Today's progressive snitstorm de jour was brought to you by Rupert Murdoch and the good folks of the Wall Street Journal.  Yes, the WSJ, home of the craziest effing bunch of loons posing as an editorial board in the so-called mainstream media for more than thirty years.  (And that was before Rupert bought 'em.) 

The WSJ news operation, of course, is one of the holy cows of media criticism.  Everyone konws it is a veritable sanctuary from editorial or class pressure where no one dares say "bias."  And why not?  Rupert is well-known for his totally "hands-off" approach when it comes to the reporting of the fine news organizations he has been engulfing and devouring for the last several decades, right? 

Whatever.  There's something stinky about with the WSJ story attributing statements about the public option to Rahm Emmanuel that provoked yesterday's blogger ride on the outrage train.  I've read it several times now (as opposed to just relying on what someone else says it says).  And having done so, I find myself unconvinced that Emmanuel even said anything untoward or off message about the public option. The problem is that the WSJ story is very dodgy.  It is conspiciously evasive about the source of the supposed statements, long on paraphrasing, and very, very short on direct quotes and ostantatiously devoid of context. No one seems to have noticed and I wonder why.  I wonder what it was about this story that exempted it from the skeptical filter those of us who hang out near (or even write) liberal blogs habitually apply to MSM stories about issues of concern to us.   

Evasive About Sourcing. 

The WSJ article says Emmanuel said things in "an interview."  Not an interview with the reporters.  Not an interview with the WSJ.  Not an interview with anyone in particular at all.  Just "an interview."  Indeed, and oddly they use the phrase "in an interview" twice, leaving the distinct impression that the inverview they're reporting was with someone other than the authors of the story. If so, one has to question whether they're working from a transcript, a recording, someone else's notes or, worst of all, someone else's recollection.  They don't say or give a clue.  Later in the story, they imply that this interview occurred yesterday (Monday), but the reference is strangely ambiguious--it leaves open the possibility that the statement attributed to him on Monday wasn't in this mysterious interview the authors are citing.

Lack of Direct Quotations

The possibility that the reporters were working off notes taken by a third party, or the bare recollections of one or more third parties, seems highly plausible because, oddly, their article contains exactly one, count 'em, one quote of a complete sentence attribued to Emmanuel:

They've made an assessment reform is going to happen, so it's better to be part of that than not," Mr. Emanuel said

"They," apparently, being a reference to insurers and health care providers. 

So let me get this straight.  These ace reporters score an exclusive interview with the President's chief of staff in which he talks about the most important domestic story on the horizon, and the only complete sentence cited is utterly tangential to the main thrust of the story?  Can I hear a "WTF" from the congregation?  Does that not strike anyone as being somewhat atypical of normal journalistic practice?   

The story also contains one more partial quote where, for some reason, the reporters felt the need to substitute the word "negotiable" for whatever it is Emmanuel actually said:

"The goal is to have a means and a mechanism to keep the private insurers honest," he said in an interview. "The goal is non-negotiable; the path is" negotiable.

Given that this is a big part of the furball of the day, I'd rather like to know what it was he actually said, not this substitution, wouldn't you?   Was what he said truly synonomous with "negotiable" but they just liked that word better?  Were there shades of meaning that they felt the need to distill down to something more accessible to their feeble-minded readers?  Was it really something amusingly unprintable?  Did he, perchance, say something ambiguous that they've interpreted or, possibly even tendentiously misinterpreted, for the purpose of creating a little click-through generating controversy?     

Well, we'll never know because we don't have access to the mysterious "an interview" cited by the WSJ's ace reporters and they don't think you need it.  Oh, and none of the usual liberal blog watchdogs are interested in finding out.     

Regardless, that's it for the direct quotes, the only points in the story where they even puport to be directly quoting Emmanuel.  Beyond that, beginning with the quotation mark after the word "is" in the preceding blockquoted sentence, it's all paraphrasing. 

Inexplicably Extensive Paraphrasing. 

Besides the two lonely quoted sentences noted above, the article contains three more statements that purport to paraphrase things Emmanuel said in this mysterious "an interview" with persons unknown:

It is more important that health-care legislation inject stiff competition among insurance plans than it is for Congress to create a pure government-run option, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said.

