Category: Ethics

Why Am I Not Surprised?

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A leaked audio of a Senator Joe Manchin (DINO-WV) call with rich donors has revealed, among other things, that he asked donors at the group, “No Labels,” to bribe fellow Senator Roy Blunt.

Joe Manchin is not just a conservative Democrat, he is a disloyal one, and given that a recording of his call was leaked, one who who has people close to him looking to give him a well deserved shiv between his shoulder blades:

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, in a private call on Monday with a group of major donors, provided a revealing look at his political approach to some of the thorniest issues confronting lawmakers.

The remarks were given on a Zoom teleconference session that was obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting was hosted by the group No Labels, a big money operation co-founded by former Sen. Joe Lieberman that funnels high-net-worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. Among the gathering’s newsworthy revelations: Manchin described an openness to filibuster reform at odds with his most recent position that will buoy some Democrats’ hopes for enacting their agenda.

………

The wide-ranging conversation went into depth on the fate of the filibuster, infrastructure negotiations, and the failed effort to create a bipartisan commission to explore the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, and offers a frank glimpse into the thinking of the conservative Democrat who holds the party’s fate in his hands.

Manchin told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6 commission in order to strip the “far left” of their best argument against the filibuster. The filibuster is a critical priority for the donors on the call, as it bottles up progressive legislation that would hit their bottom lines. 

OK, this is not an invalid comment, though a US Senator asking high dollar donors to act as his enforcers is pretty damn skeevy.

………

When it came to Sen. Roy Blunt, a moderate Missouri Republican who voted no on the commission, Manchin offered a creative solution. “Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Manchin said. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”

That is flat out corrupt.  He is asking, in an open Zoom call with big donors, that they condition any future employment for Roy Blunt on his current votes.

He is actively calling for a bribe, or at least extortion based on the threat of withholding a bribe, which is pretty much the same thing.

Once Again Stating the Obvious

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Is anyone surprised to find that philanthropy by the very rich is largely self-serving?

I am not surprised one bit.  This has been the way of the hyper rich since before Crassus had his last drink of molten gold.*

Relying on private philanthropy serves only to increase their power, because the goal of the hyper-rich is not to help, but to reinforce their own position of power:

Philanthropy among the elite class in the United States and the United Kingdom does more to create goodwill for the super-wealthy than to alleviate social ills for the poor, according to a new meta-analysis. 

A group of U.K. researchers reviewed 263 journal articles, books and studies on elite philanthropy to better understand the role it plays in this new age of inequality. In the United States, the wealth gap between richest and poorer families has more than doubled since the 1980s, and in the United Kingdom, the incomes of the richest fifth are 12 times as much as the incomes of the poorest fifth. 

The researchers’ paper, published in a special issue of the International Journal of Management Reviews, lays out how on the whole, the elite class mainly donates to causes that provide themselves with some type of benefit. The researchers defined “elite philanthropy” as “the preserve of wealthy individuals and close family members” who became rich through entrepreneurship, either by starting a new business or expanding an inherited one. These individuals generally have extensive local, national and international business networks, the researchers said, and occupy positions with the “field of power,” a social space at the top of society that allows them to impact policy and practice.

………

Many people mistakenly view elite philanthropy as a benign force for good rather than an avenue for the super-wealthy to translate economic capital into social and cultural capital, according to the researchers. Elite philanthropy, the study argues, is transactional, as there are also material benefits in addition to the cultural capital. In 2017, the United States increased the proportion of income that can be deducted from 50% to 60%, which directly benefits the elite; and in the United Kingdom, efforts to reduce philanthropic tax relief fell through in 2012 after pushback from wealthy philanthropists.

In study after study, the rich are shown to be relatively less generous, and more inclined to engage in antisocial and immoral behavior.  Why should their so-called “charity” be any different?

*Yes, I know, Marcus Licinius Crassus actually died in battle, and not as a result of having molten gold poured down his throat. It’s a metaphor.

As Atrios Says

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“Time for another blogger ethics panel.”

It’s a catch phrase of his dating back to the early aughts, that he used, and still uses, whenever a reporter or columnist at one of the major news outlets is caught profiting off of an undisclosed conflict of interest.

