Sunday, August 24, 2008

vanden Heuvel doesn't do corrections

As we were saying, Katrinket vanden Heuvel, who really needs to shore up her thread-bare pro-woman credentials, elected to instead write nothing about Stephanie Tubbs Jones, not even a single sentence.



The editor and publisher of The Nation may, however, have been too busy quickly composing a post ("A People's Convention") that rambled on forever (14 paragraphs) before getting to the point of why she was blogging at all: To issue a 'correction.'



She'd wrongly written that Diane Benson "was the only candidate to immediately release a tough statement criticizing [the FISA bill's] approval." Benson's opponent Ethan Berkowitz also did.



But far be it from Katty-van-van to ever use the words "I was wrong" or "to correct my past writing."



Instead, she 'allows,' "They have a point there. Berkowtiz released a statement on July 9 that was published in the Alaska Report. "



Katty never explains in her dithering post that the FISA vote took place July 9, 2008.



In other words, the day of the vote Berkowitz had issued a statement calling out the vote.



In other words, Katty-van-van was wrong-wrong and forgets to include that or to write anything that resembles a correction of record.



She does go on (and on) about how it wasn't really her fault she "based my description on the interview with Ms. Benson and reports" and, of course, whined that "Berkowtiz's statement had been difficult to locate on his website at the time of the vote." At the time of the vote?



That would be July 9th (pay attention).



She goes on to justify being wrong about the polling on the Berkowitz and Benson race by excusing herself with "at the time of publication on August 4 these polls were not avaialbe either through a Google News search or Berkowitz's own website." August 4th? Wasn't she just whining about her other error and implying July 9th? Regardless . . .



How proud The Nation must be that their editor and publisher thinks doing a Google News search and looking for polling results on a candidate's website qualifies as "researching" the polling numbers before writing about them.