probably benefit, but far less than Willow and points north.   It’s certainly not reasonable to call it a bridge to Wasilla.  Actually, this looks like a very good public infrastructure investment, and it’s a little surprising that it doesn’t exist already.

The Wall Street Journal has a story on Sarah Palin’s “earmarks” that is raising eyebrows. The thrust of the article is that Palin is a hypocrite for requesting earmarks while campaigning as an opponent of them. The problem with the article is it doesn’t distinguish between earmarks (last-minute spending dropped into bills with little or no discussion) and ordinary legislative appropriations.

Due to Alaska’s unique location and size, it has numerous needs that are legitimately related to Federal functions. For example, Alaska requested funding for an airport in the town that houses a missile defense radar. Perfunction has the story. (Via Instapundit.)

I’ve lost confidence in Howard Kurtz. It’s been a few days, and rather than correct his error about Palin’s Iraq prayer, he repeats it:

Some conservatives criticized Gibson for raising religion by asking Palin whether she considers the Iraq conflict a “holy war.” But how can it be unfair to ask about her own words, in a church, that “our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God”?

It is unfair because she simply didn’t say that. Kurtz has to know this, if for no other reason that the conservatives whom Kurtz is criticizing are pointing it out. Praying for rain is different from asserting that it’s raining. Could he really be unable to see the difference? I want to give Kurtz the benefit of the doubt, but I see precious little doubt to work with.

(Via the Corner.)

They editorialize:

Her efforts to explain some previous statements were lacking in candor. She claimed, implausibly, that she was merely channeling Abraham Lincoln when she described the war in Iraq as “a task from God.”

She simply did not say that. Look media, get it through your thick skull: praying for rain is different from asserting that it’s raining.

As far as Lincoln goes, I can’t say what Palin was thinking when she said that, but I can say what I thought when I read it. Reading that, I immediately thought of Lincoln’s prayer. (That was when the AP first started this bogus story, nearly a week before the Palin interview might have planted the connection in my head.) It’s a matter of cultural literacy that I guess the Washington Post simply doesn’t have.

(Via the Corner.) (Previous post.)

A roundup of Palin bias, just from this weekend:

• A Washington Post story entitled “Biden Releases His Tax Returns,” omits the release’s embarrassing revelation (Biden gives just 0.2% of his income to charity, one fifteenth of the national average), and spends 60% of the article reporting conjectural attacks on Palin. (Via Newsbusters.)
• The camera work in the Charlie Gibson’s interview of Palin was arranged to make Palin look small and inferior, in contrast to his interviews with Obama and Hillary Clinton. (Accident? If it makes you feel better to suppose that ABC sent its B-team to handle the Palin interview, go right ahead.)
• Liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes says Palin molests teenage boys.

In case McCain is feeling left out, he’s still getting the treatment too. The photographer used by The Atlantic (the magazine famous for fanning the fake-Palin-pregnancy rumors) to photograph John McCain for a cover story brags that she deliberately used the photo shoot to make McCain look bad. For example:

After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.

Meanwhile, the media is getting mad that it’s being accused of bias.

UPDATE: More on the McCain photo shoot. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: A director speaks out on the Gibson-Palin camerawork. He says it’s normal practice to choose the camera position and lens to adjust the apparent height of the subjects, which ABC chose not to do. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: The Atlantic is doing their best to get in front of this.  Good for them.  They need to do something about Andrew Sullivan too, though.  (Via Instapundit.)

Newsbusters looks at the raw transcript of the Gibson interview and finds several places where they edited it to make Governor Palin appear less knowledgeable or more belligerent toward Russia.

(Via Instapundit.)

Poor John McCain must be wondering why no one will lie about him any more. Here’s the Washington Post’s latest smear, a page one story:

Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. On any other day, Palin’s statement would almost certainly have drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats, but both parties had declared a halt to partisan activities to mark Thursday’s anniversary.

These soldiers are not time-travellers, sent to fight Saddam. They are fighting today’s enemy, who, as everyone knows, is al Qaeda now. They’re called “al Qaeda in Iraq” (or, as some prefer, “al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.”) Palin’s statement was absolutely accurate.

