Oops! (On the Sarah Palin blunders)
Wait, Sarah Palin was not a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, as The New York Times claimed last Tuesday? It was actually her husband?
Huh. Who’d've thunk it? The mighty New York Times thwarted in its quest for truth by, um, the fact that someone told ‘em so.
The Times’ Caucus blog explains:
The information in the Times article was based on a statement issued Monday night by Lynette Clark, the party’s chairwoman, who said that Ms. Palin joined the party in 1994 and in 1996 changed her registration to Republican. On Tuesday night, Ms. Clark said that her initial statement was incorrect and had been based on erroneous information provided by another member of the party whom she declined to identify.
They didn’t bother to check with Palin?
The Times retraction went out fast, already on Tuesday, but apparently it wasn’t prominent enough to be widely noticed. So thanks to Tom Gross for bringing it to our attention. Tom notes other clearly accidental media blunders about Sarah Palin:
No, Sarah Palin didn’t support Pat Buchanan in the 1999-2000 campaign; she was an official on the campaign of Republican presidential contender Steve Forbes.
No, her eldest son Track (who is deploying to Iraq this week) didn’t join the National Guard because he was a drug addict.
No, her daughters Willow and Piper aren’t named after witches on TV.
No, she’s not anti-Semitic. In fact, she has an Israeli flag in her office, and quietly turned up for services at a newly opened Wasilla synagogue to pay her respects.
No, she didn’t cut funding for unwed mothers, but increased it by 354 percent (and no, the Washington Post doesn’t appear to have corrected its story about this despite being asked to do so).
Then there’s this. We really don’t know what to make of this. As summarized by the Sydney Morning Herald:
The internet was aflame at the weekend after the liberal internet columnist Charley James accused the polarising Governor of Alaska of making a racist, sexist remark to friends while dining at a restaurant in Alaska just after Barack Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
“So Sambo beat the bitch,” she said, according to James, whose source was the waitress who served Mrs Palin. No one else has interviewed the waitress – known only as Lucille – to confirm it and none of the other diners have come forward.
But it was James’s exhibit A in an article that accused Mrs Palin of being “openly racist” and “vindictive and mean”.
How can they ask her when she will not speak to the press?
Mark Davis
September 19, 2008 at 14:55
Can the media be trusted?
Media blunders caused by “beat the competition to news headlines” are numerous. For example, after Arvid Saunaitis presented a breakthrough dental appliance made out of chromium cobalt metal and denture teeth to NBC, and they did the story, a few opportunistic dentists presented an all plastic appliance to other news networks and by distorting the facts persuaded them to cover their story instead. After Arvid warned the reporters that their all plastic replica will not work as they claim, they ignored his expert advice and caused numerous patients to be scammed out of large sums of money. More on the story can be found at http://tometalk-erudite.blogspot.com
In another example, after the researchers at the University of Pennsylvania published a narrow test tube study in the journal of Science and the lead researcher of the study, Dr. Ian Blair asked the press, “For God’s sake don’t say vitamin C causes cancer,” many reporters proceed to do exactly that. Dr. John Hathcock, vice president for the Council for Responsible Nutrition also commented, “The media should do its homework and put new scientific findings in their proper context. That kind of responsible journalism would help consumers, rather than cause confusion.”
Unfortunately the media will never stop deceiving the public and will continue to push their political agendas until the public has had enough and begin looking for alternative news sources.
Cybercorrespondent
http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com
cybercorrespondent
September 30, 2008 at 2:52