If you haven't heard by now, the internet "fact checker" PolitiFact chose the statement "Republicans voted to end Medicare" as their "Lie of the Year." The statement as far as I can tell is 100% true and, at absolute worst, is simply a statement that's true but only with the minor qualification "using a definition of the word 'ends' that most people would find perfectly reasonable."
The Republican plan would completely privatize Medicare for anyone under the age of 55. PolitiFact's argument that the claim was a "lie" was based on (1) the fact that people over 55 would remain in the same system they are today on the Republican plan and (2) Republicans would still use the term "Medicare" to refer to their new privatized system. Note first of all that their two explanations are in tension with each other; if they think it's important to note that the system is the "same" for people over 55, then they must think sameness is important. But if sameness is important, then Republicans completely changing the system (which makes it no longer the same) should undermine their claim that nothing was ended. So PolitiFact's explanations aren't even consistent with each other.
If two statements are inconsistent, that means at least one of them is wrong, but it doesn't guarantee that one of them is correct, and in this case PolitiFact is wrong on both counts. In regards to (1), the fact that Medicare continues to exist for people over 55 does not mean that Republicans haven't for all practical purposes ended it, at least on the assumption that we won't discover the Fountain of Youth in the next century. And changing the system to a private one where we are at the mercy of insurance companies alters it into a completely different concept than Medicare. Here's where some subjectivity comes in; if you think that all 'Medicare' means is "the government provides some money once you get old" then you might think the new idea still counts as Medicare; but people with a more sophisticated understanding of the system understand that the privatized version is simply not the same thing.
But more important than the fact that Politifact is wrong is that they inserted themselves into the 2012 elections and they were clearly agenda driven. There were other finalists for Lie of the Year that were clear, outright lies: John Kyl's claim that abortion services is 90% of what Planned Parenthood does, or the right-wing claim that the stimulus created no new jobs, for example. But PolitiFact apparently chose the above claim because they wanted to present the idiotic, childlike notion of "balance" that currently impairs modern journalism. Instead of searching for objective facts, many modern journalist simply search for opposing statements from two "sides." Likewise, instead of choosing an actual lie, PolitiFact chose a statement made by Democrats in order to "balance" the fact that outright lies from Republicans had been chosen in previous years.
So this brings me back to the title of this post. We used to have good reason to cite PoltiFact in political debates. In fact, I greatly enjoyed Fired Up Missouri repeatedly mocking Ed Martin over his proclivity for using the death panels "Lie of the Year." But of course, from an ideal information-gathering perspective, there was never anything especially important about PolitiFact. If both a partisan blog and PolitiFact debunked a certain claim, say by linking to the actual language of a bill, both have provided the same information. Yet the point of linking to PolitiFact was that you could trust that their analysis was not driven by an agenda. In other words, in situations where you didn't have time to do a full analysis yourself, you might think you could put trust in a group that objectively looked at the information.
However, this assumption no longer holds any water. PolitiFact has shown clearly that they are willing to distort their analysis based on a twisted political agenda; namely, the agenda of achieving false balance by appeasing the Right side of the political spectrum. There's no longer any justification for thinking that you can trust their analysis without doing just as much research as you would when getting info from any other source with a partisan bias. In fact, there's a good argument to be made for linking to an otherwise identical analysis that comes from a source that doesn't falsely pretend to be agenda-free. PolitiFact could have been a useful contribution to political discourse in this country; unfortunately, by undermining their credibility, they have now lost that opportunity.
For some excellent analyses of the PolitiFact debacle, please see the work of Paul Krugman, Dave Weigel, Tommy Christopher, and Jamison Foser.
Showing posts with label tommy christopher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tommy christopher. Show all posts
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Poseur Alert! Dana Loesch *Explicitly* Supported Romney's Mandate in 2008
It's a funny thing. If you point out that right-wing pundits lie, their fans don't care. If you point out that they use extremist rhetoric, their fans don't care. But if you point out that they're unhip....have mercy!
Tommy Christopher wrote a snarky follow-up to my earlier post where he compared Dana Loesch's voting for Romney in a February 5, 2008 primary to a hipster having a Justin Bieber CD drop out of his pocket. Loesch, of course, freaked out and posted a response claiming she had "eaten Christopher's lunch" because she only supported Romney out of her disdain for McCain. But Christopher updated his post to note that, in Missouri's '08 primary, McCain was not Romney's only opponent. In fact, McCain just barely beat out Mike Huckabee.
