Tea Party Express official says liberal media used TPM's 'totally bogus story'

E-mail from Joe Wierzbicki of the Tea Party Express:

What's disgusting about the TPM Muckracker hit on us is that it's a totally bogus story - and the author knows it.
The $800,000 they cite was NOT paid to Russo Marsh + Associates. The vast majority of that money was to reimburse Russo Marsh + Associates for the efforts where we fronted the money in our capacity as the organizers of the Tea Party Express. . . .
And then Rachel Maddow of MSNBC last night (and the CBS blog, and dozens of other liberal blogs) have run with the story. I'm not sure how much these people in the secondary chain of this viral promotion understand that their advancing a bogus story. Maybe some of them do and they don't care.
What seems obvious is that the only reason someone would advance a bogus story like this if they knew it to be bogus, would solely be to try to take a shot at the tea party movement in general, and smear the Tea Party Express in particular. . . .

Read the rest at The American Spectator.

CBS totally objective about 'teabaggers'

In the sense that Andrew Sullivan is totally objective about Sarah Palin's uterus, I mean. And I'm not complaining about getting linked by a major news organization, but see if you can guess CBSNews.com editor Charles Cooper's agenda:

All through the spring and summer of 2009, Tea Party media hands portrayed their anti-government - and anti-Obama - protests as the voice of a genuine grass roots movement. Now it's clear that any retelling of that story also must include a discussion of the Republican operatives who were whispering play calls behind the scenes. What with so many folks out and about for the holidays, this TPM Muckraker piece failed to garner wider attention.

That would be the same TPM article I linked earlier, the one which asserted that because the Tea Party Express PAC paid $800,000 to the public relations firm which organized the tour, something foul was afoot. Anyway, Cooper linked my post, and it wasn't hard to discover that he was also the author of this August headline:

Teabaggers Shout Down Tampa Bay Town Hall

OK, it's free country, and Cooper is free to seek readers from the HuffPo/MSNBC axis. But I've covered the Tea Party movement pretty extensively and actually met Sal Russo, the former Reagan campaign aide who is accused by Cooper of "whispering play calls," whatever that means.

As a matter of fact, my good friend Barbara Espinosa interviewed Sal Russo in Orlando. Far from being a furtive, nefarious figure, he's a nice guy. I'm sure his skills -- organizing, fundraising, communication, management -- were very helpful to the Tea Party movement.

Why is Russo's involvement being used to insinuate that the protests are not "a genuine grass roots movement"? I've heard the same argument made about FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, Campaign for Liberty and various other free-market organizations that have supported the Tea Party movement.

The Left and Democrats coordinate their activities through scores of individuals and organizations (George Soros, ACORN, SEIU, NARAL, GLSEN, etc.) and any conservative who sees a pattern there is denounced as a conspiracy-theory kook. But let mainstream political organizations on the Right become involved in . . . uh, mainstream politics, and liberals insist there must be something shady going on.

Anyway, thanks for the link, Charles Cooper. If CBS News ever decides to hire anyone who isn't a liberal, please send me a press release. That would be a huge story!

What is Helen Thomas thankful for?

You might think she would express gratitude for being the ugliest left-wing woman ever to achieve worldwide fame, against tough competition from Barbara Mikulski. But you would be wrong. Via Drudge Twitter and Politico:

IG-Gate: The Sacramento Sex Scandal Obama and MSM Want You to Ignore

Yeah, this kind of stuff could get embarrassing:

About 11:00 p.m., Mr. Johnson arrived at St. Hope and instructed [her] to gather her things and come with him. Mr. Johnson drove to [her] apartment, which is managed by St. Hope Development and houses its AmeriCorps members, purportedly so that they could review the students' grades. While in [her] apartment, in which another AmeriCorps member had a separate bedroom, Mr. Johnson laid down on [her] bed. [The woman] sat on the edge of the bed to show him the grades, at which time Mr. Johnson "layed [sic] down behind me, cupping his body around mine like the letter C. After about 2-3 minutes or so, I felt his hand on my left side where my hip bone is."

That's from WorldNetDaily, digging up more gold from the motherlode Grassley-Issa report (PDF) on the firing of AmeriCorps IG Gerald Walpin. The Democratic mayor of Sacramento seemed to think he could use the federally-funded St. HOPE program the way Eliot Spitzer used the Emperor's Club VIP call-girl agency.

Kevin Johnson's fiancee -- who just happens to be the boss of D.C. public schools -- tried to sweet-talk Walpin out of blowing the whistle on her sweetie and, when Walpin wouldn't play ball for Obama's buddies, the White House fired Walpin and lied about it. And then there are those magic words: "Hush money."

All of which adds up to one heckuva sex scandal, but you're not seeing much about this in the MSM, are you? The New York Times buried the story inside Saturday's paper with the bland headline, "G.O.P. Report Connects Official to Fiancé’s Case."

If Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee weren't Democrats, the New York Times would be running 72-point headlines on Page One: REPUBLICANS ROCKED BY TEEN SEX 'HUSH MONEY' CHARGES!

But like Professor Glenn Reynolds says, "When the press can ignore a sex scandal, you know it's covering for politicians, not covering them."

More at Memeorandum and the IG-Gate blog.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! What offends me about this is that the newspaper business is in meltdown mode and, hey, sex sells, right? This story is a headline-writer's dream:

SACRAMENTO SEX SCANDAL!
Hizzoner's Hush-Money Teen Tango
Watchdog Whistle-Blower Claims
White House Arranged Cover-Up

Watever happened to selling newspapers, people? Dibs on the "Michelle Rhee sex video" Google-bomb, BTW. Now, somebody needs to hit my tip jar. My wife wants to go holiday shopping Friday.

Ho-hum: Another day, another 'Doug Hoffman, far-right extremist' spin

Yesterday at Hot Air, I pushed back against this misrepresentation of the Hoffman campaign. And now we see the same misguided claim being promoted by a writer for the Raleigh (N.C.) newspaper:

The N.C. Republican Party has been channeling its inner Jesse Helms lately, and not just because a portrait of the late conservative icon was unveiled last week.
At a GOP banquet Saturday night in North Raleigh, one of the main speakers was to have been Doug Hoffman, the New York conservative congressional candidate who was the favorite of Glenn Beck & Co . . .

Doug Hoffman's stated political positions place him squarely in the conservative mainstream of the Republican Party. The attempt to depict Hoffman and his supporters as rabid fringe fanatics is either (a) liberal propaganda or (b) faulty analysis by people who've been misled by liberal propaganda.

