Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Tempest in a Beanpot Goes National

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Loads of commentary on dKos and elsewhere (including video). Over 100 comments on the Atrios thread, many off-topic (funniest one on-topic: “Shortest version of the Greater Boston show: ‘Can we talk about something else, please?!'”) Some choice comments from the Kos thread:

First up, one of the funniest: Cream City writes

Just tryin’ to figure out the reaction here, with  several diaries on this, hundreds and hundreds of posts.  Or maybe DailyKos is heavily populated by Beantowners who actually see the show, never miss it, can elucidate for us why this show is so significant that it’s the biggest news in Boston since the last Kennedy had to go to confession for yet some other tawdry scandal?  Or is that this is such a big issue, to Bostonians, anyway, because no Kennedy has had a tawdry scandal lately?

In the larger scheme of life — war, death, disease, disaster, Congress — I must have missed one of the many diaries that explained the national significance of this show that I’ve never seen . . . am I in the only PBS market in the country that doesn’t see it?  (And if so, from what I’ve seen here, I guess we can be grateful that our schedule has no room for it, with the Lawrence Welk specials.)

Second, one of the most pointed. Blue in Colorado asks:

Can  Ms Rooney name one pundit or reporter–other than the debatable example of Judy Miller–who has been held accountable in any way for their laxity, laziness and timidity in the run up to the Iraq War? Has one pundit apologized? Has Richard Cohen been forced to explain what he meant by “therapeutic violence”? (I just can’t get past that phrase and all the hideous things it means). Has David Broder acknowledged that all the Heroic Moderates in his three or four column series on the Heroic Moderates who are going to save the country (McCain, Graham, Lieberman, Salazar, Shays) voted to abolish habeas corpus and authorize torture?  All rhetorical questions, but Ms Rooney has put herself in a position to offer an answer.

Third, the most academic. Tod Westlate offers:

Horatian satire is usually comic and tends to be light and absurd; Juvenalian satire (the type in which Chris engaged) tends to be harsh and acerbic. You’d think a bunch of journalists with college educations — at least one a professor — would know the difference.

Finally, a particularly devastating one. inclusiveheart offers:

Personally, if I was going to go on TV and make any claims and I was a journalist, I’d be fact checking everything including the New York Times.

And believe me there is plenty, plenty more, including a fair amount of back and forth about our very own frequent contributor Professor Kennedy.

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Comments

  1. I should say that I think kos’s nasty promotion comment regarding Carroll is a little over-the-top at this point. Carroll apologized profusely; he may not have said everything one would want him to, but it was plenty for me.

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    I do think that Rooney still doesn’t get it: As if “it wasn’t funny” was relevant one way or another. And I’ve been going back-and-forth with Dan Kennedy all week, and he ain’t gonna budge, so I’m at the point of “let the reader decide” with him.

    • If they invited a real blogger on state politics in Mass, be it David or someone else, to gain that perspective on live TV, then I think they would have went far enough. Why do people who continue to make huge mistakes continue to get passes and are expected to be able to learn from those mistakes when they’re insulated from the knowledge it takes to have a broader understanding and be capable of coming up to the stances they claim some sort of expertise on. (sorry for the world’s longest run-on sentence LOL.)

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      It just reminds me of the Baker Commission: every single one of them were pro-war in the beginning (at least presumably so) and suddenly we’re expecting them to be able to ‘get it’ without some sort of outsider voice? The same thing happened on the Greater Boston show: without that outsider voice, they don’t have a chance in hell of understanding why they were so wrong – and sadly their viewers probably think they were on the right during this whole ordeal.

    • Maybe what the promotion comment was referring to with the “poster child” note is that these things can take on a life of their own. It is unfortunate, I think, that Carroll waited a whole week to respond. He could have posted his apology right away on their blog, and then said whatever he wanted when the show went to air. As it happened, outrage built and built.

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      As to Dan, I do wonder what his standard is for fact-checking the “media” pieces they choose to comment on. We’ll see what he says, if he can make it through the force-field of arrogance that emanates from my posts and chooses to share his thoughts. In the meantime, heaven knows there are plenty of other folks who have weighed in on the subject over the past few days. đŸ˜‰

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      Also, I wonder what he thought, as a blogger, of Callie Crossley’s dismissive comment that bloggers aren’t journalists. But surely Dan is a journalist! And a blogger! Frankly, the idea that how one communicates defines whether one is or is not a journalist seems totally idiotic to me.

      • … and to clarify his entire commentary, here on BMG, front-paged, and he says “The accuracy or lack thereof concerning the Times chart is your issue, not mine.”

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        I must be getting stupider, because Dan’s lines of reasoning are increasingly opaque to me. So, rather than pestering him to explain it all to me, I’m going to try to smarten up on my own.

      • Do you believe that bloggers on BMG should fact articles from the New York Times before they post or comment on them?

        • As has been said repeatedly, that is a straw man argument. Dan wins that one hands down, because no one is actually arguing against him.

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          No one is suggesting that everyone do a thorough fact-check of everything in the NYT or any other basically “respectable” publication. Speaking for BMG: No, we’re not going to do that, because as Prof. Kennedy correctly points out, it’s silly. It also happens to be irrelevant to the current case.

