You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby
By Mitch Berg
I remember when I worked as a reporter, both on the radio and as a freelance print reporter. Now, I was nothing to shake a stick at; I was a serviceable reporter. Nothing more.
And part of being a serviceable journalist that could get hired to write stories was making sure that what you turned in to your editor was all facts. Especially when I did print work – my last step before walking my copy in to the office was to call back all my sources and double-check everything I’d presented as fact – names, spellings, places, numbers, who said what to whom, everything – to remove all semblance of opinion, supposition and by-guess-and-by-gosh, to say nothing of human error, that was humanly possible.
That was back when I was working for the most benign media in the US – the small neighborhood newspapers that dot Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the suburbs, the papers that report on neighborhood business, events, crime and the daily (or more usually weekly or monthly) parade of events on their turf, the Midway Monitor, Grand Gazette, Highland Villager, East Metro Courier and a bunch of others, all of them little tabloids that depended for their existence on getting the story right in their neighborhoods. Accuracy was a premium, since everyone in the paper’s audience knew everyone and everything that was being written about.
The editors and publishers of these little papers knew that their survival, even more than that of the big dailies, depended on their credibility with their audience.
Credibility. It’s a big thing, if you’re in the communication business.
———-
We conservative bloggers give the Minnesota Monitor a hard time. As has been amply observed by many local center-right bloggers, the MinMon is supported by the “Center for Independent Media”, which until fairly recently shared offices with “Media Matters for America”. MM4A is a George Soros-funded attack PR firm associated with an awful lot of gutless attack-flakkery; in addition to carrying on a high-profile campaign of smearing conservative commentators (often swerving into overt racism, sexism, anti-semitism and a lot of other “isms” that, were MM4A a conservative organization, wouldn’t pass unnoticed and unassailed.
The Center for Independent Media pays a group of local bloggers a fairly fat stipend, by blogging standards, to write for the Minnesota Monitor. One must, on the surface, give the CIM and the Monitor some points for at least trying to put up a good appearance; they bandy their “Code of Ethics” about with giggly abandon. I think it’s fair to say that some of their “journalists” make a game effort to try to meet that “code”; an examination of Minnesota Monitor’s coverage shows that the “code” gets ignored when convenient. And while questions have been raised about CIM’s funding, they’ve never revealed anything – although the phrase “liberals with deep pockets” has slipped out in informal conversation.
To sum it up – the Minnesota Monitor and its merry band of rentabloggers has been trying to eke out some credibility as a news source. I think it’s fair to say that outside the motivated center-to-far-left, they’re not there yet.
Which is where this story starts.
—–
One of the Minnesota Monitor’s bloggers is Jeff Fecke. Jeff’s been writing his “Blog of the Moderate Left” for a long, long time – almost as long as I’ve been doing this blog. I’ve never met Jeff, knowing only his online persona; I’ve sympathized with him during his divorce, and read about some of his health issues, about which he’s written quite a bit over the years (he once had a side-blog about bariatric surgery that was by far the most affecting and interesting thing he’s written). But for the most part, Fecke is a snark-blogger in the model of fellow rentablogger Duncan “Atrios” Black; the stereotypical Fecke piece actually reads like the stereotypical Black piece:
Why Does Bush Hate The Troops?
Article says administration trying to solve vets health care crisis.
Oh yeah. That’ll work.
After five years of that (and yes, I know – like most three-line parodies, it’s as hamfisted as…well, an Atrios analysis piece; read Fecke’s oeuvre and judge for yourself).
To be clear and fair – I don’t believe Fecke to be a bad person in any way. I’m not getting into any personal attacks here.
But we’re talking about journalism. It’s nothing personal – just business.
———-
I know what you’re thinking. “Who are you to judge, Berg?”
