Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ten Years
The most poignant thing about this anniversary is that ten years ago we Americans shared the common conviction that things could not get any worse.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
S&P: Cut Medicare, Social Security
Nearly lost in all the media hubbub over S&P’s unprecedented decision to downgrade the US credit rating is the blatant fact that it is meddling in US politics. Robert Reich makes the obvious point that S&P’s responsibility is simply to assess whether the US is likely to pay its debts, and that it has no right to insert itself into the question of how much debt the US should decide to maintain. But even Reich does not go far enough.
What S&P is doing is to use its rating leverage to take sides in the ongoing deficit negotiations in Washington. In its justification of the downrating, S&P says (a) it wants more deficit cuts, and (b) that the problem is partisan brinksmanship in those negotiations makes it unlikely that the federal government will accept the necessary package of revenue increases, especially tax hikes, and entitlement cuts needed to attain (a).
In other words, the downgrade is about the further negotiations regarding deficit reduction that will resume when Congress reconvenes after the August break, specifically the debate over the balance between tax hikes and entitlement cuts.
S&P says that it takes no position on how the two parties work out that balance, as long as they do cut the deficit further.
But that is disingenuous. Everybody in Washington (save perhaps the delusional would-be bipartisans in the White House) knows that the current GOP will never allow any tax increases. Hence what S&P is really saying is it demands to see cuts to Medicare and Social Security. It is threatening to lower the nation’s credit rating even further unless the deficit is cut even further, so the message is clear: Cut entitlements.
All of us saw that Obama and the Democrats allowed themselves to be taken hostage in recent months in order to save the Treasury’s creditworthiness. Now S&P is trying its hand at the same thing.
Update, Aug. 8: Right on cue, as the NYT reports, members of Congress start worrying about how they can get back into the good graces of S&P:
The practical and foreseeable effect of S&P's action and its announcement was mainly to ramp up pressure on Democrats to concede to entitlement cuts that their constituents oppose strongly. It's hard to believe that that was not its intent. In fact S&P has a history of throwing its weight around in political matters on behalf of Wall Street interests.
crossposted at unbossed.com
What S&P is doing is to use its rating leverage to take sides in the ongoing deficit negotiations in Washington. In its justification of the downrating, S&P says (a) it wants more deficit cuts, and (b) that the problem is partisan brinksmanship in those negotiations makes it unlikely that the federal government will accept the necessary package of revenue increases, especially tax hikes, and entitlement cuts needed to attain (a).
We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.
In other words, the downgrade is about the further negotiations regarding deficit reduction that will resume when Congress reconvenes after the August break, specifically the debate over the balance between tax hikes and entitlement cuts.
Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.
S&P says that it takes no position on how the two parties work out that balance, as long as they do cut the deficit further.
Standard & Poor's takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.'s finances on a sustainable footing.
But that is disingenuous. Everybody in Washington (save perhaps the delusional would-be bipartisans in the White House) knows that the current GOP will never allow any tax increases. Hence what S&P is really saying is it demands to see cuts to Medicare and Social Security. It is threatening to lower the nation’s credit rating even further unless the deficit is cut even further, so the message is clear: Cut entitlements.
All of us saw that Obama and the Democrats allowed themselves to be taken hostage in recent months in order to save the Treasury’s creditworthiness. Now S&P is trying its hand at the same thing.
Update, Aug. 8: Right on cue, as the NYT reports, members of Congress start worrying about how they can get back into the good graces of S&P:
The downgrade of the United States government’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s is almost sure to increase pressure on a new Congressional “supercommittee” to mute ideological disagreements and recommend a package of deficit-reduction measures far exceeding its original goal of at least $1.5 trillion, lawmakers said Sunday.
Even before the panel is appointed, its mission is expanding. Its role is not just to cut the annual budget deficit and slow the explosive growth of federal debt but also to appease the markets and help restore the United States’ top credit rating of AAA. Otherwise, taxpayers may eventually have to pay more in interest for every dollar borrowed by the Treasury.
The report certainly got the attention of Capitol Hill.
[snip]
Credit rating agencies have thus emerged as a powerful constituency whose concerns are taken seriously by Congress.
[snip]
S.&P. did not advocate a specific mix of increased revenue and spending cuts. But it did say that overhauling entitlement programs was “key to long-term fiscal sustainability” and that the debt deal “envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare.”
The practical and foreseeable effect of S&P's action and its announcement was mainly to ramp up pressure on Democrats to concede to entitlement cuts that their constituents oppose strongly. It's hard to believe that that was not its intent. In fact S&P has a history of throwing its weight around in political matters on behalf of Wall Street interests.
crossposted at unbossed.com
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Another unacknowledged edit by Jeffrey Goldberg
The more evidence turns up about Jeffrey Goldberg’s revisions of his controversial post “Mumbai Comes to Norway,” the worse his journalistic lapses look and the less satisfactory his explanation appears.
I came across a site that mirrors his Atlantic blog, perhaps using his RSS feed. It preserves two versions of his “Mumbai” post – one with “UPDATED” in its title (from late in the evening of July 22), and the other without (evidently captured earlier that afternoon at 3:22 PM ET). Here is the text of the earlier version:
This version differs from the original piece, posted half an hour earlier. The second paragraph is longer; everything after “Western existence” was added after the original post went up. Notice that this addition is not labeled an ‘update’.
This calls into further doubt Goldberg’s explanation of events. When he learned that I’d turned up evidence of an unacknowledged update to “Mumbai” in which he added material down through its third paragraph (with its alternative theory for the Norway attacks), you may recall, Goldberg quickly added an update to “Mumbai” stating:
(a) that he appended the ‘caveat’ in the third paragraph right after he originally posted “Mumbai” (“I wrote it almost right after I posted originally”)
(b) that he did initially label this addition as an ‘update’
(c) that a subsequent revision of “Mumbai”, because of obscure technical difficulties, accidentally deleted the update label in (b)
This new evidence is hard to square with that story. (i) It shows that there were at least two updates before the third paragraph was added, not one nearly immediate update as Goldberg implied. (ii) The first of these revisions (some 10 to 30 minutes after the original post) was not in fact labeled as an ‘update’, nor was the title of the post. (iii) A further revision (appending the third paragraph) came more than half an hour after the original post, not quickly as Goldberg said. So Goldberg’s account of his revisions of “Mumbai” is in tatters. We also have clear evidence that Goldberg did append some material to his original post without acknowledging the revision.
