The Seattle Times‘s David Postman, the paper’s “chief political reporter,” planted an IED — ably assisted by insurgent state Democratic party members — in his story about the campaign for chairman of the state Democratic Party:
Phil Talmadge — a former Supreme Court justice, state senator and 2004 primary candidate for governor — entered the race this week … […]
Talmadge dropped out of the governor’s race because of medical issues. He was a tough critic of [Gov. Christine] Gregoire’s. During his campaign, he shared opposition research on Gregoire with key allies of Gregoire’s opponent, Republican Dino Rossi.
Talmadge said he asked [Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton] to check with Gregoire personally to make sure the governor approved [of his running for state chair]. “I wouldn’t be foolish enough to do this if the head of the party in effect was someone who couldn’t work with me,” he said. (Emphases mine.)
Talk about a hatchet job. Members of the state Dem lists I subscribe to are furious. Talmadge has been particularly popular with Deaniacs who like his progressive views, his deep understanding of state issues, and his sharp intellect.
“Phil Talmage has been contacted about the story,” writes an LD leader to an e-mail list I read. “He has stated that the claim is blatantly untrue.”
But is there truth to the unsourced allegation? Today, Howard Martin links to Washblog‘s report by Noemie Maxwell that digs into Postman’s report “without explanation or attribution”:
Now it appears that the opposition research that Talmadge “shared” flowed in one direction only — to Mr. Talmadge.
Talmadge admits meeting with Tom McCabe of the Building Industry Ass’n of Washington (BIAW), “the lobbying group for homebuilders, which has long battled Gregoire in court [when she was state attorney general].” Talmadge took the offered research on Gregoire.
Proper or not, sharing oppo research has gone on forever. But, even “chief” political reporters need to conduct due diligence on unattributed statements written as fact.
The Washington Post ‘s big story about the resignation of a FISA judge was colored by an unattributed characterization of the judge’s political leanings. On December 20, I wrote:
The WaPo article does say that he was considered a “liberal” judge (by who the article doesn’t say) apparently because he “has often ruled against the Bush administration’s assertions of broad powers in the terrorism fight, most notably in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.”
Oh, I get it. You’re a liberal judge if you vote on the side of the Bill of Rights. …
I wonder how many conservative bloggers’ faces lit up when they saw that magic word liberal in the WaPo story. (I haven’t checked, but will bet that Ms. Malkin or one of her minions didn’t miss it.)
“There are plenty of choices Mr. Postman could have made to express the true sense of what happened. Why this particular one which created a false impression?” argues Washblog‘s Maxwell.
Postman’s piece is rife with ugly gossip about the candidates, including charges of homophobia in the state party. … continued below …
But, [state party activist Mitchell] said in an e-mail interview, “I am more than curious about the sexuality question.”
[Greg Rodriguez, in a relationship with another man, whose last name he took, has withdrawn from the state race because of “whisper campaigns and blog traffic that raised questions about his decision to take his partner’s last name and whether he could lead the party as a gay man” and because he’s not really Hispanic.]
Mitchell said sexual orientation is an insignificant factor in most jobs, but not in selecting someone to lead the state Democratic party.
“The party needs, I believe, to appeal to that vast group of uncommitted and middle-of-the-road voters in order to make its future more attractive,” he said.
Given “the nascent conservatism one hears so much about, I simply do not feel that the party would benefit from Mr. Rodriguez’s stewardship,” Mitchell said. …
Oh just shut up, will you. Isn’t that just what we need: A Democratic party leader blabbing about his homophobic queasiness to the Seattle Times.
Postman makes MSNBC’s Rita Cosby look like a girl scout by comparison. (And Democratic activists didn’t help by talking too freely with Postman.) Seattle Dem activist Chad Lupkes wrote in an LTE, “David Postman’s article about the race for Washington State Democratic Party Chair made un-sourced claims about the candidates, and reveals why so many people in our state are against getting involved in political campaigns and our political parties.”
