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 Caveat lector 5 February 1999 Our current howler (part I): We’re suggesting that viewers watch out!
Synopsis: The comely host of the new show Watch It! was in the middle of a day filled with howlers. The analysts simply love Laura Ingraham--they think she’s even cuter in person--and they’d just settled in to watch her new show when she ran old tape of Sidney Blumenthal, speaking after a grand jury session (2/26/98). When broadcasters need a mustachioed villain, they turn like robots to Mr. B, and there was Sidney, braying complaints about what he’d been asked to discuss: BLUMENTHAL: Ken Starr’s prosecutors demanded to know what I had told reporters and what reporters had told me about Ken Starr’s prosecutors. If they think that they have intimidated me, they have failed.But the comely new host wasn’t buying. She mentioned that a grand juror had criticized Sid, in June, for what he’d said after his previous appearance. And then she made the following statement, which happens to be completely untrue: INGRAHAM: I seem to remember, on our network and others, people saying, “Oh, how could Ken Starr, how could Ken Starr, be actually asking questions about contacts with the media? That intrudes on the First Amendment rights of reporters.” Well, it turns out that actually didn’t happen. [Our emphasis]Oops. The simplest review of the 2/26 deposition shows Blumenthal repeatedly asked such questions. Here’s some questions thrown at Sid, regarding talking points from the DNC: QUESTION: And you received this from the DNC?Sid said, “Yes.” QUESTION: Did you distribute it to anyone outside the White House?Sid named a number of news organizations. QUESTION: Would you, though, distribute the talking points? Would you cause the talking points to be distributed to any of these news organizations?Later: QUESTION: [Did] you disseminate the talking points that you received from the Democratic National Committee to any news organization?Hey. We could go on and on like this, but we believe that you’re getting the point. But, though Blumenthal was questioned by the OIC in exactly the way his words described, Ingraham was only one of several who falsely said otherwise Wednesday. Maybe she’d read the Wall Street Journal, in its Wednesday editorial: WALL STREET JOURNAL: [E]veryone...should remember his performance when he emerged from the Starr grand jury last February. He charged that prosecutors had “demanded to know what I told reporters and what reporters had said to me.” Mr. Blumenthal lied about that line of questioning, and the press fell for it.Maybe because they’re so gullible. Fred, Brit and Mara must have read Bartley too. Here’s what they said Wednesday evening: BARNES: We know Sidney is willing to lie. Remember when he testified before the grand jury he came out, spoke to television cameras in public, and lied about what he’d been asked about.And the truth is, we’re not too surprised about that. We suspect maybe Sid wants that too. The howling errors were especially sad, because the topic was covered, in some detail, in the New York Times Wednesday morning. Here’s what James Bennet correctly penned about what Sid had said: BENNET: [P]rosecutors did repeatedly ask him to whom he had given information, an open-ended question that seemed to invite the names of news organizations.It made us go back and reread what Sid had been asked. Too bad Laura and the folks at Fox were busy reading the Journal instead.
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