Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 179

Bezos and Butthead

Like others, I have explored Richard Cohen's amazingly offensive column at the Wash Post today, in a piece at The Nation. There are now loud and prominent calls for his dismissal or retirement and even a petition. I've dubbed the affair "Bezos and Butthead." Almost worse, here's tweet a few hours ago by the paper's (verified) publisher, Katharine Weymouth: "Brilliant: richard Cohen on why Cruz beats Christie in iowa: http://wapo.st/1bwCzT7 "   If you don't know, the publisher is the niece of Talking Heads great Tina Weymouth.   UPDATE #1 Much-maligned (justly) Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt defends the column, saying he would just edit one sentence differently.

UPDATE #2  Cohen defends himself to Huff Post.  Swears he's not a racist (who ever admits it?).  Says, falsely, that he was only expressing the views of  right-wing Tea Partiers (actually, he used the word "conventional" in his own voice).   Purports that he is still a "liberal."  And so on.  Clue to why this happened?  "I get plastered" he admits.  Well, he means, by critics, but it's also only defense for what he wrote.

"60 Minutes" and "Pissing Off the Left"

Lloyd Grove, one of my old Crawdaddy writers, at the Daily Beast joins those saying "60 Minutes" hasn't done nearly enough to probe its Benghazi scandal.  And why not?

One salient difference from the 2004 experience is that nine years ago, the network was being targeted by an organized campaign by conservative activists; this time, the attackers are largely liberal bloggers and press critics like David Brock of Media Matters. “It’s a lot safer pissing off the left than pissing off the right,” said a veteran journalist with hard experience in these issues. “The left raps your knuckles, and the right cuts off your hand and serves it to you for lunch.”

But the main reason will be because many media experts/writers--such as Nicholas Lemann, quoted by Grove--just don't think it's that big a deal and CBS just needs to do a little tinkering.  I'll write more on this later.

Jon and Stephen: 16 Minutes on '60 Minutes'

To no one's surprise, The Daily Show and Colbert Report both took on the 60 Minutes Benghazi scandal last night in their opening segments.  Jon titled his "Meh Culpa" and Stephen brought on his own fake guest--Sam Waterston--and issues his own "we're very sorry."  See it all below:


The Colbert Report
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The Daily Show
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Purple Prose Did Not Set Off Red Flare

Mother Jones got excerpt from the now-withdrawn book by serial liar Dylan Davies, a wildly improbable tale about a meeting with FBI agents and prosecutor.  "The guy who was the most choked-up among them embraced me. The lady prosecutor gave me a hug as well."  Writer concludes:

Davies' improbable account of FBI agents weeping and spouting grateful platitudes only underscores how negligent 60 Minutes was in vetting its story. Even if the FBI wouldn't confirm Davies' account, where are "all those photos" from the scene he claimed to have given them? Why didn't they corroborate his tale with others who'd been there? Indeed, exactly how and why the network got so duped remains a very open question.

Shot Down Like Dogs

An Iranian rock musician apparently shot and killed three others in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, today, and at least two of them were in this band, the Yellow Dogs, below.  The third musician in interesting video here. They were prominent enough to have played at SXSW.  Then the gunman killed himself.

More Laughs from Bill Keller

Bill Keller, the NYT's greatest humor columnist since Russell Baker (not counting Bill Kristol), is back with a piece claiming that President Obama is "under water."  In fact, he is not just sinking but on "the bottom."  Talk about pot meeting kettle!  Keller claims the public is "numbed and disgusted" and, believe it or not, he is not referring to his readers.

Yes, Obama deserves plenty of  blame, but Keller apparently has no shame--well, we knew this before, given his embrace of Judy Miller,  and many attempts to defend his hawkishness on Iraq.  And this new column just happens to appear a day after a widely-acclaimed piece by the paper's public editor revealed Keller (again) as a spineless tool for holding, almost forever,  the James Risen piece in 2004 that revealed the Bush team's illegal eavesdropping.   Just a weeksago Keller wanted to bomb Syria first and ask questions later--advice fortunately scorned by the "underwater" President, and now we have those chem weapons on the way out, plus an opening with Iran.   Perhaps Obama has a few words on how the Times might "salvage" Keller.

