Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2007, 05:04:37 PM
AP alters CAIR quote in story about Ayaan Hirsi Aliposted at 7:36 pm on February 10, 2007 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | printer-friendly From one of our very best tipsters, RLW, comes a great little catch of which I’m not quite sure what to make. Quote #1:
Quote #2:
The first quote comes from an AP article written by William C. Mann and entitled “Critic of Islam finds new home in U.S.” that moved on the wire at 2:05 a.m. The second is from an AP article by the same author with the same title that moved at 10:14 a.m. I compared the text of the first story to the text of the second side by side in MS Word and the two are completely identical except for the CAIR quote. It’s possible that Mann collected both quotes from Hooper contemporaneously and changed from the first to the second unbidden, simply because he liked the second one better. Except … Hooper’s making the same point in each. He’s just being more politic about it in the second instance by dropping the word “hate.” You can imagine him saying during their interview, “You know what? I went too far. Let me rephrase that last comment” and then giving Mann the second quote — but if that’s what happened, why did the first quote appear in the story that moved at 2:05? What we’re looking at here, I suspect (but obviously can’t prove), is Hooper having made the first comment during their interview, then gotten buyer’s remorse when he saw how shrill it looked in print. So he called up the AP hours after the fact and asked them to replace it with a more “nuanced” version — and the AP agreed to do so. Which brings us to our exit questions. First, am I missing some other obvious explanation? And second, if not, is giving sources a do-over on quotes after a story’s been published standard practice in the industry? I’m asking in earnest. I honestly don’t know the answer. Update: The AP’s Statement of News Values and Principles says, “For corrections on live, online stories, we overwrite the previous version. We send separate corrective stories online as warranted.” This isn’t a correction, though. Unless Mann mistranscribed it — which is exceedingly hard to believe — he’s simply replacing a harder quote with a softer one. Why?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2007, 07:13:15 AM
Television Takeover U.S.-financed Al-Hurra is becoming a platform for terrorists.
BY JOEL MOWBRAY Sunday, March 18, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Fighting to create a secular democracy in Iraq, parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi had come to rely on at least one TV network to help further freedom: U.S. taxpayer-financed Al-Hurra.
Now, however, he's concerned. The broadcaster he had seen as a stalwart ally has done an about-face. "Until now, we were so happy with Al-Hurra. It was taking stands against corruption, for human rights, and for peace. But not anymore."
Stories that he believes cry out for further investigation, such as recent arrests of those accused of supporting the terrorists in Iraq, are instead getting mere news-ticker mentions at the bottom of the screen. And Arab voices for freedom, which used to have a home on Al-Hurra, are noticeably absent. "They're driving out the liberals," he complains.
Mr. Alusi is not the only one concerned about the recent changes at Al-Hurra. Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors--the congressionally-created panel charged with overseeing Al-Hurra, among other government-funded broadcasters--is currently demanding answers about the network's decision last December to broadcast most of a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah.
Sitting up straight and raising his index finger, he states emphatically, "It's the single worst decision I've witnessed in all my years in international broadcasting."
The airing of the Nasrallah speech is a sign of the network's new direction since it was taken over by a longtime CNN producer, Larry Register, last November. Launched in February 2004, Al-Hurra broadcasts three separate feeds: to Europe, Arab nations and one for Iraq. The network is supposed to be a key component of our public diplomacy to the Arab world. Its mission statement calls for it to showcase the American political process, and just as important, report on things that get little attention on other Arabic networks, such as human-rights abuses and government corruption. Within weeks of becoming news director, Mr. Register put his own stamp on the network. Producers and on-air talent quickly understood that change was underway. Investigations into Arab government wrongdoing or oppression were no longer in vogue, and the ban on turning the airwaves over to terrorists was lifted. For those who had chafed under Mr. Register's predecessor--who curbed the desire of many on staff to make Al-Hurra more like al-Jazeera--the new era was welcomed warmly.
"Everybody feels emboldened. Register changed the atmosphere around here," notes one staffer. "Register is trying to pander to Arab sympathies," says another.
The cultural shift inside the newsroom is evident in the on-air product. In the past several months, Al-Hurra has aired live speeches from Mr. Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, and it broadcast an interview with an alleged al Qaeda operative who expressed joy that 9/11 rubbed "America's nose in the dust."
While a handful of unfortunate decisions could be isolated, these actions appear to be part of Mr. Register's news vision. Former news director Mouafac Harb, a Lebanese-born American citizen, was not shy about his disdain for terrorists and had a firm policy against giving them a platform. But Mr. Register didn't wait long to allow Hamas officials on the air to discuss Palestinian politics.
At a staff meeting announcing the reversal of the ban on terrorists as guests, Mr. Register "bragged" about his personal relationship with Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a top Hamas official, according to someone who was present. Contacted on his cell phone for comment, Mr. Register declined, indicating that he couldn't spare even two minutes anytime in the coming days.
Perhaps it is because Mr. Register is so casual in his attitude to terrorists that interviewers now toss softball questions to fiery anti-Western guests, while also taking digs at one of America's closest Middle Eastern allies, Israel. The new Al-Hurra was on full display Feb. 9, when riots broke out following Israel's implementation of security measures that limited access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
In roughly two hours of breathless live "breaking news" coverage--which outdistanced al-Jazeera by 30 minutes--Al-Hurra's Muslim guests vilified Israel, and one spun conspiracy theories about the Jewish state's "plans" to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque. No doubt the Islamic talking heads were egged on by the Al-Hurra anchors asking questions such as, "Do you think that the timing of these actions is as innocent as Israel pretends?" (Translations were provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government official.)
This powder keg of a panel included Ikrima Sabri, imam of the Al Aqsa Mosque, who is best known for his tenure as Yasser Arafat's hand-picked mufti of Jerusalem. During the broadcast, Mr. Sabri accused Israel of firing guns and throwing bombs into the mosque, then refusing to allow medical care for the wounded.
Mr. Sabri's propaganda should not have come as a surprise. Just weeks before 9/11, Mr. Sabri delivered a passionate Friday sermon, broadcast nationally on official Palestinian Authority radio. He prayed for the destruction of Israel, Britain and the United States.
If anyone should be savvy about people like Mr. Sabri, it ought to be Mr. Register. With two decades of experience at CNN, including three years running the Jerusalem bureau, he should know that live TV is the wrong venue for firebrands or guests prone to outrageous commentary.
Complicating matters is that once someone is on Al-Hurra live, Mr. Register lacks the basic requirement to stay on top of unfolding coverage; he doesn't speak Arabic. Had Mr. Register been able to understand Mr. Nasrallah's Dec. 7 speech, perhaps he would have rushed to cut away early on. Before the five-minute mark, Mr. Nasrallah told the audience to stop their celebratory gun-firing, explaining, "the only place where bullets should be is the chest of the enemies of Lebanon: the Israeli enemy."
Former Broadcasting Board of Governors member Norman Pattiz understands the perils of turning over the airwaves to the likes of Mr. Nasrallah. Though he wouldn't comment on anything relating to recent months--he left the board last year, before Mr. Register's arrival--Mr. Pattiz said bluntly, "Simply handing a microphone over to a terrorist and letting them spew is not what I would call good journalism." Though Mr. Pattiz is a well-known Democrat who feuded constantly with Mr. Tomlinson, a Republican, the two men had one area of agreement: Mr. Harb, Al-Hurra's original news director. Sounding remarkably similar to Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Pattiz said, "The direction Al-Hurra launched in is the direction in which it should continue to go, because it was very successful."
Mr. Alusi, the Iraqi parliamentarian, agrees. "Al-Hurra should have the role of transporting democracy, and to help Iraqis understand freedom," he says. "If you have a good product, you must sell it in a good way. The United States is a very good product."
Mr. Mowbray is working on a book about the struggle for the heart of Islam in America.
Opinion Journal/WST yesterday
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 19, 2007, 12:04:42 PM
Special Dispatch Series - No. 1508 March 20, 2007 No.1508
Islamist Website Instructs Mujahideen in Using Popular U.S. Web Forums to Foster Anti-War Sentiment among Americans In the past few months, Islamists engaged in "media jihad" have increased their efforts to expose as broad a Western audience as possible to their jihad films, which purport to document the growing success of the mujahideen in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of this endeavor, they have posted jihad films on popular free video-sharing websites such as YouTube, LiveLeak, and Google Video, hoping that such films will tip public opinion in the West against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan - thus pressuring Western governments to withdraw their troops from these countries.
As part of the campaign to foster anti-war sentiment among Westerners, and more specifically among Americans, a member of the Al-Mohajroon Islamist website with the username Al-Wathiq Billah instructed mujahideen in how to infiltrate popular American forums and to use them to distribute jihad films and spread disinformation about the war.
The following are excerpts: [1]
"Raiding American Forums is Among the Most Important Means of Obtaining Victory in the Fierce Media War… and of Influencing the Views of the Weak-Minded American"
"There is no doubt, my brothers, that raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war... and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army. This American is an idiot and does not [even] know where Iraq is... [It is therefore] mandatory for every electronic mujahid [to engage in this raiding]."
"It is better that you raid non-political forums such as music forums and trivia forums... which American people... favor... Define your target[ed forum]... and get to know it well... Post your contribution and do not get into... futile arguments..."
Indicate You Are an American
"Obviously, you have to register yourself using a purely American name... Choose an icon that indicates that you are an American, and place it next to your nickname [in the forum]."
"In my experience, the areas most visited in American forums... [are titled] 'Random Thoughts' and 'What's going on in your mind?'... [The former] takes priority in the American forums, and is highly popular. You should post your contribution there... This should include films of the mujahideen in Iraq, mujahideen publications in English, and images and films of the Americans' crimes, [such as] killing unarmed civilians in Iraq... etc."
"Invent Stories About American Soldiers You Have [Allegedly] Personally Known"
"Obviously, you should post your contribution... as an American... You should correspond with visitors to this forum, [bringing to their attention] the frustrating situation of their troops in Iraq... You should invent stories about American soldiers you have [allegedly] personally known (as classmates... or members in a club who played baseball and tennis with you) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves..."
"Also, write using a sad tone, and tell them that you feel sorry for your [female] neighbor or co-worker who became addicted to alcohol or drugs... because her poor fiancé, a former soldier in Iraq, was paralyzed or [because] his legs were amputated... [Use any story] which will break their spirits, oh brave fighter for the sake of God..."
How to Make Americans Feel Frustrated With Their Government
"You should enter into debate or respond only if it is extremely necessary... Your concern should [only] be introducing topics which... will cause [them to feel] frustration and anger towards their government..., which will... render them hostile to Bush... and his Republican Party and make them feel they must vote ton bring the troops back from Iraq as soon as possible."
"Do not... discuss issues pertaining to Arabs or Muslims at all, whether negatively or positively... because this could be a trap for you... In addition, do not ask people to circulate the material [you have posted] in other forums... as these types of requests will expose you..."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 22, 2007, 09:24:06 PM
What Ails Mainstream Journalism By Alyssa A. Lappen FrontPageMagazine.com | March 22, 2007
Why do otherwise thorough reporters lose their professional skepticism when covering the Middle East and Islam? This peculiar journalistic phenomenon has puzzled me since I began covering the Middle East and Islam, in lieu of the investigative financial reporting work I had done for most of my career. Indeed, it largely motivated my personal professional shift.
An informal conversation with a part-time journalism professor recently gave me important clues. Our professional dialogue was private; therefore, it would be a gross violation of trust to identify this person in any way, excepting to note that the professor lived and reported from the Middle East for a time and now teaches how to cover current-day religious affairs and relations at a major university.
The professor's classes often cover reporting on the Islamic community in the U.S. today. Therefore, I was keenly interested to determine the professor's familiarity with sacred and historical texts that motivate modern Islamic activity and dogma.
In financial reporting, it goes without saying that one cannot write a major investigative piece on a corporation, industry or economic issue without first reading a great deal. For public companies, this requires extensive review of all Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings--recent annual reports (10-Ks, or F-20s for foreign firms), quarterlies (10-Qs), and changes to business strategy (8-K) or ownership (13-D). A good sleuth also consults the filings of major competitors and customers, in addition to interviewing as many of them as possible.
Only after laying this groundwork will the thorough reporter contact executives at the subject corporation.
A similar procedure--research first, interviews later--applies to private companies. Before 1995, Fidelity Investor chairman Edward C. Johnson III (Ned Johnson) rarely if ever spoke to reporters. Therefore before requesting an interview, I read everything available on the giant money management firm--and talked to more than 140 industry analysts, consultants, competitors, former and then-current Fidelity employees, and so on. The resulting September 1995 Institutional Investor cover story was subsequently emulated by Fortune, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others.
Likewise, for a May 1989 Forbes report on the world's largest private textile firm, Milliken & Co., which had never previously been profiled, before asking the secretive magnate Roger Milliken for an interview, I spent six weeks filling more than 12 notebooks with every shred of data I could gather from every available source. The late Senator Strom Thurmond, then 86, for example, sent me to Florida U.S. Representatives Sam Gibbons, who, in turn, described Milliken as “a protectionist hog, H-O-G.” And former President Richard M. Nixon replied to an interview request in writing.
Of course, not all my financial stories required so many advance interviews, but a large number did. This point is not boastful. Indeed, without intensive advance work, interviewing hard-to-get, controversial, evasive or famous sources would be wasted opportunities or completely fruitless.
Such exhaustive reportage has often helped to expose corporate, Wall Street or other financial corruption. Similarly, investigative journalists have similarly raked corrupt politicians over the coals.
But when it comes to interviewing Muslim community or religious leaders, mainstream reporters are little inclined to submit them to tough or probing questions. Frequently, the U.S. media present leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim American Society (MAS), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), or Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as “civil rights” activists, “soft-spoken,” regular guys to be taken at face value, “moderate,” “really respected,” and so on.
Corporate executives caught contradicting themselves--lying, in a word--are forced out, one way or another. Such was the case for former Radio Shack CEO David J. Edmondson in 2006, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, former Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski, and an endless list of others. Given the recent prevalence of American corporate corruption, in fact, legislators and securities regulators responded with a host of new rules.
On political religious matters, though, reporters don't even check readily available records to verify the claimed moderation of these men and groups. Otherwise, they undoubtedly would quickly find that these organizations are actually all radical--supporting violence and terrorism--and that the supposed men of reason have usually said terribly immoderate things. But unlike the immoderate quotations and deeds of Democrats or Republicans, lesser Muslim radicals than Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al-Zawahiri go largely unnoticed in mainstream broadcasts and reports.
The question is, why don't reporters routinely check on these subjects, as when covering any other public figure?
Consider the above-noted journalism professor, teaching undergraduate college courses on how to cover modern religious communities, especially U.S. Muslim communities. This professor (with financial reporting experience no less) seemed both predisposed to believe the statements of most Muslims and completely oblivious to the inherent journalistic problem with that.
Moreover, lacking familiarity with the Islamic practice of hiding the truth (taqiyya, or kitman)--it would be easy to misapprehend the importance of substantiating and corroborating everything--even “unquestionable” religious precepts.
Probably for this reason, the professor lauded the condemnation of the September 11 attacks by the world's preeminent Islamic university, Cairo's al-Azhar. The teacher had never heard of its author, the respected Islamic scholar Muhammed Sayyid al-Tantawi--and was astonished to learn that Tantawi's Ph.D. thesis, Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna (The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and the Sunna), consists entirely of Jew-hatred based on sacred Islamic texts.1
The professor, who speaks no Arabic, Farsi or Turkish, evidenced similar naiveté in suggesting that I read Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, by Columbia University's “moderate” Mahmoud Mamdani--although Mamdani, likewise, is no moderate. In the March 2007 London Review of Books, he blasts New Yorkers protesting Sudan's jihad genocide, which prefers to parallel with Iraq's “insurgency and counter insurgency.” And in 2005, Mamdani sounded like Osama bin Laden, when he blamed the U.S. for creating violent political Islam during the Cold War. That year, in Foreign Affairs, Mamdani also falsely equated jihadis and neoconservatives.
The inadequate skepticism of the journalism professor seems representative of attitudes among the vast majority of Western mainstream journalists covering this area. The acceleration of excessive credulity screams from this oxymoron--“The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood”--which Foreign Affairs recently ran instead of a headline on an equally unbalanced “report.”
Another source of gullibility crystallized as the professor admitted almost total ignorance of the Qur'an, Hadith (reputed sayings and deeds of Muhammed), Sira (Muhammed's biography), or such other critical Islamic texts as Al-Akham As-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance) by Ali ibn Muhammed Mawardi (d. 1058); Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat by Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368); or translations of any portion of Ibn Khatir's massive Qur'anic commentary, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim.
Consider the supreme irony, given how Americans cherish freedom of speech, in contrast to the severe restrictions placed on it by Islam.
Slander, according to al-Naqib, “means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him.”2 According to the latter definition, even the truth can be slanderous if its subject doesn't like it.
Lacking familiarity with these texts before interviewing a devout Muslim on religion or political Islam is akin to a financial journalist profiling a Fortune 500 CEO without reading his annual or quarterly reports, talking to any competitors, without even a rudimentary understanding of Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. The CEO could have stolen and stashed a million shares of stock somewhere, and the reporter would be clueless.
But unacquainted with most important Islamic religious texts and laws, this professor insisted that only Saudi Arabia's strict Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam is responsible for current Islamic terrorism and incitement to jihad--and that the original texts are devoid of radicalism.
In one regard, however, the professor should be greatly lauded--for requesting a “short list” of Islamic histories and important foundational Islamic texts, and promising to read and consider them all.3
If every reporter covering Islam similarly committed to read (or at least consult) Islamic texts and history (with special attention to skeptics) the general ability to pose pertinent and challenging questions would rise exponentially along with understanding how radical Muslims, parading as moderates, have thus far generally deceived them.
NOTES:
1 Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna [The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and the Sunna], Zahraa’ lil-I`laam al-`Arabi, Cairo. 1986-1987, third printing, 1407/1987, p. 9, pp. 107-126, 129-146, translated to English (forthcoming) in Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: from Sacred Texts to Solemn History (2007, Prometheus).
2 Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368), Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, 1991 and 1994, Amana Publications (revised ed., 1994), p. 730.
3 The short list includes the Qur'an (preferably in multiple translations), aHadith, (Sahih Muslim, Sahih al-Bukhari, and others) Ibn Ishaq's Sira (the oldest extant biography of Muhammed), The Laws of Islamic Governance (Muhammed Mawardi--d. 1058); Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat (Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib--d. 1368); Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim (Ibn Khatir's Qur'anic commentary), and historical summaries including The Legacy of Islamic Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (Dr. Andrew Bostom, 2005, Prometheus); Why I am Not a Muslim (Ibn Warraq, 1995, Prometheus); The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (Bat Ye'or, Farleigh Dickenson University, 1985); The Decline and Fall of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude 7th-20th Century (Bat Ye'or, 1996, Farleigh Dickenson University Press) Eurabia: The Euro Arab Axis (Bat Ye'or, Farleigh Dickenson University, 2005).
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2007, 07:10:55 PM
PRESS IGNORES FBI STUDY SAYING GUN LAWS IGNORED BY COP KILLERS
BELLEVUE, WA – For more than two months, a damning report on a five-year study by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about how cop-killing criminals ignore gun laws and where they get their guns has languished in the shadows, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms revealed today.
“The public has a right to know the contents of this report, which was revealed to the International Association of Chiefs of Police last year,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron. “According to the Force Science News, research focused on 40 incidents involving assaults or deadly attacks on police officers, in which all but one of the guns involved had been obtained illegally, and none were obtained from gun shows.”
The study is called “Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers.” Waldron called it a “smoking gun” in terms of revelations about the sources of crime guns. Anti-gun politicians and police chiefs do not want the public to know as they campaign against the so-called “gun show loophole,” he said.
The newsletter quotes Ed Davis, who told the IACP that none of these criminals who attacked police officers was “hindered by any law – federal, sate or local – that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws.” The Force Science News is published by the Force Science Research Center, a non-profit institution based at Minnesota State University in Mankato. The newsletter also stated, “In contrast to media myth, none of the firearms in the study was obtained from gun shows.”
“This is a devastating revelation,” Waldron said, “and while Mr. Davis should be applauded for telling the IACP that criminals ignore gun laws, we’re wondering why the IACP has been quiet about this, and why the mainstream press never reported this, and probably never will.
“Force Science News calls the gun show loophole a ‘media myth’,” Waldron said, “and that’s what gun rights activists have been saying for years. It’s time for the IACP leadership to acknowledge that gun laws don’t stop criminals, that they only restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens, and that gun shows are not the ‘arms bazaars for criminals’ as they have been portrayed.”
Title: Bellheads vs. Netheads
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 29, 2007, 02:00:23 PM
Packet Politics "Netheads" take on "Bellheads." Look out, Mrs. Clinton.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
The thing I like most about the "Hillary 1984" political ad on YouTube isn't the face, shrouded in a ghastly pixel haze, but the voice. Her voice recedes into a weird, unreal echo. Truth to tell, you could insert any of the faces imploring us now to make them president, and achieve the same effect. (If you're still playing catch-up, go into YouTube.com, search "Hillary"--or just click here--and watch in wonder.)
It took some days after it posted on YouTube for the non-Web media to confer legitimacy on the one-minute, 13-second clip, calling it a potential "conflict" between the Hillary and Obama camps. Days later, after claiming ownership of the video, political pro Phil de Vellis wrote on the Huffington Post that he'd done the ad in a Sunday afternoon on his Mac with "some software." He said there's more where that came from. "The game has changed."
He's right. But it began a long time ago. The change came some 40 years back, when the U.S. defense department bought into a suggestion by electrical engineer Paul Baran, the son of a grocery store owner, that it build a data transmission network based on "packet switching." This was the Internet.
As someone who's on the Web too many hours, I have wondered what changing screens hundreds of times each day to access different gobs of "information" has done to the way our brains order the world, which is known as human consciousness. This "change" is having a material effect on just about everything else; why not on who gets elected president next year?
In 1996, an eon ago, Steve G. Steinberg wrote a prescient article in Wired magazine on the battle between what he called Bellheads and Netheads. This was essentially an argument over the network design of the Web between engineers for the established phone companies, the Bellheads, and the anarchic engineers of the Web, Netheads. It was a war between the old world of circuit-switching and the new world of packet-switching, the one we inhabit today. This may have been an arcane argument among engineers, but the grander philosophical claims then were justified. What was at stake, as Mr. Steinberg accurately predicted, was "very different visions" of how we communicate. The engineers were changing how we think.
For more than a century, we were conditioned by the world of Lily Tomlin's famous telephone switchboard operator, Ernestine. Ernestine's "switch" was a circuit-switch, which means it connects A directly to B. Conversation or faxed data travels in a predetermined channel.
Packet-switching could hardly be more different. Information departs point A but then breaks into pieces, or packets, and bounces around a shared network almost randomly, then somehow arrives together at point B. The packet is a bundle of electrons, but "packet" is an apt metaphor for how the technology has changed us. Rather than sit still to fully absorb a copper-wire's stiff stream of information, we flip through screens, sorting fragments of data into a final thought or solution.
Like it or not (I dislike a lot of it), this is how most of us now live--and think. Viacom is suing YouTube because YouTubers are extracting five-minute clips of the best parts of "The Daily Show." Why waste 30 minutes?
Today, the Bellheads are long-form TV, traditional political ads, 74-minute CDs, two-hour movies--predetermined A-to-B formats. (Newspapers are in fact a collection of "packets," a subject for another time.) The Netheads are YouTube, shared playlists, remixed videos, the idea of personal choice, and randomly arriving political ads such as "Hillary 1984." That Netheads are chop-shopping "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" is ironic, but as the Yoda of old-media Walter Cronkite said, "That's the way it is." Prepackaging versus packets. And so in politics.
One of the conundrums of politics now is why Rudy Giuliani's polling lead for the GOP nomination is not just strong but persistent. Conventional wisdom holds it will fall when "conservative" voters learn his full biography and liberal social views. How could they not have heard? An alternative explanation is that voters are "processing" Mr. Giuliani differently.
Packet-switching is what allows us to flip effortlessly through torrents of data on Web screens, holding in mind a basic search goal. By now, this experience has forced more people than ever to think in terms of hierarchies--how to sort through lots of information and assign values, the way we quickly separate the flood of email into levels of importance. By now, we all have an Intel inside.
This may be why Mr. Giuliani is getting away with his social views in the GOP. We've become so adept at assigning value to good and bad information in searches that we can do it for a "flawed" candidate like Rudy Giuliani. Faced with an array of Rudy "packets"--the anti-terror reputation, three marriages, abortion and all the rest--GOP voters have already sorted the data, put anti-terror at the top of the hierarchy and are comfortable giving the social issues relatively lower values. Still relevant, but mid-range. This is how we do work now, every day. Why should it not affect politics?
If it is true that our political thinking is being bent by constant streams of small, value-laden packets of data that we constantly remix into personal hierarchies, then paradoxically the "new" politics of Web sites such as Moveon.org or the Daily Kos are really Old School. Like Bellheads who originated deep in the last century, the leftwing sites think politics is still straight and simple: "pull the plug" on Iraq, "enact universal health care." For sites on the right, the one answer is the Fence to stopper Mexico. But political reality is more fluid and contingent than ever before. The Big Solution is wholly alien to the packet-switching political mindset now. Nancy Pelosi thought the Iraq vote was a slam dunk; in fact, her caucus broke into a random array of views on Iraq. That final vote has about as much stability as a Web page.
Some say ads such as "Hillary 1984" are democratizing politics. But that's just hardware--more sellers throwing stuff at us. The bigger change is happening inside the public's mental software. No poll can capture how the voting mind is processing the political inbox today. What's not to like about that?
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 27, 2007, 09:47:27 AM
WSJ- Opinion Journal
Little Big Brother
Howard Dean, head of the Democratic National Committee, once again is proving he has unusual views on the media. He says groups that want to hear candidates talk openly should bar the media. "If you want to hear the truth from them, you have to exclude the press," is how he bluntly put it.
On one level, that's not so controversial an idea. Today's "gotcha" journalism certainly makes candidates cautious and fearful that any stray remark will be blown out of proportion by someone in search of a headline.
But Mr. Dean's reasoning for why the media should be shut out of political meetings was revealing. He says the Golden Age of media coverage by Olympian figures such as Walter Cronkite is long gone. "The media has been reduced to info-tainment," he told the Mortgage Bankers Association. "Info-tainment sells. The problem is they reach the lowest common denominator instead of forcing a little education down our throats, which we are probably in need of from time to time." By "education," I take it Mr. Dean is referring to views of the enlightened "progressive" kind.
The Democratic Party's chairman has long expressed a position that federal regulation of the media -- in the form of a new Fairness Doctrine or the breakup of entities such as Fox News -- wouldn't be a bad idea. In 2003, while a presidential candidate, he railed, "Media corporations have too much power... The media has clearly abused their privilege, and it is hurting our democracy."
Of course, some would say having political figures such as Mr. Dean who are overtly hostile to the media holding politicians like themselves to account may also not be good for democracy. Like many liberals, Mr. Dean just hasn't gotten used to a media universe where there are players beyond the Big Three networks and the traditional newspapers whose newsrooms were stuffed almost exclusively with Democrats.
-- John Fund
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2007, 06:36:49 AM
SOMETHING OF VALUE How to Sink a Newspaper Free news for online customers is a disastrous business plan. BY WALTER E. HUSSMAN JR. WSJ Monday, May 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
One has to wonder how many of the newspaper industry's current problems are self-inflicted. Take free news. News has become ubiquitous, free, and as a result, a commodity. Anytime you are trying to sell something that becomes a commodity, you have lost much of the value in providing that product or service.
Not many years ago if someone wanted to find out what was in the newspaper they had to buy one. But not anymore. Now you can just go to the newspaper's Web site and get that same information for free.
The newspaper industry wonders why it is losing young readers. Those readers might be young, but many of them are smart, not to mention computer-savvy. Why would they buy a newspaper when they can get the same information online for free?
Newspapers initially created their Web sites with the best of intentions. After all, newspapers are in the information business. And rather than fight the new medium, the Internet, why not embrace it? Wanting to be the leading information providers and thereby have the most popular Web site in the community, they posted all of their news online for free.
Exacerbating the problem with free news was the decision by the newspaper industry, which owns the Associated Press, to sell AP copy to news aggregators like Yahoo, Google and MSN. These aggregators created lucrative news portals where the world could get much of the news that was in newspapers. So readers could now get free news not only on newspaper Web sites, but also from portals and aggregators that had a chance to monetize the content, most of which was created and financed by the newspaper industry.
With local radio and television stations also creating Web sites and posting their news for free, newspapers soon realized that much of the news on the broadcast Web sites had been created by the local newspaper. So, whereas before the newspapers were selling print ads while radio and TV were selling air time, now they were all selling the same medium: their Web sites. Since newspapers share their content with the Associated Press so other members can use it, radio and TV members are using much of that content to compete against the newspapers that created it.
Newspapers have for years been frustrated by radio stations which merely read the stories which are printed in that morning's edition. TV stations often get much of their news from the newspapers, too. But reading it on the air is clearly different from posting it online, placing them in direct competition with newspapers' Web sites. All of this would be fine if newspapers generated lots of additional revenues from offering free news. But the fact is newspapers generate most of their online revenues from classified advertising, not from news. Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, estimated that newspaper Web sites generated 78% of their revenues from classifieds in 2006.
It turns out that a Web site is a very different medium from a newspaper. While consumers often find pop-up ads a distraction and banner ads as more clutter, readers often seek out the advertising in newspapers.
The Inland Cost and Revenue Study shows that newspapers will generate between $500 and $900 in revenue per subscriber per year. But a newspaper's Web site typically generates $5 to $10 per unique visitor per year. It may be that newspaper Web sites as an advertising medium, and free news, just can't generate the revenue to sustain a valued news operation.
In fact, online revenues for the publicly traded newspaper companies in 2005 varied from 1.7% at Journal Register Co. to 5.7% at Belo Corp. The only company higher was the Washington Post Co. at 8.4%. Yet newspapers typically spend 12% or more of their revenues on their news and editorial operations.
The Wall Street Journal Online now has 931,000 paying subscribers, more than the paying subscribers to all but three U.S. newspapers: USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Our newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, does not offer our news for free on the Web site. We offer free headlines. On a few selected stories, we offer a few free paragraphs, designed to get people to read our paper. We also offer free classifieds.
Recently I had the opportunity to compare our Web site policy with the free news policies of other papers. For the six months ending March 31, 2007, the newspaper industry's circulation was down 2.1% daily and 3.1% Sunday. By contrast, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's circulation was up 1.24% daily and up less than 1% Sunday.
I was able to make another interesting comparison, too, with the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Columbus and Little Rock are both state capitals. Columbus is a larger market, and the Columbus Dispatch's circulation of 217,291 compares with 176,172 for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Up until Jan. 1, 2006, both our paper and the Columbus Dispatch offered news content only by subscription. We even charged the same price, $4.95, for an online monthly subscription, and both of us offered the same style electronic editions.
But Columbus dropped its subscription model on Jan. 1, 2006, and began offering most of its news for free. Its Web traffic and revenues certainly increased. But what happened to its paid circulation?
The six months ending Sept. 30, 2006 was a good comparison, since it compared six months in 2006 when the Columbus Dispatch had free news on its Web site compared with six months in 2005 when it did not offer free news. The Columbus Dispatch's daily circulation was down 5.8% while Sunday was down 1.1% for the six-month period. This compared with our loss of less than 0.4% daily and 1% Sunday.
When I looked at this comparison with Columbus, as well as the newspaper industry's larger losses, it didn't encourage me to change our Web policy to free news.
So what are we doing with our Web site? We have hired a videographer to complement our text coverage in the newspaper. We have added photo galleries to increase the number of photographs beyond what we can publish. We offer an electronic edition where you can search the entire edition by keywords, something you can't do in the print edition. And we offer breaking news email alerts, something else you can't do in print. In other words, we are offering value on our Web site that complements, rather than cannibalizes, our print edition. Collectively, the American newspaper industry spends $7 billion on news and editorial operations. This includes everything from copy editor salaries to sports travel expenses. In addition, the Associated Press spent about $600 million world-wide in editing and creating news. By offering this news for free, and selling it to aggregators like Google, Yahoo and MSN for a small fraction of what it costs to create it, newspaper readership and circulation have declined.
These declines are accelerating. In 2004 and prior years, industry circulation declines were usually less than 1%. Since March 2005, these declines have been 2%-3% per year. With declining readership comes declining ad revenues, which are followed by layoffs.
The newsroom layoffs are most troubling, as less news with less quality, context and details results in more declines in readership and later, declines in advertising. If the $7 billion spent covering news becomes $6 billion, and later $5 billion, it is not just the newspaper industry that gets hurt. Journalism will be diminished in America with less investigative and enterprise reporting; indeed, less reporting of state houses, city halls, school boards, business and sports. Clearly a lot is at stake.
It is time for newspapers to reconsider the ultimate costs and consequences of free news.
Mr. Hussman is publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2007, 07:24:23 AM
A Reporter's Fate The BBC held hostage in Gaza.
BY BRET STEPHENS Tuesday, May 22, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Dozens of hostages were released in Gaza over the weekend, in the wake of a truce called between the warring factions of Hamas and Fatah. The BBC's Alan Johnston, now in his 11th week of captivity, was not among them.
I last saw Mr. Johnston in January 2005, the day before Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Johnston was by then the only Western correspondent living and working full time in Gaza, although the Strip was still considered a safe destination for day-tripping foreign journalists. He kindly lent me his office to interview Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, and asked whether I was still editing the Jerusalem Post. He seemed genuinely oblivious to the notion that my by-then former association with an Israeli newspaper was not the sort of information I wanted broadcast to a roomful of Palestinian stringers.
January 2005 was also the last time one could feel remotely optimistic about an independent Palestinian future. Mr. Abbas had campaigned for office promising "clean legal institutions so we can be considered a civilized society." He won by an overwhelming margin in an election Hamas refused to contest. There had been a sharp decline in Israeli-Palestinian violence, thanks mainly to Israeli counterterrorism measures and the security fence. A Benetton outlet had opened in Ramallah, signaling better times ahead.
In Gaza things were different, however, and Mr. Johnston was prescient in reporting on the potential for internecine strife: "This internal conflict between police and the militants cannot happen," one of his stories quotes a Palestinian police chief as saying. "It is forbidden. We are a single nation." Yet in 2005 more Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians than by Israelis. It got worse in 2006, following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Hamas's victory in parliamentary elections. "The occupation was not as bad as the lawlessness and corruption that we are facing now," Palestinian editor Hafiz Barghouti admitted to Mr. Johnston in a widely cited remark.
When Mr. Johnston was kidnapped by persons unknown on March 12--apparently dragged at gunpoint from his car while on his way home--he became at least the 23rd Western journalist to have been held hostage in Gaza. In most cases the kidnappings rarely lasted more than a day. Yet in August FOXNews's Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were held for two weeks, physically abused and forced to convert to Islam. Plainly matters were getting progressively worse for foreigners. So why did the BBC keep Mr. Johnston in place? Yet the BBC also seemed to operate in the Palestinian Authority with a sense of political impunity. Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti described Mr. Johnston as someone who "has done a lot for our cause"--not the sort of endorsement one imagines the BBC welcoming from an equivalent figure on the Israeli side. Other BBC correspondents were notorious for making their politics known to their viewers: Barbara Plett confessed to breaking into tears when Arafat was airlifted to a Parisian hospital in October 2004; Orla Guerin treated Israel's capture of a living, wired teenage suicide bomber that March as nothing more than a PR stunt--"a picture that Israel wants the world to see."
Though doubtlessly sincere, these views also conferred institutional advantages for the BBC in terms of access and protection, one reason why the broadcaster might have felt relatively comfortable posting Mr. Johnston in a place no other news agency dared to go.
By contrast, reporters who displeased Palestinian authorities could be made to pay a price. In one notorious case in October 2000, Italian reporter Riccardo Cristiano of RAI published a letter in a Palestinian newspaper insisting he had not been the one who had broadcast images of two Israeli soldiers being lynched in Ramallah. "We respect the journalistic regulations of the Palestinian Authority," he wrote, blaming rival Mediaset for the transgression. I had a similar experience when I quoted a Palestinian journalist describing as "riff-raff" those of his neighbors celebrating the attacks of Sept. 11. Within a day, the journalist was chided and threatened by Palestinian officials for having spoken to me. They were keeping close tabs.
Still, whatever the benefits of staying on the right side of the Palestinian powers-that-be, they have begun to wane. For years, the BBC had invariably covered Palestinian affairs within the context of Israel's occupation--the core truth from which all manifestations of conflict supposedly derived. Developments within Gaza following Israel's withdrawal showed the hollowness of that analysis. Domestic Palestinian politics, it turned out, were shot through with their own discontents, contradictions and divisions, not just between Hamas and Fatah but between scores of clans, gangs, factions and personalities. Opposition to Israel helped in some ways to mute this reality, but it could not suppress it.
This is the situation--not a new one, but one the foreign media had for years mostly ignored--in which the drama of Mr. Johnston's captivity is playing out. Initial reports suggested he had been kidnapped by the so-called Popular Resistance Committee; later an al Qaeda affiliate called the Army of Islam claimed to have killed him. More recently, evidence has come to light suggesting he's alive and being held by a criminal gang based in the southern town of Rafah. The British government is reportedly in talks with a radical Islamist cleric in their custody, Abu Qatada, whose release the Army of Islam has demanded for Mr. Johnston's freedom. What the British will do, and what effect that might have, remains to be seen. For now, one can only pray for Mr. Johnston's safe release. Later, the BBC might ask itself whether its own failures of prudence and judgment put its reporter's life in jeopardy. The BBC's Paul Adams has said of his colleague that it was "his job to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament." For that act of solidarity one hopes a terrible price will not be paid.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2007, 10:13:00 PM
'We Are the Only People Preventing Them From Telling the Story' In a Memorial Day column, David Carr of the New York Times complains about a U.S. military rule requiring that embedded reporters "obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited."
Why is it so important to show images of hurt and dead Americans? A fellow Timesman gives away the game:
James Glanz, a Baghdad correspondent who will become bureau chief for The New York Times next month, said that although he and others had many great experiences working with the rank-and-file soldiers, some military leaders seem determined to protect something besides the privacy of their troops.
"As the number of reporters there dwindles further and further because of the difficult conditions we work under, the kind of work they are able to publish becomes very important," Mr. Glanz said. "This tiny remaining corps of reporters becomes a greater and greater problem for the military brass because we are the only people preventing them from telling the story the way they want it told."
Hmm, we thought the job of a reporter was to tell stories, not to prevent others from doing so. Furthermore, is it even possible to imagine a Times correspondent saying his job is to prevent the enemy from telling its story?
And here's an example of the kind of journalism the Times's Baghdad bureau produces. This is from a news account, also in yesterday's Times:
On Sunday, American troops freed 42 Iraqi prisoners from what military officials described as a Qaeda hideout northeast of Baghdad. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, said some of the captives appeared to have been tortured.
The raid was part of a security effort involving 3,000 additional troops sent to Diyala, a violent province north of the capital with a mixed population of Sunnis and Shiites. Colonel Garver said the hideout had been found because of a tip from an Iraqi, and that all 42 freed prisoners were receiving medical care.
"Some of the rescued stated they had been suspended from the ceiling," he said. "Some of them stated they had been there for four months. One young man stated he was 14 years old."
This is a good story, one that points up the brutality of the enemy and the bravery of American servicemen. Given Glanz's ideas about the press's role, you almost have to wonder how reporter Damien Cave managed to sneak it into the paper.
Well, here's how: The passage we quoted above was paragraphs 11 through 13 of a story titled "Roadside Bombing Kills 2 More G.I.'s in Iraq."
The story is not accompanied by a picture of the two dead soldiers' bodies. Do you wish it were?
=========
Two Papers in One!
" There is one matter on which American military commanders, many Iraqis and some of the Bush administration's staunchest Congressional critics agree: if the United States withdrew its forces from Baghdad's streets this fall, the murder and mayhem would increase."--news story, New York Times, May 27
"It's upsetting to think that Mr. Bush believes the raging sectarian violence in Iraq awaits reigniting. . . . But we have grown accustomed to this president's disconnect from reality and his habit of tilting at straw men, like Americans who . . . don't worry about what will happen after the United States withdraws, as it inevitably must."--editorial, New York Times, May 27
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on June 01, 2007, 12:10:54 PM
This could go under humor or politics or just left alone, but I'll stick it here for the media perspective. I saw Al Gore on the PBS News hour yesterday. I'm no linguist, but when Gwen Ifill tried to pin Gore down on whether we were lied into war, Gore said that Bush made an "explicit implication...", I couldn't help but wonder where that slip would have been re-broadcast if Bush had fumbled those words. Probably all over Letterman, Leno, etc., maybe the NY Times.
I found the PBS transcript and emailed the tip to OpinionJournal, who did the following piece ripping Gore pretty badly with it yesterday, and gave me a credit at the end for the tip.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010147
Assaulted Nuts
Is Al Gore a genuine intellectual, as he would like us to believe, or is he just pretentious à la John Kerry? He has a new book out called "The Assault on Reason," and we suppose reading it would shed some light on the question. But life is short.
Here's an excerpt from an interview Gore gave Gwen Ifill of PBS's "NewsHour":
Ifill: You write of a "determined disinterest" in learning the truth, on the part of the Bush administration on pre-war intelligence. You accuse the White House of an "unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception," very strong words. And you say that President Bush "outsourced the truth." Are you suggesting that President Bush deliberately misled the American people when it comes to the Iraq war?
Gore: Well, there was certainly a coordinated effort in the White House and in the Department of Defense simultaneously to convey the image of a mushroom cloud exploding over an American city and to link it to a specific scenario, the very strong and explicit implication that Saddam Hussein was going to develop nuclear weapons and give them to Osama bin Laden, and that would result in nuclear explosions in American cities.
"Explicit implication," huh? How do you know it wasn't an implicit explication? Such slipshod thinking leads one to think that Gore does have more in common with Kerry than with, say, Pat Moynihan.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 06, 2007, 06:32:55 AM
As many of you may know, Robert Murdoch is trying to buy the WSJ. Here is the WSJ's editorial today: =======================
An Independent Newspaper The Bancrofts and a century of "free people and free markets."
Wednesday, June 6, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
"Don't believe the man who tells you there are two sides to every question. There is only one side to the truth."
So wrote William Peter Hamilton, one of the first men to hold the job of editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, in the early decades of the last century. For editorial writers worth their pay, those are words to live by, and we hope to be living by them for a long time to come.
That's a point worth stressing amid the news that the Bancroft family may soon sell the Journal's parent company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. or some other bidder. The Bancrofts have been exceptional stewards of this newspaper for more than a century. But capitalism is dynamic, and those of us who extol the virtues of Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction" for others can't complain when it sweeps through our own industry. That's what is happening as the Internet breaks up long-time media business models, and Dow Jones is hardly immune. The Bancrofts have every right as owners to sell or not based on their own dictates, and what we say won't matter in any event.
Where we do have a say, however, is on the question of journalistic "independence." There's been a lot of debate lately about what that means. We thought our readers might like to know what it has meant at the Journal, and specifically for these columns, over the decades. For starters, the Bancrofts are unique in their hands-off ownership. They are often compared as family newspaper proprietors to the Grahams at the Washington Post or the Sulzbergers at the New York Times. But members of those families run those newspapers, exerting influence over the news and opinion operations. In that sense, those newspapers are hardly "independent" of those families.
Everyone knows that the influence of Times Publisher and CEO Arthur Sulzberger Jr. extends to selecting not merely the editorial page editor but columnists, political endorsements and, as far as we can tell, even news coverage priorities. We don't see how this differs from most of what Mr. Murdoch is accused of doing with his newspapers. The same lack of independence also applies to most non-family media companies such as Gannett, a newspaper owner whose make-no-waves corporate ethic turns nearly all of its editorial pages into mush.
By contrast, the Bancrofts have allowed journalists to run the news and editorial shops. That family ethic became a guiding principle under Jessie Bancroft Cox, step-granddaughter of Clarence Barron, and the business leadership of the great Barney Kilgore.
At the editorial page, this has meant that for a century we have been able to adhere to a worldview we now distill to the phrase "free people and free markets." This began, more or less, with the classical liberalism of William Hamilton, who as a Scotsman before emigrating had dabbled in British Liberal Party politics. It has continued through a series of editors who have adhered to those principles despite shifting political fashions and partisan winds.
Over the years this independence has also meant the freedom to challenge prevailing media conventions and political power. Following Hamilton as editor in the 1930s, Thomas Woodlock battled Keynesian economics and the New Deal. The Journal was skeptical of FDR's dalliances with prewar Britain--until the day war began and our short editorial was headlined, "We Have a Duty." The editorial hangs in our office today.
As he campaigned for re-election in 1948, Harry Truman denounced the Journal as the "Republicans' Bible," a line that earned him a rebuke from Editor (of the editorial page) William Grimes because "our loyalties are to the economic and governmental principles in which we believe and not to any political party." In one of his visits to the White House, Editor Vermont Royster was thanked by John F. Kennedy for supporting his free-trade agenda. "Young man," said Royster, "the Wall Street Journal was supporting free trade before you were born." The Journal hasn't endorsed a Presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover, preferring instead to praise or assail the candidates' ideas.
On occasion this has meant the Journal has come under outside pressure, both commercial and political, but the Bancrofts and our publishers have always stood firm. In the 1950s, these columns defended Journal reporters against General Motors for disclosing the car company's tactics against independent auto dealers only weeks after we had defended GM against the government's trustbusters. GM pulled its advertising for a time, only to back down later, and the episode helped the Journal build credibility as independent of advertising interests.
Our former Editor Robert Bartley once told us of being called on the carpet by Henry Kissinger, then the Secretary of State, for opposing détente and arms control with the Soviet Union. Journal Publisher and CEO Warren Phillips accompanied Bartley to the meeting, and started things off by asking Mr. Kissinger what all of his Spengler-pessimism talk vis-à-vis the Russians was about. The anti-détente editorials kept coming, and Bartley and Mr. Kissinger later became friends.
The 1990s were especially controversial with the Journal's reporting about Whitewater and Bill Clinton's ethics, and more than one liberal thought he could mute Bartley's campaign in the wake of the Vincent Foster suicide. But the Bancrofts and Publisher Peter Kann stood up to the pressure.
Perhaps the sternest commercial test has come as we have expanded abroad, especially in Asia. The Journal has been banned or had its circulation restricted in many countries, and a reporter for another Dow Jones publication went to jail in Malaysia. In Singapore, a big market for the Journal, the government made the editorial page the first target of its campaign to curtail Western coverage of its domestic politics in the mid-1980s. While other companies--notably Bloomberg--have surrendered pre-emptively, the Journal has been nearly alone in fighting back. Freedom of the press has improved in Asia as democracy has expanded, and we're proud to continue fighting for freedom and human rights today in China.
We could tell other stories, but the essential point is that our owners have allowed us to speak our mind on behalf of a consistent set of principles. Readers may like, or loathe, those beliefs and our way of defending them. But we like to think this brand of independence is one reason the Journal has attracted such an influential readership. To borrow a phrase from modern business lingo, we hope it is part of our value proposition.
At a dinner honoring their century of Journal ownership in 2002, Bob Bartley expressed his gratitude to the Bancrofts for their support, noting that some of his editorials over 30 years must not have sat well with everyone in the ideologically diverse clan. But Bartley added that his proudest boast was that he ran the only editorial page "that sells newspapers." We can't say what any future owner would do, but we doubt one would be foolish enough to undermine this market appeal.
On January 2, 1951, William Grimes wrote a memorable editorial, "A Newspaper's Philosophy," that summed up our worldview this way: "On our editorial page we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, in his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government. People will say we are conservative or even reactionary. We are not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical."
Even 56 years later, that still sounds good to us. Whether the Bancroft family sells or not, and no matter who is the buyer, we plan to stand for those beliefs for as long into the future as we are able.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 06, 2007, 06:40:45 AM
Second post of the morning: ==========================
My Sweet Press Lord We'll take the Washington Post, please.
BY HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR. Wednesday, June 6, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Here's my dream, and it's a not good one. The day comes when a controversialist like Rupert Murdoch bids to buy The Wall Street Journal--and no one cares. That's one of the considerations swirling in a mess that, from any party's perspectives except Mr. Murdoch's, makes the decision faced by the Bancroft family (which controls Dow Jones, our parent company) so vexing. The future of the paper is at risk if we do the deal; it's also at risk if we don't.
Our owners, in the way of other businesses, have not made themselves richer by growing their capital in the Journal. Nonetheless, in their stewardship of the paper, they've let us do what we do without interference, which is something we all cherish. Even those of us who don't find Mr. Murdoch an ogre naturally would treat as dubious any change of circumstance that might portend a change in this, our own very satisfying situation.
Mr. Murdoch's dealings in China have been a concern. This column, tongue in cheek, once assailed him for his "offenses against freedom and democracy," such as dropping the BBC from his Star TV lineup to appease Beijing. But we also let the reader in on a secret: "Mr. Murdoch's judgment about when to trim may not be perfect, but most sensible people want Star TV in China."
In any case, his trimmings in China have been far less egregious than those of Yahoo. With any owner, you take a chance--and the risks include not just errors of commission (inappropriate interference) but errors of omission (letting the business run itself when it really needs a strong hand to alter course and correct its follies).
Much is heard about editorial independence, some of it fusty, some of it exactly to the point. What makes the New York Post such a delight is partly the entertaining suspicion (most of the time probably unwarranted) that hidden agendas and childish rivalries are behind the decision to bash this muckety-muck and spare that. Not for nothing is the Post the favorite read of New York's catty media, social and business elite, and nobody mistakes it for a paper of record. Mr. Murdoch clearly knows what he's doing, fitting a newspaper to its market opportunity. One has a reasonable suspicion that he also understands the very different market position and opportunity of the Journal. (Indeed, we'd like to think he'd end up more hostage to the Journal--its visibility, credibility and power to embarrass--than the paper would ever be to his business and personal interests.)
The flipside is that great newspapers aren't great because nobody is running them. In his wonderful memoir, the journalist and eminent business adviser Peter Drucker wrote: "Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication. . . . Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done."
His qualities as a newshound and shrewd businessman mean, in all likelihood, that Mr. Murdoch would prove a responsible proprietor for the Journal, despite hyperventilation at the prospect by some readers and employees. He's certainly equipped by experience to make the necessary judgments to protect the paper's stature while expanding its reach (and has the resources to do so). Though strictly from the perspective of someone who works here, I'd still prefer to be owned by a company exclusively in the news business, one that lives and dies by the reputation of its newsgathering.
Here I confess to a personal bias, related to nothing more than reading the Washington Post over the years, which is that it's an exceptionally brainy newspaper. Intelligence as a quality is hit or miss in most newspaper writing and editing. At the Post, they seem to have institutionalized it. You rarely find the collapses of critical judgment that seem to be routine at other papers when, say, a trial lawyer appears claiming evidence of racism in the auto dealership industry or at an oil company.
Absent too are the excesses of billboard journalism--the habit of editors casually intruding a noisy paragraph that oversells and distorts the story below, leaving an unsatisfying jumble of facts that don't live up to the assertions at the top.
We don't love everything in the Post or all its reporters, and it has certainly benefited from conservative competition from the Washington Times. It also lacks the leverageable assets that Mr. Murdoch would presumably use to build the Journal's brand and distribution opportunities. But the Post's editorial page has become remarkably more sensible in recent years (although its Web site remains awful and the Style section has gone down the tubes). The company itself is principally in the news business; Warren Buffett sits on the board, guarding against investment misadventure.
A few readers have harrumphed that Mr. Murdoch reputedly would try to shorten the Journal's articles. He's not the only one. Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie has instructed his crew to write shorter too--and the Post already strikes me as a very well-edited paper: News stories are rounded, complete but not overwritten. They also have a semblance of being written by somebody with a living mind, not just re-executing the media's general template on a given news event (for an everyday example, see the Post's recent contributions on the Chinese pet food scare).
More than that, if you read a lot of newspapers, what sneaks up on you are the outward manifestations of a quiet, non-braggy excellence that should be attractive to anyone looking to ensure the Journal's long-term future. Mr. Murdoch is the only one who has put money on the table. He's not the only one some of us wish would.
Mr. Jenkins is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal on Wednesdays.
Title: Changes at WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 13, 2007, 07:04:34 AM
I find the WSJ, which I have been reading for 30 years now, to be an outstanding newspaper. Its editorial page maintains an unparalleled level of intelligent and informed discourse. So I naturally follow the Murdoch offer and related matters with great concern. ===================
Shake-Up in Newsroom of Journal By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Published: June 13, 2007 NY Times The Wall Street Journal, already roiled by a proposed takeover by Rupert Murdoch, will announce today a major newsroom shake-up, including the reassignment and replacement of several top editors, officials there say.
Times Topics: Dow JonesThe reorganization represents a bid by the managing editor, Marcus E. Brauchli, who took the top job in the newsroom just a month ago, to put his stamp on the upper echelons of one of the nation’s most respected and widely read newspapers. A spokesman for Dow Jones & Company, The Journal’s parent company, declined to comment on any planned changes.
The newsroom announcement will come on the day that the Bancroft family, which owns a controlling interest in Dow Jones, is expected to make a new proposal to Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation on safeguarding The Journal’s editorial independence in the event of a sale. The Bancrofts’ goal is to keep the appointment of The Journal’s top editors out of Mr. Murdoch’s hands.
Under Mr. Brauchli’s reorganization, John Bussey, a deputy managing editor who has been based in Hong Kong, will lose that title, according to Journal officials, who insisted that their names not be used because they were not authorized to discuss the changes. He has been offered a position as a columnist, but has not decided if he will accept it and is continuing to discuss his next assignment.
Those officials said Edward Felsenthal, another deputy managing editor who oversees the “soft” sections like Personal Journal and Pursuits, is also expected to lose his title. His next assignment is not clear.
Both men are in their 40’s and had been considered rising stars.
Daniel Hertzberg, the senior deputy managing editor, will become the top editor of The Journal’s Europe and Asia editions, and will be based in Brussels. Mr. Hertzberg, who is in his early 60’s and has been the second-ranking newsroom editor, was once seen as a leading contender for Mr. Brauchli’s job.
William S. Grueskin, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, will be promoted to deputy managing editor of the newspaper, with a broad responsibility over news coverage in both the print Journal and on the Web site. He will also oversee the domestic bureaus.
The shake-up continues a period of transition that began last year and has included the retirements of some of Dow Jones’s longtime leaders — including Peter R. Kann, the chairman and chief executive, and Paul Steiger, The Journal’s managing editor — and could culminate in a sale to News Corporation.
The Bancroft family initially rejected Mr. Murdoch’s $5 billion bid, but later agreed to consider a sale. Many family members, who take great pride in The Journal’s editorial quality, disdain the work of News Corporation media outlets like the Fox News Channel and The New York Post, which they see as politically slanted and overly devoted to celebrity gossip and crime.
In a June 4 meeting with Mr. Murdoch and others from News Corporation, Bancroft family members and advisers said that if they agreed to sell, they wanted to set up a control board with exclusive power to hire and fire The Journal’s top editors.
Mr. Murdoch countered that he would accept a control board like the one put in place when he bought The Times of London in 1981. There, the News Corporation chooses the top editor, who must then be approved by a group of independent directors who are not chosen by the company. But that arrangement is widely seen as having failed to keep Mr. Murdoch from shaping The Times’s news pages as he sees fit.
Since a family meeting Monday, the three family members who sit on the Dow Jones board and their advisers have refined their proposal, which they expect to present to News Corporation today. “The question everyone had is how enforceable it’s going to be, in light of what went on in London,” a family member said.
Family members say the plan will call for a family-appointed board, which would name both the managing editor and the editorial page editor, who would have the power to fill all the positions below them.
The family is not yet prepared to say whom it would put on such a board, but family members said yesterday that they were leaning toward current and former Journal employees — including Mr. Steiger, the former managing editor; the publisher, L. Gordon Crovitz; and Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor — rather than outsiders.
Some critics of The London Times arrangement said that one of its weaknesses was that the independent directors had few connections to journalism, giving them less incentive to stand up to Mr. Murdoch.
The Bancrofts have debated having one board or two: one to pick the leader of the newsroom and the other to choose the editorial page editor. Family members and people close to them said yesterday that it was not clear how the matter had been resolved — in keeping with Bancroft practice, they said, the three family members on the board revealed little detail — but they said they believed that a single board would be the choice.
There had also been some discussion within the Bancroft family of proposing to give the control board some power over newsroom budgets, and again, family members said it was not clear to them what would be in the proposal given to Mr. Murdoch. But members and family advisers have argued that the strongest plan is the simplest one, and that in any case, it would be unrealistic to think that News Corporation would agree to give up financial control.
In the newsroom, the changes at the top will be fairly comprehensive. Alan Murray, an assistant managing editor, will move to the Web site with responsibility for video reports and the relationship with CNBC.
Michael W. Miller, the Page 1 editor, will be promoted to deputy managing editor, and will continue overseeing Page 1, and get other coverage, in particular the “business of life” sections. Michael Williams, editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, will take his place as Page 1 editor of the United States edition. Another deputy managing editor, Alix M. Freedman, will keep her job.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on June 13, 2007, 09:09:31 AM
Crafty, I have also been a huge fan of the Journal and for me also it is/was always because of the editorial page. I was first referred there by my college economics professor, Walter Heller, who made us read his contributions there in the mid-1970s. I peeked around a little further and found that he was only on their Board of Contributors only because of his dissenting view; the the main editorials made far more sense to me. Heller was chief economist for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and was poised to take that role for Ted Kennedy who nearly beat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 primaries with a platform of gas rationing and national health care. (Sound like liberals 28 years later) Meanwhile Robert Bartley and his staff at the Journal were all over the underpinnings and advancement of supply-side economics and writing editorials like the classic 'Keynes is Dead', which claimed that if inflation and unemployment can worsen simultaneously, they could also be solved simultaneously. They were right.
I assume that Murdoch is a market, media and investment genius and wouldn't buy Dow Jones just to squander the brand names of Barrons and the WSJ. The Journal has always maintained a very real firewall between its newsroom and its editorial page so the changes in the newsroom don't alarm me.
Title: Re: Changes at WSJ
Post by: rogt on June 14, 2007, 08:39:37 AM
I find the WSJ, which I have been reading for 30 years now, to be an outstanding newspaper. Its editorial page maintains an unparalleled level of intelligent and informed discourse.
Are you and I reading the same WSJ? I've never had any issues with their actual news reporting, but I remember the editorial page mostly for it's deliberate distortion (if not omission) of facts, unconditional defense of right-wing criminality, and open contempt for any restraints on wealth accumulation and priveleges for the wealthy.
Regardless, I don't imagine a sale of the paper to Rupert would have any noticeable effect on the editorial page. If anything, I would expect the Journal's news articles to gradually become less and less distinguishable from the editorial page, to the point where it's basically the print version of Fox News.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on June 14, 2007, 04:16:58 PM
[WSJ editorials have] "open contempt for...restraints on wealth accumulation". Well said, me too! :)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 14, 2007, 07:22:50 PM
Doug:
In the late 60s-early 70s I thought I was a leftist. Then in 1975 I went back to college and took my first economics course. What a revelation! What I discovered I had been all along was pro-freedom and that , , , drum roll please , , , I was a libertarian. Free minds and free markets!!! It was at this point I began reading the WSJ, especially the editorial page. I remember well the intellectual ferment and excitement of the editorials you describe. I became a big fan of Jude Wanniski's "The Way the World Works".
I am far less sanguine than you about Murdoch. In the context of the WSJ, his track record concerns me.
Marc
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: milt on June 15, 2007, 09:36:07 AM
In the late 60s-early 70s I thought I was a leftist. Then in 1975 I went back to college and took my first economics course. What a revelation! What I discovered I had been all along was pro-freedom and that , , , drum roll please , , , I was a libertarian. Free minds and free markets!!!
Oh come on, Marc!
How about I open a liquor store next to your house? Or maybe I'll duplicate all the Dog Brothers DVDs and sell them myself. Then we'll see how much you like free markets.
Or did you mean government "regulated markets?"
-milt
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2007, 09:50:49 AM
C'mon, libertarian doesn't mean anarchist. It means govt limited to certain functions (e.g. protection of property rights such as copyright in a DVD.) Our Founding Fathers were libertarians. In their essence, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were and are libertarian.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2007, 06:53:14 AM
http://newsbusters.org/node/13761
AP Uses Democrat Talking Points in Fred Thompson Hit Piece Posted by Noel Sheppard on June 26, 2007 - 23:30.
As Democrats complain about conservative dominance on the radio, the hypocrisy is made crystal clear when America's leading wire service copies talking points directly from one of Howard Dean’s e-mail messages for a hit piece on looming Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson.
Such was identified by Steve Hill of Target Rich Environment who brilliantly outlined the similarities between an e-mail message he received Friday from the Democratic National Committee chairman (complete text with timestamp and e-mail address to follow) with an Associated Press article published Tuesday at CNN.com (emphasis added throughout):
1. DNC talking point: “In his most recent stint in Washington, Thompson worked for a London company lobbying Congress to limit liability claims for asbestos-related illnesses. Over the past three years he’s made $760,000 fighting for the interests of his corporate clients.
“AP/CNN talking point: ”More recently, while Frist led the Senate, Thompson earned more than $750,000 lobbying for a British reinsurance company that wanted to limit its liability from asbestos lawsuits.
2. DNC Talking Point: “And just this month, as part of his role as the ultimate Washington insider, Thompson offered to host yet another fundraising event for Scooter Libby’s legal defense fund. Thompson has been vocal in his support of Libby, saying that he would “absolutely” pardon him.”
AP/CNN Talking Point: “Thompson also helped run the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund Trust, an organization that set out to raise more than $5 million to help finance the legal defense of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was convicted in March of lying and obstructing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.”
3. DNC Talking Point: “For years, acting wasn’t the Law & Order star’s profession — it was a hobby. In the real world, Thompson has made a fortune in a decades-long career as a Washington lobbyist.”
AP/CNN Talking Point: “Republican Fred Thompson, who likes to cast himself in the role of Washington outsider, has a long history as a political insider who earned more than $1 million lobbying the federal government.”
4. DNC Talking Point: “Although the folksy-sounding Tennessean recently told USA TODAY that he would run an outsider, just as he did while campaigning as a “country lawyer” in a red pickup during his 1994 U.S. Senate race, his résumé is that of a longtime Washington operative who has crossed ideological lines to represent corporate and foreign clients.”
AP/CNN Talking Point: “That history as a Washington insider is at odds with the image Thompson has sought to convey to voters. When he first ran for the Senate in 1993, Thompson cast himself in the part of the gruff, plainspoken everyman, leased a red pickup truck and drove around Tennessee in his shirt sleeves.”
Amazing similarities, wouldn’t you agree? Now, check out the e-mail message that Steve received Friday for verification (his address has been removed for his privacy):
From: "Howard Dean" <democraticparty@democrats.org> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert To: "Steve Hill" < > Subject: FW: The inside-outsider Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:56:59 -0500
Dear Steve,
I wanted to follow up on Tom's email from Tuesday.
As you probably know, we've got a big job here. Right now it's up to us -- not the 2008 Democratic candidates -- to take on Fred Thompson, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls. And that's why we need your help.
Last year, the 50-state strategy put organizers on the ground across the country to stand up to the lies and failures of the GOP. Those organizers were the key to our unprecedented victories up and down the ballot in 2006.
Unlike many campaigns, our organizers still had a job when the election was over -- thanks to contributions from Democrats like you. That sort of support is crucial to build a party that will fight in every state for many elections to come, and that support is what allows us to continue to have organizers working in your state today.
Just yesterday in Iowa, a DNC-funded organizer was on the ground distributing facts to reporters after a big speech by Rudy Giuliani. If we don't continue to organize and research now, Election Day 2008 could be one that we'd rather forget.
Don't let that happen -- support our efforts today:
http://www.democrats.org/FundOrganizers
November 2008 may seem like a long time from now, but Democrats aren't waiting to take our country back.
Sincerely,
Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
P.S: If you didn't get a chance to read about the real Fred Thompson, check out the email Tom sent a few days ago.
Remember the Republican culture of corruption? The revolving door of Republican politicians moving in and out of top political offices and Washington D.C. lobbying firms?
That's Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson.
For years, acting wasn't the Law & Order star's profession -- it was a hobby. In the real world, Thompson has made a fortune in a decades-long career as a Washington lobbyist.
And just this month, as part of his role as the ultimate Washington insider, Thompson offered to host yet another fundraising event for Scooter Libby's legal defense fund. Thompson has been vocal in his support of Libby, saying that he would "absolutely" pardon him.
As he runs for president, he'll try his hardest to hide the truth from the American people. And we need to stop him.
Support our efforts to get the truth out about Fred Thompson:
http://www.democrats.org/StopTheAct
Here's what the USA Today had to say about Lobbyist Thompson:
"Although the folksy-sounding Tennessean recently told USA TODAY that he would run an outsider, just as he did while campaigning as a "country lawyer" in a red pickup during his 1994 U.S. Senate race, his résumé is that of a longtime Washington operative who has crossed ideological lines to represent corporate and foreign clients."
In his most recent stint in Washington, Thompson worked for a London company lobbying Congress to limit liability claims for asbestos-related illnesses. Over the past three years he's made $760,000 fighting for the interests of his corporate clients.
Now Fred Thompson wants the American people to believe he's the next Ronald Reagan -- a Washington outsider with Hollywood charisma and conservative appeal. But
Thompson just plays the role of straight-shooting outsider
on TV. In reality, he's as inside as you can get.
He's trying to get to the White House on slick lines and good acting. Help us stop him:
http://www.democrats.org/StopTheAct
As Fred Thompson tries to go from Washington's K Street
to Pennsylvania Avenue, the stakes of his candidacy couldn't be higher. In an interview just last week, for example, he claimed that the Roe v. Wade decision "was fabricated out of whole cloth," and that it was the worst court ruling in the past 40 years.
We need to make sure that in 2008, Fred Thompson goes back to doing his acting on Law & Order -- not in the White House.
Make a contribution today:
http://www.democrats.org/StopTheAct
While the Democratic presidential candidates hit the campaign trail, we'll be hitting the Republicans. It's our job to tell the American people the facts about opponents like Fred Thompson and to hold them accountable.
We can't finish that job without you. I hope you'll join us.
Sincerely,
Tom McMahon DNC Executive Director
Extraordinary similarities, yes?
In reality, we shouldn’t be too surprised, as the folks at Power Line identified some interesting information about this AP writer, Travis Loller (emphasis added):
Ms. Loller has a rather colorful past as a left-wing activist. Mother Jones described her as a "radical":
Three American citizens, along with nine other foreigners, were deported from Mexico on April 12, 1998 for alleged collusion with the Zapatista rebels (EZLN). The woman, Travis Loller, 26, and two men, Michael Sabato, 30, and Jeffrey Conant, 30, are part of an American relief group called Intercambio de Tecnologia Apropiada (ITA) or, in English, Appropriate Technology Exchange. The Mexican government accused the three of agitating for the rebel army that's been struggling in the southeastern state of Chiapas for over four years in an effort to win basic civil rights and gain land reform for the indigenous Indians in the region.
*********
The three Americans have extensive activist histories, having worked for reproductive rights, the homeless and protests against the Gulf War, the Rodney King verdict and Propositions 187 and 209.
Now, Loller works for the Associated Press, apparently with assistance from the Democrat Party.
Anybody want to talk about the Fairness Doctrine?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on June 27, 2007, 12:59:21 PM
I'm pretty sure that both sides do the dirty deed.
Here's a link to the NRSC (National Repubplican Senatorial Committee). All the clips are from FOX News:
http://www.nrsc.org/Multimedia/
FOX is the RNCs mouthpiece just as CNN is the DNCs. The media is biased whatever side you are on.
Fortunately, the intelligent ones amongst us can read between the lines, no?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2007, 03:13:15 PM
SB,
Pretty sure? I may have missed it, but i've never seen Fox News do this. Now the dems are pushing the "Fairness Doctrine". I guess talk radio and Fox News are overpowering CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, National Peoples' Radio, all the major newspapers and news magazines, requiring government intervention. :cry:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2007, 03:41:50 PM
I'm sure he's a good journalist, what he does in his off time is his business.... :roll:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2007, 03:51:18 PM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MEDIA MATTERS Kerry joins 'Fairness Doctrine' chorus Also wants to bring back equal-time provisions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: June 27, 2007 10:28 a.m. Eastern
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (Photo: NBC 'Meet the Press') John Kerry openly stated his support of the overturned "Fairness Doctrine" that required broadcasters in America to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance."
The Federal Communications Commission overturned the rule in 1987 because it failed to accomplish its purpose of encouraging more discussion of controversial issues. More notably, concerns were raised over the constitutionality of the doctrine because many believed it violated First Amendment free speech rights.
"I think the fairness doctrine ought to be there, and I also think equal time doctrine ought to come back," he said on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC.
Kerry's remarks can be heard in a recording posted by the Drudge Report.
"These are the people that wiped out … one of the most profound changes in the balance of the media is when the conservatives got rid of the equal time requirements and the result is that they have been able to squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views and I think its been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public eye," Kerry argued.
Kerry also favored reinstating the Equal Time Rule, which requires television and radio stations to allocate equal airtime to political candidates.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, recently introduced in Congress a plan to revive the Fairness Doctrine.
Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said this week she is considering the possibility of bringing it back.
"Well, I'm looking at it, as a matter of fact … because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side," said Feinstein in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. "And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on June 27, 2007, 05:02:26 PM
Boo-hoo, poor politicians getting their feelings hurt by talk radio. My god, it's embarrassing to listen to grown adults talk this way.
The Fairness Doctrine reminds me of New Age teachers wanting to get rid of scores in school sports events so that no kids gets their feelings hurt 'cuz they lost. Maybe if Dems would get off their lazy asses and try to put together their own A.M. radio programming they wouldn't complain...but I doubt that's gonna happen.
Jeez, it's enough to make you wanna move to a frickin' desert island sometimes.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2007, 08:43:33 PM
The dems have tried. Air America has gone bankrupt how many times now?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 28, 2007, 10:36:10 AM
Boo-hoo, poor politicians getting their feelings hurt by talk radio. My god, it's embarrassing to listen to grown adults talk this way.
I assume you're talking about Republicans, since Democrats have been getting trashed by talk radio on a regular basis for so many years now that I imagine they're used to it.
The right-wing radio hosts are acting all hurt and betrayed by Trent Lott, after all they did to defend him! (When he said "we wouldn't have all these problems today" if Strom Thurmond had been elected president.) Trent and others loved talk radio when it was working to their advantage, but now that these mass appeals to fear and ignorance are getting in the way of something they want (this immigration bill), now all of a sudden it's a problem.
Quote
The Fairness Doctrine reminds me of New Age teachers wanting to get rid of scores in school sports events so that no kids gets their feelings hurt 'cuz they lost.
Surely you are aware that the Fairness Doctrine was enforced throughout the entire history of the FCC and was only repealed in 1987, so it's nothing new. Although I do agree that the Democrats are being total pussies by trying to resurrect it now. Did the idea somehow never occur to them during the past 10+ years during which the right-wingers have dominated AM talk radio?
Quote
Maybe if Dems would get off their lazy asses and try to put together their own A.M. radio programming they wouldn't complain...but I doubt that's gonna happen.
As GM said, they did try this with Air America, and it's fallen pretty flat. Most of the shows/hosts are downright boring and, let's face, it the Democrat message is about 90% identical to the Republicans' at this point.
IMO, what's needed is not another Fairness Doctrine but stricter limits on media ownership.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 28, 2007, 12:09:34 PM
I've never been a fan of Lott, even less so with his "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” statement. I guess us uppity citizens should just shut up and let our betters in DC doing our thinking for us.
However, funny how those attacking Lott for his Strom Thurmond statement seem to give Robert "KKK" Byrd a pass.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 28, 2007, 01:06:08 PM
I've never been a fan of Lott, even less so with his "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” statement. I guess us uppity citizens should just shut up and let our betters in DC doing our thinking for us.
However, funny how those attacking Lott for his Strom Thurmond statement seem to give Robert "KKK" Byrd a pass.
I take it from the above that you are a regular listener of Sean Hannity? I know he uses that nickname a lot. I don't think Byrd should get a "pass" either, but surely you're not suggesting that this somehow makes what Trent said a-OK.
I listen to right-wing radio fairly often (it's usually a lot more entertaining than AA or NPR), and I hear plenty of callers start out by telling the host "I agree with pretty much everything you say" (a pretty f-d up thing to say so proudly, considering how often what these hosts "say" is pretty vile and racist). So clearly there are plenty of conservatives willing to let the Hannitys and Savages do their thinking for them.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 28, 2007, 01:17:56 PM
I can't stand "Savage" for more than 30 seconds. Don't catch Hannity that often. I take "Savage" to be something akin to Phil Hendrie rather than legitimate commentary. I'm curious what exactly Sean Hannity has said that you consider to be racist? I doubt very much the majority of talk radio listeners have the talk show hosts "doing their thinking for them". People who like talk radio tend to read and think and also trend upwards in income from the general population. Check the demos.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 28, 2007, 02:13:08 PM
Yeah, I honestly can't think of anything particularly racist from Hannity, as opposed to Savage, Rush, or Glenn Beck.
I know what you mean about Savage. Seriously though, what would you say about a person who claims to agree with him pretty much 100%? Whether or not his radio persona is just an act, it's clear that a lot of people see him as validating beliefs they take seriously.
Not to mention that the owners of these stations are Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), Clear Channel, etc. You'd think Imus' infamous "nappy-headed hos" comment was the first time they realized that some of their hosts are right-wing wackos!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 28, 2007, 02:35:45 PM
Imus wasn't/isn't anywhere near politically right. The "nappy headed ho's" comment was a joking hip-hop reference, so i'm not sure how you are putting him into the "right-wing wacko" grouping. I'm still curious what Sean Hannity has said that you consider racist.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 28, 2007, 02:44:12 PM
I'm still curious what Sean Hannity has said that you consider racist.
Did you read the first line of my last post?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 28, 2007, 02:47:56 PM
Sorry, I meant Beck. I'm assuming with Limbaugh, you're referring to his NFL quarterback statement, or is there something else?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 28, 2007, 02:50:43 PM
I'm multi-tasking right now..... :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2007, 04:21:36 PM
For the record, IMHO
a) Strom Thurmond was a nasty cracker b) Robert Byrd is a gaseous windbag, a hypcirite and an unprincipled slut c) Trent Lott is an unprincipled slut d) Sean Hannity, after a decent start, has rapidly become an unprincipled slut and partyline hack. e) I've never heard Savage and only heard Beck once. His IQ seemed quite moderate. f) Who is Phil Hendrie? g) Sometimes Rush is a windbag. Sometimes he is a partyline hack. Often he has some good points.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 28, 2007, 05:05:04 PM
****Phil Hendrie did the funniest stuff on radio i've ever heard. He'd get callers all the time that didn't know it was a joke a bait them into rage.****
Phil Hendrie From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Phil Hendrie Philip Stephen Hendrie (born September 1, 1952, Arcadia, California) was the host of The Phil Hendrie Show, a comedy talk radio program that was syndicated throughout North America on Premiere Radio Networks and on XM Satellite Radio. While The Phil Hendrie Show became renowned for its unique and controversial guests, those guests were not real people at all—they were fictional characters created and voiced by Hendrie himself. Hendrie has performed voices on the animated FOX sitcoms King of the Hill and Futurama, and in Team America: World Police. In Spring of 2006, he had a supporting role in the live-action NBC sitcom Teachers. Hendrie was married in 1997 to radio talk show host Maria Sanchez. Their wedding was held at the Queen Mary and was broadcast live on KFI. Hendrie moved from Minneapolis and then to Miami where he further developed his show. The show then moved to KFI in Los Angeles and was nationally syndicated to approximately 100 radio stations. In February 2005, Hendrie was moved from his flagship station, KFI, to XTRA Sports 570 AM, a sports talk radio station also centered in Los Angeles. In early 2006, Hendrie announced that he would be ending The Phil Hendrie Show, feeling he had reached the limits of what he could do in "terrestrial talk radio" and expressing a desire to shift his career focus toward acting. His last radio broadcast was June 23, 2006. [1] On December 4, 2006, in a radio interview, he mentioned that he may soon be returning to radio, but the show will not include his character skits. On June 4, 2007, it was announced that Phil Hendrie will return to radio June 25, 2007 from 10 PM to 1 AM PST on Talk Radio Network-FM, with shows airing weeknightly. However, the new show, while more lighthearted than most other talk radio shows about news and politics, does not have any comedic intent like his previous show, and Phil does not performs character voices in the new show.
Hendrie considers his views unique for modern talk radio: on one hand, he is a registered Democrat who vocally supported Bill Clinton, voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000, both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and Michael Dukakis over George H.W. Bush (although Hendrie claims "I had to hold my nose when voting for Dukakis"). Hendrie is also adamantly pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and pro-amnesty for illegal immigrants. At the same time, he is extremely supportive of the Iraq War as well as the War on Terror. He voted for and supported President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, chiding Democrat John Kerry as trying to be "all things to all people" and cautioning listeners that Bush would in time be viewed as one of the greatest American presidents. These views caused a stir among some of his fans and tended to dominate his show throughout 2002 and 2003. Hendrie eventually started a blog, titled and located at www.georgewbushisgod.com (seemingly to incite those who felt he was moving too far to the right). The blog came down after a few weeks, partly because Phil was tired of squabbling with readers. Hendrie has since renounced using his radio program for political ranting, saying that he didn't want to be "another white man all mad and ready with the answers" in a 2006 live chat with fans. [edit]New Direction
Phil Hendrie announced his retirement from radio in order to pursue an acting career. His last show aired on June 23, 2006, although his former flagship, KLAC in Los Angeles, continued to air reruns of Hendrie's programming in its original timeslot until November 2006. In addition, until February 2007, News/Talk 610 CKTB (AM), in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, continued to air a show of specially selected Hendrie bits - called 'Phil Hendrie By Demand' - four hours a week on Saturday evenings. Hendrie played a starring role in NBC's short-lived midseason replacement sitcom, Teachers, in the spring of 2006. He has also completed pilots for 'Three Strikes', and 'Giants of Talk Radio'. Hendrie has also completed a role in a Will Ferrel film. Phil also guest starred in two episodes of The Unit that originally aired October 10th and October 31st, 2006. He played the part of a radio talk show host on a military base. Phil has also guest stared in several episodes of Matt Groening's cartoon show Futurama voicing different members of a hippy family known as the Waterfalls. The Phil Hendrie Show is downloadable in mp3 format, starting with his October 4, 1999 show, at Phil's official web site. [2] [edit]Phil in the Blogosphere
Hendrie has maintained several blogs, including www.georgewbushisgod.com and, later, www.herbsewell.blogspot.com (named after one of his more infamous characters, a paroled child molester). Beginning on May 29, 2007, the blog featured an ad proclaiming Hendrie's return to the airwaves on June 25 on the Talk Radio Network. On June 26, 2007, the blog was removed for fear of negative publicity.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 28, 2007, 05:48:53 PM
Woof GM,
It's not like I can search around and come up with an instance of Rush, Beck, Savage, or whoever calling somebody a "nigger" or engaging in that kind of overt racism. They know that's not allowed and of course they're careful to not do it. It's mostly in the various little songs and fake ads they have, when one of them mimics a Mexican or an Arab, plays a recording of some hispanic politician's speech with mariachi music added in the background, etc. It's the kind of thing you have to listen to these shows for a while to pick up on.
But regardless, I don't see the right-wing radio hosts or their views as the problem, but that they get to present their spew with no requirement that any opposing views be presented. Sure they can (and do) take calls from liberals, but this is the "opposing view" being presented completely on the host's terms. After all, it's their show.
So what if the FD were implemented in such a way that for every hour of right-wing radio, the station were required to broadcast a 10-minute "rebuttal" that the show's host has no control over? This wouldn't be just one-sided either, i.e. Anne Coulter could have the last 10 minutes of the CNN news hour (or whatever "liberal media" show) to respond to anything she wants. Obviously (as SB_Mig said) the devil is in the details, but the idea is that nobody gets to spew a bunch of outrageous BS without somebody getting the chance to call them on it at the time.
Rog
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on June 28, 2007, 06:50:51 PM
Woof Rog, I think you answered yourself with this quote:
Quote
I don't see the right-wing radio hosts or their views as the problem, but that they get to present their spew with no requirement that any opposing views be presented. Sure they can (and do) take calls from liberals, but this is the "opposing view" being presented completely on the host's terms. After all, it's their show.
Emphisis on "after all its their show" When you start requiring rebutal and all else as you suggested then it ceases to become "Their show". Probably sponsers and the bottom line, MONEY are quite a factor here. I think it pretty simple that if its worth anything to the person putting out their agenda....say the left,they could do it just as easily as the right simply by doing the same things.......and of course funding it........that is if it means so much to them and their cause. Beats the crap out of constant whining "its not fair" :| TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 29, 2007, 12:04:52 AM
Woof Rog, I think you answered yourself with this quote:
Quote
I don't see the right-wing radio hosts or their views as the problem, but that they get to present their spew with no requirement that any opposing views be presented. Sure they can (and do) take calls from liberals, but this is the "opposing view" being presented completely on the host's terms. After all, it's their show.
Emphisis on "after all its their show" When you start requiring rebutal and all else as you suggested then it ceases to become "Their show".
It may be "their show", but it's being broadcast on airwaves owned by the public. That gives us some say over how it goes.
I don't understand. The host wouldn't be required to do or say anything different, there would just be a small part of the show devoted to an opposing view over which the host has no control. Why should any honest person fear this? If the conservatives have the same right to call "the liberal media" on whatever they want, then what's the problem?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2007, 04:31:07 AM
And why not have the NY Times be required to give 15% of its space to different points of view? As for the small detail about whose point of view goes in that 15%, well no doubt the State can handle that , , , :roll: The problem is that experience shows that the FD didn't work very well. It simply caused the stations to lessen the amount of coverage they gave to controversial subjects.
As Air America showed, the reason talk radio is what it is, is that America wasn't very interested in the message-- and its not my sense of America that the government should intervene in what people listen to.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on June 29, 2007, 09:44:54 AM
Quote
It may be "their show", but it's being broadcast on airwaves owned by the public. That gives us some say over how it goes.
Absolutely. But that is why ratings exist. Obviously, if a show is popular people want to hear the message. I listen to right wing radio just as I listen to sports radio, pop music, NPR, etc. If I'm not interested in the message or music, I change the station.
The market (i.e. the public) should be the deciding factor, not the government.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2007, 10:43:04 AM
Opinion Journal of the WSJ:
A Subject Made for Talk Radio
"There's nothing fair about the Fairness Doctrine," is how Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican and former talk-show host, put it yesterday before the House voted 309 to 115 in favor of his bill to block any future president or the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the 1949 Fairness Doctrine, the regulation that for some four decades stifled discussion of controversial issues on the airwaves by requiring broadcast stations to provide "equal time" for opposing commentary.
Democrats, many of whom are sympathetic to muzzling conservative talk radio, were spooked by the power of hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to make their lives miserable. Even Democratic Rep. David Obey put on a brave face as he rose to support the Pence bill. "Rush and Sean are just about as important in the scheme of things as Paris Hilton," he told the House. "I would hate to see them gain an ounce of credibility by being forced by a government agency or anybody else to moderate their views enough that they might become modestly influential or respected."
Mr. Obey is, of course, fooling himself. It was precisely the fear of populist talk radio that compelled over half of Democrats in the House to back the Pence bill rather than court the anger of the airwaves.
If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't duplicate the Pence bill in the Senate, he'll be missing a great political opportunity. The Senate is a hotbed of pro-Fairness Doctrine sentiment. In recent days, John Kerry, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California have all touted its revival. "In my view, talk radio tends to be one-sided. It also tends to be dwelling in hyperbole. It's explosive. It pushes people to, I think, extreme views without a lot of information," Ms. Feinstein recently said.
In the language of politicalspeak used by most Members of Congress, what Ms. Feinstein was really saying is that talk radio has gotten too powerful and it's time radio hosts were sent a warning that it's incumbents in Congress who write the rules that determine whether they can stay in business or not.
Mr. Pence's successful effort is just the latest embarrassment the Democratic House majority has suffered at the hands of the Republican minority. "Republicans sure know how to be an effective minority better than the Democrats did," complained Democratic Rep. Zack Space of Ohio.
For now, the Fairness Mongers and their Democratic Congressional allies are clearly on the defensive.
-- John Fund
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 29, 2007, 12:06:41 PM
My biggest beef with the "Fairness Doctrine" is that gov't burecrats will be parsing speech and deciding "what's fair" in response. Political speech isn't binary code. It isn't as simple as a President's speech and the democrat's response.My favorite talk show commentator isn't nationally syndicated, he the closest i've found to representing my point of view so is that "unfair" that he doesn't have a nat'l show?
http://www.850koa.com/pages/shows_rosen.html (A Jewish conservative from New York)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on June 29, 2007, 10:29:39 PM
The market (i.e. the public) should be the deciding factor, not the government.
I agree in thory, but is that what you see happening now? Of all the AM radio political talk radio stations where I live, one is liberal (Air America, at least), one is mostly middle-of-the-road, and *three* are conservative. And this is in the SF Bay Area, not Texas. I'm not sure how the "market" in the most liberal area of the country somehow decided that more than 60% of it's AM talk radio should consist of hard core right-wing shows.
I confess I don't know exactly how we'd decide who would provide the "rebuttals" in my suggested scheme, but do any of you agree that this would be a good thing if done fairly? I hear all the right-wingers in this forum barking about how dishonest and biased the media is against their views, and I'm offering you the (hypothetical) chance to show everybody what frauds they are on their own shows (and of course vice-versa for the liberals). What's the problem?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2007, 11:08:31 PM
The problem is that no one would agree on what is "fair". The problem is the government imposing speech.
" I'm not sure how the "market" in the most liberal area of the country somehow decided that more than 60% of it's AM talk radio should consist of hard core right-wing shows."
That's the mystery of it all :-D That you (or I) do not understand it is irrelevant. To think that we can is what Hayek called "the fatal conceit".
In this case you don't know how what is unfair and unbalanced would be decided; you don't who would decide it; and you don't know who gets to choose who gets represent the other side-- or even that there will only be two sides!-- and you want to put the government in charge anyway.
:roll:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 02, 2007, 10:11:53 AM
Funny isn't it. No mention of Pelosi here - just a Republican Presidential candidate shortly after he mentions his run:
What a joke no? "Fairness doctrine". It only applies when the left criticizes the right. There is no fairness on CNN. The NYT. MSNBC. But that is OK - but wait when we speak of conservative talk radion now we are only getting one side of the story. I am glad the NYT tried to hit Murdoch. We need more of the press policing themselves.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on July 02, 2007, 11:55:32 AM
Quote
" I'm not sure how the "market" in the most liberal area of the country somehow decided that more than 60% of it's AM talk radio should consist of hard core right-wing shows."
While it would seem natural, a majority lean in one direction or other politically does not necessarily translate to other areas. IMHO this conservative lean shows that while the populace may be liberal, the people listening to the stations (and setting the ratings) are not. Also, the range of the stations goes far beyond SF which would take it into more conservative parts of NorCal, thus reaching a different demographic.
As for police-ing the airwaves, how would we decide who decides what is "fair and balanced"? Seems like we are creeping back into the area of censorship...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on July 02, 2007, 08:25:13 PM
" I'm not sure how the "market" in the most liberal area of the country somehow decided that more than 60% of it's AM talk radio should consist of hard core right-wing shows."
While it would seem natural, a majority lean in one direction or other politically does not necessarily translate to other areas. IMHO this conservative lean shows that while the populace may be liberal, the people listening to the stations (and setting the ratings) are not. Also, the range of the stations goes far beyond SF which would take it into more conservative parts of NorCal, thus reaching a different demographic.
Totally makes sense. I was mostly trying to make the point that conservative talk radio is dominant even in the most liberal part of the country, so I can only imagine it being moreso in places known for being conservative.
Quote
As for police-ing the airwaves, how would we decide who decides what is "fair and balanced"? Seems like we are creeping back into the area of censorship...
Here's what seems like a reasonable summary of the Fairness Doctrine. This 1969 case where it was upheld is interesting:
"The FCC fairness policy was given great credence by the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case of Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC. In that case, a station in Pennsylvania, licensed by Red Lion Co., had aired a "Christian Crusade" program wherein an author, Fred J. Cook, was attacked. When Cook requested time to reply in keeping with the fairness doctrine, the station refused. Upon appeal to the FCC, the Commission declared that there was personal attack and the station had failed to meet its obligation. The station appealed and the case wended its way through the courts and eventually to the Supreme Court. The court ruled for the FCC, giving sanction to the fairness doctrine."
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I'm not sure how the FD was actually enforced in practice, but I don't think there was some "Ministry of Truth" or political officers monitoring every political broadcast. It sounds like it amounted to (1) a requirement that stations presenting specific political viewpoints show proof of having sought out some opposing views as part of their license renewal, and (2) the right to sue if somebody trashes you without giving you a chance to respond. To interpret this as a violation of the First Amendment seems like an extreme view to me.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2007, 12:18:11 AM
I very vaguely remember the Red Lion case from law school.
I think what you are missing is that in practice stations simply avoided controversial subjects.
There are additional good reasons to oppose the FD, but for the moment I will point out that its logic was that of a time of limited bandwith. In most markets, there were only 2-3 TV stations and AM radio, so a superficially plausible case could be made for the FD. Today however we have the internet, Sat Radio and more. Like so many regulations undertaken by the State, the FD is a solution in search of a problem.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on July 03, 2007, 10:36:12 AM
I think what you are missing is that in practice stations simply avoided controversial subjects.
Can you provide an example?
Quote
There are additional good reasons to oppose the FD, but for the moment I will point out that its logic was that of a time of limited bandwith. In most markets, there were only 2-3 TV stations and AM radio, so a superficially plausible case could be made for the FD. Today however we have the internet, Sat Radio and more.
Agreed, but specifically wrt broadcast media, along with the growth in the number of stations there's been a corresponding concentration of ownership of these media in fewer hands, which if anything has made the barrier to entry even higher than it was in 1949. The barrier to entry for the internet is sufficiently low that no such balance requirement is necessary, but I think there remains a good case for enforcing this in broadcast media.
Again, I can't believe the Savages and Hannitys are seriously worried about being booted off the air by some "thought police". The question is how long they (or their liberal counterparts) would be able to get away with making outrageous claims and trashing people if even some small part of their show had to consist of a rebuttal over which they had no control. Nobody who didn't want to listen to it would be forced to do so, so I don't see how anybody can claim this is "censorship".
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 04, 2007, 07:05:23 AM
Rogt,
Do you trust the government to regulate your speech?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2007, 08:54:47 AM
MD: I think what you are missing is that in practice stations simply avoided controversial subjects.
ROG: Can you provide an example?
Tough to give and example of something that didn't happen :lol: More seriously now, the point is that, as comments here have already pointed out, the potential for hassles and disputes about who the other side is (often issues have far more than two sides) means that is that the suits who ran the networks just found it easier to avoid controversy altogether.
Quote MD There are additional good reasons to oppose the FD, but for the moment I will point out that its logic was that of a time of limited bandwith. In most markets, there were only 2-3 TV stations and AM radio, so a superficially plausible case could be made for the FD. Today however we have the internet, Sat Radio and more.
ROG Agreed, but specifically wrt broadcast media, along with the growth in the number of stations there's been a corresponding concentration of ownership of these media in fewer hands, which if anything has made the barrier to entry even higher than it was in 1949. The barrier to entry for the internet is sufficiently low that no such balance requirement is necessary, but I think there remains a good case for enforcing this in broadcast media.
Which would only arbitrarily handicap broadcast media viz the internet, sat radio, cable TV, sat TV etc. Back in law school, anti-trust law was an area of interest (indeed, my second summer of law school was in that division of the Federal Trade Commission) The issue I think you are misunderstanding is the definition of the market. The market is not broadcast media, the market is the consumer's access to news and opinion. With the internet, newspapers, sat radio, sat TV, cable TV, regular radio, etc, broadcast news simply does not have oligopolistic power. NO ONE DOES.
Again, the FD is solution is search of a problem.
Or are the cowards in Congress thinking in terms of applying the FD to ALL media?!? :? :x :x
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on July 04, 2007, 09:36:52 AM
MD: I think what you are missing is that in practice stations simply avoided controversial subjects.
ROG: Can you provide an example?
Tough to give and example of something that didn't happen :lol: More seriously now, the point is that, as comments here have already pointed out, the potential for hassles and disputes about who the other side is (often issues have far more than two sides) means that is that the suits who ran the networks just found it easier to avoid controversy altogether.
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. From the (admittedly small) glimpses I've seen of how the Vietnam War, Civil Rights struggles, etc. were covered back in the 60s, there was a lot less fear of controversy in the media then than there is today. I attribute some of this to the more drastic limits on media ownership that were in place back then. You had such "controversial" figures as Malcolm X being interviewed on the "Today" show (and given a fair chance to say his piece) back then. I suppose you might be able to have somebody like him on a mainstream show today, but only if a Bill O'Reilly were present to interrupt and attack basically every point he makes.
Quote
Quote MD There are additional good reasons to oppose the FD, but for the moment I will point out that its logic was that of a time of limited bandwith. In most markets, there were only 2-3 TV stations and AM radio, so a superficially plausible case could be made for the FD. Today however we have the internet, Sat Radio and more.
ROG Agreed, but specifically wrt broadcast media, along with the growth in the number of stations there's been a corresponding concentration of ownership of these media in fewer hands, which if anything has made the barrier to entry even higher than it was in 1949. The barrier to entry for the internet is sufficiently low that no such balance requirement is necessary, but I think there remains a good case for enforcing this in broadcast media.
Which would only arbitrarily handicap broadcast media viz the internet, sat radio, cable TV, sat TV etc.
Compared to the internet, any broadcast media is handicapped by the the limited amount of space and (in most cases, prohibitively) expensive access. Do you not see this crucial difference?
Quote
The issue I think you are misunderstanding is the definition of the market. The market is not broadcast media, the market is the consumer's access to news and opinion. With the internet, newspapers, sat radio, sat TV, cable TV, regular radio, etc, broadcast news simply does not have oligopolistic power. NO ONE DOES.
Yes, people can choose to get their information from sources other than broadcast media (and some do), but the fact is that most people don't. I think this has to do with the fact that TV and radio are still cheap and easy (to receive) compared to the alternative sources you cite. As long as most people are getting their information from broadcast media, I see an obligation to ensure at least some balance there. Otherwise it's just too easy for one set of political views to dominate simply because of it's commercial viability. SB_MIg's point about talk radio in the Bay Area comes to mind.
Quote
Again, the FD is solution is search of a problem.
I think there are ways to implement something like the FD in ways you would consider fair and reasonable, but what I'm getting is that your instinctive mistrust of any "government regulation" (and there are good reasons to not trust) makes you unwilling to even consider this.
Like I've asked before, wouldn't what I suggest have a positive effect *if* it could done fairly and reasonably? Let's explore that possibility a bit, if you would be so kind as to humor me.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on July 04, 2007, 11:44:34 AM
Woof Rog, I have been loosley following this conversation, and I'am just wondering if there was some mouth piece out there specificly that you would like to see get more air time thats not getting it or something specific your talking about.
The onley thing I see is that you want, or would like to have,is the right wingers checked with rebutal on their shows. Are you making the claim that the lefts view is not equally or fairley represented? I don't quite see this as true with the last election as being evidence. Besides don't you feel that people are smart enough to make their own decisions on what they choose to believe without being convinced? Obviously yourself being a good example. Minority maybe....But then did it ever occur to you that the right is really more the main stream than you may be willing to admit and that most people have no issue with what your claiming.
Did it ever occur to you that living where you do may have you a little out of touch with the other 99.9% of America TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on July 06, 2007, 03:40:03 PM
The onley thing I see is that you want, or would like to have,is the right wingers checked with rebutal on their shows.
That's something I'd like to see, but if you read my earlier posts in this thread you'll see that I advocate this for liberal as well as right-wing shows.
I don't see it as a matter of people not being smart enough to decide what to believe. What I see is a difference between the right to free speech (guaranteed by the constitution) and the right to say whatever outrageous crap you want and not be challenged or rebutted (not guaranteed).
All the time these right-wing hosts say stuff like "liberals hate America", "liberals want to see more people killed by terrorists", "liberalism is a mental disorder", etc. Sure, a liberal can call in and try to argue with the host, but the host can (and often does) interrupt or just hang up any time he wants. If a bunch of liberals are calling in at once, he's free to put the dumbest-sounding one on the air for the sole purpose of ridiculing the guy (and by extension, all liberal ideas). How much of these guys' toughness and confidence derives from having almost complete control of the exchange?
Crafty has repeatedly argued that the FD largely resulted in stations shying away from controversial political topics. I see no reason to shy away from presenting *any* topic if what you're presenting is factual information, or at least an honest point of view that isn't merely an attack or fear-mongering. But if the "controversial" material in question is mostly unsubstantiated and/or outrageous statements and attacks, and a broadcaster is shying away from presenting it because it would never stand up to any serious challenge or fact-checking, then isn't that what should happen?
Rog
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on July 06, 2007, 05:00:48 PM
Woof Rog, I would say that for the most part I agree with what your saying. Though I doubt that this would/will happen. Hopefully anyone who would here someone say "liberals hate America" or anything like this would dismiss it as worthless spew. Unfortunatly there are those types who do buy into such mindless crap. Just the same its safe to say that this probably happens just as much on the left side as it does the right......none the less theres probably an audience for everything. I think the idea that your speaking of .......checking speakers facts and content of what they are saying would best be served on a program specific setting. More or less a debate type show with a moderator or fact checker for substance. Though I think the audience for this would be limited, as well as those mouth pieces who would be willing to risk their reputations and agendas in a public forum. Hence the money factor for programming as audience equals $$$ CNN does do a show similar to this called "cross fire" righty's and lefty's square off on specific topics. I have watched this from time to time.....though I do tire when one side won't let the other present their point, by interupting them. James Carvell is usally best for this tactic. Of course you mentioned this as a problem already........So I don't have a good answer. Unfortunatly, we can not rely on others to be honest and just tell the truth and base it on FACTS. Then again if all would do this we would'nt need lawyers and courts either........ Just my opinion TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2007, 05:51:48 PM
Opinions are like *ssholes. Everyone has one. I'll choose my *sshole and you choose yours :lol: "Facts" are often a matter of dispute. IMHO this is clearly a matter for free people to work out for themselves e.g. by changing the station/channel and not for Congress or bureaucrats. If I have already decided that my orientation in tax policy is supply side, I really don't want the government decreeing that I have to listen to a Keynesian in order to hear a supply sider analysis of tax policy. As a matter of fact, I can imagine getting right prickly to anyone trying to make me listen to what I don't want to listen to.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on July 07, 2007, 05:53:16 AM
Woof, Like I said I have been loosley following this thread so I dont know all the particulars.......but I'am defintaly against gov.imposed networking....or as Crafty stated being forced to listen to the views or opinions of anyone I don't want to hear. Changing the chanel seems easiest. Besides to hear what you want to hear merly involves tuning into the station that preaches your agenda. As i previously stated theres a audience for everyone......and someone for every audience. A Aerosmith lyric says "talk with yourself and you'll hear waht you want to hear" :-D TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2007, 07:19:28 AM
Stated in non-PC English, the FD means in order to hear one point of view, you have to hear "the other" POV. Of course there are the additional problems of determining:
a) who gets to represent "the other POV" b) whether it needs to have a substantial following (of course if it doesn't it willl be litigated that it does not have a following because it hasn't yet had the govt make people listen to it :roll: ) c) what to do if there are several other POVs-- do we have to listen to all of them?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on July 07, 2007, 10:52:13 AM
I refuse to believe that a congress with an approval gap 7 points worse that Bush, coming into an important election season, that can't seem to get anything done on anything will pass freedom of speech barring legislation that will prohibit the broadcast of a No. 1 show like Rush Limbaugh for example, and make joke balancing like they lamely attempt on Jay Leno to be the law.
That it used to be the law does not prove that this genie can be put back into the bottle.
I don't find compelling Roger's argument that successful shows pick the dumbest liberal caller in order to defeat that view. In fact, these shows are loaded with real clips of liberal politicians in power, in their own words, with context largely preserved. Not with balance or equal time, but their views are discussed at length.
Missed in his analysis, it seems to me, is that the media was NOT balanced under the the last freedom of speech banning doctrine. Rush's success and now so many others is based on the fact that a very widely held viewpoint, roughly called conservatism, was and still is under-expressed elsewhere.
Nor do I find compelling that statements like Michael Savage saying "Liberalism is a mental disorder" require a response. I first do not put him in a category with conservatives. And second, if I was a liberal strategist, I would not encourage prominent liberals to get on his show and raise his stature and balance. I listened to enough Air America to know that either side can digress their message to that level, but the answer is already well stated in this thread - turn the dial, not try to regulate the hatefulness or opinions you find to be misguided.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 08, 2007, 10:28:50 AM
Hi Doug,
***Rush's success and now so many others is based on the fact that a very widely held viewpoint, roughly called conservatism, was and still is under-expressed elsewhere.***
Yes. The same for Fox network which liberals despise. Finally, there is a major news network I can turn on to hear views which more closely mirror my own unlike any other station on TV or cable. And this infuriates the left. Their bluff is called, and their hypocracy exposed.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 11, 2007, 03:53:06 PM
"A man who was engulfed in flames after allegedly crashing a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into Glasgow's airport is unlikely to survive his severe burns, a doctor who treated him said Tuesday," the Associated Press reports from Edinburgh, Scotland:
"The prognosis is not good, and he is not likely to survive," a member of the medical team that treated him at the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow said on condition of anonymity because details about patients are not to be made public.
Apparently the only details about patients that are not to be made public are the names of doctors who make details about patients public.
Political Journal, WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 12, 2007, 07:52:05 PM
http://newsbusters.org/node/14050
Courtroom Explodes in Laughter After ABC’s Sawyer Touts Fairness of Journalists
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 01:34:59 PM
Waiting for the "fake but true" leftists to chime in....Never let the truth get in the way of undercutting the war against the global jihad.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on July 20, 2007, 02:06:13 PM
Woof GM, Those that know me, know I'am certainly no "Fake but True" Lefty. However I have been thinking and rethinking......The war in Iraq and all that goes along with it...... You make an intresting comment/statement or whatever.... in your last post ,"global Jihad". I do believe in A global Jihad.....However I'am not so sure this can be won by invading and destroying countries..... Sure, I supported the removal of Saddaam Husien from power.......though I don't really view him as a jihadist......not in the truest sense of the word. Do you think honsetly a war against "global Jihad" can be won by destroying countries like Iraq? A friend once said to me......"You can kill the man but you can't kill the dream" Would you not agree that global jihad is more an ideal than an individual? TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 02:29:26 PM
Tom,
The global jihad is rooted in core elements of islamic theology, so as you point out it's an idea that transends individuals and nation-states. It's threat to our collective ideals and way of life are real so we can either choose to fight and win or lose and submit. I fear that short of nuking Mecca and killing off much or the world's muslim poplulation, nothing else will work, but trying to reform the islamic world via our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq should be tried first before we use scortched earth methods.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 02:32:47 PM
BTW, the "fake but true" reference goes back to the CBS scandal where Dan Rather tried sabotaging the 2004 election with the bogus Bush nat'l guard memos. Various figures tried to defend the memos as "fake but true".
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on July 20, 2007, 02:54:16 PM
Ok, I'am not sure I agree with the termonology.....but ok for sake of argument lets go with "reform"......How do you think weve done so far since 9/11? Would you say we are winning over the Islamic community world wide? Are you saying that sending troops into countries like Iraq is a method of reform? Please expound on that and how thats supposed to work.
Lets look ar Iraq for example......We got rid of Sadaam H. Now we are dealing with the likes of Guys like Sadr......Who would you say is/was the bigger threat? Obviously S.H. was Iraq's "president" but I feel Sadr is much more radical by was of "Islamic Jihad" How far does this go? Ever time a hardline Islamist stands up we take him out?....... I need to buy some weapons manufacturing stock! TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on July 20, 2007, 04:51:38 PM
I fear that short of nuking Mecca and killing off much or the world's muslim poplulation, nothing else will work, but trying to reform the islamic world via our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq should be tried first before we use scortched earth methods.
Nice attitude. You and Madeleine "I think the price [500,000 - 1,000,000 Iraqi children dead as a result of the economic sanctions] was worth it" Albright have much in common.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2007, 05:06:37 PM
Just briefly chiming in here. IIRC In yet another lapse of clarity and testicular fortiude, by accepting the premise of an interviewers question, Half-bright aceded to an assertion of 500,000.
As you and I have discussed on the DBMA Ass'n forum, there is no particular basis for this number. The only article I have seen that seemed to genuinely and seriously assess the human cost of the UNITED NATIONS embargo was in Reason magazine several years ago. As some of us know, Reason is a libertarian oriented publication and as such the majority of its editors and readers feel quite comfortable with Ron Paul type analysis. In other words, there is nothing in the filters through which the magazine view the world that would prevent it from finding/agreeing with very high numbers.
Instead, after concluding that NO ONE really could have a clue, the article's best guestimate was about 100,000-- unlike your assertion of children only, this number simply was of civilians.
This is still a horrendous number, but to whom should we give credit?
*The United Nations-- whose embargo it was and whose leashing of the US when it could have finished off Saddam in the Gulf War necessitated the embargo;
* Oil competitors like Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Empire who made more money due to the overall decrease in world-wide oil supplies;
*Those who benefited from the corruption of the Oil for Food program-- particularly France, the Soviet Empire and the UN bureaucracy itself all the way up to the Secretary General himself.
Lets wrap this point up and return to the subject of this thread: Media-- yes?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 05:17:00 PM
Ok, I'am not sure I agree with the termonology.....but ok for sake of argument lets go with "reform"......How do you think weve done so far since 9/11? Would you say we are winning over the Islamic community world wide? Are you saying that sending troops into countries like Iraq is a method of reform? Please expound on that and how thats supposed to work.
Lets look ar Iraq for example......We got rid of Sadaam H. Now we are dealing with the likes of Guys like Sadr......Who would you say is/was the bigger threat? Obviously S.H. was Iraq's "president" but I feel Sadr is much more radical by was of "Islamic Jihad" How far does this go? Ever time a hardline Islamist stands up we take him out?....... I need to buy some weapons manufacturing stock! TG
Non-state actors need state sponsorship. They can work without it, but having state sponsors greatly increases their range and lethality. Saddam was a state sponsor of terrorism who well might have handed off WMD technology to al qaeda, as the Clinton administration feared. Again, with core islamic theology requiring muslims to engage in jhad until the world is conquered by islam gives us few choices but to either reform islam, shatter it or submit to it. None will be easy or quick, but i'll choose the first two of the three choices.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2007, 05:22:00 PM
May I suggest that it would be a more precise formulation to say that we need to allow Islam to reforrm itself-- which can only be accomplished by sane Muslims if we defend ourselves from the insane ones?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 05:22:45 PM
As far as winning "hearts and minds" inthe muslim world. Not so much. Hard to compete with the muzzie media and what's preached in friday prayers.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on July 20, 2007, 05:23:36 PM
Just briefly chiming in here. IIRC In yet another lapse of clarity and testicular fortiude, by accepting the premise of an interviewers question, Half-bright aceded to an assertion of 500,000.
OK, she conceded to 500,000 and you say it was actually 100,000. Is your point that 100,000 is an acceptable price but 500,000 isn't?
The number of Iraqis killed in our present war is estimated by fairly credible sources (the Lancet, the British government) at well over 500,000.
Quote
Lets wrap this point up and return to the subject of this thread: Media-- yes?
So in which thread does GM's "final solution" for the Muslim world belong?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2007, 05:37:53 PM
1) My point is to challenge the 500,000 number and assert the 100,000 number. IMO Albright's brain fart on this point has greatly damaged the reputation of the US because she stupidly agreed to US ownership of the embargo, when it was a UN embargo pushed by nefarious interests (including fellow Muslim countries) and aceded to by the US. Naturally in that she was the US Secy of State, great weight was given to her words in the Arab/Muslim world precisely because it spoke deeply of poor values/poor thinking-- and just as naturally here in the US her words promptly went down the memory hole.
2) As for casulaties in the War itself, for the numbers you give please give citations for the Lancet (over which IIRC we have already jousted on the Ass'n forum) and "the British government" so stating?
3) As for which thread for GM's theory of the war, lets take it to the "WW3" thread.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on July 20, 2007, 06:06:05 PM
Woof GM, Sorry I missed your last post here. My bad. I would say thats a very lofty goal to shatter or reform the worlds largest religion. Do you honestly think were up to the task.....esp. virtually by ourselves....... I would say quality preventive messuares may best suit our purpose, as well as accurate selective targeting. Esp high profile targets like Bin Laden TG oK AGAIN MY BAD...........Move the thread. :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 06:14:06 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2007, 08:33:55 PM
ROTFLMAO!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 20, 2007, 08:47:13 PM
With that logic, the next time ABC wants to show "Apollo 13", the "we never went to the moon" loons get equal time for their drivel. "Schindler's List" grants equal time for jihadists or neo-nazis to tell "their side of the story". :roll:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 21, 2007, 06:33:41 AM
TORONTO • VisionTV says it will monitor one of its shows more closely after it broadcast a lecture by an Islamic preacher who said scripture requires Muslims to either fight jihad or finance it.
The multi-faith channel, available in 7.8 million Canadian homes, said it took the precaution following a complaint about last Saturday's broadcast of a lecture by the Pakistani fundamentalist.
In the hour-long talk, Israr Ahmad said, "Jihad in the way of Allah, for the cause of Allah, can be pursued either with your financial resources or your bodily strength when you go to fight the enemy in the battlefield.
"So jihad, the highest form, is fighting in the cause of Allah."
Mr. Ahmad runs a seminary and bookstore in Lahore, Pakistan, and his writings foresee the "global domination of Islam," compare Jews to "parasites," describe the Holocaust as "divine punishment" and predict the "total extermination" of Jews.
His followers in Canada include terror suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was arrested last summer for his alleged role in a plot to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto.
According to Mr. Jamal's wife, Mr. Ahmad was her husband's teacher and mentor.
The television program left some wondering how the Pakistani preacher, who claims that Jews control the world through a secret conspiracy involving financial institutions, made it on to Canada's government-regulated airwaves.
"Israr Ahmad is widely known for his hateful words and vilification of Jews," said Canadian Jewish Congress spokesman Bernie Farber. "We are deeply concerned that Vision would give this individual the imprimatur of Vision's credibility. It was a mistake in judgment and ought to concern all of us."
VisionTV's code of ethics forbids the broadcast of programs that glorify or incite violence or "have the effect of provoking or abetting domestic or international religious or political conflicts."
The broadcaster acknowledged that the show, Dil Dil Pakistan, had talked about jihad and fighting but said it did not contravene the station's policies against incitement because the comments were made in a historical context. But it said the show would be monitored more closely.
"We have essentially a system of flagging shows when complaints are made, where we'll watch subsequent episodes even more carefully than we otherwise do, and take extra care and caution. So that's certainly the case here," said Mark Prasuhn, VisionTV's chief operating officer and vice-president of programming.
Toronto resident Mindy Alter, however, said the message came through loud and clear when she tuned in to the show, which aired from 3 to 4 p.m. on July 14.
"The part about the jihad, he said very specifically that it is incumbent upon Muslims to wage jihad against their enemies until Islam rules supreme over the world," Mrs. Alter said.
"I'm sorry, I don't think that belonged over the airwaves of Canadian TV.... You can put that in whatever context you like. To me that's preaching jihad."
Responded Mr. Prasuhn: "Definitely, the viewer is correct. [Mr. Ahmad] does make the point about, you either contribute financially or through your body, and he uses the word fight. But none of this, as far as I could see, is in any way correlated or referenced to the present day. It is strictly a historical context and reading of the Koran by a Koranic scholar."
Mr. Ahmad is not just a religious scholar. He heads a self-described "revolutionary" organization called Tanzeem-e Islami, which wants to turn Pakistan into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
In his book Lessons From History, he writes that the revival of Islam will begin in Pakistan, because it is the only country that "has the potential for standing up against the nefarious designs of the global power-brokers and to resist the rising tides of the Jewish/Zionist hegemony."
Islam will come to rule in four stages, he claims: the Ultimate World War in the Middle East, the appearance of the anti-Christ, the extermination of the Jews and the "domination of Islam, over the entire globe."
Canadian Muslim Congress founder Tarek Fatah said Mr. Ahmad "is allied to the ultra-conservative Islamists of Pakistan. His weekly TV rants are targeted primarily at fellow Muslims, urging them to segregate themselves from non-Muslims. He is also a promoter of the doctrine of jihad, as in armed warfare against non-Muslims."
Mr. Prasuhn said the show was screened before it was aired and that no problems were identified. He said he watched the show again after receiving a complaint on Monday and did not see a problem.
"He is saying that Muslims have a duty to propagate their faith," Mr. Prasuhn said.
"Then it goes a little further. It isn't directly connected to the word jihad, but in the same paragraph or whatever he then gets into talking about [how] this is accomplished - and again he's kind of referencing Koran and history - accomplished through jihad, which means these two things, financial contribution or fighting.
"So there's a line of thought there, but it's going a bit beyond what's actually there to say he's [saying] if you respect the Koran, you need to today engage in jihad and violence and fighting with non-Muslims. That's not said.
"At no point did I hear him say anything that would reference the present day or that would reference what a practitioner of Islam should do today. Now, that's an inference one might draw, I suppose, but I did not hear it in his words."
sbell@nationalpost.com
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2007, 07:41:54 AM
Left Angeles Times:
Some in Congress pushing for reinstatement of Fairness Doctrine The influence wielded by conservative talk show hosts draws calls to reinstate the policy. By Jim Puzzanghera, Times Staff Writer July 23, 2007
WASHINGTON — It was the decision that launched a thousand lips.
In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission stopped requiring broadcasters to air contrasting views on controversial issues, a policy known as the Fairness Doctrine. The move is widely credited with triggering the explosive growth of political talk radio.
Now, after conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage helped torpedo a major immigration bill, some in Congress have suggested reinstating the Fairness Doctrine to balance out those powerful syndicated voices.
That has unleashed an armada of opposition on the airwaves, Internet blogs and in Washington, where broadcasters have joined with Republicans to fight what they call an attempt to zip their lips.
Opponents of the Fairness Doctrine said it would make station owners so fearful of balancing viewpoints that they'd simply avoid airing controversial topics — the "chilling effect" on debate that the FCC cited in repealing the rule two decades ago.
"Free speech must be just that — free from government influence, interference and censorship," David K. Rehr, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, wrote to lawmakers.
There's little chance the fairness doctrine will return in the near future, as FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin publicly opposes it and the White House wrote to broadcasters last week assuring them that Bush would veto any legislation reinstating it. But the issue has renewed debate about how far the government should go in regulating the public airwaves.
Some Democrats say conservative-dominated talk radio enables Republicans to mislead the public on important issues such as the Senate immigration reform bill.
"These are public airwaves and the public should be entitled to a fair presentation," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is considering whether the Fairness Doctrine should be restored.
Republicans say that the policy would result in censorship and warn that it could return if Democrats win the White House in 2008.
"This is a bad idea from a bygone era," Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said at a news conference last week with five other Republicans announcing legislation to block reenactment of the policy.
The FCC enacted the Fairness Doctrine in 1949 to ensure the "right of the public to be informed" by presenting "for acceptance or rejection the different attitudes and viewpoints" on controversial issues. The policy was upheld in 1969 by the Supreme Court because the public airwaves were a "scarce resource" that needed to be open to opposing views.
Broadcasters disliked the rule, which put their federal station license at risk if they didn't air all sides of an issue. Michael Harrison, who hosted a weekend talk show on the former KMET-FM in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1985, said the policy kept him from giving his opinions on controversial topics.
"I would never say that liberals were good and conservatives were bad, or vice versa. We would talk about, "Hey, all politicians are bad," or "It's a shame that more people don't vote," said Harrison, who publishes Talkers magazine, which covers the talk radio industry. "It was more of a superficial approach to politics."
The Fairness Doctrine ended during the Reagan administration. In a 1985 report, the FCC concluded the policy inhibited broadcasters from dealing with controversial issues and was no longer needed because of the growth of cable television.
"Many, many broadcasters testified they avoided issues they thought would involve them in complaints," recalled Dennis Patrick, who was chairman of the FCC in 1987 when it repealed the policy. "The commission concluded that the doctrine was having a chilling effect."
The decision was controversial. Congress passed a law in 1987 reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but Reagan vetoed it.
Shortly afterward, Limbaugh, then a little-known Sacramento disc jockey, emerged as a conservative voice on radio stations nationwide. Another failed congressional attempt to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in 1993 was dubbed the "Hush Rush" bill.
A 1997 study in the Journal of Legal Studies found that the percentage of AM radio stations with a news, talk or public affairs format jumped to 28% in 1995 from 7% in 1987. Liberal talk radio efforts, such as Air America, have struggled to get ratings.
The Fairness Doctrine seemed dead and buried. Then in January, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), who is running for president, announced that with Democrats back in the House majority, he planned to hold hearings on reviving the policy because media consolidation has made it harder for some voices to be heard. ========
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And this spring, conservative talk show hosts unleashed a campaign against the Senate immigration bill, which would have given the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Their listeners flooded the Capitol with complaints, and the bill failed last month on a procedural vote.
Bill supporters immediately lashed out at talk radio.
"Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with the problem," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). And Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said they favored restoring the Fairness Doctrine.
"We have more power than the U.S. Senate and they know it and they're fuming," conservative talk show host Savage said in an interview. The liberal bent of the mainstream media more than compensates for conservative dominance of AM talk radio, he said.
"We're going to have government snitches listening to shows," he said. "And what are they going to do, push a button and then wheel someone into the studio and give their viewpoint?"
But Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.) said the rest of the media presented a balanced view of controversial issues, and the Fairness Doctrine would simply reimpose that requirement on talk radio.
Hinchey is readying legislation to reinstitute the doctrine as part of a broad package of media ownership reforms.
"It's important that the American people make decisions for themselves based upon the ability to garner all the information, not just on what somebody wants to give them," he said.
Republicans have seized on comments like that.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), a former radio talk show host, proposed an amendment last month prohibiting the FCC from spending money to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine. It passed 309 to 115 after a parade of Republicans took to the House floor to blast calls to restore the policy. Democrats branded the vote a political stunt. Republicans tried to propose a similar amendment in the Senate last week, but Democrats blocked it .
Republicans vow to continue pressing the issue.
"The American people love a fair fight, and so do I," Pence said. "But there's nothing fair about the Fairness Doctrine."
Title: Somehow, one doubts that
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2007, 10:16:17 AM
this is what the FD advocates have in mind :evil:
POLITICAL FUTURES “I want to present a hypothetical here. I know this would not happen, but I’ll offer a compromise, the Limbaugh compromise, to the Democrats in the Senate and in the House... I will agree to pull our troops out of Iraq if you Democrats will agree to my conditions after the defeat... When al-Qa’ida celebrates after we pull out, after we admit defeat, every TV image of al-Qa’ida celebrating must be a split screen. On one side, al-Qa’ida celebrating; on the other side, I want pictures of Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and Carl Levin smiling and congratulating themselves. When al-Qa’ida slaughters Iraqis after we pull out and we see the pictures of this on TV, every TV image must show a split screen. On one side of the screen, the bloody slaughter scenes; on the other side of the screen, pictures of smiling Harry Reid, smiling Chuck Schumer, smiling Carl Levin congratulating each other with big laughs... I think that’s a reasonable compromise, and I’ve offered it here in all sincerity. If the left will agree to this compromise, I will join them in calling for a pullout from Iraq.” --Rush Limbaugh
PatriotPost.US
Title: Attorney question
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2007, 04:03:28 PM
What legal recourse (if any) does Fox network have against this? Leftist organizations are contacting those who advertise on Fox network with what sounds like to me a form of intimidation to not advertise on Fox. It is a clear and organized campaign to harrass and frighten local, small advertisers away.
What legal recourse (if any) does Fox network have against this? Leftist organizations are contacting those who advertise on Fox network with what sounds like to me a form of intimidation to not advertise on Fox. It is a clear and organized campaign to harrass and frighten local, small advertisers away.
Not a lawyer, but boycotts are a time honored tactic. I personally see nothing wrong with it. Fox has strong ratings and that's the biggest influence on advertising dollars.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2007, 07:51:11 PM
***I have no problem with that.***
Of course you don't. It's not *your* business or your website these people are trying their best to do great damage to.
That was not my question. My question what legal recourse do they have, if any?
Perhaps none. I don't know.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 27, 2007, 08:07:57 PM
CCP:
The tone of voice coming through there is rather snarky and IMO undeservedly so. Nevertheless, I'll flesh out why I have no problem with it. Its called freedom. Fox is free to do as it sees fit, and others are free to do as they see fit in response.
There is no legal remedy, nor should there be.
TAC M.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 05, 2007, 09:30:05 AM
Well I felt your first post was a bit of a brush-off. Your views on freedom of speech are well known.
I would have figured you would have no problem with it in regards to freedom speech.
I also think that Fox has an angle that implies the freedom of speech of their advertisers is being limited by those who disagree with Fox. In that regards or perhaps some other, I wondered if Fox had some cause for a civil suit.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 05, 2007, 12:02:14 PM
Anybody can sue anyone for anything in the US, however suing is one thing, winning is another.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 05, 2007, 01:24:53 PM
I have a idea!! How about instead of killing low level A'Q In Iraq........or at least in co-operation with killing low level A'Q, We go after bigger fish like the Financiers of A'Q like the gentleman Suadi mentioned in Buzzwardos post (sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz) Just in case it was missed by all the arm chair war lords heres a quote from the article:
Quote
Who is Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz? Well, he's a very wealthy and influential Saudi. Big deal, you say. Is there any other kind? Yes, but even by the standards of very wealthy and influential Saudis, this guy is plugged in: He was the personal banker to the Saudi royal family and head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, until he sold it to the Saudi government. He has a swanky pad in London and an Irish passport and multiple U.S. business connections, including to Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission.
I'm not saying the 9/11 Commission is a Saudi shell operation, merely making the observation that, whenever you come across a big-shot Saudi, it's considerably less than six degrees of separation between him and the most respectable pillars of the American establishment.
As to whether allegations about support for terrorism by the sheikh and his "family, businesses and charities" are "entirely and manifestly false," the Cambridge University Press is going way further than the United States or most foreign governments would. Of his bank's funding of terrorism, Sheikh Mahfouz's lawyer has said: "Like upper management at any other major banking institution, Khalid Bin Mahfouz was not, of course, aware of every wire transfer moving through the bank. Had he known of any transfers that were going to fund al-Qaida or terrorism, he would not have permitted them." Sounds reasonable enough. Except that in this instance the Mahfouz bank was wiring money to the principal Mahfouz charity, the Muwafaq (or "Blessed Relief") Foundation, which in turn transferred them to Osama bin Laden.
Oh wait a minute.....we are so serious about our global war on terror......oh how could I forget......were selling arms to the Saudis. :| Yep....The shootin gallery is open Partner. :-P TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2007, 05:10:37 PM
Tom:
Please forgive me, but what does this have to do with media issues?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 06, 2007, 05:25:06 PM
Guro Crafty, I have no idea. It was a posted comment on the post by Buzwardo regarding the book that mentioned the Sheik as a Saudi Finacier of AQ........I must have miss posted it on the wrong thread....my apologise...... :oops: TG In the future I promise to try to keep my comments more thread friendly with special emphisis on attention to detail. :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2007, 06:03:58 PM
Good dog! :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 10, 2007, 02:23:21 PM
**Why the media blackout on this story???**
http://minx.cc/?post=236691
Media Blackout: Google News Search Reveals Only One MSM Mention -- FoxNews, Of Course -- Of NASA's Dramatically-Revised Temperature Records Updated: That ND TV Station Reference Was Just To Say Anything's Blog Search for "NASA temperature" which should bring the story up.
Only two references: One to a ND TV station and one to FoxNews. The FoxNews link has a link for 92 related articles, but every single one of the articles that comes up is about the new claim that global warming will begin -- for reallies this time -- in 2009.
Hitting the "show omitted duplicative results" reveals one more article about the NASA scandal -- but only by conservative online magazine The American Thinker.
And Newsweek dares to call global warming skeptics reality-deniers.
Drudge could help push the word on this, of course, and shame the press into mentioning it, but he won't, because he's a FREAK weather fetishist (today's big story: the heatwave!) and because he refuses to even mention stories that blogs have publicized or broken before he knew which way was up.
The TNR thing, for example, is now in the MSM. Krauthammer covers it today. And Drudge? Boycotting the story, because he doesn't have a piece of it and even acknowledging it would imperil his rather undeserved and quite happenstancical (whatever) position as the Guy Who Makes Millions By Reading The Wires And Putting Up Links.
I'm a little tired of Matt Drudge's jackassery on both points, especially the latter one. The overweening and destructively defensive egotism of a guy who just puts up fucking links he finds on the wires is getting to be a little too much to take.
Not to kiss up to Instapundit (though I'm sending him this link), but Instapundit tries to boost blogs on his blog, pushing blog stories harder than MSM stories even if the MSM stories are a bit more interesting.
Drudge does the opposite, of course, seeing blogs as a threat.
You think Drudge has been pushing anti-Kos stories out of politics? Nope. He's pushing them out of self-interest. The DailyKos is the only blog in the world that even has a significant fraction of his enormous traffic -- pretty much Kos is the leftist Drudge -- and so he's knocking a competitor for entirely personal reasons.
Update: Rob Port of Say Anything tells me the one other MSM mention -- by a ND TV station -- really wasn't by the TV station per se, but just his own blog, which the TV station syndicates.
Here's Rob Port's post; here's the post as it appears syndicated on that TV station's page. If you go to the station's page, you'll see these blogs are not exactly prominently displayed, though I do think it's a neat idea, and a welcome one, for local TV stations to feature local blogs.
I'm not knocking the station really, just noting this hardly counts as a bona-fide MSM mention. Kinda, sorta, but not really. They just linked his blog post, as they do some of his posts. The TV station itself did not report on the story and (presumably) did not broadcast it.
So we're down to exactly one MSM mention, as far as I can tell, and honestly, it's hard even to claim FoxNews is part of the MSM. Certainly the MSM doesn't count them as such. They all think they're just GOP TV.
So, really-- zero MSM mentions of an important story about global warming.
Why?
Because sometimes relevant facts must be withheld from the public so they are not misled by trivial things like evidence, science, and actual news.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 11, 2007, 01:25:04 PM
Why The New York Times Can Legally Help The Enemy in The War on Terror
By Jeffrey Imm
In July 2007, the Washington Post gave a Hezbollah supporter full coverage of an online column on Jihadism, and in June 2007, both the New York Times and the Washington Post printed editorials by a Hamas figure.
This week, the New York Times has provided online columns on August 8 and August 9 dedicated to brainstorming new ideas on how Jihadists can attack and kill Americans. The New York Times author, Dr. Steven Levitt, a writer on economics, used his online August 8 column "If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?" to offer some new ideas to Jihadists on ways to murder Americans, and suggested some specific tactics that Jihadists can take to improve both the level of terror and effectiveness of such murders. Then Dr. Levitt invited the general public to offer their own suggestions on how Jihadists might be able to kill Americans, stating "I'm sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them." And disturbingly, many hundreds of readers obliged Dr. Levitt by offering horrific suggestions to help Jihadists. This was not yet enough for the New York Times, and so on August 9, Dr. Levitt wrote a second online column "Terrorism, Part II", where he defended his right to recommend murder ideas to terrorists, by explaining that there are a "virtually infinite" number of American vulnerabilities, and by claiming that the "terrorists are incompetent" or the "terrorism threat just isn't that great".
Not once in either column does Dr. Levitt ever use the word... "Jihad" or "Jihadists". In Dr. Levitt's view, the threat is only from incompetent criminals that he calls "terrorists", and that view of terrorists as mere "criminals" was echoed the same day by former NATO leader Wesley Clark in another New York Times column "Why Terrorists Aren't Soldiers".
America's Propaganda Vulnerability
The New York Times' online column brainstorming for ideas to kill Americans does point out a massive vulnerability for America -- the fact that during wartime, such a column was editorially acceptable and legal for public distribution.
The real question that Americans should be asking is WHY it is legal and editorially acceptable - not only for the Steven Levitt columns, but also for the Hezbollah and Hamas editorials. This goes back to the fundamental unresolved questions in the minds of a segment of the public as to: (a) is the USA at war or not, (b) if so, who is the enemy, (c) what is our war strategy against the enemy.
Wartime Responses to Aiding the Enemy
Nearly 6 years after the 9/11 attacks, the idea that we as a nation still have large segments of the population that not only don't believe the nation is at war, but also can't identify the enemy is truly disturbing. The imperative need for clear and precise executive government communication on this war is demonstrated by such New York Times and Washington Post columns. Yet there is no public outrage by the government, no public anger by the government, and nothing but silence on these columns.
Would it have been tolerable to President FDR during World War II or to President Woodrow Wilson during World War I, if the major news media were publishing editorials by the enemy, and publishing suggestions on how the enemy could best attack the nation during war? Basic American history clearly answers these questions: FDR had an Office of Censorship and Woodrow Wilson urged the creation of the Sedition Act of 1918. These were wartime measures, because the nation was at war. Moreover, the news media voluntarily complied with the WWII Office of Censorship, and worked with the government towards the shared goal of defeating the enemy.
By contrast, in today's war, the U.S. government has had to struggle to legally have the right to monitor potential saboteurs and sympathizers, and has had to struggle to retain laws to allow the FBI to effectively investigate such enemies. And the news media publishes classified information on U.S. government war strategies and on sensitive information on financial tracking of the enemy.
The Unresolved Questions That Allow Others to Define America's Position
The war against transnational Jihadists and their myriad organizations poses unique challenges in effectively defining America's wartime positions. Unlike WWI or WWII, the current war does not readily allow a nation state or nation states with a publicly recognizable army that can be defined as the enemy to be defeated. These unique challenges require greater clarity, greater precision, and greater communication from the government to the nation than any time in America's history -- regarding the state of war, the identity of the enemy, and the war strategy.
The State of War
The enemy has been precise about its goals and its objectives. Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda has declared written war on the United States not once, but twice, once in 1996 and once in 1998. These Jihadist declarations of war have been rarely discussed in the news media or in government discussions about the war. The Washington Post published the 1998 war declaration on September 21, 2001 - 10 days after the 9/11 attacks.
Moreover, Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith has also documented its goals in the Jihadist war against the United States, as well as Al-Qaeda's stated goal to kill at least 4 million Americans.
On the American side, the declaration of war was "The Authorization for Use of Military Force" ("AUMF") (Public law 107-40) passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The authorization granted the President the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against those whom he determined "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups.
The AUMF should have provided sufficient war-justification for both the American public and the news media, should the enemy be sufficiently identified. However, the AUMF never used either the word "Jihad" or "Jihadists" in defining the enemy.
The Identification of the Enemy
The AUMF provided the rationale for the current war in Afghanistan, based on American intelligence of the role of the Taliban Jihadist camps in training the 9/11 attackers, as it calls for the right to use military force against those who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the 9/11 attacks.
However, like this week's New York Times columns by Dr. Steven Levitt, the AUMF also did not use the word "Jihad" or "Jihadist". Moreover, the effort to fight the Jihadists then became tagged with the general term the "War on Terror". Furthermore, many of the government leadership speeches regarding the war have referenced the enemy as "terrorists", as "evil", and as "extremists".
General references to fighting a war against "terrorism", "evil", and "extremists" have enabled widely diverse interpretations by individuals as to who exactly the enemy is, and has allowed virtually every different pundit and commentator to come up with their own interpretation on the identity of the enemy. From the perspective of international relations, this could provide "strategic ambiguity" to allow for tactical realpolitik negotiations among nations that tolerate or host Jihadists to aid in tactical battles in either Afghanistan or Iraq. But it misses the holistic view that for the nation to effectively fight a war - they must be united in identifying the enemy.
In the case of New York Times writer, Dr. Steven Levitt, the "terrorists" that he was referring to are not a wartime "enemy", they are mere "criminals" who he no doubt sees no connection to 9/11 or the AUMF at all. More troubling is that former NATO leader Wesley Clark also views Jihadists as mere "criminals". Furthermore, the New York Times and the Washington Post apparently views neither Hamas or Hezbollah as "enemy" organizations, but apparently views their naming on the State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization as "terrorists" as a political viewpoint.
Al-Qaeda is a Jihadist Organization
The idea that Al-Qaeda is a Jihadist organization may seem to be obvious, but not to all segments of the public and to organizations influencing the government. This plays another part in the blurring of the enemy's identification. As pointed out in numerous articles, there is a large segment of intelligentsia that seeks to obfuscate the enemy's identification by arguing that there is "good Jihad" and "bad Jihad". Dr. Walid Phares' recent column "Preventing the West from Understanding Jihad" demonstrates how apologist literature has even reached the National Defense University, and how apologists argue that the proper term for "bad Jihad" is "Hiraba". Dr. Phare's column was rebutted by Jim Guiard, who argued that America is not threatened by "Jihadist martyrdom", but "Irhabi Murderdom".
As I have mentioned previously in other postings, the fundamental problem for Americans in identifying the enemy, whether it is the vacillating term "War on Terror", or the unwillingness to call the enemy "Jihadists" comes down a conflict in Americans accepting that an enemy group could be affiliated in any way with any religion. America was founded on freedom of religion; it is inherent in our identity as a nation. But in dealing with the war of Jihadists against America, it is a fact that in identifying the enemy, that the present enemy is motivated by very specific religious beliefs.
Those who seek to obfuscate the identity of the enemy argue that if you call the enemy "Jihadists", then you validate their view as being representative of all of Islam. That is a red-herring that seeks to keep Americans in denial, not only about the identity of the enemy, but also about their very real religious motivations. And so... we are left with merely fighting a "War on Terror".
War Strategy Without Agreed-Upon Enemy Identity
Unlike WWI and WWII, where the enemy was clearly identified, the transnational Jihadists are difficult for the American public to process as an enemy. Moreover, while Al-Qaeda has formal declarations of war on the United States, and other Jihadist groups declare war on the USA on a near-daily basis, the only real war declaration that the USA has is the AUMF, that never once uses the word "Jihad". Therefore, without an agreed-upon enemy identification, the U.S. government and public are at major odds as to what, if any, war strategy there should be, and not only just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in other parts of the world.
Unlike WWII, where the Nazis were a clearly designated enemy, in 2006, the Washington Post feels no wartime loyalty to preserve classified information about secret CIA prisons holding Jihadists. And that small representative example of the dysfunction in agreeing on enemy war strategy or even the identity of the enemy, has now resulted in major media publishing Jihadist editorials and now publicizing ideas to help the enemy attack and kill Americans.
Enemy Aid is the Price of Ignorance
As I have previously posted, the American public is woefully uninformed as to the scope and the magnitude of the daily World War by Jihadists across the globe. There are easily 20 to 30 Jihadist news stories most days; if the American public on average hears about 2 of those, it would be a miracle. The Jihadist World War is simply not reported as a priority by the American news media, and once again, the Jihadists have not been formally designated as the "enemy". By and large, the American news media finds the Jihadist activities in India, Israel, Somalia, Philippines, Thailand, Europe, UK, and around the world as "isolated incidents" deserving as mention (if at all) on page 30 of foreign news.
This leads to some segments of the population to view that such Jihadists have legitimate "struggles" and are not really "terrorists" either, but are "militants", whose cause deserves a voice in world affairs, as per the New York Times' and Washington Post's editorials for Hamas and Hezbollah.
The more painful realization is that the historical monofocus of Americans on their own affairs makes such world news and world threats to blur from any possible attention spans, except for the occasional suicide bombing in Iraq broadcast on cable news networks. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, when after writing a story on UK Jihadists threatening the United States, I watched a television game show with my wife, where a premed college student not only didn't know what the capital of the United Kingdom was, but wasn't even sure that the UK was actually a country at all.
Knowing your public is an important part of any public mobilization - whether it is for war - or for any other shared cause. And the New York Times and the Washington Post publications increasingly illustrate how little, 6 years after 9/11, the American public understand about the Jihadist enemy that is at war with the United States.
The price of such ignorance is to tolerate news media, public organizations, and individuals that will promote enemy propaganda, enemy incitement, and will provide information to the enemy on how to harm America, without the laws, the restraint, and the good sense to realize that all of this is unacceptable during war-time. And the price of such ignorance is a nation that is not prepared, not mobilized, and not energized for the long fight against the enemy.
In this war against Jihad, America must decide if it can continue to tolerate the price of ignorance, or if instead it is willing to make the investment in strategic war planning, communication, clear identification of the enemy and its threats, and unified purpose necessary to defeat its enemies.
Sources:
August 8, 2007 - The New York Times: "If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?", by Steven D. Levitt
August 9, 2007 - The New York Times: "Terrorism, Part II", by Steven D. Levitt
August 8, 2007 - The New York Times: "Why Terrorists Aren't Soldiers", by Wesley K. Clark and Kal Raustiala
U.S. News Media and Terror Group Figure Editorials -- CTB Posting, Jeffrey Imm
Washington Post: CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program: Controversy regarding The New York Times' decision to publish
August 23, 1996 -- "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" -- Osama Bin Laden Declaration of War Against the United States of America
Febuary 23, 1998 -Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders - World Islamic Front Statement -- Osama Bin Laden's Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans (declaring war and plans to attack the United States) -- Published in Al-Quds al-'Arabi
June 12, 2002: 'Why We Fight America': Al-Qa'ida Spokesman Explains September 11 and Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of Mass Destruction
Authorization for Use of Military Force (Enrolled Bill), September 18, 2001
September 18, 2001 - U.S. Authorization for Use of Military Force
Preventing the West from Understanding Jihad - Dr. Walid Phares
Is AQ-style Terrorism "Jihadi Martyrdom" or "Irhabi Murderdom" ??? - Jim Guirard
Why We Must Label Al-Qaeda Terrorism "Jihad Martyrdom" - Robert Spencer
2007: Strategic Thinking Needed in Fighting Global Jihad -- CTB Posting, Jeffrey Imm
9/11, Religious Faith, and Ignorance -- CTB Posting, Jeffrey Imm
9/11 and News Reporting on Jihadist Terrorism -- CTB Posting, Jeffrey Imm
By Jeffrey Imm on August 10, 2007 7:00 PM
Title: More freedom in the chinese media?
Post by: ccp on August 13, 2007, 07:39:55 AM
I find this story about corruption in China amazing because it was first reported in *Chinese* media. I would think that in the past those reporting this corruption, and not those participating in the corruption would have been the ones in trouble.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2007, 09:30:19 AM
Confessions of a BBC liberal
The BBC has finally come clean about its bias, says a former editor, who wrote Yes, Minister
Antony Jay
In the past four weeks there have been two remarkable changes in the public attitude to the BBC. The first and most newsworthy one was precipitated by the faked trailer of the Queen walking out of a photographic portrait session with Annie Leibovitz.
It was especially damaging because the licence fee is based on a public belief that the BBC offers a degree of integrity and impartiality which its commercial competitors cannot achieve.
But in the longer term I believe that the second change is even more significant. It started with the BBC's own report on impartiality that effectively admitted to an institutional "liberal" bias among programme makers. Previously these accusations had been dismissed as a right-wing rant, but since the report was published even the BBC's allies seem to accept it.
It has been on parade again these past few weeks on the Radio 4 programme The Crime of Our Lives. It included (of course) the ritual demoni-sation of Margaret Thatcher (uninterested in crime . . . surprisingly did not take a closer interest), a swipe at Conservative magistrates and their friends in the golf club and occasional quotes from Douglas Hurd to preserve the illusion of impartiality, but the whole tenor of the programme was liberal/ progressive/ reformist.
The series even included a strong suggestion that Thatcher's economic policies were the cause of rising crime. So presumably she shouldn't have done what she did?
There is a perfectly reasonable case for progressive liberal reform of penal policy. There is also a perfectly reasonable case for a stricter and more punitive penal policy.
This programme was quite clearly on the side of the former and the producer/writer was a member of BBC staff. Can you imagine a BBC staff member slanting a programme towards the case for a stricter penal policy?
The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple - much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?
They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word "liberal" would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let's call it "media liberalism".
It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmil-lan's premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.
But we were not just anti-Macmil-lan; we were antiindustry, anti-capital-ism, antiadvertising, antiselling, antiprofit, antipatriotism, antimonarchy, antiempire, antipolice, antiarmed forces, antibomb, antiauthority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place - you name it, we were anti it.
Although I was a card-carrying media liberal for the best part of nine years, there was nothing in my past to predispose me towards membership. I spent my early years in a country where every citizen had to carry identification papers. All the newspapers were censored, as were all letters abroad; general elections had been abolished: it was a one-party state. Yes, that was Britain - Britain from 1939 to 1945.
I was nine when the war started, and 15 when it ended, and accepted these restrictions unquestioningly. I was astounded when identity cards were abolished. And the social system was at least as authoritarian as the political system. It was shocking for an unmarried couple to sleep together and a disgrace to have a baby out of wedlock. A homosexual act incurred a jail sentence. Procuring an abortion was a criminal offence. Violent young criminals were birched, older ones were flogged and murderers were hanged.
So how did we get from there to here? Unless we understand that, we shall never get inside the media liberal mind. And the starting point is the realisation that there have always been two principal ways of misunderstanding a society: by looking down on it from above and by looking up at it from below. In other words, by identifying with institutions or by identifying with individuals.
To look down on society from above, from the point of view of the ruling groups, the institutions, is to see the dangers of the organism splitting apart - the individual components shooting off in different directions until everything dissolves into anarchy.
To look up at society from below, from the point of view of the lowest group, the governed, is to see the dangers of the organism growing ever more rigid and oppressive until it fossilises into a monolithic tyranny.
Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for liberty, equality, self-expression, representation, freedom of speech and action and worship, and the rights of the individual. The reason for the popularity of these misunderstandings is that both views are correct as far as they go and both sets of dangers are real, but there is no "right" point of view.
The most you can ever say is that sometimes society is in danger from too much authority and uniformity and sometimes from too much freedom and variety.
In retrospect it seems pretty clear that the 1940s and 1950s were years of excessive authority and uniformity. It was certainly clear to me and my media liberal colleagues in the BBC. It was not that we in the BBC openly and publicly criticised the government on air; the BBC's commitment to impartiality was more strictly enforced in those days.
But the topics we chose and the questions we asked were slanted against institutions and towards oppressed individuals, just as we achieved political balance by pitting the most plausible critics of government against its most bigoted supporters.
Ever since 1963 the institutions have been the villains of the media liberals. The police, the armed services, the courts, political parties, multi-national corporations - when things go wrong they are the usual suspects.
But our hostility to institutions was not - and is not - shared by the majority of our fellow citizens: most of our opinions were at odds with the majority of the audience and the electorate. Indeed the BBC's own 2007 report on impartiality found that 57% of poll respondents said that "broadcasters often fail to reflect the views of people like me".
There are four new factors which in my lifetime have brought about the changes that have shaped media liberalism, encouraged its spread and significantly increased its influence and importance.
The first of these is detribalisation. That our species has evolved a genetic predisposition to form tribal groups is generally accepted as an evolutionary fact. This grouping - of not more than about five or six hundred - supplies us with our identity, status system, territorial instinct, behavioural discipline and moral code.
We in the BBC were acutely detribalised; we were in a tribal institution, but we were not of it. Nor did we have any geographical tribe; we lived in commuter suburbs, we knew very few of our neighbours and took not the slightest interest in local government. In fact we looked down on it. Councillors were self-important nobodies and mayors were a pompous joke.
We belonged instead to a dispersed "metropolitan media arts graduate" tribe. We met over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner to reinforce our views on the evils of apartheid, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment, the British Empire, big business, advertising, public relations, the royal family, the defence budget - it's a wonder we ever got home.
The second factor that shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain's problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.
This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.
We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say "Tesco" to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, "Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers." The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers does not register on their radar.
The third factor arises from the nature of mass media. The Tonight programme had a nightly audience of about 8m. It was much easier to keep their attention by telling them they were being deceived or exploited by big institutions than by saying what a good job the government and the banks and the oil companies were doing.
The fourth factor is what has been called "isolation technology". Fifty years ago people did things together much more. The older politicians we interviewed in the early Tonight days were happier in public meetings than in television studios.
In those days people went to evening meetings. They formed collective opinions. In many places party allegiance was collective and hereditary rather than a matter of individual choice based on a logical comparison of policies.
These four factors have significantly accelerated and indeed intensified the spread of media liberalism since I ceased to be a BBC employee 40 years ago.
But let's suppose that I had stayed. Would I have remained a devotee of the metropolitan media liberal ideology that I once absorbed so readily? I have an awful fear that the answer is yes. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2240427.ece
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2007, 07:07:16 AM
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2007, 04:20:17 PM
The Windsor Hezbollah Billboard:CBS Violates Federal Law 2007-08-12 11:16am PT | Total Score: 67 points | Average Rating: 4.19 out of 5 | Post History | Visit Debbie Schlussel
By Debbie Schlussel Thanks to the many readers who sent me the Windsor Star article about the Hezbollah CBS billboard in downtown Windsor, Ontario, Canada (right over the river from us here in Detroit). The Star is an excellent paper and used to be edited by a friend of mine. I read it regularly, as the same Sharia that is beginning to be instituted here and the same Islamicization we see is magnified ten-fold just a few miles away in another country.
CBS' Hezbollah Billboard in Canad
An unidentified party paid to post a pro-Hezbollah billboard, featuring photos of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, as well as other Hezbollah officials. While that is disturbing, it really is not surprising if you've ever been to Windsor, especially lately. Hezbollah and HAMAS supporters who can't get in here, live freely over there. And others who can't get in here, regularly are smuggled through in car trunks from over there to here. And Hezbollah supporters here have training camps over there. The billboard may be against the law in Canada, where free speech laws are less absolute, but it's definitely illegal under U.S. law for other reasons.
What's disturbing is that CBS owns the billboard and allowed it to be posted. This is a violation of federal law here in America. It makes no difference that the billboard is in Canada. Federal law prohibits providing material support, including communications (such as a billboard), to terrorist groups. Hezbollah is not only on the State Department Terrorist List, it is also a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity by the U.S. Department of Treasury. Therefore, with the posting of this billboard supporting Hezbollah, CBS has gone beyond the bounds of free speech and entered the boundaries of illegality. Unfortunately, nothing will likely happen to CBS for doing so. Who enforces the laws? Well, our spineless, wimpy, partial-to-Muslims Justice Department does. They will never pursue CBS for doing so. So, CBS will get away with it.
Conceivably, a victim of Hezbollah terrorism and his/her relatives could try to sue CBS over this material support, but it's a stretch. Such a suit, though, would be interesting because it would force CBS, through discovery, to disclose exactly who paid for the billboard, and let us know exactly who is working for Hezbollah in North America--at least, in connection with the billboard. For now, you can contact CBS and protest this billboard. Ask CBS why they will allow their billboards (and who knows what other media outlets--CBS radio? CBS television network?) to be used as vessels for a terrorist group's propaganda . . . a terrorist group that murdered over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians in barracks and an embassy in Beirut, almost 100 people in the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy, and countless U.S. soldiers in Iraq against whom Hezbollah is producing IEDs.
And there is another thing not specified in the article. Windsor's Mayor, Eddie Francis, is a Lebanese Maronite Christian. He is generally a good guy, but he is under pressure from the Muslim community in Detroit, with whom he has broken bread. I'm glad to see he denounced the billboard. For him--a pro-Western Christian Arab in a city with a geometrically-growing Muslim Arab population--that was courageous and laudable. Compared to spineless politicians here, like Michael Chertoff--who regularly visits the open agents and supporters of Iran and Hezbollah--that is a breath of fresh air.
Another positive development: The Windsor Jewish community--to whom I once spoke and with whom I have a good relationship--is, unlike most Jewish communities here in America, especially in Detroitistan. They are a small community that fights against the pan-Islamist winds (in Detroit, the Jewish "leadership" embraces and bows down to those winds). They are less liberal and more proud to be Jews and Canadians. They've spoken out harshly against the billboard, whereas here in Detroit, the Jews would embrace it as a great thing (so-called Detroit Jewish "leaders," like Sharona Shapiro, regularly kiss the butts of Hezbollah's and Iran's agents and full-fledged supporters here). And for those who keep telling me that most Muslims are against terrorism, please tell me why every Muslim intervied by The Windsor Star praised Hezbollah. Most Muslims may not be involved in terrorism. But most Muslims actively cheer it on. Wake up, Dhummis (not you the readers of this site). More from The Windsor Star: Members of the Jewish and Lebanese Christian communities in Windsor are outraged by the appearance of a billboard that appears to promote Hezbollah -- an organization the Canadian government considers terrorist. "That organization is banned in Canada," said Harvey Kessler, executive director of the Windsor Jewish Community Centre. "How can that billboard be up in Windsor when it represents a terrorist organization which is banned under the laws of Canada?" Located at the southwest corner of Marion Avenue and Wyandotte Street East, the billboard does not mention Hezbollah by name, but features a central image of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the controversial political and military group. . . . Kessler said he feels Nasrallah represents "the opposite of peace. It should be offensive to all people living in Windsor. It should be offensive not only to the Jewish community, but to any Canadian." Emile Nabbout, president of the Windsor branch of the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb, said he also thinks Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and he feels the billboard creates a misconception of the views of Windsor's Lebanese community. "We really are not in support or in favour of that billboard and it should be removed ASAP," Nabbout said. . . . "By just analyzing the picture, there is no doubt in my mind this is a Hezbollah activity," he added. Printed in English on the left side of the billboard are the words: "Lebanese and Arab communities in Windsor city congratulate the Lebanese people for their steadfastness and endeavor to establish peace in Lebanon." But Nabbout said that Arabic writing which appears on the right side of the billboard does not match the English translation. According to Nabbout, the Arabic writing makes a reference to fighting. "What they mean by 'fight' is basically 'guerrilla' -- using arms and weapons," Nabbout said. "Basically, there is a very specific word... That is a definite difference between the Arabic and the English." Contacted on Friday night, Mayor Eddie Francis said he was made aware of the billboard earlier in the day. Asked if he is concerned about its presence, Francis said: "The politics of Lebanon belong in Lebanon, not on the streets of Windsor." Francis said he has no idea who was responsible for the billboard, but the city is now looking into whether its content violates any rules. . . . According to [Muslim Windsor resident Sam] Ali, the accusations that Hezbollah is terrorist are untrue. "Hezbollah is freedom fighting. Whoever calls them terrorist is a liar," he said. . . . Fellow Lebanese native and Muslim Ghina Maawie said she doesn't understand why anyone would be offended by the billboard. "When I saw it, I felt so happy and so proud of it," she said. =====================
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 17, 2007, 08:24:35 PM
In what has become practically a routine, whenever bad publicity for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) surfaces, in an almost Pavlovian response, the New York Times leaps to its defense.
As I wrote about last March in The New Republic, when CAIR had befallen several embarrassing public setbacks, including the rescinding of an award from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office and public opposition on Capitol Hill for the use of a room to host a CAIR event, the Times dispatched its reporter, Neil MacFarquhar, to resuscitate CAIR’s image.
And now that CAIR has been named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Hamas fundraising trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), and copious amounts of evidence linking CAIR to both Hamas itself and the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood have been reported, MacFarquhar and the Times are at it again, printing an article (Muslim Groups Oppose a List of ‘Co-Conspirators’) that may as well be a CAIR press release. In fact, this “story” was spurred by CAIR’s announcement that the organization had filed an “amicus” brief in the HLF trial, seeking to remove itself from the list of un-indicted co-conspirators, and folded into its press release to shore up CAIR’s ridiculous – yet typical – persecution fantasy.
Meanwhile, the Times has done virtually no reporting whatsoever since the trial began one month ago, save one MacFarquhar piece during jury selection (which I wrote about at the time), another piece of CAIR-esque propaganda:
In today’s New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar, parroting the tactic of Islamist organizations like CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), pretends to speak for all American Muslims, writing: For American Muslims, whose religion stipulates that they give 2.5 percent of their annual income to charity, the shuttering of so many of their organizations without a hearing smacks of discrimination. No attempt is even made to qualify that statement with a “some," "many" or even a "most” – apparently MacFarquhar knows how all American Muslims feel. Much of his article serves as apologia for the defendants, as well. Yet again, when given an opportunity to report on CAIR’s Executive Director Nihad Awad being officially placed by the FBI at the notorious 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Hamas activists and supporters, or the fact that there is documentary evidence consisting of official Muslim Brotherhood manifestoes from the trial directly linking CAIR with other noted American-based Hamas-front groups such as the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), the Times completely ignores the evidence and is nowhere to be seen. But when CAIR claims that the U.S. government is involved in a long-ranging conspiracy for the purposes of the “demonization of all things Muslim,” (emphasis added) then MacFarquhar and the Times are right there to serve as CAIR’s unofficial mouthpiece. As far as the Times’ readers are concerned, the free pass given to one of the most controversial and dangerous organizations in America continues unfettered. And despite the mounting and damning evidence coming to light due to the HLF trial, coupled with the already long, troubling and well known history of radicalism, anti-Americanism and virulent anti-Semitism espoused by CAIR officials, no doubt America’s “paper of record” will continue to run cover for them for a long time to come.
By Steven Emerson on August 17, 2007 2:24 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 22, 2007, 11:30:02 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 22, 2007, 11:31:40 AM
Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org) Seattle Post-Intelligencer Offers Haiku Contest - But No Help - in FBI Terror Probe
By Bill Hobbs Created 2007-08-21 20:18 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is refusing to run the photos of two men the FBI is seeking to question in connection with suspicious behavior aboard a Puget Sound ferry - behavior that could be a precursor to a terror plot, or could be nothing nefarious at all.
The Seattle PI reports the story here [1] and explains its rationalization for not publishing the photos here [2]. And - in a steller example of complete touchy-feely uselessness - the paper is holding a haiku-writing contest [3] for readers to write about how they feel about the FBI alert and the way the paper handled it.
From the report:
The FBI is asking the public for help in identifying two men who were seen behaving unusually aboard several Washington state ferries. About four weeks ago, the FBI fielded several reports from passengers and ferry workers about the men, who seemed "overly interested in the workings and layouts of the ferries," Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said Monday.
The FBI also publicized photos of the men, which were taken by a ferry employee, Burroughs said. The Seattle P-I is not publishing the photos because neither man is considered a suspect nor has either been charged with a crime.
From the excuse, er, rationalization, er, explanation by Seattle P-I Managing Editor David McCumber:
Ferry security is hugely important. So are civil liberties and privacy.
The P-I last year reported that according to a Justice Department inspector general's assessment, Puget Sound's ferries were the nation's No. 1 target for maritime terrorism.
This may well be a case of alert citizens spotting a very real threat. But running a photograph of two men who may as easily be tourists from Texas as terrorists from the Mideast with a story that makes them out to be persons of interest in a terrorism investigation seems problematic, to say the least.
Yeah. Of course it would be easier to find out which is the case if the FBI could find the guys. And it would be easier to find the guys if the Seattle P-I would publish the photos, so that Seattle-area residents would know what the men look like whom the FBI has asked the public to help them find. As it stands now, in the name of being politically correct, the Seattle P-I has decided to alarm the people of Seattle and leave them looking suspiciously at just about anyone who fits the general description of male and looking like they might be from the Middle East.
Besides, while McCumber raises the flag of "civil liberties and privacy," the men in the photo were photographed in public while on a public ferry.
There is no invasion of their privacy, nor of their civil liberties, by publishing the photos so that the authorities can locate and speak with the men.
Disagree with me on that? Consider this: If Managing Editor McCumber needed art to illustrate a story on the region's ferry system, he could and likely would dispatch a Seattle P-I photographer to one of the ferries, and publish a shot of random ferry passengers on the deck of the boat. The paper might not even bother to identify the people in the photo.
Newspapers publish crowd shots taken in public all the time without identifying the people in the photo or asking if they mind having their photo published - or knowing if they are or are not involved in some sort of criminal activity.
McCumber's excuse for not running the photos is ... beyond weak. It is a figleaf for political correctness run amok, political correctness that may compromise the security of the people of the Seattle area that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ostensibly exists to serve.
Politeness causes me to refrain from suggesting the editors of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer must be smoking something [4].
The good news: The P-I's decision to not run the photos is fueling widespread distribution of the photos in the blogosphere.
No word yet on how the Seattle Times is going to handle the FBI's request - the most recent story in the Seattle Times that seems relevant was this story [5] published August 3.
Here's more from the Jawa Report [6]. Also, the blogger at The View From Out Here, comments [7], "If we don’t know what they look like then how can we identify them? If you think they are just tourists, did you ever, on vacation, take pictures of a restricted area on a boat and tried to measure the size of the boat?"
No.
The P-I should put the security of its community ahead of the desire to not hurt some folks' [8] feelings.
Update: Michelle Malkin's excellent post [9] on the Seattle ferry story reminds us of the the Seattle Times' investigation in 2004 on reports on jihadi probing of the ferry system [10].
Update: A commenter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website notes how out of touch with reality the editors of that paper are about the new media world in which they now operate.
It's amazing to me to think that, in this internet era, the [paper] is arrogant enough to think that they can 'hide' something from the public. By not publishing the pictures, they are making themselves less relevant - additionally, through the controversy, they are making the story bigger than it would be otherwise. This is a perfect example of why newspapers, and big media in general, is losing readers by the thousands.
Neither the Seattle Post-Intelligencer nor the rival Seattle Times is the gatekeeper of information in the greater Seattle area anymore, if they ever were. Neither are any of the local TV news stations. There are just so many news outlets and distributors now - cable networks, websites of out-of-town papers, and blogs - that no matter what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did, the people of Seattle were going to see these photos.
Thus, their decision to not publish the photos does not in any way accomplish the goal that drove that decision, while simultaneously showing the people of Seattle that the paper will put political correctness ahead of the security of thousands of Seattle-area ferry commuters - and demonstrating its increasing irrelevance in the broad and varied new-media landscape.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 22, 2007, 11:54:35 AM
Makes me want to pull my own teeth out...
If the PI doesn't want to help identify the men, then why even run the story?
Ugh...it makes my brain hurt.
As an aside, I did see the story, along with photos of the men on the news yesterday.
I think that stories like this emphasize the importance of being vigilant each and everyday. You never know when your own observations may come in handy!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 22, 2007, 12:21:55 PM
My mom told me about this show. :-D I missed last nights broadcast....but she said it was very good. Muslim warriors is tonites broadcast I know.......mainstream tv :| http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/gods.warriors/ TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 22, 2007, 02:41:00 PM
Christiane Amanpour would be an example of a reporter I do not trust.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 22, 2007, 03:52:43 PM
Woof, After reading your post I read this wikipedia section on her. Why is it that you do not trust her? TG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_Amanpour
Christiane Amanpour From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Christiane Amanpour, CBE, (born January 12, 1958) (in Persian: کریستین امانپور) is the chief international correspondent for CNN.
[edit] Biography Shortly after her birth in London, her British mother Patricia, and her father Mohammed, an Iranian airline executive, moved the family to Tehran. The Amanpours led a privileged life under the regime of the Shah of Iran.[citation needed] At age 11, she returned to England to attend first the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire, England, and then the New Hall School, an exclusive Roman Catholic girls' school. Her family had to flee Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Amanpour moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island. During her time at URI she worked in the News Department at WBRU-FM Providence.
After graduation, she worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island as an electronic graphics designer.[1] In 1983, she was hired by CNN. In 1989, she was posted to Frankfurt, Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. However, it was her coverage of the Persian Gulf War that followed Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990 that made her famous. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and many other conflict zones. Her emotional delivery from Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo led some viewers and critics to question her professional objectivity, to which she replied, "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."[2]
From 1996-2005, she contracted with CBS to file four to five in-depth, international news reports a year as a special contributor on that network's newsmagazine program, 60 Minutes. These reports garnered a Peabody Award in 1998, adding to the Peabody she was awarded in 1993.
In 1993, she was also awarded the George Polk Award for Television Reporting. Again in 1996 she, along with Anita Pratap, received the George Polk Award for Foreign Television Reporting for their story "Battle for Afghanistan," which aired on CNN.
Based out of CNN's London bureau, Amanpour is one of the most recognized international correspondents on American television. Her willingness to work in dangerous conflict zones has reportedly made her one of the more highly (if not the highest) paid field reporters in the world. She speaks English, Persian, and French fluently. Forbes magazine has named her one of the 100 Most Powerful Women.
She has had many memorable moments in her career, one of them being a telephone interview with Yasser Arafat during the siege on his compound in March 2002, during which Chairman Arafat hung up on her.[1] Another was landing the first and only post-election interview of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a Western journalist in 2005, despite some trepidation that this strident disciple of the now deceased Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would raise the issue of the Amanpour family's ties to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed by a revolution led by Khomeini with Ahmadinejad's active involvement. The interview came off without a hitch.
She received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Michigan in 2006 for her contributions to journalism.
She was made a CBE in the 2007 Queen's Birthday
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 22, 2007, 04:06:37 PM
She's never found a terrorist she couldn't apologize for....Not so far anyway.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 22, 2007, 04:41:42 PM
GM, I read the article twice. I see no apolgy for terrorists there. In fact she refers to Hammas as radical and states that they have launched suicide attacks on Israel. She does state that Gaza is some of the most poverty stricken shes ever seen. I don't doubt that statement. She does make the statetment that Hamas has little chance of making things better for its people because of the cut off of aid by the U.S. ,that also is true. I don't actually view it as an apology...though I can kinda see how you may feel this way(a bit of a stretch in my opinon) I do hear her saying that without U.S. funding Hammas cannnot provide for its own. My thought there is even terrorists would like to be able to care for its people. :| Got anything else? I am listening......I'am naive to all the evils of our mainstream reporters..... TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 22, 2007, 05:51:43 PM
Tuesday, March 28, 2006 From terrorism to trash collection
You would think that after more than 50 years of one of the most intimately chronicled conflicts in human history -- Israelis vs. Palestinians -- there would be nothing new to say, no surprises. You would be wrong.
Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that has launched suicide attacks in Israel, won the Palestinian elections in January, thereby creating two firsts:
1. The first time a regime has changed in the Arab world democratically through elections;
2. The first time an Islamist group has come to power through elections.
Hamas gained support among Palestinians through two decades of building an effective and affordable social welfare system in Gaza. It runs most of the kindergartens, funds health clinics, provides welfare checks to widows and orphans, and yes, even stages mass weddings to help unemployed young men get married.
During this year's election, Palestinians fed up with the rampant corruption and lawlessness of the late Yasser Arafat's government turned to the only alternative, Hamas.
So when people ask: "Why did the Palestinian people elect a terrorist group?" The answer is because they see them as a lifeline.
Each time I go to the Palestinian territory of Gaza, I am shocked by the reality on the ground. On a recent visit, I passed through a short tunnel from the First World in Israel and emerged into the Third World that is Gaza. The poverty there is among the worst in the world.
Hamas officials told me they did not expect to win the election as overwhelmingly as they did. They say their main priority now is to meet the demands of the people for a better life.
But that may be impossible, because Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Hamas and have already cut funding to the new Palestinian government.
Posted By Christiane Amanpour, CNN Correspondent: 11:03 AM ET
****Normally, you'd have to buy an infomercial to get spin this good, unless of course you're a terrorist group and it's a CNN "journalist".****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 22, 2007, 06:52:33 PM
GM, Uh...... thats the same article you hyper linked in your previous post. :| All I get from the articel is it overstates the obvious.......Call it spin if you like.....but is there a particular part thats untrue? TG
Title: Fun w/ Grapefruit Spoons
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 22, 2007, 08:31:14 PM
Cognative . . . dissonance . . . overwhelming (Reaches for grapefruit spoon with which to self-administer a lobotomy before synapses spontaneously ignite).
Excuse me while I go find a blind person to describe color to.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 23, 2007, 02:02:53 PM
Buzwardo, Feel free to answer my question as to weather or not the article states ANY LIES, untruths....... I for one believe Hammas to be a terrorist organization.... GEEZ hopefully she didn't have to scream that in your face. ( politicaly correct?) She may get future interviews because of this....?she does get more access than a lot of reporters.
However, believe it or not....not everyone totally agrees with or sides with the jews. (Even here in God'country U.S.A.) I for one do. I also can read through the article and understand "the spin" So are you assuming that shes trying to mind bend people by wording a article a particular way........SINSTER.....will it ever stop. :lol: Then again........Of course we also know that Hammas has been a terrorist organization for a LONG time now........however we just in the last YEAR or so stopped sending aid to the palistinians :roll: I guess it was ok to send aid........until now? I wish I had more time to compose this....just don't hopefully I this makes sense and you won't need your spoon.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 23, 2007, 02:25:42 PM
Quote
....just don't hopefully I this makes sense and you won't need your spoon.
Spoon? Dude I'm torquing down a large bit in the hammer drill as I type. Excuse me while I go fade away like HAL 9000. . . .
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, please, I'm half crazy half crazy half crazy haf
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2007, 02:50:22 PM
Tom:
Speaking for myself, I have seen various reports by CA wherein in my opinion she left out pertinent facts so as to skew what the viewer would take away from the piece. I rarely watch CNN (e.g. when trapped into it while down in Peru) and no I can't quote the specific piece or subject, but I do know that I filed her under the heading of "misleading, probably deliberately so"-- not exactly solid proof I know, but OTOH I don't find her worth my time to accumulate the evidence and make the case.
TAC, Marc
PS: Buz, Tom: A gentle tug on the leash to keep the tenor of the conversation in tune with the harmonics of the "friends at the end of the day" code around here please.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 23, 2007, 03:26:01 PM
Tom,
Do you understand the connection between HAMAS and the Muslim Brotherhood ?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 23, 2007, 05:26:04 PM
GM, Truthfully, I do not know the connection between Hamas and the Muslim brotherhood......Iam intrested to hear. I don't make any claims to know more than the average Joe and the mideast is a complicated Zoo.
Guro Crafty, I do also understand what your saying and beleive it to be true. I did watch the CNN show last night Muslim warriors and thought it to be a little on the sympathetically, skewed side. I was not overly impressed.
Buzwardo can shuck insult to me all he wishes thats fine......Truth be....I do know the facts about the article posted by GM written by CA......I'am also well aware of how it was/is worded and how it sounds......but truth is the articlle may be slanted but it is not untrue.....pretty sure if it were.......some of our resident brain surgeons would have pointed it out to me rather than post nothingness. That option is still there. :wink:
Guro Crafty knows me hopefully well enough to know that just because I have taken up a position.....its not predominatly one I believe. The thing with me is I want to also know how other people think rather than take my stance and stand soley on that. Thats kinda how I try to maintain balance.......From time to time I play devils advocate to provoke what I beielve to be educated conversation. This forum IS one that gives good views and has a very solid knowledge base.......and just for the record......I consider myself a pretty conservative right winger.......(with balance) :-D Take it for what its worth. TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 23, 2007, 05:53:03 PM
The Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood
By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen FrontPageMagazine.com | June 16, 2006
On October 28, 2005,[1] President George W. Bush denounced IslamoFascist movements that call for a “violent and political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”
The Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun)[2] also known as the Ikhwan is a good example of what the President described and what he must protect us against.
The Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) organization describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and called for return to an original Islam.[3]
The Brotherhood is an expansive and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries, dedicated to creating a global Islamic order that would isolate women and punish nonbelievers. Its members and supporters founded al Qaeda, as well as one “of the largest college student groups in the United States.”[4]
The Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism, Juan Zarate, stated recently, “the Muslim Brotherhood is a group that worries us not because it deals with philosophical or ideological ideas but because it defends the use of violence against civilians.”[5] In fact, The MB 1982 secret plan, (the Project) recently exposed, instructs all members locally and globally “To channel thought, education and action in order to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.” [6]
The Muslim Brotherhood has historically and continues to actively pursue the establishment of a Muslim regime that will serve as the basis to re-establish the Caliphate, not only by defending violence against civilians, The current leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Mahdi Akef,[7] “recently issued a new strategy calling on all its member organizations to serve its global agenda of defeating the West. He called on individual members of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide to not only join the “resistance” to the U.S. financially, but also through active participation.”[8] In the MB Project (1982), Point of Departure[9] instructs members,” To use diverse and varied surveillance systems, in several places, to gather information and adopt a single effective warning system serving the worldwide Islamic movement. In fact, surveillance, policy decisions and effective communications complement each other.”
In an interview to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat,[10] an international Arab newspaper on December 11, 2005, Akef stated that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview - the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.”
To that end, Akef said, “the Muslim Brotherhood… are an all-encompassing Islamic organization, calling to the adoption of the great religion that Allah gave in his mercy to humanity.” Meanwhile, according to its leader, the MB is busily cementing its ties: “We are in the global arena, and we preach for Allah according to the guidelines of the Muslim Brotherhood. All the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the international arena operate according to the written charter that states that Jihad is the only way to achieve these goals[11]. “Ours is the largest organization in the world,” he said.
Akef emphasized, “A Muslim in the international arena, who believes in the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood is considered part of us and we are considered part of him[12].”
In earlier interviews, ‘Akef called the U.S. “a Satan that abuses the religion.” He said: “I expect America to collapse soon,” declaring, “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America[13].” Although U.S. observers often view the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Hamas as less violent than al-Qaeda, the Brotherhood has long been actively supporting global jihadi efforts. “Prior to the U.S.-led attack on the Taliban regime, the Muslim Brotherhood actually had training camps in Afghanistan where it worked with Kashmiri militants and sought to expand its influence in Central Asian states, especially Tajikistan.”[14]
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Muslim Brotherhood reacted to Hamas’ January 2006 electoral victory as not merely as a local achievement, but “a victory of the Islamic nation in its entirety,[15]” and as an expression of the concept that “the path of Islam is the true solution.”
As the parent of all Sunni and many other Islamist terrorist groups, the MB, to deflect attention, uses its long-term strategy, known as “flexibility”[16] (muruna[17] in Arabic). This chameleon-like adaptation is tactical moderation with the ultimate objective of complete Islamization of society.[18] Indeed, the MB’s 1982 project calls on members “To reconcile international engagement with flexibility at a local level.”[19]
Today, when the West focuses on Islamist terrorism, the MB usually refrains from publicly advocating violence. The MB’s 1982 Project, calls on its members “To master the art of the possible on a temporary basis without abusing the basic [Islamic] principles… we should not look for confrontation with our adversaries, at the local or the global scale, which would be disproportionate and could lead to attacks against the dawa or its disciples.”[20]
As stated on its charter and its website, the MB seeks to install an Islamic totalitarian empire, a worldwide Caliphate, through stages designed to Islamize [21] targeted nations by whatever means available.
A principal danger of MB activities is that they are hidden behind “religious” ideology. Moreover, this ideology dictates concealment (Kitman).[22] In fact saying, “we should keep hush-hush on things that are still in preparation.” This ideology controls every aspect of life and seeks to impose that control on everyone.
In the end, the MB intends to overthrow all secular governments and impose Islamic law (Shari’a) worldwide, and it is diligently pursuing this goal. In July 2005, former Kuwaiti minister of education Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab'i,[23] wrote in the Arabic London daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology." Thus, on its website,[24] the MB advocates, “Establishing the Islamic government.”
“Building the Muslim state…Building the Khilafa…Mastering the world with Islam,”[25]; however, would necessarily deprive Americans of their First Amendment, rights.[26] The first clause in the Amendment states there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The First Amendment also upholds an individuals’ right to religious freedom. But as determined by its doctrine, the MB would exploit that right—along with First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly—to actively seek the imposition of laws that would deny religious freedom to everyone else.
Moreover, the MB guiding principles celebrate its major [and continuing] role in the struggle to liberate Muslims lands. The ikhwan's bravery in the 1948 Palestine war has been recorded by all sides. The total number of volunteers from the ikhwan in 1948 numbered 10,000 from Egypt, Syria and other countries. In addition to participating in the battle to liberate Palestine, they served to raise the consciousness of Muslims all over the Islamic World and restore to them the spirit of struggle and dignity. The ikhwan have played a role in liberating Muslim lands from colonialist powers in almost every Muslim country. The ikhwan were active amongst Muslims in Central Asian Muslim republics since the '70s, and their involvement can be seen recently in such republics as Tajikistan. More recently they had a major role in the struggle for Afghanistan and Kashmir[27].
Clearly, the MB strives for Muslim supremacy, often violently.
The MB’s readiness to use violence was demonstrated in the U.S., in 1993 with the bombing the World trade Center in NYC. Exiled MB leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in U.S. prison for plotting this attack, also planned to blow up bridges and tunnels in Manhattan.[28] Since then, the MB affiliated groups in the U.S., focused their activities and agenda to condition American minds and behavior to create an Islamic foundation from which violence can spring when the time is right.
And future violence is all but guaranteed: In 2004, MB leader Mohammad Mahdi Akef publicly promoted “Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, called for the destruction of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.”[29]
Actively promoting its radical religious ideology, the MB may well meet the definition of a “terrorist organization,” under the Patriot Act, even though it has not been so designated by the U.S. government. The law stipulates “terrorist organizations to potentially include terrorist organizations not designated by the Secretary of State …A group that is engaged in terrorist activities might not be designated as a terrorist organization because, inter alia, the group’s activities escape the notice of U.S. officials responsible for designated organizations as terrorist; the group has shifting alliances; or designating the group as a terrorist organization would jeopardize ongoing U.S. criminal or military operations”. [30]
Terrorist organizations are legally defined as groups of two or more individuals that have “committed, incited, planned, prepared, gathered information or provided material support for terrorist activities.” However, terrorist activity can in some instances include even “indirect” actions such as group membership and advocacy. [31]
In addition, the REAL ID Act of 2005 significantly expanded the legal definition “terrorist organization” as it pertains to U.S. immigration law. “Terrorist organizations” now include any group that solicit funds or memberships for either terrorist organizations or activities, or otherwise provide them material support. The definition now covers groups with subgroups engaged in terrorist activities, too. [32]As we discuss below, the MB has many such subgroups and has spawned many offspring— thus the MB and all its offspring now seem to fit these legal criteria.
The definition of “engaged in terrorist activity” was also broadened under the Real ID Act, to include belonging to, associating with, soliciting or recruiting for, or giving material support to a terrorist organization or even a single member, including non-designated terrorist organizations. Furthermore, if they so claim, the burden is now on aliens to prove that they could not reasonably have known that their actions supported a terrorist group. [33]
The Caricatures Riots
The riots following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in the then obscure Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, [34] in September 2005, should have surprised no one. In fact, the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe, in line with the MB agenda, were planted long before the cartoons were published.
In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and leader of Hizb ut Tahrir (a radical group that works to establish the Caliphate), Sheikh Issam Amayra, from the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, called upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war, according to his sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.
Amayra’s sermon warned that: “…the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. Yet they managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country in order to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”
Amayra continued, “Afterwards the citizens of the Caliphate (which will be raised in Denmark) will wage war on Oslo, and after they change that city’s name to Medina [for the Arabian holy city] they will fight their neighboring Scandinavian countries in order to join their lands to the territory of the Caliphate. In the next stage, they will wage a holy war and spread the message of Islam to the rest of Europe, until they reach the original city of Medina. Then they will join both cities under the banner of Islam.”
Clearly, the riots in Denmark and throughout the world were not spontaneous, but planned and organized well in advance[35] by Islamist organizations that support the MB, and with funding mostly from Saudi Arabia.[36]
The MB and its offspring organizations employ the Flexibility strategy in the U.S. and wherever they operate. This strategy calls for a minority group of Muslims to use all “legal” means to infiltrate majority-dominated, non-Muslim secular and religious institutions, starting with its universities. As a result, “Islamized” Muslim and non-Muslim university graduates enter the nation’s workforce, including its government and civil service sectors, where they are poised to subvert U.S. law enforcement agencies, intelligence communities, military branches, foreign services, and financial institutions.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 23, 2007, 05:57:54 PM
Congressional plans to outlaw material support for designated terrorist groups and their leaders in 1996 caused a stir for leaders of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), evidence released Wednesday shows.
The foundation and five of its officials are on trial for violating that law, as they stand accused of providing material support to Hamas. In a telephone call intercepted by FBI agents under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, HLF founder Shukri Abu Baker discusses the legislation with HLF officer and fellow defendant Ghassan Elashi and an associate named Thomas Mohamed. “Up to this point,” Baker said, “the law differentiates between…for example the charitable and let’s say military wings of any organization…But after this passes, it will be the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re supporting charitable. It’s the same as long as that organization is named a terrorist organization.”
The defense insists it raised money solely to feed and care for needy Palestinian families and did not work in league with Hamas. The media, Baker said in the 1996 call, “is going out of its way to establish a link…between the Holy Land Foundation and, and, and other organizations. So this is not for nonsense. There is a purpose.” The media, in this case, is the Dallas Morning News and IPT Executive Director Steven Emerson. Morning News reporter Gayle Reaves had interviewed Baker two weeks earlier.
Other evidence released in the trial shows HLF repeatedly turned to Hamas members and affiliates for fundraisers. Its officials attended a secret 1993 meeting of Hamas members and sympathizers in Philadelphia to discuss ways to derail the new Oslo Peace Accords. And documents seized from HLF offices and other defendants show HLF and other U.S.-based Muslim groups were part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. Hamas is a Brotherhood offshoot.
But Baker and his HLF associates weren’t going to tell Reaves that. Baker briefed El-Mezain about Reaves’ questions in a call two days after her interview. They agreed that El-Mezain wouldn’t talk to Reaves:
“Tell her, ‘I called him and he is not scared of you,’” El-Mezain instructed, “‘but he has no time to see you.’”
Something else El-Mezain said in that call is revealing: “Tell her…I mean, regarding donations to Hamas at the time were not illegal. Also, in truth, they are an honor to the entire Palestinian people in the first place.”
Other testimony Wednesday from FBI Special Agent Robert Miranda focused on HLF’s efforts to protect its cover.
In July 2000 Baker hired a private investigator to check HLF office for bugs or other forms of surveillance. “The Basic RF Counter-Surveillance Sweep determined that certain aspects within the facility, and therefore the Foundation, have been under technical surveillance by unknown entities, for an undetermined period of time. At the time of the sweep, certain recommendations were made regarding these findings, as well as some general suggestions,” wrote Shihan Hale, president and CEO of the Executive Protection Group, Inc. in Dallas.
Hale offered a second title under his signature, that of Regional Director of Security for the Muslim American Society (MAS).
Evidence previously admitted in the trial shows MAS tasked as part of a “Confrontation Work Plan” in the agenda of a July 30, 1994 meeting of the Palestine Committee. “The activation of the role of MAS” is called upon “to educate the brothers in all work centers, mosques and organizations on the necessity of stopping any contacts with the Zionist organizations and the rejection of any future contacts…”
Court was dismissed early today and will resume Monday.
By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) on August 23, 2007 10:15 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 23, 2007, 06:07:44 PM
The MB has a global reach and HAMAS is just one of it's faces. Not that you'd know that by watching CNN..... :roll:
Aside from that, it's just like the United Way with bomb vests. Good reporting there.
Title: Disambiguation on Parade
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 23, 2007, 06:18:43 PM
Ya know Tom, if you think those are insults you really don't want to get next to me when I'm flinging food around a kitchen. Drill Instructors are dilettantes who stop by during the dinner rush to see how it's really done, and usually leave crying. Consider my recent mewlings the written equivalent of Edvard Munches "The Scream."
As for why I've failed to answer the "why is water wet" kinds of questions you've been posting, the answer is because doing so provides nothing of value to me. I've done my share of circular dances with clumsy rhetoricians here and elsewhere; laps around those tracks have never brought me anything but increasing horror with the tenacity some people bring to beliefs they are utterly unable to support in a reasoned manner. If you are indeed playing the foil I'm afraid it's a tin foil and the resulting amorphous lump of crinkled questions does nothing for me but inspire a shake of the head.
A wholly superflous aside: while pulling up an image of "The Scream" I noted that it's subtitled "disambiguation." I think I've found my next screen name. . . .
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2007, 06:25:42 PM
Very funny GM.
Buz: Ditto!
Tom:
1) Concerning money to the Palestinians before and not now: Before the govt. was the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords. The Hamas is a terrorist organization which rejects the Oslo Accords, so when it was elected, the flow of money was cut off. Pretty simple actually. Many criticized Bush for foolishly encouraging democracy and pointed to Hamas's election, whereas I found its election to pierce the veil of the illusion that the Palestinian's wanted peace with Israel and allowed us to shut off the money flow.
2) May I suggest if you want to do a devil's advocate bit again that you state in advance that you are playing devil's advocate?
TAC, CD
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 23, 2007, 06:56:40 PM
Guro Crafty, I don't intend to beat this into the ground but.......My feeling is...When the the Palestinian gov. was the PLO...Hammas was its gaurd dog.......and most often left off leash, and ran loose unrestrained. We may have from time to time put up a feeble protest...which mostly went unheard by the PLO. I think it wrong to assert that it was ok to fund the PLO just because they signed the Oslo accords.....but I do understand that When Palestine showed its true colors by voting in Hammas it gave us a easy out on funding the Palestinians. TG Kinda the baisis of my orginal argument towards the CNN/ CA article.....
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2007, 07:30:23 PM
Well no argument from me if you are saying that Arafat, may he rot in hell, was a lying, murdering, scum bag. And no argument from me if you say that the US should never have supported him-- but this belongs in a different thread. :-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 11:26:43 AM
Fitzgerald: The point of CNN's religious fundamentalism series
Christiane Amanpour has at least one parent who was part of what one would have hoped to describe as the intelligent secular ancien regime. They were the people pushed out by Khomeini and his epigones, and therefore, one would have thought, comprehending the nature of Islam. Well, it turns out that not everyone who has fled Iran quite has that necessary understanding. Some like to pretend that Khomeini is a sport, when the real sport was the Shah and his father, in their de-emphasis on Islam, their emphasis on the pre-Islamic past of Iran, and their willingness to limit the power of the mullahs -- and, above all, to give the non-Muslims of Iran, the Christians, Jews, and Baha'is, reasonable security and even something akin to legal equality.
But Amanpour does not realize that. Nor, in her aggressive climb through the media ranks, has she stopped to study Islam. She has not stopped to find out what happened to the Zoroastrians or what happens to them in Iran today. She has not stopped to find out why, even in the 20th century, a Jew could be killed for going out in the rain (where a drop might ricochet off him and hit an innocent Muslim with this raindrop of najis-ness, thus contaminating him).
She might, that is, have begun with the history of Islam in Iran and considered the treatment of non-Muslims, and how Shah Abbas II overnight ordered the conversion of all the Jews and Armenians in an Iranian city (possibly Tabriz), and why the real, as opposed to the Iranian exile's dreamy fictional history of Iran, is full of such episodes. She might have gotten hold of E. J. Browne's work on Persian literature, and studied Hafiz and Sa'adi. She might have read Omar Khayyam, and come to realize just how un-Islamic he was. She might have read the Shahnameh of Firdowsi, and seen how his literary talent was put to work preventing the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs from successfully coming to damage and then overwhelm the Iranian culture. She might have done a special program on Islam as a vehicle of Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, and used Iran as an example of one place where it did not succeed as it did elsewhere.
Oh, there are many things that raw-boned massive Christiane Amanpour might have done, if she had allowed herself the leisure to think, and be something more than one more media star, one more mere reporter incapable of making sense of what she reports on.
But she did none of it. She clawed and clawed to the top. She entered into a mariage blanc, a white marriage of grayish convenience, with James Rubin. She travels, she reports from here, she reports from there. She is like so many of them, with their fabulous salaries, their baseless self-assurance, their inability to convey anything difficult, anything that requires instructing us rather than feeding us visual and verbal pablum.
If you have seen the presentation of those "Christian fundamentalists" (read: Fanatics), then you will observe how carefully the cameramen have captured those flags, and taken shots of hands uplifted in prayer or hallelujahs to make sure the viewer gets the impression of a Nuremberg rally, with these "Christians" heil-hitlering all over the place. Very carefully done, very artfully and deliberately done. She, Christiane Amanpour, is of course determined to make this group of Christians look as bad as possible, and then to convince us that they represent a huge number of people, and to do the same, when their time comes, to those wild-eyed fanatical Jews, those "Biblical settlers" who think -- imagine that! -- that the Land of Israel, that gigantic land, practically the size of Connecticut or is it Massachusetts, was given in a Covenant to the Jews. What a terrible thing, what a thing so utterly comparable, is it not, to the view in Islam that the entire world belongs to Muslims, and that they must by right dominate everywhere?
Do you see a little something not quite symmetrical in her view, in her presentation, or that of her crew, so willing to play ball? Meanwhile, one wonders how she can stand herself. And why CNN so obviously insults us, in reducing the menace of Islam, the menace that only a fool could ignore, and the full scope of which, based on immutable texts, becomes clearer to the intelligent every day, to something like the non-existent menace from those wild-eyed Nurembergian Christians, with Amanpour as their recording Riefenstahl, or those crazy "West Bank" settlers, in their trailers, choosing to live among a million Arabs -- "Palestinians" -- who of course have every right to be there, because...well, isn't the Middle East the same thing as the Arab World, after all? Where do those pesky remnants of Jews, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Copts, Maronites, Mandeans, Yazidis, Armenians, and all the others come from? Why don't they go back where they came from? The "Arab World," the "Muslim Arab World" -- now that's more like it. That's just the ticket.
Because, you see, Every Group Has Its Crazies. And those crazies, you see, are exactly alike, in what they want, and how they act, and the size of the demands they make on the rest of us. But exactly.
That's the point of this series. You didn't think there was another point, did you?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 24, 2007, 11:47:49 AM
GM, Having watched 1.5 parts of the 3 part series (not able to stomache finishing the Christain part3) I find this article to be pretty much on the mark. The points of the article are well taken. I also thik this quote from SB-Mig to make good sense also....regarding a LOT off issues :
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I have to admit that a truly objective film on the subject matter seems like an impossibility at this point in the game.
Unfortunatly I think there is no middle ground any longer.......Or objectivity. TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 12:00:30 PM
A simple test for evaluating the impact of the fundamentalists of various religions: Body count. Compare and contrast those killed and wounded by the global jihad vs. the scary christians and jews. I don't know of any jews that have thrown acid into the face of people not keeping kosher and we haven't yet see a wave of fundie christian suicide bombing evolution classes, though i'm sure that's coming any day now.... :wink:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 24, 2007, 04:40:53 PM
Not really a media post, but I wanted to respond to GM's latest.
GM,
You're not actually saying that Jews/Christians/Mormons/Hindus have never committed crimes against their own are you?
I agree that the use of violence by fundamentalists in Islam (aka Islamists, Jihadists) is doing a pretty good job of keeping the current body count high, but history (and fairly recent history at that) has plenty of examples of other fundamentalist/conservative/orthodox religions wreaking havoc on those with different belief systems. Or in some instances upon those in their own religious circle. I'm not condoning the behavior, but I am pointing out that everyone has done it at one time or other.
Now before this turns into a "they killed more than we did" or "yeah, but that was years ago" argument, how about we consider the inherent danger of any fundamentalist belief system? While Islamic fascism is indeed a threat, we are fighting it and for the time being, the "hand-to-hand" battle is centered in the Middle East. The hearts and minds battlefield is IMHO the more important one. How do we keep people from considering fanatical religious thought as a viable option? I'm pretty sure no one just walks down the street and suddenly thinks "Hmmm, I wanna kill me some Jews/Arabs/Christians/Muslims".
I think that fundamentalist thought of any kind is dangerous. Fundamentalist religions tend to work in one of two ways: in your face, or behind the scenes. I would even suggest that the latter, in the form of legislative changes, educational reforms, dictating lifestyle choices (and I'm talking about any number of countries here) is more dangerous than physical violence, as much of this happens "below the radar".
Everyone is capable of being an a*hole, we just happen to have a lot of them in particular religious garb these days.
As for "fundie christian suicide bombing", I would point to instances of violence like abortion clinic bombings, doctor killings, and attacks on synagogues by neo-nazis (usually under the guise of "true christians"). IMHO there are enough nutballs around to make trouble over issues as simple as evolutions classes..we just haven't seen it yet.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 05:07:37 PM
SB,
Given that there are roughly the same number of christians and muslims worldwide, please compare the body counts. If there are "dangerous fundies" in every religion, then there should be the roughly same amount of death and mayhem, right? So, in the last 6 months, year, 10 years, what's the christian body count vs. the muslim body count? Why the disparity?
Title: Relativistic Hand Wringing
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 24, 2007, 05:35:39 PM
SB Mig:
I have trouble with zealots of every stripe, and have heard from far more bible thumping god-squaders that I'm going to burn in hell than I've heard from closet Marxists that I'm a judgmental paternalist who's existence is an affront to Mother Gaeia. With that said, there's a place for realistic risk assessment, and from that perspective I'm far more concerned about zealots of the Islamic stripe than just about any other flavor.
I agree that an argument about who's piled corpses highest is little likely to be productive, nor do I want to run laps slicing history into pogromic segments, but like most others I buy insurance for my car, house, health, etc., but don't by any against asteroid strikes, East coast earthquakes, big bursts of oceanic methane, mountaintop floods, and other events that are on the far edge of the geographic history horizon. Similarly in my soft target role as an ad hoc first responder I don't spend a lot of time worrying about homicidal Moonies or hostage taking Hasids, though there is a group of folks currently making a habit of blowing bystanders away that does enter into my thinking.
You want to argue big picture then yep, we could come up with a long list of savage bastards I'd have no problem tossing out the airlock. But if you're seeking to cast a benefit cost analysis of the current geopolitical scene then I think it makes more sense to focus on demonstrable threats rather than speculative boogiemen. If that's the yardstick then who is currently stacking American corpses the highest strikes me as a valid metric. I'll leave the relativistic hand wringing to those who have the leisure time for it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 24, 2007, 07:01:26 PM
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So, in the last 6 months, year, 10 years, what's the christian body count vs. the muslim body count? Why the disparity?
Cuz it's not the good old days, and we didn't have the balls to ride into pakistan and drop a nuke...
All joking aside, I'm not saying that the chrisitan body count isn't higher, just that perhaps our approach to the problem shouldn't be strictly black and white.
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I don't spend a lot of time worrying about homicidal Moonies or hostage taking Hasids
And what I'm saying is that perhaps we
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should
spent a little bit of time paying attention to other branches of religion that are fanatic in their beliefs as well, because while the threat they pose is not as in your face, it has just as many societal repercussions. Am I concerned about Christian conservatives blowing me up? No. But I am concerned about them telling me how to live. Am I concerned about Hindus fighting Muslims in India, not so much...until someone decides to throw a nuke. Islam is in the forefront but let's not get tunnel vision.
The lack of "big picture" thinking as many call is what dragged us into this Iraqi boondoggle in the first place. Lack of foresight, unwillingness to change strategies, and just plain bullheadedness has made for disaster. I just think that it's about time we pay attention to the the entire forest, not just the tree in front of us.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 24, 2007, 07:04:29 PM
So, on the media end of things, I would think that a piece on "God's Warriors" would try and point out the dangers of any religion's fanatical followers. I didn't watch it, so I don't know how it panned out.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 07:23:35 PM
SB,
The secular society you live in is a concept found in christian thought. "Render unto Ceasar..."
Something not found in islamic thought.
If Jerry Falwell doesn't approve of you, so what? It's OBL's disapproval, or more far reachingly, Sayeed Qutb's disapproval that is suffered in real flesh and blood terms.
Why is this?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 07:29:32 PM
Funny how dunking a crucifix in urine or smearing a picture of the virgin mary in elephant dung is applauded and covered by the MSM, but they get so timid about that one religion. Why is that?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 07:36:16 PM
August 24, 2007 Courage, Cowardice and the Wordsmiths
By Stephen Rittenberg, MD
"...there must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words.... I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace." - Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad
When I served as a Navy psychiatrist during the Vietnam War, one of my weekly duties was interviewing and assessing potential draftees who were seeking to avoid service by claiming mental illness. Many of these were recent Ivy League graduates, students of the humanities, who were active protesters of what they insisted was an immoral war. They thought of themselves as idealists.
Yet they were not principled conscientious objectors. Instead, they were glib, had read up on symptoms of psychosis, and could feign the manifest behavior of any disqualifying syndrome-including homosexuality. Their efforts to dissemble were usually rather obvious. They were predicated on the arrogant assumption that they were smarter than any military psychiatrist.
Once it was pointed out to them that if they avoided the draft, someone else, less educated and less favored by fortune would go in their place, they quickly revealed their true motivation: fear. I realized I was observing cowardice masquerading as idealism. These young men would do anything to avoid the risk of fighting and dying for their country.
I then would return to my hospital responsibilities, working with wounded vets. These were not glib wordsmiths. It took real effort to get them to talk about their experiences. They didn't think of their courage in battle as anything special. When they did talk about it, they often worried that they'd let down their comrades. The contrast with would-be draft evaders was striking. There was absolutely none of the self-preoccupation of the Ivy Leaguers. Instead these were men who had done deeds, fought battles, rescued other wounded platoon members, risked their lives. They readily acknowledged having been afraid, and many paid a high emotional price. They felt fear, but unlike our Ivy Leaguers, the force that propelled them was courage, not cowardice.
Over many years of clinical observation, I repeatedly confirmed the truth of Wordsworth's observation that "the child is father of the man". So who were these wordsmith cowards as children? In his great essay Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?, Robert Nozick pointed out that wordsmith intellectuals-writers, journalists, liberal arts professors, film makers, television pundits-had frequently been children who achieved success in school, based on their verbal skills. They were rewarded with elite status within the school system. As adults, however, they were not similarly rewarded. Capitalism rarely gives its greatest rewards to the verbally skilled. Nozick tried to sort out the puzzle, and concluded that it is our educational system, where, as he put it:
"...to the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards. The wider market society, however, teaches a different lesson. The greatest rewards do not automatically go to the verbally brightest. Verbal skills are not most highly valued... Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?...The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. " As Eric Hoffer succinctly put it: "Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words." Nozick also observed that there is a childhood forerunner to capitalism -- the world of the playground. There, verbal intellect is far less important than action. On the playground aggression is as important as intellect. Being able to utilize aggression in the service of solving problems produces leaders not designated by authority figures, but by one's peers. Physical courage is valued highly. Cowards are mocked and shunned as "scaredy cats". Willingness to fight for oneself, without appealing to authority becomes a measure of status. It also provides real world lessons in human nature.
I recall trading blows to gain sufficient respect to be included in pick up schoolyard games. An Irish Catholic boy admired for his basketball skills joined my fight against the anti-Semites and insisted that anyone who could sink jump shots from 25 feet out could play on his team, even if he was a Jew. It took a few bloodied noses but the matter was finally settled. Gerry Paulson was our schoolyard Patton.
In that freewheeling world of the schoolyard, the good little girls and physically timid boys who craved teacher's praise were at a disadvantage. The schoolroom was their utopia, where physical aggression was banned and all problems had a verbal solution. Girls are usually more verbally adept in the early childhood years and gain surplus praise from teachers. In addition, such children, including boys who crave teacher's approval, receive moral approbation for being "good" while aggression is, "bad". Hence the future wordsmith intellectual grows up feeling smarter, morally superior, a caring idealist.
These self-flattering views carry over to adulthood, and shape the future wordsmith intellectuals' political views. If words can resolve all conflicts, then wordsmiths are exceedingly important. If conflicts within and between human beings can be "resolved" with words, then who better to play the role of savior than the wordsmith intellectual?
One of the central features of utopian politics, explaining their appeal to intellectuals, is the promise that conflict can be abolished and human nature fundamentally changed. Whether Communism, Nazism or Islamism, the aim is a unified, submissive, happy mankind led by an elite in possession of the truth, just like Miss Murphy when she taught 6th grade. Aggression will then vanish when egalitarian paradise prevails.
Since that happy day never arrives, scapegoats are needed to explain the failure of utopia whenever it is tried. Usually it's the Jews, but it can be other ‘infidels' as well. Thus the wordsmith intellectual can rationalize mass murder by a Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or Ahmadinejad, vicariously discharging his own repressed violent aggression, while still holding fast to an idealized self image.
Nozick's explanation for wordsmith intellectuals' opposition to capitalism is an important first order explanation, but it doesn't go deeply enough into the psychology of intellectuals.
Capitalism embraces competition and competition requires utilization of aggression. Profound fear of aggression, and the concomitant dislike of action to solve problems, constitutes the underlying reason for the loathing of capitalism. The schoolroom is a model for intellectual utopia. Utopia is, above all, a conflict-free zone wherein no one is aggrieved. Whatever social problems exist can be talked out. Intellectuals and their verbal skills can show the way to harmony and peace. Having avoided aggression at an early age, these wordsmiths never learned Patton's lessons in courage. Cowardice is therefore the reaction that comes most readily in situations of danger.
As a psychoanalyst I belong to a wordsmith profession, of course, and I have a close-up view of its practitioners. They are overwhelmingly left in their politics and tend to think words are the answer to all serious problems. Their faith in the power of words to resolve conflict is almost absolute. When psychoanalysis came to America it shed its European pessimism about human nature in adapting to New World optimism. Therapy changed its goals from Freud's limited aim of converting misery into ordinary human unhappiness. It decided, in the cant phrase that rules to this day, that mental "conflict can be resolved", i.e. done away with, and blissful happiness can then prevail. This became the task of individual psychotherapy-to resolve intrapsychic conflict, and then the aim was extended to include group social conflicts.
We are drowning in a therapeutic culture, saturated by a fantasy version of human nature in stark contradiction to the original psychoanalytic view, a view much closer to the stoics and St. Augustine than to Deepak Chopra. Unfortunately for the adherents of the therapeutic culture, conflict can never be ‘resolved', and they are doomed to disappointment. Never mind, there will be another self help guru next week.
The human mind, however, is in conflict as long as it is alive.
Conflict between wishes, fears, moral prohibitions, and demands of reality never go away. The ways of handling conflict can change, with very hard and prolonged work, but that is a far more modest and realistic goal than the utopian one of transforming human nature implicit in the notion that mental conflict can be resolved.
Changing entire societies is even more difficult. Contemporary psychotherapists, like other wordsmith intellectuals, endorse a Rousseau-ian ideal of human nature: innocent children are victimized by their parents, who are unwitting transmitters of capitalism's oppressive values to their offspring.
Many fine and noble efforts have been made to awaken the Western world to the mortal threat posed to its moral foundations and its very existence by militant Islam. The openly declared intentions of these enemies of Western civilization, accompanied by their daily deeds of mayhem, would seem to be enough to awaken us. Testimony by former adherents like the brave Walid Shoebat should sound an alarm that would wake the deepest sleeper.
Yet many in the Western world remain in a sound, politically correct, post-modern sleep. Why is this? When evidence is ignored, when savagery is blamed on provocation by its victims, when a Jew-hating death cult is described as a religion of peace, when media and governing elites see little difference between the firemen and the fire, there must be non-rational forces at play. Rational discussion doesn't always work because fear is great, terror has worked on many, and amongst the wordsmith elite, cowardice is the usual response.
Fear is, of course a universal response to danger. How a person handles fear varies widely, depending on early development. George Patton, in his famous D-Day speech said; ".. every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared." Fortunately, wordsmith intellectuals are not the majority of Americans. If you took the New York Times, our Ivy League faculties and the Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis as representative of the country, you would conclude we are a nation of castrati. Their screeching volubility notwithstanding, they are nevertheless the minority. I find it comforting, when the caterwauling of the left becomes deafening, to think of them as "the insects of the hour", in Edmund Burke's phrase. He wrote: "Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour." Rarely does one find a Churchill or a Patton, men of action who also are wordsmiths. It is unlikely that one will appear soon gain, so we will have to get through this war in defense of civilization by setting an example of courage and hoping that a few of the wordsmith intellectuals will be shamed into silence. After all, as Patton remarked: "...Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American..."
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/courage_cowardice_and_the_word_1.html at August 24, 2007 - 10:09:38 PM EDT
Title: Antiseptic Engagement
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 24, 2007, 08:58:00 PM
Quote
Am I concerned about Christian conservatives blowing me up? No. But I am concerned about them telling me how to live.
Well hey, then beware of the Greenies who want to carbon neutral your fanny back into a third world subsistence existence, too. Indeed, no bible thumper has ever come out of my bathroom and complained about the shampoo I use, given me grief about the way I separate my trash, lectured me about what food I eat and so on, but plenty on the left have. Bet you dimes to dollars you can't find a member of the god squad who cares about the size of your toilet tank, but members of the nanny state left have legislated that choice away for you.
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The lack of "big picture" thinking as many call is what dragged us into this Iraqi boondoggle in the first place. Lack of foresight, unwillingness to change strategies, and just plain bullheadedness has made for disaster. I just think that it's about time we pay attention to the the entire forest, not just the tree in front of us.
How's that any different from saying our failure to live a righteous life abiding by Jehovah's will has led to a sorry state of affairs? You call for a god-like omniscience while chastising those who believe there is such a thing. Has there ever been a war where foresight wasn't lacking, poor strategies weren't clung to, and obstinacy didn't complicate things? Sounds like the conflict you'd engage in is too antiseptic ever to occur.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 09:56:02 PM
When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said 9/11 happened because god stopped protecting America because of immorality the left mocked them. However Noam "Holocaust denier" Chomsky puts a hard leftist spin on the same concept and the secular leftists can't buy enough of his delusional scribblings.
:evil:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 24, 2007, 10:31:58 PM
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Bet you dimes to dollars you can't find a member of the god squad who cares about the size of your toilet tank, but members of the nanny state left have legislated that choice away for you
But they do care about what my children study in school, what kind of lifestyle I lead, and who I can or can't marry. Again, while not a direct physical threat, one I consider just as disturbing.
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hard leftist spin on the same concept and the secular leftists can't buy enough of his delusional scribblings.
This isn't a discussion about left or right spin, it's a discussion about the dangers posed by religious fanatics. Which is why perhaps I should move it to another area?"
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Funny how dunking a crucifix in urine or smearing a picture of the virgin mary in elephant dung is applauded and covered by the MSM, but they get so timid about that one religion. Why is that?
Because the MSM has no balls.
Guys, I am talking about the dangers posed by religious fanatics, which correctly reported or not are worth careful consideration. The media's spin on fanaticism is deeply flawed, and I don't attempt to condone it. All I'm saying is that the issues raised/discussed are worth consideration regardless of the immediacy of the threat.
Going to bed now. Back for more in the a.m.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 24, 2007, 11:22:37 PM
Bet you dimes to dollars you can't find a member of the god squad who cares about the size of your toilet tank, but members of the nanny state left have legislated that choice away for you
But they do care about what my children study in school, what kind of lifestyle I lead, and who I can or can't marry. Again, while not a direct physical threat, one I consider just as disturbing.
****Ah, and the secular left doesn't use the public schools and universities as indoctrination mechanisms, right? There's no one trying to impose an agenda on the schools, but the right, right?****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 25, 2007, 04:07:08 AM
GM:
Nice find with that Rittenburg piece.
Here the BBC reporting on Gaza: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26744_Video-_Return_to_Gaza&only
Marc
Title: Obey the Bunny Slippers
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 25, 2007, 07:54:32 AM
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Guys, I am talking about the dangers posed by religious fanatics, which correctly reported or not are worth careful consideration.
Yeah, and I'm replying the ducks on the left with all their PC orthodoxies quack in a similar manner. Indeed, I think many of the left would be horrified to realize there's a strong Puritan streak ingrained in their ideology. I think that the underlying process is that a large segment of humanity is unable to deal with the ambiguity a vast and uncaring universe regularly reveals and hence casts about for gross simplifications that makes sense of it all (to them!). I don't care if it's Allah, Gaiea, Yaweh, animal spirits, Zoroaster, ganja, dialectic materialism, L. Ron Hubbard, Haile Selassie, Gog and Magog, ancestors, cows, earth spirits, or the pair of bunny slippers that speak to you from under the bed, if you are attempting to impose the fruit of your gross simplifications on me I don't have any use for you. Think trying to split off those who use similar processes but different bunny slippers is disingenuous at best.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 25, 2007, 08:40:36 AM
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Ah, and the secular left doesn't use the public schools and universities as indoctrination mechanisms, right? There's no one trying to impose an agenda on the schools, but the right, right?
I find the secular left's attempts to make societal changes just as reprehensible. One of my biggest pet peeves has been the creation of political correctness, and that's all about the Left.
However, I believe the religions covered in the CNN piece were Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The topic of discussion is the inherent danger of fanatics in each religion and there respective fields of focus. Muslims - Jihad. Fundamentalist Jews - Maintaining the State of Israel. Christians - Lifestyle/Societal changes. Each worthy of consideration regardless of what you may perceive to be their threat level. I still don't see the problem with long range, wide scope thinking, while taking direct action at the same time. The jihadis are obviously dangerous and that's why there's a war going on. But culture wars exist in our own society that most people are happy to ignore, which I find disturbin.
And, if you haven't noticed, there isn't a religion known as Secular Leftism...actually, there probably is one somewhere in Humboldt County :lol:
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Yeah, and I'm replying the ducks on the left with all their PC orthodoxies quack in a similar manner
Careful examination of all extremists/idealogues is important, religious or otherwise. I focus on the religious ones because they tend to try the hardest.
So let's try this grade school style:
Fanatical Muslims dangerous. Check Fanatical Christians dangerous. Check Fanatical Jews dangerous. Check Fanatical Muslims most dangerous at this time. Check All fanatics worth paying attention to. Check
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 25, 2007, 09:56:15 AM
"Fundamentalist Jews - Maintaining the State of Israel"
1) Are you saying that favoring the survival of Israel is the position of a fanatic?
2) Are you suggesting moral parity amongst all three groups?
Title: Checklist Question
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 25, 2007, 11:00:03 AM
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I focus on the religious ones because they tend to try the hardest.
And, in doing so, bow before your bunny slippers while while making aghast noise about Christians and Jews who do the same.
If you're willing to let folks find their own path through the fog to any paradise or perdition that follows, support in no uncertain terms the fleeting phenomena known as freedom even in its distasteful manifestations, sort out differences in an empiric manner via informed debate, and can contend with omnipresent ambiguity without seeing what you seek in its cloud, then I've no issue with you. But if you're gonna curse the barbarians and their false gods while rubbing blue mud into your navel so that you can join your tribe at the inquisition, you are condemning what you partake of. That insular mindset has been the bane of humanity from its outset and leads to the sort of pigheaded buffoonery you've railed against elsewhere.
Bottom line is I've no qualms with your checklist, but ask if you should add yourself to it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 25, 2007, 11:45:59 AM
More on the MSM's submission to the "religion of peace".
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 25, 2007, 01:54:21 PM
Buzwardo, Your last post was very elequently worded and quite cute.You do have quite a way with words. I'am quite a bit simplier and to the point....I see no need to drag out a message in a flowery vocab. :roll: Though I feel you think quite highley of yourself as is evident by your postings :| Which brings me to my point/ question........You seem to have no problem Bashing everyone under the sun and appear to stand for .......well....not much....or take no particular side.......that in its self is fairly safe....but anyway.....I'am just curious as to what Bunny slippers you bow to? I DO POSE THIS AS A SERIOUS QUESTION. Hopefully not self....that would be just sad.... TG Guro Crafty......no tempeture rising here :-D.....Just trying to get a feel for a guy who appears to take no side.
Title: Diana Moon Glampers Please Phone Home
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 26, 2007, 09:16:48 AM
Gee, Tom, sorry I talk too pretty. I'll......start.....interjecting!? lotsa---random..... punctuation so~you***feel....more???? at home////////
I listed my bunny slippers above, if you're unable to adduce 'em I'm certainly not going to waste my time writing your argument for you.
As for why I should write down to you, how 'bout if you try to write up to me? Give that a shot and maybe we can meet in the middle at some point. Crafty clearly expressed his preference above; you might want to reread it in view of your attention span issues. And while you're doing a little research, read Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron to get a handle on what I truly feel about people who try to force me to dumb things down. You don't have a relation who goes by the last name of "Glampers," perchance?
In the interim, next time you're training tell your Sifu his technique is eloquent and cute, but that you'd really like to spar only using simple and ineffective technique. Let us know how that comes out.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 26, 2007, 01:46:19 PM
Buzwardo, I don't recall saying or infering that you need to or should write down to me. I just see no reason to read through all your self flattery just to have you write at the end quotes like this:
Quote
Bottom line is I've no qualms with your checklist, but ask if you should add yourself to it.
After all isn't that pretty much what your saying all along? Evidently you've got plenty of time on your hands........but...... Please by all means continue to impress! I asked you what bunny slippers you bow to... You refrenced a above post. I can't seem to locate that list you lead me to believe is so clearly communicated......maybe if you could help me out with that "list". As for the martial arts refrence. It has been my experience that the simple techniques is most often the ones that yield the best result. The cute eloquent ones are merly for show........I'am sure though if your as good a fighter as you are internet whiz kid then you may disagree....though I must confess to not seeing a lot of your postings on the martial arts threads. :roll: Have you ever made any? Feel free to move this to another thread and eloquently tell me all about your fighting/martial arts experiences. Hey....its the internet......you can be king if you like :wink: TG Actually I thought my previous post simple enough.........All I asked was what you stand for......all I got in response was more BS.......
Title: My Mother Wears Combat Boots
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 27, 2007, 06:39:44 AM
Nah, Tom, you're too obtuse to deal with. If truly desiring to learn my beliefs feel free to to peruse my other 700+ posts and see what you can glean. Indeed, I stated them to you directly in an earlier exchange and offered to explain 'em if you'd tell me what the gig pays. Again, I'm not inclined to put more energy into answering a question then you do asking it and don't understand why the concept is so hard to communicate.
In the interim do keep probing for chinks in my ego. Try calling me a ratfink next; that will sure show me.
SB Mig, if I came on too strong I apologize, it's not my intent to to drive you out of the conversation. You've always struck me as someone who has more than two clues to rub together and I usually find value in the things that you post, as well as our exchanges.
Title: Critique of "God's Warriors"
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 27, 2007, 06:45:08 AM
CNN's God's Warriors at war with truth Posted by Rabbi Marvin Hier | Comments: 30
A day prior to the airing of Christiane Amanpour’s six-hour CNN documentary entitled God’s Warriors, I was one of four clergymen to be a guest on Larry King Live to discuss the issue of fundamentalism in today’s world. The interview on Larry King was pre-recorded in mid-July and none of the participants had seen the six-hour documentary because it was still being edited. Now that I have seen it, I sent the following critique to the producers of God’s Warriors.
1. MORAL EQUIVALENCY - There is no moral equivalency between some 200 Israeli fanatics prone to violence and tens of thousands of Palestinian terrorists whose acts are endorsed by the elected government and a significant portion of the population. The failure of the documentary to clearly make that distinction skews the facts and conveys the false impression allowing people all over the world to conclude that there IS a moral equivalency between the number of Palestinian terrorists and Jewish terrorists - this is a complete distortion. More importantly, the largest terrorist group responsible for much of the unrest in the Middle East, Hamas, got a free pass from CNN in God’s Warriors and is not even mentioned in the documentary’s segment on Islam.
2. JEWISH LOBBY - CNN spends much time describing the strength of the “Jewish Lobby” in Washington. But what do supporters of Israel active on the Hill have to do with a documentary focusing on the power of religion? Indeed, many of those defending Israel on Capital Hill are, in fact, secular Jews. Furthermore, if you are going to talk about powerful lobbies, why not give equal time to the enormous power of the Arab Oil lobby?
3. SECURITY FENCE (Hamas Wall) - The consultants of the documentary make a point of showing the security fence that now separates the Palestinians from the Israelis. Palestinians interviewed explain the hardships they face and call the fence an “apartheid” wall. Nowhere is there a mention of the wide consensus of support for the security fence amongst all Israelis, left and right, including Israel’s Supreme Court, which has sanctioned the fence because, without it, the suicide bombings would continue unabated, something NO society can tolerate. Indeed, the terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the real architects and designers of that fence.
4. FIGHTING TERRORISM - God’s Warrior’s makes mention of the fact that the few Jewish terrorists described in the film were all arrested by the Israeli government and sent to jail for their crimes. Yet, they ignore the fact that Palestinian officials have never convicted Palestinian terrorists. Had they done so, there would be no need for a security fence.
5. SIX DAY WAR - The documentary spends a lot of time on the Six Day War and emphasizes how Israel decided to attack the Old City during the War, which changed the status quo forever. But God’s Warriors fails to explain how or why the Six Day War started. It hides from its audience the fact that Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran (an international waterway), an act of war under international law, denying all shipping to Israel and that the Arab States, including Jordan, which controlled the Old City, brought their armies to the border. Had they not taken those actions, the Six Day War would have been averted. By ignoring all that and instead focusing on Israel’s attack on the Old City, God’s Warriors guides its audience to the conclusion that the purpose of the War was Israel’s intention to grab the Old City of Jerusalem.
6. SHARON - The documentary is critical of Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, which enraged Muslims and allegedly started the Second Intifada. It also mentions his “responsibility” in allowing Lebanese Christians to massacre Muslims at Sabra and Shatila. Yet, it ignores his critical decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza in an attempt to jump start the peace process. Nor does it mention the Palestinian response to the withdrawal - the election of Hamas - a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel - as the new Palestinian government.
7. TEMPLE MOUNT - The documentary fails to emphasize that the Muslims, to whom Israel gave the authority to administer the Temple Mount, strongly discourage any Jew from coming there despite the fact that it is the holiest site in all of Judaism (whereas, the holiest sites in Islam are, in fact, Mecca and Medina). On the other hand, the Western Wall, which is under Israeli control, regularly welcomes visitors of all faiths.
8. RELIGIOUS LEADERS - CNN presents the senior Imam in charge of the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount, who explains the site’s holiness to Muslims. But rather than interview the Chief Rabbi of Israel to describe the sacredness of the site for Jews, CNN contents itself with allowing an extremist layperson to explain the importance of the Temple Mount to Jews. Where is the fairness?
9. TWO STATE SOLUTION - God’s Warriors ignores the origins of the Arab/Israeli conflict: the Arab refusal to accept the 1947 United Nations Partition of Palestine, which called for both a Jewish state and an Arab State. The Jews accepted the plan – the Arabs rejected it. Had the Arab world accepted the two-state solution then, much of the bloodshed would have been averted. There’s a lot of talk about settlements, but no talk at all of the consistent Arab policy from 1948 until 1978 to make no compromises with Israel.
10. A HUMAN FACE ON TERROR - God’s Warriors keeps mentioning the “despair” that many Arabs feel, as if that is a justification for the insane behavior of honoring people as martyrs because they murdered innocent civilians they never knew. Why patronize terrorists and even humanize them if we are going to allow the conversation to be dominated by their despair? The parents of these terrorists should be confronted with the simple truth that despair has existed throughout time – that billions of people throughout history have felt pain without reverting to mass murder. Following the defeat of Nazism, the Holocaust survivors were also in despair. They lost their families, but they didn’t resort to killing innocent civilians as a way of alleviating their pain. Neither did the 750,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries following the 1948 War – they too, did not become suicide bombers.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 27, 2007, 08:11:26 AM
Excellent find Buz. Tom, this piece exemplifies the reasons I hold CA in low regard.
Changing subject briefly-- it appears that the dhimmitude faction of the Wash Post has notched up another victory http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?entry=6755
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on August 27, 2007, 12:28:53 PM
Heya,
Had a busy weekend training and fantasy football drafting, so I couldn't respond right away. The significant other was also wanting to drag me from the keyboard to run errands and such.
Quote
1) Are you saying that favoring the survival of Israel is the position of a fanatic?
Absolutely not.
I may be mistaken, but I believe that was the bent of the Amanpour piece. The topic of her coverage was religious "warriors". Upon review of my earlier writing, I did not clarify that the goals of each religion's "warriors" were interpreted by the MSM, not myself. I have already stated the media's spin on fanaticism is deeply flawed, and I don't attempt to condone it.The piece Buz just posted does a great job of pointing out many of these flaws.
2) Are you suggesting moral parity amongst all three groups?
Again, no. But I do believe that actions of religious extremists of any bent are worthy of examination and careful observation.
Buz, I am not put off in the least by your response. I find all the exchanges on this forum to be well worth my time and energy, and I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth. Actually, I think it would be great to have a sit down drink, dinner, and conversation with a number of people on this forum.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 27, 2007, 02:40:32 PM
Buzwardo, I won't lose any sleep because you refuse a little transparency. Though it was nice of you to apologise to SB Mig. Which was part of the reason for my asking you to share a little of yourself...since you seem to have no problem criticizing others. Its all good...... I actaully did take a look at your posting record, to find that you posted less than 2% on the martial arts threads......any chance you might actaully share your martial arts experiences....Or is the question somthing you would rather not share....anyway.... I'am just kinda wondering whats your attraction to a martial arts forum. Please post on a more apropriate thread if your so inclined. TG
Title: Of Mormons, Bread Crumbs, and Semaphore Flags
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 27, 2007, 03:16:46 PM
Lotta transparent stuff has been posted of late that your gaze has failed to penetrate, and you've yet to give me a compelling reason to cut stuff into pieces small enough for you to chew. Again--are you listening this time?--I'm not going to put more effort into explaining things than you put into understanding them.
Didn't realize I was required to post my martial arts pedigree to participate here, though Crafty anecdotally knows of mine. Pester him for it if you must, but I'm not gonna cater to your hamfisted attempts to dictate the terms of debate. I will say that I'm a pretty mediocre martial artist and hence choose not to speak of things I not particularly well versed in. There's a lesson there if you're paying attention, but I'm not gonna lay a trail of bread crumbs the size of boulders, enlist the lung power of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or empty an aircraft carrier and ask all the sailors to wave semaphore flags in the hope they'll lead you to it.
Next inane challenge, please. . . .
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 27, 2007, 03:25:33 PM
Quote
Buz, I am not put off in the least by your response. I find all the exchanges on this forum to be well worth my time and energy, and I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth. Actually, I think it would be great to have a sit down drink, dinner, and conversation with a number of people on this forum.
Cool. I know I can get pretty darn intense, particularly when annoyed on other fronts. It's not my intention to treat you like a piñata.
You ever get out to VA drop me a line; be glad to tip one or more with ya.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 27, 2007, 03:31:31 PM
Buzwardo, You seem to bear a little to the defensive side....As I said its all I good. I will not pursue, you conversation further after all as you so handly show I'am by no means in your league. Well Iam off to slay dragons else where......I think to make my pursuit.....white, Buddhists living on the East coast...named Chuckie :roll: I bid you ado....... Rides off into the sunset gathering bread crumbs as he goes :wink: TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 27, 2007, 06:00:02 PM
There was a big story on global warming this month of some downward corrections in recent temperatures that makes the 1930s again hotter than any year of late. Credit goes to Buzzwardo for posting the NASA corrections here and to the source he linked of coyoteblog http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/08/official-us-cli.html for timely and enlightening info.
I predicted elsewhere that the NY Times would pick up this story in a few days maybe on page 47. In fact, it took them 16 days and they changed the context to be a story about right wing blogs making a big deal out a quarter of a degree "fix". For that reason I moved my reply to 'media issues'.
A larger point I took from the story is that they don't measure temperature, they gather readings and then adjust, balance, tweak and make changes to the data according to some secret and flawed algorithms from some scientists who have their own bias and investment in the outcome.
Here is that NY Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/26climate.html
Quarter-Degree Fix Fuels Climate Fight
By ANDREW C. REVKIN Published: August 26, 2007
Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere and a quarter of a degree to inflame the fight over global warming.
A quarter-degree Fahrenheit is roughly the downward adjustment NASA scientists made earlier this month in their annual estimates of the average temperature in the contiguous 48 states since 2000. They corrected the numbers after an error in meshing two sets of temperature data was discovered by Stephen McIntyre, a blogger and retired business executive in Toronto. Smaller adjustments were made to some readings for some preceding years.
All of this would most likely have passed unremarkably if Mr. McIntyre had not blogged that the adjustments changed the rankings of warmest years for the contiguous states since 1895, when record-keeping began.
Suddenly, 1934 appeared to vault ahead of 1998 as the warmest year on record (by a statistically meaningless 0.036 degrees Fahrenheit). In NASA’s most recent data set, 1934 had followed 1998 by a statistically meaningless 0.018 degrees. Conservative bloggers, columnists and radio hosts pounced. “We have proof of man-made global warming,” Rush Limbaughtold his radio audience. “The man-made global warming is inside NASA.”
Mr. McIntyre, who has spent years seeking flaws in studies pointing to human-driven climate change, traded broadsides on the Web with James E. Hansen, the NASA team’s leader. Dr. Hansen said he would not “joust with court jesters” and Mr. McIntyre posited that Dr. Hansen might have a “Jor-El complex” — a reference to Superman’s father, who foresaw the destruction of his planet and sent his son packing.
Blogs are still reverberating, but Mr. McIntyre, Dr. Hansen and others familiar with the initial data revisions are clarifying what is, and is not, at issue.
One thing not in question, Mr. McIntyre and Dr. Hansen agree, is the merit of shifting away from energy choices that contribute heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Mr. McIntyre said he feels “climate change is a serious issue.” His personal preference is to shift increasingly to nuclear power and away from coal and oil, the main source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Mr. McIntyre and Dr. Hansen also agree that the NASA data glitch had no effect on the global temperature trend, nudging it by an insignificant thousandth of a degree.
Everyone appears also to agree that too much attention is paid to records, particularly given that the difference between 1934, 1998, and several other sets of years in the top 10 warmest list for the United States are so small as to be statistically meaningless.
Mr. McIntyre said that when he posted the revised list under the heading “A New Leaderboard at the U.S. Open,” “I just was sort of having some fun with it as much as anything.”
He added: “The significance of things has been misstated by Limbaugh and people like that.”
Dr. Hansen and his team note that they rarely, if ever, discuss individual years, particularly regional findings like those for the United States (the lower 48 are only 2 percent of the planet’s surface). “In general I think that we want to avoid going into more and more detail about ranking of individual years,” he said in an e-mail message. “As far as I remember, we have always discouraged that as being somewhat nonsensical.”
Jay Lawrimore, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center of the Commerce Department who works on assembling the climate records that NASA analyzed, said his agency could probably do a better job of emphasizing the uncertainty surrounding its annual temperature announcements.
Indeed, there is enough wiggle room in the numbers that the center has a different list of the 10 warmest years than those produced using NASA’s and Mr. McIntyre’s analyses. By the climate center’s reckoning, 1998 remains the warmest year for the 48 states (with 2006 second and 1934 third).
Dr. Lawrimore, Dr. Hansen and other experts said that trends are far more important than particular years, and the recent widespread warming trend has been clear — and very distinct from the regional hot spell that drove up United States temperatures in the 1930s.
Mr. McIntyre and the government scientists do agree on at least one more thing: the need to improve the quality of climate data gathered around the world, including in the United States, which has by far the planet’s biggest network of meteorological stations.
Mr. McIntyre is not alone in pointing out that the need to adjust and revise such data — with the attendant risk of mistakes — would be reduced with more care and consistency taken in collecting climate data.
The National Academy of Sciences has repeatedly called for improvements in climate monitoring. An independent group of meteorologists and weather buffs is compiling its own gallery of American weather stations at www.surfacestations.org, with photographs showing glaring problems, like thermometers placed next to asphalt runways and parking lots.
Dr. Lawrimore said that the government is preparing to build a climate reference network of more sophisticated, and consistent, monitoring stations that should cut uncertainty in gauging future trends.
In any case, he said, the evidence for human-driven warming remains robust. “Saying what they’re saying has just provided an opportunity for them to create doubt in people’s minds,” he said of the bloggers.
Title: Adieu Ado
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 27, 2007, 08:14:25 PM
Tom:
Well after all the snarky things I've said I expect this will have a hollow ring, but it's clear to me you've got a good heart. You joined the fray and kept at it despite the fact a polysyllabic SOB came at you from all directions. Many would have started flinging obscenities, you stuck to your guns and kept moving forward.
Not so sure, however, you're right about my defensive nature. Be they words or sticks, when something comes at me I tend to charge back at it, making my nature an offensive one, alas often in both senses of the word.
As that may be, as someone who failed three semesters of high school English, I ought to have a better handle on what it's like when some supercilious ba$tard blue-pencils every utterance. I got past my English issues--hell I taught English at a community college, which really should have ripped a hole in the space-time continuum or something--and found in doing so it's remarkably similar to learning a martial art: learn the basic elements, put them together into simple phrases, combine the phrases into more complex structures, and, once you have the basics down, start riffing on structures from there.
Expect if we ever crossed sticks you'd teach me more than I'd teach you; if you ever want to flip that around where writing is concerned drop me a line and we'll see where it leads. Be aware that my methods are unorthodox, just ask the class where I used a 10 inch French Knife and a sharpening steel as props. The Dean was not amused. . . .
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 27, 2007, 11:37:48 PM
Christiane vs. Christians and Jews By Phyllis Chesler FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/27/2007
Dhabah Almontaser, the nearly anointed principal of Brooklyn's madrassa and CNN's fully annointed Christiane Amanpour both agree that in Arabic, "Intifada" means a "shaking off." Amanpour gave an example of how to use the word by saying that "Palestinian (terrorists) were (merely) shaking off the Israeli Occupation;" Almontaser, when challenged about the infamous tee-shirts, said that "Intifada-NYC" referred to young Muslim girls "shaking off oppression."
In November of 2005, Fox's O'Reilly showed live footage of the French Intifada as it raged in Paris. According to WorldNetDaily, Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, (aka Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin AbdulAziz AlSaud), who owns 5-6% of the Fox News Channel, personally called Rupert Murdoch and asked him to change the offensive (but accurate) caption: "Muslim Riots" to the less offensive (and less accurate) "Civil Riots." Within thirty minutes, the Prince had his way.
To paraphrase New York Post columnist Cindy Adams: Only in America kids, only in America.
Our fine Saudi prince also owns shares in Times-Warner/AOL/CNN, which he first acquired in 2002. According to Forbes, the London Guardian, and other media outlets, in 2002 the Prince "claimed to own 1.4 billion in AOL stock...in 2003 he bought another 450 million of AOL stock." God knows what he owns now. (Yes, he's the very Prince whom Presidential hopeful Rudy Guiliani humiliated when he refused to accept his ten million dollar donation for humanitarian aid immediately following 9/11).
Has bin Talal's ownership influenced Amanpour's highly touted, highly slanted, and highly tedious three part series "God's Warriors?" I have no inside information here but I doubt that any overt bribes were involved.
Amanpour dresses in safari-like bush jackets but they are never grungy, and are in fact glamorous in color and fit. She is no Oriana Fallaci, no Susan Sontag, but is probably the best CNN has to offer in terms of Talking Heads who presumably think. To those unfamiliar with Amanpour's background, she lived in London (still does), attended schools in America, and her husband, James Rubin, is Jewish. He once worked for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright--another Jew who did not know she was one.
After watching Amanpour's segment on the Jews, I was disheartened and outraged. How long will people have to suffer Big Lies on our screens and be forced to react defensively, only after the fact? How much Saudi money might really be involved in CNN's series? In addition to bin Talal, we do know that the Saudis have been buying up shares in the Western media, (UPI for example), influencing curriculum on campuses, and in some instances, buying certain journalists outright. (There is a scandal about this still under wraps in Europe right now. Stay tuned for an update).
Amanpour, whose father is a Muslim Iranian, her mother British, and who spent the first eleven years of her life in Teheran, set out to portray Jews as religiously driven terrorists, illegal land-grabbers, and fat-cat American lobbyists with dual loyalties. She interviewed former President Carter and John Mearsheimer (but not anyone of stature who can easily rebut what they say). Both men believe that Israel is an apartheid state and that the Zionist lobby controls American foreign policy. (See CAMERA'S excellent point by point refutation of Amanpour).
Amanpour makes sure to track down Israelis who have advised the government that "settling an occupied land" violates the Geneva convention and international law (such as Theodore Meron); the Jewish Israeli lawyers who defend Palestinians and who often successfully, challenge the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes. She has female settlers on camera who allegedly say that they believe Palestinians should be killed or expelled. She shows the security wall at its ugliest without context and she focuses on individual Palestinians who are indeed being seriously harmed by its creation. (No, she does not show the Jews being blown up, week after week, in a non-stop series of 9/11s that might explain the desperate need for such a tragic but strategic structure).
In my no doubt alarmist and paranoid view, she is trying to position American and world Jewish support for Israel as essentially equivalent to American and world Muslim support for Hamas and for other Muslim terorrist organizations who also engage in humanitarian aid and social service projects. Just as the leaders of the Holy Land foundation are being tried as supporters of terrorist organizations in America today, Amanpour's portrayal of Jewish support for an allegedly "illegal," "racist," or "apartheid" Jewish "settler state" with a "handful of Jewish terrorists" may now lead to simiilar attempts to shut down American-based fundraising for Israel and to dampen Congressional support for military foreign aid to Israel.
Perhaps Amanpour does not envision this at all but merely wishes to show that there is terrorism on both sides of the divide. But this is not true. While there is indeed a "handful" of "Jewish terrorists" or ideologue of Jewish reprisals, (Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, and the Jewish Underground are named), such figures are just that--a handful, and their attempts at indiscriminate violence have either been prevented or immediately and seriously punished by the Israeli government.
Further, Amanpour fails to draw the right conclusions from what she does show on camera. In every instance, Israeli government officials, including former Shin Bet and IDF spokesmen are the ones who prevent Jewish terrorists from striking, who arrest and imprison them when they commit violence, who sentence them to between 7-15 years in jail or to life sentences. There are no posters all over Israel glorifying their violent deeds as there are on the West Bank for their shahids and shahidas and in the no-longer occupied Gaza strip. Israeli textbooks and television videos do not sing their praises in Israel as is the case among the Palestinians.
It gets worse. She views the Muslim claim to Al Aqsa and the Temple Mount, not as equal to but as superior to the ancient Jewish claim. She fails to draw a single conclusion from the fact that Muslims did not--and still do not--allow non-Muslims access to their holy Jewish or Christian religious sites although Jews guarantee that access to all religions.
So, there I was, licking my wounds when I turned on the TV to see Amanpour's second segment.
Amanpour has never met an Iranian or for that matter a Muslim whom she does not like; yes, even the terrorists and one fundamentalist imam in "the holy city of Quom" receives only a flirtatious wag of her finger when he rather cheerfully admits that women are not allowed to do certain things and are condemned to other things--but that's for their own good, to protect them. She is warm with him, much less warm with his so-called Israeli counterparts.
She opens her segment on Muslim Warriors with a charming, well-spoken, highly westernized young man, Ed Husain, who was deceived, or who rebelled and became associated with a terrorist group in his native London. Once he realized that they are killing innocent people, even children, he backed away. He has written a book about leaving Islamism.
Ed Husain does not represent most Muslims who at best, remain silent and who do not condemn Islamist imperialism, religious fundamentalism, or America- and Jew-hatred. There are a handful of Muslims who criticize Islam openly. Many are tortured, killed, forced into exile, impoverished, live in hiding, publish under psedonyms. Her interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali was very, very brief --no more than a minute altogether. On the contrary, she kept returning to former nun Karen Armstrong whose views on Jews, Israel, and Zionism are anti-Semitic with a vengeance. Armstrong also defended veiling and compared it her own habit as a nun. (Stay tuned for more to come about this).
As to women? Amanpour does not tell us any stories of honor killings or women who avoided being honor-murdered but instead focuses on a happy, modestly veiled Muslim-American woman who describes how her choice to "cover" is denigrated and held suspect in America.
Each and every portrait of a Muslin or of a Muslin terrorist's family presents soulful, thoughtful people, perhaps a bit "different" than you and I but still human, likeable, charming--maybe even made of better stuff than you and I in the west who crave material posessions, display female bodies, allow men and women to intermingle in sexually charged ways, drink alcohol, and refuse to live in a God-centered world.
Amanpour is worse than all the others (writers mainly) who have been blasting Judaism and Christianity but mainly in order to be able to also blast, but in a lesser way, Islam. The thesis is that we are all guilty, all to blame, that each religion is clannish, "different," its texts support violence, its extreme followers are but a handful, nothing for the world to worry about.
These are all false assumptions and outright lies.
THE CHRISTIAN CALIPHATE
In her three part series, Amanpour is far more combative and confrontational with both Jewish and Christian religious leaders than she is with Muslim leaders. She is warmer, softer, more "at home," with even the most extreme of Islamist leaders, perhaps even more respectful, than she is with their allegedly Jewish or Christian counterparts.
Amanpour completely fails to make the distinction between Islamists who teach hatred of infidels and women and who blow infidel and Muslim civilians up (as well as honor-murder their own women); Israelis who are under perpetual terrorist seige and who are trying to defend themselves against Islamist attacks; and conservative Christians who are trying to moblize votes, change laws, or win hearts and minds with words, not bombs (although she certainly has lots of footage of the bloody bombings at abortion clinics--bombings I personally abhor and mourn--as do many Christians).
Amanpour wants us to like Muslims--even the most extremist among them. They are human, prick them will they not bleed? But she does not want us to like Christians or Jews, especially those who are Zionists.
Amanpour does not seem to show the same respect towards conservative Christians who wish to dress modestly, remain chaste until marriage, and avoid a secular culture of rampant pornography and rape as she shows their far more extremist counterparts in the Islamist world or than she shows, at great length, one well-spoken Muslim-American woman who decides to "cover."
In one instance, Amanpour accuses Ron Luce, a Christian leader of teenagers, as being like the Taliban. He actually answers Amanpour in a rather charming, disarming way. She will not be moved. Amanpour herself takes no stand on what Luce says about an American secular and popular culture which allows virgin teenager America to be raped on the sidewalk as we pass by without stopping or caring.
Perhaps Amanpour can't forgive these "radical" Christians their support for Israel, their "Zionism." She presents Pastor John Hagee (together with the late Jerry Fallwell) as Doctor Strangeloves. Hagee, by the way, sees Iran as a threat to America and Israel. As he speaks of his Christian love of Zion, Amanpour cuts to a presumed Israeli air attack againt innocent civilians, replete with weeping, civilian Arab women.
Amanpour again returns to former President Jimmy Carter--this time to have him tell us that he had to break with evangelical Baptists over their sexist position on women in the church. Carter who believes that Israel is an "apartheid" state and whose library has been hugely funded by the Saudis is the new feminist in town.
Amanpour has a definite political agenda--no less so than the Christian conservatives whom she attacks for daring to conduct "stealth politics, under the radar" when they engage in Christian voter drives. Amanpour wants to put a Democrat in the White House. She wants someone there who will move against the so-called Israel Lobby and who will finally stop funding Israel. She wants our next Commander in Chief to engage in nicey-nice diplomacy with Iran. She wants Americans to stop fearing that every Muslim might be a terrorist and to start accepting a parallel Islamic/Islamist universe right here on our own soil.
Yes, our ethnically super-trendy, British-accented war correspondent really wants exactly this. And she wants us to see that such right-wing Christians are no different than Islamists, including Bin Laden, who want a world Caliphate. (We are all the same, all cultures are equal, remove the mote from your own eye before you judge anyone else, etc.)
To accomplish her goal, Amanpour presents Christian conservatives as truly scary, as mounting a Crusader-like Army against liberal secular America--but not necessarily a violent war against terrorist Islamism. Amanpour exploits America's hottest domestic issues (abortion and gay marriage) in order to accomplish her own foreign policy aims.
By the end of her third and final segment we are meant to fear and loathe the Christian conservative right far more than we are meant to fear or loathe Amanpour's Amadinejad whom --incredibly--she never accuses of funding Hezbollah's terrorist work abroad. What she mainly shows us in Iran are Shi'a Muslims at prayer, engaged in theatrical-religious rituals. We do not see them funding and masterminding Hezbollah as it takes down civilian (and Christian) Lebanon, lays seige to Israel, blows up the Jewish Community Center in Argentina. She shows us the child-martyrs (one estimate has 850,000 dying in the Iran-Iraq war) as themselves true believers as opposed to victims of sadistic adult handlers.
Her third segment is one long running advertisement for a Democratic candidate for the next Presidency. She is electioneering as hard as she accuses the Christians of doing.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including the bestseller Women and Madness (1972) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She has just published The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised edition of Women and Madness. She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (1974). She is currently on the Board of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and lives in New York City. Her website is www.phyllis-chesler.com.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 28, 2007, 06:48:16 AM
Buzwardo, My first inclination is to not respond to your post, after all I've already ridden off into the sunset. However I just don't want you to feel sorry for me, and my inferior vocabulary and my inablity to translate it across the computer key board. I do feel my best attributes may be as a orator....Also I may be somewhat uninformed and often post on personal opinon....I may over argue my points....but also feel myself a big enough man to be willing to admit "I was wrong"
As for learning the English language....While I may never have the same mastery as yourself, if ever I feel a need to improve on it, I will consult my mother who was a English major.......As I did mention in a previous post I prefer to communicate in a way that transcends all levels...therefore not excluding anyone from conversation. Neither am I overly concerned about my abilitys to learn nor attain knowledge, as I'am quite proud of my education having made it through Nursing school and currently working as a nurse in a "in" patient Hospice facility, I have no problem communicating with doctors or other medical professionals on a regular/daily baisis...... So....please don't feel sorry for me.....I'am pretty confortable where I'am at :wink: TG By the way, I found all I care to know about you on your "my space page" Pretty intresting pictures :wink:
Eh, I'm not up on Myspace and consider it one of the biggest wastes of time invented. Guess I'll have to copyright my handle.
Don't feel sorry for you and don't mean to condescend; just trying to wish a fellow traveler well.
Happy trails. . . .
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Howling Dog on August 28, 2007, 10:01:32 AM
Buzwardo, Not sure a copywrite would help, but this guy bears some similarites, that may lead one to beleive it to be you....like him being a English lit. major and also from a similar, general geographic location as well as a percieved general personality similar to yourself. (as I percieve it). http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=67149053 Sorry for the case of mistaken identity......imagine two Buzwardos in the world :-o TG
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2007, 10:12:10 AM
I've met our Buz, and the myspace Buz most certainly is not him :lol:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 28, 2007, 11:13:24 AM
http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2007/08/26/opus/
Suppressed by the MSM.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 28, 2007, 11:35:32 AM
Title: Not Myspace
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 28, 2007, 12:06:50 PM
I like how Mr. Wallace boycotts consumerism with a digital camera in his hand.
Had my pic snapped while I was cooking at a recent event, holding the same knife and steel that horrified the Dean a ways back. As you can see, I don't much resemble the Myspace boho:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2007, 09:11:50 AM
By Kevin Mooney CNSNews.com Staff Writer August 30, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - A conflict of interest involving the radical Nation of Islam and the Washington, D.C., affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) is an example of unethical journalism that benefits extremist Muslims, according to a national security expert and a Hollywood filmmaker.
Martyn Burke, director of documentary films at ABG Films, and Frank Gaffney, president of the conservative Center for Security Policy, produced a documentary for a PBS series - "America at a Crossroads" - that focused on Muslims in America, Europe, and Canada who speak out against Islamist extremists.
Their documentary, "Islam versus Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center," was, after a protracted battle, rejected in April by WETA, the PBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.
The film is going to air on an Oregon PBS affiliate this month, and some other affiliates may run it as well. However, one of the more controversial aspects over the film is that PBS chose to have the documentary reviewed by the radical Nation of Islam prior to its decision to cancel the film.
