WE CAN DO WHAT WE WANT

because we're the press, damn it!

Man, I'm getting sick and tired of that attitude.

Several days ago I went through a piece on the wedding from the Toronto Star, which included a fairly ugly quote from Marine General Jim Mattis. So ugly that I was a bit skeptical at the time, and wrote, "I don't know what the entire statement was. But when that's what's cut, it reads as if we're saying we don't need to apologize at all for anything we do, not we don't have to apologize because we were right."

Well, apparently I wasn't skeptical enough. After a bit of work, Jason van Steenwyk catches them out: the quote is out of context, and while it's impossible to tell which outlet mangled the quote first, so many of them distorted the quote in exactly the same way, it's clear that whoever went to the press conference first, and took the quote out of context, was then simply copied by a bunch of other outlets whose reporters were just too damn lazy to bother to check.

Why do these people think we should trust them at all anymore? and why are they still surprised when polls continue to show that their credibility is dropping?

(via Instapundit, who for some reason gets access to an Iraqnow entry I can't get.)

Comments

[DaninVan]

They all make the same 'mistake' because they all take the quote off the same wire service; no 'reporting', in the sense you meant, involved.