Hint: when you reach bottom, stop digging
Remember Allah’s sure-handed fisking yesterday and the day before of Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell and his feeble defense of manufacturing news to fit the correct (ie, liberal) agenda? Well, thanks to Confederate Yankee, we now know why this ethically-bereft liberal “journalist” is so eager to minimize the crimes of his fellow lying propagandists:
Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?
I never found out. Oh, I went down to the falls, all right, but when I got there, I discovered that I just could not wander up to strangers (even dorky ones wearing funny hats and knee socks) and ask them for their personal opinions, however innocuous. It was a puffball assignment, but that wasn’t why I rebelled. I just could not bring myself to do it.
So I sat on a park bench and scribbled out a few fake notes and then went back to the office and wrote my fake story, no doubt quoting someone like Jane Smith from Seattle, honeymooning with her husband Oscar, saying something like, “Gosh, I never knew there was so much rock under there!”
Of course, I got away with it. There was no Jane Smith to complain about being misquoted, and no one was going to call all the Smiths in Seattle to find out if she really existed. I suppose the world was none the worse for it. As a story, it wasn’t exactly on a par with a sniper shooting up the suburbs of Washington.
Still, I felt bad about it for years and (obviously) have never forgotten it. On the other hand, I was, at the time, just 19, it was a summer internship, and I’d only been on the job about a month.
And never forget, this is Old Media talking here, the folks who really would prefer it if we’d all just shut up and trust them, thanks.
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When Hell freezes, you lying sacks of…
Update! Confederate Yankee notes that “1967 is long past, but character flaws are forever.” He’s got a solid reason for saying so, too.
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I like to think that most people know the truth and realize they are expected to tell it. Maybe that's just being naive.