If I were Rudy, I'd just claim I have the ability to fly. Then Tim Russert would ponder "Does Giuliani's ability to fly hurt or help his campaign."

Another interesting example of journalists failing to note a lie is today's NY Times discussing manhole covers made in India:

At the Shakti Industries foundry, “there are no accidents, never ever. Period,” Mr. Modi said. “By God’s will, it’s all fine.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html

The workers pour iron while stripped to the waist and walking barefeet. While it's obvious the guy's lying, the Times won't say that he is.

Guilliani is trying to make hay out of an unfortunate crime in Washington state that incidentally occurred on the same day Romney was visiting to raise money. Romney was warned about this fellow my Massachusetts officials, but King County sheriffs were not.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004036131_webjudge26m.html

By God's will, Brian, no one ever gets hurt...really. Our fire walking training has made us invulnerable to molten iron. Just the same way your President Bush's blessed ability as a peacemaker between Democrats and Republicans has prepared him to broker a Middle East peace...really.

Absotutely, Mr. Modi!

Paul, let's face facts: since reporters do not care to determine truth or falsity, there is no incentive for telling the truth, and the gop has taken this discovery to its ultimate conclusion: lie about everything, all the time.

The reporter might have also mentioned that "fiscal conservative" Rudy passed along a $3,000,000,000 deficit to his successor, Mike Bloomberg...

By golly you're right. We'll get this type of thing figured out by the time Hillary is President, you better believe it.

Hi, I'm Journalist Barbie. Reporting facts is hard. Besides, if I use statistics to show that Rudy is lying, his people will call my boss ten times an hour until he forces me to issue a retraction. If Mitt's lying, then his people will call my boss nine times an hour until he forces me to include what they say the statistics really mean, and then I'll have to let Rudy say what they really mean, and then I'll have to get an two outside experts to weigh in and by that time, there's no room left for the advertisements!

Journalism is really hard! Stenography - not so much.

If football referees operated the way that modern journalists do, we'd get calls like this:

"Detroit accuses Green Bay of holding. Green Bay accuses Detroit of pass interference. The accusations offset, we will replay first down... again."

Bo-ring.

Now, back to the real news. Hillary's cleavage display -- calculated, or premeditated?

To Brian Schmidt at 4:35:

I follow oyur reasoning, but I think that the author of the piece on the manhole "factory" figured that letting the quote sort of twist there in the wind as it were would be enough, and that readers would easily spot the lie. In other words, the writer saw no need ot point out the obvious. In the crime statics story, it's just plain lazy journalism/editing.

Ack. I can spell, but I cannot type. Appy polly loggies.

Paul Waldman says: The only thing that will keep them from lying is if they know they'll pay a price.

1. I'd have a smidgen more faith in your Bealesque outburst if I thought those at this site would ever say the same thing about two lying Dems (I know, those are so hard to find).

2. Waldman is not correct about "reporters" being our only defense against lies. In fact, this site could do a huge public service if they'd encourage citizen journalists to go to campaign appearances, ask real questions (no smears, no rants), and then upload the response to Youtube. As soon as a few people do that, it will start a trend as others seek their slice of online fame.

Was just watching CNN at the gym and noticed the same thing. Could be that a reporter came on and laid out the facts after I'd left, although the piece seemed like it was over.

Other thing about this kinda stuff is it increases people's sense of alienation from politics. Why bother to get involved? How do you know who to believe? A lot of people don't have the kind of internet literacy to instantly think "Google!" (and feel confident in their ability to get the right answer that way).

"If I were an editor at one of these fine papers, and my reporters turned in one of these stories, I'd tell them to figure out whether Romney or Giuliani is telling the truth."

Now I know why you aren't an editor at a big paper....

Silly wabbit. Lying is part of the narrative. Reporters would lose their objectivity if they attempted to influence the narrative rather than to just comment and document their meandering directions. Plus ... no invites to parties !!!!

kmqnqq

If chefs were reporters they'd never tell you which salad dish has the big blob of spit on it...

... I'll come in again ...