Who, indeed. I’ve worn a lot of hats in my life; reporter was one of them, for a while. This blog, of course, is not journalism, for the most part (I’ve taken my shots at it, of course). It is a combination of things – diary, soapbox, punching bag; at the end of the day, it’s really my personal comment section for the big blog of my life. I seek to be “fair” not as a matter of journalistic ethics – this blog (generally) is not a journalistic endeavor – but out of a personal sense that fair is the right thing to be. And like all personal senses, it’s malleable and subject to all the usual personal vicissitudes. I am not always fair. But I generally strive to me. And I can say with absolute honesty that I’ve never knowingly put anything false on this blog, outside what I believed to be fairly clear satire and parody. While my bias is one of the reasons this blog exists, I take personal integrity seriously; the only person I’ve banned from this blog in the past two years was ejected for calling me a liar (wrongly, of course).
On the radio? I’m honest about my biases. And I can honestly say that I’ve never done even the most highly-charged interview (last October’s interview with the Strib’s Rochelle Olson, about her hatchet-pieces on Alan Fine, was probably the most portentious of my radio career) wanting to be unfair. Indeed I was fair to Olson; I just paid out the rope by which I think she hung herself.
On any given issue, you can figure for yourself how fair and credible I am; your decision may be informed, well or foul, by the fact that I’m honest about my biases. On the show as on this blog, you, the listener and reader, are the judge.
———-
Last week, Fecke – in his capacity as a “journalist” for the Minnesota Monitor – sent Andy Aplikowski an “interview” – an email with a bunch of questions.
Andy is an outspoken Republican, a firebrand within the party, someone who has a vision and works for it with a tirelessness that the party needs a lot more of. Like anyone with a vision and the cojones to state it, he’s developed some detractors and enemies within the party. It’s the detractors’ loss; the perception that political parties are full of people who fret more about internal politics than about winning elections is one of the things that kills the desire of anyone who doesn’t live for that kind of thing to get and stay involved.
Andy’s first reflex was to delete the “request”; Fecke is a writer with a five year history (on his personal blog as well as the MNMOn) of antipathy toward Republicans, working for an outlet whose mission is to serve as a propaganda organ for the regional left. In retrospect, it may have been the right reflex.
But Andy forwarded the email to a group of other local center-right bloggers, including me. And in a brief burst of creativity, we concocted a number of flagrancies; a fictional groundswell for John Hinderaker to lead the MN GOP, a bunch of things that’d jump right out at a typical leftyblogger as stereotypes for the snarking, to justify much gamboling about and poo-flinging.
Learned Foot – a party to the party – sums things up fairly well:
What it was, however, was an amusing diversion; an exercise in disinformation with a rather obvious play to the preconceived prejudices of you and your audience. I mean, didn’t those references to Obama and the Imus comment seem just a little extraneous and out of context?
It was like waving our arms yelling “Yoohoo! You can play the race card here!”
Not to you people. Critical thinking jumps right out the window when you hacks see the chance to slime somebody. Hell, it never even occurred to any of you that perhaps Andy didn’t write any of those answers at all (aside from inserting typos and torturing some of the syntax to make it look more authentic).
It was a half-baked hoax – because, frankly, what’s the point of fully-baking a hoax with these people?
———-
In writing about the whole flap, Fecke asks:
So I’ll have much more on L’affaire Aplikowski later today, but I’m still left wondering how “I know! I’ll lie in an interview and say racist and incendiary things, and then Jeff Fecke will print them in Minnesota Monitor, and that’ll show him!” makes me look bad.
If Fecke’d stopped there, it probably wouldn’t have.
But Fecke went on to fall into our trap, and prove our point.
Remember – being a “journalist” involves clearly separating fact from opinion – and, if you ever worked for a boss like my first one, keeping your opinion the hell out of it.
Fecke seems (to my opinion) to have a habit of inserting opinion into ostensible “journalism”; remember when he wrote with no evidence one could discern from his reporting that Representative John Kline – combat veteran, one-time carrier of the nuclear “football” and survivor of several campaigns’ worth of DFL mud-mongering – was “”terrified” of his contituents at a town hall meeting? I wanted to jump through the monitor (and the Monitor) to ask “um, based on WHAT?”
