Sunday Open Thread [5.19.13]
BREAKING: I didn’t win the Powerball yesterday!
In the evolving story of the “doctored” emails that ABC’s Jon Karl breathlessly injected into the Benghazi stupidity, it looks as though Karl has some right-wing bias issues. He’s not as bad as James O’Keefe, but one wonders where this man’s editors were.
In the same vein, Jay Rosen has written in some detail on how Jon Karl got played by his confidential source, and now he’s made ABC a problem too:
10. When a confidential source burns a reporter, a reporter is within his rights to burn–that is, “out”–that source. But it almost never happens because reporters are concerned that potential sources will take it as a sign that the reporter cannot be trusted to keep their names secret. That’s bad enough. But this is worse. Karl had a chance to limit the damage to ABC News from his faulty reporting when he first responded to Jake Tapper’s report. He blew that. Inexplicably, an ABC News spokesperson then doubled down on Karl’s original reporting: strike two. They had a chance to recover by asking Karl to explain how he got misled on This Week. They blew that when they chickened out and asked Jeff Zeleny to appear instead. #
Burning a source for setting you up would send a message to sources that you’d better be on the up and up, I would think. I don’t know how confidentiality of sources got to be more important than your sources not playing you.
The Guardian takes a good look at the first of America’s climate refugees. Newtok, Alaska is in the Western part of Alaska and is being destroyed by erosion and flooding. The town is rapidly sinking and Corps of Engineers thinks the town will be underwater in 4 years. This is the future of our coasts — perhaps not as fast or drastic as the disappearance of Newtok — but rising water will have some impacts. And even if you aren’t living right at the coast — you’ll be paying for whatever solutions there are to move/harden coastal areas.
And the NJ covers the latest adventures in family values by the local GOP — the lawsuit charging Vance Phillips with sexual assault.
What interests you today?
Me neither Cassandra, no millions here. But there’s a good pot of Tuscan bean soup on the stove and some mushroom sauce for pasta. That’s a lot less hassle than all that money would have been. Just thinking about it made my brain hurt.
Today is a great soup-making day, auntie dem! Hope it was awesome.
Update on Jon Karl — he released a statement to CNN’s Howard Kurtz, regretting his error, but standing by his story. Which is weird, because once you eliminate the BS his GOP source was feeding him, there was no story. And how come he released this statement to CNN, but ABC didn’t even have him on their yack show today?
“Karl is often tapped by ABC to offer factcheck segments, and the results frequently reinforce some of the misinformation that is supposed to be corrected, or attempt to spread the blame to “both sides.” ”
Jeebus. Our media sucks so much.