Kaus clobbers comPost clunker

Mickey Kaus finds WaPo GOP Talking Points Memo story not entirely accurate or carefully worded.....and an early version even had unsupported claims.

hmmmm.....and might we even say the GOP memo story is biased?

Naked, Unbridled Scooplust at WaPo
By Mickey KausUpdated Monday, April 4, 2005, at 4:07 PM PT

Blogging in Print: According to de facto MSM Damage Controller Howie Kurtz, WaPo's Mike Allen is apparently now admitting what has been obvious to everyone else who has followed the controversy over those alleged "GOP Talking Points": the Post's stories were not entirely "accurate and carefully worded" (Kurtz's words), nor is it true that Allen "stuck to what we knew to be true and did not call them talking points or a Republican memo." Instead, he let an early version of his story ship out containing the unsupported claim that the memo was "distributed to Republican senators by party leaders." [Emph. added] ...

Obviously at some point Allen thought or assumed the memo was a GOP leadership document, and before he'd nailed that down he temporarily let his scooplust get the better of him. This is a perfectly forgivable mistake. At least I hope it is--I make it all the time. You get all excited thinking you have a great story and then when you think more about it you realize you have a not-quite-as-great story, so you go back and make it "carefully worded"! ...

comPost Bombs US Nuclear Policy

Weekly Standard's Henry Sokolski nukes comPost's errors.

The Washington Post Bombs Nuclear History Did Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz try to stoke Iran's nuclear ambition in the '70s?
by Henry Sokolski
03/28/2005 2:35:00 PM

WHEN YOU ARE UP AGAINST the most worrisome modern security threat there is--the spread of nuclear weapons--history becomes more than an academic pastime. Get it right and you avoid the errors of the past. Get it wrong and the worst of the past is almost certain to rhyme into the future.

Take the Sunday Washington Post report, "Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy," in which Dafna Linzer describes a nuclear negotiating strategy President Ford "reluctantly" endorsed for Iran that would reap U.S. nuclear vendors over $7 billion. Under this deal, which Secretary of State Henry Kissinger laid out in a memorandum in l975, the United States, according to Ms. Linzer, would supply Iran with reactors and try "to accommodate Iranian demands" for plants to separate plutonium chemically from spent reactor fuel, even though the plutonium produced could be used directly to make nuclear weapons.

The reporter reminds us that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz served in the Ford administration and are now opposed to Iran's acquiring such dangerous nuclear capabilities. The reader is then steered to the following conclusion:


The Ford administration--in which Cheney succeeded Rumsfeld as chief of staff and Wolfowitz was responsible for nonproliferation issues at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--continued intense efforts to supply Iran with U.S. nuclear technology until President Jimmy Carter succeeded Ford in 1977.

There are many things upsetting about this history. But the worst of it is not the hypocritical flip-flop that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are accused of by the Washington Post. Instead, it's what the article fails to tell the reader.

First, whatever dubious approach to Iran Ford may have grudgingly endorsed in April 1975, he clearly reversed 18 months later. In October 1976, Ford, at the urging of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the National Security Council, and his White House staff, which was under Cheney's command, made a major statement on nuclear policy. Ford explained that several months before he had ordered a thorough review of U.S. nuclear policy and concluded that "reprocessing and recycling of plutonium should not proceed unless there is sound reason to conclude that the world community can effectively overcome the associated risks of proliferation." He went on to explain that he had reached this conclusion because he believed "that avoidance of proliferation must take precedence over economic interests."

Ford's statement went beyond generalities. In it, he announced that he had prohibited any American export of reprocessing or nuclear technologies that could contribute to proliferation. He proclaimed that the United States would defer any domestic commercial separation of plutonium and called on all nations to avoid exporting reprocessing or enrichment technology for a period of at least three years. Ford also made it clear that the United States, in concert with like-minded nations, would help assure states that chose to forgo enriching or reprocessing a reliable supply of fresh reactor fuel and access to safe storage of their spent reactor fuel.

Second, although President Carter initially upheld the Ford administration's new nuclear policy, he subsequently undermined it, in the very case of Iran. In an effort to show support for the Shah, President Carter visited Iran in late December 1977. At the time, it was U.S. policy to export U.S. reactors but not to share reprocessing or enrichment technology with any state, Iran included. Yet, when he met with the Shah, Carter, to the amazement of his aides, cast U.S. nuclear policy aside and orally assured the Shah that he could have anything nuclear he wanted from the United States, including reprocessing, if he liked.