They know it too, because they’ve edited the article to read:

Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush In Talk to Troops in Alaska

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that Iraq the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. On any other day, Palin’s statement would almost certainly have drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats, but both parties had declared a halt to partisan activities to mark Thursday’s anniversary. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

So where’s the retraction? With the article’s lede struck, there’s nothing left. The rest of the article is just “this comes as a time when” filler.

Also on the Washington Post’s front page today is a hatchet job on John McCain’s wife. Nice.

(Via Commentary, via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Fox News noticed this.

UPDATE (5/17): Finally, a “clarification“.  How wrong do you have to be to rate a correction?  (Via Extreme Mortman, via No Silence Here, via Instapundit.)  Plus, another Palin correction the same day.

What is going on? First Charlie Gibson, now media commentator Howard Kurtz. In his column on Gibson’s Palin interview, Kurtz makes three mistakes on the first page:

First:

Did she believe the Iraq war is a task from God? When Palin demurred, Gibson said those were her “exact words.” No fancy footwork, no long-winded setups, no gotchas. Just a solid, straight-ahead interview.

What? Sure, no fancy footwork; just an outright lie.

Second:

Even Palin’s critics should admit that, in terms of demeanor, she handled herself well for someone who three years ago was worried about the books in the Wasilla library. She projected confidence and was not openly rattled.

This is so debunked, it’s not even funny.

Third:

And she came pretty close to saying she’d declare war on Russia for invading future NATO member Georgia. Palin might want to spend more time with McCain’s foreign policy gurus.

She did not say anything of the sort. What she said is that if Georgia joined NATO, and if Russia invaded again, we might be required to defend them with military force. In this she was absolutely right. Have we forgotten what NATO is?! It’s a military alliance, and the security guarantee is its backbone. (Of course, the idea is the security guarantee deters Russia from invading in the first place, as it did throughout the Cold War.) Maybe Kurtz needs to spend some with foreign policy gurus himself.

How can a media critic not know this? I’ve liked Kurtz for a long time so I’m going to pull my punches here, but this is very disappointing, to say the least.

(Via Instapundit.)

I never had anything against Charlie Gibson before. Now we know he’s a liar. Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin included this exchange:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

“Exact words” he says. Not really. Yes, she spoke those words, but Gibson has carefully divorced them from their context:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

The words Gibson omitted are given in bold. In context, it’s absolutely clear that Palin’s words were exactly what she told Gibson they were: a prayer, not a statement of fact.

I’m particularly incensed by Gibson’s follow-up after she has already explained the context: “I take your point about Lincoln’s words: but you went on and said. . .” The word “but” implies that the following quote contradicts her explanation. In context, the quote actually confirms it.

ASIDE: By the way, I don’t see that there’s anything so scandalous to what Palin is alleged to have said either. But, not having said it, she shouldn’t need to defend it.

ABC also tells another lie in its article about the interview:

Palin has also recently come under fire for dismissing a librarian while she was mayor of Wasilla in 1996.

The librarian lost her jobs [sic] after telling Palin she would not remove books if the mayor deemed them offensive.

This allegation is entirely false, except in the weak sense that the librarian lost her job at a later date than her conversation with Palin. The conversation itself gives no support to the suggestion that Palin wanted to ban books.

(Previous post, another previous post.)

UPDATE: Hot Air noticed this as well.

UPDATE: No Mr. Martin, reiterating her original statement does not constitute backing off of it. (Via Ankle Biting Pundits.)

UPDATE: An email to the Corner alleges that ABC edited out the “exact words” exchange when the piece was rebroadcast on the west coast. (I don’t know if this is true or not.) Taking out Gibson’s lie would make sense, of course, but deleting Palin’s “I don’t know if that was my exact quote” is another matter. The latter was correct and essential. It’s unacceptable to delete an essential part of Palin’s response merely because it occasioned the interviewer to lie. The only way for ABC to fix this is to admit that Gibson made a “mistake”. They cannot cover it up.

