Here’s a piece by Andrew Kantor at USA Today that’s embarrassingly amateurish, for someone trying to accuse me of being amateurish: Technology empowers amateur journalism for better or worse. (Hat tip: davesax.)

Take the blog that exposed those Reuters/Adnan Hajj photos — Little Green Footballs (LGF). It’s written by a Web designer from California named Charles Johnson.

Johnson took offense to a column by Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, in which Mitchell decried the baseless attacks on war photographers after the Hajj affair.

So Johnson went from using his technology toolbox like a pro to using it like an amateur. He dug up an article Mitchell wrote in 2003 in which Mitchell admitted that — more than 30 years ago — he faked some quotes while working for a local newspaper in Niagara Falls.

Mitchell was clearly embarrassed — it went against his professional ethics enough that 30 years later he told the story. But what was Johnson’s take? He claimed it as proof that Mitchell had “first-hand experience with staging news.”

Calling it “staging news” or saying Mitchell “faked a news story” was a bit off the deep end, and neither accusation would have gotten by a professional editor. But Johnson isn’t a professional. He’s just a guy with a toolbox. He had great success using it, helping to expose the faked Bush National Guard memos, as well as those Adnan Hajj photos.

But he mistook having a well-worn set of professional tools with being equivalent to a well-followed set of pro principles.

Some points in reply:

1) I did not “dig up” the article by Mitchell, as Kantor could easily have discovered if he followed the link in my post to Confederate Yankee, who actually did “dig up” the article. Kantor’s “well-followed set of pro principles” apparently doesn’t include checking to see if his statements are, you know, accurate.

2) Kantor says that fabricating quotes from nonexistent people does not constitute faking news, and the accusation wouldn’t have “gotten by a professional editor.” Excuse me? Faking news is not faking news? Is that supposed to make sense? Kantor’s statement is interesting primarily because it reveals that he apparently doesn’t believe that faking quotes rises to the level of “faking news.”

3) To complete the disingenuous smear job, Kantor does not even mention that after the article by Greg Mitchell came to the attention of the blogosphere, someone (Mitchell?) sneakily went back and rewrote sections of it to make him appear less guilty. That must be Kantor’s “well-followed set of pro principles” in action again.