But you know, the LATimes employs professionals backed up by layers and layers and layers of editorial fact-checking. As opposed to blogs, which are, in the words of an LA Times columnist, hokum-spreading “crab grass.”

I digress.

Late Wednesday night on the West Coast, at 11:26 Pacific Time, the LA Times admitted it was hoaxed:

A Los Angeles Times story about a brutal 1994 attack on rap superstar Tupac Shakur was partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated, the reporter and editor responsible for the story said Wednesday.

Reporter Chuck Philips and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, issued statements of apology Wednesday afternoon. The statements came after The Times took withering criticism for the Shakur article, which appeared on latimes.com last week and two days later in the paper’s Calendar section.

The criticism came first from The Smoking Gun website, which said the newspaper had been the victim of a hoax, and then from subjects of the story, who said they had been defamed.

“In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,” Philips said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m sorry.”In his statement, Duvoisin added: “We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck’s. I deeply regret that we let our readers down.”

…The Times story said the paper had obtained “FBI records” in which a confidential informant accused two men of helping to set up the attack on Shakur — James Rosemond, a prominent rap talent manager, and James Sabatino, identified in the story as a promoter. The story said the two allegedly wanted to curry favor with Combs and believed Shakur had disrespected them.

The purported FBI records are the documents Philips and Duvoisin now believe were faked.

As noted, the LATimes’s internal probe was prompted by The Smoking Gun website’s report maintaining that the paper was hoaxed by Sabatino, who supplied the bogus FBI docs. Sabatino, according to TSG, “has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as ‘a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.’”

The reporter, Chuck Philips, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. But he wasn’t able to smell the swindle:

Philips, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, said he believed in the authenticity of the documents in part because they had been filed in court. But the Smoking Gun’s sharply critical review said The Times had overlooked numerous misspellings and unusual acronyms and redactions that could have cast doubt on the documents’ authenticity.

Moreover, the documents appeared to have been prepared on a typewriter, the Smoking Gun account noted, adding that a former FBI supervisor estimated that the bureau ceased using typewriters about 30 years ago. The website said its reporters had learned that the documents could not be found in an FBI database.

The website also described unexplained coincidences that made it appear Sabatino had composed the documents from prison. The Smoking Gun showed that Sabatino had filed court papers on his own behalf that had “obvious similarities” in typography and “remarkably similar spelling deficiencies” to those in the purported FBI documents.

The Smoking Gun used a report from Sabatino’s sentencing in 2003 for fraud and identity theft to suggest that his history of lying began in childhood. When the boy’s mother left home at 11, he told a teacher that his mother had died in an accident, rather than acknowledge the truth, said his father, Peter Sabatino, according to the website. It posted what it said was a letter that the father wrote to the judge.

How did Philips attempt to verify the documents supplied to him? Why, he had “heard” many of the same details from other unnamed sources! And it sounded like something in Tupac Shakur’s lyrics. So it all must have been true. Apparently, since he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, the same layers and layers and layers of fact-checking applied to other stories didn’t apply to his:

Philips said in an interview that he had believed the documents were legitimate because, in the reporting he had already done on the story, he had heard many of the same details.

He said a source had led him to three prison inmates who purportedly carried out the attack on Shakur. One of those inmates implicated the planners of the attack and another implied who was involved, Philips said. Two others who said they witnessed the attack corroborated portions of the scenario described in the article, he said. None of the sources were named in the story.

Philips also said the events the sources described fit with previous accounts in the media and even in Shakur’s songs.

Still, Philips said he wished he had done more.

Philips said he sought to check the authenticity of the documents with the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, which had handled the investigation of the attack on Shakur, and with a retired FBI agent, but did not directly ask the FBI about them. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment, while the former FBI agent said the documents appeared legitimate, Philips said.

His statement said he “approached this article the same way I’ve approached every article I’ve ever written: in pursuit of the truth. I now believe the truth here is that I got duped. For this, I take full responsibility and I apologize.”

