THE DUMBNESS OF THE WHALE: The Times inflates the NFL’s case!

THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2015

Part 4—The gang that wouldn’t report straight: Did an employee of the New England Patriots under-inflate some footballs in violation of NFL rules?

It’s possible! Pretty much everything is.

That said, we can’t say we see much evidence that this offence occurred. We say that because we’ve read the NFL’s official report on this subject, the Wells report.

Did a Patriots’ employee under-inflate some footballs? It’s still a possibility! But the Wells report reveals the NFL as the organization that can’t function straight—and as an organization that can’t seem to tell the truth straight.

It’s astounding to see the way the New York Times has refused to report those matters. Let’s review of the NFL’s serial dysfunction in this high-profile affair.

The gang that can’t measure air pressure straight

First, the Wells report shows the NFL to be the gang that can’t measure air pressure straight. The league had rules about the air pressure of footballs. But it had never developed a standard procedure for measuring that air pressure.

On the day in question, referee Walt Anderson brought two air pressure gauges to the game from his home. As a result, he enacted the old joke known as Goldberg’s Law:

The man with one watch always knows the time. The man with two watches is never quite sure.

As Anderson would learn at halftime, his two gauges produced systematically different air pressure readings. Beyond that, Anderson apparently wasn’t sure which gauge he had used before the game to measure the pressure of both teams’ footballs. But if he used the gauge he said he had used, the air pressure readings of the Patriots’ footballs were pretty much right where they should have been when they were measured at halftime.

To solve this problem, the Wells report decided that Anderson must have been wrong about which gauge he used before the game. They explained this helpful assessment in such murky language that they came close to defining themselves as “the gang that can’t speak English straight.”

The problem of the dueling gauges was only the tip of the iceberg. At halftime, the NFL measured the air pressure of four Colts’ footballs. One of their readings made so little sense that the Wells report basically disregarded it.

After the game, the NFL measured the pressure of four Patriots’ footballs. None of those readings made sense. They too were disregarded by the Wells report.

At this point, an honest organization might consider the possibility that their review should go no further, so thoroughly had they failed to gather reliable data. As the Wells report makes clear, the NFL isn’t that kind of org.

That gang that can’t seem to tell the truth straight

The NFL’s attempt to measure air pressure was clownish beyond belief. From there, the league apparently moved to Step 2 in its operation—the distribution of false information to the national press.

The league’s initial conduit was Chris Mortensen, a gullible and apparently dishonest ESPN star reporter. Three days after the game in question, he reported a set of air pressure readings which made it seem that the Patriots’ footballs were grossly under-inflated. He sourced the incriminating data to “NFL sources.”

When the Wells report presented the actual air pressure readings, it became clear that Mortensen had been given a bogus set of statistics—false statistics which grossly tilted the playing field against the Patriots. To this day, Mortensen hasn’t reported this fact to ESPN viewers and readers, nor has he explained the source of his false information.

The gang that can’t write letters straight

By now, the NFL had thoroughly bungled its attempt at data collection. It seems it had also misinformed the national press about the air pressure readings its procedures had produced.

This took the league to Step 3 in its action. Now, it grossly misinformed the Patriots organization about what it had found.

This piece of apparent disinformation came from David Gardi, an NFL senior vice president. Gardi wrote a letter to the Patriots which included a wildly inaccurate claim about the air pressure reading of one of the Patriots’ footballs.

According to the Wells report, this was “an inadvertent error” on Gardi’s part. He had simply “relied on memory” when he wrote the inaccurate letter, the Wells report ridiculously said.

The gang that won’t correct false information straight

The Patriots weren’t given the accurate air pressure readings for two more months. They finally received the accurate data on the stipulation that they couldn’t correct the false information which had appeared in the press.

As far as we know, the NFL never told Mortensen, or anyone else, that he had published a bunch of false statistics—false statistics which strongly tilted the playing field against the Patriots.

As noted, this fact became clear when the Wells report published the actual air pressure readings. As mentioned, “Mort” hasn’t said a word about this matter in the weeks since the Wells report appeared. Neither have any of the other whales who “spout” and slap their horizontal tails on ESPN, the news org of record for this journalistically disgraceful affair.

In fairness to ESPN, roughly half their analysts left their previous careers after taking too many blows to the head. This doesn’t explain the silence of Mortensen.

Did an employee of the Patriots under-inflate some footballs? It’s possible, although we’d say the evidence for this crime is extremely weak.

If the referee used the gauge he says he used before the game, there doesn’t seem to be any “under-inflation” to explain! In that case, the Patriots’ footballs were pretty much right where they should have been according to the Ideal Gas Law, a part of basic physics.

This is all explained in the Wells report, which hit the press all the way back on May 7. Amazingly, none of this has been explained in the New York Times, which has done two lengthy front-page reports on this matter, plus a lengthy informational column.

In the weeks since the Wells report appeared, the New York Times has established itself as the gang that won’t report even the most basic information. The Times won’t report basic information at all, let alone report it straight!

In a global perspective, nothing much turns on this latest consensus scandal. But it represents a stunning example of the way our American “press corps” works.

The dumbness of the whale is profound. So is the his brute dishonesty.

The gang that won’t report even the most basic information

It isn’t like the New York Times has avoided this topic. On May 7, it published a front-page news report about the Wells report.

On May 12, it published another front-page report. This report described the penalties the NFL had just announced for the Patriots and for Tom Brady, the team’s wonderfully handsome star quarterback.

On May 14, the Patriots published their 20,000-word rebuttal to the Wells report. The Times didn’t do a news report about the Patriots’ rebuttal, but they published a lengthy column by David Waldstein which served as the paper’s account of what the patriots had said.

The Times has not avoided this topic. Let’s summarize its basic coverage:

May 7: “Tom Brady Probably Knew Footballs Were Doctored, N.F.L. Finds”
Front-page news report, John Branch, 1727 words.

May 12: “Brady Receives a 4-Game Ban”
Front-page news report, Bill Pennington, 1394 words

May 15: “Patriots' Rebuttal Is Foray Further Into Farce”
Sports section, informational column, David Waldstein, 1015 words

In those three pieces alone, the Times has devoted more than 4100 words to these recent events. Let’s marvel at the basic things Times readers never been told.

Let’s start with the paper's lesser omissions. Times readers have never been told about the clownish procedures which produced the NFL’s official data.

They’ve never been told about the dueling air pressure gauges. They’ve never been told about the data which had to be thrown out.

They’ve never been told that the NFL produced four different air pressure readings for the intercepted football which supposedly triggered this conflagration. As far as New York Times readers know, the NFL’s fata collection was competent right down the line.

Beyond that, Times readers have never been told that this brouhaha started with false information in the press, attributed to “NFL sources.” They’ve never been told that the NFL also sent false information to the Patriots organization.

If you read the Times, those things never happened. Those matters won’t worry your head. But there’s a massively larger piece of this puzzle Times readers have never been given.

Incredibly, Times readers have never been told about the basic physics of this matter—about the Ideal Gas Law. They’ve never been told that the Patriots’ footballs should have been “underinflated” by halftime, a point which the NFL’s own Wells report makes perfectly clear.

What can we possibly mean by this? Consider Bill Pennington’s front-page news report on May 12.

By now, Pennington and his brutish editors had had a full five days to review the Wells report. That report explains the physics quite clearly—given the cool weather on the day of the game, the Patriots’ footballs should have measured anywhere from 11.32 to 11.52 psi by the time they were measured at halftime.

The Wells report makes it perfectly clear—the Patriots’ footballs should have bene “underinflated” by halftime. But Pennington, like Branch before him, never mentioned this brutally basic fact.

Here’s the account he handed Times readers at the start of his front-page news report—a news report whose clownishness matched that of the NFL’s data collection:

PENNINGTON (5/12/15): New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, a golden boy of American sports and perhaps pro football's biggest star, was suspended Monday for four regular-season games without pay by the N.F.L., which said he had deliberately and secretly violated league rules.

The N.F.L. also fined the Patriots $1 million and took away two prized future draft picks, including a first-round choice in 2016, saying that the team, and Brady, schemed to improperly deflate footballs in the A.F.C. championship game last season on the way to securing New England's fourth Super Bowl victory.

A deflated football is said to be easier to grip, especially in the cold and wet conditions that the Patriots faced at home against the Indianapolis Colts on Jan. 18.

In a statement, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said he supported the punishment issued by the league's executive vice president for football operations, Troy Vincent, for what the league called “conduct detrimental to the integrity of the N.F.L.” The team and Brady were also censured for not fully cooperating with a league-commissioned investigation into how a vast majority of footballs used in the first half of the Patriots' victory in the A.F.C. championship game ended up underinflated not long after the game officials had measured and approved the footballs in a pregame inspection.

“A vast majority of [Patriots] footballs...ended up underinflated not long after the game officials had measured and approved the footballs in a pregame inspection?” You could possibly defend that as “technically accurate,” but it doesn’t begin to explain the actual situation.

