Media Scandals

"Hardball" host Chris Matthews lurched even further off the deep end on Wednesday’s "Imus in the Morning." After praising the “great job” Rudy Giuliani did in cleaning up New York City — which Matthews again suggested was done with just “a pinch” of "fascism" — the MSNBC star went on a rant declaring how he’s “sick of southern guys with ranches running this country.”Losing control, Matthews…

Bryan Preston at Hot Air, who recently returned from a trip to Iraq with Michelle Malkin, caught the misleading headline (still there) in a story by newly-promoted AP Baghdad news editor Kim Gamel: The headline conveys the obvious impression that our troops are fighting Iraqi soldiers and not terrorists/"insurgents." Based on the story that follows, the headline is obviously false. Bryan…

I'd never quite appreciated how amusing the Leftist swarm could be until last night and this morning, where an Associated Press report that Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf had finally, at long last confirmed the existence of Captain Jamil Hussein hit the wires, and liberals around the country (and around the world) conflated Hussein's ability to exist with the veracity…

On December 5 of last year, I wrote a blog post entitled 60 Billion Minutes, where I wrote:We also know that Jamil Hussein has consistently been a source for at least 60 news stories over two years, and that Jamil Hussein is just one of many apparently fake sources that has driven Associated Press reporting in Iraq. This presents us with the unsettling possibility that the Associated Press has no…

The last paragraph of their Wednesday editorial (my bold) makes the point that the wire service, its defenders, and those who want to see the whole to-do as being about "just one incident," won't see, or won't admit to seeing:What is clear about all this is that nothing is clear. Maybe there's a Jamil Hussein with the Iraqi police, but he's a sergeant, not a captain. Maybe there's a police…

Curt at Flopping Aces notes that the Associated Press has quietly changed the copy of their November 28 response to questions about the "burning six" story. And the Google cached version apparently has been changed, as well. The AP angrily rejected criticism of its story about six Sunni men being dragged from prayer and burned alive after CENTCOM, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and bloggers…

Why isn't Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who first broke the "fauxtography" scandal out of Lebanon, among Time's "digital democracy" change agents?After looking at the weak collection of candidates available to vote for as Time's Person of the Year last week (based on what they did in 2006, which wasn't much), I wrote:Perhaps YouTube, online forums, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and online…

Regret the Error, a blog about media corrections has released its annual list of funniest mistakes, apologies, frauds, hoaxes, and embarrassments perpetrated by and on the self-styled arbiters of the truth. Some of my favorites: Reuters, the news agency that brought you the fraudulent photography of Adnan Hajj, also makes real mistakes. In an Oct. 25 story about bees, it mistakenly said that…

In a column published last night, Eric Boehlert does an excellent job of showing why David Brock's Media Matters should be regarded as the alimentary canal of punditry; on one end it's good at regurgitation, and on the other, the finalized product is consistently something better flushed. In Michelle Malkin fiddles while Baghdad burns, Boehlert dishonestly addresses the continuing Associated…