On Target Blog - Accuracy In Media

Scozzafava Gets WaPo Sympathy

2009-11-10T22:07:17+00:00

Although the 2009 NY-23 special election is over, with Democrat Bill Owens sweeping up the seat, Washington Post writer Jason Horowitz is trying to convince readers that Dede Scozzafava got the short end of the stick from the GOP.

In his article, "'Scozzafava' turns into epithet: It's a Grand Old Purging as moderate's ousted," Horowitz casts the New York state assemblywoman and failed candidate as a sympathetic, teary-eyed church choir moderate. From the article:

Even as she now hopes to return to her normal life of local politics, laundry and choir practice for next month's big performance of Bach's Christmas Cantatas, the political forces that swept her up have not entirely let her go...."

At her desk, with a fuzzy elephant face down on a bookshelf behind her, she recalled the exhausting end days of her campaign. Violet semicircles hung below her teary eyes as she recounted how Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and other conservative leaders excoriated her for less-than-orthodox positions on gay rights, abortion and organized labor. Her nose reddened as she recalled her abrupt exit from the special election to replace John M. McHugh, whom President Obama had appointed as secretary of the Army earlier in the year.....

....Plus, the Democrats were so nice! They called. They sympathized. They made her feel good about tossing her support to Bill Owens, who -- with her help -- became the area's first Democratic representative in more than a century.

"Oh, someone left chocolates for me!" she said, picking up a present from her aunt and uncle. Her GOP family has been less supportive. And she warns that what happened to her will happen to candidates like her...

The rest of the article describes how the Democratic party orchestrated Scozzafava's endorsement of Owens.

Horowitz later writes that "Scozzafava, who was stripped of her Republican leadership position in the New York State Assembly on Monday, says she has no regrets and even leaves open the possibility of running for the seat again as a Republican. She sees herself as a champion of local expertise over ideological purity."

And ideological purity was in short supply: Michelle Malkin and other conservatives argue that Scozzafava was far from moderate; the latter won the pro-choice Margaret Sanger award, supports same-sex marriage and was on the ACORN-affiliated Working Families Party ballot. "She also supported the trillion-dollar federal stimulus package-which every House Republican voted against," writes Malkin.

Why Newsweek is the Punch Line

2009-11-10T21:01:04+00:00

"If we can't convince a million and a half people we're worth less than a dollar a week, the market will have spoken," Newsweek's editor Jon Meacham said in May 2009, according to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. And Meacham has been working hard to make his dream come true, by featuring such laughable headlines as The Thinking Man's Thinking Man: Al Gore's New Plan for the Planet, Yes He Can (But He Sure Hasn't Yet): A Liberal's Survival Guide, and my personal favorite, Why Joe Is No Joke: From Afghanistan to Health Care, A Vice President to Be Reckoned With, a hilarious attempt to validate Joe Biden. At this point, the number of Americans who believe Newsweek is worth more than a dollar a week is shrinking faster than Harry Reid's approval ratings.

Still, Meacham should be lauded for his cunning here. Newsweek lost almost $20 million in the first quarter of this year; in response, Meacham said that he would attempt to cut readership in order to increase profits (see the link to Howard Kurtz's article). His plan involved "discouraging renewals," ostensibly by creating a magazine so far to the left that no rational human being could take it seriously, and "targeting a more highbrow audience" (the term "highbrow" being used in the loosest possible sense). By claiming it was his plan all along to isolate the vast majority of readers, Meacham can still grasp at the elusive straws of credibility.

It may be safe to say that Newsweek has never needed that credibility more. For example, the November 9^th edition of Newsweek (The Thinking Man's Thinking Man) calls Al Gore a "prophet" several times, in multiple articles. Newsweek contributor Sharon Begley writes glowingly of Gore, praising him for everything from his optimism to his spirituality in her article The Evolution of an Eco-Prophet. She calls him "fact-filled," largely ignoring the growing scientific dissent with his claims, and essentially admits her unquestioning faith in the "eco-prophet": "One has absolutely no trouble-none, zero, nil-believing him," she writes.

On the other hand, Meacham doesn't bother explaining how easy it was for him to believe Al Gore, and he doesn't need to. He made his own faith in Gore all too clear with his own November 9^th article, Recycling Won't Save Us, But Greed Might. The entire article presumes that Gore's claims are all correct, and calls Gore a prophet twice.

