More lame China apologies

WASHINGTON — Yesterday, Washington Post media critic Howie Kurtz asked me if I were “satisfied” with how New Republic editor Peter Beinart made amends for printing a cover story that ripped off a series of exclusive, copyrighted articles by WorldNetDaily.com
investigating Labor Secretary Elaine Chao’s ties to Communist China.

Only inasmuch as anyone can be satisfied, I replied, with a “regret” that blames an “editing error” for plagiarism.

Beinart’s “regret” sounds like the first trimester of the Bush administration’s pregnant apology to the People’s Republic of China. And “editing error” sounds like the standard Washington confession that “mistakes were made.”

Apparently, by “editing error” he means that his spell-check program snagged on the proper noun, “WorldNetDaily.com,” throughout author John B. Judis’ 6,700-word tome, and somehow changed the reference to the disparaging phrase, “conspiracy-minded
right-wing website.” Editing error, indeed.

But it’s the correction to the New Republic’s website that’s really chintzy.

In the only revised part of the cover story, about midway through, Beinart gives only generic credit to WorldNetDaily for surfacing “stories about Chao, her father and Heritage [Foundation].”

To which stories is he referring? He could be more specific by referring to us wherever our original material appears in the cover story.

Of course he couldn’t possibly do that, because if he did, he would no doubt create too many references — an embarrassment of references, in fact — which would most certainly tip off his readers to WorldNetDaily.com being the main source of his cover story.

Many thanks, by the way, to WorldNetDaily readers who e-mailed complaints to the New Republic. I’m sure you had a hand in eliciting Beinart’s mea kinda culpa. More than one reader joked that they didn’t have to read the magazine’s “investigative report,” because they’d already read it three months earlier on WorldNetDaily.

Beinart adds in the edited version that our stories were “recirculated on other right-wing websites.” A more subtle dig, but still a dig. He still couldn’t resist trying to discredit us while crediting us.

Call us what you will, Mr. Beinart, but “right-wing” newssites don’t expose the potential conflicts of interest of a Republican Cabinet pick of a Republican president whose first pick for that same job blew up in his face and who sure as hell didn’t want more controversy. “Right-wing” newssites don’t get off to such a poor start with an incoming Republican administration.

“Right-wing” newssites also don’t investigate right-wing think tanks, particularly not the biggest and most powerful in Washington. Do you know many “right-wing” newsies who alienate friendly right-wing sources? Odd, isn’t it.

Beinart and Judis never once stopped to think that perhaps we’re interested simply in reporting the truth without regard to whom it helps or hurts — in this case Chao, Bush and Heritage. But of course they didn’t, because that concept is completely foreign to them and the rest of the media elite in this town.

That agenda of reporting the unreported news — raw and politically unprocessed — has made WorldNetDaily.com the most popular website in the world over the past two years. It’s attracted to us the most traffic of any independently owned newssite, and ranked us in the top 10 overall, among those owned by Time-Warner-AOL and other corporate media conglomerates. We now serve more than 40 million page views to more than 2 million different readers per month. And we’re No. 1 overall in “stickiness” — the amount of time readers spend on the site.

For a real laugh, however, scroll down to the bottom of Judis’ cover story on the magazine’s website.

There, you’ll find the following formal correction:

“The conservative website WorldNetDaily.com has published several stories containing allegations about Elaine Chao, her father and the Heritage Foundation,” Beinhart no doubt conspired with Judis to write.

“Earlier versions of the article — itself the product of three months of reporting — acknowledged the contribution of WND and other conservative websites, but due to a late editing error, a specific reference to WorldNetDaily’s contribution was deleted,” the correction continues. “We regret the omission.”

Note the word, “allegations.” As if we printed gossip, and they printed facts.

That Chao served on an insurance company board that partners with the Chinese government and the Lippo Group is a fact. WorldNetDaily reported that fact before the New Republic or anyone else. That Chao’s father, James C.S. Chao, and Chinese President Jiang Zemin are old pals from Shanghai is a fact. We reported that before the New Republic. And I could go on and on.

Simply by saying “allegations,” Beinart and Judis think they can put some distance between their copycat story and WorldNetDaily’s original stories. If they can convince their readers that our stories were filled with “allegations,” then that must mean their story is filled with facts. And then they can claim it as their own.

This is why they made a point to mention that Judis’ cover piece was the “product of three months of reporting.”

Only, it’s more like three months of fact-checking and confirming all the heavy lifting WorldNetDaily did in just a few weeks back in January. Three months to check facts? Must be nice, Mr. Judis.

But seriously, this rip-off and cheap attempt at restitution is intellectual malpractice and dishonesty at its worst. Why would professional journalists stoop to such lows? Professional jealousy.

The fat and fatuous Old Media is having to take the nimble, no-nonsense New Media seriously. And they don’t like it. The New Republic is hardly the first to eat humble pie. Kurtz’ esteemed paper was caught trying to claim a WorldNetDaily scoop as its own last
year, and had to apologize and publish a correction.

Fourteen times over just the past year, the Associated Press, the premiere news wire, has cited WorldNetDaily for stories it’s broken. All were confirmed; none proved “conspiracies.”

Apparently the New Republic has higher journalistic standards than AP.