Or how he implied without any visible evidence that the Kline campaign conspired to block his liveblogging of the meeting? His long record of jumping to unwarranted conclusions, sometimes with very embarassing results?
Not that he stands out from the Minnesota Monitor in general; last winter, when a group of Twin Cities gay activists’ van was vandalized at Dordt College in Iowa – a fairly fundamentalist Christian school that bans gay relationships on campus – the report on the subject skimped on little facts like Dordt had invited the gay activists, and that Dordt had ordered the vandalism cleaned up by their own maintenance people. Andy Birkey, the reporter who covered the story, left a comment about my questions a few weeks later:
I wrote the piece the night before I went on vacation, based on information from my good friend Matt Comer who was a participant in the Soulforce Equality Ride. I wrote it before media reports had come out, and did not have internet access for the following week, or I would have followed it up.
While I do – sincerely – appreciate Birkey’s clarification, my inner editor wants to ask – “so you didn’t bother to get Dordt’s story before you left on vacation? Then why did you run the story, as incomplete and thus unfair as it was?”
Minnesota Monitor has done little to earn the trust of those who aren’t fundamentally-disposed to agree with it in the first place. Given that Minnesota Monitor’s “reporters” have a record of omitting non-prejudicial facts about Republican, Christian and right-leaning subjects (by omission or commission), while essentially making up things to fit their preconceived hypotheses, where’s the percentage in someone like Andy Aplikowski not assuming that Fecke will screw him in the final draft?
As, indeed and predictably, he did:
I’m also left wondering who the “proper GOP leaders” Aplikowski notified were. As far as I can tell, Andy Aplikowski is saying that the Republican Party of Minnesota authorized him to lie to the newsmedia to prove–well, something. I didn’t know the GOP of Minnesota was in the habit of authorizing its district chairs to freely lie to people, but it’s probably good to know.
From a bald-faced hoax, Fecke – with no source other than an emailed statement from a party to the hoax, presumes a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Minnesota GOP.
Satisfying to one’s inner Bob Woodward, perhaps, but getting another source would have been a better idea. In saying the State GOP “authorized” anything, Fecke is making things up, presuming facts nowhere in evidence (nowhere in existence) to go along with his preconceived idea.
For while Fecke says:
I regret that I did not expect him to lie in the interview, but we rarely think ill of those lied to. Generally, it’s the liar who looks the worst.
Except the “lie” was a trick. And it worked.
Sad to say. But true.
———-
Fecke does bring up one point – possibly advertently.
For now, I’m just left shaking my head sadly. I actually wanted to write an article that was fair to Aplikowski and the GOP, one that was not a hatchet job, but simply presented his point of view.
About a month ago, Jeff Horwich from MPR approached me about appearing on a panel in front of a live audience on the MPR program “In The Loop”. I did my due diligence, of course – but I, a conservative talk show host, could walk into Minnesota Public Radio with a reasonable expectation that I wasn’t going to get punked. MPR – at least their news and public affairs departments – have a reputation for being fair. I felt I could trust MPR – and my trust was amply rewarded. As was theirs; I did nothing to jerk them around. I respected their integrity, and with good reason; they apparently believed there was good reason to respect mine.
Likewise, when Eric Black called me a few years ago asking for background on Powerline and the other local center-right bloggers, I believed – rightly – that what I said would be reported fairly, clearly and with no words crammed into my mouth. I didn’t assume I’d agree with any conclusions Black drew – but I believed in Black’s integrity.
With Minnesota Monitor – a propaganda organ funded by wealthy liberals in pursuit of an agenda I find largely noxious, a website that I believe to be deeply disingenuous about its funding and motives – there is no such trust; indeed, by employing a serial would-be clairvoyant like Fecke, the Monitor shows contempt for factual, fair reporting.
