Another Taste of Brownie
Former Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown spent a lot of his final days in the job complaining about inaccuracies in press coverage of his history.
You may recall I wrote a story a few weeks ago showing that one of the major provable inaccuracies -- that he was a college friend and college buddy of his predecessor, Joseph Allbaugh -- was spread by Brown himself.
(credit: AP)
News agencies across the country ran corrections once Allbaugh began distancing himself from Brown by calling around and insisting they met sometime after college. But the notion that they were college pals -- a convenient way to demonstrate the cronyism which got Brown his old friend's job in the first place -- refuses to die, even in newspapers which corrected the original inaccuracy.
Case in point: A recent Washington Post blurb about Brownie's new consulting business, in the same suite as Allbaugh's company, makes the college chums reference. As they say in the newspaper biz, sometimes you gotta RTFN (let your imaginations work on the meaning to that acronym).
The Feed is a blog on TV, media and modern life by St. Petersburg Times TV/media critic Eric Deggans. Possibly the most critical guy at the Times, he has served as music, media and TV critic at various times over 10 years.
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RTFN, I'm not sure but I'm going with "Rabble-rousing Times Fabricates News". If I'm right, please donate the prize to charity.
Posted by: Mr. Cinnamon Pretzel | November 28, 2005 at 08:32 PM
Reprobates at the Times flatulate nonstop?
Posted by: gas-x | November 29, 2005 at 02:32 AM
Guys...if you're going to come up with some insulting acronyms for the Times, you gotta do better than this.I'm starting to think I'm losing the interest of all the really sharp cranks out there...
Posted by: Eric Deggans | November 29, 2005 at 11:09 AM
By the way, the acronym stands for Read The Frickin' Newspaper...
Posted by: Eric Deggans | December 01, 2005 at 10:31 AM