Hoffman did not lose because he was ideologically outside the mainstream. He lost because (a) he started with zero name recognition outside of his Lake Saranac hometown, (b) his campaign was badly underfunded until mid-October, (c) the national GOP wasted nearly $1 million propping up the doomed campaign of Dede Scozzafava, and (d) Scozzafava dropped out and endorsed the Democrat the weekend before Election Day.

Circumstances (c) and (d) are unlikely to occur again anywhere anytime ever, much less in North Carolina. For so many political "experts" to try to extract from the NY23 campaign the lesson that Hoffman was too right-wing, and that conservative Republicans are therefore generally doomed to defeat, is a case of wishful-thinking theory without adequate factual support.

Governor Palin: Lean into the curve

Just got through doing a long in-person interview about populism and the contemporary political landscape, sat down to find out what had been going on in the blogosphere for the past few hours, and at Memeorandum saw this headline:

Newsweek Photo of Palin Shows
Media Bias and Sexism

"Sexism" is an ideological pejorative coined by feminists and, as such, a term I disdain -- actually, I make a point of jabbing feminists at every opportunity.

Grant that the editors of Newsweek hate Sarah Palin. We have every reason to believe that the choice of photo of Palin in shorts represented an attempt to diminish and belittle Palin, to portray her as a cheesecake bimbo, the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan. Palin herself writes:

The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention - even if out of context.

That this is "sexist," OK. Gotcha. But does Sarah Palin want to assume a feminist victimhood posture, to say that she is being oppressed by the patriarchy?

No, I think not. Excuse me for suggesting that the way for Palin to leverage this -- to "re-brand" herself as they say -- is to lean into the curve. The better response would be along the lines of:

"Yes, I am a woman. Yes, I have legs. And, yes, I've been told they're very nice legs. Exactly why the editors of Newsweek decided that showing me in shorts was appropriate for the cover of their magazine is for them to explain -- and good luck with that. I guess I'm trying to figure out what side of the double-standard applies here. Levi can get naked for Playgirl and still be taken seriously, but Newsweek thinks it's something scandalous to show me in running shorts? Just wait until I grant my first in-depth foreign-policy interview to Maxim!"

Or something to that effect. The governor signifies her self-awareness that she is something of a political and cultural novelty -- a conservative woman who is a viable presidential prospect. She is aware that her good looks are both an asset and a potential liability, and that liberals want to portray her as a trailer-trash airhead, the "Caribou Barbie," etc.

She gets the joke, and she turns it back against them. Nothing disarms an attack so well as self-deprecating humor. It's like the way Reagan joked about his own extremist reputation: "The Republican Party needs both its right wing and its far-right wing."

To use the word "sexist" against Newsweek is to accuse enlightened liberal elitists of violating their own egalitarian standards -- which is all fine and good. But "sexist" also sounds like one of those grim, humorless Women's Studies professors ranting at a campus "Take Back the Night" rally.

Ick. Don't go there, governor. You are a happily married Christian conservative pro-life woman who -- oh, glorious coincidence! -- looks good in shorts. Your husband is a certified USDA prime slice of hunkalicious beef, your son is a soldier in Bravo Company, and your daughter is a single mom with a selfish douchebag ex-boyfriend.

All of which is to say, you are the 21st-century all-American woman, a symbol to which a lot of moms can relate. Just think of the enormous untapped electoral potential in the "My Daughter's Ex-Boyfriend Is A Selfish Douchebag" Coalition.

Lean into the curve, governor. Be yourself. Relax and have fun. Avoid the humorless feminist victimhood pose. If Hillary Clinton couldn't make that work against Obama, the media sure as heck won't let you use it, so let it go.

When you wish to call attention to the media's double standard -- both the male/female thing and the liberal/conservative thing -- always do so in a way the displays confidence and good humor. Invite the audience to laugh with you, and give them an opportunity to laugh at the media. And let the media laught at themselves. You might be surprised how many people in the press corps think their peers take this Serious Journalism stuff a bit too seriously.

Don't ignore your critics, governor, but don't let them undermine your confidence, either. You are winning. Just don't forget: Lean into the curve.

Why CNN sucks

Greetings from the Buffalo Niagra International Airport. Just put Ali Akbar on his plane back home and, with deadline looming for the December issue of The American Spectator -- subscribe now -- the National Desk has been set up at the airport bar for a few hours.

I'm being forced to watch CNN, where the host of "American Morning" just finished interrogating (not interviewing) Rep. Michelle Bachmann. CNN's John Roberts did his assigned job, reading from DNC talking points and forcing Bachmann to respond point-by-point to the liberal argument -- which, however, was not presented as a liberal argument, but rather as "some critics say" or, simply, as facts.

At one point, Roberts raked Bachmann over the coals for calling ObamaCare "socialized medicine." That is to say, he was spinning for the Democrats, who know that "socialized medicine" has negative connotations compared to "health care reform."

This rhetorical battle is, however, only about politics, and has nothing to do with the policy at dispute. In terms of policy -- what will it cost taxpayers? how will it affect delivery of health care services? et cetera -- it doesn't matter if you call it Super Duper Rainbows And Unicorns Sexy Delicious Health Care Paradise. The policy is the policy is the policy.

John Roberts made no acknowledgment of this underlying reality. His job was to pretend to be objective while striving to depict Bachman and all other opponents of ObamaCare as extremist fringe kooks: "Socialized medicine! How dare you call it socialized medicine!" And he did that dishonest work with transparent enthusiasm.

This segment was followed, a few minutes later, by a puff-piece profile of Valerie Jarrett, who was given the kind of tough, aggressive, critical treatment that the Jonas Brothers get from the editors of Tiger Beat.

It is CNN's pseudo-objectivity -- a liberal perspective presented as The Way It Is -- that annoys the informed viewer.

The White House has waged a propaganda campaign against Fox News (which frankly presents a conservative perspective as The Way It Is) while Fox's two cable rivals (both liberal) slide into Nielsen irrelevance, unable to attract a mass audience. And the geniuses at CNN can't seem to figure out why this is.

NY23: Hoffman is asked to react to Limbaugh's Dede 'bestiality' comment

Jude Seymour of the Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times is a nice guy, who let me use his office computer two weeks ago when I first came up to cover this campaign. Exactly why he chose this occasion to spring a "gotcha" question on Doug Hoffman, I don't know. Watch the video, and make your own judgment.

After the video ended, Jude found himself called before an impromptu meeting of the Conservative Journalism Criticism Squad. One reporter who shall remain nameless -- but who might be press corps pin-up idol John McCormack -- described Seymour's method as the "Inquisition" approach to journalism.

