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The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple provides a good example of lying leftist liberals in the media in his post on Katie Couric’s recent documentary on guns.

It looks as though Katie Couric stunned her interviewees. Knocked them out with a bombshell inquiry: “Let me ask you another question: If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?” prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?” Now check out the blank stares.

Nearly 10 seconds of silence, as if no one has an answer to Couric’s rather straightforward question. The scene comes from “Under the Gun,” a film written, produced and directed by Stephanie Soechtig and narrated by Couric, the global anchor for Yahoo News; Couric also serves as executive producer. The session depicted in the video above features Couric and members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a group whose motto is “Defending Your Right to Defend Yourself.”

And to hear the VCDL tell the story, those awkward seconds are a fabrication, a byproduct of deceptive editing. To prove the point, VCDL President Philip Van Cleave has released an audiotape of the session, which is available on the site of the Washington Free Beacon as part of a story by Stephen Gutowski. In that recording, the question from Couric is a bit different from the one in the video. She says, “If there are no background checks, how do you prevent — I know how you all are going to answer this, but I’m going to ask it anyway. If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?”

On the audiotape, a reply comes immediately from one of the VCDL members: “Well, one — if you’re not in jail, you should still have your basic rights.” More chatter follows.

In an interview with the Erik Wemple Blog, Van Cleave said, “My teeth fell out of my head when I saw that.” The result of the editing, he says, is that folks who view the documentary are “going to say these people are idiots. It affects all the gun owners.” Other scenes in the documentary, says Van Cleave, “accurately” represent the input of his fellow gun owners. But not the exchange on background checks. “This was beyond the pale.” Van Cleave says he has audio of the entire interview with Couric — a backstop against bogus editing that he learned from his dealings with the media. “I do that as a matter of course when I’m doing things like that,” says Van Cleave. “It has saved me a few times.” …

… Moments ago, the film’s people released this statement from Soechtig:

“There are a wide range of views expressed in the film. My intention was to provide a pause for the viewer to have a moment to consider this important question before presenting the facts on Americans’ opinions on background checks. I never intended to make anyone look bad and I apologize if anyone felt that way.”

Here at the Erik Wemple Blog we stroke our gray beard and reflect: In the years we’ve covered and watched media organizations, we’ve scarcely seen a thinner, more weaselly excuse than the one in the block above. …

Mollie Hemingway has a good memory. She notes Couric defended Planned Parenthood with claims of doctored footage, then does the exact same thing. And by the way, independent reviews showed the PP film was not edited with intended malice. Which is what Katie did.

… This willful and malicious doctoring of evidence to support an agenda is so unconscionable that even CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other media outlets made note of it.

Couric should have disclaimed the documentary and publicly acknowledge her error. Instead, the film’s director Stephanie Soechtig indirectly admitted she spliced in false footage when she issued the following statement:

My intention was to provide a pause for the viewer to have a moment to consider this important question before presenting the facts on Americans’ opinions on background checks. I never intended to make anyone look bad and I apologize if anyone felt that way.

This mealy mouthed mush was described as an apology at CNN while The Washington Post openly mocked the “apologize if” construction of the response. Erik Wemple of the Post added that he’d never seen a “thinner, more weaselly excuse” than the one proffered by Soechtig. For her part, Couric said “I support Stephanie’s statement and am very proud of the film.” …

… Indeed, when Katie Couric ran interference for Cecile Richards (Head of Planned Parenthood), doing a lengthy sit-down puffball interview and a tour of an abortion clinic where she didn’t once mention, uh, abortion, she twice decried the videos as “edited.” Couric is a long-time pro-abortion activist, not just using the mainstream media to advocate it, but having marched in support of the right to end unborn human lives. Last week on David Axelrod’s podcast, she said that her parents were major influences on her, specifically citing her mother’s volunteer work for Planned Parenthood and the fact that her mother invested in Trojan condoms when she learned about the AIDS crisis. Classy!

An accompanying write-up of the Cecile Richards interview falsely stated:

The videos, some of which were edited together in a way to depict Planned Parenthood employees talking about selling fetal tissue, which is illegal, rocked the organization.