And that’s assuming Fecke is sincere about his desire to be fair, which, let’s be charitable, is yet to be determined, as Andy points out in his rejoinder to the flap (which you should read):
Fecker left out a lot of very pro-Republican content, because it did not suit his needs and fit his agenda. A paid political operative is an operative all the same. What they say is tainted by the money that pays for their words and where it appears, and it can no longer be trusted as objective. I don’t care who pays who, when a blogger takes money to blog, they obviously have sold their objectivity and credibility as well.
So if you were a rock-ribbed conservative Republican, and a Jeff Fecke with all of that journalistic baggage approached you, what would you do?
The fact that Fecke needs to assure the Minnesota Monitor reader that he’s not carrying out a hatchet job is telling, whether Fecke meant it that way or not. With Jeff Horwich, Caroline Lowe, Eric Black, Conrad DeFiebre and any number of other solid local journalists, it wouldn’t even be a question; integrity would be assumed; Eric Black never has to assure the reader he doesn’t intend to punk his subject.
If Minnesota Monitor wants to be taken seriously as “journalists”, they have to get to the point where they can say the same thing. With a straight face, anyway.
———-
“So why did you do it, Berg? Why did you go along with the other center-right bloggers in this juvenile prank?”
Because I thought it would be interesting to see what cockroaches got scared out of under the rocks. I had no expectation that Minnesota Monitor or Jeff Fecke would change their spots.
Less still did I expect the local leftysphere would disappoint.
But more on that later.
Oh, and by the way? Andy’s not remotely a racist.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I think Fecke lost pretty much any claim to being a journalist when he e-mails a list of questions and considers that an “interview.”
I avoid e-mail interviews at all costs, and about the only time I resort to them is when I’m trying to speak with a Big Blue VP who is just too busy to squeeze in an actual interview (plus they want to get the messaging JUST RIGHT, and filter their answers through their team of handlers).
E-mail “interviews” are the laziest, most unprofessional, non-journalistic approach I can think of. It’s basically saying “Hey, would you mind doing my job for me by answering these e-mail questions and sending them back?”
If Fecke wants to be taken seriously, he has to show he’s serious by, you know, MAKING AN EFFORT. Picking up a phone and “interviewing” someone isn’t that hard; in fact, it’s Journalism 101.
What Fecke’s dabbling in is Journalism by spam. He deserved to be the butt of this joke.
May 9th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
You mention the neighborhood papers and reporting the facts…..unfortunately some of them suffer from BDS now. One of the “facts” reported by the Southside Nws in Mpls last month is that Bush invaded Iraq to “get their oil” and has turned over the oil fields to the oil company Haliburton.
May 9th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I appreciate you mentioning my clarification. I didn’t insinuate that members of Dordt College were responsible; and in fact I’ve written a bit about other schools that were welcoming to the Equality Ride, including Northwestern here in St. Paul. It is a bit inaccurate to say Dordt invited them. The riders contacted the school and asked to be allowed on campus. Dordt agreed; many others did not.
I’m not under an obligation to get the school’s perspective on the incident, as I didn’t blame them for the vandalism, nobody did. You are trying to find anti-Christian bias, where there is none. What I disagree with is an ideology that breeds this kind of thing, and it’s certainly a minority of Christians. SoulForce, btw, is a faith-based organization.
I pointed out that the Equality Ride’s mission is to confront negative attitudes about LGBT people on these campuses, attitudes that can result in this type of act (see Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, for example). “Expect more events like these as Soulforce and the Equality Ride directly confront the institutions that produce this type of hatred” is what I wrote. You can read about (and watch)some of the experiences the riders had at the Soulforce blog. I wasn’t wrong. “You mind is evil and wicked, and you are living in a deathstyle,” is what was shouted at them at Bob Jones University. There are many others.
May 9th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Say what you will, Mitch. I haven’t lied to anyone in an interview. I’ve been approached by Brodkorb–less a reporter than even lil’ ol’ me, even you will agree. I declined the opportunity. Oh, I could’ve “punked” him–but that would have required me to lie.
And I don’t lie in print.
Am I a perfect journalist? No. I’m learning my craft. And given that I was running a straight interview piece, then there was nobody to check against. I wanted Andy’s opinions, and I ran them as he gave them to me. I even bent over backward to be fair, going so far as to send him a rough draft of where things were.
