Charlie Pierce Speaks

He observes that ABC reporter Jonathan Karl's entire report on "talking points" regarding Benghazi is completely bogus. His source lied to him, and there was no effort made to protect the State Department (and by extension, Hilary Clinton).

Karl's "apology" is a typical non-apology apology. He says that the story still stands, but that quote was the whole story.

Pierce's analysis on this is spot on:

………If Jonathan Karl doesn't like being called a hack, then he should stop being a hack. Here's one way to do it.

Blow the source who lied to you and, therefore, lied to us.

Do that. Or be a hack.

There's no third alternative.

An interesting fact that Pierce cites is that Karl's entrée into "journalism" was was through a right wing organization founded by William F. Buckley, and currently run by the infamous right wing liar publisher Alfred Regenry:

Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses (Extra!, 9-10/91)—such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O’Keefe (Political Correction, 1/27/10). The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI’s first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery. Several leading right-wing pundits came out of Collegiate-affiliated papers, including Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry and Laura Ingraham (Washington Times, 11/28/04).

The Collegiate Network also provides paid internships and fellowships to place its members at corporate media outlets or influential Beltway publications; 2010-11 placements include the Hill, Roll Call, Dallas Morning News and USA Today. The program’s highest-profile alum is Karl, who was a Collegiate fellow at the neoliberal New Republic [TNR] magazine.

FAIR rightly calls him a right wing mole.  The Collegiate Network is not a journalist organization, it just plays one on TV.

I would also that between Glass, Shalit, Siegel, and now Karl, TNR under the ownership of Marty Peretz seems to be a petri dish for journalistic malfeasance.