Making (Up) The News: Seven Case Studies
It is the responsibility of every journalist to report the news truthfully, without fear or favor, and to not let their ideological beliefs stand in the way of accurate reporting. And in this modern age, watchful citizens on the political right have played an integral part in ensuring the integrity of the press by holding journalists responsible for any inaccuracies, whether the result of bias or no, in their news reporting.
So, let’s recap.
THE REPORTER: Dan Rather, CBS News.
THE STORY: Documents reveal that President Bush, having dodged service in Vietnam by joining the Air National Guard, failed to meet the requirements of his Guard position.
THE TRUTH: The documents were not legitimately obtained.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Rather’s blood, hastening his resignation and citing the affair as evidence of a liberal bias in media.
THE ENDGAME: Rather left his job, three producers were fired, and the right became almost totally embittered against mainstream media. The documents were never proven to be forgeries, however, and it remains a fact that President Bush avoided service in Vietnam and that no evidence exists that he fulfilled his obligations in the Guard.
THE REPORTER: Scott Thomas Beauchamp, The New Republic.
THE STORY: American soldiers in Iraq, including Beauchamp himself, behaved in a manner unbecoming a member of the Armed forces.
THE TRUTH: An Army investigation established that Beauchamp exaggerated some of his claims and allegedly fabricated others. Beauchamp’s fellow servicemen denied his stories.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Beauchamp’s blood, suggesting that he should be criminally prosecuted and citing the affair as evidence of the corrupt nature of the left-wing media.
THE ENDGAME: Beauchamp was fired, The New Republic issues a retraction, and the right cited the case as proof of the lies of the liberal press. The denials of wrongdoing by Beauchamp’s comrades, on the other hand, are no more definitive proof that the wrongdoing took place than his claims of their complicity are proof that it did, and a number of American soldiers continue to behave in a manner unbecoming a member of the armed forces in Iraq.
THE REPORTER: Jamil Hussein, the Associated Press.
THE STORY: A massacre of civilians occurred in Baghdad, including the near-destruction of several mosques, as reported by Hussein, a captain in the Iraqi national police.
THE TRUTH: Reports of a civilian massacre were unconfirmed and the damage to the mosques was not total.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Hussein’s blood, with many claiming he didn’t even exist and citing the affair as evidence of how reporting from Iraq cannot be trusted.
THE ENDGAME: Hussein, who in fact does exist, was arrested for talking to the press without permission. Dozens of witnesses and other journalists testified that a large number of civilians were murdered, though many chose to remain anonymous because people who speak to the press are often targeted for killing in Iraq. Photographs of the mosques show extensive damage. The AP notes that during the period in which right-wing blogs were claiming that Jamil Hussein did not exist and was merely an invented figure by which to spread false stories about the bad news in Iraq, thousands of Iraqis were killed.
THE REPORTER: Judith Miller, The New York Times.
THE STORY: Iraq under Saddam Hussein had fully reconstituted its weapons of mass destruction program and was actively working towards acquiring a nuclear bomb.
THE TRUTH: Iraq under Saddam Hussein had no working WMD program, and in over four years of occupation, no such weapons have ever been found, nor have the means of constructing them.
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers, who normally have nothing but bad things to say about The New York Times, found nothing suspicious about Miller’s reporting, and embraced her stories as definitive proof that Iraq was a threat.
THE ENDGAME: Miller, who in addition to having printed without cavil stories fed to her by the Bush administration, was hip-deep in the Valerie Plame scandal, for which conservatives made her a martyr figure. She retired after 30 years with the paper, making no apologies for her malreportage, and has since taken a high-paying job with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a right-wing think tank.
THE REPORTER: Michael Ledeen, Pajamas Media.
THE STORY: Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, died on January 4 of this year .
THE TRUTH: Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, is in fact still alive.
THE FALLOUT: Pajamas Media, which was founded as a vehicle for the web-based “New Media” that would replace the inaccurate and biased reporting of the mainstream media, did not find it necessary to issue an apology for having falsely reported the death of a major world leader. Reports of Khamenei’s death can still be found on their website.