The Nation of Islam (NOI) and its long-time leader Rev. Louis Farrakhan have a history of espousing racism and anti-Semitism. Farrakhan stepped down as NOI's leader in 2006 for health reasons.
PBS's decision to pass the film to NOI for review was a serious "breach of journalistic ethics," said Burke.
"Is there anyone who understands that no functioning journalist - or network, or publication can ever allow this kind of outrageous action?" Burke wrote in an e-mail to PBS officials.
"This utterly undermines any journalistic independence. ... It virtually hands the story to the subject and allows them to become an active party in shaping it. That is advertising, not journalism. Is that not obvious?" he added.
Burke noted that PBS hired Aminah McCloud as an adviser for the "Crossroads" series. McCloud, director of Islamic World Studies at DePaul University, is a "radical professor," according to Burke, and it was she who gave a "rough cut" of the documentary to the Nation of Islam.
Burke, in an interview with Cybercast News Service, further said that the PBS producers and advisers involved in the "America at a Crossroads" series were favorably disposed to the Islamist perspective and this was detrimental to the filmmaking. PBS officials claimed the "Muslim Center" film, a part of the series, was overly subjective and one-sided. They thus decided against airing it as part of the series. (See Related Story)
In addition, Jeff Bieber, WETA's executive producer, demanded that Gaffney and his CSP colleague Alex Alexiev - a national security expert who specializes in Islamic extremism - be fired from the filmmaking because they are conservatives, said Burke.
But "I'm not going to fire anyone from the right or the left unless their politics start skewing the truth as we understand it," Burke said. "So, when WETA asked me 'don't you check into the politics of the people you work with?' I said I can't believe I'm hearing this in America."
When PBS officials failed to blacklist conservatives associated with the project, they shifted strategy and began to attack the film directly, Gaffney told Cybercast News Service in an interview. Leo Eaton, the "Crossroads" producer for WETA, and other PBS officials pushed for editorial changes that would dilute the over-arching theme and central message of the film, said Gaffney.
The criticisms Eaton presented on behalf of PBS-WETA in a series of notes called for significant modifications to the content - changes that would portray Islamic extremists in a favorable manner, detached from reality, according to Burke and his CSP partners.
"What began as a struggle to prevent people like me from playing in the left's sandbox at PBS mutated into a concerted effort to ensure that a film that told the story of anti-Islamist Muslims never made it on the air," said Gaffney.
"I am personally committed to preventing PBS from doing business the way it has been doing it up until now. There's no doubt that part of what was going on at PBS with our film was a naked antipathy toward conservatives," he added.
A letter from Sharon Percy Rockefeller, president and CEO of WETA, to Gaffney was dismissive of the concerns the filmmakers expressed over the hiring of McCloud and her subsequent activities.
With regard to McCloud's decision to exhibit a portion of the film to the Nation of Islam, Rockefeller wrote: "I am informed that while she regrets causing you and WETA any concern, she thought it was her duty as an advisor to check out the accuracy of information she believed to be incorrect, both for the benefit of WETA and the show producers."
The "Crossroads" series was conceived and financed through the liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) with $20 million in federal funds. The Burke and Gaffney film, "Islam versus Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center," cost $675,000.
Allegations directed against public television officials that touch on questions of journalistic ethics have caught the attention of key congressional figures who are now seeking an investigation.
In a letter to Kenneth Konz, the inspector general for CPB, three Republican senators and two Republican representatives expressed concern over apparent conflicts of interest that may have affected PBS's decision to not run the "Muslim Center" in the series.
When the "Crossroads" project was initially launched, top officials within CPB, including former Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, expressed a strong desire to bring in a mix of views, including conservative voices, not traditionally heard on public television.
Tomlinson resigned in 2005 after an inspector general's report raised issues about some of his political activities.
Concerning this mix of views, it "was an initiative that came from CPB that did not necessarily have the concurrence of PBS," said Steve Bass, president and CEO of the Oregon Public Broadcasting System, which is now airing the "Muslim Center" film.
"The fact that you are broadening the pool of people involved in the film series and casting a wider net is almost by definition going to cause some problems," he said.
The creative and political differences that typically beset film projects were further exacerbated in the case "Islam vs. Islamists," Bass surmised, because public money was involved.
"We were attacked for having a point of view, which is astonishing since my understanding is that by definition documentaries have a point of view," said Burke.
"We set out to answer a simple question: Where are the moderate Muslims? What we found is they are speaking out, but they are speaking out in a vacuum and often at great peril and always with great difficultly," Burke added.
In his written correspondence with the filmmakers, Eaton described the film as a "one-sided narrative" that featured the conflict between so-called moderates and extremists in "very subjective and very claustrophobic terms."
For his part, Burke told Cybercast News Service that "wherever possible" anyone in the film advocated radical behavior was permitted to say so at length.
Although he found the film to be "quite compelling" and worthy of airtime, Bass said he felt some of the proposed changes the filmmakers were asked to make could have improved the overall product.
"If I found any fault with it, there were parts of the story that to me needed a little bit more information," he said.
"The film assumed a level of understanding on the part of the viewer that may not be there universally. That's why we decided to add the panel discussion. We think it poses the film in a greater base of understanding with more information," Bass added.
A panel discussion featuring Zuhdi Jasser, co-founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AISD), Rafia Zakaria, an associate executive director of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana, and Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of CAIR in Chicago has been produced to run alongside the film.
But individual stations are free to decide whether or not to include the panel, Bass explained.
Although Burke and Gaffney think the film's treatment at WETA warrants further investigation, they agree "Islam vs. the Islamists" has the potential to reach an even larger audience than it otherwise would have if aired as was originally intended on the "Crossroads Series."
Cybercast News Service attempted to contact Eaton and Bieber via e-mail, but did not receive a response.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 02, 2007, 01:55:03 PM
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/001189.html
Opus AKBAR!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2007, 09:56:37 AM
-- John Fund Some Religions Are Funnier Than Others
For the second Sunday in a row, the Washington Post declined to publish the popular "Opus" cartoon strip, written by Berkeley Breathed, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his daily cartoon "Bloom County" in 1987. Because the Post is Mr. Breathed's syndicator, other papers apparently took the cue and nixed the cartoons as well.
The offending strips featured the hippy, fad-chasing Lola Granola, who has decided, for the moment, to adopt the pose of a victimized "radical Islamist," veil and all, which she calls the "hot new fad on the planet." Amy Lago, the comics editor for the Washington Post Writers Group, told Fox News: "I don't necessarily think it's poking fun [at Islam... but the question with Muslims is, are they taking it seriously?"
Even as it spiked Mr. Breathed, the Post last Sunday had no trouble publishing on its Web site (under the heading "On Faith" no less) an attack on Christianity by author Sam Harris, who called the doctrine of Christ dying for humanity's sins "a direct and undisguised inheritance of the scapegoating barbarism that has plagued bewildered people throughout history." For his part, Mr. Breathed has been an equal-opportunity satirist over the years, once lamenting that the Bush administration's bumbling had all but made parody impossible. Perhaps his next target will be the selective sensitivities of newspaper editors.
opinion journal WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2007, 11:49:10 AM
Chuck
Guilty in the Duke Case
By Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson Friday, September 7, 2007; Page A21
One night in jail: So concludes the Duke lacrosse rape case -- rape fraud, as it turned out. The legacy of this incident should include hard thinking about the deep pathologies underlying the media sensationalism and the perversion of academic ideals that this fraud inspired.
The 24-hour sentence was imposed on Mike Nifong, the disbarred former district attorney of Durham, after a contempt-of-court trial last week for repeatedly lying to hide DNA evidence of innocence. His prosecution of three demonstrably innocent defendants, based on an emotionally disturbed stripper's ever-changing account, may be the worst prosecutorial misconduct ever exposed while it was happening. Durham police officers and other officials aided Nifong, and the city and county face the threat of a massive lawsuit by the falsely accused former students seeking criminal justice reforms and compensation.
All this shows how the criminal justice process can oppress the innocent -- usually poor people lacking the resources to fight back -- and illustrates the need for reforms to restrain rogue prosecutors. But the case was also a major cultural event exposing habits of mind among academics and journalists that contradict what should be their lodestar: the pursuit of truth.
Nifong's lies, his inflaming of racial hatred (to win the black vote in his election campaign) and his targeting of innocent people were hardly representative of criminal prosecutors. But the smearing of the lacrosse players as racist, sexist, thuggish louts by many was all too representative.
Dozens of the activist professors who dominate campus discourse gleefully stereotyped and vilified their own students -- and not one member of Duke's undergraduate faculty publicly dissented for months. Duke President Richard Brodhead repeatedly and misleadingly denigrated the players' characters. He also acted as though he had no problem with Nifong's violations of their rights to due process.
The New York Times and other newspapers vied with trash-TV talk shows hosted by the likes of CNN's Nancy Grace, a biased wacko-feminist, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, a right-wing blowhard, in a race to the journalistic bottom. The defendants -- who endured the ordeal with courage and class -- and their teammates were smeared nationwide as depraved racists and probable rapists.
To be sure, it was natural to assume at first that Nifong had a case. Why else would he confidently declare the players guilty? But many academics and journalists continued to presume guilt months after massive evidence of innocence poured into the public record. Indeed, some professors persisted in attacks even after the three defendants were declared innocent in April by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper -- an almost unheard-of event.
Brushing aside concern with "the 'truth' . . . about the incident," as one put it, these faculty ideologues just changed their indictments from rape to drunkenness (hardly a rarity in college); exploiting poor black women (the players had expected white and Hispanic strippers); and being born white, male and prosperous.
This shameful conduct was rooted in a broader trend toward subordinating facts and evidence to faith-based ideological posturing. Worse, the ascendant ideology, especially in academia, is an obsession with the fantasy that oppression of minorities and women by "privileged" white men remains rampant in America. Its crude stereotyping of white men, especially athletes, resembles old-fashioned racism and sexism.
Can this trend be reversed? The power of extremist professors will continue to spread unless mainstream liberal academics, alumni and trustees stop deferring to them and stop letting them pack departments with more and more ideologically eccentric, intellectually mediocre allies.
As for the media, the case shows the need for editors and watchdogs to remind journalists that they are supposed to be in the truth-telling business and that truth emerges from facts and evidence.
The case did feature one hero, who showed how academics as well as journalists should behave: Professor James Coleman of Duke Law School. Long a champion of liberal causes, Coleman broke ranks with his guilt-presuming colleagues after Brodhead named him to lead a committee investigating the team's culture. Yes, the report Coleman's committee issued in May 2006 said that some lacrosse players drank unlawfully or excessively and had committed such petty offenses as having noisy parties. But alcohol aside, the report was a stunning vindication. Team members had "performed well academically"; respected the Duke employees with whom they came into contact; behaved well on trips; supported current and former African American players; and had no history of fighting, sexual assault or harassment, or racist slurs.
The media long ignored this portrayal, which did not fit their mythical story line. Coleman later became the first -- and for months the only -- Duke figure to publicly denounce Nifong's violations of the players' rights. The media long ignored that, too.
Washington Post
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2007, 09:29:25 AM
A Real 9/11 Cover-Up By CYRUS NOWRASTEH September 11, 2007; Page A18
A year ago today, ABC ran the docudrama I wrote, "The Path to 9/11," at the peak of a firestorm of political protest designed to discredit and shut down the miniseries before it aired. Left-leaning pundits, politicos and bloggers waxed hysterical about its supposed inaccuracies and anti-Clinton bias, though the vast majority of them had not seen it.
They were determined that no one else should see it, either. But they failed, and the miniseries garnered nearly 28 million viewers and seven Emmy nominations. One year later, however, there is another attempt to shut down "The Path to 9/11" -- this time the DVD version.
Despite what these would-be censors and the conspiracy theorists of the blogosphere fervently believed a year ago, the miniseries was never about Bill Clinton, the political left or right, but about our common enemy then and now: Islamist terrorism. It dramatizes a clearly linked chain of historical events, beginning with the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, continuing through the multiple attacks on American embassies and interests abroad, and culminating in the horrific attacks on American soil six years ago.
The miniseries depicts not only the institutionalized lapses and errors along the way, noted in the 9/11 Commission Report and other sources, but also the efforts of ordinary American heroes who did their best to defend this country from its enemies. Both the failures and the successes are historical facts, and neither the Clinton nor Bush administration is spared its failures or denied its successes in the miniseries, as its many millions of viewers can attest.
After the broadcast the controversy went away. The threatened lawsuits never materialized, and the attacks on the miniseries' credibility dissipated. Indeed, experts such as Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, and Gary Schroen, the first American field agent into Afghanistan after 9/11, both came forward to confirm the accuracy of the docudrama.
The current battle against the DVD version is not taking place in a frenzy of unfounded accusations, but in silence. The normal time frame from broadcast to DVD for miniseries and movies is approximately four months. Originally I was told by ABC that the DVD release date would be in January. January came and went, and I was told June was the new release date. Then July. Now ABC's official statement is, "We have not decided on a release date at this time." No further explanation.
Privately, I was told by an ABC executive that "If Hillary weren't running for president, this wouldn't be a problem." The clear message is that ABC/Disney isn't eager to reopen the wound, or feel the pressure again from politicians anxious to whitewash their legacy. Executive Producer Marc Platt, a well-known Hollywood liberal, even had to finance the limited Emmy campaign himself because Disney/ABC refused to do so (unheard of for such a high-profile production). This passive self-censorship is just as effective as anything Joseph Stalin or Big Brother could impose. The result is the same: the curbing of free speech and creative expression, and the suppression of a viewpoint that may be an inconvenient truth for some politicians.
This was a $40 million project that, because of the overblown controversy, attracted no sponsors and thus made not a penny of profit from its broadcast. It is a quality production, both entertaining and educational, that has the potential to recoup a significant part of its cost, if not actually turn a profit, through the sales of an eagerly anticipated DVD. Does ABC/Disney not owe it to its shareholders to make this basic effort to reclaim some of their $40 million?
But profit, while not an insignificant consideration, is not at the heart of the matter here (certainly not for me personally, as I would make literally a fraction of a penny for each DVD sold). The issue is that corporate timidity is preventing millions of Americans from finding "The Path to 9/11" on DVD -- though other politically controversial movies are readily available, such as "Loose Change," which argues that the Bush administration targeted American citizens for death in an elaborate and sinister plot, or Michael Moore's unabashedly biased "Fahrenheit 9/11." These highly charged movies, which don't offer even a pretense of balance, and others can be found online or in retail outlets and DVD rental stores across the country -- and so they should be, just as "The Path to 9/11" should be.
Whatever one may think of the miniseries or of me as the writer, the American way is not to let the docudrama languish in a cowardly purgatory but to release it for the general public to judge. If there is controversy, all the more reason it should be made available for every American to decide for himself. In fact, I suggested to Disney executives that members of the Clinton administration be allowed to speak their piece in the DVD's special features, a suggestion which was met with -- that's right -- utter silence.
A year ago, the amped-up outcry preceding the airing of "The Path to 9/11" nearly drowned out the truth. This Sept. 11, it is the corporate silence regarding the DVD that is deafening.
Mr. Nowrasteh wrote the screenplay for "The Path to 9/11" and is one of its producers.
WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2007, 11:49:49 AM
The World According to Univision By LESLIE SANCHEZ September 13, 2007; Page A17
John Edwards has not taken a definitive position on abortion. Hillary Clinton's position on the issue is that "she will fight for the defense of children." And Barack Obama wants taxes to be "as low as possible."
Each of these statements is misleading, at best. Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton support "a woman's right to choose" and Mr. Obama wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts. But on Univision, a Spanish-language TV network with an average prime-time audience of about 3.5 million viewers, these and other slanted statements about the presidential candidates are commonplace.
These statements appeared on Univision's Web site, but like much of the network's reporting, were missed by the mainstream media because they appeared only in Spanish. I have taken an extensive look at Univision and found that these are a tiny fraction of the biased views of American politics regularly presented by the network.
This is something all of us need to be concerned about. Earlier this week, Democrats participated in a Univision-sponsored presidential debate held in south Florida. The candidates used the forum to reach out to Hispanic voters and many Democrats have noted that only one Republican -- Sen. John McCain -- has agreed to participate in a similar debate for GOP candidates originally scheduled for this coming Sunday. Their aim is to portray Republicans as biased against Hispanics.
But context matters. Faced with an onslaught of biased reporting, Republicans are right to have reservations about Univision. They should, however, engage the network, as it is far too important to be ignored. Late last month, Nielsen began comparing Univision to other broadcast networks in a single viewer sample, and found that it is the most-watched TV network (ahead of Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC) for viewers 18-34.
If their views were presented fairly, it's likely that Republicans would connect with Hispanic voters. That may be why the network's news coverage often downplays issues that make Hispanics dislike Democrats (abortion, same-sex marriage, taxes) and sensationalizes the immigration issue as a way of demonizing Republicans -- even those who are not anti-immigrant.
Rudy Giuliani, who is attacked by some for making New York a "sanctuary city" for illegal immigrants during his time as mayor, was blasted as anti-inmigrante in a recent op-ed by star reporter Maria Elena Salinas on Univision's Web site. Apparently the mayor earned the label because he was tough on crime and supports border security, notwithstanding the fact that he carried 43% of New York City's Hispanic vote (a bloc that tends to be heavily Democratic) when he ran for re-election in 1997.
Republicans must engage and demand fairness from Univision, rather than let it propagandize the most conservative segment of the Hispanic population -- the 40% who may speak English, but who are "Spanish-dominant" and consume their news in their native language. According to a July 2006 study of previous elections by the New Democratic Network, English-speaking Hispanics are more reliably Democratic, and "the movement towards Bush has come from the Spanish-dominant, as they have gone from 82%-18% Clinton-Dole in 1996 to 52%-48% Kerry-Bush."
Univision isn't alone. Bias is a problem throughout Spanish media. In South Carolina, Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican and supporter of the failed comprehensive immigration reform bill, was surprised to see a December 2005 headline in El Periodico Latino that, when translated, read: "BAD NEWS FOR IMMIGRANTS: Congressman Inglis will support President Bush's position on immigration." Of course, the Bush plan was the most pro-immigration proposal on the table.
Univision is the largest and most important part of the Spanish-language media, yet it features some of the most unbalanced political news coverage on television and it continues its leftward drift. Marcela Salazar, a former staffer for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was hired recently as the producer on Univision's new political show, "Al Punto," which is hosted by two left-wing journalists. A Democratic friend of mine, who works as a strategist for a Democratic presidential campaign, told me last week: "She'll do us a lot of good there."
As a group, Latinos are more pro-life and more supportive of traditional family values than non-Hispanic whites, less likely to divorce and three times as likely to have started a business in the past decade. Given that all of these are strong Republican identifiers, GOP strategists are asking themselves why they vote so lopsidedly Democratic.
The answer rests, in part, in the bias in the Spanish-language media. Republicans should counteract that by participating in Univision's debate, if only so they can speak over the heads of biased reporters and directly to the network's audience.
Ms. Sanchez, director of the White House Initiative on Hispanic Education from 2001-2003, is author of "Los Republicanos: Why Hispanics and Republicans Need Each Other" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2007, 10:53:03 AM
There was quite a media firestorm ignited when security at USC's library tasered a late night Iranian who refused to ID himself and/or leave.
Why did this not receive similar coverage?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=657_1190085332
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2007, 05:10:12 AM
Dead Metaphor? Here is a story to brighten your weekend: Early this afternoon we received an email from one of our most loyal readers. We'll withhold his name, because our purpose here isn't to make him look silly. Suffice it to say that he writes us several times a week, his nickname for President Bush is "Chimpy," and the following message, which we quote verbatim, is actually quite a bit more temperate than his usual fare:
No wonder the entire world sees this fool for the complete moron that he is.
I now see that his supporters, such as your august self, have truly, really, fundamentally no shame and no sense of embarrassment. Bush makes us all look like dopes--after all he was elected twice (ooops, make that stole the election twice--my bad)
If only his idiot gaffs were the worst of it...
He is truly worthless as a president and as a man!
Our correspondent sent us a link to a blog called First Draft, in which someone styling himself "Holden Caulfield" says of the president, "Christ, what a dumbass," and links to the following Reuters dispatch:
Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.
"It's out there. All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive," Achmat Dangor, chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said as Bush's comments received worldwide coverage. . . .
"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday. . . .
References to his death--Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail--are seen as insensitive in South Africa.
So, what did President Bush actually say? Here's the quote in context, from the White House transcript:
Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where's Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there's a psychological recovery that is taking place. And it's hard work for them. And I understand it's hard work for them. Having said that, I'm not going the give them a pass when it comes to the central government's reconciliation efforts.
In this context, it is clear that the literal meaning of "Where's Mandela?" is "Where is the Iraqi who will play the role in his country that Mandela played in postapartheid South Africa?" This was a pithy metaphor, not an "embarrassing gaffe."
Now, how did Reuters get the story wrong? There are, it seems to us, three explanations:
Stupidity. The reporter was so bone-headedly literal-minded that he simply did not understand the rhetorical device Bush was employing.
Laziness. The reporter wasn't actually at the press conference and didn't bother to check the context of the quote.
Dishonesty. The reporter knew full well that Bush was speaking metaphorically and deliberately twisted his meaning in order to fit the stereotype that Bush "has a reputation for verbal faux pas." In the case of the particular Reuters dispatch "Caulfield" links to, laziness is the most likely answer. It's datelined Johannesburg, so the reporter surely was not at the press conference. But ultimately the explanation for the "worldwide coverage" this "gaffe" has received is either stupidity or dishonesty. Some journalist either failed to understand or deliberately misrepresented Bush's remark. And the joke is on people like our Bush-hating correspondent, who gullibly eat this stuff up.
political journal WSJ
Title: Dan Rather
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2007, 09:14:07 AM
“Dan Rather seems divinely inspired to crash more times than a Kennedy driving home from an office party. The multimillionaire semi-retired newsman is suing [CBS] for $70 million, $1 million for every year he’s been alive since he was 5 years old. Which is fitting, because that’s what he sounds like. The gist of his lawsuit is that CBS used him as a ‘scapegoat’ in the Memogate story to ‘pacify the White House.’ The swelled-headed former anchor, who used to brag incessantly about his toughness and independence, also whines in his suit that the network forced him to apologize under duress when ‘no apology from him was warranted,’ and that the former managing editor of CBS News ‘was not responsible for any such errors.’ Indeed, according to Rather and his lawyers, the only mistakes made were by CBS management, which, in its eagerness to ‘appease angry government officials,’ had the temerity to apologize for passing off fake documents as real ones in a news story intended to sway a presidential election... Frankly, we need this. And by ‘we,’ I mean a grand coalition of people who delight in watching one of the 20th century’s most pompous gasbags fall from the top of the laughingstock tree and hit every branch on the way down. These are dour times, and if Gunga Dan and Hurricane Dan and What’s-The-Frequency-Kenneth Dan want to trade their Afghan robes, yellow windbreakers and enormous tinfoil hats for some baggy pants, bright-orange wigs and floppy shoes, I say let them. I just hope all of the Dans show up at the courthouse in a teensy-weensy clown car.” —Jonah Goldberg
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on September 24, 2007, 01:49:26 PM
I'm curious to see what actually comes out in court during this lawsuit.
First off, it should be acknowledged that while the supposedly forged documents show that Bush didn't even fulfill his service requirements, the evidence of Bush evading the draft by using family connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard was overwhelming even without them. The attack on CBS sought to make those documents the central issue and thus avoid the substantive (and proven) claim that Bush used family connections to get out of the draft.
Rather claims that the network-appointed "Independent Review Panel" investigating his reporting was extremely biased and in fact never even determined whether or not the forgery claim was true. I assume his lawyers will demand that CBS produce their evidence that the documents were forgeries. If it turns out that CBS fired a long-time veteran journalist solely on the word of some right-wing blogger claiming the documents were produced by Microsoft Word, CBS is basically screwed.
Rog
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2007, 03:24:45 PM
Agreed that the suit has the potential to be very interesting. I have a supply of popcorn (organic of course) on hand and suspect none of the parties will come out of it looking very good :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 24, 2007, 09:31:44 PM
I'm curious to see what actually comes out in court during this lawsuit.
First off, it should be acknowledged that while the supposedly forged documents show that Bush didn't even fulfill his service requirements, the evidence of Bush evading the draft by using family connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard was overwhelming even without them.
**Supposedly forged? Please explain how the Texas Air National Guard was using Microsoft Word in 1973. This should be priceless.**
The attack on CBS sought to make those documents the central issue and thus avoid the substantive (and proven) claim that Bush used family connections to get out of the draft.
**Please post the non-fabricated documents that prove that assertion.**
Rather claims that the network-appointed "Independent Review Panel" investigating his reporting was extremely biased and in fact never even determined whether or not the forgery claim was true. I assume his lawyers will demand that CBS produce their evidence that the documents were forgeries. If it turns out that CBS fired a long-time veteran journalist solely on the word of some right-wing blogger claiming the documents were produced by Microsoft Word, CBS is basically screwed.
Rog
Here is the RIGHT-WING (cue scary music) Blogger's post. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526&only Please debunk it for me.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 24, 2007, 09:40:31 PM
Here is the cool graphic overlay of the two images. Amazing the TANG had word processors in 1973. Karl Rove must have a time machine! :-o
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on September 25, 2007, 12:04:45 AM
Read the guy's blog posts, and all I can say is if that's all CBS went on, they don't stand a chance in court.
Did any known authorities on document forgery agree with his conclusions and state so publicly? Did the Bush administration itself officially make this claim?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 25, 2007, 02:47:57 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2007, 06:47:13 AM
ROTFLMAO :lol:
Moving right along, here's this from the WSJ:
Other People's Politics In defense of the New York Times.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Two bastions of liberalism are discovering the nasty side of campaign finance reform now that it has landed in their own backyards.
On Sunday, a spokeswoman for the New York Times admitted it had "made a mistake" when it charged the radical group MoveOn.org a special discounted rate for an ad accusing General David Petraeus of betrayal in advance of his Congressional testimony. Meanwhile, DailyKos's Markos Moulitsas Zuniga has faced a Federal Election Commission inquiry into advertising sales at his blog, which has become a force in pushing the Democratic Party to the left on various issues--among them, campaign finance reform.
DailyKos holds forth regularly that "our democracy is in danger" from money in politics and loudly supports McCain-Feingold and other campaign and media restrictions. The New York Times position on campaign finance reform is that it "has not gone far enough," and that more should be done to control donors and prevent changes that would "open the spigots to corporate and special-interest money."
Of course, it's always other people's influence that's a threat to democracy. DailyKos's misadventure was resolved with a Federal Election Commission ruling that allowed it (quite properly) to escape the rules it wants foisted on everybody else. And we certainly defend the Times's right to sign advertising contracts at whatever price it wants to charge--without the FEC combing through its books in search of rate discrepancies.
Unfortunately, the Times's passion for regulating everyone else's speech has now boomeranged, with politicians calling for an investigation into its favor to MoveOn. This is getting to be a bad Times habit: Recall its campaign for a special counsel to investigate media leaks that turned into a probe of its own sources and led to judicial rulings that limited press freedom. House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Tom Davis (R., Va.) wants hearings on whether the MoveOn discount represented a contribution in violation of campaign finance laws, and whether those laws are actually enforceable. Mr. Davis is indulging in some partisan opportunism here, and we wish instead that he was explaining that the problem is not that these organizations slipped through some campaign finance net. The problem is the net.
The DailyKos argues that it qualifies for the "commentary" exception under McCain-Feingold, while the Times would presumably qualify under the newspaper exception. Anyone who reads either one quickly figures out that they are both stalwart supporters of the Democratic Party and liberal causes. This is their right, but it's hard to see why their political speech deserves any more special legal protection than that of Big Labor or the NRA. As for the Times's ad discount, we also don't see why it shouldn't be as protected as the paper's inevitable endorsement next year of Hillary Clinton for President. Won't that be an "in-kind" political contribution worth at least a few thousand dollars?
The FEC deserves a pat on the back for backing away from media content oversight. But the real solution here is for the Supreme Court to rediscover its First Amendment principles and strike down campaign finance restrictions. As long as McCain-Feingold is on the books, regulators will be running around damming up leaks wherever they imagine they've found them. Sooner or later they'll come after the press, as maybe the Times and other left-wingers are beginning to figure out.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on September 25, 2007, 09:03:13 AM
Woof GM,
Perhaps you can point to some specific parts of that report you consider absolutely fatal to whatever argument you think I'm making?
I only skimmed the report (I have a full-time job), and I did see one part where they state clearly "The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents were forgeries". It goes on to say that Rather took them to be authentic based on the authenticity of a signature, and was responsible for ensuring their authenticity before reporting them as fact. It's basic conclusion is that Rather is guilty of shoddy reporting because he was in a rush to report the story first.
Should be an interesting court proceeding.
Rog
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2007, 09:20:57 AM
As reported in Iran:
IRI President addresses students at Colombia University New York, Sept 25, IRNA Ahmadinejad-Colombia Varsity-Address Despite entire US media objections, negative propagation and hue and cry in recent days over IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scheduled address at Colombia University, he gave his lecture and answered students questions here on Monday afternoon. On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world. Before President Ahamadinejad's address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran's stands as the Iranian President would put them forth. He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression. Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians' resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement. The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad when he touched on international crises. At the end of his address President Ahmadinejad answered the students' questions on such issues as Israel, Palestine, Iran's nuclear program, the status of women in Iran and a number of other matters.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 25, 2007, 10:16:55 AM
Perhaps you can point to some specific parts of that report you consider absolutely fatal to whatever argument you think I'm making?
I only skimmed the report (I have a full-time job), and I did see one part where they state clearly "The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents were forgeries". It goes on to say that Rather took them to be authentic based on the authenticity of a signature, and was responsible for ensuring their authenticity before reporting them as fact. It's basic conclusion is that Rather is guilty of shoddy reporting because he was in a rush to report the story first.
Should be an interesting court proceeding.
Rog
The report doesn't give any "dead-bang" statements that the documents are forgeries because the originals can't be examined. All they have are the photocopies of documents that pefectly match up with Microsoft Word. The originals would put the final nail in the document's coffin. If Fox News ran a similar story right before the 2008 election with photocopies of alleged memos from Hillary Clinton ordering Vince Foster's murder and the "documents" had the same shady pedigree, I can only imagine the howls of outrage from the MSM and the left.
Of course, Fox News doesn't have a history of such journalistic scandals, unlike the NY Times, the New Republic and "See B.S."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2007, 05:57:52 AM
From today's NY Times:
Iran’s Media Assail President’s Treatment E-Mail Print Reprints Save Share Digg Facebook Newsvine Permalink
By NAZILA FATHI Published: September 26, 2007 TEHRAN, Sept. 25 — Iranian state television on Tuesday sharply criticized the way President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been treated during his Columbia University talk and asserted that he had triumphed over his adversarial hosts, whom it described as Zionist Jews.
Commentary, interviews and video broadcast in Iran of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia on Monday depicted a resolute leader who overcame an ambush of personal insults to present his views on topics like the Holocaust, Israel, the Palestinians and nuclear weapons, views that were described as having been well received by the audience.
“In the end, who was the winner?” asked one television commentator, leaving the answer to a quote from John R. Bolton, a former American ambassador to the United Nations and an outspoken Iran critic, who said Mr. Ahmadinejad was the “big winner” for being able to talk at the university.
The evening news showed scenes of the large crowd that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s talk had drawn inside and outside the university. “Mr. Ahmadinejad was the center of the world news for the past few days,” said the reporter.
“Some media even called on students to boycott the speech,” the reporter added, saying that instead Mr. Ahmadinejad got a warm welcome.
The program repeated scenes that showed the audience cheering Mr. Ahmadinejad, suggesting that a lot of the audience was made up of his supporters. “I saw even Jewish students who walked out of the talk saying Mr. Ahmadinejad was very convincing,” a woman wearing a head scarf told the program in English.
It also pointed out that the president of Columbia, Lee C. Bollinger, had made insulting remarks, without elaborating on them. Mr. Bollinger had said that Mr. Ahmadinejad exhibited “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” and that he was “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”
The television broadcasts also showed video of the audience booing Mr. Ahmadinejad when he said there were no homosexuals in Iran. It added that a protest was orchestrated by a Zionist lobby that had brought schoolchildren.
Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards, denounced on the state-run news channel the inhospitable treatment of Mr. Ahmadinejad. “He is the president of a country,” he said. “It is shocking that a country that claims to be civilized treats him that way.”
In an interview with the Aftab Web site, Ali Ahmadi, a member of Parliament, also spoke harshly about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s treatment, and criticized those in the Iranian government who had advised him to appear at the university.
“New York is the headquarters of Zionist Jews, and they have control over Columbia University,” he said. “It seems that our diplomacy apparatus had not given complete information to the president.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2007, 11:55:53 AM
Political Journal WSJ
Maybe Liberals Should Find a Radio Host Named 'Laura'
Liberals in Congress have signaled they would like nothing better than to revive the New Deal-era Fairness Doctrine -- which would hobble talk radio by mandating a balanced presentation of all views -- should Democrats win both the White House and Congress next year.
They have a simple motivation. Liberal talk radio just can't seem to make it in the marketplace. Maybe it's because National Public Radio, which is taxpayer-subsidized, leans left enough to satisfy liberal listeners' ideological sweet tooth. Maybe the talk radio audience is skewed to the self-employed who drive much of the day or to conservative retirees. Or maybe it's because liberal arguments presented in their full-throated glory just don't sell in a center-right country.
Air America, the liberal talk radio network that debuted in 2004, is in perpetual trouble and has seen Al Franken, its big star, flee for the relative security of a U.S. Senate campaign. Or take the talk radio network started last year by feminists Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem. The GreenStone radio network offered cutting-edge liberal thinking pitched to a female audience -- and flopped completely. By the time the network's two sugar-mommas pulled the plug late last month, GreenStone had signed up only eight affiliates, all in medium-sized or small markets. The network's staff say they are distressed to find that talk radio continues to be dominated by conservative and male voices.
They need to think again. Female talk radio personalities are doing quite well, thank you. Laura Ingraham's blend of conservative politics and pop culture attracts over five million listeners a week. Laura Schlessinger has almost eight million listeners for her mix of personal advice and stern conservative moral messages. Both have significant female audiences, proving that the message and not the medium is the problem with liberalism's inability to connect with mass audiences on radio.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2007, 02:15:07 AM
Trigger-Happy Journalists Some of our finest special-op soldiers serve companies like Blackwater.
BY BEN RYAN Monday, October 1, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
"They are immature shooters and have very quick trigger fingers," says an anonymous lieutenant colonel.
"Why are we creating new vulnerabilities by relying on what are essentially mercenary forces?" asks a nameless intelligence officer. "They often act like cowboys over here," says an unidentified commander.
Ever since a recent shootout in downtown Baghdad, newspapers have been ablaze with charges that private security contractors in Iraq are trigger-happy.
This rush to pass judgment is hardly surprising. Frequently derided as "mercenaries" and "rent-a-cops," security contractors make an easy target for war opponents.
As a former employee of a major Blackwater competitor, I find this categorical smearing of contractors to be starkly at odds with my experience. I served as an officer in the Navy SEALs for six years. After I left, I joined a private security firm and was promptly sent to Iraq.
Contrary to the popular belief that Blackwater contractors are "thugs for hire," most are highly professional and well trained. Blackwater operates the world's largest private military training facility. Its 1,000 contractors working in Iraq are drawn from the ranks of former military and law enforcement officials. Many of its workers are former SEALs or veterans of other special-operations units. The risks these workers assume are underscored by the infamous 2004 ambush in Fallujah, in which four Blackwater contractors were murdered and mutilated. To date, Blackwater has lost 30 contractors. For all anyone knows, last month's incident could have turned into another Fallujah had Blackwater's contractors reacted differently. The details are still terribly unclear.
The contractors--and the U.S. diplomats they were escorting--claim they were ambushed. Yet Iraq's Ministry of Interior almost immediately issued a report declaring that the contractors were "100% guilty." Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has charged that the operators killed "in cold blood."
With conflicting reports, condemnations should not be made until the joint Iraqi-U.S. investigation is completed. The media, however, has accepted the Ministry of Interior's version of events, all but writing off the accounts of both Blackwater and the State Department.
This follows a long-established pattern of unfounded claims in the press about security contractors. For instance, numerous reports reference contractors making over $1,000 a day--far more than active-duty soldiers. Some point to the more than $700 million Blackwater has received in State Department contracts in order to denounce security firms as war profiteers.
The truth, however, is that contractors are cost-effective. Blackwater contractors, for example, are generally paid $450-$650 a day. More important, unlike U.S. servicemen, they usually receive no benefits and are paid only for the days they work. Security contractors at the better firms have typically retired from active duty or left the military on their own accord after extended service. They are honorable veterans who have chosen to risk their lives to protect American diplomats in a war zone.
Instead of depleting our armed forces, security contractors allow the government to recapture its investment in these men during wartime and avoid the extraordinary expense of training new recruits. In short, they're already trained and experienced--and cost money only when they're needed.
Another common myth is that contractors are above the law. True, the June 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17 exempts contractors (and other diplomatic personnel) from local prosecution. But that doesn't mean that contractors have been granted blanket immunity from prosecution. In fact, the order clearly states that this immunity is limited only to acts necessary to fulfill contracts. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians--as alleged in last month's incident--are not covered. Contractors are also subject to numerous U.S. statutes and regulations, as well as international treaties. Just last year, Congress amended the Uniform Code of Military Justice to include contractors. Contractors can also be prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000, which permits charges to be brought in federal court for crimes abroad.
Like soldiers, security contractors are sometimes forced to make split-second decisions with enormous consequences. They must be--and are--accountable to our government for their actions. But the people I worked with in Iraq, including veterans working for Blackwater, were hardly rogue cowboys. I did, however, meet some trigger-happy journalists over there.
Mr. Ryan is a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer who spent time in Iraq as an employee of Triple Canopy, a private security firm.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2007, 02:00:44 PM
I post this article here because although it is not about media issues, it is responsive to the previous post on this thread about media coverage of Blackwater. -------------------------------
Blackwater has fired 122 personnel
By RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 5 minutes ago
Private security contractor Blackwater USA has had to fire 122 people over the past three years for problems ranging from misusing weapons, alcohol and drug violations, inappropriate conduct, and violent behavior, according to a report released Monday by a congressional committee.
That total is roughly one-seventh of the work force that Blackwater has in Iraq, a ratio that raises questions about the quality of the people working for the company.
The report, prepared by the majority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, also says Blackwater has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005, or roughly 1.4 per week.
In more than 80 percent of the incidents, called "escalation of force," Blackwater's guards fired the first shots even though the company's contract with the State Department calls for it to use defensive force only, it said.
"In the vast majority of instances in which Blackwater fired shots, Blackwater is firing from a moving vehicle and does not remain at the scene to determine if the shots resulted in casualties," according to the report.
The staff report paints Blackwater as a company that's made huge sums of money despite its questionable performance in Iraq, where Blackwater guards provide protective services for U.S. diplomatic personnel.
Blackwater has earned more than $1 billion from federal contracts since 2001, when it had less than $1 million in government work. Overall, the State Department paid Blackwater more than $832 million between 2004 and 2006 for security work, according to the report.
Blackwater, founded in 1997 and headquartered in Moyock, N.C., is the biggest of the State Department's three private security contractors. The others are Dyncorp and Triple Canopy, both based in Washington's northern Virginia suburbs.
According to the 15-page report, Blackwater has had more shooting incidents than the other two companies combined.
The report was distributed to committee members on the eve of a hearing on private security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blackwater's founder and chairman, Erik Prince, will be one of the witnesses.
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell had no comment on the specifics in the report.
"We look forward to setting the record straight on this issue and others tomorrow when Erik Prince testifies before the committee," she said. On Friday seven of the oversight committee's 18 Republican members called on Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the panel's chairman, to postpone the hearing until more is known about a recent incident in Iraq involving Blackwater guards.
On Sept. 16, 2007, 11 Iraqis were killed in a shoot-out involving Blackwater guards protecting a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad. Blackwater says its guards acted in self-defense after the convoy came under attack. Iraqi witnesses have said the shooting was unprovoked. Several investigations are under way, including one by the State Department and another by a U.S.-Iraqi commission that is also examining the broader issue of how private security contractors in Iraq operate.
In a Sept. 28 letter, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and six other Republicans said the committee should wait until these investigations are complete. "We feel it would be irresponsible for the committee to rush to judgment until all the facts are considered," the letter states.
Rep. Tom Davis or Virginia, the committee's top Republican, did not sign the letter.
Spokesman Brian McNicoll said Davis has no objection to the hearing taking place because several State Department representatives are scheduled to testify.
In addition to Prince, the witnesses include: David Satterfield, the department's Iraq coordinator, Richard Griffin, assistant secretary for diplomatic security, and William H. Moser, deputy assistant secretary for logistics management. ___ On the Net: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20071001121609.pdf
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2007, 07:30:56 AM
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Palestinian Propaganda Coup By NATAN SHARANSKY October 2, 2007; Page A17
Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value truth and accuracy in Middle East news reporting. The case involves Philippe Karsenty, a French journalist and media commentator, who was found guilty of defamation after he called for the firing of two France 2 Television journalists responsible for the Sept. 30, 2000, news report on the alleged killing of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father Jamal crouching in terror behind a barrel in Gaza's Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery.
The tape fanned the flames of what became known as the second intifada. The boy Mohammed was the iconic martyr, his name and face gracing streets, parks and postage stamps across the Arab world. His memory was invoked by Osama bin Laden in a jihadist screed against America, and in the ghastly video of the beheading of American Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl.
Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. The official IDF investigation concluded that, based on the position of IDF forces vis-à-vis the Duras, it was highly improbable, if not impossible, that an Israeli bullet hit the boy. Research by the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic and Commentary magazine concurred. Then a German documentary revealed inconsistencies and probable manipulations in the account of France 2's lone journalist on the scene that day, Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahmeh.
And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2's Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.
Subsequently, alleging gross malfeasance, Mr. Karsenty called for the firings of Mr. Enderlin and France 2 News Director Arlette Chabot. But France 2 stood defiant, suing Mr. Karsenty for defamation.
The defamation trial passed almost unnoticed in Israel, to the apparent detriment of Mr. Karsenty's case. In his ruling in favor of France 2, judge Joël Boyer five times cited the absence of any official Israeli support for Mr. Karsenty's claims as indication of their speciousness.
Israel's decision to stay on the sidelines was unfortunate because the truth always matters. The al-Dura incident wasn't the only media report to inflame passions against Israel in recent years, but it was the one with the highest profile. Moreover, if, as Mr. Karsenty and others have claimed persuasively, the al-Dura incident is part of the insidious trend in which Western media outlets allow themselves to be manipulated by dishonest and politically motivated sources (recall the Jenin "massacre" that never was, or the doctored Reuters photos from Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006), then France 2 must be held accountable.
It is important to note that the al-Dura news report profoundly influenced Western public opinion. When I served in the Israeli government as minister of Diaspora Affairs from 2003 to 2005, I traveled frequently to North American college campuses. I heard first hand how Mohammed al-Dura had shaped the perceptions of young people just beginning to follow events in the Middle East. For many Jewish students, the incident was a stain of dishonor that called into question their support for Israel. For anti-Israel students, the story reaffirmed their sense of Zionism's innately "racist" nature and became a tool for recruiting campus peers to the cause.
To its credit, Israel has come to recognize that it must play an active role in uncovering the truth. The IDF recently sent a letter to France 2 demanding the release of Talal Abu Rahmeh's 27 minutes of raw footage, asserting the implausibility of IDF guilt for the death of Mohammad al-Dura, and raising the possibility that the entire affair may have been staged.
Tragically, there is no way to repair the damage inflicted on Israel's international image by the France 2 report, much less restore the Israeli and Jewish victims whose lives were exacted as vengeance. It is possible, however, to deter slanderous news reporting -- and the violence that often accompanies it -- by setting a precedent for media accountability via the handover of Talal Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes of raw footage. Encouragingly, the judge presiding over Mr. Karsenty's appeal has now requested the tapes. France 2 must make a full public disclosure. If there is nothing to hide, why should it refuse?
Mr. Sharansky is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
WSJ
Title: Modern Heroes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 04, 2007, 05:59:51 AM
Modern Heroes Our soldiers like what they do. They want our respect, not pity.
BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN Thursday, October 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
I'm weary of seeing news stories about wounded soldiers and assertions of "support" for the troops mixed with suggestions of the futility of our military efforts in Iraq. Why aren't there more accounts of what the troops actually do? How about narrations of individual battles and skirmishes, of their ever-evolving interactions with Iraqi troops and locals in Baghdad and Anbar province, and of increasingly resourceful "patterning" of terrorist networks that goes on daily in tactical operations centers?
The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq's complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it.
The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them. I am generalizing, of course. Indeed, there are regular, stellar exceptions, quite often in the most prominent liberal publications, from our best military correspondents. But exceptions don't quite cut it amidst the barrage of "news," which too often descends into therapy for those who are not fighting, rather than matter-of-fact stories related by those who are.
As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: "Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I'm a warrior. It's my job to fight." Every journalist has a different network of military contacts. Mine come at me with the following theme: We want to be admired for our technical proficiency--for what we do, not for what we suffer. We are not victims. We are privileged.
The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims "displaced traditional images of heroism." It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims. Heroes, according to the ancients, are those who do great deeds that have a lasting claim to our respect. To suffer is not necessarily to be heroic. Obviously, we have such heroes, who are too often ignored. Witness the low-key coverage accorded to winners of the Medal of Honor and of lesser decorations.
The first Medal of Honor in the global war on terror was awarded posthumously to Army Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith of Tampa, Fla., who was killed under withering gunfire protecting his wounded comrades outside Baghdad airport in April 2003.
According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared with 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. While the exposure of wrongdoing by American troops is of the highest importance, it can become a tyranny of its own when taken to an extreme.
Media frenzies are ignited when American troops are either the perpetrators of acts resulting in victimhood, or are victims themselves. Meanwhile, individual soldiers daily performing complicated and heroic deeds barely fit within the strictures of news stories as they are presently defined. This is why the sporadic network and cable news features on heroic soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan comes across as so hokey. After all, the last time such reports were considered "news" was during World War II and the Korean War.
In particular, there is Fox News's occasional series on war heroes, whose apparent strangeness is a manifestation of the distance the media has traveled away from the nation-state in the intervening decades. Fox's war coverage is less right-wing than it is simply old-fashioned, antediluvian almost. Fox's commercial success may be less a factor of its ideological base than of something more primal: a yearning among a large segment of the public for a real national media once again--as opposed to an international one. Nationalism means patriotism, and patriotism requires heroes, not victims.
Let's review some recent history. From Sept. 11, 2001, until the middle of 2003, when events in Afghanistan and Iraq appeared to be going well, the media portrayed the troops in an uncomplicated, positive light. Young reporters who embedded early on became acquainted with men and women in uniform, by whom they were frankly impressed. But their older editors, children of the '60s often, were skeptical. Once these wars started going badly, skepticism turned to a feeling of having been duped, a sentiment amplified by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. That led to a different news cycle, this time with the troops as war criminals. But that cycle could not be sustained by the facts beyond the specific scandal. So by the end of 2004, yet another news cycle set in, the one that is still with us: the troops as victims of an incompetent and evil administration. The irony is that the daily actions of the troops now, living among Iraqis, applying the doctrines of counterinsurgency, and engaged regularly in close-quarters combat, are likely more heroic than in the period immediately following 9/11.
Objectively speaking, the troops can be both victims and heroes--that is, if the current phase of the war does indeed turn out to be futile. My point is only to note how the media has embraced the former theme and downplayed the latter. The LexisNexis statistics reveal the extent to which the media is uncomfortable with traditional heroism, of the kind celebrated from Herodotus through World War II. If that's not the case, then why don't we read more accounts about the battlefield actions of Silver Star winners, Bronze Star winners and the like?
Feeling comfortable with heroes requires a lack of cynicism toward the cause for which they fight. In the 1990s, when exporting democracy and militarily responding to ethnic and religious carnage were looked up upon, U.S. Army engineering units in Bosnia were lionized merely for laying bridges across rivers. Those soldiers did not need to risk their lives or win medals in order to be glorified by the media. Indeed, the media afforded them more stature than it does today's Medal of Honor winners. When a war becomes unpopular, the troops are in a sense deserted. In the eyes of professional warriors, pity can be a form of debasement.
Rather than hated, like during Vietnam, now the troops are "loved." But the best units don't want love; they want respect. The dilemma is that the safer the administration keeps us at home, the more disconnected the citizenry is from its own military posted abroad. An army at war and a nation at the mall do not encounter each other except through the refractive medium of news and entertainment. That medium is refractive because while the U.S. still has a national military, it no longer has a national media to quite the same extent. The media is increasingly representative of an international society, whose loyalty to a particular territory is more and more diluted. That international society has ideas to defend--ideas of universal justice--but little actual ground. And without ground to defend, it has little need of heroes. Thus, future news cycles will also be dominated by victims.
The media is but one example of the slow crumbling of the nation-state at the upper layers of the social crust--a process that because it is so gradual, is also deniable by those in the midst of it. It will take another event on the order of 9/11 or greater to change the direction we are headed. Contrary to popular belief, the events of 9/11--which are perceived as an isolated incident--did not fundamentally change our nation. They merely interrupted an ongoing trend toward the decay of nationalism and the devaluation of heroism.
Mr. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, is the author of "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground," just published by Random House.
WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2007, 08:56:45 AM
Anatomy of a BIG Lie: ‘Phony Soldiers’ Regular readers are aware that, since The Patriot’s founding a decade ago, we’ve included a short section within Friday’s Digest called, “The BIG Lie.” It’s a section we’ve reserved for egregious examples of Leftist disinformation.
There is an old maxim that if one repeats a lie often and loud enough, it will eventually be perceived as the truth.
Adolf Hitler defined that dictum in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf, writing that a big lie must be so “colossal” that the public would be confident that no national leaders “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
After Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, his chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, used the Third Reich’s big-lie apparatus to fortify the Nazi campaign against Jews. Goebbels blamed the Jews for Germany’s inability to recover from World War I, and this big lie led to the Holocaust—the wholesale murder of some six million men, women and children.
After Germany’s WWII defeat, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and subsequent Communist leaders perfected the big-lie propaganda machine with media “dezinformatsia” campaigns. The primary organ for disseminating this disinformation was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Pravda, which in English means “the truth.” Even the name is a big lie.
Here in the U.S. , the organs of Leftist disinformation have assumed equally impressive identities: The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and NPR, and the list goes on. (For a weekly recounting of the MSM’s biggest whoppers, please see the “Dezinformatsia” section of our Wednesday Chronicle.)
Most recently, the Democrats’ dezinformatsia machines were running overtime to discredit Gen. David Petraeus, commander of our Armed Forces in Iraq. In advance of his congressional testimony about the progress of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Leftmedia gave endless play to those Demo-gogues who have bet their 2008 electoral prospects on failure in and retreat from Iraq.
On the morning of Gen. Petraeus’s testimony, the Democrats’ most effective web-based organ of disinformation, MoveOn.org, was given a deep discount by the Democrats’ most effective print-based organ of disinformation, The New York Times, to run an appalling full-page lie under the heading, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”
Democrats and the George Soros-funded MoveOn thought they could, with impunity, brand one of our nation’s most distinguished warriors a traitor. By extension, they branded as traitors all American forces fighting jihadi terrorists in Iraq and around the world. However, Leftist politicos and MoveOn grossly underestimated the new media’s ability to expose such a colossal lie and grossly overestimated the public’s tolerance for such accusations once brought to their attention.
In short, the Left got caught in a big lie and was severely rebuked.
In an effort to offset that rebuke, Democrats and their radical cadre have fabricated another big lie—this one targeting Rush Limbaugh.
Rush, of course, is the arch-nemesis of the Left. He broke ground for conservative perspective on the radio, much as Fox News did for television and The Patriot did for the Web.
To recap: Rush had been responding to an on-air caller who noted that the MSM has continually dredged up a handful of troops—some real, some fake—to provide antiwar statements to support the Demos’ desire for defeat and retreat. Rush agreed, noting that some of these anti-warriors, in particular Jesse MacBeth, have flat-out lied about their military service. He rightly dubbed them “phony soldiers.”
For the record, Jesse MacBeth, the prototypical anti-OIF poster boy, was in fact born Jesse Al-Zaid. Al-Zaid claimed to have served in Iraq, even receiving a Purple Heart after being shot. He claimed to have witnessed atrocities committed by “fellow soldiers.” But it turns out that Al-Zaid never completed boot camp, being discharged after 44 days because of his “entry level performance and conduct.” He was not a Green Beret, never in Special Ops, never in Iraq—though he even attempted to defraud the VA of more than $10,000 for “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Al-Zaid, whose protest diatribes have been circulating for several years, is indeed a phony soldier.
But the truth never deters the Left’s big lies.
Their so-called “watchdog group,” Media Matters for America, removed from context the two words “phony soldiers” and blast-broadcasted the big lie that Rush had branded that label on the handful of anti-OIF protestors who actually served in Iraq. In lock step, that smear was dutifully regurgitated by the MSM and then picked up by opportunistic Demo-gogues in Congress, desperately seeking a reversal of charges after their disastrous attempt to question the patriotism of Gen. Petraeus.
Chief among the most despicable of those propagating this dezinformatsia campaign from their Senate soapboxes are John Kerry and Tom Harkin.
Kerry, like Jesse Al-Zaid, embellished his military record and then used his “hero status” as a platform to falsely accuse ground troops in Vietnam of all manner of atrocities. (He is the target of a national petition to indict him for acts of treason, which now has more than 200,000 signers.)
Kerry’s most notable commentary on Iraq in the past year was his assertion that American service personnel are “stuck in Iraq” because they are too stupid to get a better job.
This week he led the charge against Rush, saying, “In a single moment on his show, Limbaugh managed to question the patriotism of men and women in uniform who have put their lives on the line and many who died for his right to sit safely in his air conditioned studio peddling hate.”
This is the same Jean-Francois Kerry who, back in 2005, accused U.S. forces in Iraq of “going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, uh, uh, uh, you know, women...”
Iowa Demo Sen. Tom Harkin, who also falsified his military record by claiming to have been a Vietnam combat pilot when he actually flew repaired aircraft from Japan to U.S. bases in Vietnam, perpetuated the lie, saying, “I must say that as a veteran, I find it offensive that Rush Limbaugh would attack the patriotism and the dedication of any soldier fighting in Iraq... I also find it disturbing that his offensive comments have not been condemned by our Republican colleagues or by the Commander in Chief, all of whom are so quick to condemn a similar personal attack on General Petraeus several weeks ago.”
Of course, as Limbaugh said in response, “Why should they condemn something that wasn’t said? You know what ought to be condemned here is [the Left’s] wanton inability to find the truth.”
Further perpetuating the big lie—and further wasting the taxpayers’ hard-earned money—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his cadre of MoveOn Demos sent a letter to Mark Mays, CEO of Clear Channel Communications, which broadcasts Rush’s program via more than 1,200 stations. The letter demanded that Mays condemn “Limbaugh’s hateful and unpatriotic” remarks.
Further, former Democrat presidential wannabe, General Wesley Clark, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, is demanding that Rush be removed from the Armed Forces Radio network.
In the House, Lefty Mark Udall introduced a big-lie resolution condemning Limbaugh, and 26 Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors.
And what of Media Matters, the propaganda organ that launched the lie?
My colleague, National Review essayist Byron York, offered this analysis: “Media Matters is much more than a traditional media-watchdog group. Indeed, it is probably more accurate to view Media Matters as part of the constellation of groups that have come together on the left in the last year or so, all aimed at electing a Democratic President. Their [donors list] reads like a Who’s Who of those who have financed the new activist Left.”
“Constellation of groups”? In other words, a Socialist propaganda network that would make even Goebbels blush with pride!
Patriot Post
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2007, 06:55:48 AM
Ted Koppel, even though he often let his Democrat preferences show, always impressed me. Here's this on what he's doing now:
“Nightline” had its privileges, one being that viewers knew just where to find Ted Koppel during his quarter-century tenure there.
Skip to next paragraph Related Times Topics: Ted Koppel Additional articles and information about Mr. Koppel. He’s now nearly two years removed from the program that made his name. But Mr. Koppel no doubt is still being discovered on the Discovery Channel, a comparative wilderness where he can indulge himself in the extended documentaries that long ago roamed free on broadcast television.
His latest two-hour effort, “Koppel on Discovery: Breaking Point,” is a report on the “overloaded and understaffed” California prison system. Escapist TV it’s not. And it will be tough to get much traction opposite the likes of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”
Mr. Koppel’s efforts are no less valuable, though. This is television journalism the way it was drawn up in some mythical Edward R. Murrow playbook. Pertinent, eye-opening information is imparted. Individual stories flesh it out. All sides are heard. The correspondent is visibly involved yet unobtrusive. What a concept.
“Breaking Point” focuses on California State Prison, Solano, in Vacaville, where a onetime indoor basketball court is now H Dorm. Designed for 200 inmates, it houses more than 340. They’re stacked three bunks high in a cauldron rife with “drama and politics,” Mr. Koppel says.
“It’s about turf and protection, drugs, weapons and prostitution,” he continues. “It’s a rigid code of segregation along ethnic and racial lines. And most of all it’s about gangs.”
All told, a California prison system built to hold 100,000 inmates is bursting with 173,000, Mr. Koppel says. Each prisoner costs taxpayers $43,000 annually. Many are repeat offenders serving mandatory sentences of 25 years to life as part of the “three strikes and you’re out” law.
The impetus for that legislation was the 1993 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, Polly Klaas, by a man who had just been paroled from prison. Mr. Koppel interviews her father, Marc Klaas, identified as a “victims’ advocate,” who has an understandable enmity toward violent criminals.
“As far as I’m concerned, you can stack these guys like cordwood,” Mr. Klaas says. “And you can keep them locked away forever.”
Many of the long-term inmates were not convicted of violent crimes, however.
One is Joey Mason, who says he voted in favor of the three strikes law before being convicted of a nonviolent burglary. He has since been imprisoned two more times for the same offense and is not eligible for parole until 2019. Believe him or not, though, Mr. Mason tells Mr. Koppel he’s a changed man.
“I really believe I’d be a better taxpayer than a tax taker,” he says.
“Breaking Point” is divided into chapters, and one of the more striking is called “Powder Keg.”
“Race guides every aspect of prison life,” Mr. Koppel tells viewers before inmates and prison officials back him up. Cellmates are invariably of the same race by design. Prisoners eat and share food only with their own kind. Fights are almost always between inmates of different races. No one, inmates say, wants to be branded a “race traitor.”
“It is as rigid a form of segregation as ever existed in this country,” Mr. Koppel says.
A recent court order has mandated that California prisons be integrated. An inmate named Darren Doucette, among others, isn’t in favor of that.
“I think it’s bad,” he tells Mr. Koppel, “because someone’s son’s gonna die.”
There are some bright spots, too. The chapter “Graduation Day” is surprisingly moving, with a relative handful of inmates proudly wearing caps and gowns to receive their G.E.D. diplomas. Friends and relatives applaud after a prison official intones, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the spring 2007 graduating class.”
Mr. Koppel quickly adds, “Keep in mind that these inmates are the exception.”
“Breaking Point” is exceptional. Real-life looks at prison life generally aren’t crowd-pleasers, even if fictional depictions often are. But Mr. Koppel and his longtime executive producer, Tom Bettag, have fought another good fight on behalf of in-depth television journalism about a subject of true import.
Ed Bark, a former television critic for The Dallas Morning News, is now proprietor of the television Web site unclebarky.com.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on October 17, 2007, 05:44:26 PM
Wasn't sure whether this belonged here or the in "Dogs, Wolves, & Canines" thread.
I know that neither Ellen or the Fairness Doctrine are very popular in this forum :), but what are you guys' thoughts about Ellen using however much of her daily nationwide TV show to say whatever she wants about the dog adoption agency that's now receiving death threats?
Not to mention that Ellen gave up on socializing the dog with her cats after *10 days*!? What a softcore.
Marina Baktis, who runs the nonprofit rescue agency Mutts and Moms with business partner Vanessa Chekroun, filed a police report Tuesday night, after receiving death threats in the wake of DeGeneres' tearful on-air plea for the return of her adopted pooch to her hairdresser's family.
The Pasadena Police Department said it was investigating the source of "several threats [made to Baktis'] cell phone and work phone from several angry persons who threatened her life and her property."
"This is horrible. I rescue dogs. I can't believe this," Baktis told Access Hollywood.
"I haven't eaten, I'm sick and I've had heart palpitations."
Mutts and Moms has also been targeted by an Internet-powered call for a boycott, launched by dog-loving DeGeneres fans via Craigslist.
Batkis said DeGeneres' A-list status does not make her exempt from the agency's rules.
"Celebrities, you know, they get preferential treatment. They have lots of money. They go into a restaurant, they get a table. And so you know, this contract was breached. It was breached. So, people need to understand when you enter a binding legal agreement that you can't just go, 'And here you go, I don't want you,' " Batkis told Access Hollywood.
In an exclusive phone conversation with E! News' Ryan Seacrest Wednesday, DeGeneres reiterated her dismay over the dog being taken away and denied she had been deliberately trying to disregard the agency's policies, saying, "The whole situation is surreal." (Get the full audio of Ryan and Ellen.)
"I will say this: We never filled out an application. We never had a home evaluation," she told Seacrest, indicating the agency was somewhat unpredictable about adhering to its own rules.
Her celebrity status, she said, had nothing to do with it.
"I didn't say you can't come to my home, I didn't say I won't fill out a form. She didn't ask me to," DeGeneres said.
"We're not trying to be anything other than a regular person trying to adopt a dog."
DeGeneres first took to the airwaves sobbing Tuesday, as she recounted the tale of her four-month-old adopted Brussels Griffon mix, Iggy, whom she passed off to her hairdresser after he wasn't getting along with her cats.
Upon learning DeGeneres had relocated the pet without permission—a violation of the agency's adoption policy—a Mutts and Moms representative went to the hairdresser's home with a police escort and seized the dog.
DeGeneres, 49, who admitted on her show she had not read through the adoption paperwork carefully enough, suggested to Seacrest that the owners of the agency had a vendetta against her. She said she pleaded with them not to take out her mistake on the dog and the family and begged them to just go to the home to evaluate Iggy's new living situation. Instead, she said, the representative entered the house and snatched the dog away.
She said her hairdresser's 11- and 12-year-old daughters were devastated by the loss of the dog, after begging with the agency for three hours to let them keep their pet.
"I thought I did a good thing," an emotional DeGeneres said Tuesday during her show. "I tried to find a loving home for the dog, because I couldn't keep it.
"I feel totally responsible for it, and I'm so sorry. I'm begging them to give that dog back to that family. It's not their fault. It's my fault. I shouldn't have given the dog away. Just please give the dog back to those little girls."
However, Mutts and Moms, which has a policy of not working with families with children under 14, has declined to do so.
"[Batkis] doesn't think this is the type of family that should have the dog," attorney Keith A. Fink, who does not represent the owners but was authorized to speak on their behalf, told the Associated Press. "She is adamant that she is not going to be bullied around by the Ellen DeGenereses of the world…They are using their power, position and wealth to try to get what it is they want."
DeGeneres' publicist, Kelly Bush, said her client was simply interested in ensuring the dog was in a good and loving home.
"It's very upsetting to hear that someone is getting those kinds of calls," Bush told the AP about the threats directed at Mutts and Moms. "Ellen just wants the dog reunited with the family."
A more composed DeGeneres said as much on her show Wednesday, while renewing her plea for Iggy to be given back to her hairdresser.
"It's become so insane," she said. "The dog just needs to go to the family."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on October 17, 2007, 05:54:52 PM
I know, this post may be more appropriate for the "political rants" thread...
DeGeneres, 49, who admitted on her show she had not read through the adoption paperwork carefully enough, suggested to Seacrest that the owners of the agency had a vendetta against her. She said she pleaded with them not to take out her mistake on the dog and the family and begged them to just go to the home to evaluate Iggy's new living situation. Instead, she said, the representative entered the house and snatched the dog away.
She said her hairdresser's 11- and 12-year-old daughters were devastated by the loss of the dog, after begging with the agency for three hours to let them keep their pet.
"I thought I did a good thing," an emotional DeGeneres said Tuesday during her show. "I tried to find a loving home for the dog, because I couldn't keep it.
This really &*@^ing burns me. She admits she didn't thoroughly read the contract she signed, but insists the agency has some kind of beef with her.
The arrogance is just astounding. Apparently the agency has a specific policy about not adopting dogs to families with children younger than 14 (as if the decision of whether a given dog will do well in a home with small kids is one that just any shmo like her is qualified to make), but as far as Ellen's concerned, those kinds of issues (and abiding by a contract she signed) are just for little people.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2007, 05:47:05 AM
I'm not really following this Rog. Are you saying that there should be a FD here so that the agency gets to respond to EG on her show?
Also, I'm not getting why the hairdresser and family gave up the dog. Some third part comes to my door wanting my children's dog has got a serious problem. What kind of parent coughs up their children's dog? If the agency wants the dog, let them sue.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on October 18, 2007, 09:55:08 AM
I'm not really following this Rog. Are you saying that there should be a FD here so that the agency gets to respond to EG on her show?
Not necessarily, but IMO the adoption agency should sue Ellen's ass off for damages. IMHO, Ellen airing this issue (a personal business dispute) on her show is completely inappropriate and defamatory. Keep in mind that the woman from this adoption agency has received death threats over this, a boycott, etc.
Quote
Also, I'm not getting why the hairdresser and family gave up the dog. Some third part comes to my door wanting my children's dog has got a serious problem. What kind of parent coughs up their children's dog? If the agency wants the dog, let them sue.
IIRC from the article, the agency woman had a cop escorting her, so I don't see what choice they had but to comply.
But the fact is that it wasn't that family's dog. If anybody's to blame for making the kids sad, it's Ellen for making the mistake of giving them the dog in the first place.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 18, 2007, 01:52:33 PM
Thanks for the dog story. I'm not much of an Ellen fan or of anyone else in showbiz - still couldn't help wondering how they came to have kids,so I googled it:
Ellen DeGeneres denies adoption reports, Saturday, February 10 2007 ... denied claims that she is planning to adopt a child with girlfriend Portia De Rossi. The talk show host insisted that she has no plans to have children and praised De Rossi for making her life "almost perfect". "We're not adopting and we don't want to have children," she explained. "No babies - neither of us want children.
But also found: DEGENERES TO ADOPT? Comedian Ellen DeGeneres reportedly has plans to adopt a child with her actress girlfriend Alexandra Hedison. ...pals say they're now ready to seal their romance with a child. ( - oops, wrong 'spouse')
And this: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi are said to be considering cementing their romance by becoming first-time parents. Although the two stars did not reveal their choice for adoption or for natural birth, comedienne DeGeneres confessed she's been thinking about motherhood - and she's aware she has to act fast. "I think we should do it (have a child) soon... When I'm around babies, I just melt. It's a big responsibility", she told America's People magazine.
I guess they really 'cemented their relationship' when they took the next big step after a kid and added a dog... File it all under media issues. :?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2007, 10:00:00 PM
Why would a cop accompany the agency to enforce a civil contract?!? Does this make any sense Rog?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on October 19, 2007, 08:44:54 AM
I don't know what discussions went on between the agency and ED before this, but I suspect the agency had reason to believe that the hairdresser would not surrender the dog without a police presence. But I assume you agree that with a cop present, refusal to surrender the dog was not an option.
You do understand that this was a rescue dog that ED adopted and kept for 10 days, and then gave away to her her hairdresser because the dog didn't get along with her cats? From the agency's POV the dog was given to a family they know absolutely nothing about other than that they're friends of ED, in clear violation of the contract ED signed.
If this were a case of cops (or anybody) showing up at somebody's house to seize a dog they've had for years and is unquestionably theirs, I'd be with you 100%, but that's not the case here. I don't know how long this dog was with the hairdresser before being taken back, but it couldn't have been more than a week or so.
Had this hairdresser ever owned a dog before? If a friend of mine offered to give me a dog she just adopted 1-2 weeks ago, the first question I'd ask is whether that's OK with the agency she got him from. Or did Ellen just assure her this wouldn't be a problem, assuming no lowly dog adoption agency would dare question the judgment of an A-list celebrity concerning what's an appropriate home for the dog?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 20, 2007, 06:23:00 AM
"But I assume you agree that with a cop present, refusal to surrender the dog was not an option."
My question is why a policeman would be there at all? ED broke her contract with the Agency, but why does this give the agency the right, without a court ruling on the merits, to take a dog from someone who was not party to the contract? Why would the court compel specific performance as vs. pay damages? etc etc etc.
Anyone, for me this is all much ado about nothing. Perhaps it is ED's rather maternal instincts coming out of the closet? :lol:
Back to the subject matter of this thread:
Reid letter sells for $2.1 million on eBay Limbaugh chastises senator for attempting to 'horn in' on charity effort Posted: October 19, 2007 2:20 p.m. Eastern
A final eBay bid of $2.11 million secured a letter from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that demanded an apology from radio talk host Rush Limbaugh over his "phony soldiers" comment. On his show today, Limbaugh announced the winning bidder was Betty Casey, a noted philanthropist and trustee of the Eugene B. Casey Foundation in Gaithersburg, Md. It was the largest bid ever in an eBay charity auction, breaking the $800,000 mark paid for a Harley Davidson motorcycle bearing the signature of "Tonight" show host Jay Leno. "The Eugene B. Casey Foundation believes freedom of speech is a basic right of every citizen of this country," the foundation said in a statement on the auction. "Their purchase of the smear letter was to demonstrate their belief in this right, and to support Rush Limbaugh, his views, and his continued education of us." Meanwhile, Limbaugh chastised Reid for taking credit for the money raised by the letter during comments to colleagues today on the Senate floor posted by Breitbart.tv. Reid is trying to "horn in" on the effort, said Limbaugh, who pointed out the Nevada Democrat has not apologized for accusing him of smearing troops who opposed the Iraq war. "Now he has the audacity to climb aboard this, praising the effort, saying he never knew it would get this kind of money," Limbaugh said. Directing his comments to Reid, Limbaugh said, "It wasn't your letter that raised this money. It was your abuse of power that is responsible for raising this money." If it were any other letter by Reid, he said, "people wouldn't pay a dime for it." "This one represents an abuse of power by a U.S. senator, who after besmirching me by name on the Senate floor, gets a hold of my syndicate partner, asking him to confer with me about something he thought improper," said Limbaugh. 'That is why your letter is historic," he continued. It's "a full fledged, undeniable, 100 percent abuse of power." (Story continues below) Limbaugh announced last week he would sell the original letter addressed to the head of Clear Channel Communications in order to benefit the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, a charity offering financial assistance to the children of Marines and federal law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. The No. 1-rated talk host said he wouldmatch the winning bid, and he challenged each of the 41 Democratic senators who signed the letter to match it as well. Limbaugh said the winning bidder, Casey, has been a listener of his program since its inception. "We cannot thank her enough for her support of this," Limbaugh said. "I am honored and proud and happy to be matching her $2,100,100." Reid claimed Limbaugh's use of the phrase "phony soldiers" was an attack on all U.S. troops who oppose the war in Iraq. However, a transcript from Limbaugh's Sept. 26 show suggests the "phony soldiers" remark specifically addressed the case of Jesse MacBeth, an anti-war activist who claimed to have witnessed atrocities as a Purple Heart recipient in the Army Rangers. MacBeth never served in Iraq and was expelled from the military after 44 days in uniform. The message on the letter's eBay listing said: "This historic document may well represent the first time in the history of America that this large a group of U.S. senators attempted to demonize a private citizen by lying about his views. As such, it is a priceless memento of the folly of Harry Reid and his 40 senatorial co-signers. BID NOW!" Limbaugh, noting he serves on the board of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, said he would bear all costs of the auction: "Every dollar of your winning bid will go to this charity, which has to date distributed over $29 million." Clear Channel Chief Executive Officer Mark P. Mays responded to Reid's letter with a defense of Limbaugh's right to express his opinions openly on the airwaves. Many elected officials, mostly Democrats, expressed their displeasure with talk radio following the defeat of what President Bush called his "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" legislation – a plan characterized by many talkers as "amnesty." There were a number of calls for reinstating the Fairness Doctrine – which has also been called the "Hush Rush" bill. As WND reported, another Democratic leader, Rep. Henry Waxman of California, angrily denied a report claiming he's investigating Limbaugh and other conservative radio talk-show hosts, but the magazine which made the allegation is not issuing any retraction. As WND reported, one radio station in Oregon decided to "hush Rush" for a day and replace Limbaugh's talk program with music after receiving some requests from local listeners.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: rogt on October 20, 2007, 11:59:06 AM
"But I assume you agree that with a cop present, refusal to surrender the dog was not an option."
My question is why a policeman would be there at all?
In case the hairdresser decided to pull a Crafty and refuse to give up the dog? :)
Quote
ED broke her contract with the Agency
OK then. So what right to ED or her hairdresser have to bitch about how unfairly they're being treated? If I rent a car and just give it away to my friend, does the rental agency have no right to take it back because hey, my friend never signed any contract with them? Your legal reasoning here is not sound IMO.
It's not like ED couldn't have simply gone to the pound and adopted a dog she could pretty much do whatever she wanted with, but she chose to go to this boutique adoption agency where they spend a lot of time trying to find the right homes for their dogs, and naturally they're going to object somebody just giving one of their dogs away to somebody they (the agency) knows nothing about.
That's not to say that all (or even many) adoption agencies are pleasant to deal with. They can be annoyingly self-righteous and tyrannical, and turn away people who would provide a perfectly good home for a dog because they use the wrong kind of collar or their yard isn't big enough.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 20, 2007, 01:07:09 PM
Are we really talking about Ellen's doggie-drama here? :roll:
I don't know the laws of the People's Republic of Kalifornia, but in my state, police officers take great pains to avoid getting involved in civil disputes. There are "civil stand-bys" where cops will stand by as a referee where there is contention between parties, but the only way I as a peace officer would seize a dog was with a court order requiring I do so, aside from it being evidence in a crime or a victim of abuse or a threat to public safety and order.
Were I a citizen of the PRK, i'd be more worried about the state of the CDC. I was in a "Security Threat Group" training class several months ago (STG is the PC term for prison gang) and the instructor discussed how once upon a time the CDC was the model for corrections and dealing with STGs. Now, they are throwing their hands up as the CDC spirals out of control.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2007, 07:01:56 AM
GM makes my point on the doggie drama, a subject with which I am done. Last word yours Rog :-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 26, 2007, 06:08:14 AM
Apocalypse No The New Republic's editors seem to have mistaken Vietnam movies for real life.
Friday, October 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
"I love chicks that have been intimate with EDS's," he announced to his fellow soldiers sitting in the chow tent in Camp Falcon in Baghdad. "It really turns me on--melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses." The soldiers laughed so hard they almost fell from their chairs. They enjoy running over dogs in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, luring them in and then crushing their bones as they whelp. When a soldier comes upon a mass grave, he picks up a human skull, places it merrily on his head, and marches around.
This is from the now-famous "Baghdad Diaries," in The New Republic, carrying the byline of soldier-writer Scott Thomas. They are an attempt to capture the tragedy and dehumanization of war, how it coarsens men in ways that you, safe in your bed, cannot fathom. They are a lost generation, battered by war, and struggling, with the real weapons of war's survivors--mordant wit, pitiless humor, the final surrender to nihilism--to survive in a world they never made. Do I overwrite? Do I sound like an idiot? I'm just trying to fit in.
To read the Thomas pieces was, simply, to doubt them. And to wonder if its editors had ever actually met a soldier on his way to or from Iraq, or talked to any human being involved in the modern military.
The diaries appear to be another case of journalistic fabulism. This week came word, via the published transcript of a telephone conversation between "Thomas," who is actually Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and his editors. It is actually painful to read. The editors almost plead with him to stand by his work, after months of critics' picking them factually apart. He won't do it. He doesn't want to talk to "the media." He's said enough.
Everyone in journalism thought first of Stephen Glass. I actually remember the day I read his New Republic piece on the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington in 1997, a profile of young Republicans as crude and ignorant pot-smoking alcoholics in search of an orgy. It, um, startled me. After years of observation, I was inclined toward the view that there's no such thing as a young Republican. More to the point, I'd been to the kind of convention Mr. Glass wrote about, and I thought it not remotely possible that the people he painted were real. I also thought: Man, this is way too convenient. The New Republic tends to think Republicans are hateful, and this reporter just happened to be welcomed into the private world of the most hateful Republicans in history. On the Thomas stories, which I read not when they came out but when they began to come under scrutiny, I had a similar thought, or a variation of it. I thought: That's not Iraq, that's a Vietnam War movie. That's not life as it's being lived on the ground right now, that's life as an editor absorbed it through media. That's the dark world of Kubrick and Coppola and Oliver Stone, of the great Vietnam movies of the '70s and '80s.
If that's what you absorbed during the past 20 or 30 years, it just might make sense to you, it would actually seem believable, if a fellow in Iraq wrote for you about taunting scarred women, shooting dogs, and wearing skulls as helmets. This is the offhand brutality of war. You know. You saw it in a movie.
If you'd had a broader array of references, and were less preoccupied by the media that is the great occupying force in our own country, and you were the editor of the Thomas pieces, you might have said, "Whoa." Just whoa.
I'll jump here, or lurch I suppose, to something I am concerned about that I think I am observing accurately. It has to do with what sometimes seems to me to be the limited lives that have been or are being lived by the rising generation of American professionals in the arts, journalism, academia and business. They have had good lives, happy lives, but there is a sense with some of them that they didn't so much live it as view it. That they learned too much from media and not enough from life's difficulties. That they saw much of what they know in a film or play and picked up all the memes and themes. In terms of personal difficulties, they seem to have had less real-life experience, or rather different experiences, than their rougher predecessors. They grew up affluent in a city or suburb, cosseted in material terms, and generally directed toward academic and material success. Their lives seem to have been not crowded or fearful, but relatively peaceful, at least until September 2001, which was very hard.
But this new leadership class, those roughly 35 to 40, grew up in a time when media dominated all. They studied, they entered a top-tier college, and then on to Washington or New York or Los Angeles. But their knowledge, their experience, is necessarily circumscribed. Too much is abstract to them, or symbolic. The education establishment did them few favors. They didn't have to read Dostoevsky, they had to read critiques and deconstruction of Dostoevsky.
I'm not sure it's always good to grow up surrounded by stability, immersed in affluence, and having had it drummed into you that you are entitled to be a member of the next leadership class. To have this background in the modern era is to come from a ghetto, the luckiest ghetto in the world, a golden ghetto beyond whose walls it can be hard to see. There's much to be said for suffering, for being on the outside or the bottom, for having to have fought yourself up and through. It can leave you grounded. It can give you real knowledge not only of the world and of other men but of yourself. In some ways it can leave you less cynical. (Not everything comes down to money.) And in some ways it leaves you just cynical enough.
Journalistically, I was lucky enough to work at CBS News when it was still shaped by the influence of the Murrow boys. They knew and taught that "everyone is entitled to his own opinions"--and they had them--"but not his own facts." And I miss the rough old boys and girls of the front page, who'd greet FDR with "Snappy suit, Mr. President," who'd bribe the guard to tell them what the prisoner said on the way to the chair, and who were not rich and important but performed an extremely important social function. They found out who, what, where, when, why. And they would have looked at the half-baked, overcooked junior Hemingway of Scott Thomas Beauchamp and said, "That sounds like a buncha hooey."
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.
Title: More on Beauchamp's Bogus Reporting
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 26, 2007, 02:32:17 PM
Shattered Diarist Ask Peter Arnett for advice next time.
By James S. Robbins
It was nice to see the Scott Thomas Beauchamp/New Republic scandal back up on the radar screen yesterday. There was never a satisfactory conclusion to the story; it just faded out over the summer. Now it is back in a big way, with the Drudge Report releasing internal Army documents related to the case, and a very revealing transcript of a conversation between Beauchamp, various luminaries from The New Republic, and Beauchamp’s TNR-supplied lawyer.
TNR’s first response to the release was typical of the tone-deafness with which they have approached the entire affair — denouncing the selective leak of official documents. It is always suspect when journalists take a principled stand against leaks. It might be more convincing if TNR pledged never to use leaked information in its reporting ever again, maybe then they’d have some credibility. As it happened, the Army report recommended releasing the findings to the media, while TNR was frantically trying to get Beauchamp to cancel all his press interviews. TNR Editor Franklin Foer said that Scott owed it to the magazine to talk only to them to let them “control the way the story proceeds.” I suppose because they were doing such a great job of controlling it thus far.
The Beauchamp affair should be taught in journalism schools as a case study of how not to conduct damage control. When it quickly became obvious that there were serious problems both with Beauchamp’s “diaries” and with the author himself, TNR should have cut bait. The magazine could quite reasonably have made a statement that they were taken advantage of by someone they trusted, who was married to someone on their staff who presumably vouched for him, and retracted the stories. It would have been embarrassing, but the matter would have concluded. Instead TNR stood by Beauchamp, tying the magazine’s credibility to his, and suffering accordingly. Rather than admitting error and moving on, they invested time, money, and apparently a degree of political capital in fighting a clearly losing cause with no discernable upside even if they had prevailed. It is mystifying — like Dan Rather defending those bogus National Guard documents, or Peter Arnett sticking to the story of the U.S. conducting Sarin gas attacks against captured American troops in Vietnam. How can people who are so successful make such astonishing errors in professional judgment?
Maybe TNR didn’t think there was much there. Unlike the above-mentioned stories the “atrocities” Beauchamp claimed to have documented were unremarkable. Killing dogs? There are justifiable reasons for doing so in combat conditions — if a dog with a backpack is approaching your AFV you had better take it out quickly. As well, packs of vicious or rabid dogs roaming civilian areas need to be controlled. Playing around with a skull from a mass grave? I can see bored privates doing that briefly until their platoon sergeant barked at them to knock it off and keep digging. But the thing that should have given the TNR editors pause if they had any understanding at all of military culture was the tale of mocking a disfigured woman in a mess hall in Iraq (later changed to Kuwait, but whatever, just details, right?) No solider would publicly mock a woman wounded in an attack unless he was looking for a serious ass kicking. This is not how our troops behave. The fact that this alleged incident did not raise a red flag to the TNR editors demonstrated how out of touch they are with the military — or how willing they were to believe the worst about our fighting forces.
The Army’s report on the Beauchamp incident is good reading and confirms what was widely believed, namely that Scott either made up or wildly exaggerated the events he described. It is a shame that all we got to see was the report itself and not the supporting documentation, especially the statements of other soldiers in Beauchamp’s unit. Maybe the next leak won’t be as selective. But the real gold is the transcript of the telephone call, which reveals TNR was in much closer contact with Beauchamp throughout the controversy than they were willing to admit.
Poor Scott comes across as pitiable. He found out that there is a major difference between publishing sophomoric anti-military musings on his sparsely viewed blog and impugning the American Solider in a national opinion journal. “[T]his whole thing it’s…it’s…spun out of control and mutated into something that’s it’s just like…it’s not something that…it’s just insane,” he said. “I’m basically saying, like, I basically want it to end.”
Beauchamp could certainly have ended it by just admitting that his stories were fake. TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic — who went out of his way to mention that he was “not around the office” when the stories were edited and published (did he know this was being taped?) — gave Scott ample opportunity. He pointed out that the magazine stood up for Scott while they have been dragged through the mud, and nevertheless if “certain parts of the story are bullshit, then we’ll end it that way.” He just asked Beauchamp to summon up some personal responsibility and be straight with them.
But why start being responsible now? Beauchamp masterfully avoids giving direct answers. He isn’t talking to anyone about the articles any more. He wants to concentrate on being a Soldier. He won’t talk to the media — TNR included. He has an excuse for everything. He can’t get the copies of the investigative documents TNR wants because he’s busy. “Time is different from time where you are,” he states. If people think his stories aren’t true, well, people will view what he wrote in a lot of ways, that can’t be helped. But are they true or not? “I’m not commenting on the stories,” Beauchamp said. “That’s what I’m saying…I’m not discussing them at all. Um, which is not an admission of anything.” Um, right.
It is amusing to see TNR on the receiving end of Beauchamp’s dissembling. Did they expect gratitude? Forget it. Scoblic’s frustration is evident — he points out that TNR really went to the mat to defend Beauchamp and now he was lumping them in with the rest of the media. TNR did a variety of things for Beauchamp, including “making sure you were okay via a number of pretty high level channels.” (How high? Through whom? Interesting story there I’ll bet.) When Beauchamp sloughs it all off by saying he is a Soldier and not a writer, he’s going to focus on his duty to his comrades in arms, the next line from Scoblic is “(Unintelligible.)” Fill in the blank yourself.
It is hard to see how TNR can continue to stand by Beauchamp, or why they should. He certainly cares little about them, and the findings of the official report, leaked or not, give the magazine an opportunity to publicly recant. That is, if they can stomach agreeing with the Army. Or they could stick with the type of tactics that have brought them to their current state of disrepute; denounce the report, say the testimony was coerced, that the Soldiers involved were threatened with reprisal, that Beauchamp is too intimidated to speak, and so forth, which might find an audience with the hard-core conspiracy minded, but will only serve to keep the issue festering until the next revelation.
The bright side of the case study is in illustrating the power of the web to police reporting — to act as a watchdog over the watchdogs. In particular it reconfirms the critical role of the milbloggers. A prescient, award-winning essay by Army Major Elizabeth Robbins (relation by marriage) pointed out that if members of the military were prevented from blogging, this corner of the information domain would be left to the Beauchamps of the world, where they could indulge their biases unchecked. “To silence the most credible voices — those at the spear’s edge — and to deny them this function is to handicap the Army on a vital, very real battlefield,” Robbins writes. “The Army’s reputation is maintained on many fronts, and no one fights harder on its behalf than our young Soldiers. We must allow them access to this fight.” Had milbloggers not intervened, who knows what absurd, fantastic, vicious and wholly contrived events Beauchamp’s fourth and fifth “diary” entries would have contained? And how many people would have believed them?
— James S. Robbins is the director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University , senior fellow for national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmU4NzMxZWM3YjRiODgzZDkzNjVhMzNkMmQ3N2RiYWU=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2007, 05:53:12 AM
'Fairness' Is Foul Liberals vs. the First Amendment.
Monday, October 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
It wasn't that hard for Indiana's Rep. Mike Pence to build media and congressional support for his Free Flow of Information Act, which would protect the confidentiality of contacts between reporters and sources. It passed the House this month by an overwhelming vote of 398-21. His next battle will be a lot harder--to permanently ban the Fairness Doctrine, the regulation many liberals are now actively trying to revive in an effort to silence their critics.
Until the FCC scrapped the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, it required broadcasters to provide equal time to all sides of "controversial" issues. In practice, this led to what Bill Monroe, a former host of NBC's "Meet the Press," called "timid, don't-rock-the-boat coverage." On radio, Newsweek's Howard Fineman notes, it "effectively kept partisan shows off the airwaves," so that in 1980 there were a mere 75 talk radio stations. Today there are 1,800.
But the Fairness Doctrine has always had fans in the corridors of power because it gave incumbents a way of muzzling their opponents. The Kennedy administration used it as a political weapon. Bill Ruder, Kennedy's assistant secretary of commerce, explained: "Our strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." The Nixon administration similarly used the doctrine to torment left-wing broadcasters.
Democrats who have become "Fairness" mongers insist they simply want to restore civility and balance to the airwaves. Al Gore, in a typically overheated speech last year bemoaned "the destruction of [the] marketplace of ideas" which he blamed in part on the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, after which "Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein rails against "one-sided programming" that has pushed the American people into "extreme views without a lot of information." She thinks Americans deserve to know "both sides of the story." Isn't it enough that National Public Radio, subsidized by the government, serves as a vehicle for liberal voices in just about every community in the country?
True, commercial radio is dominated by conservatives, but perhaps that's because liberal arguments in their full-throated glory just haven't sold as well. Air America, the liberal talk radio network that debuted in 2004, is in perpetual financial trouble. Then there's the GreenStone talk radio network started last year by feminists Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem. It offered cutting-edge liberal thinking pitched to a female audience--and flopped completely.
Rep. Pence says he knows all about the power of talk radio because he used to host a statewide show in Indiana, where he describes himself as "the decaf Rush Limbaugh." He believes the Fairness Doctrine would "amount to government control over political views expressed on the public airwaves." In June his first effort to impose a one-year moratorium on any revival of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC passed, 309-115, with nearly half of House Democrats voting in favor. But a one-year moratorium was an easy vote, because there is no reason to expect the Fairness Doctrine to make a comeback before 2009, when a new president--perhaps a Democrat--appoints a majority of FCC commissioners.
That's why Mr. Pence is proposing the Broadcaster Freedom Act, a bill that would permanently bury the Fairness Doctrine. Because House Democratic leaders are unlikely to allow it to come to the floor for a vote, Mr. Pence has launched a "discharge petition," a device to bypass House committees and move the bill directly to the floor. He needs 218 members--a House majority--to sign the petition. He has collected 185 signatures, but all from Republicans. Democrats are being told by their leadership that signing such a petition would undermine their control of the House.
Mr. Pence, says that "freedom should not be a partisan issue" and that he is optimistic that he can collect the signature of every Republican and then pluck off some 20 of the Democrats who voted for his one-year moratorium last summer (he'd need at least 18).
The stakes are high. "Lovers of liberty must expose calls to restore the Fairness Doctrine for the fraudulent power-grab that they plainly are," writes Brian Anderson, editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
That's because the attempts to control the airwaves won't stop with so-called equal time rules. Al Franken, the liberal former Air America host who is now running for the Senate in Minnesota, is already slipping into the role of potential legislative censor of his old industry. "You shouldn't be able to lie on the air," he told Newsweek's Mr. Fineman earlier this year. "You can't utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying."
In fact, you can be "fined" for lying, if the person you lie about successfully sues for defamation. But the First Amendment makes it exceedingly difficult for defamation plaintiffs to prevail, especially if they are public figures--and for good reason. Under a more pro-plaintiff legal regime, "the pall of fear and timidity imposed upon those who would give voice to public criticism is an atmosphere in which the First Amendment freedoms cannot survive," Justice William Brennan wrote in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964).
Justice Brennan used to be a liberal hero. If he were alive today, he would surely be dismayed to learn that liberals seem to have concluded they have no use for the First Amendment.
WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2007, 10:11:54 AM
to Eternity One of the ways in which the media bolster their anti-Iraq narrative is by maximizing the number of U.S. casualties. The figures you hear for the number of deaths--currently approaching 4,000--almost always include noncombat deaths. Roughly 20% of "Iraq war" deaths are from illness, accident, suicide or other "nonhostile" causes.
By this standard, of course, every serviceman in Iraq is doomed, and so are the rest of us. Even for those who perish in combat, war is only the proximate cause of death.
A striking example of "Iraq war" deaths that weren't appeared last week in the New York Times:
The Department of Defense has identified 3,825 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans on Tuesday:
CAMACHO, Anamarie Sannicolas, 20, Seaman, Navy; Panama City, Fla.; Naval Support Activity.
The San Francisco Chronicle published news of Camacho's and Gresham's deaths under the headline "U.S. Toll in Iraq," and the text said they had died "in Iraq."
This is false, as the Chronicle's own Web site confirms. The paper has a database with details of all the deaths "in Iraq," and both Camacho's and Gresham's entries show that they "died Oct. 22 in Bahrain during a non-combat related incident." (Nonetheless, the heading on the Chronicle's database pages reads "Portraits of Sacrifice: U.S. Casualties in Iraq.")
To find out how they died, we turn to the Gulf Daily News, an English-language Bahraini paper:
Anamarie Sannicolas Camacho, 20, and her colleague Genesia Mattril Gresham, 19, were shot dead at the Naval Support Activity Base, Juffair, at around 5am on October 22.
Their alleged killer, fellow serviceman Clarence Jackson, 20, is still clinging to life after apparently shooting himself in the head immediately after the murders.
He is now at the National Naval Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, US, after being transferred to the US from a specialist hospital in Germany. . . .
[Camacho's mother, Jovie] Paulino, who served in the US Air Force for six years, is also angry at the way the navy have handled the shooting.
"I had entrusted my daughter to the navy when she joined and this is what has happened, I just don't understand," she said. "I was in the military and right now I feel so angry and disappointed. She put her life on the line for our freedom and the only thing they should do (in return) is protect her."
Her comments echo that of Ms Gresham's mother Anita, who earlier blamed officials for leaving her daughter exposed to danger from a man she said turned nasty when she tried to cool their "casual" relationship.
Ms Gresham revealed Jackson had a restraining order against him and had been on suicide watch, after he allegedly attacked Miss Gresham less than four months ago.
She was also angry that Jackson was allowed to carry a gun after his alleged attack on her daughter and that officials were not telling her what happened in the run-up to the killings.
If Jackson dies of his wounds, will the Times and the Chronicle list him as another casualty of the "Iraq war" rather than of his own twisted rage?
The incident does illustrate an uncomfortable truth: that romantic entanglements can be harmful to military discipline. This is why servicemen can be prosecuted for adultery, and it is one reason that the military excludes open homosexuals and restricts the roles in which women may serve. This was a horrific and senseless crime. Imagine how disruptive it would have been in a combat unit.
WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2007, 08:21:42 PM
An example of the profoundly anti-semitic bigotry affecting so much of the coverage of Israel
rticle in The Spectator.co.uk by Melanie Phillips The al Durah blood libel Wednesday, 14th November 2007
I am in Paris where I have attended the Court of Appeal special session called to witness the 27 minutes of hitherto unseen footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah which the court had required France 2 to produce. For readers who are unfamiliar with this scandal, I wrote about it here, here and here.
Suffice it to say here that the iconic image of the child Mohammed al Durah, pictured crouching with his father behind a barrel next to a concrete wall in an apparently vain attempt to shelter from the gun-battle between Israel and the Palestinians that was raging around them before he was allegedly shot dead by the Israelis, served to incite terrorist violence and atrocities around the world after it was transmitted by France 2 at the beginning of the second intifada. Yet it is clear to anyone looking at this in detail that the whole thing was staged, not least from the devastating evidence here which shows the boy raising his arm and peeping through his fingers seconds after the France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin said he! had be en shot dead.
After Philippe Karsenty, founder of the French online media watchdog, Media Ratings, accused France 2 of staging the al Durah ‘killing’ and called for the resignation of both Charles Enderlin and France 2’s News Director, Arlette Chabot, France 2 and Enderlin sued Karsenty for defamation, and won. In a disgraceful piece of judicial cronyism after the gratuitous intervention of the then French President Jacques Chirac, the court decided against Karsenty and in favour of France 2 and Enderlin. Karsenty appealed; the judge ordered France 2 to produce the unscreened footage of this incident; today it did so.
Well, sort of. What it actually produced was 18 minutes out of the 27 it was required to bring forward. From this footage, which according to France 2’s Palestinian cameraman was filmed during an implausible 45 minutes of continuous shooting by Israeli soldiers, there is no evidence that anyone at all was killed or injured -- including Mohammed al Durah who by the end of the frames in which he figured seemed to be still very much alive and unmarked by any wound whatsoever.
The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.
Enderlin offered only a vague, rambling and unconvincing explanation of why he had only produced 18 minutes of footage rather than the 27 he claimed to have received from his cameraman in Gaza (Enderlin himself was not in Gaza when these events occurred). After the hearing Professor Richard Landes, one of the people who had already seen the contested footage, said that two scenes had been cut out which clearly showed that the violence had been staged -- including one in which a Palestinian preparing to throw a missile is suddenly picked up and carried into an ambulance despite showing no signs of injury. This scene, said Landes, was filmed by Reuters, who actually filmed the France 2 cameraman filming it. Yet there was no sign of it today.
What struck me very forcibly about the 18 minutes overall was that, although this was supposed to have been filmed during continuous firing by the Israelis for 45 minutes, much of the footage consisted merely of a violent demonstration by stone throwing youths, many of whom who appeared to be enjoying the exercise. One child was pictured riding a bicycle through the melee. There was no evidence of any of them being killed or injured. From time to time, to be sure, youths were dragged onto stretchers and into ambulances – but there was no sign of anyone actually being shot, no-one falling under fire, no sign of any blood or injuries whatever. The nearest it got to an injury was a sequence in which a young man coyly pulled his shirt open a little to provide a glimpse of a neat red circle on his stomach, which he claimed was a (rubber?) bullet wound. But since he appeared to be in no pain whatever and was grinning throughout his turn for the camera, this seemed an eminently ! implaus ible way for someone who had just been hit by gunfire to behave.
There were many very strange things about this footage which just didn’t add up. When it came to the footage of the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, the following stood out:
* This sequence was not a continuous narrative but was repeatedly broken up and spliced onto footage of other scenes from the demonstration
* Although the France 2 cameraman had told a German film-maker, Esther Shapira, that he had filmed six minutes of the al Durah father and son under continuous Israeli fire, the footage of them lasted for less than one minute
* There was a camera tripod next to them
* There was no evidence of the boy actually being hit
* At one point, people in the crowd cried out that the boy was dead, while he was sitting up large as life clinging onto his father with his mouth wide open
* After he was said to be dead, he moved his arm (the sequence I have already reported which has been available on the web for years).
The Appeal Court is not due to give its verdict in this case until next February. As of today, such are the fresh contradictions and questions thrown up by the showing of this footage it would seem that France 2 has painted itself into a corner from which it will find it increasingly hard to escape.
But this scandal goes far beyond France 2. Soon after it transmitted the 55 seconds which showed the ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah, it helpfully sent various news agencies three minutes of the footage of this incident – including the frames in which the ‘dead’ child is seen moving, but which of course it had not broadcast. For reasons which invite speculation, not one of these agencies broadcast it either. Had they done so, there would have been no ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah and untold numbers of subsequent deaths would have been avoided.
It is therefore not surprising, but no less shocking, that with a couple of heroic exceptions the mainstream media has until very recently ignored the evidence suggesting that a monumental and deadly fraud was perpetrated here, indicators which have been around for years. As of today, the Karsenty case has been totally ignored by the mainstream French media. It is also deeply troubling that the Israel government ignored this evidence for seven years, that it is only very recently that its press spokesman Danny Seaman said the incident was staged, and that even now certain representatives of the Israel government are playing a most ambiguous role in defending their country against this modern blood libel.
The ‘killing’ of Mohammed al Durah was swallowed uncritically by the western media, despite the manifold unlikeliness and contradictions which were apparent from the start, because it accorded with the murderous prejudice against Israel which is the prism through which the Middle East conflict is habitually refracted. This scandal has the most profound implications not just for the media, not just for the Middle East conflict but for the western world’s relationship to reason, which seems to grow more tenuous by the day.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2007, 08:10:14 AM
Courage and Journalism November 21, 2007; Page A18 Among the blessings this fair land can give thanks for tomorrow is a free press. In much of the rest of the world, that's a freedom that remains elusive at best. The men and women who report the news often do so at great personal risk.
Four such journalists were honored in New York City yesterday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit group that promotes the right of journalists world-wide to report without fear of reprisals. The honorees work in four countries on three continents. Each has a harrowing tale to tell. Three have colleagues who were murdered while on the job.
Adela Navarro Bello is the general director of Zeta, a weekly magazine in the border town of Tijuana, Mexico. Zeta covers organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption in Mexico's northern states, including the collusion between police and criminals. The cost of its investigative reporting has been high. Zeta's co-founder and a co-editor were murdered, and Ms. Navarro has received death threats. On a visit to the Journal's offices on Monday, she described the milieu in which she works: "Journalists have been assaulted, murdered or simply disappear."
Pakistan's Mazhar Abbas works for ARY One World Television, one of the TV stations closed down in President Pervez Musharraf's current state of emergency. After his name appeared on the hit list of an ethnic group allied with Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Abbas was among three journalists who found an envelope containing a bullet taped to his car. A recent trend is for the families of journalists also to be targeted.
Dmitry Muratov is founder and editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper for which the late Anna Politkovskaya was working when she was murdered last year. Mr. Muratov's newspaper is known for its probes of high-level corruption, human-rights abuses and the war in Chechnya. "The [Vladmir Putin] government views the country as its personal business enterprise," he told us, "and we are basically trying to expose them." In addition to Ms. Politkovskaya, two other Novaya Gazeta reporters have been killed.
The fourth honoree is Gao Qinrong, who was released recently from a Chinese jail. He served eight years on a series of bogus charges brought after he exposed government corruption in an irrigation project in Shanxi province. Beijing refused to issue him a passport so he was honored in absentia. There are 29 journalists currently in jail in China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Mr. Muratov spoke for all the winners when he told us, "We do what we can." Such modesty belies their courage and dedication.
WSJ
Title: NY Times at it as usual
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2007, 05:55:48 AM
Political Journal
Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off Australia held an election over the weekend, and voters turned out the Liberal Party (which is on the Australian right) in favor of the left-wing Labor Party. Showing its penchant for Angry Left parochialism, the New York Times headlines the story "Ally of Bush Is Defeated in Australia," and the first and third paragraphs were about America rather than Australia:
Australia's prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush's staunchest allies in Asia, suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of the electorate on Saturday, as his Liberal Party-led coalition lost its majority in Parliament.
He will be replaced by Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party leader and a former diplomat. "Today Australia looks to the future," Mr. Rudd told a cheering crowd in his home state, Queensland. "Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward."
Mr. Howard's defeat, after 11 years in power, follows that of José María Aznar of Spain, who also backed the United States-led invasion of Iraq, and political setbacks for Tony Blair, who stepped down as Britain's prime minister in June.
It also followed the victories of pro-American prime ministers in Germany, Canada and France; and the last we heard, Belgium didn't even have a government. But elections in foreign countries are generally not referendums on the American president. The world does not revolve around George W. Bush, even if the world of the Times does.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 30, 2007, 10:13:08 AM
Quote of the Day
"I think CNN does itself a great disservice when it doesn't apply the exact same kind of criteria to both debates. I covered both of them. In the Democratic debate, I don't think there were any questions that were clearly coming from, you know, a Republican point of view. They were generally sympathetic. They were about global warming and health care and education, all kind of Democratic issues. They weren't challenging them. There was one kind anti-tax question, I think, but they weren't challenging the basic principles of the Democratic Party. There were lots of questions last night [at the GOP debate] that were. I think the question about the Bible was mocking. I think one of the abortion questions was clearly not from someone who was pro-life" -- Mara Liasson of National Public Radio on the Republican and Democratic presidential debates sponsored by CNN and Google's YouTube affiliate.
CNN's Bumper Crop
Last week, CNN's Anderson Cooper quipped in an interview with Townhall.com that "campaign operatives are people too" and CNN wasn't worried if political partisans posed questions at the GOP debate he'd be moderating the following Wednesday. "We don't investigate the background of people asking questions [by submitting video clips]. It's not our job," he said.
Yet now CNN's logo has egg splattered all over it as the network scrambles to explain how a co-chair of Hillary Clinton's veterans' committee was allowed to ask a video question on gays in the military at Wednesday's debate. The questioner, retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr, was flown at network expense from California to the debate site in Florida so he could repeat his question to the candidates in person. CNN claims it verified retired Brig. Gen. Kerr's military status and checked his campaign contribution records, contradicting Mr. Cooper's blasé attitudes. But the network still somehow missed his obvious connection to the Hillary campaign which any Google search would have turned up.
CNN later airbrushed Mr. Kerr's question out of its rebroadcast of the debate, indicating that it apparently doesn't think "campaign operatives" are legitimate questioners at the network's debates.
Now it appears that an amazing number of partisan figures posed many of the 30 questions at the GOP debate while pretending to be CNN's advertised "undecided voters." Yasmin from Huntsville, Alabama turns out to be a former intern with the Council on American Islamic Relations, a group highly critical of Republicans. Blogger Michelle Malkin has identified other plants, including declared Obama supporter David Cercone, who asked a question about the pro-gay Log Cabin Republicans. A questioner who asked a hostile question about the pro-life views of GOP candidates turned out to be a diehard John Edwards supporter (and a slobbering online fan of Mr. Cooper). Yet another "plant" was LeeAnn Anderson, an aide to Leo Gerard, president of the American Steel Workers Union and a prominent Edwards backer.
It seems more "plants" are being uprooted with each passing day. Nearly one-third of the questioners seem to have some ties to Democratic causes or candidates. Another questioner worked with Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's staff. A former intern with Democratic Rep. Jane Harman asked a question about farm subsidies. A questioner who purported to be a Ron Paul supporter turns out to be a Bill Richardson volunteer. David McMillan, a TV writer from Los Angeles, turns out to have several paeans to John Edwards on his YouTube page and has attended Barack Obama fundraisers.
Given CNN's professed goal to have "ordinary Americans" ask questions at its GOP debate, how odd that so many of the video questioners selected by CNN turned out to be not just partisan Democrats, but actively hostile to the GOP's messages and candidates.
political journal WSJ
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 17, 2007, 05:58:37 AM
The NY Times covers the AP. Caveat Lector! ===============
Case Lays Bare the Media’s Reliance on Iraqi Journalists
By TIM ARANGO Published: December 17, 2007 Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning.
He was held for around 20 months by the military — in Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, with no right to contest his detention —before being turned over to an Iraqi magistrate, who will act as a one-man grand jury and decide if there is enough evidence to link him to the insurgency. He has not been formally charged with a crime.
The Associated Press has staunchly defended Mr. Hussein, pointing out that his role as a journalist involved getting close to the insurgency. Over the last three years, the American military has held at least eight other Iraqi journalists for periods of weeks or month without charges and released them all, apparently unable to find ties to the insurgency, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit organization.
As for Mr. Hussein and his lawyers, “they were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense,” The Associated Press said in a statement last week, noting that Mr. Hussein was still being detained without formal charges. “The Associated Press continues to believe that claims Bilal is involved with insurgent activities are false.”
A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.”
In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said that Mr. Hussein had been named by “sources” as having “possessed foreknowledge of an improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) attack” on American and Iraqi forces, “that he was standing next to the I.E.D. triggerman at the time of the attempted attack, and that he conspired with the I.E.D. triggerman to synchronize his photograph with the explosion.”
The e-mail message did not say whether the photograph in question is the one that Mr. Hussein took in Falluja on Nov. 8, 2004, of Iraqi insurgents firing a mortar and small arms, which was among the 20 from The Associated Press that collectively won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.
The military spokesman said further: “The Associated Press was informed that the sources had reported Mr. Hussein’s knowing and willing offer to provide a false Iraqi national identification card to an alleged sniper, whom Mr. Hussein knew was wanted” by the military, “in order to assist the sniper in eluding capture.”
For its part, The Associated Press hired a New York lawyer and former prosecutor, Paul Gardephe, to investigate the situation. He published a 46-page report that concluded “there is no evidence — in nearly a thousand photographs taken over the 20-month period — that his activities ever strayed from those of a legitimate journalist.” Mr. Gardephe was in Iraq last week defending Mr. Hussein.
The role of Iraqis as front-line reporters, and the dangers they face working for Western news organizations, is well known. In a few recent examples, in October a journalist for The Washington Post, Salih Saif Aldin, was shot dead in a Baghdad neighborhood rife with sectarian violence. That death occurred three months after a local journalist working for The New York Times was killed in the same area. Of the 124 journalists killed in Iraq since the war began, 102 have been Iraqi, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
And while Western journalists do depend on Iraqi freelancers, several news organizations, including The New York Times, continue to have resident correspondents who leave their compounds to report in Baghdad and beyond.
Several editors and reporters overseeing Iraqi coverage for Western news organizations said they worked hard to vet their local hires for sectarian and political ties that could slant their coverage, and offered extensive training in the rules of Western journalism. But there are no official background checks that can be conducted, as American and European companies routinely do when making domestic hires. Rather, news organizations try to get to know their prospective Iraqi hires in person and then judge them by the work they produce.
“A person is usually recommended by another journalist and brought in for an interview, and you sit down and have a long discussion with that person,” said John Daniszewski, The Associated Press’s international editor. “Like any job applicant in the states, people go through a probationary period. They are given lessons, it’s like an apprenticeship relationship.”
Mr. Daniszewski added, “When you are working side by side, you get to know the person, and if the person seems unreliable, or if you ever see someone not completely honest with you, he is out the door.” =============
Page 2 of 2)
The reporters and editors said that they often had to filter out obvious sectarian biases from news copy, and, as a matter of policy, would not run statistics like death counts from the field without official confirmation from the military. But, these journalists emphasized, there is a big difference between bias seeping into news copy and insurgents infiltrating news organizations.
According to The Associated Press, Mr. Hussein, a 36-year-old member of a prominent Falluja farming family, had a modest job history before the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq: he worked in a grocery store, an auto parts joint and handed out goods as part of a United Nations assistance program. Photography was his hobby, and an uncle had set up a darkroom for him.
When soldiers and journalists flooded into Falluja in April 2004, Mr. Hussein began working as a driver and helper for The Associated Press. “He said he always wanted to be a professional photographer,” Mr. Daniszewski said. “And we had a need there. We gave him training, equipment and he just did good work.” In April 2006, Mr. Hussein was detained in Ramadi by the United States military, which said it had evidence linking him to the insurgency, but did not press charges.
The situation has not dissuaded foreign news organizations from continuing to lean heavily on local stringers. “They’re essential,” said Marjorie Miller, the foreign editor of The Los Angeles Times. “We couldn’t do our job without them, more so than in any other war we’ve covered.”
David Schlesinger, the editor in chief of Reuters, said, “using local staff is something we do everywhere in the world. But it’s become so dangerous in Iraq, we’re even more dependent on local staff there than in other places.”
In any foreign outpost, Western news organizations rely on locals to get the job done, often as drivers or translators. “The reliance on local staff is nothing new, whether it be in the West Bank, or Gaza or other places,” said Joel Campagna, Middle East program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “News organizations know how to vet and scrutinize information.”
However, he said, Iraq “is the most dangerous conflict we’ve seen at C.P.J. in our 26 years. In Iraq, the ubiquity and scale of danger has really hampered the ability of journalists to gather news.”
Mr. Hussein is one of more than 24,000 individuals held by the American military worldwide, most in Iraq, according to statistics cited by The Associated Press. But not even the nudging of a giant Western news organization was enough keep him from spending 20 months behind bars without being formally charged with a crime.
“The Iraqi courts seem to be completely overwhelmed,” said Linda A. Malone, a law professor at the College of William and Mary who advised the Justice Department during the trial of Saddam Hussein. “There’s a tremendous backlog. That’s not to say this one might not be a priority. Hopefully that would be the case given the issue of journalistic freedom versus national security.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2008, 08:44:49 AM
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The Lancet's Political Hit January 9, 2008 Three weeks before the 2006 elections, the British medical journal Lancet published a bombshell report estimating that casualties in Iraq had exceeded 650,000 since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. We know that number was wildly exaggerated. The news is that now we know why.
It turns out the Lancet study was funded by anti-Bush partisans and conducted by antiwar activists posing as objective researchers. It also turns out the timing was no accident. You can find the fascinating details in the current issue of National Journal magazine, thanks to reporters Neil Munro and Carl Cannon. And sadly, that may be the only place you'll find them. While the media were quick to hype the original Lancet report -- within a week of its release it had been featured on 25 news shows and in 188 newspaper and magazine articles -- something tells us this debunking won't get the same play.
The Lancet death toll was more than 10 times what had been estimated by the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and even by human rights groups. Asked about the study on the day it was released, President Bush said, "I don't consider it a credible report." Neither did the Pentagon and top British authorities. To put the 655,000 number in perspective, consider that fewer Americans died in the Civil War, our bloodiest conflict.
Skeptics at the time (including us) pointed to the Lancet study's manifold methodological flaws. The high body count was an extrapolation based on a sampling of households and locations that was far too small to render reliable results. What the National Journal adds is that the Lancet study was funded by billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute. Mr. Soros is a famous critic of the Iraq campaign and well-known partisan, having spent tens of millions trying to defeat Mr. Bush in 2004.
But "Soros is not the only person associated with the Lancet study who had one eye on the data and the other on the U.S. political calendar," write Messrs. Munro and Cannon. Two co-authors, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, told the reporters that they opposed the war from the outset and sent their report to the Lancet on the condition that it be published before the election.
Mr. Roberts, who opposed removing Saddam from power, sought the Democratic nomination for New York's 24th Congressional District in 2006. Asked why he ran, Mr. Roberts replied, "It was a combination of Iraq and [Hurricane] Katrina."
Then there is Lancet Editor Richard Horton, "who agreed to rush the study into print, with an expedited peer review process and without seeing the surveyors' original data," report Mr. Munro and Mr. Cannon. He has also made no secret of his politics. "At a September 2006 rally in Manchester, England, Horton declared, 'This axis of Anglo-American imperialism extends its influence through war and conflict, gathering power and wealth as it goes, so millions of people are left to die in poverty and disease,'" they write. See YouTube for more.
We also learn that the key person involved in collecting the Lancet data was Iraqi researcher Riyadh Lafta, who has failed to follow the customary scientific practice of making his data available for inspection by other researchers. Mr. Lafta had been an official in Saddam's ministry of health when the dictator was attempting to end international sanctions against Iraq. He wrote articles asserting that many Iraqis were dying from cancer and other diseases caused by spent U.S. uranium shells from the Gulf War. According to National Journal, the Lancet studies "of Iraqi war deaths rest on the data provided by Lafta, who operated with little American supervision and has rarely appeared in public or been interviewed about his role."
In other words, the Lancet study could hardly be more unreliable. Yet it was trumpeted by the political left because it fit a narrative that they wanted to believe. And it wasn't challenged by much of the press because it told them what they wanted to hear. The truth was irrelevant.
WSJ
Title: WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2008, 06:56:14 AM
IMHO the Wall Street Journal, especially its editorial page, is an extraordinary newspaper. =====================
Our Philosophy
The Wall Street Journal has a long tradition of vigorous and independent editorial commentary. As early as 1902 Charles Dow wrote a column called "Review & Outlook," and that title runs today over our editorials in editions on three continents. In the boom of the 1920s, the paper was distinguished by the reporting and commentary of its proprietor, C.W. Barron. In the years after World War II, Bernard Kilgore was the publishing genius who forged the Journal into a national and now international institution. (See "Barney Kilgore Built His Dream.") But it was for editorial writing that his Journal won its first two Pulitzer Prizes, to William Henry Grimes in 1947 and Vermont Royster in 1953. In 1951 Mr. Grimes famously spelled out The Journal's approach to reporting and editorializing in "A Newspaper's Philosophy."
Looking back over this history, what's surprising is not the change of views but their constancy. (See "Journal Editorials and the Common Man.") They are united by the mantra "free markets and free people," the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities. If these principles sound unexceptionable in theory, applying them to current issues is often unfashionable and controversial.
Even regular readers often inquire about how our articles and views manage to appear five days a week, or how many people write the editorials? This is not as simple a question as it seems. When we counted the other day, the full-time budgeted staff of the editorial page numbered 43. This staff is responsible for the editorial and op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, the daily Leisure & Arts pages of the domestic Journal and the critical reviews and Taste page for the Weekend Journal, and OpinionJournal.com with its substantial body of original content.
At last count, about 22 of the 43 staff members have written at least one editorial over the last year. But there are many other things to do. Ten are involved in producing the pages (i.e., formatting the electronic images that fill printing plates or computer screens), clerical and business-management tasks. Six are principally involved in arts and cultural reviewing, which on this newspaper are recognized as an opinion function. Eight are mainly involved in the two international editions, both writing editorials and editing feature articles, and two devote most of their time to producing the OpinionJournal.com Web site features.
In New York and Washington, a core group of 12 people is principally involved in writing editorials or our proprietary columns. Another four are principally involved in editing features from outside contributors and letters to the editor. Of course, many editorials and articles are used in more than one edition, often with appropriate customization. And some writers or editors may be doing editorials one day, cultural reviews the next and feature articles the third. Out of this maelstrom, three sets of editorial and op-ed pages across the world get filled every morning. Our tradition has long been to avoid set-piece meetings but to gather come-who-wants informally. This tradition is now giving way to e-mail exchanges, and we've adopted one formal meeting a week for more free-ranging discussion.
But coordination of policy positions is not as difficult as an outsider might think, for we all share a similar world view. The most important coordinators--Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot and Deputy Editors Daniel Henninger and Melanie Kirkpatrick--have worked together for decades. They are guided by the tradition of free people and free markets set out by Charles Dow and elaborated by a long string of editors.
A word is due here about journalistic philosophy, as opposed to political philosophy. The Journal editorial pages are obviously in themselves a substantial journalistic enterprise. But they are dwarfed by the Journal news department: more than 600 reporters on the global news staff and another 900-plus on Dow Jones Newswires. Following the American newspaper practice, the heads of News and Editorial report independently to the publisher, Gordon Crovitz.
We expect our editorial writers to do their own reporting, developing their own sources and seeking news from their own perspective and insights. It may sometimes happen that news sources get calls from both news and editorial departments. Sometimes the dispatches of news and editorial seem to disagree, primarily in reflecting different sets of news sources. While this can be confusing, we do not see that the reader is the loser.
We believe that the ultimate function of the editorial pages is the same as the rest of the newspaper, to inform. But in opinion journalism we have the additional purpose of making an argument for a point of view. We often take sides on the major issues of politics and society, with a goal of moving policies or events in what we think is the best direction for the country and world. We recognize that others may disagree but see little value in equivocation. In stating our own views forcefully, we hope to raise and sharpen the level of debate and knowledge. And we hope that our editorials reflect not merely the passing whim of passing editors, but a body of thought shaped by a century of tradition.
Title: NY Slimes caught in flagrante delito again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2008, 06:26:51 PM
WSJ
We Stand Behind Our Stereotype By JAMES TARANTO January 14, 2008
There is a school of thought in journalism according to which it is bad form to mention the race or ethnicity of a criminal suspect or defendant unless there is a compelling reason to do so. The idea is that such references gratuitously perpetuate stereotypes while imparting information that is of no use to the reader.
But racial and ethnic groups are not the only ones who take offense at such stereotypes, as the New York Times reports:
Veterans groups have long deplored the attention paid to the minority of soldiers who fail to readjust to civilian life. After World War I, the American Legion passed a resolution asking the press "to subordinate whatever slight news value there may be in playing up the ex-service member angle in stories of crime or offense against the peace." An article in the Veterans of Foreign Wars magazine in 2006 referred with disdain to the pervasive "wacko-vet myth," which, veterans say, makes it difficult for them to find jobs. The wacko-vet myth is alive and well. This very passage comes from a 7,000-word front-page piece in yesterday's Times titled "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles":
The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment--along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems--appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction. Are they depraved on account of they were deployed? In fact, the Times's data are not sufficient to establish a correlation, much less a casual relationship, between stateside homicide and previous service in Afghanistan or Iraq.
To determine whether there's such a correlation, we'd need to know, in addition to the number of war vets charged with homicide, the corresponding figure for the general population, as well as the denominators--i.e., the number of war vets and the size of the population as a whole. A serious analysis would also take into account the demographic characteristics of the veteran population, which is disproportionately young and male.
This the Times does not do. Power Line's John Hinderaker conducts some back-of-the-envelope calculations and finds that if the Times's numbers are correct, "the rate of homicides committed by military personnel who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan is only a fraction of the homicide rate for other Americans aged 18 to 24."
The Times, however, pre-empts this line of argument by acknowledging a defect in its methodology:
To compile and analyze its list, The Times conducted a search of local news reports, examined police, court and military records and interviewed the defendants, their lawyers and families, the victims' families and military and law enforcement officials. This reporting most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big cities and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail. Also, it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homicide charges. If the numbers aren't comprehensive, what exactly is the Times trying to prove here? This is where things get interesting:
The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower. What the Times has discovered, then, is a dramatic increase in the number of news reports in which homicide defendants are identified as servicemen or recent veterans. Does this mean that those who've served their country are more crime-prone now than they were in peacetime? Or does it mean that reporters are more prone to perpetuate the wacko-vet myth than they were during peacetime?
The Times is trying to prove the truth of a media stereotype by references to media reports. It might have proved nothing more than that it is a stereotype.
Title: WSJ needles NY Slimes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2008, 04:22:59 PM
Underwhelmingly Iraqi One of our favorite sports is mocking the New York Times for the roundabout way in which it tries to avoid acknowledging that al Qaeda in Iraq is connected with al Qaeda everywhere else. Here's a particularly inviting example, from yesterday's paper:
Some critics contend that estimates of insurgents who actually belong to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which American officials say is overwhelmingly Iraqi but has foreign leadership, tend to be overstated. Many insurgents who are lumped into the group, they say, are Sunnis who simply need money or who are angered by the sectarian bias of Iraqi security forces, but who have no wider allegiance to al Qaeda. If "many" insurgents who are Iraqi are wrongly "lumped into this group," isn't the obvious conclusion that al Qaeda in Meso-whatever is underwhelmingly Iraqi? The Washington Post adds this:
U.S. military officials in Iraq said they now think that nine out of 10 suicide bombers have been foreigners, compared with earlier estimates of 75 percent. This is further evidence that the New York Times is right, inasmuch as the New York Times is saying the New York Times is wrong.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 31, 2008, 07:04:18 AM
Edwards Yay, Giuliani Eh Each of the two bye-kus above this item links to an Associated Press story about the respective candidate's decision to withdraw from the race, and the contrast is quite striking. Here is the AP's Nedra Pickler on the lovely and talented Edwards:
Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has learned. Wow, how did the AP learn that Edwards's campaign was "scrappy" and that it "steered his rivals toward progressive ideals"? That must've taken some heavy-duty research!
Pickler also credits Edwards with having "waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals." It seems that he "burst out of the starting gate with a flurry of progressive policy ideas":
The ideas were all bold and new for Edwards personally as well, making him a different candidate than the moderate Southerner who ran in 2004 while still in his first Senate term. But the themes were eventually adopted by other Democratic presidential candidates--and even a Republican, Mitt Romney, echoed the call for an end to special interest politics in Washington. Who'd a thunk that "even a Republican" would endorse Edwards's bold new idea of "an end to special interest politics in Washington"?
By contrast, the AP's Devlin Barrett covers the Giuliani withdrawal straight:
Rudy Giuliani, who bet his presidential hopes on Florida only to come in third, prepared to quit the race Tuesday and endorse his friendliest rival, John McCain. The former New York mayor stopped short of announcing he was stepping down, but delivered a valedictory speech that was more farewell than fight-on. Giuliani finished a distant third to winner John McCain and close second-place finisher Mitt Romney. Republican officials said Giuliani would endorse McCain on Wednesday in California. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the public announcement. Barrett notes that the former mayor's distant third-place finish in yesterday's Florida primary "was a remarkable collapse for Giuliani"--ultimately a matter of opinion, we suppose, but one with which it's hard to disagree. In describing Giuliani's background, he has some kind words, but they are much more tempered than Pickler's on Edwards:
Giuliani hung his bid for the Republican presidential nomination on his leadership. His stalwart performance as New York mayor in the tense days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks earned him national magazine covers, international accolades and widespread praise. Yet, Giuliani was always a Republican anomaly--a moderate-to-liberal New Yorker who backed abortion rights, gay rights and gun control in a party dominated by Southern conservatives. Now it is true that everyone, even reporters, is human. If you spend a good portion of your life covering politics, you are going to develop feelings about politicians, and if you're not careful, they may slip into your news coverage. What bothers us about this Pickler dispatch--and about many other instances of media bias we've pointed to over the years--is that the reporter doesn't even seem to have bothered to be careful. It may not be possible for a reporter to achieve the ideal of perfect objective detachment, but that's no excuse not to try.
James Taranto WSJ
Title: NY Times conspiracy?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2008, 07:18:52 PM
Question: Let me see if I have the timeline on this correct: The NYTimes was siiting on its McCain-Lobbyist story at the same time it was endorsing him? The better to set up a Dem victor?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 09, 2008, 04:54:13 PM
**Here is a nice little example of media bias. Listen to this ISNA infomercial on NPR and contrast it with what is really known about ISNA.**
by Steven Emerson Counterterrorism Blog August 11, 2007
In an otherwise important article published by Newsweek this past Wednesday (An Unwelcome Guest), reporters Mike Isikoff and Mark Hosenball detailed a Department of Justice outreach event, cancelled at the last minute because of one of the invitees was a high ranking official with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) - a potentially embarrassing fact since ISNA was recently named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the current trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in Dallas.
The cancelled event was slated for the same day as President Bush's speech at the Islamic Center of Washington D.C., problematic in its own right for several reasons, as I reported at the time, including the presence of Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also an un-indicted co-conspirator in the HLF case. Recent testimony and evidence in the HLF trial has conclusively linked CAIR's founders with HAMAS, and its American affiliate, the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But back to ISNA; Newsweek put a call into ISNA to ask about its status as un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF trial, and this is the result:
In a brief telephone interview with NEWSWEEK Wednesday, Magid pointed a reporter to an e-mail statement saying that the ISNA was seeking an immediate retraction of the government's "unfounded allegations" in the Holy Land case. "ISNA is not now and has never been involved in any covert or illegal activity and has never supported any terrorist organizations," the statement read. "Rather, ISNA is an open and transparent membership organization that strives to be an exemplary and unifying Islamic organization … ISNA hereby reaffirms its unqualified condemnation of all acts of terrorism." (emphasis added) Isikoff and Hosenball, however, let that statement go unchallenged. And this is the same Newsweek that, several months ago, uncritically reported that new ISNA President Ingrid Mattson was, "bringing the moderate viewpoint to the world."
Yet, as I recently reported here, ISNA's sympathy with terrorism, and individual terrorists, runs quite deep.
ISNA has never condemned terrorist groups like HAMAS or Hizballah by name. More notably, in June of 1997, two and a half years after HAMAS was officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States government (and long after common sense and reality indicated as such), top HAMAS official Mousa Abu Marzook thanked ISNA (and several other U.S.-based Islamist and "civil rights" organizations), writing that ISNA supported him through his "ordeal" – Marzook had been detained at JFK airport in 1995 and arrested and the Israelis were seeking his extradition. Marzook wrote that ISNA's efforts had "consoled" him.
ISNA's magazine, Islamic Horizons, is a hotbed of pro-jihadist literature, and has long championed HAMAS and HAMAS officials, notably Mr. Marzook himself. In the November/December 1995 issue, almost a full year after HAMAS was officially designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, Islamic Horizons published an article titled, "Muslim Leader Hostage to Israeli Interests." That leader was Marzook, characterized by ISNA as:
[a] member of the political wing of Hamas, disliked by the Zionist entity for its Islamic orientation, continues to be held hostage in the U.S. at the whims of his Zionist accusers. And in the September/October 1997 issues, two and a half years after the designation of Hamas as a terrorist group, Islamic Horizons published an article describing Marzook as:
[j]ailed without trial in New York for-months for alleged ties to organizations seeking Palestinian rights. The pro-Hamas rhetoric and apologia in Islamic Horizons is off the charts, yet ISNA continues to get a free pass as a "moderate" organization by much of the government and media, who have probably not bothered to pick up a copy of its magazine.
Additionally, evidence has been introduced during the HLF trial which further exposes ISNA's claim of "unqualified condemnation of all acts of terrorism" as lies, at the same time, undercutting HLF's innocent claims that the organization only assisted impoverished widows and orphans, and establish long-standing ISNA ties to HAMAS. Exhibits entered into evidence a few days ago at the HLF trial include an expense voucher from the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), an ISNA subsidiary, made out for $10,000 in the name of Musa Abu Marzook, as well as a check drawn on a NAIT account in the same amount made out to Marzook. Another check for $10,000 on the same account was made out to Marzook's wife, Nadia Elashi. Another check for $30,000 was made out to the Islamic University of Gaza (and has Shukri Abu Baker/OLF written on the memo line), a school long known to be controlled by HAMAS, and which counted such notables as former HAMAS leader Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantissi and current HAMAS leader Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar as professors, and the recently deposed HAMAS Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is a former dean of the University.
Beyond the evidence in the HLF trial, ISNA counts among its former leadership such luminaries as convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operative Sami al-Arian. According to his own bio:
Dr. Al-Arian has also been an active community leader. He helped establish the largest grass roots organization in the U.S., the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in 1981, and its many affiliates such as the Muslim Arab Youth Association (1977), the Islamic Association for Palestine (1981), Islamic Committee for Palestine (I.C.P), Islamic Community of Tampa (1987) and Islamic Academy of Florida (1992). (emphasis added) ISNA also granted an official "Certificate of Affiliation" to al-Arian's "charity," the Islamic Concern Project (a.k.a. the Islamic Committee for Palestine/ICP).
Al-Arian was a frequent speaker at ISNA events, which have also hosted speakers such as Abdurrahman Alamoudi, currently serving a 23 year prison sentence for acting as a financial courier for a State sponsor of terrorism, having admitted his role participating in an Al Qaeda-inspired plot to assassinate the then-Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and Mohammed Salah, recently convicted and sentenced for obstruction of justice related to lying about his HAMAS connections in a civil law suit against U.S.-based HAMAS front groups.
ISNA officials can say they "condemn acts of terrorism" all they want, but the evidence supporting their ties to, and true feelings about, terrorist groups like HAMAS and PIJ, is overwhelming. The Department of Justice has started to take note. One can only hope that other branches of the government and mainstream media will follow suit.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2008, 09:24:05 AM
Spitzer's Media Enablers By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL March 12, 2008; Page A21
The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will surely be examining them in coming months. But don't expect the press corps to delve into the biggest lesson of all -- its own role as his enabler.
Journalists have spent the past two days asking how a man of Mr. Spitzer's stature would allow himself to get involved in a prostitution ring. The answer, in my mind, is clear. The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press. "You play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don't get caught," said Mr. Spitzer two years ago. He never did get caught, because most reporters were his accomplices.
Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances. Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.
Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan -- all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.
Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title "Crusader of the Year," and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the "Enforcer." A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was "a rock star," and "the Democratic Party's future." In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.
What the media never acknowledged is that somewhere along the line (say, his first day in public office) Mr. Spitzer became the big guy, the titan. He had the power to trample lives and bend the rules, while also burnishing his own political fortune. He was the one who deserved as much, if not more, scrutiny as onetime New York Stock Exchange chief Dick Grasso or former American International Group CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.
What makes this more embarrassing for any self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. He knew what sort of storyline they'd be sympathetic to, and spun it. He knew, too, that as financial journalism has become more competitive, breaking news can make a career. He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance. News organizations that dared to criticize him were cut off. After a time, few criticized anymore.
Instead, reporters felt obligated to run with whatever he handed them. Consider the report in the wake of a 2005 op-ed in this newspaper by John Whitehead. A respected Wall Street figure, Mr. Whitehead dared to criticize Mr. Spitzer for his unscrupulously zealous pursuit of Mr. Greenberg. Mr. Spitzer later threatened Mr. Whitehead, telling him in a phone call that "You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done." Some months later, after more Spitzer excesses, Mr. Whitehead had the temerity to write another op-ed describing what Mr. Spitzer had said.
Within a few days, the press was reporting (unsourced, of course) that Mr. Whitehead had defended Mr. Greenberg a few weeks after a Greenberg charity had given $25 million to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation -- a group Mr. Whitehead chaired. So Mr. Whitehead's on-the-record views were met with an unsourced smear implying bad faith. The press ran with it anyway.
In 2005, Mr. Spitzer went on national television to suggest that Mr. Greenberg had engaged in criminal activity. It was front-page news. About six months later, on the eve of a Thanksgiving weekend, Mr. Spitzer quietly disclosed that he lacked the evidence to press criminal charges. That news was buried inside the papers.
What makes this history all the more unfortunate is that the warning signs about Mr. Spitzer were many and manifest. In the final days of Mr. Spitzer's run for attorney general in 1998, the news broke that he'd twisted campaign-finance laws so that his father could fund his unsuccessful 1994 run. Mr. Spitzer won anyway, and the story was largely forgotten.
New York Stock Exchange caretaker CEO John Reed suggested Mr. Spitzer hadn't told the truth when he said that it was Mr. Reed who wanted him to investigate Mr. Grasso's pay. The press never investigated.
Mr. Spitzer's main offense as a prosecutor is that he violated the basic rules of fairness and due process: Innocent until proven guilty; the right to your day in court. The Spitzer method was to target public companies and officials, leak allegations and out-of-context emails to a compliant press, watch the stock price fall, threaten a corporate indictment (a death sentence), and then move in for a quick settlement kill. There was rarely a trial, fair or unfair, involved.
On the substance, his court record speaks for itself. Most of Mr. Spitzer's high-profile charges have gone up in smoke. A New York state judge threw out his case against tax firm H&R Block. He lost his prosecution against Bank of America broker Ted Sihpol (whom Mr. Spitzer threatened to arrest in front of his child and pregnant wife). Mr. Spitzer was stopped by a federal judge from prying confidential information out of mortgage companies. Another New York judge blocked the heart of his suit against Mr. Grasso. Mr. Greenberg continues to fight his civil charges. The press was foursquare behind Mr. Spitzer in all these cases, and in a better world they'd share some of his humiliation.
Instead, remarkably, they continue to defend him. Ms. Masters, his biographer, was on CNN the day Mr. Spitzer's prostitution news broke, reassuring viewers that the governor really was a "lovely" guy. Other news reporters were reporting what a "tragedy" it was that such a leading light in the Democratic Party could come to such an ignoble end.
There's little that's tragic about Mr. Spitzer, unless you consider his victims (which would appear to include his own family). The press would do well to meditate on that, and consider how many violations they winked at and validated over the years. Politicians don't exist to be idolized by the press, at least not by any press corps doing its job.
Ms. Strassel, who covered Eliot Spitzer's investigations, now writes the Journal's Potomac Watch column from Washington.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 12, 2008, 03:59:40 PM
Are Iraqi Insurgents Emboldened by Antiwar Reporting? By Alex Kingsbury Wed Mar 12, 2:44 PM ET
Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq? The short answer, according to a pair of Harvard economists, is yes.
In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the authors are quick to point out numerous caveats to their findings, based on data from mid-2003 through late 2007.
Yet, their results show that insurgent groups are not devoid of reason and unresponsive to outside pressures and stimuli. "It shows that the various insurgent groups do respond to incentives and shows that a successful counter insurgency strategy should take that reality into account," says one of the paper's coauthors, Jonathan Monten, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The paper "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect in Iraq? Evidence From the Insurgency in Iraq" concludes the following:
--In the short term, there is a small but measurable cost to open public debate in the form of higher attacks against Iraqi and American targets.
--In periods immediately after a spike in "antiresolve" statements in the American media, the level of insurgent attacks increases between 7 and 10 percent.
--Insurgent organizations are strategic actors, meaning that whatever their motivations, religious or ideological, they will respond to incentives and disincentives.
But before partisans go wild on both sides of the aisle, here are just three of the important caveats to this study:
--The city of Baghdad, for a variety of reasons, was excluded from the report. The authors contend that looking at the outside provinces, where 65 percent of insurgent attacks take place, is a better way to understand the effect they have discovered. Other population centers like Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and Najaf were included in the study.
--The study does not take into account overall cost and benefit of public debate. Past research has shown that public debate has a positive effect on military strategy, for example, and, in the case of Iraq, might be a factor in forcing the Iraqi government to more quickly accept responsibility for internal security.
--It was not possible, from the data available, to determine whether insurgent groups increased the overall number of attacks against American and Iraqi targets in the wake of public dissent and debate or simply changed the timing of those attacks. This means that insurgents may not be increasing the number of attacks after all but simply changing the days on which they attack in response to media reports.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 19, 2008, 08:31:57 AM
NPR = NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE RADIO March 16, 2008 12:00 AM Four short segments of conservative views were enough to flood NPR with angry phone calls and email. So much for “fairness,” writes Pam Meister. Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers
by Pam Meister
Imagine you’re a typical NPR listener, tuning in as you sip your Starbucks Café Latte — made with skim milk and a shot of cinnamon — work the New York Times crossword puzzle, and think about how great it is that you don’t have to stop for gas on your way to work this morning because you drive a Prius. Suddenly, you’re jolted out of your comfortable morning routine by the unimaginable: a segment entitled “Conversations with Conservatives.” Choking on your latte and misspelling “pestiferous” on your crossword, your head begins to spin as Rev. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, discusses the status of evangelical voters. But surely it’s just an anomaly. An early April Fool’s Day joke. Yeah, that must be it! And fortunately, it was only seven minutes. But the next day, you hear Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, talking about which fiscal policies appeal to Republican voters. And the day after that, radio talk show host and CNN personality Glenn Beck discusses core conservative values. And on the last day of February, you are treated to David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, blathering on about the challenges that Sen. John McCain faces when it comes to proving himself to the conservative base. If there’s a reason to abolish Leap Year and February 29, then having David Keene spoil your Starbucks experience surely must be it. Who can you call? There has to be someone. The Washington Times reports that for daring to air the views of conservatives on its morning drive show during the final four days of February, NPR fielded “more than 60 angry e-mails and phone calls … calling the programming ‘shameful’ and a ‘lovefest with radical, right-wing nuts.’ There were only a few … that praised the series as ‘refreshing’ and ‘articulate,’ among other things.” National Public Radio is funded in part by federal tax dollars. The last time I checked, both liberals AND conservatives are required to pay federal taxes. So what’s wrong with having four seven-minute segments out of the year where conservative ideas are brought forth? You know, throw them a Milk Bone once in a while to pretend you care about them while you spend their money on things like Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion.” The problem with many liberals is that while they say they espouse tolerance, love for your fellow man, and discussing problems instead of resorting to fisticuffs, when they’re actually expected to “walk the walk,” things get ugly. To them, just listening to conservative ideas is akin to Dracula finding out about a nationwide tainted blood supply. It’s painful when liberals realize that not everyone thinks the way that they do: that there are unenlightened souls out there who don’t recycle, who go to church once in a while, who respect our military, and who don’t think that the sun shines out of Barack Obama’s nether regions. So, being the enlightened, progressive types that they are, instead of listening respectfully to what the other side has to say — and possibly learning something new — they stick their fingers in their ears, chant “I can’t hear you,” and complain to the person in charge about how awful the experience was. It’s sort of like the people who believe that vandalizing and bombing military recruiting stations is a great way to get their message of peace out to the masses. They also institute “speech codes” at universities — ostensibly so that no college student will get his widdle feewings hurt — but in reality limiting students’ First Amendment rights in the name of keeping certain “unwanted speech” off campus. In an ironic twist, the same people want to see the Fairness Doctrine brought back. They think that it’s a way to silence folks like Rush Limbaugh and Neil Boortz, whose very existence means that even driving that Prius isn’t enough to erase the negative feelings that must result from knowing these individuals are adding to the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere simply by existing. Wait a minute, that’s it: Rush Limbaugh causes global warming! But the knife cuts both ways. Want the Fairness Doctrine? Fine, but be prepared to listen to more conservatives on NPR. In fact, NPR’s ombudsman Alicia Shepard has a wish list that includes “Thomas Sowell, Janice Shaw-Crouse, Shelby Steele, and the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr. as possible guests. “’There are dozens of diverse conservative voices, but NPR and all news organizations need to work much harder to bring them into the conversation,’ Ms. Shepard noted.” And if they don’t want conservatives on NPR, that’s fine too. Just send conservatives a refund for their portion of the taxes that support it. Now that’s progressive.
Title: The NYTimes rationalizes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2008, 08:33:57 AM
The NYTimes tries to cover its *ss, but fails-- the truth is simple: the coverage is less because things are going much better. =========== The War Endures, but Where’s the Media? comments (70) E-Mail Print Reprints Save Share Digg Facebook Mixx Yahoo! Buzz Permalink
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Published: March 24, 2008 Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.
Readers' Comments "The fact that the economy and the election are now of major interest to the public is part of the reason for the war being put on the back burner." AJ, PA Read Full Comment » Post a Comment » Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The drop in coverage parallels — and may be explained by — a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq “very closely” in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.
Experts offer many other explanations for the declining media focus, like the danger and expense in covering Iraq, and shrinking newsroom budgets. In the last year, a flagging economy and the most competitive presidential campaign in memory have diverted attention and resources.
“Vietnam held the media’s attention a lot better because it was a war with a draft that touched a lot more people; people were sent against their will, and many more Americans were killed,” said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard.
“In a conventional war, like World War II, there’s dramatic change, a moving front line, a compelling narrative,” he said. But after the triumphal first months, Iraq became a war of insurgents vs. counterinsurgents, harder to make sense of, “with more of the same grim news, day after day.”
The three broadcast networks’ nightly newscasts devoted more than 4,100 minutes to Iraq in 2003 and 3,000 in 2004, before leveling off at about 2,000 a year, according to Andrew Tyndall, who monitors the broadcasts and posts detailed breakdowns at tyndallreport.com. And by the last months of 2007, he said, the broadcasts were spending half as much time on Iraq as earlier in the year.
Since the start of last year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, has tracked reporting by several dozen major newspapers, cable stations, broadcast television networks, Web sites and radio programs. Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.
The policy debate in Washington that dominated last year’s Iraq coverage has almost disappeared from the news. And reporting on events in Iraq has fallen by more than two-thirds from a year ago.
The drop accelerated with a sharp decline in violence in Iraq that began at the end of last summer. The last six months have been safer for American troops than any comparable period since the war began, with about 33 killed each month, compared with about 91 a month over the previous year.
“The available news hole got so much smaller because election and economic news took up so much of the space,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center.
There are no authoritative figures for most media coverage before 2007. But a check of several large and midsize newspapers’ archives shows a year-by-year decline in articles about Iraq, and an increase in the proportion supplied by wire services. Experts who follow the coverage say there is no doubt about the trend.
“I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war” in the first years, said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow on national security at the Brookings Institution. “Now it’s less than one a day.”
He argued that Americans who support the war might not have wanted to follow the news when it was bad, and that Americans against the war are less interested now that the news is better. And the presidential candidates, he said, have shown “surprisingly little interest in discussing it in detail.”
Many news organizations have fewer people in Iraq than they once did, though no definitive numbers are available. Coalition officials have said that although there were several hundred reporters embedded with military units early in the war, the number has been measured in tens in recent months.
Violence against journalists makes reporting on Iraq costly and difficult; executives of The New York Times have said that the newspaper is spending more than $3 million a year to cover Iraq. The risks have forced news organizations to hire private security forces and Iraqi employees who can go places that Westerners cannot safely explore.
From the start of the war through 2005, journalists and their support workers were killed in Iraq at a rate of one every 12 days, according to tallies kept by the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2006 and 2007, the rate was one every eight days. Most of those killed have been Iraqis.
“Danger and the expense are gigantic factors,” Mr. Jones said. “The news media have to constantly revisit how much money and risk to expend.”
Title: The Al Durra Case
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2008, 09:58:13 AM
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Al-Durra Case Revisited FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE May 27, 2008
It's hard to exaggerate the significance of Mohammed al-Durra, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli bullets on Sept. 30, 2000. The iconic image of the terrified child crouching behind his father helped sway world opinion against the Jewish state and fueled the last Intifada.
It's equally hard, then, to exaggerate the significance of last week's French court ruling that called the story into doubt. Not just whether the Israeli military shot the boy, but whether the whole incident may have been staged for propaganda purposes. If so, it would be one of the most harmful put-up jobs in media history.
You probably didn't hear this news. International media lapped up the televised report of al-Durra's shooting on France's main state-owned network, France 2. Barely a peep was heard, however, when the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in a suit brought by the network against the founder of a media watchdog group. The judge's verdict, released Thursday, said that Philippe Karsenty was within his rights to call the France 2 report a "hoax," overturning a 2006 decision that found him guilty of defaming the network and its Mideast correspondent, Charles Enderlin. France 2 has appealed to the country's highest court.
Judge Laurence Trébucq did more than assert Mr. Karsenty's right to free speech. In overturning a lower court's ruling, she said the issues he raised about the original France 2 report were legitimate. While Mr. Karsenty couldn't provide absolute proof of his claims, the court ruled that he marshalled a "coherent mass of evidence" and "exercised in good faith his right to free criticism." The court also found that Talal Abu Rahma, the Palestinian cameraman for France 2 who was the only journalist to capture the scene and the network's crown witness in this case, can't be considered "perfectly credible."
The ruling at the very least opens the way for honest discussion of the al-Durra case, and coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. French media could stand some self-examination. The same holds for journalists elsewhere.
On that Saturday in 2000, Palestinians faced off against Israeli troops at Gaza's Netzarim junction. Two months before, Yasser Arafat had walked out of the Camp David peace talks. Two days before, Ariel Sharon had visited Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The second Intifada was brewing. The French network's cameraman, Mr. Abu Rahma, filmed the skirmishes and got the footage to the France 2 bureau in Israel. Mr. Enderlin edited the film and, relying only on his cameraman's account, provided the voice-over for the report. He suggested Israeli soldiers killed the boy. He didn't say he wasn't there.
Along with the Temple Mount incident, the al-Durra shooting was the seminal event behind the second Intifada. Israel apologized. But nagging doubts soon emerged, as Nidra Poller recounts here. An Israeli military probe found that its soldiers couldn't have shot the father and son, given where the two were crouching.
Others including Mr. Karsenty asked, among various questions, Why the lack of any blood on the boy or his father? Or why did France 2 claim to have 27 minutes of footage but refuse to show any but the 57 seconds on its original broadcast? Mr. Enderlin said, "I cut the images of the child's agony, they were unbearable."
Under pressure from media watchdogs, and after years of stonewalling, France 2 eventually shared the additional film. It turns out that no footage of the child's alleged death throes seems to exist. The extra material shows what appears to be staged scenes of gun battles before the al-Durra killing. For a sample, check out www.seconddraft.org, a site run by Richard Landes, a Boston University professor and one of Mr. Karsenty's witnesses.
Judge Trébucq said that Mr. Karsenty "observed inexplicable inconsistencies and contradictions in the explanations by Charles Enderlin."
We don't know exactly what happened to Mohammed al-Durra. Perhaps we never will. But the Paris court ruling shows that France 2 wasn't completely open about what it knew about that day. It suggests the Israelis may not have been to blame. It makes it plausible to consider -- without being dismissed as an unhinged conspiracy theorist -- the possibility that the al-Durra story was a hoax.
To this day, Islamic militants use the al-Durra case to incite violence and hatred against Israel. They are well aware of the power of images. Mr. Karsenty is, too, which is why he and others have tried to hold France 2 accountable for its reporting.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
Title: On Charles Krauthammer
Post by: ccp on May 29, 2008, 06:23:49 AM
Interesting read. Charles was Canadian graduted from Harvard Medical School and taught psychiatry at Mass General and made significant contributions to the concept of bipolar disorder. I thought he is in a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis but it is the result of a long ago auto accident. I like him because I usually agree with his views. He has accomplished a lot especially while disabled. There is no overt evidence he lets his disability get in his way. In fact one can almost never tell that he is in a wheelchair when he is on the air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 31, 2008, 02:16:51 PM
Whitewashing the Thai Jihad By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, May 30, 2008
In a story Wednesday on a jihadist attack on a wedding party and other jihad activity in Thailand, Agence France Presse added a concluding paragraph that was typical of mainstream media coverage of the Thai jihad and of jihad activity in general. For while AP, Reuters, AFP and the rest never saw a piece of Palestinian propaganda they didn’t like, they also never saw a jihad they couldn’t whitewash.
AFP’s concluding paragraph blandly placed all the blame for the conflict on the non-Muslim Thai government:
More than 3,000 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.
All was well, you see, until the Buddhists of Thailand, motivated apparently only by rapacious imperialism, annexed the poor autonomous Malay Muslim Sultanate. AFP does not mention, of course, that the Malay Sultanate at that time was making war against the Siamese during the war between Siam and Burma, and Thailand conquered it in that context -- making it Thai by a right of conquest that has been universally recognized throughout human history (except, of course, when it comes to Israel and to any Muslim land that is conquered by non-Muslims).
Along with this come the media’s allergy to the word “jihad,” and its frequent recourse to the passive voice when discussing what the jihadists did. Sometimes inanimate objects act, apparently of their own accord. For example, in a March story on bombings in southern Thailand, Reuters’ lead paragraph stated: “Bombs killed three men and wounded 21 people in three separate attacks in Thailand’s troubled Muslim far south, police said on Sunday.” Reuters gives no hint as to who is doing the bombing and who are the victims – which in itself is a clear indication that the bombers are not the government or pro-government vigilantes, but jihadists.
The story continues in this vein. Its second paragraph tells us that a bomb was hidden in the car, but with no hint as to by whom. In paragraph 5 we learn that in the three southern provinces, “2,500 people have been killed in gun and bomb attacks since a separatist insurgency erupted in January 2004.” The separatist insurgency just erupted, you see, like a volcano. It was an act of God, a force of nature. Here again Reuters gives the reader no hint as to who the separatist insurgents are, or who killed the overwhelming majority of those 2,500 people. In paragraph 6, we learn how the “suspected militants” set off another bomb, but once again are given no hint as to who these militants are.
Same thing in paragraph 7: unidentified “insurgents” ambush the security forces. In paragraph 8, it’s simply a “bomb,” a random, accidental object, that unaccountably wounded four people. But also in that paragraph we learn that this is all taking place in “the three far south provinces which formed an independent sultanate until annexed by Thailand a century ago.” Reuters and AFP are in step on this: the only background they give suggests that Thailand is entirely responsible for provoking the conflict, and should simply have left the Malay Muslims alone.
Only in paragraph 10 of the Reuters story are we finally told that “Buddhist monks” are among the chief targets of the still-unidentified “militants” -- which should lead the informed reader to identify them as Islamic jihadists and Sharia supremacists. But they come to that identification with no help from Reuters.
In reality, the Thai jihadists are uniquely brutal even by the standards of their jihadist brethren, and are fighting to correct the outrage, as they see it, of non-Muslim rule over a Muslim population in southern Thailand. But the AFP and Reuters stories exemplify the kind of coverage that jihad activity receives from the mainstream media as a matter of course. The perpetrators of jihad violence are not identified, their ideology is never discussed, and the conflicts they provoke are blamed on their victims. This kind of coverage is of a piece with the U.S. government’s new see-no-jihad, speak-no-jihad, hear-no-jihad policy: both appear to be based on wishful thinking. Both seem to emanate from the idea that if we simply do not allow ourselves to notice jihad activity, it will somehow fade away from neglect. If we pretend that Islam is peaceful, violent Muslims will lay down their arms.
The price we will have to pay for these fantasies could be very high.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His next book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, is coming this November from Regnery Publishing.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 06, 2008, 05:23:08 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues - Tim Russert
Post by: DougMacG on June 17, 2008, 09:38:07 PM
I didn't like Tim Russert very much professionally due to my heavy conservative bias, but he was the second best in the business to Jim Lehrer IMO and his show was the giant of the political shows so I defer to Thomas Sowell who is far smarter than me for a wonderful tribute to this legend who died WAY too young.
Tim Russert (1950-2008) by Thomas Sowell
Only with Tim Russert's sudden death at the age of 58 has his true stature as a landmark journalist become as widely recognized as it has long deserved to be.
To ask who will replace him as host of "Meet the Press" is to confront the reality that there is no one comparable on the horizon. Those of us who have followed "Meet the Press" since the long ago days of Lawrence Spivak know that Russert was the best of some very good hosts.
What made Tim Russert special was not some trademark catchword or contrived persona. What you saw was what you got-- a down to earth guy who came on the air having thoroughly researched the subject and having a keen insight into politics and politicians.
He didn't flaunt his knowledge. He was one of the few very smart people who seemed to feel no need to impress others that he was smart. But, if you knew the subject that he was talking about, you realized that he had really done his homework.
There was something else that set Tim Russert apart from many other journalists, whether print journalists or broadcast journalists: His agenda was bringing out the facts.
He didn't let the politicians he interviewed get away with slippery statements and inconsistent positions. But it was not "gotcha" journalism. It was not trying to filter or slant information to promote some political or ideological agenda.
No doubt Tim Russert had his own opinions. He had, after all, been on the staff of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and on the staff of former New York governor Mario Cuomo.
But, whatever Tim Russert's political opinions were then or later, that was not what his program was about. He was there to serve the audience by bringing out the facts about the political world, a world where spin is the usually name of the game.
Often critics who complain about media bias argue as if what is needed is to be "fair" to "both sides." But what is far more important is to be honest with the audience-- who are seeking information and understanding about the real world, not about the ideology or the agenda of the journalist.
This is not to denigrate opinion journalists, who have a valuable role to play, just as reporters like Tim Russert do. But, with both opinion journalists and reporters, the question is whether you play it straight with the audience, instead of filtering out inconvenient facts in order to manipulate the audience in favor of some agenda.
In short, the issue is honesty rather than "fairness." The question is whether journalists put their cards on the table. Russert put his cards on the table-- and they were high cards.
A small personal note: A few months ago, an old friend said that he would like to get a videotape of my interview on "Meet the Press" back in 1981. I dug up an old videotape in my garage but, after several summers in a hot garage, it was not in very good shape.
As a long shot, I decided to write to "Meet the Press," to see if they would sell me another copy of the interview, if it was still available.
This interview took place back in the days when Bill Monroe was the program's moderator. But, since the only name I knew of at "Meet the Press" was Tim Russert, I addressed a note to him, figuring that one of his secretaries might get back to me with the information.
Instead, I received a DVD of that interview and a brief, handwritten note from Tim Russert, with a transcript of the interview thrown in.
How people treat those who cannot do them any good or any harm reveals a lot about their character. For me, Tim Russert scored high in that department as well.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 18, 2008, 07:13:07 AM
From various media entities, including those from the "evil" Fox News, it seems that everyone that knew Tim Russert personally liked him and respected his journalistic professionalism. Having said that, how many cops and military personnel died in the line of duty while the MSM ran endless clip memorializing Mr. Russert. Not slamming him, just pointing out the self-centeredness of the MSM.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 22, 2008, 12:55:58 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2008, 02:04:56 PM
I saw that as part of reading their interrogation article-- which I hope to get around to posting later on the "Intel" or "Legal Issues" thread. What $#%@#$% scum they are at the NYTimes!!! :x :x :x
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2008, 01:06:07 PM
Smearing Judge Kozinski June 23, 2008; Page A15 Even scandals now operate at Internet speed. Ten days ago, it looked as if an investigative reporter had uncovered a pornographic Web site operated by a federal judge. By last week, the case instead showed how easily privacy is breached online, how mainstream media botch a story, and how bloggers can redeem journalism by reporting facts.
It's not every day that a judge's wife uses a blog to defend her husband as not a pornographer. The Los Angeles Times scoop charged that the chief judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alex Kozinski, had posted sexually explicit material online. His wife, lawyer Marcy Tiffany, then wrote a lengthy letter defending her husband that was published on the L.A.-based blog Patterico.com. "The fact is, Alex is not into porn – he is into funny – and sometimes funny has a sexual character." She complained that the L.A. Times article used "graphic descriptions that make the material sound like hard-core porn when, in fact, it is more accurately described as raunchy humor."
Indeed, Judge Kozinski is well known for taking the law very seriously, but himself not at all seriously. He was born in Romania, came to California when he was 12, and at 18 went on "The Dating Game" and won. At 35, he was the nation's youngest federal appeals court judge. More recently, he applied to and won a gossip blog's "judicial hottie" contest ("I have it on very good authority that discerning females and gay men find graying, pudgy, middle-aged men with an accent close to Gov. Schwarzenegger's almost totally irresistible," he wrote in his application.)
There's even a law review article entitled "Humor, the Law, and Judge Kozinski's Greatest Hits." In his spare time, Judge Kozinski once served as the videogame reviewer for The Wall Street Journal. He sends an occasional blast email of slapstick jokes to friends. Full disclosure: I have been known to laugh out loud at them.
The L.A. Times claimed that Judge Kozinski posted the images and videos in question onto a Web site. Instead, this content – almost all emailed to him by others – existed on a file server never meant to be accessible by the public. You can now find the images online through a Google search, and you will know pornography when you see it, or when you don't see it, but in any case you can judge. For example, what the L.A. Times described as a "video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal" (which got upgraded to a "bestiality" video by the San Francisco Chronicle), was in fact a big hit on YouTube, watched some 500,000 times. It shows a rancher urinating in a field, then being surprised by a donkey chasing him around. Silly, but not pornography. The Wonkette blog dismissed the pictures and video as "the sort of naughtiness you'd find in the dirty birthday cards section at Spencer Gifts."
Still, Judge Kozinski felt compelled to recuse himself from hearing an obscenity case just getting under way in Los Angeles, and also requested an ethics investigation. "Those of us who know him know that he could have tried this case fairly, but the public would have thought the court system had lost its marbles if Kozinski had stayed on the case," said law professor Stephen Gillers. That's true, given the misleading coverage in the mainstream media around the world. The New York Daily News headline was "Trial (& Titillations) End for Kinky Judge."
A subplot was how the L.A. Times got its bad scoop. The source was Cyrus Sanai, a Beverly Hills lawyer whose hyperlitigious antics drew the wrath of several judicial opinions, which Judge Kozinski supported. Mr. Sanai figured out that by adding "/stuff" to the address of Judge Kozinski's Web site, he could access a subdirectory that contained the cartoons and videos. Mr. Sanai admits he shopped the story for months, to several news organizations (including The Wall Street Journal, he says), before the L.A. Times ran with it – timed to wreak havoc with the obscenity trial. For Mr. Sanai, dipping into Judge Kozinski's files and hoping to embarrass him was "part of a litigation strategy."
Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in his blog objected that "the real story here is how easily we let such a baseless smear travel – and our need is for a better developed immunity (in the sense of immunity from a virus) from this sort of garbage." He compared Mr. Sanai's accessing of the Kozinski family home computer to breaking and entering: "Some disgruntled litigant jiggers the lock, climbs into the window, and starts going through the family's stuff."
All's well that ends well. Within a week of citizen-journalist bloggers establishing this as a nonscandal, it was left to the humor site The Onion to put a fine point on the absurdity of the accusations. It published a fake person-on-the-street interview, soliciting this quote responding to Judge Kozinski having to recuse himself from the obscenity trial: "Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site." In this case, the Onion earned its tongue-in-cheek tagline as "America's Finest News Source."
Write to informationage@wsj.com
Title: NYTimes Columnist: Bush was right?!?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 24, 2008, 02:23:52 AM
The Bush Paradox Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Share Digg Facebook Mixx Yahoo! Buzz Permalink
By DAVID BROOKS Published: June 24, 2008 Let’s go back and consider how the world looked in the winter of 2006-2007. Iraq was in free fall, with horrific massacres and ethnic cleansing that sent a steady stream of bad news across the world media. The American public delivered a stunning electoral judgment against the Iraq war, the Republican Party and President Bush.
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David Brooks
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The Conversation Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race.
All Conversations » Expert and elite opinion swung behind the Baker-Hamilton report, which called for handing more of the problems off to the Iraqi military and wooing Iran and Syria. Republicans on Capitol Hill were quietly contemptuous of the president while Democrats were loudly so.
Democratic leaders like Senator Harry Reid considered the war lost. Barack Obama called for a U.S. withdrawal starting in the spring of 2007, while Senator Reid offered legislation calling for a complete U.S. pullback by March 2008.
The arguments floating around the op-ed pages and seminar rooms were overwhelmingly against the idea of a surge — a mere 20,000 additional troops would not make a difference. The U.S. presence provoked violence, rather than diminishing it. The more the U.S. did, the less the Iraqis would step up to do. Iraq was in the middle of a civil war, and it was insanity to put American troops in the middle of it.
When President Bush consulted his own generals, the story was much the same. Almost every top general, including Abizaid, Schoomaker and Casey, were against the surge. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was against it, according to recent reports. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for a smaller U.S. presence, not a bigger one.
In these circumstances, it’s amazing that George Bush decided on the surge. And looking back, one thing is clear: Every personal trait that led Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war led him to make a successful decision when it came to this crucial call.
Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.
Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals.
In fact, when it comes to Iraq, Bush was at his worst when he was humbly deferring to the generals and at his best when he was arrogantly overruling them. During that period in 2006 and 2007, Bush stiffed the brass and sided with a band of dissidents: military officers like David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and outside strategists like Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and Jack Keane, a retired general.
Bush is also a secretive man who listens too much to Dick Cheney. Well, the uncomfortable fact is that Cheney played an essential role in promoting the surge. Many of the people who are dubbed bad guys actually got this one right.
The additional fact is that Bush, who made such bad calls early in the war, made a courageous and astute decision in 2006. More than a year on, the surge has produced large, if tenuous, gains. Violence is down sharply. Daily life has improved. Iraqi security forces have been given time to become a more effective fighting force. The Iraqi government is showing signs of strength and even glimmers of impartiality. Iraq has moved from being a failed state to, as Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations has put it, merely a fragile one.
The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.
The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.
But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.
Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on June 24, 2008, 03:51:24 AM
***Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.***
Don't expect any real honesty like this from BO.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 24, 2008, 06:50:54 AM
***Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.***
Don't expect any real honesty like this from BO.
Or any other opponent of the war....
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 25, 2008, 03:37:42 PM
- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
The Times, It Ain’t a-Changin’ June 25, 2008 - by Bruce Bawer
Just imagine the world picture of somebody whose primary — or even (God forbid!) sole — source of news is the New York Times.
In particular, imagine that person’s image of Islam — and of the problems and issues surrounding the growing presence of Islam in the West today. At the Times — as at other important news organizations — the slant on Islam has been shaped almost exclusively by apologists like Karen Armstrong (author of Muhammed: A Prophet for Our Time) and John Esposito (director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University). In March, the New York Times Magazine published a long essay by another major apologist, Harvard law professor and Times Magazine contributing writer Noah Feldman, who took (shall we say) an exceedingly generous view of sharia law and its proponents. Last Sunday, the magazine ran a [1] new piece by Feldman, arguing that Muslims are Europe’s “new pariahs” and that the only real problem related the rise of Islam in Europe today is — guess what? — European racism.
It’s a familiar claim, to put it mildly, and Feldman served up the usual rhetoric, conflating the nationalist bigots of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang party with people like the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, whose views on the Islamization of Europe are rooted in liberal values. Feldman dismissed as “prejudice” concern about first-cousin marriages among Muslims — never mind that almost all such marriages are forced, that the overwhelming majority involve rape and abuse, and that those who have campaigned hardest against them are not “racists” but women’s rights advocates. Feldman deep-sixed the catastrophic rise in rape, gay-bashing, and other crimes by young European Muslim males, the extensive abuse of European welfare systems that is helping to destroy them, and the broad-based cultural jihad which ultimately seeks nothing less than the replacement of democracy with sharia. Feldman insisted that “a hallmark of liberal, secular societies is supposed to be respect for different cultures, including traditional, religious cultures — even intolerant ones.” That’s easy to say about things happening on the other side of an ocean from your Ivy League office. I’d like to see Feldman tell this to gay people in Amsterdam, where ten years ago they felt safer than anyplace else on earth and where Muslim youths now beat them up in broad daylight in the middle of town. Or why doesn’t he try this line on Jewish children in France, who according to a French government report can no longer get an education in that country because of severe harassment (and worse) by Muslim classmates? Feldman further equated Islamic and Roman Catholic views of gays and women — as if the Church’s “rejection of homosexuality and women priests” could be compared to the execution of gays and the wholesale subordination of women to the will of men. Feldman scored Europeans for failing to treat immigrants “as full members of their society” — yet while such prejudice does indeed exist, somehow immigrants from places like Vietnam and Chile nonetheless persevere and thrive (in the U.K., Hindus are more economically successful than the average Brit), while Muslims don’t. The difference has to do not with European prejudice but with Islam.
Since 9/11, the kind of brazen sugarcoating of Islam that Feldman served up last Sunday has become a convention in the Times and other mainstream media. Routinely, news organizations suppress, downplay, or misrepresent developments that reflect badly on Islam; they go out of their way to find stories that reflect (or that can be spun in such a way as to reflect) positively on it; and they publish professors and intellectuals and “experts” like Feldman, who share the media’s determination to obscure the central role of jihadist ideology in the current clash between Islam and Western democracy and to point the finger instead (as Feldman does) at European racism.
Yet while a number of media consumers are wise to this policy regarding Islam, relatively few realize that it’s a fresh variation on a well-established tradition. This tradition — which may be fairly characterized as one of solicitude, protectiveness, and apologetics when reporting on totalitarian ideologies, movements and regimes — involves habitual practices that can be attributed partly to institutional stasis, passivity, and timidity, partly to a desire to maintain access to this or that tyrant, partly to profound failures of moral insight and responsibility, partly to inane notions of “fairness” and “balance,” partly to an unwillingness to face aspects of the real world that need to be acknowledged and dealt with, and partly to an inability to grasp (or, perhaps, to face the fact) that the status quo has changed.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about, let’s examine some highlights from the history of the Times — not only America’s most famous newspaper, but the one from which the nation’s media have, to an extraordinary extent, taken their lead for generations. These highlights do not even begin to tell the whole story of the Times’s treatment of totalitarianism over the decades, of course, but they point to something chronic, unhealthy, and dishonest at the heart of the Gray Lady’s editorial sensibility that has yet to be effectively addressed - and that has its counterparts in countless less prominent media on which the Times has long exerted a major influence.
First case in point: Walter Duranty, the Times’s Moscow correspondent during much of the Stalin era. The celebrated British author Malcolm Muggeridge once commented that “no one…followed the Party Line as assiduously” as Duranty did; Tim Rutten, in a 2003 Los Angeles Times article, called Duranty “an active agent of Soviet propaganda and disinformation - probably paid, certainly blackmailed, altogether willing.” Author of a novel, One Life, One Kopeck (1937), that was pure Communist cant and a non-fiction book, The Kremlin and the People (1941), that another old Moscow hand, Louis Fischer, described as a “Song of Praise” for Stalin, Duranty was an unswerving Kremlin apologist: he praised a 1932 law that forbade peasants to leave their collective farms, insisted (to Trotsky’s consternation) that the false confessions extracted at Stalin’s show trials were true, and condemned the Berlin Airlift. It was Duranty who coined the term “Stalinism” and who, rationalizing Stalin’s brutality, first said “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Duranty claimed to want to bring about “Russian-American…understanding” — which is to say that he used the word “understanding” in exactly the same way that it’s often used now vis-à-vis Islam. (What’s being encouraged, of course, isn’t understanding at all but its opposite — a determination not to understand, see, or acknowledge certain facts. In the 1930s, Britons who were desperate to avoid war with the Nazis also spoke about “understanding” in this way - refusing to recognize that there are some things that, once properly understood, must be actively resisted and destroyed.)
Duranty’s position afforded him immense power to shape the American public’s image of the Soviet Union. As Muggeridge biographer Ian Hunter put it in 2003, Duranty was “the most influential foreign correspondent in Russia,” a man whose articles were “regarded as authoritative” and “helped to shape U.S. foreign policy.” While Stalin was shipping people to the Gulag, Duranty’s rosy dispatches were taken by many American leftists as confirmation that the USSR was indeed a veritable workers’ paradise.
His crowning disgrace was his reporting on the Ukraine famine of 1932-33. It began when Stalin, out to forestall a counter-revolution, forced Ukrainian peasants onto collective farms, seized the 1932 crops, confiscated food, grain, and livestock, made it a crime to supply villages with food, and put grain supplies under armed guard while children starved nearby. The historian Robert Conquest has described the Ukraine during this period as “one vast Bergen-Belsen”; in the end, the famine — which many experts and governments, including America’s, officially regard as an act of genocide — killed about a quarter of the Ukraine’s population. (Most estimates of the death toll range from seven to ten million.) Yet Duranty denied that Ukrainians were starving. Reports he filed from the region appeared under such headlines as “Soviet Is Winning Faith of Peasants” and “Abundance Found in North Caucasus.” His biographer, S.J. Taylor, has summed up his spin as follows: “He spoke of happy workers, plentiful harvests, congenial conditions. Any talk of famine, he said…was ‘a sheer absurdity.’” Though in a few articles he came somewhat closer to telling the truth (apparently having seen conditions so horrible that even he felt, if only momentarily, the pull of conscience), he soon reverted to full denial mode. That his colossal misrepresentations were deliberate is proven by records of a private conversation he had with a British official in 1933, in which he admitted that “as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year.”
While Duranty presented Soviet lies about the Ukraine as the unvarnished truth, others risked life and limb to get the facts out. A 1932 report by Andrew Cairns outlined in detail the catastrophe Stalin had brought about, but Stalin’s supporters on the British Left made sure it was never published. Arthur Koestler, who spent the winter of 1932-33 in the Ukraine, described entire villages that perished of starvation; and Muggeridge’s own admiration for Stalin dissolved in the face of what he described in the Guardian as “one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe it ever happened.” (The result of Muggeridge’s exposés? Thanks to Stalinists in high places, he was unable to find work in Britain.) Perhaps most intrepid of all was a young Welshman, Gareth Jones, who published at least twenty articles in the U.S. and Britain about the famine. Because, unlike Duranty, he had no impressive institutional credentials, Jones’s articles drew little notice; yet one of them, which appeared in the Manchester Guardian, so unsettled the Kremlin that the Soviet Press Censor, Constantine Oumansky, gathered together all the Western correspondents in Moscow and persuaded them — apparently with little difficulty — to write articles calling Jones a liar. Duranty came through like a trouper: in a piece headlined “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving,” he savaged Jones’s reportage. Taylor calls Duranty’s mendacity about the famine “the most outrageous equivocation of the period. Yet the statement seems to have pacified almost everyone.”
Duranty’s Moscow dispatches add up to an appalling legacy, and the Times was intimately implicated in every last bit of it. A State Department document that was declassified in 1987 revealed that in 1931 Duranty admitted to a U.S. embassy official in Berlin that “in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities,” his articles consistently reflected “the official opinion of the Soviet regime.” Throughout his long tenure at the Times, there were critics — most but not all of them marginal (Time Magazine decried him as “the No. 1 Russian apologist in the West”) — who pilloried the Times for printing Duranty’s disinformation. Yet Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger dismissed all criticism of what he called Duranty’s “faithful and brilliant work at Moscow.” Sulzberger’s successors, moreover, while acknowledging the validity of the criticism, have invariably done so in tame, vague, and thoroughly inadequate terms. To this day, moreover, the Times has stubbornly resisted calls to return the Pulitzer that Duranty won for a 1931 series of articles singing the praises of the economic policies that laid the famine’s foundations.
Indeed, just as Duranty not only lied about the famine but slandered those who told the truth about it, so Times editor Bill Keller, in a remarkably callous 2003 response to a Ukrainian group that sought to have Duranty’s Pulitzer rescinded, compared the petitioners to the dictator who had slaughtered so many millions of their people, suggesting that revoking the award “might evoke the Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories.” When a member of Gareth Jones’s family wrote to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., in 2003, asking him to return Duranty’s award, Sulzberger — whose family’s newspaper had been instrumental in airbrushing Jones from history — didn’t even bother to reply. And when the Pulitzer board decided that same year not to rescind the prize, Sulzberger released a statement alluding to “defects” and “lapses” in Duranty’s work — weak language indeed to describe the covering up of a holocaust — and offering a few feeble, euphemistic words of “sympathy” for “those who suffered as a result of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine.”
In the end, as Taylor has written, “fewer words were actually published” in the Western press about the Ukrainian famine “than the number of men, women, and children who had perished.” The New York Times and its man in Moscow deserve an enormous share of the responsibility for this, given the extent to which the American press followed the Times’s lead. (Indeed, many U.S. papers’ Soviet coverage consisted largely or entirely of syndicated Times articles.) Since the U.S. and British governments exerted little or no pressure on Stalin to end the Ukrainian famine, frank and vivid reporting about the famine in the Times might have forced their hands. Taylor notes that of all those who witnessed “the greatest man-made disaster ever recorded,” only Duranty “had sufficient prestige and prominence to exert an influence”; had he “spoken out loud and clear…the world could not have ignored him.” Andrew Stuttaford, writing in National Review in 2001, agreed: “Had he told the truth, he could have saved lives.”
Yet the obloquy is not Duranty’s alone. Sulzberger and his editors understood very well what kind of game their man in Moscow was playing. It was a game of access and of influence. The Times, to be true to its image of itself, simply had to be assured that if, for example, Stalin wanted to give an exclusive interview to only one Western newspaper, he would choose the Times; and in order for the Times to retain that predominant position, it had to play ball (just as CNN, decades later, would play ball with Saddam’s regime in order to be able to keep operating out of Baghdad). Sulzberger and company knew, too, that for the Times to retain its authoritative image on the American Left, it couldn’t challenge the Left’s image of Russia too aggressively. What’s more, they may have thought they were serving a cause they perceived as greater than truth — namely, the cause of peace and solidarity between Russia and the West. Similar motives appear to shape the relationship of the Times and other media today to the complete truth about Islam and to the contemporary Gareth Joneses who have sought to tell it. Duranty endeavored to cover his bases on Stalin, moreover, in the same way that many journalists today seem to be trying to cover their bases on Islam. As Muggeridge explained it, Duranty attempted to write in such a manner that, whether “the famine got worse and known outside Russia” or, alternatively, “got better and wasn’t known outside Russia,” he would be able in either case to point to what he’d written at the time and claim that he’d gotten the story right. In short, he embodied cautious, cynical careerism at its worse.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 25, 2008, 03:38:49 PM
Not only did the Times give America a fraudulent picture of the Soviet Union in the 1930s; its coverage of the Holocaust in the next decade suggests a determination both to maintain an appearance of impartiality and to preserve an illusion that Hitler’s regime was not as monstrous as it really was. Hitler’s destruction of the Jews was so blatantly evil that to write about it in a civilized and responsible manner meant taking sides; but that was apparently too much for the Times to ask of itself. Though it was already well established by 1942 that the Nazis intended to exterminate European Jewry, as Laurel Leff notes in her 2005 book Buried by the Times, the newspaper’s European correspondents “would not be the ones to disclose this information.” Though the Times (then as now) prided itself on covering even relatively minor international news, it managed not to report the decimation of the Jewish populations of whole cities and countries. When the State Department confirmed the murder of approximately two million Jews in German-occupied areas, the Times ran the story on page ten. When the Times did run stories about the Holocaust, moreover, it deliberately obscured the fact that the victims were being killed because they were Jews. It even avoided using the word “Jews,” routinely referring to the victims as “refugees” or identifying them by nationality. And it repeatedly served up the fiction that they had been killed because they were opponents or perceived opponents of the Nazi regime.
Leff’s exhaustive account of this ignominy makes it clear that the Times considered it more important to seem objective than to tell the whole truth about Nazi genocide. In a letter written at the time, Sulzberger explained that he had to remain “disassociated from active participation in any movement which springs from the oppression of the Jews in Germany” so as not to compromise “the unprejudiced and unbiased position of the Times.” In other words, he was holding up as a journalistic ideal a neutral stance toward the extermination of millions. Amoral though this insistence on “objectivity” was, however, even it seems to have been largely a cover for something else — namely a simple failure of institutional courage. Reading Leff’s book, one gathers that if those in power at the Times chose to systematically mute the facts about the Holocaust, it was largely for no more profound reasons than that they, like their counterparts today who sugarcoat Islam, didn’t want to endanger their position in the cultural elite, or even risk, say, a modicum of discomfort at the occasional dinner party. It was more important to them to maintain their own status, not to mention the newspaper’s reputation, than to fully and honestly report the facts about a historically unprecedented act of monstrous evil.
One also has the impression that the Holocaust-hiders then, like the whitewashers of European Islam now, felt that, all in all, it was best to soft-pedal horrors — almost as if denying the terrible truth, or at least drastically diminishing it, would somehow make it less real or less horrible. Michael Marrus (quoted by Leff) speaks of reporters’ “unwillingness to break established patterns to help the Jews” — which strikingly echoes an observation by Harrison Salisbury (quoted by Taylor) that Duranty was “incapable of reporting something that broke the pattern he had established.” Indeed, it can seem that for the Times, when it comes to the very biggest and most disturbing stories, the “news that’s fit to print” was, and is, often the news that best fits the paper’s pre-existing picture of the world. In this sense, the Times is not a liberal newspaper at all, but deeply conservative, determined above all to provide its largely comfortable and affluent readers with a consistent, predictable picture of the world that doesn’t challenge their own worldview in any significant way or make them feel obliged to deal with things they’d prefer not to deal with. Certainly a loyalty to “established patterns” is a factor in the refusal by the Times and other media today to report honestly on the dramatic changes in European society wrought by the continent’s ongoing Islamization.
At both the Holocaust-era and present-day Times, one senses a dread over appearing to take the side of European Jews — whether the Jews are being exterminated by Germans (as they were then) or tormented by Muslims (as is the case today). Leff’s conclusion is striking: “When confronted with the facts of mass murder, journalists reacted as if they had no understanding of what those facts meant.” She quotes an observation by Saul Friedlander about “the simultaneity of considerable knowledge of the facts and of a no less massive inability or refusal to transform these facts into integrated understanding.” This is a remarkably apt description of the Times’s approach to Islam in the West today: the facts, the anecdotes, the statistics, all add up to a clear, coherent picture of what some of us have called cultural jihad or soft jihad; but the Times, and the innumerable news organs around the world that follow its lead and/or share its mindset, categorically decline to add the pieces up. In the 1940s, reporters recognized the reality of the Holocaust even as they refused, or on some level were unable, to accept it; a similar psychological process seems to be in operation today with regard to Islam. As Seth Lipsky noted in a cogent review of Leff’s book, its importance “is in helping us to understand what happened so that we can…avoid the same mistakes now that a new war against the Jews is under way and a new generation of newspaper men and women are in on the story.”
One should also mention, in this context, the very special relationship between The New York Times and Fidel Castro. William F. Buckley, Jr., put it memorably: Fidel Castro got his job through the The New York Times. To be more specific, he got it through the Walter Duranty of mid-century, Herbert Matthews, who fell head over heels for Castro much as Duranty did for Stalin. Glenn Garvin put it this way in Reason in March 2007: “Matthews was the first American reporter to interview Fidel Castro and the last to recognize the man as a ruthless and slightly mad totalitarian murderer.” At the time when Matthews was portraying him as a romantic guerrilla hero who enjoyed broad popular support and represented a serious threat to the government of Fulgencio Batista, Castro was in reality a washout with a ragtag group of no more than eighteen followers; but Matthews’s landmark front-page article of Sunday, February 24, 1957 (in which he called the revolutionary “overpowering,” a “man of ideals, of courage, and of remarkable qualities of leadership”), gave him a new lease on life and established the still potent Castro myth.
As was the case with Duranty and Stalin, moreover, Matthews’ articles and private confidences strongly influenced State Department views of Castro; and his rhapsodies about the Cuban, like Duranty’s hymns to the Georgian, were echoed throughout the Western media. Matthews insisted repeatedly that Castro was not a Communist, and he smeared reporters (just as Duranty had smeared Gareth Jones) who disagreed. As Duranty had excused Stalin’s crimes with the blithe sentiment that “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” so Matthews justified Castro’s abuses by saying that “A revolution is not a tea party.” And though Castro’s victory, in which Matthews was proud to have played a part, led to the murder of countless Cubans by firing squads, the reporter was ready to play down such uncomfortable details, excuse them, and even misrepresent them — in the same way that Duranty had done with the Ukraine famine. Just as Duranty defended Stalin’s show trials and the executions that followed, so Matthews dismissed Castro’s post-Revolution bloodbaths, calling Cuba “the happiest country in the world” (a lie that has lived on for decades in PC circles). In one editorial, Matthews referred to Castro as a “friend”; Castro, in a personal note professing his “deep and lasting affection,” addressed Matthews as “Mi Querido Amigo.”
And with Matthews, as with Duranty, the Times was a willing accomplice. In 1959, when Castro visited the Times offices in New York to “thank the Times for its role in the revolution” — as Matthews’s biographer, Anthony DePalma, put it – Sulzberger was there to “welcome” him, and “Castro thanked Sulzberger and several editors profusely.” (Castro would visit the Times’ offices twice more, in 1995 and 2000.) In a memo written shortly after the revolution, Matthews told Sulzberger that Castro “really wants advice and guidance and constructive criticism from sources he knows to be friendly, such as The New York Times.” Eventually, the Times stopped running Matthews’s pieces on Cuba — not because they were too heavily slanted toward Castro, but because Matthews was so public about his friendship with the dictator. What mattered to the Times, in short, was not maintaining objectivity but preserving an illusion thereof. “It is bad enough,” Buckley later wrote, “that Herbert Matthews was hypnotized by Fidel Castro, but it was a calamity that Matthews succeeded in hypnotizing so many other people, in crucial positions of power, on the subject of Castro.” Indeed. The lingering influence of Matthews’s idolization of Castro — who executed political rivals and put homosexuals in concentration camps — could be observed, as Garvin notes, in such nauseating spectacles as Dan Rather’s chumminess with the dictator in a 60 Minutes interview, Barbara Walter’s hosting a dinner party for him, and Diane Sawyer’s greeting him with a kiss.
This overview would not be complete without at least a brief mention of Times Indochina correspondent Sydney Schanberg, who was immortalized by actor Sam Waterston in the film The Killing Fields. In a 1975 article, Schanberg looked forward to the fall of the Lon Nol government in Cambodia, writing that “for the ordinary people of Indochina . . . it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with Americans gone.” This line was quoted in 2003 by Myron Kuropas, who went on to cite Schanberg’s backhanded defense of the genocidal Khmer Rouge:
Was this just cold brutality: a cruel and sadistic imposition of the law of the jungle which only the fittest will survive? Or is it possible that, seen through the eyes of the peasant soldier and revolutionaries, the forced evacuation of the cities is a harsh necessity? Perhaps they are convinced that there is no way to build a new society for the benefit of the ordinary man, hitherto exploited, without literally starting from the beginning; in such an unbending view people who represent the old ways and those considered weak or unfit would be expendable and would be weeded out.
The weasel words “harsh” and “unbending” aside, this passage amounts to a reprehensible attempt to justify pure evil on what we would today call multicultural grounds. Similar language was used to defend Stalin and Hitler. Indeed, to read Duranty, Matthews, Schanberg, and the Times’ Holocaust-era European correspondents is to be struck by how much alike they all sound. Whether they were in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, these reporters evinced the selfsame fascination with tyrants and offered the selfsame justifications for tyranny. This mentality is still on view today in the pages of the Gray Lady, as one after another of Duranty’s heirs continue to try to sell the line that Islam is a religion of peace, that “jihad” means spiritual struggle, that only a minuscule minority of Muslims in the West want to exchange democracy for sharia, and that the only real problem with Islam in Europe is European racism.
The Times should have learned a valuable lesson or two from its past. But it’s making exactly the same mistakes today with Islam in the West that it did with Stalinism and Hitlerism, ignoring and discrediting the testimony of honest observers while giving legitimacy to tyranny’s sympathizers and apologists. The Times’s power is such that it might play an immensely positive role in educating its readers about the situation before them and helping them to recognize where their own responsibilities lie. Instead it’s pursuing an editorial policy that bids fair to be every bit as disastrous as was its approach to Stalin, the Holocaust, and Castro. And a large segment of the mainstream Western media is following its example.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-times-it-ain%e2%80%99t-a-changin%e2%80%99/
URLs in this post: [1] new piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=p rint&oref=slogin
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2008, 06:06:18 PM
A perfect example of the MSM's bias and corruption.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2008, 09:20:56 AM
Indeed!!! I try to stay focused on what the success of what I perceive to be the mission, but there are moments when I wonder if the America of our Founding Fathers will survive. :cry: :cry: :cry:
Title: NYT: WSJ editor to take over at Wa Po.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2008, 06:11:00 AM
Signaling a generational change at one of the nation’s most influential newspapers, the new publisher of The Washington Post on Monday selected an outsider as the paper’s top editor.
Marcus W. Brauchli has spent most of his career as an editor and overseas correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.
Marcus W. Brauchli, a former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, will become the executive editor of The Post on Sept. 8, at a time of great upheaval in the industry. At age 47, he is young enough to remain in place for many years, working alongside the publisher, Katharine Weymouth, who is 42 and has been in her job for five months.
He will succeed Leonard Downie Jr., 66, who has led The Post’s newsroom for 17 years, guiding it to numerous accolades, including six Pulitzer Prizes this year, the most in its history.
But Mr. Brauchli (pronounced BROW-klee) and Ms. Weymouth take the helm at a time when The Post, like the newspaper industry as a whole, is buffeted by budget cuts, a shrinking newsroom, falling advertising revenue and declining circulation.
“I don’t think it’s a case of her wanting to shake the place up as much as her having to,” said Benjamin C. Bradlee, a former executive editor who is a vice president of the Washington Post Company. “She feels the urgency to change and adapt, and thank heaven.”
The Post is trying to meld its print and online news operations — something The Journal has already done — and that task is high on the priority list of Ms. Weymouth, the first Post publisher with direct control of its Web site. The two operations have been kept apart to a degree that is rare in the industry — the Web site even has a separate newsroom, in Virginia — which has bred duplication and turf wars.
In a statement, Ms. Weymouth said that Mr. Brauchli’s experience at The Journal would “help us navigate the new world of media.”
Her decision to pass over candidates within The Post and hire Mr. Brauchli comes shortly into a tenure that has already made clear that she intends to shake up the venerable but financially troubled paper. She is in the fourth generation of her family to head the paper that her great-grandfather, Eugene I. Meyer, bought in 1933, and is considered the likely successor to her uncle, Donald E. Graham, 63, as chairman and chief executive of the Post Company, which also owns Newsweek magazine and the Kaplan educational business.
But her choice of Mr. Brauchli is a surprising one at a paper best known for its political coverage and inside-the-Beltway savvy. Some editors and reporters at The Post say that changing the leadership in the midst of a hard-fought presidential campaign is an unorthodox and potentially disruptive move.
Mr. Brauchli has little experience in Washington, but at The Journal he helped oversee coverage of presidential campaigns and served as a foreign correspondent. Former colleagues say he has no trouble adapting to new territory.
“He has one of the quickest minds, and he has the ability to accumulate an enormous amount of information and very quickly become sophisticated on any topic,” said Stephen J. Adler, editor in chief of BusinessWeek and a former Journal editor.
It is not clear what role will be played by The Post’s second-ranking editor, Phillip Bennett, who has the title of managing editor and was a candidate for the top job. People who have discussed the matter with Post executives — and who insisted on anonymity to avoid upstaging those executives — said that an arrangement with multiple managing editors was under consideration.
The other serious contenders for executive editor were Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor of The New York Times; Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek; and David Ignatius, a Post columnist and former editor.
When Mr. Brauchli became the managing editor of The Journal, the top newsroom position there, in May 2007, he was a popular choice among his colleagues. Seven months later, the paper was taken over by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and Mr. Murdoch and the publisher he installed, Robert Thomson, pressed for an array of changes in the content of The Journal and the way the newsroom was organized — changes that much of the newsroom opposed.
Mr. Brauchli resigned in April to become a consultant to the News Corporation, saying, “I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing.” Mr. Thomson then took his place. Some of Mr. Brauchli’s former colleagues were bitter that he did not fight the changes made by The Journal’s new owners, but many others said his position was untenable from the start.
Mr. Brauchli left The Journal with a severance package that news reports valued at several million dollars; it is not clear whether joining The Post changes the terms of that package, if at all. He declined to comment for this article, as did Ms. Weymouth.
===========
At The Post, he takes on a set of serious challenges. Since 2000, the paper’s weekday circulation has declined to 673,000, from about 800,000, but is still the seventh-highest among American newspapers. Its Web site draws more than nine million unique visitors monthly, according to Nielsen Online, making it the third-highest for a newspaper Web site.
But like all newspapers, The Post has been unable to convert that heavy Web traffic into enough dollars to outweigh the loss of print advertising and circulation revenue. The Post has responded to the economic pressures by reducing its news staff from more than 900 people early in this decade to about 700, and executives there expect it to shrink further in the next few years.
The newspaper division of the Post Company, which consists mostly of The Post itself, reported an operating profit of just $1.2 million in the first quarter, on revenue of $206.1 million, down from $14.9 million in profit a year earlier.
On the whole, the Post Company is less threatened by the industry’s transformation than most of its newspaper brethren, because it is far less reliant on newspapers, bolstered by its Kaplan educational unit and its broadcast and cable television holdings. It reported earnings of $39.3 million in the first quarter, down 39 percent from a year earlier, despite an 8 percent increase in revenue, to $985.6 million.
The company’s stock is down 42 percent from its peak in 2004, reflecting a broad decline in the industry.
Ms. Weymouth is the granddaughter of Katharine Graham, the longtime Post publisher, and daughter of Lally Weymouth, a Newsweek editor and correspondent on foreign affairs. She practiced law for a number of years before joining the Post Company in 1996 as an in-house lawyer, and most of her experience with the company has been in advertising.
Several people she has worked or consulted with — most of them requested anonymity to avoid alienating her — describe Ms. Weymouth as very smart and determined to move quickly to adapt to the challenges posed by the Internet. And they say she is less deferential to some of The Post’s traditions than her predecessors were.
She talked for a time of getting an office in the newsroom, which would be seen at some papers as a breach of the traditional separation of the business and news operations, but company officials say that idea has been shelved.
Soon after taking over, Ms. Weymouth began conferring with a number of people inside and outside the company about possible editors. Casting a wide net quickly made it a fairly public process, at a time when Mr. Downie and the paper insisted publicly that there were no immediate plans for him to leave — and it was seen by some of his loyalists as putting pressure on him to go.
But those who have discussed the succession with her said that Ms. Weymouth recognized her lack of news experience and wisely sought the advice of a wide range of people.
“It was pretty un-Graham-like to be so public, but it was what she needed to do,” said one of the contenders who lost out to Mr. Brauchli. “She sees that the industry’s in crisis.”
Title: Rehabbing the DC Snipers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2008, 07:20:17 AM
Rehabbing The D.C. Snipers By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007 4:30 PM PT
Media Bias: Why would two Muslim men travel 3,000 miles to kill random people in the nation's capital a year after 9/11? CNN investigated and found Islamic terror had nothing to do with it.
In its special marking the fifth anniversary of the sniper attacks, the network downplays the religious angle to the story in a reprise of its original shameless coverage.
When news of the snipers' identity first broke, CNN anchors were so determined to avoid making the obvious connection to radical Islam that they called the lead sniper, a Muslim convert, by his old name. Police were looking for John Allen Muhammad, but CNN insisted on referring to him as John Allen Williams.
Jailhouse sketches, including this one containing references to 'jihad,' 'holy war' and 'infidels' were entered into evidence in the 2003 trial of convicted D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo. His attorneys said they were evidence of indoctrination by Malvo's accomplice, John Allen Muhammad. But the only drawing shown in a new one-hour special on CNN shows Malvo shedding tears. Now the network has completely scrubbed Islam from the picture, offering child abuse (boo-hoo) and spousal revenge as alternative motives for the snipers' bloody rampage.
Nowhere in its one-hour special — promoted as "The Minds of the D.C. Snipers" — is Islamist brainwashing even hinted as a motivating factor behind their serial assassinations. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that they were on a jihad.
In their own words, Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo traveled across the country to terrorize Washingtonians on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — first by picking off random people and then by blowing up school buses using plastic explosives loaded with ball bearings.
Their plan was to ramp up their shootings to 25 a day before moving on to explosives, killing scores of children. Thankfully, they were caught before they could put phase two into effect.
Muhammad and Malvo, now in prison in Virginia, still managed to kill 10 and wound three — including an elementary school kid shot in the back — while paralyzing the nation's capital for three full weeks.
The jailhouse drawings of the younger sniper, Malvo, tell it all:
• One sketch of Osama bin Laden exalts him as a "Servant of Allah."
• A self-portrait of him and Muhammad is captioned: "We will kill them all. Jihad . . . Allah Akbar!"
• A sketch of the burning Twin Towers has as its caption: "America did this. You were warned."
• A poem scribbled alongside an American flag and star of David drawn in cross hairs reads: "Our minarets are our bayonets, Our mosques are our baracks, Our believers are our soldiers."
• The Quran (Surah 2:190) is quoted as follows: "Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you and slay them wherever ye catch them." Also: "Islam the only true guidance."
• The White House is drawn in cross hairs, surrounded by missiles, with the warning: "Sep. 11 we will ensure will look like a picnic to you," and "you will bleed to death little by little."
• Another warning reads: "Islam. We will Resist. We will conquer. We will win."
Somehow CNN's "special investigations unit" managed to overlook this pile of courtroom evidence. It showed only one drawing — a self portrait of Malvo shedding tears.
CNN maintains that Malvo, an alleged victim of negligent parents, now has remorse for his victims — even though he wrote in one notebook: "They all died and they all deserved it. We will not stop. This war will not end until you are all destroyed utterly."
CNN also omitted the fact that while Muhammad and Malvo were in county jail awaiting trial, their lawyers insisted they be fed Islamic "halal" meals, such as veggie burgers, instead of ham sandwiches. They also got copies of the Quran.
According to Knight Ridder and others reporting at the time, the director of a shelter where the two men stayed for a spell in Washington state tipped off the FBI that Muhammad "might be a terrorist."
That incident mysteriously disappeared from an interview that CNN host Soledad O'Brien conducted with the same source for the special.
The revisionism and sanitization of Islam continued with O'Brien's interview with Muhammad's ex-wife, who insisted that jihad and hatred of America had nothing to do with her husband's cold-blooded killings.
Her head covered with a hijab, Mildred Muhammad claimed that she and she alone was the target of his attacks, and that the dozen-plus victims were an attempt to cover up the real target. CNN bought her story, even packaging it as an exclusive.
But a simple check of local news stories at the time would have revealed that neighbors reported seeing Muhammad visit with his former wife and children at their Maryland town house before and during the shootings. One neighbor said he even jogged with him.
Police even staked out her house in the hope he would visit again.
By leaving out all these facts — never even mentioning that the subjects of its investigation had converted to Islam — CNN committed professional malpractice.
Its "special investigation" is nothing more than a politically correct whitewashing of the truth aimed at pleasing Muslim groups like CAIR, which has argued that "there is no indication that this case is related to Islam or Muslims."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 10, 2008, 07:32:35 AM
Just like the MSM's recent coverage of honor murders in the US. Funny how the "M" word is avoided like the plague. :roll:
Title: NY Times at it again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 14, 2008, 08:05:30 PM
Terrorist Telephone By JAMES TARANTO July 14, 2008 WSJ
An article in Friday's New York Times drew lots of attention from those who like to wring their hands about U.S. "torture" of terrorists, but to our mind it's awfully thin:
Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book. . . . The book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," by Jane Mayer, who writes about counterterrorism for The New Yorker, offers new details of the agency's secret detention program. . . . Citing unnamed "sources familiar with the report," Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document "warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted." Red Cross representatives were not permitted access to the secret prisons where the C.I.A. conducted interrogations, but were permitted to interview Abu Zubaydah and other high-level detainees in late 2006, after they were moved to the military detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. . . . The book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day. The book also reports that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, told the Red Cross that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been "kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room." To sum up: The New York Times reports that a new book reports that unnamed sources reported to the author that a report exists that says terrorists reported being tortured.
That is, not only are we being asked to take the word of terrorists--whose training material instructs them to claim they have been tortured--but we are being asked to trust terrorists' claims that are reaching us fifth-hand (or fourth-hand if you spend $27.50 for the book). It's a big game of telephone.
And we thought the New York Times was against listening to terrorists' phone conversations.
Title: 3 anchors follow BO
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2008, 07:24:29 AM
By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 17, 2008; C02
The three network anchors will travel to Europe and the Middle East next week for Barack Obama's trip, adding their high-wattage spotlight to what is already shaping up as a major media extravaganza.
Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.
John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.
Obama has "proven adept at generating excitement," says David Folkenflik, media correspondent for National Public Radio. He said the anchors hope "a little bit of that excitement will rub off on their newscasts if they can convey an American phenomenon abroad, if that's what it turns out to be. Senator McCain is not as magnetic a figure in that way."
Jim Geraghty, a columnist for National Review Online, said Obama's paucity of foreign travel as a presidential candidate makes the trip a natural draw for news organizations, while "McCain has been around forever, and he's probably been to all these places before." But, he says, "the networks will be acting as a PR wing for the Obama campaign if they treat any of these photo ops as truly newsworthy breakthroughs."
The plan is for Williams, Gibson and Couric interviews to be parceled out on successive nights in different countries, giving each anchor a one-day exclusive. (Correspondents could have done the interviews instead, but a certain competitiveness sets in once one or two anchors agree to go.) The Washington Post is withholding the scheduled locations for security reasons.
Some 200 journalists have asked to accompany Obama on the costly trip, which will include stops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the campaign will be able to accommodate only one-fifth that number. No itinerary has been announced.
The senator from Illinois has been drawing far more media attention than his Republican rival from Arizona. With this week's Newsweek cover story on Obama's religious beliefs, he has been featured on Time and Newsweek covers 12 times in the past three years, compared with five for McCain. This week's New Yorker includes a 14,600-word piece on Obama's political rise in Chicago. Obama and his wife, Michelle, were recently on the cover of Us Weekly and were interviewed -- with their young daughters, which Obama later said he regretted -- by "Access Hollywood."
When McCain visited Britain, France and Israel in March and met with their leaders, no network anchors tagged along. NBC and ABC sent correspondents; CBS did not. None of the evening newscasts covered his trip to Canada last month. And McCain's swing through Colombia and Mexico two weeks ago was barely covered, although NBC and ABC sent correspondents.
The upcoming Obama trip, by contrast, has already generated stories about how large his crowds will be and whether German authorities will allow him to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. "Europe Awaits Obama With Open Arms," the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 18, 2008, 07:29:12 AM
I don't mind, as long as they wear "Obama 2008" t-shirts while broadcasting.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on July 18, 2008, 09:22:52 AM
GM,
There is obviously some Obama bias in the media. But would you not agree that the first viable African American presidential candidate's trip Europe and the Middle East deserves a bit more coverage than usual? And might it be possible that Obama's "flavor of the week" celebrity is driving a lot of the coverage? The networks know a lot of people will watch him, so they're going to force the rest of us to sit through it.
If I were the other side, I'd be happy for Obama's excessive media coverage, as it gives him plenty of opportunity to shoot himself in the foot. And with the number of gaffes that McCain has thrown out in the past few weeks, he's proving himself to be about as poor a "live television" guy as possible.
I'd be perfectly happy not seeing either one of them on television for the next 2 1/2 months, until debate time.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 18, 2008, 01:40:42 PM
SB,
I think that's like saying there is some anti-semitism found at a "nation of islam" gathering....
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:20 PM PT Journalism: Barack Obama is headed overseas, with the three network anchors trailing behind him like groupies ga-ga over a rock star. And they say that media bias is just a myth.
Obama will begin his travels Friday with a visit to Europe and continue on to the Middle East. These are not normal campaign stops for a man running for president. But Obama is no common man — at least as the media see him. They have uncritically anointed him a savior and are eager to be in his presence as he makes his "historic" trip. NBC News anchor Brian Williams, ABC anchor Charles Gibson and CBS anchor Katie Couric will be on hand, and they'll scratch and claw each other to get that exclusive interview. Obama's arrogance — playing president and planning to speak in front of Berlin's symbolic Brandenburg Gate — is unseemly enough. But the media fawning is a disgrace. Other than those reporters assigned to John McCain, do they even know that Obama's opponent in the fall has made not one, but three trips overseas since March? Not only did the anchors pass on those tours, their respective networks "provided little if any coverage of any of them," according to an analysis by the Media Research Center. When McCain was in Europe and the Middle East for a week in March, the networks that will immortalize Obama's triumphant tour carried only four full stories on the trip. "CBS did not even send a correspondent along" and offered "only one report consisting of only 31 words" over 10 seconds for "the entire week Sen. McCain was abroad," the MRC reports. The media, which seem endlessly interested when Obama downs a hot dog or picks up a basketball, and which feel a collective tingle in their legs whenever he speaks, couldn't even limit their description of the junior senator's haircut to 31 words. Network chiefs say they need to be with Obama on this trip to record how he performs on the world stage. That's plausible. We'll believe it, though, only if Obama commits a gaffe and the press actually does more than gloss over it. The liberal national media are free to put all their resources into Obama coverage, encourage Americans to vote for him and ignore McCain entirely. Our Constitution gives them the liberty to do just that. What rankles us is the facade of objectivity they put up. All we're asking for is some honesty.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 18, 2008, 01:49:22 PM
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:20 PM PT Journalism: Barack Obama is headed overseas, with the three network anchors trailing behind him like groupies ga-ga over a rock star. And they say that media bias is just a myth.
Obama will begin his travels Friday with a visit to Europe and continue on to the Middle East. These are not normal campaign stops for a man running for president. But Obama is no common man — at least as the media see him. They have uncritically anointed him a savior and are eager to be in his presence as he makes his "historic" trip. NBC News anchor Brian Williams, ABC anchor Charles Gibson and CBS anchor Katie Couric will be on hand, and they'll scratch and claw each other to get that exclusive interview. Obama's arrogance — playing president and planning to speak in front of Berlin's symbolic Brandenburg Gate — is unseemly enough. But the media fawning is a disgrace. Other than those reporters assigned to John McCain, do they even know that Obama's opponent in the fall has made not one, but three trips overseas since March? Not only did the anchors pass on those tours, their respective networks "provided little if any coverage of any of them," according to an analysis by the Media Research Center. When McCain was in Europe and the Middle East for a week in March, the networks that will immortalize Obama's triumphant tour carried only four full stories on the trip. "CBS did not even send a correspondent along" and offered "only one report consisting of only 31 words" over 10 seconds for "the entire week Sen. McCain was abroad," the MRC reports. The media, which seem endlessly interested when Obama downs a hot dog or picks up a basketball, and which feel a collective tingle in their legs whenever he speaks, couldn't even limit their description of the junior senator's haircut to 31 words. Network chiefs say they need to be with Obama on this trip to record how he performs on the world stage. That's plausible. We'll believe it, though, only if Obama commits a gaffe and the press actually does more than gloss over it. The liberal national media are free to put all their resources into Obama coverage, encourage Americans to vote for him and ignore McCain entirely. Our Constitution gives them the liberty to do just that. What rankles us is the facade of objectivity they put up. All we're asking for is some honesty.
Maybe that is because Sen. McCain is soooooo boring??? I mean listen to him speak; even his supporters fall asleep. The networks are a business. They go where the ratings will be. Who/What does America want to watch??? What will drive ratings? And it isn't McCain.
And good grief, McCain is over 70 years old! Most people retire at 65; most top investment firms and nearly all top accounting firms have mandatory retirement at 60 - they want fresh new ideas and energy from people at their prime. I mean we all should love and respect our Grandfather, but ...
ps Didn't Sen. McCain earlier criticize Obama for not going overseas and on at least two occassions didn't he taunt Obama to do so? I guess Obama just listened and followed his advice. And now McCain complains that Obama gets all the attention??? hmmm
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 19, 2008, 01:16:30 PM
Maybe that is because Sen. McCain is soooooo boring??? I mean listen to him speak; even his supporters fall asleep. The networks are a business. They go where the ratings will be. Who/What does America want to watch??? What will drive ratings? And it isn't McCain.
**Is Obama more interesting than McCain? Sure. Should we as a people select a president using the same criteria we'd use to select a talk show host? Especially in a time of war and loose nukes? Should the MSM have at least try for a superficial attempt at impartiality?**
And good grief, McCain is over 70 years old! Most people retire at 65; most top investment firms and nearly all top accounting firms have mandatory retirement at 60 - they want fresh new ideas and energy from people at their prime. I mean we all should love and respect our Grandfather, but ...
**Obama's ideas aren't new. Some of them date back to the Carter administration. His pursuit of an American defeat in Iraq is very 60's. Perhaps having seen the impact of those ideas firsthand, McCain is in a better position to avoid the repeat of those mistakes.**
ps Didn't Sen. McCain earlier criticize Obama for not going overseas and on at least two occassions didn't he taunt Obama to do so? I guess Obama just listened and followed his advice. And now McCain complains that Obama gets all the attention??? hmmm [/quote]
**I'm glad Obama is traveling overseas. Sadly, the trip is probably now one of the more important accomplishments in his wafer thin resume, not that the anchors will be pointing this out in the midst of their fawn-fest.**
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2008, 04:05:45 PM
JDN:
"ps Didn't Sen. McCain earlier criticize Obama for not going overseas and on at least two occassions didn't he taunt Obama to do so? I guess Obama just listened and followed his advice. And now McCain complains that Obama gets all the attention??? hmmm"
There are two separate points here:
1) Failure to go to Iraq and Afg, and its rectification (not without having formed yet another opinion first :roll: ) 2) Media coverage thereof.
Concerning the latter, the disparity is huge-- what is happening on this trip has been happening every day. In my hometown LA Times, I regularly find BO on the front page and McC on page 15 or page 8.
Furthermore, the superficiality of the coverage boggles the mind.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 19, 2008, 08:54:05 PM
I'm glad to see that NPR is all over the wave of hunger in America.
McCain Campaign: New York Times Blocked Op-Ed Response to Obama by FOXNews.com Monday, July 21, 2008
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McCain: John McCain and former President George H.W. Bush arrive for a news conference at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. (AP Photo)
The New York Times on Friday blocked an opinion piece submitted by John McCain to the newspaper shortly after it printed a piece by his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, McCain campaign officials confirmed to FOX News on Monday.
Obama’s piece detailed his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. While McCain’s proposed piece also discussed Iraq, The Times told McCain’s advisers that it would not accept the op-ed in its current form because it did not offer new information. Obama’s speech previewed a series of speeches leading up to a highly publicized trip to war zones in the Middle East.
“I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the op-ed page. However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach,” Times op-ed editor David Shipley wrote the campaign via an e-mail later distributed by McCain’s team.
“It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan,” Shipley wrote.
Shipley, who was named deputy editor in January 2003, served in the Clinton administration as a senior presidential speechwriter and special assistant to the president from 1995 to 1997.
McCain campaign Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker said the two candidates “have very different world views” about Iraq and the campaign wanted an opportunity to state its candidate’s view.
“We have elections in this country, not coronations and it’s unfortunate that The New York Times wouldn’t allow their readers to hear from John McCain and make their own judgment,” Hazelbaker told FOX News.
“John McCain believes that victory in Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables. Unlike Barack Obama, that position will not change based on politics or the demands of the New York Times,” added McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.
The New York Times issued a statement defending its process of posting op-eds.
“It is standard procedure on our Op-Ed page, and that of other newspapers, to go back and forth with an author on his or her submission. We look forward to publishing Senator McCain’s views in our paper just as we have in the past. We have published at least seven op-ed pieces by Senator McCain since 1996. The New York Times endorsed Senator McCain as the Republican candidate in the presidential primaries. We take his views very seriously,” said Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.
Obama’s op-ed ran on July 14, days before the Democratic presidential candidate departed for Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a congressional delegation that received coverage from all three broadcast networks’ news services. It is the first time the networks have traveled overseas with a candidate.
Hazelbaker said that it’s not her job to police the media coverage, but the campaign would have liked to have “made our case directly to the voters.”
“We think the American voter is smart enough to make the call on their own,” she said.
FOX News’ Shushannah Walshe contributed to this story.
Title: Here's what the NY Times would not print
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 21, 2008, 11:54:36 PM
In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City — actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely. I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 22, 2008, 09:37:03 AM
POLITICS AND POWER The 2008 Election Is the Media Trying to Elect Obama? by Dee Dee Myers July 21, 2008, 5:15 PM
Tomorrow, CBS’s Katie Couric will interview Barack Obama from Jordan. On Wednesday, ABC’s Charlie Gibson will chat with him from Israel. And on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams will do the honors from Germany. Call it the presidential campaign equivalent of Shooting the Moon. And to think, a few short months ago the Washington establishment was buzzing about the press’s pending dilemma: With Obama and John McCain looking like the all-but-certain nominees of their respective parties, how would the media choose between its new crush, Obama, and its long-time paramour, McCain? The Illinois senator has been a media darling since he burst onto the scene at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2004, and during the Democratic primary season, he bested Hillary Clinton in both quantity of coverage (he got more) and tenor (his was way more positive). But McCain has gotten so much favorable media attention over the years that he often joked that the press was his political base. In a head-to-head competition, who would win? So far, the answer is clear: Obama is The One. In the first quarter of the general election, he has simply gotten more and better coverage than McCain. For those who need more evidence than the enormous press entourage that is treating Obama’s current trip not like the campaign swing of a presidential candidate, but like the international debut of the New American President, there are several new studies which help quantify the disparity. The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which evaluates more than 300 newspaper, magazine, and television stories each week, found that from June 9 (after Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination) until July 13, Obama was more prominently covered every single week. During one particular week, July 7–13, McCain was a significant presence in 48 percent of the stories—but Obama met that mark in 77 percent of the pieces. Similarly, the Tyndall Report, a media monitoring group, found that Obama received substantially more media attention. I can only imagine what the gap must be like this week, as Obama continues to meet with world leaders and adoring crowds, while the mere presence of media’s biggest and brightest stars stamps each and every event as important! Given all that, it’s not surprising that voters, particularly those of the Republican persuasion, think the media is more or less in Obama’s pocket. A recent survey by Rasmussen found that 49 percent of the likely voters they talked to believed that reporters would favor Obama in their coverage, while just 14 percent said the same about McCain. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans thought the press would try and help Obama win, while only 21 percent of Democrats thought journalists were in bed with McCain. Complaints about bias are only exacerbated when the New York Times (the bête noire of the right) rejects an opinion piece written by McCain comparing his position on Iraq to Obama’s—just days after the Times ran a similar piece by Obama. Suspicions of pro-Obama bias began in the primaries. A Pew survey in late May and early June found that 37 percent of Americans believed that Obama received preferential coverage; only eight percent said the same about his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton. There are lot of “explanations” for the lopsided coverage: Obama is new and what’s new is “news.” As the first African-American to run a serious race, let alone win a major party’s nomination, Obama is running an historic campaign. Obama has created a “movement,” and Americans are simply more interested in him than in his opponents. Obama is running a smarter campaign, and he knows how to court media attention. It’s also true that intense media coverage is a double- edged sword: the attention is great when things are going well, but it can doom a candidate if and when things start to go badly. And so far, Obama has had way more good days than bad days. Each of those rationales is largely true—and somewhat less than satisfying. At the end of the day, this will be a long campaign, and what’s true in July may not be true in November. But what seems indisputably true—to quote another dazzling young Democrat who received disproportionately favorable media attention, John Kennedy—is this: “Life is unfair.”
Title: Media contributions to dems 15 to 1.
Post by: ccp on July 25, 2008, 07:37:35 AM
OK Pelosi et al are upset over talk radio. They proclaim we need a "fairness doctrine". Conservative talk radio *is* as it is, the closest thing to fairness. Why take a look at the "mass media". There is little fairness there. Of course Pelosi is silent about that. BOs lead of ~48 to 42% is roughly the same as Clinton's margins of winning. Our country remains as divided as ever. Having a person with a flaming liberal history (BO) proclaim he is going to get past that and unite us would be as absurd as seeing Pat Robertson doing the same thing from the right. I don't know, has our country ever been as split since the Civil War?
This should be the headlines on all the newspapers. But we will never see it.
Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1
By WILLIAM TATE | Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:20 PM PT
The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money.
Even the Associated Press — no bastion of conservatism — has considered, at least superficially, the media's favoritism for Barack Obama. It's time to revisit media bias.
True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is no media bias. It is we, the hoi polloi, who reveal our bias by questioning the neutrality of these learned professionals in their ivory-towered newsrooms.
Big Media applies this rationalization to every argument used to point out bias. "It's not a result of bias," they say. "It's a matter of news judgment."
And, like the man who knows his wallet was pickpocketed but can't prove it, the public is left to futilely rage against the injustice of it all.
The "newsworthy" argument can be applied to every metric — one-sided imbalances in airtime, story placement, column inches, number of stories, etc. — save one.
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .
Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.
And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected, they are more substantial than the amount that Obama has criticized John McCain for receiving from lobbyists: 96 lobbyists have contributed $95,850 to McCain, while Obama — who says he won't take money from PACs or federal lobbyists — has received $16,223 from 29 lobbyists.
A few journalists list their employer as an organization like MSNBC, MSNBC.com or ABC News, or report that they're freelancers for the New York Times, or are journalists for Al Jazeera, CNN Turkey, Deutsche Welle Radio or La Republica of Rome (all contributions to Obama). Most report no employer. They're mainly freelancers. That's because most major news organization have policies that forbid newsroom employees from making political donations.
As if to warn their colleagues in the media, MSNBC last summer ran a story on journalists' contributions to political candidates that drew a similar conclusion:
"Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left."
The timing of that article was rather curious. Dated June 25, 2007, it appeared during the middle of the summer news doldrums in a non-election year — timing that was sure to minimize its impact among the general public, while still warning newsrooms across the country that such political donations can be checked.
In case that was too subtle, MSNBC ran a sidebar story detailing cautionary tales of reporters who lost their jobs or were otherwise negatively impacted because their donations became public.
As if to warn their comrades-in-news against putting their money where their mouth is, the report also cautioned that, with the Internet, "it became easier for the blogging public to look up the donors."
It went on to detail the ban that most major media organizations have against newsroom employees donating to political campaigns, a ban that raises some obvious First Amendment issues. Whether it's intentional or not, the ban makes it difficult to verify the political leanings of Big Media reporters, editors and producers. There are two logical ways to extrapolate what those leanings are, though.
One is the overwhelming nature of the above statistics. Given the pack mentality among journalists and, just like any pack, the tendency to follow the leader — in this case, Big Media — and since Big Media are centered in some of the bluest of blue parts of the country, it is highly likely that the media elite reflect the same, or an even greater, liberal bias.
A second is to analyze contributions from folks in the same corporate cultures. That analysis provides some surprising results. The contributions of individuals who reported being employed by major media organizations are listed in the nearby table.
The contributions add up to $315,533 to Democrats and $22,656 to Republicans — most of that to Ron Paul, who was supported by many liberals as a stalking horse to John McCain, a la Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos with Hillary and Obama.
What is truly remarkable about the list is that, discounting contributions to Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who was a favorite son for many folks in the media, the totals look like this: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans (four individuals who donated to McCain).
Let me repeat: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans — a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.
Tate is a former journalist, now a novelist and the author of "A Time Like This: 2001-2008." This article first appeared on the American Thinker Web site.
January 15, 2008 -- THE New York Times is trashing our troops again. With no new "atrocities" to report from Iraq for many a month, the limping Gray Lady turned to the home front. Front and center, above the fold, on the front page of Sunday's Times, the week's feature story sought to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home. Heart-wringing tales of madness and murder not only made the front page, but filled two entire centerfold pages and spilled onto a fourth.
The Times did get one basic fact right: Returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began.
Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.
The Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, should crunch the numbers. I'm even willing to spot the Times a few percentage points (either way). But the hard statistics from the Justice Department tell a far different tale from the Times' anti-military propaganda.
A very conservative estimate of how many different service members have passed through Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since 2003 is 350,000 (and no, that's not double-counting those with repeated tours of duty).
Now consider the Justice Department's numbers for murders committed by all Americans aged 18 to 34 - the key group for our men and women in uniform. To match the homicide rate of their peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007.
In other words, the Times unwittingly makes the case that military service reduces the likelihood of a young man or woman committing a murder by 80 percent.
Yes, the young Americans who join our military are (by self- selection) superior by far to the average stay-at-home. Still, these numbers are pretty impressive, when you consider that we're speaking of men and women trained in the tools of war, who've endured the acute stresses of fighting insurgencies and who are physically robust (rather unlike the stick-limbed weanies the Times prefers).
All in all, the Times' own data proves my long-time contention that we have the best behaved and most ethical military in history.
Now, since the folks at the Times are terribly busy and awfully important, let's make it easy for them to do the research themselves (you can do it, too - in five minutes).
Just Google "USA Murder Statistics." The top site to appear will be the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Click on it, then go to "Demographic Trends." Click on "Age." For hard numbers on the key demographics, click on the colored graphs.
Run the numbers yourself, based upon the demographic percentages of murders per every 100,000 people. Then look at the actual murder counts.
Know what else you'll learn? In 2005 alone, 8,718 young Americans from the same age group were murdered in this country. That's well over twice as many as the number of troops killed in all our foreign missions since 2001. Maybe military service not only prevents you from committing crimes, but also keeps you alive?
Want more numbers? In the District of Columbia, our nation's capital, the murder rate for the 18-34 group was about 14 times higher than the rate of murders allegedly committed by returning vets.
And that actually understates the District's problem, since many DC-related murders spill across into Prince George's County (another Democratic Party stronghold).
In DC, an 18-34 population half the size of the total number of troops who've served in our wars overseas committed the lion's share of 992 murders between 2003 and 2007 - the years mourned by the Times as proving that our veterans are psychotic killers.
Aren't editors supposed to ask tough questions on feature stories? Are the Times' editors so determined to undermine the public's support for our troops that they'll violate the most-basic rules of journalism, such as putting numbers in context?
Answer that one for yourself.
Of course, all of this is part of the disgraceful left-wing campaign to pretend sympathy with soldiers - the Times column gushes crocodile tears - while portraying our troops as clichéd maniacs from the Oliver Stone fantasies that got lefties so self-righteously excited 20 years ago (See? We were right to dodge the draft . . .).
And it's not going to stop. Given the stakes in an election year, the duplicity will only intensify.
For an upcoming treat, we'll get the film "Stop-Loss," starring, as always, young punks who never served in uniform as soldiers. This left-wing diatribe argues that truly courageous troops would refuse to return to Iraq - at a time when soldiers and Marines continue to re-enlist at record rates, expecting to plunge back into the fight.
Those on the left will never accept that the finest young Americans are those who risk their lives defending freedom. Sen. John Kerry summed up the views of the left perfectly when he disparaged our troops as too stupid to do anything but sling hamburgers.
And The New York Times will never forgive our men and women in uniform for their infuriating successes in Iraq.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Wars of Blood and Faith."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 27, 2008, 09:58:39 AM
From The Sunday Times July 27, 2008 Sleaze scuppers Democrat golden boy
Gotcha: Senator John Edwards, whose wife has cancer, has been caught in a sex scandal that ends his vice-presidential hopes
Sarah Baxter in Washington SCRATCH John Edwards off the list of potential vice-presidential candidates. The former White House contender, who had been hoping to get the nod from Barack Obama, is in the midst of a full-blown sex scandal.
Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.
The tabloid magazine cornered Edwards, 55, leaving a Los Angeles hotel where Rielle Hunter, his alleged mistress, and her baby were staying, at 2.40am last Tuesday. He ran down a hallway and dived into the men’s bathroom. A hotel security guard confirmed the encounter. “His face just went totally white,” the guard said.
The story has been bubbling away for months, but so far there has been not a word about it in the mainstream newspapers, even though Edwards was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and has been tipped for a prominent job in an Obama administration – if not vice-president, then attorney-general or antipoverty tsar.
Edwards volunteered recently: “I’m prepared to consider seriously anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.”
He can stop waiting by the telephone. News of the “gotcha” rapidly circulated on the internet via the Drudge Report and has been buzzing on the blogs. The Enquirer’s story appears to be well sourced.
According to the magazine, Edwards arrived at the Beverly Hilton on Monday at 9.45pm after attending a meeting on homelessness in Los Angeles and was dropped off at a side entrance. Two rooms were allegedly booked for Hunter in a friend’s name.
Edwards emerged hours later and was confronted by journalists from the Enquirer. His usual spokesmen and defenders have scurried for cover behind a wall of “no comment”, while the details of the story have gone unchallenged.
Even so, Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.
Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”
The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.
Byron York, a conservative journalist, finally broke the silence in The Hill, a reputable, non-partisan congressional newspaper. “The media looks down on the National Enquirer but you look at the Edwards story and say, ‘Wow! There appears to be a lot of knowledge there’. It is darned fishy,” York said.
Edwards appeared at a press conference on poverty in Houston shortly after the Enquirer story broke. All he would say was: “I don’t talk about these tabloids. They’re tabloid trash and just full of lies.” There was no explicit denial.
York believes sympathy for Edwards’s wife may partly account for the media blackout. “She’s a very high-profile wife and she’s suffering from cancer. But if the story is true, this was going on when he was running for president.”
If Edwards is the father of Hunter’s child, he may also be responsible for an elaborate cover-up which would call into question his political integrity as well as his fidelity. An aide to Edwards had previously claimed via a lawyer that he (the aide) was the father.
Hunter’s existence was first mentioned by Newsweek in 2006, when the magazine claimed that the little-known film-maker had been commissioned by the millionaire candidate to make behind-the-scenes web videos of his presidential campaign after they “met in a New York bar”.
Hunter, a former aspiring actress, was paid $114,000 (£57,000) for her work. Months later, a writer on The Huffington Post website wondered what had happened to the videos, which had vanished from Edwards’s campaign site. The headline read, “Edwards mystery: innocuous videos suddenly shrouded in secrecy”.
As the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination gathered pace in October last year, the Enquirer claimed that Hunter was the candidate’s mistress. “It’s completely untrue. Ridiculous,” Edwards said. “I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30 years.” Two months later the magazine revealed that Hunter, a 43-year-old divorcee, was six months pregnant.
The story took a bizarre turn when she claimed that Andrew Young, a long-time aide to Edwards and a married family man, was the father of her child. Young’s lawyer acknowledged his paternity.
Hunter moved from New York to the same gated community in North Carolina as Young and his wife and young children, raising speculation that he was really her minder. Young has not commented on the latest allegations.
The National Enquirer may publish photographs corroborating Edwards’s presence at the hotel this weekend. A reporter for The Washington Post said yesterday: “To be quite honest, we’re waiting to see the pictures. That said, Edwards is no longer an elected official and he is not running for office now. Don’t expect wall-to-wall coverage.”
The Clinton Connection
Roger Altman, who has a controlling stake in the National Enquirer, is a former official in Bill Clinton’s administration. Some wags believe the magazine poured resources into the love child story to scupper John Edwards’s chances of beating Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.
Were the latest revelations timed to finish him off as a potential running mate? Despite the rumours, it is not likely. Few people think Clinton is still on Barack Obama’s shortlist.
David Perel, the Enquirer’s editor-in-chief, said the magazine’s parent company had “nothing to do with the editorial side, which I run”.
“We stayed on the story,” he said. “We did it the old-fashioned way with lots of legwork. We did what the [big] news organisations used to do. We knocked on doors, ran down leads and talked to people.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 03, 2008, 04:52:46 PM
Hollywood Takes on the Left David Zucker, the director who brought us 'Airplane!' and 'The Naked Gun,' turns his sights on anti-Americanism. by Stephen F. Hayes 08/11/2008, Volume 013, Issue 45
Los Angeles For anyone who has ever been on a movie set, the commotion inside Warner Brothers Studio 15 will be familiar: serious-faced actors and actresses quietly rehearsing their lines; the director of photography huddled with his assistants around two high-definition screens inside a small black tent reviewing the last scenes; extras lounging around the set trying both to stay out of the way and to get noticed; carpenters busily working to construct the set for the next scene; a frazzled first assistant director guzzling Red Bull and yelling instructions to anyone who will listen.
"Rolling," he shouts.
Others throughout the cavernous studio echo his call.
"Rolling! Quiet please!"
David Zucker is sitting in a high-backed director's chair with his name on it. (I'd always assumed they were just used for effect in movies, but here one was.) Zucker is looking at a monitor showing the inside of an empty New York City subway station. It's actually just a set--a stunning replica of a subway station--and it sits 15 feet to Zucker's right.
The first assistant director breaks the silence.
"Action!"
The set jumps to life. Two young men--both terrorists--enter the station. They are surprised to see a security checkpoint manned by two NYPD officers. "I'll need to see your bag, please," says one of the officers. The lead terrorist glances nervously at his friend and swings his backpack down from his shoulder to present it to the cops. Just as the officer pulls on the zipper, however, a small army of ACLU lawyers marches up to the policemen with a stop-search order. The cops look at each other and shrug their shoulders. "This says we can't search their bags."
The young men are relieved. They smile fiendishly as they walk toward the crowded platform. As the lead terrorist once again slips the backpack over his shoulder, he mutters his appreciation.
"Thank Allah for the ACLU."
Zucker's latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo.
David Zucker believes we are in a "new McCarthy era." Time magazine film writer Richard Corliss recently joked that conservative films are "almost illegal in Hollywood." Tom O'Malley, president of Vivendi Entertainment, though, dismisses claims that Hollywood is hostile to conservative ideas and suggests that conservatives simply haven't been as interested in making movies. "How come there aren't more socialists on Wall Street?"
But Zucker's film, together with a spike in attendance at events put on by "The Friends of Abe" (Lincoln, not Vigoda)--a group of right-leaning Hollywood types that has been meeting regularly for the past four years--is once again reviving hope that conservatives will have a battalion in this exceedingly influential battleground of the broader culture war.
Zucker has always been interested in politics. He was raised in Shorewood, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, in a household where Franklin Delano Roosevelt was viewed as either a hero or a dangerous conservative. He was elected president of his senior class at the University of Wisconsin, and, when he addressed his classmates at commencement in the spring of 1970, his speech was serious--a friend describes it as "solemn" and political. Among other things, Zucker condemned the Kent State shootings and lamented the mistreatment of America's blacks. Two years later, he appeared on stage with lefty leading man Warren Beatty and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. Zucker says at the time he was "very liberal." (His brother Jerry remains an unreconstructed liberal and recently optioned a sympathetic movie about the life and times of serial fabulist Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame.)
David Zucker got his start in entertainment right after school. In 1971, he teamed up with his brother and two friends to create an irreverent revue called Kentucky Fried Theater. They drew large crowds to cafés and small theaters in Madison and soon outgrew the college town. They went to Hollywood to chase the dream, and, surprise, the show worked in Southern California, too.
They caught the attention of some of Hollywood's boldfaced names--the show would serve as one of Lorne Michaels's inspirations for Saturday Night Live--and in 1977 they released their first film, The Kentucky Fried Movie. It was the first of many classics: Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun, BASEketball. Actually, BASEketball sucked, but by the time it was released in 1998, Zucker had put together enough of a streak that he was widely regarded as a comedic genius. Matt Stone, who together with Trey Parker created South Park, starred in BASEketball. He described Zucker's influence this way: "I used to sit at home with my friends in high school and watch Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane! and vomit from laughing."
Although these films had some political jokes, the movies themselves did not carry overt political messages. Naked Gun 2 came closest with a vaguely pro-environment theme. (It opens with George H.W. Bush meeting with the heads of America's coal, oil, and nuclear industries: the representatives of the Society for More Coal Energy [pronounced SMOKE]; the Society of Petroleum Industry Leaders [SPIL]; and the Key Atomic Benefits Office of Mankind [KABOOM].) Zucker, who owns a Toyota Prius and derives a third of the energy for his house from photovoltaic cells, is still an environmentalist.
In 1984, one of Zucker's college friends, Rich Markey, suggested he listen to a local Los Angeles talk radio show, "Religion on the Line," hosted by Dennis Prager. Zucker took the advice and soon struck up a friendship with Prager, whose conservative views appealed to Zucker as common sense. Although his politics were evolving, Zucker remained supportive of California Democrats, giving $2,400 to Senator Barbara Boxer in the mid-1990s. He contributed another $600 to an outfit called the "Hollywood Women's Political Committee" which, with members like Jane Fonda, Bonnie Raitt, and Barbra Streisand, probably wasn't calling for low taxes and abstinence education.
Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. "Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn't take it anymore," he says. "The response to 9/11--the right was saying this is pure evil we're facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this? I think I'd just had enough. And I said 'I quit.'"
He decided to write a letter to Boxer, sharing his disgust and telling her not to expect any more of his money. Having never done this before, he asked a friend with the Republican Jewish Committee for help. This friend recommended Zucker contact Myrna Sokoloff, a former paid staffer for Boxer, who had recently completed a similar ideological journey.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Sokoloff had worked for several stars of the Democratic party's left wing. She served on the campaign staff of Mark Green, a close associate of Ralph Nader, when he ran for Senate in New York against Al D'Amato. She worked for Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign and in 1998 was a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer's reelection effort.
Sokoloff had begun to sour on the Democratic party and the left generally during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. "As a feminist, I was outraged," she recalls. "If he had been a Republican president we would have demanded his resignation and marched on the White House." When she made this point to her Democratic friends, she says, they told her to keep quiet.
Although she didn't vote for George W. Bush in 2000, Sokoloff says she was glad that he won. Less than a year later, she understood why. "When 9/11 happened, I knew Democrats wouldn't be strong enough to fight this war."
Sokoloff and Zucker never did write the letter to Boxer, but their partnership would prove much more fruitful.
As the 2004 presidential election approached, Sokoloff and Zucker looked for a way to influence the debate. Their first effort was an ad mocking John Kerry for his flip-flops that the conservative Club for Growth paid to put on the air. In 2006, Sokoloff and Zucker followed that with a series of uproarious short spots mocking, in turn, the Iraq Study Group, Madeleine Albright and pro-appeasement foreign policy, and pro-tax congressional Democrats.
The Iraq Study Group ad was the most memorable. It opens with news footage of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain celebrating the signing of the Munich Agreement. A newspaper stand boasting "Peace with Honour" flashes across the screen.
Neville Chamberlain: "This morning, I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler. Here is the paper, which bears his name upon it, as well as mine."
The spot cuts to footage of German bombers over Warsaw. "Well," intones a narrator, "that negotiation went well. Fifty million dead worldwide. Nicely done, Mr. Chamberlain."
Then viewers are shown footage of imaginary negotiations between James Baker, Syria's Bashar Assad, and "Iranian madman" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Baker's Iraq Study Group had formally recommended talks with Iran and Syria as part of its proposed solution to the problems in Iraq.
When Ahmadinejad asks Baker for permission to develop nuclear weapons so long as Iran promises not to use them, Baker agrees. Triumphant music plays loudly in the background and the diplomacy pauses for a celebration and some photos.
The music stops and Baker returns to the table with Ahmadinejad and Syria's Bashar Assad.
"Next item: You must agree to stop supplying the explosive devices that are killing our American soldiers in Iraq," Baker insists.
"We won't do that."
"Well, can you reduce the number?"
"Okay, how about 10 percent?" Assad proposes.
"Twenty percent," Baker responds.
"Fifteen."
"Five."
"Sold!"
The music starts again and Baker, like Chamberlain, triumphantly waves the signed agreement.
"Now, this thing about destroying Israel," he says to Ahmadinejad.
"We will do that," says the Iranian leader.
Baker shrugs. "That's fair," he says, affixing his signature to yet another agreement and once again waving it before the cameras.
Zucker says that the idea to do a feature film grew out of those ads, and several of the actors in the spots, including Turkish actor Serdar Kalsin, who plays Ahmadinejad, have speaking roles in the film.
If An American Carol grew out of Zucker's work on these commercials, the narrative device dates back to 1843. An American Carol is based loosely--very loosely--on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
"Why be original?" Zucker asks. "I've done that. It doesn't work, like BASEketball"--as he says this, he rolls his eyes and moves his right hand across his body to indicate a car going off a cliff.
The holiday in An American Carol is not Christmas and the antagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead, the film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone, who has joined with a left-wing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July. Along the way, Malone is visited by the ghosts of three American heroes--George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy--who try to convince him he's got it all wrong. When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video. "This will not be hard to find in Hollywood," says one. "They all hate America." When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil.
The entire film is an extended rebuttal to the vacuous antiwar slogan that "War Is Not the Answer." Zucker's response, in effect: "It Depends on the Question."
Zucker had originally hoped to cast Dan Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy) as Malone, but a timing conflict kept him from getting it done. After briefly considering Frank Caliendo, a fellow Wisconsinite, a colleague passed him a reel from Kevin Farley, the younger brother of the late Chris Farley, and Zucker, who recalled seeing Kevin Farley in an episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, was interested.
Zucker and Sokoloff met Farley in April 2007. Zucker described his new film with words he had chosen carefully. "I figured he was like everyone else in Hollywood--a Democrat," Zucker recalls. "And we knew that this was not a Democrat movie." It would be a satirical look at the war on terror, he told Farley, and explained that he and Sokoloff were political "moderates."
Farley hadn't seen any of Zucker's ads and assumed he was like everyone else in Hollywood--a Democrat. So he answered with some strategic ambiguity of his own. "I consider myself a centrist," he said, worried that they might press him more about his political views.
Zucker gave Farley the script and, concerned that Farley's agent would advise him against accepting the role because of the film's politics, told the actor not to show it to anyone. Farley, best known for his recurring role in a series of Hertz commercials, read the script and called back the next day to accept.
When he met Zucker and Sokoloff on the set as shooting on the film began, he told them that he, too, had long considered himself a conservative. "I couldn't believe it," says Sokoloff. "We were afraid that he would not want to be involved in something that was so directly taking on the left and that he would not want to play the Michael Moore character."
Farley told me this story during a break in filming at the Daniel Webster Elementary School in Pasadena, last April, with Steve McEveety, the film's producer, listening in.
"I thought that the minute we started talking about politics that would be the end," Farley recalls. "There was this dance that we did--a dance familiar to conservative actors in Hollywood. Lots of actors have done it."
"All three of you," said McEveety.
"Yeah, all three of us."
Farley is not aggressive about his politics and has chosen simply to opt out of political discussions when they have arisen on other projects. "I usually just bite my tongue unless it gets too ridiculous," he says. "The only thing that really bothers me is when they go off about the president. It just gets annoying."
If Farley is nervous that his proverbial big break is coming in a film with politics that might make getting his next big role more difficult, he doesn't show it. "If it's the last movie I do, I'll go work for Steve's company," he says.
"If this doesn't work," McEveety deadpans, "I won't have a company."
Yes, he will. He founded the company, Mpower Pictures, two years ago with John Shepherd, a former child actor, and Todd Burns, who helped put himself through law school by working as an EMT. McEveety, whose producing credits include Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, and The Passion of the Christ, is far too well-established to live or die based on the success of one film. And he created Mpower in part because he wanted the freedom to take risks on film projects others in Hollywood wouldn't consider. One such film, The Fallen, will be out later this fall. The film, based on a powerful book by Iranian journalist Friedoune Sahebjam, tells the true story of a young Iranian woman who is framed by her husband on false charges of infidelity and persecuted under the strictures of sharia law. According to McEveety, the Iranian regime has already begun an effort to discredit the film.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 03, 2008, 04:53:50 PM
McEveety is one of several big names that will make it hard for the Hollywood establishment to ignore An American Carol. Jon Voight plays George Washington. Dennis Hopper makes an appearance as a judge who defends his courthouse by gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten Commandments. James Woods plays Michael Malone's agent. And Kelsey Grammer plays General George S. Patton, Malone's guide to American history and the mouthpiece of the film's writers.
I chatted with Grammer on the set at Warner Brothers studios. "I'm glad some of the bigger guys jumped in--Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, James Woods."
Grammer has been out as a conservative for several years and has publicly mused about running for office. His name comes up periodically when California Republicans are brainstorming about candidates to take on Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein for their Senate seats. It's not hard to see why. He is passionate about the issues that matter most to conservatives and extraordinarily articulate.
"The accepted way to speak about America is in the voice that disrespects it. And the voice that's unacceptable is the one that loves America," he says, wearing the uniform of an Army general and sipping from a bottle of pomegranate juice. "How did we get here?"
Over the course of two hours, we are joined by several others working on the movie and talk about everything from taxes--"the rich in this country are being criminalized"--to Iraq. "Petraeus has to couch every bit of optimism in some convoluted formulation to avoid the promised rush of disrespect," Grammer says.
Eventually, the conversation turns from policy to punditry. Grammer, who is friends with Ann Coulter, says he quoted her once to some of the young people who work for him.
"'Ann Coulter,'" he says, recalling their horror and assuming their voice. "'She's the antichrist.' And I said: 'What the f-- do you know about the antichrist? You don't even believe in Christ.'"
Robert Davi, who plays the lead terrorist in the Zucker film, joins us as the discussion turns from policy to the cable pundit shows. Davi is one of those actors with an instantly recognizable face--he was the villain in the Bond film Licence to Kill--but whose name is unknown to most of the country.
"I can't stand Keith Olbermann," says Davi. "Jesus Christ, I want to slap that guy."
"I just sit there and watch these shows"--he picks up an imaginary remote from the table in front of him, points it at the imaginary television somewhere to the right of my head and begins clicking--"I watch them all. I cannot watch the murder shows anymore. Greta comes on and"--he changes the channel once more.
Our discussion continues over lunch and we are joined by Myrna Sokoloff, Kevin Farley, and Chriss Anglin, who plays JFK. Lunch lasts an hour, and we discuss marginal tax rates, the Democratic primary, whether John McCain will pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and whether the talk of closing Guantánamo is serious or just campaign rhetoric.
Eventually, the conversation turns to the war and the opposition to it--the subject of their current project. "No one on the left wants to admit that radical Islamists want to kill Americans, the Jews--everyone in the West," Davi says. "I try to talk to my friends on the left and they just don't get it. Most of them have never even heard of Sayyid Qutb. How can you have an intellectual discussion about the war we're in without knowing who Sayyid Qutb is?" he asks, raising his voice so that actors from other tables glance over to see what's causing the commotion. JFK concentrates on his food.
Later that same day, I spoke to Lee Reynolds, who plays the New York police officer whose efforts to search the terrorists are thwarted by the ACLU. Reynolds, too, is a conservative--something David Zucker did not know when he cast Reynolds in the anti-Kerry ad he produced in 2004. Reynolds was active duty military for 12 years and shortly after 9/11 worked as the chief media officer for detainee operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
When he returned, he took a job as a production assistant on a film--he asked me not to name it--shot in several locations across the United States. Reynolds worked hard and, he says, won the confidence of the film's directors, who gave him more responsibility. But just as he was making a name for himself, word began to spread that he had been in the military and, far worse, that he supported the efforts of his uniformed colleagues in the war on terror.
"Once they found out I was a Republican, unfortunately for some people it was a problem," he recalls. Several people who had talked to him regularly throughout the shoot simply stopped. And a trip that he was to have taken to participate in an offsite shoot across the country was abruptly cancelled. Another person was sent in his place. Reynolds says that he had only two colleagues who treated him the same way they had before, including "an anti-Bush lesbian" who was disgusted by the dogmatism of the others on the film. Reynolds, now a reservist, is scheduled to leave for Iraq in early 2009. The more Zucker is known as a conservative, the more frequently he has encounters with others who consider themselves conservative.
On one of the days I was on set, McEveety had invited Vivendi Entertainment president Tom O'Malley to meet Zucker. Vivendi had just agreed to distribute the film and had promised wide release--news that had the cast and crew of An American Carol in particularly good spirits.
O'Malley and Zucker chatted about the fact that O'Malley is the nephew of Candid Camera's Tom O'Malley and that they are both from the Midwest, among other things. Zucker thanked him for picking up the movie, which will be one of the first for Vivendi's new distribution arm. O'Malley told Zucker that he was particularly interested in this film in part because he, too, leans right.
Such revelations are common occurrences at the periodic meetings of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives known as the "Friends of Abe." The group, with no official membership list and no formal mission, has been meeting under the leadership of Gary Sinise (CSI New York, Forrest Gump) for four years. Zucker had spent a year working on a film with Christopher McDonald without learning anything about his politics. Shortly after the film wrapped, he ran into McDonald, best known as Shooter McGavin from Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore, at one of these informal meetings.
"It's almost like people who are gay, show up at the baths and say, 'Oh, I didn't know you were gay!' " Zucker says.
From the beginning, Zucker knew what the political message of An American Carol would be. His problem was how to make it funny.
