Internet Scofflaw

It’s no surprise when a newspaper prints a puff piece for Barack Obama.  It is a little bit surprising when they provide a free link to Obama’s campaign web site, though.  Somehow, John McCain doesn’t get the same treatment.  (Via Instapundit.)

Lawrence Lessig has a good explanation of what’s going on with the Judge Kozinski kerfuffle. (Via Instapundit.) Here’s the even shorter version: What most press reports (for example) are calling Kozinski’s family’s “publicly accessible Web site” would better be described as their “improperly secured private file server.” He (or someone in his family) chose to store some strange (but not illegal) files in a place he thought was private.

I think it would be a good rule, when reading any media report involving the Internet, simply to assume the report is wrong.

UPDATE: More here.

“Obama’s Official Blog is Boring. McCain’s is Enjoyable. Why That’s Bad News for the GOP.”  Seriously, that’s the title.  (Via the Corner.)

According to a Rasmussen poll, just 17% say reporters even try to give unbiased coverage of politics, versus 68% who say they try to help their preferred candidate.  Even 50% of liberals say reporters are biased.  (Via Instapundit.)

I once saw a professional debunker on television. His topic of the day was the Bermuda Triangle, in which ships have supposedly disappeared at a statistically improbable rate. He said that when they went about locating the Bermuda Triangle disappearances on a map, they had to get a much bigger map. Ships that had supposedly been lost in the Bermuda Triangle had actually been lost all over the world, and had been listed as Bermuda Triangle losses based on the most tenuous connections (for example, they were scheduled later to pass through the Caribbean Sea).

We may be starting to see a similar phenomenon with Iraq casualties. An Orlando Sentinel story under the banner “U.S. WAR CASUALTIES” reports the latest casualty, a Pfc. Howard A. Jones of Chicago. James Taranto uncovers that Jones was not killed in Iraq at all:

Pfc. Howard A. Jones, Jr., 35, of Chicago, died May 18 in Chicago from injuries sustained when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while on leave from the Iraq theater of operations.

So being assigned to Iraq is now enough to classify a sadly commonplace death as a “U.S. WAR CASUALTY.”

To be sure, the Defense Department has to take some blame for issuing Jones’s name in a press release in the first place. Today’s media can’t be expected actually to read a press release before plugging it into their narrative. Still, the DoD has pulled their press release. (Taranto’s link has gone stale, and release 11946 no longer appears here.) The Orlando Sentinel however has yet to issue a correction.

In the AP:

McClellan was ordered to say that White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity. Later, a criminal investigation revealed that they were.

Unless the writer is using the word “involved” very expansively, the investigation revealed no such thing. We’ve known for over nine months that Richard Armitage was the one who leaked Plame’s identity, and he did it without any involvement from the White House.

(Via Instapundit.)

The New York Times, better late than never:

An article on May 4 about black liberation theology and the debate surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, Senator Barack Obama’s former minister, erroneously confirmed a statement by Mr. Wright that the United States has used biological weapons against other countries. There is no evidence that the United States ever did so.

(Via the Corner.)

How does such an outlandish claim get past their vaunted army of editors and fact-checkers?

On Memorial Day, the New York Times ran a risible story about the state of reporting on the war in Iraq. I noted their amazing claim that we the public, not the media, are responsible for the poor coverage of the war. Meanwhile, other bloggers were upset about this paragraph:

But the tactical success of the surge should not be misconstrued as making Iraq a safer place for American soldiers. Last year was the bloodiest in the five-year history of the conflict, with more than 900 dead, and last month, 52 perished, making it the bloodiest month of the year so far. So far in May, 18 have died.

This is entirely misleading, for several reasons:

• Last year was the bloodiest because it included the surge, which took the battle to the enemy. The surge succeeded within months, and the latter months of 2007 saw a dramatic drop in violence. (James Taranto gives the raw numbers.) Thus, the surge did make Iraq a safer place for American troops. (One might argue that the surge cost lives in doing so, but that’s not relevant to the actual claim, which regards the surge’s outcome, not its process.)
• As a minor point, the surge significantly increased the number of troops in Iraq. Thus, on average, Iraq is a less dangerous place than the absolute numbers might suggest.
• The month of April was the bloodiest month of 2008 so far. Of course, there are only three months that precede April. In the first four months of 2008, April was slightly worse than average and February was slightly better. All four numbers are within the range of random variation.
• May is another story altogether. May saw a precipitous drop in violence that rivals the drop in mid- to late 2007. The story quotes the figure from May as if it supported its thesis, when in fact it refutes it.

That paragraph is a great example of how to lie with half-truths. Each of the claims that can be fact-checked are literally true. Not one of them, however, supports the paragraph’s overall thesis.

Jason Van Steenwyk (a veteran of Iraq) complained to the New York Times. The story’s author, David Carr, replied:

jason,

all do respect, I see nothing to correct. last year was the bloodiest of the war. last month was the bloodiest so far this year. it is still a dangerous place to be a soldier.
david

Now we see the standards at the New York Times. It’s okay to deceive your readers, so long as the facts you cite are literally true.

(Via Gateway Pundit.)

ASIDE: As most anyone familiar with the military could tell Mr. Carr, the Marine Corps provides much of the US force in Iraq, and Marines are not referred to as “soldiers.”