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          I am contending that the Times article in question contained glaring omissions of important information that should have set off alarm bells to a critical reader — and certainly should have made a journalist reporting on the story want to seek more context. Carroll did look (not hard enough?), but misunderstood what he found. Oopsie.

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          May I refer you to Cos’s comment that says it better than I’ve been doing?

          • So you don’t have to do full fact-checking if you have an especially well-attuned B.S. detector? I don’t get it.

            • And that it cuts to the credibility, as I wrote, of the venue in question. I do think that people at BMG and, indeed, anywhere have some degree of responsibility to fact-check stories they want to comment about. I think Greater Boston should have held itself to a higher standard than they did in this case, and it seems they agree — at least, Keller seems to; Kennedy maybe not. I am still very curious about what standard, exactly, if any, Dan thinks should apply to the “media” stories on which they comment.

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              As to BMG, speaking for myself I do my best to make sure that stories I comment on are themselves accurate. When I make mistakes, I try to correct them. I try to research and substantiate points that seem unclear. I suspect that to whatever degree we have credibility, it is in part because many of the commenters here research the subjects about which they write before they publish.

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              As a matter of principle, however, this is an open venue. Writers can say what they please, so long as they follow our Rules of the road. Fortunately for us we have worldwide distribution, a large audience, and immediate feedback. Thus mistakes, as I wrote before in my post on comments, are usually spotted very quickly. Since  most newspapers, TV stations and radio shows havn’t built up this kind of open commenting system, it is harder for them to catch mistakes and their corrections can be slower.

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              In short, my position is that (a) sources should be fact-checked to some degree by everyone, (b) the more fact-checking, in general, the more credible the commentary that results, (c) BMG is a public venue and welcomes a broad spectrum of material, some more credible and some less; we benefit from our thousands of readers and our commenting system, which allows many mistakes to be spotted quite quickly, and (d) the credibility of many existing news outlets could be enhanced if they opened themselves up to more feedback.

    • Bob – Thanks for letting me know I’m getting kicked around on Kos. I noticed that I was anonymously libeled as a supporter of the war in Iraq. Since Lynne stood up for me as being at least occasionally sane, I sent her four links to pieces I wrote opposing the war, three before it began, one after. Since I’m not a registered Kos person, I’m hoping she’ll post the links.

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      Gosh! Imagine reading a blog and finding completely false, damaging statements written about you. I’m really shocked. Maybe I should get all my friends to flood Kos with 1,000 or so comments this week.

      • Bloggers don’t have to fact-check.  While you’re expected to go over the New York Times and fact-check them, we can make stuff up about you in whole cloth.  By the way, if you want to write again about the War in Iraq, we’d encourage you to fly over there to see for yourself that a war is actually happening, or indeed that such a place exists.  Because if it turns out that you’re wrong about anything held to be common knowledge, it will nonetheless be your fault.

        • Maybe you can post the links here too, if you have time.

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          As to posting comments on Kos, they have a 24-hour delay on posting comments and a one-week delay on posting diaries after registration. I believe that applies to everyone. Here is their FAQ wiki. Other than that, I believe anyone can post there directly.

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          Hope the grading went well!

            • I seems that you have been doing everything else but …

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              No issues with John Carroll he said he made a mistake and did it publicly, kudos to him as not many people would have done that one the air.

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              The issue is you being a complete asshole (sorry couldn’t think of a better description) after John’s comments.  You said that you didn’t get the satire, and it was stupid.  Thanks for the critique.  What the hell does that have to do with airing a false story.  Dan it was John Carroll’s thing to resolve it, then you couldn’t just leave it alone and came up with this tickey tack bullshit…it was stupid, no it was incredibly stupid routine.  You are still doing it, address your comments instead.

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              The was an OpEd in the NY Times and what was neglected was facts in the piece:

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              …while most disclosed their campaign ties on their blogs, some – like Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits – did so only after being criticized by fellow bloggers.

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              The from this you were fine with if you think satire is stupid then it’s fine to make up a story.

            • I read it. I thought that was a pretty good accounting you gave of yourself, and a good response. I suppose reasonable people differ on the significance of your reaction to Powell’s speech.

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              Just in passing, I wonder why you wrote that I thought the Kos posting “absolutely kicks ass,” since I didn’t use that term and, indeed, didn’t characterize the thread as a whole anywhere, either positive or negative, to the best of my knowledge. I’m just needling you, since you have been pretty picky about accurate quotations the past few days. Wait, don’t waste time answering that. It doesn’t matter.

              • If you don’t want me to reply, don’t ask the question. Charley crafted an indirect quote and stuck it in my mouth. “Kicks ass” is not a quote, either direct or indirect. It is merely my description of your reaction to the Kos post, which I think can fairly be described as gleeful.

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                I see no shame in not realizing how deeply flawed Powell’s testimony was even before he did.

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                Finally, characterizing me as a supporter of the war is a pretty grotesque error, and harmful to me both personally and professionally. I was able to correct it — as, of course, “Greater Boston” corrected its error.

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                But since you seem to be full of ideas on how “GB” could have avoided making such an error in the first place, I wonder if you have any thoughts on how a group blog such as the Kos — or, for that matter, BMG — might avoid such mistakes ahead of time. I should not have had to discover the post almost by accident and correct it myself, because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

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