The war on terror, of course, does not lend itself to hilarity. But Zucker knows comedy and has spent nearly four decades making people laugh. With his friend Lewis Friedman, a comedy writer, Zucker went looking for the absurd in the political left and found an abundance of material.
Zucker and Friedman poked fun of the know-nothing culture of antiwar protests. During a rally at Columbia University, students chant: "Peace Now, We Don't Care How!" Some of their protest signs are ones you'd find at any antiwar rally. Some are not. "9/11 Was an Inside Job," "Kick Army Recruiters Off Campus!" "End Violence--War Is Not the Answer!" "End Disease--Medicine Is Not the Answer!" "It's Too Dark Outside, The Sun Is Not the Answer!" "Overpopulation--Gay Marriage Is the Answer!"
Other claims were so absurd they didn't require exaggeration. "We really didn't have to do a lot of stretching," says Zucker.
When he heard Rosie O'Donnell claim that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state," he knew he had several minutes of material.
In the film, a rotund comedian named Rosie O'Connell makes an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor to promote her documentary, The Truth About Radical Christians. O'Reilly shows a clip, which opens with a pair of priests walking through an airport--as seen from pre-hijacking surveillance video--before boarding the airplane. Once onboard, they storm the cockpit using crucifixes as their weapon of choice. Next the documentary looks at the growing phenomenon of nuns as suicide bombers, seeking 72 virgins in heaven. A dramatization shows two nuns, strapped with explosives, board a bus to the cries of the other passengers. "Oh, no! Not the Christians!" O'Connell's work ends with a warning about new threats and the particular menace of the "Episcopal suppository bomber."
Zucker is plainly not worried about offending anyone. David Alan Grier plays a slave in a scene designed to show Malone what might have happened if the United States had not fought the Civil War. As Patton explains to a dumbfounded Malone that the plantation they are visiting is his own, Grier thanks the documentarian for being such a humane owner. As they leave, another slave, played by Gary Coleman, finishes polishing a car and yells "Hey, Barack!" before tossing the sponge to someone off-camera.
It is one of just two references to the ongoing presidential campaign. (The other one, more cryptic, comes in a scene that's a throwback to the Iraq Study Group ad. Neville Chamberlain, after polishing Adolf Hitler's boots, signs the Munich Agreement, and declares: "We have hope now.") But Tom O'Malley, president of Vivendi, believes that the timing of the film's release--October 3--will give it special relevance to the current debates. And several of the film's leading figures have strong opinions about Barack Obama. "Obama is not qualified to be president, and it'll be a disaster," says Zucker, who then pauses as if he's said something he should have kept to himself. "Shouldn't I be allowed to say that?"
Zucker says that one of the major differences between the left and the right in America today is that leftists think of their political opponents as evil. "I don't think that Obama is an evil guy, I just think he's wrong. But I do think we face real evil in Ahmadinejad and the mullahs and all these crazy guys."
Does Obama understand that?
"I don't think so. I don't think so."
Zucker points to a National Journal study that found Obama to be the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. "John Kerry was, and Obama is. Fortunately, Kerry was a stiff. But Obama isn't a stiff and he's really adaptable. He's like a really clever virus who adapts. Obama's the farthest left of all of these guys. And that's why he associated with all of those crazies--terrorists, preachers of hate."
Jon Voight, who says he was "duped" as a young man into rallying against the Vietnam war, is also troubled both by Obama's associations and his willingness to end them so abruptly. "When I look at the other side, when I look at Barack Obama, I see expediency," he says, pointing to Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and assuming Obama's voice. "He's like family. I could never disown him. I didn't know him. I didn't hear those words in that church."
If those behind the film have similar views about Obama, many of them have opposing views about the long-term impact of a film like An American Carol on the movie industry.
"If this does well, it'll change everything," says Grammer.
"I think it would be pompous to say that," says Voight. "It's a movie. It's a satire. And it's a funny satire. I don't want to point to this thing, just because there are so few films from conservative sources, and make it a target. It's a movie. Let's not burden this little horse with additional weights."
David Zucker seems to be of two minds. When I ask him if he had an objective in making the film, he borrows a line from his friend and former partner, Jim Abrahams. "Avoid embarrassment."
He adds: "I don't have any desire to be taken seriously. Really, I really don't. But having said that, I really believe this stuff. Why can't I put it out there? And I'm scared to death of Obama. If I didn't do something about it I would feel--My kids would ask: 'What did you do in the war Daddy?'"
"I donated my career to stop this s--."
Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins) .
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 04, 2008, 10:49:50 AM
Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org) British Writer Claims MSM Silence on Edwards Scandal Reflects Newspaper Decline
By P.J. Gladnick Created 2008-08-04 06:28 Perhaps it takes a foreigner looking from the outside in to give us a clear look at the overall meaning of the mainstream media silence on the alleged John Edwards scandal. In this case it is Guy Adams writing in his US Media Diary [1] in the UK Independent about "The 'scoop' the US papers ignored." (emphasis mine):
That old cliché about everything being bigger in America seems especially pertinent when attempting to describe the sheer scale of the crisis currently afflicting the US newspaper industry, which makes all Fleet Street's woes look like a summer picnic.
Last week, The Los Angeles Times decided to flog its historic downtown offices, on top of sacking 150 of its 870 journalists. So did The Chicago Tribune. Almost every title in the land is now shedding staff; a hundred New York Times hacks have been offered voluntary redundancy; Newsweek recently announced cuts. It's a bloodbath out there, as US media companies attempt to claw a pound of flesh from haemorrhaging readerships.
Consider, against this backdrop of falling circulation and a failing industry, the decision of every mainstream paper in America to ignore the juiciest political story of the month (and possibly the year): the discovery by National Enquirer hacks of John Edwards, in the corridors of a Beverly Hills hotel, where his alleged mistress and alleged love child were also staying, at half past two on the morning of Tuesday, 22 July.
Since Edwards was, until recently, hoping to be president and will almost certainly have a prominent role in any Barack Obama administration, his marital integrity is a matter of public interest. It could yet become an election issue. Yet neither the highfalutin NYT, nor the Tribune, nor even the LA Times, on whose patch the whole sordid business occurred, have yet stepped up to the plate to report it. Their old-fashioned reticence seems quaint, in this day of kiss'n'tell and chequebook journalism. But it's also depressing: one of the reasons America's newspapers are dying is their perceived pomposity. Readers say they are too timid to rock the boat; right-wingers complain (with some justification) that they conspire to suppress damaging stories about Democrats. The general public thinks they have simply become boring.
The Edwards story could be selling truckloads of newsprint. It is attracting enormous traffic online, and has been devoured by viewers of Fox, the only TV network to report it. In ignoring the affair, newspapers are sacrificing potential readers and repeating the mistakes of the 1990s, where they loftily decided against reporting Bill Clinton's many bedroom misdeeds, allowing internet sites to claim the Monica Lewinsky "scoop."
The editor of the LA Times, Tony Pierce, has higher concerns, though. He recently sent staff an edict. "There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair," it read. "Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations."
I can't pretend to know what Mr Pierce does with his 870 journalists. But if he'd asked just one of them to check out these "salacious rumours" regarding John Edwards the LA Times might have a few more readers, and fewer of the 870 staffers might have to be cut from its bloated payroll.
And in the MSM Wall of Silence category comes this report from a Kansas City Star TV writer, Aaron Barnhart, featured here [1] in NewsBusters last Friday. In contrast to his earlier claim that the MSM has finally begun to report on the John Edwards scandal, Barnhart has now backtracked [2] on his earlier position about the new "openness" of the media on this topic (emphasis mine):
Perhaps I spoke too soon about the whole "John Edwards story going mainstream" business. After a couple of reports by my colleagues elsewhere in the vast McClatchy chain appeared last week, there was bupkis out of the MSM. I mean, I got more traction trying to climb Airport Road in my 1961 Ranchero during an ice storm.
I think all the serious political reporters are just waiting for the National Enquirer to break more news. Then they'll pounce. It's a weird way to do journalism, for sure, but not that surprising. There's very little upside for news editors to be early on this story (no one is talking up Edwards as a VP right now), while the downside is considerable. The blogosphere, however, has gone wild over this story, and simply by deigning to talk about it, TV Barn — a blog, mind you, kept by a MSM entertainment critic — just had its biggest weekend in a decade of service.
Kudos to Mr. Barnhart for being man enough to admit his error and correcting it. Oh, and also thanks for the inadvertent shoutout by referencing this blog as "the adverserial" in the following description of the blogosphere reaction to his earlier piece:
Reaction to my piece has ranged from the adversarial [2] to the hotly adversarial [3] to off-the-charts, like this blogger [4] whose line-by-line analysis of my story would make any JFK/9-11/TWA 800 conspiracy theorist proud.
However, I do think Barnhart was a bit harsh in his latter description of the DBKP blog [5] as making a "conspiracy theorist proud." Any blog that describes [6] your humble correspondent in the following manner deserves praise, not scorn (emphasis proudly mine):
PJ Gladnick, of Newsbusters Writer Claims Edwards Scandal Story Has Finally ‘Trickled Out’ Into MSM [6], does a complete demolition of Barnhart’s other claims about why the MSM didn’t cover the story.
Of course, NewsBusters also took a pass on the story in December. But, NBs has been all over the story in its July reincarnation, chiefly through the efforts of Gladnick. Gladnick’s NewsBusters coverage has been a key element in holding the media’s feet to the fire over the last two weeks.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 05, 2008, 11:51:35 AM
THOUGHT POLICE By RALPH PETERS
August 5, 2008 -- AFTER a lecture to the Marine Memorial Association last week, a reporter thrust a mike toward me and asked if I thought I should be tried for war crimes for my columns in The Post supporting our military.
The reporter - who avoided revealing what outlet he was with - thought he was being wonderfully clever, but what fascinated me about the silly encounter (it was in San Francisco, after all) was how unintentionally revealing it was about the shameless hypocrisy of the left.
Think about it: For expressing my views to readers like you on these pages, hardcore leftists believe I should be put on trial as a war criminal.
It tells you all you need to know about the extreme left's view of the First Amendment: Free speech is great, as long as it's their free speech (or extreme pornography). But dissenting views must be censored. The more effective the opponent, the more important it is to shut him down.
The extreme left loves to pretend it stands for freedom. It never has and never will. From the Reign of Terror in Paris onward, its core agenda has been the tyranny of egomaniacal intellectuals. The hard left hates an open debate - especially these days, when it's out of new ideas.
The left pretends that campuses should enjoy freedom of speech, yet activist students shout down, harass and even attack speakers whose views they dislike. That's brownshirt behavior, folks - as surely as show trials are Stalinist.
Hardcore leftists never welcome a freewheeling debate - they'd rather force their beliefs on the rest of us. It's an article of faith for the left that folks like you and me are too stupid to know what's good for us (we're so dumb, some of us even believe in God).
For many years, the left's tactic was to pretend to care about average citizens. In the last century, the motto was the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (still a dictatorship, of course). Then, when American workers showed no interest in the Sovietization of Michigan, outraged leftists retreated into the Dictatorship of the Intellectuals.
Now we have the would-be dictatorship of the pseudo-intellectuals.
The stunning hypocrisy of the march-in-step left was brought home to me again on Sunday while I waited in a green room for a C-Span spot.
The show preceding mine featured a young woman, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, who's published a book about the poor, innocent, kitten-loving prisoners at Guantanamo. Her interview climaxed with the claim that Guantanamo is the equivalent of the Holocaust.
I guarantee you that no one from MoveOn or DailyKos questioned that outrageous comparison. (Nor did the patsy interviewer challenge it.)
The Holocaust's victims were 6 million innocents. The handful of prisoners at Guantanamo are accused terrorists. Guantanamo has no gas chambers; prisoners aren't forced into slave labor. They aren't tortured or starved or shot. And their trials are open to members of the press.
The truly outrageous aspect of such comparisons is that the American left, with its Stalin-redux willingness to rearrange history, neglects to mention that, outside of Japan, all of the 20th century's great totalitarian regimes had roots on the political left.
It wasn't just Lenin and Stalin whose propaganda machine prefigured MoveOn. Nazi is an acronym for "National Socialist." Read Mein Kampf. It isn't a tribute to free-market capitalism, folks. Mussolini was a populist. Mao was a leftist, as was Pol Pot. The last century's worst censors and book burners all emerged from leftist ideologies.
At the moment, the American left evokes our Communists in 1939, who contorted themselves to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler. As this column recently pointed out, Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home! disappeared from the political scene the instant Obama called for sending those troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of back to Fort Hood.
For the hardcore left, the party line always trumps conscience. MoveOn isn't new - it's just Pravda with poor punctuation.
The more I think about that proposed war-crimes trial, the more excited I get. If we could just delay it until President Obama invades Pakistan, he and I could share the prisoners' docket together.
Of course, the charges he'd face would be far worse, given that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal dictator and Pakistan's a democracy. But the left is right: We can't let war crimes go unpunished.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."
Title: Brent Bozell on Helen Thomas
Post by: ccp on August 10, 2008, 04:29:17 PM
And they wonder why people to the right of center on the political spectrum flock to Fox news and listen to talk radio? We have no where else to go if we want balanced news and journalism.
It's like today on "Meet the Press". Someone points out that talking has not helped the situation in Georgia which is opposite of Obama's claims and then you have this guy Dionne literally jumping into the conversation as fast as possible to fix this thought to one in align with the candidate he loves and says this situation actually shows why the US needs to talk more with its European allies in order to deal with the Russian-Georgian problem "so Obama's approach is still completely correct".
Are we to take this spin from a supposedly objective "journalist" by not simply changing the channel? Needless to say I turned off Meet the Press as fast as possible.
Yet Helen Thomas denies any of this. And of course she gets honored. Will there be an HBO documentary honoring Robert Novak who sounds terminally ill?
***Doubting Helen Thomas by L. Brent Bozell III August 6, 2008 Tell a friend about this site
At a screening of a forthcoming HBO documentary honoring liberal journalist Helen Thomas in Washington, Thomas was asked whether most White House reporters are liberal. “Hell no!” she thundered. I’m dying to find another liberal to open their mouths [sic]. Where are they?”
Is this Grande Dame of Journalism serious? The answer, of course, is yes. Since Ms. Thoms is dying to find vocal liberals in the news media, the least we can do is point her in the right direction.
Let’s see...
ABC’s Claire Shipman says the taxpayers, not the politicians, should sacrifice to close the budget deficit: “If every American were to pitch in $2,000, we could pay off this year's deficit.... Or, if we handed over, each of us, 500 gallons of gasoline or, in terms we could all really understand, if every American gave up 666 lattes for a year, we could pay off this year's deficit.”...Dan Rather predicts Big Oil will try to manipulate the election for John McCain: “The people who can affect the price of oil would prefer a Republican presidential candidate. Watch the price of oil. If it goes down, which it may very well, it could help John McCain quite a bit.”
The Associated Press swoons: “It's not only Obama's youth, eloquence and energy that have stolen hearts across the Atlantic. Obama has raised expectations of a chance for the nation to redeem itself in the role that Europe has loved, respected and relied upon.”...CBS’s Mark Phillips melts in Berlin: “The 200,000-plus crowd confirmed his rock star status, and his more cooperative sounding rhetoric was what the crowd wanted to hear.”...Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times rejects charges of pro-Obama bias with this doozy: “Mr. Obama's weeklong tour of war zones and foreign capitals is noteworthy because it is so unusual to see a presidential candidate act so presidential overseas.”
On “Meet the Press,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw prods Al Gore: “How can you, given the passion that you feel about this issue, turn down the idea that you could be in the administration as a Vice President or as an energy czar or as both?”...With a straight face, retiring New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse claims, “President Clinton played to the center, not the left, in selecting Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.”...NBC labels the late Jesse Helms an “outspoken ultra-rightist,” but waxed about Howard Metzenbaum as a “populist” who “always fought for the little guy.”
NBC’s Matt Lauer presses Barack Obama – as not liberal enough, quoting hotheads at the New York Times: “Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, he's zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.”...New polls from battleground states delight MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “I'm thrilled with this. Obama's strength in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Great Lakes.”
CBS’s Katie Couric sees bias now: “However you feel about her politics, I feel that Senator Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.” … And Time’s former Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson pens, “If there’s anything we need to rescue us from the last eight years, it’s brains, good judgment and experience. Obama has the first two. Gore has all three.”
NBC’s Lee Cowan waxes, "In victory and in defeat Michelle Obama had always been there, dressed as brightly as her husband's smile"....In reference to John McCain’s wife Cindy, New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley writes: “As the Equal Rights Amendment faded as a cause and conservatism made a comeback, Republican spouses became ever more careful to stay three steps behind their men and the times.”
Former ABC reporter Linda Douglass, now an Obama spokesperson, reveals the obvious: “I have fundamental differences with John McCain on the issues and always have. I don't have any problem criticizing John McCain." …AP reporter Charles Babington cheers: “Obama is something special, a man who makes difficult tasks look easy, who seems to touch millions of diverse people with a message of hope that somehow doesn’t sound Pollyannaish.”
Conservative columnist Bob Novak tells it like it is: "I've been covering presidential campaigns since 1960. I have always said I have never seen the media as much entranced by a candidate than when they were in my very first campaign, in 1960, when they were for JFK. But I'm telling you right now, the enchantment with Obama beats the JFK syndrome."
But Helen Thomas, the so-called Dean of the White House press corps, doesn’t know any liberals in the news media.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 11, 2008, 04:32:33 PM
CCP, I share your sentiments about slanted news coverage. I always regret finding out important facts through right wing sources instead of from my local paper, the evening news or a show like Meet the Press. For example, I shouldn't have to learn new, relevant facts on the opinion page of the WSJ. Those should be on page one and not just in the WSJ.
I missed the Sunday shows and was reading transcripts this am. Even on Fox, Chris Wallace was very hard on Treasury Secretary Paulson, trying to match the other shows. Assuming Paulson is guilty of something and denying it, then I would understand the tone, but he is OUR (US) treasury secretary and doing his best as far as I know. It seems that a discussion/interview tone could have worked just fine to get the facts out instead of having 100% of the questions being combative. At least he does that to both sides.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 08, 2008, 11:08:19 AM
Title: This is a good start.
Post by: ccp on September 08, 2008, 01:22:33 PM
The following is pretty much what I suspected. Kind of obvious really. Another one pushing her agenda on the rest of us.
Speaking of ridiculously biased MSNBC, here's another:
****From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Rachel Maddow
Born Rachel Anne Maddow April 1, 1973 (1973-04-01) (age 35) United States Occupation Radio host TV host Partner Susan Mikula Rachel Anne Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is an American radio personality and political pundit. She is the host of The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio and an MSNBC TV show host.[1]
Contents [hide] 1 Education 2 Radio career 3 Television career 4 Personal life 5 References 6 External links
[edit] Education A graduate of Castro Valley High School in Castro Valley, California, Maddow later obtained a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994. She then received a Rhodes Scholarship in 1995 and used it to obtain a D.Phil. in political science from Lincoln College, Oxford University.[2] Her political activism has focused on AIDS and prisoners' rights, especially the prevention of the spread of HIV and AIDS in prisons. She is an outspoken advocate for gay and progressive issues.
[edit] Radio career Maddow got her first radio hosting job at WRNX (100.9 FM, Amherst, Massachusetts) when the station held a contest for a new on-air personality.[3] She was hired on the spot to co-host WRNX's then premier morning show, The Dave in the Morning Show. She later went on to host Big Breakfast on WRSI, in Northampton, Massachusetts, for two years. She left the show to join the newly created Air America in March 2004.[2] There she hosted Unfiltered along with Chuck D and Lizz Winstead until its cancellation on March 31, 2005.[4] Two weeks later (April 14), her own two-hour-long program, The Rachel Maddow Show, began airing; it was expanded to three hours on March 10, 2008. It currently airs live from New York from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET on weekdays, with David Bender filling in the third hour for the call-in section when Maddow is on TV assignment.
[edit] Television career Maddow was a regular panelist on MSNBC's Tucker. During and after the November 2006 election, she was a frequent guest on CNN's Paula Zahn Now. In January 2008, Maddow was given the position of MSNBC political analyst and is now a regular panelist MSNBC's Race for the White House with David Gregory and MSNBC's election coverage, as well as a frequent contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.[2]
On April 4, 2008, Maddow was the substitute host for Countdown with Keith Olbermann, her first time hosting a news program on MSNBC. Maddow described herself on air as "nervous," but Keith Olbermann complimented her work and she was brought back to host "Countdown" on May 16, 2008; that day, Countdown was the highest rated news program in the key 25–54 year old demographic.[5] For her success, Olbermann awarded Maddow the 3rd ranking in his regular segment, "World's Best Persons" on the following Monday, calling her "World's Best Pinch-Hitter."[6] Maddow filled in again on Countdown for eight-and-a-half broadcasts while Olbermann was on vacation in July 2008 (including the latter half of the July 21 show).[7] Maddow has also filled in for David Gregory as host of Race for the White House.[2]
It was announced on August 19, 2008, that Maddow will take over the 9 pm ET time slot on MSNBC on September 8, 2008, replacing Dan Abrams.[8] The name of her new show will be 'The Rachel Maddow Show'.[9]
[edit] Personal life Maddow lives in Manhattan and Western Massachusetts with her partner, artist and accountant Susan Mikula.[10][11] The couple met in 1999, when Mikula hired Maddow, who was then working on her doctoral dissertation, as a gardener for her country house. They moved in together a year and a half later.[10]****
Title: NYTimes removes article
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2008, 08:03:03 AM
NYT.com Removes Article Mentioning Obama's Muslim Roots
NYT.com Removes Article Mentioning Obama's Muslim Roots
By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive) September 9, 2008 - 10:25 ET
UPDATE: Link to article in question now works as of 6:45PM.
On March 6, 2007, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof published an article entitled "Obama: Man of the World."
In it, Kristof addressed Barack Obama's upbringing, including his early life in Jakarta when he "got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school."
For some reason, the link to this piece doesn't work anymore. Does the New York Times no longer want folks to read the following paragraphs (h/t Gateway Pundit via NBer mitchflorida):
"I was a little Jakarta street kid," he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics -- and more likely to be aware of their nationalism -- if he once studied the Koran with them.
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it'll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."
Moreover, Mr. Obama's own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn't sure if his grandfather's two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite.
Further complicating the matter is that Kristof posted a link to this piece at his "On the Ground" blog the night before it appeared in print, and solicited opinions. That link doesn't work, either. Even more mysterious, Obama's official campaign website still has the article available. Makes one wonder what the Times is feeling so squeamish about.
I looked at this site; rather than impartial information, it's so biased it's.......
For example, I like and do a lot of photography. One of the comments on this site was that the angle of the camera on Palin and Gibson during their interview was intentionally biased against Palin. The site went on to say, in contrast, look at two examples of Obama and Hilary; notice how the camera makes them look equal... But the site didn't mention that the one particular camera shot that they chose as an example had Gibson (over 6'0" tall and Palin around 5'4") standing and facing each other. Of course there are height differences. What the article left out is that in most of the interview they were both seated (the two of them looked equal) and/or the camera was on Palin alone looking quite strong. The site is dribble; simple biased reporting rather than factual news. Now I am not a Palin for VP fan, but as one site said, "she appeared confident, disciplined and responded in a manner that showed her readiness to lead." Now maybe you do or don't like her answers to Gibson, or that Gibson was "too" aggressive (that is his job and Palin should be able to handle it) but that is another issue. But don't absurdly slant the facts and blame the cameraman because you don't like how Palin did in the interview.
Other foolish examples exist on the same site. No facts; it's simply biased reporting in it's worst form. To paraphrase GM, maybe they should sell McCain/Palin T shirts on their site.
Title: Bozell, Newsbusters, and the MRC
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 14, 2008, 09:14:12 AM
I'm not a big fan of Newsbusters. It's one of many offshoots from Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, all of which imbue a fairly pro-catholic and religion bias in most of their reporting. They publish CNS News Service which has always struck me as a shrill and one dimensional information source. MRC does some occasional empiric analysis of the MSM that mostly involves frequency counts, i.e. how many times a negative story appears about one candidate compared to his opponent, and tidbit can be derived from its various organs. However, much as I don't like posting pieces from Reverend Moon's house organ The Washington Times, I don't like citing the findings of the MRC and its organs as you often have to excise their orthodoxies first.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2008, 02:46:58 PM
Sounds like I should have read it first :oops: The source from whom I received the recommendation has been downgraded from "relaible source" to "usually reliable source" :lol:
Title: Blankley on the MSM's propaganda
Post by: ccp on September 25, 2008, 01:32:58 PM
Tony Blankley is a reasonable guy in my opinion, but I couldn't agree with him more. MSNB/CNBC have given up any pretenses of objectivity and are just propaganda outlets for the crats. Tony is also correct about the Economist's review of the Freddoso book which actually surprised me. I beleive the Economist pieces are almost always tilted to the left and clearly are wraped to the advantage of the crats. So it very much surpirsed me when I read the piece on the Freddoso which essentially agreed that BO's ties with Ayers is a huge eye opener to extreme left this guy is coming from and how his handlers have reconstructed him out of thin air to be a reconciliator which is completely at odds with his political life. As for BOs gaffs - yes generally not one peep from the MSM about them. Hey did anyone hear Biden's comments about FDR coming out and speaking to the citizens of the US after the 1929 crash on television - before he was President and before TV was invented? :-D
BLANKLEY: Media covering for Obama Obama remains unknown Tony Blankley Wednesday, September 24, 2008 The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08 for the first time, the major media are consciously covering for one candidate for president and consciously knifing the other. This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly and even half way honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press.
The image of Barack Obama that the press has presented is not a fair approximation of the real man. They have consciously ignored whole years in his life, and showed a lack of curiosity about such gaps that bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct. Thus, the public image of Mr. Obama is of a "Man who never was." I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real life WWII British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece, rather than Italy, in 1943. Operation "Mincemeat" involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as a Maj. William Martin, R.M. and put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a brief-case containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.
To make the operation credible, British intelligence created a fictional life for the corpse — a letter from a lover, tickets to a London theater, all the details of a life — but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media has presented to the nation as Mr. Obama is not the real man.
The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeats any McCain gaffes, while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Internet sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Mr. Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventual one or two clear sentences from Mr. Obama. Nor do you see Mr. Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the United Nations. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.
More appalling, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" suggested that Gov. Sarah Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That scene was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate for Senate in Minnesota. Talk about incest.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen.Barack Obama, D-Ill., greets supporters before his speech in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina on September 21, 2008. (UPI Photo/Nell Redmond)
But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting, is the shocking gaps in Mr. Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply has not reported on Mr. Obama's two years at Columbia University in New York, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers— after which they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Mr. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Mr. Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks the media has focused on all the colleges Mrs. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago and the close criticism of Mrs. Palin's mayoral political opponents. But in two years they haven't bothered to see how close Mr. Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.
Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Mr. Obama's rise in Chicago politics — how did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great — and unflattering details on Mr. Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book, the mainstream media continues to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, the Economist, to give Mr. Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.
The public image of Mr. Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Mr. Obama, his publicist David Axelrod and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.
Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor has written that "the media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis." That conspiracy has not only photo-shopped out all of Mr. Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent Mr. McCain's image), but it has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.
The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Mr. Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.
Tony Blankley is a syndicated columnist.
Title: VP debate moderator is a huge BO fan
Post by: ccp on October 01, 2008, 06:56:43 AM
I would give serious consideration to cancelling the debate if I were with McCain's camp. This is really ridiculous. I also noticed Couric's interviews with Palin are "gotcha" journalism. Conservatives only voice is talk radio and a few on Fox - such as Hannity (who I actually think is way too partisan and "talking point-like").
ELECTION 2008 VP debate moderator Ifill releasing pro-Obama book Focuses on blacks who are 'forging a bold new path to political power'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: September 30, 2008 8:35 pm Eastern
The moderator of Thursday's vice-presidential debate is writing a book to come out about the time the next president takes the oath of office that aims to "shed new light" on Democratic candidate Barack Obama and other "emerging young African American politicians" who are "forging a bold new path to political power."
Gwen Ifill of the Public Broadcasting Service program "Washington Week" is promoting "The Breakthrough," in which she argues the "black political structure" of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality.
Ifill declined to return a WND telephone message asking for a comment about her book project and whether its success would be expected should Obama lose. But she has faced criticism previously for not treating candidates of both major parties the same.
During a vice-presidential candidate debate she moderated in 2004 – when Democrat John Edwards attacked Republican Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton – the vice president said, "I can respond, Gwen, but it's going to take more than 30 seconds."
(Story continues below)
"Well, that's all you've got," she told Cheney.
Ifill told the Associated Press Democrats were delighted with her answer, because they "thought I was being snippy to Cheney." She explained that wasn't her intent.
But she also was cited in complaints PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler said he received after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivered her nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., earlier this month.
Some viewers complained of a "dismissive" look by Ifill during her report on Palin's speech. According to Getler, some also said she wore a look of "disgust" while reporting on the Republican candidate.
At that time she said, "I assume there will always be critics and just shut out the noise. It is surprisingly easy."
Ifill, who also works with her network's "NewsHour," is making preparations to moderate this week's debate between the two candidates for vice president, Palin and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden.. She told BlackAmericaWeb.com she thinks debates "are the best opportunity most voters have to see the candidates speaking to issues."
She said she is concerned only about getting straight answers from candidates.
"You do your best to get candidates to answer your question. But I also trust the viewers to understand when questions are not answered and reach their own conclusions," Ifill told BlackAmericaWeb.
"Four years ago, when neither John Edwards nor Dick Cheney proved capable of answering a question about the domestic epidemic of AIDS among African-American women, viewers flooded me with reaction," she said.
She said she will make her own decisions about what questions to ask, adding "the big questions matter."
In the Amazon.com promotion for her book, Ifill is described as "drawing on interviews with power brokers," such as Obama and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
In an online video promoting her book, she is enthusiastic about "taking the story of Barack Obama and extending it."
It focuses on four people, "one of them Barack Obama of course," she said.
"They are changing our politics and changing our nation," she said.
On Amazon.com, Ifill is praised for her "incisive, detailed profiles of such prominent leaders as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and U.S. Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama."
"Ifill shows why this is a pivotal moment in American history," the review says.
She told AP her view of Obama: "I still don't know if he'll be a good president."
She also describes how she met him at the 2004 Democratic convention and since then has interviewed the Illinois senator and his family.
She also boasted that by the time of the debate, "I'll be a complete expert on both" Palin and Biden.
The debate will be held at Washington University in St. Louis, which has posted information about the evening's events online.
Ifill's profile there describes her as a longtime correspondent and moderator for national news programs and includes her service as moderator of the 2004 debate between Edwards and Cheney.
However, there's no mention of her upcoming book. Nor does the website for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is organizing the meetings of the candidates, mention her book.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 02, 2008, 02:20:38 PM
By Gwen Ifill PBS Chief Political Correspondent and Gwen Ifill President, Ifill Center for Media Ethics and Gwen Ifill Editor, BarackBeat Fanzine
WASHINGTON - As expected, a blue ribbon panel from the Ifill Center for Media Ethics cleared award-winning political journalist Gwen Ifill of all charges today, ending a lengthy 20 minute investigation into "ethics" charges that most observers believe were motivated by politics and racism. Ifill, like dynamic groundbreaking President-in-Waiting Barack Obama, is Black. The complete exoneration clears the way for Ifill to moderate the Vice Presidential debate tonight between respected Senate veteran Joe Biden and former beauty pageant loser Sarah Palin.
"I would like to thank Ms.Ifill for her complete cooperation into this unnecessary politically-motivated witch hunt," said Commission Chairperson Gwen Ifill. "On behalf of the entire panel, I would like to offer my sincere apologies for dragging her in and wasting her valuable time on the basis of such obviously flimsy and bogus allegations."
Displaying her famous grace, Ifill said she harbored no ill will toward the inquiry.
"I'm satisfied by the result," said the objective, down-the-middle reporter whose work has earned her numerous awards for broadcast excellence as well as several honorary doctorates in Journalism Ethics. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got debate questions to prepare."
The Ifill Ifill commission was convened late yesterday in the wake of a whispering campaign by racist internet operatives for cancer-ravaged reactionary Senator John McCain. The scurrilous charges included objections to Ifill serving as debate moderator because of her coming best-seller, President Obama: The Audacious Winning Campaign of the African-American Adonis Who Healed the Planet and Stopped the Oceans' Rise, available November 6 from Harper Collins. Save 20% of the $29.95 list price by preordering with your Amazon or Barnes and Noble card.
Some of the whispering campaign focused on the "issue" that Ifill forgot to mention the book to the debate commission, even though the respected media professional has had much on her mind lately, including the massive economic meltdown spurred by years of failed trickle-up Republican economic policies.
Some anonymous partisan critics also faulted Ifill for her work as Editor of BarackBeat Magazine Giant Poster Pullout Special, with over 100 commemorative Obama stickers and free mini-CD of the Jonas Brothers hit "Hope Is In The House," available on newstands now -- for the low cover price of $5.95!
Those criticisms were quickly dismissed by the blue ribbon ethics panel consisting of Ifill, MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, and veteran Washington press correspondent Gwen Ifill. In its official report, the commission ruled that Ifill's book deal was consistent with prevailing journalism ethics standards, noting that 86% of national broadcast media personalities had similar pending Barack Obama book deals.
Ifill did not escape some criticism from the panel however, as she was warned several times by ranking member Olbermann that "your position of moderator is no excuse not to violently attack Palin."
"As journalism professionals, we are counting on you to do the right thing," said Olbermann, presenting her with the Center's "Dan 'Mr. October' Rather Journalist of the Year" commemorative baseball bat.
"You can depend on me," said Ifill, calmly pounding spikes into the engraved Louisville Slugger. "I promise to conduct myself in the highest traditions of Gwen Ifill."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 02, 2008, 02:24:32 PM
Question: Would Gwen Ifill wearing an "Obama 2008" be more or less ethical than her refusal to recuse herself after not disclosing her book?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2008, 03:12:43 PM
Unlike Clinton, Biden Gets Pass for Saying He Was 'Shot At' in Iraq When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, she was accused of "inflating her war experience" by Barack Obama's campaign -- but the campaign has been silent about Joe Biden telling his own questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq. By Bill Sammon
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Barack Obama and Joe Biden wave to the crowd as they arrive for a rally in Fredericksburg, Va., Saturday. (AP Photo)
When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, she was accused of "inflating her war experience" by rival Democrat Barack Obama's campaign.
But the campaign has been silent about Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, telling his own questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube last year. "Number one, you take all the troops out - you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
The senior senator from Delaware went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
The rest of the press ignored the flap at the time because Biden was viewed as having little chance of ending up on the Democratic presidential ticket. But even after Biden was selected to be Obama's running mate last month, his claim to have been "shot at" drew no scrutiny from the same reporters who had savaged Clinton for making a similar claim that turned out to be false.
FOX News has been asking the Obama campaign for details of the alleged shooting in Iraq ever since Biden was tapped to be vice president. Biden campaign spokesman David Wade promised an answer last week, but failed to provide one.
Meanwhile, the gaffe-prone Biden has again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones - this time in Afghanistan. Biden said he will grill Republican rival Sarah Palin in Thursday's vice presidential debate about "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Biden never explicitly claimed his chopper had been forced down by terrorists. Nonetheless,
John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Obama-Biden officials have been less than forthcoming about Biden's dramatic war stories.
"They never explained Biden's helicopter story from last week - which is very similar to the story about getting 'shot at' in Baghdad," Rogers said.
Bill Sammon is deputy Washington managing editor for FOX News Channel.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 04, 2008, 06:05:49 PM
BY TAMMY STABLES BATTAGLIA FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Detroit news radio station WWJ-AM (950) has fired radio personality Karen Dinkins after she wore a Barack Obama T-shirt while covering a presidential rally on Sunday.
Dinkins, contacted at her home today, said she is surprised about the reaction to her firing after Sunday’s rally at the Detroit Public Library. She said a number of news outlets contacted her after the station let her go on Monday. She said she had worked there for 13 years.
“I was really kind of surprised this is a news story,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t comment further. “I didn’t anticipate it.”
Jane Briggs-Bunting, director of the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, believes sending any type of political message — on air or off — is a no-no for journalists.
“Reporters, we’re on duty 24-7,” Briggs-Bunting said shortly before Obama took the stage this afternoon at MSU. She’s worked for Life and People magazines as well as the Free Press. “I can have an opinion, and my opinion will be heard in the privacy of a voting booth. You can’t publicize your political views on a T-shirt you wear, a button you wear, or a campaign sign in your front lawn. You represent your news organization 24-7.”
A call to WWJ-AM (950) management offices wasn’t immediately returned. But a woman who answered the phone in the newsroom said the station had received a number of calls from upset listeners.
Lorain Obomanu, Dinkins’ union representative at the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists’ Southfield office had no comment, a spokesman said today.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 04, 2008, 08:34:05 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues, moderator bias
Post by: DougMacG on October 06, 2008, 07:31:41 AM
I mentioned Gwen Ifill's bias annoying in the VP debate Thanks to the American Thinker for taking the time to go ack over the questions and analyze what we all witnessed:
Gwen Ifill's VP Debate Bias By Lee Cary A careful reading of the questions Gwen Ifill asked during the VP debate reveals several that displayed her bias.
The revelation that PBS's Gwen Ifill plans to release a book on Barack Obama on Inauguration Day raised the suspicion that her moderator role at the VP debate might be other than objective. It was. The evidence of her bias is evident in several of her questions to the candidates. Below are a few examples.
The Forced-Choice Question
The forced-choice question aims to force an answer from a choice of options defined by the interviewer. For example, in the early stages of the Afghanistan War, the late Peter Jennings asked Pervez Musharraf, then President of Pakistan, if the United States in Afghanistan was "bombing too much or too little."
It was a classic forced-choice question designed to create one of two headlines: "Musharraf Criticizes American for Bombing Too Much," or "...Too Little." Mr. Jennings intended to create controversy because controversy sells. Musharraf wisely dodged the question.
During the VP debate, Ifill used forced-choice questions to further her biases. Here's one:
"As America watches these things [Congress struggling with the bailout bill] happen on Capital Hill, Senator Biden, was this the worse of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?"
Honestly now, how many sane, reasonable people see the bailout ordeal as representing the "best" of Washington?
It was a tee-up question for Biden. He said, "neither the best nor worse," but it was, he said, a reflection of the bad economic policies of "the last eight years." In other words, it was the worse of Washington on the Bush-Republican side.
What would an un-bias question in this venue sound like? How about this: As America watches theses things happen on Capital Hill, what should they reasonably expect to be the outcome, and its impact on their lives?
Here's another example of an Ifill forced-choice question:
"Who do you think was at fault? I start with you, Governor Palin. Was it the greedy lenders? Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn't have been buying a home in the first place? And what should you be doing about it?"
Notice the choice not on the list -- Congressionally driven Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies that forced banks to make loans to people who had no ability to repay them.
Governor Palin accepted the Ifill choices and blamed ‘predator lenders" and Wall Street "greed" and "corruption."
The Bias-Premised Question
Ifill asked,
"Senator Biden, how, as vice president, would you work to shrink this gap of polarization which has sprung up in Washington, which you both have spoken about here tonight."
The key twin concepts in that question are "polarization" and "sprung up." The implied bias is that during the Bush administration polarization "sprung up."
Ifill is a smart, educated women. She knows that partisan polarization has been part of Washington since the death of the man the city's named after. She also knows that when the House voted on the first version of the bailout bill, many Democrats voted against it. The "polarization" over the bailout wasn't based on political parties. It was based on economic free-market philosophy.
Here's another Ifill bias-premised question:
"Governor and Senator, I want you both to respond to this. Secretaries of State Baker, Kissinger, Powell, they have all advocated some level of engagement with enemies. Do you think these former secretaries of state are wrong on that?"
This was a back-door effort to support Barak Obama's "no preconditions" statement made during his nomination campaign. Ifill's bias is that there's nothing wrong with what Obama said.
Ifill knows that, diplomatically, "some level of engagement with enemies" goes on all the time, often through back channels using third parties. The idea that we don't communicate with our enemies is a Beltway media myth.
Hers was a cleverly formed question, since a "no" answer to the closed-ended query (a "yes" or "no" type question) with which it ends (Do you think...?) would sustain the notion that what Obama said is consistent with, and analogous to, what the former Secretaries of State say. Ifill uses the question to establish conceptual parity without the opportunity to challenge the premise.
(Peter Jennings tied this tactic once with General Tommy Franks, and Franks made Jennings, unaccustomed to being challenged, sit up straight in his chair by saying, "Peter, I don't accept the premise of your question.")
Here's another example of a biased question.
"Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the Constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?"
Out of left field, Ifill interjects the man Democrats love to hate, Dick Cheney, into the debate. She attributes an unexplained and unsubstantiated interpretation of the Constitution to Cheney, and then asks Palin to defend or attack that interpretation. (What interpretation?)
It was a question designed to trap Palin, akin to Charlie Gibson's "Bush Doctrine" question. Palin gave a one sentence non-committal answer, and then moved away from the topic. The question gave Biden another chance to demonize Cheney, and display his strikingly faulty understanding of when the VP presides over the Senate. He said,
"The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress."
Say what? This notion when unchallenged by Ifill. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution reads:
"The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
"The Senate shall choose their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States."
Cheney, and other Vice Presidents, could sit up on the platform and preside over the Senate every time it's in session, but they've other things to do. This is Biden's "no authority" interpretation.
Here's another example of a bias-premised question from Ifill.
"Let's come full circle. You both want to bring both sides together. You both talk about bipartisanship. Once again, we saw what happened this week in Washington. How do you change the tone, as vice president, as number two?"
Surely Ifill noticed that both support and opposition to the bailout bill was "bipartisan" in that members of both parties voted both for and against it. And surely she noticed that the most inflammatory language of that week was voiced by Speaker Pelosi when she called Republicans "unpatriotic" (but had no public name-calling for her initial 95 Democrat "no" votes).
One last example under this category of bias-premised questions:
"[To Biden] Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples."
This question was designed to get the attention of the conservative Republican base in order to erode Palin's favor there. Palin noticed that and made a point of saying,
"But I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go around and round about what that actually means."
Ask yourself this question: What influence does the Vice President have on individual state marriage policies that would warrant this question in a VP debate? The answer is - none. It was all about attempting to embarrass Palin before the GOP base.
The Contrived Dichotomy Question
Listen for the contrived dichotomy buried in this convoluted question from Ifill.
"Senator Biden, we want to talk about taxes, let's talk about taxes. You proposed raising taxes on people who earn over $250,000 a year. The question for you is, why is that not class warfare and the same question for you, Governor Palin, is you have proposed a tax employer health benefits which some studies say would actually throw five million more people onto the roles of the uninsured. I want to know why that isn't taking things out on the poor, starting with you, Senator Biden."
Nevermind Ifill's specious citation of an unnamed, uncertified source as "some studies." (What studies?) Note the dichotomy she creates within her question: Biden wants to tax the rich versus Palin wants to take health insurance away from the poor.
Another tee-up for Biden. He begins his answer with,
"Well Gwen, where I come from, it's called fairness, just simple fairness."
Conclusion
To conclude that Gwen Ifill's moderating efforts displayed through her questions were without bias requires a willing suspension of disbelief.
Her moderator performance represents another sad day for America's entrenched, and ever less objective, television journalism.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 06, 2008, 08:01:47 AM
Doug, Great post. The bias is eaily there. All these questions begin the premise that everything BO says is o target and the repsondent can agree or try to disagree. I didn't watch the debate so I don't know but I would be willing to bet there were no such manipulated questions that could benefit McCain.
McCain was foolish not to demand she be withdrawn as moderator.
That all said, the Republicans tried and failing answer to economic woes which for the last 3o years, is deregulate, lower taxes is woefully no longer enough. When 1% of the population wons 90% of the wealth in this country there is clearly something wrong.
The game is clearly corrupt and rigged. I see it in the music "industry" which is nothing more than organized crime.
The Republicans fail to address this and until they do they will always be fighting the uphill battle.
I have not yet heard one Rebublican leader address this. Trickle down economics is *not* enough.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 07, 2008, 08:10:25 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 07, 2008, 11:44:50 AM
Only the liberal media could come up with this crap about McCain. The "maverick" label supposedly came from a couple of ultra liberal family members named Maverick. So of course the logic goes, how dare McCain who is a Republican call himself one. I recall the label was no problem when McCain was for campaign finance reform at a time when it would have hurt the cans more then the crats.
Leave it to the times to print this.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ Published: October 4, 2008 There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”
Skip to next paragraph
BRAND Samuel Augustus Maverick But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.
“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.
In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.
Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.
This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.
Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.
Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”
“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”
“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”
Title: PD WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2008, 01:44:42 PM
If a respected journalist says something controversial at a media conference filled with reporters and bloggers but no one reports it, what is one to make of that?
Mark Halperin, an editor at large for Time magazine and coauthor of the campaign field guide "The Way to Win," was one of several speakers at yesterday's conference on the 2008 election sponsored by Time and CNN in New York. During his panel discussion, Mr. Halperin was asked if the media had been too soft on Mr. Obama. To the surprise of the largely liberal audience, his answer was yes. He went on to say that through the subtle choice of which stories to cover and where to deploy investigative resources, the national media had handed Mr. Obama "hundreds of millions in free publicity." He attributed the positive coverage in part to the historic nature of Mr. Obama's candidacy. But he also noted that only a few hands had gone up in the crowded room when the audience had been asked how many had voted for George W. Bush.
He quickly tempered his remarks by noting that John McCain had similarly been the beneficiary of positive media coverage in his 2000 campaign. "It is interesting that the media's favorite candidates in both parties both won their party's nominations this year," he observed. He called on reporters to look at their 2008 coverage of candidates after the election, in hopes that in the future "they do a better job treating people equally."
Mr. Halperin's comments were pithy, well argued and controversial. Yet, almost 24 hours after they were made, it appears none of the bloggers and reporters present for the event have chosen to report on them -- perhaps providing validation for his core statement about how bias is reflected in the choice of which stories to report and which to ignore.
-- John Fund
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 16, 2008, 03:35:51 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 17, 2008, 06:30:57 AM
A recent ap/yahoo poll suggests that McCain "popularity" has dropped precipitously.
Frankly I don't believe it. What I do believe is that this is propaganda designed to throw McCain off his negative attacks because BO is vulnerable. The MSM can't have that. Many want us to fall for the dishonest fluff hook line and sinker.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 18, 2008, 06:26:24 AM
It is truly amazing. Every time I log on to the Yahoo web page there is another assoicated press article trying to make McCain look inept. Now they criticize him for "Joe" the plumber. And of course they dismiss Joe as not licensed. Not once do we hear anything about BO's flip flops, his changes of opinion aka Clinton with direction of whatever the polls tell him to say. Not once do we hear anything critical about him.
Oh well. WE are destined to be a weaker country I guess. Yes in the beginning BO will look wonderful flying around with photo ops from adoring fans and foreingners who want us weaker. I fear that by the time the majority of Americans have waken up it will too late. The Republicans need new leadership and ideas and people who CAN articulate and can string the ideas together into some coherent strategy that appeals to more people. The old conservatism is too simplistic IMO.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2008, 11:44:11 AM
Indeed!
And what the f#%^! is this media drivel that McCain should have vetted a private citizen-- in front of his own home yet!-- challenging His Glibness with a focused question that got His Glibness to reveal his heart on a fundamental issue?!? THAT is what matters here!!!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 18, 2008, 12:35:29 PM
October 18, 2008, 7:00 a.m.
Joe the Plumber vs. Joe the Hair-Plugger Put that in your pipe and solder it.
By Mark Steyn
Give a man enough rope line and he’ll hang himself. There was His Serene Majesty President-designate Barack the Healer working the crowd at some or other hick burg, and halfway down the rope up pops a plumber to express misgivings about the incoming regime’s tax plans.
Supposedly, under the Obama tax plan, 95 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut. You’d think that at this point the natural skepticism of any sentient being other than six-week-old puppies might kick in, but apparently not. If you’re wondering why Obama didn’t simply announce that under his plan 112 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut, well, they ran it past the focus groups who said that that was all very generous but they’d really like it if he could find a way to stick it to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and whatnot. So 95 per cent it is.
By the way, like the nightly news shows, this column now has an exclusive lavishly funded Fact Check Unit set up at great expense (a colorful graphic with the words “FACT CHECK ALERT!”) in a lame attempt to pass off our transparent political bias as some sort of scientific exercise. Our accredited credentialed licensed expert Fact Checkers from the University of Factology in the Czech Republic are standing by to rigorously Fact Check the candidate’s claims. We check facts so you don’t have to. All you have to do is sign up to our Fact-Check-Me-Now! service and we’ll send you a daily Fact Check on your Facts Machine, which costs only $79.95 from Radio Shack (sorry, no checks).
Anyway, our Fact Check Unit ran the numbers on the Obama tax-cut plan and the number is correct: “95.” It’s the words “per cent” immediately following that are wrong: that’s a typing error accidentally left in from the first draft. It should read: Under the Obama plan, 95 of the American people will get a tax cut.
Joe the Plumber expressed his misgivings about the President-in-waiting’s tax inclinations, and the O-Man smoothly reassured him: “It’s not that I want to punish your success,” he told the bloated plutocrat corporate toilet executive. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
In that sentence about you spreading the wealth around, there’s another typing error: that “you” should read “I, Barack.” “You” will have no say in it. Joe the Plumber might think he himself can spread it around just fine, but everyone knows “trickle-down economics” don’t work. So President-presumptive Obama kindly explained the new exquisitely condescending “talking-down economics:” Put that in your pipe and solder it.
Evidently the O-Mighty One was not happy after his encounter with Joe. He’s still willing to talk to Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But never again will he talk to Joe the Plumber without preconditions. Outraged at the way the right-wing whackos were talking up Joe the Plumber as if he were an authentic regular Joe like Joe Biden, the O-Bots of the media swung into action. Vast regiments of investigate reporters were redeployed from the Wasilla Holiday Inn back to the Lower 48.
“We need you down here checking out this Joe the Plumber,” editors barked to journalists.
“But I’m this close to wrapping up the Wasilla Town Library banned-book investigation!”
“Forget it! The Atlantic Monthly is claiming Joe the Plumber is Trig’s real father. We can’t get behind on this. Get to Minneapolis Airport. Joe the Plumber was seen in the bathroom with Senator Larry Craig.”
“Yes, but he was installing a stopcock…”
“Look, you went to Columbia School of Journalism. This is what we bold courageous journalists do. We’re the conscience of the nation. We speak truth to plumber.”
“Er, shouldn’t that be ‘Speak truth to power’?”
“That’s the old edition of the handbook. Now we speak truth to power-tool operators. Joe the Carpenter, Joe the Plasterer, Joe the Electrician… When you’re building utopia, you don’t want any builders getting in the way.”
Alas, as a result of this massive investment of journalistic resouces, no investigative reporter will be free to investigate ACORN voter-registration fraud or Obama’s ties to terrorist educator William Ayers until, oh, midway through his second term at least.
Under the headline “Is ‘Joe The Plumber’ A Plumber? That’s Debatable”, John Seewer of the Associated Press triumphantly revealed that Joe is not a “licensed” plumber. In fact, he doesn’t need to be licensed for the residential plumbing he does, but isn’t that just typical of Bush-McCain insane out-of-control deregulation? It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that most of these subprime homeowners got Joe in to plumb their subprime bathrooms. Next thing you know, the entire global economy goes down the toilet. Coincidence?
Joe is now the most notorious plumber in American politics since the Watergate plumbers. And they weren’t licensed, either. It turns out Joe doesn’t even make 250 grand, and it’s only the 250-thousand-a-year types who’ll be paying more (please, no tittering) under Good King Barack. Joe Biden — that’s Joe the Bluecollar Senator — said that he didn’t know any 250,000-dollars plumbers in his neighborhood, or even in the first-class club car on Amtrak he rides every night to demonstrate his bluecollar bonafides. On Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer emphasized this point, anxious to give the apostate plumber one last chance to go with the flow:
“Well, I just want to ask you now about the issue that was raised, because it’s been a little confusing to me as I try to sort it out here. To get straight here, you’re not taking home $250,000 now, am I right?”
“No. No. Not even close,” confessed Joe.
So what’s he got to be worried about?
The heart of the American Dream is aspiration. That’s why people came here from all over the world. Back in eastern Europe, the Joe Bidens and Diane Sawyers of the day were telling Joe the Peasant: “Hey, look, man. You’re a peasant in the 19th century, just like your forebears were peasants in the 12th century and your descendants will be peasants in the 26th century. So you’re never gonna be earning 250 groats a year. Don’t worry about it. Leave it to us. We know better.” And Joe the Peasant eventually figured that one day he’d like to be able to afford the Premium Gruel with just a hint of arugula and got on the boat to Ellis Island. Because America is the land where a guy who doesn’t have a 250-grand business today might just have one in five or ten years’ time.
I’m with Joe the Plumber, not Joe the Hair-Plugger. He’s articulated the animating principles of America better than anyone on either side in this campaign. Which is why the O-Bots need to destroy him. As Obama’s catchphrase goes:
“Joe the Plumber!
Can we fix him?
Joe the Plumber!
Yes, we can!”
For the record, I am not a government-licensed pundit. But I expect they’ll fix that, too.
So, while the MSM hammers Joe the Plumber, they kiss up to Louis Farrakhan and the NOI. Given that there is just one degree of separation between Farrakhan and Obama, I guess this makes a twisted sort of sense to the left.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on October 20, 2008, 11:05:18 AM
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 26, 2008, 07:37:55 PM
LA Times Hiding Incriminating Video of Obama with Radical Palestinian? Update: Ayers and Dohrn Attended Khalidi Party with Obama Politics | Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 8:18:26 pm PST
Gateway Pundit says he contacted the LA Times to ask about a video showing Barack Obama at a party for former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, mentioned by the LA Times in this article: Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama.
At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
LA Times writer Peter Wallsten said he won’t release the video or reveal his sources: Confirmed: MSM Holds Video Of Barack Obama Attending Jew-Bash & Toasting a Former PLO Operative... Refuse to Release the Video!
If true, this is media malfeasance of an almost astounding degree. They have a video that could change the stakes in this election and they’re hiding it. And they’ve been hiding it since last April.
Contact the Los Angeles Times and demand that they release this video.
UPDATE at 10/25/08 9:36:04 pm:
It gets even more interesting.
Also attending the farewell dinner described above: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.) **So Rachel, still confident in Obama's "zionist" credentials?**
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 27, 2008, 10:04:59 AM
October 27, 2008, 6:00 a.m.
The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, but the press doesn’t think it’s quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.
Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.
The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.
Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?
Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.
Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)
Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)
Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.
Wallsten’s story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):
It was a celebration of Palestinian culture — a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."...
[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than … his opponents for the White House....
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel — a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn’t know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers’s views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers — the “education reform” allies who barely know each other … except to the extent they together doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books — just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he “did not know” whether Ayers was there.)
Why won’t the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground’s 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.
The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement—The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!
END AID TO ISRAEL!
Barack Obama wouldn’t possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports … would he? I guess to answer that question, we’d have to know what was on the tape.
But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn’t Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin’s sartorial splendor?
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDFkMGE2MmM1M2Q5MmY0ZmExMzUxMWRhZGJmMTAyOGY=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 27, 2008, 10:43:36 AM
Well this in no surprise.
Jew hating Farrakhan calls BO the "messiah".
Is it a coincidence that the only Jews BO has associated with are US hating liberals/radicals?
The answer cannot be no.
I would like to put Sarah Silverman on the front lines between Israel and Hamas and Hezbellah and ask her to put her life on the line by trusting a person (BO) who has historically spent his entire adult life hanging out with haters of our country and Jews.
Oh I guess that little twirp is wiser than her grandparents who lived through the holocaust - yes?
Well again I guess we can only hope BO really is the second coming of Lincoln - only time will tell.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 28, 2008, 01:27:51 AM
It is an interesting, albeit long, detailed poll/study published a few days ago, but it clearly shows Jews favor Obama by nearly a 2:1 margin. Anotherwords CCP, an overwhelming majority of Jews in America associate themselves with and prefer Obama and the Democratic party versus McCain or the Republicans.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 28, 2008, 08:54:56 AM
JDN, Yes but this is not news. Jews have for decades been overwhemingly Democratic. I've posted before that for many Jews the Republicans are as evil as Hitler. So what is your point?
Many older Jews in Florida reportedly are afraid of BO. That is where this Sarah Silverman comes in and is doing the (for me) embarassing "great schlep" to Florida thing.
And actually a almost 2 to one margin is less than 66 percent which is less than the historical 75% of Jews who vote Democratic. So actually the number you pose is actually a *drop* for Democrats among Jewish voters.
Getting most Jews to vote Republican would be as difficult as getting most Blacks to do that.
I guess they either believe BO will protect Jews or want to believe or don't care since he is from their party. I don't know that BO will not do this but I am highly suspicious and would not risk the survival of Israel to a PResident who has apparantly had roomates and friends who are very much against Israel as has been his spiritual mentor WRight. I think it reasonable to assume he must have had some agreement with them on this regard. While there may be scant evidence for this there is absolutely zero evidence he disagreed with the anti Israel people until he was way into his campaign and the Jews around him convinced him he must do so for Jewish votes.
Remember how he will distance him from his friend and mentor of decades REv Wright. What makes anyone think he wouldn't do the same to Jews if political puch comes to shove? Just thinking out loud.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on October 28, 2008, 08:57:53 AM
Why McCain is getting hosed in the press By: John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei October 28, 2008 10:43 AM EST
Politico political editor Charles Mahtesian was e-mailing the other day with a Republican lobbyist who signed off with a plea that sounded more like a taunt: “Keep it balanced.”
A reader e-mailed us with the same sentiment in different language. “Are you f***ing joking! Your bias has stooped to an all-time low. Wait, it will probably get worse as election day nears.” Those asterisks, by the way, are hers, not ours.
And get a load of this one, from someone in Rochester, N.Y., who did not like our analysis of the final presidential debate. “You guys are awfully tough on McCain. There may be some legitimacy to the claim of press bias. Mom.”
We were all set to dismiss Harris’ mother as a crank. Same for VandeHei’s: a conservative dismayed by what she sees as kid-glove treatment of Barack Obama. Then along came a study — funded by the prestigious Pew Research Center, no less — suggesting at first blush, at least, that they may be on to something.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.
What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).
OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.
And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.
So what?
Before answering the question, indulge us in noting that the subject of ideological bias in the news media is a drag. The people who care about it typically come at the issue with scalding biases of their own. Any statement journalists make on the subject can and will be used against them. So the incentive is to make bland and guarded statements. Even honest ones, meanwhile, will tend to strike partisans as evasive or self-delusional.
Here goes anyway.
There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.
As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.
Politico was not included in the Pew study. But our researcher Alex Burns pulled out his highlighter pen and did his own study of Politico's October stories last week: 110 stories advanced a narrative that was more favorable to Obama than McCain. Sixty-nine did the opposite.
Our daily parlor game (which some readers, alas, seem to take a bit more solemnly than we do) declaring “who won the day” has awarded the day to Obama by a 2-to-1 margin. It’s doubtful even McCain would say he’s had more good days than that.
Still, journalists should do more than just amplify existing trends. A couple weeks back, Politico managing editor Bill Nichols sent out a note to the campaign team urging people to cough up more story ideas that took a skeptical look at the campaign tactics and policy proposals of the Democrat, who is likely to be president three months from now. As it happened, the response was a trickle (though Nichols and Mahtesian came up with some ideas of their own).
Responsible editors would be foolish not to ask themselves the bias question, especially in the closing days of an election.
But, having asked it, our sincere answer is that of the factors driving coverage of this election — and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama — ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil.
The main reason is that for most journalists, professional obligations trump personal preferences. Most political reporters (investigative journalists tend to have a different psychological makeup) are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being detached from their own opinions comes relatively easy.
Reporters obsess about personalities and process, about whose staff are jerks or whether they seem like decent folks, about who has a great stump speech or is funnier in person than they come off in public, about whether Michigan is in play or off the table. This is the flip side of the fact of how much we care about the horse race — we don’t care that much about our own opinions of which candidate would do more for world peace or tax cuts.
If that causes skeptics to scoff, perhaps they would find it more satisfying to hear that the reason ideological bias matters so little is that other biases matter so much more.
This is true in any election year. But the 2008 election has had some unique — and personal — phenomena.
One is McCain backlash. The Republican once was the best evidence of how little ideology matters. Even during his “maverick” days, McCain was a consistent social conservative, with views on abortion and other cultural issues that would have been odds with those of most reporters we know. Yet he won swooning coverage for a decade from reporters who liked his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics.
Now he is paying. McCain’s decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout.
Since then the media often presumes bad faith on McCain’s part. The best evidence of this has been the intense focus on the negative nature of his ads, when it is clear Obama has been similarly negative in spots he airs on radio and in swing states.
It is not our impression that many reporters are rooting for Obama personally. To the contrary, most colleagues on the trail we’ve spoken with seem to find him a distant and undefined figure. But he has benefited from the idea that negative attacks that in a normal campaign would be commonplace in this year would carry an out-of-bounds racial subtext. That’s why Obama’s long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was basically a nonissue in the general election.
Journalists’ hair-trigger racial sensitivity may have been misplaced, but it was not driven by an ideological tilt.
In addition, Obama has benefited from his ability to minimize internal drama and maximize secrecy — and thus to starve feed the press’ bias for palace intrigue. In this sense, his campaign bears resemblance to the two run by George W. Bush.
Beyond the particular circumstances of McCain v. Obama, there are other factors in any race that almost always matter more than the personal views of reporters.
The strongest of these is the bias in favor of momentum. A candidate who is perceived to be doing well tends to get even more positive coverage (about his or her big crowds or the latest favorable polls or whatever). And a candidate who is perceived to be doing poorly tends to have all events viewed through this prism.
Not coincidentally, this is a bias shared by most of our sources. This is why the bulk of negative stories about McCain are not about his ideology or policy plans — they are about intrigue and turmoil. Think back to the past week of coverage on Politico and elsewhere: Coverage has been dominated by Sarah Palin’s $150,000 handbags and glad rags, by finger-pointing in the McCain camp, and by apparent tensions between the candidate and his running mate.
These stories are driven by the flood of Republicans inside and out of the campaign eager to make themselves look good or others look bad. This always happens when a campaign starts to tank. Indeed, there was a spate of such stories when Obama’s campaign hit turmoil after the GOP convention and the Palin surge.
For better or worse, the most common media instincts all have countervailing pressures. Countering the bias in favor of momentum is the bias against boredom. We’ve seen that several times this cycle — an outlying poll number being pumped to suggest big changes in a race that is basically unchanged. There’s a good chance you’ll see this phenomenon more in the next week.
Then there is the bend-over-backward bias. This is when journalists try so hard to avoid accusations of favoritism that it clouds critical judgment. A good example were stories suggesting Palin held her own or even won her debate against Joe Biden when it seemed obvious she was simply invoking whatever talking points she had at hand, hanging on for dear life.
Finally, one of the biases of journalists is the same one that is potent for almost all people: the one in favor of self-defensiveness. That’s why, even though we think ideological bias is pretty low on the list of journalistic maladies in this election, it is not viable for reporters to dismiss criticism out of hand.
So there you go, Ma: We’ll look into it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on October 28, 2008, 09:55:54 AM
Is it a coincidence that the only Jews BO has associated with are US hating liberals/radicals?
The answer cannot be no.
I would like to put Sarah Silverman on the front lines between Israel and Hamas and Hezbellah and ask her to put her life on the line by trusting a person (BO) who has historically spent his entire adult life hanging out with haters of our country and Jews.
Oh I guess that little twirp is wiser than her grandparents who lived through the holocaust - yes?
My point CCP was/is that rather than the ONLY Jews BO has associated with are US hating liberals/radicals as you put it, I think you are wrong, in truth an overwhelming majority of all Jews associate with Obama. Or are you saying in your logic that all Jews who support Obama hate the United States? I believe most Jews love America and an overwhelming majority of Jews support Obama as being best for America.
As for historical margins, this same report goes on to point out "that as of this writing (10.20.08) we would project a 75% - 25% margin in favor of Obama among Jewish voters." This despite significant changes among the demographics of Jewish voters since Rooselvelt's time favoring the Republican party.
I don't think it is "reasonable to assume (that Obama would risk the survival of Israel) he must have had some agreement with "them" on this regard." Proof ??? And, I think the vast majority of Jewish voters are intelligent and conscientious. They will vote for someone whom they think is good for America, good for Jews in America, and good for Israel. And they are overwhelmingly choosing Obama over McCain.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 28, 2008, 10:42:03 AM
JDN,
Well I meant early on it seems the Jews BO had associated with appear to be "radicals" or far left and simply all those who now support him among the larger overall Jewish community.
" I think the vast majority of Jewish voters are intelligent and conscientious."
Yes, but I believe you underestimate many Jew's hatred for all things Republican.
As a Jew who is familiar with the very ardent party affiliation of most Jews and their total hatred for anything Repbublican you overestimate their willingness or even emotional ability to cross over to the Republican side. If it helps you understand what I mean try to consider the absolute visceral hatred some Blacks have for Republicans. Many Jews are the same in this regard. They *will not* open up in this way. They will put misgivings aside to vote for a guy who is now saying things he has never said to vote party lines.
And no I am not saying Jews who support BO hate the US. But I have not been made aware of Jews of the political center or the right who he has associated with prior to late in his campaign. But I have not studied his life history so I could be wrong as to this point.
I am in the minority among my fellow Jews as for my leanings to the right. Maybe I am like Jackie Mason.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 28, 2008, 11:06:38 AM
SB post from Politico?: "...for most journalists, professional obligations trump personal preferences. Most political reporters (investigative journalists tend to have a different psychological makeup) are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being detached from their own opinions comes relatively easy.
Joking, right??? The main media MISSED nearly all the negative stories and contradictions within the Obama campaign and picked up just a few of them belatedly. How do they know the polls tell the story if the polls are based on what people read and see through biased coverage. Was it published ANYWHERE in the mainstream media how much of the drivel from Biden in his debate was false - off by 2000% on his repeated Iraq-Afghanistan cost comparison. "Let me repeat that" Off By 2000%! Or do we mostly hear that someone spent too much on new clothes for Palin. Where is Obama pounded now for LYING about campaign spending limits, a 3/4 of a BILLION DOLLAR mistake that buys the White House - mostly silence, but the NY Times ran hit piece on Mrs. McCain and another time on some alleged Sen. McCain sex scandal that never turned into anything. Meanwhile they missed by a year what others carried on the "GOD DAMN AMERICA" pastor disaster. Was Obama or Biden EVER called on the carpet for use of the false stat that America only has 3% of the world's oil reserves when they only count as reserves the areas where congress already allows drilling? Or that tax increases must be delayed because they will admittedly choke out growth? If they choke out growth why are they good for us later? There's a question not likely to be asked by Katie Couric or Charles Gibson.
I don't know a msm-only reading liberal who even knows that Tony Rezko (convicted felon) owns the Obama's side yard or that ACORN is a leftist political group that was channeled hundreds of thousands of foundation and taxpayer funds through Obama. I've heard maybe a hundred times, even from McCain himself, of his low finish in school, but never that the Magna Cum Laude candidate picked the bumbling Joe Biden from the bottom 11% of his class.
Did you see Gibson's interview with Obama June 4 after clinching the nomination: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5000184&page=1 "I'm curious about your feelings last night. It was an historic moment. Has it sunk in yet?" :What did she say?" "do you say to yourself: Son of a gun, I've done this?" "did you truly, in your gut, think that a black man could win the nomination of a major party to be president of the United States?" "Is the hardest part of all this behind you or ahead of you?" "Has the joyfulness of this hit home yet? Do you take joy from it?"... Compare the tone with the grilling of Palin. Maybe I just don't understand professional detachment.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2008, 11:10:52 AM
I'm born and raised Jewish in a liberal New York home.
Look at me now :lol:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on October 28, 2008, 12:27:26 PM
DMcG,
I think the article makes some good points. Are reporters biased? Yes. Have they been more biased towards Obama? Yes. The media is going with their perceived money man 'cuz he's pulling in the readers and viewers. It ain't right, but that the way it goes sometimes. And it's not going to change now, or in the forseeable future.
It has become increasingly apparent that the majority of American public just doesn't care about Obama's past. Period. Do I care who Obama knows and what shady stuff he does? You betcha. But most people don't. Think about it, had a politician with ties to a former radical, crazy business investments, and links to questionable voting run for office in '00 or '04 he wouldn't have lasted through primary season.
And that's not a matter of polls or biased news. It's a matter of people freaking out about their jobs, the economy, two wars. I think many people are thinking "I don't care if the guy has two heads at this point, we just want something different." Not better, not safer, not proven, just plain different. I see people's approach to this election (unless you are a die-hard party liner) like a roll of the dice. "Screw it, I'll go with the new guy.", they're saying. And the media is going along with it 'cuz they can and no one will tell them any differently. Don't like how we report? Fine, watch/read something else.
Fortunately for me, I actually read news from both sides. And I see bias on both sides. And I can base my decisions on my own research. I wish more people would. But I'm guessing a lot of politicians and pundits would be out of jobs if this was the case.
But really, what do you expect from news these days? Conservatives play to their audience, Liberals to theirs. Everyone one screams bias, and then attempts to force their bias onto the public, all the while acting like the victim.
The argument from conservatives is always that the public are sheep and are being force fed information by the liberal media. "There is no outlet for conservative viewpoints!" is the cry heard over and over. Bullsh*t. The "mainstream media" argument became ridiculous years ago. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly consistently hold larger market shares than their competitors, as does Fox News. They are officially mainstream now. And reaching huge audiences.
The argument from liberals is always that the public are being propagandized by the right instead of being told "the truth". Who's truth? Ultra liberal leanings by newspapers and newscasts are hardly truthworthy. Making every conservative out to be a war hungry, gun toting, christian evangelical, uneducated racist isn't the way to make friends. And it sure ain't objective.
I for one, appreciate hearing all sides of the argument, but only when presented in an intelligent, objective way. The rantings of the right turn me off, as do the pandering and whining of the left. And yelling louder (on either side) doesn't make you right, it just makes you seem like an a-hole. I consistently listen to conservative talk radio, and read conservative websites and blogs, just as I read independent, liberal, and sometimes crazy conspiracy websites and blogs. Why? Because it is the ONLY way to get a plethora of perspectives and formulate MY OWN OPINION.
Such a shame that this country has turned into "Think my way or your not worth listening to." This election season has managed to lower the discussion to a base "I right. You're wrong.", which is just plain stupid. No concession to others' arguments and certainly no common middle ground. Truly unfortunate.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 28, 2008, 02:47:26 PM
Hi Doug,
"Or do we mostly hear that someone spent too much on new clothes for Palin"
I had to wonder if anyone ever question how much Hilary spends on clothes, jewelry, and make up artists.
Every single time I saw her she wears different top of the line pants outfits.
I am not clear if she ever wore the same carefully chosen outfits twice. One can only imagine the team of fashion consultants she paid off. Trying to look like the Presidents of old with her fluffy collars and all. But that is fine. No one made and issue of it and neither did I. It is just the hypocrisy and hatred of Palen by the lefty media that is not.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on October 28, 2008, 05:20:28 PM
Not that I care one way or another about the clothes, bigger issues exist, but Hillary and Obama pay for their own clothes; they are not asking the DNC to pay for them. In contrast, $150,000 in political donations paid for Palin's wardrobe. I think that is the issue. Wrong or right; I don't know.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 28, 2008, 08:31:05 PM
What of the 5.3 million dollar Barackopolis in Denver? Does the money spent on that offend anyone as much as Palin's clothes?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 28, 2008, 09:04:14 PM
Regarding Palin's clothes, I agree it's a PR gaffe, but in context - she had already been ridiculed by the east coast critics for lacking good fashions, not to mention that 2 wars are going on and the world economy is in panic. GM, interesting comparison, will greek-column-gate get 35 times the scrutiny? I guess not.
SBMig, nice post. We agree on a lot of it. I agree the politico piece was a nice addition to the discussion which can get one sided here, especially in the bias thread :-). It's very true that there are plenty of outlets for conservatives - Rush, Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, blogs like Powerline. The conservative sites have huge followings and fill a void but I wish people would get at least a summary of another view from the mainstream.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 29, 2008, 07:10:13 AM
In the realm of opinion, there are obviously conservative voices out there. As far as the Mainstream Media that's supposedly filled with objective and professional journalists, is anyone seriously going to try to argue that they don't have a hard left bias?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 29, 2008, 07:29:58 AM
October 29, 2008, 0:00 a.m.
Snapshots of the Tank Notorious Obamedia moments of 2008.
By Michelle Malkin
To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth II, 2008 is not a year on which honest journalists shall look back with undiluted pleasure. This has turned out to be even more of an annus horribilis than 2004, when Dan Rather’s fake Bush/National Guard memo fiasco redefined the “BS” in CBS News. There were so many mainstream journalists swimming in the Democratic tank this year, the nation’s newsrooms looked more like overcrowded aquariums at PetSmart.
In less than a week, the campaign season will be over. But the Obamedia’s most shameful biases and notorious blunders shall not be forgotten. Here are my Top Five, by no means comprehensive and in no particular order:
1. The Los Angeles Times and the suppressed Obama/Jew-bash videotape.
In April, L.A. Times reporter Peter Wallsten reported on a 2003 farewell party for Rashid Khalidi, a radical Palestinian Liberation Organization spokesman/adviser turned Ivy League professor. The anti-Israel Arab American Action Network sponsored the gala. In attendance: good neighbors Barack Obama and Weather Underground terrorist duo Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Wallsten reported that the “event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.” But the news organization refuses to let readers watch the video of Obama and his left-wing terrorist friends and will not release the tape. It’s “old news” now.
The paper had no problem, however, embedding a video clip of Sarah Palin’s 1984 swimsuit pageant on its gossip blog and deeming it newsworthy.
2. Ogling Obama. In May, CNN posted “breaking news video” of female journalists on Obama’s press plane fawning over the Democratic presidential candidate as he talked on his cell phone. The caption listed on the network’s website: “Obama in jeans: Sen. Barack Obama surprises the press corps by wearing jeans.”
In the clip, several members of the press corps yell at a Secret Service agent to “sit down” because she’s obstructing the view of their beloved Obama. They giggle and sigh as Obama straddles over a row of seats and they furiously click away on their cameras. “You’re killing us,” one of them says breathlessly.
No, you’re killing yourselves.
Runners-up for Most Drool-Covered Groupies: The journalist who squealed “He touched me!” at the UNITY minority journalists’ convention in July; the MSNBC producer who broke down and shed tears of joy upon learning that The One had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination; MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who proclaimed that he “felt a thrill up his leg” after an Obama speech in February; Oprah Winfrey, who confessed she did a “happy dance” for Obama; and the writer for the German publication Bild, who worked out with Obama at the Ritz-Carlton in Berlin and reported: “I put my arm around his hip — wow, he didn’t even sweat! WHAT A MAN!”
3. The Atlantic Monthly’s deranged photographer. Publisher David Bradley’s once-esteemed magazine hired celebrity lens-woman Jill Greenberg to snap portraits of John McCain. Greenberg, an outspoken left-winger who goaded children into crying on film and captioned the images with anti-Bush slogans, sabotaged the photo shoot and gloated about it on a photo industry website.
After tricking McCain into standing over a strobe light to create ugly shadows on his face, she then posted vandalized versions of the imagery on her personal website with crude, vulgar labels. One featured McCain with fangs and blood dripping from his mouth — with the Greenberg-added words, “I am a bloodthirsty warmongerer (sic).” Another piece of her “art” showed an ape (a favorite Greenberg subject) defecating on McCain’s head. The highly respected editors at Atlantic professed shock despite Greenberg’s notoriety. The name of her blog: “Manipulator.”
4. The quote doctors and math-manglers at CNN.
In a botched attack on Sarah Palin, CNN reporter Drew Griffin cited National Review writer Byron York allegedly questioning Palin’s abilities and character: “The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above.” York, however, was characterizing the press coverage of Palin.
In a botched tally, CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien proclaimed that an audience poll showed “overwhelming” preference for Joe Biden after the vice-presidential debate. A freeze frame of the show of hands, however, showed the audience split. The mathematically challenged O’Brien also claimed that Palin slashed Alaska’s special-needs budget by 62 percent (which she recycled from the liberal Daily Kos blog), despite the fact that the governor increased special needs funding by 12 percent. Facts, schmacts.
5. Us magazine publisher Jann Wenner’s Obama apparatchiks. The gossip mag’s partisan slime job on Palin and her family (“Babies, lies, and scandal”) last September opened the floodgates of Palin-bashing across the mainstream media and was the nadir of the year. Wenner — a prominent Obama backer who ran countless hagiographies of him in sister publication Rolling Stone and featured the Obamas with the slavering headline “Why Barack Loves Her” on Us nagazine’s June cover — had his media flack e-mail the anti-Palin hit piece to all media in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention: “Might be useful as an illustration of how the news is playing out,” the flack wrote.
Indeed, the side-by-side covers of the Palin smears and the Obamas’ deification perfectly illustrate the year in Obamedia.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmNmZDM0NzdiZmVjOGYzOWFmMTRjZjU5MjZkNmJiZmQ=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on October 29, 2008, 03:54:26 PM
Khalidi Tape: The L.A. Times Is on Firm Journalistic Ground
By Bill Sammon Deputy Managing Editor, Washington Bureau, FOX News Channel
I’m no cheerleader for The Los Angeles Times and I’d like to see their videotape of Barack Obama praising a PLO activist as much as the next guy, but as far as I can tell, the newspaper is on firm journalistic ground in refusing to make the tape public.
To me, it’s pretty simple. Reporter Peter Wallsten made an agreement with a source to refrain from publicly disclosing the tape. Unless that source lets Wallsten off the hook, the reporter is journalistically bound to abide by the agreement, regardless of how much heat his newspaper takes from pundits on TV.
Indeed, Wallsten has little choice in the matter. If he were to cave in to mounting public demands for the tape, no self-respecting source would ever give him another shred of information. Nor should they.
Some critics have questioned why Wallsten would agree to withhold the videotape, which purportedly shows Obama with Rashid Khalidi and other Palestinians who expressed criticism of U.S. and Israeli policies. These critics note that Wallsten was allowed to describe the gathering –- a going-away party for Khalidi — in his story, so why can’t he release the tape in full?
This aspect of the debate, while perhaps interesting, is nonetheless irrelevant. Again, a deal is a deal, even if it’s a dumb deal. Besides, there may be a perfectly legitimate reason for withholding the tape, such as the possibility that it contains footage that would compromise the unnamed source’s identity.
Conspiracy theorists now point to the fact that Wallsten’s story, which was published back in April, contained no explanation about the agreement to withhold the tape from public disclosure. The only explanation of any sort, they note, was this cryptic line: “The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by the Times.”
But journalistically speaking, there was no compelling reason for The Times to disclose the particulars of the agreement its reporter had reached with the source. Besides, there was no way of knowing months in advance that the story would become a political football in these final days of the campaign.
Still, other critics have complained that an initial statement released by The Times earlier this week did not mention its agreement with the source. But that does not mean such an agreement did not exist. Unless we have evidence to the contrary, I’m afraid we have to take The Times at its word when it says, however belatedly, that such an agreement indeed existed.
Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson told me today that Republican presidential candidate John McCain was wasting his time attacking the newspaper for not releasing the tape. Wolfson noted that McCain would be better off, at least politically, demanding that Obama, his Democratic opponent, call for the tape’s release.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Title: Nothing to See Here. . . .
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 30, 2008, 11:40:35 AM
October 30, 2008, 1:00 p.m.
The Los Angeles Times’s Strange Notion of Journalistic Ethics Give us the tape … or at least a transcript of Obama’s radical shindig.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Journalistic ethics?
When it comes to insulting our collective intelligence, the Obamedia soundtrack of the ongoing campaign breaks new ground on a daily, indeed an hourly, basis. Still, the Los Angeles Times takes the cake.
Change you can believe in is a short hop from fairy tales you can be sold. In that spirit, the Times tells us, we’d really, really love to release the videotape we’re holding of that 2003 Khalidi shindig — the one where Barack Obama joined a motley collection of Israel-bashers, including the former terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to sing the praises of Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for PLO master-terrorist Yasser Arafat. But alas, our hands are tied by journalistic ethics.
Of course the ever ethical Times would never try to skew election coverage in favor of a candidate it has recently endorsed (after blowing kisses at him for two years). Nor would the newspaper give its readers anything but a complete, accurate, and truthful account of an event like the Khalidi Bash that it deemed worthy enough to cover. You can take that to the bank. But, gosh-darn, it turns out that a “source” the Times won’t name supposedly provided reporter Peter Wallsten with the videotape on the solemn promise that the paper would never let it see the light of day … except to report on it as the Times saw fit.
If you believe that one, I’ve got a tax cut for you.
Let’s suspend disbelief for a moment. Let’s pretend that there is really some sentient being out there who actually leaks a videotape to a reporter wanting and expecting the event depicted to be given news coverage but somehow not wanting or expecting the tape itself to be published. And let’s further pretend that this phantom source who doesn’t want to tape disclosed nevertheless gives the tape to the newspaper rather than keeping control over it himself.
Let’s say we buy that this highly unlikely scenario actually happened. That would still not prevent the Los Angeles Times from putting out a transcript of the Khalidi testimonials and other speechifying.
We know, for example, that Barack Obama spoke for several minutes. Yet the Times has provided us with only the most cursory summary — to be more precise, not a summary but an account. A summary is a synopsis that fairly reflects what was said. Reporter Wallsten, to the contrary, fleetingly tells us only that “Obama adopted a different tone [from rabid anti-Israel speakers] in his comments and called for finding common ground.”
How so? We’re not told. Here’s the entirety of the Times description of Obama’s remarks:
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”
How very enlightening. What were the topics of the dinner-table talk? What blind spots and biases was Obama referring to? Did anything in his speech provide clues? We have no idea: the Times doesn’t tell us.
Moreover, we also know that several speakers that night sang paeans to Khalidi — who regards the establishment of a Jewish state in “Palestine” as the Nakba (i.e., “The Catastrophe”) and justifies terrorist attacks against Israeli military and government targets. The Times concedes the party was a forum “where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.” Yet, again, we are given only two blurbs:
[A] young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.” One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”
You know there was a lot more where that came from, spouted by several other speakers whom the Times story fails to name. Why not put out a transcript of what was said and by whom? And if the Times has information about what was in the commemorative book that was prepared for the occasion of Khalidi’s triumphant departure to assume the Edward Said chair at Columbia University, why not put that out too?
Even if you accept for argument’s sake the bunk about honoring the “source’s” supposed wishes, the newspaper wouldn’t need to release the tape in order to give us a more comprehensive account of what happened that evening. So it’s not that the Times is simply withholding the tape. The Times is trying to suppress the story. Not the story as Wallsten spun it back in April. The full story.
The full story couldn’t be more relevant. Barack Obama says he is a staunch supporter of Israel. The importance of the Khalidi festivities isn’t simply that Obama lavished praise on a man who was an Arafat apologist — although that is troubling in itself. What also matters is that many speakers (no doubt including Obama’s good friend Khalidi himself) said extremely provocative things about Israel and American policy.
While that went on, Obama apparently sat there in tacit acceptance, if not approval. He didn’t get up to leave. He wasn’t roused to a defense of his country. He didn’t deliver a spirited condemnation of Islamic terror. He just sat there. And when it came his turn to speak, he spoke … glowingly … about Khalidi. He was clearly comfortable around the agitators and, equally crucial, they were clearly comfortable spewing their bile in front of him — confident that they were certainly not giving offense.
Why would the Times think it’s not newsworthy to tell us in detail what Obama sat through and chose not to refute? He says he supports Israel, but shouldn’t we get a peek at what he actually does when Israel is under attack. After all, he wants to be in charge and soon the attacks may be more than just verbal.
All of that could be made known by the publication of a transcript, without breaching any purported promise to the purported source.
But, the Times sputters, we’ve already done that news story back in April. The material facts have already been publicized thanks to our crack reporting.
Really?
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were at the party. Given the controversy over their extensive relationship with Obama — sitting on boards together, doling out millions of dollars together, lauding each other’s writings, joint appearances at conferences, Obama’s introduction to Chicago politics in the Ayers/Dohrn home, etc. — didn’t the Times think their attendance together at a party for Khalidi was worth reporting?
Given that Obama now preposterously claims he and Ayers barely know each other, didn’t the Times think it was worth mentioning that guest-of-honor Khalidi, a very close friend of Obama, just happens also to be a very close friend of Ayers?
No.
The party was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) — an organization founded by Khalidi and his wife (who also worked for the PLO’s press agency) and lavishly funded by Obama and Ayers when they sat together on the board of the Woods Fund. Did the Times think that was newsworthy?
Again, apparently not. Wallsten’s article does not mention the AAAN’s role in the party. He describes the AAAN “a social service group” which is headed by Khalidi’s wife and was given a $40,000 grant by the Woods Fund when Obama sat on the board. In fact, AAAN is an activist Palestinian organization that regards Israel as illegitimate and supports driver’s licenses and welfare benefits for illegal aliens. Further, it was founded by both Khalidi and his wife, it actually received almost twice as much Woods Fund support as the Times said (i.e., $75,000, not $40,000), and, at the time of those grants, one of Obama’s partners on the board was Bill Ayers.
Besides Obama and Khalidi (about whose speeches the Times tells us precious little), who else spoke at the party? What was said? What was written in the commemorative book prepared for the occasion? The Times doesn’t tell us.
In fact, though the Times’s story runs 2000 words, very little of it is about the party the Times now contends it covered adequately. Most of it is dedicated to probing what Wallsten frames as the alluring mystery of Barack Obama’s position on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. Is he really a strong Israel supporter? Do anti-Israeli Palestinians really have good reason to regard him as a friend? Would he shift away from the strong U.S. alliance with Israel to a more “even-handed” approach—as one Chicago Palestinian-rights activist claims to have heard Obama say he favored (Obama denies it)?
We don’t know. The Times raises these and other questions, acknowledges that they are vexing, but then withholds from us critical information by which we might draw our own informed conclusions.
The mainstream press, of course, is urging Congress to enact a “shield law,” protecting reporters from government subpoenas. To a former prosecutor, that’s worth noting. You see, in matters of great public importance, prosecutors have ethical obligations, too. One of them says that if you provide an incomplete or misleading version of an event to the public’s courts, and you have information in your file that would clarify the situation, you are duty-bound to disclose that information. That way, the factfinder is equipped to make an intelligent, informed decision about what the truth is.
By contrast, the mainstream media want the right to mislead you, to provide you with a woefully incomplete record, but to deprive you of clarifying information even when it is readily at their disposal. You just have to take their word for what happened, and never you mind the details.
Are you comfortable taking the Obamedia’s word for it? Or do you think you ought to have a look at what Los Angeles Times has unilaterally decided not to show you?
The time for a newspaper to start worrying about journalistic ethics is when it publishes the story, not six months later when, in the stretch run of a crucial election, it gets called on an obviously incomplete report. Ethics, furthermore, are about fair and honest treatment. If the videotape at issue involved John McCain rubbing elbows with radicals or the CIA trying to protect national defense secrets, the Times would publish it and revel in the inevitable Pulitzer for its “courage” in doing so.
Let’s see the tape … or at least a transcript.
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the FDD’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDBlZjBiNzdlNzhlOWY0MTBkODgwZDJlYjFmMjJiNTI=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 30, 2008, 01:08:48 PM
***Not that I care one way or another about the clothes, bigger issues exist, but Hillary and Obama pay for their own clothes; they are not asking the DNC to pay for them. In contrast, $150,000 in political donations paid for Palin's wardrobe.***
Do you really think that distinction if true is the issue?
It was really all about humiliating and embarrasing Palin. Besides Hillary and co. had 100 million from years of people throwing money to them along with their political aspirations. Palin doesn't have that kind of money - at least yet.
Title: Mccain Org gave money to PLO spokesman
Post by: rachelg on October 30, 2008, 04:34:09 PM
I am obliviously not a fan of the PLO and I think both McCain and Obama are Pro-Israel.
The Khalidi Gambit: McCain Attacks Obama for Connection to Palestinian Activist Whose Work McCain Helped Fund
October 29, 2008 10:35 AM
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., did a live interview with Radio Mambi in Miami this morning in which he went after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for his connections to a “PLO spokesman.”
McCain was referring to Rashid Khalidi, who, five years ago, Obama toasted at a going-away party before Khalidi headed off to New York City to become a professor at Columbia University.
In April, the Los Angeles Times’s Peter Wallsten wrote about the toast, saying a “special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
“His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been ‘consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases...It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary, not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table,’ but around ‘this entire world.’”
Wrote Wallsten: “In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.
“He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a ‘war crime’ and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.”
Wallsten had a videotape of the Khalidi party, which conservatives and, as of today Sen. McCain, are calling upon him to release.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, has said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
McCain today said, “The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public...I’m not in the business of talking about media bias...but what if there was a tape of John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit...I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different.” But McCain has his own connection to Khalidi.
In 1993, McCain became chairman of the International Republican Institute. He still chairs that respected organization.
That same year, Khalidi helped found the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, self-described as “an independent academic research and policy analysis institution” created to meet “the need for active Palestinian scholarship on issues related to Palestine.” (Its archived Web site is HERE.)
Khalidi was on the board of trustees through 1999.
According to tax returns, the McCain-chaired IRI funded the organization Khalidi founded and served on to the tune of $448,873 in 1998 (click HERE to see the tax return)* as first reported by Seth Couter Walls at HuffPo.
The IRI continued to give money to the CPRS after Khalidi left the group as well.
Asked to respond to this seeming contradiction, McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb writes, “It's long been clear that Obama and Khalidi have a close relationship -- that they were frequent dinner companions. It is another in a series of questionable associations, but it is not the focus of our request that the LA Times release this tape. It's clear from the Times story that the evening featured speeches that were anti-Semitic in tone and anti-Israel in nature. As our initial statement said, 'This campaign wants to know how Barack Obama responded to that hate-speech, whether he was mingling with Ayers, who he once described as 'just a guy in my neighborhood,' and anything else that might be of interest to voters now deciding who to support in this election.'”
(Goldfarb is referring to two speakers at Khalidi's 2003 farewell party: "a young Palestinian American (who) recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace,'" and another who "likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology.'")
Continued Goldfarb: “Why would the media withhold information that might be damaging to a presidential candidate? It is certainly a luxury that you and your colleagues have never afforded this campaign.” For his part, Obama was asked about his relationship with Khalidi in May at an event with Jewish voters in Boca Raton, Fla.
“I do know him because I taught at the University of Chicago,” Obama said. “And he is Palestinian. And I do know him and I have had conversations. He is not one of my advisors; he’s not one of my foreign policy people. His kids went to the Lab school where my kids go as well. He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel’s policy.
“To pluck out one person who I know and who I’ve had a conversation with who has very different views than 900 of my friends and then to suggest that somehow that shows that maybe I’m not sufficiently pro-Israel, I think, is a very problematic stand to take," Obama said. "So, we gotta be careful about guilt by association.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 30, 2008, 04:51:06 PM
Rachel,
You can't see a difference in the degree of connection between Obama and McCain to Khalidi ?
Title: Inane Equivocation
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 30, 2008, 08:00:26 PM
Uhm, yeah, what GM said.
Imagine a Republican sitting in a room where people were being disparaged due to their religion or the color of their skin, and then try to imagine a news organization sitting on a video of the incident. Never happen, it'd be all over the airwaves faster than you can say "news cycle."
Alas, you don't have to imagine someone trying to excuse similar behavior by pointing out tangential associations that have nothing to do with the point under discussion as you've done it already. But hey, if sitting on a board that gives money to an organization that has someone in it who supports terror is bad, then I guess serving on a board where the guy sitting next to you supported terror tactics is even worse, right?
This sort of inane equivocation doesn't bode well for informed discussion. . . .
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on October 31, 2008, 07:12:26 AM
Newspapers often don't give our their notes or support documentation. And if it was going to be requested, it should have been done six months ago, not a week before the election and thereby used sole to inflame without chance of explanation. And yes, McCain too has had association with the Khalidi.
I too think both McCain and Obama support Israel. And while I am not a fan of the PLO, I think most moderates agree something needs to be done to resolve this problem or in the end Israel will be the loser.
BBG as have others have stated "that Khalidi supports terror". But what is a "terrorist"? Anyone who opposes us? Anyone who supports the PLO? Agree or disagree, they too believe they are in a war. And many countries (allies) are beginning to support the PLO's position. Just because someone disagrees with you and is Muslim, doesn't make them a terrorist...
And by most articles I have read Khalidi is a moderate. You may not like Obama, but don't you think someone needs to begin a dialogue, to intercede in this dilemma? And it is tough to intercede when you are not willing to listen to both sides.
Wrote Wallsten: “In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.
“He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a ‘war crime’ and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.”
Also, I doubt if Columbia would hire a true "terrorist" in a full professorship position. A lecturer maybe :-D Rather I think Columbia wants a diverse of opinion. Nothing wrong with that.
Title: Drudge headline
Post by: ccp on October 31, 2008, 07:49:28 AM
For those who maybe don't look at Drudge - you certainly won't see this on MSM unless CNN picks it up only after Fox presses the issue.
To me this is an example of what we are in for and is abuse of power far beyond what the framers of the Constitution would have ever desired.
This is censorship of the press no different than McCarthyism of the 50's and just a starter smaple of what we are in for.
I really can't believe this is happening in 2008. On the one bright side Novak reports the Dems won't get their super majority so fillibustering is this country's last stand against outright socialism.
Of course the 40% of people who pay no taxes don't have a problem with this as the 20 million illegals who will be made legal in a few months. Of course the 30% of people in New Jersey who in some way are either government employees or on the dole in some fashion won't mind bigger government. Don't expect me to be thrilled as a small business man at the concept of taxing me even more and than the Dems giving it right to my employees. Why should I bother? I just might *have* to let one employee go.
I think Republicans just sitting back and hoping that BO will be unpopular in the polls in a few years allowing them to make a comeback with the same old message is a huge tactical blunder. Hoping BO will look like Jimmy Carter is too big a risk. He may not. And he has an adoring press and is dead set on controlling the news, and any opposition. Unlike anyhting Carter did.
I hope I am wrong but I hope even more the Republicans can adjust their message.
***PURGE: SKEPTICAL REPORTERS TOSSED OFF OBAMA PLAN Fri Oct 31 2008 08:39:55 ET
NY POST, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, WASHINGTON TIMES TOLD TO GET OUT... ALL 3 ENDORSED MCCAIN
**Exclusive**
The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!
The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters -- and possibly others -- will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.
MORE
Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES' Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain's Straight Talk Express airplane.
After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.
Developing... ****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on October 31, 2008, 08:18:35 AM
While I happen to agree with you on the issue of ILLEGAL immigrants; yet unfortunately both Obama and McCain seem sympathetic on this issue.
I do however think your "pay no taxes" group gets a bad rap.
First, based on this logic, if I "pay no tax" now why do I care who wins; I will continue to "pay no taxes" so the Obama plan and the McCain tax plan is all the same to me, isn't it? Therefore I doubt if Obama is pandering to this group; they receive no benefit and therefore no tax incentive to vote for him.
And saying that 40% of the people "pay no tax" forgets payroll taxes which can be up to 15% of earnings. That is still a "tax" isn't it? Perhaps you mean pay no "income" taxes? But even then that 40% number is misleading.
As for the media, well, when it comes to the plane, I think McCain and Obama both choose their "friends". I think you even pointed out that Dowd with the NY Times had been barred from McCain's plane; his choice I say.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 31, 2008, 09:11:46 AM
now why do I care who wins; I will continue to "pay no taxes" so the Obama plan and the McCain tax plan is all the same to me, isn't it? Therefore I doubt if Obama is pandering to this group; they receive no benefit and therefore no tax incentive to vote for him.
Did I say this?
BO is offering rebates to the 40%. I didn't say they don't care - I say they are happy to vote for BO who bleieves in redistribution of wealth. And payroll taxes is not income tax that pays for the supposed federal services that are offered. Although I guess government borrows from these funds.
No, quite the contrary, I think people who pay no income tax get off easy. I think they don't get a rap. And to me that is a problem. Just as it is a problem that the rich are getting richer and the rest going nowhere is a problem I think 40% paying no federal income tax is also a problem and wrong. And the more we run to the left the worse this will get. Yet Reagonimcs while I think is better does not address this wholly either. Now we have Obamanomics. That to me is far worse but both fall short IMHO.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 01, 2008, 04:34:45 PM
October 31, 2008, 4:00 a.m.
The End of Journalism Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place.
By Victor Davis Hanson
There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.
Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.
CAMPAIGN FINANCING For years an axiom of the liberal establishment was the need for public campaign financing — and the corrosive role of private money in poisoning the election process. The most prominent Republican who crossed party lines to ensure the passage of national public campaign financing was John McCain — a maverick stance that cost him dearly among conservatives who resented bitterly federal interference in political expression.
In contrast, Barack Obama, remember, promised that he would accept both public funding and the limitations that went along with it, and would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Then in June 2008, Obama abruptly reneged, bowing out entirely from government financing, the first presidential nominee in the general election to do that since the system was created in 1976.
Obama has now raised over $600 million, by far the largest campaign chest in American political history. In many states he enjoys a four-to-one advantage in campaign funding — most telling in his scheduled eleventh-hour, 30-minute specials that will not be answered by the publicly financed and poorer McCain campaign.
The story that the media chose to ignore was not merely the Obama about-face on public financing, or even the enormous amounts of money that he has raised — some of it under dubious circumstances involving foreign donors, prepaid credit cards, and false names. Instead, they were absolutely quiet about a historic end to liberal support for public financing.
For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama. All future worries about the dangers of big money and big politics will fall on deaf ears.
Surely, there will come a time when the Democratic Party, whether for ethical or practical reasons, will sorely regret dismantling the very safeguards that for over three decades it had insisted was critical for the survival of the republic.
Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign.
THE VP CANDIDATES We know now almost all the details of Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, whether the trooper who tasered her nephew went to stun or half stun, the cost of her clothes, and her personal expenses — indeed, almost everything except how a mother of so many children gets elected councilwoman, mayor, and governor, routs an entrenched old-boy cadre, while maintaining near record levels of public support.
Yet the American public knows almost nothing of what it should about the extraordinary career of Joe Biden, the 36-year veteran of the Senate. In unprecedented fashion, Biden has simply avoided the press for most of the last two months, confident that the media instead would deconstruct almost every word of “good looking” Sarah Palin’s numerous interviews with mostly hostile interrogators.
By accepted standards of behavior, Biden has sadly proven wanting. He has committed almost every classical sin of character — plagiarism, false biography, racial insensitivity, and serial fabrication. And because of media silence, we don’t know whether he was kidding when he said America would not need to burn coal, or that Hezbollah was out of Lebanon, or that FDR addressed the nation on television as president in 1929 (surely a record for historical fictions in a single thought), or that the public would turn sour on Obama once he was challenged by our enemies abroad. In response, the media reported that the very public Sarah Palin was avoiding the press while the very private Joe Biden shunned interviews and was chained to the teleprompter.
For two months now, the media reaction to Biden’s inanity has been simply “that’s just ol’ Joe, now let’s turn to Palin,” who, in the space of two months, has been reduced from a popular successful governor to a backwoods creationist, who will ban books and champion white secessionist causes. The respective coverage of the two candidates is ironic in a variety of ways, but in one especially — almost every charge against Palin (that she is under wraps, untruthful, and inept) was applicable only to Biden.
So we are about to elect a vice president about whom we know only that he has been around a long time, but little else — and nothing at all why exactly Joe Biden says the most astounding and often lunatic things.
Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home.
THE PAST AS PRESENT In 2004, few Americans knew Barack Obama. In 2008, they may elect him. Surely his past was of more interest than his present serial denials of it. Whatever the media’s feelings about the current Barack Obama, there should have been some story that the Obama of 2008 is radically different from the Obama who was largely consistent and predictable for the prior 30 years.
Each Obama metamorphosis in itself might be attributed to the normal evolution to the middle, as a candidate shifts from the primary to the general election. But in the case of Obama, we witnessed not a shift, but a complete transformation to an entirely new persona — in almost every imaginable sense of the word. Name an issue — FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, drilling, Iran, Jerusalem, the surge — and Obama’s position today is not that of just a year ago.
Until 2005, Obama was in communication with Bill Ayers by e-mail and phone, despite Ayers reprehensible braggadocio in 2001 that he remained an unrepentant terrorist. Rev. Wright was an invaluable spiritual advisor — until spring of 2008. Father Pfleger was praised as an intimate friend in 2004 — and vanished off the radar in 2008. The media might have asked not just why these rather dubious figures were once so close to, and then so distant from, Obama; but why were there so many people like Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko in Obama’s past in the first place?
Behind the Olympian calm of Obama, there was always a rather disturbing record of extra-electoral politics completely ignored by the media. If one were disturbed by the present shenanigans of ACORN or the bizarre national call for Americans simply to skip work on election day to help elect Obama (who would pay for that?), one would only have to remember that in 1996 Obama took the extraordinary step of suing to eliminate all his primary rivals by challenging their petition signatures of mostly African-American voters.
In 2004, there was an even more remarkable chain of events in which the sealed divorce records of both his principle primary rival Blair Hull and general election foe, Jack Ryan, were mysteriously leaked, effectively ensuring Obama a Senate seat without serious opposition. These were not artifacts of a typical political career, but extraordinary events in themselves that might well have shed light on present campaign tactics — and yet largely remain unknown to the American people.
Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.
SOCIALISM? The eleventh-hour McCain allegations of Obama’s advocacy for a share-the-wealth socialism was generally ignored by the media, or if covered, written off as neo-McCarthyism. But there were two legitimate, but again neglected, issues.
The first was the nature of the Obama tax plan. The problem was not merely upping the income tax rates on those who made $250,000 (or was it $200,000, or was it $150,000, or both, or none?), but its aggregate effect in combination with lifting the FICA ceilings on high incomes on top of existing Medicare contributions and often high state income taxes.
In other words, Americans who live in high-tax, expensive states like a New York or California could in theory face collective confiscatory tax rates of 65 percent or so on much of their income. And, depending on the nature of Obama’s proposed tax exemptions, on the other end of the spectrum we might well see almost half the nation’s wage earners pay no federal income tax at all.
Questions arise, but were again not explored: How wise is it to exempt one out of every two income earners from any worry over how the nation gathers its federal income tax revenue? And when credits are added to the plan, are we now essentially not cutting or raising taxes, but simply diverting wealth from those who pay into the system to those who do not?
A practical effect of socialism is often defined as curbing productive incentives by ensuring the poorer need not endanger their exemptions and credits by seeking greater income; and discouraging the wealthy from seeking greater income, given that nearly two-thirds of additional wealth would be lost to taxes. Surely that discussion might have been of interest to the American people.
Second, the real story was not John McCain’s characterization of such plans, but both inadvertent, and serial descriptions of them, past and present, by Barack Obama himself. “Spreading the wealth around” gains currency when collated to past interviews in which Obama talked at length about, and in regret at, judicial impracticalities in accomplishing his own desire to redistribute income. “Tragedy” is frequent in the Obama vocabulary, but largely confined to two contexts: the tragic history of the United States (e.g., deemed analogous to that of Nazi Germany during World War II), and the tragic unwillingness or inability to use judicial means to correct economic inequality in non-democratic fashion.
In this regard, remember Obama’s revealing comment that he was interested only in “fairness” in increasing capital-gains taxes, despite the bothersome fact that past moderate reductions in rates had, in fact, brought in greater revenue to government. Again, fossilized ideology trumps empiricism.
Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax.
The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.
Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGFhOWY3YTZkMzliYjFjYTlkMjNjMGNhMTc3ZjYyMWM=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2008, 12:41:08 PM
I am so glad the MSM has done such a fine job of letting us get to know BO:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 04, 2008, 03:24:26 PM
I have heard about these visits on talk radio. It is not clear what the visits mean in the context of visiting another country of a college friend.
I don't recall that Indonesia is particularly in love with the US. He lived there for a few years.
I guess the Jews are about to find out what his real relationship with these past associations means going forward. Hopefully nothing. But I am fearful of this guy's motives and true intentions.
He is clearly shown a flair for pathologic dishonesty. He can lie like the best of them. Without even a flinch or trace of emotion. This to me is very worrisome.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2008, 06:49:24 AM
Chris Matthews, being honest
http://reason.tv/roughcut/show/598.html
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 08, 2008, 07:32:00 AM
I assume its Matthews saying he will do everything he can to support and cover for BO "for the good of the country". Of course when W was President he did everything he could to destroy the President, I assume, "for the good of our country".
Joe Scarborough laughed when Matthews claimed it was "his job" to do this. "Your job" he asked. "I thought you are a journalist?"
Matthews was already on MSNBC last night claiming BOs attempt at humor was "really really funny". I guess he meant the "mutt" comment. I am not sure if he was claiming BOs Nancy Reagan insult was also funny, because I changed the station. I thought BOs discussion about the dog was a tangential waste of time. The cheap shot at NR was just that. Neither was really really funny but that was Matthews spin at making BO appear to be a raging success. MSNBC states the USA is already getting dividends from the BO presidency(which by the way hasn't yet started) because Iran congratulated him and Iraq is elated the US will not pull out.
With regards to MSNBC I really don't recall a "MSM" outlet doing everything it can to humiliate and insult people who recently lost an election like they are doing to Palin, McCain, and the losing party in general.
As O'Reilly has pointed out, even any attempt at objective journalist in the USA is past history. He made an off the cuff comment to Bernie Goldberg that "we are old and almost dead anyway".
I had an elderly patient in her 80s tell me her brother made a similar comment to the effect, "aren't you glad we are on the way out with what is going on today?."
Anyway I digress.
Title: WTF?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2008, 06:55:24 AM
Dan Mirvish, who with Eitan Gorlin created an elaborate Internet hoax complete with a fake policy institute and a phony adviser to Senator John McCain.
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Published: November 12, 2008 NYT It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.
April Fools’ Comes Early: Read All About It (November 13, 2008) Palin Calls Criticism by McCain Aides ‘Cruel and Mean-Spirited’ (November 8, 2008) Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog The Web Site for the Harding Institute
Eitan Gorlin as the phony McCain adviser Martin Eisenstadt.
Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.
Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.
And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.
Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?
“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh.
(For what it’s worth, another reporter for The New York Times is an acquaintance of Mr. Gorlin and vouches for his identity, and Mr. Gorlin is indeed “Mr. Eisenstadt” in those videos. He and his partner in deception, Dan Mirvish, have entries on the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. But still. ...)
They say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.
“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.
Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.
An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”
But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.
The hoax began a year ago with short videos of a parking valet character, who Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish said was the original idea for a TV series.
Soon there were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph W. Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.
When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.
Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”
Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.
The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.
It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Mr. Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”
Before long Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.
In June they produced what appeared to be an interview with Eisenstadt on Iraqi television promoting construction of a casino in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Then they sent out a news release in which he apologized. Outraged Iraqi bloggers protested the casino idea.
Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.
In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.
Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.
Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”
But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”
And then there is William K. Wolfrum, a blogger who has played Javert to Eisenstadt’s Valjean, tracking the hoaxster across cyberspace and repeatedly debunking his claims. Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish praised his tenacity, adding that the news media could learn something from him.
“As if there isn’t enough misinformation on this election, it was shocking to see so much time wasted on things that didn’t exist,” Mr. Wolfrum said in an interview.
And how can we know that Mr. Wolfrum is real and not part of the hoax?
Long pause. “Yeah, that’s a tough one.”
Title: More Treason from the NYT
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2008, 10:23:42 AM
The Gray Lady undermines national security ... again There they go again. The New York Times, continuing its policy of aiding and abetting this nation's enemies, on Monday published the latest classified anti-terrorist program to come to its attention. This revelation covers a secret order that authorized covert military action inside Syria, Pakistan and "elsewhere" (a quick look at the map to see what lies between Pakistan and Syria will discover "elsewhere"). Citing military and civilian sources, The Times reports that nearly a dozen such raids have been carried out since 2004. We can only imagine the gratitude felt by those brave special-ops soldiers carrying out these missions that their activities are public knowledge.
Freedom of the press is one of the most important rights enshrined in the Constitution. Its position as part of the First Amendment is no accident, indicating the importance the Founders gave to a press able to report freely and without fear on the activities of government. Even in wartime, the government should not censor the media unless truly extraordinary circumstances dictate otherwise. But there is also a reason for the government's classification of information, including this definition of Top Secret: "information of a highly sensitive nature, whose disclosure could result in grave danger to the national security of the United States." At what point does The Times consider that protecting our national security is more important than scoring political points against the Bush administration?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 14, 2008, 10:46:15 AM
Answer: They don't consider it. The only stories they'll bury is anything that might harm Barack Obama. They are fine with getting SpecOps soldiers killed. They'll then run an op-ed bemoaning the loss of the soldiers, blaming President Bush all the while.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on November 14, 2008, 11:17:51 AM
I think a lot dates back to the publication or the government's request for restraint of publication of the Pentagon Papers.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the first amendment and justified publication for the greater good.
Decision
6-3 The decision finally stated that the Supreme Court agreed with the two lower courts which had originally decided that the Government had not met that burden, so the prior restraint was not justified. This final decision was not signed by any particular justice. The Per Curiam opinion itself in this case was very brief because all the Court wanted to state was that it had concurred with the decisions of the two lower courts to reject the Government’s request for an injunction. The Justices’ opinions included different degrees of support for the clear superiority of the First Amendment and no Justice fully supported the Government’s case. Because of these factors, no clear and exclusive law appears to have come out of this case. Nevertheless, the significance of the case and the wording of the Justices’ opinions have added important statements to the history of precedents for exceptions to the First Amendment, which have been cited in numerous Supreme Court cases since . Justice Hugo Black wrote an opinion that elaborated on his absolutist view of the First Amendment. He was against any interference with freedom of expression and largely found the content of the documents to be immaterial. Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980) largely concurred with Black, citing the need for a free press as a check on government. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. explained how the publication of the documents did not qualify as one of the three exceptions to the freedom of expression established in Near v. Minnesota (1931). Justice Potter Stewart and Justice Byron R. White agreed that it is the responsibility of the Executive to ensure national security through the protection of its information. However, in areas of national defense and international affairs, the President of United States possesses great constitutional independence that is virtually unchecked by the Legislative and Judicial branch. "In absence of governmental checks and balances," per Justice Stewart, "the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in [these two areas] may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government." Justice Thurgood Marshall established the notion that the term “national security” was too broad when legitimizing prior restraint, and also argued that it is not the Court’s job to create laws where the Congress cannot. Justice Warren E. Burger, dissenting, argued that “the imperative of a free and unfettered press comes into collision with another imperative, the effective functioning of a complex modern government," that there should be a detailed study on the effects of these actions. He argued that in the haste of the proceedings, and given the size of the documents, the Court was unable to gather enough information to make a decision. He also argued that the Times should have discussed the possible societal repercussions with the Government prior to publication of the material. The Chief Justice did not argue that the Government had met the aforementioned standard, but rather that the decision should not have been made so hastily. Justice John M. Harlan and Justice Harry A. Blackmun joined the Chief Justice in arguing the faults in the proceedings, and the lack of attention towards national security and the rights of the Executive.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 14, 2008, 11:31:12 AM
**The MSM has been propagandizing for dictators and hurting American interests long before the pentagon papers.**
May 7, 2003 8:45 a.m. Prize Specimen The campaign to revoke Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer.
We will never know how many Ukrainians died in Stalin's famines of the early 1930s. As Nikita Khrushchev later recalled, "No one was keeping count." Writing back in the mid- 1980s, historian Robert Conquest came up with a death toll of around six million, a calculation not so inconsistent with later research (the writers of The Black Book of Communism (1999) estimated a total of four million for 1933 alone).
Four million, six million, seven million, when the numbers are this grotesque does the exact figure matter? Just remember this instead:
The first family to die was the Rafalyks — father, mother and a child. Later on the Fediy family of five also perished of starvation. Then followed the families of Prokhar Lytvyn (four persons), Fedir Hontowy (three persons), Samson Fediy (three persons). The second child of the latter family was beaten to death on somebody's onion patch. Mykola and Larion Fediy died, followed by Andrew Fediy and his wife; Stefan Fediy; Anton Fediy, his wife and four children (his two other little girls survived); Boris Fediy, his wife and three children: Olanviy Fediy and his wife; Taras Fediy and his wife; Theodore Fesenko; Constantine Fesenko; Melania Fediy; Lawrenty Fediy; Peter Fediy; Eulysis Fediy and his brother Fred; Isidore Fediy, his wife and two children; Ivan Hontowy, his wife and two children; Vasyl Perch, his wife and child; Makar Fediy; Prokip Fesenko: Abraham Fediy; Ivan Skaska, his wife and eight children.
Some of these people were buried in a cemetery plot; others were left lying wherever they died. For instance, Elizabeth Lukashenko died on the meadow; her remains were eaten by ravens. Others were simply dumped into any handy excavation. The remains of Lawrenty Fediy lay on the hearth of his dwelling until devoured by rats.*
And that's just one village — Fediivka, in the Poltava Province.
We will never know whether Walter Duranty, the principal New York Times correspondent in the U.S.S.R., ever visited Fediivka. Almost certainly not. What we do know is that, in March 1933, while telling his readers that there had indeed been "serious food shortages" in the Ukraine, he was quick to reassure them that "there [was] no actual starvation." There had been no "deaths from starvation," he soothed, merely "widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." So that was all right then.
But, unlike Khrushchev, Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize winner, no less, was keeping count — in the autumn of 1933 he is recorded as having told the British Embassy that ten million had died. ** "The Ukraine," he said, "had been bled white," remarkable words from the journalist who had, only days earlier, described talk of a famine as "a sheer absurdity," remarkable words from the journalist who, in a 1935 memoir had dismayingly little to say about one of history's greatest crimes. Writing about his two visits to the Ukraine in 1933, Duranty was content to describe how "the people looked healthier and more cheerful than [he] had expected, although they told grim tales of their sufferings in the past two years." As Duranty had explained (writing about his trip to the Ukraine in April that year), he "had no doubt that the solution to the agrarian problem had been found".
Well, at least he didn't refer to it as a "final" solution.
As the years passed, and the extent of the famine and the other, innumerable, brutalities of Stalin's long tyranny became increasingly difficult to deny, Duranty's reputation collapsed (I wrote about this on NRO a couple of years ago), but his Pulitzer Prize has endured.
Ah, that Pulitzer Prize. In his will old Joseph Pulitzer described what the prize was designed to achieve: " The encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education."
In 1932 the Pulitzer Board awarded Walter Duranty its prize. It's an achievement that the New York Times still celebrates. The gray lady is pleased to publish its storied Pulitzer roster in a full-page advertisement each year, and, clearly, it finds the name of Duranty as one that is still fit to print. His name is near the top of the list, an accident of chronology, but there it is, Duranty, Times man, denier of the Ukrainian genocide — proudly paraded for all to see. Interestingly, the list of prizewinners posted on the New York Times Company's website is more forthcoming: Against Duranty's name, it is noted that "other writers in the Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage."
Understandably enough, Duranty's Pulitzer is an insult that has lost none of its power to appall. In a new initiative, Ukrainian groups have launched a fresh campaign designed to persuade the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke the award to Duranty. The Pulitzer's nabobs do not appear to be impressed. A message dated April 29, 2003 from the board's administrator to one of the organizers of the Ukrainian campaign includes the following words:
The current Board is aware that complaints about the Duranty award have surfaced again. [The campaign's] submission…will be placed on file with others we have received. However, to date, the Board has not seen fit to reverse a previous Board's decision, made seventy years ago in a different era and under different circumstances.
A "different era," "different circumstances" — would that have been said, I wonder, about someone who had covered up Nazi savagery? But then, more relevantly, the Pulitzer's representative notes that Duranty's prize was awarded "for a specific set of stories in 1931," in other words, before the famine struck with its full, horrific, force. And there he has a point. The prize is designed to reward a specific piece of journalism — not a body of work. To strip Duranty of the prize on the grounds of his subsequent conduct, however disgusting it may have been, would be a retrospective change of the rules, behavior more typical of the old U.S.S.R. than today's U.S.A.
But what was that "specific set of stories?" Duranty won his prize " for [his] dispatches on Russia especially the working out of the Five Year Plan." They were, said the Pulitzer Board "marked by scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity…."
Really? As summarized by S. J. Taylor in her excellent — and appropriately titled — biography of Duranty, Stalin's Apologist, the statement with which Duranty accepted his prize gives some hint of the "sound judgment" contained in his dispatches.
""Despite present imperfections," he continued, he had come to realize there was something very good about the Soviets' "planned system of economy." And there was something more: Duranty had learned, he said, "to respect the Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, who [had grown] into a really great statesman.""
In truth, of course, this was simply nonsense, a distortion that, in some ways bore even less resemblance to reality than "Jimmy's World," the tale of an eight-year-old junkie that, briefly, won a Pulitzer for Janet Cooke of the Washington Post. Tragic "Jimmy" turned out not to exist. He was a concoction, a fiction, nothing more. The Post did the right thing — Cooke's prize was rapidly returned.
After 70 years the New York Times has yet to do the right thing. There is, naturally, always room for disagreement over how events are interpreted, particularly in an era of revolutionary change, but Duranty's writings clearly tipped over into propaganda, and, often, outright deception, a cynical sugarcoating of the squalor of a system in which he almost certainly didn't believe. His motivation seems to have been purely opportunistic, access to the Moscow "story" for the Times and the well-paid lifestyle and the fame ("the Great Duranty" was, some said, the best-known journalist in the world) that this brought. Too much criticism of Stalin's rule and this privileged existence would end. Duranty's "Stalin" was a lie, not much more genuine than Janet Cooke's "Jimmy" and, as he well knew at the time, so too were the descriptions of the Soviet experiment that brought him that Pulitzer.
And if that is not enough to make the Pulitzer Board to reconsider withdrawing an award that disgraces both the name of Joseph Pulitzer and his prize, it is up to the New York Times to insist that it does so.
*From an account quoted in Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow. ** On another occasion (a dinner party, ironically) that autumn Duranty talked about seven million deaths.
Title: The Ukrainian holocaust
Post by: ccp on November 14, 2008, 05:09:05 PM
An elderly patient of mine in her late 80s recently passed away. Her son told me of her incredible story of survival in Ukraine in the 30s and 40s. She watched her whole family starve to death before her eyes. They worked as virtual slaves for Stalin and the saved what food they could only to have the Russians come in a steal it all for their troops.
She was later in Germany during the allied bombings and told stories of the firestorms. She told her son this was bliss compared to how Russians treated them when they were later shipped to Siberia.
She came to this country in the 1950's. She was grateful to be here and only asked for one thing. A job to be able to pay her way. She was not like the immigrants of today who come here and abuse our systems and expect amnesty and make up phoney social security numbers and then get outright indignant when anyone questions this.
Her son, also a patient of mine stated the Ukrains are terrible publicizers and chronicalers of history. He rightly pointed out how Jews are great at reminding the world about what happened to them but no one ever hears about what was done to them. He said this in an admiring way. But then I guess he didn't realize I am Jewish when he told me how one of the Russians generals, "a Jew", suggested to Stalin that the easiest way to deal with the Ukraines was to simply let them starve. And Stalin took his advice.
I listened. I thanked him for sharing his mother's story. I suggested he write it all down. Maybe he could send it to the Holocaust museum.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 18, 2008, 02:40:28 PM
We should all let President-elect Obama have some honeymoon time, but that said, so far the sudden cessation in 'hope and change' that became part of the American mindset for two years is surreal, and one of the most remarkable developments in recent American political history. Obama's Clintonite appointments, his reliance on those well-known DC fixtures credentialed by Ivy League Law Schools, and his apparent backtracking on radical tax hikes on the "wealthy", instantaneous shut-down of Gitmo, prompt withdrawal from Iraq, and repeal of anti-terror legislation seem to have delighted conservatives, relieved that the Daily Kos and Huffington Post are not calling the shots. But two minor points, it is still November, not late January. So no one knows anything yet and we should suspend judgement, despite the FDR and Lincoln daily comparisons.
Second, if we should see in January that the government really does not want to evict Khalid Sheik Mohammed & co. from Guantanamo, and does want to stay in Iraq until 2011 to finish up, and does want to let the present tax code ride for a bit, and does want to leave most Bush-enacted homeland security measures in place, then Obama has not merely embarrassed his hard-left base, but has terribly humiliated the media as well.
For years now we have been preached to that Guantanamo is a gulag where Korans are stomped and flushed (not laptops provided to the chief architect of 9/11), that we waged a foolhardy, amoral, and hopelessly 'lost' war against the Iraqi people, that the rich plundered the economy on the backs of the poor, and that the Constitution was burned so that covert agencies could play James Bond. I could go on, but you get the picture.
Given all that, are we now suddenly—in 1984-fashion—around late January either to be told all that was not quite so, or will we simply hear no more about how these Bush legacies have ruined America—or what exactly is the party line to be? There is still such a thing, after all, as Google.
The point is that somewhere around early to mid-2007 ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Newsweek, Time, etc. chose to become—in the manner that they selected, emphasized, and presented their news stories—a quasi-official Obama media, or at least a quasi-official what-they-thought-Obama-was news media. Chris Matthews' asinine statement about his investment in the success of the Obama administration was merely a crude summation of the creed of the more sober and judicious.
I don't really think they can now pull off an Animal-Farm-like 'two-legs were bad', 'now two-legs good' complete turn-about just because they've taken over the manor. I do think that the media's unprofessional lobbying for the cause of Obama—not now, but in a decade or two—will become a classic case study in any graduate class on journalistic ethics.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2008, 10:15:58 AM
For purposes of self-justification, Azam Amir Kasab, the only terrorist taken alive in last week's Mumbai massacre, offered that the murder of Jews in the city's Chabad House was undertaken to avenge Israeli atrocities on Palestinians. Two other terrorists cited instances of anti-Muslim Hindu violence as the answer to the question, "Why are you doing this to us?" before mowing down 14 unarmed people at the Oberoi Hotel. And if dead terrorists could talk, we would surely hear Abu Ghraib mentioned as among their reasons for singling out U.S. and British hostages.
David KleinOne suspects the terrorists spent far too much time listening to the BBC World Service.
Let's hasten to add that by no means should the BBC alone be singled out. When it comes to terrorists and their grievances, nearly all the Western media have provided them with a rich diet on which to feed.
In the spring of 2005, Newsweek ran with a thinly sourced item about the Quran being flushed down a Guantanamo toilet. Result: At least 15 people were killed in Afghan riots.
Newsweek later retracted the story, which was the right thing to do but also, in its way, exceptional. Compare that to the refusal of French reporter Charles Enderlin and his station, France 2, to retract or even express doubt about his September 2000 report on Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli soldiers during an exchange of gunfire in the Gaza Strip -- an exchange Mr. Enderlin did not witness.
In an exhaustive piece in the June 2003 issue of the Atlantic, James Fallows observed that the evidence that the boy could not have been shot by an Israeli bullet is overwhelming, while the evidence that the entire incident was staged is, at the very least, impressive. In France, the story has been the subject of various lawsuits. In Israel, however, and throughout the Muslim world, Durrah became the poster child for a five-year intifada that took several thousand lives.
Maybe Durrah was somewhere in the minds of the Mumbai killers. If not, there was no shortage of other Israeli "atrocities" for them to choose from, mostly fictitious or trumped up and all endlessly cited in Western media reports: the "siege" of Gaza; the 2002 Jenin "massacre"; the 1982 massacres (by Lebanese Phalangists) in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut; the execution of Egyptian POWs in 1967.
All these fables have real-world consequences, and not only for Israelis. In July 2006, an American named Naveed Afzal Haq ambled into the offices of the Seattle Jewish Federation and shot six people, killing one. One of the survivors testified that Mr. Haq "stated that he was a Muslim, [and] this was his personal statement against Jews and the Bush administration for giving money to Jews, and for us Jews for giving money to Israel, about Hezbollah, the war in Iraq." Wherever did he get those ideas?
As it turns out, often from terrorist suspects themselves, offering their testimonials of Israeli or U.S. malevolence to a credulous Western media. In the Quran-in-the-toilet imbroglio, for instance, the Nation's Ari Berman filed a piece titled "Newsweek Was Right," which cited accounts by former Guantanamo detainees of how their captors abused the Holy Book. Unmentioned in any of this were the instructions contained in al Qaeda's "Manchester Document," obtained by British police in 2000, that told followers to "complain of mistreatment while in prison" and "insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security."
Or consider the tale of Ali Shalal Qaissi, the subject of a New York Times story in March 2006. Mr. Qaissi, founder of the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons, claimed to be the black-hooded man standing on a box, attached to wires, ghoulishly photographed by the Abu Ghraib jailers. The Times thought enough of his story to put it on page one, until it turned out he wasn't the man. A March 18, 2006, "Editor's Note" tells us something about how these stories make it to print:
"The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account."
Of course, it's always possible to fall for a well-told lie. But it's worth wondering why a media that treats nearly every word uttered by the U.S., British or Israeli governments as inherently suspect has proved so consistently credulous when it comes to every dubious or defamatory claim made against those governments. Or, for that matter, why the media has been so intent on magnifying genuine scandals (like Abu Ghraib) to the point that they become the moral equivalent of 9/11. Some caution is in order: Terrorists, of all people, might actually believe what they read in the papers.
Title: WSJ: Other than that, the story was accurate
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2008, 09:50:33 AM
Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate
Yesterday's item on Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged attempt to sell Barack Obama's erstwhile Senate seat cited a pair of reports from KHQA-TV in Quincy, Ill., contradicting Obama aide David Axelrod's claim that Obama never discussed the Senate appointment with Blagojevich, a claim that contradicted Axelrod's own earlier claim that he knew the governor and the president-elect had discussed the matter.
The first KHQA report, on Nov. 5, said that Obama was "meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich this afternoon in Chicago to discuss" the nomination. The second, three days later, said that the meeting had taken place. Never mind, KHQA now says:
KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday. The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date. To call this a "clarification" is rather an understatement, like saying that KHQA's performance in this matter is not the proudest moment in the history of American journalism. In any case, the "clarified" KHQA report was, as far as we know, the only evidence, aside from Axelrod's now-recanted statement, that Obama and Blagojevich had discussed the matter. Even assuming no conversation took place between the two principals, we still are left with the question of when the Obama team became aware of Blagojevich's alleged scheme and what if anything they did about it.
Jim Lindgren has a detailed and suggestive timeline. He points to a CNN report from Nov. 9, the Sunday after Election Day, in which "a prominent Democratic source close to" Obama confirms an earlier report by Chicago's WSL-TV "that Valerie Jarrett is Obama's choice to replace him in the Senate."
"On Monday, Nov. 10," Lindgren recounts, quoting the criminal complaint, "Blagojevich holds an incredible 2-hour conference call with multiple consultants: 'ROD BLAGOJEVICH, his wife, JOHN HARRIS, Governor General Counsel, and various Washington-D.C. based advisors, including Advisor B,' discussing his corrupt schemes. He follows this with two calls with Advisor A."
The same day, the CNN story linked above was updated:
Two Democratic sources told CNN Monday that Obama wants Jarrett to serve in the White House, not the Senate. Here is Lindgren's analysis:
So what happened? The likeliest scenario is that one of the many participants in Blagojevich's Monday phone calls either floated his plans to the Obama transition team to assess their response or tipped off the Obama camp about the reckless ideas that Blagojevich had planned. In any event, within hours of Blagojevich substantially expanding his circle of confidants, the Obama camp withdrew Jarrett's name from consideration and attributed that withdrawal to the President's wanting Jarrett in the White House. And the Obama staffers went out of their way to depict this as Obama's choice, rather than Jarrett's, which would have been more common. The report claims Obama's involvement in the decision and suggests a direct effort to undercut the idea that Obama was pressuring Blagojevich to appoint Jarrett. Lindgren speculates that Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Blagojevich's successor in the House and Obama's designated chief of staff, was the Obama camp's point of contact with the Blagojevich camp. As National Review's Byron York points out, the L.A. Times asked Obama specifically about this, and he ducked the question (ellipses in transcript):
Q: Have you ever spoken to Gov. Blagojevich about the Senate seat? Obama: I have not discussed the Senate seat with the governor at any time. My strong belief is that it needed to be filled by somebody who is going to represent the people of Illinois and fight for them. And beyond that, I was focused on the transition. Q: And that was before and after the election? Obama: Yes. Q: Are you aware of any conversations between Blagojevich or [chief of staff] John Harris and any of your top aides, including Rahm [Emanuel]? Obama: Let me stop you there because . . . it's an ongoing . . . investigation. I think it would be inappropriate for me to, you know, remark on the situation beyond the facts that I know. And that's the fact that I didn't discuss this issue with the governor at all. What would be the significance if Emanuel turned out to have known about the alleged bribery attempt? Legally, not much, according to Lindgren:
It is not a crime to fail to report a bribery attempt. The federal misprision of felony statute would seem to make it a federal crime to fail to report a federal felony. . . . But case law has conclusively determined that mere non-reporting is not enough. Active concealment or the acceptance of a benefit for concealing is required. Since all indications are that the Obama camp rejected any corrupt deal, they would seem to be legally in the clear. In their refusal to make a deal, it would appear their instinct for self-preservation served them well. It would be more impressive, though, if it turns out they did the public-spirited thing and reported Blagojevich's conduct to the authorities.
Obama's "ongoing investigation" dodge has drawn criticism from both right and left (the latter has likened it to President Bush's refusal to comment during the investigation of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle). Yet prosecutors generally do not like prospective witnesses to talk about a case publicly, and surely we want Obama and his aides to cooperate with prosecutors. It does put Obama in a politically awkward position, though, especially if the facts he is constrained from discussing publicly reflect well on him and his advisers.
Who Was Dick Simpson? He is a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago whom Reuters quoted yesterday (as we noted) as saying, "Obama is not related to the corruption pattern in Chicago," and, "He has not been pressing for any person to replace him in his Senate seat."
Simpson is also a former Chicago alderman--a fact that seems relevant, but that Reuters omitted.
Title: Crats have lock on intelligence
Post by: ccp on December 13, 2008, 07:52:22 AM
Republicans are simpletons and Democrats are geniuses. So says the MSM. Unfortunately having a Republican President for 8 years who was not adept at expressing himself contributed to this image though the MSM was in adoration with the appearance of sophistication before that, but W certainly served to give them fodder on this point.
***Liberalism = Genius?
by L. Brent Bozell III November 26, 2008
If there is a dreadfully overused word in the giddy countdown to the Obama inauguration, it is “smart.” Not just “smart,” but also its stronger cousins like “Brilliant” and “Genius.” These words have been offered shamelessly for nearly every person assigned a role by President-Elect Obama. They are assembling an “all-star cabinet.” This was not an honor for those having attended all the right schools, but a tribute to people who have all the “right” ideas. Liberals are smart because they’re liberals. Conservative beliefs are honed from having been dropped on your head as an infant.
Last week, Newsweek almost comedically compared Obama to Lincoln, hailing the strength of his “humility.” How could anyone stay humble with all these hyper-flattering cover stories about whether you’re Lincoln or you’re Franklin Roosevelt? Nobody asked: But what if he turns out to be another ineffective Jimmy Carter? Then again, not to worry. Just as Time turned Obama into FDR on its cover, they comically projected Carter as Gary Cooper in “High Noon” in the hostage-crisis spring of 1980.
Back in June of 2001, Newsweek headlined an article on an upcoming Bush foreign policy trip with these words: “See George. See George Learn Foreign Policy.” He was painted like a president who couldn’t prove he was smarter than a fifth-grader on TV. Newsweek did attempt a historical comparison. European pols heard Bush advocating missile defense, and one participant joked, “He was like Reagan....without the charisma.” Newsweek concluded school wasn’t working yet for Bush: “Still a student in a most demanding and unforgiving school, he needs all the teachers he can get.”
That dismissive attitude toward Republican politicians will long outlive the Bush presidency, just as it outlasted Reagan’s. Nine days after the election, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham denounced Sarah Palin in the snobbiest of tones on NBC’s “Today” as someone who should “be going into a kind of policy Berlitz course, which one would think would be a relatively sound thing to do.” Plugging Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson, NBC’s Matt Lauer added the colorful tale that Jackson threatened to kill his own vice president, so Meacham caustically added, “I don’t know if Senator McCain has thought that along the way.”
Meanwhile, Newsweek’s writers are exploring the inspiring depths of humility of their blessed Barack: “Obama has unusual detachment for a politician. He observes himself as a kind of figure out of literature.” Does that sound humble? Or does it sound astoundingly arrogant? Reagan living in his own movies put him in Fantasy Land, but Obama seeing himself as the Embodiment of Hope on the library shelf is somehow grounded. The Obama-crazed media are hallucinating.
On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” co-host Robin Roberts couldn’t stop gushing about the Obama cabinet picks: “Some would say it’s a team of rivals, a la President Lincoln, or is a better comparison a team of geniuses as FDR did?” George Stephanopoulos unsurprisingly agreed: “We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes.”
Smelling salts all around, please.
If this proposed incoming Obama administration wasn’t so stuffed with Clintonites, starting with Hillary, that line might have sounded insulting to Bill Clinton. Sixteen years ago, all these same tributes were being offered to Bill Clinton’s superior intelligence, Bill Clinton’s grace under pressure, and a superior incoming Clinton staff. Even Stephanopoulos was ogled back then over the charisma of his “power whisper.”
But looking back, how well did Bill Clinton display a foreign policy genius that made the world a less violent place? Are the mass murders in Rwanda or the massacre in Srebrenica something that every Clinton fan in the media has wiped clean from their brains? Have they all forgotten the Americans killed at the Khobar Towers, or aboard the U.S.S. Cole, our lost diplomats at the embassies of Kenya and Tanzania? Did the overflowing international compassion of Clinton melt the hearts of al-Qaeda into retirement? Why, then, does every media liberal assume that History will open her arms and beckon Obama forward as an early entry into the Pantheon of Presidential Greatness?
Conservatives and Republicans have a very important role to play now in holding this alleged Team of Geniuses accountable. This disgraceful “news” media won’t, period. They will line up to serve Obama only slightly less explicitly than Chris Matthews, who typically blurted out that his new job as a television host was to insure President Obama’s success. We say “blurted out” because Matthews tends to...blurt. But give him credit for one thing: the courage to admit the attitude of servitude that his colleagues so piously deny.***
This is one image the Cans have to dispell. "Dogma" as Colin Powell puts it is not going to do it. We need thoughtful, intellectual responses that will appeal to the growing bed of minorities in the US.
Title: Bush: "It was a size 10 shoe"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2008, 04:58:12 PM
President Bush shows some good reflexes in dealing with cranky reporter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duLds-TZMGw
Title: Woodward & Redford
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 22, 2008, 01:26:09 PM
The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism December 22, 2008
By George Friedman
Mark Felt died last week at the age of 95. For those who don’t recognize that name, Felt was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame. It was Felt who provided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post with a flow of leaks about what had happened, how it happened and where to look for further corroboration on the break-in, the cover-up, and the financing of wrongdoing in the Nixon administration. Woodward and Bernstein’s exposé of Watergate has been seen as a high point of journalism, and their unwillingness to reveal Felt’s identity until he revealed it himself three years ago has been seen as symbolic of the moral rectitude demanded of journalists.
In reality, the revelation of who Felt was raised serious questions about the accomplishments of Woodward and Bernstein, the actual price we all pay for journalistic ethics, and how for many years we did not know a critical dimension of the Watergate crisis. At a time when newspapers are in financial crisis and journalism is facing serious existential issues, Watergate always has been held up as a symbol of what journalism means for a democracy, revealing truths that others were unwilling to uncover and grapple with. There is truth to this vision of journalism, but there is also a deep ambiguity, all built around Felt’s role. This is therefore not an excursion into ancient history, but a consideration of two things. The first is how journalists become tools of various factions in political disputes. The second is the relationship between security and intelligence organizations and governments in a Democratic society.
Watergate was about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. The break-in was carried out by a group of former CIA operatives controlled by individuals leading back to the White House. It was never proven that then-U.S. President Richard Nixon knew of the break-in, but we find it difficult to imagine that he didn’t. In any case, the issue went beyond the break-in. It went to the cover-up of the break-in and, more importantly, to the uses of money that financed the break-in and other activities. Numerous aides, including the attorney general of the United States, went to prison. Woodward and Bernstein, and their newspaper, The Washington Post, aggressively pursued the story from the summer of 1972 until Nixon’s resignation. The episode has been seen as one of journalism’s finest moments. It may have been, but that cannot be concluded until we consider Deep Throat more carefully.
Deep Throat Reconsidered Mark Felt was deputy associate director of the FBI (No. 3 in bureau hierarchy) in May 1972, when longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died. Upon Hoover’s death, Felt was second to Clyde Tolson, the longtime deputy and close friend to Hoover who by then was in failing health himself. Days after Hoover’s death, Tolson left the bureau.
Felt expected to be named Hoover’s successor, but Nixon passed him over, appointing L. Patrick Gray instead. In selecting Gray, Nixon was reaching outside the FBI for the first time in the 48 years since Hoover had taken over. But while Gray was formally acting director, the Senate never confirmed him, and as an outsider, he never really took effective control of the FBI. In a practical sense, Felt was in operational control of the FBI from the break-in at the Watergate in August 1972 until June 1973.
Nixon’s motives in appointing Gray certainly involved increasing his control of the FBI, but several presidents before him had wanted this, too, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Both of these presidents wanted Hoover gone for the same reason they were afraid to remove him: He knew too much. In Washington, as in every capital, knowing the weaknesses of powerful people is itself power — and Hoover made it a point to know the weaknesses of everyone. He also made it a point to be useful to the powerful, increasing his overall value and his knowledge of the vulnerabilities of the powerful.
Hoover’s death achieved what Kennedy and Johnson couldn’t do. Nixon had no intention of allowing the FBI to continue as a self-enclosed organization outside the control of the presidency and everyone else. Thus, the idea that Mark Felt, a man completely loyal to Hoover and his legacy, would be selected to succeed Hoover is in retrospect the most unlikely outcome imaginable.
Felt saw Gray’s selection as an unwelcome politicization of the FBI (by placing it under direct presidential control), an assault on the traditions created by Hoover and an insult to his memory, and a massive personal disappointment. Felt was thus a disgruntled employee at the highest level. He was also a senior official in an organization that traditionally had protected its interests in predictable ways. (By then formally the No. 2 figure in FBI, Felt effectively controlled the agency given Gray’s inexperience and outsider status.) The FBI identified its enemies, then used its vast knowledge of its enemies’ wrongdoings in press leaks designed to be as devastating as possible. While carefully hiding the source of the information, it then watched the victim — who was usually guilty as sin — crumble. Felt, who himself was later convicted and pardoned for illegal wiretaps and break-ins, was not nearly as appalled by Nixon’s crimes as by Nixon’s decision to pass him over as head of the FBI. He merely set Hoover’s playbook in motion.
Woodward and Bernstein were on the city desk of The Washington Post at the time. They were young (29 and 28), inexperienced and hungry. We do not know why Felt decided to use them as his conduit for leaks, but we would guess he sought these three characteristics — as well as a newspaper with sufficient gravitas to gain notice. Felt obviously knew the two had been assigned to a local burglary, and he decided to leak what he knew to lead them where he wanted them to go. He used his knowledge to guide, and therefore control, their investigation.
Systematic Spying on the President And now we come to the major point. For Felt to have been able to guide and control the young reporters’ investigation, he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post’s coverage.
Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department — or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing — Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role Felt had selected for them. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all knew who Deep Throat was. They worked with the operational head of the FBI to destroy Nixon, and then protected Felt and the FBI until Felt came forward.
In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI’s control over Nixon. Woodward, Bernstein and above all, Bradlee, knew what was going on. Woodward and Bernstein might have been young and naive, but Bradlee was an old Washington hand who knew exactly who Felt was, knew the FBI playbook and understood that Felt could not have played the role he did without a focused FBI operation against the president. Bradlee knew perfectly well that Woodward and Bernstein were not breaking the story, but were having it spoon-fed to them by a master. He knew that the president of the United States, guilty or not, was being destroyed by Hoover’s jilted heir.
This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. Protecting Deep Throat concealed not only an individual, but also the story of the FBI’s role in destroying Nixon.
Again, Nixon’s guilt is not in question. And the argument can be made that given John Mitchell’s control of the Justice Department, Felt thought that going through channels was impossible (although the FBI was more intimidating to Mitchell than the other way around). But the fact remains that Deep Throat was the heir apparent to Hoover — a man not averse to breaking the law in covert operations — and Deep Throat clearly was drawing on broader resources in the FBI, resources that had to have been in place before Hoover’s death and continued operating afterward.
Burying a Story to Get a Story Until Felt came forward in 2005, not only were these things unknown, but The Washington Post was protecting them. Admittedly, the Post was in a difficult position. Without Felt’s help, it would not have gotten the story. But the terms Felt set required that a huge piece of the story not be told. The Washington Post created a morality play about an out-of-control government brought to heel by two young, enterprising journalists and a courageous newspaper. That simply wasn’t what happened. Instead, it was about the FBI using The Washington Post to leak information to destroy the president, and The Washington Post willingly serving as the conduit for that information while withholding an essential dimension of the story by concealing Deep Throat’s identity.
Journalists have celebrated the Post’s role in bringing down the president for a generation. Even after the revelation of Deep Throat’s identity in 2005, there was no serious soul-searching on the omission from the historical record. Without understanding the role played by Felt and the FBI in bringing Nixon down, Watergate cannot be understood completely. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee were willingly used by Felt to destroy Nixon. The three acknowledged a secret source, but they did not reveal that the secret source was in operational control of the FBI. They did not reveal that the FBI was passing on the fruits of surveillance of the White House. They did not reveal the genesis of the fall of Nixon. They accepted the accolades while withholding an extraordinarily important fact, elevating their own role in the episode while distorting the actual dynamic of Nixon’s fall.
Absent any widespread reconsideration of the Post’s actions during Watergate in the three years since Felt’s identity became known, the press in Washington continues to serve as a conduit for leaks of secret information. They publish this information while protecting the leakers, and therefore the leakers’ motives. Rather than being a venue for the neutral reporting of events, journalism thus becomes the arena in which political power plays are executed. What appears to be enterprising journalism is in fact a symbiotic relationship between journalists and government factions. It may be the best path journalists have for acquiring secrets, but it creates a very partial record of events — especially since the origin of a leak frequently is much more important to the public than the leak itself.
The Felt experience is part of an ongoing story in which journalists’ guarantees of anonymity to sources allow leakers to control the news process. Protecting Deep Throat’s identity kept us from understanding the full dynamic of Watergate. We did not know that Deep Throat was running the FBI, we did not know the FBI was conducting surveillance on the White House, and we did not know that the Watergate scandal emerged not by dint of enterprising journalism, but because Felt had selected Woodward and Bernstein as his vehicle to bring Nixon down. And we did not know that the editor of The Washington Post allowed this to happen. We had a profoundly defective picture of the situation, as defective as the idea that Bob Woodward looks like Robert Redford.
Finding the truth of events containing secrets is always difficult, as we know all too well. There is no simple solution to this quandary. In intelligence, we dream of the well-placed source who will reveal important things to us. But we also are aware that the information provided is only the beginning of the story. The rest of the story involves the source’s motivation, and frequently that motivation is more important than the information provided. Understanding a source’s motivation is essential both to good intelligence and to journalism. In this case, keeping secret the source kept an entire — and critical — dimension of Watergate hidden for a generation. Whatever crimes Nixon committed, the FBI had spied on the president and leaked what it knew to The Washington Post in order to destroy him. The editor of The Washington Post knew that, as did Woodward and Bernstein. We do not begrudge them their prizes and accolades, but it would have been useful to know who handed them the story. In many ways, that story is as interesting as the one about all the president’s men.
Title: Re: Media Issues, re Friedman on Felt/Woodward/Nixon
Post by: DougMacG on December 22, 2008, 03:53:43 PM
What a great post, very insightful. True that an informant and a newspaper exposed bad conduct and brought down a presidency. Also true was the the informant and his base of power, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, was also a story of other government misconduct, far exceeding its authorized powers that deserved exposing, but was never pursued.
Similar stories happened throughout the Bush administration as the NY Times for example kept exposing the processes that were keeping us safe. It always seemed that no one looked deeper into the leakers and their own obvious violations.
The media, like the regulators, missed the failures and collapses of everything from Enron to Fannie Mae, AIG, Bear Stearns (and the Soviet Union) etc. etc. and the ability of the ones we consider mainstream to investigate anything just keeps getting smaller and smaller. So the news stories become selected by the call-in leakers instead the so-called editors or publishers.
Title: Another Felt Piece
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 23, 2008, 06:38:11 AM
Make many of the points of Crafty's piece above.
Patrick Cockburn: The reality behind Deep Throat The Mark Felts of this world want to use the media as a weapon against their enemies Saturday, 20 December 2008
Mark Felt, the senior official at the FBI who was the highly placed informant or Deep Throat who famously leaked information during the Watergate scandal, died this week. His nickname, drawn from a pornographic movie of the day, has since become a generic term for well-informed anonymous source.
It was Mr Felt, with access to all FBI files, who met Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in an underground parking garage in Rosslyn, Virginia. He famously steered him and Carl Bernstein towards exposing the Watergate burglary of the Democratic Party's national offices in Washington as only one part of a general campaign of sabotage and political spying directed by the White House. Mr Felt's role was long suspected but confirmed by him only in 2005.
His motives for directing Woodward and Bernstein towards the links between the White House and the Watergate burglars were two fold. After 30 years at the FBI, Mr Felt had expected to succeed J Edgar Hoover as its director when he died in 1972 and was enraged to be passed over for the job by President Nixon's nominee Patrick Gray III.
There was more at work here than the frustrated ambition of one man. Mr Felt's secret revelations to Mr Woodward were part of a general counterattack by US government law enforcement agencies against President Nixon who had been trying to place his own men in charge of them. The FBI man was not alone. A striking aspect of Watergate was the sheer quantity of leaks damaging to Nixon coming from all parts of the government, from the CIA to the Internal Revenue Service.
The Watergate investigation is often held up as the apogee of journalistic investigation, but the public memory of what happened gives a highly misleading and exaggerated impression of what journalists can achieve. The blow-by-blow account of Woodward and Bernstein in investigating the break-in are at the heart of their book All the President's Men and the film of the same name.
An impression is given that there are always lots of leakers out there desperate to leak and the assiduous journalist will always come up with an informant. In fact, Watergate was one of a kind as a scandal in the number of highly placed informants from the security agencies covertly willing to tell the media about the White House's illegal operations because they were defending their own turf.
The self-interested motives of the Deep Throats seldom comes across in accounts of the scandal in part because of the journalistic convention to pretend that anonymous sources make revelations from a sense of outraged morality or for no reason at all.
Journalists may think of themselves as spies, unrelenting investigators discovering and publishing dark secrets about the malpractices of government. This is the image commonly portrayed in movies about the media. But in practice every journalist soon discovers that people have an irritating inhibition about admitting to acts that might land them in court or in jail.
If they are forced to make admissions, as were so many of those involved in Watergate, it was because they are threatened with legal penalties by prosecutors and judges. A close look at the scoops attributed to Woodward and Bernstein shows that most of their accurate information was second hand and was extracted under threat of legal penalty by the Watergate prosecutors.
Most crimes are easy to discover and describe in general terms. I once covered the Lloyd's insurance market for the Financial Times in 1989-90 when it was perpetually mired in litigation and scandal. It did not take long to work out how those running some of the syndicates were parting investors from their money. But it was almost impossible to prove in detail what was happening because those making money out of it were intelligent enough to cover their tracks.
I had the same feeling a decade later when I was in Moscow as correspondent of The Independent and wanted to write about the Russian mafia. I knew a photographer whose uncle was a mafia boss in a city on the Volga north of Moscow. We met the uncle who politely asked why he should talk to us since this might lead to him being sent to prison. I said I could think of no reason in the world. He added that even to be seen talking to a journalist might lead to him being killed by his fellow mafiosi. I said that this was undoubtedly true. Nothing could be proven. We then drank a spectacular amount of vodka, and the uncle explained over the course of a long evening how his main racket worked. This turned out to be a simple but highly lucrative scheme for getting cut-price gasoline from the local oil refinery by a mixture of bribes and intimidation and selling it at a large profit. Unfortunately, the information was unpublishable because the local criminals had had the sense to hide their activities behind a maze of dummy companies and foreign bank accounts.
There is nothing wrong with Woodward and Bernstein benefiting from leaks that were generated by bureaucratic warfare in Washington in 1972. Anybody reporting on government will be dependent on sources within government. The Mark Felts of this world do not act simply out of a sense of righteousness but because they want to use the media as a weapon against their enemies.
At the height of the scandal over the Watergate break-in, Mr Felt found nothing strange in ordering nine equally illegal burglaries of the homes of friends and relatives of members of a left-wing splinter group. Crucial he may have been to the downfall of Nixon, Deep Throat was scarcely a single-minded opponent of the obstruction of justice.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 29, 2008, 10:42:12 PM
Year of Leg Thrills By L. Brent Bozell III MediaResearch.org | Monday, December 29, 2008
Sean Hannity marks 2008 as the year journalism died. But it could just as easily be the year journalism felt a thrill going up its leg. That Chris Matthews announcement in February, that a Barack Obama speech caused him a mild ecstasy, represented the everyday “mainstream” media view. Reporters didn’t so much produce “news” during this election year as they tried to make a sale. Every story seemed to say “You know you want Obama.”
Chris Matthews won the “Quote of the Year” for 2008 in the Media Research Center’s annual tally of the year’s worst reporting, or “The Best of Notable Quotables.” The only quote that came close to Matthews in summing up the year in liberal tilt was this bizarre post-election headline from the Reuters wire service: “Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race.”
The “Obamagasm Award” went to Nancy Gibbs, Time’s senior writer in charge of obsequious fawning, for using her post-election cover story to compare Obama to Jesus Christ, only better: “Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.”
A Kool-Aid-abstaining Obama critic might see in that line a reference to how Obama’s memoirs are a melange of biographical fact and self-serving literary invention, as authors from David Freddoso to Jerome Corsi have revealed. But no, Gibbs was celebrating the Obama victory as a massive crusade to save America: “He won because in a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than ever spoken before came together to try to save it.”
Even anchormen couldn’t resist the urge to “save the country” by selling Obama. NBC’s Brian Williams won the “Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award” for soft and cuddly interviews for trying to help Michelle Obama identify the worst Republican lie about her husband: “What of the attacks has busted through to you? What makes you angriest at John McCain, the Republicans? What’s being said about your husband that you want to shout from the mountain tops is not true?”
Do you remember Cindi McCain being asked claptrap like that?
Hillary Clinton was also lionized, most egregiously as she finally packed up her long-spoiled campaign in June. The day after the last primary, ABC’s Diane Sawyer won the “Media Hero Award” by conflating Hillary’s presidential campaign to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ: “This woman, as we said, forged into determination and purpose her whole life. As someone said, ‘No thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.” (The quoted “someone” was William Penn, who wrote a book on Christianity and Quakerism in 1669 titled “No Cross, No Crown.”)
By contrast, liberal journalists loathed Gov. Sarah Palin from the moment she took the stage in Dayton as John McCain’s running mate. Chris Matthews won the “Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin” for insisting in October that comparing Palin to Hillary Clinton “is the comparison between an igloo and the Empire State Building!”
Liberal reporters often assumed that anyone who criticized these sainted Democrats must be inventing things out of whole cloth. Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine won the “Damn Those Conservatives Award” by trying to shame T. Boone Pickens for backing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry in 2004.
She asked if he regretted funding them, and when he responded “Why would I?,” Solomon shot back: “Because it’s such an ugly chapter in American political history.”
Boone protested: “Everything that went into those ads was the truth.” Solomon retorted: “Really? I thought it was all invented.” Thus proclaimeth a scribe for that bastion of objective news, The New York Times.
But Solomon was no Bill Maher, who’s in his own category of viciousness. On his little HBO show in February, Maher earned the “Crush Rush Award for Loathing Limbaugh” by reveling in P.J. O’Rourke’s mockery of Rush Limbaugh’s old OxyContin addiction. Asked Maher: “Why couldn’t he have croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger?”
Maher’s HBO rants also won the “Barbara Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity” when he railed against the Catholic Church as both “a child-abusing religious cult” and “the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia.”
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann ran away with the “Madness of King George Award” for yelling at President Bush in May to “shut the hell up” and attacked him for “a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense.” (That would pretty much describe the entirety of Keith’s not-so-special comments during the Bush era.) Olbermann also insisted Bush was a “fascist” who was “urinating on the Constitution.”
Up until convention season was over, MSNBC thought this kind of commentary qualified Olbermann for “objective” anchorman duties sitting beside ecstatic Chris Matthews. That also sums up the media’s year in review.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia, and is a syndicated columnist.
Title: Re: Media Issues, economist magazine
Post by: DougMacG on January 05, 2009, 09:34:57 AM
Adding my comment to some positive and negative comments made regarding bias and quality at 'The Economist'. To me, they have high quality writing and analysis. I particularly liked the coverage and clarity in succinctly written stories from other parts of the world. I canceled my subscription over bias that I just wasn't going to support on American politics.
The issue that lost me was 'HillaryCare'. They wrote a short piece debating the pros and cons of some little detail healthcare proposal in the works - like the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic (Ibuprofen coverage or something serious like that) - with the presumption nationalized health care was both a good thing and a sure thing. They missed the political outrage coming at the over-reach of the health care initiative which was based on Clinton's mandate from winning 43% of the vote and his need to give his wife a job. Socialized medicine in 1993 was not the direction of this country and led to the congressional revolution that held for 7 congressional terms.
Maybe just a sentence acknowledging that half the country would be up in arms about nationalizing our most important industry as we tear up the tenets of limited, constitutional government would have sufficed to hedge against perceived bias as they wrote about the secret task force negotiations.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on January 05, 2009, 10:18:11 AM
Adding my comment to some positive and negative comments made regarding bias and quality at 'The Economist'. To me, they have high quality writing and analysis. I particularly liked the coverage and clarity in succinctly written stories from other parts of the world. I canceled my subscription over bias that I just wasn't going to support on American politics.
Yep, that pretty well sums it up; high quality writing and analysis, succinct stories from other parts of the world, but definitely, they are not always right (although I think they have an excellent percentage) :-)
Title: This IS CNN
Post by: G M on January 08, 2009, 08:29:33 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2009, 08:25:26 PM
CNN's Staged Video Update: Norwegian Doctor Works with Hezbollah
Media | Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 7:46:52 am PST
At Erik Svansbo’s Sweidsh blog, more information about the pro-terrorist agenda of Mads Gilbert, the doctor seen in that staged video from a Gaza hospital.
The doctor’s colleague actually told the Aftonbladet newspaper that spreading pro-Hamas propaganda is more important to them than their medical work—and the Norwegian organization for which they work is a partner with Hezbollah’s “Martyr Foundation.” In Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Mads Gilbert’s norwegian colleague Erik Fosse reported about his work in Gaza: Two Norwegian doctors have worked hard for seven days to save lives in Gaza. But to report to the outside world about what is happening in the war assessing the more important. - “Our witness function and to convey what is actually happening have been more important,” says the doctor Erik Fosse to VG Nett.
In Sweden’s biggest morning newspaper, columnist Lisa Bjurwald stated that NORWAC cooperates with Hezbollah’s Martyr Foundation: GILBERT AND HIS medical colleague Erik Fosse seconded by the Norwegian aid organization NORWAC, for which Fosse is boss. NORWAC’s partners include Hezbollah’s Martyr Foundation, which collects and distributes money to suicide bomber’s families.
Not a single mainstream media source has reported the outrageous pro-terrorist views and actions of these doctors, but all have broadcast interviews with them.
Title: Time rooting for America's/Israel's enemies, as usual....
Post by: G M on January 13, 2009, 06:09:16 AM
- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Is Time Rooting for Israel’s Defeat?
Posted By Stephen Green On January 12, 2009 @ 12:00 am In . Column2 01, . Positioning, Israel, Media, Middle East, US News, World News | 3 Comments
Has Time magazine joined the ranks of Hamas and come out in favor of the destruction of Israel? Probably not, but what else is a reader to think after just the first couple paragraphs of [1] this Tim McGirk story from last week? You’d think McGirk’s story couldn’t get any worse than the headline — “Can Israel Survive Its Assault on Gaza? — but you’d be wrong. Read:
With each passing day, Israel’s war against Hamas grows riskier and more punishing, with the gains appearing to diminish compared to the spiraling costs — to Israel’s moral stature, to the lives of Palestinian civilians and to the world’s hopes that an ancient conflict can ever be resolved.
That’s pure, and unsubstantiated, conjecture. No sources, no facts, no figures. And in a news piece. You’d think things really couldn’t get worse from there, but you’d be wrong again. Read a little further down:
But after 60 years of struggle to defend their existence against foreign threats and enemies within, many Israelis may be wondering, Where does that end lie? The threat posed by Hamas is only the most immediate of the many interlocking challenges facing Israel, some of which cast dark shadows over the long-term viability of a democratic Jewish state.
Go back and read that again. That pounding you hear isn’t just a headache, it’s the drumbeat of surrender. McGirk has, somehow, turned a fairly limited incursion into Gaza — which Israel occupied in its entirety for almost 30 years — into a referendum on the very existence of the Jewish state.
Notice again that McGirk hasn’t quoted any actual Israelis, or anyone else for that matter. He’s simply asserted that “many” Jews “may be wondering” if there’s any “long-term viability.” McGirk is making stuff up and reporting it as news. And his editors at Time seem to be fine with that. But don’t be surprised — McGirk and Time have quite the history of making stuff up together.
McGirk was the “journalist” who “broke” the “story” of the “massacre” by U.S. Marines at Haditha, Iraq. In fact, he fought with his editors to get the word “massacre” in the lede of the story, calling it “[2] a battle I lost.” A good thing, too, because the story of the Haditha Massacre has been proven to be a fake.
But, as Clarice Feldman noted in an [3] American Thinker article asking if McGirk was “the new Mary Mapes,” McGirk is no stranger to the moral equivalence game. Reporting from a Taliban hideout weeks after the 9/11 attacks, McGirk wrote that he left, “thinking that maybe this evening wasn’t very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we’re not so different after all.” Surely, McGirk’s access to the Taliban is no mystery.
Unfortunately, McGirk isn’t Time’s only questionable hire.
[4] Tony Karon has been writing for Time since 1996, and serving as a senior editor since 2000. In a December 29, 2008, [5] article on the Gaza War, Karon proved himself almost as incapable of hiding his biases as McGirk. He can hardly go a paragraph without spouting Hamas propaganda:
But Hamas has good reason to expect that Israel’s military campaign will be limited, and it believes it can come out ahead in the strategic equation despite the heavy cost in blood that will be paid by its own leaders and militants, as well as by Palestinian civilians.
Ah, those brave Hamas leaders, willing to pay any price and bear any burden — to fire rockets from school yards and into civilian areas. The suffering of the Palestinian people is all too real — but left unsaid is how much of it is caused by the terrorists Palestinians themselves elected to lead them. Context is everything, and Karon does his best to skew it to one side.
Again, do not be surprised. If you [6] click over to Karon’s personal website, you’ll find he thinks that “The fact of Israel’s survival” is “a grim reality” for its Palestinian citizens. Does that mean that if Israel were to somehow just … go away … that life would become not-so-grim for the Palestinians? It seems that Karon has left the answer to that question as an exercise for the reader.
Tim McGirk is Time’s Jerusalem bureau chief, and Tony Karon is the senior editor for world coverage. They are not simple stringers, or even on-assignment reporters. They help shape, define, and determine Time’s coverage of the Middle East — and thus shape, define, and determine what millions of people the world over learn about a vital region.
Everyone has their biases — here at Pajamas Media, we wear ours proudly on our sleeves. If only the folks at Time were so forthcoming.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-time-rooting-for-israels-defeat/
URLs in this post: [1] this Tim McGirk story: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1870314,00.html [2] a battle I lost.: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/times-mcgirk-wanted-to-call-haditha-a-massacre [3] American Thinker article: http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/06/haditha_is_mcgirk_the_new_mary.html [4] Tony Karon: http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,494004,00.html [5] article on the Gaza War: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1868864,00.html [6] click over: http://tonykaron.com/2008/05/08/israel-is-alive-zionism-is-dead-what-now/
Title: Re: Media Issues, bankrupt liberal media
Post by: DougMacG on January 16, 2009, 06:39:28 PM
Speaking of media bias, could we please have a moment of silence for the (Minneapolis) StarTribune that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. Known affectionately as the 'Red Star' or the 'Star and Sickle', this paper is as liberal as they come and their their bias runs from page one to the editorials to the weather and yes, through the sports section. I know the financial crisis in the newspaper business is about advertising revenue and competition from free internet sources, but it doesn't help that your product is designed to alienate nearly 50% of your potential readers.
MN is perhaps the most liberal state in the union, the only state Reagan never won and the home to names like Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Paul Wellstone and (NY'er) Al Franken. Still, that tells only half the story. Minnesota has elected only one new Democrat governor since 1970, so there is another view here and no newspaper to cover it.
I had the honor :oops: of writing the opposing view published in counterpoint to their predictable endorsement of Bill Clinton in Nov. 1992. After being gutted by people who didn't understand the point I was making, I started including 'no edit without permission' with my contributions and never got published again.
In chapter 11 they don't go away, they just quit paying their bills. Maybe a savvy bankruptcy judge should require them to aim the product at more than half the market.
Title: News now made in China too?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2009, 09:49:04 AM
Bringing this over from the China thread
China: Beijing Plans to Infiltrate Mainstream Western Media(to buy & control failing MSM) Boxun ^ | 01/28/09
Beijing Plans to Infiltrate Mainstream Western Media
By chinafreepress.org (translation)
Jan 28, 2009 - 11:06:03 AM
Boxun Exclusive
In mid-January 2009, a week before Chinese New Year, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party held a meeting to discuss its plan for foreign propaganda work in the year to come. It summarized the past decade's progress in co-opting international Chinese-language media into doing the propaganda work of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Politburo decided that in addition to continuing its Chinese-language international image promotion, it plans to infiltrate and influence mainstream Western media. The meeting cited the example of the Russian former KGB officer and present tycoon who has purchase the defunct British newspaper The Evening Standard. This overt an approach is undesirable, the meeting concluded, and instead influential overseas Chinese in the media business should be utilized to purchase and operate mainstream Western media organs.
The spring 2008 coverage of the uprising in Tibet by CNN and other Western mainstream media organs sounded an alarm. China's Politburo concluded that it must counter this by infiltrating and influencing Western coverage of China and China's image in the international media.
The opportunity is presently ripe because of the downturn in the world economy. Many media organizations are in economic difficulty, even going bankrupt, and they can be purchased and it will look like an investment and business opportunity and not the attempt of the Chinese government to infiltrate Western media organs and influence Western popular opinion toward China that it is.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on February 04, 2009, 02:04:42 PM
Unrestricted Warfare.
Title: Media Corruption, this week with George Stephanopoulos
Post by: G M on February 04, 2009, 03:38:07 PM
http://www.mrc.org/press/2009/press20090204.asp
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 04, 2009 CONTACT: COLLEEN O’BOYLE or TIM SCHEIDERER AT 703.683.5004 Bozell to ABC President: You Must Publicly Address Stephanopoulos' Apparent Conflict of Interest Open Letter Demands Public Resolution to Daily Strategy Calls
Alexandria, VA – Media Research Center (MRC) President L. Brent Bozell, III has written a letter to ABC News President David Westin calling on him to publicly address and resolve what appears to be a clear violation of journalistic ethics by ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos. Last week a Politico story broke the news that Stephanopoulos has participated in daily phone strategy sessions with now White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel throughout his tenure at ABC.
Mr. Bozell on Thursday issued a statement demanding an explanation, and calling for Stephanopoulos to recuse himself from reporting on an Obama Administration whose plans and messaging he spends every morning helping to craft. Stephanopoulos has remained silent.
Bozell has now brought the matter directly to Westin, calling on him to either provide evidence that the Politico story is false, or admit and resolve what clearly would be a major violation of journalistic ethics.
To schedule an interview with MRC President Brent Bozell or another MRC spokesperson, please contact Tim Scheiderer (x. 126) or Colleen O’Boyle (x. 122) at (703) 683-5004.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2009, 05:39:25 PM
:-o
Refresh my memory-- what was Stephanopolous under President Clinton? Press Secretary? or?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on February 04, 2009, 06:32:39 PM
Per Wikipedia:
Prior to joining ABC News, he was a senior political adviser to the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and later became Clinton's communications director.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Stephanopolous
Post by: DougMacG on February 04, 2009, 08:37:39 PM
My recollection is that he was a young ambitious staff worker working the strategy and rapid response war room with James Carville. They had to answer a number of things that came up other than policy, "I didn't inhale", Gennifer Flowers, letter to draft board, etc. but they just keep saying Carville's line: "it's the economy, stupid."
Tim Russert worked for Mario Cuomo. As a reporter and analyst it would be normal that the analysts and anchors stay in touch as best they can with both sides getting the latest word before they go on the air. But this story says Stephanopolous was too close to one side - a major media outlet perhaps favoring Barack Obama and hope and change over those ugly Republicans. Please say it isn't so. :-(
Title: Interview with a Palestinian Journalist, I
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 07, 2009, 09:31:43 AM
A Minority Report from the West Bank and Gaza michaeltotten.com ^ | February 1, 2009 | Khaled Abu Toameh via Michael Totten
Khaled Abu Toameh is not your typical Palestinian journalist. He began his career at one of Yasser Arafat’s newspapers and today he writes for the Jerusalem Post. He has produced video for European TV stations, and even blogged for a while at Commentary Magazine in New York. It’s impossible to cram Toameh into a convenient ideological box, though that doesn't stop some people from trying.
I met him briefly a few weeks ago on my trip to Israel sponsored by the American Jewish Committee when he gave a talk to me and my colleagues and answered some questions at the end. I’m reproducing the entire transcript here because I think he deserves a full hearing.
Hamas, Fatah, Americans, Israelis, Europeans, Arab governments, American foreign correspondents – just about everybody involved in any way with the conflict comes under some well-deserved fire. There's something here for just about everybody to like and dislike, and I’m publishing what he said without quote-shopping or cherry-picking his words for convenience.
* Khaled Abu Toameh: When I finished high school the PLO offices hired me as a correspondent, and I worked for a PLO newspaper for seven years during which time I attended university in Jerusalem. After I graduated I had to make a decision: do I go back and work for the PLO, or do I try to become a real journalist? It took me about two seconds to make that decision. I decided to work with the international media and the Israeli media.
When I say "work with the international media," what does that mean? We have hundreds of foreign journalists who come to this part of the world – every year, every month, and sometimes every week – to cover the stories here. Now there are two stories here. There's the one that's happening inside Israel, and there's the one that's happening inside the Palestinian areas.
Fortunately for us, Israel is an open country that allows people to write whatever they want, criticize the prime minister, the defense minister, the IDF. You can write all these horrible things against Israel and still walk in downtown Jerusalem. But when it comes to covering the Palestinian territories, the story is completely different. You can't wake up in the morning as a foreign journalist and drive on your own into a Palestinian village. You can't just show up and say “Good morning, I work for the New York Times, can I speak to Hamas please.” It doesn't work like that for a number of reasons. You don't know the language and need a translator. You don't know your way around. And most important, it's not safe.
So foreign journalists who want to cover stories in the Palestinian areas rely on fixers. And that's where I fit in. For the past twenty years or so I've been working as a fixer, translator, advisor – call it whatever you want – with most of the foreign media. And of course in this work with the international media I got myself a number of jobs, one of which I'm still doing. I even have colleagues here. For the past twenty years I've been working with NBC News, and I was blogging for Commentary Magazine also. I was writing for U.S. News and World Report, occasionally for the Wall Street Journal, and a number of British tabloids. In the course of this work with the international media I became a writer and analyst of Palestinian affairs and a film producer for the BBC.
About eight years ago, when the Second Intifada started, I started writing for the Jerusalem Post about Palestinian issues. And I still work with the international media. My job is to serve as the eyes and ears of the international media.
Some of you may be wondering what's going on with this guy who started working as a journalist for the PLO and ends up writing for a Jewish newspaper. Some people ask me “when did you become a Zionist? When did you become pro-Israel?” Well, I'm not pro-anything other than the facts and the truth. As a journalist I don't have any problem working for any newspaper that provides me with a platform. I don't care if it's Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or even Buddhist.
And to be honest with you, I find it ironic that as an Arab Muslim living in this part of the world that I have to work for a Jewish newspaper or for the international media in order to be able to practice any kind of real journalism. Why? Because we don't have any free media. In the Palestinian areas we didn't have it when I was working there in the 1970s and 1980s, we didn't get one when we brought Yasser Arafat in to start the Palestinian Authority, and of course we don't have a free media today under Fatah, Hamas, and the rest of the gangs that are running the show out there. And this is very sad.
Sometimes I wish the problem with the media was the only problem that we have over there, but as you all know it's a very messy situation. I'm one of those who has been arguing for the past fifteen years that things have been going in the wrong direction in this part of the world. For a few months after signing Oslo we reached the point where many Jews and many Arabs missed the good old days before the peace process began.
Now, what do I mean by that? Oslo was not bad. Oslo was based on the idea of a two-state solution and ending the military occupation in one way or another. So the idea of Oslo was not bad. Separation between Jews and Palestinians who did not want to live together. And as such I supported it. I thought it was a good idea.
But the way Oslo was implemented brought disaster on both Jews and Arabs. The assumption back then in the U.S., in Israel, and in many places in Europe, was that if you bring the PLO and thousands of PLO fighters and you dump them into the West Bank and Gaza and you give them millions of dollars and guns that they will do the dirty job of policing the West Bank and Gaza. They would replace the occupation and fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They would do all these wonderful things. Why? Because they're on our payroll.
So the international community and Israel gathered all these PLO fighters from around the world, released thousands of PLO fighters from Israeli prisons, gave them uniforms and guns, and called them security forces. And the result was the people who had never received any basic training, people who had never finished high school, became colonels and generals in Yasser Arafat's Authority. He established sixteen different security forces with the help of the Americans, the Europeans, and the Israelis. And they started pouring money into this regime that they called the Palestinian Authority. Billions of dollars with the hope that Arafat would deliver.
Now, there's no need to elaborate. As you all know, Arafat turned out to be a crook. Most of the money that was sent to the Palestinian Authority literally went down the drain and supported the shopping sprees of Arafat's wife who was living in Paris. Instead of building us a hospital, Arafat built a casino in Jericho, as if the Palestinian revolution aspired for forty years to get us a casino. And the chutzpah was that he built that casino across the street from a refugee camp. So Palestinians did not see the fruits of peace.
My argument is as follows. The fact that Arafat was crooked didn't surprise us Palestinians. We were only surprised by the fact that the international community kept giving him money and refused to hold him accountable when he stole our money. Why didn't they invest something? They didn't want to believe it.
When I tried to alert my foreign colleagues in 1995, 1996, and 1997, to the fact that there was corruption in the Palestinian Authority, many of them asked me if I was on the payroll of the Jewish Lobby. I wanted to know where was this Jewish Lobby? If there was one maybe they would pay me.
I told them: “This is what I am hearing. The writing is on the wall. Come and listen to what Palestinians are saying.” And they told me they weren't interested in that story. They told me they wanted anti-Israel stories because it made their lives so much easier. They told me they didn't want to write anything bad about Palestinians, that Arafat was a man of peace and should be given a chance. I heard this from major American journalists, by the way. Leading American journalists. I don't want to give you their names right now, but I was really frustrated. And angry.
Listen. For all these years we've been attacking the military occupation. So why is it that when I tell you something that Arafat is doing, suddenly you don't want to report it and think it's Jewish propaganda? Most of these journalists did not even want to make any effort.
By depriving these people of money, what did Arafat do? He radicalized the Palestinians who did not see the fruits of peace. So that's reason number one why Palestinian society is radicalized.
But there are other reasons. Reasons number two is that you gave Yasser Arafat guns so that he could kill Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but instead he directed those guns against anyone who said they wanted reform or democracy. Arafat used your guns, your weapons, provided by the United States of America, to suppress the leaders of a new leadership.
Let me give you an example. In 1997, 29 Palestinian professors signed a petition demanding Yasser Arafat end the corruption. They found themselves either shot or killed or thrown into jail or they had to run away from the country. And of course this is not a story you would see on CNN. I don't think even the New York Times reported that.
So Arafat cracked down on the reformists and the democrats and the people who wanted good government. And he sent the rest of the people into the open arms of Hamas. He cracked down on the reformists and he refused to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Reason number three. You gave Yasser Arafat money to open a TV and radio station. And on this TV and radio station Arafat said “Jihad, jihad, kill the crusaders, kill the Jews, kill the infidels, kill everyone but me.” Now you may ask yourself why Arafat was inciting against his peace partners in Israel, why was he inciting against the Americans and Europeans who were feeding him? It doesn't make sense.
Well, to us it does make sense. This is how our Arab dictators survive. They constantly blame the miseries of our people on the Jews and the West and the Crusaders and the infidels and the Zionist lobby and the imperialists. They use all these slogans. Arab leaders always need to make sure that their people are busy hating somebody else, preferably the Jews and the Americans. Otherwise their people might rebel, and God forbid they might demand reforms and democracy.
This is exactly what Arafat did, but he did it in Arabic. The international community – and even Israelis – did not want to listen to what Arafat was saying in Arabic. They only cared what he said in English. They said that what he said in English was good.
I said “Excuse me, folks, but in Arabic Arafat is telling people to kill you.” But they did not want to listen to the incitement. They underestimated it. They said “you Arabs are all corrupt and don't know anything about democracy so you deserve a dictatorship.”
This incitement drove people into the open arms of Hamas. Arafat was telling people how evil the Jews are, and people then said “Hamas is right, Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs. Why should we make peace with them?”
A fourth reason, which is a lot less important in my view, is that Israelis brought the PLO into the Palestinian areas, armed the PLO, helped create all these security militias and gangsters and mafias, and then said they needed to protect themselves from their peace partners. And how did they protect themselves? By imposing restrictions and curfews, by surrounding Palestinian communities with checkpoints. Why? Because they needed to protect themselves from the militias and mafias that they brought into the West Bank and Gaza. So Palestinians lost faith in the peace process.
All this radicalized Palestinian society to the point that when Hamas decided to run in free and democratic elections under the banner of “change” and “reform” they won. It was all very obvious. The writing was clear on the wall that anyone who challenged Arafat back then....believe me that if even Ehud Olmert had run in the Palestinian elections promising change and reform and democracy he would have won. Because in January of 2006, the parliamentary elections that were held in the Palestinian Authority were largely about internal reforms in the Palestinian areas. Hamas was ready to deliver. What did they do? They came to the Palestinians and said “Listen, folks. You've tried all these PLO people. They're corrupt. They're bad. Arafat was a thief. Abu Mazen is also a total failure. These guys stole your money. These guys are US agents, they are CIA. Why don't you try us now? We will show you that we can establish good government. And, by the way, look at what we've done for you since 1988. We've established a vast network of educational, social, health, and economic services. Arafat built a casino, and we built two universities. Arafat gave his wife 100,000 dollars a month so she can do her shopping while we gave poor people money. Arafat built bars and restaurants in Ramallah while we built orphanages and charities.” So the Palestinians said “Let's try Hamas. If they come to power there is nothing left to steal. They can't be more corrupt than the PLO.”
That was the basic line. I'm not saying all those who voted for Hamas in 2006 were registering a vote of protest. We have to be very careful. Hamas does have a lot of supporters. What I'm saying is that had it not been also a vote of protest against the PLO , Hamas would not have won. Why? Because I know Christians who voted for Hamas. I know centrist Palestinians who voted for Hamas. I even know PLO people who voted for Hamas because the name of the game back then was “Let's punish the PLO.” And how do you do it? By voting for Hamas, their main rivals. And it worked. And Hamas came to power.
What has been happening since then is also very interesting. The U.S. government, with the help of some Europeans and some Israelis, after Hamas won the election, they went to the guys who lost the election and said “folks, here are guns and here is some money. Go bring down this democratically elected government.” And what was the result of this U.S. meddling in Palestinian affairs? It backfired. It played into the hands of Hamas and even boosted Hamas' popularity on the street.
What did Palestinians think when they saw Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush openly campaigning against this democratically elected government? Their sympathies went to this democratically elected government even though it was Hamas. And when Palestinians see PLO people, the Fatah people, openly conspiring with the Americans and the Israelis to bring down a democratically elected government, they're going to hate the PLO even more.
So U.S. and European meddling in Palestinian affairs in the aftermath of the Hamas victory further strengthened Hamas to the point where in June 2007 Hamas says “Everyone is trying to bring me down. No one is giving me a chance. The whole world is against me. You corrupt PLO people are conspiring against me. I won in a free and democratic election. If you don't believe me, ask Jimmy Carter. He supervised the election. What does everyone want from me?”
And they staged a coup. Some people call it a coup. They threw the Fatah people out of Gaza. Fewer than 10,000 Hamas fighters defeated more than 70,000 American-backed Fatah policemen. The question is, how did they do it?
The answer is very simple. As soon as Hamas started shooting, these people did not fight. They ran away. They surrendered to Hamas. They basically went to Hamas and said “No, no, Hamas, please. We will give you all the guns, everything. Just leave us alone.” And they ran away.
First they tried to run away toward Egypt. But Mubarak is not stupid. He sealed the border. I was there when it happened.
Israel was the only country in the world that sent troops and helicopters and gunships and ambulances to save Muslims from being slaughtered by Muslims, to save the PLO people from being slaughtered by Hamas. Israel took them and dumped them in the West Bank.
Title: Interview with a Palestinian Journalist, II
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 07, 2009, 09:32:38 AM
And where are we standing today? I told you before that I'm one of those people who support a two-state solution. I think it's a wonderful solution. But in the end we're getting a different kind of two-state solution. We have two separate entities. One in Gaza, and one in the West Bank.
The one in Gaza is an Islamic state run by Hamas and supported by Ahmadinejad, Syria, Hezbollah, and some people say Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. It's a very dangerous situation, and as a moderate Muslim that's the last place I want to live on this earth.
What we have in the West Bank is the secular, corrupt, powerless regime of the PLO. Abu Mazen, Abu Shmazen, all these Abus. The Arafat cronies who failed their people over the past fifteen years. Who lost the election in January 2006 because of the corruption. Who were kicked out of Gaza because they failed. Who have lost control over half the Palestinians who live in this part of the world. And they are sitting in Ramallah. These people are in power only thanks to the presence of the IDF in the West Bank. If the Israeli army were to leave the West Bank tomorrow morning these PLO people would collapse in five minutes and Hamas would take over.
The question we should ask ourselves in the wake of this scenario is whether or not there is really a partner on the Palestinian side for any deal, let alone a peace agreement. Any kind of deal. Is there really a partner on the Palestinian side? And the answer is simple. No.
Hamas is not a partner for any peace agreement because Hamas is not going to change. All these people who believe that Hamas will one day change its ideology, that pragmatic leaders will emerge in Hamas, these people are living under illusions. Hamas is not going to change. To their credit we must say that their message has been very clear. It's the same message in Arabic and in English. They're being very honest about it. They're saying “Folks, we will never recognize Israel. We will never change. We will not abandon the path of the resistance.” They're very clear about it.
After they won the election, by the way, the international community went to Hamas and said “Listen. If you want us to deal with you, accept Israel and everything will be okay.” And Hamas was very honest. They said “No. We are not going to renounce terrorism. We are not going to recognize previous agreements between Palestinians and Israel. And we are not going to recognize Israel's right to exist.” They were very clear about it. And they say the same thing today.
Ten days before the Hamas coup in Gaza I was invited by some U.S. diplomats to tell them about what was happening. I told them “Hamas is about to kick the PLO people out of Gaza because you are openly with the PLO and it has discredited them on the street. You're making them look like CIA agents.”
The U.S. diplomats said “You don't know what you're talking about. The PLO has 70,000 people. Who is Hamas? They will crush them. You will see.”
My prediction was not 100 percent accurate because I expected it to happen in three weeks. It happened ten days later. The writing was very clear on the wall.
There are so many things that are obvious in this part of the world that international leaders, diplomats, all these people in the West who are dealing with the Palestinian issue turn a blind eye to and don't want to see. Before we go to the Q&A and I take your questions, I want to give you one small example of how people in the West don't want to understand what's going on over here.
Before the January 2006 parliamentary election, the PLO people went to Condoleeza Rice and said “You are making a huge mistake by forcing us to go and have a free and democratic election. Our people don't trust us. We are corrupt and we will lose. Hamas will win. So please let's not hold an election. This is not the right time.”
“No, don't worry,” she said. “Let Hamas participate in the election. Hamas will not win. Everything will be okay.”
They asked her how she knew Hamas was not going to win. She said she warned the Palestinians that if they vote for Hamas, she will punish them.
That warning, by the way, gave Hamas ten more points in the election. Hamas took Rice's statement and made huge banners out of it that said Condoleeza Rice says no to Hamas.
So Rice, knowing that Hamas is a terrorist organization, did not set any preconditions for Hamas' participation in the election. Even in Israel, by the way, Hamas candidates were openly campaigning in Israel, in Jerusalem. In East Jerusalem, okay, but in Israel. They were campaigning openly. They were saying “reforms, democracy, and by the way we want to destroy Israel.”
What made Rice, after they won the election, say Hamas is a terrorist organization? Before the election they were not a terrorist organization? She bears responsibility for the fact that Hamas is in power. It was a huge mistake. Instead of learning from their mistakes after Hamas came to power, they continued with the same mistakes. And look at the mess we are in now.
I don't know how to solve this problem. Talking about a Palestinian state today is a joke. Where would that state be established? Israel controls nearly half of the West Bank. These PLO people can't deliver. If Israel gives up the West Bank, you will have to go to Cairo or Amman to take a flight back to America because snipers will be sitting on the hilltops above Ben-Gurion airport.
If you keep up this policy of supporting one party against the other, Gaza will move to the West Bank and we will end up with more anarchy and lawlessness and God knows what else is going to happen. It's a very unpleasant picture. It's very gloomy, I know.
Anthony Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies: Let's see if we can steer this back to the Gaza issue. Given what you've said, what will the impact be on this fighting in Gaza and in the West Bank?
Khaled Abu Toameh: All those talking about how Hamas is finished or on the verge of collapse or that it's only a matter of time before the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip revolt against Hamas, I'm sorry to tell you that I don't share these assessments. Hamas may have suffered a major blow. Many of its institutions have been destroyed. It has been undermined in many ways. But what worries me is that Hamas still enjoys a lot of political support. Hamas continues to be as strong as it was in Gaza.
Why? I've been saying this for a long time: the only way to undermine Hamas and eventually bring about its collapse is to offer the Palestinians a greater alternative to Hamas. Not by bombing their headquarters and destroying their military arsenal. That's good, but it's not enough.
If I were the Americans and the Europeans after Hamas came to power, I would have gone to the PLO people who lost the election and, instead of giving them guns and money, I would have told them “Listen, folks. Hamas is in power because of your corruption, your mismanagement, and because you guys are thieves. Why don't you guys reform yourselves? Get rid of all these corrupt people in the PLO and Fatah. Form a youth party and challenge Hamas in the next election.” That's one way.
But I'm afraid that under the current circumstances Hamas is going to be around for a long time. Many Palestinians today will tell you that Mahmoud Abbas is a traitor, that all these people were actually in the IDF headquarters watching the war. Hamas is already saying that Mahmoud Abbas was passing information to the Israeli about the whereabouts of Hamas leaders.
These allegations are very serious, by the way. I don't know if you saw my story today in the Jerusalem Post about how Hamas in the past 48 hours has been waging a massive crackdown on Fatah in Gaza. They've killed or wounded maybe 100 Fatah people. They're dragging them into the streets and shooting them in the legs. They've even gouged the eyes of some of them out. Maybe you're going to have lunch later, so I don't want to go into graphic descriptions of what's happening to Fatah over there. But Fatah is really under attack, and I don't see anyone moving to save them.
I don't see a mass movement rising against Hamas. Not now. I've been talking to many people in Gaza. I haven't heard one person there blaming Hamas for the destruction of his house. I'm hearing a lot of voices against Israel and against the Arab states. And much of the anger is being directed against Mahmoud Abbas. This operation makes the moderate Arabs look like fools. It makes them look as if they were on the wrong side. When you have Al Jazeera, the most popular TV station in the Arab world, daily and nightly inciting against the Arab leaders and giving a platform for people who are saying our Arab leaders are traitors, that our Arab leaders are in collusion with the Israelis, that our Arab leaders were hoping to enter Gaza in Israeli tanks...you know, this is reverberating. Most of the protests on the Arab street in Cairo, in Khartoum, in Yemen, wherever you go, you will hear people chanting slogans against Arab leaders and Mahmoud Abbas before they chant slogans against Israel and America.
And now there's all this talk of bringing Mahmoud Abbas to Gaza. Excuse me, but if Mahmoud Abbas enters Gaza he will be executed in the public square within minutes. You have all these militias roaming the streets. Most of them weren't fighting. They were hiding. They became “civilians” as soon as the Israelis launched their attack. They were all in hiding or they were all dressed as civilians. When they were brought to hospitals they were without their guns. They were counted as civilians.
We don't know exactly what's happening over there, but I don't see any attempt by the local Palestinians or other forces to challenge Hamas openly.
Max Boot, Council on Foreign Relations: What about the Israeli expectation that with these attacks they will have established deterrence against Hamas? Do you think that's true?
Khaled Abu Toameh: Yes. Yes. Look. The West Bank was quiet during the attack in Gaza. Now, I was talking to many people. You know what they were saying? And this is the funny part. “You know what?” they said. “The Jews have gone mad. This is not the time to mess around with them.” And, you know, when you hear this from the man on the street, it really does create deterrence. I would rather see deterrence created in another way, but there is this perception on the Arab street today that the Jews have gone crazy, there are no more red lines, nothing, they don't care, and we should be careful. So in that sense, yes, there is some kind of deterrence, for the short term at least.
Before this war, four days before the war, I interviewed a number of Hamas guys. I published it in the Jerusalem Post. And the headline was Hamas Mocks Israel's Nonresponse to Qassam Attacks. What were they saying, the Hamas leaders? Basically that the Jews are cowards.
They think Israel ran away from Lebanon, that Hezbollah defeated them. They thought the Jews were scared and would not come into Gaza. They were really confident that Israel wouldn't fight back. Really. They were. They thought at most that Israel would send a few tanks into open fields just to calm Israeli public opinion. So the response really caught them by surprise, especially the first day.
So yes, there is this perception today in the Arab world that our neighbor has gone mad.
Anthony Cordesman: I was in the West Bank this summer, and it's amazing what they've achieved even though an awful lot of that money is still going to senior officials and not to the Palestinian people.
Khaled Abu Toameh: The other day someone came for the first time ever to this part of the world, and he called me and asked me to take him to Ramallah. So I drove him to downtown Ramallah and we stopped there. The man was shocked. He said “Where are the refugee camps? Where are the mud houses? Where's the poverty?”
I said “Why are you asking me these questions?”
He said “I'm shocked. Look how nice it is.”
You know, there are things that are contradictory and don't make sense over there. Some of the restaurants in Ramallah are more expensive than the restaurants in Tel Aviv. There are people with a lot of money.
The corruption hasn't been stopped, but it has been reduced. Some Americans and Europeans continue to pour money on the PLO people without holding them accountable under the pretext that this money will produce a moderating effect.
Max Boot: There does seem to be this sense that the West Bank has been doing better economically.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Yes.
Max Boot: Does that translate into better politics?
Khaled Abu Toameh: No.
Title: Interview with a Palestinian Journalist, III
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 07, 2009, 09:33:01 AM
Mario Loyola, National Review Magazine: One American strategy in the Bush Administration's foreign policy has been to make conditions in the West Bank so much better than in Gaza that the people in Gaza start to say, “Look, it's better under Fatah.”
Khaled Abu Toameh: They are saying that. But at the end of the day they're not going to vote for Fatah. Why? Look. People won't do that for two reasons, or they will vote for Hamas for two reasons.
One, Hamas is not corrupt in power, they didn't steal money. No one gave them a chance, so Palestinians won't hold it against them. Hamas are victims in the eyes of the Palestinians. And as such people's sympathies go to Hamas.
Two, when they look at the PLO guys, all these Abus sitting in Ramallah, they don't see any change. They don't see that the PLO people, the Fatah people, have drawn any conclusions from their own defeat. Fatah has been trying to hold internal elections for the past eighteen years, and they've failed. Mahmoud Abbas promised to hold general elections inside Fatah, two years ago, three years ago, fours years ago. The power struggle between the old guard and the young guard inside Fatah has been ongoing. People look at Fatah and don't see that there is a viable alternative to Hamas.
General Tom McInerney, Fox News Military Analyst: Is there a solution to this problem?
Khaled Abu Toameh: You Americans are always asking us that. Why are Americans always asking me if there is a solution? A solution to what?
Michael J. Totten: The whole thing.
Khaled Abu Toameh: What is the whole thing?
Anthony Cordesman: Is there anything useful that could be done this year?
Khaled Abu Toameh: Listen. Look. We must stop dreaming about the New Middle East and coexistence and harmony and turning this area into Hong Kong and Singapore. If anyone thinks a Palestinian will wake up in the morning and sing the Israeli national anthem, that's not going to happen. If anyone thinks an Israeli Jew will go back to doing his shopping in downtown Ramallah or to see his dentist in Bethlehem or eat fish in Gaza City, that's not going to happen. There has been a total divorce between Jews and Palestinians. We don't want to see each other.
I think that's good. Separation is good. Separation doesn't need harmony and coexistence. Forget about that. That's not going to happen. Let's focus on managing the conflict. Instead of talking about real peace, let's first of all try to stop the violence, reduce the level of bloodshed, and maybe that will pave the way for future peace. The only solution now is total separation between these two communities. Israel should not be involved in the internal affairs of the Palestinians, but at the same time Israel has the right to look after its own security. They should disengage from the Palestinians completely and tell them, “Listen, folks. Don't mess around with us anymore. We're going to strike back if you fire rockets at us. And if you want to have Hamas, Fatah, or whomever, go and do it over there without our help.” That's the only way. I don't see a real peace emerging over here. We should stop talking about it.
Max Boot: But earlier you said that if Israel disengages from the West Bank, Hamas will be in power in five minutes.
Khaled Abu Toameh: I mean the Israelis should disengage under the proper circumstances. Under the current circumstances, they should not disengage. Only if they have a partner on the Palestinian side.
Max Boot: The circumstances aren't going to change any time soon.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Yes. Okay. So don't do anything. You know what? Some Israelis ask me what they should do. I say “Nothing. You just sit there. And wait.”
If I were an Israeli Jew I would go to the Palestinians and say “Listen, folks. I'm prepared to give you a Palestinian state and the Israeli majority approves of that, not because we love the Palestinians, but because we want to be rid of the Palestinians.”
There's a majority of Jews today who want to disband most of the settlements and take only two percent of the West Bank. My Israeli Jewish friends say to me, “You know, Khaled. You Arabs can take whatever you want. Just leave us alone. It's no longer a territorial dispute for us. We'll give you anything you want if you just go and leave us alone.” Some of them even go further than that. Some of them say “Just leave us Tel Aviv, the airport, and the beach.”
In the wake of these positive changes that have happened inside Israel, all you need is a strong partner on the Palestinian side. There is some hope, but only if there is a strong partner on the Palestinian side.
General Tom McInerney: But not Hamas.
Khaled Abu Toameh: I don't care. If I were Israeli I would talk to any Palestinian who wants to talk to me, and I would shoot any Palestinian who shoots at me. I wouldn't ask if they were Hamas. You know what? Believe me, if you listen to Hamas and Fatah in Arabic there isn't much of a difference, especially these days. Fatah fought alongside Hamas in Gaza. Today they said they lost 36 fighters and fired 900 rockets at Israel. Fatah.
Mario Loyola: Hamas pretends its casualties are lower, and Fatah pretends its casualties are higher.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Look. Look. As I said before, let's stop saying “Fatah” and “Hamas.” Talk to anyone who wants to talk. Talking to Hamas does not mean that you recognize Hamas or that they become your buddies. The funny thing is that Israel went to war against a party that it doesn't recognize. And in the end Israel made a cease-fire unilaterally and negotiated with the Americans and the Egyptians for how to end it. And Hamas is still sitting there.
There's nothing wrong with Israel talking to Hamas if they want a ceasefire. Israelis can't ignore the fact that Hamas is in power. And Hamas continues to enjoy tremendous support over there.
Dr. Barry Posen, MIT Security Studies Program: I'm interested in going back a couple of steps and asking for your assessment of Hamas' strategy to let the ceasefire lapse and accelerate the firing of rockets. You already mentioned that they miscalculated the Israeli reaction, but what were they hoping to benefit? And what does that tell us about deterring Hamas in the future?
Khaled Abu Toameh: I think this is something many people in Israel and the West don't hear. I hear it in Arabic, and I hear it directly from them.
Dr. Barry Posen: That's why I'm asking you.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Just before the ceasefire expired, Hamas went to Egypt and said “Listen, folks. We agreed to the previous ceasefire because you, the Egyptians, promised us you would open the Rafah border crossing. And it didn't happen. And we, Hamas, were committed to this. We did our best to honor the ceasefire.”
Okay, there were some violations here and there, but Hamas did in a way honor the ceasefire. They arrested people who were firing at Israel.
Mubarak said “To hell with it. I'm not going to open the Rafah border crossing unless you allow Mahmoud Abbas to come back into Gaza. Do whatever you want. I'm under pressure from the Israelis, the Americans, and Mahmoud Abbas not to open the Rafah border crossing.”
Mahmoud Abbas went to Mubarak before the ceasefire expired and said “President Mubarak, please don't reopen the Rafah border crossing because that will strengthen Hamas. If you want it to be open, only give it back to me in line with the 2005 US-brokered agreement.”
And so, if you think about it, Mahmoud Abbas and Hosni Mubarak bear indirect responsibility for this war. When Hamas saw that they weren't going to open the borders, Hamas said “To hell with the ceasefire” and started firing rockets again. Israel reacted and now we are where we are today.
So now we are back to square one. Hamas is still making the same demand. They said “Okay, we agree to a ceasefire, but reopen the border.” They keep saying “reopen the border.”
Max Boot: Do you think there is going to be any change in Mubarak's attitude? Is he going to do anything to help out that he wasn't doing before?
Khaled Abu Toameh: No. We're back to square one. Look. For Mubarak it's better if these weapons go into Gaza and kill Jews, because if these weapons don't go into Gaza to kill Jews they might end up on the streets of Cairo. They might end up in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Smuggling is a business. We're doing Hamas an injustice by saying they're the ones who established the tunnels. These tunnels have been there since 1967. In the 1970s I visited some of the tunnels. In the 1980s I visited the tunnels. When Arafat was there I visited the tunnels. These tunnels are part of the culture. It's a cultural thing over there. If you have your own tunnel it's like you have your own business. Hamas now takes taxes and gives people a license to build their tunnel.
Listen. The Egyptians are hypocrites. They are busy killing African refugees who are trying to get asylum in Israel. They opened fire on an African mother and son who were trying to run away from Sudan and were trying to seek refuge inside Israel. I haven't heard that the Egyptians are destroying tunnels or anything. I haven't heard it.
Dr. Barry Posen: What was Hamas' theory about how the rocket fire would work? Was the rocket fire meant to being hawks to power in the election here? Were they trying to bring back attention? Were they trying to affect Israeli-Egyptian elections? Because in a weird way it seems to me that this war had a funny objective, that both Israelis and Hamas were fighting for Egypt.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Look. I believe this war could have been prevented. Really. Had we gone to Hosni Mubarak and the Americans and said “Okay, let's forget about the 2005 agreement. Let's come up with a new agreement.” Hamas would have agreed to have some Palestinian Authority representatives at the border in return. But no one wanted to listen. They all said “Bring down Hamas, bring down Hamas.”
To answer your question, Hamas thought that if they fire rockets at Israel that the Israeli public would revolt and start complaining and would go to their leaders and say “Go and find some kind of solution.” Israelis don't want war and can't afford to have war on the eve of elections. So they thought the Israeli public would revolt, that the Egyptian government would come back and negotiate a new ceasefire of Hamas' terms. They really thought these rockets would bring about some kind of international response or a response from the Israeli public.
Mario Loyola: Isn't violence for Hamas both a means and an end?
Khaled Abu Toameh: Of course. Of course. But in this specific case they used the rockets to put pressure on Israel and the West and the Egyptians with the hope that they could extract some concessions. Hamas believes they have created a balance of terror with Israel, and they're trying to imitate Hezbollah.
Anthony Cordesman: What are Palestinian attitudes going to be toward Iran and Syria? And what are Palestinians going to think about Europeans?
Khaled Abu Toameh: First of all, Hamas and Fatah are fighting over who is going to receive the international aid. This is very bad, and they are already accusing each other of stealing some of the aid that has come in from the West and from the Arab countries.
Now Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, all these people are playing a very negative role in this part of the world. Iran did not want Hamas to sign the ceasefire. Iran wants to fight to the last Palestinian. And they will do it through Hamas, through Hezbollah. They have their own agenda, these Iranians. Hamas could not have taken control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 had it not been for support from Iran and Syria. They had logistical and financial support, which means weapons. Most of the weapons coming into Gaza are being financed by Iran and facilitated by Syria.
So how do the Palestinians relate to them? They are some Palestinians who will tell you that the Iranians are bad, that we don't want them meddling in our affairs, look what they've done, these Iranians and Syrians are responsible for the divisions among Palestinians, they are inciting Hamas. Others will tell you they welcome Iran. There are mixed views. But I don't think the majority would like to see aid from Norway, Switzerland, or Canada instead of from Iran and Hezbollah.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2009, 01:03:18 PM
About half-way through President Obama's press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. "All, Chuck Todd," the President said, referring to NBC's White House correspondent. "Where's Chuck?" He had the same strange question about Fox News's Major Garrett: "Where's Major?"
The problem wasn't the lighting in the East Room. The President was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out.
Presidents are free to conduct press conferences however they like, but the decision to preselect questioners is an odd one, especially for a White House famously pledged to openness. We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors. Mr. Obama can more than handle his own, so our guess is that this is an attempt to discipline reporters who aren't White House favorites.
Few accounts of Monday night's event even mentioned the curious fact that the White House had picked its speakers in advance. We hope that omission wasn't out of fear of being left off the list the next time.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2009, 01:17:14 PM
Just pointing out the most obvious in media bias and failings, I was struck during the 'stimulus' press conference last week by the fact that no one asked the President where the money was coming from. McCain has called it generational theft. If this were a business proposal from a company president, the board of directors' first question would be where is the money going to come from. Same if it was a proposal for a case study project at any reputable school of government. The professor's first question would be, where is the money you propose to spend going to come from? But no curiosity whatsoever from the White House puppet press corps. That is the sad state of the fourth estate.
Any chance that wouldn't be Helen Thomas' first question if this were 'W' or even McCain?
Title: Facing Down Factions
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 18, 2009, 07:21:10 AM
February 18, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
‘Truth to Power’ Gap Politicians and journalists are petrified of seeming hostile toward members of the “coalition of the oppressed.”
By Jonah Goldberg
‘Speak truth to power,” a phrase of Quaker origins adopted by campus radicals, Hollywood gadflies, and establishment journalists, has become shorthand for bravely criticizing government, big corporations, and other stereotypical villains.
But where’s the bravery? I don’t know many journalists who are afraid of the government, and most make their living from big corporations. Sure, liberals — which most journalists are — are afraid of what conservatives will do in power and vice-versa. But they aren’t very afraid of what government will do to them, specifically.
In fact, being singled out for criticism by the president of the United States is nothing short of a gift. To this day, aging has-beens exploit any opportunity to brag that they were on Richard Nixon’s enemies list. When Bill Clinton denounced William Kristol in 1994 for monkey-wrenching health-care reform, he helped make Kristol one of the most important people in Washington. Various White House assaults on Rush Limbaugh have him laughing all the way to the bank.
And yet, I’ve met innumerable writers and editors who are scared, even terrified, of one or more of these groups: gays, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, feminists, evangelical Christians, and the handicapped. You can write 100 columns calling the president a mass-murdering, sexually depraved sociopath, or demanding that we nationalize the oil companies, but don’t you dare invite the wrath of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or the parents of autistic kids, or (shudder) cat lovers.
(I once wrote a column supporting the hunting of feral cats in Wisconsin, where up to 217 million birds are killed by wild felines each year. Several veteran editors sent me notes marveling at my naïveté. Indeed, the e-mail response was so frightening, I nearly put my family in hiding. By the way, I now believe feral cats should be permitted to dine on schoolchildren if they so desire.)
And it’s not just journalists. Politicians are petrified of seeming hostile toward members of the “coalition of the oppressed.” Legislators cower in fear of earning the wrath of gays, but will brag in their direct mail that they are at war with the White House or that they’ve stood up to the military-industrial complex.
But even the gay bullies on Seinfeld can’t hold a candle to radical Muslims in terms of their ability to strike fear in the hearts of others.
Just look at Britain. It is currently harboring a gaggle of non-British Muslim preachers who call for, among other things, the slaughter of Jews and the imposition of sharia law in Britain. These people are accepted, sometimes even given welfare benefits, in the name of pluralism, multiculturalism, and tolerance.
But when Geert Wilders, a documentary maker and member of the Dutch parliament, was invited by British members of Parliament to screen his documentary critical of the Koran in London, the government said, in effect: “Whoa, whoa, whoa! We can’t tolerate that.” Wilders has been barred from the country because his ideas “threaten community harmony.”
If only Wilders’ supporters beheaded people or thronged outside embassies spewing various “death to” chants, he might have been invited to have tea with the queen.
Speaking of beheading, have you heard about the founder of a television network in upstate New York dedicated to showing Muslims as peace-loving and political moderates? You might have when he started his enterprise in 2004, as the venture received lavish attention. But when Muzzammil Hassan allegedly cut off his estranged wife’s head this month, coverage not only was muted, but the media bent over backward to dispel any notion that religion had anything to do with it. After all, isn’t wife-beheading an ecumenical practice?
One can run through a long list of contortions and double standards when it comes to Muslims: honor killings swept under the rug, theater productions canceled, books shelved by publishers, thought-crime tribunals in Canada, death threats over political cartoons. Chin-strokers at the state department will tell you U.S. foreign policy needs to cater to the “Muslim street,” which chants “death to America” as a voice warm-up exercise.
But the point here isn’t to single out Muslims. Of course most Muslims are law-abiding and peaceful. And I would say that even if the Council for American-Islamic Relations wasn’t prepared to hound me from public life for saying otherwise.
But it’s worth remembering that government and corporations aren’t the only institutions that can abuse power. Factions, to borrow a word from the Federalist Papers, have a power all their own. When governments cave to that power, they become mere tools of bullies. And when journalists go along for the ride, there’s no one left to speak truth to power when that is what’s needed most.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Chad on February 18, 2009, 08:53:40 AM
Quote
But the point here isn't to single out Muslims. Of course most Muslims are law-abiding and peaceful. And I would say that even if the Council for American-Islamic Relations wasn’t prepared to hound me from public life for saying otherwise.
I couldn't agree more. However I happened to be watching Law and Order:SVU last night and a girl made a video mocking TERRORISTS. The show became preachy about tolerating Muslims. WTF? She was clearly against terrorism not Islam. I guess the First Amendment is only for the NYT. The show is becoming unwatchable as the the detectives preach about the govt being into torture, but have no qualms about roughing up perps when it is convenient for them. :roll:
Title: Limbaugh on FD
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2009, 10:22:22 AM
RUSH LIMBAUGH Dear President Obama:
I have a straightforward question, which I hope you will answer in a straightforward way: Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as "local content," "diversity of ownership," and "public interest" rules -- all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?
You have singled me out directly, admonishing members of Congress not to listen to my show. Bill Clinton has since chimed in, complaining about the lack of balance on radio. And a number of members of your party, in and out of Congress, are forming a chorus of advocates for government control over radio content. This is both chilling and ominous.
The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. As a former president of the Harvard Law Review and a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, you are more familiar than most with the purpose of the Bill of Rights: to protect the citizen from the possible excesses of the federal government. The First Amendment says, in part, that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." The government is explicitly prohibited from playing a role in refereeing among those who speak or seek to speak. We are, after all, dealing with political speech -- which, as the Framers understood, cannot be left to the government to police.
When I began my national talk show in 1988, no one, including radio industry professionals, thought my syndication would work. There were only about 125 radio stations programming talk. And there were numerous news articles and opinion pieces predicting the fast death of the AM band, which was hemorrhaging audience and revenue to the FM band. Some blamed the lower-fidelity AM signals. But the big issue was broadcast content. It is no accident that the AM band was dying under the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which choked robust debate about important issues because of its onerous attempts at rationing the content of speech.
After the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the Fairness Doctrine in the mid-1980s, Congress passed legislation to reinstitute it. When President Reagan vetoed it, he declared that "This doctrine . . . requires Federal officials to supervise the editorial practices of broadcasters in an effort to ensure that they provide coverage of controversial issues and a reasonable opportunity for the airing of contrasting viewpoints of those issues. This type of content-based regulation by the Federal Government is . . . antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. . . . History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee."
Today the number of radio stations programming talk is well over 2,000. In fact, there are thousands of stations that air tens of thousands of programs covering virtually every conceivable topic and in various languages. The explosion of talk radio has created legions of jobs and billions in economic value. Not bad for an industry that only 20 years ago was moribund. Content, content, content, Mr. President, is the reason for the huge turnaround of the past 20 years, not "funding" or "big money," as Mr. Clinton stated. And not only has the AM band been revitalized, but there is competition from other venues, such as Internet and satellite broadcasting. It is not an exaggeration to say that today, more than ever, anyone with a microphone and a computer can broadcast their views. And thousands do.
Mr. President, we both know that this new effort at regulating speech is not about diversity but conformity. It should be rejected. You've said you're against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but you've not made it clear where you stand on possible regulatory efforts to impose so-called local content, diversity-of-ownership, and public-interest rules that your FCC could issue.
I do not favor content-based regulation of National Public Radio, newspapers, or broadcast or cable TV networks. I would encourage you not to allow your office to be misused to advance a political vendetta against certain broadcasters whose opinions are not shared by many in your party and ideologically liberal groups such as Acorn, the Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org. There is no groundswell of support behind this movement. Indeed, there is a groundswell against it.
The fact that the federal government issues broadcast licenses, the original purpose of which was to regulate radio signals, ought not become an excuse to destroy one of the most accessible and popular marketplaces of expression. The AM broadcast spectrum cannot honestly be considered a "scarce" resource. So as the temporary custodian of your office, you should agree that the Constitution is more important than scoring transient political victories, even when couched in the language of public interest.
We in talk radio await your answer. What will it be? Government-imposed censorship disguised as "fairness" and "balance"? Or will the arena of ideas remain a free market?
Mr. Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on February 20, 2009, 02:16:07 PM
***Bill Clinton has since chimed in, complaining about the lack of balance on radio***
I would say that Rush saved me during the sliminess of the Clintons. Listening to his talk show helped me live through Bill/Hill. Without it and just watching main stream media, I would have wondered if I was almost the only one who saw through the Clinton BS/swindel machine.
I loved him then. And I like him now. But I don't agree with him as much anymore.
Talking theories and ideals while otherwise promoting "you gotta fail, maybe lose everything, come back and work three times as hard to be able to do better..."
Just doesn't sound as pleasant as "don't worry the government will bail you out of all your troubles."
Rush just doesn't get it this time around.
Title: WSJ: Bill Moyers and the FBI
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2009, 06:06:00 AM
One of the darker periods of modern American history was J. Edgar Hoover's long reign over the FBI, as we have learned since he died in 1972. So it is more than a historical footnote to discover new records showing that prominent public television broadcaster Bill Moyers participated in Hoover's exploits.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Washington Post has obtained a few of the former FBI director's secret files. According to a Thursday front-page story, Hoover was "consumed" with exposing a (nonexistent) relationship between a gay photographer and Jack Valenti, the late film industry lobbyist who was then an aide to Lyndon Johnson. Hoover's M.O. was to amass incriminating personal information as political blackmail.
But as the Post reports in passing, the dossier also reveals that Mr. Moyers -- then a special assistant to LBJ -- requested in 1964 that Hoover's G-men "investigate two other administration figures who were 'suspected as having homosexual tendencies.'"
More Hoover's Institution 07/20/05 – Laurence H. Silberman This isn't the first time Mr. Moyers's name has come up in connection with Hoover's abuse of office. When Laurence Silberman, now a federal appeals judge, was acting Attorney General in 1975, he was obliged to read Hoover's secret files in their entirety in preparation for testimony before Congress -- and as far as we know remains one of the only living officials to have done so. "It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service," he wrote in these pages in 2005.
Amid "bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King," Judge Silberman found a 1964 memo from Mr. Moyers directing Hoover's agents to investigate Barry Goldwater's campaign staff for evidence of homosexual activity. A few weeks before, an LBJ aide named Walter Jenkins had been arrested in a men's bathroom, and Mr. Silberman wrote that Mr. Moyers and his boss evidently wanted leverage in the event Goldwater tried to use the liaison against them. (He didn't, as it happened.)
When that episode became public after Mr. Silberman testified, an irate Mr. Moyers called him and, with typical delicacy, accused him of falling for forged CIA memos. Mr. Silberman offered to study the matter and, should Mr. Moyers's allegations pan out, he would publicly exonerate him. "There was a pause on the line and then he said, 'I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?' And then he rang off."
The Opinion Journal Widget Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page. Memories are short in Washington, and Mr. Moyers has gone on to promote himself as a political moralist, routinely sermonizing about what he claims are abuses of power by his ideological enemies. Since 9/11, he has been particularly intense in criticizing President Bush for his antiterror policies, such as warrantless wiretapping against al Qaeda.
Yet the historical record suggests that when Mr. Moyers was in a position of actual power, he was complicit in FBI dirt-digging against U.S. citizens solely for political purposes. As Judge Silberman put it in 2005, "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends."
Mr. Moyers told us through a spokeswoman that he "never heard of the Valenti matter until this story and had nothing to add to it." He also pointed to a 1975 Newsweek article in which he wrote that he learned of the LBJ-Hoover relationship in "the quickly fading days of my innocence." In the Nixon days, this was called a nondenial denial.
Title: A Shameless Lace of Veracity
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 21, 2009, 08:17:28 AM
Sermonizing moralist worked for LBJ outing gays for political ends, huh? I'm quick to change the channel whenever that posturing putz comes on, but this tidbit at least gives lie to the incessant left-wing nattering. PBS must be so proud. Maybe they can do an 8 part series in the Joseph Campbell "Power of Myth" vein where sanctimonious hypocrites can be canonized for displaying a shameless lack of veracity. Moyer could interview Gore first. . . .
Title: More treason from the NY Times
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2009, 09:41:49 PM
More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.
The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.
They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan’s government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.
Pakistani officials have vigorously protested American missile strikes in the tribal areas as a violation of sovereignty and have resisted efforts by Washington to put more troops on Pakistani soil. President Asif Ali Zardari, who leads a weak civilian government, is trying to cope with soaring anti-Americanism among Pakistanis and a belief that he is too close to Washington.
Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends.
A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said.
Four weeks ago, the commandos captured a Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda here in this town in the Khyber Agency, one of the tribal areas that run along the border with Afghanistan.
Yet the main commanders of the Pakistani Taliban, including its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and its leader in the Swat region, Maulana Fazlullah, remain at large. And senior American military officials remain frustrated that they have been unable to persuade the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to embrace serious counterinsurgency training for the army itself.
General Kayani, who is visiting Washington this week as a White House review on policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan gets under way, will almost certainly be asked how the Pakistani military can do more to eliminate Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the tribal areas.
The American officials acknowledge that at the very moment when Washington most needs Pakistan’s help, the greater tensions between Pakistan and India since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November have made the Pakistani Army less willing to shift its attention to the Qaeda and Taliban threat.
Officials from both Pakistan and the United States agreed to disclose some details about the American military advisers and the enhanced intelligence sharing to help dispel impressions that the missile strikes were thwarting broader efforts to combat a common enemy. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the increasingly powerful anti-American segment of the Pakistani population.
The Pentagon had previously said about two dozen American trainers conducted training in Pakistan late last year. More than half the members of the new task force are Special Forces advisers; the rest are combat medics, communications experts and other specialists. Both sides are encouraged by the new collaboration between the American and Pakistani military and intelligence agencies against the militants.
“The intelligence sharing has really improved in the past few months,” said Talat Masood, a retired army general and a military analyst. “Both sides realize it’s in their common interest.”
Intelligence from Pakistani informants has been used to bolster the accuracy of missile strikes from remotely piloted Predator and Reaper aircraft against the militants in the tribal areas, officials from both countries say.
More than 30 attacks by the aircraft have been conducted since last August, most of them after President Zardari took office in September. A senior American military official said that 9 of 20 senior Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan had been killed by those strikes.
In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of C.I.A. operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said.
The newly minted 400-man Pakistani paramilitary commando unit is a good example of the new cooperation. As part of the Frontier Corps, which operates in the tribal areas, the new Pakistani commandos fall under a chain of command separate from the 500,000-member army, which is primarily trained to fight Pakistan’s archenemy, India.
The commandos are selected from the overall ranks of the Frontier Corps and receive seven months of intensive training from Pakistani and American Special Forces.
The C.I.A. helped the commandos track the Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda, Zabi al-Taifi, for more than a week before the Pakistani forces surrounded his safe house in the Khyber Agency. The Pakistanis seized him, along with seven Pakistani and Afghan insurgents, in a dawn raid on Jan. 22, with a remotely piloted C.I.A. plane hovering overhead and personnel from the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s main spy service closely monitoring the mission, a senior Pakistani officer involved in the operation said.
Still, there are tensions between the sides. Pakistani F-16’s conduct about a half-dozen combat missions a day against militants, but Pakistani officers say they could do more if the Pentagon helped upgrade the jets to fight at night and provided satellite-guided bombs and updated satellite imagery.
General Kayani was expected to take a long shopping list for more transport and combat helicopters to Washington. The question of more F-16’s — which many in Congress assert are intended for the Indian front — will also come up, Pakistani officials said.
The United States missile strikes, which have resulted in civilian casualties, have stirred heated debate among senior Pakistani government and military officials, despite the government’s private support for the attacks.
One American official described General Kayani, who is known to be sensitive about the necessity of public support for the army, as very concerned that the American strikes had undermined the army’s authority.
“These strikes are counterproductive,” Owais Ahmed Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, said in an interview in his office in Peshawar. “This is looking for a quick fix, when all it will do is attract more jihadis.”
Pakistani Army officers say the American strikes draw retaliation against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas, whose convoys and bases are bombed or attacked with rockets after each United States missile strike.
Title: Nation of cowards? Yes
Post by: ccp on February 23, 2009, 11:15:29 AM
I really doubt the Post cartoon was meant to demean BO with the monkey. No major newpaper would have purposely done that in this day and age.
Eric Holder is correct. Whites are a nation of cowards But not for the reason he states. But for our willingness to continue to put of with this kind of crap:
***REV. AL SOAKS UP BOYCOTT BUCKS BIZ GIANTS PAY OR FACE RACE RALLIES By ISABEL VINCENT and SUSAN EDELMAN June 15, 2008
Anheuser-Busch gave him six figures, Colgate-Palmolive shelled out $50,000 and Macy's and Pfizer have contributed thousands to the Rev. Al Sharpton's charity.
Almost 50 companies - including PepsiCo, General Motors, Wal-Mart, FedEx, Continental Airlines, Johnson & Johnson and Chase - and some labor unions sponsored Sharpton's National Action Network annual conference in April.
Terrified of negative publicity, fearful of a consumer boycott or eager to make nice with the civil-rights activist, CEOs write checks, critics say, to NAN and Sharpton - who brandishes the buying power of African-American consumers. In some cases, they hire him as a consultant.
The cash flows even as the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn has been conducting a grand-jury investigation of NAN's finances.
A General Motors spokesman told The Post that NAN had repeatedly - and unsuccessfully - asked for contributions for six years, beginning in August 2000.
Then, in December 2006, Sharpton threatened to call a boycott of the carmaker over the closing of an African-American-owned GM dealership in The Bronx, and he picketed outside GM headquarters on Fifth Avenue.
Last year, General Motors gave NAN a $5,000 donation. It gave $5,000 more this year, a spokesman said, calling NAN a "worthy" organization.
In November 2003, Sharpton picketed DaimlerChrysler's Chicago car show and threatened a boycott over alleged racial bias in car loans.
"This is institutional racism," he bellowed.
In May 2004, Chrysler began supporting NAN's conferences, which include panels on corporate responsibility and civil rights and a black-tie awards dinner to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Last year, Sharpton gave Chrysler an award for corporate excellence.
In 2003, Sharpton targeted American Honda for not hiring enough African-Americans in management.
"We support those that support us," wrote Sharpton and the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, president of NAN's Michigan chapter, in a letter to American Honda. "We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner."
Two months after American Honda execs met with Sharpton, the carmaker began to sponsor NAN's events - and continues to pay "a modest amount" each year, a spokesman said.
"I think this is quite clearly a shakedown operation," said Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia, a conservative corporate watchdog. "He's good at harassing people and making noise. CEOs give him his way because it is a lot easier than confronting him."
Sharpton denies his organization pressures corporations for cash.
"That's the old shakedown theory that the anti-civil-rights forces have used against us forever," he told The Post yesterday. "Why can't they come up with one company that says that? No one has criticized me."
A businessman who hired Sharpton as a consultant says the flamboyant leader skillfully persuades CEOs by wielding the statistic that African-Americans spend $738 billion a year.
"His way of doing things was, 'If we're going to support you and you're not going to support us, then we have to focus on telling the African-American community not to spend their money,' " said La-Van Hawkins, a partner in Hawkins Food Group, which owns and operates fast-food franchises nationwide.
Hawkins spoke from the Yankton Federal Prison in South Dakota, where he's serving time for attempted bribery.
After Hawkins lost an attempt to sue Burger King in 2000 for denying him franchises, he sent Sharpton, attorney Johnnie Cochran and a Miami lawyer to meet with the company's top execs.
"They ended up settling with me for $31 million," Hawkins said.
Sharpton did not get a cut, but Hawkins Food Group paid him an annual $25,000 fee, Hawkins said. He said he has donated "over $1 million" to NAN.
Sharpton has snagged other gigs as a consultant. Less than a year after he threatened to call for a consumer boycott of Pepsi in June 1998 because the company's ads did not portray African-Americans, the company hired him as a $25,000-a-year adviser until 2007.
Sharpton made the same complaint against Macy's in 1998. The company appointed Sharpton an unpaid adviser on diversity, but also funds NAN's annual conference. Last week, Macy's Senior Vice President Ed Goldberg praised Sharpton as "the kind of guy you can sit down and talk to."
In a dramatic flip-flop, Sharpton in 2000 blasted New York developer Bruce Ratner for paying low wages to workers at his Atlantic Mall in Brooklyn.
"We will not allow you to enslave our communities, Mr. Ratner," Sharpton told a rally. "You must meet with us - you must come to terms with the poverty you are creating using public dollars."
By 2004, the developer's company, Forest City Ratner, had begun to fork over thousands of dollars to NAN. Sharpton now strongly supports Ratner's proposed Atlantic Yards project, which includes a new arena for the New Jersey Nets.
"Just because Pepsi and other companies had me on their board advising them didn't mean that I wasn't blasting them all the time," said Sharpton.
"Look at Forest City Ratner. I blasted them and they came up with one of the best community agreements for blacks and Latinos."
NAN, which began humbly in Harlem in 1991 with Saturday-morning rallies at PS 175, now boasts 45 chapters across the country. The group lobbies for African-American rights and raises awareness of issues such as police brutality and racial profiling.
"Sharpton went national just like a franchise," said Flaherty. "Each of these local chapters can now hit up businesses for support in their communities."
In 2002, NAN launched a Las Vegas chapter that solicits corporate and individual donations of up to $5,000 on its Web site. NAN spokesman Charlie King said all donations go through the New York office.
It's unclear how much the chapter has raised, because Nevada does not require charities to report their revenues. King would not give numbers.
Sharpton vowed to call a national boycott against MGM Mirage in 2001 and 2002 if it refused to meet with him to discuss alleged racism in hiring and employment at the company's Detroit casino.
In 2003, MGM named NAN one of its diversity "partners" in Detroit.
Sharpton sticks up for his corporate patrons.
Since 2005, Wal-Mart has given yearly support to NAN, including sponsorship of last April's conference, without disclosing the amounts.
In 2006, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Sharpton rival, accused the retailer of buying silence from critics of its employment practices by trying to "throw money at us."
At the time, Sharpton rushed to the company's defense. "Wal-Mart has in no way tried to persuade me with money," he declared.
NAN, a tax-exempt nonprofit, closely guards its corporate largesse. Most companies also keep the sums secret, and some would not divulge them. The corporations interviewed by The Post viewed their relationships with NAN as friendly and beneficial.
Anheuser-Busch states on its Web site that it gave the group "between $100,000 and $499,000" last year.
Last year, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found NAN had failed to file years' worth of financial reports. The group has filed more records, but the AG's office said it won't release them pending the US attorney's probe.
In its 2006 IRS filing, the latest available, NAN reported about $1 million in contributions and $1.1 million in expenses and programs. It owes the IRS $1.9 million in payroll taxes, The Post has learned.
A NAN spokesman said the group is cooperating with authorities "to pay whatever obligations it owes and continues to do so."
susan.edelman@nypost.com***
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on February 23, 2009, 11:51:50 AM
Companies need to man up and tell NAN and others to shove it. Don't hire him. Don't fall for his IMHO empty boycott threats.
There are plenty of other spokespeople of all backgrounds to whom African Americans will listen.
People are over the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, as well as their counterparts. Unfortunately, no one has thought up a good way of making their ridiculous "messages" obsolete and exposing them for the self-aggrandizing frauds that they are.
Title: Flushing out BM
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 23, 2009, 03:01:14 PM
I loathe Bill Moyers so it's pretty amusing to see his skeletons get outed, so to speak:
The Intolerable Smugness of Bill Moyers He just can't help himself. By Jack Shafer Posted Friday, Feb. 20, 2009, at 6:27 PM ET Bill Moyers took it in the shins this week after the Washington Post's Joe Stephens, drawing on FBI files liberated by a FOIA request, reported the liberal lion's role in hunting suspected homosexuals inside the Lyndon Johnson White House.
The Post story's primary focus is on the FBI investigation of presidential aide Jack Valenti's sexual orientation, an investigation OK'd by President Johnson. It also reports that Moyers, then a special assistant to the president, asked the FBI to investigate two additional administration figures thought to have homosexual tendencies.
These weren't the only Moyers White House homo-hunts. On Commentary's blog, Jason Maoz quotes former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2005 that weeks before the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election, Moyers "was tasked to direct [FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files."
The Wizbang blog continues the Moyers bashing by quoting from CBS News correspondent Morley Safer's 1990 autobiography, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam. Safer writes:
[Moyers'] part in Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover's bugging of Martin Luther King's private life, the leaks to the press and diplomatic corps, the surveillance of civil rights groups at the 1964 Democratic Convention, and his request for damaging information from Hoover on members of the Goldwater campaign suggest he was not only a good soldier but a gleeful retainer feeding the appetites of Lyndon Johnson.
Rounding out the week's pillory is my old boss, Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin, who finds the Post discovery consistent with the thuggery that marked Moyers' political career. As long as Moyers is taking such a well-deserved beating, allow me a couple of licks.
When Moyers was Johnson's press secretary, he believed that journalists existed to serve the president. James Deakin writes in Straight Stuff: The Reporters, the White House and the Truth that Johnson's assistant press secretary Joe Laitin told Moyers that it was OK to plant a question with reporters every once in a while at presidential news conferences. A bogus idea, for sure, but Laitin thought the technique was useful in getting important information out. "When [the president] volunteers something, everybody immediately is on guard: what's he trying to sell?" Laitin told Deakin.
Moyers pitched the idea of planting questions to Johnson, who embraced it, giving Moyers a couple of questions for Laitin to distribute, which he did.
Johnson so loved this innovation that he was determined to plant every question at his next news conference. About 15 minutes before the session started, Moyers brought Laitin about 10 questions from the president. When Laitin protested that this was too much—"Bill, this isn't the way it's done"—Moyers said, "Do it!"
A rebuked Laitin approached John Pomfret of the New York Times first, primarily because the two were close. Deakin quotes Laitin:
I said, "John, would you mind asking the president this question?" There was no time for amenities; I had to be blunt because they were waiting and it was now eight minutes away from call time. He looked at me and said, "How dare you try to plant a question on the New York Times? I'm offended by this, and it's highly unethical."
Laitin did succeed in planting one or two questions, but, as Deakin writes, "the Grand Plan had failed."
Nancy Dickerson confirms the Moyers methodology in her 1976 memoir, Among Those Present: A Reporter's View of Twenty-Five Years in Washington. She writes:
The tactic [of planting questions] has been tried before, notably in Ike's day, with little fuss, but it hurt Johnson immeasurably. …
One day when I phoned Bill Moyers he asked if I was going to go to the news conference later that day. When I said that I was, he suggested, "You'd be the perfect one to ask LBJ how he feels; after all, it's his birthday.
Dickerson agreed to the request, but another reporter beat her to the question at the news conference. She continues:
I don't know how many other plants there were that day, but in retrospect I know that I was wrong in agreeing to ask one, even if it was a valid news question. Bill Moyers was out of line in suggesting it, and I was at fault in agreeing to it. Years later Bill told me that [Eisenhower press secretary] Jim Hagerty and [Kennedy press secretary] Pierre Salinger had done the same thing with great skill, and that it was necessary to compensate for the inadequacies of a press corps that often fails to ask the key question. I disagree. If a President has some information he feels the American people should know, he has only to make an announcement before the reporters' questions start.
Now compare Moyers' willingness to script Johnson news conferences with the sanctimonious interview he gave to Buzzflash in October 2003. He observes that modern journalists "who don't serve a partisan purpose and who try to be disinterested observers find themselves whipsawed between these corporate and ideological forces" and goes on to complain about the White House press corps, saying:
I think these forces have unbalanced the relationship between this White House and the press. Frankly, even if we had tried it in LBJ's time, we wouldn't have gotten away with the kind of press conference President Bush conducted on the eve of the invasion of Iraq—the one that even the President admitted was wholly scripted, with reporters raising their hands and posing so as to appear spontaneous.
Where does the guy who planted questions at LBJ news conferences, who told Nancy Dickerson that previous press secretaries had done it, and who told her that planting questions was necessary get the moxie to accuse the Bush press corps of participating in a scripted news conference?
The scripted news conference he's harping about is the one from March 6, 2003, in which Bush snubbed a reporter who was trying to get his attention by saying:
We'll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted—(laughter.)
Does this mean the Bush news conference was "scripted"? Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer claimed absolutely not in a March 7, 2003, briefing. Fleischer said that Bush had called upon questioners from a "suggestion" list he had prepared. The president preferred this method because it results in a "more orderly news conference," added Fleischer. The scripted comment was just another Bush joke gone flat. (If you have a Nexis account, see the nicely done March 8, 2003, Newsday news story "Not Scripted, but Listed: Checklist of reporters helps Bush work news conference" by Ken Fireman.)
Bush isn't the only president to have relied on the list approach. Barack Obama favors it, too, something that Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin was complaining about in early January, before the Obama inauguration and well before his first news conference (Feb. 9). As you may recall, Obama made no effort to conceal his reliance on a list as he called on reporters.
I await Moyers' "expose" of the Obama administration's blatantly scripted news conferences.
******
Oh, never mind. A Feb. 11, 2009, Wall Street Journal editorial already claimed this scoop. "We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors," the Journal editorial states. Many thanks to Slate's John Dickerson, son of Nancy, for pointing me both to the Deakin passages and to his mother's book. Send Moyers news to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word Moyers content in the subject head of an e-mail message, and send it to slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large. Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2211601/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on February 23, 2009, 03:28:16 PM
Companies need to man up and tell NAN and others to shove it. Don't hire him. Don't fall for his IMHO empty boycott threats.
There are plenty of other spokespeople of all backgrounds to whom African Americans will listen.
People are over the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, as well as their counterparts. Unfortunately, no one has thought up a good way of making their ridiculous "messages" obsolete and exposing them for the self-aggrandizing frauds that they are.
Gee, our President could. Oh wait, he's busy running the economy into the ground right now. Oh, yeah and he's a product of the Jackson-Sharpton-Wright school of "Hate Whitey".
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on February 23, 2009, 05:45:59 PM
Quote
he's busy running the economy into the ground right now
Pretty sure that baby had a full head of steam before Captain Basketball stepped into office....
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on February 23, 2009, 05:59:58 PM
Really? Compare TARP vs. the Porklus and Barry-O's "Soak the rich" class warfare.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: SB_Mig on February 23, 2009, 09:34:39 PM
Um, yeah, you won't find me crying to hard for the rich people getting "soaked" any time in the near future.
Lord knows how hard they've had it over the past eight years... :roll:
As for comparisons, I like to keep my head from exploding. When people (regardless of party) mention numbers in the billions as solutions, I get pissed off. I'm at least willing to wait a little bit before calling a month old administration a failure.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on February 23, 2009, 09:41:39 PM
Cry for the impact that "soak the rich" has on the non-rich as money flees overseas. Look at California today and telll me it's working well with horrific levels of taxation and goverment overspending. Think this will somehow turn out different when tried on a national level?
The Obama-Kool Aid will be getting very bitter, very soon.
Title: Meltdown on MSNBC: The Leg Tingle Is Gone?
Post by: G M on February 23, 2009, 09:50:32 PM
BARACK OBAMA Meltdown on MSNBC: The Leg Tingle Is Gone?
I can hardly believe what I'm watching on MSNBC right now. Chris Matthews is almost critical — no, not even almost, he's flat-out critical of President Obama on the economic front. He mentions an earlier conversation with CNBC's manic stock analyst Jim Cramer and a University of Maryland professor (Peter Morici?) knocking Obama for several economic decisions — that the stimulus bill needed more real infrastructure and less pork, that the housing bill isn't inspiring confidence and doesn't look like it will work, and that no one has faith in Tim Geithner's solution for the banks.
Howard Fineman of Newsweek says Obama has been "grim and a little distant at the same time . . . Tim Geithner hasn't inspired any confidence anywhere, as far as I can tell."
Matthews: "He seems like Barney Fife to me."
Eugene Robinson: "I actually referred to him as Doogie Howser, Treasury Secretary, and I think it's a little unfair." Much laughter ensues.
More Fineman: "Despite his high approval rating and obvious intellect and goodwill, he hasn't quite yet seemed to convey the sense that he knows the way forward and that he can get us there . . . I thought the first fifteen minutes of this show were devastating. Not that Jim Cramer is the only person they have to convince, but they have to convince people that they know what they're doing, that they're not just feeling their way forward." Robinson points out that they are feeling their way forward.
Matthews: "I thought 8,000 was the floor, and it looks like 6,000 is the floor. People are angry, I'm getting angry."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2009, 09:53:35 PM
Thank you for bringing things back to the subject matter of the thread.
Title: Expecting a deluge of mockery over this BO gem tomorrow?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2009, 10:45:34 PM
Expecting a deluge of MSM mockery over this BO gem tomorrow?
Yeah, right.
"What you’re now seeing is a profit and earnings ratios get to the point that buying stocks is a good thing if you have a long-term perspective on it,” the President said to reporters after meeting in the Oval Office with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown."
Title: How do you say telePromter in French?
Post by: ccp on March 05, 2009, 05:55:58 PM
Interesting. I wonder if Chris Matthews would still get a chill on his leg after reading this. He seems to delight with glee and glow in anything that mocks W as being less than intellectual.
In a similar vein Lou Dobbs showed BO mistating the PE ratio as "profit" to earnings ratio. He asked if the main stream media would have let W off the hook if *he* did that. We all know the answer.
BO would do well to remember Lincoln's famous phrase about you can fool some of the people some of the time....
Bo is too disingenious by half. If only the Republicans can get the right message and the right messenger (it ain't Limbaugh)....BO is finished.
***Obama's safety net: the TelePrompter By CAROL E. LEE | 3/5/09 3:22 PM EST \President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.
The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.
Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White House’s stately parlors. They stood next to him on the floor of a manufacturing plant in Indiana as he pitched his economic stimulus plan. They traveled to the Department of Transportation this week and were in the Capitol Rotunda last month when he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln in six-minute prepared remarks.
Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual — not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.
After the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches, reports surfaced that he was training to wean himself off of the device while on vacation in Hawaii. But no such luck.
His use of the teleprompter makes work tricky for the television crews and photographers trying to capture an image of the president announcing a new Cabinet secretary or housing plan without a pane of glass blocking his face. And it is a startling sight to see such sleek, modern technology set against the mahogany doors and Bohemian crystal chandeliers in the East Room or the marble columns of the Grand Foyer.
See Also Dueling Dems have Obama in earmark jam GOP tries to lure Dems on housing Reports: Obama goes gray! “It’s just something presidents haven’t done,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. “It’s jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter.”
Just how much of a crutch the teleprompter has become for Obama was on sharp display during his latest commerce secretary announcement. The president spoke from a teleprompter in the ornate Indian Treaty Room for a few minutes. Then Gov. Gary Locke stepped to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper for reference.
The president’s teleprompter also elicited some uncomfortable laughter after he announced Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Health and Human Services secretary. “Kathy,” Obama said, turning the podium over to Sebelius, who waited at the microphone for an awkward few seconds while the teleprompters were lowered to the floor and the television cameras rolled.
Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 05, 2009, 06:05:04 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues, NY Times didn't know illegal immigration was ... illegal
Post by: DougMacG on March 05, 2009, 07:09:16 PM
Powerline does a nice job of bias and accuracy watch over a place that Crafty calls the NY Slimes.
The Times Clears Up a Misunderstanding
The New York Times has long been an advocate for illegal immigration. Today we got some insight, perhaps, into what has motivated the Times' editors, via the paper's corrections section:
An editorial on Feb. 22 stated incorrectly that unlawfully entering the country is not a criminal offense. It is a misdemeanor for a first-time offender.
It's quite remarkable: until today, the Times' editors believed that illegal immigration was legal!
Title: The dreaded "I-word"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 06, 2009, 03:53:17 PM
Levy suspect's illegal status stirs media debate Jennifer Harper (Contact) Friday, March 6, 2009 It has become the dreaded "I-word" at many news organizations.
Much of the press has shunned the terms "illegal alien" or "illegal immigrant" to describe Ingmar Guandique, recently charged by police and federal prosecutors in the 2001 slaying of Washington intern Chandra Levy.
The designation of Guandique - who entered the U.S. illegally in 2000, was convicted of two nonfatal attacks on women and incarcerated - has reignited a debate over whether a person's immigration status is relevant to the story. Journalists also are debating whether the words "illegal" and "immigrant" are too loaded to use in an already emotionally charged story. And maybe even racist.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has long cautioned journalists against using the word "illegal" in copy and headlines. The practice is "dehumanizing" and "stereotypes undocumented people who are in the United States as having committed a crime," said Joseph Torres, the group's spokesman.
That has not prevented Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly from repeatedly calling Guandique an "illegal alien," though Fox used plain old "Salvadoran immigrant" in its news coverage. Guandique has been called "Salvadoran immigrant," "incarcerated felon," "suspect" and "jailed attacker" in assorted accounts.
"Too many journalists don't want to provide ammunition to those who want stricter immigration laws, so avoid connecting illegal immigrants to evidence which will bolster the argument that illegals cause harm," said Brent Baker of the Media Research Center.
"So, when police charge an illegal immigrant with murdering Chandra Levy, reporters for CBS, CNN and AP benignly describe him as a 'Salvadoran immigrant' or as simply 'a laborer from El Salvador,' " Mr. Baker said.
USA Today, the Washington Examiner and The Washington Times, however, referred to Guandique as an "illegal immigrant."
"We aspire to give our readers as much accurate and relevant information as possible. Ingmar Guandique's immigration status and his entire criminal history fell within our definition of reporting as near as possible the whole truth. We saw no reason to censor ourselves or deny information to our readers," said Michael Hedges, managing editor of the Examiner.
"The suggestion that immigration status somehow is irrelevant or should be treated like race in a crime story seems flawed. Being white or black or Hispanic or Asian isn´t a crime. Entering the country illegally is," said John Solomon, executive editor of The Times.
"If a suspect entered the country illegally and then committed a crime, as is alleged in the Levy case, it is relevant information to the reader. If the illegal immigrant hadn´t gotten into the country, he or she might not have been in a position to commit the crime," Mr. Solomon said.
The Washington Post, which has produced extensive coverage of the case in the past year, often opted for the term "Salvadoran day laborer," though the paper does not forbid its journalists from designating immigration status.
"We don't have any such policy. Our view is that any reference to someone's immigration status, employment, race, ethnicity, nationality or other characteristic should be relevant, and add context and understanding for readers. We are aware of the debate about whether describing the Chandra Levy suspect as an 'illegal immigrant' is scaremongering, and we've discussed it and believe we've stuck to our principle," said editorial spokeswoman Kris Coratti.
Although Guandique entered the country illegally, he was eligible for "temporary protected status" granted by President Bush to Salvadorans who had been in the U.S. before February 2001. Guandique had filed for that status and received authorization to reside and work in the U.S. while his application was pending. His request ultimately was denied.
"This is a very complicated matter. The goal is to make sure that journalists are specific and precise in the use of words like 'illegal,' 'immigrant' and 'undocumented.' It gets complex because different news organizations have different policies, and journalists themselves interpret those policies," said Robert Steele, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute.
"There is a widespread and I believe logical argument that the broad use of certain terms in disrespectful. The press should be particularly cautious and conservative in our use of the term 'alien.' It should only be used when referring to certain specific laws," he added. "Our style is to use 'illegal immigrant,' rather than 'undocumented worker' or 'illegal alien,' for those who have entered the country illegally," said Darrell Christian, editor of the Associated Press stylebook.
"Based on Webster´s definitions, 'immigrant' is a broader term. 'Alien' is a resident who beats political allegiance to another country; 'immigrant' is someone who comes to another country to settle, whether legally or illegally. Not all non-U.S. citizens living in the United States would be considered workers, undocumented or not," Mr. Christian said.
The most recent AP coverage of the Levy case did not examine the legality of Guandique's immigration status, and refers to him as a "Salvadoran immigrant," "inmate" and "convict."
Click here for reprint permissions! Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC
Title: Matthews Smackdown
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 12, 2009, 06:27:18 AM
Interesting exchange between Bush spokesman Ari Flesher and Chris Matthews:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 16, 2009, 10:59:43 AM
The message is clear. Go after the chosen one and we will come after you. Ironically this sahkedown group is funded by one of the Wall Street big shots Soros who spent his life making fortunes on Wall St:
NEW YORK (AP) - Some critics are seizing on comedian Jon Stewart's attacks of CNBC to launch an online petition drive urging the network to be tougher on Wall Street leaders. The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America and some economists are behind the effort, launched Monday. They're asking CNBC to hire economic voices with a track record of being right about the current crisis and do more to hold business leaders accountable.
