Well, this is something of a bombshell. Obviously it suggests the intellectual dishonesty Greg Mitchell engaged in as a “19-year-old intern” (or staff reporter or whatever) is still very much apart of his journalistic persona.

What’s especially ironic is that E&P presents itself as being the conscious and “watchdog” of the journalistic trade or “profession.” Yet here’s an apparent example of E&P going into archival materials and making changes – without notifying readers. If true, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays out.

Incidentally, when E&P was covering the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, I noticed an online discussion (I don’t remember where) between journalists about how the wording in E&P’s hard-hitting stories criticizing the media’s coverage had mysteriously changed during the day. And these changes, to be sure, apparently went beyond typos, misspellings, and that sort of thing. E&P allegedly tweaked substantive parts of its articles -- just like it’s apparently done with archival material -- rather than notifying readers of clarifications or corrections.

To be sure, I don’t know if my anecdote involving E&P’s mine coverage is accurate. But it certainly is consistent with what’s being described in respect to the mysterious changes in Mitchell’s retrospective piece.

Finally, as I noted in an earlier comment, even if Mitchell was only an intern, it’s highly probable he had enough journalism experience and training to know that what he was doing was wrong.

There’s a final irony here. Like many senior editors in the MSM, Mitchell came of age during the Watergate and Vietnam War eras. That’s when the word “cover-up,” among other things, became part of the journalistic lexicon. And those engaging in cover-ups of any kind -- according to the journalistic culture that sprang from that era -- were given no quarter. Now that E&P is engaging in an apparent cover-up, let’s see how much slack Mitchell’s MSM pals give him.

It takes forever to load, but as of the time of this post, the original version of Mitchell's article is still in The Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Someone substantially altered the text of the mediainfo.com story, after six different bloggers cited the article. If you type in the URL of http://www.mediainfo.com/ and press "enter" so that you could investigate who mediainfo.com belongs to, wondering how they could change such an old story so quickly, the URL will resolve to adweek.com.

It is readily apparent that someone at Editor and Publisher has been manipulating the news a lot more recently than 1967, and if I was a corporate officer at VNU Business Media, I think I'd start my Monday morning by asking who has access rights to post and repost stories, and I'd make a thorough investigation of the server logs to see who uploaded the changes to that article Friday afternoon, sometime between 2:30 PM and 5:01 PM. I’d ask, because that someone is torpedoing my company’s credibility.

When they talk to "that person," I hope they remind him that 1967 is long past, but character flaws are forever."

Posted by Confederate Yankee at August 26, 2006 01:19 AM | TrackBack

So you have no proof of this "change", correct? And we're supposed to just trust that you wingers aren't covering for each other?

Here's an alternate theory: one blogger (perhaps "Jon Ham") altered the text for partisan reasons, and sent it out, and you guys ran with it. When I pointed out the discrepancy, you went into CYA mode. Since I caught the change, and not you, I could just as easily ascribe this "change" to you, as you did to someone at E&P as you have no proof. The alternative is to take you guys at your word, without proof. This stinks like a "family" cover-up, and I don't mean Greg Sargent and E&P.

Why would he include the info, after leaving it out? What purpose would it serve?

But you, your motives are crystal, buddy.

Barfly,

The original is still archived and online.

Mayhap it's time for Greg Mitchell to be exiled to the Island of Misfit Journalists along with Mary Mapes, Dan Rather, Jayson Blair, and a good chunk of Reuters' photo stringers.

There's a certain principle in law enforcement that says for evey time someone is caught doing something wrong, there were probably ten times they were not caught. Character matters quite a lot in a business based so much on trust.

Barfly,

My hacking skills aren't what you imagine. I would have no idea how to get into E&P's server to change wording in a column.

I remembered that column from four years ago because it enraged me so at the time. I wrote a letter contemporaneously to Romenesko's blog about it, but no one seemed to think this was a big deal. But that's because at the time I worked for the MSM and when writing to Romenesko I was talking to the MSM, and E&P circulated only to the MSM. Talk about a closed circuit!

As for the word changes, I don't see the point. Mitchell made clear in the original (fifth graf) that he was a 19-year-old intern and I referenced that in my letter. Putting it in the lede ex post facto doesn't change much.

Anyway, this whole episode has been an instructive lesson in how the new media has changed everything.

