CHILDHOOD’S END: MSNBC needs to explain!

TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012

Part 2—Is someone doctoring photos: For decades, we liberals got to roll our eyes at those gullible ditto-heads.

They would phone Rush Limbaugh to state their full allegiance. When they did, they would recite the mélange of bogus, false and doctored facts El Rushbo had been spewing.

If we lower the tax rate, we get higher revenue! Global warming is all about sunspots! No claim was too bogus to be recited. If Rush said it, it was true!

It was good for liberal self-esteem to see these pitiful public displays. Surely, we liberals are the smart, “nuanced” people, we told ourselves down through the years.

Today, comment threads in liberaldom offer similar displays. Liberals burning with true belief recite the scripts they’ve been served by their own cable masters. One example:

Last Wednesday, Kevin Drum offered this perfectly sensible post about the George Zimmerman case. Drum’s view: Given the nature of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, it’s unlikely that Zimmerman will be convicted of a crime. Drum based his judgment on a report about the law in the Tampa Bay Times.

If Zimmerman is charged, will he be convicted? Should he be convicted under terms of that much-maligned law? In each case, we have no idea. But rather quickly, Drum’s comment thread spilled with tortured tribal reasoning—and with bogus facts. This comment came quite quickly:

COMMENTER (4/4/12): Where "near your size" is defined, from Trayon Martin's perspective, to be “100 lbs. heavier and chasing me in an SUV.”

Was Zimmerman 100 pounds heavier than Martin? The commenter was advancing a “fact” which had proved to be bogus. But so what? Soon, another commenter recited the same bogus claim. This commenter was armed with the modern-day liberal’s weapon of choice—a pleasing dollop of snark:

COMMENTER: Zimmerman weighs 250 lbs. Trayvon weighs 140.

The video shows NOT A MARK on Zimmermman. I've actually seen the REAL one.

Trayvon keeps getting bigger and uglier every time you losers post. First he was 6'; now he's 6'3"; what next? 9 feet? Keep your story straight, at least.

Within the context of the thread, this commenter seemed to think that conservative “losers” were embellishing Martin’s height to gain a tribal advantage. In fact, it was Charles Blow, seeming to cite Martin’s parents, who first said Martin was 6-foot-3. And no:

Zimmerman doesn’t weigh 250 pounds, a fact which was quite clear by last week. (For more information, see below.) But that was the “fact” we had been fed by our “liberal” post-journalistic machines. And alas:

As Limbaugh’s ditto-heads have done for decades, we liberals have been marching forth to repeat our own tribe’s bogus claims. We laughed at them when they played it this way.

Now, the ditto-heads are increasingly us.

In this case, Drum’s conservative commenters seemed better informed on the question of height and weight. His liberal commenters had cast themselves in the ditto-head role, faithfully repeating the bogus claim they had heard from people they trusted. Just a guess:

It may not have entered these commenters’ heads that they were possibly being played by the high-profile people they trusted. That Sharpton, O’Donnell and Schultz had been feeding them reams of bullroar—had perhaps been feeding them lies.

Alas! A stream of bogus factual claims has been advanced on MSNBC over the past three or four weeks. In some cases, the bogus claims were false; in other cases, the claims were unknown, unproven. But just as in the Limbaugh/Fox years, so too in this brave new corporate world: A steady stream of true believers have been prepared to repeat what they hear.

They’ve heard a lot of bogus claims—as in the Fox/Limbaugh years.

Last night, matters got worse. On Politics Nation, Al Sharpton was interviewing Kendall Coffey and Ken Padowitz, a pair of Florida “legal experts” who can be relied upon to echo Sharpton’s views and claims. As in the Fox/Limbaugh years, this leads to the state we liberals have mocked as “epistemic closure.”

As usual, Sharpton, Coffey and Padowitz were echoing each others’ views. To watch the full segment, click here.

For us, a rather shocking moment occurs around 11:45 on this tape.

At that point, without comment from Sharpton, new videotape of Zimmerman appears. It offers a very large close-up of the back of his head as he arrives at the Sanford police station on the night of the killing.

This close-up isn’t grainy. And wow! In this close-up image, the back of Zimmerman’s head seems to be completely pristine. There isn’t the slightest sign of any blemish or injury.

There isn’t a stub of a hair out of place. There is no sign of any injury. To judge from this new close-up view, Zimmerman didn’t suffer the slightest wound or abrasion on the night of the killing—just exactly as we libs have been told. (See the second comment to Drum, above.)

Does that close-up represent an accurate picture of Zimmerman’s head on the night of the killing? We have no idea. But this close-up photo is impossible to reconcile with two earlier close-up shots, including one close-up which was aired by MSNBC on March 29. That close-up seemed to show an obvious goose-egg on the back of Zimmerman’s head, crowned with an obvious abrasion.

Later, ABC produced another close-up of Zimmerman’s head. This close-up was grainer, and more distant, than the image aired by MSNBC. But it seemed to show two abrasions on the back of Zimmerman’s head.

Which of these three close-up views is not like the others? In fact, none of these images seems like the either one of others! But last night’s close-up completely contrasts with the close-up this same cable channel showed on March 29.

On March 29, Zimmerman had an obvious wound on the back of his head. Last evening, his head was pristine. (For a link to that earlier close-up, with viewing instruictions, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/4/12.)
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2012/04/disappearing-trick-msnbcs-apparent.html

Question: What exactly does it mean when news orgs tell us that we’re looking at “enhanced” photos? We don’t know, but as non-experts, we would say this: One of the close-ups shown by MSNBC simply has to be doctored.

“Doctored.” Not enhanced.

We could be wrong in that assessment. But the contrast between the two close-ups is remarkable. If you thought that “journalism” was still being practiced on our cable “news” channels, you might say the contrast was shocking.

In tribal times like these, people tend to extend true belief to their side’s tribal leaders. In the case of Limbaugh, the ditto-heads have done this for decades. As we form our own “news orgs,” we liberals are moving in this same direction.

It’s natural, if unwise, to place full faith in tribal leaders. But what the heck happened on Politics Nation last night?

Was the back of Zimmerman’s head injured that night? We have no first-hand knowledge. Last night’s close-up may be a faithful representation of the state of his head when he arrived at the police station that night. But if that is so, what explains the earlier close-up aired on this same cable channel?

And what explains Sharpton’s endless silence in the face of such contradictions? Our tribe’s true believers recite what he says.

Why won’t Sharpton explain?

Again, the tape of the tape: Regarding height and weight, the New York Times reported on April 2 that Zimmerman was 5-9, 170; Martin was 6-1, 150.

One day later, the Orlando Sentinel offered this fact-check:

STUTZMAN (4/3/12): Trayvon was trying to defend himself against a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds.

Outweighed, yes. By 100 pounds, no. George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who says he killed Trayvon in self-defense, outweighed him by 30 or 40 pounds, according to family members. A Sanford police incident report says Trayvon was 6 feet tall and weighed 160 pounds. A spokesman for the family's lawyers gave a slightly different set of numbers: 6 feet 1 and 150 pounds. Zimmerman is 5 feet 9 inches tall, according to the police report, but it is silent about his weight. A family member says he currently weighs about 190 pounds. Zimmerman used to be far heavier. A 2005 police report put his weight at 250 pounds, but security-camera video released last week by Sanford police show him to be much trimmer.

Obviously, we don't know the precise figures. In best New York Times fashion, the newspaper simply gave us our data, didn't say how it knew.

Mike Wallace and a change in press culture!

MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012

Promoting the great Saint McCain: We have no overall view of the career of the late Mike Wallace.

Presumably, he did a lot of good work. Presumably, no one is perfect.

This morning, the New York Times presents a long history of his career. Since Wallace is thought of as an iconoclast, we thought it was worth recalling an instance in which he betrayed a different impulse.

By 1998, the upper-end press corps was increasingly becoming the equivalent of a small, upper-class social club—a wealthy fraternal/sororal order with shared views and rigid group narratives. By 1998, one such narrative involved the moral greatness of the great saint, Saint John McCain.

John McCain was morally great. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were not—were the opposite. Everyone voiced these standard group tales, including a famous iconoclast.

In June 1998, Howard Kurtz reported the swoon for the sainted McCain, a group phenomenon which would soon be known by that name:

KURTZ (6/8/98): The media's fascination with McCain transcends his maverick style. Nor can it be fully explained by his cheerful accessibility...

The plain truth is that a growing number of journalists want John McCain to run for president. The fact that he's just flirting with the idea makes him all the more desirable.

Mike Wallace, who turned down the chance to be Richard Nixon's press secretary, says of McCain: "I'm thinking I may quit my job if he gets the nomination. . . . I'm impressed by his independence, by his willingness to take on the tough ones. By his honesty about himself. As I look at the current crop, there's something authentic about this man."

Wow. Kurtz went on to quote other major press figures who were caught in the swoon. (“Al Hunt has written in his Wall Street Journal column that McCain ‘is the most courageous and one of the most admirable men I've ever known in American politics.’”) But Wallace had actually said that he might quit his job to work for McCain if he got the GOP nomination.

By 1998, the upper-end press corps had become a small, corrupt mafia—an inbred group which was devoted to its silly, novelized tales.

John McCain was the world's greatest saint. Starting in March 1999, Gore was the world's biggest liar.

The liberal world still won’t discuss most of this remarkable story. Darlings! Careers hang in the balance! Some things must be ignored!

But Wallace was pushing these fairy tales too. By now, at its upper ends, this was no longer an actual “press corps.”

What was it instead? We've reported for years. You decide!

How much should a mind-reader cost!

MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012

O’Brien got hers for free: How much should a mind-reader cost?

At a conference in Las Vegas, the GSA paid $3200 for such a performance. For the New York Times’ account of this matter, go ahead—just click here.

How much should a mind-reader cost? We’d say the GSA overpaid. On March 30, CNN got its mind-readers for free!

On that evening, CNN broadcast an hour-long special about the death of Trayvon Martin. The program was called, “Beyond Trayvon: Race and Justice in America.”

