Patterico's Pontifications

3/4/2006

Falsehoods in L.A. Times Letters to the Editor Regarding the Levee Story

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 12:14 pm



The L.A. Times printed this letter yesterday:

Now the Associated Press is reporting that the president was warned before Katrina hit New Orleans that a disaster was imminent, that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk and overwhelm rescuers. The president asked no questions. After Katrina hit, he claimed no one could have imagined the levees breaching — the same excuse as after 9/11, when the administration had been warned that airplanes could be used as missiles (“No one could have imagined this”). Why should we trust this administration about anything?

BARRY GREENFIELD
West Hollywood

They also printed this letter:

While only minimally vindicating former FEMA chief Michael Brown’s attempts at self-defense, the revelation of a video showing that President Bush knew what was coming, only to subsequently lie about knowing, shows yet again the incompetence and public dishonesty by which Bush operates. “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” he said. Maybe those 10 now-infamous words should be added to the discredited 16 he used in justifying the war on Iraq.

MIKE LASKAVY
Oak Park

Unwisely relying on the veracity of The Times, the paper’s readers understood the video to be a warning that the levees could be breached, not overtopped. This is flatly untrue, and reprinting the assertion in a letter just compounds the error. The AP has issued a “clarification.” Where is the L.A. Times‘s correction?

10 Responses to “Falsehoods in L.A. Times Letters to the Editor Regarding the Levee Story”

  1. My guess would be that the poor schlub in charge of doing letters to the editor hasn’t even seen the “correction,” and so just printed timely letters.

    sharon (e51965)

  2. Surely, as familiar as you are with the Times’ displeasure at having to correct their own stuff, you don’t expect them to correct factual errors in letters to the editor?

    Unless, of course, it was a factual error that somehow supported conservative positions.

    Dana (71415b)

  3. The simple answer is LAT doesn’t have enough employees to check the facts anymore. What with all the lost subscriptions, declining ad revenues, and drops in circulation, not to mention evaporating credibility, there simply aren’t enough staff remaining on the job to make sure what appears in the paper is accurate. And, it’s all Bush’s fault anyway, so who cares?

    LAT’s new name: the Leftist Agenda Tabloid

    LAT’s new motto: All the news that fits our Leftist Agenda, right or wrong.

    Black Jack (d8da01)

  4. Wrong. It is standard operating proceedure at the LAT to feature letters that mirror their POV while not publishing those that don’t. They have been doing it for years. But so have many other pubs. The effort is made to make it seem that nobody has a different POV and that nobody has sent them any mail with a different POV.

    “Join the mob or you’ll be left behind.”

    Howard Veit (a7b3c3)

  5. Why don’t we begin a pool – perhaps denominated in cold cervezas – as to when this pitiful rag finally goes out of business?

    In all honesty, when I’m in Southern California I actually enjoy reading their sections on entertainment, arts, food, & restaurant type stuff. Maybe they could sell off those sections prior to filing chapter 13, or as part of a chapter 13 reorganization?

    Deacon Bleau (730767)

  6. BROWN: There’s no question in my mind he probably had those reports, because we were feeding in the Homeland Security Operations Center, into the White House sit room, all of the information that we were getting. So he had to have had that information. Plus, I think the president knew from our earlier conversations that that was one of my concerns, that the levees could actually breach.

    http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/02/sitroom.03.html

    [And from later in the interview, Brown says: “But I think the president was speaking honestly at that point that he didn’t really anticipate that they would be breached because of all this conflicting information.” So we have Brown saying the president was being honest, and an AP tape that doesn’t contradict what the president says. — Patterico]

    m.croche (85f703)

  7. LA Times – Proudly misleading the public since 1968!

    Perfect Sense (e55418)

  8. Mr. Veit wrote:

    It is standard operating proceedure at the LAT to feature letters that mirror their POV while not publishing those that don’t. They have been doing it for years. But so have many other pubs. The effort is made to make it seem that nobody has a different POV and that nobody has sent them any mail with a different POV.

    Well, it sure seems that way in The Philadelphia Inquirer as well, but since Philly voted 80% for Senator Kerry, maybe the only letters they get really are from the leftists.

    But, in a way, why should we care? Everybody who wants to publish a comment here has been able to do so; as far as I can tell, our humble host hasn’t banned anyone, regardless of how much anyone disagrees with him, or even one who calls the host a liar.

    The internet has changed things, radically, and our ability to express our opinions no longer needs to go through press-owned portals.

    Dana (a90377)

  9. “…our opinions no longer needs to go through press-owned portals.”

    Yes, and ain’t it grand? 20 years ago I was so outraged at an article in the Reno GJ, I called the editor and we argued for about 30 minutes. It ended when he laughed and acknowledged the bias but refused to correct it. When I asked if he would print a letter from me correcting the errors, again he laughed, said no way, and hung up.

    It was “in your face, like it or lump it” in the old days before Internet Blogs. Now the shoe is on the other foot. And, that’s progress.

    Black Jack (d8da01)

  10. I read the comment asking where the LAT’s correction is…I’m pretty sure it is in the same place the LAT has its head stuck. But just maybe it will wiggle its toes every now and then to let us know its still alive in there.

    Greg Franklin (2d3183)


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