Unfortunately, these two historical facts failed to make it into the Washington Post's account. Nonetheless, they suggest that U.S. officials ought to be judged as much by how they measured up to Ford's 1976 nuclear policy statement as by what they may have done previous to its announcement.

Certainly, today we are struggling with some of the very same issues Ford gave fairly clear guidance on. It would still be best if the United States and other like-minded nations encouraged others to forgo expanding the world's current capacity to reprocess or enrich. And the further export of these and related technologies still needs to be curbed. Finally, just as 30 years ago, the recycling of plutonium for commercial reactor use should be proscribed until and unless effective ways are devised to prevent the quick diversion of this material to make bombs.

Are we living up to these standards today? That's not a question the Post, in its incomplete retelling of history, bothers to pose. It is, however, the question we should be asking.


Henry Sokolski, is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, D.C. and author of The Best of Intentions: America's Campaign Against Strategic Weapons Proliferation (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001).




© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

The Spoofs on the comPost

Powerline also finds comPost ethics problem

Our Skeptical Reporters

Yesterday's Washington Post included this rather embarrassing correction:

The March 18 Names & Faces column included a quote that was attributed to Britney Spears via Allure magazine. The quote was actually a spoof, written by a Philadelphia Daily News reporter, of an Allure interview with Spears. The spoof was then picked up as an actual quote by MSNBC.com.

As Michelle Malkin points out, the Spears parody quote was widely reported as fact in the mainstream media.

This kind of thing happens more often than you might think. To take one more consequential example, during the first George Bush administration, a political opponent made a joke to the effect that before going to Latin America, Dan Quayle expressed regret that he hadn't studied his Latin more diligently in high school, so he could communicate with the natives. This joke was retailed as fact in many newspapers and magazines, even though it was preposterous on its face. (I'm not aware that any news source ever retracted or corrected the false story, either.)

The Spears quote admittedly wasn't quite this ridiculous, but still: wouldn't you think that a reporter's suspicion might be roused by these alleged statements by Spears?

Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the poolboy to walk the dog? Can't I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks.
I'd like to think that we at Power Line wouldn't reproduce a quote that ridiculous without wondering, at least, whether it is genuine, and possibly even doing a bit of fact-checking--which seems, in many quarters, to be a dying art.

Posted by Hindrocket at 08:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Post reports story that never happened

From instapundit, another chapter in comPost ethics.

Howard Kurtz writes that USA Today has some of the tightest sourcing rules around:


The veteran Gannett editor has also imposed strict rules on the use of anonymous sources, which some reporters say go too far and limit their ability to compete on stories. No information attributed to a "senior administration official" has appeared in USA Today since December, largely because of Paulson's crackdown. Even such formulations as "Democrats opposed to Bush's Social Security plan" are barred unless some names are included, and the use of unnamed sources has dropped about 75 percent.

To grant someone anonymity, Paulson says, "you have to go to a managing editor, identify that source -- which was at the heart of the Jack Kelley mess -- explain why we trust that source and how it moves the story forward." Paulson also runs Jones's picture on the editorial page, inviting feedback -- because, he says, past complaints about Kelley never reached or were dismissed by senior editors.


Kurtz notes that some USA Today staffers think that these rules make it hard to compete with other big papers. But Kurtz's next item makes me wonder if those other big papers don't need to do some tightening-up of their own:


How did The Washington Post manage to report that a Gridiron Club skit had lampooned commentator Armstrong Williams when the skit never took place?

"It was a goofball mistake on my part," says Post reporter Neely Tucker, who corrected it after the first edition and apologized to Williams. He says journalist sources told him of the planned skit -- working reporters are barred from the annual event -- and that he only learned later that it had been dropped.


Remember this when people accuse blogs of reprinting rumors without checking them!

posted at 09:02 AM by Glenn Reynolds

One More Test

Testing once again to make sure we're back up and running.

Post omits "Death to America"

From Little Green Footballs...Post sanitizes Iran

2/6/2005: "Death to America" Event Canceled in Maryland

Regime Change Iran reports that the Bethesda Marriott Hotel has canceled plans to host an event paid for by the Iranian mullahs, titled: Twenty Sixth Anniversary of the glorious victory of the Islamic Revolution and Death to America Day.