                   * * *

Mr. Emanuel said one of several ways to meet Mr. Obama's goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own. He noted that congressional Republicans crafted a similar trigger mechanism when they created a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare in 2003. In that case, private competition has been judged sufficient and the public option has never gone into effect.

                  * * *

On Monday, Mr. Emanuel said the trigger mechanism would also accomplish the White House's goals. Under this scenario, a public plan would kick in under certain circumstances when competition was judged to be lacking.

That's all folks. No surrounding context for his remaks, either quoted or paraphrased, no additional statements.  Just two one sentence quotes and what are represented to be three brief paraphrased comments.  The rest of the story is filled in with the reporters own opinions stated as facts, an older quote from Obama--apparently added in for the sole purpose of creating the appearance of a contradiction--and some old quotes by legislators, apparently added in to show they're at odds with what the WSJ paraphrases Emmanuel as saying. 

So once again, why am I the only one who detecteth a ripe piscine aroma wafting from yon story? 

Rahm Effing Emmanuel, Chief of Staff and Designated Ball Breaker for the President of the United Sates purportedly gives reporters for the second or third most important newspaper in America an interview on the single most momentous policy issue of the day, and this all the material they got out of itt?  One sentence, one partial sentence,  three paraphrases and a bunch of stuff from other sources hashed into it? 

And beyond that, the entire story has an odd, poorly constructed, disjointed feel to it.  It is as if it were written by a college sophomore who shouldn't have skipped that remedial English comp course as a frosh . . . or, just possibly, a story that was subjected to some very ham-fisted editing by an editor with an agenda.  And, funny I should mention it because it just so happens that these two quoted sentences and three paraphrases are put together in a way that seems deliberately calculated to create dissension  and discord among the liberal base, sow distrust among the President's allies and generally degrade  his support from the left.  Which, in turn, would just happen to be the one thing that would most delight the fatcats who own and operate the WSJ right down to the tip of their Palin-infatuated roots. 

Or maybe not.  Maybe I'm just touring the Grassy Knoll looking for Illuminati again and it was really just a a matter of a couple of reporters who are over selling a couple of lines they grabbed as Emmanuel was walking by as "an interview" and then did a shitty job of writing the story because they were rushing to beat the daily deadline.  Occam's razor, yadda yadda yadda.   

Nonetheless, why is it that despite all of the unmistakable stinkiness wafting off this piece, no one,subjected this ostantiously odd story to even the level of level skepticism that they ordinarily turn on MSM reporting on the issues of the day?  Why is it that bloggers whose purpose for becoming bloggers was their jaundiced view of the mainstream media took this story as gospel and ran with it? 

And more to my point, why is it that the usual group of Obama skeptics and outright longtime Obama  haters, people who ordinarily wouldn't accept an MSM story's claim that the sun rises in the east at face value without checking it out themselves eagerly swallowed this fishy story hook, line and sinker as they rushed into the comments to thunderously denounce this latest example of Obama's perfidy?  

I ask because this is far from an isolated incident. 

If there's one thing those of us in the blogosphere (and commentosphere) who are somewhere to left of the mean on the ideological bell curve share, it is a general acceptance of the critique of the MSM encapsulated in Colbert's Gridiron appearance a few years ago (and the MSM's clueless response).  Many of us have been inside news stories and have had the opportunity to observe first hand that, invariably, what the MSM says is happening is, at best, a funhouse mirror reflection of the truth. 

And yet whenever a story pops up that seems to validate long held beliefs that Obama is the weakest, most tyranically, most awfulest dishonest, dishonorable corporatist sell-out swine who ever won an election, away goes the customary media filter.  Instead, time and again, they suspend the disbelief which which they view all other news from the same source and they rush into the comments to denounce and reject his infamous betrayal of all that's good and right.  And all too often, shortly thereafter, the story they relied upon is exposed as bullshit and yet it makes no impression whatsoever them.  Bring it up and, invariably, the response is derision of his supporters dog like devotion to their dear leader. 

I thought we were supposed to be the rational ones.  Is it too much to ask that we at least apply a modicum of our normal skepticism to stories like this, even when they fit so neatly into our preconceived notions--especially when they fit so neatly into our proconcived notions--before we go flying off the handle and throwing our ballstic hissy fits?  Serously, it's getting tedious.