The Non-Explanation of the Non-Apology

James Fallows has now commented on the Frummery taking place in The Atlantic.

1. A colleague at The Atlantic made a major journalistic error this week.

He certainly did. David Frum stated that a photo of blood-covered Palestinians was a fake when it was not. He based his accusation on the musings of man with no credibility. And then he apologized by issuing a non-apology in which he lied about the number of tweets he had made.




Fallows goes on to explain why journalists need to be skeptical and then brings us home:

As he would point out quickly himself, David Frum is not of this part of the journalistic world. If he were, he would have known how grave an accusation he was making, and he would not have made it without being sure. I respect him for promptly* apologizing and saying that he had been wrong. And I have written this dispatch to express, and encourage, respect for the reporters in the Middle East and elsewhere now taking risks to tell us what they have seen.  

* Several readers have noted that the apology came six days after the original tweets, so I shouldn't have written "promptly" the first time. The rest of the sentence stands.

Not a word about bias, and heart-felt support for Frum's one-sided skepticism.