Mike Wallace can learn a thing or two from Greg Mitchell.

"And we're supposed to just trust that you wingers aren't covering for each other?"

Barfly: it looks like you owe them an apology. Will one be forthcoming? I doubt it.

With the original article clearly stored in the Internet Archives, "Barfly" and Mr. Mitchell will have to back up from the "smear campaign" claims and try something else. Attacking the bloggers as Wing Nuts is no doubt one plan, which they've already started. Hard to see that that will work when anyone with a spare minute can confirm this for themselves. E&P can only pray that a bigger story will surface that will distract their critics.

But bigger than the challenge to E&P will be the challenge for the New York Times. Mr. Mitchell has been a "long time contributor" for the paper of record. I wonder what similar "skills" he's applied there? Anyone care to look?

Good work.

It's not the crime, it's the coverup. Except in this case it's the crime too.

Coverup ?

Who does he think you are? The Edgartown police investigating an automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island?

That wasn't much of an apology, Barfly.

Barfly:

Come on, don't apologize, dig deeper! Obviously, those right-wing ideologues at the WaybackMachine are in on the act. Google's cache--and everybody else who will have looked at the prior-to-change version is part of the conspiracy, too! Call Oliver Stone!

What's new? Making up stories is part of lazy journalism practiced since Guttenburg. Its now getting more notice because of the blogging community which has become like a uncontrollable thruth serum. Of course, 3 martini journalists don't like it - why should they.

Laddy, if you look closely, 'Barfy' is not 'Barfly'. They even indicate different email addresses.

I think the best we can hope for is that 'Barfly' will STFU, having no sane response that can be fit into the Derangement Syndrome worldview.

Hmmn, he was there in 1967 reporting about the Falls being turned off? I thought the Corp of Engineers did that in 1969 not 1967.

That doesn't sound like an apology to John Ham to me, Barfly.

This little fracas is getting to be par for the course with Editor and Publisher. The magazine is as much about left-wing editorializing and activism as it is about media criticism.

See here:
http://blogs.rocky

mountainnews.com/denver/temple/archives/2006/08/why_editor_publ.html

And here:
http://www.inopinion.com/features/?itemid=951

And here:
http://www.inopinion.com/features/index.php?itemid=805

I've always wondered how the barking moonbats could support the conspiracy theories they come up with. Now ... evidence that at least one of them is a drunk and has pickled his brain.

It begins to come together.

1967... 1969... what's the difference?

Uncle looks to be correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagra_Falls

Barfly,

In your original comment, you thought that C.Y. had misquoted the E&P article by Mitchell, right?

Then in this thread, you wrote (8/26/06 3:16am) that a right-wing blogger might have altered the text of Mitchell's E&P article to create this kerfluffle. You mean that Jon Ham or somebody hacked E&P's site and made the text alterations illicitly and without Mitchell's or E&P's knowledge, right?

Jon Ham noted the obvious (8:04am), that it's a bit of a stretch to hang the subtle changes in the article on uberhacking feats by bloggers unaffiliated with E&P.

Then you recently commented (9:17am)

It's not the crime, it's the coverup. Except in this case it's the crime too.

I'm confused. What do you now see as the crime, and what do you think the coverup is?

Wow, I’ve heard of rewriting history, but that is a literal rewrite.

I would think that in the long run, the MSM would be grateful to bloggers, for helping them with their fact checking. It’s not like bloggers want to destroy all news agencies, but rather for them to tighten up the screws. When you’re caught, you have to repent and move on. You don’t get to counter accuse. I guess that’s the new definition of good journalism.

Okay, am i the only person who doesn't really care. Okay, so he added that he was 19 and an intern. He added a little mitigating info. so what? At worst, he should have noted the minor change, but so long as it is true, i don't see how its a big ethical lapse to add it in.

The real headline is he has done this himself.

Except, A.W., it looks like he was lying about being 19 if the falls were actually turned off in 1969 as Wikipedia indicates.

What we appear to have hear is an interesting story...

off coarse, Eye mint "here". Stupdi tiepos.

The Falls were shut off in 1969, not 1967. Was this just a typo at E&P or another clumsy lie? When was Greg Mitchell born? Was he a 19 year old intern in 1969, when he fabricated the Falls story?