The program was hosted by Soledad O’Brien. She spoke to several skilled mind-readers, none of whom (we’re assuming) was paid.

The GSA paid $3200 for its mind-reader. Curtis Sliwa performs this service for free. For unknown reasons, CNN invited Sliwa to be one of the stars of its hour-long special. Before too long, this very dumb TV performer was mind-reading in this manner:

O'BRIEN (3/30/12): Let's begin with you, Mr. Sliwa. You obviously founded the Guardian Angels. And I think your name, it's fair to say, is synonymous with civilian patrols. What did George Zimmerman do wrong, and is there anything he did right that night?

SLIWA: He did nothing right, except wake up early that day and begin to stalk people through his paranoia he thought were looking to commit crime on his compound. A self-appointed watchman.

[...]

In the streets we call it mad dogs. He was on a mission. He was solo. He had all the furniture upstairs and rearranged in the wrong rooms.

I know everyone is fixated on hoodies. But I know a bunch of young men who wore different colors passed by with hoodies. He fixed on Trayvon. In his mind Trayvon was a hood, a hoodlum, an enemy of society. He has Skittles and iced tea going home. The guy felt it. Because you know, when you are in the street, you feel the instinct. Somebody is stalking you. Somebody is on your back. And Trayvon probably at a certain point just decided to stand his ground.

The GSA overpaid.

In this absurd and disgraceful performance, Sliwa did a brilliant job reading the minds of Zimmerman and Martin. He knew what Zimmerman woke up thinking; he knew what Zimmerman thought about Martin when he saw him that night. He also knew what Martin “felt” as events transpired that evening.

(For the record, Sliwa displayed a second type of clairvoyance, saying he knew that “a bunch of young [white] men” also “passed by with hoodies” that evening. How could be possibly know that?)

On a journalistic basis, Sliwa’s presentation was a disgrace. A journalist should have challenged what he said—but O'Brien simply posed a question to a different guest.

Sliwa’s mind-reading went unchallenged. Before the program ended, he showcased his skill once again:

SLIWA: Why are we fixated on the hoodie? Because it's thug-like. If you wear a hoodie like a thug, you suck in your bottom hip like you've got your trousers down to your butt. And all of a sudden, you're acting big and bad. Well, then you're acting like a thug.

No one is suggesting that Trayvon Martin was acting that way. There was a sea of hoodies that day. No, no, Zimmerman, he locked on Trayvon because he was on a mission. Trayvon didn't have to have a hoodie. He was going to take out Trayvon. It had nothing at all to do with the hoodie.

Contradicting much conventional wisdom, Sliwa said that Zimmerman didn’t react to Martin’s hoodie. But how could he be so sure of that? O’Brien never asked.

O’Brien let Sliwa’s mind-reading go. But then, she also accepted a piece of mind-reading by Harvard professor Charles Ogletree.

Ogletree may have been sharp at one time; we’ve been struck in recent years by the weakness of his presentations. At any rate, consider what happened when O’Brien asked him to comment on one part of Zimmerman’s 911 call on the night Martin died.

O’Brien played one specific part of the tape, then asked the professor to comment. We’ll include her introduction, where she promoted Ogletree’s recent book:

O’BRIEN: Joining me this evening is Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree. He's in Boston. His book, Presumption of Guilt, is about the wrongful arrest of another Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates.

[...]

I want to focus on the 911 calls. The call lasts a little over four minutes, but it's going to be something that everybody is focusing on in this case. Let's play a little bit of the call between George Zimmerman and the dispatcher.

ZIMMERMAN (audiotape): This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around looking about.

O'BRIEN: Professor Ogletree, I'll start with you. To me, at the end of the day, the most important question seems to be what was it that made Trayvon Martin suspicious to George Zimmerman, correct?

In truth, that is an important question. Why did Zimmerman call police when he saw Martin that evening? To use O’Brien’s language, what made Martin seem “suspicious?”

Question: Is it possible that Martin was behaving strangely this night, as Zimmerman told the dispatcher? Could that be what made him seem “suspicious” to Zimmerman? Like you, we have no way of knowing—and Ogletree doesn't know either. But O’Brien had played the part of the tape where Zimmerman said that Martin was behaving oddly.

Could something like that explain the initial phone call? In his response, Ogletree completely ignored what Zimmerman said on the part of the tape he had just heard. Instead, he did some inventive mind-reading. We’re working from the official CNN transcript:

OGLETREE (continuing directly): He was black, and he was a male, and Zimmerman saw him. This is what the book is all about, as you know, Soledad. It's not about Henry Gates. It's about the presumption of guilt. You look at someone's skin, you look at what they're wearing.

And when I talk in the book, I talked about the Trayvons of the world. And he has now become a legend. Every parent, every relative, every sibling, every stranger is going to say, "What do I do about my son or my daughter, what they wear, where they go?" It's going to change America's behavior.

And this was—in a sense, this was a presumption of guilt. He looked at his face, they saw him dressed, and they said, "That guy is up to no good." He did nothing wrong, but they said he was a man who did something wrong and now he's dead.

Ogletree couldn’t possibly know whether those highlighted statements are accurate. (They could be accurate, of course.) But so what? He got in several plugs for his book as he recited a novelized claim about the thoughts in Zimmerman’s head.

Presumably, this mind-reading came free of charge. At any rate, O’Brien never asked Ogletree how he could possibly know such things.

As we watched this CNN broadcast, we were struck by O’Brien’s almost total lack of journalistic instincts this night. No matter how foolish her pundit guests were, she made no attempt to challenge their statements. Jane Velez-Mitchell, a Headline News star, is one of cable’s Nancy Grace-style former prosecutors.

How dumb can these very dumb people get? At one point, Velez-Mitchell asked the world's dumbest known question:

O'BRIEN: Many of the conversations have moved from the facts of the case to race and racial profiling and conversations about George Zimmerman's ethnicity and also Trayvon Martin's race. Why is race such a big issue in this?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, it shouldn't be, in the sense that we as a culture need to start moving beyond describing people just in terms of their race. And so I think this is an opportunity for us to really look at what do police departments do. Why do they always ask somebody who is reporting something suspicious is the person black, white or Hispanic?

What's interesting is in the police report, the victim, Trayvon Martin is described five times as a black male in one paragraph in the police report. Now, why are they constantly focusing on the victim being a black male? Is that sort of subliminal racism right there?

Why do police departments ask about race (and gender) in such circumstances? Could anyone but a cable “news” star be dumb enough to ask?

Back to the price of mind-reading: Did the GSA pay too much? O”Brien’s program was called “Beyond Trayvon,” but she devoted her opening segment to an interview with Benjamin Crump, the Martin family’s attorney.

(No one from Zimmerman’s camp appeared, nor did O’Brien explain this imbalance. Perhaps the Zimmerman camp declined an invitation. O’Brien didn't say.)

Did the GSA pay too much? When O’Brien spoke with Crump, he did some aggressive mind-reading too. More specifically, he put some very ugly thoughts in the mind of some unspecified persons (plural):

CRUMP: I have to say this very quick, because this is troubling. They ran a background check on Trayvon, who is dead on the ground. They don't run a background check on the guy who just shot and killed the kid in cold blood. In essence, what they did, they said that, “Zimmerman, your word is more credible, and we're going to accept that, just like you profiled him in that 911 tape, this is a little thug on the ground, and he really doesn't deserve a fair and impartial investigation.”

Wow. It isn’t entirely clear what Crump meant when he said that “they” ran no “background check” on Zimmerman—and O’Brien didn’t ask him to explain. But in that highlighted statement, Crump drew a very ugly portrait of what “they” said on the night of Martin’s death—and he didn’t say who he meant.

Who said that Trayvon Martin was just “a little thug on the ground?” That is a very ugly portrait—but of whom is this portrait true?

An actual journalist would have asked. O’Brien stared into air.

Crump mind-read in an ugly way. Presumably, he did so for free. Plainly, the GSA did overpay at its convention. But then, so did CNN if it hired O’Brien expecting journalistic behavior.

What went through Zimmerman’s mind that night? Like these TV stars, we have no real idea. How could we possibly know such a thing? How could these TV performers?

CHILDHOOD’S END: The death of a dream!

MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012

Part 1—Believing O’Donnell: For decades, we liberals had it good in the tribal wars of self-esteem.

In 1988, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show went nationwide. From that point forward, we liberals could hear Limbaugh’s clownish misstatements as they aired coast to coast.

We also could hear conservative listeners speaking to Rush, declaring themselves “ditto-heads.” Following Limbaugh’s groaning misstatements, we could hear reflexive affirmation from millions of gullible followers.

Among liberals, this produced the widely-voiced belief that we were the smart ones, the “nuanced” observers, the people who play the game straight. Our self-esteem soared in the Limbaugh/Fox years, even as we took a series of painful political hits.

These were the happy years. We got to believe that we were smart—that their side featured the very dumb players. We got to believe that our leaders are honest—that their side is run by dissemblers.

We often blamed our political failures on the dishonesty of their side’s leaders, matched with the dumbness of their followers. Even as we lost political ground, this view of the world was extremely good for liberal self-esteem.

Except among the proudly deluded, that era has come to an end. Increasingly, we liberals are creating a world which crawls with disingenuous leaders—and with highly gullible followers, our own liberal ditto-heads.

Limbaugh pioneered this culture, but this is how our own world works at this point. For one small example, consider a segment from last Thursday evening’s Last Word.

Three days earlier, President Obama had made a peculiar statement concerning the Supreme Court’s review of the health care law. Almost everyone saw the strangeness in what the president said:

OBAMA (4/2/12): With respect to health care, I'm actually—continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law. And the reason is, because in accordance with precedent out there, it's constitutional. That's not just my opinion, by the way. That's the opinion of legal experts across the ideological spectrum, including two very conservative appellate court justices that said this wasn't even a close case.

[...]

Ultimately, I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

And I'd just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I'm pretty confident that this—this court will recognize that and not take that step.

