Rachel Maddow & US Magazine: Mighty Quick to Report Palin Jokes As News

[Peremensoe]

@mlees

After watching the clip, I got the impression that Maddow thought that the magazine article was serious in it’s suggestion that Palin should advocate for an invasion of Egypt. I don’t get the impression that she realised the magazine article was satire.

So, it seems to me that it wasn’t Palin she was poking fun at, but the extreme right wing.

Somewhat sloppy. Something I might expect from Doper’s, but not a major news network.

Right. She was whooshed.

[villa]

@Mr.Moto

I think it is on point. Palin is singled out in the media for verbal gaffes, reportage of behavior and other matters, to the point that the media sometimes misreports the story. This happens to an extent with Biden as well, and I think the argument can be made that it happened with President Obama. Yet when Schumer (who us a U.S. Senator, third in the Democratic Leadership and chairman of the Rules Committee) makes a verbal gaffe, there is a collective yawn.

But that is precisely why you cannot look at these things in isolation.

If you have two people, each of whom says the same dumb thing. Now this stupid comment could be one of two things: (a) a brain fart/slip of the tongue; or (b) a sign that the person genuinely thought that.

When it happens, you don’t know which it is. When a person has a history of not knowing basic political things, don’t you think that it is more legitimate to presume that it was (b) rather than (a)? And similarly, where a person has a history of being knowledgeable and intelligent, it is more legitimate to presume it was (a) and not (b)?

Which is why your earlier comment that you didn’t “want to get into whether Schumer or Palin is smarter or understands government more - that doesn’t matter” is so confusing to me. It DOES matter. It goes directly to whether we give the person the benefit of the doubt or not.

[EinsteinsHund]

@EinsteinsHund

But still, you’re right: kinda meh.

After thinking about it, I have to revoke my evaluation. If Maddow was wooshed, then it really was a case of sloppy journalism and not doing the research, as some other posters suggested. In this case, Maddow or her staff have to be shown the warning sign for satire I mentioned in my former post.

[Marley23]

I finally got the video to work just now, and yes, Maddow blew this one. That’s just a stupid error and there’s nobody to blame except her and her writers. The satire on ChristWire.org is not exactly understated. (Most hyper-social conservative sites probably don’t have that many ‘meet gay singles ads,’ nevermind the headlines.) “This story fit into our preconceived notions” is not an excuse.

For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think the potshot at Beck was being offered as an excuse for their mistake.

[villa]

@Marley23

(Most hyper-social conservative sites probably don’t have that many ‘meet gay singles ads,’ nevermind the headlines.)

That’s true. They’d have “meet closet married gay men on the DL” ads.

[Mr.Moto]

@villa

But that is precisely why you cannot look at these things in isolation.

If you have two people, each of whom says the same dumb thing. Now this stupid comment could be one of two things: (a) a brain fart/slip of the tongue; or (b) a sign that the person genuinely thought that.

When it happens, you don’t know which it is. When a person has a history of not knowing basic political things, don’t you think that it is more legitimate to presume that it was (b) rather than (a)? And similarly, where a person has a history of being knowledgeable and intelligent, it is more legitimate to presume it was (a) and not (b)?

Which is why your earlier comment that you didn’t “want to get into whether Schumer or Palin is smarter or understands government more - that doesn’t matter” is so confusing to me. It DOES matter. It goes directly to whether we give the person the benefit of the doubt or not.

Okay. The problem, though, is that sometimes this perception that a person genuinely doesn’t know about a topic is an overblown one. And sometimes the people reporting these things about our politicians have a very superficial understanding of the facts themselves. I remember debates along these lines when Palin made comments about the vice-president’s responsibilities and powers.

So do we really want to leave it to the media, loosely defined, to determine if a politician really means the stupid things that come from their mouths? Not solely. A reporter or a commentator or a comedian can choose their response to what a politician says. So can we.

[suranyi]

@villa

To be fair, he didn’t. He said there were no “far left” politicians. He then said that the left was “essentially nonexistant.”

And naming three people on the left (if indeed they are on the left) doesn’t deny the veracity of the claim that the left is “essentially nonexistant.”

Well, if he meant on the national scene, then he might be correct. But even then I would say that representatives Barbara Lee and Pete Stark (my own congressman) are on the left, even by European standards.

Nothing wrong with that, after all I live in the Bay Area partially because I fit in here. I’m used to liberal politics and for the most part agree with it.

Anyone looking at Ammiano’s career, speeches, and voting record knows he’s really quite far to the left.

[davidm]

@Crawlspace

This is not true.

The piece in question never directly quoted Palin and Maddow made it explicitly clear that these were not Palin’s ideas, but rather a suggestion to Palin made by someone they (the show) thought was loony. It came at the end of piece on some of the more absurd analysis of the turmoil in Egypt and used this as an example of the most absurd they could find.

The following day they admitted that the piece was absurd because it was a brilliant piece of satire and they were ashamed of having believed it. Having never offended Palin in the first place there was no need to apologize to her and in no way used her as an excuse for their own goof. The only thing you could possibly construe as weaselly is her claim that a world full of Glen Beck style “analysis” has blurred the line between reality and satire.

Please heed your own advice and verify information before posting it as fact.

So it appears that the OP is in fact guilty of what they accused Maddow of. Naturally since he or she has such high journalistic standards and insists that facts be checked before they are reported I’m sure that astorian will be along any moment now to profusely apologize for not checking the facts before reporting.