CNBC has been in the firing line since Stewart pointed out network personalities who, in retrospect, offered bad financial advice.
CNBC had no immediate comment. CNBC spokesman Brian Steel said last week that the network was proud of its record of offering diverse opinions on the economy.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Title: iMistrial
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 18, 2009, 11:28:27 AM
March 18, 2009 As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
By JOHN SCHWARTZ Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.
Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.
“We were stunned,” said a defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he had been on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”
It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.
Last week, a building products company asked an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment, claiming that a juror used Twitter to send updates during the civil trial.
And on Monday, defense lawyers in the federal corruption trial of a former Pennsylvania state senator, Vincent J. Fumo, demanded before the verdict that the judge declare a mistrial because a juror posted updates on the case on Twitter and Facebook. The juror had even told his readers that a “big announcement” was coming on Monday. But the judge decided to let the deliberations continue, and the jury found Mr. Fumo guilty. His lawyers plan to use the Internet postings as grounds for appeal.
Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom. They are required to reach a verdict based on only the facts the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial. But now, using their cellphones, they can look up the name of a defendant on the Web or examine an intersection using Google Maps, violating the legal system’s complex rules of evidence. They can also tell their friends what is happening in the jury room, though they are supposed to keep their opinions and deliberations secret.
A juror on a lunch or bathroom break can find out many details about a case. Wikipedia can help explain the technology underlying a patent claim or medical condition, Google Maps can show how long it might take to drive from Point A to Point B, and news sites can write about a criminal defendant, his lawyers or expert witnesses.
“It’s really impossible to control it,” said Douglas L. Keene, president of the American Society of Trial Consultants.
Judges have long amended their habitual warning about seeking outside information during trials to include Internet searches. But with the Internet now as close as a juror’s pocket, the risk has grown more immediate — and instinctual. Attorneys have begun to check the blogs and Web sites of prospective jurors.
Mr. Keene said jurors might think they were helping, not hurting, by digging deeper. “There are people who feel they can’t serve justice if they don’t find the answers to certain questions,” he said.
But the rules of evidence, developed over hundreds of years of jurisprudence, are there to ensure that the facts that go before a jury have been subjected to scrutiny and challenge from both sides, said Olin Guy Wellborn III, a law professor at the University of Texas.
“That’s the beauty of the adversary system,” said Professor Wellborn, co-author of a handbook on evidence law. “You lose all that when the jurors go out on their own.”
There appears to be no official tally of cases disrupted by Internet research, but with the increasing adoption of Web technology in cellphones, the numbers are sure to grow. Some courts are beginning to restrict the use of cellphones by jurors within the courthouse, even confiscating them during the day, but a majority do not, Mr. Keene said. And computer use at home, of course, is not restricted unless a jury is sequestered.
In the Florida case that resulted in a mistrial, Mr. Raben spent nearly eight weeks fighting charges that his client had illegally sold prescription drugs through Internet pharmacies. The arguments were completed and the jury was deliberating when one juror contacted the judge to say another had admitted to her that he had done outside research on the case over the Internet.
The judge questioned the juror about his research, which included evidence that the judge had specifically excluded. Mr. Raben recalls thinking that if the juror had not broadly communicated his information with the rest of the jury, the trial could continue and the eight weeks would not be wasted. “We can just kick this juror off and go,” he said.
But then the judge found that eight other jurors had done the same thing — conducting Google searches on the lawyers and the defendant, looking up news articles about the case, checking definitions on Wikipedia and searching for evidence that had been specifically excluded by the judge. One juror, asked by the judge about the research, said, “Well, I was curious,” according to Mr. Raben.
“It was a heartbreak,” Mr. Raben added.
Information flowing out of the jury box can be nearly as much trouble as the information flowing in; jurors accustomed to posting regular updates on their day-to-day experiences and thoughts can find themselves on a collision course with the law.
In the Arkansas case, Stoam Holdings, the company trying to overturn the $12.6 million judgment, said a juror, Johnathan Powell, had sent Twitter messages during the trial. Mr. Powell’s messages included “oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter” and “So Johnathan, what did you do today? Oh nothing really, I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money.”
Mr. Powell, 29, the manager of a one-hour photo booth at a Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, Ark., insisted in an interview that he had not sent any substantive messages about the case until the verdict had been delivered and he was released from his obligation not to discuss the case. “I was done when I mentioned the trial at all,” he said. “They’re welcome to pull my phone records.”
But juror research is a more troublesome issue than sending Twitter messages or blogging, Mr. Keene said, and it raises new issues for judges in giving instructions.
“It’s important that they don’t know what’s excluded, and it’s important that they don’t know why it’s excluded,” Mr. Keene said. The court cannot even give a full explanation to jurors about research — say, to tell them what not to look for — so instructions are usually delivered as blanket admonitions, he said.
The technological landscape has changed so much that today’s judge, Mr. Keene said, “has to explain why this is crucial, and not just go through boilerplate instructions.” And, he said, enforcement goes beyond what the judge can do, pointing out that “it’s up to Juror 11 to make sure Juror 12 stays in line.”
It does not always work out that way. Seth A. McDowell, a data support specialist who lives in Albuquerque and works for a financial advising firm, said he was serving on a jury last year when another juror admitted running a Google search on the defendant, even though she acknowledged that she was not supposed to do so. She said she did not find anything, Mr. McDowell said.
Mr. McDowell, 35, said he thought about telling the judge, but decided against it. None of the other jurors did, either. Now, he said, after a bit of soul-searching, he feels he may have made the wrong choice. But he remains somewhat torn.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If everybody did the right thing, the trial, which took two days, would have gone on for another bazillion years.”
Mr. McDowell said he planned to attend law school in the fall. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/us/18juries.html
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 18, 2009, 02:35:10 PM
An interesting outcome of the electronic world we live in. While everything I do or my wife or I speak in our house is monitored, I am sure my vehicle has a GPS system hidden somewhere, including no doubt eveything I post on this website, I have learned there really is nothing I can do about it.
One cannot even get any electronic device today withour remote access. There are cameras everywhere, our cell phones document who we call and when and where. Our financial records, and increasingly our health records are on line. OUr children put all their personal infornation on line. Some even think it cute to put up naked pictures of themselves. There are not even laws that address most of these issues. Even those that one would think would be simple common sense. Bama's friends even want to monitor our bathroom habits!
Nothing is sacred anymore - nothing.
As for the jury thing I have a story - kind of a confession. I was on jury duty once. While we took our break I stood outside the courtroom and happened to look up to read a bulletin board that was right there. On it it mentioned the cases of the day. It mentioned the one I was on the jury duty for. It mentioned it was for the third DUI offense of the defendant. She would lose her license permanantly if she lost the case.
Thing of it is - the fact that it was her THIRD DUI was never mentioned during the trial.
I am guessing this information was kept out perhaps because it would "prejudice the jury". Perhaps it could have only been brought up if the character of the defendent was brought up by the defense team - which never was the issue.
The evidence against her was overwhelming anyway. She was clearly staggering on the police video. She was literally driving the wrong way down a large thorough fair at 2AM after being seen leaving a bar/grill.
Her BAC was over the legal limit. Yet some saps on the jury still felt bad, "well haven't you ever driven after drinking too much?" went the line.
Would they have felt this way if they knew it was her third arrest for this? She was clearly a menace on the road. Anyway, there were no blackberries or Iphones. Just me standing outside the courtroom reading what the bailiff posted on the board.
Title: Gutenberg to Craigslist: Implications Thereof
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 20, 2009, 12:09:48 PM
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.
One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.
The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them.
As these ideas were articulated, there was intense debate about the merits of various scenarios. Would DRM or walled gardens work better? Shouldn’t we try a carrot-and-stick approach, with education and prosecution? And so on. In all this conversation, there was one scenario that was widely regarded as unthinkable, a scenario that didn’t get much discussion in the nation’s newsrooms, for the obvious reason.
The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) Hardware and software vendors would not regard copyright holders as allies, nor would they regard customers as enemies. DRM’s requirement that the attacker be allowed to decode the content would be an insuperable flaw. And, per Thompson, suing people who love something so much they want to share it would piss them off.
Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.
When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.
* * * The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.
“The Wall Street Journal has a paywall, so we can too!” (Financial information is one of the few kinds of information whose recipients don’t want to share.) “Micropayments work for iTunes, so they will work for us!” (Micropayments work only where the provider can avoid competitive business models.) “The New York Times should charge for content!” (They’ve tried, with QPass and later TimesSelect.) “Cook’s Illustrated and Consumer Reports are doing fine on subscriptions!” (Those publications forgo ad revenues; users are paying not just for content but for unimpeachability.) “We’ll form a cartel!” (…and hand a competitive advantage to every ad-supported media firm in the world.)
Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.
* * * Elizabeth Eisenstein’s magisterial treatment of Gutenberg’s invention, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, opens with a recounting of her research into the early history of the printing press. She was able to find many descriptions of life in the early 1400s, the era before movable type. Literacy was limited, the Catholic Church was the pan-European political force, Mass was in Latin, and the average book was the Bible. She was also able to find endless descriptions of life in the late 1500s, after Gutenberg’s invention had started to spread. Literacy was on the rise, as were books written in contemporary languages, Copernicus had published his epochal work on astronomy, and Martin Luther’s use of the press to reform the Church was upending both religious and political stability.
What Eisenstein focused on, though, was how many historians ignored the transition from one era to the other. To describe the world before or after the spread of print was child’s play; those dates were safely distanced from upheaval. But what was happening in 1500? The hard question Eisenstein’s book asks is “How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?”
Chaotic, as it turns out. The Bible was translated into local languages; was this an educational boon or the work of the devil? Erotic novels appeared, prompting the same set of questions. Copies of Aristotle and Galen circulated widely, but direct encounter with the relevant texts revealed that the two sources clashed, tarnishing faith in the Ancients. As novelty spread, old institutions seemed exhausted while new ones seemed untrustworthy; as a result, people almost literally didn’t know what to think. If you can’t trust Aristotle, who can you trust?
During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change — take a book and shrink it — was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word. As books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, they expanded the market for all publishers, heightening the value of literacy still further.
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify.
And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
* * * If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other. In a notional town with two perfectly balanced newspapers, one paper would eventually generate some small advantage — a breaking story, a key interview — at which point both advertisers and readers would come to prefer it, however slightly. That paper would in turn find it easier to capture the next dollar of advertising, at lower expense, than the competition. This would increase its dominance, which would further deepen those preferences, repeat chorus. The end result is either geographic or demographic segmentation among papers, or one paper holding a monopoly on the local mainstream audience.
For a long time, longer than anyone in the newspaper business has been alive in fact, print journalism has been intertwined with these economics. The expense of printing created an environment where Wal-Mart was willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau. This wasn’t because of any deep link between advertising and reporting, nor was it about any real desire on the part of Wal-Mart to have their marketing budget go to international correspondents. It was just an accident. Advertisers had little choice other than to have their money used that way, since they didn’t really have any other vehicle for display ads.
The old difficulties and costs of printing forced everyone doing it into a similar set of organizational models; it was this similarity that made us regard Daily Racing Form and L’Osservatore Romano as being in the same business. That the relationship between advertisers, publishers, and journalists has been ratified by a century of cultural practice doesn’t make it any less accidental.
The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag dealer, and the law firm hiring a secretary, and that kid down the block selling his bike, were all able to use that infrastructure to get out of their old relationship with the publisher, they did. They’d never really signed up to fund the Baghdad bureau anyway.
* * * Print media does much of society’s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?
I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.
Imagine, in 1996, asking some net-savvy soul to expound on the potential of craigslist, then a year old and not yet incorporated. The answer you’d almost certainly have gotten would be extrapolation: “Mailing lists can be powerful tools”, “Social effects are intertwining with digital networks”, blah blah blah. What no one would have told you, could have told you, was what actually happened: craiglist became a critical piece of infrastructure. Not the idea of craigslist, or the business model, or even the software driving it. Craigslist itself spread to cover hundreds of cities and has become a part of public consciousness about what is now possible. Experiments are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points.
In craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative’, there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.
Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.
We don’t know who the Aldus Manutius of the current age is. It could be Craig Newmark, or Caterina Fake. It could be Martin Nisenholtz, or Emily Bell. It could be some 19 year old kid few of us have heard of, working on something we won’t recognize as vital until a decade hence. Any experiment, though, designed to provide new models for journalism is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the past.
For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.
Overseas reporters have been a casualty of budget-chopping news organizations, leaving an opening for the online start-up GlobalPost. But at a time when many news executives are exploring nonprofit business models to keep specialized reporting flowing, GlobalPost, which made its debut on Jan. 12, is intended to be a moneymaking venture.
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David Blumenfeld Matt Beynon Rees, shown in Beit Jala, is a former correspondent for Time magazine, and contributes to the for-profit GlobalPost from Jerusalem. With 65 correspondents worldwide — drawn from a surfeit of experienced reporters eager to continue working in their specialties even as potential employers disappear — GlobalPost has begun offering a mix of news and features that only a handful of other news organizations can rival.
Recent articles, free at GlobalPost.com, included reports on Thailand’s Islamic insurgency and Indian yogis worried about the financial crisis.
That ad-supported reporting is only one part of the GlobalPost business plan. If it is to succeed, it will depend in part on how many people sign up for a separate paid section of the site, which was to have been available in test mode beginning last week but is now expected to go online in the coming days.
Called Passport, it offers access to GlobalPost correspondents, including exclusive reports on business topics of less interest to general audiences, conference calls and meetings with reporters, and breaking news e-mail messages from those journalists.
Passport subscribers, who pay as much as $199 a year, can suggest article ideas. “If you are a member, you have a voice at the editorial meeting,” although the site will decide which stories to pursue, said Charles Sennott, a GlobalPost founder and its executive editor. He said Passport is meant to “create a feeling of community” for subscribers who might otherwise see newsrooms as “impenetrable and fortresslike.”
GlobalPost correspondents, who include the former Washington Post writer Caryle Murphy in Saudi Arabia and a Time magazine correspondent turned novelist, Matt Beynon Rees, in Jerusalem, are paid extra for Passport work. Their basic compensation is $1,000 a month for four articles, plus shares in the venture. The site had 500 applicants for the jobs, Mr. Sennott said.
Only a couple of dozen people have signed up for Passport, said Philip Balboni, GlobalPost’s other founder and the president and chief executive. The site is depending on marketing partnerships to generate subscriptions, some discounted, and hopes to have more than 2,000 by year’s end.
Two months in, the Boston-based company says demand for the free site — the mainstay of the business — is ahead of expectations. It has logged 250,000 unique users who have visited at least once, compared with the 90,000 Mr. Balboni had hoped for by now, and 1.1 million page views, more than half from returning visitors. “People have clearly liked what they’ve seen,” Mr. Balboni said, adding that the site has had visitors from every country except North Korea, Chad and Eritrea.
Advertising remains slow, he acknowledged. Liberty Mutual Insurance signed on for a year, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University has been advertising on a trial basis. “I think it will just take time,” Mr. Balboni said. “We are in an incredible down market.”
More encouragingly, a third revenue stream has been growing, as the company has signed up a growing number of news outlets, including The Daily News and The Boise Weekly of Idaho, to carry its reports and have use of its correspondents.
CBS Radio News recently signed a nonexclusive deal. It will be able to call on GlobalPost correspondents during breaking news, as a backup to its own reporters, said Harvey Nagler, CBS News’s vice president of radio.
Public television’s “Worldfocus” weeknight newscast features reports from GlobalPost correspondents, who carry inexpensive Flip digital video cameras when in the field.
The site was started with $8.5 million from private investors.
Mr. Balboni, who created the New England Cable News network, said he was a passionate defender of for-profit journalism. “I believe deep in my heart and soul that the discipline of the marketplace makes for a stronger organization,” he said. “It gives you a far greater chance to be a self-sustaining enterprise, without having to turn to government or foundations,” which can be mercurial, he said.
Long before the debate about whether newspapers and magazines should be charging for Web content, Mr. Balboni envisioned having consumers pay for at least a part of GlobalPost, he said. It was a lesson he learned after years in the cable TV business, which is supported by subscribers as well as ads. Having created a hybrid model, he said, “now we have to prove it in the marketplace.”
Alan D. Mutter, a media investor who analyzes news-business models at the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, praised GlobalPost in an interview “for being thoroughly modern in its approach to revenue, in that it understands it won’t be simply advertising or subscriptions.” He added, “They’ve identified every conceivable revenue stream I can think of.”
But questions remain, he said, including how many news organizations still have the budget to pay to use its articles, and whether GlobalPost’s executives can create compelling content that will draw enough subscribers. “I’ve seen other publishers who offered premium content, and the content wasn’t good enough to make you want to write a check,” he said.
“This is definitely a forward-looking model, but it remains to be seen whether the audience materializes and whether they can execute,” Mr. Mutter said, adding that “I think everyone wishes them well because they are pretty close to what the future will be for news publishing.”
Title: Re: Media Issues - Press Conference, no questions on either war
Post by: DougMacG on March 25, 2009, 10:58:47 AM
Not one single question on either war even though Obama last month ordered 17,000 more Americans into Afghanistan. Wonder if a Republican president could escalate a war and then hold a economic press conference?
Title: Dems & Madoff's Money
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 26, 2009, 09:28:28 AM
March 25, 2009 DSCC Keeps Madoff Money; Mainstream Media Virtually Silent (Doug Heye) @ 3:36 pm The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has apparently decided to keep $100K in contributions from Bernie Madoff, who faces up to 150 years in prison for swindling billions from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick in a massive Ponzi scheme.
In campaigns, one side often calls on the other to return money for one reason or another. Sometimes it's valid, sometimes not. Regardless, it's Campaign 101. But when the contributor in question is the single biggest financial criminal in history, there can be no question that those illicit funds should not remain in campaign coffers.
Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gave thousands in Madoff donations to charity. Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) are doing the same.
Given the economic uncertainty our nation faces and that Madoff not only fleeced the rich and famous but major corporations such as HSBC — in other words, Madoff swindled all of us — the DSCC's decision is shockingly tone-deaf.
However, what’s almost equally surprising is the virtual silence from the media. During the Enron scandal, returning campaign money was a daily drumbeat, as were the news stories discussing Enron’s purported ties to President Bush. Now, when the Democratic Senate campaign vehicle makes the conscious decision to keep $100K in Madoff money, stolen just as if it came from a bank holdup, there's little to no outrage. Why?
Here's a suggestion for members of the media — ask Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who himself was robbed by Madoff, what he thinks of the DSCC keeping stolen money in order to help fund his colleagues’ Senate campaigns this election cycle.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 26, 2009, 12:52:08 PM
This is outrageous.
"gave thousands in Madoff donations to charity"
Why aren't they giving it back to a fund for those robbed?
Title: IBD: Imagine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2009, 06:01:13 AM
Imagine If A Republican Were President By LARRY ELDER | Posted Thursday, March 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT
President Barack Obama, in an appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno, made a self-deprecating but ill-advised joke, in which he referred to the Special Olympics. He quickly apologized. Crisis averted. Fair enough.
But the real story is the media double standard: Imagine the uproar if a President John McCain made the Special Olympics comment.
For that matter, imagine if a President McCain mistook a White House window for a door, his secretary of Treasury had not paid taxes, he granted two dozen waivers to his no-lobbyists-in-government rule and he had promised bipartisanship but got only three across-the-aisle votes for his "stimulus" package.
Imagine if President McCain, after promising a "clean break" from his predecessor, retained "extraordinary rendition," the FISA program, the option of wiretapping without warrants and the option of using "enhanced interrogation techniques.
Or if he promised to close Gitmo, then said it would take as long as a year, but then our European allies refused to take in "detainees" from their own countries.
Or if he reneged on or fudged his promise to have all combat troops out of Iraq within "16 months of his presidency."
Or if he adopted for Afghanistan the same counterinsurgency strategy used in Iraq, which, as a candidate, he'd criticized for not "achieving its objectives.
Or if he used the same "state secrets" argument as did the Bush administration in the same court case, to avoid turning over certain national security documents in an ACLU-brought case on behalf of an alleged torture victim/detainee.
Imagine if — on the campaign trail — a future President McCain had declared a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable" but agreed to engage in negotiations without preconditions, if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the new president he must apologize for 60 years of anti-Iranian activity, if President McCain then reached out to the Iranians in a televised address and, in response, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who holds ultimate authority in Iran — told him to a) drop animosity and criticism, b) end sanctions, c) unfreeze assets, and d) end "unconditional support" for Israel.
Imagine if President McCain acted "outraged" — as though he, his secretary of Treasury and a party leader (Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.) had not previously known about and approved the controversial AIG bonuses and that executives at Freddie and Fannie, failed institutions now taken over by government, were getting bonuses, too.
Or if, during this recession and after criticizing taxpayer-funded corporate retreats, President McCain and First Lady Cindy McCain threw taxpayer-funded White House parties nearly every night, hiring entertainers such as Stevie Wonder and the Jonas Brothers.
Imagine if, as sitting president, McCain appeared on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno and cracked jokes, while — as the media would have written — "millions of Americans have lost their homes and their jobs with millions afraid they're next, yada, blah, etc."
Or if he tripled the projected annual deficit and intended, within a short period, to double the national debt. Or if he promised to "create or save" an ever-changing number of jobs — never offering a yardstick to define a "saved job."
Imagine that McCain's vice president made a number of gaffes, including not knowing the "recovery" Web site despite going on national television to promote it and revealing on television — through his wife — that he'd had the option of a job as secretary of State or VP — thus showing the administration's extreme disrespect toward the current secretary of state.
Imagine if, of the 18 important sub-Cabinet positions in the Treasury Department, none was filled. Or if, after promising "transparency," McCain wouldn't say where the TARP money had gone and who had gotten it. Or after receiving bailout money, the largest 20 financial institution recipients actually reduced lending — the opposite intent of the program.
Or if after saying that he wasn't a "socialist," McCain defended himself by asserting that "it wasn't on my watch" that we'd bought shares of banks — but omitted that, as senator, he'd supported and voted for it.
Or if he constantly said he'd "inherited" the deficit despite — as a senator — voting for TARP and other programs that had wildly increased it.
Imagine if President McCain ungraciously treated Prime Minister Gordon Brown from the U.K. — our closest and oldest ally — and gave him cheap, tacky gifts apparently picked up from the White House gift shop and someplace like Wal-Mart.
Imagine if, despite a reputation for "eloquence," President McCain relied on teleprompters for even the most minor of statements, verbally stumbling and flailing when the teleprompters malfunctioned.
Or if he broke protocol and tradition by pre-picking and giving notice to the reporters to be called on in press conferences. Or if he admonished the out-of-power party by denouncing a popular talk show host and imploring the opposite party to refuse to listen to him.
Imagine if the media kept referring to him as "popular" when his poll numbers were virtually identical to those of George W. Bush at the 50-day mark in their respective presidencies.
Or if his chief of staff, in a newspaper article about his achievements as a House member, said in front of a reporter that the opposition party could "go f*** themselves."
On the other hand, Cleveland State beat Wake Forest.
Title: A Simple Model for Online Journalism
Post by: rachelg on March 28, 2009, 07:40:18 AM
http://www.newwest.net/main/print/24233/ The Future of News
A Simple Model for Online Journalism
By Jonathan Weber, 3-19-09
The collapse of the traditional metro newspaper business has been foreseeable - indeed, foreseen - for quite some time, but it’s still a shock to see venerable institutions like the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer close their doors. What’s equally shocking, though, is the widespread assumption that serious journalism will disappear along with newspapers, and that preventing the disappearance of journalism requires either a massive philanthropic effort, a coordinated effort by news organizations to force a return to paid subscriptions, technological breakthroughs with electronic news reader devices, new business models that have yet to be invented, or some combination of all of the above.
As a four-year veteran of a journalism-driven local online media start-up, I believe there’s a very viable business formula that’s actually quite simple, and here today: take advantage of new tools and techniques to cover the news creatively and efficiently; sell sophisticated digital advertising in a sophisticated fashion; keep the Web content free, and charge a high price for content and interaction that are delivered in-person via conferences and events. And don’t expect instant results.
I’m not saying this model will be a “replacement” for newspapers, or provide stable, high-paying jobs for all the journalists who once worked at newspapers. Nor do I claim that it will, by itself, support all the forms of journalism that we want and need. But I do think the potential of this approach has been radically underestimated. Some variation of it is already well-established in the trade and specialty press - Paid Content, TechCrunch,The Business Insider, Talking Points Memo, and many of the Federated Media and Gawker Media sites are all good examples - and though it’s perhaps harder in local general-interest media, it can work there too. As evidence of that, I’ll immodestly suggest a look at our experience of NewWest.Net.
We started this company in 2005 partly on the premise that the news business would be changing in profound ways, and that would create opportunities. We were also very interested in what we considered a very big story - the dramatic transformation of the Rocky Mountain West from an under-populated, resource-dependent region to a dynamic, fast-growing hub of the emerging “amenity” and technology economies. We thought the story was regional in scope, but at the same time we were very conscious of the fact that people relate most closely to what’s most local, so we established NewWest.Net as a regional online magazine with local sites in key markets.
The editorial model relies on a combination of professional journalism (currently two full-time and four part-time professionals, as well as a number of freelancers); what we think of as semi-professional journalism (talented writers or subject-matter experts who do something else for their day job); and citizen journalism (bloggers and others who contribute on specific topics, sometimes for small sums of money). We don’t have copy editors, but rather copyedit each others’ stuff. We’re direct and conversational in our style, which is actually easier and quicker once you get used to it, and more appealing to readers than old-style newspaper formulas.
We have a very active photo group on Flickr, and get great feature photography from that. We mostly use Google for fact-checking - not fool-proof, but it works. We use Twitter and Facebook and RSS to push our stories out into the world. We do great video-driven stories when we can, and happily link to others’ videos. In fact, we happily link to a lot of stuff, sometimes in combination with our own reporting and sometimes not. We have lively comment threads, which we manage with as light a hand as we can and which are often additive to the stories in addition to being entertaining. We have very active event calendars in our local markets - separate from our main sites but well-integrated, and with a dedicated editor. We’re experimenting with a new social media site in Missoula, and we’ll see where that goes.
Our coverage is far from comprehensive, and we rarely write about sports or TV or movies (except when the big documentary film festival is in town). Big investigative projects are few and far between. We’re not a “paper of record,” and we’re not (or at least not yet) a replacement for local newspapers. Still, if you ask people around here where they go for smart coverage of growth and development, land-use issues, local food, regional politics, and community culture, a lot of people would say NewWest.Net. On some big stories, such as the boom and bust of the regional real estate market and the bankruptcy of the Yellowstone Club and other high-end resorts, we have been way ahead of the pack.
On the business side, we’ve found that the conventional wisdom about plunging display ad rates is simply wrong. If you have a quality site, with good editorial that drives meaningful traffic, and you work closely with advertisers and offer them flash ads, video ads, good stats reporting, and the opportunity to help understand a new medium, they will pay a premium. A critical thing we have learned is that selling online advertising is more different from selling print or broadcast than mostly people think. I’d suggest that the difficulties traditional media outlets have in getting good prices for online advertising have to do not with the medium itself, but with the learning curve involved in figuring out how to sell it properly. It took us a couple of years, and we didn’t have any legacy issues to deal with.
Everything on the Website is free, but we have about 1,000 people who pay $150 or $300 or $500 a year for their NewWest experience. This experience comes through conferences and events, which have been a major revenue source and an excellent promotional vehicle for our site. The conferences are content-driven - programming a conference is in many ways very similar to editing a magazine - and thus we see it as part-and-parcel of the journalistic mission, not a distracting commercial add-on. If anything, people like conferences even more when they spend so much time interacting via a computer screen. Conference attendees are our loyal subscribers, and they pay a lot for our content.
Newspapers had market power because they were the only ones that could deliver information to people’s doorsteps every day. That’s why things like classifieds were attached to newspapers. Online media organizations don’t have that leverage, obviously. But what they do have is the ability to get people to come to their sites by providing great editorial. We have always found that strong, original stories are far and away the best way to drive traffic. Over time, if you’re close to your community and story-driven, rather than being a generic platform of some kind, you can build a journalism brand that means something, and can be monetized.
NewWest.Net isn’t making money yet, but we’re not losing money either. We had start-up capital to get us to this stage, but that was gone as of about six months ago. Even in the worst economy any of us have every experienced, we’re making it - not with donations and not with new inventions, but simply by being creative with the tools we have and working our butts off. I wouldn’t underestimate that last bit, and sometimes I do think I’m a masochist for not riding the corporate media gravy train until it completely ran out of steam. But the world doesn’t owe any of us a living, and in the long run I firmly believe that NewWest.Net and things like it will feed the families of plenty of great reporters and editors.
Title: D for Deleted
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 31, 2009, 06:45:07 AM
March 31, 2009 Spot the party label
By William Tate In basketball, 'D' refers to defense; in political reporting, 'D' signifies Democrats. When it comes to reporting political scandals, though, 'D' seems to be missing from the increasingly partisan publication that used to be the nation's newspaper of record.
In an egregious example of the dinosaur media's blatant bias in favor of Democrats, the New York Times on Monday ran a report on a probe into a potentialy devastating lobbying scandal -- while downplaying Democrats' possible involvement.
According to the Times story, the investigation centers on powerful lobbyist, Paul Magliocchetti, and his firm, The PMA Group.
Magliochetti is a former aide to influential Congressman John Murtha.
The article skims over accusations that Magliochetti and PMA may have used straw donors to skirt campaign finance laws -- a practice that, if true, could have potentially influenced the outcome of last year's election -- and instead focuses on inside-the-Beltway concerns that the FBI may be investigating lavish dinners and other gifts that congressmen and their aides might have accepted from Magliochetti.
What the story buries -- almost, but not quite completely -- is that this scandal centers on Democrats. The first reference to the political party is deep in the seventh paragraph, and even then is only made in reference to an attorney used as a source for quotes in the story, "a veteran Washington criminal defense lawyer known for representing Democrats."
The article waits until the next paragraph, the eighth, to identify Murtha's party affiliation, even though he is first mentioned in the far-more-prominent third graph. And, when the report finally does so, it is in the context of denying wrongdoing:
"A spokesman for Mr. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said the lawmaker had done nothing wrong and was not involved in the investigation."
(It should be noted that a spokesman for Magliochetti and PMA also denied any wrongdoing.)
These are the only two times in the 1,500+ word Times article in which the word, Democrat, appears; Magliochetti's party affiliation is not referenced, nor are party affiliations for any other individuals, even though numerous other politicians are named in the story.
"Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he (Magliochetti) and a PMA colleague, Daniel Cunningham, were hosting a rowdy table of lawmakers at dinner in a private room in the Capital Grille that included Representatives Mike Doyle, Tim Holden and Robert A. Brady of Pennsylvania; Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey; Representative Michael E. Capuano of Massachusetts; Representative John B. Larson of Connecticut; and former Representative John Baldacci of Maine, now governor. (Mr. Larson reportedly led the group in a sing-a-long...) All were members of an informal group that followed Mr. Murtha's lead. Asked recently about the night, representatives of the lawmakers declined to comment."
Setting aside the deplorable nature of a rowdy party in Washington while first responders at Ground Zero and -- just a few miles away -- the Pentagon were digging through rubble, hoping desperately to save even a single life, it is remarkable that the Times article didn't bother to identify the party affiliation of a single one of the individuals named above, even though two of them are now powerful members of House leadership. Larson is Democratic Caucus Chair , and Capuano is House Organization Study and Review Chairman.
And, yes, all the congressmen mentioned are Democrats -- as is Maine Governor Baldacci.
Even the Times article draws a comparison between the current scandal and the imbroglio that brought down former powerhouse lobbysit, Jack Abramoff. So let's contrast the Times' coverage of the two.
A Times Magazine profile of Abramoff, published on May 1, 2005, called Abramoff a "a kingpin of Republican Washington" in the first sentence of the second paragraph. (The first graph is just a one-sentence teaser to set up the second.) The next sentence tells us that "he (Abramoff) was close friends with the powerful Republican congressman from Texas, Tom DeLay," and, before we're finished with the paragraph, we also learn of "the countless fund-raisers he (Abramoff) gave for Republican congressmen and senators."
Thus, before the main opening paragraph is concluded, the Times had already tied Abramoff to Republicans three times, more than it used the word, Democrat, in the entire article on the current PMA scandal.
In all, the word Republican is used 15 times in the -- admittedly longer -- 2005 Times Magazine piece on Abramoff.
This is no aberration. A January 4, 2006 Times article presenting an overview of the Abramoff case named Abramoff as "a prominent Republican lobbyist", again in the prominent second paragraph, and referred to "former House Republican majority leader, Tom Delay, and other senior Congressional Republicans."
In all, that 2006 article used the word, Republican, five times in connection with the Abramoff scandal.
Other Times articles referred to Abramoff as:
- "the corrupt Republican lobbyist,"
- "high-flying Republican lobbyist,"
- "the indicted Republican superlobbyist,"
- "The fallen Republican lobbyist,"
- "prominent Republican lobbyist,"
- or just "the Republican lobbyist." When Democrats are involved in scandal, they are often identified as "Representative William J. Jefferson," or "Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana,"with party identification buried deep in the reports.
Yet, when it comes to a GOP politician, the Times often leads with their party affiliation:
"Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho," "Larry E. Craig, an Idaho Republican," "former Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho."
Or "Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican entangled in the corruption," "Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio," "former Representative Randy Cunningham, the San Diego Republican," "Randy Cunningham, a former Republican House member."
It's a pattern that's repeated almost endlessly; Times -- and the MSM in general -- coverage of scandals that involve Republican politicians unfailingly highlights their party affiliation, while coverage of scandals involving Democrat officials buries, or fails to mention at all, their political party.
It seems that, when it comes to reporting political scandals, the Times' printing press is missing a letter, the capital D.
As in John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania).
Or the New York Times (D-New York.)
William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/spot_the_party_label.html at March 31, 2009 - 09:41:12 AM EDT
Title: Paper Money--Newspapers aren't assets to be flipped, leveraged, and stripped.
Post by: rachelg on April 05, 2009, 09:20:04 AM
Paper Money Newspapers aren't assets to be flipped, leveraged, and stripped.
Each time a newspaper company closes or files for bankruptcy—as Sun-Times Media, the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and 58 other newspapers, did this week—analysts are quick to hammer another nail in the coffin of the printed word. Roughly coinciding as they do with the advent of the Kindle 2, the failures give ammunition to voices who say newspapers are obsolete. Now that both of the Second City's major newspapers are operating under the umbrella of Chapter 11, and with papers in Denver and Seattle shutting down, it's tough to argue with those who say the industry has useless management, a fundamentally unviable business model, and not much of a future.
While newspapers have serious problems, the recent failures of several newspaper companies (here's a list of list of four others that have gone BK in recent months) shouldn't necessarily lead to visions of the apocalypse. Virtually every newspaper in the country has experienced a sharp drop in advertising and is suffering losses. But not every newspaper company in the country has gone bankrupt as a result. And the failures may say more about a style of capitalism than an industry. Each company was undone in large measure by really stupid (and in one case criminal) activities by managers.
Let's review. Sun-Times Media is the name given to the company formerly run by convicted felon Conrad Black. Black and his colleague, Publisher David Radler, who confessed to his crimes, improperly took tens of millions of dollars in fees from the company and caused it endless legal heartache. Jeremy L. Halbreich, the interim CEO of the company, blamed the bankruptcy filing on "this deteriorating economic climate, coupled with a significant, pending IRS tax liability dating back to previous management."
The actions of the top executives in other bankrupt newspaper companies were criminal only if you consider gross financial stupidity and recklessness to be jailing offenses. Who loads up newspapers—cyclical companies whose revenues are in secular decline thanks to the disappearance of classified advertisements and the rise of the Internet—with tons of debt at precisely the wrong time? Financial geniuses, that's who.
In 2007, legendary real estate investor Sam Zell decided that a talent for good timing in flipping office buildings made him an expert on the ailing newspaper industry. In December 2007, he closed on the $8.2 billion purchase of the Tribune Co., which owned the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Cubs. Zell put down just 4 percent of the purchase price—$315 million—and borrowed much of the rest, leaving the company with a $13 billion debt burden. This deal was the purest expression of the "dumb money" mentality. The only hope Zell had of making a dent in the debt load and keeping current on the $800-million-plus annual interest tab was to sell off trophy properties like the Cubs, office buildings, and big-city newspapers—assets that themselves don't throw off lots of income but whose purchase requires tons of cheap credit. Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy Dec. 8, 2008.
Two of the other large newspaper companies that went bust in recent months have similar back stories. A bunch of private-equity types bought the company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News in June 2006, borrowing about $450 million of the $562 million purchase price. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late February but not before paying top executives $650,000 in bonuses in December. Among those getting a bonus: Brian Tierney, the former public relations executive who was one of the architects of the deal. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which filed for Chapter 11 in January, was another private-equity train wreck. About two years ago, Avista Capital Partners bought the paper for $530 million, loading well over $400 million of debt onto the company.
In other words, the newspaper companies that have failed wholesale were essentially set up to fail by inexperienced managers who believed piling huge amounts of debt on businesses whose revenues were shrinking even when the economy was growing was a shrewd means of value creation. A similar dynamic is playing out in other industries. Several mattress companies have filed for bankruptcy or are near it. It's not simply because sales are down due to the economy or because mattresses, which rely on an inferior technology, are being displaced by futuristic futons. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal reported (subscription required), the companies are going bust because private-equity types loaded them up with absurd levels of debt at the wrong time.
It's true that plenty of smaller newspapers without huge debt loads are in trouble. But lots of newspapers are muddling through, in part because, like our sister publication the Washington Post, they're owned by a parent company that has other lines of profitable businesses; or, like the New York Times, their parent companies have the financial flexibility to take dramatic action to raise capital; or, like Gannett papers, the parent company manages expenses aggressively. All newspapers—all print media—have been hit hard in this recession. All face an existential crisis and may ultimately face the prospect of bankruptcy. Those whose owners saw papers as assets to be flipped, leveraged, and stripped are already bankrupt. Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published as an e-book
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2215154/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 10, 2009, 08:44:26 AM
Gee, if I didn't know better, I'd think Obama was an inexperienced buffoon. :roll:
Title: Mercator Net: Stop the presses?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2009, 06:14:48 AM
Stop the presses?
Well, we just might stop the presses. And John Robson says he won't miss The New York Times when they go. Stop the presses? Can it be? Compared to the suddenly very possible demise of newspaper titans including the New York Times, the fate of the “unsinkable” Titanic a century ago seems mildly odd, the collapse of General Motors merely a bit strange. It’s going to leave a gap in the American national conversation. But we’ll all survive fairly easily. It’s weird to see this fate overtake the daily press, an institution that once seemed as much a part of American life as the neighbourhood barber shop. Twentieth century fiction and commentary alike could not imagine urban life without daily mass circulation newspapers, or those newspapers without the authoritative, massive, eternal flagships every reporter and editor envied. Now paper after paper folds up or seeks bankruptcy protection, and even the mighty Times is reduced to swearing it really honestly won’t go bankrupt... next month.
The economic difficulties of newspapers are not all that surprising. It is true that they have not been in a long slow decline like most of the “rust belt” industries that defined American economic might from the turn of the century into the 1960s. Newspapers were not slowly ground down by foreign competitors figuring out mass production while compulsory unionization drove up costs and drove out innovation. Instead, they were suddenly blindsided by the Internet.
It’s not that anyone solved the problem of how to make money giving something away free online. Instead, online searches and email took away newspapers’ ability to do exactly that the old-fashioned way. In their old, apparently unsinkable business model, subscription and newsstand prices never even attempted to cover production costs. Instead, they attracted readers with cheap papers, and then advertisers paid them to deliver their messages to those readers. And unfortunately the Internet made it possible for buyers and sellers to find one another faster and more reliably, and revenue from classified and retail advertising collapsed with catastrophic rapidity.
Thus far newspapers have my sympathy, and not only because they have been a major source of my income for the past dozen years. I didn’t see this terrible problem coming a decade ago either. But the other major problem now afflicting newspapers was entirely self-inflicted and I did see that one coming. It was content: what they covered and, even more, the way they covered it. The newspaper industry as a whole took on a particular tone of smug bias that now prevents it from adapting to changed circumstances in the only way I think is realistic.
There were exceptions, of course, but the typical newspaper and especially the typical elite newspaper deserve exactly the reproach my distinctly unconventional colleague David Warren delivered last May. “In my view... The idea of the news sheet remains essentially sound... People still want something to read that is portable and companionable and requires no technological savvy whatever. But those who can read want something ... intrinsically lively, informative, interesting, and even reliable and trustworthy and aesthetically satisfying.” Instead of which, especially as they came to recruit mostly from journalism schools, newspapers became the preserve of a narrow liberal elite “who think and sound like sociology majors, and express themselves in a jargon stream of pompous, preachy, preening, vaguely leftist and reptilian drivel.”
The only way newspapers can survive in the digital era is to exploit the negative tendency of the Internet to overload us with information of dubious quality. They must become trusted gatekeepers, sites to which you subscribe even for things you could get free elsewhere because they collect it all in one place in an intelligent and fair-minded way and save you hours of precious time for a few dollars a week. And nobody now trusts them to do so but the sorts of liberals who, in William F. Buckley Jr.’s apt jibe, go on endlessly about other points of view but are always amazed to find that there are other points of view. There aren’t enough such people to sustain the industry on reader rather than advertiser revenue.
Take The New York Times ... please. On questions of factual accuracy, and weight with the chattering classes in liberal epochs, it had some real claim to be the American newspaper of record. And it deserves credit for broadening its pages by inventing the Op Ed page (a seemingly timeless feature, it actually began in the “grey lady” in 1970). But the Times took a reliably and offensively biased liberal position from time out of mind without even realizing it.
In the 1920s it assured its readers Hitler had been tamed. In the early 1930s it published Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer-winning lies denying Stalin’s famines. Its crusade against the Vietnam war culminated with the notorious headline “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, A Better Life” from Phnom Penh, Cambodia on April 30, 1975, the day the Khmer Rouge took the city and began their genocide.
In 1983 the Times sonorously informed its readers that “the stench of failure” hung over the Reagan White House. And on and on. In a master-stroke of clueless pomposity, every four years the editorial board stroked its collective long grey beard before pronouncing that on this occasion they considered the Democratic candidate for president superior... 14 straight times and counting.
I do think the collapse of a national press is bad for a nation. Love them or hate them, a few generally recognized leading publications created a shared framework for a national conversation in which virtually every informed person knew many of the same facts and was reacting to the same thoughtful presentations of those facts.
The development of technology from the dawn of the microchip era was bound to fragment this conversation to some extent. Even cable television reduced the shared cultural experience of audiences in the industrial democracies in the 20th century, hearing the same handful of major radio shows then watching the same handful of entertainment and news programs. You don’t have to think it could have been prevented to see some drawbacks to the shattering of this common focus and the development of a sort of national and international ADD.
The Internet does take Chesterton’s warning about the parochialism of big cities to new heights; with millions of blogs to choose from we can easily avoid information overload by focusing only on those sources that confirm everything we already think in exactly the tone we find most congenial. Newspapers could make money combating that tendency, if they hadn’t long ago succumbed to the temptation to perform it for one elite point of view only.
They will be missed for what they might have done. But not, sadly, for what they chose to do instead while they still had a choice.
John Robson is an Ottawa based writer and broadcaster.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 14, 2009, 05:01:35 PM
Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle On Obama's Double-Homicide APRIL 14, 2009 | ISSUE 45•16
The press hasn't figured out how best to display the gruesome crime-scene photos from the president's bloody rampage.
WASHINGTON—More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.
"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation."
Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried."
ENLARGE IMAGE
Associated Press reporters investigate any possible gym training regimens the president might have used to get into peak physical condition for the murders.
Since the killings took place, reporters across the country have struggled to come up with an appropriate take on the ruthless crime, with some wondering whether it warrants front-page coverage, and others questioning its relevance in a fast-changing media landscape.
"What exactly is the news hook here?" asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. "Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a 'day in the life' of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama's unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?"
"Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now," Kaplan continued. "I don't know. There are a million different angles on this one."
So far, the president's double-homicide has not been covered by any major news outlets. The only two mentions of the heinous tragedy have been a 100-word blurb on the Associated Press wire and an obituary on page E7 of this week's edition of the Lake County Examiner.
While Obama has expressed no remorse for the grisly murders—point-blank shootings with an unregistered .38-caliber revolver—many journalists said it would be irresponsible for the press to sensationalize the story.
"There's been some debate around the office about whether we should report on this at all," Washington Post senior reporter Bill Tracy said while on assignment at a local dog show. "It's enough of a tragedy without the press jumping in and pointing fingers or, worse, exploiting the violence. Plus, we need to be sensitive to the victims' families at this time. Their loved ones were brutally, brutally murdered, after all."
Nevertheless, a small contingent of independent journalists has begun to express its disapproval and growing shock over the president's actions.
"I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but we are in the midst of an economic crisis here," political pundit Marcus Reid said. "Why was our president ritualistically dismembering the corpses of his prey when he should have been working on a new tax proposal for small businesses? I, for one, am outraged."
The New York Times newsroom is reportedly still undecided on whether or not to print a recent letter received from Obama, in which the president threatens to kill another helpless citizen every Tuesday and "fill [his] heavenly palace with slaves for the afterlife" unless the police "stop the darkness from screaming."
"President Obama's letter presents us with a classic journalistic quandary," executive editor Bill Keller said. "If we print it, then we're giving him control over the kinds of stories we choose to run. It would be an acknowledgment that we somehow give the nation's commander in chief special treatment."
Added Keller, "And that's just not how the press in this country works."
Title: CNBC sweats BO-Bashing
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2009, 01:40:23 PM
CNBC SWEATS 'OBAMA-BASHING'
April 16, 2009 --
THE top suits and some of the on-air talent at CNBC were recently ordered to a top-secret meeting with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to discuss whether they've turned into the President Obama-bashing network, Page Six has learned.
"It was an intensive, three-hour dinner at 30 Rock which Zucker himself was behind," a source familiar with the powwow told us. "There was a long discussion about whether CNBC has become too conservative and is beating up on Obama too much. There's great concern that CNBC is now the anti-Obama network. The whole meeting was really kind of creepy."
One topic under the microscope, our insider said, was on-air CNBC editor Rick Santelli's rant two months ago about staging a "Chicago Tea Party" to protest the president's bailout programs -- an idea that spawned tax protest tea parties in other big cities, infuriating the White House. Oddly, Santelli was not at the meeting, while Jim Cramer was, noted our source, who added that no edict was ultimately handed down by the network chieftains.
CNBC flack Brian Steel confirmed the get-together, but insisted: "The dinner was to thank CNBC for a job well done in our in-depth reporting throughout the financial crisis. As far as our coverage is concerned, we are built for balance and we are unabashedly pro-investor."
Our source retorted: "That is complete bull[bleep] . . . they didn't invite a lot of people to [the meeting]. There were many staffers who were working 24/7 during the crisis who weren't asked to attend, even Santelli, who was a big star for the network during those weeks. Why not?"
In addition, the insider said: "News of the meeting is starting to leak out and people are contacting a number of the on-air people to ask if they've been muzzled by GE."
Title: WSJ: Making the old new again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2009, 10:40:11 PM
It's make-or-break time for many newspapers. Denver and Seattle recently lost dailies, the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times are both in bankruptcy, and owners of the Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle threaten closure. One reader mourned the loss of her local newspaper in Connecticut by lamenting that she had gone from living in a city to living off just another exit on Interstate 95. As comedian Stephen Colbert put it last week, "The impending death of the newspaper industry: Where will they print the obituary?"
Barney Kilgore. Creative destruction is blowing hard through the news industry, as digital technology gives readers access to endless sources of news but undermines the ability of publishers to support news departments. City newspapers are no longer the dominant way people get news or the main way advertisers reach consumers. The recession is accelerating these trends, with advertising so soft even Web-only news operations, which don't have the legacy costs of print, are now struggling to support journalism.
As the remaining city newspapers rethink themselves, editors and publishers might consult a road map for how newspapers can live alongside new media that was drawn up more than 50 years ago by Bernard Kilgore, outlined in a new biography by former Journal executive Richard Tofel, "Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal and the Invention of Modern Journalism."
Kilgore had remarkable judgment early about the journalistic issue of our day: how readers use old media, new media and both. When Kilgore became managing editor of the Journal in 1941, he inherited a business model that technology had undermined. Founded in 1889 to provide market news and stock prices to individual investors, the Journal lost half its circulation as this basic information became widely available.
Kilgore observed that then new media such as radio meant market news was available in real time. Some cities had a dozen newspapers that had gained the Journal's once-valuable ability to report share prices.
The Journal had to change. Technology increasingly meant readers would know the basic facts of news as it happened. He announced, "It doesn't have to have happened yesterday to be news," and said that people were more interested in what would happen tomorrow. He crafted the front page "What's News -- " column to summarize what had happened, but focused on explaining what the news meant.
On the morning after Pearl Harbor, other newspapers recounted the facts already known to all the day before through radio. The Journal's page-one story instead began, "War with Japan means industrial revolution in the United States." It outlined the implications for the economy, industry and commodity and financial markets.
Kilgore led the Journal's circulation to one million by the 1960s from 33,000 in the 1940s by adapting the newspaper to a role reflecting how people used different media for news. His rallying cry was, "The easiest thing in the world for a reader to do is to stop reading."
Business and financial news is different from the general news focus of city newspapers, but in 1958 the owners of the New York Herald Tribune approached Kilgore for help. Mr. Tofel uncovered a five-page memo Kilgore wrote them on how to keep city newspapers essential to readers. The Herald Tribune, he wrote, is "too much a newspaper that might be published in Philadelphia, Washington or Chicago just as readily as in metropolitan New York." Kilgore urged the "compact model newspaper." Readers valued their time, so the newspaper should have just one section, with larger editions on Sunday when people had more time to read.
His advice was clearly ahead of its time. The owners didn't heed it, and the Herald Tribune went out of business in 1967. But his observations on what readers want from city newspapers may be even more true in today's online world. Readers increasingly know yesterday what happened yesterday through Web sites, television and news alerts.
"Kilgore's first critical finding," Mr. Tofel wrote, was "that readers seek insight into tomorrow even more than an account of yesterday." This "may only now be getting through to many editors and publishers." Indeed, at a time when print readership is declining, The Economist, with its weekly focus on interpretation, is gaining circulation. The Journal continues to focus on what readers need, growing the number of individuals paying for the newspaper and the Web site.
If readers would prefer more-compact city newspapers, a less-is-more approach could help cut newsprint, printing, distribution and other costs that don't add to the journalism. Newspaper editors could craft a new, forward-looking role for print, alongside the what's-happening-right-now focus of digital news.
There's a lot of experimentation by editors around the country to find out what people want from their print and online news. For city newspapers on the brink, the Barney Kilgore approach might deliver some badly needed good news.
Write informationage@wsj.com
Title: That cheering crowd of soldiers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2009, 09:58:38 AM
Fauxbama Photo Event Generates Positive Coverage According to Minority Report's Dave Hinz, "[T]hat wonderful cheering welcome that President Obama received with his unscheduled surprise visit to the troops in Iraq, was entirely a staged event." One Army sergeant described the event this way: "We were pre-screened, asked by officials 'Who voted for Obama?', and then those who raised their hands were shuffled to the front of the receiving line. They even handed out digital cameras and asked them to hold them up." As Hinz put it, "[P]olitical operatives from the Administration orchestrate a faux-cheering crowd of adoring military, right in front of the media covering the event."
The Associated Press obliged, reporting, "President Barack Obama went for the defining television shot by capping his first extended foreign tour with a surprise visit to Iraq. He got it -- pictures of hundreds of U.S. troops cheering wildly as he told them it was time for the Iraqis to take charge of their own future. The war-zone photo opportunity produced a stunning show of appreciation for Obama from military men and women who have made great sacrifices, many serving repeated tours in a highly unpopular war."
It's not hard to believe that all the "journalists" tagging along on this assignment failed to mention this charade. But when covering the teleconference President Bush set up a couple of years ago with soldiers who were shown on camera, discussing who would take what question, all the media could say was "Scandal!" As for Obama, he must have learned from this comparison with a real commander in chief.
Title: Chirs Matthews struggles with SEALs' "lucky" three shots
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2009, 08:33:20 PM
Title: Cavuto caught inflating?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 18, 2009, 11:16:41 AM
http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001168/
Title: Impacting the collective global MEMRI
Post by: rachelg on April 18, 2009, 04:03:36 PM
Impacting the collective global MEMRI Apr. 15, 2009 Greer Fay Cashman , THE JERUSALEM POST
Retired IDF colonel Yigal Carmon, the president of MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), has an impressive CV. He served in the IDF Intelligence Corps, was an adviser on Arab affairs to the Civil Administration in the West Bank and a senior staff member of Israel's National Defense College. He was a senior member of the Israel delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference, an adviser on counter-terrorism to prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, and director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.
All of this, Carmon said, made him aware of the need for the organization he founded a little over a decade ago.
"In my long government career, I had the opportunity to see how governments, legislatures and the public at large suffered from lack of knowledge despite the fact that information was available - but in alien languages," he told The Jerusalem Post. "This enabled self-proclaimed pundits, who didn't even know any foreign languages, to hold a monopoly on what was the perceived reality of the Muslim world.
"It reminds me of the bad old times of communism, when there were Sovietologists who didn't speak a word of Russian. Today, there are so-called Arabists who don't speak Arabic. It's untenable that people who don't speak Arabic should be in this business," he said.
The business he was referring to is the monitoring of the Muslim and Arab world, and the accurate translation of what is said on Arabic radio and television, which often differs from statements made to the print media.
There are also many hidden - and sometimes dangerous - messages in Internet publications, discernable only to the most competent of linguists.
"Diplomats and journalists rely on strategic information," said Carmon. "When I started this project, I brought some work to one of the wire services, which had its own translator. When the bureau chief read my report and compared it to that of the translator, he said it was as if they had come from two different worlds. In my perception this illustrated what was lacking due to language barriers."
With these obstacles in mind, MEMRI's mission is to bridge gaps between East and West.
Like any new enterprise, it suffered some teething problems. "In the beginning there were attempts to thwart our work, but we overcame the opposition by the quality of what we do," said Carmon. He added, with no small degree of satisfaction: "We send direct mail to 80,000 subscribers worldwide, but we have millions of hits and individual users of our Web site who aren't part of our subscriber base."
For example, material that MEMRI ran on Wafa Sultan, the outspoken Syrian-born secularist who now lives in the US and is frequently interviewed with regard to her critical views on Muslim terrorism and extremism, attracted so much attention that the Web site had received 16 million hits from 192 countries, he said.
One might expect the founder and president of MEMRI to work out of Washington, DC, where the independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit organization is headquartered. Carmon is indeed a frequent visitor to Washington, but prefers to base himself in the Jerusalem branch office. Other branch offices are located in London, Tokyo, Rome, Baghdad and Shanghai.
The material MEMRI researches is translated to English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. Additional languages are about to be added through the Urdu-Pashtun media project, which will include translations and analyses of media in Farsi and Turkish, in addition to Arabic.
The main topics MEMRI deals with are: Jihad and Terrorism Studies; The US and the Middle East; Reforms in the Arab and Muslim World; The Arab-Israeli conflict; Inter-Arab relations; Economic Studies; The Anti-Semitism Documentation Project and the Islamist Web sites Monitoring Projectd.
Just reading the headings on the MEMRI Web site, without studying the analyses, is a mind-boggling experience. There is an almost overwhelming wealth and variety of material.
Carmon is justifiably proud of the fact that in the past year, MEMRI's 50 salaried staff members have translated and analyzed 10,905 papers.
Would MEMRI be able to function without the Internet? And if so, to what extent?
"We live with the era," he said. "We started our work in a computer age and utilize whatever the Internet facilities enable us to do."
This includes a TV monitor project that puts numerous video clips, on many subjects, at the disposal of interested parties. The video clips are accompanied by brief explanations and are updated daily. For some it is much more important to see and hear someone saying something than to read a report about it.
Asked where he thought MEMRI had been most influential, Carmon unhesitatingly replied: "In explaining the ideology behind terror. In the past, terror was a regarded as a crime, but it wasn't generally realized that it's not a regular crime, and that it's motivated by ideology."
Today, MEMRI could almost qualify as an intelligence organization, given its success in monitoring of terrorist organizations and their activities, as well as the opposition and dissent in the population groups in which terrorists operate.
Its dedicated Web site, the Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM), is available to paying subscribers only. The wealth of other information it amasses is freely available online.
"Ten years ago, the volume and quality of reports on the Middle East were not what they are today," acknowledged Carmon. "There was a prism of experts telling us about the Middle East, and we had to take their expertise at face value," he said.
"Today, MEMRI supplies primary sources and allows reporters and decision makers to judge for themselves and draw their own conclusions. We do not engage in advocacy."
He was pleased, however, when he saw someone else trying to create something similar to MEMRI - especially when it was a Saudi prince.
"Part of our success is reflected in the fact that Walid Bin Talal gave $20 million to Georgetown University to create a free on-line database on Islamic studies and the history of the Arab world. As far as I can tell, it is based on the MEMRI on-line principle."
Of all the subject matter MEMRI monitors and analyzes, there are two projects on which Carmon particularly likes to focus. One is reform in the Muslim and Arab world, and the other is anti-Semitism.
"Reforms in the Muslim and Arab world constitute our flagship project," he said. "We are big on reforms. We have helped several reform initiatives, and in 2001 we monitored and distributed dissident voices in the aftermath of the bombing of the World Trade Center.
"When these voices were small and weak, we were able to amplify them by publishing them - and we keep doing that without support from any quarter. We even helped reform Web sites to operate."
MEMRI also renders assistance to counter-terrorism organizations. "We help all security organizations working against terrorism, and we expose anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world," Carmon asserted. "Exposure of this ugly phenomenon provokes instant positive reaction, such as renouncing or backing away in the Arab world, unlike [in] Iran, where exposure prompts more anti-Semitism. One example of this occurred soon after our exposure of an anti-Semitic series on Egyptian television. A series of three articles written by Osama el-Baz in Al-Aharam refuted all anti-Semitic messages. He sent translations of these articles to every member of Congress."
Carmon sees incidents such as this as unmistakable sign of MEMRI's impact.
Unfortunately, he said, anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world was currently on the rise.
"Prior to Operation Cast Lead, the level of anti-Semitism in Arab and Muslim lands, other than Iran, had been reduced," Carmon noted. "Then it went up again, but I believe it will go down again."
Political and religious messages are often reflected in the arts, which is why MEMRI monitored the arts no less than raw politics,he said.
"We do a lot on social and cultural issues," he stated. "We have material on Arab music, culture, cinema and literature. North African cinema is very anti-terror, and in Pakistan there's a rock group that's anti-terror. We keep our finger on the pulse of popular culture."
MEMRI also gets involved in human rights issues. "We received a request from Sini Sanuman, a small NGO in Mali, Indonesia," Carmon related. "Sini Sanuman, which means Healthy Tomorrow, was interested in was getting a clip of the Egyptian television broadcast in which the Grand Mufti of Egypt addressed the subject of female genital mutilation, which he absolutely condemned.
"The NGO wanted to show the clip to Ousmane Cherif Haidara, a prominent religious leader in Mali, in the hope that if what the Grand Mufti said was sufficiently convincing, Haidara would also publicly oppose the practice."
Thinking it might be helpful if American women's rights activists were informed about what happened to women outside the US, Carmon went on the lecture circuit.
"I addressed 15 US women's rights groups about this issue, but they couldn't care less. They're not interested in women's rights in the Muslim and Arab world," he said.
Like all non-profit organizations, MEMRI relies on the support of donors, but under the present economic circumstances, financial support was waning, he said.
"The economic meltdown is a tragedy for us," said Carmon. "Some of our supporters, such as Elie Wiesel, who is on our board, can no longer help us. Others who continue to give are giving less. We are desperately in need of help. While I'm deeply grateful for all the financial support we received in the past, and I understand the difficulties imposed by the current financial crisis, I have to say that it will be disastrous if we can't finance our projects. We already have projects that we cannot implement for lack of resources."
To have made the enormous impact that MEMRI has succeeded in making in just over a decade is no mean feat. Nonetheless, Carmon isn't as happy as he should be. "I thought we would go a lot further in a decade than we have done," he admitted.
Though not an advocacy organization, MEMRI, with its wealth of monitored information, can provide tools for Jewish youth to use in countering anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on campus. "Jewish youth on campus should be disseminating knowledge of the Middle East," he asserted. "Knowledge was always the Jewish people's survival weapon. Now I encounter terrible ignorance, which impacts negatively on all advocacy efforts."
There was a distinct note of frustration in Carmon's voice as he pointed out there was ample material available on video, "which is the language of the age."
It bothered him, he said, that young people who spend up to 18 hours a day on a computer could, with hardly any effort, disseminate knowledge to the whole world, but for the most part were not sufficiently interested to make the effort.
Now, on the threshold of the second decade of MEMRI's operations, what does Carmon wish for?
His response is simple and broad: "To win the information challenge worldwide." This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710697837&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull [ Back to the Article ]
There are definitely Feminists organizations that are interested in genital mutilation.
Title: IF Stone
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2009, 09:28:35 PM
Title: The Servile NYT
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 03, 2009, 08:44:25 AM
May 03, 2009 Pinch Sulzberger grovels before his Patron
Ed Lasky The New York Times must be getting increasingly desperate.
The publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger, writes a paean in Time Magazine to Carlos Slim, the billionaire Mexican monopolist who threw the flailing Times a lifeline via a 250 million dollar loan earlier in the year.
This is a man who has set back development in Mexico by his monopoly (or near monopoly) of the telecommunications system in that nation. He has been milking his profits for decades, blocking technological development of competitors by using his influence with politicians. The Times has historically derided this type of crony capitalism, especially when it takes place in the developing world because of its effects on the poor.
Before Slim bought the obeisance of Pinch, the paper had run critical articles on him. Now Pinch's soul -- if he has one -- has been bought, lock, stock and barrel.
Behave now Pinch --you have a master, now. And it shows.
Here is Pinch at his most servile:
I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Carlos Slim. He had decided to invest in the New York Times Co. and thought it would be a good idea to get to know me and my senior colleagues. It was obvious from the moment we met that he was a true Times loyalist. We had an enjoyable conversation about what was happening in this country and everywhere else in the world. Carlos, a very shrewd businessman with an appreciation for great brands, showed a deep understanding of the role that news, information and education play in our interconnected global society.
Carlos, 69, believes that as people know more, they have a far better opportunity to change and improve their lives. As he spoke at our meeting, he conveyed the quiet but fierce confidence that has enabled him to have a profound and lasting effect on millions of individuals in Mexico and neighboring countries.
Well, Slim has slowed the development of the telecommunications system in Mexico and neighboring nations. He charges sky high prices for the use of the phone system that he was able to buy for a song years ago when the government privatized what had been a government owned system. Anyone been to Mexico lately? The phones are clunky and belong in the Mexican equivalent of the Smithsonian. Nevertheless they are slot machines for Slim.
Slim tapped his political contacts to arrange a sweetheart sale. This is precisely the type of behavior Sulzberger and his paper has condemned in the past.
The absurdity reaches new highs when Sulzberger claims Slim is helping millions of people become part of the information age. His efforts have retarded access to the internet because it has been profitable for him to derail competition and milk his monopoly.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/pinch_sulzberger_grovels_befor.html at May 03, 2009 - 11:42:24 AM EDT
Title: Smote by Quote
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 12, 2009, 08:42:40 AM
Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer - Tue May 12, 2009 8:57AM EDT
DUBLIN - When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.
"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.
"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."
So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.
"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."
Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.
When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.
He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences.
If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source — and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.
Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said he appreciated the Dublin student's point, and said he agreed it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it."
"We always tell people: If you see that quote on Wikipedia, find it somewhere else too. He's identified a flaw," Walsh said in a telephone interview from Wikipedia's San Francisco base.
But Walsh said there were more responsible ways to measure journalists' use of Wikipedia than through well-timed sabotage of one of the site's 12 million listings. "Our network of volunteer editors do thankless work trying to provide the highest-quality information. They will be rightly perturbed and irritated about this," he said.
Fitzgerald stressed that Wikipedia's system requiring about 1,500 volunteer "administrators" and the wider public to spot bogus additions did its job, removing the quote three times within minutes or hours. It was journalists eager for a quick, pithy quote that was the problem.
He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal.
"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on May 13, 2009, 07:09:36 AM
Previous media post of Huss where the student fools the media but gets caught by wikipedia is funny, but sad.
Similarly, here is the vice glibness spoofing the Washington Post. Reminds me of Jay Leno on the national enquirer, 'you know it's true because they check, double check and check again before they run with a story' lol.
From powerlineblog.com:
Washington Post (May 11) served up this headline: "Obama Enlists Biden's Expertise About High Court." The sole source cited by the Post for the proposition that Biden has a major say in selecting the next Supreme Court nominee is Biden himself. The only other source in the portion of the story that deals with Biden's role in policy matters is Ron Klain, Talkin' Joe's chief of staff. Klain touted Biden's foreign travels and asserted that "having a vice president who can do that sort of work has been a huge asset to the president."
Title: Keep on Rockin', MSM
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 21, 2009, 12:04:33 PM
It's always galled me that the media generally can't write a sentence about firearms without getting a fact wrong, yet just about everyone in American has an uncle or knows someone who could provide the ballistics table for just about any given bullet without breaking stride. Why can't the media get something simple straight, when everyone else knows who to consult? This piece speaks to variations on this vacuous theme.
Monday, the President ate a burger .. Mark Steyn Steyn Online ^ | 21 May 2009 | Mark Steyn
Maybe if they’d covered the love child instead of a fast food foray, papers wouldn’t be dying
John Edwards’ adultery was back in the news last week. Well, okay, “back” is probably not le mot juste, given that the former presidential candidate’s mistress cum campaign videographer wasn’t exactly front-page news even in the days when he was coming a strong second in the Iowa caucuses or being tipped as a possible vice-presidential nominee. Every editor knew the “rumours” (i.e., plausible scenario with mountains of circumstantial evidence), but, unlike, say, Sarah Palin’s daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s mother’s drug bust, this wasn’t one of those stories you need to drop everything for.
Only when the hard-working lads at the National Enquirer doorstepped Senator Edwards in the basement stairwell of the Beverly Hilton after a post-midnight visit to his newborn love child and forced him to take cover in the men’s room did the Los Angeles Times swing into action. Alas, it was to instruct its writers to make no comment on a story happening right under their own sniffy noses. The editor Tony Pierce emailed as follows:
“There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.
“If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don’t hesitate to ask
“Keep rockin,
“Tony.”
“Keep rockin.” If only. I think we can take it as read that, if Senator Edwards were delivering his mistress’s octuplets on the editor’s desk at the Los Angeles Times office, Tony would still insist we need a couple of corroborating sources before we can run with this thing.
While no doubt grateful for the Times’ efforts, by now even the adulterer had concluded it was time to fess up to his adultery. So he admitted to an affair with Rielle Hunter, but said that he only began it after his wife’s cancer had gone into remission. Er, so that’s okay then. And he insisted the kid isn’t his. Even Oprah found that a tough one to swallow: in her interview with Elizabeth Edwards last week, she observed that there aren’t a lot of guys who jump on a plane to scoot off to some Hilton in the middle of the night to hold a baby that isn’t theirs for 10 minutes.
Like so many of daytime TV’s happy homemakers, Mrs. Edwards produced something she’d prepared earlier:
“Golly, then you don’t know that many politicians. We do it all the time. Holding babies is what we do.”
Go on, try it yourself when you’re running for office. Wander into an EconoLodge at 2 a.m., and bang on the doors till you hit some obliging mom.
I met Mrs. Edwards when she was campaigning in 2004. And, compared to her oleaginous husband, she seemed very real. Operative word: “seemed.” It’s tempting to do as Oprah did—cast her as the victim. Yet she knew the truth about his affair throughout his second run for the presidency. In Iowa, Edwards pushed Hillary into third place. Had Mrs. Clinton gone on to lose New Hampshire the following week, Democrat primary voters might have concluded Edwards was the only viable alternative to Obama, and perhaps a better bet for the general election. The one-term southern senator was running on biography—son of a mill worker, happily married, stood devotedly by his wife during her cancer—and, although the press were aware the biography was false, they decided their readers didn’t need to know that. It’s not an Edwards scandal, it’s a media scandal.
After Obama had been nominated and Edwards was history, a few press grandees conceded that yes, maybe there was a legitimate story there, but such a sordid tale was never going to tickle the fancy of their refined sensibilities. Oddly enough, this consideration never seems to come into play with, say, Mark Foley, the Florida Republican hounded from public life after some overly tender emails to one of the more fetching Congressional pages, or Larry Craig, the Republican senator caught playing some ill-advised footsie with an undercover cop in the Minneapolis airport men’s room. Admittedly, these sex scandals are less “sordid” than Senator Edwards’: for one thing, there’s no sex in them—just some unrequited cyber-billets- doux in Foley’s case, and a bit of club-footed George Michael stall-divider semaphore in Larry Craig’s. British Tories at least have the consolation of the career-detonating sex scandal; Republicans have to make do with the career-detonating no-sex scandal.
Edwards is history now, and Obama is President. And the other day he and Joe Biden visited a hamburger restaurant. In the Clinton years, the 8 a.m. news bulletin on National Public Radio would invariably begin: “The President travels today to [insert state here] to unveil his proposals on [insert issue here].” If you’ve read A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, you’ll recall that Hank Morgan, the eponymous time-travelling New Englander, was much taken by the Court Circular published each week in Camelot:
On Monday, the king rode in the park.
” Tuesday, ” ” ”
” Wednesday ” ” “
” Thursday ” ” “
” Friday, ” ” “
” Saturday ” ” “
” Sunday, ” ” “
The NPR morning lead is the merest variant: on Monday, the king rode in the park to declaim his proposals on reduced emission standards. And the massed ranks of the press corps dutifully rode behind to scribble them down while trying to avoid the horseshit. But, when King Barack rode to the burger restaurant, there were no such policy implications: he didn’t bring along the treasury secretary to nationalize America’s cheeseburgers or Barney Frank to cancel the busboys’ bonuses. He just went to have a burger and some “tater tots.” And not one self-respecting member of the press corps thought, “Uh, do we really want to schlep across the Potomac to Virginia just to file a report on Obama eating a cheeseburger?”
So off they all galloped. In 1939, President and Mrs. Roosevelt hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Hyde Park in upstate New York. Their Majesties had come down from Ottawa, accompanied by Mackenzie King, because, technically, they were visiting the U.S. in their capacity as King and Queen of Canada. Which is an arcane Commonwealth constitutional point of no interest to Americans, naturally. Instead, the point of local interest was that FDR served Their Majesties hot dogs, and much was made of the fact that this was the first time the Royal Family had ever eaten this quintessentially American delicacy. From the radio reports, it sounds like the first time for the Roosevelts, too: when Eleanor says, “Your Majesty, here is your hot dog,” she puts the emphasis on the “dog” rather than the “hot,” as if to distinguish it from a hot goat or hot mongoose. Appearing on the Rush Limbaugh Show last week, I made the observation that it had taken 70 years for American public life to turn up a fast-food photo op of similar absurdity, only now the media were marvelling not that a foreign king was passing among them and eating as ordinary mortals do but that their own citizen-president was. That’s not, to my mind, progress.
The blogger Mickey Kaus likes to distinguish between the news and the “under-news.” The “news” is what you get from your bland monodaily or your incontinence-pad-sponsored network news show; the “under-news” is what’s bubbling out there on the Internet. I can see why Obama, Edwards and others value the king-rode-in-the-park model. But it’s not clear what’s in it for America’s failing newspapers. If you’re conservative, you don’t read them because they’re biased. If you’re an informed leftie, you don’t read them because they don’t have the gleeful partisan brio of the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post. And, if you’re apolitical, you don’t read them because they’re just incredibly boring.
Throughout the ‘d’90s, from O.J. to Monica, the ethics bores of America’s journalism schools bemoaned at the drop of a New York Times commission the media’s “descent into tabloidization.” A decade on, American newspapers are dying. Really dying, I mean; not just having a spot of difficulty negotiating the transition from one distribution system to another, which is the problem faced by British, Australian, Canadian and other newspaper markets. But better to be the dead parrot’s cage liner, than the actual parrot. Which would you say was more responsible for the death of American newspapering? The “descent into tabloidization”? Or the dreary monarchical deference of American liberalism’s insipid J-school courtiers? The king rode in the park. He was riding his videographer in the shrubbery, but you don’t need to know that.
“Keep rockin,” Tony Pierce advises his writers. Why not start rockin’? Tony sounds such a cool guy, he knows all the hepcat lingo. What a shame his newspaper isn’t as groovily written as his memos. Which may be why the Los Angeles Times’ parent company has had to file for bankruptcy protection. If this crate’s a-rockin’, it’s because Tony and his chums drove it over a cliff and it’s bouncin’ on the way down.
Title: Woodward on the Prowl
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 31, 2009, 07:53:59 AM
Plan of Attack Bob Woodward versus the White House.
Gabriel Sherman, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, June 17, 2009
In early May, White House Counsel Greg Craig circulated a memo inside the West Wing. Part of a series of memos on protocol, it explained how to deal with writers researching books and articles on the White House. (Craig's unsurprising instructions: Clear interview requests with the press office.) While the memo didn't mention any journalists by name--and while there are currently no fewer than half a dozen major reporters under contract to write books about the nascent Obama presidency and the 2008 campaign, any of whom could conceivably end up embarrassing the administration--there is one person in particular the White House is undoubtedly nervous about: Bob Woodward.
Since the inauguration, the Washington Post legend has been quietly reporting a new book on the Obama White House. "I'm in the preliminary stages of working on it," Woodward confirmed to me by phone recently. "I'm working on it and making progress."
Officially, the White House says it is not adopting a press strategy to respond to Woodward. Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that the Craig memo "was not issued in relation to any inquiry related to a specific reporter or author." Still, there is reason to think that Woodward might make the administration particularly anxious. "Every White House is wary of Woodward, " says New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker, who worked alongside him at the Post. What's more, Obama's White House is known to hate process stories, exactly the sort of exhaustive, in-the-room descriptions of high-level debates at which Woodward excels. And, even worse, Woodward has some extra motivation to fill his next book with big scoops. His fourth and final Bush book, The War Within, sold just 159,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, far below his third Bush installment, State of Denial, which sold more than half a million. "The last time I talked to him about books, earlier this year, he had been lamenting the fact his last Bush book didn't sell as well," one of Woodward's friends told me.
And an especially hungry Bob Woodward is especially bad news if you're one of the people being written about. "Good luck," another Woodward friend told me when I asked if the White House will succeed in keeping Woodward out. "If you want to hide things from Bob, it always comes out. It always does."
As former White House officials have made clear, Woodward can easily become a vexing problem at the highest reaches of an administration. In his 1999 memoir All Too Human, George Stephanopoulos detailed the fallout from Woodward's 1994 best-seller, The Agenda, which helped to define the Clinton presidency as freewheeling and dysfunctional. "His books invariably created embarrassing headlines for their subjects, but his sources were assumed to be the most important, connected, and knowledgeable people in Washington. I was wary of Woodward, but flattered and curious too," the former Clinton spokesman wrote about his decision to meet Woodward and grant an interview.
Stephanopoulos explains Woodward's reporting style: "He flashes a glimpse of what he knows, shaded in a largely negative light, with the hint of more to come, setting up a series of prisoner's dilemmas in which each prospective source faces a choice: Do you cooperate and elaborate in return (you hope) for learning more and earning a better portrayal--for your boss and yourself? Or do you call his bluff by walking away in the hope that your reticence will make the final product less authoritative and therefore less damaging? If no one talks, there is no book. But someone--then everyone--always talks."
Not only did Stephanopoulos end up talking, he also passed along a letter from Woodward to President Clinton, who himself sat for an interview. It was a decision the president came to regret. Stephanopoulos writes that the "repercussions were immediate" when Woodward's book was released. (Clinton fired his chief of staff, Mack McLarty, and brought on Leon Panetta.) The president was said to be furious at Woodward's portrayal of his administration.
From the outset, the Bush White House decided to cooperate with Woodward. "It was a different era when the first Woodward book came out," recalls former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. "President Bush was riding high, and events were going well." Fleischer says that Bush himself urged staffers to cooperate with Woodward, especially then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was reluctant to grant an interview (he did). "The message got down to everybody: 'Talk to him,'" Fleischer says. Bush sat for interviews for Woodward's first two installments, and, even though the president didn't personally cooperate with Woodward's third book, State of Denial, Fleischer says that "the White House tried to be helpful."
This time around, Woodward told me that, while he had heard about the Obama White House's effort to manage access for writers, he was not worried. "People make their individual choices about what they're going to do, even in the White House and in the government," he said. "Over my four decades of working on books, you find that some people will help, some people won't help, some will help at certain stages and not at others, some people won't help at the beginning but will help later on. That's reporting."
"What he does," one Woodward friend told me, "is he just turns on the vacuum cleaner and goes around Washington scooping up information until he gets a focus." That focus, of course, is subject to change. For his first book on Bush, Woodward told me he initially reported on the Bush tax cut, which dominated headlines in the languid summer of 2001, before September 11 jolted the White House onto its war footing. "In the case of Bush, after he was elected, I decided the center of gravity was his tax cut," Woodward said. "So I worked for nine months on his tax cut. I was doing the last interviews on the Hill on 9/11, and, of course, the center of gravity shifted to national security, so I shifted. I still have those boxes sitting in my office. It's a book about the Bush tax cut that was never written and probably never will be written."
One possibility, and a potentially worrisome one for this administration, is that Woodward will choose to focus on national security--the area where Obama has always seemed hypersensitive about being portrayed as weak and directionless. If he does, a likely source could be Obama's national security adviser, Jim Jones. A couple of years ago, Jones was a guest of Woodward at his wife Elsa Walsh's fiftieth birthday party held at Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee's house. "He and Elsa were glued to Jones at the cocktail party before the dinner started," one attendee told me. Another source could be David Petraeus. A favorite Washington parlor game consists of trying to figure out whether various officials talk to Woodward based on how generously he depicts them. If that method is accurate, then it suggests that Petraeus, who was portrayed glowingly in The War Within, was a Woodward source--and perhaps will be again.
Of course, Woodward is not the only well-known author the White House has to worry about. Journalists writing books on Obama's presidency include Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, New Yorker Washington correspondent (and former TNR staffer) Ryan Lizza, and TNR's Noam Scheiber; two campaign books--one by Haynes Johnson and Washington Post reporter Dan Balz, the other by New York magazine's John Heilemann and Time's Mark Halperin--are also in the works.
But Woodward isn't fazed. "As they say in the book business, you can't judge a book by the proposal," he told me. "There are a lot of people doing books with angles that may or may not pan out." Woodward, it seems, not only plays head games with his sources, but also with the competition.
Gabriel Sherman is a special correspondant for The New Republic.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on June 07, 2009, 07:41:20 AM
Bowing? Much ado about nothing...
But what riles me a little, and I am an Obama fan, :-o is that Brian Williams is suppose to be a newscaster; impartial, honest, and trustworthy. I watched part of the show with Brian Williams at the White House; even I concede it was an inappropriate lovefest unbecoming to a professional and respected newscaster. Matt Lauer; fine, that's entertainment, but I am disappointed in Brian Williams. I lost some respect for him and the position.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 07, 2009, 08:16:46 AM
Well, obviously there is a riff here based on His Glibness bowing to the Saudi king and for what the spontaneousness of the gesture reveals about what is in his heart-- which is manifested in the nature of his coverage. We are in agreement about the nature of the coverage :-D
Title: Made Up Metrics
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on June 09, 2009, 10:18:40 AM
OPINION: MAIN STREETJUNE 9, 2009 The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims The Obama Numbers Are Pure Fiction. By WILLIAM MCGURN
Tony Fratto is envious.
Mr. Fratto was a colleague of mine in the Bush administration, and as a senior member of the White House communications shop, he knows just how difficult it can be to deal with a press corps skeptical about presidential economic claims. It now appears, however, that Mr. Fratto's problem was that he simply lacked the magic words -- jobs "saved or created."
"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."
Mr. Fratto sees a double standard at play. "We would never have used a formula like 'save or create,'" he tells me. "To begin with, the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it."
Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.
And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula "save or create" allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a "non-measurable metric." And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.
"The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius," writes Mr. Mankiw. "You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus."
Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.
It's not only former Bush staffers such as Messrs. Fratto and Mankiw who have noted the political convenience here. During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.
"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," said the Montana Democrat. "If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."
Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in.
If the "saved or created" formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.
"You would think that any self-respecting White House press corps would show some of the same skepticism toward President Obama's jobs claims that they did toward President Bush's tax cuts," says Mr. Fratto. "But I'm still waiting."
Title: A rare spontaneous moment on MSNBC
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2009, 09:17:18 AM
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f28_1244651491
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on June 16, 2009, 06:33:27 AM
If you haven't seen drudge yet today check this ou We essentially are seeing government controlled media:
Folks, I don't know if health care costs can be controlled withoug some form of controls on delivery. But make no mistake about it. Those of us who are now paying for it will have are care rationed to pay for those who are not. End of story. The Republicans need make this clear. We want all Americans to understand that they can decide if they want to spurge for universal care but theirw WILL be rationed. Don't let BO deny this. The cost controls they are talking about are only the beginning. But this as far as I know is a seminal event in our history is it not? Unless we had something like this during wartime (WW2) before I was born:
ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET
On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!
Highlights on the agenda:
ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.
The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.
MORE
Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:
Dear Mr. Westin:
As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC's astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.
Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party's opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.
In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.
Respectfully, Ken McKay Republican National Committee Chief of Staff
Developing...
Title: ABC Goes the Pravda Route
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on June 18, 2009, 11:38:30 AM
ABC quiets Obama opposition June 18, 11:57 AM · 1 comment
ABC network has denied the Republican National Committee the opportunity to advertise during the White House’s presentation on health care reform. Scheduled to air June 24, the President’s ‘Prescription for America’ will air in the East Room, along with Charlie Gibson’s deliverance of ‘World News’ from the Blue Room.
Ken McKay, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff, issued a complaint to the head of ABC news Monday evening, saying, "In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime. " To read Mr. McKay's full compaint, click here.
It seems the Republican National Committee wasn't the only one turned down by the network. Conservatives for Patient's Righs requested rates for a mere one minute ad to follow-up 'Prescription for America' but was denied.
Chairman for Conservative's for Patient's Rights, Rick Scott, issued the following statement:
"It is unfortunate-and unusual-that ABC is refusing to accept paid advertising that would present an alternative viewpoint for the White House health care event. Health care is an issue that touches every American and all potential pieces of legislation have carried a pricetag in excess of $1 trillion of taxpayers' money. The American people deserve a healthy, robust debate on this issue and ABC's decision-as of now-to exclude even paid advertisements that present an alternative view does a disservice to the public. Our organization is more than willing to purchase ad time on ABC to present an alternative viewpoint and our hope is that ABC will reconsider having such viewpoints be part of this crucial debate for the American people. We were surprised to hear that paid advertisements would not be accepted when we inquired and we would certainly be open to purchasing time if ABC would reconsider."
With General Motors, banks, and health care at his fingertips, it's not surprising that media is to follow. It's just unfortunate that ABC is so willing to oblige. It's probably just a coincidence that Obama's Director of Communications for the Office of Health Reform is Linda Douglass, a former long time reporter for ABC news.
Title: Kidnapped NYT reporter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2009, 12:42:15 PM
Michael Yon on why he held back info on kidnapped NYT reporter
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
Title: Lets see how the American Pravdas cover this one
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2009, 06:25:04 AM
President Bush received considerable heat from the American Pravdas (my new name for the MSM) with its allegations of his politicizing science.
Lets see how this story is covered! ============================
Suppressed EPA scientist breaks silence, speaks on Fox News By: MARK TAPSCOTT Editorial Page Editor 06/30/09 12:10 PM EDT Alan Carlin, the senior EPA research analyst who authored a study critical of global warming that was suppressed by agency officials, has broken his silence and spoken on Fox News about his situation. Carlin told "Fox & Friends" Steve Ducy and Gretchen Carlson that his most important conclusion in the study was that the U.S. should not rely upon recommendations of the UN in making policy decisions regarding global warming. "The most important conclusion, in my view, was that EPA needed to look at the science behind global warming and not depend upon reports issued by the United Nations, which is what they were thinking of doing and in fact have done," Carlin said. Asked what happened to his study once it was completed, Carlin said "my supervisors decided not to forward it to the group within EPA who had the responsibility for preparing an overall report which would guide EPA on whether to find that the emission of global warming gases would be something that EPA should regulate." You can watch entire interview with Carlin here. Carlin has been at EPA for 38 years and until the Fox interview was telling reporters seeking interviews that he was instructed by EPA officials not to speak with them. He almost certainly risks retalitation by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other Obama appointees within the agency. There are federal laws designed to protect whistle blowers like Carlin from political retaliation. It will be fascinating to watch how an administration of the Left deals with a whistleblower who for whatever reason opposes their political agenda. Will they persecute him or protect him? I've had occasion to deal with quite a few whistle blowers over the years and they generally fall into two categories: First are the sincere employees who see something they believe to be wrong, are rejected when they go through channels seeking change, and are then subjected to reprisals, big and small, which ultimately exact an incredibly high emotional, professional and financial toll. It is not uncommon for these folks to become obsessed with seeking vindication, to suffer nervous breakdowns or end up divorced. Then there are the others who somehow manage to maintain an emotional and professional balance while maintaining the rightness of their cause and pursuing it to a conclusion. It often takes years, but eventually they sometimes win vindication, though by that time the original controversy is usually long past and the wrong they exposed has either been forgotten, papered over or, occasionally, addressed and remedied. A great example of this second kind of whistle blower is William Clinkscales, a man I greatly admire who exposed hundreds of millions of dollars of waste and fraud at the General Services Administration (GSA) during the Carter years, and was put through hell as his reward. He was vindicated by President Reagan who honored his service and recognized the importance of what he had done. Bill once told me of his being reassigned to a do-nothing job as his boss in effect saying to him: "Now Bill, in this extremely important new job I am giving you, your task is to watch that flagpole out in front of the GSA headquarters and if it moves, you come tell me immediately." I still chuckle when I think of Bill telling me that, but it was indicative of the lot that too often greets whistle blowers like Alan Carlin. Carlin told Fox that "things are a little tense, but as of last night, I still had a job." Sounds like he is expecting the worst. My prediction in this case is that Carlin will be stripped of duties, given an office that was previously used as a broom closet and transferred to a duty location as far from EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. as possible. Or he will soon opt for retirement, which will then free him to write and speak as he pleases, secure in his receipt of a pension from the federal government's old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) broke the story about Carlin's study being suppressed last week and has posted extensive information about the situation. It appears the story has generated so much interest that CEI's web site is overwhelmed with traffic, as it is taking a loooonnnnnggggg time to load. UPDATE: CEI demands EPA hear public comments on suppressed study The good folks at CEI have issued astatement today demanding that EPA reopen the comment period on the proposed rule on the agency's plans to regulate global warming emissions - CO2, the same thing every human being breathes out during the normal course of living - and to which the Carlin study was addressed.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2009, 03:42:19 PM
Pre-packaged questions for His Glibness: http://www.breitbart.tv/white-house-...ons-for-obama/
Title: WaPo Sells Access to Pols
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 02, 2009, 10:35:53 AM
WaPo cancels lobbyist event amid uproar By: Mike Allen July 2, 2009 08:04 AM EST
Washington Post Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth said today she was cancelling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where, for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."
With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth and Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli both said they were not aware of the flier.
“This should never have happened,” Weymouth told Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. “The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."
Brauchli told Kurtz he was "appalled" by the plan."It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase," Brauchli told Kurtz. The proposal "promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post."
Earlier this morning, Brauchili said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Katharine Weymouth. Brauchli,was named on the flier as one of the "Hosts and Discussion Leaders."
The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.
And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.
"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders."
Kris Coratti, communications director of Washington Post Media, a division of The Washington Post Company, said: "The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. It went out before it was properly vetted, and this draft does not represent what the company’s vision for these dinners are, which is meant to be an independent, policy-oriented event for newsmakers.
"As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this. We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that The Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate."
In his e-mail to the newsroom, labeled "Newsroom Independence," Brauchli wrote: "Colleagues, A flyer was distributed this week offering an 'underwriting opportunity' for a dinner on health care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate. The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude our participation.
"We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable. There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values."
The flier says: “Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. … “
Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. ... A Washington Post Salon ... July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. ...
"Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard," the flier says. "At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. ... By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons."
The first "Salon" is titled "Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on July 03, 2009, 06:55:11 AM
The Washington Post escapade reminds me of the Mark Sanford tryst. The Post 'journalists' worked so hard for so long to build their own power and contacts in the rising leftist movement and they worked so hard to achieve the mutual adoration of the hate-America crowd that now take offices as high officials in the Obama administration and they feel so unappreciated for all that they have accomplished, with so many people just reading their content on the internet for free, taking their hard work for granted, with classified money lost to craigslist and their beautiful Sunday edition sold out to the grocery coupon high bidder, who would not lust for the money, power and glamour of selling these contacts to the CEOs that could actually cash in the new multi-trillion dollar boondoggle that they worked so hard to create? Caught up in the excitement they forgot it might look bad once exposed.
It is very telling of the bankrupt newspaper business today that within the publisher's staff after just 6 months of the Obama administration NO ONE could either remember that they were supposed to maintain at least a public facade of neutrality or no one had the nerve to point that out to the boss before the invitations went out. Unbelievable.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2009, 07:17:48 AM
Exactly so. :x
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 03, 2009, 09:48:43 AM
"supposed to maintain at least a public facade of neutrality" That's out the window. The glee with which the msm goes after Sanford. Remember they ingored the John Edwards thing as long as they could get away with it until, one of the tabloids broke the story. (nat Inq?)
Notice the difference in motivations btw investigating crat vs. the can? Clear as a bell to me.
Title: Journalistic narcissism
Post by: rachelg on July 05, 2009, 06:43:57 PM
I found the below post really fascinating because the future role of journalists, critics, pundits, publishers etc is really up in the air.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, Andrew Sullivan said, “Journalism has become too much about journalists.”
True. It’s not just that newspapers are covering their own demise as thoroughly as Michael Jackson’s. This is about the mythology that news needs newspapers – that without them, it’s not news.
In an offhand reference about the economics of news, Dave Winer wrote, “When you think of news as a business, except in very unusual circumstances, the sources never got paid. So the news was always free, it was the reporting of it that cost…. The new world pays the source, indirectly, and obviates the middleman.” This raises two questions: both whether news needs newsmen and whether journalists and news organizations deserve to be paid.
I tweeted Winer’s line and Howard Weaver then started a discussion with this tweet: “Is it news if it’s not reported? I don’t think so.” I don’t think he’s saying that the reporting needs to be done by a professional, but he is saying that reporting is what makes news news. Does news need the middleman?
Steve Yelvington just tweeted that “The Washington Post ’salon’ debacle is a clash between myth and reality on so many levels: ‘the select few who will actually get it done.’” Being needed.
The realization of that myth – the myth of necessity – hit me head-on when I read an unselfconsciously narcissistic feature in The New York Times this week about the room where the 4 p.m. news meeting is held. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has likened that meeting to a “religious ceremony.” The Times feature certainly acted as if it were taking us inside the Pope’s chapel: “The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world.”
Behold the hubris of that: They decide what is important. Because we can’t. That’s what it says. That’s what they believe.
I was trained to accept that myth: that journalists decide what’s important, that it’s a skill with which they are imbued: news judgment. I worked hard to gain and exercise that judgment. The myth further holds that no judgment of importance is more important than The Times’; that’s why, every night, it sends out to the rest of newspaperdom its choices. News isn’t news until it’s reported and it’s not important until The Times says so.
But why do we need anyone to tell us what’s important? We decide that. What’s important to you isn’t important to me. Why must we all share the same importance? Because we all shared the same newspaper. There is the wellspring of the myth: the press.
I am trying to cut through these many myths about newsso I can reexamine them. In something I’m writing now for another project, I say: “To start, it is critical that we understand and question every assumption that emerged from old realities – for example, that news should be a once-a-day, one-for-all, one-way experience just because that’s what the means of production and distribution of the newspaper and the TV broadcast necessitated.” And: “Owning the printing press or broadcast tower used to define advantage: I own and control the means of production and distribution and you and don’t, which enables me to decide what gets distributed and forces you to come to me if you want to reach the public through news or through advertising, whose price I alone set with little or no concern for competition.”
No more. The press has become journalism’s curse, not only because it now brings a crushing cost burden but also because it led to all these myths: that we journalists own the news, that we’re necessary to it, that we decide what’s reported and what’s important, that we can package the world for you every day in a box with a bow on it, that what we do is perfect (with rare, we think, exceptions), that the world should come to us to be informed, that we deserve to be paid for this service, that the world needs us.
The journalistic narcissism that extrudes from the press extends to so much of the journalist’s relationship with her public. Jay Rosen just tweeted his headline for Plain Dealer Connie Schultz’ return of spitball (below): “A blogger was mean to me so that means I’m right.” John McQuaid tweeted that he feared I was “only abetting Connie Schultz’s effort to turn a real debate into a bloggers vs. MSM culture war.” He’s right. Schultz didn’t address the substantive objections to her hare-brained and dangerous scheme; she made it about her.
Oh, I know, this is all a big set-up for your punchline: A blogger is talking about narcissism? Heh. Isn’t blogging the ultimate narcissism? But who called it that, who made that judgment? Journalists, as far as I’ve seen. When they talk, it’s important. When we talk, it’s narcissism. What we say can’t be important – can it? – because we’re not paid and printed. But I don’t want to replay the blog culture war, which I keep hoping is over. I want to question assumptions, to find the cause and effect of myths.
And that’s what Winer is trying to do when he reminds us that the important people in news are the sources and witnesses, who can now publish and broadcast what they know. The question journalists must ask, again, is how they add value to that. Of course, journalists can add much: reporting, curating, vetting, correcting, illustrating, giving context, writing narrative. And, of course, I’m all in favor of having journalists; I’m teaching them. But what’s hard to face is that the news can go on without them. They’re the ones who need to figure out how to make themselves needed. They can and they will but they can no longer simply rest on the press and its myths.
: LATER: Good discussion in the comments already. I particularly like this from Craig Stoltz:
At the WaPo, where I used to work, the story conference room was decorated with (1) the metal frame with sticks of backwards type that was used to print the “Nixon Resigns” front page [it is said that that wall had to be reinforced to bear its weight--myth?]; (2) a framed Post advertisement from the early 70s reading “I got my job from the Washington Post,” which Gerald Ford was good-natured enough to sign; (3) two columnar shelves of important tomes written by Post staffers over the years; and, yes, (4) a polished wooden table whose craftsmanship and sheen suggested the Pedestal of Truth.
No coffee was allowed in the room.
Confession: Every time I was in that room I felt inspired, breathed in the myth, absorbed the history and mission that made the Post such an extraordinary institution [and which makes these week's "salon" disaster so heartbreaking].
That room and the myth it conveyed may have made me a better journalist.
I suspect it made me a more arrogant, and therefore ultimately vulnerable one.
: In Twitter, Aaron Huslage asks: “How is curating journalism different from the NYT editorial meeting? isn’t it, at heart, picking ‘what’s important’?” And I responded: “Now it doesn’t have to be one-for-all. And it’s not necessary what’s ‘important’ (as the NYT says) but ‘relevant’ (Google’s goal).”
: Juan Antonio Giner takes apart the Times room: an analog space for a digital age.
: Tim Russo responded to Schultz, though she refused to respond to him.
: ANOTHER great comment, this one from David Weinberger:
May I add one more, related, myth to your collection, Jeff? Here goes: It’s possible to _cover_ the day’s events.
This is just a different way of putting your formulation “One man’s [sic] noise is another man’s news.” But I think it’s worth calling out since the promise of global sufficiency is a big part of traditional newspapers’ promise of value to us: “Read us once in the morning, and after going through our pages, you will know everything you need to know.” (Do radio stations still make the ridicule-worthy “Give us 8 minutes and we’ll give you the world?” claim.) Yeah, no newspaper would ever maintain that claim seriously if challenged — they know better than their readers (or at least they used to) what they’re leaving out — but it’s at the base of the idea that reading a paper is a civic duty. The paper doesn’t give us _everything_ but it gives us _enough_ that reading one every day makes us well-informed citizens.
The notion that newspapers give you your daily requirement of global news — which works to wondering, along with Howard, if there is such a thing as “news” — seems to me to be as vulnerable as the old idea of objectivity. Like objectivity: (1) It’s presented as one of the basic reasons to read a newspaper; (2) it hides the fact that it’s based on cultural values; and (3) it doesn’t scale well in the age of the Net.
Ultimately, this myth is enabled –as so many of the myths of news and knowledge are — by paper. Take away the paper and the newspaper doesn’t become a paperless newspaper. It becomes a network. That’s what’s happening now, IMO. From object to network … and networks are far far harder to “monetize” (giving myself a yech here) than objects….
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am and was tagged journalism, newsbook, newspapers.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2009, 08:20:59 PM
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2009/06/27/
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2009/06/28/
Title: WSJ: Cheering the deficit
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2009, 07:21:36 AM
BY BRENT BOZELL A calm Sunday breakfast might have been ruined after a glance at The Washington Post's front page on June 14. A chart below the fold explained that under Obama's federal spending proposals, the United States would be required to borrow $9 trillion during the next decade. That's $9,000,000,000,000. The Post compared that, in today's dollars, to the financial burden of World War II: $3.6 trillion. That's not all of Obama's spending plan. That's only the part that's in the red.
Is it any wonder that a recent Gallup poll found more people disapprove rather than approve of Obama's handling of the deficit? But we've only just begun. Now President Obama wants to add another enormous chunk of government health-care spending. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the latest Democratic bill in the Senate would add another one trillion dollars to the budget over the next decade, and they suggest that's only a partial estimate.
Remember when the Democrats and their media allies wailed about how the Iraq war wastefully drove up the national debt? The Post's chart estimated that the Iraq war costs from 2003-2008 totaled $551 billion, a pittance compared to the massive load of debt the Democrats want to pass right now. And they want to pass it at breakneck speed, so just like the "stimulus" bill, it will become law before the public learns its manifold outrages.
Sadly, this Washington Post article notwithstanding, the news media aren't questioning the new health "reform" drive. They are enabling it.
ABC News has announced plans to put Barack Obama in prime time again from the White House to push his health-nationalizing agenda for an hour – and then another half-hour on "Nightline." ABC will broadcast live from the White House for "World News" and "Good Morning America," interviewing both Barack and Michelle Obama.
It's bad enough that NBC News just gave Obama two hours of fluffy promotion in prime time (followed quickly by two hours of prime-time fluff reruns). Now, ABC isn't going to promote how Obama buys hamburgers for the staff and has a cute puppy. They're going to help him sell his hard-left "Prescription for America."
Forget participation. ABC isn't allowing time even for any official Republican rebuttal. Republicans will have to hope they find a spot or two in the audience ABC News selects with the promise of "divergent opinions in this historic debate." ABC also promises the participation of their medical correspondent Dr. Tim Johnson, who's been a blatant cheerleader for a European-style "right" to health care.
This isn't unprecedented. ABC handed over two hours of morning air time after Columbine for Bill and Hillary Clinton to lament our country's gun culture in 1999. In 1994, NBC News offered the Clintons a two-hour special to promote Hillary-care, paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a major supporter of socialized medicine. The Democrats always seem "overprivileged" when they want to sell their programs on network news.
Skepticism is warranted when ABC promises "divergent opinions," which probably means a debate between leftists, that people who want a single-payer socialist system will be granted the floor. If the past is prologue, if Charlie Gibson has any tough questions for Obama, he'll be asking him to explain why our ultraliberal president's too much of a conservative on health care. Gibson angered President Clinton during the 1999 Columbine special by insisting he wasn't enough of a gun-banner. He said a friend of Clinton's complained the Colorado high school shooting "seared the national conscience," and yet "the President had a chance to roar on gun control and he meowed."
More conservative White Houses have not been awarded a supportive network platform. Does anyone remember that ABC prime-time special that allowed President Bush to sell Social Security privatization in 2005? Or the two-hour 2006 prime-time Bush White House special promoting the War on Terror? Try not to laugh too hard at the impossibility of such a concept.
You can just hear the protests, can't you? "Why, we can't do that! We're journalists!"
In prime time, Barack Obama is overexposed and under-challenged. If ABC wants to add any sliver of credibility to all this freely offered air time, it will ask the president to defend adding ten trillion dollars to the national debt in the decade to come, and ask if the current government's priorities should really require a deficit three times the "investment" of World War II.
Title: eavesdropping in the media
Post by: ccp on July 09, 2009, 01:18:49 PM
I would be shocked if this does not go on all the time. Many things Katherine and I have said, ryhmes, comments and ideas has shown up in all places media, Commercials, cartoons, sitcoms, CNBC, talk shows and anywhere the media can make a buck. Katherine who used to buff cars for some extra dollars many years ago said to her psychopathic mother that they ought to come up with a shammy for the kitchen and she responded "wow" what a grat idea. Next comes out the shamwow! Also snuggies after Katherine told her the idea of a blanket that places for ones arms came out. they get people on CNBC to read phrases obviously from telepromters that are made in our house. These people even appear to be smirking as though they hav no idea why they are supposed to be reading what they are reading - which I am sure they don't. commercials, cartoons, sitcoms, anything that supposedly can be used to sell. Some of these times are undoubtedly coincindents which do occur, but of these are not. Eavesdropping is assuredly rampant. No law enforcement agency investigates this so unless one has a fortune to pay private investigators and lawyers so well that they cannot be bribed to help cover it up - that's it.
If one doubts what I am saying - and it would be understandebly so - remember - where are all the songs from the musical geniouses who claim they have vast libraries of music?
If they can't steal it at some point in the next few years - maybe sooner - remember it here - something will happen to Katherine and or me. They will not wait forever. Not with what could be hundreds of millions at stake.
In any case this is no surprise to me and is certainly only the tip of the iceberg. And as eavesdropping devices get smaller, cheaper and more ubiquitis this will only get worse. And governement - they don't give a shit. Theft is not a real crime in this country unless one is high profile like Berie Madoff and/or one rips off the well connected.
*****Guardian exclusive: News of the World phone-hackingMurdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims• News of the World bugging led to £700,000 payout to PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor • Sun editor Rebekah Wade and Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson – both ex-NoW editors – involved • News International chairman Les Hinton told MPs reporter jailed for phone-hacking was one-off case Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.
The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.
Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence, which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them. The evidence also poses difficult questions for:
• Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts.
• Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public.
• The Metropolitan police, which did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel.
• The Press Complaints Commission, which claimed to have conducted an investigation, but failed to uncover any evidence of illegal activity.
The suppressed legal cases are linked to the jailing in January 2007 of a News of the World reporter, Clive Goodman, for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff, an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had acted without their knowledge.
But one senior source at the Met told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets.
Last night, Prescott said: "I think Mr Cameron should be thinking of getting rid of Coulson."
However, a spokeswoman for Cameron said the Tory leader was "very relaxed about the story".
Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes, one of many victims of mobile phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers, comments on the huge out-of-court settlements Link to this video News International has always maintained it had no knowledge of phone hacking by anybody acting on its behalf.
Murdoch told Bloomberg news last night that he knew nothing about the payments. "If that had happened I would know about it," he said.
A private investigator who had worked for News Group, Glenn Mulcaire, was also jailed in January 2007. He admitted hacking into the phones of five other targets, including the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, Gordon Taylor. Among the phones he hacked were those of the Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes, celebrity PR Max Clifford, model Elle MacPherson and football agent Sky Andrew. News Group denied all knowledge of the hacking, but Taylor last year sued them on the basis that they must have known about it.
In documents initially submitted to the high court, News Group executives said the company had not been involved in any way in Mulcaire's hacking of Taylor's phone. They denied keeping any recording or notes of intercepted messages. But, at the request of Taylor's lawyers, the court ordered the production of detailed evidence from Scotland Yard's inquiry in the Goodman case, and from an inquiry by the Information Commissioner's office into journalists who dishonestly obtain confidential personal records.
The Scotland Yard files included paperwork which revealed that, contrary to News Group's denial, Mulcaire had provided a recording of the messages on Taylor's phone to a News of the World journalist who had transcribed them and emailed them to a senior reporter, and that a News of the World executive had offered Mulcaire a substantial bonus for a story specifically related to the intercepted messages.
Several famous figures in football are among those whose messages were intercepted. Coulson was editing the paper at this time. He said last night: "This story relates to an alleged payment made after I left the News of the World two and half years ago. I have no knowledge whatsoever of any settlement with Gordon Taylor.
"The Mulcaire case was investigated thoroughly by the police and by the Press Complaints Commission. I took full responsibility at the time for what happened on my watch but without my knowledge and resigned."
The paperwork from the Information Commission revealed the names of 31 journalists working for the News of the World and the Sun, together with the details of government agencies, banks, phone companies and others who were conned into handing over confidential information. This is an offence under the Data Protection Act unless it is justified by public interest.
Senior editors are among those implicated. This activity occurred before the mobile phone hacking, at a time when Coulson was deputy and the editor was Rebekah Wade, now due to become chief executive of News International. The extent of their personal knowledge, if any, is not clear: the News of the World has always insisted that it would not break the law and would use subterfuge only if essential in the public interest.
Faced with this evidence, News International changed their position, started offering huge cash payments to settle the case out of court, and finally paid out £700,000 in legal costs and damages on the condition that Taylor signed a gagging clause to prevent him speaking about the case. The payment is believed to have included more than £400,000 in damages. News Group then persuaded the court to seal the file on Taylor's case to prevent all public access, even though it contained prima facie evidence of criminal activity.
The Scotland Yard paperwork also provided evidence that the News of the World had been involved with Mulcaire in his hacking of the mobile phones of at least two other football figures. They filed complaints, which were settled this year when News International paid more than £300,000 in damages and costs on condition that they signed gagging clauses.
Taylor declined to make any comment. Goodman, now out of jail, said: "My comment is not even 'no comment'." A spokesman for News International said: "News International feels it is inappropriate to comment at this time."
Last night, John Whittingdale, the Conservative MP who chairs the culture, media and sport select committee, said the revelation "raises a number of questions that we would want to put to News International".
He added: "The fact that other people beyond the royal family had their calls intercepted was well known. But we were absolutely assured by News International that none of their journalists were aware of that, that Goodman was acting alone and that Mulcaire was a rogue agent".
Asked if the committee would reopen the issue, he said: "The committee will want to discuss it very urgently. I think we will do so tomorrow morning, and if we decide that there are further questions to ask, then certainly we would summon back witnesses and ask those questions."
Former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil described the story last night as "one of the most significant media stories of modern times". "It suggests that rather than being a one-off journalist or rogue private investigator, it was systemic throughout the News of the World, and to a lesser extent the Sun," he said. "Particularly in the News of the World, this was a newsroom out of control.
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857.*****
Title: Closed to the Press Press Party
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 10, 2009, 07:54:04 AM
White House Press Corps Happy to Attend Barack Obama's Off-the-Record BBQ By John Cook, 12:44 PM on Thu Jul 9 2009, 33,791 views Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy.
We reported yesterday that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's "backyard bash" by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his Playbook column the next day, he deleted a reference to his own name and didn't bother to tell his readers that he was actually at the party.
Well, he wasn't alone. Gawker has learned that the White House gave tickets to virtually every major news organization that covers the president—the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, CBS News, and so on, about 30 in all. The reporters were invited to attend on the following condition:
"You are being invited to attend this event as a guest. Blogging, Twittering or otherwise reporting on this event is not permitted. If you feel that you cannot agree to abide by these ground rules, please don't claim a ticket."
That's right: Much of the White House press corps spent the Fourth schmoozing with White House staffers, catching performances by the Foo Fighters and Jimmy Fallon, and watching the fireworks from the most exclusive vantage point in the D.C. metro area, all off the record—not to mention off-the-Facebook and off-the-Twitter. These are the same people who just a week ago were whining in the press briefing about Obama's malicious and dastardly attempts to "control the press." (Well, not the self-same people—we're not sure if Chip Reid and Helen Thomas, the primary antagonists in that exchange, were in attendance.)
There is a cosmic irony at work here: The party was "closed press." (Ha!) It was covered, under onerous restrictions, by a pool reporter—the Baltimore Sun's Paul West. West was ushered in by White House staffers for a mere 40 minutes, so he could record the president's remarks. He was kept in a pen so that he wouldn't run amok and interview someone. He shouted questions at Obama as he worked the rope line, which the president ignored. Then he was taken away. West wrote up his blindered account of the party and then e-mailed it to the White House press corps, many of whom were actually at the party, outside of the pen, hanging out with all the other guests. And then, because they had temporarily signed away the right to do their jobs in exchange for facetime with staffers, a few cold Stoudt's American Pale Ales, and some corn on the cob, their news organizations picked up that pool report and used it to tell their readers what happened at the party. This is how the press covers the White House.
The party was designated "closed press" because it was originally going to actually be closed to the press. But on Thursday of last week, a batch of last-minute tickets opened up, and White House staffers decided it would be nice to invite the press corps. They distributed them to the news organizations, who then decided who to give them to. (We are reliably told it was mostly White House correspondents who snapped them up.) But instead of just opening up the event to coverage, which would have meant spoiling a nice backyard bash with network cameras, radio correspondents, international press, and the vast machinery of live electronic media, the White House decided that it would be more fair to the news organizations who weren't invited if they just kept it off the record. That way, the thinking went, no one's getting special access. As absurd as that sounds when you're talking about inviting a select group of reporters to a party with the president, it kind of makes sense if you have to deal with a host of news outlets jockeying for access. If it's all off the record, a small regional paper can't complain that not being invited seriously hurts their coverage.
What doesn't make sense, at all, is why a group of reporters who have recently begun clinging to the notion that they are independent of Washington's clubby morass of back-scratching self-congratulation would agree to attend an off-the-record party at the White House while one of their own is walled off in a pen like some forlorn scapegoat, doing the job they're supposed to be doing.
Title: Media Issues: CNN in the heartland
Post by: DougMacG on August 13, 2009, 10:19:31 AM
This could fall under 2nd amendment or religion but to me the issue is the reporter. Like the obnoxious Lawrence O'Donnell interview with Peter Schiff this poor lady just couldn't grasp what she was being told while the midwest businessman was calm and explanatory with her.
I recall after some past GOP victory a famous radio host said the NY Times would need to send foreign correspondents to the heartland in search of understanding of what had happened. This CNN morning host didn't leave her studio to gain these insights:
Q: Fox News’ Glenn Beck said that the government will get complete access to your computer and all of your files when you log on to Cars.gov for the Cash for Clunkers program. Is there any truth to this?
A: This claim is false. Beck quoted from a security message on the site for dealers, not the site for the general public.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 13, 2009, 11:31:49 PM
Cars.gov Terms of Service: What Glenn Beck Gets Right and Wrong Commentary by Hugh D'Andrade There's an entertaining clip from Glenn Beck's Fox News program making the rounds on the Internet lately, featuring this language from the Terms of Service for the "Cash for Clunkers" program:
This application provides access to the [Department of Transportation] DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed... to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.
While this language was accessible only by registered dealers, and not the public (and has apparently now been removed), it nevertheless is a shocking example of the kind of problems that can come with click-through agreements written by faceless lawyers and basically imposed on the rest of us. No one should ever try to force you to "agree" that accessing a government website turns your computer into a government computer or gives up your privacy rights in the other contents of your computer.
This hopefully careless language demonstrates the concerns that EFF has long raised about the creeping reduction in user privacy and rights online that we see through various means, including terms of service, cookies and even the “phone home” nature of some of our devices like the Amazon Kindle. This sort of contracting away of our privacy and rights is bad enough when companies do it — it should be off limits for government.
Unfortunately, the commentary of Fox anchor Kimberly Guilfoyle was also wrong about the scope of the privacy issues:
They are jumping right inside you, seizing all of your personal and private information, and absolutely legal, Glenn, they can do it... They can continue to track you, basically forever, once they've tapped into your system, the government of course has, like, malware systems, and tracking cookies, and they can tap in any time they want.
Clicking "continue" on a poorly worded Terms of Service on a government site will not give the government the ability to "tap into your system... any time they want." The seizure of the personal and private information stored on your computer through a one-sided click-through terms of service is not “conscionable” as lawyers say, and would not be enforceable even if the cars.gov website was capable of doing it, which we seriously doubt. Moreover, the law has long forbidden the government from requiring you to give up unrelated constitutional rights (here the 4th Amendment right to be free from search and seizure) as a condition of receiving discretionary government benefits like participation in the Cars for Clunkers program.
The problems with overreaching terms of service are real, and EFF has been working hard to combat them, especially when your privacy is at stake. Companies and government departments repeatedly sow the seeds of confusion, concern and outrage when they sneak catch-all terms into the small print. Our ToSBack site tracks these agreements and allows the public to find out what they say and track their changes over time. But terms of service agreements don’t go as far as allowing the government ongoing, free range into your personal computer with a single mouse click. At least not yet.
Title: More heat on Beck
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2009, 05:22:58 PM
Glenn Beck claims science czar John Holdren proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population
As evidence that the country is closer to socialist than capitalist these days, radio and talk show host Glenn Beck recently made this claim about John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy:
"I mean, we've got czars now," Beck said during his July 22, 2009, program. "Czars like John Holdren, who has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population."
Political figures like Holdren, who are little-known by most Americans, make easy targets. And Beck's biting quick hit on Holdren provides a healthy enough dose of outrage on which to hang his argument.
But is it true?
Beck's allegation has its roots in a book Holdren co-authored with Paul and Annie Ehrlich more than three decades ago called Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment .
Conservative bloggers have quoted the book extensively, and often out of context, to make the point that Holdren has advocated positions such as the ones Beck stated.
We obtained the book to see exactly what Holdren, then a young man, wrote (or co-wrote). The book is just over 1,000 pages, and it clearly makes that case that an explosion in population presented a grave crisis. Although it is a textbook, the authors don't shy away from presenting a point of view. As the preface states, "We have tried throughout the book to state clearly where we stand on various matters of controversy."
In a section on "Involuntary Fertility Control," Holdren and the other authors discuss various "coercive" means of population control — including putting sterilants in the drinking water. But they stop well short of advocating such measures.
Here's a few excerpts:
"The third approach to population limitation is that of involuntary fertility control. Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means. ...
"Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock. ...
"Again, there is no sign of such an agent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseen side effects would, in our opinion, militate against the use of any such agent, even though this plan has the advantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pressures that might tend to discriminate against particular groups or penalize children."
Later, the authors conclude, "Most of the population control measures beyond family planning discussed above have never been tried. Some are as yet technically impossible and others are and probably will remain unacceptable to most societies (although, of course, the potential effectiveness of those least acceptable measures may be great).
"Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying. As those alternatives become clearer to an increasing number of people in the 1980s, they may begin demanding such control. A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time. If effective action is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive measures can be averted in most countries."
And here's the part that some have interpreted as Holdren advocating for forced abortions.
“To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated. For example, under the United States Constitution, effective population-control programs could be enacted under the clauses that empower Congress to appropriate funds to provide for the general welfare and to regulate commerce, or under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws constitutionally could be very broad. Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. Few today consider the situation in the United States serious enough to justify compulsion, however."
This comes in a section discussing population law. The authors argue that compulsory abortions could potentially be allowed under U.S. law "if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society." Again, that's a far cry from advocating or proposing such a position.
In the book, the authors certainly advocate making abortions readily accessible for women who want to get them. But they never advocate forced abortions. Big difference.
In response to the comments from Beck and others, Holdren's office issued this statement: "The quotations used to suggest that Dr. Holdren supports coercive approaches to limiting population growth were taken from a 1977 college textbook on environmental science and policy, of which he was the third author. The quoted material was from a section of the book that described different possible approaches to limiting population growth and then concluded that the authors’ own preference was to employ the noncoercive approaches before the environmental and social impacts of overpopulation led desperate societies to employ coercive ones. Dr. Holdren has never been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive means of population limitation."
Holdren's office also provided a statement from Annie and Paul Ehrlich, the co-authors: "We have been shocked at the serious mischaracterization of our views and those of John Holdren in blog posts based on misreadings of our jointly-authored 1000-page 1977 textbook, ECOSCIENCE. We were not then, never have been, and are not now 'advocates' of the Draconian measures for population limitation described — but not recommended — in the book's 60-plus small-type pages cataloging the full spectrum of population policies that, at the time, had either been tried in some country or analyzed by some commentator.
Under questioning by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., during his Senate confirmation hearing, Holdren said he "no longer thinks it's productive to focus on optimum population for the United States. ... I think the key thing today is that we need to work to improve the conditions that all of our citizens face economically, environmentally, and in other respects. And we need to aim for something that I have for years been calling 'sustainable prosperity.'"
Vitter continued with his line of question, asking directly, "Do you think determining optimal population is a proper role of government?"
Said Holdren: "No, senator, I do not. ... I think the proper role of government is to develop and deploy the policies with respect to economy, environment, security, that will ensure the well-being of the citizens we have."
But with regard to Beck's claim that Holdren "has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population," the text of the book clearly does not support that. We think a thorough reading shows that these were ideas presented as approaches that had been discussed. They were not posed as suggestions or proposals. In fact, the authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Certainly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate for forced abortions.
Some have argued that Holdren's view of the imminent and grave global dangers posed by overpopulation should provide pause, given Holdren's current view that global warming now presents imminent and grave global dangers. That's a matter for reasoned debate.
But in seeking to score points for a political argument, Beck seriously mischaracterizes Holdren's positions. Holdren didn't advocate those ideas then. And, when asked at a Senate confirmation hearing, Holdren said he did not support them now. We think it's irresponsible to pluck a few lines from a 1,000-page, 30-year-old textbook, and then present them out of context to dismiss Holdren's long and distinguished career. And we rate Beck's claim Pants on Fire!
LW
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on August 19, 2009, 07:45:17 PM
Title: Fisher Ames on the press in 1807
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 24, 2009, 04:24:04 AM
"We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper's ally, It would be easy to enlarge on its evils. They are in England, they are here, they are everywhere. It is a precious pest, and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it." --Fisher Ames, Review of the Pamphlet on the State of the British Constitution, 1807
Title: Glenn vs. Van Jones
Post by: ccp on August 25, 2009, 06:46:13 AM
"Self describes enenmy of capatilism and communist who graduated from Yale (IVy league school - breeder of liberal doctrine) in some ways now that he has profitied handsomely from it sounds like a conservative; see an excerpt of what he wrote in his book below (between the stars).
It is plainly obvious his strategic use of corporate boycotts to cut the feet off his political enemies sounds curiously suspicious of another tactic used by another fabulously wealthy African American - Jesse Jackson.
Except for eco philosophy he now sounds like a capatilist. It sounds to me this guy should be held up as taching point to all those who subscribe to the purported "horrors" of big money, capatilism in general. Now that he learned and BENEFITTED handsomely from the capatilist system - he has been transformed from a Communist, black nationist, to one of capatilism biggest proponents.
I know what that tells me. What does that tell you? What lesson can the world learn from such a transformation?
Anyone see any hypocrisy from another lib IVY leaguer?
FWIW the Wikepia story with caveats that it is just Wikepia:
Van Jones From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Van Jones
Van Jones as White House Council on Environmental Quality's Special Advisor for Green Jobs, 2009 Born 1968
Nationality United States Education University of Tennessee at Martin Yale Law School Occupation Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Environmental Activist Employer White House Council on Environmental Quality Known for 2009 Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People 2009 New York Times Bestselling Author Title Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones (born 1968) is (since March 2009) the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).[1]
He is an environmental advocate, a civil rights activist and attorney, and an author. A self-described former communist and black nationalist, Jones was active in the Rodney King protests in 1992.[2] Formerly based in Oakland, California, Jones is the founder of Green For All, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."[3] His first book, The Green Collar Economy, released on October 7, 2008, was a New York Times bestseller.[4] Jones also founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a California NGO working for alternatives to violence and incarceration.[5]
In 2008, Time magazine named Jones one of its "Environmental Heroes."[6] Fast Company called him one of the "12 Most Creative Minds of 2008."[7]
Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Social and environmental activism 2.1 Ella Baker Center for Human Rights 2.2 Green For All 2.3 Other 3 The Green Collar Economy 4 Political Evolution 5 Awards and honors 6 Publications 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links
[edit] Early life Van Jones was born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee. His father was a junior-high-school principal and his mother was a high-school teacher. His grandfather was the leader of the Christian Methodist—formerly Colored Methodist—Episcopal Church.[8] As a child, Jones was, by his own description, “bookish and bizarre.”[8] When his parents gave him Luke Skywalker and Han Solo action figures, instead of arranging them to fight he would have them run for imaginary public offices. His twin sister, Angela, remembers him as “the stereotypical geek—he just kind of lived up in his head a lot.” During the summers, Jones accompanied his grandfather to religious conferences, where he recalls sitting “in these hot, sweaty black churches,” listening to the adults talk, all day and into the night.[8] He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1986. After earning his B.A. from the University of Tennessee at Martin, Jones left his home state to attend Yale Law School. In 1993, Jones earned his J.D. and moved to San Francisco.
[edit] Social and environmental activism
[edit] Ella Baker Center for Human Rights In 1995, Jones started Bay Area PoliceWatch, the region's only bar-certified hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims and survivors of police abuse. PoliceWatch began as a project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, but by 1996 had grown big enough to seed a new umbrella NGO, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
From 1996-1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a successful campaign to get officer Marc Andaya fired from the San Francisco Police Department. Andaya was the lead officer responsible for the in-custody death of Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a major leader in the failed campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which sparked a vibrant youth and student movement that made national headlines. In 2001, Jones and Ella Baker Center launched the Books Not Bars campaign. From 2001-2003, Jones and Books Not Bars led a successful campaign to block the construction of a proposed "Super-Jail for Youth" in Oakland's Alameda County. Books Not Bars later went on to launch a statewide campaign to transform California's juvenile justice system. That campaign is still winning major reforms.[9]
In 2005 the Ella Baker Center expanded its vision beyond the immediate concerns of policing, declaring that "If we really wanted to help our communities escape the cycle of incarceration, we had to start focusing on job, wealth and health creation."[9]
In 2005, Van and the Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations' World Environment Day celebration, held that year in San Francisco.[10] It was the official beginning of what would eventually become Ella Baker Center's Green-Collar Jobs Campaign.
The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign was Jones' first concerted effort to combine his lifelong commitment to racial and economic justice with his newer commitment to solving the environmental crisis. It soon took as its mission the establishment of the nation's first "Green Jobs Corps" in Oakland. On October 20, 2008, the City of Oakland formally launched the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a public-private partnership that will "provide local Oakland residents with job training, support, and work experience so that they can independently pursue careers in the new energy economy."[11]
[edit] Green For All In September, 2007, Jones attended the Clinton Global Initiative and announced his plans to launch Green For All, a new national NGO dedicated to creating green pathways out of poverty in America. The plan grew out of the work previously done at local level at the Ella Baker Center. Green For All would take the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign mission — creating green pathways out of poverty — national.
Green For All formally opened its doors on January 1, 2008. In its first year, Green For All organized "The Dream Reborn," the first national green conference where the majority of attendees were people of color. It co-hosted, with 1Sky and the We Campaign, a national day of action for the new economy called "Green Jobs Now." It launched the Green-Collar Cities Program to help cities build local green economies. It started the Green For All Capital Access Program to assist green entrepreneurs. And Green For All, as part of the Clean Energy Corps Working Group, launched a campaign for a Clean Energy Corps initiative which would create 600,000 'green-collar' jobs while retrofitting and upgrading more than 15 million American buildings.[12]
In reflecting on Green For All's first year, Jones wrote, "One year later, Green For All is real – and we have helped put green collar jobs on the map…We have a long way to go. But today we have a strong organization to help get us there."[12]
[edit] Other Jones has also served on the boards of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including 1Sky, the National Apollo Alliance, Social Venture Network, Rainforest Action Network, Bioneers, Julia Butterfly Hill’s "Circle of Life" organization and Free Press. He was also a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He recently was a key speaker at the youth conference PowerShift 2009 in Washington, D.C. In 2005, following Hurricane Katrina, Jones co-founded a Web-based grassroots organization addressing Black issues called Color of Change. Jones left the organization several years later to move on to other pursuits, such as Green For All.[13]
[edit] The Green Collar Economy On October 7, 2008, HarperOne released Jones's first book, The Green Collar Economy. The book outlines Jones's "substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country--the failing economy and our devastated environment."[14] The book has received favorable reviews from such environmental activists as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawken, Winona LaDuke and Ben Jealous.[15]
Jones had a limited publicity budget and no national media platform. But a viral, web-based marketing strategy earned the book a #12 debut on the New York Times bestseller list.[4] Jones and Green For All used "a combination of emails and phone calls to friends, bloggers, and a network of activists" to reach millions of people.[4] The marketing campaign's grassroots nature has led to Jones calling it a victory not for him but for the entire green-collar jobs movement.
The Green Collar Economy is the first environmental book authored by an African-American to make the New York Times bestseller list. [12]
[edit] Political Evolution Having started his career as a staunch critic of capitalism, by the late 1990s Jones's views were evolving. Today, he has emerged as one of the foremost champions of green business, entrepreneurship and market-based solutions. In his book The Green Collar Economy, Jones wrote:
***[W]e are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely.
So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs — and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world — and everyone else.****
Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones explained that as a young person he became further politicized in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. Jones was still a law student at Yale Law School at the time. While volunteering as a legal monitor during a peaceful protest in San Francisco following the Rodney King trial, Jones was arrested along with other legal monitors and some protesters. He and the other detainees were released after being illegally arrested; the charges were later dropped and Jones was financially compensated by the City of San Francisco's Attorneys Office for the unlawful arrest.[16] In jail, however, Van Jones said,
"I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."[17]
In 1994 the group of activists Van Jones was involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a collective which "dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia".[17]
[edit] Awards and honors This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)
Jones's awards and honors include:
2009 - New York Times Bestselling Author for The Green Collar Economy 2009 - Time 100 Most Influential People, Time Magazine 2009 - selected as one of the Ebony Power 150 2009 - the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award, presented to those who best exemplify selfless and devoted service in the cause of equality. 2009 - "Rolling Stone 100: Agents of Change” (#89); Rolling Stone Magazine[18] 2009 - Eco-Entrepreneur Award, Institute for Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Innovation; Howard University 2009 - Individual Thought Leadership, Energy & Environment Awards; Aspen Institute[19] 2008 - One of 17 “Sexiest Men Living”; Salon.com[20] 2008 - Best Dressed Environmental List (#1 of 30); Sustainable Style Foundation[21] 2008 - Time Magazine Environmental Hero 2008 - designation as one of Essence Magazine's 25 most influential/inspiring African-Americans 2008 - Elle Magazine Green Award 2008 - One of the George Lucas Foundation's "Daring Dozen" 2008 - Hunt Prime Mover Award 2008 - Campaign for America's Future "Paul Wellstone Award"; 2008 - Global Green USA "Community Environmental Leadership" Award 2008 - designation as one of the nation's "Plenty 20" in the October/November 2008 edition of Plenty Magazine 2008 - San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award 2008 - One of Fast Company's "12 Most Creative Minds" 2008 - Puffin/Nation prize for "Creative Citizenship" 2008 - World Economic Forum "Young Global Leader" 2000 - International Ashoka Fellowship 1998 - Reebok International Human Rights Award 1997-1999 - Rockefeller Foundation "Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship In 2008, Tom Friedman profiled Van in his bestselling book, Hot, Flat & Crowded. Also in 2008, Wilford Welch featured him in the book Tactics of Hope, and Joel Makower highlighted Van's ideas in the book Strategies for the Green Economy.
[edit] Publications The Green Collar Economy: A Revolutionary Plan to End Global Warming, Beat Poverty, and Unite America HarperOne (2008)
Title: Media Issues: They keep missing the facts of the story.
Post by: DougMacG on August 27, 2009, 08:47:50 AM
I just posted a story in 'Intel Matters': http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/08/what_made_ksm_talk.asp#more detailing the lives saved from the real intelligence received from the worst characters on the face of the earth. Meanwhile I listened to NPR, a trusted source where my intelligent liberal friends might be listening, and they interviewed an FBI agent who explained how no real info is ever gotten through enhanced techniques and how 'it says more about us than it does about them', then the host piles on with more liberal drivel opposite to the FACT that real intelligence was obtained from terrorist detainees saving real American lives.
I am happy to go to conservative sites to read conservative opinions but it bugs me to no end that I have to go to right wing sources to find out established facts about the economy and about protecting our country. What a tragedy that intelligent, liberal and moderate citizens can watch, read and listen to so many trusted sources and not get key facts on big issues.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 27, 2009, 01:27:48 PM
Thanks Doug. I don't believe for one second that "enhanced interrogation techniques" or whatever one wants to call it might not work if other methods fail.
Even the mere "threat" of it should improve outcome.
Now our enemy knows thanks to Bama we use kid gloves only. So now our enemies know they only need say, "I want to speak to my lawyer".
I do agree it is a huge problem to know when to use such techniques and when does one know when the enemy is truly ignorant vs. willfully witholding information. No one wants to harm innocents. Clearly the three guys in your article were not innocents.
Even the gigantic Democrat/liberal/progressive/socialist Alan Dershowitz was for torture if needed acutely to save lives.
He seems distinctly silent now we have the socialist in office.
Title: Mary Jo Kopechne unavailable for comment
Post by: G M on August 27, 2009, 02:55:56 PM
Where's Mary Jo Kopechne's Eulogy? by Henry Rollins August 27, 2009, 10:57 AM
Not Far Under The Surface. Let’s say I am driving myself and a passenger in my car at night. I accidentally drive off a bridge into the water below. I am able to get out of the submerged vehicle but for some reason, I am unable to free the passenger. I gather two friends, a relative and my lawyer and return to the scene. We are unable to rescue the person trapped in the car. Several hours later, myself nor the two others I took to the site have called the authorities. In fact, it’s two fishermen who find the car the next morning as even then, no one has been called to the scene. The car is removed from the water and it is determined that its occupant is dead. This tragic incident is made international news by my circumstances. I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger. I deny this for the rest of my life. That at no point did I make an attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died alone in total darkness? I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be enough to wipe the slate clean? After my passing, would you fail to mention the incident and the death of this innocent person in reviewing the events of my long and lauded life? You wouldn't forget about her, would you? That would be negligent.
Title: Re: Kennedy - Kopechne
Post by: DougMacG on August 27, 2009, 04:29:02 PM
There is no truth whatsoever then to the rumor that Ted Kennedy's service Saturday will be held underwater?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2009, 07:08:37 AM
ABC, NBC Won't Air Ad Critical of Obama's Health Care Plan The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot -- particularly in light of ABC's health care special aired in prime time last June hosted at the White House By Joshua Rhett Miller
FOXNews.com
Thursday, August 27, 2009
A doctor in the ad by the League of American Voters asks: "How can Obama's plan cover 50 million new patients without any new doctors? It can't."
The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot -- particularly in light of ABC's health care special aired in prime time last June and hosted at the White House.
The 33-second ad by the League of American Voters, which features a neurosurgeon who warns that a government-run health care system will lead to the rationing of procedures and medicine, began airing two weeks ago on local affiliates of ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS. On a national level, however, ABC and NBC have refused to run the spot in its present form.
"It's a powerful ad," said Bob Adams, executive director of the League of American Voters, a national nonprofit group with 15,000 members who advocate individual liberty and government accountability. "It tells the truth and it really highlights one of the biggest vulnerabilities and problems with this proposed legislation, which is it rations health care and disproportionately will decimate the quality of health care for seniors."
Adams said the advertisement is running on local network affiliates in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Maine and Pennsylvania. But although CBS has approved the ad for national distribution and talks are ongoing with FOX, NBC has questioned some of the ad's facts while ABC has labeled it "partisan."
"The ABC Television Network has a long-standing policy that we do not sell time for advertising that presents a partisan position on a controversial public issue," spokeswoman Susan Sewell said in a written statement. "Just to be clear, this is a policy for the entire network, not just ABC News."
NBC, meanwhile, said it has not turned down the ad and will reconsider it with some revisions.
"We have not rejected the ad," spokeswoman Liz Fischer told FOXNews.com. "We have communicated with the media agency about some factual claims that require additional substantiation. As always, we are happy to reconsider the ad once these issues are addressed."
Adams objects to ABC's assertion that his group's position is partisan.
"It's a position that we would argue a vast majority of Americans stand behind," he said. "Obviously, it's a message that ABC and the Obama administration haven't received yet."
Dick Morris, a FOX News political analyst and the League of American Voters' chief strategist, conceptualized the advertisement and said its purpose was to "refocus" the debate on health care reform.
"I feel the whole debate on health care reform needed to be refocused on the issue of Medicare," he told FOXNews.com. "Most of the debate had been on issues of socialized medicine and cost. I felt that the impact of the legislation in cutting the Medicare program and enforcing rationing needed to be addressed."
Morris, a onetime advisor to former President Bill Clinton, said he was particularly troubled by ABC's decision not to air the spot.
"It's the ultimate act of chutzpah because ABC is the network that turned itself over completely to Obama for a daylong propaganda fest about health care reform," he said. "For them to be pious and say they will not accept advertising on health care shuts their viewers out from any possible understanding of both sides of this issue."
Title: Re: ABC NBC will not air ad critical of ObamaCare
Post by: DougMacG on August 28, 2009, 09:13:44 AM
For my small part, I wrote a complaint email to both networks. I will not air their network until I hear otherwise. Free speech when it suits their purposes is the new slogan.
Title: From TIME rag, I mean mag
Post by: ccp on September 01, 2009, 07:06:10 AM
This could easily have been written by the DNC posing as journalism. No where does it mention a proposed 500 billion cut to Medicare. Of course there is the usual, "Republicans have been capitalizing" and of course the obligatory leftist mention of Sarah Palin as confusing our elderly. Nothing of course about the fact the bill is 1000 pages long, virtually no law makers had read it yet were happy to vote for it, that few in the public were or still are aware of what is even in it or what it means to them individually or us as a nation yet the problem is not with that - it is with the evil opponents of the bill. Typical left wing media. :x
By KATE PICKERT Kate Pickert – Tue Sep 1, 5:40 am ET Many observers are puzzled by the level of anger and vitriol senior citizens have been directing toward their besieged elected representatives during recent health-care town halls. But no one can be more surprised, or put in a more uncomfortable position, than the organization that supposedly represents their interests, AARP. The 40 million–member advocacy group, after all, signed on early as a key supporter of President Obama's health-care-reform plan, and now it finds itself on the defensive, scrambling to win back much of its own membership. "A year ago, it seemed obvious that AARP would be for health reform," says the group's legislative-policy director David Certner. "Our membership as far as we could tell was quite ginned up about health-care reform." (See TIME's guide to understanding the health-care debate.)
Since then, members' views have apparently shifted. At least 60,000 AARP members quit the organization between July 1 and mid-August specifically because of its pro-reform stance, and the organization's online message boards are littered with anti-reform posts. (AARP is quick to point out that during the same period, it signed up 400,000 new members.) According to a poll conducted Aug 4-11 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, just 23% of Americans over 65 feel they would be better off under reform proposals and even fewer believe the Medicare program would benefit. While plenty of other groups are united against reform, opposition from seniors, who consistently have the highest voter turnout rates of any age group - especially in midterm elections like the one next year - may prove especially perilous for the reform effort. (Read "The Real Issues of End-of-Life Care.")
AARP's support for Democrats' health-care-reform proposals is critical this year. The group is one of several health-care power players the White House struck deals with in hopes of shoring up support for reform early on. In June, AARP, President Obama and PhRMA, a group representing drug companies, announced they had agreed to a plan to help close the Medicare Part D prescription-drug coverage gap known as the "doughnut hole," which leaves seniors without coverage after their drug costs exceed $2,700 and until they spend $4,350 of their own money. The White House deal, triggered if reform becomes law, would save seniors 50% on name-brand drugs and cost the drugmakers $80 billion. But this boon for the elderly was apparently not enough to sell seniors on reform overall. "Somewhere along the line, we seemed to have veered really off course based on a lot of the misinformation and disinformation that clearly is making its way to the older population in particular," says Certner.
It's not hard to see how seniors got spooked, which to some degree is an indictment of AARP, not to mention the Democrats. Sarah Palin and other conservative opponents have helped fuel rumors that the House health-reform bill calls for the establishment of "death panels" to decide when to cut off medical care for seniors. (This is not true - the House bill includes a provision to reimburse doctors who provide voluntary end-of-life counseling to patients.) Judging by comments at town-hall meetings, the elderly are also fearful that Democratic proposals would take funding away from Medicare to pay for coverage for Americans who don't currently have health insurance. This is not entirely untrue; Democratic proposals call for spending money to help insure the uninsured, alongside targeted reductions in Medicare reimbursements to doctors and hospitals and major funding cuts to Medicare Advantage, which allows seniors to buy private insurance with federal dollars. Most health-policy experts, however, believe these cuts are necessary for the program to remain financially solvent.
See the top 10 health-care-reform players.
Certner, of AARP, says the group agrees with this sentiment, but simultaneously opposes any proposals that would cut Medicare benefits or services. He says Democratic health-reform proposals "can strengthen the Medicare system," by "finding savings through reducing inefficiencies, waste and overpayment." "If that's done correctly, there shouldn't be any harm to the program," says Certner. "But most people hearing about cuts to Medicare have no idea how the cuts are being done." (See five truths about health-care in America.)
Critics might say that AARP has been out of touch with its members, while defenders could say that it is taking a more fiscally responsible view of what needs to be done to fix Medicare for the long-term. But part of the organization's current bind stems from its uniquely hybrid functions and makeup. In addition to being the voice of seniors in Washington, it also offers all Americans over the age of 50 reduced prices for gym memberships, travel and rental cars, while also selling AARP-branded insurance policies; AARP Services, a for-profit subsidiary, earned some $650 million in royalty revenue in 2008, 65% of which came from health-related offerings like insurance. (This dual advocacy/insurance brokerage role has made AARP a lightning rod for criticism over the years, especially in cases when the group lobbied for legislation that would have been a boon to its for-profit operations.) AARP, therefore, has to balance the interests of members aged 50-64 with those of members over 65. Its younger members are among the fastest growing cohorts of the uninsured and pay some of the highest premiums for insurance policies on the open market; these members would be most affected by private health-insurance reform and a public health-insurance option that could reduce costs. AARP's Medicare-eligible members, on the other hand, are focused on preserving that program's benefit levels. (See TIME's video on the struggles of an uninsured woman.)
To try to get its membership back in line with AARP's pro-reform stance, the group is stepping up its communication efforts. A national television advertising campaign got underway in August, 8 million pieces of direct mail related to Medicare and health reform will be sent out after Labor Day and the September issue of AARP Bulletin, which reaches some 40 million households, will include a cover story on health-care myths. The White House is also gearing up for a new message campaign aimed at seniors; it hosted a late-August conference call with advocacy groups with the power to reach seniors, including AARP, to brief them on a new eight-page talking-points memo from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about how reform could help older Americans.
The HHS memo outlines reasons seniors need reform, including increasingly high out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries to pay for drugs and medical services that could be lowered if comprehensive reform brought down the overall growth in health-care spending. The memo also points out ways that comprehensive reform could benefit seniors indirectly - uninsured Americans, who typically get less routine medical care, are sicker once they become eligible for Medicare, increasing costs for everyone in the program, for example. Unfortunately for Democrats, these nuanced points are not easily translated into sound bites, further evidence of why Democrats are currently losing the public-relations battle.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been capitalizing on the moment, suddenly presenting themselves as the defenders of a government health-care program they have spent years attacking. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post on Aug. 24 titled "Protecting Our Seniors," and the RNC issued a press release on Aug. 28 titled "Real Solutions for Seniors."
Edward Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, a union-affiliated pro-reform advocacy group that represents some 4 million seniors, says the "solo drum beat" from the opposition has so far successfully drowned out its and AARP's message. "Frankly, the other side has done a better job of raising issues that are of concern to seniors," he says. "I think the right word to use about seniors right now is confused."
Title: Class Portrait
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 05, 2009, 09:51:30 AM
The Omnipresent Leader They want us to “pledge to be a servant to our president”?
By Mark Steyn
On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama’s plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote: “Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.”
Oh, dear! “A Canadian author”: Talk about damning with faint credentialization. I don’t know what’s crueler, the “Canadian” or the indefinite article. As to the rest of it, well, that’s one way of putting it. Here’s what I said on Wednesday re dear old Saddam and Kim: “Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.”
Close enough for Times work.
But, if the Times wants to play this game, bring it on. The Omnipresent Leader has traditionally been a characteristic feature of Third World basket-case dumps: The conflation of the man and the state is explicit, and ubiquitous. In 2003, motoring around western Iraq a few weeks after the regime’s fall, when the schoolhouses were hastily taking down the huge portraits of Saddam that had hung on every classroom wall, I visited an elementary-school principal with a huge stack of suddenly empty picture frames piled up on his desk, and nothing to put in them. The education system’s standard first-grade reader featured a couple of kids called Hassan and Amal — a kind of Iraqi Dick and Jane — proudly holding up their portraits of the great man and explaining the benefits of an Iraqi education:
“O come, Hassan,” says Amal. “Let us chant for the homeland and use our pens to write, ‘Our beloved Saddam.’”
“I come, Amal,” says Hassan. “I come in a hurry to chant, ‘O, Saddam, our courageous president, we are all soldiers defending the borders for you, carrying weapons and marching to success.’”
Pathetic, right?
On Friday, August 28, the principal of Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington, Utah — in the name of “education” — showed her young charges the “Obama Pledge” video released at the time of the inauguration, in which Ashton Kutcher and various other bigtime celebrities, two or three of whom you might even recognize, “pledge to be a servant to our president and to all mankind because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek.”
Altogether now! Let us chant for mankind and use our pens to write, “O beloved Obama, our courageous president, we are all servants defending the hope for you and marching to change.”
And, unlike Saddam’s Iraq, we don’t have the mitigating condition of being a one-man psycho state invented by the British Colonial Office after lunch on a wet afternoon in 1922.
Any self-respecting schoolkid, enjoined by his principal to be a “servant” to the head of state, would reply, “Get lost, creep.” And, if they still taught history in American schools, he’d add, “Oh, and by the way, that question was settled in 1776.”
To accompany President Obama’s classroom speech this week, the White House and America’s “educators” drafted some accompanying study materials. Children would be invited to write letters to themselves saying what they could do to “help the President.”
My suggestion: “Not tell people what I really think about his lousy health-care plan.”
Well, after the unwelcome media attention, that exercise was hastily dropped.
For the rest of us, the president does not yet require a written test from grown-ups after his speeches, but it’s surely only a matter of time. The New York Times managed to miss my point: Far from “accusing” the president of “trying to create a cult of personality,” I spent much of my airtime on Rush’s show last week “accusing” the president of doing an amazing job of finishing off his own cult of personality in record time. Obama’s given 111 speeches, interviews, and press conferences in which he’s talked about health care, and the more he opens his mouth the more the American people recoil from his “reforms.” Now he’s giving a 112th — to a joint session of Congress — and this one, we’re assured, will finally do the trick. That brand new Chevy may be rusting and up on bricks by the time he seals the deal, but America’s Auto Salesman-in-Chief will get you to sign in the end.
The president has made the mistake of believing his own publicity — or, at any rate, his own mainstream-media coverage, which is pretty much the same thing. They told him he was the greatest orator since Socrates, but, alas, even Socrates would have difficulty playing six sets a night every Open Mike Night at the Soaring Rhetoric Lounge out on Route 127. Even Ashton Kutcher’s charms would wane by the 112th speech.
“Mr. Obama,” wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, “has grown boring.” Amazing but true. He’s a crashing bore, and he’s become one in nothing flat. His approval ratings have slumped — not just among Republicans, not just among independents, not just among seniors, who are after all first in line for the death panels. But they’ve fallen among young people — the starry-eyed members of the Hopeychangey Generation who stared into the mesmerizing giant “O” of his logo and saw the new Otopia. According to the latest Zogby poll, Obama’s hold on the young is a wash: 41 percent approve, 41 percent disapprove. Zogby defines “young” as under 30, so maybe the kindergartners corralled into his audience this week will still be on side, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
The president’s strategy on January 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall — stimulus, auto nationalization, cap’n’trade, health care — and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. Unfortunately, the American people aren’t finding it quite so charismatic, and they’re beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting prosperity-throttling future-beggaring big-government policies.
No wonder the poor chap’s running out of material. At the time of writing, one of his exercises for America’s schoolchildren is to suggest what you’d like him to do in his next speech. Here’s mine: Call in sick, sir. You’ll be doing your presidency a favor.
The president is not our ruler but our representative, a citizen-executive drawn from the people. It is unbecoming to a self-governing republic to require schoolchildren to (to cite another test question) select the three most important words in the president’s speech.
But, if we have to trudge down this grim road, go on, kid, I dare you: “That’s all, folks!”
Oh, wait. You have to rank the three most important words in order:
1) Try 2) Something 3) Else
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWRiZTdhYTA4MmFkYWJkYjliZDA5OWFiMTU0YmU5YTg=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: prentice crawford on September 05, 2009, 11:57:25 AM
Woof, If you can't shut'em up then shut'em down Obama style with taxes. www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022709-obama-proposes-spectrum-license.html P.C.
Title: Friedman: You know what’s kind of cool? Dictatorship!
Post by: G M on September 09, 2009, 07:23:11 PM
Friedman: You know what’s kind of cool? Dictatorship! posted at 3:36 pm on September 9, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
One normally expects to see paeans to one-party rule and dictatorships in fringe publications sponsored by International ANSWER or World Can’t Wait. Usually, the New York Times offers those sentiments in more subtle terms than it does in today’s Thomas Friedman column. Friedman extols the Chinese form of government while deriding the fact that political opposition keeps Obama from imposing the policies Friedman likes: Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down. Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions. Oh, those enlightened Chinese government officials! When they’re not executing people to harvest their organs, and when they’re not forcing women to have abortions to satisfy their one-child policy, and when they’re not tossing people in prison for political dissent, they have a great energy policy … even though they reject Kyoto and any attempt to hamstring themselves on economically-suicidal cap-and-trade policies. Actually, considering Friedman’s column, perhaps rounding up the opposition is a net plus for the Chinese in his eyes. Even putting aside Friedman’s longing for fascism (as long as it supports his policies), Friedman’s entire premise is suspect. We haven’t enacted government-run health care precisely because we’re not a “one-party democracy.” Constituents have made their opposition plain to it across the nation, and Democrats understand that Republicans will replace many of their colleagues if they support ObamaCare. Obama’s approval numbers have dropped precipitously as well, because people dissent from the orthodoxy of the Democratic elites. That’s what has Friedman pining for Beijing. Saying “no” to very bad ideas is a perfectly legitimate response, especially when the policies impose government control over private industry to the extent Barack Obama and his radical Congress desire. The opposition has no responsibility to engage on horrible ideas, although contra Friedman, the Republicans have already offered an alternative to ObamaCare, which Henry Waxman refuses to consider. Saying “no” to rapid expansion of government power is the rational response to radical policies. What’s next for the New York Times? A tribute to Benito Mussolini and running the trains on time as a fair exchange for personal and political liberty? (via The Corner, which has been savaging Friedman all day)
Title: A hoax
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2009, 05:41:08 AM
FRANKFURT — All of Germany was bamboozled Thursday by a bizarre scheme that tricked the country’s main wire service into reporting an attempted suicide bombing in a California town — an attack supposedly perpetrated by a non-existent rap group called the “Berlin Boys.” How they did it: A team of publicity seeking hoaxers fooled Germany’s wire service into reporting on a fake suicide bombing in California allegedly perpetrated by German rappers. 1. First the tricksters set up a website for a fake California city called Bluewater and a fake TV station there. On the websites, they listed California telephone numbers — but those went directly to the hoaxsters’ German Skype accounts. They also created a Wikipedia article that confirmed the existence of the station. 2. A hysterical “reporter” from the fake TV station called German newsrooms reporting a suicide attacks, and directed them to the fake websites. German journalists called the phone numbers for “officials” listed on the sites to confirm the stories. Of course, those numbers connected straight to the hoaxsters. 3. The DPA – the German equivalent of the Associated Press – put the story up on its newswire. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office was quickly flooded with phone calls from German reporters trying to confirm the suicide bombing. 4. Within 30 minutes, the DPA took down their story. But the damage was done. Later, the hoaxsters sent out a press release announcing what they did.
The work of German filmmakers peddling a satirical movie called Short Cut to Hollywood, the elaborate hoax involved at least two faked websites, a faked Wikipedia entry and California phone numbers for “public safety” officials that were actually being answered by hoaxsters in Germany using Skype. The hoax has transfixed this country. It prompted a 1,000-word tome on the website of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s most respected newspaper, and even a press conference denouncing the incident by the DPA – the German wire service responsible for first disseminating the news about the “attack.” The hoax’s effect was felt thousands of miles away, as a flood of concerned phone calls from Germany jammed the switchboards at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office, which has jurisdiction over the supposed bombing site in California.
“This is frustrating and a waste of our resources,” said office spokesman Arden Wiltshire, who was awakened at 5 a.m. Thursday to try and sort out the crisis. Wiltshire worries that dispatchers could have missed important calls to deal with the Germans. “We’re sorry for what happened; we, too, were victimized,” said Justus Demmer, a DPA spokesman. “What we have learned today is if there’s someone committed to betray you, it’s very hard to stop it.”
The hoax began Thursday when a man identifying himself as California TV journalist Rainer Petersen called Germany’s largest news services to report the rap group’s arrest. He directed journalists to websites for “KVPK News” and the “City of Bluewater.”
The Bluewater website listed California telephone numbers for city services, while the KVPK site hosted faux English-language TV news reports about the bombing.
But Bluewater isn’t a city at all: It’s a large unincorporated swath of land straddling the Arizona-California state line, with the California side patrolled by San Bernardino County’s deputies. The Berlin Boys don’t exist in real life, and neither does KVPK.
That didn’t stop the DPA from running the headline: “Attack in Small California Town.”
That’s when the trickle of calls to the Sheriff’s office became a barrage, prompting dispatchers to wake Wiltshire – something only done for a major crisis, like the shooting of an officer.
The DPA corrected the report about half an hour later, but by then it was too late. The assault on dispatchers paralyzed officials through the night, even after the pranksters sent out a press release that made it clear the whole stunt was an elaborate hoax to promote a short film.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 15, 2009, 06:25:03 AM
Dan Gainor - FOXNews.com - September 14, 2009 ACORN Story Grows But Mainstream Media Refuse to Cover It
This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings. But almost no one is covering it.
Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).” I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN.
The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. -- This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings!
Only almost no one is covering it.
This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. When they find something inconvenient, they let it pass. They didn’t like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment.
But it isn’t working any more. The ACORN fiasco has now impacted three offices – Baltimore, Washington and New York – with laugh-out-loud videos reminiscent of the hookers and pimps from the 1970s “Starsky and Hutch” show. Huggy Bear returns! Four employees have been fired, with more likely to come. And the controversy was so laughably bad that the Census Bureau cut off all ties to the group known formally as the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." -- They called it the “tipping point” to shed themselves of ACORN. More nuts for someone else, I guess.
And yet. And yet it’s still been ignored by the network news. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC. The only thing any one of the three broadcast networks has done appeared in a blog post by ABC’s Jake Tapper. It's hardly worth noting except to show that the networks know about what’s going on. They just don’t care to report it. Only FOX News has bothered to report on the controversy.
The video scandal is only part of the fiasco that is this Saul Alinsky-esque community group. Just last week CNN reported that other ACORN employees were arrested in Florida. “Arrest warrants were issued Wednesday for 11 Florida voter registration workers who are suspected of submitting false information on hundreds of voter registration cards, according to court documents,” said CNN.
That’s typical. The Web site "Rotten ACORN" is devoted to election fraud complaints against the organization. The site’s map shows 14 different states where complaints have been filed. The last time any one of the broadcast networks talked about that was before the 2008 presidential election. That was NBC on Nov. 1. Nothing since.
Yes, the newspapers have taken a passing glance at the video story. The Post wrote about the firings in D.C. The New York Times ran a story by the Associated Press. Nothing more. I am underwhelmed. At least the Times covered it this time. With Jones, the Times waited until he had resigned to report he was under fire.
What’s worse with ACORN is that we’re paying for all this. At least in part. The Washington Examiner writes that they “found that ACORN has received at least $53 million in federal money since 1994.”
For its own part, ACORN naturally blamed someone else. In this case, FOX News, calling itself “their Willy Horton for 2009.” The ACORN state reads like a paranoid’s interpretation of the videos. Here’s Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, for the group:
“The relentless attacks on ACORN's members, its staff and the policies and positions we promote are unprecedented. An international entertainment conglomerate, disguising itself as a ‘news’ agency (FOX), has expended millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, in their attempt to destroy the largest community organization of Black, Latino, poor and working families in the country. It is not coincidence that the most recent attacks have been launched just when health care reform is gaining traction. It is clear they've had these tapes for months.”
Yeah, all that about under-aged prostitution, corruption and government connections isn’t news. People are just out to get ACORN. No wonder their name symbolizes a kind of nut. Too bad the rest of the media don’t want us to know that.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The FOX Forum and he can be seen on FOXNews.com’s “Strategy Room.”
Title: Obama: West a "jackass"
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2009, 06:28:04 AM
Another example of the MSM trying to protect a guy who is not Abe Lincoln.
As for OBama these outbursts are obviously reflections of the real man coming out despite the denials from the protective MSM. ""ABC has since issued an apology to the White House for quoting words that were never intended to be made public.""
Why apologize - did anyone ever apologize when this happened to W? A real journalist might say this is the *real* man behind the facade of the great mediator.
As for Taylor Swift I am of the *opinion* she is a little creep. All her hit lyrics that she claims she wrote are exactly like songs and parts of song lyrics that Katherine wrote and were taken out of our house by her psychopathic mother or appear to taken via networking into computers or printers hooked up to computers.
Taylor Swift has minimal talent. She can't sing very good at all, she can't dance and she cannot create music contrary to her claims. Yet she is a chosen annointed one, apparantly because her father (probably) knows the right people, her stuff sellls to the teeny boppers, and big music is behind her and making money. As for the West thing it will turn out to be her biggest boon. And my wife and I sit here and can do nothing while people moved into several homes near us and surveillance the crap out of us.
Our lives are ruined, the peopel robbing us think this all one big funny game and little shits like Taylor Swift who have little talent are collecting awards on the national stage. ****The US president made the uncharacteristically blunt remark during an interview with CNBC, the US business news network, on Monday.
Although Mr Obama delivered the aside during an off-the-record segment of the pre-recorded interview, it was picked up and tweeted by a journalist from a rival network.
The message has since been deleted, but not before it was re-tweeted by many of Mr Moran's more than one million followers, ensuring that it was read across the web.
ABC has since issued an apology to the White House for quoting words that were never intended to be made public. (WHY apologize - did anyone ever apologize when this happened to W?)
"In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview," a spokesman said.
"This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again."
The White House has yet to comment on the affair, but the president's criticisms of West certainly chime with the public mood.
The rapper has been widely condemned for interrupting 19-year-old country-pop singer Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech at the New York award ceremony on Sunday night to claim that his friend Beyoncé should have won the best female video gong.
In an contrite appearance on the Jay Leno show last night, he said that he planned to apologise to the Swift in person and said he was going to take some time off from the music industry.****
Title: Refresher on *Acorn & Obama*
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2009, 06:37:32 AM
People are occasionally asking if OBama is just affiliated with left wing radical groups or if he is a real believer. People like Beck who say the latter of course are bieng lalbed "fringe" "right wing nuts" or a new one desperate one from MSNBC, "the fringe of the fringe".
Only a fool or sucker could see realize this guy is a true believer by now.
Just a refresher from MM to remind us the intimate links between Obama and this corrupt organization. He actually was doing some of the teaching.
"According to ACORN, Obama trained its Chicago members in leadership seminars". I wonder if any of these training sessions have footprints? What kind of training are we talking about?
The ACORN Obama knows By Michelle Malkin • June 25, 2008 12:10 PM
My syndicated column today spotlights the whistleblower report on ACORN, which I’ve been blogging about (here) and which deserves more attention in the media and in Washington–especially in light of the radical activist group’s embrace of Barack Obama. The Consumer Rights League e-mailed to let me know that three GOP congressmen (Hensarling, Feeney, and Royce) have called on Barney Frank (D-Housing Boondoggle) to investigate ACORN’s taxpayer abuses. Snowball’s chance, I know, but conservatives ought to be turning up the heat and using every ounce of energy they have to, well, act like conservatives and push to de-fund the Left.
For excellent background on Obama and ACORN, see Stanley Kurtz’s NR piece here, plus City Journal pieces here and here. Also here and here.
***
The ACORN Obama knows by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2008
If you don’t know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers — you and me — and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League documents how Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects.
Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn’t being spent on these radical activities?
Don’t bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a “community organizer” and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN’s political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. According to ACORN, Obama trained its Chicago members in leadership seminars; in turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his campaigns. Obama also sat on the boards of the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation, both of which poured money into ACORN’s coffers. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who “best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about” — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money.
Let’s take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.
Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including “Leon Spinks,” “Frekkie Magoal” and “Fruto Boy Crispila.” Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN’s criminal sabotage “an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls.”
The group’s vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: “In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.”
In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney’s office.
Under the guise of “consumer advocacy,” ACORN has lined its pockets. The Department of Housing and Urban Development funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing “anti-poverty” groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since taking office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza (”The Race”) scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.
As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new expose, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters “no lobby” agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment.
Republicans have largely looked the other way as ACORN has expanded its government-funded empire. But finally, a few conservative voices in Congress have called for investigation of the group’s apparent extortion schemes. This week, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney, Jeb Hensarling and Ed Royce called on Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to convene a hearing to probe potential illegalities and abuse of taxpayer funds by ACORN’s management and minions alike.
Where does the candidate of Hope and Change — the candidate of Reform and New Politics — stand on the issue? Barack Obama, ACORN’s senator, is for more of the same old, same old subsidizing of far-left politics in the name of fighting for the poor while enriching ideological cronies. It’s the Chicago way.
Title: Our side screws up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2009, 06:42:53 AM
Bloggers said this photo showed a gargantuan crowd at Saturday's "tea party" protest. But it apparently was taken in 1997 at a Promise Keepers rally.
In the competitive world of Washington protests, crowd size is often a matter of dispute. Organizers usually boast of huge crowds, while police and the news media offer much smaller estimates.
So supporters of Saturday’s “tea party” protests against President Barack Obama were quick to highlight their big turnout. To bolster countless claims on blogs and Facebook, many posted a photograph that showed a gargantuan crowd sprawling from Capitol Hill down the National Mall to the Washington Monument.
But it turns out the photo is more than 10 years old, apparently taken during a 1997 Promise Keepers rally.
On Saturday, estimates about the crowd spread quickly through the conservative blogosphere. Many writers, including author Michelle Malkin, pegged the number of people between 1 million and 2 million. Those reports were largely based on information from people in the crowd.
Malkin, for example, updated her blog at 12:34 p.m. noting that, “Police estimate 1.2 million in attendance. ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million,” and she cited a Twitter post from Tabitha Hale, writer of Pink Elephant Pundit, who was in Washington for the protest.
Many bloggers said the media was unfairly reporting much smaller numbers, and many included the photo.
“I have no doubt that Washington Democrats are well aware of how many people turned out, even as their media outlets try to downplay the event,” said Power Line, a conservative blog that linked to the photograph from Say Anything, another conservative Web site.
“ 'Media’ estimates range from 60,000 to 500,000 to around 2 million (yes, 2,000,000),” wrote John G. Winder for the conservative blog Cypress Times. “Those estimates, the language employed, and the visuals chosen for use in reporting the rally and representing the people gathered, vary greatly based solely on bias.”
In the mainstream media, crowd estimates varied.
The New York Times reported that “thousands” of protesters “filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall,” while Fox News wrote that “tens of thousands” marched on Washington. CNN said “reporters at the scene described the massive crowd as reaching the tens of thousands.”
Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, said the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. But the day of the rally, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.
“It was in no way an official estimate,” he said.
We asked Piringer whether there were enough protesters to fill the National Mall, as depicted in the photograph.
“It was an impressive crowd,” he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, the crowd “only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street,” he said.
Yet the photograph so widely posted showed the crowd sprawling all the way to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.
There’s another problem with the photograph: It doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth Street and Independence Avenue that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn’t show the “tea party” crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.
Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. According to Randall Kremer, the museum’s director of public affairs, “The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s when the IMAX theater was being built.”
It appears that the photo was actually taken in 1997 at a rally for Promise Keepers, a group for Christian men. According to the group’s Web site, nearly 1 million people attended the event. Photos of the Oct. 4, 1997, event that were posted on various Web sites in 2003, 2008 and earlier this year show either the same picture or a similar photo that has identical tents and what appear to be TV screens in the same locations.
Conservative bloggers who originally posted the picture have backed down.
Malkin, like some of her conservative cohorts, retracted the number she had attributed to ABC when the network chastised FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe, whose organization arranged the event, for inaccurately telling the crowd that the news organization had reported the crowd at 1 million to 1.5 million people.
Malkin linked to the ABC story on her site, and changed her blog post headline to “Celebrating the 9/12 rallies; Turnout estimated at 2 million; Update: How many?; FreedomWorks in error.”
Say Anything updated its original post to say that the picture was “of the wrong rally.” An accurate photo “clearly shows that (the rally) didn’t take place on the mall nearly as extensively as the image I mistakenly posted does.” Power Line took the picture down all together.
But because mistakes can still live forever on the Internet and many people who saw the photo on Facebook were unaware it was found to be the wrong picture, we decided to still rate it on the Truth-O-Meter. And Pants on Fire it is.
Title: Media Issues - re. our side screwed up
Post by: DougMacG on September 17, 2009, 08:55:49 AM
Crafty, You are correct but I would also note the speed that the story got corrected. I was traveling and noticed and shared the picture of the protest on powerline. I looked again a very short time later and another powerline poster had issued the correction - right with the original post. Then they took down the false picture. Not like CBS and Dan Rather digging in their heels or the NY Times burying corrections much later deep in the paper if at all.
Same goes for this format which lends itself nicely to offering corrections or other takes on anything posted.
I remember reading and repeating a story that Oliver North so long ago testified that he needed his elaborate security system because he had been targeted by a then unknown terrorist - OBL, and that was false, I think the real story was of another terrorist named Abu Nidal. Anyway I remember being duped and hating it. Makes me wonder how regular readers of the NY Times must feel on a near-daily basis. --- From the wit of the tea party crowd, some blogs covering the protest posted photos of protesters pretending to be czars wearing protest t-shirts mocking the glibness administration and their avoidance of senate confirmations for key appointees. Hope this is received in good humor... (http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/BCzar.jpg)
Title: Media Issues - The story behind the ACORN story, with more to come
Post by: DougMacG on September 21, 2009, 09:06:52 PM
Conservative niches in media profit from the void left by the so-called mainstream media, still they are frustrated by the what they won't cover or expose. In this particular case the main media was badly outsmarted and humiliated by one who knows their bias and their methods better than they know themselves.
September 21, 2009 The Story Behind the ACORN Story By Andrew Breitbart
Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror. ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.
They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What's more, it ain't over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.
When filmmaker and provocateur James O'Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN - the nation's foremost "community organizers" - dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for - and getting - help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O'Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.
I was awed by Mr. O'Keefe's guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into "war room" mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O'Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media's hand.
Once the American public saw with its own eyes the grotesque, common practices of ACORN's housing offices, Mr. O'Keefe and Miss Giles could no longer be a legitimate focus of media scrutiny. Kill the messenger doesn't work with the American people when they realize that the message is so devastating and honest. I think the video exposed the misuse of public funds and systemic manipulation of the tax code in the name of "helping the poor."
If Mr. O'Keefe dumped the videos on YouTube, the political powers would have killed the expose before it got traction. I half-joked that he should secretly tape pitching the major television networks exclusive use of his videos for their nightly news broadcasts. But a simpler, less controversial method proved as fruitful.
I told him that in addition to launching his compelling and stylized Web videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released.We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O'Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com.
Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Videos of five different ACORN offices in five separate cities would be released on five consecutive weekdays over a full week - Baltimore, Washington, New York, San Bernadino and San Diego. By dripping the videos out, we exposed to anyone paying attention that ACORN was lying through its teeth and that the media would look imbecilic continuing to trot out their hapless spokespeople.
If the media, as expected, pretended that the story didn't exist, they'd have another debacle on their hands comparable to the failure to report the shocking views of the White House's "green jobs czar," Van Jones. If they invested in the story, I told Mr. O'Keefe, they would do ACORN's defense work. I told him the focus needed to be on the message, not the messenger. Otherwise, the mainstream media would attempt to direct attention away from the damaging video evidence.
The best example of this came from ABC's anchor, Charlie Gibson. "I don't even know about it. So you've got me at a loss," he told WLS radio when asked about it. "But my goodness, if it's got everything, including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it in the morning." But he also said that what was seen on these videos was best left for the "cables."
Is this not malevolent arrogance?
That evening, Katie Couric and "The CBS Evening News" cried uncle and did a story. Six days into an underground media sensation that caused the White House to force the Commerce Department to delink ACORN from the census on day two, CBS knew it could sit on the sidelines no longer. Especially since ACORN spokespeople were issuing what to me was clearly lie after lie, and CBS could only assume that more videos were coming.
CNN made the most sustained effort to blame the messenger and make the videos the issue. Producers aggressively called Miss Giles, Mr. O'Keefe and me, imploring us to explain our journalistic tactics. I told them repeatedly that if they offered the videos a fair airing and let their audience decide, we'd agree to a Time Warner grilling. I also said we could have the debate on journalistic ethics after this story played out at a journalism school of their choice.
Instead, the media repeated ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' growing body of lies, never holding her accountable for her shameless hackery. Jonathan Klein, CNN's president, is emerging as symbol of the mainstream media's last depressing days.
No wonder Jon Stewart delivered a stinging and hilarious rebuke of the real newspeople on his "Daily Show" parodies every night: "Where were the real reporters on this story? ... Where the hell were you?"
High praise to you, Mr. Stewart. It's nice to see there's someone out there in liberal media-land who would recognize there's something terribly wrong on these videos. And yes, there are more to come.
At the very least, filmmaker James O'Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division. But more important, I won't rest until they receive a grant to continue their partisan artistry from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Title: Ignorance of Bias
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 23, 2009, 09:15:36 AM
Going to Fox II John Stossel Wednesday, September 23, 2009 When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine."
Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan "reform." But dictionaries define reform as "improvement." So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama's plan an improvement. Isn't that bias?
The New York Times took its bias to an absurd length. Its page-one story on the big anti-big-government rally in Washington, D.C., referred to "protests that began with an opposition to health care. ..."
Apparently, in the Times reporter's and editors' view, opponents of the Obama health care plan oppose health care itself. (The online article was later changed.
Economic-policy reporters usually present the views of supporters of new regulations as objective and public-spirited. For a contrary view, at best they'll ask a Republican or a representative of the regulated business, who is portrayed as self-serving. (Republicans tend to offer a watered-down version of the Democrats' proposals.)
A recent Bloomberg report on President Obama's plans to rewrite financial regulations is typical: "Obama has proposed new regulations overseeing the systemic risk posed by large financial institutions." The reporter quoted White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers in support of the plan. Although there are plenty of reasons to doubt that regulators are competent at judging systemic risk, no skeptical economist was quoted. Readers are led to believe the program is perfectly feasible.
Most reporting on the "stimulus" package has the same flaw. Just to call it "stimulus" is to editorialize, since the idea that government spending can truly stimulate an economy is at best doubtful. Many good economists say it can't be done. After all, the money is taken from somewhere else. But the economists rarely are quoted.
In addition, reporters seem to think they've done their job if they merely describe the intentions behind the proposed "reform." But the burden of proof should be on the sponsors of regulation and spending. They should have to make a convincing case that their new rules are superior to the free market. Who cares about intentions?
Fuel-efficiency standards, intended to save gasoline, give us less crashworthy cars, so more people die. Subsidies to American farmers destroy Third World markets. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encouraged shaky subprime mortgages and helped cause the housing and financial turmoil.
The long list of bad results that have emerged from well-intended regulation ought to dim reporters' enthusiasm. But it hasn't.
I admit that my guiding political and economic philosophy -- libertarianism -- now shapes my reporting, in this way: It prompts me to ask questions that others don't ask.
I don't claim to be the expert. But some of my colleagues who write about business know nothing about economics. Many are comically hostile to profit -- they dismiss it as "greed" (although they bargain for the highest salaries possible).
On my former ABC blog, some people called me a biased "conservative."
"Your (sic) a shill anyways John. dont (sic) let the door hit you in the you know what."
I'm surprised that the self-described enemies of intolerance can't tolerate even one MSM reporter who doesn't share their statist premises. The interventionist state has been the status quo for generations, so I must be something other than "conservative." "Liberal" is what my philosophy used to be called. It's the statists who are the reactionaries.
Not all the blog comments were hostile:
"Congratulations. The mind boggles at the thought of giving free reign on air to someone who actually understands economics."
"Stossel challenges conventional wisdom, so I hope Fox lets him do that."
I assume Fox will. My points of view on things like immigration, nation-building and the war on drugs differ from those of many at Fox, but libertarians like Judge Andrew Napolitano (http://tinyurl.com/lm2mpy) still seem to thrive there. The alleged "conservatives" are pretty tolerant.
I think they'll tolerate me. See you there next month.
Title: NYT admits
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2009, 06:07:33 AM
I forget exactly where I saw/heard it in the last day or two, but apparently Pravda on the Hudson has admitted that it came very late to the Van Jones story and that the little coverage it gave had the appearance of political favoratism and that it had decided to have someone monitor the opinion media for ideas about stories.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 30, 2009, 07:28:25 AM
I look forward to Stossel on Fox.
"it had decided to have someone monitor the opinion media for ideas about stories."
Suggesting they follow the MSM pack about what to cover.
Title: WSJ: Secret Editor Man , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2009, 08:28:02 AM
By JAMES TARANTO (Editor's note: This is an abbreviated edition of Best of the Web Today. We're on assignment, returning Thursday.)
Clark Hoyt, "public editor" of the New York Times, has weighed in on his paper's coverage of the Acorn scandal--or rather its lack thereof. Right off the bat, he delivers a half-truth:
On Sept. 12, an Associated Press article inside The Times reported that the Census Bureau had severed its ties to Acorn, the community organizing group. Robert Groves, the census director, was quoted as saying that Acorn, one of thousands of unpaid organizations promoting the 2010 census, had become "a distraction."
What the article didn't say--but what followers of Fox News and conservative commentators already knew--was that a video sting had caught Acorn workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes.
It is true, as we noted Sept. 14, that the AP article as published in the Times didn't mention that Acorn had been caught in a sex-slavery sting. But that's because the paper cut the latter half of the original dispatch, which did mention it. And there were other AP dispatches on the evening of Sept. 11, such as this one, that led with the sting. Somehow the Times managed to miss those.
Hoyt acknowledges that the Times continued missing the story:
For days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes--closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser--suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.
It's hard to disagree with that. But Hoyt could have strengthened his argument by noting, as we did Friday, that the Times has followed exactly this pattern with the National Endowment for the Arts scandal: ignoring it altogether until the Obama administration took some remedial action, then reporting it only on an inside page. Oh well, maybe he'll get around to it in a few more weeks.
When the Times waddled in with a report on the sex-slavery sting, it covered it as a political story. Hoyt rightly faults the paper for this:
Finally, on Sept. 16, nearly a week after the first video was posted, The Times took note of the controversy, under the headline, "Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe." The article said that conservatives hoped to weaken the Obama administration by attacking its allies and appointees they viewed as leftist. The conservatives thought they had a "winning formula," the article said, mobilizing people "to dig up dirt," then trumpeting it on talk radio and television. . . . I thought politics was emphasized too much, at the expense of questions about an organization whose employees in city after city participated in outlandish conversations about illegal and immoral activities.
Scrupulously fair, Hoyt did seek the other side of the story--the Times editors' side:
Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief, said, "We did not ignore the Acorn story, so I don't think it's fair for people to say we blew it off." . . . Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was "slow off the mark," and blamed "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio." . . . Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.
This seems totally predictable--but wait. On Sept. 10, we wrote (with respect to the Van Jones story) that we thought Hoyt would write something along the lines of: "The Times was a beat behind on this story. To some readers, this suggests liberal bias. I see no evidence of this." We added: "We'll buy Times public editor Clark Hoyt a drink if he doesn't say something to that effect when he weighs in on the Jones story."
But he didn't say he doesn't think the problem was liberal bias. In fact, given Hoyt's history of pooh-poohing liberal bias in his own voice, we'd say he pointedly did not say so in this case. He said Jill Abramson (who, as co-author of "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas," doesn't have a liberally biased bone in her body--ha ha) didn't think the problem was liberal bias. This is a huge difference.
Clark, we owe you a drink. Just email us to collect.
Here, though, is the most priceless bit of the Hoyt column:
[Abramson] and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person "a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere."
The Obama administration, as we noted Wednesday, was supposed to usher in a new era of transparency in government. Instead we find ourselves in a new era of opacity, not only in government but in the media. The New York Times now employs secret agent editors.
Hoyt writes, of the sex-slavery sting, that "most news organizations consider such tactics unethical--The Times specifically prohibits reporters from misrepresenting themselves or making secret recordings." True enough. But even James O'Keefe told the Acorn employees his name. At least in that sense, he was more honest with his targets than the Times now is with its readers.
Title: Elder
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2009, 08:33:14 AM
"Close your eyes, and pretend it's still the George W. Bush administration," writes columnist Larry Elder. "In Afghanistan, more American service members died in August than in any month since the war began. His top military commander says that without more troops, we run the risk of losing the war. Iran admits operating a second previously undisclosed nuclear facility. Unemployment stands at 9.7 percent, with consumer confidence lower last month after a brief uptick. An important domestic initiative -- one he campaigned on -- faces a likely make-or-break month in Congress."
Elder continues, "What does the President do? He flies to Copenhagen to personally lobby the International Olympic Committee to bring the Olympics to Crawford, Texas."
Substitute Barack Obama for George W. Bush and Chicago for Crawford and you have the news this week: Obama flew to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC to award the 2016 Olympics to his "home town" of Chicago. The First Lady flew separately to make her own pitch. Just think of the carbon footprint that generated.
Aside from massaging his narcissistic ego, Obama is obviously looking to generate a huge financial windfall for his Chicago cronies, though as we went to press the decision had not yet been made. And anyway, as Elder concludes, "Iran and Afghanistan can wait."
Title: Dying Breed of Russian Journalists
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 03, 2009, 08:50:27 AM
Where in the World Is Alexander Podrabinek? Hopefully, Putin Doesn’t Know Posted By Kim Zigfeld On October 3, 2009 @ 12:18 am In . Column2 04, Blogosphere, Culture, Europe, Free Speech, History, Media, Politics, Russia, World News | No Comments
Where in the world is Alexander Podrabinek [1]? I hope Vladimir Putin never finds out.
Mr. Podrabinek is one of a literally dying breed: Russian journalists who are not afraid to tell the truth even if it gets them murdered. Reuters reports: “New York-based press watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia the world’s third most dangerous country for journalists, with 17 killed since 2000 including Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.”
Over at my blog La Russophobe, we’ve translated Podrabinek’s column on the valiant Russian website Yezhedevny Zhurnal [2] many times. He’s written about official corruption [3], state propaganda [4], human rights atrocities [5] in the Chechnya region, persecuted dissidents [6] and opposition leaders, [7] and the essential lack [8] of an original Russian idea.
But now it seems, Podrabinek has gone one step too far.
A few days ago, a new restaurant in Moscow was forced to change its name [9]. Podrabinek wrote a column about the incident, and the reaction was so virulent among the Russian nationalist set, the death threats so clear and credible, that the author has been forced into hiding [10].
The incident couldn’t have been more Soviet in character. The restaurant called itself “Anti-Sovietskaya” — but not because it was opposed to the Sovietization of Russia under proud KGB spy Putin or even to Russia’s horrific legacy of Soviet mass murder. It called itself that simply because it was located opposite [11] the infamous Sovietskaya Hotel.
But that didn’t matter to Russia’s fire-breathing nationalists, and especially not to the Hitler-youth knockoff called “Nashi” (“Us Slavic Russians”). They descended on the little restaurant as if it was praising the Nazis who destroyed Russia in World War II (rather than criticizing the likes of Josef Stalin, who wiped out at least as many Russians as the Nazis), and soon it was forced to change the name to simply “Sovietskaya.”
That didn’t sit well with Podrabinek, and he wrote about it [12] on Yezhedevny Zhurnal’s virtual pages (translation here [13]). As Reuters reports, he “recalled the prison camps and crimes of Stalinism, and accused the current Russian authorities of trying to burnish the image of the Soviet Union.”
He’s not just blowing smoke. Podrabinek saw the worst of the Soviet system up close and personal. The International Press Institute notes [14]: “He was sentenced in 1978 to five years in Siberia for criticizing the Soviet system, and in 1980 was sentenced to three and a half years at a labor camp for distributing banned literature.”
Nashi, which is directly supported by the Kremlin, publicly accused him of “defiling the honor of veterans of the Great Patriotic War” and announced it would conduct protest activity at his home — clearly stating, in other words, that it knew where he lived. Its spokesman added: “We believe that people who insult veterans should not have the right to live here.”
Then the death threats starting rolling in. On Monday, he announced that he had “received information from reliable sources that at a senior level the decision has been taken to settle scores with me by any means.”
Given the statistics on the murder of Russian journalists and the power and connections of the Nashi fanatics, Podrabinek’s fears are clearly well-founded. The Telegraph reports [15]: “In recent years Nashi waged a campaign against former British Ambassador Sir Anthony Brenton, which he described as ‘psychological harassment bordering on violence’ after he attended and spoke at opposition meetings. His car was followed and he was picketed on trips out of Moscow.”
Ever since Putin first came to power, we’ve seen one critic after another brutally murdered [16] and not a single killing ever solved. The Kremlin has seized control of every mainstream media outlet and now, even though the vast majority of Russians can’t even go online [17], it is squaring off against the last vestige of critical reporting: Internet websites. Putin is reviving the Soviet state as fast as his limited resources will allow him.
And the world is just letting him do it. Instead of confronting Putin, U.S. President Barack Obama is offering him gifts of appeasement in the form of reduced military confrontation and ignoring the neo-Soviet crackdown. Given Russia’s deep and abiding hatred [18] of America and her values and its willingness to support [19] America’s most lethal enemies, Obama is clearly bequeathing a future conflict with Russia to America’s children just the same way Neville Chamberlain did.
But we must reserve our harshest scorn, of course, for the cowardly denizens of Russia who look the other way as Putin carries out his final solution for the problem of democracy. Their craven silence as sources of information are switched off and propaganda based on outright lies once again overwhelms them is truly nauseating. It is a betrayal of all the heroic Russians who struggled to resist the first Soviet dictatorship and gave their lives doing so.
Little wonder, given this crude backwardness, that Russia doesn’t rank in the top 130 nations of the world for adult lifespan. Indeed, given Obama’s cowardice, perhaps our best protection against the Russian menace is that they seem hell-bent on driving themselves into extinction.
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URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/where-in-the-world-is-alexander-podrabinek/
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[1] Alexander Podrabinek: http://ej.ru/?a=note&id=9494 [2] Yezhedevny Zhurnal: http://ej.ru/ [3] official corruption: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/another-original-lr-translation-into-the-russian-cesspit/ [4] state propaganda: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/another-original-lr-translation-medvedev-is-the-new-goebbels/ [5] human rights atrocities: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/another-original-lr-translation-putins-dagestan-disaster/ [6] dissidents: http://lrtranslations.blogspot.com/2007/02/saga-of-larisa-arap.html [7] opposition leaders,: http://lrtranslations.blogspot.com/2007/02/bukovsky-real-russian-patriot.html [8] essential lack: http://lrtranslations.blogspot.com/2007/02/imitation-as-russian-national-idea.html [9] change its name: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE58K3PD20090921?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnou [10] forced into hiding: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE58S1G020090929 [11] located opposite: http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=29896 [12] wrote about it: http://ej.ru/?a=note&id=9467 [13] here: http://www.finrosforum.fi/?p=5988 [14] notes: http://www.freemedia.at/startpage/singleview/as-ipi-press-freedom-advocacy-mission-arrives-in-russia-journalist-goes-into-hiding-after-receiving-threats/d38392708c/ [15] reports: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/6243970/Russian-journalist-in-hiding-after-receiving-threats.html [16] one critic after another brutally murdered: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/putinmurders/ [17] vast majority of Russians can’t even go online: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/reimposing_totalitarian_inform.html [18] deep and abiding hatred: http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=larussophobe.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.themoscowtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Farticle%2F384367.html [19] willingness to support: http://www.rferl.org/content/Not_So_Fast/1830363.html
Title: Pravda on the Hudson: BO team goes after FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2009, 07:58:02 AM
By BRIAN STELTER Published: October 11, 2009 Attacking the news media is a time-honored White House tactic but to an unusual degree, the Obama administration has narrowed its sights to one specific organization, the Fox News Channel, calling it, in essence, part of the political opposition.
Glenn Beck was credited with forcing a White House adviser to resign.
“We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” said Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, in a telephone interview on Sunday. “As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”
Her comments are only the latest in the volatile exchange between the administration and the top-rated network, which is owned by the News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Last month, Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, and David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, met for coffee in New York, in what Politico, which last week broke that news, labeled a “Fox summit.”
While neither party has said what was discussed, some have speculated that a truce, or at least an adjustment in tone, was at issue. (Mr. Ailes and Mr. Obama reportedly reached a temporary accord after a meeting in mid-2008.) But shots are still being fired, which animates the idea that both sides see benefits in the feud.
Fox seems to relish the controversy.
“Instead of governing, the White House continues to be in campaign mode, and Fox News is the target of their attack mentality,” Michael Clemente, the channel’s senior vice president for news, said in a statement on Sunday. “Perhaps the energy would be better spent on the critical issues that voters are worried about.”
Fox’s senior vice president for programming, Bill Shine, says of the criticism from the White House, “Every time they do it, our ratings go up.” Mr. Obama’s first year is on track to be the Fox News Channel’s highest rated.
One Fox executive said that the jabs by the White House could solidify the network’s audience base and recalled that Mr. Ailes had remarked internally: “Don’t pick a fight with people who like to fight.” The executive asked not to be named while discussing internal conversations.
Certainly, Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from ABC News, for its spin-off channel, Fox Business. The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
The shift for Fox News — the favorite network of the Bush administration, now the least favored one of the Obama administration — has financial implications for the News Corporation, especially given the network’s status as a growth engine in a perilous time for media companies.
Fox’s programs have drawn record numbers of viewers this year. Through last week, Fox averaged 1.2 million viewers at any given time this year, up from one million viewers through the same time last year. Previously, the channel peaked in 2003, the year the Iraq war started, with nearly 1.1 million viewers.
But controversial comments by the host Glenn Beck have also prompted an ad boycott. And the perception of Fox News as an opposition party has also affected its news correspondents, including Major Garrett, its chief White House correspondent, who Ms. Dunn says is a fair reporter. Mr. Garrett and other Fox correspondents have been directed by Mr. Clemente not to appear on the channel’s most opinionated programs.
Still, Paul Rittenberg, who oversees ad sales for Fox, said the channel existed in a climate where viewers choose cable news channels based on affinity. His channel, he said, stresses in its pitch to advertisers that “people who watch Fox News believe it’s the home team.”
To many Democrats, of course, the “home team” is conservative, a view only compounded by Fox’s at times skeptical coverage of Mr. Obama this year.
“I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration,” he said in June, though he did not mention Fox by name. He added, “You’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front.”
The White House has limited administration members’ appearances on the network in recent weeks. In mid-September, when the White House booked Mr. Obama on a round robin of Sunday morning talk shows, it skipped Fox and called it an “ideological outlet,” leading the “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s prime-time show and call the administration “the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”
Ms. Dunn called that remark juvenile and stressed that administration officials would still talk to Fox, and that Mr. Obama was likely to be interviewed on the network in the future. But, she added, “we’re not going to legitimize them as a news organization.”
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In an interview, Mr. Clemente suggested that there was an element of “shoot the messenger” in the back and forth. “Sometimes it’s actually helpful to have an organization or a person that you can go up against for whatever reason,” he said.
Fox argues that its news hours — 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays — are objective. The channel has taken pains recently to highlight its news programs, including the two hours led by Shepard Smith, its chief news anchor. And its daytime newscasts draw more viewers than CNN or MSNBC’s prime-time programs.
“The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page,” Mr. Clemente said.
The White House rejects the news and editorial page comparison, and officials there can rattle off any number of perceived offenses. They date to the month before Mr. Obama formally started his presidential campaign, when one of the network’s morning hosts falsely claimed that he had attended a madrassa, an Islamic school. (The incident happened on what Fox calls an entertainment show, “Fox and Friends”; the mistake was corrected on the air later.)
More recently, Fox hosts have promoted tea party rallies against big government and steered attention toward a number of White House czar appointments. Mr. Beck, in particular, was credited with forcing Van Jones, a low-level White House adviser for environmental jobs, to resign last month. Mr. Beck devoted numerous segments to Mr. Jones and called him a “communist-anarchist radical.”
“If it wasn’t for Fox or talk radio, we’d be done as a republic,” Mr. Beck said in the wake of the resignation.
Mr. Beck, whose 5 p.m. program consistently draws three million viewers, is a “cultural phenomenon now,” Mr. Shine said. But this success has come at a price: he is the source of considerable discomfort for Fox’s journalists, especially for false statements on his program. In August, for instance, Mr. Beck claimed that Mr. Garrett was “never called on” at White House press briefings, but Mr. Garrett had asked a question that day.
Weeks earlier, Mr. Beck labeled Mr. Obama a racist, leading to an advertising boycott by ColorOfChange.org, an advocacy group that Mr. Jones helped found. Dozens of advertisers have distanced themselves from Mr. Beck’s show, causing headaches for Mr. Rittenberg’s advertising team, although he said Fox “hasn’t lost a dime” because the ads were moved to different hours.
Fox has made the channel’s tensions with the White House a story. In August, the network’s top-rated host, Mr. O’Reilly, dispatched one of his opinion program’s producers to ask why the administration seemed “so thin-skinned” at a White House briefing. The deputy press secretary disagreed, and said that Mr. O’Reilly had interviewed Mr. Obama during his candidacy last year. The administration’s aggressive stance suggests that it does not view Fox’s audience as one that can be persuaded. During the presidential campaign, Ms. Dunn said, it booked campaign representatives on Fox to try to reach undecided voters, but by mid-October, the campaign had mostly withdrawn them from the channel’s programs.
“It was beyond diminishing returns,” she said. “It was no returns.”
Title: Correction.
Post by: ccp on October 12, 2009, 08:56:00 AM
***Attacking the news media is a time-honored White House tactic but to an unusual degree, the Obama administration has narrowed its sights to one specific organization, the Fox News Channel, calling it, in essence, part of the political opposition.***
This statement is patently false. The White house and the left in Congress are going after "talk radio" as well. ie: "fainess doctrine". The statement would be more accurate to state the White House is out to destroy, defame, or muzzle any news organization that it views as opposition.
And the rest of the media is clearly in the tank for BO.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Fox News
Post by: DougMacG on October 12, 2009, 10:56:47 AM
I often hear top of the hour radio news from Fox and find they often let the same liberal spin fall into news stories that we would expect from ABC, NBC, CBS, AP, etc. A good conservative editor would question the wording and framing of the stories and no one is doing that IMO.
I don't watch the cable shows but see Fox News Sunday. Of the usual panelists, obviously 2 are right wing. The others for balance are less flaming in their leftism than typically found on the other Sunday shows. Chris Wallace is the most balanced of the moderators. I would compare him to Jim Lehrer in his ability to keep his personal views out of the way and do his job.
Hannity is an opinion show. I know him only through radio. Obviously a lighter weight than Rush but he brings on insightful and relevant guests, right and left. To have him on prime time must ruffle the lefty feathers but his success, like Rush, is based on the void left by the rest of the media. ----
Crafty, I am curious to read more about your observation that the WSJ opinion page has changed for the worse since the Murdoch took over.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2009, 10:20:09 PM
That was DEVASTATING :lol:
Title: Patriot Post
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 16, 2009, 10:01:38 AM
From the Left: The War on Fox News The Obama administration is clearly not content to have a majority of American news media in its back pocket. It wants total obedience and has now openly declared war on Fox News Channel, which White House Communications Director Anita Dunn recently accused of being "a wing of the Republican Party." She added that from here forward, "We're going to treat [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent. ... We don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."
Consider the source, though. Dunn is also on the record saying that one of her "favorite political philosophers" was Mao Tse Tung, who was responsible for more than 70 million deaths in Communist China.
Obamanauts are furious with Fox for being the only major broadcast news outlet that has not toed the party line. Apparently, the administration thinks the way "legitimate news organizations behave" is to out-and-out lie about the opposition, like CBS News with its "fake but accurate" hatchet job on President George W. Bush just prior to the 2004 election, and like the outrageously phony quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh in recent days (more on that later).
Fox, on the other hand, has recently exposed the corruption of ACORN and the extreme leftism of former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, but this doesn't make it anti-Obama. Rather, it makes Fox pro-information, as the ACORN exposé and Van Jones's public insults about Republicans were real and noteworthy events, though most of the media chose not to report them.
The White House attack on Fox News goes beyond the simple cowardice of the Obama administration. Not only are they afraid to field tough questions from an aggressive news organization but government appointees in high places like Mark Lloyd, the FCC's Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer, are calling for ways to address the "structural imbalance" of talk radio and, presumably, the manner in which FNC does business. For his part, Lloyd is on record as being enamored of Hugo Chavez's "democratic revolution" and his takeover of the Venezuelan media. All aboard for the "Fairness Doctrine."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2009, 08:40:00 AM
The White House escalated its offensive against Fox News on Sunday by urging other news organizations to stop "following Fox" and instead join the administration's attempt to marginalize the channel.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox."
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization."
"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."
By urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama aides officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month, when White House communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news."
On Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace retorted: "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else."
The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."
"She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."
"Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong."
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues."
Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House's decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks.
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: "I don't always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree."
David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: "I totally agree with Donna Brazile." Gergen added that White House officials have "gotten themselves into a fight they don't necessarily want to be in. I don't think it's in their best interest."
"The faster they can get this behind them, the more they can treat Fox like one other organization, the easier they can get back to governing, and then put some people out on Fox," Gergen said on CNN. "I mean, for goodness sakes -- you know, you engage in the debate.
What Americans want is a robust competition of ideas, and they ought to be willing to go out there and mix it up with some strong conservatives on Fox, just as there are strong conservatives on CNN like Bill Bennett."
Bennett expressed outrage that Dunn told an audience of high school students this year that Mao Tse-tung, the founder of communist China, was one of "my favorite political philosophers."
"Having the spokesman do this, attack Fox, who says that Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in her life, was not…a small thing; it's a big thing," Bennett said on CNN. "When she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, that -- I mean, that is crazy."
Fox News contributor Karl Rove, who was the top political strategist to former President George W. Bush, said: "This is an administration that's getting very arrogant and slippery in its dealings with people. And if you dare to oppose them, they're going to come hard at you and they're going to cut your legs off."
"This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list. And it's unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do," Rove added. "That is over- the-top language. We heard that before from Richard Nixon."
Media columnist David Carr of the New York Times warned that the White House war on Fox "may present a genuine problem for Mr. Obama, who took great pains during the campaign to depict himself as being above the fray of over-heated partisan squabbling."
"While there is undoubtedly a visceral thrill in finally setting out after your antagonists, the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence," Carr wrote over the weekend. "So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year."
He added: "The administration, by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight."
Title: The continuing creep of fascism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2009, 08:08:34 AM
By SETH LIPSKY Leonard Downie, who stepped down a year ago as executive editor of the Washington Post, was famous for declining to vote as a matter of journalistic principle.
"I decided to stop voting when I became the ultimate gatekeeper for what is published in the newspaper," he once explained. "I wanted to keep a completely open mind about everything we covered and not make a decision, even in my own mind or the privacy of the voting booth, about who should be president or mayor, for example."
This week Mr. Downie is in the news for declaring in favor of government subsidies for the press. He has written a report, commissioned by the Columbia Journalism School, called "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," which recommends legislation and regulatory changes to enable news organizations to operate as nonprofits or hybrids between limited liability companies and charities. The report also recommends that the government use money from various fees to subsidize the news business.
The report focuses on what it calls "accountability journalism." According to the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, Nicholas Lemann, in a note published on the CJR Web site, Messrs. Downie and co-author Michael Schudson make clear that the Internet "has brought the days when privately owned newspapers could be the main bearers of this reporting function to an end."
The authors insist they are not recommending "a government bailout of newspapers, nor any of the various direct subsidies that governments give newspapers in many European countries," even though, they reckon, "those subsidies have not had a noticeably chilling effect on newspapers' willingness to print criticism of those governments." They acknowledge that most Americans distrust government involvement in reporting and say they share it. But they write that this "should not preclude government support for news reporting any more than it has for the arts, the humanities, and sciences, all of which receive some government support."
They say there's been "a minimum of government pressure in those fields," though they note the exceptions, such as when the National Endowment for the Arts came under fire in the 1990s. The authors assert that "any use of government money to help support news reporting would require mechanisms, besides the protections of the First Amendment, to insulate the resulting journalism as much as possible from pressure, interference, or censorship." They propose that the government siphon money into the news business from the Federal Communications Commission's surcharge on phone bills. They suggest the revenues be tapped for a Fund for Local News, which could direct the money to "worthy initiatives in local news reporting."
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Martin Kozlowski .The report suggests they would fund "categories and methods" of reporting, rather than individual stories or reporting projects. It likened the way Local News Fund Councils would operate to the ways State Humanities Councils have been in business since the 1970s—nonprofits whose volunteer boards have, in some places, gubernatorial appointees, all serving limited terms. When I asked Mr. Downie for more detail on what he had in mind, he said he envisioned government money more for innovation than continuing operations, though he also suggested that grants could be renewable.
Mr. Downie has stepped onto an exceptionally slippery slope. It's a view I've reached after 20 years working almost constantly to raise private capital for independent, privately-owned newspapers. One was the Forward, the weekly newspaper covering the Jewish beat that was launched in the 1990s on the foundation of the famed Yiddish-language broadsheet known as the Jewish Daily Forward. The other was The New York Sun, which was launched in 2002 to try, among other things, to seize the local beat from which the New York Times was retreating as it sought to become a national newspaper.
Though those were joyous decades in a happy newspaper life, I don't mind saying there were often desperate days. There were weeks at the Forward when its chairman, Harold Ostroff, and I basically covered the payroll with an American Express card. At the Sun, I was once warned by a lawyer that if the investors didn't come through, officers of the company could be held personally liable for any unpaid payroll taxes. (There were no unpaid taxes, and the investors did come through.)
One thing that kept me going was the prospect that at least some of our competitors, who were also losing money, might crack before we did. The notion that any of them might be sustained by government subsidies strikes me as profoundly contrary to a free press. In the event, the Sun folded without government help.
I take no comfort from the analogy the authors of this report draw with government funding for the arts. In New York City, there came a time when the leaders the voters entrusted with their tax money concluded that what was being done with it in the arts was so abhorrent they tried to stop it. This happened in 1999, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani confronted the Brooklyn Museum over its display of a depiction of the Madonna that had been splattered with elephant dung. A federal court wouldn't let the city stop funding the museum.
What would happen today if some modern-day version of Jay Near's "Saturday Press," an anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, racist newspaper issued during the 1920s, were to look for innovative funding by one of these state councils today? Minnesota tried back then to suppress Near's paper as a nuisance. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Near v. Minnesota (1931), protected his freedom from prior restraint. It's one thing for the Supreme Court to say a Jay Near can't be stopped in advance from publishing on his own dime. It would be another to use state power to force the rest of us to pay for it whether we want to or not.
Even if one could get around this sort of thing, I've come to the view that the real protection of press freedom is in the idea of private property. Press freedom in Soviet Russia was lost precisely on this issue when, as American journalist John Reed told the story in his famous book, "Ten Days that Shook the World," a proposal was put on the table to restore the press freedom that had been suspended on the first day of the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin shouted it down with a diatribe about how that would mean restoring to capitalists privately owned printing equipment, paper supplies and ink.
I don't mean to suggest, in any way, that Mr. Downie is a Bolshevik. I do mean to suggest that the best strategy to strengthen the press would be to maximize protection of the right to private property—and the right to competition. Subsidies are the enemy of competition, and as the newspaper industry flails around for a solution, I can't help but think of the hapless Roscoe Filburn.
He was a farmer in Ohio who had the misfortune to be growing wheat during the 1930s, when subsidies were brought in for farmers. With subsidies came restrictions on how much wheat one could grow—even, Filburn learned in a landmark Supreme Court case, Wickard v. Filburn (1942), wheat grown on his modest farm. Years later we have fewer family farms and more industrial farms vying for vast federal subsidies.
Could such a thing happen in news? Speaking as one entrepreneur who has tasted failure in the news business, let me say that if government subsidies for news gathering ever come up for a voter referendum, I hope Mr. Downie, a great editor to be sure, stands on his original principles and stays home.
Mr. Lipsky, a member of the adjunct faculty at the Columbia Journalism School, is the author of "The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide," which will be published later this month by Basic Books.
Title: NYT: Prosecutors turn tables on student journalists
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2009, 07:02:29 AM
EVANSTON, Ill. — For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of 11 inmates, the project’s director says, and an Illinois governor once cited those wrongful convictions as he announced he was commuting the sentences of everyone on death row.
But as the Medill Innocence Project is raising concerns about another case, that of a man convicted in a murder 31 years ago, a hearing has been scheduled next month in Cook County Circuit Court on an unusual request: Local prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves. The prosecutors, it seems, wish to scrutinize the methods of the students this time. The university is fighting the subpoenas.
Lawyers in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office say that in their quest for justice in the old case, they need every pertinent piece of information about the students’ three-year investigation into Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of fatally shooting a security guard in 1978. Mr. McKinney’s conviction is being reviewed by a judge.
Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.
Northwestern University and David Protess, the professor who leads the students and directs the Medill Innocence Project, say the demands are ridiculously overreaching, irrelevant to Mr. McKinney’s case, in violation of the state’s protections for journalists and a breach of federal privacy statutes — not to mention insulting.
John Lavine, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism, said the suggestion that students might have thought their grades were linked to what witnesses said was “astonishing.” He said he believed that federal law barred him from providing the students grades, but that he had no intention of doing so in any case..
A spokeswoman for Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, who was elected last fall, said the prosecutors were simply trying to get to the bottom of the McKinney case.
“At the end of the day, all we’re seeking is the same thing these students are: justice and truth,” said Sally Daly, the spokeswoman. She said the prosecutors wished to see all statements the students received from witnesses, whether they supported or contradicted the notion of Mr. McKinney’s innocence.
“We’re not trying to delve into areas of privacy or grades,” Ms. Daly said. “Our position is that they’ve engaged in an investigative process, and without any hostility, we’re seeking to get all of the information they’ve developed, just as detectives and investigators turn over.”
If the courts find that Mr. Protess and the journalism school must turn over the student information, they risk being held in contempt if they refuse, said Dick O’Brien, a lawyer who is representing Northwestern.
But if the school gives in to such a demand, say advocates of the Medill Innocence Project and more than 50 similar projects (most involving law schools and legal clinics), the stakes could be still higher, discouraging students from taking part or forcing groups to devote time and money to legal assistance.
“Every time the government starts attacking the messenger as opposed to the message, it can have a chilling effect,” said Barry C. Scheck, a pioneer of the Innocence Project in New York, who said he had never seen a similar demand from prosecutors.
In October 2003, Mr. Protess’s investigative journalism classes began looking at the case after Mr. McKinney’s brother, Michael, brought it to the attention of the Medill Innocence Project — one of more 15,000 cases the project has been asked to consider investigating over the years.
Mr. Protess, who has been on the faculty at Northwestern since 1981 and began leading his investigative reporting students on such cases in 1991, created the Medill project in 1999, the same year he and his students drew national attention for helping to exonerate and free Anthony Porter, an inmate who had come within two days of execution.
The McKinney case took three years and nine teams of student reporters, all of whom have since graduated from Northwestern. In the end, the teams concluded that Mr. McKinney had been wrongly convicted of killing Donald Lundahl, a security guard, with a shotgun one evening in September 1978 in Harvey, a southern suburb of Chicago.
The students said they had found, among other things, that two eyewitnesses had recanted their testimony against Mr. McKinney and could not have seen him commit the killing because they were watching a boxing championship (Leon Spinks vs. Muhammad Ali). The students collected an affidavit from a gang member who, they say, confirmed Mr. McKinney’s alibi that he was running away from gang members when the shooting took place.
The students have also suggested alternative suspects in the case and offered witnesses who said they had heard the others admit their involvement.
In 2006, the students took their findings to the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern’s law school, and by late last year, the claims were being considered by a Cook County Circuit Court judge and were described in an article in The Chicago Sun-Times and on the Medill Innocence Project Web site.
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The students provided their videotaped interviews of critical witnesses and affidavits to the prosecutors, but in June the prosecutors subpoenaed far more — the students’ investigative memorandums, e-mail messages, notes from multiple interviews with witnesses and class grades.
In their quest, prosecutors have raised a central question about the role of the students — suggesting that they should be viewed as an “investigative agency,” not journalists, whose unpublished materials could, under certain circumstances, be protected under a state statute.
“The school believes it should be exempt from the scrutiny of this honorable court and the justice system, yet it should be deemed a purveyor of its inadequacies to the public,” a legal brief from prosecutors said.
Professional journalism groups have said the students are clearly journalists, and offered support for their wish not to reveal their notes. Beth Konrad, president of the Chicago Headline Club, said the club was seeking a discussion with Ms. Alvarez, the state’s attorney.
“We want to know, what was the decision to overreach on this?” Ms. Konrad said.
Donald M. Craven, the interim executive director of the Illinois Press Association, questioned the prosecutors’ motives. “Taken to its logical conclusion, what they’re trying to do is dismantle the project,” Mr. Craven said.
Mr. Protess said his students most assuredly functioned as journalists and, as such, did not wish to become “an arm of the government” by providing their notes and private exchanges.
“It would destroy our autonomy,” he said. “We function with journalism standards and practices to guide our work.”
The notion that students would have been rewarded with better grades for witnesses who confirmed the thesis that Mr. McKinney was innocent is simply false, he said.
“My students are told to uncover the truth, wherever that leads them,” he said. In the last four years, he said, students had twice concluded that the convicts whose cases they were studying were indeed guilty.
Sarah Forte, one of the students who investigated Mr. McKinney’s case and who graduated in 2006, said she was frustrated that prosecutors were making the requests, even as Mr. McKinney, 49, remained in a prison in downstate Dixon.
“Why are they focusing on these unrelated things?” asked Ms. Forte, a defense investigator at the Southern Center for Human Rights who said she went to Northwestern partly to get involved in Mr. Protess’s project. “I cannot even imagine what they think they are going to find.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 07:21:45 AM
I actually support the "Innocence Project", but they better be ready for discovery.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2009, 07:42:10 AM
Why?!?
This smells to me like a matter of trying to intimidate those who raise, , , pardon the expression , , , inconvenient questions and facts. I'm willing to entertain hearing the other POV, but this smells to me like the prosecutors are being bullies.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 08:17:30 AM
If they were just writing a story for publication, then the journalist claim should fly. What these projects do goes well beyond that. If you wish to act as an investigator, then everything you do is subject to discovery.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2009, 09:38:54 AM
So, investigative reporters are subject to discovery?!?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 10:30:35 AM
“We’re not trying to delve into areas of privacy or grades,” Ms. Daly said. “Our position is that they’ve engaged in an investigative process, and without any hostility, we’re seeking to get all of the information they’ve developed, just as detectives and investigators turn over.”
The students said they had found, among other things, that two eyewitnesses had recanted their testimony against Mr. McKinney and could not have seen him commit the killing because they were watching a boxing championship (Leon Spinks vs. Muhammad Ali). The students collected an affidavit from a gang member who, they say, confirmed Mr. McKinney’s alibi that he was running away from gang members when the shooting took place.
The students have also suggested alternative suspects in the case and offered witnesses who said they had heard the others admit their involvement.
The students provided their videotaped interviews of critical witnesses and affidavits to the prosecutors, but in June the prosecutors subpoenaed far more — the students’ investigative memorandums, e-mail messages, notes from multiple interviews with witnesses and class grades.
**I think it's pretty clear that they are acting as investigators when rather than researching and reporting, they move into taking statements/affidavits and reconstructing crimes for testimonial purposes for the appealate process. They are acting as defense investigators and not mere journalists, no matter what title they seek.**
Title: staged photo op "for the ages"
Post by: ccp on October 27, 2009, 09:22:19 AM
Could this photo op have been any obviously more staged then this? Hand picked *short* navy personel. Tall darkly dressed figure against the all white dressed back drop and probably with elevations in his shoes and on elevated podium. Reminds one of a towering figure of Abe Lincoln, black dressed and at the head of all the shorter generals. Except he is still no Abe Lincoln who really does belong to the ages.
Every reporter has a point of view. But some refuse to admit it.
John Stossel | November 5, 2009
I made The New York Times last week. It even ran my picture. My mother would be proud.
Unfortunately, the story was critical. It said, "Critics have leaped on Mr. Stossel's speaking engagements as the latest evidence of conservative bias on the part of Fox."
Which "critics" had "leaped"? The reporter mentioned Rachel Maddow. I wouldn't think her criticism newsworthy, but Times reporters may use MSNBC as their guide to life. He also quoted an "associate professor of journalism" who said my speeches were "'pretty shameful' by traditional journalistic standards." All this because I spoke at an event for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a "conservative advocacy group."
It is odd that this is a news story. In August, AFP hired me to do the very same thing. I give the money to charity. The Times didn't call that "shameful."
But in August, I worked for ABC News. Now, I work for Fox. Hmmm.
It reminds me of something that happened earlier in my career.
I was one of America's first TV consumer reporters. I approached the job with an attitude. If companies ripped people off, I would embarrass them on TV—and demand that government do something. (I now regret the latter—the former was a good thing.)
I clearly had a point of view: I was a crusader out to punish corporate bullies. My colleagues liked it. I got job offers. I won 19 Emmys. I was invited to speak at journalism conferences.
Then, gradually, I figured out that business, for the most part, treats consumers pretty well. The way to get rich in business is to create something good, sell it for a reasonable price, acquire a reputation for honesty, and keep pleasing customers so they come back for more.
As a local TV reporter, I could find plenty of crooks. But once I got to the national stage—20/20 and Good Morning America—it was hard to find comparable national scams. There were some: Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc. But they are rare. In a $14 trillion economy, you'd think there'd be more. But there aren't.
I figured out why: Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check. Reputation matters. Word gets out. Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy. Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.
It made me want to learn more about free markets. I subscribed to Reason magazine and read Cato Institute research papers. Then Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Aaron Wildavsky.
My reporting changed. I started taking skeptical looks at government—especially regulation. I did an ABC TV special, "Are We Scaring You to Death?" that said we TV reporters often make hysterical claims about chemicals, pollution, and other relatively minor risks. Its good ratings—16 million viewers—surprised my colleagues.
Suddenly, I wasn't so popular with them.
I stopped winning Emmys.
I was invited on CNN's media program, Reliable Sources, to be interviewed by The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz and an indignant Bernard Kalb. They titled the segment, "Objectivity and Journalism: Does John Stossel Practice Either?" It was in big letters over my head.
Apparently, I had broken the rules.
On the air they told me that I was no longer objective. I was too stunned to defend myself effectively. I said something like: "I've always had a point of view. How come you had no trouble with that when I criticized business?"
In hindsight, I wish I'd said: "Look at the title on the wall, you hypocrites! It shows you have a point of view, too. Many reporters do. You just don't like my arguments now that I no longer hew to your statist line. So you want to shut me up."
But I didn't.
So I'll say it now: Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view.
So why am I the one called biased?
I like what "Americans for Prosperity" defends. I'm an American, and I'm for prosperity. What creates prosperity is free and competitive markets. That means limited government.
And I will speak about that every chance I get.
John Stossel will soon host Stossel on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of Give Me a Break and of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 06, 2009, 07:49:37 AM
What I saw from the OBama statement about the shooting was a man who was giving another lecture. Everytime he speaks it is in the form of a lecture. The lack of true emotion (other than anger when someone should disagree or oppose him), the lack of any real sensitivity does suggest some sort of personality disorder. The love for himself, the lack of emotion, the manipulative character, the deceitfulness like it is actually part of his nature, the balming others when things go wrong = personality disorder. Clinton certianly possessed many of these traits. Whenever I would try to categorize him as a personality disorder (Clinton) I would find that he possessed many of the traits but not quite enough to be categorized as full fledged narcissistic personality disorder. Yet Clinton did seem to have a sensitivity that OBama clearly does not possess. Obama is also clearly more of megalomaniac than Clinton ever was. What is interesting about the following piece is that the author doesn't blame OBama. He blames his handlers. Thus there is still denial out there about the true nature, the true objectives of Obama. Many still appear to be in denial about his true nature, his true agenda. What will it take to wake the country up I don't know? If people haven't seen enough to figure it out by now....
Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama. By ROBERT A. GEORGE Updated 9:18 AM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Getty Images President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That's the least that should occur.
Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.
Did the president's team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on -- and the initial words coming out of their president's mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.
It must have been disappointing for many politically aware Democrats, still reeling from the election two days before. The New Jersey gubernatorial vote had already demonstrated that the president and his political team couldn't produce a winning outcome in a state very friendly to Democrats (and where the president won by 15 points one year ago). And now this? Congressional Democrats must wonder if a White House that has burdened them with a too-heavy policy agenda over the last year has a strong enough political operation to help push that agenda through.
If the president's communications apparatus can't inform -- and protect -- their boss during tense moments when the country needs to see a focused commander-in-chief and a compassionate head of state, it has disastrous consequences for that president's party and supporters.
All the president's men (and women) fell down on the job Thursday. And Democrats across the country have real reason to panic.
New York writer Robert A. George blogs at Ragged Thots. Follow him on Twitter.
Copyright NBC Local Media First Published: Nov 6, 2009 5:16 AM CST
Title: A Surprise from Pravada on the Hudson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2009, 08:03:50 AM
The NYTimes actually surprises by acknowledging this:
At Fort Hood, Witness Credits Second Officer
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: November 11, 2009 KILLEEN, Tex. — Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley has been applauded as a hero across the nation for shooting down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during the bloody rampage at Fort Hood last week. The account of heroism, given by the authorities, attracted the attention of newspapers, the networks and television talk shows.
But the story of how the petite police officer and the accused gunman went down in an exchange of gunfire does not agree with the account of an eyewitness who had gone to the base’s processing center, where the shooting occurred, to conduct business before being deployed.
The witness, who asked not to be identified, said Major Hasan wheeled on Sergeant Munley as she rounded the corner of a building and shot her, putting her on the ground. Then Major Hasan turned his back on her and started putting another magazine into his semiautomatic pistol.
It was at that moment that Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, a veteran police officer, rounded another corner of the building, found Major Hasan fumbling with his weapon and shot him.
How the authorities came to issue the original version of the story, which made Sergeant Munley a national hero for several days and obscured Sergeant Todd’s role, remains unclear. (Military officials also said for several hours after the shooting that Major Hasan had been killed, although he had survived.)
Six days after the deadly shooting rampage at a center where soldiers were preparing for deployment, the military has yet to put out a full account of what happened.
At a news conference outside the post on Wednesday, Lt. Col. John Rossi refused to take questions about who shot Major Hasan or why the initial reports said it had been Sergeant Munley rather than Sergeant Todd.
“These questions are specific to the investigation and I am not going to address that,” Colonel Rossi said.
Public affairs officials also declined to make Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the post, available for questions. It was Mr. Medley, who oversees the post’s civilian police and fire departments, who gave the first account of how Sergeant Munley stopped the gunman.
On Tuesday night, Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, of the Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs at the Pentagon, declined to say whether it was Sergeant Todd who had shot Major Hasan. “It could have been, but the final outcome will be determined by the results of the ballistics tests.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Sergeant Todd’s wife, Lisa, said he had asked the Army to protect his identity in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. Her husband did not consider himself to be the real hero of the day, she said. “They were in this together,” she said.
Neither Sergeant Todd nor Sergeant Munley were made available by the military for this article, but on Wednesday on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” they offered their first public comments on the shooting. They did not give a detailed chronology of what happened, nor did they say who had fired and hit the suspect.
Both are members of the civilian police force at Fort Hood. Sergeant Todd said on the talk show that he and Sergeant Munley had arrived at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in separate squad vehicles about the same time.
Sergeant Todd acknowledged that he had played a major role in bringing the violence to an end. He said that he had fired at the suspect, kicked his weapon away and placed him in handcuffs. It was the first time in his 25 years in law enforcement and the military, Sergeant Todd said, that he had used his weapon.
“I just relied back on my training,” Sergeant Todd said. “We’re trained to shoot until there is no longer a threat. And once he was laying down on his back, his weapon just fell into his hand and I’m, like, ‘O.K., now’s the time to rush him and secure him.’ ”
The confusion over what happened and the quickness of the military to label someone a hero seemed reminiscent of the case of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in 2003, when the Army initially reported Private Lynch had been captured in Iraq after a Rambo-like performance in which she emptied her weapon and was wounded in battle. It was later learned she had been badly hurt in a vehicle accident during an ambush and was being well cared for by the Iraqis.
On Friday, the day after the Fort Hood shooting, Mr. Medley said Sergeant Munley had encountered Major Hasan, pistol in hand, chasing down a bleeding soldier. It was 1:27 p.m. She fired at him, he turned, they rushed at each other firing and both fell, Mr. Medley said.
“He turned and charged her rapidly firing, and she did what she was trained to do,” Mr. Medley said that day. He added, “She is absolutely a hero.”
===============
(Page 2 of 2)
Several hours later, at a late-night news conference on the post, Colonel Rossi expanded upon the story slightly in speaking to reporters. He said Sergeant Todd had arrived at the scene in the middle of the gunfight and had also fired his weapon.
The eyewitness, however, offered a different account. He said he was walking in a roadway between the main building, known as the Sportsdome, and five smaller buildings. Major Hasan was headed toward the main building, the witness said, when Sergeant Munley came around the corner of a smaller building. Major Hasan wheeled on her and shot her several times, the witness said. It was unclear whether she squeezed off a shot or not, but she fell over backward, disabled with wounds in her legs and one of her wrists, the witness said.
Major Hasan then turned his back on her and began to shove another magazine into his pistol. He did not appear wounded, the witness said. A few seconds later, Sergeant Todd came around another corner of the same building. He raised his weapon and fired several times at Major Hasan, who pitched over backward and stopped moving.
“He shot her, turned away from her and was reloading, when he was shot,” said the witness, who was nearby.
On the Winfrey show, Sergeant Munley, 35, said the incident was confusing and chaotic. “There were many people outside pointing to where this individual was apparently located,” she said. “When I got out of my vehicle and ran up the hill, that’s when it started getting bad and we started encountering fire.”
Sergeant Todd, 42, is a native of California who spent most of his adult life as a military police officer in the Army. He left the military police after 25 years to join the civilian force at Fort Hood. Like most members of the military, he has moved around a lot, serving at four bases in the United States and two in Germany.
Ms. Todd said her husband did not seem upset in the wake of shooting Major Hasan.
“He say’s he’s O.K.,” she said. “And I have to take him at his word.”
Title: Blind Journalism
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 12, 2009, 11:02:40 AM
Media Mush Too many journalists have been spinning the public — and themselves.
By Clifford D. May
Imagine if, in 1942, the son of German immigrants from the Sudetenland had yelled “Heil Hitler!” and then gunned down several dozen of his fellow soldiers on an American military base. Most reporters probably would not have expressed bewilderment as to the perpetrator’s motive. They’d have simply connected the dots and told the public what happened: An army officer appears to have turned traitor, subscribing to the Nazi ideology and choosing to kill for the Nazi cause.
But that was then, this is now. After the attack at Fort Hood, evidently carried out by the Muslim son of Palestinian immigrants, much of the major media disconnected from reality. On CNN and NPR, the pressing question was whether there are enough “mental-health professionals” in the army. In other words, perhaps the problem was that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist, didn’t have access to . . . a psychiatrist.
On MSNBC, an anchor wondered whether we will ever know for sure whether religion was a “factor” in a massacre initiated with a shout of “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is greatest!”) — the international war cry of terrorists who claim to be fighting what they call a “jihad” for Islam. Even the Fox News Channel displayed such chyrons as: “Investigators search for a motive in Ft. Hood killings.”
I know: The intelligence community, the FBI, the military brass — all stumbled badly in connection with this case. But journalists are not supposed to be like government employees. Reporters are supposed to be risk-takers, seeking the truth and telling it — even when the truth is inconvenient and uncomfortable.
That’s what I was taught when I was trained as a journalist, and it’s what I believed during the more than 20 years I spent in the news business, including at the New York Times, which last week ran this front-page, above-the-fold headline: “Told of War Horror, Gunman Feared Deployment.” Are Times readers really to believe that the alleged perpetrator was such a sensitive soul that, to take his mind off the “horror” of war, he shot as many of his unarmed colleagues as he could, reloading while the dying and wounded lay bleeding on the ground?
The second paragraph of this same story reports that Hasan “started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives.” How could professional editors not insist that such a slander of American soldiers — and one so improbable given the deference paid in the U.S. military both to officers and doctors — at least be followed by the standard disclaimer that the charge could not be verified?
This, too, needs to be mentioned: The Times quotes the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s condemnation of the killings, declaring that the organization is “speaking for much of the Muslim community in the United States.” On what possible basis can the Times determine that? Is there any organization that the Times would designate as speaking for much of the Christian community in the United States? How about the Jewish Community?
And how much research would have been required for the Times to learn that the Muslim Public Affairs Council is a controversial group, one that has been sharply criticized for both its ideology and its ties to terrorism by researcher Steven Emerson, Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, Muslim reformer Irshad Manji, and other experts?
Islamic extremism is a difficult issue — but it’s not that difficult. We grasp that an ideology based on the premise that one race must dominate all others is odious and dangerous. Is it such a leap to understand that the same is true of an ideology based on the premise that one religion must dominate all others?
And just as we can imagine why a German might find the dream of Aryan supremacy appealing, we ought to be able to imagine why someone like Hasan could be drawn to the promise of Islamic supremacy.
What I have said above obviously does not imply that all Germans were Nazis during the 1930s and ’40s. On the contrary, some Germans — a minority to be sure — fought Nazism. Similarly, many Muslims reject militant Islamism, and a brave minority are fighting it. They deserve our support.
But it does not help them when we deny the truth: Hateful, medievalist, supremacist, and genocidal ideologies, movements, and regimes have risen up from within the world’s Muslim communities. They are waging a war against the West — and against Muslims who don’t go along with them. Until and unless we acknowledge this, we cannot make sound decisions about how best to defend ourselves, our children, and our civilization. And make no mistake: Right now we are not.
On a recent visit to Pakistan, I met with journalists who told me they were not free to report on the terrorists attacking their Muslim nation. “You can’t be neutral when reporting on the Taliban,” one said. “They don’t believe in neutrality. They think that you, as a Muslim, must work for them. If you don’t, you — and your family — will be in danger.” More than one told me about the TV reporter who conducted a cautious interview with a Taliban commander. He was relieved when it was over, but the terrorist leader, evidently, grew dissatisfied with his performance. The reporter was tracked down, shot dead, and the video was taken from him.
For now, at least, it is not so perilous to be an American journalist. Yet so many self-censor when it comes to radical Islam; so many have succumbed to what Andy McCarthy calls “Willful Blindness”; so many have imbibed the Kool-Aid of multicultural relativism and “political correctness” that they routinely and reflexively candy-coat stories and attempt to spin their audiences.
Michael Ledeen’s excellent new book, Accomplice to Evil, explores the Western reluctance to recognize and confront threats both in the past and in the present. He begins with Baudelaire’s famous line: “The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.” These days, however, the Devil can relax. Major-league journalists are playing the trick for him.
— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzM1NGRhZDJjNDZlYTZjNmExYjM4ZGQwMDdmMDBhNzk=
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 12, 2009, 01:37:18 PM
"The Times quotes the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s condemnation of the killings, declaring that the organization is “speaking for much of the Muslim community in the United States.” On what possible basis can the Times determine that? Is there any organization that the Times would designate as speaking for much of the Christian community in the United States? How about the Jewish Community?"
We keep hearing how *most* Muslims do not hold the opinions of the Ft. Hood killer. He is a fringe of the fringe.
Oh really? Exactly how does anyone know that? Has anyone studied this?
Where is the research that proves this? And does anyone really think that many Muslims are going to admit in the open they sympathize with Jihad?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 14, 2009, 07:55:42 AM
Fitzgerald: Salam al-Marayati, loyalty, and patriotism
“Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati is the newest blogger for the popular website The Huffington Post. Here is an excerpt from his first blog: ‘As Muslims, when we take an oath of citizenship or allegiance, it is tantamount to making an oath with God: “And be true to your bond with God whenever you bind yourselves by a pledge, and do not break [your] oaths after having [freely] confirmed them and having called upon God to be witness to your good faith: behold, God knows all that you do.” - Quran 16:91. As Muslim Americans, when we take the oath of allegiance to America witnessed by our families and our friends (and now DHS), we must remain true to our word. It is an Islamic obligation to defend what we are taking an oath to, namely the constitution of the United States of America. That does not equate with supporting the policies of the government. Patriotism is not waving the flag or using it to intimidate others; patriotism is love of country, and when we as Muslim Americans see a danger to our country, such as terrorism or xenophobia, or policies that hurt the image and interests of the United States, it is our American and Islamic responsibility to change toward the betterment of America….’” -- From the Huffington Post, which apparently will now regularly include articles by Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (see the announcement here)
This is the purest taqiyya, or kitman, or combination of both.
Islam teaches -- inculcates, rather -- the notion that Muslims do not owe any allegiance to non-Muslims, not to their countries, not to their institutions, legal and political, not to anything. Within Islam -- uniquely, among world religions -- such a doctrine has arisen, and has been elaborated, and has been written about, one that is based on both the letter and spirit of the Qur'an and on the example of Muhammad, the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana), the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil). See the assurances given the Meccans in the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya.
Look at the false equivalences: “terrorism or xenophobia,” with the first referring to real acts of terror by Muslims, following promptings that are found in the texts of Islam (see the Qur’an, see the Hadith, passim) and the “xenophobia” in question merely being, in this case, not “hatred of foreigners” but, of course, the fear and suspicion of those who are adherents of Islam, a fear and suspicion that are entirely rational, and that are felt most by those who have taken the most time to inform themselves about the texts and tenets and history of Islam. And note how carefully he says that “we must remain true to our word” when we “take the oath of allegiance to America.” Why? It makes no sense to remain true to a word, or an oath, given to an Infidel polity in order to obtain American citizenship or to relieve the suspicions of non-Muslims. Islam is a Total Belief-System that reinforces, through a whole variety of means, again and again the idea that for a Muslim the main thing, possibly the only thing, in life that truly matters is being Muslim, and that loyalty to fellow Muslims and to the teachings of Islam are the only things that matter, not the trivial and the transient, the without-worth because non-Muslim, Infidel polities.
Al-Marayati pretends that Muslims are just full of the patriotism and loyalty that animates other Americans. Is this true? Have Muslims rallied to the cause of fighting against “Muslim extremism” abroad? Have they flocked into the military, imitating the Japanese-Americans of the 422nd Regiment during World War II, the first (or possibly second) most decorated regiment in the entire U.S. military? Or have the handful of Muslims who have served reported how difficult it has been for them, how they have been repeatedly criticized and attacked by other Muslims for fighting “for the Infidel”?
And what has been the behavior of Muslims, and Muslim organizations, in this country? Have they encouraged Muslims to report on that “tiny handful of extremists,” or have they repeatedly refused to do so? Have Muslim organizations, and not only CAIR, exhibited a spirit of cooperation, or have they repeatedly urged Muslims not to voluntarily cooperate but to carefully go through them, and what’s more, have encouraged Muslims to report any and all supposed “anti-Muslim incidents,” all of which are scrupulously investigated, and almost all of which have been found to be baseless, or greatly exaggerated? Have they not encouraged in Muslims themselves, and in a credulous media that believes uncritically Muslim complaints, the idea that Muslims are being “victimized”?
There are a handful of exceptions. These consist of those who, having through no fault of their own been born in to Islam, have decided that they no longer are believers. But they are unwilling, out of fear or filial piety, to declare themselves openly to be apostates, and so signal to the outside world their disenchantment with Islam by identifying themselves as “cultural Muslims” or in some other way as “Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims. They are as yet unwilling to wholeheartedly declare that disenchantment and their own falling-away from the faith.
All over the countries of Western Europe, as in the Muslim -dominated lands (Dar al-Islam), one can find the message of Islam clearly set out in the sermons of imams who are either uninhibited or perhaps, in some cases, simply unaware that they are being eavesdropped on by agents of the various Infidel governments. That message is clear: loyalty to Islam and to fellow members of the Umma comes first. And if one goes to Muslim websites (it isn't hard to do) and reads around, one discovers that the universal answer to the question "do I have to obey the laws of Infidel states if I have managed to obtain citizenship in those states" is not a resounding and unqualified "Yes" but, rather, the obvious: obey the laws of Infidel states only insofar as those laws do not contradict the principles of Islam, of the Holy Law of Islam or Shari'a. In other words, "be a good citizen" just so long as what you do does not contradict Islam.
The "loyalty" and "patriotism" that Salam Al-Marayati describes sounds fine. Anyone who knows little or nothing of Islam might be taken in. One might be if one has ignored all the evidence, in both the clearly-stated doctrines of Islam, and in what might reasonably be called the necessary developments from those doctrines -- including kitman ("mental reservation") and taqiyya. These have naturally been developed and are practiced, as we can all see, in every encounter with non-Muslims, when Muslims feel they need to conceal, in order to preserve Islam and Muslims from critical scrutiny, and to delay for as long as possible the widespread understanding of the texts and tenets of Islam.
The passage above should raise eyebrows and more than eyebrows. It is clear that Al-Marayati is determined to misrepresent Islam. It will be interesting to see what protests there are in comments, and how informed those protests are. The level of preparation of those who answer him will be important.
But all you need to do is look at Islam from the inside out -- look at the ample testimonies provided by a growing army of defectors from that other army, the army of Islam. Look at what Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells us in her Infidel about all the ways that Muslims talk about fooling the non-Muslims of the Netherlands. Look at Ibn Warraq, or Ali Sina, or all the many ex-Muslims who have contributed to such websites as the latter's www.faithfreedom.org. Look at the opinion polls, where Muslims in Western Europe support attacks within, and against, the countries and non-Muslim peoples among whom they have been allowed to settle. There they are treated by the innocent and the ignorant with great generosity, which has been repaid with a malevolent determination to relentlessly spread the power and might of Islam, and to undercut, in every way that is deemed effective, the legal and political institutions, the liberties, the social understandings, of Infidel peoples and polities.
One detects in the soft-spoken assurances of Tariq Ramadan the hiss of a slitherer. Read Caroline Fourest, or many others, on his slitherings. And then re-read carefully the excerpt from Al-Marayati above. Then go to www.faithfreedom.org, or answering-islam.org, or to the books of Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or to the articles by many defectors from Islam, or the studies of Islam by the great Western scholars who wrote during the century of flourishing Western scholarship on Islam, roughly from 1870 to 1970, which is roughly when the portcullises came down, to defend the castle of Islam, and the Age of Inhibition began.
When Al-Marayati utters his sly remarks about “love of country” and the “betterment of America,” what do you think he means? What could he possibly mean, if he is a believer in Islam? If you believe in Islam, if you believe in the Message of the Last of the Prophets, then what would be best for America, what would bring about its “betterment”? Surely not more of the same, not more of the same belief that mere men should, through the ballot, decide on the political and legal institutions of this country. Men are, or should ideally be, “slaves of Allah.” And a well-ordered world, according to Muslim doctrine, is that in which the will, not of mere mortals, but of Allah himself, is obeyed. So it is not the will of the people, expressed through elections and representative government, but rather the will of Allah, as expressed in the Qur’an and glossed by the Sunnah, that should prevail. That is surely what Al-Marayati sees as the best hope for this country, the “betterment” for which he, and all of the Believers, will naturally strive. In other words, the entire basis for the American policy is flatly contradicted by the most essential understandings of Islam.
And what does Al-Marayati think of the Constitution of the United States? What, for example, does he think of the First Amendment, and the rights of free speech, and of freedom of conscience, as guaranteed by both the Free Exercise and the Establishment clause? Does Al-Marayati think that anyone in this country who wishes to leave Islam should be perfectly free to do so without any repercussions whatsoever? What does he think about the case of Rifqa Bary? What punishment does he think should properly be meted out to those Muslim men who have, on their own, killed or greatly harmed their own daughters or wives, because they thought their daughters or wives had left Islam, or behaved in a way that brought “dishonor” to the family? And if he thinks such people should be properly punished by the full force of the law, does he also think that people guilty of similar behavior in other countries, such as Jordan or Syria or Iraq or Saudi Arabia, should also be punished? Or does he merely counsel acquiescence in the American legal system because, at present, Muslims cannot change it, and it is more important to outwardly conform -- temporarily -- with the American system so as better to work, over the long term, for changes in America that will lead to what Al-Marayati and those who think and believe like Al-Marayati consider to be the “betterment” of America?
And what could be “better” for America than the onward march of Islam, and an end to all of those elements, including the Constitution of the United States, that flatly contradict the spirit and letter of Shari’a? Just look around the world, look at the vast lands that over the past 1350 years have been conquered by Islam, ordinarily, though not exclusively, through military force. And look at the wiles and guiles that have helped Muslims avoid having to declare, in their mental baggage, as they leave the Lands of Islam (where all the failures of those lands can be intelligently attributed to the teachings of Islam itself), that they are quite different from refugees from the Nazis, who hated the Nazis and Nazism, and refugees from Communism, who hated the Communists and Communism, despite in a sense being “refugees” from the Misrule, in every sense, of Islam.
No, most of those who leave the awful societies of Dar al-Islam take a bit of Dar al-Islam with them. Yet they flee its natural violence, and aggression, and corruption, and political paralysis, and economic paralysis which are natural results both of the Muslim hatred of bida (innovation), and of the Muslim encouragement of an attitude of inshallah-fatalism. They flee an intellectual wasteland, reflected in such things as openness to the world as suggested by the number of translated works, because in Islam, what is pre—Islamic, or what is non-Islamic, is part of one vast and contemptible Jahiliyya -- save in the one area that seems truly to interest Muslims, and that is the area of weapons manufacture. While they are indifferent to pure science, they seem terribly concerned to acquire the ability to rival or surpass the West in the production, or at least accumulation, of weaponry.
There’s much more, but you can elaborate on the theme -- including the moral squalor that the mistreatment of women and of all non-Muslims reveals.
Oh, yes.
What could be better?
What could be worse?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 14, 2009, 08:06:03 AM
Just as security officials overlooked Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's links to al Qaeda cleric Anwar Aulaqi, who exhorts American Muslims to kill US soldiers, so did our leaders long turn a blind eye to a "mainstream" Muslim group's ties to this same 9/11-tied imam and other Islamic extremists.
Title: Michael Yon
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2009, 08:16:14 AM
Hostages Next Article >
Michael Yon 16 November 2009
When New York Times journalist David Rohde was kidnapped last year in Afghanistan, the company engaged in a painstaking effort to squash the story. They succeeded in persuading major media who learned of the kidnapping to keep quiet. The cover-up was so good that a New York Times reporter I spoke with in December 2008, while she and I joined Secretary Gates on a trip through Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq and back to the United States, had not heard about the David Rohde kidnapping.
The New York Times openly agrees that publishing such articles increases the peril to the lives of hostages, yet it published details about a British couple being held hostage in Somalia, and thus increased the value of the hostages to the kidnappers.
Some months after Mr. Rohde’s kidnapping started leaking, I published a generic blurb about the case, but made sure none of the information was new.
I knew more than was included in the vignette, but chose not to release it. I did not share what sources had told me: that Taliban members were being paid large sums of money (and that money was being wasted) and that some of the efforts flowed through Dubai. I have not published any other additional information from sources. Shortly after publication, March 13, 2009, I received an e-mail that included this request from a person close to Rohde:
“The NYT has asked for a news blackout while they do what they can for David Rohde's release. All the wires and the big papers are following it. Therefore, while I'm sure you don't mean any harm, I'm not sure your post about him is helpful.”
The person who e-mailed was not from the New York Times. I removed the blub I had posted to my site. Though no new information was released, I had offered the kidnappers more coverage.
Sources continued sending reports about attempts to repatriate Rohde. I had not sought out this information. It had fallen as it usually does, like rain.
After Rohde returned to the United States and details became public, the Washington Post and others contacted me about my decisions to publish and then remove the vignette. My thoughts were that if the words risked the life of Mr. Rohde, they should not be publicized.
While reading the New York Times’ article about the British couple, I became upset, and wondered why they would implement a black-out for one hostage, but not another.
I shifted my Blackberry over to Twitter and punched out some blurbs, one of which said the following:
“Numerous very well placed sources have told me New York Times/associates paid millions to get Rohde release.”
And:
“NYT is endangering the hostages in Somalia.”
It is important to know that while tweeting those words, I was sitting on an airplane, on a research trip, for an article for the New York Times. An editor had asked for something about Afghanistan, and I chose the topic of biogas, which included trips to Cambodia, Laos, Nepal (twice), Vietnam (this week), and Afghanistan.
The New York Times is one of the best sources on Iraq and Afghanistan. Their war correspondents are the “A-Team” and that included David Rohde. I was happy to write a piece for the New York Times.
The flurry of follow-on stories that picked up on my tweets, such as those by the Huffington Post, focused on ransom for Mr. Rohde, rather than the point about the harm the New York Times’ detailed coverage could cause the hostages.
On November 2, the New York Times posted a public response:
“Several Web sites repeated Monday erroneous allegations that The New York Times had paid a ransom in the case of its reporter David Rohde, held by the Taliban for seven months.”
The New York Times didn’t mention me by name, but the story continued spreading, with people reporting that I accused the New York Times of lying. Nowhere in the “tweets” was ransom mentioned, or anything about lying. I have no evidence that the New York Times misled the public, nor did I say or imply such. The tweet about money was based on what I had been told by reliable sources. Again, this is the tweet:
“Numerous very well placed sources have told me New York Times/associates paid millions to get Rohde release.”
The New York Times rebuttal statement goes on to quote David Rohde:
“American government officials worked to free us, but they maintained their longstanding policy of not negotiating with kidnappers. They paid no ransom and exchanged no prisoners. Pakistani and Afghan officials said they also freed no prisoners and provided no money.
“Security consultants who worked on our case said cash was paid to Taliban members who said they knew our whereabouts. But the consultants said they were never able to identify or establish contact with the guards who were living with us.”
Though it didn’t address the exact amount of money, the New York Times confirmed my tweet about money by acknowledging that “cash was paid to Taliban members.” My sources have said that large sums of money went through Dubai to Pakistan, not to mention the costs paid to consultants and other expenses.
Though my statements were in line with the New York Times’ statements, other outlets continued to state that I was accusing the New York Times of “lying.” Not the case.
Chris Rovzar, who blogs at New York Magazine, was off mark when he ran this headline: Freelance War Reporter Accuses Times of Lying about Taliban Bribes.
My words said nothing about lying or bribes, and I am not a “freelance” or a “reporter,” though some of the work involves reporting. I contacted Mr. Rovzar and was pleasantly rewarded by his goodwill, candor and willingness to reexamine the words.
Moving on, the New York Times picked up on points about its coverage of the Somalia story when it published:
“Bloggers also accused The Times of hypocrisy in reporting on a British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates while keeping quiet Mr. Rohde’s kidnapping. . .
“The New York Times did not break the story of the kidnapping of Paul and Rachel Chandler, and during our reporting of it The Times consulted Christine Collett, Ms. Chandler’s sister-in-law, to ask her if the family objected to the publication of any information regarding the case. Ms. Collett, who was quoted in the story, said the family had no objection to The Times reporting on the case.”
Reporting with permission from a sister-in-law hardly makes it right. How many everyday people have experiences dealing with kidnappers? In fact, the Rohde case was the first time I realized how sensitive negotiators are to even passing acknowledgment. How many of us know that even acknowledgment of the kidnapping can lead to harm? Most people are unaware, but the New York Times knows. Did the New York Times share advice on its recent experiences when it asked Ms. Collett’s permission?
This incident aside, my respect for the New York Times’ reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan is undiminished. It offers world-class coverage, and continues to be on the reading list.
The New York Times and I simply have a difference of opinion on the hostage topic.
I believe that they have been truthful, while understandably guarded on the abduction of David Rohde. It would be wrong to bash a paper that has fielded such an outstanding team in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hostage issue is just one important issue, and all points by all parties seem to have been made and noted.
Finally, it’s time to move on from this distraction to a much larger topic: Afghanistan. Bad signals are coming from the White House.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2009, 12:29:32 PM
A bit kitchy cute here and there, but some interesting factoids scattered along the way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8
Title: Mercator.net The Future of the News
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2009, 05:21:56 AM
Although I disagree with this piece's conclusions, I find it intelligent and thoughtful: =============== Natalie Fenton | Tuesday, 24 November 2009 tags : media, newsThe future of the news The collapse of a viable business model for the mainstream media raises the question of what we want news for and how it can be delivered.
The production and circulation of independent, quality news is a hallmark of democratic societies with a complex history of commercial practices, regulatory controls and technological innovation. The demise of the existing business model of the local and regional press and of broadcast news in the regions together with the struggle for survival of many national newspapers demands a critical consideration of what we want news for and how it can be delivered.
A recent study by Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media ResearchCentre provides empirical evidence that challenges utopian visions of the internet as a brave new world with everyone connected to everyone else, a non-hierarchical network of voices with equal, open and global access. This latest ‘new’ world of ‘new’ media has not greatly expanded the news that we read or hear or changed mainstream news values and traditional news formats; neither has it connected a legion of bloggers to a mass audience. Rather, as the economic model for traditional news production stumbles and falls in the digital age, professional journalism has become the first casualty, the second, if we’re not careful, and pretty close behind will be the health of our democracy.
The research draws on over 170 interviews with a range of professionals from a cross section of mainstream news media, as well as news sources and new producers online including bloggers and people operating in the realm of alternative news; we added to this, 3 newsroom ethnographies and a content analysis of online news across mainstream news media, online alternative media, social networking sites and YouTube.
We looked at the role of structural factors such as commerce, finance and regulation along with the cultural complexities of journalism, journalistic subjectivities and working practices.
And we found an industry and a practice in trouble.
Newspaper circulation and readership levels are at an all time low; there has been a tremendous growth in the number of news outlets available including the advent of, and rapid increase in, free papers, the emergence of 24 hour news and the popularization of online and mobile platforms; a decline in advertising revenue alongside cuts in personnel. With regard to local and international news production, the lack of economies of scale means that it is increasingly commercially unviable.
