May 21, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Are those burning trousers I smell?
Last week, the blue half of the blogosphere got all excited because Jason Leopold said he had sure and certain knowledge that Karl Rove was going to be indicted post haste.
I've been meaning to blog about this, because as a journalist my immediate reaction was: are y'all on crack? We're talking about a story from Jason Leopold, the fellow who was jettisoned by Salon for plagiarizing and making explosive allegations about Secretary of the Army Thomas White that subseuently could not be authenticated, either by the source or Leopold's cell phone records. According to the New York Times, Dow Jones, his former employer, was similarly disenchanted with his work habits:
Until April, Mr. Leopold was a Los Angeles correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires. He said he resigned from Dow Jones to write a book about the energy crisis.His resignation came about a week before Dow Jones published the second of two extensive corrections of a March 18 article by Mr. Leopold and another reporter. The corrections there and in The Wall Street Journal, which also published the article, invalidated virtually all of the major points of the article, which accused Enron of compensating several executives excessively.
Mr. Leopold said he believed he was being singled out because of his aggressive reporting.
''I don't think there's any reporter out there who has skirted the edge like I have and really tried to obtain information about Enron,'' he said.
Taking a story on Mr Leopold's word is like trying to get rich by taking the advice of those late night television hucksters. Nonetheless, many were convinced--or at least made hopeful--by Leopold's blustering threats to out his sources if the story turned out to be false.
So that's what I was going to write. Then I got lazy . . . and then I was OTBE: Overtaken By Events. Truthout, the website that published the story, has recanted. With charming naivete, Mark Kleiman awaits the outing of sources, even though the wording of the recantation is more than a little desperate:
On Saturday afternoon, May 13, 2006, TruthOut ran a story titled, "Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators." The story stated in part that top Bush aide Karl Rove had earlier that day been indicted on the charges set forth in the story's title. The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. In moving as quickly as we did, we caused more confusion than clarity. And that was a disservice to our readership and we regret it.As such, we will be taking the wait-and-see approach for the time being. We will keep you posted.
Papers publish stuff from anonymous sources who get it wrong all the time. They don't apologize for it unless there is something very, very wrong with the story--like Judy Miller's repetitive gullibility and excessive source-greasing. Otherwise, they just write a new story saying that for whatever reason, it didn't happen. While even the most inveterate liar tells the truth sometime, it strikes me as unlikely that there are any sources for the story outside of Jason Leopold's extremely fertile imagination. Unless shown very convincing evidence, I will regard anyone he "outs" as an unwitting victim of Leopold's mendacity, and the left-wing's credulity.
Posted by Jane Galt at May 21, 2006 10:18 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksPapers publish stuff from anonymous sources who get it wrong all the time.
On that topic how about this, and this.
Funny how the mistakes always seem to lean the same way....
Castigating "the left-wing" (?) based on Jason Leopold is like damning the "right-wing" based on Alex Jones. Gimme a break.
his wikpedia page is interesting too.
it's been the subject of an "edit war"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jason_Leopold&action=history
Wow. Who knew it was even possible to get bounced from _Salon_.
There's always a temptation to believe what we humans want to believe, especially in this case where some have been waiting for "Fitzmas" for a while. But gee, anyone besides me remember the "Hitler Diaries"? That wasn't something some rinky-dink website fell for. There's some big "news" organizations that have bought, literally, into some even sillier blunders, like believing that Micro$oft Word was available before the PC was invented...
Hmm. I wonder if I could unload an old Selectric on Mr. Leopold; he might need one someday...
Actually, I don't think anything like "the blue half of the blogosphere" got all excited about Leopold's story. firedoglake reserved judgment ("We try to only report on things we confirm ourselves and if that puts us behind the curve, well so be it.") As far as I can tell, neither Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, nor Atrios mentioned it, and Kevin Drum noted the story under the heading "Wildly Speculative Rumor Watch". If any of the kos front pagers took a position on Leopold's credibility other than 'wait and see', I missed it. AmericaBlog: "Yeah yeah there are stories out there that Rove has told the president he's going to be indicted. Perhaps. But I'd rather see this on an established news site before I believe it." And of course Peter Daou was skeptical from the get-go.
Except for Daou, this was just a random sample of people I thought of offhand, when I read this piece, thought "I don't remember that at all", and went to check. But I would have thought that any generalization about "the blue half of the blogosphere" that wasn't true of any of these people has to be wrong.
While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle.