Later, Pennington tried it again. Here’s what Times readers were told:

PENNINGTON: At the core of the league's investigation was the discovery at halftime that a high percentage of the footballs used by the Patriots in the A.F.C. championship game were underinflated. The footballs had been inspected by game officials before the game and inflated to the permissible pounds-per-square-inch measure established by the N.F.L. Circumstantial but detailed information and accounts provided in the league report last week implicated Jastremski, McNally and Brady as part of an operation to furtively deflate the footballs beyond the permissible threshold sometime between the pregame inspection and the opening kickoff.

Tipped off by a Colts executive, the officials measured the footballs again at halftime and found that a majority of the Patriots footballs—the teams each used their own balls—were underinflated. The footballs were once again inflated as required, and the Patriots then continued to dominate the Colts in a 45-7 rout.

We’d describe that as a second-grader’s account of the basic facts. New York Times readers were never told that the Patriots’ footballs should have been “underinflated” by halftime—should have displayed lower readings than the “permissible pounds-per-square-inch measure established by the N.F.L.”

Pennington wrote a child’s account of the basic facts, and thus of the basic dispute. But this child’s account of the basic facts appeared on the front page of the Times, as was the case with Branch’s news report five days before.

Warning! Avert your gaze from Branch’s use of the clownish term “squishier:”

BRANCH (5/7/15): The head referee for the Patriots-Colts game, Walt Anderson, used a gauge to test the air pressure of each ball. The balls are made of a urethane bladder inside a pebbled leather casing. N.F.L. rules dictate that they be properly inflated during a game, falling into the window of 12.5 to 13.5 pounds per square inch.

McNally told Anderson that Brady liked the balls to be at the low end of the scale. (Brady later confirmed this, to reporters, saying that he liked squishier footballs to help him get a better grip.) Ten of the balls were approved. Two others were underinflated. Anderson instructed another official to pump them up until they reached the 12.5-p.s.i. threshold.

[...]

[W]hen 11 balls were tested with two gauges at halftime, after the Colts had raised suspicions following a second-quarter interception of a Brady pass, they were all below 12.5 p.s.i. Most were substantially lower. One was at 10.5.

The game was played in the rain, and deflated balls would have been easier to grip in the wet weather.

Good God! According to Branch, when the Patriots’ footballs were measured at halftime, “they were all below 12.5 p.s.i.” Full stop!

The Wells report on which Branch was reporting said that the Patriots footballs should have measured below 12.5 psi by that time, by at least a full pound! In a front-page New York Times news report, Branch simply skipped that fact.

(“One was at 10.5?” Branch didn't note that this reading came from only one of the two dueling gauges—the gauge the referee said he didn’t use before the start of the game.)

Branch offered a simpleton’s before-and-after account—a simple tale of consensus scandal written for a young child. That said, this Simple Simon account of the facts was amplified nowhere in the Times’ two front-page reports.

The clownishness only got worse when the Times published Waldstein’s account of the Patriots’ rebuttal report.

The rebuttal report highlighted all the problems with the NFL’s bungled attempts at data collection. It strongly complained about the false information the NFL had disbursed.

In his original hard-copy text, Waldstein hinted at some of this misconduct by the NFL. As we noted on Monday, all such suggestions were edited out of the scrubbed account which now appears on-line.

That's bad enough—but good God! Below, you see Waldstein’s account of the Patriots basic explanation of the inflation level of their footballs. In a slightly different world, it would be astounding to think that work like this could appear in the New York Times:

WALDSTEIN (5/17/15): The Wells report asserted that the footballs the Patriots used in the first half of the A.F.C. title game in January were, in general, significantly underinflated, while the four footballs the Colts used that were measured conformed to the guidelines.

The Patriots countered by emphasizing that only four of the Colts’ balls were measured and offered theories about why their own footballs were underinflated at halftime. Perhaps it was because the Colts kept their footballs in garbage bags on the rainy sidelines and the Patriots did not. Perhaps it was because the Patriots’ footballs were measured first, and during those 10 minutes the Colts’ balls reached equilibrium in the warmer confines of the referees’ locker room.

The Patriots also noted how they had the ball for most of the first half, especially at the end. Therefore, their footballs—the N.F.L. lets each team use its own—were subjected to far more physical abuse. Could the underinflation have been caused, the Patriots wondered, by the “different number of times” the balls were “crushed under the weight of players being tackled”?

According to Waldstein’s report, “The Patriots...offered theories about why their own footballs were underinflated at halftime.”

He then fails to mention the Patriots’ number-one “theory,” according to which the inflation levels were exactly where they should have been due to the weather conditions and the Ideal Gas Law.

Good God! Waldstein pretends to report the positions the Patriots adopted in their rebuttal report. But in that remarkable passage, he omits the most significant explanation for the “underinflation”—for the reduced air pressure readings—of the Patriots’ footballs.

He weirdly omits another obvious fact. According to the referee, the Colts’ footballs started the game at 13.0 psi, as compared to 12.5 psi for the Patriots’ footballs. Might that help explain why the Patriots’ footballs were “underinflated” by halftime, while the Colts’ four footballs still “conformed to the [pre-game] guidelines?”

In the New York Times, it cannot! That fundamental fact went unmentioned in Waldstein’s account.

The New York Times has devoted thousands of words to the Wells report and its aftermath. But in all its reporting, and in its additional half dozen columns on the topic, Times readers have never encountered even the most fundamental facts about this ridiculous case.

They’ve never been told about the NFL’s clownish attempt at data collection. They’ve never been told that the NFL gave false information to the Patriots and apparently to the press corps itself.

Most amazingly, Times readers have never been told about the basic physics of the case.

Why were the Patriots’ footballs “underinflated” at halftime? In two lengthy front-page reports, then in Waldstein’s informational column, Times readers were never told about the effect the weather had on the air pressure readings of both teams’ footballs.

It was right there in the Wells report. It didn’t get into the Times!

The dumbness of the whale is both astounding and vast. Tomorrow, we’ll show you where the Times, and the rest of the press, took their focus as they cavorted and played on the surface of their consensus tale.

Tomorrow: Dumbest fish in the sea

Supplemental: Frank Bruni’s upset with college presidents’ pay!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015

We’ll take it one step farther: Frank Bruni is upset today with college presidents’ pay.

Last weekend, the thoughtful pundit was upset with the Clintons’ “greed” and with their troubling income.

We think Bruni should be concerned with college presidents’ pay. He makes some good points in his new column.

That said, we’re willing to take it one step farther. Since Bruni’s concerned about everyone else, we think the scribe should start to inquire about major journalists’ pay.

For example, how much does Frank Bruni get paid? How about Maureen Dowd?

People like Bruni are often upset about the money other folk make. At the same time, they tend to be secretive about the piles of cash which gets dished to the big runny cheeses in their own sacred field.

Especially on the TV machine, it’s hard to doubt the pernicious results of big corporate pay. We watch the declining quality of Rachel Maddow’s show and we wonder if a person like Maddow would ever decline as much as she has if it weren’t for the ill effects of massive corporate pay.

In our judgment, Maddow’s a special case. That said, all over our TV “news” divisions, wealthy purveyors are clutching their pearls, asking if Hillary Clinton can relate to “everyday people.”

We’re always struck by the efforts these people make to keep their own incomes secret. How are they able to relate? The question never comes up!

In large part, the clowns on TV are willing to clown because of their very large pay-days. In our view, Maddow has become an especially striking case.

Her self-adoration is dragging her down. She’s hardly the only one.

THE DUMBNESS OF THE WHALE: Verdict first, information never!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015

Part 3—Ahab in Wonderland: It has long been a basic precept of our press corps’ consensus scandals:

Verdict first, information never!

Information must never intrude on the prearranged judgment which permits the fun of consensus scandal.

Analysis? What’s that?

Who is the Ahab of the current scandal—the scandal concerning air pressure of footballs? That Ahab would seem to be Ryan Grigson, general manager of the Indianapolis Colts.

According to the NFL’s official “Wells report” (see page 45), Grigson sent an email to league officials before last January’s playoff game against the New English Patriots. It included a note about the bad conduct of Grigson’s personal whale:

EMAIL FROM COLTS OFFICIALS: As far as the game balls are concerned it is well known around the league that after the Patriots game balls are checked by the officials and brought out for game usage the ballboys for the Patriots will let out some air with a ball needle because their quarterback likes a smaller football so he can grip it better, it would be great if someone would be able to check the air in the game balls as the game goes on so that they don’t get an illegal advantage.

Question: If it was “well known around the league” that the Patriots had been doctoring footballs, why had no one ever complained to the league before this?

The Wells report skips all such questions. In fairness, it did note this:

“The Grigson email did not contain any factual support for the suspicions raised, and the NFL was unaware of any factual support prior to the game.”

Lack of factual support is often observed at the start of our consensus scandals. Things spiral downward from there.

In this case, the NFL soon found itself seeking more information from the Colts. As a result, the Wells report goes on to describe the Colts’ previous encounter with their own personal white whale.