Philips has spent years digging into the rap music business and had won a reputation as a dogged streetwise reporter. He and Times reporter Michael Hiltzik shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for beat reporting for their accounts of entertainment industry corruption, including illegal detoxification programs for celebrities. Duvoisin has overseen many of The Times’ most notable investigative projects in recent years.

..,.The story was reviewed by Duvoisin and two editors on the copy desk. Other investigative stories published by The Times in recent years have in some cases received the scrutiny of at least one more editor and often of the managing editor or editor of the newspaper. The Shakur piece did not receive that many layers of review.

Philips’ Pulitzer Prize-winning partner Hiltzik, by the way, is the sock puppeteer who was smoked out by LA Times watchdog Patterico.

Another one of those damned blogs doing the fact-checking the MSM doesn’t have the time or inclination to do.

Patterico notes that the LA Times’ admission should spur a deeper investigation: “I think the paper needs to take a broader look at Philips’s work.” Particularly his association with rap criminal Suge Knight. He points to this 2005 piece from Jan Golab at Front Page (damn those Internet sites again!) raising questions about Philips’ coverage:

Chuck Philips, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his music business reporting in 1999, has covered Death Row Records since the early ‘90’s. He has long been known for obtaining scoops and exclusive interviews for The Times due to his unmatched access to Suge Knight. Some critics have characterized him as Suge’s apologist and as a reporter corrupted by access. Others speculate there may be more to it than that. One key witness at the Biggie civil trial, Death Row insider Kevin Hackie, who identified David Mack as attending Death Row functions, also stated in a pre-trial deposition that “Chuck Philips was frequently at Death Row functions and received payments from Death Row Records.” Hackie backed off of this statement at trial, but he also tried to back away from everything he had told investigators, stating, convincingly, that “I’m in fear for my life.” Asked what he feared, Hackie stated: “Retribution by the Bloods, the Los Angeles Police Department and associates of Death Row Records.”

More here and here.

Not to be schadenfreude-listic, but I want to reprint the quote I linked up top from fretful LA Times columnist, David Lazarus, who bemoaned the rise of Internet news sources and blogs in December:

“…blogs will continue sprouting like crab grass throughout the electronic ether. Soon, the line separating quality journalism from utter hokum will be too blurry to discern.”

The LA Times has no monopoly on “quality journalism.” Perhaps the hokum-spreading newspaper will think twice about printing Internet-bashing screeds from its stable of arrogant employees. Members of the “crab grass” New Media help draw the bright lines that sloppy members of the old media have blurred. Next time this happens, try:

“Thank you.”

***

For some fascinating reading, check out Philips’ online live chat with readers about his now-discredited piece that took place on March 18. Don’t know if the LATimes will yank the transcript, but right now it’s still up here. He tells readers that he had planned to come out with two more stories on the subject before the end of the year. Wonder what fake documents those would have relied on. Excerpt from the transcript:

…Chuck Philips: hi everybody. thanks for taking the time to read the story.

mj: How confident are you that the reporting will stand up against any libel challenges by those implicated?

…Chuck Philips: hi mj. i am very confident that i have reported accurately what my sources said. and i feel confident that they know what happened. the documents supported what i learned. i believe what i wrote can withstand any legal challenge.

…TupacLivesOn7: Anyone think tupac is still alive?

Chuck Philips: no. my reporting does not involve conspiracy theories. i follow the facts wherever they lead me. i interview individuals who have intimate knowledge of what happened – many of whom have never spoken to police. i look for documents to support my investigation. i don’t rush things into print. i don’t stretch my stories to conform to theories. i spend a long time developing them until i get them right

…Chuck Philips: to 221isaturk, i hope to publish at least 2 more related stories before the year ends

…MykalRoze: Chuck, why wasn’t the story printed in the paper? I read that a shorter version of it might be printed, but it would be nice to be able to have a copy on newsprint, just as I have newspaper copies of your previous Tupac stories.

…Chuck Philips: to mykalroze, my editor marc duvoisin came up with the idea to publish this investigative report on the web first to reach all of you hiphop fans over the world – people who understand who this artist means – and we wanted to present in a comprehensive way with visuals, audio, lyrics, and extensive photos. tomorrow, we plan to publish a slightly shorter version of the story in the calendar section. thanks for reading it and for your questions.

