Time Magazine Crashed And Burned Edition

There is so much to like about this post from Jamison Foser about the puff piece on Glenn Beck which makes the cover of the new edition of Time magazine. But the ending is really what sums up everything that is wrong with the piece and is wrong with our mainstream media in general now:

At this point, you have to wonder if the article was some kind of performance art, designed to prove the very skepticism about the media it seems to lament. See, this very Time article was the product of a "dishonest, incompetent, conniving media, which refuse to tell the truth." And not because I happen to despise Glenn Beck, but because there simply were not 1.7 million people at last week's protest. Because Time damn well knows there were not 1.7 million people at last week's protest. And because Time refused to say there were not 1.7 million people there. Not only that -- Time also insisted on pretending that only "liberal sources" say there were 70,000 people there, when, in fact, the D.C. Fire Department said there were 70,000 people. That's a dishonest and incompetent refusal to tell the truth. Actually, it's worse than a refusal to tell the truth: It's a dishonest and incompetent false claim.

At the beginning of his article, Von Drehle referred to a recent poll that found "record-low levels of public trust of the mainstream media." Guess what? Articles like this are why nobody trusts the media. When you pretend that obviously false claims about crowd sizes are valid, people won't trust you. When you pretend that only liberals say 70,000 people actually attended last week's protest, people won't trust you. They shouldn't trust you. You aren't trustworthy. You are doing your job dishonestly and incompetently.

And that dishonesty, that incompetence, is what enables Glenn Beck. When Glenn Beck says 1.7 million people were at the protest, and the Washington, D.C., Fire Department says 70,000, and Time runs an article saying conservatives and liberals disagree about the crowd size, that enables Glenn Beck's lies.

No wonder Beck liked the article so much.

Its worth your time to click on the link and read the whole thing because it is as thorough a take down of this kind of he said she said article as you will find anywhere. But the end result still ends up being the same as so eloquently put by Mr Foser. Its not just that this is a bad piece of journalism, its that it actually harms the readers of Time magazine when they will not call a lie a lie. And it also harms them in that by not calling a lie a lie it could possibly legitimize the lie and needlessly misinform them. It seems that good Villager outlets like Time magazine just will not figure that out until they go out of business, and I am cheering that day on every single day.

The Walkback You Aren't Hearing About

You would think that with all of the "he said, she said" journalism going on with respect to Speaker Pelosi's quote last week that the CIA misled her that when a prominent antagonist of hers had asserted that she was lying and then had to walk it back on a major "Sunday Show" after seeing the actual CIA documents that it would be plastered all over cable news. And you would be wrong.

“I think these documents will be made public. I think that when they are made public it won’t be crystal clear as to what exactly went on in that briefing. …

“Overall, Chris I think it’s pretty clear the speaker either knew or should have known that these enhanced interrogation techniques were occurring. …

“I think the documents for me are pretty clear. For others they may not be as clear.”

Now why in the world wasn't Representative Hoekstra's word featured prominently on "Morning Joe" today as they tried to impugn Speaker Pelosi's credibility? I think we all know the answer to that. Send this video to as many people in the media as you can via twitter or their email addresses and demand they start focusing on the credibility of the CIA as much as they have been focusing on Speaker Pelosi's.

(major h/t to JaO)

Corraboration

With all of the incessant "He said, She said" journalism being practiced today by the mainstream media about Nancy Pelosi's assertion that the CIA misled her in 2002, its important to note that these same "journalists" aren't pointing to another House Democrat from that time who ALSO says the CIA misled him in a similar brieifing AND that the recently released timeline from the CIA on briefings was wrong. Not only was it wrong but that the CIA admitted to him that it was wrong. And yet the CIA has not publicly acknowledged the mistake/deception. And that former Democratic Congressman is Bob Graham, probably the one guy that has an almost unimpeachable reputation for accuracy and thoroughness due to the copious notes he takes everyday about his activities. Here is what Graham had to say:

Senator Bob Graham insisted on Thursday that he too was kept in the dark about the use of waterboarding, and called the agency's records on these briefings "suspect."

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman said that approximately a month ago, the CIA provided him with false information about how many times and when he was briefed on enhanced interrogations.

"When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held," Graham recalled. "And they contacted me and gave me four dates -- two in April '02 and two in September '02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002."

As for the one briefing he did attend, the Florida Democrat said that he had "no recollection that issues such as waterboarding were discussed." He was not, per the sensitive nature of the matters discussed, allowed to take notes at the time. But he did highlight what he considered to be pretty strong proof that the controversial technique was not discussed.

Now that is a pretty strong statement which mightily supports what Nancy Pelosi said yesterday about the conduct of the CIA. So you have to ask why no one in the MSM is reporting on the substantiation?

Because our mainstream media is teh suck.

Why Everyone Should Read Greg Sargent's Blog

All day since Nancy Pelosi said that the CIA had misled her in her briefing in 2002 I have seen people from every political stripe question whether the CIA intelligence report proved that Nancy Pelosi had been briefed on waterboarding or if it hadn't. The point of contention is the wording of the entry where it say she and Porter Goss were briefed on techniques that had already been used. That's big because we now know that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded already by the time Speaker Pelosi attended that briefing. But the thing about it is Greg Sargent noticed that wording on the very day the report came out last week. And he didn't wait for Speaker Pelosi to make a statement. Instead like a REAL journalist he asked the CIA what it really meant:

In the newly-released documents detailing the torture briefings given to members of Congress, the portion describing Pelosi’s single briefing says she was told about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general, but doesn’t specify whether she was told about the use of waterboarding. That was specified about some briefings given to others.

I asked CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano why. His answer: Because the notes and memos on the Pelosi meeting that form the basis for the docs didn’t allow them to go that far, meaning that they didn’t specify that she’d been briefed on waterboarding in particular.

Now can we find a way to get the MSM to report this so we can move on from this stupid sidenote? The CIA, in their own words, have no proof that Speaker Pelosi was specifically briefed on waterboarding. Now would be a good time to get the focus back on who ORDERED the torture rather than who was briefed or not briefed on it.