Crossing the Line
Eugene Robinson tells Rachel Maddow that George Will “crossed the line” (emphasis in original):
MADDOW: Eugene, I feel like factchecking politicians is a full-time job and it is a very fun one. But does it sort of feel like there is just more made up stuff in the daily back and forth of political news right now than usual?
ROBINSON: It certainly does, and it’s distressing. I think there’s a distinction here among the examples we cite. What George Will did was cherrypick a sentence in a report, be very persnickety in the way he parsed his sentences, and end up making it sound as if the report had said the exact opposite of what it actually said. He was persnickety enough that his editors, who happen to be my editors, felt he didn’t cross the line. I thought he did. And the ombudsman agreed with me, actually, and wrote about it in last Sunday’s paper.
Via Matthew Yglesias.
George Will crossed a journalistic ethics line. Erick Erickson at RedState may have crossed a lawsuit line.
