NY Times on Lara Logan's screwed up reporting:
As CBS was backtracking on its report, Threshold Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, said in a statement that it was recommending that booksellers remove Mr. Davies’s book from their shelves. “The Embassy House” was published Oct. 29, and more than 38,000 copies are in print.
Ms. Logan did not reply to requests for an interview Friday. In an interview earlier this week, she had ardently defended Mr. Davies’s character and his veracity against charges that he had given differing accounts of the events that night in Benghazi.
Threshold is a
right wing nutcase publisher ("Threshold Editions is an imprint of Simon & Schuster that specializes in conservative non-fiction. Recent successes include #1 New York Times bestsellers Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin, An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck, and The Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D."), and that CBS is at all associated with it (it owns Simon and Schuster) and would push this conspiracy theory to sell books and pander to Benghazi nutters tells you everything you need to know in terms of trusting their judgment.
CBS is the same organization that screwed up their interview of an Obamacare "victim", only to have Fox News straighten them out:
After appearing on CBS News yesterday morning in a segment on her rising health-care costs under Obamacare, 56-year-old Florida resident Dianne Barrette received calls from producers at Fox News, the better to repeat her critical tale on TV’s No. 1 outlet for Obamacare opposition. Presumably the network was interested in how Barrette’s insurance premiums were set to go from around $50 to nearly $600, as she explained yesterday on CBS News.
The story, however, wasn’t as straightforward as the CBS News account suggested. As pointed out here and here, Barrette’s $50 insurance plan was shot through with holes, particularly with respect to hospitalization. The Obamacare-compliant plan that she was offered in its place must comply with a set of basic standards, including hospitalization.
Clearly, this calls for a
blogger ethics conference.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Michael Calderone, who has been all over this story:
But while “60 Minutes” continued to stand by its source over the course of a week, the network dodged questions about why -- in light of the conflicting accounts and Davies' public admission he had once lied about his whereabouts -- the network remained confident in a source who appeared increasingly less credible.
The Huffington Post requested comment from “60 Minutes” about Davies' conflicting accounts on Nov. 1 and on Monday and Tuesday of this week. A "60 Minutes" spokesman did not respond to those requests.
Matt Taibbi (in 2010) slamming Lara Logan for siding with the military against the McChrystal takedown by Michael Hastings:
Lara Logan, come on down! You're the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!
I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."
Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him. According to Logan, that's sneaky — and journalists aren't supposed to be sneaky:
Charles P. Pierce:
I ask this in all seriousness -- when was the last time the president gave a speech about poverty? Not a section in the State of the Union. Not a speech about the embattled middle class. Not about how we all do better when all of us are doing better. Not about increasing opportunity. A full-throated, unequivocal speech simply about poverty, and about poor people, and about how it is a moral disgrace in the richest nation on earth to have as many people as we do who are forced to choose between meat and shelter. Let him give one now. I'll buy a ticket.
Bill Moyers:
The New York Times has a heartbreaking story today on how cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — or food stamps — are affecting millions of low-income American families for whom $10 or $20 makes a big difference. The decrease marks the largest across-the-board cuts since Congress first passed the Food Stamps Act in 1964 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and affects 47 million people, or about one in seven Americans.