Say what? Almost everyone saw the oddness in Obama’s formulation. Whatever he might have meant, Obama had said that it would be “unprecedented” to “overturn a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

In fact, the health care law had passed the House by a narrow, seven-vote margin. But however strong a congressional majority may be, everyone knows that the court has the power—indeed, the duty—to overturn a law if fails to pass constitutional muster.

Beyond that, everyone knows that this wouldn’t be an “unprecedented” act by the court. In context, the use of the term “unelected” only seemed to add to the oddness of Obama’s remarks.

Whatever Obama might have meant, he had actually said an odd thing—and virtually everyone knew it. Lawrence Tribe, dean of liberal law professors, said that his former student “obviously misspoke.” Obama began to walk back his own statement one day after he made it.

Obama made a peculiar statement. Unless you were watching Lawrence O’Donnell’s cable “news” program last Thursday night.

O’Donnell’s show airs on MSNBC, a corporate-run “news channel” aimed at liberals—a channel which has increasingly been aping the practices of Fox. In line with that emerging culture, O’Donnell seemed to suggest that criticism of Obama’s statement had been—what else?—a form of Republican hypocrisy.

That’s hard to do if you actually quote the relevant part of Obama’s statement. So O’Donnell took a different approach.

As he introduced Thursday night’s segment, O’Donnell quoted a different part of Obama’s statement—a single sentence which, standing alone, actually makes perfect sense. He then pretended that this was the part of Obama’s statement which had been disputed. (To watch the whole segment, click here.)

This is the way the segment began. O’Donnell’s conduct represents the end of an era—the end of a childish dream:

O’DONNELL (4/5/12): So Republicans and the noise machine at Fox News think it’s perfectly OK to say this:

GEORGE W. BUSH (videotape): It’s the only branch that’s unelected and whose officers serve for life. Unfortunately, some judges give in to temptation and make law instead of interpreting it. Such judicial lawlessness is a threat to our democracy and it needs to stop.

O’DONNELL: And Republicans and Fox News world think it is a high crime to say this:

OBAMA (videotape): I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.

O’DONNELL: Joining me now is Politico’s chief White House correspondent Mike Allen [and] Salon.com senior writer and MSNBC political analyst, Steve Kornacki.

Quoted on its own, that part of Obama’s statement is perfectly accurate. But that isn’t the part of the president’s statement which has been widely critqued.

Soon, O’Donnell offered the nugget around which his segment would turn. On his worst day, Limbaugh himself couldn’t have played the game better:

O’DONNELL: Mike, tell us what’s going on here? They are suddenly very, very upset that a president, actually quoting Republicans, not saying they’re— He was using the Republican phrase about them being unelected saying, “This is what you guys used to say.” And they can’t take it when he says that.

It’s true. Down through the years, Republicans have often referred to judges as being “unelected.” But that wasn’t the part of Obama’s remarks which has been widely critiqued.

O’Donnell’s segment proceeded as planned thanks to the help of a couple of friends. Surely, Allen and Kornacki each understood that O’Donnell was working a bit of a scam—that he wasn’t quoting the part of the statement which had been so widely discussed.

But so what? Each pundit politely played along, as their counterparts frequently do on Fox. The result?

Everyone else in America knows what Obama was criticized for. But if you relied on O’Donnell last week, you still have no idea.

O’Donnell’s segment was one small part of last week’s programming on MSNBC. But the silly deception involved in this segment typifies the larger drift now on display at this “liberal” “news channel.” Most remarkably, MSNBC has run a remarkable series of scams in recent weeks concerning the killing of Trayvon Martin. In the course of its many deceptions and misstatements, an era has come to an end.

For decades, we liberals got to think that we are the smart and honest players. We got to believe that our leaders are honest. We got to believe that liberal voters are too smart, too nuanced, too intellectually honest to accept a ditto-head role.

No one watching MSNBC can continue to hold such a childish belief. In endless ways, this channel’s recent conduct—and the conduct of its viewers—has represented a type of “childhood’s end.”

Tomorrow: Our own ditto-heads

But why would Obama do that: On Thursday evening, there was one small break from the pretense that Obama had said nothing wrong. Responding to the question we’ve cited above, Mike Allen—and O’Donnell himself—made these peculiar remarks:

O’DONNELL: Mike, tell us, what’s going on here? They are suddenly very, very upset that a president, actually quoting Republicans, not saying they’re— He was using the Republican phrase about them being unelected saying, “This is what you guys used to say.” And they can’t take it when he says that.

ALLEN: Well, both sides here are working the refs, the ultimate—the ultimate swing vote. Here you just have one vote on the margins.

I think the president also would take back some of what he said. There’s going to be plenty of time in—

O’DONNELL: He marched it back a little bit.

ALLEN: Yes, every day, he has.

But why in the world would Obama do that? Why would he “march it back a little bit?” Why would he do that “every day?” Unless you already knew, O’Donnell gave you no way to know why Obama would so such a thing. A similar scam occurred Wednesday night, with Van Jones and Richard Wolffe cast in the role of dissembling helpmates.

(To watch that segment, click this. In that case, you do see the tape of Obama’s peculiar remarks. The misdirection proceeds from there.)

This is how Limbaugh has always treated his gullible conservative listeners. As liberal viewers start accepting this treatment, a childish dream, of three decades’ duration, has finally come to an end.

Correction watch: What will the New York Times do!

FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2012

Can David Brooks possibly think this: We have only scratched the surface of Lawrence O’Donnell’s dissembling last night.

But then, this morning, there’s David Brooks. Can David Brooks possibly think this?

In this morning’s column, Brooks criticizes President Obama’s speech this week to the nation’s newspaper editors.

Brooks makes many criticisms of Obama’s speech. But can David Brooks possibly think this?

BROOKS (4/6/12): Then the president turned to Ryan’s Medicare proposal. The Ryan plan, he charged, “will ultimately end Medicare as we know it.”

In 2011, when Ryan first proposed a version of this budget, Politifact, the truth-checking outfit, honored this claim with its “Lie of the Year” award. Since then, the Ryan Medicare proposal has become more moderate and much better. Obama’s charge is even more groundless.

Good God. Will Ryan’s plan “end Medicare as we know it?” For ourselves, we have no problem with that statement. But quite plainly, that isn't the statement Politifact honored as its “Lie of the Year.”

Indeed, Politifact clarified that point last Thursday, in this post. “Want to invoke our Lie of the Year? Get it right,” Politifact said in its headline.

We aren’t going to waste your time going back over this tired old point, though you can read what Politifact wrote. (You’ll have to read to the end of the post.) Instead, we’ll ask an obvious question:

Is David Brooks really so clueless that he thought his statement was accurate? Here's your other possibility:

Could he possibly that dishonest?

O’Donnell misled you all night long. Then, this morning, there was Brooks! Our discourse is breaking down all around, as has been true for some time.

One more question in the face of this morning’s remarkable misstatement

Will the New York Times acknowledge this groaning misstatement by Brooks? You can feel quite sure that MSNBC will never correct its endless misstatements of the past several weeks.

MSNBC will never tell you the truth. What will the New York Times do?

BALCONY FAILURE: The doctor was IN!

FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2012

Part 5—Blow knows broken noses: If it weren’t for the bogus information, would there be any information at all?

Last night, that was the question as we watched MSNBC continue to disgrace itself in the matter of Trayvon Martin. On Lawrence O’Donnell’s disgraceful Last Word, the doctor was once again IN.

Dr. Blow was on hand last night to tell the world about broken noses. This "doctor" isn't a medical man. But such things no longer matter:

BLOW (4/5/12): That is the crucial point here. Is there a broken nose? And if George Zimmerman`s head was being smashed into the pavement, is there some evidence of a concussion?

And those things can be proven, and if he actually did receive medical care. What we know now is that the second ambulance was canceled because the person who was attending to George Zimmerman did not believe that he had sufficient enough injuries to warrant even an ambulance. [see note below]

And what we also know is that we see George Zimmerman 35 minutes after the fact. We see him not even reaching for the nose, not trying to— A broken bone is excruciating. There are a zillion nerve endings in the face. You would be in excruciating pain.

We know that that is not what we see on the tape. We know that the one witness that was interviewed on CNN, on Anderson Cooper`s show, said that the person, George Zimmerman, sprang up after the shooting, did not appear hurt. He never says that he reaches for his head. He never says that the person is holding their nose, none of that.

So what we know flies right in the face of the idea that someone has a broken bone in the face...

It’s impossible to embarrass the New York Times. For that reason, the New York Times won’t be embarrassed to see its columnist, Charles M. Blow, playing doctor on TV in this embarrassing manner.

Blow has no medical background, of course. But given the way modern "journalism" works, he plays a doctor on TV. That said, does Blow know what he's talking about when he talks about broken noses? “Signs and symptoms of a broken nose may appear immediately or may take up to three days to develop,” one on-line site explains, contradicting the good doctor’s nostrums.

This web site seems to make Blow a quack. But what would the people at that web site know? It’s run by the Mayo Clinic!

Did Zimmerman sustain a broken nose? Like you, we have no way of knowing. But on last evening’s Last Word, Charles Blow extended one of the truly great episodes of journalistic malpractice in modern post-journalist history.

How bad was O’Donnell’s program last night? Following Blow, there was the statement from Natalie Jackson, one of the Martin family’s lawyers. After Blow finished blowing his nose, Jackson interrupted with a blatant, but scripted, misstatement of fact:

JACKSON: The point is—and that’s the point that is getting lost. The point that’s getting lost is that George Zimmerman was told to stay in his car. When he got out of his car, he had a 9 millimeter, as he chased down, according to his own words, Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon Martin was where he was supposed to be. He was not committing any crime. And he ended up, after an encounter with George Zimmerman, with a bullet wound in his chest. That is for a jury.

And that is, that is why— and this case must go to a jury. You have an unarmed teenager where he was supposed to be.

As Jackson surely knows, Zimmerman was not “told to stay in his car” that night. He was out of his car, already following Martin on foot, when the police dispatcher told him, “We don’t need you to do that.”

