Patterico's Pontifications

11/6/2009

L.A. Times Flushes Embarrassing Version of Fort Hood Story Down Memory Hole . . .

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 7:03 am



. . . and replaces it with a new version that mentions the shooter’s very devout Muslim faith and his statements of support for suicide bombings. The old version of the story? It never existed. You got that? Never existed.

Except that it did. And I can prove it.

Many of you probably saw my post last night noting the L.A. Times‘s politically correct failure to mention these important facts about Hasan’s support for Islamic terrorism. As I said in my original post: “The L.A. Times will bury this as long as they can — probably until they’re embarrassed into revealing it due to its clear relevance.”

Then Instapundit linked my post (thanks!), and thousands of people saw this paper’s burying of significant facts in obeisance to political correctness. Meanwhile, as I predicted, evidence mounted that this information was highly relevant. So what did the paper’s editors do? Why, they simply whisked the old story down the memory hole and replaced it with a new story at the same Web address. The new version has no notice of the change.

Thing is, I knew they would do that. Because they have done similar things so very many times before. So I saved the old versions of the story, to prove that the original versions omitted all this information, and concentrated instead on irrelevant statistics about suicides caused by post traumatic stress disorder.

As I have recounted in my UPDATE x4 to my post from last night, I saved the text of the original story as it appeared when I first wrote my post. You can read that version here. Then, when the story was changed at 6:46 p.m. to reflect the fact that Hasan was still alive. I copied that version too. Read that version here.

Both of these earlier versions suppressed any mention of Hasan’s raving about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his support for the shooting at the Army recruitment base in Little Rock, and his statements (both to colleagues and his alleged Web postings) supporting suicide bombings. This information was being widely reported elsewhere, but not in the Los Angeles Times.

L.A. Times editors buried this information. And now they’re trying to hide the fact that they buried it.

57 Responses to “L.A. Times Flushes Embarrassing Version of Fort Hood Story Down Memory Hole . . .”

  1. i am shocked, shocked i tell you to discover that there is news spin like this at the LA Times…..

    i can’t wait until the next time one of their minions calls to ask me to resubsribe.

    redc1c4 (fb8750)

  2. LA Times blame game …

    1) Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
    2) War
    3) Bush
    4) Anti Muslim Aggression by Whites in the Army
    5) Second Ammendment
    6) Inscription to the Armed Forces

    The real blame …

    1) Political Correctness
    2) Islam as it is practiced, not preached
    3) Poor Security at the Base
    4) No profiling

    HeavenSent (01a566)

  3. Is it possible that perhaps they didn’t have those facts when they first ran the story?

    just sayin (d7b11b)

  4. The essence of political correctness is that certain facts must be excluded from discussions. Not opinions; facts. PC is the thumb on the scales that forces social decisions in the direction demanded by antidemocratic ‘activists’, deliberately omitting to weigh ALL the evidence.

    Nothing is more insane than this decision process. Any political party purporting to support democracy should adopt as its platform the immediate end to political correctness. For starters, no more exclusion of such facts from discussions – and no more admitting shouts of ‘racism!’ as any sort of evidence in a discussion.

    Insufficiently Sensitive (a939d1)

  5. Is it possible that perhaps they didn’t have those facts when they first ran the story?

    Sure. It’s possible that, at 6:46 p.m., Allahpundit had been reporting on various aspects of the relevance of Hasan’s Muslim faith for hours, and that the entire news organization at the L.A. Times was completely unaware of all that widely reported information.

    Yes, maybe they were utterly incompetent, and were getting beat by a single blogger at Hot Air.

    But it’s more likely that the editors knew this information, but were sitting on it — because they didn’t have a bulletproof certainty that these facts explained his motivation — and they feared accusations of stereotyping.

    Political correctness, in other words.

    Substitute “fan of Rush Limbaugh” for “devout Muslim who spoke about suicide bombings” and tell me whether they would have hid THAT fact from readers for so long.

    Patterico (64318f)

  6. Had this murderer been a God-bothering Christianist who donated to Palin, listened to Rush, and Tivo’d Beck when he was out teabagging, that would have been the lead.