It’s also worth underlining that Goldberg’s first inclination after he wrote “Mumbai” was to go back to expand and emphasize the unequivocal blame he was heaping on jihadists. So the third paragraph, whenever it finally was added, was an even greater reversal than it had originally seemed (when we didn’t know of this first unacknowledged update).
Notice too that the clause Goldberg inserted surreptitiously in the first paragraph (“if this is jihadist in origin”) is not present yet in this first revision of “Mumbai”. That means very likely it was inserted at the same time as the third paragraph was added. In other words, it’s even clearer now that the inserted clause was meant to work together with the third paragraph in helping to deflect criticism that he had rushed to judgment.
As always, it will be interesting to see whether Jeffrey Goldberg attempts to explain the ever-widening confusion about the history of his revisions of this extraordinary post.
I came across a site that mirrors his Atlantic blog, perhaps using his RSS feed. It preserves two versions of his “Mumbai” post – one with “UPDATED” in its title (from late in the evening of July 22), and the other without (evidently captured earlier that afternoon at 3:22 PM ET). Here is the text of the earlier version:
I'm following news of the Norway attacks like the rest of you, and am curious to see, among other things, Norway's response. I hope it is not to pull troops out of Afghanistan; this would only breed more attacks. So, why Norway? It doesn't seem likely, on the surface. There are many countries with more troops in Afghanistan than Norway; and there are several countries whose newspapers have printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. My first reaction is two-fold: 1) Jihadists did this in Norway because they could. Norway is pretty well-known among homeland-security types for being among the softer, less-defended countries of the West, and 2) Norway is making moves to expel a jihadist called Mullah Krekar, who is one of the founders of Ansar al-Islam, the al Qaeda-affiliated group that operated in Iraqi Kurdistan with some help from Saddam's intelligence services. This could be a message about his coming deportation.
Of course, asking the question, "Why did jihadists attack (x)?" could lead people to believe that these sorts of attacks are responses to particular events. They are not. At the deepest level, they are responses to Western existence. I know that this sort of statement sounds too Bushian for some people, but I tend to think that many hardcore jihadists -- i.e. ones who are willing to murder innocent people -- develop a deep desire to murder infidels, and only then go looking for specific places to do this murder, and only then gin-up weak rationalizations for the murder. In other words, the list of ostensible grievances is endless.
This version differs from the original piece, posted half an hour earlier. The second paragraph is longer; everything after “Western existence” was added after the original post went up. Notice that this addition is not labeled an ‘update’.
This calls into further doubt Goldberg’s explanation of events. When he learned that I’d turned up evidence of an unacknowledged update to “Mumbai” in which he added material down through its third paragraph (with its alternative theory for the Norway attacks), you may recall, Goldberg quickly added an update to “Mumbai” stating:
(a) that he appended the ‘caveat’ in the third paragraph right after he originally posted “Mumbai” (“I wrote it almost right after I posted originally”)
(b) that he did initially label this addition as an ‘update’
(c) that a subsequent revision of “Mumbai”, because of obscure technical difficulties, accidentally deleted the update label in (b)
This new evidence is hard to square with that story. (i) It shows that there were at least two updates before the third paragraph was added, not one nearly immediate update as Goldberg implied. (ii) The first of these revisions (some 10 to 30 minutes after the original post) was not in fact labeled as an ‘update’, nor was the title of the post. (iii) A further revision (appending the third paragraph) came more than half an hour after the original post, not quickly as Goldberg said. So Goldberg’s account of his revisions of “Mumbai” is in tatters. We also have clear evidence that Goldberg did append some material to his original post without acknowledging the revision.
It’s also worth underlining that Goldberg’s first inclination after he wrote “Mumbai” was to go back to expand and emphasize the unequivocal blame he was heaping on jihadists. So the third paragraph, whenever it finally was added, was an even greater reversal than it had originally seemed (when we didn’t know of this first unacknowledged update).
Notice too that the clause Goldberg inserted surreptitiously in the first paragraph (“if this is jihadist in origin”) is not present yet in this first revision of “Mumbai”. That means very likely it was inserted at the same time as the third paragraph was added. In other words, it’s even clearer now that the inserted clause was meant to work together with the third paragraph in helping to deflect criticism that he had rushed to judgment.
As always, it will be interesting to see whether Jeffrey Goldberg attempts to explain the ever-widening confusion about the history of his revisions of this extraordinary post.
Jeffrey Goldberg busted
For the last ten days Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg has struggled to explain how an inflammatory post he published on July 22 was radically altered subsequently to make it seem less imbalanced – without however alerting readers that it had been changed. Goldberg initially blamed the Norway attacks unequivocally on Muslim terrorists. But then as events that Friday were demonstrating how foolish his rush to judgment had been he appended seven new sentences to the original post, raising the possibility of right-wing terrorism and suggesting that all along he was just exploring various theories about who was responsible. Three days later, when Goldberg learned that I’d turned up evidence to show that he’d revised his post without acknowledgment, he went back to the post and added a nearly incomprehensible and dubious update explaning how that transpired. When this ‘gibberish update’ was greeted derisively by various journalists, he quietly slipped yet another explanation into the post briefly restating his version of events and accusing his critics of trying to undermine him for ideological reasons (I call this one his ‘Checkers update’).
Goldberg has maintained throughout – in vague terms – that misleading readers was entirely unintentional and the product of a single technical glitch. Goldberg claims that he originally did set the additional seven sentences apart, preceded by the label “UPDATE”, but later in the day when he appended a further ‘update’ the original label was accidentally omitted.
I’ve found no evidence to back up his story and have provided several grounds for doubting his explanation of events. Furthermore, although Goldberg promised in the ‘gibberish update’ to look into the electronic trail of his various updates to the post and thus clarify what actually transpired, he hasn’t said a word since then about it. I've pointed out repeatedly that he could simply use The Atlantic’s logs to show how his post changed over time. Goldberg has never responded to that suggestion or brought forward any actual evidence beyond his own assertions. His integrity and that of The Atlantic have been called into question, and he has declined to rebut the allegation in detail. Indeed, Goldberg has said that it is his critics who need to prove his story is false.
Well, a serious hole in his story just showed up. It was raised by commenter ‘Robinisms’ at my original post on the Goldberg scandal, who noted another telling (but until then overlooked) change Goldberg made to his original post: Goldberg inserted a new clause into the middle of his first paragraph. This insertion clearly was designed to make his original post seem more circumspect; it adds an element of caution to a paragraph that originally lacked it entirely. It is a change that Goldberg’s explanation plainly does not justify.
I quote the entire post as originally published:
When Goldberg appended the seven new sentences later that day, these original sentences remained the same with a single exception. He slipped a new clause into the fourth sentence of the first paragraph, which he did not mark in any way as a revision:
The new clause turned the first two paragraphs of the post into a hypothetical exercise, which they had not been in the original. So even if Goldberg did add “UPDATE” before the long section he appended, as he claims, he had doctored the original post sufficiently with the surreptitious insertion of this clause that he might have hoped to deflect criticisms that he had rushed to judgment.
I see no way that Goldberg can explain away this clause under his current story, except by making it even more baroque than it already is.
The very surreptitiousness of this insertion tends to strengthen my original impression that Goldberg's unacknowledged revision was meant to mislead readers.
Goldberg has maintained throughout – in vague terms – that misleading readers was entirely unintentional and the product of a single technical glitch. Goldberg claims that he originally did set the additional seven sentences apart, preceded by the label “UPDATE”, but later in the day when he appended a further ‘update’ the original label was accidentally omitted.
I’ve found no evidence to back up his story and have provided several grounds for doubting his explanation of events. Furthermore, although Goldberg promised in the ‘gibberish update’ to look into the electronic trail of his various updates to the post and thus clarify what actually transpired, he hasn’t said a word since then about it. I've pointed out repeatedly that he could simply use The Atlantic’s logs to show how his post changed over time. Goldberg has never responded to that suggestion or brought forward any actual evidence beyond his own assertions. His integrity and that of The Atlantic have been called into question, and he has declined to rebut the allegation in detail. Indeed, Goldberg has said that it is his critics who need to prove his story is false.
Well, a serious hole in his story just showed up. It was raised by commenter ‘Robinisms’ at my original post on the Goldberg scandal, who noted another telling (but until then overlooked) change Goldberg made to his original post: Goldberg inserted a new clause into the middle of his first paragraph. This insertion clearly was designed to make his original post seem more circumspect; it adds an element of caution to a paragraph that originally lacked it entirely. It is a change that Goldberg’s explanation plainly does not justify.
I quote the entire post as originally published:
I'm following news of the Norway attacks like the rest of you, and am curious to see, among other things, Norway's response. I hope it is not to pull troops out of Afghanistan; this would only breed more attacks. So, why Norway? It doesn't seem likely, on the surface. There are many countries with more troops in Afghanistan than Norway; and there are several countries whose newspapers have printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. My first reaction is two-fold: 1) Jihadists did this in Norway because they could. Norway is pretty well-known among homeland-security types for being among the softer, less-defended countries of the West, and 2) Norway is making moves to expel a jihadist called Mullah Krekar, who is one of the founders of Ansar al-Islam, the al Qaeda-affiliated group that operated in Iraqi Kurdistan with some help from Saddam's intelligence services. This could be a message about his coming deportation.
Of course, asking the question, "Why did jihadists attack (x)?" could lead people to believe that these sorts of attacks are responses to particular events. They are not. At the deepest level, they are responses to Western existence.
When Goldberg appended the seven new sentences later that day, these original sentences remained the same with a single exception. He slipped a new clause into the fourth sentence of the first paragraph, which he did not mark in any way as a revision:
It doesn't seem likely, on the surface, if this is jihadist in origin.
The new clause turned the first two paragraphs of the post into a hypothetical exercise, which they had not been in the original. So even if Goldberg did add “UPDATE” before the long section he appended, as he claims, he had doctored the original post sufficiently with the surreptitious insertion of this clause that he might have hoped to deflect criticisms that he had rushed to judgment.
I see no way that Goldberg can explain away this clause under his current story, except by making it even more baroque than it already is.
The very surreptitiousness of this insertion tends to strengthen my original impression that Goldberg's unacknowledged revision was meant to mislead readers.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Jeffrey Goldberg’s Checkers Update
It turns out that on Thursday Jeffrey Goldberg slipped yet another update into his “Mumbai Comes to Norway”. It was a response to the public reception of my criticism of his journalistic lapses here and here. Remarkably, Goldberg did nothing to publicize this defense of his integrity, either at The Atlantic or on Twitter (at both of which he was posting very frequently).
So far it is the only sustained attempt he’s made publicly to rebut the charge that he doctored ‘Mumbai’ on July 22 with an unacknowledged revision, since his notorious ‘gibberish’ update last Monday. Here is the latest update in full:
The last three sentences here are priceless. Goldberg insinuates that his critics are out to get him “on ideological grounds”. He offers no proof for such an explosive charge.
I’m the critic who first accused him of doctoring his post, and I’d like to know why he claims to understand my ideology. And how is that ideology, whatever it may be, at war with his own? Observant readers will notice that the accusation was in fact first published at the newish website Flapola, which “exists to chronicle the absurdities of public discourse”. It’s unclear whether “the people out there” who Goldberg feels are his ideological enemies would also include journalism professor Jay Rosen of NYU. If so, that seems absurd as well. Goldberg’s update reminds one a little too much of Richard Nixon at his worst (“You've got to be a little evil to understand those people out there. You have to have known the dark side of life.”).
Goldberg demands proof that his contrived-sounding story is false. I have offered plenty of evidence, an electronic trail that calls his story into question. For example, I pointed out that the title and web address of ‘Mumbai’ only acquired the word “Updated” around 5 hours after it was originally posted. That’s hard to square with Goldberg’s statement that he added the label “update” to his first revision, which came “almost right after [he] posted originally”. Goldberg is the one with access to The Atlantic’s logs. As I’ve said several times, he could easily produce the “proof”, if those logs backed him up, to prove he’s telling the truth. He hasn’t even bothered.
“All I can say is that the screw-ups were inadvertent.” False, see my last paragraph. Goldberg can produce the evidence he claims would show that he marked the first revision of his post as an “update”. Simply repeating his undocumented assertions proves nothing.
This latest update is rather dismissive. Isn’t his journalistic reputation sufficiently worth defending that Goldberg would produce readily available evidence to back up his story?
So far it is the only sustained attempt he’s made publicly to rebut the charge that he doctored ‘Mumbai’ on July 22 with an unacknowledged revision, since his notorious ‘gibberish’ update last Monday. Here is the latest update in full:
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE ON THE UPDATE (Thursday the 28th): Jay Rosen has pointed out that the previous paragraphs read like gibberish. He's mostly right. Here's a shorter version: I posted, updated,, erased the post by mistake, tried to restore the post, left things out of the post, then fixed the post. There are people out there -- people who are opposed to me on ideological grounds -- who are accusing me of intentionally doctoring the post. They offer no proof, however. All I can say is that the screw-ups were inadvertent.
