Joel Pollak and David Burge, Two National Treasures
Joel Pollak, the editor in chief of Breitbart.com, has been doing some outstanding work today exposing biases of the mainstream media. This morning, ABC News' Brian Ross, while reporting on the Aurora, Colorado shooter, pointed fingers at the Tea Party. Specifically, here's the exchange he had with George Stephanopoulos:
Stephanopoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.
Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.
Stephanopoulos: Okay, we'll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.
Ross, however, had located the wrong Jim Holmes. The gunman was not Tea Party member Jim Holmes; rather it was University of Colorado-Denver PhD student Jim Holmes. Pollak was quick to expose this, noting:
How interesting that Ross and ABC News should think to look to the Tea Party website first--and to broadcast politically volatile information without verifying if that "Jim Holmes" is the same as the suspect.
The "Jim Holmes" page on the Colorado Tea Party website is advertising an event with Middle East commentator Brigitte Gabriel next Thursday, July 26--hardly the behavior of a man who expected to be committing a deadly crime on July 20 for which he would certainly be apprehended and might not survive.
Pollak also noted how "When ABC News corrected its initial report, it tried to spread the blame around to 'social media' and 'members of the public'."
Pollak also managed to get an exclusive interview with the falsely accused James Holmes.
Iowahawk's David Burge, through a series of Twitter posts, found a more creative way to criticize ABC News. Here's one of the posts:
@BrianRoss Tea Party member, U Colorado grad student, potayto, potahto.
In twelve more Twitter posts, Burge lists crimes committed by "Brian Ross." Although not committed by ABC News' Brian Ross, they were real crimes committed by genuine Brian Ross's. Here are a couple:
ABC News' Brian Ross arrested in VT for robbing, beating teenager http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120628/NEWS02/306280020/Five-arrested-St-Albans-pool-death
ABC News' Brian Ross arrested in TX for skipping bail http://siterunning.info/booking/187189/Phillip-Ross
Burge ends the series with a final tweet, "Correction: In previous tweets I mistakenly identified ABC News' Brian Ross with a series of arrestees. I apologize to the arrestees."
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Sep '10
Re: Joel Pollak and David Burge, Two National Treasures
Mendel apparently requires smiley faces and sarcasm slashes to understand irony.
Mar '11
Re: Joel Pollak and David Burge, Two National Treasures
My cardinal error was in assuming that breitbart.com is a website with journalistic integrity.
Over at Breitbart they routinely break news and expect it to be taken seriously. For a website with those pretensions to knowingly publish falsehoods about a killer mere hours after the act, satire or not, is simply despicable.
And I see from the "likes" on this thread that my view is not widely shared. Would anyone like to explain how intentionally spreading false rumors at a time of crisis - in a style serious enough to dupe most other news outlets (who reported on the Breitbart article) - is not beyond the pale?
Feb '12
Re: Joel Pollak and David Burge, Two National Treasures
Mendel
Perhaps, but I re-read the article and it doesn't sound satirical to me. And if indeed I have been duped, at least I am not alone: most major news sites, including some on the right, are reporting that Breitbart published and retracted a (serious) story about the shooter being Democrat.
And if it is satire, I find the Howard Stern-esque tactic of fabricating information about a mass murderer on a prominent website for the sake of a joke on the day of his murders in very, very poor taste. · Jul 20 at 10:46pm
Somehow the requirements of taste never stop the Left - only the Right. I'd rather the Right didn't stand with hands folded while the Left decides what we should all talk about.
Dec '10
Re: Joel Pollak and David Burge, Two National Treasures
Mendel
My cardinal error was in assuming that breitbart.com is a website with journalistic integrity.
Over at Breitbart they routinely break news and expect it to be taken seriously. For a website with those pretensions to knowingly publish falsehoods about a killer mere hours after the act, satire or not, is simply despicable.
And I see from the "likes" on this thread that my view is not widely shared. Would anyone like to explain how intentionally spreading false rumors at a time of crisis - in a style serious enough to dupe most other news outlets (who reported on the Breitbart article) - is not beyond the pale? · Jul 21 at 3:52pm
The Breitbart headline was in direct response to the shoddy ABC report. It was not about the mass murder or about the killer, it was about ABC news.
You may not remember this, but Breitbart was always about vetting the media. If you feel that's not a worthy goal, by all means feel free to believe anything and everything the media says about you and your reported associations.