I wrote dear old Murray to take him to task for the following quote from the article “Baseball: Cooperate, or the Bogeyman Will Get You.”

Now, apparently Murray thinks Steroids aren’t dangerous enough for Congress to be worrying their pretty little heads over so Murray decides that they should be worrying about the real killer, smoking and just leave baseball to Murray, so he takes the committee heads to task for wasting their time thusly:

“I wanted to ask Davis and Waxman about steroids, but I also wanted to ask them why they are so concerned about the potential dangers of steroids when they ignore the 400,000 deaths each year that the United States surgeon general has said are related to smoking. The number of deaths by steroids is minuscule compared with deaths by smoking, but steroids
apparently are sexier.”

Obviously this is intended to impugn the motives and priorities of Mr. Waxman. The problem is that Murray is ignoring the facts again. To whit: Mr. Waxman’s record is sterling on
tobacco and smoking issues, he spearheaded the charge to eliminate smoking in the Congress’s Speaker’s Lobby and has been a leading light on the Congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health. It’s not exactly a secret that Tobacco has been Waxman’s baby for about 3 decades. Does Murray care to fact check? Oh hell no.

So, I send him email alerting him to his error. His response:

“If Mr. Waxman had returned my calls, I would have been happy to hear him tell me about his efforts with tobacco and I would have been happy to have noted them in the column. I would like to hear about them directly than from a self-appointed publicist. But thanks for the information. I’ll keep it in mind if he ever calls me.

Murray Chass”

Am I crazy or isn’t it his job to make sure that what he writes is, if not accurate, at least resembles reality. Wouldn’t you think that he might have some obligation to do a little fact checking in writing these hatchet jobs? Is it journalism when you rely on a Congressman to give you information readily available to the world? How can he be considered a journalist? Forgive the tirade, but the man infuriates me.