Loneliness, Lies & Videotape

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 18, 2006 7:40 AM

The great thing about the Internet is that anyone, even a lonely 16-year-old girl, can record her thoughts and draw a big following.

The maddening thing about the Internet is that she might not be lonely or 16.

If you spend time on the Web, you probably know that the latest cult hit on YouTube -- which seems to generate a new sensation every few hours -- was Lonelygirl15, a shy, angst-ridden teenager who blabbed over a period of weeks about her life, family and boyfriend in videos that seemed strangely slick.

This set off a nationwide hunt for the online star "Bree" -- plus spinoff satires -- before the terrifying truth emerged: Bree was a fake, a fraud, a cyberscam. She was a 19-year-old actress named Jessica Rose.

It gets worse. The scheme was cooked up by a trio of buzz-seeking California filmmakers, who have since signed with Creative Artists Agency. Rose landed on "The Tonight Show."

Still, this might serve as a case study in how the Net polices itself. Other YouTube contributors made videos questioning, for example, how a Lonelygirl15 fan site could have been set up before Bree's first posting. One video morphed her into the devil. And it was blogger Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher -- with help from his son -- who followed the e-mails (today's version of following the money) and unmasked Rose, a graduate of the New York Film Academy, as the real Bree.

Foremski writes that the scrutiny offers a "media model for the future: a mediasphere that uses the best qualities of professional media combined with relentless pursuit of information by citizen journalists. That's a potent formula that bodes well for our society, IMHO." ("In my humble opinion," for you Luddites.)

But the lesson here is not just that skillful flimflam artists can fool the world, at least for a time. It's that things online are not always what they seem, as creeping commercialization changes the culture.

The alluring aspect of YouTube -- where the Lonelygirl15 soap opera remains online, in perpetual reruns among the 100 million other videos -- is that anyone with a camera can play. Even though YouTube has struck promotional deals with the likes of NBC and ABC, it remains a Wild West frontier where someone with a message, a cool dance move or a silly stunt can rustle up a crowd.

But distortions are all too easy to pull off. CBS News asked YouTube last week to remove a video that changed correspondent Byron Pitts's report on attitudes toward the Iraq war by adding a 90-second interview with a retired colonel that was posted on the network's Web site, even though only a snippet of the interview had actually aired. That altered the nature of the story, CBS argued, and YouTube complied.

Post-it-yourself video sites feature the good, bad and breathtakingly ugly. YouTube has dozens of videos -- set to music and with Arabic logos -- purporting to show American soldiers being killed in Iraq. These appear to be lifted from jihadist Web sites, one expert told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

YouTube's shield of anonymity can be politically useful. No one knows who posted the footage of Tramm Hudson, a white Republican House candidate in Florida, saying: "I grew up in Alabama, and I understand . . . that blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know how to swim." (He lost.) Was it subterfuge by a rival candidate?

The promise and the peril of online communications extend to the blogosphere. It was a blogger, Harvey Levin of TMZ.com, who broke the story of Mel Gibson's drunken, anti-Semitic rant after the actor was arrested in Malibu. But some mainstream journalists are still learning the ropes. Writers for the Los Angeles Times and the New Republic were suspended recently when they engaged online in "sock puppetry" -- posting comments under pseudonyms that either assail their critics or heap praise on themselves.

What YouTube and social networking sites like MySpace.com and Facebook have in common is that they eliminate the media middleman. Musicians, comedians and other artists (not to mention the date-deprived) can sell themselves to other people without having to convince a journalist that they are worthy of ink or airtime. Unfortunately, the old media establishment too often paints this world as dark and dangerous -- "What Parents Need to Know About MySpace," says a U.S. News cover story -- while playing down its fun and creative aspects.

Foul play -- even in the guise of allegedly lonely teenagers -- is always possible with no referees. But amateur detectives, it turns out, are pretty good at busting fakers.

Playing Hardball With Matthews

The phone call that ultimately led to the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was triggered by his anger at Chris Matthews. And therein lies a small peek at how Washington works.

In the summer of 2003, according to the new book "Hubris" by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Libby -- then Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- was upset over Matthews's criticism of the Iraq war. Libby had Adam Levine, a White House spokesman who once worked for Matthews at MSNBC's "Hardball," call the host to complain.

In the call, which the book says led to a shouting match, Levine said that Matthews had been harping on the role of Libby and other neoconservatives who, Levine noted, have Jewish-sounding names. "Some of what you're saying about this sounds anti-Semitic," Levine told Matthews.

In an interview, Levine confirms the call. "The sole purpose of making the phone call to Chris Matthews," he says, "was to try to correct what I believed and Scooter believed were incorrect statements Chris was making" linking Libby to a passage in President Bush's State of the Union message about Saddam Hussein seeking enriched uranium in Africa, which the administration later retracted. "I in no way believe Chris is anti-Semitic. I know for a fact he's not."