The Newspaper Society notes that 101 local papers closed down between January and August 2009. In those that are surviving fewer people are doing more and more work. Now I know we may all say that about our jobs, but in journalism what we see is the perfect storm – a history of marketisation, deregulation and globalisation, throw new technologies in to the mix (bringing about yet more speed and space and more need to invest in technical infrastructure). These factors combined have had a negative impact on journalism for the public good and in the public interest.
The working context of news media has increased pressures in the newsroom to fill more space (through the expansion of online platforms), work at greater speed (to fill the requirements of 24 hour news and the immediacy of online communication) with fewer journalists in permanent positions and more job insecurity.
"In the old days you had to get up in the morning and read all the newspapers, listen to the Today Programme [.…] Now, in addition to all of that we also have to keep an eye on websites, blogs of others, just in case stories crop up [.…] As on the Internet what we have to contend with is hugely increased sources of information." (Political Newspaper Editor, National Mid-Market)
"... when you’re under those time constraints, the Internet is fabulous but it’s dangerous as well. And I think that, a lot of the time people get things wrong, particularly on 24-hour news channels, it’s because they’re relying on the Internet." (Political Editor, Commercial Broadcasting)
In this environment there is evidence of journalists being thrust into news production more akin to creative cannibalization than the craft of journalism – as they need to fill more space and to work at greater speed while also having improved access to stories and sources online – they talk less to their sources, are captured in desk-bound, cut and paste, administrative journalism. Ready-made fodder from tried and tested sources takes precedence over the sheer difficulty of dealing with the enormity of user generated content or the overload of online information leading to an homogenization of content as ever increasing commercial pressures add to the temptation to rely not just on news agencies but on all cheaper forms of news gathering.
Given the speed of work, and the sheer amount of traffic and noise that journalists are exposed to every day, it is less easy for ordinary citizens and non-elite sources to make direct contact with reporters in mainstream media. In order for journalists to pick out the important information from the ‘blizzard’ online they are forced to create systems of ‘filtration’ based on known hierarchies and established news values. With so little time at their disposal journalists tend to prioritise known, ‘safe’ sources. So mainstream news on-line has not expanded to include a broader diversity of voices or shifted focus according to information filtered through social media.
And even though there is now a plethora of media outlets, and citizens and civil society can publish media content more easily than ever, there still is a dominance of a limited number of players that control news, information content and public debate. In other words mainstream news matters, maybe more than it ever has done – and most people, most of the time get most of their news from it. Furthermore the organisation of web search tends to send more users to the most popular sites in a winners take all pattern. It seems ever likely that the voices on the web will be dominated by the larger, more established news providers in a manner that, yet again, limits possibilities for increased pluralism.
In some newspapers, the combination of staff reductions and speeded up production schedules mean that only the most established senior, journalists, with the highest level of personal autonomy, have the luxury of leaving the office to talk to people, phoning a number of different people to verify information, or probing for alternative views or contradictions. But its not just the young journalists whose working practices have been transformed:
"They [journalists] don’t even try to talk to you, they just watch breaking news upstairs. I pass them every day when I come in, I pass one of the rooms and I see them watching telly and they’re banging away on the typewriters, all of them [.…] When I first came here [.…] it would be rare for that Lobby not to include some journalists, and sometimes it could be as many as ten or a dozen or twenty. Now, the only people you see in the Lobby are the fellas in the fancy breeches looking after the place [.…] I think it’s the advent of 24 hours news." (Labour MP)
What we’re left with is a contradiction between the transforming potential of new technologies and the stifling constraints of the free market.
The material conditions of contemporary journalism (particularly unprotected commercial practice) do not offer optimum space and resources to practice independent journalism in the public interest. On the contrary, job insecurity and commercial priorities place increasing limitations on journalists’ ability to do the journalism most of them want to do – to question, analyse and scrutinize.
What is the relationship between news media and democracy? A news media that can be relied upon to monitor, hold to account, interrogate power and facilitate and maintain deliberation is critical to a functioning democracy. In a world of one click communication and information overload protecting and enhancing a news media that can aim for this ethical horizon has actually become more important rather than less important. Without it we are left scrambling through the blogosphere, drowning in opinion, with no known serious fact-checking, no requirement to put stories in context, no real way of holding the writer gatherers to account. Where the well resourced and the already powerful are able to shout the loudest, twitter their way to the top of the pile while everyone else whispers in the wind.
How do we preserve it and should government have a role in media structures and behaviour? Any government that truly believes in the basic principles of democracy should be prepared to provide the means by which it can function. This means regulating news media to provide the freedom to operate in the public interest rather than purely for commercial gain. To ignore this is to accept that the market can be relied upon to deliver the conditions for deliberative democracy to flourish. Markets do not have democratic intent at their core. When markets fail or come under threat, ethical practice is swept aside in pursuit of financial stability.
How do we do it? My view is that we need to move towards a system of post-corporate, low profit or not-for-profit news supported by government funding that comes not from the Licence fee but from practices that are popular elsewhere in Europe such as industry levies and the charging of news aggregators that exploit news content.
Natalie Fenton is Reader and Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre and Goldsmiths Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy at the University of London. This article has been republished from openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2009, 10:16:33 AM
The Foundation "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
Government & Politics The Scandal That Never Happened If you have watched only network news for the last two weeks, you may not have heard about the flap over climate change data. It's the biggest scandal to rock the scientific world in quite some time.
As we noted Tuesday, servers from the UK's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) were hacked into and some 62 megabytes of data were subsequently made public. (We're not discounting the inside whistleblower theory yet.) The data include e-mail communications between noted scientists in the field of global warming, including Phil Jones and Keith Briffa of the CRU and Michael Mann from Pennsylvania State University. The release is so damning that Jones has temporarily stepped down as CRU director, pending an investigation.
In an effort to play up Mann-made global warming, the communications discuss various ways to manipulate, suppress or even destroy data showing the earth's climate to be cooling. Still, Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), insists, "This private communication in no way damages the credibility of the AR4 findings." AR4 is the latest IPCC report.
On the contrary, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a leading opponent of anthropogenic warming theories, said, "It appears that, in an attempt to conceal the manipulation of climate data, information disclosure laws may have been violated. I certainly don't condone the manner in which these emails were released; however, now that they are in the public domain, lawmakers have an obligation to determine the extent to which the so-called 'consensus' of global warming, formed with billions of taxpayer dollars, was contrived in the biased minds of the world's leading climate scientists." Billions of dollars only scratches the surface of the cost of fighting phantom warming.
Indeed, these revelations should be devastating to the envirofascists' cause. But their accomplices on the nightly news have done their best to ignore the story, focusing instead on a golfer who can't drive straight (roadway, not fairway) and a killer whale that ate a great white shark. (To their credit, newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post have devoted numerous stories to the scandal, though the Post laughably editorialized, "None of it seriously undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change.")
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also downplayed the story, saying, "In the order of several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don't think that any of that is, quite frankly among most people, in dispute." Except, yes, it is.
The importance of the truth can't be overstated, especially in the world of science and particularly with the climate summit at Copenhagen set for next week. To wit, the IPCC study blaming humans for global warming will be the basis for discussions among world leaders on how best to handicap developed industrial economies. The scientists involved in writing that report are the same ones implicated by the scandalous e-mails, leading us to conclude that much of the report -- and therefore the efforts of the world's political leaders -- is based upon lies.
Not that it was ever about the climate, mind you. Political leaders are interested in one thing: power. As Pachauri declared, "Today we have reached the point where consumption and people's desire to consume has grown out of proportion." Their goal is to redistribute our money and limit our consumption.
The scandal has possibly cost Al Gore, the "Profit" of Doom, some cold cash. Gore will be attending the Copenhagen conference and was to offer a handshake and a picture for the bargain price of $1,200. But it appears the Goracle has cancelled the engagement due to "unforeseen changes" in his schedule. If he can't even predict his own schedule, why should we believe his weather forecasts?
Title: NPR Pressures Reporter not to Appear on Fox
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 07, 2009, 06:41:47 AM
NPR reporter pressured over Fox role By: Josh Gerstein December 6, 2009 10:36 PM EST
Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.
At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.
NPR’s focus on Liasson’s work as a commentator on Fox’s “Special Report” and “Fox News Sunday” came at about the same time as a White House campaign launched in September to delegitimize the network by painting it as an extension of the Republican Party.
One source said the White House’s criticism of Fox was raised during the discussions with Liasson. However, an NPR spokeswoman told POLITICO that the Obama administration’s attempts to discourage other news outlets from treating Fox as a peer had no impact on any internal discussions at NPR.
Liasson defended her work for Fox by saying that she appears on two of the network’s news programs, not on commentary programs with conservative hosts, the source said. She has also told colleagues that she’s under contract to Fox, so it would be difficult for her to sever her ties with the network, which she has appeared on for more than a decade.
Liasson did not return phone calls seeking comment on the meetings. In an e-mail message, she declined to be interviewed for this article.
NPR spokeswoman Dana Rehm declined to discuss Liasson and her work on Fox.
“It isn’t our practice to comment about internal conversations or about personnel matters, and we’re not going to be changing that policy,” she said. “As part of our ongoing work we have internal conversations about talent appearances all the time that are part of our regular editorial evaluation.”
Rehm added, “There’s no relationship between the White House’s criticism of Fox and any discussions about Fox that we’re having.”
A Fox spokesperson declined to comment on specific questions about Liasson. However, the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said in an email: “With the ratings we have, NPR should be paying us to even be mentioned on our air.”
The White House aide behind the campaign to denounce alleged bias at Fox, then-Communications Director Anita Dunn, said she had no discussions with NPR executives about the issue. However, in an interview with NPR in mid-October, she said, “We see Fox right now as the source and the outlet for Republican Party talking points.” Dunn recently left the White House communications post.
Liasson is one of the most high-profile journalists to appear as a regular guest commentator on Fox News. A bio of Liasson posted on Fox’s website describes her as a “political contributor” and says she joined the network in 1997.
Fox disputes White House charges that it is a conservative media outlet, saying it clearly differentiates between news programs and commentary from hosts such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.
As the White House’s campaign against Fox heated up in October, Liasson’s work on Fox drew fire from Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate.
“By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations,” Weisberg wrote in an Oct. 17 Newsweek column, “Why Fox News Is Un-American.” “Respectable journalists — I'm talking to you, Mara Liasson — should stop appearing on its programs.”
In the past, NPR has caught flak over its personnel appearing on Fox News and has taken some steps to put distance in the relationship.
In February, NPR asked that journalist Juan Williams, who is a political analyst for the radio network, no longer identify himself as such when appearing on Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor.” The request followed a “Factor” appearance in January in which Williams said of first lady Michelle Obama, “She’s got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going.”
NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard wrote that she had received dozens of “angry e-mails” about Williams’s remark. However, she said NPR officials were “in a bind” because he is not a full-time NPR employee and instead works on a contract that gives him broad latitude over his non-NPR work. Williams later said he regretted the remark. In recent months, Williams has filled in on occasion as a guest host of O’Reilly’s show. Liasson has not taken such a role.
One source close to NPR executives said their discomfort with the Fox appearances by NPR personnel has been long-standing and has intensified over time.
“This has been a building thing. There has been a concern in the upper regions of NPR that Fox uses Mara and Juan as cover” to defuse arguments that the TV network is populated with right-wing voices, said the source, who asked not to be named.
One complaint from NPR executives is that this very perception that Liasson and Williams serve as ideological counterweights reinforces feelings among some members of the public that NPR tilts to the left. “NPR has its own issues in trying to convince people that, ‘Look, we’re down the middle,’” the source said. “This is a public and institutional problem that has nothing to do with Mara. Obviously, you can’t give Mara a hard time for what’s coming out of her mouth. ... She’s very careful. She isn’t trashing anybody.”
The White House’s more aggressive stance against Fox took shape back in September after officials became concerned that unfair stories were migrating from Fox to other news outlets, including The New York Times. By month’s end, the White House had gone from pointing out inaccuracies on Fox to using an official blog post to denounce “even more Fox lies.”
The anti-Fox campaign became more overt in an Oct. 8 Time story in which Dunn denounced Fox as “opinion journalism masquerading as news.”
White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod later escalated the fight by calling on other news outlets to reconsider their approach to Fox. “They are not really a news organization,” Axelrod said in an Oct. 18 interview on ABC. “It’s really not news, it’s pushing a point of view; and the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way.”
Last month, Dunn declared that the White House’s effort to raise other journalists’ doubts about Fox’s reports had succeeded.
“What was important was the idea that just because something gets aired on them didn't mean that they — that everybody else needed to go chasing it. And I think that if you looked at some of the fake stories that were created that the mainstream media felt they needed to go chase — because, you know, for whatever reason, they were getting pressure to, quote, ‘Why aren't you being balanced?’” she said at a conference sponsored by Bloomberg News. “I think it did — it did help people get a sense of perspective again ... to the extent that, you know, people took a step back and said, ‘Hmm, am I really wanting to go chase those stories?’”
“I kept saying to people, ‘You know, if you're going to go chase those stories, get a second source,’” Dunn said.
Title: Forget privacy
Post by: ccp on December 07, 2009, 07:36:02 AM
From one who has had my total privacy invaded I find this interesting. When one sees the close up picture of Schmidt one can understand how money can but anything - including lots of girlfriends (he would make a good catch for Susan Boyle):
Google CEO: Secrets Are for Filthy People Eric Schmidt suggests you alter your scandalous behavior before you complain about his company invading your privacy. That's what the Google CEO told Maria Bartiromo during CNBC's big Google special last night, an extraordinary pronouncement for such a secretive guy.
The generous explanation for Schmidt's statement is that he's revolutionized his thinking since 2005, when he blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gleaned from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations. In that case, the married CEO must not mind all the coverage of his various reputed girlfriends; it's odd he doesn't clarify what's going on with the widely-rumored extramarital dalliances, though.
Schmidt's philosophy is clear with Bartiromo in the clip below: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." The philosophy that secrets are useful mainly to indecent people is awfully convenient for Schmidt as the CEO of a company whose value proposition revolves around info-hoarding. Convenient, that is, as long as people are smart enough not to apply the "secrets suck" philosophy to their Google passwords , credit card numbers and various other secrets they need to put money in Google's pockets.
Title: Media Issues, Mara Liasson on Fox panel
Post by: DougMacG on December 07, 2009, 09:12:41 AM
Worst part of this story (?) is that Obama through Anita Dunn is the force that caused the scrutiny.
Should the inmates be handpicking the guards at the asylum?
If Fox was guilty of bias, wouldn't critics want more not fewer Mara Liasson's on the panels and more liberals not fewer as guests?
What they really want is to hurt your career and your income if you criticize or affiliate with administration critics.
If I could I would cut back on my donations to NPR. ------
Meanwhile, no word yet (?) from ABC, CBS, NBC or the news pages of major liberal bankrupt newspapers about the 16 day old largest scandal of our time - climategate.
Title: WSJ: the Rabbit Ears Wars
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2009, 03:43:02 AM
You stupidly built a drive-in theater in the desert just as your customers were all deciding to stay home and watch HBO. Fortunately, the theater turns out to be sitting on a mountain of oil.
With a few asterisks, such is the situation of old-style TV broadcasters, whose viewers have fled to cable or satellite but whose spectrum is lusted after by the wireless industry. According to a much-noted study sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association, in the hands of the broadcasters, that spectrum is worth a mere $12 billion. In the hands of mobile phone carriers struggling to meet explosive growth for mobile broadband, it would be worth $62 billion.
To the Silicon Valley types who people the Obama administration, this suggests a rational policy: Pay broadcasters to give up some or all of the airwaves used to send signals to their dwindling rabbit-ear audience. Turn it over to mobile phone folks at a hefty markup.
Blair Levin, a veteran telecom analyst who heads the FCC's broadband efforts, has floated a Hindenburg of a trial balloon by broaching just such a deal with broadcasters. Virtually all agree that any such "grand bargain," to be politically deliverable, must enlist the willing, nay eager, participation of broadcast station owners. No problem—broadcasters would be the biggest winners, right?
Sadly, remember what happened to the original Hindenburg. Broadcasters, who have a keen sense of political realities, note that their broadcast licenses don't actually confer a property right, so whatever deal the FCC struck with them, Congress would certainly rewrite it to make sure Congress got all the money. Broadcasters would receive squat, and probably be vilified as bandits in the process.
"Pipe dream" was the verdict of Colleen Brown, chief of Fisher Communications, owner of 20 stations in the Pacific Northwest.
"Politically they would fall flat on their face," opined Sinclair Broadcasting's Mark Aitken, estimating the agency's chances selling a cash-for-spectrum deal to Congress.
But, hold on. We mentioned asterisks. The FCC and Mr. Levin are correct (and brave) in pointing out the need for a market mechanism to guide spectrum to its highest and best uses. But the FCC is in no position to know whether mobile broadband is that higher and better use. A reason is the regulatory straitjacket, including ownership limits, that for decades has prevented license holders themselves from exploring new broadcast business models.
OpinionJournal Related Stories: Jenkins: Neutering the Net Jenkins: The Coming Mobile Meltdown .For the truth is, broadcast offers impressive economies for distributing rich media content compared to the Internet. An infinity of users can be served by a single bitstream. It doesn't matter how many receivers tune into a TV broadcast. It never gets overloaded.
Consider a small company called Sezmi, now testing in Los Angeles a competitor to cable and satellite TV. Users get a box with a powerful HDTV antenna, allowing them to receive not just traditional over-the-air TV channels but also popular cable networks, broadcast locally using spare capacity leased from TV stations.
A separate broadband connection supplies on-demand movies and even material plucked from YouTube. And to help make the most of limited bandwidth, each also comes with a giant terabyte-sized disk drive capable of storing many hours of programming, automatically downloaded in advance based on a viewer's demonstrated habits and tastes.
All this, of course, would also yield a cornucopia of information with which to deliver the truly individualized advertising that TV ad buyers crave.
Who knows whether Sezmi will pan out technologically, and at the very-much-cheaper-than-cable price the company touts. The FCC quite properly worries about a coming mobile capacity crunch, with all those proliferating iPhones. But throwing spectrum at it won't be the only solution. Greater integration of fixed and wireless will help. Software innovation, cramming more bits into the same frequency, will help. So will usage-based pricing. And as Sezmi shows, local storage can substitute for bandwidth too.
The FCC is looking in the right direction, but we need more than just a "market solution" to liberate spectrum from the current government-approved incumbents. We need a market that can fully explore the potential of all the business models that might contest to find the highest and best use of that resource.
In the meantime, the agency's trial balloon is having a perverse effect, spurring broadcasters to new Potemkin feats to prove they are making full use of their existing spectrum, such as rolling out new digital "subchannels" that nobody watches. Some broadcasters even invoke the 1962 All-Channel Receiver Act and insist a new "golden age of broadcasting" is around the corner—just as soon as the FCC mandates that every smart phone be capable of receiving over-the-air TV signals.
In short, one picture is starting to come in clearly: The spectrum puzzle won't be solved by the clean and simple deal the agency envisioned just a month ago.
Title: NYT Climate Guy Calls it Quits
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 14, 2009, 07:40:07 PM
It's pretty hard to imagine that Climategate didn't play a role as Revkin was mentioned repeatedly in the outed emails:
Andy Revkin to leave Dot Earth and NYT
His last day will be December 21st, 2009. Dot Earth can be viewed here.
I can’t say I’m surprised. About a month ago, I had an email exchange with Andy on this subject, where he shared with me that he might leave.
While I often disagree with Andy’s postings, I will say that he has been extraordinarily civil to me and also to Steve McIntyre, compared to some others in the same business of writing about climate (you know who you are). He has never not responded to an email I’ve sent him.
He’s been a worthy opponent, let’s hope that whomever replaces him (if there is a replacement, NYT is doing major staffing cutbacks and employee buyouts) has the same or higher standards of conduct.
He cites frustration with journalism and also personal fatigue after routinely working virtually 24/7 in recent years. This I can understand. Keeping WUWT running these days demands similar efforts.
Yale Climate and Media Forum has more details.
On behalf of WUWT and it’s community, please join me in wishing Mr. Revkin good health and success in his next venture. – Anthony Watts
Title: Warming Reporters Left Cooling their Heels
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 16, 2009, 06:01:47 AM
Climate reporter--most of whom regurgitate the AGW party line reflexively--are left standing in line for accreditation in Denmark. The UN can't even get a line of allies registered for their climate conference, but expect to manage a carbon indulgence program?
AP’s Seth Borenstein left out in the cold at Copenhagen for 7 hours thanks to U.N. incompetence
I try to remind people that the U.N. has not succeeded at much of anything during its history. Mostly it just makes pronouncements and consumes cash. When it comes to doing any real work, they fall down on the job, because most of the people that make up the U.N. have never had to do any real work themselves.
So I hope this lesson on the U.N. to Seth Borenstein sinks in. He’ll hardly forget his day in the cold I’m sure.
Temperature and Weather on Dec14th in Copenhagen: Hi 33 °F Lo 31 °F Humidity average 89%, winds averaged 6 mph for a wind chill of 26°F. Overcast.
From the Climate Pool:
Seth’s toes are finally warm. In his security photo he is grinning like a child — and with reason. He’s finally in. “You have no idea how important water and a bathroom is until you don’t have it,” he said after waiting 7 hours and 20 minutes to enter the Copenhagen climate talks.
Attendees wait in a line to pick up accreditation at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Dec. 14. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) With U.N. security letting in only those cleared last week, hundreds of accredited delegates, journalists and NGO representatives were left to stand for hours in near-freezing temperatures before being let through. “It was crazy,” AP’s Seth Borenstein said. “You couldn’t leave the line. You couldn’t go to the bathroom, you couldn’t eat. Then snowflakes started falling. One woman even said, ‘if lightning strikes me, would they take me out of line?’”
People started handing out food — one gave out tangerines, another croissants. A man screamed “I don’t need food. I need socks! I’m freezing my ass off out here.” At one point, a U.N. official announced the wait would be longer, prompting the crowd to boo and chant “Let Us In!”
An Indian TV crew member interviewing actor Rahul Bose quipped “we’ll just do our interviews out here!” to which Bose mused “when bad things happen in a first-world country, it’s really a disaster!”
Seth himself stepped into the line at 7:55 a.m. and was through at 3:15 p.m., but only after another AP reporter, John Heilprin, “saved my bacon” by persuading a U.N. security guard to go out and fetch him. “John was afraid to go out himself in case they wouldn’t let him back in … the first thing I did when I saw him was give him a big hug. I have never been so grateful to be indoors.” Seth’s neighbors in line? “Oh they’re still out there.”
And it looks like they might stay there. With 40,000 people registered and Bella Center’s capacity only 15,000, the U.N. introduced a new quota system and ordered NGOs to cut down their numbers. Police shut down the Bella Center’s subway stop in a bid to ease the congestion. The situation can only get worse as more than 100 heads of state and government, including President Obama, show up this week with their entourages.
Many among the 3,500 accredited journalists worry they may be “locked down” in the press area and kept away from the conference center’s central atrium where delegates, presidents and premiers would circulate.
UPDATE: At 5 p.m., U.N. officials told everyone still in line that accreditation would close at 6 p.m. and so they should leave until Tuesday morning. Police started pulling people out of the crowd, which shouted back “Shame on the U.N.!” The U.N. then apologized for the inconvenience — a gesture met with more booing and chanting.
Katy Daigle is based in London and covers international news for the AP
==========
And they want the U.N. to run our global carbon system and handle all the money? Hell they can’t even handle the press line.
Title: "False Balance" Follies
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 29, 2009, 10:22:04 AM
The lack of climate skeptics on PBS's 'Newshour'
Russell Cook I stopped watching commercial network news in the '80s, but still had PBS' MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and its trademark two-side analysis of major news. Gradually after 2002, the lack of global warming skeptic scientists offering rebuttal to their IPCC guests began bothering me, so I wrote and asked about it, starting in 2007. I also started writing to the Media Research Center this year, asking them to include PBS when they criticized broadcast news outlets' lack of balance in global warming stories. Long story short, the PBS Ombudsman answered on 12/17 (here, 2/3rds down the page at the headline "Hot About Warming"), and Tim Graham at MRC's NewsBusters also wrote a nice 12/21 analysis of PBS' response.
What's missing from the PBS response is an outright explanation for its lack of skeptic scientist guests, and Ombudsman Getler's "danger of establishing a false equivalence" observation was a head-snapper for me because it mimics Society of Environmental Journalists board director Robert McClure's opinion in his October 16th reply to me at his web page here (comment #7).
I cannot speak for The News Hour, but I do know that for me and most other journalists covering climate change, there came a time when scientists like Singer and Michaels no longer were credible.
Yes, we *could* have one of them in a story, or on a show, and have a representative of the "other side." But that would be false balance.
Interestingly, McClure wrote in his July 2006 Seattle P-I blog about skeptic Pat Michaels, quoting CNN's Peter Dykstra:
He fills the false journalistic need for balance on the topic...
An isolated observation? From a 2007 PDF file, "ExxonMobil's Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science" at the Union of Concerned Scientists' site:
...journalists' inclination to provide political "balance" leads to inaccurate media reporting on scientific issues. Far from making news stories more balanced, quoting ExxonMobil-funded groups and spokespeople misleads the public by downplaying the strength of the scientific consensus...
From a 2005 Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard page, "Global Warming: What's Known vs. What's Told", first quoting from other Nieman writers, then environment reporter Bud Ward:
"The result of the routine media practice of quoting conflicting 'sides,'" wrote Corbett and Durfee, is "giving equal weight to fringe and nonscientists as much as scientists ... even though the majority of evidence or opinion may fall clearly to one side."
Ward: ..."the old journalism 101 thing about balance" is creating a problem in the coverage of climate change. "Balance in some cases can be the enemy of accuracy..."
From a Competitive Enterprise Institute PDF by David Murray, "The Political Economy of Climate Science, Print Media and Climate Change Coverage", noting Arizona Republic reporter Steve Wilson's November 24, 1995 article quote about ASU professor Robert Balling:
"... greenhouse critics like Arizona's own, Dr. Robert Balling "should continue to be heard, but they should not counterbalance the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion."
Finally, one with an intriguing twist - from former reporter Ross Gelbspan in another 2005 Nieman Foundation piece, describing the fossil fuel lobby:
For the longest time, this industry's well-funded disinformation campaigns have duped reporters into practicing a profoundly distorted form of journalistic balance. In the early 1990's, the coal industry paid a tiny handful of dissenting scientists (with little or no standing in the mainstream scientific community) under the table to deny the reality of climate change.
Excuse me? What "journalistic balance"? If the NewsHour's ultimate explanation is that they did avoid such a 'distorted form of journalistic balance' for years, did they first check the veracity of accusations against skeptics?
Has any mainstream media news outlet checked the veracity of those accusations of corruption?
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.html at December 29, 2009 - 01:20:42 PM EST
Title: Media Issues: PBS News Hour
Post by: DougMacG on December 29, 2009, 02:55:43 PM
"...Lehrer NewsHour and its trademark two-side analysis of major news"
Within the constraints of broadcast TV this was one of the best for me. Used to make a ritual of watching Paul Gigot for 5 minutes on Fridays and getting a good feel for what was going on in Washington that week. After he was promoted at WSJ and replaced at PBS with David Brooks, it became a moderate Obama supporter bantering with a totally partisan leftist for pretend political balance and all value lost for my point of view. I quit watching so I missed the balance lost on climate, but keeping one side off is shameful. I'm glad someone is holding PBS feet to the fire. It would be very interesting if correspondence about this shows up in the climategate emails. Would not surprise me, very much like the Orwellian fight to keep opposing views out of peer review. Shame on the News Hour for succumbing to that pressure. I wonder if there is enough taxpayer dollars involved to qualify for a freedom of information act inquiry into the correspondence around the time balance was dropped.
BTW, I always thought Jim Lehrer was the best in the business at asking both sides good questions and keeping whatever his own views are out of it. The balance was so good that my liberal cousin and I had the same favorite news show while taking the exact opposite lessons from it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Rarick on January 02, 2010, 08:10:40 AM
I liked watching the news hour since it gave me the points and information to do my own poking around if I was so inclined. I often reached the "Politicians justifying their job" conclusion. This is , there was no problem aside from the politicians choosing opposite views on the issue and scooping up various studies and info for the sake of argument. (the don't run with scissors in your hand, and drowning in the 5 gallon bucket type issues).
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2010, 05:37:00 PM
Brit Hume: 'Jesus Christ' the 'Most Controversial Two Words You Can Ever Utter in the Public Square' Thursday, January 07, 2010
By Karen Schuberg
(CNSNews.com) – Brit Hume said he was “not surprised” by the media backlash over his remarks to Tiger Woods on “Fox News Sunday” this week. There is a “double-standard” when it comes to speaking publicly about Christianity versus other religions, he said.
Hume, a Fox News analyst, told CNSNews.com: “There is a double standard. If I had said, for example, that what Tiger Woods needed to do was become more deeply engaged in his Buddhist faith or to adopt the ideas of Hinduism, which I think would be of great spiritual value to him, I doubt anybody would have said anything.”
Last Sunday, Hume suggested the golfer-- who has stated that he is Buddhist -- look to Christianity for help to makeover his personal life. In response to host Chris Wallace’s question asking him to predict the biggest sports story of 2010, Hume speculated that while Woods would recover professionally from his now-public admission of adultery, the comeback of his personal life is currently a question mark.
“Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer.” Hume began. “Whether he can recover as a person I think is a very open question, and it’s a tragic situation for him.
“I think he’s lost his family; it’s not clear to me if he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children, but the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal -- the extent to which he can recover -- seems to me to depend on his faith.” Hume said.
The former newsman-turned-commentator continued: “He’s said to be a Buddhist; I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be: ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’”
Hume faced severe media backlash for his Christian words to Woods.
On Tuesday, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann accused Hume of an “attempt to threaten Tiger Woods into converting to Christianity.”
MSNBC anchor David Shuster blasted Hume, saying he had no business mentioning Christianity on a political talk show.
“I do think (talking about Christianity on a political talk show) diminishes the discussion of Christianity,” Shuster said. “My Christian friends have said as much, that it diminishes the discussion of Christianity and faith when you have a conversation out-of-the-blue on a political talk show. This wasn’t the ‘700 Club,’ this wasn’t ‘Theocracy Today.’”
Tom Shales, media critic for the Washington Post , in a Tuesday column, demanded that Hume apologize and called his Christian remarks “even only a few days into January, as one of the most ridiculous of the year.”
When CNSNews.com asked Hume if the media uproar over his comments regarding Tiger Woods and a potential conversion to Christianity caught him by surprise, he replied, “No, I’m not surprised.”
When asked if he would do it again, Hume did not hesitate to respond affirmatively.
“Sure,” he said.
CNSNews.com asked Hume: “Why is Jesus Christ taboo in polite conversation or in the world of politics and media?”
“I think it’s been true for a long time in many cultures. It is certainly true in secular America today that the most controversial two words you can ever utter in a public space are ‘Jesus Christ,’” Hume said.
When asked to speculate about the reasons for the mainstream media’s vitriolic reception of Christianity, Hume initially expressed bewilderment
“I’m somewhat at a loss to explain it because so many of the people who purport to be aghast at such mentions are themselves at least nominally Christian. But there it is,” Hume said.
He added: “I think it is true that for people who are not Christian, Christianity makes a fairly extravagant claim which is that the Son of God -- God made Flesh -- came into this world, lived, suffered terribly, and died for the remission of our sins, and then rose again. This is a huge supernatural event, and a lot of people don’t—have a lot of trouble believing it. But if you do purport to believe it, the implications are pretty staggering. And the result is you may end up talking about it,” Hume said.
Hume also ventured possible practical reasons for the public’s searing distaste for Christianity.
“There is certainly a level of anti-Christian bigotry that may have something to do with the fact that on certain issues, the views of Christians are against theirs on certain matters such as abortion and others, but I can’t account for all of it. It is a striking reality, however,” Hume concluded.
The Rev. Pat Mahoney, a Presbyterian minister and executive director of the Christian Defense Coalition in Washington, D.C., said it is important to put Hume’s words on "Fox News Sunday" into context.
“When Brit Hume made the comment, it was not as a newsperson, but it was in a commentary analyst context,” Mahoney said. “He wasn’t reporting on a hard news story. He was sharing 'opinioned' fact which many of the news programs encourage their commentators to do.”
Noting that many journalists feel “awkward” when dealing with matters of Christianity, Mahoney said: “I think really what they are denigrating . . . is (what journalists feel is) a conservative political point of view. That it isn’t so much Christianity per se, but I think it’s how they view Christians,” Mahoney said.
“I think there’s a stereotype among journalists on viewing Christians, that somehow they’re rigid, they’re bigoted, they’re harsh, they’re judgmental, they’re mean-spirited, etc., and that comes forth,” Mahoney added.
“I think (Hume) was trying to reach out to Tiger and offer him hope, and I don’t think Brit Hume should be muzzled on areas of faith when your commentators should be able to freely share [their] opinions on a host of issues,” Mahoney said.
Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in New York City, said Hume was not “imposing” anything.
“He was simply proposing something publicly, and this should be taken at face value,” Donahue said.
Donahue said the double standard reveals itself in the absence of public outrage over atheists who have become “increasingly dogmatic and aggressive and very public and vocal” in expressing their contempt for Christianity.
At heart, the backlash of “hatred” towards Hume’s comments is a reaction against conservative sexual mores, Donahue said.
“So much of it has to do with sexuality of course, because the cultural elites in our society don’t want to be told 'no' by anyone. And when they look at Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, they see a religion which essentially speaks to virtues of sexual restraint. And that’s really what’s undergirding this,” he told CNSNews.com.
Title: Post Colllapse, I
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 19, 2010, 07:30:29 AM
Post Apocalypse - inside the collapse of a great newspaper The New Republic | January 19, 2010 | Gabriel Sherman
On July 2 of last year, Politico broke a startling story: The Washington Post was planning to host off-the-record salons at which sponsors would pay to mingle with D.C. eminences and Post writers. The dinners--the first of which had been advertised in Post fliers as an “exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done”--were to take place at the home of Katharine Weymouth, the Post’s publisher.
Weymouth, granddaughter of legendary Post owner Katharine Graham, had only been on the job for a year and a half. Now she was at the center of a potentially major journalistic scandal. Even though she was on vacation in Europe at the time, she was quick to react. “Absolutely, I’m disappointed,” she told Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. “This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren’t vetted.” A few days later, Weymouth penned a letter apologizing to readers. But that wasn’t enough to make the matter go away. The paper’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, soon published an investigation concluding that Weymouth and other top Post employees had been intimately involved in planning the salons and knew about their off-the-record status. The episode, Alexander wrote, constituted “an ethical lapse of monumental proportions.” (Click here to read what Andrew Sullivan calls the "best new blog.") [1]
What Alexander didn’t say, and what Weymouth never quite admitted, was that the salons had, in fact, been her idea. Weymouth had wanted to get the Post into the conference business even before she was promoted to publisher, according to two senior executives close to her. “She had floated the [salon] idea several times,” says one of the executives. “There was no enthusiasm on the sales side to pursue it.” But Weymouth was determined to make the dinners happen, envisioning them as the first iteration of a series of ambitious conferences that would attract advertisers and readers.
Last spring, the Post recruited Charles Pelton, a fifty-two-year-old event planner whose firm had helped organize corporate-sponsored conferences for The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. Pelton was given an office in the Post executive suite. According to one source, Pelton was more interested in planning large conferences than salons, which didn’t need his level of expertise and were, moreover, financially irrelevant. (At most, the events would generate around half a million dollars, an amount that wouldn’t contribute any meaningful revenue to the Post’s bottom line.) But, given that it would be easier to plan the salons than the conferences, Pelton decided to start with the smaller events. He did, however, disagree with Weymouth about the venue: He believed her four-bedroom Chevy Chase house was too far outside the city center and not sophisticated enough for a high-level gathering. Instead, he suggested using a downtown restaurant, while another executive proposed the Georgetown residence of Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee. But Weymouth rebuffed both ideas: She wanted the salons held at her home.
After the news of the salons surfaced in July, the events were canceled and the paper scuttled plans to host a larger conference modeled on Davos. Two months later, Pelton resigned. But, by then, the damage from salongate, as it came to be known, was done. Publicly, the Post had been humiliated; privately, the scandal had left the newsroom questioning the judgment of both Weymouth and Marcus Brauchli, the paper’s new editor. Brauchli had been on the job for only a year, and it was soon revealed that he, too, had been involved in planning the dinners. “I’ve been very upset by all this stuff,” one senior Post staffer told me recently. “It’s like, oh God, who are these people?” (Click here to read how Democrats can pass health care--even if Coakley loses.) [2]
Why had Weymouth been so intent on holding the salons? One theory was that she was simply naïve. “This was inexperience on her part,” says former Post executive editor Len Downie. Another held that her ego was to blame. “I think Katharine wants to relive the glory days of her grandmother,” says one executive, alluding to Katharine Graham’s legendary dinner parties. (When I spoke to her recently, Weymouth declined to revisit the salon episode.) But, whatever the explanation, one thing seemed undeniable: The Washington Post was a desperate paper, and, in pushing the salons, Weymouth had essentially been casting about for anything, large or small, that might help to save it. Over the past year, the Post has folded its business section into the A-section, killed its book review, revamped its Sunday magazine, and redesigned the entire paper and website, while organizationally merging the print and online editions. Hundreds of staffers have left the Post since 2003, thanks to four rounds of buyouts. In 2008, the Post began losing money; in 2009, its advertising revenue dropped by $100 million. All of this while the paper was under siege from new competitors, national and local. “The common storyline is the Post is flailing,” a senior reporter says. “To me, it’s slightly different. It’s throwing everything up there to see what sticks.” “Everybody feels like we’re lurching,” says another reporter. “A company in chaos” is how a third Post staffer describes the state of the paper.
The Post, of course, is not alone; other large newspapers are suffering financially as well. And yet, the Post’s financial decline is only part of the story. Over the past few months, I have talked to about 50 current and former reporters, editors, Web staffers, and business employees. From these conversations, a picture has emerged of a paper suffering an identity crisis. Its peers seem to have coherent strategies for saving themselves: The New York Times is doubling down on journalism in the belief that it can persevere online as the global newspaper of record; The Wall Street Journal remains the country’s definitive chronicler of business; other large papers have tried to distinguish themselves by burrowing into local issues. But the Post seems to be paralyzed-and trapped. It can’t go completely local because the local news in Washington is, in many respects, national; and its status as the paper of record for national politics is under assault from numerous competitors--competitors it isn’t clear the Post can defeat. Meanwhile, the tense, even hostile, relationship between the print and online divisions hasn’t made the paper’s search for a coherent identity any easier. And so, in a new era for journalism, The Washington Post has yet to figure out what it wants to be. The result has been a lot of lurching--some of it (like salongate) embarrassing, much of it merely ineffective, but almost all of it suggesting a newspaper in disarray.
Watergate turned the Post into one of the most famous newspapers in the world. But what brought the Post fame never brought in much money. National and international news weren’t lucrative for the paper. Instead, the Post’s financial performance was fueled by its domination of the local market. Currently, the paper--print and online combined--penetrates 63 percent of local households, which, according to the Post, is the highest percentage among the ten largest metropolitan newspapers.
Looming over this history was also a bit of good luck that may have ultimately backfired: In my conversations with Post staffers, they repeatedly cited Katharine Graham’s prescient purchase of Kaplan, the education and test-prep company, as a source of financial strength that bolstered the Post when the newspaper industry began struggling in recent years. But the success of Kaplan may have also provided a financial cushion that insulated the Post from making changes necessary to survive in a new climate.
While the Post’s most famous editor was Ben Bradlee, it was Len Downie’s seventeen-year tenure as editor that did far more to shape the institution’s culture. “The paper was sexy after Watergate, but it was erratic,” a former senior staffer says. “Len professionalized the newsroom.” Downie’s judgment and earnestness--he famously refused to vote so he wouldn’t have any appearance of political bias and loved stories about tornados and hurricanes--was a source of confidence for Post editors and reporters. “The reason salongate never would have happened with Len,” a former senior editor says, “is that Len would have heard the idea and he would have said, ‘It’s a stupid idea, don’t come to me with this shit. We’re doing journalism here.’”
But Downie and Don Graham--Katharine’s son, who succeeded her as publisher--were slow to adapt, even as the media world was fracturing around them. Much of their strategy was built around bulking up local coverage and expanding deeper into the D.C. suburbs. Graham also famously separated the print and Web departments--sending the online division to Arlington, Virginia.
Beginning in the late 1990s, a debate over the Post’s identity developed in the newsroom, as the Web made it possible to reach readers anywhere, at virtually no cost. On one side was Steve Coll, a brilliant foreign correspondent who had been promoted to managing editor. After New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger strong-armed the Grahams out of the Post’s 50 percent stake in the International Herald Tribune in 2002, Coll led a task force that proposed using up to $10 million from the proceeds of the IHT sale to build up the Post’s national and international coverage. Graham rejected the idea. “Don’s feeling at that time was it wasn’t about the dollars; at that point, the paper was minting money,” a former senior staffer says. “The fear was: If we invest in the national audience, the delicate balance will shift away from the local audience.”
By the early part of this decade, Downie had held onto power too long and stunted the ambitions of the editors coming up behind him. “Len wouldn’t do things they felt needed to be done,” says former Post political reporter Peter Baker, who left the paper for the Times in 2008. “A whole generation of younger editors were smothered by a leadership that was resistant to change.” In August 2005, Coll, who was a newsroom favorite and Downie’s logical successor, announced he was leaving to join The New Yorker as a staff writer. “If Len had decided to retire after 2002, Coll wouldn’t have left the paper,” says a former senior staffer. Explains another: “Particularly as financial pressures grew, editors were spending all their time on thankless budgets, cutting the budgets, going to meetings to try to figure out how to do more with less resources, and figuring out how to reorganize the place under the shadow of a guy who didn’t want these things to happen.” (“I may have been excessively hands-on, though you can never see it in yourself,” Downie told me. “I don’t know if I stifled anyone under me.”)
Like Coll, John Harris was in the ambitious generation of staffers in their forties who chafed under Downie. Harris had joined the Post as an intern in 1985 and risen to become the paper’s national politics editor. In directing the Post’s coverage of the 2006 midterm elections, he saw how radically the Web and cable news had changed journalism. And he knew that the Post was woefully unprepared for these new realities. The Web and print sides rarely collaborated, with print editors disdaining the Web culture.
In October 2006, Harris and White House correspondent Jim VandeHei secretly met with Robert Allbritton, who owns a string of TV stations, to discuss their plans to launch a politics-only Web venture. At the time, Allbritton was planning to start a Capitol Hill newspaper to take on Roll Call and The Hill. Harris and VandeHei convinced him to think bigger. They envisioned a Web-focused organization that would compete not just inside the Beltway for congressional scoops, but with the national political press corps--and the Post itself.
Downie counter-offered and told Harris and VandeHei they could manage a staff of eight to ten if they developed their project in-house. But Harris and VandeHei had plans to staff a newsroom of 100 reporters and editors. In November, they left the paper. Many of the people I spoke with agreed that the decision to let them walk out the door ended up being a disaster for the Post. “What a mistake,” says Baker. “The most obvious indictment is the failure to foresee what opportunities were out there that John Harris and Jim had created.”
In the wake of Harris and VandeHei’s departure, managing editor Phil Bennett installed Susan Glasser to run the paper’s national desk. As a foreign correspondent, and then the well-regarded editor of the Post’s Outlook section, Glasser (who is married to Baker) had established herself as a rising star. And she was one of the few print staffers to embrace the Web. But, as a manager, Glasser’s frequent clashes with her staff roiled the newsroom and spilled into unflattering articles in the Washington City Paper and Washingtonian. Morale plummeted. Her aggressive push for political coverage put the Post in competition for scoops with Politico during the 2008 race, but also angered some staffers who disagreed with her news judgment. “The coverage of Washington became much more inside-baseball coverage,” one former staffer told me. At a newsroom meeting in February 2008, shortly after Hillary Clinton fired her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, reporter Carol Leonnig asked Downie why the Post had run three political stories off the front page--including one on Solis Doyle’s departure and another mentioning it--on the same day. “You might have thought Patti would have been shot,” Leonnig said, according to three people present. “This is what The Washington Post does,” Downie retorted.
Despite defending Glasser to the newsroom, Downie and senior Post management began to recognize a growing problem. In April, Glasser’s eighteen-month tenure on the national desk ended after a panel overseen by human-resources editor Tom Wilkinson investigated her management practices. Days later, Baker quit the Post to join the Times. “I left because of what happened to my wife,” he told me. Baker, who grew up in suburban Fairfax County and idolized the Post, is still raw over his wife’s experience. “I never wanted to go to The New York Times,” he says. “I wanted to work at The Washington Post for the rest of my life. ... Having said that, looking at the way things are today, there’s part of me--I’m glad I’m not there. It would be very depressing.”
The Glasser episode was among the first management decisions for Weymouth, who had been named publisher two months earlier. A lawyer by training, Weymouth was the daughter of Lally Weymouth, one of Katharine Graham’s four children. Despite hailing from Washington royalty, she grew up outside the Beltway bubble on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She studied ballet and went to Harvard and then Stanford Law School. In contrast to her grandmother, Weymouth was relatively unknown on the D.C. social circuit. “Katharine lives in a modest house and drives her kids around in a van,” a senior Post executive says. “And yet, I think she wants the stature that comes with being publisher. I’m not sure how you reconcile all of that.”
Title: Post Colllapse, II
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 19, 2010, 07:30:46 AM
Unlike her uncle Don, who spent a year in the newsroom as a metro reporter, Weymouth had come up exclusively through the business side of the paper. At most major papers, the business and news departments view each other suspiciously, and the Post was no exception. The business staff felt that the news side condescended to local readers. While the paper raked in money covering local issues, the ethos of the Post newsroom was defined by its national and foreign reporting. “She drank down some of the High Church newsroom criticism,” a former senior staffer says. “The business side thought, ‘They’ve lost touch with their readers; they don’t care about firemen.’” “She missed the year that Don had [in the newsroom] where he got to know editors, but, more than that, he got to know the ethic,” says veteran reporter Walter Pincus. “Literally, she only knew five or six of us.” Downie told me he had wanted Weymouth to join the newsroom and discussed the idea with her on several occasions in the late 1990s and early 2000s--but the timing never worked, given her increasing role on the business side.
A few months into her tenure, Weymouth took a group of senior Post employees to Harvard Business School for a weeklong corporate boot camp. That retreat kicked off a series of high-level strategy meetings at the Post that continued through much of 2008, as Weymouth tried to figure out a way forward for the paper. The financial picture was downright awful. Advertising, already weak, had taken a secondary dive in the wake of the economic crisis. Once again, the question of the Post’s identity was at the heart of the discussions. Should the Post go hyper-local, as was in vogue in newspaper circles? Should it redouble its political coverage to counter the Politico threat? Would the Web or print dominate?
Near the end of 2008, Post president Stephen Hills met with Weymouth and the top brass to deliver his final recommendations. The conclusion was that print was just too valuable to deemphasize. To illustrate the point, according to one participant in the meeting, Hills put up a chart showing that a daily print subscriber represents $500 in revenue for the paper, while a website reader brings in only $6. “In Steve’s presentation, he was completely focused on the print paper,” the participant recalls. “If you sat in these meetings, the biggest problem was the person who runs the business side doesn’t care about the Web. You bring up mobile and he gets uncomfortable. He’d rather talk about if we should deliver to Charlottesville or not.” (Hills did not respond to phone calls. For her part, Weymouth defends the Post’s balance between Web and print. “Print is still the revenue driver now,” she says. “We are conscious that the Web is a critical part of the future. We are navigating our way through this transition.”)
Even as Weymouth was rethinking the paper’s business model, she had also decided that she needed a new executive editor. Some senior staffers I spoke with pointed out that Weymouth and Downie were not particularly close. Her grandmother had named Ben Bradlee; now Weymouth wanted her own pick. At his sixty-sixth birthday celebration in May 2008, Downie told the newsroom staff that he intended to stay until he was 70. He was stung when Weymouth told him shortly thereafter that she was going to seek his replacement. “I was expecting to stay longer,” Downie told me.
Phil Bennett was the most prominent internal candidate; others in the running included then–New York Times deputy managing editor Jon Landman, former Post Style editor David Von Drehle, and Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. Sources told me that Ben Bradlee pushed for foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius to get the job. “She was looking for a magic solution, for a person to cut the budget, shrink the mission of the paper, and make people happy,” recalls one candidate Weymouth interviewed. “They wanted to shrink the paper, close sections. All kinds of ugly stuff. It was a hairy, hairy combination. And it’s kind of an impossible job.”
In the end, Weymouth settled on Brauchli, the then–forty-seven-year-old former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. At the Journal, Brauchli had burnished his image as a winsome foreign correspondent--investing in a nightclub in Shanghai and regaling Journal reporters back in New York with his exploits from the field--before ascending to the paper’s top job. But he lasted less than a year, quitting in the wake of Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Journal and reportedly getting millions in severance pay in the process. Soon enough, however, he was a candidate to lead the Post. Part of Brauchli’s appeal was likely that he had begun the process of merging the Journal’s print and online operations--something that Weymouth wanted the Post to do. “I think it was an inspired choice,” Paul Steiger, who preceded Brauchli as managing editor of the Journal, told me. “This is a guy who is a great journalist, who has a great feel for the Web, and he brings to The Washington Post a great feel for finance and economics--things which the Post had, but it needs more of them in the environment of the present or the future.”
Still, his appointment took many by surprise. He was the first outsider to run the paper, and he had virtually no experience in domestic politics or metro coverage, the Post’s core franchises. A few months after Brauchli arrived, some staffers took to calling him “Count Brauchula” and circulated an e-mail containing a photo of Brauchli with red eyes and fangs. In addition, a story spread among Post staff about how he had impressed Weymouth: After Brauchli interviewed with the publisher over breakfast near her home, she offered to give him a ride to the newsroom in her convertible BMW. On the drive downtown, Weymouth supposedly freaked out when a spider jumped into the car. Brauchli calmly removed the bug. As one former senior Post staffer says, “It was the you’re-my-hero moment.” Well, not exactly, Weymouth explains. “It was not relevant on my radar screen,” she told me. “But since you ask, it is true there was a spider.”
One of the biggest challenges facing Brauchli was how to merge the Post’s online and print operations. For more than a decade, the Post’s website had been based across the Potomac in Arlington, while its newsroom was in Washington. Weymouth and Brauchli decided to bring the two divisions together and commissioned a dramatic renovation of the Post’s downtown headquarters. The move did not go smoothly for either side. The newsroom was gutted, and, during the construction this past summer, staffers worked either from their homes or out of makeshift quarters on the third floor and a windowless room on the ground level dubbed “The Gulag”--“a friggin’ sweatshop,” as one senior editor on the print side described it. Meanwhile, from the Web staff came complaints about the print side’s decision to do away with perks like serving online staffers free bagels on Mondays.
But beyond the trivial grumblings were real philosophical divides. Print staffers grouse about the quality of the website. “Why does our homepage look so crappy and cheesy?” one reporter says. “Why is it not as nice as the Times’s page?” Others complain that Web producers don’t appreciate the Post’s august traditions. Some in the newsroom felt the frenzied coverage of the White House party-crasher scandal was driven in part by the millions of hits the story generated. A week after the story broke, Style editor Ned Martel convened a meeting attended by 25 reporters and editors to coordinate coverage of the scandal. “If I were to call a similar meeting on Al Qaeda’s recruitment in the U.S., you know what I would get? I might get two people there,” says a senior print staffer. “You’d have trouble getting support on the Web to mobilize.”
The online side counters that the print staff doesn’t understand the Web. “At the Post, the Neanderthals won,” one former senior Web staffer told me recently. “The overall mentality on the print side is dismissive and dictatorial.” Since Weymouth took over, both the website’s publisher and top editor have quit--and, in a brash challenge to the Post’s dominance in local reporting, the online editor, Jim Brady, is now planning to launch a metro website with backing from the same media empire that owns Politico.
And, when the two sides have collaborated, the results haven’t always been pretty. This summer, political reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza filmed a series of a dozen or so Web videos called “Mouthpiece Theater.” In one episode spoofing Obama’s beer summit with Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge policeman who arrested him, Milbank joked that Hillary Clinton should drink “mad bitch” beer. The scripts for “Mouthpiece Theater” were e-mailed to Brauchli and other senior editors for approval a few hours before each episode. But, while Brauchli signed off on the “mad bitch” script before the episode was cut, he says he didn’t see the graphics that would be paired with the dialogue. It was a reasonable excuse, since Hillary Clinton’s name never appeared in the script; her face simply flashed across the screen as Milbank said the words “mad bitch.” Still, the bigger problem is why anyone thought the video--as a whole, decidedly unfunny--was fit to be aired, with or without the reference to Clinton. The entire controversy--which ended with Brauchli canceling the series--left the impression that the Post was aimlessly producing Web content in the hope that something, anything, would catch on.
The biggest change prompted by the Web-print merger has been a shift in the way the Post edits. Modeling his new system in part on the Journal’s, Brauchli divided editors into two classes: one that would assign stories and manage teams of reporters; and another, known as the Universal News Desk, that would edit stories continuously. The idea was to help the Post update its website throughout the day. But the system engendered ill will on both sides of the new divide. When Brauchli announced the change at a town hall meeting last spring, many editors slated to be assigned to the Universal News Desk felt that he characterized their new jobs as glorified copy-editing positions. Since then, editors running teams of reporters have often clashed with Universal News Desk editors whom they see as meddling with their assignments. “You’re always in these shitty little arguments about, ‘Why are you talking to my reporters?’” one assigning editor says. Brauchli acknowledges the complaints but says the system will result in a more efficient publishing process. “Change of this magnitude,” he says, “requires time to settle in.”
Brauchli may have rankled some of his employees, but he still has the support of the most famous person in the Post newsroom. Bob Woodward told me that, until this past September, he did not know Brauchli particularly well. Then, on the evening of Friday, September 18, Woodward received a copy of General Stanley McChrystal’s confidential report to the White House, warning that the Afghanistan mission could end in “failure” if more troops weren’t deployed. Woodward e-mailed Brauchli, who immediately wrote back that the two should meet in the morning at the Post. After a series of talks with Pentagon and administration officials, Woodward’s bombshell made it into the paper on Monday morning. “To an old-timer, and I fall in the old-fart category,” Woodward told me, “when you have something new that’s classified, that’s at the center of government debate and business and they don’t want you to publish it--all the machinery the government can muster--and one editor, and that’s Marcus, says, ‘We’re doing this’? It’s more than encouraging.”
The article was also a reminder of the Post’s enduring ability to break important stories--which the paper still does with impressive regularity. (Brauchli pointed out that, shortly before we spoke in early January, the Post had broken several major political stories--the decisions of Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan, as well as Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, not to seek reelection--on the same day.) Meanwhile, the easing of the financial crisis of 2008 has stabilized the paper’s finances. According to multiple sources, the Post returned to profitability in the final three months of 2009. And Brauchli is trying to reestablish support among staffers. He has taken groups of reporters out to dinner, while making himself more of a presence in the newsroom.
But none of these developments, however promising, changes the fact that the Post remains a newspaper in distress--in late October, Brauchli had to physically intervene when an editor punched a writer in the newsroom--and, most importantly, one without a strong identity. And so, the paper’s institutional lurches continue. On November 24, the Post announced that it was shuttering its remaining domestic bureaus to focus its resources in Washington--a sign that, once again, local journalism had won out. Then, in December, the Post printed a news piece on the national debt in partnership with a publication called The Fiscal Times--without disclosing that the organization is backed by financier Pete Peterson, a well-known deficit hawk. Again, the Post found itself at the center of an ethics scandal. And another attempt at experimenting seemed to have backfired.
Weymouth says the changes of the past year--however chaotic--were necessary to save the paper. Her job, she told me, is “to make sure the Post is here for generations to come.” But that Post will look very different from the one her grandmother ran. “It clearly is a smaller paper,” says Walter Pincus. “It’s not going to go back to where it was.”
Gabriel Sherman is a special correspondant for The New Republic.
Title: National Enquirer and John Edwards
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2010, 06:30:11 AM
By DAVID PEREL It took John Edwards two years to tell the truth. I was surprised; I thought it would take longer.
The man who risked the fate of the Democratic Party to satisfy his political narcissism released a statement Thursday finally admitting paternity of Rielle Hunter's daughter. In part, he said: "To all those I have disappointed and hurt, these words will never be enough, but I am truly sorry."
His sincerity was as egocentrically superficial as his infamous $1,250 haircut during the 2004 presidential race.
If this seems harsh, it's an analysis borne of two and a half years uncovering the former North Carolina senator's affair while I was editor in chief of the National Enquirer. Throughout the 2008 Democratic primary, I watched him lie, use associates to help him lie, and perniciously abuse public trust while campaigning on restoring a moral core to fill the void of America's diminishing greatness.
In October 2007, after invoking Martin Luther King Jr. in a campaign speech, Mr. Edwards said: "There are much more important things in life than winning elections at the cost of selling your soul. Especially right now, when our country . . . needs to hear the truth from its leaders."
Cut to Aug. 8, 2008, when Mr. Edwards, after being caught visiting his mistress and their baby in the middle of the night by the National Enquirer, admits his affair on ABC's "Nightline" only because he can no longer credibly deny or evade the issue.
In his mea culpa about the affair, when confronted with the issue of paternity and an Enquirer photo of him holding the baby, Mr. Edwards told a national TV audience: "I don't know who that baby is" and insisted that "timing" made it impossible for him to be the father.
Mr. Edwards's admission of paternity is the final vindication for the National Enquirer, which broke the news of his affair with Ms. Hunter in 2007 and continues to pursue the story. A December 2007 Enquirer report featured a photograph of a clearly pregnant Ms. Hunter and detailed information that she was being hidden in a North Carolina gated community by Mr. Edwards's friend and aide Andrew Young.
At the time, as editor in chief of the Enquirer, I directed a several-month operation with reporters and photographers on stakeout in North Carolina to nail down this scoop. We believed the photograph of Ms. Hunter, the checkable facts about her relationship with Mr. Edwards, and the in-process coverup would cause an instant public uproar as the mainstream press verified the article and demanded answers from Mr. Edwards.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Former Sen. John Edwards .But the photograph of Ms. Hunter pregnant and a slew of well-documented facts in the Enquirer article did nothing to enervate Mr. Edwards's brazen quest for power or budge the mainstream press from its comfortable seat on the campaign bus. A cursory question about the affair was eventually asked, to which a smug Mr. Edwards responded: "tabloid trash."
And then there was silence. While Mr. Edwards went on to lose the Democratic primary, he still tried to position himself for an important role in the new administration, attempting to barter his way into being named attorney general. He might have made it that far if the Enquirer had given up after its initial exclusive was dismissed by the candidate, the press and the public.
Faced with public and press indifference to a major political exclusive on a leading presidential candidate, many at the Enquirer assumed we were finished with a story that had consumed tremendous resources for little payoff. The investigative team was buoyed when we decided to continue.
Was the decision to stay after Mr. Edwards made out of anger over his lies and their acceptance by the press and public? Was it a high-minded attempt to force the public to acknowledge the dangerous character flaws of a man who was headed for some type of high office? Or was it simply a tabloid instinct to illuminate the crepuscular hiding places where the rich and famous store their secrets? Draw your own conclusions, but ultimately the public good was served in a way that was undeniable.
Months passed. The Enquirer had several after-the-fact confirmations of meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. We abandoned our normal methodology and did not run articles on these. The breakthrough came early summer of 2008, with information that Ms. Hunter and Mr. Edwards would secretly meet at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Two separate teams of Enquirer reporters and photographers checked into the hotel and were deployed at various points on the property.
Ms. Hunter and Mr. Edwards met on July 21, 2008. Enquirer cameras captured it all on videotape, including early the next morning when Mr. Edwards, confronted by an Enquirer reporter as he left Ms. Hunter's room, ran into the men's room.
Hours later, I posted our new exclusive on the Enquirer's Web site and shortly thereafter published in the Enquirer the photo of Mr. Edwards holding his baby. Still, the mainstream media was reluctant to run the story. Numerous reporters and editors from other outlets called and asked me to release the video footage of that night. I refused. Some were angry. I owed and offered them no explanation about our strategy—until now.
Mr. Edwards had already shown us his willingness to lie in the face of overwhelming evidence. In July 2008, Mr. Edwards knew the Enquirer had him on video and he waited. Behind the scenes we sent him a message—deny the affair and we will release the video and prove you a liar. At the same time an ABC News investigative team pounded him.
When Mr. Edwards realized there was no way out, he tried to control the damage and decided to confess to the affair. He appeared on "Nightline" on Aug. 8, 2008, and admitted only to the affair, knowing the Enquirer had his meeting with Ms. Hunter on video. At points in the interview he offered ridiculous denials about paternity and the photo of him with his child.
It had taken 10 months for the Enquirer to prove Mr. Edwards affair, and once he confessed we knew it still wasn't over. Paternity was the next issue. But again, Mr. Edwards would admit the truth only when it was absolutely necessary.
In late 2008, the Enquirer, confident in our sources, reported definitively that Mr. Edwards was the father of the baby. Again he evaded the question even while our sources told us he was privately arguing over child support with Ms. Hunter, the terms of which he now says have been agreed upon.
Some journalists asked me if the Enquirer had a DNA match of Mr. Edwards and the child. I never answered that question. But the possibility that we had obtained a DNA match may explain why Mr. Edwards never followed through with his plan—according to recent statements by his aide Mr. Young—to fake a DNA test. He knew the possibility of a real one proving his paternity would be produced.
Two years and three months after the Enquirer first reported on his affair with Rielle Hunter, John Edwards released a statement acknowledging paternity of her baby.
Mr. Perel, the editor in chief of the National Enquirer from 2006 to January 2009, directed its coverage of the John Edwards affair.
Title: Saudis own 7% of FOX?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2010, 06:55:27 PM
Not sure of the worthiness of the source, but the issue is worth noting:
Conservative Activists Rebel Against Fox News: Saudi Ownership Is ‘Really Dangerous For America’ Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana.
Last weekend, at the right-wing Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference in St. Louis, Joseph Farah, publisher of the far right WorldNetDaily, blasted Fox News for its relationship with Alwaleed. Farah noted correctly that Alwaleed had boasted in the past about forcing Fox News to change its content relating to its coverage of riots in Paris, and warned that such foreign ownership of American media is “really dangerous.” ThinkProgress was at the speech and observed attendees of the conference murmuring and shaking their heads in disapproval:
FARAH: There’s a flaw, a real compromise in Fox that you need to understand. And if you care about national security, you especially need to be attentive to it. And that is that Fox News parent company is News Corp has a significant ownership by a Saudi prince that many of you will be familiar with because right after 9/11 this prince very famously offered Rudolph Giuliani a big multi-million dollar check to rebuild and Giuliani told him to stick the check where the sun don’t shine because this guy was basically blaming America for what happened on 9/11. Well this guy owns a very significant percentage of the News Corp and has let the world know that he can get things taken off Fox News when he finds them objectionable and has in the past. And I really believe this is really dangerous for America.
Listen here:
ThinkProgess spoke to right-wing author Brigitte Gabriel, another speaker at the conference, who said that Alwaleed was recently interviewed by Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. Gabriel angrily denounced the interview as a “darling high school reunion”: “All of the sudden, Neil Cavuto is interviewing him like a buddy-buddy because he is the boss.” Indeed, in the “rare” interview Alwaleed gave last month, he reaffirmed his “alliance” with the Murdoch family and told Cavuto why he has a personal stake in influencing American politics:
– On continuing America’s dependence on fossil fuels, Saudia Arabian oil: “Saudi Arabia’s strategic alliance with the United States will continue and as a derivative of that, the link with the oil between oil and dollars is there. The bulk of our GDP, the bulk of budget comes from oil and oil is still a dollar based commodity.” As Media Matters has documented, Fox News is a reliable source of misinformation on clean energy, and has aggressively attacked efforts to move America away from a fossil fuel dependent economy.
– On opposing financial reforms, bank responsibility fee: “In a way I’m conflicted because I’m invested in Citigroup but at the more global picture, I’m a big supporter of the United States. I believe taxing the banks right now is not the right thing at all. It’s like you have a patient coming out of an ICU.” Alwaleed owns a $4.3 billion dollars stake in Citigroup, a massive bank that spent millions lobbying against financial reform last year.
With the Citizens United Supreme Court decision essentially freeing corporations to spend unlimited amounts in campaigns, theoretically Alwaleed can pressure the American corporations he owns stock in to spend millions — or even billions — of dollars attacking candidates he opposes. In addition to his powerful Fox News outlet, Alwaleed and other foreign investors have potentially unprecedented power to impact American elections. __________________ War is Existence. Adaptability is Strength. Service is Mastery.
Title: POTH: ABC, CBS contracting
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2010, 05:15:50 AM
ABC News is making no secret about what is behind the sweeping staff cuts it now faces: raw survival instinct.
“I just looked out at the next five years and was concerned that we could not sustain doing what we were doing,” said David Westin, the president of ABC News, as he explained the decision last week to jettison up to 400 staff members, a quarter of the news staff, in the coming months.
The same compelling motive already instigated strategic retrenchment at ABC’s broadcast competitors. NBC, the one network with a cable news channel, MSNBC — and, not coincidentally, the only network in a sound position of profitability — has drastically pared down its operations over the last few years. So has CBS, which is losing money already and has cut about 70 jobs this year.
But with news available more places than ever, on cable channels and Internet sites, and with revenue challenged by heavy dependence on shrinking advertising dollars, the future for the news divisions at ABC and CBS remains deeply insecure.
“Long term, it’s going to get harder for these guys to exist as they are currently constructed, with the exception of NBC because it can offload the costs on MSNBC,” Michael Nathanson, an industry analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said.
The economic problems facing ABC News and CBS News in many ways mirror those faced by newspapers, which have been similarly afflicted by a drop in advertising revenue. The reaction — severe cuts in personnel and other costs — also looks to be the same.
But can you shrink your way to prosperity? Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News who is now a news media consultant (NBC News is one client), said of the ABC cuts: “The real issue after this is what is going to drive growth? How do you generate more profit? And this doesn’t address that.”
The easy answer would seem to lie in NBC’s structure, because in contrast to its competitors, that news organization is flush, making an estimated $400 million in profit a year.
“We actually think we have a completely different model,” Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said. That model: win every significant ratings competition on the broadcast side and rely on MSNBC’s revenue stream of advertising plus cable subscriber fees to subsidize the high costs of news gathering.
The effectiveness of that formula inevitably resurrects predictions that a marriage with a cable news organization is imperative for CBS and ABC. The obvious partner is CNN, and both those networks have been in courtships with it before. To date, the cultural challenges have been insurmountable. CNN, which says last year was its most profitable since its founding in 1980, would seem to have little incentive to rush to the aid of a network. And neither network wants to cede editorial control to CNN.
“If it were easy or obvious, it would have happened by now,” Mr. Heyward said.
But a longtime network news executive, who asked not to be identified because of connections to previous private negotiations involving CNN, said that ABC or CBS was likely to enter into an alliance with a partner like CNN “within the next few years.”
Even Mr. Westin, who said he did not see how a match with CNN “makes sense for us,” conceded: “In general, in business, when there is real decline, consolidation inevitably happens.”
Already, outlines of consolidation are discernible. Several CNN stars contribute to “60 Minutes” on CBS. And CBS executives, mindful that Katie Couric’s contract expires in a little over a year, have talked to Anderson Cooper of CNN about an anchor job, according to two TV veterans informed of the meeting.
In recent months, a handful of ABC News reporters has appeared on the business channel Bloomberg, and the two organizations have tried to jointly hire at least one person, according to two staff members who asked not to be named because they were not authorized by their employers to speak. Those two, and two others, labeled the sharing by ABC and Bloomberg — what one person called flirting — a possible prelude to a broader news-gathering pact.
A Bloomberg spokeswoman said that the company was a client of ABC’s affiliate service and declined to comment on any talks about a broader relationship between the organizations. An ABC spokesman said the current level of cooperation with Bloomberg was “hardly unusual.”
Network news divisions have historically been family jewels for their parent corporations, lending prestige and an aura of public service — as well as a shield against government intrusion. Mr. Heyward called the network evening newscasts a “bastion of serious news coverage at a time when so much of television has become tabloid and trivial.”
========== Page 2 of 2)
While they have steadily shed viewers, to a cumulative 22 million in 2009, from about 50 million in 1980, the newscasts still amass an audience that dwarfs any show on a cable news channel. In the last five years, the more lucrative network morning shows have also shown declines, Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said. “What’s occurring in broadcast news is not some sudden crisis. This has been a glacial erosion,” he said.
A survey by the Pew Research Center last year reported that three-quarters of respondents thought the cancellation of the evening newscasts would be an “important loss” to the country. Mr. Rosenstiel said, “None of these news division presidents wants to be the first guy to kill an evening newscast.” Not that it would be their call. That decision would fall to the networks’ corporate parents. Executives from CBS News and ABC News said the top corporate executives for both networks remained outspoken supporters of the news divisions.
ABC employees were reviewing buyout packages last weekend. Eligible staff members have until March 26 to decide whether to leave. If ABC cannot meet its goal, layoffs will follow.
Mr. Westin said ABC News could no longer afford to support a worldwide staff of about 1,500, with bureaus in cities foreign and domestic, most with traditional TV news work forces: camera operators, sound engineers, tape editors, assignment editors and, of course, correspondents, many with substantial salaries.
More journalists will become jacks-of-all-trades, wielding cameras, microphones and lights, as well as lists of interview questions. More production work will be conducted out of New York. “The ones who fear the most from the cuts are the ones that have a single function,” one ABC staff member said.
Mr. Westin said high-priced and purely cosmetic talent would become an increasingly endangered species. “There have been people in television news — very successful people — who do not write,” he said. “We are going to definitely require more of our journalists.”
Mr. Westin said he did not think the cuts would compromise ABC’s journalism, but not everyone shares his confidence. One veteran ABC News executive said, “Clearly the signal is: It’s not important to create anything new. We simply have to figure out a way to manage it cheaply.”
CBS, similarly, is trying to do the same with less. In an interview after its layoffs in early February, the CBS News president, Sean McManus, said the organization was figuring out how to “utilize our resources in a more efficient way.”
NBC News, meanwhile, remains the envy of the business, largely because of its decision in 1996 to start up a separate cable news channel.
The total work force at NBC News — which includes MSNBC — is 1,100, the size ABC now aspires to be. CBS is believed to have fewer than 1,400 on staff.
So far, Web revenue is a rather small part of the broadcast networks’ bottom lines, although Mr. Westin said ABC’s digital income was “up substantially.”
But if digital revenue cannot offset ad losses, Mr. Heyward suggested there was high ground from the flood if the networks could find a way to make their news stand out.
“The notion of investing more in distinctiveness and less in sameness is critical,” he said. That means more enterprise reporting and less overlapping coverage of news that cable handles, like reporters standing in snow drifts with yardsticks.
But the networks will surely stick it out, he predicted, if only because they do not want to see their competitors win.
“I sometimes compare it to three people in a leaky boat,” Mr. Heyward said. “Each one sees an island shimmering in the distance and starts thinking: I could jump out and swim for the island and maybe I could make it.
“On the other hand, I could drown and make the boat lighter so the other two make it. I think you are going to see everybody staying in the game because everybody knows leaving guarantees a longer lease on life for their competitors.”
Title: Unsafe at any Screed
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 15, 2010, 05:44:11 PM
Exorcising Toyota’s Demons Reviewing the history of tort-bar opportunism and media malfeasance should dispel the Great Toyota Panic of 2010.
You know those unseen and undetectable gremlins that hide in Toyota’s electronic throttle controls? Turns out they have it in for elderly drivers. The Los Angeles Times has compiled a list of 56 fatal incidents over 19 years purportedly involving unintended Toyota acceleration, and according to my Overlawyered co-blogger Ted Frank — in a Thursday analysis refined and extended the next day by Megan McArdle of The Atlantic — the age of the driver can be publicly ascertained in a little more than half the instances. That median age turns out to be 60 — that is to say, half the drivers were that old or older. By contrast, only 16 percent of general auto fatalities in 2008 occurred with a driver 60 or older behind the wheel. Whatever is causing Avalons, Highlanders, and Tundras to misbehave is largely bypassing drivers in their twenties and thirties and instead homing in on drivers old enough to remember the Eisenhower era.
For those who’ve been setting up the Japanese automaker as the latest symbol of heartless capitalism, it’s been a bewildering few days. On Wednesday the media jumped hard for the story of a man who frantically called 911 while his Prius ran away on a San Diego freeway (outstandingly gullible CBS News coverage here). Before long observers had begun poking holes in the story, and colorful details on the man’s earlier doings have been emerging all weekend. On Thursday, meanwhile, the New York Times — whose news columns had helped set the tone for the panic with accusatory coverage — ran what was actually a surprisingly good op-ed advancing the possibility that most of the Toyota cases will turn out to be the result of . . . driver error.
Driver error? You could have spent hours watching the stacked congressional hearings, or the breathless, America-in-crisis coverage on NBC, with no inkling that hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake was any sort of major factor. Certainly the impresarios of the Great Toyota Panic — the members of Congress and their staffs, the TV producers, and above all the consumer advocates with their close trial-lawyer ties — were not at all keen to explore that topic.
Through weeks of Toyota-flaying coverage, these voices — united in Demanding That Action Be Taken even if no one could quite say what was wrong with the cars — seldom acknowledged that unintended acceleration in automobiles is a subject with a long history. Each year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives complaints of this sort from owners of all brands of cars; big makers other than Toyota get a goodly share. The volume of complaints ebbs and flows from year to year for reasons that seem to have less to do with cars’ technical features than with media coverage and mass psychology; thus a scare over a given model that grips one country may never reach a second country in which an identical model is sold.
By far the most famous episode of sudden-acceleration panic is the 1986 Audi episode, which took years to fizzle out: Regulators in the United States, Japan, and Canada pronounced that they could find no explanation for the accidents other than “pedal misapplication” or, more bluntly, driver error. The parallels with the Toyota affair — starting, but not ending, with the tendency of acceleration incidents to hit older drivers — are numerous and continue to multiply.
With Audi, as with Toyota, the anecdotes seemed compelling. Attractive families, who spoke well and obviously believed in their cause, had lost loved ones to horrendous accidents. No one, least of all the miserable execs from the automaker, wanted to go on camera to contradict them, even though (as it turned out) their cases often failed to convince juries when things eventually got to court.
With Audi, as with Toyota, massive publicity fed on itself. As the scare went national, the number of reported acceleration incidents soared, partly because newly wary customers began reporting incidents they might otherwise not have bothered to report, partly because families (and lawyers) seized on the acceleration theory to explain older crashes. In both cases, newly filed reports on older accidents ensured that the overall numbers would leap almost overnight in a newsworthy way, thus keeping the cycle going.
With Audi, as with Toyota, the panic was met with far more skepticism in the specialized enthusiast and engineering press — places like Car and Driver, Popular Mechanics, and their online equivalents — than in the general press and on Capitol Hill. Not that seasoned automotive writers necessarily were in a rush to dismiss the reports; there’s always a first time with emerging hazards, and problems like misplaced floor mats or sticky pedals might indeed need to be checked out. But the general feeling was that familiar old causes of accidents should be well explored before positing exotic new ones.
And that brought up, in both episodes, the question of why brakes had failed to overcome the car’s forward motion. In all American cars, now as well as then, brakes firmly applied will readily overpower an accelerator at full throttle. In theory a driver might burn out the brakes by hesitant or inconsistent efforts to fight the surge, but seldom if ever were brakes actually found to be burned out in this way after accidents.
With Audi, as with Toyota, the scare targeted vehicles with some of the lowest fatality rates on the road — indeed, vehicles that might often be chosen precisely for their safety by risk-averse buyers. So rare are sudden-acceleration events that the purported risk — even as it touched off a nationwide media frenzy — was smaller than many other risks drivers accept as routine, such as that of choosing a slightly longer commute to work. Indeed, so minute was the supposed risk that if rattled owners at the height of the panic decided to leave a suspect Audi or Toyota undriven in the garage, in favor of using their family’s second vehicle, they were very likely increasing their risk — since that second vehicle was unlikely to be as safe overall as the demon Audi/Toyota.
With Audis, and in other acceleration scares affecting GM and other companies, we know that older drivers are not the only group disproportionately likely to be involved in a runaway. Others include drivers who are short in stature, who are unfamiliar with the vehicle (parking-lot attendants, new buyers), and who are taking off from a stopped position or backing up. Publicly available reports do not yet indicate whether the Toyota crashes fit all of these patterns; McArdle does note, however, that the L.A. Times compilation of fatal accidents seems to contain a striking number of drivers who were immigrants.
Why doesn’t the mainstream press — okay, in particular the networks and liberal newspapers — do a better job of covering these issues? One reason is that — this is unchanged since the 1970s — both are willing to take their lead on coverage from the same trial-lawyer-linked consumer groups that help Henry Waxman to orchestrate his hearings. Indeed, some of the very same figures who pushed Audi’s supposed guilt 25 years ago, such as Clarence Ditlow of the Ralph Nader–founded Center for Auto Safety, have been showcased both in the press and on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, usually with scant mention of their long records of inaccurate pro-litigation advocacy.
That isn’t the only way in which the networks have failed their viewers. The widely recalled low point of the Audi controversy came when CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a grossly unfair hatchet job on the automaker, complete with a bogus simulation rigged up by an expert witness working with lawyers suing Audi. This time around, it was the turn of ABC’s Brian Ross, who used, yes, an expert witness hired by litigators suing Toyota to rig up a supposed simulation of electronic failure. (Toyota promptly showed that you could get the same silly, artificial result by hooking up other automakers’ vehicles in the same way.) Matt Hardigree of Jalopnik called the results “ridiculous” and a “hoax,” while Gawker — noticing some stealthily falsified footage of tachometer results — headlined its coverage “How ABC News’ Brian Ross Staged His Toyota Death Ride” and “ABC News’ Toyota Test Fiasco.”
Alas, this is nothing new. Back in 1993, I wrote a piece for National Review (“It didn’t start with Dateline NBC”) exploring how the famous hidden-incendiary-device scandal that publicly disgraced NBC News was part of a long tradition of less-than-honest network coverage. Ten years later, I reported (in my 2003 book The Rule of Lawyers) that not only did the networks seem to have learned nothing from the Dateline NBC fiasco, they had actually gone back to using some of the same expert witnesses, consumer groups, and staging techniques that had gotten them in trouble in the first place.
These days, online critics — like Gawker and Jalopnik, Ted Frank and Megan McArdle, Michael Fumento and NRO’s Henry Payne — can correct the networks’ misreporting within hours, rather than days or months. Whether or not that comes as any comfort to beleaguered Toyota, it’s a definite improvement for the rest of us.
— Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His book Schools for Misrule, on the influence of legal academia on public policy, will be published next February by Encounter Books.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Rarick on March 16, 2010, 07:04:08 AM
Drek Und Drang, about some fairly minor stuff. Too bad the media cannot be subjected to a defamation lawsuit, they do need some accountability since they seem to be unable to do it themselves.
The rollovers with the Explorers, the Audi, and Toyota are all stuff that in retrospect, appears fairly overblown.
Title: A Hard Reset
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 18, 2010, 06:44:43 AM
It was way overblown, and curiously unreported on. :roll:
Watching most of the media dwell on the head count end of the healthcare boondoggle while avoiding most in the way of constitutional analysis, for instance, inspires a similar eye roll. It's like they play an endless game of Mr. Potatohead by reassembling prefabricated pieces into a finished product that looks about like all other amorphous lumps with random features applied to 'em.
Don't know if anyone else caught the jaw-droppingly awful, incredibly ironic, series of words placed in a row by Howell Raines, Jason Blair's former, disgraced editor at the New York Times, but if your brain needs a cognitive dissonance inspired hard reset initiated check out his whiny and inane mewlings:
Everything wrong with modern journalism can be found right there.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 30, 2010, 08:52:14 AM
Isn't it amazing how the MSM adores this President?
Here is a guy who *despite" huge majorities in both houses and high approval ratings at the start still could barely muster the votes to get health care passed and could not get Americans to like his plans, could not convince the majority it is a good idea, alienated massive numbers of voters, has succeeded in dividing this country even further, infuriated his political adversaries, had to bribe, and threaten to get just barely enough votes to get this passed, basically only passed because of Pelosi not because of the phoney one and indeed could reasonably argued it passed in spite of him and the fellow radicals - and yet - the msm trumps this up as some sort of major victory, the second coming of the One, a renewed political momentum.
The truth is the phoney one could not have messed up health care any more than he did, the American public sees through his lies and distortions. The majority of the public wants health care change, including me, yet this guy the purported great one had to do what he did to get a still very unpopular bill passed.
This is not much of a victory for the one by any stretch of ones imagination. Yet if one listens to the media one would come away with the impression this guy is so great. What a joke.
Title: Anonymous Source use by NYT/POTH
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 18, 2010, 12:09:29 PM
To the NYTimes's credit it allowed this piece to be published:
By CLARK HOYT Published: April 17, 2010 THE Times continues to hurt itself with readers by misusing anonymous sources.
I have received complaints about recent articles in which unnamed sources were allowed to 1) accuse a real estate agent of racial discrimination, 2) provide a letter from a dead man in the midst of a political controversy, and 3) discuss the press strategy of a politician who seeks to manipulate reporters with, among other tactics, off-the-record phone calls.
Despite written ground rules to the contrary and promises by top editors to do better, The Times continues to use anonymous sources for information available elsewhere on the record. It allows unnamed people to provide quotes of marginal news value and to remain hidden with little real explanation of their motives, their reliability, or the reasons why they must be anonymous.
Joe Walsh of Roslindale, Mass., wrote last week that reporters seem to have a ready list of reasons why sources can’t be named — not authorized to speak, ongoing negotiations and the like — that serve only to provide “both the source and the reporter with a veil of integrity.”
Anonymous sources can be invaluable. Notably, they recently helped The Times break a scandal involving Gov. David Paterson of New York. But used casually or routinely, they stir readers’ skepticism.
Consider these recent examples.
¶Last Sunday, The Times profiled Mary Kay Gallagher, a 90-year-old real estate broker in a historic Brooklyn neighborhood. Gallagher was portrayed as tough and civic-minded. According to the article, “some say” she saved the neighborhood from apartment buildings and having its landmark homes cut into boarding houses. But it added, “Others say she unfairly steered minority buyers from the best properties.”
Neither “some” nor “others” were identified. Gallagher defended herself in the article, saying she sold to blacks, to Asians, to Jews and to Republicans. “I don’t think I’m racist,” she said.
Ben Smith, a reporter for Politico — who uses anonymous sources, and has been burned by them — wrote to say he was shocked that The Times would put Gallagher in the position of denying a faceless charge of racism, one that could get her in serious trouble if it were true. Smith, who lives in the neighborhood and knows Gallagher, said, “It strikes me as a classic trick, unworthy of The Times.”
Jodi Rudoren, who edited the article and inserted the language that offended Smith, said the sources were not really anonymous. She said the reporter, Robin Finn, interviewed many people on the record, some of whom described Gallagher as a neighborhood savior and others who said she was hard on minorities. Rudoren said she was trying to summarize these two points of view, not allow anyone to hide. But she said she wished she had stressed that all this happened a long time ago, and she regretted using the word “steered,” given that racial steering in real estate is unlawful.
I do not think even an old charge of racism against a broker can be handled that way. Someone has to stand up, and the allegation has to be reported out. Were there complaints to a licensing board? Were minority buyers kept out?
Philip Corbett, the standards editor, said he was troubled by the allegation. “It’s an extreme example of what I think of as the ‘critics say’ device of reporting, without any specifics of who the critics are or where they’re coming from.”
¶A day earlier, The Times reported that, weeks before he died, Edward Gramlich, a former governor of the Federal Reserve, had written a note to Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, essentially clearing him of charges that he did not heed Gramlich’s warnings of a subprime mortgage meltdown.
The note surfaced as friends of Gramlich were expressing anger at Greenspan for telling the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that Gramlich had not formally raised his concerns about subprime mortgages with the Fed’s board. Was the note real? Where did it come from? Why now? The Times said only that it “was provided” to the paper.
Kurt Luedtke, a former newspaper editor and Oscar-winning screenwriter, wrote that most readers would think the letter was leaked by Greenspan, “but life is strange,” so maybe not. Either way, he said, “this is the sort of anonymity that serves no one.” (Disclosure: Luedtke is a friend and former colleague of mine.)
To me, the article looked like The Times had allowed itself to be used in an attempt to rehabilitate Greenspan’s reputation through the convenient device of a letter whose writer was not available for questioning. Sewell Chan, the reporter, said it was not like that. Without discussing his source, he said he began reporting on the fallout from Greenspan’s testimony and learned about the note from a reluctant source, who read it to him. He said he verified it with a second source, a close friend of Gramlich’s, who said it accurately reflected the dying man’s views. Chan said he did not have space to include the second source.
Richard Stevenson, the deputy Washington bureau chief, said that, without identifying the sources, the paper should have done a better job of describing how it obtained the information. I think the article was misleading in that it suggested The Times had a copy of the note, when all it had was someone reading its contents. Making it the top of an otherwise balanced article contributed to the sense that The Times had been spun.
¶Last week, a front-page article described how Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general, seeks to manage the news media through conference call press conferences, where he cannot be seen, and off-the-record calls to reporters. A Cuomo aide was granted anonymity to say the conference calls were “one of the greatest press maximizers.” I am not sure what that means, but it seemed to add nothing to the article. And why was the aide anonymous? “Because he did not want to discuss Mr. Cuomo’s press strategy publicly,” the article said — candid but hardly a valid reason.
Carolyn Ryan, the metro politics editor, said she agreed in retrospect that the quote was unnecessary.
¶Now, here is why all of this matters:
John Albin of Manhattan objected to an article late last month providing new details about Governor Paterson’s involvement in efforts to pressure a woman involved in a domestic dispute with one of his top aides. The article said the governor helped draft a proposed statement for the woman in which she would say there had been no violence in the episode, a contradiction of what she told the police. “Three people with knowledge of the governor’s role” were the sources.
Albin said The Times “should not be hiding behind blind quotes when it comes to accusations that are this serious.” I understand his frustration, but respectfully do not agree. Joe Sexton, the metro editor, said anonymous sources were the only way The Times could get the vital story of this scandal. The paper’s reporting has proved true at every turn — prompting high-level resignations, the end of Paterson’s election campaign and a criminal investigation.
Sexton said he realized it “can take something of a leap of faith for some readers to be comfortable” with anonymous sources in such articles. That leap would be easier if The Times did not squander readers’ trust by using unnamed sources so often and so casually in far less compelling cases.
E-mail: public@nytimes.com.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 18, 2010, 05:57:03 PM
Chicago: Muslim who murdered family on orders from "Allah" now the victim, "suffering greatly" in jail
This Chicago Sun-Times story, after being more honest than AP by noting that Larry killed all these people because he believed he had some responsibility before Allah to do so, makes sure to include the standard disclaimer from a local Muslim group -- the kind of thing that is usually as a matter of course appended to any story about a Muslim committing violence in the name of Islam: Islam condemns, Islam forbids, Islam is peace, etc. etc. etc.
The sheer pro-forma aspect of such disclaimers, and their frequent employ, ought to give some people pause. But it doesn't. In any case, it is here once again disingenuous. James Larry murdered his family, according to this Chicago Tribune report, after complaining that his wife was not behaving according to Islamic standards, and saying that the Qur'an was telling him to kill (which it certainly does do -- see 2:191, 4:89, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, etc.). Now, honor killing, which is also the subject of a blizzard of Islamic disclaimers whenever it appears in the news, is nonetheless relatively common in many Muslim countries, and is effectively encouraged by the fact that honor murderers often are given lighter sentences than other murderers.
Syria recently scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'"
That's right: two years for murder!
In 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."
And a manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).
In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.
That's why these honor killings keep happening -- because they are broadly tolerated, even encouraged, by Islamic teachings and attitudes. Yet no authorities are calling Islamic leaders to account for this. But in light of all this, James Larry ought not to be dismissed as a simple madman, and the Islamic community let off with the standard "Islam condemns, Islam forbids" disclaimer. Instead, there ought to be a serious public discussion about how the texts and teachings of Islam are used by Islamic jihadists to justify violence, and how they can be and are used even by violent creepy lunatics like James Larry to justify wanton slaughter. Only then can any effective steps be taken to try to prevent future murders like these.
But nothing like that is going to be done. Even to suggest that it should be done is "Islamophobic." And so instead, more people will be murdered in the future the way James Larry's family was murdered.
"Murder suspect 'suffering greatly,' his lawyer says: Bail denied Wisconsin man accused of killing 4 in his family," by Rummana Hussain for the Chicago Sun-Times, April 17:
The Wisconsin man charged with killing four family members and seriously injuring two other relatives in a hail of bullets as they slept at his sister's Marquette Park home suffers from a "multitude" of mental health illnesses, his attorney said Friday. James Larry, a 32-year-old Muslim convert who allegedly told authorities he was ordered by "Allah" to carry out the carnage, has been under doctors' care since 2002 and recently received psychiatric treatment in Janesville, Wis., said Julie Koehler, an assistant Cook County public defender.
Koehler said Larry was crying, his head bowed, when prosecutors detailed how he allegedly killed his pregnant wife, Twanda Thompson, 19; son, Jihad, 7 months, pregnant niece Keyshai Fields, 16, and 3-year-old Keleasha Larry, another niece.
"He is suffering greatly," Koehler said, after Judge Peggy Chiampas ordered Larry held without bond.
Larry also shot his 57-year-old mother, Leona Larry, and a nephew Demond Larry, 13, before dawn Wednesday. Both remain in critical condition, Assistant State's Attorney Jamie Santini said.
The body count could have been worse, Santini added. He said Torino Hill, a 35-year-old man living in the home's basement, was spared when James Larry's gun jammed and another niece, 12, escaped injury when she ran down the street and called police....
James Larry, who has a lengthy criminal record, admitted his role in the shooting spree, told detectives he knew his wife and 16-year-old niece were pregnant and even led police to the 9mm handgun he allegedly used in the shooting, Santini said.
"That's not the lot, turn left. It's the first vacant lot off the alley on the left," Larry directed officers, according to a police report.
James Larry also allegedly told officers he wished he "had more bullets."
"I wish I had more bullets. Kill me. I threw the gun in a vacant lot by the police station. I'll show you," James Larry said, according to the report.
A relative said that when James Larry looked to the sky and didn't see the moon or the sun before dawn Wednesday, "that meant Allah told him to take his family."
On Friday, several local Muslim leaders and organizations denounced the murders and stressed that the Islamic faith should not be associated with the tragedy.
James Larry's sister Keshai -- the mother of three victims, including the two dead girls -- joined Inner-City Muslim Action Network members and Jewish and Christian leaders later in the afternoon to show solidarity with the religious groups, IMAN's executive director Rami Nashashibi said.
For years, the Marquette Park-based IMAN has been involved in many anti-violence efforts in the neighborhood and is taking an active role in assisting the victims, Nashashibi said.
"We find this type of horrific violence absolutely incompatible with any understanding or any expression of Islam," he said.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 19, 2010, 11:03:41 PM
Thank goodness police broke up this evil plot by crazed militia types no doubt influenced by the wild-eyed tea partiers.
Oh, wait, it was the Crips and Bloods, those naughty Democrat constituents? Move along, nothing to see here. Well, I just hope they filled out their Census forms before they all were rounded up. A massive gang takedown in Queens uncovered a rare alliance between Bloods and Crips and a ruthless plot to assassinate cops, authorities said Friday.
The revelations came as law enforcement unveiled the chilling results of long-running "Operation Under Siege" - 104 suspects, dozens of guns, two slayings and piles of drugs and cash.
The sprawling case was built on wiretaps - including recordings of gang associate Keith Livingston, who blabbed about plans to protect his drug turf by killing cops on patrol.
"He intended to position himself on rooftops and shoot police officers who were compromising his business in Far Rockaway and South Jamaica," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
"Before his deadly plans could be carried out, detectives arrested him and seized a defaced 9-mm. Hi-Point rifle, among other weapons."
Livingston's plot was only one facet of an investigation that began two years ago when police and prosecutors began looking into a drugs-and-guns network in Far Rockaway.
By Friday, they had arrested 104 people, closed two murder cases, and exposed ties between Far Rockaway Crips and the Bloods in South Jamaica.
The Crips, working to lock up the drug trade at four housing projects, bought cocaine, heroin and marijuana from a gang that should have been their enemy.
"The Bloods in South Jamaica aren't loyal to the Bloods in Far Rockaway, who were feuding with the Crips," a law enforcement source said. "That's what made this so unusual."
In fact, some of the Bloods in Far Rockaway were actually part of four Crips sets known collectively as Flocc - the last "c" standing for Crips.
One of the Flocc leaders was charged with shooting at an occupied NYPD car in January during an altercation with members of a Bloods set known as "Klick Klack." The cops were not hurt.
Livingston was arrested in September after he was heard on his cell phone complaining he was fed up with cops on foot patrol along Sutphin Blvd. in South Jamaica.
The officers were part of Operation Impact, an NYPD initiative that floods crime-ridden areas with rookie cops.
"[He] was unhappy with the fact that the police were out there, aggressively doing their job," said Deputy Chief Robert Boyce, head of the NYPD's Gang Division. "He stated that he wanted to shoot a police officer, to get them out of the way, from a rooftop."
Police secured a warrant and arrested Livingston hours later at his home on 160th St., recovering two guns, including the camouflage Hi-Point.
Livingston, charged with gun possession and conspiracy, is being held on $250,000 bail. His lawyer did not return a call. Last month when nine clowns running around in the woods in Michigan were arrested, including a registered Democrat, it was national news for a week. Now we have 104 violent gangbangers arrested with murder on their minds.
I wonder if anyone has notified Frank Rich and the Southern Poverty Law Center?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 21, 2010, 09:22:44 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Rarick on April 28, 2010, 03:10:41 AM
The right/ conservative show up armed to the teeth and just stand there. The left shows up throws a lot of noisy monkey rage. Some one crossees the no mans land in between with a rock or a bullet, and it is on. I am just wondering when...........
Title: While the oil spilled, a new documentary by Michael Moore
Post by: DougMacG on April 30, 2010, 10:16:10 AM
Joking. A documentary you will never see.
This is starting to look a lot like Katrina, but without a hostile media scrutinizing the slow reaction of the administration.
Journalist Michael Moore has come across footage of Obama and Biden taking separate jets to NY to bitch out other people for not doing their job... while the oil spilled.
Obama dispatched a climate change administrator to the region - 8 days later... while the oil spilled.
Obama wants an investigation and a report on his desk within 30 days... while the oil spilled.
Title: Media Issues, Coverage of the China Apology
Post by: DougMacG on May 17, 2010, 09:52:50 AM
Following up on GM's post from Powerlineblog.com that the US has apologized to China for the Arizona law and other 'human rights abuses', John Hinderacker of Powerline reports that:
"Bill O'Reilly plans to lead off his show tonight with the Obama administration's apology to China for Arizona's new immigration law and other supposed American "human rights violations." I will be on the show at the top of the first hour, at around 5:00 Eastern time."
"UPDATE: Even as the State Department trashes Arizona to other countries, Rasmussen reports that 55 percent of voters favor a law like Arizona's for their state. Could the Obama administration possibly be more out of touch?"
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 17, 2010, 03:10:53 PM
YOU will be on O'Reilly? :-o How very cool! 8-) We would love an AAR! :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on May 17, 2010, 04:19:11 PM
"YOU will be on O'Reilly? shocked How very cool! cool We would love an AAR! grin
No, No, No... I was quoting John Hinderacker of Powerline. I must be more careful with my punctuation! I will update the post with QUOTATION MARKS.
Title: Reuters busted again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2010, 06:41:11 PM
The British-based Reuters news agency has been stung for the second time by charges that it edited politically sensitive photos in a way that casts Israel in a bad light. But this time Reuters claims it wasn’t at fault.
The news agency reacted to questions raised by an American blogger who showed that Reuters' photo service edited out knives and blood traces from pictures taken aboard the activist ship Mavi Marmara during a clash with Israeli commandos last week. Nine people were killed and scores were injured in the clash.
The pictures of the fight were released by IHH, the Turkish-based group that sponsored the six-ship fleet that tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.
In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.
The blog “Little Green Footballs” challenged Reuters' editing of the photo.
“That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it,” the blog stated.
In a second photo the unedited print issued by IHH showed blood along the ship's railing and a hand holding a knife as an Israeli soldier lies on the deck. Both the blood and the knife were missing in the photo that Reuters released.
Reuters on Tuesday denied it intended to alter the political meanings of the photographs.
“The images in question were made available in Istanbul, and following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges," the news agency said in a statement. "When we realized that a dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images, Reuters immediately moved the original set as well."
Reuters has yet to respond to charges about the second photo.
This is the second time Reuters has been accused of manipulating photos. In 2006 a Reuters photographer, Adnan Hajj, doctored several photos of the destruction caused by Israel's bombing of Beirut. In one he added smoke to a panoramic picture of South Beirut to make the damage look more severe than it was. In a second photo, he showed a woman whose home had supposedly been destroyed in the same raid, but an investigation revealed that the woman's house had been destroyed prior to the Israeli strike.
Reuters later removed all of Hajj's more than 900 photos from distribution and severed its relationship with him. A photo editor also was fired.
What happened on the Mavi Marmara and who was responsible for the killing and bloodshed on the ship is still a matter of debate. Activists charge that Israeli commandos fired first and provoked the skirmish. Israeli commandos say they were compelled to use deadly force after they were attacked by people on board the ship.
Title: Rabbi Nesnoff.On Kurtz.Hallalueh!!!
Post by: ccp on June 13, 2010, 10:36:09 AM
It was intersting to see Rabbi Nesenoff on Howard Kurtz this AM. He defined himself as a liberal NY Jew admired Helen Thomas and did not set out to "ambush her". He also expressed his anxiety over his being attacked rather than Helen Thomas. What I didn't expect was his mention that he will have to re-examine his low Democratic party identification. In other words liberal Jews must have been some of the ones attacking HIM for videoing Helen Thomas. He is now soul searching questioning which party he should be a member of. I say it is about time Liberal Jews wake up. This is further evidence that at least some Jews will wake up and recognize Republicans, Tea partiers are NOT worse than Nazis. They are not the enemy. This was for me a hallulueh moment. The first time I ever saw a liberal Jewish person actually question this on the air!
****Rabbi Nesenoff's 25,000 Pieces of Hate Mail Submitted by Jason Miller on Tue, 06/08/2010 - 23:26 This photo of Charles Manson was sent to Rabbi David Nesenoff Before this past weekend, Rabbi David Nesenoff was a virtually unknown rabbi who lives and works on Long Island. When his teenage son finished his high school exams and uploaded a 2-minute video of Helen Thomas expressing her anti-Israel views on the Whitehouse lawn, Nesenoff gained global fame. That 2-minute video on his RabbiLIVE.com website brought Helen Thomas' long career in journalism to an abrupt and embarrassing end.
In addition to the media inquiries, Rabbi Nesenoff has also received some 25,000 messages of hate in the past few days since uploading the Helen Thomas video for worldwide consumption. Tonight, he updated the RabbiLIVE.com website to read:
RabbiLIVE.com reported a story from the White House lawn.
We received over twenty five thousand pieces of hate mail. Emails will be continuously posted TONIGHT.
"Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies." -Elie Wiesel
Nesenoff and his son, the site's webmaster, will post some of the nastiest, hate-filled email messages they received without concealing the sender's name or email address.
The first posting to the site includes the text "Helen Thomas was right" followed by profanity and an apparent threat to the rabbi and his family. The sender also attached a photograph of death row inmate and convicted mass murdering cult leader Charles Manson with a swastika tattoo between his eyes.
This is undoubtedly not what Rabbi Nesenoff expected when he posted the now famous Helen Thomas video.****
Title: Correction"*n*ow";not"*l*ow Dem..."
Post by: ccp on June 13, 2010, 10:38:04 AM
correction:made.eom
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on June 14, 2010, 10:07:42 AM
After some thought and offiers for low rates I re subscribed to the Economist. It has some interesting stuff that I won't find elsewhere but there is clearly a leftist bent. The authors pretend (IMO consciously or subconsciosly) to be objective and unbiased but they are not. They basically right off the "right" as they call them as basically the party of no and a bunch of quacks. Fox is considered total fringe and Beck though not mentioned by name would be considered wacko.
JUst looking at this issue's cover one can guess what's inside. Look closely at the picture. Anti- illegal Immigration is just a bunch of biggots. Fox news is a fox, etc. In the articles the "right" is always concluded to be wrong headed, a bunch of quacks, or the like. I am afraid this mag is "MSM".
http://www.economist.com/printedition/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 14, 2010, 12:31:27 PM
That's a shame. It used to be a sterling center right publication with a remarkably deep and broad world-wide network. I read it quite a bit 30 some odd years ago.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on June 20, 2010, 12:42:43 PM
I posted this on June 2 on the cognitive dissonance thread while posting of Obama:
"And yes. He does call to mind Jimmy Carter - but like I said - on steroids"
Did anyone hear Hannity say Obama is like "Jimmy Carter on steroids" two nights ago?
I also stated this in our house.
I don't know if coincidence or not.
I do know that some things Katherine or I say do wind up on the air. Far fetched. Yes. But true, as we are being surveillenced as part of an ongoing effort to steal more music lyrics some of them copywritten from Katherine.
Notice how their is a let less new music coming out now since Katherine is not writing anything new. She has been fixing some songs and constantly lines disappear off the computer.
If the music business is this corrupt can anyone imagine Wall Street with its insider trading, hedge funds, etc?
Title: Example of how music crime works?
Post by: ccp on June 20, 2010, 01:21:21 PM
I am not sure if this is example of how organized crime in the entertainment industry works or just coicidence.
Below is a copy of that thread around the time I posted it on 06/02/2010. When I try to print out my entire post of 06/02/2010 the first part, the part where I mention Jimmy Carter "on steroids" does not print.
I cannot get this segment to print:
" The silver lining is that Bamster will set the liberal/progressive agenda back to Woodrow Wilson. The bad news this country is going to be hurt bad till we can climb our way out of this mess. The people going around saying he is doing a good job are deniers. Sorry assholes. You are not going to get your reparations. Maybe you as well as the rest of us will have to work our butts off to get out of this mess. And yes. He does call to mind Jimmy Carter - but like I said - on steroids. It can't be just coincidence the"
The rest of the post prints. This is interesting to me. Because this is exactly one way how Katherine keeps getting lines from her work on the computer ripped off. The one from a song they want disappears altogether or cannot be printed out or copied. They then use just enough of it one cannot sue or they hold on till they can get into the house and get access to the computer HD or the discs and steal or tamper with them. Then you hear the singer coming out with the song with the lyrics in them. Such as Toby Keith, shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, and what is the name of the big douch with the voice of a frog - Trace Adkins. Actually the entire country crew are all doing it. So are many of the pop singers. Lady Gaga is another shoved in front of us with big money. Notice she is on all the networks talk shows. Larry King, O'reilly and all of them. Someone is making deals behind the scenes promoting her as though she is something special.
But I wonder if anyone can print out my complete post. Just curious.
ccp Power User
Posts: 1264
Re: The Cognitive Dissonance of His Glibness « Reply #557 on: June 02, 2010, 03:14:16 PM »
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The silver lining is that Bamster will set the liberal/progressive agenda back to Woodrow Wilson. The bad news this country is going to be hurt bad till we can climb our way out of this mess. The people going around saying he is doing a good job are deniers. Sorry assholes. You are not going to get your reparations. Maybe you as well as the rest of us will have to work our butts off to get out of this mess.
And yes. He does call to mind Jimmy Carter - but like I said - on steroids. It can't be just coincidence the world's hot spots are exploding into turmoil while the ONE sits at the helm. Remember big mouth Biden said Bamster would be tested? Well what is the One going to do now that Israel may go to war with Turkey, we are closer to war in Korea in my lifetime, Iran is almost with nuclear weapons? I guess he can continue to blame the F* Jews which he all but come out and done (its their faults because of a few housing projects). Or he can blame Bush again which he has continued (to this day) to do. Or of course he blame corporate American or BP. Or he can continue to travel around the world as our fearless leader apologizing to the world for all its problems all the while saying the US is at cause of them. When willl the MSM come out of their delusional state? They will have to. Kicking and screaming yes. But they will eventually have to. But when?
***By Dick Morris 06.2.2010 Published on TheHill.com on June 1, 2010
Conservatives are so enraged at Obama’s socialism and radicalism that they are increasingly surprised to learn that he is incompetent as well. The sight of his blithering and blustering while the most massive oil spill in history moves closer to America’s beaches not only reminds one of Bush’s terrible performance during Katrina, but calls to mind Jimmy Carter’s incompetence in the face of the hostage crisis.
America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America has faced in the past 50 years. We are watching generations of environmental protection swept away as marshes, fisheries, vacation spots, recreational beaches, wetlands, hatcheries and sanctuaries fall prey to the oil spill invasion. And, all the while, the president acts like a spectator, interrupting his basketball games only to excoriate BP for its failure to contain the spill.
The political fallout from the oil spill will, indeed, spill across party and ideological lines. The environmentalists of America cannot take heart from a president so obviously ignorant about how to protect our shores and so obstinately arrogant that he refuses to inform himself and take any responsibility.
All of this explains why the oil spill is seeping into his ratings among Democrats, dragging him down to levels we have not seen since Bush during the pit of the Iraq war. Conservatives may dislike Obama because he is a leftist. But liberals are coming to dislike him because he is not a competent progressive.
Meanwhile, the nation watches nervously as the same policies Obama has brought to our nation are failing badly and publicly in Europe. When Moody’s announces that it is considering downgrading bonds issued by the government of the United States of America, we find ourselves, suddenly, in deep trouble. We have had deficits before. But never have they so freaked investors that a ratings agency considered lowering its opinion of our solvency. Not since Alexander Hamilton assumed the states’ Revolutionary War debt has America’s willingness and ability to meet its financial obligations been as seriously questioned.
And the truth begins to dawn on all of us: Obama has no more idea how to work his way out of the economic mess into which his policies have plunged us than he does about how to clean up the oil spill that is destroying our southern coastline.
Both the financial crisis and the oil come ever closer to our shores — one from the east and the other from the south — and, between them, they loom as a testament to the incompetence of our government and of its president.
And, oddly, to his passivity as well. After pursuing a remarkably activist, if misguided and foolhardy, agenda, Obama seems not to know what to do and finds himself consigned to the roles of observer and critic.
America is getting the point that its president doesn’t have a clue.
He doesn’t know how to stop the oil from spilling. He is bereft of ideas about how to create jobs in the aftermath of the recession. He has no idea how to keep the European financial crisis contained. He has no program for repaying the massive debt hole into which he has dug our nation without tax increases he must know will only deepen the pit.
Some presidents have failed because of their stubbornness (Johnson and Bush-43). Others because of their character flaws (Clinton and Nixon). Still others because of their insensitivity to domestic problems (Bush-41). But now we have a president who is failing because he is incompetent. It is Jimmy Carter all over again.
Who would have thought that this president, so anxious to lead us and so focused on his specific agenda and ideas, would turn out not to know what he is doing?***
Report to moderator 71.250.236.43
Body-by-Guinness Power User
Posts: 1948
Another Illegal Job Offer Emerges « Reply #558 on: June 02, 2010, 08:22:08 PM »
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe we can hear that Stanley Brand quote again:
Andrew Romanoff details contacts with White House over potential jobs Updated, 9:39 pm
Former Colorado state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff released a detailed statement tonight detailing his contacts with the White House last fall in which a top aide to President Barack Obama sought to convince him to leave the state's Senate race.
Romanoff said that he received a call in September 2009 from White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina making clear that the White House would be supporting appointed Sen. Michael Bennet in the Colorado Senate Democratic primary.
Added Romanoff:
"Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions. At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one." (Romanoff'sstatement is available after the jump.)
The three jobs floated to him by Messina via email, according to Romanoff, were: Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin America and Caribbean for USAID, Director of Office of Democracy and Governance at USAID and director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
Romanoff said he followed up with a phone message in which he declined the potential job offers.
The Romanoff statement comes less than two weeks after questions about what job (if any) was offered to Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak in hopes of driving him from the race against Sen. Arlen Specter.
The White House ultimately released a report from Counsel Bob Bauer in which it was revealed that former President Bill Clinton had approached Sestak about leaving the race but that no formal contact between the Obama Administration and the candidate had ever occurred.
The simple fact that the White House -- via Messina -- made clear that they would be supporting Bennet in the August Democratic primary is not, in and of itself, particularly shocking. White Houses -- no matter which party is in control -- play favorites in primaries and do their level best to clear fields for the candidate they believe is best positioned to hold the seat for their side in a general election.
At issue is whether the White House's statement on the matter accurately portrayed the entirety of the situation.
In a September 27, 2009 Denver Post piece a White House spokesman is quoted saying that "Mr. Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."
Romanoff, in his own statement tonight, reiterates that point; "At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one," he said.
California Rep. Darrell Issa (R), who has led the charge against the White House on the Sestak and Romanoff matters, issued a sweeping condemnation of the Administration in the wake of the Romanoff statement asking "how deep does the Obama White House's effort to invoke Chicago-style politics for the purpose of manipulating elections really go?,".
Republicans will almost certainly attempt to make an issue of the White House's carefully worded statement about its conversations with Romanoff--questioning whether dangling three specific positions is tantamount to a job offer.
Andrew Romanoff statement
I have received a large number of press inquiries concerning the role the White House is reported to have played in my decision to run for the U.S. Senate. I have declined comment because I did not want - and do not want - to politicize this matter.
A great deal of misinformation has filled the void in the meantime. That does not serve the public interest or any useful purpose.
Here are the facts:
In September 2009, shortly after the news media first reported my plans to run for the Senate, I received a call from Jim Messina, the President's deputy chief of staff. Mr. Messina informed me that the White House would support Sen. Bennet. I informed Mr. Messina that I had made my decision to run.
Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions. At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one.
Later that day, I received an email from Mr. Messina containing descriptions of three positions (email attached). I left him a voicemail informing him that I would not change course.
I have not spoken with Mr. Messina, nor have I discussed this matter with anyone else in the White House, since then.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 20, 2010, 02:34:14 PM
http://www.tscm.com/index.html
Title: CCN reporter mourns Hezzie death
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2010, 07:09:11 PM
Recently some big mucky muck of Hezbollah died. I gather some twit reporter at CNN tweeted about her sadness at his death.
Title: No Fly, Photo, Entry, or Reporting Zones
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 06, 2010, 07:23:10 PM
Respecting the Press and Public Access During the BP Oil Spill
We've heard countless stories of journalists trying to cover the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico being denied access in one way or another. Whether they're trying to fly over the spill to take photos, gain access to the oil-covered beaches, or take pictures of the dead animals washing ashore, a "media clampdown" continues despite federal government assurances that access is "uninhibited."
One BP representative told a Mother Jones reporter that BP could restrict access to the Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge because "it's BP's oil." And many reports indicate that local law enforcement has actually been cooperating with BP to restrict journalists' access to the spill.
It's this kind of news that prompted the ACLU of Louisiana to send a public letter (PDF) to the sheriffs of all Louisiana coastal parishes (or counties, to us non-Louisianans) reminding them of their obligation to respect the First Amendment rights of the media and the public. The letter states:
This letter is to notify you that members of the public have the right under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to film, record, photograph, and document anything they observe in a public place. No one — neither law enforcement nor a private corporation — has the legal right to interfere with public access to public places or the recording of activities that occur there. Nor may law enforcement officials cooperate with private companies in denying such access to the public. The letter cites other instances where press access has been restricted.
The ocean and coasts have already taken a beating from BP. Local law enforcement shouldn't allow the First Amendment to take a beating too.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 06, 2010, 08:24:48 PM
But cameras in public places are like a orwellian police state or something.... :evil:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2010, 10:56:57 PM
When they belong to Big Brother that is a very distinct question from the one presented here GM.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 06, 2010, 11:09:35 PM
So what you are saying is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public space, right?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 07, 2010, 03:59:31 PM
Oh sheezus, do you really need these distinctions drawn? Are you truly comparing photographing an oil soiled stretch of ocean for publication to mounting a camera outside someones door and catching frames all day every day?
Okay, there's this thing called the 1st amendment which prohibits the feds from prior restraint, amongst other infringements. Last I read it, the amendment doesn't speak to 24/7 federal videography, or is this one of those "living constitution" things?
Whatever JDN has must be ketchin'.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 07, 2010, 04:23:53 PM
Spin it however you wish, but the legal principle is the same. Say it with me "No reasonable expectation of privacy". I knew you could.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Rarick on July 08, 2010, 02:37:32 AM
The press is not 24/7 surveillance either, nor do they have a bunch of guys with guns and tanks to do something to you when you complain........... A video camera checking out a neighborhood for a photo op. is a whole lot different from trying to shoot video thru doors and windows of a private residence too. The Press gets in touble for that- papparazzi is get poppped and and some court action ensues all the time for doing things like that. Do the same to law enforcement getting equally intolerable and what happens..........
Yes the media is a PITA, but they are also the people's eyes and ears. Yes, Virginia, they are biased but at least their barking let's you know something is happening. The Government can be way more than that, and they are sneaky bastards, and they may be trying to pull a fast one in return for.......?
I am surprised that there aren't any boycott calls yet, BP is only one gas company right.........
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 08, 2010, 07:10:38 AM
The press is not 24/7 surveillance either
**They sure can be.** , nor do they have a bunch of guys with guns and tanks to do something to you when you complain
**Where do you live to have tanks do something to you when you complain? Have tanks done something to you in the past?**
........... A video camera checking out a neighborhood for a photo op. is a whole lot different from trying to shoot video thru doors and windows of a private residence too. The Press gets in touble for that- papparazzi is get poppped and and some court action ensues all the time for doing things like that. Do the same to law enforcement getting equally intolerable and what happens..........
**What does happen?**
Yes the media is a PITA, but they are also the people's eyes and ears. Yes, Virginia, they are biased but at least their barking let's you know something is happening. The Government can be way more than that, and they are sneaky bastards, and they may be trying to pull a fast one in return for.......?
**Someday, someone will make a coherent arguement instead of hysterical tinfoil ramblings on this topic, i'm sure of it.**
Title: Black Panthers
Post by: ccp on July 11, 2010, 11:11:55 AM
After hearing CNN news anchor thank Bobby Seales for explaining the "difference" (?) between his original Black Panthers he helped found and the "new" (if one calls them that) Balck Panthers for being a guest and explicitly telling him, "it is a great honor having you on the show" (could anyone imagine any CNN news anchor say that to any conservative) I have been looking aournd on line trying to get more information on Black Panthers. As a kid growing up all I can remember is blacks with large Afros holding AK 47's yelling about down with the whites, and what was her bank robber name, Angela Davis etc.
I cannot verify the objectiveness of any of the stuff I find online but here is one website. Clearly the connection between Black Panthers and Marxism is as close as two crossed fingers. Free health care, housing, food, transfer of wealth, educational revisionism, quotas etc. The liberal movement that Obama embraces is all right here. The anger at the United States expressed here (remember Michelle Obama's statement that was something to the effect, "for the first time I am not ashamed of this country?. I would say that the only diffference is Obama not only wants to redistribute everything domestically in the US but also wants to do it on a global scale by redistributing US wealth around the world. The radical nature of Obama is so obvious. And yet the MSM continues to cover for him. And try to marginalize those who do call him on it from Fox, radio etc.
Indeed those at CNN, ("it is an *HONOR* to have you on our show" - she says to cop killing, Marxist, American hating, violent preaching Bobby Seales) could not make their views as radical hippies from the 60's any more obvious.
http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm
**** Ten-Point Program The Ten Point Plan WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES. We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.
WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES. We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.
WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS. We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.
WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.
WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR All BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE. We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.
WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES. We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.
WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION. We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.
WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U. S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR All PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY. We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.
WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.****
Title: Whitewashing black racism
Post by: G M on July 11, 2010, 11:48:54 AM
Title: Geraldo vs Shabbaz
Post by: ccp on July 12, 2010, 07:59:26 AM
Kudos to Geraldo Rivera for calling out "Zulu" on his show over the weekend.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 12, 2010, 08:01:08 AM
I never watch Geraldo. What happened?
Title: Geraldo vs. Shabazz
Post by: ccp on July 12, 2010, 09:04:18 AM
Crafty, Shabazz called Geraldo a sell out. Geraldo told Shabazz his calling for racial war is crazy and reparations are basically what the Great Sociaety has been and it has given us a generation (or three) of dependent angry serfs. Geraldo, instead of calling for killing of white babies how about telling African Americans to pull up their pants and be fathers. I think this is it:
Title: Media blocked from oil spill
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 13, 2010, 08:21:40 AM
http://tinyurl.com/2a6nnw2
Team Blocks Media from Oil Spill Posted July 12th, 2010 at 4:00pm
Last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported that the federal government was blocking media access to coastal areas around the Gulf, preventing them from taking photos and reporting on the environmental damage of the oil spill. You can watch the video and see Cooper is livid that the Obama administration is treating him and his colleagues this way.
Cooper of course compares this to Katrina when media were blocked from…well we’re unsure what the media was blocked from in Katrina, since the photos and video from the Superdome, the Convention Center, the overpasses, levees, streets and neighborhoods contributed to possibly the most photographed crisis in history. (Cooper points out that they were blocked from seeing people “dying in their homes” – yeah, uh, same thing)
There are two real stories here, and we do appreciate Cooper bringing one of them to light. The media should of course not be blocked by the federal government from safely reporting on the spill and its affects. The heartbreaking images of oil soaked pelicans, turtles, tarballs and destroyed marshes achieve one important goal – to remind Americans of the disaster the federal government is ignoring. To this day, the media continue to have unnecessarily limited and prohibitive access to the disaster area, including reporters being hassled on public streets. NPR reported yesterday on a reporter who was asked to reveal the images on his camera, and his social security number by members of the local police, FBI and BP.
But there is a second story.
The second story is that while national reporters are fighting the Obama administration’s lack of transparency, they’re not reporting the Obama administration’s lack of competence. Every minute a correspondent scuba dives into the Gulf to reveal that oil is, well, murky, or an anchor shows you another tarball, we miss out on real journalistic oversight.
The Obama administration is making catastrophic decisions every day that is crippling the Gulf Coast environment and economy, yet this story is not being told. A team of experts from The Heritage Foundation, without any credentials, were able to move along the coast unfettered, interview officials, fisherman, port workers and experts to discover major mistakes being made in the response efforts. These stories do not require a pristine camera shot, but rather some old fashioned investigating.
Yes, the story that the White House is engaging in a cover-up mentality is important. As the Louisville Courier-Journal reported yesterday: “The National Press Photographers Association has sent a letter to President Obama expressing outrage at the new rules and requesting that he rescind them. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a union that includes broadcast journalists, is monitoring reports of denial of access and censorship.”
But as Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish said to Anderson Cooper: “Maybe if [the Federal Government] spent more time getting things like that deployed to pick up the oil, they wouldn’t have to worry about blocking access from the media…if we did our job, and did the right thing, the news you would be reporting would be good news. You would be showing marsh being clean.”
Exactly, let’s also focus on what the government is hiding rather than just the methods they’re using to keep things hidden. And if the government is held accountable for the cleanup they are solely responsible for managing, then the media will be let in because the story will finally get better. We hope.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 13, 2010, 08:35:39 AM
"let’s also focus on what the government is hiding"
It has become quite hard to conclude it is just incompetence and not the desired goal of Bamster - blame big oil and let the spill wreck the Gulf for his greeen agenda. Yet MSM will NEVER report this - including Cooper.
Title: Media coverage of accidents
Post by: bigdog on July 13, 2010, 09:12:10 AM
The above posts reminded me of this article about media coverage of the coal mine accisnt in West Virginia a few years ago. Although it focuses on the mining industry, I think there might be some parallels with the current coverage of the oil spill.
The horrible mining accident in Sago, West Virginia again focused the news media’s attention on the treacherous work of coal mining.
At one point, in live, late night coverage, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reminded viewers that this Appalachian region mines a lot of coal, which is used to fuel many of the power plants supplying electricity to viewers around the country. (In fact, more than half of the electricity used in the U.S. comes from coal.)
As elementary as Cooper’s observation seemed, it was an important connecting of the dots between the electricity we effortlessly consume and the dangerous labor conditions of coal mining.
But, the news media have themselves to blame for our collective ignorance on the coal industry. (Imagine a reporter from Saudi Arabia feeling it necessary to tell us that this is where a lot of our oil comes from.)
A review of network and cable television news over the past four years indexed by the Vanderbilt Television News Archive suggests that the news tells us about coal mining literally by accident.
• In 2005, national television news carried a total of four reports about coal mining, including a Fox story on a deadly China coal mine flood, and a CNN “Then and Now†story on the 2002 rescue of nine trapped coal miners in Pennsylvania—a story CNN liked so much they broadcast it twice. An exception to the accident-related coverage was an ABC News package and a full Nightline report on coal’s comeback as an energy source.
• It was more coverage by accident in 2004, with two reports for the year, covering mine explosions in China and Siberia.
• In 2003, the TV networks did a few reports on trapped miners in Russia, and another piece recalling the Pennsylvania mine rescue of 2002.
• Coverage of the Pennsylvania Quecreek Mine disaster and rescue accounted for nearly all of the coal mining-related reports of 2002. Here was the story so good it seemed like it came from Hollywood (and eventually was sold there). A total of 43 national TV news reports, most in just a few days in late July and early August, gave us wall-to-wall coverage of nine miners rescued from a flooded mine 240 feet underground.
Editors might argue that there is no “peg†for news about coal mining unless there is an accident involved.
Yet accidental coverage tells only part of the story. The news media habitually jumps from accident to accident, and misses disturbing patterns that could be the basis for a different kind of story.
First, The United Mineworkers of America (UMWA) union charged that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA)—a regulatory agency whose top ranks are staffed by former coal industry officials—is lax in enforcing Mine Act safety violations, and doesn’t have sufficient manpower to properly inspect the nation’s 1,400 mines.
Recent accidents illustrate the problem. In the Quecreek incident, it was later discovered that the workers had been supplied with faulty maps that led them to accidentally drill into flooded, abandoned mine tunnels. In Sago, as journalists quickly discovered after the disaster, the mining company had a list of more than 200 health and safety violations last year, including several that the company knew about but didn’t fix. Other mining accidents in recent years illustrate the same situation of preexisting safety problems gone uncorrected.
Second, the mining industry likes to point out the declining fatality rate in mining – 28 in 2004, compared to 133 in 1980, and more than 1,000 annually in years before the 1940s. But, the industry (as well as the industry-friendly MSHA) have ignored miners’ requests to reduce unsafe levels of coal dust, which is both a hazardous explosive in the mine and dangerous to breathe—more than 1,000 miners a year die from black lung disease.
As the United States steps up coal production, let’s start purposefully telling more stories about coal and how it is produced. The big arguments for coal are that it’s our coal, and it’s cheaper than other forms of energy. But, we need to start a public discussion about all of coal’s costs – to the land and water where it’s mined, to the atmosphere where it’s burned, and to the workers who risk their health and lives to dig it up.
Title: About those Death Toyotas, Never Mind
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 13, 2010, 01:52:13 PM
Crash Data Suggest Driver Error in Toyota Accidents By MIKE RAMSEY And KATE LINEBAUGH
The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that at the time of the crashes, throttles were wide open and the brakes were not engaged, people familiar with the findings said.
The results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyota and Lexus vehicles surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes. But the findings don't exonerate Toyota from two known issues blamed for sudden acceleration in its vehicles: sticky accelerator pedals and floor mats that can trap accelerator pedals to the floor.
The findings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration involve a sample of reports in which a driver of a Toyota vehicle said the brakes were depressed but failed to stop the car from accelerating and ultimately crashing.
The data recorders analyzed by NHTSA were selected by the agency, not Toyota, based on complaints the drivers had filed with the government.
The findings are consistent with a 1989 government-sponsored study that blamed similar driver mistakes for a rash of sudden-acceleration reports involving Audi 5000 sedans.
The Toyota findings, which haven't been released by NHTSA, support Toyota's position that sudden-acceleration reports involving its vehicles weren't caused by electronic glitches in computer-controlled throttle systems, as some safety advocates and plaintiffs' attorneys have alleged. More than 100 people have sued the auto maker claiming crashes were the result of faulty electronics.
NHTSA has received more than 3,000 complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyotas, including some dating to early last decade, according to a report the agency compiled in March. The incidents include 75 fatal crashes involving 93 deaths.
However, NHTSA has been able to verify only one of those fatal crashes was caused by a problem with the vehicle, according to information the agency provided to the National Academy of Sciences. That accident last Aug. 28, which killed a California highway patrolman and three passengers in a Lexus, was traced to a floor mat that trapped the gas pedal in the depressed position.
Toyota has recalled more than eight million cars globally to fix floor mats and sticky accelerators.
A NHTSA spokeswoman declined to confirm the results from the data recorders. She said the agency was continuing to investigate the Toyota accidents and wouldn't be prepared to comment fully on the probe until a broader study is completed in conjunction with NASA, which is expected to take months.
Transportation Department officials, however, have said publicly that they have yet to find any electronic problems in Toyota cars.
Daniel Smith, NHTSA's associate administrator for enforcement, told a panel of the National Academy of Sciences last month that the agency's sudden-acceleration probe had yet to find any car defects beyond those identified by the company: pedals entrapped by floor mats, and "sticky" accelerator pedals that are slow to return to idle.
"In spite of our investigations, we have not actually been able yet to find a defect" in electronic throttle-control systems, Mr. Smith told the scientific panel, which is looking into potential causes of sudden acceleration.
"We're bound and determined that if it exists we're going to find it," he added. "But as yet, we haven't found it."
Toyota officials haven't been briefed on NHTSA's findings, but they corroborate its own tests, said Mike Michels, the chief spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales. Toyota's downloads of event data recorders have found evidence of sticky pedals and pedal entrapment as well as driver error, which is characterized by no evidence of the brakes being depressed during an impact.
Some company officials say they are informally aware of the NHTSA results. But Toyota President Akio Toyoda has said the company won't blame customers for its problems as part of its public-relations response.
Toyota is still trying to repair damage to its reputation caused as much by disclosures that the company hid knowledge of safety problems with its vehicles as by the reports of sudden acceleration.
NHTSA levied a $16.4 million fine against Toyota earlier this year for failing to notify the agency in a timely manner about its sticky-accelerator issue. Toyota's handling of a rash of safety complaints involving high-profile models such as the hybrid Toyota Prius has prompted Congress to consider a far-reaching overhaul of U.S. auto-safety laws.
Last week, Toyota announced it had taken steps to improve its vehicle quality, including moving 1,000 engineers into a new group that will try to pin down problems. The Japanese auto maker also will extend development times by at least four weeks on new models to do more testing and will cut down on the use of contract engineers.Toyota showed reporters the inner workings of its labs, including how it has been testing its electronic throttle control module to find any malfunctions. The system is controlled by a main computer and has a second computer as a backup if the first fails. In either instance, failures should be noted in the car's main computer and result in engine power being cut.
The car maker also has tested its vehicles' responses to strong electromagnetic radiation, such as the waves generated by cellphones and radio towers, which some critics have said could be causing a malfunction. The only interference engineers have encountered after bombarding cars with electromagnetic waves is static on the car radio.
U.S. Reps. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) and Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) have been critical of Toyota's efforts to track down alternative causes of unintended acceleration. They have said Toyota has been slow to react or evasive. Toyota has said it is doing everything in its power to respond to both Congress and customer complaints.
Title: Media Issues: Coal accident coverage
Post by: DougMacG on July 14, 2010, 09:19:29 AM
Big Dog, I read that story and had the opposite reaction (surprisingly :-)). Always hard to compare loss of any life in any number without sounding callous, but it sounded to me like a small number at risk or lost and a large story relative to the fact pointed out in the story that over half of our electricity comes from coal. Parallel to the oil spill story as you mentioned, it seemed to me that the loss of eleven in the explosion and collapse was presented only later as a mere detail to the main story - oil gushing.
Meanwhile the perfect safety record of the western, carbon-free nuclear industry is almost a complete, non-story, unpublished secret. I think you would need a far right blog to discover that truth.
Coal stories also remind me of just how few of us do real work in a physical, dirty and risky sort of way, as compared with some other time like a hundred years ago. When we retire our public employees from our classrooms and and air conditioned government centers in their fifties, with pay, pension and healthcare, you would think we were finally allowing them to escape from the inhumane drudgery of coal mining.
Meanwhile we still kill 34,000 a year on our highways which means that the delivery system for potato chips and soda pop is possibly more deadly in this country than the production of half our total electrical needs with coal.
(Not to mention a million a year plus of unreported elective loss of human life in the abortion industry. Where is that headline?)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on July 14, 2010, 09:39:32 AM
DougMacG... just know that we will agree on something someday!!! The point I was trying make, poorly, as it turns out, was that the media have a way of waiting until sensational stories are made to report on them.. However, as has been reported widely in the wake of the BP oil gusher, there is a long history of noncompliance, incompetence, and abuses by this company. If the media chose to make a big deal about this before the oil spill, there might not be an "after the oil spill" to report.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on July 14, 2010, 10:09:39 AM
BD, I agree. There are so many untold stories out there all the time. Amazing how there was absolutely no investigative journalism pre-exposing the Enron, Madoff, Fannie Mae, Lehman Bros. or almost any other meltdown in the making.
"...there is a long history of noncompliance, incompetence, and abuses by this company."
Instead they were finalists to win the safety award prior to the accident. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/07/07/07greenwire-bp-was-finalist-for-federal-safety-award-at-ti-72712.html
Also unreported, except by The Rolling Stone of all places, is that there is no possible chance that the federal bureaucrats even read the false, BP risk assessment study before the Obama administration granted this license to this campaign contributor. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0 Yet no one in the absent, government protection agencies lost a job over this as far as I know.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on July 14, 2010, 11:12:29 AM
Excellent sources. Thank you for sharing! I might use one or both for classes. And see, we DO agree!
Title: Media Issues: Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer and Eric Holder
Post by: DougMacG on July 19, 2010, 10:37:42 AM
Apparently host and show prep staff take same week off for vacations over at CBS Face the Nation or just no concern over Obama DOJ's unequal enforcement of our basic laws.
Bizarre also how Schieffer in his business confuses the terms 'news' and 'coverage'. "There hasn't been a lot of news about it ..."?? A senior Justice whistle blower resigned over it - I think he meant not much mainstream coverage. Looking for this video, even though it is CNN, the first page of google results were all from blog coverage. Media has changed and the story is out.
Title: Conspiracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2010, 12:00:04 PM
Moving BBG's post to here:
Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller 1:15 AM 07/20/2010
It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”
(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)
Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.
“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.
Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.
The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”
Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be “Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha,” Bernstein wrote.
In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into the conversation to say “be sure to read” a column in that day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.
Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, helped too.
Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18, calling the debate “a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world.”
The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive once again.
Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.
It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.
Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list.
The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, “It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country.”
Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. “All this hand wringing about just how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going.”
“Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.
(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell on deaf ears. “I can say ‘hey I don’t think you guys should cover this,’ but no one listened to me.”)
Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.
“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”
Ackerman went on:
I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”
Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.
“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.”
(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question I’m going to answer,” he said.)
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
Title: WaPo Owns Journolist?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 21, 2010, 11:17:10 AM
A follow up to the above post:
Forget the Whistleblowers! WaPo Management Owns the Journolist
Christopher Alleva Andrew Brietbart is offering a $100,000 reward to a whistleblower who will release the entire Journolist archive. Why bother? Washington Post management has control of the archive, via creator Ezra Klein, who works for the Post.
Like most companies, the Washington Post Company owns all their employees emails. This is set forth on page 10 and 11 of their Corporate Code of Business Conduct. Key sentence: "There should be no expectation of privacy in these electronic interactions."
Now that we know that Journolist has functioned as a conspiracy to intimidate people into not reporting the news, the Washington Post Company owes the nation complete transparency on the activities of this cabal.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/forget_the_whistleblowers_wapo.html at July 21, 2010 - 01:16:13 PM CDT
Title: JournoList Participants
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 24, 2010, 11:48:49 AM
Someone with far too much time on his hands is slowly assembling a list of "journalists" known to have participated in the JournoList. They are as follows:
JournoList: 107 Names Confirmed (with news organizations) Source List Included | 07/24/2010 | BuckeyeTexan Posted on July 24, 2010 1:38:36 PM EDT by BuckeyeTexan
The following 107 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv.
1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect 2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO 3. Mike Allen - POLITICO 4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America 5. Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic 6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation 7. Ryan Avent – Economist 8. Dean Baker - The American Prospect 9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones 10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly 11. Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report 12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute 13. Michael Berube - Crooked Timber (blog), Pennsylvania State University 14. Lindsay Beyerstein - (blogger) 15. Joel Bleifuss - In These Times 16. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law 17. Sam Boyd - The American Prospect 18. Rich Byrne - Playwright and freelancer 19. Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic 20. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic 21. Lakshmi Chaudry - In These Times 22. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic 23. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation 24. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic 25. Joe Conason – The New York Observer 26. David Corn – Mother Jones 27. Daniel Davies – The Guardian 28. David Dayen - FireDogLake 29. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley 30. Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg 31. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly 32. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress 33. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic 34. Henry Farrell – George Washington University 35. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect 36. James Galbraith - University of Texas at Austin (professor) 37. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University 38. Ilan Goldenberg - National Security Network 39. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast 40. Merrill Goozner - Chicago Tribune 41. David Greenberg - Slate 42. Robert Greenwald - Brave New Films 43. Chris Hayes – The Nation 44. Don Hazen - Alternet 45. Michael Hirsh - Newsweek 46. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect 47. Michael Kazin - Georgetown University (law professor) 48. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist 49. Richard Kim – The Nation 50. Mark Kleiman - The Reality Based Community 51. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect 52. Joe Klein - TIME 53. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University 54. Lisa Lerer - POLITICO 55. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation 56. Alec McGillis – Washington Post 57. Scott McLemee - Inside Higher Ed 58. Ari Melber - The Nation 59. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com 60. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine 61. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller 62. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch 63. Michael O’Hare - University of California, Berkeley 64. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future 65. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago 66. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice 67. Katha Pollitt – The Nation 68. Ari Rabin-Havt - Media Matters 69. David Roberts - Grist 70. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive 71. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network 72. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones 73. Greg Sargent – Washington Post 74. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun 75. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic 76. Michael Scherer - TIME 77. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect 78. Adam Serwer – American Prospect 79. Thomas Schaller - Baltimore Sun (columnist), University of Maryland, Baltimore County (professor), FiveThirtyEight.com (contributing writer) 80. Julie Bergman Sender - Balcony Films 81. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com 82. Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight.com 83. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly 84. Ben Smith - POLITICO 85. Sarah Spitz – NPR 86. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium 87. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News 88. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones 89. Sam Stein - The Huffington Post 90. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net 91. Steven Teles – Yale University 92. Thoma - The Economist's View (blog), University of Oregon (professor) 93. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian 94. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker 95. Rebecca Traister - Salon (columnist) 96. Cenk Uygur - The Young Turks 97. Tracy Van Slyke - The Media Consortium 98. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent 99. Moira Whelan – National Security Network 100. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project 101. Kai Wright - The Root 102. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review 103. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win 104. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly 105. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA 106. Julian Zelizer - Princeton professor and CNN contributor 107. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 26, 2010, 08:28:06 AM
I don't know how accurate or complete this list is but I cannot deny, as a Jew, how many obviously Jewish names there are on this list (over 40).
It rather does give weight to the notion that Jews do have a unusually large influence in media. That said I am proud of our accomplishments and not disparaging them.
OTOH I just don't get the reason or even justification for the liberal bias of so many of my fellow Jews. They think they are being intellectual but I look at them as being foolish.
Title: Media Issues: Journalists Protecting Obama
Post by: DougMacG on July 26, 2010, 11:13:59 AM
Title: Dr. K Can't Deal with What he Dishes Out
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 03, 2010, 10:53:44 AM
Paul Krugman Gives Up
By Fred Douglass A marvelous thing happened over on Paul Krugman's blog at the New York Times last week. Krugman effectively conceded defeat on a range of economic debates. Who defeated him? People who posted comments on his New York Times blog. Mere commenters.
For those who do not know, Paul Krugman is one of the few who still claim that Keynesian progressivism is the answer to America's (and Europe's) problems, not their cause. He repeats that claim many times each month. Amid these repeated expressions of his "progressive" faith, he now also repeatedly expresses grim despair because his progressive policy prescriptions are being accepted less and less in the public square, even by the Obama administration.
Krugman is an academic. He has never run a company. He has never created a job. The closest contact he evidently ever had to "business" was as an adviser to Enron, where (in his own words) he was paid $50,000 to help build Enron's "image."
This, perhaps, explains the dozen or so points that Krugman makes over and over. Here are a few: Obama's stimulus was too small. Debt is good. Austerity is bad. Deflation is coming. Ken Rogoff, Greg Mankiw, Alberto Alesina (all at Harvard), and other serious economic scientists do not understand economics as well as he does. Those who do not agree with him are "mass delusional." And perhaps Krugman's favorite line: "I was right, of course."
Befitting his ideology, Krugman has only one policy to propose, regardless of topic: Transfer more resources from the discipline and dynamism of markets to the inefficiency and cronyism of government.
Government-run health care. Government-controlled banks. Government bailouts. High taxes. High spending. Krugman wants it all, just like in Europe (which, in 2008, he called "the comeback continent"). And Krugman has no problems denying economic science and current events to advocate it.
With the meltdown in Europe so obviously the consequence of too much Krugmanism and U.S. unemployment near 10% after a trillion dollars in stimulus, Krugman has attracted some criticism.
For example, Robert Barro, the distinguished Harvard economist, noted that Krugman "just says whatever is convenient for his political argument. He doesn't behave like an economist." The New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent observed that Paul Krugman has "the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults." James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal, after listing the falsities in Krugman's latest piece on climate last week, hazarded that perhaps "Krugman makes himself ridiculous merely to make our job easy."
But no matter how low Krugman's fallacious fruit hangs, Krugman has long been comfortable among the acolytes who frequently post on his blog. A representative post is: "Paul, you are a God-send for those of us who appreciate a superior intellect with common sense! Thanks for applying your brilliance." Or this: "Paul, dig deep dude. You are brilliant." It was hardly surprising that last January, Krugman declared, "I love my commenters."
No longer.
For just as Krugman was declaring his love for his blog commenters last January, people started posting serious rebuttals of Krugman's standard claims about economics. These commenters were not obviously Republican stooges. They were not obviously members of "the political class." They were not obvious ideologues.
Rather, the posters simply knew some economic science and how jobs are created and economies grow, perhaps because they were members of "the productive class." And they came prepared to support their rebuttals of Krugman's ideology and his singular policy prescription by facts and peer-reviewed economic science.
For six months, they made Krugman's blog one of the more informative and interesting places to hear economics debated. In part, this was because they gave Krugman a serious run. Their posts were long, near the 5,000-character limit set by the New York Times. They were reasoned. They were knowledgeable. They carried citations to economic science literature that one might expect in a Ph.D. dissertation.
And so their rebuttals were often decisive.
For example, when Krugman a month ago drew one of his famous "trend lines" based on a single point, a blogger named rjh immediately responded, "These trend lines you are drawing all over the place. Pardon my French, they are complete garbage." And nearly half of Krugman's commenters joined to point out that Krugman was arguing junk. Krugman was forced to make two defensive replies; both were immediately refuted.
Responding to Krugman's praise for the high taxes in Europe and his repeated denial that tax cuts might stimulate an economy enough to make up for revenues lost, a European posting under his initials jg pointed out that the low Reagan-Clinton tax rates made "being an entrepreneur interesting again. All those internet startups like eBay, Amazon or Netscape would probably never have been created if it weren't possible for the inventors to get rich." This anti-progressive notion that the "evil rich" might actually create growth if they were not taxed -- on his "personal" blog, no less -- must have made Paul spit up his morning coffee.
But things got worse for the professor. Matching Krugman's repeated claim that the "stimulus" was too small, Sean produced peer-reviewed economic science from Alesina, who examined 92 attempts at stimulus since 1970 in OECD countries and found that tax cuts, but not spending, stimulated. Krugman stammered a reply, but the damage was done; his acolytes had learned that economic science existed that contradicted Krugman's claim (central to Obama's "stimulus" legislation) that government's spending your money helps an economy.
Matching Krugman's claim that government can "create wealth by printing money," several posters cited the latest economic science showing that the "multipliers" that Keynesians use are wrong. They further noted that Krugman had used these wrong multipliers seventeen months ago to predict incorrectly that Obama's stimulus package would keep unemployment below 9%.
And so Krugman's blog presented the most unforgivable conclusion: Krugman had actually been wrong. As he had been when he advocated low interest rates and the creation of a housing price inflation in 2001, one of the causes of current economic difficulties.
Things then got still worse. When Krugman repeated his claim that Bush's tax cuts had "caused" the deficit and damaged the economy, commenters first taught Krugman how to count. They then cited two papers by the Romers showing that tax cuts help economies. Christina Romer is, of course, the chief economic advisor to President Obama.
When Krugman repeated one of his "debt is good" posts, posters linked to the economic science from Reinhardt and Rogoff showing that high debt is inimical to economic recovery.
Occasionally, Krugman attempted a reply. For example, he dissembled that Reinhardt and Rogoff had "highlighted" a single postwar American experience, which he dismissed as "spurious." The commenters did not let him get away with it. Within 24 hours, Sean had pointed out that Reinhardt and Rogoff had found similar effects of debt in six countries on three continents over four decades, including Canada, Japan, Greece, and Belgium. Krugman then struggled to find something "spurious" about each of these. Sean's rebuttal showed that Krugman was refusing to meet any burden of proof. Still worse, Samuel showed that Krugman's reasoning, if applied generally, would forever insulate Krugman's ideology from any refutation of any kind.
...Which is perhaps what Paul Krugman wants, but it is not economic science.
Krugman's blog commenters were especially relentless in pointing out his inconsistencies. In one post, Krugman admitted that "politicians will always find ways to shield the powerful." Posters piled on, pointing out that Krugman's universal policy prescription gave politicians more power under the assumption that they would defend "the proletariat." Krugman replied that he was "sure that there's a large literature" on government cronyism and corruption. Secure in his big-government ideology, he admitted that he had never read that literature. But like the ideologue that he is, Krugman then expressed his faith (the only word appropriate) that "bureaucracy will do a heckuva job" if it is not "downgraded and devalued." Bloggers responded by citing the latest economic science showing the impossibility of Krugman's "utopian dictatorship-by-bureaucracy."
Paul Krugman has spent his career as a pundit advocating that government bureaucrats and political process replace markets. He knows that there is a large literature that says that this is a bad idea. That literature is transparently relevant to Krugman's only policy proposal. And yet Krugman has not read it...and admits that he has not read it, without embarrassment.
By July, Krugman had lost his "Battle of the Blog." On July 23, Latrina commented, "Who is this Sean from Florida? He takes everything that [the] Professor [says] and shreds it, piece by piece. He shouldn't be allowed to post his comments on this blog since he seems to be winning all the debates. We progressives need to stick together and embellish our talking points without someone from the outside pointing out fallacies in our ideology."
Krugman had also had enough. On July 23, Krugman showed that he was clearly no longer "in love" with his commenters. Now he called them "ranters" and "trolls." On July 28, Krugman changed his comment moderation policy. Claiming that "ranters ... say the same thing every time," Krugman announced that he was going to throw away posts longer than "three inches." His thinking must have been thus: Three inches are sufficient to write "Krugman is brilliant," but not sufficient to present a documented and persuasive rebuttal to whichever of Krugman's standard arguments he was peddling that day.
Within 24 hours, those outside the Times had taken notice. Stephen Spruiell at the NRO noted the absurdity of Krugman's complaint that bloggers might use the same responses to rebut Krugman's repeated statements of the same ideology. Wrote Spruiell:
This [is] from the guy who has spent the entire summer rewriting the same blog post", Spruiell went on to point out that "Krugman's sycophants ... also say the same thing every time." "Krugman's policy seems geared to limit comments to "Yay Dr. K!" "Way to go!" "Keynes was right!" etc.
As indeed it has. Krugman's blog the day after the policy change had just six comments the last time I looked. "Hurray," said one. "Awesome!!" said another.
In his appearance on Sunday on "This Week," Krugman repeated his attack on Rogoff. He repeated his claim that he, a deflationista, "was right." Regulars could go to Krugman's blog and download the economic science that showed that Krugman was blowing smoke on "This Week," a gig that may pay Krugman more than even Enron.
And so after his ride back to Princeton, Krugman pulled the plug. He twice scolded "whiners," claiming that this blog under the New York Times masthead was "a personal not-for-pay venture." He claimed that he was burdened by needing to see if posts contained "obscenities" (none had, other than the "French" cited above). And he declared that he has "no obligation to provide" space for "ranters" and "whiners" who might rebut the ideology that he routinely markets.
Of course not. It is his blog. But it is newsworthy that after years of allowing 5,000-character responses consistent with Times policy, Krugman pulled the plug just as he was so obviously losing the debate. The academic world and the business world share something: They both view this as an admission of defeat.
Krugman is also "losing the audience." Eighteen months ago, Krugman's progressive ideology that was the consensus of the president, the House, the Senate, and not a few Republicans. Now, the Obama administration is evidently worried that it bought economic snake oil from Keynesians like Krugman. Even Ezra Klein is beginning to question the Keynesian economic models of Blinder and Zandi that "got it so wrong."
And so a six-month episode of enlightening economic debate has come to a close. Will Krugman respond to posts on other blogs? We do not know, but routinely in the past, he simply refuses to do so. He is clearly unable to do so, and, surrounded now sycophants and acolytes who tell him how brilliant he is, why should he even bother to try?
Fred Douglass welcomes correspondence at FredDoug2009@gmail.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/paul_krugman_gives_up_1.html at August 03, 2010 - 12:52:27 PM CDT
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 03, 2010, 07:01:10 PM
Heh heh heh :lol: 8-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Rarick on August 04, 2010, 04:07:54 AM
That left a mark.......
Title: Patriot Post: Alexander on Newsweek
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2010, 10:33:36 AM
Alexander's Essay – August 5, 2010
The Fundamental Transformation of Newsweek and America Common Threads of Delusion and Demise
"During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted..." --Thomas Jefferson Freedom of the press is codified in the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of ... the press") because our Founders rightly understood that a free and impartial press was a vital component of Essential Liberty.
However free, the press has rarely risen to the challenge of impartiality, not even during earliest days of our Republic. Thomas Jefferson observed as president, that the nation's newspapers "serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke." With the advent of the 24-hour "news" cycle, the press has never been more partisan than it is today.
Hence in 1996, when we launched The Patriot Post, one of our primary objectives was to break the mainstream media's chokehold on public opinion. Since our inception, The Patriot has devoted much-needed attention to the threat that a partial press poses to liberty, even receiving the Accuracy in Media Award for Grassroots Journalism for our efforts.
The Leftmedia's threat to liberty has been perilous in recent years, while we've been at war with a formidable adversary -- Jihadistan and its terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters around the world.
By way of confirmation that our foreign Jihadi enemy understand the power of the American Leftmedia as an instrument of propaganda, as do domestic Leftist politicos, consider this authenticated communiqué between Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom: "I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media."
In the midst of that critical period for OIF, one of the most egregious Leftmedia print propagandists, Newsweek, under the leadership of its (now former) editor Jon Meacham, ran defeat and surrender cover stories with headlines like "We're losing...", in which Meacham claimed the expertise to chart a retreat from Iraq before total defeat.
The unmitigated arrogance of such positions notwithstanding, surely Meacham understood that such cover stories serve only to embolden our enemy, which results in the deaths of America's uniformed Patriots on the warfront. Some call giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy, "treason." At best, it brands Meacham with the same stripes as Hanoi Jane Fonda.
Meacham, whose "golden boy" career was christened by a benefactor heiress of The New York Times, became editor of Newsweek in late 2006, 10 years into his stint with the magazine. He then promptly set about to transform the magazine into an elitist tabloid for those who want to read, in his words, "what I'm interested in."
MeachamOf that transformation, columnist Jeff Goldberg punned, "[T]he redesigned Newsweek. (Now with even more Meacham!)"
While dragging Newsweek deeper into the Leftist abyss, Meacham insisted, "We're not a partisan magazine. ... I am not a reflexive lefty. Far from it." At the same time, he editorialized, "Obama is essentially a centrist."
One trademark characteristic of most "reflexive lefty" elitists in media and politics is that their capacity for introspection is short circuited by pathological narcissism. Thus, they self-righteously believe they embody the "spirit of the people," and perceive themselves to be centrist, just much smarter than the masses whose devotion they desire.
Narcissists with Obama-like charisma can create a cult following among their devotees, which is sustainable until enough of them open their eyes and realize that the emperor has no clothes.
When asked recently, "Think of one of your least favorite people in Washington and describe what makes that person so unappealing," Meacham responded, "Total lack of self-awareness." At least he can see it in others.
Of his plan to fundamentally transform Newsweek, Meacham said, "It's hugely counterintuitive. The staff doesn't even understand it."
Apparently, it was so "counterintuitive" that Meacham's readers didn't understand it either.
According to Business Insider, "Newsweek's negligible operating loss of $3 million in 2007 (its first year under the Meacham plan) turned into a bloodbath: the business lost $32 million in 2008 and $39.5 million in 2009. Even after reducing headcount by 33 percent, and slashing the number of issues printed and distributed to readers each week, from 2.6 million to 1.5 million, the 2010 operating loss is still forecast at $20 million."
Consequently, Newsweek was sold this week to another Lefty, billionaire Sidney Harman (hubby to Leftcoast Rep. Jane Harman), who agreed to assume the glut of debt accumulated since Meacham took the helm. The winning bid? One dollar. No kidding. Given all the debt Harman took on, another bidder, Fred Drasner (former CEO of US News and World Report) quipped, "I think he paid a very full price."
I took note of the sale not because of Meacham's abysmal performance at Newsweek (most of the antique print media outlets are in financial trouble) but because 25 years ago I arranged payment of Jon's tuition at a very fine private high school that his family could not afford. At the time, he was a polite, adroit teenager, a Young Republican cheerleader for Ronald Reagan with a promising future.
While I had hoped that my investment in his education would produce a good return for our national heritage of Liberty and its extension to our posterity, I also realize that some seeds fall upon fertile ground and some upon the rocks. Instead of a stalwart constitutionalist, Jon, under the stewardship of various Leftmedia employers, lost his bearing and veered Left. (I recently wrote Jon and asked for a refund of that tuition, but got no response. Perhaps it was because of the salutation, "Dear Jon.")
Further, I was struck with the similarities between Jon's delusional vision to transform Newsweek as a microcosm of Obama's failed vision for the "fundamental transformation of America." Both visions reveal unbridled arrogance and an underlying contempt for those who are just not smart enough to see it their way, and both set a course for demise.
In a recent essay on Obama, Meacham wrote that if not for "a series of counterintuitive bets," he would not be president. Unfortunately for the nation, Obama's bets are meeting with the same disastrous fate as Meacham's bets at Newsweek. Fortunately for the remaining employees of Newsweek, Harman bailed them out, while Red China is bailing out (Read: "taking ownership of") America.
Thomas Jefferson concluded, "[T]he press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood," asserting that partisanship undermines the vital role of a free and impartial press in defense of liberty against tyranny. In the case of Newsweek, Meacham and company betrayed that trust, and his readers, like a growing number of Obama's supporters, unsubscribed.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander Publisher, The Patriot Post
Title: Hide the motive, when the motive is leftist
Post by: G M on September 02, 2010, 07:21:39 PM
Media again disappointed they can't blame Limbaugh.
Title: POTH moves "Beyond the Facts"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2010, 06:10:44 AM
In an Age of Voices, Moving Beyond the Facts By ARTHUR S. BRISBANE Published: September 4, 2010
WHAT some call opinion, others call interpretive journalism — a label as opaque as the practice. Call it what you will, nothing has generated more reader indignation in the past few weeks than when it has appeared on a news page.
Phone: (212) 556-7652 Address: Public Editor The New York Times 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
The morphing of news has stuck in some readers’ craw for a long time, and all three of The Times’s previous public editors dealt with the issue. But I believe the phenomenon is accelerating and has the potential to redefine the newspaper.
It’s not that editors have decided to abandon the traditional virtues of objective journalism. But the Times news pages increasingly are home to “voices,” not merely reportage, as editors commission work bearing the author’s distinctive point of view. And it is happening during the clamor of the Internet age, when such voices are the only ones that seem to rise above the din.
“How could anyone possibly think this piece belonged in a news section?” asked one reader, Donald Johnson, about a “Political Times” column by Matt Bai.
Another reader, Vicky Bollenbacher of Boulder, Colo., had the same concern about a news-page column in Business Day. “You should move such pieces clearly to your opinion section, or exercise a great deal more editorial muscle to clean pieces like his up from being advocacy pieces,” she said.
And David Hooper, a San Francisco reader responding to a column in the A section by Jonathan Weber, said, “In my opinion, your article was, in fact, an Op-Ed piece.”
Unhappy readers, all — reacting to a change that is unsettling to readers and journalists alike, according to Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. “These norms are shifting almost invisibly beneath the seat of journalists,” Mr. Rosenstiel said. “It is even harder for audiences ... to recognize the cues and the hand gestures that indicate whether a story is one kind of story or another.”
The trend has been decades in the making, but Mr. Rosenstiel believes the online medium is an accelerant in the process: “I think we are seeing the beginning ... of a new hybrid style of writing which is a blend of opinion and news.”
When I asked Matt Bai about his Aug. 12 “Political Times” column on Representative Paul Ryan — the one Mr. Johnson criticized — he said: “I guess my column is part of a broader effort to take some chances in the paper and explore different formats for a new era. I think that represents a great and exciting trend for the paper; none of us can afford to think in old rubrics for new generations of readers.”
Bai’s editor, Richard Stevenson, the deputy Washington bureau chief, elaborated on how The Times is navigating the new norms. “We are still exploring how much of a voice you can have ... what kinds of conclusions you can draw when it comes to politics,” he said.
A news-page column like “Political Times” carries the “freedom to reach a reported conclusion,” he said. Not to “throw opinion around,” but to “express in a restrained and fact-bound way a conclusion about something.”
Mr. Stevenson’s careful language draws a line between a Times news-page column and the kind of material one looks for on the Op-Ed page. I acknowledge the distinction in theory but think it is a very fine line, one that is easy to miss and easy to transgress. And one that readers often can’t see.
To Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, the whole effort to demonstrate impartiality is wrong-headed to begin with. American newspapers, once home to unfettered political agendas, have labored in the modern period to cull point-of-view out of reporting with the result that “newspaper writing turned into some of the dullest prose on the planet,” in his view. He sees no conflict between “having a worldview and doing great journalism,” and points to British papers like The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph as examples.
The Times is having none of that. Instead, it chooses to play in the mosh pit under the old rules, refining them as needed. The challenge is compounded because The Times, to its credit, has taken the “innovation” bit into its mouth and run with it. New features, functions and capabilities come on stream all the time, requiring close monitoring.
The Jonathan Weber column that drew criticism, for example, appears on recently added “regional pages” that run in San Francisco. The pages are produced by The Bay Citizen, an independent nonprofit news organization, of which Mr. Weber is the lead editor.
Mr. Hooper and a second reader, Michael Rowe, were concerned about Mr. Weber’s strong point of view in an Aug. 15 column, and about the unusual provenance of the pages themselves. As Mr. Rowe put it, the pages “appear to have been outsourced with little ongoing explanation.”
It’s easy to see why these readers reacted as they did. The Weber column, which concerned union opposition to pension reform in San Francisco, stood at the very precipice of political opinion writing — analyzing union opposition while noting “vituperative” union attacks and “scorched-earth” tactics.
Times editors said they carefully edited the piece and that Weber simply analyzed the political conflict without weighing in personally on pension reform. Still, it strikes me as risky to bring on an outside entity — even one like The Bay Citizen that the Times has fully vetted — and empower it with a mandate to produce such work.
Mr. Weber’s view: “I think The Times is engaging in a number of experiments and trying to do new kinds of things. They are approaching that process with a lot of rigor. ... It is nowhere near the case that they turned these pages over to us and allowed us to do our thing.”
Indeed, it is evident that The Times sees the rise of interpretive material as desirable and manageable. To help readers with this, it offers the online “Readers’ Guide.”
“In its news pages,” the guide says, “The Times presents both straightforward news coverage and other journalistic forms that provide additional perspective on events.”
The “Man in the News” form, it says, is “not primarily analytical but highlights aspects of the subject’s background and career that shed light ... ”
While the “Reporter’s Notebook” is busy “supplementing coverage.” And the “Memo” is a “reflective article.”
The “Journal,” by contrast, is a “sharply drawn feature ... closely observed and stylishly written.” (Where do I look for the grossly observed and unfashionably written stuff?)
The “News Analysis” form “draws heavily on the expertise of the writer.”
And the “News-Page Column,” the form that Mr. Bai and Mr. Weber deploy, calls for a “distinctive point of view.”
These narrow distinctions reflect the struggle to remain impartial while publishing more and more interpretive material. How to resolve this tension?
One path is to do a much better job of labeling the work — and please don’t bother with the fine distinctions. Call it commentary or call it opinion, but call it something that people can understand.
That, or abandon the sacred cloak of impartiality.
I vote for the former but concede that the latter may offer better traction in the opinion-gorged landscape of the future.
E-mail: public@nytimes.com
Title: Morning Joe for Clinton!
Post by: ccp on September 28, 2010, 07:24:39 AM
This guy has lost me forever:
Joe Scarborough Hints He Would Like to See Bill Clinton Run Again for President – If Only It Were Constitutional By Matt Hadro (Bio | Archive) Thu, 09/23/2010 - 16:19 ET
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough – who when a Republican congressman voted to impeach President Clinton – seems to believe that a former President should be able to legally run for office again after taking "a term or two off." His comments followed a gushing slew of praise for former President Bill Clinton, and he noted that many viewers "are just sitting there thinking 'Why can't [Clinton] run for President in a couple of years?'"
"It seems so short-sighted, just because the Republicans were upset that FDR was President for four terms," Scarborough complained of the 22nd Amendment, ratified during Truman's second term but passed out of Congress four years earlier in March 1947. Republicans did control both houses of Congress then, but the amendment would have excluded then-President Harry Truman and was supported by some Democrats.
Co-hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski conducted a glowing interview of the former president at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. Story Continues Below Ad ↓ Topics ranged from Clinton's charitable work around the world to the 2010 elections to Newt Gingrich. Scarborough worked in some sharp criticism of his former GOP colleague and former Speaker Gingrich, due to his recent comments about the New York City mosque.
Yet Scarborough had nothing but praise reserved for Clinton."Listening to you talk right now, you've always been known as the brightest, the first-class, however you want to put it – but you've had the ability the past decade to go all around the world, start this initiative, understand issues – you've understood issues better than anyone in Washington, when you were President."
Scarborough, treading carefully, asked the former president why it wouldn't make sense for someone to run again for President. "I'm just wondering, not for you, but doesn't it make sense for this country to say, 'Okay, let a guy serve, or a woman serve for eight years, then they can take a term or two off – but then if they have something to give back to America in the terms of leadership, give them that opportunity'?"
President Clinton agreed with Scarborough, but added that an amendment shouldn't apply to him, but to future candidates for the Presidency. "If we change the Constitution, it shouldn't apply to me. That is, it shouldn't apply to anybody that served, it should all be forward-looking, so no one would think it was personal."
The interview about Clinton's organization became a slobbering love-fest for the Democratic president, conducted by the former Republican congressman. Scarborough, in describing the conflict resolution between the GOP Congress and Clinton's Presidency in the 90's, asked Clinton this gem: "Could you explain to Washington, DC, on both sides – how did you do that? How did you rise above it? How did everybody learn to work together, even if they fought each other like hell?
A transcript of this segment, which aired on September 23 at 8:17 a.m. EDT, is as follows:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: You know, it's a unifying concept, too. Because you speak to the small-government conservative in me, because conservatives always complained that government can't do everything, that government can't – it's actually Kennedy-esque, "Ask not what your country can do for you." You're saying "We're minding the gap. We're not expecting the federal government to do everything. We're expecting you to help."
(...)
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well I actually think the formula that you just described – not left/right, not right/wrong, and bringing people together from both sides – could apply beyond the Clinton Global Initiative. It could apply in Washington.
BILL CLINTON: I think so, too. I think that what we ought to talk about – I urged my fellow Democrats to tell the American people that the country wasn't back to work, nobody was happy, but according to all the numbers, the recession bottomed out and it was job-time, showtime. So the only real issue in this election should be what is each party going to offer to get the country moving again, which idea is most likely to work. I think that ought to be the debate. What are we going to do, who's more likely to do it? And I think – I believe they should say "Give us two more years to do this. If it doesn't work, you can throw us all out. We've got another election in two years, throw us all out. We're in a deep hole, couldn't get going in time."
That's what I – I think we ought to all be willing to be judged by what ___ does not empower other people.
SCARBOROUGH: I've talked to you about this before. We go out and give speeches all across the country, and sometimes to progressive crowds, and I always start with when I ran in '94, I couldn't stand Bill Clinton's image on TV! And they'll all rustle out there. I'll say "I came up to Washington, DC," and I'll go through this, and as I explain the story away, well he didn't really like us that much, either. But look what we accomplished together. Look what we – we learned. I learned so much from those five years, and they were tough, tough years for you, and for Hillary, and for a lot of people. Balance – Terry was talking about this. We balanced the budget four years – for four years, the first time that happened since the 1920's, reformed welfare, created 22 million new jobs. And those were two sides that didn't exactly love each other. Could you explain to Washington, DC, on both sides – how did you do that? How did you rise above it? How did everybody learn to work together, even if they fought each other like hell?
BILL CLINTON: Well first of all, you've got to know the difference between something that's real and something that's show. I remember one day, Senator Lott – who was a Republican senator – was on one of these Sunday morning shows. And he called me a "spoiled brat," or something like that. And one of our guys in the staff called and said "You know what Trent Lott said?" I said, "Don't worry about that." He said, "How could you say that?" I said, "Let me tell you what happened. Trent Lott agreed to be on a Sunday morning show, before he thought about it. He was exhausted all weekend, because we had been working long hours. He got up early in a bad mood, and somebody goaded him, and he took the bait." That's all. And I called Lott, and he said 'Oh, my God you're calling me.' I said, "No, I'm calling to tell you I've already forgotten about this." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because you shouldn't have done this show, you were too tired. And you woke up exhausted, you were mad you did this show, somebody goaded you, and you took the bait." He said "That's exactly what happened."
That's what happens when you know somebody as a person, as well as a political opponent. When you cut people a little slack, and you realize that doesn't have anything to do with the job, and you just work on getting the job done. When we hung Lott's portrait in the Capitol, Newt Gingrich and I spoke for him. And we talked about the fights, but then we talked about what we achieved. That's what I think we have to do. We've got to get back into "We're all hired hands here." And we've got to – it's a good think to have a philosophy. I could give you – if you look at the stuff we're debating here, I could give you a more conservative and a more liberal position about how to deliver health care in Haiti, or re-set-up the schools, or promote economic growth. But in the end, what matters is half the kids have never been to school – do they go to school or not? They've never had a health care system at all – will they have one? They've never had a government that functions, 17 percent of the government was killed on earthquake day – are they going to have one? And that's – somehow we need to drive our political debate toward that.
SCARBOROUGH: But we seem to be losing ground. You brought up Newt Gingrich. I talked to your wife and you and others about what I learned – that you can disagree without being disagreeable – I made a lot of mistakes in the 1990's, I think a lot of people did. But you brought up Newt Gingrich. Here's a guy that should know better. And yet he's going out there comparing one of the great religions of the world to Nazism, Kathleen Sebelius to Stalin – it's really disappointing that in some ways we seem to be losing ground.
CLINTON: Well, but I think part of that is – you saw what happened in these Republican primaries, he might want to run for President, and frankly, it's a version of what he did in '94, as opposed to what he later came to do after we had the huge fight over the government shutting down and then we all calmed down and went to work. And I think, at least I know he knows better. And that's not a good thing.
SCARBOROUGH: Doesn't that make it worse?
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I think that does make it worse.
SCARBOROUGH: I think that's what depresses me about it is, he's such a bright guy, and he's got so many gifts –
CLINTON: But he sees all these other people being rewarded for it, and so I think that's what –
BRZEZINSKI: He sees the payoff.
CLINTON: Hm-hmm.
(...)
SCARBOROUGH: Let me ask you a Constitutional question. Because sitting here listening to you talk – I know there are a lot of people that are opinion leaders and shapers that watch this show, that are just sitting there thinking "Why can't he run for President in a couple of years?"
CLINTON: There's a little Constitutional –
SCARBOROUGH: I know. I was just going to say, does it make sense – because listening to you talk right now, you've always been known as the brightest, the first-class, however you want to put it – but you've had the ability the past decade to go all around the world, start this initiative, understand issues – you've understood issues better than anyone in Washington, when you were President. But to go around the world for a decade, all of this knowledge – and I'm just wondering, not for you, but doesn't it make sense for this country to say, "Okay, let a guy serve, or a woman serve for eight years, then they can take a term or two off. But then if they have something to give back to America in the terms of leadership, give them that opportunity. It seems so short-sighted, just because the Republicans were upset that FDR was President for four terms.
CLINTON: Well, that's what I believe the rules should be. But it isn't what it is. I think if I were writing – there's a very strong argument for telling – for saying you shouldn't serve three terms in a row. Because by the time you've appointed everybody, there's just – people get relaxed, there's too much opportunity for people, even if not for corruption, just for bad things happening for the taxpayers. (Unintelligible) But with life expectancy being so long, and people being alert until they're in their seventies, and sometimes in their eighties – look at Paul Volcker – he's mid-eighties, you know, he might as well be 40 years old, in some ways. I think there's an argument for that. But if we change the Constitution, it shouldn't apply to me. That is, it shouldn't apply to anybody that served, it should all be forward-looking, so no one would think it was personal. But, you know, that's kind of what I think it should be.
SCARBOROUGH: It makes so much sense.
—Matt Hadro is News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 28, 2010, 07:37:30 AM
Well, this is MSLSD, which a whopping 12% of the public turns to for news. :roll:
Title: Green Money for Black Ink
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 30, 2010, 05:29:33 PM
Well isn't this special:
Mark Tapscott: When journalists become Big Green's spinmeisters
By: Mark Tapscott Editorial Page Editor September 29, 2010
Many Gloucester, Mass., residents depend on commercial fishing, so it's not surprise they have little patience with the almost uniformly negative media coverage in recent years suggesting the entire marine ecosystem is about to collapse due to the industry.
Nancy Gaines, a Gloucester Times reporter who recently analyzed that coverage, made some shocking discoveries about a cozy little Iron Triangle among well-known reporters, Big Green environmental scientists whose findings they regularly report, and funding by foundations that share the movement's ideological agenda.
"The journalists are wined and dined by the advocates and hired to train the scientists to use the media to advance their message," Gaines reported. "The journalists, in turn, call on those same scientists as sources when writing about the advocates and their agenda."
In 2002, for example, the Pew Charitable Trust flew a group of elite scientists and reporters from the New York Times, the Economist, Time, U.S. News & World Report, and other prestigious publications to the island of Bonaire in the Caribbean for five days of fun in the sun.
Once there, they could "loll on the island's fine beaches, sip cocktails at the Tipsy Seagull and perhaps marvel at the flamingoes for which Bonaire is famous," Grimes wrote.
But there was an agenda for the gathering, too. Among the attending scientists was Daniel Pauly, author of "Aquacalypse Now: The End of Fish," and head of a fisheries center at the University of British Columbia that received $15 million from Pew.
Following the Bonaire junket, Tom Hayden (no relation to the radical activist formerly married to Jane Fonda) of U.S. News & World Report, wrote a cover story in the magazine, "Fished Out," that strongly supported the idea that commercial fishing is destroying the oceans' fish populations.
The article quoted 14 sources, including Pauly and another Pew-funded scientist who went snorkeling with Hayden on Bonaire, according to Pew's scheduled program. Thirteen of the 14 sources Hayden quoted in the article received Pew funding, directly or indirectly. The other quoted source was a restaurant chef.
Hayden did not disclose that Pew paid for his trip to the Caribbean or that Pew funded all but one of his sources. Even so, his article continues to influence debate on commercial fishing's alleged impact on the environment. In March of 2009, the Pew Charitable Trust started a nationwide public relations campaign against overfishing.
One of the scientists whose research was cited by the Pew PR campaign and in Hayden's article was Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco. a Pew fellow, member of the Pew Oceans Commission and of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative that evolved from it. Obama appointed her as director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2009.
The Packard Foundation gave $2.1 million for Lubchenco's Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, which she started in 1997. She says scientists must lead politicians and the public to create a world that is "ecologically sound, economically feasible and socially just."
Her ALLP trains selected scientists to use talking points with reporters. Among the trainers for ALLP are current and former newspaper and broadcast journalists, as well as current and former White House and congressional staff members.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott's CopyDesk blog on washingtonexaminer.com
Title: Media Issues: Gallup mis-titles polls and big stories are lost
Post by: DougMacG on October 01, 2010, 08:33:54 AM
In the August 14, 2009 poll, conservatives outnumbered liberals in virtually all of the fifty states, even in hotbeds of radicalism like Massachusetts and Vermont. What was the title of that poll? "Conservative Label Prevails in South." On February 3, 2010, Gallup repeated the poll. The results were the same (every state was more conservative than liberal), but what was the title of that poll? "Three Deep South States Are Most Conservative" (not something like "Conservatives Still Outnumber Liberals in Every State"). On August 2, 2010, Gallup tested the waters again. This time, there were more liberals than conservatives in one state, Rhode Island, leading Gallup to give this poll the reasonable title of "Wyoming, Mississippi, Utah Rank as Most Conservative States."
Title: WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2010, 05:06:00 PM
The tweets started arriving in August, and they did not mince words. One of the first accused the South Korean government of being "a prostitute of the United States." The Twitter account, under the name "uriminzok," or "our nation," seemed to be part of a sprawling North Korean digital operation that included a Facebook account (registered as a man interested in "meeting other men," but solely for "networking purposes") and a series of YouTube videos meant to celebrate the might of the North Korean military.
View Full Image
Edel Rodriguez
.A spokesman for the North Korean government quickly denied any involvement with the Facebook and Twitter accounts, but he acknowledged that they were the work of government supporters living in China and Japan. The owner of the Facebook page (which the Palo Alto, Calif., company eventually deleted, citing violation of its terms of service) told a South Korean news agency that it was run by a Pyongyang-based publishing outlet affiliated with the government. Apparently, even the notoriously isolated rulers of North Korea know how to practice what the U.S. State Department calls "21st-century statecraft."
While authoritarian governments continue to censor the Web and crack down on bloggers—a few days ago, Iran sentenced the controversial blogger Hossein Derakhshan to 19½ years in prison for "insulting sanctities," among other charges—they are also increasingly using the Internet for their own propaganda. Officials are pouring resources into social media and hitting the blogs to disseminate pro-government views and undermine their critics. And they're succeeding: The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.
Chinese authorities have established a formidable online propaganda operation, much of it geared to internal needs. Not only do they train and pay bloggers to try to steer dissenting online discussions in a more favorable direction, they also send text messages with inspirational Maoist quotes, promote computer games in which players fight corrupt officials, and design patriotic ring tones. (On National Day in 2009, millions of customers of state-controlled China Mobile woke up to discover that their ring tones had been replaced with a nationalistic tune sung by the actor Jackie Chan.)
The Kremlin is not far behind. It relies on the services of several high-profile bloggers who promote the government's talking points, helping the Kremlin to reach the hip digital audiences who avoid its masterful propaganda on TV. But the authorities haven't given up on television altogether. Some of the Kremlin's Internet cardinals even get to co-host their own shows during prime time. Russian authorities are also embracing new platforms. In early 2010 the Duma announced a proposal to give tax breaks to firms that feature patriotic themes in their computer games.
The North Korean case is unusual, of course. Ordinary citizens have no access to the Web, so the tweeting is presumably meant to tease South Koreans, who aren't allowed to visit North Korean websites without permission from their own government. In August, Seoul quickly blocked access to the North Korean tweets, probably to the great delight of the North Korean authorities, who seem to relish any opportunity to highlight the South's undemocratic regulations.
Tweets From the Top @uriminzok: South Korea is 'a prostitute of the United States' (North Korea, regime supporters) @chavezcandanga: 'The squalid ones said they won. Well, let them keep winning like this!' (Hugo Chávez) @KremlinRussia_E: 'My congratulations to @BarackObama on his birthday' (Dmitry Medvedev) .View Full Image
Edel Rodriguez
.North Korea's Internet presence has traditionally been limited to a handful of official sites, but the situation is slowly beginning to change. Earlier this year, South Korean authorities accused the North of penetrating South Korean blogs and forums to spread rumors that the sinking of the Cheonan warship in March 2010—one of the thorniest issues in recent relations between the two countries—was orchestrated by Seoul in order to blame the disaster on Pyongyang.
This doesn't mean that there are hordes of North Korean government officials who spend their days surfing indie rock blogs. Such latitude might undermine the morale of government bureaucrats: Once they got on Facebook, they might start learning about capitalism by playing FarmVille. Such operations are probably executed much as they would be by any other government, by outsourcing them to the private sector or, at minimum, encouraging those who sympathize with the government
North Korea aside, most authoritarian governments have already accepted the growth of the Internet culture as inevitable; they have little choice but to find ways to shape it in accord with their own narratives—or risk having their narratives shaped by others. Once they realize that censorship doesn't work in an environment where new blogs can be set up in a matter of seconds, they turn to propaganda. Instead of blocking the views that they don't like, they seek to marginalize them, often by undermining the credibility of critics. Accusing them of being Western stooges often does the trick.
For all the supposed omnipotence of China's censorship apparatus, even Chinese leaders acknowledge that online spin can be more effective at diffusing online tensions. Wu Hao, a local official who's become the godfather of China's Internet propaganda, said last year that "public opinion on the Internet must be solved with the means of the Internet." It's for this reason that the government has nurtured a digital army of online commentators—known as the 50-Cent Party for the scant pay they receive for each comment—who eagerly perform damage control on the Chinese Internet.
Fifty-centers are only rarely used to promote some genuinely new party position, but rather as a means of containing the online reaction to sensitive political issues, predominantly by seeding doubt. The governments of Azerbaijan and Nigeria have experimented with similar schemes. For all their supposed fear of the Twitter Revolution, the Iranian clerics in Qom have been running blogging workshops—mostly targeting religious women—since 2006. Their goal is to influence online discourse about highly sensitive issues like the role of women in Iranian society.
There is also a more pragmatic reason for authoritarian governments to go online: Many of their opponents are already active in this space. Countless Facebook groups in support of Gamal Mubarak—who may soon succeed his father at the helm of Egypt—sprouted up after many young Egyptians took to the site to vent their criticisms and publicize antigovernment protests. (The junior Mr. Mubarak claims no relationship to his online boosters.)
Something similar is happening in Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez, after seeing the opposition use Twitter to mobilize campaigns against him, jumped on the bandwagon, gaining nearly 900,000 followers in five months. Using the name Chavezcandanga (in Spanish, candanga means "the devil," but Venezuelans also use the term to describe someone naughty and wild), Mr. Chávez has been avidly tweeting his way through the recent parliamentary election campaign. His Twitter response to the results of last weekend's election: "The squalid ones said they won. Well, let them keep winning like this!" Given his designs for a transcontinental revolution, Mr. Chávez may also see Twitter as a way to mobilize supporters in other Spanish-speaking countries, who don't always have the privilege of watching "Aló Presidente," his Sunday TV show.
In many of these propaganda fights, the quality of one's arguments often matters far less than their quantity. Victory often comes down to who can construct the most impressive online persona by adding new friends and writing witty tweets. Incumbents, who have state resources at their disposal, usually enjoy a significant advantage. A few months into his Twitter adventure, Mr. Chávez announced a plan to allocate 200 staffers and state funds to boost his Twitter presence.
As the public sphere has grown decentralized and media based in the West have lost their dominance in setting the global agenda, it has become easier for governments—as well as for corporations, fringe movements and anyone else with an ax to grind—to promote their agendas. Bribing 100 bloggers is often much easier than bribing the editorial board of one newspaper.
View Full Image
Edel Rodriguez
.In doing this, of course, anxious authoritarians are simply following wider market trends. Helping clients to establish effective control online has already become a lucrative industry. Australia's uSocial offers to place a story of your choice on the front page of popular social news sites like Digg.com, as well as to sell you new Facebook friends (1,000 for just $197) or new Twitter followers (1,000 for just $87). Although most Internet companies frown on such abuse of their services, they cannot root them out completely—and, as existing brands try to master the digital space, the demand is poised to grow.
Or consider Megaphone, a desktop tool designed by a group of Israeli activists and released during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. Megaphone identifies any new online polls about Israel and immediately prompts its users to visit the poll's website and cast their votes. It also tracks favorable articles about Israel in the international press, urging users to push such stories to the "most emailed" lists on websites by sending them to all their friends. Moscow and Beijing would presumably love to have a Megaphone-like tool the next time that the international press accuses them of starting yet another war in the Caucasus or suppressing the rights of Tibetans.
Can supporters of democracy in the West stop or at least thwart the growth of authoritarian influence on the Internet? Maybe. Should they try? That is a much harder question to answer. Western governments could fight this insidious new form of state propaganda by creating, for example, some kind of website for rating the authenticity of Russian or Chinese online commentators. Alternatively, all comments from one IP address might be aggregated under a unique online profile, thus exposing the operatives working from the offices of the government's propaganda department.
But in most cases, such Western interventions would also erode online anonymity and put dissidents' lives on the line. The best that Western governments can do is to educate—in person or remotely—those running important political websites about how to build communities, keep their content visible despite all the spin and avoid being overwhelmed by pro-government intruders.
In the meantime, as long as it helps to embarrass its enemies in the South, a tweeting North Korea is also a stronger North Korea. American officials, still giddy with enthusiasm for digital statecraft, have been a little too quick to welcome North Korea's entry into the world of social media. "The Hermit Kingdom will not change overnight, but technology once introduced can't be shut down. Just ask Iran," tweeted the U.S. State Department's Philip Crowley in August. Maybe—but technology, once introduced, can also be co-opted to serve ends very different from free expression. Just ask the Kremlin or China's 50-centers.
—Evgeny Morozov is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom," due out in January.
Identical buses lined unloading people with matching shirts. Signs promoting socialism, marxism, terrorism. Litter strewn. About a 6 or 7 year old girl promoting socialism for the 21st century.
Why wouldn't the media show these?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 03, 2010, 11:49:34 AM
Old Media Buries the Lede — Communists and Socialists Dominated ‘One Nation’ Rally
I’ve always liked getting to the heart of the matter—something the activist old media has no interest in doing during this election cycle.
November 2 is a mandate on whether America will remain a country based on the Constitutional values of Liberty and freedom, or whether we are headed to the dregs of communism and socialism embraced by the American left and its Democrat Party. Too extreme you say?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 04, 2010, 10:25:39 AM
"What you won't see on the MSM"
You are so right!
I notice the MSM could only say "thousands" showed up.
That was later in the day changed to "tens of thousands".
CNN is gving up on politics and becoming a politically correct *nutritionist* show.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Juan Williams
Post by: DougMacG on October 21, 2010, 07:50:21 PM
I hate defending Juan Williams. But here goes.
He said something like: People dressed up in Muslim garb on airplanes make him nervous.
This means people dressed up like mass murderers make him nervous in a situation identical to those mass murders.
I wondered if "garb" is disrespectful. Defined as: a fashion or mode of dress, esp. of a distinctive, uniform kind: in the garb of a monk. Not judgmental but descriptive, so fitting here.
This does not mean all Muslims are terrorists. We need to do some math processing here. Islamic radicals are Muslims. Islamic radicals are mass murderers. Other Muslims are not. It is easy to see the difference. Just watch them carefully and with fear and worry for their whole life and see if they commit mass murder. Then you will know if they are they radical extremists or the peaceful ones. If someone especially a peaceful Muslin knows another way of telling the difference please let Juan Willians and the rest of us know.
If Juan's statement is true about his own reaction, should he have not said what was true or should he have pre-resigned for having those feelings?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 21, 2010, 08:24:05 PM
I like Juan Williams. As far as liberals go, he not a bad guy. He actually will concede a point now and then.
As far as moderate muslims go, here is a good example of one we invited into the pentagon:
Anwar al-Awlaki - the radical spiritual leader linked to several 9/11 attackers, the Fort Hood shooting, and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airliner - was a guest at the Pentagon in the months after 9/11, a Pentagon official confirmed to CBS News.
Awlaki was invited as "...part of an informal outreach program" in which officials sought contact "...with leading members of the Muslim community," the official said. At that time, Awlaki was widely viewed as a "moderate" imam at a mosque in Northern Virginia.
At the same time, the FBI was also interviewing Awlaki about his contacts with three of the 9/11 attackers - Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al Midhar and Hani Hanjour - who were all part of the crew of five that hijacked the American Airlines jet that hit the Pentagon.
In the days after 9/11, Awlaki told FBI officials he remembered meeting al Hazmi but recalled little else about him. It is believed Awlaki met both al Hazmi and al Midhar in 2000 when Awlaki was the imam at a mosque in San Diego. Awlaki later moved to Northern Virginia and al Hazmi was seen at the Virginia mosque as well. However, there are scant details about Awlaki’s actual contacts with al Midhar and Hani Hanjour.
In 2001, the FBI did not share this investigative information with the Pentagon, but officials say there was no reason to - Awlaki was not a suspect and was not believed to be connected to the 9/11 attacks. Instead he was viewed as a valuable liaison to the Muslim community and a potential investigative source. As one official put it, "he was a much different guy back then."
Still, it's not clear what kind of vetting or background check was done by the Defense Department before Awlaki was allowed into the building.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 21, 2010, 08:31:42 PM
Mohamed Elibiary was one of the speakers at a December 2004 conference in Dallas entitled "A Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary," Ayatollah Khomeini. When Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News called him on this, he threatened Dreher, telling him: "Expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe."
Fox Guarding Henhouse Alert: "Secretary Napolitano Swears in Homeland Security Advisory Council Members," from the Department of Homeland Security, October 15 (thanks to Jeff):
Washington, D.C. - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano swore in three new members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) during her latest tri-annual meeting with HSAC, which took place at DHS headquarters this week. The HSAC is comprised of experts from state, local and tribal governments, emergency and first responder communities, academia and the private sector who provide recommendations and advice to the Secretary of Homeland Security on a variety of homeland security issues.
The new members include: former New York City Police Commissioner and Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, who will join as vice-chair to former CIA and FBI Director Judge William Webster; Massachusetts General Hospital Director of Police, Security and Outside Services Bonnie Michelman; and Freedom and Justice Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Mohamed Elibiary. [...]
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2010, 01:03:24 PM
I think a rather productive firestorm has been ignited by JW's firing by NPR.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2010, 04:40:40 PM
"I think a rather productive firestorm has been ignited by JW's firing by NPR."
Yes. :-) ------
There was a question on the board of whether the media had turned at all (from worship to just bias). This grilling by Chris Mathews of Rand Paul's opponent may surprise you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKEFzyDEn3w
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2010, 04:59:49 PM
Returning to ordinary bias, Here is Newsweek Editor Jonathon Alter's latest, entitled: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/23/alter-midterms-matter.html "The GOP’s agenda has to be stopped."
Title: Day by Day: Oh say can you see?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2010, 11:04:05 AM
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/10/22/
Title: Time blames hyperinflation on tea party
Post by: G M on November 11, 2010, 12:31:13 PM
If hyperinflation arrives, Time Magazine wants its readers to know who the real culprits are. It won’t be the federal government that hiked annual spending by 38% in three years and began running trillion-dollar deficits. It won’t be the Congress that kept raising debt limits to allow for that spending spree. And it won’t be the Federal Reserve that, in desperation over the government’s spending and debt spree, began printing money to artificially keep interest rates low. No, the real culprit will be the political movement that opposes all of the above, according to The Curious Capitalist:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2010, 01:17:28 PM
Two consultants say Huffington and her partner violated a handshake agreement. | AP Photo Close By BEN SMITH | 11/15/10 7:02 PM EST Updated: 11/16/10 6:56 AM EST Two Democratic consultants are accusing Arianna Huffington and her business partner of stealing their idea for the powerhouse liberal website Huffington Post.
Peter Daou and James Boyce charge that Huffington and partner Ken Lerer designed the website from a plan they had presented them, and in doing so, violated a handshake agreement to work together, according to a lawsuit to be filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The complaint is a direct challenge to the left’s most important media property from two stalwarts of the progressive movement. And it challenges Huffington’s own oft-told story of coming up with the idea in conversation with Lerer and other friends.
“Huffington has styled herself as a ‘new media’ maven and an expert on the effective deployment of news and celebrity on the Internet in the service of political ends,” says the complaint. “As will be shown at trial, Huffington’s and Lerer’s image with respect to the Huffington Post is founded on false impressions and inaccuracies: They presented the ‘new media’ ideas and plans of Peter Daou and James Boyce as their own in order to raise money for the website and enhance their image, and breached their promises to work with Peter and James to develop the site together.”
The suit against Huffington, Lerer, and Huffington Post also sheds light on the very political aims of the left’s most powerful – and valuable – online voice.
Democrats need “to develop a dominant position within the Internet,” Daou said during an early meeting about the site, according to the complaint. “It is a system [for] pushing the message, not just for fundraising,” he allegedly said.
Huffington called the charge of stolen ideas and broken deals “a completely absurd, ludicrous supposition” from men whom she’d turned down for jobs on the site.
“We have now officially entered into Bizzaro World. James Boyce and Peter Daou, two political operatives who we rejected going into business with or hiring 6 years ago, and who had absolutely nothing to do with creating, running, financing, or building the Huffington Post, now concoct some scheme saying they own part of the company,” she and Lerer said in a written statement to POLITICO, writing that the two “tried to cash in” before filing suit and “said they’d go away for just a little money.”
“For months now they have been trying to extract money from us. They are filing the lawsuit of course because we did not agree to any payment,” they wrote.
Boyce and Daou said they are filing suit now only for recognition and vindication: They will, the two said in a statement, use any proceeds beyond legal fees and expenses “to support progressive causes and citizen journalists and bloggers who are active in support of those causes.”
“How noble,” Huffington and Lerer said in their statement.
The lawsuit touches on the same legal frontiers of intellectual property and deal-making as did a famous lawsuit Facebook settled in 2008. The success of the suit, which seeks unspecified damages, will hinge on whether Daou and Boyce can prove they had offered “something more specific than a generalized notion” and that Huffington had agreed to make them part of the deal, said Dan Kornstein, a prominent New York litigator.
Huffington Post has emerged as a juggernaut since its launch on May 9, 2005. The site’s front page offers a leftward tilt on political news, a sort of mirror image of the Drudge Report. A cadre of bloggers contribute analysis for free and a growing staff provides original content on politics and whatever other content – notably, celebrity – drives traffic and buzz.
Title: Huffington
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2010, 01:23:42 PM
As one who has been robbed of hundreds of song lyrics and seen them sold all over the place and lines used in advertising, commercials, cartoons, sitcoms, and all over the entertainment industry the above allegation about Huffington, another entertainment hawk doesn't surprise me. I don't believe her for one second. There is no doubt to me she is lying. Why she has a history of stealing. Right off of Wikepedia:
****Plagiarism claims Huffington was accused of plagiarism for copying material for her book Maria Callas (1981); the claims were settled out of court in 1981, with Callas biographer Gerald Fitzgerald being paid "in the low five figures."[21][22][23]
Lydia Gasman, an art history professor at the University of Virginia, claimed that Huffington’s 1988 biography of Pablo Picasso, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, included themes similar to those in her unpublished four-volume Ph.D. thesis. "What she did was steal twenty years of my work," Gasman told Maureen Orth in 1994. Gasman did not file suit.[24]
Maureen Orth also reported that Huffington "borrowed heavily for her 1993 book, The Gods of Greece."[25]****
Nonetheless, I doubt the accusers will be able to do a darn thing about it. As a victim of such things I can feel their pain. Most people wouldn't.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2010, 09:30:18 AM
Even a legend in his own mind can be right sometimes.
Some folks on "our" side acted irresponsibly on this one:
=========
Too Good to CheckBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: November 16, 2010
On Nov. 4, Anderson Cooper did the country a favor. He expertly deconstructed on his CNN show the bogus rumor that President Obama’s trip to Asia would cost $200 million a day. This was an important “story.” It underscored just how far ahead of his time Mark Twain was when he said a century before the Internet, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” But it also showed that there is an antidote to malicious journalism — and that’s good journalism.
In case you missed it, a story circulated around the Web on the eve of President Obama’s trip that it would cost U.S. taxpayers $200 million a day — about $2 billion for the entire trip. Cooper said he felt impelled to check it out because the evening before he had had Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a Republican and Tea Party favorite, on his show and had asked her where exactly Republicans will cut the budget.
Instead of giving specifics, Bachmann used her airtime to inject a phony story into the mainstream. She answered: “I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.”
The next night, Cooper explained that he felt compelled to trace that story back to its source, since someone had used his show to circulate it. His research, he said, found that it had originated from a quote by “an alleged Indian provincial official,” from the Indian state of Maharashtra, “reported by India’s Press Trust, their equivalent of our A.P. or Reuters. I say ‘alleged,’ provincial official,” Cooper added, “because we have no idea who this person is, no name was given.”
It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American president.
“It was an anonymous quote,” said Cooper. “Some reporter in India wrote this article with this figure in it. No proof was given; no follow-up reporting was done. Now you’d think if a member of Congress was going to use this figure as a fact, she would want to be pretty darn sure it was accurate, right? But there hasn’t been any follow-up reporting on this Indian story. The Indian article was picked up by The Drudge Report and other sites online, and it quickly made its way into conservative talk radio.”
Cooper then showed the following snippets: Rush Limbaugh talking about Obama’s trip: “In two days from now, he’ll be in India at $200 million a day.” Then Glenn Beck, on his radio show, saying: “Have you ever seen the president, ever seen the president go over for a vacation where you needed 34 warships, $2 billion — $2 billion, 34 warships. We are sending — he’s traveling with 3,000 people.” In Beck’s rendition, the president’s official state visit to India became “a vacation” accompanied by one-tenth of the U.S. Navy. Ditto the conservative radio talk-show host Michael Savage. He said, “$200 million? $200 million each day on security and other aspects of this incredible royalist visit; 3,000 people, including Secret Service agents.”
Cooper then added: “Again, no one really seemed to care to check the facts. For security reasons, the White House doesn’t comment on logistics of presidential trips, but they have made an exception this time. He then quoted Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, as saying, “I am not going to go into how much it costs to protect the president, [but this trip] is comparable to when President Clinton and when President Bush traveled abroad. This trip doesn’t cost $200 million a day.” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said: “I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy and some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president’s trip to Asia. That’s just comical. Nothing close to that is being done.”
Cooper also pointed out that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the entire war effort in Afghanistan was costing about $190 million a day and that President Bill Clinton’s 1998 trip to Africa — with 1,300 people and of roughly similar duration, cost, according to the Government Accountability Office and adjusted for inflation, “about $5.2 million a day.”
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues — deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate — let alone act on them. Facts, opinions and fabrications just blend together. But the carnival barkers that so dominate our public debate today are not going away — and neither is the Internet. All you can hope is that more people will do what Cooper did — so when the next crazy lie races around the world, people’s first instinct will be to doubt it, not repeat it.
Title: POTH: Russia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2010, 08:46:32 AM
MOSCOW — A well-known television personality on Thursday used the occasion of an awards ceremony to deliver a blistering critique of Russian television, saying its journalists had bent so completely to the will of the government that they were “not journalists at all but bureaucrats, following the logic of service and submission.”
Leonid G. Parfyonov’s speech was especially remarkable because of its venue: an elegant dinner organized by Channel One, Russia’s leading channel, to honor the memory of a television host who was gunned down in 1995. Looking out at a glittering crowd that included many of the most powerful figures in the Russian media, Mr. Parfyonov said they had taken on the docile posture of the Soviet-era Central Television.
On federal channels, he said, one cannot hear “critical, skeptical or ironic discussions” of either President Dmitri A. Medvedev or Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
“The highest authorities are beginning to look like the dear departed, of whom one says good things or nothing at all,” said Mr. Parfyonov, who was visibly nervous as he accepted his award. “This, despite the fact that the audience is obviously demanding different opinions; what a furor arose around that single exception, the televised dialogue between Yuri Shevchuk and Vladimir Putin.”
Mr. Shevchuk, a Russian rock star, exchanged views with Mr. Putin at a dinner for the Russian cultural elite, capitalizing on the occasion to lecture the increasingly irritated prime minister on press freedom, government corruption and police abuse, among other things.
Mr. Parfyonov was accepting the first annual Vladislav Listyev television award, which comes with a prize of one million rubles, or about $32,000. Video of the speech, which could be found on Channel One’s Web site, was viewed many thousands of times on Friday, particularly in media circles. A prominent blogger, Rustam Adagamov, called it “an epitaph for modern Russian television.”
Mr. Parfyonov sketched out the recent history of Russian broadcasting, starting with Mr. Putin’s ousting of media moguls whose channels were critical of the government and the demand for national unity that came in the wake of terrorist attacks. Journalists in Russia saw their work shearing into two categories: suitable for television, or not suitable for television. While newspaper reporters can still occasionally confront Mr. Putin with uncomfortable questions, television newscasters “guess the authorities’ goals and aims, their moods, their friends and enemies,” when tackling delicate subjects, he said.
“I have no right to blame any one of my colleagues, since I am not a fighter and I do not expect heroic deeds from others, but it is necessary to call things by their names,” he said. As media independence drains away, Russians are increasingly contemptuous of journalism in general and shrug their shoulders when journalists are beaten for their work, he said.
“People do not understand that journalists take risks because of their audience,” he said. “They do not attack journalists because they wrote something, or said something, or filmed something, but because people read it, or heard it, or saw it.”
Vladimir V. Pozner, a veteran television host who was serving as the event’s master of ceremonies, said the speech was startling precisely because Mr. Parfyonov is a cautious man who “has always been part of the corporate structure.”
“It’s not as much criticism of television as criticism of what the government has done to television,” Mr. Pozner said. “Everyone knows that’s the way things stand. Ever since Putin came in, the big channels have been tightly controlled, and everyone knows what you can say or not say.” But, he added, they do not say so in public.
“It’s a little bit like our friend Hans Christian Andersen, and the little boy who said, ‘But the king is naked!’ ” he said.
Title: The Worst Reporting In the World?
Post by: G M on November 28, 2010, 05:25:30 PM
Friday, November 26, 2010 The Worst Reporting In the World? Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 2:50 PM
On Thanksgiving the New York Times ran a story with the headline "G.O.P. and Tea Party Gains Are Mixed Blessing for Israel".
The story contained this blunt assertion: "Scores of Tea Party-backed candidates are entering Congress, many of whom favor isolationist policies and are determined to cut American foreign aid, regardless of its destination." (emphasis added.)
Many paragraphs later the article notes that "the Israeli government was viewed by some as one of the big winners of the midterm elections," but then adds "the Tea Party-backed lawmakers remain something of a mystery" and goes on to cite Senator-elect Paul again as holding views that trouble supporters of Israel.
Given the headline and the fact that the reporters say that "many" of the "scores of Tea Party-backed candidates" are backing isolationist policies, shouldn't the article cite someone other than Paul? I am unaware of any other Tea Party-backed candidate entering the Congress who is other than very supportive of Israel, but perhaps I missed ten, five or even a couple of anti-aid-for-Israel candidates? Surely the Times had something to back up the reporters' assertions and the headline?
Or not. The article seems a transparent attempt to persaude readers that Israel has something to fear from the new Congress when in fact Israel's greatest concern comes from the president. The obvious hostility to Israel that has marked the president's public statements and policies from the day he took office is clearly threatening the Democrats' grip on the votes of Jewish-Americans, so the left-wing Times has helpfully launched a wholly misleading meme that Israel has something to fear from the new GOP majority when in fact the triumph of the GOP is the best thing to happen to Israel in American politics in two years.
Really, are there no editors at the Times? One senator's statements versus the overwhelmingly pro-Israel views of the new GOP members?
Title: The Times then and now
Post by: G M on November 29, 2010, 05:39:29 PM
The New York Times is participating in the dissemination of the stolen State Department cables that have been made available to it in one way or another via WikiLeaks. My friend Steve Hayward recalls that only last year the New York Times ostentatiously declined to publish or post any of the Climategate emails because they had been illegally obtained. Surely readers will recall Times reporter Andrew Revkin's inspiring statement of principle: "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."
Interested readers may want to compare and contrast Revkin's statement of principle with the editorial note posted by the Times on the WikiLeaks documents this afternoon. Today the Times cites the availability of the documents elsewhere and the pubic interest in their revelations as supporting their publication by the Times. Both factors applied in roughly equal measure to the Climategate emails.
Without belaboring the point, let us note simply that the two statements are logically irreconcilable. Perhaps something other than principle and logic were at work then, or are at work now. Given the Times's outrageous behavior during the Bush administration, the same observation applies to the Times's protestations of good faith.
UPDATE: James Delingpole cruelly belabors the point...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 30, 2010, 07:59:09 AM
GM, Agreed. The hypocracy of the NYT knows no bounds. There is also the profit issue too. This latest leak is a great money maker for the news media whereas climate gate probably would not be such good "goosip"
On another note with regards to Hillary's spying who in their right mind doesn't think spying is the approach taken by all in diplomacy? In some regard this story is like a hollywood gossip magazine. The pro Hillarites probably think this helps her look strong and pro US standing up for us. Has anyone read anything that really can substantiate any accomplishment on the Hill's part overseas?
David Corn thinks she should resign in disgrace. Her credibility with the foreingers is caput so he says. (LIke she was ever an honest INJUN about anything!) Good luck. She might resign if she was to run against Obama. No other way. She is still unning. She had an article she pretends to have written published in the Economst this week. It speaks about America is an still will be the leader in the world etc etc. Of course she is still running for Prez.
*****Should Hillary Clinton resign as secretary of state due to the WikiLeaks revelations? My friend Jack Shafer at Slate makes a good case. His reason: Clinton, like predecessor Condoleezza Rice, signed orders instructing U.S. foreign service officers to spy on the diplomats of other nations. Cables went out under her name telling State Department officials overseas to collect the fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans of African leaders, to obtain passwords, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer accounts used by foreign diplomats, and to gather private information on United Nations officials, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Diplomats are not spies (though spies do pose as diplomats). They do collect information -- by working contacts overseas, reviewing the local media, interacting with the population of the nations where they are stationed -- often acquiring intelligence that is as valuable, if not more so, than the secrets snatched by intelligence officials. But there is a line between a diplomat and a spook. The former uses aboveboard methods to find out what his or her government needs to know about other nations; the latter resorts to espionage, wiretaps, bribery, and other underhanded means. There are many reasons for keeping the two roles distinct. Diplomats are awarded immunity and can gain certain access overseas because they are not spies.
Now that the Clinton State Department has blurred the line, U.S. diplomats, who have to contend with the assumption that any U.S. official abroad is really working for the CIA, will have an additional burden to bear when doing their jobs overseas.
Of the many WikiLeaks revelations that have emerged in the past few days -- and more are to come in the next few months, as the renegade website continues to release batches of the 251,287 State Department cables it has obtained -- the news that U.S. diplomats have been turned into part-time spies certainly warrants thorough investigation. Obama administration officials, of course, have tried to make the leak itself the paramount issue. Attorney General Eric Holder has promised prosecutions if "we can find anybody involved in breaking American law." Clinton has called the leak "an attack on America's foreign policy interests," claiming it has endangered "innocent people." Republican Rep. Peter King urged Clinton to determine if WikiLeaks can be designated a terrorist organization. Sen. Joe Lieberman has called on the United States and other governments to shut down WikiLeaks. Sarah Palin, naturally, blamed President Barack Obama's "incompetence" for the leaks, as she erroneously equated this episode with a website posting pages of her new book without her permission.
Yet there have not been such passionate calls for investigating the transformation of U.S. diplomats into undercover snoops. The administration's strategy -- as is to be expected -- is to focus on the easy-to-demonize messenger, not the hard-to-explain message. But Diplomatgate ought to be a top priority for the oversight committees of Congress. Still, this part of the story could easily get lost in the WikiLeaks wash, as multiple revelations appear simultaneously: Arab nations practically encouraging Washington to back an attack on Iran, U.S. diplomats describing Afghan President Hamid Karzai as "driven by paranoia," and -- don't forget this one -- Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi traveling the world with a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse. The diplomats-into-spies news is a scandal on its own. But thanks to WikiLeaks fire-hose approach, this exposé is somewhat overshadowed by the entire documents dump.
As for Clinton, WikiLeaks' scattershot approach is probably helping her. Shafer contends,
No matter what sort of noises Clinton makes about how the disclosures are "an attack on America" and "the international community," as she did today, she's become the issue. She'll never be an effective negotiator with diplomats who refuse to forgive her exuberances, and even foreign diplomats who do forgive her will still regard her as the symbol of an overreaching United States. Diplomacy is about face, and the only way for other nations to save face will be to give them Clinton's scalp. . . .
There is no way that the new WikiLeaks leaks don't leave Hillary Clinton holding the smoking gun. The time for her departure may come next week or next month, but sooner or later, the weakened and humiliated secretary of state will have to pay. In many other nations, news such as this would indeed prompt resignations of high officials. The United States does not have this noble tradition. Here, government officials hold on for dear life when trouble erupts. (How many U.S. officials resigned when it turned out the Bush-Cheney administration was wrong about WMDs in Iraq? None.) So one can expect Clinton to dig in her heels, as the administration decries the leaker and ignores the leaks. (And with Obama in a weak position politically after the 2010 elections, he's not likely to shove aside a woman who's still fancied by much of his party's base.) Perhaps the coming WikiLeaks leaks will cause additional difficulties for Clinton. But given the ADD of the national media, she probably can survive the current storm. Shafer has a sound argument, but I'd settle for seeing Clinton and subordinates grilled on Capitol Hill about the spookification of U.S. diplomats. But that's probably as likely as the White House inviting Julian Assange to a holiday party.****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 30, 2010, 05:53:42 PM
CCP,
Pretty much any nation-state that is anybody on the world stage uses their embassies and diplomatic cover for espionage purposes. Spies are generally divided into "legals" and "illegals". The "legals" have diplomatic creds and when caught get PNG'ed (Meaning persona non grata) and ejected from the foreign nation. "Illegals" operate under deep cover, because if they are discovered, they face whatever the capturing authorities might wish to do to them, including torture, imprisonment and execution.
Title: Friedman catches a well deserved beating
Post by: G M on December 04, 2010, 04:23:56 PM
Will Thomas Friedman just renounce his citizenship and move to China already?
By: Mark Hemingway 12/01/10 12:33 PM
Those of us masochistic enough to read the New York Times op-ed page with any regularity know that Tom Friedman has a long and distinguished history of praising the autocratic communist government in China as means of denigrating things here in the U.S. Today's column, however, might just take the cake. It starts with a cutesy premise -- what if China's diplomatic cables were wikileaked? What would they say?:
Read it all.
Title: Media Issues - Thomas Friedman
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2010, 08:34:18 PM
"Friedman catches a well deserved beating"
Thank you. He deserved that. One of his other drumbeats is that we are addicted to oil and that is the heart of all our problems.
We are not 'addicted' to oil. We are powered by oil. The impact that imbalance has on international trade is caused by our refusal to produce energy, not by our consumption.
If the U.S. produced as much as we consumed, our impact on the global market would be net zero, gas would still be at 99cents/gallon, the Saudis and Chavez's would be less enriched, the trade deficit and dollar outflow for oil would be nothing and all our businesses would be far more competitive.
Producing ethanol, solar or windmills off of government subsidies would accomplish none of that.
Sen. Vitter from Louisiana says that 97% of our oil is still off limits by government regulation. Even with all those prohibitions it is still our best transportable fuel source. Friedman should look into freeing American oil production if his concerns were at all what he says they are.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 05, 2010, 08:56:04 PM
I can tell you that the air pollution in China's cities makes the worst smog alert day in LA's history seem like a fresh spring morning in a Colorado mountain meadow. My wife used to do business in China's megafactories. She saw metal plating factories dumping toxic sludge directly into rivers that were water sources for poor villages downstream. The same villages suffer incredible rates of children born with birth defects. Other poor villages have entire populations slowly dying of AIDS, because they sold plasma for a pittance of money and the equipment used to extract the plasma, meant to be disposable was re-used over and over again, infecting everyone with the HIV virus.
I guess Tom Friedman must not have seen THAT China.
Title: Media Issues - Thomas Friedman - only collective action can save us
Post by: DougMacG on December 06, 2010, 08:17:58 AM
GM, I look forward to reading a best selling rebuttal to Friedman: The World is Round - and just the right size and temperature. :-)
'Hot, Flat and Crowded' ... we will all [burn to death?]... 'if we do not act quickly and collectively'. http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded
The world is not crowded. Some 3rd world parts of it are, ,mostly where collectivists and poverty rule and individual freedom and decision making is stifled. And the cities where they the collectivists all want us all to live are crowded. Has anyone ever looked down when they fly across our fruited plain? We just had the coldest Thanksgiving here in decades, we've had no melt off and it's still snowing, people are dying from the cold across Europe, the 'research' his book was based is all discredited, yet he is an award winning author - like Krugman - and Michael Moore and Al Gore? Why are there no updates to the conclusions when we find out the underlying data was tweaked and biased?
I have seen more accurate reporting in The Enquirer.
GM is correct about China. Friedman writes about 'poisons', then gives China a pass for filth while lambasting us for exhaling a harmless trace molecule that plants breathe. I wish that people who write about economics or environmentalism were required by their employer to study it first. If we really needed CO2-free energy, every book of his would be about nuclear energy and a larger grid.
Title: Pravda on the Hudson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2010, 07:02:36 AM
The New York Times Nov. 20, 2009, on its decision not to publish secret data: "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."
The Times a year later (Nov. 29, 2010) on its decision to publish illegally acquired WikiLeaks data: Despite their provenance, "The Times believes that the (WikiLeaks) documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises, and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 16, 2010, 11:42:41 AM
I wish they'd just be honest and say "We believe in man made global warming, or at least want the policies of leftist economic control as desired by MMGW advocates imposed on the US, so we won't print anything to show that the science is just made up horseshiite. As far as Wikileaks, anything that reduces America's strength, we support, being good leftists."
Title: Jounolist-ism
Post by: G M on December 24, 2010, 12:47:32 PM
111th Congress Most Productive Ever: JournoList Alive & Well: Media Talking Points If there was ever any doubt that JourList (or it's successor) isn't up and running...the current talking points by the MSM that the 111th Congress is the most productive since the Great Society initiative of Johnson in the 1960's should put that to rest. Pretty much every outlet from NBC to the LATimes is saying this almost verbatim.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on December 24, 2010, 12:54:29 PM
GM,
Really remarkable how the MSM is manipulating us.
They never mention that this Congress has been probably the most unpopular and least admired of any in history.
Not that that should matter. Why they have been the most "productive".
I think most Americans, even the swing voters would correct the word productive to "destructive".
Again all I can say is thank God for Fox and talk radio. If not for them we would all be scratching our collective heads asking could we be the only ones with any common sense in the sinking country.
Title: Memory Hole-2010
Post by: G M on January 01, 2011, 04:15:26 PM
2010 a Banner Year for MSM’s Ministries of Mistruth On the big stories of the year, it's all the facts they wish to print. December 31, 2010 - by Tom Blumer
In George Orwell’s 1984, set in a pre-computer era, Winston Smith, working in the misnamed Ministry of Truth, alters documents that contradict or conflict with his totalitarian government’s take on history, wiping out inconvenient truths or revising them to fit the current template.
In 2010, the establishment press ramped up its propaganda role, acting as a collective of preemptive Winston Smiths. They ignored or massaged important news stories in ways that prevented the vast, relatively disengaged majority of the population (probably 85%, but perhaps as low as 80% thanks to the Tea Party movement) from getting their arms around the truth without doing a great deal of independent research.
Reviewing my blog’s 2010 posts, I thought I might have a hard time coming up with ten obvious Smith-like examples. I found about 50. If I’m lucky, I may have addressed 10% of the really offensive instances that occurred throughout the year. What follows are ten of the worst, with occasional multiple offenses packed into one item. Except for the final two, the worst by far that I found, they are in no particular order.
1. Refusing to describe the U.S. homebuilding industry and new home market as the worst since World War II. The current meme is that it’s the “worst in 47 years of record-keeping,” except that in most instances the “record-keeping” phrase is omitted, giving readers the clear impression that at least 2010 wasn’t as bad as 1963.
That’s not so. 2010 was 43% worse than 1963, and worse than every full year after Japan blessedly surrendered to us — even before adjusting for population.
Reporting the truth would make it painfully obvious that the Obama administration’s HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) and other initiatives have not only failed to revive the market, but have harmed it. The press won’t tolerate that.
2. “Channel-stuffing” at Government/General Motors. From July through November, the company shipped 112,000 more cars to its dealers than its dealers sold, increasing dealer inventories to an unreasonable 90 days’ sales. In doing so, GM, which according to accounting rules recognizes a sale when a vehicle leaves the factory, created over $1 billion in shipped-ahead profit.
This is a very effective technique for dressing up the books ahead of an initial public offering and making things look good for a while thereafter. But it’s not sustainable without a huge upward spike in sales, which isn’t happening. None of this is news in the establishment press.
3. ObamaCare’s work and marriage disincentives. Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has shown that if ObamaCare ever takes full effect, those who wish to advance themselves could face marginal health care subsidy-loss rates of more than 100% (I’m not kidding). A person’s “reward” for earning more income would be having to pay more for the same health care coverage than the additional wages they have earned.
Additionally, couples who marry or wish to stay married would lose thousands of dollars a year by doing so. If not stopped, the subsidy structure will virtually kill any incentives for financial self-improvement, and will be a recipe for breaking up untold numbers of families. Of course, the establishment press has raised no concerns over this.
4. Global warmists’ admissions. First, there was Professor Phil Jones’s February concession that there has been no global warming since 1995. Then there was IPCC economist Ottmar Edenhofer’s frank November assertion that climate policy “is redistributing the world’s wealth.” Apparently only English newspapers and editorial writers at Investor’s Business Daily care about these things. Meanwhile, journalists moaned about how people were no longer buying into the supposedly “settled science.”
5. Multiple falsehoods packed into one report. For sheer volume and chutzpah, it’s hard to beat the falsehoods the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger churned out in one September dispatch. First, he informed readers that trillion-dollar deficits didn’t happen until two years ago (wrong; the 2008 deficit was “only” $455 billion). Then he claimed that tax collections through eleven months of fiscal 2010 were up from the same period in fiscal 2009 (wrong again; they were down). Finally, he wrote that government spending was down compared to the previous year (three times wrong; true spending, as opposed to “outlays” as defined by Uncle Sam, was up by over 4% at the time). I asked the AP to retract Crutsinger’s false claims. To my knowledge, the wire service never has, and the falsehoods are still out there.
6. The State in the boardroom. The “Small Business Lending Act” passed in the fall contains a little-known provision requiring banks wishing to participate to accept federal “capital investment” in their institutions. It’s little-known because the press has shown little interest in reporting it.
7. Flubbed scrub at the New York Times. The scrub goes back to a December 2009 article (the link is to the post-scrub version), but relates to the Ground Zero mosque, one of the most misreported stories of 2010. In August, as the controversy heated up, a few bloggers who had excerpted that December story noted that several passages were missing from the original, including this quote from GZM spokesperson Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:
New York is the capital of the world, and this location close to 9/11 is iconic.
The article’s co-author, Sharaf Mowjood, is a “Former Government Relations Coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations.” It is reasonable to believe that Mowjood recognized the odious religious triumphalism in Rauf’s statement, and had it and other questionable items expunged shortly after they appeared online and before they went to print.
8. Skimmers, what skimmers? The press said virtually nothing about the EPA’s utter lack of preparedness for the BP oil spill. Journalists also took very little interest in the fact that several nations offered many forms of tangible aid to help the federal government contain and clean up the spill, and were either turned down flat or severely delayed. One Associated Press item whined that many nations wishing to provide help expected to be (gasp!) reimbursed for their costs.
9. He didn’t read it; what’s your point? Except for the uniqueness of the final item, this example would be firmly in the running for 2010′s worst media muff. In May, regarding Arizona’s commonsense immigration enforcement measure, long after irresponsible charges of nativism and racism had been hurled by many administration members, President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress: “I have not had a chance to — I’ve glanced at it. I have not read it.” The press virtually ignored this shocking dereliction of duty.
10. Shirley Sherrod. No review of 2010 media “Smithing” can be complete with mentioning Sherrod, the USDA employee who was fired after Andrew Breitbart showed a video of a speech she made to an NAACP chapter. Sherrod and her husband Charles received the free press ride of the year. The $13 million the pair received in a farming racial discrimination lawsuit settlement just before she took her USDA job in July 2009 was almost never reported. The documented proof from a longtime leftist that the pair’s New Communities “cooperative” exploited child labor, paid less than minimum wage, illegally resisted union organizing efforts, and employed scab labor never made it into the mainstream media.
Finally, the press has fiercely resisted reporting the pervasive fraud in a related legal action meant to compensate black farmers who truly suffered discrimination in past decades. It is an operation that Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com recently exposed as a false claims gravy train. CNN actually covered for the government by relaying without question its contention that only three claims were fraudulent.
Will the press’s Winston Smiths be more or less aggressive in 2011? As New Media gets stronger, the establishment will likely get more desperate. So the answer is probably “Yes.”
Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 01, 2011, 04:39:29 PM
This is an interesting article. I agree that there are many important events that somehow fail become stories. Here is another list of underreported news in 2010.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 01, 2011, 05:38:55 PM
Secretary of State Colin Powell cautioned President George W. Bush against invading Iraq on the basis of the Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it." But things worked out differently: Iraq was broken, but it's never been owned by Washington.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2035319_2035317_2035508,00.html #ixzz19pzemibN **Saddam and his sociopathic sons are no longer a threat to anyone. That's a big win right there.
The American media's appetite for Iraq stories has declined sharply, keeping with the public's diminishing interest in a story with no satisfactory ending.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2035319_2035317_2035508,00.html #ixzz19q04LTGv **No, the media's interest waned when it could no longer use US casualties against an American president they hated.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2011, 10:35:05 PM
BD:
When I saw it was Time magazine I pretty much stopped right there. My disrespect for this publication is such that I cannot be bothered to say why. Its like when someone asked Louie Armstrong what jazz was, he is said to have answered "If you have to ask, I can't tell you." :lol:
I will say that I seethe quite a bit that the same folks here in the US who did their very best to sabotage and undercut our efforts there complain that it did not go well. This is not to say that there was not a loyal opposition; it is only to say that there was a very disloyal one too and that the damage it did was incalculable.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 02, 2011, 04:13:58 AM
When I saw it was Time magazine I pretty much stopped right there. My disrespect for this publication is such that I cannot be bothered to say why. Its like when someone asked Louie Armstrong what jazz was, he is said to have answered "If you have to ask, I can't tell you." :lol:
I will say that I seethe quite a bit that the same folks here in the US who did their very best to sabotage and undercut our efforts there complain that it did not go well. This is not to say that there was not a loyal opposition; it is only to say that there was a very disloyal one too and that the damage it did was incalculable.
That's too bad. Several of the stories were ones that I found interesting. Jihadists in Somalia and unrest among the Irani powers that be, for instance.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2011, 07:50:34 AM
Well, I have respect for you, so I will give it another look-- but I really do hold Time in great contempt.
, , ,
Just looked and my contempt remains unchanged :lol:
The bias is systemic to the publication. For example, the BP oil spill piece is phrased to let BO off the hook; where for example is the mention of the skimmers from the Dutch and other countries that BO refused because it would have annoyed certain US maritime unions? Or the Somalia story making the rise of the Islamo Fascists our fault? Or the portrayal of concern over Islamic immigration simply as xenophobia? All this on top of the utterly specious analysis of Iraq , , , :-P
For my idea of stuff worth the time, I will email you Stratfor's Top Ten stories of the decade :-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 02, 2011, 05:22:45 PM
I got your email, and will read it in the AM. I take your point, but I still see merit in the Time piece. It is silly, I think, to assume that a single news outlet will provide the whole story. Bias will persist whether political, geographical, gender etc. What the stories can do is bring them to our attention and then allow us to research the background stories. A little research never hurt anyone!
Thanks for the story.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2011, 06:24:06 PM
I get that, but for me Time simply is not worth the time. You are a very bright and very well educated man and life is short, so it surprises me that you do :lol:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 02, 2011, 06:30:32 PM
Thanks for the (backhanded) compliment. I think.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2011, 08:49:28 PM
Both the compliment to you and the attendant insult to Time are intended :lol:
Title: Time/JournoList Magazine
Post by: G M on January 02, 2011, 10:40:42 PM
Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller | Published: 1:15 AM 07/20/2010 | Updated: 10:56 AM 07/23/2010
Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ and former pastor of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., addresses a breakfast gathering at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2008. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
Both the compliment to you and the attendant insult to Time are intended :lol:
:lol:
Good article GM. I still stand by my contention that Time, or other outlets, can introduce stories that have not been covered by other outlets, though.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 03, 2011, 07:36:45 AM
BD,
Yes, any media entity could potentially introduce a story not being covered by other media entities. Given the corruption demonstrated by Time and other MSM entities involved in JournoList, do you trust them?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on January 03, 2011, 07:38:39 AM
"Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
Yes and they are setting up the Republicans now. Notice now that the Repubs control Congress the mantra throughout the media is< "the big question are the Republicans going to compromise with Obama which is of course what the voters want (wink wink) or are they going to be the party of 'no'"?
I don't recall hearing anything like this when W was President and Pelosi controlled Congress in '06 to '08.
Notice the bias difference. This IS the hurdle the Republicans must surmount. If they cannot voice why they are better for America than the Radical progressive agenda pushed through by the academic, union, lawyer, media cabal than they will not win.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2011, 10:21:43 AM
BD:
Of course Time probably does have some content with merit, but as the piece posted by GM illustrates, IMHO it is a seriously deceptive publication. I have no problem with reading material with which I disagree, but I find it inefficient and counterproductive to spend time with things whose integrity I doubt. For example, even though I agree with Debka's biases in favor of Israel, I refuse to read it because I find it to be a seriously irresponsible source. Similarly I regard Time like I regard Oliver Stone's movie on the JFK assasination-- too hard to discern the lines between fact and fiction.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 03, 2011, 11:58:00 AM
Yes, any media entity could potentially introduce a story not being covered by other media entities. Given the corruption demonstrated by Time and other MSM entities involved in JournoList, do you trust them?
GM, I don't trust much about any news source, mainstream or otherwise. That is why I suggested that if one source can introduce me to a story, it can provide the impetus to do expanded research on my own. My trust of Time is not higher or lower than New York Times, Fox News, The Economist, Commentary.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 03, 2011, 12:22:45 PM
BD,
My training in open source intelligence analysis says use a minimum of 3 sources of information. This means sources of information that can be trusted. Time and other MSM "JournoList-ism" practitioners cannot be seen as journalists in the classical definition. Rather than news, they write editorials in the guise of news articles, with a intent of propaganidizing the public rather than informing.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 03, 2011, 01:44:18 PM
GM, every source will have inherent biases. The purpose of using a minimum of three is a sort of "cross reference." A blind man can be a good source; and even a liar provides information.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 03, 2011, 02:00:18 PM
Sure, but you have classify sources as Time as low on the reliability scale. Were Time an informant, I wouldn't try to get a warrant based on their collective testimony on a subject alone, without corroborating information from much more credible sources.
Time and other JournoLists are useful when one wants to see what the talking points are from the DNC/white house on the topic du jour.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2011, 02:17:25 PM
"Time and other MSM "JournoList-ism" practitioners cannot be seen as journalists in the classical definition. Rather than news, they write editorials in the guise of news articles, with a intent of propaganidizing the public rather than informing."
YES.
BD, I agree that with your mindset you can get useful starting points from JournoLists, indeed very JKD of you to do so :wink: but FWIW for myself I think there are other sources more that give more value for my time. For example see CCP's post of the interview with Khosla on January 1 with regard to energy and environmental predictions on the Stock Market thread of our "S,C, &H" forum.
Anyway, I suspect we are near to confusing a horse with a cat-- the cat may have 9 lives, but this horse is probably dead by now from the beating we have given him :lol: Last word yours :-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 03, 2011, 05:56:52 PM
BD, I agree that with your mindset you can get useful starting points from JournoLists, indeed very JKD of you to do so :wink: but FWIW for myself I think there are other sources more that give more value for my time. For example see CCP's post of the interview with Khosla on January 1 with regard to energy and environmental predictions on the Stock Market thread of our "S,C, &H" forum.
Anyway, I suspect we are near to confusing a horse with a cat-- the cat may have 9 lives, but this horse is probably dead by now from the beating we have given him :lol: Last word yours :-)
I think part of the issue is that we come at this from different starting points. Unlike most people, I don't look at news just to be informed. I look at news that can be digested, is informative, has a different tack, and lots of other reasons and purposes. While I certainly read for myself, and increasingly for this forum, I also use the materials professionally. While you (plural) may not find Time, NYT, or other publications to be worth your while, in the end they are not less trustworthy, biased, useful, important, etc. than most other sources.
Media are designed to make money, and increasingly news has become "softer" no matter the medium. My favorite recent example was a (seemingly serious) discussion about the way that President Obama walked his dog. To blame Time for having biases is silly. They attempt to reach their audience. Fox News does the same thing.
This is why I suggest that any news source can provide an intro to a story. NO news outlet can, will, or should provide a comprehensive look at any story. They just can't. There are contradictory book length treatments of much of the world's problems.
I have written a 2-3 page article and used 30 sources. Not all of them were "expert", "right", "mainstream", or some other adjective. However, all of them provided a small lens into the story I was telling.
Simply dismissing a story because Time, or similar, tells it is too simple. A professor of mine once asked the question of a bureaucrat who was creating an advisory board. In general, the board should be comprised of experts who are more right than wrong. If, however, there was one person who was only right 10% of the time, but was right when everyone else was wrong, wouldn't you want him on the board?
It seems to me that we, at least as martial artists, do this same thing (a head nod to the JKD in me). If I go to a BJJ seminar with some hotshot, trim, young,black belt and he teaches me only one thing in 2 days that I feel like I make mine, I don't dismiss his expertise. I am glad I went to the seminar.
After all that, I feel really bad for the horse. Sorry, Mr. Ed.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 03, 2011, 07:02:29 PM
BD,
As a scholar, if you were writing a history of jihad terrorism in the US, would you treat a 9/11 "truther" site as just another source? What would your vetting process be for information sources?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 03, 2011, 07:06:32 PM
As a scholar, if you were writing a history of jihad terrorism in the US, would you treat a 9/11 "truther" site as just another source? What would your vetting process be for information sources?
That would depend, I guess. What is the audience, and the purpose of the piece? For example, if I was attempting to write about the public's reaction to 9/11 then it would be another source.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 03, 2011, 07:10:47 PM
In my example, you are attempting to collate and document the actual events. What sources do you use? What would you avoid and why?
Title: Re: Media Issues, Time etc.
Post by: DougMacG on January 03, 2011, 11:27:54 PM
This analogy may not work but... one of my best friends in college, scary to think he became a brain surgeon, use to say of drugs and music, I paraphrase best that I can recall: let them take the acid and the coke and the heroin, bands like the Doors, the Stones, the Dead, Pink Floyd. Then we buy the album for five bucks and enjoy the effects without risking the brain damage and overdoses of taking all those drugs ourselves.
In this case we have (figuratively) sent Bigdog to study Time magazine, the UK Guardian, and institutions of higher learning at very high risk to himself while we can sit back in our easy chairs in secure locations and read just the best of the best of what he finds there. I, for one, appreciate it and hope that he is able to eventually get out those places unharmed.
He mentioned going there not just for news. Besides his reasons and cross checking information, we should not lose touch with what other people are reading and thinking even if the motive is just to persuade or defeat them. We want the diversity of opinion here so (IMO) Let it Be. Attack or criticize based on specifics in the posts. Here goes.
It is strange to have Time which I guess is now CNN write about something/anything being under-reported. It should be the readers telling them what was under-reported. Still I found it interesting. (Also I want to read the 20 predictions again more closely.)
Point 1 includes the proverb about breaking Iraq so we have to fix it. True, that was our policy but it was BS to me in this sense. Iraq was broken before we got there, unless you can make the case that rape, torture and gassing your people into submission is normal or functional (unbroken). GM's take was correct IMO. The fun and profit in the media of harping on Iraq left with Bush. It made no sense with a new and enlightened Commander in Chief. With Afghanistan I think the press is mostly blocked from knowing anything helpful. In war that has some validity. What the press prints, the enemy knows.
They are right-on regarding the Somali story being a huge, under-reported, also not that far away - I believe there were 24 Somali-based, al Qaida related arrests in Minneapolis this past year. I suppose that doesn't sell until an airliner turns into fireworks. Same with tragedies like Congo and Sudan. People can't find an angle to relate to it or do anything about it; famine, rape and pillage is normal there. If peace or prosperity broke out that might be news. The Iran power struggle could have been the story of the year. Our press had nothing to report (no inside scoop) and our country did nothing to help. I wish Rahm had said never let an uprising against a tyrannical regime go to waste.
Bias from my point of view pops in on this one: '8. The Rise of Europe's Anti-immigrant Right'. Seems to me the story missed was the immigrants coming in and revolting against Europe. I have posted at least three different videos of that on this forum. Friends elsewhere (readers of Time and Newsweek?) mostly have no clue about what is happening there, where here it was harshly argued. One was a private grocery store ransacked for made in Israel products in a 'suburb' of Paris, home of the car fires. Another showed riots as Sweden couldn't allow spectators to watch their own national team play a home Davis Cup match because the opponent was Israel and the site was Sweden's 3rd largest city Malmo, an Islamic stronghold where a third of the city is 'foreign born', soon to be an Islamic majority city. Different video, same story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLUBtc1iWvc - I wonder what Time's coverage was. Watch and imagine there would not be some political backlash.
The oil spill story I thought was the story of the year. It played no part in the election that followed and hardly a word was written after the fix. Either it was way overblown while it was happening or horribly neglected by the media in followup. The lack of domestic drilling to match our consumption is still one of the worst, self-inflicted wounds in our economy and of all geopolitics. I have read nothing worthwhile yet about what we learned from this disaster.
Maybe those criticizing Time knew what they were doing. BD followed by posting an interview of Justice Scalia. :-) It was short, but I love to hear people like that in their own words instead of having their minds read by punditry.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 04, 2011, 04:41:25 AM
This is an interesting article. I agree that there are many important events that somehow fail become stories. Here is another list of underreported news in 2010.
I am stunned at how much my post has generated, for a few reasons. 1, I genuinely found the original aricle posted by GM to be interesting. I then posted another article with a different list of underreported stories. I acknowledged the interest I had in GM's post, and thought there might be other stories of interest. Instead, the interest was that I used TIME MAGAZINE. Holy ape sh!+, Batman.
2, Guro Crafty has asked for a cease and desist. Something about a dead horse... keep kicking it, I'll let you, but I will no longer be brought into the session.
3, DougMacG, while I appreciate your interest (and I mean that sincerely), I'm not sure how my posting a single article from TIME MAGAZINE is like taking acid. As I have said earlier, I post stories because I find them to be interesting. I found the Scalia interview to be interesting, but not because of a browbeating.
4, I attempt to convey a general appreciation for the materials presented /shared in this forum, even when I do not agree with them, but that is not the norm, it would seem. If I don't agree with them, I will certainly acknowledge that, but it doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the fact that the person found the story worth sharing. Let me repeat, I don't always post stories I agree with. I post those I find interesting. If the articles, etc. that I post don't interest you, don't read them. But to have 3 day discussion about TIME MAGAZINE, and not the story is pointless. See 2 above, and the rule about remaining "friends at the end of the day."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 04, 2011, 05:00:46 AM
BD, There was humor intended that did not come through. My timing was lousy because of reading along without having the time to post. I'm sorry for making things worse. I was sincere in saying I appreciated the original post. - Doug
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 04, 2011, 07:54:03 AM
BD, There was humor intended that did not come through. My timing was lousy because of reading along without having the time to post. I'm sorry for making things worse. I was sincere in saying I appreciated the original post. - Doug
Rereading your post, there is humor and it does come through. My sincere apologies, DMG.
Title: Media Issues- Sports Illustrated
Post by: DougMacG on January 06, 2011, 10:52:44 PM
With their more controversial issue coming soon I just wanted to compliment Sports Illustrated for getting something right last month, picking one of our little buddies from girls sports as Sportskid of the Year 2010: http://www.sikids.com/photos/29241/2010-si-kids-sportskid-of-the-year-jessica-aney/1
Jessie has been my sports hero for about 3 years. You have to see the photo with her family (#9) to realize how small these girls are. If anyone of adult size had the efficiency of movement and utilization of strength she has, the power and control generated would be unimaginable. The top men tennis pros came to town for an exhibition last year but everyone left there talking about the earlier play of the 11 year old girls. Her best friend and doubles partner was world champion at 9 and flown around the world to compete while we met Jessie at a small tournament near their hometown. Totally humble, unaffected and into her craft, she taught herself a one-handed backhand while the others all need two. At 11 or barely 12 playing high school level she beat the top player from each of the top three schools to reach the state finals in tennis, and her best sport is hockey. Bet on gold for team USA the first time she plays hockey in the Olympics.
Title: POTH speaks to this thread
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2011, 09:11:52 AM
Hanging On as the Boundaries ShiftBy ARTHUR S. BRISBANE Published: January 8, 2011
FOUR months as public editor has given me a working list, perhaps only that, of the challenges The Times faces and the faults readers find in this most important of American newspapers. As a representative of the reader, I’d like to post that list today and invite you to consider it, then add to it as you will.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times More Public Editor Columns .The Public Editor's Journal .E-mail: public@nytimes.com .Phone: (212) 556-7652
Address: Public Editor The New York Times 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
The blending of opinion with news is a good place to start. Although there is a distinct separation between the Editorial Page operation headed by Andrew Rosenthal and the news operation headed by Bill Keller, the news pages are laced with analytical and opinion pieces that work against the premise that the news is just the news.
The most glaring recent example that drew my eye was the Dec. 15 front-page column by David Leonhardt analyzing the debate over health care reform. The piece, a day-two follow-up to the news that a federal judge in Virginia had overturned the health care law’s central provision, drew complaints from readers like Sheila R. Markin of Sarasota, Fla., who wrote: “The Times does itself no good by putting these articles on the front page. It loses its status as an objective newspaper.”
She added, “I want my newspaper to be known for its unbiased articles on the front page.” Ms. Markin nailed it with this last sentence. I have no problem with Mr. Leonhardt’s analysis; he’s an accomplished economics writer and is entitled to his view. It was The Times’s decision to place it on Page 1 that posed the difficulty, sending the message that The Times’s take on health care is synonymous with Mr. Leonhardt’s, which some see as progressive or liberal.
The issue of opinion versus news in the news pages is, I think, one of boundaries. In my experience, people value boundaries, rely on them and grow uncomfortable when they move.
And here’s another form of boundary-slippage that readers complain about, one that is technology-driven. Once upon a time, the final print edition set a final, definitive version of a story and headline, leaving for posterity an immutable document of record, albeit one gathering dust in the newspaper morgue. No more. Now, appearing online, stories often undergo more frequent updates and headline changes. The same story often appears under distinctly different headlines in print, on the Web and on the other digital devices the Times feeds.
Amy Goldstein, a reader from Princeton, N.J., wrote to me that she found all this versioning problematic. “How does the newspaper of record handle this?” she asked, referring to changing versions of an obituary of the movie director Arthur Penn. “I read something, and now poof, it’s gone without a trace.”
While the requirements of digital publishing sometimes make things go “poof,” in other ways the digital environment commits things to a kind of immortality that itself is sometimes unwelcome.
In one case I wrote about, I argued that the paper had run roughshod in using the names of a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old who were named in a civil suit. But there is no fix for a problem like this after-the-fact. When it comes to the notion of expunging the identities, Times policy is strict: the electronic record is not to be changed. To me, this argues for taking far more care in protecting individuals’ privacy in the first place.
Indeed, taking sufficient care on the front end of reporting and publishing is one of the most difficult challenges for The Times as news consumption shifts rapidly to digital venues like the Web, tablets and cellphones. The newspaper scored a clear victory in this respect with its handling of the WikiLeaks material. With its deep roster of experienced reporters and computer-aided reporting expertise, The Times carefully mounted a responsible assemblage of coverage.
Floyd Abrams, the prominent First Amendment lawyer, gives The Times’s WikiLeaks work very high marks. And he notes that the stakes are huge, given the peril that news organizations face when dealing with secret material — dealings that could potentially subject them to prosecution under the Espionage Act.
“Once the legislature or the judiciary gets the notion that the entities before it are reckless,” Mr. Abrams warns, “the less likely they are to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Unfortunately, though, the pressure at The Times to produce in a high-speed news environment sometimes leads to much less careful work. You could ask Greg Brock, the senior editor who handles corrections for The Times. In 2010, he told me, The Times corrected 3,500 errors, most commonly spellings, dates and historical facts.
“What leads to these type errors?” Mr. Brock said. “Reporters and editors are rushed on deadline; they simply fail to double-check; the reporter misreads her notes. But many of these errors stem from Googling a name and taking the spelling — or historical fact — as gospel.”
Speed has other ill effects. For journalists charged with feeding the digital news flow, life is a barely sustainable cycle of reporting, blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and, in some cases, moderating the large volume of readers who comment online. I applaud these journalists for their commitment but worry that the requirements of the digital age are translating into more errors and eventual burnout.
Certainly, as Mr. Brock also notes, the digital age has spawned a growing chorus of bloggers who closely monitor The Times. “A blogger points out an error, challenges something The Times has published and urges its followers to write The Times,” he said. “So they do so by the hundreds — particularly on politically charged issues.”
Looking ahead, the twin demands of digital and print will remain for the foreseeable future (and p.s., it’s not readily foreseeable). The Times will have to maintain deep investments in both domains while the media mix sorts itself out — an expensive proposition that puts pressure on The New York Times Company’s already slim profit margin.
So it seems that, as the New Year dawns, boundaries will continue to shift, the pressures will mount, and much will depend on the success of The Times’s pending launch of its pay model — the pay-to-use system designed to generate revenue for the currently free NYTimes.com.
One thing I know I can count on: The readers will weigh in. Their passionate view — from outside the newspaper’s 52-story bubble on New York’s West Side — provides an essential balance and perspective that helps keep The New York Times on track.
E-mail: public@nytimes.com
Title: Manufacturing dissent
Post by: G M on January 13, 2011, 04:37:47 AM
**Funny how you don't see this in the MSM's coverage.
Title: POTH's Charles Blow(hard)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2011, 11:48:45 AM
Normally this guy is a typicall super progressive, but today he actually shows some integrity. ========================
The Tucson Witch HuntBy CHARLES M. BLOW Published: January 14, 2011
Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.
The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.
Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.
“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”
The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.
I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.
But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof.
The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents.
Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.
Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.
You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.
Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on January 16, 2011, 12:25:22 PM
I know I'm dating myself; and I am an old codger, but I long for the days when newscasters/reporters simply presented the news. If I wanted an "opinion" I would turn to the editorial page of the newspaper or read/listen to the news clearly labeled "editorial" or clearly "one reporter's opinion" occasionally offered at the end of the broadcast. Now, everyone seems to have a strong biased opinion; yet they call it "news" be it Fox or MSN or the N.Y. Times.
"There was a time when thoughtful people tried to be balanced. The old-style political columnists were famous for saying nothing. The presented both sides of any given issue in an "on the one hand/on the other" fashion, pretty much allowing readers to form their own opinions,"
Title: Let us shed a tear
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2011, 07:08:28 PM
Updated Keith Olbermann, the highest-rated host on MSNBC, announced abruptly on the air Friday night that he is leaving “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” immediately.
The host, who has had a stormy relationship with the management of the network for some time, especially since he was suspended for two days last November, came to an agreement with NBC’s corporate management late this week to settle his contract and step down.
In a closing statement on his show, Mr. Olbermann said simply that it would be the last edition of the program. He offered no explanation other than on occasion, the show had become too much for him.
Mr. Olbermann thanked his viewers for their enthusiastic support of a show that had “gradually established its position as anti-establishment.”
In a statement, MSNBC said : “MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”
MSNBC announced that “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” would replace “Countdown” at 8 p.m., with “The Ed Show” with Ed Schultz taking Mr. O’Donnell’s slot at 10 p.m. Mr. Olbermann did not discuss any future plans, but NBC executives said one term of his settlement will keep him from moving to another network for an extended period of time.
NBC executives said the move had nothing to do with the impending takeover of NBC Universal by Comcast.
Mr. Olbermann had signed a four-year contract extension in 2008 for an estimated $30 million. He hosted “Countdown” at 8 p.m. since 2003 and it became the foundation of the channel’s surge to status as the second-ranked news channel on cable television, after Fox News, surpassing the one-time leader CNN.
Mr. Olbermann’s outspoken, and sometimes controversial, support of liberal positions and Democratic candidates redefined MSNBC from a neutral news channel to one with that openly sought to offer viewers on the left their own voice, much as Fox News has done so successfully for an audience of viewers with conservative opinions.
Mr. Olbermann challenged Fox News publicly on numerous occasions, especially the top-rated cable host Bill O’Reilly, whom he regularly tweaked and frequently placed in the top circle of infamy on a segment Mr. Olbermann called “The Worst Person in the World.”
Ratings for his show grew, though he never really approached the level of popularity Mr. O’Reilly has achieved. But he helped grow the MSNBC liberal brand by his frequent invitations to one guest, Rachel Maddow, who was eventually offered her own show on MSNBC.
Ms. Maddow became the 9 p.m. host following Mr. Olbermann and has built such a successful show that some NBC executives felt less concerned about losing Mr. Olbermann as the signature star of the network.
According to several senior network executives, NBC’s management had been close to firing Mr. Olbermann on previous occasions, most recently in November after he revealed that he had made donations to several Democratic candidates during the 2010 congressional elections — one of them, coincidentally, was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has been the subject of many of his recent shows after being shot in an assassination attempt in Tucson on Jan. 8.
The top MSNBC executive, Phil Griffin, said the donations had violated NBC News standards and ordered Mr. Olbermann suspended. His fans responded with a petition to reinstate him that attracted over 250,000 signatures. Mr. Olbermann returned two days later. In his response he said the rules on donations had been “inconsistently applied.”
.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 21, 2011, 07:34:31 PM
I was kind of hoping for an on-air suicide, but this is ok.
Title: JournoListing Sarah
Post by: G M on January 22, 2011, 06:44:59 AM
Here’s a top 10 list of job suggestions for Keith Olbermann.