Of course, the point of all this from my perspective is to evaluate whether Loesch really lives up to her carefully constructed, money-making image as a rebellious tea party outsider. If she claims that the constitution is the most important thing to consider and that RomenyCare is unconstitutional, then it would be pretty bad if she actually ended up supporting Romney in 2008 despite recently claiming that she was "against him last election."
But all of that is rather indirect. Because, as it turns out, Dana Loesch actually said on her blog that she supported RomneyCare. In her January 30 live blog of the Republican debate in California, here's what Loesch had to say:
So is it a lie? Here's what Dana Loesch said in her most recent response:
Tommy Christopher wrote a snarky follow-up to my earlier post where he compared Dana Loesch's voting for Romney in a February 5, 2008 primary to a hipster having a Justin Bieber CD drop out of his pocket. Loesch, of course, freaked out and posted a response claiming she had "eaten Christopher's lunch" because she only supported Romney out of her disdain for McCain. But Christopher updated his post to note that, in Missouri's '08 primary, McCain was not Romney's only opponent. In fact, McCain just barely beat out Mike Huckabee.
Of course, the point of all this from my perspective is to evaluate whether Loesch really lives up to her carefully constructed, money-making image as a rebellious tea party outsider. If she claims that the constitution is the most important thing to consider and that RomenyCare is unconstitutional, then it would be pretty bad if she actually ended up supporting Romney in 2008 despite recently claiming that she was "against him last election."
But all of that is rather indirect. Because, as it turns out, Dana Loesch actually said on her blog that she supported RomneyCare. In her January 30 live blog of the Republican debate in California, here's what Loesch had to say:
7:19 Is it just me or are they going after Romney tonight? I like Romney’s “pay your own way” approach to healthcare. Now the debate is starting to sound like an exercise in conservatism. First time all night.Seems bad enough already, but check out the full Romney quote Loesch was referring to:
With regards to my health care plan, let me describe what is the ultimate conservative approach. In this country, you have today about 47 million people that don’t have health insurance. We went out and tried to find out why they don’t. We found out that about half of them could afford to buy insurance if it were reasonably priced. They could afford to buy it, but they weren’t buying it. it? If we get sick, we can go to the hospital and get care for free.“ And we said: what? If somebody could afford insurance, they should either buy the insurance or pay their own way. They don’t have to buy insurance if they don’t want to, but pay their own way. But they shouldn’t be allowed to just show up at the hospital and say, somebody else should pay for me. So we said: No more free riders. It was like bringing “workfare” to welfare. We said: If you can afford insurance, then either have the insurance or get a health savings account. Pay your own way, but no more free ride. That was what the mandate did.So there you go. Radical, going-all-in-for-a-strict-interpretation-of-the-constitution tea party rebel Dana Loesch "liked" Romney's healthcare plan and specifically the mandate, which she says is unconstitutional. And she's now claiming that she never supported it.
So is it a lie? Here's what Dana Loesch said in her most recent response:
I weighed RomneyCare against McCain-Feingold. And that's ultimately what made my decision. I disliked both of them to the point where I almost just wanted to choke. And I ultimately decided that McCain-Feingold in that particular instance was worse.Is it wrong to change your mind about an issue or a candidate later on? Of course not. But is it wrong to rewrite your own history to try to pretend that you never supported the thing you now point to as the epitome of all-evil? You betcha!
I think socialism at any level is still socialism. I don't buy the federalism excuse for RomneyCare. I think it was bad for business, it was bad policy. Say what you will. I spoke to Will Cain earlier this morning (who's on CNN and I respect his opinion very much) and we politely disagreed. I think that it's still socialism. You're still penalizing people for not participating in the system. You're still hinging their living in a state with their purchasing a product from the government and you're penalizing them if they don't. That's a nationalized, in the case of Massachusetts, a state-run freedom-infringing health care plan.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Is StarChild111 Actually "Jennifer George"? -Updated X 2
Jennifer Preston at the New York Times wrote a fascinating story on Friday documenting that two high school girls who seemed to be at the heart of one of #weinergate's major sub-plots did not actually exist. The IDs they provided were not real, as Preston confirmed by contacting the state and the school they claimed to attend. At this point it's not at all clear what was going on: they might have been trying to set up Weiner, they might have been trying to set up Breitbart and Dana Loesch (because, as Tommy Christopher knew but did not report, one of them claimed that Loesch and Breitbart were trying to get them to tell a story about their interactions with Weiner), or they might be real but simply disguising their actual identities.
