of this particular dustup, the process that Greenwald initiated is good and necessary. Every time these people misrepresent the truth, we should call them on it and demand retractions, corrections, etc. If it's this uncomfortable for them to get it wrong, maybe they'll start to get it right.

Now to fire up my email client and send a few polite but forceful letters...

Thank you Glenn, just thank you.

"Neither Klein nor Painton bothered to verify whether anything they were told was true. Instead, they mindlessly printed it with an accompanying article smearing Democrats as weak on national security and concerned with Terrorists rights at the expense of protecting Americans."

And that alone is enough to demand some resignations at Time.

I wonder if Time really cares about all this stuff at all.

It depends on how they view their image, their product, and their interests.

It just might be that they don't care at all if the 5 percent of Americans who care enough about politics to follow this story all realize that Time is more invested in grand narratives than factual accuracy.

There are millions of Americans who don't know, and will be pleased to read Klein, and Time, regardless.

That doesn't mean we should all just give up, but I do wonder how much Time cares about accuracy. It's not clear that there's any particular reason to think that they do.

Thanks for your hard work on this, Glenn.

you're hot on the trail of one of the root causes of why americans have allowed a criminal president to remain in office for over seven years... this isn't about joe klein per se... it's about the fact that We the People are consistently lied to so that the power and money elites can continue implementing their agenda...

http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/

I wonder if Democratic staffers working for the judiciary and intelligence committees of both houses have ever contacted Klein and/or Time's editors regarding his misinformation campaign (perhaps this has been discussed in earlier posts). In addition to Klein, there are consistent misrepresentations across the media spectrum as regards, particularly, the various legislative efforts to reign in the Bush Administration's constitutional usurpations. The seeming silence by Democratic representatives in the face of media distortions is inexplicable.

I wonder if Democratic staffers working for the judiciary and intelligence committees of both houses have ever contacted Klein and/or Time's editors regarding his misinformation campaign (perhaps this has been discussed in earlier posts).

I spoke with some of those staffers on the day I first wrote about Klein's article. They were livid about the flatly false characterizations from Klein about their bill. I tried to get them to issue statements, and they didn't seem to want to (which I found both annoying and revealing - why shouldn't they protest publicly after being smeared like that??), but some did suggest they would contact Klein. I have no idea if they did.

I suspect he'll still end up on some morning talk this coming Sunday braying on about Democratic missteps

1. glenn will be accused of being a partisan by time's people and their defenders, and they will say glenn is acting specifically on behalf of democrats. thus there is no need to deal with glenn's fact claims.

2. glenn and jane will be accused of being intemperate at minimum if not profane. this will, in the minds of the accuser, obviate glenn's fact claims re klein and thus also obviate the need for a factual response.

3. glenn will be placed in a category separate from klein and time: perhaps "blogger", perhaps "angry citizen journalist", maybe "polemicist." this too will get rid of the need to make a factual defense.

4. any argument from any right wing source that critiques klein will be used by stengel et al as an example of "he makes both sides mad". this means in the minds of the stengels of the world that klein must be right--in between critiques of the right and left (and leaving aside that glenn's is based on facts and the right wing critique will be based on the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin) surely must lie the truth. luckily, this too removes the need to deal with any claims of factual inaccuracy made by glenn.

5. my head will explode.

I don't think I have seen a more deserved online verbal smackdown since Juan Cole punched the lights out of "National Review's" resident Simpson's expert- Jonah Goldberg- a couple years back. This is ugly. This is more embarassing than the thing with the colonel a couple weeks back.

If Glenn keeps this up we might just see Klein without a job before to long. Though- no doubt he will be picked up by Newsweek or some other MSM outlet that trade these sycophant pretenders back and forth.

It's down the list below getting Time to properly correct the story and promise more rigorous fact checking, but we must continue to insist that journalists reveal their sources when those sources have clearly lied to them!

Why the hell don't they get this? There must be some kind of disincentive towards feeding journalists blatantly false information. Tell us who on the Intel cmte told Klein this gibberish.

I believe it was the late great billmon who wrote a piece on the long history of Time magazine as a propaganda outlet for the republican party. It was a highly informative piece and I wish I could find it, it is well worth the read.

Would it be possible for someone to post a link to the text of the bill that Klein was referencing in his article. The best way to confront the argument that the article contained no errors is with the text of the bill itself. It seems that if Time is repeatedly confronted with the language of the bill that excludes foreign to foreigh communications, it will need to eventually acknowledge that it made an error.

holding liars feet to the fire is an important part of the process of repairing our public discourse. For too many years, the lazy, lying, illiberal lapdogs of the larcenous oligarchy of the Main $tream Media have played mouthpiece for the powers that be.

We need our Upton Sinclair, our Ida Tarbell, our H.L. Mencken....

Where is the willingness to "speak truth to power" as the Quakers put it.

Pax