The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Bias by Omission: What the WaPo Didn’t Include in Its ‘BullyGate’ Hit Job

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 12 Comments

Susan Swift at Big Journalism located a profile feature about Mitt Romney in Automobile magazine, including quotes from some of the same sources used in Jason Horowitz’s “BullyGate” story. One of the common sources was Phillip Maxwell, who is quoted by the WaPo as an authority on the Infamous Homophobic Bullying Haircut. So, what didn’t Horowitz tell us about Maxwell that Automobile does?

“I’m a Democrat, so I won’t vote for him. . . . He’s determined to claim the highest office in the land — to be the first Mormon to do it. He keeps that undercover because he doesn’t want to frighten people.”

Hmmm. Let me get this right:

  1. Democrat.
  2. Thinks the Mormon-quest-for-power theme would “frighten people.”

Kinda like Lawrence O’Donnell, really. But it’s rather curious that the same Philip Maxwell who told Automobile magazine that he’s a Democrat is not clearly identified as such by Horowitz. And, as John Nolte notices, ABC News also presented Maxwell as apolitical.

I have “long been bothered” by this . . .

Category: ABC, Election 2012, Media Bias, Mitt Romney

MSNBC Host Loses It When Reporter Won’t Play Along With ‘Get Mitt’ Meme

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 24 Comments

Tim Carney had a piece this morning about BullyGate and “the casual indifference The Post displays as it destroys lives in pursuit of its goal of electing Democrats.” Somehow, Tim got booked onto MSNBC, where host Tamron Hall wanted him to play along with the game. Amid her increasingly angry interruptions, Carney managed to speak some truth to power:

{W}hat you’re doing here is a typical media trick: You hype up a story, and then you justify the second-day coverage of the story by saying, “Oh, well, people are talking about it. Here’s how Romney responded to it” . . .
You are bringing up a meta story here, which is, “What is the Romney response to this other non-story?”

Watch the video as Hall tells Carney “you are actually irritating me right now” and eventually cuts off his mike:

Via Memeorandum with more commentary by Patterico and by Brian Cates at Draw and Strike.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston scores the Headline of the Day:

The Washington Post Could Not Be Reached
for Comment, On Its Own Blockbuster Story

Much more from Ed Driscoll, who’s aggregating like a mofo.

UPDATE II: Ace of Spades weighs in on the Tamron Hall/Tim Carney segment:

After Carney’s kicked off due to his refusal to play the left’s Reindeer Games, a Democratic strategist opines it’s a “red herring” that we must talk about the GDP and jobs, and argues that George Bush won in 2004 by talking about “gay marriage, gay marriage all day long.”
Thus, he argues, turnabout is fair play.

Can we talk, just for a minute, about the media’s conception of “fairness”? Because I think this is what you might call a “teachable moment.”

What is the simplest, most childish definition of “fairness”? Even-Steven, 50-50, halfsies — a down-the-middle division, where everybody takes turns and everyone’s slice of the pie is the same. If your mind is fixated on that kindergarten notion of “fairness,” then the real world is an endless carnival of unfairness.

To the Kindergarten Mind, “inequality” is a synonym for “injustice.”

This is the basic liberal worldview on everything, and no amount of adult common-sense argument has ever proven capable of persuading liberals from turning loose of this infantile concept.

We might examine how liberals apply their Kindergarten Mind to many areas of public policy, but let’s just stick to the concept of “fairness” as it applies to political coverage in the media. To the Kindergarten Mind, fairness could mean many things in this regard:

  1. 50-50 — Power is exactly divided between Republicans and Democrats, and everybody cooperates so they can get at least a “satisfactory” grade for “plays well with others.”
  2. Taking Turns — After a Republican gets the White House for four or eight years, then it’s the Democrats turns to have the White House for an equal period of time. The same is true with the House, the Senate, governorships, state legislators, etc. As long as everybody takes turns, both Democrats and Republicans can say that the political process is “fair.”
  3. The Triumph of the Party of Fairness — In this conception of “fairness,” Republicans are the party of Evil Rich Haters, and also vicious cheating partisan bullies who don’t play fair, so they don’t deserve a “50-50” share and also have no right to claim power on the basis of it being “their turn” to be in charge. Kindergarten-style “fairness” therefore requires that Republicans always lose, and any time Democrats lose an election, the result is inherently unfair.

Think back to the alleged “golden age of bipartisanship,” the passing of which has been much lamented of late, in light of the defeats of such “moderate” Republicans as Dick Lugar, Mike Castle, Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist. Between 1954 and 1994, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives without exception, and controlled the Senate for all but a few years of that four-decade span. Between 1968 to 1992, however, Republicans won the White House in five elections (Richard Nixon in 1968 and ’72, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and ’84, George H.W. Bush in 1988), and the Democrats won only once (Jimmy Carter in 1976). Barely had a Democrat broken the (obviously unfair) 12-year Reagan-Bush presidential tenure (with Bill Clinton’s 1992 election) than those Evil Rich Haters in the GOP swept the 1994 midterms to take control of the House and Senate. Although Clinton won re-election in 1996, Republican control of Congress extended another decade (until the Pelosi-led Democrats won in 2006), and the Evil Rich Haters actually stole the 2000 election (or so, Democrats would have us believe) in order to install Chimpy McHitler George W. Bush as president.

All of which is to say, if you look at the situation with the liberal Kindergarten Mind conception of “fairness,” we’re more than 40 years into a long steady succession of unfair outcomes. After the eight-year presidency of Republican George W. Bush, Democrats deserve — under the “taking-turns” conception of fairness — at least eight years of President Oh My God He’s So Historically Awesome Obama.

Thus, the media (about 90% of whom are Democrats) consider Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign an effort to bring about a grossly unfair result, to deprive Democrats of “their fair share” of electoral success. “Fairness” requires that Romney must lose.

Also, if you vote for Romney, you’re a greedy racist who hates gay people and wants women to die from back-alley abortions.

Republicans who demand that the Thrill-Up-My-Leg Obama-Loving Media should give “fair” treatment to Mitt Romney are therefore actually advocating unfairness, as defined by the Kindergarten Mind.

 

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Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, MSNBC

Good May Come Of This Administration: The Realization That Federal Involvement In Personal Matters Is False

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Bruce Carroll, writing in the Daily Caller, critiquing the Left’s response to Barack’s panderingevolution this last week:

In my experience this is a typical reaction from left-wing gays and lesbians. They want to be liked, accepted, adored and fawned over. This week, President Obama gave them an important moment of self-adoration.
After the initial glow, however, those of us who look at life more critically and through the prism of reality like, for example, the law and the U.S. Constitution, found Obama’s announcement to be anything but historic. All he did was state his personal perspective on a social matter. Did he say he was going to ask Congress to repeal the “Defense of Marriage Act” signed by President Clinton? Nope. Did he urge all 50 governors to move toward same-sex marriage recognition in their state? Nope. Did he say he would back efforts for a gay marriage plank in the DNC platform at the Democratic Convention. Nope.

Read the whole, insightful thing. What’s crucial here both for LBGTs and my own SoCon ilk is the understanding that the Federal government should really be more about Federal (multi-state/international) matters than fretting about Bruce’s or my (relatively boring, I’ll venture) sex lives. Managing the housing, sexuality, health, education, and retirement of anyone is neither possible nor Constitutional.

The smaller, more Constitution-centric we keep the cone of issues at the peak, the bigger the Conservative tent, oddly enough.

Brendan O’Neill at The Telegraph highlights the hate being poured on North Carolina:

Sticking with the idea that opponents of gay marriage are knuckle-scraping specimens, Buzzfeed magazine published a very popular piece this week called “14 Steps That Will Evolve Your Views On Gay Marriage”. It showed a monkey in a cage – your typical opponent of gay marriage, apparently – and invited him to become more “evolved” on this important moral issue. Given the widespread criticism being made of North Carolina’s black communities in particular, many of whom supported Amendment 1, all this talk of unevolved knuckle-draggers whose brains are easily controlled by religious cranks is sailing perilously close to racism territory.

See, Brendan, raaaaacism, by definition, exists purely within the hearts of the male, Christian, Caucasian, heterosexual opressor patriarchy. Even publicly noting this undeniable fact is, for me, an act of bigotry. Despite the absence of any object for my bigotry, and any bigoted statement! It is impossible for me to achieve sufficient self-loathing to be shriven of the sins of my ancestors which cling to me in the fashion of the most bitter leprosy. I stand convicted by weight of my existence, in the eyes of the Left.

There is no maintaining the current state of Federal over-reach. The only way to return any sanity to U.S. politics is to restore the Federal government to Federal bounds. My wife has a T-shirt, which says, in French: Blessed is the student who, like I river, completes his course without leaving his bed. The flood of Federal over-reach is drowning us.

Update: linked at The Rio Norte Line

Category: Gays, Racism

Hard Times in WaPoVille: ‘BullyGate’ Timing Questioned on ‘Morning Joe’

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 10 Comments

If they’ve lost Morning Joe . . .

“And there’s no doubt that . . . the timing of this obviously is in line with Barack Obama coming out a couple of days ago, saying — I’m sorry. It’s a fun — I mean, the media response to Barack Obama saying absolutely nothing. In the immortal words of Pat Buchanan, celebrating ‘a big fat nothing burger’ when Barack Obama basically said, ‘I’ve got the same position on gay marriage as Ron Paul or Ronald Reagan. I’m not going to do anything about it. The states can do what they want.’ But it seems to me that a story like this is timed to go along with the media celebrating Barack Obama saying he’s going to let states ban gay marriage.”
— Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, Morning Joe

Remember that last month the Washington Post fired a young blogger, Elizabeth Flock, for errors in her account of a controversy involving the Romney campaign. WaPo ombudsman Patrick Pexton headlined his account of that incident, “The Post fails a young blogger.”