The Columbia Journalism Review reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued a Canadian drug maker this week—and in the process blew apart the premise of a two-year-old 60 Minutes investigative piece on short sellers.

The March 2006 segment by Lesley Stahl sought to warn viewers about hedge funds that use bad information to drive down stock prices to benefit themselves at small investors’ expense.

To make its point, 60 Minutes focused on a lawsuit brought by Biovail Corp., of Toronto, which accused the big hedge-fund SAC Capital, of Stamford, Connecticut, and a stock-research firm of conspiring to spread bogus information about the company. . .

On Monday, though, the SEC sued not the targets of the 60 Minutes piece, but Biovail itself and two of its executives, alleging accounting fraud and other wrongdoing. The SEC said the drug maker “repeatedly overstated earnings and hid losses in order to deceive investors” and “actively misled investors and analysts about the reasons for the company’s poor performance.” . . .

The SEC charges against Biovail effectively torpedo the Stahl piece, which was devoted to airing the drug maker’s allegations that the stock-research firm, a predecessor of Gradient Analytics, concocted phony research to please SAC, a client.

In fact, the danger to investors was Biovail. So, 60 Minutes had it exactly wrong.

It gets worse:

Biovail had been under SEC investigation since 2003. So it was clear at the time that Biovail was probably not a good example of a public company victimized by shorts. In fact, it was more likely that the Biovail example would prove the value of shorts, as it has.

The 60 Minutes segment acknowledged that its alleged victim was under investigation, but buried the information artfully in the middle of a denial of wrongdoing by the hedge fund.

Here it is. The emphasis is mine:

The hedge fund SAC denies all the charges in Biovail’s lawsuit and says that the decline in the company’s stock was due to earnings shortfalls and investigations by authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, “not any conspiracy.”

Confused? I think you’re supposed to be.

Evan Coyne Maloney has a perspicacious explanation for the woes of the mainstream media:

While it is true that the quickening pace of technological change caught the old media off guard, much of the media’s current predicament is largely of its own making. By intertwining their most valuable differentiator (facts gathered at some expense) with something that’s increasingly ubiquitous and free (opinions), media outlets diminish the perceived value of their product and send a muddled message to news consumers.

Although there are bloggers who have done excellent first-hand reporting, most bloggers are not equipped to compete with the core competency of large news-gathering organizations. Instead, bloggers tend to function as filters, amplifiers, analyzers and fact-checkers for stories that have been reported (and under-reported) by the establishment media. . .

By seeing bloggers as direct competitors, outlets put themselves in a position of competing on their greatest weakness while at the same time undermining their greatest strength. Instead of competing in the arena of gathered facts, many in the traditional media have responded to the rise of online outlets by deciding that they need more opinion in their product, not less. The problem with that is, the news media has been insisting for decades that they’re “objective.” . . .

Yet under the guise of “news analysis,” “putting things in context,” giving “perspective” and “helping you understand,” the news media insists on wrapping what should be its unique product—hard-to-gather facts—in packaging that makes their product look similar to everything else that’s available online for free.

Maloney makes a very good point, and I think there’s a lot of truth in it.  Let’s perform a thought experiment, though.  Suppose that the media is behaving rationally.  Suppose that it makes sense for the media to focus on opinion over facts.  What could be the reason?

It strikes me that the most plausible reason is that the media is no longer good at gathering facts, if indeed they ever were.  By focusing on opinion, they are competing in what their core competency is, not what it should be.

As evidence, consider Iraq.  The war in Iraq is the most important story in the world today (other than possibly the 2008 elections), and yet the media won’t cover it.  We have to rely on bloggers (particularly the three that Coyne links) to tell us what’s actually happening there.  The media’s reporting is limited to press releases and unreliable stringers, and increasingly little of those.  (And this is despite the fact that embedding is actually free.)

Indeed, we see evidence almost daily that the media is barely better at gathering facts than it is at gathering non-facts.  I think Maloney is right that the media should focus on original fact-gathering, but I conjecture that they are no longer good at it.

If I’m right, we will see the news media’s die-off continue, as outlets that cannot compete go out of business.  The ones that survive will be the few that know (or can learn) how to gather news.  Of course, before that happens, we will see calls for the government to bail-out the media and insulate them from competition.

Such is the pronouncement of the New York Times:

Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There’s plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.

The media isn’t responsible for their coverage; we have to share in the blame. In fact, their only problem is a “failure of resolve” (whatever that means), not that they’re incompetent and dishonest.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

“Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.” . . .

I see; it’s our fault that the media stops covering the war when we start winning. Do they write this stuff with a straight face?

Television network news coverage in particular has gone off a cliff. Citing numbers provided by a consultant, Andrew Tyndall, the Associated Press reported that in the months after September when Gen. David H. Petraeus testified before Congress about the surge, collective coverage dropped to four minutes a week from 30 minutes a week at the height of coverage, in September 2007.

It was also pointed out that when Katie Couric, CBS’s embattled anchor, went to Iraq to report the story, she and her network were rewarded with their lowest ratings in over 20 years. Hollywood producers who had hoped there would be a public interest in cinematic perspectives on this war have been similarly punished.

It’s the public’s fault for not watching. The fact that Couric and Hollywood were putting out crap played no part in their woes.