Matthews says that he was in the forefront of "pointing out the ideology behind the war" and that he knows from his experience in the Carter White House that the vice president's top aide must have been involved in vetting the infamous "16 words" in Bush's address. "It obviously bugged him that I did that," Matthews says of Libby. But, he says, "I don't know Scooter Libby. I don't know what happened between him and the vice president and why that call was made."

After the complaint to Matthews, Libby called Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief, to ask why Matthews was always taking aim at "Libby and Wolfowitz and Perle." During the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, Libby testified that he learned about Plame during that phone call with Russert. But after the NBC newsman testified that the subject of Plame never came up, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald obtained an indictment of Libby, who is contesting the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Couric Watch

It didn't take long -- six days, to be precise -- for some critics to start pronouncing Katie Couric's CBS tenure a failure.

After taking the "CBS Evening News" to first place in her debut week, Couric dropped to third last Monday, and rivals declared her surge over. But she won two of the next three nights, and finished second on the other. To be sure, Couric's more feature-oriented approach has stirred controversy, but history shows that news ratings move at a molasses pace.

"I said from Day One I'd be happy with consistent and even slow growth," says CBS News President Sean McManus. "Even being in a race for No. 1 is a pretty darn good accomplishment, a sea change considering where the 'CBS Evening News' has been the last 10 years. For some people, it's an attractive story to say that Katie is back at No. 3, when in reality this is going to be a fight for the next couple of years."

Signs of Progress

Seven and a half months after being wounded in Iraq, Bob Woodruff is spending more time at ABC News and plans to work more regularly in the fall, starting with a report on his ordeal.

"If you haven't seen Bob, you would be amazed," the former anchor's wife, Lee, said in an e-mail that recounted the family's summer at Lake George. "His hair has grown in; he has been playing some killer tennis, driving the boat for the kids . . . doing some Pilates with my sister and playing Scrabble like a fiend. He looks and sounds so much more like himself each week."

Backing Away from Bush

More conservative pundits are hopping off what remains of the Bush bandwagon. Peggy Noonan says he's no longer changing any minds:

"I think that Americans have pretty much stopped listening to him. One reason is that you don't have to listen to get a sense of what's going on. He does not appear to rethink things based on new data. You don't have to tune in to see how he's shifting emphasis to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there is no new data, only determination.

"He repeats old arguments because he believes they are right, because he has no choice--in for a penny, in for a pound--and because his people believe in the dogma of the magic of repetition: Say it, say it, to break through the clutter.

"There's another reason people don't listen to Mr. Bush as much as they did. It is that in some fundamental way they know they have already fully absorbed him. He's burned his brand into the American hide."

But, says Noonan, "the Democrats' mistake--ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush--is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They've been sucker-punched by their own animosity . . . They heighten Bush by hating him. One of the oldest clichés in politics is, 'You can't beat something with nothing.' It's a cliché because it's true."

Andrew Sullivan , who long ago turned on Bush, sees the torture argument as telling:

"The sight of so many Republican senators and one former secretary of state finally standing up against the brutality and dishonor of this president's military detention policies is a sign of great hope. It turns out there is an opposition in this country - it's called what's left of the sane wing of the GOP. Slowly, real conservatives are speaking out loud what they have long said in private. The apparatchiks of the pro-torture blogosphere can vent, but it is hard to demonize the new opposition as 'leftist' or 'hysterical.'

"Warner? McCain? Graham? Powell? These men who have served their country are somehow less reliable on matters of war than a man who never went to the war of his own generation and has bungled the two critical wars on his own watch? Please. These men are less serious about confronting terror than Dick Cheney, whose own record of commentary in Iraq would be dismissed as unhinged and absurd if he were a lowly blogger? Please."

At Rightwing Nuthouse, though, Rick Moran trains his fire on the opposition party:

"Perfectly content with throwing rhetorical bombs on the issue of detainee rights for months, not offering any solutions but rather tossing exaggerated epithets at the president and Republicans, Congressional Democrats are cowering on the sidelines as the most important debate in the War on Terror unfolds on the Hill:

"If Democrats think they are being clever by not falling into the Republican 'trap' of engaging in a debate on this issue, they have outthought themselves once again."

This Nancy Grace saga is starting to get a lot of attention, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius is not exactly a fan:

"Nancy Grace was in vintage form on her national talk show on CNN's Headline News. Her guest was a soft-spoken 21-year-old mother named Melinda Duckett. Police in Florida suspect Duckett had something to do with the disappearance of her 2-year-old son, Trenton, on Aug. 27.

