Defending Will Bunch: Harold Jackson is FULL OF IT.
Harold jackson at the inky has a lotta nerve:
Unfortunately, most of the critics of our contract with Yoo have their facts wrong.
But that happens when your information comes from those bloggers who never let the facts get in the way when they’re trying to whip people into a frenzy to boost Web site hits.
It’s a shame that one blogger who disseminated poor information is actually a full-time journalist for a sister publication in The Inquirer building.
Harold Jackson is writing about journalist and Daily News-sanctioned blogger Will Bunch, who responds here:
A newspaper that make such an overt (and unforced, and unnecessary) hire as John Yoo is normalizing torture to its readers and the world, stating that waterboarding and other violent interrogation tactics are just another one of those “on one hand, on the other hand” kind of things. I find this torture normalization highly offensive, as do scores of other people who have written the Inquirer….
“Poor information”? That’s a bizarre accusation considering that the primary source of information for my original blog post was…Harold Jackson. Thanks to my communication with Harold, I was able to report accurately that Yoo had been offered a contract in 2008 (He told me “late last year,” although he later told the New York Times more specifically October). My piece also reported factually that a) there was no formal announcement of Yoo’s column either by way of a press release or a standalone article, as had been the case with several other high-profile columnists and b) I, and others I spoke with who work at either the Daily News or Inquirer, were not aware that Yoo was a regular monthly columnist. I didn’t make any kind of broader accusation along those lines — frankly that whole section of my original post was not even that central to the post, but merely to explain why I (and some other bloggers) were speaking aggressively about Yoo now, several months into his contract. (Ironically, it wasn’t me or one of “those bloggers” who made a big deal about a possible disclosure issue, but a reporter for the New York Times. I’m sure we’ll all discuss it at our next “blogger ethics panel.”) I do still find it odd, however, that the bio line at the end of Yoo’s columns doesn’t mention that he worked for the Bush Justice Department, his main “qualification,” — but Harold didn’t address that.
One of my pet peeves about my colleagues in mainstream journalism is that they so frequently accuse bloggers of getting facts wrong — yet almost never, ever provide an example, even though that should be easy to do if it happens so often, right? But the good thing is that if a blogger does make a mistake, it’s usually corrected right away. So if Harold Jackson or any of my friendly commenters knows of something in my blogging about John Yoo that’s inaccurate (something that no one has done so far in a week of bashing by conservatives, by the way), or explain what he means by “poor information,” please let me know right away, and I’ll happily fix it.
So here we have the editor of the op-ed page publicly claiming that Bunch got his facts wrong, when Bunch got them directly from Jackson. Meanwhile Jackson won’t address his colleague by name, pretending that Bunch is some random guy whose blog isn’t written on Philly Media Holdings dime or the Philly.com website, rather than someone who’s a journalist first and a blogger second (which even will acknowledges). Hell, when i first met Will Bunch he wasn’t blogging at all! Who has their facts wrong NOW Harold?
Maybe instead of a bloggers’ ethics panel, we need a mainstream journalists’ ethics panel. I have the feeling harold jackson (and many more) need a refresher.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
[...] Another decent blogger put an intriguing blog post on Brendan Calling Blog Archive Defending Will Bunch: Harold …Here’s a quick excerptOne of my pet peeves about my colleagues in mainstream journalism is that they so frequently accuse bloggers of getting facts wrong â yet almost never, ever provide an example, even though that should be easy to do if it happens so … [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
[...] Another decent blogger put an intriguing blog post on Brendan Calling Blog Archive Defending Will Bunch: Harold …Here’s a quick excerptOne of my pet peeves about my colleagues in mainstream journalism is that they so frequently accuse bloggers of getting facts wrong â yet almost never, ever provide an example, even though that should be easy to do if it happens so … [...]
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June 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
[...] A smart blogger added an interesting post on Brendan Calling Blog Archive Defending Will Bunch: Harold …Here’s a small excerptOne of my pet peeves about my colleagues in mainstream journalism is that they so frequently accuse bloggers of getting facts wrong â yet almost never, ever provide an example, even though that should be easy to do if it happens so … [...]