    JD (6dce29)

  7. Until they said it was a Muslim I thought it must be one of those violent Presbyterians … you know they have cut off so many heads and blown up so many buildings and attacked so many innocent people with suicide bombs … well I’m just surprised it wasn’t a Presbyterian …. or a Methodist (they can be even worse). Supposedly peaceful Christianists, of course, act like cowards and never speak up against the Methodists and Presbyterians. Instead, they send money to support their atrocities.

    quasimodo (4af144)

  8. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

    Ignorance is Strength.

    Free Delivery.

    Mitch (a6a8c9)

  9. I learned a lot about what makes these pc liberals tick by watching Shep Smith and Senator Hutchinson being incapable of uttering the killer’s name yesterday. It would actually cause them physical pain at that time to say his name because it was so dissonant to the narrative that was going on in their minds about post traumatic distress and their natural tendency to sympathize with those who kill American soldiers.

    It needs to be considered that these liberal journalists might not so much be trying to deceive the audience as they are trying to deceive themselves and spare their own feelings. Shep Smith and the Times had to know that everyone was going to find out the story soon enough, but they still couldn’t save themselves from the indignity of putting their mental/emotional problem on display for all to see.

    j curtis (5126e4)

  10. Liberals aren’t that upset about the Ft. Hood shooting because they kinda agree with it.

    Alta Bob (e8af2b)

  11. Anyone else wonder how someone who hadn’t yet been exposed to the trauma of war could suffer from post traumatic stress, and, aren’t professionally trained mental health workers uniquely positioned to identify the syndrome and deal with it without resorting to mass murder?

    ropelight (db98cc)

  12. We had a moonbat here once claim to be suffering from PRE traumatic stress disorder, and that idea was also advanced during l’affaire Beauchamp.

    JD (6dce29)

  13. #10 Sorry for the pun … DEAD ON.

    HeavenSent (01a566)

  14. It’s a NEW! and IMPROVED! story…

    mojo (8096f2)

  15. #12, JD, I was unfamiliar with such a condition so I took a closer look.

    PRE traumatic stress is easily identified by the yellow stripe on the victim’s back. The condition is complicated by an overly active imagination, a refusal to face facts, an exaggerated sense of self worth, and by the unwillingness to do one’s job.

    Liberals are particularly susceptible to the malady. But most at risk are those with lengthy exposure to printer’s ink, and are not to be considered as distinct from liberals, they simply exhibit a greater range of symptoms often masked by denial, pomposity, and grandiosity.

    ropelight (db98cc)

  16. I’m no business whiz, but what other business has a model that assumes its customers are idiots?

    Self-fulfilling prophecy.

    jodetoad (059c35)

  17. The New York Times is doing them one better. This is the current story:

    Military records indicated that Major Hasan was single, had been born in Virginia, had never served abroad and listed “no religious preference” on his personnel records.

    Do they want every single reader to go elsewhere ?

    Mike K (addb13)

  18. By the way – in Obama’s remarks to the tribes before he talked about this incident, he confused the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom with the military Congressional Medal of Honor.

    h/t
    http://www.newsmax.com/frank_gaffney/Fort_Hood_Obama/2009/11/06/282652.html

    Amphipolis (b120ce)

  19. Government is no longer in the protection business. Just the enforce conformance game. Great Britain’s revenge.

    gary gulrud (75a696)

  20. I prolly need to denounce and condemn these racist bigoted statements, just in case.

    JD (6dce29)

  21. And the New York times also points out that living your Muslim faith is very difficult in this country.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/us/06suspect.html?ref=todayspaper

    pk (fe44e2)

  22. Mark Steyn is on a tear against the media coverage of this…
    He just ripped into a Newspeak website post on how “overstressed” the Army/Military is in the War on IslamoFascism (Oopps, they didn’t use that “I” word, I denounce myself).

    AD - RtR/OS! (b8e0ad)

  23. It’s only difficult if those who practice the “religion of peace” refuse to condemn those who choose the opposite path.

    Dmac (a964d5)

  24. You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows:

    This is terrorism plain and simple, and if you can’t figure that one out for yourself, you can’t tell shit from Shinola.

    ropelight (db98cc)

  25. Today, Glenn Greenwald criticizes Patterico and Allahpundit of the “Hotair” blog, for linking to false Twitter rumors regarding the Fort Hood incident:

    “Patterico wrote: “Whenever there is breaking news, it’s good to keep a few things in mind: . . . Always follow Allahpundit” — referring to one of the two bloggers at Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air site.

