The most fascinating behind-the-curtains look at political reporting you’ll read all day:

Tod Kelly

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is  a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

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20 Responses

  1. Kim says:

    No. You’re supposed to be excited about Fishgrease, or Tanta, or half a dozen subject matter experts getting to have their say about things they “live/eat/breathe”. Which is pretty freaking exciting, if you ask me.

    Or, ya know, you could get excited about Serious Scoops off the internet, like that Mad Money caper.Report

  2. Judging “Internet journalism” by the behavior of the Breitbart folks is like judging rock music by Creed. The New York Post sucks at journalism too, even though it’s a newspaper.Report

  3. Bob2 says:

    No, you’re supposed to be wondering if Marco Rubio is ready for prime time because he had trouble drinking a glass of water on national TV.
    No one cares about that Hagel stuff nationally. They care about WaterglassGate.

    Was Rubio’s poor water drinking ability a symbol of his drowning on TV?
    Perhaps he just didn’t have enough practice drinking water.
    Maybe it’s a Catch-22 and he couldn’t drink the water properly because he was dehydrated, but if he didn’t drink the water, he’d tank the speech, which he tanked because he drank the water improperly.Report

    • Michelle in reply to Bob2 says:

      That story didn’t seem to have a whole lot of legs after a couple of days. The MSM instead moved on to the critical story of why Obama didn’t allow reporters to shadow him while he played golf with Tiger Woods.Report

      • Tod Kelly in reply to Michelle says:

        Water bottles, golf with Tiger, who cares?

        The important thing is the fourth estate is out there doing its sacred job of filling in dead air in-between the annual Blizzard-gedon coverage and the next B-list celebrity tell-all.Report

      • Bob2 in reply to Michelle says:

        I think they’re trying to feed another round of austerity via Simpson-Bowles 2 now that the Tiger Woods whine has lost its legs. Sequels almost always are worse.Report

  4. BlaiseP says:

    This sort of reporting has a long and dishonourable provenance. The Hearst newspapers were famous for it. When the artist Frederick Remington cabled WR Hearst saying “There will be no war.” Hearst famously shot back “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

    Robert Heinlein verbed Walter Winchell, to winchell, defined as to rudely and intrusively lie and slander. Walter Winchell was the terror of his age, also a Hearst employee. Rush Limbaugh didn’t have anything on Winchell. Or, for that matter, another monster of those times, Westbrook Pegler.

    Andrew Breitbart loved nothing more than a good fight. If truth is the first casualty of war, gossip and slander are its father and mother.Report

  5. MikeSchilling says:

    Also enjoy Shapiro’s completely incoherent denial that his story stems from Friedman’s joke. What matters is that he heard the same thing from three different people, none of whom was the guy who first misunderstood Friedman. Because it’s not like rumors spread. And the fact that Friends of Hamas doesn’t exist in the real world is irrelevant, or at least unaddressed. Anyway, you’ll never guess the real story: it’s how the media is totally in the tank for Obama! (Oh, you did guess that.)Report

  6. Nob Akimoto says:

    This kind of makes me think of the whole Wikipedia hoax regarding the Bicholim War.Report

  7. Pinky says:

    I dunno. I read Shapiro’s original article, and I don’t see what he should have done differently. It was poorly-sourced, but he made it clear that it was. The blame is on anyone who didn’t read past the headlines.Report

    • trumwill mobile in reply to Pinky says:

      He could have verified that the organization exists. I’d like to think I’d have done that at least to get some juicy incendiary material about how nefarious they are.Report

      • I think this is the part that makes me smell a skunk.

        It seems pretty unlikely that no one running with this story – especially Shapiro – would have passed up the opportunity to do a quick Nexus search to tie other terrible events, declarations, associations and quotes from FoH with Hagel (and therefore Obama).

        So I have to wonder if Shapiro and a bunch of others that ran with this story early on didn’t figure out it was bogus, and then decided the narrative was too page-hitty to pass up.Report

    • MikeSchilling in reply to Pinky says:

      “Anonymous Source Claims Hagel Funded By Non-existent Hate Group!”Report