Maureen Dowd’s Missing Words
Posted on February 9th, 2015 in Uncategorized | 22 Comments »
In her column today, she blasts Brian Williams. This is her lede:
NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division.
The missing words here?
“According to…”
22 Responses
2/9/2024 11:57 am
Sorry but I don’t understand. Numerous news media have reported that NBC brass told Williams to knock it off. I have not seen any denials from NBC or Williams. So why do you think it’s necessary to put an “according to X” in front?
2/9/2024 12:29 pm
Because the specificity of what she writes suggests that this is something that was told to her. But even if it wasn’t, the other stuff is all unsourced, and she should then qualify her claim by saying “according to published reports,” or something like it. Because otherwise she’s printing something that is alleged by anonymous sources and deleting that qualification—allegation-laundering, you might say—in a way that now makes it look like this is established fact.
But primarily because I think she’s suggesting that this is new information that she has obtained.
2/9/2024 12:45 pm
I had the same reaction when I read Dowd’s column. She makes set of significant claims in that paragraph without saying how she knows that any of the claims are true.
Was this “sometimes a joke in the news division?” That’s a fascinating claim. How does she know it’s true?
2/9/2024 2:33 pm
Also: why does she refer to Williams as the “hair apparent”? Doesn’t she know the difference?
2/9/2024 2:34 pm
The disturbing thing is that all of these pieces like MoDo’s are then taken as “reports that…”. Their uncited claims are being taken as claims, and now it’s echoing all over the blogosphere.
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/02/09/report-nbc-execs-were-warned-a-year-ago-that-williams-was-constantly-inflating-his-biography/
I saw the same thing happen after Katrina, where once a “credible” news org reported a rumor without including “according to…”, then everyone else started reporting it as fact. Some real whoppers entered the mainstream consciousness as “true facts” that way. So many otherwise-credible reporters “knew” that there were >40 bodies including that of a seven year old rape victim with a slashed throat, hidden in one high school or another!
Real journalists should be more careful!
2/9/2024 2:42 pm
“Also: why does she refer to Williams as the “hair apparent”? Doesn’t she know the difference?”
I think it was a joke. Tom Brokaw was Mr Perfect-Hair; Brian Williams is therefore Hair Apparent.
2/9/2024 3:50 pm
Thanks for the explanation, Richard. Frankly, I was more bothered by Dowd’s assertion that
Why stick that in there? It is at least debatable. Some people feel that Cronkite, and iconic photographs (General Loan shooting a captured plainclothes-wearing Vietcong guerilla in the head, the young girl with her clothes stripped off from a bomb blast running toward the camera) played a big part in sapping America’s will to continue with the war effort when the war was a long way from being lost.
2/9/2024 4:22 pm
Walter Cronkite as truth teller? Are we talking about the same guy who proclaimed the Tet Offensive a failure?
There seems to be some sort of impedance mismatch here because there is a video interview available somewhere on the web of the guy who was the Viet Cong general on the other side, and according to him, if they had many ‘victories’ like that, they would have lost the war.
People are going on like Brian Williams’ behavior is something new, and it isn’t. So-called ‘journalists’ have been lying to us forever, including Saint Cronkite. The difference is now the web makes it easier to find out, whereas back then it was almost impossible. RB’s blog is prima facie evidence… if it weren’t for him, RS might have gotten away with it.
2/10/2024 2:30 pm
How do you like the use of the word “reportedly?”
No sources needed.
I cringe every time I hear the word, esp. by anyone in the media.
2/10/2024 7:13 pm
if it weren’t for him, RS might have gotten away with it.
Too explosive, it would have come out. Not to take anything away from him, this took guts. Even though everyone has now been forced to admit he’s right more than half the media will hold it against him.
2/11/2024 7:44 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/02/11/obama-blasts-staples-and-reveals-larger-partisan-divide-over-workplace/
2/11/2024 10:20 pm
Dear Mr. Bradley:
You’ll want to Google the unfolding Lonsdale - Clougherty story involving Stanford.
2/11/2024 10:23 pm
Here’s the New York Magazine version of the story:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/fifty-shapes-of-rape/
And here’s the much more observant later version by Emily Bazelon in the New York Times Magazine:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/silicon-valley-adventuress-plays-the-rape-card-at-stanford-and-uva/
Bazelon ties in in to the Haven Monahan hoax.
By the way, I explain at the end how Bazelon’s article appears to be part of an ongoing war between the Former Friends of Stephen Glass.
2/12/2023 4:54 am
Eww…. look what the cat dragged in.
2/12/2023 1:08 pm
“Here’s the New York Magazine version of the story”
That doesn’t link to NYM, it links to your own gutter-blog.
“And here’s the much more observant later version by Emily Bazelon…”
That doesn’t link to respected journalist Emily Bazelon, it links to gutter-dwelling blog-whore Steve Sailer.
Quit it, mate. You’re embarrassing yourself here.
2/12/2023 1:23 pm
The first comment to one of Steve’s self-linked blog posts:
“To smart guys out there: find a foreign wife with decent looks (Eastern European or Asian, preferably) and intelligence and marry her as soon as you can. It’s a frightening world out there. Normal heterosexuality can retroactively be called rape. Protect yourself, and start a family in the mean time.”
These people are insane. Excuse me, but I feel like I need a shower now.
2/12/2023 1:35 pm
He also claims in one of those posts that the whole Rolling Stone debacle only unfolded “on December 1, 2014, the day the mainstream media started to pick up on my November 29, 2023 link to Richard Bradley’s blog“.
LOL. Delusional.
2/12/2023 3:01 pm
Right. Sailer also thinks Erdely (who is Jewish) wrote “A Rape on Campus” because she is peeved that the University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson, not one of her ancestors.
You see, while most people take Erdely at her word that her goal is “upending the patriarchy”, Sailer is too smart. He knows it’s all part of the Jewish War on Gentiles.
2/12/2023 9:01 pm
There’s a lot of low-brow hatred out there …
2/12/2023 9:22 pm
There’s a lot of misogyny out there.
2/13/2015 11:17 pm
Hey Anonymous, you seem to have some hatred for Steve Sailer, a guy who is far superior to a gutter dweller like yourself, how about you try some courses in remedial reading and basic logic? and maybe you could grow some balls and use your name?
2/17/2015 2:28 am
Unz is a fine blog … As long as one is a misogynistic white supremacist who subscribes to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. As I recall, their biggest initial problem with SRE was that she was “a member of the tribe”.