It happened in Week 11, the last time the Patriots played the Colts. Sean Sullivan is the Colts’ skillful equipment manager:

WELLS REPORT (page 46): During interviews, when asked to explain the source of their concerns about the Patriots game balls, Grigson, Sullivan, and other members of the Colts equipment staff referenced the Colts Week 11 game against the Patriots in Indianapolis. During that game, Colts strong safety Mike Adams intercepted two passes thrown by Tom Brady. On both occasions, Adams handed the footballs to Brian Seabrooks, an Assistant Equipment Manager for the Colts, on the sideline. Sullivan also examined the footballs because, as he described it, he always checks to see how other teams prepare their balls to “make sure no one is doing a better job.” Sullivan and Seabrooks said that the intercepted footballs appeared to be coated in a tacky substance and seemed spongy or soft when squeezed. They explained that even though they did not test the air pressure of the intercepted footballs at the time, based on their years of experience, the softness of the balls raised suspicions. They also cited unspecified chatter throughout the League that the Patriots prefer their footballs softer than other teams and that visiting teams should be on guard when playing at Gillette Stadium. They could not identify a specific source for this information or reference particular conversations.

Just for the record, “unspecified chatter” is also widely observed at the start of consensus scandals.

Back in Week 11, Colts personnel didn’t attempt to measure the air pressure of the highly suspicious footballs their player intercepted. They based their suspicion on “their years of experience” and their presumed expertise.

That said, it may be just as well that the Colts didn’t try to perform an actual act of measurement. During the playoff game in January, they did attempt to conduct such a measurement of a ball which was intercepted.

Despite their years of experience, their attempt at measurement didn’t go especially well. The Wells report continues the tale. As it does, our first statistic appears:

WELLS REPORT (page 63): At approximately 7:47 p.m., during the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game, Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson intercepted a pass thrown by Tom Brady. Following the interception upon reaching the sideline, Jackson handed the ball to David Thornton, the Colts Director of Player Engagement, near the Colts bench and Thornton immediately handed the ball to Assistant Equipment Manager Brian Seabrooks. According to Seabrooks, he believed that the ball felt similar to the footballs intercepted by Mike Adams during the Colts game against the Patriots earlier in the season, so he asked one of the team‟s equipment interns to locate a pressure gauge and test the inflation level of the intercepted ball. The intern used a digital pressure gauge similar to the gauge used by the Colts to set their footballs before the game, and reported that the pressure measured approximately 11 psi. Seabrooks then walked with the intercepted football to Equipment Manager Sean Sullivan, who squeezed the ball and agreed that it felt soft.

The Wells report doesn’t explain the basis on which the Colts believed they had the right to measure one of the Patriots’ footballs. Concern for the NFL’s sacred rules is selectively observed in this official report.

At any rate:

For unknown reasons, the Colts directed an intern to measure the pressure of the ball. The intern reported that it “measured approximately 11 psi.”

Conducting his own detailed probe, Sullivan “squeezed the ball and agreed that it felt soft.” But thanks to the intern’s work, we now had our first statistic.

We also had the start of a farce in which the NFL established the fact that it didn’t know how to measure air pressure as of the date in question.

Uh-oh! As events unfolded on the day of the playoff game, NFL officials proceeded to measure the air pressure of that same football.

In fact, they measured it three different times. Needless to say, they came up with three different readings, as revealed on page 70 of the Wells report:

11.35 psi; 11.45 psi; 11.75 psi.

The Wells report doesn’t say what air pressure gauge was used to produce that welter of readings. But by now, the NFL had nailed it down! The air pressure of the intercepted football was one of the values shown below. You can take your pick!

11.0 psi; 11.35 psi; 11.45 psi; 11.75 psi

It was like the old joke about the weather. If you don’t like the air pressure readings in New England, just wait a while!

Perhaps you’re starting to see our general point. Although it never bats an eye at the chaos it is describing, the Wells report goes on to describe ludicrous conduct by a gang which couldn’t measure air pressure straight.

For this one football alone, the Wells report presents four different air pressure readings, across a rather wide range. And the league’s attempts at data collection only became more clownish from there, as we’ve described in previous reports.

After its clownish attempts at data collection, the league proceeded to Step 2 in its probe—the dissemination of false information to the press corps and the Patriots.

A bunch of false statistics quickly appeared at ESPN and NBC Sports, attributed to “NFL sources.” And that wasn’t all! On page 100, the Wells report quotes a letter the NFL sent to the Patriots on the day after the game.

The letter was written by David Gardi, the NFL’s highly august Senior Vice President of Football Operations. This is part of what Senior Vice President Gardi falsely wrote:

LETTER FROM THE NFL TO THE PATRIOTS: The inspection, which involved each ball being inspected twice with different gauges, revealed that none of the Patriots‟ game balls were inflated to the specifications required under Rule 2, Section 1. In fact, one of the game balls was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12½ to 13½ psi. In contrast, each of the Colts‟ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.

In fact, none of the footballs had been recorded at anywhere close to 10.1 psi on either of the NFL’s clownish dueling gauges. On page 101, the Wells report, seeing no evil in senior vice presidents, explains this small tiny completely understandable accidental minor pointless mistake:

WELLS REPORT (page 101): In fact, none of the Patriots game balls measured 10.1 psi when they were tested at halftime. We believe that there was an inadvertent error in communication of the results to Gardi. The NFL personnel providing the air pressure information to Gardi at the time did not have copies of the documents on which the measurements had been recorded by Richard Farley and were relying on memory alone. We do not believe that this error raises any doubt about the accuracy of the measurements recorded by Farley or any other relevant issue...In any event, with the knowledge and approval of League staff, we subsequently provided all of the air pressure data to counsel for the Patriots during the course of the investigation subject to a confidentiality commitment.

They relied on memory alone! At this point, you might also describe the NFL as “the gang that can’t write letters straight!”

The Wells report must be one of the most farcical documents ever released to the press corps. In the passage we’ve just posted, you see its authors blithely accepting a claim of innocence on behalf of the organization which was paying their very large fees—an organization which had apparently provided false information to the Patriots and to the national press corps.

Gardi was quickly given a pass for his astonishing conduct. But all through this same report, its authors turn backflips looking for ways to interpret every comment by their Patriotic targets in a criminal light.

On its face, this dual standard is farcical, and perhaps not obsessively honest. By the way:

Under the “confidentiality agreement” cited in the passage above, the NFL apparently told the Patriots that they couldn’t correct the false information which had appeared in the press. As of late March, the Patriots were finally allowed to see the real numbers—just so long as they agreed that the press and the public wouldn’t be told!

We’ve rarely seen a crazier document than the Wells report. It describes farcical conduct by the NFL, an organization which seemed to have no idea how air pressure works in footballs, or how it can be measured.

The Wells report describes farcical conduct by the NFL, but it never seems to notice. It also seems to describe dishonest conduct by the NFL. That too escapes its ken.

On its face, the Wells report has the look of a farcical document which isn’t obsessively honest. But by the time it was handed to the press, the outlines of our latest consensus scandal had already been settled.

Tomorrow, we’ll return to the New York Times to see how that famous newspaper presented the farcical problems which litter the Wells report. Let’s just say that these farcical elements were all disappeared by the Times.

Verdict first, information never! As the press corps happily clowned with its latest consensus scandal, an Ahab among the Colts met the Alice in Wonderland standards which have long prevailed across our “national press corps.”

Information never! Tomorrow, the pitiful Times.

Supplemental: Eye-and-earwitnesses fail us again!

TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2015

The train derailment this time: Why did that Amtrak train speed up as it approached that dangerous curve?

We’ll offer our speculation below. For today, we once again learn an important lesson about the limitations of eyewitnesses.

By the weekend, the following questions had arisen: Had the windshield of the train been struck by some object? Could that have played a role in the derailment?

For ourselves, we don’t know what occurred. According to murky reporting in today’s New York Times, an account from an earwitness has apparently turned out to be wrong:

PHILLIPS AND SCHMIDT (5/19/15): On Monday, as Amtrak restored service between New York and Washington, F.B.I. investigators traveled to a train yard in Wilmington, Del., where Amtrak 188 was taken for further study. Officials analyzed the windshield to determine if damage to the glass was caused by the derailment or a projectile, such as a rock.

The N.T.S.B. said it expected final results in the next few days.

“It could be completely coincidental, it could be causal, and that’s exactly what we are trying to find out,” Robert L. Sumwalt, a member of the N.T.S.B., said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” Mr. Sumwalt said at a news conference on Friday that an assistant conductor said she heard an engineer on the Septa regional commuter line say in a radio transmission that his train had been struck by an object. She told investigators that she believed she heard the Amtrak engineer, Mr. Bostian, say that his train had been hit by something, too.

On Sunday, Mr. Sumwalt, appearing on several talk shows, said recordings of radio traffic showed that the engineer did not call dispatch to say his train had been struck, nor did the Septa engineer recall having a conversation with Mr. Bostian.