This time, it’s David Brooks, who was caught taking a full time salary from the Aspen Institute as well as running the Weave Project,  both of which have taken money from Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the Walton (Walmart) family, and a plethora of corporate sources that he routinely shills for.

Brooks has resigned from the Aspen institute, the status of the rest of his affairs is unclear:

David Brooks has resigned from his position at the Aspen Institute following reporting by BuzzFeed News about conflicts of interest between the star New York Times columnist and funders of a program he led for the think tank.

Eileen Murphy, a spokesperson for the Times, said in a statement that editors approved Brooks’s involvement with Aspen in 2018, when he launched a project called Weave. But current editors weren’t aware he was receiving a salary for Weave.

Spoiler, he is receiving a salary for Weave.

………

Brooks’s resignation comes after BuzzFeed News discovered further evidence of conflicts of interest and entanglements with corporate and billionaire donors to Weave.

Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BuzzFeed News first revealed Brooks never disclosed to Times readers that he takes a full-time salary for his work on Weave, or that its funders include Facebook, the father of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and other wealthy individuals and corporations. Brooks recently wrote a blog post for Facebook’s corporate website in praise of Facebook Groups, a product that has often been a fount of misinformation and hate speech.

………

If you know someone who lives alone ask them to join NextDoor, which is Facebook for neighborhoods. It helps them stay in touch with those right around them. Vital in a crisis.

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) March 14, 2020

Over the past 24 hours, BuzzFeed News discovered new evidence of potential conflicts. On March 15 of last year, as Americans faced a deadly pandemic, Brooks appeared on “Meet The Press”and offered some advice.

“We need to take moral steps to make ourselves decent neighbors to each other as we go through this thing. I think people should get on Nextdoor, this sort of ‘Facebook for neighbors,’” he said.

Left unsaid by Brooks was that Nextdoor, a social network for neighborhoods, had donated $25,000 to Weave. A day before his appearance on the nationally televised NBC program, Brooks also tweetedto his nearly 250,000 followers, “If you know someone who lives alone, ask them to join NextDoor.”

Another new revelation: Last month, Brooks appeared in a Walton Family Foundation video and did not disclose that the organization, run by the billionaire family that founded Walmart, also funds his project.

Brooks’s failure to disclose these conflicts of interest added to the string of ethically questionable actions by the columnist and author related to his work on Weave.

Brooks will survive this, he fits the NYT narrative for a, “Reasonable Conservative,” but in a less toxic workplace than the Times newsroom, he would be gone.

Who Needs Legal Ethics?

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Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are requesting that the organization’s “White Shoe” law firm, Perkins Coie, be removed from the case for gross conflicts of interest:

A high profile law firm is now caught up in the DNC WikiLeaks mess. A group of Bernie Sanders supporters filed a class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee, and the now-former chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz. In a letter sent Monday, they are demanding that attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP be removed from the case due to a conflict of interest. New emails discovered through the WikiLeaks dump show that attorneys from the law firm have given strategy advice to hurt Sanders, well before he dropped out. To add fuel to their claim, they’ve now discovered that attorneys from Perkins Coie are representing both the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign.

………

Internal emails discovered through WikiLeaks show that Perkins Coie attorneys advised the DNC on how to fight allegations from Bernie Sanders. This spring, the Sanders campaign accused Hillary Clinton of ‘laundering’ money through the Clinton Victory Fund. Marc Elias, who serves as the Clinton campaign’s general counsel and also a partner at Perkins Coie, fired off an email to DNC staff stating:

My suggestion is that the DNC put out a statement saying that the accusations the Sanders campaign are not true. The fact that CNN notes that you aren’t getting between the two campaigns is the problem. Here, Sanders is attacking the DNC and its current practice, its past practice with the POTUS and with Sec Kerry. Just as the RNC pushes back directly on Trump over “rigged system”, the DNC should push back DIRECTLY at Sanders and say that what he is saying is false and harmful the Democratic party. [emphasis added]

………

However, attorneys for Bernie Sanders supporters contend that the federal court rules bar Perkins Coie lawyers from representing the DNC as defense counsel in the case. They say that the Perkins Coie attorneys may become “potential material witnesses” or “defendants” in the case and should be disqualified. They plan to file an official motion in court.

Seriously, what is up with this?