If 60 Minutes had an iota of credibility left after Rathergate, that last remnant is now gone.

John Hinderaker takes apart the latest CBS News scandal.

Give thanks for the Internet.

A Rather photoshop flashback:

A reminder to conservatives: “Swift-Boating” does not equal smearing.

Swift-Boating means exposing hard truths about corrupt Democrats.

By using “Swift-Boating” in the context of the John McCain/NYT story, you are doing a grave disservice to the Swift Boat Veterans who courageously told the untold truths about John Kerry that the mainstream media wanted buried.

This is a no-no–made all the more surprising by the fact that the conservative quoted in the article spearheaded communications for the Swift Boat Vets:

Greg Mueller, a veteran Republican strategist, said conservatives would side with McCain against the paper they love to hate.

“The New York Times is trying to swift-boat McCain,” Mueller said. “This is the first real salvo of the general election. Certainly, the Times cannot complain about a negative general election campaign since they fired the first shot.

“It was a poor and revealing attempt by The New York Times to try and smear McCain at a time when he is starting to define Obama as a inexperienced liberal, so The New York Time takes up for Obama’s defense. If anything, this helps energize conservatives to come to McCain’s aide in beating back attacks by The New York Times and other liberal MSM outlets.”

I hope this was a misquote.

***

Make sure you order a copy of To Set The Record Straight. Send one to your local newspaper editor–or to the next commentator or political operative whom you spot distorting the Swift Boat Veterans’ legacy.

He’s quoted in yesterday’s Boston Herald warning about the dangers bloggers pose. He speaks from experience:

“When it comes to blogging and some things on the Web, there’s little or no accountability,” said Rather, who covered his first presidential race in 1952. “This is the new American political coverage media. It’s a wilderness, and when you go into the wilderness, there’s always some danger.”

Wonder if Helen “Blame the bloggers” Thomas is filing an amicus brief in his case?

You don’t have to be a Harvard University re searcher to figure out that the media is infected with liberal bias – or to realize that some left-wing journalists will use any means necessary to create ideological narratives that fit their worldview.

The Rathergate debacle at CBS News – in which faked National Guard memos were used to smear President Bush – was an extreme example. But if you look closely, you’ll find everyday examples of Serious Journalists manufacturing the news and concocting social crises. Amazingly, they always manage to make conservatives look racist, intolerant and evil. Funny how that works…

…Welcome to Media Theatrics 101. Instead of simply interviewing folks in the South or staking out real gay couples, ABC News thinks it’s fair and objective to stage-manage social experiments and call it journalism. Next thing you know, they’ll hire celebrity prankster Ashton Kutcher to jump out and yell, “You just got Punk’d!”

Reader Brett from Atlanta e-mails:

You know what’s ironic? Tonight–the very day you have posted this article about ABC hoping to show Southern people as narrow minded bigots–that same network is broadcasting the CMA Awards! The show will do a huge number in the South, and ABC is no doubt charging top dollar to the manufacturers of pickup trucks and jeans to advertise their wares. So at the same time ABC wishes to expose Southerners as bigots, it is wooing them as viewers. Such hypocrisy.

When you don’t feel like covering the news, you manfacture it. Remember the story I broke last spring about NBC News engineering a sting at NASCAR to try and expose fans as anti-Muslim bigots? Well, it looks like the dinosaur networks haven’t learned from the embarrassing backlash to that pathetic episode. Or Rathergate. Or Shattered Glass. Or Janet Cooke. Or Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, according to the local Fox affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, it looks like ABC News is engaging in media stage management and Theater of Journalism to expose anti-homosexual bigotry in the South:

ABC is doing a social experiment in Birmingham that includes having same-sex couples show affection for each other in public, according to Birmingham police department sources.

FOX6 first learned about this story from a Southside merchant who pointed out an RV parked at the corner of 20th Street and 11th Avenue South. The merchant said ABC was working on a week-long project to see how people would react to things like public displays of affection by gay and lesbian couples. A FOX6 news reporter approached the RV and talked with an “actor” who said, “Yes, we are working for ABC News.”

