I'm Sure Hugh Hewitt Will Be Very Upset

It hasn't received nearly as much attention as the 60 Minutes imbroglio, but an article filled with fabricated quotes was posted on the Fox News website last week. An excerpt:

Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday….

Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.

"I'm metrosexual -- he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

A "metrosexual" is defined as an urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.

Fox has retracted the story, explaining that it "was based on a reporter's partial script that had been written in jest and should not have been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice." The reporter in question was Carl Cameron.

Joshua Micah Marshall still has some questions about the affair. He also notes another recent boo-boo at the Fox campaign desk, in which the network was taken in by a tale more obviously phony than any forged memo.

Comments

[Bill]

Oooooh... Some reporters report bullshit and some politicians tell lies...

Tell me something I don't know.

(No offense intended Jesse, I'm just so bored with stories about the media.)

[Dan]

It hasn't received nearly as much attention as the 60 Minutes imbroglio

Well, yeah -- Fox immediately retracted the story, admitted that the quotes were fake, and apologized. CBS is still trying to prove that the forged documents it used are genuine. Nixon showed us that it's not the scandal that hurts you -- it's the cover-up.

[Mark S.]

It would be nice to see if the right-wing radio squawk shows even mention this, much less give it as much time as Rathergate, the "draft hoax", and the false story about Bush supporters booing his request to include Bill Clinton in their prayers when he went in for his surgery.

Of course, I doubt it.

[anon]

"Well, yeah -- Fox immediately retracted the story,"

CBS was fooled by forged documents, but FOX fabricated the phony quotes. So, why the leniency on Fox? I'm sure it has nothing to do with them being the mouth piece of the right-wing.

[thoreau]

I think we need to put this all in perspective by remembering that Kerry would be much worse.

[E-Rock]

Probably because this is the comparison:

Fox: Self-inflicted fuck up, implying Kerry is a pussy. Admited, retracted.

CBS: Self-inflicted fuck up, implying Bush was imcompetent and failed to fullfill his requirements to his country. Denied, denied, denied, insulted those accusing them, denied, denied, admited that maybe they got taken, still denied. Shut up and hoping this all goes away.

[crap-action-jackson]

The important thing to remember is that, while the gists of both fabricated stories are true, Kerry is a dick.

[J]

anon,

Well, _FOX_ (as in the higher ups) didn't fabricate the phony quotes. Someone working for Fox did. It still doesn't make them look good, but it's an important distinction.

Having said that, how fucking stupid do they have to be to accept as face value those quotes? Do they not seem totally implausible? One could argue (and maybe this is what you're implying) that it strains credulity that someone at Fox would see these quotes and not immediately become suspicious that they're the jokes they so obviously are. But then maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

[andy]

"The important thing to remember is that, while the gists of both fabricated stories are true, Kerry is a dick."

They're both dicks.

[Bill]

They're both dirty dicks. Cover them with condoms and we'll all be better off.

[Jor]

Actually, Fox's star political correspondant, responsnible for covering the Kerry campaign pulled the quotes out of his ass. NO BIAS THERE. At all. CBS got fooled by someone else. And was stubborn about it. The quotes fox went with, were made up by themselves. Not only that, they put up another story, the same day, with more made up shit. TWO STORIES in one day.

CBS isn't going to say anything bad about Dear Leader, let's see Fox take that same vow and shut the fuck up about Kerry. I'll call that even.

[Jor]

Oh, btw, Hewit is a gigantic HACK. like complete RNC operative. Why anyone listens to him, other htan to get official Bush campaign info, is beyond me.

[thoreau]

They're both dirty dicks.

Given the way that they fuck us on April 15, I'm just hoping they aren't covered in Santorum...

[Kikki]

Speaking of dirty dicks and media, what's up with the BlogAd for "Kikki, an erotic account of life in public radio"? If there's one group's erotic escapades I don't want to read about, it's public radio. Now excuse me while I try to cleanse my mind of the image of Terry Gross and Garrison Keillor going at it.

[J]

I just followed thoreau's link to the "Spreading Santorum" page, and Savage links to Hit and Run for referring to Santorum as "the frothy mixture" in an entry. Reason has really hit the big time now. If only the comment had appeared in his weekly column, read by hundreds of thousands of perverts and deviants, myself included. Well, I guess maybe the demographics here probably wouldn't actually change that much....

[J]

"what's up with the BlogAd for "Kikki, an erotic account of life in public radio"?"

I'm intrigued! As an NPR junkie, I spend most of my day imagining Bob Edwards getting it on with Diane Rehm, or Carl Kasell getting it on with Tavis Smiley, or the Car Talk guys getting it on with _everybody_. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can get any details about the book without buying it. Back to my sweet, sweet imagination....

[Dan]

CBS was fooled by forged documents, but FOX fabricated the phony quotes. So, why the leniency on Fox?

Because CBS (a) wasn't fooled, (b) covered up the fact that they conspired with Kerry campaign associates to produce the report, (c) attacked the people who caught them, and (d) still don't admit they lied.

[thoreau]

Because CBS (a) wasn't fooled

Really? That's a significant accusation.