The Washington Post story reveals that the Marriott Corporation canceled the event because it is illegal to do business with Iran: Iranian Celebration Canceled. But the Post doesn’t mention the “Death to America” bit.

A celebration scheduled for this weekend at Montgomery County’s new hotel and conference center, marking the 26th anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, was canceled after the hotel’s operator learned that it would violate federal law.

The Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, which opened in December, was to play host to 1,000 guests at a reception thrown by Ali Jazini, director of the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

John Wolf, a Marriott spokesman, said yesterday that the hotel canceled the event after realizing it is illegal to do business with Iran. He said Marriott officials will “be taking steps” to prevent similar bookings in the future.

PrestoPundit Punches Post

PrestoPundit was almost suckered by the Post....almost

I WAS almost suckered in by this duplicitious WaPost lead paragraph on medical care reform:
The budget President Bush unveils next week will propose spending an extra $140 billion over 10 years to expand health coverage to millions more Americans
But on closer reading this is just another WaPost lie (the dishonest WaPost reporter here is Ceci Connolly). If you look later in the story, it turns out that what is involved here are tax cuts -- i.e. the government isn't spending more of our tax money, quite the contrary -- instead people are being allowed to keep and make use of their own money:
About half of the $140 billion appears to represent Bush's plan to provide refundable tax credits for the purchase of health insurance.
This is a classic MSM lie, right out of the Columbia School of Journalism paybook. The whole tone and content of the article is anti-Bush, anti-reform, anti-market. Just what we've come to expect from the big lefty newspapers.

Post shows political bias

Here's a terrific letter from our friend Leo Rennert.

HOW THE POST UNDERMINES ITS OWN CREDIBILITY AND GIVES CONSERVATISM A GOOD NAME!

In the Post's Jan. 6 editions about Saudi hate messages piling up in U.S. mosques, your agenda journalism backfires beautifully.

Your reporter, John Mintz, identifies Freedom House, which he describes as a "CONSERVATIVE-LEANING human rights organization, as the source of a report documenting the widespread dissemination of Saudi hate literature and messages in American mosques. A few paragraphs later, Mintz tells Post readers that Freedom House was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Any half-way intelligent or observant reader would immediately ask him/herself: When the Post uses reports from Human Rights Watch, is it identified as a LIBERAL-LEANING human rights group? Of course not. Never. Why? Because left-leaning is politically correct and kosher; right-leaning is highly suspect and thus a pejorative adjective in the Post's lexicon.

But quite unintentionally I'm sure, Mintz compounds his own LEFT-LEANING agenda by recalling that Eleanor Roosevelt founded Freedom House, not realizing that what he's really telling readers is that the mantle of fighting religious and ethnic discrimination so courageously worn by Mrs. Roosevelt is now the province not of her LIBERAL progeny, but of CONSERVATIVES who alone are left to attack bigotry when they see it. Mrs. Roosevelt would weep.

So thanks, guys, for making all this clear.

LEO RENNERT, Bethesda, Maryland

Post confuses terrorist with dissident

Here is another deconstruction of comPost analysis-reporting.....this time from Captain'sQuartersBlog.com.

January 27, 2005
WaPo Playing Petty Games With Inaugural Speech
Rarely will readers experience the level of intellectual dishonesty that Glenn Kessler and Scott Wilson reach in their report today on a jailed Jordanian dissenter and President Bush's reaction to a question about him. During his press conference, a reporter asked the president about Ali Hattar, currently jailed on slander charges in Jordan:

President Bush was stumped yesterday when he was asked at his news conference about the plight of a Jordanian man who faces a two-year prison term for slander after giving a lecture last month calling for a boycott of American goods and companies. "I'm unaware of the case," he said.
The circumstances are somewhat murky, but in many ways the case signifies the difficult choices and trade-offs inherent in Bush's call in his inaugural address for the right to dissent and protest around the world. ...

"Freedom has to include the freedom to criticize the United States," [HRW spokesman Tom] Malinowski said. "If Bush would stand up for this guy, people who doubt his sincerity would be impressed. It is an opportunity for the administration."


