Dean Esmay is wrong again on just about every detail of this attack on the mainstream press:
I was stunned this morning to read that the President survived an assassination attempt in the nation of Georgia. A grenade was thrown at him and went off about 25 feet from where he was standing.
…back in May. And the press here in America had no interest in the story.
Wow. Just… wow.
First, the grenade didn’t go off.
Second, it was thrown within about 100 feet of the president, not 25 feet.
Third, of course it was covered in the mainstream press. Here’s a sidebar I wrote about it:
Close call with death, May 19, p. 8
THE LIVE GRENADE thrown within 100 feet of President Bush last week did not land close enough to cause grievous injury – but at half that distance, it could have killed him, an expert said yesterday.“If you were at half that distance, he would have been in much more danger, because that would have put him at the edge of the lethality radius,” said military ordnance expert Vincent Di Ricco, 60, of Mountain Lakes, N.J.
Even at 100 feet, Di Ricco said, there is the possibility of a “lucky fragment” hitting soft tissue such as the President’s eye, Di Ricco said.
The FBI said the grenade misfired due to a light strike on its blasting cap, caused by a slow deployment of the grenade spoon. Di Ricco said that probably means the grenade was rusted.
“That grenade could be 30 years old,” he said. “I would think it was a very old grenade that someone had stored improperly.”
It didn’t make as much news coverage as it might have because Georgian authorities at first said it was an intert “engineering grenade” that posed no danger to the president. (Also, apparently no one saw it being thrown). It wasn’t until eight nine days later that the FBI came out with a statement that the grenade was live. But this was certainly covered in the U.S. press, contrary to what Dean, Powerline, Right Spin and other blogs say.
UPDATE: To his credit, Dean corrects himself here. He has also corrected the original post.
Thanks for noting that I made the correction.
I didn’t see anything but, if you read Dean’s most recent post, you see that he notes he was corrected. Isn’t that the point of a blog afterall? State things as you see them and leave yourself open to correction. I think you’re being overly antagonistic here. He made a mistake about a story he heard about nearly three months after the event happened.
As for myself, as I noted on my blog The Right Spin, I remember reading about it in an article I simply stumbled upon. I recall no real media reaction to the story. If you say there was fine but leave it at that. There’s no point in getting antsy about it.
I didn’t just correct myself there–before I posted it, I also posted an update on the original article hours before I wrote the second piece.
Dean has corrected the post, but I was a bit surprised to see this story pop up today. I thought everyone was familiar with the details after it happened. It seemed like a non-story to me.
I just got back and have added an update to note that Dean has corrected himself.
Kevin, you say I’m being “overly antagonistic,” but y’know … I’m a member of the mainstream press, and you guys have been attacking us, sometimes in very antagonistic terms, for quite some time now. (Maybe not you specifically, but certainly Dean and many other conservative bloggers). Now, there’s nothing wrong with that per se — I mean, we are semipublic figures, we mostly belong to big institutions, and should be held accountable. And certainly there’s a lot of stuff that we can be fairly criticized for.
All that said — I can tell you that some of the stuff I read on these conservative blogs (or hear on talk radio) bears very little reality to my firsthand experience in the newspaper business for 10+ years. The constant guessing at motives, assuming reporters and editors are these partisan hacks … that hasn’t been my experience at all. (Do you really think we’d cover up an assassination attempt on the president? Or fail to cover it? I am fairly confident that every single large and midsize newspaper reported on this back in May).
So if I get “antsy” from time to time when we’re constantly accused of different things, that’s why.
Sounds reasonable. And I can certianly understand where you’re coming from. Being a conservative Christian I’m constantly being accused of being racist, homophobic, anti-woman, anti-minorities, warmonger, close minded, simple minded and many many other things (oh, I also seem to want to usher in a theocracy). It’s a huge pain but I deal with it.
Dean is one of the most fair guys I know and if I think he’s off on something I let him know and he’s Johnny-on-the-stop to correct it if I’m right. However, I believe he, like myself, take a long time to come around on certian issues. Speaking for myself when I take a stance on something it’s only after I’ve spent a lot of time looking at all the evidence. Once I come to a decision it takes a lot to change my mind. It’s not close-mindedness on my part but confidence in my position. Dean, like myself, are not some faceless organization of cause. We’re real and reasonable people. As such I expect to be treated as such.
Maybe I’ve gone off somewhere that makes no sense but… well, I wrote a lot so I’m gonna keep it. Anyway, you seem like a reasonable guy and you’re obviously frusterated. So are we. Lets acknowledge that and get to fixing the problems on both sides.
I look forward to visiting your blog more often. I’ll do my best to give you a fair shake and if I’m being an ass let me know. It’s usually not my intention.
Kevin D.
therightspin.us
Seems to me like Dean spent 1 percent of his time saying, ‘Yeah I was wrong’ and 99 percent of his time then singing praises to blogs and how, still, they are better than mainstream journalism.
Of course, there’s the slight problem that he got his facts wrong the first time when the mainstream media did not, but why don’t we just gloss over that and still insist that the mainstream media is bad and obviously plotting some anti-Bush conspiracy?
Somewhere out there is some right-winger who stumbled across his first incorrect entry, who never saw the amended version. And now thank’s to Dean’s sloppiness that right-winger is all the more convinced that there’s some liberal media conspiracy against Republicans when in fact none exists– it’s the Republicans conspiring against the media. Sad.
Dean corrected himself. What more do you want? How about he turns his blog into “Dean’ World Is Always Wrong?” Will that be enough for you? The false Newsweek Koran story incited violence that lead to the deaths of 15 people. Will you hold them to the same standard you hold Dean? And if Newsweek isn’t responsible, in some way, for those deaths, for the actions of others then Dean is no more responsible for that, “…right-winger who stumbled across his first incorrect entry…”
“Dean, like myself, are not some faceless organization of [or?] cause.”
Kevin, I agree with you there … that’s why reporters need to engage more with our readers, publicly, so y’all can put faces to the names!
As for Dean, he’s admitted his mistake — and I’ve been known to make them too — so I, for one, am ready to move on…