Did Zimmerman head back to his car at that point, as he has apparently said? Like you, we don’t know. But the story works better if Jackson lies, saying he was ordered to stay in his car.

And so, she lied to you last night—unless she’s a total incompetent.

Jackson repeated one of the many false narratives which have emerged from herself and from Benjamin Crump, the other Martin family attorney. In a world driven by journalistic values, the host of this broadcast would have asked her to explain her apparent misstatement.

But the host of this program was Lawrence O’Donnell, one of the most dishonest players in the history of cable “news.” This is how O’Donnell reacted to Jackson's bogus remark:

O'DONNELL (continuing directly): Charles M. Blow and Natalie Jackson, thank you both very much for joining me tonight.

Yes, O’Donnell is dumb to the bone. But even he surely knows that Jackson’s statement was false.

By the rules of journalism, O'Donnell should have challenged his guests' misstatements last night. But on MSNBC, the death of Trayon Martin is a hit TV program. MSNBC hasn’t played by those old-world journalistic rules since its hit show began.

Nor does it plan to start. This is Network come to life, as a news channel drives a big hit.

Lawrence O’Donnell is baldly dishonest. We wouldn’t say that about Soledad O’Brien, who hosted an hour-long special about Martin's death on CNN last Friday night.

We wouldn’t say that O’Brien behaved dishonestly during this program, although that’s certainly possible. But where were her journalistic skills on this sad and revealing night?

Tomorrow: How much do mind-readers cost?

O'Donnell plays the Mormon card!

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

A nasty and dumb piece of work: Lawrence O’Donnell is a real piece of work.

Last night, he did a segment on the killing of Trayvon Martin. His basic misstatements were legion.

This will never stop.

But at least he stopped playing the Mormon card on last evening’s Last Word. On Monday and Tuesday nights, O’Donnell had toyed with this card, diddling himself as he did and showing the soul of the bigot.

O’Donnell’s a nasty and dumb piece of work—always has been. Let’s review his behavior on Monday night.

Earlier that day, a Ron Paul supporter had asked Mitt Romney “a very strange question about his religion” during a town hall meeting. That was O’Donnell's account of the question—but so what! Rather than ignore this “very strange question,” O’Donnell teased the topic all through Monday’s program:

O’DONNELL (4/2/12): In the “Rewrite” tonight, Mitt Romney was asked a question about sin today that he answered with one word—but the real answer just might be a bit more complicated.

O’DONNELL: Coming up, a Ron Paul supporter asked Mitt Romney a very strange question today about his religion. Does Romney think it is a sin for a white man to marry and have a child with a black woman? Mitt Romney gave a one-word answer to that question, but Mormon teachings on that subject have been rewritten over the years. That’s in tonight’s “Rewrite.”

O’DONNELL: Next, Mitt Romney runs away from a somewhat complicated question about his religion today. That’s next in the “Rewrite.”

Oh boy—this was really going to be good! And finally, the segment arrived! O’Donnell played tape of that “very strange question,” after which he started to talk. As has been clear for a fairly long time, this guy is a dumb piece of work:

O’DONNELL (4/2/12): In tonight’s Rewrite, another episode of the politics of religion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I guess my question is, Do you believe it is a sin for a white man to marry and procreate with a black woman?

ROMNEY: No. Next question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: That question is not as crazy as it sounds, especially when you consider the teachings of Brigham Young, who just happens to be the only Mormon leader Mitt Romney has ever publicly praised while running for president.

Brigham Young was president of the Mormon Church for 30 years. And Mormon belief holds that the president of the church talks directly to God. So when the president of the Mormon Church tells you what God is thinking, Mormons listen very carefully.

On March 8th, 1863, Brigham Young said in a sermon, "Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man, who belongs to the chosen seed, mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty under the law of God is death on the spot. This will always be so."

So there is Mitt Romney’s hero, Brigham Young, telling him if he has sex with a black woman, he will die, on the spot. And this will always be so. Bret Hatch, the 28-year-old Ron Paul supporter who are asked Romney today if it is a sin to marry and procreate with a black woman, tried to quote something written by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

Mitt Romney cut him off when he heard the beginning of these lines: Quote, "and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people."

Racism’s grip on Mormon practice has been so strong during Mitt Romney`s lifetime that it was not until 1978, 10 years after Martin Luther King was assassinated, 1978, that the Mormon Church suddenly decided to allow black men to become priests in the Mormon Church.

Mitt Romney was 31 years old at the time. If we had a candidate running for president today or any nominee facing Senate confirmation who belonged to a racially exclusive club until he was 31 years old, that man’s candidacy for the presidency or for the cabinet or a federal court would be doomed.

But in America, the politics of religion has spared Mitt Romney the embarrassment of having to address this issue because it is the virtually unanimous position of the political press corps that no candidate should ever be asked any challenging question about the candidate's religion.

As he continued, O’Donnell made it clear—he thinks journalists should ask Romney what he thinks about matters like this. What he thinks about statements by Brigham Young from 1863.

Just for the record, Romney did “address this issue” in 2007, though O’Donnell knew he mustn't tell his viewers. On Meet the Press, Romney told the late Tim Russert that he recalled the day in 1978 when the Mormon church said that blacks could become priests.

O’Donnell could have played this tape Monday night. As a dumb, nasty hustler, he didn’t:

ROMNEY (12/16/07): I can remember when I heard about the change being made, I was driving home from—I think it was law school—but I was driving home, going through the Fresh Pond Rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio, and I pulled over, and literally wept. Even to this day it's emotional. And so it's very deep and fundamental in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God. My faith has always told me that; my faith has also always told me that in the eyes of God every individual merited the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter, and I have no question in my mind that African-Americans and blacks, generally, would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons.

O’Donnell could have played that tape. But he holds his viewers in low esteem, so he didn't.

More broadly, stop for a minute to imagine Lawrence O’Donnell’s America.

In Lawrence O’Donnell’s America, every dumb-ass in the "press corps" would feel free to ask White House candidates about the pronouncements of their church's leaders from hundreds of years in the past. Do you know how stupid this country would be if that was standard practice?

Pope Pius IX was the head of O’Donnell’s church in 1863. Do you know how many ridiculous things he said? Should Candidate Kerry have been quizzed on these matters in 2004?

If Candidate Kerry had been quizzed, what would Lawrence have done?

One more point about the small tiny mind of the instinctive bigot:

O’Donnell complained that Romney’s church didn’t allow blacks to be priests until 1978. O’Donnell’s church doesn’t allow women to be priests right to this very day! Such awkward comparisons will never occur to pieces of work like O’Donnell and Dowd as they display their instinctive bigotry toward The Other’s religion.

Should journalists have hounded Candidate Kerry about this matter? If they had, what would Lawrence have done? Trust us: He would have screamed and bellowed and yelled.

Trust us: That is precisely what this major dumb-ass would have done.

We recommend that you watch that whole segment from Monday evening’s Last Word. (To do so, just click here.) You’re watching the work of a genuine dumb-ass—and of a nasty man.

O’Donnell’s a very dumb piece of work. Corporate bosses on cable “news” channels will always put such folk in charge.

BALCONY FAILURE: O’Brien doesn’t get her wings!

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012

Part 4—At CNN, balconies fail: According to a famous Hollywood script, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

According to our frustrated analysts, “Whenever you read the New York Times, you hear a balcony fail.”

Balcony failure is rare in this country, presumably due to the basic competence of those in the building trades.

But where was the New York Times’ basic competence when the great newspaper first tried to describe the death of Trayvon Martin?

This particular case of balcony failure occurred on Tuesday, March 27. The story of Martin’s killing had gone viral on cable eight days before. Now, the Times was lumbering into action, trying to summarize the basic events of this case for its readers.

One day before, the Orlando Sentinel had posted a detailed report, describing George Zimmerman’s account of what happened that night. Now, the New York Times tried to summarize that report.

With remarkable speed, the New York Times failed. These are paragraphs 3 and 4 of its bungled report, the featured report on the first page of the paper’s National section:

ROBERTSON AND ALVAREZ (3/27/12): In Mr. Zimmerman's account to the police, he returned to his S.U.V. after he was unable to find him. Trayvon then approached Mr. Zimmerman from behind and they exchanged words. Then, Mr. Zimmerman said, Trayvon hit him hard enough that he fell to the ground—which would explain what Mr. Zimmerman's lawyer, Craig Sonner, has said was a broken nose—and began slamming his head into the sidewalk.

The account first appeared in The Orlando Sentinel on Monday and was later confirmed by the Sanford police as ''consistent with the information provided to the state attorney's office by the Police Department.''

No bells rang as we read those grafs—though we did hear a balcony fail.

Sorry, but no—the Orlando Sentinel didn’t report that Zimmerman said he “returned to his S.U.V. after he was unable to find” Martin. According to the Sentinel, Zimmerman told police that he “had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind.”

And yes, there is a difference.

The Times tried to paraphrase what the Sentinel wrote—the newspaper tried and it failed. Result? On MSNBC, propagandists used this bungled account to claim that Zimmerman was a liar. Plainly, the fatal encounter between Zimmerman and Martin didn't occur at Zimmerman’s truck. On the One True Corporate Liberal Channel, this meant that Zimmerman had lied to police about that evening’s events!

In paragraph 3, a balcony failed. And uh-oh! As the Times scribes continued to type, a second balcony crashed to the earth:

ROBERTSON AND ALVAREZ (continuing directly): At a news conference on Monday, the Martin family, their lawyer and supporters said the police were attempting to demonize Trayvon by leaking Mr. Zimmerman's account to the media.

The most relevant fact in Trayvon's death, they said, is that Mr. Zimmerman chose to pursue Trayvon, who was unarmed and walking home, despite a police dispatcher's advice to stay in his car.

''They have killed my son,'' Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon's mother, said tearfully at the news conference. ''And now they are trying to kill his reputation.''

The highlighted passage makes it sound like Zimmerman was told to stay in his car, then got out and started pursuing Martin. Plainly, that account is inaccurate.

