Free Republic

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...

In the ABC News blog, "The Blotter," Brian Ross reports that the list of luminaries who say that they were the subjects of fake interviews written by former ABC News consultant Alexis Debat, 35, and published in Politique Internationale is growing exponentially.In addition to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) who said an article published in the June issue French foreign affairs journal was a fabrication, the list of faked interviews now includes: Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder...

A Chinese court sentenced reporter Zi Beijia, 28, to a year in prison for faking a hidden camera television story about cardboard-filled pork buns, reports The Associated Press. According to testimony at Zi’s trial, he paid four migrant workers from Shaanxi province to make the buns according to his instructions, which included stuffing the dough with cardboard softened with caustic soda and a small amount of fatty pork, and then edited the footage at home. A freelance reporter for Beijing Television, Zi’s motive for faking the story was to advance his career. Unfortunately, it is not unheard of for freelance...

The fallout from Armenian Genocide denier James Taranto’s July 26th column, "It Didn’t Happen," continues over these charges of countenancing genocide against Barack Obama and of genocide denial against John Kerry: Barack Obama's latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq. …One may take the position that genocide would not be the likely result of an American retreat from Iraq. That is the view of Mr....

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 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?...