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If You are A Fan of Accuracy, Avoid Reading Josh Marshall
I was reading an article today criticizing the bad habit of some in the media of engaging in "pluralization", which consists in pretending that several people committed an act for which only one person was responsible.
My first reaction was to instinctively dig the archives in search of whatever the maestro of misinformation Josh Marshall had written about a recent incident in which one man irresponsibly yelled "killed him," in apparent reference to Barack Obama.
And my suspicions proved to be well-grounded. Marshall reported this incident as follows:
Even the lowly Huffington Post said:
Some of you may be thinking that regardless of the number of people who yelled "kill him," this unbecoming behavior was deplorable; and you are right. But the point of this post is this: Josh Marshall's style is fiery and attractive, but when it comes to obtaining accurate information, he should not be your first source; Or your second; or your third.
Admittedly, it's much more fun and dramatic to pretend that a crowd, or several individuals, commited a vile act perpetrated by a lone nut.
My first reaction was to instinctively dig the archives in search of whatever the maestro of misinformation Josh Marshall had written about a recent incident in which one man irresponsibly yelled "killed him," in apparent reference to Barack Obama.
And my suspicions proved to be well-grounded. Marshall reported this incident as follows:
So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out "terrorist."But let's see how a reporter who was there, Dana Milbank described the incident:
And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out "kill him", though it's not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn't seem to matter.
These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing.
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.Note how in Marshall's world, one member of the crowd becomes "members."
Even the lowly Huffington Post said:
The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley.What Marshall wrote is not spin. It's a falsehood.
Some of you may be thinking that regardless of the number of people who yelled "kill him," this unbecoming behavior was deplorable; and you are right. But the point of this post is this: Josh Marshall's style is fiery and attractive, but when it comes to obtaining accurate information, he should not be your first source; Or your second; or your third.
Admittedly, it's much more fun and dramatic to pretend that a crowd, or several individuals, commited a vile act perpetrated by a lone nut.
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Hey, it's hard defending terrorist pals. We need all the falsehoods we can come up with to counter the trash talk.
Try again. Maybe with Rezko? It's been a while since we heard about him.
October 8, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Poor Andrew.....
2 separate events.
ONE man at the McCain event.
But SEVERAL people at the later Palin event (she held more than one) yelled 'kill him'. The video footage is available on YouTube. (Feel free to have a look at it.)
The footage was also shown last night on COUNTDOWN.
Perhaps YOU should hone your forensic skills.
'Members' was the correct usage, since it involved more than one person over several events.
October 8, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gayithacan, Dana Milbank's article is only about Sarah Palin's rally. Milbank said nothing about McCain's rally. You would know this if you had paid attention to the BIG ASS PICTURE OF SARAH PALIN above Milbank's story.
October 8, 2008 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
And you know why you aren't linking to the Youtube video? Because YOU KNOW it isn't true that several people are heard in that video saying "kill him."
Don't lie.
October 8, 2008 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bingo...get your facts straight, Andrew!
October 8, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Add the LA Times political blog to those who reported one man yelling "kill him" while Palin was speaking:
A Palin fan at a rally hurled racial slurs at black members of the media the other day, and the Secret Service is investigating allegations that a supporter called out "Kill him!" while Palin was speaking about the Obama-Ayers issue.
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/10/john-mccain-bar.html
But according to member Gayithacan, the great Josh Marshall was right but the Huffington Post, Dana Milbank and the LA Times are clueless.
October 8, 2008 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Irresponsibly referring to someone as a terrorist is inciteful. Referring to a U.S. Senator as a terrorist is dumb and inciteful. Political activism and terrorism in present day terms are a world apart. Palin intentionally refuses to see the distinction knowing full well the reaction it will get. The attitude in this country toward terrorism is obvious as is what McCain and Palin are doing. What they are doing is clearly dangerous. Deceitfully taking advantage of the public fears of terrorism is as low as it gets.