    Upon reading that, I went to Hot Air to read what he had written, and it’s actually quite revealing — not in terms of what it reveals about Hot Air (that topic wouldn’t warrant a post) but, rather, what it reveals about major media coverage of these sorts of events. Allahpundit’s post consists of a very thorough, contemporaneous, and — at times — appropriately skeptical chronicling of what major media outlets were reporting about the Fort Hood attack, combined with his passing along of much unverified gossip and chatter from Twitter, most of which turned out to be false.”

    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/06/reporting/print.html

    Dwight Laprairie (ed2632)

  26. OK, when are we going to “take care” of our domestic jihadists?

    PCD (1d8b6d)

  27. Thank you, Dwight, for the Salon article. Now I know that I’m too stupid to figure out that information posted within minutes of an event might not be accurate. And that my world view might be influenced by an internet poster with an agenda.
    I guess Glenn’s point is that we should leave the reporting to the unbiased professionals that we have in today’s main-stream media.

    pk (fe44e2)

  28. The Los Angeles Times is a disgrace to journalism. I would imagine at this point their unethical behavior has rendered the majority of their staff unhirable.

    happyfeet (71f55e)

  29. In fairness, Greenwald also criticized the mainstream media in the article in question: ” Similarly, certain news organizations — like NPR — used anonymous sources to disseminate inflammatory claims about Hasan’s prior troubles allegedly grounded in activism on behalf of Islam.”

    Dwight Laprairie (ed2632)

  30. I wish Beck wasn’t sick because corruption like this would be exposed to a much larger audience.

    Oh well, for now I’ll just have to gloat and take full credit for the LA Times’ change of heart. After seeing their failure to mention the Islamic angle, and go off about PTSD (even though Hasan hasn’t been to war), I wrote an angry email to the writers of the article, viciously chewing them out.

    So again, heap your praises on me, because I claim full credit for forcing the LA Times to cover the Muslim angle.

    rightwinged (8af32a)

  31. Patterico, you continue to do excellent work. Thank you for at least trying to keep the media honest and for continually pointing out how significantly news stories are affected when the reporting reflects PC cultural sensitivities rather than the unvarnished and true facts.

    Unfortunately, this tragedy also underscores that the PC bug has obviously infiltrated the military. No rational mindset can absorb the fact that this killer psychiatrist–who apparently gave ample prior evidence of his issues– was recently promoted, was treating fragile soldiers, and was scheduled for deployment in a war zone.

    elissa (ef9951)

  32. Greenwald is dreaming if he thinks people aren’t going to be seeking immediate news in an event like this. Some issues are understandable. The army did pick up two other people for questioning. They later released them and a third person. So ?

    The story about automatic weapons fire was false but shooting 43 people in 3 minutes must sound like it. The shooter was himself shot 3 minutes after he started, according to the news today.

    I commented last night about why the military might have said he was dead for a while until the conspiracy angle was sorted out.

    Greenwald is also wrong about people not following this story once the first few days are over. The legacy media and CAIR may hope that is the case but it isn’t. This will be a big story for a few months.

    Mike K (addb13)

  33. …but the Sacramento Bee features Hasan being a militant Muslim prominently in paragraph… er

    No I’m kidding. They still haven’t mentioned anything about it.
    They have a nice side3bar on the columbine kids though.
    Say did you know they were white? Perfectly good white kids.
    No really. I’m reading it right here in today’s Bee.
    Shocking.

    papertiger (4d1249)

  34. Gleeeeeeen is aggressivelt dishonest, on his good days.

    JD (f8b50e)

  35. Greenwald is dreaming if he thinks people aren’t going to be seeking immediate news in an event like this.

    Greenwald didn’t say that people don’t seek immediate news. People certainly look for accurate news.

    Dwight (9747f7)

  36. I think Mike K’s first post is dead on. A ton of the info at first is gonna be wrong and it’s silly to expect people not to want info. It’s a function of news organizations to always want to be first; not necessarily right.

    JD’s reaction is typical of his “kill the messenger” style of thinking, but, if one actually reads Greenwald’s post, there are two conclusions: Glen wasn’t criticizing Allahpundit; he was criticizing the MSM for being wrong AND Glen reads Patterico! Frankly, of those two things, only one is surprising….after all, I think we’re all aware that the MSM is a lot less impressive than it thinks it is.

    Pk pretty much sums up my feelings about Glenn’s post

    Now I know that I’m too stupid to figure out that information posted within minutes of an event might not be accurate. And that my world view might be influenced by an internet poster with an agenda.

