Pat Dollard | Young Americans

This is a very interesting read. I shit you not.
~Bashman

Media Dishonesty Matters
By Randall Hoven
American Thinker

We are being fed false and misleading information, in matters big and small. It has come from trusted sources such as established newspapers, experienced journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners and Nobel Peace Prize winners. It has been going on for a long time, sometimes by carelessness and sometimes by deliberate lying. I have compiled a list of 101 such incidents.

Did you know that Time magazine and other news organizations had a Vietnamese communist on full-time staff in Vietnam during that war? Do you remember that ABC, CBS and NBC have all rigged cars or trucks with explosives or other devices to make them look dangerous on TV, or that Consumer Reports lied about the Suzuki Samurai enough to put it out of business? Do you know that multiple “veterans” of the Viet Nam and Iraq wars who told of atrocities there were never even in the military? Did you realize reputable news organizations such as the Boston Globe and Reuters cannot tell the difference between a real soldier and a toy doll, commercial pornography and soldiers committing rape, a burning tire dump and a bombed building, a fired and an unfired rifle round, or footage of the North Pole and a clip from the movie Titanic?

When it comes to President Bush, the media have lied about his National Guard service, lied about his serving a plastic turkey to troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving and then made a big deal about that phony story, lied about his speeches, quoted him by removing the words he actually used, and admitted they would use a harsher standard with him than his opponent John Kerry. To this day, they criticize his administration’s handling of the Katrina crisis, which was actually one of the most successful rescue and recovery efforts in history, but barely mention their own huge and egregious mistakes in reporting on that event.

My original lists were published in American Thinker on August 16 and August 20, 2007. Since then I have added several and subtracted a few.

The subject of my list is not just journalism, but any dishonesty as related to the public debate. For this reason I included more than journalists. Historians and other “non-fiction” authors especially could be included.

So here is the list, in alphabetical order. And for those who don’t know, or who would love to accuse me of plagiarism, there is a source for every item in the list, embedded in the name. Any quotes should be traceable to that source. (I’ve already been accused of plagiarism, but from those who read unauthorized copies that did not include the embedded links, instead of the original American Thinker article. That’s right: I was accused of plagiarism because I was plagiarized.) While I provide a source for every item, a single source is not usually sufficient to prove anything. You might have to do some of your own searching if you remain unconvinced of a party’s guilt. Space is limited.

The Dishonest 101

1. ABC, Food Lion story (1992). Fraudulent techniques and probable fabrication. Two ABC producers lied on their resumes to get jobs at Food Lion. They each wore a wig hiding a tiny lipstick-sized camera, and each carried a concealed microphone. It’s possible they shot footage of mishandled food by doing the mishandling themselves. Food Lion sued ABC and a jury awarded it $5.5 million.

2. ABC 20/20 “Exploding Fords” story (1978). Staged footage. Similar to the later NBC “exploding” GM trucks episode, ABC aired “grossly misleading crash videos and simulations, withheld the same sorts of material facts about the tests, and relied on the same dubious experts with the same ties to the plaintiffs bar… viewers were shown a crash fire and explosion without being told it had been started by an incendiary device.”

3. ABC 20/20, “Buckwheat” (of the Little Rascals) story. (1990). Fell for hoax. “In 1990 the ABC program 20/20 was hoaxed into believing that Billy “Buckwheat” Thomas was alive and working as a grocery bagger in Tempe, Arizona. (Thomas actually died in 1980.) A segment broadcast October 5 with narrator Hugh Downs featured an impostor.”

4. AFP/Yahoo News (2007). Fell for hoax/lie. Ran a picture with the caption “An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.” But the picture was of unfired cartridges, which could only have “hit her house” if they were thrown at it.

5. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press (2005). Lying/fabricating. In his sports column, he described alumni players at a basketball game who were not even there.

6. Stephen Ambrose, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. He was almost a book “factory”, writing eight books in five years. But that apparently came easier when parts were copied from other books, without attribution.

7. Pham Xuan An, Time (1960’s). Communist spy reporter. Pham Xuan An was a “Viet Cong colonel who worked as a reporter for U.S. news organizations during the Vietnam War while also spying for the communists… He was the first Vietnamese to be a full-time staff correspondent for a major U.S. publication, working primarily for Time magazine… his job as a spy was to uncover and report the plans of the South Vietnamese and U.S. military… he was considered the best Vietnamese reporter in the press corps.” He died in Viet Nam in 2006, where he had been “promoted to major general and was named a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces, with four military-exploit medals.”

8. Peter Arnett, CNN, NBC, National Geographic (1999-2003). Lying, bias, treasonous behavior. CNN fired him in 1999 for his reporting the Operation Tailwind story (see below). NBC and National Geographic fired him in March 2003 for being interviewed on Iraqi TV during war, in which he stated that the U.S. war plan had failed. “It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war,” said NBC.

9. Associated Press (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.

10. Doug Bandow, columnist (2005). Failure to disclose potential conflict of interest. “The Copley News Service revealed it had suspended syndicated columnist Doug Bandow for allegedly accepting payments from Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write positive stories about Abramoff’s clients.” Bandow said, “It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it.”

Click HERE for the rest of the list.