It’s not just The New Republic that publishes falsehoods. National Review Online has revealed its milblogger-reporter W. Thomas Smith falsified or embellished reports on Hezbollah in Lebanon in late September.
At the time, Smith claimed in NRO’s “The Tank” that he saw 200 heavily armed militants in a “sprawling Hezbollah tent city” and then claimed that 4,000 to 5,000 Hezbollah gunmen made a “show of force” in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut. The two reports were based on guessing and hearsay, and probably not true.
Smith now says he took what he saw, which wasn’t much more than two AK-47s one day and groups of men with radios on another day, and added in information fed to him by others, which was a lot, to reach the conclusions that he reported. Unfortunately, at the time, he didn’t distinguish for his readers what he actually saw from what he was told. He says he didn’t explain who told him what because blogs are “less formal” than regular news stories.
‘Nature of blogging.’ Kathryn Lopez, the NRO editor, disclosed the faked stories two days ago, apologizing, but providing the lame excuse that “the nature of blogging being what it is,” the fabrications easily slipped through.
But there is nothing in “the nature of blogging” that makes it less reliable than the printed word. It isn’t the nature of blogging that makes a difference. It’s the nature of the blogger.
Naturally, Glenn Greenwald has jumped on Smith’s falsifications as a way to defend The New Republic’s embarrassingly long cover-up of the “Baghdad Diaries” lies by Scott Thomas Beauchamp.
Serving the ‘war agenda’? To Greenwald, Smith’s faked accounts are part of a right-wing “war agenda,” and Beauchamp’s falsifications are “far less significant.”
Writes Greenwald:
Completely fabricated accusations designed to fuel their war agenda and other political interests are not new for the world of right-wing punditry. It is par for the course. Last year, they lied in a swarm by claiming the Iranian parliament passed a new law requiring Iranian Jews to wear yellow stars. They falsely accused AP of inventing a non-existent source, Jamil Hussein, who existed exactly as AP said. They accused Democrats of ghost-writing the vile Terry Schiavo memo written by Mel Martinez (a false accusation Kurtz, of course, pumped). They repeatedly lied about Bilal Hussein’s photography, falsely claiming that he photographed executions of hostages in Iraq and other insurgent actions. And that’s just a small sample of their chronic fabrications and false claims. …
[Now], here is the leading conservative magazine, outright inventing facts about Hezbollah’s military conduct in Lebanon. And -- in stark contrast to the transparent efforts of Franklin Foer to investigate and disclose what he learned -- National Review’s editors do everything possible to obscure what happened and to justify the falsehoods, praising the reporter who did it and keeping him on.
Damn skeptics. I’d like to hear a response to Greenwald’s list of complaints. I doubt the facts are as simple as he portrays them. I’ve seen some of those reports, and usually they’ve amounted to a healthy distaste for tyranny and skepticism about media coverage of the Middle East.
But Greenwald then says “they” use all these “fabricated accusations … to fuel their war agenda.” Perhaps “they” simply want the press to explain better how it gets its news and photographs. Greenwald can’t imagine that. He claims there are leaders of the Free World who just like wars.
As far as the false reports that the Iranian parliament was “requiring Iranian Jews to wear yellow stars,” Greenwald obviously has compounded the wrong “facts” of that case. The report, published in the National Post of Canada, was not that Jews would have to wear “yellow stars,” but that they would have to wear distinctive clothing identifying themselves as Jews. Liberals and conservatives were outraged at that possibility, though it turned out to be a false alarm.
‘Transparent’ New Republic. Then Greenwald describes The New Republic’s disgracefully Nixonian cover-up of its Beauchamp lies as “the transparent efforts of [New Republic editor] Franklin Foer to investigate and disclose what he learned.” That has to be the biggest fabrication of the day.
Frank Warner
Even good reporters jump to conclusions. In the movie "All the President's Men," you can see Ben Bradlee holding back Woodstein and placing obstacles in their way for very good reasons. It rings true. This war is being waged with disinformation as much as bullets. Remember the "captured" G.I. Joe from early on?
You can't know what the truth is with anything but politically fabricated certainty. You just have to trust that your government is reliable. That's why we elect them. People with BDR (or CDR for that matter) have simply sabotaged our efforts out of ignorant negativism.
As I understand it, AP was being fed disinformation by the Interior Department. Jamil Hussein might have existed, just as John Smith or James Johnson might appear in your phone book, but he probably wasn't the source. And it wasn't just the conservatives. Even CNN and NYT were questioning his identity. Michele Malkin was the most vociferous, but she was far from alone, and there's no reason to assume it was a conscious lie. She has since moderated her accusation, anyway. People should learn to reserve judgment. You don't have to assume every event is related to a conspiracy on the part of the other party. The enemy takes advantage of our internal dissension.
Posted by: jj mollo | December 02, 2007 at 04:36 PM
"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!"
-- Alexander Hamilton
Posted by: Neo | December 03, 2007 at 09:18 AM