Newsbusters congratulates Lou Dobbs for getting the Wen Ho Lee story wrong
November 13, 2009 1:29 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Last week, Newsbusters toasted ABC's World News Tonight for a report on the Ft. Hood handgun massacre; a report that was factually inaccurate. Now, in the wake of Dobbs' CNN departure, Newsbusters dips into the archives and tips its hat to Dobbs for doing such a great job covering the Wen Ho Lee espionage case back in 1999. Slight problem: Dobbs got the Lee story wrong.
Question: Aren't media critics supposed to chastise the press when they get it wrong, not congratulate it?
Basically, Newsbusters was thrilled because Dobbs, unlike the other news anchors at the time (at least that's the claim), jumped on the anti-Clinton story of the Wen Ho Lee spy case, and Dobbs wildly over-hyped it:
This is the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It is also ground zero in what is arguably the most alarming nuclear espionage scandal in nearly 50 years, certainly since the Rosenbergs. What has been stolen is a sophisticated miniaturized warhead technology.
Wrong and wrong, as it turned out. Although at the outset, that was certainly the talking points Republicans were pushing, so in that sense Dobbs got those correct.
But here's the best part: Newsbusters today doesn't bother to point out that the hype Dobbs initially pushed turned out to be bogus. Newsbusters pretends that the Wen Ho Lee story was a huge blockbuster that embarrassed the White House.
It wasn't. In fact, the case ended with a U.S. District Court judge apologizing to Lee in open court on behalf the government for the way prosecutors had "embarrassed our entire nation."
Here's my favorite Newsbusters passage:
The press in 1999 also gave the la-la treatment to the possibility of any connection between the technology transfer and laundered political contributions that likely had Chinese origins.
The punch line? There was no connection. Period. Newsbusters is mad that the press, at least initially, didn't play up an angle that turned out to be false. Newsbusters wishes the press back in 1999 had hammered an anti-Clinton angle, even though it was bogus.
And yes, this week in honor of his CNN departure, Newsbusters congratulated Lou Dobbs for getting the Wen Ho Lee story wrong.
The media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers"
How to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less
Media Matters: In which Glenn Beck hosts talk of tickle fights
well, here is a new one:
newsbusters had an article by the guy that looks like a teletubbie who got all hot and bothered about a satirical segment of morning meeting with dylan ratigan where they showed photoshopped pictures of sarah palin without pointing out that were photoshopped.
and then the teletubbie continues, threatening that, "MSNBC should immediately apologize for presenting such false information." you're kidding, right? how is displaying photoshopped pictures "false information"? false information would be if ratigan proclaimed that those are real pictures of sarah palin... then again, he didnt say that they arent, either. regardess, it is obvious that newsbusters cant take a joke and understand the difference between satire and real news. they are so hard up for bias that they will point to anything as "liberal bias", as much it may not be.
by the way, this comment by a newsbusters poster is pretty ridiculous:
and they can never show actual evidence of MMfA, or the others, doing such a thing.
the best way to characterize newsbusters and the people on there is a "palace of paranoid pansies" because all they do is complain about things that are never there. and, as MMfA has documented, they continue to repeat factual errors and push the same lies that fox news and the rest of the conservative media does.
Lee revisited
While not deserving of nine months in jail Slate concludes we're glad Lee is not working at Los Alamos anymore.