|
||
Intermarkets' Privacy Policy Support
Donate to Ace of Spades HQ! ![]() ![]() ![]() Recent Entries
Saturday Overnight Open Thread (4/1/23)
Saturday Evening Movie Thread 04/01/2023 [TheJamesMadison] The Weekend Hobby Thread Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 1 Saturday Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, April 1 Newsom Nightmares Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival EMT 4/1/23 Daily Tech News 1 April 2023 Tonight's ONT Can And Will Be Used Against You In A Court Of Law Absent Friends
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022 Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022 redc1c4 2021 Tami 2021 Chavez the Hugo 2020 Ibguy 2020 Rickl 2019 Joffen 2014 Cutting The Cord And Email Security
NoVaMoMe 2023:
06/10/2023
Details to follow |
« Exxxxtreme Winter! (By Which We Mean "A Very Mild Winter," Which Used To Mean "A Good Winter") |
Main
| Irony Alert: TNR Claims Weekly Standard's Anonymous Sourcing For Beauchamp Retraction Is Weak »
August 07, 2007
Not Just TNR: WaPo Doesn't Fact-Check Easily Fact-Checked "Fact;" Still Refuses To CorrectThis story, by Jose Antonio Vargas, claimed: Build a liberal site such as Daily Kos, as the Persian Gulf War veteran and former Republican Markos "Kos" Moulitsas Zuniga did five years ago, and bloggers either join the discussion or not. This is not true. As I related yesterday, his own bio states he spent nearly the entirety of his hitch in Bamberg, Germany. In an article about himself for TAP, he wrote: Eight weeks later, I emerged a brand new person, this one weighing 140 pounds. And after my three-year stint, while I was stationed in Germany and missed deploying to the Gulf War by a hair, I emerged as a Democrat. Why did Jose Antionio Vargas write that Kos was a "Persian Gulf War veteran"? Well, probably because Kos tends to say things like "I wore combat boots. I served during the Gulf War," as he stated on Howie Kurtz's Reliable Sources on CNN. Those statements are technically true, but seem calculated to create a very large misimpression in the public's mind about precisely what Kos was doing during the Gulf War. Curiously, he doesn't say "I wore combat boots. I served in period of complete peace during the East-West German reintegration," or the like. Now, this was all easily fact-checked before the piece went out. However, it was not fact-checked. Kos' likely statement "I served during the Gulf War" was simply changed to him being a "Gulf War veteran," without the reporter ever searching for thirty seconds (it's alll it took me, and I suck) on Google to see if this was accurate. Worst than that, the story remains uncorrected. And I have contacted the WaPo about it, citing them chapter and verse the documentation proving their error. Who have I written? Well let's see: 1) Jose Antiono Vargas, the author, himself. 2) The Post's editors, through their letters to the editor address, and, fearing they may have missed the latter, 3) to the Post's own media critic Howie Kurtz, through an intermediary he knows and frequently has on as a guest and whose email, therefore, he would presumably bother to read. So the Washington Post has been informed three different ways to three different parties who would be interested in the accuracy of their story -- author, editors, in-house media critic -- and has of yet not corrected the story. The only correction they've provided is for a silly misspelling of a blogger's name -- the sort of correction papers like to make, as they're so trivial, and thus credit them as good about making corrections while costing them nothing at all. It's the larger errors they shy away from correcting -- at best, they offer a later "walk-back" which states the facts correctly without ever acknowledging their previous report was in error. If it is now the Washington Post's explicit style guidance that a man merely serving during a war is in fact a veteran of that war, then I expect them, in accordance with this odd new ruling, to begin referring to President Bush as a "Vietnam veteran." He served, after all, during the war. In Texas, sure, but Bamberg, Germany is no more within striking distance of Iraq than Texas is to Vietnam. a And, like Kos, he could have been called to serve in Vietnam at any time; apparently that's enough to make one a "veteran" of a war. I trust, having made this decision regarding Kos, the Washington Post will now go through eight years of articles about Bush and correct each one of those, elevating him to the status of "Vietnam vet." The dirty little secret isn't such a secret, and it's not so little: The MSM simply does not fact-check, except to the most trivial degree, and even when obvious errors are pointed out to them, they refuse to correct them. Because the act of correcting so many large errors would be a tacit admission of that which they dare not confess: They simply do not bother checking their facts beyond the absurd "smells good" standard. | Recent Comments
Diogenes:
"A former work location on a previous contract made ..."
TheJamesMadison, being witty and sophisticated with Ernst Lubitsch: "196 I need to rewatch The Magnificent Ambersons. T ..." WinLinBSDAdmin: "I need to rewatch The Magnificent Ambersons. That ..." Mike: "The Passion Of The Christ by Mel Gibson, drops mi ..." Smell the Glove: "@53 Paul Newman and Strother Martin in Slapshot is ..." Eromero: "190 Gentleman's Agreement was an emergency rewrite ..." Yudhishthira's Dice: "Wasn't Kinski the perv whose daughters claimed he ..." That Northern skulker: "I love the Exodus theme song. ..." Way, Way Downriver [/i]: "[i]Gentleman's Agreement[/i] was an emergency rewr ..." naturalfake: " "Bloody Hell" is a very good oddball black comed ..." All Hail Eris, Sans-Culottes (except for the Book Thread): "Must've had a lot of CHinese money in this flick. ..." Eromero: "The Passion Of The Christ by Mel Gibson, drops mi ..." Recent Entries
Saturday Overnight Open Thread (4/1/23)
Saturday Evening Movie Thread 04/01/2023 [TheJamesMadison] The Weekend Hobby Thread Ace of Spades Pet Thread, April 1 Saturday Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, April 1 Newsom Nightmares Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival EMT 4/1/23 Daily Tech News 1 April 2023 Tonight's ONT Can And Will Be Used Against You In A Court Of Law Search
Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Primary Document: The Audio
Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |