Sunday, September 07, 2008

Shoot at the Big Targets First


On the very slim chance that anyone is nervous about the "Sambo" story, rest assured, this is pure fantasy. Just check out the source. "Charley James" says:

Frankly, writing as someone who has been covering news since the late 1960s for everything from local newspapers to major market TV and radio stations, to a major business newsweekly, journalists don’t like citing anonymous sources any more than much of the public likes reading pieces that quote people without attribution. Alas, more often than not, the reality is that in a highly-explosive story such as my piece about Sarah Palin I posted, granting anonymity may be the only way to get a source to agree to be interviewed.

So I am not surprised that a number of readers who wrote comments about the article raised questions about my sources. It has happened before, especially when I tackled a subject that raises a lot of dust, and it will happen again. Although I won’t reveal any sources – I honor promises of anonymity – let me explain.....

Does that smell fishy to you? Why not name the "major business newsweekly"? Or any of the papers? And if you check his blogspot profile you see he's only been blogging since June. Is this possibly one of those guys who says he "works" for such and such paper because he got a letter to the editor published back in 1982? About getting litter barrels for the bike path? OK, sure, could be he's a professional "journalist" who just didn't realize that this bit of writing looked suspiciously like what an internet poser would write. So I checked the google news archives. Guess what? I found nothing written by a Charley James.

Sure old Chaz can come up with some story about using a pseudonym, or maybe the CIA went through and purged all his old work. Sure. Only thing we can know for sure that he wrote is this new story. But look how this "professional" writes:

Frankly, writing as someone who has been covering news since the late 1960s for everything from local newspapers to major market TV and radio stations, to a major business newsweekly, journalists don’t like....

What? I'm not a professional and I can tell you that's wrong. The sentence could be fixed with: "Writing as a blah-blah-blah, I must say that journalists...." Or break it into two sentences. But that "writing as" went nowhere. That's just poor writing.

And Charley? What's this:

a highly-explosive story such as my piece about Sarah Palin I posted.

My piece I posted? Good lord, you're barely literate. OK, how about:

especially when I tackled a subject that raises

Oh, good Lord Charley, you write like one of those found-money Nigerian please-to-be-remitting letters. Charley it's: "especially when I tackled a subject that raised" RAISED you monkey at a typewriter. You illiterate hack.

So ok, he's not a professional. That's not a sin. But the intro to his piece says he is. And that's an obvious lie. When the whole thing starts out with a lie you need read no further. There is no Lucille. This story sprang from one of those feverish little internet lefties.

The LA Progressive, where I first saw the Snarly James piece, looked professional at first but that's just pretty graphics... a little digging shows it's two people with a Yahoo address who have been doing this for six months or so. More sizzle without the steak.

***Update: Reader participation! From his Blogger Profile:

I've been writing since I was eight years old and, after working in newsrooms for far too long, I have devoted much of the past decade as an independent investigtative jouralist.

Hey! Nigerian scammers -- hire this guy.

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