It appears the reporting done by Roger Simon (not the bloger Roger L. Simon) is a bit more then a simple hit piece against Fred. It may just violate some serious journalistic ethics: (via Confederate Yankee)
Simon quoted Thompson as stating that “I’ve got a silly hat rule.”
As the CBS video clearly showed, that was only part of Thompson’s statement.
What Thompson actually said was, “I’ve got a silly hat rule that I’m about to violate.“
Thompson then takes the Chief’s helmet and starts to raise it if he
is going to put it on, and then says, while laughing, “I ain’t gonna do
it… I ain’t gonna do it.”At this point Jeri Thompson steps in and Fred puts the helmet on
her. Throughout the video, you can hear those assembled laughing,
including Chief Dan McKenzie, who handed Thompson the helmet to begin
with. McKenzie is shown smiling widely at the end of the clip.We don’t know if the entire Politico article is grossly
unfair in the way it characterized Senator Thompson’s swing through
Waverly, Iowa, but we do know, thanks to the CBS News video, that not
only was Simon’s editorializing of what occurred in the Waverly Fire
Department mischaracterized, but that he doctored a quote to make his
article appear all the more damning.Simon is the Chief Political Columnist for The Politico–one that they tout as one of “Washington’s most visible and experienced journalists.”– and should know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that doctoring quotes is highly unethical by any journalistic standard.
Or at least their own standards as The Politico’s mission statement states:
There is a difference, however, between voice and advocacy. That’s one
traditional journalism ideal we fully embrace. There is more need than
ever for reporting that presents the news fairly, not through an
ideological prism. One of the most distressing features of public life
recently has been the demise of shared facts. Warring partisans — many
of whom take their news from sources that cater to and amplify their
existing opinions — live in separate zones of reality. In such a
climate, every news story is viewed as either weapon or shield in a
nonstop ideological war. Our answer to this will be journalism that
insists on the primacy of facts over ideology.
In fact, A Second Hand Conjecture found another instance of a Roger Simon piece reporting his opinion of the event as fact. Some mission statement guys.
If you quote someone it means that this is EXACTLY what the person said. Roger Simon doctored the quote by leaving out the final 5 words to the sentence. He then goes on to misrepresent the event as some sour, awkward moment which if you view the video it most certainly is not. If this doesn’t violate some code of ethics by a journalist then I don’t know what would.
The problem with this kind of conduct, if left unchecked, is that people like Allah and friends at Hot Air, and other high traffic sites, will buy into it and ensure the story goes viral. After awhile it just becomes a fact, unless us bloggers find out the truth and do what we can to stamp it out.
I’m telling you. Can we trust the MSM on anything anymore? They use insurgents to report on stories in a war zone, they use pseudonyms for sources without letting their readers know they are using the pseudonym (and along the way report a event that never happened), they report on atrocities across Iraq which never happened and then never retract their stories, and they print political hit pieces on candidates they don’t like without ever telling the readers of their bias.
Is it any wonder the MSM is going the way of the dinosaur?
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