The Columbia Journalism Review doesn't like Fox News;that's nothing new. But what to do when FNC makes news that serves their other favorite objective: hating President Bush? Why, CJR sucks it up and gives credit where credit is due; they point out FNC's journalistic superiority and hope nobody notices.
Well, tough luck, CJR: you've been caught committing almost-fair reporting. (Even if the CJR still can't bring itself to check the spelling of FNC personalities names--"Neal" Cavuto?) In a Felix Gillette piece subtly titled "Bush flops as press critic," Gillette criticizes President Bush for criticizing the Los Angeles Times for writing about the new Joint IED Neutralizer (JIN) techonology, a remote-control anti-IED device, then goes on to triumphantly correct him--by pointing out that Fox News had the JIN story first:
Articles about anti-IED technology had already been circulating in the American media for months. JIN's existence was an old story. Some six months earlier, for example, in August 2005, Fox's "Your World With Neal [sic] Cavuto" featured an interview with Thomas Dearmin, President and CEO of Ionatron -- the Arizona-based company that manufactures the Joint IED Neutralizer.
"This is a spinoff of our core technology which is laser-induced plasma channels ...," Dearmin told Fox. "What we've done is we've built a phaser but it fits in a truck right now. It's not hand-held. We went to the government and they were looking for a quick solution to the roadside bomb problem ... We actually drive them down the highway in front of a convoy or in an area where maybe the night before someone might have planted roadside bombs."
Over the next few months, short pieces appeared in the Associated Press and the Arizona Daily Star, which also revealed that Ionatron was making a counter-IED device and, in a general sense, how the devices worked.
