I tried to find the Variety item cited for the KOCH affair to avoid a disclaimer about the NY Post, but couldn't find a link. Oops, it's "Variety" not Vanity Fair. Will look there.
On Edit: O.K., found the Variety item, but am leaving THE RAG here because it is ADDING Koch's self-defense on his Gay Rights record.
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http://gawker.com/5231557/abc-news-fiercely-defends-notoriously-desperate-reporter?skyline=true&s=xABC News Fiercely Defends Notoriously 'Desperate' Reporter
.... Now Ross has drawn the ire of the New York Times for his 2007 exclusive reportfeaturing former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who came forward on the record to confirm that the CIA had waterboarded suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah. Kiriakou pointedly used the word "torture" to describe the process but insisted that it was exceedingly limited, and that it worked—Zubaydah started cooperating after one 30-second session, Kiriakou told Ross.
As the New York Times' Brian Stelter and Scott Shane point out, Kiriakou was either lying or didn't know what he was talking about. According to the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel memos released this month, Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. ....
Brian Ross' problem is that he often has shitty sources. Kiriakou, Debat, whoever was telling him that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks. ABC News and others defend him as a hard-working reporter with many important stories and awards under his belt—including a Polk-award-winning December 2005 report that named Poland and Romania as the locations of the CIA "black sites" that the Washington Post had uncovered a month before. But at least one former colleague says he's just gullible.
"Ross has a reputation for being able to be spun, because he's so desperate for stories," a former ABC Newser tells Gawker. "If he has one source for something, and he seems trustworthy, he'll go with it. The New York Times' investigative guys say, 'We never take anything Brian Ross reports with anything less than a pound of salt.' ....
Ross is working on a follow-up to his Kiriakou story, and for the time being ABC News has appended an update to the story on the web: ....
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940124.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&query=Outrage+Ed+KochTribeca
Outrage
(Documentary)
By JOHN ANDERSON
.... With an aptly modulated score by Peter Golub and the engaging graphics of Bil White, “Outrage” levels withering assaults at the likes of former New York Mayor Ed Koch, whose record on AIDS and gay rights was virtually nonexistent, despite a well-established affair with a man he subsequently ran out of town (at least according to David Rothenberg, a Koch confidant and the first openly gay candidate for New York’s City Council). David Dreier, the California congressman and archconservative, and his ideological brethren, such as Louisiana’s Jim McCrery and GOP operative Ken Mehlman, all take their lumps. The fact that Mehlman helped orchestrate the GOP’s 2004 virulent anti-gay strategy is the kind of connection in which “Outrage” specializes. ....
The docu also commits various sins of editorial juxtaposition: From a scene in which Crist insists on his straightness, it cuts to former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who resigned in the wake of a gay sex scandal, talking about how important it is to be true to oneself. What can the viewer be meant to conclude but that Crist is being dishonest? From all the assembled evidence, he is, but manipulation is still manipulation.
At the same time, “Outrage” (which, one hopes, has its own legal team in place) is operating from a position of righteous indignation, and that indignation is infectious. In a near-poetic gesture, Dick brings in “Angels in America” playwright Tony Kushner and Ray Cohn’s denials of his homosexuality, even while he was dying of AIDS co. Where Dick’s film goes very right is in attacking self-denial, the essential vice practiced by those who’ve built careers on denying others their rights. ....
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04292009/gossip/pagesix/koch_has_right_to_be_outraged_166670.htmKOCH HAS RIGHT TO BE OUTRAGED
ED Koch is upset over a new documentary, "Outrage" -- not because it claims he had "a well-established affair with a man he subsequently ran out of town," as Variety reported yesterday, but because it claims "his record on AIDS and gay rights was virtually nonexistent." ....
But what about the assertions of David Rotherberg, the first gay candidate for City Council, who claims in "Outrage" that Koch and a man named Dick Nathan were an established couple during Koch's years in Congress until Koch dumped him when he ran for mayor, often with former Miss America Beth Myerson by his side? Nathan died of AIDS in 1996.
"Dick Nathan was a fine guy. We were friends," Koch said. "He wanted to be a commissioner in my administration." But Koch decided to stick with a very capable woman he'd inherited from the previous administration of Abe Beame. "He
got mad and left town," Koch said.
Koch won't ever answer when asked if he's gay. "Are you married?" he'll typically ask the questioner. If the answer is yes, he'll come back with, "When was the last time you committed oral sex on your spouse? Don't answer that. It's no one's business."
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THE PROBLEM WITH A DISCLAIMER is its coming off as defensive, especially when it's preemptive. Trouble is, it's damned if do/don't: NOT including it first results in the predictable problems.
DISCLAIMER re: linking to the NY Post (for to head-off highly predictable, OT/hijacking posts):: Yes, it is a RAG. Yes, it is owned by NewsCorp/Faux's MURDOCH. No, he doesn't Dictaphone content to his gossip columnists. No, "gossip" does NOT equate to "UNtruth" (OR with "triviality" for that matter). These old time gossipers are more journalistically reliable than Tweety and such ilk. Frequently, political tidbits are here first, later to show up in more "respectable" venues. Keep friends close, enemies closer. Cherrypicking intel results in self-fulfilling FALSENESS. I got hooked on these gossipers when they were on the
E!1 network and, when they were cancelled, tracked them down and they happened to be at THE RAG (NY Post). ALL I read at THE RAG are the gossip and the horoscope. On Edit: If this disclaimer is NOT ENOUGH, if you don't like this o.p., PLEASE just click OUT without leaving your any-further-a(doo-doo)!1
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