The “experiment” is apparently for ABC’s Primetime Live program, which is running a series of undercover stings titled “What Would You Do?”

Welcome to Serious Broadcast Journalism: If you can’t find the video you need to fit the P.C. left narrative, hire actors to make it happen.

Dinosaur network news motto: All the news that’s fit to stage.

***

Here’s more about “What Would You Do?” from a 2005 article on the ABC News site.

Flashback: News sting ideas of the day (these came in after the NASCAR/NBC debacle…feel free to send/add your suggestions for new ABC News ideas):

I wonder if they would consider sending a professor wearing an “I Love W” button and an American flag pin into the faculty lounge at Harvard or some other liberal ivory tower with a hidden camera. I would love to see that experiment. I can’t imagine anyone at NBC doing that one. Maybe John Stossel at ABC, though?

…Perhaps when I get back from deployment, you can follow me around Seattle and see how I get treated wearing my Navy uniform…

…Why don’t you set up some white guy with hidden cameras, put a George Bush T-Shirt on him and have him walk down a street in Pakistan. Or, better yet, have him walk down a street in Detroit. I’ll just bet you could get a lot of bigoted reactions…

…* Wear a pro-life t-shirt to a Women’s Studies class.
* Wear a Halliburton company polo shirt to the Kos Kidz annual blogmeet.
* PUBLISH CARTOONS WITH MOHAMMED IN THEM…

Update: Via TVNewser, CBS responds… “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Rather will dredge up his bygones on the Larry King Live show tomorrow.

Charles at LGF takes you down animated memory lane. Let’s see that on CNN.

***
Yes, my friends, Gunga Dan is suing Viacom and CBS for $70 million over the loss of his network career after the Rathergate debacle:

Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a $70 million lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors.

Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed Guard broadcast and, in the process, “seriously damaged his reputation.” As plaintiffs, the suit names CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Sumner Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News.

In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”

He also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush, as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.

That’s right. He’s still battling the thorough investigative review by the Thornburgh panel. Hey, thanks for bringing it up again, Dan. It’s well worth re-reading the whole, damning indictment.

Hat tip – Lawhawk , who offers some free professional advice:

Here’s a memo for Dan Rather. When you produce a story based on bogus documents and then use nonexistent sources to verify said bogus documents, don’t expect your employer to give you choice assignments or air time. Indeed, count your blessings that you’ve got a job at all.

You should have been resigned to the ash heap of history for your stunt to manipulate the outcome of the US Presidential elections with just days to go, but instead, you still manage to get air time.

Going back to the Thornburgh report, I remind you of two telling, key phrases: “Myopic zeal.” “Rigid and blind.”

And a refresher on the top 10 news-gathering and news-vetting failures identified by the panel:

1. The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;

2. The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;

3. The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;

4. The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody;

5. The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents “were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files”;

6. The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;

7. The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;

8. The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;

9. The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and

10. The telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry – a clear conflict of interest – that created the appearance of a political bias.

Myopic zeal. Rigid and blind.

The more things change, the more Dan Rather stays the same.

To back up his point that pulling out of Iraq would be a disaster, President Bush has quoted opinions from the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top U.S. general in Iraq—and now, two bloggers from Baghdad.

Bush made a surprising reference to the blogosphere during a spirited defense of his war strategy on Wednesday. The mention seemed even more unusual because the president didn’t identify whom he was quoting, so he seemed to be leaning on anonymous commentary.

“They have bloggers in Baghdad, just like we’ve got here,” Bush told the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Then he began to quote: “Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed.”

His point was that Iraqi people are seeing signs of progress—and what better example of their unbridled expression than blogs.

It turns out, the White House made clear hours later, that he was quoting two brothers, Mohammed and Omar Fadhil. They write an English- language blog from Baghdad called IraqTheModel.com. Both of them got to meet Bush in the Oval Office in 2004.

In his speech, Bush was pulling select lines from an op-ed that the brothers wrote. It appeared in The Wall Street Journal on March 5.

Blogs are Web sites that tend to be narrow in focus and directed at a niche audience. Most operate without editors and give instant reaction to the news. Their freewheeling, open nature makes them popular but also ripe for unverified statements.

