"Daily Howler's" reply to NYT's calling DU'ers Tsunami Conpiracy Theorists

[KoKo]

Yes, this is the latest battle in the Times’ newest war—a war the paper has declared on the Net. If we may now engage in a bit of speculation, it has become fairly clear that some in Times Nation have just about had it with this rude medium, a medium in which wildly ill-informed people dare to challenge great orgs like the Times. Result? The paper began to publish silly attacks on the “blogosphere” late last year, and Schwartz continues the onslaught this morning. The Times is eager to let readers know how stupid those folks on the Net really are. They used to rant in their corner bars! But now, they’ve been given computers!

(SNIP)

Yes, people like Schwartz are very brave when it comes to targeting folks on the Net. They search for silly statements by anonymous shlubs, then rush the odd statements into print, letting readers understand how idiotic the Net really is. But how brave and bold are fellows like Schwartz when it comes to influential crackpots? As we read Schwartz’s piece this morning, our thoughts drifted back to the Times’ brave conduct when it came to those cranks called the Swift Boat Vets—the cranks who transformed a White House election while fellows like Schwartz sat and stared.

Ah yes, the Swift Boat Vets—a group of crackpots with powerful interests behind them, a group which actually changed an election! When John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi published Unfit for Command, it was clear—to anyone who read it—that the pair were deeply kooky themselves. The book self-contradicts on page after page, and its gonzo chapter on Kerry-the-commie was straight from a mid-50s fever swamp. Any sensible person who read it would have known that its authors had emerged from those corner bars and were now engaging in “crackpot theorizing” and “ill-informed rumor-mongering” right out in public! And this, of course, is the very problem which Schwartz bravely types on today.

ttp://www.dailyhowler.com/dh010305.html

[sniffa]

1. hah!

that's beautifuL. :D

[gratuitous]

2. Yeah, Bob Somerby's terrific

I don't agree with everything he says, but he's spot-on when he compares the mainstream media's high dudgeon over blogging with their supine attitude towards the Swift Liars. But then, taking on a well-financed, powerful group of fudgers might be risky. Smacking down some guy with a keyboard and a website is ever so much easier.

The Times, like most bullies, is very careful in selecting its targets.

[lebkuchen]

3. The NYT gets ridiculed on this sight every half hour. So what.

Its editors are becoming as thin-skinned as the Chimp.

[Old and In the Way]

4. We police our own.

In the marketplace of internet news, if people don't get the story and the facts right, they lose credibility. Who polices the NYT and corporate media? Fot the most part, it seems they have their own agenda that spins the news the way their investors want it to be spun.

[tigereye]

5. to be fair, when I did read the actual article in the NYT

( took me a while to get to it)

It did mention that the DU discussion that was noted, did have reasonable elements and comments as it progressed.

[otohara]

6. Kick

[Kelvin Mace]

7. Unfortunately, the story was edited in such a way

that the complete issue was altered.

I posted on this here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2901509

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[anarchy1999]

8. Anyone here ever hear of the Bolanos Brothers and their road trip

for vets and Kerry? I didn't think so.

http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/1048951.html

Texas Veterans For Kerry Launch Four-State Swing In Texas

A group of Texas veterans who support John Kerry’s presidential bid launched a four-state swing on Friday in Laredo.

They’re trying to drum up support for Kerry among those who have served in the military.

Their journey, called "The Last Patrol," includes one week of
events in cities across Texas, including Waco, Killeen and College Station.

The veterans will also travel through New Mexico and Arizona en route to a final rally in San Diego shortly before Election Day.

The effort was the idea of the four Bolanos brothers of El Paso, all of
whom served in the Vietnam War and who are now staunch Kerry
backers.

Rick Bolanos says an organized effort to discredit Kerry's Navy
service in Vietnam in the late 1960's is an insult to all
veterans.

Veterans For Kerry Texas Schedule

Too bad the DNC and the Kerry campaign chose to ignore them.

October 13, 2004

Four brothers from Texas who served in Vietnam ended a four-state tour in San Diego on Monday night, urging hundreds of people aboard the carrier Midway to reject George W. Bush and elect John Kerry president of the United States.


Advertisement

Calling themselves Veterans for America, the four Bolanos brothers – Rick, Louis, Ben and Bill – organized the countercampaign to the pro-Bush group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which produced a series of stinging television spots this summer questioning Kerry's Vietnam Warrecord.

The brothers, who toured Texas, New Mexico and Arizona,were the highlight of a political rally that for more than two hoursfeatured numerous Democratic candidates for state and federal offices and a passionate speech from Rick Bolanos describing his Vietnam experience.

"Freedom has a price, and the price of freedom is your life," Bolanos said, recounting what his father told him and his brothers decades ago, when he urged them to join the fight against communism.

Bolanos said he became incensed when he heard the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads downplaying the seriousness of Kerry's wounds.

The Texas veteran told the story of one young man he met who bled to death from a small shrapnel wound, an injury not much different from the one that earned Kerry one of three Purple Hearts.

"If he had lived, and he had run for president of the United States, how would these swift boat veterans, how would the president of the United States, denigrate his service?" Bolanos said.

Bolanos criticized Bush and most of the president's senior advisers for avoiding military service when they were younger. "This administration hasn't earned the right to denigrate. They haven't earned the right to disparage" any veterans, he said.

Midge Costanza, a former adviser to President Jimmy Carter who lives in Escondido, told the crowd she is embarrassed to be an American with Bush in the White House.

"I want our country back!" she shouted to thunderous applause. "It's not the country I know."

Within hours of the event, Veterans for America organizers posted a video documentary of the speeches on their Web site.

Elizabeth Hansen of La Jolla said it was nothing like any political rally she had ever attended.