ASIDE: How do I know that Gibson is lying? He had plenty of opportunity while researching this interview, to make sure he knew what he was talking about. He had the responsibility in particular to make sure that he would only claim “exact words” when he actually knew they actually were her exact words. In any case, they certainly know the truth now. If ABC issues a correction, I’ll call it an honest mistake. Barring that, they are being dishonest.

UPDATE: Other outlets have picked this up now, but no correction from ABC yet.

UPDATE: From from correcting, ABC News is highlighting this piece in their advertisements. (Via the Corner.) In one day they are severely damaging their brand.

UPDATE: More media idiots pick up the meme.

UPDATE: Fox News has the story straight.

Ramesh Ponnuru is very careful not to be caught out.  He calls this Newsweek piece a possible scoop, for reporting a McCain litmus test that no one else has heard.  If she had a scoop, she would have told us when and where he said that.  This is merely an invention.

This is the second story today about CNN being taken in by a Palin story that’s already been debunked. In this one, CNN follows the AP in failing to discern the difference between praying for X, and asserting that X is true.

(Via Volokh.)

If CNN is going to complain so much about accusations of media bias, they should try to commit less of it.

Just about everyone is mocking CNN for its reporter Lola Ogunnaike buying into a Photoshopped Palin-in-bikini-with-rifle that had already been debunked for about a week:

I mean, McCain has been really good about painting Obama as this lightweight, using the word “celebrity” as a pejorative. They don’t want to have a boomerang effect. They don’t want that to come back on Sarah Palin, and people say, yes, she looks good in a bikini clutching an AK-47, but is she equipped to run the country?

With all the well-justified mockery, there’s one vein that is being missed: The woman in the photo isn’t even holding an AK-47. I’m hardly an expert on assault rifles, but the AK-47 has the most distinctive profile of any rifle, and that sure isn’t one. It looks to me like an ordinary hunting rifle.

Ramesh Ponnuru points out:

Tom Brokaw said to Sen. Biden yesterday, “When Barack Obama appeared before Rick Warren, he was asked a simple question: When does life begin? And he said at that time that it was above his pay grade. That was the essence of his question.” No, it wasn’t, and I wish people would stop getting this wrong. Warren’s question was pretty well formulated so that it could not be answered with the usual who-knows-when-life-begins claptrap. Warren asked, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”

Brokaw’s version of Warren’s question was a vague and theological, and to it Obama’s “above my pay grade” answer would be a standard, weasely response.  The real question was a legal one, and Obama’s answer made no sense at all.  (Most likely, Obama came prepared with to answer an abortion question, and didn’t consider that his answer failed to fit the question.)

For some reason, the media’s “errors” always lean the same direction.

MSNBC’s experiment with hyper-partisan news anchors is at an end. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are being relieved as MSNBC anchors by NBC reporter David Gregory:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

(Via Drudge, via the Corner.)

Why is this happening?  The background is the success of Fox News:

Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. . .

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

Why is this happening? The background, as always, is Fox News.  I’m not privy to any insight information, but it’s pretty clear that MSBNC made a business decision to move left, hoping to do what Fox has done on the right.  But they missed something important.  Given the biases of the rest of the media, there was plenty of room for Fox to position itself on the right and still do respectable news.

It’s not nearly so easy on the left.  To get to the left of the media, MSNBC put Olbermann and Matthews into the anchor chair.  In so doing, it moved beyond respectable news, and became an embarrassment.

Allahpundit catches an AP article that misquotes Sarah Palin, and then builds an entire article around the misquote.

I do wonder why they bothered.  Even the modified quote seems defensible (although, not having actually said it, she doesn’t have to), so it doesn’t even seem like an effective smear to me anyway.

Set aside their lunatic “talent”. They simply cannot be trusted. If no one is fired, this gives Republicans all the excuse they need to boycott them.

Yuval Levin:

I have always tended to think that conservative complaints about the media are a little exaggerated. There are occasionally obvious instances of bias and clear examples of a double standard, but most reporters don’t want to fall into those and some conservatives are surely too sensitive to them. But this week has changed my view. I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent mistreatment of her teenage daughter in a difficult time, the ill-informed piling on about the vetting process, the self-intensifying circle of tisking nodding heads utterly detached from a straightforward political event, have been amazing and eye-opening. . .

