Have a look elsewhere on this site today and you'll see the nearly weekly diary that has just enough good grammar in it to not look like the efforts of a Troll, that gradually reveals itself to be an attempt to slime your undersigned diarist.
The New York Post is now up to about a dozen completely fabricated stories, "hung" off actual developments, but bearing no more resemblance to reality than, say, George Bush's worldview.
Here's how it goes, and here's what to do when they eventually single you out for "the treatment."
- The Actual Development (Or "Excuse"):
Over the weekend here in Denver Tom Brokaw -- who has been utterly supportive of me to the extent that an email he sent me after a primary night in March still sits in printout form in my wallet -- is at a panel when Ed Rendell detonates about MSNBC doing (fill in the blank).
Tom explains that while even he thought, personally, that Chris and I may have gone further during the primaries than he would have, he thought that the more reserved work of others on the air more than balanced out that minor complaint. He goes on to praise Chris and me. The limited reporting of this, since it's trivia, leaves out the nice stuff and the contextual facts (like: Tom has been on with us every Primary night, and each Convention night, and if he didn't want to be, he didn't have to be) and focuses only on the negative.
- The Guess (Or "Facts? We Don't Got To Print You No Stinking Facts!")
Richard Johnson, the editor of the Page Six Department of The New York Post - currently at the wrong end of an eight-figure suit in which they've already admitted slander; well known as (at least) the former boss of bribe-soliciting and bribe-taking flunkies, now either personally uses a glimmer of creativity, or assigns one of his flunkies like Paula Froehlich, to think of the worst possible response to the Actual Development.
The response doesn't have to be logical (Who, exactly, would banish Tom Brokaw?) nor does it have to jibe with any past or current facts (Brokaw's other comments, his continuing appearances on MSNBC here in Denver, the fact that we saw each other on the street outside the Convention Center Monday morning and had a lovely and all-too-brief visit). It just has to sound insane.
Given who's working on creating such a tableau, finding the insane element is easy. I'm giving them too much credit when I suggest this is a glimmer of creativity.
- Call MSNBC For Comment (But Ignore Or Dismiss Denial)
There's a variation of this. One of the other Murdochian fabrications led to the Post hack calling our PR department, where it was responded to with a detailed explanation of why the story couldn't be true. The Post printed "An MSNBC spokesman could not be reached for comment," and in their own minds got away with it, I think, because they spoke to a woman PR department, and not her colleague, the spokesman.
- The Amplification (The Time Of The Trolls)
Once the Post publishes, either let the gossip sites with no interest in doing anything but echoing (Radar Online, sometimes Gawker or Jossip) repeat the story. Hey, once it's in the Post, you can quote them! Why bother making a phone call?
But that's usually insufficient. Within the television news industry it is generally accepted that a lot of the stuff bashing other networks on blogs is too inside to not be literally composed by somebody in the Murdoch chain. This was done by one Fox Sports PR person, to my personal knowledge, when I worked there in '99-'00. The comments of one poster at TVNewser read so similarly to O'Reilly's "Talking Points" that his/her/its posting privileges were revoked.
So the one here this morning - consider yourself privileged - somebody may have done this while on the clock working for the Aussie Pirate.
- WHAT TO DO IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY
Having been staked out at my home by a Post flunkie, I can tell you from experience that there are a lot of effective self-defense steps one can take. A small video recorder is a useful device, the stalking equivalent of a bright light for cockroaches. Also, exposing them in a public forum like this, helps.
Also, if you're ever approached by a Murdochian agent, repeating only the words "falafel" and "loofah" in your answer may render you immune.
Mostly, you accept it, as the proverbial forces of darkness, acknowledging you have wounded them. And then devote your energies to wounding them more, aiming -- next time -- more accurately, and higher.