A real Johnson

It's a small world. My brother and I were discussing a recent incident in which Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson let his personal politics drive him into a frenzy -- politics, and antipathy to Mormons in general, and Mitt Romney in particular. Rather typical for today's reporter, Johnson has gone beyond wearing these attitudes on his sleeve and more or less flies them as standards with a complete color guard and drum and bugle corps. 

Bro is a strong Romney supporter. I'm undecided but like Mitt well enough. He was a decent governor for my hard-to-govern state, a good businessman, and is a genuinely nice guy; I think without naming names we could do worse for president (and the cynic in me says we probably will). Now, Bro and I also understand that being a reporter means you still have personal beliefs and attitudes and they do make it into your writing (which you admit if you're honest). We've both been pro journalists ourselves, writing daily news and features, so we know how it is. 

Which brings us back to Glen Johnson. "I worked with him... at the Lowell Sun!" Bro remembers. "He was a complete jerk even then!" 

Patriotic Journalism Students! Where?

Well, if you know any journalists, you already know the answer is: not here. 

Meet Zhou Hao, Jia Na, and the gang. They may be Godless, motherless, heathen Communists, but they've got a bit of fellow-feeling for their countrymen, an attribute that would see them drummed out of the profession of journalism in the USA. 

Note also a throwaway mention of the test that prospective PLA AF pilots must take: language comprehension, in one of the languages of China's potential enemies. 

(Hat tip, Seth Beckhardt; nothing in extended entry)

Draft Dodger Still Hosing the Troops: Alan Wurtzel

Behold the face of a truly despicable man. 

During the Vietnam War, his country came calling -- and Alan Wurtzel, from a well-off family, and not particularly burdened with any feelings of patriotism or loyalty or duty, hung up the phone. Let someone else go in his place. He stayed in college through a Ph. D in 1974 -- I'm sure it's just a coincidence that he waited out the entire draft, huh? 

Whether his draft-dodging then was legal or not, it's legal now -- President Carter's first act as President was to pardon the draft dodgers, draft rioters, and deserters... just like his last act was to abandon the military and diplomatic personnel that his weak and vacillating foreign policy had condemned to captivity in Iran.

Now Wurtzel's a vice president of NBC -- apparently not one of the news personnel being laid off at the flailing network -- and a millionaire many, many times over. But he's not so secure in his position that he can resist sticking it to the troops in a new war. 

During Vietnam, Wurtzel callously expected some working-class kid to fight, and maybe die, in his place. This time, he went out of his way to make sure an ad encouraging people to remember to thank the troops overseas won't appear on his network. He used a flimsy pretext, but the real reason is crystal clear: he, and his network, loathe the troops so much that a simple "Thank You" ad was more than he could bear. 

It almost sounds like a guilty conscience is bothering him -- if a creature like Wurtzel has a conscience. 

UPDATE: Wurtzel didn't make the decision alone, but with an NBC shyster named Richard Cotton, who is a major contributor to Democrats. It turns out that, like most NBC staff, he prefers Dems quite a bit -- almost $50,000 worth in his case. I'm sure that doesn't impinge on his ability to be objective. Or have anything to do with Wurtzel and Cotton's previous decision to run similar ads for their pal John "Genghis" Kerry. Heh. (Note: this update's been revised to clarify its meaning).

UPDATE II: According to Jules Crittenden (a blog worth reading, from an MSM insider), quoting the Washington Post, Wurtzel has wavered and the ad will run. I guess somebody was going to look up his political giving next. 

More on Beauchamp and Foer

Mike Yon runs into Scott Beauchamp's battalion commander and learns a few things about Beauchamp that most of us didn't know -- including something that speaks well of the embattled young soldier's character. The war's most brilliant correspondent (that would be Yon, not the other guy) has formed one opinion of the private, another of his erstwhile editors, and both are worth considering. 

