"Matthew Desmond" and his liberal "news" site AddictingInfo.Org blatantly violated journalistic ethics by running a story they knew wasn't accurate. Does the left really need our own Andrew Breitbart? JH doesn't think so, and he's going to tell you why in this video...and why it's vital to call people like this out and put a stop to them before they can do real damage.
(Some content may be blocked by DKOS. You can view the original article at http://www.lowgenius.net/...)
I'm seeing an increadingly problematic trend in political reporting lately.
And the thing is...it's not coming from the right this time.
It's come from the left. The liberals. "Our side."
You see, it's fairly reasonable to expect that an outfit like Fox News will lie and distort the truth for their convenience, that they'll play to the preconceptions of their audience. We know that's what they do, and we know that's what a lot of conservative media sources do.
It's important that we understand how things like confirmation bias work, you see, because if we don't understand it, we risk becoming succeptible to it. That's why I do these videos on these subjects. It's why I chose communication as my college major, and political science as my minor.
A few days ago Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann made an historical error in a televised interview by referring to John Quincy Adams as a "founding father." This is a few weeks after Sarah Palin made a series of similar errors regarding the history of Paul Revere's ride. (image disallowed by DKOS due to having my own host.)
One of the things that happened in the aftermath of Palin's remarks was several of her followers attempted to edit the Wikipedia article about Revere, basically trying to rewrite history to make their candidate seem correct.
So when the Bachmann thing happened, sure enough someone tried to change the Wiki article about John Quincy Adams...except this time it was a little different. Many of the edits were clearly made tongue-in-cheek, and one editor admitted openly that the intent was to vandalize the article. Unlike the Palin situation, however, no attempt was made to justify the changes. No indication was given that anyone was seriously trying to believe that Bachmann was correct.
Yet at least two prominent liberal news sites reported that "Bachmann Supporters" altered the article.
I admit, I got caught in my own confirmation bias on this, and passed on a link to one of the sites making this unsupported assertion, and I want to thank my friends William and Hanna for calling me on it, because the observation they made was right: there simply is no evidence that this was done by Bachmann's supporters.
As it happens, this site is one I've dealt with before - addictinginfo.org, run by a guy who calls himself "Matthew Desmond." I first ran across Matthew when he was relentlessly comment-spamming one of his groups on Facebook. For a while, it seemed like you could not find a single entry on any liberal-interest Facebook wall that didn't include spam from Matthew Desmond.
I blocked him and reported him for spam, and he rolled a new account, and this happened several times until he finally got the idea. He still sends me friend requests, as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
I don't like that whole spamming tactic, personally. It smacks of caring more about making money and getting attention than focusing on creating meaningful content or trying to find truth and facts. But whatever, I can't tilt at every windmill that comes along. (image disallowed by DKOS due to having my own host.)
But this issue is a bigger problem than spam - it's lying, it's presenting a distortion of reality and inducing people to react to it; it is step one of witch-hunts and mob rule, and that has no place in my country's politics, ESPECIALLY not from "my side."
When I confronted Desmond on this issue, rather than doing the honorable, ethical, thing and retracting his statement with an admission that he had no evidence to support it...he called me stupid. He claimed that he did indeed have "reasonable grounds" to make that statement; threatened me with a lawsuit for "libel," told me I had no "common sense."
Strangely, his attitude and writing style are very similar in tone and nature to the person whose IP address he screen-captured for his article...the same address that admitted that their changes were intended to be vandalism.
That address resolves to a lab terminal at a public university on the west coast.
That university has a student whose partial name is..."Desmond Matthew."
Now, I'm not saying that the person behind this Matthew Desmond pseudonym deliberately manufactured this controversy by first editing the Wiki article and then reporting it in a manner intended to artificially incite outrage, thereby driving traffic and generating profit for his website, and the LAST thing I want is for anyone to start harassing people at their school.
I don't KNOW that these things are related, it could just be a coincidence....but it sure smells funny. And that's kind of the point, you see - if AddictingInfo.Org and Matt Desmond hadn't first lied and then turned hostile, I wouldn't have ever wondered enough about this to go digging.
Matthew Desmond smells funny. He doesn't act like a liberal, really. He's not someone who changes his mind when confronted with new information; he's not someone who shows respect and dignity in his conversations. He just calls people names, asserts his unvalidated "authority," and relies on logical fallacy to support his positions.
(image disallowed by DKOS due to having my own host.) What he acts like is a Randite conservative shill who cares a great deal more about generating traffic for his website by manufacturing saccharine outrage and positioning himself to "expose" things, than he does about presenting a liberal point of view or, heaven forbid, actually finding some truth and facts to present.