"The wildest cheering and applause was for the veterans," said Hansen yesterday, who paid $15 for a ticket. "People had tears in their eyes."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/federal/20041013-9999-6m13swift.html

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:8tj9LtupJf4J:www.veteransforamerica.com/+veteransforamerica&hl=en

It was a crying shame they were ignored, these four brave brothers could have buried the Swift Boat Boys in a heartbeat!!

[Old and In the Way]

9. Exactly.

We got to hear the Swift Boat Liars nightly in the M$M....but their polar opposites suffocated from lack of media oxygen. Same with the AWOL story. Play up the question of authenticity, play down the facts.

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. This is so great. I wonder how wide an audience it reached?

At first, I naturally assumed that the Times article reached such a hugely greater number of people that nothing could touch it but another MSM article. But the way that things are passed around the net, this rebuttal is NOT invisble. And it's GREAT.

Take THAT you smug, condescending, boneheaded jerks!!!

I do wonder how the reporter originally wrote the article vs. how it was edited by other people.

[Kelvin Mace]

11. It compared and contrasted DU

with another site on the right (three guesses) and showed quotes from their site that was not terribly flattering.

The gist of the story was the advantage blogs have over the MSM since they can be self-correcting in real time. While you do see wild-eyed conspiracy mongering on DU and other major web sites, you also see reasonable people and experts step in to counter with fact.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[Nothing Without Hope]

13. Yes, and that is a critically important difference

Here people can actually LEARN and fact-check their theories and ask question with a reasonable expectation of getting an answer that makes sense or a link a relevant site. It's INTERACTIVE, and it's hooked directly into the whole world. That is diametrically opposed to the "we write it, therefore it's all true" school typified by the rather self-satisfied Times. And the internet sites also have access to the Times itself as well as all the reporting by the MSM in addition to other sources. There are also a range of true experts standing by to chime in. The discussions demonstrate different viewpoints and the strengths and weakesses in them. It's a circus and a party and a university and something else quite unprecedented. It's alive.

If there were two classrooms typifying these different approaches, which group of students would be better informed? (yes, that's a rhetorical question!)

[Pithy Cherub]

12. NYT got there widdle feewings hurt...

pretty upset about it all - NOT! At some point DU's public subscription numbers are eating into theirs and this is an initial feather punch to stem the tide.

[Kelvin Mace]

14. Actually,

I don't think the NYT management gives a rat's ass. The guy who wrote the story is bummed because what he wrote is not what was printed and now he looks like a major asshole.

Not everybody at the NYT is Judith Miller.

Let's not lose our humanity. If we do, we become the enemy.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[Pithy Cherub]

15. Actually, haven't lost mine.

The NYT once had a reputation that was pretty much unassailable for accuracy. It is very hard to defend a press outlet that did little to investigate whether we should go to war with trumped up facts or the credibility of a Jason Blair and on and on... and makes a one time apology. From big issues to discussing a discussion board, dare say there were more important things that are left uncovered in the interest of humanity. Ok ;)

[Carni]

16. I still don't see what the big deal is--

I frankly didn't see and still don't see what the big deal is...

So what? A DU poster mused about what could cause an earthquake and if it could be created by bad environmental policies, or whatever.

I have wondered this myself and I know that I have posted some material containing oddball theories and questions here and other places regarding other topics over the years.

DU indeed contains news... but it also contains a lot of posts where people exchange sources, compare notes and even occasionally talk about out of the mainstream theories.

To my knowledge DU has never claimed to be a "news publication" and to my knowledge none of us are getting paid to sit here and shoot the shit.

This is just the big media doing it's best to downgrade the blogs etc because let's face it their own reporting has been a joke for over four years (again Judith Miller and her bush admin whoring comes to mind...where were the checks and balances on THAT?)

[Lena]

17. I agree.

So what? A DU poster mused about what could cause an earthquake and if it could be created by bad environmental policies, or whatever.

***

Like you said, so what? Isn't DU here for discussions? On any subject?
I sure could be wrong, because I usually read and don't post so much; but that's my take. Any subject up for discussion is fine to me.

[lib_1138]

19. They seem to be holding us to a journalistic standard

which is unfair since some people just like to "vent."

I mean, even if it is a "silly" theory, why should it be held to some sort of magnifying glass?

Jeeze, these people are worried about losing their jobs, so they are busy pointing out the "deficiencies" of Joe/Jane Public posting what is in their heart.

[KoKo]

21. Excellent points Carni...We don't get paid to report and aren't pretending

we are a Mainstream News Site. This is a Discussion Board with Forums. To cherry pick individual posts as reflective of all Discussion shows that MSM is anxious to discredit "Online Discussion Boards" which are gaining readership by sucessfully parsing and criticizing MSM's own faulty, flawed (and in the case of NYT's and WaPO "stovepiped") reporting from the White House and RNC."

[Carni]

22. I have posted some half baked remarks and questions on occasion

But if I put something in "breaking news" or I claim it's fact...
I check and recheck and double check and then I STILL suggest that people follow the pertinent links to see for themselves.

What next? Will faux and the NYT's be trolling around in the lounge? (I have read stuff there that I didn't even *get* LOL)

[Stephanie]

18. They should look to Judith Miller and Ahmed Chalabi

if they want to talk about “crackpot theorizing” and “ill-informed rumor-mongering”

[Carni]

23. You've got that right

I myself after researching Chalabi's background for months posted several of my "conspiracy theories" about him being a big fat fraud.

Gee, wait a minute...I would have been right!

I wonder if the NYT's or Faux will do a feature piece on my old posts? (I guess that would be a negative lol)

[burythehatchet]

20. Screw the Times

our Lounge has more factual news than that dog poop platform.