Patterico's Pontifications

12/28/2007

Crab-Grass Blog Obtains Correction from Much-Respected, Widely Esteemed News Outlet — Nine Days After the Fact

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 8:53 am



With the lightning-quick speed characteristic of the fleet-footed Big Media, the L.A. Times today issues this correction:

Giuliani campaign: An article in Section A on Dec. 19 about the relatives of fallen New York firefighters who are opposing Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential bid said that another organization, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, had been fined for “acting in concert” with 2004 Republican presidential efforts. The Federal Election Commission in 2006 concluded that the group “did not unlawfully coordinate its activities” with individual candidates or political parties. The Swift Boat organization was fined for failing to register as a political committee and for raising millions of dollars over the limits that apply to those committees.

I told you (and the L.A. Times Readers’ Representative) about this error nine days ago — the very day the article came out. I guess it took them nine days to read the link I sent them that spoon-fed them this correction.

Chalk up another victory for the crab-grass blogs.

9/13/2010

Mark Levin’s Elitist Attack on You

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:54 pm



“Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it’s] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.”Jonathan Klein, September 10, 2004, referring to bloggers.

“I look forward to reading his book one day, where he lays out with some coherence his philosophy on governance and politics. In the meantime, he appears to be just another loser with a keyboard . . .”Mark Levin, September 13, 2010, referring to me.

Mark Levin’s dismissal of me as a “jackass,” a “moron,” an “ass,” and an “idiot” doesn’t bother me much. He’s not the first person to call me childish names on the Internet, and he won’t be the last.

But calling a blogger who corrected him on numerous factual misstatements as a “loser with a keyboard” strikes me as very . . . Ruling Class.

And it’s not just an attack on me or PowerLine’s Paul Mirengoff. It’s an attack on any mere blogger who dares correct a Very Important Radio Host on the facts. And, in fact, his characterization of me as a “loser with a keyboard” because I haven’t Written a Book is, fundamentally, a dismissal of anyone who has the temerity to express their opinions on the Internet without having Written a Book.

It’s an attack, in short, on you.

Raise your hand if you have written a book. If your hand isn’t up, Mark Levin doesn’t need to hear from you. You’re just a “loser with a keyboard.”

Remember: my criticism of Levin had nothing whatsoever to do with his position on the Delaware Senate primary. I have my opinion about that, and others have theirs. Reasonable people can disagree about this election. But facts are not opinions — and Levin botched the facts badly in his post about Paul Mirengoff. And that was my beef with Levin.

I criticized Levin because he said that Paul Mirengoff supported Specter over Toomey, when Mirengoff actually supported Toomey over Specter. Because Levin said Lindsey Graham is Mirengoff’s “brand of Republican” when Mirengoff has said Graham is his least favorite Republican senator. Because he said Mirengoff supported “Harriet Meyers” (he means “Miers”) when Mirengoff ultimately opposed her.

I criticized Levin because he misrepresented Mirengoff’s post so badly it was as if he hadn’t bothered to read it — and Levin seemed to think he had the right to engage in such distortions because Levin is famous and Mirengoff is not (“I don’t know Paul Mirengoff and I suspect virtually none of you do”).

Where have we heard this sort of elitist and arrogant attitude before? Why, yes: in Big Media.

We have heard it from New York Times reporter James Risen, who said that his blogger critics were ““jerking off in their pajamas” and added: “Do you even know anything about me? Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don’t know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think.”

We have heard it from Helen Thomas, who said of bloggers: “[T]hey certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics . . .”

We have heard it from Big Media columnists who decried the way that blogs “continue sprouting like crab grass throughout the electronic ether”; or called bloggers “hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world”; or declared that “blogs are largely the habitat of unemployed writers, enraged misanthropes, retired teachers, aging journalists and people who normally pass their time doodling or making obscene telephone calls.”

We’ve listened to the catcalls through the years — even as we point out error after error after error . . . resulting in correction after correction after correction.

And now we’re hearing the same arrogant attitude from Mark Levin, who thinks your opinion is worthless if you haven’t Written a Book. In his latest response to Mirengoff, he admits he was wrong about Toomey, defends his half-truth about Mirengoff’s support for Harriet Miers as a “full truth,” (Bill Clinton would be proud!) — and doesn’t even bother to address the utter misrepresentation about Mirengoff being a fan of Lindsey Graham.

He’s a Big-Time Radio Host, you see. He doesn’t have to respond to criticism.

And his original post? Still utterly uncorrected. Just like Big Media!

Levin likes to drape himself in the mantle of the Little Guy, but his behavior towards Mirengoff and myself is the behavior of a man who thinks he is above such petty matters as fairness and accuracy — and only the Anointed have the right to call him on it. He thinks he can say what he likes, ignore your corrections of his falsehoods, and generally turn up his nose at you because you aren’t as famous as he is.

If his radio show ever goes bust, I think he has a great future in Big Media. I hear they have some openings at the L.A. Times.

1/15/2008

Another Reason Blogs Suck: They Annoy You with the Pesky Facts Big Media Is Wise Enough Not to Bother You With

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:01 am



The New York Times reports that many men are coming home from the war and becoming murderers.

Crab-grass blogger Armed Liberal reports that many more men don’t go to war and still become murderers.

Indeed, those who don’t go to war appear to become murderers at a slightly higher rate than those who do.

The New York Times didn’t mention that part.

More vindication for Helen Thomas!