Me, I started out at a 6,000-circulation weekly in Austell, Ga. You don't do ambush interviews in that kind of situation. Maybe I'm really not ready for the big leagues. I report. You decide.

And hit the tip jar. I'd say you got your money's worth tonight, eh?

UPDATE: The Rush Limbaugh quote to which Hoffman was asked to react:

How about Dede Scozzafava? You know what? Dede Scozzafava has just screwed every RINO in the country by showing everybody who they are. . . . She has just put an exclamation point on the problem with RINOs. They eventually end up exactly where most liberals do. They're just a little slower in getting there. But they end up where liberals are. Scozzafava has screwed every RINO in the country. We could say she's guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just how phony and dangerous they are.

Today, Seymour put up a blog post with the title: "Rush, you should be ashamed."

UPDATE II: While I was working on the first update, about 10 p.m., the phone rang here at the National Desk in Watertown. It was Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent, asking about our plans for a bit of post-deadline socializing. And I freaking lost it.

Some of my friends may remember my newsroom blowup in 2007, when I cussed out Ken Hanner and kicked a steel door open on my way out of the Washington Times. Persuaded to reconsider, I eventually quit on good terms in January 2008.

OK, I'm hell on deadline. And my own shortcomings and sins are so glaringly obvious that it's hard for me to blame anyone else for my problems. I goof off and procrastinate when opportunity affords. But when deadline hits, I get kind of crazy. So this was all my fault. Mea culpa.

Still, sometimes, I get that Rodney Dangerfield don't-get-no-respect feeling and, under pressure, I can be even more of a total jerk than usual. Think of General Patton slapping that shell-shock case in Sicily.

So I had a screaming conniption. Impatient by nature, what I wanted to do at that moment in time was to finish the update, so that readers would have context in which to interpret the video. What I did not want to do was to answer the phone and have to think about the questions that Dave Weigel was asking about our post-deadline party plans.

Present at the time in the smoke-filled hotel room that is the National Desk were Ali Akbar, Kerry Picket and Hooah Mac. Surely, one of them would do me the favor of taking the phone and dealing with Weigel's questions. Uh . . . no. Because nobody owes me any favors.

And I freaking lost it. At one point in the two-minute rant that ensued, I was quite literally frothing at the mouth. A lifetime of personal frustration exploded upon friends who were innocent. For this unseemly tantrum, I apologize to all who were forced to witness it. Mea culpa.

However, next time I ask someone to please answer the phone while I'm on deadline -- I pray to God -- just answer the phone. That Jekyll-and-Hyde horror show was more frightening to me than it was to you, my victims. My wife will bake you brownies to compensate, and will never let me live it down.

NY23 UPDATE: Beware the MSM spin!

How much more in the Democratic tank could the Associated Press possibly be?

President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton are lending their political star power to an unlikely Democratic bid to win a special congressional election in an area that's been a Republican bastion for more than a century.
The Nov. 3 contest in upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling, 11-county area where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 45,000, is shaping up as a test of a struggling GOP and a possible gauge of Obama's coattails.
Obama, who carried the district by 5 percentage points in his landslide victory in New York last year, forced the special election when he named the incumbent, Republican John McHugh, his Army secretary. The president will host a fundraiser for the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, later this month in New York City.
In a fundraising e-mail for Owens, Clinton called the special election "bigger than just one candidate or one office ... victory or defeat will also be seen as a referendum on President Obama's agenda." . . .

Yeah. Not even until the fifth paragraph that they mention either the RINO Dede Scozzafava or Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Oh, please don't even get me started on Jazz Shaw of the woefully misnamed "Moderate Voice." (With alternative New Media like this, who needs the MSM?) And because Allah Hates Me, he goes out of his way not to link me at Hot Air. -- even after I went out of my way to toss him a softball chance to unload more snark on Sarah Palin.

Pause. Deep breath. Calm. I'm chopped liver, and chopped liver doesn't have feelings. (Blame Eric Telford.) For something truly interesting about the NY23 race, we turn to libertarian Jason Pye:

Scozzafava supports tax increases (refuses to sign a no tax hike pledge), bailouts, the stimulus bill (she would have been the only Republican to support it), card-check legislation, Cash-for-Clunkers, earmarks, the Davis-Bacon Act and the minimum wage. One of the more ironic twists of this race is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Bill Owens, the Democratic Party nominee, are slamming Scozzafava as a tax-hiking liberal. Even Markos Moulitsas called Scozzafava "the most liberal candidate in the race." . . .
This reminds me of the 2004 GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania between Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Pat Toomey. President George W. Bush and the Republican establishment behind Specter, raising money and campaigning for him. While the principled candidate was left behind.
While many conservatives and libertarians are looking for the GOP to get its act together, they are showing that they are still the party of big government.

Indeed. But for a more cheerful outlook, we seek refreshingly factual reporting, and find it from WTTI in Watertown, N.Y.:

Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug Hoffman opened campaign offices in Watertown, Plattsburgh and Canastota on Saturday.
In Watertown, the Lake Placid CPA rallied a group of supporters at the new office at 106 Court Street, telling them it's time to end the careers of career politicians.
"They want to tell you what you want to hear. And then they get elected and they do what they want to do to promote their career. We don't need more politicians like that," Hoffman told the cheering crowd.

A cheering crowd? For a candidate the Associated Press doesn't even mention until the fifth paragraph? I'm shocked!

More at Memeorandum. I might update later, after I go jab some more pins in my Erik Telford voodoo doll.

Another reminder that the MSM is in the tank for Obama, as if you didn't know that

Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute headlined this "All is well because Obama is in charge," which elucidates a point that the New York Times carefully endeavors to obscure:

A study to be released Monday of financial news coverage this year found that government, Wall Street and a small handful of story lines got the bulk of the attention while much less was paid to the economic troubles of ordinary people. . . .
Reviewing almost 10,000 reports from Feb. 1 to Aug. 31 in newspapers, on news Web sites, on the radio and on network broadcast and cable television, Pew found that almost 40 percent of economic news reports dealt with the trials of the banking and auto industries, and the federal stimulus bill passed in February. . . .
Unemployment and the housing crisis accounted for 12 percent. And, the study said, “stories that tried to explicitly examine the broader impact of the economic downturn on the lives of ordinary Americans filled 5 percent of the economic coverage." . . .
In February and March, the economy was the subject of nearly half of all news coverage, driven mostly by the stimulus bill and the uses of bank bailout money. After those fights died down, financial news coverage fell by more than half.
Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew project, said it was easier for the national news media to cover Washington “than to fan out around the country and measure the impact on real lives.”
“There’s plenty of reason to understand why a lot of this is a Washington and New York story,” he said. “But we’re talking about something that affected almost every American in some way.”