It seems the earwitness was wrong about what she thought she heard. In a bit of a muddle, the Times report doesn’t explain which train the earwitness was on.

Last Friday, Jim Dwyer wrote an important piece in the Times about the limitations of eyewitnesses. In his “About New York” column, he described mistaken testimony from two eyewitnesses to an incident last Wednesday in which a man with a hammer attacked two police officers.

The two eyewitnesses gave separate accounts of the incident. Both were sure about what they had seen. Until they watched surveillance tape, which showed their accounts were wrong:

DWYER (5/15/15): Contrary to what Mr. O’Grady said, the man who was shot had not been trying to get away from the officers; he was actually chasing an officer from the sidewalk onto Eighth Avenue, swinging a hammer at her head. Behind both was the officer’s partner, who shot the man, David Baril.

And Ms. Khalsa did not see Mr. Baril being shot while in handcuffs; he is, as the video and still photographs show, freely swinging the hammer, then lying on the ground with his arms at his side. He was handcuffed a few moments later, well after he had been shot.

There is no evidence that the mistaken accounts of either person were malicious or intentionally false. Studies of memories of traumatic events consistently show how common it is for errors to creep into confidently recalled accounts, according to cognitive psychologists.

“It’s pretty normal,” said Deryn Strange, an associate psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “That’s the hard thing to get our heads around. It’s frightening how easy it is to build in a false memory.”

The two eyewitnesses weren’t malicious, Dwyer emphasized. They were simply wrong—wrong about what they thought they saw during a brief, highly unusual incident.

The shortcomings of eyewitness testimony were brought to the fore in the Justice Department’s report about the death of Michael Brown. This material was widely ignored by those on our own liberal team.

The material was also widely ignored by some of the overpaid stars of “cable news.” In subsequent incidents, they quickly returned to a shaky practice—they interviewed excited eyewitnesses without warning viewers that such testimony, while well-intentioned, may often turn out to be wrong.

To name one name, Anderson Cooper has never met an eyewitness whose account he didn’t love. We were struck by the ease with which some cable performers returned to an irresponsible practice. Perhaps it’s what they get paid for!

Dwyer’s column was instructive. Regarding the train derailment:

In a medium driven by speculation, we’ve seen no one wonder if this could possibly have been a copycat incident. A copycat of what, you may ask.

Incomparably, we’ll leave it right there! But in a world driven by speculation, we’re often struck by the lack of imagination among those in our cable brigade.

THE DUMBNESS OF THE WHALE: Information drowned in the deep!

TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2015

Part 2—The facts you still haven’t heard: How vast is the dumbness of the whale?

(Editor’s note: The “whale” to which this post refers is the mammoth, appalling cetacean known as “the national press corps.”)

How vast is the dumbness of the whale? Today, let’s consider the way Melville’s “spouting fish” has buried basic information as it pretends to discuss its current consensus scandal.

For years, we’ve stated a basic point—facts and information play almost no role in our public discourse.

As the whale descends to the deep to compose a standard group tale, it’s narrative all the way down! Inconvenient facts will always be sent to the bottom!

Our current consensus scandal displays this aspect of press culture in an especially straightforward way. Let’s review three sets of facts about the “Deflategate” matter.

These basic facts have been disappeared by the spouting fish of the national press. Almost surely, you’ve heard none of these facts before.

The intercepted football which touched off the conflagration

In Homer’s glorious tale, Paris’ seduction of Helen triggers a vast conflagration. In the press corps’ current tale, D’Qwell Jackson’s interception of a pass by Tom Brady touches off the thrilling Deflategate brouhaha.

Within the first week of this mess, Jackson said that he’d noticed nothing unusual about the football in question. But on the sidelines, officials of the Indianapolis Colts had been scandalized by what they said was the softness of the ball!

In the NFL’s official report, the story proceeds from there. This passage describes the NFL found when its glorious functionaries measured the air pressure of the triggering football:

WELLS REPORT (page 70): The pressure of the Patriots ball that had been intercepted by the Colts was separately tested three times and the measurements—11.45, 11.35 and 11.75 psi, respectively—were written on athletic tape that had been placed on the ball for identification. League personnel retained possession of the intercepted ball and it was not reintroduced to the game after halftime. The football intercepted by Jackson was provided to Paul, Weiss for examination in connection with the investigation.

Good lord! According to NFL regulations, footballs are supposed to be inflated within a range of permitted air pressure—anywhere from 12.5 psi to 13.5 psi. On all three measures, the intercepted football measured below that standard!

On its face, that looks like a problem. But uh-oh! Some 43 pages later, the Wells report gets around to presenting some key information:

WELLS REPORT (page 113): As a result of exposure to the colder temperature on the field during the first half, the air pressure of all of the game balls tested at halftime decreased from the levels measured prior to the game. This result is consistent with basic scientific principles, including the Ideal Gas Law, which predicts the proportional change in pressure that is caused by a change in temperature of the gas inside a pressure vessel of fixed volume (such as a football). According to Exponent, based on the most likely pressure and temperature values for the Patriots game balls on the day of the AFC Championship Game (i.e., a starting pressure of 12.5 psi, a starting temperature of between 67 and 71 degrees and a final temperature of 48 degrees), the Ideal Gas Law predicts that the Patriots balls should have measured between 11.52 and 11.32 psi at the end of the first half, just before they were brought back into the Officials Locker Room.

Oops! According to that passage, the intercepted football—the Helen of this conflagration—seemed to measure exactly where it should have!

According to the Wells report, all the Patriots’ footballs were measured at 12.5 psi before the game began. According to the Ideal Gas Law, weather conditions would have reduced their psi readings to a range of 11.32-11.52 psi by halftime of the game.

On two of the measurements, the intercepted football fell within that range. (The pass was intercepted midway through the second quarter.) On the third measurement, its inflation level was above that predicted range.

Based on those readings, there seems to be little reason to think that air was surreptitiously released from this football after it was approved for use by referee Walt Anderson. Presumably, this explains why Jackson said he found nothing strange about the football he intercepted.

Presumably, NFL games are played with such footballs all the time! Presumably, this happens almost every week as weather conditions lower the air pressure that existed before the game began.

Why then did Colts’ officials say they thought this football was strange? We’ve seen no one in the national press corps attempt to address this obvious question. In fact, the press has disappeared these facts almost completely. They’ve dragged this information into the deep, where it was drowned.

The Patriots’ other footballs

On its face, the intercepted football provides no reason to think that air was surreptitiously released from Patriots’ footballs.

What about the Patriots’ other footballs? As the brutish monsters of the deep thrashed about in a frenzy, the other eleven footballs were measured at halftime. What did those readings suggest?

In typical fashion, the process was clownish and chaotic. Two different air gauges produced systematically different sets of readings.

That said, these are the readings that emerged on the so-called "Logo gauge," the gauge which referee Walt Anderson said he thought he used before the game. We number the footballs as it’s done in the Wells report (page 8, page 68):

1) 11.80 psi
2) 11.20 psi
3) 11.50 psi
4) 11.00 psi
5) 11.45 psi
6) 11.95 psi
7) 12.30 psi
8) 11.55 psi
9) 11.35 psi
10) 10.90 psi
11) 11.35 psi

According to referee Anderson, he measured all these footballs at 12.5 psi before the game, then approved them for use. But how strange!

Three of these footballs measured above the range predicted by the Ideal Gas Law. Two were substantially higher (footballs 1 and 7). If we assume that those halftime measurements were accurate (a large assumption), that suggests the possibility that Anderson inflated those footballs to a level above 12.5 psi before the game.

Five of the footballs measured within the range predicted by the Ideal Gas Law. Only three of the footballs measured below that predicted range. One of the three (football 2) was just a tick below the predicted range.

On face, those measurements provide little reason to think that air was surreptitiously released from those footballs after they were approved for use by Anderson. Perhaps for that reason, we've seen no one mention these readings as the whale has pretended to discuss its latest consensus scandal.

Two points should be noted:

To keep its waterlogged tale afloat, the NFL has judged that Anderson was probably wrong in one of his contentions. Despite his personal recollection, they have judged that he probably used the other air pressure gauge before the game.

In the Wells report, they “explain” their reasoning in the murkiest English ever formed this side of Queequeg. Before the week is done, we’ll look at that presentation.

Final point—there is absolutely no reason to regard any of those measurements as precise or accurate. As noted above, the NFL measured the intercepted football three times, coming up with three different readings.

Was that 10.90 psi for football 10 a precise and accurate reading? There is no apparent reason to think so. The same is true of all the readings presented by Wells as he married the dumbness of the whale to a type of kangaroo court.

Let the bad information roll

Admit it! You’ve seen no one report or explain the facts about the intercepted football, whose air pressure seems to have been where it should have been.

You’ve seen no one report or explain the air pressure readings which were recorded for the other eleven balls.

Crackers! When the whale concocts a tale, he drowns all facts in the deep!

In their place, he will often start inventing false facts. Or he will accept false facts from the party whose point of view he prefers in the thrilling new scandal about which he is spouting.