What the heck is this supposed to mean, anyway? "Too far out in front of the news cycle." They have a crystal ball or something and they can report on events that haven't really happened yet, but which the Rules of Magic force to come to pass no mattter what?
Megan, you are a journalist. Can you decipher this for me, please?
James
James,
It means they screwed up BIG TIME and don't want to admit it, but because they hate Rove and Bush so much they're willing to believe almost anything bad about them regardless of the evidence. They're absolutely certain Rove is destined to be indicted, so they'll always be able to confirm after the fact, "see we knew, even way back then".
This kind of thing speaks volumes about the seething hatrid, that has always been present at the fringe, but is now becomming more and more commonplace.
Maybe we need to put a democrat in office for a couple terms just so all these screaming lefties can stop passing off hateful, bitter attacks filled with nothing more than twisted half-truths as "news".
It was clear to me in the aftermath of September 11, that it was only a matter of time before the "otherside" abadoned the false pretense of "unity" and got back to hating Bush and Republicans like their religion demands.
ps - don't confuse this to mean I believe all democrafts/leftists/liberals behave this way, but the microphone for their party has becoming dominated by these extreme lunatics...
No offense but how does Jason Leopold speak for the Democratic Party? He doesn't. I will grant there are some partisan websites out there (DailyKos on the left and Free Republic on the right) filled to the brim with caffienated total lunatics.
As far as the blanket denials by BellSouth & Verizon - that's all they are blanket denials. It doesn't disprove the USA Today story one bit. This might surprise you but corporations often lie. The total truth hasn't been revealed yet.
I called this whole "retraction" lame.
http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2006/05/19/one-word/
But Ms. Galt is much more eloquent. Me, I use a 2x4.
I'm guessing Truthout just demolished a lot of hard won credibility.
I agree lame, lamer and lamest. I suspect that Jason was betting that Rove would be indicted this week and it would be a "scoop" to resucitate his brain dead career.
Brian DeSpain, I think you are pretty much right on the money there. However, I think that Jason was getting shoved down the path by Larry Johnson, Joe Wilson, and his other sources within VIPS. I doubt Jason made all of this up, I'm willing to bet some money that at least some of it came from the Wilsonistas.
Where did I castigate "the left-wing" or even the left wing? I just said that Jason Leopold has a history of being so unreliable as to make it unwise to take anything he says at face value. I don't think that has anything in particular with his being left wing--though Mr Leopold has tried to make himself out to be a victim of the right-wing witch hunt being conducted by Salon and the New York Times. I just think that those who believe him are engaging in extraordinarily wishful thinking, and hunting down any sources he "outs" would be piling injustice on intemperance.
Jane Galt wrote:
though Mr Leopold has tried to make himself out to be a victim of the right-wing witch hunt being conducted by Salon and the New York Times.
The idea of a right-wing witch hunt conducted by Salon and/or Pinch Sulzberger's rag is the funniest thing I've read all day.
Where did I castigate "the left-wing" or even the left wing?
Possibly here, where you castigated the left wing:
"While even the most inveterate liar tells the truth sometime, it strikes me as unlikely that there are any sources for the story outside of Jason Leopold's extremely fertile imagination. Unless shown very convincing evidence, I will regard anyone he "outs" as an unwitting victim of Leopold's mendacity, and the left-wing's credulity."
Perhaps that came out of your keyboard's mouth a bit more broadly than you intended?
Until the grand jury is disbanded, I would be very worried if I were Rove.
Fitzgerald is the most thorough lawyer in the states. Here in Ill., there were years when Gov. Ryan appeared to be safe from any worries. A political ploy by a prosecutor, that was the cry out of the republicans over here.
Just a few days ago, the conviction on all counts came down.
If Rove did anything wrong, he will be in jail at the end. 5 times infront of the grand jury would make me very worried.
5 times infront of the grand jury would make me very worried.
Only if Rove were a ham sandwich or a lacrosse player.
Long after everyone has forgotten what this was about*, I'll still be dropping the line "We erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle." That's just a gem.
* Come to think of it, I realize I never did know what this was about in the first place. It's Plame-related, or something else?
Jane, there's plenty of "excessive credulity" all around, or have you forgotten about the reasons you felt it was imperative we invade Iraq? Talk about believing what you want to believe regardless of the facts.
No offense but how does Jason Leopold speak for the Democratic Party? He doesn't. I will grant there are some partisan websites out there (DailyKos on the left and Free Republic on the right) filled to the brim with caffienated total lunatics.