THE ENDGAME: Ledeen is not only still employed, he is still employed by Pajamas Media. His columns ceaselessly fulminating for war with Iran are enjoyed weekly by PJM’s readers.
THE REPORTER: Michael Yon, “Michael Yon Online Magazine”.
THE STORY: Elements of al-Q’aeda in Iraq cooked a young boy and forced his parents to eat him.
THE TRUTH: No confirmation has been found that al-Q’aeda terrorists are borrowing their tactical plans from the Brothers Grimm.
THE FALLOUT: When some observers questioned Yon’s unquestioning reportage of a variant on the blood libel, Yon equivocated, first blaming his source within the military, then blaming the source’s source, an Iraqi government official. At no point did he accept blame for having published such an outrageous story without bothering to verify it, claiming only that he could “offer no opinion about the veracity” of the account – an unusual position for a journalist to take.
THE ENDGAME: Michael Yon is still hugely popular with right-wingers, who call him an independent reporter with no ideological leanings; some even go as far as to call his activities heroic, and in marked contrast to the biased and negative reporting of the mainstream media.
THE REPORTER: W. Thomas Smith Jr., The National Review.
THE STORY: Hundreds of armed men were gathered in a Lebanese refugee camp, and up to 5,000 armed terrorists were running amok in the Christian areas of Beirut with the full blessing of the authorities.
THE TRUTH: Smith actually saw two men with rifles in a tent, and a couple of guys with radios hanging around in downtown Beirut.
THE FALLOUT: When observers noted that Smith’s accounts of thousands of armed men swarming around Beirut had not been reported by any other sources, his defenders on the right claimed the observers were leftist tools, his editor blamed it on the Arab tendency to lie, and Smith himself said he did not find it necessary to defend himself against the false charges of terrorists.
THE ENDGAME: The National Review, who helped lead the charge against The New Republic during l’affaire de Beauchamp, stated that they will continue to print Smith’s stories “on a submission-by-submission basis and will continue to do so unless we have reason to decide otherwise”.
Say it with me, now, everybody:
DAMN LIBERAL MEDIA!
why do you even try? it will do no good to point out the obvious. the right-wing controls the airwaves and the print media and will do so for the foreseeable future. the left controls the blogs but that is not enough…yet.
oh, yeah. FIRST, BIATCHES!!!!111!!
IOIYALFFWAHOFW
It’s OK If You’re A Lying Fuck Face With A Hard On For War
What about the Liberal Liar, Joe Klein? He still has a job. Damn Liberal Media!
somewhere stanley rothman is laughing in his grave. actually, i know where that grave is. i’m off for a little defilement then.
>his editor blamed it on the Arab tendency to lie
I for one think the implication that some sand monkeys could outsmart such a brave patriot and defender of Israel is, itself, anti-semitic and, in the words of Andrew Sullivan, only makes Smith MORE right. Or something.
I think you’re getting too worked up about this. Talking about horrible bad guys generates ratings/newspaper sales; therefore, the media outlets like to bring on warmongers. These warmongers have a big, fat agenda, so OF COURSE they will lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want; I would expect the same sociopathological issue that creates warmongery creates would also create a general lack of ethics.
I believe that the proliferation of this behavior is allowed by a general lack of political discourse in our country. Too often what passes for political discourse is “did you see the poll numbers in Iowa?” or “Did you hear what so-and-so said?”, and I fear that you, too, are falling into this trap a little too far. It’s one thing to be snarky and note buffoonery; it’s another to yell “hypocrite” every time a sociopath is inconsistent in spewing his agenda.
What do you want, justice?
New Media as bad as the old.
What are the options and where is the table?
National Review and New Republic both have the initials NR. These initials stand for
Nutty Republicans. Or ?
Mr. Leonard Pierce: I’m afraid your case studies analysis shows a clear liberal bias. I’m also afraid that you therefore hate America and the troops, and that furthermore you have an unsettling lack of qualms about disrespecting Our President, Leader of the Free World. Karl Rove will be no doubt be in touch with you, mister, and soon, very soon.
