Advanced Error Checking at WaPo
Can we count on the
media to promise adherence to a New Year’s Resolution that they will henceforth
publish only that which is true, and that if they make a mistake, they will
correct it immediately? Don’t count on it. On Sunday, the Washington Post
published a story by Michael Dobbs claiming to correct various alleged
misstatements made by the presidential candidates. The story was itself in error,
especially in claiming that statements by Rep. Ron Paul and others about a
planned “NAFTA superhighway” are “demonstrably false.”
The Post has no
credibility in lecturing the candidates on what they can and cannot say. The
Post recently published various accounts of how a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo
had overcome a wall and attacked three visitors. But the Post couldn’t get the
facts straight on a simple story such as this. It said the wall was 20, 18 or
12.5 feet high. If the paper can’t get a basic fact correct about the height of
a wall at a zoo, what makes you think it can monitor and correct the statements
of presidential candidates? The work of its self-described “fact-checker,”
Michael Dobbs, who supposedly runs a “truth squad” at the paper and is committed
to “sorting truth from campaign fiction,” is a joke. Arrogant and superficial he
is. A fact-checker he is not.
On the matter of the
height of the zoo wall, let’s understand how badly the paper botched the
essential facts. A December 27 Post story by Marc Kaufman and Sylvia Moreno
declared that the Christmas Day attack at the zoo occurred “when the tiger somehow
got out of its enclosure¯one that included a surrounding moat and a 20-foot-high
wall.” Later in the story, the paper said that “zoo officials told reporters
that the wall is 18 feet high” and that “Many tiger experts then said it is
virtually impossible for a tiger to jump that high, adding to the mystery of how
the animal got out.” The paper then added, “The actual size of the 67-year-old
wall could change those views.”
One day later, the facts
changed again. Kaufman reported in the Post that the wall “is below the minimum
height recommended by the nation’s zoo accrediting agency” and that the Zoo
Director said it is 12.5 feet high, well below the 16.4-foot recommended minimum
height.
Consider that the Post,
which can’t get the facts straight on the height of a wall at a zoo, now
purports to correct Rep. Ron
Paul and others on a claim
that a “NAFTA superhighway” is being planned.
He’s Not Lou
Dobbs
This self-described
Washington Post “fact checker,” Michael Dobbs, has worked for the paper since
1980, has written three books, and has held fellowships at such prestigious
places as Harvard and Princeton universities. His “chief researcher,” Alice
Crites, “has been the crack researcher for the Post’s
investigative department for the better part of the last decade,”
a bio says.
With this kind of background, you might think they know how to research and
write a story.
But based on their work
on the NAFTA superhighway controversy, they ought to give it up. It’s too bad
because Dobbs’ bio says that he played a role in covering Dan Rather’s use of
bogus memos to smear President Bush before the 2004 presidential election. That
was a real journalistic scandal. Now, in jumping on Rep. Paul and others about
the NAFTA Superhighway controversy, they have gotten themselves in a scandal of
their own. Their work was on a par with Rather’s.
Dobbs gives Reps. Paul,
Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo four “Pinocchios” for their comments on the
matter. A “Pinocchio” is meant to suggest that they have lied. Four of them
constitute a “whopper,” or a big lie. However, during the brief time that Dobbs
or Crites apparently researched this topic, Dobbs admits that a Google search of
the Federal Highway Administration turned up a reference to a “NAFTA
Superhighway” running from Minnesota to the Texas-Mexico border. But he
dismisses the significance of the term. This is called cognitive dissonance. He
seems afraid that there might be something to it.
If he has a fondness for
federal websites, he ought to quote from the federal Security & Prosperity
Partnership (SPP), which claims that while the U.S. government “is not planning
a NAFTA Super Highway,” there are “private and state level interests [which are]
planning highway projects which they themselves describe as ‘NAFTA Corridors’…”
Down in Texas, one part of it is called the
Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) highway system. What’s more, a group called
NASCO is openly
promoting, with federal funding, a “corridor” between and among the three
countries. It disavows the term “NAFTA superhighway,” saying it refers only to
an existing interstate highway, but the purpose of the NASCO corridor is clearly
to expand U.S., Mexican, and
Canadian transportation infrastructure as part of a
trilateral arrangement.