The Monster wrote (9:52am):

if you look closely, 'Barfy' is not 'Barfly'. They even indicate different email addresses.

Sorry, Barfly, my bad at 10:19am--missed that.

I still hope you do share your current thinking on how the changes at E&P came to pass.

A classic case of digging deeper, and an extraordinary irony. Mitchell presented the tale as a learning experience: he was only 19, an intern. As he wrote it, he must have thought how safely distant that lapse was, his position at the helm of E&P proof of how far he'd come. Who could doubt he had learned right from wrong? Changing the article, assuming Mitchell did it, suggests he would have profitted from a few more lessons in ethics, particularly given parallels with the recent photo scandals.

That old E&P article is a historical artifact, a piece of evidence, that an honest journalist would have to deal with as is. However, as in the case of the corrupt photojournalists, the evidence (text/image) that's available didn't tell quite the right story, so it had to be altered.

The change is modest, as Jon Ham points out above. It does not change the facts of the story, only the effect of the story on the reader. But it does change the fact of the story itself, and it does reveal a distrust of the reader great enough to rationalize dishonesty.

How common is this attitude among journalists? How often do well-meaning journalists rationalize dishonesty in the name of "truth"? Truth of this sort is unmoored from facts and essentially a literary effect.

What do you now see as the crime

I've submitted this case to the Kos jury for deliberation.

The charge: Criticism of an apparent leftwing moonbat who admits to "making shit up" as a journalist.

The defense: incoherant rambling and nonsense.

Verdict: Innocent by reason of being a fellow traveler ;->

Barfy > Barfly

Well... Wikipedia seems pretty certain that it was June, 1969 that the falls were turned off to work on the rock faces, not 1967.

So the question is, was Mitchell 21, not 19, when he fabricated those quotes? Anybody got access to Mitchell's DOB?

that was supposed to be a mathematical 'not equal' sign.

They should have put a note saying the article had been updated. So that's a little sneaky.

However--the issue itself is a non-issue. Yeah, he made a minor mistake 40 years ago!~ And he is admitting it in the article because it's relevant.

And yet the "character" death squads get called out. Absurd. How is dialogue to exist with such over-the-top over-reaction--please. Without sin, throw the first stone and all that. Come on. Cripes.

Btw, how old was Domenech when he plagiarized?

And what happened to him?

Lee.

A mistake is when you grab the wrong coffee cup. "Mistake" has no component of will in it. Mitchell didn't make a mistake. He lied on purpose. And he did it for a reason, to make it easy on himself.

Umm, lee -

rewriting the article three years after the fact is not a good journalistic practice.

Adding an 'Update' would be okay.

Updated: This article has generated some recent interest, I'd like to make it more clear that the example I give is from when I was 19 years old, working as an intern. Greg Mitchell

------------------

Original text.

------------------

Lee Kane,

For a business engaged in reporting facts, a "little sneaky" is like "a little bit pregnant".

Looks like Mitchell was indeed 21 at the time, based on a 2003 article listing his age as 55.

http://suitablyflip.blogs.com/suitably_flip/2006/08/recovering_fabu.html

Will Editor & Publisher finally change their name to Fabricator & Airbrusher? The MSM deserves a worthies cataloger of its demise than this.

No updated response from Barfly yet....

If this were a 1337 h4x0r website, they'd have a word for what happened to Barfly...

PWNED!!11!!

Hey Spacemonkey, I kind of like Barfy.

Just a thought: Have you checked barfly's IP address?

-- Erik

This is just another example of the fifth column in America exposing itself.

A.W.,

I guess it's just you.

The post-publication edits are not, as you pointed out, noted. The piece is simply edited as if it were written that way in 2003. Was the piece edited as recently as August 2006? If so, why?

You seem to believe the details are simply mitigating, but Barfly brings forward the accusation that it was Jon Ham who edited the piece to make Greg Mitchell look back. I would present to you that it was someone working on behalf of Greg Mitchel to make Jon Ham look unethical in the face of Ham's disgust at what Mitchell calls trivial and common fabrication.

Think about it.

I must immediately retract my accusation. Looking at the edit history at the Wayback Machine it seems as if the story was edited between November 5, 2003 and January 17, 2004. So it does indeed look as if the details are mitigating even if they are not accurate.