October 8, 2008 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's Hive Sign, Andrew. It's not intended for Outsiders. The members of the Hive feel absolutely no compunction to be accurate or fair in what they say. On the contrary. The only thing that counts is how badly it hurts McCain.
October 8, 2008 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
You couldn't have said it better, Billy.
I think the first comment of the thread was the most transparent. The member shamelessly admitted: "We need all the falsehoods we can come up with to counter the trash talk."
October 8, 2008 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, and I'm sure he was so deadly serious.
Do you few who so soberly agree, with such massively hysterical sky-is-falling fake outrage, over the smallest tittle follww each other around so you can back each up in effort to make it appear you are some sort of significant percentage of the population?
Do us a favor: be honest for a change and tell it to McLame.
October 8, 2008 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jnagarya is very angry that not 100% of TPM'ers disagreed with me. Fanaticism here has reached pathological levels.
October 9, 2008 12:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well.
I would agree with Josh from a different perspective. Today Chuck Todd projected onto the Obama camp that they were trying to spin things that were actually being expressed by pundits and voters... as if all reaction and concern expressed by anyone that could be viewed as in line with Senator Obama's views are coming directly from the Obama camp.
This morning a pundit demanded that the Obama camp is directly responsible for the 527 ad that ran questioning McCain's health, not because the ad was created or run by Senator Obama, but because it helped him in some way. I think there is a different place to look for the truth of Josh Marshall's statement.
I was writing about this today because I felt is was laziness on the part of the 'journalists' involved.
October 8, 2008 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why are you here? it does not seem like you have anything in common with the people at this site. There are any number of websites that would give you a good home. So why? It's very curious, don't you think? What are you hoping to accomplish?
October 8, 2008 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
What am I hoping to accomplish? To get our journalists and bloggers to get it RIGHT.
Do you like misinformation?
October 8, 2008 9:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm callin bullshit on ya pal. At the absolute worst, all Josh did was report something with a slight variation. Not a falsehood. Not even close.
October 8, 2008 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was a falsehood.
"members" is not one member. This is why all other mainstream outlets referred to one member.
If this "slight variation" were the norm, exaggeration would be acceptable.
You might wish to be fed BS, but I don't. If I can't attend a rally or have not watched the video, I want the media to tell me what happened. Not more, no less. They can inject their opinions, but not their own facts.
Pluralization is wrong.
October 8, 2008 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Overstatemnt, not falsehood, because the information was so available that it's probable everyone who read Josh's article saw the overstatement for being that. It wasn't a lie.
Careless? In a factual sense; but not in the emotional, and the tenor across McPalin ralIES, PLURAL.
October 8, 2008 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe I used the word "lie" yet, because I can't read minds. Lie consists after all, in intentionally spreading falsehoods, and I'm not 100% sure if he was being clueless or a liar. That's a tough call.
But that it was a falsehood is indisputable.
October 8, 2008 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Andrew, you self-proclaimed "seeker of truth":
Where do you get the balls to spout off about others engaging in spurious "pluralization?"
Let me resuscitate in its entirety a comment I posted in response to a blog you posted back in July:
Andrew:
Your post offers not a shred of evidence for your headline, "Liberals criticized for praising evening news bias study without looking at it."
I happen to agree with the two people you cite -- Ana Marie Cox and Bob Somerby -- that the CMPA study isn't very reliable or significant.
But neither of them make the basic claim you are making, that "liberals" are praising this study.
Somerby quotes exactly ONE person -- NBC comentator Dan Abrams -- as doing so, or as having equated the network evening news shows studied with the media in general.
Not "some people," as you allege.
Let me point out that you are generalizing from insufficient evidence in an attempt to show that "liberals" generalize from insufficient evidence.
Ironic, no?
Project much, do you, Andrew?
October 8, 2008 10:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
So in summary, acanuck, you mean that Josh Marshall, whose humongous readership relies partly on his reports for their daily information, and I, Andrew Perez (a while ago) were guilty of exaggeration?
I'll take that. It proves my diary right.
October 8, 2008 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink