This diary isn't a complete review of how Power Line handled the Schiavo memo, but rather an analysis of the chronology of one particular lie told several times by Hinderaker, in his zeal to promote the idea that the memo was fake. An example of the lie is
here: "the print version of the memo, as posted on Raw Story, was identical to ABC's 'exact, full copy of the document,' except that the four typos that ABC had identified with a 'sic' were all corrected."
Elsewhere I prove the falsity of this statement, and why the statement is important. I also discuss why it's appropriate to consider it an intentional lie, rather than an innocent error. Here my focus is simply on the remarkable fact that this particular lie was widely and quickly promoted via a variety of leading right-wing media outlets (and then finally via the WaPo) with virtually no one bothering to notice what was obvious: the statement is clearly false.
This is a cautionary tale regarding the widespread myth that the blogosphere is self-correcting. In this instance, an easily-detected and important error was apparently accepted at face value by a set of leading right-wing media figures and also by their large aggregate audience. Here's a chronology of how quickly and thoroughly the lie spread. (All times below are Eastern.)
On 3/28 at 12:00 am Hinderaker's Weekly Standard article was posted.
At 12:10 am Power Line plugged the article.
At 7:54 am Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) plugged the article.
At 10:35 am the article was picked up by Yahoo News.
At 1:35 pm Michelle Malkin plugged the article.
The article was also promoted in separate Free Republic articles that appeared at 6:28 am, 10:08 am and 10:33 am.
At this point, less than 14 hours after the Weekly Standard article had first appeared, it had been promoted on several of the biggest conservative blogs.
The morning of 3/29, at about 10 am, Hinderaker repeated his lie on the Laura Ingraham show: "a jpeg version was put up in which the errors identified by ABC News have now been corrected." (Audio of her shows can be purchased at lauraingraham.com.)
Late on 3/29 or early on 3/30 Howard Kurtz of the WaPo promoted the lie: "the typos somehow vanished."
On 3/30 at 10:21 am Power Line again repeated the lie.
On 3/30 at 10:14 am a Kos reader emailed Hinderaker to point out his misstatement. Between that time and 4:41 pm, five emails were exchanged between Hinderaker and the reader. In his emails Hinderaker rudely, repeatedly and vociferously restated the lie: "look at the Raw Story version, you will see that all four have been corrected, exactly as I wrote."
Note that by the end of this email exchange, almost three days had elapsed from the time Hinderaker's Weekly Standard piece was first posted. During these three days, Hinderaker's easily-detectable lie had been directly or indirectly promoted via major conservative outlets, including several of the leading conservative blogs (and then finally via the WaPo), to an audience of many thousands of readers and listeners. Yet apparently none of these people spoke up to bring Hinderaker to his senses, because as of 4:41 pm on 3/30, Hinderaker was still sticking with the lie.
At 5:47 pm Hinderaker finally posted an article acknowledging, in a lame and mealy-mouthed manner, that he had made a mistake. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other media outlets involved in propagating Hinderaker's misstatement (including and especially the Weekly Standard and the WaPo) have issued a corresponding correction or clarification with regard to this specific misstatement.
Note on audience size: according to TTLB, the blogs which led the way in promoting Hinderaker's lie (Power Line, Instapundit, Malkin and Free Republic) are four of the top five conservative blogs (for some reason Little Green Footballs missed the boat), with aggregate visits per day totalling well over 200,000. The Weekly Standard claims a paper circulation of 65,000. I don't know their online circulation. The Laura Ingraham radio show is apparently carried by 250 stations.
In other words, any regular reader of major conservative blogs could hardly have missed seeing a reference to Hinderaker's Weekly Standard article (not to mention regular Weekly Standard readers, and Laura Ingraham listeners). Yet apparently none of these readers/listeners spoke up regarding Hinderaker's blatant misstatement (until finally Hinderaker's trance was broken by three emails from an insistent Kos reader). Hinderaker's misstatement also breezed by his two Power Line co-bloggers, his Weekly Standard editors, Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham. And then finally Howard Kurtz.
The obvious conclusion is that none of these folks (as well as their audiences) have the slightest interest in doing even the most minimal fact-checking. They've proven they're inclined to quickly and uncritically accept and/or promote a statement by Hinderaker even when the statement is not just unsubstantiated, but clearly false.