This is essentially an update to a column I posted 10 days ago, which can be found here.
As you can see at the link, I tried really hard to give Rick Ellis the benefit of the doubt, but I can't anymore.
Saturday, Ellis posted an "update" of sorts, entitled "The dangers of relying on common sense (or why Crooks & Liars is wrong). Now, his original "story," such as it is, has been flying around the Internet and left leaning news, even though absolutely zero provable facts were contained in the original, and no additional facts have come to light. Yet, once again, Rick Ellis uses unverifiable fact and supposition to make the unprovable DECLARATION that "Crooks & Liars is wrong."
He's referring to this story on the "Crooks & Liars" website, written by longtime blogger, Karoli. The essence of the story actually has little to do with Mr. Ellis; It's about the hysteria surrounding a story that has been bouncing around the Internet for 11 days, and which was absolutely refuted by my post 10 days ago. Mr. Ellis is only mentioned tangentially in this piece. The essence of his mention can be summed up by the following passage:
No one has a source, no one has any evidence, and the originating story which Michael Moore and now Naomi Wolf breathlessly spread quotes an anonymous source with the promise of still more to come in the future, from a "reporter" for Examiner.com who no one seems to know. Miraculously, this "reporter" got a tip from DHS that no national reporter received, and even though Mr. Ellis walks back his original accusation, he promises updates in the future. Well, it’s the future. It’s two weeks later and crickets from Mr. Ellis. Mission accomplished, though. Ask people who are paying attention to the OWS movement and they’ll swear up and down that yes, it was coordinated by DHS because MICHAEL MOORE and now NAOMI WOLF say so.
Truth: We don’t know. It isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility for mayors to consult with DHS. After all, that’s what they’re there for. To help local and state governments deal with threats, real, rumored or perceived. At best, one can conclude that maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t coordinate, and if they did coordinate, no one knows to what extent they did or whether there was any sort of "blessing" and/or mandate from DHS to what they ultimately chose to do.
Rick Ellis is not exactly a national reporter of note. There can be no disputing that. I produced a ton of evidence of this in my original post. Karoli and I both note that it seems rather strange that someone who works for DHS and is in a position to know such things would call Ellis, of all people, and relate the story to him. No one's saying he's a liar, just that it's not exactly obviously plausible. Anyway, here's what Ellis has to say about that:
Crooks and Liars also passes along a bit of the standard snark along the lines of "Hey, this guy is an unknown and why would anyone talk to him?" Aside from the fact that it's often written by people no one else has heard of either, it ignores the fact that lots of solid journalists spend their entire lives working without ever getting to the point where they have a national stage. If anyone had bothered to ask, I would have told them that one of the places I met a lot of federal law enforcement people was during my stint as the managing editor of a then NBC-owned TV station web site in Birmingham, Ala. There were a few stories that brought in scores of federal law enforcement folks to town, including the trial of Eric Rudolph. Like many other journalists, I keep in touch with sources and you'd be surprised what you learn over the period of years. As for the rest of career, I've done everything from financial news to working a national news desk for a company that ran 70+ local news sites across the U.S.
This piece also argued, "Hey, where are all the follow-up pieces?" I hesitate to be snarky, but seriously, stories like this play out over a period of weeks and sometimes even months. If I wanted to just post theories or unsourced material, I could writing about this every day. You will hear more about this--from me and from other probably better-known reporters--but it's a complex story that deserves a solid block of reporting. A few days without breaking news doesn't mean the story is wrong. If anything, it means there is lot here to digest and confirm.
How could a journalist with the kind of experience Ellis is claiming not understand the questions posed above? They're very basic. Not only does he not answer them, he creates more. The tv station website he claims to have been "managing editor" for was never owned by NBC, for example. It was affiliated with NBC, but someone in that business for a long time should understand the difference. The domain was registered to NBC, of course, but that is because it had NBC in the title, and NBC uses an IP protection service to administer them. But the station itself was never owned by NBC. Also, "managing editor" is usually the title given to a lead anchor. It's difficult to believe Ellis carried that title at the station's website. I'm not saying he's lying, but again; what he says creates more questions than it answers.
(I stand corrected. Mr. Ellis pointed me to Wikipedia (ahem), which says that NBC may have owned the station he claims to have been affiliated with between 1996-2006. I stand by the rest of the story.)
By the way, the last part of the above passage isn't "snarky," it's asinine. YES, journalists DO spend a lot of time on some stories. YES, a lot of stories DO take a lot of time to play out. But that significant time commitment is supposed to be taken BEFORE a news story is published. You're supposed to report facts when you know them, not post a rumor and then ten days later take others to task because the story "hasn't worked out yet."
My original post was preceded by almost 3-4 hours of research, just gathering facts, to make sure everything I said was correct BEFORE I reported it. That's how stories work. You don't hear something on the phone, then report it, and cross your fingers that it turns out to be true later. Well, you don't unless you wish to emulate Fox News.
One more quick note; look at his attempted "take-down" of Karoli. Notice a problem with it? You know, like HE is the one making unsubstantiated claims, not Karoli. It's not her job to do his research for him. She's simply pointing out that his claims are unsubstantiated. As you'll see in a minute, he actually proves her right.
The issue is whether or not we should allow Rick Ellis to say "trust me" when he tells us an "unnamed source" gave him the information in his articles. Again, I ask; if I told you an "unnamed source" told me something about the Bush White House, should you believe it? The answer is no. Anyone who "just believes" such a thing is no different than a typical Fox News consumer, who believes the fertilizer he's fed on a daily basis.
And for the record, I would never publish such a piece. If I couldn't substantiate something I said with documentation, I would pull an experienced journalist in to corroborate everything. Put it this way; I guarantee I know more people who've worked in the White House than Ellis, and I could easily get someone to admit anything I wanted "off the record." But that's the problem with journalism these days, isn't it? Too many of those types of stories.
This is how Ellis ended his piece:
I don't mind the criticism, but when it comes in pieces that don't offer anything other than opinion and some links to other pieces, I can't take it too seriously. The Crooks & Liars piece (like lots of other things being written) relies on the "well it doesn't make common sense" argument. The problem is that argument only works if you know all the facts.
I'm not going to wade into this again, because otherwise I'll never get any work done. We'll just let the events of the next few months play out and see who's right.
I want everyone who's relied on his piece to let that sink in. The "reporter" who first propagated the story now suggests that we should all wait weeks and months to see IF his story might turn out to be true someday, maybe. Is this really a story you want to hang your credibility cap on, Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf and Richard Kim, among others? The reporter himself has all but admitted that he can't prove his own story is true, and that we will all have to trust him. That means everyone who even mentioned this story has reported something that is, on its face, untrue.
Once more, the key to fighting Fox News is to NOT be like them.
