Telegraph editorial secrets revealed!

There should be no scarier words to a fact-checker than "London's Daily/Sunday Telegraph is reporting that..." This opening line has been a staple of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy from the time Bill Clinton became president, used as the opening shout in an echo chamber of slander and political sabotage (when Clinton was the target) and of bogus "intelligence" about Saddam/9-11/WMDs (when Saddam was the target). Of course, "London's Daily/Sunday Telegraph" had already perfected the technique of the planted and slanted story in their coverage of Ireland long before it was adapted for VRC purposes.

But there is a positive development, because it looks like the latest transparently bogus Telegraph story, relying on a supposed "Dear Saddam...yours ever, Mohammad Atta" memo, is getting more negative attention than usual. Blogger Roger Ailes (not the bald repulsive one) provides the links and his own appropriate commentary, noting in particular this gem from the Telegraph journalist who wrote the story, Con Coughlin:

[Coughlin] said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a "senior" member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was "genuine," he and his newspaper had "no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens," he said.

That's quite a definition of a journalist's job: just get the dodgy memo from your MI5/MI6 buddies at the pub and rush it into print that evening. Fact-checkers, schmact-checkers.