Leaking Oil, the New Republic Loses Altitude Rapidly...

Mark Kleiman has a comment on the New Republic's Jason Zengerle's oath of omerta:

The Reality-Based Community: I've heard lots of excuses for continuing to protect sources who supply false information, but the source's own refusal to return phone calls is a new one one me...

I emailed Jason Zengerle:

Do you really believe that Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas are running a pay-for-play scheme in which politicians hire Armstrong and then get the support of Kos?

The answer I got back:

well, it's complicated. i don't know enough to say "yes, i do," but i do know enough so that i can't definitively say, "no, i don't." right now i'm trying to figure out the answer and determine if the stuff that looks kind of fishy really is fishy, or if it's innocent. jz

I take Jason's answer to be: "No, but I'm too ashamed to actually say 'No' outright."

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

---

UPDATE:Jason Zengerle protests over the phone that "I don't know" means "I don't know."

Comments

[Robert Waldmann]

Ah but the key question is are you going to feel free to use "The Cossacks Work for the Czar" as the title for 3% of your posts. In the current environment, it might be interepreted as a coded message that little father Kos is absolute monarch of the left blogosphere.

Speaking of which, I wish he had decided to call them Kosovians not Kossacks.

Anyway don't let me catch you writing "The Kossacks work for the Ksar" eh ?

[BillS]

"i don't know enough to say "yes, i do," but i do know enough so that i can't definitively say, "no, i don't."

Gee, wouldn't you think a responsible journalist would try to figure that out before making insinuations?

[christo]

The ethics of protecting a confidential source that is using you to start a disinformation/slime campaign? Where do you have to grow up and go to school to even start considering that one? Zengerle is a willing participant in the echo chamber a.k.a rove/faux style. Next he'll be demonstrating his bravery by riding the elevator to the top of the Sears tower which will create a dilemna as he worries how many thoughts he's losing each time his ears pop.

[mere mortal]

None dare call it Rathergate?

When other media figures use false documents to make claims of fact, there are consequences.

I suppose it's all good as long as you're libeling a liberal.

At least Rather's bad documents supported claims that were true.

[CK]

If I remember correctly, if you subsidize something you get more of it than the market would otherwise want. There is a corollary to that truism. The more of it that you get is always subpar. TNR is part of the subsidized opinion market. As always economics does have the correct answer for everything.

[fair]

people have asked me whether I believe Jason Zengerle is a shoplifter.

well, it's complicated. i don't know enough to say "yes, i do," but i do know enough so that i can't definitively say, "no, i don't."

(I know he has been in stores. I know he has sometimes emerged from them carrying merchandise. Can I *definitively* say that he did not shoplift it? Oh, no--not *definitively*. )

many people wonder whether I believe that Jason Zengerle is guilty of male prostitution.

well, it's complicated. i don't know enough to say "yes, i do," but i do know enough so that i can't definitively say, "no, i don't."

and on and on.

The guy should come clean. Reveal the source who lied to him. And stop smearing Kos.

No, better: the guy should keep on doing just what he is doing at TNR, until both he and that festering, plague-ridden hulk sink under the waves.

[mercurino]

"I take Jason's answer to be: 'No, but I'm too ashamed to actually say "No" outright.'"

perhaps.

another possibility is: "No, I don't think it's true, but I think I can advance my career by manufacturing a media sh-tstorm that is sustained through the use of dirty smears and underhanded insinuations, which, while wholly lacking in solid proof, nonetheless give a strong impression of impropriety. Afterall, if Karl Rove could do it, why can't I?"

[crack]

Do I believe Jason Zengerle is an Icthyophile?

well, it's complicated. i don't know enough to say "yes, i do," but i do know enough so that i can't definitively say, "no, i don't." right now i'm trying to figure out the answer and determine if the stuff that looks kind of fishy really is fishy, or if it's innocent.

That won't stop me from publishing the allegatioin while I sort out whether or not its true.

[Anderson]

"i don't know enough to say "yes, i do," but i do know enough so that i can't definitively say, "no, i don't."

That is the most pathetic thing I have read in a long while. It should be pasted into comemnts on everything Zengerle writes for TNR, until either we get a serious apology and retraction, or Zengerle finds some other line of work.

[Christopher ball]

Much has been made of the Oct. 2005 Brown over Hackett switch by Kos after Armstrong backed Brown, his client. Salon focused on this, but Kos had not made much of an endorsment for Hackett, but it was an odd switch. And Kos is supportive of Warner, an Armstrong client, despite Warner's middle-of-the-road positions. Then NYT-Opinionator noted that Armstrong been accussed of pay-for-play stock-touting by the SEC in a civil, not criminal, action and settled with them (without declaring guilt _or_ innocence). Then TNR-Plank revealed that Kos had asked other bloggers not to discuss the issue. As Zengerle notes, it looks fishy. The first issue was whether Kos tried to help out Armstrong's candidate, but Kos's reactions are not exactly open.

