NRO and TNR’s Bogus Bloggers

By Ken Silverstein

Last night, I posted an email that Chris Allbritton, an American reporter based in Beirut, had sent to National Review Online in early October. In it, Allbritton called W. Thomas Smith Jr., who has been posting stories from Lebanon for NRO, a “liar.” This was one of many red flags NRO received about Smith’s work, but kept publishing him nonetheless.

Now Jonathan Schwarz at Mother Jones writes about his own curious experience with NRO’s online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, who was very, very slow to address the obvious problems with Smith’s work.

Meanwhile, The New Republic has published a long story confirming what has been obvious for a long time: the columns of “Baghdad Diarist” Scott Thomas Beauchamp contained large amounts of crap.