{"id":29160,"date":"2012-03-16T17:08:02","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T21:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29160"},"modified":"2012-03-16T17:16:35","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T21:16:35","slug":"the-leo-webb-saga-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29160","title":{"rendered":"The Leo Webb saga wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NSOM sent us a link that&#8217;s about a month-and-a-half old from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poynter.org\/latest-news\/regret-the-error\/161789\/marketplace-kqed-explain-how-fabricated-commentary-got-on-the-air\/\">Poynter.org<\/a> in which they reported on how Leo Webb, the sniper\/baseball pro, got his fabricated story on the air. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28550\">We first wrote about Leo<\/a> when two observant readers heard his bullshit story on their local public radio station. Then again when the media outlet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28578\">took the story down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But the Poynter folks went back and asked the producers at Marketplace and KQED how Leo slipped through their obviously rigorous vetting process. Basically they answered what we expected they would; he said the things we wanted to hear;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe have a mission and big push on right now to make sure that voices that aren\u2019t always heard on public radio are heard,\u201d he said, noting this can include people who are marginalized or disenfranchised by society.<\/p>\n<p>Deborah Clark, the executive producer of Marketplace, said her program also has a goal to \u201cbring in a diversity of voices that aren\u2019t heard very often.\u201d (Walton and Clark also spoke with Erik Wemple today.)<\/p>\n<p>This drive to find untold or ignored stories helped Webb get on the air. Clark said in the case of her program, Webb\u2019s tale \u201cdidn\u2019t receive the standard editorial vetting from us that it should have.\u201d She said it would be standard procedure for the program to contact the military to verify Webb\u2019s claims prior to airing his words. That didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n<p>Walton said KQED also didn\u2019t contact the military prior to airing the piece, nor did it check any databases of minor league baseball players to confirm Webb\u2019s account that he played Double A ball for the Chicago Cubs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a [vetting] process and part of it is that the person does work worth the editor of the piece quite a bit, so you generally have an idea that person is who they said they are,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, there is a &#8220;big push&#8221; for &#8220;a diversity of voices&#8221;. That&#8217;s a good excuse. In other words, we&#8217;re in a hurry to push the &#8220;crazy vet&#8221; image on the public and we&#8217;ll put anyone on the air who facilitates that meme. <\/p>\n<p>Just looking for the shitbag on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=100000662534958&#038;sk=info\">Facebook<\/a> might have raised a few flags, since the only mention of the military on his page is the fact that he likes NCIS, but he lists the two semesters he spent at community college. <\/p>\n<p>So Marketplace got their &#8220;diversity of voices&#8221; that they were seeking. A lying POS poser. And just because he&#8217;s a lying POS poser outed by people who would recognize a lying POS poser when they see one, there are still <a href=\"http:\/\/wicknews.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/13\/check-it-out\/\">people out there who would prefer to believe him<\/a>. Why let the truth get in the way of a generally accepted meme.<\/p>\n<p>And clearly <a href=\"http:\/\/jimromenesko.com\/2012\/02\/02\/marketplace-scolded-for-airing-false-my-life-is-true-commentary\/?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150532870135749_20989446_10150533719000749#fdda8579bb92e8\">others are disappointed that his story isn&#8217;t true<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NSOM sent us a link that&#8217;s about a month-and-a-half old from Poynter.org in which they reported &hellip; <a title=\"The Leo Webb saga wrap-up\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29160\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Leo Webb saga wrap-up<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}