The spectacle reveals a deep rot at the heart of the political press, and has been among the most shameful chapters in the history of modern American journalism. Not everyone has joined in, of course, but essentially all of the important institutions of our political press have played their part in one way or another. We can only hope those involved have begun to come to their senses, and that they recognize the magnitude of their failure this week. That doesn’t mean they should go easy on Palin, . . . but the treatment she has received is not what just any VP candidate would get, and the attitude and assumptions underlying this week’s amazing assault raise very troubling questions about the cream of the crop of political reporters.

UPDATE: More here.

Based apparently on blog reports, the NYT reports that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party.  It’s not true, which they could have found out themselves if they had bothered to look at voter registration records.  This is journalistic malpractice, plain and simple.  In fact, the entire article is “materially false,” says a senior campaign strategist.

More generally, the way the media has comported themselves over Sarah Palin is disgusting.  After all the reams they’ve written, they have nothing other than the trooper allegation, which was already public and will prove to be nothing.  Nevertheless, by relentless fixation on vicious rumors and private family issues, they’re trying to create a bad odor to Palin’s nomination.

Honestly, I didn’t think my opinion of the mainstream media could fall even lower.

The idea to a political fact-check is to report the actual facts, not echo a campaign’s claims. CNN is missing the point:

BLITZER: Senator Obama blasts opponents for distorting his record on abortion-related legislation. We’re checking the facts.

. . .

BLITZER: So just a recap, Mary, what is the basic difference between these two bills?

SNOW: Well, 2003, the National Right to Life Committee will say the language is very similar, but what the Obama camp pointed out is that it lacked a provision to protect Roe v. Wade. That was the measure that was added two years later, so that is the explanation why the campaign said and Obama has said that he opposed that 2003 law.

The Obama camp may have “pointed out” that the bill lacked that provision, but it’s not true. The NRLC has the documents to prove it, and the Obama campaign has conceded the truth. If CNN cannot even “check the facts” accurately when they’ve already been established, what good are they?

(Via the Corner.)

Power Line spots an egregious error:

As dumb as the Levin-Dorgan press release was, however, it wasn’t dumb enough for the New York Times. The paper got out its calculator, multiplied the gross revenues of the companies in the GAO study by 35%, and came up with this classic of economic ignorance:

At a basic corporate tax rate of 35 percent, all the corporations covered in the study in theory owed $875 billion in federal income taxes.

In theory, a company pays 35% of its net income to the feds, not its gross receipts. That reporters and editors at the New York Times should be ignorant of this basic fact is shocking. How in the world can these people purport to instruct the rest of us on economic matters, when they lack the most fundamental understanding of how our tax system works?

The NYT story is here. They’ve since edited it and added a correction:

An article on Wednesday about a Government Accountability Office study reporting on the percentage of corporations that paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005 gave an incorrect figure for the estimated tax liability of the 1.3 million companies covered by the study. It is not $875 billion. The correct amount cannot be calculated because it would be based on the companies’ paying the standard rate of 35 percent on their net income, a figure that is not available. (The incorrect figure of $875 billion was based on the companies’ paying the standard rate on their $2.5 trillion in gross sales.)

I know the New York Times has had cutbacks, but they still have editors, don’t they? Not one editor understood how the corporate income tax works? We might want to keep that in mind when reading NYT editorials.

It’s even worse than Power Line says, because the correction is wrong too. There is actually a very good way to estimate the tax liability of these companies, which is to look at the actual tax paid. Almost no corporation is going to make the mistake of failing to pay the taxes that their own books show they owe. Corporations reduce their taxes by clever accounting, not by outright failing to pay. So the NYT’s mistake is not just a failure of calculation. The calculation they were trying to do was fundamentally nonsensical. They could argue (as Levin and Dorgan do) that corporations’ accounting unfairly lowers their taxes, but that argument cannot be illustrated by this sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation.

(Via Instapundit, who quips “It was my understanding that there would be no math.”)

