Yesterday was the biggest single day of page views in the history of the Shark Blog, thanks to my postings on Bob Scheer, the man whose mendacity inspired me to become a blogger in order to help expose journalists like Scheer. Thanks also to Glenn Reynolds, who linked to me 4 times yesterday and to Hugh Hewitt, who linked to me and mentioned me on his radio program (he heard about me from Reynolds, so the Prof. gets credit for this too). And initial traffic from Andrew Sullivan's Thursday link (which went up late Wednesday) also counted in yesterday's page count. But enough about my page traffic. Back to Bob Scheer, without whom none of this would be necessary:
Glenn Reynolds comments on my comparison of Scheer to Blair:
I'm not sure that's a fair comparison -- Scheer's a pundit, if a not-very-good one, while Blair was (or pretended to be) a reporter.Fair enough, and I would say that anything an opinion columnist states as an opinion should be given plenty of lattitude as opinion. But anything even an opinion journalist states as a fact should be held to the same standards as anything that any reporter states as a fact. Hence my choice of the three examples in my previous post where Scheer asserts as factual three statements that are almost certainly false. The more I think about Scheer, the more I convince myself that the scandal of his career is of the magnitude of the Blair scandal, not only because of the habitual misquotes and distortions, but because the problem has been going on so long, and because Scheer has become such an entrenched institution that he seems to have become immune from serious editorial oversight.
David Horowitz, who has known Scheer for decades, emailed me:
I can vouch for the fact that Scheer gets special treatment at the Times. I used to write opeds for the Times. Bob Berger my editor would tone down everything I wrote until one day I complained. I said, what about Scheer's columns (which are exceptionally nasty)? Berger said "Scheer's anointed." I said, "You mean he's protected?" And Berger said,This, and more, in Horowitz's FrontPageMag article "Scheer Lunacy at the Los Angeles Times". I've linked to this piece in the past, and it's well worth revisiting.
"Yes."
Scheer's biography states that "He is now a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, where he teaches a course on media and society." The Annenberg School course catalog includes the following course description
500 Media and Society (3, FaSp) Analysis of major theories on the role of communication media and society with special emphasis on the role and responsibility of the news media.Is Bob Scheer someone who should be educating aspiring journalists on the "role and responsibility of the news media"? I can only ask the question, somebody at the Annenberg School might want to answer it.
UPDATE a closer look at the USC catalog and class schedule shows that Scheer taught this course in the Annenberg School of Communication (not the School of Journalism):
310 Media and Society (4, Fa) Interplay between media and society, including family and children’s socialization, inter-group relations and community, pornography and violence, gender and race, media ethics, conduct of politics.Media ethics? Is this the guy who should be teaching media ethics? Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 22, 2003 12:09 AM
Well actually, considering the recent scandals involving Easson Jordan, Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, Robert Fisk, Stephen Glass, and the LA Times photographer who tried to pass off that composite photo, one could argue that Robert Scheer would be the IDEAL person to discuss the role and responsibility (or lack thereof) of the news media.
An example of a distortion, Stefan, is right in your Canard-o-Matic.
You cite one canard as "Palestine" and reference Scheer's February 25 column.
But in that column, Scheer only says "Is all this shuffling of friends and foes just realpolitik, similar to how we ignore the mayhem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an inconvenient sideshow?"
That's his only reference to Palestine and it was passing comment. Your little chart makes it seem like some big deal.
More importantly, it is a fairly debatable statement. You may disagree but many people believe that hitherto Bush has (somewhat understandably) tried to avoid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as just too intractable. You may disagree with Scheer but the term "canard" is vast overkill.
The word canard referse to a "falsity." I won't speculate on your reasons for including "Palestine" in your Canard-o-Matic but it discredits you. I am pro-Israel and so I went first to the "Palestine" entry first off. I was amused that you would include Scheer's statement as a canard. As I said before, you simply don't agree with the guy.
Btw, I don't care about Scheer, rarely read him and not impressed by his politics when I do; he's far too much of a bleating-heart for my taste.
But I do care about rigor in conversation and I am disappointed with the style with which you grind your axe.
Posted by: "Dave" on May 22, 2003 09:08 AMDave:
When you get right down to it, "passing comments" are all that Scheer's columns ever consist of. He uses a throwaway fact (or slander or distortion, it really doesn't matter) to undermine the strawman argument he is railing against. Then he repeats the process untill he has enough copy to turn into the Times.
Since throwaway smears are such a central component of Scheer's oeuvre, it is entirely appropriate to focus on them in criticizing Scheer. To argue otherwise would be like saying it's unfair to criticize a Star Wars prequel by focusing on the lame dialogue and bad acting.
Please go read Scheer's column of February 25, 2003.
Posted by: "Dave" on May 22, 2003 10:03 AMStefan-
Congrats also on being the first real blogger to be linked by Lucianne.com. A long overdue recognition of reality on her part. Drudge, you self-centered poseur, your next. Anyways, terrific piece on Scheer. As a long time Times nonreader (due in no small part to Scheer), I somehow feel like one of those Poles or East Germans c 1989 just prior to the collapse of the wall. The wall in this case being the local newspaper monopoly & national networks. BTW welcome to the dark side!
Posted by: Lloyd on May 22, 2003 10:15 AM