Sunday, May 27, 2012

Prize for Dishonest Reporting

You can't make this kind of stuff up. The folks at PJ Media are offering a prize for dishonest reporting, and the committee includes Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon.

Let's see, shall we nominate Glenn Reynolds for dishonestly attributing a right-wing columnist's views to the Kansas City Star? Or the time he misrepresented economic figures to blame it on Obama? There are just so many examples to pick from.

For Roger Simon, how about his recent interview of uber-fruitcake Jack Cashill about a meaningless error in a 20-year-old biography of Obama?

Or how about PJ Media's own Andrew Klavan for this dishonest commentary?

We could also nominate the Discovery Institute "News & Views" section, for having the most consistently dishonest reporting about evolution. There are so many DI lies to choose from, it's hard to know where to start. I'd nominate Denyse O'Leary, too, except the prize is for reporting, and it's hard to call what she does with that name. "Reprinting" would be a better word.

7 comments:

BlakeD said...

"A meaningless error in a 20-year-old biography of Obama"

You have to decide whether to believe the author of the mini-bio (a better term than "biography") when she says: "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. " or, alternatively, that someone close to Obama, if not Obama himself, supplied the agency with a bio. Note that this bio lasted, with changes (but not a change of birthplace) for 16 years. And their guidelines at their site says: "[Y]ou should describe in two or three sentences—no more—what the book will be about. This is followed by another brief paragraph on why it is being written and then another on why you are qualified to write it....Finally, there should be a more formal narrative Bio of the author."

Doesn't it make more sense to believe that Obama stretched the truth about his background to make it sound more exotic, thus to try to sell more books, than it does to believe that this bio was "a simple mistake and nothing more"?

Oh, and you use Trig-Truther Andrew Sullivan as a source? Really?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Doesn't it make more sense to believe that Obama stretched the truth about his background to make it sound more exotic, thus to try to sell more books, than it does to believe that this bio was "a simple mistake and nothing more"?

It depends. If you're a moronic partisan who will believe anything bad about Obama, no matter how preposterous or poorly sourced, then yes, it makes more sense.

If, however, you're a normal person with some connected brain cells, then you don't invent elaborate scenarios when simple ones would do.

When I entered Canada as a permanent resident, the officer typing up my form misspelled my name. I used that piece of paper for 15 years and never noticed the misspelling until one day it caused problems with the Canadian bureaucracy. Now, you could invent a story about how I deliberately misspelled my name to sound more exotic, or evade some criminal record, or something. But the simpler explanation would be correct: I just never noticed.

BlakeD said...

The exact opposite can be said, too.
"If you're a moronic partisan who won't believe anything bad about Obama, ..."

When you misspell "Hawaii" as "Kenya", write back, OK?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

The exact opposite can be said, too.

But not by anyone with connected brain cells.

The whole business about Obama and Kenya is a moronic diversion from real issues, such as whether Obama should be the one in charge of "kill lists", or why this administration refuses to do anything about the insane war on drugs. Why not criticize Obama for something really important and vital, instead of these insane diversions?

And nobody ever claimed "Hawaii" was "misspelled".

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Watch Blake get all riled up about this mistake, too.

Not.

BlakeD said...

Those two issues you brought up are indeed important. "The whole business about Obama and Kenya is a moronic diversion from real issues" -- True, as far as birtherism is concerned. But this isn't about birtherism; it's about the president's honesty or lack thereof.

The Romney typo? That was funny! Not as funny as Obama's "navy corpse-men" or "3000% reduction in insurance premiums", but still funny.

Anonymous said...

How about attacking G W Bush lying about being a US citizen?

See, BlakeD? Takes no brains or skill to make up stories.

How about attacking far-rightwing corporate-worshipping Wall-Street-worshipping conservatives like Obama for failing to take aggressive action to stop burning fossil fuels, to outlaw meat which tortures animals and wastes croplands and puts unnecessary amounts of CO2 into the air, to slow global warming?