I've been involved with workplace and church teaching over the years, and I've come up with a pretty good guideline:

Admitting you're wrong generally doesn't decrease your trustworthiness, it increases it.

If I can be relied upon to admit when I goof (and let's face it, we all goof from time to time), then I can be relied upon to tell the truth.

Alas, certain groups haven't learned that lesson yet.

Can't they see that the Code Pink photo is a joke, high satire? I thought they were more nuanced than that.

Yes, I agree. The photo is fake but accurate.

Can't they see that the Code Pink photo is a joke, high satire? I thought they were more nuanced than that.

Absolutely, yeah. We do Photoshops like that too, and our watermarks are even less visible (usually a semi-transparent 'Teh Sadly' on the least conspicuous corner).

The problem is that people were using the Code Pink photo as if it were real, and when we showed that it wasn't, the stories just shifted. The creator claimed that he took the text verbatim from Code Pink's website (and linked to it), but when we looked at the post, it wasn't true. People were saying that they'd seen the banner with their own eyes, and then that story shifted to "My friend saw it in California," and other things like that.

David Horowitz's people are now claiming that the Iranian stoning photo is genuine, that it was taken by a friend of a friend of a woman whom Horowitz quotes, and maybe it was 'borrowed' for the movie.

I don't want to get ahead of the plot here, but my opinion at this moment is that Horowitz is going to have to think of a better one.

Credit where credit is due. It's always good to admit these mistakes and get them behind you.

Not doing so about the Rather memos hurt the left in 2004.

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 09/28/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Bohica22: Of course it was a joke, of sorts. All the Sadlynauts certainly recognized that. The point of Gavin's post was that a few GoE dum-dums tried to assert that not only was the banner real, but that they had seen it with their own eyes. That's what we Raleigh boys call "batsh*t crazy," ain't it, CY?

Neil: So you're willing to admit that the young George Bush went AWOL from the National Guard? Deal.

CY: Fair post, and very well-mannered comment over at SN (doubtless that Southern upbringing). To be sure, your comment met with some snark and distrust, but it did inspire a fairly eloquent response, re: "civil discourse," from a respected regular over there, Mikey; to wit:

Truth be told? I’m so tired of the shouting and the hatred and the us/them bullsh*t while the world goes up in flames, I welcomed the rational comment by CY. At some point we’re going to have to live together.

Here’s a question. How does it do us any good to force the gap wider, and encourage nothing but hatred and violence? If we can’t figure out how to stand for dialog, where do we get off saying war is not the answer?

Of course, there were plenty of demurrals, principally founded upon the belief that you're not to be regarded as a good-faith media watchdog. For example, this post does appear to be one of the very, very few where you even tangentially take on the vast fount disinformation that is the winger noise machine. Perhaps if you were to do more investigations of this sort--your own, and not just amplifications of the research of others--Mikey's vision of civil discourse could be realized at least a little. Hell, try listening WPTF's line-up once in awhile: Rush, LuMaye, Hannity, Levin, that's 10 hours a day of prevarication, quite the lode (or rather, load).

Great post. Very adult.

Interestingly enough, perhaps, there are liars on both sides of the political spectrum -- neither side is immune. It's better for all if we just own up to mistakes and quit blaming everyone else. Thats a societal flaw that, also, exists on both sides of the political spectrum.

Stunning. I can't even count the times I've been accused of playing the "fake, but accurate" card in defense of something done by Lefties (even when that's not what I'm doing). Now it's being used here, and it is being used with a straight face.

Second, when a Lefty media outlet gets something wrong, correcting the caption is never seen by the posters here as an appropriate response; it's painted as "rewriting history" or "hiding" the truth, and then there's the usual snark about how "those LIEberals apparently don't know about the cache." People here are always loudly calling for abject apologies and, in some instances, resignations.

Some small dribble of consistency would be appreciated.

Dolf, first, I've got a strict no profanity policy, so I hope you don't mind that I edited your text very slightly to comply.

As for whether or not I'm "good faith media watchdog," I'm not even sure how that is defined. If you're suggesting that I should do a one-for-one, liberal biases versus conservative bias, I'll have to tell you that I'm sorry: I've been through journalism school and done my time as a media consumer and critic, and have to tell you that the bias is clearly left of center. My current targeting envionment is where the bulk of the action lies, as far as hard news bias exists (there is plenty of commentary on the right, of course, but the longer I'm around, the less I tend to write about commentary from either side unless it is truely, factually awful).