Whether
it is one
highway or a series of “corridors,” there is obviously a project underway with
federal assistance to facilitate and expand trade between Mexico, the U.S., and
Canada. Such a project could run roughshod over
private property rights and facilitate illegal activities, such as the
trafficking of people and drugs, from Mexico. And that is why it should be a
major issue of this political campaign.
Hard to
Admit the Truth
It’s hard to believe
that Michael Dobbs could have missed this basic truth. He may not want to admit
that Rep. Paul and the others are correct on this critical point because to do
so would raise the question of why papers like the Post are not covering the
growing controversy. Why, for example, haven’t they covered the fact that
Judicial Watch, the public interest legal group, has been forced to file Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get some of the details about the
secretive federal “working groups” that exist under the SPP to facilitate
trilateral agreements involving trade matters? Judicial Watch uncovered documents that quote participants
in the scheme as saying that an “evolution by stealth” strategy is being used to
put the plan into place. Documents also speak of developing a common security
perimeter and a common identification card for citizens of the three
countries.
Shouldn’t the Post be
interested in telling its readers that the SPP has never been approved by
Congress? Or is this a case of “secret government” that the paper approves of?
As Dobbs alleged,
descriptions of the NAFTA highway vary in size and scope. But that’s because so
many details are still being kept hidden from the public, and people have to try
to put the pieces of the puzzle together based on information from various
sources. In a sense, the NAFTA superhighway is like that wall at the San
Francisco Zoo. It exists, and that is the key point. The Post should be
interested in getting and publishing the facts and details, not smearing
conservative journalists like Jerome Corsi who are doing the appropriate and
necessary investigative work. Corsi’s book, The Late Great USA, provides
important information about this project and even documents a Chinese connection
to it.
As AIM has noted,
however, the real issue is not so much the highway or the corridors but the plan
to bring the three countries together in a trilateral entity or even union
governed by so-called North American institutions. Like the issue of illegal
immigration, it affects our survival as a sovereign nation. Our media just don’t
seem to get it, perhaps because they employ so many illegals as nannies,
housekeepers and gardeners.
A Major Story of Our
Lifetimes
As AIM
readers know, I covered a February 16, 2007, conference sponsored
by the Center for North American Studies at American University (AU) that was
devoted to an emerging “North American Community.” This is what conference
organizer Robert Pastor, a former Carter Administration official and Clinton
adviser, prefers to call it. Academic literature distributed to conference
participants discussed a common legal framework for the U.S., Canada and Mexico
and proposals for a North American Court of Justice (with the authority to
overrule a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court), a North American Trade Tribunal,
and a Charter of Fundamental Human Rights for North America. One of Pastor’s
students at AU wrote a paper saying that Pastor personally favors a North
American Parliament.
Dobbs and
his colleagues at the Post chose not to cover this conference or its
ramifications. So because they have missed one of the biggest stories of our
lifetimes¯how powerful political forces are trying to promote a super state for
North America like the European Union for Europe¯they have decided to depict
those who dare to tell the truth or raise questions about this trend away from
national sovereignty as liars, cranks, and frauds.
Perhaps
our New Year’s resolution ought to be to treat the Washington Post like
The Onion, the
comedy paper in Washington, D.C. that is printed by the Post. But which one are
we supposed to be laughing at? Now you know why we call it the Washington
Compost.
But while
we laugh at the Post and its “fact-checkers,” we should keep the pressure on the
press to correct its errors and cover the facts. As for the politicians, one can
fault Rep. Paul for his stands on various issues, but exposing and opposing the
NAFTA highway isn’t one of them. Other Republican presidential candidates may
have to follow his lead on this and perhaps other sovereignty-related issues. He
was way ahead of all the others, for example, on the matter of safeguarding
American sovereignty from the United Nations. He calls for a complete U.S.
withdrawal from the corrupt world body.
For our
part, we have to use the New Year to promote passage of the Broadcaster Freedom
Act, in order to protect those in conservative talk radio who talk about the
issues that we know in our hearts and our minds are valid and legitimate. It is
because of talk radio and the Internet that millions of Americans know that Rep.
Paul is right, not wrong, about the NAFTA highway.
However,
our new book on The
Death of Talk Radio? warns that freedom of speech is in increasing jeopardy
in the U.S. We offer an action guide for saving the First Amendment.
We have a
lot of work to do. Don’t remain on the sidelines. And don’t let the Washington
Post demoralize you. We at AIM have been fighting them for decades. We can use
your support.
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted
at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.