Journalists Hit "60 Minutes" Stonewall

After last night's 90-second "apology" by Lara Logan on 60 Minutes--the show spent more time on photos of the Beatles with their wives and kids in 1964--it's certain that CBS wants to turn the page.  An insider even confirmed this was the case, according to the NYT.  No internal or independent probe.  No disciplining of reporter or producer.  Clearly CBS is terrified of where a probe might lead--for example, IDing why they did this story in the first place and didn't vet their source.  (See my piece at The Nation on the CBS News chief's background as honcho at Fox News throughout the Bush years--and Lara Logan revealing her own bias last year.)

Only a strong push from other journalists will push CBS to launch such an investigation and discipline staff and producer.   I'll log below what key journos are saying.  Many are making strong statements, although some are still giving CBS points for making any sort of limited apology--as if they could not do that after their source was thoroughly discredited.  Others are presuming--with no evidence that I've seen--that CBS will make a much longer statement later.

Jay Rosen:  "Two outstanding features of the 60 Minutes correction: written in the passive voice, edits out the role played by other news organizations."  Frank Rich:  "Failure of @ CBSNews to report how Lara Logan was duped for 'a year' (her claim) by a Benghazi hoax guarantees others will do it for them."  Dan Kennedy: "Pathetically inadequate."  Mike Signorile:  "60 Minutes 'apology' — or 'mistake,' as Logan put it— is pathetic. Needs full investigation, ramifications."  Gabriel Sherman: "A show w/ reporting legacy of 60 Minutes should have turned its reporting muscle back on itself to explain to viewers what happened, and why."  Roger Simon of Politico:  "60 Minutes needs to do an 'Anatomy of a Mistake' piece on its Benghazi story, not just a 'gee, we're sorry' mini-apology."

David Folkenflik of NPR "CBS gets points for a) apology b) not using own airwaves vs critics, as Rather did amid Bush memo fiasco. But concerns remain. CBS needs to offer transparent account of how the process went off the rails. Has not happened yet."  Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:  "I just watched the 60 Minutes "correction"/apology tonight and thought was pretty amazing for its brevity, lack of substance and general obfuscation... If you'd come to this 90 seconds without knowing anything that had happened over the last couple weeks, you would probably think that one person interviewed in a 60 Minutes segment may have been misleading in some of the things he said."  Michael Moore:  "You can tell the media is liberal by the way CBS fired Lara Logan but never did anything to Dan Rather."

Eric Boehlert:  "fact CBS won't open up shop to independent review just proves how terrified execs R of truth behind Benghazi fiasco coming out."  Will Bunch:  "So '60 Minutes' apology totally inadequate -- now what? We know CBS is terrified of right wingers...they need to be terrified of rest of us."  David Brock of Media Matters: “This evening's '60 Minutes' response was wholly inadequate and entirely self-serving. The network must come clean" and appoint independent panel to probe. Jeff Greenfield: "Will CBS investigate and make results public, as it and other nets did in past? So far this is a 'modified limited hangout.'" Blake Hounshell: "mistakes were made...."  Clara Jeffery, editor of Mother Jones:  "apology is weak. Not covered: promoting source pubbed by CBS imprint run by Mary Matalin. Or failure to check w/ FBI sources."


Craig Silverman of Regret the Error commented for the NYT:  “Aside from the fact that it struck a very passive tone and pushed the responsibility onto the source, Dylan Davies, it said nothing about how the show failed to properly vet the story of an admitted liar. There are basic questions left unanswered about how the program checked out what Davies told them, and where this process failed.  In the short term, this will confirm the worst suspicions of people who don’t trust CBS News.  In the long term, a lot will depend on how tough and transparent CBS can be in finding out how this happened — especially when there were not the kind of tight deadline pressures that sometimes result in errors.”  He also produced a valuable comparison of Dan Rather and Lara Logan "60 Minutes" scandals. 
Jay Rosen added a second comment at his blog:  "Attention now turns to Jeff Fager, as the person at CBS (executive producer of '60 Minutes’) who approved the final cut of a deeply flawed report starring a source CBS knew to have lied to his employer, and the executive at CBS, boss of the news division, who decided that it was time to move on from that mistake. Can that conflict of interest stand? So far it looks like it will."