Anyway, yesterday, someone tweeted an interesting
link that showed that one of the girls, @starchild111, who throughout #weinergate was thought to be named "Nikki", originally had the name "Jenay."
This prompted me to reexamine some of the search results for @starchild, and it appears that the account @starchild111 is actually associated with the name "Jennifer George" (click the photo for a larger view):
It's not entirely clear what to make of this information...but it certainly seems like something worth investigating.
Anyway, yesterday, someone tweeted an interesting
link that showed that one of the girls, @starchild111, who throughout #weinergate was thought to be named "Nikki", originally had the name "Jenay."
This prompted me to reexamine some of the search results for @starchild, and it appears that the account @starchild111 is actually associated with the name "Jennifer George" (click the photo for a larger view):
It's not entirely clear what to make of this information...but it certainly seems like something worth investigating.
Update: I've removed a little bit of information that singles out particular individuals (though I should note that I never provided any information that would allow anyone to be directly contacted) because there are reports of people getting angry calls. Obviously this kind of behavior, like the constant pestering from right-wing bloggers of people associated with the story, is not called for.None of the people who regularly read this blog would engage in such idiotic behavior, but I sure hope whoever is doing it stops. Keep in mind that the name might be fake, and that even if it's real there are lots of people named Jennifer George in the world, so approaching any particular individual in an accusatory manner is obnoxious and unacceptable behavior.
Update #2: Lee Stranahan says he was called by a woman claiming to be Jennifer George, who told him that she owned the account in 2009 but then deleted it, and that someone later started a new account with the same name.
Friday, June 3, 2011
My Response to Tommy Christopher's Response on #Weinergate
Tommy Christopher has kindly emailed a response to my earlier criticisms of his coverage of Daily Kos and Breitbart. Some of what he said was already addressed in my update, but he wouldn't have had any reason to have know that. My understanding of his defense is that (1) he was already highly critical of Breitbart earlier, (2) that he specifically restricted his criticisms to focus on the "publications" of Breitbart, rather than other communications, and (3) he stands by his original criticisms of Markos for several reasons.
So I'll start first with his response about restricting his argument to "publications," or as Christopher puts it: "the publication of factual evidence." Christopher notes this restriction and then points out a number of tweets where he's been critical of Breitbart's behavior on Twitter in recent days, writing things like:
So, by his own standards, it seems weird to argue that it's OK to differentiate Breitbart's behavior on Twitter from that on his web site. And the fact that he criticized Breitbart's tweets just bolsters my point that the target article presented an inaccurate piture of Breitbart's role in his mess. What we want to know is whether Breitbart behaved honestly and ethically, not just whether he was somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else. So it's true that Tommy Christopher circumscribed his arguments to focus only on the Big websites, but by doing so it ceases to be a helpful evaluation of Breitbart's role in the controversy.
The reality, however, is that Breitbart did not even meet the lowered bar of "somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else." As I pointed out, he allowed Jim Hoft to post links to the pictures and personal information of high school girls during his smear campaign.
Christopher's response to this criticism of Breitbart was twofold. One, he pointed out that he was critical of Hoft on Twitter. That's admirable, but not really relevant to my point that Breitbart allowed the filth on his site. Second, Christopher wrote the following:
And this was Breitbart's response:
So forgive me if I don't take Breitbart deleting the link four days later as strong evidence of the high quality of his moral character.
Finally, in my post I defended Markos's decision to not edit a recommended diary on his site:
So I'll start first with his response about restricting his argument to "publications," or as Christopher puts it: "the publication of factual evidence." Christopher notes this restriction and then points out a number of tweets where he's been critical of Breitbart's behavior on Twitter in recent days, writing things like:
Drawing conclusions from an ambiguous fact pattern is yellow. Publicly claiming "we have more"=yellow. @AndrewBreitbartFirst thing to note: it's ironic that Christopher himself was critical, just two days ago, of the idea that it's acceptable to be dishonest on Twitter yet claim that one's "publishing" has been honest:
So, by his own standards, it seems weird to argue that it's OK to differentiate Breitbart's behavior on Twitter from that on his web site. And the fact that he criticized Breitbart's tweets just bolsters my point that the target article presented an inaccurate piture of Breitbart's role in his mess. What we want to know is whether Breitbart behaved honestly and ethically, not just whether he was somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else. So it's true that Tommy Christopher circumscribed his arguments to focus only on the Big websites, but by doing so it ceases to be a helpful evaluation of Breitbart's role in the controversy.