In this case, the preferred party was the deeply aggrieved NFL. And so, in line with standard practice, false information quickly appeared in the press, attributed to “NFL sources.”

We discussed that false information in two prior reports. First, click here; after that, click this.

On May 7, the Wells report finally released the air pressure readings for the Patriots’ footballs. When it did, it became clear that false information had quickly appeared in the press, attributed to “NFL sources.”

Admit it! In the twelve days since the Wells report appeared, you’ve seen no one report this awkward fact. You’ve seen no one ask the NFL to explain this awkward fact.

In their widely-derided rebuttal report, the Patriots have also alleged that the NFL wouldn’t show them the actual air pressure readings for the first two months of the consensus scandal. The Patriots also allege that they were only given the accurate data on the condition that they not release it to the press and the public.

Those are astonishing claims. Admit it! You’ve seen no one report those claims. You’ve seen no one ask the NFL if those claims are accurate. And you’ve seen no one mention an additional fact which the Wells report mentions on page 100:

In the first days of the scandal, the NFL sent a letter to the Patriots which falsely stated that the intercepted football measured 10.1 psi. In this way, the Patriots were grievously misinformed about the actual state of the facts.

The Wells report describes this remarkable matter as “an inadvertent error.” Admit it! In the days since the Wells report appeared, you've seen no one mention this awkward, embarrassing, kangaroo court-style fact.

As Melville suggested but never quite said, the dumbness of the whale is matched only by its brutal dishonesty. As we’ve fruitlessly told you for years, disappearance of basic facts is a key part of this pattern.

In this morning’s New York Times, Adam Nossiter offers an appalling report about the horrific sexual conduct of men in Boko Haram.

They’re behaving in the ways their broken social contract permits. So are the many reporters and pundits who toy with your world over here.

The behavior of ESPN’s reporters and pundits has been an embarrassing, rolling disgrace in this ongoing matter. Then again, have you seen anyone report, discuss or attempt to explain the basic facts we've presented above?

This is the way our “press corps” works, even with topics which massively matter, unlike this latest exciting topic.

We’ve been telling you this for years. But the dumbness of the whale is extensive:

It’s quite plain that nobody cares.

Tomorrow: Instantly, with lightning speed, the world’s dumbest talking point

Supplemental: And now for a little light explication!

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015

Quoting Freud, the trouble with jokes: In truth, Chapter 42 of Melville’s most famous book isn’t called “The dumbness of the whale.”

We wrote that in this morning’s report. In reality, Chapter 42 is called “The whiteness of the whale.”

You can check it out via this link, which we repeat. We thought the phrase was famous.

We offered our headline for the week—THE DUMBNESS OF THE WHALE—as a cri de coeur (a “cry of the dog”). Also as a bit of an exasperation-fueled joke.

This was our thinking:

When Melville described the whiteness of the whale, he was largely writing about a whale. We aren't writing about a whale this week. Our “whale” is the national press corps, whose dumbness, we’re prepared to suggest, is its defining trait.

The dumbness of the whale! The idea is this—the press corps is a humongous beast defined by its massive dumbness.

Below, we’ll show you what Melville actually wrote. Then, we’ll show you the way we tricked it up, just by changing one word:

WHAT MELVILLE WROTE: Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

THE WAY WE TRICKED IT UP: Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the dumbness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

We offered that as a little joke. It turned out to be confusing.

The so-called dumbness of the whale is the dumbness of the press corps! As we said this morning, it’s rarely been so clearly displayed, though it’s also largely invisible.

Tomorrow, we’ll lay out some basic facts concerning our nation’s latest consensus scandal. Thanks to the “dumbness of the whale,” these basic facts have been withheld all over the national “press corps.”

The basic facts to which we refer were withheld from that column in the Times. That said, they’ve also been kept from public view pretty much everywhere else.

Fundamental facts have been withheld all over the national press corps! It’s the nature of “consensus scandal.”

In our view, the familiar practice virtually defines the dumbness of the whale.

Two final points to ponder: First, it will always be defined as the fault of the person whose accurate words get ignored.

(Broder: Why were Clinton’s speeches so long? Milbank: Why did Gore use so many big words?)

Second, a dirty little secret:

We the people love consensus. In the end, we always find a way to judge that its purveyors were right.

We believe Dostoyevsky said that, although we could always be wrong.

THE DUMBNESS OF THE WHALE: What Herman Melville so memorably said!

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015

Part 1—The New York Times, all at sea: In the famous forty-second chapter of his longest, most famous book, Herman Melville had his famous narrator, Ishmael, explain a famous obsession.

Above all else, Ishmael explains, it was the dumbness of the whale which had him spellbound—“appalled.”

All last week, we thought of the passage we show you below as we followed the coverage of the consensus scandal which was quickly and dumbly christened “Deflategate:”

MELVILLE (1851): Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the dumbness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

Forget his other attributes. It was the dumbness of the whale which left Ishmael in horror, appalled.

More than forty years ago, Melville got it right! By now, the astonishing dumbness of the whale has become both perfectly clear and almost completely invisible.

In the past few weeks, this dumbness has been put on vivid display in the press corps’ pseudo-discussion of the Deflategate fandango. In the process, no one has “done it dumber” than the New York Times’ David Waldstein.

Waldstein’s column about this matter appeared in last Friday’s editions. Let’s build a quick chronology of recent events:

Wednesday, May 6: On Wednesday, May 6, the NFL issued its official report on this matter, the so-called “Wells report.” According to the Wells report, it is “more probable than not” that two employees of the New England Patriots deliberately underinflated some footballs last January, in violating of NFL rules.

Just for the record, “more probable than not” means that the two employees may not have engaged in these actions. That said, it was also deemed “more probable than not” that Tom Brady, the Patriots’ handsome star quarterback, was “generally aware” of the actions which the two employees committed or then again possibly didn’t.

Thursday, May 14: On Thursday, May 14, the Patriots issued a rebuttal to the Wells report. The next day, the Times hurried Waldstein’s column into print, then began revising it as the morning wore on.

In hard copy, Waldstein’s column bore the headline shown below. The headline reflected the general shape of the press corps’ consensus:

“Patriots’ Rebuttal Is Foray Further Into Farce”

In our hard-copy New York Times, Waldstein’s column was bannered across the top of the first page of the “Sports Thursday” section. In subsequent editions, major portions of the column were substantially changed—you might even say dumbed down.

That said:

In Waldstein’s column, and in dozens just like it, the American people were exposed to the dumbness of the whale. They were also denied the most basic facts about our latest consensus scandal.

In what way was Waldstein’s column so preternaturally dumb? Let us start counting the problems:

In paragraph 5: In paragraph 5 of his hard-copy text, the scrivener wrote this: “From the Patriots’ standpoint, the science is indisputable.”

That sounded intriguing, though imprecise. To what “science” did Waldstein refer? Did he mean that the science in question really is indisputable? Or did he simply mean that that’s what the Patriots claim?

Who knows? In standard fashion, Waldstein never described “the science” in question. He never explained what the Patriots think the science tells us about the case.

He never said if he thinks the Patriots are right in their belief. The basic science of the case was quickly, completely abandoned.

In paragraph 8: In paragraph 8 of his hard-copy text, Waldstein seemed to say that the NFL had made some “preposterous claims” in its official report. But he never explained what those claims were, and the word “preposterous” was removed from the later versions of his piece, including the version which now appears on-line.

In paragraph 13: In paragraph 13 of his hard-copy text, Waldstein said that the Patriots “matched every far-fetched claim in the Wells report with one of their own.”

That sounded intriguing. But he never explained what the NFL’s “far-fetched claims” actually were. The word “far-fetched” has been removed from the later versions of his column.

Also in paragraph 13: In paragraph 13 of his hard-copy text, Waldstein also said this: “The Wells report engaged in a few logical contortions to show that the footballs the Patriots used in the first half of the A.F.C. title game in January were, in general, significantly underinflated…”

That sounded dishonest! But Waldstein never explained what the NFL’s “logical contortions” were. Needless to say, the unpleasant claim has been removed from the later versions of his column.

In paragraphs 16 and 17: Wow! In paragraphs 16 and 17 of his original text, Waldstein seemed to describe egregious misconduct by NFL officials. This is the text which appeared in our hard-copy Times:

WALDSTEIN (5/15/15): Finally, in a rebuke to league officials initially for leaking inaccurate figures that said the balls were egregiously below the minimum air pressure at halftime, the Patriots suggested that the real and less damaging air-pressure figures were intentionally suppressed to minimize their effect on the public, and only released in conjunction with more damning text messages.

“One can only speculate,” the Patriots said, “why it was so important for the league that the accurate halftime information be withheld from the public until it was ultimately part of a report that downplayed the science and instead relied on selective texts.”

Say what? NFL officials “initially leaked inaccurate figures?” They “intentionally suppressed the real and less damaging air-pressure figures?”

Waldstein’s original text seemed to accuse the NFL of egregious misconduct. But wait a minute! Did league officials really leak inaccurate figures to the press? Or is that just the Patriots’ claim?