'60 Minutes' Tonight With Mini-Culpa on Bogus Benghazi Report

Two days after their "apology" Friday morning, "60 Minutes" covered their bogus reporting on the Benghazi scandal in their regular show tonight.  It came after Jeff Fager, the executive producer, told Michael Calderone of Huff Post that, yes, Dylan Davies had told them he lied to his boss about where he was on the fateful night.  And yet went ahead with their report, without seemingly tough vetting, after that.  Until now,  CBS had suggested that they didn't know about Davies' story to his employer.   Here's my reporting and updates so far today.

Here's brief write-up on tonight's "apology" by Lara Logan.  Now "very sorry" but simply "a mistake."  Pathetic.  We learned more about the Beatles and their wives in 1964 than we did about the Benghazi scandal on "60 Minutes" tonight.  Clearly they will try to tough it out and not even do a major probe--as the NYT in its story tonight on latest "apology" reveals it was told.    Journalists must forced them to investigate.

Media writers and others are starting to weigh in on Twitter.  Jay Rosen:  "Two outstanding features of the 60 Minutes correction: written in the passive voice, edits out the role played by other news organizations."  Frank Rich:  "Failure of @ CBSNews to report how Lara Logan was duped for 'a year' (her claim) by a Benghazi hoax guarantees others will do it for them."  Dan Kennedy: "Pathetically inadequate."  Mike Signorile:  "60 Minutes 'apology' — or 'mistake,' as Logan put it— is pathetic. Needs full investigation, ramifications."  Gabriel Sherman: "A show w/ reporting legacy of 60 Minutes should have turned its reporting muscle back on itself to explain to viewers what happened, and why."  Roger Simon of Politico:  "60 Minutes needs to do an 'Anatomy of a Mistake' piece on its Benghazi story, not just a 'gee, we're sorry' mini-apology."

David Folkenflik of NPR, very weakly: "CBS gets points for a) apology b) not using own airwaves vs critics, as Rather did amid Bush memo fiasco. But concerns remain."  Eric Boehlert:  "fact CBS won't open up shop to independent review just proves how terrified execs R of truth behind Benghazi fiasco coming out."  Will Bunch:  "So '60 Minutes' apology totally inadequate -- now what? We know CBS is terrified of right wingers...they need to be terrified of rest of us."  David Brock of Media Matters: “This evening's '60 Minutes' response was wholly inadequate and entirely self-serving. The network must come clean" and appoint independent panel to probe. Jeff Greenfield: "Will CBS investigate and make results public, as it and other nets did in past? So far this is a 'modified limited hangout.'" Blake Hounshell: "mistakes were made...."  Clara Jeffery, editor of Mother Jones:  "apology is weak. Not covered: promoting source pubbed by CBS imprint run by Mary Matalin. Or failure to check w/ FBI sources."

Craig Silverman commented for the NYT:  “Aside from the fact that it struck a very passive tone and pushed the responsibility onto the source, Dylan Davies, it said nothing about how the show failed to properly vet the story of an admitted liar. There are basic questions left unanswered about how the program checked out what Davies told them, and where this process failed.  In the short term, this will confirm the worst suspicions of people who don’t trust CBS News.  In the long term, a lot will depend on how tough and transparent CBS can be in finding out how this happened — especially when there were not the kind of tight deadline pressures that sometimes result in errors.”
Jay Rosen added a second comment at his blog:  "Attention now turns to Jeff Fager, as the person at CBS (executive producer of '60 Minutes’) who approved the final cut of a deeply flawed report starring a source CBS knew to have lied to his employer, and the executive at CBS, boss of the news division, who decided that it was time to move on from that mistake. Can that conflict of interest stand? So far it looks like it will."

'Doonesbury' Strip Killed?

Well-known writer and longtime Arkansas resident Gene Lyons reported on Facebook that this Doonsebury strip was killed today by the major paper in his state, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, confirmed here.   I'll check to see if there's a mechanical, not political, explanation, and if other papers axed.

Houston, We Have a Shooting Problem

Gunfire broke out at house party in Houston leaving two dead and at least 20 others shot, now in hospital.  Two gunmen sought.   Video here.   UPDATE: The two dead were high school students.  Authorities blaming social media partly--party was promoted on Twitter and word spread.