    And, in my humble opinion, it’s odd for him to swing and miss that badly. His essay on Obama continuing the State Secrets doctrine bulls*it in the Arer case was important.

    timb (449046)

  37. Rick Ellers thinks Gleen’s the awesomenest bloggah evah.

    Dmac (a964d5)

  38. Dmac nailed it. Glen Greenwald is a liar. He has absolutely no credibility because he’s been caught fabricating. Who cares what that jackass says? It’s not like he lied once, or lied a little…

    Also, his blog is dumb. JD is right to have a negative reaction to this.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  39. Both of these earlier versions suppressed any mention of Hasan’s raving about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his support for the shooting at the Army recruitment base in Little Rock, and his statements (both to colleagues and his alleged Web postings) supporting suicids bombings.

    There’s only one source for the “raving about the wars” and “support for the shooting [at Little Rock]” anecdotes. A guy who called Fox News claiming he’d worked alongside Maj. Hasan at Ft. Hood, says “about a year ago” he began detecting the hostile tone.

    How can “Col. Terry Lee” suggest he and Hasan were close colleagues the Darnall facility for the past year?

    Maj. Hasan was transferred to Texas last July and moved into his apartment around the end of the month.

    Maybe he transited to and from Darnall on a semi-regular basis. But nothing like that scenario has emerged in any reporting.

    steve (15c3a4)

  40. steve, that’s a good question. What I heard from that Colonel was disturbing. Why didn’t the Colonel do something about it? This Major has real responsibility in a way that demands professionalism and sensitivity to the pain Islamofascists have caused.

    It’s not that surprising, in today’s AKO equipped military, for troops to be friends with eachother after they have been assigned to different places. Especially officers. It’s a small army in many ways… a lot of people in the Major’s field probably know him. A full bird Colonel has a ton of power and influence. They have a responsibility to running a good military, and a lot of people appear to have let our soldiers down. I don’t want a witchhunt, but I am very disappointed.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  41. Oh, Dustin, JD does not need your permission to hate Glenn. It’s what JD does; the boy likes to kill the messenger.

    Nonetheless, I’m intrigued by the inanity of your comment. Greenwald is a liar, because of the alleged sockpuppeting, and that somehow reflects on his reading of Patterico and noting the MSM is full of crap and opining on the Obama administration’s deceitful legal tactics?

    How does that math work? One time, this guy chose to assume other people’s names (allegedly) so he could argue with them on his own site. Then, according to the right wing blogosphere, he lied about it, which means his observations about the MSM (which you hate too) and Obama’s betrayal of promises are wrong?

    Still, if that is your position, would you join me in encouraging DRJ to stop linking to League of the South member and American Renaissance reader and contributor (both the organization and the publication are worried about “white culture,” if you get my drift) Robert Stacy McCain? Hint: the last link is the best.

    I’m glad we can reach this agreement, Dustin. Jd can stop reading Glenn because he lied once and DRJ can stop linking to a racist because the racist is disgusting. I won’t bring up Glenn and you can help purge the site of RSM!

    timb (449046)

  42. Creepy douchenozzle.

    JD (263cf6)

  43. Yep, JD, that describes timb and gleenellersbee.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  44. Greenwald is a liar, because of the alleged sockpuppeting?

    There’s nothing “alleged” about it – are you his personal Cabana Boy now, or is that position still taken?

    How does that math work? One time, this guy chose to assume other people’s names

    Here’s how that math works – he didn’t do it one time in the first place. He initially posted one sockpuppet, then doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on his lying after being caught out in the open. That’s called a pattern, not an isolated incident. Now please go back to his site right now and tell all of his awestruck readers how you defended the poor fabulist from our reckless regard for the truth. Then you can post all of the conservative blog commenters who’ve sockpuppeted themselves, and how they’re still held in such high esteem as Mr. Ellensberg. We’ll be waitng with baited breath, no doubt.

    BTW, you’ve stated previously that you only come on here when Karl posts – but now you’re over here quite frequently. What changed?

    Dmac (a964d5)

  45. timb – It’s nice to see your bigotry out in the open again. You just don’t like southerners, do you? Have you ever read R.S. McCain’s blog or are you just relying on hatchet jobs of people with agendas such as your own that you linked?

    daleyrocks (718861)

  46. Greenwald has an ellipsis when he quotes me. Note what he omits — and how his post might have had a different effect had he not omitted that part.

