For those of you who followed my quixotic (and ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to get Power Line to retract an obvious falsehood that they had posted, I've put together a timeline for your enjoyment, together with the links, and a few notes on the whole thing at the end:
03/03/05, morning: Powerline puts up a post specifically endorsing Ann Coulter's claim that the NYTimes is engaged in "the "outing" of gay children of conservatives."
03/03/05, afternoon: I write my own post that reveals that the NYTimes was not, in fact, outing gay children of conservatives, and that Ann Coulter's column contained numerous lies and distortions.
03/03/05 - 03/04/05: I email Powerline twice, politely asking them to retract their statement, providing them with quotes, definitions, and other evidence. I receive no response.
03/05/05, evening: Powerline posts a response, in which they stand by their previous statements, and reiterate their belief that "what the Times did was deporable."
03/06/05, morning: I post a response to Powerline's update, in which I reveal that not only were the three children in question not "outed," but are gay activists or spokespeople who have spoken publicly about their sexuality, and that Powerline apparently intentionally choose a definition of the verb "out" that applies to a different sense of the word.
03/07/05: Maya Keyes, one of the people who Ann Coulter and Powerline claim was outed by the NYTimes, notices my post, and writes on her own blog that she is not offended by the NYTimes piece, and that she doesn't consider mention of her sexuality an invasion of her privacy.
03/08/05: I write about Maya Keyes' statements. I send Powerline another email asking them, now that we have iron-clad proof that to the contrary, to please retract their incorrect statement.
As of today (03/16/05), no one at Powerline has responded to any of my emails, and they have not retracted their (twice affirmed) statement about the NYTimes.
A few final thoughts:
1) The people who write on Powerline are apparently engaging in a deliberate deception. Given that Powerline's reputation is based largely on being credited with discovering the factual errors in the famous CBS Bush TexANG story, the fact that they won't correct such an obvious and easily correctable factual error of their own, apart from being deeply ironic, reflects very poorly on their integrity. In fact, it seems to reveal that they are partisan hacks who are more interested in their right-wing agenda than they are in whether their statements are true or false.
2) This is not a case of Powerline simply linking to something that was false. They made the lie their own, and they bear direct responsibility for its dissemination. They specifically repeated Coulter's charge in their own words, and then affirmed their belief in it when pressed.
3) Given that the blogosphere is often praised by conservatives as the self-correcting savior of the American media, that Powerline has refused to acknowledge to themselves and to their (apparently considerable) readership an obvious error makes one wonder whether the self-correcting blogosphere isn't another partisan republican myth, perpetuated in order to advance their agenda.
4) To those you who think that I wasted my time trying to get Powerline to admit a mistake: I don't think I did. I didn't really think they would admit their mistake. I was mostly testing a hypothesis that I had, and the results of the experiment were conclusive. And now, here, collected in one place, is a copiously documented case-study in how spectacularly dishonest a right-wing blog (one that made its reputation on its fact-checking, no less) can be if they're allowed to get away with it.
-- Michael
If you don't mind doing it, i don't think it's a waste of time being done. maybe Hugh Hewitt should see this, as he seems to be the biggest salesman of the "self-correcting" myth.
Posted by: d | March 16, 2005 at 01:17 PM
You need to keep a copy of the posts at Powerline because they may change them (or the URL may change). Probably ought to keep a copy of Coulter's post too. You should probably track down the NYT editorial too if you can. Your "I post a response" link doesn't go to the article btw.
Note that Coulter did name names (in contradiction to what Powerline stated) in her article and otherwise specify the people she was refering to:
Has John Kerry had lunch with his pal Mary Cheney lately? What ever happened to Newt Gingrich's gay half-sister?
...a website reporter for supposedly operating a gay escort service...
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I'm not sure I'd push the "lie" aspect since after all's said and done they were just shiling for Coulter, and the lie itself is trivial enough. I would present it as a matter of character.
Now the next step is presumably to get more people to contact Powerline. Afterall they did at least respond to you. Possibly if more people raised the question they would conceed more. I would be interested in knowing what they meant when they claimed that even if they did have it wrong about the meaning of "out" the NYT was still "deplorable". How so? What exactly is deplorable about that? Do they mean that talking about gay people is "deplorable" in itself?
Posted by: DavidByron | March 16, 2005 at 08:06 PM
It must have been a lot of trouble, but I agree that the results are worth it.
Have you sent a copy of this to Time magazine? Their feet could use some toasting if they don't back off from their earlier opinion of P'line.
Posted by: wmr | March 16, 2005 at 10:07 PM