This eco-alarmism from Newsweek is truly fascinating, considering the fact that as of October 26, 2009, according to statistics from the Pew Research Center, more Americans believe in haunted houses than believe in manmade global warming. Given that fact, perhaps Newsweek would have been better off if they'd focused their November 9^th edition on ghost stories rather than the alleged global warming and Al Gore's "evolution."

On the other hand, Meacham's apparent goal is to make at least a million and a half people think Newsweek is worthless this year. So in reality, he's actually doing a great job when it comes to courting American readership.

Meacham's suicidal strategy may defy all logic, but those striving for accuracy in media shouldn't stand in his way. If he wants to drive Newsweek into the ground, by golly, let's help him. He might think that "Joe is no joke," but in reality, his publication is the punch line.

Mainstream Misreporting: CNN’s Gross Distortion

2009-11-10T20:26:06+00:00

The Mudville Gazette has reported that once again, the "mainstream" media have distorted their coverage of the recent murders at Fort Hood.

Private Joseph Foster was sitting in the second row when Nidal Malik Hasan attacked last week, and explained his situation to CNN:

Roberts: So the first moments of Thursday afternoon, can you tell our viewers, you know, where you were, what happened, how it all unfolded?

Foster: I was sitting in what they call station 13, it's where we get, basically, our final outs of our RSP (ph) system and I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up, screamed and yelled Allah Akbar (ph) in Arabic and he opened fire.

Foster was one of those soldiers wounded when Hasan began shooting. He was shot in the hip, but even with his wound he did "what [he] was trained to do," helping others get out of harm's way. As the Mudville Gazette pointed out, when Roberts said Foster was "acting heroically" for helping others despite his injury, Foster nobly protested:

ROBERTS: So you were acting like a soldier. You were acting heroically. We should point out that you're with the 20th Engineer Battalion and despite your best efforts and I guess the efforts of your comrades, as well, four members of the battalion were killed, 10 others were injured. And you were shot in the hip and you didn't realize it at the time?

Foster: I had realized it at first, but with that much adrenaline, you tend to forget things.

Clearly, Foster was implying that his adrenaline rush made it possible for him to forget the pain from his hip and save the lives of those around him.

However, you would never get this story if you didn't watch the video of Private Foster yourself (or read about it at the Mudville Gazette or Gateway Pundit)-because CNN was reporting Foster's account thusly:

Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) -- Pvt. Joseph Foster was filling out routine paperwork for his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan on Thursday when he heard a shout quickly followed by a burst of gunfire from just a few feet away.

"I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up and yelled 'Allahu akbar' in Arabic and he opened fire," Foster said Monday on CNN's "American Morning."

Foster, 21, said he wasn't clear about whether the gunman said those exact words, noting that "with that much adrenaline, you tend to forget things."

Of course, when the Mudville Gazette first pointed this out, CNN retroactively edited the first article they linked to. They did find this page that as of 1:26 PM EST had the original story intact, and we at Accuracy in Media took the liberty of saving a screenshot of the page, in case they retroactively edit that one, too.

This story serves as a disturbing wake-up call to those few left in society today who believe that such organizations as CNN are above selective editing for agenda-driven purposes. This is just one more reason why the American people should think twice before believing what they read.

Jayson Blair’s ‘Hope’

2009-11-10T15:27:36+00:00

Jayson Blair's publicity agent, Ted Faraone, e-mailed me in the wee hours this morning to say that I made "one huge mistake regarding Jayson" in my "otherwise excellent blog post" yesterday by reporting that Blair said his speech at Washington and Lee would be his last public comment on journalism. Faraone noted that Blair said he hopes it will be his last public comment on the topic.

That is a distinction without a difference, in my opinion. Blair wrote in the preface to his memoir that "I am the master of my own destiny," so if he doesn't want to comment publicly about journalism in the future, he won't.

For the record, here is exactly what Blair said: "My intention, and my hope, is that this will be my last public comment on journalism. I hope to reserve future conversations about my career in journalism to private audiences of students and for individuals who might be able to benefit from my experience, learn from my mistakes and be inspired by my recovery."

I do love the irony of the PR agent for a man who destroyed his own journalism career lecturing me about accuracy. Blair lied and plagiarized with abandon for months. His willful ethical transgressions were "huge mistakes." At worst, I read too much into Blair's own words. I actually thought he meant he wouldn't be speaking publicly about journalism ever again.