Don’t you know, President Bush? Only the MSM is allowed to circulate “unverified statements.” (See, for example, AP and the NYTimes and the Washington Post and the Associated Press again. Related–see also: Reuters.)

And never mind that Iraq the Model isn’t merely an “opinion” blog reacting to news, as the snobs at the AP would have you believe. They are reporting news from the ground–which is a serious threat to MSM outlets like the AP that continue to rely on anonymous stringers relying on anonymous sources feeding them unverified statements.

As for “operating without editors,” well, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. See also: Rathergate.

***

Update: The Fadhil brothers respond to the tinfoil-hatters and critics:

I would like to say a few words to the new visitors who are not so familiar with this blog. I have noticed that our traffic nearly tripled today and that most of the extra traffic is coming from pages talking about the recent speech by President Bush in which he mentioned a quote from our March 5 article on the WSJ…New visitors, welcome to ITM!

First of all we’re proud of it. It’s the ultimate ambition for a political blogger to have his or her words heard and better reach the desks of decision-makers.

Second I would like to make clear one point to bloggers like dailykos ans some MSM supported blogs who seem so upset for some reason that the voice of some Iraqis is being heard.

I’ve seen some of them publish stories full of lies and accusations they can’t support and I think it’s pathetic to throw the “you’re a sold-out propaganda” accusation at people just because they don’t share the same point of view…This only reflects their lack of knowledge and the bankruptcy of ideas they suffer.

We speak the language of facts, supported by images and statistics and more important, we live here while they don’t. We write about the good days as well as the bad days in Iraq’s journey to a better future.

Judith Weiss has all the background on the conspiracy-mongers.

“Who is Jamil Hussein?” is becoming the new “Who is John Galt?”–a blogospheric refrain that both summarizes and challenges MSM apathy about its questionable war reporting.

Townhall’s Mary Katharine Ham is the latest to pose the question in the Washington Examiner.

Historian and Army infantry officer Robert Bateman, using the latest AP scandal over its six burning Sunnis report as a hook, has a must-read reminder in the NYPost today about the botched war reporting of the Associated Press:

The most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous – used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong – but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they’re at it again in Iraq.

I have got direct experience of this – from challenging the AP’s seriously flawed 1999 “scoop” about the masssacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.

Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians’, as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred – there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.

But the AP’s sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.

The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily’s account was chilling. It was also – as AP should have known – a fantasy.

The AP story took at face value Daily’s claims that he was a combat infantryman who won a battlefield commission just a few days after the events at No Gun Ri, and had been awarded the Distinguished Cross and three Purple-Hearts.

In reality, he was an enlisted mechanic in an entirely different unit, nowhere near No Gun Ri. He had fabricated his biography and credentials as well as his entire account of the events at No Gun Ri.

When I later confronted AP editors with the facts and records that showed their source Daily to be a fraud, they blew me off. What would a historian know about this topic after all, or a soldier?

The AP didn’t issue a retraction, or even attempt to reinvestigate; and it certainly didn’t withdraw the story from the Pulitzer competition. Instead, it attacked the messenger.

Sound familiar?

Bob Owens looks at the magnitude of the AP’s Jamilgate:

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone. And Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen potentially fake Iraqi policemen used in news reports the AP disseminates around the world. This does not begin to attempt to account for non-offical sources which the AP will have an even harder time substantiating. Quite literally, almost all AP reporting from Iraq not verified from reporters of other news organizations is now suspect, and with good reason.

Instead of affecting one show on one network watched by 14 million viewers as Rathergate did, “Jamilgate” means the Associated Press may have been delivering news of questionable accuracy to one billion people a day for two years or more. In this evolving instance of faux journalism, “60 Minutes” is now potentially 60 billion false impressions, or more.

A principled, professional news organization owes its consumers the truth. To date, the Associated Press, as voiced by comments from officers international editor John Daniszewski and executive editor Kathleen Carroll, has refused to address the rampant inconsistencies in the “burning men” story, produce physical evidence proving their allegations, or produce star source Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein. Arrogantly, they attack the messenger (both U.S military and Iraqi government sources and bloggers), and insist we must believe them, even though they give us no compelling reason to do so, and many reasons to doubt them.

