On Saturday, the Salt Lake Tribune published an article by Alexandra Karl called “Glenn Beck’s Nazi Exhibit” that attacked the Independence Through History Museum Glenn curated for Man in the Moon.
Let’s just say, the author clearly didn’t do her homework – the article is filled with a tremendous number of factual inaccuracies, including misstating the name and location of the event, in addition to sloppy reporting that misidentified several of the artifacts in the museum.
Perhaps most frustrating, however, is the ever-apparent fact that Karl, who, according to her bio is ‘an art historian and educator’ living in Salt Lake City, clearly did not bother to attend the Museum herself, and her reporting obviously suffered as a result.
On radio this morning, a furious Pat decided to go line by line through the article to point out all of the errors in the piece. “Glenn, you brought up something yesterday that I looked into after the show, and I just haven't been able to let go of. I can't let go of it until we get this resolved,” Pat said angrily.
“Let it go,” Glenn pleaded. “This comes from Pat. Yesterday, he was obsessing about this all day on the plane.”
In the article, Karl refers to the event as Man on the Moon instead of Man in the Moon and writes that the event took place at the Rio Tinto Stadium. In actuality, the event took place at the USANA Amphitheater (the article was updated on Monday to reflect this mistake).
“Now, even if you had a passing interest in accuracy and/or truth and you were writing what you considered to be a scathing exposé on someone, wouldn't you at least try to get the location of the main event right,” Pat asked. “She couldn't so much as Google where the event took place?”
“No, not necessarily, not if I was a journalist in today's world,” Glenn quipped. “She doesn't care.”
Ultimately, Karl surmises that based on the items in the museum, Glenn must be a Nazi sympathizer. “Surely harboring such items adheres to a personality cult and suggests a sympathizer rather than a critic,” she writes.
“So here Alexandra moves beyond simple buffoonery into defamation territory, suggesting that Glenn, who's fought so hard for Israel, for Jews, he's fought so hard he received the Defender of Israel award… a guy whom Benjamin Netanyahu referred to as a ‘friend of Israel’… is a Nazi sympathizer,” Pat said. “That goes beyond plain unadulterated stupidity… that’s character assassination and defamation territory.”
Despite Pat’s outrage, Glenn was not particularly offended by the incident. Obviously, Karl is entitled to her opinion and she is entitled to write and publish her opinion, but one could only hope that for the sake of its readers, the Salt Lake Tribune uses this as a learning experience when choosing what to publish for public consumption.
Editor's note: This article has been updated for clarity. It originally referred to Karl as a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, which they have said on their Twitter account is inaccurate and emphasized she is simply a reader who contributed a piece and therefore they aren't responsible for the inaccuracies in the content. But as Stu said...
Curious, does Alexandra Karl have direct publishing access to your website @sltrib? Or was there a process leading up to posting?
— STU BURGUIERE (@WorldOfStu) July 30, 2013
