As Emerson's fame mounted, so did criticism. Emerson's book, The Fall of Pan Am 103, was chastised by the Columbia Journalism Review, which noted in July 1990 that passages "bear a striking resemblance, in both substance and style" to reports in the Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. Reporters from the Syracuse newspaper told this writer that they cornered Emerson at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference and forced an apology.
Emerson never produced real FBI documents that he claimed were in his possession.
As a consultant on the series, Emerson presented AP reporters with what were "supposed to be FBI documents" describing mainstream American Muslim groups with alleged terrorist sympathies, according to the project's lead writer, Richard Cole. One of the reporters uncovered an earlier, almost identical document authored by Emerson. The purported FBI dossier "was really his," Cole says. "He had edited out all phrases, taken out anything that made it look like his."
The writer of the Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting articles is former Weekly Planet editor John Sugg. Emerson filed a lawsuit against Sugg and the WP. He claimed Sugg and WP had "maliciously and repeatedly published false and defamatory utterances Emerson later dismissed the lawsuit. As usual, Emerson couldn't prove his claims. My personal favorite Emerson bogus claim is that he had to be put in the Witness Protection Program. John Russell of the Justice Department put that to rest.
Terrorism is a serious threat to America. Steven Emerson is not a serious journalist.
It's funny you should call me out on using the Emerson information, and not mention that Blurbex is linking to it too.... especially since the 1999 FAIR article you link to with "plagiarism problem" and "never produced" were written by John Sugg, senior editor of Weekly Planet, the Tampa paper behind Blurbex.
ReplyDeleteIf Emerson's info is good enough for his loudest critics, then it's good enough for me; probably because all those complaints Emerson mounted in the late 90's about Muslim terrorist in academics at USF turned out to be true. Hard to argue with the truth.
Mr. C, if you want to use Emerson as a source then be my guess. Just because Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair worked for left-leaning publications doesn't mean I trust them.
ReplyDeleteTerrorism is a serious threat. There are real journalists who do a better job of covering the issue.
I'm not using Emerson's complete body of work as a treatise on terrorism. With respect to the Sami Al-Arian case, he reported, many years ago, that Sami Al-Arian was a terrorist. Sami admitted as much in February.
ReplyDeleteYou may think there are better journalist covering terrorism, but better journalist were not correct in this instance. Should I conclude that all the other terrorism journalist out there are liars?
Whatever you think of Emerson, his complete body of work, or his political leanings, he was right about Sami Al-Arian, and that is the only point worth mentioning. Sami is a terrorist. He admitted it. You should quit trying to shoot the messenger.
It seems Emerson's most vocal critic, John Suggs, could see the writing on the wall. Maybe you should too.