Sunday, September 12, 2004
Time interviewer propagates lie in first sentence: Tumultification!
Five days ago, Patterico exposed how AP Dowdified a Cheney quote, perverting its meaning to make it sound as if Cheney was saying that a Kerry victory would invite another terrorist attack. Cheney's actual warning was about how a Kerry administration (not named, but implied) would RESPOND to an attack: that they would respond legalistically rather than militarily (as Kerry himself has proclaimed).
Now today, in Kerry's first major media interview after over a month of ducking hard questions posed by the Swift Boat Vets, his Time Magazne interviewer, Karen Tumulty, starts out, not just with a softball, but by repeating the long since exposed AP disinformation:
I was sorry to see Cheney come out two days ago with a clarification that apparently neglected to note that he had been misquoted. Cheney's reward for playing it nice? The CNN story on Cheney's clarification used the clarification as an opportunity to repeat the original misquote without noting that it was a misquote! CNN:
For those not familiar with the story, the actual quote was:
More clarification is good, but couldn't Cheney have pointed out that the excised portion of his original quote did in fact provide the same clarification at the time? Not mentioning the mis-quote just gives his enemies in the press a context in which to repeat their earlier disinformation.
We have a term for chopping up quotes so as to pervert their meaning: the Dowd, after the most famous practitioner of the technique. No term has yet been coined for propagating a Dowd after it has already been exposed. Others might out-compete Tumulty for the dishonor on grounds of precedence, prominence or poisonousness, but for serendipitousness of name, Tumulty has to be the winner: Tumultification!
Now today, in Kerry's first major media interview after over a month of ducking hard questions posed by the Swift Boat Vets, his Time Magazne interviewer, Karen Tumulty, starts out, not just with a softball, but by repeating the long since exposed AP disinformation:
TIME
This past month has been pretty brutal for you, between the Swift Boat ads, the Republican Convention and the Vice President saying if you get elected, it would invite another terrorist attack. Have you come to any new conclusions about whom you're running against and what you have to do to win?
I was sorry to see Cheney come out two days ago with a clarification that apparently neglected to note that he had been misquoted. Cheney's reward for playing it nice? The CNN story on Cheney's clarification used the clarification as an opportunity to repeat the original misquote without noting that it was a misquote! CNN:
On Tuesday, campaigning in Iowa, Cheney had said: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
For those not familiar with the story, the actual quote was:
...it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.
More clarification is good, but couldn't Cheney have pointed out that the excised portion of his original quote did in fact provide the same clarification at the time? Not mentioning the mis-quote just gives his enemies in the press a context in which to repeat their earlier disinformation.
We have a term for chopping up quotes so as to pervert their meaning: the Dowd, after the most famous practitioner of the technique. No term has yet been coined for propagating a Dowd after it has already been exposed. Others might out-compete Tumulty for the dishonor on grounds of precedence, prominence or poisonousness, but for serendipitousness of name, Tumulty has to be the winner: Tumultification!