Drum roll please…
10. Open a consulting business based on liberal civility techniques.
9. Join the Obama Administration as the Worst Person In The World Czar.
8. Take over ACORN and re-brand as WINGNUT.
7. Sit in a corner clutching a Cornell diploma and babbling “You sir…You sir…You sir…”
6. Pitch NPR on a new show called “Meltdown.”
5. Paint a sign that says “Will Teabag for Food.”
4. Audition for the part of the creepy gym teacher on MTV’s “Skins.”
3. Insist Markos Moulitsas finally pay up for that weekend in Paris.
2. Spokesman for the Washington Generals.
And the number one suggestion is….
1. Get an internship at the Rachel Maddow Show.
Hope everything works out, Keith.
Good night and good luck.
Title: Pravda on the Hudson on Pravda on the Beach
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 24, 2011, 05:10:26 AM
The NYT on the Los Angeles Times:
LOS ANGELES — Big city newspapers all across the country have suffered one indignity after another in the last few years. But few of them have been as hard hit — or gotten as much grief for it — as The Los Angeles Times.
Here in the city that has always strived to show how a sense of sophistication lies beneath the silicone and the superficial, The Times has joined the city’s impossible freeway traffic as a unifying force of complaint.
On a recent weekday evening, Edie Frère, owner of a stationery store in the city’s quaint Larchmont Village section, wistfully recalled reading The Times as a young girl, captivated by the old Hollywood starlets and socialites who graced the society pages.
“We need a paper that’s more, and this is less,” said Ms. Frere, 66. “I think it’s just not a world-class paper, no matter how you cut it. It used to be a world-class paper.”
Never mind that The Times is considered a front-runner to win a Pulitzer Prize this year for its coverage of city officials in Bell who gave themselves enormous salaries, a story that tapped into a growing national outrage over wasteful government spending. Or that it still maintains, despite all the bloodletting since the paper was bought in 2000 by the Tribune Company, 13 foreign bureaus, more than any other large metropolitan daily except The Washington Post. Or that it is the only big city daily that still employs a battalion of correspondents stationed in cities across the country.
In the sidewalk cafes, coffee shops, hair salons and studio lots of this sprawling metropolis, the notion that The Times remains one of the best newspapers still in business is a foreign one.
“When I came here back in ’74, it would take me all day to read the paper. Now it takes me 10 minutes — tops,” said Quintin Cheeseborough, 57, who is self-employed and comes to the Los Angeles Central Library occasionally to read The Times. On a recent morning, he was reading The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, but not The Los Angeles Times.
Since The Times was sold to Tribune, its newsroom staff has been cut in half. For many Angelenos, the downsizing is just one more sign that their city is losing stature. Add it to the list of other ego-bruising blows, like the loss of its professional football team, the flight of Fortune 500 companies from the city limits and a failed bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“We don’t even have a football team. So what does that tell you?” said Mr. Cheeseborough, a note of resignation in his voice.
The Times’s weekday circulation has been nearly halved since 2000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, falling to just over 600,000 — a far steeper rate of decline than at many other big dailies like The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press and The Washington Post.
To identify where all the local harrumphing comes from, it helps to understand just how closely the rise of The Times is associated with the rise of Los Angeles as a capital of culture and commerce.
The paper’s founding families, the Otises and the Chandlers, used their fledgling publication to push for the development that helped give rise to modern Los Angeles. Water was first piped into the San Fernando Valley because they arranged for it. Los Angeles Harbor was built in part because of their backing.
Not that everyone shares such a dim view of the paper. Bill Mullins, 55, an equipment clerk at the city’s Central Library, said that despite the cutbacks, he still thinks The Times invests in the kind of journalism most news organizations have eliminated.
“The L.A. Times will do stuff that I love, like a story on a Los Angeles boy who went to Iraq. And it will start on the front page and jump to Page 12, and then take up all of Page 13,” Mr. Mullins said. “I mean, you can’t get that kind of stuff in three minutes on NBC or ABC.”
Still, seeing the paper sold to a bottom-line-driven corporate owner from Chicago was a major blow to many here. Even Mr. Mullins said that he thought the sale to Tribune would be the paper’s “death knell.” And what Tribune did to local coverage after acquiring the paper only reinforced those concerns. Times bureaus and printing facilities in Orange County and the San Fernando Valley once employed hundreds of people to publish separate editions, each with a locally tailored front page.
John S. Carroll, a former Times executive editor, recalled that each of those operations was like a separate paper. “It was like going to a newspaper in a medium-size city,” Mr. Carroll recalled of visiting there. “It was really something.”
Those operations are no more. Breaking local news no longer appears on the front page, because to save money it moved up its deadlines and moved late-breaking local, national and foreign news to a separate section.
================
The paper’s absence in the community is felt in ways beyond what it no longer covers. The Chandler family, apart from its role in city commerce and politics, was also a cultural force in Los Angeles.
“The intertwinement with the community was much greater when the Chandlers owned the paper, with their charitable contributions, their contributions to the arts,” said Leo Wolinsky, who left the paper in 2008 after holding a number of top jobs there, including executive editor. “If you walk around downtown L.A., The Los Angeles Times and the Chandler name is on everything. When the Tribune Company came, that got cut back severely.”
More than just cutbacks have left many Angelenos with a dim view of their paper. Under its current publisher, Eddy W. Hartenstein — a former DirecTV chief executive who became the fourth publisher under Tribune — The Times has run a number of ads on its front page and on the fronts of other sections that many here felt cheapened the paper. One ad that ran last summer, for a King Kong feature at Universal Studios, declared: “Universal Studios Hollywood Partially Destroyed.”
That ad prompted outrage from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who took the highly unusual step of writing a letter to Tribune’s chairman, Samuel Zell, accusing him of making “a mockery of the paper’s mission.”
Mr. Hartenstein, who through a spokeswoman said he would “pass” on a request to be interviewed for this article, defended the ad at the time, saying it met the paper’s standards. Mr. Hartenstein appears somewhat aware that he has some community relations mending to do. He wrote a letter to readers on Dec. 26 saying that the paper would remain committed to hard-hitting local coverage. But that is a complicated task.
Harvey Levine, 48, a television stage manager who lives on the city’s West Side, ended his subscription after unread copies began piling up at home. “The L.A. Times should be the paper that I trust and go to daily, and it’s not,” said Mr. Levine, a native of Canada who as a young man dreamed of a career in Hollywood and bought copies of the weekend Times in Toronto.
“I know they have a lot of really good writers and they win lots of awards, but I thought it just wasn’t enough,” he said.
Title: JournoList-ism, Reagan edition
Post by: G M on January 28, 2011, 06:05:45 AM
Don’t fool yourself… Journolist is alive and well. It was apparent this week after Obama’s SOTU Address that the state-run media is still coordinating their message to the American people.
All three major networks described Obama’s confusing speech as being “Reaganesque.” They want so desperately for the failed socialist they helped elect to appear like the beloved Ronald Reagan.
Title: "Failed socialist" what proof do you have of this GM?
Post by: ccp on January 28, 2011, 07:46:58 AM
"failed socialist"
GM I ask you the above with tongue in cheek,
Did you see SoloDAD Obrien (one of CNN's partisan hacks pretending to be a journalist) going after a Republican congresman yesterday for calling Obama a "socialist". It was one of those "keeping them honest" segments. She wanted to know what the evidence is that he is a socialist. When one of the answers was Obama-care she was beside herself and obviously bristling with anger, "more than 50% of the people want it", "so are you saying more than 50% of Americans are socialist?" She could not trap him into acquesing and was clearly annoyed.
Just another jornolister attempt at labelling anyone who evens suggests Obama is in some way marxist as "radical", as "crazy". Like it isn't obvious the Pres isn't a radical progressive - yeah right.
I used to think of myself as a moderate Republican. I now have learned from this board and watching the media and the progressives what a mistake that is.
Progressivism is truly a form of cancer. When they cannot ram it down our throats they scream "civility", "bipartisanship", "compromise", "good governance".
The right cannot compromise because there is NO compromise with them. They do not stop, it is never enough, and their answer to everything is more government programs and regulation.
Title: Socialist
Post by: G M on January 28, 2011, 11:40:04 AM
The more you dig in to this, the more troubling it becomes.
In the 1996 election for the Illinois State Senate, Obama was running in a four way primary.
To make up ground, and pay attention here, to make up ground he sought the New Party endorsement as well. In that way, Obama calculated that he could get the Democratic left and the hard left to support him.
But Obama was running against Alice Palmer -- she was already hardcore left. So, and again pay attention, Obama *went to the left* of a hard core leftist to win. That's what he did by seeking the New Party endorsement.
Now here is where it gets interesting. At the beginning of 1996, Obama was able to get all of his opponents thrown off the ballot.
Mr. Hope and Change used the brass knuckles and ran uncontested as the Democratic nominee.
We've already established that the New Party had, by 1996, become the party of the hardcore leftist radicals -- an amalgamation of communists, socialist, and other reds — in other words, not something acceptable to mainstream America.
Why then, if he then did not need the New Party's support, did he keep up the relationship?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on January 28, 2011, 11:50:10 AM
"At the beginning of 1996, Obama was able to get all of his opponents thrown off the ballot."
GM, Can you elaborate? How did he do that and who helped him do this?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 28, 2011, 11:54:05 AM
The mainstream media thought that the membership of Todd Palin, who is not a candidate for any office, in the Alaska Independence Party important enough to report in such outlets as the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and the New York Times, among others.
So now that Barack Obama's membership in the far left New Party has been unearthed, will they report his membership in that Socialist organization?
Proof of Obama's membership in the New Party was discovered by the Politically Drunk On Power blog:
In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. The admittedly Socialist Organization experienced a moderate rise in numbers between 1995 and 1999. By 1999, however, the Socialist 'New Party' was essentially defunct after losing a supreme court challenge that ruled the organizations "fusion" reform platform as unconstitutional.
After allegations surfaced in early summer over the 'New Party's' endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was never a member of either organization. The DSA and 'New Party' then systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA's New Party.
On Tuesday, I discovered a web page that had been scrubbed from the New Party's website. The web page which was published in October 1996, was an internet newsletter update on that years congressional races. Although the web page was deleted from the New Party's website, the non-profit Internet Archive Organization had archived the page.
From the October 1996 Update of the DSA 'New Party': "New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races...
Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)."
You can find the above quote from the scubbed New Party web page at this Internet Archive Organization link. More confirmation of Obama's membership in the New Party can be found at an article in the November 1996 Progressive Populist magazine:
New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.
The Democratic Socialist Party of America also reported on Obama's New Party membership in its July/August 1996 edition:
The Chicago New Party is increasely becoming a viable political organization that can make a different in Chicago politics. It is crucial for a political organization to have a solid infrastructure and visible results in its political program. The New Party has continued to solidify this base.
First, in relation to its infrastructure, the NP's membership has increased since January '95 from 225 to 440. National membership has increased from 5700 in December '95 to 7000. Currently the NP's fiscal balance is $7,000 and receives an average of $450/month is sustainer donations.
Secondly, the NP's '96 Political Program has been enormously successful with 3 of 4 endorsed candidates winning electoral primaries. All four candidates attended the NP membership meeting on April 11th to express their gratitude. Danny Davis, winner in the 7th Congressional District, invited NPers to join his Campaign Steering Committee. Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in 7th Subcircuit Court, explained that due to the NP she was able to network and get experienced advice from progressives like Davis. Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration. The lone loser was Willie Delgado, in the 3rd Illinois House District. Although Delgado received 45% of the vote, he lost by only 800 votes. Delgado commented that it was due to the NP volunteers that he carried the 32nd Ward. Delgado emphasized that he will remain a visible community activist in Humbolt Park. He will conduct four Immigration workshops and encouraged NP activists to get involved.
Kudos to Politically Drunk On Power for digging up this information about Obama's membership in the socialist New Party. The question now is if the MSM will deem his party membership important enough to report on. They sure didn't hesitate to report on Todd Palin's membership in the Alaska Independence Party.
UPDATE: Yet more proof of Obama's close involvement in the socialist New Party from NewsBusters' Hermano who provided this link to the Chicago Democratic Socialists of American September-October 1995 New Ground 42 edition:
About 50 activists attended the Chicago New Party membership meeting in July. The purpose of the meeting was to update members on local activities and to hear appeals for NP support from four potential political candidates. The NP is being very active in organization building and politics. There are 300 members in Chicago. In order to build an organizational and financial base the NP is sponsoring house parties. Locally it has been successful both fiscally and in building a grassroots base. Nationwide it has resulted in 1000 people committed to monthly contributions. The NP's political strategy is to support progressive candidates in elections only if they have a concrete chance to "win". This has resulted in a winning ratio of 77 of 110 elections. Candidates must be approved via a NP political committee. Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP. The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.
The political entourage included Alderman Michael Chandler, William Delgado, chief of staff for State Rep Miguel del Valle, and spokespersons for State Sen. Alice Palmer, Sonya Sanchez, chief of staff for State Sen. Jesse Garcia, who is running for State Rep in Garcia's District; and Barack Obama, chief of staff for State Sen. Alice Palmer. Obama is running for Palmer's vacant seat.
So Obama signed a contract with the New Party? Verrrry interesting.
Absent the ability to read minds and hearts, I can't really tell you if Barack Obama is uniquely dishonest. What is for certain, though, is that his campaign is uniquely deceitful. These two things are not synonymous. Politicians are famous for suppressing facts and manufacturing fantasies to hide their faults, and, while Obama certainly practices this sleight-of-hand, I can't say he is more inured to it that your average prevaricating pol. But what is doubtless is that he has more faults to hide.
It's ironic that Obama has used the "lipstick on a pig" line, because Avon's whole inventory couldn't, sans media spin, cover up his true colors. And color is a factor this election. It's not that the senator is black, however, or that, as he said last debate alluding to McCain's criticism, he is "green behind the ears." It's that he is red behind the ears.
Barack Obama may be the most radically-left major-party presidential nominee in our nation's history. A recent analysis of voting records -- not words but actions -- showed that the senator owned the most left-wing record in the Senate in 2007, placing him ahead of even that body's one avowed socialist, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Now, if Sanders proclaims himself a socialist, and Obama is to the left of Sanders, what do you call Obama?
Of course, some question the methodology of the study, and, true enough, a different one might yield slightly different rankings. But if Obama is within a sickle-length of socialist Sanders, does it really matter if he is a couple of spots above or below? This is an instance where we definitely should remember second place.
Yet accusations of socialism are, well, just so hard to believe. But a damning revelation just came to light that should leave no doubt about Obama's sympathies. The blog "Politically Drunk On Power" (PDOP) discovered documents showing that the senator was a member of the "New Party," which is, the blog explains,
". . . a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards."
Now, listen to this. The New Party tried its best to obscure Obama's ties to the organization and had scrubbed the relevant documents from its website; however, PDOP was able to find them at a non-profit Internet Archive Organization. Quoting from the October 1996 New Party update, the blog reveals:
New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races . . .
Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).
PDOP then cites the November 1996 issue of Progressive Populist magazine, which reported on the results of the general election, writing:
"New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago [emphasis mine]."
Providing further evidence, PDOP provides an excerpt from the DSA's July/August Edition of New Ground 47 Newsletter, which in part reads:
. . . the NP's '96 Political Program has been enormously successful with 3 of 4 endorsed candidates winning electoral primaries. All four candidates attended the NP membership meeting on April 11th to express their gratitude . . . . [One of them,] Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.
Citing yet another source, the 1996 Election Update from the Columbus Free Post, PDOP writes:
"The first NP member heads to Congress, as Danny Davis wins an overwhelming 85% victory yesterday (he got a higher percentage of the vote in that district than the President). NP member and State Senate candidate Barack Obama won uncontested."
Now there is an obvious question. If Obama was a member of the New Party, why was he running as a Democrat in Illinois? The answer is that these socialists were Machiavellian and understood that they could not as yet win power under their own banner. This tactic was outlined in the New Party's 1997 Happy Birthday Update. Here are parts of the PDOP excerpt:
. . . the New Party would remain independent of the Democratic Party - but without undermining the Democrats.
. . . the New Party's founders suggest, the left needs an organization that straddles the inside-outside fence. If the U.S. left is ever to make a meaningful decision on the third-party-vs.-Dems question, they propose, it must first take on the task of grassroots power-building.
. . . The party's strategy has been to build political organizations in a few targeted cities, working closely with labor and community organizations.
Does Obama's history as a "community organizer" still sound innocuous or even positive? The above provides the strongest indication that he was a socialist community organizer.
Here is more from the update:
"Chapters run candidates only where they have a real chance of winning, combine campaign work with organizing and education, and refuse to spoil elections by stealing votes from the better of two major party candidates [emphasis mine]."
Given this fact, is it any surprise that ex-weathermen terrorist and Obama ally Bill Ayers obtained a $50 million government grant (our tax money) for "education" and then gave it the senator, who, in turn, funneled it to ACORN, a group involved in "organizing"?
The update continues:
. . . Until major changes in the legal structure of the U.S. politics happen, we're stuck with a two-party system, and progressives -- if they want to win many elections -- will have to run, and vote, Democrat.
. . . [Our affiliated] organizations can, from time to time, move their political muscle and know-how into Democratic primaries to back progressive candidates for state legislature and even Congress, but do not have the size or clout to field their own candidates for the Senate, the Governor's office, or the White House.
No, but it now seems they very well may soon have one of their number in the White House.
Next, PDOP provides evidence from an article written by New Party member Jim McGrath in 1997:
". . . Chapters generally require endorsed candidates to sign a contract, with requirements that they be NP members, identify as such, support the NP principles and program, and work to build NP chapters . . . ."
In other words, it's highly probable that Obama signed a contract with this socialist party and was a member.
More from the article:
. . . For the New Party, whether progressives should run as Democrats is a tactical, not ideological, question . . . . Regardless of whether our candidates run as "non-partisan" (in fact, the vast majority of our candidates, as we're generally running in local elections which are usually non-partisan), "New Party Democrats" (inside Dem Primaries), or independents, they all are New Party members . . . .
Note that all throughout these quotations, we see continual admissions that socialists are, in fact, running as Democrat candidates, using the major party as a political Trojan Horse. These socialists have also won offices in many parts of the nation. Thus, two ominous questions present themselves: Should Obama win the presidency, how many in the Democrat-controlled house will be fellow New Party travelers? And, with both the legislative and executive branches in their hands and the election past, will the lipstick come off? Will they feel free to legislate a radical socialist agenda?
Lastly there is the Chicago DSA Press Release New Ground 69, which tells us (in the Endorsements Section) of how ". . . Obama participated in a 1996 UofC YDS Townhall Meeting on Economic Insecurity . . . ."
What does "YDS" stand for?
Youth Democratic Socialists.
I understand that some of you are enraptured by Barack Obama. He is a charismatic leader at the center of a cult of personality, and you may not want to think ill of him. But we all want to be responsible voters, and this requires placing country before oratory, before image, before personality, before party, and considering evidence presented. And in Obama's case it is overwhelming; it can be said beyond a reasonable doubt that he was a socialist.
Thus, responsible citizens must demand two things before giving the senator their vote. First, he must come clean about his socialist past and exhibit some contrition. Second, he must convince us that he has renounced these socialist beliefs and will not push the DSA agenda from the Oval Office.
We also must be mindful of the old saying, "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." As for the Chicago surprise's past, he cultivated his political career in a very bad neighborhood. A bad ideological one. And if he wants to now occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the onus is on him to truly prove he has left it behind.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 28, 2011, 12:04:16 PM
Naturally, Barack Obama was an active part of ACORN at the time, helping it legally in court and helping it organize voters. By 1996, ACORN and the New Party were essentially the same body. Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the New Party endorsed Barack Obama in his State Senate bid. Obama began seeking the New Party endorsement in 1995. He had been running in a four way primary against his former boss, Senator Alice Palmer, herself a far left radical, and two other individuals. But an election law quirk gave Obama the upper hand. In order to get on the ballot, candidates had to collect signatures of voters. Printed names were not allowed. Obama challenged the petitions of his rivals and was able to get every one of them thrown off the ballot. By the time the ballot was drawn up for the 1996 election, Obama’s was the only name in the race.
Nonetheless, Obama still coveted the New Party endorsement. The New Party required candidates who received the endorsement sign a pledge of support for the party. Obama did not need to support a party that was, in effect, a front group for communists; yet he still chose to. The July issue of the New Ground noted that 15% of the New Party consisted of Democratic Socialists of America members and a good number of Committee of Correspondence members.
Title: The Reagan/Obama cover
Post by: G M on January 29, 2011, 03:24:06 PM
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=57742
Flip side.
Title: The new civility
Post by: G M on February 03, 2011, 10:36:42 AM
Title: Media Issues: New Civility?
Post by: DougMacG on February 07, 2011, 11:24:53 AM
Going back a couple of days to the white Common Cause progressives calling for the lynching Clarence Thomas, the issue (not mentioned I think) they were so upset about was the Citizens United decision. I would have thought it was war, torture or Roe v. Wade fears, not opposition to freedom of political speech.
The media aspect of this is that these comments (largely unreported) are somewhat consistent and documented on video, whereas the racist allegations at a Tea Party rally were widely reported, totally unverified and likely untrue.
Lynching, tie them up, and torture them ideas are beyond racist and likely apply to Scalia and others as well as Thomas. Racism as more like saying you won't play with someone or work with them because of skin color. These comments strike me more as terroristic, and the incitement trail (for anger, not violence) leads directly to publicly made falsehoods uttered by the chief in the 2010 SOTU. http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/28/the-truth-about-president-obama-and-citizens-united/ (Please correct me if I am wrong.)
Disclosure to be consistent: I cannot guarantee that I would not make similar utterances at a far-right-wing-hate-rally regarding Kelo, if I was the rallying type.
Title: Right-wing hatred
Post by: G M on February 11, 2011, 03:04:30 PM
Title: Media Issues: Time Magazine
Post by: DougMacG on February 13, 2011, 06:17:51 PM
Crafty I don't know specifically what your beef was when you came down so hard on Time magazine recently (mindless liberal drivel?), but they have embarrassed themselves beyond belief on this one - falling for a Sarah Palin spoof and going to press without even clicking on the source, much less having someone listen to it. The National Enquirer's coverage of John Edwards is Pulitzer material compared to this slop they call journalism. Most of the past criticisms of what Palin has said came down to quotes of Tina Fey. This one was a hoax marked COMEDY at the original source and Time bought it hook, line and sinker. Dan Rather had higher standards. The correction apologizes to the singer not the character they were trying to assassinate. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/02/028356.php
Title: Cover-up
Post by: G M on February 17, 2011, 10:30:22 AM
CBS complicit in news coverup By Michael Graham | Thursday, February 17, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed
Dateline — Egypt:
“[60 Minutes] correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, ‘Jew! Jew!’ as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday.”
Powerful reporting on an important story. Two problems: It didn’t run until yesterday, and CBS didn’t run it. The quote is from the New York Post. And it was The Wall Street Journal that reported “the separation and assault lasted roughly 20 to 30 minutes.”
But CBS? They sat on their own story. For five days, as reporters reveled amid giddy celebrations in Tahrir Square, and as President Obama praised President Obama’s handling of the Egyptian crisis, CBS reported nothing.
Only when other media had the story did CBS break the news that its own chief foreign correspondent was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault.” **Read it all.
Title: Re: Media Issues, Racism in the Wisconsin teachers union mob?
Post by: DougMacG on February 19, 2011, 10:24:22 AM
First a comment on the previous. "CBS...sat on their own story. For five days, as reporters reveled amid giddy celebrations in Tahrir Square..."
- That I think is how Matt Drudge got his start; he had insiders tell him the stories networks were holding. ----- We heard ad nauseum the tea party rallies were racist because attendees were predominantly white.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 07, 2011, 08:03:10 AM
Marc Levin forshadowed Bachman on Meet the Press this weekend. Marc Levin predicted that on Meet the (Liberal) Press Michelle Bachman would would get attacked for something. He thought she would be question endlessly, like Boehner to criticize the "birthers". Instead Liberal Democrat David Gregory kept shoving her "gangster" description of the way Obama leads in her face. Over and over again he made it a point demanding she retract it. HOw can she be compromising if she speaks like this? He asks.
My points,
First, I didn't hear him calling and demanding for *compromise* when the Dems controlled government. Second, I didn't hear him demand an apology from the One for comments like, "we reward our friends and punish our enemies". Third, Instead of harping on one comment why doesn't he just let her give her opinions and stance? Fourth, Just the fact this is discussed in the following piece is exactly what the liberal media was after. Get her to say somethng that could be taken out of context or not to apologize and make THAT the issue to distract from her real points. The MSM does this to every conservative.
Bachmann Stands by ‘Gangster Government’ Description By Melanie Starkey Roll Call Staff March 6, 2011, 1:39 p.m. Print E-mail Reprints
Text size Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) refused Sunday to retreat from her characterization of the Obama administration as a "gangster government."
The House Tea Party Caucus founder said, "I don't take back my statement on gangster government," a phrase she used at a tea party gathering in April. "I think that there have been actions that have been taken by this government that I think are corrupt," she said during her appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."
She hammered at the administration Sunday for $105 billion included in last year's health care overhaul law for its implementation, regardless of the questions put to her. Bachmann called on the White House last week to apologize for the funding, which the Congressional Research Service reported in October.
The money was "hidden in various parts of the bill," she said Sunday. "Members of Congress didn't even know this money was in the bill, because we couldn't read the bill before it was passed, because it wasn't given to us but hours before we had to vote for it," she said.
Bachmann said she hasn't "made a decision either way about plans for" entering the 2012 presidential election.
"We can do so much better, she said. "And that's what I'm talking about with people in the next few months. We need to think very strongly. A second administration of Jimmy Carter wouldn't have done this country any favors. We need to make sure we don't have a second Barack Obama administration."
When asked if she had a timeline for making a decision about running, she responded, "I think there's a normal course of events when a decision like that will be made. And if I choose to go down that road, I'll make the decision."
Title: Re: Media Issues, Michele Bachmann on Meet the Press
Post by: DougMacG on March 07, 2011, 03:40:13 PM
CCP, I watched most of that segment. Quite a standoff. I thought she was daring him to take her off the air for not answering his questions. She was determined to make a point (quoted below) and repeat that point, and in a way her point was relevant to every question that he asked. Bachmann has gone through this before, I think it was with Chris Matthews who was determined to get her to say un-American with reference to anything to do with candidate Barack Obama. Once she said the word, they chopped off all chance for context or explanation and the media ran full speed in all directions with their sound bite. Here she did the opposite, walked in with a smile and a script and gave them only one sound bite to play no matter how bizarre the questions.
I defend her plenty but she is not going to be the next President; she doesn't have crossover appeal. More likely would just split conservative vote. If she feels she has broad enough appeal she can run uphill for senate in MN against little Amy, a Hillary clone who is Al Franken's senior senator.
This is the point she was repeating: "We discovered that secretly, unbeknownst to members of Congress, over $105 billion was hidden in the Obamacare legislation to fund the implementation of Obamacare." This is something that wasn't known. This money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/06/michele-bachmann-obama-ne_n_831986.html
Title: Michelle Malkin's missing relative
Post by: ccp on March 08, 2011, 11:18:51 AM
Title: FOX: Truth? We don't need no stinkin' truth! ???
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2011, 08:51:27 AM
Is this but a local affiliate or is this the big FOX News?
Either way, it looks quite bad.
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/ja021903.htm
Title: Re: Media Issues - NPR
Post by: DougMacG on March 09, 2011, 09:50:31 AM
Yesterday it was NPR VP Ron Schiller out, the guy in the video. Last night I heard James O'Keefe (the film director) on Hugh Hewitt radio say there is more material coming. Today it is NPR CEO Vivian Schiller out (no relation). http://www.npr.org/2011/03/09/134389342/vivian-schiller-ceo-of-npr-steps-down?ps=cprs Isn't government bias media a little creepy in free economy? Which article authorizes that power of congress? I love the part where he says we would be better off without federal funding. Take him at his word.
From the NPR link: "...Vivian Schiller's resignation. I'm told by sources that she was forced out — that this was, I guess, the final shoe dropping, you could say." - No, there is more material coming that they know and we don't. The final shoe is total government divestiture.
In the information disclosed about the group to NPR, they are working to spread Sharia Law across the globe. What could go wrong with that, can we count on your donation??
Title: Liberal onslaught on rep. King
Post by: ccp on March 09, 2011, 11:07:14 AM
CNN was on the liberal offensive this AM going after Rep. King for his investigating Muslim extremism in the US. Going into his past such as saying he supported the IRA which while on Fox he explained he did not support their terrorism but was roundly commended for bringing peace there even by Clinton. Even Obama recommended him to be ambassador to Ireland. Does anyone think that if he had ties to Irish terrorism the One would offer him the ambassadorship to Ireland?
Of course CNN's the "soloDAD" is off on another lopsided show trying to gain sympathy for the minority of the month.
It was Latinos, Blacks and now of course it is Muslims.
"Unwelcome in America" is the title.
The jornolist crowd appears to have King in their sights.
Title: What fun! Juan Williams on the new NPR fiasco LOL
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2011, 11:54:42 AM
ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC and NPR Ignore Death Threats to Wisconsin Republicans
Title: Time article
Post by: ccp on March 14, 2011, 12:36:06 PM
"Wisconsin's Governor Wins, but Is He Now Dead Man Walker?"
What is interesting is that author Dawn Reiss points out on her website she does NOT pick the headline. In other words the headline was chosen by Times editors.
Amazing how the MSM points out how peaceful the protests were. I guess chalk outlines with body parts drawings are peaceful. Get a load of the last paragraph from the union members in tears as though not getting her pay raise or totally free health care is some sort of human rights violation. Indeed.
*****Wisconsin's Governor Wins, but Is He Now Dead Man Walker? By Dawn Reiss / Madison Saturday, Mar. 12, 2011
Protesters march outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison on March 11, 2011
Scott Olson / Getty Images Comment Print Email Reprints Facebook Twitter MORE Add to my: del.icio.us Technorati reddit Google Bookmarks Mixx StumbleUpon Blog this on: TypePad LiveJournal Blogger MySpace
The Wisconsin State Capitol had taken on an eerie quiet by late Friday. Gone were the throngs of protesters who had occupied its marble floors like it were a summer campground. The midnight honking of cars circling the white building had ceased. The chalk outlines around fake dead bodies etched with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's name remained in dismembered parts, not yet completely washed away by hoses.
It was the governor, however, who had walked away the legislative victor in the showdown. On Friday, as angry protesters chanted "Shame" and blew horns and vuvuzelas, Walker took up a dozen pens, one at a time, to sign into law a bill that not only takes away the ability of unions to bargain collectively over pensions and health care but also limits pay raises of public employees to the rate of inflation and ends automatic union dues collection by the state. It also requires public unions to recertify annually. It was a coup by Wisconsin Republicans against the labor movement in one of its strongholds. (See how Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker got his way.)
The governor allowed himself a moment to reflect on how his signature might play historically. "Some have asked whether this is going to set a national precedent," he said. "And I don't know ... but if along the way we help lead a movement across the state for true fiscal reform, true budgetary reform to ultimately inspire others across this country, state by state and in our federal government, inspire others to stand up and make the tough decision to make a commitment to the future so that our children across all states don't have to face the dire consequences we face because previous leaders have failed to stand up and lead, I feel that is a good thing." He also attempted to be magnanimous toward the thousands of protesters who had gathered in Madison since he first announced his legislative intentions on Valentine's Day. "I think we've had a civil discussion," he said. "It's been passionate, but it's been civil along the way."
The public outcry had been unexpected and brought out many first-time protesters who stayed on or returned again and again, even as observers thought the remarkably peaceful demonstrations would dissipate. And so, for the many who showed up, some at great sacrifice, were the protests in vain? "No," says Kenneth Mayer, who teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin. "It was pretty clear that the protests, as massive as they got, weren't going to change the governor's mind. Even though they didn't succeed in getting what they wanted, they mobilized a lot of people and made this a salient issue. A protest doesn't have to succeed in its immediate goal to have a long-term impact." (See pictures of the showdown in Wisconsin.)
That probably means the protesters are going to turn from slogans to pocketbooks, funneling millions of dollars in donations into the state's unions. Their anger will likely also provide momentum for recall petitions. Wisconsin allows for the recall of elected officials once they have been in office for a year. According to Mayer, signatures amounting to 25% of the original voters must be gained to start a recall election. Getting rid of Walker would be tough. The governor was just voted into office and therefore could not be subject to a recall until Jan. 3, 2012. And it would require about 540,000 signatures to get his name on a recall ballot. Wisconsin has never recalled a governor in its history. Still, the threat of a recall — to Walker and his allies — could keep the governor in check. Democrats need to gain three seats in the state senate to win back control of the body; there are eight GOP senators who are now eligible for recall. (See pictures of the Japan earthquake.)
The anger and activism could also propel legal challenges regarding the way Republicans may have violated open-meetings law and internal procedures to get the bill passed without a quorum (Democratic senators fled to Illinois specifically to prevent passage). But Mayer says that such claims are unlikely to succeed because "there is case law where the state courts have declined to get involved and force a legislature to enforce its own rule." A constitutional challenge on the basis of whether the Republican reclassification of the bill from fiscal to nonfiscal were legal may have a better chance, says Mayer, but "it's not a slam dunk."
The protesters have a lot of contained anger to vent. The demonstrations — a "quiet riot," according to some — managed to avoid turning violent. Though tensions mounted toward the end, there were never any door-busting, glass-breaking riots. It was horn blowing and button wearing instead of fistfights. There was drum beating and dancing instead of destruction. There were baby strollers and wheelchairs decked out with snarky signs. When Bill Hoyt, 52, saw his middle- and high school daughters and their friends banging on glass panels on the capitol grounds, he reminded them to be respectful of government property, saying destruction wasn't a good use of their frustration and that it would only create more problems. (Comment on this story.)
The frustration from the defeat will be channeled elsewhere. Wiping tears from beneath her dark-rimmed glasses, Anne Moser, 47, who works for the University of Wisconsin-Madison's science-based Water Library, said, "People know that violence doesn't get you anywhere. The attack the Republicans have made is violent and a violation of human rights. It is an attack on the middle class. We teach our children to follow rules and to sit at the table and work it out, but that certainly hasn't happened here." And so she and her allies may seek their revenge elsewhere: in a court of law or, most likely, a polling booth.
Title: libs distorting truth as usual
Post by: ccp on March 16, 2011, 09:32:28 AM
Miami mayor recalled for raising taxes. HIs recall was rightly called a tax revolt by Fox yet liberal news outlet *Time* twists the truth saying he was fired for bravely increasing taxes so as not to cut government benefits and trying to claim it was to preserve "critical departments like fire and police". Libs are also trying to tie this somehow in their favor to the recall attempt by Democrat machine operatives in Wisconsin saying politicians better watch out. Thye must be sorely frustrated that the MIami mayor is recalled for raising taxes not cutting government benefits:
Alvarez Recall: Miami-Dade Prepares to Vote Out Mayor By TIM PADGETT / MIAMI Tim Padgett / Miami – Mon Mar 14, 6:45 pm ET Politicians often do the right thing wrongly. Democrats are mistaken to think we can stanch our hemorrhaging budgets without cutting entitlements, but Republicans are just as delusional to suggest it can be done without raising taxes. Carlos Alvarez, the Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County, or greater Miami, understood this. And so, staring at the revenue free fall caused by South Florida's housing collapse, he engineered a property-tax increase last year to plug a near half-billion-dollar budget hole and keep critical departments like fire and police from being, as he said, "gutted."
Problem was, taking that step during the Great Recession, when Miami-Dade unemployment was approaching 13%, meant that you and your administration better be models of fiscal responsibility. But it turned out that Alvarez, one of the few Miami politicos with a reputation for probity, was at the same time raising high-level staffers' salaries as high as 15% while calling for a 5% cut for county workers; he also used his government car allowance to help pay for a new luxury BMW 550i Gran Turismo. Couple that with the fact that the Miami-Dade County Commission, which passed Alvarez's tax hike, is widely considered a feckless body - many of its members recently ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime costs with the all-too-common practice of using cops as their personal chauffeurs - and you can expect a bruising backlash. (See 25 crimes of the century.)
It looks like that's coming on March 15, when Alvarez will face a recall vote. "We've all been complaining about the quality of our government for a long time, and now we finally have a chance to do something about it," said Norman Braman, the Miami billionaire who led the recall-petition drive, after casting his anti-Alvarez ballot when early voting opened last week. Polls indicate that Alvarez probably won't be parking his beemer in the mayor's downtown-Miami space much longer. According to a March 6 Bendixen survey, 67% of Miami-Dade voters want to dump him. And when and if they do, Miami and its dysfunctional civics are likely to become a new rallying point for the antigovernment wave that swept so many ultra-conservative candidates - including Florida's controversial new governor, Rick Scott - into office last year.
The fall of Alvarez, who was first elected in 2004, would be resounding. Before the recession hit, he was riding high: Miami's housing boom was like a never-ending South Beach party, and in 2007 he won a referendum that gave the mayor, occupying a then relatively weak post, broad new powers that residents hoped would check the incompetent county commission. (Alvarez aides say that was the reason for the staff raises: the new mayoral powers thrust additional duties on the office.) (See "40 Under 40: The Rising Stars of American Politics.")
But though he handily won re-election in 2008, Alvarez may have overestimated Miami-Dade's new mayoral mandate as the recessionary hurricane bore down on South Florida. Even his accomplishments soon came under critical scrutiny, including the deal he and the county commission inked with the Florida Marlins for a new downtown baseball stadium, which in many respects now looks like a sweeter arrangement for a fat-cat sports franchise than for a struggling, low-wage county. Meanwhile, the 13-member county commission remains as clueless as ever. It hardly blinked, for example, when the Miami Herald last fall reported that Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz is the director of a construction firm hired to do work at Miami International Airport, which is overseen by the commission. Diaz claims he never directly voted to give the firm contracts, but the Herald found that companies that have won airport concessions have in turn employed his firm.
All of which was too much for Braman and other Alvarez critics, who were able to secure almost twice the number of petition signatures needed to force a mayoral recall vote. Commissioner Natacha Seijas, who reportedly warned a political rival in 2002 during a debate that she'd "leave here in a body bag," also faces a recall, and four other commissioners may confront one soon. After exhausting his appeals to nullify the petition last month, Alvarez curtly stuck by his fateful tax-increase decision. "I recommended a budget that preserves services," he said. (See the top 10 unfortunate political one-liners.)
But he did it, as far as many if not most Miamians are concerned, while he and the county commission preserved their privileges. In the process, they handed more leverage to controversial watchdogs like Braman - who, as an owner of car dealerships, has used his financial clout to kill sales-tax levies for badly needed public-transportation improvements in Miami. If Alvarez and Seijas (who voted with seven other commissioners for the property-tax hike) are toppled on March 15, their political tone-deafness will only have made it harder for the next politician to do the right thing when it's warranted.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 16, 2011, 09:44:34 AM
Tangent: If I remember correctly Miami had a mayoralty election voided in 199? for vote irregularlities-- which greatly added to my suspicions during the Bush-Gore recount of 2000.
Title: POTH and their "Moderate Muslim"
Post by: G M on March 18, 2011, 02:03:51 PM
NY Times Mag promotes “Hoax of the Holocaust” cleric Yasir Qadhi as face of “moderate” American Islam
Title: Media Issues: The Anatomy of a Smear
Post by: DougMacG on March 23, 2011, 09:32:21 AM
A long piece on Powerline by John Hinderacker. A very good read about how biased media works. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/03/028666.php (This is the conclusion. You need to read the whole story to judge the facts for yourself.) "What we see here is incest to the third degree. The disgusting morass of left-wing blogs, funded by far-left billionaires like George Soros, spew up an endless stream of slimy attacks on mainstream citizens, like Charles and David Koch, and mainstream politicians, like Mike Pompeo. Democratic Party outlets that are generally presumed to be more respectable, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, watch the dirt flow by and periodically, when they see something promising, pluck it out of the swamp and take it mainstream in order to benefit their party. The Post isn't as bad as some--I have referred to it as the most respectable voice of the Democratic Party--but when it follows this disgusting practice, plucking out the vilest unsubstantiated smear and promoting it for purely partisan purposes, it is hard to distinguish the Post from the most disreputable far-left rags, like Think Progress and the New York Times."
Title: WSJ: NPR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2011, 05:27:05 AM
We search for Truth around here. Does anyone have anything on the assertion here about The Blaze's saying that O'keefe misled? ================
By STEVE INSKEEP On the day NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller lost her job, I was reporting from Egypt. That evening, I had dinner with employees from NPR's Cairo bureau. I wasn't eager to talk shop, but I didn't have to. The conversation barely touched on news from home.
Instead we spoke of Egypt's revolution. And we talked over the logistics of supplying our colleagues in nearby Libya with body armor.
When I had time to think about it, I noticed a contrast between the news that NPR reports from the Arab world and the news NPR has lately made at home. Each news story revealed the values of the people reporting it.
Here the story was reality TV. A video editor created a faux organization, set up a meeting, and secretly recorded the bone-headed remarks of an NPR executive. The editor, activist James O'Keefe, spliced together clips to suggest that NPR was prepared to take money from an Islamist group allegedly founded by members of the "Muslim Brotherhood in America."
Emails show that NPR refused the money, and the conservative website The Blaze discovered that the executive's remarks were repeatedly lifted out of context. Nevertheless, the executive and his CEO were dismissed.
I congratulate Mr. O'Keefe for upholding his values: faith in the power of video to mislead. As columnist Michael Gerson noted in the Washington Post, by selectively misquoting the executive's words, rearranging events, and other devices, Mr. O'Keefe made him sound sympathetic to Islamic radicals and unfairly tarnished NPR with "an elaborate, alluring lie."
At the same time, my NPR colleagues in the Arab world were reporting on the actual Muslim Brotherhood and many other players involved in the uprisings. My colleagues' reporting technique demonstrates their values. Suppose you're NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, one of the first reporters into Libya after its rebellion began. You need to know if the rebels are advancing. The only way to find out is to drive toward the front lines until the artillery shells exploding around you make it clear that they're not. Next, you figure out how to get back alive. Then you try to rest, because you'll do it again tomorrow.
With those values in mind, let's consider the fundamental question: the accusation of "liberal bias" at NPR, which drives many critics calling to eliminate its federal funding. It's not my job as a reporter to address the funding question. But I can point out that the recent tempests over "perceived bias" have nothing to do with what NPR puts on the air.
The facts show that NPR attracts a politically diverse audience of 33.7 million weekly listeners to its member stations on-air. In surveys by GfK MRI, most listeners consistently identify themselves as "middle of the road" or "conservative." Millions of conservatives choose NPR, even with powerful conservative alternatives on the radio.
View Full Image
Getty Images .I've met an incredible variety of listeners in my travels. The audience includes students, peace activists, and American soldiers I met in Iraq. They're among many people in the military who rely on NPR's international coverage. When I was NPR's Pentagon correspondent, I discovered that it's a prize beat, because on every base you meet people who already know who you are. Many other Americans are listening in places like Indiana, my home state, or Kentucky, where I first worked in public radio. Not much of the media pays attention to the middle of the country, but NPR and its local stations do. Many NPR stations have added news staff as local newspapers have declined.
Members of Congress listen too: A few months ago I was interviewing a Republican lawmaker who quoted an NPR story he'd heard that morning. And there are people like the woman I met at a Sarah Palin debate party in 2008, in rural western Virginia. She said she listened during long drives required by her job with a railroad. The same programs she hears in Virginia have also reached an audience abroad. In Egypt last week, a young man told me he so admires the quirky reporting of my colleague Robert Krulwich that he plans to translate it into Arabic.
Conservatives in our diverse audience let us know when they disagree with our coverage—as do liberals, who've sent notes for years to advise me that I am conservative. Most listeners understand that we're all figuring out the world together, calmly and honestly, in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
NPR's audience keeps expanding because Americans want more than toxic political attacks. They want news. Think again of my colleagues in Libya, going forward to bear witness amid exploding shells. Is that liberal or conservative? Maybe it's neither. It's an honest and honorable effort to keep Americans informed.
Mr. Inskeep is co-host of NPR's "Morning Edition."
Title: "Rose/O’Keefe Standard of Journalistic Transparency"
Post by: G M on March 24, 2011, 08:08:55 AM
We Call On the MSM to Adopt the ‘Rose/O’Keefe Standard of Journalistic Transparency’ Posted by John Nolte Mar 9th 2011 at 10:58 am in media bias | Comments (100) With their most recent undercover video investigations, independent journalists James O’Keefe and Lila Rose have set a new standard of transparency in the field of journalism — a standard I call on all media outlets — print, online, and broadcast — to adopt and to institute immediately. Within hours of releasing what the AP called “heavily edited” video footage of a high-powered NPR executive’s troubling statements with respect to the Tea Party, conservatives, and Jewish control of the media, Mr. O’Keefe then released to the public the full, unedited two-hour video of the entire conversation. Another New Media pioneer, Lila Rose, also released the full video of her undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood.
While the biased AP apparently only whips out the term “heavily edited” when the institutional left is under fire, it’s difficult to disagree with them on principle, especially when we live in a world where on a daily basis the network nightly news programs, Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, and every facet of the MSM broadcast and publishing world release reports no less “heavily edited” than Rosa and O’Keefe’s initial video releasse. However, unlike Rose and O’Keefe, the mainstream media never allows the public to view the full, unedited material in order to judge the full context for ourselves.
This can and must end today.
With New Media once again leading away, let’s start a new era of responsible journalism that we’ll call The Rose/O’Keefe Standard of Journalistic Transparency, where the insidious practice of “heavily edited” interviews and reporting finally comes to an end. If the mainstream media is as devoted to transparency, truth, and context as James O’Keefe, here are some examples of how it can work….
Within hours of a “heavily edited” broadcast report or interview on the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric and CBS will release online any and all video used to compile that report. Within hours of the Associated Press or Politico releasing an article quoting an interview subject, the AP and Politico will release the notes and/or audio recordings of the full unedited interview. The same with Rachel Maddow, and because he’s The New Murrow and awfully concerned with how the media behaves — Jon Stewart himself should lead the way with the release of the full video of any and all interviews within hours of his wacky editors making the latest “Daily Show” target look like a fool.
Because Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Rose have led the way in journalistic transparency and taken the first step, as a show of good faith from the MSM in accepting this offer, we call on Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric to release every frame of video involving their 2008 interviews with then Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin.
Veritas, anyone?
Title: The Old Grey Hag goes Down
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 29, 2011, 09:05:48 AM
JACOB LAKSIN The Worst of Times William McGowan chronicles the long decline of the paper of record. 25 March 2011 Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America, by William McGowan (Encounter, 288 pp., $25.95)
Abe Rosenthal, the long-serving former executive editor of the New York Times, used to have a recurring nightmare: that he would wake up someday to find that the Times had ceased to exist. It is a commentary on the paper’s much-diminished prestige that many now dream of such a day.
William McGowan doesn’t. While critical of what he considers the paper’s decline, he writes as an admirer of the Times and its place in American history. In his view, the Times once stood as a model of fair-minded, responsible journalism and an important civic and political institution in its own right. The problem, as he points out in his book, Gray Lady Down, is that the Times has remained a hugely influential organization even as it has abandoned its once lofty journalistic standards.
It was not always thus. Recalling the paper’s glory days, McGowan pays tribute to the late Rosenthal’s editorship. Though a political liberal, Rosenthal didn’t want the paper to become a sounding board for left-wing politics. He checked the paper’s drift to the left, particularly in its Washington bureau, by insisting that reporters conduct objective reporting and avoid potential conflicts of interest. Rosenthal memorably summed up his editorial policy: “I don’t care if my reporters are fucking elephants, as long as they aren’t covering the circus.” It’s a testament to Rosenthal’s dispassionate approach to news reporting that in 1972, William F. Buckley’s National Review—hardly a reflexive ally of the Times’s progressive politics—called for other media to emulate the paper’s standards.
If it’s hard to imagine a similar endorsement today, it’s because the Times, in McGowan’s view, has become a very different, and much less worthy, enterprise. McGowan attributes the paper’s decline to two main causes. The first is its embrace of so-called lifestyle journalism in the 1970s. Designed to give the staid “Gray Lady” a trendy makeover and lure a younger demographic, the focus on soft news failed to increase readership. It did, however, open the door for the left-wing politics that Rosenthal had resisted and which would gradually shape the paper’s cultural coverage. A case in point is the Times Book Review, a once-diverse forum for intellectual debate that now often shuns conservative titles, even when they top the paper’s own extended bestseller list.
The second factor in the Times’s decline was the ascension of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. to the perch of publisher in 1992. Having come of age in the sixties counterculture, Sulzberger moved to shift the paper’s focus from its historical commitment of reporting the news “without fear or favor” to the more activist promise to “enhance society.” In particular, Sulzberger wanted the paper to promote “diversity” and to move beyond what he disparaged as the “predominantly white, straight, male version of events.” As the author of Coloring the News, a critical look at the politically correct mania for “diversity” and its damaging effect on the news media, McGowan writes as an authority on the Times’s transformation. The change was most obvious in the paper’s increasingly strident editorial pages, but the news content, which began taking its cues from editorial, suffered as well. Times veterans groused that the paper risked compromising its news coverage with a newly ideological agenda, but Sulzberger dismissed such concerns, declaring that he was “setting a moral standard.”
The paper’s diversity obsession culminated in the calamitous tenure of Howell Raines. Admired by Sulzberger for his uncompromising and outspoken leftism, Raines became executive editor in 2001 and presided over a series of journalistic disasters that badly tarnished the Times’s editorial brand. The biggest of these, which would cost Raines his job, involved a young black reporter named Jayson Blair. Recruited through a minority internship, Blair was promoted over the objections of his editors as part of the paper’s diversity drive. A national correspondent by the time he was 27, Blair wasn’t ready for the role. During his seven months on the job, Blair fabricated details in at least 38 of 73 stories, conning editors by lifting details from photos and other news stories and appending datelines of locations from which he had not reported.
The fallout from Blair’s fraud in May 2003 ended not only Raines’s Times career, but also that of Gerald Boyd, the paper’s first black managing editor. Sulzberger called the scandal the “low point in the paper’s 150-year history.” The Blair affair was a damning indictment of the paper’s “diversity” agenda, but it was not an isolated incident. McGowan shows how the Times’s ideological hobby horses make it uniquely susceptible to such hoaxes. A more recent example was the paper’s scandalously prejudicial early coverage of the 2006 Duke University “rape” case, in which a black stripper accused three white Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a team party. Because the Times covered the story through the prism of race, sex, and class, much of its initial reporting echoed the baseless charges of radical professors like Duke’s Houston Baker, who claimed that the lacrosse players were “white, violent, drunken men . . . veritably given license to rape.” As evidence mounted that the players’ accuser had made up her story, the Times corrected the record, but not before it had done grave damage to the reputations of three innocent young men.
On the cultural side, the Times’s weakness for diversity cant has made it an easy target for literary con artists. In 2004, the paper was taken in by “J. T. LeRoy,” the supposedly transgendered cult novelist whose background as a “young truck-stop prostitute who had escaped rural West Virginia for the dismal life of a homeless San Francisco drug addict,” as described by the Times’ Warren St. John, had impressed credulous reporters and reviewers at the paper. It later emerged that none of these biographical details was true—not least that “he” was actually a (non-transgendered) “she,” Laura Albert. That revelation must have been especially embarrassing for St. John, who didn’t discover it even after dining with “LeRoy” in broad daylight.
McGowan mocks such PC-inspired faux pas, but his most compelling chapters chronicle a more serious failure: the paper’s biased, politicized, and often damaging reporting on national security and the domestic threat of Islamic terrorism. Though it will come as no surprise to regular readers, McGowan shows that the Times has consistently failed to explore the religious motivations of Islamic jihadists. When Army major Nidal Hasan killed 13 soldiers and wounded 30 at Fort Hood in November 2009, the Times’s editorialists lamented that “no one can begin to imagine what could possibly have motivated this latest appalling outrage.” In reality, Hasan, a self-styled “Soldier of Allah,” had a long track record of Islamic extremism that left little doubt about his motivations. Yet one wouldn’t know it from the paper’s coverage, which failed to explore the religious angle and to investigate how Hasan was able to rise through the army’s ranks despite countless warnings about the danger he posed to his fellow soldiers. McGowan also considers a number of other cases where the paper’s apparent political sensitivities have prevented it from doing hard reporting about Islamic extremism in America. Plainly, not all the news is fit to print.
Where Islamic extremism inspires timidity at the Times, national-security measures aimed at keeping the country safe from terrorism bring out the paper’s adversarial worst. In December 2005, the Times on its front page broke the story of the National Security Agency’s classified program monitoring the phone and email communications of terrorist suspects in the United States. The paper not only published the story over the appeals of the Bush administration, which warned that it could compromise terrorist surveillance, but it also suggested that the program had limited security value. Not until the release of a classified report by five inspectors general in 2009 did the paper get around to acknowledging that the NSA surveillance program had in fact been a useful early detection tool for counterterrorist agencies. The paper’s coverage of the PATRIOT Act and the SWIFT banking surveillance program, which monitored the transactions of suspected terrorists, was similarly one-sided and antagonistic. The skeptical reader might muse here that such coverage would seem par for the course for a news organization that published the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War in 1971. But as McGowan reminds us, the Times agonized over that earlier decision and agreed to publish the documents only after it determined that current military secrets would not be exposed. No such restraint governs the paper’s national-security coverage today.
Fed up with the Times’s political agenda and its ideological crusades, many on the right have sworn off the paper. McGowan believes that this is a mistake. While less influential than it once was, the paper still shapes much of the coverage that other media follow, and it remains a major influence on the country’s political and intellectual elite. The day the New York Times is no longer around may not be the nightmare that Abe Rosenthal imagined, but we ignore the paper at our peril.
Jacob Laksin is managing editor of Front Page Magazine.
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/bc0325jl.html
Title: NBC's journalistic ethics
Post by: G M on March 30, 2011, 09:15:44 AM
On NBC, the missing story about parent company General Electric
Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press - The story that General Electric did not pay federal taxes last year was widely reported everywhere but NBC.
Paul Farhi, Tuesday, March 29, 8:24 PM It’s the kind of accountability journalism that makes readers raise an eyebrow, if it doesn’t raise their blood pressure first. General Electric Co., reported the New York Times last week, earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last year, including $5.1 billion in the United States — and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes.
The front-page story drew widespread commentary in newspapers and on many Web sites. ABC News and Fox News, among others, were all over it.
But the story was conspicuously absent from the reportage of one news organization: NBC.
During its Friday broadcast, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” had no time to mention that America’s largest corporation had essentially avoided paying federal taxes in 2010. Or its Saturday, Sunday or Monday broadcasts, either.
Did NBC’s silence have anything to do with the fact that one of its parent companies is General Electric?
NBC News representatives say that it didn’t. “This was a straightforward editorial decision, the kind we make daily around here,” said Lauren Kapp, spokeswoman for NBC News. Kapp declined to discuss how NBC decides what’s news or, in this case, what isn’t.
But to others, NBC’s silence looks like something between a lapse and a coverup. The satirical “Daily Show” on Monday noted that “Nightly News” had time on Friday to squeeze in a story about the Oxford English Dictionary adding such terms as “OMG” and “muffin top,” but didn’t bother with the GE story.
Ignoring stories about its parent company’s activities is “part of a troubling pattern” for NBC News, said Peter Hart, a director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal media watchdog group that often documents instances of corporate interference in news. He cited a series of GE-related stories that NBC’s news division has underplayed over the years, from safety issues in GE-designed nuclear power plants to the dumping of hazardous chemicals into New York’s Hudson River by GE-owned plants.
Title: Whoops!
Post by: G M on April 04, 2011, 02:31:08 PM
Monday, April 4, 2011 L.A. Times Announces Obama's New Campaign Website - http://www.latimes.com
Title: Conflict of Interest
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2011, 02:43:27 PM
Pasting here BBG's post from the Health Care thread:
===================
Wash. Post, CBS, NBC Should Disclose Receipt of ObamaCare Subsidies from Cato @ Liberty by Michael F. Cannon 1 person liked this By Michael F. Cannon
It's not an easy period for major media organizations, what with all this creative destruction revamping that sector of the economy. So the Washington Post Co. couldn't help but be pleased when it received a $570,000 bailout from ObamaCare's Early Retiree Reinsurance Program. That program allows the Obama administration to run up the national debt another $5 billion by doling out cash to corporations that provide retiree health benefits. The CBS Corporation received more than $720,000. General Electric, a part owner of NBC Universal, Inc., cleared nearly $37 million.
Since The Washington Post, CBS News, NBC News, and MSNBC have now received subsidies (the latter two indirectly) from this very controversial law, their reporters should disclose that fact to their audiences when reporting on ObamaCare. A disclaimer like this should suffice: "The Washington Post Corporation has received subsidies under the health care law." That would be consistent with how NBC discloses its relationship with General Electric:
Glenn Reynolds, James Taranto, and Scott Johnson have all covered this story masterfully. Consider what follows a simple footnote for the historical record.
This week President Obama replied to a man who told the president that he is hard-pressed to buy gasoline for his van that he ought to trade it in for a new car with better mileage. Obama assured him he’d probably get a great deal these days—from GM, Ford, or Chrysler, he added. The Associated Press first reported this incident and then scrubbed it from its story; most of the media did not care about it at all, because Obama is awesome.
Some might be tempted to shrug this off as an anecdote about a clueless ruler and his palace-guard press, unsympathetic to people clinging to their vans and religion. But we all occasionally say silly things—we’re only human, not sort of a deity—and it would be unfair to equate the president’s response with Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” remark, because Marie Antoinette did not actually say that.
The phrase is commonly misascribed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no record of her ever saying it; it may have originated in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, completed in 1769 when Marie Antoinette was only 13, attributed to a “great princess” who may have been a fictional character. The misattribution came later:
One factor that is important to understand when studying how this phrase came to be attributed to Marie Antoinette is the increasing unpopularity of the Queen in the final years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. . . . Her Austrian birth and femininity were also a major factor. . . . In fact, many anti-monarchists were so convinced (albeit incorrectly) that it was Marie Antoinette who had single-handedly ruined France’s finances that they nicknamed her Madame Déficit.
So Marie Antoinette was the victim of the tea partiers of the day, who attributed to her a remark she never made. Monsieur Le Deficit, on the other hand, actually made the remark that historians will not be able to find in the Associated Press. The video is here and the screenshot is here.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 09, 2011, 09:46:27 AM
GM,
Do you remember when Bush senior didn't know what a bar code was on groceries and how the msm railed against him using this as an example of how out of touch he was with "average" "folks"?
Can you imagine if a Republican had said what bamster said in your example above?
The hypocracy and double standard is truly infuriating.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 09, 2011, 10:09:33 AM
This is why the Obama-koolaid is turning bitter in many mouths, no matter how hard the MSM shills for him.
Title: Why the British press is better
Post by: G M on April 18, 2011, 06:50:53 PM
Title: Elder
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2011, 08:21:28 AM
Donald Trump isn't going to run for president.
He is rich, enjoys himself, says bold and often stupid things, trades his wife in for a younger model every few years, and calls Rosie O'Donnell a "big fat pig." What's not to like?
But President The Donald Trump? Really?!
He couldn't take the scrutiny. Given his swashbuckling life and the media's heightened scrutiny of things Republican, Trump would spend his entire campaign putting out fires. Whether it be shady-side-of-the-line business deals, "bimbo eruptions," tax shenanigans, enemies looking to get even, or Lord knows what else, he'd barely have time to round up enough B-listers to keep "Celebrity Apprentice" afloat.
Then there is the matter of his ideology -- as in, what exactly is it? Trump has alternately called Jimmy Carter the worst president ever, then George W. Bush the worst president ever, and now Barack Obama the worst president ever. This nouveau "conservative Republican" supported "universal health care"; advocated a tax on the rich; stood pro-choice on abortion; supported Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; called George W. Bush "evil"; proposed a 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports; and has contributed more money to Democrats than to Republicans. Whew!
Like Ross Perot -- an earlier rich, thin-skinned businessman-turned-presidential-aspirant -- Trump barks out orders, says jump and expects people to do so. Doesn't work that way in politics. Try jabbing an index finger at an obnoxious New York Times reporter or a pesky rival Republican and saying, "You're fired!"
Nor will he run as an independent -- as he once threatened and then un-threatened to do. An indie candidacy would siphon votes away from the Republican candidate, requiring Trump to spend the rest of his life deflecting the blame for Obama's re-election. No fun being the next Ralph Nader, who, after costing Al Gore Florida and the presidency in '00, can't get a table at Chuck E. Cheese's.
This brings us to the only reason to pay attention to The Donald. He's turning over rocks the media can't even locate with a guide dog and a treasure map.
Take the "wacky" birther issue. Polls show that most Republicans question whether Obama was born in America. The Supreme Court calls this a "political question" and, therefore, outside of its power of judicial review. So legally, the birther issue is deader than Elvis. Besides, Obama's principal 2008 primary opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, couldn't nail him on the issue. If there were something there, the hounds of the Clintons would have found it.
But are the "birther" folks wackier than the majority of Democrats who believe George W. Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11 or are unsure that he did?
Are the "birther" folks wackier than the majority of Democrats who believe that "Bush Lied, People Died" our way into the Iraq War or are unsure that he did?
Are they wackier than the majority of Democrats who, in 2008, held Bush responsible when gas prices hit $4 a gallon?
What's the point? When people are unhappy with a politician and/or his policies, they sometimes see the worst -- whether or not there is a factual basis. But the media do not even have a name for the Democratic equivalent of "birthers," despite these vicious, unsubstantiated and irresponsible accusations of Bush.
On the birther issue, however, there is at least some legitimate head scratching.
Hawaii's new governor, incensed over this "demonization" of Obama, vowed to put the issue to rest by releasing the relevant documents. Oops. The governor learned that under Hawaii's privacy laws, no one could obtain the records without a "tangible interest." Who could release the records? Barack Obama. And he apparently refuses to waive his right of privacy. This kind of thing fuels speculation and suspicion.
Trump, while he's at it, might want to turn his investigators onto Obama's academic records -- high school through Harvard Law -- which remain top-secret.
Trump might want to confirm or refute Obama's campaign assertion that he and his mother used food stamps -- a tale of hardship strangely missing from Obama's autobiography.
Trump might want to question members of Obama's former church to find out how, during his 20 years as a member, Obama managed to miss every single sermon in which his "spiritual adviser," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, shouted the anti-Semitic, anti-American, racist statements widely seen on YouTube.
We know Bush's grades. We know his brand of whiskey before he kicked it. We know he eats pork rinds. Dan Rather nuked his own career trying to prove Bush got high-hat treatment in the Texas Air National Guard -- a contention Rather still holds. But Obama? Nothing to see here.
No, the real story about Trump isn't Trump.
It's the pass given Obama by the media. Whether it's regarding Obama's birthplace, whether Obama personally heard Wright's racist and anti-Semitic sermons, or whether unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers wrote Obama's first book, Obama manages to avoid careful examination from the adoring media.
Trump would not be relevant -- if the media had been.
Title: Jihad against the truth on youtube
Post by: G M on April 23, 2011, 08:34:29 PM
And/or it is intimidated by Islamic Fascism, just as Mussolini's Brown Shirts intimidated in the streets of Italy.
Andrew, you are a good person, but in my opinion your opinion is the result of being denied both sides.
Title: Jornolisters circled the wagon around Obama
Post by: ccp on April 25, 2011, 09:29:41 AM
Aaron Klein noted how Stephenapolous made a "fool" out Michelle Bachman who backtracked about Bama's birth record. I tend to conclude she made a fool out of herself.
And Mark Levin thinks she is great?
The journolist media is out in full force going after anyone who questions why Obama is not revealling all his records.
It is really a sight to behold how they have circled the wagons around him defending him tooth and nail.
The pattern we keep seeing from the MSM:
If someone says all he has to do is show the long form the answer would be:
"are you suggesting he was not born here?"
I don't know why not just show the long form?
"so you are saying he was not born here? Despite this certificate posted online that the State Department accepts and two contemperaneous newspaper announcements?"
Well why does he not just show the "long form"?
"SO you believe he was not born here and are part of the radical, fringe crazy stupid right?"
You continue to NOT answer the question as to why he doesn't simply show the long form?
"The Hawaii governor states he remembers his birth. We have an official in Hawaii who has attested to have seen the form."
What is Obama hiding? Why not just show the form? He is obviously hiding something?
Do you think the Republican party can win chasing the "birther" issue?
etc etc etc.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 25, 2011, 09:33:45 AM
The Hawaiian gov. (who is a dead ringer for Krusty the clown) has backed off his statements about Obama's birth and long form BC.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 25, 2011, 10:20:10 AM
"He is obviously hiding something?"
The secret if there is one (just conjecture) is that Barack Sr. was not the father and wasn't the husband, which means the President is not really Barack Jr, though it would appear they used the name with permission. Also maybe things were tampered or changed to allow for Indonesian citizenship later.
Nothing that happened with him as a newborn is his fault (obviously), but it is his story and his knowledge of it all would make his best selling autobiographies into a pack of lies, instead of just racist-Marxist drivel.
"Do you think the Republican party can win chasing the "birther" issue?"
No. He needs to be defeated straight on for his record and for the direction he still wants to lead the nation. But the media lack of curiosity and lack of follow up is deplorable. (Imagine if Palin's birth location with a foreign parent and records missing!) Besides his college record I never saw anything controversial dug up from his constitutional law lectures or law review writings while we now see results from his two disastrous high court appointees.
The constitution does not say 'long form' nor does it lay out a burden of proof, it just says 'natural born citizen'. Arnold Schwartznegger and Madeleine Albright are examples that were passed over for not being born here.
Title: Media Issues - Pulitzser Prize to WSJ for anti-Obamacare series
Post by: DougMacG on April 25, 2011, 10:37:47 AM
On a more positive note (from my perspective) on the media, last week a WSJ editorialist won a Pulitzer for "against the grain" anti-Obamacare coverage. The consistent downward movement of support for Obamacare since it passed would tend to show these concerns to be right.
"EDITORIAL WRITING: Joseph Rago of The Wall Street Journal.
Rago was honored for his editorials challenging the health care changes advocated by President Barack Obama.
In his "Review & Outlook" columns for the Journal, he deconstructed the results of similar policy in Massachusetts and its implications for Washington, warning that the changes would fail and do Democrats great political harm.
With a degree in American history from Dartmouth, Rago joined the Journal editorial page in 2005 as an intern."
(Looks and sounds like this guy is in his 20s. You may hear from him again.)
Title: Doug, you're too nice
Post by: ccp on April 25, 2011, 11:47:33 AM
"No. He needs to be defeated straight on for his record and for the direction he still wants to lead the nation. But the media lack of curiosity and lack of follow up is deplorable."
His personal likability (for whatever reason is still good) so we do need the politics of personal destruction (if we 'pardon' this phrase made famous by BJ bill jefferson Clinton), as well as beating him on the issues.
We don't need to make anything the phoney one him up. It is all there, just being hidden. We need to dig and dig and dig. The more this guy gets exposed as a serial liar the better.
Nothing can be left to chance, no stone unturned in defeating this guy before he destroys this country. The Obama rama drama must end on January 20, 2013. BTW, say it does - mark my words - illegals will be pardoned on January 19th!!!
And not a damn thing anyone can do to stop it.
Title: 38% of Americans think the One definitely born in USA
Post by: ccp on April 26, 2011, 07:41:08 AM
Crying, not laughing out loud at the obnoxiousness of the journolist media, who still cover for Bamster. Why just this morning we have some pundit on saying that Obama's issue of being born in the USA is "put to rest". Oh really?!
Last night Anderson Cooper kept asking his guys including the liberal Harvard law guy (I can't think of his name) why doesn't Bamster just show his long certificate. Again and again we hear every tangled legal reason why he need not do it, he doesn't have to, he shouldn't, it would take "hours" to locate, and every single twisted excuse except *THE REASON WHY HE DOESN'T JUST SHOW IT". Every single fangled argument to avoid answering why doesn't he just show it. What IS he hiding? I guess the public does have enough savvy to see through the liberal media's persistance in doing everything possible to cover this up and to try to move things along.
This is not even a political issue or Republican issue. This is an issue voters do have a right to know. Many liberals think it great that we have a right to know every single detail about what our military is doing even if it risks lives yet they suddenly do not think these questions about the covering up of Bamster's history important.
Doug, Your right, whatever happened to bamseter at his birth is one thing but the cover up of the events surrounding his birth, employment records and school records and siliencing everyone who ever seemed to know anything about him certainly IS his fault:
****The real estate developer and reality TV star, who scores at the top in polls of the GOP field these days, falls to fourth when Republicans are asked to rate who among the contenders would be a “good” or “great” president in office.
Fifty percent of Americans, including 31% of Republicans, say Trump would make a “poor” or “terrible” president.
STORY: Donald Trump on faith and worship MORE: Despite Barbour's exit, GOP field open for president STORY: GOP's gamble on the budget pays off, so far “Trump is filling a huge void in the Republican Party right now, and he’s gathering a protest vote: protest against the way Washington works; protest with the establishment Republicans,” says Scott Reed, manager for Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. “The jury is still out whether Trump can translate that into a real candidacy for president.”
His possible bid faces broad resistance: 63% of Americans, including 46% of Republicans, say they definitely will not vote for Trump for president. In comparison, 46% of Americans say they definitely will not vote for President Obama — significantly lower but itself a hurdle to winning the 2012 election.
Though Trump initially got attention by expressing doubts whether Obama was born in the USA, that issue is not driving his support. Among those who say they definitely or might vote for Trump, only about a third question whether the president was born in the USA.
Support from the “birthers” is stronger for Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. The issue has persisted even though Hawaii has released an official Certificate of Live Birth showing Obama was born there, a fact confirmed in non-partisan investigations by FactCheck.org and others.
Still, in the USA TODAY poll, only 38% of Americans say Obama definitely was born in the USA, and 18% say he probably was. Fifteen percent say he probably was born in another country, and 9% say he definitely was born elsewhere.
USA TODAY/Gallup Poll Views already are polarized about President Obama and some major Republican candidates for 2012.****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on April 28, 2011, 06:23:06 AM
I didn't know where to put this, but "The Economist" here has been often referenced, recommended and maligned on this site.
But if you like it, or want to give it to anyone, you will not see a better price; 60% off and $51.00 for 51 issues.
http://www.groupon.com/los-angeles/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 29, 2011, 08:09:23 AM
""The Economist" here has been often referenced, recommended and maligned on this site."
The mag does have some interesting world wide articles though after reading it for a few years now it also does have a left bias and as Crafty described an elitist know it all kind of bent that usually leaks through in most of the articles.
Most if not all the writers are obviously liberals who seem to have a hard time being totally objective. Perhaps if I were liberal I would welcome and not be offended by the bias.
After much thought I decided to renew my subscription because the value was greater then the (to me ) offensive nature of the information.
Perhaps this explains the reason why I have been posting the articles with different thoughts, pro and con, on this site.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 29, 2011, 09:04:56 AM
I agree with CCP. The Economist generally has good coverage of other regions of the world that US publications ignore.
I started my subscription to 'The Economist' when Bill Gates said it was his favorite read - back when he was interesting. I thought it might be insightful and it was. I canceled during coverage of HillaryCare, 1993? They did a piece questioning whether this or that should be in the package, (bandaids and birth control?) without questioning whatsoever the desirability of a government takeover. Even if you favor the takeover, any responsible analysis would at least question it. This was during 40 years of Dem congresses and before the idea that a major political ground shift was about to take place.
A worthwhile read at times with its 'centrist' bias, along with my two favorite short books, 'The Core, Uncompromising Principles of Moderates' and 'The Great Moderates of History' :-)
Title: Reporter banned , , , for reporting
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2011, 12:58:46 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 30, 2011, 07:50:45 AM
Well interesting a San Fran newspaper is saying this. Most of us see he is a serial liar. Consistent with his narc personality disorder.
They ARE liars and manipulators and arrogant, self absorbed and with tememdous self love and resistant and incapable of being objective in the face of any criticism.
The anger response we see from the phoney One is a typical it is 'you' who are wrong, not (never) 'me". Yet they can often continue to lie, lie in the face of being exposed, continue to try to charm and manipulate and get everyone on board to adulate them. We are dealing with a real personality disorder. The guy is 'f' up. The MSM still predominantly has the wagons circled around him though. Perhaps this will be the start of a break from the lib media though I do not hold my breath.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 30, 2011, 12:00:29 PM
Remember that it was also at a San Francisco fundraiser where Obama was surprised to hear his own quote hit the news: "...they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment..." http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-04-15/news/17143877_1_john-mccain-huffington-post-obama-s-comments
The lesson he should have taken from that was that everything he says everywhere has the potential of making news.
Instead, the lesson he took from it is be militant about who gets in the room. Biden's staff was more careful; they locked the reporter in the broom closet for the speech. The berating of the Austin TX reporter was also telling. Obama was basically telling him he will never get this kind of access again. That comment should have gone only to his own staff. He didn't have the self-discipline to hold the comment when he thought the camera was off. Let's see if that Texas reporter gets another one on one Oval Office interview, lol.
Yes the reporters have a bias, but they also need to get quotes and break news to stay employed and sell newspapers. Because of the bias, the reporter who broke the 'clinging' clip very likely did not know it would viral. Condescending talk about people from across the heartland is what they do at breakfast, lunch and at the water cooler everyday, it made perfect sense.
This story has deteriorated down to two sides calling each other a liar.
Sometimes the small slip-ups (ask Clinton about spilling on the pretty dress) hurt a President more politically than choosing the wrong war or tax rate. The small things that you think no one will see are the ones that can tell us who you really are. In this case, a manipulative, deceitful phony.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 30, 2011, 12:53:39 PM
Imagine the outcry if Bush/Cheney had done these things.
Title: NYT: FAIL
Post by: G M on May 05, 2011, 08:43:19 AM
NYT magazine cover story: ‘A Beast Within the Heart of Every Fighting Man’
We’ll call this the mother of all narrative fails. The very week that the NYT magazine runs a negative, anti-military cover story with a brooding graphic on the cover, the beast within the heart of the US Navy SEALs takes down the world’s worst terrorist. No kidding.
Beneath that cover over at the mag’s web site, we get this for a teaser:
The case against American soldiers accused of murdering Afghan civilians turns on the idea of a rogue unit. But what if the killings are a symptom of a deeper problem?
Well. The case of the New York Times trashing the military the very week that it efficiently takes down Osama bin Laden turns on some yellow journalism and awful timing. But what if the Times‘ releasing of US war plans before the invasion of Iraq, its cheerleading for the Soviets and the Viet Cong and whoever else happens to be against America at the moment, is a symptom of a deeper problem?
(thanks to gus)
Title: General Deception
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 11, 2011, 11:19:46 AM
Journalism and Generality
Posted by Jason Kuznicki
The media makes it hard for ordinary people to be libertarians. In large part, this is because journalism is in the business of selling panic—panic about terrorism, panic about drugs, panic about food, panic about pornography, panic about our health care system. If it’s not an emergency, it’s not news. To the lazy journalist, everything becomes an emergency—and emergencies always—always—demand state action.
The media makes things hard for the would-be libertarian in other ways, too. Consider this story from today’s Washington Post, about… well, it’s hard to say, actually:
Senate Democrats unveiled a plan Tuesday to save $21 billion over the next decade by eliminating tax breaks for the nation’s five biggest oil companies, a move designed to counter Republican demands to control the soaring national debt without new taxes.
With the proposal, Democrats sought to reframe the debate over debt reduction to include fresh revenue as well as sharp cuts in spending. For the first time, Democratic leaders suggested an equal split between spending cuts and new taxes — “50-50,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.).
That represents a larger share for taxes than has been proposed by either President Obama or the bipartisan commission he appointed to recommend how to cut the national debt.
So far, the Democratic tax agenda is focused on ending subsidies for big oil companies, a hugely popular proposal involving what Democrats see as a prime example of wasteful giveaways in the tax code. By raising the issue, Democrats are trying to force Republicans either to drop their rigid stance against new taxes or to defend taxpayer subsidies for some of the world’s most profitable corporations, including Ex xon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
The proposal came in response to remarks Tuesday by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who said raising taxes is “off the table.” A day earlier, he gave a speech demanding more than $2 trillion in spending cuts in exchange for GOP support for an increase in the legal limit on government borrowing through the end of next year.
Where am I confused, you ask? On almost everything a libertarian ought to care about. I’ll explain.
One of the key aspects of any good law is generality—that is, equality before the law. As F. A. Hayek put it:
[T]hough government has to administer means which have been put at its disposal (including the services of all those whom it has hired to carry out its instructions), this does not mean that it should similarly administer the efforts of private citizens. What distinguishes a free from an unfree society is that in the former each individual has a recognized private sphere clearly distinct from the public sphere, and the private individual cannot be ordered about but is expected to obey only the rules which are equally applicable to all….
The general, abstract rules, which are laws in the substantive sense, are… essentially long-term measures, referring to yet unnkown cases and containing no references to particular persons, places, or objects. Such laws must always be prospective, never retrospective, in their effect (The Constitution of Liberty, chapter 14, section 2).
Now, with every passing day our government stomps all over this generality requirement again and again, chiefly in the economic sphere. But is it doing so on the front page of today’s Washington Post? That’s a good question.
I can think of lots of ways we might deny a tax break to a certain five oil corporations. Some are decidedly better than others in their generality. Consider the following, ranked from least general to most:
“The corporations known as Ex xon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are hereby denied tax break X. All others still qualify, or not, as they did before.” “Oil corporations with an annual revenue above $198 billion are denied tax break X.” “We find that tax break X itself is lacking in generality. It is hereby repealed, and the overall corporate tax rate is increased accordingly.” Which one are they proposing? From the story’s first paragraph, we could easily conclude that it was (1). Many people on the left would be happy with (1), because big corporations are anathema to them, and everything they do is evil, and punishing them—generality be damned—is just great.
But then, it could also be (2), and this measure is somewhat more general, even if ConocoPhillips—the smallest company on the list—just so happens to have an annual revenue of $198.655 billion. As Hayek noted, “[C]lassification in abstract terms can always be carried to the point at which, in fact, the class singled out consists only of particular known persons or even a single individual” (ibid., section 4). Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.
And finally, there’s (3), clearly the winner in terms of generality. Is that in fact the proposal being discussed by members of Congress? Or is it still more general than that—something perhaps as described by my colleagues Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren earlier this month?
Last week President Barack Obama responded to rising public anger over soaring gasoline prices by banging the drums for the elimination of various tax breaks enjoyed by the oil and gas industry…
[L]et the record show that President Obama is right… about these tax breaks. They make the economy less — not more — efficient and do nothing to reduce prices at the pump.
Rigging the tax code to make investments in manufacturing artificially more attractive than investments in something else is an enterprise designed to harm non-manufacturers for the benefit of … manufacturers. Conservatives who want government to leave markets alone have no business throwing their political bodies in front of this tax break. If their political rhetoric means anything, they would see the president’s bid and raise him by calling for total repeal of this tax break for everyone, not just for oil and gas companies.
If only we were so lucky! Getting back to the Post, we learn much later in the story—in the fifteenth paragraph —that the congressional proposal “would close several long-standing tax loopholes, yielding roughly $2 billion a year in savings to be applied to lowering the deficit. It would affect only the five largest oil companies, excluding smaller producers.”
This is confusing to the point of deception. Does it really “close” a loophole to take a few entities and exclude them from the prior exclusion from the tax? By my understanding, it makes the law less general, more convoluted and more arbitrary, than it was before. Close the loophole—or just don’t close it, I think a Hayek might say. Don’t make companies play human Tetris to figure out whether they aren’t not un-disincluded.
One day I think people will look back on our era—from roughly the civil rights movement to the present—and marvel. They will be amazed at how, while the law grew much more general regarding many non-economic matters, it became increasingly partial and favoritist when it came to running a business. At times our journalism and even our language seemed blind to this contradictory development, which only encouraged it. Even thinking about the generality of our laws is made difficult when it’s just not a topic on the national media’s radar.
But equality before the law should apply, well, equally. Shouldn’t it?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 13, 2011, 02:51:04 PM
Is this more hatred from Glenn Beck? :-D
Title: Media Issues, Krugman/NY Times: Hostage Taking??
Post by: DougMacG on May 16, 2011, 09:18:37 AM
Any genocidal analogy to the holocaust is off-limits, but tying spending or budget reform to new debt authorization is Hostage Taking?? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=1
Title: Media Issues, Powerline Blog: Free Speech?
Post by: DougMacG on May 16, 2011, 09:47:50 AM
One media story went by this winter without hardly a word, especially at the source.
Powerline blog is a very influential conservative new media outlet (they brought down Dan Rather for one thing), run by 3 guys, friends from college out of Dartmouth, 2 in Minneapolis and one in Washington, all attorneys sidelining in political commentary since about the beginning of new media, but the names changed a few months ago.
Paul Mirengoff wrote an off-the cuff reaction to the Tucson service for the fatalities of the shooting. He wrote something like that he didn't personally care for the music at the service, lengthy and of some native American origin and didn't see how it fit - none of the victims were native American.
The next day he apologized and very shortly after that the post was removed and he was out. I read that post, found his music observation odd or unnecessary, but certainly an apology or retraction would have sufficed for those who were offended, if that was truly the issue.
Hardly an explanation and no public good byes were posted. Apparently he works for a very influential law firm working some huge case and some client insisted him off of Powerline or the firm loses the mega-client. He decided to keep his day job for now. At about that same time Steven Hayward, formerly of Reason, AEI, Weekly Standard, National Review, quietly joined the group and started posting very ably.
I think Mirengoff will be back on Powerline at some point, when he is done with that law firm or when they are done with that client, and the rotten details of wrongful oppression of free speech in America will be told.
Title: Media Issues: NY Times Editorialists - Selective and Self-Serving
Post by: DougMacG on May 16, 2011, 10:41:28 AM
A must read IMO. This comes from a competitor, an opinion column in the WSJ, but the points he ties together are damning, and cover a lot of ground.
Corporate Turkeys The birdbrained phony populism of the New York Times Co.
By JAMES TARANTO
AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, a case the U.S. Supreme Court decided last month, deals with a somewhat obscure question of statutory interpretation--namely, the circumstances under which the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 permits states to supersede provisions in business contracts providing that disputes be settled by arbitration rather than lawsuits. The editors of the New York Times, in an overwrought editorial today, frame the decision as an act of class warfare.
The justices reversed a decision of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that held California state law permitted Vincent and Liza Concepcion to launch a class-action suit against AT&T. The company had offered them two free phones as part of a service contract, then charged them $30.22 in sales tax on the devices. (It's unclear, and tangential to the case, why their grievance is with AT&T and not with the state of California, which presumably mandated the collection of the tax.) By 5-4, the court held that the Concepcions were bound by a provision of the contract in which they agreed to forswear class-action complaints.
That distresses the Times editorialists. They describe the decision as "a devastating blow to consumer rights" that entails "major setbacks for individuals who may not have the resources to challenge big companies." The subheadline reads: "The five conservatives of the Supreme Court chose corporations over everyone else."
At least the New York Times editorialists and the liberals of the Supreme Court can be counted on to choose the little guy over corporations. Except when they don't, of course. Contrast today's editorial with one from June 24, 2005, in which the Times cheered Kelo v. New London, another 5-4 ruling vindicating the interests of corporations against those of individuals.
Kelo was the decision of a liberal majority (including Justice Anthony Kennedy, who also voted with the majority in AT&T Mobility.) It held that the Constitution permits the government to seize private land in the "public interest," then convey the condemned land to a private corporation so that a city "can shore up its tax base and attract badly needed jobs."
In that case, the Times scoffed at individual rights, crowing that Kelo "is a setback to the 'property rights' movement, which is trying to block government from imposing reasonable zoning and environmental regulations."
The Kelo decision prompted a political backlash, which the Times criticized in another editorial, on June 26, 2006:
The ruling set off talk of "eminent domain abuse." What has been lost in the discussion is the good that eminent domain can do. It has long been a key tool by which cities can upgrade deteriorating neighborhoods and assemble land for affordable housing. (The New York Times benefited from eminent domain in clearing the land for the new building it is constructing opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal.)
Affordable housing for the New York Times Co. What great news for the little guy!
This is reminiscent of the Times's opposition to free speech in the wake of last year's Citizens United v. FEC decision. In that case, the Times's hatred of corporations led it to the bizarre position that, the First Amendment notwithstanding, government has the power to censor core political speech when corporations engage in it.
Well, most corporations. As we noted back then, the Times editorial did not mention that one class of corporations was exempt from the "campaign finance" law in question: media corporations such as the New York Times Co. Indeed, were it not for this special privilege, the Times would have been in violation of the law it championed every time it endorsed a candidate for federal office.
The Times editorialists pose as class warriors against corporations, but in fact are selective and self-serving. Never get into a foxhole with the Old Gray Lady; you will find she is an unfaithful ally.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2011, 10:47:46 AM
Although I certainly agree with the point about the hypocrisy of POTH (Pravda on the Hudson) I will say that I am troubled by the holding of "AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion", but that is a subject for the legal issues thread.
Title: NY Times ombudsman's ruminations
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2011, 08:45:39 AM
Loitering on the FringesBy ARTHUR S. BRISBANE Published: May 28, 2011 THE culture is headed for the curb, and The New York Times is on the story. .The Public Editor's Journal .E-mail: public@nytimes.com .Twitter: twitter.com/thepubliceditor .Phone: (212) 556-7652
Address: Public Editor The New York Times 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 .Readers' Comments
Recent examples include a May 19 article (“With a Harsh Light on Two Men, Much of the Scrutiny Falls on the Women”) about the privacy-invading media coverage of the women in the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn cases, as well as a Sunday, May 22, investigation (“The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash”) into how pay-to-play tabloid journalism works in the digital age.
The same Sunday paper brimmed with stories touching on the business and pop-cultural dimensions of a society that convicted Lenny Bruce in the 1960s for saying some words you can now hear every night on cable. Vampires and werewolves, Chelsea Handler’s sharp tongue, Charlie Sheen’s heavy-hitting lawyer, a cross-dressing memoirist and a two-page Sunday magazine essay on the semantics of women’s private parts — they’re all there for your consideration!
I can appreciate that, as a chronicler of the times, the newspaper has a mandate to cover events and culture wherever they may lead. As Jim Rutenberg, the author of the article on the cash economy behind tabloid reporting, told me: “We can’t pretend that this part of the world doesn’t exist. This is part of our culture.”
That said, it’s a challenge for The Times to preserve its dignified brand as it undertakes to cover the world as we have come to know it: high, low and, at times, suffused with vulgarity.
The “Harsh Light” article is a case in point. The story focused on how old taboos against revealing personal details are disappearing in today’s media environment. It also took note of the sharp disparity between the two men, who have wealth and position to deploy in their own defense, and the two women, who seem relatively powerless.
The article’s premise was, I think, a solid one and a good way to advance the Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn stories. The question is whether it was necessary to actually put the seamy stuff in the paper.
To develop the personal-details theme, The Times started by describing a media mob camped out near the women’s homes, looking for dirt. The story named Mr. Schwarzenegger’s former housekeeper and quoted a disparaging comment about her appearance that had been published on a Forbes.com blog. It then added a second nugget from the gossip Web site TMZ that also cast her in a bad light. The Times took care to note that “several news organizations” had repeated the TMZ item.
In effect, the story took a kind of anthropological approach, donning latex gloves to report on how others were reporting the story — chronicling, as it were, others’ low standards.
Rick Berke, The Times’s national editor, said it was necessary to print the unpalatable details to document the premise of the piece. “If you cut it out, you are withholding from the reader what we are talking about,” he said, adding that this wasn’t a “backdoor” way of getting sleazy details into the paper.
It’s a fine line The Times walks. In Mr. Rutenberg’s story about the tabloid press, he eschewed what I am sure were many opportunities to publish choice samples of trashy journalism. As a result, the story — months in the making and ultimately pegged to the Schwarzenegger case — seemed more comfortably situated inside the boundary line of good taste.
The taste and standards issue isn’t static, of course, but moves with the times. Coverage of major public figures, like the former California governor and the former head of the International Monetary Fund, adapts with shifting social standards, and so does softer journalism that addresses popular tastes. What formerly existed off the page finds a way onto it.
In “An Unspeakable Word Is the Word That Has to Be Spoken,” published in the Sunday magazine, the author, Jenny Diski, rather creatively addressed a distinctly feminine obscenity: bits of literary history concerning it, BBC bloopers using it, the lingering cultural objection to it, and her own call to actually use it in print. All without ever using the word or resorting to asterisks or other such substitutes.
Accompanying the essay was an excerpt from The Times’s “Manual of Style and Usage” that included this admonition: “An article should not seem to be saying, ‘Look I want to use this word, but they won’t let me.’ ”
I suggested to Hugo Lindgren, the editor of the magazine, that the essay seemed to flout The Times’s guidelines, but he said that he and Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, had discussed the question and decided carefully on how to handle it. Mr. Corbett said, “I would view this as a carefully considered exception to the rules, rather than a flouting of them.”
So I suppose we can feel assured that this loitering at the edge of propriety is not done heedlessly. But it is done with some regularity.
An illustration comes from the checkered realm of memoir-writing. In the Book Review section on Sunday, The Times published a review of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt” by Jon-Jon Goulian. This came on top of an earlier review of the same book in the May 18 Arts section, and an article in the May 19 Styles section about the fuss surrounding the book and its underachieving author. All this for a work summarized by Publishers Weekly as follows:
“A man wears women’s clothes, rejects a legal career, and otherwise baffles his parents in this flamboyant but callow memoir.”
Granted, there is another view: Mr. Goulian is a fascinating creature of the New York publishing scene who got a $750,000 advance for a book that plumbs his riveting psyche. But still, three print articles in five days?
The Times editors overseeing the various pieces told me they made their assignments without knowledge of the others. This makes sense in the surprisingly decentralized system that produces The Times in print every day and, online, all day. But the ubiquitous Jon-Jon is symbolic, I think, of the strong tug on The Times and other mainstream news media to follow society, sometimes eagerly, to its fringes.
My preference would be to see more restraint. True, other media are indulging in questionable journalism, and it is difficult to resist the downward revision of standards. But The Times could just as easily pull back, recognizing that its readers don’t need and aren’t relying on it to chronicle these badlands. Other news outlets are more than willing to go there.
Title: Why isn't the MSM covering this?
Post by: G M on May 31, 2011, 07:11:43 AM
Iowahawk with his sensitive and nuanced take on the story.
Title: From a corrspondant from the "keeping them honest CNN"
Post by: ccp on May 31, 2011, 02:26:48 PM
Objective journoulism de jour: :roll: :x
By Walter Rodgers Walter Rodgers – Fri May 27, 10:16 am ET “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,” instructed the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, “people will eventually come to believe it.”
For 2-1/2 years, the big lie repeated about President Obama has been that he’s not a real leader. Responsible critics called him diffident, spineless, and rudderless. Irresponsible critics called him a socialist, a Muslim, and not an American. Now, even after his brilliant planning and direction of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, detractors are complaining that he didn’t have the guts to release photos of Mr. bin Laden’s corpse.
Outdated notions of leadershipSome of this maligning simply reflects the same savage partisan attacks leveled against every president (except Ronald Reagan) since Watergate. Some of it reflects darker bigotry toward Mr. Obama. But it also shows our outdated and wrongheaded notions of leadership.
American culture mistakenly prizes bravado and arrogance as sure signs of leadership. Public showmanship – like donning a flight suit in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner – is easy. Quiet, cool, competence that gets results – like pulling together an international coalition to protect civilians in Libya in record time – is hard.
It’s a bias we learn as kids. Our history books lionize war heroes, yet are often silent about the diplomats who prevented conflict.
QUIZ: What's your political IQ?
AccomplishmentsLet’s recall the herculean tasks Obama has already accomplished:
He stabilized the worst economy since the Great Depression. Though unemployment remains stubborn, the stock market is basically back to where it was before the global economic meltdown. His stimulus bill kept America humming and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, while his rescue of General Motors saved an industrial icon.
His administration kept thousands of over-extended Americans from losing their homes by laboring mightily to forestall foreclosures.
In spite of ferocious opposition, he passed long-overdue reforms of our health-care system that had eluded the reach of many past presidents.
He signed into law a bold package of regulations to boost consumer protection and restrain Wall Street’s greed.
He negotiated a historic nuclear-arms reduction treaty with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev.
Forgetting these and other accomplishments, the public has regrettably bought into the corrosive and dishonest campaign to degrade Obama. Goebbels-style nihilism that rejects anything Obama does as odious remains a powerful narrative.
The good news is that Obama’s shrewd and calculated management of the hunt for bin Laden shows how hollow these critiques are.
For months, Obama discreetly oversaw the raid. He should be praised for concealing US intentions from the Pakistanis, who seemed willfully blind about bin Laden’s whereabouts.
Compare Obama’s stealth with his predecessor’s search for bin Laden. George W. Bush was embarrassingly gullible dealing with the Pakistanis. According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and senior adviser to four presidents on the Middle East, Bush 43 was too easily “dazzled” by Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf.
In 2002, Mr. Musharraf assured Washington that bin Laden was almost certainly dead. Later, Musharraf’s government hinted to the Bush administration that bin Laden was on a kidney dialysis machine, half dead in a cave in Afghanistan.
In his book “Deadly Embrace,” Mr. Riedel quotes former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdallah Abdallah saying, “Musharraf skillfully played the American administration, throwing ‘dust in Bush’s eyes.’ ”
Good tasteGood taste is another facet of leadership. Contrast the way the Bush administration orchestrated a public trial and execution of Saddam Hussein, turning it into a vulgar spectacle, with Obama’s shrewd refusal to publish photos of bin Laden’s body. His announcement of bin Laden’s death was restrained and sober, not at all celebratory – the right note to conclude a sensitive military operation. Obama’s later visit to ground zero was a fitting bookend to a sad chapter in United States history.
IN PICTURES: Obama in Britain
Obama’s hawkish critics chide him for allegedly “sitting on the sidelines” during recent uprisings in Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Take it from someone who has reported from across the Middle East: Sitting out potential Arab civil wars isn’t abdication of leadership; it is wisdom.
And yet, when facing near-certain humanitarian disaster, Obama wisely and rapidly put together a broad NATO coalition to deal with the Libyan revolt while keeping American involvement to a minimum – no boots on the ground and no dead Americans.
It’s true that Obama hasn’t made tackling the debt a priority. But when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress for much of the past decade, US debt exploded. On that issue, the public will have to lead.
A friend, a center-right voter, told me recently, “The reason I voted for Obama is because he has no hatred in him.” In another era of divisive bitterness, Lincoln preached, “[w]ith malice toward none, with charity toward all.” It’s worth noting how closely Obama’s philosophy of leadership approaches that.
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column.
Title: More Weinergate goodness!
Post by: G M on May 31, 2011, 08:17:55 PM
Title: Re: From a corrspondant from the "keeping them honest CNN"
Post by: bigdog on June 01, 2011, 03:58:38 AM
Walter Rodgers is a columnist for the Christian Science Monitor. He gets paid to write opinion pieces, and his work is not intended to be "objective" any more than George Will, Mona Charen, or Charles Krauthammer.
By Walter Rodgers Walter Rodgers – Fri May 27, 10:16 am ET “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,” instructed the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, “people will eventually come to believe it.”
For 2-1/2 years, the big lie repeated about President Obama has been that he’s not a real leader. Responsible critics called him diffident, spineless, and rudderless. Irresponsible critics called him a socialist, a Muslim, and not an American. Now, even after his brilliant planning and direction of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, detractors are complaining that he didn’t have the guts to release photos of Mr. bin Laden’s corpse.
Outdated notions of leadershipSome of this maligning simply reflects the same savage partisan attacks leveled against every president (except Ronald Reagan) since Watergate. Some of it reflects darker bigotry toward Mr. Obama. But it also shows our outdated and wrongheaded notions of leadership.
American culture mistakenly prizes bravado and arrogance as sure signs of leadership. Public showmanship – like donning a flight suit in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner – is easy. Quiet, cool, competence that gets results – like pulling together an international coalition to protect civilians in Libya in record time – is hard.
It’s a bias we learn as kids. Our history books lionize war heroes, yet are often silent about the diplomats who prevented conflict.
QUIZ: What's your political IQ?
AccomplishmentsLet’s recall the herculean tasks Obama has already accomplished:
He stabilized the worst economy since the Great Depression. Though unemployment remains stubborn, the stock market is basically back to where it was before the global economic meltdown. His stimulus bill kept America humming and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, while his rescue of General Motors saved an industrial icon.
His administration kept thousands of over-extended Americans from losing their homes by laboring mightily to forestall foreclosures.
In spite of ferocious opposition, he passed long-overdue reforms of our health-care system that had eluded the reach of many past presidents.
He signed into law a bold package of regulations to boost consumer protection and restrain Wall Street’s greed.
He negotiated a historic nuclear-arms reduction treaty with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev.
Forgetting these and other accomplishments, the public has regrettably bought into the corrosive and dishonest campaign to degrade Obama. Goebbels-style nihilism that rejects anything Obama does as odious remains a powerful narrative.
The good news is that Obama’s shrewd and calculated management of the hunt for bin Laden shows how hollow these critiques are.
For months, Obama discreetly oversaw the raid. He should be praised for concealing US intentions from the Pakistanis, who seemed willfully blind about bin Laden’s whereabouts.
Compare Obama’s stealth with his predecessor’s search for bin Laden. George W. Bush was embarrassingly gullible dealing with the Pakistanis. According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and senior adviser to four presidents on the Middle East, Bush 43 was too easily “dazzled” by Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf.
In 2002, Mr. Musharraf assured Washington that bin Laden was almost certainly dead. Later, Musharraf’s government hinted to the Bush administration that bin Laden was on a kidney dialysis machine, half dead in a cave in Afghanistan.
In his book “Deadly Embrace,” Mr. Riedel quotes former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdallah Abdallah saying, “Musharraf skillfully played the American administration, throwing ‘dust in Bush’s eyes.’ ”
Good tasteGood taste is another facet of leadership. Contrast the way the Bush administration orchestrated a public trial and execution of Saddam Hussein, turning it into a vulgar spectacle, with Obama’s shrewd refusal to publish photos of bin Laden’s body. His announcement of bin Laden’s death was restrained and sober, not at all celebratory – the right note to conclude a sensitive military operation. Obama’s later visit to ground zero was a fitting bookend to a sad chapter in United States history.
IN PICTURES: Obama in Britain
Obama’s hawkish critics chide him for allegedly “sitting on the sidelines” during recent uprisings in Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Take it from someone who has reported from across the Middle East: Sitting out potential Arab civil wars isn’t abdication of leadership; it is wisdom.
And yet, when facing near-certain humanitarian disaster, Obama wisely and rapidly put together a broad NATO coalition to deal with the Libyan revolt while keeping American involvement to a minimum – no boots on the ground and no dead Americans.
It’s true that Obama hasn’t made tackling the debt a priority. But when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress for much of the past decade, US debt exploded. On that issue, the public will have to lead.
A friend, a center-right voter, told me recently, “The reason I voted for Obama is because he has no hatred in him.” In another era of divisive bitterness, Lincoln preached, “[w]ith malice toward none, with charity toward all.” It’s worth noting how closely Obama’s philosophy of leadership approaches that.
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 01, 2011, 06:13:28 AM
It's easy to get confused, given the propensity of CNN to attempt to disguise opinion pieces as news.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on June 01, 2011, 07:08:07 AM
It is also easy, since he works for CS Monitor to get confused about the news source. You know, since he left CNN in 2005. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/its-official-walter-rodgers-leaves-cnn_b6703
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on June 01, 2011, 07:10:04 AM
The point that it is merely opinion is fair enough.
Rodgers apparently didn't get the memo that we weren't going to use Nazi analogies to describe people who haven't committed genocide. (Glen Beck was savaged for that.) Rodgers stoops that low twice in the piece, once again in the middle for readers who may have missed the beginning - or was he committing a "Goebels-style" atrocity himself by repeating his falsehood?
Opinion piece yes, laced with false facts. I hate to impugn her but maybe Rodgers piece is more in the spirit of Ann Coulter than George Will. Does the the CSM or CNN run columns like hers often? I have not known George Will to open his criticism with a blatantly false statement. Seems to me he makes a painstakingly effort to quote his opponents accurately.
Rodgers opens his post-Nazi analysis with: "detractors are complaining that he didn’t have the guts to release photos of Mr. bin Laden’s corpse."
I have not seen that written, even in the vile comment sections of Like telling BD to read more case law, maybe I need to read more conservative commentary. :wink:
Maybe in the spirit of Nazi analogies I will re-open my only partially flawed comparison of abortion to the holocaust that angered people here beyond words. Add the corollary that roughly 5 Justices on the Supreme Court and nearly all liberals are modern holocaust enablers. See if CNN will run with that.
Civil discourse in the Obama supporter era continues.
I would like to come back on other threads to discuss the merits of the piece, like touting "the herculean tasks Obama has already accomplished". He skipped one; Obama has endeared us to the third world by mimicking their economic policies.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on June 01, 2011, 07:11:22 AM
More on "Weinergate." make sure you watch the whole thing. More on CNN's propensity to opine!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on June 01, 2011, 07:14:09 AM
"I have not known George Will to open his criticism with a blatantly false statement. Seems to me he makes a painstakingly effort to quote his opponents accurately."
That is because George Will has a Ph.D. in political science. You can trust those people. And, believe it or not, I prefer the three I mentioned to Rodgers.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on June 01, 2011, 08:50:52 AM
I prefer to see politicians like Rep. Weiner taken down based on the (lack of) merits in their political arguments, but must admit a little revenge-like pleasure in seeing this jerk distracted and squirming on a personal matter. In the middle of his non-denial defense, he just can't keep himself from put out his personal attack against Justice Thomas' and his wife, regarding healthcare while he is allegedly trying to make a point on a debt ceiling vote.
I wonder if Bob Schieffer or Dick Gregory will call that attack on Thomas racist. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/28/bob-schieffer-trump-racism_n_854817.html http://www.mediaite.com/tv/newt-gingrich-i-have-never-said-anything-about-president-obama-which-is-racist/
I was more impressed with the sincerity of O.J. Simpson combing the world's golf courses for the real killer, and with the Roger Clemons, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong campaign against steroids, than with Weiner's effort to find and prosecute the real Twitter-hacker.
Who knew that liberals could also be targets of comedy. Letterman and others missed out on a couple of good years bypassing on these potential targets for ridicule.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 01, 2011, 08:54:24 AM
I'm not sure Stewart's "His d*ck is too small" defense is very compelling. It wouldn't be hard, I mean difficult for the FBI to determine if Weiner's account was hacked. Funny how he hasn't asked for an investigation but lawyered up instead. It's almost like he has something to hide.
Title: Weiner: “Can’t say with certitude” that photo wasn’t of him
Post by: G M on June 01, 2011, 12:41:44 PM
Weiner: “Can’t say with certitude” that photo wasn’t of him
posted at 2:31 pm on June 1, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
Really? If Anthony Weiner wanted to defuse this scandal, he seems to be using the gasoline-to-fight-fire strategy. On the exact questions that call for clear and unequivocal answers, Weiner keeps backing away with vague and unresponsive statements instead Click on the image to watch the RCP video:
NBC’s LUKE RUSSERT: “That’s not a picture of you?”
REP. ANTHONY WEINER: “You know, I can’t say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted.”
Shouldn’t this be a question where certitude is rather easily achieved? How many pictures does Rep. Weiner take of his underwear to cause this confusion? To “manipulate” a photo, there has to be a source photo with which to work. If the picture was “dropped in,” then it should be easy for Weiner to say unequivocally, “I have never taken a photograph of my genitalia, with or without underwear.” The inability to make that statement — and to tell an NBC reporter that he “can’t say with certitude” that the picture is a hoax — makes him look as though he’s hedging his bets. Heck, he is obviously hedging his bets, and that gives a pretty strong whiff of guilt in these circumstances.
Ace has been asking great questions all along, so be sure to keep up with the story there, as well as at Big Journalism.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on June 01, 2011, 04:12:12 PM
Of course it isn't compelling. It is funny though. And note that I said nothing about that. I did note the CNN bit though, since this is the media issues thread.
And I LOVE (please note the sarcasm) is inabilty to deny it is his junk.
I'm not sure Stewart's "His d*ck is too small" defense is very compelling. It wouldn't be hard, I mean difficult for the FBI to determine if Weiner's account was hacked. Funny how he hasn't asked for an investigation but lawyered up instead. It's almost like he has something to hide.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 01, 2011, 04:35:30 PM
Anyone think the Mrs. Anthony "The Atlantic is cold" Weiner is buying the "hacked" story? :roll:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2011, 09:01:29 PM
You mean Stewart is wrong and that is Weiner's penis? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 01, 2011, 11:45:28 PM
Well, he seems to be unsure. :wink:
If he really wanted to impress that co-ed, he should stretch some underwear over that schnoz and tweet that pic!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on June 02, 2011, 03:42:30 AM
:lol: :lol: :lol:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2011, 09:07:43 AM
Apparently, it was a slow news week. Either that, or our culture has really sunk quite low. But the "biggest" news concerned New York Democrat Anthony Weiner's wiener. Or more accurately, the accidental/pranked/hacked Tweet of a man's underwear-clad genitalia that was intended for a 21-year-old college student Weiner was following on Twitter. Long story short, Weiner insisted that he didn't peck out that Tweet, claiming his Twitter account had been hacked, but when pressed for investigation or at least a strong reaction, Weiner backtracked and said it was a prank -- a far less serious thing. Then he admitted that he couldn't say "with certitude" that the offending image wasn't indeed his package, and he got rather stiff and prickly when questioned by the media. That hasn't stopped the press from centering the 24-hour news cycle on Private Weiner, who now claims his lips are zipped. To be frank, however, we think the congressman is in a real pickle, and the wurst may be yet to come.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 03, 2011, 12:06:34 PM
Apparently, it was a slow news week. Either that, or our culture has really sunk quite low. But the "biggest" news concerned New York Democrat Anthony Weiner's wiener. Or more accurately, the accidental/pranked/hacked Tweet of a man's underwear-clad genitalia that was intended for a 21-year-old college student Weiner was following on Twitter. Long story short, Weiner insisted that he didn't peck out that Tweet, claiming his Twitter account had been hacked, but when pressed for investigation or at least a strong reaction, Weiner backtracked and said it was a prank -- a far less serious thing. Then he admitted that he couldn't say "with certitude" that the offending image wasn't indeed his package, and he got rather stiff and prickly when questioned by the media. That hasn't stopped the press from centering the 24-hour news cycle on Private Weiner, who now claims his lips are zipped. To be frank, however, we think the congressman is in a real pickle, and the wurst may be yet to come.
Now THAT was offensive! :wink:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on June 03, 2011, 06:16:54 PM
"...he got rather stiff and prickly..."
Not stiff and prick-y? :evil:
Title: Steyn on Weinergate
Post by: G M on June 04, 2011, 03:44:27 PM
Title: question Palin - heroic "accomplishment"
Post by: ccp on June 11, 2011, 08:50:51 AM
Question Bamster and you are a nut:
" Regardless of whether you thought the Palin email trove was a waste of time like many, or were obsessively live-blogging the events like us, you can't deny that the massive scanning and crowdsourcing of document review by major news outlets was a tremendous accomplishment."
Compare the above assesment to the MSM reports about the release of Bamster's long form birth certificate (if real). That the poor man was subjected to unbearable disrespect, and harm because a bunch of crazy right wing radical loony birds "forced" him to do this painful thing. and of course there is always the implication this was DONE TO HIM because he is half Black.
***The Top Ten Revelations from the Sarah Palin Emails At 8:37 a.m. Saturday morning, the New York Times tweeted "After scanning marathon, all 24,000 #palinemail documents are in our searchable, interactive viewer." Regardless of whether you thought the Palin email trove was a waste of time like many, or were obsessively live-blogging the events like us, you can't deny that the massive scanning and crowdsourcing of document review by major news outlets was a tremendous accomplishment. While revelations from the cache may continue to trickle in over the weekend, at this point the bulk of the emails have been combed through, and this is what we now know about Palin that we didn't (necessarily) know before.
Related: Harry Reid and Sarah Palin Bicker Over Cowboy Poetry
Palin "joked" with George W. Bush about becoming Vice-President.
Related: Palin Accuses Obama of 'Pussy-Footing Around' Bin Laden Photos
Only a month before Palin was picked by John McCain as a running mate, she spoke with then-president George W. Bush, where she admitted to being unable to take a Vice Presidential position seriously. "The Pres [George Bush] and I spoke about military. He also spoke about (and we joked about) VP buzz."
Related: Palin Coincidentally Finds Key Primary States on Bus Tour
In fact, a mere two days before she was picked as Vice President, Palin was willing to help change signs at an Anchorage gas station to show lower prices. But unprepared though Palin was, Politico notes that she was soon forwarding encouraging notes to her staff from fans about the vice presidency. One supporter of Palin’s from South Dakota wrote to a publicly listed e-mail address that was then forwarded to her official e-mail in late June that Palin would make “a first-rate running mater for Senator John McCain.”
“Please encourage her to accept if asked!” the supporter wrote. “What can we do to encourage Senator McCain to put her on the ticket?”
McCain's decision process took a matter of days.
Related: Sarah Palin Is Definitely Not Done Whining About the Press
It was not until Aug. 24 that there was any serious indication Palin might be be Vice President. That was when she asked her office in Juneau to send two years of her financial disclosure forms to Anchorage for unspecified purposes. The New York Times notes that "as many asserted at the time, the vetting process of the vice-presidential candidate appears to have taken just a few scant days."
In late August, when McCain's choice was announced, Palin wrote “Can you believe it!” in response to a staff member. “He told me yesterday — it moved fast! Pray! I love you.”
She was once an Obama fan.
On August 4, 2008, Palin praised a speech given by President Obama as "great" and noted he "stole" some Alaskan ideas. "He did say 'yay' to our gasline. Pretty cool. Wrong candidate," Palin wrote.
She has never had much time to read the news.
Katie Couric's infamous interview with Palin, where the then-governor struggled to explain her media diet, may not have been the "gotcha" interview Palin later asserted it to be. It seems she really didn't have time to read the news, even to correct misinformation. By her own admission, her plate was too full. In one e-mail in February 2007, Palin wrote:
"i will try to carve out time in the day to more fully scan news clippings and try to catch some of the talk shows via internet, but so far I haven’t even found an extra minute to be able to tune into the shows unless I’m . . . driving in my car... i need folks to really help ramp up accurate counter comments to the misinformation that’s being spread out there.”
Palin asked God for guidance on the budget.
"I have been praying for wisdom on this ... God will have to show me what to do on the people's budget because I don't yet know the right path ... He will show me though."
She was intimidated by Alaskan Congressman Rep. Don Young.
In September 2008, a staffer e-mailed Palin that Young was trying to reach her. She replied: "Please find out what it's about. I don't want to get chewed out by him again. I'm not up for that."
Palin has always had a troubled relationship with the press.
Palin has always both courted and complained about the press. Her love-hate relationship is nothing new. On January 28, 2007, she disputed a report from the Anchorage Daily News that she'd put a "ban" on staffers talking to reporters. "I have NEVER banned any of our team members from voicing opinions on anything, she wrote. "I've asked that you all share your opinions, speak freely to press, public, legislators, one another, etc."she wrote to a staff member, “The double standard we face in so many areas is almost comical.” But she also vented that she was being criticized for speaking out, “The double standard we face in so many areas is almost comical,” she wrote to a staff member.
Palin ghostwrote a letter to the editor of the Alaska Daily News.
An email from July 2008 suggests that Palin ghost-wrote a letter to the editor of the Alaska Daily News that was to be sent under the name of a supporter. A critic had written to the Daily News about Palin's no-show at the 2008 Miss Alaska Pageant, and Palin wanted to "someone to corrct the letter writer's goofy comments, but don't want the letter in response to ADN to come from me." She drafted a letter and had her staff member sign it under the name of "Kristan Cole."
The rumor that Trig Palin is Bristol's son has been going on for a while.
Guardian uncovers the following quote from Palin
Hate to pick this one up again, but have heard three different times today the rumor again the Bristol is pregnant or had this baby. Even at Trig's doc appt this morning his doc said that's out there (hopefully NOT in their medical community-world, but it's out there). Bristol called again this afternoon asking if there's anything we can do to stop this as she receive two girlfriend-type calls today asking if it were true. Palin has remained firm on Troopergate from the beginning.
On July 27, 2008, Palin's supporter Debbie Joslin sent a her saying that "If you did fire WM (Walt Monegan) in part or in whole because of the brother in law, just admit it and make it right. Hire him back if that makes sense and even if it doesn’t, just say you are sorry you let personal feelings get in the way and move on. People will forgive you." But Palin reponded, “I hope you’ll trust me that I’d be the first to admit if I made a mistake two weeks ago in offering Walt a different job aside from Commissioner...No personal feelings ever influenced my recognition."
Two days later, on July 29, she wrote again, “I prefer speaking to these reporters who want comments on the issue, I invite the investigation but it's obvious we could get to the bottom of it all if leggies and reproters would just ASK me further questions instead of spending $100g on a fishing expiditoin”
In a later email she expressed increasing frustration:
"I do applogize if I sound frustrated w this one. I guess I am. Its killing me to realise how misinformed leggies, reporters and others are on this issue. The accusations and false assumptions are mind boggling. "He's still a trooper, and he still carries a gun, and he still tells anyone who will listen that he will 'never work for that b*itch' (me) because he has such anger and distain towards family. So consistency is needed here. No one's above the law. If the law needs to be changed to not allow access to guns for people threatening to kill someone, it must apply to everyone."****
Title: Media: Powerline 3.0
Post by: DougMacG on June 29, 2011, 09:05:10 AM
The guys at Powerline IMO are thoughtful conservatives, insightful and objective in my opinion, [of whom] :wink: I quote or source often. Just a note here to point out they upgraded from a blog to a newspaper format today to make the site more readable: http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on July 02, 2011, 08:36:17 AM
Tim Rutten is an (liberal) editorial writer for the LA Times. But I think this is a fair summary of today's media and politics.
Also, I like Axelrod's comment, "David Axelrod, the president's closest political advisor, told the Washington Post that though he disagreed with Halperin's comment, "He's a decent person and a good journalist."
Title: WSJ has become Fox-fied
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2011, 07:48:59 AM
Although as my inserts below indicate I have some disagreements with the following POTH piece, I do agree with its general thrust that Murdoch has been bad for the WSJ, a paper which I used to love dearly. =========================================
It’s official. The Wall Street Journal has been Fox-ified. Earl Wilson/The New York Times
It took Rupert Murdoch only three and a half years to get there, starting with the moment he acquired the paper from the dysfunctional Bancroft family in December 2007, a purchase that was completed after he vowed to protect The Journal’s editorial integrity and agreed to a (toothless) board that was supposed to make sure he kept that promise.
Fat chance of that. Within five months, Murdoch had fired the editor and installed his close friend Robert Thomson, fresh from a stint Fox-ifying The Times of London. The new publisher was Leslie Hinton, former boss of the division that published Murdoch’s British newspapers, including The News of the World. (He resigned on Friday.) Soon came the changes, swift and sure: shorter articles, less depth, an increased emphasis on politics and, weirdly, sometimes surprisingly unsophisticated coverage of business. (Marc: Agree!)
Along with the transformation of a great paper into a mediocre one came a change that was both more subtle and more insidious. The political articles grew more and more slanted toward the Republican party line. (Marc: Disagree! Lots of Dem blather that would never have seen the light of day began appearing!) The Journal sometimes took to using the word “Democrat” as an adjective instead of a noun, a usage favored by the right wing. In her book, “War at The Wall Street Journal,” Sarah Ellison recounts how editors inserted the phrase “assault on business” in an article about corporate taxes under President Obama. The Journal was turned into a propaganda vehicle for its owner’s conservative views. That’s half the definition of Fox-ification. ("Conservative" does not mean "pro certain busienss interests, and as noted the papaer moved leftward, not rightward)
The other half is that Murdoch’s media outlets must shill for his business interests. With the News of the World scandal, The Journal has now shown itself willing to do that, too.
As a business story, the News of the World scandal isn’t just about phone hacking and police bribery. It is about Murdoch’s media empire, the News Corporation, being at risk — along with his family’s once unshakable hold on it. The old Wall Street Journal would have been leading the pack in pursuit of that story.
Now? At first, The Journal ignored the scandal, even though, as the Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff pointed out in Adweek, it was front-page news all across Britain. Then, when the scandal was no longer avoidable, The Journal did just enough to avoid being accused of looking the other way. Blogging for Columbia Journalism Review, Dean Starkman, the media critic, described The Journal’s coverage as “obviously hamstrung, and far, far below the paper’s true capacity.”
On Friday, however, the coverage went all the way to craven. The paper published an interview with Murdoch that might as well have been dictated by the News Corporation public relations department. He was going to testify before Parliament next week, he told the Journal reporter, because “it’s important to absolutely establish our integrity.” Some of the accusations made in Parliament were “total lies.” The News Corporation had handled the scandal “extremely well in every way possible.” So had his son James, a top company executive. “When I hear something going wrong, I insist on it being put right,” he said. He was “getting annoyed” by the scandal. And “tired.” And so on.
In the article containing the interview, there was no pushback against any of these statements, even though several of them bordered on the delusional. The two most obvious questions — When did Murdoch first learn of the phone hacking at The News of the World? And when did he learn that reporters were bribing police officers for information? — went unasked. The Journal reporter had either been told not to ask those questions, or instinctively knew that he shouldn’t. It is hard to know which is worse. The dwindling handful of great journalists who remain at the paper — Mark Maremont, Alan Murray and Alix Freedman among them — must be hanging their heads in shame.
To tell you the truth, I’m hanging my head in shame too. Four years ago, when Murdoch was battling recalcitrant members of the Bancroft family to gain control of The Journal, which he had long lusted after and which he viewed as the vehicle that would finally allow him to go head-to-head against The New York Times, I wrote several columns saying that he would be a better owner than the Bancrofts.
The Bancrofts’ history of mismanagement had made The Journal vulnerable in the first place. I thought that Murdoch’s resources would stop the financial bleeding, and that his desire for a decent legacy would keep him from destroying a great newspaper.
After the family agreed to sell to him, Elisabeth Goth, the brave Bancroft heir who had long tried to get her family to fix the company, told me, “He has a tremendous opportunity, and I don’t think he’s going to blow it.” In that same column, I wrote, “The chances of Mr. Murdoch wrecking The Journal are lower than you’d think.”
Mea culpa.
Gail Collins is on book leave.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 16, 2011, 07:54:43 AM
The NYT accusing anyone of lacking journalistic ethics is like Charlie Sheen lecturing anyone on substance use.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2011, 08:48:55 AM
True! Pravda on the Hudson most certainly lives in a big glass house, but the question presented here is the WSJ. I think I posted here at the time that Murdoch took over of my concerns; also to be noted is that the Pravdas will be using all this to continue their attack on non-Pravda sources and beliefs.
Title: Scotland Yard, the dog that did NOT bark , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2011, 11:30:51 AM
Breaking News Alert The New York Times Saturday, July 16, 2011 -- 1:38 PM EDT -----
Taint From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard
For nearly four years, six overstuffed plastic bags containing possible evidence of phone hacking by the British tabloid, The News of the World, collected little more than dust in the evidence room of Scotland Yard.
During that time, British police officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the paper. But that assertion has been reduced to tatters in the last week, torn apart by an avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions by newspaper executives that the hacking was more widespread, and a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.
In an article in the Sunday New York Times, Don Van Natta Jr. explains how the British police agency and News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the World, became so intertwined that they shared the goal of containing the investigation.
LONDON (AP) — Police say Sean Hoare, the whistleblower reporter who alleged widespread hacking at the News of the World, has been found dead.
Police said Hoare's death at his home in England was not considered to be suspicious, according to Britain's Press Association news agency.
**Kind of reminds me of when the FBI rushes forward to claim there are no indications of terrorism before an investigation is conducted.Until an autopsy has been conducted, you really can't say.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2011, 12:14:42 PM
In that Scotland Yard appears to have been a major player in this, serious fox in the hen house issues are presented by any investigation.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 19, 2011, 12:33:02 PM
In that Scotland Yard appears to have been a major player in this, serious fox in the hen house issues are presented by any investigation.
Very bad, that. From what I know, the UK is usually pretty bleeding edge on homicide investigation methods and technology. It depends on the laws and policy and procedures of the location, but typically an unattended death is treated as a homicide unless/until found to be otherwise. It need not require a kicked in front door and a head severed by an axe.
Title: Media Issues: WSJ Foxified?
Post by: DougMacG on July 19, 2011, 12:51:58 PM
Coming back to a previous Crafty post recently and back around the time Murdoch tookover:
What I notice is that the WSJ perhaps stands alone in the fact that there really is a firewall between the news departments and the editorial writing. In that sense it is two different publications. The news side trudges on, very good in parts but no different in slant (IMO) or 'objectivity' to the NYT, WashPost, USA Today, etc.
The Editorial Page OTOH was alone in the pre-internet era in terms of direction and quality, back in the Robert Bartley days. The transition to the current team I don't think was in any way tied to the Murdoch purchase, just generational. Paul Gigot the current editorial page editor has great analysis and insight in politics and economics. I believe he was Bartley's pick to replace himself and to continue what he built. Gigot seemed to bring in a new team of writers who I would say are very good but not great. I don't believe the overall political views they publish have changed. (They were conservative and long before Fox/Murdoch was in TV much less newspaper.)
If you go to Real Clear Politics they show their own most read listings of the day and week. WSJ columns get in there but you can see over time which writers and stories are more compelling than others. Maybe WSJ should shake things up and hire away a couple of big name writers, but I see their circulation is number one in the country, more than double the NY Times, more than triple the LA Times. In a tough business, that's not too bad. http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/130676/wsj-remains-largest-circulation-daily-newspaper/
NYT was also on the lead of Glen Beck (envy) - 'firing' story - last January, he stayed on 6 months and was still number one in his time slot with re-runs the week after he left. They are IMO just taking this opportunity to remind liberal readers that there are conservatives elsewhere in the media to avoid.
Title: Ooof!
Post by: G M on July 20, 2011, 12:04:24 PM
MSNBC To GOP Congressman: "Do You Have A Degree In Economics?"
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on July 20, 2011, 04:36:50 PM
That's pretty funny.
Title: Media Issues/entertainment/corporate/crime complex
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2011, 09:43:46 AM
Almost certianly Piers Morgan is lying. The entire entertainment industry is rampant with criminal behavior. We have had our phones hacked, tapped, listening devices, breaking and entering, stolen intellectual property, surveillance to do harm, bribery theft at the Copyright Office, bribery of government officials and more. The stolen lyrics and anything else we say or do that can be sold to make a buck shows up in commercials, comedy skits, talk shows, cartoons, movie lines, marketing ads, throughout the "entertainment" industry. Everyone has connections, and spread the material around. No most of them are not doing the stealing but the are party to passing it around, making deals amongst themselves, looking the other way, claiming it for themselves, and following the code of silence.
The News corp is not an exception - it is the rule. I have claimed this for years. But I am not a powerful person with billions and connections. So no one gives a shit about me or Katherine. But News has many wealthy and politically connected enemies. So this gets traction and people to actually do something about it.
Folks let me say again - this behaviour is not the exception - it is the rule. Indeed the device makers have ways to "get in" your devices. Try finding it embedded. Try doing anyhting about it.
When I hear the doppy girly news anchors ask their guest who come on their shows to talk of the surveillance ask, "can one opt out?" all I can do is cringe at their ignorance an naivity:
*****Phone Hacking
CNN's Piers Morgan 'told interviewer stories were published based on phone tapping' Piers Morgan, the CNN broadcaster, has said that newspaper articles based on the findings of people paid to tap phones and rake through bins were published during his time as a tabloid newspaper editor, it can be disclosed.
Piers Morgan, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson have all edited the News of the World Photo: REX By Jon Swaine, New York 12:40AM BST 27 Jul 2011 Mr Morgan, a former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor who is now a high-profile television presenter in the US, has spent the past week categorically denying ever printing material derived from phone hacking.
He spoke out after being accused by a Conservative MP and political bloggers of being involved in the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, for which he used to work.
“For the record, in my time at the News of the World and the Mirror, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone,” he said last week on CNN, where he now hosts a talk-show.
But it has emerged that Mr Morgan gave a notably different response when asked during an interview with the BBC about his potential involvement in covert "gutter" journalistic practices during his time as a tabloid editor between 1994 and 2004.
“What about this nice middle-class boy, who would have to be dealing with, I mean essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones, people who take secret photographs, who do all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff,” he was asked on BBC's Desert Island Discs in June 2009. “How did you feel about that?" Mr Morgan replied: “To be honest, let’s put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That’s not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work.
"I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do,” he told the programme's host, Kirsty Young.
“I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market.”
The discovery of Mr Morgan’s comment, first hinted at by the Guido Fawkes political blog, came after Trinity Mirror, the parent company of The Daily Mirror, announced it had opened an investigation into editorial standards at its newspapers in light of the phone hacking scandal.
Clive Goodman, a reporter for The News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the newspaper, were jailed in 2007 for illegally hacking mobile phone voicemails. News International, the paper's parent company, initially said the scandal was limited to a "rogue reporter" but in recent weeks conceded it was in fact widespread.
The News of the World was shut down and several more arrests have been made, including Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor hired by David Cameron to be the chief spokesman at 10 Downing Street and Rebekah Brooks, Mr Murdoch's former British newspaper chief. But News International has made clear it believes hacking was widespread among other tabloids.
At the weekend James Hipwell, a Daily Mirror financial columnist between 1998 and 2000, said that illegal phone hacking was “endemic” during Mr Morgan's editorship. "You know what people around you are doing,” he said.
Last week Mr Morgan was accused in a parliamentary committee by Louise Mensch, the Tory MP for Corby, of publishing an article in 2002 about an affair between Sven Goran Eriksson, the England football coach, and Ulrika Jonsson, the television presenter, which he knew had been obtained via phone hacking. He denied this and demanded an apology during a nine-minute row on live television.
Sources close to Mr Morgan said that he was referring to the tabloid industry in general. In a statement, he said: “I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone. I am not aware, and have never seen evidence to suggest otherwise, that any Mirror story published during my tenure was obtained from phone hacking.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 05, 2011, 08:00:54 AM
It is remarkable how the crats are able to still spin the fault of the economy onto the tea party.
Now the lack of new jobs the faultering economy is due to the tea party distracting Brock and the country away from job creation to the debt ceiling and the debt.
And the MSM of course picks up this ball and runs for the goal post.
Apparently independents are ok with this as they seem to blame Congress for everything more than Brock.
They probably still agree with tax the rich mentality. They still don't get it. Better steal more from the successful the mess with my Medicare social security and the rest.
Newt was on Greta last night and was right on message (IMO) by explaining how easy this could addressed if we only get big government out of the way.
However the MSM ignores him. Instead we here opinions from giants like Obama diseased Brock apologist Eugene Robinson of the Wash Post.
Joe Scarborough has lost me once and for all. He is living proof that anyone can be bought. (By his employer MSNBC).
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 05, 2011, 10:53:54 AM
Are there ever any polls about radical progressivism in the United States? How popular is liberalism once people understand what it is all about? Americans should be thanking the tea party yet the entitlement crowd never ceases to stop:
****Views of Congress, tea party reach new low in poll By Chris Moody
Political Reporter
The marathon negotiations that led to the debt ceiling deal seemed to leave an indiscriminate trail of casualties in Washington. And now a new opinion poll has proven as much, with public views on the debt showdown dealing severe hits to all parties--centrist compromisers and principled hardliners alike.
Not all the anger is necessarily aimed at Washington, however. Public perception of the tea party movement, which many see as the driving force that kept Republicans from voting to raising the debt ceiling without implementing unprecedented spending reductions, is at a record low. In a New York Times/CBS poll released Friday, 40 percent of respondents said they held an "unfavorable" view of the movement, up from 29 percent before the debt negotiations began in April, and higher than any number since pollsters started asking the question last year. One in five respondents said they approved of the tea party, down from 26 percent a few months ago.
Congress, as usual, fared the worst. The legislative branch almost never gets high marks from the public, but never before has it earned this level of disapproval. Eighty-two percent in the poll said they disapprove of how members of Congress are doing their jobs--the highest such rate since 1977, when the poll was first taken.
President Obama, on the other hand, was the only one to really escape the negotiation process without deeply damaging blows to his perception, the poll suggested. Almost half (48 percent) said they approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, a number that has remained stable since late 2009.****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2011, 11:08:19 AM
What poll is that? I've seen that Baraq has dropped from 48 to 40% in the last few months , , , I'd also be curious to cross check the data from other polls regarding the Tea Party
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 05, 2011, 11:22:10 AM
Crafty, Good point. This AM MSNBC cites a CBS/NYT poll. Anyone would know this poll is going to be biased and is probably directly connected to the jurnolist-NYT-MSNBC liberal media cabal.
Of course in the poll the tea party boehner congress all come out on the bottome while Brock is not nearly as negative.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on August 05, 2011, 12:25:46 PM
Congress is traditionally the lowest regarded branch of government, no matter who is in power, and no matter who is asking the questions (and the article says as much). It wouldn't matter, almost certainly, if the president had been Republican and the Congress had been split. That said, if you look at MOC reelection rates, constituents LOVE their elected officials.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2011, 12:48:27 PM
Gerrymandering has quite a bit to do with re-election rates.
If we are going to continue this, lets take it to the election thread
Title: STAT Jornolist reply to debate
Post by: ccp on August 12, 2011, 08:39:00 AM
This is so obviously the jornolist with the liberal pollsters and party operatives all in cohoots. They know Brock is a loser so we will see blitzkreg (sp?) like attacks from them about every republican thing that comes up:
Title: Re: Media Issues: Phony fact check?
Post by: DougMacG on August 12, 2011, 11:47:56 AM
CCP, Thanks for exposing the phony fact checkers. That is a political document no better or less biased than what they claim to be correcting.
I normally don't read anything past the first falsehood - this one starts by saying regarding the individual mandate: "Nothing is unconstitutional until courts declare it to be so." Of course an appeals court just said so today, but other courts have already declared that - in both directions. Even if this court ruled otherwise or the Supreme Court eventually gets this wrong, she has every right running for President to question the constitutionality of everything the federal government does and declare to us her view of it - and she did. Other cases are more questionable; this one to me is kind of obvious. Her view of that gives us an idea of how she would govern. Whether you like that or oppose it, that is the purpose of the debate.
They don't get anything right IMO until the ending where Bachmann (quoting a false newspaper story) says that Pawlenty said the era of small government is over. That was just sloppy. Anyone following his years in the legislature, two terms as governor and campaigning for President knows that Pawlenty, like Bachmann is a force on the side of trying to contain the expansions of government. If you can find a part of a statement otherwise, it is likely false or lacking context, and she should have known that.
Title: Schultz apologizes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2011, 10:44:47 AM
On Day 938 of his presidency, Obama says he'll have a jobs plan in a month or so
They go on to criticize the bus tour: "Because Obama wanted to hear from regular Americans, he's encased in an armored Darth Vader bus with heavily-tinted windows so no one can see him looking out at regular Americans.
And as the commander-in-chief meanders through the Heartland in this black vehicle, the entire road in both directions is cleared of regular Americans for the president's entourage and motorcade to pass by safely." [Picture is supposed to be a two-way street. Welcome to the motorcade.] (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef015390c37ade970b-450wi) -------------- [The Pres. flew Air Force One to St. Paul MN to get to the Canadian-built bus.]
Title: Media Issues: AP = DNC alarmism mouthpiece?
Post by: DougMacG on August 18, 2011, 02:34:18 PM
"But Perry's opinion runs counter to the view held by an overwhelming majority of scientists that pollution released from the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the planet. Perry's home state of Texas releases more heat-trapping pollution carbon dioxide -- the chief greenhouse gas -- than any other state in the country, according to government data."
Carbon dioxide IS NOT the chief greenhouse gas. Water vapor is. By far!
Carbon dioxide is not pollution. It is what plants breathe and animals exhale.
Carbon dioxide releases by humans in 2011 is a sign of ECONOMIC ACTIVITY. Is that what they meant to say?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 18, 2011, 03:19:58 PM
Doug, Which bus do you think Brock is in the black one or the red one? Or neither? :| Maxine Waters is pissed his tour didn't go through urban Black communities. :-P Hell he knows her crowd is going to vote for him.
What does she think?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 18, 2011, 04:03:26 PM
CCP, funny. The part I though odd was to fly the most expensive plane to MN so you can go busing to IL - to be closer to the people. And while busing you are hidden completely from public view. Could have just flown. $2 million for 2 buses. Use them 2 days, then fly to the vineyard. What happens to the taxpayer buses? Bus barn now at the White House or did they buy more property?
I support whatever part of that operation is really necessary to protect him from assassination. Somehow that highway full of civilian vehicles doesn't seem like the best way to do that.
I recall that Clarence Thomas, with his wife, drives his own motorhome to the campgrounds and diners across the country and actually does meet the people on his time off. I'm not visualizing an entourage with that. He may not be leader of the free world, but he plays a role in it.
The reason given by Carney that the trip is business not campaign, as he touts the success of his own policies (?) and slams his opponents, is that the President isn't facing a primary challenge. That is convenient.
Title: Pravda on the Hudson's hit piece on Congressman Issa
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2011, 06:42:54 AM
Title: Stewart on Megan wuzzername
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2011, 02:34:37 PM
Gotta give props to Jon Stewart for anally plugging Megan Wuzzername of FOX this past week for being a hypocrite-- contrasting her on entitlements then getting in a snit over someone who criticized paid maternal leave as a scam or something like that. You had to see it to appreciate-- quite the skewering!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on August 29, 2011, 03:56:54 PM
I forgot about the maternity leave "entitlement", ahem excuse me, I mean "human/civil right".
http://thecallblog.com/?p=99
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 29, 2011, 04:59:59 PM
A couple of links: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-11-2011/lactate-intolerance Funny but misleading. The original piece of her skewering the radio show host I thought really was funny though you couldn't tell if he was serious, if she was really mad or what any of her political views really are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMiipGGdHIs
She was giving shit to a friend who asked for it. He said something intentionally to get her going - the maternity thing is a racket. I doubt he doesn't understand mothers being with newborn. Her time off was in a private contract, not a government entitlement. Yes she said US in the dark ages on that with a twinkle in her eye, perhaps devil's advocate to a conservative radio host friend of hers.
The Stewart assumption is that she is otherwise a complete anti-government anarchist because she works at Fox and has asked tough questions in the past about entitlements that can't be reformed. He tried a few gotcha moments and for sure it worked with his audience. A straw argument string of unrelated partial clips of her insinuating that overall entitlements have gone too far. Yes they have. The clip of her saying "the free market should dictate" was about the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE, not pregnancy, leave or child rearing. Stewart has it down to either you favor all entitlements and government control 'like us' or you don't. Everyone in between, like a moderate on Fox, is a hypocrite.
Title: WSJ: Digital Divide
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2011, 08:57:01 PM
By DAVID FRIEND It is clear that the world changed on 9/11. It is less clear exactly how it did. Ten years later the debate is still open on the wisdom of waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq, on laws that effectively rolled back civil liberties, on the West's relation to Islam, on America's place in the world. But in one respect, the way the world changed is utterly clear—the manner in which we witness news events.
In 2001, few could have foreseen the way the attacks would coincide with a phase change in how we observe and respond to key moments in public life, and therefore how society and culture go on to interpret history. Three technologies that found their footing in the 1990s—digital photography, 24/7 television news, and Internet-supported citizen journalism—came of age that day as some two billion people (a third of the species) watched the attacks unfold on TV and the World Wide Web.
But what we couldn't foresee then is how the act of newsgathering would be turned on its head. Since 9/11, the documentation of conflict—in the form of still photographs and moving pictures, often by civilians carrying camera-equipped mobile phones, whose footage can be viewed almost instantaneously across the globe—actually takes precedent in the public mind over context and analysis. Often, "traditional" media coverage, no matter how well-funded, thorough and authoritative, is not considered credible or definitive unless accompanied by compelling visual evidence.
On Sept. 11, 2001, there was no such thing as a YouTube video. Or a Facebook page. Or a Twitter feed. Cellphone cameras did not exist. Yet legions of people rushed to the site of the twin towers to document the attack and its aftermath. Their images, as much as those from stationary TV cameras or professional photographers, became our window onto the calamity. Meanwhile, countless others used their pagers, phones and PCs to enter firsthand reports of what things were like in Lower Manhattan. Thousands more, forwarding those accounts around the world, helped produce a people's chronicle of 9/11 that corresponds with—rivals, really—the record seen on television and in print.
What was extraordinary that day has become thoroughly familiar. In 2011, when history happens, it is more often than not a nonjournalist with a pocket camera, a blog or a Twitter account who files the initial dispatch. It was a tourist with a camcorder who captured the first devastating waves of the Asian tsunami of 2004. A commuter with a mobile phone, riding the London Underground, took the first haunting frames of the transit bombings of 2005. Nowadays, history belongs to the first photographer to post the pictures of it.
This phenomenon was everywhere apparent during this year's popular "Arab Spring" uprisings, from Tunis to Tripoli, and from Aleppo to the Gulf of Aden. In country after country, abuses were revealed via Facebook postings and YouTube videos. Protests, coordinated via social networks like Facebook, were spearheaded by young people, all of whom had grown up during the digital era. (More recently, both rioters and citizen-response groups in London and elsewhere have used mobile messaging services to mobilize.)
In retrospect, one can only imagine how the assaults of 9/11 might have been absorbed and magnified in the age of the smartphone, WiFi and streaming video. How might the attacks have further traumatized us had the technology existed to allow real-time visualizations of the deaths of thousands of innocents? How differently might the international community have reacted—or might historians have judged the actions of al Qaeda—had workers, trapped inside the World Trade Center, used the cameras on their hand-held devices and computers to record scenes of atrocity and carnage, then beamed those photos and videos to their families?
Instead of a panoramic view of mass murder, witnessed from a distance, would we have seen individual lives extinguished one by one, and irrefutably, in the here and now? And to what end? How, one wonders, would we have handled such images, given the breadth of the horror and the unspeakable depth of the loss?
It is hard to imagine that we would have wanted a more detailed account of the awfulness of that day. Even so, it is hard to suppose that we would rather have learned about the facts of September 11 through the next morning's newspapers. Ten years after, we don't just expect a crowd-sourced profusion of digital images to accompany a significant event as it unfolds; for better for worse, we demand it.
Mr. Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of "Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11," reissued this month by Picador. This op-ed is adapted from the book's preface.
Title: Remember when the left was so concerned about civility?
Post by: G M on September 07, 2011, 05:42:56 AM
Remember when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in Tucson by a mentally ill gunman? Do you remember the many voices calling for civility in our political dialogue that sprang from that event? That happened only eight months ago, but civility has evidently become passe.
We've received a few recent, unpleasant reminders of this fact. Just before the holiday weekend, video emerged of Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., telling a friendly crowd that some of his fellow members of Congress would like to lynch him because he is black. Given that Carson obviously made this up (if he didn't, he is free to return The Washington Examiner's calls at long last and name names), it's a cheap way of spreading false fears and exciting base voters.
On Labor Day, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had choice words for Republicans at a union rally: "Let's take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to America where we belong." The first part of that sentence seems slightly more serious than putting "targets" on a campaign map, doesn't it? (And no, I have no idea what the second half means.)
Despite the fact that President Obama appeared on stage about 20 minutes after Hoffa, the White House declined to comment on Hoffa's remarks. It's just as well, because if Obama had commented on the "son-of-a-bitches," he might have also had to comment on the equally absurd (if less salty) declaration from his own vice president to an AFL-CIO rally the same day: "You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates." (Biden actually said something very similar at a fundraiser in 2008, except that he included trial lawyers among those guarding the gates.)
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/09/wheres-civility-now
Title: unions do not represent the middle class
Post by: ccp on September 07, 2011, 10:13:24 AM
The strategy of the unions is to exand *their* plight to most Americans by calling it a *middle class* issue. The jornolists/unions/liberals are all on the same page screaming about the "war on the middle class", "working people", etc.
Like yeah right; the tea party the republicans the conservatives want to destroy the middle class.
Most of us are not in unions and even some union members don't buy this propaganda - which is exactly what it is.
Yet Pat Buchanan is exactly right and echoes what I have been saying all along:
the left and the right have not as yet put forward a real plan to save the obvious trend of falling behind of the middle class.
And Doug, I love ya but please don't try to give me stats about how the middle class is doing as well as it was 30 - 40 years ago. It clearly is much harder to make ends meet today then it was only a generation ago. Two people working, even college degrees meaning far less, people not having job security, $30,000 being a decent wage in 1970 and now 100K is not even the same. The middle is clearly been stagnant and not able to keep up with the bills.
That said the answer for me is not to steal from succesful people and dole it out. The answer is unclear to me. Without any doubt in my mind any Republican who can give a logical plan that addresses this more specifically will wipe out Brock.
The big government small government argument alone will always be a screaming yelling match struggle for the middle votes.
Title: MSNBC - a night of high comedy
Post by: ccp on September 08, 2011, 06:15:09 PM
I missed the debate but saw some of the MSNBC liberal "analysts" afterwards.
The two Chrises, Rachel, Al, Ed. It was really a riot watching them fail as they tried to demean the candidates. The whole time using every conceivable name, label, argument, and struggling with logic so twisted even one with Down's syndrome would be cracking up with laughter.
The only ones who have lost the *debate* are the liberals.
The LEFT has lost the *debate*. Now if the Repubs can only bring home the bacon.
Title: Media Bias - Meet the Depressed with David Gregory
Post by: DougMacG on September 18, 2011, 08:47:24 PM
It is so old to complain about media bias so I apologize in advance, but that lightweight David Gregory was way over the top today IMO. At the start of his interview with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell must have said may I have permission to treat this one as a hostile witness. What a jerk, Gregory. What a bunch of loaded questions. 'The President wants to [grow jobs and solve the debt problem] but wonders whether he has a partner with the Republicans'.
They play a clip from Speaker Boehner, Gregory asks, "Isn't this classic politicians double talk, talking out of both sides of their mouths?" No attempt whatsoever to hide his hatred or bias. McConnell was professional and directly answered the questions without complaint. Then, guess what? Next guess was former President and out comes the gushing and fawning. It was supposed to be friendly because it was supposed to be about just some global do-gooding Clinton is up to. Fine. Instead they used Clinton to answer the other side of the same questions and issues, but with the hosts' friendly and helpful kid gloves. If hostile is how best to question and Bill Clinton is who they send up, then rough him over too. If he is too old, too removed or too fragile, leave him out of it.
Yes, former Presidents deserves respect. So do the leaders of the senate.
Here is the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/ Please don't watch. The internet hits just encourage them.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 18, 2011, 08:53:30 PM
Here is the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/ Please don't watch. The internet hits just encourage them.
If it were not for right-wing bloggers, MSLSD wouldn't have any traffic at all..... :evil:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2011, 03:08:04 PM
"Here is the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/ Please don't watch. The internet hits just encourage them."
Experiencing cognitive dissonance here , , , :lol:
Title: Mex narcos intimidating US journalists
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2011, 05:28:13 AM
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton examines the emerging threat against journalists covering Mexican cartel violence along the border and the challenges of corroborating source information.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links Mexico Security Memo: Zetas Communications Network Dismantled As a forecasting company, we try to look at emerging threats. Intelligence surfaced this week over concerns for border violence against journalists that cover cartel violence from Mexico. In this week’s Above the Tearline, we’re going to examine the challenges of making sense of this kind of emerging threat, as well as how we go about attempting to corroborate or refute the information.
Being a journalist or an investigative reporter in Mexico is an extremely dangerous job. Organizations like Reporters Without Borders reports that there’s been 80 journalists killed in Mexico since 2000, and recently we had two female journalists found naked, bound and killed in Mexico City. The intelligence we received this week is from a very reliable source of STRATFOR that expressed very specific concern for this emerging threat against journalists inside the United States, especially those in close proximity to the border.
When STRATFOR receives a report like this from a reliable contact, we take great strides to attempt to corroborate or refute the data point, meaning we go about contacting our other sources in state and local and federal law enforcement, as well as foreign police, in this case, Mexico, in an effort to see what they may know about this concern and to seek out their assessment as to whether or not this could be a viable threat. One of the things that we did to connect the dots is, we have had over the years anecdotal information from various media contacts and investigative journalists of the exact same fear. We’ve had reports of journalists being relocated out of concerns surrounding this exact issue, and in essence protective security measures being taken by various media outlets to protect themselves from this kind of issue.
One of the other things we do in an effort to corroborate or refute a source report is, we’ll gather together the tactical team that puts together the Mexico Security Memo and discuss in great detail whether or not we think this is a viable threat and will unpack that threat to see if it makes sense or if it’s something that just is totally off the wall.
The Above the Tearline aspect with this video is the fear that the cartels have the capability to suppress the open source as to what’s taking place in Mexico or along the border and in essence shape the perception of what the cartels are doing. We have already seen this happen inside of Mexico. There has been a reduction of investigative journalists, we’ve had numerous killed and intimidated and if this threat is now coming across the border, this is an issue that most of us have to look at very closely and think about the ramifications of the spillover effect and the ability of the cartels to shape the news inside the United States.
Click for more videos
Title: It was only ten years ago today, that Al Alwaki was the voice of moderate Islam
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2011, 12:10:00 AM
Bret Baier Report tonight reported that after 911 Pravda on the Hudson, Pravda on the Potomac, NPR and other usual suspects interviewed and lauded Al Alwaki as a voice of moderate Islam. Only POTP had the class to mention this in today's reports on his most excellent kill.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: prentice crawford on October 01, 2011, 12:45:16 AM
In relation to the post from Stratfor that Crafty posted earlier:
BY Helen Kennedy DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, September 25th 2011, 5:18 PM
Related NewsMexican bloodbath: At least 40 killed in weekend drug violence Mexican drug gang leaves alarming message for American agents near school, 59 bodies found buried in series of pits in northern Mexico Mayor, police chief and official in U.S. border town busted for running guns to Mexico drug cartels Mexican military detains a suspect in killing of ICE agent Cruise ships are canceling stops in Mazatlan, Mexico, due to crime.
Headline: A woman who blogged about the Zetas drug cartel was found tortured and decapitated Saturday night in Mexico - the latest atrocity against people who criticize the drug gangs online.
The 39-year-old, who blogged under the name "Laredo Girl," was found butchered by a roadside monument to Christopher Columbus with two computer keyboards.
Gruesome photos in the Mexican press showed her semi-clothed body, missing parts of limbs, sprawled in the grass.
A large placard stood propped nearby, with a scrawled note that read in part, "I'm here because of my reports...Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl."
It was signed "ZZZZ" - the sign of the vicious Zetas cartel.
The woman's severed head was balanced on the top of a large cement globe, with dark rivulets of blood running down the sides.
Some newspapers identified her as Mary Elizabeth Castro Macias, others as Marisol Macias Castaneda.
She was a newsroom manager at Primera Hora, the newspaper in Nuevo Laredo said, but the note made it clear it was her blog posts that angered the cartel - not the paper's journalism.
She posted anonymously as "NenaDLaredo" on a social networking site called Nuevo Laredo Live, where residents shared tips about drug-gang activity.
It was not clear how the cartel found out her real name.
Ten days ago, the mutilated bodies of a young man and woman were found hanging from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo with a message threatening internet posters.
A woman was hog-tied and disemboweled, hanging topless by her hands and feet. The man was dangling by his hands, cuts in his joints so deep that bone was visible.
"This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the Internet," read a sign next to them. Share EmailPrintYou may also be interested in:From NYDailyNews.com
P.C.
Title: Media Issues: NY Slimes
Post by: DougMacG on October 06, 2011, 09:08:47 AM
160 years and 106 Pulitzer Prizes and THIS passes for journalism:
"...The Republicans have used that cowardice to embarrass Mr. Reid, his party and Mr. Obama. On Tuesday, when the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, prankishly offered to bring up the jobs bill, Mr. Reid was forced to object, leading to all sorts of merry, if hollow, taunts from the Republican side. The Republicans’ willingness to play political games while millions are out of work is inexcusable, ..." ----- The bill is more of the same of what did not work and dug our debt deeper at frightening pace. This continues and extends our problems, does not solve them. Mr. Reid isn't a coward. Slimeball maybe but not a coward. They know better than that and lie to their own trusting readers. Majority Leader Reid has a number of Democrat members who reject the bill outright and a good number more with serious doubts. Mitch McConnell isn't a prankster. Voting down the bill in the senate just like they voted down an Obama budget 98-0 IS how you call the question and begin to move forward with real solutions. How can it be a prank to call for a vote on the President's own agenda tight while you are being publicly berated as an obstructionist?
Believe or not, people have honest disagreements in policy with their failed view of economics. That does not make people cowards and pranksters. Hard to believe people pay for drivel passed off at the highest levels as journalism.
Title: Mark Steyn: Why the lack of MSM outrage at “dead Mexicans”?
Post by: G M on October 08, 2011, 05:35:27 AM
Mark Steyn: Why the lack of MSM outrage at “dead Mexicans”?
posted at 1:25 pm on October 7, 2011 by Tina Korbe
As I wrote yesterday, Fast and Furious should have been uppermost in the minds of every reporter at the president’s press conference — yet most of the journalists in the room gave BHO a bye. Today on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, columnist Mark Steyn memorably took the mainstream media to task for its lack of interest in the scandal, which has resulted in the murder of at least 200 people in Mexico and at least 11 violent crimes in the United States:
“Now real Mexicans are dead,” [Steyn said]. “Does the president of the United States, does his attorney general, does CNN, does The New York Times, does NPR — do they not care about dead Mexicans?
“I mean, forget the United States Border Patrol guys that were killed with these ‘Fast & Furious’ guns. Real-live, or previously live, citizens of third world countries — the kind of people that NPR, The New York Times claim to love — are dead because of this.”
“Why isn’t that a national scandal?” he pleaded. “This is absolutely a — Iran-Contra didn’t rack up that kind of body count. Watergate didn’t rack up a body count. Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mother, or whatever stupid story they were chasing around Wasilla for months, that didn’t rack up a body count. There were hundreds of dead Mexicans from a gun running program run by the United States.”
The rate of revelation regarding Fast and Furious has been steady (and steadily serious), but Steyn’s right: That’s no thanks to either the Justice Department, which has resisted Congressional inquiry into the matter, or the mainstream media, which has studiously avoided the subject with just a few exceptions. Must be because MSM news outlets are so “reasonable.” What we know about F&F, then, is a testament to the conviction and persistence of Congressional lead investigators Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), to the conservative media (even though the DOJ has consistently refused document requests from our sister site Townhall.com, as well as CNSNews.com and other conservative sites) and to CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson. Watching this news unfold has at times seemed like a horror show — when I first heard the death count in Mexico, for example — and at other times has seemed like a hopeful reminder that “the truth will out.” Stories like this just can’t lie dormant forever — and, in the end, the MSM ignores the news at its own peril. As more and more media consumers recognize which news outlets deliver relevant information and which news outlets don’t, those that ignore truly newsworthy events or feign objectivity as a thin disguise for agenda advancement will become less and less, well, mainstream.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 08, 2011, 10:22:46 AM
"Why the lack of MSM outrage at “dead Mexicans”?"
Good question.
The stories coming out of Mexico are truly shocking. The brutality, the cruelty is unbelievable. And no one can stop it. We in this country are doing the drugs that are feeding this. Yet I hear no shame on our part, no guilt, no remorse.
Just blame the drug cartels for dealing us drugs.
The "fast and furious" guns trafficking is a big scandal with a big cover up probably all the way to Brock - However this is really only a small part of the overall problem.
The gang violence in the US is nothing like that seen south of the border in Mexico Central and South America.
I cannnot blame the Mexican government every time they point out the drugs are coming here and we pay for it. Sure they are corrupt but so are we.
All we hear is the libs saying how we have so many people in jail for drugs when they should be getting "treatment".
What a joke. That's not the answer either or is only a fraction of the answer.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 08, 2011, 10:49:46 AM
GM, Great Post. Mark Steyn is very witty and persuasive when he gets going on the right issue. Just coining the name of the scandal 'Dead Mexicans' ought to get someone else besides about 4 people here to ask WHY did this happen?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 08, 2011, 11:24:40 AM
Well Fox and Hannity are asking.
The MSM won't until they have to of course.
They are not interested in morality as much as their political and financial interests obviously.
Yet the MSM pretend they are all about morality. We have SoloDAD giving us more "Latino in America" nonsense. Yet not a peep from the queen of feeling sorry for illegals when it comes to the Latinos budgeoned in the streets of Mexico.
Then again if Bush were Prez she and the silver haired Rothschild would be on every day screaming ther outrage for the poor of South of the border.
Of course what gays go through here in the US is far worse then any suffering in Mexico due to the terror of these bastard drug cartels. :wink:
Title: Nada from La Raza
Post by: G M on October 08, 2011, 11:33:14 AM
I just checked the La Raza site and searched for "Fast and furious" and "ATF". Not one thing on "Gunwalker" it appears.
Imagine the outrage if Arizona cops checked 200 illegals for immigration status.
Title: Media mum about savage Muslim hate crime in the U.S.A.
Post by: G M on October 09, 2011, 07:28:51 AM
Star of David Carved on Infidel’s Back in St. Louis
Media mum about savage Muslim hate crime in the U.S.A.
October 6, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Jamie Glazov
A certain Arab author by the name of Mr. Alaa Alsaegh, an immigrant to the U.S. from Iraq, was attacked on August 14, 2011, by Muslims in the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. They stabbed him and carved a Star of David onto the flesh of his back. His crime? He published an Arabic language poem titled “Tears at the Heart of the Holocaust” on the website ArabsForIsrael.com. The poem expressed his love for the Jewish people and his sorrow over their fate in the Holocaust. The Muslim community in which he lived was outraged by this thought crime. He was called an infidel and received many threats for articulating his taboo feelings for the Jewish people. Alienated from the Muslim community, he continued to write his poetry, which contained the same themes which so upset his fellow Muslims.
In broad daylight and heavy traffic on Aug. 14, Alsaegh paid the price for expressing love for the Jews. And it happened in the streets of St. Louis, right here in the heart of America. Author and courageous freedom fighter Nonie Darwish describes the horrific event:
As he was driving at 10:30 in the morning on Compton St. near Park Ave., a small white car cut him off and hit his car, while another car stopped behind him. The occupants of the cars, some of whom wore security guard-type uniforms, quickly entered Alsaegh’s car, pointing a gun at him. They pushed his upper body down against the steering wheel, stabbed him and pulled off his shirt to expose his back. Then, with a knife, they carved the Star of David on his back while laughing as they recited his pro-Jewish poem.
Alsaegh thought that the perpetrators were Somalis; he was taken to the hospital and the photo of his injury was taken there.
The FBI has concluded that this was a hate crime. Question: apart from the Nonie Darwish article, and a handful of other reports, where exactly is this horrific story of Sharia street justice in America being reported? It is nowhere in the media.
Rodney King became a household name. The inhabitants of one American city rioted over what happened to that man. President Obama quickly reacted to the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and, without knowing the incident’s specifics, accused the police of acting “stupidly.”
Will Alaa Alsaegh become a household name? Will the inhabitants of an American city riot over his case? Will Obama say something? Henry Louis Gates didn’t have his flesh violated by the police. Might Alsaegh prove worthy of one ounce of Obama’s moral indignation?
We know the answers to these questions.
Three more questions:
[1] What if Alaa Alsaegh was a Muslim who was attacked by Christians in St. Louis who carved a cross on his back? Do you think this story would make it into the media?
[2] What if Alaa Alsaegh was a black man who was attacked by skinheads who carved KKK or a swastika onto his back? Do you think this story would make it into the media?
[3] What if Alaa Alsaegh was a Jew who expressed love of Muslims and was attacked for that by Jews who carved a crescent moon and star, a recognized symbol of Islam, onto his back? Do you think the story would make it into the media?
We know the obvious answer to those three questions. We also know that not only would these scenarios lead to mass media coverage worldwide and spark anti-American hysteria, but that scenarios 1 and 3 would most certainly lead not just to U.S. congressional committee investigations, but also to entire UN commissions.
Why is our media silent when a Muslim infidel has a Star of David carved on his back in a hate crime perpetrated by Muslims? Why is the literary culture silent? Where is Hollywood? Why is even our own president silent?
The answer is because of a monstrosity called the Left. The Left shapes and controls the boundaries of our society’s discourse. The Left’s mantle of multiculturalism and the belief that all religions and cultures are equal (except the ones it hates) have been internalized by our society, and there are severe punishments for crossing the boundaries of permitted speech. For example, if you condemn the Muslims for inflicting violence on Alsaegh, then you would have to accept that, in terms of the ingredients of their crime, that they are clearly acting out of the mandates of their Islamic faith (i.e., the obligation to hate infidels and Jews etc. is irrefutable). But to condemn their acts and the teachings on which they are based violates the sacred cow of leftist beliefs (i.e., Islam is a Religion of Peace) and, therefore, makes one an Islamophobe, something that, thanks to the Left’s victory in our culture, most people are now terrified of being accused of.
This phenomenon explains why Ilan Halimi, a Jewish boy in France, was kidnapped by a Muslim gang several years ago in Paris, held in a secret Muslim concentration camp and barbarically tortured for 23 days until he died (with the torturers calling his mother and reciting Koranic verses to her while she heard his screams), and his name is still to be spoken in our media.
It is understandable, of course, why Halimi’s name is not spoken — or known — in our culture. If it were, then the fact would become well known that in the apartment building in which he was tied up and tortured, the myriad of dwellers in the building, all Muslims, heard Ilan’s screams. Not only did they not do anything to stop it, but many of them got in line to participate. And they took gratification and consolation from torturing their Jew, for Islamic theology dispenses numerous mandates and incentives for Muslims to hate, hurt, and kill Jews. To accept this fact annihilates the foundational structures of the leftist belief system; it takes the legs out from the progressive lies on which our culture is built. It is safer, therefore, not to acknowledge the names of Alaa Alsaegh and Ilan Halimi, let alone what happened to them and why.
The notion that his own society is unjust is the bedrock of the leftist’s vision. To recognize the evil of the people who carved the Star of David on Alaa Alsaegh’s back or who tortured Ilan Halimi, and to recognize the evil of the ideology that inspired them, is to admit the existence of pernicious adversarial faiths. Such an admission concedes that there are cultures and systems that are much more unjust than ours. This is an untenable step for leftists to take, because it means acknowledging that there is something superior about our civilization that’s worth saving and defending.
Showing compassion for Alaa Alsaegh and Ilan Halimi is, therefore, extremely dangerous for any leftist, as it would undermine his political faith. As I have documented in United in Hate, it would also expose him to potential excommunication from his social community — which is unfathomable for the majority of leftists, whose politics are, in the end, their social lives and, therefore, their sense of personal identity.
There is also a desperation in our culture and media for a “moderate Islam” (we talk about it more than Muslims do) — an Islam that many non-Muslims strenuously insist exists, but that somehow mysteriously eludes them. This moderate Islam will take all of our problems away, we are told, once the “extremists,” who are the “minority” in Islam, are consoled. Meanwhile, a real and actual “moderate Islam” is nowhere to be found; there is no school of Islamic jurisprudence that counsels Muslims to renounce the Qur’an’s teachings on Islamic supremacism and the obligation of violent jihad. And yet, to suggest the truth of this reality in our society earns one only the label of being a racist and an “Islamophobe.”
Roger Simon, CEO of Pajamas Media, wrote a piece awhile back that touched on this theme, analyzing why even various conservative thinkers have attacked Geert Wilders. In his view, these conservative individuals are rejecting Wilders because they are afraid that he might be right. Krauthammer criticized Wilders, Simon writes, not because
he thinks the Dutch politician is “extreme,” but because he is afraid the Dutch politician is right. Call it projection, but I believe this because I have the exact same fear. I think many of us do and we don’t want to face it. Who would? The resultant conclusions are too depressing.
Indeed, it is too depressing to consider the implications of Wilders being right and so a form of Stockholm Syndrome vis-à-vis Islam must enter the consciousness of our society – a Stockholm Syndrome clearly on display, in its own toxic form, in the shameless silence we are now witnessing of our media on the frightening and tragic fate of Alaa Alsaegh.
Jamie Glazov is the editor of FrontPageMag.com. He is the author of the new book United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 10, 2011, 07:24:46 AM
GM your point about media hypocracy also finds fodder with the Wall street thing. Especially trying to compare it to the Tea Party.
The left wing media keeps making this into a left version of the Tea Party. Yeah right this is just like the tea party. Professional hippies and union thugs demading handouts from succesful people is not the same as those paying the bills having a beef:
I am not sure what to make of the media silence about the drone killing and American citizen. Personally I am all for it. Yet the uproar over water boarding yet silence over this is prima faciae evidence of a two faced liberal democrat party media complex.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 10, 2011, 07:31:29 AM
Of course. War was bad when BooooOOOOoooosh was president. Gitmo was a stain on American honor. Now, not so much.
Imagine if 200 Mexicans were killed as a result of a republican president's illegal program? The media would have the sobbing family member's tearful faces plastered on the tv 24/7.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 10, 2011, 10:29:08 PM
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/10/08/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 29, 2011, 10:22:16 AM
What can I say. It is so frustrating to read an article from a staunch Democrat liberal like Alter lauding Brock for being so ethical and even going so far to analyze how remarkable it is that Bamster is so teflon and how foolish Republicans look trying to make mountains out of mole hills. Obivously the reason Brock gets away with it is precisely BECAUSE of people like Alter. OF course a guy with his politcal blinders on is not going to simply be able to look in the mirror and see why Brock is getting more flack for scandal. This is the double standard world we live in:
****Obama Miracle is White House Free of Scandal: Jonathan Alter By Jonathan Alter Oct 27, 2011 7:45 PM ET
Jonathan Alter was a senior editor, media critic and columnist for Newsweek, where he worked for 28 years and covered five administrations and seven presidential campaigns.
President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest.
The sight of Texas Governor Rick Perry tumbling out of the clown car recently as a “birther” (or at least a birther- enabler) is a sign of weakness, not just for the Perry campaign but for the whole Republican effort to tarnish the president’s character.
Although it’s possible that the Solyndra LLC story will become a classic feeding frenzy, don’t bet on it. Providing $535 million in loan guarantees to a solar-panel maker that goes bankrupt was dumb, but so far not criminal or even unethical on the part of the administration. These kinds of stories are unlikely to derail Obama in 2012. If he loses, it will be because of the economy -- period.
Even so, the president’s Teflon is intriguing. How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? After investigating the question for a recent Washington Monthly article, I’ve been developing some theories.
For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions (Tim Geithner’s tax problems in 2009) his administration tends to fire first and ask questions later. The best known example is Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official who was mistakenly fired by her boss over a miscommunication that led higher-ups to believe -- wrongly -- that she had made inappropriate racially tinged remarks. In several other cases, the decision to give staffers accused of wrongdoing the boot was made within hours, taking the air out of any possible uproar.
Mixed Results But the White House’s intense focus on scandal prevention has had mixed results. The almost proctological vetting process has ended up wounding Obama as much as prospective nominees. He gets cleaner but often less imaginative officials. The kind of swashbuckling figures from the private sector who might have, say, come up with a far more ambitious job-creation plan often don’t bother to apply for government service these days.
The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse.
A Media Problem Unfortunately, we might not know of scandals in stimulus spending or elsewhere because of changes in the news business. For today’s media, talk is cheap and reporting is expensive. That means we get more chatter and less scrounging for official wrongdoing.
In the past, many of those scandal stories originally came from congressional investigators and others with subpoena power. But with the demise of the Office of Independent Counsel, a fount of information for reporters from the Reagan to the Clinton eras, the machinery of scandal-hunting began crumbling.
It doesn’t help that so much “news” coverage -- as opposed to commentary that is explicitly opinionated -- nowadays takes place in a partisan context. Fox News has tried to flog stories on manufactured controversies like “policy czars” in the White House (which go back to the 1970s) or whether it was wrong for Elizabeth Warren to consult with state attorneys general on their lawsuits against mortgage lenders. (It wasn’t.)
Every time Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who leads a House investigative committee, calls the Obama administration “corrupt” without offering any evidence, he hurts his cause. It’s much harder to make a story register as a bona fide scandal when the political motivation is so obvious.
It’s also harder to find room for such stories when so much other news is breaking. Scandals like the Monica Lewinsky affair were almost a luxury of good times, when the nation could afford to obsess about a blue dress. Not these days.
These factors are all relevant, but the ultimate explanation can be found at the top. According to a metric created by political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Obama set a record earlier this month for most days without a scandal of any president since 1977. The streak probably won’t last, especially if he gets a second term, where scandals are more common. But the impression of rectitude will be part of the voters’ assessment of him next year. He’ll need it.
(Jonathan Alter, a Bloomberg View columnist, is the author of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this article: Jonathan Alter at alterjonathan@gmail.com.****
Title: Larry Elder on MSM on Jesse Jackson's peccadillos
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2011, 09:28:42 AM
Politico coverage of biggest non-story of the campaign:
(Update since story, Politco today criticized Gingrich-Cain, Lincoln-Douglas debate for not addressing the 'the most high-profile issue in the campaign...' - the harassment story! http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67681.html)
Update: 94. Under Herman Cain, NRA launched sex harassment fight
Update: 93. Herman Cain allegation: Accuser breaks silence
Update: 92. NRA confirms one harassment complaint
Update: 91. Cain: Attention stems from popularity
90. Accuser attorney: Settlement dated 9/99, Kilgore signed - Nov. 4, 2011 - Story
89. Block wants firings at POLITICO - Nov. 4, 2011 - Story
88. Cain may face more questions - Nov. 4, 2011 - StoryRove swats Cain for accusing Perry - Nov. 4, 2011 - Story
2. Paul camp responds to Cain story -- by hitting him on TARP - Oct. 30, 2011 – Story
1. Exclusive: 2 women accused Cain of inappropriate behavior - Oct. 30, 2011 - Story
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 07, 2011, 07:40:19 AM
The jornolist feeding frenzy is so obvious.
When we need a good solid candidate for the Rep party we have none that are not flawed. The jornolist will go crazy highlighting all those flaws. Unlike their complete willfull ignoring Obama's flaws when he ran.
But as Bob Grant point out the media bias and absolute corruption will never change. He thinks it too late for the country as we knew it. I do too. I hope we are wrong.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2011, 08:08:52 AM
In the early days of the Republic several of the Founding Fathers had some very ripe words for the press and given the examples I have read I can see why.
Certainly at this moment mcuh of the MSM has become a bunch of llttle Pravdas, but OTOH there are many outstanding places for citizens to inform themselves; I would unhumbly note we here on this forum do what we can.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 07, 2011, 12:38:54 PM
"Certainly at this moment much of the MSM has become a bunch of little Pravdas, but OTOH there are many outstanding places for citizens to inform themselves; I would unhumbly note we here on this forum do what we can."
Yes, but... As much as I like it here and as fun as it is to criticize main media outlets, I strongly regret having to search so far and wide to find different opinions that many highly intelligent people reading the main newspapers and watching the main television stations may never come across. Not only exposure to different opinions but to learn crucial facts that might support an opposing opinion, one often must go through quite a few alternative sources. It isn't that I can't search and find an opposing opinion expressed, it is that others reading and watching only different outlets of the same take can miss so much IMO.
One simple example, Christiane Amanpour of This Week said to Speaker Boehner yesterday that 75% of people think the rich should have their tax rates raised (of course far more than 75% don't know what that rate is). If those people were told the top 1% now pay 38 times their dollar share of the public burden and 50% are paying nothing, and then asked who should pay more, the answer might be closer to the usual 50/50 political split. Show me, anyone, where that fact has ever been reported or highlighted in anything that resembles MSM, except in the utterances of a guest like this being treated as a hostile witness. ----
On 'Constitutional Issues' Bigdog mentions a (right wing) scorn for Justice Stevens. An unfortunate part of having to hunt and sort through right wing and left wing sites to learn the different sides of controversial issues is that I am unlikely to come across a balanced look at the total work product of someone like that. Except of course on this forum.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2011, 02:38:53 PM
Perhaps I flatter us, but I think that our readership here is several notches above normal and as such tend to be people who tend to influence other people.
This is how change begins.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 07, 2011, 03:04:17 PM
"If those people were told the top 1% now pay 38 times their dollar share of the public burden and 50% are paying nothing"
Occasionally I see this get asked and the response from the liberals is always silence, evade the question, or make a face of annoyance at these points. And the person asking it always lets them off the hook.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Cranewings on November 07, 2011, 03:22:48 PM
Maybe someone here could educate me on this because its getting thrown around some right now.
So in the 50's we had a tax rate of 90% for the wealthiest and a < 5% unemployment. On the surface it looks like we should bring back the 90%, though it even says on that link they had less they had to actually pay the 90% on. So what was the rate then in terms of the rate now, if that makes any sense?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2011, 05:02:56 PM
CW:
Please post this in the Tax Policy thread and I will be glad to answer it for you.
Title: Something that won't get press from the MSM
Post by: G M on November 16, 2011, 05:34:03 AM
Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 7:25 PM
While promoting socialism at the APEC Summit in Hawaii, Barack Obama thinks he’s in Asia. “Here in Asia…”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFz_Rm4YnPU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFz_Rm4YnPU&feature=player_embedded It’s OK. He’s a democrat. Hat Tip Susan.
Title: Media Issues: NPR Slandering the Red States
Post by: DougMacG on November 20, 2011, 09:49:01 AM
In the balancing process of new media challenging old, one person has taken up a strong challenge on the hack jobs of a few of the Goliaths such as the NY Times and Dan Rather. John Hinderacker at Powerline (biased blogger alert) is now on Part VI of 'NPR Slandering the Red States': http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/slandering-the-red-states-part-vi-laura-sullivan-responds.php where the NPR hit piece author is just starting to answer back. As in the case of his exposure of the hit jobs on the conservative Koch brothers, it is best to read these in their entirety to get the full picture. Just like the reaction of Dan Rather on the false but true fake documents, this author sounds like she has never been questioned before, putting out a story that children from Indian Reservations are being kidnapped by the State of South Dakota. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/slandering-the-red-states-part-v-why-wont-npr-tell-the-real-story-help-me-ask.php
I feel bad for MSM customers who can follow the news from so many of the same sources everyday and have no idea they only read or heard one side of it. Also I resent having to go to alternative sites to get facts, not just differing opinions.
Title: Conspiratorial tangent
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2011, 09:37:46 AM
All the world over, Red is the color of the Left (as in Communist, as in deficit, as in losses) and Blue is the color of the Right. When Reagan won the presidency, the states he won were shown in Blue. When and why, and by whom was it decided to reverse this?
Title: Re: Conspiratorial tangent
Post by: G M on November 22, 2011, 09:40:12 AM
All the world over, Red is the color of the Left (as in Communist, as in deficit, as in losses) and Blue is the color of the Right. When Reagan won the presidency, the states he won were shown in Blue. When and why, and by whom was it decided to reverse this?
I'll lookit up. I'm guessing that coloring the dems red, especially today is just too obvious.
Title: Exhibit A of media bias
Post by: G M on November 29, 2011, 12:39:29 PM
In a NPR story this morning on Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) retirement announcement, there was a brief retrospective of Rep. Frank's congressional career -- but remarkably, there was no mention made of Frank's involvement in the recent housing-sector meltdown.
None, other than to say he was 'an advocate for affordable housing.' What, one wonders, was the result of such advocacy on the part of Rep. Frank?
It's as if NPR thinks recent history can simply be airbrushed away. But it can't; it's right there for all to see.
From a September 2003 report by the New York Times' Stephen Labaton, on a Bush Administration proposal for a new agency charged with the financial oversight of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
All hail the 'great' Barney Frank!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 29, 2011, 02:23:49 PM
It goes far deeper and far worser than missing the call. He actively drove the disaster.
Title: Whoops, Ayers contradicts Obozo
Post by: G M on November 29, 2011, 06:22:37 PM
Bill Ayers Says One Thing, The Obama Campaign Says Another, and The Usual MSM Suspects Don’t Care
Posted by John Nolte Nov 29th 2011 at 4:42 pm in Journolist, Obama, elections 2012, journalism, media bias | Comments(7)
Today’s opening snark courtesy of Journolister Dave Weigel from his Slate perch:
Big Government breaks the news that Bill Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama; well, this was broken by Ben Smith in 2007, but still.
I call it a “snark” because the word “lie” feels a little harsh during this holiday season. However, it’s just a fact that Big Government didn’t position the piece as “breaking news” and as far as I can tell it wasn’t even a featured story. But you have to admire a guy like Weigel who poses as an objective journalist and yet sees no news value whatsoever in new video of a notorious domestic terrorist speaking openly about his relationship with a sitting President of the United States.
But is it really that Weigel saw no news value in it or that he knows that Obama’s re-election could be in even more trouble were he to receive the kind of vetting Journolisters like Weigel did everything in their power to prevent in 2008?
Naturally, Weigel isn’t alone. Here’s Politico’s Ben Smith joining in on the wrist-flicking of the new Ayers video:
Oh, and did you know Ben Smith was also a member of Journolist and that something he didn’t find at all, uhm, “footnote-y” was the possibility that Sarah Palin might own a tanning bed.
Priorities.
Except a funny thing happened between all that snark and footnotery. Breitbart TV Editor-In-Chief Larry O’Connor did the digging Journolisters fear (My God man, what if we find something!?!?!) and came up with an actual story:
In 2008 the Barack Obama for President campaign went into full denial mode accusing the McCain/Palin campaign of lying about a fundraiser held in domestic terrorist Bill Ayers’s home for Barack Obama’s Illinois State Senate campaign.
Watch this clip from October 15, 2008 where spokesman Robert Gibbs flat-out denies the fundraiser story to an inquiring Chris Matthews. Then watch Bill Ayers, in his own words, admit to the event himself.
Either Mr. Gibbs lied to Mr. Matthews, or Mr. Obama lied to Mr. Gibbs.
Here’s the clip:
—–
But wait–there’s more! In October of 2008, in the heat of the campaign, NPR all but called Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin a liar for how she characterized the relationship between Ayers and Obama. Here’s a juicy NPR nugget: [emphasis mine]
To help Obama in the Democratic primary race to succeed her, Palmer organized a few informal meetings to introduce Obama to her supporters in the fall of 1995, including the gathering at Ayers’ house. It was not a fundraiser, as some reports have stated. And it was not the meeting that launched Obama’s political career, as other Obama critics have alleged.
Well, gee, NPR, the domestic terrorist disagrees.
And here’s the Huffington Post in October of 2008:
LIE: “Obama was feted at a fundraising event” at Ayers’ home.(“Hype: The Obama Effect”) TRUTH: Obama never had a fundraising event at Ayers’ home.
And here’s our friend Ben Smith again, assuring us in February of 2008 that Obama only “visited” with Ayers … Once. I do hope Michelle Obama sent him a thank you note in the form of a fat-free fruitcake or something.
Which begs a question the MSM dare not ask. In 2008, who passed on the information that the Ayers event wasn’t a fundraiser? Did the Obama campaign lie to NPR and the Huffington Post and Politico in 2008 (not that they weren’t told what they wanted to hear) or is Bill Ayers lying today?
But who cares? That was three whole freaking years ago. History. Water under the bridge. Bygones. After all, Weigel and Smith can’t be bothered with old stuff involving a sitting president possibly lying about his relationship with a domestic terrorist. They have 24 year-old rocks to write about, 15 year-old allegations of sexual harassment, and 42 year-old papers…
Stop whining electorate, our Media Overlords know what’s best for us.
P.S. Hey, Ben and Dave: I’m guessing any digging into this is out of the question. Yeah, you’re probably too busy going over Newt Gingrich’s 15 year-old divorce documents.
Title: Re: Whoops, Ayers contradicts Obozo
Post by: G M on November 29, 2011, 06:24:31 PM
Bill Ayers Says One Thing, The Obama Campaign Says Another, and The Usual MSM Suspects Don’t Care
Posted by John Nolte Nov 29th 2011 at 4:42 pm in Journolist, Obama, elections 2012, journalism, media bias | Comments(7)
Today’s opening snark courtesy of Journolister Dave Weigel from his Slate perch:
Big Government breaks the news that Bill Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama; well, this was broken by Ben Smith in 2007, but still.
I call it a “snark” because the word “lie” feels a little harsh during this holiday season. However, it’s just a fact that Big Government didn’t position the piece as “breaking news” and as far as I can tell it wasn’t even a featured story. But you have to admire a guy like Weigel who poses as an objective journalist and yet sees no news value whatsoever in new video of a notorious domestic terrorist speaking openly about his relationship with a sitting President of the United States.
But is it really that Weigel saw no news value in it or that he knows that Obama’s re-election could be in even more trouble were he to receive the kind of vetting Journolisters like Weigel did everything in their power to prevent in 2008?
Naturally, Weigel isn’t alone. Here’s Politico’s Ben Smith joining in on the wrist-flicking of the new Ayers video:
Oh, and did you know Ben Smith was also a member of Journolist and that something he didn’t find at all, uhm, “footnote-y” was the possibility that Sarah Palin might own a tanning bed.
Priorities.
Except a funny thing happened between all that snark and footnotery. Breitbart TV Editor-In-Chief Larry O’Connor did the digging Journolisters fear (My God man, what if we find something!?!?!) and came up with an actual story:
In 2008 the Barack Obama for President campaign went into full denial mode accusing the McCain/Palin campaign of lying about a fundraiser held in domestic terrorist Bill Ayers’s home for Barack Obama’s Illinois State Senate campaign.
Watch this clip from October 15, 2008 where spokesman Robert Gibbs flat-out denies the fundraiser story to an inquiring Chris Matthews. Then watch Bill Ayers, in his own words, admit to the event himself.
Either Mr. Gibbs lied to Mr. Matthews, or Mr. Obama lied to Mr. Gibbs.
Here’s the clip:
—–
But wait–there’s more! In October of 2008, in the heat of the campaign, NPR all but called Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin a liar for how she characterized the relationship between Ayers and Obama. Here’s a juicy NPR nugget: [emphasis mine]
To help Obama in the Democratic primary race to succeed her, Palmer organized a few informal meetings to introduce Obama to her supporters in the fall of 1995, including the gathering at Ayers’ house. It was not a fundraiser, as some reports have stated. And it was not the meeting that launched Obama’s political career, as other Obama critics have alleged.
Well, gee, NPR, the domestic terrorist disagrees.
And here’s the Huffington Post in October of 2008:
LIE: “Obama was feted at a fundraising event” at Ayers’ home.(“Hype: The Obama Effect”) TRUTH: Obama never had a fundraising event at Ayers’ home.
And here’s our friend Ben Smith again, assuring us in February of 2008 that Obama only “visited” with Ayers … Once. I do hope Michelle Obama sent him a thank you note in the form of a fat-free fruitcake or something.
Which begs a question the MSM dare not ask. In 2008, who passed on the information that the Ayers event wasn’t a fundraiser? Did the Obama campaign lie to NPR and the Huffington Post and Politico in 2008 (not that they weren’t told what they wanted to hear) or is Bill Ayers lying today?
But who cares? That was three whole freaking years ago. History. Water under the bridge. Bygones. After all, Weigel and Smith can’t be bothered with old stuff involving a sitting president possibly lying about his relationship with a domestic terrorist. They have 24 year-old rocks to write about, 15 year-old allegations of sexual harassment, and 42 year-old papers…
Stop whining electorate, our Media Overlords know what’s best for us.
P.S. Hey, Ben and Dave: I’m guessing any digging into this is out of the question. Yeah, you’re probably too busy going over Newt Gingrich’s 15 year-old divorce documents.
I guess the MSM is still working on how they can blame Sarah Palin or Newt for this.
Title: Herb and Marion Sandler
Post by: ccp on December 12, 2011, 09:58:55 AM
Hats off to Aaron Klein for real journolism exposing the influence of major leftist radical liberal groups and NBC news:
newsroom gets fresh leftist invasion. Network teams up with ‘journalism’ outfit founded by Barack Obama campaigners. Posted on December 6, 2011 at 9:30 PM EST
By Aaron Klein
NBC-owned television stations in cities across the nation just teamed up with a nonprofit “journalism” group funded by a billionaire husband and wife team who not only spent millions campaigning for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org.
The nonprofit, ProPublica, will contribute to the news operations of all NBC owned-and-operated stations, including those in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, the network announced Monday.
The NBC affiliates will get early access to investigative reports from ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
Also included in the arrangement are local radio stations owned by Comcast, which purchased NBCUniversal earlier this year
The LA Times reported the arrangement comes as Comcast moves to fulfill its commitment to federal regulators to strengthen local, public-interest programming.
Bill Davis, chief executive of Pasadena-based KPCC-FM, said his radio station and KNBC-TV in Los Angeles will be able to expand the size of their audiences and the reach of their reporting.
“We can get to the kind of investigative and enterprise stories we wouldn’t be able to singularly,” Davis told the LA Times.
NBC stations will be given access to ProPublica’s newsroom to focus their own reporting on similar stories.
“We put the reporting at their fingertips and they can do terrific local stories with it,” said Richard Tofel, general manager for ProPublica.
“We get a greater and wider impact, which is ultimately our mission,” Tofel said of the new arrangement.
Obama campaigners; MoveOn, ACORN funders
On its website, Pro Publica describes itself as championing the values of the “weak” against the “strong.”
States the website: “Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with ‘moral force.’ We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”
Controversial Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of Obama who was embroiled in a national race scandal in 2009, sits on the board of ProPublica.
ProPublica was founded with a $10 million yearly grant from Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, which was one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders and savings and loans.
Just before the financial crisis, the Sandlers in 2008 sold their business to the Wachovia Corporation for about $26 billion, a deal which valued their personal shares at about $2.4 billion.
The Sandlers are major donors to the Democratic Party and are top funders of ACORN, MoveOn.org, the American Civil Liberties Union and other far-leftist groups like Human Rights Watch.
The billionaire couple donate major sums to the Center for American Progress think tank, which is reportedly highly influential in helping to craft White House policy.
The center is directed by John Podesta, who served as co-chairman of Obama’s 2008 presidential transition team.
In 2008, the Sandlers were behind two controversial California Political Action Committees, Vote Hope and PowerPac.org, which spent about $5 million in pro-Obama ads in that state. The two groups were run by the Sandler’s son-in-law, Steve Phillips, the former president of the San Francisco School Board.
Journalistic integrity called into question
The journalistic integrity of the Sandler-backed ProPublica has been repeatedly called into question.
A report by the Capital Research Center concluded ProPublica “churns out little more than left-wing hit pieces about Sarah Palin and blames the U.S. government for giving out too little foreign aid.”
Slate reporter Jack Shafer raised questions about ProPublica’s ability to provide independent nonpartisan journalism in light of the nature of the Sandler’s political donations, which include “giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party campaigns.”
The watchdog website UndueInfluence.com slammed ProPublica’s claim of independence, stating the site is “as independent as a lapdog on a leash with allegiances sworn in advance to left-wing causes.”
AP distributes Soros-funded ‘journalism’
NBC’s deal with ProPublica is not the first time a major news outlet distributed reporting that is funded by questionable, partisan sources.
In 2009, KleinOnline first broke the story, that the Associated Press began delivering to its subscribing 1,500 American newspapers content, it has emerged, penned by groups with financing from philanthropist George Soros. The AP also distributes ProPublica pieces.
The AP announced in July 2009 it will allow its subscribers to publish free of charge work by four nonprofit groups, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica.
The CPI is funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute.
CPI churns out regular partisan pieces. One widely debunked CPI study from 2008, covered extensively by the AP, claimed it found President Bush and top administration officials had issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq as “part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
Writing on FrontPageMag, Richard Poe, a writer for the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, concluded CPI and other Soros-funded so-called watchdogs “have a long history of coordination with Soros and his Shadow Party. They are beholden to Soros personally for his financial support. His influence often shows in their choice of targets.”
The AP itself has called the arrangement to distribute pieces from the Soros and Sandler-funded nonprofits an experiment that could be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets.
“It’s something we’ve talked about for a long time, since part of our mission is to enable our members to share material with each other,” said Sue Cross, a senior vice president at the AP.
She added the development in 2006 of an Internet-based system for members to receive AP material made it easier to do this kind of sharing and to offer new products like the investigative service.
With research by Brenda J. Ellio
Title: newsmedia/government fascism
Post by: ccp on December 16, 2011, 09:29:06 AM
Anther "journalist" gets hired by the government. I don't know what to make of the now obvious common revolving door between news people and government work. It is exactly the same stuff us Wall Street Fed employee work or corporate lobby government relations. We had Tony Snow go from the media to press secretary, we have Dana Perrino go from press secretary to Fox punditry. We have senators, governors, comgresspeople getting talk shows and routnine guests on the networks.
We have talk show hosts and other media types going to the WH giving advice (zakaria). This is really weird folks. Do others notice this. This nation is in civil war. A propoganda war. This is a big part of it. I don't feel more educated or informed. I feel more manipulated and deceived. I feel like this is part of what is called the establishment. It is all about them, their pocketbooks, their agendas. Do others feel this way?:
****Jim Sciutto is ABC News' Senior Foreign correspondent, based in London. Since moving overseas in 2002, he has reported from more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, including twelve assignments in Iraq. He contributes to all ABC News broacasts and platforms, including "World News with Diane Sawyer," "Nightline" and "Good Morning America."
Sciutto won Emmy awards in 2004 and 2005 for best story in a regularly scheduled newscast, covering northern Iraq for "Iraq: Where Things Stand." He was nominated for another Emmy in 2005 for outstanding coverage of a breaking news story for "Crisis in Beslan". He reported from Poland as part of ABC's Dupont Award-winning coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II.
Sciutto was the first television reporter to interview Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah and one of a handful of journalists allowed inside an Iranian nuclear plant in 2005. During the Iraq war, Sciutto was the only reporter embedded with the U.S. Special Forces.
Prior to his assignment overseas, he was based in Washington, reporting primarily from the Pentagon. Sciutto has also anchored "World News Now" and "World News This Morning." Before being assigned to Washington, he served as an ABC News correspondent in Chicago.
Prior to joining ABC News in 1998, Sciutto was Hong Kong correspondent for Asia Business News, an Asia-wide TV network owned by Dow Jones. For ABN, he covered Hong Kong's return to China in 1997, and reported on every country in the region, including assignments to China, Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore and South Korea.
Sciutto's first job in television was as moderator and producer of "The Student Press," a weekly public affairs talk show for U.S. and Canadian college students broadcast on PBS.
Sciutto earned a degree in history from Yale University in 1992. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Hong Kong from 1993 to 1994.
In 2002, he was appointed Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale. He was also selected as a term member of the Council of Foreign Relations in June 2002.****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on December 16, 2011, 09:37:19 AM
Probably he's taking a big pay cut to serve. And he does seem like a very qualified individual.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on December 16, 2011, 12:11:27 PM
"Probably he's taking a big pay cut to serve."
Who cares. It is still a career move.
Journalists are getting rich, politicians are getting rich, Federal employees are getting rich, the lobbyists are getting rich.
The beltway is the richest metropolitan area in the country.
Why should regular voters believe any of them?
The OWS should be on Capital Hill, at the White House and in DC in general - not Wall St.
Title: Media Issues: David Gregory Meet the Press with Michele Bachmann + 60 minutes
Post by: DougMacG on December 18, 2011, 12:05:41 PM
I could post this every week I guess, what a biased jerk he is for an alleged journalist. "I must interrupt you for accuracy!" and then he doesn't establish anything to be inaccurate. He baits Bachmann to call Newt's attitude toward her as sexism: "Is it Sexism?" (She declined.) Where the hell did that come from?? No one has made that charge!
I can't wait to see David Gregory ripping and interrupting a sitting President Obama "for accuracy" in the spirit of equal treatment. Or is "Sexism" or racism why the President will be treated with honor and dignity while his nonsense explanations will face only the lightest scrutiny if he ever appears on a show like that. ------------ Another network CBS, from 'The Atlantic' a piece ripping 60 Minutes for its softball interview of President Obama
How 60 Minutes Wasted Its Interview with Obama By Conor Friedersdorf
Dec 12 2011, 3:35 PM ET
The hour-long conversation was a typical example of a broadcast journalist failing to hold a powerful politician accountable
In an interview posted by 60 Minutes on Sunday, President Obama spends an hour answering questions posed by Steve Kroft, a 23-year veteran of the CBS television program who has won numerous broadcast journalism awards and enjoys unusual access to the president: earlier this year, he conducted the only interview with Obama on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and back in 2008 he scored the first post-election interview with Barack and Michelle Obama.
Were I an adviser to President Obama, I'd urge him to give his next exclusive to Kroft too, for there is a superficial toughness to his interviews. "There are people in your own party who think that you were outmaneuvered. That you were stared down by John Boehner and Grover Norquist and capitulated," Kroft says at one point. Later he notes that "You say that you rallied the country, but these poll numbers show otherwise. They show that 75 percent thinks the country's on the wrong track." As a political operative, these are exactly the sorts of questions I'd want the struggling politician for whom I worked to get, because it appears that he has volunteered to sit down with a tough interviewer, but actually he is being given an opportunity to offer free-ranging explanations for something that no one can deny: lots of people in America are unhappy with him.
As a journalist at a non-broadcast outlet, I am frustrated by interviews like this one. Few journalists (and zero non-journalist citizens) are afforded an opportunity to spend an hour asking anything of the president, and fewer still who enjoy a mass audience as big as 60 Minutes, which bills its broadcasts as "hard-hitting." It is therefore disheartening each time the opportunity is squandered with broad, superficial, softball questions:
KROFT: You definitely have some impressive accomplishments.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you, Steve.
KROFT: No, you do. And more than a lot of presidents who manage to get reelected. My question is, is it enough? Why do you think you deserve to be reelected?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think under some extraordinary circumstances, we not only saved the country from a potential disaster -- not only did we manage our national security at a time where there were severe threats and two wars going on, in a way that has made America stronger and more respected and put us in a better strategic position around the world and almost decimated our number one enemy, which is al Qaeda -- but what I've also been able to do is to, in very practical ways, put in place a series of steps that will allow middle-class families and those trying to get in the middle class to take back some of what they've lost over the last couple of years. Now, we're not there yet, but what I can say unequivocally is that everything I've done, every single day, and everything I will do as long as I'm in this office is designed to make sure that every kid in America has the same opportunities that I had.
Given a fleeting hour with a president who is avowedly seeking re-election, how can a journalist possibly justify that exchange? Of course he's going to say yes, he deserves to be reelected, and then repeat his familiar messaging. In the course of the next year, as President Obama stumps all over the nation and otherwise campaigns for re-election, there is zero chance that the American public will be deprived of his argument for why he deserves another term.
It would be forgivable if that question were surrounded by better ones. But much of the interview is flawed in similar ways.
Another example:
KROFT: One of the things that surprised me the most about this poll is that 42%, when asked who your policies favor the most, 42% said Wall Street. Only 35% said average Americans. My suspicion is some of that may have to do with the fact that there's not been any prosecutions, criminal prosecutions, of people on Wall Street. And that the civil charges that have been brought have often resulted in what many people think have been slap on the wrists, fines. "Cost of doing business," I think you called it in the Kansas speech. Are you disappointed by that?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think you're absolutely right in your interpretation...
This is embarrassing. Why is Kroft volunteering an oversimplified explanation for American anger at Wall Street? Why does he pose the question as though Obama's feelings (whether he is disappointed or not) is relevant? More importantly, why does he fail to challenge the president with specific questions grounded in facts and policy realities rather than public perception?
Here's a journalist (ostensibly) working on behalf of a polity that has seen populist movements in the streets on the left and right, largely because they believe that there is an unseemly relationship between the federal government and Wall Street. Kroft could've asked whether Obama thought it was problematic for Peter Orszag to take a job at Citigroup; he could've asked whether it's true that Joe Biden called Jon Corzine at the height of the financial crisis to ask what the Obama Administration should do upon taking office; he could've asked about recent revelations that the Fed secretly funneled trillions to banks and failed to tell Congress about it. When did Obama know? Should anything be done about it? Kroft could've pressed Obama about why he hasn't pushed to end the "too big to fail" status quo that could conceivably lead to another Wall Street bailout. Any decent financial journalist could come up with dozens of other questions.
An interviewer determined to challenge a sitting president, as every interviewer of every president should do, could've asked what Obama thinks about the fact that his drone strikes in Pakistan are destabilizing a nuclear power and killing innocent children; or whether Solyndra got special treatment because of its insider connections; or what he thinks about the Fast and Furious scandal and what Eric Holder knew about it. Kroft could've challenged Obama to explain why he decided to proceed with military action in Libya even though it violated the War Powers Resolution, or asked him about the controversy surrounding federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, or echoed the concerns that progressives have with his immigration policies.
But nope. Kroft asked none of those questions; nor did he press Obama about his views on indefinitely detaining American citizens; nor did he ask about the killing without due process of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American; nor did he ask about the controversy surrounding whether the morning-after pill should be available over-the-counter for people of all ages or not; nor did he ask about the private security contractors that America will pay to stay in Iraq after we leave; nor about the state secrets privilege; nor about aggressively prosecuting whistleblowers; nor about many other issues of concern to liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, all of whom have earnest complaints.
Instead we got hard hitting exchanges like this one:
KROFT: I'm sure your poll numbers will probably automatically go up as soon as there is a Republican candidate in the race. I mean, that's normal. I mean, you're being judged now on your performance.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No, no, no. I'm being judged against the ideal. And, you know, [Vice President] Joe Biden has a good expression. He says, "Don't judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative."
Other gems:
"Have you given up on the Republicans? Have you stopped reaching out to them? Are you just out there now trying to get your message across?"
"What do you make of this surge by former Speaker Gingrich?"
"Tell me, what do you consider your major accomplishments?"
What this interview represents -- like so many broadcast news interviews with sitting politicians and high level bureaucrats -- is the charade of asking tough questions to hold the president accountable. And the utter failure to ask any actually tough questions, to unearth any new facts of significance, to force any sort of reckoning before the television cameras on a matter of importance. If I were advising Obama, I'd make sure that Kroft got the next exclusive interview too.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on December 18, 2011, 12:53:43 PM
Doug,
I share your being peeved at Gregory. He is such a partisan hack and frankly a scumbag.
I don't know for the life of me why Republicans keep going onto his show. Why give him the opportunity and why give him legitimacy at all? He is not legitimate and his show stinks anyway. It is no different than propaganda coming out of MSNBC.
Do a lot of independents watch him?
Why are the repubs going on his show? Who needs his crap?
That said Bachman handled herself well for the five minutes I could stand watching Gregory continuously try and bait her. It is obvious what he does.
Title: Sharpton "anchor"
Post by: ccp on January 03, 2012, 10:08:37 AM
The *establishment guy*, Sharpton may take over the time slot for Uygur:
"too establishment" "challenge power"
****Al Sharpton Close to Anchor Deal at MSNBC
Reuters Jul 21, 2011 Say hello to Al Sharpton and goodbye to Cenk Uygur for MSNBC's 6 p.m. time slot. According to The New York Times's Brian Stelter, a deal is "imminent" to have the civil rights firebrand anchor his own show, following Uygur's six-month tryout. Stelter says the deal comes as "MSNBC and other news channels have been criticized for a paucity of minority hosts in prominent time slots." Uygur was offered a contract to host his own weekend show but declined saying to viewers on his web show The Young Turks that MSNBC was too "establishment." He explained, “I didn’t want to work in a place that wouldn’t let me do my kind of show, that wasn’t interested in my kind of show, that didn’t want to challenge power."
In the Times article Uygur says that in April MSNBC president Phil Griffin “called me into his office and said that he’d been talking to people in Washington, and that they did not like my tone.” According to Uygur, Griffin didn't like him criticizing President Obama so extensively. On his web show, he offered the words of one of his fans to explain his feelings: “Watching Cenk on The Young Turks is like watching a tiger in the wild; watching him on MSNBC is like watching a tiger in a cage.” Nice imagery.****
Title: Re: Sharpton "anchor"
Post by: bigdog on January 03, 2012, 05:03:07 PM
The *establishment guy*, Sharpton may take over the time slot for Uygur:
"too establishment" "challenge power"
****Al Sharpton Close to Anchor Deal at MSNBC
Reuters Jul 21, 2011 Say hello to Al Sharpton and goodbye to Cenk Uygur for MSNBC's 6 p.m. time slot. According to The New York Times's Brian Stelter, a deal is "imminent" to have the civil rights firebrand anchor his own show, following Uygur's six-month tryout. Stelter says the deal comes as "MSNBC and other news channels have been criticized for a paucity of minority hosts in prominent time slots." Uygur was offered a contract to host his own weekend show but declined saying to viewers on his web show The Young Turks that MSNBC was too "establishment." He explained, “I didn’t want to work in a place that wouldn’t let me do my kind of show, that wasn’t interested in my kind of show, that didn’t want to challenge power."
In the Times article Uygur says that in April MSNBC president Phil Griffin “called me into his office and said that he’d been talking to people in Washington, and that they did not like my tone.” According to Uygur, Griffin didn't like him criticizing President Obama so extensively. On his web show, he offered the words of one of his fans to explain his feelings: “Watching Cenk on The Young Turks is like watching a tiger in the wild; watching him on MSNBC is like watching a tiger in a cage.” Nice imagery.****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2012, 05:22:50 PM
Racebaiting grifter scumbag. :x
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 03, 2012, 05:41:12 PM
Rev. Wright must have turned MSNBC down.
Title: Media Issues: Keith Olberman over at Al Gore TV, not getting along
Post by: DougMacG on January 09, 2012, 11:19:11 AM
... and the NY Times enjoying it: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/business/media/at-current-tv-keith-olbermann-is-trapped-inside-his-show.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Who could have seen this coming?
Title: ms*LSD*; Pat out; Al in
Post by: ccp on January 09, 2012, 02:48:19 PM
Pat out because he is hurtful and outdated ideas. So put Sharpton with his objectivity, sensitivity, and honest analysis in. I don't know whether to laugh or cry:
Title: WSJ nails it
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2012, 06:48:37 AM
A funny thing happened on the way to the New Hampshire primary: ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos embarrassed himself on national television with questions plainly intended to embarrass the Republican candidates. Therein lies a lesson.
On Saturday night, Mr. Stephanopoulos stepped outside the role of honest interlocutor when he pursued Mitt Romney with the issue on nobody's lips or legislative agenda: whether states have the right to ban contraception. Likewise, fellow moderator Diane Sawyer, who asked Republicans what they would say, "sitting in their living rooms," to a gay couple.
As the audience appreciated—they booed after Mr. Stephanopolous's sixth follow-up—these questions were designed less to illuminate than to paint Republicans as people who hate gays and are so crazy they might just ban contraception if elected.
For conservatives, this is nothing new. Conservatives are used to a world where the referees often seem to be playing for the other team. In this case, however, the responses from the candidates were revealing.
Rick Santorum essentially answered directly, opposing the Supreme Court's definition of privacy and defending traditional marriage. On the question about gays, Newt Gingrich called marriage between a man and a woman a defining part of our civilization. He then turned the question back on Ms. Sawyer, wondering why the press never asks about how same-sex marriage is driving the Catholic Church out of the adoption business. As for state bans on contraception, Mr. Romney noted that no state was in fact proposing to do so, "and asking me whether they could do it or not is kind of a silly thing."
If this were an academic exercise, Mr. Santorum might score highest. Even those who disagree with him would concede that his answers were on point. He knows what he believes and why, and he does not run away when asked to defend the hard position.
Mr. Gingrich's answer showed why he remains popular among many Republican quarters despite his considerable baggage. Unlike those who strike conservative voters as too polite or deferential to lordly media figures, Mr. Gingrich calls bias by its name. And he was right to point out that there are serious consequences (such as adoption) to the legalization of same-sex marriage that the news media mostly choose to ignore.
Nevertheless, Mr. Romney trumped. He didn't shy away from the substance, confirming that he favors repeal of Roe v. Wade and explaining the constitutional way to oppose court decisions when you believe one has been wrongly decided. But when he dismissed the whole line of questioning as "silly," he made Mr. Stephanopoulos look ridiculous.
That's something to remember going forward. Yes, it's unfair that Democratic candidates such as President Obama can count on the media to amplify their biases against Republicans.
Bias, however, is a fact of American political life. Merely complaining about it doesn't move the ball.
No one appreciated this more than Ronald Reagan. Today we remember the Gipper as a popular and beloved American figure. That's not the way he was presented to the American public when he was running against Jimmy Carter in 1980. Back then, Mr. Reagan was cast as a divisive, Neanderthal warmonger itching to push the nuclear button.
President Carter played to this image. A "MacNeil/Lehrer Report" after the single presidential debate that year noted that Mr. Carter had used the word "dangerous" six times. Another observer added that the president had also called Reagan "heartless," "insensitive," "misleading," "disturbing" and "irresponsible."
Mr. Reagan didn't let it get to him. When Mr. Carter implied Mr. Reagan was against Medicare because he opposed all efforts to help provide decent health care for American citizens, Mr. Reagan smiled and shook his head. Then he issued four devastating words that have now entered the political lexicon: "There you go again."
There's a good lesson here. Whatever else we know about 2012, we know we will have many more Stephanopoulos moments ahead. Though it might be more satisfying to thunder against the injustice, there are other, possibly more effective ways to expose the bias.
On the social issues especially, the media narrative is that Republicans are obsessed. The truth is that at a time when millions of Americans can't find work, when our Middle East policy is in turmoil, when the future of Mr. Obama's signature legislative achievement—health care—is in question, every Republican in the running is itching for the opportunity to talk about how he would address these things.
In sharp contrast, it was Mr. Stephanopoulos and Ms. Sawyer who showed themselves consumed with nonexistent initiatives on contraception and what you might say to gay friends who are sitting in your living room. Saturday night on ABC, we saw this bias in its full, condescending form.
We also saw something less well appreciated: that a Republican candidate can turn it to his advantage.
Title: Media Issues
Post by: Spartan Dog on January 10, 2012, 11:05:23 AM
Posted on behalf of Crafty Dog :-)
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/010812.jpg)
Title: Pravda on the Hudson and CAIR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2012, 07:54:23 AM
The New York Times Collaborates with Hamas Front Group to Suppress the Truth by Steven Emerson IPT News January 25, 2012 http://www.investigativeproject.org/3406/the-new-york-times-collaborates-with-hamas-front
• The New York Times cites the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a credible source, while continuing its policy of never mentioning that CAIR was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, and operates as a Hamas support group. • NYT also suppressed the facts that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator 2007 Holy Land Foundation conspiracy trial, which resulted in the FBI cutting off all formal contact with the group and that an FBI official has described CAIR as a "front for Hamas." • NYT primarily relies on two sources for comments: Zead Ramadan of CAIR-NY, and Faiza Patel, of the Brennan Center of Justice, but which the Times deliberately fails to mention that both of whom represent organizations that have repeatedly refused to condemn Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups or have blamed the FBI for fabricating Islamic terror plots. • An IPT investigator videotaped Ramadan at a press event refusing to answer her questions as to whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. • The Times cites CAIR's Zead Ramadan as a legitimate source of criticism of the film but fails to report that Ramadan contributed $1,000 to Viva Palestina, an organization led by noted anti-Semite George Galloway, that supports Hamas financially and politically, in 2010. • Patel of the Brennan Center has long been a critic of law enforcement's attempts to counter terrorism, even denouncing the NYPD's operation that resulted in the arrest of accused lone-wolf jihadist Jose Pimentel, charged with plotting to bomb U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. • The Times failed to report that their only two sources for their story--CAIR and the Brennan Center, who are made to seem independent and impartial are actual apologists for Islamic terrorist groups. In fact, the Times failed to report that the Brennan Center received CAIR's "Safe While Free" Award in 2009. • The Times failed to report one actual flaw in the film but based its demonization of the film based largely on emails it did not disclose that it received from CAIR, a Hamas front group In a front-page story on Tuesday discussing the documentary film, "The Third Jihad," and its use by the NYPD in training, The New York Times once again collaborates with radical Islamists to help shape the news. The article revealed the newspaper's bias, from the vaguely threatening headline – "In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims" - and by relying on those who are not simply opposed to the film, but have previously demonstrated their support of radical Islamists by both word and by association with similarly aligned groups. The Times' article, written by Michael Powell, primarily relies on the opinions of Zead Ramadan of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' New York chapter (CAIR-NY) and Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center, both of whom aver that the NYPD acted questionably by showing city police the film, to present the case. Ramadan asserts that the movie "defiled our faith and misrepresented everything we stood for." Patel stated that, "The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us." The problem with Ramadan and Patel, left unsaid by the newspaper, is found in their words and associations. As has been its longstanding policy, the Times never mentions that CAIR is a Hamas support group, created by the Muslim Brotherhood to present and promote its interests. (Of course, even if one day the Times did acknowledge that, it would still have to break another self-imposed taboo of having never once called Hamas a terrorist organization.) In contrast to the newspaper, the film does reveal how CAIR was created shortly after a secret 1993 meeting in Philadelphia involving members of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. The goal was for CAIR to operate as a pro-Hamas lobbying group, without being publicly linked to Hamas. The FBI later cited that evidence, which was used to help name CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation conspiracy trial, in explaining why it cut off formal communication with CAIR. "Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS," FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers wrote in April 2009, "the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner." But CAIR refused to address the documentary's substance. Instead, the group issued a press release quoting Ramadan comparing it to the Nazi-era film "Triumph of the Will" and the silent movie "Birth of a Nation." Ramadan voiced his concerns to NYPD chief Raymond Kelly, who said he would "take care of it" and department spokesman Browne denounced the film as "wacky." All of this was left out of the article on Tuesday, which also failed to inform readers about the questionable backgrounds of the movie's critics. The story said nothing about the fact that in 2010 Ramadan contributed $1,000 to Viva Palestina, an organization founded by the notorious anti-Semite George Galloway, and which supports Hamas financially and politically, or that CAIR-NY in 2008 issued a statement calling for the release of Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to contribute funds to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist group. The Investigative Project on Terrorism attended a Dec. 15, 2011 press conference held by a group calling itself the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, and asked if he considered Hamas a terrorist organization. Ramadan was asked point-blank: "Do you consider Hamas a terrorist organization?"
[click above to view the video or click here to see the video and a full transcript] Ramadan proceeded to tap-dance around the question. He replied by stating that, "Islam, myself, and I think all people of conscience, are opposed to all terrorism in all of its forms against all people of the world. Anyone who is innocent that is killed, it's not the way of the Islamic people or people who stand for liberty and justice. Thank you very much." Our investigator pressed forward, asking Ramadan about Hamas specifically. Ramadan refused to answer, stating that his concern was "the American Bill of Rights situation that we now have." Ramadan then proceeded to attack the questioner. "You want to take our foreign policy issue and make it the number one issue in the world. No. The issue we have right here is the problem we have in America, and we're eroding," he said. Ramadan added that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had gone to Myanmar to talk about the erosion of human rights and appeared to be "bringing that back here" and "showing how to erode our civil rights here." Again, our investigator noted that Ramadan was evading the question about Hamas. "He already answered," moderator Imam Talib Abdur Rashid shot back. "You just didn't get the answer you wanted." Over and over, CAIR spends a lot of effort urging Muslim Americans not to cooperate with law enforcement. Speaking at CAIR-NY's "Annual Banquet and Leadership Conference" in April 2011, board member Lamis Deek implored her audience not to speak to the FBI, NYPD or other law enforcement agencies. "It's very important to not speak to law enforcement of any type, not just FBI agents," she said. "We're talking about the New York Police Department, we're talking about tax agents, we're talking about everybody." Deek said that if the FBI shows up claiming it has a warrant for someone's arrest, they need to ask to see the warrant because "Mossad" agents had been "go[ing] around pretending to be FBI." She warned that "they" (it was unclear whether she was referring to the Mossad, the FBI, or both) will threaten to "seriously blackmail" people. Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center - which is sufficiently in accord with CAIR that in 2009 it received CAIR's 'Safe While Free' Award - offers complementary positions. At a Nov. 17 forum in Washington entitled "Islamist Radicalization, Myth or Reality," Patel appeared to suggest that any effort by law enforcement to look for signs of radicalism in the Muslim community was doomed to failure. "You can't expect the community to behave as your partner if at the same time you're subjecting them to intense surveillance and monitoring," she said. And if Muslims were in denial about the existence of radical Islamist ideologies in their communities, perhaps law enforcement should defer to them, Patel added: "If the community doesn't believe that radicalization or extremism or extremist views or extremist ideologies is (sic) a problem in their own community, then you should also understand that maybe they know what they're talking about, and not be spending police resources this way." In a Huffington Post op-ed, Patel denounced the NYPD's operation that resulted in the arrest of accused lone-wolf jihadist Jose Pimentel, charged with plotting to bomb U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It should not come as a surprise that The New York Times left all of this critical information out of Tuesday's article, given the paper's long history of covering for CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations. As we have noted before, Times reporters like Andrea Elliott and columnists like Nicholas Kristof have published stories glossing over the radical background of Salafist cleric Yasir Qadhi, dean of academic affairs at the Houston-based AlMaghrib Institute, and whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood's radical record and hostility towards Israel. Last December, after Kristof penned a column in which he claimed that Brotherhood officials in Egypt had been behaving responsibly, Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy described Kristof as "credulous" about the Brotherhood. After interviewing some of the organization's members who had just been elected to Parliament, Trager wrote in the New Republic that, "Far from being moderate, these future leaders share a commitment to theocratic rule, complete with a limited view of civil liberties and an unmistakable antipathy for the West." Nonetheless, the NYPD, apparently responding to pressure from the media and perhaps from politicians, including Mayor Bloomberg, who denounced the film, stopped showing the documentary. Somebody [at the NYPD] exercised some terrible judgment," Bloomberg said Tuesday. "As soon as they found out about it, they stopped it." The mayor gave no indication that he had actually seen the film. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and narrator of the film, took exception to Bloomberg's comments. "I could not disagree more," he said. "The fact that Bloomberg made such a comment without providing any evidence that the film was in error indicates that the mayor's comment was "careless," Jasser said. Bloomberg's ignorance should not be surprising given his administration's friendly relationship with CAIR-NY. In May 2009, for example, the mayor's education policy advisor, Fatima Ashraf, hosted the Islamist group's annual banquet and fundraiser, where she gushed praise for CAIR-NY. Ashraf called it "a shining star among Muslim organizations in the country," adding that "their sincerity and motivation" and "genuine desire to make positive change for Muslims is what really makes them stand out." In similar fashion, Bloomberg's uninformed position is mirrored by the Times article, which does not provide any examples, or specific information of any kind, to back up criticism of the film. The article hints in rather foreboding fashion that the film is an effort to scare people about the threat posed by radical Islam: "Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying near the White House." Even in this brief description of the film, The New York Times got it wrong. According to Clarion Films, which produced the documentary, the photograph of the White House with an Islamic flag on top was taken from Islamist sources, not altered by the filmmakers.
Title: Media Issues: LA Times putting lipstick on a pig economy
Post by: DougMacG on February 05, 2012, 09:41:03 AM
"Doug, why criticize the LA Times? " (from Political Economics)
I carry deep seated anger toward our own local Star and Sickle and it surfaces its ugly head when I read falsehoods put out by the government and repeated without scrutiny by other sycophant, agenda driven press.
Sorry for the outburst but there weren't 200k net real jobs created, there were 200k statistically adjusted jobs listed on bureaucratic paper at taxpayer expense. Everyone else is doing it too is not a defense; the LA Times was the one quoted. My wrath is aimed at them not you, but curious, JDN, did you really not know the rest of the story - posted below?
The pattern I see them use is to report a news story falsely to create a different story such as that the economy is slowly getting a little better when it isn't and then poll on that story and manufacture a new news story based on their own poll saying that the majority or some other large number think the economy is getting a little better - in this case, or the rich have too much as another example. Like clockwork I will show you the second half of that soon.
The LA Times is not alone in it, but if they want to deceive for a living or limit their market for biased, sloppy agenda driven reporting to only half the market then I will enjoy my liberty in pointing out their own eroding market and market share.
You may be right in your 10 year figure but the WSJ did not use to be No.1 and the LA Times while staking out a slant similar to MSNBC is moving the other direction.
I resent having to go to outside of mainstream sources to find truth, accuracy or critical thinking. I don't mind the trouble personally, it was pretty easy to find the rest of the BLS data, but am saddened and harmed by the fact that I share a Republic with people who are largely informed with a storyline from what Crafty so aptly calls the Pravdas.
The real Pravda.Ru probably digs deeper into its reporting than those we accuse here of being state run presses.
Beneath the headlines and not in the LA Times, not even worthy of footnoting while repeating government manufactured drivel is how they got to that number: "Between December 2011 and January 2012, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" increased by 1.2 million." bls.gov That would be another steep drop below what is shown in this chart. See if this chart shows the employment situation improving in the 6 years since Sen Barack Obama and the Democrats took over congress first and then the executive branch: (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Labor-Force-Participation-Rate-440x264.png) Unreported in the LA Times is a) any information from the chart and b) any analysis as to why the sharpest downward turn occurred.
If they will lie in words and lie by omission, they can take back a little criticism. "We...suffer from a deplorable lack of curiosity' is what Capt von Trapp said back to the Nazis when everyone already knew what the other was doing and didn't need to ask.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on February 05, 2012, 10:01:15 AM
I happen to like the LA Times; in general it does a good job. I posted a few other editorials from today's paper a moment ago; you may even agree with some.
That said, I have friends at the LA Times; they deplore the massive lay offs and lack of attention to detail. They often simply pass headlines along. That's too bad. I prefer, as you Doug have pointed out, careful analysis. Frankly, whether I agree or not is not the point; hopefully I learn something either way. But I learn little from sound bites.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2012, 01:12:24 PM
When I ran for US Congress for the 36th District of CA, the combined vote of the Libertarian Party (me) Green Party, and Peace & Freedom Party was 10%, well more than the margin between the Dem (Jane Harman) and Rec (Joan Milke Flores) yet Pravda on the Beach refused to report our votes, instead showing the Dem and Rep votes as constituting 100% of the vote. Oh, and btw, POTB refused to mention us in its coverage of the debates during the race, even though both the Green candidate and I were very well received.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 05, 2012, 08:45:52 PM
When I ran for US Congress for the 36th District of CA, the combined vote of the Libertarian Party (me) Green Party, and Peace & Freedom Party was 10%, well more than the margin between the Dem (Jane Harman) and Rec (Joan Milke Flores) yet Pravda on the Beach refused to report our votes, instead showing the Dem and Rep votes as constituting 100% of the vote. Oh, and btw, POTB refused to mention us in its coverage of the debates during the race, even though both the Green candidate and I were very well received.
To not list at all what they consider to be minor candidates is an editorial choice - a pretty bad one if those votes were greater than the margin of victory. To take two scores that total 90% of the vote and say it was 100% is dishonest. Shame on them.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2012, 09:24:03 PM
Exactly so. I would add that it was 1992, the year of Ross Perot's candidacy and third party was in the air. The Daily Breeze, a not insubstantial local paper that was and is part of the Copley news chain, gave even space to all candidates (except for P&F who did not bother) for the question of the week on the bottom half of page three for eight weeks and even coverage in all the debates. I got plenty of good commentary and the Reps asked me to run for them the next time.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on February 06, 2012, 06:55:17 AM
The LA Times, no offense, seemed reasonable and accurate to me in their reporting. The article stated....
Harman, Not Flores, Is Voters' Choice : The Democrat's $1.3-million campaign pays off in the redrawn 36th Congressional District. By contrast, Republican Steve Horn uses a low-budget approach to upset Evan Anderson Braude in the 38th.
November 05, 1992|JANET RAE-DUPREE and TINA GRIEGO | TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Democratic attorney Jane Harman, whose $1.3-million campaign promised "choice" and "change," soundly trounced Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores in a newly drawn coastal district that political observers had thought would become a safe Republican seat.
Early returns had shown Flores maintaining a slim lead. But by midnight, the difference had dwindled to a near-tie and soon became a virtual Harman landslide. The final tally left Harman with 48.8% of the vote, Flores with 41.7%, and three minor party candidates splitting 9.5% among themselves.
end of article ___________________________________
United States House of Representatives elections, 1992 Party Candidate Votes Percentage Democratic Jane Harman 125,751 48.4% Republican Joan Milke Flores 109,684 42.2% Green Richard Greene 13,297 5.1% Peace and Freedom Owen Stanley 5,519 2.1% Libertarian Marc F. Denny 5,504 2.1% No party Martz (write-in) 2 0.0% Totals 259,757 100.0%
Democratic hold
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 06, 2012, 08:46:11 AM
JDN, Nice searching. You might also try to find the first page election summary and see if that is where they had the percentages wrong.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on February 06, 2012, 09:08:57 AM
Doug, I couldn't find the first page election summary, but as you implied, it is a "summary" on the first page. Often, they only list the top two contestants if together they have an overwhelming percentage (90%+ in this case) of the vote. They will list more candidates if it's a close 3 or 4 way race. I don't think it's any intentional disrespect to the other contestants - it's merely a matter of front page summary space available.
IMHO the article I posted, printed in The LA Times on November 5, 1992, seems like a fair and accurate, albeit brief, summary of the election results.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 06, 2012, 10:14:24 AM
Then I would head to the microfilm at the library before publishing a story implying that our host who had the rest of the facts correct was wrong. If LAT was wrong in cover, then there is quite a difference between proving them right and proving they knew better. We will see... ------------ The NY Times has quite a history of putting out truth much later is very small print buried in a section called corrections that really could be its own major publication. Perhaps a mis-spelling should go in corrections, but correcting falsehoods should be in a size and location equal or greater to the original, unless they are content to leave a false impression in the minds of millions who read the original story. ------------ In a different story of irresponsible reporting, our paper reported a tragic fire a few years ago killing multiple young college students in private housing at the university. For the first few days the Red Star ran with every story they dig up to insinuate that the landlord must have had some negligence that led to the fire. He was caught once doing his own gas piping, OMG! (Safe install of gas pipe is not rocket science for an experienced multiple building owner.)
But it turned out in investigation that the victims own friends killed their roommates through drunken passing out with cigarettes burning near flammables, but by then the story was old news and the real story was buried deep if covered at all, leaving roughly 99% of the readers with the false impression, as intended. To inform is not their mission. To fit the story into their agenda and to sell newspapers - that is what matters. -------------- Back to Crafty's story: In MN, it was the previous election where the minor party candidate for Senate rose to 15% of the vote that opened the door for one wrestler without a real party to win the Governor's office in a 3-way race the next time around.
Not covering the minor candidates leads to more of the same while polls keep showing people dissatisfied are with the choices.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2012, 08:19:00 AM
JDN:
Touching base with me first would not have been inappropriate.
I know what I know. It is entirely possible that the final actual results were published , , , eventually.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on February 07, 2012, 08:30:35 AM
I apologize if I have offended you; that was surely NOT my intent. I have the highest respect for you and in particular admire the fact that you ran for office rather than like most of us who are merely armchair critics.
I was merely defending (we often see give and take on this forum) the LA Times. IMHO I think overall it is an excellent newspaper, less than before, but given the economic times of publishing companies, still a very good newspaper.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2012, 08:27:34 PM
Forward.
Title: Napolitano
Post by: ccp on February 17, 2012, 09:45:26 AM
Beck gone now Napolitano. Ratings are down I guess. Truthfully it seems like these shows will only appeal to certains groups and go only so far. I say with disappointment that the strict conservative message is not going to get us the independents. Just won't happen. It is just too late, like it or not.
Proof in point, the country's "greatest generation" is now the country's biggest "entitlement generation" - by FAR. Medicare and SS alone will bankrupt us while the politicians and the few who control the world economy continue their shell game.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2012, 09:30:49 PM
I haven't had a chance to really follow this, but I gather that Napolitano has been asking people NOT to email FOX in protest and that he anticipates continuing to work with the network.
FWIW, I found his show rather , , , relentless and did not watch it very much.
Title: Brietbart
Post by: ccp on March 01, 2012, 12:27:34 PM
What I found interesting are the posts after the short Malkin post.
Liberals who are so kind, thoughtful, heartful:
http://michellemalkin.com/
Title: Media Issues - NY Times: Leftist Takeover, Now They Tell Us!
Post by: DougMacG on March 04, 2012, 08:53:50 AM
John Hinderacker at Powerline has been a consistent media critic of this publication with no quest for truth of its own. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/03/now-they-tell-us.php
A reader writes:
From today’s New York Times:
During the McGovern-Mondale era, the Democrats were exactly where the Republicans are now: the party had been taken over by its most extreme liberal faction, and it had lost touch with the core concerns of the middle class….Those terrible losses in 1972 and, especially, in 1984 were the Democrats’ shock therapy.
What happened in the interim? In effect, moderate Democrats wrested the party back from its most liberal wing….“We had become a party that had stopped worrying about people who were working and only focused on people who weren’t working,” [Al] From told me. “The party didn’t understand how big a concern crime was. It had stopped talking about opportunity and growth.”
Just for fun, I looked up the Times editorials in 1972 and 1984 in which the paper endorsed George McGovern and Walter Mondale, respectively. Needless to say, those editorials contain no trace of any acknowledgement that the Democrats were in the grip of the party’s far-left wing, or that either candidate had “stopped talking about opportunity and growth,” had “lost touch with the core concerns of the middle class,” or was “focused on people who weren’t working.”
On the contrary. Here is what the Times had to say about McGovern back in 1972:
The New York Times urges the election of George McGovern for President of the United States. We believe that Senator McGovern’s approach to public questions, his humanitarian philosophy and humane scale of values, his courage and forthrightness can offer a new kind of leadership in American political life. …
A McGovern administration, the Times believes, would reverse the unmistakable drift in Washington away from government of, by and for the people. …
On virtually every major issue from the war to taxes, from education to environment, from civil liberties to national defense, Mr. McGovern…seems to us to be moving with the right priorities, with faith in the common man, and within the democratic framework.
Which is to say that McGovern was just about as left-wing as the Times editorial board. This is what the Times had to say about Walter Mondale when it endorsed him in 1984:
[Mondale's] election would mean franker, fairer decisions on the hard economic choices that the President has concealed during the campaign. Mr. Mondale would offer an enlightened and humane conception of what Government should, and should not, do. Most of all, he would bring to the White House the will to control nuclear weapons. …
Walter Mondale believes in a sturdy defense. He also stands in the middle of the bipartisan community that long ago learned to abandon the fruitless quest for nuclear superiority. In this election, he represents all those Republicans and Democrats determined to tame the nuclear threat.
Lawyer Mondale offers pragmatic skill at making the best of reality. … Walter Mondale has all the dramatic flair of a trigonometry teacher. His Nordic upbringing makes it hard for him to brag. The first debate may have been the high point of his political personality. But there’s power in his plainness.
Precisely by not dramatizing issues, he has consistently produced consensus and agreement, as a Senator and as Jimmy Carter’s Vice President.
In the Times’s view at the time, Mondale was trudging stolidly down the middle of the road. Meanwhile, it is interesting to see that the paper’s current obsessions were just as prominent 28 years ago:
Who is likely to do better in arms negotiations in the next term, Walter Mondale or the President who tickles the religious right by reviling the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire?
To Henry Steele Commager, the historian, the 1983 speech in which Mr. Reagan described the Russians in that way was “the worst Presidential speech in American history, and I’ve read them all” – not because it was undiplomatic but because “No other Presidential speech has ever so flagrantly allied the government with religion. There was a gross appeal to religious prejudice.”
Religious prejudice? What a bizarre way of looking at the Cold War! Of course, it goes without saying that the Times failed either to foresee or to wish for the downfall of the Evil Empire.
One final digression before returning to the main point: the 1984 edition of the Times should be applauded for its concern about deficit spending:
Unless most economists are crazy, the country can’t keep borrowing $200 billion a year.
Give the paper its due; it was right. Deficit spending of $200 billion a year couldn’t continue. The Democrats had to increase the deficit to over $1 trillion to cover their extravagant spending habit.
The Times, of course, has no credibility at all, but it is nice to see that after more than a quarter century, it is willing to publish a column by its own reporter that admits the truth about the inept candidates that it backed out of partisan fervor and ideological extremism.
Title: Re: Media Issues - protected material
Post by: DougMacG on March 05, 2012, 07:59:59 AM
A discussion of note went by on a different thread about copyrights while I was gone. There is a tradeoff between protecting content and getting the word out so that there will be awareness and demand for content. A couple of my own thoughts to add.
Using the Wall Street Journal as an example:
a) There is an expectation when you subscribe that you will share content with a small or reasonable amount of people such as their eagerness to have it in the waiting room of the dental office - or the public library. Somewhere I read in the online world that is sharing with 4 people, but in the example above such as at the public library all day that is certainly more. There is no indication that people come here for the purpose of getting around that subscription cost they otherwise have paid themnselves. If anything the random promotion and discussion of stories and columns would make people more likely to subscribe.
b) Their own promotional strategy is to give away a mixture of free and protected content to draw attention, praise and subscriptions. Often times my own awareness of a good column comes from their own efforts to submit material to other best of the web sites like Real Clear Politics for widespread dissemination.
c) I post some things because they are expressing my own viewpoint, but give credit to the source as a matter of honesty.
d) I often suggest people subscribe and include subscription links as Crafty has done for various publications. Here's one (save over 80%!): https://services.wsj.com/Gryphon/jsp/retentionController.jsp?page=10129
e) The content is intentionally mixed to get non-subscribers lured part way in, but as you read signed in as a subscriber there is no indication provided as to was is or is not protected. Note that this discussion started as a reader was pulled part way in requesting more.
f) My own awareness of the WSJ editorial page began after my economics professor passed photocopies around of his own contributions. My copy got lost or damaged. I replaced it at the library and found out that he was only being published for his opposing view and that the lead editorials made far more sense. While the liberal universities were pushing Keynesian economics as the only way to proceed in macroeconomics, the WSJ lead editorial was writing that "Keynes is Dead" in the late 1970s with simultaneously exploding inflation and unemployment. Former editor Robert Bartley was a genius at putting a team together and current editorial page editor, Green Bay Wisc. native Paul Gigot is one of the most insightful people in Washington IMHO.
g) Besides reading and subscribing, I have contributed material to the editorial page that they had no hesitation in using. They credited me but forward no payment. Other times it appears that they have been reading the forum before writing - without credit. I don't think they want to risk having a cease and desist order being mutual! :wink:
"The adventure continues."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on March 05, 2012, 08:18:10 AM
I don't know the solution, but the WSJ's Subscriber Agreement (similar to most other publications) is quite clear....
Personally, I don't see the harm, if anything interesting articles posted make me want to subscribe to the WSJ (I don't because I read it at various venues) but maybe that is the wrong attitude.
___ WSJ Agreement
b. The text, graphics, images, video, metadata, design, organization, compilation, look and feel, advertising and all other protectable intellectual property (the "Content") available through the Services are our property or the property of our advertisers and licensors and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Unless you have our written consent, you may not sell, publish, distribute, retransmit or otherwise provide access to the Content received through the Services to anyone, including, if applicable, your fellow students or employees, with the following exceptions:
(i) You may occasionally distribute a copy of an article, or a portion of an article, from a Service in non-electronic form to a few individuals without charge, provided you include all copyright and other proprietary rights notices in the same form in which the notices appear in the Service, original source attribution, and the phrase "Used with permission from The Wall Street Journal Online" or "Used with permission from Barron's Online", as appropriate. Please consult the Dow Jones Reprints web site if you need to distribute an article from a Service to a larger number of individuals, on a regular basis or in any other manner not expressly permitted by this Agreement.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on March 05, 2012, 09:16:25 AM
"I don't know the solution, but the WSJ's Subscriber Agreement (similar to most other publications) is quite clear...." ------------------------
The solution from our point of view is to do no harm to them, and from their point of view to send a friendly letter or cancel my subscription anytime they find me to be an annoyance.
The WSJ is not run by the lawyers. The business side of the publication is thrilled to have their columns quoted and talked about across the talk shows and the internet - right up to the point of where is starts to take money out of their pocket.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on March 05, 2012, 09:18:34 AM
Sounds good to me. :-D
Title: Media Issues: Contraception is the issue??
Post by: DougMacG on March 05, 2012, 10:52:56 AM
Stephanoplous brought this up in a debate when there was no issue whatsoever in any state over access to contraception. Now it is David Gregory's first question to a major party candidate for President on Meet the Press. Good grief. Newt handles him well. Yet Gregory sticks to the script completely ignoring the answer already given. Just terrible, terrible journalism. Falsehood after falsehood advanced in the question, repeatedly, AFTER being corrected.
Stephanoplous brought this up in a debate when there was no issue whatsoever in any state over access to contraception. Now it is David Gregory's first question to a major party candidate for President on Meet the Press. Good grief. Newt handles him well. Yet Gregory sticks to the script completely ignoring the answer already given. Just terrible, terrible journalism. Falsehood after falsehood advanced in the question, repeatedly, AFTER being corrected.
The MSM-DNC would love to trumpet Obozo's accomplishments, but having nothing there they are forced to push "If the republicans win, they are going after your ladyparts!".
God forbid we look at the real issues.
Title: UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas
Post by: G M on March 10, 2012, 10:04:10 PM
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1ca_1314455872
UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas or Tennessee
Dr. Tim Groseclose is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He has joint appointments in the political science and economics departments and has held previous faculty appointments at Caltech, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Tim released the book Left Turn recently and was on Hannity with Senator Fred Thompson on Friday night to discuss the book.
http://www.timgroseclose.com/
Title: Re: UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas
Post by: bigdog on March 11, 2012, 10:09:47 AM
Groseclose is an excellent source. I look forward hearing more about the book, and reading it if I get the time.
UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas or Tennessee
Dr. Tim Groseclose is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He has joint appointments in the political science and economics departments and has held previous faculty appointments at Caltech, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Tim released the book Left Turn recently and was on Hannity with Senator Fred Thompson on Friday night to discuss the book.
http://www.timgroseclose.com/
Title: This American Lie
Post by: G M on March 17, 2012, 07:34:38 AM
Mike Daisey Lies on This American Life; Theaters Won’t Cancel Performances or Issue Refunds
By Edward Champion – March 17, 2012Posted in: daisey-mike, Theater, This American Life
On Friday afternoon, Mike Daisey, the monologist who appeared on This American Life earlier in the year to report on apparent abuses of Chinese workers at Foxconn, was revealed to have fabricated and conflated substantial details of his story. Daisey’s lies and errors had proven so severe that This American Life devoted an entirely new episode to clearing up Daisey’s story.
Daisey’s tale, which was an excerpt from his one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, had helped to shape many people’s feelings about Apple. Apple had relied upon its supplier, Foxonn, to manufacture its line of iPhones and iPads. And while an independent investigation from The New York Times earlier this year also revealed unsafe working conditions at Foxconn, there remain significant doubts over whether much of what Daisey has stated on stage and on air is true.
“As best as we can tell,” said host Ira Glass on the new episode of This American Life, “Mike’s monologue in reality is a mix of things that actually happened when he visited China and things that he just heard about or researched, which he then pretends that he witnessed first-hand.” Glass went on to say that he had taken Daisey at his word and that he saw no reason to doubt Daisey. “I can now say in retrospect that when Mike Daisey wouldn’t give us contact information for his interpreter, we should’ve killed the story rather than run it. We never should’ve broadcast this story without talking to that woman.”
Rob Schmitz, a Marketplace correspondent in Shanghai, was able to track down “Cathy” — Daisey’s interpreter for the piece, whose real name is Li Guifen but who also goes by the name Cathy Lee — by putting the terms “Cathy,” “translator,” and “Shenzhen” into Google. He called the first phone number that came up. Cathy Lee did not know that Daisey had used her in his show. She thought that Daisey was merely an American writer.
Title: Pamela Geller catches Pravda on the Hudson at it again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2012, 08:50:38 PM
Who Keeps 404ing Stories about Malia Obama’s Spring Break Trip to Mexico?
This is very curious. Stories about first daughter Malia Obama’s spring break trip to Mexico with 25 Secret Service detailed to protect her and her friends keep returning 404 errors or redirects.
Here’s Huffington Post’s link to its story about the spring break. Click on it and see where it goes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/malia-obama-mexico-spring-break_n_1364063.html
Yahoo! ran a story about it. But it has since been run off. http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-daughter-spends-springbreak-mexico-145031176.html.
That Yahoo! link is redirecting to a story about something entirely unrelated.
Essence had the story. Emphasis on the past tense. http://www.essence.com/2012/03/19/malia-obama-travels-to-mexico-for-spring-break/
Even the UK Telegraph story is now off the grid. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9152796/Malia-Obama-guarded-by-25-Secret-Service-agents-on-spring-break-in-Mexico.html. That’s the version that Drudge was linking to.
Drudge linked to a different version, at the International Business Times, and now that story is down the 404 hole: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/316249/20120319/malia-obama-mexico-spring-break-travel-warning.htm
The spring break trip really happened. This blog post about it hasn’t gone 404 (yet), and has several pics of Malia with her friends.
What is going on here? Is the White House trying to scrub the Internet of all stories about the first daughter’s spring break trip to Mexico?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2012, 09:23:39 PM
Please post this in Fire Hydrant too.
Title: The story of Malia Obama’s Mexican vacation reveals double standards and a noodl
Post by: G M on March 20, 2012, 01:20:05 PM
The story of Malia Obama’s Mexican vacation reveals double standards and a noodle-spined media
Bookworm on Mar 20 2012 at 8:25 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, Media matters
Over the weekend, I got a link to a story about Malia Obama heading off to Mexico for vacation with 12 friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story is newsworthy because it implicates taxpayer concerns: Malia is going to a nation that the State Department warns is dangerous, and Americans are footing the bill for the 25 federal employees who are necessary to offset that danger. I know that these Secret Service agents are on the payroll regardless, but feeding and lodging them outside of Washington, D.C. becomes the taxpayers’ burden. (In the same way, Obama’s little basketball jaunt with PM Cameron cost the taxpayers an extra $478,000 over the regular fixed costs in the “taking care of POTUS” budget.)
You’ll notice that I haven’t included the link to the story about Malia Obama’s trip. That’s because, by the time I received the email with the link to the Malia vacation story, the great white-out had begun. As I, and every other sentient web-using being had noticed, the story about Malia Obama was melting away as quickly as the wet Wicked Witch of the West. Those of us trying to find a solid link for the story felt as if we were playing a bizarre version of whack-a-mole. The links would pop up for a second, only to vanish again.
The big question, of course, was why? Why is an apparently properly sourced story vanishing? If it was false, one would expect White House push-back, with the news sources either denying the White House’s arguments or issuing apologies for their error. A vanishing story, however, has been a first. And now the truth has come out. The White House told the news agencies that it’s not fair to report on the kids:
The White House has admitted to telling news agencies to pull stories on Malia Obama visiting the Mexico for spring break, Politico reports.
Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, emailed Dylan Byers:
From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.
There are a couple of problems, however, with the White House’s reasoning and the media’s craven collapse. First, as I noted in my opening paragraph, it is newsworthy that the White House has opted to impose on taxpayers the very real and high costs of sending the First Daughter to a nation that’s on the State Department’s own warning list (although the region in which Melia is now traveling is not specifically named in that list).
Second, the Obamas routinely trot out the kids to score political points. The most recent example was the way President Obama used his daughters to justify calling Sandra Fluke to sympathize with her when Rush Limbaugh suggested that spending thousands of dollars on sex aids, and then expecting others to pay for them, suggested that Fluke is not a lady, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Bristol Palin sums it up nicely:
You don’t know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next. You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha. After all, you didn’t want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:
“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” you said. “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”
Most political observers also thought it wasn’t a coincidence that Barack’s and Michelle’s 2011 Christmas card — the last one they’ll be sending out before the election — prominently features their two daughters. This was a campaign photo and it made the daughters a prop.
I don’t mind that Obama is using his daughters politically. Politicians do that all the time, and it’s no use pretending that the Obamas don’t have two daughters out there who make perfect photographic and rhetorical props. What I do mind is that the White House gets to eat its cake and have it. It announces to the press “We get to use the Obama girls when it’s good for us, but you don’t get to use the Obama girls when it’s bad for us.” And the press, meekly, goes away.
Rather than collapsing spinelessly, the press, collectively, should have said, “Sorry, but this story is already out there, so you’ll have to deal with the security consequences of sending your daughter off to a dangerous country. As for future stories, we won’t report on your daughters if you’ll stop using them to score political points. As long as you keep them in the public eye, however, they’re fair game for honest reporting about their activities.”
I guess, though, that my dream of an upright and honest media is as much a fantasy as that melting Wicked Witch of the West.
Title: Media scrubs Malia Obama vacation story
Post by: G M on March 20, 2012, 04:45:27 PM
**How much does 25 Secret Service Agents and their per diem cost the taxpayers? I'm guessing at least 10 years of condoms for Sandra Fluke.
The AFP, the Huffington Post and other websites have scrubbed a report about first daughter Malia Obama's school trip.
On Monday, the AFP reported that Obama's daughter was on a school trip along with a number of friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story was picked up by Yahoo, the Huffington Post, and the International Business Times, as well as UK publications like the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and other overseas publications like The Australian.
But on Monday night, the story had been removed from those sites .The AFP page for the story now links to a story titled "Senegal music star Youssou Ndour hits campaign trail," as does the Yahoo page. The Huffington Post page now links directly back to the Huffington Post homepage. The Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Australian stories now lead to 404 error pages, reading "page not found." The International Business Times story also links to the IBT homepage, though a version of the original story still exists online.
A spokesperson at the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though given the late hour that can be forgiven. I will update here if and when I hear back from the White House, and when I hear back from spokespeople with the various websites and news agencies.
UPDATE: Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, emails to confirm this was a White House effort:
From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on March 20, 2012, 07:04:59 PM
"when they are not with their parents"
She is 13, traveling to a third world earthquake zone, without parents, I assumed the trip was for national security purposes.
Title: Mexico for Spring Break
Post by: G M on March 21, 2012, 05:21:45 AM
It’s not actually about the First Daughter, per se, who according to serially vanishing stories has been vacationing with a group of friends in Mexico — a country for which the State Department just last month issued a new warning to all U.S. travelers.
It’s about the judgment of the White House, which apparently deems there is “no vital news interest” to this story.
How so?
Let us set aside the obvious hypocrisy of a president who denounces the “1%” and calls for Americans to tighten their belts, while members of his own family summer on a Martha’s Vineyard estate, spend Christmas beachside at Oahu, and travel for fun to the ski slopes of Colorado, the luxury suites of Marbella, and now, scenic spots in Mexico. If that is the image Obama wants to cultivate, or those are the family pleasures with which he wishes to balance the rigors of his presidency, so be it.
Let us set aside, for the moment, the queasy feeling it brings, reminiscent of the air-brushed politburo photos of Mao’s China, to see news stories erased, one after another, at the behest of the White House. Doubtless there are security concerns here. Though, especially in the information age, it suggests an odd obliviousness to think that an optional holiday, entailing security concerns presumably serious enough to warrant erasing news stories, should not qualify as a legitimate story.
Let us even set aside the cost to taxpayers of dispatching Secret Service agents — reportedly, 25 of them — to Mexico, not for official White House business, not for something that clearly benefits belt-tightening U.S. taxpayers, but for the pleasure trip of a family member. There is a case to be made, persuasive or not, that the presidency should not be such a burden as to preclude whatever the first family can manage in the way of reasonable socializing and entertainment.
