After Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Reporter Eric Lichtblau was caught lying about Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-Calif.) in print (which should tell you all you really need to know about the Pulitzer these days, and as an aside, deliberate MSM lies will henceforth be known as “Doing a Lichtblau”) the NYT is scrambling to do damage control.
The lies started in the lede:
Here on the third floor of a gleaming office building overlooking a golf course in the rugged foothills north of San Diego, Darrell Issa, the entrepreneur, oversees the hub of a growing financial empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Of course, as we’ve previously reported the golf course is a freeway and the “gleaming office building,” is an ugly, four-story, concrete and glass box.
None of this matters to the Times, who are scrambling to defend a story with 13 substantive errors, the Politico reports:
Dean Baquet, the Times’ D.C. bureau chief who is becoming a top editor in New York this fall, said he is looking at Issa’s office’s complaints.
“I think if you look carefully at Mr. Issa’s complaints, and the story, you will see that there is nothing that gets to the heart of it,” Baquet said. “Happy to consider any mistakes they point out, and we are looking at those. But I’m not seeing a need for any sort of retraction.”
He also argued that Lichtblau’s lede was not misleading.
“I don’t think it implied — at least to my mind — that Issa’s office overlooked the golf course,” he said. “I think it is trying to give a sense that this is a building in a cool area. That’s the way I always read it. Otherwise it really would have said his office overlooked the golf course. That would have been even cooler to say.”
Uh, Earth to Dean, that’s exactly what it DID say. Dweeb.
Deano also seems to feel there’s no reason for anyone to be upset over the mistake in the lede. Now, for those of you who are not journoweenies like myself, the lede (pronounced lead) is the first paragraph of the story, one generally tries to be accurate there.
“It feels to me, to be frank, that the discussion of a very sophisticated and nuanced story has been shifted to what the story did not say, rather than what it did say,” he said. “What it did say is that Mr. Issa is doing something rare among members of Congress by actively leading a business empire and that this raises questions that are rarely confronted. I think that is a very, very legitimate issue to explore in the pages of the paper.”
Lichtblau, who did visit the hall of the third floor, told POLITICO he didn’t see the golf course from any of the windows of that floor. He said he stood at Shadowridge Country Club, about a quarter mile to the southwest of the building, and could see the building from there.
He also said a brochure for the building’s lessor bragged about its golf course views, but he could not produce that flier. Issa’s office said it does not know about any advertisement describing such views.
Lichtblau said the “golf course was some color, but the point of the lede was, symbolically, what it said to have his business office literally next door to his congressional office.”
Well, Eric me boy, you did get one part of this right, your screw up in the lede was symbolic — which is why so many people are ticked off about it. It’s symbolic of the sort of sloppy reporting and outright prevarication the former “newspaper of record” engages in in any story about their political enemies.
Not that the Politico is much better. Check out the final line of their story which tells you exactly which side they’re on:
Issa is the bombastic chairman of the top investigative committee in Congress, and takes it upon himself to be the check on the Obama administration’s actions. He is worth several hundred million dollars in assets, making him perhaps the richest lawmaker in Washington.
Gee, how dare Issa take it upon himself to *gasp* do his job, that dirty rich guy.
I sent an email to Lichtblau earlier this week asking him if he would do the honorable thing and issue a retraction and apology.
The crickets are still chirping.
I have to tell you folks, if I turned in a story with 13 factual errors my paper wouldn’t be digging in to protect me. I’d be looking for a new job while my publisher was issuing a public apology both to our readers and to whomever the story was about. That the Times refuses to do so tells you all you need to know their editors.
Every fiction writer needs an editor. Sounds like Lichtblau and Baquet are well matched.
The NYT has always been the Democrat’s official mouthpiece, but at least it used to pretend to be a real newspaper. Not so much anymore.
Patrick -
I appreciate your attempt to help me understand the proper pronunciation of “lede”, which has eluded me for years.
But, unfortunately, I’m no better off.
Your reference to “lead” as the correct pronunciation still leaves me with two choices – “lead” – the metal, or “lead” – as in “to guide”.
But, thanks for the try!
The first paragraph of a news story in a traditional, pre-computerized newspaper was pronounced, as Patrick Richardson says, to rhyme with “speed” or “deed” and it was spelled “lede” (and still is) to distinguish it, in writing, from “lead” the metal (pronounced “led”), of which the type for each letter, number and and punctuation sign was made.
All news stories were set in lead type by type-setters, who were often hearing-impaired. It helped if you were, because the tremendous sound of the presses running would have deafened a person with good hearing.
It was a different time then, not only because lead type is no longer used, but because the likes of Lichtblau and Baquet are rewarded today rather than fired.
Neither would have held onto their jobs after this fiasco 40 years ago. That was then. This is now.
I’m grateful to Patrick Richardson for holding the Times’ collective feet to the fire, but I’m glad he’s not holding his breath on hearing back from Lichtblau. Earth to Dean, indeed.
What we also need is Earth to Pinch, for all the good it would do.
Thank you for your kind words. I’m aware I’m very much a throw back to an earlier time as a journalist. My first journalism instructor Stacy Sparks, with whom I had knock-down drag-out political arguments nevertheless instilled in myself and all her students at deep respect for our chosen profession.
We were taught ours was a noble profession, with an important responsibility.
“Reporters” like Mr. Lichtblau, who is really nothing of the kind but simply a party hack, offend me. They defecate all over my life’s work and the American public as well.
They’ve forgotten their basic job — to tell the truth.
Lichtblau’s story was about as subtle as a hand grenade at a garden party, and as nuanced as whacking someone upside the head with a 12lb sledgehammer.
He was out to make Issa look bad, and failed miserably. The standard NYT reader already thinks Issa sacrifices virgins at midnight in the House Rotunda. The target audience, so-called independents are better informed these days than they used to be. They know what the Times is.
I say it again — I would say Lichtblau should be ashamed of himself, but it’s pretty clear he has none.
as in “to guide” leed
Lord I hate Issa’s Viper alarm system. I’m an auto mechanic. However I am pleased that some good will come of it after all.
You guys have it all wrong and you’re fortunate that there are readers like me who can clue you in to what’s really going on.
What you fail to realize is that the Times is a leader in post-modern journalism. People like Patrick are held up on outmoded, patriarchal concepts like facts and truth…oops, I mean “facts” and “truth.”
There is nothing new here; it may be that Rigoberta Menchu’s autobiography is by old standards fiction, but it should have been that way and reveals a deeper truth, one that is not constrained by old-fashioned concepts like “reality.” Similarly, none of the Group of 88 who accused the Duke lacrosse players of a nasty and brutal crime have recanted and there’s no reason they should. After all, the players may not have “actually” done the deed but they are white guys and hence part of the centuries-long oppression, so they should have done it or would have done it if they thought they could get away with it.
Once you understand that your journalistic ethics are outmoded, passe, you will see that the Times story reveals the deeper truth, which is that all Republicans are greedy, grasping people whose goal in life is to deny a fair chance to other people.
Thus the Issa story is true even if the facts aren’t. You guys need to understand this. Ask leftists to help you. I think their response will be somewhere along the line of “oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.”
– had the best intentions, er, never mind…