Faking the news is nothing new.

In one of his memoirs, Henry Louis Mencken relates that as a cub reporter covering the waterfront for the Sunpapers in Baltimore, he and the other cub reporters for the other 5 dailies in the city decided the weather was too nasty to work, and so they spent the day in a tavern, eating & drinking. To cover themselves, they made up a story which they all turned in to their editors.

The next day, Mencken's editor confronted him: Nice work, he said, this time at least you spelled the names right.

Now if any researcher happened upon that story in the archives of the Sunpapers, and confirmed that all of the daily newspapers in the city had the identical story, he would be certain that the events recounted actually occurred.

But it was all made up.

Making up the news is an old story.

Getting caught by the blogosphere is what's new.

Barfly has cut 'n run.

AW of Freespeech's comment is not unfair, and it would be tempting to go with it. If they had been true (see, conservatives understand stuff like the subjunctive too, y'know) the additions, though clearly intended to offer youth and inexperience as excuses, would have been fairly minor.

But they're not just nothing. They actually illuminate his original comments interestingly, suggesting a person of low social courage who has an inordinate fear of looking foolish. Which ties in pretty strongly with the criticism of MSM figures as "all on the same page," "living in a bubble," "drawn from the same political class," etc.

So by giving us less information, then having to backtrack and grudgingly give more to cover their asses, they end up by revealing more about themselves than they ever intended.

BTW, here's confirmation of the 1969 date from a non-Wikipedia source. (courtesy LGF)

And here's the edit history according to the archive: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030

You have to click on each edit to determine when the excuses, er I mean details, were added.

CY, where did you find the May-November 2003 version of the story or is it your assertion that the story on mediainfo.com to which you linked was the source for your blockquote?

Can you clarify?

The version on the WayBack machine does explicitly state that Mitchell was a 19-year-old summer intern:

Still, I felt bad about it for years and (obviously) have never forgotten it. On the other hand, I was, at the time, just 19, it was a summer internship, and I'd only been on the job about a month.

One of the many alarming things about the Jayson Blair scandal is that he never grew up, and no one at The New York Times ever seemed to notice. My ethical breach at 19 in Niagara Falls was bad enough. One expects a bit more from a 27-year-old with years of experience in New York.

Checking the Wayback Machine more closely, not only was the article substantively editted, but the audit trail for changes was faked, as well.

The article was in 2003. There are 3 change entries listed in 2003, and their web address gives a matching datestamp. For example, the change listed as "Nov 05, 2003" has a "20031105072113" embedded in the archive URL. The 2003 updates do not have the bit about being a 19 year old intern.

There are 2 changes listed in 2004. They both have the 19 year old intern bit. However, the url shows the updates occuring in 2006. For example, the change linked on Wayback as "Jan 17, 2004" has embedded "20060826173129". Assuming those are Greenwich timestamps (5 hours ahead of the US east coast), it means the update was added earlier today.

Here's the Wayback change history url for the article in question
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030

It shows 5 changes, purporting that 3 were in 2003 and 2 in 2004. Each change link goes to a url of the form http://web.archive.org/web/ TIMESTAMP ARTICLESPECIFIC

The 3 2003 changes have url parts that agree with the date. None of these have the 19 year old intern bit. The 2 changes purporting to be from 2004 have timestamps in with 20060826 in them. The 2 changes are seconds apart and both have the 19 year old intern claim.

It wouldn't shock me if the change history gets altered again. For posterity, the current link for the first version with the 19 year old intern claim purports to be "Jan 19, 2004" but the link goes to the url "http://web.archive.org/web/20060826175353/http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030"

Lewis, I cannot confirm your claims. The URLs I get are now:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040117221659/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20041128205109/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030

As you can see, there is no 2006 timestamp there.

I see. When I click on the links to the 2004 versions it resolves to a URL that is formatted as Lewis claims.

When I click on the links to the 2003 versions they resolve to URLs that are formatted as though the date stamp is 2003.

Maybe this time stamp does not indicate what you think it is? I don't know. Curiouser and curiouser.

E&P used to be nothing but a classified ad vehicle for journalism jobs. Nobody ever paid attention to its editorial content before Mitchell came on board.

He made it a vehicle for a sort of preserved-in-amber 1960s ethos, dressed in 21st century clothes.