[DanInAlabama]

While Killian?s Secretary said she did not type ?those memos? she said that the information in them was accurate.
I could care less that Carl Cameron made up these quote, he said it was a joke, and I take him at his word since his reporting is very often a joke.
Cameron?s wife worked for the Bush election team. Do you think CBS could get away with allowing Dan Rather to interview any politician running for president if Rather?s wife was on said politician?s election team? It?s just fine at FOX News.

[joe]

thoreau, that is the most police euphemism for "bullshit" I've ever seen.

I have to use that. "&*%$#$#@ you, joe, you#@!$#@ mother %$#&^%$#@!"

"Well, that is a significant accusation."

[Dan]

"Because CBS (a) wasn't fooled"

Really? That's a significant accusation

Not really. Actually, has CBS actually claimed they were fooled? Last I heard Rather was sticking to the weasel-worded excuse that they hadn't been able to verify the documents yet.

Nobody over the age of 30 could have looked at those documents without immediately thinking "these don't look like they came from a typewriter". Combine that with the fact that the slightest amount of investigation reveals that, indeed, there is virtually no way they could have come from a typewriter (nobody has managed to reproduce the document on a typewriter yet), the fact that the CBS reporters are experienced journalists, the fact that the documents came from a Kerry associate with a history of making fradulent accusations, and the fact that CBS remains unwilling to come clean, and I think it is completely reasonable to say that they weren't fooled.

While Killian?s Secretary said she did not type ?those memos? she said that the information in them was accurate

Which would be an interesting bit of hearsay evidence if it wasn't for the fact that the secretary had already said, a week earlier, that she couldn't remember anything about Bush or his service in the Guard.

Perhaps it was seared -- seared! -- in her memory?

[Pedro]

Um... that excerpt and what it links to, read like an Onion article. How can something that reads so much like a parody be considered a fabrication?

[Josh]

Do you think CBS could get away with allowing Dan Rather to interview any politician running for president if Rather?s wife was on said politician?s election team? It?s just fine at FOX News.

It's not like Rather's daughter is a Democratic activist/fundraiser or anything, right?

[Ammonium]

It sure was nice of a right wing blog to bring this up FOUR DAYS AGO when it first broke.

Of course, four days into Rathergate, plenty of people on Hit and Run were trying to think of ways a typewriter could produce MS Word documents.

[Jesse Walker]

It sure was nice of a right wing blog to bring this up FOUR DAYS AGO when it first broke.

Weekends don't count in Internet Time, so Glenn actually posted that yesterday.

(Translation: I'm making excuses for not blogging this until now. Best ignore me.)

[kwais]

Jor, you say:

"CBS isn't going to say anything bad about Dear Leader, let's see Fox take that same vow and shut the fuck up about Kerry. I'll call that even"

and you say it only a few posts after someone else mentioned something about the draft hoax, also perpetuated by CBS to scare ignorant people into voting for Kerry, because they would be afraid of being drafted. (the guy who sold me my cell phone said him and his wife were voting for Kerry because he didn't want to go to Iraq).

Also wasn't the document thing like a four year story? Talk about a vendetta.

[Rick Barton]

"metrosexual"

I think that if there's going be a word to describe an...

urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.

...that there should be one that doesn't have "sexual" in it. It just doesn't fit. We need a new word. The French have a word: boulavardee(Sp?) or something. Let's have a contest. Reason, you guys put up a prize.

[Cletus Nelson]

"what's up with the BlogAd for "Kikki, an erotic account of life in public radio"?

lol!

Maybe that title would have flown back in those halcyon days when the left had the lock on sex and drugs...

I'll bet it's an unreadable post-modern diatribe that "explores using the erotic space to engender a metacritical counterhegemonic dialogue"...

[Anders]

well, CBS was given a false document of something that probably was true. Nobody has tried to argue that what the document suggested wasn't correct, only that the documents themselves weren't real.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Maybe I've been out west too long but I think Josh Marshall looks like he's probably a metrosexual.

[OPUS]

I thought Kerry really said those things. He is orange and his hair is perfect. Why would he not say that?

[a former reporter]

News flash: every reporter with at least half a brain does stuff like this. You can't possibly spend your life around politicians, bureaucrats, pr people and the rest without mocking them. I'm sure the people covering Bush make fun of him plenty. Of course, Cameron fucked up by letting this get anywhere close to the Web.

[Dan]

Nobody has tried to argue that what the document suggested wasn't correct, only that the documents themselves weren't real.

Well that's certainly a ridiculous claim for you to make.

The Bush administration hasn't commented on the documents one way or the other, last I checked. But the allegations in the documents aren't new ones, and they've all been repeatedly denied by the Bush team over the years. So, so far as Bush is concerned, the accurate statement to make would be: Bush has said the things suggested by the documents aren't correct, but hasn't tried to argue that the documents themselves are fake.

But of course your claim wasn't limited to Bush; you said that *nobody* had disputed the contents of the documents. The blogosphere, the talk show/talk radio circuit, and the political pundit community are filled with people who have denied both (a) the authenticity of the memos and (b) their contents. There are also quite a few Republicans in Congress who have done the same.

To sum up: what the hell were you thinking?

[Ernie Longmire]

If there's one group's erotic escapades I don't want to read about, it's public radio. Now excuse me while I try to cleanse my mind of the image of Terry Gross and Garrison Keillor going at it.

Fans of Negativland's KPFA show "Over The Edge" are already fully aware of what The Weatherman does with his Booper.