The war remains on the front burner for some outlets. On Sunday, The Los Angeles Times gave over much of its front page to chronicling Californians who have died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post continues to personalize the war with a series called Faces of the Fallen.

Honoring the memories of our fallen veterans is great, but if the war were really on the front burner, they might also report the actual events of the war. They know how to do it; in 2003, when they were paying attention, I read the Washington Post daily (or more) for updates on the war. Alas, you can’t get that kind of information from the mainstream media any more. When war reporting contains little to no actual war reporting, you can’t blame people for tuning out.

(Via Countercolumn, via Instapundit.)

I’m sufficiently used to media failure that I rarely any more find a case that really makes me angry, but this one manages. The AP runs a story that would be very bad news:

Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.

The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia. . .

So far, al-Sistani’s fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private — rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population — according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.

All spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Fortunately, the story isn’t true. Unfortunately, this is the kind of story than can cost our people their lives just by being out there, even if it’s not true. One might have hoped that the AP would feel a special obligation to get the story right in this case, merely in the interest of not feeding violence.   Nope.  Instead, they run a story based entirely on anonymous accounts and apparently didn’t even ask Sistani for comment.  (The closest they get is another anonymous statement, from a “longtime official.”)  On the other hand, they’ve got plenty of people who think it’s unlikely, including one Juan Cole (an infamous Iraq war opponent).

Still, the AP comes away smelling like a rose compared to Time, who run the story after it’s already been debunked:

In recent days, there have been reports that Sistani has been quietly issuing religious edicts, or fatwas, calling for the armed resistance to U.S. forces. Such a move by Sistani would essentially mark a reversal of his passive cooperation with the U.S. enterprise in Iraq to date. However, Sistani’s aides deny the reports. “Nothing like that came from the office of the ayatollah,” said Hamid al-Kahfaff, a spokesman for Sistani in Najaf.

Times knows that Sistani’s aides deny the story, and they know that it would be out of character for Sistani to do it, and they have nothing but anonymous statements made to someone else (ie, gossip), but they print it anyway.  Time’s reporting in Iraq has been pretty funny, but I’m not laughing any more.

(Via Gateway Pundit, via Instapundit.)

According to Ed Morrissey’s source in the McCain campaign, yes. (Via Instapundit.)

The allegation isn’t exactly solidly sourced, but is it plausible? I guess the matter comes down to whom we think is more respectable, the New York Times or an anonymous source cited by Hot Air. Tough call.

UPDATE: It’s not proof that they made the threat, but if they did, they followed through on it.

The New York Times breathlessly reports:

Senator Barack Obama drew the largest crowd of his campaign so far on Sunday, addressing an estimated 75,000 people who had gathered here on the banks of the Willamette River.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

It is “fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd” of his campaign, he told the audience. His wife and daughters, who have been with him most of the weekend, joined him on the stage at the beginning of the event but left as he was about to speak.

Also on the stage was a free concert by a popular local rock band, which might have drawn a fan or two to the park on a beautiful Sunday. The NYT didn’t think that was worth mentioning. (Via the Corner.)

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The French Court of Appeals on Wednesday found in favor of Jewish activist Philippe Karsenty, overturning a lower court decision that he had libeled France 2 and its Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin when he accused them of knowingly misleading the watching world about the death of the Palestinian child Mohammed al-Dura in the Gaza Strip in 2000.

“The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that [al-Dura’s shooting] was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody – without being sued,” Karsenty told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the verdict was issued at 1:30 p.m. Paris time.

Al-Dura was filmed cowering with his father Jalal behind a barrel at the Gaza Strip’s Netzarim Junction on September 30, 2000, during an apparent gun battle between Palestinians and Israeli troops. Fifty-five seconds of video footage were released to the world by France 2 at the time, out of some 18 minutes that were shown in court and even more footage that France 2’s detractors claim is not being shown to the public. . .

Karsenty, the head of the media watchdog Media Ratings, was sued for libel after calling for Enderlin’s and France 2 news director Arlette Chabot’s dismissal, saying the footage was “a hoax.” Enderlin, who was not present in Gaza at the time of the incident, has vehemently denied the charge, expressing confidence in cameraman Abu Rahma’s honesty. . .

The IDF, which initially apologized for the death of al-Dura, concluded after an investigation that the boy could not have been hit by Israeli bullets.

(Via Israel Matzav, via Instapundit.)

As the old saying goes, when his lips are moving. Or, in the case of James Rubin, a Clinton administration official and sometime journalist, when he submits an op-ed to the Washington Post. Rubin accuses John McCain of a major flip-flop on Hamas:

I [Rubin] asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Rubin’s charge is clear. The old McCain “was ready to do business” with Hamas, in contrast to Clinton and Obama who say “Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism” first. Thus, Rubin is saying that McCain did not require that Hamas change its policies.

Well, firstly, the statement that “we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another” doesn’t necessarily support Rubin’s charge. After all, we dealt with Saddam, one way or another. In any case, any question about McCain’s meaning here is resolved by the very next exchange (which Rubin left out):

Rubin: So should we the United States be dealing with that new reality through normal diplomatic contacts to get the job done for the United States?

McCain: I think the United States should take a step back, see what they do when they form their government, see what their policies are and see what ways we can engage them; and if there aren’t any then their may be a hiatus. But I think that part of the relationship is going to be dictated by how Hamas acts, not how the United States acts.