Related: Hot Air has video of Mark Steyn’s appearance on O’Reilly last night slamming the AP.

Meanwhile, AP editors have resurrected Green Helmet Guy.

Who is Jamil Hussein?

***
Previous:

Free Jamil Hussein
Questioning a NYTimes reporter; challenging CBS News & ASNE
The alleged war atrocity that the NYTimes can’t substantiate
Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

This is Peter Hartlaub. He is the San Francisco Chronicle’s pop-culture critic and “helps cover movies, television and the media,” according to his bio. In addition to his newspaper duties, Hartlaub blogs for the paper’s “Culture Blog.” One of his latest posts is an astonishingly ugly, ad hominem attack on Ann Coulter–emblematic of the unhinged, intolerant Left. And it’s posted on a “culture” blog.

The jerk compares Coulter to a horse at a children’s zoo. He mocks her weight and her face by linking to sophomoric left-wing bloggers deriding her looks–including this, this, and this. He posts photos he took of the horse alongside photos of Coulter, then sits back and waits for Chronicle blog commenters to pile on. Here is a sample:

***

File this one away the next time the journalistic elite attacks bloggers as an unruly, uncivilized mob of hate-mongers in need of adult supervision. Under the guise of “culture” commentary, San Francisco Chronicle staffer/blogger Peter Hartloub displays the true colors of the moonbat mainstream media: slime green. Naturally, the anti-Coulter-obsessed staffers at media industry publication Editor and Publisher think Hartlaub’s post is funny.

Do you?

Contact:

Reader representative: If you have comments on The Chronicle’s coverage, standards or accuracy, please call Dick Rogers, the readers’ representative, at (415) 777-7870. Written comments can be e-mailed to readerrep@sfchronicle.com, faxed to (415) 442-1847, or addressed to Readers’ Representative, c/o San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103.

Letters to the Editor should be addressed to letters@sfchronicle.com. Due to space considerations, only letters of less than 250 words will be considered for publication. Please provide your name and telephone number along with your letter. You will be called if your letter is being considered for publication.

SFGate.com executive:

Peter Negulescu – VP Digital Media pnegulescu @ sfgate.com

***

Related: Mark Finkelstein looks at a Jeff Danziger hit.

I had about 30 seconds to talk about the Reuterization of war journalism on O’Reilly last night, which is just the way it is on cable TV. Thankfully, there are no time limits or topic constraints on the Internet. Which is why I started Hot Air in the first place. We’ve posted our report, “Picture Kill,” up on YouTube. Watch right here and feel free to pass it around to friends and family who are still stuck watching the dinosaur media:

Links and comments here.

BBC reports that Adnan Hajj is standing by his photo of the Israeli jet dropping “missiles” on southern Lebanon:

Mr Hajj, a freelance photographer working for Reuters, denied altering the second photograph, an image of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon.

“There’s no problem with it, not at all,” he said in a BBC interview.

Riiiight.

Meanwhile, Reuters does it again: “Bombing of Funeral: False Reporting by Reuters.” (hat tip – BP)

In related news, AP recalled a doctored photo of an Alaskan pipeline worker:

[O]n Monday, the AP recalled a photo that it had transmitted Sunday night of a worker in Alaska examining an oil pipeline. In that photo, the worker appeared to have four hands, and there were other elements such as a section of pipe that appeared to have a double image.

Lyon said the distortions were unintentional and resulted from careless use by the photographer of a software feature in Photoshop called a “cloning tool.” The photographer had used the feature in an attempt to clear up a glitch in the picture caused by a dirty sensor, the part of a digital camera that records the image. AP’s ethical guidelines permit use of “cloning” in limited circumstances to clean up dirt or scratches from an image.

And an AFP photo misidentified a Katyusha rocket headed toward Israeli as an Israeli rocket headed toward Lebanon.

