Why should they care? Has William Jefferson (”Big Turnip”) Clinton or his devoted little spouse (our Wife of Bill, aka “the WOB”) ever suffered the slightest consequences for decades-long careers of blackmail, extortion, sell-outs and slander– all for purely personal advantage, political power-at-any-cost?

Those who dispute this characterization invariably fall back on three themes: Facts mean nothing. Slophead and the WOB may have permanently devalued the American Presidency, knowingly endangered citizens, traded with the enemy (Red Chinese and Saudis, among others)– but Oaths be blamed, America’s not worth defending anyway. And anyone who calls us on such issues victimizes us as inevitable losers in any serious debate. We hate you, who are mad or stupid enough to question our competence, our (ahem) intentions. As Masters of Self-esteem, we may ignore accuracy, coherence, any rational, disinterested inquiry: Attitude is King.

Anyone suspecting this exaggerates the nature of such cesspools as AP has already joined that Party; and everyone admits which one that is.

It’s just as bad in the discussion on Global Warming where the socialists admit leaving critical data about the Medieval Warm Period out of studies on global warming so they could make the false claim that warming is worse now than at any time in the last 1,000 years.

And of course they get away with it, so they keep doing it. As I’ve said before, the more hysterical the “news” the wider it’s reported. Any correction, if there is one, is likely to be buried.

There’s that old Churchill quote (which also gets attributed to Mark Twain): “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

I soon noticed that there’s a downside to debunking fraudulent people or claims. The people who make them up — and most of those who agree with them — simply don’t care. Because the characters and claims are invented to support what they already believe fervently, debunking them does not “count.”

Lies presented in furtherance of a greater “truth” are not really considered to be lies, at least not in the moral sense. The idea is to persuade people, and if fictional people or incidents have to be used, that’s OK, as long as it’s in the interest of the greater truth.

While I have taken Eric’s post out of context here, I did go to his site and read the entire post.

What Eric (and many) fail to realize (or does not mention)is….if AP loses credibility for this preported fabrication, so does every Major News Media that subscribes to their service. If 60+ stories by Jamil Hussein all prove to be questionable at best, how many other totally unsourced or fabricated storys have been produced by AP?

There is a lot a stake here, and Curt is at the forfront of exposing an agenda of bias that CAN shape the events of the world.

It’s been far too long for the liberal media (and their “furtherance of a greater “truth”) to go unchecked.

And for the record Eric, the furtherance of a greater “truth” based on lies is an agenda of bias that will decay the morality of journalism, no matter what the intintions are meant to be.

A stringer probably gets paid better if his information is more often used in reports. If a stringer seems to have access to some “Jamil Hussein” that seems authoritative and produces casualty reports in excess of what official sources report, AP is likely to use those reports because they better fit AP’s political agenda. Or play into some paranoia that official sources might be downplaying casualty counts.

So it doesn’t take long for enterprising people to realize that higher casualty counts make you more money. So some stringer invents a Jamil Hussein or hooks up with some enemy propaganda operation who feeds him incidents and figures. This source’s information gets used and he profits.

So now you start to have competition between stringers, not on who can report facts, but on who can get printed and get a bonus. So now you start having inflated casualty reports from all kinds of different sources because everyone wants a piece of the action. If you want to get paid a bonus, bring in some civilian casualty figures above the official stats or some incident that the official sources don’t mention.

In other words, they have created a market demand for fiction. People being people and life being tough … someone steps up to fill that demand by telling them what they want to hear and collecting some cool cash for it.

So pretty soon you start having media reports that are running twice as high and sometimes higher than the offical reports along with incidents that nobody else seems to know about. Pretty soon the entire thing spirals out of control and Baghdad seems to be a non-stop shooting gallery with thousands killed every month reported in the media and a media that doesn’t really care if the reports are true or not. In other words, the “truthier” the story, the more likely it gets printed.

Mostly it is market forces playing on the media bias. If the media would pay for accuracy instead of numbers, it would get accuracy. The market will provide what the consumer will buy.

The Phantom Press Corps Song

Off we go,into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high, into the sun,
Down we dive, spouting our lies from under
At ‘em boys, give ‘er the gun,
We’ll live in shame, or go down in flames,
Hey! Nothing can stop the phan-tom press corps. …

Sorry. Fuzzy flashback.