Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “One, Two, Three, Yer Out!”

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January 23, 2006

One, Two, Three, Yer Out!

Hatched by Dafydd

John Hinderaker at Power Line, my favorite blog, bar none -- not even my own -- waxed eloquent in high dudgeon (does anyone ever wax, or perhaps wane, in low dudgeon?) over the tendentious sloganeering by "reporter" Michael Isikoff over "the Other Big Brother," which turned out to be a mild and inoffensive report by the Department of Defense about some anti-military, anti-American protest before the gates of Haliburton.

The piece is great, as usual, but John includes a section that reminds me of something completely unrelated, having nothing to do with the foregoing paragraph. And how's that for a segue?

John notes that Isikoff's primary source, William Arkin, is a rabid Bush hater; but the tagline description of him fails to note that fact, which could conceivably color Arkin's response to the DoD program:

So William Arkin is a bitter anti-Bush partisan; yet Newsweek takes his words at face value and describes him only as "a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who writes widely about military affairs."

This reminded me of the three strikes that caused me to sever my subscription to the Los Angeles Times lo these many years ago. (Patterico, are you listening?) They were of the same sort: articles by or about persons who have significant baggage on certain subjects -- without the Times troublling to note that baggage, perhaps afraid of confusing the reader with too many relevant facts.

The Times printed a review of the anti-Clarence Thomas book Strange Justice, by Jill Abramson and Jane Meyer. The review was written by Nina Totenberg... but the Times tagline identified Ms. Totenberg only as an NPR reporter -- without noting that she was, in fact, a principal in the Anita Hill attack on Thomas, having plotted extensively with Hill, Hill's main corroborating witness "Judge" Susan Hoerchner, and staffers for Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Totenberg clearly had a huge battleaxe to grind with Clarence Thomas, so it was hardly a surprise that she loved the book. Strike one!

The Times ran a review of a book on Capitalism and economics; the review was penned (or processed) by Professor Eric Hobsbawm ... and the Times found it sufficient to mention only his academic affiliation -- without bothering to reveal that the good professor Eric "the Red" Hobsbawm is a notorious, unregenerate Communist, which some might think relevant to his review of a book on Capitalism. Strike two!

Finally, the Times published an opinion piece castigating the Los Angeles Police Department for its investigation of a homicide case. The author of the piece? Orenthal James Simpson. The Times' entire description of this op-ed author? "O.J. Simpson lives in Los Angeles." (This was, of course, after the criminal case.) Strike three, and I will not take the L.A. Times for at least twenty-five years to life.

So now you know why.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 23, 2006, at the time of 12:59 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

forgive me the OT, Dafydd ab Hugh, but you serious need to read this.
Perhaps you will understand my NSA partisanship better.
and i still think it passing strange for a fellow mathematician to profess such admiration for....lawyers.
;)

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi at January 23, 2006 3:20 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Matoko Kusanagi:

Matoko, you linked to a twenty-one page PDF file, which I'm not likely to read. Why don't you select out the portion that makes your case and post it here?

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at January 23, 2006 3:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

Dafydd, it is BIG type, you have excellent reading skills, and frankly, you need to read it all.
please.

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi at January 23, 2006 3:36 PM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

here's the the WaPo
but you'll get more from the pdf, hayden's actual words.
;)

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi at January 23, 2006 3:47 PM

The following hissed in response by: Patterico

How about the time that the paper ran an op-ed by Erwin Chemerinsky on the Pledge of Allegiance case in the Supreme Court without disclosing that he had worked on the case?

The above hissed in response by: Patterico at January 23, 2006 10:47 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Patterico:

Yep, exactly the same thing: the Los Angeles Times is infamous for failing to disclose significant and relevant facts in their taglines... facts that definitely would alter how readers perceive the op-ed or column in question (conflicts of interest, previous agitation on one side of a controversial issue, a direct connection with one of the principals, etc.).

I read that Chemerinsky thing on your site, because that was long, long after I dropped the Times -- which I believe was in 1999 or early 2000. Prior to that date, I had continued to subscribe only because of the comics pages!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at January 24, 2006 2:52 AM