SCANDALOUS

Posted at 9:32 a.m. ET

Faking a story is one of the most serious offenses in journalism, and normally results in a writer being fired.  Jason Blair, the now-famous faker at The New York Times, faked some stories and was eventually shown the door.   A Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post was found to have made up her winning story, and was similarly escorted out of the compound. 

There are several ways to fake a story.  You can make up facts, you can leave out critical information to give a false impression, or you can edit the story in such a way as to twist it out of shape.

There's been plenty of buzz about Sarah Palin's poor performance in her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.  I'm not here to make excuses for some of her inadequate answers.  However, it turns out that a number of her answers were actually far more adequate than what we saw on television.  There are two remarkable articles on this.  The first is by Frank Miele of the Daily Inter Lake of Montana.  Miele is an excellent columnist who went west from the East Coast and has acquired a fine journalistic reputation.  The second is from the Iris Blog, which I'm using for the first time. 

These articles can't be summarized.  There's too much vital detail.  But both examine the Gibson and Couric interviews and reveal, stunningly, how they were edited to make Sarah Palin look ridiculous.  These writers have the goods.  They compare the original transcript of the interviews to the edited versions that we saw on TV.  They prove their point about deceptive journalism beyond any reasonable doubt.

I urge you to read these pieces.  You won't regret it.  They will give you an insight into the dry rot that is eating away at much of the mainstream media.  Miele deserves a Pulitzer for his story.  He won't get it.

September 28, 2008.