All of which is to say, with unemployment at 9.8 percent and no prospect of it going down in the next six months, the MSM have been ignoring this turd in the punchbowl and pretending that recovery is just around the corner.

What has actually been happening in the economy, of course, is that the way the TARP bailout was structured, it pumped massive liquidity into Wall Street. This inevitably led to a rise in stock prices -- a "sucker's rally" -- that I believe is the main reason we haven't seen a consumer price increase as a result of the Fed's insanely inflationary monetary policy. Relatively little of that extra currency is going to Main Street. Instead, it's been siphoned off into the financial sector and we're seeing an inflationary stock bubble.

Because the MSM desperately wants to believe in the unicorns-and-rainbows magic of Obamanomics, they've highlighted the stock market rally and twisted the headlines about other economic news -- "We only lost 200,000 jobs last month? Great!" -- in an attempt to manufacture consumer confidence.

Alas, consumer confidence isn't magic, either. At some point, the fundmentals actually matter and, as I have occasionally had cause to remind you, the fundamentals still suck.

UPDATE on the Kentucky Killing: 'We Don't Even Know What We Don't Know'

Because law enforcement officials are being extremely circumspect in discussing the death of Bill Sparkman -- whose nude body was found Sept. 12 in the Hoskins family cemetery near Arnetts Fork Road in Clay County, Ky. -- the absence of information has led to extremely irresponsible speculation.

I'm working on a very long, detailed account of the case based on my trip to Kentucky, but I had to lay that aside for a while today when I saw a grossly misleading story in Newsweek. This prompted me to whip out a quick 861 words for The American Spectator:

"He knocked on the wrong door," was the way one resident described what most locals familiar with the case consider the most likely scenario for Sparkman's killing. As the Newseek story notes, eastern Kentucky is known as a haven of marijuana growers. The weed growers plant their crops in Daniel Boone National Forest, which sprawls across the mountainous region and encompasses half of Clay County.
What would be proven if we knew (as we do not) that Sparkman was engaged in Census work at the time of his disappearance -- most likely Sept. 9, three days before his body was discovered in the Hoskins family cemetery some 30 miles east of his home -- and "knocked on the wrong door"?
If the fatal door he knocked on was at the home of a marijuana grower or a drug dealer (methamphetamine and other drugs are also problems in the region), who killed him after mistaking Sparkman's federal identification as evidence that the stranger was a narcotics agent, is that an "anti-government" or "anti-Census" motive? Or is it merely a criminal seeking to prevent detection of his crimes -- the kind of killing that happens with unfortunate frequency in America all the time?
That, however, is strictly a hypothetical scenario. The haste of some journalists and bloggers to attribute Sparkman's mysterious death to a particular motive -- to give it a political meaning -- based on speculation and assumptions, is irresponsible in the extreme. . . .

Read the whole thing. A smart reporter never burns his sources, so I can't identify the Kentucky journalist who this past week exclaimed to me in exasperation: "We don't know anything. Hell, we don't even know what we don't know."

Which is why it was perhaps a fortunate coincidence that a "top Hayekian public intellectual" drove more than 500 miles to spend three days gathering information about the Sparkman case. Students of Friedrich Hayek know how the Nobel Prize-winning economist emphasized that information is diffused widely among the population, so that no "expert" or group of experts can ever claim to have complete knowledge in any given field. The failure of intellectuals to recognize the limits of their own expertise leads to harmful preconceptions and myths, as Greg Ransom has explained.

The Hayekian insight has utility far beyond the field of economics. Appreciating the value of unknown facts -- information beyond our immediate knowledge, which may actually be more important than the facts we do know -- is essential to a genuinely objective pursuit of truth.

The lazy assumption that we know all we need to know, that there cannot be any unknown facts that contradict the beliefs we form on the basis of partial information, is the basis of far too many mistaken beliefs. I've already reported how stereotypes of rural Kentuckians as backward, ignorant and impoverished have resulted in a misleading portrayal of the decent, hard-working, law-abiding citizens of Clay County. (Let's don't even get into the Kelsee Brown angle.) And now we see how a too-eager desire to cast Bill Sparkman's death as a political symbol is leading to assumptions that may be equally misinformed.

It's a free country, which means everyone is free to speculate how and why Bill Sparkman died. But ill-informed speculation and assumptions are no substitute for facts, and there are still too many unknown facts for anyone to pretend to know the motives of whoever put Sparkman's body in that cemetery.

If the editors of Newsweek don't want to pay for solid, sensible, accurate reporting, they need to grab themselves a fresh, hot cup of delicious STFU.

Hit the tip jar, y'all. My wife won't like this one bit, but if I can collect another $500 in the Shoe Leather Reporting Fund, I'll go back to Kentucky and keep after this story until folks in Clay County award me honorary hillbilly status.

UPDATE: Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack calls the Newsweek story "Another Steaming Pile of MSM Journalism," and we've got ourselves a Rule 3 opportunity with a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE II: Yehuda the Rhetorican:

Newsweek -- like much of the Legacy Media -- needs to become re-acquainted with the importance of shoe leather to quality journalism. And I don’t mean it needs a kick in the @$$, although it certainly does.

Speaking of which, how about some kicking rock 'n' roll?

UPDATE III: Linked in Left Coast Rebel's roundup and . . . Well, the Tampa Tribune had an interesting profile of Bill Sparkman. I didn't want to "go there," but as Dan Riehl points out, the speculation that Sparkman was gay has been bouncing around all over the 'sphere for days. Dan e-mailed to mention this to me, and I replied that many people in Clay and Laurel counties suspected that, at the very least, Sparkman had homosexual tendencies. NTTAWWT.

As I told Dan, the problem is that we have no idea whether Sparkman's sexuality (whatever it was, and all I know is what people in Kentucky told me) had anything to do with his disappearance and death. It might be relevant or not. At any rate, that Tampa story is full of very strong suggestions that my Kentucky sources have reasonbly accurate "gaydar."

We await Andrew Sullivan's next hysterical post claiming that Sparkman was a victim of hillbilly homophobia.

UPDATE IV: Paco points out exactly why the Newsweek story sticks in my craw: While I'm driving more than 1,300 round-trip in a 2004 KIA to report this story, Eve Conant gets paid a full-time salary to sit around writing a 1,700-word essay that concludes:

The Census Bureau field-training manual advises employees on everything from walking only in lighted areas to staying away from political issues, especially when someone is hostile: "Do not defend yourself or the government with respondents who say they hate you and all government employees. Indicate that you regret this opinion and express a desire to provide them with a positive experience." Perhaps Bill Sparkman wasn't given the time to follow that sage advice.

