So why did Eric Black – the dean of Minnesota political reporters – jump on what turned out to be the Media Matters bandwagon on the phony “Rush Limbaugh Insults the Troops” fiction?

Honest mistake, fueled by (admitted) bias?  Too much writing, not enough analyzing?  Leash being yanked?

Kouba at TVM wonders too:

Last Friday on his website, Eric Black had a post where he passed along, with an uncritical eye, the blast from Media Matters about its trumped up attack of Rush Limbaugh. Worse, in the second paragraph he referred to Jeff Fecke’s musings on the matter. A bit like Theodosius declaring Alaric an authority on Roman culture. [Two minute penalty; piling on! Not inaccurate – just piling on – Ed.]
The post made me raise at least 1.5 eyebrows, for Mr. Black is smart enough not to accept at face value a broadside against Republicans from a partisan outfit like Media Matters.

That the anti-war Left would grasp at such a weak excuse to try and take some attention away from MoveOn’s blunder with its smear of Gen. Petraeus should be a clue they need a telescope to see the moral high ground.

And…

Mr. Black is too experienced a journalist to carry water for Media Matters, and now that he’s waded out into the blogosphere, this episode should highlight the fact there are creatures swimming around with sharp teeth that don’t play as fair as he does.

Black wrote a correction – sort of:

The essence of Limbaugh’s defense/rebuttal (which he delivered, in high dudgeon on the next day’s show after the Media Matters piece had led to Limbaugh being criticized by several congressmen and senators) is that the full text of the show in which he used the term “phony soldiers” proves that he was referring to only one soldier, Jesse MacBeth, who actually was a phony.

MacBeth claimed to have been an Army Ranger, an Iraq vet, and to have witnessed atrocities. But all of those statements were lies. MacBeth stands convicted of making false statements.

Media Matters original piece attacking Limbaugh made no reference to MacBeth or to the possibility that Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” remark had been a reference to MacBeth. Limbaugh argues that any fair-minded person listening to the whole broadcast would have understood that he was referring to MacBeth and that Media Matters is guilty of a willful smear.

With an asterisk:

Here’s problem #1:

“Phony soldiers” occurs during a Limbaugh exchange with a caller. The caller complains that the media:

“never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.”

That’s when Limbaugh interjects “the phony soldiers.” At that moment, it certainly seems that both he and the caller are referring to soldiers and veterans who oppose the war. Jesse MacBeth has not been mentioned and is not part of the context.

Yeah, talk radio’s a funny thing. It’s always your rough draft, your first take (unless you’re on NPR, doing one of their highly scripted shows).  If one is sympathetically inclined toward Limbaugh, one will probably assume he meant the slew of soldiers thrown up in front of the media by one anti-war group or another that later turned out to by phony.  If not, you might assume he’s talking about all anti-war soldiers.

But when one thinks of (and refers to) Media Matters as a “media watchdog group” rather than a “leftist propaganda mill”, it’s a pretty big chink in your chain of informational evidence.

It’d be interesting to have Mr. Black on the show again; we have a lot to talk about…

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 6:43 am and is filed under Big Alt-Media, Blogs, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.