Dr. Robert Replogle's Weblog

For many years I lectured to the medical students on how to read a scientific article. There are nuances well known to prolific publishers which , while not exactly lying, stretch the material in such a way as to make the conclusion of the author seem undeniable. I leave it to history to judge whether I did such, but I am of the firm opinion that if you wish to make a bank robbery-proof, hire as your consultant a bank robber. For many years I subscribed to a host of newspapers and magazines, but I never had time enough to thoroughly digest them After I retired from clinical surgery, all that changed. I got up in the morning, made a pot of coffee, and sat down with 4 or 5 newspapers and read and digested them all. Gradually this evolved into my parsing routine, I began a compulsive program to sort out truth from fiction. The ability to seek other avenues of information on the Internet, and the plethora of cable news channels are almost sufficient for even the most voracious news junkie, which I became. Within 6 months I canceled my subscription to the New York Times,Time and Newsweek magazines, because it was simply no challenge to detect the disconnect between reality and the material published in these sources. There was little , or no, effort to maintain sublety. I am copying a typical example of the genre, this one from the United Press International, but it could have easily been the N Y Times. I did not parse this one, I am not sure who did, but I present it as a classic example ot the "new" journalism.

Sunday, November 6

Another incredibly poor job at speculation, disguised as news, by what's left of the United Press International. Do you want a clear example why people don't trust the news media anymore?
Here's the text of this story. It is about 160 words long. Now, count with me the number of anonymous or unnamed sources in this "news item", starting with the author:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) --(Unsigned - 1)Karl Rove's colleagues (no colleagues named - 2) are preparing for the possibility that he may leave the White House because of the CIA leak case.
Despite the insistence of friends (no "friends" named - 3) that he is out of legal jeopardy, several of the lawyers (no lawyers named - 4) who deal with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald believe Fitzgerald is continuing to look into the possibility of charging Rove with lying to investigators or the grand jury or both, Time magazine reports (again, with no attribution to a Time reporter - 5).
If that happens, Rove almost certainly would resign immediately.
Several Bush administration officials predict (no officials specified - 6) that within a year, the president will have a new chief of staff and press secretary, probably a new treasury secretary and maybe a new defense secretary, the magazine said.
If Rove does head out, he may leave behind a wounded president.
"A president who loves to hit home runs and wants to be remembered for swinging for the fences is being forced to take base hits," says a former White House official (naturally, this former official is unnamed - 7).
There you have it. UPI throwing excrement up against wall, sourced and attributed worse than gossip you'd hear from your barber, offered by an anonymous "journalist" who would rather remain a coward, and offered up to the world as a news story.
UPI did at least get the story party right, according to my "sources in the know." He'll leave the white house sometime in mid-January, 2009.
"And so it goes" Bob Replogle