The reality, however, is that Breitbart did not even meet the lowered bar of "somewhat-honest-and-ethical-on-his-websites-but-not-necessarily-anywhere-else." As I pointed out, he allowed Jim Hoft to post links to the pictures and personal information of high school girls during his smear campaign.
Christopher's response to this criticism of Breitbart was twofold. One, he pointed out that he was critical of Hoft on Twitter. That's admirable, but not really relevant to my point that Breitbart allowed the filth on his site. Second, Christopher wrote the following:
If I am guilty of something, it is not noticing this link in Hoft's BG article, but once I did, I emailed Breitbart to alert him to it. If he sends me back an email saying he's leaving it up because she was asking for it, and I do nothing, then you will have a point. And what are you doing linking to it?He later added, via email:
Since I alerted Andrew Breitbart to the presence of that link in Hoft's story, it has been deleted.Well, that sounds just dandy that Breitbart decided to delete the link only a mere four days later, after everyone has already looked at it, and while he's trying to smear Markos as someone who publishes information about high schoolers. Just dandy, except for the fact that Media Matters' Eric Boehlert was criticizing Breitbart over Hoft's post four days ago, and the link has remained up until today. Here's Boehlert's criticism, which was retweeted by Breitbart:
And this was Breitbart's response:
So forgive me if I don't take Breitbart deleting the link four days later as strong evidence of the high quality of his moral character.
Finally, in my post I defended Markos's decision to not edit a recommended diary on his site:
I had found the photo myself several days ago, and chose to redact the personal information on the yfrog image I posted because one of the people was in high school. I agree with Tommy to the extent that I personally did not want to share that information. However, that is a different context entirely from what Markos is being accused of. Christopher is attacking Markos because Markos owns a site that allows community diaries and has a policy that is biased very heavily against censorship of the community part of the site. The diary in question was not written by one of the paid front page authors: it was written by one of the community members. Thus, while I personally did not want to share the full information, I don't think it's "reprehensible" for Markos to choose not to censor the content choices of diarists except under extreme circumstances (which is what he said was his policy in an email to Christopher).And Christopher responded as follows:
3 problems with this: 1. redacting the names would have had no effect on the content's news value. 2. This was an extreme circumstance. Two minor children and their parents feared for their safety. 3. There is no "policy" against it, made clear by his offer to consider a "counter-argument" that he deemed worthy. He never argued the girls weren't being endangered, he just didn't care.My thoughts. I agree that redacting the names wouldn't have decreased the "news value:" however, I think that a site owner making a decision to edit content of a user is a serious decision that some would have objected to. What actually happened, the author of the diary deciding to change the content, is preferable. As I said before, I personally would not divulge the girls' information, even though I previously saw the image, since I saw what happened to the women subjected to harassment after neanderthals like Hoft posted their personal information and Breitbart's site linked to it. My only point was that there is a difference between deciding what you personally write about and what is allowed to appear in a community that values free expression and investigation. Thus, though I don't agree with Markos's decision, I can see why he would (perhaps mistakenly) lean against the idea of censoring his community. And again, this is different from Breitbart's site hand-picking an article from Hoft that links to pictures and personal information of high school students. In the later case, the people who run the web site are directly responsible.
Tommy Christopher's Response to My Criticism of His Coverage of Weinergate
(Editor's note: Tommy Christopher sent me an email with a response to my criticisms of his coverage of Breitbart and Markos Moulitsas. He reproduced my blog post and includes his responses in italics. I've added a couple comments that hopefully clarify the presentation of information. My response to Christopher's response can be found here.)
Mediaite Uses Double Standard to Attack Kos, Defend Breitbart
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite wrote a long post that has some good points in it (including a statement by parents slamming an irresponsible media's coverage of Weinergate), but bizarrely uses a double standard to claim that Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos is reprehensible and Breitbart an innocent victim.
