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Comments

1. #1
   On July 19th, 2007 at 8:45 am, georgej said:

   Hmmm.

   We can take away one of two results from this exercise: Either Jennifer Hunter is a clueless idiot who is incapable of doing a simple fact check, or she attempted to pull a fast one on her readers by telling a story she WISHED was true.

   Of course, given the recent “now we’re libby-dems, now we’re not” flip flopping at the Sun-Times, a case can be made that the editors are incapable of doing their own fact checks.

   How long did it take to list the donors for Ronca on the web, 30 seconds?

2. #2
   On July 19th, 2007 at 8:47 am, NeoConNews said:

   If you wondered what makes it so difficult to say something like “there were misunderstandings about the previous political contributions of my source”, it’s because the story was agenda driven in the first place. Now we’re treated to a column sophomoric in its complaints about those meanie Republicans who can’t just leave the poor liberal author’s propaganda alone. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so full of the bull’s predigested lunch to begin with.

3. #3
   On July 19th, 2007 at 8:53 am, Hoodlumman said:

   Don’t downplay your first option, George, that Hunter is a clueless idiot.

   Journalism degrees are not difficult to acquire.

4. #4
   On July 19th, 2007 at 8:59 am, TheWriteJerry said:

   Well, we do know one fact from Jennifer Hunter’s reporting – that she is a staunch liberal. She confirms that by refusing to take responsibility for what she wrote.

5. #5
   On July 19th, 2007 at 9:21 am, katieanne said:

   MSM still whining about being held accountable for printing lies and pursuing an agenda. Bummer. Ah, how they must miss the days when their lies went unchallenged.

6. #6
   On July 19th, 2007 at 9:23 am, rfbarker said:

   Obviously “staunch Republicans” are lined up to attend Democratic Party love fests and fund raisers. Where else would you expect to find them? And after all, anybody who throws a few coins at Arlen Specter has got to be conservative, right?

7. #7
   On July 19th, 2007 at 9:28 am, Regulus said:

   This kind of “staunch-Republican-has-Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus-conversion” pseudo-story is nothing new. I’ve seen similar things in print media before, and heard one such fable on the local radio news.

   Remember Moby back in 2004? He was the “artist” who actually came out and advocated that trolls on conservative blogs should pose as “disaffected Republicans” in an effort to demoralize the authentic conservatives on those sites. Same song, different verse.

   As for Jennifer Hunter… my bet is that she was a willing dupe of this Jim Ronca clown. He was lying through his teeth, of course, but what he was saying was music to Hunter’s ears: one of those “Too good to fact-check” assertions of the same order that led Mary Mapes and Dan Rather to take a similar ill-advised leap of faith.

   As a 1983 J-school grad – from back in the Olden Days of Yore when our professors kept their personal politics out of the classroom and warned us about “Agenda Journalism” instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist – it amazes me to see just how low the bar has been set these days for what passes as “journalism.”

   The irony of it all is that fools like Hunter, who – and I’m being charitable here, for the only other explanation is that she’s pathologically dishonest – is a gullible fool of the first order, probably thinks she’s so much smarter than her readers that instead of simply informing them, she needs to “educate” them… and finds out too late just who the buffoon really is.

8. #8
   On July 19th, 2007 at 9:30 am, Gunny2112 said:

   What caught my eye is that she could easily have found a real individual who had abandoned the GOP in favor of the Dems. Instead, she chose either to be lazy, or just plain lied. In either case, she showed her true colors.

9. #9
   On July 19th, 2007 at 9:33 am, josetheguerilla said:

   There is nothing here but smoke and mirrors. It’s modern day propaganda.

10. #10
    On July 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am, 3Steps said:

    @Gunny

    lol.. too true… with the number of people pissed off over Shamnesty it would have taken them a matter of a few seconds on the internet to find real republicans who are refusing to support the GOP financially. But that was obviously too much work for her… or her editor…

    As TheWriteJerry #3 points out.. her true leanings are proven by her inability to accept responsibility for not checking her own facts.

    The DNC… the party of “It’s not my fault.”

11. #11
    On July 19th, 2007 at 9:54 am, OneofThem said:

    Um… I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say, “PWNED!”

12. #12
    On July 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am, DirkBelig said:

    The Treason Media has been whining since the rise of the conservative Blogosphere that we’re just leeches sitting in our pajamas, typing lies about those anointed journalists who are doing the real work, pounding the pavement, running stories to ground. Who are WE to question THEM?!?