I don't know why posters here have such a problem with Zengerle's "I see smoke but no fire yet" response given that Gilliard is unable to deny that he wrote the email message -- only that he did not send it to "Townhouse" and has no record of it:

"To be fair, I told Glenn I disagreed with the characterization of it being false, because I may have express some kind of sentiment close to that. The issue to me is not that Zengerle created it out of whole cloth, but if he got it from a source that he was too lazy and sloppy to confirm it with me. Let me be clear, I didn't deny writing the e-mail. I said that I had no record of writing such an e-mail with that phrase, to the list on that day."
See http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/06/about-e-mails.html

[howard]

the way i came to know jason zengerle is by reading the plank for a couple of months. during that time, i discovered that 100% of the posts that i found annoying beyond measure were written by...jason zengerle, so my conclusions were twofold: a.) the guy's a jerk; b.) as a result, i'm not going to read the plank anymore, because the pleasure of reading spencer ackerman on iraq was not sufficient to outweigh the risk of aggravation from reading jason zengerle.

so the fact that he is further demonstrated to be a jerk is no surprise here.

christopher: if a halfway decent journalist thinks there's a "fire" somewhere, then he at least ought to see some flame before he writes about it. and in addition, christopher, in case it's not clear to you, kos supports a pretty fair number of centrists; there's nothing special about him supporting warner....

[Something Polish]

In Zengerle's defense, I recall reading from a reliable source that it is "irresponsible not to [speculate]." Given that unquestionable logic, I pass along kind kudos to Mr. Zengerle.

[Christopher ball]

> if a halfway decent journalist thinks there's a "fire" somewhere, >then he at least ought to see some flame before he writes >about it.

There were "flames" -- Moulitsas asking others to ignore the story on a private list and is somewhat misleading about Armstrong's financial status during the SEC investigation (they had founded a political consultancy when Armstrong was 'a poor graduate student.') And, as it turns out, after Stark and Greenwald expressed concern -- not acceptance -- of the allegations (and Gilliard, apparently felt likewise, as he states on his own blog). It doesn't help that Moulitsas mistates Armstrong's options -- he can't go "on the offensive" regarding the consent decree because it bars him from doing so.

[OhioMarc]

Chris, the question is

"Do you really believe that Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas are running a pay-for-play scheme in which politicians hire Armstrong and then get the support of Kos?"

The Hackett/Brown issue does not require this, at all, and there is zero evidence that Kos pressured other people - in fact, there was a considerable split on this issue among left bloggers and on DailyKos. Support for Brown came from progressives, while people impressed by his congressional run tended to favor Hackett.

The Armstrong SEC bit has nothing at all to do with supporting political candidates. Apparently, prominent bloggers discuss current issues on a closed mailing list. This is surprising? It'd be surprising if they didn't.

Chris obviously hasn't read Gilliard's blog. He was being honest - he writes a lot of email - but was clear in stating that the story as reported was wrong. Even Jason acknowledges that the email in question was not written by Steve and not sent to the list in question.

It looks as if Chris is trying to cobble together a lot of nothing to make a nebulous case that Kos is somehow corrupt. There is no evidence of any message to the effect of "write this or you will pay"...

[howard]

OhioMarc, what fun is it when you already take all the good points? christopher, those aren't flames you cited.

if zengerle doesn't like markos and jerome, fine, it's a free country. if he thinks that markos is a tad protective of jerome, i think we have worse problems in our time, but de gustibus non est disputandum. but zengerle's claims are much broader, and there ain't no flames at all supporting them. fact is, zengerle hates markos (it was part of the annoying tendencies i referred to at 10 a.m.), and not even in a funny way! he thought he had a shiv to stick into markos' ribs, and he was wrong.

[Evelyn Mulwray]

Maybe Zengerle ran his half-baked hit piece in hopes that it would attract other people to dish dirt on liberal bloggers. Perhaps he hoped disgruntled people with scores to settle with Kos or others would surface. In other words, Zengerle may have been on an old fashioned fishing expedition, trolling for sources.

Only problem is that his shabby reporting is now the story. It looks like Zengerle is gonna wear this one for quite some time. I can imagine other reporters nervously edging away from him, afraid the stench is contagious.

[Barry]

Nah, he stuck it to a liberal; if any reporter has suffered for lying about a liberal in the last twenty years, I haven't heard of them.

[Christopher ball]

I intervened here against the charge that Zengerle's skepticism is unwarranted or disingenious. Zengerle was given an embarassing email by Kos -- him asking fellow prog-blogs not to blog on the Kos-Armstrong-SEC issue -- and Kos flipped on his blog. And Kos mis-stated or was confused over several key issues I mention above. I did read the Gilliard blog -- I quoted directly from it above -- and the post reflects the same hyper-skeptical approach that Zengerle has. What I'm reading here is that Gilliard can be hyper-skeptic because he's anti-Zengerle but Zengerle can't be a hyper-skeptic because he's anti-Kos. Pfui!

Re the "pay for play" stuff, I don't know whether Kos will back Armstrong clients just because they are Armstrong clients. He might, and that might piss some people off, or he might back them because he thinks that if Armstrong is willing to work for them, they must be good candidates, or he might not back them at all.

It is not a matter of "belief" but of whether evidence is consistent or inconsistent with the allegations. I think the evidence against Kos is pretty weak -- e.g., Kos was not gung-ho Hackett before Armstrong's intervention, so his reversal was not much of a shift. But Kos's post-Townhall points are pretty lame, like "I don't consult." The insinuation/allegation was not that Kos got consulting fees for backing Armstrong's clients but that maybe Kos hopes that Armstrong will get his clients to send ad revenue Kos's way if he backs them. There's not much logic to that since Armstrong's candidates are more likely _not_ to pay to advertise on thedailykos if they're getting free play, and if Kos and Armstrong were colluding one would think that they would do it privately, not by reciprocal blog posts.

[Cranky Observer]

Here's a hint on civil discourse: when one "doesn't know" something, one does not use one's lack of knowledge as the basis to make scurilous and unfounded acusations against another person. And if one does make that mistake, after one learns that 1/3 of one's argument was based on a forged document, one retracts one's statements in full and with a full, unqualified apology.

Cranky