(Transcript from Ankle Biting Pundits, which also has video. (Via Instapundit.))

McCain said that there may be a “hiatus” in relations, depending on Hamas’s policies, and then said further that the relationship “is going to be dictated by how Hamas acts.” In other words, McCain did require that Hamas change its policies or face an interruption in relations, which is the same thing he says now. (Incidentally, Rubin notwithstanding, it’s not at all clear that this is Obama’s position.)

An honest mistake? Not likely. CNN’s Dana Bash reports:

CNN asked Jamie Rubin earlier today for the rest of the interview or at least for a transcript and he said he didn’t have it. He said he only had this particular quote he said that was e-mailed to him.

(Via the Corner.)

Oh, come on. He expects us to believe that he only has one paragraph from his own interview with McCain, and that one paragraph is the very one that, when taken out of context, can be twisted to support Rubin’s point. It’s much more plausible that he doesn’t want us to know the context, which would eviscerate his argument.

I’ve found that the Washington Post tends to be a little more honorable than most of the mainstream media, so perhaps they’ll run a correction. I won’t hold my breath, though.

UPDATE: Rubin attempts to defend himself on Geraldo Rivera’s show. Geraldo makes it easier, by leaving out the evidence of Rubin’s duplicity — allowing Rubin to characterize it himself. I don’t think his defense works with anyone who’s watched or read McCain’s actual words.  (Via Instapundit.)

As a bonus, Mike Huckabee (who won’t often be praised at Internet Scofflaw) has a good comment about Obama’s response to Bush’s anti-appeasement speech. “It’s the hit dog who hollers,” Huckabee said. After all, Bush’s speech never mentioned him by name. Obama should have shrugged it off, saying he’s not an appeaser. Instead, he fell back on the old “how dare you question my patriotism?”, implicitly conceding that Bush was referring to him.

I just listened to public radio’s This American Life do their special program on the housing crisis. The bread and butter for This American Life is the varied angsts of people who aren’t fortunate enough to live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, so this was an unusual foray into something resembling hard news. I suppose it was to be expected that it would be filled with risible economic misinformation.

At the end, the program made its obligatory comparison to the great economic crises of the 20th century, the Great Depression and the “malaise” of the Carter administration. Comparisons to the Depression are obligatory in any election year with a Republican incumbent and a slow economy, so it’s a telling sign of economic improvement if This American Life admits that comparison doesn’t work. Instead, they compare to the 1970s: “unemployment keeps going up, and things are really bad, unless you’re comparing to the Depression.” (Quote from memory, not verbatim.)

Well, let’s look at a few numbers, comparing today with January 1, 1981. Today’s unemployment rate is 5.0% (actually down, not up, from last month). That’s higher than the recent low of 3.8%, but much lower than 1981’s 7.5%. Today’s prime rate — the best interest rate available in the private sector — is 5%. In 1981 it was a whopping 20.5%. (That was the highest it’s been since 1948, this first year my source reports the data.) Today’s inflation rate is 3.98%. In 1981 it was 11.83%. (That was actually down a bit from its mid-1980 peak of 14.76%, a height unmatched since 1947.) If we do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to adjust for inflation, that means that the real prime rate today is about 1%, compared to about 9% in 1981. (Note: this calculation is probably not exactly right, due to differences in the way the data sets are reported, but it gives a sense of the orders of magnitude.)

In addition to the numbers, there was the untold suffering caused by Nixon’s unrepealed price controls and Carter’s “voluntary” price controls, most famously the gas lines. Gasoline may be expensive today, but you can buy it nearly anywhere without waiting. (You can thank Ronald Reagan for that.) Today’s economy looks nothing like Carter’s, thank heavens.

Hot Air has the story.

The AP story on McCain’s speech this morning:

John McCain castigates Obama for vote against judge
May 6 04:50 AM US/Eastern
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) – Republican John McCain castigated Democrat Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice in a speech about the kind of judges McCain would nominate.

McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.

McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.

Obama likes to talk up his image as someone who works with Republicans to get things done, McCain said. Yet Obama “went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee,” McCain said.

Mary Katharine Ham, who attended McCain’s speech, found this article rather remarkable, because four hours later she was still waiting for the speech actually to take place. (Via Instapundit.) The entire article is a fraud: a past-tense account of what the author thought was likely to take place, based on the prepared text.

Public Editor Clark Hoyt admits that it might have been useful to report the news:

While The Times was aggressive with its coverage on the Web, it was slow to fully engage the Wright story in print and angered some readers by putting opinion about it on the front page — a review by the television critic of his appearances on PBS, at an N.A.A.C.P. convention and at the National Press Club — before ever reporting in any depth what he actually said. . .

Carol Hebb of Narberth, Pa., spoke for many when she wrote that she found the newspaper’s initial coverage “very strange.” If editors did not think Wright’s remarks were newsworthy enough to be on the front page, she asked, why did they put the review by Alessandra Stanley there? “I was very surprised that her piece was not accompanied by a ‘factual’ article reporting the content of Mr. Wright’s comments more completely and perhaps adding some meaningful context.” . . .

Peter Weltner of San Francisco wrote that he wished The Times had examined what he said were falsehoods in Wright’s remarks — like the claim that blacks and whites learn with different parts of their brains — instead of “merely guessing why Mr. Wright said it.”

