On Day to Day Mike Pesca has a report ‘Times’ Gets Faked Out on ‘Diary’ Entry : “The New York Times unwittingly put a phony story in their “Metropolitan Diary” feature recently.” This details the reaction by the Times to being conned into running a fake anecdote, not news, but a fake fluff piece.
After you listen, consider the reaction of the Times to Judith Miller and her reporting.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
The opinions expressed in Comments are those of the individuals making them. Truly absurd comments and opinions are subject to being cruelly mocked, but "flame wars" will take place on someone else's dime.
Your first comment, all comments with extensive links, and random comments that the software decides it doesn't like for no discernible reason will be held for moderation.
[Be aware that for unknown reasons the software rejects comments shorter than 15 characters, so if you want to leave a short comment fill the gap with periods ........]
2 comments
Oh, good grief; it’s a fucking prank, and the NYT should just get over it. [Note: the previous sentence fulfills my minimum Left-Wing Blogger’s Potty Mouth Quotient™ for the day.]
Does Michael Pollack (ph) realize what an ass he has made of himself and his supposedly respectable employer? One thinks not only of Judy Miller, as you mentioned, but also of right-wing bloggers who “out” lefty bloggers as a way of destroying their real lives. His disproportionate response is at about the same level IMHO. And… does he take no responsibility at all for the NYT’s gullibility?
I wonder if Andrea (ph) has considered suing, no, not the NYT, but Pollack himself. The fact that he explicitly threatened her career and went out of his way to involve several parties not intrinsically involved in the incident (probably using his NYT resources to obtain the information) sounds like it may be grounds for such a suit. But that would surely be expensive.
Or I suppose Andrea’s friends could simply find Pollack’s home phone number and publish it. That would certainly be a response in kind: disproportionate and disruptive of his daily life. But that would be wrong. I am NOT recommending that her friends saturate his home phone 24 hours a day with “wrong numbers” …
I seem to remember reading something about “motes” and “beams”, or possibly “dust specks” and “trees”, that related to proportionate responses.
They are so caught up in their own self-importance that they miss the fact that they are becoming obnoxious jerks.