This is not true. My piece clearly, carefully presents a narrow defense of Breitbart against a specific charge: " Andrew Breitbart has been repeatedly accused of engineering a hoax against Rep. Anthony Weiner
""when it comes to the publication of factual evidence" "as far as presentation of documentary evidence"
I clearly made a distinction between this specific charge, and other criticisms of Breitbart's conduct:
(Ed- the following are tweets sent from Tommy Christopher to Breitbart which, I take it, are being presented as evidence that he was recently critical of Breitbart): "There are reasonable criticisms to be made of Andrew Breitbart regarding the Weinergate story (I have made many), and I haven’t seen every statement he’s made on Twitter or TV, so I cannot vouch for their fairness"
.@AndrewBreitbart says @patriotusa76 was "monitoring" @RepWeiner.And Westboro Baptist "monitors" military funerals.http://bit.ly/lGUt6k #p2Your story isn't "tight," it's as yellow as a canary driving a taxi. You present no evidence to suggest it wasn't a hack...@AndrewBreitbartThen you imply that you have some. @AndrewBreitbartHis report of a hack IS evidence it was a hack. In the courts, they call it "testimony." @AndrewBreitbartJournalism isn't about what you believe, or even what you know, but what you can verify. @AndrewBreitbartJournalists don't pretend they have more evidence, or withhold it if they really do. Yellow to say "we have more." Put up. @AndrewBreitbart 28 MayNot the point.Drawing conclusions from an ambiguous fact pattern is yellow. Publicly claiming "we have more"=yellow. @AndrewBreitbart 28 May
It goes on like that for hours, but you get the idea.
Christopher claims that Kos is "reprehensible" because a diarist on Kos's site posted a screen shot of an iphone from one of the suspicious characters in the story, which showed a conversation between that person and a minor who was looking to push a false story about Weiner communicating with one of her friends.
Actually, she was falsely claiming they both engaged in such communication.
I had found the photo myself several days ago, and chose to redact the personal information on the yfrog image I posted because one of the people was in high school. I agree with Tommy to the extent that I personally did not want to share that information. However, that is a different context entirely from what Markos is being accused of. Christopher is attacking Markos because Markos owns a site that allows community diaries and has a policy that is biased very heavily against censorship of the community part of the site. The diary in question was not written by one of the paid front page authors: it was written by one of the community members. Thus, while I personally did not want to share the full information, I don't think it's "reprehensible" for Markos to choose not to censor the content choices of diarists except under extreme circumstances (which is what he said was his policy in an email to Christopher).
3 problems with this: 1. redacting the names would have had no effect on the content's news value. 2. This was an extreme circumstance. Two minor children and their parents feared for their safety. 3. There is no "policy" against it, made clear by his offer to consider a "counter-argument" that he deemed worthy. He never argued the girls weren't being endangered, he just didn't care.
On the other hand, here's what Christopher had to say about Breitbart:
Through our contemporaneous conversations throughout this story, it has been clear that Andrew Breitbart followed leads that were submitted to him, rather than that he engineered any of this, and as far as presentation of documentary evidence, has acted responsibly throughout. He has also refrained from identifying the young women involved, unlike other websites on the left and the right, a fact that is to his credit.This has led to idiotic gloating from the right-wing blogsphere. For example;
And Hot Air:
The big takeaway, however, is that the reporting from Big Journalism was conducted responsibly, and that Breitbart and Dana Loesch did what reporters do — get data from sources and report on them, rather than manufacture a story, as they were accused of doing.
