No Double Standard Here!
Tom Maguire links a Howard Kurtz quote in which Howie says that McCarthy’s campaign contributions are “[a]bsolutely relevant information.”
Yet the L.A. Times has reported not one word of this absolutely relevant information, since their initial article on Saturday.
Maybe the L.A. Times agrees with another Washington Post staff writer, Dafna Linzer, who justified the Post‘s decision to omit mention of McCarthy’s donations with this:
But we are living in partisan times and people want a partisan, political motive and explanation for everything. I don’t think that’s reasonable.
(Via Stephen Spruell.)
Exactly. Newspapers like Linzer’s Washington Post, or my hometown L.A. Times, simply don’t need to report campaign donations from controversial figures making politically charged allegations. For example, when the Swift Vets made their allegations, I don’t remember the L.A. Times running a story about John O’Neill’s political contributions. Do you?
Oh, right. That story.
P.S. Allah tries to make sense of the confusion regarding whether Mary McCarthy was the source for the “secret prisons” leaks.
UPDATE: The Commissar has a graphical “web of connections” between Democrats and McCarthy. It reminds me of another “web of connections” I once saw, with two differences: 1) the other “web of connections” purported to show Swift Vet ties to Republicans, and 2) it didn’t appear on some conservative blog, but in the New York Times.
Nope, no double standard here!
[…] UPDATE: Patterico checks his archives to see if Media Blog is right about a double standard. Guess what he finds. […]
Hot Air » Blog Archive » CIA Leak Update: Backtrack? (3ca10e) — 4/25/2006 @ 6:40 pmKurtz just dropped the mask. We got a clear view of the Lefty mind at work. He’s toast.
Black Jack (d8da01) — 4/25/2006 @ 6:42 pmMy comment above is inoperative.
Black Jack (d8da01) — 4/25/2006 @ 6:45 pmMinor correction, but isn’t your hometown the town where you were born or grew up?
[A quick dictionary.com search says no. It’s the “town or city of one’s birth, rearing, or main residence.” — P]
See Dubya (5073f6) — 4/25/2006 @ 7:19 pmMy comment above is inoperative.” – Black Jack
No worries.
Keep the boilerplate Rolodex cocked and ready.
steve (2552b4) — 4/25/2006 @ 7:38 pmabsolutely relevant information
It is only relevant if you want to publish the truth, which has never been the goal of the LA Times.
Perfect Sense (024110) — 4/25/2006 @ 11:08 pmPatterico, you forgot about the Web of Connections graphic that I made.
Web of Connections
Hoystory (15d1aa) — 4/26/2006 @ 12:41 amWhat an odd thing to say. Her political contributions aren’t relevant?! Since when?
sharon (fecb65) — 4/26/2006 @ 3:39 am6 degrees of Mary McCarthy
If you’re familiar with the game “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” you’ll know what I mean with the above post title.
Sister Toldjah (3e6668) — 4/26/2006 @ 6:03 amThe object of the game is to, as MSNBC describes it, “connect Bacon and any other actor through the films or t…
Um, Patterico, I clicked on both “Connections” links you provide… and I appreciate both of them. Each has information that’s relevant to the issue at hand–and to possible motives of various players–and to the biases and capacity for truthfulness of the organization (newspaper or blog) hosting the graphic.
(Prior to the 2004 election, I’d concluded that there was merit to certain Swift accusations, and that mainstream news organizations were spinning. The NYT web is another one of those “it doesn’t mean what ‘they’ want you to think it means” cases.)
Ace’s “There’s something about Mary” web is comprised of information that AFAIK is completely truthful and is quite helpful in sorting out who’s-saying-what.
Why are the NYT, LAT, etc. averting their (readers’) eyes from this material? I suppose they want to avoid charges of McCarthyism.
AMac (b6037f) — 4/26/2006 @ 6:38 am[…] This is outrageous. The L.A. Times continues to hide from its readers what media critic Howard Kurtz has called “absolutely relevant information” about Mary McCarthy: her web of connections to prominent Democrats, including sizeable monetary contributions. This, despite the fact that the paper considered analogous information, regarding prominent Swift Vet John O’Neill’s contributions to Republicans, to be worth its own story. What’s worse, today’s story positively seeks to portray her as a pure creature of conscience (my emphasis): Former colleagues described her as cautious and respected. “I thought she was a competent, quiet, good intelligence officer,” said Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who worked with McCarthy. “She was certainly someone you had respect for and saw not as an ideologue or someone who would end up putting herself in this position.” […]
Patterico’s Pontifications » L.A. Times: Mary McCarthy Not an Ideologue (421107) — 4/26/2006 @ 6:54 amStop for a moment.
If you take Ty Cobb’s (I wonder what his batting average is) word the Ms. McCarthy did not leak classified information on rendition prisons to Dana Priest (WaPo), then there are still at least 2 more leakers yet to be found.
Ms. McCarthy may be a political hack, but in effect her lawyer is saying there are bigger fish yet to fry. Let’s save a bit of vitriol.
A special touch in these stories is when the newspapers get quotes from anonymous intelligence sources. Isn’t this exactly what the official CIA statement gave as the reason for the firing of Ms. McCarthy. Talk about sticking a finger in your eye.
Neo (cba5df) — 4/26/2006 @ 12:06 pm