Joe Klein, TIME & GOP Lies

Reason #8975 why I STOPPED reading TIME, Newseek and other so-called popular political mags several years back. Enter the Joe Klein fiasco, which started about two weeks ago, as it goes to the heart of how these printed materials can cause more confusion, and disinformation, rather than enhance the public good. First Joe Klein (so-called "liberal" writer) prints a lie in TIME about the Democrats and the FISA bill. When Glen Greenwald of Salon takes him to task, Klein refuses to backdown. When the pressure (and the accompanying truth that can't be dismissed) gets too heavy, Klein then begins to backtrack without ever really taking responsibility. When it gets too hot to handle, Klein simply walks away from the matter and tells his readers its too hard to figure out. Meanwhile it comes out, that Peter Hokstra (right wing Republican wack-job, the one who crazily claimed to find WMDs in Iraq long AFTER it was apparent there were none) was the person who gave Klein his information. So what we have is a well known journalist who took the words of an obviously partisan political figure as fact without bothering to do his own checking, and then had it printed in his magazine. Finally, after so much criticism, TIME finally issued a retraction. However, it was about as half-a*sed, as Klein's, giving its 4 million readers no real clear cut information. So you have a so-called liberal writer, TIME and a right-wing Republican in bed together, all protecting each other. And this is supposed to be our source of "objective" news....




A timeline of articles detailing the Klein, FISA, TIME, Fiasco.

Nov. 21 2007
Joe Klein: Both factually false and stuck in the 1980s The Time pundit spouts pro-capitulation advice to Democrats that is as obsolete as it is grounded in falsehoods.

Nov. 25 2007
Time magazine's FISA fiasco shows how Beltway reporters mislead the country Joe Klein passed on outright GOP lies about the House Democratic FISA bill to 4 million Time readers and now obscures what happened.

Nov. 26 2007
Joe Klein digs Time's hole deeper still The still-uncorrected errors in the Time article are made far worse by Klein's ongoing deceit.

Nov. 27 2007
Demand answers from Time magazine The Time editors responsible for Joe Klein's "Shameful Journalism" arrogantly refuse to account for what they did.

Nov. 27 2007
Everything that is rancid and corrupt with modern journalism: The Nutshell Time's "correction" reads like satire.

Nov. 29 2007
The Chicago Tribune vs. Time magazine The newspaper clearly and unequivocally states that Joe Klein's statements were false. UPDATE: GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra outs himself as Klein's source.

Dec. 4 2007
Time magazine refused to publish responses to Klein's false smears Both Sen. Feingold and Rep. Holt asked to respond to Joe Klein's falsehoods. Both were blocked from doing so. UPDATE: Chairmen Conyers and Reyes, and Sen. Dodd, add their protests.

Dec. 7 2007
Rep. John Conyers: Setting the Record Straight on FISA Contrary to GOP and media spin, the RESTORE Act does not grant "terrorists the same rights as Americans," as Klein alleged. The bill explicitly provides that warrants are not needed to intercept overseas communications.