You are forgetting about the New York Times – MoveOn.org relationship, you know, the one where the NYT gave MoveOn.org a discount for its ad about General Petraeus.
clear proof of the liberal media!
The National Review, who helped lead the charge against the New Republic during l’affaire de Beauchamp,
Illustrating the ironcast Law of Right-wing Projection… that if someone is warning about the unguarded state of the chicken-coop, and blaming it all on liberal misconduct and defeatism, then that person is probably a fox.
What are the options and where is the table?
Who is the Culprit and Who is the Victim?
Why is it that Liberals are just not as good as the right is on that “Howling for Blood” thing? Is it genetic? Is the Right really descended from those screaming, pitchfork waving mobs of Transylvania? The Salem witch hunters?
Inquiring minds want to know.
THE FALLOUT: When some observers questioned Yon’s unquestioning reportage of a variant on the blood libel, Yon equivocated, first blaming his source within the military, then blaming the source’s source, an Iraqi government official. At no point did he accept blame for having published such an outrageous story without bothering to verify it, claiming only that he could “offer no opinion about the veracity” of the account – an unusual position for a journalist to take.
That is complete bullshit you made up. Yon first wrote that he was REPEATING a story that could not be verified and he named a room full of people who witnessed the Iraqi telling that story.
He neither blamed the military nor the Iraqi gov’t, I suggest you show us a link directly to where HE did either of those things.
He did not have to accept blame for this story because he never laid claim to its veracity. As for your claim that “its an usual position for a journalist to take” that is crap!
One month earlier, on June 8th, Karl Penhaul, CNN, wrote the following:
“Locals say al Qaeda amputated fingers for smoking
Nationalist insurgents say al Qaeda excesses are behind their falling-out. Several sources said al Qaeda members burned a 7-year-old child alive and murdered women and other children in the towns and villages around the provincial capital of Baquba. They did not give names or dates to back up their claims.”
Not once does Karl name his sources or even mention the names of anyone who might have witnessed “sources” telling Karl about Al Q burning a child alive. If they can burn a child alive, it is not impossible to believe that they can bake a child. Anyone with any smarts understands that these stories may only be “urban legends” but the reality that many Iraqi’s are repeating them means that they should be shared in the media. If Al Q can fly planes of innocent civilians into buildings and behead civilians on YouTube, burning children alive or baking them is quite feasible. The Germans gassed men, women and children alive in ovens.
At least Michael clearly stated that he was REPEATING the story which he states clearly was being told by an Iraqi in Arabic and being translated. He names the translator, he names the witnesses who were in the room when this story was told, and he makes it clear that this is not verifiable but in light of what he had witnessed personally in Iraq he felt the story could be plausible.
That’s alot more than CNN and Karl Penhaul did.
Another point: Yon isn’t a journalist. He never claimed to be one. He is not recognized as a journalist by any news organisation. He is a writer, and as a former Green Beret, an informed observer of events in Iraq.
His readership leans left and right. He is an independent observer who has reported the good bad and ugly in Iraq. He has criticized the administration, and certain Generals in the Military who have tried to censor bad news coming out Iraq.
Sadly NO truth can be found on your site, you distort to fit your agenda!
THE FALLOUT: Right-wingers howled for Beauchamp’s blood, suggesting that he should be criminally prosecuted and citing the affair as evidence of the corrupt nature of the left-wing media.
THE ENDGAME: Beauchamp was fired, the New Republic issues a retraction, and the right cited the case as proof of the lies of the liberal press. The denials of wrongdoing by Beauchamp’s comrades, on the other hand, are no more definitive proof that the wrongdoing took place than his claims of their complicity are proof that it did, and a number of American soldiers continue to behave in a manner unbecoming a member of the armed forces in Iraq.
This is also not true. . He served in the Military. He was never FIRED from TNR, because he was never HIRED by them.