Perhaps. And perhaps the staff of Newsweek could take up a collection at their office, so they could buy a clue as to why they're losing credibility.

UPDATE V: Speaking of "losing credibility," Charles Johnson and the few remaining unbanned denizens of LGF Lizardland are going bonkers over Dan Riehl and "the ghey."

Thanks to Bob Belevedere for his latest aggregation.

'Chicago is out? . . . Chicago is out?'

Like Allah says, "Comedy gold."

Me on Twitter:

I'm thinking the influence of the Vlaams Belang-dominated Belgian delegation to the IOC was decisive.

Between the Flemish Menace and ultranationalist fascist sympathizers like Pamela Geller, Chicago was doomed.

If you don't get that joke, don't worry. If you do get that joke, I apologize for the coffee spew all over your computer.

UPDATE: The suspiciously Flemish-looking Michelle Malkin says to "prepare for recriminations." Yeah, liberals are already trying to blame Republicans, but if I live to be 56, I'll be enjoying the recriminations with bikini-clad cuties on the beach in Rio, covering the 2016 Olympics. (Just warning regular readers, so you can get ready for the Mother Of All Tip-Jar Rattles.)

Speaking of bikini-clad cuties, Dan Riehl advises, "Next time, send Sarah Palin." Or, as the former Alaska governor is now known to Charles Johnson, Sharmuta and the LGF gang, "a close associate of Vlaams Belang sympathizer Stacy McCain."

VIDEO: Kelsee Brown is not -- repeat, is not -- a right-wing extremist

MANCHESTER, Ky. -- Having a late dinner Tuesday with Manchester Enterprise news director Morgan Bowling at the Huddle House here, our interview was interrupted by the cook.

"Are you a reporter?" she asked, and when I replied that I was, she said: "Hi, I'm Kelsee, the Huddle House Killer."

Her jocular introduction was answered with a joke of my own, but the young lady -- Kelsee Brown, 19, from Corbin, Ky. -- then told us an amazing story, explaining how she was misrepresented by another reporter covering the Bill Sparkman story. Here is how that Sept. 24 article portrayed Miss Brown:

Kelsee Brown, a waitress at Huddle House, a 24-hour chain restaurant in Manchester, when asked about the death, said she thinks the government sometimes has the wrong priorities.
"Sometimes I think the government should stick their nose out of people's business and stick their nose in their business at the same time. They care too much about the wrong things," she said.

In a brief interview Tuesday night, Miss Brown said that her words were misquoted and her sentiments misconstrued. She said what she was actually trying to tell the reporter -- who had asked her what she thought about the Sparkman killing -- was something entirely different.

Miss Brown said she told the reporter that all she knew about the apparent homicide of the 51-year-old Census worker in the vicinity of Big Creek, about 12 miles east of Manchester, was what she learned from media accounts. Therefore, she was hesitant to pass judgment on the case. Miss Brown says she didn't mention government, and instead was saying that the news media should not "stick their noses in people's business."

However, her words -- which she insists were misquoted and misinterpreted -- were subsequently cited on an Internet discussion board under the headline, "Ignorant red state morons defend lynching of census worker."

Miss Brown says she is not a Republican, but is a registered Democrat and, during her 2008 senior year at Corbin High School, was actually a leader of students supporting Barack Obama for the presidency.

Miss Brown then recounted her story for my camera. Here is the world-exclusive video:

Miss Brown emphasized that she does not speak for her employer and that management of Huddle House share her deep sympathy for Sparkman's friends and family. Having spoken at some length to Miss Brown, I can testify that she is very friendly and cheerful, with a keen mind and a warm smile. Anyone wishing to learn more about this interview should contact Morgan Bowling (e-mail) at the Manchester Enterprise, (606) 598-2319.

-- Robert Stacy McCain

UPDATE: Check out this article from Monday's London (Ky.) Sentinel-Echo about the "pure speculation" and "misinformation" in the national media.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m.: Linked by Jimmie Bise Jr. at Sundries Shack, Moe Lane at Red State, and Dan Riehl at Riehl World View, and at Memeorandum.

Sparkman case update: Kentucky-bound

FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- Stopped here and hopped on the computer in a motel lobby, to file a quick report on my progress en route to Clay County, Ky., and give you an update on the latest headlines surrounding the murder of Bill Sparkman.

First, speculation about the motive for the killing of Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census worker, continues. Roger Hedgecock's WorldNetDaily column:

Last week, Sparkman's death became fodder for more attacks on "right-wing violence." Bloggers wanted to "send the body to Glenn Beck," and a Time magazine piece speculated that Sparkman was a victim of the culture of another McCain-voting Southern state
Now it looks more like Sparkman was yet another victim of illegal drug operations on national forest land, and possibly also a victim of our still open border with Mexico.

Mexicans? In Clay County, Kentucky? Is there a "Little Tijuana" neighborhood down in Manchester? I expect to be there before suppertime, so we'll wait and see about that angle. The case is making headlines as far away as Scotland, where Andrew Purcell of the Herald writes:

The death is fuelling speculation he was killed simply because he worked for the federal government – now the target of a wave of hate from extreme right-wingers. . . .
Dave Breyer, of the regional FBI field office in Louisville, sought to play down assumptions a violent dislike of bureaucratic interference could have motivated the killer.
"I think to give this impression he was strung up because he was a federal employee is giving a bad impression to the nation," he said. . . .
Carl Greene, a reporter at [the Corbin, Ky.] Times-Tribune, said it was just as likely Sparkman stumbled upon a drug operation. "The mountain people grow a lot of marijuana," he said. "There are methamphetamine labs there. The place has gotten a reputation. It is an area where the law is sometimes ignored."

Ah, so according to Purcell, the killers are either (a) right-wing extremists or (b) dope gangs. And then there's Dan Riehl's theory, but no need to go into that just now. The main reason I want to see Clay County for myself is summed up by this Associated Press article in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Positive news stories about Clay County don't come often.
When it comes to national news, the rural county about 170 miles southeast of Louisville seems to be a magnet for negative headlines. And to some local residents, the recent discovery of the body of U.S. census worker Bill Sparkman is just the latest blemish. . . .
"It makes us all seem like idiots that do anything they can do to make money," said Freda Collins, 41, of the Burning Springs community near Manchester. "You feel embarrassed for one thing. You get to the point where you don't want to tell anyone where you're from because of the stereotypes. But what can you do?"

Indeed. Well, I'm coming down there to report facts, not stereotypes. Assuming that Clay County is not entirely populated by moonshiners, meth cookers, Mexicans, marijuana growers and militia extremists, I hope to provide a more balanced perspective on this rural community.