Let us also set aside any tut-tutting about parental discretion in letting teenagers travel to places under a travel warning from the State Department. The First Family is in a good position to weigh the risks to its members, and is doubtless well acquainted with the first-rate competence of the Secret Service to provide security, which, when factored into the equation, presumably goes far to lower the risk for the vacationing First Family member.
But that brings us to the risks faced by those traveling secret service agents — whether 25 in number, or whatever the precise total might be. Yes, their job is to protect the First Family, and that includes taking a bullet or laying down their lives, if need be, to ensure that not a hair on a First Head is harmed. We can expect to hear no complaints from the Secret Service. But those Secret Service agents quite likely have families, too. They have now been dispatched to do their job not within U.S. shores where American authorities have enormous powers to minimize the risks, nor in a place which the State Department at least regards as routinely secure for Americans to amuse themselves on spring breaks. Instead, these Secret Service agents have been sent to provide security in Mexico, where the State Department warns that due to transnational criminal organizations, “crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country” including “homicide, gun battles, kidnapping, carjacking and highway robbery.” State reports that “gun battles have occurred in broad daylight on streets and in other public venues, such as restaurants and clubs.” Of particular concern are “kidnappings and disappearances throughout Mexico,” with local police in some cases implicated. State adds that U.S. government personnel and their families “are prohibited from travel” to some of the most dangerous areas. And though the holiday destination reported in the vanishing new stories is not on the list of Mexican provinces totally taboo for personal travel of government personnel, State warns that in Mexico, “even if no advisories are in effect for a given state, crime and violence can occur anywhere.”
Perhaps one way the White House is entitled to regard the Secret Service is that there should be no constraints on the risks its agents are asked to run, for whatever reason. Certainly if the president wants to visit Afghanistan (which he’s done twice, on highly secured “surprise” visits, during his presidency), or go to Mexico on official business, it’s appropriate that Secret Service agents are expected to go with him, and do their jobs, at higher risk, to protect him and any family members in tow. But — hoping that all goes safely and smoothly with this Mexican spring break, and trusting to the Secret Service to ensure the safety of members of the First Family, wherever they might go — may we ask, nonetheless, a question:
In the terrible event that State’s warning proves relevant, and in the course of doing whatever it takes to provide security, any of those 25 or so American Secret Service agents are wounded or even killed in the line of fire, would the White House still consider the context a non-story? Would it be irrelevant that they had been asked to run such risks not to safeguard official business, but to enable a personal holiday trip to a place under a U.S. government travel warning? One need not quarrel over whether the White House, or anyone in it, is entitled to organize holiday trips to just about anywhere on the planet. But being entitled to do something does not necessarily mean it’s a good idea to do it. Where’s the sense of responsibility to those who serve? Where’s the judgment?
Title: Al Jazeera won't show Toulouse shooting video
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2012, 08:31:30 AM
Title: POTH reporter with a grudge
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 29, 2012, 06:49:21 AM
By JAMES FREEMAN New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny could not have been pleased when GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum called "bulls ---" on his questioning at a Sunday campaign event in Wisconsin. So perhaps it's not surprising that Mr. Zeleny has co-authored a piece suggesting that it's time for Mr. Santorum to quit the race.
In his speech at the Sunday event, Mr. Santorum described problems with rival Mitt Romney's health-care plan in Massachusetts and then said that Mr. Romney is "the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama." Afterwards, Mr. Zeleny asked Mr. Santorum to defend the claim that "Mitt Romney was the worst Republican in the country." There is of course a difference between saying someone is the worst person among millions in a political party and saying that someone is the party's worst option to face a particular opponent. This may partly explain Mr. Santorum's use of the barnyard vulgarity.
In any case, we can only imagine what Mr. Santorum said when he saw Mr. Zeleny's co-authored story this week carrying the headline, "Santorum Ignores Pressure to Bow Out to Romney." Since Mr. Santorum is running second, voters may wonder why the Times isn't applying even more pressure to bow out on also-rans Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.
It's a particularly good question given recent polling out of North Carolina, which holds its primary in May. Like the Times, the firm Public Policy Polling leans left, yet its recent survey suggests that Mr. Santorum becomes more competitive as the field shrinks. PPP finds that Messrs. Romney and Santorum are now tied for the lead. Says PPP, "Two weeks ago Romney had a four point lead over Santorum in the state. Romney's support has remained pretty steady since then," but Mr. Santorum has gained as Mr. Gingrich has declined. "If Gingrich dropped out of the race Santorum would open up a 6 point lead in North Carolina with 43% to 37% for Romney and 13% for Paul."
It's hard to say whether GOP voters nationally would make a similar choice, but what is the journalistic purpose in encouraging a front-runner's strongest competitor to quit?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 29, 2012, 01:17:53 PM
This Martin/Zimmerman situation is horrible enough but the explosion of emotion on the media is unbelievable.
Of course we keep hearing all these new pieces of evidence but I have to agree with Judge Napolitano that he probably should be arrested and charged. While Martin may not be an angel he was not the instigator at least initially, and the 911 dispatcher did advise Zman to back off and it appears he didn't. I don't see how neighborhood watch can be construed to be ok to chase someone down a street with a gun.
I guess this has many issues involved:
Race Racial profiling concealed weapons Fla unique stand "your ground law" (which to me has nothing to do with this - someone following another on public property) gangster apparal
A trial seems to me the only way yet it would be OJ Simpson all over again.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 29, 2012, 04:05:29 PM
"the 911 dispatcher did advise Zman to back off and it appears he didn't."
NO, this is not accurate. The dispatcher said "We don't need you to do that" or "You don't have to do that" i.e. something that would protect the police from liability claims should it be claimed that they asked for/encouraged his help. That is NOT the same thing as "Back off!"
"I don't see how neighborhood watch can be construed to be ok to chase someone down a street with a gun."
NOT alleged anywhere of which I am aware.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 29, 2012, 04:28:46 PM
Your right. The 911 dispatcher did not actually tell him NOT to chase Martin just said what you said. There is a difference:
"I don't see how neighborhood watch can be construed to be ok to chase someone down a street with a gun."
Well wasn't he carrying a gun? I assume concealed.
He did follow Martin who appears to have tried to flee. Martin undertandably felt threatened and at some point confronted Zimmerman who was carrying a concealed weapon.
Perhaps Zimmerman was just trying to keep an eye on Martin till the police arrived.
But he chased the guy down. This is not self defense.
Title: Journo-list-ism at it's finest!
Post by: G M on April 02, 2012, 01:34:57 PM
NBC to Internally Investigate Misleading Segment on Zimmerman 911 Call By Brett Smiley
NBC disclosed today that it will be launching an internal investigation into a segment about the Trayvon Martin case that appeared on the Today show, in which a call between George Zimmerman and a 911 dispatcher prior to Martin's death was edited in such a way that it portrays Zimmerman as a racial profiler. The editorial decision under review involves the removal of the dispatcher's inquiry about the race of the person Zimmerman was following — Martin. Absent that question, Zimmerman's comments get strung together as if he said, in sequence, "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black."
The Washington Post provides the full transcript of that part of the call:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
Of course Zimmerman goes on to follow Martin against the advice of the dispatcher, but in this version of the call, it doesn't appear that he's awkwardly offering the information or in effect, profiling. Zimmerman still might have been, but the truncated call left much less doubt.
The Post's Erik Wemple writes that in a case where few facts are undisputed, it was particularly egregious to misrepresent one of them, the phone call. "To portray that exchange in a way that wrongs Zimmerman is high editorial malpractice well worthy of the investigation that NBC is now mounting."
Meanwhile New York Times media czar David Carr wrote a column today titled "A Shooting, And Instant Polarization," in which he similarly impugned some media coverage of this controversial case.
That the public is rendering its verdict immediately and firmly may be routine, but choosing sides takes on a deeper, more dangerous meaning when race is at the heart of the story. Race as an explosive issue is nothing new, but it’s been staggering to see it simmer and boil over in our hyperdivided media environment where nonstop coverage on the Web and cable television creates a rush to judgment every day.
Partisan politics and far-flung conflicts fit nicely into that world — who’s ahead, who’s behind, should we stay or go? — but racial conflict? Not so much.
That hasn’t stopped many in the media from displaying the same reflexive vigilantism that some are attributing to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon. All over the Internet and on cable TV, posses are forming, positions are hardening and misinformation is flourishing. Instead of debating how we as a culture are going to proceed, an increasingly partisan system of news and social media has factionalized and curdled.
Carr and Wemple are not the only two to call out partisan media and media at large for mishandling coverage of the Martin case, or misrepresenting specific aspects of it. Nor are NBC or Business Insider (chastised by Carr for mishandling dubious photos) the only two to have erred in their coverage.
We'll end with an exchange from Something's Gotta Give, starring Jack Nicholson (Harry) and Diane Keaton (Erica):
Harry: I have never lied to you. I have always told you some version of the truth. Erica Barry: The truth doesn't have versions, okay?
Title: Even Mother Jones recognizes the bias
Post by: G M on April 03, 2012, 06:15:16 PM
According to the Today show, here's what George Zimmerman said to a 911 dispatcher as he was trailing Trayvon Martin last February:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
What a racist! Obviously Zimmerman had a real hang-up about black kids. But no. It turns out some bright spark at NBC decided to edit the conversation just a wee bit. Here's the whole exchange:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
This is now fated to be Exhibit A in conservative charges of mainstream media bias for about the next century or so. And who can blame them? What a cockup.
Title: NRO fires columnist for racism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2012, 08:46:22 PM
NBC's "He Looks Black" - Now You See It, Now You Don't
NBC is busy taking down the evidence of its repeated usage of its bogus edit of the George Zimmerman 911 call. This follows the firing of a producer for the use of the same bad edit on the March 27 Today Show. Left unanswered - what about the March 22 use on the Today Show? [LATE ADD: a third usage of "He looks black" has been found and edited out of existence (but not Google Cache!) at NBC 6 Miami, as described below. When will the Elite Media sniff a cover-up?]
Twelve days ago Dan Riehl found this at MSNBC:
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black,” Zimmerman told a police dispatcher from his car. His father has said that Zimmerman is Hispanic, grew up in a multiracial family, and is not racist.
The use of ellipsis clearly indicate that the conversation was clipped. This version has since been re-edited (without any explanation) to include the complete exchange.
Yesterday the discovery by Les Jones of two similar bad edits at NBC 6 Miami for stories from March 19 and March 20 were widely broadcast by the InstaPundit. As of this writing, those stories have been "fixed" by the web editors to eliminate the troublesome passages (and are marked as updated April 9; the specific update is unexplained). Fortunately, the original versions live on in Google Caches and screen shots taken by Les Jones, shown below.
And on Monday Jeralyn Merritt discovered, with Lexis, this Today Show transcript from March 22 with the same bad edit. So far that is still online, but a screenshot is below.
[And let me add - in the updates I discover at least one, possibly two new NBC 6 Miami stories from Mar 17 and Mar 19 that were re-edited on April 9 and *may have* contained the bad edit]
So, it seems to be a bit of a race - can NBC sweep this down the memory hole before the crowd notices?
They just might succeed - the firing of a producer for one bad edit on the March 27 Today Show got a lot of attention and the Daily Caller knows the score but I have seen no Elite Media mention of the scope of this problem: twice on the Today Show plus twice at NBC 6 Miami plus once at MSNBC (which was their version of an NBC 6 Miami story) makes five appearances of the bad edit, yet the media coverage is of a producer fired for one March 27 use. Three usages have been airbrushed away with no notice; Lexis will preserve the March 22 Today Show, but that won't matter if no one looks.
Just to duplicate Les Paul, here are the NBC 6 Miami originals:
Trayvon Martin's Shooter Defended By Fellow Neighborhood Watch Captain
The "He looks black" portion was dropped with no obvious replacement in the latest version.
And:
White House Monitoring Trayvon Martin Case as Protests Mount
A state stand your ground law might prevent any prosecution
Christina Hernandez, Jeff Burnside and Edward B. Colby
Lest you doubt, Jeralyn Merritt and Les Paul have some links and contemporaneous accounts of this reality.
Lets see if NBC can be prodded into an even more comprehensive investigation and report. They can explain again how time constraints led to a mistake on the air twice and in print three times.
WHICH CAME FIRST, THE VIDEO OR THE TEXT? One theory is that NBC 6 Miami posted this truncated Zimmerman quote on their website as text. A few days later, a harried Today Show team grabbed the text story and cut the 911 audio to match it for the Mar 22 broadcast; a few days later, thyey re-ran the tape for the Mar 27 broadcast.
Bug why match a text report that way? Surely Today is big enough to do their own editing their way. So, my guess is this - the Mar 19 text matches a Mar 19 (or earlier) broadcast by NBC 6 Miami, which originated the fateful edit. A few days later a harried NBC Today producer grabbed the NBC 6 tape and clippled what he/she needed, including the bum edit.
This kinda/sort exonerates the "Today" team, which is guilty of brain lock and failure to listen critically becasue they recycled a bad decision by NBC 6 Miami.
It also suggests that the extensive, intensive NBC investigation ought to have turned up the original offense in a NBC 6 Miami broadcast. Did they? Can anyone find such a broadcast? Does Lexis immortalize every word uttered at every local news outlet?
My *GUESS* as to the chain of events: A March 19 (or earlier) broadcast by NBC 6 Miami creates the bad edit. The script is matched at the Mar 19 website story. The NBC 6 website recycles the edit in thie follow-up story, which is mirrored at MSNBC. Finally, the Today Show picks up the bad tape from NBC 6 and airs it on Mar 22 and again on Mar 27.
That results in the five uses we have seen and suggests there is a broadcast usage yet to surface.
SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND... CONFUSION: Why did NBC 6 Miami update these stories from March 17 and March 19 on April 9, after editing the two we have already flagged? If someone could work some GoogleCache magic that would be lovely. Meanwhile, a fairly convincing clue is in the comments to the Mar 19 story, from 18 hours ago:
This article contains an extremely misleading "quote" of the 911 call and needs to be corrected! What he said was, "Hey we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy...This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." The "he looks black" the response to a direct question asked by the dispatcher about whether Martin was "white, black, or Hispanic."
Oh, and my Kung Fu is unexpectedly adequate - here is a screen shot of the Google Cache as of April 6, complete with the phrase NBC 6 is trying to bury:
You won't see that now! And do note, the edit is different (my emphasis): There's a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. He look's black".
The March 17 story has a byline for Mike Schneider, an AP reporter, and a version of his story is widespread. However, I find this in the national version but *not* in the current version shown by NBC 6 Miami:
The teen had gone to a convenience store to buy candy and was walking back to his family’s home in the neighborhood.
“This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something,” Zimmerman told the dispatcher from his SUV. He added that the black teen had his hand in his waistband and was walking around looking at homes.
He has said he acted in self-defense, but Martin’s family said they are now more convinced than ever that Zimmerman should be charged in the shooting.
The NBC 6 version now omits the italicized paragraph. Do note that what the AP used is fair, but on March 19 NBC 6 extends it to "“This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something. He looks black".
Is it possible they re-wrote the AP story and have now buried it? The Google Cache version I find at the NBC 6 website was saved on Apr 10, 2012 08:02:20 GMT, so it succeeds their April 9 re-edit. Irk me. However, this suggestive but hardly conclusive comment from March 17 provokes suspicions:
I find it odd that in his 911 call he keeps pointing out the boy is black and makes speculations: "He looks like he was on drugs", "His hand is in his waistband". He's the captain of a neighborhood WATCH not a neighborhood ACT.
The current version makes no mention of Zimmerman saying the boy was black; the AP version distributed elsewhere does not quote Zimmerman saying that, although it includes "He added that the black teen had his hand in his waistband", so maybe that is what this reader had in mind. Well, the NBC cover-up is holding on this one.
TO BE FAIR: NBC might want to segue to the old "Cut and Paste ate my brain" defense. A mistake made once just rumbled through their echo chamber, with multiple editors at multiple sites noticing nothing. Rodeo clowns without malice. Might work. But did they ever give Bush a break when he rolled with the "I'm too stupid to be evil" defense? They did not.
AND ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: We can't get Howard Kurtz and the Bigfoot media watchers to take on NBC, but at least NBC is reading their critics. Let me check to see if they hit the tipjar. (There is no tipjar.)
Title: Your corrupt media at work
Post by: G M on April 16, 2012, 08:31:32 PM
Washington Post: We Tried To Bury That Story About ObamaCare Blowing Up The Deficit
By Sean Higgins
Mon., April 16, 2012 6:31 PM ET
Tags: Media - ObamaCare - Deficit - Economy
Washington Post columnist Patrick Pexton made a rather startling admission in the paper’s Sunday edition: The Post never meant for their recent story about how President Obama’s health care law expands the budget deficit to become a viral Internet sensation. In fact, they deliberately tried to bury the story.
Putting the story (inside the paper) on A3 was the right judgment for a print publication. (Story author Lori) Montgomery urged her editors, correctly, not to put it on the front page: it wasn’t worth that.
The story in question was titled “Health care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds.” It pointed out that the administration had double-counted Medicare savings in the law and once you adjusted for that it added to the deficit rather than reducing it, as the White House has claimed. This is pretty significant news and was soon repeated and reposted throughout the web.
Pexton, the Post’s resident ombudsman (an in-house critic-scold for those not familiar with journo-speak), admits that they are ambivalent about this success, calling story’s popularity a reflection of our “our reactive, partisan, hyperventilating media culture.”
You see the research was done by Charles Blahous, a Republican appointee to Medicare and Social Security’s board of trustees. Several readers responded by telling Pexton that this GOP association (somehow) tainted the data and should be ignored, despite the fact that Blahous was approved by Obama in 2010.
“Republicans say yes, it’s an accounting trick, Democrats and the CBO say no, it’s the only realistic way to do it,” wrote Pexton. So, who is right in this dispute? Don’t ask Pexton, who offered no opinion and instead seemed to want to wash his hands of the whole matter:
We in the media like the Web traffic that a story like this attracts. It quickens the media pulse; we all get a frisson of pleasure from being viral on the Internet for a day.
But I’m not sure the truth wins. The truth is that every complex law change, every annual federal budget, is a risk. They’re all based on assumptions and forecasts that may or may not come true. And when they don’t, Congress and the president have to adjust.
Well, one way to ensure that the truth wins out is is to report all the facts to your readers. And putting it on the front page is one way to get it to them. Just sayin’.
Follow Sean Higgins on Twitter: @SeanGHiggins
Title: B Franklin 1767
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2012, 07:30:43 AM
"To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers." --Benjamin Franklin, Reply to Coffee House Orators, 1767
Title: Your corrupt LA Times at work
Post by: G M on April 20, 2012, 09:01:41 AM
If there’s one thing that’s utterly predictable during the course of our war, it’s that major journalistic outlets will publish stories that shame our troops or place them at greater risk — but only after very public (and comically insincere) hand-wringing. I wonder . . . if any Afghan soldiers turn their weapons on their American allies as a reprisal, will the Times editors at least send flowers to the families of the fallen? Perhaps a card? “We’re sincerely sorry that our journalistic ‘ethics’ led to the death of your husband/wife/son/daughter, but there was a vital need to cast our war effort in a negative light. After all, the New York Times leads us in Pulitzers at the moment, and nothing says ‘Pulitzer’ like exposing two-years-old wrongdoing by privates.”
But if you’re one of those courageous and fearless “let’s tell the raw truth, and let the chips fall where they may” types, and you’re tempted to respect the L.A. Times for its journalistic integrity, let me remind you of a time when the newspaper showed restraint: When it decided — in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign — not to publish a videotape of Barack Obama praising former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi at a 2003 dinner. After all, that’s just a future president discussing one of the world’s most hot-button geopolitical issues (with a bonus appearance by applauding domestic terrorists). Move along. Nothing to see there.
Title: War Photographs
Post by: JDN on April 20, 2012, 09:16:02 AM
Photographs help Americans see the wars, to remember something wise that Robert E. Lee said during the Civil War and that still holds true: “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.”
I gotta admit, IF you are going to war (I don't think we should be there) it IS hard to have a lot of sympathy or be "fond" of dead hajis. That's war...
People die in war. Better the enemy than Americans...
Title: Confidential Sources
Post by: JDN on April 20, 2012, 09:30:28 AM
But of course, JDN seeks to distract from the corruption of the LA Slimes.
If the left didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
LA Times made a promise. What is a "confidential source" unless it's "confidential"?
The Times on Tuesday issued a statement about its decision not to post the tape.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
Jamie Gold, the newspaper's readers' representative, said in a statement: "More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite -- the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on April 20, 2012, 09:41:05 AM
Bull-shiite!
"Let me give a copy of a tape to the press, and then make them promise not to release it".
:roll:
This is the dumbest excuse I've heard since I searched a suspect and found a bindle of a "green leafy substance" in his sock. He looks me in the eye and says "Those aren't my socks".
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 20, 2012, 10:19:14 AM
"Those aren't my socks". :wink: They found that substance in Randy Moss' car when he couldn't break free from single coverage, a cop on the hood, and he said, I can't think of who's been driving this lately. ----------- "Photographs help Americans see the wars"
GM is right about lack of restraint but that is a given.
Making the adjustment to waging war in an age of instant cameras and photo transmission everywhere was a failure of a few troops in a couple crucial situations with tremendous cost. The giddiness you may feel after a necessary kill needs to be internal - even thousands miles away from the LA Times or al Jazeera headquarters.
There once was an NFL coach (Bud Grant) who told his players that when you get to the end zone, act like that is where the play was designed to go. Eleven years into the war, how are we not training soldiers what to do in the event of a kill - and enforcing the policy.
We also failed to make the adjustment in Washington to waging war in the age of daily tracking polls. Always hard to sell the public on the necessary war you command when you personally oppose it.
Cutting off ears, instantly transmitted photos and daily tracking polls do not mix or add up to a successfully sustained war effort against a fully committed enemy - who has our own media on their side.
Title: 100,000!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2012, 03:57:23 PM
Anothere 100,000 reads thread!
Well-done gents!
Title: Media Issues: Charles Blow, NY Times joined at the hip with Obama campaign
Post by: DougMacG on April 26, 2012, 07:32:39 AM
Written up 2 days ago for being in the tank for Pres.Obama by their own public editor: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-hard-look-at-the-president.html?_r=1
The unapologetic NY Times follows Romney's best speech of his life with a cheap retort by columnist Charles Blow trying to put Romneys words back to him: "we are not stupid": http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/we-are-not-stupid/
Reading it I learned all about clueless liberal columnists and the papers will to publish them and nothing about Romney.
"Mitt Romney has made clear during this primary season that he was willing to be neither moderate nor independent — but rather “severely conservative” — in seeking the Republican nomination."
Mr. Blow, you are writing about a GENERAL ELECTION speech you moron. With no opponents left he is no longer seeking the endorsement. And the issue of the election isn't "regressivity" and "social direction" unless you are shamelessly in the ideological tank, it is about jobs, recovery, growth and American strength.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 26, 2012, 10:26:50 AM
Sorry to disagree Doug, but I think you are missing a key distinction here. Blow(hard) is an opinion columnist. The question presented concerns news coverage.
Your argument would be the same as saying FOX's news show "The Bret Baier Report" is biased because Sean Hannity is a Republican shill.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 26, 2012, 11:56:18 AM
Crafty, No problem with disagreement.
You guys have called Hannity a blowhard too, maybe repetitive and not enjoyable to listen to, but in his diatribe I hear him use valid examples to back up the larger points that he makes. Rush L is as partisan-right as they come; when he pens an op/ed in the WSJ** he includes arguably valid points to support his assertions. This piece did not contain one that I could find.
Is it really a coherent point that this election is a referendum on Mitt Romney? Romney spelled out with the greatest clarity yet the difference in the visions between the parties and the campaigns and Blow says it is about tactics? Okay, if so, how so? He doesn't say.
Blow writes: "as the 2010 midterm elections showed, economic issues are something of a Trojan horse for the right" - huh?
Yes a liberal columnist is legit to print - the search is still on for a good one. This column to me is just sloppy journalism. He was ostensibly covering and opining on the Romney speech and there is no indication that he even saw it or heard it, not a single quote though he did say it contained 'some punchy lines'. It reflects on the publication 2 days after they admitted to being a partisan shill for the President - the link is in my post. This could havegone on cognitive dissonance of the left (or better yet ignore it for having adding nothing of value to the discussion), but Blow is media unless one admits the left and the mainstream media are one and the same.
For balance, I find this on their site: Romney’s Victory Speech By ANDREW ROSENTHAL "[Romney] did not mention the Republican Party, which holds more responsibility for the nation’s economic sluggishness than Mr. Obama." Good grief. Obama's WhiteHouse.gov is not THAT partisan. http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/romneys-victory-speech/
Their right to publish BS and nothing but on a major event in their good brand name is matched with my opportunity here, on a widely read forum, to call them out on it. )
** Rush Limbaugh in the WSJ. Points made and backed up, whether one agrees with him or not. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123318906638926749.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703876404575199743566950622.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704322004574477021697942920.html
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 26, 2012, 12:02:46 PM
***Blow writes: "as the 2010 midterm elections showed, economic issues are something of a Trojan horse for the right" - huh?***
Blow is famous for letting emotion get in the way of any sound logic or common sense.
Then again the whole Democrat party is having a hard time explaining the liberal agenda in a logical/rational way.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 26, 2012, 03:40:36 PM
My point is that you are commingling news http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-hard-look-at-the-president.html?_r=1 and opinion (Blowhard, Hannity, whomever)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on April 30, 2012, 09:33:33 AM
The sharpest remark of the evening came from Kimmel at the conclusion of his monologue.
"Some people say journalism is in decline, they say you've become too politicized, too focused on sensationalism, they say you no longer honor your duty to inform America but instead actively divide us so that your corporate overlord can rake in the profits," Kimmel said. "I don't have a joke for this, it's just what some people say."
"What do you think of the Republican criticism that we are politicizing it -- that the White House, I should say, is politicizing it?" --------- Worried about my previous commingling, is she news or opinion? :wink:
Title: CNN lowest ratings in more than ten years
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2012, 11:03:46 AM
Title: Cognitive Dissonance of the Media - Close Elections
Post by: DougMacG on June 07, 2012, 01:22:11 PM
Obama won in 2008 in a landslide election ... 7 point victory.
Walker won a close one. ... 7 point victory. ---------------------- The headline in the print edition of Washington Post June 6 2012: “Wisc. governor Walker survives recall election: long lines and a close vote.” --------------------- "Scott Walker Retains Governorship in Close Recall Election" http://gawker.com/5916100/scott-walker-retains-governorship-in-close-recall-election --------------------- Obama wins election in landslide to become first black president BY ASSOCIATED PRESS Published November 5, 2008 http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2008-11-05/obama-wins-election-landslide-become-nations-first-black-president --------------------- "How close is close?" http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/how-close-is-close.php --------------------- I heard a Russian immigrant caller to the Rush L show comment that the old Soviet Union only had one network lying to them. Here we seem to have a whole conspiracy of synchronized networks spewing out planned disinformation.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on June 07, 2012, 02:07:17 PM
Speaking of lying. When our Atty General sworn to uphold the law can't even tell the truth!
What does this say about our country?
Thanks to Clinton lying at the highest levels has become total sport and an art.
Any semblence of honesty with integrity is simply out the window.
Title: MSNBC caught in flagrant cheap shot of MR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2012, 01:59:34 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues: POTH would rather be in Fallujah
Post by: DougMacG on July 26, 2012, 11:01:06 AM
When Bush won 'unexpectedly' in 2004, NYT reporters were reportedly telling each other they didn't even know anyone who voted for Bush. Rush L humorously pointed out that they would have to send "foreign correspondents" out to the heartland to find out what happened.
Let the record reflect that 61 years after the oil discovery the POTH has now sent an opinion reporter out to Williston, North Dakota to file a condescending and derogatory * report on a boom that has the potential to change geo-politics.
I know it was a day trip because the hotels are booked and she certainly doesn't have any friends there.
* "There are certain things that journalists do as a public service because you, the noble reader, are probably not going to do them for yourself — like attending charter revision meetings or reading the autobiography of Tim Pawlenty. Going to Williston is sort of in this category." - Gail Collins, NY Times
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 26, 2012, 11:27:34 AM
"* "There are certain things that journalists do as a public service because you, the noble reader, are probably not going to do them for yourself — like attending charter revision meetings or reading the autobiography of Tim Pawlenty. Going to Williston is sort of in this category." - Gail Collins, NY Times"
Classic POTH! :lol:
Title: Revelations on the scripting of stories
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2012, 08:21:00 AM
Title: Volunteer "Pravda" network of "reporters"
Post by: DougMacG on August 01, 2012, 12:03:11 PM
Good question Obj (corrupt media comments on Pres 2012 thread) and I'm sure there is no great answer. I resent having to go to right wing sites to get basic news and analysis that should be more widely available. The market is making it's own correction but it's happening too slow and not in the way we might have expected. As you mention, the huge successes of Rush L and Fox News are examples of movement, yet the so-called mainstream seem unchanged in spite of market share they surrender.. Obviously the circulation of stories and facts, opinions and analyses through sites like this is our way of getting the information out.
A Russian immigrant observed that it is worse, in a way, here than in the old Soviet Union with the real Pravda. They have one state run media while we have a whole near-monopoly conspiracy of them, repeating and amplifying a message the rest of us find biased and deceitful.
One of the most insightful feature of the Rush L show now copied by others is the media montage. They aren't just telling the same story, they are using the same words. One of the first I picked up "gravitas" with the Cheney choice for VP. The point of course to them is that is what George Bush lacked at the top of the ticket. That word went from never used to in almost every sentence on every media outlet covering the choice. Since then there have been dozens and dozens more examples. Even Fox News on the radio is a parrot of the other networks IMO. The choice of words covering an issue can be crucial.
Places like Powerline and others take on institutions like the NY Times regularly. They got them today on the flaws in their poll and they've exposed them big time on a host of badly covered topics. Still their readership is small compared to the bankrupting newspaper. They also played a big part in taking down Dan Rather on his 'fake but true' story, but they did not take down the liberal bias of SeeBS. Microsoft pulled back from MSNBC.com but that didn't change the bias on cable. My thought was that these exposures of bias caused errors would lead to a shake up and a correction. Instead they take pride in their niche while their importance is diminishing.
I used to write opposition pieces for the local paper; my counterpoint ran across from the Mpls StarTribune (star and sickle) endorsement of Bill Clinton in 92. In their editing, they cut a key paragraph that tied in with other points I was making. After that I wrote 'no editing without my permission' on subsequent submissions and was never published there again.
Other conservatives advise not to write for them at all. Don't help them improve their product. Let it die and the best way to make them go away is to ignore them completely and get news from better sources.
I like to search for stories of interest from the accumulator sites, Real Clear Politics is one of the best, also Drudge, The Blaze, Free Republic and DBMA. ) Google News allows you to choose which outlet to read a current story. Powerlineblog keeps a running referral to about 6 picks of noteworthy stories current on the web. WSJ's James Taranto writes a Best of the Web piece every business afternoon, no subscription required, with excellent insights and humor. Add in the Huffington Post, might as well turn to left instead of pretend mainstream to know what they are thinking and reading. It is important to see and read the opponents in their own words, so don't leave those out no matter your view.
Seriously this forum is an excellent antidote because the posters here all share from their own unique reading lists on a wide range of topics and issues.
Title: Michael Barone on recent examples of media's selective reporting...
Post by: objectivist1 on August 06, 2012, 01:53:37 PM
Supporters of Ted Cruz and Chick-fil-A Break News
By Michael Barone - August 6, 2012
Americans keep behaving in ways that baffle the liberal mainstream media. Two examples figured prominently -- or should have -- in last week's news.
One is the runoff primary for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz thumped incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, 57 to 43 percent.
Cruz won even though the Texas Republican establishment, from Gov. Rick Perry on down, endorsed Dewhurst. So did the Austin lobbying community, since Dewhurst as lieutenant governor has run the state Senate for the last 10 years (and, having lost this race, will do so for at least the next two).
Dewhurst has had a generally conservative record and had no problem getting elected and re-elected statewide four times. And he spent liberally from the fortune he made in the private sector.
To be fair, some MSM outlets did run stories on Cruz's rise in the polls since he ran behind Dewhurst by a 45 to 34 percent margin in the May 29 primary. And it's not uncommon for a second-place finisher to overcome the primary winner in a runoff.
But there's a pattern here that the big liberal press has been reluctant to recognize: Candidates from the GOP establishment are getting knocked off by challengers with less name recognition, far less money and the support of the tea party movement. The tea party was supposed to be dead and gone, you know.
There were two such victories in May, when six-term Sen. Richard Lugar was upset by state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in Indiana and when state Sen. Deb Fischer beat two well-known contenders for the open seat nomination in Nebraska.
Cruz, who is the odds-on favorite in November, has the credentials and policy positions to be a figure of national importance for many years. At 41, he could represent the second-largest state in the Senate for decades.
And there's a tradition of Texas senators taking the lead in public policy, from the days of Tom Connally and Lyndon Johnson and including John Tower, Lloyd Bentsen and Phil Gramm.
Cruz has a fine legal pedigree. He was a law clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and argued nine cases (and won five) in the U.S. Supreme Court representing Texas. As a teenager, he memorized and gave lectures on the Constitution, and on the stump he emphasized the founding document's limits on the power of government.
The big media has assumed that tea partiers are potentially violent despite the lack of evidence of any violent behavior. That's why ABC's Brian Ross mentioned on-air an Aurora, Colo., tea partier with the same name as the movie theater murderer, although it's a common name and Aurora has 325,000 people.
In contrast, the MSM has been happy to celebrate the much smaller and often violent Occupy movement and characterize it as "mostly nonviolent."
Texas showed once again that many voters are eager to turn out and vote for tea party-backed candidates. Cruz won by about 2 to 1 in fast-growing exurban counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and metro Houston.
The MSM could hardly avoid reporting Cruz's victory Tuesday. But many news outlets ignored Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day Wednesday.
There were big crowds, long drive-up lines and record sales at the chain's stores, in response to the declarations by the mayors of Chicago, Boston and Washington that they would keep the restaurant out because of its owners' opposition to same-sex marriage.
That's not "Chicago values," said Mayor Rahm Emanuel, although there are many Chicagoans on both sides of this issue, just as many are on both sides, in varying proportions, throughout the country. But even many supporters of same-sex marriage like me were appalled at the spectacle of public officials barring businesses because of the religious or political beliefs of their owners.
In Huntsville, Ala., YouTube celebrity Antoine Dodson, who is openly gay, dined at Chick-fil-A on Wednesday. "That's what freedom is. We don't all have to believe in the same things," he told a Huntsville Times reporter.
"We all have our different beliefs and can still come together and still be friends and be cool with each other," he said. "So I'm here to be in support of the employees, and I'm also coming to get that spicy chicken sandwich."
Dodson presumably is not an expert on the Constitution like Ted Cruz. But he has something to teach the liberal mainstream media about the spirit of the Founders.
Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Title: WSJ: The Pinnochio Press: Fact Checkers Fuct
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2012, 06:54:57 AM
The Pinocchio Press
The bizarre rise of "fact checking" propagandists.. JAMES TARANTO
In the 19th-century fairy tale "The Adventures of Pinocchio," the eponymous protagonist is a wooden puppet who dreams of becoming an actual boy. We suppose people who work as fact checkers have long dreamed of becoming writers and editors, who enjoy, respectively, the glory and the power in journalism.
Associated Press/Sven Kaestner The new face of journalism? . Outside the world of journalism, fact checkers were pretty much unknown until recently. Like proofreaders, they work behind the scenes. Their job is quality control. The most rigorous fact-checking operations--The New Yorker's and Reader's Digest's are the best known among us who know about such things--would scrutinize every factual assertion in an article, reporting back so that any error could be corrected.
Over the past few years, many organizations have promoted "fact checkers" by making them writers, or perhaps demoted writers by making them fact checkers. No, it's more the former, because other writers have been bowing to the "fact checkers" as submissively as Barack Obama upon meeting some anti-American dictator.
"Fact-checker findings, including those by The Washington Post's project, figure prominently in campaign ads," enthuses a Post news story. "The unique rating systems used by these organizations--including the trademarked Truth-O-Meter and Pinocchios--have become part of the political vernacular." A New York Times news story laments that fact checkers "verdicts . . . are often drowned out by dissent."
Perhaps the reason other journalists are so deferential toward the "fact checkers" is that these fact checkers, unlike the traditional ones, don't check the facts of journalists but of politicians. By and large, they aren't actually checking facts but making and asserting judgments about the veracity of politicians' arguments.
The quality of their work is generally quite poor. "The MSM's ['mainstream' media's] fact-checkers often don't know what they're talking about," notes Mickey Kaus, who cites an example on a subject he knows well:
The oft-cited CNN-"fact check" of Romney's welfare ad makes a big deal of HHS secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius' pledge that she will only grant waivers to states that "commit that their proposals will move at least 20% more people from welfare to work." CNN swallows this 20% Rule whole in the course of declaring Romney's objection "wrong":
"The waivers gave 'those states some flexibility in how they manage their welfare rolls as long as it produced 20% increases in the number of people getting work.' "
Why, it looks as if Obama wants to make the work provisions tougher! Fact-check.org cites the same 20% rule.
I was initially skeptical of Sebelius' 20% pledge, since a) it measures the 20% against "the state's past performance," not what the state's performance would be if it actually tried to comply with the welfare law's requirements as written, and b) Sebelius pulled it out of thin air only after it became clear that the new waiver rule could be a political problem for the president. She could just as easily drop it in the future; and c) Sebelius made it clear the states don't have to actually achieve the 20% goal--only "demonstrate clear progress toward" it.
But Robert Rector, a welfare reform zealot who nevertheless does know what he's talking about, has now published a longer analysis of the 20% rule. Turns out it's not as big a scam as I'd thought it was. It's a much bigger scam.
The merits of the argument are beyond the scope of today's column. It is quite possible that there are people whose knowledge of the subject is as deep as Kaus's and Rector's but whose honest interpretation is more favorable to the Sebelius position. An appeal to their authority could carry as much weight as our appeal to Kaus's and Rector's.
But an appeal to the authority of "independent fact checkers" carries no weight at all. In case you're skeptical of this assertion, let's look at some other examples of their output from the past week.
Here's an excerpt from an Associated Press "fact check" of Paul Ryan's convention speech:
RYAN: "And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. . . . So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama."
THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee. . . .
RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."
THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan.
In both of these cases, the AP neither disputes nor verifies the factual accuracy of Ryan's statements. Each of these is simply a tu quoque--an argument against Ryan. Under the guise of fact checking, the AP is simply taking sides in a partisan political dispute.
The most disputed portion of Ryan's speech involved the closing of a General Motors plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wis. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal Friday defended Ryan's account against "the press corps 'fact checkers' and the liberals who love them."
But even the so-called fact checkers can't agree on the facts. PolitiFact rated Ryan's account "false," while CNN.com called it "true but incomplete." Anyone who really believes in the authority of "fact checkers" has a liar's paradox problem.
Sometimes the so-called checks are just red herrings. Here's an example from ABC News:
In comparing President Obama to Jimmy Carter, Ryan said in July 1980 the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent and "for the past 42 months it's been above 8 percent under Barack Obama's failed leadership."
Both parts of this sentence are true according to the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, but in July 1983, when Ronald Reagan was president, unemployment was at 9.4 percent. In July 1982 it was higher at 9.8 percent.
In July 1992, when George H.W. Bush was president, unemployment was at 7.7 percent.
Is what Ryan said factually correct? Yes, but it leaves out some important data.
Ryan compared Obama to Carter. AP thinks he should also (or instead) have compared Obama to Reagan and Bush. There is no factual dispute here whatever.
Sometimes the "fact checkers" are ignorant even of facts that, in contrast with the welfare material above, require no special expertise to know. This is from a CNN.com "fact check":
In a new policy paper, his Republican rival for the White House, Mitt Romney, says, "President Obama has intentionally sought to shut down oil, gas, and coal production in pursuit of his own alternative energy agenda." . . .
Obama has, for sure, angered some oil and coal producers by steering federal money to alternative energy sources. But there is no evidence that he is trying to "shut down" traditional energy industries.
No evidence? How about Obama's own words? "So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them, because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Sometimes the "fact checkers" simply pronounce trivial truths. From the AP on Mitt Romney's convention speech:
ROMNEY: "I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has five steps."
THE FACTS: No one says he can't, but economic forecasters are divided on his ability to deliver. He'd have to nearly double the anemic pace of job growth lately.
This is like "fact checking" somebody's wedding vows by asserting that while marriage can be wonderful, it's hard work and ends in divorce half the time.
Among "fact checkers," the worst of a bad lot may be the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler. On Thursday afternoon he actually wrote a post called "Previewing the 'Facts' in Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech." With those scare quotes, he declared the Republican nominee a liar before Romney had even opened his mouth.
Conservative blogger Stacy McCain describes "the pattern for Republican National Convention coverage: Democrats choose their themes, issue their talking points and their media henchpersons then repeat the partisan spin as if it were a matter of indisputable fact." Kessler didn't wait; he wrote the talking points himself.
The usual conservative complaint about all this "fact checking" is the same as the conservative complaint about the MSM's product in general: that it is overwhelmingly biased toward the left. But the form amplifies the bias. It gives journalists much freer rein to express their opinions by allowing them to pretend to be rendering authoritative judgments about the facts. The result, as we've seen, is shoddy arguments and shoddier journalism.
The partisan fault-finding directed against Republicans is accompanied by partisan excuse-making for Democrats. Thus ABCNews.com tries yet again to rationalize away Obama's most notorious presidential utterance:
Greeting Air Force One as it touched down [in Iowa] under sunny skies and sultry heat was a hand-painted banner draped across the top of an airplane hangar that reads, "Obama Welcome to SUX--We Did Build This." "SUX" is the airport code for Sioux City.
The message appeared to be a response President Obama's "you didn't build that" remark from a July campaign rally, when he was trying to explain that government--not businesses--constructed public infrastructure on which the economy relies.
"Obama is casting his net for the moron vote," wrote R. Emmett Tyrrell in a recent column. "I do not believe that there are enough morons out there to reelect him." But if ABC is right that Obama found it necessary to "explain" that government builds "public infrastructure," the president is also making a play for the idiot vote.
Bad journalism feeds into ever-more-extreme rhetoric from the left. "Last night, Paul Ryan lied to the American people," wrote Brenda Witt of MoveOn.org in a Thursday email. "Some journalists and outlets covered Ryan's lies. But others failed to check the facts and didn't call Ryan out on his brazen lies." The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Greetings from the California delegation breakfast at the DNC where before he had a cup of coffee Democratic Party Chair John Burton--much like his ol' palGuv Jerry Brown once did--just compared the Republicans to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, for "telling the big lie," a reference to several [putative] falsehoods GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan recently told.
"They lie and they don't care if people think they lie . . . Joseph Goebbels--it's the big lie, you keep repeating it," Burton said Monday before the Blake Hotel breakfast. He said Ryan told "a bold-faced lie and he doesn't care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie."
You see the progression. Journalists claiming to be engaged in "fact checking" make tendentious arguments against Republicans. Left-wing partisans rely on the authority of the "fact checkers" to call their opponents liars or even Nazis.
One gets a sense of desperation from both the Democrats, who are trying to re-elect a president with a lousy record, and the MSM, who are trying to restore the authority they enjoyed when they aspired to objectivity, or at least pretended convincingly to do so.
Obama may yet eke out an ugly victory, but the decline of the MSM's authority seems inexorable. And it's not only "fact checkers" who are acting like out-and-out partisans. Time's Joe Klein is "the Pope of American political journalists" according to the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur. RealClearPolitics notes an ex cathedra pronouncement he made the other day when he granted an audience to the New York Times's Helene Cooper:
Cooper: Four years of covering Barack Obama, he does not play the race card. Not in a negative way. He does not do that.
Klein: He hates it. He hates it. He probably should, though. He probably should address it because the bitterness out there is really becoming marked.
Some may dispute Cooper's claim that Obama doesn't "play the race card." But Klein's assertion that he "probably should" is really quite stunning. It's almost certainly bad advice. Indeed, we'd say following it in 2008 would have been one of the few ways he could have lost to John McCain. Successful or not, the attempt to foment racial division would be as repugnant coming from a black leftist as from a white conservative.
Above all, though: What in the world is a journalist doing offering such rancid advice? In general terms, the same thing all those "fact checkers" are doing. Also the same thing journalists did when they slandered the Tea Party as racist, and when they wrote puff pieces about ObamaCare and insisted the public would learn to love it, and when they falsely blamed conservatives for the Tucson massacre.
During the Obama era, so-called mainstream journalism has increasingly been characterized by a blurring of the distinction between not only fact and opinion but opinion and propaganda. One can only hope the audience sees matters more clearly
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 05, 2012, 02:03:29 PM
Good post. It remains to be seen how CNN's anchors fact check the Dems during their convention.
The women anchors on CNN hve made Republican "fact checking" a career taking it on with passion and vengeance.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: JDN on September 05, 2012, 02:21:09 PM
It does remain to be seen.
As most here know, I am a fan of snoopes.com I think they are honest and unbiased; they seek the truth.
But merely because someone calls themselves a "fact checker" doesn't mean $%^&*.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 08, 2012, 10:27:57 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: jcordova on September 08, 2012, 12:03:13 PM
ALL THE BIG MEDIA COMPANIES HAVE ALWAYS NEVER EXPOSED THE TRUTH. IF A REPORTER TRIES TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH, HE/ SHE GET SHUT DOWN IN AN INSTANT. :-(
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 09, 2012, 09:06:09 AM
This AM obama's surrogate Fareed Zakaria is twisting the arguments ass backwards and saying the Republicans, and conservatives are angry at America.
It is all "nostalgia" which is the liberal's new way of saying the Republicans just are white male racists who want white supremacy.
He had a bunch of liberal friends from Harvard (of course or Princeton of course) to advance his case.
The liberals will not cease to make this into a race baiting election.
My answer is if the right was about nostalgia for slavery or segregation than why are we trying as hard as possible to include as many minorities as possible.
Romney has to make the case it is the left that hates American ideals, hates American exceptionalism, capatilism, constitutionalism, and limited government. With regard to the latter MR and conservatives continue to fail to make the case that less government is better.
Today Art Laffler was on FOX and was asked specifically and directly an important question that goes to the heart of today's neo civil war.
He was asked why is should people believe that "trickle down" economics is better for the majority of people? Do not the rich keep getting richer and the rest of the people stagnate? Why not increase tax rates on higher earners, Clinton did it and the economy boomed. Laffler was a complete failure at articulating a logical rational simple response that most people would agree to.
I gaurantee Doug McG would do a far better job at answering these questions ina way the average could understand and immediately agree to.
I do not understand why these core questions are not being answered by the MR team. All they do is talk "jobs", the "debt", and other buzz words that DO NOT specify why history proves them/us rright and the socialists wrong.
If they can learn to answer these types of questions then the game is won. If not we wiol contine to have fecnce sitters who will decide the safer course is government handouts and wealth transfer.
I just get it. Romney is still playing a win by default game.
Title: Re: Media Issues, remembering 9/11
Post by: DougMacG on September 11, 2012, 01:54:32 PM
Excellent attention to remembering 9/11 in the media today. Why? Because Obama killed Osama.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 20, 2012, 09:13:11 AM
A day or two ago Geraldo Rivera was asking a guest about Romney's 47% comments and his first question had to do with somethng to the affect was this a criticism of Blacks.
I couldn't believe he was turning this issue into a racial thing.
He sits on Fox and he calls himself a Republiican? He is no republican he is saying that only because he is on Fox.
I am no longer a fan of Rivera.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 20, 2012, 09:33:23 AM
You just noticed that Rivera is an idiot?!? :lol:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: objectivist1 on September 20, 2012, 10:42:28 AM
I second Crafty's surprise. Rivera has seen virtually EVERYTHING through a racist prism as long as I can remember. He vehemently defended Bill Clinton during the impeachment, then was surprised later when Clinton threw him under the bus and wouldn't give him the time of day. When Rivera was hired at Fox a few years ago, the network received thousands of letters/e-mails from viewers outraged that they would hire this pathetic excuse for a journalist. The man is a fool.
Title: Good Job Univision!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 21, 2012, 05:26:51 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues - Pull Polling from the agenda driven media
Post by: DougMacG on September 27, 2012, 06:33:08 AM
In polling, the media is the story unless you think there is some science to slop like this. Most dramatic of the latest false polls, NY Times and See-BS are putting their names on polls that put Obama up by 10 in Ohio. Obama is going to win in 2012 by a margin of 5 times what he had in the euphoria of 2008? And the margin of error is what, 3%? Ha ha.
Was there any adjustment made after all t he polls were wrong in Wisconsin by 6 points, any change to the turnout model after Obama's party lost by 7 points nationwide in 2010? I don't think so.
Romney is leading by 10 with independents, has stronger enthusiasm from his base and will lose the election and closest states by 10 or more??
Instead of arguing the internals, let's just watch and see. The election is soon enough. Watch them tighten up their own results just before the election as the last one is the only one for which anyone can measure accuracy. Meanwhile, this crap will linger as the rest of the media follows the poll averages in measurfes like the RCP average. Readers and viewers should walk away from these failed brands, unless what they print you think is the unbiased truth. Lol.
In polling, the media is the story unless you think there is some science to slop like this. Most dramatic of the latest false polls, NY Times and See-BS are putting their names on polls that put Obama up by 10 in Ohio. Obama is going to win in 2012 by a margin of 5 times what he had in the euphoria of 2008? And the margin of error is what, 3%? Ha ha.
Was there any adjustment made after all t he polls were wrong in Wisconsin by 6 points, any change to the turnout model after Obama's party lost by 7 points nationwide in 2010? I don't think so.
Romney is leading by 10 with independents, has stronger enthusiasm from his base and will lose the election and closest states by 10 or more??
Instead of arguing the internals, let's just watch and see. The election is soon enough. Watch them tighten up their own results just before the election as the last one is the only one for which anyone can measure accuracy. Meanwhile, this crap will linger as the rest of the media follows the poll averages in measurfes like the RCP average. Readers and viewers should walk away from these failed brands, unless what they print you think is the unbiased truth. Lol.
The Five False Assumptions Behind Poll-Skewing September 27, 2012 - 11:20 am - by Zombie Polls polls polls polls polls. In the weeks leading up to a presidential election, that’s all anyone talks about. Polls subsume all other news: Every soundbite, disaster, current event, policy, gaffe, decision and incident are merely vectors in pollspace, data which may or may not nudge the candidates’ numbers up or down a notch.
Therefore he who controls the polls can retroactively control everything that happens: Any event or utterance can be afterward spun as wonderful or ruinous if you can demonstrate that the subsequent poll showed a bounce or a dip. Polls are seen as irrefutable ex post facto evidence that a slanted news report was in fact accurate: “See? You complained when we quickly labeled the candidate’s joke as a ‘gaffe,’ but this new poll shows he dropped three points, so that proves it really was a gaffe.”
As a result, the 2012 presidential campaign is paralleled by a surrogate Poll War enjoined by each side’s supporters in the punditocracy. Whatever else happens in real life, the partisans are in an endless down-and-dirty mud-wrestling match over the veracity and reliability of polls.
The Purpose of Poll-Skewing
Each side has defined for itself an ultimate goal. Obama’s supporters in the media and online strive incessantly to demonstrate and publicize that Obama is ahead in the polls. Romney’s supporters strive to demonstrate that those polls are skewed, since the published totals are “weighted” (i.e. arbitrarily distorted) to match statistics about past voter behavior that are no longer true.
Now, if you had just landed on Earth from another galaxy, you likely would be very confused about this behavior on the part of the poll-wrestlers. Presuming there is such a thing as objective reality, there must be a certain true percentage of people who support each candidate — so what purpose is served by intentionally misrepresenting that reality if, at the end of the campaign, that misrepresentation will be trumped by an actual vote? Isn’t the purpose of polls to reveal a snapshot of how things really stand?
Oh you naive extraterrestrials, we reply. Originally, yes, polls were meant to document reality, but nowadays polls are designed to mold reality. If two candidates are in truth currently tied, but we announce that one of them is in the lead, then on election day he will actually win, because our false poll reporting affected how people vote. Get it?
Amateur Mass Psychology
No, actually, I don’t get it. This entire strategy, which dominates the 2012 election even more than it dominated earlier campaigns, is based on some amateurish assumptions about mass psychology that have never been proven, or even tested. I find it extremely odd that no one has ever questioned these assumptions — until now, at least — because so much depends on them. What if it turns out, after endless person-hours expended on the Poll Wars, that the assumptions justifying poll-skewing are completely wrong?
For poll-skewing to be effective, all five of the following hidden assumptions about human psychology must be true:
ASSUMPTION #1
• When a person sees that his team is in second place, he gives up and stops fighting.
Perhaps I’m different from everyone else on Earth. Maybe I’ve got grit that everyone else lacks. But when I see myself behind in an ongoing competition, I redouble my efforts in an attempt to win.
But I don’t really think I’m different at all. I think most people react exactly as I do. In fact, personnel managers often rely on this common behavioral trait to motivate employees by pitting them against each other and then implying to each one that if only he tried a little bit harder he would surpass all the other employees and win the promotion. The end result is that each employee, thinking his promotion is in danger, works more energetically to achieve hoped-for victory.
Here’s an example. Let’s just say that in some battleground state Obama and Romney are essentially tied in the raw polling data, but in an attempt to “depress the vote” among Romney supporters the media and partisan pollsters intentionally skew the results and announce that Obama is actually up by three points. What would be the group psychology consequence of this false announcement?
The Obama partisans assume that Romney supporters will see the false Romney-is-losing poll results, get discouraged, and say to themselves, “Gee, looks like Romney is going to lose. There’s no point in voting for him. I give up. I’m not going to vote on election day.” And then Obama really would win by three points.
Now to me, that would be a bizarre and unlikely reaction. I would assume the exact opposite — that the Romney supporters would become unnecessarily alarmed at such a poll result and as a consequence would fight harder for their candidate: “Gee, Romney is trailing at the polls: I’d better go volunteer at the campaign office and make sure all my fellow Republicans vote with me on election day to help Romney pass Obama at the finish line.” And the consequence would be that Romney won by three points.
So: We have two competing assumptions, one (held by most Democratic strategists) that skewed poll results will discourage opposition voters, and one (held by me) that skewed poll results will energize opposition voters.
Surely, there is some evidence, some study, supporting one assumption over the other — right? Well, as far as I can tell, no, there isn’t. For this entire campaign season I’ve searched in vain for some kind of verification that the unquestioned assumptions underlying the “depress the vote” strategy are even true. But no one’s ever done such a study, and I doubt any strategists have ever spent two seconds questioning their assumptions about mass psychology.
And how would such a study be conducted? It’s not like a pollster can ask voters, “If your favorite candidate was actually ahead in popularity, but the only way you could know this fact was from the results of polls, and if then a pollster like me intentionally lied and told you that your candidate was actually losing, would the deception work on you and cause you to become discouraged and not vote at all?” I’d imagine that the pollster would get a punch in the nose rather than a well-reasoned answer.
But if there’s no data to support the assumptions behind the “depress the vote” strategy, then who’s to say whether the assumption is correct? Simply because more people have that assumption? And how do we prove that? Do we take a poll of people about their group psychology assumptions? “Do you assume that falsely distorted poll results will depress votes for a candidate or energize his supporters?” And what if those poll results are themselves skewed? Where does it end?
And so we come to an astonishing conclusion: That thousands of campaign strategists for decades have been operating on an assumption that has never been confirmed, and that for all anyone knows the exact opposite could be true — that poll results skewed against a candidate only end up energizing his supporters and increasing his final vote tally.
ASSUMPTION #2
• People’s desire to be part of the “in crowd” is much stronger than any political philosophy they may have.
The next assumption justifying skewed poll reporting is that people’s fear of being perceived as an “outsider” or member of a losing faction outweighs their political beliefs. Thus, people will flippantly switch votes to whichever candidate is likely to win merely so as to then feel like part of the “winning team.” If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Is this assumption accurate? I can’t say for sure. There probably are some people who are so shallow, so obsessed with social maneuvering and so despicable that they will side with the perceived majority in any situation, even if it entails utter hypocrisy and moral vacuity. But do such people even bother to vote? It’s hard to visualize such a person, but I imagine they’re more concerned about what eye-shadow Kim Kardashian wears than they are about the fate of civilization.
Furthermore, it seems more and more, especially in the last four years, that the opposing political factions have hardened, the fissure between them has deepened, and rarely these days does anyone say the once-common refrain “There’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats.” Consequently, it has become much more difficult to casually switch camps, because now that involves flipping from one political extreme to another, rather than (as it used to be seen) choosing between two very similar options.
Flip-floppers and fair-weather vote traitors are a dying breed. Are they common enough to affect the result of a national election by voting for Obama simply because they were tricked into thinking he was guaranteed to win? Quite doubtful. I have no hard statistics on the rarity of flippant vote-switchers, but then again nor do the strategists laboring overtime to deceive them. Are those labors all a grand waste of time?
ASSUMPTION #3
• The liberal media can communicate directly to their conservative opponents with reverse dog whistles, while winking to Obama voters that they should ignore the lies.
The American left is obsessed with the concept of the “dog whistle,” an imaginary mode of communication in which conservative speakers, addressing a general audience, use secret code words to convey racist sentiments to fellow racist conservatives, which the rest of the audience presumably doesn’t notice (except for those too-clever Dog Whistle Detectives who spot racist code words in every Republican utterance).
Dog Whistle Code is actually an interesting logical problem: How can you embed a specialized message for a specific target audience in a communiqué that is broadcast to the general public? Long gone are the days when anyone could keep narrowcasting private; now, if you try to give a partisan message to a partisan audience, it will inevitably leak out to a shocked world. Therefore every utterance must be presumed to be broadcast generally, and any messages targeted at a specific subgroup must be secretly incorporated into a statement everyone can hear.
But the situation becomes doubly difficult when your target audience is not your close political comrades but rather your ideological opponents. But that’s exactly what the Obama-loving media is trying to do.
The goal of generating and promulgating skewed poll results is to (theoretically) depress and discourage Republican voters; but there is an unwanted side-effect that the media wishes to avoid: Inducing complacency on the part of Obama voters.
If you assume that a conservative activist will give up hope and stop fighting when he learns that his candidate is losing by a wide margin, then you necessarily will also assume that the reverse is true as well: That an opposing liberal activist will become lax, over-confident and complacent when he sees that his candidate is winning by a wide margin.
The corollary of “Dang it, my guy is losing by a wide margin, so there’s no point in voting” is “Yay! My guy is winning easily, so there’s no need to vote.”
So when the pro-Obama media and supporting punditocracy trumpet a new skewed poll, the hope is that conservatives will see it and become disheartened; while liberals are supposed to see it and understand (wink wink) that it’s a lie directed at someone else, which they should therefore ignore.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. If anything, Obama supporters seem to lap up and internalize the “Obama will win effortlessly” meme far more eagerly and unquestioningly than Romney supporters, who have become jaundiced and distrustful of anything the media does.
The end result is that for every Romney voter who stays home because he was tricked into thinking his vote will be futile in a sea of Obama votes, there may very well be an equal number of Obama voters who stay home because they were incidentally tricked into thinking their votes are unnecessary since Obama will win in a landslide.
And once again, I don’t have statistics for this, but neither do the Democratic strategists, because it’s basically impossible to poll future non-voters about why they will fail to vote. For all anyone knows, there will be five Obama voters who stay home out of over-confidence and complacency for every Romney voter who stays home out of depression.
ASSUMPTION #4
• Low-information undecided voters in swing states pay attention to the news, current events and polls.
As I noted in my previous essay, the few remaining undecided voters are the kind of people who would rather watch reruns of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” than live broadcasts of the Democratic and Republican party conventions. They have absolutely zero interest in politics.
This impression was confirmed by some man-on-street interviews with random New York voters which Howard Stern recently broadcast on his radio show. The interviewees were breathtakingly ignorant, had only the vaguest notion of who was even running for President, and agreed with any statement the interviewers made, including that Romney was Muslim, that Obama had picked Paul Ryan as his running mate, that John McCain was the 2012 Republican nominee, and so forth.
The Honey Boo Boo viewers and the New York morons, along with many of the other low-information voters around the country, don’t follow the ups and downs of daily polling; most of them probably don’t even know there is an election coming up. Heck, most of them probably can’t even read. They are, in essence, unreachable.
Low-Information Undecideds never notice the details: all they can perceive is the general atmosphere. Thus, the interview subjects in New York all said they were voting for Obama, not because of any reason they could name, but simply because they were in New York and in New York everybody votes for Obama. And I’m quite sure that if one went to certain counties in Texas one could find people planning to vote Republican for no other reason than it’s what “everybody does.”
So the pollsters reason: If we can create that atmosphere of Obama’s inevitable victory and universal popularity, then we can “convince” Low-Information Undecideds to vote for Obama simply because they will be mimicking what they think everyone else is doing.
But there’s a flaw in this plan. Swing states and battleground states are defined as such for a reason: They are evenly split between Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative. There is no overarching political culture that dominates the atmosphere, as there is in (for example) San Francisco, or Provo, Utah.
Therefore the task confronting partisan pollsters in swing states is almost insurmountable: Create the false impression that Obama is overwhelmingly popular in an area where he is in fact not. It’s next to impossible to fabricate a Potemkin Village of widespread pro-Obama enthusiasm visible only to people notorious for not paying any attention. If Low-Information Undecideds merely ape what their neighbors do, in a swing state half those neighbors are going to be Republicans and half are going to be Democrats, and no amount of skewed polling can disguise that fact.
ASSUMPTION #5
• Polling companies need to be accurate in order to gain a reputation for reliability, so they have no motivation to lie.
This assumption, which the pollsters hope the public has, is partly true. A reputation for accuracy is one way for a polling company to attract clients.
But polling companies have a second motivation often at odds with and usually trumping the desire for accuracy: To give their clients (in this instance, political campaigns) what they want.
Want to see a poll that shows you’re winning (so you can use those false stats to sway the electorate?) You got it!
Want us to weight the results so that opposing voters become too despondent to bother voting? You got it!
Want evidence that you were in the lead so that when when voter fraud propels you to otherwise undeserved victory, it looks believable? You got it!
Campaigns will seek out any pollster who can provide them with the propaganda necessary to manipulate the election. Accuracy is only useful for secret internal polls; intentionally deceptive skewing is useful as tool to trick voters.
Some voters have figured this out, and now place more trust in the campaign’s secret internal polls than they do in publicly announced polls. But outsiders rarely get a glimpse of those secret internal polls unless they’re intentionally leaked. Diabolical campaign managers have begun to realize that they can also sway those hard-to-discourage skeptical voters by “leaking” supposedly reliable internal polling numbers which support their propagandistic goal; and since the polls are secret, there’s no expectation to release the underlying breakdowns, so the propagandists are free to concoct and release any “internal polling numbers” they so desire.
All in all, the polling industry has just as much if not more structural motivation for corruption as it has for honesty, so we can’t rely on the “marketplace” to weed out biased polls.
Conclusion
Five assumptions. Never questioned. All or most of them need to be true for poll-skewing to be effective. And yet under closer inspection none of them are proven to be true. On the other hand, there’s no solid evidence that they’re false, either; it’s all a guessing game of untested hypotheses. From my vantage point, which in the absence of any solid data is as valid as anyone else’s, many of the assumptions are not only false but they are inverted: The exact opposite assumption is more likely to be true.
Campaign strategists and their poll-skewing accomplices may be shooting themselves in the foot every single day by jumping to unproven conclusions about mass psychology. For all they know, every action they take backfires, and helps the opposition.
But they can’t be bothered by doubts. Merrily they skew and skew, convinced of their cunning.
Title: Wishful thinking
Post by: G M on September 27, 2012, 03:31:30 PM
Obama’s Approval Rating Mirrors 2010 1:04 PM, Sep 27, 2012 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSONS
For all of the wishful thinking in the mainstream press about President Obama’s positioning 40 days before this election, Obama’s approval rating looks remarkably similar to what it was on this date in 2010 — shortly before his party lost a historic 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats. On September 27, 2010 — exactly two years ago — Rasmussen Reports showed Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters to be minus-3 percentage points (with 48 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving). Among those who felt “strongly,” Obama’s net approval rating was minus-14 points (with 27 percent “strongly” approving and 41 percent “strongly” disapproving).
Today, Rasmussen Reports shows Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters to be minus-3 points (with 48 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving). Among those who feel “strongly,” Obama’s net approval rating is minus-14 points (with 28 percent “strongly” approving and 42 percent “strongly” disapproving). So, two years after the biggest Republican gains in the House since before World War II, Americans remain every bit as unimpressed with the way Obama is handling his job as president as they were then. This stands to reason. Obamacare remains an unprecedented threat to Americans’ liberty, this “recovery” still feels like a recession, the debt continues to explode, and Obama still ducks responsibility for anything that happens during his presidency, at least to some degree. The American people are noticing.
Title: Here are two reasons most Americans don't trust the mainstream media
Post by: G M on September 28, 2012, 03:25:25 PM
Here are two reasons most Americans don't trust the mainstream media September 27, 2012 | 8:00 pm 22Comments
Mark Tapscott Executive editor The Washington Examiner
E@mtapscott If I've said it once, I've said it hundreds of times, especially when talking with young people thinking about becoming journalists: Journalism is a proud profession because it is the first line of liberty's defense.
Journalists have a constitutional license to shine light in the dark places of government. That's the main reason I love my job and cannot imagine myself doing anything else.
It's too bad the majority of Americans don't trust journalists. Even more distressing, though, is the fact that most of the editors, reporters, producers and researchers who occupy journalism's commanding heights don't seem to have a clue about why their work lacks credibility.
How do I know that? Well, let's do an experiment. Here are two important stories on issues of vital national importance, but you aren't likely to hear much about them if you depend upon the broadcast networks and big national dailies for your news. That's because both stories cut across the conventional wisdom that suffocates independent thinking in the leading newsrooms.
The first story concerns electric vehicles, or EVs, which are assumed to be the wave of the green future. EVs cannot now and aren't likely any time soon to offer more comfort or convenience at less cost to consumers than conventional internal-combustion cars and trucks.
Even so, the federal government has spent billions of dollars in the past two decades on research, loans and tax credits to encourage automakers to sell more EVs and consumers to buy them. But consumers avoid EVs like the plague.
As a result, Toyota, which two years ago confidently predicted it would soon be selling thousands of EVs, reversed course this week, with a senior executive saying "the current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge."
Search the websites of the New York Times and Washington Post for coverage of Toyota's decision, and you'll likely find only blog notes buried deep within. The broadcast networks similarly ignored the story.
The second story concerns something else the federal government has spent billions of tax dollars on in the past two decades in the form of research, loans and tax credits to encourage, namely, construction of affordable housing for the poor.
Chicago's ShoreBank was for many years the nation's largest community bank, specializing in funding affordable housing developments and mortgages. It was also the 2008 Obama presidential campaign's bank. ShoreBank went under two years ago.
Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairwoman Sheila Bair told the American Banker this week that ShoreBank failed in part due to mismanagement caused by partisan politics.
She also said the otherwise admirable commitment of the bank's owners and managers to encouraging more affordable housing in Chicago resulted in it "going astray" and "relying too much on its cachet and glamorous reputation among liberal groups and did not focus enough on the basics of running a bank."
Bair's comments come hard on the heels of The Washington Examiner's exclusive report last week laying out President Obama's central role in leading Chicago's liberal activists to unite with greedy developers and the city's corrupt political machine in spending hundreds of millions of public dollars and tax credits on failed affordable housing developments.
The developers got rich, the politicians, including Obama, got campaign donations, and the liberal activists got jobs and power, but Chicago's poor got screwed.
The Times and Post will probably give decent coverage to Bair's new book in which she discusses ShoreBank and other issues. But don't hold your breathe waiting for them to connect the dots to the Examiner's reporting on Obama's role in these matters.
And they will still wonder why they're held in such low regard by the public.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.
Title: Media Issues: Skewed polls are the latest shiny object
Post by: DougMacG on October 01, 2012, 11:09:30 AM
I mentioned in another post that all polls for MN governor in 2010 including the final poll were off by 12 points. In Wisconsin this year they missed by 7. I thought the margin for sampling error was 3%, lol. Strangely those misses are about the range that Obama was leading Romney in key swing states in some outrageous recent polls.
One theory advanced is that the biased media and polling organizations want to effect turnout to swing the election with skewed polls. But a wide margin could sabotage turnout on the leader more than it does on the angry opposition, so that doesn't make any sense.
My theory now is right back to GM's theory on every other strategy in the Obama campaign. The polls results are concocted to fit the shiny object theory - HEY, look at this SHINY OBJECT, over HERE!! Take your eyes off the unemployment rate, the debt and the 24 year old in your basement for a minute, here is a shiny object!
The false polls give the Romney campaign has taken on a new first name, the struggling Romney campaign. Ask David Gregory, he gets it into the first sentence:
Announcer: From NBC News in Washington, MEET THE PRESS with David Gregory.
GREGORY: And good Sunday morning. With both sides in full-preparation mode for Wednesday’s first presidential debate, the struggling Romney campaign is recalibrating his message... -------------------
Unmentioned: There has been a 36 point enthusiasm swing from Democrats to Republicans since the 2008 election to today according to the latest Gallup. Dems +20 2008, Even 2010, R's +16% now. Everybody knows this of course because USA Today put it on page 13. ------------------
Polls all admit applying their own secret sauce to get the right samples and results. Unskewedpolls.com removes the skew back to best known party affiliation numbers and has Romney leading by 7.4%. http://unskewedpolls.com/
I don't believe them either.
Title: Does Pat Cadell read our forum?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2012, 05:12:56 AM
Notice his use of my pejorative "Pravda" for the MSM.
Obama’s Boys on the Bus The media pull out all the stops to reelect the president. Oct 15, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 05 •
Fred Barnes
The Time cover story last week was headlined “The Mormon Identity.” The cover, featuring Mitt Romney in a stained-glass window, said in smaller type, “What Mitt Romney’s faith tells us about his vision and values.” Newsweek had President Obama on the cover, identifying him as “The Democrats’ Reagan” and heralding the story inside as “What Obama Will Achieve in His Second Term.”
Neither of the stories, to put it mildly, was helpful to Romney’s presidential campaign. The piece in Time was fair, but the timing, long after Mormonism had faded as a factor in the election, was suspect. In Newsweek, Obama was lionized, while Romney and Republicans were treated like hyperpartisan right-wingers.
My point in citing the newsmagazines is not that they’re colluding to reelect Obama. They don’t have to. It comes quite naturally to these pillars of the mainstream media to elevate issues with a pro-Obama tilt. And they’re not even the biggest contributors to the liberal bias that has dominated media coverage of the presidential race.
The bias has been so massive, palpable, and unprecedented that the scales have begun to fall from the eyes of a few stalwarts of the media establishment. Obama, Mark Halperin of Time noted last week, “has been covered as a candidate, rather than as an incumbent whose record needs to be scrutinized.” As you might suspect, this coincides neatly with the president’s reelection strategy.
The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman has suggested the media have all but given the president a free ride. “Obama was such a cool and uplifting story to so many in the media in 2008 that they have essentially ceded ground to him that they have yet to reclaim,” Fineman wrote. The president has campaigned “without having to seriously and substantively defend his first-term promises or shortcomings, and without having to say much, if anything, about what, if anything, he might do substantially differently if he is fortunate enough to win again.”
The most explosive criticism of press bias has come from Patrick Caddell, the former pollster and adviser to Democrats George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Gary Hart. “We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on it, the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of blockers, and nobody says anything,” Caddell said in a speech.
If you hadn’t guessed, the refs are the media, their victims Romney and Republicans. No fan of Romney, Caddell said Obama is protected by the media. Any other president who flew to Las Vegas for a fundraiser hours after the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya would have been “crucified,” he said. But Obama wasn’t. “It should have been the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s ‘flying over Katrina’ moment,” Caddell said. “But nothing was said at all and nothing will be said.”
Coverage of the Obama administration’s response to the Libyan attack also reflects the media’s double standard. Within 24 hours, Pentagon and intelligence officials had concluded the assault on the Benghazi consulate was an act of terrorism planned for the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, according to numerous reports. Yet five days later, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, insisted it “began spontaneously” as a reaction to the Cairo demonstrations against a “hateful video.” White House press secretary Jay Carney continued to say the same.
An obvious question arises, or at least should. Was there a cover-up? If we had a Republican president—or even a Democratic president not named Obama—the press would be pursuing that possibility with great intensity. And the national news would be focused on efforts of the president and his aides to deflect blame for the eruption of assaults on American embassies in Libya and across the Middle East. But in Obama’s case, this hasn’t happened.
Kirsten Powers of the Daily Beast is one of the few journalists to doubt the administration’s motives. Its spin doesn’t make sense, she wrote, “unless it is seen as a deliberate attempt to mislead Americans into believing al Qaeda has been decimated, as President Obama has been known to assert.” But “most of the media herd was fretting” about Mitt Romney’s taxes, she added, thus too busy to probe a far bigger story that might embarrass Obama.
In the treatment of Romney and Obama, the double standard has become habitual. The hunt for gaffes is the defining trait of the media in regard to Romney. But the most egregious gaffe by Obama this year—“You didn’t build that”—was ignored for four days and reported only after the conservative press had created a mini-firestorm over the comment.
In September, Romney innocently joked in answer to a reporter’s question. “Look at those clouds. It’s beautiful. Look at those things.” This was turned into a running gag “for no other reason than to make Romney seem wooden,” wrote Gawker’s John Cook. “Imagine if Obama’s every ‘heh’ or ‘uuuhh’ made it into his quotes.”
Media “fact checkers,” too, have been notoriously one-sided, to the detriment of Republicans. Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention was flyspecked in a novel way: He was faulted not for what he said but for what he didn’t say. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s constant stream of misstatements, goofy comments, and gaffes are routinely tolerated. “From insensitively telling a wheelchair-bound state senator to ‘stand up’ to not recognizing how many letters there are in the word ‘jobs,’ the media have let Biden get away with gaffes that would have gotten GOP VP picks pilloried,” says Geoffrey Dickens of the Media Research Center.
Several months ago, a journalist with four decades of experience and I discussed the matter of media bias in the election. We agreed it would probably be worse than ever. And it has been. But we never figured it would be this bad and, a month before Election Day, still getting worse.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
Title: Speaking of professional journalists....
Post by: G M on October 11, 2012, 02:34:25 PM
Announcing the Winners of the Inaugural Walter Duranty Prize
Inside, the transcripts from last night's award ceremony held in New York City by PJ Media and The New Criterion. Update: High-def video of the speeches now online at the Tatler. by Roger L Simon
Bio October 11, 2012 - 12:00 am WHY A DURANTY PRIZE?
What are we doing here? A couple of years ago Roger Kimball and I came up with the idea that The New Criterion and PJ Media should join forces to give an annual prize in honor — or dishonor, as the case may be — of the somewhat notorious Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times between 1922 and 1936, Walter Duranty.
I say “somewhat notorious” because not too many people outside the insular media world know who he was — but they should. To review for those in this room — most of whom do know — for some fourteen years Walter Duranty, then the most famous and respected foreign correspondent in the world — also, as it happens, a Brit — whitewashed the repressive evil deeds of the Soviet Union, leading to that country’s recognition by none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, while winning a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his efforts.
He did this whitewashing most prominently in the case of the Ukrainian Holodomor: the forced starvation of between 1.2 and 12 million ethnic Ukrainians, depending on whose estimates you believe. In other words, a lot of people. Duranty called that genocide “an exaggeration and malignant propaganda” in the newspaper of record. He also covered up the show trial of the British engineers who were tortured into falsely confessing that they were trying to sabotage Stalin’s Five-Year Plan … and similar events … all the time excusing those Soviet misdeeds with what became his personal mantra: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”
Meanwhile, he fiercely attacked those who dared criticize him, particularly the brave Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who risked his life to report on the Holodomor, and the British author Malcolm Muggeridge, who returned the compliment by calling Duranty: “The greatest liar I have met in fifty years of journalism.”
Virtually the same year he was winning his Pulitzer, Duranty was reassuring Soviet authorities that he would allow them to vet all reports about their country before they appeared in The New York Times — effectively making that newspaper a U.S. branch of Pravda, for a time anyway.
So why did Walter Duranty do all this? What motivated him to write this way, to lie so flagrantly seemingly without conscience?
That was the primary question that compelled my wife Sheryl Longin and me when we started to do research for our stage play The Party Line, in which Duranty is one of the main characters and of which you have a copy tonight.
Our assumption, like most people, was that Duranty was driven by ideology. The line about the eggs and the omelet sounds suspiciously like a folksy version of: “The ends justify the means.”
But it turned out not to be true. Duranty wasn’t much of a leftist at all. In fact, on several occasions he dismissed communism as a system suitable only for the East, for primitive Russians who craved and needed a strong leader like Comrade Joe, and as something that wouldn’t work in the West.
No, Duranty’s motives were far more personal and modern. Even postmodern.
Dr. Johnson famously told us: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money” — making a lot of bloggers blockheads, but never mind. For Duranty it was money, but it was more than that. No, he wasn’t a communist, although communists certainly used him. He was instead a bohemian of his time, a friend and follower of the Satanist Aleister Crowley, steeped in sex, drugs, and rock and roll before there was any rock and roll, who was snatched from the absinthe bars of Paris to be the Moscow correspondent for The New York Times.
A modern narcissist par excellence, Duranty did what he did for power and acclaim, to be the man in Moscow, the most listened to correspondent on the most important story of his time. To be feted at the Waldorf Astoria — which he was. To be hugely famous, or to borrow the title of Leo Braudy’s book, for The Frenzy of Renown … Vanity Fair, if you will.
In that way he is like our award winners tonight — although perhaps he went a bit further. Like Duranty, none of them are communists, at least as far as I know. But they certainly lust after Vanity Fair, to one degree or another. They have allowed their desire to be chic, to be outrageous or modern and trendy, to be popular kids with the political in-crowd, to overshadow everything they do and to warp their writing beyond the normal bias into outright distortion and propaganda. They should be a lesson to all of us.
And a warning to the public.
A recent Pew Poll showed public dissatisfaction with the mass media has reached what Pew called a “fresh high,” with 60 percent of Americans saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Personally, I wonder who the forty percent are. But again, never mind.
We hope the Duranty Prize, acting as a warning, will do its little bit to correct that.
Before I relinquish the podium, a word about our methods. Some months ago, PJ Media and The New Criterion publicized this prize and solicited nominations from our readerships, which then were vetted by a committee of professional writers and journalists, some of whom are with us tonight: Peter Collier, Cliff May, Ron Radosh, Glenn Reynolds, Claudia Rosett, and the two Rogers — Kimball and Simon. We received over 150 different nominations, but ended up hewing remarkably close to the recommendations of our readerships. We abjured only one of the top four nominees — NBC for its selective editing in the Trayvon Martin case, because we could not determine culpability. We have learned, however, that NBC is being sued in the case, so that will be adjudicated in the courts — unless the network settles, of course.
So now, on to our prizes.
SECOND RUNNER-UP by Ron Radosh
Radosh: Today, it is my privilege to present the Second Runner-up Walter Duranty award to Andrew Sullivan, the writer and blogger for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Sullivan is worthy of the award for three specific themes which recur in his writing.
The first is his solitary fight on what he considers one of the most horrendous crimes committed against human beings — in this case, on male babies. I refer of course to what Sullivan calls “genital mutilation,” or as most of us refer to it, “circumcision.”
In the past few weeks, he has returned to the issue many times. In the face of medical evidence and major scientific studies that prove the worthiness and health benefits of circumcision, Sullivan offers the following reason why he believes the practice developed: “Foreskins,” he writes, “are much harder to keep clean in dusty and arid places like deserts.”
Judaism and Islam are “desert religions,” and thus religious belief led us to institute a barbaric practice that deprives a child of what human evolution wrought, without his permission. Parents, then, have been engaged in mutilation of their own sons without giving it a thought.
The second reason Andrew Sullivan deserves the prize is for his neverending and relentless crusade to prove that Sarah Palin was not the mother of her Down Syndrome baby, Trig.
As he wrote one year ago, the failure of the media to expose this truth is as important as its failure “to challenge the facts about the rush to war against Iraq.” Acknowledging that he does not know whom the mother is, or indeed whether or not Palin is actually Trig’s mother, Sullivan writes: “If Palin has lied about this, it is the most staggering, appalling deception in the history of American politics.” Considering that the list of deceptions and cover-ups in most observers’ lexicon includes events like Watergate, or the failure of the Roosevelt administration to let the truth be known about Soviet responsibility for the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn, Andrew Sullivan’s conception of what allows one to describe Palin’s would-be lie in such dramatic terms defies imagination.
As he confesses, “only Joe McGinnis seems to give a damn.” As most of us know, McGinnis’ book on Palin was a complete bomb. He had no revelations of worth, and every reviewer trashed it — for good reasons. One of those reasons was that McGinnis revealed himself to be Sullivan’s only backer and a fellow Trig birther, thereby ending any credibility he was thought to have.
Third, Sullivan deserves the award for being Barack Obama’s greatest cheerleader — a stance appreciated by the president, who told the press that he regularly reads Sullivan’s blog. Only once was Sullivan critical of the president — when, after Obama’s recent speech to the UN, Sullivan complained that the president appeared to be supportive of Israel because of an apparent threat to its existence from Iran. After all, Sullivan wrote: “There is only one nuclear power in the Middle East and it … has launched several pre-emptive wars on its neighbors near and far.”
If you have any doubts about what Sullivan thinks of Israel, his answer came in a column he wrote only a few days ago: “We give the Israelis everything they ask for and they give the U.S. nothing in return. In fact, they have operated as a foe, not friend, greeting Obama with the Gaza assault, deliberately destroying Obama’s Cairo’s outreach to the Arab-Muslim world with their settlement policy, confirming every conspiracy theorist in the Middle East.” With Netanyahu as prime minister, he concludes: “Israel is not our ally.” Anyone wanting evidence for how much Andrew Sullivan is outside the consensus about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel should look no further.
Finally, we must also cite Sullivan’s over-the-top cover story for Newsweek on Obama. In his eyes, the president is a conciliator of the center willing to work with Republicans, but foiled by right-wing Republicans bent only on his destruction. He does not refer to Bob Woodward’s new book, in which Woodward reveals Obama as a chief executive who eschewed cooperation across the aisle and sought instead to implement an unpopular health care program without any Republican support. Reading his words, our PJ Media colleague Richard Fernandez commented that Sullivan’s paragraphs: “ … are destined for greatness. It leaves one slack-jawed, unable to credit the words on the page. You have to read it twice to make sure you weren’t hallucinating.”
Watching the first presidential debate, Andrew Sullivan blogged: “Romney has taken charge, even as Obama has spoken more,” managing to make the issue one of the “status-quo versus change dynamic.” Romney, he wrote, “is kicking the president’s ass.” As for his closing statement, Sullivan called it: “F…… sad, confused and lame.” Obama, he said, “may have even lost the election tonight.”
Hence, should Romney win the election, Andrew Sullivan’s worst nightmare would come true, and he would then receive an award that might cause him even more discomfort than the one he is receiving tonight.
FIRST RUNNER-UP by Roger Kimball
Kimball: The selection committee of the 2012 Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity is delighted to award its commendation and second-place prize to Bob Simon for his supremely untruthful report “Christians of the Holy Land,” which aired last April on CBS’s storied news show 60 Minutes.
Expert practitioners of the art of mendacity from the time of the sophist Callicles have advised their pupils, when telling a lie, to make it a big one. This Mr. Simon did with consummate bravado. Not for him the subtle misrepresentation, the quiet fudging of a fact, the deft deployment of misleading innuendo. No, Bob Simon started with a doozy: the “one place where Christians are not suffering from violence” in the Middle East, he reports, “is the Holy Land.”
Who knew? Yes, he admits, Muslims are persecuting Christians — and Jews, too, of course — in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, but in and around the birthplace of Jesus, Christians are unmolested by Muslims. Nevertheless, they are fleeing the Holy Land in droves. This puzzles Mr. Simon. He took the formidable resources of CBS and went with 60 Minutes to the Holy Land to find out why.
We on the Committee of the Duranty Prize were surprised at Bob Simon’s surprise — or what might more accurately be called his feigned surprise. For surely his in-depth, on-the-ground, walk-the-streets-and-interview-colorful-natives investigation uncovered what is patent to even a cursory examination of the facts about the persecution of Christians by Muslim Palestinians.
We think, for example, of the at least 14 homes of Christian Palestinians that were burnt to the ground by a Muslim mob in 2005 in the West Bank because a Christian man was dating a Muslim woman. What provocation!
We think also of that catalogue, assembled by Church leaders and reported by the London Telegraph, of the nearly 100 incidents of abuse perpetrated, in the words of one commentator, by an “Islamic fundamentalist mafia against Palestinian Christians.” Comparing the tone and substance of “Christians of the Holy Land” with the historical reality, the Committee instantly understood that in Bob Simon we had a practitioner of journalist untruthfulness worthy of comparison with his great precursor, Walter Duranty.
The Committee was also deeply impressed by the breadth and versatility of Bob Simon’s mendacity. For not only did Mr. Simon blithely deny the reality of Arab violence against Christians in the Holy Land, he also skillfully and brazenly laid the blame for Christians’ fleeing the area at the feet of the Israelis — as if Israel’s policy of self-defense precipitated the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land.
Mr. Simon also blatantly misrepresented the character of the documents he drew upon for evidence. He suggested, for example, that the so-called Kairos Document, a statement issued by a group of left-leaning Palestinian Christian pastors in 2009, was a blueprint for peace, when in fact it is a noxious specimen of anti-Israel propaganda that also whitewashed Palestinian acts of terrorism as “legal resistance,” a description that other Christian groups have rightly rejected as “repugnant.”
Bob Simon furthermore followed anti-Israeli Palestinian propaganda in falsely describing the nature of the security barrier that protects Bethlehem. He said that it “completely surrounds” the city, transforming it into “an open-air prison.” But as he must know from the evidence of his own eyes, the barrier lies to the north and west of the city only.
In the course of his report, Bob Simon interviews and rudely baits Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., who told him the “major duress” on Christians in the West Bank comes from Muslims. In response, Simon trotted out a Christian Palestinian businessman who denied it — but whose very livelihood depends on the good will of Muslim Palestinians. As one commentator for the Committee for Accuracy for Middle East Reporting in America asked: “Did Simon really expect to get [this] prominent businessman with a lot to lose … to admit to problems with the Muslim majority in Palestinian society in an on-camera conversation with two other people sitting next to him? Is this what passes for investigative reporting at 60 Minutes?”
On a personal note, I would like to register the fond place that 60 Minutes occupies in my memory. I do not much watch that or any other television news show these days, but in years past my wife and I would often spend Sunday evening with Bill and Pat Buckley who lived near us in Connecticut. No Sunday evening could proceed without taking in 60 Minutes together before dinner. I found the segments sometimes informative, occasionally tendentious, but no episode I recall commanded the breathtaking mendacity displayed by Bob Simon’s piece of anti-Israeli propaganda masquerading as concerned journalism.
“Christians of the Holy Land” is a textbook case of deploying the trappings and authority of objective reporting in order to further the ends of ideology. Bob Simon, though unworthy of the canons of responsible journalism intermittently upheld at CBS, is nevertheless a flagrantly successful embodiment of the spirit of mendacity that the Walter Duranty Prize was founded to commemorate. Congratulations, Bob Simon, on your award. You richly deserve it.
DURANTY PRIZE WINNER by Claudia Rosett
Rosett: Good evening, and fair warning. What you are about to hear will not endear any of us to the fashion police.
Choosing the winner of the first Walter Duranty prize at first seemed daunting. As you have just heard, there were a great many richly qualified contenders. But as our prize committee worked through the entries, there was one dispatch that stood out. Not only did it exemplify the Duranty spirit, but it did so in ways so Potemkin, so self-absorbed and so extravagantly intent on peddling terror-linked dictatorship as an exercise in elegance and good taste, that we knew we had a winner.
This story was a joint accomplishment of writer and editor, so it is a shared award. The selection committee is pleased to bestow the Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity on reporter Joan Juliet Buck and editor Anna Wintour, for their combined feats of on-site reporting, headline packaging, impeccable timing, and fearless dismissal of the truth in Vogue magazine’s astounding March 2011 cover story: “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.”
Styled as a profile of the first lady of Syria, Asma al-Assad, this article was a paragon of propaganda — a makeover of the Assad dictatorship, presenting Asma as the human face of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule: “glamorous, young and very chic.”
Reported and published on the verge of the Syrian uprising and bloody government crackdown that began early last year, in which to date more than 30,000 people have died, “Rose in the Desert” glossed over the horrific realities of Syria’s despotism — which were abundantly evident even before the 2011 carnage, at least to anyone who cared to browse the reams of human rights reports and terror cases.
Instead, Vogue showcased as a breathless scoop a portrait of Syria’s ruling couple as a pair of classy and benevolent aristocrats; the kind of couple any self-respecting member of the global elite could admire and endorse without violating standards of either morality or the latest trends in Parisian footwear.
Ms. Buck, for whom Vogue obtained extraordinary access to the Assads, gushed about Asma as “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies … breezy, conspiratorial, and fun … a thin long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement.” Ms. Buck treated her readers to visions of Asma waking at dawn to begin her charitable rounds, including her campaign urging millions of young Syrians to engage in “active citizenship.” There were vignettes of Asma flying around Syria in a French-built corporate jet, or careening through traffic behind the wheel of a plain SUV, en route to museums, schools, and orphanages, a study in “energetic grace,” deftly accessorized with little more than a necklace of Chanel agates; shoes and Syrian silk tote bag by French designer Christian Louboutin.
Then there was Asma at home, with her husband and three young children, in their thoroughly modern apartment, where Asma herself, dressed in jeans, t-shirt, and old suede stiletto boots, answers the front door, and whips up fondue for lunch. This was a presidential dwelling, as reported by Ms. Buck, where neighbors freely peered in and dropped by; a household “run on wildly democratic principles” where Asma explains: “We all vote on what we want.”
In this wildly democratic household, the dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, makes his low-key entrance as “the off-duty president,” wearing jeans, playing with his children, and praising his previous profession of ophthalmology as one he chose because “there is very little blood.”
This is the husband, we learn, to whom the dazzling, urbane, London-born Asma says she is grateful, because in wooing her away from her narrow career as a banker to become the first lady of Syria, he gave her back something she had lost — the chance to experience the world around her.
So, what was that world around her? What about the Assad regime’s dynastic grip on power, maintained even in Syria’s relatively calm moments by a long record of terrorist bombings, assassinations, and brutal domestic repression? What about the jailing and torture doled out for years to Syrian dissidents who dared demand anything remotely resembling the “democratic principles” attributed to the Assad household? What about the iron rule with which the same Assad regime that bankrolled Asma’s taste for Louboutin and Chanel had beggared the Syrian people? What about the use of the medieval torture rack in Syria’s prisons, the collaboration with Iran, the terrorists bunking down in the capital, and the North Koreans testing missiles out back?
In the Duranty tradition, Ms. Buck did not completely ignore the troubling aspects of Assad’s regime. Much as Duranty in his day reported that Ukrainians, then starving to death under communist rule, had “shortages,” Ms. Buck noted that in modern Syria, the “shadow zones” were “dark and deep.” Observing that Syria, when she went there in late 2010, had a reputation as the safest country in the Middle East, Ms. Buck speculated this was “possibly” due to the pervasive state surveillance. The Assad regime’s resident terrorists she stitched into her story as a dash of color: there were Hezbollah souvenir ashtrays in the souk, and you could “spot the Hamas leadership racing through the bar of the Four Seasons.”
But all that, implied Ms. Buck, might be changing under the rule of the vibrant, open, glamorous, caring, wildly democratic, and ever-so-chic Assads.
Such an article would have been a monstrous travesty at any stage of Assad’s rule. But with remarkable timing — for which we must credit editor-in-chief Anna Wintour — Vogue packaged “A Rose in the Desert” as the cover story of its March 2011 issue. The magazine hit the stands and the story hit the internet as the uprisings of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were spreading to Syria.
With Syrians engaging in rather more active citizenship than Asma, in her charity works, apparently had in mind, the Assad regime tried to suppress the uprising by killing its own fellow citizens — shooting, shelling, jailing, torturing, and murdering even children. Unlike in Duranty’s day, thanks to modern technology it did not take long for these horrors to hit the headlines. Vogue’s paean to the Assads was abruptly exposed as one of modern journalism’s most mortally embarrassing makeovers.
With instincts worthy of the old Soviet politburo, or for that matter, the Assad dictatorship, Vogue’s initial response was neither to apologize nor to correct the record, but simply to delete the article from its web site.
Though the tale doesn’t quite end there.
Both Ms. Buck and Ms. Wintour have since recanted the article. Under some circumstances, that might have disqualified them from the Duranty Prize. But in both cases, the recanting was not so much an apology as a justification, an approach so self-involved that it meets in spades the criterion outlined by Roger Simon of “modern narcissism par excellence.”
This past June, well over a year after publishing “A Rose in the Desert,” Ms. Wintour finally released a statement that was largely about deflecting blame. Vogue, she explained, had entertained high hopes for the Assad regime, but “as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue.”
The month after that — and more than 16 months after the now infamous article — Ms. Buck finally published her own recantation of sorts. To her credit, she denounced the Assads, deplored the carnage in Syria, and tipped out a litany of damning details observed while visiting the Assads but omitted from her original article.
But to call it a full-throated apology would be inaccurate. Ms. Buck’s deepest sympathies seemed reserved for herself.
Writing in Newsweek under the headline “Mrs. Assad Duped Me: My notorious interview with Mrs. Assad, the first lady of hell,” Ms. Buck said she was initially reluctant to take on the Syria assignment, but did so at the urging of her editors at Vogue. Plus, a 2008 article in the British Conde Nast Traveller had described the “increasing hipness” of Damascus, and by 2010, Syria’s status, wrote Ms. Buck, was oscillating between “untrustworthy rogue state and new cool place.” In taking the road to Damascus, Ms. Buck was following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Kerry, Sting, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Francis Ford Coppola, as well as a public relations firm, Brown Lloyd James, hired by Mrs. Assad, which arranged the Vogue interview.
For the Vogue cover story that then emerged, Ms. Buck blamed everyone and everything from Vogue to the Assads to her own apparently inescapable work ethic: “I didn’t want to write this piece. But I always finished what I started.” By her account, Vogue’s editors overrode her prepublication misgivings, and then asked her not to talk about the article. Ms. Buck dutifully kept her silence until after Vogue had declined, some nine months later, to renew her contract. Cast adrift, she lamented in Newsweek that she had become a victim: “There was no way of knowing that this piece would cost me my livelihood and end the association I had had with Vogue since I was 23.”
Given Vogue’s original enthusiasm for the project, we can understand Ms. Buck’s shock when she was dropped by her long-time editors. But did she, and they, really have no clue from the get-go that their joint concoction, “A Rose in the Desert,” was a marvel of journalistic mendacity?
In sum, for their stalwart efforts first to cast Syria’s dictatorship as a fashion statement, and then to cover — or erase — their tracks in ways so self-serving that even now they continue to mislead, we congratulate the winners of the Walter Duranty Prize, Anna Wintour and Joan Juliet Buck.
Title: Professionals
Post by: G M on October 16, 2012, 02:36:16 PM
Professors donate to Obama, opine about election in news articles By Bob Cusack - 10/16/12 05:00 AM ET
At least a half-dozen professors who gave political donations to President Obama have been quoted in news articles opining about his administration and the 2012 race for the White House.
The findings of The Hill’s months-long investigation come as Republicans have been crying foul, alleging a media bias for Obama and against Mitt Romney.
The Hill cross-checked academics who have been quoted in news articles with Obama’s donor list and eliminated those who worked in prior Democratic administrations. The half-dozen professors detailed in this article do not mention their political affiliations in their bios online. A similar search for Romney donors did not yield any results.
The scholars say they didn’t tell reporters that they had donated to Obama, but would have had they been asked. It is not common practice for journalists to inquire about such political donations, however.
Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute says journalists should ask about political contributions: “Reporters are trying to get an independent viewpoint. Increasingly, the audience is demanding to know how [reporters] get information. The audience would like to know this information."
Title: Perhaps BD would care to explain
Post by: G M on October 17, 2012, 02:37:49 PM
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/330742/bizarre-coincidence-democrats-get-more-time-all-three-debates-katrina-trinko Bizarre Coincidence: Democrats Get More Time in All Three Debates
By Katrina Trinko October 17, 2012 10:39 A.M. Comments 232 If you want more time to get your message out in debates, it’s good to be a Democrat.
According to the CNN debate clock, President Obama spoke at greater length than Mitt Romney during both debates, as did Vice President Biden during his debate with Paul Ryan. In the first debate, Obama spoke for 3 minutes, 14 seconds more than Romney — which means he got 8 percent more talking time than Romney. In last night’s debate, Obama spoke for 4 minutes and 18 seconds longer than Romney, giving him 11 percent more talking time. Obama talked for 52 percent of the time when either man had the floor, while Romney talked for 47 percent.
During the vice presidential debate, the gap wasn’t as wide: Biden spoke for 1 minute, 22 seconds more than Ryan. Still, that gave Biden 3 percent more speaking time than Ryan.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 17, 2012, 02:53:04 PM
Happily: First, Raddatz (the professional) did a better job of keeping the Democrat in check than anyone, except you, wants to recognize. Thank you for this wonderful post.
And, as we all know (you, Doug, Crafty, Romney and I), Obama is all talk. Doesn't this support your position? It is the singular proof you were looking for.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 17, 2012, 03:58:59 PM
Happily: First, Raddatz (the professional) did a better job of keeping the Democrat in check than anyone, except you, wants to recognize. Thank you for this wonderful post.
And, as we all know (you, Doug, Crafty, Romney and I), Obama is all talk. Doesn't this support your position? It is the singular proof you were looking for.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 17, 2012, 04:10:57 PM
I'll grant you that Raddatz was more skillful in her partisanship than "Candy". I'm curious if that her nickname because she consumes bags of it daily?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 17, 2012, 08:46:27 PM
I'll grant you that Raddatz was more skillful in her partisanship than "Candy". I'm curious if that her nickname because she consumes bags of it daily?
GM, you are so mean! I was going to post that she may rent two airline seats when she flies, and has nightmares about the new portions that the first lady and Bloomberg would like to impose on us all.
But that too would be mean, detract from substance, and so I decided not to post it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 18, 2012, 04:07:33 AM
I saw nothing on this forum about the time allowed to Obama or Romney in the wake of the first debate. Perhaps it was a non-issue since Obama got his ass kicked? But now, somehow it matters to you. Really?!? Now. Sounds like revisionist history to me.
I saw nothing about the time allowed to Biden/Ryan. Perhaps it was a non-issue because A) it was the VP debate, and those don't matter and B) because Biden had enough time to make his Libya gaffe that WAS talked about on this forum.
Now I see it, in the wake of the most recent debate. Perhaps this is because A) Obama showed up this time, which seems odd to say given the VAST gap in the time he was given by Lehrer. Shit, I thought he wasn't even there, but now I feel differently. Maybe he won the first debate after all? I mean, he must have with ALL THAT TIME. B) Mitt still had enough time to make statements that overtook the memes for the day and C) You still dislike/distrust the party choice of Romney? Where is the substantive discussion of the time he spent in the debate?
Is all this talk of Candy's size because she wouldn't fit in Mitt's binder?
I'll grant you that Raddatz was more skillful in her partisanship than "Candy". I'm curious if that her nickname because she consumes bags of it daily?
GM, you are so mean! I was going to post that she may rent two airline seats when she flies, and has nightmares about the new portions that the first lady and Bloomberg would like to impose on us all.
But that too would be mean, detract from substance, and so I decided not to post it.
Title: Worst Moderating Presidential debate history, it was ugly
Post by: DougMacG on October 18, 2012, 08:03:29 AM
The time difference in the first and the second is starting to accumulate when it is so blatant in the third and when it all goes the same direction. The time was crucial in the third because nearly all of Obama's time from my point of view was spent making either false or misleading statement about his opponent or false and misleading statements about his own record. Time is needed to rebut these and still answer the primary question of him in the debate, what would a Romney administration look like.
I did not notice Bigdog use the word 'professional' associated with the performance Candy, though I may have missed it. Maybe we all agree here, except for the noted digression.
I wrote notes to myself throughout the debate and after question 6, I wrote that she was trying to keep order. By question 9, by my count, she had horribly interjected herself into the debate as a participant. She asked Gov Romney, "Why have you changed your mind?" on ak-47s, covering for a rebuttal point she saw the President miss. Really? What pressing federal issue is out there about guns right now other than the dead Mexicans and US border guard scandal. Looked to me like she was trying to help Obama carry Colorado using the movie theater shooting for political gain and Obama missed his opening. She needed this point made to show why she chose the question.
Then the "self-deport" followup, completely uncalled for, and all the other one sided interruptions. "SIT DOWN GOV ROMNEY." When did she say sit down Mr. President. It was a moment of ugliness. Are they not allowed to stand even during their opponent's time??
She made NO attempt to stop applause that real moderators don't tolerate. The one-sided applause started to give away the phoniness of the setup; she was the one who picked the people by knowing their questions. Little did we know who was applauding.
Then the doozy, sticking her nose in to call Romney a liar after all the misinformation she had tolerated to that point. And she was wrong on her facts. UPDATE: On that point the President and the moderator seemed to be openly collaborating.
That drew the biggest applause. Turns out it was Michelle Obama leading the applause. The television audience did not know that. Instead of nipping it in the bud she blushed because it was she they were applauding. Does the moderator have no control over the partisans allowed in the room? If not, why are they allowed in the room?
She made a promise at the beginning that time to followup would be available at the end, but that wasn't true. Pundits outside the room were keeping track of time discrepancies and she wasn't. Instead she was looking for her openings to get herself in on one more big play for her team. Did someone see it differently than that?!?
A professional hockey ref calls offside on Wayne Gretszky the same as he calls it on a first year unknown. This lady didn't. This replacement ref displayed her team's uniform and threw herself into it instead of moderating. Participants get judged on style, not just substance.
Small time differences wouldn't normally matter except that our media and debate scorers count any lie or deception that is not immediately refuted as a debate point won. And if refuted, they still score the point to the liar/deceiver because he had successfully put his opponent on defense.
Speaking of partisans, we have Bob Schieffer coming up next.
The Republican party and candidates may have signed on to a lineup of lefties for moderators because they were offered no other choice. Out here in the heartland we did not give up our right to whine about Washington media lefties trying to control the process.
"...she wouldn't fit in Mitt's binder?"
Romney does exactly what every liberal would want any employer to do on pay equity. He sought out, found and hired more women at senior high paying jobs, and Obama didn't. For that, what do they do? Thank Romney, honor him? No, ridicule. Make fun of the process, or a word missing in a time limited sentence used to describe the process. I assume he referred to binders of women's applications or resumes. - Hey guys, we found another shiny object! - Every minute that you visualize the binders of women you are not seeing 23 million unemployed, 47 million and still growing numbers of people dependent on food stamps and 1 in 6 in poverty.
'That's enough'. 'Sit down Gov. Romney.' Most people give their dog more respect.
Title: Set up?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2012, 08:18:13 AM
From an internet friend:
"This website has taken the video of the debate and reviewed extensively the Bengazi question. It appears that the writer is correct in determining that Obama knew who the questioner by sight, prior to the questioner even standing up to identify himself. The writer also has reviewed the question asked and makes a pretty good argument that the wording of the question, "enhanced security", is something that most people would not have used. Heck, I would not have asked the question in the manner that he did.
"Also, there are reports that Crowley was at the White House on Sunday.
"I cannot confirm this. Add, there are reports that Crowley's husband might have an appointed office in government. But Crowley has never identified who her husband is, so who knows?"
...there are reports that Crowley was at the White House on Sunday.
They were very clear at the beginning that the questions were known only to Crowley and her staff. If she violated that there would be quite a consequence for her - to move up even higher in Washington media social circles.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 18, 2012, 09:49:47 AM
"I did not notice Bigdog use the word 'professional' associated with the performance Candy, though I may have missed it. Maybe we all agree here, except for the noted digression."
I wonder why? Perhaps because I didn't. Perhaps, I went as far as posting the three links I again post below. Don't believe me (and why should you, really)? Take a look at the October 17 morning posts on the 2012 presidential thread.
It does bug me though, when you guys refuse to see that Romney has performed MUCH AS YOU EXPECTED him to when he was just "a" candiate rather than "the" candidate. There is much questioning on this forum questioning things like Romney's conservative creds and his inability to connect with voters. Then he doesn't, and you blame someone else. As for MY binder commetn, it wasn't me that brought Candy's size into the discussion. You were right that it diminishs from the quality of the discussion. I am sorry the connection was clear in print than in my head.
"Turns out it was Michelle Obama leading the applause." Source?
You are wrong on many things, Doug.
First, "A professional hockey ref calls offside on Wayne Gretszky the same as he calls it on a first year unknown." Always? There has long been discussion around the NFL that QBs like Manning and Brady get away with things that others don't. I wonder what the strike zone is for players in MLB. It is NOT always the same.
Second, "He sought out, found and hired more women at senior high paying jobs...". There is a fair amount of discussion going on about this. In fact, it appears that the binders of information were NOT sought out by him, but were made independently and would have been given to the winner of the election, no matter it was.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2012, 10:46:08 AM
"It does bug me though, when you guys refuse to see that Romney has performed MUCH AS YOU EXPECTED him to when he was just "a" candiate rather than "the" candidate. There is much questioning on this forum questioning things like Romney's conservative creds and his inability to connect with voters. Then he doesn't, and you blame someone else"
Well, I can speak only for myself, but I suspect none of us are surprised at Romney-- but I am not seeing any inconsistency in our noting when the pravdas put their fingers on the scales , , ,
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 18, 2012, 12:44:07 PM
Pointing out the influence of the moderators is fine. The inconsistency is the singular focus, shifting from Romney, when that was the previous concern. Now... there is a new "shiny object" to use GM's (I think) apt description. No blame for Romney... when ALL the credit was given to him (or Obama's terrible first performance).
Jim Lehrer gave Obama extra time to waffle, grunt, fumble his way and now you are frustrated??????
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2012, 01:49:58 PM
Sorry to be slow, but I'm not following your point.
Like most here, I did not want Romney as the nominee for a variety of reasons and our concerns in goodly measure have been ratified. Romney has not run a very good campaign. Like most/all here I strongly prefer Romney to Obama. Like most/all here I think much of our media to be a cabal of progressive pravda conspiracy on behalf of Baraq-- and would submit that this line of thought has exceedingly ample evidence provided in this thread.
What is the inconsistency?
Title: While five million jobs were created, , , yeah right
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2012, 02:19:53 PM
next post
OK, so where have the pravda fact checkers been on this one?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 18, 2012, 03:08:35 PM
"UPDATE: On that point the President and the moderator seemed to be openly collaborating."
BINGO! Buraq typically fumbles into an response, but he jumped into that almost before the question was finished. I'm curious exactly how this was staged.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 18, 2012, 03:10:37 PM
Sorry to be slow, but I'm not following your point.
Like most here, I did not want Romney as the nominee for a variety of reasons and our concerns in goodly measure have been ratified. Romney has not run a very good campaign. Like most/all here I strongly prefer Romney to Obama. Like most/all here I think much of our media to be a cabal of progressive pravda conspiracy on behalf of Baraq-- and would submit that this line of thought has exceedingly ample evidence provided in this thread.
What is the inconsistency?
Title: I guess CNN is reading our forum now
Post by: G M on October 18, 2012, 03:29:57 PM
CNN defends 'superb' debate moderator Candy Crowley over her 'point of fact' on Benghazi . . . and claims she only gave Obama more time because he speaks slowly By Toby Harnden In Washington PUBLISHED: 22:06 EST, 17 October 2012 | UPDATED: 14:56 EST, 18 October 2012
CNN has sent out talking points to its staff, directing them to say that Candy Crowley was merely 'stating a point of fact' about the Libya 'terror' row and insisting that Barack Obama only got more time than Mitt Romney because he speaks slowly. In an email to all CNN staff, the network's managing editor Mark Whitaker congratulated his anchoron her role as moderator and washing over the controversy over her effectively siding with Obama over Romney on a question concerning the U.S. Consulate attack in Libya last month. Whitaker wrote: 'Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.' Show of support: Moderator Candy Crowley had the backing of CNN despite what her critics said According to the internal email, obtained by TMZ, Whitaker continued: 'The reviews on Candy's performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver.' The moderator's dramatic intervention, in which she cut Romney short when he claimed that Obama had failed to say the attack was the work of terrorists in the his Rose Garden statement the following day, has been met with outrage. More...Revealed: The high-flying women in Romney's 'binder'... but was he telling the truth about his cabinet selection process? 'I'm still getting the hang of this thing': Obama says he's starting to 'figure out' presidential debates Caught on camera: The moment Michelle Obama broke debate rules by CLAPPING as Candy Crowley backed her husband over Romney's Libya claim
Crowley appeared to backtrack just a few hours after she left the GOP candidate exposed on the stage in front of millions of viewers.
She admitted that Romney had been 'right in the main' but added that he had 'picked the wrong word'. She then told chat show The View today: 'It didn't come to me as I'm going to fact check that. It came to me as let's get past this... To me I was really trying to move the conversation along... This is a semantic thing.'
Coming out fighting: The President, pictured with Romney at the start of the debate, was much more aggressive A storm of protest has followed the incident. Top Romney allies said Crowley 'had no business' intervening in the argument, accusing her of 'getting in the game' rather than being an impartial observer. IN FULL: THE CNN EMAIL Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. She and her team had to select and sequence questions in a matter of hours, and then she had to deal with the tricky format, the nervous questioners, the aggressive debaters, all while shutting out the pre-debate attempts to spin and intimidate her. She pulled it off masterfully. The reviews on Candy's performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver.
On the legitimacy of Candy fact-checking Romney on Obama's Rose Garden statement, it should be stressed that she was just stating a point of fact: Obama did talk about an act (or acts) of terror, no matter what you think he meant by that at the time. On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We're going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time. During a question about security at the Benghazi compound, where four American officials including ambassador Chris Stevens were killed on September 11, Obama said he was ultimately responsible as commander-in-chief. Romney then questioned whether or not Obama had called the consulate attack an 'act of terror' in his Rose Garden address the following day. While Obama cut across Romney - saying 'look at the transcript' - Crowley seemed to back up the President, telling the Republican governor that Obama did 'call it an act of terror'. Her interjection drew applause from the audience, led by Mrs Obama, but angered political commentators, who accused Crowley of stepping in on behalf of the President.
Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro called the moderator's reactions a 'disgrace' while his colleague John Nolte said Crowley 'lied to save Obama'. Democratic strategist Joe Trippi told Fox News the exchange was 'going to help the President', adding: 'There’s a ref, and the ref just threw the flag.' Romney advisor Ron Kaufman continued the sporting metaphor as he said: 'At different times tonight, she in fact got into the game, and she wasn't on the sidelines.' And former New Hampshire governor John Sununu said: 'Candy was wrong, and Candy had no business doing that, and Candy didn't even keep the time right.' However, top Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom insisted he was relaxed about the controversial intervention, saying: 'I don't complain about the refs - I think Candy was dandy.' The shock moment came in the middle of what CBS News anchor Scott Pelley described as 'the most rancorous presidential debate ever', adding: 'We have never seen anything like that in presidential history. They turned every question from the audience into an attack on the other.' Crowley often struggled to control the candidates as they spoke over each other amid angry exchanges.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2012, 07:51:47 PM
BTW
"Turns out it was Michelle Obama leading the applause." Source?"
I saw this reported in one of the Brit newspapers and it was referenced last night by Greta Van Susteren on FOX. Her comment was "A wife applauded her husband. BFD."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 18, 2012, 09:43:34 PM
"...[Romney] doesn't [connect with voters], and you blame someone else"
My view is different than Crafty's in this sense, I am mostly satisfied with the Romney campaign and especially his debate performances including the second. I thought Romney looked very well prepared for every question asked and gave clear and persuasive answers to each, under difficult circumstances. There is always more he could have said, time permitting - but time didn't. I thought President Obama was way out of line in terms of false and deceptive charges and denials, a follow up for another thread. I blame the moderator for failure in her assigned and agreed role.
"You are wrong on many things, Doug." - I like to hear this.) I regularly hope I am wrong but end up disappointed. :wink:
The Michelle Obama applause accusation seems to be true. http://www.examiner.com/article/michelle-obama-violated-debate-prohibition-against-applauding The audio has a lead partisan clapping loudly and a camera still shot indicates it was the First Lady - unless she brought her hands together to pray.
(http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1185852!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/clap18n-3-web.jpg) NY Daily News
The real point though IMO was that the applause was one-sided and the so-called moderator did nothing about it. It just compounded what was happening at the 'moderator' table.
Professional umpires assigning different strike zones to different hitters and pitchers... I know it happens. Is it professional?
"[binders of women's resumes] would have been given to the winner of the election, no matter [who] it was."
If the story is a lie or embellishment, please link; plenty of staffers should know.
The main point was the hiring, not the binders IMO. He was ranked number one in the nation at putting women in top positions. A Democratic Governor would have hired the same staff as a Republican Governor or hire just as many women? We don't know that.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 19, 2012, 03:36:08 AM
I am glad you have come around to the campaign. I sucks to be disappointed in your party's candidate.
It appears to be true that M. Obama clapped. Is it true she led the applause? Real Clear Politics says "Nearly all of the audible applause came from those sitting away from the actual debate" in a story about her breaking the rules (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/17/michelle_obama_broke_agreed_upon_rules_clapped_at_debate.html)
I did not say that you were wrong about the applause. I asked for a source, before indicating you were error about specific other things, but in your response you imply I thought you were error. Professional? Misleading? Wrong?
We can talk about the professionalism of MLB umpires if you really want to. I was responding to your claim that "A professional hockey ref calls offside on Wayne Gretszky the same as he calls it on a first year unknown." And now you backtrack???!!!??? Or, do you not believe it? Or do you think, perhaps, that humans miss actions in games of high speed, perhaps?
"If the story is a lie or embellishment, please link": http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/10/17/massgap-responds-to-mitt-romney-on-women-appointees/
Prior to the 2002 gubernatorial election, MassGAP approached the campaigns of candidates Shannon O’Brien and Mitt Romney and asked them both to commit to: (1).“Make best efforts” to ensure that the number of women in appointed state positions is proportionate to the population of women in Massachusetts; (2). Select a transition team whose composition is proportionate to the women in the Commonwealth; and (3). Meet with MassGAP representatives regularly during the appointments process. Both campaigns made a commitment to this process. ... Prior to the 2002 election, women comprised approximately 30 percent of appointed senior-level positions in Massachusetts government. By 2004, 42 percent of the new appointments made by the Romney administration were women. Subsequently, however, from 2004-2006 the percentage of newly-appointed women in these senior appointed positions dropped to 25 percent.
And, interestingly, enough, this quality comment was made, too:
"PBS commentator Mark Shields points out Romney’s binders story is affirmative action:
'That will be the clip that will be seen around the world, Mitt Romney. And the interesting thing about that is, he told the story about the women in his Cabinet, was that was affirmative action. That is affirmative action.
He got all these men. And he said, no, no, can’t we find some women? Go out and find some women. That’s the definition of affirmative action.'"
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2012, 05:59:32 AM
A worthy point on Romney and affirmative action.
Title: Pravda on the Hudson still claiming riots on 911 in Libya
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2012, 01:52:45 PM
New York Times Still Claiming 'Riots in Libya' Caused by Youtube Vid By ROBERT LAURIE - NYT obviously still deep in denial Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story about a new movie, scheduled to air on the National Geographic channel two days before the election, which focuses on the death of Bin Laden. The film chronicles Obama's brave decision to make the only choice he could, and authorize the killing despite the wishes of Vice President Joe Biden. It's called "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden." The film's rights are held by Harvey Weinstein, one of Obama's most ardent supporters, and it features the President prominently. Most of the article is spent discussing how airing the film so close to the election is just a coincidence. The producers want to assure you that this is not propaganda, the subject is handled fairly, and there's no political motivation behind the timing. According to NatGeo chief exec Howard T. Owens, the date was simply selected “to take advantage of our fall schedule. Other than being commercially opportunistic, we weren’t considering the election,” Of course they weren't. More interesting is that the NYT piece carries an indication that the paper is not finished burying its head in the sand over the Benghazi situation. Buried near the bottom of the column is the following paragraph. "Beyond the political issues, the film may carry the risk of associating Mr. Obama with any backlash in a Muslim world already inflamed by the YouTube trailer for an insulting film portrayal of its prophet. In September riots erupted in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere as Muslim crowds reacted violently to what they perceived as the unforgivable insults of a scratch production, “The Innocence of Muslims,” some of which was posted on YouTube.
Nothing in “SEAL Team Six” recalls the anti-Muslim tones of that film. But the new film’s portrayals of the jeopardy to Muslim children during the assault on Bin Laden’s compound, and its graphic references to — but not portrayals of — torture in the war on terror may step toward the risk zone." Oh no! portraying the Bin Laden raid "may step toward the risk zone!" Heaven forbid. Perhaps this is a good time to remind the crack reporters at The New York Times that we've since learned there was no riot in Libya, as the streets were completely calm that night. Also, we now know that the attack on our consulate was an act of planned terrorism which had nothing to do with any YouTube video. You'd think the "Old Grey Lady" would get tired of embarrassing herself. You'd be wrong. Thank goodness she's here to sound the alarm, warning those who would see us dead that a new movie may hurt their feelings.
Title: This IS CNN
Post by: G M on October 25, 2012, 02:07:42 PM
Ted Turner tells Piers Morgan soldier suicides are good
By: Hope Hodge 10/25/2012 02:05 PM
an interview with CNN host Piers Morgan last week, Media mogul and CNN founder Ted Turner said the fact that there have been more suicides than combat deaths in the Army this year is not “shocking,” but “good.”
Highlighted first by Breitbart.com, the Oct. 19 interview has Turner speculating that “it’s time to put war and conflict behind us and move on,” and the rising rate of self-inflicted troop deaths is good because it brings attention to that view.
Here’s the exchange:
TURNER: It’s time to put war and conflict behind us and move on, and start acting like civilized, educated human beings.
MORGAN: You made the point to me in the break there, more American servicemen have –
TURNER: — are dying now from suicide over there than are dying in combat.
MORGAN: That’s shocking, isn’t it?
TURNER: Well, what — no, I think it’s — I think it’s good, because it’s so clear that we’re programmed and we’re born to love and help each other, not to kill each other, to destroy each other. That’s an aberration. That’s left over from hundreds of years ago. It’s time for to us start acting enlightened.
President Barack Obama has spoken out to condemn Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s controversial comments on abortion and rape in recent days. Will he let this remark go unaddressed?
Title: local reporter with testicles questions Baraq
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2012, 09:10:52 AM
Title: Where is Raddatz (the professional) on Benghazi-gate?
Post by: G M on October 28, 2012, 02:02:41 PM
BD, A quick seach on ABC's site shows that Martha Raddatz did the following most recent stories:
Female Fighter Pilot Breaks Gender Barriers
Martha Raddatz Oct 10, 2012 01:50 PM Blog Entry from News Martha Raddatz, ABC News
Amb. Stevens Cautioned Ex-Military Officer Against Libya Travel
Martha Raddatz Oct 02, 2012 07:10 PM Blog Entry from News Martha Raddatz, ABC News
Given her status as a professional journalist, I'm curious why she wouldn't be reporting on the latest developments on Benghazi-gate. Could you please explain it to me? Is it not newsworthy?
Title: Will Raddatz cover this story?
Post by: G M on October 28, 2012, 02:07:27 PM
Establishment Press Won't Cue Up Biden's Outrageous Comment to Slain Benghazi Hero's Father By Tom Blumer | October 27, 2012 | 10:52
It's hard to find a benchmark against which to compare remarks delivered by Vice President Joe Biden, but here's one from a past administration. In June 2004, Bush 43 Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted on the Senate Floor at the annual Senate photo op by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy had previously been flogging the left's phantasm over alleged "profiteering" by Halliburton, the company at which Cheney had served as Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000. At the end of a testy exchange, Cheney either said "(F-word) you" or "(F-word) yourself."
The Washington Post (go to the third of 22 pages at the link), the New York Times, and the Associated Press covered the story. A Taipei Times dispatch claiming to a blend of Times and AFP reporting actually contains the F-word. A Google News Archive search surfaces at least a dozen establishment press stories and commentaries which are still out there. However, I found almost no mainstream press stories covering what the father of slain Benghazi-defending hero Tyrone Woods claims that Biden said to him when the casket containing his son's remains returned to America (bold was in original):
Story Continues Below Ad ↓ JOE BIDEN TO FATHER OF FORMER NAVY SEAL KILLED IN BENGHAZI: ‘DID YOUR SON ALWAYS HAVE BALLS THE SIZE OF CUE BALLS?’
The father of one of the former Navy SEALs killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya says President Barack Obama wouldn’t even look him in the eye and Vice President Joe Biden was disrespectful during the ceremony when his son’s body returned to America. He also says the White House’s story on the attack doesn’t pass the smell test.
Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, called into “The Glenn Beck Program” on TheBlazeTV Thursday and recounted his interactions with the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden at the ceremony for the Libya victims at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He told host Glenn Beck that what they told him, coupled with new reports that indicate the Obama administration knew very good and well, almost immediately, that a terrorist attack was occurring in Benghazi, make him certain that the American people are not getting the whole truth.
Vice President Biden, as he has become known to do, reportedly made a wildly inappropriate comment to the father who had just lost his hero son.
Woods said Biden came over to his family and asked in a “loud and boisterous” voice, “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”
If this claim were refutable, I believe the Vice President's office would have attempted to do so by now, and it hasn't. The "loud and boisterous" element just cited sort of closes off that avenue.
Later in the Blaze report just linked, Woods described his encounter with President Obama at the same ceremony:
“When he finally came over to where we were, I could tell that he was rather conflicted, a person who was not at peace with himself,” Woods said. “Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish. His face was pointed towards me but he would not look me in the eye, his eyes were over my shoulder.”
“I could tell that he was not sorry,” he added. “He had no remorse.”
Beck said he wanted to give the president “the benefit of the doubt,” and asked Woods how he could be sure that Obama wasn’t just uncomfortable or nervous during their conversation. Woods said it was Obama’s “demeanor.”
Completing the trifecta of administration awkwardness and obfuscation, Woods claims that Hillary Clinton told him that the U.S. would "make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted."
Google News searches on "Charles Woods" (in quotes) and "Biden cue" (not in quotes) returned only two results from U.S. establishment press outlets, a blog post at US News and an outstanding column at the Orange Country Register by the incomparable Mark Steyn. The UK Daily Mail is on the story. Separate searches on "Charles Woods" at the Associated Press and the News York Times (not in quotes and in quotes, respectively) are similarly barren.
The mainstream media's silence on the Benghazi disaster reached deafening levels on Sunday, as hosts of four out of the five major news shows--with the exception of Fox News Sunday--failed to raise the issue. Only Bob Schieffer of CBS gave it serious consideration, and only after it was raised by Sen. John McCain. When the Benghazi issue did surface, other than on Fox, it was invariably brought up by Republican guests, and then deflected by the hosts, who largely ignored new stories this week that implicated the White House in the decision not to intervene to save the life of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and other American staff.
Here is how the Sunday shows covered the issue:
NBC: Meet the Press with David Gregory
The Benghazi issue was not raised at all, save by panelist Carly Fiorina, who was interrupted by Gregory. He promised, "We'll get to that a little bit later," but did not return to the issue before the show's end. (The show was interrupted in some markets, in the final minute, with breaking news about Hurricane Sandy.)
ABC: This Week with George Stephanopoulos
The Benghazi issue was raised by Newt Gingrich, in response to a question about the Romney campaign's prospects in Ohio. Stephanopoulos failed to ask a follow-up and steered the conversation back to polls.
CNN: State of the Union with Candy Crowley
The Benghazi issue was raised twice, once by Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus in response to a question about U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's views on abortion, and once by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in response to a question about whether Romney would win the state in November. Crowley did not raise the issue independently in a show largely focused on polls and voting.
CBS: Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer
The Benghazi issue was raised in an exchange between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff. After McCain brought up the issue, Schieffer asked a follow-up question about whether the administration had engaged in a "deliberate cover-up." McCain said it had either been a cover-up or "the worst kind of incompetence." Schieffer responded with another question about whether drones had produced images of the attacks. Emanuel responded with the Obama campaign's standard talking points, and Schieffer followed up with a question about what he would have done in the White House. Emanuel ducked the question, instead praising Obama's foreign policy record in general.
FOX: Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace
The Benghazi issue was first raised by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in describing issues of concern to Wisconsin voters. Wallace replied that he had planned to address the issue later, which he did, addressing questions to Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) about recent revelations. Warner responded by expressing sympathy with the families of the dead and wounded and promised: "We're going to get to the bottom of this. The intelligence is going to hold hearings when we return, right after the election." He added that the situation had "been politicized," criticizing Romney in particular. Wallace countered that the issue was a legitimate topic of political discussion. He followed up with questions about whether drones flying over Benghazi were armed, and Sen. Udall repeatedly refused to answer directly, saying that he could not comment further. Wallace also later made the issue the primary focus of the show's subsequent panel discussion.
An earlier version of this article cited Sen. Tom Udall. The error has been fixed.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 28, 2012, 03:59:19 PM
It was pretty stupid of them to talk about the hurricane barrelling down on swing states.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2012, 06:10:55 PM
What GM reports is as shameful as it is predictable.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 28, 2012, 07:29:45 PM
What GM reports is as shameful as it is predictable.
David Gregory discussed Benghazi on October 12 (http://www.mediaite.com/tv/nbcs-david-gregory-white-house-is-sowing-more-confusion-on-benghazi-attack/); October 21 (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/axelrod-no-inconsistency-from-the-white-house-on-libya/). On the day before a hurricane collides with a coast, and estimated tens of millions of people will be without power, he doesn't get to Benghazi. You don't like him anyway, and don't agree with him on Benghazi.
Stephanopoulos wrote about Benghazi on October 17 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/biden-ryan-continue-clash-on-benghazi/). He wrote about Benghazi (and Candy Crowley!!!) on October 21 (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/greta-van-susteren-candy-crowley-clumsy-on-benghazi-debate-interjection/). He discussed Benghazi on the same day, in a way I am sure you disagree with (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2012/10/21/friedman-contends-benghazi-controversy-utterly-contrived-stephanopoulos). On the day before a hurricane collides with a coast, and estimated tens of millions of people will be without power, he doesn't get to Benghazi.
Candy Crowley (in)famously discussed Benghazi on October 16 and 17. Now she doesn't. Seems like a no win. Even on the day before a hurricane collides with a coast, and estimated tens of millions of people will be without power.
I understand your concern about Benghazi, as you know. I think this critique is off the mark. You might have heard about the hurricane moving toward the east coast. It IS newsworthy. And, it might very well impact the election.
Title: Whistleblower sues Time Inc. over OFF
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2012, 09:53:15 PM
Grumble, grumble, you do support what you say with relevant data :lol: but on the whole I still think my larger point remains.
=============================================
Whistleblower Sues Time, Inc. Over "Fast and Furious"
We reported recently that a key "Fast and Furious" whistleblower, John Dodson had called on Fortune Magazine to retract a story on the scandal that the Department of Justice Inspector General's report showed to be full of inaccuracies.
Now, Agent Dodson has taken the step of suing Time, Inc, the owner of Fortune, for libel.
The suit claims that the article is "fictitious in the sense that it contains facts that Defendant knew to be false prior to publication."
"[T]he Plaintiff has been libeled nationally and internationally by Defendant, injuring his reputation," the lawsuit states. "The falsities in the article subject the Plaintiff to hatred, ridicule and contempt by readers of the Fortune, its online article, and other persons. The defamatory statements are serious criminal imputations, unfavorable in the eyes of the Plaintiff's fellow United States citizens, including the citizens of South Carolina where he lives."
The Fortune article, written by former Bill Clinton campaign worker Katherine Eban and published right before a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress in the matter, stated that no guns were intentionally allowed to "walk" to Mexican drug cartels. Eban also claimed that Dodson was only motivated to blow the whistle because of a dispute with another agent. The inspector general's report shows both these claims to be incorrect. Additionally, the information uncovered by the House Oversight Committee also shows that Eban's accusations and conclusions are not supported by the facts.
Despite all this, Eban and Fortune have so far refused to admit the story is inaccurate, nor has the article been retracted. Time, Inc, has not made any public statement so far regarding the suit.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 29, 2012, 01:11:23 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2012, 04:22:40 AM
BD:
I took a closer look at what you cite, and find it de minimis. Hurricane Sandy arguably may explain one of two days of non-coverage, but essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 29, 2012, 05:21:52 AM
I took a closer look at what you cite, and find it de minimis. Hurricane Sandy arguably may explain one of two days of non-coverage, but essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves.
These shows air once a week. One day of non-coverage is a week for them.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2012, 05:25:07 AM
"These shows air once a week. One day of non-coverage is week (sic :lol:) for them."
Sorry BD, I'm not sure of your meaning here.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 29, 2012, 05:32:42 AM
GM gave a list of Sunday morning talk shows. They air once a week. Your complaint about about my sources was that "Hurricane Sandy arguably may explain one of two days of non-coverage." One day of coverage for those shows is the entire week. And, having the Sunday show be about the hurricane that is making landfall on MONDAY doesn't mean they dropped the ball.
As for this, "essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves," as you well know I agree with you there.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2012, 05:46:25 AM
:-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 29, 2012, 11:33:01 AM
A splattering of wimpy comments from the links of coverage in our AWOL 'watchdog' mainstream press: Creating confusion. Clumsy. Transparent. An utterly contrived story. Mentions on a blog but never a series of relentless followup questions on the Sunday shows in question with their key guests. Please point out if I missed that. One Stephanopolous blog entry ends with the quote Biden saying Romney is politicizing the tragedy and the other with the comment that it was Mitt's worst moment. Why would a news show make a follow up on points expressed so clearly and objectively?
I wonder what these agenda driven losers would have said about Watergate, had it been Obama instead of Nixon.
Maybe for opinion, but the viewer should not need to go to right wing media to get basic facts on core issues of the day. But we do.
If the excuse is the hurricane, lol, then which storm continues to keep them off of Fast and Furious?
It was NOT our military leaders IMHO telling our forces to stand down and let the assassinations and destruction go forward. It was our civilian leadership and we have much easier way to change them out than impeachment.
“They’re just sowing more confusion about this rather than resolving the issue, which is creating more of an issue,” Gregory concluded. - And then he didn't make it more of an issue. Maybe he is planning a hard hitting, national, prime time inquiry into all the contradictions, misstatements, deceptions and the security failures themselves in Benghazi prior to the election - when they are done with their regional weather forecast. I will stay tuned.
To this quote: "essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves," Bigdog wrote: "as you well know I agree with you there."
Amen to that!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 29, 2012, 11:42:07 AM
"If the excuse is the hurricane, lol...". Interesting wording.
Are you suggesting that potential damage, loss of life, etc. is not worthy of news, Doug? Are you suggesting that potential ramifications of Sandy shouldn't be talked about? Especially on the east coast, which is where the news headquarters tend to be located?
And, I think I am firmly on record about OFF. That does not mean the criticism of the news shows of YESTERDAY was merited.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 29, 2012, 02:50:42 PM
I took a closer look at what you cite, and find it de minimis. Hurricane Sandy arguably may explain one of two days of non-coverage, but essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves.
These shows air once a week. One day of non-coverage is a week for them.
One day of non-coverage to go along with the rest of the days of non-coverage? Why do these professional journalists miss out on these big stories? Watergate didn't have a body count.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 29, 2012, 03:55:49 PM
And which journalist you take to task was on the air during Watergate?
I took a closer look at what you cite, and find it de minimis. Hurricane Sandy arguably may explain one of two days of non-coverage, but essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves.
These shows air once a week. One day of non-coverage is a week for them.
One day of non-coverage to go along with the rest of the days of non-coverage? Why do these professional journalists miss out on these big stories? Watergate didn't have a body count.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 29, 2012, 04:45:40 PM
Ah, so exposing presidential scandals is as dated as polyester leisure suits?
I took a closer look at what you cite, and find it de minimis. Hurricane Sandy arguably may explain one of two days of non-coverage, but essentially the coverage has been far, far less than this matter deserves, and far, far less probing than this matter deserves.
These shows air once a week. One day of non-coverage is a week for them.
One day of non-coverage to go along with the rest of the days of non-coverage? Why do these professional journalists miss out on these big stories? Watergate didn't have a body count.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2012, 05:21:31 PM
BD:
I'm not getting a clear read on where you're going with this. What I'm getting is that you are quibbling with me because the particular shows in question are weekly shows and were aired with H-Sandy approaching that my criticism of the show was unfounded even though the same folks and same pravda networks have a shameful record with regard to Benghazi-gate in particular and Obama in general-- do I have this right?
Title: Re: Media Issues -Storm story is big, so is national security before an election
Post by: DougMacG on October 29, 2012, 07:40:39 PM
"If the excuse is the hurricane, lol...". "Interesting wording."
Guilty. The nervous laugh is that every week they have a reason, not at the Act of God destruction sure to come. I have the same compassion as your average liberal or journalist. When will they get to asking the tough questions of the right people and demand an answer? Never. Not before, during or after the storm, or they can easily prove me wrong. If the only story is the storm, cancel the show and bring in the weather people and emergency broadcasters. That is what they are doing tonight. Is that what happened Sunday am? I don't think so.
"Are you suggesting that potential damage, loss of life, etc. is not worthy of news, Doug?" No. And there wasn't any Sunday morning, but a real need to tell people to take cover. "Are you suggesting that potential ramifications of Sandy shouldn't be talked about?" No. Did I say that? "Especially on the east coast, which is where the news headquarters tend to be located?" Interesting point, they should call it the meet the east coast press. How about asking the rest of the questions from a Calif studio: WHO TOLD OUR SECURITY FORCES TO STAND DOWN AND LET OUR DIPLOMATS BE MURDERED? Was the drone armed? Who watched in real time in the situation room? Where was the President? Who told Susan Rice the lie to spread on 5 Sunday shows? Why? - No time for any of that.
"And, I think I am firmly on record about OFF." - Noted. And likewise for the agreement on this issue. ) None of my anger is aimed at anyone here! (Big, friendly smile icon)
"That does not mean the criticism of the news shows of YESTERDAY was merited." I watched the end of Fox News Sunday and the beginning of clicking between Meet the Press and This Week, was interrupted by news of a death in the family and left the house. I am no expert on what they did or did not cover yesterday other than to infer from all sides in the conversation that the storm coming was the reason for no real follow up on a Benghazi story that is huge and that we all agree is not getting the coverage or aggressive followup that it deserves.
The storm story is now huge and publicizing its magnitude and potential for damage before it hit was fully warranted.
It didn't stop Bill Clinton from telling a Connecticut crowd Sunday night: "We're coming down to the 11th hour. We're facing a violent storm," Clinton said. He waited a beat, then added, "It's nothing compared to the storm we'll face if you don't make the right decision in this election." Was that a joke or serious? I don't know.
I expect hurricanes to hit seaboards, deathly cold waves in the north, earthquakes in earthquake zones, floods in flood zones, all newsworthy. I wonder how many minutes Meet the Press spent on the Missouri River floods of 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Corp_of_Eng._6-16-11A_267.JPG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Corp_of_Eng._6-16-11A_219.jpg "in the second half of the month of May 2011, almost a year's worth of rain fell over the upper Missouri River basin" after a 212% of normal snowfall meltoff from the Rockies. - Not a mention. Couldn't even see it from Washington or New York.
(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/Corp_of_Eng_6-16-11A_219-1.jpg) Freeway intersection I-29 and I-680 June 10 2011, US Army Corps of Engineers photo
Was this Sunday morning's storm coverage so urgent and thorough that they skipped their commercials? - No. They just skipped doing their job.
----
Note: Drudge who is not liberal or east coast based goes hog wild on big storms too. http://drudgereport.com/ Disasters make great news stories. Huge headline as I post this, "NYC Goes Dark". Below storm coverage he continues coverage of the rest, including: CLINTON: Sandy 'nothing compared to the storm we'll face' if R elected... There will be a 'Secretary of Business' in 2nd Term... Father of Slain SEAL to president: 'Better to Die a Hero Than Live a Coward'...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 30, 2012, 01:09:52 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on October 30, 2012, 03:06:23 AM
No, you're just complaining about the lack of something, and then somehow not noticing that there isn't a vacuum on these shows. Three of the four shows that you posted about spent a significant amount of time on Hurricane Sandy. Oh, and by the way, Face the Nation's website has McCain/Libya as the top story RIGHT NOW. But don't let that stop your made up complaints.
And what issue, precisely, do you think I have failed to address?
Title: Re: Media Issues, Jonah Goldberg on Benghazigate
Post by: DougMacG on October 30, 2012, 07:35:14 AM
The whole column is very good, but this part pertains specifically to the discussion here:
LA Times today: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-msm-benghazi-20121030,0,6605340.column
"This is not to say that Fox News is alone in covering the story. But it is alone in treating it like it's a big deal. Of the five Sunday news shows, only "Fox News Sunday" treated this as a major story. On the other four, the issue came up only when Republicans mentioned it. Tellingly, on NBC's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory shushed a guest when she tried to bring up the subject, saying, "Let's get to Libya a little bit later."
Gregory never did get back to Benghazi. But he saved plenty of time to dive deep into the question of what Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments on abortion and rape mean for the Romney campaign. Typically, Gregory's instincts about the news routinely line up with Democratic talking points, in this case Obama's ridiculous "war on women" rhetoric.
I am willing to believe that journalists like Gregory are sincere in their desire to play it straight. But among those who don't share his instincts, it's hard to distinguish between conspiracy and groupthink. Indeed, it's hard to think why one should even bother trying to make that distinction at all."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2012, 08:08:51 AM
BD:
As I review our posts, I'm not seeing anything that reads to me as saying that H-Sandy should not have received big coverage. What I'm seeing is that we don't see that such coverage needed to exclude coverage of the extraordinary story of Benghazi yet again.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on October 30, 2012, 01:19:59 PM
"And what issue, precisely, do you think I have failed to address?"
Given her status as a professional journalist, I'm curious why she wouldn't be reporting on the latest developments on Benghazi-gate. Could you please explain it to me? Is it not newsworthy?
Title: Media cooperating with Benghazi cover-up?
Post by: G M on October 30, 2012, 01:47:47 PM
Media cooperating with Benghazi cover-up? posted at 1:31 pm on October 30, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
There has been a curious lack of curiosity among the media about the chain of events that left an American consulate largely undefended in a terrorist attack, resulting in the death of four Americans, despite a number of military resources at hand. Does this equate to a cover-up by the national media, or at least cooperation on their part with the Obama administration to avoid answering questions about it?
Deborah Saunders, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, finds the lack of interest in this story very, er, interesting. She argues that this isn’t a total media blackout by any means, but implies that the aversion to this story has a lot to do with the party affiliation of the President:
Some readers tell me that they see The Chronicle’s failure to run a rash of front-page stories as proof of bias. They have a point, but they fail to appreciate the local emphasis in today’s front-page placement, especially during a presidential election and World Series, which the Giants, incidentally, won 4-zip.
Most important is the resources issue. Most dailies don’t have foreign bureaus or reporters with the sources needed to break this type of story. “I don’t think there’s a bias issue, but we do have to rely on our primary news services,” Chronicle Editor Ward H. Bushee told me.
That doesn’t let the media off the hook. Saunders notes some very troubling information that has come to light in the last few days — through some good work at Fox News, among others — but which haven’t prompted much coverage or follow-up elsewhere. And if this had happened in a Republican administration, Saunders argues, we’d be seeing a much different response from the media:
On Friday, correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources told her that a CIA team, including Tyrone Woods who also died in Benghazi, had requested military backup during the attack but was told to “stand down.” The CIA dismissed the story as “inaccurate.”
A drone was deployed over Benghazi during an attack that lasted about seven hours. Yet, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that he hadn’t known enough about what was happening in real time to authorize a military rescue.
The Chronicle’s most recent story on Benghazi ran on Oct. 25. It reported that on Sept. 11, the State Department e-mailed the White House that Ansar al-Shariah had claimed responsibility for the attack. That would be shortly after 6 p.m. Eastern time. What did Obama know that night, when did he know it and what did he do about it? Ditto Langley and the Pentagon.
Now ask yourself this: If George W. Bush were president, and the press didn’t know what he did on the evening of the Benghazi attack, do you think there would be the same focus in the media? I think we know the answer.
Michael Ramirez offers his Pulitzer Prize-winning perspective at Investors Business Daily on the media response:
About Standing Up for Heroes ABC News is launching an ongoing series of reports “Standing Up for Heroes“ on Friday, November 11. Through this ongoing series of reports Bob Woodruff and Martha Raddatz will shine a light on critical issues facing veterans and their families while showcasing the ways Americans can come together to help those who have served and sacrificed.
Howabout covering Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty and their final fight?
Title: Cindy Sheehan & Charles Woods
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2012, 06:19:00 PM
Cindy Sheehan Was Cheered, Charles Woods Is Ignored* (http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/103012-631381-cindy-sheehan-cheered-charles-woods-ignored.htm?p=full)
Libya: As the father of a former Navy SEAL slain at Benghazi wonders why our secretary of state lied to him, we wonder why our CIA director abetted a lie that contradicted counterterrorism officials and the FBI.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, a media eager to deny George W. Bush a second term made Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, a national heroine and reported virtually her every word and move.
"Cindy Sheehan," gushed NBC News, "is single-handedly bringing the Iraq debate to Mr. Bush's doorstep."
But nobody in a mainstream media eager to see President Obama get a second term is bringing the Benghazi debate to the White House doorstep. On all the Sunday talk shows, when Benghazi was brought up, the moderator quickly changed subjects.
On CNN's "State of the Union," Candy Crowley, who came to the aid of President Obama on Benghazi during the second presidential debate, sloughed off attempts by two GOP officials to broach Benghazi. When Newt Gingrich raised Benghazi on ABC's "This Week," host George Stephanopoulos quickly changed topics. NBC's David Gregory cut off GOP panelist Carly Fiorina when she brought up Benghazi, promising to "get to that a little later." Of course, he never did.
Nor is Gregory or the others likely to pursue an interview with Charles Woods, father of Ty Woods, one of the SEALs killed in Benghazi.
A few conservative outlets have talked to him, notably Fox News, and he's had much to say about how and why his son was abandoned by the government he served.
Woods is especially angry "that apparently the White House situation room was watching our people die in real time, as this was happening."
If Cindy Sheehan had made such a comment, it would have led every evening newscast.
Nor is Woods happy with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Her countenance was not good, and she made this statement to me .. . she said we will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted," he told radio host Glenn Beck. Woods said he "could tell that she was not telling me the truth."
Indeed, she and the president had to know Benghazi was not caused by a video and knew in real-time there was no spontaneous mob, but rather an organized terrorist attack by the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia.
Two days after the deadly Libya terror attack, representatives of the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) gave Capitol Hill briefings in which they said just that — that the evidence supported an al-Qaida or al-Qaida-affiliated attack.
FBI and NCTC also briefed that there were several al-Qaida training camps just outside Benghazi where the attack occurred and resulted in the deaths of four Americans. The area was described as a hotbed for the militant Ansar al-Sharia as well as al-Qaida in North Africa.
So why did CIA Director David Petraeus tell lawmakers the opposite a day after, that the attack was more consistent with a flash mob, where militants showed up spontaneously with rocket-propelled grenades?
Petraeus downplayed to lawmakers the skill needed to fire mortars, which every spontaneous demonstrator knows how to do.
Petraeus, who served honorably as commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, had to have known otherwise.
"I wish that the leadership in the White House had the same level of moral courage and heroism that my son displayed," Woods said.
So do we. And we wish the media would give him as much sympathy and air time as they gave Cindy Sheehan.
Title: FB censors SEALs to protect Baraq on Benghazi-gate
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2012, 06:36:56 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 30, 2012, 09:59:13 PM
Revise and extend my remarks...
Meet the Press etc should have done their job, filmed a show, brought in key guests, asked tough questions - on key issues. It is 2 shows to a landmark election and they haven't asked much yet. On the eastern seaboard they should have cut away as they did with every other show for extreme weather warnings. People can catch up with the clips, news, video and transcripts when they have more time.
Strange to learn it wasn't the storm but the inconvenient comment of the Indiana candidate that superseded coverage of the Benghazi security scandal.
Like Candy Crowley says, we can get to that later. Much later.
Bad storms coverage has good ratings. Right wing rape abortion comments have the potential to hurt Mitt Romney. We have time for that.
Title: "Don't ask, don't tell" is back!
Post by: G M on October 31, 2012, 01:31:36 PM
Leno: DADT is back — it’s “Obama’s new policy for questions on Libya” posted at 2:41 pm on October 31, 2012 by Erika Johnsen While Jay Leno has no trouble finding occasion to poke fun at Republicans, last night he made a joke at President Obama’s expense last that contained an all-too-accurate observation:
Well, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is back — not for gays in the military, it’s President Obama’s new policy for questions about Libya. Don’t ask, don’t tell! Well, that’s the big story, the Republicans are accusing the White House of successfully engineering a massive coverup on the Libyan attack, but on the plus side, it’s the first time Republicans are giving credit to Obama for doing anything successfully. We’re more than seven weeks out from the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, but we’re still left trying to put together an accurate picture of what actually happened and the White House is still deflecting questions. As the Weekly Standard wonders, we have heard from various government officials, but that has left us with still more questions about Obama’s commanding-in-chief:
So here’s where we are: Petraeus has made clear the CIA wasn’t responsible for the decision not to act. Panetta has tried to take the responsibility himself—and the White House has seemed to encourage this interpretation of events. But Panetta’s position is untenable: The Defense Department doesn’t get to unilaterally decide whether it’s too risky or not to try to rescue CIA operators, or to violate another country’s air space. In any case, it’s inconceivable Panetta didn’t raise the question of what to do when he met with the national security adviser and the president at 5 p.m. on the evening of September 11 for an hour. And it’s beyond inconceivable he didn’t then stay in touch with the White House after he returned to the Pentagon.
So the question remains: What did President Obama do that evening (apart from spending an hour on the phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu)? What did he know, and what did he decide, and what was the basis for his decisions? Of course, when I say that “we” are still left with questions, I only mean the people who are bothering to be interested in this travesty of a security failure — because there seem to be a lot of people within a certain profession who are actively disinterested, as Charles Krauthammer argued last night: “You could argue that it takes Libya off the front pages, but then again, it wasn’t on the front pages in the first place. It is the mainstream media, who spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles on the supposed outing of a CIA agent in the Bush administration, in which she was safely in Washington and never in danger, has an epidemic of incuriosity about the murder of an ambassador.”
Title: Democrat Pat Caddell lets rip
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2012, 01:32:47 PM
Benghazi Coverup Much Worse Than "Third-rate Burglary" By Jack Kelly - October 31, 2012
The ride on the Obama bus gets bumpier as more bodies are thrown under it.
The latest to go thumpity thump are journalists who trumpeted the administration's excuse that faulty intelligence is why the president said for so long the attack on our consulate in Benghazi was a "spontaneous" protest over a Youtube video.
The journalists went under the bus because the Foreign Service and career intelligence officers the administration tried to scapegoat refused to go there. They've leaked emails that reveal the White House was informed while it was still going on that the attack was the work of terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida.
To put this in the context of the Mother of All Scandals, these emails are the equivalent of a transcript of what was on the 181/2 minutes of the secret White House tapes President Nixon's secretary erased.
"What did the president know, and when did he know it?" Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn, asked during the Watergate hearings. The answer in the leaked emails is that the president knew everything, all along.
They were sent by the Regional Security Officer in Libya to the State Department in Washington, the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and thedirector of National Intelligence.
The first said the consulate was being attacked by "about 20" armed men.
The third, sent two hours later, reported that Ansar al Sharia, an Islamist militia, was claiming credit for the attack.
A fourth, sent at 11:57 p.m. EDT, described a mortar attack on the consulate annex, where the Americans were killed.
About 300 watch officers at the NSC, State, Defense, the FBI and other agencies would have read these emails as soon as they were received, and informed their superiors right away. This was a crisis. Men armed with mortars, machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades were attacking a U.S. consulate. The ambassador was missing. The secretary of state, the DNI and the president would have been briefed within hours.
When the "three a.m. phone call" came (at 6:07 p.m. EDT), the president ignored it. The day after learning Ambassador Stevens had been murdered and sensitive intelligence documents were missing, he jetted off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas.
And for nearly two weeks afterward, Mr. Obama and his senior aides blamed the attack on the Youtube video -- even though they knew that wasn't true.
His interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, taped the day after the attack, indicates that Mr. Obama has been lying from the get-go.
"My suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in [the attack on the consulate] who were looking to target Americans from the start," the president told Mr. Kroft.
The fact that CBS cut this from the broadcast -- airing instead Mr. Obama's attack on Mitt Romney for criticizing his Middle East policy -- indicates why the White House remains confident the "mainstream" media will continue to downplay the scandal.
This cover-up, like that in Watergate, goes right to the top. What's being covered up is much worse than a "third rate burglary." Why was security so lax? Why were the ambassador's pleas for more turned down? Why did the president lie? Americans have a right to know. Few in the media have tried to find out.
Appeals to their integrity are unlikely to get "mainstream" journalists to do their jobs, since they have so little of it. Self preservation may. The leaked emails expose journalists who touted the administration's story as gullible chumps, corrupt shills, or both.
Spooks and diplomats are angry at the attempt to make them scapegoats; furious that the president didn't lift a finger to help their comrades in the consulate during the seven-hour siege. More leaks may be on the way. If they fail to follow up, journalists could lose more credibility than the president. They haven't much credibility left to lose.
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on November 01, 2012, 03:40:19 AM
As I review our posts, I'm not seeing anything that reads to me as saying that H-Sandy should not have received big coverage. What I'm seeing is that we don't see that such coverage needed to exclude coverage of the extraordinary story of Benghazi yet again.
The post that began this deluge took four programs to task about their lack of coverage of a particular story on a specific day. That specific day was the day before a hurricane hit the east coast, in the most densely populated area of the country (I think), a week before an election, hitting states such as PA and VA which are swing states that will determine the outcome of the election.
Three of the four programs that were berated, critisized or whatever spent much of their airtime to talk about that hurricane. Since I have posted about the hurricane coverage on the SUnday morning programs, you have said "What GM reports is as shameful as it is predictable." I take that to mean that hurricane coverage is not worthy of air time, when a story that you, GM and Doug somehow think should have been aired on that exact day. I agree that Benghazi is an undercovered story, but that won't stop the storm front that is GM once he has made up his mind about something. However, critisizing those programs on the day before landfall, for airing hurricane coverage strikes me as stupid, cold, and over the top. It also detracts from the message that you three and other conservatives want to support about the liberal media bias. You don't have to convince each other, you have to change the minds of those who don't beleive you. When hurricane coverage is your starting point, you lose the likelihood of persuasion, I would think. I say that, because you've lost me. NOW the criticism has shifted to only one of the orginal programs. So now the complaint seems to be that one of four didn't actually talk about the hurricane. OK, but that sure is different than the original position. And you accuse me of quibbling. One of four. That is a quibble.
No matter what I say, none of you will change your mind. Doug suggests that these programs might have cut away, so that there are essentially two different shows shown. Actually, I have friends and family on the east coast. I'd like to see what's going on out there. I care about how the storm impacted the election, so I'd like to know what is going on in Pennsylvania and Virginia. (Also, I'm not sure that it is strange that Mourdock's comments would get airplay. First, this comment came at the end of an election cycle that has included Todd Akin making national news. Second, Romney did just film a commercial for Mourdock. Third, I think that abortion remains an important election story, as most Americans have strong views on it. Fourth, there has been a major point about swing voter, and the number of which are women. Fifth, well, nevermind... How could we think to talk about domestic electoral issues before an election.)
You all see the spector of the liberal media. I see, at least for a day, the media covering the most important national story.
So, attack away. Me? Reporters? Whomever. Overwhelm the forum with facts about one of four shows. That totally proves that you are right, no matter what. Because you will ALWAYS be right. No matter what.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 01, 2012, 08:24:27 AM
Bigdog, These are good points, very well expressed. The storm was huge, deadly and affected people beyond what was in its path. I regret a couple of things, that I piled on with points already made by others, and that my words trivialized the importance of broadcasting the deadly danger impending.
The Mourdock point is interesting. It is something they would also cover if not interrupted by the storm, but not ahead of or instead of Benghazi IMO. What bill or constitutional amendment that might pass in the Senate would ban abortion for pregnancies resulting from rape? There are none.
"The New York Times and Washington Post have both run nearly 100 pieces over the last 3 months mentioning the GOP and rape." http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/29/mainstream-media-twists-mourdock-comments-about-god-and-life-into-something/#ixzz2Ayo84LIc There is an under-covered story.
Rape abortions make up about .05% of all abortions. The non-existent controversy makes a useful diversion from focusing on convenience abortions that comprise more than 98% of abortions, as I see it.
Regarding Benghazi, the Sunday shows were the conduit for the central lie the administration put forward. I clicked and watched Ambassador Susan Rice go on four of those shows with the exact same well rehearsed story. She was sent there by the White House to tell the nation a false characterization of what happened in a very important international event. It has been 7 weeks since the tragedy. What exactly she was covering up we still don't know.
Assuming professionalism and conscience, these shows would feel a need to get the false story corrected, find and air the truth the best they can and get it done in the same format, national broadcast not in a blog, prior to the election.
My complaint is aimed at far more than the decisions made that one day. The point of that day is that if not that day as the story was exploding, then when? It isn't going to happen. They broadcast a falsehood and they leave it out there for weeks or forever uncorrected.
If the administration goes down partly because of this story it is because people moved on to get their news from other sources than what used to be the main networks and the main newspapers.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on November 01, 2012, 01:53:04 PM
And, likewise, Doug, your response is very helpful.
I think that we have a different view of what makes something newsworthy. For example, while I take your point on the importance of the rape/abortion, I think you "misunderestimate" its impact. First, rape is horrific (I know you know this; not a jab at you in any way). As such, and given that it is many women's worst nightmare, or top 3 anyway, the basis of the question has political merit I think you don't recognize. Especially since many of the undecideds are women. Second, one's view on abortion is often indicative of religious views. We can discuss whether ot not one should base a vote on religion, but we both know that people do. JFK being Catholic, Romney--albeit to a lesser extent-- and his Mormon faith, and Obama's Christian/Muslim/has he choosen a church yet are things that are focused on very often, for good or ill. Mourdock's (or Akin's) misstatements about rape/abortion ARE indicative of their faith. And, as such, will be discussed. And if this isn't true, why did Mitt Romney call Todd Akin and ask him to step aside from the election???
Also think that there are MANY stories that are under-reported. In that regard, Benghazi is not unique. And here, I don't just mean the ones you mean, or the necessarily political, in a liberal/conversative view. There has been little to no coverage about the impact Sandy had in the Caribbean. There is very little discussion, it seems to me, about the conflict between Japan and China about Senkaku Islands. Etc. But you (conservative plural) don't complain about those under reported stories. Why not? Aren't they important? So, I see un(der) reported stories not necessarily as a liberal/conservative issue, but as a sad by product of the news that occurs by nature of being news. There are only so many news sources, with a finite airtime or pages to report the news. Other resources are also lacking (any guesses about the number of news desks in Africa?).
Finally, no matter what YOU were talking about, if you look carefully... I was talking about a day. If you see liberal taint everywhere, I think you lose lots of people. As I said, I know you lost me.
Title: whew...
Post by: bigdog on November 01, 2012, 06:32:59 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2012, 07:12:57 PM
Finally shamed into it by FOX :evil: :-D
Funny that you should mention this because on the round table for the final segment of Bret Baier's Special Report today they specifically mentioned that the story finally seems to be getting some traction with some of the Pravdas 8-)
Title: "watching political pundits make sports fans look like PhD mathematicians"
Post by: bigdog on November 02, 2012, 05:51:59 AM
That probabilities do not ensure outcomes—something every blackjack player who has busted while hitting against a face card has long known—has escaped Silver’s detractors. Brendan Nyhan at CJR and Ben Jacobs at Daily Download have emptied an ample volume of bullets into this barrel of fish. Ezra Klein put it succinctly: “If Mitt Romney wins on election day, it doesn’t mean Silver’s model was wrong. After all, the model has been fluctuating between giving Romney a 25 percent and 40 percent chance of winning the election. That’s a pretty good chance!”
CNN Exposed, Emmy Winning Former CNN Journalist, Amber Lyon Blows The Whistle, Let me repeat that.CNN is paid by the US government for reporting on some events, and not reporting on others. The Obama Administration pays for CNN content
Sunday, October 7, 2012 10:15
CNN Exposed
Emmy Winning Former CNN Journalist, Amber Lyon, Blows The Whistle….
Simultaneously Answers One of my questions….
by sundancecracker
The central issue is Media Controlled by The Obama Administration, and more specifically CNN – as a VERIFIED tool for propaganda and disinformation.
Within this Canadian video report you will find footage of a CNN story on Egypt and Mohammed Al Zawahiri. It was produced by well-known CNN Journalist Nick Robertson. The entire video is excellent, but the pertinent aspect is at the 1:30 mark.
In the previous thread I asked two central questions. The Second Question was:
Why would CNN [or CNNi] refuse to air the Nick Robertson report with Muhammed Al Zawahiri (brother of Ayman Al Zawahiri) that clearly shows the Egyptian uprising was 100% in response to his call for protests for release of the Blind sheik on 9-11.? Why would the “most trusted name in news“, hide the report showing the truth, and instead allow the false narrative to be sold, by them, to the American electorate?
Amber Lyon provides the answer(s).
CNN never aired the Nick Robertson report in Egypt because it completely contradicted the Obama Administration, and Hillary Clinton State Department, Egyptian assertions. In short, it proved they were lying – BIG TIME. The refusal to air the real reasoning for the Egyptian Embassy assault was intentional protection of President Obama specifically orchestrated by the CNN News group. Specific, intentional, lying.
Apparently they have a history of this no-one knew about. UNTIL NOW.
Amber Lyon is an award-winning journalist who worked for CNN.
She says she was ordered to report fake stories, delete unfriendly stories adverse to the Obama administration (like the Nick Robertson report), and construct stories in specific manners while working for the left-wing network.
CNN is paid by foreign and domestic Government agencies for specific content.
Let me repeat that.
CNN is paid by the US government for reporting on some events, and not reporting on others. The Obama Administration pays for CNN content.
Let that sink in.
Additionally CNN and CNN International are also paid by foreign governments to avoid stories that are damaging, and construct narratives that show them in a better, albeit false, light.
Amber Lyon is a three-time Emmy winning investigative journalist and photographer. She accuses CNN of being “fake news.”
Back in March 2011, CNN sent a four person team to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring. Once there, the crew was the subject of extreme intimidation amongst other things, but they were able to record some fantastic footage. As Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian writes in his blockbuster arti…:
“In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances. She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters. In sum, the early 2011 CNN segment on Bahrain presented one of the starkest reports to date of the brutal repression embraced by the US-backed regime.
Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary. Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision. To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi.
Having just returned from Bahrain, Lyon says she “saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting.”
Here is a segment of the Bahrain report that Amber Lyon and her team put together. CNNi refused to allow it to air because the Bahrain Government had paid them not to show it.
When Amber Lyon recognized the extent of the reasoning, she challenged CNN. CNN told her to be quiet, and began to view her as a risk. She knew, and found out, too much.
Amber is now trying to tell the story, the real story, of what is going on behind the closed doors of US Media entities. Amber has created her own website, and additionally as noted in the Guardian Article she is trying to share the truth of the deceptions.
What Amber Lyon describes is exactly the reason why CNN never aired the Nick Robertson interview with Muhammed Al Zawahiri in Egypt.
Amber recently did a web interview with Alex Jones on InfoWars. Generally the TreeHouse does not appreciate Alex Jones. He is wound up tighter than piano wire, and unfortunately much of his truth is diminished because of the hype he places upon it.
Alex Jones is easy to disregard as a “conspiracy theorist”, not because of what he says, but because of how he says it. Everything is desperate and dangerous with him. That said, the words and explanations of Ms. Lyon in the discussion/interview are poignant and vastly informative. So I share the video with you so you can hear from Amber herself exactly what is being described and articulated. It is critical to listen towhat she says, not just about Bahrain but also about what the Obama administration is specifically doing. Just try to overlook the Alex Jones-ism, and focus on what Amber Lyon is sharing.
Title: Strong Terms for a Weak President
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 02, 2012, 01:18:15 PM
Editorial excoriating the administration and lapdog media over the handling of Libya:
Title: Hurricanes and the press
Post by: G M on November 03, 2012, 02:40:30 PM
BD,
Do you detect any discernable difference in how Preident Bush was covered during Katrina and a certain president now?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on November 04, 2012, 05:59:41 AM
Do you mean the lack of a "Brownie" moment?
Or the reaction of a governor of the opposing party praising the reaction by the president? Make sure to mention that this was done on Fox, despite an attempt to set the opposing party governor for a partisan statement.
Or, do you have something else in mind?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2012, 08:00:04 AM
"Do you mean the lack of a "Brownie" moment?"
Ouch :lol:
That said, I do think Bush got a raw deal on Katrina. The true outrages were the mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana. Working from memory, with literally weeks of warning, the mayor (local response being the first line of defense) couldn't even keep hundreds of buses, which should have been used for getting folks without their own vehicles ouf to town from getting sunk-- and so very much more. However the words of condemnation were missing in the pravdas. Frankly one suspects that he being a black Dem and Bush being the preferred target had something to do with it.
The Dem governor of LA was missing in action, even while Rep Gov Haley Barbor of Mississippi, who faced the same problems in the same degree, did a fine job to media silence. Again one suspects pravda partisanship to have something to do with it.
To my old fashioned way of thinking the federal government is the third line of defense (after local and state) but well, having exoriated Bush, the progressive pravdas are all to glad to support the notion of yet another area of federal pre-emption.
My grumpiness aside, here there was a genuinely huge catastropic storm that understandably overwhelmed local capabilities and federal action (e.g. Army Corps of Engineers helping pump out the tunnels and the subways quite the correct thing to do. Naturally the President preened, and the pravdas praised, but , , , well, , , there it is.
==================
ASAP"...So that we are clear on this all, here is the record: ''It took Barack Obama seven days to visit Joplin, Missouri after a tornado wiped out half of the town and killed 120 people... ...It took Barack Obama 14 days to visit the Gulf Coast after the BP oil spill. ...Obama declined to visit Tennessee after the historic 2010 "1000-year floods." ...Obama ignored the Texas wildfires when over 400 homes were lost. ...And, of course, Obama ignored the calls for help from Benghazi.... ...But it took Barack Obama only one day to visit the hurricane damage on the East Coast. Then again, there’s an election next week.''
-Gateway Pundit
Title: Heck of a job, Barry
Post by: G M on November 04, 2012, 02:56:27 PM
If there were one, they'd be sure to report it, right?
Or the reaction of a governor of the opposing party praising the reaction by the president? Make sure to mention that this was done on Fox, despite an attempt to set the opposing party governor for a partisan statement.
FEMA's vaunted "lean forward" strategy that called for advanced staging of supplies for emergency distribution failed to live up to its billing in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In fact, the agency appears to have been completely unprepared to distribute bottled water to Hurricane Sandy victims when the storm hit this Monday. In contrast to its stated policy, FEMA failed to have any meaningful supplies of bottled water -- or any other supplies, for that matter -- stored in nearby facilities as it had proclaimed it would on its website. This was the case despite several days advance warning of the impending storm.
FEMA only began to solicit bids for vendors to provide bottled water for distribution to Hurricane Sandy victims on Friday, sending out a solicitation request for 2.3 million gallons of bottled water at the FedBizOpps.gov website. Bidding closed at 4:30 pm eastern.
Breitbart News spoke with contracting officer Annette Wright, who said that the winning vendor would be required to deliver the 2.3 million gallons of bottled water to an East Farmingdale, New York distribution center that was listed in the solicitation request by Monday, November 5th. Ms. Wright was unable to say when or how the water would be delivered from the distribution center to needy Hurricane Sandy victims in New Jersey, Staten Island, Long Island, and other boroughs of New York City. Vendors "are currently being evaluated," she said, and when the vendors are announced, they will provide information on how local distribution will occur. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When night falls in the Rockaways, the hoods come out.
Ever since Sandy strafed the Queens peninsula and tore up the boardwalk, it’s become an often lawless place where cops are even scarcer than electrical power and food. Locals say they are arming themselves with guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend against looters.
Thugs have been masquerading as Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) workers, knocking on doors in the dead of night. But locals say the real workers have been nowhere in sight, causing at least one elected official — who fears a descent into anarchy if help doesn’t arrive soon — to call for the city to investigate the utility.
PHOTOS: HURRICANE SANDY'S PATH OF DESTRUCTION
LIVE BLOG: THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE SANDY
Further exacerbating desperate conditions, it could take at least a month to repair the the bridge that connects the Rockaways to the city subway system, officials said.
“We booby-trapped our door and keep a baseball bat beside our bed,” said Danielle Harris, 34, rummaging through donated supplies as children rode scooters along half-block chunk of the boardwalk that had marooned into the middle of Beach 91st St.
“We heard gunshots for three nights in a row,” said Harris, who believed they came from the nearby housing projects.
Carly Ruggieri, 27, who lives in water-damaged house on the block, said she barricades her door with a bed frame. “There have been people in power department uniforms knocking on doors and asking if they’re okay, but at midnight.”
And another local surfer said he has knives, a machete and a bow and arrow on the ready. Gunshots and slow-rolling cars have become a common fixture of the night since Hurricane Sandy.
“I would take a looter with a boa. If I felt threatened I would definitely use it,” said Keone Singlehurst, 42. “Its like the Wild West. A borderline lawless situation.”
City Councilman James Sanders (D-Far Rockaway) said he fears the situation will devolve into anarchy.
“We have an explosive mix here,” said Sanders. “People will take matters into their own hands.”
Walter Meyer, 37, lives in Park Slope but often surfs in the Rockaways. He said it’s not the place it was before the storm.
"After sunset everyone locks their doors,” said Meyer, as he loaded up a solar panel from a factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to bring to local residents. "They're trying to find whatever weapons they can find. Some people are even using bows and arrows."
"FEMA had hundreds of thousands of liters of bottled water, along with millions of meals, cots and blankets stockpiled, which were moved into the region ahead of Sandy."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 04, 2012, 05:03:22 PM
"FEMA had hundreds of thousands of liters of bottled water, along with millions of meals, cots and blankets stockpiled, which were moved into the region ahead of Sandy."
Well, if government funded media says so, it must be true, right?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2012, 05:14:45 PM
"For Staten Island resident Deb Smith, whose house was flooded by the storm surge from Sandy, FEMA has been a savior.
""What a hell of an organization. I got on the phone with them yesterday, I got my claim number in already, the guy said he's going to call me in a couple of days," she says. "He's going to come out and estimate, and they said, listen, whatever doesn't work, they're going to help us put stuff in storage.""
No doubt NPR will be checking in with Debbie in a few days :wink:
More seriously, "IF" FEMA has improved since Katrina, that's a good thing, but IMHO self-reliance is the first line of defense. Army Engineers pumping out tunnels and subways, providing generators (have they been doing this? I don't know) seem a good and appropriate use of federal resources to me, but I for one would like to see more reference to "Ya know, waiting until there is a storm bearing down to run down to the supermarket to buy food and water, to the hardware store to buy gasoline jugs and to the gas station to fill them may leave you facing empty shelves, empty gas tanks, and long lines-- all when you don't have the time and generally everything is in gridlock."
Or you can wait for FEMA to select its vendors, pay them (you ever tried getting the govt to pay promptly on a contract even when there is no crisis?) and for the vendors to get to you.
Also a good idea would be laws that allowed people the necessary tools to defend themselves, their homes, and their property. Granny may not be able to draw a bow and aim the thing, but a suitable handgun should be well within her capabilities.
Title: NPR
Post by: bigdog on November 04, 2012, 06:24:53 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2012, 08:29:41 PM
BD:
Good citation and I agree. NPR does have certain standards of integrity.
Still, I doubt in the chaos of Sandy's aftermath whether anyone will be going back to Debbie to see if the promises that were made her that so impressed her were kept. I should have been clearer in making my point.
Title: Fox attacks Bruce Springsteen for hosting charity concert
Post by: bigdog on November 05, 2012, 03:58:59 AM
“Good intention, raise some money for victims, but the timing is more than suspect,” guest host Eric Bolling said this morning.
I, for one, totally agree. The nerve of these liberal artists raising money for victims of the storm immediately after the damage was done.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 05, 2012, 06:01:11 AM
It's not like Springsteen has a connection to NJ and the NJ shore , , ,
Agreed, the comment was over the top.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Meet the media biased Press with David Gregory
Post by: DougMacG on November 05, 2012, 06:55:22 AM
Following the deluge here last week I watched this show in its entirety yesterday. It certainly masquerades as being a balanced show in search of the truth.
Host David Gregory asked his administration guest a very tough question about the lack of security at Benghazi. I'll come back and add the text in with exact quotes, but after he got his non-answer at quarter after the hour he said that's all we have time for and went on to break.
He made no point whatsoever to expose or correct the lie put forth by the Barack Obama administration through Ambassador Susan Rice on his show on Sept 16, 2012:
See the Rice interview: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/meet-the-press/49051702 ------------ Meanwhile, did CBS bury the contradictory parts of their President Obama video until too late to do damage for political or editorial reasons? With the space available on the internet, why are we not entitled to see entire on-the-record interviews in something close to real time? ----------- BD, I know I lose more moderate voters with my liberal bias rants, but I lose me if I don't speak up on what I see that troubles me deeply. It isn't that there aren't enough right wing sources; it is that I resent having to go there to get key information and it troubles me to see what others are often missing. I agree with you 100% on your point about other types of unreported stories and under-reported stories in our media. The China-Japan islands dispute is a great example. American press is audience and ratings oriented with very little interest in widening our knowledge. That is one of the great benefits of this forum where much of this does come up with referrals to good sources to read.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Meet the media biased Press with David Gregory
Post by: bigdog on November 05, 2012, 09:49:10 AM
BD, I know I lose more moderate voters with my liberal bias rants, but I lose me if I don't speak up on what I see that troubles me deeply. It isn't that there aren't enough right wing sources; it is that I resent having to go there to get key information and it troubles me to see what others are often missing. I agree with you 100% on your point about other types of unreported stories and under-reported stories in our media. The China-Japan islands dispute is a great example. American press is audience and ratings oriented with very little interest in widening our knowledge. That is one of the great benefits of this forum where much of this does come up with referrals to good sources to read.
Doug, many thanks for the reply. As I think you know, I respect you a great deal and appreciate your thoughts generally and your thoughtful response here.
I understand your point, believe me. And I think that "I lose me if I don't speak up" is a particularly important point. I do want to say, though, that perhaps there are some starting points that you may consider somewhat. First, as I said, all of the fracas that began due to a post prior to Sandy was due, it seems to me because I made a point about a particular day, and then several on the forum took that as an opportunity to lambast damn near everything related to media in the past 4 years (I embellish, I know). If you could have conceded that coverage of a hurricane was important, even if that meant that other things were left off the air, I think that would help... and it wouldn't have lost a "more moderate voter" who DIDN'T disagree with your overall point to begin with.
Does that make sense?
Title: And so it goes , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 05, 2012, 04:00:44 PM
BD: I don't think anyone didn't think the hurricane anything less than a huge story, merely that Benghazi could have been covered too had the desire been there.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cbs-releases-previously-withheld-60-minutes-interview-segment-in-which-obama-refuses-to-call-benghazi-a-terrorist-attack/ This would seem to have been a natural follow-up to the second debate and Candy Crowley's inaccurate intervention , , ,
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 05, 2012, 09:40:07 PM
"Does that make sense?"
Yes. )
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on November 06, 2012, 02:42:37 AM
Then I think we are back to disagreeing occassionally, agreeing with a fair amount of consistency and at least understanding the basis of where we are coming from. Today is a good day already. Now, off to the polls.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 06, 2012, 10:22:39 AM
"If you could have conceded that coverage of a hurricane was important, even if that meant that other things were left off the air, I think that would help... and it wouldn't have lost a "more moderate voter" who DIDN'T disagree with your overall point to begin with."
Funny, I thought I did that.
Title: Why did CBS do this, BD?
Post by: G M on November 06, 2012, 10:26:28 AM
A CBS News Obama-Libya scandal? Certainly. By Erik Wemple
Oct. 17. That’s the date on which President Obama’s position on the Benghazi, Libya, attack peaked as a national issue. The night before, in a town hall debate moderated by CNN’s Candy Crowley, the president made a spectacle of noting that on the day after the Benghazi tragedy, he stood in the Rose Garden and called it an “act of terror.” His opponent, Mitt Romney, seemed convinced otherwise, prompting a controversial fact-check by Crowley. The fuss over all of this prompted politically involved Americans to debate just how Obama had categorized the tragedy.
Cue the “60 Minutes” video. Or not.
In a passionate post today, Bret Baier of Fox News hammers CBS News for waiting till Nov. 4 to post a bit of video quite relevant to all of this. In it, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” asks the president about Benghazi. The question was posed on Sept. 12, the same day of the Rose Garden address:
KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorist attack? OBAMA: Well it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other. The president’s response packs it all: 1) Avoidance of the question; 2) refusal to use the term “terrorism”; 3) reliance on talking points about bringing people to justice. In other words, big news.
Had this clip embedded itself in the news cycle after the town-hall debate, the following would have happened:
1) CBS News would have reaped millions of page views;
2) Mitt Romney’s slip-up in the town-hall debate over this issue would no longer look like as a slip-up; it’d look like a quest for accountability;
3) Team Obama would have had to spend days responding to questions about the discrepancy between what he said in the town-hall debate and what he’d told Kroft; and
4) After that town-hall debate, Romney pretty much dropped Libya as a talking point. In a strategic move much observed by pundits, he declined to pound away on the topic in the final presidential debate, which centered on foreign policy. Had CBS News released what it had on hand, perhaps Romney would have had charged ahead with a Libya message.
Now the clip is way past its sell-by date. It’ll cause a ruckus among media critics and Libya geeks, and that’s about it. As insulting as CBS News’s timing is its position on the matter. It has issued a short statement that skirts the issue in the hope of changing the subject, perfect symmetry for Benghazi: “We’re proud of our Benghazi coverage, which from Libya to Washington has been the most comprehensive original reporting of any network.”
Left unaddressed is how this possibly could have happened. An honest mistake? A producer who missed the second debate? Whatever the cause, the episode grinds to the detriment of Kroft, who had the prescience to ask the president the question that would preoccupy Washington for weeks. Perhaps it was he who agitated to release this clip.
Critics will elevate CBS News’s selective video publishing to a prime exhibit in their brief that the mainstream media is protecting Obama. Barring a better explanation from CBS News, that’s a hard case to contradict. The only note of mitigation for the network is that it didn’t wait till after the election to publish the video or suppress it altogether.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on November 07, 2012, 03:28:45 AM
Then I missed it, and I apologize for the oversight.
"If you could have conceded that coverage of a hurricane was important, even if that meant that other things were left off the air, I think that would help... and it wouldn't have lost a "more moderate voter" who DIDN'T disagree with your overall point to begin with."
Funny, I thought I did that.
Title: Katrina on the Hudson and MSM spin
Post by: G M on November 14, 2012, 10:02:39 AM
Or the reaction of a governor of the opposing party praising the reaction by the president? Make sure to mention that this was done on Fox, despite an attempt to set the opposing party governor for a partisan statement.
Hurricane Sandy: Katrina on the Hudson? posted at 5:11 pm on November 13, 2012 by Mary Katharine Ham Glenn Reynolds notices similarities, in USA Today:
One parallel: A late evacuation order. Even before the storm struck, weatherblogger Brendan Loy — famous for calling for early evacuation of New Orleans before Katrina struck — criticizing Mayor Bloomberg for not ordering early or extensive enough evacuations in New York, and for making the “ignorant” statement that Sandy wouldn’t be as bad as a hurricane…
After Sandy struck, some areas did worse than others, and FEMA — as with Katrina — got bad press. Manhattan was hit hard, but the outer boroughs suffered more. Staten Island residents say they were forgotten by relief efforts and one press report called the island “a giant mud puddle of dead dreams.” Adding insult to injury, when another nor’easter approached the area FEMA closed its Staten Island office “due to weather.” Time called it “the island that New York City forgot.” Rudy Giuliani called FEMA’s performance “as bad as Katrina.” But there is one difference:
So: late warnings, confused and inadequate responses, FEMA foul-ups and suffering refugees. In this regard, Sandy is looking a lot like Katrina on the Hudson. Well, things go wrong in disasters. That’s why they’re called disasters. But there is one difference.
Under Katrina, the national press credulously reported all sorts of horror stories: rapes, children with slit throats, even cannibalism. These stories were pretty much all false. Worse, as Lou Dolinar cataloged later, the press also ignored many very real stories of heroism and competence. We haven’t seen such one-sided coverage of Sandy, where the press coverage of problems, though somewhat muted before the election, hasn’t been marked by absurd rumors or ham-handed efforts to push a particular narrative. It took days for FEMA to hit the ground in hard-hit parts of NYC. More than a week after the storm, FEMA representatives were just getting on the ground and opening temporary offices in New Jersey. When a nor’easter blew in, several of their offices shut down because of— wait for it— severe weather.
An army of FEMA volunteers is now housed in the USTS Kennedy near Staten Island, a 540-foot training ship. They are well-meaning, no doubt, and yet the State Island FEMA office was one of those closed for inclement weather last week, in one of the hardest hit parts of the city.
Citizen groups stepped in:
Victims of an unforgiving one-two punch from superstorm Sandy and a nor’easter that both hit New York’s Staten Island say FEMA has forgotten them…
Punch-drunk residents’ ire is also aimed at the city — which is going door-to-door to order people out of their homes — at the American Red Cross, which some say has not done enough and at police and firefighters. One group of residents, calling themselves the “Brown Cross,” is patrolling the devastated streets, armed with walkie-talkies, and helping residents clear debris and pump water from their flooded homes.
“We’ve done more for our community than FEMA, the Red Cross and the National Guard combined, directly hitting houses and people in need,” Frank Recce, the 24-year-old longshoreman and Iraq Army veteran who organized the group, told FoxNews.com. Occupy, too!
FEMA says 1,600 people are using aid for hotels, but there are thousands more displaced, and a rental-market pinch. Church members helped find housing for victims in Middletown, N.J when FEMA’s help was late or misguided:
Colon has been trying to find housing for church members who lost everything. A few people slept stretched across chairs in the sanctuary after the storm. The nearest FEMA assistance center is in Union Beach, about five miles away, and many storm victims lost their cars to flooding.
Colon says she knows FEMA has offered some of the displaced people housing, but miles from their neighborhoods.
“It’s not doable if you put them a mile and a half out. They have to have transportation to their job. [FEMA wants] to offer help, but it has to be helpful to the person,” she said, especially storm victims with children in school who value their community. “They lost their house already; now they’re going to lose everything else.” FEMA trailers are headed to the area, but no state has requested or claimed them yet, and it has not yet been determined where they’ll end up. Mercifully, FEMA Director Craig Fugate assures residents they’re not toxic, unlike some Katrina-era FEMA trailers, which were found to be contaminated with formaldehyde.
Here’s FEMA’s assessment of its own performance, by the numbers:
Since Hurricane Sandy struck New York, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has approved more than $338 million to help individuals and families recover from the disaster.FEMA provides the following snapshot of the disaster recovery effort as of Nov. 12:
More than 176,000 New Yorkers have contacted FEMA for information or registered for assistance with FEMA and more than $338 million has been approved. More than 91,000 have applied through the online application site at www.disasterassistance.gov.
30 Disaster Recovery Centers (DRC) are open in the nine declared counties. These include mobile sites as well as fixed sites, and to date more than 12,000 survivors have been assisted at DRCs in New York.
More than 1,100 Community Relations (CR) specialists are strategically positioned throughout affected communities, going door to door explaining the types of disaster assistance available and how to register. More teams continue to arrive daily.
1,126 inspectors in the field have completed more than 44,000 home inspections. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, critics understandably questioned the federal agency’s lack of contingency plan for disseminating information if victims couldn’t get on the Internet.
A call to FEMA’s news desk, however, found even they didn’t have any non-Internet information readily available beyond suggestions that people call 911 in an emergency. When asked where folks should turn for information if they have no power, a FEMA worker said, “Well, those people who have a laptop with a little battery life on it can try that way. Otherwise, you’re right.”
Such blind spots are perilous to the public, experts say. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell did reference during a news conference Monday two useful phone numbers — 211 for guidance on emergency shelter locations and 511 for traffic information — and D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray told News Channel 8 that people should call 311 in storm-related emergencies.
But that’s about it for public information of this type. As Glenn notes, disasters are disasters. Bad things are going to happen, some recovery efforts are going to fail in an unpredictable environment, and we shouldn’t make unfair racial and socio-economic accusations about why without some pretty good proof.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find a story about Sandy and FEMA without a sentence like this:
“She applied for FEMA assistance the day after Sandy hit, but said she hadn’t heard back.”
Or this:
“FEMA hasn’t done anything else. The inspector came out and he inspected the damage and that was it. He said he was going to forward it to his headquarters and I will hear from them, that’s it.” When asked if he has heard from anyone? Daily quickly responded, “No.” Then, there’s this.
The effort has now moved from incomplete and incompetent immediate response to the often labyrinthine demands of applying for assistance from the federal government:
“You have to get a copy from your landlord saying that it was your living space,” Jones said. “If you get denied (from flood insurance), get a letter in writing saying what (your insurance provider) won’t cover. Then submit that letter to FEMA and FEMA can send an inspector to inspect your home.” It should come as no surprise that smaller, more flexible organizations are filling gaps where the federal government fails (giant charity Red Cross was criticized, too), and without much of the triplicate form-signing. Many of FEMA’s problems, both during Katrina and now, are due to the nature of a giant bureaucracy. There’s a place for federal response, and tweaks can make it work better, but we shouldn’t close ourselves off from innovative solutions by insisting a bigger FEMA is always a better fix.
In the meantime, thank goodness for the kindness and quick thinking of those who are able to help where needed, neighbor to neighbor, and lessen suffering in what is still a nightmarish situation for many of our countrymen.
Title: real media bias
Post by: bigdog on November 15, 2012, 04:32:50 AM
Yes! But the blame goes to the audience rather than the media outlet IMO. In fast and furious, a dead border agent story could not buy interest in the story. Sex with a General/former General, that's a story! Petraeus bridges the media double standard. Dems see him as the guy who prosecuted the Iraq war for Bush (not for America, "Betray-us", 'you must suspend belief in reality to listen to him') and R's see him as an Obama appointee, even a potential whistle blower in the Obama administration. ----- “This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out,” Broadwell’s dad, Paul Krantz, told the Daily News outside his home in Bismarck, N.D.
“There is a lot more that is going to come out,” said Krantz, claiming he was not allowed to elaborate. “You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye.”
Whatever that means...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2012, 01:50:07 PM
Certainly sex is a part of it, but so too natural and IMHO appropriate curiousity about the character-- and judgement of the head of the CIA e.g. did he actually use gmail for private correspondence? Share classified intel with his mistress? This second other woman seems a curious figure too (from Lebanon, millions in debt, friends to many generals, BSer e.g. diplomatic immunity claim on a 911 phone call etc) , but he was taking her side in a child custody trial? Much here that is curious.
If this is what it takes to bring spotlight to this whole Benghazi matter, , , ,
Title: POTH called on BS in report on Hamas rocket attacks
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2012, 01:56:43 PM
Fraud: CNN Uses Video Footage Of Faked Palestinian 'Injuries'
Email Last night on CNN's 360 with Anderson Cooper, video footage was broadcast that purported to show injuries and victims of Israeli military operations in Gaza. The footage was exposed as fraudulent here on Breitbart News yesterday..
Title: Idiot MSNBC anchor
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2012, 11:17:24 AM
Title: Prager on Pravda on the Hudson (POTH)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 20, 2012, 09:03:23 AM
How the New York Times Covers Evil
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
ShareThis
The way in which the New York Times reports good vs. evil is one of the most important stories of our time.
Take the war between Israel and Hamas that is taking place right now.
This war is as morally clear as wars get. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty and no freedom of speech or press. In a nutshell, Hamas is a violent, fascist organization.
Israel, meanwhile, is one the world's most humane states, not to mention a democracy that is so tolerant that Arab members of its parliament are free to express admiration for Hamas.
Over the past decade, Hamas had launched thousands of rockets into Israel with one aim: to kill and maim as many Israeli citizens as possible -- Israelis at work, at play, asleep in their homes, in their cars. Finally, Israel responded by killing Ahmed al-Jabari, the chief organizer of Hamas violence, the Hamas "military commander" as he was known among Palestinians.
The next day, three more Israelis were killed by rockets.
Then Hamas targeted Tel Aviv, Israel's most densely populated region, and Israel shelled Hamas rocket launching sites.
In other words, an evil entity made war on a peaceful, decent entity, and the latter responded.
How has the New York Times reported this?
On Friday, on its front page, the Times featured two three-column wide photos. The top one was of Gaza Muslim mourners alongside the dead body of al-Jabari. The photo below was of Israeli Jews mourning alongside the dead body of Mira Scharf, a 27-year-old mother of three.
What possible reason could there be for the New York Times to give identical space to these two pictures? One of the dead, after all, was a murderer, and the other was one of his victims.
The most plausible reason is that the Times wanted to depict through pictures a sort of moral equivalence: Look, sophisticated Times readers, virtually identical scenes of death and mourning on both sides of the conflict. How tragic.
If one had no idea what had triggered this war, one would read and see the Times coverage and conclude that two sides killing each other were both equally at fault.
This is the mainstream (i.e., liberal) media's approach. The Los Angeles Times headline on the same day was: "Israel and Gaza veering down familiar, bitter path,"
Same presentation: two scorpions fighting in a bottle.
Examples are endless. Here is one more:
In 2002, there was widespread Nigerian Muslim opposition to the Miss World pageant scheduled to take place that year in Nigeria. Defending the pageant, a Nigerian female reporter wrote a column in which she said that not only were the contestants not "whores," as alleged by the Muslim protestors, but they were such fine women that "Muhammad would probably have taken one of the contestants for a wife."
That one sentence led to Muslim rioting, the beating and killing of Christians, the burning of churches and the razing of her newspaper's offices.
How did the New York Times report the events?
"Fiery Zealotry Leaves Nigeria in Ashes Again."
No group is identified as responsible. "Fiery zealotry," not Muslim violence, was responsible.
The article then begins: "The beauty queens are gone now, chased from Nigeria by the chaos in Kaduna."
Again, Muslim rioters weren't responsible for chasing the beauty queens out of Nigeria; it was "chaos."
The article concludes that what happened in Kaduna was another example of Africa's "difficulty in reconciling people who worship separately." In other words, Christians and Muslims were equally guilty.
As the flagship news source of the left, the New York Times reveals the great moral failing inherent to leftism -- its combination of moral relativism and the division of the world between strong and weak, Western and non-Western, and rich and poor, rather than between good and evil.
Title: On air resignation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2012, 02:52:08 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues - content sharing
Post by: DougMacG on December 04, 2012, 10:56:21 AM
Content sharing, in excerpts, with major media on the forum is mutual - for the record. We normally give credit. They rarely do.
DougMacG, DBMA public forum December 03, 2012, posted 10:11:17 AM » "At an interagency teleconference in late April [1994], Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?” http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2362.msg67996#msg67996
WSJ: December 3, 2012, posted 7:23 p.m. "At an interagency teleconference in late April [1994]," Ms. Rice "stunned a few officials present when she asked, 'If we use the word "genocide" and are seen as doing nothing, what will the effect be on the November [congressional] election?' http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324355904578156980748123040.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 04, 2012, 10:59:08 AM
Interesting. I do wonder who might quietly frequent our little obscure spot.
Title: Media Issues: Surprising (lol)Media Bias discovered in the Fiscal Cliff Coverage
Post by: DougMacG on December 04, 2012, 11:25:46 AM
The forum has more diversity of political thought than the top three television broadcast news networks combined.
ABC World News with Diane Sawyer continues to tout the Obama Administration’s spin that tax hikes on the wealthy are the only solution to the looming “fiscal cliff” catastrophe. According to an analysis from the Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute, in the three weeks following President Obama’s re-election, World News devoted more than 10 minutes 18 seconds to talk of tax hikes and just 35 seconds to spending cuts (a 17-1 margin).
NBC Nightly News discussed taxes more than twice as often as spending (4 minutes 23 seconds to 1 minute 47 seconds.), while CBS Evening News gave tax hikes only three more minutes of coverage (14 minutes 5 seconds to 10 minutes 12 seconds). However, more than a third of CBS’s spending cut coverage total comes from one story detailing the horrific downside of spending cuts.
ABC was by far the worst offender, refusing to even entertain spending cuts as a viable solution to the Obama Administration’s crushing budget deficits.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2012, 03:23:42 PM
The number of reads per post on the various threads of this forum is indeed intriguing. We have many threads with 40-60 reads per post and not a few well above that, with several above 100 reads per post. The Mexico thread on the Spanish language forum (which in great part duplicates the Mexico thread here on P&R) is around 300!
Title: Who did it and why?
Post by: G M on December 04, 2012, 06:21:08 PM
To What Lengths Did Someone Go to Scapegoat George Zimmerman? by Bryan Preston
Bio December 4, 2012 - 11:41 am The “new” photo of George Zimmerman raises some very disturbing issues. Take a look at the black and white version of the photo, which the Florida prosecutor gave to the defense as part of the discovery process shortly after his altercation with Trayvon Martin.
Other than color, what else is missing from this photo?
Can you tell how old George Zimmerman is? To me, he looks like he could be any age from 20 to more than 50. But the graininess and lack of visible hair on the top of his head suggest that he is an older man.
The lack of color in the photo obscures Zimmerman’s race as well. As a friend of mine pointed out to me, the man in that photo is brighter in complexion than the man is in reality. The black and white photo renders Zimmerman a pale white. The whites of his eyes and his facial skin are nearly the same tone. The contrast makes his face emerge harshly from the shadows behind him.
The man in the photo above looks somewhat menacing. The misshapen nose suggests a history of brawls, the color having been drained away, taking with it the reds and purples indicating a fresh wound from a very recent attack. The vacant look in his eyes suggests no remorse for the killing of a young man, which the man in the photo had done moments before the photo was taken.
“This man might be a thug.” That’s the nonverbal message of the photo above.
Now, look again at the color photo. This is the unaltered photo, from which the grainy, black and white version was manufactured.
Seen in color, the “thug” who might be, becomes a wounded young man. Shock and fear ring his eyes. There may be small wounds or acne on his forehead. Blood drips from his nose and his lip appears to be busted open. His nose appears to be freshly broken. Instead of being a white ghoul emerging from shadows, he is a wounded man sitting in a car after a life-changing, possibly life-destroying, event has happened. The ghoul has flesh and blood after all. He bleeds.
From that color photo, taken in color at high resolution by law enforcement officers moments after the altercation, someone manufactured the grainy black and white photo and made the decision to hand that version, but not the full color version, over to Zimmerman’s defense. Who did that? Who manufactured that photo? How did they manufacture it? Why did they manufacture it?
Had the color photo been available in the days after Martin’s unfortunate death, there might never have been a backlash against the Sanford police. There might never have been a national movement to arrest and prosecute Zimmerman. President Obama might never have taken sides with the New Black Panthers, who put a bounty on Zimmerman’s head, and with the usual tragedy trolls who always seek to convert corpses into political talking points. The NBC News edit that made Zimmerman sound racist could have been countered with a color photo showing Zimmerman’s wounds, corroborating his explanation of what happened that night. But someone chose to hide the color photo and manufacture the black and white, so that that photo would tell a different story.
I keep using that word — manufacture — deliberately, because that is what was done here. Someone took the high-resolution digital original and printed it out, then ran it through a copy machine several times to introduce noise, and remove the color and reduce the quality. They may have also taken it into Photoshop to manipulate its contrast and add additional noise. That is manufacturing.
In doing all of this, they deliberately stripped George Zimmerman of his humanity.
Who did this? For what purpose?
Did someone in a position of authority take a look at George Zimmerman’s name, which suggests an older white male rather than a younger Hispanic, then take a look at this young, black victim, and decide to scapegoat Zimmerman deliberately because of the narrative that his name and Trayvon Martin’s racial background provided?
Title: Media Mediocrity, Bias, Agenda and Fact Hiding: Where is THIS story?
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2012, 10:30:46 AM
One of the two biggest showstoppers today threatening to shut down USA government and private competitivenes, and force us into immediate recession is the wisdom and experience of raising taxes on the rich. GOP House members are pledged not to do it. The President says no deal without it. The media withholds the facts and then polls the public on the assignment of blame.
The U.K. lost 60% of its millionaires in one year with a tax rate increase on the rich that yielded NO NEW REVENUES while we argue the same question here, right now. http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1791.msg67993#msg67993
France is also losing wealth, millionaires and revenues with even more punitive policies.
I already posted on 'Tax Issues', now I ask here on 'Media Issues', where is this story?
Someone please link footage of broadcast network news leading story or link to front page coverage on the Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times, etc. etc. Even in the Wall Street Journal news sections, not opinion. It isn't an opinion. It's a stubborn fact, and an extremely timely and relevant story.
I whine in general, often, about the need to go to biased, right wing sources to get basic, pertinent, public policy information. But my willingness to dig for data doesn't solve anything politically or economically if only a few right wingers get the information. This story is one specific example.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 05, 2012, 10:49:59 AM
Perhaps BD can point out some professional journalists who are covering this.....
Title: The Stories You Missed in 2012
Post by: bigdog on December 06, 2012, 04:30:07 AM
What FOX news isn't telling us... Why haven't these news stories made it to the only trustworthy news source. Why, oh why, have these stories received a fair and balanced treatment. Conspiracy? Probably. I will continue to watch diligently to see when these important stories covered. And, where is the coverage in the WSJ???
Or, is it just possible that, as I have noted, some stories just don't get covered?
I mean, my goodness, Kate flippin' pregnant. That is THE news in the UK.
Did JK Rowling leave? She has the most to gain by relocating.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2012, 05:28:10 AM
A fair point BD, but I just read through the list and saw none that would have impacted the fortunes of Baraq and/or progressivism negatively, hence the lack of suspicion on our part.
OTOH the British story certainly is relevant to issues that ARE being discussed rather vigorously at the moment.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on December 06, 2012, 05:56:15 AM
You are right, Guro. The thawing relations between nuclear powers, the rise in population in the B in "BRIC", the eradiciation of a disease (or the rise of others), the dispute between the UAE and Iran, or the HK/China dispute (which will likely not impact the continent or world) or the ... oh, nevermind. There just isn't enough there for news coverage.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2012, 06:06:55 AM
OF COURSE there are important matters that do not get on the finite radar screen of human attention! That said, I think our point is that those that DO get put on the radar screen by the pravdas are selected by intellectually dishonest criteria towards political ends.
Neither point contradicts the other as I understand it. Am I missing something?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on December 06, 2012, 06:51:40 AM
Excpet that some of the stories in the link posted that were un- or underreported themselves would have HELPED make President Obama's case about many things. The return of jobs to the U.S. is one example. So, why aren't THOSE stories being pushed, hard, by the "pravdas?"
And, seriously, did JK Rowling leave the UK and I missed it? Because, again, if there is ONE person who would benefit, it's her. If she stayed, why did she?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2012, 07:53:22 AM
If Obama were to make the case on the purported "return of jobs" to the US the pravdas would be right there with him just as by the sin of omission they fail to report the British data (which is on the radar screen of the professional chattering class) because it would underuct Obana's efforts to raise tax rates with powerful empirical data.
As for Rowling, apart from the human interest hook, who cares? The real point is the net aggregate data, yes?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on December 06, 2012, 09:05:18 AM
If Obama were to make the case on the purported "return of jobs" to the US the pravdas would be right there with him just as by the sin of omission they fail to report the British data (which is on the radar screen of the professional chattering class) because it would underuct Obana's efforts to raise tax rates with powerful empirical data.
As for Rowling, apart from the human interest hook, who cares? The real point is the net aggregate data, yes?
Not necessarily. If the millionaires who left aren't the most rich and powerful, that means something different than if the ones who left were spread out from millions to billions. Or just the billionaries. Or in the middle. Or the newly rich. Or the ...
Aggregate trends help to understand issues, but they are not necessarily the issue itself.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 06, 2012, 02:39:59 PM
"What FOX news isn't telling us... Why haven't these news stories made it to the only trustworthy news source."
Did anyone mention Fox News? Why don't you just answer the question?
BTW, the F.A. article was interesting, but pretty much unimportant trivia mixed with stories that people that pay attention already know. As an example, HK straining against the slow squeeze of the mainland has been going on one way or another since 1997.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2012, 03:29:11 PM
"Aggregate trends help to understand issues, but they are not necessarily the issue itself."
Well if the issue is, as it is here, where we are on the Laffer Curve with the rates in question then isn't the aggregate data concerning what revenues are at different rates precisely the point?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 06, 2012, 04:51:41 PM
Apologies for the outnumbering, but I would like to revise and extend as well...
Bigdog put a number of arguments back against my original point. The first is perfectly valid - there are many stories that don't get covered. Second, the UK tax increase point is not as clear as Doug says it is, the richest person in the UK did not leave for example. Third would be defects in the coverage of others, such as Fox News.
The Foreign Policy piece is interesting, though they are one more outlet that missed the UK-no-new-revenues-from-taxing-the-rich story, even while they write about missed stories. Tax policy isn't foreign policy directly, but the foundation of a successful foreign policy is economic health and strength at home IMO. Our deficit, our recession/stagnation, our growing culture of dependency and non-productiveness, and our policies at home that result in an anti-business climate yielding a record low rate of new business startups undermine our foreign policy capabilities and influence.
They put forward 10 interesting stories, all of the type that make reading the forum worthwhile; you don't learn these things most other places: 1) Trade between India and Pakistan, 2) Brazil Immigration, 3) Inuit prosperity, 4) Guinea worm disease eradicated, 5) 3D copyrights, 6) Call Centers moving from India to Philippines, 7) Hong Kong - China tensions, 8.)Cyoress-Moscow ties, 9) Oil in Central Africa, 10) Abu Musa islands dispute.
There is no reason to trivialize any of these. The analogy though to me would be if a newspaper like the NY Times, LA Times, or Washington Post were writing and placing stories on the front page day after day about Guinea worm disease, and it was crucial to the survival of our country, but they had neglected to tell us it was cured. The publications are covering the tax increase on the rich story incessantly, but they are not telling us crucial details such as that when it was tried in the UK just one year ago it brought in NO NEW REVENUE.
The J.K. Rowling argument, micro vs. macro, to me is like refuting global warming by pointing out one cold day in Minneapolis. J.K. Rowling may have a host of personal reasons to stay or she may have moved her investments out of the U.K. for all we know. The story says that 6000 people still reported income over a million GBP, not that everyone left or has the ability to leave. This is not a story a wealth tax, where she leads Great Britain; it is a story about an income tax rate that yielded no new revenue. I don't think she released a major title during that year. My income from selling or renting MN properties does not leave the state if I leave; maybe her copyrights are parked in the UK, or maybe the bulk of her income has already left. No facts advanced but a nice shiny object! I know nothing about the inner workings of U.K. tax laws. Her business is rather unique. She employs very few people relative to her income, compared to other gazillionaires. I also would doubt that the majority of her books are printed in the U.K.
More important is that 10,000 million-pound incomes disappeared. That doesn't mean the people left; it means those income levels are gone. In a growing economy (and the only way to grow revenues is to grow the economy), that number should have gone up at least a few thousand, not to have the majority of them disappear. It is a HUGE story.
We can argue the merits further on tax issues, but the falsehood is static scoring. President Obama keeps quoting numbers that don't include the FACT that people change their behavior based on changing policies, incentives and disincentives. The Media Issue I introduced is that the media that we consider mainstream will not cover it.
The last time (only time?) I saw an mainstream co-conspirator question liberal-Democratic failed economic theories was one Charlie Gibson asked of candidate Barack Obama back in April of 2008:
GIBSON: You have...said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all...?
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/Story?id=4670271&page=3#.UMEts1KIiqk ---------------- Or try this, has the front page news section of a major publication mentioned ever reported that revenues to the Treasury doubled in the 1980s, from $517 Billion to $1032 Billion while the top rate went from 70% to 28%, or that revenues surged 44% in 4 years from $1.78 Trillion in 2003 to $2.57 Trillion in 2007 under the Bush tax rate cuts now in question. Tax rate cuts did not cause the deficits, did they ever put forward facts to correct the quotes of people claiming they did. If not, why not? They just didn't get to it - like Brazilian immigration or Guinea worm disease? I don't buy it. They were on the topic and omitted the key points. The reason I put forward is mediocrity, bias, agenda and fact hiding.
I don't watch Fox News except one Sunday show they put on broadcast television. Many here find Hannity to be a blowhard. Shows like that admit they are opinion more than news. No doubt Fox misses a lot of stories; maybe their misses show their bias. I heard they cut back Rove and Morris for being idiots and zealots on election night. A good sign. Fox radio news to me is written with similar liberal bias as the other networks. They miss most stories and repeat the same take on the same lead stories hour after hour.
I believe Foreign Policy has this wrong, (while we are at it): (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/121116_storiesmissed-energygraph.jpg) The U.S. measures oil reserves differently than every other country. The SEC regulates the use of the term. We have much, much more oil than the data from this chart shows.
Kate Middleton... Just goes to show how stories are mostly market driven to whatever draws people in. The analogy I think would be if you covered her every move day after day after day after day, then learned public knowledge she was pregnant and DIDN'T cover it.
On tax policy they hide the facts, poll on what people learned from distorted coverage, and make the poll result the story. 57% say they want ta hikes on the rich? Did they preface the poll question with the fact that tax rate hikes don't bring in more revenue as just shown in a nearly identical example in one of the most similar economies to the U.S. in the world? No. Not with a story, not in the question.
If so-called mainstream media had balance their market size would potentially double (to include conservatives) but the agenda would fail. The number one cable news network by far competitor Fox might never have gotten off the ground if political balance was already achieved. The WSJ is by far number one in the nation with a third more subscribers than the NY Times and more than 4 times the circulation of the Washington Post. Coincidentally their editorial views are the opposite of most of the rest and fill a conspicuous void in the market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_States_by_circulation
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on December 06, 2012, 06:33:49 PM
Another reason that the story has not been reported is that it may not be as much of a story as some of the sources listed here previously purport:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 06, 2012, 09:01:17 PM
Bigdog, I think that piece makes good points; that's how the story could have read if they weren't afraid to open that door. Reports that said the people left the country were irresponsible, not professional journalism, unless they had looked them up and tracked them down. They didn't; the data gives numbers, not names or addresses.
They point out "forestalling" of income, to move it forward like Obama supporter Costco did with dividends ahead of Obama's dividend tax tripling. What excessive capital gains taxes later will do is backstalling. Never sell. Never capture the gain. Never pay the tax. How then do resources move freely to their most productive use? They don't. It's economic malpractice, if you ask me, unreported malfeasance. Ask Charlie Gibson, the revenue goes down.
The reality is that a huge proportion of the rich showed amazing flexibility and mobility of income on a scale that blows the doors off of all static models and all working economic theories at the CBO, OMB, DNC, NYT, LAT, CBS, WP and the White House Council of Economic Advisers who already said it would throw us into recession. People change behavior quickly to different schemes of taxation and the rich have the most flexibility. More efficient, sadly, is Obama's 2% tax hike (FICA) coming to workers who live paycheck to paycheck.
JK Rowling may not have left England, but others have made moves in that situation. Swedish star Bjorn Borg moved to Monaco to escape Sweden's wealth tax and Stephan Edberg, as he approached the number one ranking in the world, moved from Sweden to London of all places - in a U.K. led by Margaret Thatcher. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/sweden-repeals-wealth-tax/ http://articles.courant.com/1991-09-09/sports/0000212282_1_annette-olsen-edberg-purolator-courier
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on December 07, 2012, 03:47:07 AM
"By mid- 1955, the country had pulled out of the previous year's recession and gross national product was growing at a rate of 7.6 percent. The boom was so great that the budget for 1956 predicted a surplus of $4.1 billion. With the surges in production and the economy, the 1950s is often recognized as the decade that eliminated poverty for the great majority of Americans" (http://homepages.gac.edu/~jcullip/workexamples/mea.html).
How is that possible since the tax rates in the 1950's were the highest in history: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
Taxes didn't seem to kill the economy then. Taxes didn't seem to kill the inventive spirit of America then. Taxes didn't seem to lead unpatriotic people to relocate then.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on December 07, 2012, 04:54:12 AM
"Aggregate trends help to understand issues, but they are not necessarily the issue itself."
Well if the issue is, as it is here, where we are on the Laffer Curve with the rates in question then isn't the aggregate data concerning what revenues are at different rates precisely the point?
The why seems to be important. If there are fewer millionaires in the UK because of economic downturn rather than relocation, the story changes a little.
Incidentally, even Murray Weidenbaum isn't an adherent to the Laffer Curve.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 07, 2012, 07:44:53 AM
"If there are fewer millionaires in the UK because of economic downturn rather than relocation, the story changes a little. "
Yes, higher tax rates, lower revenues and national recession all correlate. Who knew? I still don't see that as valid reason for the cover up. Someone might take the facts wrong?
Clinton's and Eisenhower's economies competed in a different world, I think you know. The point to this discussion would be, how much revenue did the high tax rates raise? Revenues surged when we removed the 90% rate. Revenues surged when we removed the 70% rate and when we removed the 28% capital gains rate. Britain's economyu surged when they removed the highest tax rates. Hiding income and avoiding taxable income becomes less profitable. JFK had it wrong? Robert Mundell had it wrong: "The level of U.S. taxes has become a drag on economic growth in the United States. "The national economy is being choked by taxes — asphyxiated." http://www.polyconomics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1559:its-time-to-cut-taxes&catid=46:1997&Itemid=31
One thing you may be forgetting or omitting is bracket creep. With inflation, the rates that applied to no one were applying to more and more people without any real increase in income. Not to mention the impending challenge of foreign competition. Can we take that back to the 50s?
Laffer Curve postulates that no tax revenue will be raised at the extreme tax rates of 0% and 100% and that there must be at least one rate where tax revenue would be a non-zero maximum. Other than current CBO scoring, who disagrees with that, in principle? Reagan's first chief economic adviser thinks that tax rates going from 90% to 100% would increase revenues?
The point here on Media Issues remains, why hide such a big story? Because there is more to the story? Then put more in the story. It would put the supply side deniers on the defensive? Then include their interviews in the coverage. The story is more than 2 weeks old and this remarkable occurrence BD posted of massive levels of 'forestalled' income as a reaction to impending, punitive tax rates occurred more than a year ago! The majority of people of whom the tax applied changed their economic behavior in response to the policy change we are now demanding. Where was the media? With heads in sand, hoping no one else would report it either. Mediocrity, bias and agenda, not professionalism, is my humble opinion.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 07, 2012, 08:24:23 AM
For the purposes of this thread, I think we can limit ourselves to why this story wasn't reported by the pravdas to any noticeable degree. For the genuine tax policy questions of the most recent entries here, I think they will be better recorded for posterity over in the Tax Policy thread.
Title: Caution: Professional Journalists at work! Zimmerman sues NBC
Post by: G M on December 07, 2012, 02:32:03 PM
George Zimmerman sues NBC over Trayvon Martin reports Posted by Erik Wemple on December 6, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Lawyers for George Zimmerman filed suit today against NBC Universal Media over a well-publicized editing error that portrayed their client in racist terms in his pursuit of Trayvon Martin on a drizzly evening in February.
“NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so to set about the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain,” states the civil complaint in its opening salvo against NBC.
(Also at The Washington Post: Can Zimmerman prevail against NBC?)
NBC’s editing of the 911 audiotape in the Martin case became a public fixation after the media-monitoring Web site NewsBusters.org noted editing oddities on a “Today” show broadcast March 27. Here’s how NBC News portrayed the audiotape:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
The full tape went like this:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black.
Zimmerman thus didn’t volunteer a racial profile of Martin; he was asked to provide it, a point that the lawsuit makes in colorful fashion: “NBC created this false and defamatory misimpression using the oldest form of yellow journalism: manipulating Zimmerman’s own words, splicing together disparate parts of the recording to create illusions of statements that Zimmerman never actually made.”
The suit against NBC alleges four other instances in which NBC-produced shows aired false and defamatory versions of the same events. Zimmerman faces a second-degree murder charge in the case.
The botched edits, charges the suit, were far from innocent mistakes: “Defendants pounced on the Zimmerman/Martin matter because they knew this tragedy could be, with proper sensationalizing and manipulation, a racial powderkeg that would result in months, if not years, of topics for their failing news programs, particularly the plummeting ratings for their ailing “Today Show” as well as for the individual defendants to “make their mark” for reporting a [manipulated] story such as this.” Individual defendants are Lilia Luciano and Jeff Burnside, NBC employees involved in early cases of Zimmerman mis-editing.
Following a public uproar over the tape-doctoring, NBC News issued a statement on the matter saying this: “During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.”
Such contrition didn’t impress the Zimmerman camp. “Only after the defendants’ malicious acts were uncovered and exposed by other media outlets … did defendant NBC ‘apologize’ and terminate some of those in its employ responsible for the yellow journalism identified in this Complaint.” Zimmerman himself never received an apology from the defendants, according to the suit.
The suit doesn’t specify a dollar amount of damages that Zimmerman is seeking. “That’s showmanship,” says James Beasley, the Philadelphia-based lawyer representing Zimmerman in the suit.
Beasley declined to comment on whether he’d already had any discussions with NBC. “I don’t want to talk about that. I can’t talk about that. But let’s just say I don’t think it’s going to get settled.”
On that question, at least, Beasley and NBC appear to agree. When asked about the complaint, NBC Universal issued this statement: “We strongly disagree with the accusations made in the complaint. There was no intent to portray Mr. Zimmerman unfairly. We intend to vigorously defend our position in court.”
Title: Re: Media Issues - Airbrushing an Impeachment
Post by: DougMacG on December 11, 2012, 05:42:51 PM
I mentioned this piece in 2016 Presidential. Their right to skew things with a double standard is matched with our right to point it out.
It has been a banner year for Bill Clinton. The former president delivered a galvanizing speech, deemed by many on the left to lay out the best argument for re-electing President Obama, at the Democratic National Convention. During the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and other GOP hopefuls frequently talked up the Clinton-era economy and the former president's ability to reach across the aisle. The Sunday New York Times ran a front-page story on whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will run for the Oval Office in 2016 -- and it didn't even mention Bill's 1998 impeachment.
When former Arkansas employee Paula Jones sued President Clinton for sexual harassment, he told and stuck to a gratuitous lie about his sexual relationship with a White House intern. And Hillary Clinton, despite what reporter Jodi Kantor describes as "her activist feminist roots," was his greatest enabler.
The then-first lady blamed a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for independent counsel Ken Starr's "politically motivated" questioning of Monica Lewinsky, even though her husband was the chief architect of Starr's perjury trap.
"Her status is singular but complicated," the Times reported -- "half an ex-presidential partnership," a woman at the peak of power and likely 2016 front-runner. No mention of the I-word.
"You'll never see a story about (President Richard) Nixon that doesn't say he resigned in disgrace," former Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian observed. There's a double standard so it's bad form to mention that Bill Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached. ... "...the Gray Lady [ran] 19 stories, columns and blogs that mentioned Mitt Romney's dog Seamus by name this year. (Romney, you see, drove with the dog in a carrier strapped to his station wagon roof during a family vacation in 1983.)"
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2012, 06:18:52 PM
Don't get me started on the Clintons:
The payoffs by Tyson Foods (the $97k in commodity futures to gubernatorial candidate Bill's wife), the missing billing records, the mysterious death of Vincent Foster, the various quasi-rapes, the sale of pardons (e.g. Marc Rich, facilitated by the current AG), sending aircraft carriers through the straights between China and Taiwan to enable Johnny Chung (working from memory on this name) to raise money, $345K via Bernie Schwartz by moving technology transfers to Dept of Commerce from Dept of , , , State? with regard to rocket/satellite technology, White Water, Bill's chief of staff (? name?) going to prison to cover for Hillary at the law firm, then taking $750k yearly from Chinese front in Indonesia (the Riadys), wagging the dog (Yugoslavia? or? I forget) to escape conviction on the impeachment , , ,
Oh, wait, we have a thread for them , , ,
Title: Clinton has affected American Politics like no other in my opinion
Post by: ccp on December 12, 2012, 11:44:30 AM
Recently MSNBC's Lawrence ODonnell (duck) claimed that Newt Gingrich had far more lasting effect on our political culture than Reagan Clinton or the two Bushes.
He claims that Gingrich was the tax cutter of the century. That Gingrich came up with the phrase that tax hikes will reduce jobs and that that has been the Republican mantra since and this phrase more than anything has affected our politics.
I say that Clintonism has affected our politics far more and insidiously and way to the detriment of our culture our politicals, our supposed media watchdogs, our morals, our ethics.
Since Clinton has dumb downed American politics to such an extent there is simply NO lie that is no biggie, No immoral action that is no biggie, no twisting of the truth to totally absurd levels, that is no biggie, no length to which the libs in the media will go to protect their guy, no bribe that is not biggie, even to the extent that a PResident lied to cover up an embassy attack for fear it would resemble the Terhan attack of 1976 and hurt his election. If hostages were taken.....
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2012, 02:14:09 PM
There's a reason Clintonian chicanery and perfidiousness has its own thread , , , :x
Anyway, I continue to be pleasantly surprised at the ongoing coverage FOX has started giving to the evils of baseline budgeting.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 13, 2012, 05:25:50 PM
James Taranto (WSJ) asks:
Does anyone have an editor?
Seattle Times, Washington Post: " America in 1917 did not fight on a credit card... President Wilson... sold Liberty Bonds to cover costs. [In 2001 George W.] Bush, by contrast... borrowing to pay for the war helped lead to the current fiscal crisis."
- does anyone realize that selling bonds is the way in which the government takes on debt? ------------------------ NY Times on Hurricane Sandy: "Crews from as far away as...Quebec have worked feverishly to repair or replace those [utility] poles..."
- As far away as Quebec? ... a Canadian province that is contiguous with New York.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2012, 06:19:26 PM
Well, I was reading in the WSJ today that 70% :-o :-o :-o is financed by the Fed buying the debt with the printing press. I suspect that even Wilson and his Fed did not do that , , ,
Title: Re: Media Issues - Time Person of Year 2012
Post by: DougMacG on December 19, 2012, 10:59:37 AM
Time Person of Year 2012 - a person, group, idea or object that "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year" - should have gone to the "low information voter".
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on December 20, 2012, 09:55:59 AM
"low information voter"
Doug, I know what you mean.
But I really think it unwise politically to assume that many voters for the Dems are just plain ignorant.
I think most know exactly what they are voting for. That is entitlements and make the rich pay more.
I am not so sure Boehner is wrong to cave. No matter what, the Republicans always get the blame for these budget battles. Look at Clinton/Gingrich. Look at Obama/Boehner #1.
As long as the voters perceive other people footing the bill (increase taxes on the rich) they are more than happy to have a deal that does exactly that.
The Republicans do not have the same jorno*list* and talking heads/points (propaganda machine) and the right spokespeaple to do anything about this.
The risk is we do not have a crash and then the Liberals come out with extreme power. The benefit of a crash is that may be the only way to stop the liberal/media/union/university politburo planners agenda.
This may be the only way out. :-o :x :cry:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 20, 2012, 11:04:53 AM
"The risk is we do not have a crash and then the Liberals come out with extreme power"
I know it is not your intention, but this could be misportrayed as wishing ill for the country for our political gain. May I suggest the following wording?
"The risk is that the chickens do not come home to roost before the Liberals come out with extreme power."
Title: Re: Media Issues - Time Magazine Person of the Year
Post by: DougMacG on December 20, 2012, 11:38:54 AM
But I really think it unwise politically to assume that many voters for the Dems are just plain ignorant.
I think most know exactly what they are voting for. That is entitlements and make the rich pay more ...
CCP,
I agree with this part. The President received about 51% of the vote. Most are from the core Democratic, partisan constituencies and they are not low information voters. Biased information maybe, but not low information. The story Time tells is how these other people came out to provide the margin of victory, "the people who don’t much care for politics...aren’t political in the cable-TV sense of the word", and put their faith in Barack Obama.
Link to the Time Magazine Hagiography: http://poy.time.com/2012/12/19/person-of-the-year-barack-obama/
Quoting Time from the second page:
"...the poll questions did not account for Obama’s secret weapon: the people who don’t much care for politics. A sizable chunk of the President’s most ardent backers don’t admire either party yet think Obama is somehow above it all, immune to all the horse trading and favor mongering that politics entails. These voters aren’t political in the cable-TV sense of the word. But in 2012, they stuck by Obama. In the last month of the Obama campaign’s voter registration, 70% of those signed up were women, minorities or people under 30.
The Democrat coalition is complex. The core constituencies include liberal elites, teachers union members, rial lawyers, civil servants and plenty of successful business people who are affluent and well informed, at least in terms of the amount of time spent paying attention to the issues. My point from the Time piece is that the margin of victory came from the turnout of these infrequent, less informed, unlikely voters who came out and put their faith in Pres. Obama.
For all our errors made about the reading of the polls, I remember posting that Obama's lead was most impressive in the group called "unlikely voters".
I honor them here - right now,"for better or for WORSE", as "Person of the Year" - for giving their faith, trust and support, instead of honoring President Obama for receiving it.
Title: Professional Journalist commits felony on Nat'l TV
Post by: G M on December 23, 2012, 02:31:07 PM
David Gregory Violates DC Gun Law On National TV Posted: December 23, 2012 by ShortTimer in Crime, Guns, Media
Meet the Press’s studios are located in Washington DC. This morning on “Meet the Press”, David Gregory decided to wave around a 30-round AR-15 magazine.
DC High Capacity Ammunition Magazines – D.C. Official Code 7-2506.01
(b) No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term large capacity ammunition feeding device means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The term large capacity ammunition feeding device shall not include an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition..”
From Westlaw’s listing of DC’s gun laws:
District of Columbia Official Code 2001 Edition Currentness Division I. Government of District. Title 7. Human Health Care and Safety. Subtitle J. Public Safety. Chapter 25. Firearms Control. Full text of all sections at this level Unit A. Firearms Control Regulations. Full text of all sections at this level Subchapter VI. Possession of Ammunition. Current selection§ 7-2506.01. Persons permitted to possess ammunition.
(b) No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term “large capacity ammunition feeding device” means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The term “large capacity ammunition feeding device” shall not include an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition.
Penalties:
It is also illegal to possess, sell or transfer any “large capacity ammunition feeding device.” A person guilty of this charge can be sentenced to a maximum fine of $1000 and/or up to a year imprisonment. D.C. Criminal Code 7-2506.01.
And from the DC Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog:
3. Unlawful Possession of Ammunition – As I mentioned above, in the District of Columbia, unless you are a licensed firearms dealer, you can only possess ammunition for the type of firearm that you are lawfully registered to own. Possession of unlawful ammunition is a crime and can result in a fine of $1,000 and a year in prison. It is also illegal to own what is considered a “large capacity ammunition feeding device,” which means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
I chose to highlight these three major gun laws because they are the ones most likely to catch someone off guard that has no idea they are in violation of the Washington, DC gun laws.
Title: Re: Professional Journalist commits felony on Nat'l TV
Post by: DougMacG on December 24, 2012, 08:21:32 AM
He may have some form of diplomatic immunity arising out of the work he does for the Obama administration.
For more information on the immunity that protects Obama administration officials from prosecition on existing gun laws, please see 'Fast and Furious'.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 24, 2012, 01:13:24 PM
Some animals are more equal than others.
Title: Re: Professional Journalist commits felony on Nat'l TV
Post by: bigdog on December 26, 2012, 05:03:27 AM
He may have some form of diplomatic immunity arising out of the work he does for the Obama administration.
For more information on the immunity that protects Obama administration officials from prosecition on existing gun laws, please see 'Fast and Furious'.
He may have some form of diplomatic immunity arising out of the work he does for the Obama administration.
For more information on the immunity that protects Obama administration officials from prosecition on existing gun laws, please see 'Fast and Furious'.
There is easily probable cause for a arrest warrant. Any theories as to why Gregory hasn't been arrested, BD?
Title: Re: Media Issues: David Gregory, gun crime or journalistic fraud?
Post by: DougMacG on December 26, 2012, 10:00:45 AM
From the transcript:
DAVID GREGORY:" ...here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50283245/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/december-wayne-lapierre-chuck-schumer-lindsey-graham-jason-chaffetz-harold-ford-jr-andrea-mitchell-chuck-todd/#.UNsuvVKIiqk
Video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sncWW-1Lwb0
No gun, no ammunition, I don't get what his point was in having one in hand. His guest wasn't the least bit interested in that line of questioning and a magazine versus having a rifle or even a sharp knife wasn't the least bit dramatic.
From the thread: "No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm."
Gregory's problem is deeper. To avoid the crime he will have to maintain he committed something worse, journalistic fraud. (Some of us already made that call.) I think he would prefer the $1000 fine, but a year in prison?
I am curious what the real penalty would be for others caught on a DC street, a black man not dressed in a business suit for example, with similar possession? Probation?
With a gun law conviction, would he recuse himself from subsequent, professional journalist discussions about gun control laws?
------ Aside from the increase in homicides, the District of Columbia actually has a very low crime rate. - Marion Barry, Natl Press Club, 23 March 1989 http://www.snopes.com/quotes/barry.asp
Title: Premeditated
Post by: G M on December 26, 2012, 04:13:10 PM
D.C. Police — NBC requested and was denied permission to use high capacity magazine in news segment
Posted by William A. Jacobson Wednesday, December 26, 2012 at 11:23am
1614
As noted in an earlier post, an email has surfaced purporting to be from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department stating that NBC requested permission to use a high capacity ammunication magazine and that the request was denied.
The email first appeared on the AR15 gun forum, and then at the The Patriot Perspective blog which first broke the Gregory story.
Here is the email, with the addressee’s identity removed:
“From: “DC Police (imailagent)” <customerservice.mpd2@dc.gov> Subject: Email from DC Police (Intranet Quorum IMA00519327) Date: December 24, 2012 4:13:12 PM EST To: -
The Metropolitan Police Department is in receipt of your e-mail regarding David Gregory segment on “Meet the Press.” MPD has received numerous e-mails informing us of the segment. NBC contacted MPD inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for their segment. NBC was informed that possession of a high capacity magazines is not permissible and their request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated. Thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention.
Customer Service – Metropolitan Police Department”
Fearing the email was a hoax, I was cautious about running the text of the email. But as earlier reported, a confidential source who works for D.C. government verified that the email was in a format used by the MPD:
“… the Metropolitan Police Department email reply you received is genuine. DC Government uses “Intranet Quorum” software designed by Lockheed to manage general inquires. The email address and the subject line of the email you received are consistent with that software.”
Now I have received confirmation that the e-mail is authentic.
(added) For much of the day yesterday and last night I sought confirmation from the D.C. Police. After numerous emails exchanged last night and conversations this morning, I finally was able to receive the authentication needed, as well as confirmation of the request by NBC and denial by the MPD.
I forwarded the text of the email, exactly as it appears above, to Gwendolyn Crump, Director, Office of Communications for the MPD, with the following question:
Can you confirm that is a real email sent from your system. I am informed that the email format is consistent with the Intranet Quorum format you use. Putting aside the substance of the investigation, I just want confirmation that it is a genuine email sent from your system.
I would appreciate your response on that specific question. Thank you.
Ms. Crump responded:
“Yes. I can confirm that what you sent appears to be the IQ system message.”
I further followed up to make sure that the email was an actual email sent by MPD, not just that it “appeared” to be one, and Ms. Crump confirmed:
“Yes, that email was sent from MPD.“
Officer Aziz Alali of the MPD Public Information Office further confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail, and gave me this statement by telephone:
“NBC contacted the Metropolitan Police Department inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for this segment. NBC was informed that that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and the request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated and I cannot get into any further specifics on this investigation.”
NBC News has not responded to multiple inquiries as to the request and denial, or whether the magazine was real or just a prop. During the segment in question, Gregory stated “here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets.”
If it turns out the magazine was in violation of D.C. law, the fact that NBC News was warned by the D.C. Police not to use the magazine puts a whole new light on the incident, turning it into an intentional violation of the law. While the law does not require intent, the existence of intent could influence a decision whether or not to prosecute.
Update: Thanks to all the blogs and websites who linked here and properly credited us with getting the D.C. Police to confirm this story, including but not limited to, Instapundit, Huffington Post (!), Hot Air, The Daily Caller, Breitbart.com, and more … Newsbusters.
As to this, well, at least there’s some emotional satisfaction:
Feds and media jump to David Gregory’s defense as race card goes missing Posted by William A. Jacobson Thursday, December 27, 2012 at 8:01am It must be nice to have friends in high places
76 38 Wow, isn’t this convenient.
An unnamed ATF official hopes that David Gregory and NBC News do not get prosecuted for violating D.C.’s clear law prohibiting the possession or transfer of high capacity ammunition magazines because it’s all just a misunderstanding (h/t The Patriot Perspective):
But ABC News has learned from an official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that NBC had reached out to the federal agency on Friday for advice before displaying the weaponry.
According to the ATF official, the agency noted that ATF doesn’t enforce D.C. gun laws, but agreed to put the question to a couple of Washington police officers who’ve worked with the agency in the past.
The D.C. officers advised the ATF spokesman that Gregory could display the magazine, provided it was empty, the source said.
That turned out to be bad advice, as conservative media and gun rights activists were first to note. The ATF official describes this as a “misunderstanding,” and says he hopes DC police will not bring charges.
Seriously, NBC News relied upon what some police officer told ATF which told NBC News? Wouldn’t anyone with half a brain reach out to the D.C. Police directly?
Yes, of course, that’s exactly what NBC News did, it contacted the Metropolitan Police Department directly and was told that it was against the law and they were not permitted to use the magazine on the television show. Yet NBC News did it anyway, and now the defense is that someone told someone who told us it was okay?
That’s no “misunderstanding.” Also, NBC has a legal department, did the show contact that department which would have found the answer pretty easily?
And anyway, the law does not require a knowing violation.
Would ABC News or any of the other media outlets dragged to the story treat Fox News this way? Or a Republican? Or Wayne LaPierre?
The media is circling the wagons around NBC News, as Politico documents, Media disdain for the David Gregory story:
Some political and media types weren’t impressed by headlines this week reporting that D.C. police are investigating the alleged display of a gun magazine on NBC’s Meet the Press. They took to the Internet with their disdain for the story.
Notice another thing missing from the media treatment?
All the usual suspects who play the race and the white privilege cards against Republicans are silent.
Title: Our Advocacy-Obsessed Apparatchik MSM
Post by: G M on December 28, 2012, 02:53:59 PM
December 27th, 2012 - 4:19 pm At Commentary, Peter Wehner explores “The Left’s Epistemological Closure,” beginning with his take on Byron York’s latest column on how the television’s MSM have jettisoned the role as newsreaders to become, as Wehner writes, “fierce advocates for gun control”:
In his column Mr. York quotes Frank Sesno, a former CNN reporter and Washington bureau chief who is now director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, who said there should be a “media agenda” on guns to push the issue until government action becomes a reality. “The media themselves have a huge opportunity and power and responsibility to channel this,” Sesno told CNN’s Howard Kurtz. And the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg–an NRA critic who wrote an intelligent article on the case for more guns and more gun control–pointed out, ”Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever.”
A few thoughts on all this:
1. The elite media are more open in their advocacy than at any time I can recall. There are probably multiple reasons why, including the fact that Fox News has been so successful in breaking the previous liberal monopoly that existed in journalism. When there was no real counter-weight to ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, the Washington Post, the New York Times, et cetera, journalists were content to advance their worldview in more subtle ways–for example, through their story selection rather than out-and-out hortatory. But the “New Media,” which has injected new voices and different points of view into the public debate, seems to have convinced many journalists that something more is necessary. And so increasingly we see supposedly dispassionate anchors on supposedly neutral networks like CNN toss aside any pretense of objectivity. They are as political and dogmatic in their advocacy as the NRA is in its advocacy. It’s just the NRA has been more honest about its goals than progressive journalists.
But gun control is but one advocacy position the MSM have taken in recent years. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Reuters infamously concluded that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom [sic] fighter.” Concurrently, the New York Times‘ Howell Raines — presumably, with Pinch Sulzberger’s full backing — decided that opening up the Augusta National Golf Club to women was a much more important topic than the GWOT in its formative stages. In October of 2004, as the presidential election was entering the final stretch, and with RatherGate then freshly in the media’s collective mind, Mark Halperin, then the ABC News political director, drafted an internal memo that stated both political parties were not equally accountable, as Matt Drudge noted at the time:
The controversial internal memo obtained by DRUDGE, captures Halperin stating how “Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.”
But Halperin claims that Bush is hoping to “win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.”
“The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done,” Halperin writes.
Halperin’s claim that ABCNEWS will not “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable” set off sparks in St. Louis where media players gathered to cover the second presidential debate.
Halperin states the responsibilities of the ABCNEWS staff have “become quite grave.”
In August, Halperin declared online: “This is now John Kerry’s contest to lose.”
Back in 2007, Editor and Publisher, the house organ of the legacy media, ran a column titled, “Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity, Newspapers.” And in early 2009, Newsweek declared “We Are All Socialists Now” – which likely didn’t come as much of a shock to its then-parent company’s ombudsperson, who admitted immediately after the election that the Washington Post was also deeply in the tank for Mr. Obama.
While grizzled old vets such as Dan Rather and Andrea Mitchell might not ever publicly confess to knowing how to define their ideology, a few more examples such as these just might lead a cynical person to conclude — as difficult and as shocking as it might seem — that the media might just ever-so-slightly lean a miniscule, infinitesimal amount to the left.
There are of course countless more additional examples than our handful above, where the media long ago concluded that simply reporting straight news was much less satisfying than serving the cause of the good and righteous left. (Feel free to explore the topic further in the comments.)
Or to put it another way, replace the word “student” with “viewer” from this quote from William F. Buckley’s 1959 book Up From Liberalism, as posted today by Stacy McCain, and it neatly sums up the MSM’s goals:
In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.
Fortunately, as a new video from Canada’s Sun TV explores, it’s still possible to punch back twice as hard against such tactics. As the Instaprofessor writes, linking to the same column by Byron York that inspired Peter Wehner’s post at Commentary, “Don’t be surprised, journalists, if many Americans view you as the enemy as a result. Don’t blame them. You’ve taken sides. When you act as agents for the apparat, don’t be shocked when people think of you as apparatchiks.”
Update: “Gun Control Debate Exposed The Media’s Bias, David Gregory Exposed Their Hypocrisy.”
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 28, 2012, 04:27:04 PM
Slight adjustment: "When you act as agents for the apparat, don’t be shocked when people think of you as pravdas.”
And, on a lighter note:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d16_1356622989
Title: Glenn Beck: a scattered shower of journalism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2012, 08:05:15 AM
Or the reaction of a governor of the opposing party praising the reaction by the president? Make sure to mention that this was done on Fox, despite an attempt to set the opposing party governor for a partisan statement.
by William Bigelow 7 Dec 2012 Remember when Chris Christie was hugging Barack Obama as they posed for photo-ops after Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey? He might have spent his time more profitably by making sure officials in the devastated areas were prepared to assist FEMA workers who were rushed to the scene and then told to go sightseeing for four days. A FEMA worker stated: They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry. We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.
He added that when he and his fellow emergency workers arrived at Fort Dix, officials brushed them off:
The regional coordinator even said to us, “I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you.” They told us to go to the Walmart nearby or to check out the area but told us to stay out of the areas affected by the storm. If our boss back at headquarters had not been alerted and didn’t make a push to get us assignments, the people running the show on the ground level would have just kept us sitting in the barracks.
A Washington administrator admitted in an email:
My people are being told to go sightseeing. They may have a mission in 2-4 days .... I am asking them to reach out to contacts there that may be able to use their expertise ... We will continue to seek these opportunities as otherwise these personnel resources will be wasted ... Please advise way ahead ...
Michael Byrne, a federal coordinating officer for FEMA, protested:
I’m not going to say we couldn’t have done better. I can understand the emotional commitment. They want to jump right in and start with the effort. I feel the same way. The time was used to find the best place for them and for quick-training. There were logistical challenges but we have been fully engaged in the areas since then.
The FEMA worker disagreed:
When there’s disaster, every second counts. That clock starts ticking once the storm makes landfall.
Then he uttered words to make Chris Christie and Barack Obama blanch. He said:
I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.
**Not that you'd know from our professional journalists, right?
Title: National Propaganda Radio
Post by: G M on December 29, 2012, 03:26:06 PM
Bernard Goldberg No Liberal Bias at NPR — Just Ask NPR Posted: March 14, 2011 in Featured, Media Bias, Uncategorized
Ask most conservatives and they’ll tell you that NPR is a hopelessly left-wing news organization filled with liberal biases. Ask most liberals and they’ll tell you it’s a down the middle, mainstsream news outlet. Instead of getting into that debate, let’s get into another, more nuanced one. So, consider this statement made by the co-host of NPR’s On the Media:
“If you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and all of the member stations, you would find an overwhelmingly progressive, liberal crowd.”
Those are the words of Bob Garfield in the aftermath of the conservative “citizen journalist” sting against NPR, which caught on camera a now former fund raising executive smearing the entire Tea Party movement as racist and stupid.
Mr. Garfield was not saying NPR has a liberal bias, just that it’s journalists are “overwhelmingly” liberal. That is a great big problem all by itself. But more on that in a moment. Garfield’s guest, a liberal named Ira Glass, who is host of the NPR show “This American Life” predictably said, NPR is a mainstream news operation and has no liberal bias. End of discussion!
But let’s look it this way: Let’s say, if you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and all of the member stations, let’s say you’d find an overwhelmingly conservative, right-wing crowd — does anyone at NPR think that would be just fine; that such one-sidedness wouldn’t present journalistic problems; that such a news organization would present the news without filtering it through a conservative lens?
I don’t.
But somehow liberals at NPR think that it doesn’t matter if just about everybody in the newsroom is liberal. After all, the argument goes, they’re professionals. They can keep their biases to themselves. To which I have just two words: Juan. Williams.
In the “overwhelmingly” liberal bubble that is NPR, executives were appalled at Juan Williams comment to Bill O’Reilly that ““When I get on a plane … if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried, I get nervous.”
This was so bigoted, in their view, that they had to fire Mr. Williams. In a statement explaining why they did it, NPR said: Williams’ words “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
But these same sensitive liberal souls let Nina Totenberg, NPR’s Legal Affairs correspondent, go on a Sunday talk show each week and spout all sorts of liberal nonsense. Who could forget her shot at then Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a comment for which she later apologized. If there was “retributive justice,” in the world, Ms. Totenberg said, Jesse Helms would “get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”
Inside the liberal bubble Juan Williams is a bigot. Nina Totenberg isn’t.
That’s one of the many reasons it matters if a newsroom is “overwhelmingly” liberal – or conservative.
Another has to do with what a news organization chooses not to put on the air. It’s about what it doesn’t deem important or interesting enough to share with its audience. Not all bias can be detected by what actually survives the gauntlet and sees the light of day. I speak from first hand knowledge.
In December 2001, my first book came out. It was called Bias and it was about liberal bias in the so-called mainstream media. Terry Gross, who hosts a daily interview program on NPR called Fresh Air, showed no interest in having me on – despite the fact that Bias was number one on the holy grail of liberal booklists, the New York Times best seller list. And that’s perfectly fine. I have no right to be on any program. Terry Gross can pick and choose her guests as she sees fit.
But not long after the book came out she had a liberal professor on her show criticizing it. She never gave me a chance to defend my work. And then a full year after Bias came out, I got a call from NPR telling me that Terry Gross wanted me on Fresh Air. Why now, so long after my book came out? Because a liberal had just published a book condemning Bias, that’s why.
So I was of no interest to Terry Gross until I was in the liberal cross hairs.
I may have no right to be on her show, but she has no right to pretend she’s not part of NPR’s “overwhelmingly” liberal crowd, and one who has a very deep-seated liberal bias.
As for the current debate, about whether federal government money should go to NPR: I’m against it. And not because of liberal bias. If public broadcasting is as good as we’re constantly being told by its adoring and loyal supporters in places like Manhattan and Malibu, then it ought to be good enough to survive on its own, without taxpayer money, no matter how small.
In a 21st century media universe with thousands of radio and television outlets, NPR (and PBS) should find its niche in the marketplace. If it does, that’s fine with me. If it doesn’t, well, somehow I suspect we’ll all survive.
Title: Laws Are for Little People
Post by: G M on December 29, 2012, 03:30:37 PM
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/336573
Laws Are for Little People
By Mark Steyn December 28, 2012 5:30 P.M.
A week ago on NBC’s Meet the Press, David Gregory brandished on screen a high-capacity magazine. To most media experts, a “high-capacity magazine” means an ad-stuffed double issue of Vanity Fair with the triple-page perfume-scented pullouts. But apparently in America’s gun-nut gun culture of gun-crazed gun kooks, it’s something else entirely, and it was this latter kind that Mr. Gregory produced in order to taunt Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. As the poster child for America’s gun-crazed gun-kook gun culture, Mr. LaPierre would probably have been more scared by the host waving around a headily perfumed Vanity Fair. But that was merely NBC’s first miscalculation. It seems a high-capacity magazine is illegal in the District of Columbia, and the flagrant breach of D.C. gun laws is now under investigation by the police.
This is, declared NYU professor Jay Rosen, “the dumbest media story of 2012.” Why? Because, as CNN’s Howard Kurtz breezily put it, everybody knows David Gregory wasn’t “planning to commit any crimes.”
So what? Neither are the overwhelming majority of his fellow high-capacity-magazine-owning Americans. Yet they’re expected to know, as they drive around visiting friends and family over Christmas, the various and contradictory gun laws in different jurisdictions. Ignorantia juris non excusat is one of the oldest concepts in civilized society: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Back when there was a modest and proportionate number of laws, that was just about doable. But in today’s America there are laws against everything, and any one of us at any time is unknowingly in breach of dozens of them. And in this case NBC were informed by the D.C. police that it would be illegal to show the thing on TV, and they went ahead and did it anyway: You’ll never take me alive, copper! You’ll have to pry my high-capacity magazine from my cold dead fingers! When the D.C. SWAT team, the FBI, and the ATF take out NBC News and the whole building goes up in one almighty fireball, David Gregory will be the crazed loon up on the roof like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” At last, some actual must-see TV on that lousy network.