I’m with Hebb and Weltner. For a newspaper that showed great enterprise on the subject last year — breaking the story that Obama had disinvited Wright to deliver the invocation at the announcement of his presidential campaign, and publishing a deep examination of their relationship before most Americans had heard of Wright — it was a performance strangely lacking in energy at a potential turning point in the election.

“Strangely” lacking? Not so strange, I would say.

Incidentally, Tom Maguire notes that the NYT still has yet to report the “God damn America” phrase in any news story.  (Via Instapundit.)

AFP shows again why they’re the best at disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda.  Power Line pulls together the story of an April 28 UAV attack on terrorists operating within a populated neighborhood in Gaza in which five civilians were tragically killed.

AFP promotes the Palestinian line, that the IDF deliberately fired on a residential house (out of sheer evilness, I suppose).  In paragraph twelve, they report the IDF’s denial of responsibility:

The Israeli army later said the explosion that killed the Abu Maateq family was the result of a strike on Palestinian militants carrying explosives.

“The IDF (army) targeted from the air two Palestinian gunmen” who were approaching soldiers “while carrying large bags on their backs,” the army said in a statement after conducting an inquiry into the incident.

“A big explosion erupted on the scene, following the attack against the two, indicating the presence of bombs and explosives in the gunmen’s bags,” it said.

As always, they immediately and uncritically report a Palestinian claim that the IDF is lying:

Palestinian witnesses disputed that account, insisting that the house was more than a kilometre from the scene of the clashes and that the explosion was caused by an Israeli missile fired by an aerial drone.

No armed men were killed or wounded in the explosion at the house, and an AFP correspondent who arrived at the scene shortly after the strike saw shrapnel from an Israeli missile amid the wreckage inside.

(ASIDE: Again the AFP shows its remarkable ability rapidly to get AFP correspondents to the scene of terrorist activity.  I wonder how they do that?)  This short rebuttal contains at least two (probably three) lies in two sentences, as was made clear when the IDF released their video of the incident.

The video shows two attacks, one of which was next to the house in question.  The first attack might have been a kilometer away, but the second is fewer than ten meters away.  (Lie number one.)  Both attacks cause secondary explosions, indicating the targets were carrying some kind of munitions.  (Lie number two.)

The video also shows what probably happened.  The second attack shows a flare extending from the explosion into the house, most likely from a rocket being set off.  The majority of any shrapnel in the house, then, would be from the terrorist rocket, not the Israeli missile.  Is it possible that some Israeli shrapnel found its way into the house, and the AFP stringer was qualified to identify it among the other shrapnel?  Barely.  (Probable lie number three.)

The bottom line is that this “massacre” (as Hamas calls it) was the direct result of Hamas’s practice of carrying out their terrorism from within residential areas.  The video shows the UAV aiming several meters away from its target, so as not to fire on the house, but even with that sort of restraint on the part of the IDF, Hamas’s practice of waging war from within residential neighborhoods is inevitably going to result in tragedies.  Fortunately for Hamas, they have a reliable partner in AFP for turning tragedies into propaganda.

Roger Kimball analyzes the NYT’s formula for McCain hit pieces:

1. Prissy introductory sentence or two noting that Mr. McCain has a reputation [read “unearned reputation”] for taking the ethical high road on issues like campaign finance reform.

2. “The-Times-has-learned” sentence intimating some tort or misbehavior.

3. A paragraph or two of exposition that simultaneously reveals that a) Mr. McCain actually didn’t do anything wrong but b) he would have if only the law had been different and besides everyone knows he is guilty in spirit.

(Via Instapundit.)

In the latest case, the “misbehavior” is that McCain sometimes rides on his wife’s plane, which saves him some money. The NYT concedes that this violates no campaign finance rules, but the FEC has considered changing the rules. That’s it.

Pathetic.

Confederate Yankee demolishes a bogus ABC News story about how US gun laws are putting guns in the hands of Mexican criminals.  (Via Instapundit.)

Jim Rutenberg, who wrote the NYT’s last McCain hatchet job, has been called in for a second.  This one is even more pathetic than the last.  Ed Morrissey has the story.

At the LA Times, in a review of HBO’s John Adams:

George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term.

I guess that’s where the tradition of presidents stepping down after one term in office started.

The critic now is suitably embarrassed, but what about the editors?  I thought that editors and fact checking were supposed to be the big advantage of the mainstream media.

(Via the Volokh Conspiracy.)

The McClatchy wire story is breathless:

The war in Iraq has become ”a major debacle” and the outcome ”is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.

The story is picked up by our friends on the left, as a much-desired indication that we’re still losing in Iraq despite all the evidence that we’re winning. The wishes of the left aside, how can that be? It isn’t, writes Joseph Collins, the author of the study:

The Miami Herald story (“Pentagon Study: War is a ‘Debacle’ “) distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not “lay much of the blame” on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he “bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” It does not single out “Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley” for criticism.

Here is a fair summary of my personal research, which formally is NDU INSS Occasional Paper 5, “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath.”

This study examines how the United States chose to go to war in Iraq, how its decision-making process functioned, and what can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Even allowing for progress under the Surge, the study insists that mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out in the mid- to long-term for improvements in the U.S. decision-making and policy execution systems.