I probably shouldn't ever mention Mike without saying I first met him when he was a young private (PFC actually) in a lot of trouble, and I definitely shouldn't mention Mike without saying that Ernie Pyle was the Mike Yon of World War II. I am usually vague when I mention Mike's stories because I want my few readers to go join his many readers -- they will use their time more productively that way. 

And a blog from Phoenix that I haven't noticed before, Exurban League, has the USA-Today style infographic to make sense of Foer's callous disregard of the First Law of Holes. 

Update: Fabricating Franklin's Fresh Fibs

I know, I just posted on this controversy. But that was before I saw this Howard Kurtz article in the Washington Post. 

Foer spoke to Kurtz; he's only talking to sympathetic newsmen who won't press him with hard questions. And he told Kurtz: 

"He obviously was under considerable duress during that conversation, with his commanding officer in the room with him."

That is, straight outright, a lie. Beauchamp's (the diarist's) commanding officer was not present when Beauchamp spoke to Foer, Scoblic, and TNR's lawyer. The transcript lists who was present and exposes Foer's lie. (I provide a screencap overleaf). Beauchamp's squad leader, a low-ranking NCO (staff sergeant) who can't punish Beauchamp in any meaningful way, was present, as was a mighty specialist (a rank lower than corporal) from the PAO (who is not in Beauchamp's chain of command at all). Beauchamp's CO was not there. No commissioned officer at all was there. Foer made that bit up.

Game over For Fabricating Franklin Foer

When The New Republic published a series of stories by its "Baghdad Diarist," a pseudonymous Army private, bloggers, particularly milbloggers, took the stories apart. When key facts turned out to be fabrications, TNR editor Franklin Foer promised a full investigation. 

Now, a leak of documents to Drudge -- authenticated by the military and TNR -- has revealed that Foer's investigation has been undertaken with all the vigor of OJ's quest for the real killer, and for the same reasons: Foer and other TNR insiders knew beyond doubt almost two months ago that there was no substance to their diarist, and they've undertaken a conspiracy of silence ever since. 

If he were any kind of a man, Franklin Foer (and his co-conspirators, Peter Scoblic and Jason Zengerle) would resign and slink off under whatever rock now covers former TNR star Stephen Glass.

But if he were any kind of a man, Foer would not have used the diarist's wife against him. 

The Reporter Did It?

I don't know anything about this case, but I think I know why this guy was acquitted. He was accused of knocking over a lesbian protester, and had not only the protester but two eyewitnesses testify that he did exactly that. Contra that, he himself was the only primary one to testify. [UPDATE: There was other defense testimony, I've learned since writing this. More at the end.] 

So it wasn't he said, she said.... more like he said, they said. But the jury believed him, and not the witnesses. 

I think I can explain. You see, one of the witnesses was a reporter for the once-great, but now empty and decrepit, local daily, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The people in Worcester are simple, decent working- and middle-class folk (I was born there and grew up nearby; I returned there and taught school briefly after serving on active duty).

They know that if the Telegram & Gazette reporter said it these days, it probably never happened. The more so when it's in the context of the great gay buggernaut (well, what would you call a gay juggernaut?). The Buggernaut in all its manifestations has been one of the T&G's hobby horses, and nobody who reads the newspaper has any illusions that their reporters can be honest about it.

The Dan Strikes Again

There are legends in the world of broadcast journalism, great communicators who use rare insight to communicate complex issues to the public. 

Then there's Dan Rather. The Dan struck again, with one of his trademark "fake but accurate" stories (and his trademark gloom-and-doom spin). This time, he charged that the Boeing 787 was unsafe because it was... drumroll please... made of composites. 

His source? A Boeing engineer, whom The Dan put forward as a whistleblower. As usual with The Dan, some fact-checking is required. Turns out the guy was sacked because he can't keep his cool. He wanted to hang his boss from a meat hook, and said so. Kind of a hard guy for a modern corporation to bear with.  

