INDCJournal: Status Check

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July 01, 2005

Status Check

Posted by Bill

At the beginning of the month, I cast skepticism on an Aljazeera.com report that declared that John Kerry would seek impeachment proceedings for President Bush, despite the fact that the article contained no direct quote backing such an assertion:

John Kerry to call for President Bush's impeachment? Well, Al Jazeera thinks so.
Though, I'm not sure how much I trust an analysis that relies on Michael Moore's web site and the Democratic Underground for mainstream sources of internet intelligence. Also, this makes it sound like they have an inordinantly expansive interpretation of a John Kerry statement of resolve[.]

Steve Ely also noticed the claim's dubiousness.

But despite the questionable sourcing and lack of a direct quote, several right-wing bloggers and media outlets uncritically parroted the headline that Kerry would seek impeachment, probably because the story presented too fun a partisan target for healthy equivocation. It's nearly a month later, and no impeachment.* Also, no retractions or clarifications from the outlets that trumpeted the headline.**

* Two weeks ago, therawstory did publish an anonymously sourced claim that Kerry was "enlisting other senators to sign onto a letter to the intelligence committee seeking answers to the Downing Street memo," but that's a far cry from impeachment proceedings.

** It's possible that such clarifications exist; I just haven't been able to find any.

Posted by Bill at July 1, 2005 08:29 AM | TrackBack (0)

Comments

My post had Kerry as a Little Debbie Zebra Cake pointing out that a Fruit Pie is not above the law.

For that, I apologize and retract and redact and bow to your superior wisdom and canniness and pronounce you king of the internet and have sent your post URL along to Glenn Reynolds so that he may link it and show all the world just who in the blogosphere is the real thinker and the real CITIZEN JOURNALIST -- a man whose instincts are so finely honed that, above all others, was able to separate out the bullshit from the anti-war fertilizer.

GOD BLESS YOU INTERNET KING!

Posted by: Jeff G at July 1, 2005 03:09 PM

Thank you! I may not be KING OF THE INTERNET, but I certainly rule your ass.

You ran with the unqualified declaration in service of the necessarily abbreviated structure of a joke. I get that. Common shortcut.

You know who else does that? Jon Stewart. I love the ones about "no WMD!"

What a hoot!

Posted by: Bill from INDC at July 1, 2005 03:11 PM

Bill,

You may want to research this a little further. The Newsmax piece quotes The New Bedford, Mass. Standard Times as of 6/3/05. Their archives are not available free. If someonw has Lexis/Nexis access the original source may me available for review.

You may have snarked too soon. :) I'm not sure.

Tom

Posted by: RiverRat at July 1, 2005 05:05 PM

The New Bedford, Mass. Standard Times as of 6/3/05. Their archives are not available free. If someonw has Lexis/Nexis access the original source may me available for review.

Likely irrelevant. All the stories are derived from the same quotes, apparently in the same interview - if that's the best they've got, it's not a call for impeachment. My error would be in not identifying the Standard as potentially the original outlet (prior to aljazeera.com) that snagged the quotes.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at July 1, 2005 05:11 PM

Here's the Newsmax article.

This may have resulted from a conflation of Kerry's comments and Nader's

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/6/3/00901.shtml

Posted by: RiverRat at July 1, 2005 05:12 PM

This may have resulted from a conflation of Kerry's comments and Nader's

Bingo.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at July 1, 2005 05:14 PM