Free Republic

The line between liberal political punditry and ouright liberal politcal activism at MSNBC continues to fade to the very vanishing point. In the latest promo for his All In show, Chris Hayes boasts "I'm not just a passive witness. I am not there to just tell you a story. I'm there to act out: to do it in real time—to do politics, not talk about it." There's something comic about Hayes' delivery. He speaks with all the strength and conviction of President Obama laying down a red line to Vladimir Putin. View the video here.

The Society of Professional Journalism’s code of ethics is apparently unknown to, and easily dismissed by, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. On “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Monday, the anchor introduced Politico’s Jonathan Martin after playing a clip of former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain suggesting some reporters at an event in Texas check the Society of Professional Journalism’s “code of ethics.” “Jonathan Martin is the senior reporter for Politico and broke the original story,” she said. “I assume you read the journalistic code of ethics, whatever that is.” Martin replied by saying he had his copy “well-thumbed.”

The TNR saga is slowly seeping into the media, with posts this morning at the Washington Post and the New York Times, in addition to last night's mention in the New York Observer. Not a single one of these outlets discusses the fact that Franklin Foer spent the better part of 13 pages alleging a military conspiracy spanning four bases in three countries involving dozens of soldiers, from privates to colonels.I guess they didn't want to discuss how nutty that explanation sounds. Nor did they mention that Foer and The New Republic refused to apologize to those soldiers in Iraq...

It took four months of dodging, ducking, bobbing, and weaving, but bloggers have finally pinned Franklin Foer and The New Republic to the mat. Yesterday afternoon, Foer's online edition of the magazine published a long, self-pitying, highly defensive screed about the Scott Beauchamp articles that accused American soldiers of casual atrocities in Iraq in which the Editor of The New Republic admitted the magazine would no longer stand behind or vouch for their accuracy: "When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that....

A major sex scandal story involving one of the leading presidential candidates is believed to be soon published by the LA Times, Big Head DC has learned. Details are slowly trickling in through people who’ve heard about the story, and with Larry Flynt saying he’s set to reveal a “huge” sex scandal story involving a sitting senator in the coming days, the rumors seem to be gathering traction. “So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that ‘everyone knows’ the LA Times was sitting on...

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...

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?...

Dina Temple-Raston, who covers the FBI for National Public Radio, did a story last week on objections by civil libertarians to the bureau's tactics in conducting surveillance without court orders. The first person she quoted was an official at the American Civil Liberties Union. Temple-Raston is also the co-author of a new book titled "In Defense of Our America." The other author is Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. The book "illustrates the dangerous erosion of the Bill of Rights in the age of terror," as the organization's Web site puts it. Does being partners with such a prominent...

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...

WorldNetDaily not for sale WASHINGTON – I have often wondered why everyone in this town thinks alike. Now I know. They are all paid by the same master. That's the conclusion I am beginning to draw following the latest disclosure that a prominent columnist-pundit has been on the take from the Bush administration. First it was Armstrong Williams confessing his journalistic sin of accepting a $240,000 payoff from the Bush Education Department for promoting the expansion of the federal government's unconstitutional grab for power over schools. Then came the disclosure that Maggie Gallagher took a mere $21,500 in payola to...

" . . . Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. . . . Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story." This is part of the "Code of Ethics" of the Society of Professional Journalists, an organization dedicated to protecting and improving journalism. During a "town-hall" style meeting with the troops in Kuwait, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked the 2,300 or so soldiers to ask him "tough...

Earlier this month, CNN and an organization called "Rock the Vote" co-sponsored a Democratic presidential debate. In case you don't remember, it was the one when Howard Dean managed to simultaneously insult both liberal blacks and Southern whites by saying Southerners may be racists but he wants their votes anyway. But that's all history now. What's news is that part of the debate was rigged. It was a tiny little bit of the debate - truly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things - but highly illustrative of why "youth politics" is so bogus in the first place. One of...

<p>On Aug. 7, a story on the cover of the Sports section about the Giants game at Pacific Bell Park was filed by a Bee reporter who was not at the game. The reporter watched the game on television at a location away from the stadium.</p>

Jayson Blair, a young reporter for the New York Times, has just been forced to resign because he has written over three dozen articles for that newspaper over the last few years which were flatly false. He lied about facts, he lied about alleged quotes in his articles, he lied about even being in the cities from which he claimed to file his stories. But this is not about Blair, it is about the Times permitting, or even encouraging, his journalistic dishonesty. The facts have come out only in part in the Times. It assigned three editors and five reporters...

CNN.com has begun running stripped-down ads that look a lot like editorial links, raising some concern among some journalism ethics experts. The online news site, owned by AOL Time Warner, is featuring advertising text links that appear at the top of Technology, World and U.S. News pages, adjacent to news headlines. Examples of text include: "If you Love Coffee," "Up to 80% off Ink!" or "Avoid Bad Retailers." Though the tags link to marketing Web pages rather than news stories, they are not clearly labeled as having been sponsored, or paid for by advertisers--a concern for some journalism ethics...

AP Fires Reporter After Source Query Mon Sep 16, 5:11 PM ET WASHINGTON (AP) - The Associated Press has dismissed a reporter after the news agency could not confirm the existence of people quoted by name in a number of his stories. AP reviewed stories by Washington reporter Christopher Newton after receiving inquiries about two experts he quoted in a Sept. 8 piece about crime statistics. Editors then found a number of additional stories quoting people whose existence could not be verified. Most of these quotes were attributed to individuals with academic credentials or working in policy research. "Chris Newton...