There are, of course, a lot of bad opinion columns written every day. It is impossible to read, much less debunk, all the drivel that gets churned out.
Recently, via Ed Cone, I encountered a September 29 column by Tim Chavez writing in the Tennesseean that is breathtakingly bad. I hereby nominate it for Worst Column of the Year.
Chavez begins with a trite thesis. He thinks that the media fails to report good news coming out of Iraq. The only twist he provides is that he thinks that the failure to report the good news is the result of a conspiracy between the media and John Kerry.
Now, Chavez offers no proof of such a conspiracy. I guess that he just thinks that when a car bomb goes off at ceremony for the opening of a sewer pumping station, any report that focuses on the 34 dead children, the 49 total killed, the 139 injured, or the ten Americans wounded in the blast instead of progress towards provision of clean water is self evidently part of a pro-Kerry/anti-Bush conspiracy.
So far that is just routine wingnuttery, but when it comes time to provide examples of the good news from Iraq that are ignored by the media, Chavez really begins to seperate himself from the pack.
Unlike the reporters risking their lives in Iraq, Chavez gets his information from the inbox on his computer. That inbox informed him that, as of September 29, there were no insurgents in Samarra:
Did you see the big headline or watch the top-of-the-newscast story about the success of our sons and daughters in Samarra, Iraq?Of course, you didn't...
[i]t took e-mails from Marine officers in Iraq to relay the importance of this positive news - so I could tell you.
''Samarra is a beaming success story over here,'' writes Lt. Col Jim Rose, a Tennessee Marine whose parents live in Old Hickory. ''We were getting ready for a take-down there right after Najaf. We told the locals, 'Hey, see what happened in Najaf? Is that what you want? Cause we're coming.' It took the locals about two days to get the bad guys out.''
Rarely has a report been so quickly disproved. On October 1, two days after Chavez' published his column, the American military, along with Iraqi forces, engaged in a major combat operation to drive the insurgents out of Samarra. How can that be if the locals had already expelled the "bad guys?"
Perhaps Mr. Chavez' email source was a fraud. Perhaps Lt. Col. Rose was just wrong. It is hard to know how far Mr. Chavez' wignuttery goes. Perhaps he thinks that the American military conducted a major combat operation, with the attendant casualties, as part of a conspiracy to elect John Kerry. Regardless of the cause, events on the ground in Iraq disproved Mr. Chavez first example within forty-eight hours.
Chavez's second example is even more egregious. His email friend writes, and Chavez buys (hook, line, and sinker), the following:
''The Najaf shrine - HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left,'' Rose wrote. ''They (Sadr's supporters) rounded them up during the battle and brought them in to be executed. Why? Because they anticipated the Americans would eventually enter the shrine and walk into a media ambush. We never went in. The people of Najaf love us right now because of that. They hate Sadr and want him dead.''Have you heard that one yet (in the media)?''
No we haven't. We just get one side. That's bad journalism - by a news media acting in concert with Kerry.
NY Times reporter Alex Berenson recently wrote Romanesko about Chavez' column:
I covered the battle of Najaf for the New York Times. I was embedded at a Marine base in Najaf and saw the battle from its third day to its finish. I was at the shrine the day the battle ended and a ceasefire was declared. I can tell you firsthand that the report Tim Chavez supposedly received from a Marine lieutenant colonel claiming that "HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left" the shrine of Imam Ali is entirely false. Does he really think that the correspondents on the scene would have covered that up, or that the Iraqi government and the American military would not have broadcast that fact around the world?Tim, let me ask you directly: Have you ever been a reporter? Do you have any idea what makes a good story? The massacre of hundreds of women and children inside a sacred Muslim shrine would have been front-page news worldwide for days. We didn't report it because it never happened...
Tim, your piece is a disgrace. You ought to apologize for it to the correspondents who are risking their lives on the ground in Iraq. I'm back home now, so I can write this in safety and peace. But I'd urge you to head on over. Spend a few weeks on the ground for yourself. And then decide whether the picture we've painted is accurate.
Chavez then offers two examples of "good news" the media refuses to report. The first example is proved false by the actions of the American military within forty-eight hours of the column being published.
The second "example," which does not consist of "good news" in any event, is shot down by an eye witness to the very events.
The confluence of trite and wrong, standing alone, would merit a nomination for "worst column" but there is a clincher. Chavez was apparantly taken in by hoax emails that he believed. He shows no sign of having checked to see if the emails were genuine or if the facts were true. In the very column in which he repeats the substance of the emails without verifying the facts, he, ... wait for it ... attacks Dan Rather as being an exemplar of what is wrong with the media.
Chavez writes:
It shouldn't be this way. Yet journalism in America is broken. It has no foundation of values by which many Americans can relate and depend. The moral of this column is not about one side prevailing in news coverage on the war on terror. It's simply about fairness - about Americans getting both sides with the same prominence.They're not. And media emphasis on Iraq being in chaos has coincided with John Kerry making the same pitch to voters. It makes you wonder, just as we did on the authenticity of Dan Rather's reporting. And now America knows about Rather's ruse.
Update: Can anyone guess who linked approvingly to the Worst Column of the Year?