New York Times Writer On Bogus Tapper Claim About Bill Clinton: It's The Blogosphere's Fault
February 1, 2008 -- 2:19 PM EST // //
Updated below.
This is worth a look, because you hear this argument time and again. New York Times writer Andrew Revkin has written a long dissection of yesterday's episode involving Jake Tapper and his piece's bogus claim that Bill Clinton said he wants to "slow down our economy" to combat global warming. Revkin's conclusion: It's the blogosphere's fault.
If you're not up to speed on this, you can read about the whole episode here. This is what Revkin has to say about it:
Further down in the post, Mr. Tapper included the full text and a link to the entire speech. The context makes it clear that Mr. Clinton was not recommending a slowdown to limit warming, and instead was saying that an economic slowdown and emissions cuts in the United States and other industrialized countries would have no effect because emerging economic powerhouses like China would not follow suit. But the blogosphere, for the most part, doesn’t seem to have time for full transcripts — only the portion that suits some preexisting stance.Revkin says that this episode shows off the Web's "greatest failing." Look, you constantly hear this sort of blame heaped on "the blogosphere" for such episodes. But it's almost comically simplistic. Indeed, it's striking what an extraordinary misreading of the episode this is. After all, it was the blogosphere that quickly debunked this myth and thus prevented it from spreading farther and wider than it did.
Just to restate the obvious, this episode was the creation of three parties: Tapper, ABC News, and Drudge. Revkin uncritically points to Tapper's explanation that the piece put video and the context of the quote further down in the piece. But so what? The problem here, again, was the obviously misleading use of the quote out of context and high up in the piece. This simple act, when combined with ABC News' misleading headline and the willingness of Drudge to grab on to the falsehood and push it out there, created a story that wasn't true.
Let's not kid ourselves here. We all -- Tapper included -- know how the freak show works. If that quote hadn't been torn out of context like that, there wouldn't have been any story -- and no link on Drudge, either.
Obviously, the Internets do sometimes abet the spreading of falsehoods. But the "blogosphere" is the last party that deserves blame here. The point is, some folks use the Internet responsibly, and others don't -- and in this case, ABC and Drudge didn't. Those in the "blogosphere" who swiftly knocked the falsehood down, on the other hand, did. Let's be more precise when assigning blame, shall we?
Update: A newspaper has now picked up the ABC story and turned it into truly grotesque parody.
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