The last three sentences here are priceless. Goldberg insinuates that his critics are out to get him “on ideological grounds”. He offers no proof for such an explosive charge.
I’m the critic who first accused him of doctoring his post, and I’d like to know why he claims to understand my ideology. And how is that ideology, whatever it may be, at war with his own? Observant readers will notice that the accusation was in fact first published at the newish website Flapola, which “exists to chronicle the absurdities of public discourse”. It’s unclear whether “the people out there” who Goldberg feels are his ideological enemies would also include journalism professor Jay Rosen of NYU. If so, that seems absurd as well. Goldberg’s update reminds one a little too much of Richard Nixon at his worst (“You've got to be a little evil to understand those people out there. You have to have known the dark side of life.”).
Goldberg demands proof that his contrived-sounding story is false. I have offered plenty of evidence, an electronic trail that calls his story into question. For example, I pointed out that the title and web address of ‘Mumbai’ only acquired the word “Updated” around 5 hours after it was originally posted. That’s hard to square with Goldberg’s statement that he added the label “update” to his first revision, which came “almost right after [he] posted originally”. Goldberg is the one with access to The Atlantic’s logs. As I’ve said several times, he could easily produce the “proof”, if those logs backed him up, to prove he’s telling the truth. He hasn’t even bothered.
“All I can say is that the screw-ups were inadvertent.” False, see my last paragraph. Goldberg can produce the evidence he claims would show that he marked the first revision of his post as an “update”. Simply repeating his undocumented assertions proves nothing.
This latest update is rather dismissive. Isn’t his journalistic reputation sufficiently worth defending that Goldberg would produce readily available evidence to back up his story?
Friday, July 29, 2011
The latest Jeffrey Goldberg scandal
On Monday Jeffrey Goldberg added a bizarre and nearly incomprehensible note to a highly controversial post at The Atlantic. The note sought to explain and justify an earlier, unacknowledged revision to the piece whose effect had been to make him appear less foolish. He maintains that he misled readers inadvertently by accidentally deleting the word “UPDATE” from that revision. His account was far from adequate and refers to obscure technical difficulties. Goldberg even said that he couldn’t really understand what had happened as he repeatedly revised the post the previous Friday. He promised to look into his electronic trail to figure the situation out.
Since then, however, Goldberg has added nothing to his garbled explanation. It should be a simple matter to extract from The Atlantic’s servers a record of his updates to that post, if in fact it would corroborate and clarify his flimsy account. As things are, Goldberg stands accused of deliberately doctoring a post to mask how outrageous his original post had been. Prominent journalists such as Jay Rosen have called him to task. And yet four days later Goldberg still has produced no evidence on his own behalf. His colleagues at The Atlantic remain silent as well.
There are detailed descriptions of this scandal here and here.
The facts as I understand them are as follows: Last Friday afternoon Goldberg posted a two-paragraph screed, “Mumbai Comes to Norway,” blaming the attacks unequivocally on Islamic terrorists. When events demonstrated how reckless he’d been, Goldberg added a third paragraph raising the possibility of right-wing terrorism. By not labeling this as an update, he left readers to conclude that he was just exploring multiple theories rather than using the massacre to make a bold pronouncement about the worldwide jihadist danger. Later that evening, beginning around 8 PM, Goldberg began adding 4 further paragraphs on stray thoughts, each of which he did carefully label as an “UPDATE”. At the same time he also added “(UPDATED)” to the title. So he was capable of noting updates when there was nothing to be gained from not doing so.
On Saturday, Goldberg posted a roundabout defense of his decision to rush to judgment, “On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks.” It is characteristically disingenuous, particularly about what he had written in “Mumbai”.
On Monday, when he learned (via James Fallows) that I had found cached evidence that he’d made those unacknowledged changes to “Mumbai”, Goldberg hurriedly added another update to the post. This was the aforementioned bizarre explanation for not having labeled the first revision as an ‘update’. It is so ridiculous it really needs to be seen to be believed.
The Atlantic needs to address this disgrace. The ‘Mumbai’ post was reprehensible to begin with. The doctoring of it is a further scandal. Goldberg’s ridiculous excuse-mongering makes matters worse. His refusal to apologize for any of it is worse still.
And as if that weren’t shameful enough, his colleagues at The Atlantic have some answering to do for ignoring or excusing all of this. On Saturday James Fallows called for the Washington Post to apologize for a Jennifer Rubin post that, like Goldberg’s, used the Norway attacks to propagandize about Islamic terrorism. His call was seconded by two other Atlantic writers. But none of them has so much as mentioned Goldberg’s reprehensible “Mumbai” post. In correspondence, Fallows bobbed and weaved when pressed about holding Goldberg to basic journalistic standards.
So will Goldberg and The Atlantic ever properly address this bundle of scandals?
Update Friday July 29: James Fallows finally responds here to the allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy. It’s pretty thin stuff. He states that Goldberg was having connectivity problems “that morning” and would have to be crazy to lie about the circumstances of his unlabeled update to ‘Mumbai’ (from later in the day).
Setting aside the fact that Goldberg has said some pretty crazy things – for example, rushing to blame the Norway attacks on Muslim terrorists – apparently neither Fallows nor Goldberg has made any effort to dig out those logs to prove that Goldberg misled his readers accidentally as he claims. As I’ve noted repeatedly, it should be a simple thing to produce that evidence if it actually backs up Goldberg’s story. Further, Goldberg said that his memory is hazy and his convoluted account is nearly incomprehensible. So why is nobody at The Atlantic trying to clarify what is otherwise an extreme embarrassment for them?
As regards the issue of whether he should condemn Goldberg’s rush to use the massacre to score points, Fallows argues (a) that others did not condemn Goldberg either, and (b) he didn’t see ‘Mumbai’ until Goldberg had already tried to walk back some of its extremism. Left unaddressed, I think, is whether Fallows and The Atlantic should condemn it now that he realizes it was originally as indefensible a post as the Jennifer Rubin piece he denounced. Goldberg has not admitted that he was wrong to post it. Quite the contrary, he continues to defend the decision. Goldberg is still trying to portray the controversy disingenuously as criticism that he merely ‘suspected’ al Qaeda’s involvement in Norway. That is intellectually dishonest (not to say crazy given that people can go back and read what he wrote).