Why? Not because I fear being outed as liberal. I am liberal. MinMon is a liberal newsmagazine. We don’t hide that, or pretend otherwise. And if the GOP and right blogistan is not interested in being covered in a center-left newsmagazine, well, that’s fine.
But you can’t argue that I was unfair to Andy–because I wasn’t. And you can’t argue that I published a hatchet job–because in my original piece, I went out of my way not to print some of the over-the-top language that I felt Andy had inserted for shock value.
No, for all your griping, my failure as a reporter was trusting a liar, and those who helped him lie. And that is indeed my failure, and one I will learn from. And I will know next time I talk to you, or Andy, or indeed anyone on the right side of the aisle, that the odds you are telling the truth are negligible. Indeed, were I a reader of your blog anymore, that’s the lesson I’d take as well.
I don’t like being lied to, Mitch, but readers like being lied to even less. My apology will be going up on MinMon tomorrow, for passing through your lies as fact. I’ll await your apology, but I won’t expect it.
May 9th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I appreciate you mentioning my clarification. I didn’t insinuate that members of Dordt College were responsible; and in fact I’ve written a bit about other schools that were welcoming to the Equality Ride, including Northwestern here in St. Paul.
It was a near thing, I thought – but I’ll admit that I was looking for it, too.
On the other hand, your partner Jeff’s piece on the subject (which sparked my interest in your story in the first place) was a pretty bald-faced, oversimplistic attack.
It is a bit inaccurate to say Dordt invited them. The riders contacted the school and asked to be allowed on campus. Dordt agreed; many others did not.
Someone else wrote to say they had been, but in any case, duly noted.
I’m not under an obligation to get the school’s perspective on the incident, as I didn’t blame them for the vandalism,
True, in a sense; but the fact that you didn’t is certainly worth a mention.
What I disagree with is an ideology that breeds this kind of thing, and it’s certainly a minority of Christians.
Fair enough. I agree, as far as that goes.
SoulForce, btw, is a faith-based organization.
Noted.
I pointed out that the Equality Ride’s mission is to confront negative attitudes about LGBT people on these campuses, attitudes that can result in this type of act (see Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, for example). “Expect more events like these as Soulforce and the Equality Ride directly confront the institutions that produce this type of hatred” is what I wrote. You can read about (and watch)some of the experiences the riders had at the Soulforce blog. I wasn’t wrong. “You mind is evil and wicked, and you are living in a deathstyle,” is what was shouted at them at Bob Jones University. There are many others.
I’d suspect so. Look, I have nothing against SoulForce. And I do have something against rank bigotry (and took part in a gay bashing once as a result. On the side of the gay guy, lest you’d wondered).
So if I misapprehended anti-Christian bigotry in your piece, I apologize – although it seemed close enough to warrant scrutiny at the time.
Gays aren’t the only ones that get bashed in this society.
May 9th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Thanks Mitch. I agree. My wording on that hastily posted article wasn’t the best either, so for what it is worth, I agree with that assessment and I suppose a level of scrutiny was waranted.
I struggle with the fine line of criticizing elements of the theology and criticizing an entire class of people. Especially from my perspective as a member of the LGBT community. I do appreciate you criticisms.
And I have appreciated your conservative take on LGBT issues from time to time.
May 9th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
But does anyone who isn’t a conservative blogger really read the “Minnesota Monitor”? Because of the approximately 1 zillion liberals I know (and I’m including myself here), I don’t know a single one who bothers with it. It’s sort of like one of those boxes on the street corner with the free job newsletters in it: people might know it’s there, but they’re not going to bother to look in it.
I swear, it might as well be there for you people’s amusement or outrage or whatever.
But, anyway, nice Smiths reference in your title. Can Morrissey and conversativism coexist?
May 9th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Any follow up on that story, Andy? I was immediately suspicious that the incident was a hoax. The pictures showed only spray paint on the windows of the van, the easiest place to clean, and the pictures depicted things it’s hard to imagine any Christian drawing as grafiti. Where were the citatations & quotes from scripture?