Ask yourself this: How many murders happen in Washington, D.C., every year? So how come this one murder -- because it happened in Appalachia -- has generated such lurid speculation?

Hang on, Freda Collins. Just another 390 miles to go today, and I should be there by nightfall. As for the rest of y'all -- hit the tip jar.

I can scavenge pretty well when I have to. They serve a free continental breakfast here at this motel, and everybody evidently assumes I'm a guest, even though I just pulled off the I-79 exit and walked in the door. But professional journalism savvy like that will only get me so far . . . hit the tip jar.

OK, a quick trip to the men's room, refill my coffee and grab another donut from the continental breakfast buffet, and then I'm back on the road.

UPDATE: 9:55 a.m.: Just got off the phone with Trooper First Class Don Trosper of the Kentucky State Police, official spokesman for the investigation. Asked if he had any concern over Internet chatter about the Sparkman case, Trooper Trosper said: "It's just speculation and rumors. . . . We concern ourselves with facts."

Me, Moe Lane and Malkin vs. the MSM: The Media Elite's Strange Priorities and Misallocation of Scarce Resources

"I don’t actually want to see newspapers go away, seeing as they’ve got structural advantages on news gathering that I envy. Like actual budgets: when someone like Robert Stacy McCain decides that he’s going to go down to Kentucky and cover the Bill Sparkman murder, he has to shake the tip jar, write a few posts highlighting the issue, and hope that somebody comes through for his expenses. The equivalent NYT editor simply calls up the relevant department and has somebody set it up. The ability to follow stories that easily is a powerful ability; would that the NYT was willing to take advantage of it.
-- Moe Lane of Red State

My good friend Moe (we're like this, Moe and me) was addressing Michelle Malkin's criticism of the New York Times, criticism that might be applied more generally to all the elite media.

Speaking of which, if the NYT desires a token conservative presence on its op-ed page, why hire another "meritocrat" pundit like Ross Douthat, who can't be bothered to pick up a phone, much less get in his car and go talk to sources in person?

The NYT would have done much better to (a) spend that money on actual reporting, and (b) fill the designated "conservative" spot on its op-ed page with rotating freelance submissions from actual conservatives. You know: People like Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Mark Steyn, Mary Katharine Ham, Rush Limbaugh . . .

Yet the same criticism about misallocation of resources might be extended far beyond the Times building on West 43 Street, to encompass much of the blogosphere and even the conservative movement. My good friend J.P. Friere, formerly of The American Spectator and now with the Washington Examiner, likes to say that conservatives don't need more Bill Buckleys, we need more Bob Novaks, and he's right. (Although Hannah Giles in a thong is a lot easier on the eyes than Novak ever was.)

Nowadays, every 22-year-old with a laptop and a Wordpress account wants to play the pundit, give us The Big Picture, and lecture us with their own ill-informed answers to that eternal question, "Whither Conservatism?"

Here's your answer: Shut up, kid, I've got T-shirts older than you.

Today, down in rural Virginia, Al Regnery's throwing a big barbecue. All the big shots will be there and I'm invited. I'll be running late, and I'm worried about what economists call the opportunity costs of attending the annual shindig, rather than staying here to work, work, work.

There's only one of me and I'm a freelancer. I don't have an AmEx card for travel expenses like the big shots at the networks do. It takes a couple of business days for PayPal transactions to be processed, and until that tip-jar cash clears the bank, I'll be pushing it to the limit just to get to Clay County, Kentucky, by Monday, and only hope I can avoid my checks don't start bouncing before those payments clear.

Meanwhile, I've promised the American Spectator a column that's already half-written and has to be turned in before I try to get some sleep, then depart before dawn in my 2004 KIA, so I can try to file something -- at least a brief report -- with a Kentucky dateline by noon Monday. Never mind that we're a one-car household and my wife's steamed because she'll have to improvise her own transportation for a few days. (A rental car might cost $60 a day, nudge, nudge.)

Considering all my disadvantages, then, perhaps you understand my resentment of the media elite's overprivileged journalistic inertia. When I think of the elite, with their Harvard educations and their fat salaries, sitting around pontificating about the Big Picture . . . well, I'm not ashamed to rattle the tip jar, because I think I'm not the only one who's sick and tired of the MSM's better-than-thou attitude.

When I started blogging full-time in March 2008, it was only a time-waster between freelance gigs. Also, I had at least one prospect for a staff position at a publication I won't name. But then those guys started jerking me around, asking me to contribute some freelance work for them, just as a kind of tryout.

Screw that. As if I couldn't hustle up freelance opportunities without trying out for a job like some unknown grass-green rookie. I'd rather freelance for the Spectator and Pajamas Media -- people who treat me with some respect and appreciate my efforts.

So, as always when faced with such a problem, I asked myself: What Would Hunter S. Thompson Do?

Double down. Bet on myself. Spend out my 401(k) to pay the bills until I could turn this crazy gonzo thing into a revenue stream sufficient to establish my financial independence. And then, next time they're looking to hire an award-winning journalist with more than two decades of newspaper experience who also does HTML and digital photography, knows his way around the blogosphere and Web 2.0, has mad skilz with Final Cut Pro and PhotoShop, my answer will be a question:

"What's it worth to you, buddy? If you want me, do you want me with or without that blog where I can say anything that crosses my mind? Do you want me to give up that wild fun and all those loyal tip-jar hitters, or do you want me to bring them along with me? I can go either way here, but I've got to know if you're serious about wanting me, because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You're not going to push me around like some kid fresh out of J-school. Been there, done that, ain't going back for more. But I'm a reasonable man, and am willing to entertain any reasonable offers. So give me a number here, and I'll tell you whether it's too low. I write for money."

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. And things are looking pretty weird right about now. My wife's worried sick about the bills. She's also worried sick about me getting into trouble in Kentucky, but I told her it's nothing. If they'd didn't kill me in Kampala, they won't kill me in Clay County.

BTW, I just got off the phone with Track-a-'Crat, who seems to be coming down with Appalachian Swine Flu. He's got all the symptoms, so he'll probably be too sick to go to his day-job Monday. He'll have to be rushed to see a specialist, and I told him I know just the man to see: The world-renowned Dr. Raoul Duke of Louisville, Ky.

Rent a convertive, Track-a-'Crat, and leave the rest to me. Sometimes, the cure for Appalachian Swine Flu is worse than the disease . . .

Just keep hitting that tip jar, you ungrateful bastards. Baby, it's about to be showtime!

Michelle Malkin misspells RAAAAACIST!