The media have straight-up adopted Planned Parenthood’s false “deceptively edited” talking points and carried the water for Planned Parenthood’s campaign against the Center for Medical Progress. Here, one of their perky own in the mainstream media is caught red-handed actually deceptively editing in the service of gun control, and the most outrage The New York Times can muster is the headline, “Audio of Katie Couric interview shows editing slant in documentary, site claims.” What a joke our mainstream media are.

Tim Carney says you can blame Couric and her ilk for Donald Trump. 

Donald Trump tells us that journalists “are the most dishonest people” and are “sleaze.” This is silly.

But if my fellow journalists wonder why he gets away with his attacks and obfuscation towards the media, Katie Couric provides a good explanation.

Couric, who spent three decades as a supposedly straight-news reporter, this year narrated an anti-gun documentary. As a fig-leaf of balance, she included in the documentary an interview with Virginia Citizens Defense League. She used this as an occasion to “demolish” the gun nuts.

Reviewers got the message. The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “A group of blustery members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, however, suddenly remain painfully quiet when Couric asks them the hard questions.”

Indeed it’s painful to watch, or glorious to watch, depending on your perspective. The topic was background checks. Under current law, gun stores cannot sell a gun without conducting a background check on the buyer. If a gun owner sells his gun, however, he is not required to conduct background checks. Some gun-rights defenders oppose any mandatory background checks. No matter what, though, felons may not own guns.

“Let me ask you another question,” Couric says, as the gun-rights supporters look on, “if there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”

One gun-defender blinks, an uncomfortable grimace on his face, as he looks to a compatriot at the table. The camera cuts to another man, quietly staring down at the table. A third man, bearded, glares without saying a word before turning his eyes down. Eight seconds of awkward silence greet Couric’s question.

Devastating.

But of course, that’s not what happened. Couric’s victims produced the audio from the meeting and published it online last week. In real life, Couric prefaces the question with “I know how you all are going to answer this, but I’m going to ask it anyway.”

 

Once she finishes her question, one participant immediately lays out the argument that felons, when they complete their prison sentences, should have their gun rights restored. …

… After first standing behind the filmmaker’s transparently false defense, Couric has apologized for approving the misleading edit. But her week-late, second-try apology isn’t commensurate to the crime.

On Amazon and on iTunes Thursday, you could still download the lying video. The Hollywood Reporter review is still out there, uncorrected. The film was scheduled to screen in Danbury, Conn., Thursday night, June 2.

The lying anti-gun film needs to be pulled from distribution until the lying scene is removed. Only pressure from the center-left mainstream media will make that happen. Some journalists probably hope the Couric flap can be ignored, but that would be the worst thing for a free press.

A free country requires a free press in order to hold accountable those in power — that includes the press itself.

No cartoons today. There’s nothing funny about Lyin’ Katie Couric.

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A few years ago we could not stop reading and hearing about the French economist Thomas Piketty. Why? Because his research claimed the middle class has made little progress over the last 100 years. The left jumped on that as proof of their Hobbesian view on contemporary American life and culture. 

They did the same with the Card & Krueger study that claimed raises in the minimum wage would not cost jobs. That’s been well debunked, but the canard is brought out every election. Krueger was responsible for the ‘cash for clunkers’ program that was part of the liberals war against the poor. Somehow it made sense to him our economy could advance by destroying wealth. So, we paid for the destruction of tens of thousands of cars. And the used cars, important to the poor, went up in price. That kind of failure has to be recognized.  What do we do with an academic who is usually wrong? Krueger became the head of the administration’s Council of Economic Advisors. 

Writing in Commentary, Tim Kane lays out some of the foolishness in Piketty’s book. His article is titled “Piketty’s Crumbs.” In the article he shows us some pictures from 1910. 

Three years ago, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) made its author the most famous economist in the world. The book caused a sensation by highlighting rising income and wealth inequality in the United States and Europe, especially in its jarring claim that inequality is just as bad today as it was a hundred years ago. Piketty writes: “The poorer half of the population are as poor today as they were in the past, with barely 5 percent of total wealth in 2010, just as in 1910. Basically, all the middle class managed to get its hands on was a few crumbs.” …

… How much money would you demand to give up modern public goods such as highways or emergency fire and ambulance services? How much is air conditioning worth to you? What about penicillin? Entertainment of any kind that is not live? The ability to travel to Australia from Minneapolis in a day’s time for the price of five men’s suits? Recorded music, movies, and cable television? How much would you have to be paid to surrender the Internet for a month? No Facebook. No Netflix. No email. No Google searches. No Google Maps.