The problem, however, is that Breitbart's sites clearly engaged in far worse pushing of innocent young women's personal information than anything on Kos. Check out this post from Big Governmnet, where Jim Hoft links to "young attractive coeds," including girls in high school:
After Hoft posted the personal information of these young girls for his knuckle-dragging followers, several of them complained about being harassed online. And unlike the Kos diary, which came from the community, Hoft's diary was hand picked by Breitbart's editors to appear on the site. Your criticism of Hoft's post is valid, your claim of a double-standard is not. As you already know, I reacted the same way to Hoft's original post (at GatewayPundit) as I did to Kos: I denounced it in no uncertain terms, and lobbied to have the information removed:
After Hoft posted the personal information of these young girls for his knuckle-dragging followers, several of them complained about being harassed online. And unlike the Kos diary, which came from the community, Hoft's diary was hand picked by Breitbart's editors to appear on the site. Your criticism of Hoft's post is valid, your claim of a double-standard is not. As you already know, I reacted the same way to Hoft's original post (at GatewayPundit) as I did to Kos: I denounced it in no uncertain terms, and lobbied to have the information removed:
@Stranahan retweeted that list, already knowing underage girls were targeted for harassment? Disgusting. http://bit.ly/jrWUfC #p@Stranahan Yep, even Big Government redacted her name, yet you and other unethical "journalists" irresponsibly pushed it..@Stranahan That was a weak move, dude. That list paints bullseyes on innocent girls. Opens them up to this or more:http://bit.ly/jrWUfC@Stranahan Why? Do you want to publish their handles and pictures so goons can cyber-bully them? No thanks..@Stranahan If you ever publish a list like that with my kids on it, there's gonna be a problem.@Stranahan And if Jim Hoft published a list like that with your kids on it, we would have a problem.I could not be more disgusted with Jim Hoft, whom friends tell me is a nice guy IRL. Get him to take that list down.How about it? Any decent #tcot think Jim Hoft @gatewaypunditshould take down his jailbait gallery? Anybody? Bueller?
If I am guilty of something, it is not noticing this link in Hoft's BG article, but once I did, I emailed Breitbart to alert him to it. If he sends me back an email saying he's leaving it up because she was asking for it, and I do nothing, then you will have a point. And what are you doing linking to it?
(Ed- Christopher later emailed the following: Since I alerted Andrew Breitbart to the presence of that link in Hoft's story, it has been deleted.)
Furthermore, Breitbart went on CNN to claim that Weiner "had relationships" with "quite young girls" based on nothing more than this garbage and the lies from his sources.. In fact, contrary to what Christopher claimed, Breitbart specifically cited Wolfe for his despicable claims on CNN.
This is why I disclaimed my defense to exclude statements he made elsewhere. What he said on CNN was technically accurate, but unfair. I have made numerous criticisms of this kind of thing, but it is not suggestive of what he's been accused of. Explaining this specific instance would have forced me to divulge protected information (the basis of his claim deals, in part, with another underage girl, and was revealed to me in an off-the-record conversation, but does not rely on anything Patriot or Goatsred gave him. You can ask Breitbart about it if you want a more thorough explanation), and was not relevant to the story I was reporting, which was that Breitbart did not engineer this, and did refuse to run with documentation that turned out to be false.
Yet Christopher claims that Breitbart has acted "responsibly" throughout this mess. Again, what I actually said was much narrower. He acted responsibly with respect to documentary evidence that was presented to him, and took care to protect identities. Unbelievably sloppy "media criticism," if you ask me.
(Ed- My response to Tommy Christopher's response.)
Yet Christopher claims that Breitbart has acted "responsibly" throughout this mess. Again, what I actually said was much narrower. He acted responsibly with respect to documentary evidence that was presented to him, and took care to protect identities. Unbelievably sloppy "media criticism," if you ask me.
Mediaite Uses Double Standard to Attack Kos, Defend Breitbart- Updated
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite wrote a long post that has some good points in it (including a statement by parents slamming an irresponsible media's coverage of Weinergate), but bizarrely uses a double standard to claim that Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos is reprehensible and Breitbart an innocent victim.
Christopher claims that Kos is "reprehensible" because a diarist on Kos's site posted a screen shot of an iphone from one of the suspicious characters in the story, which showed a conversation between that person and a minor who was looking to push a false story about Weiner communicating with one of her friends. I had found the photo myself several days ago, and chose to redact the personal information on the yfrog image I posted because one of the people was in high school. I agree with Tommy to the extent that I personally did not want to share that information. However, that is a different context entirely from what Markos is being accused of. Christopher is attacking Markos because Markos owns a site that allows community diaries and has a policy that is biased very heavily against censorship of the community part of the site. The diary in question was not written by one of the paid front page authors: it was written by one of the community members. Thus, while I personally did not want to share the full information, I don't think it's "reprehensible" for Markos to choose not to censor the content choices of diarists except under extreme circumstances (which is what he said was his policy in an email to Christopher).
On the other hand, here's what Christopher had to say about Breitbart:
And Hot Air:
After Hoft posted the personal information of these young girls for his knuckle-dragging followers, several of them complained about being harassed online. And unlike the Kos diary, which came from the community, Hoft's diary was hand picked by Breitbart's editors to appear on the site.