Alas! In his initial column, Waldstein left these basic questions unclear and unresolved. He never explained what the “inaccurate figures” in question actually were.

In the later version of Waldstein’s column, his text was changed in a major way. The column now says that the Patriots contend that the league engaged in this conduct. It says the Patriots make this contention; it offers nothing more.

Even in his original text, Waldstein didn’t say whether any inaccurate data ever appeared in the press. As readers of this site may know, the dumbness of the whale is routinely displayed in this practiced manner.

Waldstein’s original column was dumbed down, in major ways, by the New York Times. But don’t be fooled! Even his original text stands as a tribute to the dumbness of the whale—to the dumbness which controls the way our discourse works.

Even in its original form, Waldstein’s column played by the rules which have been on display in almost all opinion columns, news reports and pundit discussions of this exciting consensus scandal. Alas! He focused on the least significant aspects of the rebuttal report. He avoided the basic facts of the case in favor of silly anecdotal matters—silly “evidence” which was interpreted in the dumbest possible way.

Keeping faith with the consensus, Waldstein emphasized the allegedly “farcical” nature of the Patriots’ rebuttal. He never explained the remarkable information which is found in that rebuttal report.

Even in its original form, readers of Waldstein’s column were shielded from the most basic facts of the case. Instead, they encountered the talking points which controlled the pseudo-discussion observed all through the “press.”

Months before, a consensus judgment had been reached on this matter. Even in his original text, Waldstein seemed to know that he mustn’t explain how weak that consensus is.

Here's how vast the dumbness is. An editor at the New York Times dumbed even that column down! But this is the way our consensus scandals are served to the public.

In the global perspective, nothing much turns on the “Deflategate” matter. That said, the press corps’ discussion of this matter constitutes a perfect example of the problem Melville described, decades ago, as “the dumbness of the whale.”

Judgment first, information never! As we’ll show you all this week, that’s the way this event has been processed all through the brainless whale we still describe as our “press corps.”

Tomorrow: By rule of law, three basic facts the public can’t be told

Much as Melville said: We can’t link you to Waldstein’s original column, which stressed the allegedly “farcical” nature of the rebuttal report.

Good boy! But even that piece was considered too strong, perhaps too suggestive of real information! An amended version “survive[d] the wreck,” as Melville so memorably put it.

Supplemental: The Patriots make a remarkable claim!

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2015

As always, the press corps ignores it: On Thursday, we noted a striking fact:

As with most of our consensus scandals, the scandal our press corps has dubbed “Deflategate” began with some false information.

More accurately, it began with a lot of false information. And uh-oh!

At ESPN and at NBC Sports, major journalists attributed this false information to unnamed “NFL sources.” Apparently, the bad information was being dispensed by people within the league.

For our background report, click here.

Almost all our consensus scandals start with bad information. Given the caliber of our “press corps,” things typically snowball from there.

Something else happened on Thursday. The New England Patriots released a lengthy rebuttal to the NFL report which accused the team, even including its handsome star quarterback, of serious wrongdoing.

In their rebuttal, the Patriots made some remarkable claims about the false information which launched this latest ship.

In its typical way, the press corps is ignoring the Patriots' claims about that false information—false information which came from “NFL sources.” We don’t know if their claims are true, but we thought you ought to see them.

Several parts of the Patriots rebuttal report are striking. Below, you see the part which discusses the bad information which triggered this latest state fair:

PATRIOTS REBUTTAL REPORT (5/14/15): Since the Patriots were the target of this investigation and since information coming directly from game officials and League officials was crucial—and it was the League that also employed the investigators—Patriots’ counsel requested to be present during interviews of such League personnel. That request was rejected. Patriots’ counsel also requested from the outset that he be provided with the actual halftime psi measurements. That information was not provided until March 23, over two months into the investigation. It was provided then only on the condition that it not be disclosed and, particularly, that it not be disclosed to the media until the final report was issued. This condition was imposed in the face of the extensively reported misinformation about halftime football psi that the League had refused to correct. One can only speculate why it was so important for the League that the accurate halftime information be withheld from the public until it was ultimately part of a report that downplayed the science and instead relied on selective texts.

The claims made in that highlighted passage are truly remarkable. Also remarkable? The way the “press” has ignored these claims in the past two days.

Let’s be clear. There is no doubt that false information was quickly leaked to the press about those air pressure readings.

At ESPN and at NBC News, this extensive false information was attributed to “NFL sources.” That is a matter of record, not an allegation.

In their rebuttal report, the Patriots have made some allegations about the way this matter played out:

They have said that the NFL refused to show them the actual air pressure readings for the first two months of this auto-da-fe.

They also claim that the NFL finally showed them the accurate data on the condition that it mustn’t be shared with the public or the press!

If true, that’s simply astounding.

Obviously, the NFL knew that initial press reports presented false information. They also knew that this false information was sourced to the NFL.

The NFL failed to correct this false information; that is a matter of record. But according to the Patriots, the NFL’s behavior was worse than that.

According to the Patriots, the NFL refused to let the Patriots see the accurate information. And when they finally let them see it, they insisted that the accurate information couldn’t be shared with the press!

That’s an astonishing pair of claims, except to the silly life forms found in our national press.

In a rational world, the national press would be upset by the fact that they were given false information in the first few days of this mess.

Beyond that, you’d think they’d be troubled by the claim that the NFL insisted, for the past four months, that this false information mustn’t be corrected.

That’s the way things would work in even a slightly rational world. But as we’ve told you for eighteen years, we live in a different type of world.

We live in the world which rejected Katharine Boo’s warning about “Creeping Dowdism.” We live in a world which is all about the love of consensus scandal.

Katharine Boo’s prescient warning was completely ignored. Beyond that, we’ve told you about this gong-show culture for the past eighteen years. That work has been ignored too!

In this case, as in so many others, a familiar pattern obtained. False information quickly appeared; it drove the shape of the new consensus. And once a consensus forms within the hive we call our “press corps,” nothing can ever disrupt it.

In the past two days, we’ve seen virtually no one discuss the false information which was attributed to “NFL sources.” We’ve seen no one discuss the Patriots’ claim about the NFL’s refusal to share the accurate information.

In a rational world, the Patriots have made some remarkable claims. Unfortunately, we live in the low-IQ world which rejected Boo. It's a world which adores its Salem Village decor and its clownish consensus scandals.

We’ll discuss this topic all next week. In the global perspective, nothing much turns on this latest consensus scandal, but it offers a stunning example of the way our “discourse” works.

ENABLERS OF THE SCANDALOUS TIMES: Michael Tomasky rolls over and dies!

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2015

Part 5—Let them save fewer lives: How do “liberal” pundits react when the New York Times creates its deeply compromised “bombshell reports?”

More specifically, how do “liberal” pundits react when the bombshell reports in question are aimed at major figures from the more liberal party?

On Thursday morning, April 23, the New York Times filed its latest such report. That very night, it was described as a “bombshell report” by the fiery liberal Chris Hayes, who seemed deeply involved in seeing no evil at the glorious Times.

Please understand! The New York Times plays a major role in the lives of professional journalists, especially those of the “sensible center” or the mainstream left.

Journalistic careers run through the Times. So does the social standing of our fiery professional journalists.

Perhaps for those reasons, liberal pundits have been deeply involved, for the past several decades, in seeing no evil at the Times. And so it went when the clownish Jo Becker filed that “bombshell report.”

Pathetically, Hayes rushed onto the TV machine to praise the accuracy of the report. He even praised the apparent good faith the bombshell seemed to exhibit.

Predictably, Hayes listed the various things that “drive him crazy” or “drive him nuts” about Bill and Hillary Clinton. He mentioned nothing that “drives him nuts” about journalists like Becker.

Along with fellow liberal Michelle Goldberg, hayes ignored the bulk of the bombshell report. Instead, he focused on a minor section of the report which alleged a “disclosure problem” at the Clinton Foundation.

That’s the real problem, the two liberals cried, as they zeroed in on a six-paragraph section of a 75-paragraph report. But so it goes among career liberals when the Times plays its endless games, especially those involving the Clintons.

To date, the New York Times hasn’t accused the Clintons of deflating the Patriots’ footballs. If it ever advances that claim, you can count on this:

People like Hayes and Jonathan Chait will see no problem with such work. They’ll attack the Clintons in various ways—and they’ll persist in seeing no evil at the glorious Times.

The lack of pushback will be general among our top career liberals. Consider Michael Tomasky’s fiery reaction to the bombshell report.

Like Hayes and Chait, Tomasky is smart and well-informed. Standard excuses don’t apply here, as they do with so many upper-end journalists.

On April 28, Tomasky responded to the bombshell report in his regular column for The Daily Beast. By now, the Clinton Foundation had explained the alleged disclosure problem—the problem Hayes and Goldberg had managed to find so disturbing.