These are Piketty’s crumbs. Here are some others.

It is doubtful that anyone in my old Ohio neighborhood on the west side of Columbus was a one percenter. My mother worked as a “lunch lady” at the local elementary school and later as a secretary for Xerox. My father worked at a grocery store before enlisting in the military. They never complained, but, as my mother says, “We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper.”

I remember hot summer days before many people with middle incomes could afford an air conditioner. I remember how dramatically it changed our quality of life, too. AC is ubiquitous and cheap today, but is it a crumb?
My mother slept in on one Christmas in, I think, 1978, on orders from my father. She awoke to find that he had bought and installed our first dishwashing machine. As an economist, I try to think about how to measure the value of that washing machine, but I am at a loss. Surely, it was worth more than it cost. There’s a notion of consumer surplus in welfare analysis, but that fails to capture the extra-economic utility people actually experience.

I remember getting one of the nation’s first cable television systems—30 channels instead of three, including CNN (which debuted in 1980) and HBO and ESPN. A movie “costs” $15 to see at the theater, yet we have millions of hours of broadcasting piped over cable every month at no marginal cost. …

… The most compelling photo from the first decade of the 20th century comes from a street in Manhattan. A dead horse, clearly malnourished, had collapsed and was awaiting collection. This was a common occurrence in cities everywhere, as horse-drawn commerce and transportation remained predominant. Indeed, there are a half dozen other carriages—not automobiles—in the background. What compels are the eight boys at play in the sewer a few feet from the dead horse. Two older boys are standing and staring at the photographer, while the younger boys are barefoot and seated along the gutter, splashing. Nearby wooden buildings are in shambles, windows wide, shutters hanging askew. The streets and sidewalks are bricked and worn down.

The germ theory of disease was barely a half-century-old when this photo was taken. Antibiotics would be discovered decades later, and widely used only when these boys were adults, assuming they survived the Great War and the plague of 1918. …

… I asked my mother what it would take for her to give up air conditioning for a year. She lives in Florida, and she didn’t have to think long to name her price. “Nine million dollars.”
What does all this mean? It means the inequality debate is a slippery slope almost by design, cleverly limited to ensure that free-market advocates will never have the high ground except the one afforded by sheer common sense. The way to win the argument is simply to ask about those crumbs of progress that progressives ignore. Ask if critics of capitalism actually believe progress can happen (child labor laws, voting rights, electrification, hot showers) and can continue.

Second, it means that economic theory is falling short, because it cannot successfully measure progress over the long term. What economists call consumer surplus—the difference between what you are willing to pay for something and its actual price—is a fraction of the value we experience, but Piketty doesn’t even count consumer surplus. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, progressive economists know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Scholars who research income trends should no longer ignore positive externalities which are tiny year to year but extraordinarily large decade to decade. The political stakes are too high, and inequality debate too central, for us to pretend the foundations of microeconomics are firm. If Nordhaus is right, intangible gains are many multiples greater than median incomes.

For voters, this means we should pause in our rush to “fix” capitalism. Yes, modern economies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas are imperfect, but recognize that they have enriched everyone in intangible yet vital ways. Does this mean, as the sharp-witted economist Brad DeLong charges, that I am saying we shouldn’t care about inequality? Maybe a better way to frame it is that the inequality you’ve been told about is almost certainly an illusion. If poorly measured inequality is the price of progress—mothers and babies alive, blood transfusions, civil rights, ice cubes in summertime, and, yes, Facebook—it is a very small price indeed.

From NewsAlert we learn about some of Piketty’s factual errors.

Leftist economist Thomas Piketty , is yet another of a long line of economists , who know nothing about history. Economist Robert Murphy busts Piketty for his wrong take on American economic history. Here’s Thomas Piketty from his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century pages pages 506-507: …

More from Forbes.

Given the excitement that Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has stirred up within the political left, the French economist probably should have titled it Fifty Shades of Inequality.

In Capital, Piketty presents a painstakingly researched case for doing what progressives ranging from Paul Krugman to Barack Obama want to do anyway, which is to raise taxes and expand the power and reach of government. Unfortunately for liberals, Piketty gets almost everything wrong, starting with the numbers. …

… If America’s welfare population (along with their lifestyles) were put in a time machine and sent back to the France of 1870, they would be viewed by the ordinary people of that time as a strange new aristocracy.

