Roger Friedman had a piece at Fox News on Friday decrying the theaters "Passion" is opening in as "out-of-the-way-theatres", highlighting "black neigborhoods and poor neighborhoods" and "out of neighborhoods that are considered Jewish, upscale or liberal".

David Poland in turn rips Friedman's article a new one

Sometimes, a journalist makes a mistake. And sometimes, a journalist makes a mistake that is so heinous and easily remedied by any fact checking that the person's publisher deserves to be threatened with litigation and the person in question deserves to lose their job.

Such is the story with today's breathtakingly inaccurate and malicious fairy tale by Roger Friedman, printed at FoxNews.com regarding the release pattern of The Passion of The Christ. The premise of this unresearched mess is that Newmarket Films and Mel Gibson are avoiding big cities and Jewish populations with the theatrical release pattern of the film.

There has been no journalist who has been more critical of Gibson's self-fulfilling-prophecy style of showing this film selectively, building a furor when he is publicly claiming to be fearful that one will erupt, than myself. However, a major media outlet propagating false information in an attack on the film - especially when suggesting that it is news and not opinion - is beyond any acceptable idea of journalistic ethics.

Moreover, for Roger Friedman, a Jew, to so incautiously swing these lies around like a bag full of angry cats is, in my opinion, deeply damaging to Jews everywhere who do not wish to be accused of being willing to stoop to any depth in order to maintain our position in society.

I am not sure that Roger Friedman meant to put such a blatant factual lie in print. I am sure his editors would have stopped it had they known. But Friedman failed to do the most basic job of being a journalist… checking out the facts. Instead, he lazily went to one internet source, apparently unaware of two basic facts: 1. Ticket sales websites are not well designed for long-range presales. 2. There is no movie ticket sales website that offers tickets to all the theaters in any major market.

It took me all of two minutes to find out that Roger Friedman's facts were incorrect. I went to two web sites and made one phone call.

-- David Poland - Movie City News

He then goes on to lay out how the release isn't nearly as selective as Friedman says, and how easy it would have been for him to find out.

Then Monday Friedman comes back with a "news story" with comments like "Gibson's personal liability on "The Passion" [is] roughly $50 million. That's a lot of money to prove a point. It's $40 million more than Rosie O'Donnell spent on her musical, "Taboo." "The Passion" is now the most expensive vanity production in history." Now it seems to me Gibson's "vanity production" is a much better deal than Rosie's, considering that I've never heard of "Taboo" in my life. He goes on to claim that Newmarket added new screens but were still avoiding upscale and Jewish areas.

Ironically, in this second article he manages to both misquote himself and rail against someone else for not correcting an incorrect column.

Poland in turn fires back with a column that refutes just about everything in Friedman's second column. It isn't the most costly vanity production ever. The screens Friedman says were added were added before his Friday column.

Gotta give Friedman credit though. I never thought I'd see someone live up to the high standards for crappy reporting upheld by Harley Sorensen.