The rest of the story is equally bogus. In fact, as I explain overleaf, the "details" he gives about the hazards of composites are even more bogus than The Dan's mere misrepresentation of the reason for the guy's sacking. Fortunately, The Dan's exposé took place out of sight of the news-seeking public, on the vanity network HDNet. 

Perhaps because of HDNet's irrelevance, Dan's bogus report didn't get a lot of press, what with him filing a $70 million suit against his former CBS pals, and praising fellow busted fabricator Peter Arnett. 

Update 9/23: Boeing's arch-competitor Airbus defends Boeing (note: .pdf file). "I really think this is a total red herring,” the Airbus spokesman said. “The difference of composites vs. aluminum is well known and taken into account. The [Boeing] drop test completely validated the design codes. " IOW, Dan's been pwn3d. Again. h/t my old peeps at Aero-News

"Only the Media Got the Story Right."

I'm generally pretty harsh on the media around here. They usually deserve it. But the quote above shows that the media can, and does, do good; it was spoken by Linda Paey, the wife of convict Richard Paey, to Miami Herald reporters Marc Caputo and Phil Long (the photo is by Long and a larger version and more detail are available at the Herald). 

Richard Paey was just freed -- pardoned -- by Florida Governor Charlie Crist. He had been convicted of drug trafficking for using fake prescriptions to get a small mountain of painkillers -- which he then ingested to fight chronic pain. 

In prison, doctors found they had to hook him to a morphine drip for his pain to be manageable. Why prosecutors went all out to nail Paey and got him sentenced to decades in prison is not clear; real drug dealers get gentler treatment all the time. 

While Paey's prison ordeal is over, the larger ordeal, the razor wire cage of pain in which he's confined, continues. But, ''I feel pretty good. I feel pretty good,'' he told the reporters. His lawyers had only asked that Crist commute his sentence; the pardon was a welcome surprise. 

"Flying is safe. Racing is not safe."

This is a truly excellent on-scene report by Don Cox of the Reno Gazette-Journal. The Reno air races are great fun for all, but no one denies they're hazardous for the participants. Cox interviews race pilot Ron Buccarelli, who flies the modified P-51 Precious Metal in the Unlimited class, and Buccarelli is frank and forthright. 

He has decided to quit racing. His reason: his family. "It's selfish for me to come race," he says. 

Certainly this year's bad fortune is a factor. Three pilots died in three separate accidents in three different race classes.

Unlimited racer Bob Odegaard also unlimbered his thoughts to Cox. Cox apparently didn't know that Odegaard's son Casey was involved in a runway collision at Oshkosh, flying Bob's P-51 (Casey was struck from behind by the P-51A of Gerry Beck. Casey escaped without serious injury and the Odegaard P-51 was repairable, but Beck perished and his plane was destroyed by impact and fire). 

Not many reporters can get Unlimited pilots to open up about their risks, and hardly any can write such a story without a lot of sensationalism. Cox deserves credit for what he has done. Read the whole thing!

ABC Expert, Source of Iran-Attack Rumours: A Fraud

Many people get all their news from television. But if television ever covers a story you know personally, you'll probably be shocked at how inaccurate it is. The reason is simple: TV "journalists" are entertainers first, last and always, and just don't value truth in reporting. 

The latest poster child is ABC News's Brian Ross, whose expert in terrorism and national security, Alexis Debat, turns out to be not so much. Debat's claimed PhD from the Sorbonne doesn't quite exist, but what exposed him was an exclusive interview he did with Barack Obama -- the only problem is, Obama never spoke to Debat. 

The guy might not be, er, truthful, but he sure knows the boffo box-office value of a good fabrication. As the NRO Media Blog notes, he was the sole source for an explosive (and false) report that the US was deep in the throes of planning a massive strike on Iran. 

Debat does not appear to have any military experience, but that's close to the norm for academic and media military and terrorism experts. 