UPDATE (8/17): More New York Times innumeracy, including the prevalence of 1-square-foot apartments.  (Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph reports:

As the ceremony got under way with a dramatic, drummed countdown, viewers watching at home and on giant screens inside the Bird’s Nest National Stadium watched as a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks processed gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square.

What they did not realise was that what they were watching was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment.

The fireworks were there for real, outside the stadium. But those responsible for filming the extravaganza decided in advance it would be impossible to capture all 29 footprints from the air.

As a result, only the last, visible from the camera stands inside the Bird’s Nest was captured on film.

The trick was revealed in a local Chinese newspaper, the Beijing Times, at the weekend.

Ordinarily, one’s inability to get a picture safely doesn’t justify faking it. (Why would any photographer ever enter a war zone?) But perhaps journalistic ethics don’t apply to the Olympics.

(Via Fourth-Place Medal, via Hot Air.)

UPDATE (8/21): More at Popular Mechanics.

Cue the violins:

THE John Edwards “love child” story finally hit the national news media and made the front page of yesterday’s Times. For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the Internet was abuzz, and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage. . .

Murray Bromberg of Bellmore, N.Y., was glad The Times was not touching this seamy business. “I heartily approve,” he said. But everyone else I heard from over the past several weeks was either puzzled or outraged that the newspaper, which carried front-page allegations of a John McCain affair, was ignoring the relationship between Edwards and Hunter. John Boyle of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said, “I hope you will find the time to tell me why this news story is not reported by your paper.” Some readers, like Bert A. Getz Jr. of Winnetka, Ill., were sure they already knew the answer: liberal bias.

I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it. But I think The Times — like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services — was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer’s reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong. Until the ABC report, only one mainstream news organization, McClatchy newspapers, seemed to be making headway with the story.

Not that it would have been easy. David Perel, the editor of the Enquirer, said, “This is a very hard story to prove, and I think that has frozen people in place.”

Oh, boo hoo.  Reporting is just too hard.  Better not to try.

Anyway, Hoyt’s shtick is familiar now: admit that the NYT screwed up (it’s generally inarguable anyway), but deny bad faith.  Sometimes, though, denying bad faith is hard. For example, he has to explain why they ran the Vicki Iseman story (an undersourced, inconclusive story about an affair that some people thought McCain might have had), but wouldn’t touch this:

[NYT editors] Keller and Stevenson said it was wrong to equate the McCain and Edwards stories, as so many readers and bloggers have. The editors saw the McCain story as describing a powerful senator’s dealings with lobbyists trying to influence government decisions, including one who anonymous sources believed was having a romantic relationship with him. “Our interest in that story was not in his private romantic life,” Keller said. “It was in his relationship with lobbyists, plural, and that story took many, many weeks of intensive reporting effort.”

I would not have published the allegation of a McCain affair, because The Times did not convincingly establish its truth.

Hoyt is too much of a company man to point out that the last sentence refutes Keller and Stevenson’s argument. Their case might hold water, if they had been able to establish any of what they insinuated. But, as it turned out, they had nothing — unlike the Enquirer — and the story they ultimately ran hinged on the conjecturally salacious lede.

President Bush declines the opportunity to pat the backside of Olympic beach volleyballer Misty May-Treanor.  Reuters reports he did anyway.  (Via LGF.)

Amanda Carpenter was unable to verify a Washington Post story about some peculiar contributions to the McCain campaign, and asked the Post to put up or retract.  (Via Instapundit.)  They have now issued a correction that eviscerates the article.

This story was always rather odd, even before Carpenter took it apart, because they didn’t really have anything; just a few people who made (or, as it turned out, didn’t make) large contributions to McCain that you might think wouldn’t have.

In an aside about the Landstuhl controversy (one actually irrelevant to their article) Time treats the Obama campaign’s explanation as fact:

The new McCain story line has also been hurt by factual problems in many of their charges, which could cause McCain problems over time. . . [An advertisement] suggested that Obama avoided meeting with troops in Germany because he could not bring along the media to make it a photo op. In truth, Obama canceled the meeting because he did not want to be accused of holding a campaign event with wounded soldiers.