OK, so who failed on the “BullyGate” story? And if Elizabeth Flock got fired for an inaccurate blog post, how can Jason Horowitz survive multiple inaccuracies in a 5,000-word front-page story? How does the WaPo plan to verify a secondhand quote from a dead man?

Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton can be reached by phone at 202-334-7582 or by e-mail at [email protected]. Be polite.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades:

The story is overwritten and hyped up beyond all reason — silly pranks cast as “terrifying,” the word “terror” and “terrified” appearing multiple times — and then, needing some justification for their overwrought hype, they start inventing other witnesses who, in their telling, have “long been bothered” by the horrors they witness, their every night’s sleep haunted by Romney’s psychotic… um, pranks.

And, I remind you, John Lauber could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE II: A memorable headline from Donald Douglas:

The Left’s Coordinated ‘Bullying’ Attack
on Romney Exposed as ‘Unconscionable’ Journalism:
Progressives Cheer ‘Brilliant’ Political
Strategy of Axelrod and Plouffe

UPDATE III: Bryan Preston at PJM continues aggregating the collapse. Meanwhile, the Washington Post, after first claiming that its airbrushing of errors in Horowitz’s article didn’t require a correction notice, has now . . . well, they’ve “evolved,” I guess you’d say.

UPDATE IV: Did you know that the stockholders in the Washington Post have been accused of “disinvesting” in news operations? Did you know that the Washington Post lost $22.6 million in the first three months of 2012? You’re probably not going to read that news in a 5,000-word front-page article in the Washington Post, eh?

 


 

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Category: Ace of Spades, American Power, Election 2012, Journalism, Mitt Romney, MSNBC

‘BullyGate’: What Did Jason Horowitz Know, and When Did He Know It?

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 27 Comments

The implosion of the Washington Post‘s “BullyGate” story — a rapidly rising item on Memeorandum today — has sparked questions about the sourcing of reporter Jason Horowitz’s article:

A key element of the Washington Post’s 5,000-word account of Mitt Romney’s alleged high-school bullying is based on a second-hand account of a conversation with a dead man.

In response to my earlier post about the journalistic standards of the Washington Post account, a news editor with more than a decade of supervisory experience in D.C. sent me the following questions that he, as an editor, would ask the reporter (language warning):

Jason Horowitz talked to the sisters (we know this because his story cites them as the source of “Lauber dead” fact). Did Horowitz ask them whether Lauber ever mentioned the incident? If so, what did they say? Was it the same as what they’re telling ABC now? If it’s the same, why did Horowitz privilege one chance meeting with a now-semi-stranger at an airport over what those closest to Lauber said?
If the family said to Horowitz something different from what they’re now telling ABC about the effect on Lauber, why wasn’t THAT in the story
And if Horowitz DIDN’T ask the Lauber family about the effect of this incident on him … why the fuckety-fuck not!!?!?
Two of the three scenarios I’ve outlined are discipline cases in any story; on a 5,000-word A1 feature on a presidential nominee, it’s firing.

The Washington Post owes its readers some answers to such questions.

UPDATE: It doesn’t take an experienced editor to spot the common-sense problems with the Washington Post story:

Da Tech Guy senses a purposeful distraction. Bryan Preston at PJMedia doesn’t believe the timing of the WaPo article was entirely coincidental:

Horowitz has some explaining to do, and so do his editors. Did he fabricate any part of the story and implant it with Mitt’s school friends? Did he work on the timing of the story’s release with anyone in the Obama campaign?

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Category: Election 2012, Journalism, Media Bias, Mitt Romney

Rutherford B. Hayes Sympathizes With Obama Sweat Shop Workers, Sort Of

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Insty points to Jammie Wearing Fool, where sweat shop workers supporting the Obama campaign, unexpectedly, discover they are in a sweat shop:

A $95 sweatshirt currently being sold in President Obama’s campaign store is the work of Alexander Wang, a designer who’s facing a class action suit in federal court for allegedly running a sweatshop where garment workers were forced to work 100 hour weeks in a factory with conditions “comparable to those of third world countries” while being subjected to racial discrimination, verbal abuse and threats. C.K. Lee, the lead attorney representating the workers who are suing Mr. Wang told The Politicker he thinks the presence of the sweatshirt is “inappropriate.”

