James Macintyre Has "Sources"!

A very funny post on Hot Air skewers liberal blogs that make up transparently bogus rumours and then ascribe them to "sources". The media then recycles the risible stories, because obviously it is perfectly plausible that Democrat bloggers will have inside information into Sarah Palin's sleeping arrangements.

In the UK it isn't just bloggers who have "sources", it is the MSM. Take James MacIntyre of the New Statesman, he has amazing "sources". Last year he broke the story of how after meeting David Cameron, Barack Obama had abruptly stopped speaking like Obama and started sounding like a Labour press release:

"On meeting Cameron, Obama was, according to diplomatic sources, “distinctly unimpressed”, contrary to some reports (excitedly spun by the Conservatives) which suggested that the two men had formed an instant “bond”. Instead, I have been told, Obama exclaimed of Cameron after their meeting: “What a lightweight!” He apparently also asked officials about Tory Euroscepticism.

This revelation was missed by the dozens of US journalists who had been following Obama intently for months and had cultivated relationships with the people surrounding Obama. Of late Labour have been running a smear campaign against the Tories new European allies and by an astonishing coincidence James MacIntyre otherwise silent sources inside the Obama administration have revealed that Barack Obama feels the same way!:

Most recently, Obama's aides have been alarmed by Cameron's European alliance with Michal Kaminski, a former member of the neo-Nazi National Revival of Poland (NOP) party. I have learned that a 29 July column by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian - echoing my own report of Jewish leaders' concerns over Kaminski in last week's NS - has been circulated inside the Obama camp. One Democratic Party source close to the administration confirmed to me: "Your assumptions about the beliefs of Obama's foreign policy team are correct - there are concerns about Cameron among top members of the team."

No doubt Barack Obama is also absolutely dismayed at the prospect of the Tory's imposing 10% cuts in public services. Still not all of Macintyre's sources are anonymous, sometimes his frankly implausible tales are attributed to his New Statesman colleagues:

The New Statesman’s senior editor Mehdi Hasan had a troubling encounter on the Tube last week. “Are you Indian?” demanded a leering, apparently well-oiled skinhead. When Hasan confirmed he was of Indian origin, there followed a sinister tirade: “Your time has come. You’ll be out when my boys get into power.” Whom did he mean, Hasan wondered, the BNP? Then came the answer: “The Tories.”

It's the ear for realistic street dialogue that makes this tale so terrifyingly convincing.

When Jayson Blair made crap up he did to save himself the effort of actual reporting, when Stephen Glass made stuff up he did so creatively to amuse his readers. These are kind of understandable reasons (in Glass's case his stories were actually very funny), making stuff up to ingratiate yourself with politicians is a dismal excuse in comparison.