Since then, however, Goldberg has added nothing to his garbled explanation. It should be a simple matter to extract from The Atlantic’s servers a record of his updates to that post, if in fact it would corroborate and clarify his flimsy account. As things are, Goldberg stands accused of deliberately doctoring a post to mask how outrageous his original post had been. Prominent journalists such as Jay Rosen have called him to task. And yet four days later Goldberg still has produced no evidence on his own behalf. His colleagues at The Atlantic remain silent as well.
There are detailed descriptions of this scandal here and here.
The facts as I understand them are as follows: Last Friday afternoon Goldberg posted a two-paragraph screed, “Mumbai Comes to Norway,” blaming the attacks unequivocally on Islamic terrorists. When events demonstrated how reckless he’d been, Goldberg added a third paragraph raising the possibility of right-wing terrorism. By not labeling this as an update, he left readers to conclude that he was just exploring multiple theories rather than using the massacre to make a bold pronouncement about the worldwide jihadist danger. Later that evening, beginning around 8 PM, Goldberg began adding 4 further paragraphs on stray thoughts, each of which he did carefully label as an “UPDATE”. At the same time he also added “(UPDATED)” to the title. So he was capable of noting updates when there was nothing to be gained from not doing so.
On Saturday, Goldberg posted a roundabout defense of his decision to rush to judgment, “On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks.” It is characteristically disingenuous, particularly about what he had written in “Mumbai”.
On Monday, when he learned (via James Fallows) that I had found cached evidence that he’d made those unacknowledged changes to “Mumbai”, Goldberg hurriedly added another update to the post. This was the aforementioned bizarre explanation for not having labeled the first revision as an ‘update’. It is so ridiculous it really needs to be seen to be believed.
The Atlantic needs to address this disgrace. The ‘Mumbai’ post was reprehensible to begin with. The doctoring of it is a further scandal. Goldberg’s ridiculous excuse-mongering makes matters worse. His refusal to apologize for any of it is worse still.
And as if that weren’t shameful enough, his colleagues at The Atlantic have some answering to do for ignoring or excusing all of this. On Saturday James Fallows called for the Washington Post to apologize for a Jennifer Rubin post that, like Goldberg’s, used the Norway attacks to propagandize about Islamic terrorism. His call was seconded by two other Atlantic writers. But none of them has so much as mentioned Goldberg’s reprehensible “Mumbai” post. In correspondence, Fallows bobbed and weaved when pressed about holding Goldberg to basic journalistic standards.
So will Goldberg and The Atlantic ever properly address this bundle of scandals?
Update Friday July 29: James Fallows finally responds here to the allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy. It’s pretty thin stuff. He states that Goldberg was having connectivity problems “that morning” and would have to be crazy to lie about the circumstances of his unlabeled update to ‘Mumbai’ (from later in the day).
Also, our system logs changes, and any of us would be additionally crazy, knowing that, to pretend that something happened if it didn't.
Setting aside the fact that Goldberg has said some pretty crazy things – for example, rushing to blame the Norway attacks on Muslim terrorists – apparently neither Fallows nor Goldberg has made any effort to dig out those logs to prove that Goldberg misled his readers accidentally as he claims. As I’ve noted repeatedly, it should be a simple thing to produce that evidence if it actually backs up Goldberg’s story. Further, Goldberg said that his memory is hazy and his convoluted account is nearly incomprehensible. So why is nobody at The Atlantic trying to clarify what is otherwise an extreme embarrassment for them?
As regards the issue of whether he should condemn Goldberg’s rush to use the massacre to score points, Fallows argues (a) that others did not condemn Goldberg either, and (b) he didn’t see ‘Mumbai’ until Goldberg had already tried to walk back some of its extremism. Left unaddressed, I think, is whether Fallows and The Atlantic should condemn it now that he realizes it was originally as indefensible a post as the Jennifer Rubin piece he denounced. Goldberg has not admitted that he was wrong to post it. Quite the contrary, he continues to defend the decision. Goldberg is still trying to portray the controversy disingenuously as criticism that he merely ‘suspected’ al Qaeda’s involvement in Norway. That is intellectually dishonest (not to say crazy given that people can go back and read what he wrote).
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, and journalistic ethics
On Friday, just after the horrific attacks in Norway, Jeffrey Goldberg posted this two-paragraph screed, “Mumbai Comes to Norway,” in which he pinned the blame squarely and without equivocation upon Islamic terrorists: “Jihadists did this in Norway because they could.” Of course, he had no substantive evidence for the inflammatory assertion. Any rush to judgment is foolish. This was reprehensible. Some of his critics would also say it is characteristic of Goldberg’s work.
Since then no apology has been forthcoming from Goldberg. Quite the contrary, on Saturday he doubled down, posting “On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks.” This purports to be a defense of other writers who similarly had rushed to denounce Muslims for the murders. However that is disingenuous; Goldberg plainly intended the piece as a roundabout way to justify his earlier ‘Mumbai’ post. And yet he managed to say almost nothing specific about what he’d actually written the previous day, though some of what he did say about ‘Mumbai’ was inaccurate and disingenuous. Remarkably, he didn’t even provide a link to ‘Mumbai’. (After I wrote to him criticizing his failure to link to his own work, he published a ridiculous revision of ‘Suspecting’ on Monday in which he blamed that failure on vague technical problems; apparently we’re supposed to believe that his own ‘Mumbai’ post was the one relevant link he was prevented somehow from including.) Thus, Goldberg’s purpose in ‘Suspecting’ was to persuade readers that he had had every reason to join others in blaming Islamists in ‘Mumbai’, and hence was not himself to blame.
In the aftermath, nobody else at The Atlantic has criticized either of Goldberg’s controversial posts much less called for an apology. Indeed, none of their writers have even mentioned them.
This despite the fact that James Fallows on Saturday rebuked the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and called for an apology for her own rush to judgment. Fallows repeatedly updated that post as he recorded how much time had elapsed without an apology from Rubin. Her piece, as reprehensible as it is, was surely no more extreme than what his Atlantic colleague Goldberg had written and then defended. In fact, Rubin’s original post had acknowledged, by the back door, at least the possibility that the attacks in Norway were not the work of Islamic terrorists. Goldberg’s ‘Mumbai’ post, by contrast, originally expressed total certainty in blaming Muslims.