Has the public heard the last from Jayson Blair? I hoped so until today, but Faraone's e-mail holds open the possibility that Blair will have more to say about journalism. He was paid $3,000 for his appearance at Washington and Lee, the same fee he earned five years ago at Winston-Salem State University, so if the price is right ...

The World According To Jayson Blair

2009-11-09T18:13:54+00:00

LEXINGTON, Va. -- Serial plagiarist Jayson Blair, who resigned from The New York Times amid a scandal in 2003 that also cost two top editors their jobs, delivered the keynote speech here at Washington and Lee University's journalism ethics seminar over the weekend.

Blair, who described himself as "a man who left some deep scars on his chosen profession," said he hopes the speech will be his "last public comment on journalism" (text tweaked, see clarification), though he has spoken to journalism students in the past and said he will continue to do so.

"I believe it is my duty, despite my new focus on psychological coaching and mental health causes, to do what I can to aid journalism students by providing them guidance in how to avoid the rocky roads that lead to ethical transgressions," he said.

I will have more to say later about Washington and Lee's decision to invite Blair to speak. I'll also be posting video to the Accuracy In Media Web site. Until then, here are highlights from Blair's "Lessons Learned" lecture and the question-and-answer session for anyone is curious:

Blair on journalism

"My story is an anomaly in many ways because of the breadth and the largesse of it. It's not an anomaly in terms of ethical problems in journalism in general. ... To suggest that the model for journalism is changing, transforming and becoming this Web-based, faster model ... [and] that that doesn't have some ethical implications or potential ethical landmines seems a bit silly to me."

"Do a test. You know, find the story that's written about this event. ... Google a couple of lines from it and see if you can find it copied word for word somewhere. I'm willing to bet you will. And now this isn't a knock on journalism. It's not so much journalism that's driven this part of the plagiarism and fabrication stuff post-me-off-the-side-of-a-cliff. A lot of this has to do with blogs and Web stuff that's getting taken. So when you ask me this question, 'Do we have a problem with plagiarism and fabrication?' Yes we do. How much of it is in the mainstream media I don't really know because I don't pay attention to it."

Blair declined to answer a question about whether journalists need to be licensed like other profession but added, "I do know that licensing boards are not the panaceas to ethical problems. ... They have as big or bigger ethical problems." [Editor's note: That this question was asked at a university that bills itself as the birthplace of journalism education in America speaks volumes about the elitist attitudes that plague traditional media.]

Blair rejected the notion that his story should have any bearing on the future of other black journalists or efforts to achieve "diversity" in American newsrooms. "When you look at the facts of the case, I think race played very little role in either my rise or my fall. The people who have commented and said that it did, not only are they uninformed, they weren't ever close to the situation." Blair said his qualifications were "far above" any of those his age when he was hired. "And if you look at my fall, it has to do with my personal failings and nothing to do with my race. ... It's just a silly argument that to me is not even worth engaging in. The type of people who are gonna go and run with that, I'm not gonna ever change their minds."

He also downplayed the suggestion that he advanced professionally because of his personal connections rather than his skills. "Journalism, like any other profession, involves networking and relationships and other things like that. ... That's just a natural part of any business, and I don't think it's necessarily incongruent with meritocracy. The idea that somebody would be your advocate doesn't bother me."

"For a story about journalism ethics, you go and you read the collective facts that are out there supposedly about my career, and you will find lots of ... factual inaccuracies.

"It becomes a little bit harder to trust ... reporting any time you've been written about in small ways or big ways just because of the mistakes that do get made that you can see."

"Journalism can be a very what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business."

Blair on The New York Times

Blair said Howell Raines created tension in the newsroom by "coming into the paper and essentially sending the message, 'Hey everyone, you know, you weren't good enough before I got here. You gotta do it better, faster.' Then we get hit by the September 11 attacks. So instead of what would have normally happened -- the section editors get replaced slowly over time -- he's stuck with the last executive editor's section editors after he's criticized them both during his campaign to get the job and when he came in the door. But now he's stuck with them. The communication was not very good at that point. ... When those communications structures broke down and people decided not to pay attention to each other or not talk to each other, they weren't technically making ethical decisions, but they had ethical implications."

"There were a lot of changes to the culture of our newsroom. It was a newsroom that valued accuracy above all else, comprehensive coverage over everything else, that had moved to a speed-driven environment. And there were some things that were going on during that period where I would say people were getting closer and closer and closer to different kinds of ethical lines."