But so what? Correctly or otherwise, the Times attributed that account of Zimmerman’s actions to the Martin family—then made no attempt to clarify the actual facts as they emerge from the audiotape in which Zimmerman speaks to the dispatcher.

To this day, it's still unclear what Zimmerman did after that exchangewith the dispatcher. But here's an obvious guess: As Times readers scanned this report, many drew a false impression about what occurred.

If contractors conducted their duties this way, every bridge in the country would collapse; every balcony would fail. By paragraph 6 of this major report, the New York Times had failed in its attempt to paraphrase a simple report. It then had failed to challenge or clarify a plainly inaccurate statement. And sure enough:

As the corporate renegades pushed their narratives on The One True Corporate Liberal Channel, these bungles provided more grist for the mill.

At the New York Times, balconies had failed.

If contractors were this incompetent, every edifice in the country would fail. But over at least the past twenty years, the work of the American press corps has virtually been defined by this degree of basic incompetence.

Very few liberals are willing to say so. Frankly, we liberals aren’t very smart—and our career “intellectual leaders” just aren’t very honest.

In part due to the silence from our camp, the American “press corps” has been tragicomically incompetent for a good many years. Routinely, major players show a remarkable lack of basic journalistic chops.

So it was when Soledad O’Brien attempted to discuss Martin’s killing on CNN last Friday night.

O’Brien is everything you want in a TV “journalist”—she’s telegenic and likeable. But good God! Does she have a journalistic lick in her whole repertoire? Last Friday night, her hour-long CNN “Live Event Special” carried this headline: “Beyond Trayvon: Race and Justice in America.”

Balconies came crashing to earth all through this revealing program. To read the full transcript, click here.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the various points where O’Brien failed to behave like a journalist—where she failed to provide the journalistic services a modern society needs. For today, let’s list a few expectations one might bring to the host of a program like this.

For starters, let’s think about three easy pieces:

The broadcaster shouldn’t make factual claims which are untrue. She shouldn’t make factual claims which remain unproven. And here's a third expectation:

She ought to correct or challenge her guests if they make factual claims which are false or unproven.

Those duties are amazingly basic. For our money, we’d like to see broadcasters perform a fourth function in cases where a great deal of misinformation has been spewed across the land:

We’d like to see broadcasters inform their viewers of that key fact—tell viewers that they have heard many claims which are untrue or unproven. And how about a fifth expectation?

The broadcaster ought to challenge her guests in basic ways if they make highly emotional, sweeping indictments. Who exactly are they accusing? On what basis do they make their indictment? In a highly emotional matter like the killing of Martin, this is a very important service.

It’s a basic journalistic service, the type a large modern nation needs.

In emotional matters like the killing of Martin, a nation needs the basic services of traditional journalists. We need to separate facts from mere claims. We need to know when claims are untrue.

We need to be told how much we don’t know. We need competent journalists to “separate the facts from the hype,” the basic service O’Brien promised as her hour-long program started.

At CNN, quite a few balconies failed this night. But then, what else is new?

Tomorrow: Disaster movie

Disappearing trick: MSNBC’s apparent journalistic fraud!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2012

The Washington Post, left in the dark: We’ve been stunned, the last two nights, by the way Lawrence O’Donnell has played the Mormon card on his cable program.

O’Donnell’s a nasty piece of work. But for today, let’s consider the major fraud conducted by his “news channel.”

As a point of reference, consider this news report from yesterday’s Washington Post. In the highlighted passage, Sari Horwitz is trying to evaluate the claim that George Zimmerman suffered injuries in his altercation with Trayvon Martin:

HORWITZ (4/3/12): FBI agents went Monday to the gated community of Retreat at Twin Lakes, where the shooting occurred, to interview potential witnesses in the case, according to special agent Dave Couvertier, spokesman for the FBI's Tampa Field Office.

Central to federal agents is the 911 tape recording of Zimmerman's conversations with a dispatcher about a suspicious man he saw in the community. Investigators are trying to determine whether Zimmerman used a racial slur during the calls.

On Monday, ABC released enhanced video footage, showing Zimmerman in police custody less than 30 minutes after the shooting, which appears to show an injury on the back of his head. The gash would back Zimmerman's claim that he was in an altercation and that Martin repeatedly slammed his head into the ground, the network said.

Norton Bonaparte Jr., who took over as Sanford's city manager six months ago, also called on the Justice Department to review the case and the conduct of police.

Horwitz is trying to determine the extent of Zimmerman’s injuries, if any. On-line, she links to this ABC report, where you can see ABC’s “enhanced video footage.”

That footage ain’t real enhanced. Meanwhile, Horowitz doesn’t seem to know a key fact: Last Thursday afternoon, MSNBC played videotape of Zimmerman’s apparent injuries which was much more “enhanced,” much more clear. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/30/12.

Martin Bashir referred to this tape as “an extended and newly released surveillance video” which showed “new angles, never seen before, of George Zimmerman being brought into the Sanford police station.” This suggested that MSNBC had received a second tape from the Sanford police video system—that this was not the same old tape others had aired before.

Bashir's tape did provide a much clearer look at the back of Zimmerman’s head. It seemed to show a rather large goose-egg style bump on the back of his head, with a rather clear abrasion atop it.

This tape is much more “enhanced” than the ABC tape. And it has now disappeared.

To watch Bashir air this tape, just click here. The relevant footage starts at the 2:45 mark.

During a report by Ron Allen, Chris Matthews offered a very brief look at this same tape on Thursday evening’s Hardball. Since then, the tape has gone down the memory hole. Horowitz doesn’t even seem to know that this tape exists.

Unless that tape was some sort of forgery, it seems to represent the best video evidence concerning this question—the best evidence by far.

MSNBC knows that the tape exists. Matthews knows it; so does Bashir. As the channel disappears the tape, it seems to conduct a journalistic fraud.

But then, what else is new?

BALCONY FAILURE: The dog which barked again!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2012

Part 3—The New York Times, novels v. facts: Thanks to the way modern journalists work, we live in a world with very few facts.

The coverage of Trayvon Martin’s death has brought this fact into stark relief. Good grief! On Monday evening’s Piers Morgan show, George Zimmerman’s clothing was back!

Did Sanford police take Zimmerman’s clothes? As Morgan spoke with Alan Dershowitz, he repeated an old refrain:

MORGAN (4/2/12): I think my view, Alan, from the start of this has been a kind of incredulity, I guess, that George Zimmerman wasn't arrested on the night. I mean certainly, if this had happened in Britain, he’d been arrested right then and there and then he would have faced a normal criminal legal process. And clearly, the authorities on the ground were split here as to whether he should have been or not. But to let the guy just go home in the clothes he was wearing, with the—you know, with no apparent legal process even being commenced. Is that—that seems to have really angered people. What do you think of this from a legal point of view?

Might we clarify one basic point? “If this had happened in Britain,” it wouldn’t have happened under Florida law! Dershowitz went on to say that Florida law does make it hard to charge people in cases like this.

That said, we were most struck this night by the dog which barked once again. According to Morgan, the Sanford police let Zimmerman “just go home in the clothes he was wearing.”

Is that an accurate statement? Is that an actual fact about this important case? As of last Wednesday, even MSNBC was saying that the police had in fact taken the clothing; rightly or wrongly, the Orlando Sentinel had reported that as a fact way back on March 24. But on Monday evening, on CNN, Morgan asserted the opposite once again. He didn’t even seem to know that this factual claim has been challenged.

A dog was barking again! In his reply, Dershowitz seemed to leap ahead of his own knowledge, just as Morgan seemed to have done:

DERSHOWITZ (continuing directly): Well, I think there's a big difference between arrest, which is a formal legal proceeding for which you need probable cause under the statute. And the statute makes arrest very difficult to achieve. But also, the other factor, they could have done much more forensically. They could have taken DNA from under his nails. They could have taken his clothing away from him. They could have taken, and perhaps they did, close-up photographs.

I won a case a few years ago as a result of a photograph taken at a crime scene which purported to show a kind of killing, and then we were able to demonstrate that if you blew up the photograph, it showed something very, very different. So the kinds of real-time forensic evidence that can be obtained only within minutes or hours after the crime is absolutely essential.

If the police failed to do that, they really did fail to provide evidence that could give us the truth in this case.

“They could have taken…close-up photographs,” Dershowitz said. But uh-oh: “Perhaps they did!”

In context, that was pathetic.

In that aside, Dershowitz acknowledged that he doesn’t know if close-up photos were taken. Given the fact, why should we think he knows if Zimmerman’s clothing was taken?

In this exchange, Dershowitz seconded Morgan claim, saying the clothing wasn’t taken. Does Dershowitz know if that is true? We know of no reason to think he does—and we were certainly given no reason to think so on this program.

On Monday, Zimmerman's clothing was back; once again, it hadn’t been taken! Last evening, Catherine Crier made the same factual claim, speaking to Al Sharpton (details below). Sharpton simply accepted what Crier said—but then, he reacted the same way last week when Joy-Ann Reid told him the clothing had been taken.

Sharpton shows no sign of knowing that, in his role as a journalist, he is supposed to establish the state of knowledge concerning such claims for his viewers. But then, Morgan’s performance was little better on Monday night.

Has there ever been a case where so many people played around with so many factual claims? Where people used so many unproven factual statements to create the stories they like? More than five weeks after Martin’s killing, millionaire stooges like Morgan and Sharpton continue to toss around basic claims, showing no sign of knowing when these claims are in dispute.

You’re living in a world without facts. Consider what happened when the New York Times presented its front-page report on this case in Monday’s editions. (To read the report, click here.)

The report ran almost 5000 words. It listed four co-authors. What should the Times try to do in such a report? Let us make these suggestions:

The Times should let its readers know which facts have been established.

The Times should let its readers know when factual claims are still in dispute.

In our view, the Times should skip the novelization—the use of evocative story-telling which produces much more heat than light. And this:

When unfounded claims have been made in the press, the Times should explicitly tell its readers. The Times should explicitly tell its readers when and how they’ve been misled.

