1115.org

Usually after I write something about Bob Novak’s latest atrocity readers will email with comments to the effect of: “Yo, it’s just Douchebag of Liberty Bob Novak, no one pays any attention to him, so don’t get all worked up.” The problem is, people do listen to him, and his partisan attacks and fact-free conclusions give license to others in the media to parrot his nonsense.

A few weeks ago, in advance of his favorite target Howard Dean’s appearance on Meet the Press, Novak continued to push a premise that Dean isn’t raising money and consequently angering Democratic donors. It’s a sad commentary on the state of journalism when Novak can take numbers completely out of context in a way that even a casual observer could pick apart, while New York Times columnist Paul Krugman can be accused of doing essentially the same thing with no evidence by that paper’s outgoing public editor, Dan Okrent.

Okrent accused Krugman (a professional economist, professor, and author) of distorting data from an unemployment study because he didn’t include data from a 1995 unofficial research paper when he was parsing official government data. By analogy, Okrent’s criticism would be like me calling out a top music critic for not including my dismissal of Jay-Z in that critic’s piece arguing that Jay is the greatest rapper of all time. It’s apples and oranges, and Okrent knew it, pulling a cowardly hit-and-run:

I didn’t give Krugman…the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

Novak, a man more in need of a public editor than anyone currently writing, would benefit from some serious oversight akin to that (unfairly) leveled at Krugman. While Orkrent inexplicably used his parting shot to question Krugman’s veracity and professionalism, Novak’s transparently dishonest attacks on Dean are picked up by major media outlets:

BusinessWeek reporters Eamon Javers and Richard Dunham baselessly asserted in a June 6 article that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is not an effective fund-raiser, a claim that Fox News hosts Brit Hume and John Gibson echoed.

It’s one thing for Novak to play fast and loose with the soiled reputation he carries. It’s a minor offense for him to compare fundraising totals from the year of the most bitterly contested Presidential election with totals from the first quarter of an off-year after a demoralizing defeat that left Democrats at even more of a disadvantage than they held before. Bob Novak can compare the three months of the 2004 first quarter with the less than two months Dean had in the first quarter of 2005 without seeming like much more of a hack than people already perceived him to be. But the danger is in the repetition by larger outlets, all based on flawed comparisons by Novak.

Fox News betrays their “fair and balanced” tagline once again, but it’s BusinessWeek that should really be ashamed. Their magazine includes financial data and analysis in every issue. By mimicking Novak, they are doing the equivalent of comparing the earnings of a retail store’s December with its February: people shop to excess before Christmas and then spend the next several months paying off their credit card debt. People give money to politicians in election years to help them get elected. The only elections this year are some small state races for governor. And with the Democrats’ loss of seats in 2004, it’s not realistic that they will be the majority party anytime soon. Yet with all these obstacles, Dean still has the DNC bringing in more money than any other off-year in their history.

But what good are numbers when Bob Novak can just make shit up?