IBD has a good editorial on “Jihad Journalism?” This is not just about a few doctored photos. This is not just about one rogue freelancer. Unfortunately, there are many in my business who can’t wait for it to be over with so they can bury their heads in the sand again and be rid of the unruly bloggers again. It’s a familiar pattern.

The guys at EU Referendum provide sober reminders that the Reuterization of war journalism and the commodification of death go far beyond Reuters.

Jeff Harrell talks to an AP stringer.

***
Flashback:

Or the “ether space,” as President Bush calls it. (At least they got him to stop saying “Internets.”)

“I think what’s healthy is that there’s no monopoly on the news,” Bush said. “There’s competition. There’s competition for the attention of, you know, 290 million people, or whatever it is.

“And the amazing thing about this world we live in is that there’s a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody’s desk and sometimes not, but always available. It’s a very interesting period.”

Indeed, it is. But for all the lip service being paid to the power of blogosphere, the White House has sure down a lousy job of monitoring it.

Karl Rove chimes in with late praise for bloggers’ work on unmasking the fraudulent CBS Rathergate memos:

Rove considers Memogate a watershed in the rise of the alternative media.

“The whole incident in the fall of 2004 showed really the power of the ‘blogosphere’,” he said in his West Wing office.

“Because in essence you had now, an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media and bringing to bear enormously sophisticated skills,” he added.

Dude, the phrase is Army of Davids. Someone order the White House a dozen copies. Make sure they land on the right desks and get read–and not just float around in the, you know, ether space.

Danish reader L.H. sounds off about CBS News’s blame-the-victim smear attack on Denmark last night on 60 Minutes (video segment available at Expose the Left):

Dear Michelle:

I have just come across your site and as I am anxious to let off steam I hope you don’t mind me writing to you.

The reason for my upset is the CBS ’60 Minutes’ programme of last night. You see, I have always enjoyed this programme thinking it was based on sound journalistic research. But now I have gotten serious doubts.

This time I am in a position to judge the validity of the statements about Denmark made in the programme by Bob Simon as I am Danish and have followed the cartoon issue since the beginning.

Bob Simon portrays us Danes in a very negative way.

In the programme he focuses on Denmark being a fairytale country and believe me it is that – as well, but as part of our upbringing we learn to debate and to question actively, especially at school. I would describe us as a nation of ‘pain-in the ass’s always asking ‘Why?/ Why not?’. I guess this comes from being privileged (makes me think of Maslow’s pyramid) and the luxury of never going hungry to bed.

So for this past month the television has been full of debates and inputs from both Danish experts and experts from around the world on this very important issue: Freedom of speech versus Religious ethics.

The people Bob Simon interviewed have played only minor roles in these debates. The imam Abu Laban has been exposed at inciting to boycott Danish products on Al-Jazeera and is therefore no longer used as a reference by Danish television. The others have various personal agendas to nurture such as the ex-foreign minister Uffe Ellemann Jensen, who now is retired but just couldn’t stay away from a brawl even when in office.

The Cartoon issue has set the snowball rolling here in Denmark. We have seen the emerging of a Moderate Muslim movement. The leader of this initiative is member of the Danish parliament and an immigrant from Syria, Naser Khader. This movement has been started on account of the damage to ordinary Danish muslims done by the lies spread by the Danish imams during their visit to Egypt and Lebanon last December. By the way, we have just learned that the Egyptian ambassador in Denmark was the main instigator to the explosion of violence, flag burnings etc. She has now been posted in South Africa.

It seems so unfair to be pictured in the ’60 minutes’ programme as silly and immature children, when in fact we bear the burden of being those who pricked the hole in the boil.

I believe in a higher justice. If anyone in this world were to handle this madness it had to be the Danes, we are phlegmatic and well-fed enough to survive it. Right now we are sitting quietly waiting for the storm to calm so that we all can address the important issue of the future role of religions.

My hometown is Odense and Hans Christian Andersen wrote in The Emperor’s Clothes that ‘it took a little boy to dare tell the truth’. I would have liked Bob Simon of CBS to have taken that cue.

Ahhh, I feel a lot better now, thank you for your time.

L.H., you have the support and sympathy of untold numbers of Americans who are as disgusted with 60 Minutes as you are.