(Collins was specifically commenting on a version of the story running in the Miami Herald, which actually managed to make it worse by calling it a “Pentagon study” in its headline.) So the study says little about the current state of affairs — although it cites “progress under the Surge” — and mainly concludes that we made a lot of mistakes. An analysis of those mistakes so they can be corrected is useful, but it doesn’t make much of an anti-war headline. I can see why the media likes their version better.

(Via Protein Wisdom, via Instapundit.)

Rove writes to CBS, listing point after point after point where 60 Minutes neglected to investigate Jill Simpson’s outlandish charges. Dick Thornburgh may soon need to make a return trip to CBS.

A widely distributed story about how a German schoolboy out-calculated NASA turns out not to be true:

Widespread media reports claim that a German schoolboy has recalculated the likelihood of a deadly planet-smasher asteroid hitting the Earth, and found the catastrophe is enormously more likely than NASA thought. The boy’s sums were said to have been checked by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and found to be correct.

There’s only one problem with the story: the kid’s sums are in fact wrong, NASA’s are right, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different. An ESA spokesman in Germany told the Reg this morning: “A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake… NASA’s figures are correct.”

It would appear that the intial article in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, which says that NASA and the ESA endorsed Nico Marquardt’s calculations, was incorrect. The story was picked up by German tabloids and the AFP news wire, and is now all over the internet.

(Via the Corner.)

I’m not going to pick on the schoolboy and his science project, but is it too much to ask that before the AFP runs stories from unknown German papers, they might check their sources? (Rhetorical question.)

Dave Price (he reads Time so you don’t have to) notices that Time’s reporting on Basra is radically different from everyone else’s. (Via Instapundit.) While most outlets recognize the recent fighting in Basra as a clear if blemished victory for Maliki and the Iraqi central government, Time is still painting it as a victory for Sadr.

Perhaps we can forgive “How Moqtada al-Sadr Won in Basra” since it was two weeks ago (although there was a time that journalists got their facts straight before going to press), but how about “Al-Sadr Tightens the Screws” from yesterday.

Is Time sitting on a scoop here? Given the lack of any substantial information in the story, it doesn’t seem likely. In fact, all they’re able to come with is: Sadr is issuing demands (from the safety of Iran), there are roadblocks around Sadr City (stop the presses!), and some NGO says that Sadr is getting a bunch of new recruits.

The New York Times invents a McCain gaffe. Unfortunately for the NYT, John Hinderaker checked the transcript.

UPDATE (4/17): Power Line notes that the NYT has finally issued a correction. The correction doesn’t seem right either, but it’s an improvement.  What’s more interesting is this bit from a follow-up post:

I’ve had an email exchange with someone at the Times who shed interesting light on the story. It turns out that the reporters who wrote the original story didn’t fabricate the claim that McCain said Iran was training al Qaeda in Iraq; that was interpolated by an editor who “changed the copy!” The paper’s spokesman declined my request that he identify the editor who juiced up the story to put McCain in a bad light.

I thought editors were supposed to be a strength of the established papers.

The AP runs yet another story on an insurgent victory:

Iraqi police say gunmen have released the 42 college students they kidnapped earlier in the day near the northern city of Mosul.

Brig. Gen. Khalif Abdul-Sattar says the gunmen initially released the only two girls aboard the hijacked bus. They later set free remaining occupants after making sure they were not members of the security forces. . .

Meanwhile, overnight clashes in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadar City left five dead and more than a dozen wounded, police said.

The incidents illustrate the continuing instability in Iraq as the top U.S. officials here prepare to brief the U.S. Congress this week on prospects for further reductions in the 155,000-strong American force. . .

The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the reported fighting in Baghdad that started Saturday night and continued with sporadic exchanges of gunfire until Sunday morning.

One can imagine the editor’s satisfaction. Insurgent victory: check. Clumsy mention of general unrest: check. Link to political agenda: check. No comment from the Coalition: check.

But wait, that bit about no comment from the Coalition is very specifically phrased. The Coalition had no comment on the story’s throwaway “meanwhile” bit, but what about the main story? The AP doesn’t say.

Fortunately we needn’t rely on the AP. Greyhawk tracks down a Coalition press release:

The Iraqi Army rescued 42 college students after they were kidnapped by insurgents in southwestern Mosul April 6.

The Iraqi Army detained one suspect, and Iraqi Police are currently searching for additional suspects.

After Iraqi Security Forces reported the kidnapping, a Coalition force aircraft spotted a suspicious vehicle thought to contain the students. The insurgents fled the scene after the vehicle was stopped.

(Via Instapundit.)

Ah, the students weren’t kindly released by the insurgents, they were freed by the (much derided) Iraqi army, who also captured one insurgent and left the rest fleeing for cover; all of which the AP would have known if they had exercised any due diligence. But diligence can ruin a perfectly good story, can’t it?

UPDATE and BUMP: Oh geez, it’s worse than that. A Mudville Gazette commenter points out that the AP actually had reporters on-site, who put together a short film (“video essay“) about the rescue, but they still managed to get it wrong in print. On the positive side, the film is actually pretty cool.

MSNBC interrupts a McCain speech with “breaking news” of a mortar attack in Baghdad:

. . . an unremarkable development as Sadrists and insurgents have used mortars for harassment and interdiction (H&I) fires frequently throughout the war, usually to little effect. There were no known casualties at the time the story was reported, and there was no known targets of importance hit.  [There was no] legitimate reason for MSNBC producers to break into McCain’s speech, other than to try to undermine his message.