Wrong. In truth, we don’t know exactly why Obama canceled the meeting. However, we do have most of the story, and we do know that it was not for the reason the Obama campaign originally gave (concern over appearances of a campaign event), nor was it for the second reason the campaign gave (the Pentagon scuttled the visit). By Obama’s own admission, the reason had to do with the hospital’s refusal to allow a particular campaign operative, retired general Jonathan Gration, to attend.

McCain’s accusation was supported by an NBC News report that indicated the visit was cancelled because campaign staff and the media would not be permitted to attend. As it turned out, NBC was on to something, but garbled the facts. Consequently, McCain is no longer running the ad.

Time is entitled to slant its articles in favor of Obama, but it ought to get the facts right.

On the NYT op-ed page: John McCain?  No.  UFOs?  Certainly.

CNN, as a professional news organization, is ordinarily able to locate members of a group it wishes to interview, but not, it seems, when that group is the College Republicans:

The president of the College Republicans at the University of Southern California is charging that CNN used a “fake College Republican” in its broadcast report today, claiming there was a lack of enthusiasm for the GOP candidate, Sen. John McCain.

A CNN spokeswoman now says it was an inadvertent error.

In its Thursday morning report, according to a news release from the student organization, CNN interviewed someone identified as Eric Pearlmutter, who was said to be a USC student and College Republican.

“We try to get people out to our College Republican meetings, but we can’t seem to get the same amount of support,” he said.

Ben Myers, the president of USC College Republicans, said, “I have never met Eric Pearlmutter. I have never seen him at a College Republican meeting. He is not on our membership roster. I don’t know why someone would think he speaks for us. As far as I know, he could be a Democrat.”

A CNN spokeswoman admitted the error this evening in an e-mailed response: ““Eric Perlmutter appeared on today’s ‘American Morning’ segment about young Republicans on college campuses. While he attends USC and says that he is a registered Republican, he was inadvertently identified on-screen as a member of the USC College Republicans organization.

(Via Hot Air.)

Second quarter profits are down 82% at the NYT.  They’re barely a for-profit enterprise any more; maybe they should become a 527 and take donations.

(Via Instapundit.)

ASIDE: Okay, the profits a year ago included the sale of some television stations, so things aren’t quite so bad as the 82% would suggest, but they’re still looking at a 16.4% drop in advertising revenues.

A popular pastime in the conservative blogosphere is the “name that party” game, which is based on the observation that, when reporting political corruption cases, the media almost always reports party affiliation when the politician in question is a Republican, but rarely when a Democrat. I don’t play the “name that party” game at Internet Scofflaw because it’s just too easy. I prefer to focus on actual media lies and misconduct rather than general observations of bias.

Now the AP has given me a chance to play, with this story on the latest Gary Condit development:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by former Congressman Gary Condit claiming author Dominick Dunne slandered him over the death of a young female intern.

Condit claimed that Dunne falsely accused him on the “Larry King Live” show of involvement in the 2001 disappearance of government intern Chandra Levy, with whom Condit acknowledged having an affair. . .

Condit, a former Republican congressman from California’s Central Valley, has denied any involvement in or knowledge of Levy’s May 2001 disappearance at age 24, or her death. However, he acknowledged to investigators that they had an intimate relationship.

(Emphasis mine.) Condit was, in fact, a Democrat.

(Via Instapundit.)

Patterico notes that that Der Spiegel admits to rewriting its Maliki interview, but stands by the essential accuracy of their account. (Fake but accurate!)

Also the NYT’s claim that Der Spiegel “provided” them the audio isn’t really true. Der Spiegel won’t release the audio, but will play it over the phone for a “journalist”. (Whatever that means in the Internet age.)

On the other hand, Patterico agrees with my point that the “mistranslation” is largely a red herring.

Scott Rasmussen:

Voters are looking at reporters in the way reporters want us to look at Wikipedia.

(Via Instapundit.)

Wow. The New York Times is happy to publish Obama’s op-ed, but won’t publish McCain’s rebuttal. (Via Instapundit.) It’s like they’re picking sides or something.