"I was at the newspaper at a time when we had a new editor who put a much greater emphasis on speed and impact. I'm sure that this editor did not intentionally decide to sacrifice accuracy, and in fact he said that he believed we could do things faster and more powerfully with the same amount of accuracy. However, the focus on speed and impact had an ultimate result of sacrificing some accuracy through a flood-the-zone philosophy that reallocated resources and left less time being devoted to the reporting, writing and editing of each story. This likely contributed to other problems the paper had during the time period."

He said he was able to lie for so long because "here was just general dysfunction during that time period. ... I don't think it could have gone as long if we hadn't been sort of as stretched and people hadn't been as fatigued as they were."

"It's a wonderful newspaper whose editors came to my rescue on the day of my resignation. They responded with human kindness by emptying the newsroom to find me to make sure that I was safe and to get me the medical attention they assumed I needed."

Blair on his unethical behavior

"I have been in touch with some of the people that I have written about, and I have made apologies to them that don't make any excuses." He declined to elaborate or name specific people. "I think it's private conversations. Whether those people reached out to me or I reached out to them, they made a decision to allow me into some private aspect of their lives, and I shouldn't drag them back into this mess in a public way."

"We [at the Times] were emotionally in the midst of a never-ending marathon that had taken a cumulative toll on our editors and reporters. It was in this environment that I recall first crossing the line. Once it was crossed, like so much else in ethics and other areas of life, it was so much easier to cross again."

"I would cross the line, and then I would tell myself, 'I'm never gonna do that again,' and then I'd cross that line again. ... My only accountability was myself."

Blair said he became a journalism to "heal people through my stories, and I ended up hurting individuals -- the subjects of the stories, sources of the stories, people who read the stories and believed some part of it that wasn't true."

"What I think [my story] did was it really gave people, a lot of people who were distrusting of the news media at the time and continue to be ... it gave them an example to make the point that they wanted to believe or say whenever they disagreed with ... a story."

"There's no reason you should be compelled to believe anything. It's your choice. I would tell you to do the same thing I do on a daily basis. ... You listen to what people have to say. You examine it. You compare it to the facts that you know. ... You collect information from collateral sources, and you make a determination for yourself about the credibility of it. ...There's no reason I think you should necessarily be compelled to believe my version of events. I'm just offering it. You know, I'm not trying to, I think, convince anyone of anything."

Blair on ethics

"Rarely are our choices in life presented as a major, dramatic question. If they were, it would be easy. ... Instead, our most important choices in life, including ethical ones, present themselves in small baby steps -- one step at a time in minor choices that may not even seem related to the ultimate outcome. And then one day ... you can turn around and find yourself close [to] or across a line that you never thought you would go anywhere near."

Journalism students "can at times have a hard time [understanding] the notion that I got into the profession because I was curious, loved writing and wanted to help people. My reasons sound as noble as their own, and this can create some cognitive dissonance. I think it's hard for people to process the idea, to internalize the notion that I once was so much like them. But it's an important premise in looking at my career. Because if you buy the idea that I became a journalist for such noble reasons and that I could cross the ethical lines that I did, you can buy the notion that you can.

If we merely believe that only bad people do bad things, then you good people have no reason to learn ethics at all, for you are destined to do good no matter what happens. This seems contrary to everything we know about the human condition.

Froomkin’s World

2009-11-03T19:54:38+00:00

Dan Froomkin, the former quasi-White House watchdog for The Washington Post and current Obama administration lapdog at The Huffington Post, thinks all journalists should drop the pretense of objectivity as he did long ago.

Here's how he answered a query from the Democracy In America blog for The Economist when asked whether "the media should strive for objectivity in its reporting":

No. Journalists should strive for accuracy, and fairness. Objectivity is impossible, and is too often confused with balance. And the problem with balance is that we are not living in a balanced time. For instance, is it patently obvious that at this point in our history, the leading luminaries on one side of the American political spectrum are considerably less tethered to reality than those on the other side. Madly trying to split the difference, as so many of my mainstream-media colleagues feel impelled to do, does a disservice to the concept of the truth.

Froomkin is partially correct. Today's journalists have proven repeatedly that they are incapable of achieving the admittedly high standard of objectivity on a consisent basis. That's why I said earlier today that I would rather read the solid reporting of blogger-activists (regardless of their political leanings, by the way) than the work of journalists who say they are objective but behave otherwise.