In the days following Bush's ringing call for promoting democracy as a moral and national-security solution for the world's ills, one could almost see the wheels turning in the mainstream media. First the media picked apart the references to God as too much Christian triumphalism, and then scoffed at the scope of Bush's vision, ignoring his warning that it would take "generations" to eradicate tyranny.

Now we see yet another strategy to discredit Bush: toss out the names of dissenters in authoritarian countries that dislike America and see if Bush knows who they are. When he doesn't recognize the name, they write analysis pieces on page A-4 in the Washington Post. If he really cared about human liberty, we are to say, then why doesn't he care about [insert obscure name here]?

Unfortunately, even in this case, Kessler and Wilson pick a pretty poor test case for their gotcha game. The American embassy in Jordan has already questioned Hattar's detention. And Hattar hardly represents the cause of freedom in the Hashemite Kingdom:

Hattar is not a democracy activist, nor would he be considered an appealing figure by many Americans, but he has been charged under a type of vague law frequently used to suppress dissent across the Middle East. ...
Hattar -- who Qadi said is a Christian -- belongs to Jordan's professional association of engineers, whose membership is made up mostly of men of Palestinian descent and is among the most politically militant in the country. He is a delegate of the group's "anti-normalization committee," which lobbies against Jordan's 1994 agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, a decision he and others have demanded be reversed.


What's more, Hattar's charges don't exclusively deal with his call for a boycott of America, if they do at all. Hattar has been jailed for slandering the Jordanian government, which contends that he told audiences that the monarchy planned a genocide against its own subjects. Hattar doesn't even tell the truth about this, a factoid that Kessler and Wilson leave for the last paragraph of their article:

But government officials said at the time of his arrest that the charges against him were related to his contention that the Jordanian government was buying U.S. weapons for use against its own people. At the time of his arrest, Hattar said he did not mention Jordan in his speech. But in the following question period, he said he used Jordan as an example of developing countries buying U.S. weapons for use against "their own people."
In other words, Hattar is a Palestinian radical who indulges in the kind of lunatic conspiracy theories that terror groups use to legitimize attacks on Israel, America, and their own governments. Hattar isn't in the streets advocating democracy; he's advocating for the destruction of Israel and probably the replacement of the Jordanian monarchy with a PLO-style terrorocracy.

This piece is written in such a transparently deceptive manner that desperation can be the only explanation. Apparently, the president's speech had a stunning effect on leftist journalists, who now will stoop to attempts like this to discredit it. Pathetic.

Posted by Captain Ed at January 27, 2005 06:33 AM

Powerline Past's Post (Again)

Read this post from one of my favorite Blogs....Powerline.


"Centrists" Oppose Rice Nomination
Reader Richard Banyard pointed out this remarkable paragraph in the Washington Post's story on the vote in the Senate on Condoleezza Rice's nomination:

Some of the Democrats who opposed Rice were centrists from states in which President Bush won or ran strongly in November, including Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
"Centrists"?? Mark Dayton? Robert Byrd? Carl Levin? And Tom Harkin?? These are some of the most far-left politicians who have ever served in the United States Senate. At the Post, "centrist" apparently means "someone who isn't any more liberal than we are."

DEACON adds: The only centrist on the list is Evan Bayh. And I suspect that his vote against Dr. Rice is best understood in the context of the possibility he will run for president in 2008. Perhaps we are witnessing Bayh's transformation into an ex-centrist, in the Al Gore tradition.

UPDATE: Reader Jack Carrel points out that the Post has now removed the word "centrists" from its article. I assume this was the result of our pointing out the absurdity of the characterization. But there is no indication of any correction, no acknowledgement that the change was made. So go the mainstream media.

FURTHER UPDATE: Reader David McGuire has more, which casts doubt on the competence of the Post:

You will be interested to know that I e-mailed Chuck Babington about his "centrist" Democrat comments in this morning's Washington Post. Amazingly, this is how he responded:
***************

Thanks for writing. You will not find this quote in my article:
"Some of the Democrats who opposed Rice were centrists from states in which President Bush won or ran strongly in November, including Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)." You (and many others) are victims of a cut and paste job that rearranged paragraphs in order to attack the story. You can read the real article on Washingtonpost.com. I'd be happy to respond if you want to take it from there.
again, thanks,
cb

***************


I then went back to the Washington Post website to cut and paste Mr. Babington's "real" article. The fourth paragraph of his article reads precisely the same way that the quote above reads. Either someone is writing articles using Mr. Babington's byline, or Mr. Babington cannot even remember what he wrote on the same day he wrote it! It is absolutely amazing that a political writer at one of the major newspapers in the country believes he can somehow deny writing a paragraph that appeared on the official website of a newspaper only a few hours before. Mr. Babington has met the blogosphere, and he has lost BIG TIME.