The problem so many of your compatriots have is that so many of them are so far left than even things that are left of center are far to the right of them. Likewise, I don't read Free Republic or several other hard-right sites becuase they're also heavily unbalanced to the point that they can't realize where the center is, either.

All that said, I've got a decent track record of leveling criticism against what you'd probably consider the "right wing noise machine," if that is what you're talking about.

I've tagged Fox News at least twice that I can think of for fact errors (including a miscaptioned photo) or sloppy writing in the past couple of months, have absolutely ripped a U.S. General for attempting to control media access, have tossed snark at Drudge a few times that I remember, and was the one and only blogger on either side of the aisle that put the time to run down and then eventually destroy a claim of a literal "smoking gun" of Iran providing weapons to Shia militias to target American soldiers. In 2004, when other conservative sites attacked photojournalist Kevin Sites for the footage he shot of a Marine shooting a wounded insurgent at point blank range, I stood behind him... and in my very first month blogging, at that. Those are just the incidents I can recall of the top of my head.

Am I a perfectly balanced, sterile, down the middle, opinionless media critic? Heck no.

But unlike some, I'm honest enough to admit my biases.

I've been brought up indirectly in this thread as I was the one questing CY, so let me explain a bit.

What stories people cover is their perogative and I have nothing against that. Sadly, No! does not often call out liberals, CY does not often call out conservatives. In my own blog I attack mostly conservative targets.

I did not object to CY focusing on liberal mistruths. What I objected to is CY participating in Media Myth Busters, which takes on the appearance of an unbiased source that attempts to be comprehensive but is obviously nothing of the sort.

This is a blog. The Media Myth Busters site masquerades as an impartial resource.

I will give credit to CY for his post here. Calling a horse a horse is something most people simply can't do when it's inconvenient. But at the same time I would say that while CY is honest enough to admit his biases here he doesn't carry that same spirit to the MMB site.

Now, if only certain lefty media outlets and personalities (The New Republic and Dan Rather spring to mind) would admit when they are wrong, perhaps we could get some reasonable debate going in this nation.

The problem is, the reasonable lefties in this thread notwithstanding (and not all the lefties that have commented are reasonable--you know who you are, both reasonable and unreasonable), the predominant preference on the left appears to be not for a reasonable debate but for whatever dirty tricks are necessary to prevail, including outright fabrication of "stories" and "events."

Until and unless that changes, I will applaud and support (yes, financially) CY's efforts to expose their falsehoods.

"the predominant preference on the left appears to be not for a reasonable debate."

The same can be said of the right, or virtually any group. The predominant preference of *people* is not for a reasonable debate. Politics really has nothing to do with it.

I would say that your repeated use of the term "lefty" makes you one of the more unreasonable people. There are times when playing to the audience and using your particular derogatory lingo is appropriate but this probably isn't one of them. When you phrase things in that manner you are purposely dragging the discussion down into partisan name-calling.

RO, I choose words to suit my purpose. I use the term "lefty" quite deliberately to refer to a certain type of individual.

You have not inquired what sort of individual I refer to by that term, you have simply assumed that I mean a certain subset of the population which includes you.

That, neighbor, is sloppy thinking. One should be willing to inquire about terms which are not well-defined in order to facilitate reasonable discussion and debate. Of course, in terms of a debate, asking for a definition of a term also frequently helps nail one's opponent down on a specific point.

You, on the other hand, have merely assumed what I meant. I do not state that the subset of the population I refer to as "lefties" includes you; I do not state that it excludes you. I merely state that since you have not asked if it does or not, nor for a definition of the term, you prefer to assume the worst and then smear me based upon your assumption.

Thus you are, albeit with some style, attempting to do what you accuse me of, dragging the discussion down into partisan name-calling.

The fact that you grasped upon that one word--"lefty"--instead of discussing the lack of admission of error on certain elements of the left also indicates that you are not interested in reasonable debate on the merits of admitting errors, rather on, as I stated earlier, dragging the discussion down into partisan name-calling.

As I said, you do it with style, and you use your words very well. But please don't assume that your goal isn't obvious to those who, like me, use our little grey cells for their intended purpose.

The interesting part is that the Sadly, No! commenter's are using that photo to mock Christianity in a disgusting way (there's a surprise!), deny Sharia, and deny that people are actually stoned to death in Iran and other Arab/Muslim countries.

