Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson is editor of the political blog Little Green Footballs. He is credited with producing flak that has undermined journalists or their accounts. Following the Israeli war against Lebanon, when Johnson disseminated flak to undermine the credibility of news accounts about Israeli massacres, Johnson was bestowed a prize for "promoting Israel and Zionism."[1] Johnson's blog has been described as follows:
- Although it tilts right politically, it provides a cornucopia of information about radical Islam here and abroad that ought to be of use to anyone with an interest in the subject, and Mr. Johnson edits it with intelligence and wit. ("Religion of Peace Kills 14,Wounds 3," is one of his characteristically cutting headlines.) If you believe that the war on terror is necessary, that the occupation of Iraq is ultimately generous in intent, and that the level of Muslim immigration to the West poses a serious threat, then this is surely a Web site for you.[2]
Contents
Chapters
Sinking Dan Rather
From the New York Sun article:
- Mr. Johnson's biggest coup so far came when, together with some other bloggers, he exposed the forged documents with which CBS's 60 Minutes sought to undermine President Bush’s claim to have served honorably in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War. It was Mr. Johnson who, copying the forgery from a PDF file CBS posted on its Web site, retyped the memo using Microsoft Word’s standard settings, and found that his version was identical in every detail to the one Dan Rather claimed had been typed on a manual typewriter some three decades earlier.
As he typed the first sentences and found that the lines were all breaking the same way, Mr. Johnson said he felt chills running down his spine. "In a way it’s bigger than Watergate, because Watergate wasn’t an attempt to influence an election," he told me, adding that he is still stunned by CBS’s gullibility and ineptness."It shows you the amount of desperation at work. It overrode all of their journalistic impulses. They lost all their ethics. That’s the big story -- they did it because they wanted Bush not to be elected."[3]
Undermining news about Israeli massacres in Lebanon
After the Israeli attack on Qana that killed many civilians (mostly women and children) a pernicious story about fake photographs was spread via blogs -- by LittleGreenFootballs and by Richard North in Europe. The intention of these stories was undermining the credibility of news accounts about the Israeli massacres and other depredations. For his efforts, Johnson received an award for "promoting Israel and Zionism".[4]
Affiliations
- LittleGreenFootballs (Blog)
- Richard North (blogger) -- they spread each other's flak
Resources
- ^Brendan Bernhard, The Blogger Who Helped to Dislodge Dan Rather: Little Green Footballs Was an Innocuous Web-Design Site — Then Came September 11, New York Sun, 3 Feb. 2005.
- ^Stewart Purvis, Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war, The Guardian, 20 Nov. 2006.