Some of the partners, i.e. the bosses at the firms, are working for a political campaign, and are likely to be called as witnesses, and they are still representing the DNC?

This is f%$#ed up.

Google Drops, “Don’t Be Evil”

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Google has reorganized itself under a holding company called “Alphabet”, and this new holding company makes no reference whatsoever to its former slogan:

Google is now Alphabet. Temporary Holding Company Number Two is now Google. And “don’t be evil” is now one step closer to being a thing of the past.

Following the corporate reshuffle at Google, the world’s largest search firm is now owned by a holding company called “Alphabet” – which, confusingly, was temporarily a subsidiary of Google but then executed a “reverse takeover” of its parent company to become the new boss, at which point Google spun off a number of its own subsidiaries such as its life sciences subsidiary Calico and “moonshot” division X to sit under Alphabet.

The end result is that the Google we all know and love still exists, but sits under an entirely new company, with a new name, new brand, new website – and new ethics policy.

When Alphabet was revealed, it was made clear that Google’s pre-existing ethics policy would only apply to the search firm itself, rather than its parent company. But now that Alphabet has revealed its own Code of Conduct, and the words “don’t be evil” are nowhere in sight.

It was only a matter of time, I guess.

The interesting thing here is whether Google’s eschewing its prior values will have the effect of making recruiting more difficult.

After all, before Carly Fiorina destroyed “The HP Way”, people were willing to take a pay cut to work at the firm.

In the Realm of the Blatantly Obvious………

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A study of bankers had determined that when bankers are given unrealistically tough performance standards, they cheat:

Bankers are more likely to behave unethically when under pressure to reach tough performance targets, according to a survey of British financial-services employees.

Managers in banking, insurance and wealth management were more anxious and inclined to misbehave when “negative consequences or punishment for poor performance were highlighted,” PricewaterhouseCoopers and the London Business School said in a report on Monday.

“When it made them feel anxious, they tended to say money was one of their key motivators,” Duncan Wardley, a behavioral science specialist at PwC, said in the statement. “They also tended to take more risks and make unethical choices.”

I am so no surprised.

Of course, this could lead to techniques that might enhance banker honesty, but I see that as unlikely.

Michelle Bachmann May be Right About the Rapture

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I can think of no stronger indicator for the Apocalypse than the fact that, for the 2nd time in as many months, Donald Trump has seized the moral high ground.

Of course, this is an extremely low bar, as the competition is Pamela Geller:

Donald Trump was asked on “Fox & Friends” this morning for his opinion on the shooting outside Pam Geller’s “Draw the Prophet” contest, and he didn’t mince his words.

Brian Kilmeade asked whether he still believed “in freedom of speech, regardless of what they’re talking about — you’ve got to think they could do without being shot, don’t you think?”

Trump replied that it’s “very terrible,” but was heartened that the police acted “very strongly” by killing the two suspects. After blaming the “weak action” of the Baltimore police for the destruction of “over 200 businesses in a single night,” he praised the Garland, Texas police for their handling of these shooters.

However, he quickly switched subjects, saying that “I watched Pam [Geller on Fox News] earlier, and it really looks like she’s just taunting everybody. What is she doing drawing Muhammad? I mean it’s disgusting,” he said in reference to the attempted shootings. “Isn’t there something else they could be doing? Drawing Muhammad?” he went on.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck cut in to say that they’d asked Geller whether there wasn’t some other way they could have exercised their freedom of speech besides this contest, and Geller told her “No, there wasn’t another way, because you have to fight back against this war against the freedom of speech.”

Trump replied by again asking, “They can’t do something else? They have have to be in the middle of Texas doing something on Muhammad and insulting everybody?”

He reiterated his disgust at the attempted shooting, as well as his belief that Geller is taunting Islamic extremists. “What is she doing?” he asked. “Why is she doing it? It’s probably very risky for her — I don’t know, maybe she likes risk?”

“But what the hell is she doing?” he concluded.

So in April, he shamed most of the Republican Presidential candidates over Social Security and Medicare, and now, this.

I do not mean to imply that “The Donald” is meaningful ethics, but rather that the morality of the right wing has descended below his level.

