{"id":9202,"date":"2006-11-30T13:15:59","date_gmt":"2006-11-30T18:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9202.html"},"modified":"2006-11-30T13:15:59","modified_gmt":"2006-11-30T18:15:59","slug":"george-wills-creative-editing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/george-wills-creative-editing\/","title":{"rendered":"George Will’s creative editing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The spirited conversation<\/a> between Sen.-elect Jim Webb (D) and President Bush has raised more than a few eyebrows. Dems seem to believe Bush was rude and provoked the heated exchange, while Republicans tend to believe the opposite, but either way, George Will’s “reporting<\/a>” on the issue was wrong.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb “tried to avoid President Bush,” refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “I’d like to get them [sic] out of Iraq.” When the president again asked “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “That’s between me and my boy.” […]<\/p>\n

Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb’s more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being — one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And if Will were right about the Webb\/Bush exchange, he might have a point. If all you read was Will’s column, you might think Bush was being civil.<\/p>\n

Except Will left out the part of the exchange that didn’t suit his purposes. As the Post article<\/a> Will cites but misquotes explained, after Webb said he wanted to bring his son home from Iraq, Bush actually said, “That’s not what I asked you.” It was this<\/i> response that was at the heart of the confrontation, and Will managed to convey the exchange as if it hadn’t been said at all. For that matter, Webb used the words “Mr. President” twice during the chat with Bush, and Will managed to omit both references.<\/p>\n

As Greg Sargent put it<\/a>, “This is one of the rankest displays of journalistic dishonesty I’ve seen in some time…. [I]t’s quite clear his distortions were entirely deliberate.”<\/p>\n

Given the circumstances, it’s hard to disagree.
\n
\nWill wanted to slam Webb. Fine. But to take a transcript and intentionally leave out the most important sentence — the one that undermines the writer’s point — is just poor journalism and irresponsible reporting. Will’s been around a long time; he knows better than this. A correction is warranted, as is an apology.<\/p>\n

For that matter, Sargent is also right that the Post should be more than a little annoyed.<\/p>\n

You’d think such an obvious misrepresentation would irritate the Post’s top brass. You’d think they would be annoyed<\/i> with Will for sullying their pages with such journalistic misbehavior. Indeed, it’s kind of amusing to imagine what went through Will’s mind as he cut and pasted the Post’s original reporting and then hit the delete button to get rid of the inconvenient quote. Did he think to himself, “Yeah, this is bad, but no one will notice”? Or did he think, “What the heck — people will notice, but it won’t affect my professional or social standing, so who cares”?<\/p>\n

Paging Howard Kurtz: Do you consider your colleague’s effort journalistically acceptable? I don’t. This was a really bad one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d only add that in 2003, Will took a Meet the Press transcript of a Wesley Clark appearance, rearranged the sentences<\/a> into a less favorable order, and mischaracterized Clark’s comments as part of a very similar smear.<\/p>\n

Will may be a DC institution, but columnists have been disciplined for less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spirited conversation between Sen.-elect Jim Webb (D) and President Bush has raised more than a few eyebrows. Dems seem to believe Bush was rude and provoked the heated exchange, while Republicans tend to believe the opposite, but either way, George Will’s “reporting” on the issue was wrong. Wednesday’s Post reported that at a White […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}