UPDATE: Last year, the NYT ombudsman defended their decision to run an op-ed piece for Hamas.  (Via LGF.)  The final line:

Op-ed pages are for debate, but if you get only one side, that’s not debate. And that’s not healthy.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll:

• 49% believe the media is trying to help Obama (including 78% of Republicans and 50% of unaffiliated voters).  This is up 5 points in the last month.
• 45% say that would hide information that hurts their preferred candidate (25% aren’t sure).
• 50% say the media makes the economy look worse than it is.
• 41% say the media makes the war in Iraq look worse than it is.

(Via Instapundit.)

(Previous post.)

Confederate Yankee spots a fake caption on an AFP photo. (Via Instapundit.)

I have to add that it is instantly obvious to anyone who has served in the military that those soldiers aren’t securing anything. The brightly colored blank firing adapters screwed into the end of the barrels are a dead giveaway that this is a training exercise. Also, the woodland camouflage makes it just as obvious that this isn’t Iraq, and is probably North America or Europe. (Romania, it turns out.)

This could never have happened if they had a single person with military experience glancing at their photos.

BONUS: The fake caption cribbed most of a sentence from the real one. Before:

US soldiers secure the area at a new installed check-point at Babadag training facility in the county of Tulcea, during a joint task force-east rotation 2008 training exercise . . .

After:

US soldiers secure the area at a newly installed check-point at the Babadag training facility in Tulcea, Iraq.

This is fraud, not just a stupid mistake.

The New York Times’ Standards Editor reminds the staff of their rules of “Ethical Journalism.” There’s nothing about accurate, balanced articles in those rules; they’re all about avoiding obvious politicking that might tend to give people the right idea. For example:

Staff members may not themselves give money to, or raise money for, any political candidate or election cause. Given the ease of Internet access to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides.

He says it explicitly: the problem isn’t supporting the candidate; the problem is the Internet makes it easy for people to know that you’re supporting the candidate. You don’t want to feed a “false impression” of bias. (He must have chuckled as he wrote that one.) Anyway, that ship has already sailed.

(Via LGF.)

UPDATE: It’s old, but I’m reminded of this as another sort of thing the NYT might want to avoid.

The photo on the front page of IRIB News (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting), purportedly of Iran’s recent missile test, is apparently two years old. I wish Archer had a link for the old photo, but I know who I believe. (Via LGF.)

(Previous post.)

UPDATE: More here.

A photo of the Iranian missile test obtained by AFP and run in papers throughout America was digitally altered to cover for one missile that failed to launch. AFP retracted the photo, and blamed Iran for the retouch.

UPDATE: A nice animation.  (Via LGF.)

Blogger Tony Peyser catches PBS editing a Washington Week transcript to remove an embarrassing remark by moderator Gwen Ifill. Eventually, PBS ‘fesses up.

(Via a chain of links starting at Instapundit.)

BONUS: The PBS ombudsman also defends their practice of airing advertising “enhanced underwriting messages”:

Beyond our guidelines for underwriting credits, our non-commercial mission is seen in our content, which is chosen for its quality, rather than its commercial appeal to advertisers.

Right, because the best indication of quality programming is that no one wants to watch it.

The flag-pin controversy is still stupid, but that’s no excuse for getting the facts wrong:

[Obama] has repeatedly been forced to address false rumors that he will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance, place his hand over his heart during the national anthem or wear an American-flag pin on his lapel. He wore a flag pin for Monday’s speech.

(Emphasis mine.) In fact, as I’ve noted before, the flag-pin “rumor” is absolutely true:

“You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but his exact words were “I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” so it seems justified to conclude that he wouldn’t wear that pin on his chest. Certainly he’s changed his mind, and even denied that he ever said it, but that doesn’t make the “rumor” wrong.

ASIDE: If they really wanted to tell the whole story, they would point out that the whole flag-pin controversy, stupid as it is, resulted from Obama’s own too-clever-by-half effort to impugn the patriotism of people who do wear flag pins. Since the story is about smears on a person’s patriotism, that seems relevant. But if they can’t tell the whole story, I would settle for them getting the facts straight.

(Via the Corner.)

John Althouse Cohen fact-checks a New York Times article on how hard men and women work.  I’ll bet the NYT wishes people would stop doing that.

