Giving Veterans Day a Bad Name

I was out of town this weekend, the fetching Mrs. Chanman and I went to Los Angeles to see the King Tut exhibit at the L.A. County Art Museum, and even more daringly, we left our little cherub with Grami. That is the first time we have ever been separated from our little one like that. It was both liberating yet heartbreaking at the same time. By Sunday, we couldn't wait get to get our hands on that little ray of sunshine.

Now, down to business. While away, I read in the newspapers about this lout by the name of Jimmy Massey. It seems Mr. Massey was deployed to Iraq, and he claims he saw some bad stuff go down involving atrocities committed by U.S. troops. After making these claims, it was a race by the mainstream media to see who could print this stuff the fastest. They smelled super bad news from Iraq, so they were all over this story, and they were doing it around the time of Veterans Day to boot! When all was said and done, Mr. Massey turned out to have a bit of a credibility problem. You see, there was a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by the name of Ron Harris who didn't witness any of these "atrocities" that Massey claimed happened. Mr. Massey was simply doing his best impression of John Kerry by claiming he witnessed atrocities by U.S. troops even though nothing of the kind happened.

So now, the mainstream media is doing a backward trot as they try to explain to their viewers and readers how they could have screwed up so badly. My own local paper, the Sacramento Bee had fallen for Massey's fabrications hook, line, and sinker. When I got home from L.A., my Sunday paper was on my doorstep, and this gem of an article from the Ombudsman (Public Editor) was in the Forum section. I have to admit, I did enjoy watching this guy verbally squirm in his mea culpa to the readers of the Bee. What really makes this all so pathetic is that this Massey brouhaha comes just a year after CBS - or more specifically, Dan Rather and Mary Mapes - screwed the pooch concerning President Bush and the fabricated memos about his National Guard service. This just goes to show the blind partisanship and willingness to believe anything on behalf of the mainstream media if it hurts the image, honor, or integrity of the United States, its leadership, or its military.

The Sacramento Bee requires a membership login to read its online articles, so I will post the juiciest parts of the mea culpa by its Public Editor, David Holwerk:

...We should have done more to check the truth of Massey's charges before deciding whether to publish them. We didn't, and the responsibility for that is mine.

It was an error in judgment, and The Bee's readers are entitled to an explanation of how I made that error.... Before we published the story, we should have called the Marine Corps for response. We also could have attempted to speak to other members of Massey's Marine unit and to check whether any reporters were embedded with Massey's company. But we didn't.

Nonetheless, after some internal discussion, I decided that Massey was a credible source with a riveting story to tell and that we would publish the story, which we did on May 16, 2004. The story sparked a number of letters, some questioning the credibility of Massey's story. We published five letters about the story - two of them critical - and that was that, until about three weeks ago.

That's when reporter Harris called. He told me he was working on a story about Massey and identified himself as having been embedded with Massey's unit in Iraq. He told me that neither he nor other embedded journalists had seen any evidence of the atrocities Massey alleged and that other members of Massey's unit had told him the incidents never occurred. He also told me the Marine Corps had investigated Massey's allegations and had concluded they were baseless.

He said a number of news organizations had published some version of Massey's accounts. (Among the ones he named are the Associated Press, USA Today and the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, along with smaller newspapers around the country.) And he asked how The Bee had decided to publish the interview with Massey with no other sources, no response from the Marine Corps and no independent corroboration.

After I looked up the story, I told him the truth: It was clear in retrospect that we hadn't done due diligence with the Jimmy Massey interview....

And to think that these are "professional" journalists we are dealing with here folks. If anyone wonders why viewership of the evening news on T.V. is dropping like a rock, and subscriptions to the major newspapers are doing likewise, I am sure that crap like this that is being pulled has a great deal to do with it.

Good Day to You, Sir