MSNBC needs to justify this “breaking news” event by proving that they have broken into other live events on their network to cover minor Green Zone mortar attacks during the campaign season.

(Via Instapundit.)

You cannot explain this sort of thing as mere incompetence.

The LA Times admits it may have gotten a few details wrong:

An article March 28 in Section A about a typical day in the life of a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, as gleaned from reporting trips over the last three years, made several observations that Pentagon officials and officers of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo say are outdated or erroneous.

• The article said that reveille was at 5 a.m., when guards collect the bedsheet from each detainee. There is no reveille sounded at Guantanamo, and officials say the practice of collecting bedsheets ended in late 2006 for compliant detainees and last May for everyone else.
• The article said that lights were kept on in the cells 24 hours a day for security reasons, and that some prisoners grew their hair long to shield their eyes to sleep. Since September, all detainees have been issued sleep masks.
• The article said that detainees at Camps 5 and 6 could see each other only during prayer time when an aperture in their cell doors was opened. The prisoners can also see each other when being escorted to showers or interrogation, during recreation time and when the aperture is opened for meal delivery.
• The article referred to “the hour for rec time”; in fact, prisoners are allowed at least two hours of recreation daily.
• The article said the prison library had 2,000 books and magazines; it has 5,000, including multiple copies of many titles.
• The article said that once a prisoner had skipped nine meals he was considered to be on a hunger strike and taken to the medical center where he was force-fed. Medical officials say hunger strikers are force-fed only when their weight has fallen to 85% of their ideal body weight and a doctor recommends it.
• The article said that prisoners at Camp 4, a communal compound, were awaiting transfer home. Camp 4 holds prisoners judged to be compliant with camp rules.

(Bulleting mine.)  As Kathryn Jean Lopez quips, “otherwise our story was accurate.”

You know, some publications do their fact-checking before they go to press.

The Independent runs a 2005 photo as evidence of a depression in 2008. (Via Gateway Pundit, via Instapundit.)

BONUS: Roger de Hauteville spots an MP3 player on the impoverished man in the foreground.

The New York Times goes where it must to find the desired narrative; in this case a news story written in the first-person by a former captain from Saddam’s army.  (Via Instapundit.)  Wow.

UPDATE: Instapundit prints a letter from another NYT reporter defending the article.

In the Washington Post, Brzezinski repeats the lie:

Both Democratic presidential candidates agree that the United States should end its combat mission in Iraq within 12 to 16 months of their possible inauguration. The Republican candidate has spoken of continuing the war, even for a hundred years, until “victory.”

(Via the Corner.) 

Of course, that is exactly not what McCain said.  Now Brzezinski is a politician, so we shouldn’t be shocked when he lies.  The Washington Post, on the other hand, looks bad here.  Aren’t there supposed to be standards of accuracy even for op-ed pieces?

UPDATE: Better link for McCain’s actual remark.

Friday I blogged on the (lack of) reality behind the movie Stop-Loss, based on the trailer.  Well, Libertas actually saw the movie, and didn’t care for it much.  (Via Instapundit.)  Viewers seem to agree; the movie opened at #7, earning just $1.6 million.  Apparently, Paramount is not surprised:

Paramount wasn’t expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. “It’s not looking good,” a studio source told me before the weekend. “No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”

They didn’t expect the movie to do well, but they made it anyway?  I guess they feel some principles are worth wasting money on.  (Paramount’s shareholders have some grounds to be upset, I think.)

Also, an Instapundit reader suggests “an X-Prize for an Iraq war movie that doesn’t suck.”

The New York Times reviews Stop-Loss, the latest anti-war film to come out of Hollywood.  Unshockingly, they recommend it.  Just as unshockingly, they leave unasked the question of whether the movie has anything to do with the stop-loss policy employed by the Pentagon.

Judging by the trailer (which I saw a few months ago in the previews for Charlie Wilson’s War — a terrific pro-American, anti-Soviet film about running guns to the Afghan Northern Alliance), the protagonist returns from a tour of duty in Iraq, looking forward to his discharge and a life with his fiancée.  On the way out, he is informed that he is being “stop-lossed” and sent back to Iraq.  Tragedy ensues.

In reality, the stop-loss policy is intended to maintain cohesion in units deployed to war.  According to the Christian Science Monitor, soldiers can have their commitment extended for the duration of a deployment and up to 90 days before and after that deployment.  So, it would not happen that a soldier who had just returned and was due to be discharged would get transferred to another unit and re-deployed.  Indeed, from the perspective of unit cohesion, that would entirely defeat the purpose.

There’s certainly a legitimate debate about whether stop-loss is a good policy (I have no strong opinion), but judging by the trailer, this movie just spreads misinformation and doesn’t advance that debate at all.

The L.A. Times admits fabricating documents in Tupac Shakur case.  (IPS should take note!)

The Inter Press Service news agency (IPS) is reporting on a new disease that is so bad, it’s named after a security contractor:

What Iraqis now call Blackwater fever is really a well-known medical condition, and while it has nothing to do with Blackwater Worldwide, Iraqis in al-Anbar province have decided to make the connection between the disease and the lethal U.S.-based company which has been responsible for the death of countless Iraqis.

