Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Infrastructure week. at last.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

All your base are belong to Tunch.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

You cannot shame the shameless.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

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Reader Interactions

28Comments

  3. 3.

    JGabriel

    And maybe we’ll print a retraction (We’re thinking about it!)

    Careless, irresponsible, arrogant idiots.

    .

  6. 6.

    demkat620

    You know, this stuff wouldn’t be so maddening if they would stop falling for the banana in the tailpipe every time.

    Fake memos, fake callers, fake pimps.

    Stop. Falling. For. It.

  7. 7.

    plasticgoat

    No original reporting was done by the NYT on the Acorn story. It was warmed over Fox news reporting. Better information can be found daily on blogs, such as this one.

  8. 8.

    AhabTRuler

    Hoyt: The Times’ failures were the actions of individual employees and should not reflect on the paper as an organization.

    ETA: I like the fact that Bertha Lewis has been the most upfront in taking responsibility for her employees’ actions, more than any other actor in this entire saga.

  9. 9.

    NobodySpecial

    I don’t know why you tagged it as a failed media experiment.

    In their minds, it worked to perfection.

  10. 10.

    bemused

    I wonder how it feels to look like a total ass…not the first time & I doubt it will be the last time either.
    His paycheck must compensate very well if he has any journalistic doubts at all.

  11. 11.

    gbear

    I liked (not) the fourth comment down which basically said that people at Acorn lost their jobs so the NYT must have been right. Pretty sad summation of the situation.

  12. 12.

    matt

    I’m a bit confused because

    The videos were heavily edited. The sequence of some conversations was changed. Some workers seemed concerned for Giles, one advising her to get legal help. In two cities, Acorn workers called the police. But the most damning words match the transcripts and the audio, and do not seem out of context. Harshbarger’s report to Acorn found no “pattern of illegal conduct” by its employees. But, he told me: “They said what they said. There’s no way to make this look good.”

    These workers still fucked up a lot here.

  14. 14.

    kay

    I can now submit a photograph that I have altered to media and they will present it as an accurate depiction of an event that occurred.

    Because something like what’s depicted probably occurred.

    The fact is, they presented that video as a factual real-time representation of a series of events.

    And that’s not true. That’s not “what happened”.

    It may as well be wholly fictional. It can’t be a little bit real.

  15. 15.

    scav

    mmm. Does this mean we can go off on congress critters inter alios based upon their performance in Colbert’s interviews?

  17. 17.

    AhabTRuler

    @bemused: His and my family have cause to interact, although I don’t know him well at all. I have been outrageously disappointed and angry about how Hoyt approached the issue. He was a smug, establishment insider handing down the “serious” truth to the DFH and other rabble.

    To be fair, I doubt that the position pays very well at all, at least compared to CEOs and Banksters. AFAIK, he’s not exactly living the Versailles lifestyle, although he’s probably not hurting, either.

  18. 18.

    kay

    Anytime I see video on the news I have to wonder if it’s altered.

    I already read the transcript on interviews, before assessing quotes taken out of context. Since I don’t have the capability to detect video editing, I have to reject any video sequence presented as fact.

  19. 19.

    bemused

    @AhabTRuler:
    If the pay isn’t that great, I can’t imagine what benefit there is for him lowering journalistic standards other than being part of the “in crowd”.

  20. 20.

    DBrown

    The right wing thugs (republicans) have had wet dreams to kill ACORN and prevent ni … I mean black gentleman from voting. Thanks to the AO times, these racist pigs have won.

  21. 21.

    SGEW

    In [reviewing hundreds of articles,] we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time . . . . [a]nd where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

    But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

    Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.

    We consider . . . the pattern of misinformation[] to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

    – The New York Times Editorial Board, “The Times and Iraq”
    5/26/2004
    (emphasis added)

  22. 22.

    Nutella

    @AhabTRuler:

    Hoyt: The Times’ failures were the actions of individual employees and should not reflect on the paper as an organization.

    At least 14 of them according to the article. But there was no message coordination at all. No sirree! Honest Injun! Would we lie to you?

  23. 23.

    AhabTRuler

    @bemused: Nothing that deliberate. In fact, we (both here and in general) often overstate how deliberate certain actions are. It is his nature he is as an elder print reporter, especially a PP winner, a creature by and of the establishment. The Villagers are (and Hoyt can be considered a minor Villager), by and large, fairly conservative in regards to the world the know and live in, if not in terms of social and political issues. They understand it, the know their likes and dislikes, and they know they like their change incremental and “fair” (by which I mean not too upsetting to the existing elite).

    Furthermore, except for the topmost tier, many of the establishment elite, moreso actually in DC and NY, are not independently wealthy. They are dependent on remaining employed in the existing power structure; salaries are quite comfortable , especially with longevity, but no one is getting rich of their paycheck alone. Stupid gits could live like Kings if they were thrifty, but that is not the way of things.

  25. 25.

    Joel

    Did Jon Stewart ever get around to apologizing for his (minor) role in this mess? No one stood up for these guys, and it’s a damn fucking shame.

  26. 26.

    Ms. Wankerl

    If O’Keefe did not dress as a pimp, he clearly presented himself as one

    BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. In every case he said he was Giles’s gainfully employed boyfriend who was trying to protect her from an abusive pimp. I guess this asshole has yet to read the actual transcripts.

    a fellow trying to set up a woman — sometimes along with under-age girls — in a house where they would work as prostitutes.

    BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. This is just outrageous. He said they were concerned that children were living in the same house. Not that there were child prostitutes. No woman would give advice to anyone planning to pimp out children.

    This is the most pathetic non-apology I could have imagined. He makes offhand references to things like “I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing” that I believe took place online and not in the NYT’s pages.

    Editors say they are considering a correction.

    Isn’t he the fucking “public editor”? And couldn’t I say that I’m considering a run for Congress?

  28. 28.

    robert green

    my letter to the public editor:

    so sad. Some say that Acorn perpetrated massive voter fraud in 2008, and others say it helped millions of poor people. If only there were some mechanism by which we might actually be able to ascertain which of these two claims are in fact true. Perhaps using some kind of operation dedicated to discovering which of two competing claims were true? Would that such an operation existed!

    Instead, we have mealy-mouthed statements of nothing like the one you made to end your piece.

    Using the magic of this thing called “google” I was able, in 20 seconds, to ascertain with some degree of certainty that claims that ACORN perpetrated a massive voter fraud in 2008 were investigated and found to be false. I was also able to find metrics measuring ACORN’s poverty work that showed it has indeed helped millions of poor people.

    Some say the earth is round, others that it is flat–who are you as a lifelong reporter to decide which is true?

    I am sad that you are so horrifically bad at your job, and that your reporters were suckered by con artists. I feel sorry for my friends in the news industry that they are losing jobs but in the main your inability to give a real mea culpa and the ability you retain to write that last sentence makes you less than worthless to our core democratic principles.

    Retire, and replace yourself with someone with the most basic comprehension of what it means to report.

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