Fallows’ denunciation of Rubin was quickly joined by two other colleagues at The Atlantic, Steve Clemons (here and here) and Ta-Nihisi Coates. Nevertheless none of them to date has said a thing about their colleague Goldberg’s two controversial posts.
I wrote to Fallows on Saturday asking why Goldberg did not owe an apology as well. In correspondence over several days, Fallows repeatedly defended his colleague, minimized his journalistic lapses, accepted Goldberg’s ridiculous self-justifications or offered his own, and avoided as far as possible taking any action to hold Goldberg to account for such gross unprofessionalism.
It gets even worse.
On Monday I gave Fallows evidence showing that Goldberg had substantially revised his original ‘Mumbai’ post sometime later on Friday, making himself appear less imprudent by appending a final (third) paragraph. That paragraph mentions the possibility the attacks were the work of a right-wing terrorist. This radical revision of the original post was in line with the police report that afternoon about the blond Norwegian who had been arrested. But Goldberg did not mention that he’d made any changes to ‘Mumbai’. His silence left the reader to assume that his absolutely confident assertions about Islamic terrorists at the top of the post were really intended all along to be taken as just one of several possible theories, including the scenario he mentions at the end.
It is egregiously wrong to revise a post so substantially as to alter its meaning or intended interpretation without signaling that a revision was made. In terms of journalistic standards, an unacknowledged revision as radical as this is just as reprehensible as Goldberg’s original offense of rushing out inflammatory allegations without evidence to back them up.
Fallows response upon receiving this information was, at first, to say nothing more than he hadn’t known about the unacknowledged addition of the third paragraph. (I should add that, in his first email to me on Saturday, Fallows had based his defense of Goldberg entirely on this third paragraph, which he described as the “caveat” that raised Goldberg’s post above the level of Rubin’s. To my mind it was transparently an afterthought, one that scarcely mitigated Goldberg’s clear intention to pin the blame on Islamists. But for Fallows it was the key that made it permissible to criticize Rubin while saying nothing about his colleague.)
So I pressed Fallows again about what he would do now that he did know of the unacknowledged revision. Fallows finally said that he would look into it.
A short time afterward on Monday evening, Jeffrey Goldberg revised his ‘Mumbai’ post again, this time in order to justify his failure earlier to mention the first revision. His rambling excuse is such gibberish that a reasonable interpretation would be he intended it to be nearly incomprehensible. It reads like the blather you’d associate more with a Jeffrey Lebowski than a journalist at The Atlantic. This update is easily the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in the established news media.
Goldberg’s account of why he failed until late Monday evening to mention Friday’s radical update is not even remotely convincing. My reasons for rejecting his convoluted self-justification will be left to another post (see below). My point here is that, on its face, his Monday evening blather strains credulity. And yet Fallows seems to accept it. He told me nothing about what he learned upon looking into the matter. Instead he just sent me without comment the link to Goldberg’s explanation. Fallows has not responded to my further emails challenging the explanation.
In short, James Fallows is again excusing his colleague Jeffrey Goldberg’s egregious practices. Sad to say, it is not for the first time. One would have thought that Goldberg’s journalistic credentials would be in tatters long before now given the appalling record of inaccuracies, blithe inconsistencies, and gross biases that mark him out as a propagandist in foreign affairs. Are there no professional penalties to be paid for shamelessly advocating for a disastrous war as in Iraq? Evidently not. Goldberg’s friends and colleagues repeatedly have shielded him from justified criticism and even promoted him, no matter what he gets up to.
As so often, there appears to be a double standard among Beltway insiders. Those whom one is friendly with are good and serious people simply because one knows them to be, and therefore one’s friends must be placed effectively above criticism. No amount of public embarrassment is allowed to pierce this bubble of impunity.
And there can be few things more embarrassing than the preposterous and pathetic self defense Goldberg published on Monday evening in the final revision of ‘Mumbai’. Never mind for now Goldberg’s obvious disingenuousness, or his tone or the rather terrified-sounding gobbledy-gook prose. I would note simply that the premise of his explanation – that vague technical difficulties were to blame for his failure over three full days to mention the radical revision on Friday of the ‘Mumbai’ post – is nearly identical to the unconvincing explanation he’d already offered in ‘Suspecting’ for his failure to provide a link back to ‘Mumbai’.
I can’t help but notice that Goldberg had posted a longish series of uncontroversial things on Friday and Saturday at The Atlantic, without ever mentioning or seeming to have technical difficulties. But on Monday, as he sees himself under criticism for what clearly was highly controversial writing, Goldberg suddenly became all chatty in his updates to both ‘Suspecting’ and ‘Mumbai’ about how technical difficulties had been undermining him right and left, two and three days earlier, thus spoiling all his very admirable intentions. Curiously, they were spoiling his intentions only with regard to the inflammatory posts. The non-controversial posts all managed to bypass the technical gremlins somehow.
I’m reminded of the phony-sounding, convoluted narratives that undergraduate students offer up so often when they’re caught red-handed in something like plagiarism. Vague and nearly incomprehensible technical difficulties, as it happens, often turn out to be the actual culprits – not the authors themselves, apart that is from their acknowledging some slight element of sloppiness in not overcoming a series of almost unparalleled challenges in order to compel those pesky machines to do things right.
And so too with Jeffrey Goldberg, who assures us that despite his best of intentions it was the machines that made his two controversial posts seem unethical. But he’s set the record straight now because he wouldn’t want to leave his readers with the impression that he radically revised his ‘Mumbai’ post without acknowledging the revision. Except, that is, for the three days in which he did give that impression.
Fallows was right that Rubin owed an apology for her terrible misuse of the terrorist attacks in Norway to push her own agenda. He is wrong not to call for an apology from Goldberg as well. The Atlantic needs to sanction Goldberg for that reprehensible ‘Mumbai’ post, as well as for revising it later to make it seem less extreme while leaving readers for three days to assume that no repairs had been done to it. His excuse mongering on Monday also warrants an investigation, though I doubt it’s possible ever to get to the bottom of whatever it is Goldberg is claiming.
I am leaving to a second post, which can be found here, my detailed description of what Goldberg posted and when, and my analysis of that. I’ll also discuss Fallow’s record in this a little further.
Update, Wed. July 27: This evening at 6:39 ET, shortly after these two pieces were posted and crossposted at two other sites, the google cache for the original version of Goldberg's 'Mumbai' post was overwritten with the current version of the page. However I have a screen grab of the original version, should anybody wish to consult it. I have quoted its text in its entirety.
