Powerline Blog’s Scott Johnson Can Do Better
It’s hard not to pick on Scott Johnson over at the Powerline blog when he publishes a post, then later updates it with a new final paragraph like this one:
CORRECTION: Luke Hellier has corrected his MDE post to reflect that the affidavits were removed from the court file by the attorney for Dayton’s wife, not by the attorney for Dayton. That seems to me to make it more likely that the affidavits raised issues personally sensitive to Dayton’s wife rather than to Dayton. I regret the error.
In my opinion, if Scott Johnson truly regretted his error, he could have inserted that paragraph first rather than publish after his misleading post that made the mistake of relying on Luke Hellier as a source. Scott Johnson isn’t demonstrating the behavior of someone who’s interested in accurately informing his readers, since he’s continuing to knowingly mislead his readers rather than present them with accurate information first.
Basically, I think Johnson should hold himself to the same standard he’d surely like to see from other publications.
August 31st, 2010 at 9:36 am
Your expectations are unrealistic as you assume that Scott Johnson is an honorable, objective person. He is not and never has been.
Think what an enormous bubble you’d have to live in to be a bank attorney/officer and yet still believe whole-heartedly in tax cuts for the rich and tough noogies for everyone else.
Johnson’s a very highly educated guy who deeply believes that Lafferian napkin science has proven that two plus two can equal five, and that that extra digit should go straight into the financial community’s pockets.
August 31st, 2010 at 11:50 am
@Mark, I enjoy reading good writing from people I don’t necessarily agree with, but found this particular piece by Scott Johnson very misleading based on his own editorial choice. In general, I find Powerline Blog tough to read because I’m not a big fan of chickenhawk torturephiles justifying taxpayer funded death and destruction.
August 31st, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Classic wingnutthink: they have the advantage of innately knowing the truth, and therefore diligently reverse engineer every crisis until they’ve manufactured the case for their “solution.”
Because they put belief before facts, they are highly unreliable sources of information. All too often these “conservatives” build their cases on the phony bones of previous arguments with facts getting lost early on in the process.
September 16th, 2010 at 8:29 am
When has Powerline ever been “interested in accurately informing readers”?