Journalism: FAIL!
26May. 09
I don’t know whether or not people are in general aware that the crazy right-wing blogosphere is all a-twitter at the moment with the news that a man was apparently unlawfully detained for a full thirty minutes on the side of the road…other skeptical blogs seem not to have noticed, so I imagine it’s probably only because I get daily doses of crazy delivered straight to my inbox that I’ve even picked up on this story.
As the title of the post suggest, this doesn’t end well. First, a quick summary taken from Turner Radio Network so that you know what is actually going on:
“In a clear example of how tyrannical the United States are becoming, a motorist in Louisiana was pulled-over by police for having a “Don’t Tread on me” Bumper sticker!
A Louisiana driver was stopped and detained for having the bumper sticker on his vehicle and warned by a police officer about the “subversive” message it sent, according to the driver’s relative.
[…]
According to a relative of the motorist who was stopped, it happened this way: Her brother-in-law was driving home from work through the town, Ball, Louisiana, which has a local reputation for enhancing its budget by ticketing speeders. He was pulled over by police officers who told him “he had a subversive survivalist bumper sticker on his car.”
“They proceeded to keep him there on the side of the road while they ran whatever they do to see if you have a record, keeping him standing by the side of the road for 30 minutes,” she said.
Finding no record and no reason to keep him, they warned him and eventually let him go, she said.”
Pretty horrific stuff, right? I’m personally shocked and awed. But let’s look a little deeper into this controversy and play a game called ‘basic principles of journalism’. Here’s how it’ll work — I’m going to follow back all the sources for this story until I find where it originally came from, and then I’ll evaluate the source.
Turner Radio Network don’t give any sources for the story, so that’s a dead end. American Daily suffer from the same problem, but they earn extra points for giving me this hilarious screenshot:
With Townhall and Right Pundits we finally get a lead — they both cite WorldNetDaily as a source. Where did they get their story from? American Vision: and it is here that the trail runs cold. American Vision, it appears, broke the story…based on a story told to them by someone at The Patriot Depot that was allegedly told to them by a customer who said it happened to her brother. Oddly enough, the local police department have no record of this ever happening.
So the way I see it, there are two possibilities here — either a great social injustice has taken place, yet the only person to report it was someone who wasn’t present at the event who decided to pass it on to a right wing internet supply store OR the whole shemozzle has been made up out of whole cloth or exaggerated, and then used by Patriot Depot as a free advertising and publicity schtick. Considering that most of the articles I’ve linked to link right back to their website (and one I received by email was really no more than a giant ad for Patriot Depot), I know where I’m putting my money for this one…
Tags: patriot depot, propaganda, republican, Richard Hughes, right wing
May 26th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Soon to be flooding my Spam box, no doubt. Thanks for doing the legwork on this. You should sent it preemptively to Snopes.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
I have in fact just done that. Thanks for the suggestion.
May 27th, 2009 at 7:48 am
“yet the only person to report it was someone who wasn’t present at the event who decided to pass it on”
Sounds a lot like how the bible was written. Nice example for people to use a modern example to explain what happens when people writing the account werent even there.
May 27th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Am i missing something here?
Being detained for 1/2 hour while the cops look through your record and generally gas bag to you about shit you don’t care about is not something that I would call a “social injustice” or a “horrifying” experience. Seems to me exactly the kind of thing a cop would do who is just fishing for reasons to pull people over. No one was hurt or even fined. It may not be a good way to police the streets seeing as how it wastes so much time but its not really a problem.
The story being true or false is beside the point to me. Either way its not news.
May 28th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I’ve seen similar stories on at least two occasions at OCAU where the exact same thing happened directly to the poster, and both these people are from/in Australia. The most recent one (the one I recall the clearest) I’m sure it was closer to 50 minutes the guy was held for while checks were run and his car was VERY thoroughly inspected for defects. Sure it’s a bloody outrage and the cops shouldn’t be doing it, but I still don’t see how this is even newsworthy?
May 28th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
(by newsworthy I’m criticising the official/established news media, not blogs)