    The problem is that the more they protest, the more people start to realize that they may be getting fed a bill of goods and then become skeptical about what they’re being told and the last thing liberals want is people asking questions about their schemes. In the early Nineties, a family friend was telling me about some guy named Rush Limbaugh and that I should check him out. I scoffed because I *knew* that he was a racist-sexist-bigoted-homophobe; you know the drill.

    Then I actually listened to him.

    That’s when the lightbulb went off. “If the media was lying to me about this Rush fellow….what else are they lying to me about?” As Dan Rather and his fellow travelers have failed to grasp, “teh Intarwebs” have allowed for crowdsourced verification of what the Treason Media reports and as we see more and more often, we are being fed biased and downright dishonest stories. Apparently the Treason Media believes that unless you’re fabricating 100% of the story out of thing air like a Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair, it’s not dishonest.

    The thing is, I’m not sure if they are even consciously aware of their inability to be fair and balanced. When studies show that reporters contribute to Dems at a 9:1 ratio and vote for Dems at a 9:1 ration and their response is to say that they can keep their personal views out of their reporting, what are we to think? When someone contributes 11-2 to Dems and you call them a “staunch Republican”, you should be grateful that your readers are staging an intervention, not complaining that you’re being picked on. Then again, most people in dire need of treatment for mental disorders aren’t very receptive to having their problems pointed out, are they?

13. #13
    On July 19th, 2007 at 10:13 am, Rick Moran said:

    Perhaps in 20 years, when these reporters are writing for people like Michelle who will have an on line smorgasborg of sites, they’ll get it. As long as they write in newsrooms where the corporate culture is so relentlessly liberal, they just won’t understand how truly biased their writings are.

14. #14
    On July 19th, 2007 at 10:19 am, On-my-soap-box said:

    On July 19th, 2007 at 9:54 am, OneofThem said:
    Um… I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say, “PWNED!”

    LOL. I have been wanting to say that and I thought I would get to here.

    There will be other days!

15. #15
    On July 19th, 2007 at 10:20 am, uhangtight said:

    He’s a republican after the ilk of John McCain. LOL…LOL..

16. #16
    On July 19th, 2007 at 10:49 am, ThackerAgency said:

    These people believe that ‘perception is reality’. These are the people who claim that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’. Without proof, the proof becomes that they said it was so.

    I’m beginning to believe that reality no longer matters to a majority of Americans.

    The only thing that matters is perception. If she says they are ‘staunch’ how dare you question it? And more importantly ‘what’s the big deal?’

    This was all learned from the ‘perception master’ Bill Clinton. He taught all of them this mantra of social consciousness when confronted with reality that doesn’t fit your desired perception.

    1. Deny, Deny, Deny
    2. Lie, Lie, Lie
    3. When all else fails, blame someone else.

17. #17
    On July 19th, 2007 at 11:24 am, DocattheAutopsy said:

    Other “Staunch Republicans” of note:

    Arlen Specter
    Michael Bloomberg
    Joe Lieberman

    And anyone to the Right of them is, of course, a Nazi.

18. #18
    On July 19th, 2007 at 11:27 am, crushliberalism said:

    This is a dishonest tactic often seen with the left: they pretend to be Republicans or disenfranchised former Republicans so as to give themselves a level of credibility to which they are not due.

19. #19
    On July 19th, 2007 at 11:39 am, DirkBelig said:

    As if we didn’t know that AP has serious issues with reporting just the facts, I see in this NRO story by a guy who eBayed the new Harry Potter book that he received ahead of the street date:
    

    The Associated Press ran a story about the book’s release, noted my ad, and falsely claimed that I’d declined to respond to a query. That’s a lie: Even as I write this an hour or so after the AP’s story, I have not been contacted by them in any way—and if they actually try they’re going to get hung up on; lie about me and you lose interview rights.

    AP could’ve written that they had attempted to reach him, but couldn’t before press time. A good editor would’ve red-lined even that much; why mention what you couldn’t verify? Instead of practicing fundamental journalistic skills that you’d have to master to earn a “C” grade for a high school paper, the AP writer chose to LIE.

    Press dishonesty is becoming a epidemic pathological condition. If they’re going to lie about things as big as the war and as small as a stupid book being sold a few days early, what can we trust them to tell us? How many of you folks are leery of believing anything you hear in the Treason Media unless you haven’t seen it debunked by the conservative Blogosphere?