Our welfare recipients would be envied for their (comparatively) ample and varied food, (comparatively) large dwelling units, (comparatively) huge selection of clothing, amazing creature comforts (e.g., electric lights, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, washing machines, etc.), ability to travel at 80 miles an hour, capability to communicate with each other at the speed of light, and access to dazzling entertainment via flat panels on their walls.

However, what the ordinary French citizens of 1870 would probably be most envious of regarding our welfare population is their immunity to common infectious diseases, as well as their ability to easily cure the ones that they did get. And, of course, the ordinary people of 1870 France would envy our welfare recipients for the fact that they enjoyed their incredible lifestyle without having to work.

We can stop this line of discussion here. The point is that Piketty’s painstakingly researched numbers are worthless, because they ignore the existence of the modern welfare state. Our various welfare programs redistribute a huge percentage of national income, and, therefore, for the purposes of Piketty’s comparisons across time, they redistribute the beneficial ownership of capital.

Now, let’s move on to the (many) other things that Piketty gets wrong. …

… Piketty claims that his tax system would not impact economic growth or entrepreneurial innovation. However a comparison between France and the U.S. renders this assertion laughable. For reference, France, already has a wealth tax, as well as a much higher marginal income tax rate than the U.S. (75% vs. about 43%).

Of the 100 most valuable corporations in the world, 44 are based in the U.S., and 5 are based in France. This means that the U.S., which has less than 5 times the population of France and less than 6 times the GDP, has created almost 9 times as many “Top 100” companies.

The comparison is even more lopsided in terms of the total market capitalizations of the two countries’ “Top 100” companies, with a ratio of more than 13:1 in favor of the U.S.

These comparisons are just the warm-up. The real shock comes when you look at when each country’s “Top 100” companies were started.

The last time that France created a “Top 100” company was 100 years ago: Total Petroleum, in 1924. And, Total was founded at the initiative of the French government. The most recent private French venture in today’s global “Top 100” is L’Oreal, which was founded in 1909.

In contrast, one U.S. “Top 100” company (Facebook) was founded only 10 years ago. Another, Google, which was started in 1998 by two guys in a dorm room at StanfordUniversity, has a market cap approaching that of all 5 of France’s “Top 100” companies added together.

In the 90 years since Total was founded, the U.S. created 17 of its 44 “Top 100” companies, including 1 in the 2000s, 2 in the 1990s, 4 in the 1980s, and 4 in the 1970s.

The progressives want us to believe that high taxes don’t impact growth and innovation. Sure, Professor Piketty. Right. Uh-huh. …

… In believing in their own omniscience, progressive intellectuals fall into the trap described so brilliantly by George Gilder in his book, Knowledge and Power. They seek to intervene in systems that they do not, and inherently cannot, understand.

In the final analysis, progressivism is simply the time-release form of communism. This is fine with progressives like Piketty, because they truly believe that the only thing wrong with soviet communism was that it was run by Stalin, rather than by them. Give them another chance (starting with an 80% marginal income tax rate and a global wealth tax), and this time they will get it right.

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In the future will Brits celebrate the Fourth of July on June 23rd?

Paul Meringoff of Power Line posts that the Brexit result is another example of White House cluelessness.

President Obama and his foreign policy team are perpetually surprised by the world. The rise of ISIS, the fall of Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood leader who succeeded him, the chaos in Libya, Putin’s aggression, Netanyahu’s reelection — all of these key developments (and others) wrong-footed the president and his advisers. You might almost think they don’t understand the world at all.

Brexit is the latest manifestation of Team Obama’s cluelessness. Once again, the president has been caught by surprise. Surely, that is why, as Walter Russell Mead recounts, Obama, though strongly favoring the “remain” cause, did nothing to advance it until at the last minute he “parachuted in, made a speech, and expected his charisma and wisdom to work miracles.”

Many believe that Obama’s speech, in which he tried to brow-beat the British into remaining in the EU, was counterproductive. In any event, it failed to carry the day. …

… Mead concludes:

[R]arely has a presidency seen so many things go so badly for the U.S. in foreign policy. Obama’s track record is not looking good: at the end of his watch, the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia are all in worse shape than when he entered office, relations with Russia and China are both worse, there are more refugees, more terrorists and more dangerous terrorist organizations.

