Gore and pundits race to the bottom (12/4)

The debate over Al Gore's comments on the conservative press demonstrates some of the worst pathologies of American political debate
By Ben Fritz

Al Gore's comments about the conservative media to the New York Observer last week and the fierce and rapid reaction to it make for an excellent case study in how substantive debates can be undermined by outrageous rhetoric. The former Vice President did correctly diagnose the process by which many falsehoods have spread through the conservative media, but he also engaged in inexcusably inflammatory jargon when he used the term "fifth column." Some pundits, meanwhile, responded with ridiculous attacks of their own, accusing Gore of being a conspiracy theorist and mentally ill. (Read the whole column)

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12/4/2002 06:09:07 AM EST |

Noonan's factual mess (12/3)

By Brendan Nyhan

In a showcase of the punditocracy's frequent inability to accurately report basic facts, the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan managed to make two glaring errors in an online column Friday.

Noonan first claims that Darrell Lambert, an Eagle Scout who was stripped of his membership in the Boy Scouts of America due to his atheist beliefs, has responded with a lawsuit against the organization:

On "NBC Nightly news" last week there was a story. You've probably seen it. An Eagle Scout is fighting the Boy Scouts of America because they won't let him be a troop leader. They won't let him be a troop leader because he has declared he is an atheist. The BSA sees it as part of its mission to encourage the love of God in the young. An atheist, in their reasoning, is unlikely to help young boys love God. So they don't want him to be a scout leader.

He, naturally, is suing. How dare the scouts deny him his right to be an atheist!

But the scouts aren't denying him his right to be an atheist. They're denying him the right to be a BSA troop leader.

The Nexis database shows that NBC's only story on Lambert ran on Nov. 7. More importantly, it gave no indication that he has filed a lawsuit, nor has any other media report. Lambert does reportedly plan to file an appeal with a regional Scouts board, but he is not "suing" anybody.

Noonan then turned her attention to outgoing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's recent criticism of radio host Rush Limbaugh, which she described as follows:

After the dreadful showing of the Democrats in the election [Daschle] held a news conference in which he famously blamed Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio talk show hosts for inciting people to . . . well, to not liking Tom Daschle. Rush says mean things about Tom. His listeners, who Tom Daschle subtly suggests are possibly unstable and insane--how could they not be, they're conservative--get a little too excited when they hear Rush, and start to make rude sounds. "The threat level goes up," says Tom Daschle.

But again, the quotation attributed to Daschle above does not appear in the transcript of his original criticism of Limbaugh, nor in any news report in the Nexis database. During his original press conference, Daschle did say, "[T]he threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families and on us, in a way that's very disconcerting," but Noonan has a responsibility to quote what Daschle actually said, not something that sounds similar.

Is basic fact-checking too much to ask these days?

Update 12/4 10:07 PM EST: Opinion Journal has corrected both errors and added an editor's note disclosing the changes. In the case of the Lambert issue, the copy has been edited to state that he is threatening to sue, which Reuters reported in a Nov. 25 story that I didn't find in my previous searches.

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Related links:
-Limbaugh gets a pass (Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan, 11/21/02)

12/3/2002 11:37:45 AM EST |

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