    Against this backdrop, Chris Matthews appearance on Jay Leno’s show, spewing a disgusting diatribe of lies and foisting the meme that the Treason Media isn’t skeptical enough of Team Dubya, is all the more laughable, except that the vast majority of the public are unaware that they’re being lied to and manipulated by an agenda-driven partisan press.

20. #20
    On July 19th, 2007 at 11:44 am, DirkBelig said:

    And anyone to the Right of them is, of course, a Nazi.

    You must’ve missed the memo, but the current term is “neocon”. Nazi was retired as the generic smear on non-liberals after too many citations for violation of Godwin’s Law. It’s used to mean the same thing; it’s purely a semantics change. Be sure to update your VRWC decoder ring’s firmware to recognize this difference.

21. #21
    On July 19th, 2007 at 11:52 am, Milwaukee Mike said:

    I suppose a story on Joe Lieberman by the writer would lable him as a NeoCon?

22. #22
    On July 19th, 2007 at 11:55 am, Milwaukee Mike said:

    Thanks Dirk! That’s what I get for reading the comments and not refreshing before entering mine.

23. #23
    On July 19th, 2007 at 12:09 pm, puhiawa said:

    MSM=Staunchly stupid

24. #24
    On July 19th, 2007 at 12:23 pm, Miss Ladybug said:

    Recently, I’ve been seeing a car sitting in front of the house next door, and one of the bumper stickers reads something like this:

    Liberal – a person who is incredibly naive or stuck on stupid

25. #25
    On July 19th, 2007 at 1:43 pm, John Ansell said:

    Giving a liberal facts is like throwing water on a cat.

26. #26
    On July 19th, 2007 at 2:13 pm, calamityville said:

    A trial lawyer…I’m shocked.

27. #27
    On July 20th, 2007 at 8:55 am, RevJim said:

    There are some very insightful comments on the MSM here — 7 and 12 in particular. I happen to work in an MSM newsroom and the intellectual climate there never ceases to amaze and fascinate. It’s quite a laboratory in rigidly disordered thinking.

    My guess: This reporter would have cited an actual Republican who has abandoned President Bush if they felt or realized any existed. The MSM pays no attention to Republicans and knows nothing about them. They actually do not realize there’s been a backlash against Bush due to his lunatic immigration stance. They assume — because it echoes their own bias — that Pubbies are turning against the war and are, like Lefties, leaving W in droves over that. To realize the truth they’d have to actually speak to Republicans, and no MSM reporters I know ever do that. They don’t feel they have to; they *know* what “those Republicans” are like, so don’t need to check. And they get it all wrong.

    Second, never underestimate the laziness factor — both intellectual laziness and physical laziness. Some journalists are nice people but very few are paragons of virtue in the sense most here understand. They pride themselves on being very skeptical, but don’t realize — at all — that they are infinitely skeptical of Republicans, big business and the military but not remotely so about Dems, NGO’s, and peace activists. This guy’s comments so easily fit the reporter’s bigoted views it did not occur to her to be skeptical. That did not need reporting. It was *obvious* to her this man had seen the light, and why.

    Meanwhile, the insistence that there is no bias — in spite of the 9:1 donation ratio mentioned above — is made earnestly. MSM reporters do consider themselves eminently and specially qualified to render stories free of bias, in spite of the kinds of vast gaps in perspective I’ve mentioned earlier. MSM reporters are not self-reflective. They look outward at the world, not inward. And they see in the world around them a reflection of what is in them (leftist ideas). They’re not capable of fairly assessing how they think.

    I’ve also come to the conclusion, after eight years of observing this up close, that the condition is absolutely incurable. It is impervious to reasoned contradiction. When the facts of history prove the theories wrong, the theories remain unscathed, and MSM sees literally no contradiction. It is a form of almost genetic blindess, or of a personality disorder. Narcissistic, perhaps. But as intelligent as these people can often be, baseline reasoning is not part of their intellectual world. As Rousseau, I believe, said, “you can’t reason someone of a position he hasn’t reasoned himself into.”

    This reporter, amazing as it seems to humans with a normal perspective, truly feels cornered and affronted by all those emails. I’ve listened in on too many MSM’ers fielding calls from readers, only to hang up and deride them. Your criticisms do not matter to them at all. The points do not sink in.

    All just my observations, but in my experience, true. And a fascinating thing to behold.