Read the whole thing. This blog was focused on capturing an important announcement from Rutherford B. Hayes: Read more

Category: Barack Obama

No ‘BullyGate’ Pulitzer for WaPo?
UPDATE: Using a Second-Hand Source for a Dead Man’s Words? WTF?

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 37 Comments

Three recent headlines in the URGENT BREAKING SCANDAL:

Source for WaPo’s Romney hit piece:
Actually, I wasn’t present during the prank
— Hot Air

Sister of Alleged Romney Target Has
‘No Knowledge’ of Any Bullying Incident
— ABC News

A question emerges in reading
the Washington Post piece …
— Daily Caller

Of course, this URGENT BREAKING SCANDAL involves incidents that allegedly happened nearly half a century ago, so those sneaky Republicans have a had a long time to cover it up.

Certainly the latter-day Woodwards and Bernsteins at the Washington Post will have their work cut out for them.

UPDATE: When I say they “have their work cut out for them,” I mean they’re already trying to change their story as it falls apart.

The changes have been noted by so-called “bloggers” like Brian Cates:

Washington Post Caught
Making Sh!t Up Again

Of course, there are no so-called “bloggers” on the Pulitzer Prize committee, which is composed entirely of respected professional journalists like Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Dan Rather . . .

UPDATE II: Dana Loesch wonders why the Washington Post didn’t alert its readers to the changes in its 5,000-word investigative report. Probably because of budget constraints:

The Washington Post Co. reported its first-quarter earnings on Friday, and the news coming out of the newspaper division was mostly grim. The unit lost $22.6 million in the quarter, with revenue down 8% and revenue from print advertising specifically falling 17%.  . . .
[T]he paper has lost top talent lately, including James Grimaldi, who took a buyout and is heading to The Wall Street Journal. With his departure, the Post will have lost all three reporters who won its 2006 Pulitzer for their coverage of the Jack Abramoff scandal. The paper also shut out of the 2012 Pulitzers and weathered a blogger embarrassment that revealed its BlogPost operation to be a mini sweatshop.

The Washington Post can afford to assign a reporter to do a 5,000-word investigative report on a Republican’s high-school activities, but they can’t afford to let their readers know that they’re “making sh!t up” again. Because credibility is kinda expensive . . .

UPDATE III: Reading Ben Shapiro’s examination of the Washington Post story, my brain exploded when this part sunk in:

Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.
Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”
Lauber died in 2004, according to his three sisters.

FIRING OFFENSE, period.

By God, you can’t do that in journalism: You cannot base a key element of a story — in this case, the claim that Romney’s bullying left Lauber emoitonally traumatized for life — on a quote from the deceased “victim” attributed to him based on an (alleged) private conversation. Lauber isn’t around to verify or dispute the accuracy of Seed’s account, and therefore it is unethical to include the “quotes” that Seed attributes to Lauber.

When Jason Horowitz is fired — and it should be a matter of when he’s fired, not if he’s fired — this “Dead Man’s Quote” trick will be noted among the worst of his wrongdoings.

UPDATE IV: Just got off the phone with an experienced Washington news editor who agrees that the “Dead Man’s Quote” trick would be a firing offense in any reputable news organization. Permit me to explain exactly what’s wrong with this trick.

Our standards of journalism, including libel law, have accumulated in common-law fashion in accordance with our Constitution. The First Amendment is not a license for defamation. When journalism becomes a weapon to make accusations against private citizens, the Sixth Amendment’s “Confrontation Clause” must be considered.

That is to say, one cannot use claims of private knowledge by anonymous sources to accuse people of criminal wrongdoing, because the person accused is thereby deprived of the traditional right to face his accusers. It is one thing when anonymous sources are used to describe routine political shenanigans (“sources close to the campaign said”), but another thing entirely when what is being alleged could be construed as potentially libelous. In such a case, if the accused person wants to take you to court, and your anonymous source is not willing to come forward and vouch for the truth of his statements, you are screwed, blued and tattooed.

What Horowitz has done is something even worse: He has claimed to know the exact words spoken by John Lauber — a dead man Horowitz never interviewed — in a private conversation, based entirely on the word of David Seed. The substance of that alleged conversation is crucial to the accusation made by the Washington Post story that Romney’s alleged bullying had a lifelong negative impact on Lauber’s life.

Yet John Lauber is rather conspicuously unavailable for comment on the allegation, unless perhaps the editors of the Washington Post are willing to enlist a psychic to conduct a seance.

FIRING OFFENSE.

 

 


Category: Election 2012, Journalism, Media Bias, Mitt Romney

Easter Island Yields Ancient Prophecy

Posted on | May 11, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Twitchy reports that the Easter Island heads are undergoing significant archeological digging.

asdf

When they got below ground, a surprising discovery showed that maybe the Easter Islanders knew more, five hundred years ago, than so many hipsters and academics do today. . . Read more

Category: humor
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