Darrell Issa vs. the new York Times

As a guy in Issa's district, let me put my 2 cents in here.

1. Darrell Issa's main beef is a billion/million typo that was quickly corrected, and a throwaway line about his office overlooking a golf course (the nice country club is actually about a half-mile away from his office. I mean, who fucking cares?). Considering the entire premise of the article details borderline abuse of power that he's making millions off of, there's little doubt that Issa is trying to divert attention from his conflict-of-interest forest fire by starting a little fire of his own.

2. Issa had numerous attempts to talk for the NY Times story. He wouldn't do it. So that's on him. However, the U-T wouldn't run the story without Issa's side...which Issa already declined to give. It really gives the impression that the U-T is protecting Issa at all costs.

3. Issa is a partisan hack who's out to serve the following interests, in order. 1. Darrell Issa. 2. The Republican party. 3. Anybody who hates Barack Obama. 4. His district

4. The U-T story may have been written by a staffer in Issa's office. It was that slanted.

5. Darrell Issa is the chief watchdog of Congress. Yet when the real watchdog--the media--points out his massive conflict of interest, Issa throws a temper tantrum. Figures.

 

Given we're talking San Diego, we're likely talking about the pub in
question protecting the behinds of big-biz tool Issa and his cronies . . .

 

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 16, 2011

An article on Monday about the business empire of Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, misstated the worth of the companies involved in his splitting up of a holding company. The split entailed separate multimillion-dollar companies, not multibillion-dollar ones.

Correction: August 26, 2011

An article on Aug. 15 about Representative Darrell Issa’s business dealings, using erroneous information that Mr. Issa’s family foundation filed with the Internal Revenue Service, referred incorrectly to his sale of an AIM mutual fund in 2008. A spokesman for the California Republican now says that the I.R.S. filing is “an incorrect document.” The spokesman, Frederick R. Hill, said that based on Mr. Issa’s private brokerage account records, which he made public with redactions, the purchase of the mutual fund resulted in a $125,000 loss, not a $357,000 gain.

And the article, using incorrect information from the San Diego county assessor’s office, misstated the purchase price for a medical office plaza Mr. Issa’s company bought in Vista, Calif., in 2008. It cost $16.3 million, the assessor’s office now says — not $10.3 million — because the assessor mistakenly omitted in public records a $6 million loan Mr. Issa’s company assumed in the acquisition. Therefore the value of the property remained essentially unchanged, and did not rise 60 percent after Mr. Issa secured federal funding to widen a road alongside the plaza.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/us/politics/15issa.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Then there's this from Politico:

 

I try to view these issues through the lens of a non-journalist as often as possible, but it really seems like the Times was right in this one. If only people would answer phone calls.

 

Let's stay focused on what the point of this story was. If some details were a little off due to the refusal of Issa to cooperate (wonder how Issa would like if someone refused to cooperate with him?), it doesn't do a bit of damage to the point of the story, which is Issa's tremendous conflict of interest.

The meltdown Issa is having over whether his office overlooks a golf course or not is pure comedy considering the seriousness of this story.

 

It's not a meltdown. It's a time-honored deflection mechanism used by Fox News and its ilk, and you can also see it in your various paranoid sports franchises and college athletic departments. They seize on some trivial matter and get the whole world talking about it, and then they win because you're talking about something other than what's in the story. (See LSU and Miami football for the most current examples.)

I bet Issa and staff, instead of returning phone calls, started preparing their response based on the questions they were being asked. They wanted those items to get to print so they could poke little pin-pricks in it.

 

Maybe neither. If you run an out of town piece about your local turf, you're admitting that you have been beaten.

 

Rep. Darrell Issa’s office has scored yet another point in its fight with the New York Times over its Aug. 15th story raising questions about the mixing of his business and governmental activities.

The Times issued a fourth correction on the story this morning, this one a kind of meta-correction, since the information that it was correcting actually appeared in the story’s (now absent) third correction.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/onmedia/0911/NYT_issues_fourth_correction_in_Issa_story.html

 

Let's see.

One error was based on a public record that Issa had released that was incorrect. When the Times called to confirm the transaction Issa's office refused to cooperate.

The second was a typo buried in a story but the fact had been correctly reported more prominently elsewhere in the story.

And the third and the fourth concern a real estate transaction that the Times got wrong.

So the Times screwed one up one item badly, made a typo and the other error was Issa's fault.

While journalists should of course be perfect doesn't this seem to be holding up pretty well?

 

Issa's fighting with the tools he's been given.

Doesn't change what Issa is.

 

Speaking as someone who works somewhere where millions/billions mistakes come up with some regularity, I can assure you that you'd be amazed (a) how easy they are to make and (b) how easy they are to miss, even by multiple copy editors.

 

. . . especially when you're grossly-understaffed . . . and that's not an excuse, but anyone who denies it is living in an ivory tower.