A burbling back-story on Joe “Primary Colors” Klein and a Time magazine article of his has begun to geyser into plain view. Here’s the short run-down from Center for Citizen Media.

One of the most amazing episodes in modern American journalism has emerged from a flagrantly inaccurate and misguided Time magazine column by Joe Klein. He’s a political writer whose work in this case may become Exhibit A for what’s wrong with the craft today.

Klein’s column attacked congressional Democrats’ effort to pass electronic surveillance legislation that would restrain the Bush administration’s wish for essentially no restraints or oversight whatever. In his piece, Klein got some vital facts dead wrong, giving a totally misleading message to his readers.

Needless to say, bloggers and others who care about truth and the Constitution jumped on this outrageous stuff. No one did a better job than Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, who pointed out the misstatements in great detail.

Klein, obviously responding to Greenwald (though never saying so), defended himself without actually dealing with the actual facts — and even more amazingly asserted that telecom companies should do whatever the government orders them to do, even if it’s completely illegal. Bloggers continued to attack both the original piece and his absurd justifications.

Then Klein sort of, kind of admitted error in a follow-up — though he made obvious something even more amazing: He hasn’t read the legislation he attacks. Meanwhile, neither Klein nor Time has put corrections into the original, flagrantly inaccurate column, which also ran in the print edition.

Dan Gilmore at CitMedia.org

For more of the dirty details you could visit Ryan Singel at Wired,

Glen Greenwald, here, here and here.

Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake located Klein’s editor, who hung up on her. Maybe she’d talk to you. Jane posts her phone number.

Print PDF