Of course it would be easy to say - and he probably will - that I'm just angry because he called me names...but people who know me, know better than that. I could give a rip less what some sawed-off coward hiding behind a keyboard has to say about me.
What I care about is that Matthew Desmond and addictinginfo.org appear to be deliberately trying to create an equivalence between the tactics of left and right media in this country that hasn't been true, until now - liberal news writers and commentators and pundits don't just make their stories up out of thin air the way an Andrew Breitbart or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh does.
That's a very serious problem, you see...because if that kind of thinking starts to infest the left in this country, we have surrendered to the mentality of Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, and their ilk - lie, and when the lie is exposed keep lying until enough people believe it to drown out the truth...and if we've fallen that far, there's probably no hope for recovery.
Matthew Desmond has proven himself an unethical fraud, and a coward who has no problem trying to intimidate dissenters and critics into silence.
That's not how liberal minds operate.
That's how right-wing minds operate - authoritarians, despots, fundamentalists, people who care less about factual accuracy than their own ego and profit.
The left rejects that kind of thinking and behavior. Liberal America does not need sites like addictinginfo.org and people like Matthew Desmond trying to distort reality for profit.
That's what the right does. That's what conservatives do. That's why we oppose them.
I suspect that Matthew Desmond is no more liberal than Pat Buchanan. I think he's a front and a shill, a fantasy construct designed only to generate attention and profit for the person or people who invented him, and I suspect that he may be deliberate trying to create a validation of the false equivalency that is so often drawn between left and right media in this country.
At the very least, he is guilty of lying to his readers, deliberately and without apology.
Funniest part of all: I went to check and see if he'd retracted or changed his assertion just now, because I want to be fair...and he's blocked my IP address and removed all of my posts, as well as several in support of my critical position.
That's not liberal. That's being a cowardly, chicken-shit little authoritarian pussy who's afraid that his scam is going to be exposed.
I refuse to sit back quietly and allow that kind of disgusting and pathetic ethical offense to pass simply because the offender appears to be on "my side" politically. Indeed, I expect - as should we all - that those on "my side" will adhere to a HIGHER standard of ethics and truth, not a lower one.
Because if we don't, then we no longer walk the moral high ground - we've become the monster we claim to stand against.
There's no evidence that Bachmann's supporters made those edits, and there is in fact clear statements by at least one person involved that it was intentional "vandalism." There is also information which strongly suggests that those changes were made by someone with the express intent of pumping it up as a legitimate news story about conservatives trying to rewrite history...exactly the story AddictingInfo.Org ran with, and stood by even after being told it was inaccurate.
You see, Des, I showed you where your error was and gave you every reasonable chance to correct it by retracting your assertion...and you refused.
That is when you cross the line between "mistake" and "callous disregard for truth."
You not only refused, but you became hostile and openly threatening to me instead of simply having the balls to admit you were wrong, and then finally, like the snivelling, spamming, chicken-shit fraud you are, you banned me (or at least you think you did - I've added a screenshot to this article from AFTER you "blocked" me and removed all my messages as well as your threats to sue me, just because...well, because I can, and there's not really anything you can do about it) from your site.
You have a vested interest in maintaining this lie so you can continue driving traffic to your site and selling your little t-shirts and raking in ad revenue?
Problem is, Des, is that you're playing to an audience that values integrity...and you don't seem to have any.
I can't PROVE that you were behind the very edit that you then tried to claim was made by a Bachmann supporter in order to drive traffic to your site...but it sure smells funny, sonny.
We don't NEED assholes with no ethics and no balls stringing along bullshit stories to drive traffic to fake news websites. That's the way the other guys work. We're the good guys.
Contrary to what appears to be your belief, we of liberal America are not a bunch of patsies who will uncritically accept everything you say and allow you to line your pockets by degrading and corroding political discourse in this country with fake controversy and manufactured outrage.
The only ethical course of action for Matthew Desmond and AddictingInfo.Org is to either issue a full retraction of their headline, "Michelle Bachmann Supporters Alter Wikipedia To Make John Quincy Adams A Founding Father," or provide some kind of objectively verifiable evidence that proves that headline is accurate.
Failing that, we on the left must do our best to ensure that nobody mistakes AddictingInfo.Org or Matthew Desmond for legitimate information sources. We don't NEED an Andrew Breitbart working on our side, you see; that would only serve to make us weak and wrong.
Desmond and his site are demonstrably unethical and engaged in the deliberate propagation of lies and distortions for profit at the expense of truth.
And ladies and gentlemen, that is just not how we roll.
2:20 PM PT: Have added the full text of the original article. My apologies for not realizing that asking people to actually see the whole thing in context would be seen as apostasy.