Update Two, Friday July 29: James Fallows finally responds here to the allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy. It’s pretty thin stuff. He states that Goldberg was having connectivity problems “that morning” and would have to be crazy to lie about the circumstances of his unlabeled update to ‘Mumbai’ (from later in the day).
Setting aside the fact that Goldberg has said some pretty crazy things – for example, rushing to blame the Norway attacks on Muslim terrorists – apparently neither Fallows nor Goldberg has made any effort to dig out those logs to prove that Goldberg misled his readers accidentally as he claims. As I’ve noted repeatedly, it should be a simple thing to produce that evidence if it actually backs up Goldberg’s story. Further, Goldberg said that his memory is hazy and his convoluted account is nearly incomprehensible. So why is nobody at The Atlantic trying to clarify what is otherwise an extreme embarrassment for them?
As regards the issue of whether he should condemn Goldberg’s rush to use the massacre to score points, Fallows argues (a) that others did not condemn Goldberg either, and (b) he didn’t see ‘Mumbai’ until Goldberg had already tried to walk back some of its extremism. Left unaddressed, I think, is whether Fallows and The Atlantic should condemn it now that he realizes it was originally as indefensible a post as the Jennifer Rubin piece he denounced. Goldberg has not admitted that he was wrong to post it. Quite the contrary, he continues to defend the decision. Goldberg is still trying to portray the controversy disingenuously as criticism that he merely ‘suspected’ al Qaeda’s involvement in Norway. That is intellectually dishonest (not to say crazy given that people can go back and read what he wrote).
Since then no apology has been forthcoming from Goldberg. Quite the contrary, on Saturday he doubled down, posting “On Suspecting al Qaeda in the Norway Attacks.” This purports to be a defense of other writers who similarly had rushed to denounce Muslims for the murders. However that is disingenuous; Goldberg plainly intended the piece as a roundabout way to justify his earlier ‘Mumbai’ post. And yet he managed to say almost nothing specific about what he’d actually written the previous day, though some of what he did say about ‘Mumbai’ was inaccurate and disingenuous. Remarkably, he didn’t even provide a link to ‘Mumbai’. (After I wrote to him criticizing his failure to link to his own work, he published a ridiculous revision of ‘Suspecting’ on Monday in which he blamed that failure on vague technical problems; apparently we’re supposed to believe that his own ‘Mumbai’ post was the one relevant link he was prevented somehow from including.) Thus, Goldberg’s purpose in ‘Suspecting’ was to persuade readers that he had had every reason to join others in blaming Islamists in ‘Mumbai’, and hence was not himself to blame.
In the aftermath, nobody else at The Atlantic has criticized either of Goldberg’s controversial posts much less called for an apology. Indeed, none of their writers have even mentioned them.
This despite the fact that James Fallows on Saturday rebuked the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and called for an apology for her own rush to judgment. Fallows repeatedly updated that post as he recorded how much time had elapsed without an apology from Rubin. Her piece, as reprehensible as it is, was surely no more extreme than what his Atlantic colleague Goldberg had written and then defended. In fact, Rubin’s original post had acknowledged, by the back door, at least the possibility that the attacks in Norway were not the work of Islamic terrorists. Goldberg’s ‘Mumbai’ post, by contrast, originally expressed total certainty in blaming Muslims.
Fallows’ denunciation of Rubin was quickly joined by two other colleagues at The Atlantic, Steve Clemons (here and here) and Ta-Nihisi Coates. Nevertheless none of them to date has said a thing about their colleague Goldberg’s two controversial posts.
I wrote to Fallows on Saturday asking why Goldberg did not owe an apology as well. In correspondence over several days, Fallows repeatedly defended his colleague, minimized his journalistic lapses, accepted Goldberg’s ridiculous self-justifications or offered his own, and avoided as far as possible taking any action to hold Goldberg to account for such gross unprofessionalism.
It gets even worse.
On Monday I gave Fallows evidence showing that Goldberg had substantially revised his original ‘Mumbai’ post sometime later on Friday, making himself appear less imprudent by appending a final (third) paragraph. That paragraph mentions the possibility the attacks were the work of a right-wing terrorist. This radical revision of the original post was in line with the police report that afternoon about the blond Norwegian who had been arrested. But Goldberg did not mention that he’d made any changes to ‘Mumbai’. His silence left the reader to assume that his absolutely confident assertions about Islamic terrorists at the top of the post were really intended all along to be taken as just one of several possible theories, including the scenario he mentions at the end.
It is egregiously wrong to revise a post so substantially as to alter its meaning or intended interpretation without signaling that a revision was made. In terms of journalistic standards, an unacknowledged revision as radical as this is just as reprehensible as Goldberg’s original offense of rushing out inflammatory allegations without evidence to back them up.
Fallows response upon receiving this information was, at first, to say nothing more than he hadn’t known about the unacknowledged addition of the third paragraph. (I should add that, in his first email to me on Saturday, Fallows had based his defense of Goldberg entirely on this third paragraph, which he described as the “caveat” that raised Goldberg’s post above the level of Rubin’s. To my mind it was transparently an afterthought, one that scarcely mitigated Goldberg’s clear intention to pin the blame on Islamists. But for Fallows it was the key that made it permissible to criticize Rubin while saying nothing about his colleague.)
So I pressed Fallows again about what he would do now that he did know of the unacknowledged revision. Fallows finally said that he would look into it.
A short time afterward on Monday evening, Jeffrey Goldberg revised his ‘Mumbai’ post again, this time in order to justify his failure earlier to mention the first revision. His rambling excuse is such gibberish that a reasonable interpretation would be he intended it to be nearly incomprehensible. It reads like the blather you’d associate more with a Jeffrey Lebowski than a journalist at The Atlantic. This update is easily the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in the established news media.