You can add Mark Kleiman to that list as well. He’s been guzzling the Flavor Aide as bad as anyone else on the far left at the mention of “Karl Rove” or “Joe Wilson” or “Valerie Plame.”
Jane, there's plenty of "excessive credulity" all around, or have you forgotten about the reasons you felt it was imperative we invade Iraq?
I daresay the remark about Judy Miller was meant to be taken as an admonition to remember just that.
ace: Being mistaken and being credulous are not the same thing.
Given that Leopold had a history of lying and there were no corroborating third parties (or at least none with names), and that there was no general expectation by both sides of an indictment, I don't see much similarity to the run-up to OIF.
Remember that Hussein had a history in the opposite direction - one that supported the belief that he had WMDs, and that even the anti-war side generally believed he probably had them (remember "we can't invade because he'll use chemical weapons and all them troops and civilians will die"?), and that the evidence coming from the translations of all those captured documents suggests that not even the Iraqi Army knew there weren't any (significant) WMDs available? (This disregarding the claims by the Iraqi General Whose Name I Can't Recall that the WMDs were all sent to Syria.)
And then remember that the other reasons we were given for invading involved democratization (which sure seems to be, if not guaranteed to succeed, a real motive), and the existence of WMD progams ready to be restarted the moment attention was diverted (which also seems undeniable from all the testimony and evidence of Iraqi scientists and technicians).
So, I can't really buy this whole idea that Leopold's fantasies are in any way like Bush's being honestly wrong, on the preponderance of the available evidence, about Iraq's WMDs.
It doesn't take credulousness to think, in 2002, that Iraq has chemical weapons and weapons programs and will, ASAP, be working on a nuclear device. Some of that might be wrong, and some of it necessarily unprovable speculation as to future actions, but none of it is credulous.
'The idea of a right-wing witch hunt conducted by Salon and/or Pinch Sulzberger's rag is the funniest thing I've read all day.'
It was a log funnier when Leopold himself made the charge:
---------quote---------
[NY Times media columnist] Ballinger claimed she had spoken to several news organizations I had written stories for during the past six months and that none of them would work with me again.
What did I do? How could this be? ... I truly thought I was being set up. Why? I don't know...
...This clearly became an issue for the Times to pursue a salacious story about me rather than pursue the story itself, which is Thomas White....
The story the Times wrote about me was nothing more than a way to ensure I never work again as a journalist...
---------endquote----------
He also called the Salon editors 'liars' who were trying to sabotage his career.
I challenged Jason several times (on DeLong's blog) to produce an actual e-mail from Thomas White, and he couldn't do it. It was only several years later that it came out that Jason was a convicted felon, and one of his crimes was FORGERY.
Out of curiosity, what was it about my previous comment that made it unpublishable?
a victim of the right-wing witch hunt being conducted by Salon and the New York Times.
Spewed chai all over my keyboard.
Thanks, Jane.
Thank you kindly for the explanation, seer.
James
Oh yeah, I forgot about this...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/factchecking-the-blogs-_b_21493.html
Too bad you remembered, and even worse, that I clicked. Can I have the previous five minutes of my life back?
Oh ya, well you're demagogues are worse than my demagogues!
Vote them all out. They're ruining this country, regardless of their party...ALL OF THEM (that I'm aware of at least).
Oh ya, well you're demagogues are worse than my demagogues! Vote them all out.
I wasn't aware that you had to win an election in order to gain a job as a journalist.
That is what we are talking about, right? This Leopold guy is making stuff up in order to push his political views on his readers, something that journalists always swear will never ever happen because it would be a violation of their ethics.
Come to think of it, Leopold is writing about how Karl Rove got indicted in an alternate universe. (Didn't happen in this one yet.) Last time I checked, Rove never got elected to anything, either.
All this sturm and drang and no one involved holds elected office.
James
"Fitzgerald is the most thorough lawyer in the states. Here in Ill., there were years when Gov. Ryan appeared to be safe from any worries. A political ploy by a prosecutor, that was the cry out of the republicans over here."
If by "republicans" Mickslam means state Republican politicians and party hacks, then duh, they covered for their own.
If he means Republican *voters*, though, he's way off. I'm one, and I know many, many more, and we pretty much have universally loathed Ryan for years.
The secret is that the candidates the Illinois Republicans run are pretty much interchangable with the ones Illinois Democrats. offer This is definatley a "echo, not a choice" state. difference
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