The New Republic has NEVER issued an apology or retraction. Foer simply blamed everyone and than said he could no longer trust the veracity of Beauchamps stories. Hardly a retraction! He hasn’t stated that his research proves these events were fabricated, instead he claims he simply can’t trust Beauchamp anymore.
Rightwingers did not suggest Beauchamp be criminally prosecuted, as a member of the left wing, I, along with many others on both sides asked that Foer be fired, and agreed that Beauchamps punishment was the purview of the Military. A few nuts on both sides suggested he be killed, or we be killed for going after TNR, but they suggest that about you as well, doesn’t mean we listen to them.
Sadly NO truth can be found on this site, you make up lies in seven case studies to suit your agenda.
Prove any of these allegations you made up for this “case study”.
Links, names, date, times, websites, blogs, after all you allege this is a “study” of made up news. Sounds more like it’s an example of you making up allegations to suit your agenda…..er study.
Hi, angry lady! Thanks for stopping by.
It is the job of a journalist to get the story and confirm the story before running it, not to run the story and then, when no one can verity it, shrug his shoulders and say “Hey, man, I’m not saying it’s true, I’m just repeating what someone told me.” My neighbor might go around saying that he can fly to the moon and back on a surfboard, but the local paper isn’t going to run that as front page news.
If Stalin could systematically starve his own people, it’s not impossible to believe that he could also eat them. But to print a story claiming that Stalin was a cannibal, with no evidence, would be pretty irresponsible.
Are you serious? You think that just because a lot of people are repeating a crazy story, that story deserves to be covered seriously by the press? Does that mean that we should be reading about how Pop Rocks will make your head explode in the New York Times? That’s the kind of nonsense that led to the WaPo’s recent front-page story about Barack Obama’s hidden Muslim agenda. Complete nonsense.
As far as this ‘independent observer’ stuff goes, the only people I’ve ever heard say that Michael Yon doesn’t lean right are right-wingers. Oh, and Michael Yon, of course.
Huh. Someone should tell Yon, then, because if you Google his site, the page description is: “Michael Yon – Combat Journalist, Author, Blogger, Photographer.. I know he likes to say he’s not a journalist, because it serves his self-image to do so, but he doesn’t seem to have a problem when other people say it for him.
“We can no longer trust the veracity of these stories” is what is known as a retraction. It usually doesn’t consist of someone saying “We hereby offer a retraction.”
Yes, they did. Quite frequently.
Anything else you’d like to be wrong about? I got nowhere to be.
Why is CNN repressing the story about Rod Stewart’s hospitalization after consuming large quantities of his bandmates’ – err, bodily fluids?
Lots of people are talking about it, so it ought to be reported on.
Hey, this is pretty cool! I’m going to get a job as a reporter. I’ll be able to phone it in for months using this impeachable new source I’ve found.
He names the translator, he names the witnesses who were in the room when this story was told, and he makes it clear that this is not verifiable but in light of what he had witnessed personally in Iraq he felt the story could be plausible.
Well, someone told the story in a room w/ other people. It must be
trueplausible.The Germans gassed men, women and children alive in ovens.
No, they gassed people to death in phony “showers,” then burned their dead bodies in ovens. They weren’t sticking people’s heads in ovens as if they were committing suicide.
Nonetheless, it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Reading the Michael Yon post and subsequent comments it’s pretty plain that he presented the baked child story without the requisite grain of salt. He fucked up.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/baqubah-update-05-july-2007.htm
My gosh, what a smart piggy!
Sometimes I almost feel sorry for dumbasses who stumble in here thinking they’re gonna set the Sadly, No!-sers straight on anything. Well, not really. Actually, never. The fact is I enjoy it immensely.
he presented the baked child
storywithout the requisite grain of salt.Fixed.
If you substitute decent olive oil for baby oil for a couple weeks, you don’t need to worry too much about the salt.
Especially if brine the baby well before baking…
mikey
Not so fast, there. According to the Al-Qaeda cookbook, entitled To Serve Boys, baked child requires one tablespoon of kosher salt for every 5 lbs of meat.