Judged by those standards, how well did the Times perform in its sprawling report? Not real well. Let us count three ways:

Combatting novelization: This report is larded with novelizations about both major figures, Martin and Zimmerman. The bathos builds as the reporters mention Martin’s Skittles and/or candy at five separate points in their “news report.” Heart-warming anecdotes are picked-and-chosen about both Martin and Zimmerman; a few other anecdotes are selected to drive other feelings and ideas. Meanwhile, can you explain the relevance of the highlighted passage as journalism?

BARRY (4/2/12): Less than half an hour after Trayvon Martin died face-down in gated grass, a privileged crowd of 17,000 rose to their feet at the NBA All-Star game in Orlando, 20 miles to the south, to sing the national anthem. Then, while people enjoyed their after-parties, his body, not yet identified, was taken to the medical examiner's office in Volusia County.

Mr. Zimmerman, meanwhile, was taken to Sanford police headquarters, where, he told his father, the police took many photographs of his injuries. His father said that he had a broken nose, a swollen and cut lower lip, and two cuts on the back of his head.

Can you name the journalistic purpose of that piffle about the privileged crowd at the NBA game, with their after-parties? Yes, it makes the report more entertaining. It builds the bathos; it makes this “news report” read more like a novel. But even as we’re entertained, the Times rushes past that claim about photographs of Zimmerman's alleged injuries, failing to alert its readers that a wide array of contradictory claims have been made about this part of the case.

Did the New York Times try to learn if the claim it reports is true? Did the Times try to learn if the police actually did take "many photographs" of those alleged injuries? At no point does the Times attempt to say. The paper burned 5000 words, often with piffle—but it failed to explicate or explain this very key point.

A suggestion: Next time, could the Times skip the shit about NBA games and describe the conduct of its guild members? Many Times readers have heard many claims about whether photographs were taken. These contradictory claims have been a major part of this story. Those NBA parties are not.

Establishing basic facts: The Times provided a genuine shitload of enjoyable novelizations. But how did it do with the task of establishing basic facts? Let’s return to a much-discussed factual point we discussed in yesterday’s post:

BARRY: However [the altercation] started, witnesses described to the 911 dispatcher what resulted: the neighborhood watch coordinator, 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, and the visitor, 6-foot-1 and 150, wrestling on the ground.

But are those really the accurate facts about the participants’ height and weight? New York Times readers have heard many claims about the relative size of the two combatants. Those claims have driven a boatload of partisan narratives.

Is this new account accurate?

The New York Times makes no attempt to say how it knows these basic facts. Why should readers believe this account, as opposed to all the others?

For ourselves, we have no idea—and as with Morgan, so with the Times. The paper seems to have no idea that contradictory claims have been made in this area—that readers deserve an explanation of how this new assessment was reached.

Other key claims are glossed in similar ways. Did Sanford police seize Zimmerman’s gun? Did they seize his clothing? Contradictory claims have been widely advanced, used to drive aggressive narratives about the conduct of the police.

The New York Time skips these questions completely. At other points, their factual reporting is baffling. In its report, the Times reports that “several” people called 911; in a sidebar, in small print, we are told that the actual number is seven.

As a basic journalistic matter, we have no idea why you’d make a reader go hunting for the specific number. (By the way: Is seven "several?") That’s especially true when the fact ties into a very key point, a key point the Times largely glosses in this remarkable passage:

BARRY: Here is what Robert Zimmerman said is his son's explanation: Trayvon was on top, punching and slamming his head into the paved sidewalk. When nobody answered his calls for help, he tried to slide onto the grass. But in doing so, the holstered gun in his waistband became visible.

''It is a little bit cloudy,'' the father said. ''But George believes Trayvon saw the pistol, was going to get it, and said: 'You are going to die tonight.' Shortly after that, George drew the pistol and shot him.''

The police have said that this account, at least in its broadest outlines, is backed up by witnesses, most of whom have not spoken publicly.

Most witnesses “have not spoken up publicly?” That could be a very key fact, but the Times rushes past in its pell-mell pursuit of more novelization. Just consider the journalistic fail contained in that highlighted statement:

Citing police, the Times says the Zimmerman family's account “is backed up by witnesses!” That’s a remarkable statement, but wait a minute: The account is only backed by witnesses “at least in its broadest outlines!”

Having introduced this ball of confusion, the Times make no attempt to define what this qualification means. To wit:

According to police, have witnesses backed the claim that Martin was slamming Zimmerman’s head into the sidewalk? Have witnesses backed the claim that Zimmerman cried for help? Have witnesses backed the claim that Martin threatened Zimmerman’s life? There’s no way to tell from this murky account—but the Times floats that pitifully undefined claim about what witnesses may have said (though not yet in public).

As journalism, that is a fail.

A final question about basic facts: Did Zimmerman suffer real injuries? This question has been widely debated and aggressively spun. Continuing on from that NBA novel, this is the Times’ pathetic attempt to explicate this matter:

BARRY: Mr. Zimmerman, meanwhile, was taken to Sanford police headquarters, where, he told his father, the police took many photographs of his injuries. His father said that he had a broken nose, a swollen and cut lower lip, and two cuts on the back of his head.

In a grainy police video that shows a handcuffed Mr. Zimmerman being led out of a police car and through the police station, he does not appear to be badly injured; nor is there noticeable blood on his clothing. To many who have been following the case, the video presents a crucial rebuttal of Mr. Zimmerman's account.

But Mr. Zimmerman's father said that by that time, his son had been cleaned up at the scene by medics.

''They were not huge gashes,'' the father said. ''When he went to the doctor the next day, he said he could stitch it, but that he would have to re-cut it since it had started to heal. He may not have gone to the hospital earlier than that because he was in police custody for a while, and was very shaken up afterwards.''

We’re sorry, but that is pathetic. The Times is still working from "grainy video." The paper shows no sign of knowing that MSNBC aired video last week which was really quite clear.

In this passage, the Times presents a classic “some say/he said” dichotomy—some say the tape rebuts the injury claims, Zimmerman’s father says different. But despite its use of 5000 words, the Times make no attempt to evaluate these claims. One example: If Zimmerman sustained a broken nose, should there be “noticeable blood on his clothing?” Would there necessarily be any blood at all?

For the past several weeks, an assortment of cable clowns have played doctor, lecturing viewers about this matter. The New York Times made no attempt to evaluate the things they have said. But that’s because, in deference to the law of the guild, the Times failed a basic test:

Critiquing the press corps’ conduct: This case has been a cable sensation. It’s very hard to fact-check this case without referring to the many unfounded and contradictory claims which have been widely advanced.

But people! That would involve discussing the work of the press! And within the guild, such things simply aren't done! It’s amazing that the Times could devote 5000 words to this matter and produce so little light. But in large part, that outcome followed from the Times’ deference to a tenet of Hard Pundit Law:

Thou must not discuss guild members!

Unless it’s novels you really enjoy, the Times did a very poor job with this sprawling report. In part as a result of this failure, Zimmerman’s clothing hadn’t-been-taken again on last night’s Sharpton program. This time, Catherine Crier rattled the tale as her host sat mutely by.

That familiar old dog was barking again. But was it barking a fact?

SHARPTON (4/3/12): Let me start with you, Catherine. What do you think of the handling of the case so far?

CRIER: Well, I think it’s very sad. Because a case—I don’t care who the participants were. A case like this called for appropriate investigation by police officials. You take the shooter’s clothes, you, you know, rope off the area, you do what we`re seeing the FBI doing now. You don’t make that judgment before any investigation has occurred.

And I’m sort of quite surprised, having, you know, started off as a prosecutor and then, of course, on the bench, you don’t do it backwards. And you make an arrest, you take him down or at least you take Zimmerman down and conduct the interrogation, take the clothes, do the forensics. The assumptions made in this case were actually a bit staggering.

Does Crier have the slightest idea what happened in this case? More specifically, does she actually know if they “took the shooter’s clothes?” Just a guess: She doesn’t have the first fucking idea. If the New York Times had addressed this much-discussed point, some basic clarity on this point might have emerged on Monday morning.

Last week, Joy-Ann Reid told Sharpton that the Sanford police did take Zimmerman’s clothing. Sharpton sat mutely by as she did, just as he did last night when Crier told him the opposite. Five weeks after the killing of Martin, this activist turned pseudo-journalist hasn’t even tried to establish the facts about this much-discussed point.

Where does Martin have to go to get some basic respect?

For unknown reasons, Crier was described as a “legal expert” last night. Just a guess: She really performed as a novelist.

Tomorrow: Soledad as a journalist

It’s time for Crier to go: Incredibly, Crier even made it sound, once again, like Zimmerman wasn’t even “taken down” to the station! Are you sure she even knows the basic facts about that?

Ryan watch: The background to Krugman’s column!

TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2012

What, The Times report: Yesterday, we discussed Paul Krugman’s new column, which called Paul Ryan’s budget proposal a fraud. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/2/12.

According to Krugman, Ryan’s proposal is “the most fraudulent budget in American history.” This was Krugman’s explanation of that remarkable charge:

KRUGMAN (4/2/12): [T]he Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit—but the alleged deficit reduction depends on the completely unsupported assertion that trillions of dollars in revenue can be found by closing tax loopholes.

And we’re talking about a lot of loophole-closing. As Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out, to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion in revenue every year. That’s a lot of money, even in an economy as big as ours. So which specific loopholes has Mr. Ryan, who issued a 98-page manifesto on behalf of his budget, said he would close?

None. Not one. He has, however, categorically ruled out any move to close the major loophole that benefits the rich, namely the ultra-low tax rates on income from capital. (That’s the loophole that lets Mitt Romney pay only 14 percent of his income in taxes, a lower tax rate than that faced by many middle-class families.)

So what are we to make of this proposal? Mr. Gleckman calls it a “mystery meat budget,” but he’s being unfair to mystery meat.

Would Ryan be able to close enough loopholes to yield $700 billion in revenue every year? Could he even come close?

By now, you’d think our major newspapers would have done some reporting on this topic. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

In fairness, the Washington Post did present this news report about a major congressional study of this general question. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service listed the size of all the tax breaks (tax loopholes, tax expenditures) on which Ryan might draw for new funds.