Froomkin used to be one of the liberals I occasionally enjoyed reading for that reason. I knew he approached his journalism from a far-left perspective, but he was an aggressive watchdog. Then Barack Obama was elected president, and Froomkin went soft.

He still is. Froomkin's primary gripe about media coverage of Obama is that journalists, especially television networks, treat him like a celebrity and emphasize fluff over substance. He's right on both counts, but he's wrong about this:

This administration, I'm happy to say, is not unprecedentedly and spectacularly dishonest, incompetent and secretive, and therefore doesn't require the kind of courage to cover that the Bush-era White House press corps, to its shame, failed to summon. The unique and much less daunting challenge of covering this president is that he is such a celebrity.

Obama is so dishonest that he has been shouted down from the well of the U.S. House and called out by voters marching in the streets of Washington. The left-leaning Associated Press exposed Obama's lie, albeit reluctantly, about his healthcare plan not funding abortions. Liberal journalist George Stephanopoulous confronted the president about his amazing capacity for breaking promises.

And the list goes on. As Jim Geraghty has detailed regularly at The Campaign Spot, "All Barack Obama promises come with an expiration date. All of them."

Froomkin acknowledged as much in his Economist interview. "The Obama White House was a model of transparency ... for two, maybe three days," he said. "... Obama has been a terrible disappointment. Where’s the change?" Yet Froomkin still insists that Obama's team "is not unprecedentedly and spectacularly dishonest"? A watchdog can only reach such a conclusion if he is looking at the world from his master's lap.

Froomkin's distorted worldview is even more obvious when you consider his response to the White House's war with Fox News. The $5 million White House communications team has agreed to a cease fire for now but undoubtedly will pick another fight with Fox in the future -- and Froomkin clearly thinks they should. He parroted White House talking points to criticize journalists who dared defend Fox:

The Obama administration's recent characterization of Fox News is a long overdue acknowledgment of the obvious: Fox News is not a legitimate news organization -- indeed, after many years of serving as the research and messaging wing of the Republican Party, it has now gone beyond even that, to become the electronic evangelist of an ultra-partisan and non-reality-based world view.

... The litmus test is that the Obama White House is not upset at news gatherers for doing their job. What Obama and his aides are correctly pointing out is that the people working at Fox News are doing another job altogether.

Seriously? Froomkin has watched Major Garrett, who used to work and CNN, and honestly concluded that the Washington news he reports is illegitmate? Froomkin thinks Bret Baier and Chris Wallace are "doing another job altogether" on "Special Report" and "Fox News Sunday" than the anchors for other evening and Sunday news shows?

I don't believe it. It's far more likely that Froomkin, like the White House, is judging all of Fox News based on the success of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and its other opinionated talk-show hosts.

But if that's true, Froomkin has no right to complain. Fox's talkers have done exactly what he has done, and what he wrongly believes even newsmen should do -- forsaken objectivity and balance as the gold standard of journalism. Froomkin lives in an Ivory Tower made of glass, so he's really in no position to be hurling stones at Fox News or advising other journalists how to do their jobs.

A New Media Electoral Coup In New York

2009-11-03T13:20:40+00:00

Republican Dede Scozzafava's sudden departure from the special election in New York's 23rd District demonstrates the potential of journalism by conservative activists to impact politics in the new media era.

Scozzafava quit the race Saturday, three days before the Nov. 2 election. She made the decision soon after the Sienna Research Institute released a poll showing her in a distant third behind Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Hoffman and Owens were in a dead heat before Scozzafava withdrew; a new Sienna poll released today puts Hoffman ahead by 5 percent.

"We defeated the Daily Kos candidate," said Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance, one of four blogger-activists on the ground in New York over the past several days as conservative pressure mounted on Scozzafava to withdraw. The other bloggers were Ali Akbar, Stephen Foley and Robert Stacy McCain, a former Washington Times writer.

McCain was in the district first and has been filing reports on his personal blog, as well as at AmSpecBlog and Hot Air's Green Room. Akbar, Foley and Odom did their reporting for a new site called 73wire, which bills itself as a "collaborative, people-powered news project.

The 73wire trio trekked to the 23rd District, which became vacant when Republican Rep. John McHugh became President Obama's Army secretary, just days after numerous high-profile blogs "unendorsed" Scozzafava.

Odom, one of the lead organizers of this year's "tea party" activists, said he and his colleagues raised about $4,000 within about five hours of seeking donations via the e-mail list developed during the tea parties. He said 73wire has had at least 12,000 unique visits a day since its launch.