Rick Sanchez: CNN Jitbag

Rick Sanchez of CNN is a perfect exemplar of CNN's values and news judgment: that is to say, he's a lying jitbag. Sanchez wanted to ambush an airshow pilot about the death of a colleague in a crash, so he had his producers call down the whole ICAS list, practically, with a silver-tongued lie about what the show would be about. 

"They were told that the interview would focus on what those pilots do to train and prepare for their aerobatic performances." John Cudahy of ICAS writes. "The producers making the phone calls asked good, specific questions that would have supported this line of questioning during the interview. Nonetheless, most of the pilots sensed that things were not as they seemed and declined the invitation to participate."

Unfortunately, Michael Wiskus's BS meter wasn't finely tuned enough and he took a representative of CNN at his word -- always a mistake. When Wiskus went on camera, Sanchez showed his real agenda: showing one clip after another of airshow crashes, in order to try to get a rise out of Wiskus. To make sure he had maximum impact, Sanchez set it up so that Wiskus couldn't even see the footage Sanchez was sending out over the air. 

Despite that, Wiskus held his own with Sanchez, and faced the CNN lightweight's agenda head-on, managing to mention -- to Sanchez's evident dismay -- that it has been decades since a spectator or bystander has been lost at a North American Airshow. Transcript here. 

Sanchez is not unusual for CNN. Not only was it (and he) complicit in the whole saga of Hurricane Katrina reporting misconduct, but the network has been caught with fabricated reports over and over again (former correspondent Peter Arnett built a career on them). In addition, CNN big Eason Jordan admitted that CNN made a deal with Saddam Hussein, under which they broadcast his propaganda and spiked stories that reflected negatively on his regime, in return for favorable treatment for their office in Baghdad. 

You wonder what other deals they're making that they haven't admitted. Jordan's admission was forced:  in light of the invasion of Iraq, the CNN executive feared that the net's complicity in Saddam's crimes would be exposed by Saddam's captured archives. PR 101: if the news is going to be bad, get out in front with your own spin.

Sanchez seems to have a jones for airshow crashes, there are literally dozens of hits for his name and "airchow crash" on CNN's transcript site. You'd think all this exposure, including to real professionals like Wiskus, would educate him some, but he shows no signs of that happening. Here is an April transcript with a similar stew of exaggeration, speculation, and outright lies. But it goes beyond his dishonest reporting: Sanchez also has a long personal history that inducates he's a truly execrable character. 

A Headline You Won't See: 9/11 Twoofers Against Rudy

The major media outlets are all trumpeting a press release that says four 9/11 families groups have united to oppose Rudy Guiliani speaking at the commemoration ceremony ahead. All the media treat it as if this press release means that the survivors of this brutal attack are rising up against Rudy in revulsion. Here's a few examples. 

ABC (al-Reuters): "Families of September 11 victims and emergency responders raised alarms"... 

New York Times bylined story by Michael Cooper: "Some relatives of people who died on Sept. 11 said they feared the presence of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani might inject politics into the event at ground zero." The Times followed up with an alarmed editorial. 

Washington Post, bylined al-Reuters story by Daniel Trotta: "Families of September 11 victims and emergency responders raised alarms on Wednesday that former New York mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani might politicize the sixth anniversary memorial of the attacks."

Did you notice, every one of these stories has a very similar lede? Why? Because of one of the dirty secrets of the media: lots of reporters don't report any more. The reason the stories are so similar, is that they all took their verbiage direct from the press release uncritically, and only added whatever spin their particular version of the MSM slant required. 

None of them did any serious original reporting. None of them even looked at who the four groups were. Is no one curious any more?

Well I am, and so I looked into the groups. And sure enough, this story doesn't mean what it's being spun to mean by these dishonest reporters and the rest of their wolfpack. It took me fifteen minutes to find out who was behind this "story," and you can follow along with me overleaf, and duplicate my results if you care to. 

Everything You Read About Katrina Was Bull

Gang rapes in the Superdome. Stacks of bodies. Looters firing up rescue copters. No effort made to evacuate people. A complete breakdown. 

