Jack Kelly Sunday

This one is almost too easy.

This week, the Post-Gazette's Jack Kelly ended his column with this paragraph:

Ideally, there should be a newscast both Democrats and Republicans could trust the information presented is accurate, balanced, timely and in context. No one who has an agenda other than the truth has any business being in journalism. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, my friends. Jack Kelly wrote that.

Let's take a few minutes for a collective sigh and giggle at Jack's expense.  Doesn't he read his own columns?  And if he does, how does he not understand that his own work would fail miserably at the "truth in journalism" standard he's now proffering?

I realize he's a columnist but as the man said, "You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts."  Stubborn things, those facts.

Jack Kelly is not someone who can possibly be among those warning us about how bad "media bias" is as he's part of the problem.

Let's get some minor business out of the way.  In this paragraph:

An educated populace and a free press are essential for the preservation of a free society, Thomas Jefferson said. “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be,” he said. “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”

Jack fails to point out that those are two separate quotations of Jefferson, separated by almost exactly 30 years.

The first is from this letter to John Jay, dated January 1786 and the second from this letter to Charles Yancey, January 1816.  Granted, it doesn't change the meanings of either, but if we're going for a "whole truth and nothing but the truth" standard, then Jack left something out.

No biggie.

Let's look at one of Jack's examples.

He writes:

Most deplorable is the outright lie. After the police shooting of Sylville Smith triggered rioting in Milwaukee, CNN edited from the remarks of his sister her call to burn down the suburbs so they could say Sherrelle Smith was “calling for peace.”

This, in fact, happened.  But what Jack leaves out is how CNN issued a correction 24 hours later.  Did "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" Jack Kelly tell you that?

No, he didn't.  You wouldn't know that CNN make a correction to their error a day later just by reading Jack now, would you?  He left something out in order to leave you with an incorrect picture of reality - precisely what he's complaining others have been doing.

Has Jack issued a correction for saying that:

The Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team in Rota, Spain, probably could have gotten there [to Benghazi] before former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed.

When in fact they had to wait for 6 hours for a C-130 to arrive from Germany to take them the 2,000 miles to Libya - a flight of another 6 or so hours. There's no way they could have gotten there in time.

Has he issued a correction/apology for his Van Jones column?  A piece so wrong factually that the Post-Gazette pulled it from its website (though, interestingly enough, it's still accessible over at the Block's other paper in Toledo).

How about Jack's Swiftboating of Secretary of State John Kerry?  Any corrections for those disrespectful lies?

Then there's most anything Jack writes about climate change - how many corrections has there been?  How many more are needed for Jack to ascend from truthiness to actual truth?

No, Jack.  You don't get to lecture us on how bad the media is for presenting us a partial sets of facts (or downright non-facts) and then spinning them into a distorted weltanschauung for political gain.

You've been doing it all this time and it's sad that you just can't see it.

You don't believe me?  You need some evidence for your participation in the stinky tainting of the news media into something factually challenged?

You're looking at it right now.