Props to the People who Complained

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Newsweek published an anti-wind power OP/ED, and after an outpouring of outrage from informed readers, the magazine was forced to publish a clarification admitting that the author was literally an employee of the Koch brothers:

Editor’s note: The author of this piece, Randy Simmons, is the Charles G. Koch professor of political economy at Utah State University. He’s also a senior fellow at the Koch– and ExxonMobil-funded Property and Environment Research Center. These ties to the oil industry weren’t originally disclosed in this piece.

It’s still buried at the bottom or the article, but this sort of push-back is important.

This Must be a Definition of “Ethics” I was Previously Unaware Of………

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The North Carolina ethics commission has decided that there is no need for a politician to report if they are f%$#ing a lobbyist:

Sex between lobbyists and government officials who are covered under North Carolina’s ethics laws does not constitute a gift that must be listed in disclosure reports, the State Ethics Commission said Friday.

“Consensual sexual relationships do not have monetary value and therefore are not reportable as gifts or ‘reportable expenditures made for lobbying’ for purposes of the lobbying law’s expenditure reporting provisions,” the formal advisory opinion says.

The opinion was in a response to an inquiry from the Secretary of State’s lobbying compliance director, Joal H. Broun, in a letter on Dec. 15.

“You have asked whether consensual ‘sexual favors or sexual acts’ between a lobbyist and a designated individual constitutes a gift or ‘thing of value’ that would trigger the gift ban and reporting requirements,’” the opinion says.

Broun’s request also wanted to know if that activity falls within the definition of “goodwill lobbying,” which is an indirect attempt to influence legislation or executive action, such as the building of relationships, according to state law, and is also considered lobbying.

The seven-member ethics commission says Broun’s letter was “general and largely hypothetical, with little or no supporting facts,” which also limits the commission’s response. But the opinion says sexual behavior would not constitute goodwill lobbying, either.

However, providing a prostitute to a legislator or other covered official would constitute a gift or item of value and would have to be reported on disclosure forms – which, of course, would also be evidence of a crime, the opinion says.

So, if you hire a prostitute, it’s a lobbying gift covered by disclosure laws, but if you employ a temporary liaison officer at your lobbying group, at a predetermined hourly rate, there is no need for disclosure.

My guess is that we are going to see a lot of “Rent Boys” hired as consultants in North Carolina state politics.

Why Does Maureen Dowd Still Have a Job?

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It’s one thing to ask for comment from a subject of a story, but preclearing the story with your subject before publication is not journalism, it’s PR:

Leaked emails from Sony suggest that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd promised to show Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal’s husband, Bernard Weinraub, — a former Times reporter — a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication.

The end result was a column that painted Pascal in such a good light that she engaged in a round of mutual adulation with Dowd over email after its publication. It also scored Pascal points back at the studio, with Sony’s then-communications-chief calling the column “impressive.”

The exchanges were uncovered in a trove of Pascal’s emails released as part of a massive hack on Sony carried out by the group known as “Guardians of Peace.” The column, published after the Academy Awards earlier this year, lamented how “Oscar voters and industry top brass are still overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged.”

I’ve never understood the allure of MoDo.

She writes about the great issues of the day like a middle schooler dissing another girl’s choice of shoes.

I expect that her job is safe,. but I really hope that her editor cuts her a new one about this.

If This Isn’t Suborning Perjury, It’s Still a Violation of Legal Ethics

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One of the things that prosecutors are not supposed to do is to encourage a witness to lie. It’s called suborning perjury, and it is a crime.

On a marginally lower level of corruption and malfeasance is knowingly putting a witness on the stand who you know will lie.

In what is surprisingly unsurprising news, it turns out that the St. Louis prosecutors office called a witness to testify in the Michael Brown killing who they knew to be lying:

So, you are Prosecutor Bob McCulloch. You have a grand jury investigation with the entire world watching. One of your witnesses in support of the officer is revealed by the FBI to have made up her entire account. What do you do?

Apparently you present a discredited witness to the grand jury anyways. He played the FBI interview, which revealed that Witness 40’s car was not at the location, that 40 could not have exited in the manner described, that 40 did not even tell anyone her story until over two weeks after the shooting. They tore her apart, showing that she changed her story several times while sitting on the stand. For example, in her interview, 40 claimed to have made no contact to the police for two weeks, then later claimed that she did contact them several times before agreeing to be a witness. And that is not the only occasion they caught her changing her story, with other times her lack of knowledge of the crime scene, how her journal and testimony did not match, how the exit for the complex did not exist where she claimed all being revealed. That interview, found on pages 86-184 of Grand Jury Testimony Volume 15, completely discredits her as a witness.