The more you think about this, the weirder it gets. Babington's reference to "rearranging paragraphs" makes no sense; the issue is not the order of the paragraphs, but the adjective "centrist." How can a reporter deny that he used that term only a few hours after his article appeared online, and confidently refer to the WaPo web site for the correct version--at a time when the original "centrist" Democrat reference is still there? The only explanation I can think of is that Babington had directed that the adjective "centrist" be removed, but it hadn't happened yet at the time he replied to Mr. McGuire. If correct, that explanation reflects very poorly on Mr. Babington. The most charitable interpretation of these facts, as far as the Post is concerned, is incompetence.

ONE MORE UPDATE: The Post article, still bylined Charles Babington, has now been completely rewritten. It now covers both the Senate vote on Dr. Rice and the Judiciary Committee vote on Alberto Gonzales. The paragraph referring to Senators Dayton, Harkin et al. voting against Dr. Rice has now been deleted in its entirety. There is still a reference to "centrists," however. The article now says:

As in Tuesday's day-long debate on Rice's nomination, yesterday's criticisms came not only from liberal Democrats but also from more centrist or independent members who have backed the Bush administration on key issues.
For example, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) voted against Gonzales's confirmation even though he had voted in 2001 to confirm Ashcroft, a staunch conservative and an irritant to many liberal groups.


So the Post now tells us that in both the Rice confirmation vote and the Gonzales vote, Democratic oppositon came in part from "more centrist or independent members who have backed the Bush administration on key issues." No indication, however, as to who those "more centrist or independent" Democrats might be.

God only knows what the Post will print in its hard-copy version in the morning.

The mainstream media are in complete disarray. They have no idea what hit them, they can't cope, and their habitual dishonesty is now on painfully public display.

ONE MORE, CAN'T RESIST: Reader Mike Chittenden got a copy of tomorrow's Post; he writes:

I just checked Page A1 of today's Washington Post. The paragraph in questions reads: "Some of the most critical Democrats were centrists from states that President Bush won or nearly won in November. Their comments came as recent polls have shown growing public disenchantment with the situation in Iraq." The article then goes on to mention "liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer." Dayton and Bayh are mentioned later in the article, after the jump. Others were then mentioned, including Kennedy and Levin. Lieberman, Feinstein and Salazar are mentioned as praising Rice. The quote in question does not actually appear in the print article.
Yet another version. There are ostensibly some "centrists," but the Post no longer claims that Sens. Dayton, Byrd, Levin and Harkin are among them, and, in fact, there is no hint as to who the "centrists" are. Stay tuned; there may be a second print edition yet to come with one more effort to get the story straight.

AND FINALLY: The truth, maybe. Charles Babington has emailed ouur reader David McGuire to admit that he was wrong:

You are quite right... The website folks updated the morning story after the vote, and combined some paragraphs... I should have read over their shoulder, my mistake. I did get them to fix it. The story i wrote for the morning paper did not use "centrist" to describe Byrd, Harkin, etc...
Thanks for the heads up . cb


If this version is accurate, anonymous staffers at the Post revise articles written by the paper's reporters and inject their own political views into the paper's characterizations of members of the Senate. One way or the other, the Post obviously needs to get its act together.

OK, ONE MORE: Reader Cyrus Sanai finds Babington's explanation plausible:

I noted with interest your point about the C. Rice story. I was a summer reporting intern at the Post between my first and second year of law school. After you file a story, the editors feel free to add whatever slant they feel like to the copy without telling the reporter. It is possible that Babington did not call these Senators centrist, but the characterization was added by an editor.
So at the Post, at least, liberal slant is added anonymously by unknown editors who are completely unaccountable--in public, at least. This is not exactly how the Post and other MSM outlets present themselves when they brag about their accountability, credibility and "professional" standards.

Posted by Hindrocket at 01:48 PM | TrackBack (13)