Furthermore, Breitbart went on CNN to claim that Weiner "had relationships" with "quite young girls" based on nothing more than this garbage and the lies from his sources.. In fact, contrary to what Christopher claimed, Breitbart specifically cited Wolfe for his despicable claims on CNN..
Yet Christopher claims that Breitbart has acted "responsibly" throughout this mess. Unbelievably sloppy "media criticism," if you ask me.
Update: Tommy Christopher claims that I am guily of several "lies by omission." I am assuming that he's primarily talking about the fact that I did not refer to this quote from him early in the article:
So I admit, I should have included Christopher's quote in the original post. But what does it say about his post that he left out the fact that Breitbart was dishonest about this on Twitter, regularly practiced yellow journalism, and pushed Dan Wolfe's despicable conspiracy theories on TV?
Christopher claims that Kos is "reprehensible" because a diarist on Kos's site posted a screen shot of an iphone from one of the suspicious characters in the story, which showed a conversation between that person and a minor who was looking to push a false story about Weiner communicating with one of her friends. I had found the photo myself several days ago, and chose to redact the personal information on the yfrog image I posted because one of the people was in high school. I agree with Tommy to the extent that I personally did not want to share that information. However, that is a different context entirely from what Markos is being accused of. Christopher is attacking Markos because Markos owns a site that allows community diaries and has a policy that is biased very heavily against censorship of the community part of the site. The diary in question was not written by one of the paid front page authors: it was written by one of the community members. Thus, while I personally did not want to share the full information, I don't think it's "reprehensible" for Markos to choose not to censor the content choices of diarists except under extreme circumstances (which is what he said was his policy in an email to Christopher).
On the other hand, here's what Christopher had to say about Breitbart:
Through our contemporaneous conversations throughout this story, it has been clear that Andrew Breitbart followed leads that were submitted to him, rather than that he engineered any of this, and as far as presentation of documentary evidence, has acted responsibly throughout. He has also refrained from identifying the young women involved, unlike other websites on the left and the right, a fact that is to his credit.This has led to idiotic gloating from the right-wing blogsphere. For example;
And Hot Air:
The big takeaway, however, is that the reporting from Big Journalism was conducted responsibly, and that Breitbart and Dana Loesch did what reporters do — get data from sources and report on them, rather than manufacture a story, as they were accused of doing.The problem, however, is that Breitbart's sites clearly engaged in far worse pushing of innocent young women's personal information than anything on Kos. Check out this post from Big Governmnet, where Jim Hoft links to "young attractive coeds," including girls in high school:
After Hoft posted the personal information of these young girls for his knuckle-dragging followers, several of them complained about being harassed online. And unlike the Kos diary, which came from the community, Hoft's diary was hand picked by Breitbart's editors to appear on the site.
Furthermore, Breitbart went on CNN to claim that Weiner "had relationships" with "quite young girls" based on nothing more than this garbage and the lies from his sources.. In fact, contrary to what Christopher claimed, Breitbart specifically cited Wolfe for his despicable claims on CNN..
Yet Christopher claims that Breitbart has acted "responsibly" throughout this mess. Unbelievably sloppy "media criticism," if you ask me.
Update: Tommy Christopher claims that I am guily of several "lies by omission." I am assuming that he's primarily talking about the fact that I did not refer to this quote from him early in the article:
There are reasonable criticisms to be made of Andrew Breitbart regarding the Weinergate story (I have made many), and I haven’t seen every statement he’s made on Twitter or TV, so I cannot vouch for their fairness, but when it comes to the publication of factual evidence, Breitbart has acted responsibly throughout.So the thought is that all Christopher is discussing is what was "published" on Breitbart's websites. While I suppose it is technically true that Breitbart didn't outright lie or use Wolfe's allegations online, this nevertheless undermines the significance of Christopher's post. What is relevant is whether Breitbart is honest and ethical, not whether he was honest-and-ethical-in-one-medium-but-not-necessarily-others-in-this-one-particular-story. In fact, Christoper himself lecture Lee Stranahan yesterday about the idea that it's OK to say lies on Twitter if you don't publish them on blogs:
So I admit, I should have included Christopher's quote in the original post. But what does it say about his post that he left out the fact that Breitbart was dishonest about this on Twitter, regularly practiced yellow journalism, and pushed Dan Wolfe's despicable conspiracy theories on TV?
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