Then, fully knowing this, Bob McCulloch brought her before the grand jury, and entered her hand written journals filled with racist language into the record. And this testimony, by a discredited witness, is the one cited by right-wing media outlets in their attempts to support former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson. Claims of Michael Brown charging like a bull? Her account, and only her account.

 Seriously, why does Bob McCulloch still have a law license?

Poo Flinging in Journalism*

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Erik Wemple, former Editor in Chief of the Washington City Paper and current Washington Post media critic, has been chasing down allegations that Politico’s Mike Allen selling favorable coverage on his daily Playbook newsletter:

Politico Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen writes “Playbook,” a daily e-mail newsletter featuring stories from Politico and other outlets, various “exclusives,” tips and birthday notices. It also carries “messages” from big companies and trade associations hoping to reach “Playbook’s” audience of influentials.

All the items below were extracted from “Playbook” and are related to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying force that has advertised in the newsletter. Please designate which are paid advertisements for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and which are Allen’s own work:

 ………

 Answers: 1) and 3) are paid ads; 2) and 4) are Allen’s own work.

 One of the hottest issues in journalism today is “native” advertising, the tricks that publishers deploy to elide the domains of journalism and advertising. BuzzFeed has sustained gray-bearded criticism for its boundary-defying listicles. The Atlantic earlier this year ran a native ad from the Church of Scientology that inflamed its audience and prompted an apology and a review of Atlantic procedures for approving ads. Forbes, The Washington Post and the Huffington Post are also experimenting with this approach to funding journalism.

A review of “Playbook” archives shows that the special interests that pay for slots in the newsletter get adoring coverage elsewhere in the playing field of “Playbook.” The pattern is a bit difficult to suss out if you glance at “Playbook” each day for a shot of news and gossip. When searching for references to advertisers in “Playbook,” however, it is unmistakable. And its practitioner is expanding the franchise. Today, Allen disclosed in “Playbook” that he’ll be collaborating in the production of “Capital Playbook,” a newsletter stemming from Capital New York, the news site that Politico acquired earlier this year. Also today, the New York Times, as part of a reorganization of its Washington/political coverage, announced that it would be launching a “morning news tip sheet that sets up the Washington day for our readers.”

 ………

Such fandom helps to explain why Allen’s updates have become perhaps the Beltway’s most impressive journo-business story of the past decade. As previously reported, advertisers pay a good $35,000 for a weekly run in “Playbook,” a price tag that has inflated nicely for Politico in recent years.

And then there is the fawning coverage of Fox News, with the (buried at the end of the article) quote, “And yet former Fox News PR ace Brian Lewis told Jim Romenesko in 2012, “We do not have a do-not-deal-with-Politico policy. We deal with Mike Allen.” As they should.”

So, Mike Allen is not happy with Erik Wemple, which is profoundly unsurprising.

What does surprise me though is that senior editors at The Washington Post and Politico have set up a meeting to resolve this:

Top editors at The Washington Post and Politico tried on Wednesday to mend a rift between the two news organizations.
Politico’s editor in chief, John Harris, and the Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt spoke about columns by Erik Wemple, a media critic for The Post, that have been heavily critical of Mike Allen, a star reporter at Politico and author of the popular Playbook newsletter. Mr. Wemple has accused Mr. Allen of questionable journalistic practices, including using Playbook to provide favorable coverage to the companies that advertise in his newsletter.
It had been reported that editors at The Post and Politico would meet in person, but instead they talked over the phone.
“One of his writers made assertions that I believe do not meet Washington Post standards of fairness or accuracy,” Mr. Harris said in an email, describing the call with Mr. Hiatt. The assertions, he said are  “emphatically untrue — and we had a serious and non-dramatic conversation about this.”
Would the Post have a meeting like this with the now-indicted former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnel?
Of course not.  They would contact him for comments, and they would review any complaints, but a meeting?  Of course not.

When the target has a complaint, you get those complaints, and you examine those complaints, and if you determine them to be valid, you publish a correction.