That was the story, and it has the elements that today's editors strive for: impact. Punch. Vividness. Blood. Depravity. It was adaptable (and quickly adapted) to a cohesive political narrative. 

It didn't have what today's editors don't care about: accuracy. 

Well, by May of 2006. Retired Newsday reporter and tech-columnist Lou Dolinar had completed a careful study of what really happened there -- a remarkable tale of a rescue story untold. He initially hit some of the same themes here -- as early as October, 2005. As in so many things, the initial headlines were completely false. No gang rapes. No murders. No reefer truck full of bodies. No abandonment. Go to the link and read what really went down in the Crescent City.

You're waiting for the media to correct their story? As prominently as the original headlines? Better lay in a lifetime supply of MREs and bottled water, because they're not going to change their story -- the link includes a later exclamation by the New York Times's Adam Nagourney, that the emergency response was "incompetent and heartless." Nagourney is still wedded to the narrative, even as the Times and other papers have issued a few, grudging, carefully hidden corrections. 

We know, perhaps, why they don't care to get it right now. The narrative always trumps the truth for the modern journalist like Nagourney. But why didn't the press get it right at the time?

NY Times: Veterans are Dangerous and Bear Considerable Watching

The New York Times in this editorial furthers the ticking-time-bomb meme that they have done so much to create. They argue that veterans are such damaged goods that we must be registered and tracked by government agents. 

You know, like they don't want al-Qaeda operators to be. 

But it's for our own good. Otherwise, we might kill ourselves (or somebody else, they hint darkly).

Of course, this is the same New York Times that assured us that the Khmer Rouge were idealistic agrarian reformers, and that Cambodians would be much better off under Pol Pot. How'd that work out? The same Times that worked hand-in-glove with Castro to conceal that he was a Communist. And that still proudly displays a Pulitzer they took for running Stalin's propaganda under their own reporter's byline. 

Why does the Times hate veterans so? I explain overleaf... with an example from this editorial to illuminate things.   (And why do they love dictators and strongmen? I have an answer for that too, but not this time).

 Woz on the Media

 "The Media doesn't respond to education." Steve Wozniak, founder, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.)

(source)

More of Woz on the media overleaf, with some attempts to generalize from this one instance. 

 The Rogues' Gallery II... and III

Randall Hoven has published an update  to his original story at the American Thinker in which he adds 21 more plagiarists, fabricators and frauds to his original catalog. Since he didn't add most of the ones I sent him -- he says he's got too many to deal with now, and we're on our own from here on out -- I'll include them, over the jump. I'll italicise the ones that are in Hoven's list. I'll probably miss a few, as the list is getting loooooong. 

He's found a number of "dang, forgot about that one" cases, like several ABC News stories that were actually staged stunts, and The New Republic's fabricator Ruth Shalit (Shalit, Glass, and now Foer. High standards over there... "high" as in "Cheech and Chong" maybe). 

He also suggests you look at Famous Plagiarists.com. To which I'd add Dan Kennedy's media blog. Dan is a Boston-based media critic, a fine example of a principled liberal, and a decent and understanding human being... but he can't help writing about fraud scandals because, I guess, plagiarism and fraud are so central to media today. Sorry.

While I'm adding, let's not forget The Museum of Hoaxes, Regret the Error, and Romenesko, all of which regularly feature the routine and banal misconduct of the press.

It's also instructive, if you look into these things, to see how individuals get busted and then move on... and up. Mike Barnicle, serial fabricator, is still working in papers and TV. Janet Cook, legendary fabricator, cashed in on TV. Peter Arnett has never lacked a platform despite a thirty-year record of fabrication that's gotten him walking papers several times. (Maybe I should change the order of those so that they're A, B, C like the Canadian quads. I'm sure I can find a "D"). 

