Misquote, but message still true (More “Fake but Accurate” excuses from liberal media)

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | 3/25/05

[dead]

A week or so ago, lazy liberal typist Alan Ramsey was too tired to write his own article, so he typed a single paragraph introducing his readers to a speech by Bill Moyers. Though Moyers’ speech had already been exposed (by Byron York in the WSJ, among others) as complete nonsense with manufactured quotes, Ramsey was too sleepy to bother to check the veracity of any of Moyers’ claims, and proceeded to print the speech in its entirety.

Many people (including myself) sent him e-mails pointing out what a unprofessional jackass hack he is, but Ramsey will not be swayed. To bolster his case that Moyers’ speech was essentially accurate (despite a single misquote), Ramsey sought out the opinions of an impartial expert on Bill Moyers’ research – Bill Moyers.

Ramsey cites Moyers’ defense of Moyers’ alleged inaccuracy with the following quote from Bill Moyers:

“Because those or similar quotes had appeared through the years in many publications - in The Washington Post and Time, for example, as well as several books - I too easily assumed their legitimacy.”

The problem is that that statement is also demonstrably false. As Byron York pointed out months ago:

“A search of the Nexis database finds that the first-ever reference to Watt’s “quote” came in that Dec. 11 Miami Herald excerpt of Moyers’s speech.”

So to defend himself regarding the accusation that he printed a demonstrable inaccuracy by Bill Moyers as the truth, Ramsey printed a different demonstrable inaccuracy by Bill Moyers.

Then, Dan Rather style, Ramsey still insists that the fake but accurate speech by Moyers was (in his words) “still true.” The problem is that all of Moyers's research for the speech came from the same dopey leftist kook website that supplied the slanderous and laughable quote from James Watt.

Despite Ramsey and Moyers’ ridiculously absurd contention that US Republican politicians actively seek to destroy the environment to hasten the second coming of Christ, neither of them can cite a single US politician who has expressed such sentiments. Unless of course, they make up a quote. A fake but accurate quote.

Here is Ramsey’s sad defense of his lack of journalistic integrity:

Readers will recall the dark acceptance speech to a New York audience last December after Harvard Medical School named Bill Moyers, the eminent American journalist from US public broadcasting, and a former presidential press secretary, its fourth annual Global Environmental Citizen. The speech went unreported in this country's mass media until I edited its 2500-word text down to 750 words on this page on March 9 under the introduction, "Here is a speech that should terrify you. If not, you deserve everything you get."

Shrill religious and political zealots instantly fell on me. So did one of Sydney's several blimpish print shrieks. Yet the power of Moyers' speech, in its confrontation of the religious right in American politics and the Bush Administration's insidious assault on environmental protection, was undiminished by an apocryphal quote Moyers eventually corrected (10 weeks later) but which remained intact in the Harvard website text. The Herald's immediate correction of the misquote in my edited text did nothing to quell the shriek's hysterics about "lazy journalism".

Understand a few things about the speech's history.

Moyers gave it on December 1. At one point he referred briefly to James Watt, a cabinet member in the early '80s of the Reagan administration, as having told Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant because "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back". On February 8, Moyers acknowledged the quote was wrong.

The US media industry newspaper, Editor and Publisher, reported on February 9 that Moyers had written to Watt the previous day, telling him: "I owe you an apology. I made a mistake in quoting the remarks attributed to you without confirming them myself. Because those or similar quotes had appeared through the years in many publications - in The Washington Post and Time, for example, as well as several books - I too easily assumed their legitimacy. I regret the mistake.

"[But] you and I differ strongly about your record as secretary of the interior. I found your policies abysmally at odds with what I understand as a Christian to be our obligation to be stewards of the earth. I found it baffling when, in our [phone] conversation today, you were unaware of how some fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible influence political attitudes towards the environment."

Not just the environment, either.

The newspaper added: "Moyers never distributed his speech, but he said it had been placed on the Harvard website, where he believed other websites and newspapers picked it up. 'I don't know who else used it. When you make a speech, you are making a public statement, and if a journalist considers that news, so be it.' "

Its news value went little recognised or much ignored. Now, however, although published only sporadically in the US press when Moyers first made it four months ago, and in Australia only in edited form 17 days ago in the Herald, the speech has been redrafted modestly (to excise the Watt quote) and published in full, in its March 24 issue, by the prestigious New York Review of Books. The headline, over Moyers's byline: "Welcome to Doomsday".

[Mr. K]

What I love about this article is the referance to the "Dan Rather style".

[dead]

Boy this thread is lonely! At least I got one response! Thanks.

[Oztrich Boy]

Boy this thread is lonely!

What did you expect for a dead thread?

[pushforbush]

Aussie bump