You see why The Boss asked me to read over her manuscript of the Best. Book. Evah! Otherwise little typos like failing to spell raaaaaacist correctly -- remember, Michelle, it's five A's -- could undermine her credibility.

Make no mistake, the accusation of raaaaacism is intended to undermine Michelle's credibility. Michelle did a post about schoolchildren being brainwashed to sing rap praises of Dear Leader, and a San Francisco Chronicle blogger reacts by linking an utterly unrelated "Jesus Camp" video and saying:

Now I'd bet Michelle would say, "Aww, that's so cute!" Why? Because the kids are white and its George Bush? Yeah, right. And so there's the racial problem -- she can ignore singing if its done by white school kids praising a white Republican President, but if the subject's America's first black President, she gets really mad.

No, @$$hole, what gets Michelle and a lot of other people mad is that the allegedly superior minds in the MSM are so blind to their own biases. The media's worshipful attitude toward Obama -- as Jesse Jackson might say, "If the president's black, you can't attack" -- is a perfect example of a phenomenon that a conservative friend pointed out to me years ago.

Most Americans get along just fine and dandy with people of other races in their everyday real lives. What makes them angry is the way the media portray race relations. The endless reiteration of preachy liberal messages send a clear signal from the MSM elite: "You're so stupid, we must remind you constantly that prejudice is a bad thing."

This elitist condescension is insulting, but if you complain about it, that only proves what a bigot you are. It's a Catch-22, see? So if Michelle Malkin has the courage to speak out -- her latest column is about the New Jersey school indoctrination -- this makes her the target of vicious attacks. Not only is she not going along with the progressive agenda, but she relentlessly exposes the manipulations of the MSM propaganda.

Are complaints about MSM bias all about politics? Republicans just "working the refs"? No. Because so much of what people know (or think they know) about the world comes via media, the lopsided liberal bias has the effect of cluttering people's minds with false impressions.

• Don't worry about radical Islam, the MSM say, the real danger is those "anti-government" Tea Party rallies.
• Don't worry about the exploding federal deficit, the MSM say, the real danger is those racists who didn't vote for Obama.
• Don't worry about the mistakes in our bogus reporting, the MSM say, the real danger is Glenn Beck.

The media distort real life like a funhouse mirror, and if all you know about the world is what you get from the media, you might actually believe that Glenn Beck is a frog killer and the 9/12 March On D.C. was all about raaaaaacism.

Michelle Malkin is a "white supremacist"? Make. Me. Laugh.

UPDATE: Thanks to the anonymous commenter for this screencap of LGF's Charles Johnson attacking Michelle Malkin this week with a Huffington Post "white supremacist" smear:

The sick part of it is that the slimeball has more or less confessed that his leftward turn is all about the money. And now the downfall of Mad King Charles continues with a ROTLMAO video.

Hanged Census worker possible suicide; AP's anonymous source wrong?

When this news was first reported, I warned:

Drug dealers and 'shiners are notoriously hostile toward anyone snooping around, and Sparkman may well have stumbled onto some sort of criminal situation. . . .
Let's wait to see what law enforcement discovers before jumping to any kind of politicized Let's-Blame-Glenn-Beck speculation.

And now, via Hot Air, comes this interesting bit of news:

Trosper said the initial AP story on the death contains “flaws and errors.” That means it’s possible that the AP’s claim, based on an anonymous source, that he had the word “fed” scrawled on his chest could be false. Asked if that were the case, Trosper declined to comment.

In other words, don't believe everything you read. There are a couple of old newsroom sayings that apply here:

• The story too good to check. That is to say, a story which is so awesomely perfect in its illustration of some idea, you don't double-check to make sure the basic facts are right. If you're familiar with the Stephen Glass saga at The New Republic, you know how Glass cleverly fabricated stories about thuggish Republicans, selfish dot-com entrepreneurs, etc., which perfectly fit the preconceived biases of his liberal editors. Beware of this kind of "just so" story.
• If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Skepticism and attention to detail are vital to good news reporting. Spending 10 years as a news editor at The Washington Times, I often had to check to make sure that if a reporter wrote about Rep. Joe Jones (D-Texas), that Jones was actually a Democrat, actually from Texas, and actually was named Joe Jones and not James Jones or John James. Reporters sometimes get in a hurry and get things wrong, and if you forget to fact-check the small stuff, you're taking big risks, because sometimes the most significant clue that a story is essentially wrong is the presence of a few bogus "facts."

When the "fed" note was reported in the headline of the AP story, based on an anonymous source, the Associated Press was investing a lot of credibility in that one nameless source.

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post -- who has done solid reporting on IG-Gate, by the way -- clarifies the misimpressions created by the AP story:

State and federal law enforcement officials on Thursday dismissed the suggestion from a news service report that the man, William Sparkman, 51, may have been targeted because he worked for the federal government, calling that speculative. . . .
"I think to give this impression that he was strung up because he was a federal employee is giving a bad impression to the nation," said David Beyer, spokesman for the FBI field office in Louisville, which is working with state officials on the investigation.

True story: Early one Saturday morning in 1996, it was my turn in the rotation of staffers at the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune to travel down to Atlanta and cover the scene at the Olympics. Turned on the TV and saw that a bomb had gone off in Centennial Park the night before. Soon, anonymous "officials" were quoted pointing the finger of blame at security guard Richard Jewell -- and they were wrong.

Jewell, it turned out, was something of a hero who actually helped victims at the bombing scene. The perpetrator was domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph. And yet, based on anonymous "officials," the national media spent the next several days depicting Jewell as the presumptive bomber. An injustice inflicted on an innocent man by a too-credulous media.

If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

More at Memeorandum.

Because Our Commenters Deserve the Best

In March 2008, my first month of full-time blogging here at The Other McCain, I had 6,000 total visits. As of today -- approaching a cumulative total of 2.2 million visits -- we've already had more than 126,000 visits this month, which isn't yet halfway over.

More readers means more comments. Because I'm notorious (not the same as being famous, but better than being anonymous) comments have always been moderated here, which seems rather to discourage some people.

The delay caused by the moderation process prevents the spontaneous thrill of seeing your own words posted immediately, but it can't be helped. I don't mind the raving left-wing moonbats -- even most of Isabella's comments get approved -- but as I've sometimes explained to Smitty, there are two things I can't stand in the comments:

• False-flag trolls, who pretend to be conservatives as a subterfuge for pushing liberal messages; and
• Attacks on the prestige of the blog, which have the effect (and, I believe, the purpose) of telling readers that this entire project is a waste of time.