(Via Jules Crittenden, via Instapundit.)

In fact, blackwater fever is named after the dark red or black urine it causes, and has been called that for ages.  This is just lame.  Next time make up some fake documents or something.

ASIDE: I had never heard of IPS before, so I looked them up.  From their website:

IPS is a communication institution with a global news agency at its core.  IPS raises the voices of the South and civil society.  IPS brings a fresh perspective on development and globalisation.

So, basically, this is an obscure advocacy organization that puts out dubious news stories.  Probably we shouldn’t make too much of this in the media failure department.   On the other hand, the leftists that bought into this are probably owed a bit of friendly teasing.

UPDATE: This blog is five days old.  I went to the pageview stats this morning, expecting to see a typical number (like 4), and found I’d been Instalanched.  (To a close approximation, every person reading this knows this already.)  So here’s my advice to other new bloggers: forget insightful commentary; it’s snarky one-liners that get you noticed!

Anyway, during my fleeting moment of fame, I’d like to draw attention to my ad that John McCain should run on Iraq, in the hopes that someone will see it who can make it happen.

I’ve long lamented the poor state of reporting on the war in Iraq.  While our military systematically roots out terrorists, our mainstream media reports only on the latest atrocities committed by the enemy.  As Iraq has quieted, and terrorist atrocities have become less frequent, Iraq has begun to fade out of the media.  Without the Internet, it would be awfully hard to learn what’s actually happening.

Given the leanings of the media, this is not surprising, but I learned today something that did surprise me:  While reporting in Baghdad is expensive, embedding is free!  Paul McLeary writes in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Five years into the war, news organizations have understandably cut back a bit, given the immense cost of maintaining a Baghdad bureau. From life insurance for reporters to guards, armored cars (which not all bureaus have), and fortified houses outside of the Green Zone, reporting from Iraq is an incredibly expensive proposition.

But embedding with infantry units is free. Flights to Kuwait, where the Army public affairs team picks you up and puts you on a military aircraft to Iraq, and insurance still cost, but once you’re embedded, your expenses end. And that’s why I can’t understand why every major news organization doesn’t have one reporter embedded with a combat unit at all times.

(Via the Corner.)

So, hardly any major news organizations have embedded reporters any more, despite the fact that embedding is nearly free.  (At least, if they do have them, we never hear from them.)  This is surprising at first blush, but unlike McLeary, I can imagine a reason why not: perhaps the media simply doesn’t want to report on the troops.

A particular fascination of mine is with the media’s inability or unwillingness to report events accurately.  I admit I was slow on the uptake here.  The myth of competent and fair journalism is a powerful one: I wanted to believe, all the evidence to the contrary.

Like most people (according to my informal survey of people I’ve felt like asking), I had noticed that whenever the media covered something of which I had personal or professional knowledge, they invariably reported something wrong — often the central facts of the story.  But, I always figured, it’s the junior reporters who cover local news, or science and technology.  They must get the major stories right.  On the occasions when they got caught making stuff up (like 60 Minutes and Dateline NBC rigging cars to make them appear unsafe) I saw it as just an aberration.

It wasn’t until December 2000 that I really grasped the scope of the media’s incompetence and/or dishonesty.  In my own defense, there didn’t use to be as many alternative information sources you could use to double-check the mainstream media.  Still, my realization came, not by the Internet, as you might expect, but by an older technology: C-Span.  It was during the month of legal wrangling in Florida that followed the Presidential election.

One of the many lawsuits was in (iirc) Seminole County.  Democrats were suing to have all the county’s absentee ballots thrown out because many absentee ballot request formswere handled improperly.  (This would have given the election to Gore.)  The day that case went to trial, I was home with the flu, and I watched the proceedings on C-Span.  For the first time, I had direct knowledge of the facts of the day’s top story.  Later that evening, I watched the media report on what had happened: not a single story got the central facts right, and every one erred in the direction of making the lawsuit sound more reasonable than it was.   Sitting alone in my living room, I apparently had better news-gathering resources than the entire mainstream media.

That was the day I realized that the media cannot be trusted, but it still took me a while to realize that (at least when it comes to politics)  they don’t necessarily even try to get the story right.  Now, I’m not someone who gets exercised about media bias.  Journalists have always had their biases; the myth of the impartial journalist is a modern vanity.  However, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for them to tell the truth.

In a typical example, the BBC has just admitted (“clarified,” that is) that a recent report critical of Israel was fabricated:

The BBC showed a bulldozer demolishing a house, while correspondent Nick Miles told viewers: “Hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his family home.” . . .

The house, however, was not demolished; the BBC was embarrassed when news reports from other broadcasters showed the east Jerusalem home intact and the family commemorating their son’s actions.

Last week, the BBC apologized live on its news program, admitting it had used footage of another house being demolished.

(Via Power Line.)

While we’re discussing the BBC, last week they reported on a speech in which President Bush claimed victory in Iraq.  Except, he didn’t.  (Via LGF.)  Unfortunately, I didn’t start this blog quickly enough, and the article referenced has already gone down the memory hole.  Will they apologize for this?  I doubt they are sufficiently embarrassed.  (UPDATE: Screen grabs are at the Monkey Tennis Centre. (Via Instapundit.))