October 17, 2003

Hewitt On LAT/NBC Boykin Manipulation

Hugh Hewitt has more on the increasingly vile backstory to the hit job on General Boykin:

The story behind the Times' story this morning is quite odd. In the Richard T. Cooper piece on the Times' front page it is stated that "Audio and videotapes of Boykin's appearances before religious groups over the last two years were obtained exclusively by NBC News, which reported on them Wednesday night on the 'Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.'" This is clearly intended to convey the idea that the story is derivative of the NBC reporting.

An MSNBC story on the General tells the story differently:"NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin, who's been investigating Boykin for the Los Angeles Times, says the general casts the war on terror as a religious war."

I interviewed Arkin today and discovered that he developed the story on his own initiative as a columnist for the Times, and he decided with the full knowledge and approval of editors at the Los Angeles Times to provide NBC News with the story so that NBC could run the story before the paper ran Arkin's op-ed and the front-page story. He stated that the idea was to get the story some pop by using the audio and video.

The Los Angeles Times thus gave away a scoop on a story that ended up on its front page. Why would it do that? It may have a precedent in the world of journalism, but to me it stinks. Didn't the Times engage in manipulation of the news to increase its impact on the audience? Or did the paper need cover for the story and gave it to NBC in order to generate that cover

Check HughHewitt.com for full column.

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UPDATE: Living national treasure, James Lileks, gets the whole thing down in a few choice paragraphs in The Bleat

I might have gotten my can hauled into the office for this:

"Boykin is also in a senior Pentagon policymaking position, and its a serious mistake to allow a man who believes in a Christian 'jihad' to hold such a job." It's a quote from an LA Times piece about this Pentagon official accused of speaking honestly; you can find the whole story at Hugh's site. I'll leave the particulars for others; I'm interested in the sleight-of-hand the columnist pulled here. The guy he's quoting didn't use the word "jihad."The columnist put the word in quotes to signal that the guy didn't use that word, you see.

Got it. Oh, I can imagine that conversation with the boss I'd have if I did this:

So you wrote that he believed in a Christian jihad.

(Coyly channeling Michael Palin in the dock as a professional Cardinal Richelieu impersonator) Ah did that thing.

But he didn't say that.

Exactly? Well,he meant, it though.

He meant it.

Yes, and that's why I put it in quotes.

Quotes. Which are usually reserved for, you know, quotes.

Right, but I used them here to set the word apart. You know, show that it was a paraphrase.

By using the means we use to indicate direct transcriptions.

Well, sometimes, sure. But I meant them more as, you know, those air quotes you do with your fingers?

So in the future should we have a picture of you with your fingers in the air to indicate that the quote is not, actually, a quote?

Look, the point is true. The guy wants a jihad; look at what he said -

Why look at what he said, when we can just ask you to describe the general aroma? You moron! There's one standard in this business, and that these little curvy things, these dots with hooks, mean we are using the words of the person we're talking about. WORDS.

Posted by Vanderleun at October 17, 2003 12:49 PM
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