Those tax loopholes do cost the government more than $1 trillion per year. But as a realistic matter, how many of those loopholes could the Congress possibly close?

On a Saturday morning, on page A3, Lori Montgomery delivered the bad news in an informative news report:

MONTGOMERY (3/24/12): Just this week, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled a 2013 budget blueprint that would lower the top income tax rate paid by the wealthiest households from 35 percent to 25 percent by wiping out "tax shelters" and "lobbyists' loopholes."

Such a sharp reduction in rates is theoretically possible, the CRS report says. Indeed, if Congress threw out every tax break that benefits U.S. households, federal tax collections could surge by more than $1 trillion a year. If all that money were returned to taxpayers in the form of lower rates, there would be more than enough cash to meet the GOP rate target without driving budget deficits higher.

But very little of that cash comes from special-interest tax shelters, the report says, noting that 90 percent of the money is lost to just 20 tax breaks that benefit millions of American families, such as the child credit and provisions for medical care and retirement savings.

"It appears unlikely that a significant fraction of this potential revenue could be realized," says the report by CRS analysts Jane Gravelle and Thomas Hungerford.

Oops! Montgomery’s report includes more detail. In a more rational world, discussion of Ryan’s budget proposal would revolve around the information found in this report.

Montgomery’s report involves the info which lies behind Krugman’s column. But her report appeared on a Saturday morning, and it has generated little pundit discussion.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has done no news reporting on this topic. On March 23, Floyd Norris did offer this sprawling column in the paper’s Business Day section. Norris covered some of the same material treated in Montgomery’s report, although he didn’t mention the CRS report.

Just this Sunday, the Times published this editorial about Ryan’s budget. It includes the paper’s only reference to that congressional study.

But if you read the Times’ daily news reporting, you have seen no discussion of this very basic matter. You have seen no attempt to evaluate the claim that Republicans can “pay for” Ryan’s large tax cuts by wiping out tax loopholes.

On that same March 23, the Times did entertain us rubes with its standard assortment of silly piffle designed to pass for political news. Two examples:

The Times did publish this silly space-eater about political ads from past campaigns—political ads which didn’t get aired! It was accompanied by this front-page puddle of piddle—a report about the way Obama us currying favor by letting us know how much he loves Bo, his pet dog.

This is the type of stupid shit the New York Times pimps as political news. Just a guess: Very few of this newspaper’s readers understand the background to Krugman’s report. That isn’t how the Times rolls!

We live inside a very dumb political culture. Norris’ column contained a great deal of information. But people who read the Times’ news section may think they’re getting the day’s major news.

We’re sorry, but that isn’t so.

The Dowdism crept to their souls long ago. The Post hasn’t done enough on this topic. The Times has done that much less.

BALCONY FAILURE: Tale of the tape!

TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2012

Part 2—The Times reports height and weight: Balconies rarely fall off the sides of major American buildings.

Presumably, that reflects the competence of those in the building trades—and the attention and care they devote to their craft. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/2/12.)

But balcony failure has been widespread as the mainstream press corps has tried to discuss the killing of Trayvon Martin. Consider a set of facts which appeared in yesterday’s New York Times.

On the front page of yesterday’s Times, a team of reporters presented a sprawling report on the events surrounding Martin’s death. The piece ran almost 5000 words. Inside the paper, the report was accompanied by a large, detailed graphic.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the style of this report, comparing its novelistic elements with its failure to perform some basic journalistic functions. For today, let’s consider one brief passage in this lengthy report.

You might call it the tale of the tape! In one part of its report, the Times discusses the way the fatal altercation between Martin and George Zimmerman may have started.

Dan Barry is listed as lead reporter. At one point, he reported the relative size of the two combatants:

BARRY (4/2/12): However [the altercation] started, witnesses described to the 911 dispatcher what resulted: the neighborhood watch coordinator, 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, and the visitor, 6-foot-1 and 150, wrestling on the ground.

Presumably, none of the people who called 911 rattled off anyone’s height and weight. But there you see the tale of the tape as the Times has now reported it. Martin was four inches taller than Zimmerman; Zimmerman outweighed Martin by 20 pounds.

Or so the Times is now reporting. On March 26, Charles Blow reported that Martin was “nearly six feet three inches tall but only 140 pounds.” He seemed to base his statement on talks with Martin’s mother.

The data in yesterday’s news report contradict a widely-proffered portrait of this fatal encounter. If the Times’ current account is basically accurate, you might describe this earlier account from MSNBC’s Ed Schultz as a bit of balcony failure:

SCHULTZ (3/19/12): Neighbors said Zimmerman was fixated on crime and focused on young black males. Zimmerman’s father says race was not an issue.

George Zimmerman was 28 years old and weighed 250 pounds. Trayvon Martin was 17 and weighed 140 pounds. He has no criminal record whatsoever.

Trayvon Martin's mother says she thinks her son was the one who felt threatened.

In earlier accounts of this tragic encounter, this general tale of the tape was common. It was used to advance a portrait in which a much larger man preyed on a much smaller person.

By the end of last week, it was fairly clear that these early reports were quite possibly wrong—but the balcony failure continued. One example: Last Friday, Salon published this report by Delores Jones-Brown, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Right at the start of her piece, Jones-Brown again advanced the portrait of the much larger man and the much smaller child. Long after it became clear that this portrait might be bogus, the folks at Salon kept sending it out, building bathos and endangering those in the street:

JONES-BROWN (3/30/12): I am both a former prosecutor and the mother of a 15-year-old son. When my son was little, like most moms, I told him to beware of strangers; that even in a nice neighborhood, like ours, a pedophile might drive through looking for a child victim. I told him to watch out for strangers, even in nice neighborhoods, because once he was inside the trunk of a car, I might not be able to help him.

Trayvon Martin was 17 years old and, based on the photos, not very big—like my son.

Based on media accounts and the reports of the 911 calls, he was walking through a nice, but unfamiliar neighborhood, talking on his cellphone when a strange adult male began to follow him in a SUV. At one point, he thought he had lost him, but the male reappeared following him again. This time the man, who was nearly twice his size (in body mass), got out of the vehicle, approached him, and had a gun.

“Based on the photos?” Good God! If construction companies assembled data that way, balconies would crash down into the street every day of the week.

Can we talk? Several parts of that account seem to go beyond the facts of this case as they are currently known. But by last Friday, it had become fairly clear that George Zimmerman probably wasn’t “nearly twice [Martin’s] size in body mass.”

But so what? Salon published this account all the same, right at the start of a major article about this very important topic. Almost surely, this is a case of balcony failure—a type of failure which defines the work of the mainstream “press corps” over the past twenty years.

Why in the world would a professor of criminal law publish something like that? (“Based on the photos!” Good lord!) More to our current point, why would a major news org like Salon publish such work, long after it became clear that the portrait it advanced was quite possibly wrong?

Why did Salon conduct business that way? We don’t know, but contractors who clown around in such ways may find themselves sued, or in jail.

Readers may think that the tale of the tape is a trivial matter. But Jones-Brown led her piece with this portrait for an obvious reason, just as Schultz (and others) had done before her. If the New York Times is right, this involves another set of bungled facts—another set of the bogus facts which were used to build novelized tales.

All around the landscape of the press corps’ attempts to discuss this case, such balcony failure can be observed. Over the past many years, your “press corps” has been overwhelmed by even the simplest facts in a wide array of cases. Again and again, journalistic skills barely seem to exist when the people of our "press corps" attempt to conduct their work.

Does this tale of the tape really matter? Does it matter if Zimmerman weighs 170 pounds, as opposed to the previous 250?

It only matters if the truth matters. Such facts were treated as highly relevant when they were used to construct a tale in which a very small person was overpowered by a behemoth.

Salon was still pushing that story last Friday. Did we hear a balcony fail?

Tomorrow: The form of that New York Times report—and also, what Piers Morgan said

Concerning Zimmerman’s weight loss: Early on, people like Schultz built a novelized tale around Zimmerman’s large “body mass.”

If the New York Times is right, the man lost 80 pounds in a couple of weeks. But uh-oh! How does the New York Times know that Zimmerman weighs 170 pounds?

Yesterday, in 5000 words, the newspaper didn’t say!

Was that good journalistic practice? More on that question tomorrow—plus, what Piers Morgan said.

Ryan watch: Have you seen this basic issue reported!

MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012

Paul Krugman attacks Ryan’s plan: In this morning’s New York Times, Paul Krugman punches hard today against Paul Ryan’s budget plan.

Ryan’s latest plan was announced on March 20. Last Thursday, it passed the House on a largely party-line vote. (Ten Republicans voted no; no Democrats voted yes.)

Krugman says this is “surely the most fraudulent budget in American history.” Here’s his basic explanation of that remarkable charge:

KRUGMAN (4/2/12): And when I say fraudulent, I mean just that. The trouble with the budget devised by Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, isn’t just its almost inconceivably cruel priorities, the way it slashes taxes for corporations and the rich while drastically cutting food and medical aid to the needy. Even aside from all that, the Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit—but the alleged deficit reduction depends on the completely unsupported assertion that trillions of dollars in revenue can be found by closing tax loopholes.

And we’re talking about a lot of loophole-closing. As Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out, to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion in revenue every year. That’s a lot of money, even in an economy as big as ours. So which specific loopholes has Mr. Ryan, who issued a 98-page manifesto on behalf of his budget, said he would close?

None. Not one. He has, however, categorically ruled out any move to close the major loophole that benefits the rich, namely the ultra-low tax rates on income from capital. (That’s the loophole that lets Mitt Romney pay only 14 percent of his income in taxes, a lower tax rate than that faced by many middle-class families.)

So what are we to make of this proposal? Mr. Gleckman calls it a “mystery meat budget,” but he’s being unfair to mystery meat.

Krugman makes a very serious charge. He suggests that Ryan could never make his numbers work—but he only gets 800 words.