Don't even try putting that kind of crap in my comments. If you want to attack me, start your own freaking blog and we'll have a Rule 4 flame-war. But you're not going to hijack my bandwidth in order to tell my readers not to read the blog.

OK, all of that was prelude to explaining that yesterday, under the title "The Road to Dunkirk," I posted this quote from Appeasement by A.L. Rowse:

"The practical way of looking at things . . . may serve well enough in ordinary, normal times. But our times are not 'normal' in the good old Victorian sense, and never will be again. . . . These men, even Halifax, were essentially middle-class, not aristocrats. They did not have the hereditary sense of the security of the state, unlike Churchill, Eden, the Cecils. Nor did they have the toughness of the 18th-century aristocracy. They came at the end of the ascendancy of the Victorian middle-class, deeply affected as that was by high-mindedness and humbug. They all talked, in one form or another, the language of disingenuousness and cant: it was second nature to them – so different from Churchill. . . . It meant that they failed to see what was true, until too late, when it was simply a question of survival."

That quote prompted the comment:

I feel like you're trying to tell me something, but I just can't wrap my brain around it.

Which in turn inspired me to write an essay at the Hot Air Green Room:

Astute reader! I had been re-reading Rowse (whose brilliant little book was assigned reading in a college British history class I took 30 years ago) when Dan Riehl called yesterday to talk about this "Gryphen"/Griffin affair.
For the past week, the anti-Palin blogger Griffin and his PDS-affected buddies have been claiming that Dan and I are “minions” doing the bidding of Palin’s team. In actuality, I can't even get a comment from them. Two phone calls and a text message yesterday, seeking a response to the latest gossip tabloid smear, went unanswered.
Sic semper hoc. The people who control access to Republican leaders go out of their way to prevent their bosses from ever having direct contact with any rank-and-file conservative who wants to help. It's a tragically familar story . . .

It's 3,800 words, so read the whole thing. You deserve it.

'He hasn't gotten where his is today by being a racial opportunist, has he?'

So says NBC's Matt Lauer to The Boss in the "Today Show" appearance in which, as Human Events says, Lauer "loses his cool":

This is a good example of why I hate television news. Say what you will about the impact of the blogosphere on journalism, TV has been degrading our profession for decades.

Television is a totalitarian medium, which has trouble accommodating diversity of opinion in a Hayekian universe of facts, where not all facts support any one particular side of an argument. TV tends to takes one of three approaches to controversy:

1. "That's the way it is" -- The Walter Cronkite Consensus, a phony moderation that may in some sense be "objective," but is never really neutral. This is the TV version of the phony conventional wisdom that David Broder peddled for decades.
2. Silencing dissent -- The Left has, correctly, excoriated the Beltway press corps for failing to provide due-diligence examination of the arguments in favor of the Iraq invasion. Even ferociously partisan Republicans who were the most hawkish in 2002-03 must now admit that Americans didn't get the whole story in the months leading up to the invasion. One of the reasons was that TV news did an excellent job of ignoring skeptics, not all of whom were International A.N.S.W.E.R.-type peacenik kooks. TV news tends to reduce arguments to exactly two sides, pro and con, and to exclude voices that don't fit neatly into those categories.
3. The "Crossfire" Syndrome -- Speaking of Manichean dualism! Lauer evidently feels obligated to challenge and dispute an assertion with which he disagrees. He is not content to do what a good print-news interviewer always does in such a situation: Let the subject of the interview speak their piece, and then come back later to ask them about some particular fact that contradicts their viewpoint.

One of the oldest tricks in the book, as a newspaper reporter, is the give-'em-enough-rope interview method. You've got somebody caught dead to rights -- the county commissioner who gave a no-bid contract to his brother-in-law, a fact clearly shown by documentary evidence -- and yet the obligation of fairness requires that the crooked commissioner has the right to respond to the accusations against him.

No need to be adversarial in such a situation. In fact, the reporter in this scenario wants to present himself as sympathetic and open-minded: "Hey, what's your side of the story?" You save your toughest question -- your smoking-gun "gotcha" -- for the end, because if the source gets all huffy and hostile then, you've already got a whole notebook full of quotes.

TV news, as a medium, doesn't work that way. Everything is real-time and the clock rules. Lauer knows going in that he's got exactly X-number of minutes with Malkin, and begins with the determination to control the interview for its entirety in a way that no print reporter ever does (or should).

There have been times I've talked to a source for an hour or more, and the entire news value of that interview was two sentences. Print news is patient in a way that live TV is not.

Much criticism of "the media" is actually a criticism of television, and of TV's unexamined influence on other media. As a print reporter, it does not matter what my opinion is -- especially in a place like Washington, D.C., which has now fewer than four daily newspapers.

So long as I'm reporting facts accurately, any imbalance can be counteracted by either (a) a follow-up story the next day, (b) the outraged letter-to-the-editor presenting "the other side," or (c) competing coverage in another paper, reporting whatever it was I missed in my story.

TV news is not as easy as it looks -- for a 2001 interview, I watched ABC's Peter Jennings do a live studio anchor on George W. Bush's first White House press conference, and was impressed -- but it cannot be done well by people who are not conscious of its limitations and inherent biases as a medium.

Jennings took heat for bias -- he was notoriously sympathetic to Israel's enemies, which critics attributed to his having shagged every Arab hottie within reach back when he was a Mideast correspondent -- but he nevertheless had a concern for professionalism that Lauer entirely lacks.

Believe it or not, Jennings took his critics seriously. Conscious of his own liberal views, he had a real curiosity about what made people see things differently.

Jennings and I stood in the snow on the sidewalk outside the ABC News Washington that day, taking a smoke break. (He kept a pack of Camel Lights in his desk, but said, "Don't report this. My wife would kill me.") And as we stood there, off-the-record, Jennings began to interview me.

Who was I? Where did I come from? How many kids did I have? How did I end up at The Washington Times? The man had a real desire to know, and that had a real impact on my perception of a guy whom I'd been prepared to discvoer was a blow-dried Ted Baxter stereotype. Biased or not, Jennings was a real reporter, a guy who took notes and paid attention.
In fact, my feature profile of Jennings was so positive that our editor-in-chief, Wes Pruden, felt the need to edit the story personally, and include a bit of snarky negativity that I considered most unfortunate. And, alas for poor Peter, it wasn't Mrs. Jennings who killed him, but those Camel Lights.

Matt Lauer, quite frankly, is not fit to be called a "journalist" in the sense that Peter Jennings was. We can trace a descending arc in the quality of TV journalism, and Matt Lauer is not an apogee of that arc.

Headline of the Year

Newsweek's Obama Correspondent
Joins Administration

First thing Daren Briscoe did? Collect his back pay.