Odom said it was frustrating that more blogger-activists weren't in the district to cover the race and fight for Hoffman last week. The election is "our chance as conservatives to hit back" against the Republican establishment that backed the left-leaning Scozzafava over Hoffman, Odom said.

But he said the bloggers who were there played a "significant role" in shifting the dynamics of the race. He noted, for instance, that bloggers exposed the close staff ties, rather than just money, between Scozzafava's campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Odom took exception to stories that lauded Scozzafava for dropping out once she realized she could not win. He said the NRCC bailed on Scozzafava on Friday and gave her no choice. "She was literally left with nothing. ... She didn't do the right thing; she did the only thing."

Odom also said the citizen journalists stayed on duty during the weekend while traditional journalists relaxed on what they assumed would be a slow weekend news day. Drudge Report didn't have the news of Scozzafava's withdrawal online until hours after the bloggers broke it, he said. "If we weren't in the district, then that may not have come out when it did."

Matt Burns, the Scozzafava campaign's spokesman, did not respond to requests for comment on how conservative bloggers shaped the race.

Odom said more blogger-activists, especially those "who know journalism a lot better than we do," need to embed in districts of interest to the tea party movement but ignored by the mainstream media. He said they could drive coverage of the races just as they did in New York.

Bloggers weren't the only factor in the race. The conservative Club For Growth spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent weeks to influence voters in the district, and Hoffman won the backing of big names in conservative circles, most notably Sarah Palin.

Some people also wonder whether the blog-driven activism on Hoffman's behalf was a good thing. "A majority political party requires a far more diverse coalition than the audience for your average right-wing blogger or talk show host," The Wall Street Journal editorialized today.

But bloggers on the right definitely have reason to celebrate the turn of events in New York's 23rd District. Their on-the-ground reporting and coordinated editorial blog swarm against Scozzafava helped inspire an electoral coup.

Hopefully it will convince conservative donors to start funding more new media efforts.

UPDATE: McCain credits other bloggers who had an impact in the New York race and who have fostered the maturity of the conservative blogosphere over the years. They include Erick Erickson at RedState, John Hawkins of Right Wing News, Michelle Malkin, Michael Patrick Leahy of Top Conservatives on Twitter, and Dan Riehl of Riehl World View.

McCain also confesses to being uncomfortable with the "activist" part of the blogger-activist label. As a fellow newsman, I understand his discomfort, and the basic work McCain has done in New York and elsewhere in recent months is Journalism 101. He is interviewing sources, gathering facts and reporting news. But the fact that his excellent reporting is flavored with opinions makes it something other than straight news.

That's not necessarily a bad thing in today's media environment. Liberal journalists, of which there are many, have laced the news with their opinions for decades and deceived information consumers by preaching objectivity while practicing spin. That makes their journalism a lie.

Ideally, I'd like to see my journalistic brethren consistently rise to the lofty standards we set for ourselves. But because so many of them fail so often, especially in campaign reporting, I'd rather read the solid reporting of a blogger-activist than a phony journalist any day.

‘Army Of Davids’ Strikes Scozzafava

2009-10-22T17:23:50+00:00

Is that an "army of Davids" I hear on the right side of the blogosphere simultaneously calling for a Republican candidate in New York to withdraw from a special election? Indeed it is.

At high noon today, a host of conservative bloggers took a coordinated stand against Dede Scozzafava, the GOP candidate in the 23rd District race to replace Republican Rep. John McHugh. Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, rejected by the GOP establishment that embraced Scozzafava, has long been the preferred candidate of conservative bloggers, but events this week spurred them to issue a mass "un-endorsement" of Scozzafava.

On Monday, Scozzfava's husband, a local union leader in the district, called the cops on Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack because he had the gall to ask questions about issues that matter to conservatives.

Scozzafava's campaign lied about the encounter in an attack on McCormack but was forced to issue a retraction after audio revealed the truth. The campaign also leaked e-mails to the liberal blog Talking Points Memo in an attempt to embarrass McCormack but only made itself look worse. Even liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos defended McCormack.

Coupled with the disgust for Scozzafava as a RINO (Republican in name only), the McCormack controversy proved to be the tipping point for conservative bloggers. They increased the volume of their individual megaphones by yelling the same thing into them at the same time: Dede Scozzafava must go!