Tomasky started with that explanation. As he did, he made an instant mistake:

TOMASKY (4/28/15): And so you may have noticed that on Sunday, the acting CEO of the Clinton Foundation offered up an explanation as to why the famous $2.35 million from Frank Giustra was unreported: because the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership to which the money went was a Canadian entity, not an American one; and apparently, under Canadian law, such donors have a legal right to privacy. And finally, they set it up as Canadian so that other Canadians could contribute and receive the usual tax credit.

Okay, whatever. Sounds quasi-plausible, I guess. But to most of Washington and some unknown percentage of Americans, it’ll just sound complicated and fishy. And whether that skepticism is warranted or not, its existence is pretty obviously a fact that the Clintons will need to deal with, and they ought to deal with it sooner rather than later by announcing some clear, simple, new rules about what the foundation will and will not do if she becomes the president. They can make this issue, or “issue,” go away, if they want to.

Generously, Tomasky was willing to say that the foundation’s explanation “sounded semi-plausible”—or so he was willing to guess! It didn’t occur to him to ask how the Times had possibly gotten that wrong, along with everything else.

Next week, we’ll show you what happened later that week when Becker pretended to discuss the foundation’s explanation. For today, let’s consider the quality of Tomasky’s work as he considered this matter.

Uh-oh! Right in his opening sentence, Tomasky made a mistake.

According to Tomasky, the Clinton Foundation had explained “why the famous $2.35 million from Frank Giustra was unreported.”

That statement contained a mistake. However “famous” that donation was, it hadn’t come from Giustra!

This basic fact was perfectly clear in the New York Times bombshell report. Right in his opening sentence, Tomasky misreported this fact.

Everybody makes mistakes. In response to his, Tomasky posted a correction, though someone at The Daily Beast gave it a different name. And wouldn’t you know it? In his non-correction correction, Tomasky made yet another mistake!

Below, you see the way Tomasky’s piece appears at The Daily Beast today. Comically but pitifully, his correction is categorized as an UPDATE.

Pathetically, his UPDATE contain another blatant mistake:

TOMASKY: And so you may have noticed that on Sunday, the acting CEO of the Clinton Foundation offered up an explanation as to why the famous $2.35 million from Frank Giustra was unreported: because the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership to which the money went was a Canadian entity, not an American one; and apparently, under Canadian law, such donors have a legal right to privacy. And finally, they set it up as Canadian so that other Canadians could contribute and receive the usual tax credit.

UPDATE: The $2.35 million in question was not from Giustra. It came from Ian Telfer, a friend of Giustra's. Telfer also made other donations to the foundation of up to $5.6 million that according to The New York Times were reported

Okay, whatever. Sounds quasi-plausible, I guess. But to most of Washington and some unknown percentage of Americans, it’ll just sound complicated and fishy. And whether that skepticism is warranted or not, its existence is pretty obviously a fact that the Clintons will need to deal with...

That correction is really an UPDATE! Go ahead—you’re allowed to laugh!

As a courtesy, we’ll assume that someone other than Tomasky decided to call that correction an UPDATE. In line with something we noted above, the “journalist” who made that decision perhaps isn’t Chait-level smart.

Whatever! In the correction which posed as an UPDATE, Tomasky corrected his first mistake. As is perfectly clear in the bombshell report, the $2.35 million donation in question came from Telfer, not Giustra.

Everybody makes mistakes. This error wasn’t the end of the world—and as we’ve noted, Becker’s bombshell report wound on, at enormous length, in part to guarantee that no one would actually read it.

Still, we’d think a journalist would want to be careful in correcting such a mistake. For that reason, the analysts angrily threw their tablets down when they read Tomasky’s correction/UPDATE.

“Telfer also made other donations to the foundation of up to $5.6 million that according to The New York Times were reported,” Tomasky wrote. But that isn’t accurate either!

Below, you see the New York Times passage in question. The passage is easily found in a search of the bombshell report:

BECKER AND MCINTIRE (4/24/15): Mr. Telfer’s undisclosed donations came in addition to between $1.3 million and $5.6 million in contributions, which were reported, from a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia, the company that originally acquired Uranium One’s most valuable asset: the Kazakh mines. Without those assets, the Russians would have had no interest in the deal: “It wasn’t the goal to buy the Wyoming mines. The goal was to acquire the Kazakh assets, which are very good,” Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said in an interview.

Those other contributions, which were reported, didn’t come from Telfer. They came from “a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia.”

That mistake doesn’t matter much either. What does matter? The obvious lack of effort Tomasky devoted to this task—and his obvious, rather disgraceful, lack of fight or pushback.

Two weeks later, Tomasky showed up on the Fox News Channel. He guested on the new Howard Kurtz’s weekly program, MediaBuzz.

During a ten-minute discussion of this general topic, Tomasky voiced no complaints about the journalism of the New York Times. In fairness, he may not have been hugely familiar with that work, whether due to Manhattan’s social whirl or to some laziness issue.

More amazingly, Tomasky voiced no complaints about the work of Peter Schweizer, the hackish, journalistically compromised author of Clinton Cash. To watch the full segment, click here.

With her impeccable manners, Christina Bellantoni had joined the all new-and-reinvented Kurtz in signaling disgust with the fact that Bill Clinton had dared to challenge Schweizer’s glorious work. Mournfully, Tomasky lounged about for the full ten minutes, saying nothing about this.

That’s what we call seeing no evil! Seeing no evil at the Times, or even in the New York Times’ unusual business partners!

In such ways, our liberal pundits have long rolled over and showed the world that they’re secretly dead. By now, it’s a well-established part of career liberal culture.

It’s the way our compromised liberal pundits enable the culture of pseudo-scandal. They did this during the war against Gore. They continue to do it now.

How soft, how weak are our liberal pundits? Forget Tomasky’s laziness, errors and silence. Consider the solution he offered in the wake of the bombshell report.

The New York Times had pounded the Clintons for their latest very bad conduct. As cash flowed to their slimy foundation, they’d approved a scary uranium deal—a scary deal with the Russians! And not only that! Somewhere in Canada, someone’s donations to something or other hadn’t been disclosed, though Tomasky seemed to have no idea whose donations these were.

Whatever! We were stunned, perhaps disgusted, by the solution he quickly proposed. If this solution doesn’t bother you some, you too may be dead to the world:

TOMASKY (continuing from above): I’d like to see Bill and Hill, and I suppose even Chelsea since her name is on the thing too, stand up and give a press conference sometime in May or June where they say the following: Yes, first, let them remind everybody of the great work the foundation has done, the lives saved, the anti-HIV drugs dispensed, the water made potable, all that. All that stuff is real. Let them say they want the foundation to continue doing this important work.

But then let them say words to the effect: “However, we are aware of the appearances here involving some recent revelations. No one has found any smoking gun of a quid pro quo, and we’re confident no one will; but we agree the standard needs to be higher than that. The presidency can’t be compromised by appearances of conflict of interest. So here’s what we’re going to do, starting on X date”—while she’s still a candidate, way before she’s even president.

“We’re gonna downsize. We’re going to raise less, and we’re going to do less...”

Let them do less good in the world, the fiery progressive proposed! Let them save fewer lives!

Make less water potable! Let children shrivel and die! Let them say goodbye to “all that!”

Whatever happened to Michael Tomasky? Whatever it is, it seems to happen to all these folk in the end.

In the wake of the bombshell report, Tomasky couldn’t bring himself to criticize Becker’s gong-show “reporting.” Judging from appearances, he couldn’t even bring himself to read her endless report.

Appearing with the reinvented Kurtz, he couldn’t even bring himself to note the problems with Schweizer’s work! At that point, a liberal pundit has truly ceased to exist.

Here’s what he was able to do. Instantly, he was able to suggest that the Clintons help fewer poor people around the world! Instead of fighting back against power, he suggested that fewer lives should be saved, fewer drugs should be dispensed.

People are dead all over the world because of the way people like this ran and hid for two years during Campaign 2000. To Tomasky, that isn’t enough. From now on, fewer lives should be saved!

That error-riddled, UPDATED column struck us as borderline repellent the first time we read it. Last Sunday, we saw its author cower before the new, reinvented Kurtz.

Bellantoni’s manners were perfect that day. Tomasky rolled over and died.

This has gone on for the past twenty years; only your anger can stop it. President Walker is betting Koch money that this pathetic pseudo culture will persist for at least two more years.

Next week: The glorious Times pretends to discusses disclosure

Supplemental: There was some bad information going around!

THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015

ESPN failed again: Quite routinely, we the American people are fed lots of bad information.

As an example, consider the original reporting about “Deflategate,” our current consensus scandal.

On a factual basis, the original reporting was highly inaccurate. In a new column for Yahoo Sports, Dan Wetzel has noted this fact:

WETZEL (5/13/15): The story didn't go big until ESPN reported about 24 hours after the game that the NFL had discovered that 11 of the 12 footballs were measured to be more than 2 pounds per square inch below the league minimum of 12.5.

That gave a subject that almost no one knew much about context, significance and potentially sinister intent. ESPN cited a nebulous “league source” at a time when it's believed no one outside the NFL office knew the actual measurements.