"But Grace wasn't satisfied with suspicion. She wanted to solve the case right there in front of a coast-to-coast television audience.

"'Why are you not telling us where you were?'' Grace demanded, pounding the table. 'Miss Duckett, you are not telling us for a reason. What is the reason?'

"As the woman stumbled over her words, trying to come up with answers, a small yellow text box appeared at the bottom of the screen: 'SINCE SHOW TAPING,' it read, 'BODY OF MELINDA DUCKETT FOUND AT GRANDPARENTS' HOME.'

"That's right. Grace was interviewing a dead woman. Just hours before the taped interview aired last Friday, Duckett committed suicide at her grandparents' house.

"Given the circumstances, Grace's grandstanding, badgering interview was bad enough. But the idea that her producers at CNN elected to go ahead and run the interview, even though they knew Duckett had killed herself, has veterans of television news shaking their heads."

George Allen and Jim Webb debated on "Meet the Press" yesterday, clashing over Iraq . Meanwhile, National Review scolds the Virginia senator for his latest tack:

"Now Allen has risked alienating conservative voters by launching his own silly attack on Webb.

"The Allen camp hit Webb, a former Navy secretary, for an article he wrote when he was an instructor at the Naval Academy in 1979. In the article, entitled 'Women Can't Fight,' Webb argued that his alma mater shouldn't admit women because they are unsuited to combat. At a press conference organized this week by the Allen campaign, five woman Naval Academy graduates said that Webb's colorfully argued opinion had been hurtful and harmful to them. Webb wrote in his article that the academy's sole dormitory was 'a horny woman's dream,' and that he hadn't met a single female midshipman he 'would trust to provide those men with combat leadership.'

"The graduates attributed sexual harassment at the academy to male midshipmen's being emboldened by Webb's views. What nonsense. In any case, Webb long ago disavowed this position. As his campaign pointed out in response to the Allen press conference, within a few years of writing his controversial article he supported integration of the military academies; and as Navy secretary he cracked down on sexual harassment in the service and significantly expanded the operational assignments available to women. The campaign also pointed out that eleven years ago, as governor of Virginia, George Allen opposed (correctly, in our view) integrating the all-male Virginia Military Institute, saying 'it wouldn't be the VMI that we've known for 154 years. You just don't treat women the way you treat fellow cadets.'

"So what was the point of the Allen campaign's attack on Webb? Does Allen actually think women should be in direct combat? If so, what current combat exemptions does he want lifted?"

No matter what shameful thing you've done, in America you can always write a book. Which prompts Betsy's Page to observe:

"Can you think of anything you want to read less than former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's memoirs of how he came out as a gay man or how he cheated on his wife while she was in the hospital after having their baby? Even getting the sympathetic Cliff Notes from watching Oprah would be a wasted hour. Perhaps there are some out there who care about the confessions of our nation's first gay governor who gave his lover a job protecting New Jersey's security, but I can't imagine that there is a huget number of them out there. And it can't be a good thing for New Jersey Democrats in an election year to have his corruption out there reminding voters of all the problems they've experienced with the Democrats in that state. Tom Kean could be paying for McGreevey's PR tour."

The Philadelphia Inquirer checks in on the ex-governor:

"The book has been billed as a tale of struggle and redemption, but its author has already had trouble drumming up sympathy. As excerpts leaked out in the last week, describing 'boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine' trysting while his wife recovered from childbirth, politicians and taxpayers denounced McGreevey, using words such as pathetic and disgraceful ."

I can think of a few more I'd add.

I wrote about this Clinton lunch last week, and now, at Firedoglake, new detail from Christy Hardin Smith , who attended with her blogging colleague Jane Hamsher:

"It turns out that Bill Clinton got started reading blogs by his daughter, who told him that he really needed to check out the independent reporting and analysis that was being done on the web. And he did . . . and, according to Peter Daou, who did much of the coordination for the meeting, President Clinton really loves reading blogs. Who knew?!?

"So, the call came in last week with the invitation to go up to New York and meet with the Big Dawg -- but we were asked to keep the meeting off the record, it was just going to be a meet and greet, no more than an hour . . . your basic, 'Hello, you know I'm out there, I know you're out there, perhaps we can do something together in the future' sort of thing.

"Jane and I decided to go -- as if a meeting with a former president is something you just blow off (that would be rude!) -- and we wanted to emphasize the need for better messaging and coordination/cooperation with blogs and the Democratic leadership, who seem to constantly be trying to work at cross-purposes with all of us. (Hello?!? We're here to help, and we aren't charging you a dime for it -- and we actually care if you win, unlike some of the consultant rat holes you keep pouring your money into every election cycle. Wake up!)"

Can a Clinton blog be far behind?