UPDATE ON THE PREVIOUS UPDATE (Monday the 25th): A number of readers have pointed out that my previous caveat give the impression that it was an instantaneous caveat, when in fact it wasn't. It was written a short while after the original post went up, and was labeled "Update" originally (I've since affixed the word "update" to it again. What happened was that I was driving and had connectivity problems, and so when I added further updates (below), I inadvertently erased the whole post, and had to rescue it from a Word document, but in re-posting that word document (or most of it—I saved only most of it) I dropped the word "update," along with a couple of other things. And then I thought I had saved it and posted it, when it fact the "save" didn't go through until a later "save" of another update. When the post went out on my RSS feed, I believe it still had the word "update" in it. Though I don't know for sure, but will check my RSS feed when I get back. I'm sorry this sounds so confusing, but I want to clear up the impression that I folded in caveats later without saying that they were added later. In truth, I can't figure out what happened, because I thought when I wrote the aforementioned caveat, it had successfully posted, when it seems that it hadn't.
i barely understand the previous paragraph. Suffice it to say I don't want to leave anyone with either the impression that the caveat paragraph was posted simultaneously with the original content of the post, or that it was added hours or days later. I wrote it almost right after I posted originally, but it apparently wasn't saved into text until one of the next times I opened up this post. My bad—no blogging and driving for me. And of course it was my bad not to lard even more caveats into the post in the first place.
Goldberg’s account of why he failed until late Monday evening to mention Friday’s radical update is not even remotely convincing. My reasons for rejecting his convoluted self-justification will be left to another post (see below). My point here is that, on its face, his Monday evening blather strains credulity. And yet Fallows seems to accept it. He told me nothing about what he learned upon looking into the matter. Instead he just sent me without comment the link to Goldberg’s explanation. Fallows has not responded to my further emails challenging the explanation.
In short, James Fallows is again excusing his colleague Jeffrey Goldberg’s egregious practices. Sad to say, it is not for the first time. One would have thought that Goldberg’s journalistic credentials would be in tatters long before now given the appalling record of inaccuracies, blithe inconsistencies, and gross biases that mark him out as a propagandist in foreign affairs. Are there no professional penalties to be paid for shamelessly advocating for a disastrous war as in Iraq? Evidently not. Goldberg’s friends and colleagues repeatedly have shielded him from justified criticism and even promoted him, no matter what he gets up to.
As so often, there appears to be a double standard among Beltway insiders. Those whom one is friendly with are good and serious people simply because one knows them to be, and therefore one’s friends must be placed effectively above criticism. No amount of public embarrassment is allowed to pierce this bubble of impunity.
And there can be few things more embarrassing than the preposterous and pathetic self defense Goldberg published on Monday evening in the final revision of ‘Mumbai’. Never mind for now Goldberg’s obvious disingenuousness, or his tone or the rather terrified-sounding gobbledy-gook prose. I would note simply that the premise of his explanation – that vague technical difficulties were to blame for his failure over three full days to mention the radical revision on Friday of the ‘Mumbai’ post – is nearly identical to the unconvincing explanation he’d already offered in ‘Suspecting’ for his failure to provide a link back to ‘Mumbai’.
I can’t help but notice that Goldberg had posted a longish series of uncontroversial things on Friday and Saturday at The Atlantic, without ever mentioning or seeming to have technical difficulties. But on Monday, as he sees himself under criticism for what clearly was highly controversial writing, Goldberg suddenly became all chatty in his updates to both ‘Suspecting’ and ‘Mumbai’ about how technical difficulties had been undermining him right and left, two and three days earlier, thus spoiling all his very admirable intentions. Curiously, they were spoiling his intentions only with regard to the inflammatory posts. The non-controversial posts all managed to bypass the technical gremlins somehow.
I’m reminded of the phony-sounding, convoluted narratives that undergraduate students offer up so often when they’re caught red-handed in something like plagiarism. Vague and nearly incomprehensible technical difficulties, as it happens, often turn out to be the actual culprits – not the authors themselves, apart that is from their acknowledging some slight element of sloppiness in not overcoming a series of almost unparalleled challenges in order to compel those pesky machines to do things right.
And so too with Jeffrey Goldberg, who assures us that despite his best of intentions it was the machines that made his two controversial posts seem unethical. But he’s set the record straight now because he wouldn’t want to leave his readers with the impression that he radically revised his ‘Mumbai’ post without acknowledging the revision. Except, that is, for the three days in which he did give that impression.
Fallows was right that Rubin owed an apology for her terrible misuse of the terrorist attacks in Norway to push her own agenda. He is wrong not to call for an apology from Goldberg as well. The Atlantic needs to sanction Goldberg for that reprehensible ‘Mumbai’ post, as well as for revising it later to make it seem less extreme while leaving readers for three days to assume that no repairs had been done to it. His excuse mongering on Monday also warrants an investigation, though I doubt it’s possible ever to get to the bottom of whatever it is Goldberg is claiming.
I am leaving to a second post, which can be found here, my detailed description of what Goldberg posted and when, and my analysis of that. I’ll also discuss Fallow’s record in this a little further.
Update, Wed. July 27: This evening at 6:39 ET, shortly after these two pieces were posted and crossposted at two other sites, the google cache for the original version of Goldberg's 'Mumbai' post was overwritten with the current version of the page. However I have a screen grab of the original version, should anybody wish to consult it. I have quoted its text in its entirety.
Update Two, Friday July 29: James Fallows finally responds here to the allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy. It’s pretty thin stuff. He states that Goldberg was having connectivity problems “that morning” and would have to be crazy to lie about the circumstances of his unlabeled update to ‘Mumbai’ (from later in the day).
Also, our system logs changes, and any of us would be additionally crazy, knowing that, to pretend that something happened if it didn't.
Setting aside the fact that Goldberg has said some pretty crazy things – for example, rushing to blame the Norway attacks on Muslim terrorists – apparently neither Fallows nor Goldberg has made any effort to dig out those logs to prove that Goldberg misled his readers accidentally as he claims. As I’ve noted repeatedly, it should be a simple thing to produce that evidence if it actually backs up Goldberg’s story. Further, Goldberg said that his memory is hazy and his convoluted account is nearly incomprehensible. So why is nobody at The Atlantic trying to clarify what is otherwise an extreme embarrassment for them?
As regards the issue of whether he should condemn Goldberg’s rush to use the massacre to score points, Fallows argues (a) that others did not condemn Goldberg either, and (b) he didn’t see ‘Mumbai’ until Goldberg had already tried to walk back some of its extremism. Left unaddressed, I think, is whether Fallows and The Atlantic should condemn it now that he realizes it was originally as indefensible a post as the Jennifer Rubin piece he denounced. Goldberg has not admitted that he was wrong to post it. Quite the contrary, he continues to defend the decision. Goldberg is still trying to portray the controversy disingenuously as criticism that he merely ‘suspected’ al Qaeda’s involvement in Norway. That is intellectually dishonest (not to say crazy given that people can go back and read what he wrote).
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