Monday, August 06, 2007

The New Republic, Fake And Even They Knew It Was Fake

Here is a recap of the latest implosion of liberal media. The New Republic, a twice monthly magazine that supports social liberalism with a largely centrist stance on fiscal issues and a left-wing stance of social issues printed a set of stories from a soldier in Iraq who went by the name of "Scott Thomas". The stories were about the behavior of soldiers that was not very flattering to the military. The stories immediately set off red flags for a number of conservative media sites and bloggers such as Ace of Spades HQ, The Weekly Standard and Hot Air to name a few. It was later revealed that Scott Thomas was in fact Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the husband of a TNR staffer, Elspeth Reeves. This further raised more red flags since simple Google searches and such revealed a history of politically left leanings by Beauchamp who had stated in the TNR stories that he was not political. TNR used the fact that Beauchamp was married to a staffer as a reason to believe what he had to say.

Once it was clear that there were problems with the stories, a source inside of TNR let Ace know that "Franklin Foer (the editor of TNR) Doesn't Want To Tell Ellie Reeves Her Husband Is A Liar". This source was fired from TNR almost immediately.

The military started an investigation and TNR issued a statement from Beauchamp insisting it was all true but TNR did mention an error in one of the stories, saying it happened in Kuwait, not Iraq as the story mentioned. TNR was going to go back and re check the facts but did state they had confirmed the story that happened in Kuwait.

It has now come out that Beauchamp:
signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.

This signed statement happened on the first day of the military investigation right when TNR was posting a statement from the same Scott Thomas Beauchamp saying he stood by his stories and was willing to use his real name.

So clearly TNR never did check the facts like they claimed and they knew the stories were false while they were putting out statements to the contrary.

Why? Someone explain to me why? I mean besides they do not support the troops and want us to lose in Iraq.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Journalistic malpractice. It's rampant.