Strangest thing about this story: Why would a 19-year-old whose internship revealed to him that he could not approach strangers then continue on as a newspaperman?

I was a 19-year-old intern a few years earlier than Mitchell, and if I'd found I was that shy about approaching strangers, I would have found another career.

We're forgetting what is most important in all of this:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Not to mention Ted Turner's Ministry of Truth self-censorship of decades of cartoons to eliminate what is not politically correct today (i.e. smoking in Tom and Jerry)

Lindsay, the article has also been edited without notation. Do you agree?

I'm guessing that Greg has heard the story of the annual competition at the Prevaricator's Club. The reigning champ tells a tale of having been the only person ever to go UP Niagra Falls in a barrel. The challeneger, in a winning bid, simply says: "I know you did. I saw you do it."

E&P: You lie, we swear to it.

The original at TWM does have the references to him being a 19 year old intern in the fifth and sixth paragraphs -- just not the first one. And the asterisks on the Way Back Machine search page don't necessarily indicate changes in the text. Updating the page could be something like a change in formatting (which does occur here). But today's date in the URL of an update that was supposedly made back in 2004 is disturbing. That's pretty good evidence of a deliberate attempt to mislead people -- why, I can't imagine, since moving information already found later in the article up to the lede doesn't accomplish much. And pretty stupid not to have forged the change all the way back to the beginning. Unless he couldn't.

The date in the Wayback URL is the date of the last crawl. So unfortunately, Wayback did not actually crawl or archive any versions of the story in 2004. We cannot know for a fact what those stories looked like in 2004 according to wayback.

How did I end up on the live version of a site? or I clicked on X date, but now I am on Y date, how is that possible?

Yes, the E&P article was edited without notation. Looks fishy to me, and utterly pointless. Why bother covertly rewriting a lede when the relevant information was already in the article?

Exactly the right question, Lindsay. I think the answer lies in disrespect for your (or his, as it were) readers and your profession. He's just so much more clever than the rest of us.

I believe CY took his blockquote from the link that I sent him yesterday. That version on the MediaInfo site did NOT have the 19-year-old intern info in the lede as of yesterday. It was as I remembered it from May 2003 when I posted my letter on the Poynter site. I don't think there's any question that it got changed yesterday afternoon or late last night.

w3, upon further checking, I see the links purporting to be for changes in 2004 behave differently. The 2003 links give a timestamp in 2003 in the url. The links purporting to be in 2004 give an embedded timestamp that appears to be the Greenwich time of when the link was clicked. So, if you click the link twice, 2 minutes apart, you'll get different links, with timestamps 2 minutes apart and representative of the Greenwich time of when you click the links.

Note that the old links persist, at least for a few hours. The first link, which I noted in my post above, still works. I find it hard to believe they save directories for every time someone clicks a link for years.

I've checked other urls with changes in 2004. All of them give timestamps in the url which agree with the purported change date on the Wayback page. I've tried this for pages with multiple stories (e.g. instapundit.com) and single articles in other publications with 2004 changes.

So, Confederate Yankee quoted what he thought to be the story. The story was changed, with an audit log that claimed the change which added the 19 year old intern claim were in 2004. However, Wayback recovery of "intern" links doesn't use Wayback's mechanism for retrieving archives. Wayback uses a uniform mechanism for the 2003 archives and the archives in 2004 for every other article or page I've checked. It's just the change for this article adding the "intern" claim, purported to be in 2004, that doesn't act like an archive. When Confederate Yankee first linked the story, he didn't go searching for an old copy. I don't think he got an old copy. I think the version without the "intern" claim was the version of record as recently as yesterday.

It's odd someone would make 2 changes, separated by months in 2004, that got the date of Niagara closing wrong by 2 years. Especially if the biographical info linked earlier in the comments is correct, i.e. that Mitchell was 19 in 1967 when he interned but was 21 when he actually faked the story.

We know Mitchell faked the original Niagara story because he admitted it. We know the update on his article about his fakery is factually incorrect (since Niagara wasn't shut down in 1967 but in 1969). We have an old interview that puts Mitchell's age at 19 in 1967 and 21 in 1969, when he actually faked the article. We have an audit trail for the addition of the "19 year old intern" claim that does not behave like other articles on Wayback or even like the earlier change logs for that article.

