Freeper media activism: usual very casual approach to truth

[swag]

From today's NYT "Public Editor" column

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/weekinreview/14bott.html?pagewanted=1&hp

"Now I'm going to pick on the worst habits of certain anti-Times critics lurking on the Web. Last Sunday, an item appeared on FreeRepublic.com under the headline "FReeper Call to Action! Help make N.Y. Times correct the phony setup outrage story of Bush ads." Posted by "Doug from Upland," it exhorted readers of the self-described "Premier Conservative News Forum" to call Washington correspondent Richard W. Stevenson and demand that he "correct the record." Stevenson's apparent offense was a March 5 story he and Jim Rutenberg had written about negative reactions to Republican ads invoking the events of 9/11. Stevenson's telephone number was reproduced in the posting in large black letters.

Soon Stevenson's phone was ringing like an alarm clock, his voice mail filling up, he told me via e-mail, with "messages that impugned my professionalism and patriotism." Only one person, he said, bothered to leave a name and a phone number.

Had they all done so, Stevenson might have called them back and told them neither he nor Rutenberg had written what Doug from Upland had attributed to them. An Australian newspaper had run a story that included details from several different news services but left the Times writers' bylines in place. The material that provoked the posting and the calls had never appeared in The Times; informed that this was the case, Doug replaced his earlier exhortation with an apology to Stevenson.

I've been through several escapades like this one, launched from various ideological precincts scattered around the Web. They all conclude with the same lesson: It's all right to knock The Times. It's even your privilege to hate it. But it's always useful to read it first."

[boobooday]

1. Help Freepers Correct Their Phony Outrage

Over the stories they THINK are printed in the NY Times! Help them learn to read!



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[Old and In the Way]

2. Doug from Upland - a famous wack-job poster on FR.

They don't come much more bizarre than this guy.

[grannylib]

3. Repukes are notoriously unencumbered by facts...takes too long, and it

overloads their single brain cells to think about anything beyond the ideology they have been suckered into believing.
No wonder brainwashing is so effective on them; it can't take very long...