Question: Have you seen the New York Times attempt to review this basic topic in its news pages? Have you seen your biggest newspapers attempt to do basic reporting and basic analysis about this seminal topic?

No one could cover this topic in 800 words—and Krugman to trying to offer a larger perspective in today’s column. Have our biggest newspapers provided the basic background reporting?

For today, let’s ponder Krugman’s charge. According to Krugman, Ryan’s budget is “the most fraudulent budget in American history.” Even though this budget won't go into law, passage of this budget last week represents a “disturbing spectacle.”

That’s the charge. Tomorrow, we’ll review what the New York Times and the Washington Post have done in their news reporting about this seminal topic. Our question:

At this point, does the New York Times even pretend to cover topics like this?

BALCONY FAILURE: Who lost the press!

MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012

Part 1—Is the press corps minimally competent: As a general matter, we agree with David Carr’s assessment of the press corps’ work in the matter of Trayvon Martin.

In this morning’s New York Times, Carr devotes his “Media Equation” column to the coverage of this important event. As a general matter, we agree with this assessment, which is found near the start of his piece:

CARR (4/2/12): That the public is rendering its verdict immediately and firmly may be routine, but choosing sides takes on a deeper, more dangerous meaning when race is at the heart of the story. Race as an explosive issue is nothing new, but it’s been staggering to see it simmer and boil over in our hyperdivided media environment where nonstop coverage on the Web and cable television creates a rush to judgment every day.

Partisan politics and far-flung conflicts fit nicely into that world—who’s ahead, who’s behind, should we stay or go?—but racial conflict? Not so much.

That hasn’t stopped many in the media from displaying the same reflexive vigilantism that some are attributing to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon. All over the Internet and on cable TV, posses are forming, positions are hardening and misinformation is flourishing. Instead of debating how we as a culture are going to proceed, an increasingly partisan system of news and social media has factionalized and curdled.

As a general matter, we agree with those assessments. There have been “rushes to judgment” in this matter in many parts of the media. especially so on cable TV. Evocative language to the side, many major media figures have engaged in the same sorts of rushes to judgment “that some are attributing [rightly or wrongly] to George Zimmerman.”

Elementary facts have been misstated. Facts not in evidence have been widely assumed. In some instances, the better evidence has been discarded in favor of the murkier evidence—murkier “evidence” which can be used to advance a pre-approved judgment.

As a general matter, we agree with Carr’s assessment. In our view, this has been one of the most unvarnished media breakdowns of the modern era. For us, the problem with Carr’s analysis begins when he starts to name names—when he starts naming the names of those in the media have behaved in these unfortunate ways.

In our view, a funny thing happens when Carr names names. He starts by quoting a media figure who has, as far as we know, done nothing wrong in his own coverage of this topic:

CARR (continuing directly): “It has been depressing to watch something as important as this get run through the American polarization machine,” said Chris Hayes, the host of “Up With Chris Hayes,” a weekend political talk show on MSNBC. “The first week after it became national news, Act 1, seemed to be built on a shared agreement that what happened was outrageous and upsetting no matter what the facts ended up showing. But then came the backlash and now you’ve got people picking sides.”

To us, that passage is slightly odd. Few news orgs have been “picking sides” as aggressively as MSNBC, where Hayes has his own weekend show. But Carr lets Hayes define the problem—and Carr never says a word at any point about this channel’s work.

Has MSNBC done bad work? If so, that isn’t Hayes’ fault, of course. As far as we know, he himself has done nothing “wrong” in his treatment of this story. On the other hand, we haven’t heard that Hayes has ever challenged the conduct at MSNBC, his own cable channel. In the modern media landscape, “professionals” simply don’t do that!

Crackers, please! It was odd to see Carr pick someone from MSNBC when it came time to voice the complaint against the press corps’ conduct. And uh-oh! Here’s what happened when Carr started naming the names of the major news orgs who have done wrong in this case:

CARR: As if the overheated cable news debate weren’t enough, social media are fueling the story with misinformation, along with incendiary calls to action. There is a Twitter account called “@killzimmerman” that suggested George Zimmerman needed to be “shot dead in the street.” On Twitter, the movie director Spike Lee passed on what he thought was Mr. Zimmerman’s address, but it was wrong and an elderly couple was forced to flee from their home. And what if Mr. Lee had gotten it right? (Mr. Lee has since apologized and reached a settlement with the couple.)

Early last week, thanks to Fox News and Geraldo Rivera, coverage pivoted around the preponderance of hoodies rather than the ubiquity of handguns. By the end of last week, the Drudge Report was in lurid, link-driven dudgeon, suggesting that the real victim was George Zimmerman. On Thursday afternoon, there were more than 10 links at the top of the site to articles casting doubt on just how much of a victim Trayvon was, including an interview with Mr. Zimmerman’s father accusing President Obama of spreading hate. It’s ugly out there and getting uglier.

The victim is being subjected to the full media pat-down. The Daily Caller, a conservative Web site, published 152 pages of what it plausibly represented as Trayvon’s Twitter feed. His handle on Twitter was built on a racial epithet, and his penchant for objectifying his female peers in profane ways was on lurid display. The facile implication was that the young man was obviously well-acquainted with thug life.

[...]

Business Insider, which would seem to have no ideological skin in the game save clickability, blithely published one of the photos that later turned out to be misidentified that they had cadged from a neo-Nazi Web site. Nice work, guys.

Carr refers to “the overheated cable news debate” at various points in his column. But when he starts to name names, he cites only one cable channel, Fox, citing an absurdly overstated, but rather limited, comment by Rivera. In fact, all four news orgs cited by Carr are news orgs which come from the right. (We’re including Drudge as a news site.) Concerning that overheated cable debate, Carr’s readers are never told about anything which may have occurred on CNN or MSNBC.

Everyone named is from the right. MSNBC’s conduct gets disappeared—actually glossed, due to the inclusion of Hayes. This is a remarkable decision, since Al Sharpton’s dual role in this case as both journalist and activist is very unusual by American norms, whatever one might think of the work he has done on his nightly MSNBC program. (On a journalistic basis, we think his work has been awful—and we've long been fans of Sharpton.)

In the course of his column, Carr compliments two major news orgs, People magazine and ABC News. He extends a blanket of implied approbation to MSNBC and the Atlantic by dint of the people he quotes from those orgs. When he goes in search of the press corps’ bad actors, he names four conservative orgs—but fails to criticize any liberal or mainstream news org for its role in this giant breakdown.

And not only that! Carr even excuses his own New York Times, a newspaper which has made major mistakes in its basic reporting, while making little attempt to help the public sort out the mess he describes.

Is David Carr minimally competent? Even as he laments an ideology-fueled rush to judgment, he seems to be picking and choosing his villains based on ideology. In general terms, he correctly describes a remarkable mess—a remarkable breakdown in journalistic procedure.

But when he starts to get specific, he seems to join the breakdown himself.

Some thoughts about basic competence:

On Saturday night, we entertained a group of medical specialists who were conducting their annual national conference. These people have saved and extended many lives through their remarkable competence in a highly specialized form of medical practice.

Another thought about competence:

Some years ago, we entertained an industry group from the building trade. They too were holding their annual conference. Their conference had an unusual theme that year: “Balcony failure.”

We’ve never forgotten that term.

Reading through the group’s conference schedule, we recall being struck by the very large number of ways a balcony can fall off a building. But in truth, this sort of thing rarely occurs. To all appearances, the people who build our hotels and apartment buildings possess a high degree of basic competence too.

That said, does the American “press corps” possess even minimal competence? All week long, we’ll ask that question in the context of Trayvon Martin’s death.

We’ll review the work of CNN’s Soledad O’Brien—and the work of Carr’s New York Times. We’ll look at what Kathleen Parker wrote in the Washington post. We’ll compare MSNBC to Fox. We’ll talk about broken noses.

We'll discuss this pathetic performance by someone at NBC News. They've been like this for a long time.

Does your “press corps” possess even minimal competence? We’ve been asking that question at this site since the spring of 1998. During that time, very few cases have defined this problem quite as starkly as this case has.

Does your “press corps” possess even minimal competence? Many other major groups do.

Who lost the American “press corps?” Can this guild be saved?

Tomorrow: Is the New York Times minimally competent?

When media-amplified stampedes begin!

FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2012

The history of orgies: We’re off on a mission of national import. We don’t expect to post again until Monday morning.

In the meantime, we’ll recommend Gene Lyon’s column on the subject of Trayvon Martin’s death.

For our money, the most striking part of Lyons’ column involves his experience with orgies. Lyons isn’t a big George Zimmerman fan. But then too, he knows orgies:

LYONS (3/28/12): Untrained individuals like Zimmerman have no business packing heat, nor confronting strangers they deem suspicious. Trouble didn’t come to George Zimmerman; he went looking for it. At minimum, he acted like a damn fool.

However, I’ve also had the experience of writing a book about a media-amplified murder case that took place in my home state of Arkansas. What I learned was that when reporters and pundits set themselves up as amateur homicide detectives, not to mention as prosecutor, judge and jury, the odds against justice being served grow longer.

I can still remember where I was sitting and what the weather was like when I realized that a ballyhooed front page account of a murder trial in Little Rock’s dominant morning newspaper bore almost no relationship to the actual testimony and crime scene photos. It was that shocking to me. All the errors ran in one direction, casting suspicion on an innocent man for murdering his wife. He was eventually exonerated, but only after a harrowing ordeal.

Meanwhile, a veritable orgy of gossip, speculation and self-righteous moralizing swept the state. “You could ask the ladies under every hair dryer in every beauty shop in Arkansas if McArthur was involved, and they’d say yes,” one beleaguered police official told me. “They didn’t have to know the first thing about the case. They just knew.”

Later, Lyons wrote the book on the Whitewater pseudo-scandal, Fools for Scandal. That destructive episode also involved a long orgy of media-amplified speculation and gossip. Much of that national orgy occurred in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Should George Zimmerman be charged with a crime? That question lies outside our area of semi-competence. But “media-amplified” orgies aren’t good—and they have been increasingly prevalent over the past twenty years.