Wouldn’t that be halal salt?
Just askin’.
To Serve Boys has a preface, in which it is stated that all salt is Halal, but kosher salt is preferred for the roasting of meat.
On the other hand, why should I trust the word of a bunch of evil mooslims? I’m going to use pepper instead of salt, vinegar instead of wine, and porkfat instead of water when I bake my child. I bet it will come out way better than any stupid terrorists’ recipe.
You’re a member of the left wing? You’ve got to be fucking kidding. You’re not even in the directory. And don’t give me that; “I just took the oath yesterday and my paperwork must not have hit the system yet” bullshit because I have real time access to the system. Please produce your credentials. And what’s this other bullshit about people on both sides suggesting Beauchamp or “we” be killed for going after TNR? Who said anything like that who’s not a wingnut like you? Links, patties, names, nicknames, date, double date, times, posts, websites, blogs.
The whole Beauchamp affair was so sad for me.
When I first read his stories, I had a sudden enlightening moment of recognition — for the first time I actually glimpsed the occupying soldiers as the kids that they are. Goofing around in their off hours, bored and stressed at the same time, they seemed not too dissimilar from (for example) engineering students with a heavy course load.
But Beauchamp’s been discredited now. Now I have to go back to thinking of American soldiers as emotionless killing machines who spend all their non-combat time praying to God and the Great Decider. That is, I have to once again view them as war criminals, thoroughly complicit in this immense crime against humanity, rather than simply as ordinary people duped into volunteering for this stupid war.
That is, I have to once again view them as war criminals, thoroughly complicit in this immense crime against humanity, rather than simply as ordinary people duped into volunteering for this stupid war.
Ahh, don’t change your (correct) view on account of a bunch of Malkin-style chickenhawks, clucking from the bleacher seats. Next thing you know, they’ll convince you that polite peoples breathe only through their mouths.
When I first read his stories, I had a sudden enlightening moment of recognition — for the first time I actually glimpsed the occupying soldiers as the kids that they are. Goofing around in their off hours, bored and stressed at the same time, they seemed not too dissimilar from (for example) engineering students with a heavy course load.
Nah. Honestly?
When you first rotate in, you don’t “goof around”. You try to get somebody to tell you what to do. But nobody wants to talk to you, ’cause statistically, you’re gonna get fucked up. You have to keep your head down, watch the guys with time in the zone, watch the sergeants, and make it thru 90 days on your own. After that, the odds start to switch. You’ve accidently survived, and in doing so you’ve learned HOW to survive.
But here’s the problem. Now you’ve learned how to survive. You’ve learned to hate. You’ve learned to hurt people without a thought. You’ve learned to ignore the cries of wives and children. You’ve learned to step over the bodies and the body parts.
Oh, you can laugh. But it’s a bitter, cheerless, souless laughter. Celebrating the death and damage of anyone who isn’t you. You don’t think about the women and children, you toss in the grenade and when you go in you only try to keep the nastiest shit off your gear.
You put crazy rounds downrange in response to a single burst of AK or RPG round. You call in the gunships – those dudes are hot to go. They roll in and tear up the place. And again, as long as you don’t take fire and don’t get guts on your uni, fine, no problem. But your soul aches. You don’t know how to to honor the pain, so you stuff it down, and laugh at the pain and waste.
That’s something that will come out when you get back to the 24 hour px.
It’s NEVER fun. Your laugh is bitter, full of hate, amused only by the suffering of others, contrasted by the lack of suffering of your guys. Goofing IS shooting a dog, breaking a tv, stealing a necklace. Getting a blowjob from a young, hungry indig, sobbing in fear and humiliation, but desperate for a couple bucks. And you just get harder, and angrier.
Or you die….
mikey
You just wait, Mister Leonard Pierce! Trillian is gonna come back with his big brother and totally skool you on how the job of journalists is to pass along anydamnthing they hear that makes the bad guys look bad and the preznit look good!