This looks like deliberate fakery, not when Mitchell was 19 or 21 or even a factually incorrect mea culpa added in 2004. It looks like a fake planted this month. I'd appreciated it if those more familiar with Wayback can doublecheck me. Perhaps there is a special nonarchive archive that behaves in this manner for a special class of articles and only in a special date range. At this point, that's not the way to bet.

Well -- E&P has rewritten things before. In 2005 (I think ..looking for the email) they had an article in which President Bush "refused" to leave the school class he was at after being informed of the attacks. I wrote questioning the use of the word "refused." (I told them that English was only my first language, so maybe I could be wrong as to its meaning.) Interestingly they re-wrote that sentence in the online article.

I want to know how come they are the journalism-editor gurus when they don't know how to use language accurately? Anyway -- they have done rewrites of posted articles with no mea culpas. The question is why is it so important to rewrite this one when, as some others have pointed out, the age and intern info was already in there. I suppose one could say that young shy (??) journalists are allowed to make stuff up.

"Everybody" does. :-(

I agree with you, Lewis. The only point I want to make clear is that when Wayback lacks an actual copy of a page they indicate has changed on a particular date, it will redirect to either the lastest copy they have or a live version of the page. It seems as though the 2004 versions were not archived by Wayback but marked as changed in some way. The links to the 2004 pages seem to redirect to what is there now.

I don't think Wayback ever archived the pages from 2004, only 2003.

w3 writes "I don't think Wayback ever archived the pages from 2004, only 2003."

I'd state it more strongly. Wayback was given an indication that updates were made in 2004, but it isn't true. The updates were made this month, after Confederate Yankee posted the article of record. Confederate Yankee posted and linked to the article of record August 25, 2006. At that time (yesterday), it did not contain the "19 year old intern" claim. The 2004 change dates are fakes. The reason Wayback performs differently here than on other articles is because there has been an incomplete attempt to corrupt the audit trail. I strongly suspect the attempt to corrupt the audit trail happened this month and was deliberate.

I don't know enough about how Wayback works to say how they did it. It's probably something simple like setting a change date of record field that, if left blank, picks up when a web crawl notices the change. If such a thing is event driven (eg an RSS feed of changes) an automatic method will record it changing on the day the change was posted, unless specified otherwise.

Good catch, Confederate Yankee! You've got another scalp. :)

No surprise that people who defend Hizballah propaganda manipulating the news out of Lebanon would turn out to be filthy liars themselves. Cleaning up the reporting out of Lebanon should never have been a partisan issue to begin with, but for whatever reason the Left has made it one.....

Apparently to Mitchell and people like him truth and honor are flexible. Mistakes made as a youth just minor mistakes...inconsequntial. And the idea seems to carry on. Why bother with a few cheats and liars in the press?

When I was 19 I was carrying an M-16 and at 21 commanding an infantry platoon. Honor and truthfulness were not inconsequential; they had real consequences and cheats and liars could not be tolerated.

In today's world the media has a huge impact on public opinion, and in a democracy that translates to what our leaders do. Cheats and liars cannot be tolerated; the stakes are just too high. Yet Mitchell can't even see this and the reason is quite clear. Personal moral failure.

Have you checked barfly's IP address?

I'll bet one of Ace's juiceboxs it is somewhere in Brazil ;->

Barfly musta' passed out in his/her beer!

OK so you're insane, right?

Wait! I got it!

That date - 1967 - was seared...seared in his memory!

Just think - if it indeed happened in 1969 (verified by at least two independent sources, judging by the above comments), then he must have been 21 - much, much closer in age to when he got his first "real" job in journalism.

I put up the definitive proof of the timestamp issue just now at LGF, simply because I'm more familiar with what I can get away with, formatting-wise.

Bottom line is that the two '2004' edits were crawled in REVERSE ORDER of how they purport to having been made.

JAL, E&P and its staff are not gurus of publishing. It was a job-hunting service -- a money-making one for a long time, although the Internet has pretty much eclipsed it now. My boss dropped his subscription at least 8 years ago.

Mitchell got to be editor of a moribund publication and started punching out Tom Haydenish editorials. Except for Jim Romenesko, who will link to anything, nobody in newspapering pays any attention.

