{"id":9551,"date":"2007-01-08T14:05:52","date_gmt":"2007-01-08T19:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9551.html"},"modified":"2007-01-08T14:05:52","modified_gmt":"2007-01-08T19:05:52","slug":"pajamas-medias-credibility-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/pajamas-medias-credibility-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Pajamas Media’s credibility problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noted<\/a> last week that the conservative side of the blogosphere has fallen on hard times of late. First there was Cliff May’s email from a Marine about Iraq and the media, which conservatives jumped all over, which turned out to be wrong<\/a>. Then there was a picture of John Kerry in Iraq that was “proof” that the troops resented him, which also turned out to be wrong<\/a>. Then there was Capt. Jamil Hussein, which has turned out to be a humiliating story<\/a> for the right. (Those are just from the last few weeks; all of last year was bad for conservative blogs<\/a> in general.)<\/p>\n

Today, Glenn Greenwald goes one step further<\/a> and looks specifically at Pajama’s Media. Now, in theory, I think Pajama’s Media is a fine idea for the right. It’s a $3.5 million multi-media project, started by some very high profile conservative bloggers, aimed at creating a mini-empire, along the lines of Huffington, Kos, and Josh Marshall’s TPM sites, only PM would be a right-wing venture to rival traditional media outlets. At least it was intended to be.<\/p>\n

Glenn takes a look at one of the more recent setbacks<\/a> for the PM project.<\/p>\n

(1) Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (and a Contributing Editor of National Review)<\/em>, on his Pajamas Media blog last Thursday<\/a>: “BREAKING NEWS –Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, is dead.”<\/p>\n

(2) Pajamas Media, front page, last Thursday: “A source close to Pajamas Media<\/strong> has learned that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently succumbed to the cancer that hospitalized him last month, as exclusively reported by Pajamas Media<\/a>, at age 67.”  (The phrase “still unconfirmed” added<\/a> at the top only <\/em>once nobody else touched their “exclusive”).<\/p>\n

(3) Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air, last Thursday<\/a>: “This<\/a> is either going to be a two-ton feather in Pajamas’s cap or a major embarrassment.<\/strong> I have my fingers crossed for them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Guess how this one turned out for them.
\n
\nThe AP reported today<\/a> that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “looked thinner than usual and sounded as if he had a cold, but seemed otherwise in good health when he appeared on television Monday…. On Monday, Khamenei addressed hundreds of citizens of Qom, a holy city 80 miles south of Tehran, who gathered outside his residence in the city center.”<\/p>\n

PM is currently running a feature on its homepage<\/a> with images suggesting the Khamenei seen today may be an impostor. Seriously.<\/p>\n

Glenn’s not impressed.<\/p>\n

[Pajamas Media has] done nothing of even minor note since their inception (until now). As a result, news accounts from real media outlets — like the one today from Associated Press — refer to reports from Pajamas Media as mere “Internet rumors.” <\/p>\n

In light of this latest humiliation, it’s obviously necessary that they be downgraded still further in the credibility department. But what is lower than “Internet rumors” when it comes to the credibility of a report? It seems like it’s necessary to create a whole new level of unreliability just for Pajamas Media. Anyone minimally familiar with the right-wing blogosphere would have predicted — and did predict<\/a> — that a “news outlet” that grows out of that<\/i> credibility-free swamp is destined for ignominious failure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This may sound counter-intuitive, I’d much prefer if Pajama’s Media was successful and reliable. When PM, and other far-right online media outlets, make a series of mistakes, it reflects poorly on the broader medium. PM has real resources at its disposal, a large audience, and an opportunity to make an impact.<\/p>\n

But like too much of the conservative movement in general, it can’t keep its facts straight. It’s a real shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noted last week that the conservative side of the blogosphere has fallen on hard times of late. First there was Cliff May’s email from a Marine about Iraq and the media, which conservatives jumped all over, which turned out to be wrong. Then there was a picture of John Kerry in Iraq that was […]<\/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-9551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551","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=9551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}