Of course, that story wasn't true. It wasn't even close to true. Wells' report showed that none of the footballs, each measured twice, were that underinflated.

At that very moment, the NFL had to know the story wasn't true. Yet it did nothing.

So the league either created a fake story that was extremely prejudicial to the Patriots by leaking inaccurate information or someone else did it and the league office let it run wild rather than correct it with the actual air pressure measurements.

Wetzel focuses on the role the NFL played in conveying, or failing to correct, inaccurate information. For ourselves, we’ll focus on the journalistic role played by ESPN.

Wetzel’s account of that ESPN report is almost completely accurate. The ESPN report was written by Chris Mortensen, who is constantly presented as ESPN’s ace investigative reporter.

Mortenson’s information was highly inaccurate. This is what he wrote when the exciting new story was taking form:

MORTENSEN (1/21/15): The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots' 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL's requirements, league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game told ESPN.

The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts, according to sources.

Mortensen’s account of the basic facts was wrong. According to last week’s NFL report, one of the Patriots’ dozen footballs measured 10.50 psi, exactly two pounds below the minimum. But it only measured that low on one of the dueling gauges the NFL used in its Keystone Cop-inflected attempt to determine air pressure readings.

On the other gauge the NFL used, that same football was measured at 10.90 psi. Due to the NFL's Keystone Cops effort, no one can be sure what its air pressure actually was. But no other football measured as low as 10.50 on either of the NFL’s dueling air gauges.

Mortensen’s account of the air pressure readings was highly inaccurate. That said, you can be sure of what follows:

ESPN will not report its error. Nor will ESPN explain how it managed to get so thoroughly misinformed by its “league sources,” whose anonymity it is protecting.

In fairness, ESPN wasn’t the only news org reporting bad information. At NBC Sports, Mike Florio presented an inaccurate rebuttal, one which was widely reported:

FLORIO (1/25/15): But what has the NFL really found? As one league source has explained it to PFT, the football intercepted by Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson was roughly two pounds under the 12.5 PSI minimum. The other 10 balls that reportedly were two pounds under may have been, as the source explained it, closer to one pound below 12.5 PSI.

The highlighted claim was inaccurate too.

A substantial part of that report was accurate. It’s true that “the other ten balls” were closer to one pound below 12.5 psi.

But according to the NFL report, the intercepted football was measured three times on unspecified gauges, producing these readings:

11.45 psi; 11.35 psi; 11.75 psi.

Those readings aren’t even close to being two pounds under the minimum, as Florio reported. And uh-oh! According to the Ideal Gas Law, those readings are fairly close to where the footballs should have been by that time, given the day’s cool weather.

(That assumes that the Patriots’ footballs really were set at 12.5 psi in the officials’ room. Given the chaos of the NFL data collection, there’s no real way to know that they were.)

Wetzel criticized the NFL for letting ESPN’s inaccurate report stand uncorrected. That criticism is well founded. At this point, we’d be reluctant to believe anything the NFL says. It’s a very shaky organization.

That said, we’re focusing on the journalism performed by ESPN. Plainly, Mortensen’s influential report was badly inaccurate. Don’t hold your breath waiting for “Mort” to discuss and acknowledge this fact.

ESPN did some reporting during the Ray Rice episode which was horrible but highly influential. Mortensen’s reporting in this case was badly inaccurate.

Mortensen sourced his inaccurate information to “league sources.” As an organization, the league doesn’t seem obsessively honest.

Neither does ESPN.

ENABLERS OF THE SCANDALOUS TIMES: Seeing no evil at the Times!

THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015

Part 4—Hayes/Chait/Tomasky submit: On its face, the New York Times’ recent bombshell report had the look of a bit of a con, or perhaps of a sham or a scam.

The bombshell report was so long that few people actually read it. In this way, massive length can enable journalistic scams.

Massive length can also create the appearance of a bombshell. When Jo Becker’s scammy report appeared in the April 24 hard-copy Times, its 4400 words started at the top of the paper’s front page. Inside the paper, it filled two entire pages, fluffed as it was by seven photographs plus a time line and an additional chart.

It had the look of a bombshell report, plus it was so long and confusing that nobody actually read it! That said, its basic insinuation was clear, for example in the headline it still carries on-line:

“Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal”

An alert third-grader could read the drift of that exciting headline. Becker’s novelized “news reports” often seem to be written on that level.

Becker’s piece had the look of a “bombshell report.” Indeed, that’s the way Chris Hayes, aka The Puppy, described the piece on April 23, the day it appeared on line.

It had the look of a bombshell report. But if you actually read the report, it perhaps had the feel of a scam.

In rambling fashion featuring tons of gorilla dust, Becker told the tale of a scary uranium deal involving the frightening Russians. She even worked a side trip into her piece. It featured the scary Chinese!

As a matter of literary form, Becker had rather plainly fashioned a scary Cold War tale. Its insinuations may have been plain. But on a journalistic basis, it had the slight feel of a scam.

Consider this quick review:

The uranium deal in question was approved in 2010. Concerning that scary deal, Becker presented no evidence showing that anybody actually thought it was a bad deal at the time.

More specifically, she presented no evidence showing that Hillary Clinton thought it was a bad deal. Indeed, she presented no evidence showing that Clinton played any role in approving the scary deal.

An assistant secretary of state, Jose Fernandez, seemed to tell Becker that Clinton had played no role in approving the deal. In a familiar slippery move, Becker didn’t mention his statement until paragraph 67, when nobody was still reading.

Despite the endlessness of her report, Becker never reported the actual number of cabinet departments which took part in approving the deal. (The number seems to be nine.) She never reported that the Treasury Department chairs the committee which approved the deal, not Clinton’s State Department.

She didn’t report that any of those nine departments ever opposed the scary, frightening, virtually treasonous deal. Despite the endlessness of her report, Becker’s piece is best defined by the silos of information she slickly chose to omit.

There’s nothing new about this kind of work at the New York Times. In 1996, for example, Gene Lyons published Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater.

The book was published and promoted by Harper’s magazine, a storied American institution.

The book critiqued front-page reports in the New York Times which, starting in January 1992, invented the Whitewater pseudo-scandal. In an appendix to the book, Lyons presented the reams of highly relevant material the Times has chosen to omit from one of those early reports.

At least since the appearance of Fools for Scandal, play-for-pay liberal journalists have worked extremely hard to avoid discussing this apparent culture of scam at the Times. That culture of liberal avoidance was on display in the wake of Becker’s recent report.

Becker’s piece appeared on line on Thursday morning, April 23. That night, Hayes dubbed it a “bombshell report” on his fiery liberal news program.

Incredibly, Hayes explicitly vouched for the accuracy of the bombshell report. He also vouched for the apparent good faith it displayed.

Who was Hayes troubled by that night? He filled his ten-minute segment with discussions of the various things which “drive him crazy” or “drive him nuts” about the troubling Clintons. He didn’t voice a word of complaint about the work of the glorious Times. For whatever reason, players like Hayes have played it this way for at least the last twenty years.

On the bright side, people like Hayes get rich and famous when they play it this way. On the down side, people are dead all over the world because of this ongoing culture of abject liberal surrender.

Three weeks have now passed since the appearance of Becker’s “bombshell report.” Did Diogenes seek one honest man? In similar fashion, we’ve been looking for one upper-end liberal pundit who’s willing to challenge the New York Times about Becker’s scammy-seeming report.

It’s easy enough to do so! Becker’s clowning was so vast that she featured an apparent repeat mistake—an apparent “mistake” she first featured in a front-page report in 2008.

At that time, her “mistake” was challenged by Forbes magazine in a fairly definitive manner. But so what? Three weeks ago, her “mistake” appeared again!

Over the past three weeks, the New York Times hasn’t explained this apparent repeat “mistake.” None of our fiery liberal heroes has asked the Times to do so.

We’re wondering why the fiery Hayes hasn’t revisited his original analysis. We’re wondering why the fiery Rachel Maddow—she’s sometimes called The Nun—hasn’t stood up and critiqued that bombshell report.

Tomorrow, we’ll turn to the work of Michael Tomasky and Jonathan Chait to show you the shape of liberal surrender in the face of the Times. But make no mistake:

If you’re a Democratic voter, you’ve been scammed this way for years. People are dead all over the world because we in the liberal rank and file have tolerated this behavior.

At some point, you have to decide. Is it true that Becker’s report has the look and the feel of a scam?

Is it true that Jeff Gerth’s Whitewater reports were built on the same scammy practices?

Is it true that the New York Times and the Washington Post spent twenty months making up takes about Candidate Gore? At some point, a person has to decide if those things actually happened.

It’s much easier—easier by far—to keep pretending that this is all a dream. Chait and Hayes have certainly played it that way. To us, it looks like they may be enabling a long-running type of scam.

They’ll keep it up till you force them to stop. President Walker is betting the house that it will never happen.

Tomorrow: More sounds of “liberal” silence

Still coming: McIntire and Becker pretend to discuss disclosure