Readers heard that same message at both major and minor blogs. "It was a semi-coordinated move in solidarity with John McCormack, although McCormack didn't know we were doing it," said Quin Hillyer of The Washington Times. "It was just casual through a few e-mails and word of mouth, and then it just took off."

Jim Geraghty of National Review Online included this tongue-in-cheek comment in his un-endorsement post at The Campaign Spot: "Why, it's almost as if the natural response to a candidate attacking one conservative journalist was to spur all of them to unite to make that candidate's life miserable or something."

Other blogs and bloggers who joined the campaign included:

Michelle Malkin
Big Government
RedState
Warner Todd Huston (at RedState, Right Wing News, Publius Forum and The Reality Check)
Red County (here and here)
TheConservatives.com
Ace Of Spades
Conservatives With Attitude
Shaving Leviathan
Tea Party Patriots
Unequal Time

The Washington Examiner also published an editorial today calling for Scozzafava's withdrawal.

Whether any of it will matter remains to be seen. The blogosphere's coordinated un-endorsement of Scozzafava arguably will have even less impact than newspaper endorsements of candidates have had for decades because most readers won't even have a vote in the race.

But the blog campaign is further evidence of the maturation of conservative new media. Three years ago, most conservative bloggers were committed to working independently. Now they have shown they can unite in common cause, just like a militia-style army of Davids.

Perhaps more importantly in the short term, today's effort has bolstered Scozzafava's rival, both in terms of money and enthusiasm. "It's beyond my expectations," Hoffman said in response to the outpouring of Internet-driven conservative support he has received lately. "It's like a tsunami, and at this point someone should tell Dede Scozzafava you can't swim against it."

Carville To The Press: Get Over Your Race Hysteria

2009-10-18T11:33:52+00:00

It took a focus group to convince Democratic political strategist James Carville what astute Americans already knew about President Obama's vocal critics: They aren't racist; they just don't like his liberal policies.

So now Carville has a message for media squawkers like Maureen Dowd of The New York Times: Get over it! Your racial conspiracy theories are way off base.

Carville's Democracy Corps opinion research firm yesterday released an analysis titled "The Very Separate World Of Conservative Republicans." The report, based on focus groups of the targeted subjects in Atlanta and Cleveland, maligns the "extreme disconnect" of conservatives but refutes the notion that their animosity toward Obama is driven by race.

Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters' beliefs -- but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson's incendiary comments at the president's joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion -- but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.

The report elaborated in a separate section on race that includes quotes from focus group participants. They are well aware of how the racist myth is being perpetuated. "You would be called a racist" for criticizing Obama, one person said. "You would not like him because he is black. That is what the media [are] saying."

Even though Carville's firm gave the president's critics "full opportunity" for racist rants, none took the bait because, well, they aren't racist. "Race was barely raised, certainly not what was bothering them about President Obama," the report said. "In fact, some of these voters talked about feeling some pride at his election."

It would be great if "the press and elites" that Carville lectured in the report learned something from his analytical epiphany and abandoned the all-Obama-critics-are-racist spin from their coverage. But that's probably expecting too much.

Bloggers Are Journalists, Too

2009-10-17T17:40:29+00:00

Robert Giles, the editor of the Online Journalism Review, has come down on the side of bloggers as journalists, at least to the extent that bloggers can be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Giles blasted the FTC for imposing new rules on bloggers that he said violate the First Amendment:

I do not believe that the purpose of the First Amendment was to provide legal protection to specific class of corporations, namely, newspaper companies. The intent was, and should continue to be, to empower the people of the country, collectively and as individuals, to keep a watchful eye on their government and communities, and to speak in advocacy of their beliefs.

The Internet fulfills the Founders' promise of a free press to the people. No longer is "freedom of the press" limited to an elite few. ... People who have devoted their careers to reporting and publishing news should welcome this functional expansion of the First Amendment, providing us millions of new potential allies, engaged in our communities. A handful of clueless bureaucrats in the FTC should not be empowered to stand in their way.

Giles also chastised The New York Times for editorializing in favor of the FTC's rules against paid product endorsements by bloggers. He noted that the newspaper does not disclose to readers that its movie and book critics review products for free rather than buying the products. Under the FTC rules, if a blogger wrote a favorable review, he or she could be subject to a steep fine for not disclosing the freebie.

"Freedom of the press belongs to all Americans, and not just to the newspaper industry -- despite what the FTC and The New York Times would have you believe," Giles wrote.