    What false Twitter rumor did I supposedly repeat, anyway?

    Patterico (e60ec8)

  47. timb – RSM has never said anything half as racist as many comments made by Obama.

    If you are going to criticize RSM for associating with people you claim are racists I await your condemnation of Obama’s close, years long, association with Jeremiah Wright.

    And if RSM can be blamed for the actions of his associates then I wait for you to acknowledge Obama’s years long association and close work with Bill Ayers who tried to murder hundreds of American soldiers at Fort Dix.

    Have Blue (854a6e)

  48. The latest version of the LAT story still says that Obama promised “justice” in his statement. As everyone who saw it knows, he did no such thing.

    Glen Wishard (02562c)

  49. Gee, we’re all shocked about the LATimes coverage. WTF is going to change there. Absolutely nothing. And although the exposing of the duplicity of their reporting is a good thing, I really do not see any progress in changing it. The American public has gone beyond stupidty. They are wearing their ignorance as a badge of honor. And the mainstream media outlets have been the first to recognize it. Thank our educational system for the past 50 years of indoctrination and dumbing down.

    fgmorley (bbdff3)

  50. […] and lastly, someone who everybody and their second cousin is bending over backwards not to call a spade a spade, […]

    GM's Place.Com » Judgement and Judgmentalism: Major Nidal Hasan – Terrorist! (391595)

  51. timb – It’s nice to see your bigotry out in the open again. You just don’t like southerners, do you? Have you ever read R.S. McCain’s blog or are you just relying on hatchet jobs of people with agendas such as your own that you linked?

    Comment by daleyrocks

    timb – RSM has never said anything half as racist as many comments made by Obama.

    Strange that people, including AJ Strata who looked into it actually think he did, daley and have blue. If I read an article called Defense of the Faith, which includes this gem in the first three paragraphs:

    Loss of racial loyalty is recent. For centuries, race consciousness posed no moral dilemma to Christians.

    , I probably would not respond with a letter to the editor that read

    Sir — My warm congratulations to Victor Craig for his vigorous defense of Christian faith in the September issue. One point, however, that Mr. Craig failed to emphasize was that Christianity gives a firm and inflexible foundation to personal morality. It is no coincidence, I think, that the decline of white America in recent decades has gone hand-in-hand with a decline in moral standards…

    I mean, that’s just me…I don’t really think white America has declined, and, even if that were so, it is not something to be lamented.

    No, you guys can have the guy who thinks miscegenation is a revolting thing, if y’all want him. I’m just saying his racist history is all over the internet (and I provided mucho links!)

    As for the specific allegations, daley, as usual, shoots before he even knows if he has a gun, i.e. despite the wonderful comment moderation at RSM’s site, I comment there quite often.

    Have blue, that’s the dumbest piece of shyt comment ever made here since the last time dj commented. Show me anything Obama ever said that rivals:

    [T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.

    .You can find it here

    Lastly, I’m not sure the “Free Republic” or AJ “Global-warming-is-the-biggest-hoax-in-history” Strata share my “agenda.” In fact, daley, I’d wager not. One link is commentary and one is primary source documents. Had you bothered to click, before you expressed teh stupid, you might look a little less like a huge tool.

    but just a litte

    timb (449046)

  52. “alleged sockpuppeting” – timb

    Remind us again who looks like a tool, timb.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  53. shot in the dark? you, as always

    timb (449046)

  54. Poor shot, timb. Very poor shot.

    The answer is that anyone who comes to this blog where Gleen’s sockpuppeting was conclusively established and writes “alleged sockpuppeting” is the “huge tool”.

    That would be you, timb, since you seem to be too dense to realize it.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  55. […] When Major Nidal Malik Hasan perpetrated a terrorist act of mass murder at Fort Hood, the L.A. Times’s initial story had no mention of the shooter’s religion, his alleged rants against U.S. involvement in Iraq, his alleged approval of suicide bombings, or the allegations that he was shouting something in Arabic as he shot. But the paper did make sure to include irrelevant statistics concerning suicides at Army bases due to deployments to the war. After Instapundit linked my post and the story became an obvious embarrassment to the paper, editors did what they generally do with embarrassing stories: they flushed it down the memory hole. […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2009 (e4ab32)


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