Their failure to answer your question, instead going on little mocking rants, is behavior more appropriate to 5th graders. Except perhaps 2 comments.

And it is very telling that none of them actually seem to take up the cause of freedom for people such as women in Islamic countries, eh?

You have not inquired what sort of individual I refer to by that term, you have simply assumed that I mean a certain subset of the population which includes you.

I assumed you used the word according to its commonly-understood definition and connotation.

You, on the other hand, have merely assumed what I meant. I do not state that the subset of the population I refer to as "lefties" includes you; I do not state that it excludes you.

Where exactly did I state or imply that I thought the term applied to me personally? Exact quote please. Be precise.

Thus you are, albeit with some style, attempting to do what you accuse me of, dragging the discussion down into partisan name-calling.

Except that I didn't actually do any name-calling and you quite literally did. "Lefty" is literally a partisan name for something, it is name-calling in the truest sense.

Using highly-charged, deragatory terms is a good sign that someone is not interested in good-faith discussion, something many of the wingnuts* here obviously wouldn't understand.

* = See what I did there?

If you want to accuse left-wing media sources of something go right ahead, I might even agree with you, but save the mocking lingo for discussions amongst the in-crowd. You've adopted the verbiage of someone attempting to preach to the choir.

It has nothing to do with me being offended; by word-choice you've signalled a posture of confrontation and exclusiveness. (Albeit perhaps inadvertantly)

The interesting part is that the Sadly, No! commenter's are using that photo to mock Christianity in a disgusting way (there's a surprise!), deny Sharia, and deny that people are actually stoned to death in Iran and other Arab/Muslim countries.

If you are going to make accusations that strong you should provide quotes. I certainly haven't seen anyone, let alone multiple people, claim that people aren't stoned to death in Muslim countries. (And I don't know what it means to "deny Sharia") I assume you can produce direct quotations (not your own paraphrases) as evidence of that? Someone specifically saying in the Sadly,No! comments in their own words that Muslim stonings do not occur?

And it is very telling that none of them actually seem to take up the cause of freedom for people such as women in Islamic countries, eh?

I know for a fact that some members of the Sadly,No! community, some of which posted in that thread, are also members of communities that regularly blog about the rights of women in Islamic countries and other areas of the world.

Whether or not they "seem" to take up that cause is only a measure of how much research you did before making that claim.

This is a thread about accuracy in a blog about accuracy. It's not too much to ask for accuracy and precision in the comments.

And once again you seek to deflect from the issue at hand (that of admitting errors) to what my words mean.

I hereby state, for the official record that I intended no offense; therefore, if you take offense, you do it upon your own volition and against my express wishes.

With that said, I hereby also state that any further red herrings about my choice of words will most likely not be answered, except perhaps to point out that once again, you are deflecting from the main point.

Your move.

Random, see, the great thing about Al Gore's Internet is one can click a link, and actually go look for oneself.

Amazing what we can do these days, eh?

I've got to hand it to you, CCG. The sheer size of your huevos must be enough to stun a bull if you can get high-and-mighty over somebody not liking your choice of words like this:

With that said, I hereby also state that any further red herrings about my choice of words will most likely not be answered, except perhaps to point out that once again, you are deflecting from the main point.

...When you your own self have done the same thing--this time with the bonus shrill screech (accompanied, no doubt, by angry foot-stamping) to me here:

And it's not "ISP records." That's anti-Patriot-Act talk. What CY can see are your IP address records. ISP = Internet Service Provider, like AOL. IP = Internet Protocol, which includes the numeric address every computer online gets, among lots of other things.

Don't try to use terms if you don't know what you mean.

I simply didn't have the right vocabulary needed to convey my idea, and you were squealing like a little girl who's had her dolly taken away.

Consistency, my friend! It's not simply the hobgoblin of little minds--it's the quick credibility fixer-upper!

So a photoshopped photo was used to illustrate a point, and included the words “photo illustration” right on it, with a website of the creators also included, and GoE was lying to people? This is an odd situation because, even though they took it as actual, it wasn’t stated literally as such, and was clearly tagged as Photo Illustration. The fact that some commenters from GoE asserted it's authenticity is no mark on GoE. They presented it as illustrative of a point, and it was clearly marked with "photo illustration". Isn't that enough?
They felt it was authentic at first blush because they’ve personally seen so much similar signage saying things like “support resistance in Iraq” which is actually saying “we support the murder of American Troops”.
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