Then you’ll stop laughing at him! He’ll show you! He’ll show EVERYBODY!
Mikey, what did you think of the Beauchamp stuff? What he wrote seemed too neat and pat to me, story-wise. Although not implausible they gave off the whiff of concocted scenes.
Lets count the number of people that died, partially because of the journalists actions…who has the most blood on their hands(pen?).
Um let’s see….Judy Miller? Ledeen?
Everybody else is just personally/professionally embarassed compared to these two.
DAMN LIBERAL MEDIA!
(I didn’t read the post. That’s OK, isn’t it?)
Frankly, Bubba, it seemed not only reasonable but tame.
Now, there’s every possibility he made it up. I don’t have any way of knowing.
But if I was going to assume he made it up? I’d have to assume he was toning it down.
I mean, c’mon. After you’ve bayoneted someone, after you’ve shot up a hooch and found nothing but dead children in there, after you’ve posed for pics with a dead NVA soldier with his intestines hanging out in the dirt and a smoking cigarette in his mouth, with his stiff arm around your shoulders, laughing and fucking around. Oh, and after that? You reach in and take his belt buckle out from under the guts?
Either Iraq is the most PC war in the history of history, or Beauchamp was undertelling the story…
mikey
What he wrote seemed too neat and pat to me, story-wise. Although not implausible they gave off the whiff of concocted scenes
The dialogue in the “disfigured woman” story was what set off my alarms. It didn’t sound real. It seemed constructed, rather than recorded. Even when the “recording” is from memory, it has that natural ring, whereas something made up (or deliberately elaborated) is too perfect or too stilted or too apt…SOMETHING gives it away. Beauchamp’s mess hall story had a lot of that “not quite right” feeling.
Plus, the entire scenario didn’t pass my sniff test. While any of us can imagine immature, burnt-out guys snickering, whispering and muttering those hideous things under their breath to each other about a scarred female (because of the psychic discomfort she caused them), when Beauchamp claimed that the shit was screamed out loud for all, including the mockee, to hear, I said, “Nah.”
Combined with the bad “sound” of the characters, I assumed it was an exaggeration and recasting of an ugly sotto voce giggle fest amongst the boyz.
But maybe it was completely made up. In that case, Beauchamp might have a future in fiction if he can get some intensive coaching on writing more believable dialogue.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the wingnut replacement for what used to be called journalism: we say shit, you say shit. Whichever sticks, wins. Truth is for suckers.
One of my favorite examples:
http://www.knoxviews.com/node/2660
Bob Corker was running ads against Harold Ford claiming that Ford was in favor of freely distributing abortifacient drugs to children in public schools. This was after the infamous “Harold-Ford-You-Big-Mandingo-You” ad sponsored by the RNC.
Anyway, the “librul” NPR had the local politics editor from the Nashville paper on to provide commentary to a national audience. The exchange at the end of the interview:
STAMBERG: I understand that the second ad implies that Harold Ford supports the notion of morning after pills for school children.
Ms. PEEBLES: Yes, ma’am. It does. People in Congress, of course, vote on just about every issue. And there was a vote that he took on a bill where he says he absolutely did not vote in favor of the so-called morning after pill, and the Republicans claim he did. I guess the voters have to decide who’s right and who’s wrong.
STAMBERG: Jennifer Peebles, political editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Thanks a lot.
Because, y’know, reporters can’t look it up (for “congressional votes,” the Great Gazoogle yields the following for the dum-dum contingent: thomas.loc.gov) that a Republican lied in a political ad. It’s beyond truthiness and into factiness; something may not be “factual” in an objective sense, but that doesn’t stop it from sounding “fact-y” enough to broadcast far-&-wide.
(For the record, Ford didn’t say we should force-feed RU486 to pre-teen girls in South Memphis Jr. High. But what if…?!?! Can we take that CHANCE???)
[…] Political journalism is tough. But at least it’s easy to find the bias when people take short cuts and make up the […]
The right wing controls the print media???? Hahahahaaaaaaaaaa………….if only…….