Not long ago, Josh Marshall and his troops at Talking Points Memo did something highly unusual in the wake of the Congressional Hearing at which State Department IG Cookie Krongard claimed he hadn't been informed that his brother was serving on the advisory board for Blackwater (which the IG was charged with overseeing in its role as a private security force for the Dept. in Iraq.)

Josh and staff picked up the phone and CALLED HIS BROTHER and asked him if he ever told Cookie he was on the Blackwater advisory board. And the brother told them...Yes I did.

It was a NET BLOG which undertook this basic journalism task....journalism 101. Did the Times or TIME or Newsweek or FOX News or anyone else do that? NO they did not. And it is why our news media genuinely and totally are failing their basic duties to chronicle AND analayze and ask questions and tell us when politicians and others are lying.

There are TONS of resources out there...the phone and Google come to mind, but it seems beneath too many of our pundits to do the legwork. Joe Klein's clear failure to even read the FISA Legislation he was commenting on for TIME is just the latest such failure.

Where is the NY Times ombudsman when we need him (or her)?

I'm more interested in whether Hillary's cleavage is natural, or the result of a fraudulent push-up bra.

Not to get too nitpicky, but there are probably a lot more people in Mass now than in 2003, so 170+ murders now compared to then equals less murders per capita (the murder rate).

So, it is very possible the amount of murders went up while at the same time the murder rate went down. In that case, who is right? it depends on your metric.

TLB, you have a strange concept of fact-checking.

1. The Prospect is a liberal site, and is likely to be more interested in fact-checking Republicans. There are plenty of sites with more interest in fact-checking Democrats, and that's fine, too (at least if they were interested in dealing with actual facts, which few of them seem to be.) When dealing with facts, it is not necessary to fact-check everyone in order to fact-check accurately. Being "fair and balanced" has absolutely no bearing on whether the fact-checking is accurate. But your criticism is also weirdly off-base because this post isn't about accusing Republicans of lying, it's about two of them having a dispute about facts which are easily verified, and the strange inability of the press to perform that simple journalistic task.

2. Leaving aside your rather cavalier assumption that anyone can go to an event with, say, Giuliani, who rivals Bush for tight control, ask an unscreened question, and record the whole thing, asking a question and posting the response on YouTube would not, in fact, add anything more to a dispute like this except another he-said-she-said entry. If you added "with your own research establishing the facts," then it might have some effect in forestalling candidate lying, but strangely, that's not an aspect you mention. (In any case, blog posts and websites are clearly better venues for fact-checking, since you can provide links for the reader to verify the facts.)

The resident Republican boiler room stooge says:

I'd have a smidgen more faith in your Bealesque outburst if I thought those at this site would ever say the same thing about two lying Dems (I know, those are so hard to find).

Then why didn't you supply Waldman's deficiency and name some lying Dems, with actual facts to back up your rant?

Or is actually providing real evidence too hard for you?

Redshift: thank you for your treasured comments. Taking your advice, I'll henceforth think of TAPPED as just a partisan hack site.

Regarding your second fine point, I'll also stop suggesting that people try to ask questions; politicians make that too difficult.

However, I'll also point out that you have no idea what a real question is. (See the description for one of those links which are supposedly unavailable in videos; see the link for things called "cites".)

Phoenix Woman: I erred above. The only Dem leader who's ever lied is this one:

youtube.com/watch?v=CifLm6z32eA
youtube.com/watch?v=mN2o208PFhg

(Was this post linked to by Atrios or ThinkProgress or the Disney Channel forums or something?)

Bill-

I'm sure you're right that the reporter let the lie twist out there in the wind for everyone to see. That's one thing journalism's allowed to do - the other is to find another source to identify it as a lie.

But why not just say it?

Another thought - if they'd be willing to say it in print, then they'd be much more willing to confront the source, and say "Mr. Modi, you're lying and the New York Times is going to say you're lying. Care to retract your statement and say something more accurate?"

Seems to me that would be a good thing.

Anonymous@8:38
139 murders in 2003, 175 in 2005. You're saying the per capita murder rate may have gone down?

You really think it's possible the population of Massachusetts increased by more than 25% in a two-year period this decade?

You'd be better off arguing that the 2003 figure was a statistical blip.

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