Free Republic

See You in the Funny Papers A tribute to an anti-mentor. The vice provost of California State University, Northridge, retires today. Ordinarily that would be unworthy of a national newspaper's notice, but Cynthia Rawitch was a formative figure in your humble columnist's professional and intellectual development. The student newspaper, the Daily Sundial, hinted at why in a February story on her planned retirement: She worked for 29 years in the journalism department, including a 10-year period in which she served as advisor and publisher of the Daily Sundial. "Being advisor to the student newspaper was absolutely the best experience I...

In Wednesday’s edition of "Best of the Web Today" (BOTWT), James Taranto takes The Associated Press to task for its "accountability journalism" approach being a "departure from its old-fashioned just-the-facts style of journalism."Taranto also seizes upon this quote by Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas in an article published in American Journalism Review about coverage of the Duke "rape" case: "We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong." "The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong." This is reminiscent of the "fake but accurate" defense of CBS's Bush National Guard hoax. If...

It’s been a month since James Taranto and his wannabe pundit joined together in Best of the Web Today (BOTWT) to gangbang Harvard University terrorism expert Jessica Stern with erroneous accounts in the New York Sun and BOTWT about her remarks on religious extremism at a conference organized by security think tank EastWest institute.As of yet, Taranto has not seen fit to:† Correct the shoddy reporting he cited from , on which his shoddy analysis was based;† Disclose* to BOTWT and OpinionJournal readers why he did not verify the facts in the Sun article himself, instead of relying upon the...

James Taranto’s "Best of the Web Today" (BOTWT) on Thursday, July 5th, led off with an item about how the suspects in the failed London and Glasgow terror plots were depicted by The Associated Press ("[t]hey had diverse backgrounds, coming from countries around the globe, but all shared youth and worked in medicine"), which bent over backwards to sidestep the incontrovertible fact that the countries from which they immigrated to England are overwhelmingly Muslim.Then to buttress his case that it is disingenuous – and dangerous - to pretend that the terrorists aren’t all Muslim, Taranto adds: Why would that matter?...

James Taranto spotlights a piece about an EastWest Institute conference from the New York Sun in Friday’s edition of his "Best of the Web Today" column (curiously, he did not include this item in a new feature he calls "Wannabe Pundits" - but this is a whole ‘nother story that’s long and convoluted and has an expanding cast of characters, so The Stiletto must leave it for later). In a recent post, The Stiletto suggested that Taranto has been somewhat remiss in making disclosures ethical journalists typically make when they have a particular interest or stake in something they are...

In a classic example of misleading by omission, OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto’s bio states, "He attended California State University, Northridge." In a commentary about Marilee Jones, who had lied to her bosses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology about her educational credentials for 28 years, Taranto belatedly fills in the blanks: I left high school after my sophomore year; and although I spent several years in college, I never bothered to graduate. Noting that "[b]y all accounts Marilee Jones did an excellent job," Taranto brushes aside the central issue in her dismissal - "[o]stensibly Ms. Jones was forced out because she...

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale--with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale. . . .