FAIL

We’re not sure this warrants a newly conceived feature, but we’re covering our bases just in case the need arises. D.C. writer and former Yahoo! News editor Chris Lehmann has made no secret of his marital status in recent months. While some things are better suited for, say, the HuffPost Divorce section, Lehmann, formerly married to The Guardian‘s Ana Marie Cox who fled D.C. and him last summer, has seen fit to post his thoughts about it on Twitter, including an announcement that he’s already newly engaged. Now we’re not ones to, ahem, judge or scold, but really Lehmann? Are you entirely guiltless here?

In his latest d!@k move, he posted this:

Legally divorced and IT FEELS SO GOOD. Suck it, nomtweets, if you’ll pardon the expression

— Chris Lehmann (@lehmannchris) May 16, 2012

 

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Sunday afternoon, news began spreading of the death of Robin Gibb, one of the founding members of the Bee-Gees. MSNBC’s Breaking News Twitter feed screwed the pooch by rushing out the following tweet:

Bee Gees co-founder Robin Gobb dies at 62, family statement says on.msnbc.com/4dpW6f

— msnbc Breaking News (@msnbc_breaking) May 20, 2012

Yes, that’s right. The family statement says that Robin GOBB died. You know? From the legendary band, The Boo-Goos? Thanks, MSNBC! Next thing you know, they’ll be tweeting out that he died from a terminal case of Night Fever.

While that’s a pretty embarrassing typo, they have yet to delete the incorrect tweet or issue a follow-up clarifying their mistake.

In the wee hours of Friday morning, we discovered some interesting words of wisdom from Mediaite’s White House Correspondent Tommy Christopher. If you can look at the screengrab to the right and make ANY sense of that, then you’re smarter than us. Immediately, we picked up the phone to call an ambulance. The last time Christopher sent out nonsensical tweets, the man was having a heart attack. Then we thought it was part of a larger art project. I mean, the tweet, “CASH. What. Me” could easily be the name of a rap album. Considering that the tweets came in the blurry time of day where it could be a late night or early morning, we thought that it might be a drunken series of tweets from an inebriated Christopher who may have passed out on his phone. But this appeared to go well beyond the traditional butt dialing.

We frantically reached out to Christopher to make sure that he was okay and that his liver wasn’t going through another bout of Gangrene. He tells FBDC, “My little guy got a hold of my phone. I think this was a meta-critique of my Twitter feed.”

So there you have it. It was just his son taking the phone. That being said, his kid’s tweets still make about as much as much sense as Politico’s Jonathan Martin‘s on a good day.

TIPS FROM THE POOL…INTO THE DEEP END

NYT White House Correspondent Jackie Calmes, who has been covering President Obama’s fundraiser at actor George Clooney‘s home for the past 24 hours, issued an early morning Pool Report after calling a photo-travel lid at 2:32 a.m. Calmes wrote the new report (#11) to correct what was supposed to be an amusing anecdote the President told at last night’s soirée regarding his Hope poster and Clooney being photoshopped out of a picture. In her report she quote’s the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn, who clears up the error.

“According to the AP and its White House reporter, fellow pooler Jim Kuhnhenn, Potus erred on Thursday night in telling donors at George Clooney’s house his anecdote about the iconic ‘Hope’ poster of the 2008 presidential campaign. Potus said artist Shepard Fairey had based his design on a photo in which then-Sen. Obama appeared alongside Clooney at an event on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur (leading Potus to quip that it was the first and last time that Clooney had ever been ‘photo-shopped’ from a photo).

Here’s how Jim describes the reality:
‘In fact, the artist who created the poster, Shepard Fairey, used another photograph of Obama but said he relied on the Obama-Clooney picture to avoid a copyright infringement case with The Associated Press. He pleaded guilty in February to criminal contempt for fabricating and destroying evidence.’”

Here’s some bad publicity (if there’s such a thing) for an author who’s doing pretty well at the moment.

National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg published his second book Tyranny of Cliche’s: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas at the start of this month. It’s currently listed at No. 56 on Amazon’s Bestsellers list. On the book’s jacket, Goldberg’s bio says he has “twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.” But as msnbc.com points out, Goldberg has never been nominated for a Pulitzer.

“His publisher, Penguin Group (USA), said the error was unintentional and it would remove the Pulitzer word from his book jacket when it’s time for the first reprint, ‘just like any other innocent mistake brought to our attention.’”

In a chain of emails accidentally forwarded to msnbc from Penguin with comment from the publisher, Goldberg calls the whole thing a “bull@!$%# story.” When asked for comment, Goldberg told FishbowlDC by email that he’s sure he read the bio on the book before it came out, but that he “didn’t know it was a “mistake” when he saw it. “It’s a pretty dumb story if you ask me — which I suppose you are. As [msnbc] notes, lots of people have made the mistake. I’m glad to correct it, of course. But it was an honest error.”

Goldberg has had work submitted for a Prize (which is simply a matter of filling out an application and paying a $50 fee) but has never been selected by the Pulitzer committee as a finalist.

The good news: Both Goldberg and his publisher were forthcoming on the matter. “We will submit the correction to online retailers like Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com, which use our flap copy for their descriptive copy,” the publisher told msnbc. “Jonah is also correcting any other bios that have the error.”

And now for the bad news: msnbc.com reports that this isn’t Goldberg’s first brush with embellishing details. In 2008, National Review reported that Tribune Media Services, which runs his column, “nominated” him for a Pulitzer. Who knows, maybe Goldberg will seek pr advice from a well-known literary agent (and his mother) Lucianne Goldberg, who once advised ex-Clinton aide Linda Tripp to tape record conversations with Monica Lewinksy.

