In response to my Nation pieces and a request from Markos Moulitsas, today Time issued a correction to its article about Netroots Nation:
The original version of this story said that Hillary Clinton's appearance at a 2007 Netroots Q&A session was greeted by boos. The writer confused that event with accounts of another Clinton appearance that had taken place earlier. Clinton was not booed at the Netroots event.
The corrected article removes the entire passage about Clinton. Meanwhile, today's Austin American-Statesman features an editor's note informing readers that the paper "compromised" its standards by running a front-page news article slamming Netroots Nation as a virtual "faint-in" for "marauding liberals" to honor a House Speaker so liberal she could represent China. The paper also removed the article from its website, as Rachel Weiner reported. Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell, (who spoke on a panel with me at the conference), posted a blog diary about the "snarky" article on DailyKos. Today Moulitsas discussed the process:
After Mitchell's diary unleashed ... a torrent of letters to the editor directed at the newspaper, the story disappeared from the paper's website, scrubbed clean of any traces of its existence. People emailing the author ... received responses that they just didn't get the hilarity of his humorous account.
The netroots activists' pushback on these articles effectively combines fact-checking and advocacy. Bloggers can lobby for fair treatment, demand accurate coverage, and show readers whether the press is accountable.
Ari Melber
In response to my Nation pieces and a request from Markos Moulitsas, today Time issued a correction to its article about Netroots Nation:
The original version of this story said that Hillary Clinton’s appearance at a 2007 Netroots Q&A session was greeted by boos. The writer confused that event with accounts of another Clinton appearance that had taken place earlier. Clinton was not booed at the Netroots event.
The corrected article removes the entire passage about Clinton. Meanwhile, today’s Austin American-Statesman features an editor’s note informing readers that the paper "compromised" its standards by running a front-page news article slamming Netroots Nation as a virtual "faint-in" for "marauding liberals" to honor a House Speaker so liberal she could represent China. The paper also removed the article from its website, as Rachel Weiner reported. Editor & Publisher‘s Greg Mitchell, (who spoke on a panel with me at the conference), posted a blog diary about the "snarky" article on DailyKos. Today Moulitsas discussed the process:
After Mitchell’s diary unleashed … a torrent of letters to the editor directed at the newspaper, the story disappeared from the paper’s website, scrubbed clean of any traces of its existence. People emailing the author … received responses that they just didn’t get the hilarity of his humorous account.
The netroots activists’ pushback on these articles effectively combines fact-checking and advocacy. Bloggers can lobby for fair treatment, demand accurate coverage, and show readers whether the press is accountable.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.