updated

Someone tell Matthew Yglesias it’s 2010. So, misattribution of a quote not Sect. Hillary Clinton’s really is so 2008. Besides, the Reuters headline didn’t even offer quotation marks on global threat. Reuters read: Clinton calls instability in Yemen a global threat. It should have tipped Yglesias off, but instead he used it as a Clinton quote:

It’s just words, but the idea, that instability in Yemen is a “global threat” seems obviously overblown.

Maybe, except Clinton didn’t say “global threat.” Not a minor point.

This is how our media works. Traditional media sloppiness seeping into new media, something to which so called progressive boy bloggers are far too willing to fall victim in order to take a cheap shot at Clinton, though she’s clearly not the only woman on the receiving end of this crap.

You didn’t see Sarah Palin getting credit from the left, however begrudging, though I gave her a deserved nod, for single handedly derailing the health care debate last August with “death panels,” which was dumbed down to one of the biggest lies of 2009. Correction: It was a whopper that worked, which can only be blamed on the lousy messaging from Democrats, something people don’t like to acknowledge, because it would give Palin a “win.” Can’t have that.

One Yglesias reader jumped immediately:

# joe from Lowell Says:
January 4th, 2010 at 6:40 pm

Hold on. Let’s not play Telephone here.

“Obviously, we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region,” Clinton told reporters.

The term “global threat” – in quotations marks, no less – is from the headline writer at the Washington Post who claims, “Clinton calls instability in Yemen a global threat.”

Way to go, Joe. Clinton’s actual quote was: “Yemen is a threat to regional stability and even global stability.” Stability and threat are quite different terms, but even if you think they aren’t, “global threat” is still not what Clinton said.

Ironically, Yglesias published a book a couple of years ago entitled “Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.” He certainly proved the latter.

This is important, because it’s part of a picture, which Anne Kornblut is now trumpeting through her new book, “Notes from the Cracked Ceiling,” in which Ms. Kornblut pontificates about what it will take to elect a female president. As if she knows, something I’ve already covered in detail.

Whether it’s new media bloggers, especially so called progressives, or the traditional media messengers, but also including cable and traditional TV shows like “Meet the Press,” it doesn’t seem any media group wants to take responsibility for their own part in defining a woman’s role in politics downward. From Yglesias’s recent sloppy attribution to Clinton of a quote not her own (a mistake he’d likely never make covering Pres. Obama), to Kornblut’s previous years spent denigrating Clinton as she now flips to opine on how women can break through, while David Gregory has discussions on health care and abortion legislation without women on the panel (following the late Tim Russert in his all male panel shows, including when women’s issues are discussed), it’s hard to see how we stop this business as usual noise.

Yet on a bright note, last night on ABC News, Diane Sawyer had Martha Radditch reporting from Yemen, the only person on the ground in that country right now. (“The World Newswer” is the new blog.) Kate Snow did a separate report on the tragic losses of the CIA, which reminded me of the days before 9/11 when Ahmad Shah Massoud allowed a television crew into his sanctuary, only to end up blown to bits. That’s how big the Jordanian double agent story is today. And last night it was covered by a woman on ABC News, with a woman nightly news anchor as well. ABC, through Diane Sawyer, sending a message that foreign policy and national security is women’s work.

There are others too, of course. After a tortured start, Katie Couric finally blasted off when she dared to ask Sarah Palin, “Which newspapers do you read?” Not exactly Yemen, but it was a hell of a lot better than where Couric began. Meanwhile, Andrea Mitchell, anything but a natural on TV, struggles mightily at 1 pm eastern daily on MSNBC, talking foreign policy, among the trivial. But still, Mitchell is reporting in the middle of the day on foreign policy and national security, a spot she likely had to fight to get, which is to MSNBC’s credit. With the queen of foreign policy still Christiane Amanpour on CNN, now on Sundays, with reports all day from female anchors. Lara Logan, an heroic foreign correspondent, never appearing often enough on CBS. Greta Van Susteren of Fox News Channel was a beacon of light during 2008, especially for Hillary Clinton, who couldn’t buy good coverage anywhere, but yet Democrats and progressives expected her to boycott the channel. That’s how clueless the left is on these things.

More women anchors and reporters are all positive signs, but we need women well beyond the famous Sect. Clinton on all the shows speaking about world issues every day in order to break the media stereotype that women don’t belong and get it wrong. Calling people out who cover them when they utilize words like “overblown” when misattributing a quote that never existed.

There will never be a female president if we don’t get the people who cover this stuff to take them seriously by at the very least quoting them accurately.

The other danger of sloppy reporting and media misogyny, as exhibited across the media world, new and traditional, is that it inadvertently plays into the hands of the less qualified female trying to make her mark, regardless of which party she represents. It’s how we could end up with the likeness of George W. Bush in a skirt. A sloppy media is the perfect set up.