You don’t hold f%$#ing peace talks.

This sort of mutual back scratching by media institutions is one of the reasons that so many people don’t trust the press.

* Since I am mentioning Eric Wemple and journalistic poo flinging, I feel compelled to note that while Eric Wemple’s was editor at Washington City Paper, he assigned reporters in an effort to out the identity of anonymous bloggers who commented on the oft bizarre conflict with the Wag Time Pet Spa, which was next door to his house, which actually involved the arrest of his wife on allegations of literally flinging of poo, of the canine variety. (see also here)

You Have to be F%$#ing Terrified to F%$#ing Threaten the F%$#ing Pope

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It appears that Pope Francis has spooked the 1%, because they are threatening the Pope and the Church:

If anyone wonders whether Pope Francis has irritated wealthy conservatives with his courage and idealism, the latest outburst from Kenneth Langone left little doubt. Sounding both aggressive and whiny, the billionaire investor warned that he and his overprivileged friends might withhold their millions from church and charity unless the pontiff stops preaching against the excesses and cruelty of unleashed capitalism.

According to Langone, such criticism from the Holy See could ultimately hurt the sensitive feelings of the rich so badly that they become “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” He also said rich donors are already losing their enthusiasm for the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan – a very specific threat that he mentioned directly to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

Langone is not only a leading fundraiser for church projects but a generous donor to hospitals, universities, and cancer charities (often for programs and buildings named after him, in the style of today’s self-promoting philanthropists). Among the super-rich, he has many friends and associates who may share his excitable temperament.

While his ultimatum seems senseless – would a person of true faith stiff the church and the poor? – it may well be sincere. And Langone spends freely to promote his political and economic views, in the company of the Koch brothers and other Republican plutocrats.

Still, a Pope brave enough to face down the Mafia over his financial reform of the murky Vatican Bank shouldn’t be much fazed by the likes of Langone.

Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot, is also known for Dick Grasso’s obscene golden handshake when he left his chairmanship of the NYSE.

I have an affection for this guy; he certainly has the right enemies.

Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel*

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Juan Williams has been accused of lifting whole paragraphs from a CAP research paper for an article on immigration:

In a case of apparent plagiarism, Fox News pundit Juan Williams lifted — sometimes word for word — from a Center for American Progress report, without ever attributing the information, for a column he wrote last month for the Hill newspaper.

 Almost two weeks after publication, the column was quietly revised online, with many of the sections rewritten or put in quotation marks, and this time citing the CAP report. It also included an editor’s note that read: “This column was revised on March 2, 2013, to include previously-omitted attribution to the Center for American Progress.”

 But that editor’s note mentions only the attribution problem, and not the nearly identical wording that was also fixed.

 In a phone interview Thursday evening, Williams pinned the blame on a researcher who he described as a “young man.”

 “I was writing a column about the immigration debate and had my researcher look around to see what data existed to pump up this argument and he sent back what I thought were his words and summaries of the data,” Williams told Salon. “I had never seen the CAP report myself, so I didn’t know that the young man had in fact not summarized the data but had taken some of the language from the CAP report.”

So, in response to accusations that he lifted whole paragraphs from a well respected left of center think tank, his defense is that he lifted whole paragraphs from his intern.

Let’s also be clear here:  An intern’s job is to do research, not write the article.   If you do a word for word copy in the notes, there is nothing wrong with that.  It only becomes a problem when it is transcribed word for word in your article.  (This applies whether you are copying and pasting from a think tank, or from you own f%$#ing intern!)

Let’s be clear here. The intern was not listed as a 2nd author on the article.

Considering his history, condemning the allegations of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas while himself being accused of inappropriate behavior, I was wondering when this sort of sh%$ was going to catch up with him.

Arrogance and stupidity are a toxic mix.

*I need to note that this turn of phrase was created by Atrios.

Wanker of the Day

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Brendan Nyhan, who seems to think that fact checkers should put their thumbs on the scale so they can condemn the standard political fibbers and the pathological liars in equal numbers.

Read the exchange in the comments between him and Dan Froomkin, where the latter eviscerates Nyhan for his dumb-ass “a pox on both their houses” bullsh%$.

Shame on the Columbia Journalism review for publishing this crap.