P.S. A.L.’s commenters point out that his statistics don’t necessarily compare apples to apples due to the lack of available data. So the conclusion that those who go to war are less likely to commit murder is debatable, although likely. The point is that A.L. at least tried to provide some context. The NYT piece doesn’t bother.

1/5/2008

Helen Thomas: Bloggers Don’t Have the Standards and Ethics of Big Media Reporters

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 5:54 pm



This is almost too good. It’s the standard Big Media snobbishness about bloggers — coming in a quote from one of bloggers’ biggest punching bags, Helen Thomas:

“What I really worry about is that I think the bloggers and everyone, everyone with a laptop thinks they’re journalists,” Thomas said. “And, they certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics, and so forth. There’s a deterioration.”

“[T]hey certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics . . .” Well, she’s right about that.

Here’s one example.

On January 2, crab-grass blogger Dan Riehl wrote a post about a wide array of media outlets that got taken in by a phony Facebook entry for Bilawal Bhutto.

On January 3 — the next day — the L.A. Times‘s Rosa Brooks published a column that quoted the phony entry:

And who knows? Maybe Bilawal’s not such a bad choice for the Pakistan People’s Party. A history student at Oxford, he already has a constituency — at least on Facebook, where someone has established a new fan group called “Let’s not assassinate Bilawal Bhutto because he’s hot, OK?” Bilawal’s own Facebook profile is fairly modest: “I am not a politician or a great thinker. I’m merely a student. I do the things that students do like make mistakes, eat junk food … but most importantly of all … learn.” Still, “My time to lead will come.”

The L.A. Times has since issued a “For the Record” item that states:

Pakistan: Rosa Brooks’ Thursday column about political dynasties cited a quote from Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Facebook profile. Facebook has since found the entries to be “not authentic” and disabled them.

This papers over the fact that the writing was on the wall the night before Brooks’s column ran. At 7:59 p.m., a New York Times blog quoted a Facebook associate warning that the account had been set up by someone else — and blogger Riehl had picked up on it by 11:03 p.m. But dinosaur Big Media columnist Brooks still had a column printed the next day quoting the phony entry.

If Rosa Brooks had bloggers’ standards, I guess the L.A. Times wouldn’t have had to issue that correction.

But Helen Thomas is right. We don’t have their standards.

(Via Michelle.)

12/31/2007

Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2007

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 12:22 am



It is time for this blog’s fifth annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which long-time Patterico readers know as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. Previous annual reviews can be found at these links:

This year’s installment covers a number of topics, including the 2008 election, the U.S. Attorney scandal, and many others. It summarizes an entire year’s worth of work documenting omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations by this newspaper. The evidence is voluminous, but hopefully entertaining. If you have half as much fun reading this as I did writing it, you’ll enjoy this post considerably.

I hope every new reader who reads this post will bookmark the main page and return often. Bloggers: please blogroll the site if you like it. I’ll be happy to reciprocate the link if I like your site — write me and let me know your URL, and I’ll take a look.

Bloglines subscribers can subscribe by clicking on this button:


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Without further ado, let’s get to the bias:

(more…)

12/27/2007

L.A. Times Columnist: Blogs Are Like “Crab Grass” Sprouting Everywhere

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 9:24 am



To the certain amusement of bloggers, L.A. Times columnist David Lazarus resurrects the classic Big Media canard: Big Media is great and blogs suck.

The observation comes in a column that bemoans the fact that newspapers don’t charge for online content. Lazarus gripes that teenagers will pay for .mp3s, but not for online newspaper subscriptions. These damn kids nowadays!

My favorite part of Lazarus’s column is the part where he displays his dinosaur-like attitude towards New Media. Lazarus lauds his own publication as “the much-respected, widely esteemed news outlet you’re currently enjoying” — as contrasted with blogs, which he views as nuisances that “continue sprouting like crab grass throughout the electronic ether.” (You can tell he is pining for some blog herbicide that would remove this pestilence from the online world.) He adds: “Soon, the line separating quality journalism from utter hokum will be too blurry to discern.”

Breaking news for you, Mr. Lazarus: your editors are already unable to tell the difference.

Allow me, a mere crab-grass blogger, to give a much-respected and widely esteemed L.A. Times business columnist a remedial ecomonics lesson. If you’re supplying something people want to pay for, people will pay for it. If you aren’t, they won’t.

Your solution should not be to whine about this state of affairs. Your solution should be to provide a product that people want to pay for.

Why don’t people want to pay for the L.A. Times? I don’t know for sure. Speaking strictly for myself, I refuse to subscribe because your paper irresponsibly published details of a classified and legal anti-terror program. But others have their own reasons.

For example, many conservatives argue that your product is unpopular because it is untrustworthy.

There’s no doubt that it is. I’m in the process of compiling the links for my annual year-end review of the performance of your paper. It isn’t pretty, Mr. Lazarus. And it hasn’t been for quite some time.

But I have never completely bought into the idea that newspapers are having financial problems because they are inaccurate and/or liberally biased. Blogs have their foibles, too — and your paper has some strengths.

Here’s what I think is happening. We are all in the midst of an Internet revolution that none of us completely understands. Newspapers haven’t figured it out yet. I hope they do, because I think there’s a need for watchdogs — and there are investigations that (currently, at least) require the kind of manpower that only institutions like yours can spare.

But you’re never going to figure out what the next move is by whining.

It wouldn’t hurt to lose the arrogant attitude either.

Just some thoughts from the crab grass, Mr. Lazarus. Take them for what they’re worth.

(Thanks to Arthur K.)


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