Obama’s fiercest critics say that much of Obama’s foreign policy wreckage is the intended result of his policy. They are right, I think, to some degree.

But Obama didn’t want Brexit. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that he wanted a failed state in Libya, an ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and a Ukraine compromised by Russian aggression.

Obama’s foreign policy failures cannot be understood without reference to his incompetence and inability to understand the world as it is.

And this. Two weeks ago the president was spanked by 51 State Department career foreign service officers who dissent from his passivity in the Middle East. Of course, the media made little mention so we have a piece from Austin Bay in The Observer.

Dissenting State Department officials are demanding President Barack Obama wage war on the Assad dictatorship—which is a short step away from demanding regime change.

Late on June 16 The Wall Street Journal reported that the “near collapse” of the current ceasefire had spurred 51 “mid-to high-level State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy” to sign a “dissent channel cable” calling on the Obama Administration to target Syria’s Assad regime with repeated “military strikes.”

At the moment, the article remains behind The Journal’s paywall, so I’ll include several extended quotes. Journal reporters who personally reviewed the cable described the document as “a scalding internal critique of a longstanding U.S. policy against taking sides in the Syrian war, a policy that has survived even though the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been repeatedly accused of violating cease-fire agreements and Russian-backed forces have attacked U.S.-trained rebels.”

The dissenters argue “Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield.” …

… Obama’s Syrian chemical weapons red-line fiasco is a major factor in this mess. Obama had warned the Assad regime that using chemical weapons on civilians was a red-line—implying he would respond to chemical weapons employment with a punitive military attack. On August 21, 2013 a nerve gas attack by Assad regime forces killed approximately 1,500 Syrian civilians. In the aftermath Obama’s “red line” promise was exposed as a bombastic falsehood that sure sounded macho on CNN and MSNBC.

Obama “talked back” his warning. Red line? Here’s the White House transcript, so judge for yourself.

Oh heck, here it is, from August 20, 2012—a year and a day before the nerve gas attack

President Obama:

“…the point that you made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria; it concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has made a judgment. Gates says Obama’s failure to respond was a “serious mistake” that damaged U.S. global credibility.

Did it ever. State Department pros agree. …

 

… During the George W. Bush Administration, when dissent was the highest form of patriotism, State’s Dissent Channel policy dissenters would instantly become 24-7 cable news channel heroes—you know, lionized public servants speaking truth to CheneyBusHitler power? The intense, relentless media attention would have translated a heavy intellectual blow into a heavy political blow. Restrained media treatment of State’s Syria dissent cable, however, softens the political impact of  its truly devastating intellectual and expert condemnation.

The Times report does note the Syrian civil war has killed 400,000 people. I think that tragic figure is highly credible.

For the Obama Administration, the 400,000 death toll is a moral challenge historians will not miss even if au courant media do. As I note in the Creators Syndicate column linked above (at StrategyPage.com) “If we had a Republican president I’m rather certain we’d be hearing demands that the U.S. has a ‘responsibility to protect’ vulnerable civilians. The abbreviation for this policy is R2P. During the Bush Administration the Obama Administration’s current U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, was a vocal advocate of R2P. Now? Not so much. History will note the 400,000 Syrian dead died on her president’s watch.” …

David Harsanyi writes on the “radical Islam” kerfuffle.

After a meeting with the National Security Council to discuss the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, Barack Obama was angry. He’s more impassioned than we’ve ever seen him. He was speaking from the heart. He’s lashing out! Because you know what really grinds his gears? Republicans.

“That’s the key, they say,” Obama said, eviscerating the GOP. “We can’t defeat them unless we call them radical Islamists. What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”

A lot, actually.

As a matter of realpolitik, perhaps it makes sense to avoid the phrase “radical Islam.” We don’t want to offend the Mullahs, theocratic sheiks, oligarchic princes, Arab strongmen, and future junta leaders of the Middle East. We need to work with these people, after all. What should bother you, though, is that Obama constantly tries to chill speech by insinuating that anyone who does associate violence with radical Islam—which includes millions of adherents—is a bigot. This is a president who also intimates that anyone who is critical of everyday Islam’s widespread illiberalism—for example, all nations where homosexuality is punishable by death are Muslim—is also a bigot. …

MORE THAN TWO SCORE GREAT CARTOONS!