It Appears that McClatchy Employes the Only People Who Practice Journalism in Washington, DC

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Because it appears that the rest of the Washington press corps(e) allow administration officials to dictate and re-edit their quotes:

To our staff and to our readers:

As you are aware, reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg and others are agreeing to give government sources the right to clear and alter quotes as a prerequisite to granting an interview.

To be clear, it is the bureau’s policy that we do not alter accurate quotes from any source. And to the fullest extent possible, we do not make deals that we will clear quotes as a condition of interviews.

With the government trying to do more of the public’s business in secret, the demands that interviews be conducted off the record is growing. While it puts us at a disadvantage, we should argue strenuously for on-the-record interviews with government officials.

When they absolutely refuse, we have only two options. First, halt the interview and attempt to find the information elsewhere. In those cases, our stories should say the official declined comment. Second, we can go ahead with the interview with the straightforward response that whatever ultimately is used will be published without change in tone, emphasis or exact language.

The fact that McClatchy is alone in taking such a position is troubling, to say the least..

H/t Taylor Marsh

I Wonder if This Will Effect Coverage of Outsourcing

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Romenesko is reporting on a This American Life story about how a local news service is using overseas reporters and having them use aliases in order to conceal the fact:

The latest “This American Life” looks at hyperlocal content provider Journatic and interviews Journatic writer-editor Ryan Smith, who reveals that the company uses fake bylines for its Filipino writers — or did, until “TAL” blew the whistle on them.

Smith tells TAL’s Sarah Koenig that “when I ended up looking at the names on a lot of the stories [he edited], the names on the stories that were published weren’t the ones that I saw had written the stories.”

One piece, for example, had the byline of “Ginny Cox,” when the story was actually written by Gisele Bautista in the Philippines.

Producer Koenig says: “Looking at the computer system that the company uses to manage its stories, it seems that when Gisele worked on this real esate story, there was a button called SELECT ALIAS, and when she clicked on it, she had a choice: she could either be Ginny Cox, or Glenda Smith.

Journatic and the Chicago Tribune’s TribLocal have used other fake bylines for stories written by Filipino writers, including Jimmy Finkel, Carrie Reed, Jay Brownstone and Amy Anderson.

Romenensko (and apparently TAL), are focusing on the journalistic ethic issues of fake bylines.

I’m actually more interested in the effect that this will have on the coverage of outsourcing and moving overseas that we see from the mainstream media.

I have always felt that one of the conceits which gave us generally laudatory coverage of moving jobs  overseas was the conceit that reporting could not be outsourced.

Now that they know that it’s their jobs on the line, I wonder if the tenor of the stories will change.

Maybe the Blue Dogs Aren’t the Worst Democrats in Congress

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I think that the Blue Dogs are wrong, but I get the sense that they are motivated by values and ego.

I think that many of them legitimately believe that women cannot be trusted with their bodies, that rich people should not be taxed, and that idiot sons of rich people are entitled to be rich ad infinitum.

The larger New Democratic Caucus (Melissa Bean who The Onion excoriates is a senior member of the caucus), however, is just a bunch of people who want to suck at the tit of big business, as Sebastian Jones and Marcus Stern ably document:

As Congress entered the final weeks of its struggle to overhaul regulation of Wall Street in May, several hundred friends and colleagues slipped out of Washington for a private weekend on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Most were lobbyists for large banks, pharmaceutical firms, insurance companies, and big-ticket trade groups. However, 28 were members of Congress, and 29 were legislative staffers, all part of a coalition of House Democrats with a business-friendly agenda.

The retreat was held in honor of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of 69 lawmakers whose close relationship with several hundred Washington lobbyists has made their organization one of the most successful political money machines since the Republican K Street Project collapsed in 2007. In the past year and a half, New Democrats have pulled in more than $18 million in campaign contributions from their lobbyist fundraising network. The lobbyists, in turn, have mingled with lawmakers and their staffers at least 850 times during fundraising events and informal get-togethers.

…………

These folks were hamstringing Barney Frank at every turn during work on financial reforms because they worked for the banks, and not the American people.

The Blue Dogs get the press, but when push comes to shove, it’s the New Dems who f%$# us.

Read the rest of the article. It’s long, but it’s long because it is exhaustive.