May 9th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
The fine points of this affair are, I think, in seeing the difference between the “interview” and what was actually published. The interview was so outrageously outre’ that the whole of it should not have been taken seriously by any “objective” or “fair” reporter. That these answers, which played directly to liberal prejudice, were believed, is ample proof of the bias of this “reporter.” I think you have also proven something that all of us already knew, too– that liberals have absolutely no sense of humor. They remind me of the aliens in the movie Galaxy Quest, with no concept of a lie, and zero appreciation of an artful tall tale. Quite simply, it’s no fun fooling them because they don’t get it even when you explain it to them. Shame on you.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
“No, for all your griping, my failure as a reporter was trusting a liar, and those who helped him lie.”
Er, Jeff? Your failure as a reporter was in not being able to detect when a pretty obvious joke was being played on you. They weren’t “lying” as you like to whine, they were yanking your chain because you have a history of being less-than-credible when it comes to your new “journalistic” craft.
Also, to go back to my original point, if you HAD pursued a phone interview, you may have gotten more respect from your interviewee. A list of questions sent via e-mail is the kind of footwork I’d expect from a high school student or a first year j-school student.
But, go ahead and play the victim of filthy liars, rather than owning up to the fact you allowed your preconceptions to cloud your ability to sniff out when an obvious joke was being played on you.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Yossarian–
If you have been reading Andy’s blog for the past two years, what’s an “obvious joke” is–well, less than obvious. Had Mitch himself sent these answers back, I would have known something was up. But Andy posted the Mauritanian flag in response to KvM being “hacked by Turkish Muslims.” That, and arguing in posts with Gary Miller. He’s given to overstating the case. So while I agree that the answers given would be completely insane coming from, say, Drew Emmer or Ed Morrissey, coming from Andy, they seemed within the realm of possibility.
Given that I didn’t expect Andy to be lying, that meant that I wasn’t trying to parse whether Andy’s anger today was at a nine or an eleven.
Incidentally, I went the email route because I wanted to get Andy’s opinions, and felt that would be the best–and safest–route to getting them. After all, at least I now have a transcript of exactly what he wrote, don’t I? I imagine if I’d held an interview where I simply took notes, that I’d be getting all of this–except I’d also be accused of making things up. I always prefer telephone or in-person interviews if I can get them.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
“Citizen journalists” with an agenda get played for fools by their opponents. Strange, but I don’t feel for someone who’s doing yellow journalism in the tradition of the 18th century getting tweaked by the opposition.
MinMon is carrying on a fine tradition, although I suspect they don’t know it. It serves a niche, but the mainstream definition of journalism has evolved over the last few centuries into something where the agenda school of journalism is *supposed* to avoided. Some of doubt how much it actually is avoided given what makes “news” and what doesn’t, but what is generally accepted as journalism now has to meet a standard of freedom from bias that, while lax, is far more strict than what MinMon attains.
Let’s celebrate MinMon as free speech, and maybe we can call it agenda journalism, but it’s not journalism in the modern definition. Expecting to be treated as modern
“unbiased journalists” when there’s such a history of blatant bias is rather ridiculous; do you think folks treat an interview with Nick Coleman differently than they do a beat reporter?
May 9th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Jeff, please, stop dodging.
It’s your responsibility to vet and re-vet your sources and information, and then run your work past your colleagues (some call them “editors”), so you have a few extra layers of eyes and judgement to sniff out when someone’s playing a joke on you. That’s YOUR job if you want to maintain credibility, which is the commodity necessary if you want people to consider you a respectable source of news. You fell flat on your face here. But, kudos for trying to pass the blame on to your sources; there’s hope for you as a journalist yet!