State Dems already have enough “political baggage.” After “three vote counts and a half-year battle in the courts, Gregoire won the nation’s closest gubernatorial contest by 133 votes out of 2.8 million cast,” reports the AP/Olympian (via Howie in Seattle) on December 12, 2005:
Gregoire’s poll numbers have yet to improve. “She has quite an anvil she’s dragging around,” said independent pollster Stuart Elway. Many conservatives haven’t forgiven her for the perceived “stolen” election and she pursued a partisan agenda while not easing her hard-edged, hard-charging image, he and other analysts said.
Pollster David Johnson, who runs the GOP firm Strategic Vision in Atlanta, said Gregoire has one of the lowest ratings in the country. …
So, we Washington state Democrats have quite enough on our plates already. Besides Gregoire’s sure-to-be-shaky ’08 reelection campaign — and probably against her 2004 opponent, Dino Rossi (who about half of the state’s voters stubbornly, angrily believe is their real governor) — we also have Maria Cantwell’s reelection campaign in ’06 and a couple congressional seats we’d love to steal from the Republicans.
We don’t need reportorial hatchet jobs. (And we don’t need state party activists grousing to the chief political reporter of the state’s largest newspaper. Come on, people.)
Update [2006-1-2 13:40:26 by susanhu]: Noemie adds this in a comment below her post at Washblog:
Unsubstantiated claims are extremely destructive and do not belong in journalism. Anyone can say anything about anyone. And people do — they say patently false things using the authority of their profession to give them credence. These false ideas stay with us and do damage — and they harm the profession of journalism. They erode the public trust. The comments on this post attest to the fact that ideas do not need evidence to have life. People are ready to give credence to what they are predisposed to believe. That’s natural. I do that too. But in this case, I think it’s unfair.
If Postman had evidence that Talmadge had done this, then he needed to put it in the article. The fact that he has written about this twice now with no substantiation — except for Talmadge’s own statement that contradicts his later reporting — means to me that he has no substantiation …
that is the question.
My answer is to grouse productively, and that means to get your facts straight and to grouse respectfully.
I hate to admit it, but it took me a long time to realize the newspapers and tv were not telling me the truth everytime I watched them.
That’s why I’m so thankful for the internet now. If you’re going to post something, you’ve better be able to back it up. So many reports from informed sources just leaves me thinking it’s another lie or the reporter is being used someway.
Thanks Susan, you’ve bought out my cynical side again which needs reinforcement from time to time.
Oh, don’t get me started on all the rosy Iraq stories we’ve been seeing lately, where the soldiers are talking about how they are so excited to serve their country, and what an honor it is…last night they had something on MSM about a marine who was so excited to be a marine, he joined after seeing how they were helping with the tsunami last year (yep, roll that happy humanitarian footage).
Even my kids were yelling at the tv…”propaganda!” “What crap!”…we had to flip the channel. Do the people who put these shows on think anyone believes them any more?
How about that Iraqi baby with spinabifida?! Even NPR is waxing on and on about that heart-warming humanitarian story.
In the interests of fairness to all Iraqi children, can we also show photos of all the Iraqi children we’ve blown to bits, paralyzed with shrapnel, burned to death, and on and on?
(Have you told the boys that you’re really Angela Lansbury?)
Seriously, it’s amazing how a parent can influence a child’s political views. One day, I mentioned to little Darcy that McDonald’s gets its hamburger meat from South American ranches that have been built in denuded areas of the rainforest. She never would eat at McDonald’s again. “McDonald’s cuts down rain forests,” she’d exclaim to my mother, who was disgusted with the propaganda I fed her.
I was still in bed when I saw the spina bifida baby story, but I started yelling at the tv about “Just why do you think they have such high rates of birth defects, you fools! Poor nutrition and radioactive waste!”
I think I’ve warped my kids sufficiently that the wingnuts will never be ale to convert them…
You’ve made me think about something I wish we could check out.