Then again, maybe not.

A few letters can make all the difference. In a post last week News Buster‘s Tim Graham criticized lefty radio and Current TV host Bill Press and quoted him on what they perceived to be his “high flatulent” thoughts on Ann Romney’s ugly $990 fish shirt. We’re pretty sure Press said “highfalutin” and that he doesn’t think Romney is gassy.

Take a look below. Read more here.

Yeah, you read that right.

In the May issue of Washingtonian in the Capital Comment section there’s a dirty spelling error on Harry Thomas Jr.‘s corruption scandal: “Around the same time, Thomas uses pubic funds to buy a 2008 Victory motorcycle for more than $23,000.” (p. 16)

Oh what a difference an “l” makes.

Bad form? CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux got called to the carpet Monday and not the red carpet, mind you, but rather conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh tore into her for her gushing tweets during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Malveaux’s Twitter feed looked like it was taken over by a star-crazed teen, the me-walls to end all me-walls. Isn’t this great? There she was with Woody Harrelson, and Valerie Jarrett, and Dave Chappelle. Mediaite has the recap.

Was Tina holding a gun to Howie’s head? You’d have thought The Daily Beast/CNN host Howard Kurtz wasn’t enjoying himself Saturday night from the story he published Monday slamming “Nutty Nerdprom.” Sure he slammed what appeared to be creamed corn on his ballroom dinner plate. But Kurtz is about as nerdy as it gets for Washington. He’s also as enmeshed in the culture as many other members of the media. So how two-faced it is for him to slam what the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has become — which, in his view, is apparently a celebrity invasion of Washington gone wild — and tweeting about his own celeb encounters all the way  through it. Did his boss, Tina Brown, have a gun to his head? If Kurtz really wanted to show strength, instead of knocking the prom with a story, maybe he could show he means business with a boycott as opposed to say, going and fawning, and then writing about how ridiculous all that fawning is.

Hollywood and Congress collide, again — This morning Roll Call has a report on Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) using Hot in Cleveland actresses Betty White and Wendie Mallick in a campaign spot in which they gush about his love of animals and support for community safety. Of course, then he has to release a statement, saying how much of an honor it was to work with Betty and Wendie. Really, congressman, a statement for that? Berman is battling Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif. ) post redistricting. Read the piece here.

WaPo‘s flagship gossip column “The Reliable Source” isn’t exactly setting a good example these days. Sure, we know it’s loathsome to have to attribute to someone else. But that’s the breaks and the way it goes if you want to be respected by your peers.

But “The UnReliable Source” plays by its own rules. This week they reported that Lindsay Lohan was attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren – they left off her husband, John Coale, and pointedly wrote that Greta didn’t respond to their emails. What did the gals want Greta to do, confirm or reconfirm the news that had already broken? They wrote it late (at 6:24 p.m. after it broke earlier at 3:50p.m.) and attributed it to “web reports” that linked to FBDC and The Hill newspaper. But it turns out The Hill didn’t break that story — FBDC did, which they made clear in their second graph published at 5:45 p.m.. This isn’t to brag, it’s fact and The UnReliable Source should be concerned with facts. Attribution also means naming the publications, not dismissing those who beat you as “web reports.” Even Politico CLICK managed to respectfully attribute this week as far as WHCD scooplets go. If they can do it, so can you two. The best part? The gals “confirmed” the “web reports” with Lohan’s publicist. Guess in their eyes that makes it legit.

This may sound like a largely dumb example as some grouse, who cares who broke Lindsay Lohan, George Clooney or Charlize Theron first? But attribution goes to the heart of what journalists are supposed to do — which is tell the truth. The UnReliable Source, if it wants to be reliable, may want to get on board with that.

During the primary season, Politico would always reel us in with their lists of “5 Things to Watch For…” or “5 Lessons Learned From…” We can’t lie. We’re a sucker for a good list. So, we always read their insights in bullet point style. Yesterday afternoon, as the media was gearing up for the not-exciting, inevitable Mitt Romney wins in NY, RI, CT, PA and DE, Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian (whom they occasionally refer to internally as “God”) gave us “5 Things to Watch in Tuesday’s Primaries.” Considering Romney is, essentially, the only candidate left in the race, we couldn’t imagine what this list would look like. Our guess was:

1 – Watch Mitt Romney win in New York

2 – Watch Mitt Romney win in Rhode Island

3 – Watch Mitt Romney win in – Connecticut

4 – Watch Mitt Romney win in Pennsylvania

5 – Watch Mitt Romney win in Delaware

That’s NOT where Mahtesian went, however. He focused on the power of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and their impact on the race. Did anyone actually think Newt had a shot? And who cares if Santorum would have won his home state of Pennsylvania? The fact is that he already dropped out, so there’s no way to know. The only thing to watch in Tuesday’s primaries was whether or not Newt would officially drop out.

Making matters worse, now that Romney has won all 5 of the races, Mahtesian has put out “5 LESSONS from Tuesday’s Primaries.” OK. So, this actually makes a little more sense. He could focus on how Romney will pivot to the general election and how strong he was in the states that he won. But, that’s not what catches the attention of Politico. Instead, one of the lessons they focus on is — no joke — the strength of Ron Paul, whom the media has largely ignored.

Look, we’re suckers for a list, so maybe it’s our fault. But, creating a list when there’s no meat on the bone just looks like an attempt to manufacture a story to fit a headline.