In that sense, this is a tropical low -- not even a tempest -- in a very small teapot.

I have enjoyed the dismantling of Mitchell not because he is an important spokesman for my profession. He is not even an unimportant spokesman for my profession. He is a nobody. I have enjoyed it because I think his editorials are a disgrace (and I've told him so) and I enjoy watching incompetents get theirs.

This is such a non-story, is this a joke? Are there not real stories out there, talk about trying to invent a contreversy. I have seen LGF and Michelle Malkin change content without indications before.

Garth Farkley:

Remember, it isn't cut and run, it "redeployed over the horizon."

"And we're supposed to just trust that you wingers aren't covering for each other?"
-- Barfly

Lord Rove hacked the passwords to the Google cache.

From June 12, 1969 to November 25, 1969 he only found a weekend to visit the dry falls? Couldn’t find any friends who had been there and talk to them? By July it was a major attraction…

Just lazy, I guess.

I mean, really, 19 or 21 he could have interviewed a few of his buddies at a bar and seen if they had seen the falls. That is *also* tourism. And what is even worse is that with just a bit of background he could have made a puff piece into something a bit less puffy. But that would require *dedication* to being a journalist, adhering to journalistic ethics and going after *more* than the story.

The Perlmutter piece by E&P was bad. And I wrote to them on that before this debacle here. Excuse me if I do not think much of them and *their* dedication to the public.

RealityCheck: "I have seen LGF and Michelle Malkin change content without indications before."

When? What content? Both sites use updates prodigiously. Please advise.

things must be pretty desperate in wingnutland when this is all you guys have to talk about. "ooh, mitchell was 21, not 19, when he faked a quote -- yet another liberal media conspiracy revealed."

get a grip, people. your president (he's definitely not mine) has sent this country swirling down the toilet. two-thirds of America agrees with me. and all you can do use flimsy prextexts to attack his critics. it's sad and pathetic.

Someone calling themselves "RealityCheck" giving assertions as proof. Our schools really do not teach the appreciation of irony enough.

Funny, but when I see non-stories I don't even bother to waste my time to comment. If there's nothing to see, just move along.

I think what you have to give Mitchell credit for is the fact that somehow in 1967 he knew the falls were going to be shut down in 1969. Either that or he completely fabricated a story in 1967....LOL. BTW - I am being facetious.

dt - great name - stand for delerium tremons? Are you Barfly in disguise? At any rate - Bush's ratings have been back over 40% for some time now so your two-thirds comment is off track. Care to revise? It seems to me that you and yours spend an awful lot of time piping the same tune about a President that can't run again....LOL. What a waste of time on your part. Got anything else?

Maybe I am not understanding all of this correctly-
Is it the contention of Mr. Mitchell, E&P, Barfly, el al, that aside from the cover-up issue (not really an issue, is it?) that Mr. Mitchell can be forgiven the fact that he manufactured a story out of the ether because he was a 19 year old intern?
I worked for a local paper starting as a senior in high school and the first and most important lesson that was CONSTANTLY hammered into me was being accurate and honest in my reporting. I was told that without the ability to report accurately and with some honest attempt at impartiality, there would be no support from the public, and rightly so.
It doesn't matter if Mr. Mitchell was 19, 39, or 49, the fact that he admitted falsifing a story IS the news. (Yet another cardinal sin-becoming the news rather than reporting it)
In the absense of any genuine remorse and apology, I cannot help but believe that the general public would have little reason to trust anything that Mr. Mitchell, and by association, the organization that publishes him, prints.

[When they talk to "that person," I hope they remind him that 1967 is long past, but character flaws are forever.]

Kind of like a president being a cocaine user and alcoholic in the '70's.
Just saying.

Oh Timmy,

But it is YOU folks who constantly tell us that being addicted to such substances is a DISEASE, not a character flaw.

ADMITTING to having such habits, and successfully kicking them demonstrates great character. And, Timmy, please note that announcing that you've kicked your habit as you step into your limo at Betty Ford is not equivalent to having actually done so.

So, Timmy, you are a typical lib driven only by your NEED to bash Bush. You utterly fail to see that using this particular line of "reasoning" hoists you on your own patoot:

Bush drank, and Mitchell lied way back when.

Mitchell is still lying. Badly.