We know that the DOD has planted news stories in Iraq and elsewhere.
What about domestic news sources? Is that where these happy happy stories are coming from?
(btw, I subscribe to the DOD’s RSS feeds — for press releases, contracts, etc. — but I never get enough time to really read them, sigh. If anyone’s interested in pursuing those feeds, I’ll give you the URLs.)
I don’t know, but there are too many of them for me to believe that it isn’t being coordinated somewhere. It reeks of strategic planning.
It reeks of the neo-cons staying on message – look at the happy stories. Never mind that most people in Bagdhad had electricty or that schools were open before the invasion. We’ve turned the power back on and re-opened the schools. Just don’t ask how the power was lost or how the schools were demolished in the first place.
But they’ve waited a long time to start the human-interest story blitz, haven’t they? I guess they’re giving up on “bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people”…and the soldier stories are such a transparent attempt to improve enlistment numbers, don’t you think?
Having had recruiters in my room – I doubt nothing.
Yeah, you’ve seen it more up-close and personal than most of us!
I remember during Gulf War I, there was a woman who spoke to Congress about Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwati(sp?) babies out of incubators. That turned out to be a lie. I believe the woman turned out to be a member of the Kuwati(sp?) royal family, who I am sure was democratically elected.
I remember that story too. I think they’ve just gotten bolder about these stories as they’ve gotten more desperate. Can’t sow the nice Islamist regime we set up with that $200-plus billion of our tax money, can we? And nope, shouldn’t be showing that little civil war problem there either. Let’s show people with medical probelms we’ve caused, and what the heck, we’ll even provide treatment for 1 of them!
</rant>
I believe they do. Until I was in the military I didn’t know or believe a lot of the crap that existed. I’ve seen some of it on tv and I believe some of the guys are being truthful. But of course you’ll never see the guys who think what the hell am I doing here.
The thing that killed me was the footage of the military being helpful in a crisis, with no mention of the fact that we’re causing crises throughout the middle east. What happened to at least pretending to be fair and balanced?
Oh I have hated that term for so long “fair and balanced”. I honestly don’t believe there is hardly any reporting that way. Everybody has thier angles (I hate the word spin also) and to me news today is more show than anything else.
This is why I rarely watch television. It is a notion with which I struggle as I look into Andrew’s future.
He will already have the issue of being Chinese boy being adopted and raised by white parents. If I keep him from t.v and MacDonald’s, etc., he will stick out even more. Children ultimately want to be accepted, first by family and then by peers. I guess I’ll just see how his personality develops
I just wrote this in an e-mail to BooMan but thought I’d share it here too:
I like Greg Rodriguez, the gay guy who withdrew his candidacy…. he was a huge Dean supporter, and he and I talked a lot. Wonderful person. Always helped me with my questions. At that time, he was King County Democratic party chair, and he worked tirelessly for all the races.
But, around January 2004, Greg saw the writing on the wall, and switched — before the Wash. state caucuses — to John Kerry. He was pilloried by the Deaniacs.
Now he’s pilloried by state activists from redneck areas for being gay.
I’ve never understood politics well enough to not see why the person trying to help the people most doesn’t get elected. It’s all the back stabbing and underhand dealing I think I hate the most about politics.
I hate to see any good person helping people get swayed in any way.
Really, Family Man.
I wish Greg hadn’t talked to Postman, but I can SEE why he did … he was terribly disheartened by the homophobia, and probably felt he had to speak up.
For pete’s sake, even George W. Bush has lots of gay men working for him. I could name a few …
But it’s not an issue. It shouldn’t be a plus or a minus that Bush hires gays. And the same should be true in Washington state.
One thing about Greg, I am guessing: He’ll keep on working for the party. He doesn’t seem like a quitter.
I don’t know if I phrased myself right Susan. I agree with you. I guess it just didn’t come out the way I meant it to.