And the same TV producer and executive, Richard "Rick" Kaplan, was involved in different hands-on capacities in the CNN Tailwind fraud and the ABC Food Lion fraud. (I have seen somewhere things alleging that he was also involved in the Dateline NBC exploding trucks incident, but he wasn't among the producers fired or executives resigning at that time, so that claim may be bogus). Kaplan, despite being fingered by a jury for fraud in the ABC case, and exposed as the author of blood libel in the Tailwind case, has since only moved up, serving as head of MSNBC and currently producer of the "fake but accurate" CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

Yeah, the high standards of the national media. Hoot.

And While We're on the Subject of Fraud...

Really, I hate to do all this fraudblogging. I'd rather be talking about airplanes! But... well, phonies get my goat. And here's another one. 

Provincetown, Mass.'s director of tourism self-published a novel, a sort of gay-coming-of-age story (if you know Provincetown, the Natural Bachelors ' Riviera, it makes perfect sense). Not, as Seinfeld might say, that there's anything wrong with that. 

Except he let his wishful thinking drive his marketing when he announced to the world and published that he'd been on the Oprah TV show to talk about his book, and it had been selected for her book club. He even posted a transcript of his interview with the daytime-TV host. 

Except, of course, you know where I'm going with this, right? Yep, Oprah Winfrey never heard of this guy or his book, and the closest he ever got to her show was on his side of the TV screen. He made it all up. (No word on whether scouts from The New Republic and the Boston Globe are in a bidding war for him, yet).

Well, when he was busted, he manned up and confessed, right...? Er... no. Not exactly. He made a mealy-mouthed and self-serving statement. "I acknowledge an error in judgment," he stammered out. Error in Judgment? Look, if you button your shirt wrong and have to undo and rebutton it, that's an error in judgment. If you put too much milk in your breakfast cereal. If you have to back up and try parallel parking again, that's an error in judgment. Trying to con the world with a phony credit (and fabricating the supporting evidence to half-assed back it up) is something else entirely. It's of a piece with the lost souls who boast fake military medals or type a bogus Harvard sheepskin onto their resumes. It's pathetic. It's a failure of character. 

A bogus Oprah interview. As the kids say today, that's so gay. 

(Original story from the Examiner after the jump, in case the link goes stale). 

Anonymity Update: The Rogues' Gallery

I thought I had a pretty comprehensive memory of recent journalism scandals -- after all, it's my former (and possibly future) profession. But writing in the American Thinker, Randall Hoven has a veritable Rogues' Gallery of no fewer than sixty-two media miscreants: liars, fabricators, photoshoppers, reviewers who reviewed events they skipped, and all kinds of bad actors. 

These are not exceptions. This is mainstream journalism today. 

He doesn't even list two-thirds of The New Republic's crew: he has "Scott Thomas" Beauchamp, but misses Scott's squeeze Elspeth Reeve (who liked to use Scott as a source without mentioning the squeeze thing), and enabler, I mean editor, Fraudulent Franklin Foer who, caught in a deep pit of lies, can't stop digging. Or lying. 

Anonymity, Enemy of Truth and Justice 

Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative's Establishment conservative: inspired by the enduring values and animated by the humanistic spirit of Classical antiquity, he daily applies his understanding of the past to the questions of the present. The question he's tackling right now, in National Review Online, is the damage that the anonymous-source fad has done to US institutions, including to the press that seems addicted to this journalistic junk food. 

Radley Balko is as far as you might imagine from VDH, beginning with a name that might have belonged to a factory worker in a Sinclair Lewis novel, and continuing through his politics (hard-core libertarian; his blog is called The Agitator). But he is in print today in Reason online, with an eerily parallel article to Hanson's, addressing a different type of anonymity: that given by cops to informants. 

Both of these estimable writers show examples to make the case that abuse of anonymity has corrupted the institution they're writing about -- but it's interesting that each writes about a single, stovepiped situation, and they leave it to me (it seems) to expand on their narrow arguments and tie the whole thing together. 

So I will, with a view to human nature, and I'll even throw in a few more examples....