(Via Instapundit.)

With things starting to go well in Iraq, the networks are scaling back their coverage:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

The networks cry that covering Iraq is too expensive now:

“It’s terrible,” Ms. Logan [of CBS] said in the telephone interview. She called it a financial decision. “We can’t afford to maintain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time,” she said. “It’s so expensive and the security risks are so great that it’s prohibitive.”

Mr. Friedman psenior VP at CBS] said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons.

I don’t buy it. How can security cost more now that it’s easier? No, they just don’t like the product they’re getting now.

Besides, they could embed for free. Why don’t they do that?

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.”

Oh, they don’t like the stories they get from embedding. Too many actual servicemen that way.

Bottom line, Iraq coverage is all about politics:

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph has a generally good column comparing George W. Bush to Harry Truman, as presidents who are not well-liked as they leave office but to whom history will be kinder.  It makes a strange mistake though, referring to “President Harding, the disastrous president of the Great Depression.”

Warren Harding died in office on August 2, 1923.  The Depression is generally regarded to have begun with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929.  President Harding campaigned on a “return to normalcy” after Woodrow Wilson’s excesses during the First World War, and delivered on that promise, for which we should all be grateful.  However, he was plagued by scandal and accomplished little else before his untimely death.  He was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge, who is now generally well-regarded (more so by conservatives than liberals).  Coolidge was then succeeded by Herbert Hoover (of whom Coolidge did not approve), and it was Hoover who was president at the start of the Great Depression.

The Telegraph is a British paper, of course, but one still might hope that they could get the basic facts of American history straight in a historical retrospective column.

POSTSCRIPT: The degree to which we needed a “return to normalcy” after the Wilson administration is not well-known any more, but it should be.  Chapter 3 of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is all about it.

The strangest thing about the Plame-Novak-Armitage affair was the spectacle of liberal journalists pretending to be outraged at the leaking of the name of a CIA agent. Ordinarily, the media are delighted with any classified leaks they can get, and care not a whit about the implications to national security. What was different in the Plame affair was that the leak favored Republicans, and might have been (but, in fact, wasn’t) done by the White House.

Now the New York Times, who was shocked (shocked!), by the horrible disclosure of a CIA agent’s name, has decided to disclose a CIA agent’s name. There is a difference though: in this case, unlike in the Plame affair, the CIA requested them not to do so.

It’s a good thing the Plame affair has largely run its course. Any more crocodile tears from the NYT on Plame’s behalf would be awfully hard to take.

(Previous post.) (Via the Corner.)

The AP again runs a piece on the Plame leak that insinuates Lewis Libby was responsible for the leak, and never once mentions Richard Armitage, who actually did the leaking.  (Via the Corner.)

The Economist, in a review of a recent Nixon biography, repeats an old allegation against Chuck Colson:

Chuck Colson, Nixon’s general counsel who famously said that he would run over his grandmother for his boss, once contemplated firebombing the Brookings Institution, a stately think-tank, and then sending in FBI officers dressed as firemen to steal a document that Nixon wanted.

Colson admits to doing many unsavory things in his time before converting to Christianity, but he prefers to be infamous only for the real ones, writing:

SIR – I noticed that your review of a biography of Richard Nixon referred to me in a couple of unflattering ways, including the notion that I contemplated firebombing the Brookings Institution (“The fuel of power”, May 10th). You need to know, if it ever does any good, that this is untrue. The fellow that testified about it during Watergate has totally recanted.

It is not true that I ever urged or suggested it. It was the idea of one Jack Caulfield, who told me about it in the White House men’s room, and I told him he was crazy. Mr Caulfield called me one day and said he wanted to make amends; that I had been unfairly treated, and he was sorry. He later confirmed this to Jonathan Aitken, who wrote a biography of me. I don’t know if it does any good to try to change these things now, but that is the fact.

Chuck Colson

I was able to locate the relevant passage of Aitken’s book, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed, online and it confirms Colson’s claim.  It’s not well-known that Caulfield recanted his allegation, so the Economist doesn’t look all that bad.  Still, fact-checking is supposed to be the big advantage of the mainstream media, isn’t it?