Great catch by MediaMatters’ Eric Boehlert today. It seems that on Friday, the ABC news show’s segment on the emergency room at the 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad was the first time since July 18 that Nightline aired an on-the-ground report on the war.
“In the four-plus months in between,” Boehlert writes, “Nightline produced more than 230 separate news segments covering a kaleidoscope of topics, but just one was filmed in Iraq: a Green Zone-based profile of Gen. David Petraeus on the eve of his Capitol Hill testimony.” What did they run instead? Boehlert pulls some actual story slugs from the show’s archives:
* Twin Skateboarding Stars
* “Frenemies”
* Couchsurfing.com
* Pole Dancing as Exercise
* Rock & Roll Camp for Girls
* Death of the Postcard
* Barbie vs. Bratz
* Great Lobster Hunt
* Burger King’s Gamble on Marketing
* Butlers In High Demand
* Frozen Yogurt Wars
* Discrimination Against Redheads
* Expensive Parking Spaces
* PerezHilton.com
* Pasta Wars
* [Barry] Bonds’ Navy
* Babies at the Box Office
* Paddington Bear a Sellout?
* A Football Fan Makes Wine the New Beer
Pathetic, especially given that we just praised Nightline for a great report from Afghanistan. Apparently, the show’s producers and reporters feel that one or two stories from the war zone is enough every couple months.
Well almost as much time has passed since this "journalism review" has mentioned the affair de Beauchamp. Given that TNR has put out a rather lengthy full retraction of all of his "stories", its interesting that you would harp on Dateline (infotainment) yet fail to actually point a finger at TNR who ran stories where the guys wife was the primary fact checker for his stories.
I guess we will have to leave the real journalism review to us amateurs. God knows the professionals leave a lot to be desired.
Posted by The Great Satan
on Sun 2 Dec 2007 at 01:50 AM
Good point!
Where is CJR's castigation of TNR?
HUH?
Posted by padikiller
on Sun 2 Dec 2007 at 11:03 AM
Or for that matter, the National Review and Thomas Smith's fabrications.... castigate them all, I say! (Note that the word is "castigate" -- not the similar sounding word that would be offensive to meny.)
Posted by POTUS
on Sun 2 Dec 2007 at 12:58 PM
Now here is prime example of Liberal Equivalence...
A conservative cowboy reporter lets some sloppy reporting make it onto his National Review blog.. Gets busted... apologizes and explains immediately... His editor immediately starts an investigation and reports forthrightly on the error, admitting freely the mistakes that were made...
"I am opinionated: Probably more so these days than ever. But would I ever suggest that my opinion is fact? Hardly. That's the part of me that is a journalist -- the part that compels me to back up facts with sources in columns or articles. Though I haven't always listed sources when blogging about what I'm seeing, hearing or experiencing at the moment, I'll try to be more careful to do that in the future, to make available facts and impressions as crystal clear and as in context as they can be."
Yeah...
This is JUST like the TNR -Scott Beauchamp mess... In McLearyland, anyway...
To those of us in Realityville, however...
It's apples and oranges.
Nobody expects perfect journalists... Just professional, accountable ones..
Which is a little too much to ask from the leftist MSM outlets, obviously.
Posted by padikiller
on Sun 2 Dec 2007 at 01:22 PM
As paidkiller says, apples and oranges. But if the apples are rotten and the oranges are rotten, castigate them both, I say. I don't think either side should be given a pass. Do you?
Posted by POTUS
on Mon 3 Dec 2007 at 03:52 PM
The Great Satan, Padikiller, et al:
McLeary is NOT going to address the Beauchamp matter because, at a minimum, that would require him to go back and apologize to Michelle Malkin and Bob Owens and all the others who had the story correct right from the beginning.
Remember what McLeary said back at the end of July when he wrote this one?
More Beauchamp! (sorry…)
Why do conservatives hate the troops?
By Paul McLeary Fri 27 Jul 2007 01:12 PM
Here is part of what Paul said back then:
This childish game of name-calling, mostly led by the know-nothing Michelle Malkin’s of the world—anyone remember the Jamil Hussein embarassment—has been going on for the better part of a week.
Obviously, the Paul has "conservative" issues, and is incapable of noting his own huge mistake! Where I come from, just pretenting that it's not there, is called childish.
Posted by Trochilus
on Mon 3 Dec 2007 at 11:05 PM
The thought that anybody should apologize to Michelle Malkin is hilarious...
Posted by Circus Boy
on Tue 4 Dec 2007 at 06:17 AM
When the TNR/"Scott Thomas" nonsense was first exposed... Paul McLeary lashed out at Malkin in a typical knee-jerk reaction...
(McLeary won't miss a chance to attack either Malkin or his most-feared enemy.. the dreaded Fox News)
But here is what the arrogant, self-proclaimed "watchdog" of "professional journalism" actually had the nerve to write....
"While there are some very legitimate questions about what Beauchamp wrote, nothing, it’s worthy of note, has been proved false yet."
This tripe has become the de facto standard of modern, liberal "professional journalism" in McLearyland...
Any ridiculous nonsense that furthers the liberal cause is legitimate "news" until or unless it is "proven" to be false... Conservatives bear the burden of proving a negative...
And the contapositive of this nonsense is that anything that comes out of a Republican mouth is presumed by the "professional journalists" of the world to be a lie... Until and unless a sufficient number of Democrats confirm it...
This silly reasoning is straight out of Orwell... Yet Columbia is pumping out people either stupid or crazy enough to parrot this idiocy by the droves...
Posted by padikiller
on Tue 4 Dec 2007 at 09:08 AM
The fact that you're as rabid a defender of hack pundits as much as a partisan attacker of liberals speaks volumes...
Posted by Circus Boy
on Mon 10 Dec 2007 at 11:32 PM