Also, my nascent journalist colleague, here’s a little tip. Buy a recording device of some sort to tape your phone interviews, IN ADDITION to taking notes. Oh, and be sure to inform your sources you’re recording the conversation; they appreciate that. Yes, transcribing tape is a complete and total bitch but, hey, it’s what decent journalists do. Seriously, drop the e-mail approach. It’s lazy as hell.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Oh, and Jeff, I nearly forgot: take some J-school classes. They’re not great, but they might help.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
“To be clear and fair – I don’t believe Fecke to be a bad person in any way. I’m not getting into any personal attacks here.”
As well you shouldn’t..leave it to the professionals. Allow me to expound eloquent:
I got the “what should I do with this” e-mail from Andy on this too.
My response was that Andy should only do the interview if Feckless agreed to a counter interview. My sample questions included:
1. Do your testicles ever write home?
2. Does robin marty insist that you wear panties under your sundress during sock puppet meetings?
& etc…
The point being this; forget bothering to explain things after the fact..from now on, leave the moonbat shredding to trained professionals (like yours truly) who have long ago given up trying to maintain a patina of civility when dealing with lefty morons.
Send all of your pinhead piñata’s to me.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Case in point…
When Feckless says:
“And I don’t lie in print.”
He means
“On the advise of my divorce attorney I now always leave enough room for reasonable doubt.”
See what I’m tellin’ ya? Trained. Professional.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Has Feckless banned *your* IP? Case closed.
May 10th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Hey Swift One: Northwestern has an excellent journalism program. Maybe Swiftee Jr. has ambitions to clean the toilets over at FOX “News” headquarters?
May 10th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Nerdbert said: “I don’t feel for someone who’s doing yellow journalism in the tradition of the 18th century getting tweaked by the opposition.”
Yeah, Hearst was really unfair to George III, don’t you think?
You’re about a century off target, Nerd. But that doesn’t undercut your credibility in Angryclown’s eyes.
May 10th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Swiftee said,
“leave the moonbat shredding to trained professionals (like yours truly)”
Hey not-so-swift, yelling the loudest, threathening to rip off peoples heads and resorting to editing their posts is not shredding anything.
I will say though that watching you simmering in your own delusional self-aggrandizing gravy has been invaluable to me as a human being.
May 10th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Wow. A whole swarm of rabid moonbats. I guess that’s what happens when you provoke them by behaving like they already believe you are, and then saying that their belief is based on their own self-deception. That, to them, makes YOU the liar, for failing to live down to their phantasmagorical image of you. Whew! Anyone else having trouble following the logic, here?
May 10th, 2007 at 8:22 am
nice Smiths reference in your title. Can Morrissey and conversativism coexist?
You mean, my radio co-host, Ed Morrissey?
The big question: Can fans of the Smiths and Kirsty MacColl version so fthe song coexist?
Here’s for “yes”.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Mitch is right about the small weekly papers. The Southwest Journal emailed me asking for a comment on the Barak Obama group in my neighborhood. I was on vacation in St. Maarten and the guy was persistent and called me at my hotel down there to get the interview and quote. I was very impressed by his diligence just to keep the story local.
Fecke et al aren’t journalists, they are paid hacks. They have more in common with Tokyo Rose and Dan Rather than any serious journalists.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:49 am
delusional self-aggrandizing gravy
Mmmmm. Gravy!
May 10th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Hey Clown, while Hearst’s “journalism” was what gave us the _term_ yellow journalism it actually was just an example of that pattern of behaviour that existed for quite some time in newspapers. You really ought to read some of the papers from the 18th Century: they played rougher than you or swiftee. But then again, adhering to reality would require thought, learning. and actual discourse which are things you violently oppose and refuse to practice, preferring your floppy shoes and dunce cap.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Nice save, Nerd. Bet you’re glad the time machine dumped you in colonial times rather than, say, the Stone Age. Get back to me when you have a grip on space and time, ‘kay?
May 10th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Not so hidden agendas…
AAA, Mitch, LF and a few others have been having a good laugh at the expense of our local Soros “funded” bloggers over at Minnesota Monitor. Mini-money (as they call it) likes to claim that they are “unbiased”, but it does not take long to figure…..