Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Didn't even break a sweat

At American Thinker, Randall Hoven comes up with another 21 incidents of scholarly or journalistic malfeasance to add to his original 62, including should-be two-time loser
7. CBS, Dan Rather, The Wall Within (1988). Fell for hoax, liars. This documentary had Dan Rather interviewing six Viet Nam veterans who told stories of slaughter, cruelty and the horrors of war. "You're telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?" Rather asked. "Yeah. It was kill VC, and I was good at what I did." It turned out that five of the six were never in the service at all, and the sixth, who claimed to be a Navy SEAL, was an equipment repairman and never near combat.
And how could we forget:
14. New Orleans Times-Picayune The New Orleans Times-Picayune and many other newspapers reported rumors, hoaxes and lies [about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina]. The NOTP came clean and critiqued itself and others who "... described inflated body counts, unverified ‘rapes', and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of ‘scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials'." Also see Popular Mechanics for a refutation of Katrina myths.
There's one I came up with Hoven still hasn't mentioned: Thom Beal, assistant editorial page editor of the Rocky Mountain News: Plagiarism, er, "duplicated wording."

Update: Originally I had Micah Wright as the second example from Hoven's new list, but that was two military fakers and I wanted variety, of which there is plenty.

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