But, even if we’re denied that pleasure, the “dumbest media story of 2012” is actually rather instructive. David Gregory intended to demonstrate what he regards as the absurdity of America’s lax gun laws. Instead, he’s demonstrating the ever greater absurdity of America’s non-lax laws. His investigation, prosecution, and a sentence of 20–30 years with eligibility for parole after ten (assuming Mothers Against High-Capacity Magazines don’t object) would teach a far more useful lesson than whatever he thought he was doing by waving that clip under LaPierre’s nose.
To Howard Kurtz & Co., it’s “obvious” that Gregory didn’t intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, “obviousness” is one of the first casualties — and “obviously” innocent citizens have their “obviously” well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, eleven-year-old Skylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so “obvious” that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth grader? Because he’s got a TV show and she hasn’t?
Anything involving guns is even less amenable to “obviousness.” A few years ago, Daniel Brown was detained at LAX while connecting to a Minneapolis flight because traces of gunpowder were found on his footwear. His footwear was combat boots. As the name suggests, the combat boots were returning from combat — eight months of it, in Iraq’s bloody and violent al-Anbar province. Above the boots he was wearing the uniform of a staff sergeant in the USMC Reserve Military Police and was accompanied by all 26 members of his unit, also in uniform. Staff Sergeant Brown doesn’t sound like an “obvious” terrorist. But the TSA put him on the no-fly list anyway. If it’s not “obvious” to the government that a serving member of the military has any legitimate reason for being around ammunition, why should it be “obvious” that a TV host has?
Three days after scofflaw Gregory committed his crime, a bail hearing was held in Massachusetts for Andrew Despres, 20, who’s charged with trespassing and possession of ammunition without a firearms license. Mr. Despres was recently expelled from Fitchburg State University and was returning to campus to pick up his stuff. Hence the trespassing charge. At the time of his arrest, he was wearing a “military-style ammunition belt.” Hence, the firearms charge.
His mom told WBZ that her son purchased the belt for $20 from a punk website and had worn it to class every day for two years as a “fashion statement.” He had no gun with which to fire the bullets. Nevertheless, Fitchburg police proudly displayed the $20 punk-website ammo belt as if they’d just raided the Fitchburg mafia’s armory, and an obliging judge ordered Mr. Despres held on $50,000 bail. Why should there be one law for Meet the Press and another for Meet Andrew Despres? Because David Gregory throws better cocktail parties?
The argument for letting him walk rests on his membership of a protected class — the media. Notwithstanding that (per Gallup) 54 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the NRA while only 40 percent have any trust in the media, the latter regard themselves as part of the ruling class. Which makes the rest of you the ruled. Laws are for the little people — and little people need lots of little laws, ensnaring them at every turn.
This is all modern life is. Ernest Hemingway had a six-toed cat. The cat begat. (Eat your heart out, Doctor Seuss.) So descendants of his six-toed cat still live at the Hemingway home in Key West. Tourists visit the property. Thus, the Department of Agriculture is insisting that the six-toed cats are an “animal exhibit” like the tigers at the zoo, and therefore come under federal regulation requiring each to be housed in an individual compound with “elevated resting surfaces,” “electric wire,” and a night watchman. Should David Gregory be treated more leniently than a domestic cat just because when Obama tickles his tummy he licks the president’s hand and purrs contentedly?
There are two possible resolutions: Gregory can call in a favor from some Obama consigliere who’ll lean on the cops to disappear the whole thing. If he does that, he’ll be contributing to the remorseless assault on a bedrock principle of free societies — equality before the law. Laws either apply to all of us or none of us. If they apply only to some, they’re not laws but caprices — and all tyranny is capricious.
Or he can embrace the role in which fate has cast him. Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. Eleven-year-old girls fined for rescuing woodpeckers, serving Marines put on the no-fly list, and fifth-generation family cats being ordered into separate compounds with “electric wire” fencing can all testify to how near that point America is. But nothing “raises awareness” like a celebrity spokesman. Step forward, David Gregory! Dare the prosecutor to go for the death penalty — and let’s make your ammo the non-shot heard round the world!
Title: Re: I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.
Post by: bigdog on January 02, 2013, 03:34:47 AM
I have come believe that you may be right, GM. Thank you for keeping me accountable.
Or the reaction of a governor of the opposing party praising the reaction by the president? Make sure to mention that this was done on Fox, despite an attempt to set the opposing party governor for a partisan statement.
by William Bigelow 7 Dec 2012 Remember when Chris Christie was hugging Barack Obama as they posed for photo-ops after Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey? He might have spent his time more profitably by making sure officials in the devastated areas were prepared to assist FEMA workers who were rushed to the scene and then told to go sightseeing for four days. A FEMA worker stated: They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry. We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.
He added that when he and his fellow emergency workers arrived at Fort Dix, officials brushed them off:
The regional coordinator even said to us, “I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you.” They told us to go to the Walmart nearby or to check out the area but told us to stay out of the areas affected by the storm. If our boss back at headquarters had not been alerted and didn’t make a push to get us assignments, the people running the show on the ground level would have just kept us sitting in the barracks.
A Washington administrator admitted in an email:
My people are being told to go sightseeing. They may have a mission in 2-4 days .... I am asking them to reach out to contacts there that may be able to use their expertise ... We will continue to seek these opportunities as otherwise these personnel resources will be wasted ... Please advise way ahead ...
Michael Byrne, a federal coordinating officer for FEMA, protested:
I’m not going to say we couldn’t have done better. I can understand the emotional commitment. They want to jump right in and start with the effort. I feel the same way. The time was used to find the best place for them and for quick-training. There were logistical challenges but we have been fully engaged in the areas since then.
The FEMA worker disagreed:
When there’s disaster, every second counts. That clock starts ticking once the storm makes landfall.
Then he uttered words to make Chris Christie and Barack Obama blanch. He said:
I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.
**Not that you'd know from our professional journalists, right?
Title: Who Killed Newsweek?
Post by: bigdog on January 02, 2013, 03:47:02 AM
Interesting piece. They cite other news magazines still doing well, but print in general is having problems. I don't have to pick up a magazine or newspaper to read news. If it is a day old or a week old it had better be loaded with insights. Newsweek had 70 years to build a better reputation and didn't. George Will is great but not a unique asset of Newsweek or part of a theme in their content. Zakaria, brilliant? Wow! To the extent that Time leans left with mainstream redundancy, Newsweek could have carved out a different slice instead of competing for the same dollar - and losing. The Economist is far more interesting and global. At the least, it is different from the others.
Title: Professional journalist better than you
Post by: G M on January 02, 2013, 02:27:10 PM
MILLER: Two systems of justice David Gregory walks free while Iraq vet was jailed
It’s been more than a week since police in Washington, D.C., opened an investigation into NBC’s David Gregory’s possession of a “high-capacity magazine” that’s prohibited in the District on on national TV. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier’s spokesman refused Monday to respond to whether Mr. Gregory had even been interviewed yet. This is a rather curious departure for a city that has been ruthless in enforcing this particular firearms statute against law-abiding citizens who made an honest mistake.
In July, The Washington Times highlighted the plight of former Army Spc. Adam Meckler, who was arrested and jailed for having a few long-forgotten rounds of ordinary ammunition — but no gun — in his backpack in Washington. Mr. Meckler, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says he had no idea it was illegal to possess unregistered ammunition in the city. He violated the same section of D.C. law as Mr. Gregory allegedly did, and both offenses carry the same maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.
Mr. Meckler was charged with the crime and was forced to accept a plea deal to avoid the cost and time of a protracted legal fight. The indefensible nature of Mr. Meckler’s case led directly to a new law passed by the D.C. Council in December that allows prosecutors to file civil instead of criminal charges, but only if the accused was unaware of the city’s laws.
That exemption probably wouldn’t apply to Mr. Gregory, who held up a 30-round rifle magazine on his show on Dec. 23 to make his point about the need to ban them. NBC asked the police in advance for permission to bring the contraband into Washington for the interview with National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, but it was not granted.
“I unknowingly broke the law,” Mr. Meckler told The Washington Times. “Mr. Gregory knowingly broke the law. While both are seemingly harmless, both acts were deemed illegal under the District’s obscure firearms laws.” Mr. Meckler said he would never have intentionally left the rounds in his bag.
The former Army medic is still upset about being left with a criminal record and being enrolled on the police list of firearms-related criminals. “I think if you had to measure the criminality of the two instances, his should be interpreted as more severe. At the very least, he should be put on probation, pay a fine and be added to the District’s Gun Offender Registry, as I was ordered to do,” Mr. Meckler said.
The administration wasn’t concerned that it had invited a potential gun criminal to the White House Saturday for an exclusive interview with President Obama. The president used this platform to call for enactment of a new ban within a year on what he called “assault rifles” and “high-capacity clips.”
The District came up with its overly restrictive laws in response to the Supreme Court overturning the capital city’s 30-year gun ban. The statutes shouldn’t apply just to regular people but to the rich and powerful as well. The District should either repeal its over-the-top restrictions or send a squad car to take David Gregory into custody.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2013, 05:19:30 PM
Trivia: The Dick Harman who bought Newspeak for $1 (!!!) is the May-December husband of now former Congresswoman Jane Harman of the 32d of CA and the CEO/founder of Harman Electronics. Jane was one of my opponents when I ran for the Libertarian Party in 1992. Dick came up after the first debate and introduced himself and rather angrily took exception to my calling her economic policies "economic fascism". I sincerely did my best to explain that my intended meaning was not to impute anti-semitism--he comes from a generation where that was part of the understanding of the term for many and he, like me, is Jewish. In conclusion I sincerely said that he must be very proud of his daughter. With more than a little warmth he informed me that she was his wife.
I would add that Jane "lent" some $900,000 to her campaign-- which was then legally repaid to her by donations after she won to retire her campaign debts. In other words, donors were giving her money that went straight into her own pocket.
Title: Al Jazeera buys Current TV from Al Gore et al
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2013, 12:19:40 PM
Al Gore, Joel Hyatt Sell Out Israel By DICK MORRIS Published on DickMorris.com on January 3, 2013
Printer-Friendly Version Al Jazeera is coming to America -- courtesy of former Vice President Al Gore and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt. The Arab network, funded by Qatar, has just bought Current TV -- the low rated liberal cable station Gore and Hyatt founded -- for a reported $500 million. The deal gives the anti-Israeli Arab network access to 40 million homes in the United States.
Beyond bringing anti-Israeli propaganda into these new American outlets, Al Jazeera has a long record as the chosen news outlet for Al Qaeda and other terrorist cells. It was through them that Osama bin Laden would regularly post videos attacking the west and calling for renewed acts of terror. Having this network available in the US might also afford terrorist groups a new method of communicating with one another. At the very least, it will help whip up enthusiasm among Islamic viewers in America for jihadist terrorism. Some fear that its message will actually cause an uptick in domestic terrorism.
To its credit, Time Warner Cable announced that it will cancel its contract with Current so it will not have to show Al Jazeera's propaganda on its system. Their action keeps the station off 12.5 million homes. Thank you Time Warner.
Gore, who consistently postured himself as a friend of Israel, shows now how unreliable the Jewish State's "friends" are when the chips -- or the money -- is down. It is estimated that Gore, who owns 20% of Current TV, will get $100 million for his share from the deal. Media reports indicate that the former VP was eager to close the deal before the higher income tax rates he supported kick in on January 1, 2013.
Indeed, it was the height of hypocrisy that Al Gore spoke warmly of Al Jazerra saying its mission was similar to that of Current TV, to give "voice to those who are not typically heard, to speak truth to power, to provide independent and diverse points of view and to tell the stories that no one else is telling."
Among these "diverse" points of view might be terrorists. Fox News reports that "Al-Jazeera has been criticized for having a pro-Islamist bent, and accused of working with members of Al Qaeda." Fox noted that "one of its journalists was arrested in Israel in 2011 on suspicion of being an agent of the Palestinian group Hamas."
Not that Current TV is a world-beater. Its average prime time viewership is about 42,000 households. But, it remains to be seen if the pro-Israel former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, will continue with the network under the new management. And the Islamist bias of the new network might pose a problem for women's rights advocates such as former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm who also hosts a prime time show on Current TV.
Thanks to "friends" of Israel like Gore and Hyatt, the Islamist movement has a new voice in the US.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 03, 2013, 01:03:30 PM
Trivia: The Dick Harman who bought Newspeak for $1 (!!!) is the May-December husband of now former Congresswoman Jane Harman of the 32d of CA and the CEO/founder of Harman Electronics. Jane was one of my opponents when I ran for the Libertarian Party in 1992. Dick came up after the first debate and introduced himself and rather angrily took exception to my calling her economic policies "economic fascism". I sincerely did my best to explain that my intended meaning was not to impute anti-semitism--he comes from a generation where that was part of the understanding of the term for many and he, like me, is Jewish. In conclusion I sincerely said that he must be very proud of his daughter. With more than a little warmth he informed me that she was his wife.
I would add that Jane "lent" some $900,000 to her campaign-- which was then legally repaid to her by donations after she won to retire her campaign debts. In other words, donors were giving her money that went straight into her own pocket.
I love the line 'you must be very proud of your daughter' whether you knew it was his wife or not. )
Re-paying after the election also is a way to non-disclose the donors to the voters.
Buying Newsweek for $1 reminds me of my old bragging line of making more money last year than the top 3 airlines combined (even if is only $1 or a small loss).
Title: Media Issues- Tie McConnell, Boehner to back of Chevy pickup truck and drag them
Post by: DougMacG on January 03, 2013, 01:12:37 PM
Civility continued:
This could go in cog diss of the left or into the gun rights thread if it was an attempt at a coherent argument but really it is a death by torture threat to gun rights people and Republican leadership sent out via the Des Moines Register.
"• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.
• Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control."
Title: The Media & Democrats Flexible Definition of “The Rich”
Post by: G M on January 03, 2013, 02:58:22 PM
The Media & Democrats Flexible Definition of “The Rich” by Datechguy | January 3rd, 2013 It all depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is
Remember the media meme that tax increases were necessary to be sure the rich pay their fair share? Well apparently to democrats, the party of the little guy and the media “The Rich” doesn’t include General Electric, Citigroup, Diageo (makers of Puerto Rician Rum) Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, American Wind Energy Association and The Motion Picture Association of America.
Apparently they wanted a big batch of tax credits and favors and paid millions to lobbyists to achieve them, they put these credits into a Senate bill called the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012.
Now as the GOP didn’t support this massive tax giveaway and a House of Representatives with a strong Tea Party presence wasn’t about to pass it. In fact according to the site Govtrack.us…
Status: Introduced Aug 28, 2012 Reported by Committee Aug 28, 2012 Passed Senate (not yet occurred) Passed House (not yet occurred) Signed by the President (not yet occurred) The committees assigned to this bill sent it to the House or Senate as a whole for consideration on August 28, 2012. Prognosis: 19% chance of being enacted.
Or at least that would have been the odds but according to Tim Carney of the Washington Times:
A Republican Senate aide familiar with the cliff negotiations tells me the White House wanted permanent extensions of a whole slew of corporate tax credits. When Senate Republicans said no, “the White House insisted that the exact language” of the Baucus bill be included in the fiscal cliff deal. “They were absolutely insistent,” another aide tells me. (The White House did not return requests for comment.)
Sure enough, Title II of the fiscal cliff legislation is nearly a word-for-word replication of the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012.
So the Democrats,the protectors of the little guy, the people who were going to make sure that the rich paid their fair share and President Obama their champion managed to do what corporate lobbyists couldn’t add this unpassable bill into the fiscal cliff legislation, passed it in the senate and sent to the house where democrats voted for it en masse and enough establishment Republicans could make sure their corporate friends had their reward.
There was a time when media would have screamed foul, there was a time when such a bill once read and known to the public would not have been possible, but the media has already defined the villain as the GOP and the heroes as the Democrats in general and this President in particular and no amount of truth could change it.
We get the government we deserve, I really thought we deserved better.
Update: The Wall Street Journal adds to the list:
In praising Congress’s huge new tax increase, President Obama said Tuesday that “millionaires and billionaires” will finally “pay their fair share.” That is, unless you are a Nascar track owner, a wind-energy company or the owners of StarKist Tuna, among many others who managed to get their taxes reduced in Congress’s New Year celebration.
and they have a solution for the GOP
Republicans who are looking for a new populist message have one waiting here, and they could start by repudiating the corporate welfare in this New Year disgrace.
and even better they can ask where the MSM were when this happened?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2013, 03:11:10 PM
GM: Please post this in the Liberal Fascism thread as well. Thank you.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on January 04, 2013, 02:02:33 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 04, 2013, 08:23:34 AM
"POTH gets gold, silver and bronze!"
Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd and David Brooks. Good choices, my list might have been all-Krugman.
They link to a piece at Rolling Stone ridiculing Friedman, the Friedman challenge metaphor contest. I didn't know people ridiculed Friedman. Very funny. "A metaphor is supposed to make things clearer, but it's actually easier to understand Mesopotamian politics than some of these columns." The contest could be to tell which is Friedman's column and which is the parody:
"[Nobody's] willing to fall on the Syrian grenade and midwife a new order. So the fire rages uncontrolled ... and the Shiite-Sunni venom unleashed by the Syrian conflict" strains relations regionwide. Will venom-grenades give way to chainsaw-nails? It's a "breathtaking" performance that really makes your head pound."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2013, 12:37:16 PM
:lol:
Title: Newpaper's posting of gun owners puts LEOs at risk
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2013, 01:03:47 PM
Title: Gore, Glen Beck, and Al-Jazeera
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2013, 09:40:44 AM
"The liberal media have spent 12 years feeling sorry for Al Gore. The Man Who Should Have Won in 2000 has had megatons of positive publicity dumped on him, hailing him as the 'Goracle.' ... So when Gore sold his left-wing cable channel Current TV to Al-Jazeera for $500 million, where were they? ... At about 42,000 viewers during primetime, the nationwide audience [of Current TV] could fit inside the Washington Redskins' Fedex Field and still leave the stadium half-empty. ... But the controversy is not about ratings. It's about one network selling itself to another best known for vicious anti-American propaganda. ... Gore rebuffed an offer from conservative radio/TV personality Glenn Beck to buy Current TV. Beck was told, 'The legacy of who the network goes to is important to us, and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.' Beck is not aligned with the Gore viewpoint, and yet Al-Jazeera is? ... None dares express horror that the man who was almost president on 9/11 was allying himself with al-Qaida's video jukebox." --columnist L. Brent Bozell
Title: press gives the president a pass
Post by: bigdog on January 10, 2013, 03:21:25 AM
Title: Joe scarborough
Post by: ccp on January 16, 2013, 08:56:43 PM
I can't say I have ever loved the guy but he has become despicable.
Every single time I patrol the cable news and turn on his show he is bashing Republicans.
That is all he does.
Instead of preaching conservatism and boosting the Republican party he has become an enemy to our side. He is no better than the liberals he sits with.
Title: CBS News Director: Time to Destroy the Republican Party...
Post by: objectivist1 on January 23, 2013, 07:55:38 AM
CBS News Director: Obama Must Go for the Throat
Posted By Mark Tapson On January 23, 2013 - www.frontpagemag.com
A month ago I wrote, in a piece on FrontPage Mag called “The Art of Class War,” that progressives aren’t interested in coexistence or bipartisanship with the right; they want total domination and our eventual extinction. Last Friday an article subtly titled “Go for the Throat!” appeared on the leftist website Slate in which their chief political correspondent John Dickerson openly confirmed my point, calling for President Obama to destroy the Republican party in his second term.
Writing just prior to Obama’s inaugural ceremony, Dickerson strategized,
The challenge for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his second term: how to be great when the [D.C.] environment stinks… Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat. [Emphasis added]
Thank you, Mr. Dickerson, for putting your party’s totalitarian ruthlessness on the table in plain sight. Thank you for removing any lingering doubt that yours is the fascist party of hatred and intolerance, not to mention lack of diversity where it counts – the diversity of ideas.
Dickerson asserts that Obama has two options as he enters his second term: on the one hand, he can simply be the caretaker to what Dickerson calls “the achievements of his first term. He’d make sure health care reform is implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a new footing after two wars.” (Allow me to correct Dickerson here: he means Obama would make sure that his health care leviathan drags us all down into a Euro-socialist wasteland, continue to drive the economy off a cliff, and decimate our military.)
But, Dickerson says with an admiration born of the cult of personality so central to the left’s totalitarianism, “he’s not going for caretaker”; Obama is “more ambitious than that” (most definitely) and is not “content to ride out the second half of the game in the Barcalounger” (definitely not – he’s more likely to ride out the second half of the game on the golf course, where he spent much of the first half).
“How should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold?” asks Dickerson rhetorically. Press harder for bipartisan consensus? Schmooze with Republicans, perhaps even – shudder – compromise with them? Perish the thought, Dickerson concludes, blaming the Republicans for hindering the progressive march toward Utopia:
That’s the old way. He has abandoned that. He doesn’t think it will work and he doesn’t have the time. As Obama explained in his last press conference, he thinks the Republicans are dead set on opposing him. They cannot be unchained by schmoozing. Even if Obama were wrong about Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit the chance for cooperation. Republican lawmakers worried about primary challenges in 2014 are not going to be willing partners. He probably has at most 18 months before people start dropping the lame-duck label in close proximity to his name.
God knows the radical left resents constraints on their impatient political power grabs. So what’s an Alinsky-steeped former community organizer to do?
Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition’s most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.
Dickerson credits Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek for this theory of what distinguishes the legendary transformational presidents from the mere caretakers. “In order for a president to be transformational,” Dickerson summarizes about the academic’s work, “the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves.” He concedes that Obama didn’t succeed in his first term with his “gambit… to build a new post-partisan consensus”; of course, by post-partisan consensus, he means the Democrats get their way on every issue and the Republicans shut up, set aside their principles, and surrender every point. “But,” he continues,
by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing.
So Obama’s aim should be to redefine the right as ossified extremists, and then precipitate the fall of “the old order.”
So what, you say? Someone at some leftist website has exposed the radicalism we already knew defined them. Yes, but his openness is indicative of broader support. As Fox News’ Brit Hume pointed out, Dickerson is not just Slate’s “chief political correspondent” but is also CBS News’ political director. Big Hollywood’s John Nolte notes that a political director at CBS News “is now comfortable openly calling for the destruction of the Republican Party,” knowing he will not be excommunicated or even chastised for it by his mainstream collaborators – I mean, colleagues.
That’s because a second election victory for the post-American president has emboldened the radical forces that propelled him there, and the progressives smell blood. Total victory is within their grasp, they sense, so they no longer feel the need to hide their true goals.
Title: Heckofajob, Barry!
Post by: G M on January 25, 2013, 09:27:30 AM
Or the reaction of a governor of the opposing party praising the reaction by the president? Make sure to mention that this was done on Fox, despite an attempt to set the opposing party governor for a partisan statement.
by William Bigelow 7 Dec 2012 Remember when Chris Christie was hugging Barack Obama as they posed for photo-ops after Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey? He might have spent his time more profitably by making sure officials in the devastated areas were prepared to assist FEMA workers who were rushed to the scene and then told to go sightseeing for four days. A FEMA worker stated: They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry. We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.
He added that when he and his fellow emergency workers arrived at Fort Dix, officials brushed them off:
The regional coordinator even said to us, “I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you.” They told us to go to the Walmart nearby or to check out the area but told us to stay out of the areas affected by the storm. If our boss back at headquarters had not been alerted and didn’t make a push to get us assignments, the people running the show on the ground level would have just kept us sitting in the barracks.
A Washington administrator admitted in an email:
My people are being told to go sightseeing. They may have a mission in 2-4 days .... I am asking them to reach out to contacts there that may be able to use their expertise ... We will continue to seek these opportunities as otherwise these personnel resources will be wasted ... Please advise way ahead ...
Michael Byrne, a federal coordinating officer for FEMA, protested:
I’m not going to say we couldn’t have done better. I can understand the emotional commitment. They want to jump right in and start with the effort. I feel the same way. The time was used to find the best place for them and for quick-training. There were logistical challenges but we have been fully engaged in the areas since then.
The FEMA worker disagreed:
When there’s disaster, every second counts. That clock starts ticking once the storm makes landfall.
Then he uttered words to make Chris Christie and Barack Obama blanch. He said:
I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.
**Not that you'd know from our professional journalists, right?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2013, 02:00:08 PM
Ummm , , , GM: I love ya man and the clip is quite moving, but why on earth is it posted in the Media thread instead of a Bureaucracy or Regulations thread?
Title: Pravda on the Hudson's coverage of the MB analyzed
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2013, 11:02:09 AM
Additional Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood Anti-Semitic Statements Found by John Rossomando IPT News January 25, 2013 http://www.investigativeproject.org/3897/additional-morsi-muslim-brotherhood-anti-semitic
Note: This is the first of two stories to examine the New York Times' coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The New York Times' January 14 report on the Middle East Media Research Institute's (MEMRI) videos of Egyptian Mohamed Morsi's 2010 anti-Semitic statements inexplicably omitted the larger story of the Muslim Brotherhood's decades-long intrinsic anti-Semitism.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has uncovered comments going back to 2004 showing a pattern of pure anti-Semitic comments made by Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
MEMRI has routinely covered these sorts of bigoted and hate-filled statements from throughout the Islamic world that most media outlets such as the Times have refused to cover since the late 1990s.
Morsi's comments reflect the Muslim Brotherhood's intrinsic anti-Semitism that is easily obtainable dating back to its founding in 1928.
The MEMRI videos cited by the New York Times earlier this month show Morsi referring to Jews as "the descendants of apes and pigs" and saying that Muslims should "nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews…"
The IPT found additional comments by Morsi on the Muslim Brotherhood's website from November 2004 in which he described the Jews as "descendants of apes and pigs." Morsi also invoked the Quran during the same speech, calling the Zionists "traitors to every covenant and convention" and saying that "the Jews are the most hostile enemies of the Muslims."
References to Jews as "apes" and "pigs" also are repeatedly found in the speeches of the man many liberal Egyptians regard as the real power behind Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie. According to Germany's Der Spiegel, Morsi regularly meets with Badie and has shown that he expresses obedience to the supreme guide.
"The Zionists, the West and the lackey rulers conspired together. If the Muslim Brotherhood had remained in the field, the Zionist Entity would not have stood not its flag raised. Of old God forced the Jews to become pigs," Badie said in a July 7, 2010 sermon found on the Brotherhood's website.
Badie returned to the theme in a June 14, 2012 speech on the eve of Morsi's election.
"The Lord of Glory has threatened these murdering Zionists criminals with a penalty of a kind which operates in this world before the Hereafter," Badie said, then quoting: "So when they were insolent about that which they had been forbidden, We said to them, 'Be apes, despised.' [Quran 7:166]."
The Muslim Brotherhood's top leader cited a hadith frequently used by Islamic extremists that condones slaughtering Jews during a Nov. 20, 2012 speech captured by MEMRI. "The cause of Palestine is of considerable importance. It is not a cause of power, nor of Palestinians, nor of the Arabs, but is the basic cause of life of every Muslim," Badie said. "For the sake of its return, every Muslim must wage jihad, sacrifice; and expend his money for the sake of restoring it.
"Palestine and Jerusalem is a holy Muslim land, part of the faith of the Muslim ummah," Badie continued. "To forsake any part of it is to forsake the ummah's civilization and faith. This is a great sin."
Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted Badie calling for a "Holy Jihad" to liberate Jerusalem from Israeli control in an Oct. 11, 2012 report.
"Jerusalem is Islamic ... and nobody is entitled to make concessions" on the holy city, said Badie in his weekly message to supporters, according to AFP.
"The jihad for the recovery of Jerusalem is a duty for all Muslims," he said, stressing that taking back Jerusalem "will not be done through negotiations or at the United Nations." The "apes and pigs" motif about Jews resurfaced in November at a protest organized by the Brotherhood and its political arm, Al-Qalyubi. Preacher Muhammad Ragab called on Muslims at the protest "to raise the banner of jihad against the tyrannical, invading and wicked sons of apes and pigs [i.e., the Jews], and to unite against the enemies of Allah" during the protest.
The New York Times Ignores Muslim Brotherhood's Intrinsic Anti-Semitism
MEMRI posted the video of Morsi's anti-Semitism and its translation January 3, but it generated little attention until after Richard Behar of Forbes magazine wrote a scathing commentary on January 11 noting that Fox News had covered the story, and slamming the Times and other media for ignoring it.
"Surely, if the president of virtually any other country in the world had defamed an entire people in such a way — only a couple years before they got the top job, to boot — it would have at least gotten a few column-inches," Behar wrote. "Yet Morsi gets a free pass."
Three days later on January 14, the Times' Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick wrote a front-page story about MEMRI's videos of Morsi's anti-Semitism, which was followed two days later by a Times editorial criticizing the statements.
But in both cases, the newspaper failed to show that Morsi's views were part of a continuum of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement that goes back to the Brotherhood's founding.
Ironically, information about the Brotherhood's historic anti-Semitism can easily be found in the Times' own archives, but apparently nobody looked. Instead, the Times editorial sought to find a non-existent context to explain away Morsi's hate speech and threw in outrageous moral relativism.
"The problem goes deeper than just Mr. Morsi, however. The remarks were made at a time when anti-Israel sentiment was running high in Egypt and the region after the three-week Gaza conflict in 2009 between Israel and Hamas," the Times editorial said. "The sad truth is that defaming Jews is an all too standard feature of Egyptian, and Arab, discourse; Israelis are not immune to responding in kind either."
The Times editorial rhetorically suggests Morsi's comments were an aberration, asking: "Does Mr. Morsi really believe what he said in 2010? Has becoming president made him think differently about the need to respect and work with all people?"
Well, no on both counts. Casting Morsi's statements somehow as a reaction to Israel's 2009 war in Gaza ignores the fact that Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders routinely made conspiracy theories blaming Jews for Egypt's problems for decades.
They call for jihad to liberate Palestine in times of peace and times of turmoil without any condemnation from prominent Muslim leaders. And no Israeli leader, or state-sanctioned media, has come close to responding in-kind.
Statements such as those recently made by far-right Knesset candidate Jeremy Gimpel calling for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock are strongly denounced in Israeli media and society alike.
The article and editorial fail to show the deeper context. This kind of speech is nothing new for the Muslim Brotherhood. Sayyid Qutb, one of the group's luminaries, even wrote a 1951 essay called "Our Battle with the Jews." The essay cited the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and blamed Jews for Muslim problems. "From such creatures who kill, massacre and defame prophets one can only expect the spilling of human blood and dirty means which would further their machinations and evilness," he wrote.
Examples in the Times' own news archive and in other outlets show that Morsi and fellow Muslim Brotherhood leaders adhere to Qutb's anti-Semitism, which is, and always has been, a hallmark of the Brotherhood's ideology.
Badie, who served time in prison alongside Qutb in the 1960s, has vowed to continue his legacy.
"We will continue on the path of Qutb," the Assyrian International News Agency quoted Badie saying in a July 3, 2012 report.
Times reporter Michael Slackman captured another glimpse of the Brotherhood's anti-Semitism in a December 2005 article describing a statement by then-Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammad Mehdi Akef denying the holocaust.
"Western democracy has attacked everyone who does not share the vision of the sons of Zion as far as the myth of the Holocaust is concerned," Slackman quoted Akef as saying in a statement on the Brotherhood's website.
Before the Times' story was published, MEMRI issued a report showing that the Brotherhood website routinely featured anti-Semitic content. That includes a January 2010 article which dismissed the holocaust as "a tale invented by the American intelligence apparatuses with the Allies' collaboration during World War II, in order to harm the image of their German adversaries and justify the great destructive war against the Axis countries' military and civilian installations."
Had the Times examined its own archive it would have found a March 23, 2003 article by freelance writer Paul Berman in the New York Times Magazine article titled, "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror," chronicling Qutb's life and influence.
"The Jews occupy huge portions of Qutb's Koranic commentary – their perfidy, greed, hatefulness, diabolical impulses, never-ending conspiracies and plots against Muhammad and Islam," Berman wrote. "Qutb was relentless on these themes. He looked on Zionism as part of the eternal campaign by the Jews to destroy Islam."
Egyptian historian Khalid Fahmi fingered the Brotherhood as a chief cause of the exodus of Egypt's Jewish community, starting in the 1930s, in a Jan. 3, 2013 interview with Egypt's Al-Nahar TV translated by MEMRI.
"The Muslim Brotherhood bears much of the responsibility for the fleeing of the Jews from Egypt," Fahmi said.
Morsi attempted to spin his remarks following the appearance of the Times story, telling a congressional delegation led by Sen. John McCain that his words had been taken out of context. That's because, wink wink, "the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces," Morsi said referring to Jews. [Emphasis added] No anti-Semitism there. Last September, the IPT reported on a Jan. 10, 2009 article that Morsi wrote on the Brotherhood's website where he described Jews as the "descendant of apes and pigs." "May God accept you, and your deeds not leave you. God has chosen you to help His religion and defending his Aqsa, and indeed Arabism and Islam, against the herd of Zionists, descendants of apes and pigs" Morsi wrote.
According to a Jan. 22, 2013 report by MEMRI, Egyptian columnist Abd Latif Al-Menaway cited the same January 2009 article by Morsi and answers the question raised in the Times' editorial, concluding that the "article demonstrated that his use of the expression 'offspring of apes and pigs' was not a matter of coincidence." He also challenged Morsi "to ask Brotherhood members and all his supporters to stop using this language if he really believes it was wrong, as he said in the shy statement he issued to please the Americans."
Conclusion
Morsi's comments captured in the MEMRI videos and in the statement unearthed by the IPT should serve as a wake-up call for Western media outlets and politicians. They show the need for closer scrutiny toward the Egyptian president's saber-rattling toward Israel along with a more sober and less idealistic view of the Brotherhood's anti-Semitism and intolerance of other religions. That intolerance even extends to Muslims who do not subscribe to its brand of Islam.
The Brotherhood condemned Egypt's Sufi Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa last year when he visited Jerusalem.
"The Mufti did not simply represent himself, since he is seen as the representative of the official religious establishment," Osama Yassin, assistant secretary-general of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) said in an April 20, 2012 statement on its English-language website.
"Therefore, what he did cannot be accepted, justified or ignored. The Mufti must be held accountable in a manner that should deter any official or public figure from making the same mistake, and thus harming the Palestinian cause."
Gomaa's visit was similarly condemned by Yusuf Qaradawi, a chief Brotherhood ideologue based in Qatar. Qaradawi issued a fatwa denouncing the visit as haram or contrary to Islamic law.
"We must feel as though we are banned from Al-Quds and fight for it until it is ours," Qaradawi told the AFP news agency. "Those who visit legitimize an entity which plunders Palestinian lands, and are forced to cooperate with the enemy's embassy to receive a visa."
Egypt's Christians, who comprise about 10 percent of the population, have also felt the wrath of Morsi's tongue.
"They need to know that conquest is coming, and Egypt will be Islamic, and that they must pay jizya or emigrate," Morsi was quoted as having said by Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood expert Raymond Ibrahim writing in the Gatestone Institute.
Americans need to know the full truth and not the filtered version found on the pages of most newspapers and from politicians, knowing full well that the Egyptian president and the Brotherhood are motivated by a hate-filled sectarian agenda against all who oppose them.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 28, 2013, 08:57:26 AM
Ummm , , , GM: I love ya man and the clip is quite moving, but why on earth is it posted in the Media thread instead of a Bureaucracy or Regulations thread?
Was just pointing out another failure of our "professional journalists". Katrina was all BoooOOOOooooosh's fault, meanwhile Sandy is ignored.
Title: Raddatz (the professional)
Post by: G M on January 28, 2013, 09:04:47 AM
Happily: First, Raddatz (the professional) did a better job of keeping the Democrat in check than anyone, except you, wants to recognize. Thank you for this wonderful post.
And, as we all know (you, Doug, Crafty, Romney and I), Obama is all talk. Doesn't this support your position? It is the singular proof you were looking for.
ABC Gives Sen. Menendez Six Minute Interview With No Questions About FBI's Hooker Investigation
By Noel Sheppard | January 27, 2013 | 13:16
On Friday it was revealed that the FBI is investigating Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) for allegedly sleeping with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.
Despite this, when Menendez was given a six-minute interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC's This Week Sunday, he was not asked one question about the investigation or the allegations (commentary follows with full transcript at end of post):
Raddatz began the interview asking Menendez about what Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had previously said on the program concerning immigration. She followed this up by asking Menendez what he wanted to hear from the President about this issue.
Next, Raddatz asked Menendez about the controversy surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year - in particular, how he felt Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did during her testimony before Congress last week.
The next subject Raddatz chose was whether Menendez felt Chuck Hagel would be confirmed as Obama's Secretary of Defense.
Raddatz concluded the interview by asking Menendez about the looming senatorial race in New Jersey between incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) and Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D).
With a total of six minutes of air time, Raddatz didn't ask one single question about the FBI's investigation of Menendez.
Can you imagine her ignoring such an issue if she were interviewing a Republican? That probably would have been the first order of business if not the entire six minutes.
As such, why the double standard?
For those interested, here's the full transcript:
MARTHA RADDATZ, SUBSTITUTE HOST: And we turn now to New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who presided over the hearings for Secretary of State nominee John Kerry and, should Kerry be confirmed, is set to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Welcome, Senator Menendez.
SENATOR ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NEW JERSEY): Thank you, Martha. Good to be here.
RADDATZ: Thank you for joining us. What's your reaction to what John McCain just said? I mean, obviously you've been working together on this, so you know some of how he feels about this.
MENENDEZ: With what...
RADDATZ: In terms of immigration.
MENENDEZ: Immigration, well...
RADDATZ: I don't think you've been working together on some of that other stuff so much.
(LAUGHTER)
MENENDEZ: Well, I think John said it well. I am cautiously optimistic -- and as someone who has spent years between the House and the Senate trying to get comprehensive immigration reform, I'm cautiously optimistic. I see the right spirit. I see things that were once off the table for agreement and discussion being on the table with a serious pathway forward.
Of course, it will have the enhancement of the border security. We've done already a lot with more customs agents. We have more Border Patrol. We have more physical impediment than any time in history. But using greater technology, focusing our resources in a better way is something that we'll achieve, looking at making sure employers don't hire individuals who are undocumented, thinking about future flows and how we take care of the American economy by that, but also, very clearly, having a pathway to earned legalization is an essential element. And I think that we are largely moving in that direction as an agreement.
RADDATZ: What do you want? Senator McCain said it's helpful that President Obama is out on the road. What do you want to hear from him? How committed is he to getting this done? He also wants gun control.
MENENDEZ: Well, I was at the White House on Friday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus leadership. And the president made it very clear in that discussion that this was a top legislative priority for him in this session of the Congress and that he expects to work with all of us in an effort to achieve the goal, and he's fully committed to it, and I think that's why this week he starts the clock by the speech he's going to make out in Las Vegas.
RADDATZ: And that pathway to citizenship, does that have to be in there?
MENENDEZ: Absolutely. Latino voters in -- first of all, Americans support it, in poll after poll. Secondly, Latino voters expect it. Thirdly, Democrats want it. And fourth, Republicans need it.
RADDATZ: Shouldn't the president have invited some Republicans to that meeting in the White House?
MENENDEZ: Well, it was the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, so...
RADDATZ: I know, but isn't there a way to find some Republicans he could invite into the White House? I know there's...
MENENDEZ: I think -- you know, in fairness to the president...
RADDATZ: ... there were just Democrats.
MENENDEZ: ... in his first term, he invited a very large cross-section of Democrats and Republicans. And I think he understands the unique role that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus plays in the question of immigration reform, and that's why he wanted to hear from that leadership.
But I'm sure that those bipartisan meetings will take place. And most importantly, I am really pleased by the nature of the bipartisan meetings that we are having with a group of six senators -- three Democrats, three Republicans -- and I understand a similar process is taking place in the House. That's real movement forward.
If you think about it, Martha, at one time, pathway to earned legalization was off the table. We were talking about sending people back as touchbacks, if they had any opportunity. That's not really being discussed. We're making very significant progress.
RADDATZ: Let me move also onto Benghazi. Do you think this is over? John McCain clearly does not think this issue is put to bed.
MENENDEZ: Well, look, I think that -- I don't know how much more can be said about the realities of what happened in Benghazi. We have the Administrative Review Board. They made it very clear. Secretary Clinton took responsibility.
RADDATZ: Then what were you trying to get through that hearing?
MENENDEZ: Well, first of all...
RADDATZ: Did she make mistakes?
MENENDEZ: ... my Republican colleagues insisted on having that hearing before we could move on to Senator Kerry's nomination. And I thought it was important to hear from the secretary to close the chapter, where, in fact, she is moving forward, as she said, on those 29 recommendations by the Administrative Review Board, how do we change the lines of authority within the State Department so that it's very clear who's responsible for embassy security, how do we change our...
RADDATZ: Which they've said they've implemented most of those...
MENENDEZ: Absolutely. And that's very important, so that, in fact, there are very clear lines of division.
RADDATZ: I want to move...
MENENDEZ: And also, how -- how do we make sure that, in fact, we look at intelligence in a different context? There doesn't have to be a specific threat, but we look at the environment in any place in the world in which our foreign services are operating.
RADDATZ: I wanted to move on to Chuck Hagel, as well, and his nomination. Would you support Chuck Hagel? Is he the right man to be defense secretary?
MENENDEZ: I have a meeting with Senator Hagel this week. I look forward to asking him a series of questions about Israel, about Iran as the major sponsor of the Iran sanctions in the Senate. I am concerned about some of the comments he has made about sanctions in the past. I think it's our best peaceful diplomacy tool to try to get the Iranians to ensure that we have no nuclear weapons, which we cannot accept from Iran, and I support the president's view that it's not about containment.
RADDATZ: And do you expect he will be confirmed?
MENENDEZ: We'll see. I think that there's been enough senators who have said they would support him, but we'll see. Of course, there's the hearings. That always, you know, gives us an insight. And I look forward to his personal answers to a series of my questions.
RADDATZ: I want to go in the end here just to something very quickly happening in your home state between Newark Mayor Cory Booker and 89-year-old Senator Frank Lautenberg, who basically suggested this week that Booker deserved a spanking because he was coveting his seat. Do you agree with that? Should Cory Booker be making moves now?
MENENDEZ: You know, that election is next year. And all of the back-and-forth now is something I'm really not focused on.
RADDATZ: Is Booker being disrespectful?
MENENDEZ: You know, that's a question for Senator Lautenberg and Mayor Booker, as far...
RADDATZ: Because you're clearly not going to answer it.
(LAUGHTER)
Thank you very much for joining us, Senator Menendez.
Title: Media Issues - NYTimes spent 4 years denying O-liberalism, now banners it!
Post by: DougMacG on January 28, 2013, 10:04:54 AM
GM, Are you suggesting the Dem Senator from NJ would be treated differently by msm if he subscribed to a different political view? Mark Sandford in some similar situation (?) would get a scandal question in an MSM policy interview? Can't believe what I am hearing. :-o -----------
After Four Years of Denying It, New York Times Banner Headline Admits Obama's 'Liberal Vision' (WSJ excerpted, subscriptions at http://www.wsjsubscription.org/)
"... the Times has spent the last four years insisting against evidence that Barack Obama, who pushed through government control of health care and a huge ineffective "stimulus" package, while maligning the wealthy and pushing higher taxes, is some kind of moderate. Back editions of the Times are littered with claims Obama was a centrist or moderate:
Reporter Jeff Zeleny on April 10, 2011 wrote a story under the online headline: "President Obama Adopts Centrist Approach.' Zeleny also considered Obama a "pragmatist" in December 2009: "He delivered a mix of realism and idealism....he continued a pattern evident throughout his public career of favoring pragmatism over absolutes."
An April 19, 2009 story by David Herszenhorn and Jackie Calmes claimed: "In some of his earliest skirmishes, Mr. Obama eventually chose pragmatism over fisticuffs....Pragmatism, [his aides] add, is an Obama hallmark, and among the changes he promised - and has delivered - is a break from his predecessor's often uncompromising style."
Here's reporter Jodi Kantor on Obama the law professor, May 3, 2009: "Former students and colleagues describe Mr. Obama as a minimalist (skeptical of court-led efforts at social change) and a structuralist (interested in how the law metes out power in society). And more than anything else, he is a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 28, 2013, 10:57:39 AM
GM, Are you suggesting the Dem Senator from NJ would be treated differently by msm if he subscribed to a different political view? Mark Sandford in some similar situation (?) would get a scandal question in an MSM policy interview? Can't believe what I am hearing.
I know. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I've been told Martha Raddatz was a professional and now I don't know what to think.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 28, 2013, 02:06:34 PM
GM, Are you suggesting the Dem Senator from NJ would be treated differently by msm if he subscribed to a different political view? Mark Sandford in some similar situation (?) would get a scandal question in an MSM policy interview? Can't believe what I am hearing.
I know. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I've been told Martha Raddatz was a professional and now I don't know what to think.
She IS a professional, by current industry (MSM) (double) standards. And our job is to point out how ridiculously un-even-handed they really are no matter how few people care.
No doubt it was a condition of the interview that no embarrassing questions were to be asked. A condition that Martha insisted on and Sen. 'John' Menendez agreed.
Same goes for the hard hitting celeb interview last night for Steve Kroft and 60 minutes. The ongoing campaign should have to pay for that time slot.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 29, 2013, 08:27:41 AM
Steve Kroft's Softball Obama Interviews Diminish '60 Minutes' All 14 questions the award-winning correspondent posed in his recent sit-down were glaringly flawed. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/steve-krofts-softball-obama-interviews-diminish-60-minutes/272611/
The president and his outgoing secretary of state were so laudatory of each other on the CBS news program that they were practically cuddling. - Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/28/hillary-clinton-and-barack-obama-s-lovefest-on-60-minutes.html
KIRSTEN POWERS: "It was really something you would expect from like, the state-run media. It was that kind of level of propaganda" http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/01/28/powers_60_minutes_interview_was_like_state-run_media_propaganda.html
Steve Kroft: 'Obama ‘Knows We’re Not Going To Play Gotcha With Him’
Brit Hume: I Must Have Missed "60 Minutes" Giving Bush A Friendly Interview
Update, full transcript: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57565734/obama-and-clinton-the-60-minutes-interview/
Title: Re: Media Issues - a joke became a nightmare
Post by: DougMacG on January 29, 2013, 09:47:43 AM
WSJ witty visionary and online editorial editor James Taranto joked facetiously in April 2008 that outgoing Republican Senator Chuck Hagel could be candidate Barack Obama's Secretary of Defense. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120866318783929067.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
Taranto writes now: "Mr. President, would it do any good if we said that secretary of defense thing was a joke? We didn't think so. Well, we've learned our lesson. Humor is just too dangerous and unpredictable a weapon. We will never use it again."
Title: Man bites dog! Gore gets grilled by Matt Lauer!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2013, 10:14:43 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 01, 2013, 08:28:21 PM
I happen to run into Newt Gingrich on the Greta Van Susteren show the other night. As he often does, Newt was making great sense on many things. Amongst them, was his opposition to the sale of F-16a and modern tanks to Egypt. Great whole-heartedly agreed.
With Sen. Paul's proposed amendment at the time opposing the sale to follow in the next day or so, it was a highly current topic.
And Lo! Behold! Who was GVS's next guest? SecState Hillary herself! , , , and nary a question about the jets and tanks. :roll: :cry:
Title: Red-handed: Associated Press caught inserting “assault rifle” into Alabama
Post by: G M on February 02, 2013, 12:15:31 PM
Jimmy Lee Dykes has no business having firearms. A violent Vietnam vet with PTSD who beat a neighbor’s dog to death, threatened to shoot school children, and did shoot into an occupied vehicle, that Dykes wasn’t already incarcerated is a complete failure of the mental health and criminal justice system in this nation. All that happened before he murdered a school bus drive and took a 5-year-old hostage earlier this week in an on-going standoff.
In reading up on the hostage situation today, however, I caught an edit to the established facts (my bold below).
Here’s the current Associated Press report:
Dykes was known in the neighborhood as a menacing figure who neighbors said once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and an assault rifle.
Here’s the earlier story:
Dykes was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and a shotgun.
Yes, the Associated Press has been caught red-handed changing “shotgun” to “assault rifle” in their reporting.
Since the beginning of the standoff (example) it has been reported only that Dykes has been armed with a shotgun when patrolling his property. The morphing of the shotgun into an assault rifle seems to have happened within the past four hours.
Update: Without noting that they’ve made a correction of any kind, the story has changed again:
Dykes was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who neighbors said once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and a firearm.
It’s just too bad for them that screen caps never die.
Sadly, 2013 begins with CBS destroying its reputation for editorial integrity in an attempt to eliminate an innovative competitor.
(Photo: Julie Jacobson, AP)
Story Highlights CBS ordered its subsidiary CNET to remove a product from consideration for a "Best of CES" award. CBS and other networks sued Dish to stop the sale of the Hopper. CBS' actions also hurt the value of their asset, CNET.
Recently, I found myself thrust in the middle of a kerfuffle when CBS ordered its subsidiary CNET to remove a productfrom consideration for a "Best of CES" award at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. I can never recall any major media company, much less a top-tier First Amendment protector like CBS, publicly mandating an editorial decision based on business interests. The bizarre aggressiveness of CBS executives against the Hopper Sling disturbed me as it not only tainted the CES awards, but it hurt one of the world's classiest media companies.
The controversy started when Dish introduced the Hopper, a product that allows Dish subscribers to skip through TV commercials under certain conditions. CBS and other networks sued Dish to stop the sale of the Hopper, despite a landmark 1984 Supreme Court decision that innovative products like the Hopper cannot be blocked by copyright owners if the product has many uses. Broadcasters never even challenged the legality of the TiVo personal video recorder back in 1999, which allows easy commercial fast-forwarding.
While the CBS legal challenge to the Hopper case chugs along, Dish used the 2013 International CES, to introduce the Hopper Sling, which allows Dish subscribers to stream one channel over the Internet while another is playing on the home TV. As owners of CES, we had an agreement with CNET to cover the show and recognize the best products. The CNET editorial team identified the Hopper Sling as one of the most innovative products of the show, but CBS brass ordered the CNET editors to remove it from CNET's website.
For a top media company to impose editorial control so publicly for business reasons created a firestorm, resulting in stories in USA TODAY, Wall Street Journaland several tech blogs. CBS' actions are puzzling, and troubling, on many levels.
First, it destroys two reputations in a single action. CBS, once called the Tiffany network, will never be viewed again as pristine. The ethical media rule is that corporate business interests should never interfere in journalism – or at least not so blatantly, publicly and harmfully. It made me wonder if 60 Minutes had ever suffered the same treatment.
CBS' actions also hurt the value of their asset, CNET, which they purchased for $1.8 billion a few years ago. One CNET reporter even resigned over the editorial meddling. Not only have CNET users and partners like us lost confidence in its independence, but the action is so devastating to editorial integrity that other staffers are almost certainly freshening their resumes.
Second, if this decision was based on legal advice, it was bad advice. It was later revealed by the top person at CNET that the 40 CNET journalists had unanimously decided that the Hopper Sling was the most innovative product at the 2013 International CES. Removing the product from the website does not change that. I can't imagine Dish lawyers won't figure out a way to get that in to evidence. All the removal proves legally is that the CBS brass really doesn't like the product and that they're bad at PR. They took a nice award that gets decent publicity and turned it into a hugely noticed award that got mega-publicity.
CNET is a credible technology industry journalism organization with respected reporters and analysts, and has always been a good partner to CES when examining these awards. CBS had a pristine reputation, and other than its questionable anti-innovation litigation strategy, had shown an ability to embrace innovation and try new things such as acquiring CNET and experimenting with a Groupon model. But those reputations have been severely damaged.
Moreover, CNET's top editor recently revealedCNET was ordered by CBS to deceive the public and say CNET pulled the product from consideration as a finalist, even though the Hopper Sling had already been the CNET editors' unanimous choice as best of show. Unbelievable that a top executive at a Fortune 500 company had ordered an intentional deception by their own journalists.
Every week it seems we see a rock of society crumble, and CBS' actions during CES unsettle me as someone who treasures innovation and hates seeing a great company tarnished by unfairness in a respected awards program. Sadly, 2013 begins with CBS destroying its reputation for editorial integrity in an attempt to eliminate a new market competitor. Now we are considering our legal options under our agreement with CNET.
Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer electronics companies and the author of the New York Times best-selling book, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World's Most Successful Businesses.
Title: Morris to CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2013, 06:39:19 AM
Title: Michele Malkin: The Blame Righty Mob falls silent
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2013, 08:16:45 AM
The Blame Righty Mob Falls Silent Michelle Malkin Feb 08, 2013
Question: How many times over the past four years have exploitative liberal journalists and Democratic leaders rushed to pin random acts of violence on the tea party, Republicans, Fox News and conservative talk radio?
Answer: Nearly a dozen times, including the 2009 massacre of three Pittsburgh police officers (which lib journos falsely blamed on Fox News, Glenn Beck and the "heated, apocalyptic rhetoric of the anti-Obama forces"); the 2009 suicide insurance scam/murder hoax of Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman (which New York magazine falsely blamed on Rush Limbaugh, "conservative media personalities, websites and even members of Congress"); the 2009 Holocaust museum shooting (which MSNBC commentator Joan Walsh blamed on Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and yours truly); the 2010 Times Square jihad bomb plot (which Mayor Michael Bloomberg falsely blamed on tea party activists protesting Obamacare); and the 2011 Tucson massacre, which liberals continue to blame on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Question: What will this rabid Blame Righty mob do now that an alleged triple-murderer has singled out prominent lefties in the media and Hollywood for fawning praise as part of his crazed manifesto advocating cop-killing?
Answer: Evade, deflect, ignore and whitewash.
This week, former Los Angeles Police Department Officer Christopher Dorner allegedly shot and killed three innocent people in cold blood. He was the subject of a massive manhunt as of Thursday afternoon. Dorner posted an 11,000-word manifesto on Facebook that outlined his chilling plans to target police officers.
CNN headlined its story on the rant: "Alleged cop-killer details threats to LAPD and why he was driven to violence." MSNBC reported: "Manifesto: Alleged Revenge Shooter Named Targets." KTLA-TV in Los Angeles went with: "Christopher Dorner's Manifesto (Disturbing Content and Language)."
There was a curious, blaring omission in both the headlines and the stories from these supposedly objective outlets, though. Dorner expressed rather pointed, explicit views of news personalities and celebrities who have influenced, entertained and uplifted him. Dorner praised stars from Ellen DeGeneres and Charlie Sheen ("you're effin awesome") to "Jennifer Beals, Serena Williams ... Tamron Hall ... Natalie Portman, Queen Latifah ... Kelly Clarkson, Nora Jones, Laura Prepon, Margaret Cho and Rutina Wesley."
The shout-outs to liberal journalists go on at length:
"Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Pat Harvey, Brian Williams, Soledad Obrien (sic), Wolf Blitzer, Meredith Viera (sic), Tavis Smiley and Anderson Cooper, keep up the great work and follow Cronkite's lead," Dorner cheered. "I hold many of you in the same regard as Tom Brokaw and the late Peter Jennings."
Dorner also offered an "atta boy" to notorious, anti-Second Amendment CNN anchor Piers Morgan, suggesting he be given "an indefinite resident alien and Visa card." Offering up his political counsel, Dorner added: "I want you to know that I agree with you 100 percent on enacting stricter firearm laws, but you must understand that your critics will always have in the back of their mind that you are native to a country that we won our sovereignty from while using firearms as a last resort in defense and you come from a country that has no legal private ownership of firearms."
Dorner reminded MSNBC's Joe Scarborough that they had "met at McGuire's pub in P-cola in 2002 when I was stationed there. It was an honor conversing with you about politics, family and life." The alleged triple-murderer also advised "Today" show personality Willie Geist: "(Y)ou're a talented and charismatic journalist. Stop with all the talk show shenanigans and get back to your core of reporting. Your future is brighter than most."
It's ridiculous, of course, to blame these journos for the deaths of three innocents in Southern California. But herein lies a teachable moment. In the sick cycle of recent politicized tragedies, the Blame Righty mob demanded that conservative media personalities and GOP politicians apologize for crimes they didn't commit; called for increased regulation of political free speech; and cranked up its decades-old machinery to stifle conservative talk radio in the name of public safety and civility. Even the remotest connection to anything right-wing was excuse enough to convict conservatives for homicidal sprees.
And while the Blame Righty crowd still inveighs about Palin's completely innocent use of crosshairs on a political map, they have fallen silent about the stunning admission of Floyd Lee Corkins, who pleaded guilty this week to attempting to murder members of the conservative Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., last summer.
Corkins said he wanted to "kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches (he had brought) in victims' faces, and kill the guard." How did he pick the office? From a "hate map" published by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center -- the leading guilt-by-association witch-hunt crew targeting conservatives.
Ho-hum. Nothing to see here, move along. Be vewwy, vewwy quiet.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
Title: Media Editing Re: Michele Malkin: The Blame Righty Mob falls silent
Post by: G M on February 08, 2013, 09:51:41 AM
Suspected L.A. Cop Killer Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web (Update: KTLA Whitewash) by Bryan Preston
Bio February 7, 2013 - 7:34 am Sooper Mexican is following the breaking story of the former Los Angeles police officer who has gone rogue, allegedly shooting three officers and hunting others and their families after he was fired from the police force.
The suspect, Chris Dorner, posted a manifesto on the web, but media are ignoring some of its key passages. Dorner’s rant begins with an attempt to justify his crimes, and then reveals a man steeped in typical Think Progress, Media Matters style leftist thinking.
He supports strict gun control:
Who in there right mind needs a fucking silencer!!! who needs a freaking SBR AR15? No one. No more Virginia Tech, Columbine HS, Wisconsin temple, Aurora theatre, Portland malls, Tucson rally, Newtown Sandy Hook. Whether by executive order or thru a bi-partisan congress an assault weapons ban needs to be re-instituted. Period!!!
Mia Farrow said it best. “Gun control is no longer debatable, it’s not a conversation, its a moral mandate.”
Sen. Feinstein, you are doing the right thing in leading the re-institution of a national AWB. Never again should any public official state that their prayers and thoughts are with the family.
He is a strong Obama supporter, supports Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, and hates the NRA:
Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, you’re a vile and inhumane piece of shit. You never even showed 30 seconds of empathy for the children, teachers, and families of Sandy Hook.
He gets his media cues from MSNBC and CNN’s Piers Morgan:
…give Piers Morgan an indefinite resident alien and Visa card. Mr. Morgan, the problem that many American gun owners have with you and your continuous discussion of gun control is that you are not an American citizen and have an accent that is distinct and clarifies that you are a foreigner. I want you to know that I agree with you 100% on enacting stricter firearm laws
Dorner also lamented the fact that George Zimmerman was not murdered by Trayvon Martin. NBC injected race into that story, and may have helped drive a disgraced cop over the edge.
It’s pretty clear that Dorner is disturbed. It’s also pretty clear that the media and left have fueled his madness. His writing reads like a regurgitation of media narratives he could pick up on any mainstream leftist web site or media outlet. The same media are now censoring his manifesto. This comes just a day after news broke that another leftist gunman used leftwing propaganda to launch an armed attack on the conservative Family Research Council. Most media have ignored that angle, too.
A couple of days before that, a mass killer confessed to being taught to hate white people in college. That hasn’t become a media narrative, either.
If there’s no Tea Party angle and the media can’t make one up, they’re just not interested in reporting all of the facts.
Update: KTLA posted most, but not all, of Dorner’s manifesto. They left out all the parts in which he espouses leftist and anti-gun views.
The local media is covering up some of the motivations behind a deadly crime spree, while that spree is underway.
Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.
Title: When Crazed Shooters Can’t Be Linked To The Tea Party, Media Displays Admirable
Post by: G M on February 08, 2013, 10:22:00 AM
When Crazed Shooters Can’t Be Linked To The Tea Party, Media Displays Admirable Restraint
by Noah Rothman | 12:03 pm, February 8th, 2013
Alleged Los Angeles shooter Christopher Jordan Dorner, influenced by left-leaning media coverage of gun crime in the wake of the Newtown shootings, has virtually paralyzed the City of Angels. Floyd Lee Corkins, a gunman incensed by anti-gay marriage bias after reading articles by the liberal advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center, took a firearm into the Family Research Council’s headquarters with the intention of killing “as many as possible.” He hoped to smash Chick-fil-A sandwiches in the faces of as many corpses as he could. These shooters were clearly moved by left-wing media, and we should thank every benevolent force in the universe that they were. Had either shooter possessed even a tenuous link to a conservative group, a media-driven hysteria about the malevolent influence of right-wing broadcasters and commentators would be gripping the nation today. Fortunately, when a crazed shooter’s ideology is explicitly and demonstrably left-wing, the media displays admirable restraint about linking a gunman’s politics to their acts of violence.
The instinct by many high profile voices in the media to link violence to right-wing politics is not a new phenomenon, but it has enjoyed a renaissance since the tea party began to achieve political power. The broadcasters who subtly implicated former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the 2011 attack on a Democratic congresswoman in Tucson, Arizona, is indicative of this bias. CNN host Piers Morgan exemplifies the lamentable instinct to blame conservatism for senseless violence well.
In a November, 2011, interview with Mark Kelly, Morgan said he was shocked by the “extraordinary” fact that Palin did not reach out to former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) immediately after the shooting. Kelly agreed, saying that the infamous map on Palin’s website which featured targets over a variety of congressional districts that Republicans were “targeting” in that year’s midterm elections – an infraction which sparked a national uproar about the marshal imagery employed by politicians since the time of Demosthenes – was “not the right thing to do.”
The implication was clear: Palin had some influence on the crazed gunman who shot up an impromptu meeting of a Congresswoman and her constituents. Palin’s crosshairs map had become a scapegoat for prominent voices from Paul Krugman to Randi Zuckerberg. It did not take much investigation into Loughner’s background to learn that he was not especially political, and was certainly not a fan of Palin’s. Nevertheless, nearly a year after this tragic incident, Morgan clung to that baseless charge.
Since the Newtown shooting, Morgan has been beating the drum about the need for stricter gun laws. His pro-gun control crusade made a deep impression on Dorner, who praised Morgan in his manifesto. So, having been specifically cited as someone who influenced Dorner, Morgan would engage in some introspection. Instead, he dismissed his influence on the L.A. shooter outright.
Morgan tweeted confidently — just hours after the manifesto in which Dorner praised not just Morgan but MSNBC’s programming and a proposed Assault Weapons Ban – that politics has “nothing to do” with Dorner’s rampage.
Unfortunately, the spectacularly wrong-headed approach the media took to assigning nonexistent motives to Loughner did not lead the media to impose some restraint on itself when opining on the politics of crazed shooters.
After Aurora, Colorado, shooter James Holmes attacked moviegoers this summer, ABC News reporter Brian Ross – minutes after the name of the suspect had been leaked to the press – sifted through the white pages to discover that there was one James Holmes in Colorado who happened to be a tea party activist. That incident forced ABC’s President Ben Sherwood to issue an apology.
In February, 2010, when the deranged Joseph Stack flew his Piper Cub into the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas, few in the elite media waited for the dust to settle before blaming conservatism. “The First Tea Party Terrorist?” asked New York Times columnist Robert Wright.
Even though Wright had Stack’s online manifesto in hand – one in which he praises Marxist communism and laments the harsh excesses of American capitalism – Wright used a magicians sleight of hand to nevertheless link Stack to the tea party.
Was he a Tea Partier — or at least a Tea Party sympathizer? Conservatives who say no point to leftish themes in his manifesto. And it’s true that — in a line much-quoted by these conservatives — he seems to wish that the government would do something about health care. Then again, who doesn’t? … In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).
When the facts make it impossible to indulge the instinct to link a violent extremist to the right – in Dorner and Corkins’ cases for example – the media displays appropriate caution about assigning political motives to their actions.
That is an laudable impulse. The motives that drive disturbed individuals to commit heinous acts of violence, whatever they are, should not be glorified. Dorner’s manifesto clearly indicates that the media, and its coverage of the gun control debate that has followed the Newtown massacre, influenced him significantly. A responsible media would take that into account and maybe, just maybe, ask what they may be doing to contribute to the increased incidences of mass shootings.
That is a national conversation that Americans deserve. Rest assured, if Dorner or Corkins had been influenced to commit their crimes by right-wing media outlets, we would get it. Sadly, that level of self-awareness is nowhere to be found in today’s media landscape.
Title: The unredacted Dorner
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2013, 11:30:47 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 08, 2013, 05:09:10 PM
David Gregory host of Meet the Press has announced that due to the snowstorm he will not be confronting President Barack Obama this Sunday about his alleged non-involvement in the rescue not even attempted scandal brought to light this week in the Senate Benghazi hearings. Nor, with snow falling on the east coast as we speak, will he be questioning Jay Carney about his bald faced lie to the American people about President Obama's continuous involvement in the rescue that never got ordered. Said Gregory, "this is not just snow, it looks like heavy winds coming too. I just don't see tough questioning happening in the face of this."
Just breaking, Steve Kroft of the CBS program 30 minutes said, "me neither". "This is a big storm", said Kroft. "I don't see how we can get to it this week."
Both professional journalists said they are committed, weather and other delays permitting, to get to the bottom of this no matter what it takes before the November 6, 2012 election or as soon as is professionally possible after that.
Title: Palm Beach Post reporter actually engages in journalism!
Post by: G M on February 12, 2013, 10:11:32 AM
Democratic House chairwoman Wasserman Schultz caught in deception with reporters February 10, 2013 | 8:00 pm
Susan Ferrechio Chief Congressional Correspondent The Washington Examiner
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz attempted a bit of deception Monday in an effort to criticize GOP rising star Marco Rubio ahead of his State of the Union rebuttal Tuesday night. But on this occasion, the press wasn't falling for it.
In a conference call Monday, Wasserman Schultz enlisted the help of Annette Capella, described by party officials as a "Medicare recipient from Florida," to warn of the "extreme budget priorities," they believe Rubio is likely to outline in his televised response to President Obama's address.
Capella gave a lengthy and unflattering statement about Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida and Tea Party favorite. She admitted he is an attractive politician but one who would make life more difficult for seniors by supporting a plan to alter Medicare by reducing benefits.
It turns out, however, that Capella is hardly your standard Medicare-dependent Floridian. She's the Democratic Party's state committeewoman for St. Johns County.
The truth was uncovered when the call was opened up to questions. The first query came from a Palm Beach Post reporter, who asked Wasserman Schultz if Capella was the same person listed as the head of the St. Johns Democratic Party.
Wasserman Schultz paused for a moment but then said she would let Capella answer the question. Capella corrected the reporter, saying she'd stepped down from that role and is now represents the county as the party's state committeewoman for St. Johns, located in northeastern Florida.
sferrechio@washingtonexaminer.com
Title: Our Incorrigible Media
Post by: G M on February 15, 2013, 01:53:56 PM
http://freebeacon.com/our-incorrigible-media/
Our Incorrigible Media
Column: Conservatives report, liberals whine
BY: Matthew Continetti February 15, 2013 4:59 am
For the last several weeks, as you are no doubt aware, the Washington Free Beacon and other news outlets—most of them conservative—have been investigating secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel’s positions, finances, associations, career history, and utterances. Which seems to us to be precisely what you would expect an intrepid and creative and entrepreneurial press to do when the president of the United States nominates a controversial former senator to one of the most important cabinet posts in the land.
Apparently, though, and without our knowing it, you and I have passed through an inter-dimensional portal and have entered a black-is-white, up-is-down twilight zone in which asking for information pertaining to a public figure constitutes participation not only in a McCarthyite “smear machine,” but also in a “campaign, orchestrated by controversial anti-Arab figures,” with the goal of “smearing and intimidating the Arab-American community.” And “this demonizing of the Arab community is very troubling,” a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) tells Dylan Byers, a cub reporter for Politico. “The FBI was in here last week because of those types of threats.” The line separating inquiry and bigotry is, it would seem, rather thin. The ADC sees “the right-wing’s attacks in racial terms,” Byers writes. So the right wing better shut up. After all: Their witch-hunt has “come up empty.”
Except our reporting on Hagel hasn’t come up empty, not one bit, and the so-called mainstream media’s own coverage of public affairs proves it. Their blindness to this fact only confirms their incorrigibility. Remarkable, it really is, that the much-derided and condescended-to conservative media, even as the left cries and stamps its feet and blows raspberries at us, has led the way in reporting on the nomination of Brett McGurk to be ambassador to Iraq, the potential nomination of Susan Rice to be secretary of state, the ethics complaint filed against Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and, most recently, the nomination to secretary of defense of a man with a “buffoonish image” who “neutered himself” at his confirmation hearing.
Consider, again, the quotes from our friends at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Earlier this week, James Rosen of Fox News Channel reported that Chuck Hagel “did not disclose at least two recent speeches on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” The Senate Armed Services Committee had asked Hagel for records of all speeches he’d delivered since 2008. But the materials Hagel presented the committee omitted talks he gave at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in September 2008, and at the annual conference of the ADC in June 2008. “The content of Hagel’s speeches at these locations have not surfaced,” wrote Rosen.
A look at that content is one of the reasons reporters for the Free Beacon visited the offices of the ADC after Rosen’s report. But another reason, and what turns out to be the more interesting one, was to obtain a copy of the group’s IRS Form 990, which as a tax-exempt organization they are required to present to the public upon request. Here is a link to the relevant IRS instructions. Check out, specifically, the passage on page 74 in which the IRS writes that organizations filing under Section 501(c)3 of the tax code are required to “provide a copy without charge … other than a reasonable fee for reproduction and actual postage costs, of all or any part of any application or return required to be made available for public inspection to any individual who makes a request for a copy in person or in writing.”
Would the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee comply with IRS instructions and allow reporters for the Free Beacon to look upon the organization’s 990, so that the public might be better informed about the funding sources of an organization that has been injected into a national political debate?
The answer was no. And not only was the answer no, but these particular Free Beacon reporters were not allowed into the group’s offices. Nor were the Free Beacon reporters’ phone calls returned. Receipt of a hand-delivered request for the Form 990, provided to the security guard at the ADC’s headquarters, was not acknowledged. And when a Free Beacon reporter did get a representative of the ADC on the line, and attempted to explain the pertinent regulations and reasonable nature of this actually somewhat pedestrian request, that reporter was told he was being offensive and racist and harassing taxpaying Americans and the authorities had been informed of his existence.
That Chuck Hagel speech we mentioned? Sorry: It was in an “archive” somewhere in Maryland. Better luck next time. And that was where the matter stood, Wednesday evening, on the eve of the full Senate’s first vote on the Hagel nomination.
Then the matter took an unexpected turn. At 1:47 p.m. EST on Valentine’s Day, Dylan Byers and Mackenzie Weinger posted an item on Politico headlined, “ADC: Hagel’s 2008 speech, long sought by right-wing blogs, comes up empty.”
“Right-wing media outlets have been aggressively pushing the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League [sic] to locate and release video footage” of a Chuck Hagel speech, Politico readers were informed. And the “hope” of these right-wingers, readers were further informed, was to “reveal more fodder for their case that Hagel has a history of making anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic statements.” How Byers and Weinger knew the hopes and dreams of these conservative nut-balls wasn’t exactly clear, since they never once in their original post quoted directly the speech of an actual living, breathing conservative. But they did quote, directly and extensively, ADC spokesman Abed Ayoub, who said Free Beacon reporters may have come close to committing a hate crime. “They came to our offices—threatening us, demanding information, arguing with security. They got very abrasive, very aggressive. In fact, the FBI was in here last week because of those type of threats.”
As for the Hagel speech in question: “The tape comes up clean,” Byers wrote, over an hour before he actually seems to have watched it and posted it on Politico. The real story was that the Free Beacon appeared at the ADC “and harassed them for the tape.” The real story, ADC went on in a separate press release, was that “Senator Hagel has been attacked over and over merely for speaking to Arab Americans.” You can “send a strong message to those who want to isolate us” by writing ADC a $300 check. But don’t delay, because the intolerant mob could impose their reign of terror any day now. That’s spelled A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n. …
Not once did Byers and Weinger mention in their original post the Free Beacon’s completely legal and innocent request for the ADC’s Form 990. Not once did Byers and Weinger see fit to, I don’t know, pick up the damn phone and ask the WFB reporters for their reaction to charges of racism and hate. Byers and Weinger say that wasn’t necessary because they quoted from a WFB news story reporting on the allegations against our reporters. But the news story was precisely that—a news story—and thus did not contain the personal reflections of the reporters involved in writing it. Nor should it. Have political reporters become incapable of separating their sentiments and emotions from the information they seek to convey to the reading public? And have conservatives become so completely detested in polite society that their sentiments and emotions are not worthy of such conveyance?
And how does the search for a newsworthy speech “come up empty” when the search concludes in the release of the speech in question? Is any serious person willing to say that the video of Chuck Hagel’s address to the 2008 convention of the ADC would have been released had the Free Beacon and our friends not reported on it? And, not incidentally, where was the Form 990 at the center of this bizarre and needless controversy?
We contacted Dylan Byers, after he posted his scurrilous article, to make our case. Byers told us he’d write a follow-up once he called the ADC for reaction (exactly what he failed to do after originally taking Ayoub’s dictation). That second story, “Free Beacon: We did not harass ADC,” was only slightly less misleading than the first. There was the requisite ass covering, to be sure. But there were also quotes from Ayoub that were incorrect. Ayoub “noted that copies of the ADC’s 990 were available online,” Byers wrote. Now think about that for a second. If the forms were “available online,” why would WFB reporters go to the ADC offices to request them? Of course the forms were not available online. That’s the basis of the ENTIRE STORY.
“You can’t just walk into the office in the middle of the day, while everyone is working, and request a 990,” Ayoub told Byers. Ah, but you can! That’s the beauty of federal tax law. Why, the Free Beacon and Center for American Freedom provided Byers’s talented and expert colleague Ken Vogel our very own 990 not too long ago. Maybe Vogel is willing to provide his befuddled blogger a lesson in campaign finance?
What happened after Byers’s second post, though, was even more interesting. Shortly after we spoke to Byers, who spoke to Ayoub, a Free Beacon reporter received an email saying his formal request for the Form 990 had been received. And shortly after that, the ADC called the Free Beacon’s offices and said they would send Form 990s for the last three years to us by the end of the day. Which is to say: We may finally be able, after all, to report on an organization that awarded Chuck Hagel for his courageous and unconventional and blah, blah, blah, position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But we will be able to do so only after our staff was dragged through the mud on one of the most highly trafficked websites in the country.
Such is our burden, I suppose. And I suppose, too, that when Chuck Hagel withdraws his nomination, and Bob Menendez resigns his Senate seat, the usual suspects will bemoan the state of affairs that have allowed horrible conservatives to besmirch the reputations of such honorable and decent men. The usual suspects, of course, will have missed the real lesson: reporting works. The media might want to try it some time.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2013, 05:06:55 PM
Warren Romney Buffett's Heinz takeover rehabilitates the private-equity LBO.. Article Stock Quotes Comments (18) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ». smaller Larger facebooktwittergoogle pluslinked ininShare.0EmailPrintSave ↓ More . . smaller Larger First President Obama rehabilitates the reputation of the Cayman Islands as a tax shelter by nominating Jack Lew to be Treasury Secretary, and now Mr. Obama's most famous business cheerleader Warren Buffett is bidding to revive the good name of the private-equity leveraged buyout. Can someone verify that Mitt Romney lost the election?
Mr. Buffett's contribution to high-debt takeover finance comes in the form of his conglomerate's proposed $23 billion acquisition of H.J. Heinz , HNZ -0.30%the ketchup and food company. Berkshire Hathaway BRKB +0.56%is supplying some $12 billion in return for 50% ownership, while leaving the operations to its acquisition partner, the Brazilian-owned private-equity firm, 3G Capital.
Mr. Buffett has invested in many famous consumer brands over the years, but what is fascinating here is the role of 3G Capital, which has a reputation for cost-cutting and layoffs that would make Bain Capital blush.
In October 2010, for example, 3G Capital bought Burger King BKW +4.70%for about $4 billion including debt from a group that included Bain, Goldman Sachs GS -0.60%and TPG. The company proceeded to fire the CEO and cut the fast-food chain's employees by thousands in little more than a year. The Wall Street Journal reports that 413 people were sacked on a single day in December 2010.
Enlarge Image
Close Getty Images .However, profits began to rise, the company is now adding new restaurants, and 3G Capital was able to take Burger King public again last June after only 20 months of private ownership.
To believers in free markets, this sounds like a classic private-equity turnaround in which better management improves the value of a business. But Burger King and 3G Capital have also been targets of liberal media critics who view private-equity firms as rapacious capitalists. Imagine how 3G Capital's cost-cutting at Burger King would look if compiled by an Obama Super Pac into a black-and-white TV ad featuring interviews with workers who lost their jobs.
Heinz has a reputation for being leaner and better run than Burger King was, so perhaps 3G Capital will need to be less ruthless. The buyers have promised to keep the Heinz headquarters in Pittsburgh.
But the takeover will also be financed with significant new borrowing, which the Wall Street Journal reports will double Heinz's debt load to more than $12 billion. Fitch Ratings downgraded Heinz's debt to BB+, or junk bond territory, citing the heavier debt load. Heinz will also have to pay Berkshire a 9% rate on its investment in preferred shares, or about $720 million a year. The new owners had better hope interest rates stay low and the economy keeps growing.
The usual media critics of private equity are ignoring 3G Capital's takeover history, perhaps because of the role of Mr. Buffett, the billionaire patron saint of taxing the rich. The proposed deal is even being portrayed as one sign of the return of business animal spirits and a healthier economy. So much the better if they're right, but Mr. Romney is still entitled to some head-shaking about deal-making and political double standards.
Title: Debate Commission Co-Chair says selection of Candy Crowley was a "mistake"
Post by: DougMacG on February 20, 2013, 11:54:14 AM
Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, admitted that the selection of CNN's Candy Crowley to moderate the second presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney in October 2012 had been a "mistake."
Crowley stirred controversy by intervening in the town hall-style debate to support Obama's contention that he had referred to the Sep. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as a terrorist attack the day after it had occurred. In fact, as Crowley herself later admitted, Obama had not done so, referring only to "acts of terror" in general. In a CBS interview taped the same day, Obama declined to refer to the attack as a terrorist act, and subsequently supported a false story about a protest over an anti-Islamic video that never took place.
After Crowley backed up the president, some members of the audience burst into applause, in violation of the rules. The effect was not lost on the audience, which scored the debate as an Obama win--nor was it lost on Romney, who was sufficiently chastened that he refused to bring up the Benghazi issue again in the third presidential debate, even though that debate was specifically focused on foreign policy and national security.
Though it was likely not the only factor, or even the major factor, in Romney's defeat, Crowley's error slowed the new momentum that Romney had enjoyed since defeating Obama soundly in the first presidential debate. Her intervention also reinforced the media lack of interest in pursuing the Benghazi issue with the president. --------------
As Crafty pointed out, Gingrich would have known he was there to debate both of them. Romney was blindsided. Never saw it coming. He looked worse than Rubio needing water.
Not mentioned is the insinuation Pres. Obama made to Candy that the two of them had already discussed this:
"Get the transcript". "Can you say that a little louder Candy."
"He did, in fact, sir..." "He -- he did call it an act of terror."
Once again talking out of both sides of the mouth leaves a quote on record for all purposes. Too bad that in the age of information we still have a partisan, lapdog press.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2013, 02:22:09 PM
Kudos to Brett Baier for continuing to make the point that under baseline budgeting "cuts", e.g. "the sequester" are merely slower increases!
Title: Media question of the day
Post by: G M on February 22, 2013, 11:29:57 AM
Title: Professional journalistic editing
Post by: G M on February 26, 2013, 04:47:01 PM
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2522593
ABC broadcast edits out Michelle Obama claim that Chicago teen was killed by an ‘automatic weapon’ February 26, 2013 | 11:54 am
Charlie Spiering Commentary Staff Writer The Washington Examiner
Email Author @charliespiering Charlie on FB In an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts aired this morning, First Lady Michelle Obama recalled the tragic death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton who was shot and killed in Chicago after performing during the President’s Inauguration celebration in Washington D.C.
“She was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need,” the First Lady explained. “I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.”
Chicago police reported, however, that Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened fire with a handgun before fleeing in a waiting car” according to the Associated Press.
It is extremely unlikely that the murder weapon was an automatic handgun, an extremely rare occurrence, even in the streets of Chicago. An overwhelming majority of handguns bought and sold in America are semi-automatic. Police officials have not recovered the firearm, but prosecutors stated that the accused attacker shot “at least six times” into the crowd.
For the broadcast, ABC’s Good Morning America producers edited out the First Lady’s “automatic weapon” line.
She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids grow – grew – up, where our house is. She had just taken a chemistry test. And she was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need. I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.
In the web edition of the story, however, Michelle Obama appears to be quoted in full:
“She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids…grew up, where our house is. She had just taken a chemistry test. And she was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need,” she said. “I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.”
Title: Bob Woodward doubles down vs Baraq
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 28, 2013, 07:05:53 AM
Morning Jolt – February 28, 2013 By Jim Geraghty Here's your Thursday Morning Jolt. Enjoy! Jim Will the White House Regret Telling Woodward & Others They'll Regret Public Disagreement? This will be a story worth watching: The White House vs. Bob Woodward. I'll let David Jackson of USA Today summarize: It's Bob Woodward versus the White House. The bestselling author and Washington Post reporter is protesting White House pushback over his criticism of how President Obama and aides are handling the sequester issue. "It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this," Woodward told CNN, citing an e-mail he received from "a senior person" at the White House. "I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you're going to regret doing something that you believe in," Woodward said. In a statement, the White House said that "of course no threat was intended. As Mr. Woodward noted, the email from the aide was sent to apologize for voices being raised in their previous conversation. The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more. And Mr. Woodward responded to this aide's email in a friendly manner." All we can say is: We know more than a few reporters have received similar e-mails from White House officials. Yelling has also been known to happen. "More than a few reporters have received similar e-mails from White House officials." So Obama staffers regularly tell reporters "they'll regret" writing stories detrimental to the president, and we're only hearing of this now?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on February 28, 2013, 08:06:10 AM
"right" This comes from the ONE himself. Time to stop circling wagons by saying, oh it is just some staffer and of course if the ONE new he would put a stop to it immediately. Maybe it comes from Michelle who we once recall said she was ashamed of our country who now can't seem to get enough wealth glory basking with the celebrities and the circuit.
I wish she would cover her arms and chest more. Her face is attractive though
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 01, 2013, 08:28:54 AM
"right" This comes from the ONE himself. Time to stop circling wagons by saying, oh it is just some staffer and of course if the ONE new he would put a stop to it immediately. Maybe it comes from Michelle who we once recall said she was ashamed of our country who now can't seem to get enough wealth glory basking with the celebrities and the circuit.
I wish she would cover her arms and chest more. Her face is attractive though
Might be time to visit your ophthalmologist.
:-D
Title: Why Bob Woodward Must Now Be Destroyed
Post by: G M on March 01, 2013, 08:42:27 AM
Ace sums up the three reasons that the medialeft, and in particular the BuzzFeed, Talking Points Memo and Media Matters JournoList mafia, are now doing everything they can to tear down Bob Woodward.
There are several lies Woodward has exposed:
1. Obama, despite the media blitz to blame the GOP, actually conceived of and proposed the sequester.
2. Obama, despite now claiming that tax increases must be part of the deal to avoid the sequester, agreed last year that only spending cuts would constitute the plan to avoid the sequester. Thus, he’s “moved goalposts” yet again.
3. Obama does not in fact have to release illegal aliens or cancel ship deployments due to the sequester — he’s doing these things by choice, for political purposes.
In sum, President Obama’s administration is going out of its way to hurt the American people, so that he can achieve his goal of destroying the Republican Party en route to obtaining total power in the mid-terms next year. That’s his goal, the sequester was part of his plan, and Bob Woodward had to go and report the facts. Can’t have that.
Those who are trying to kill off Woodward are doing this in part to protect a president they support to the point of living by the unstated creed Obama uber alles, and they’re doing this in part as a warning to other reporters. You’ve seen what we do to Fox. You’ve seen what we’re doing to Woodward. You don’t want to be next.
It’s instructive to watch who is stepping forward to identify with Woodward, and who is doing everything they can to destroy him, to distract from what’s going on, or otherwise run interference on this story. The former are all liberals like Lanny Davis, and they appear to have a conscience and don’t like what they’re seeing out of the administration. The latter have shown themselves to be shills, and they are never to be trusted again.
Title: Woodward getting deep throated?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2013, 08:53:34 AM
Good summary.
Lets keep track of the three variables listed in the Budget thread.
Title: All the President’s Thugs
Post by: G M on March 01, 2013, 01:44:30 PM
Hey, Bob, you can’t say we didn’t warn you. We knew this White House was capable of attacking even the great Bob Woodward for telling the truth.
You could have listened to Michael Barone. He saw it coming even before Barack Obama was elected. In October 2008, he penned “The Coming Obama Thugocracy.”
I experienced it when DOJ press harpy Tracy Schmaler yelled at a half dozen reporters, as the White House official did to you, about my under-oath testimony involving the New Black Panther dismissal. Her victims included Pete Williams, Quin Hillyer, and Sharyl Attkisson. After Schmaler’s thug tendencies were well known, she was nurtured and promoted within the Thugocracy instead of being canned, as any administration before this one would have done to her — Republican or Democrat.
Schmaler has since been appointed a Made Man of sorts, entering the rarefied private sector air of David Axelrod’s shop.
Schmaler’s story is typical of this gang. Her shouting, threats, and rants at reporters would have rendered her unqualified to serve in the press shop of a state department of agriculture.
But there is something unique about the Obama White House. It borrows tactics and standards from the darker figures in history — threats, projection, unrepentant dishonesty, towering columns in stadiums, and even bloody mayhem like Fast and Furious hatched for political purposes.
Richard Nixon seems like a fluffy kitten compared to this crowd.
Which brings us back to you, Mr. Woodward. What’s happened when you, of all people, are the bad guy?
Had you ventured into any cocktail party in Silver Spring or Takoma Park just a few years ago, you would have been treated like a hero — liberal Washington’s very own version of Pittsburgh Pirate Bill Mazeroski, who with one swing of a bat brought down the reviled Nixon. “Maz” never had to pay for a meal in Pittsburgh after that October afternoon in 1960 when he delivered a World Series.
That used to be you, Bob. But now, you’re the problem!
You, of all people, threatened by a Democrat White House.
And where are your defenders? Where are the new hipster reporters of the left to defend you? Where have all the flowers gone, they used to ask.
But this is serious stuff. When the elder statesman of the industry that guards the First Amendment is threatened by the White House, it marks a dangerous turn.When other “reporters” join in, it is even more dangerous.
Perhaps this will be enough for the usual phalanx of fools at places like Mother Jones, TPM Muckraker, and The Nation to at last wonder if we’ve come full circle back to those days of righteous triumphs in August 1974. Outrage toward abuse of power was so in vogue. Where is the righteous indignation that seized a nation beginning in May 1973?
Maybe it was all a show, Bob.
Did the wave you started have more to do with the “R” after Nixon’s name than principle?
With you, I’d say it was principle. But with the rest of the liberal left, it’s starting to look like poor Dick Nixon got a raw deal compared to this mischief of rats.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 01, 2013, 03:49:48 PM
Forgive me for wondering if it hasn't been "selectively edited", as our media professional has been caught doing more than a few times...
Also, if this threat was not actually a threat, then why is the left so busy trying to act it out?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 01, 2013, 05:11:23 PM
But in the meantime, before you have any actual proof, make sure you rush to judgment.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 01, 2013, 09:23:09 PM
Like how Katrina was BooooOOOOOOooooosh's fault?
Yes, we should always trust our non-partisan professional journalists and the most transparent administration ever!It's not like they are people who'd smuggle guns to Mexican drug cartels...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2013, 12:41:17 AM
Certainly the accusation is of people whom it is plausible to believe would act out beyond the understandings of the American way, but still we must limit ourselves to what is known-- the exchange BD cites may be what it purports to be, or it may be a completely insincere backpedal due to realizing that taking on a liberal legend like BW is not a good idea.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 02, 2013, 01:46:01 AM
Certainly the accusation is of people whom it is plausible to believe would act out beyond the understandings of the American way, but still we must limit ourselves to what is known-- the exchange BD cites may be what it purports to be, or it may be a completely insincere backpedal due to realizing that taking on a liberal legend like BW is not a good idea.
Until he took to the airwaves, BW didn't seem to find the apology insincere.
Title: Woodward obviously beleived this was a threat
Post by: ccp on March 02, 2013, 11:02:54 AM
Bigdog,
I don't think that email exchange, if accurate exonerates Sperling and his boss.
Remember. The GOP operatives did NOT START this. Woodward did. He, who is hardly a conservative, who has been a big Washington insider for decades makes it very clear he saw this as a veiled threat. Than we have Lanny Davis come out publically and make the same case. And the rumor mill has it that others have also had the same experience.
The left wing political media complex is out in full throttle attacking Woodward. Like Sperling clearly without mistake as to meaning said, "you will regret" this.
So you and other libs can whitewash it. I think your post endorses Woodward's case.
In his forty years of reporting and journalism I don't think Woodward has made this case except probably going back to the Nixon era. He didn't back down than and I doubt he will now. The difference he was darling of the media then. Now HE is made the villain. You can't see the difference?
Or you choose not to?
Title: The slow slide toward state run media
Post by: G M on March 02, 2013, 02:00:25 PM
The slow slide toward state run media posted at 2:31 pm on March 2, 2013 by Jazz Shaw
In the aftermath of the increasing strange story about Bob Woodward being threatened by the White House, there seem to be a few competing entries in the, “what does it all mean” sweepstakes. There is clearly some debate over precisely how much of a “threat” it really was or was intended to be, but does that mean that it was a big nothingburger? Matt Lewis seems to be leaning that way, opining that we’ve all been played.
Sperling’s email eventually does say, “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” But this is clearly not a veiled threat of retaliation, but rather a warning that the reporter was about to get the story wrong.
When Woodward tells of being warned he would “regret” challenging Obama, it sounds ominous. But if Politico’s reporting today is correct, it seems much more innocuous than that.
Looks like we were played. Matt makes a couple of points which I won’t argue with. Woodward, even in this late stage of his career, is still in the business of selling books. And controversy is good for sales. This isn’t to say he lit this particular fire intentionally to gin up some action, but it’s also not terribly difficult to imagine how he wouldn’t rush to douse the flames, either. And the relationship between the author and Sperling may indeed be a cordial, long standing one, leading the aide to feel comfortable tossing around some phrases he might have chosen more carefully in a public forum.
But does that mean this should all be tosses aside? Kathleen Parker has a different take on the subject this weekend, with a look through a longer lens at some trends in how the White House manages the lines of communications.
Understandably, everyday Americans may find this discussion too inside baseball to pay much mind. Why can’t the president play a little golf without a press gaggle watching? As for Woodward, it’s not as though the White House was threatening to bust his kneecaps.
Add to these likely sentiments the fact that Americans increasingly dislike the so-called mainstream media, sometimes for good reason. Distrust of media, encouraged by alternative media seeking to enhance their own standing, has become a tool useful to the very powers the Fourth Estate was constitutionally endowed to monitor. When the president can bypass reporters to reach the public, it is not far-fetched to imagine a time — perhaps now? — when the state controls the message. Her method of bringing blogging and other new media outlets into the mix is what makes this more of a valid discussion. The government is supposed to face the media as an opponent of sorts, trying to keep secrets while the media tries to expose them. When the media fell from grace and became distrusted by the public to do this important job, bloggers and other non-establishment entities stepped in to watch the watchers so to speak. But we need to remember that there are still key differences between social media and the mainstream.
Bloggers – at least the lion’s share of them – don’t have any direct access to the White House. (And the few exceptions who do are so far in the pockets of the administration that it’s not worth mentioning.) So they still rely on the mainstream White House press corps for all of the inside data. And rather than having the tools to challenge the administration directly, blogging quickly devolved into competing camps who almost exclusively challenged the media on the other side of the fence rather than scoring any points for transparency in government. Conservative bloggers take on MSBNC, liberals take on Fox. Does this somehow damage White House control of the message? Parker gets this part right.
This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has. I still don’t know why it’s important that reporters get to watch Barack Obama play golf with Tiger Woods. And Bob Woodward is still able to write anything he wants. But if that’s the standard we set, how much else goes on that we’re actually missing? And how much spin gets passed off as news? In the end, the Woodward story was about a lot more than just Bob selling a few more books. It serves as a reminder that state influence over the media remains a danger, just as the Founders knew it could be when they drafted the Bill of Rights.
Title: Re: The slow slide toward state run media
Post by: G M on March 02, 2013, 02:07:44 PM
I'm just finishing "The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers" By Richard McGregor. A great book I'd recommend for everyone here. One thing that stuck me was how much of a similar system the US under Buraq was growingto be to like modern China, the key differences being they have a better economy and it's easier to start a business there, and there is a state entity that formally manages the media rather than the ad hoc one created by our "jounolistic professionals".
Title: Re: Woodward obviously beleived this was a threat
Post by: bigdog on March 02, 2013, 02:21:35 PM
I don't think that email exchange, if accurate exonerates Sperling and his boss.
Remember. The GOP operatives did NOT START this. Woodward did. He, who is hardly a conservative, who has been a big Washington insider for decades makes it very clear he saw this as a veiled threat. Than we have Lanny Davis come out publically and make the same case. And the rumor mill has it that others have also had the same experience.
The left wing political media complex is out in full throttle attacking Woodward. Like Sperling clearly without mistake as to meaning said, "you will regret" this.
So you and other libs can whitewash it. I think your post endorses Woodward's case.
In his forty years of reporting and journalism I don't think Woodward has made this case except probably going back to the Nixon era. He didn't back down than and I doubt he will now. The difference he was darling of the media then. Now HE is made the villain. You can't see the difference?
Or you choose not to?
1. Yes, the words are there, but the context implies an entirely different meaning. 2. Liberal? Perhaps compared to the others on this forum, but hardly in the crappy way you mean it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 02, 2013, 02:23:43 PM
Wheelchair-Bound Girl Remains Trapped In Apartment 4 Months After Sandy Hit
8-Year-Old Schania Burgess Has Literally Not Been Outside Since Oct. 29
February 28, 2013 7:24 PM
Schania Burgess, 8, has not been outside since Sandy hit because her building’s elevators are still not working. (credit: CBS 2)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Recovery from Hurricane Sandy has been slow for lots of people in our area.
But for one little girl in Coney Island, the aftermath of the storm has left her trapped inside her apartment for months.
Schania Burgess, 8, is wheelchair-bound and has not been outside since Sandy hit.
Her mother said the elevators in their high-rise building on Surf Avenue and 24th Street have been out of order for months, leaving Schania a virtual prisoner in their third-floor apartment.
Burgess has not been able to go to school as a result and said she misses her friends and art class the most.
Instead, she is being home-schooled by an instructor.
As CBS 2′s Kristine Johnson reported, Schania’s mother said it’s very frustrating as a parent.
“As you could see, she’s in a wheelchair. You have to take her down the steps if you want to go outside and since the storm, like I said, she has not been outside at all,” Scherry Barnett said.
Adding insult to injury, Schania’s apartment is a duplex with the bedrooms downstairs. Since the elevators are not working, the little girl has to sleep on a cot next to the kitchen.
Scherry said she’s fed up with the building and wants to move to an apartment that’s “barrier free,” but she said it’s hard to find one for her and her four children.
CBS 2 tried to get in touch with the building’s management to find out when the elevators would be fixed. A building security guard asked CBS 2 to leave the premises and calls to the management office were not returned.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2013, 05:48:28 PM
"Liberal? Perhaps compared to the others on this forum, but hardly in the crappy way you mean it."
FWIW CCP my spontaneous gut response to your comment was that I did not care for it-- and while I am at it. Though there are many points on which we don't quite see eye-to-eye, in my opinion BD is an honorable player in our conversations who brings quite a bit to the table and disagreements with him should reflect this.
I would add that I disagree with him here. Threats of denial of access, (especially for Woodward, who has enjoyed it in spades over the years) is a powerful threat and certainly plays a major role in the evolution of American media into the pravdas that they have become. I think GM's "Slow Slide" piece gets quite a bit right.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 02, 2013, 05:53:02 PM
FWIW, BD is a good guy and an important voice here.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 02, 2013, 06:12:25 PM
I think the Hot Air piece posted by GM is worth reading. And, Crafty, you are right: it does discuss important issues that should be addressed.
But, it's historical context is too short. The bit about bloggers is true because of the technology of the time, not the president. It was also true under Bush. It is also true that members of the press that questioned Bush's military strategy, as one example, were threatened with lack of access. I'm NOT saying that the Obama is right in this case (or others), but the example of BW is not the right fight.
When I discuss national security threats with students, I ask them to be reasonable about the definition, because if everything is included the definition loses its essential meaning.
So, F&F... a good fight, as I am pretty sure I've made clear consistently. Benghazi... maybe. In fact, likely. But Bob Woodward over-claiming a fight???
The single, overarching question, in my opinion, should be "Where is Congress?" It has consistently faded in the past 30 years, which allows presidents of both parties to accumulate power without cessation. If MOCs don't put party aside and focus on the institutional powers lost, ceded or stolen, at that some point there will be no way to return.
And that, if you look closely, has been a pretty consistent theme throughout my posts on this forum.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2013, 06:29:11 PM
An outstanding observation and worthy of considerable conversation here-- perhaps on the American Creed thread?
I note that this point was frequently made with considerable emphasis and persuasive power by Glenn Beck back when he was on FOX.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 02, 2013, 06:46:12 PM
I will confess to missing Beck's points on this, but that means that he and I have a point of agreement then. And I like that consensus can be built.
And many thanks to both you (Guro) and GM. I appreciate your support.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 02, 2013, 07:16:16 PM
The purported full context of the email does place the two sentences that sound like threats open to interpretation. However, I think that the even larger context of Woodward's career, coupled with Davis' assertion he had the exact same concerns that this is not normal behavior coming from WH operatives. These Washington insiders both perceived this as some sort of threat.
There are myriad ways to make someone's life miserable without "breaking kneecaps".
It takes a lot of guts to go up against the WH. It is less plausible to think he made these public statements in order to sell more copies of his book.
Indeed, reading Sperling's long winded comments sound more like a desperate attempt to muzzle Woodward. And while he is trying hard to make nice to him Sperling slips and out of exasperation advertently or inadvertently makes it clear he ain't just begging Woodward to keep quiet. He will be sorry.
Bidog if your not a liberal - I apologize. If you are, I guess I could have called you worse. .... A Nazi....A Republican.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2013, 08:56:36 PM
"Bidog if your (sic) not a liberal - I apologize."
CCP, I love ya man, so please forgive me for being a hardass here, but the point is not the point of view, it is that BD conducts himself with intellectual integrity and contributes mightily to this forum.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on March 03, 2013, 11:56:26 AM
Maybe the calling out of Obama by Woodward on the origin of the sequester means the honeymoon is finally over, 8 1/2 years after Obama's 2004 convention speech. It opens the door for pretend journalists to do real journalism and also for pretend comedians to do real comedy. They can start coming out and at least consider taking occasional shots at the administration if or when they seem warranted. Jon Stewart started to dabble in it.
I don't think you would see any of that at this point in the first term.
The 'threat' as CCP suggests does not mean break you knees regret. To Woodward they can't even take away all his access but they can throw up small roadblocks and hurdles. For a newer, younger reporter it means you go further in this town if you play ball with the right team. Criticism is fine, just keep it all over at Fox and Weekly Standard, etc.
Today I watched David Gregory follow tough questioning of Speaker of the House John Boehner with some far tougher than usual questions for his administration guest which happened to be Gene You-will-live-to-regret-this Sperling. Then gave him the opportunity to tell what a great, long relationship he has with Woodward. Still, I never heard him give good explanation to the "regret it" comment, nor back off of it.
Some stories are coming out about how Woodward isn't the greatest journalist...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 03, 2013, 01:44:01 PM
Interesting. I just saw a clip of Gregory noting the conflictual relationship of the media and this adminsitration, in which he took the position that neither really liked the other.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 03, 2013, 02:31:58 PM
Interesting. I just saw a clip of Gregory noting the conflictual relationship of the media and this adminsitration, in which he took the position that neither really liked the other.
That's pretty funny, given the seamless nature between the white house and the MSM.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 03, 2013, 02:56:23 PM
Especially when we look at Gregory not being prosecuted for a "gun crime" he committed on the same TV show not long ago.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Woodward regret?
Post by: DougMacG on March 03, 2013, 03:26:26 PM
I did not know until after the “I think you will regret staking out this claim” email that Bob Woodward isn't such a perfect journalist:
Looks like John Cassidy at the New Yorker had a well researched article about Woodward's alleged misses ready to go to print by Feb 28.
I didn't know about this Woodward scandal:
"In 1988, he published “Veil: The Secret Wars of the C.I.A., 1981-1987,” which contained his famous account of a deathbed conversation with William Casey, the former C.I.A. director. Casey, according to Woodward’s telling, admitted that he knew about the illegal diversion of monies from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras. “His head jerked up hard,” Woodward wrote. “He stared, and finally nodded yes.” “Why?” Woodward asked. Casey whispered, “I believed.” Did it happen like that? Even today, it’s a matter of dispute. In 2010, a former C.I.A. employee, who was part of Casey’s security detail, claimed Woodward “fabricated” the story after being turned away from Casey’s room at Georgetown University Hospital. Woodward dismissed the agent’s statement, saying agency guards were not present around the clock. Whatever the truth of this particular detail, there is no doubt that Woodward had a great deal of access to Casey. According to C.I.A. records, the director spoke with Woodward forty-three times while he was working on the book. Whether or not Casey coughed up the deathbed admission, “Veil” contains a wealth of previously undisclosed details about C.I.A. operations."
I didn't know about this criticism of Woodward:
The real rap on Woodward isn’t that he makes things up. It’s that he takes what powerful people tell him at face value; that his accounts are shaped by who coöperates with him and who doesn’t; and that they lack context, critical awareness, and, ultimately, historic meaning. In a 1996 essay for the New York Review of Books, Joan Didion wrote that “measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent” from Woodward’s post-Watergate books, which are notable mainly for “a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.”
How many knew that Woodward's book about praising Greenspan as "Maestro" was so ill-timed:
"Woodward’s 2000 book on Alan Greenspan, “Maestro,” which was clearly based on extensive access to the Fed chairman, is a good example of what Didion was talking about. As an inside account of what Greenspan said and did and thought, it was a useful primer, and, as with all of Woodward’s books, it included some arresting, if largely irrelevant, narrative details, such as one in which the great man, disturbed by his wife, Andrea Mitchell’s, desire for a canine companion, asks one of his colleagues, the chairman of the Philadelphia Fed, “Well, how do you tell your wife you don’t want a dog?” But as a guide to the impact of Greenspan’s policies, or the real significance of his rise to a godlike status, “Maestro” wasn’t much help at all. Less than a year after it was published, the stock-market bubble that Greenspan had helped to inflate burst, and the country was plunged into a recession."
Now the narrative on Woodward is becoming that he was a Watergate-era, one-hit wonder.
“I think [Woodward] will regret staking out this claim” about Obama moving the goal posts. -------------
Some younger journalists were allegedly treated worse than Woodward by the Obama administration: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/beat_the_press_96lFrUNync5zuBZTiZ6aUL
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: objectivist1 on March 04, 2013, 07:32:08 AM
OBAMA GOON ADMINISTRATION BULLIES YOUNG FEMALE REPORTER, "CALLING HER THE VILEST NAMES — BITCH, C--T, A--HOLE.”
I know that this does not need repeating, but if this were a Republican administration, the media would be burning the Commander-in-Chief at the stake. Instead, these tools continue to polish his knob in an advanced case of Stockholm Syndrome. They sacrifice their integrity, their objectivity, and their principles for an enemy administration whose collectivist goals they share.
Any decent American journalist would have run the emails referred to in this article on the front page. But instead, they cover for the Stalinist tactics of the thug in the White House.
Where are those goosestepping feminazis?
Beat The Press NY Post, March 3, 212 As coverage of last week’s flare-up between Bob Woodward and the White House devolved into the granular parsing of words and implications and extrapolations and possible intent, the larger point was roundly missed: the increasing pressure that White House correspondents feel when dealing with the Obama administration — to follow their narrative, to be properly deferential (!), to react to push-back by politely sitting down and shutting up.
“The whole Woodward thing doesn’t surprise me at all,” says David Brody, chief political correspondent for CBN News. “I can tell you categorically that there’s always been, right from the get-go of this administration, an overzealous sensitivity to any push-back from any media outlet.”
A brief recap: After the Washington Post ran a Woodward op-ed in which he claimed that the administration was “moving the goalposts” on the eve of the potential sequester, the veteran journalist went on to assert that economic adviser Gene Sperling said, in an e-mail, “I think you will regret staking out this claim.”
While Woodward spent a lot of the week on cable news going back and forth on whether that was a threat, few reporters, if any, asked why a high-level administration official spent so much time — Sperling admittedly shouted at Woodward during a 30-minute phone call, followed by that e-mail — attempting to control an opinion expressed in a newspaper.
The answer, say former and current White House correspondents, is simple: This administration is more skilled and disciplined than any other in controlling the narrative, using social media to circumnavigate the press. On the flip side, our YouTube culture means even the slightest gaffe can be devastating, and so you have an army of aides and staffers helicoptering over reporters.
Finally, this week, reporters are pushing back. Even Jonathan Alter — who frequently appears on the Obama-friendly MSNBC — came forward to say he, too, had been treated horribly by the administration for writing something they didn’t like.
“There is a kind of threatening tone that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” Alter said this week. During the 2008 campaign swing through Berlin, Alter said that future White House press secretary Robert Gibbs disinvited him from a dinner between Obama and the press corps over it.
“I was told ‘Don’t come,’ in a fairly abusive e-mail,” he said. “[It] made what Gene Sperling wrote [to Woodward] look like patty-cake.”
“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c--t, a--hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”
Posted by Pamela Geller on Sunday, March 03, 2013 at 10:23 PM in Obama's 2nd Term
Title: CPAC turns away Pamela Geller
Post by: bigdog on March 04, 2013, 09:05:52 AM
"CPAC is refusing to allow Pamela Geller to have a booth...".
I can see keeping Christie Kreme out, but this is stupid for CPAC to do.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 04, 2013, 11:11:43 AM
I agree, GM. I was surprised to hear of this.
Title: Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer at CPAC...
Post by: objectivist1 on March 04, 2013, 01:46:34 PM
The absurdity of this decision is explained by the fact that both Geller and Spencer have been highly critical of Grover Norquist, who sits on the board of the organization that puts on this conference. Despite the fact that for the last 3 years these two have had a standing-room-only audience, Grover Norquist and his lackey Suhail Khan (a Muslim Brotherhood operative) want to silence both Geller and Spencer. Norquist has been responsible for multiple Muslim Brotherhood-connected individuals infiltrating the highest levels of our government, and very few Republicans - such as Michele Bachmann and her co-signers - have raised any questions about this. Norquist is untouchable in their minds. Frank Gaffney has also exposed Norquists nefarious activities along these lines at his site - Center for Security Policy. He has a whole video series detailing the infiltration.
The irony of all this is that a poll sent out to CPAC attendees this year which asked which of 20 conservative web sites was their favorite, resulted in a huge margin of victory for Robert Spencer's www.jihadwatch.org. Spencer intends to attend to receive his award, and hopes to have the opportunity to greet both Norquist and Khan, who evidently despise him and Geller - for obvious reasons.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2013, 05:06:09 PM
Very disappointing of CPAC :x Let's keep an eye on how this develops.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 04, 2013, 07:09:47 PM
I agree Bigdog contributes a lot to the forum. Hope you stay and continue doing the same.
I apologize if I sounded personal.
This is the media thread so I guess I took my frustration with the MSM here.
Title: Newsweek - Woodward wasn't that great of a journalist in the first place
Post by: DougMacG on March 08, 2013, 12:13:04 PM
Who could have seen this coming?!
Would Woodward's entire career be under critical scrutiny if not for his perceived attack on the administration? ------ http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/03/11/the-myth-of-bob-woodward-why-is-this-man-an-american-icon.html
From Newsweek The Myth of Bob Woodward: Why Is This Man an American Icon?
“Some of their writing is not true,” ... “They’re wrong often on detail” ... "If there was any doubt that Bob Woodward’s ego is out of control, inviting the president to his house should put those doubts to rest.". -----
4 internet pages about problems with Woodward's previous work. He was really a hack, one might take from this.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on March 08, 2013, 12:55:25 PM
The Breitbart story in particular is loaded with links.
Slate excerpts:
"How accurate is his reporting? Does he deserve his legendary status? I believe I can offer some interesting answers to those questions."... "he’d put down the mechanics of the story more or less as they’d happened. But he’d so mangled the meaning and the context that his version had nothing to do with what I concluded had actually transpired." "The wrongness in Woodward’s reporting is always ever so subtle." "Again, Woodward’s account is not wrong. It’s just … wrong." "Like a funhouse mirror, Woodward’s prose distorts what it purports to reflect." "Bob Woodward, deploying all of the talent and resources for which he is famous, produced something that is a failure as journalism."
Woodward's employer, the Washington Post owns Slate.
I wonder what pissed everybody off...
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 14, 2013, 02:48:39 PM
When does Woodward wake up to find a horse's head in his bed?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on March 15, 2013, 09:34:04 AM
When does Woodward wake up to find a horse's head in his bed?
In the first term maybe it would have been a dead fish. "one pollster who notoriously ticked off Rahm Emmanuel received a 2 1/2 foot decomposing fish in the mail -- ripe, stinky, and to the point." http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2008/11/06/the_five_most_infamous_rahm_emanuel_moments
What is amazing in the Woodward smear is that all these attack pieces start by admitting the context and motive.
I never really liked Woodward. But if it is not him, who is the gold standard of Washington reporting?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 16, 2013, 12:20:12 PM
Nice journalism career you got here, shame if anything should happen to it....
The Chicago way...
Title: Bozell Column: Skipping an Abortionist's 'House of Horrors'
Post by: G M on March 27, 2013, 11:42:42 AM
Bozell Column: Skipping an Abortionist's 'House of Horrors'
By Brent Bozell | March 26, 2013 | 22:35
The liberal media know an abortion outrage when they hear it. Sadly they only seem to hear them from the mouths of Republican candidates, and it only takes a statement to outrage the press. Can’t they find a single abortion outrage inside an abortion clinic? Such is their radicalism that nothing, absolutely nothing regarding this gruesome procedure raises their eyebrows, never mind their ire.
One emerging story proves the degree to which our “objective” media's views on abortion are dogmatic and extreme. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia, and not just for killing babies outside the womb, but also for killing a mother through reckless use of anesthesia. Network TV coverage of the trial? Zero on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS. CNN’s entire coverage seems to be one sentence from Jake Tapper on March 21.
The New York Times wrote one story before the trial began on March 19 (buried on page A-17). The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today couldn’t be “national” newspapers and report this trial.
They’re not unaware of it. CBS aired one story after the initial clinic raid in 2011. NBC offered 50 words. CBS even passed along that Gosnell's clinic was described as a "house of horrors." Now it’s in court, and the networks can't find any horrors.
Take the Associated Press report, which appeared on CBSNews.com: “The amount of drugs given to Karnamaya Mongar -- at least as suggested by the nearly illegible clinic note -- was likely to put her in a coma,” said Dr. Andrew Herlich, a medical-school professor.
Mongar was a very sympathetic figure. A native of Bhutan, she weighed less than 100 pounds, spoke no English, and had lived for decades in refugee camps in Nepal before coming to America four months before her death. But the storyline wasn’t lining up with the media’s feminist prejudices. Their “war on women” narrative didn’t include her.
I'll give you a story that falls in line with the media's narrative supporting the plight of women: on November 14, 2012, NBC News aired a report from Ireland, where Indian immigrant Savita Halapanavar died of blood poisoning after seeking an abortion. NBC blamed the government, because the woman and her husband “pleaded for an abortion but were refused because the fetus still had a heartbeat. This is a Catholic country, they were told.”
NBC never returned to the story as hospital officials reported previous “terminations” to save the mother’s life and denied a “Catholic ethos.” To listen to this network is to conclude that abortionists don’t kill women. Catholics do.
You can also see the anti-Catholic animus determining which trials are newsworthy in Philadelphia. On May 23, 2012, the “CBS Evening News” began with the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, accused of covering up child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Scott Pelley wasn’t shy about letting the prosecutor speak, as she compared the Catholic Church to the Nazis at Nuremberg.
But when a pro-lifer uses Holocaust metaphors for an abortion clinic, he is condemned.
The trial testimony is graphic, and should make “choice” advocates sick to their stomachs. Again, see the AP: “A medical assistant told a jury Tuesday that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies during unorthodox abortions at a West Philadelphia clinic, at the direction of the clinic’s owner."
Later, AP mangled the medical facts: “Abortions are typically performed in utero.” When babies are killed over a toilet, as alleged in this trial, this is not an “unorthodox abortion” of a “fetus.” This is a baby who is born and then murdered. Liberals claim to revere “science,” but this trial is not about tiny “zygotes.” It’s about viable babies.
It gets more grotesque at every turn. Clinic assistant Adrienne Moton testified she took a photo of the child described as “Baby A” with her cell phone before Dr. Gosnell took the baby out of the room. "I just saw a big baby boy. He had that color, that color that a baby has," Moton said in court. "I just felt he could have had a chance.…He could have been born any day.”
Another Gosnell assistant said the abortionist joked about one child he murdered: “This baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.” But AP reported that Gosnell sits serenely in the courtroom, undisturbed by the accusations.
He's not alone. ABC, CBS, and NBC piled up 96 stories on Todd Akin’s medically inept comments on rape and abortion, and also wallowed in outrage over Richard Mourdock’s remarks on God’s will and a child conceived in rape. Their pro-life rhetoric was sold as a major scandal. It’s unbelievable that Dr. Gosnell’s trial for his actions inside his “house of horrors” haven't drawn one network story.
Title: New Newspeak from AP
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 03, 2013, 08:02:58 AM
The Open-Borders Reporters Who Banned 'Illegal Immigrant'
File this in the overflowing cabinet labeled: No Wonder the Mainstream Media Is Dying. On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced that it is banishing the phrase "illegal immigrant" from its famous stylebook. The world's largest newsgathering outlet now advises reporters that "illegal" will "only refer to an action, not a person."
Title: Re: New Newspeak from AP
Post by: G M on April 03, 2013, 08:06:50 AM
The Open-Borders Reporters Who Banned 'Illegal Immigrant'
File this in the overflowing cabinet labeled: No Wonder the Mainstream Media Is Dying. On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced that it is banishing the phrase "illegal immigrant" from its famous stylebook. The world's largest newsgathering outlet now advises reporters that "illegal" will "only refer to an action, not a person."
Illegal alien is the actual term used in federal law. I prefer "criminal invader" myself.
Title: Koch Bros in the hunt to buy Pravda on the Beach
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 03, 2013, 06:12:28 PM
Gosnell abortion-clinic worker: One of the babies “sounded like a little alien”
posted at 4:01 pm on April 9, 2013 by Allahpundit
Unimaginable.
A Delaware woman who worked for Kermit Gosnell testified Tuesday that she was called back to a room at his abortion clinic in Philadelphia where the bodies of aborted babies were kept on a shelf to hear one screaming amid the bodies of aborted babies kept on a shelf…
“I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” West said, telling the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge and jury that the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at the Women’s Medical Society clinic…
West, who said she called aborted babies “specimens” because “it was easier to deal with mentally,” said a co-worker had called her back to the room that night because she did not know what to do. West said the baby’s eyes and mouth were not yet completely formed and it was lying on a glass tray on a shelf and she told the co-worker to call Gosnell and fled the room…
She later made it clear that she called it “a baby” in her testimony “because that is what it is.”
That’s not the first time a clinic worker’s resorted to Orwellian euphemisms to make her “work” more bearable. Ed e-mails to remind me that you’ll also find “Product of Conception” in usage. More on Gosnell from NBC Philadelphia, one of the precious few media outlets covering this story:
An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions.
Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, “literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.” He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, “it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.”
The Anchoress notes correctly that, simply for reasons of sensationalism, the media should be all over this story. Dead children, body parts, harrowing testimony on the stand — even the most soulless news editor, untroubled by the horror-movie accusations against Gosnell, should be pushing heavy coverage for selfish reasons, to boost readership. (Britain’s Daily Mail, whose tabloid instincts are unerring, has posted several stories about it.) Out of curiosity, I skimmed the last week’s results for “Kermit Gosnell” on Google News to see what turned up among major U.S. media. I found a few articles from local Philadelphia and Delaware outlets, a couple of AP items picked up by ABC, a Mona Charen op-ed carried in the Chicago Sun-Times, and … that’s basically it. There’s no explanation for the omission except one, just as there’s no explanation for ignoring Mark Mattioli in the Newtown coverage except one, just as there’s no explanation for disinterest in the Salmon family’s saga except one.
I’m left feeling about media bias the way I felt yesterday about dynastic politics: It seems like it’s getting worse, especially their willingness to completely black out “unhelpful” stories or parts of a story rather than simply spin them away, but there’s no way to know without hard numbers. Nate Silver’s right: The world needs fewer pundits and more data-crunchers. Here’s fertile ground for the latter. Exit question from Mark Steyn: “So how many dead American babies does it take to make the news?”
Title: Media Issues: ABC, CBS and NBC Turn a Blind Eye to ObamaCare Setbacks
Post by: DougMacG on April 09, 2013, 04:33:02 PM
ABC, CBS and NBC Turn a Blind Eye to ObamaCare Setbacks
By Geoffrey Dickens | April 09, 2013 | 09:56 http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2013/04/09/abc-cbs-and-nbc-turn-blind-eye-obamacare-setbacks#ixzz2Q0mzOeAS
For the past couple of weeks there has been a steady drip of bad news for ObamaCare, but you wouldn't know it if you only get your news from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks. From a Society of Actuaries report that determined premium costs will shoot up thanks to a thirty-three percent average increase in claims; to thirty-three Senate Democrats joining Republicans in voting to repeal an ObamaCare tax on medical devices; to a Quinnipiac University poll showing even two-thirds of self-identified Democrats saying the law will either hurt them or have no effect, the recent news has been bad for the President's chief legislative victory. However, not one of these trouble spots for ObamaCare has been mentioned on ABC, CBS or NBC's evening or morning show broadcasts.
The following setbacks for ObamaCare haven't received a single second of air time on the Big Three networks:
■ On March 22, ObamaCare hit a major snag when even 33 Senate Democrats openly defied the President as they joined 45 Republicans in voting to repeal a 2.3 percent sales tax, crucial to paying for ObamaCare, on medical devices such as pacemakers and MRI machines. The measure was co-sponsored by liberal Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, who said in a statement that she would "continue to work to get rid of this harmful tax."
Big Three coverage 0 stories.
■ On March 26, the Society of Actuaries, released a study that determined health claims will increase by an average of 32 percent with some states seeing claims rise as much as 80 percent. The study estimated that states will now have to double their health spending to cover the millions of the previously uninsured. The study went on to report that claims will be driven higher because many employers will stop covering their employees once Obamacare is instituted and those workers will be more expensive to insure than those already in the individual market.
Big Three coverage: 0 stories.
■ On March 26, Obama's own Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius admitted that premiums will rise for some people buying new insurance policies in the coming fall, because of ObamaCare requirements. As the March 26 Wall Street Journal reported: "The secretary's remarks are among the first direct statements from federal officials that people who have skimpy health plans right now could face higher premiums for plans that are more generous."
Big Three coverage: 0 stories
■ On April 3 Fox News reported that the Obama administration admitted a system of exchanges designed to make it simpler for small businesses to provide health insurance, the very core of ObamaCare's promise, will be delayed an entire year. According to Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center this is a huge setback because: "Lots of small businesses struggle with providing insurance for their workers so this was supposed to facilitate it and make it easier for small business to do this," and added: "It was a huge portion of the sale job. When they passed the law in 2010 there were many senators and members of Congress who were saying 'I am doing this because it's going to help small businesses.'"
Big Three coverage: 0 stories.
■ On April 4 Quinnipiac University released a poll showing that even two-thirds of Democrats now believe Obama's health care reforms will either hurt them personally or have no effect on their daily lives, vs. 27% of Democrats who believed they would be helped. Overall, only 15% of voters think ObamaCare will mostly help them personally, vs. 78% who expect it to hurt them or have no effect.
Big Three coverage: 0 stories.
OTOH, ABC had time for this on hairstyle: "Michelle Obama making headlines again for her bangs."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 15, 2013, 07:28:52 AM
The ignored Gosnell trial also begs the question, what if he had used a gun? Would they cover it then?
Did they have to cut into their wall to wall coverage of the Gosnell trial to do this?
Title: Re: Media Issues - Timing of terrorism stories
Post by: DougMacG on April 18, 2013, 08:56:32 AM
Remember how the New York Times featured Bill Ayers on September 11, 2001 saying he regretted having not engaged in more domestic terrorist activity? Well, the Los Angeles Times tried to complete with the NY Times on Monday, with this headline and story: “With Al Qaeda Shattered, U.S. Counter-Terrorism’s Future Unclear.”
We are hardly the first – and will not be the last – to note the abhorrent double standard in the establishment media about the killing of innocent children. ... Most abortion clinics are nothing like Gosnell’s. But then, most gun owners are nothing like Adam Lanza. And Gosnell might not be quite so isolated as some would like to think. Just recently, whistleblowers stepped forward with accusations about dangerously unsanitary conditions at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Delaware.
What’s more, a few days ago, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist in Florida would not say that a baby born alive at an abortion clinic should receive medical treatment. (more at link)
Title: Media Issues - Pulitzer Prize for Commentary goes to Bret Stephens, WSJ
Post by: DougMacG on April 19, 2013, 09:47:41 AM
The Wall Street Journal won its 34th Pulitzer Prize. Congratulations to Bret Stephens on winning the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Bret won for a selection of his weekly Global View columns in 2012. Links to columns here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324485004578424973573771056.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecond
Readers of the forum already saw excerpts and links to many Stephens columns: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1718.msg66231#msg66231 http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1718.msg66241#msg66241 http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1079.msg64179#msg64179 http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=962.msg15202#msg15202 http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2177.msg69222#msg69222
Much more WSJ is available with a subscription, highly recommended: http://couponjet.org/the-wall-street-journal-subscription-discount-coupons-wsj-promo-code.htm
Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot's nominating letter: (Gigot won this award in 2000; his predecessor Robert Bartley won it in 1980.)
To the Judges: Bret Stephens, the Wall Street Journal’s Global View columnist, is a conservative thinker with a contrarian bent. Though his main focus is foreign policy, he wanders far and wide with an eclectic mind that is impossible to stereotype and forces readers to think. Millions of column inches were published on the 2012 election, yet readers could have saved themselves much time and effort if they had read only Bret’s bookend pieces in January and November. “The GOP Deserves to Lose” on Jan. 24 lamented the state of the Republican presidential field, including front-runner Mitt Romney: “Thus the core difference between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama: For the governor, the convictions are the veneer. For the president, the pragmatism is. Voters always see through this. They usually prefer the man who stands for something.” After the election he could claim vindication, and he did, in a lacerating column that upset many Journal readers but has contributed to some Republican rethinking on immigration and gay marriage.
In 2012, Bret also dared to challenge the conventional applause for Condoleezza Rice as a potential vice presidential candidate, and he defended his liberal competitor, Fareed Zakaria, against conservatives who wanted to run him out of journalism for a plagiarism slip. In an age when many ideological combatants relish and celebrate the mistakes of their competitors, Bret’s generosity was notable and a contribution to civil discourse.
His column on “Muslims, Mormons and Liberals” (Sept. 18) highlighted the hypocrisy of people who have no problem mocking one religious group in a Broadway musical but become indignant about other crude religious satires. “It need be said that the whole purpose of free speech is to protect unpopular, heretical, vulgar and stupid views,” Stephens wrote about the administration’s condemnation of the YouTube video on Mohammed. “So far, the Obama administration’s approach to free speech is that it’s fine so long as it’s cheap and exacts no political price. This is free speech as pizza.”
Bret has a particular talent for bringing humanity into his writing about geopolitics. That talent came through movingly in his columns about Sergei Magnitsky in “Russia’s Steve Biko” (March 27) and Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in “Who Will Tell the Truth About China?” (Feb. 14).
Bret’s columns are among the most popular at the Journal, and my own reporting suggests they are also among the most influential. That influence showed in his two December columns on Susan Rice, which helped to focus opposition to her possible choice as the next Secretary of State. The pieces were not welcome at the White House but they helped to convince Ms. Rice and President Obama that she would face a withering confirmation fight, and she withdrew from consideration.
As for his prose, my own view is that Mr. Stephens writes as well as any columnist in America. I can’t think of a columnist who had a better year. Sincerely, Paul Gigot
Title: Re: Coverage of Jihad in Boston...
Post by: objectivist1 on April 20, 2013, 05:25:03 AM
Jihad in Boston
Posted By Robert Spencer On April 19, 2013
It has now been revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers were two Muslims from southern Russia near Chechnya: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a firefight with Massachusetts police early this morning, and his brother Dzhokhar, who as of this writing is still at large.
As more and more material comes to light about the pair, their motivations become clear. On a Russian-language social media page, Dzhokhar features a drawing of a bomb under the heading “send a gift,” and just above links to sites about Islam. Tamerlan’s YouTube page features two videos by Sheikh Feiz Mohammed. According to a report published in The Australian in January 2007, in a video that came to the attention of authorities at the time, Mohammed “urges Muslims to kill the enemies of Islam and praises martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad.”
Tamerlan also says, “I’m very religious.” He notes that he does not drink alcohol because Allah forbids it: “God said no alcohol,” and that his Italian girlfriend has converted to Islam. Even his name indicates the world from which he comes: Tamerlan Tsarnaev is apparently named for the Muslim warrior Tamerlane. Andrew Bostom wrote in 2005 that “Osama bin Laden was far from the first jihadist to kill infidels as an expression of religious piety….Osama lacks both Tamerlane’s sophisticated (for his time) military forces and his brilliance as a strategist. But both are or were pious Muslims who paid homage to religious leaders, and both had the goal of making jihad a global force.”
Combine all that with the fact that the bombs were similar to IED’s that jihadis use in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a jihad car bomb in Times Square jihad car bomber, used a similar bomb, and that instructions for making such a bomb have been published in al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, and the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers are abundantly clear. It is increasingly likely also that they were tied in somehow to the international jihad network, as is indicated by how they fought off Boston police early on Friday with military-grade explosives – where did they get those? And where did they get the military training that they reportedly have, and displayed in several ways during the fight Friday morning?
Yet despite all this, the mainstream media continues to obfuscate the truth. NBC doesn’t see fit to mention any of the brothers’ connections to Islam in their profile of them. CNN warns that “it should not be assumed that either brother was radicalized because of their Chechen origins.” And this, of course, follows days of speculation about how the bombings appeared to be the work of “right-wing extremists,” “Tea Partiers,” and the like. According to Victor Medina in the Examiner, “Esquire Magazine’s Charles P. Pierce attempted to link the bombings to right wing extremists similar to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. In another, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen speculated that the type of bomb device could link it to right wing extremist groups.” Salon hoped that the bomber would turn out to be a “white American.”
Will Pierce, Bergen, and all the others who offered similar analyses apologize now? They almost certainly will not – and even worse, they will not be held accountable. No matter how often mainstream analysts are wrong, they never get questioned or jettisoned.
But in one sense, they were right: the bombers were indeed white, if not American. That demonstrates once and for all the vacuity of the mainstream media and Islamic supremacist claim that opposing jihad and Islamic supremacism is “racism.” Islam is not a race, and the massacre of innocent civilians is not a race. Opposing jihad is not racism, but the defense of freedom. The Tsarnaev brothers have confirmed that. However, nothing is more certain than that next week, Islamic supremacist and Leftist spokesmen will be featured on NBC and CNN decrying “racism” and an imagined “backlash” against innocent Muslims, which is always a feature of mainstream media coverage after a jihad attack, even though the “backlash” itself never actually materializes.
And there will be no accountability for that nonsense, either. Nowadays, it’s much more of a path to success to be politically correct than to be correct.
Title: Re: Media Issues, CBS surprisingly clueless
Post by: DougMacG on April 20, 2013, 06:01:37 PM
Thank God law enforcement killed and caught whoever they've got so far.
I watched CBS interrupt prime time last night to exploit, I mean, cover this. The anchor was just puzzled. Can you think of, he asked every guest, any reason they would do this, even after identifying the accused as being Islamic extremists. It went on for most of the evening. Maybe they could have done a re-cap of all the other similar attacks - there is a pattern here, or read the words in the Koran inspiring it, or quoted the promotion of these types of attacks in the Mosques, rather than endlessly ask the question only of people they know won't answer.
Our Obj (and others) could have pointed him to guests that have a theory (see previous post in this thread), if that is what they wanted.
Title: Investigating Terror in the Age of Twitter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2013, 06:37:10 AM
Michael Chertoff and Dallas Lawrence: Investigating Terror in the Age of Twitter After an arrest was reported in error, Boston police quickly knocked it down online.. By MICHAEL CHERTOFF AND DALLAS LAWRENCE WSJ
In an incredibly short span of five days last week, America went from a nation under attack by terrorists to one made proud as law-enforcement agencies quickly identified the suspected Boston bombers and tracked them down. The attack, the investigation, the manhunt and the swift resolution were unprecedented. So too was the way that law enforcement employed digital tools to do its job.
A dozen years ago when the terrorists struck on 9/11, there was no Facebook FB +0.39%or Twitter or i-anything on the market. Cellphones were relatively common, but when cell networks collapsed in 2001, many people were left disconnected and wanting for immediate answers. Last week in Boston, when mobile networks became overloaded following the bombings, the social-media-savvy Boston Police Department turned to Twitter, using the platform as a makeshift newsroom to alert media and concerned citizens to breaking news.
Law-enforcement agencies around the world will note how social media played a prominent role both in telling the story and writing its eventual conclusion. Some key lessons have emerged.
One is that misinformation—always the bane of law enforcement during emergencies—now spreads instantaneously. Boston police, recognizing the problem, took to social media to correct the record quickly. Early in the investigation, on Wednesday last week, news outlets such as CNN incorrectly reported that an arrest had been made. The story appeared at 1:46 p.m. ET on CNN's blog and was tweeted minutes later. Tens of thousands of social-media posts quickly shared the news of the arrest, and word was spread further through cable-news broadcasts. This was one of many inaccurate reports that spread across the Internet.
Within the hour, the Boston Police Department Twitter handle (@Boston_Police) posted a tweet correcting the media's claims. The tweet generated more than 10,500 shares on Twitter, ensuring that the mistaken arrest report lost steam. The episode established the BPD's social-media channels as the go-to source for authoritative information that transformed media coverage of the bombing investigation from that point forward. News outlets even took to re-tweeting the police department's posts.
Boston police didn't just use social media to correct errors. The department recognized that the news media were starved for information as the investigation continued. The traditional periodic law-enforcement news conference isn't enough to feed the news cycle—which is not so much 24/7 as 1,440, the number of minutes in a day.
Media outlets hunger for news updates, videos and short 140-character quotes to fuel their own social and digital channels. The flow of information from the Boston police discouraged the media's overreliance on unofficial sources.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the bombing investigation was the way that law enforcement employed social media to actually aid the investigation, not merely to manage the news and inform the public. Moments after photos and video of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were posted to FBI.gov, the government's website nearly crashed from the crush of visitors. BPD posted all of the official photos and video to social media to compensate for the lagging website and to encourage their online distribution. Many people shared these posts online—with some posts re-tweeted 16,000 to 17,000 times.
Each one of these "shares" on social media increased the visibility of the pictures and video that were key to identifying and locating the suspects—and to letting the suspects know that their images were everywhere. That knowledge is likely what prompted the Tsarnaev brothers to bolt from hiding.
The ubiquity of social media had its unsettling effect on law enforcement agencies during the investigation. Police departments across the country are by now well aware that criminals use social media too, whether bragging about crimes on Twitter or even posting YouTube videos that ultimately prove helpful to prosecutors.
Early Friday morning, some Boston-area residents began sharing details of the investigation they gathered by listening to police scanners on social media. As the search continued, people also posted photos and videos marking the location of law enforcement. These folks might have thought their posts were harmless or even somehow helpful, but they could have provided suspects with information they needed to evade law enforcement. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, after all, was on Twitter in the days following the bombing.
During the search for Tsarnaev, Boston police went on social-media outlets to post requests that the public "not compromise officer safety/tactics by broadcasting live video of officers while approaching search locations." Almost instantly, major media outlets from MSNBC to Fox News began admonishing their on-air guests to avoid mentioning specific details of the hunt.
The Boston Marathon bombing was a horrific crime, but it offered many lessons for law enforcement and for the country. Some of them were reminders of what we knew too well in the aftermath of 9/11—that militant Islam, for instance, wants to spill blood in America by any means possible. But some of the lessons were new ones. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and his department set a social-media standard for security emergencies that will benefit law-enforcement agencies everywhere, and the people they serve.
Mr. Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration, is chairman of the Chertoff Group, a security-advisory firm. Mr. Lawrence, chief global digital strategist for Burson-Marsteller, was a spokesman for the military coalition in Iraq during the Bush administration.
Title: white house "media" celebrity show
Post by: ccp on April 27, 2013, 10:28:08 AM
Anyone else here find the White House correspondents dinner is a disgusting show of corruption in Washington? Is there ever going to be a President who will be above this and refuse to show up? Or are they all afraid of media blowback?
Title: WH Media Show...
Post by: objectivist1 on April 27, 2013, 11:54:36 AM
CCP: No - you are not the only one. I find it disgusting as well. Sickening.
Here is a further analysis: www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/04/nerd-prom-white-house-correspondents-dinner-guests/64606/
Title: Associated Press scrubs Obama's Muslim remark...
Post by: objectivist1 on April 30, 2013, 04:06:11 PM
If Obama is not a Muslim, he certainly gives a damn good imitation of it:
AP Scrubs ‘Muslim’ from Obama’s Self-Referential Joke Robert Spencer - April 30, 2013
Warner Todd Huston reported at Breitbart Monday that “in some of its reports on Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD), the Associated Press failed to include one of President Obama’s own gags.”
Obama said: “These days I look in the mirror and have to admit, I’m not the strapping young Muslim Socialist that I used to be.” But, noted Huston, “in one version of the night’s story (as seen at Huffington Post, Time Magazine, Breitbart Wires, the Ottawa Citizen, and The Columbian to name a few), the AP’s Bradley Klapper forgot one part of the President’s joke,” reporting his words as “I’m not the strapping young Socialist that I used to be,”
Why? Did they think it had too much of a ring of truth?
Why did some editors at AP or at the publications that picked up the AP story think it necessary to run interference for Obama on this point?
By mocking the idea that he is a Muslim (and a Socialist), Obama is trying to render these things too ridiculous for serious public discussion. Fine. His personal beliefs are of no moment, except insofar as they influence his public stances. And the direction of his public policies is obvious. He has maintained a consistent foreign policy line that has enabled the establishment of several Islamic supremacist, pro-Sharia states in North Africa and the Middle East, and a domestic policy that has enabled the advance of the Islamic supremacist agenda to assert the primacy of Islamic law over American law and practice wherever they conflict. No amount of mockery will obscure that.
The record is clear. As demonstrations and revolts swept the Muslim world during Obama’s first term, he was enthusiastic. He had encouraging words for the “Arab Spring” demonstrators in Egypt and Tunisia, and even gave military assistance to their Libyan counterparts. During the third and last debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney and Obama sparred over which could express support for the Syrian rebels (who are dominated by Islamic jihadists) more strongly, and as Obama’s second term began, his administration was inching ever closer to military aid for those rebels. Yet there were two large-scale demonstrations in Muslim countries that Obama did not support – and those two exceptions are extraordinarily revealing about his disposition, as well as his policy, toward Islam.
The two pro-democracy revolts that Obama refused to support were arguably the only two that were genuinely worthy of the pro-democracy label: the demonstrations against the Islamic regime in Iran in 2009, and the anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations in Egypt in winter 2013. There is a common thread between these two that distinguishes them from all the others: in Egypt in late 2012 and early 2013, as well as in Iran in 2009, the demonstrators were protesting against Islamic states; all the other demonstrations led to the establishment of Islamic states. To be sure, the Iranian demonstrators in 2009 contained many pro-Sharia elements that simply objected to the way the Islamic Republic was enforcing Sharia, but they also included many who wanted to reestablish the relatively secular society that prevailed under the last Shah. Whether the Sharia or the democratic forces would have won out in the end is a question that will never be answered – in no small part thanks to Barack Obama.
In every case Barack Obama has been consistent: in response to the demonstrations and uprisings in the Islamic world, he has without exception acted in the service of Islamic supremacist, pro-Sharia regimes. For whatever complex of personal affinity and political calculation, he has steered the United States, in the words of the Egyptian newspaper Rose el-Youssef, “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The transformation of U.S. foreign and domestic policy is the most significant manifestation of Obama’s warmly positive stance toward Islam. Speaking at the Pentagon in 2010 on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, Barack Obama returned to a recurring theme of his presidency: that the attacks on Americans and the war that has been declared against the West have nothing do with Islam. “As Americans, we will not and never will be at war with Islam,” Obama declared, echoing almost verbatim words he used in his June 2009 Cairo address, and then adding: “It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda, a sorry band of men, which perverts religion.”
George W. Bush had affirmed that the U.S. was not at war with Islam, but Obama drove home the point in numerous ways: purging military and intelligence training materials of any mention of Islam in connection with terrorism; employing the might of the Justice Department to win special accommodation for Muslims in workplaces and schools; and lending the prestige and power of his administration to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s efforts to compel Western states to criminalize criticism of Islam.
Not a bad record for a self-described “Muslim Socialist,” however facetiously he meant the appellation. No wonder AP was embarrassed for him.
Title: WaPo on Sharly Attkinsson of CBS
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2013, 04:06:23 PM
Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2013, 04:29:06 PM
There are twol facets to this matter, which, given whose ox is begin gored, is likely to attract media attention:
1) First Amendment issues 2) National Security/Intel Issues
As I see things, there is an inherent tension here between the government having matters which are properly and necessarily to be kept secret and the fact that government uses that as a justification to declare "Secret!!!" on matters that are simply inconvenient.
I for one railed at the irresponsible and even unpatriotic disclosures during the Iraq War (e.g. that we were funding Iraqi journalists) and the Afpakia War (e.g. that we were tracking financial flows of AQ, that we were reading the geology of the rocks behind OBL when he released his videos as a way of trying to determine where he was). OTOH I am all for the whistle-blowers helping the American people find out what really happened at Benghazi.
Here, initial reports read like AG Holder and his minions went well overboard.
Title: Might this be a a conflict of interest?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2013, 06:02:31 PM
Second post of the day:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/14/
Title: Random audit...
Post by: G M on May 14, 2013, 04:58:47 PM
Shortly after I did my April 2012 interview with President Obama, my wife, friends and some viewers suggested that I might need to watch out for the IRS. I don't accept "conspiracy theories", but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me. At the time, I dismissed the "co-incidence", but now, I have concerns ... after revelations about the IRS targeting various groups and their members. Originally, the IRS apologized for red-flagging conservative groups and their members if they had "Tea Party" or "patriot" in their name. Today, there are allegations that the IRS focused on various groups and/or individuals questioning or criticizing government spending, taxes, debt or how the government is run ... any involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, or social economic reform/movement. In that April 2012 interview, I questioned President Obama on several topics: the Buffet Rule, his public remarks about the Supreme Court before the ruling on the Affordable Care Act. I also asked why he wasn't doing more to help Sen. Claire McCaskill who at that time was expected to lose. The Obama interview caught fire and got wide-spread attention because I questioned his spending. I said some viewers expressed concern, saying they think he's "out of touch" because of his personal and family trips in the midst of our economic crisis. The President's face clearly showed his anger; afterwards, his staff which had been so polite ... suddenly went cold. That's to be expected, and I can deal with that just as I did with President George H. Bush's staff when he didn't like my questions. Journalistic integrity is of the utmost importance to me. My job is to ask the hard questions, because I believe viewers have a right to be well-informed. I cannot and will not promote anyone's agenda - political or otherwise - at the expense of the reporting the truth. What I don't like to even consider ... is that because of the Obama interview … the IRS put a target on me. Can I prove it? At this time, no. But it is a fact that since that April 2012 interview ... the IRS has been pressuring me.
Title: Jay Carney’s Waterloo
Post by: bigdog on May 15, 2013, 06:40:03 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2013, 09:43:10 AM
Although I certainly am glad for the Republic that the systemic lies to the American people about who it was that was attacking us at Benghazi are finally receiving the attention they should have received before the election, I confess to a cerain , , , je ne se quoi that there is a certain pompous self-importance to the press here. They only care when "they" get lied to (or listened to by DOJ) not when we the people get lied to or listened to.
As I have noted here before, I find it far more important that our Commander in Chief, our Secretary of State, our Secretary of Defense, African Command General Hamm (I maybe misstating his title a bit here) all refused to go to the aid of Americans under fire and that they seem to think their failure to try is excusable because they claim they wouldn't have gotten there in time anyway. The depth of the apparent moral and patriotic depravity here is extraordinary-- yet the pravdas seem only to care that "You lied to US. Don't you know how important WE are?"
Not as important as those in harm's way I'm thinking , , , :x :x :x
Title: most (not all) media are the biggest hippocrits of all.
Post by: ccp on May 15, 2013, 10:01:06 AM
Yes Crafty . Your points are huge take away here.
I hope this all serves as an education in left wing propaganda to the youth of our nation who were naïve enough to fall for Obama.
Thank God for Fox and talk radio.
Without *our voices* being heard we could only imagine the boundless corruption of the left media, academia, and Democrat party . As it is it is a nightmare.
Hopefully the Republicans can regain their footing. They need to be extra tough here. IMHO their platform is big government equals corruption, incompetence, and stagnation.
But they need to give the alternative positive agenda. IMHO they do need to speak of fairness. Something akin, not blaming the rich but simply hold them to the same standards as those who are not.
Is it finally time to invest in oil gas etc? Screw wind solar and e-vehicles.
Title: Law and the AP subpoenas
Post by: bigdog on May 17, 2013, 04:55:05 AM
From the article: But what makes this revelation particularly disturbing is that the DOJ, in order to get this search warrant, insisted that not only Kim, but also Rosen - the journalist - committed serious crimes. The DOJ specifically argued that by encouraging his source to disclose classified information - something investigative journalists do every day - Rosen himself broke the law.
:? :x
Title: Help Bring "Hating Breitbart" to your town/city...
Post by: objectivist1 on May 21, 2013, 11:48:54 AM
I met Andrew and hung out briefly with him at CPAC a couple of years ago, and he was a very friendly, extremely smart and generous individual with his time. He is sorely missed.
The way he was treated by the liberal press both during his life, but even worse - after he died unexpectedly of a heart attack - was ABOMINABLE.
He was a true pioneer and fearless bulldog with citizen reporting and exposing lies the mainstream media would routinely ignore or try to cover-up. Those who hated him, hated him precisely because he told the truth about their nefarious activities. Please see this film - and take 5 seconds to request the movie by shown in your area by clicking on the link below:
www.hatingbreitbart.com/demandit
Title: Breitbart
Post by: DougMacG on May 21, 2013, 03:35:22 PM
I met Andrew and hung out briefly with him at CPAC a couple of years ago, and he was a very friendly, extremely smart and generous individual with his time. He is sorely missed. The way he was treated by the liberal press both during his life, but even worse - after he died unexpectedly of a heart attack - was ABOMINABLE. He was a true pioneer and fearless bulldog with citizen reporting and exposing lies the mainstream media would routinely ignore or try to cover-up. Those who hated him, hated him precisely because he told the truth about their nefarious activities. Please see this film - and take 5 seconds to request the movie by shown in your area by clicking on the link below: www.hatingbreitbart.com/demandit
Yes. He is a legend in new media. Rising from pizza delivery boy to editor of Drudge, launching the Huffington Post and on his own web site, he personified the first amendment. He died at least a half century too soon. You are fortunate to have met him. Like Drudge, he was out front getting stories out that otherwise would get buried. He was committed to making a difference in the 2012 campaign when he died. Nothing short of untimely death could ever have stopped him.
Title: Jason M on Breitbart
Post by: ccp on May 23, 2013, 06:39:55 PM
Only a few months ago the Republicans were on the skids. No look at the big mouth Dems:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 24, 2013, 05:32:52 PM
"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Tyler, 1804
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 25, 2013, 09:17:12 AM
Are journalists more special then everyone else? I understand their role in keeping our government in check (at the same time as serving as a propaganda wing) yet I dunno...
Title: Jefferson on Freedom of Press 1804
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2013, 07:28:13 AM
"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Tyler, 1804
Title: Journalists trawling for leaks should be willing to share the risks.
Post by: C-Kumu Dog on June 04, 2013, 12:31:09 AM
Journalists trawling for leaks should be willing to share the risks By Sarah Chayes,May 31, 2013 Sarah Chayes is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was an NPR reporter from 1997-2001 and special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2010-2011.
“Are you kidding me?”
I was always stunned to hear reporters ask me — as they did half a dozen times when I worked at the Pentagon — to show them some classified document or other. They’d just pop the question blithely, unfazed, without an apparent thought for the implications. My incredulous retort would usually reap an only half-sheepish answer: “Well, I had to ask.”
Countless national security officials have had some version of this conversation – including the State Department security adviser that Fox News correspondent James Rosen allegedly plumbed for information on North Korea. Rosen wrote in an e-mail that he’d “love to see some internal State Department analyses.”
I’ve served on both sides of the line, as an NPR reporter and a Defense Department official, and it’s from that split perspective that I’ve been observing the furor over the seizure of journalists’ telephone and e-mail records in Justice Department investigations of national security leaks. Especially troubling to some reporters and pundits is a search warrant application suggesting that Rosen was “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” with his source. Commentators have decried the Justice Department for criminalizing journalism itself.
The value to democracy of a courageous and unfettered press poking into back corners that agencies would rather keep hidden is incontrovertible. But I find myself wondering why journalists shouldn’t shoulder some responsibility for transgressions they often goad their sources to commit.
Every government employee who obtains a security clearance receives a briefing on the rules about accessing and using classified information, and, as part of his or her terms of employment, must sign a piece of paper acknowledging the potential consequences of violating the law. Many officials, including me, have been subjected to a polygraph exam — an exceedingly unpleasant experience for anyone with a conscience or a literal mind. National security staffers’ careers can be wrecked over how they handle documents stamped SECRET.
Reporters, on the other hand, have little to lose when trawling for leaks. No American journalist has been prosecuted for publishing classified information. And the media could gain even greater protections under a shield law or new procedures now being hammered out with the Justice Department .
I’ve heard from reporters and senior government figures alike that the Obama administration’s leak investigations are having a chilling effect on officials who normally interact with journalists. That’s unfortunate, because regular conversations about the business of government, as well as the injection of alternative perspectives by way of the questions reporters ask, or their reflections on what they hear, are critical to a healthy state.
But the stakes might be clearer if sources knew that reporters had skin in the game, too: if they understood that journalists weren’t asking questions idly — in hopes of a passing scoop, or even happy to be made use of in some messaging campaign — but because the information is so critical to the public interest that they are willing to risk repercussions for finding and airing it.
Ads by Google Security Clearance Help Personnel Security Clearance (PCL) & Facility Security Clearance www.jeffreylawgroup.com Comparatively unfettered though the press may be in the United States, its courage is frequently lacking. Washington relationships cemented by orchestrated leaks and background innuendo can verge on the sycophantic. Then again, government disingenuousness has also been on display in the current imbroglio.
Far too much information is protected by unwarranted classification. It’s hard to take a system seriously that places so many gigabytes of material that are not critical to national security under the same umbrella as the few nuggets that are. I’ve seen a New Yorker article included among prep documents for a National Security Council meeting stamped SECRET//NOFORN (meaning that only cleared U.S. citizens were allowed to read it). I’ve had a colleague contradict a sunny e-mail he sent me on the unclassified system with a SECRET snarl. Such misuse makes a mockery of rules that the leak investigations seek to enforce.
At least as troubling is the double standard that has seemed to apply in the recent investigations. The six criminal prosecutions under the Obama administration have all targeted working-level government employees. Meanwhile, senior officials leak — or authorize leaks — with impunity.
In September 2010, a flurry of coverage in major U.S. newspapers reported a supposed government decision on how corruption in Afghanistan would be handled. Perusing the articles with growing wonder, I looked down at a memo on my desk. Not only were passages quoted from it classified, the document was also watermarked DRAFT. No decision had been made yet because debate on the draft had not even reached the level of Cabinet secretaries. It was a classic Washington case of offensive leaking. For months, I was convinced that the perpetrator was the late Richard Holbrooke, then special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But I kept asking reporters. Finally I traced the leak to a senior White House official, whose career has progressed untroubled.
Last year, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius was given an exclusive preview of 17 redacted documents that had been retrieved from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Ignatius wrote that the documents had been declassified but had not yet been made available to the public. More than six weeks later, those 17 documents — and only those 17, out of some 1.5 million scooped up at Abbottabad — were released. How does such selectivity square with a coherent declassification policy?
Perhaps the most remarkable example of disclosure of classified information in plain sight was the detail offered up to the media in the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden — capped off by briefings from then-White House chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan. The superfluous specificity left a number of officials who had helped plan the raid aghast, including a longtime Washington insider, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The law, including regulations protecting national security secrets, should be taken seriously, and decisions to break it for reasons of conscience should not be taken lightly. But by the same token, the law should not be stretched for purposes far beyond its original, legitimate intent. And most important, it should be applied equally to all who vow to uphold it.
UPDATE: Saturday, June 1, 2013. Sarah Chayes writes: Thanks to all who have contributed great comments. This is just the type of debate such a fraught issue should generate. One thing I regret in this piece is not taking my argument about over-classification beyond criticism. Could any of you -- particularly with government experience -- suggest practical recommendations for how to reduce the amount of material that gets classified, and how to change the incentives for over-classification? Who should issue what directives? What type of implementation and follow-up mechanisms would have to be designed? Let’s use the comments forum to start hammering out a solution to this long-festering problem.
Title: Re: Media Issues, James Rosen is not blameless
Post by: DougMacG on June 04, 2013, 09:29:25 AM
Robert's post makes a good point, IMO. When it was the NY Times leaking national secrets, some of us were quick to criticize them. Just because Rosen was able to get inside or classified info doesn't mean it should have been published or broadcasted. Fred Kaplan at Slate made this point recently: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/05 /james_rosen_and_the_justice_department_leak_investigation_the_fox_news_reporter.html "Why James Rosen Is Not Blameless"
When a President divulges secrets, as with the bin Laden info and raid, they are by definition no longer classified. It is still wrong to identify sources and methods without good reason.
The question of Rosen's good or bad judgment is separate from the apparent fact that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to congress about his own involvement investigating a journalist and his contacts.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2013, 10:04:30 AM
Sorry to be a pain in the butt, but , , , Intel Matters would be a better place for this Dog Robert :-)
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: C-Kumu Dog on June 05, 2013, 10:57:00 AM
LOL, no problem. I appreciate the organization of the forums Guro!
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2013, 11:05:51 AM
:-D
Title: Media, Jay Leno, Obama, IRS, NSA
Post by: DougMacG on June 09, 2013, 08:46:38 PM
I'm not a fan of any of the late night talk hosts, and Jay Leno is a Dem, but a comedian first. At the start of Obama, the comedians wouldn't touch him. Now circumstances have reversed themselves, at least with this Leno clip:
Well, let’s see what’s going on. Hey, Snoop is back in the news. Not Snoop Dogg, Snoop Obama. Yeah, Snoop Obama. A big change at the White House today. They closed the gift shop and opened a Verizon store. Yeah.
Well, this has become a huge controversy after it was revealed that the National Security Agency seized millions of Verizon phone records, and of course this has caused a panic among civil libertarians, constitutional scholars and cheating husbands everywhere. Oh my God.
How ironic is that? We wanted a president that listens to all Americans – now we have one. Yeah.
Actually, President Obama clarified the situation today. He said no one is listening to your phone calls. The president said it’s not what the program is all about. You know, like the IRS isn’t about targeting certain political groups. That’s not what it’s about!
I mean what’s going on? The White House has looked into our phone records, checking our computers, monitoring our e-mails. When did the government suddenly become our psycho ex-girlfriend? When did that happen? When did that happen? When did that happen?
You know, I’ll tell you, if Obama wants to put this snooping thing to good use, how about spying on the IRS next time they throw a $4 million party. Why don’t you do that one? Yes, exactly, exactly. Find out about that. Yeah.
As you know by now, the IRS has taken some heat for reportedly spending $4 million on a conference in Anaheim last year where employees took dancing lessons. One of the dances they learned? Tap dancing around the issues. Yes, that was very good, be able to tap dance
Well, the latest one that came out today. You see this one? They’re saying the IRS paid an artist $17,000 to paint portraits of Abraham Lincoln to help inspire the IRS agents. You know, if they want to see a picture of Lincoln for inspiration, take out a $5 bill and save the taxpayers $16,995. Exactly. That’s what they said. They said.
Oh, the hearings have been unbelievable this week. Congressional investigators say the IRS basically threw a $4 million party for themselves. But in fairness, who else is going to throw a party for the IRS? Really? Now, a going away party, I think we’d all chip in. I would chip in! I would chip in! There you are, no problem. I would pay for that.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2013, 12:39:26 PM
From the Editor Hi there, Journalists have a terrible reputation. A recent survey in Sydney found that journalists (including shock jocks, TV reporters and newspaper reporters) ranked just above car salesmen and state politicians. There’s a simple explanation for that, as a columnist for the Daily Caller (himself a journalist probably) declared: “Most journalists are not interested in the truth, and most people know this”.
Anyhow, to restore your failing faith in journalists, I’d like to tell you about Odoardo Focherini, who has become the first Rightous Among the Nations, an Israeli honour for non-Jews who saved Jews from the Holocaust, to be beatified by the Catholic Church. The ceremony took place on Saturday in his home town of Carpi in northern Italy. In 1942 Focherini was managing director of a newspaper called L’ Avvenire d’ Italia. He and his wife Maria had seven young children. It was not a good time to be a journalist, as Italy was governed by Fascists and was allied with the Nazis, but Focherini was using his contacts to set up a network for Jews escaping to Switzerland. After Italy switched sides and joined the Allies on September 8, 1943, the Germans began to deport Italian Jews to their concentration camps. Focherini, with the approval of his wife, stepped up his efforts. He had saved about 100 Jews before he was arrested in March 1944. Thereafter he was in a series of camps before succumbing to a leg ulcer on December 27, 1944 in Hersbruck.
The Rome office of the American Jewish Committee said Focherini “acted selflessly in accordance with the highest moral principles shared by our two fraternal religions. This act will create yet another bond between Christians and Jews, further enriching our deepening dialogue. May the recognition and memory of Odoardo Focherini’s profound faith and humanity be a blessing to all the world’s peoples.”
I hope that will restore your faith in journalists. Some of them, at least, are interested in the truth.
Title: Media Issues: Bicameral coverage and Media Bias
Post by: DougMacG on June 21, 2013, 02:59:55 PM
The Senate, by 4th of July, will pass an Immigration bill that is going nowhere. This probably the number one political event of our time, based on the exuberance of liberals and the panic and fright of conservatives. The House opposes the bill and the majority controls what gets through its committee and what comes to its floor for a vote.
Meanwhile the House, one chamber again but controlled by the other party, has voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare. Repeal is not supported by the majority in the Senate. No coverage, no excitement, no panic because everyone knows it is going nowhere.
Healthcare is every bit as big an issue as immigration. Why are these two non-events covered differently?
Title: 92 Climate Change Stories without a mention of the 15 year 'Pause' in warming
Post by: DougMacG on June 26, 2013, 03:19:41 PM
The low information voter could be watching, tivo-ing, and watching again every broadcast story of the planet's greatest crisis and still have no f-ing clue what is (not) going on.
Networks Fail to Mention ‘Lull’ in Warming in All 92 Climate Change Stories
President Barack Obama’s new climate change initiative will purportedly share “a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change and lead global efforts to fight it.” Although he intends to demand action, most Americans do not see climate change as a “major threat,” according to Pew Research.
The Washington Post reported Obama will include “a plan to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from existing power plants.” That’s an agenda item the media will love. It was just a month ago when CBS “This Morning” interviewed Time magazine senior writer Jeffrey Kluger on May 11 who said “we have to curb the use of fossil fuels.”
No doubt the broadcast networks will cheer the president’s efforts, since they’ve spent years warning of the threat of climate change, even in the face of science that challenges their view. This year they’ve worried about many things including “raging infernos, surging seas, howling winds,” reported alarmist claims that weren’t accurate and connected weather to climate when scientists disagree. The networks have also completely ignored the “lull” in warming in recent years, in all 92 stories about climate change they reported in 2013.
One ABC report was typical, warning: “Many cities had record warmth, including Washington, D.C. where a lack of action on manmade climate change is likely to mean 2012 is just a glimpse into an unpleasant future, according to many scientists.”
Just since Jan. 1, 2013, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programs have aired 92 stories about “climate change” or “global warming.” Not a single one of those stories mentioned the “warming plateau” [of the last 15 years] reported even by The New York Times on June 10.
Title: Reporter fired
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2013, 09:05:39 AM
Is there a tangible difference, aside from Al Jazeera having better ratings?
Title: Hollywood, the Nazis, and the Chi-Coms
Post by: G M on July 01, 2013, 02:12:11 PM
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
July 1, 2013 4:00 AM
Movie moguls once collaborated with Nazis. Are they now kowtowing to Chinese Communists? By John Fund
A forthcoming book presents a strong case that pre–World War II Hollywood was in bed with Nazi Germany, in catering to its censorship demands. The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, by Ben Urwand of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, uses archival material to show that Hollywood studios agreed not to make films that attacked Nazis or depicted their harsh treatment of Jews.
Afraid of losing the lucrative German market, the studios invited Georg Gyssling, Hitler’s personal consul in Los Angeles, to preview films before their release and suggest changes. “If Gyssling objected to any part of a movie — and he frequently did — the offending scenes were cut,” concludes a review of Urwand’s book in Tablet magazine. “As a result, the Nazis had total veto power over the content of Hollywood movies.”
The German head of MGM actually spoke to German reporters about the “satisfying collaboration on both sides” in Hollywood. Jewish characters virtually disappeared from Hollywood films. Paramount and Fox channeled box-office profits into the production of propaganda newsreels featuring Nazi leaders. Studio mogul Louis B. Mayer was quoted in a legal case on the 1933 anti-Nazi film Mad Dog of Europe, a film that wound up not being produced: “We have terrific income in Germany, and as far as I am concerned, this picture will never be made.” Thank God nothing like that oily surrender of artistic freedom could happen in Hollywood today. Or is it happening today, if we look at show-business relations with the authoritarian regime in China? After all, China is a “terrific” market for Hollywood executives that has them kowtowing to Chinese censors and even jumping into self-censorship to curry favor with them.
With ticket sales in Western countries going flat, Hollywood is desperate to place more films on Chinese screens. China is already the second-biggest box office in the world, and it may be the biggest in as few as five years as it opens ten new movie screens a day. Rigid quotas restrict the number of foreign films entering China to only 34 a year, but that’s up from 20 a year ago. Hollywood has big dreams for China.
But those dreams must first deal with the nightmare of Chinese censorship.
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) — a group of 40 or so censors appointed by the Communist government — keeps a watchful eye to ensure not only that depictions of sex and violence are curbed but also that films “promote stability,” in the words of Janet Yang, the Chinese-American producer of The Joy Luck Club. Robert Cain, who focuses on Chinese productions for Pacific Bridge Pictures, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “Unless there is a flattering image of Chinese people, you are going to run into a challenge from the SARFT. The list of taboos is so long, it is very often too difficult to make anything entertaining.”
Sometimes the “adjustments” made to films are nothing more than business as usual. U.S.-Chinese co-productions don’t count against the foreign-film quota, so it’s no surprise that part of the upcoming Transformers 4 will be shot on location in China, with local actors rounding out the cast. Another co-production, Iron Man 3, flatters the Chinese by showing a protagonist who travels to China in order to see a particular renowned surgeon. But some co-productions are more iffy. The Hollywood Reporter says director Michael Mann’s next effort will feature a joint U.S.-China task force tracking down a deadly hacker in the Balkans. That is a howler given all the headlines on Edward Snowden and how our National Security Agency and Chinese military hackers are at war in cyberspace.
Bizarre and implausible plot lines aren’t the only problem. There is a lot of film censorship; and even more troublesome is the increasing amount of self-censorship by filmmakers who wish to anticipate what the Chinese objections might be.
Under pressure from Chinese censors, the most recent James Bond film, Skyfall, removed references to the sex trade in the Chinese territory of Macau as well as references to the torture of a British agent by Chinese officials. When Men in Black 3 was released in China, censors there had the studio excise scenes in which Will Smith erases memories of bystanders in New York’s Chinatown; authorities apparently feared that filmgoers would see the scenes as a comment on Chinese censorship of the Internet. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End saw half the scenes featuring Chinese pirate captain Sao Feng removed by censors because he was said to “vilify and deface the Chinese.”
But some Hollywood studios don’t even wait for the Chinese censors. Anxious about the Chinese response, the Brad Pitt film World War Z dropped the film’s reference to a worldwide plague of zombies originating in China. Red Dawn was a 1980s cult classic about Soviet troops that invade the U.S. and a group of teens that wage guerilla warfare against them. When MGM remade the film last year, the invaders were Chinese — at least until the film was released. Apparently to appease the Chinese, MGM spent $1 million on digitally erasing all Chinese symbols from military uniforms and vehicles, and replacing them with North Korean ones. Apparently the Pyongyang box office isn’t big enough to worry about offending.
No film is too big to avoid micromanagement. When Titanic 3D was submitted to the Chinese censors, they insisted that a scene in which Kate Winslet appears unclothed show her only from the neck up.
But director James Cameron sounded blasé about the censorship in an interview with the New York Times last year: “As an artist, I’m always against censorship. But censorship’s a reality, even in the U.S. . . . I can’t be judgmental about another culture’s process. I don’t think that’s healthy.” The slightly taken-aback Times reporter later followed up: “Did you talk to other filmmakers — your peers — about Chinese censorship?
Cameron’s stunning response: “No. I’m not interested in their reality. My reality is that I’ve made two films in the last 15 years that both have been resounding successes here [in China], and this is an important market for me. And so I’m going to do what’s necessary to continue having this be an important market for my films. And I’m going to play by the rules that are internal to this market. Because you have to.” The Hollywood studio executives of the 1930s put it just about as plainly in their dealings with the Nazis, according to Ben Urwand’s book.
The “reality” faced by Chinese artists and filmmakers is dire indeed. Last April, the Chinese filmmaker Feng Xiaogang was honored by the China Film Directors Guild. Normally not one to rock any boats, Feng used his acceptance speech to rail against the “great torment” of censorship in China. He recently had his name removed from the credits of his new film, Mystery, to protest censorship directives placed on it. It’s no surprise that Feng’s attack on censorship was itself censored when it aired on Chinese television.
James Cameron doesn’t think it’s “healthy” for him to judge China’s governmental “process.” What is clear is that China isn’t healthy for artists, journalists, or dissidents. Reporters Without Borders lists China as 173rd in the world in terms of press freedom. Freedom in the World, the annual publication of the human-rights group Freedom House, had this to say about modern China in its 2012 report:
The Communist Party showed no signs of loosening its grip on power in 2011. Despite minor legal improvements regarding the death penalty and urban property confiscation, the government stalled or even reversed previous reforms related to the rule of law, while security forces resorted to extralegal forms of repression. Growing public frustration over corruption and injustice fueled tens of thousands of protests and several large outbursts of online criticism during the year. The party responded by committing more resources to internal security forces and intelligence agencies, engaging in the systematic enforced disappearance of dozens of human rights lawyers and bloggers, and enhancing controls over online social media.
Freedom House gives China a rating of 6.5 on its scale of civil and political liberties, with 1 being the best and 7 the worst. Its reports on Chinese-occupied Tibet are even grimmer. And could even worse abuses be taking place out of view, as was the case in Nazi Germany?
It’s not that Hollywood representatives are blind to the problems with giving in to Chinese censorship. But they show zero moral courage, and future generations may well fault them for it, just as today we are coming to condemn the way Hollywood tiptoed around the Nazi issues in the 1930s.
“The adjustment of some of our films for different world markets is a commercial reality, and we recognize China’s right to determine what content enters their country,” a statement from the Motion Picture Association of America to the Associated Press in April read. “Overall, our members make films for global audiences, and audiences’ tastes and demands evolve, and our members respond to those changes. But we also stand for maximum creative rights for artists.” Just don’t expect Hollywood to do much about it, short of an unlikely U.S.-led consumer boycott.
I worked in Hollywood once upon a time, so I understand the argument that business is business. While believing that the U.S. should press the Chinese regime on human rights. I also support trade with China — trade and cultural exchanges are helpful overall to the Chinese people. But Hollywood should spare us the cant about standing up for creative rights when too many people in Hollywood are focused on bending low to appease Chinese censors who control access to that country’s burgeoning box-office profits.
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.
Title: Washington Post Airbrushes Racist Trayvon-Related Headline
Post by: G M on July 01, 2013, 05:17:40 PM
Washington Post Airbrushes Racist Trayvon-Related Headline
June 29th, 2013 - 5:15 pm
Ann Althouse, with an assist from Michael Barone, describes George Zimmerman’s racial background:
George Zimmerman is “one-fourth black, four times as black as Warren is Indian, though the New York Times describes him as a ‘white Hispanic.’”
Writes Michael Barone, noting that Elizabeth Warren asserts that she is “1-32nd Native American [and] George Zimmerman, the Florida accused murderer, had a black grandmother.”
If we’re doing plain old arithmetic here, Zimmerman is 8 times as black as Warren is Native American. (At the genetic level, it could be a lot more complex — were the identified ancestors 100%? — but that doesn’t explain the error.)
As Althouse concluded, if you “feel a little queasy about doing math, maybe your queasiness will carry over into wondering what the hell are we doing calculating racial percentages! It really is quite disgusting.”
Much more disgusting are the racial games the MSM are playing with this trial; keep the above details from Althouse and Barone in mind, as we’ll be returning to them momentarily. On Thursday afternoon, Washington Post-owned Slate ran an article on Zimmerman with the following headline and lede:
You’ll notice that’s a Google cache, as the headline was changed at some point today by Slate after they were reminded that Zimmerman is Hispanic. (You can see a couple of heads up to Slate in the comments to their Facebook page below.) The headline and subhead now read, “I Don’t Feel Your Pain — A failure of empathy perpetuates racial disparities.”
As of the time of this post, the original headline, ”Why White People Don’t Feel Black People’s Pain,” is still visible in Slate’s Twitter feed:
As well as its Facebook page:
At Newsbusters yesterday, Paul Bremmer noted in a post written before Slate changed its headline that the actual article has little to do with the incident involving Zimmerman and Martin, once it gets past its original racialist headline and lede:
Zimmerman and Martin were only mentioned in the opening paragraph, but that prominent placement indicates that Silverstein was trying to tie them into his larger point about the “racial empathy gap.” Here is that opening paragraph in its entirety:
“George Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin because he perceived him as dangerous. The defense argues he was, the prosecution argues he wasn’t. No one, of course, argues that Zimmerman approached Martin with kindness, or stopped to consider the boy as anything other than suspicious, an outsider. Ultimately Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. A lack of empathy can produce national tragedies. But it also drives quieter, more routine forms of discrimination.”
There’s no direct mention of race in that passage, but the implication is clear when you read the rest of the article. Silverstein believes Zimmerman felt no empathy for Martin because Martin was black. But keep in mind that Zimmerman, as a Hispanic, is also a minority. Most of the studies that Silverstein cited dealt only with white participants. So Zimmerman’s connection to the racial empathy gap is highly questionable.
As Bremmer concluded, “Slate shouldn’t be using the Zimmerman trial to accuse all Americans of a lack of empathy for blacks.”
Well, yes. Especially when Zimmerman is of a diverse mixed ethnic background himself.
But then, as John Hayward writes at the Breitbart.com “Conversation” group blog, when it comes to the left, “The focus most certainly is race at the Zimmerman trial.” The Washington Post owns Slate; it has the same relationship with the Post that MSNBC has with its parent company — it’s the place where both agencies can really go to town with their “liberal” bias. And reading Hayward’s description of the trial, they’ll likely have plenty more opportunities to let it all hang out in the coming weeks:
Everyone from the Martin family’s lawyers, to the professional grievance industry, to characters like the New Black Panther Party was busy whipping up riot conditions and treating Zimmerman as a fugitive from racial justice, which led to filmmaker Spike Lee endangering the lives of an innocent couple that just happened to be named “Zimmerman.” And there’s a good reason the media referred to Zimmerman as “white” until photos of him finally leaked out, and they had to change it to “white Hispanic,” a very special demographic of which George Zimmerman seems to remain the only high-profile member.
As the likelihood of a not-guilty verdict grows, the machinery of racial unrest is getting pumped up again. Death threats against “creepy ass cracka” George Zimmerman are flying around Twitter. An acquittal might be the best thing that could happen for certain political and cultural actors, as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit suggested: “Obama and the Democrats would actually prefer an acquittal here. That’s because the whole point of the ginned-up Zimmerman affair was to inflame racial sentiment to boost black turnout in 2012. With any luck, they can turn an acquittal into another racial rallying cry, which will help in 2014. It’s not about Zimmerman; he’s just one of those eggs you have to break to make an Obama omelet.”
As George Orwell once said, “Yes, but where is the omelette?”
Title: Megyn Kelly getting promoted
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2013, 10:54:35 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 04, 2013, 09:34:07 AM
I didn't realize she is that popular. Her legal logic seems sensible but not being an attorney I am not qualified to critique them.
On a different take the mass media sexualization of the news is off the charts. I have to say Fox news is probably one of the biggest peddlers of blonds of any of the news outlets.
Mainstream Media Race Hustling has Put George Zimmerman on Trial
by Bryan Preston
July 8, 2013 - 8:50 am
On the night of February 26, 2012, an altercation between two men in Sanford, FL, left one of them dead. After the deadly encounter, Sanford police took the lone survivor in, questioned him, weighed the evidence, and concluded that he had killed the other man in self-defense. The police released him and identified the two participants in the incident: Trayvon Martin, 17, who had been killed, and George Zimmerman, 28, who had fired the shot that killed Martin. Sanford police soon come under assault in the media for mishandling the case. Before long, Washington gets involved.
From Feburary 29 to March 8, 2012, nothing much happens in the case. On March 8, though, the case gained national momentum when Tracy Martin, father of Trayvon, holds a press conference calling on Sanford police to arrest Zimmerman and charge him with murder. Two days later, on March 10, the Martin family gathered at the Sanford Police Department to urge police again to arrest and charge Zimmerman. Three days later, on the 13th, the Martin family asks Sanford police to release the 911 call from the night of the shooting. On March 16, Sanford police comply with that request and the 911 call from George Zimmerman to dispatchers is released. Zimmerman is heard on the recording telling the dispatcher about an unknown man walking through the gated residential community in the rain. Zimmerman tells the dispatcher that based on his experience as a neighborhood watchman, the unknown man appears to be up to “no good.” The community had been plagued by break-ins. Zimmerman says that the troublemakers always get away.
Releasing the 911 call, it turns out, is the pivotal moment in events after the shooting. Had the mainstream media handled the 911 call responsibly, there is every reason to believe that George Zimmerman would not be standing trial right now and the nation would not be worrying that the outcome of his trial might cause race riots.
The mainstream media did not handle that call responsibly, at all. Instead of airing the call as it was made on the night of February 26, NBC News deceptively edited it to make it appear that Zimmerman targeted Martin because the teen was black. The image of a race-based killing now solidified, it’s only a matter of time before the so-called “post-racial” president and his allies turn Martin’s death into a usefully divisive racial political football, in a presidential election year.
The damage from that false edit was only beginning. NBC News plays its false 911 call edit on the Today show and its other properties. The New York Times on March 22 calls Zimmerman a “white Hispanic.” The rest of the media amplify the false racial narrative. ABC News releases a video purporting to show no wounds on Zimmerman at all, and later admits “error” while releasing a video clearly showing wounds and blood on Zimmerman’s head consistent with his self-defense story. At every step of the way, mainstream media “mistakes” and “errors” have consistently built up the false narrative that Zimmerman targeted Martin and killed him because he was black.
The media successfully fabricate the “armed white adult versus unarmed black teen narrative,” and soon enough the zeitgeist turns decisively against Zimmerman. The FBI and Justice Department announce that they are opening investigations into the shooting on March 19. Reverend and MSNBC host Al Sharpton holds a rally on March 22 in Sanford demanding “justice” and reportedly 10,000 show up. In Sharpton’s rally, NBC News and its properties have clearly crossed the line from dishonest journalism to open one-sided advocacy. Two days later, the race hustle is well and truly on, as Rev. Jesse Jackson arrives in central Florida to join Sharpton in calling for “justice.” On March 23, President Barack Obama weighs in, scolding America to engage in “soul-searching” while saying that if he had a son, he would probably have looked like Trayvon Martin. Obama’s remarks, delivered in the Rose Garden at the White House, elevate the shooting past the point of no return. Charges against Zimmerman are inevitable, lest Republican-controlled Florida face the Holder Justice Department and a full-frontal media assault. At this point, the media and race hustlers are sparing no quarter. Taxpayer-funded PBS simply calls Zimmerman “white” on April 10 in a segment hosted by Gwen Ifill, who is black.
Fast forward more than a year and Obama has been re-elected while “white Hispanic” Zimmerman is on trial facing second degree murder charges. Last week the prosecution put on its case, and it turned out to be almost entirely helpful to Zimmerman’s defense. His wounds, which ABC News had tried to cover up in its own deception, were consistent with the testimony he gave to Sanford police immediately after the shooting, when he told police that Martin, larger and more athletic than Zimmerman, had gotten on top of him and was beating him and smashing his head into a sidewalk to the point that Zimmerman reasonably feared for his life. Zimmerman told police that he only shot Martin in self-defense. The only clear evidence of racism in the case came from prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel, who testified that Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker” during a phone call shortly before the shooting. Witness John Good was first on the scene after the shooting, and as a prosecution witness told the jury that he had seen Martin on top of Zimmerman delivering a “ground and pound” to the smaller man. Every other witness in the trial, with the exception of Martin’s mother, has given testimony that in one way or another backs up self-defense and introduces more than reasonable doubt that Zimmerman is guilty of murder in any degree. Martin’s mother testified that she hears her son screaming for help on the 911 recordings of the fight. But other witnesses testified that the voice belongs to Zimmerman. Testimony about the 911 calls, then, is a wash. The prosecution’s case has introduced enough reasonable doubt on the murder charge that Zimmerman ought to be acquitted and go free. He could still face a civil suit from Martin’s family, where the evidence standards are lower and the outcome of the criminal trial could be useful to the Martin family’s lawyers as they craft a civil case against Zimmerman.
The media’s role in the Zimmerman case must not go unexamined. The fact is, the Sanford Police Department, which became the media and race hustlers’ target during this saga, got things right. They took Zimmerman in after the shooting, interviewed him, examined the evidence from his wounds to the full 911 call, and concluded that he had shot Martin in self-defense. “Police department gets things right” seldom makes for a sexy media narrative, just as “Hispanic neighborhood watchman shoots black teen behaving suspiciously in self-defense” doesn’t advance any media narrative. So the media and the race hustlers fabricated a narrative based on falsified evidence. NBC’s deceptive edit of the 911 call turned the evidence on its head and created a racial narrative that the facts do not support and never did. That edit, which despite NBC’s claims could not have been accidental, was malicious. It was also, in retrospect at least, racist. The media almost never reports black-on-black crime or black-on-white crime in America. It reserves most of its crime stories to celebrity killings, attractive women or children who have gone missing, and incidents that advance political narratives like the murders of James Byrd and Matthew Shepard. The Zimmerman case became political because the media, led by NBC News and ABC News, fabricated evidence in order to make it political. A Hispanic man killing a young black man in self-defense is far less interesting and politically useful than an older white man shooting an innocent black boy in cold blood and then claiming self-defense. The media recognized that it could use the Martin shooting to advance narratives of racism while also attacking the Second Amendment and “stand your ground” laws. So the media engaged in racism en masse, turned Zimmerman white, and faked the evidence to make him a murderer. The media’s racism has put Zimmerman on trial and America on edge as the case nears the verdict phase. Threats of race riots hang not just over central Florida, but the entire country, if the jury acquits Zimmerman. We would not be here if media from NBC to ABC to the New York Times had not deliberately turned the shooting into a racial incident.
Zimmerman filed a lawsuit against NBC in December 2012. That case should go forward once he is acquitted in the criminal trial. Hopefully his lawsuit against NBC will expose the media for its irresponsible and devious political practices and its racism. George Zimmerman should end up a very wealthy man, if any “justice” is to finally be done in this case.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2013, 10:15:44 AM
http://newsbusters.org/ ---------------------------- MSNBC's Smerconish to Spitzer: Was Your Resignation 'Unwarranted?' 'End' of Sex Scandal?
By: Scott Whitlock | July 08, 2013, 18:29 ET <image001.jpg>
Hardball guest host Michael Smerconish on Monday was so gentle with reformed prostitution patron Eliot Spitzer that even the former governor seemed uncomfortable. Talking about Spitzer's new run for New York City comptroller, Smerconish enthused, "Governor, does running now mean that resigning was unwarranted?" He continued, "Would a Spitzer victory mark the of end of the sex scandal as we know it? And I'm asking, really, have we become too intrusive into our elected officials and candidates' private lives?" This appeared to be too much for Spitzer. He allowed, "Look, I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask, because I have a perspective that is so tailored to what I've been through." Read More | 16 Comments MSNBC's Joy Reid: GOP Abortion Restrictions Are Like Muslim 'Shariah Law'
By: Brad Wilmouth | July 08, 2013, 18:16 ET <image002.jpg> On the Wednesday, July 3, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC contributor Joy Reid compared abortion restrictions to "Shariah law" as she blasted North Carolina state senate Republicans for the "sneak attack" of including the restrictions in a bill banning Islamic law in the state. Reid: Read More | 22 Comments MSNBC Harris-Perry Claims We Are In 'Third Reconstruction' After Voting Rights Decision
By: Nathan Roush | July 08, 2013, 18:00 ET <image003.jpg> On her Sunday morning programming live from the Essence Festival in New Orleans, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, the namesake of her show, entertained a panel of African-American leaders to discuss several contemporary issues including the recent 5-4 decision handed down by the Supreme Court that declared Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional because it used, to quote Chief Justice Roberts, “a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.” Harris-Perry scoffed at Roberts’ decision and claimed that this decision caused the advent of a “third reconstruction” in America. [Link to the audio here] Clearly, this is a ridiculous comparison. The current social climate and culture of our country does not even hold a candle to the kind of suppression of rights that took place during Reconstruction or even during the civil rights movement, or so-called Second Reconstruction. Read More | 30 Comments Advocacy: CNN Begs Congress to 'Fix' Student Loan Rate Hike
By: Matt Hadro | July 08, 2013, 17:48 ET <image004.jpg> In a show of advocacy and not journalism, CNN skirted the policy details of the student loans debate and instead just paddled Congress for letting the loan rates double, on Monday's New Day.
Co-hosts Kate Bolduan and Chris Cuomo begged Congress to "fix" the student loan rate increase that automatically went into effect on July 1. They dubbed it the "'Come on Congress' campaign." Cuomo scolded Congress: "This student loans thing, we want to be on it just about every day. They can fix it. They know it was a mistake. You can't compromise education in the country, not this way." [Video below the break. Audio here.] Read More | 17 Comments Dick Durbin: Congress Should Decide Who Qualifies for First Amendment Freedoms
By: Matthew Sheffield | July 08, 2013, 17:40 ET <image005.jpg> In addition to trying to redefine the Second Amendment as not protecting anyone's right to bear arms, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is now excited about how to redefine the First Amendment. As with guns, Durbin is trying to limit constitutional freedoms so that they cannot be used by people of whom he disapproves. In an opinion essay published in the Chicago Sun Times last week, Durbin argued it was "time to say who's a real reporter," so that no one else can be given First Amendment protections. Read More | 38 Comments PBS’s Gwen Ifill Bemoans Obama’s Scandals as Second-Term ‘Distractions’
By: Paul Bremmer | July 08, 2013, 17:38 ET <image006.jpg> We’re halfway through 2013, and PBS’s Washington Week used last Friday’s episode to reflect on the past six months of D.C. politics. During the course of the reflections, moderator Gwen Ifill trotted out the oft-uttered liberal complaint about “distractions” that have impeded President Obama’s second-term agenda so far.
She lamented, “You know, the one thing that's been a common theme throughout this first six months has been distractions. The ways in which pure politics has driven what ends up happening.” [Video below the break.] Read More | 33 Comments NBC's Gregory and Alter Discuss Obama's 'Centrist' Legacy
By: Kyle Drennen | July 08, 2013, 16:39 ET <image007.jpg> In an interview aired Sunday for Meet the Press's Press Pass, host David Gregory teed up left-wing NBC political analyst Jonathan Alter to promote his new pro-Obama screed, The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies: "...you write the following: 'A set of values that had been part of the American consensus since at least the New Deal would remain in place....The United States would remain a highly partisan and often gridlocked nation, but a centrist one.' Is that the emerging legacy of this president?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Alter cheered the President's re-election: "I believe it is. Yeah, and that's where I think the 2012 election was so pivotal. Because it really was all on the line....You had one party, the Democrats, who were pretty close to the center, maybe a little bit left of center. And then you had another party, the Republicans, who were way out there and much more conservative than Ronald Reagan was." Read More | 22 Comments Minutes After Rick Perry's TX Announcement, WashPost Lectures: Don't Run for President!
By: Andrew Lautz | July 08, 2013, 16:38 ET <image008.jpg> On Monday, Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas) announced he would not seek a fourth term as chief executive of the Lone Star State, saying the time had come “to pass on the mantle of leadership.”
It took the liberal media roughly 30 minutes to begin what will no doubt be an onslaught against the former presidential candidate, with the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza offering all the reasons why Perry “shouldn’t run for president again.” Read More | 19 Comments MSNBC's Klein Frets GOP 'Won't Do Anything to Help' Fix ObamaCare, Will Let 'People Get Hurt'
By: Brad Wilmouth | July 08, 2013, 16:35 ET <image009.jpg> On the Wednesday, July 3, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC analyst Ezra Klein -- also of the Washington Post -- joined host O'Donnell in complaining that congressional Republicans refuse to help the Obama administration make changes to ObamaCare that even the administration has concerns about, with Klein charging that the GOP is trying to let the act fail "no matter how many people get hurt along the way." Klein: Read More | 31 Comments CNN Anchor Bends Over Backwards to Spin for Trayvon Martin
By: Matt Hadro | July 08, 2013, 16:10 ET <image010.jpg> CNN's Suzanne Malveaux went to ridiculous ends on Monday to suggest that a testimony in defense of George Zimmerman could be used by the prosecution.
A witness testified that she recognized Zimmerman's voice crying for help in a 911 call as he struggled with Trayvon Martin, because she worked with him on a political campaign. Malveaux suggested that the prosecution could argue that Zimmerman's jubilant cries during political rallies could be similar to his voice while "pummeling Trayvon Martin" with "a sense of joy." [Video below the break. Audio here.] Read More | 33 Comments CBS Omits Spitzer's Political Opponent Allegedly Provided Him With Prostitutes
By: Matthew Balan | July 08, 2013, 15:51 ET <image011.jpg> Monday's CBS This Morning twice mentioned Kristin Davis, one of Eliot Spitzer's electoral opponents, during an interview of the disgraced former New York governor, but failed to mention that she claims to be the madam who sold Spitzer the services of prostitutes. Norah O'Donnell wondered, "Did you just look at the role of comptroller and say, 'look, I'd be running against Kristin Davis. I could probably easily get elected'.
O'Donnell led the interview with the issue of the former governor's prostitution scandal, and later mentioned Davis' name, but failed to mention the possible connection. Co-anchor Gayle King also referenced Spitzer's political adversary, but omitted her former "Manhattan Madam" role. Read More | 10 Comments MSNBC's Schultz Spews: GOP 'Attacking Minorities' By Opposing Obama's Efforts
By: Andrew Lautz | July 08, 2013, 15:04 ET <image012.jpg> Ed Schultz continued his weekly tirade against Republicans Sunday, arguing for a second straight week that the GOP is engaged in an all-out war against minorities.
After accusing conservatives of wanting to “keep a minority down” on last week’s Ed Show, the bombastic MSNBC host was at it again on Sunday, accusing Republicans of “attacking minorities” in their attempt to block President Obama’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Read More | 34 Comments ABC Skips Dem Label of Prostitution Enthusiast Eliot Spitzer, NBC Hypes 'Comeback Kid'
By: Scott Whitlock | July 08, 2013, 12:28 ET <image013.jpg> The journalists at Good Morning America on Monday offered an assist to liberal politicians trying to avoid being associated with the scandal-plagued former Governor of New York. While announcing Eliot Spitzer's return to public life, news reader Paula Faris avoided any mention of the fact that Spitzer is a Democrat. As she noted his bid to be New York City's comptroller, Faris simply referred to the "disgraced former governor of New York." Over on NBC's Today, correspondent Kristen Dahlgren hyped Spitzer as "the next comeback kid." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Comparing the ex-governor to Anthony Weiner, Dahlgren enthused, "2013 may go down as the year of the second chance." Despite connecting the two New York Democrats, Dahlgren also skipped any ideological label. It wasn't until the 8am hour that co-host Natalie Morales alerted, "The Democrat stepped down in 2008 over a prostitution scandal." Read More | 30 Comments Frustrated Chuck Todd Blames GOP 'Sabotage' for ObamaCare Failure
By: Kyle Drennen | July 08, 2013, 12:16 ET <image014.jpg> Appearing on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd blamed Republicans for ObamaCare beginning to collapse under its own weight: "...you could argue that there are some Republicans that are trying to sabotage the law, that they're hoping to not get it off the ground and then they can suddenly make the case, 'See, we've got to get rid of it.' And they've got some state governors that are openly trying to sabotage it." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Todd went on to attack Republican senators who protested an effort by the Obama administration to use the NFL to promote ObamaCare: "Look at what [Mitch] McConnell and [John] Cornyn did to the sports leagues? That was a shakedown. That was a threatening letter by the two leaders of the Senate Republicans, who essentially said, 'If you participate in this, if you help them try to enact this law of the land, be careful, there's going to be political repercussions.'" Read More | 93 Comments Gallup: Fox Is America's Main Source For News
By: Noel Sheppard | July 08, 2013, 10:41 ET <image015.jpg> This will REALLY make liberal heads explode! A Gallup poll released moments ago found more Americans consider Fox News their main source for news than any other news outlet in the nation: Read More | 128 Comments Former MSNBC Producer: MSNBC Is 'Official Network of the Obama White House'
By: Noel Sheppard | July 08, 2013, 10:02 ET <image016.jpg> A former senior producer for MSNBC came out with harsh words for his former network Sunday. Writing at the far-left AlterNet, Jeff Cohen - the former senior producer of MSNBC's Donahue show - said, "When it comes to issues of U.S. militarism and spying, the allegedly 'progressive' MSNBC often seems closer to the 'official network of the Obama White House' than anything resembling an independent channel": Read More | 73 Comments WashPost Book Reviewer Writes of Murdered Hookers, Pleads for Legalized Prostitution
By: Tim Graham | July 08, 2013, 08:02 ET <image017.jpg> In Monday’s Washington Post, book reviewer Patrick Anderson offered a positive review of New York magazine writer Robert Kolker’s true-crime story “Lost Girls” about prostitutes that ended up dead and buried in burlap bags along the highway on Long Island.
Anderson, a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, detailed the dangerous, addictive life the white “sex workers” had lived – one of the victims earned $4,500 a week and spent $3,500 each week on heroin – and then concluded his review by insisting that prostitution should be legalized, but America’s “puritanical, hypocritical society” will not concede: Read More | 220 Comments Joan Walsh Attacks Palin Friday, Whines Sunday About People Picking Twitter Fights
By: Noel Sheppard | July 08, 2013, 00:04 ET <image018.jpg> The hypocrisy of Salon's Joan Walsh knows no bounds. On Friday she sent a hateful tweet to former Alaska governor Palin. After she took some heat for doing so, Walsh had the gall to tweet Sunday evening, "Hm, the people who like to pick fights on Twitter picked a lot of fights on Twitter this holiday weekend. Sad": Read More | 133 Comments 'CNN Shame On You' Signs Appear in Cairo
By: Noel Sheppard | July 07, 2013, 23:31 ET <image019.jpg> It appears some Egyptians are not pleased with CNN's coverage of last week's coup. According to numerous sources including CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman, the following sign is appearing in the crowds in Tahrir square: Read More | 28 Comments “Amos ‘n’ Andy” Makes an Off-Color Comeback at Jesse Jackson’s Headquarters
By: Mike Bates | July 07, 2013, 23:09 ET <image020.jpg> “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was so controversial that in 1951 the NAACP demanded it be taken off the air for its derogatory portrayal of blacks. By 1966, the NAACP won a victory by stopping the show’s reruns from airing. But at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Saturday morning forum this week, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was back in fashion. Chicago talk show personality Cliff Kelley emceed a panel discussion. Warming up the crowd, Kelley placed his arm on the shoulder of Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and tried a little humor: (video here) Read More | 56 Comments For the 'Where Have You Been?' File: AP's Rugaber Discovers Temporary Hiring 'Is Exploding'
By: Tom Blumer | July 07, 2013, 22:37 ET <image021.gif> In a Sunday morning story which will likely have limited reach, and will then probably be considered old news by the time the business week resumes tomorrow, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, finally got around to recognizing a trend on which yours truly and others have been commenting for at least 2-1/2 years: the surge in employment at temporary help services. That the item's author is Christopher "Gone Are the Fears That the Economy Could Fall Into Another Recession" Rugaber makes it especially rich, once he explains to his readers some of the reasons why temp services is one of the few sectors employing more people now than it did at its pre-recession peak (bolds are mine): Read More | 19 Comments Congressman Raul Labrador Slaps Down David Brooks Twice on Meet The Press
By: P.J. Gladnick | July 07, 2013, 19:00 ET <image022.jpg> Have you ever wished that errant journalists could get their noses rubbed in their own absurdities and outright falsehoods like puppy dogs who make a mess? Well, if you had been watching Meet The Press today then you would have seen Congressman Raul Labrador of Idaho do just that to the New York Times house "conservative" David Brooks who was slapped down not once but twice. As you can see in this video and below the fold, Brooks didn't learn his lesson after being slapped down by Labrador for uttering absurdities about the Senate immigration bill. Labrador was forced to perform an encore performance after Brooks flat out uttered a falsehood. First we see Brooks describe how wonderful he thought the Senate immigration bill was: Read More | 100 Comments Clarence Page on America's Political Polarization: 'I Blame the Media'
By: Noel Sheppard | July 07, 2013, 17:23 ET <image023.jpg> The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page made a comment about the country's political polarization this weekend that might raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. Appearing on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Page said, "I blame the media" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Read More | 65 Comments Jim Carrey to 'Assault Rifle Fans': 'I Love You and I'm Sorry I Called You Names'
By: Noel Sheppard | July 07, 2013, 15:45 ET <image024.jpg> As NewsBusters previously reported, actor Jim Carrey back in March called gun owners "heartless motherf--kers." On Sunday, Carrey tried taking it back writing on Twitter, "Asslt rifle fans,I do not agree wth u,nor do I fear u but I do love u and I'm sorry tht in my outrage I called you names": Read More | 137 Comments George Will: 'What ObamaCare Requires For it to Work - Mass Irrationality'
By: Noel Sheppard | July 07, 2013, 13:50 ET <image025.gif> George Will made a marvelous observation Sunday about the so-called Affordable Care Act. Appearing on ABC's This Week, Will said, "What Obamacare requires for it to work - mass irrationality, both on the part of employers to ignore that incentive and on the part of young people who are supposed to pay 3, 4, 5 times more for health insurance than it would cost them to just pay the fine and ignore it" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Read More | 131 Comments Bush on What He and Obama Discussed in Africa: 'What a Big Pain the Press Is'
By: Noel Sheppard | July 07, 2013, 12:54 ET <image026.jpg> Former President George W. Bush had a marvelous line during his interview aired on ABC's This Week Sunday. Asked by Jonathan Karl what he and President Obama discussed in Africa last week when the cameras weren't rolling, Bush replied, "What a big pain the press is" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Read More | 103 Comments Bloomberg/BizWeek Acknowledges 'Obama Call for Muslim Brotherhood Role' in Egypt
By: Tom Blumer | July 07, 2013, 01:04 ET <image027.gif> Nicole Gaouette and John Walcott at Bloomberg BusinessWeek have revealed that the Obama administration has specifically stated that it wants the Muslim Brotherhood to have a role in any new Egyptian government. Meanwhile, other news outlets, particularly the Associated Press, have avoided disclosing that specific detail. There are two "little" problems with the administration's disclosed position. The first is that now-deposed Mohammed Morsi's final speech on Tuesday was seen as a promise that there would be civil war if he were ousted. The second is that Morsi supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups have promised to carry out a campaign of terror until Morsi is reinstalled, and are keeping that promise. Those two factors should objectively disqualify the Brotherhood's involvement. Excerpts from the Bloomberg pair's report follow the jump (bolds are mine): Read More | 72 Comments AP Updates White House/Egypt Situation With No Mention of 'Muslim Brotherhood' or 'Morsi'
By: Tom Blumer | July 06, 2013, 21:50 ET <image028.gif> You've got to hand it to the folks at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press. No news organization on earth is as consistently effective at burying the substance of a story while appearing to cover it. Take this evening's unbylined coverage of the Obama administration's noncommittal, substance-free positioning on the situation in Egypt. It takes a special talent to get through a few hundred words in a story such as this without ever mentioning the name of the ousted Mohammed Morsi or his Muslim Brotherhood party, and whoever wrote the AP story was up to the challenge (bolds are mine): Read More | 49 Comments Major Newspapers Turn Down Pro-Life Ad, Baby Image 'Too Controversial'
By: Randy Hall | July 06, 2013, 17:45 ET <image029.jpg> Liberal newspapers across the nation have no problem selling advertising space for pictures of babies to promote such products ranging from diapers to online investment firms. However, three major papers -- USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune -- rejected an ad from a pro-life organization that showed an infant at roughly 20 weeks' gestation because it's “too controversial.” An article by Caleb Parke on the Live Action News website stated that the ad featured an illustration of an adult hand holding a 20- to 24-week-old baby with the quote: “This child has no voice, which is why it depends on yours. Speak up.” Read More | 116 Comments AP Initially Claims June Jobs Report Might Delay Fed 'Tapering,' Then Reverses Field
By: Tom Blumer | July 06, 2013, 14:50 ET <image030.gif> It wasn't a tough prediction, but late Friday morning Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters noted the seemingly "metaphysical certitude the Obama-loving media will be falling over themselves in the next 48 hours to report the better than expected jobs numbers in June." Well, of course. Noel also wondered how much attention the press would pay to less than desirable aspects of yesterday's jobs report from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The answer at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, which carried at least eight reports relating to the news and its effects on the financial markets, was "hardly," as will be seen in excerpts after the jump. Additionally, the AP reversed its initial take that yesterday's non-change in the unemployment rate would keep the Federal Reserve's stimulus flowing, later deciding that the jobs report was so good that the Fed can let the tapering begin.
Title: Turmoil at Al Jazeera
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2013, 04:42:30 PM
U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News To Americans Posted By John Hudson Sunday, July 14, 2013 - 7:06 PM Share
For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?
Until this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries. The programming varies in tone and quality, but its breadth is vast: It's viewed in more than 100 countries in 61 languages. The topics covered include human rights abuses in Iran; self-immolation in Tibet; human trafficking across Asia; and on-the-ground reporting in Egypt and Iraq.
The restriction of these broadcasts was due to the Smith-Mundt Act, a long standing piece of legislation that has been amended numerous times over the years, perhaps most consequentially by Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. In the 70s, Fulbright was no friend of VOA and Radio Free Europe, and moved to restrict them from domestic distribution, saying they "should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics." Fulbright's amendment to Smith-Mundt was bolstered in 1985 by Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky who argued that such "propaganda" should be kept out of America as to distinguish the U.S. "from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity."
Zorinsky and Fulbright sold their amendments on sensible rhetoric: American taxpayers shouldn't be funding propaganda for American audiences. So did Congress just tear down the American public's last defense against domestic propaganda?
BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil insists BBG is not a propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA "present fair and accurate news."
"They don't shy away from stories that don't shed the best light on the United States," she told The Cable. She pointed to the charters of VOA and RFE: "Our journalists provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible, discussion, and open debate."
A former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG says the organization is no Pravda, but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways. In Somalia, for instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment. "Somalis have three options for news," the source said, "word of mouth, Al-Shabaab or VOA Somalia."
This partially explains the push to allow BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the United States. The agency wants to reach diaspora communities, such as St. Paul Minnesota's significant Somali expat community. "Those people can get Al-Shabaab, they can get Russia Today, but they couldn't get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like VOA Somalia," the source said. "It was silly."
Lynne added that the reform has a transparency benefit as well. "Now Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with their tax dollars - greater transparency is a win-win for all involved," she said. And so with that we have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect this month.
But if anyone needed a reminder of the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, the past 12 months provided ample reasons. Last year, two USA Today journalists were ensnared in a propaganda campaign after reporting about millions of dollars in back taxes owed by the Pentagon's top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan. Eventually, one of the co-owners of the firm confessed to creating phony websites and Twitter accounts to smear the journalists anonymously. Additionally, just this month, The Washington Post exposed a counter propaganda program by the Pentagon that recommended posting comments on a U.S. website run by a Somali expat with readers opposing Al-Shabaab. "Today, the military is more focused on manipulating news and commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting material and images without necessarily claiming ownership," reported The Post.
But for BBG officials, the references to Pentagon propaganda efforts are nauseating, particularly because the Smith-Mundt Act never had anything to do with regulating the Pentagon, a fact that was misunderstood in media reports in the run-up to the passage of new Smith-Mundt reforms in January.
One example included a report by the late Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings, who suggested that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act would open the door to Pentagon propaganda of U.S. audiences. In fact, as amended in 1987, the act only covers portions of the State Department engaged in public diplomacy abroad (i.e. the public diplomacy section of the "R" bureau, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors.)
But the news circulated regardless, much to the displeasure of Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), a sponsor of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. "To me, it's a fascinating case study in how one blogger was pretty sloppy, not understanding the issue and then it got picked up by Politico's Playbook, and you had one level of sloppiness on top of another," Thornberry told The Cable last May. "And once something sensational gets out there, it just spreads like wildfire."
That of course doesn't leave the BBG off the hook if its content smacks of agitprop. But now that its materials are allowed to be broadcast by local radio stations and TV networks, they won't be a complete mystery to Americans. "Previously, the legislation had the effect of clouding and hiding this stuff," the former U.S. official told The Cable. "Now we'll have a better sense: Gee some of this stuff is really good. Or gee some of this stuff is really bad. At least we'll know now."
Title: Jay Leno unbound, and Bill Maher?
Post by: DougMacG on July 15, 2013, 07:43:33 AM
While it is known that Leno is a registered Democrat, unlike his mindless liberal competitor, he attempts to be a comedian first, and this administration is leaving at least as many openings for humor as previous Presidents did.
"Did you hear about this? The IRS has admitted they were targeting conservative groups. President Obama called it outrageous and said he would immediately have his Benghazi investigators look into it."
Ouch.
And Bill Maher:
President Obama was in Germany and spoke at the Brandenburg Gate, which divided that city during the Cold War. Obama said: “It’s taught me a lot. When I was a kid, West Germany taught me the importance of standing tall, and East Germany taught me the importance of reading everyone’s mail.”
George Zimmerman calls himself a Democrat. A local media channel even reported this back in March 2012.
“What we do know about Zimmerman is… he calls himself a Democrat.”
George Zimmerman was an Obama Democrat. He took a black girl to prom. He tutured black kids. The Examiner reported:
Al Sharpton has incited crowds with “arrest Zimmerman now!” and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has flatly called George Zimmerman a murderer. Yet what has been widely underreported by the majority of American news organs is that Zimmerman is actually an Obama Democrat who has quite the history of working with and for fellow Americans of African heritage, as reported byThe Telegraph (of London, England) on 15 July, 2013; both the Mercury News (of Silicon Valley, CA) and The National Reviewon July 14, 2013; and Breitbart.com on Feb. 6, 2013.
At times collectively and others singularly, The Telegraph, the Mercury News and The National Review have all cited past instances of Zimmerman’s liberal/Democrat street-cred that would cause any Hollywood starlet or six figure income resident of Manhattan’s tony Upper West Side hang their head in shame.
Researchable and legitimate source examples of Zimmerman’s past history of working with and for blacks include: •“He and a black friend opened up an insurance office in a Florida…” •“He’d engaged in notably un-racist behaviour such as taking a black girl to his high-school prom…” •“Not only does he have black relatives, he has reportedly donated his time to tutor black children.” •“He launched a campaign to help a homeless black man who was beaten up by a white kid.”
Title: POTH: Ratings and Age
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2013, 02:34:07 AM
By BILL CARTER Published: July 22, 2013
Fox News continues to be near the top in cable television in terms of the number of viewers it attracts, but it is near the top in another category, too: the median age of its audience is among the oldest in television.
Megyn Kelly and Elisabeth Hasselbeck are both far younger than Bill O’Reilly.
For most of the television business — the segment that relies on advertising — that would be serious cause for concern because ad sales are almost always based on a target age of 25 to 54, and Fox News, for the last two years, has had a median age of 65-plus in its ratings both for the full day and for prime time.
But up until now at least, Fox News has been more able than any other television entity to defy the tyranny of the demos, as they are known in the business. And the network, which has upturned traditions and expectations throughout its history, has earned consistently enormous profits, relying on the commitment and loyalty of its audience.
“I don’t think you can fully capture the value Fox News brings by looking at the Nielsen ratings alone,” said Craig Moffett, the longtime financial analyst who specializes in cable. Mr. Moffett, who heads his own firm, said that the key to Fox News’s continued financial strength has been “the level of passion and engagement” it inspires in its viewers.
That translates into big money because cable systems now pay Fox News one of the highest per-subscriber fees in television, 94 cents a month, topped in cable television only by a few networks, most of which have expensive sports rights to pay. (By comparison, CNN gets 57 cents a subscriber, according to SNL Kagan Research.) As Mr. Moffett put it, “There are a handful of networks consumers are deeply passionate about out of all proportion to Nielsen ratings, and distributors know if you don’t have those networks, then woe be to you.”
With close to 100 million subscribers in total, Fox News will take in $1.11 billion this year from subscription fees before it ever sells a single commercial, Kagan estimated. Still, the network faces some significant questions as it goes forward: How old is too old? And when does the issue have to be addressed?
Fox News declined to make executives available for comment, but several recent signs — including changing personalities for some of its weekday programs — suggest the network may have decided the time has come to confront the issue of age.
Just how old is its audience? It is impossible to be precise because Nielsen stops giving an exact figure for median age once it passes 65. But for six of the last eight years, Fox News has had a median age of 65-plus and the number of viewers in the 25-54 year old group has been falling consistently, down five years in a row in prime time, from an average of 557,000 viewers five years ago to 379,000 this year. That has occurred even though Fox’s overall audience in prime time is up this year, to 2.02 million from 1.89 million three years ago.
The network also has been faced with a recent string of nightly wins in that 25-54 audience by CNN, which had been hopelessly behind in recent years.
“The numbers indicate they haven’t been replacing the younger viewers,” Mr. Moffett said of Fox News. Many of the loyal viewers the network has always had are simply aging up beyond the 54-year cutoff for many ad buyers. The result is an audience edging consistently above that 65-plus number.
News audiences always trend old, and the viewers of Fox’s competitors are hardly in the full flower of youth. MSNBC’s median age for its prime-time shows this year is 60.6; CNN’s is 59.8.
In terms of the rest of television, Fox News also is quite a bit older than networks considered to have a base of older viewers. CBS has frequently been needled for having older viewers, but at 56.8, its median viewer is far younger than Fox News’s. (Viewers at Fox News’s sister network, Fox Broadcasting, have a median age of 50.2; at ABC, the median is 54.4; at NBC, it’s 47.7.)
======================================
age 2 of 2)
In cable, the ages range from as young as 28.9 for Comedy Central, to 39.2 for another Fox sister network, FX, 43.6 for ESPN, and 52.9 for USA. The only other networks to hit 65-plus are the game show network GSN and the rural news network RFD.
The downward trend in younger viewers seems to be accelerating at Fox News. In the second quarter of this year, the network scored its lowest ratings since 2001 in the 25-54 category. And through the end of last week, CNN had squeaked ahead of Fox News for Monday through Sunday prime-time numbers in the month of July — in that age group only, though.
Fox continued to have more than twice as many total viewers in most cases, but, driven by its heavy concentration on the Trayvon Martin case, CNN has posted big gains for the month in the advertiser-preferred group. Last Thursday, for example, on the strength of an interview with Mr. Martin’s parents, as well as a special documentary on the impending royal birth, CNN averaged 381,000 viewers in that 25-54 group to 333,000 for Fox News — despite having more than 1.3 million fewer overall viewers.
Is this a trend? CNN has had bursts of ratings glory before, based on breaking news stories, only to fall back again to noncompetitive status. This time, the CNN run has been more sustained, though even a quarter of a year is far from a distinct trend.
Still, there may be some sales implications for Fox. “You do see definitely accelerating negative trends at Fox News,” said James Boyle, the managing director of SQAD, an advertising tracking and forecasting firm.
Mr. Boyle said his research indicated that the first and second quarters of this year showed declines for Fox News in sales for the ad clients he studies. “The demos have impact over time,” he said.
Tracey Riener, the senior vice president of Havas Media, which buys ad space in news programs on behalf of clients like Fidelity Investments and Choice Hotels, said, “It’s hard to ignore Fox’s ratings,” noting how the network often has double or triple the number of viewers that MSNBC and CNN have.
But she added, “Median age is important For some clients, getting old is a concern. But for some clients looking for people close to retirement age or living in retirement, I would say the group 35 to 60 is still important.”
Recent moves may be the best indicator of how Fox News is responding to the audience trends. The network announced early this month that one of its rising stars, Megyn Kelly, will be moving into its prime-time lineup later this summer; and it hired Elisabeth Hasselbeck to join its top-rated cable morning show “Fox and Friends.” Both women are considerably younger than the network’s continuing hosts.
Mr. Moffett said the most successful brands always had to be aware of reinventing themselves for the next generation. He cited the example of Cadillac.
“It was amazing,” Mr. Moffett said. “You could see the average Cadillac buyer was getting one year older every year. It didn’t take a lot of math skills to realize if nothing changed, one day the last Cadillac buyer was going to walk into the showroom and then drop dead on the way out.”
Title: Fox's political donations favor Dems?!?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2013, 12:35:32 PM
Opinion: San Diego media failed to investigate Filner sooner
Posted: Monday, July 29, 2013 11:56 am | Updated: 1:06 pm, Tue Jul 30, 2013.
by Doug Curlee
Regardless of how the Bob Filner mess eventually ends—and it will end, somehow—there are questions that need to be asked and answered.
They are questions that should have been asked long ago, and should have been asked by those whose job it is to ask such questions: us.
Who are “us”?
“Us” are the San Diego news media reporters, editors, producers and writers who pretty much knew who and what Bob Filner is and has been.
Yes, I’m including myself in that group. I’ve covered Bob Filner off and on since he was elected to the San Diego Unified School District Board in 1979. From the beginning, most of us saw how arrogant Filner was and is, how abusive he could be to his own staff members, how he felt elective office entitled him to be all those things and more.
We all saw that in Filner, and yet we did nothing about it. Filner was often a topic of conversation among us when we gathered at news conferences or when we would gather at the various watering holes many of us frequented together when off work.
The near universal opinion among us was, “Can you believe this guy? Why does he get away with acting like that?” Then another round of drinks would appear, and talk went on to other things.
But we never asked those questions on air or in print. We never really tried to find out what was behind the near-incessant rumors that always floated around Filner. We never tried to confirm any of those rumors, or, if we did, we quickly gave up when presented with the denials, or refusals to talk about it.
We didn’t do our jobs. We didn’t try to work our way to the truth or what appeared to be the truth.
We didn’t uphold the tenets of our profession—to find the truth, whatever it may be, and present it to you for your information and judgment.
Why didn’t we? Probably several reasons, although they are reasons that shouldn’t have been good enough to stop us.
Was it because Filner had established himself as a Democratic power here—for a long time, the only Democratic power here?
Was it because he had built his electoral power base generally south of Interstate 8, among the “minority” communities of African-Americans, Latinos and Filipinos?
Was it because Filner totally controlled the votes and campaign funds of large and ever-growing organized labor groups, the unions?
Was it because economic pressure was brought to bear on TV station ownerships or newspaper ownerships, all of whom depend on advertising dollars as their prime source of revenue?
Was it because we were just lazy?
I honestly don’t know, but there may have elements of all of the above involved.
All I know for sure is that we had the chance—many chances over the years—to dig into the Filner story and find much of this out.
We didn’t do it, and it now appears that’s all coming home to roost.
We watch ever more highly credible women coming forward to tell their stories of encounters with Filner, and we should all be thinking, “I should have done that story. I should have asked, or demanded, the support to go after that story.”
We can, I suppose, take some hollow comfort in watching all the TV stations and newspapers covering this story like a blanket with basically unending, round-the-clock coverage.
But I can’t help but wonder, “Could we have stopped this in its tracks, years ago? Could we have pursued the story back then? Could he have gotten that story—gotten victims to talk back then?”
Who knows? The point is, we didn’t try, or try hard enough.
Those of us in the business at that time, knowing what we did, should be a little ashamed of that.
I am.
Title: Re: Media Issues: Firing at Chatanooga Times 'Free' Press
Post by: DougMacG on August 02, 2013, 09:50:13 PM
"I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper's most-read article." --------------- Free Press editor Drew Johnson has been terminated after placing a headline on an editorial outside of normal editing procedures.
Johnson's headline, "Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough," appeared on the Free Press page Tuesday, the day President Barack Obama visited the city.
Soon after his dismissal, Mr. Johnson sent out this tweet, "I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper's most-read article." . . .
He also wrote, "The policy I 'broke' did not exist when I 'broke' it. It was created after people complained about the headline & was applied retroactively. Any time the paper wanted to change the headline online (which is how most people read the editorial), they could've.
Title: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler...
Post by: objectivist1 on August 05, 2013, 07:38:45 AM
The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler
Posted By Ben Shapiro On August 5, 2013
In his blockbuster new book, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, Ben Urwand documents how the film industry went out of its way in the lead-up to World War II to help Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Scripts dealing with the German military, including All Quiet on the Western Front, were run by the German government for approval. Full scenes dealing with German treatment of Jews were cut from several movies. Entire projects were quashed because of actual or presumed Nazi disapproval.
After All Quiet on the Western Front, “every studio started making deep concessions to the German government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, they dealt with his representatives directly,” Urwand writes. The German government utilized what it called “Article 15,” which allowed the government to ban a company’s entire slate of films if even one of the films was considered anti-German.
In 1933, the German government went even further: they threatened to ban all American films in the country if Herman Mankiewicz and Sam Jaffe went ahead with an anti-Nazi film called The Mad Dog of Europe. The Hays Office, which ran the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America, tried to shut down the film. The picture eventually ended up being killed thanks to objections from Hollywood funders. “The episode,” writes Urwand, “turned out to be the most important moment in all of Hollywood’s dealings with Nazi Germany. It occurred in the first year of Hitler’s rise to power, and it defined the limits of American movies for the remainder of the decade.”
Nothing has changed.
Since September 11, 2001, the film and television industry has consistently refused to portray Islamists as enemies of the United States. As early as 2002, Hollywood was already cutting Islamic villains from mainstream films – The Sum of All Fears, based on the Tom Clancy book in which Palestinian terrorists gain access to a nuclear device, was altered so that the villains were now, ironically enough, neo-Nazis. That’s not atypical.
Even when Hollywood attempts to portray Islamist villains, it has to apologize for it. In 2005, Fox backed off the Islamic villains in its hit series 24 after pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and forced star Kiefer Sutherland to read CAIR-approved text: “Now while terrorism is obviously one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism. So in watching 24, please, bear that in mind.”
Americans are typically portrayed as the moral equivalents of jihadists in film. In The Kingdom (2007), Muslim terrorists bomb a US military installation; the end of the film features the Muslim terrorists and US trackers mirroring each other in their xenophobic rhetoric, pledging to “kill them all.” Rendition (2007) portrayed American anti-terror techniques as the cause of terrorism across the globe. The Green Zone (2010) suggested that Americans invaded Iraq for oil.
As in the 1930s, the question for Hollywood isn’t merely principle, but money. Middle Eastern money now funds a solid share of filmmaking around the globe. Alnoor Holdings, based in Doha, began a $200 million film fund in 2010; Imagenation Abu Dhabi launched a $1 billion film fund in 2008. And regional potentates have invested a fortune in oil money in various US media entities.
The same holds true with China, which is the fastest-growing movie market on the planet. The communist regime pours hundreds of millions of dollars into filmmaking, and just as the Nazis did during the 1930s, pledges to cut off distribution for any films that are considered too anti-Chinese. That’s how the army which invades America in the remake of Red Dawn which was initially Chinese became North Korean after a re-do.
In some ways, Hollywood’s self-censorship today is significantly worse than self-censorship during the 1930s. During that period, at least, there were concerns about the rise of the Nazis; Carl Laemmle, who produced All Quiet on the Western Front, said, “”I am almost certain that [Adolf] Hitler’s rise to power … would be the signal for a general physical onslaught on many thousands of defenseless Jewish men, women and children.” He was right. But today’s Hollywood honchos don’t see the threat of Islamism; they see instead the threat of the United States. They don’t see the threat of China; they see the threat of US imperialism. Unlike their predecessors, they are ideologically aligned, in too many cases, with America’s enemies. And when finances and ideological interests are aligned on behalf of America’s enemies, American viewers are in serious trouble.
Title: AP Pravda covers up Baraq's geography gaffe
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 08, 2013, 03:05:52 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 09, 2013, 06:22:23 AM
Yes, "deepen the ports in the gulf - in Charleston SC, Savannah GA and Jacksonville FL." Does anyone have a map? 57 states? Corpsman? Gift to the Queen is a DVD of his own speeches - in an unreadable format was the only good part. Russian 'Reset' that means 'Overcharged/Overloaded'. "Let's Not Spike the Football on Osama", then spike, spike, spike. "I believe in the private sector", while beating it into submission.
The main media intentionally leave it for the right wing media to cover the boneheaded parts of the administration and the material is endless. Imagine this was ANY Republican!
Title: NBC-FOX deal on Hillary puff bio-pic?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2013, 10:09:03 PM
Title: Media Issues, Who else thinks we are near the Tipping Point on Global Warming?
Post by: DougMacG on August 22, 2013, 08:23:38 PM
Of course this could go in Pathological Science. A Soviet survivor put it best, paraphrasing: The US media is worse than Soviet Pravda. There you had only one state newspaper lying to you and you knew they were lying. Here it is more believable after you hear three four, five different sources telling you the exact same lie - or ten unoriginal sources in this case spewing the same drivel.
"Global Warming Tipping Point Close?"--headline, ClimateArk.com, Jan. 27, 2004
"Warming Hits 'Tipping Point' "--headline, Guardian, Aug. 11, 2005
"Earth at the Tipping Point: Global Warming Heats Up"--headline, Time, March 26, 2006
"Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming"--headline, Puffington Host, June 23, 2008
"Global Warming: Those Tipping Points Are Closer Than You Think"--headline, WSJ.com, April 29, 2009
"Have We Reached the Tipping Point for Planet Earth?"--video title, StudioTalk.tv, May 11, 2010
"Must-Read Hansen and Sato Paper: We Are at a Climate Tipping Point That, Once Crossed, Enables Multi-Meter Sea Level Rise This Century"--headline, ThinkProgress.org, Jan. 20, 2011
"Earth: Have We Reached an Environmental Tipping Point?"--headline, BBC website, June 15, 2012
"In spite of the continued released [sic] of 90 million tons of global warming pollution every day into the atmosphere, as if it's an open sewer, we are now seeing the approach of a global political tipping point."--Al Gore, interview with Washington Post, Aug. 21, 2013
Folks have often sent links to this website. I find it non-credible. Surely Infowars gets some things correct but in fact it is just a propaganda website no better than the worst milbloggers. For instance, this entry reports that John Kerry used the 2003 Iraq photo (misused by BBC for Syria in 2012) to build his case for an attack on Syria. I watched the entire Kerry speech delivered on Friday. Kerry did not use the photo. Kerry is not my favorite politician, but truth is truth, and facts are not the specialty of Infowars. Friendly advice: I no longer click through Infowars links. They are no more reliable than Blackfive and the bottom tier milbloggers. Waste of time.
Title: BBC caught using dishonestly labelled foto?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2013, 12:41:48 PM
second post
BBC Accused of Using Iraq photo saying it was Syria
Title: Re: Media Issues - The butchured Butler
Post by: DougMacG on September 03, 2013, 12:35:38 PM
Michael Reagan complains that this movie contains a "bunch of lies" about his father: http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelreagan/2013/08/22/the-butler-from-another-planet-n1670773/page/full
My question, why does it take a family member to do that? Don't we have a media to take care of that? Shouldn't the writers, directors and producers be deathly afraid of being called on the carpet for putting out a 'reality-based' movie full of falsehoods and having their reputations permanently destroyed by the inaccuracies? Well, they aren't. The reviewers simply call the movie 'Oscar bait". http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/08/15/the-butler-review/2581949/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 04, 2013, 08:12:46 PM
I watched morning schmo this AM and he interviewed some Benghazi author and the interview was very similar to this. No mention whatsoever about the pre election cover up by Obama and Hillary and outright deception and lying to America for their political cover. Not a peep. Just that nothing in retrospect was done wrong in the events that led to the attack. Just that it is always easy in hindsight to retrospectively go back and find warning signs. Unbelievable. Then to sound really adorable they all croon (including Schmo) about the bravery and courage of those who were left to be murdered by those at the top (and yes, "we are here for a higher calling was a phrase used in 1975 and thus was no biggie that was used again this time). I know Americans see this but bottom line is their pocketbooks.
*****CBS Highlights Benghazi Anniversary; Fails to Mention Obama and Hillary By Name
Published: 9/3/2013 5:54 PM ET
Subscribe to Matthew Balan
By Matthew Balan
Tuesday's CBS This Morning spotlighted the upcoming one-year anniversary of the Islamist attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, but whitewashed the role of President Obama and his administration, including that of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Anchors Charlie Rose, Norah O'Donnell, and Gayle King didn't once mention Obama or Clinton's name during an interview segment with author Fred Burton.
In his new book, Burton revealed that "an unidentified security official in the Benghazi compound...messaged the U.S. embassy in Tripoli: 'Benghazi under fire, terrorist attack.'" However, Rose only vaguely referenced the White House's now-discredited talking point about the terrorist attack: "Does this book and your understanding of it suggest that everybody knew it was a planned attack, and not a surprise arising out of a protest?" [audio available here; video below]
The three anchors brought on the former diplomatic security agent to discuss "Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi". In her first question, King played up how her guest wrote, "'In this situation, there's no right or wrong decision – just the issue of reaction and survival.' So, really, take us inside that day – what happened day – these really young guys."
Burton replied, "I think the politics of this story have been put over the top, and what I wanted focus on, Gayle, was the heroism of the agents...on the ground, in this very difficult environment, trying to do the best they possibly could, based upon the circumstances that were unfolding."
King followed up with her own vague reference to the Obama administration's early talking point that the Benghazi attack was an impromptu reaction to an obscure anti-Muhammad YouTube video: "You point out this was not a ragtag team that came into the embassy that day. You said they were methodical, and they were systematic. These guys knew what they were doing."
Norah O'Donnell couldn't bring herself to use the President's name when she asked her sole question about the manhunt for the perpetrators of the terrorist attack. Instead, she used a general pronoun in reference to the United States:
NORAH O'DONNELL: It is almost a one year later since this attack happened and these four Americans were killed. And yet, those responsible are still on the loose. Why haven't we been able to catch them? What do you believe is behind the hunt for them, and why they've been so elusive?
Near the end of the end of the segment, Rose raised the issue of whether the incident was a "planned attack and not a surprise", but like his colleagues, didn't specifically mention that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had claimed that the assault was a "spontaneous - not a pre-meditated response" eight days later on several Sunday morning shows. CBS senior correspondent John Miller also hinted that Ambassador Chris Stevens was partially at fault:
JOHN MILLER: ...[Y]ou've got an ambassador who wants to travel. It's September 11th. It's a symbolic day for threats. And this is very typical of the Diplomatic Security Service. They're a small agency with...a very limited number of people covering 450 outposts. And usually, there is (sic) two of them – or just a handful – in a high-threat place to cover a threat like that. When the ambassador says, I want to go from Tripoli to Benghazi, nobody gets to say, well, sir, that's a bad day for that. We can't let you do that. They just mount up and go. And this is part of that story.
Exactly three weeks earlier, on the August 13, 2013 edition of CBS This Morning, correspondent John Blackstone boosted Hillary Clinton's potential 2016 presidential run, and minimized the ongoing questions about her leadership before, during, and after the attack in Benghazi. For opposition, Blackstone merely noted that "a new ad, just released by the GOP, criticizes Clinton's handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi", without further explaining the issue.
The full transcript of the Fred Burton segment from Tuesday's CBS This Morning:
NORAH O'DONNELL: Next week marks the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
[CBS News Graphic: "Inside Benghazi: Book Details Deadly U.S. Consulate Attack"]
GAYLE KING: For the first time, we hear from the agents assigned to protect Stevens in a new book detailing the assault. It's called 'Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi'. It's written by Fred Burton. He is a former diplomatic security agent, and a former State Department counter-terrorism deputy chief. He joins us, along with our senior correspondent – that would be John Miller, who's a former assistant FBI director. Good to see you both.
Fred Burton. I have to start with you, because I was on plane for ten hours yesterday, and I read your book from cover to cover-
FRED BURTON, CO-AUTHOR, "UNDER FIRE": Thank you-
KING: I have to say, I bugged the guy next to me – let me read you this part; let me read you this part. You know this job. You've done this job, so you how these guys were feeling. And at one point, you said, 'In this situation, there's no right or wrong decision – just the issue of reaction and survival.' So, really, take us inside that day – what happened that day – these really young guys.
BURTON: I think the politics of this story are – have been put over the top, and what I wanted focus on, Gayle, was the – the heroism of the agents – that were all very young – on the ground, in this very difficult environment, trying to do the best they possibly could, based upon the circumstances that were unfolding.
KING: But you point out this was not a ragtag team that came – came into the embassy that day. You said they were methodical, and they were systematic. These guys knew what they were doing.
BURTON: Absolutely. It was a very choreographed attack on the temporary facility, which was not up to physical security standards; which, obviously, has been discussed, as a result of the follow-on accountability review board by the State Department. But in essence, this is what diplomatic security service agents do. I investigated the last U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty in 1988, which was Ambassador Arnie Raphel. He perished aboard Pak-1, which was the aircraft which killed the president of Pakistan. And I was all of about 24, 25-years-old at the time, and I remember just being greatly overwhelmed by circumstances. And I certainly didn't have the experience in my – in my mind, to do the job that – that it would have been a different story today if I'd gone out to do the same kind of case.
O'DONNELL: It is almost a one year later since this attack happened and these four Americans were killed. And yet, those responsible are still on the loose. Why haven't we been able to catch them? What do you believe is behind the hunt for them, and why they've been so elusive?
BURTON: Well, I personally don't believe that anybody will ever be captured and brought into a court of law to be prosecuted for this. I think the most probable outcome will be some sort of Predator drone strike on the suspects identified. It's a very hostile environment. There is no infrastructure in place, Norah, to capture these individuals. The Libyans do not have a FBI or a CIA, per se. This is a country that is like the wild, wild West-
O'DONNELL: Sure, sure-
CHARLIE ROSE: You talk about the politics of all this. But does this book and your understanding of it suggest that everybody knew it was a planned attack, and not a surprise arising out of a protest?
BURTON: Well, you look at this case, Charlie. What you have is the moment that the first round was fired, the agents that were there knew absolutely that this was a terrorist attack. That was the only outcome that they were dealing with at the moment-
ROSE: Right-
BURTON: Remember, that the counter-terrorism community is really not geared for decisions to be made at the highest level. So, there's a process that's in play; notifications are made; and, in essence, you have to have good contingency plans, so you have an appropriate response at that period of time.
KING: John what were the lessons learned in Benghazi, do you think, that will help protect other diplomats?
JOHN MILLER: Well, there's the formal essence, which will come out from the review board; and there are the informal lessons, and one of the reminders is that the ambassador is 'god'. And that is, you know, when you're in a hostile environment – the ambassador was popular there, and had operated in Benghazi before. But you've got a security package that is shrinking, and you've got an ambassador who wants to travel. It's September 11th. It's a symbolic day for threats. And this is very – this is very typical of the Diplomatic Security Service. They're a small agency with – with, you know, a very limited number of people covering 450 outposts. And usually, there is (sic) two of them – or just a handful – in a high-threat place to cover a threat like that. When the ambassador says, I want to go from Tripoli to Benghazi, nobody gets to say, well, sir, that's a bad day for that. We can't let you do that-
KING: Yes, yes-
MILLER: They just mount up and go. And this is part of that story.
KING: And the most touching thing was to remember Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. We'll be right back.
— Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.******
Title: She's not covering Paris Hilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2013, 10:18:02 AM
Title: Senate approves bill to protect Wash insider journalists
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2013, 07:01:26 AM
With of course their preferred political ideology. Naturally that is not exactly how this is worded but isn't it plainly obvious this is how one can read through this. Another example of 1% privilege for those who are connected that is exactly what I am talking about. Those 1% get many benefits the rest of us don't get. Sure if they get it fairly and squarely no problem. But if they get it through advantages only they have then of course 99% are going to be resentful. Like why is Romney paying 17% tax and I am paying well over 30%? Yes I am angry. And why is nearly half the country not paying any? OTOH hand I don't think people paying millions should pay a higher percentage either. Flat tax.
*****Drudge hates new shield bill, but is defining 'journalist' really 'fascist'?
A media shield law approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee defines a “real reporter” deserving of extra protection. Bloggers, "citizen journalists," and others cry "foul!"
Christian Science Monitor Patrik Jonsson 17 hours ago
In its attempt to define who’s a journalist and who’s not, is the US Senate trying to say that Thomas Paine, a corset-maker, wouldn’t have deserved the same protections from government heavy-handedness as a newspaper publisher like Ben Franklin?
The first version of a media shield law that handily made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday defined for the first time what constitutes a “real reporter” deserving of extra protection versus what Sen. Dianne Feinstein called a “17-year-old blogger” who doesn’t deserve a legal shield.
While Mr. Paine eventually edited magazines in the United States, he’s best known for his pamphleteering days, when he self-published “Common Sense,” one of the American Revolution’s most poignant calls to arms. Modern bloggers often see themselves as the inheritors of the pamphleteering tradition, and many wondered on Friday whether Paine would be covered under the proposed law.
That Congress is attempting to define “journalist” at all in order to expand protections after a number of high-profile leak cases and ensuing Justice Department prosecutions caused blog impresario Matt Drudge to call Ms. Feinstein a “fascist” on Twitter, suggesting that the law would subvert a free press by giving institutional advantage to government-approved media outlets.
“Federal judge once ruled Drudge 'is not a reporter, a journalist, or a newsgatherer,'” Mr. Drudge, proprietor of the massive news aggregator site Drudge Report, Tweeted Friday. “Millions of readers a day come for cooking recipes??!”
On its face, the proposed shield law doesn’t affect the First Amendment, which at any rate doesn’t guarantee anybody’s right to publish whatever they want. The bill simply adds extra protections against being forced to testify about sources for established reporters and freelancers with a “considerable” amount of publishing experience. It also allows a judge to make a declaration as to who’s a journalist and who’s not in an attempt to build the shield as wide as possible.
“All we’re doing is adding privilege to existing First Amendment rights, so there is, logically, zero First Amendment threat out of this,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, (D) of Rhode Island.
But conservative bloggers, including some law professors, had a different reaction, suggesting that such a law would give the Department of Justice powerful discretion that could potentially be used to intimidate amateur reporters who are also working in the public interest.
The boom in online news arguably has helped polarize the American political scene, but it has also given readers access to far more data and viewpoints than they had under the system of editors and reporters that make up the traditional American newsroom.
Moreover, largely because the First Amendment extends press freedoms to all Americans, the US has no special licensing requirements for journalists, as many other Western countries do, meaning that the shield law would be the country’s first attempt to create what critics call an “elite” tier for the institutional press.
“Journalism is an activity, not a profession,” wrote University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who mans the popular InstaPundit blog.
Some senators agreed. “It strikes me that we are on dangerous territory if we are drawing distinctions that are treating some engaged in the process of reporting and journalism better than others,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, (R) of Texas. “Essentially as I understand this amendment, it protects what I would characterize as the ‘corporate media’…. But it leaves out citizen bloggers.”
The intent of the federal shield is to enshrine in law what, until the Obama administration, had been maintained mostly as a tradition – that reporters shouldn’t have to testify about how or through whom they received sensitive information with a demonstrable public interest.
Fighting back against leakers like Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange, who have used the Internet to instantly disseminate vast troves of classified data and documents to the global masses, the Obama administration has prosecuted both whistleblowers and reporters who have gained access to that kind of data with an unprecedented vigilance. The administration has also been caught tapping dozens of phone lines at the Associated Press, the nation’s preeminent wire service.
(Ironically, President Obama has said he supports a shield law that critics point out has been made more necessary by the actions of his administration.)
The bill says that a "covered journalist" is a person who gathers or writes news for "an entity or service that disseminates news and information."
The bill, however, does not offer an impenetrable shield.
Federal officials can still “compel disclosure” from a reporter who has information that could prevent a murder or child kidnapping, help stop acts of terrorism, or information that could cause severe harm to national security.****
Title: Your professional, unbiased media at work...
Post by: G M on September 17, 2013, 02:52:43 PM
Piers Morgan: On second thought, does it really matter what kind of gun was used at the Navy Yard?
posted at 2:47 pm on September 17, 2013 by Allahpundit
Is there anyone in American media who trolls more people with less effort than this insufferable wanker? I’m not even mad. It’s a talent. If you don’t have an actual fan base, the logical thing to do when you’re not playing pattycake with celebrities is to seize a hot-button issue with both hands and start a fight over it at every opportunity. If America ever did ban guns, his first tweet the next morning would be about how, if you think about it, abortion really should be available up to and including the start of labor.
Last night’s talking point: The Navy Yard shooting proves once again why we need to get rid of “assault weapons” like the AR-15. Today’s talking point, now that we know there were no “assault weapons” involved:
Piers Morgan @piersmorgan
Lots of confusion over exactly what guns Wash Navy Yard shooter used. But do you think it matters to the victims? #GunControlNow
There’s no “confusion.” The FBI confirmed hours ago to his own network that Alexis had a shotgun and two pistols. This is simply Piers being unwilling to eat two scoops of sh*t publicly for his demagoguery yesterday. But in his defense, he’s far from alone among media gun-grabbers in that regard. And if it makes you feel better, this new tweet at least represents what’s obviously his honest view. No one who believes what Morgan believes about guns would stop logically at “assault weapons.” They’re merely a foot in the regulatory door. If Piers had his way, at a minimum we’d be talking about a ban on all semiautomatics. Not that that would have stopped Alexis either.
Via Noah Rothman, as of noon ET today, MSNBC was still running a graphic of Alexis wielding an AR-15 instead of a shotgun or pistol. Of course.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 17, 2013, 04:41:59 PM
GM when I first pulled up your post and saw the picture of the person with the rifle watching over other people first looked like a prison with a guard then you see "lean forward" in the corner and I think liberal control freaks who want to monitor everything we do and control us and force us to their will. Because that is what their agenda is.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on September 17, 2013, 05:30:19 PM
GM when I first pulled up your post and saw the picture of the person with the rifle watching over other people first looked like a prison with a guard then you see "lean forward" in the corner and I think liberal control freaks who want to monitor everything we do and control us and force us to their will. Because that is what their agenda is.
Well, that is their dream.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2013, 08:26:25 PM
I think I have the gist of this right: Some of you may have seen that Time's cover this week in the US was about paying amateur athletes, whereas in the rest of the world it was of Putin and how he had anally raped the US. Why the difference? Well it may have something to do with the fact that the man who made the decision will be going to work for Sec. State Kerry. Quelle coincidence!
Title: media and prozac?
Post by: ccp on September 18, 2013, 06:52:24 AM
I really don't know if SSRI drugs can be blamed for the shooting as implied. There is no question these drugs help a lot of people au contraire to Michael Savage's rants. Also people who take them are often at risk of mood disorders and that is why they take them. It is always easy for those with financial/political interests to simply blame the drug. (Pat Kennedy drove into the side of the capital building because of ambien and not that he was drunk.) In this case the Navy yard shooter was delusional and indeed SSRIs do not treat delusional or hallucinatory disorders. They are not antipsychotics. If he did in fact have bipolar disorder than treating the depressive component with an SSRI while not treating the manic side could very well have led to even worse mania outbreaks. This is well know to anyone who goes to medical school. There is always some risk that a person seeks medical help during the depressive state and the doctor treats that only and then the patient actually has undiagnosed bipolar. If people are manic they feel great and don't go to the doctor unless someone else brings them in.
What I absolutely like about this article is it highlights the corruption of our big media complex. It is extraordinarily corrupt and while it is just conjecture that the media buries this because of money from big pharmaceutical companies with ad campaigns it is certainly food for thought.
*****Media Buries Psychiatric Drug Connection to Navy Shooter
The Alex Jones Channel Alex Jones Show podcast Prison Planet TV Infowars.com Twitter Alex Jones' Facebook Infowars store
Networks don’t want to risk losing $2.4 billion in ad revenue from pharmaceutical giants
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com September 18, 2013
Despite every indication that Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis was on SSRI drugs that have been linked to dozens of previous mass shootings, the mainstream media has once again avoided all discussion of the issue, preferring instead to blame the tragedy on a non-existent AR-15 that the gunman didn’t even use.
We now know that Alexis “had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems.”
As Mike Adams points out, “This is proof that Aaron Alexis was on psychiatric drugs, because that’s the only treatment currently being offered by the Veterans Administration for mental problems. Alexis’ family members also confirmed to the press that he was being “treated” for his mental health problems. Across the medical industry, “treatment” is the code word for psychiatric drugging.”
Alexis also suffered from PTSD, blackouts and anger issues – all of which are treated with SSRI drugs. The most common form of treatment for PTSD is Paroxetine, which is listed as the number 3 top violence-causing drug by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP).
The Navy Yard shooter was clearly on some form of psychiatric drug, but the media has shown no interest in discovering its identity.
Despite it being reported that prescription drugs were found in the apartment of ‘Batman’ shooter James Holmes days after the Aurora massacre, it took nine months to find out exactly what those drugs were. Like Columbine killer Eric Harris, Holmes had been taking Zoloft, another SSRI drug linked with violent outbursts.
The length of time it took to find out that Holmes was on Zoloft was partly because the media habitually shows zero interest in pursuing the link between anti-depressants and violence.
As the website SSRI Stories profusely documents, there are literally hundreds of examples of mass shootings, murders and other violent episodes that have been committed by individuals on psychiatric drugs over the past three decades. The number of cases is staggering.
Why is the corporate media so disinterested in pursuing this clear connection?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the pharmaceutical giants who produce drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil spend around $2.4 billion dollars a year on direct-to-consumer television advertising every year. By running negative stories about prescription drugs, networks risk losing tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue.
While failing to ask questions about what SSRI drugs Aaron Alexis was taking prior to his rampage, the media instead blamed the shooting on assault rifles, even after it had been confirmed that no AR-15 was used by Alexis during the massacre.
FBI assistant director Victoria Parlave stated at a press conference on Tuesday that authorities, “do not have any information at this time that [Alexis] had an AR-15 in his possession.”
Despite there being no evidence that an AR-15 was used, the New York Daily News ran a front page headline yesterday morning entitled, “Same Gun Different Slay,” next to a picture of an assault rifle.
Hours after the FBI stated that no AR-15 had been used, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, who previously blamed the Boston bombings on Alex Jones,continued to use an animated graphic depicting Alexis carrying an assault rifle during the massacre.
Anti-second amendment crusader Piers Morgan also erroneously blamed the shooting on “a man with a legally purchased AR-15, who just committed the same kind of atrocity as we saw at Sandy Hook, and Aurora,” during his CNN show on Monday.
CNN’s live news coverage also reported that Alexis had “recently purchased (an) AR-15 shotgun,” when in fact that purchase had been denied.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post also falsely reported that an AR-15 had been found on Alexis after the massacre.
DC gun grabbers Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin also regurgitated the false claim that Alexis used an AR-15 during the rampage.
The US press has once again behaved like state media in the aftermath of the Navy Yard shooting by pursuing the assault rifle angle – despite the fact that it was patently false – in order to bolster the White House’s gun control agenda.
In doing so, they have concurrently buried an integral aspect of mass shootings that needs to highlighted as part of a national conversation – the clear connection between violent outbursts and SSRI drugs.*****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2013, 07:56:11 AM
Though infowars may have this one right, its reputation is so deservedly bad that I would really rather have a different source for this. If this is true, surely someone else is covering this as well , , ,
Title: Your professional, nonpartisan media at work
Post by: G M on September 23, 2013, 01:55:23 PM
The New York Post’s Michael Gartland has done more digging on the story of Wazn Miller. He is the teenager whose last moments the Newark mayor has relayed numerous times in paid speeches and on the stump, but a little fact-checking as well as the police report made public after NR sued Booker and the city of Newark revealed that Booker has taken considerable liberties with the story, inflating his own role and, it appears, outright fabricating certain details.
Here is Booker in 2007 remarks:
It seemed like a whirlwind was going on around me, so much was flashing through my mind as I sat there just trying to hold this child as his breathing stopped … The ambulance finally came, pushed me out of the way, ripped open his shirt where I now saw three gunshot wounds in his front, one in his side — and he was dead.
Here is Gartland:
Wazn Miller didn’t die in Booker’s arms — and while the then-34-year-old pol was there, he may have made matters worse. A woman was cradling the prone Miller when Miller’s friend David Estrada, 14 at the time, arrived.
“He came over and picked him up,” said Estrada, now 23. “A lot of people said, ‘You’re not supposed to move somebody after they get shot.’ The bullets might start moving around.”
Gilez Smith, 27, said he saw Miller struggling to live and described Booker’s heroics as a “ploy.”
“I told him, ‘Just leave him alone!’ ” Smith recalled. “He was like, ‘Breathe, breathe,’ smacking him all in the face . . . It was a big act.”
Miller “was still breathing” when medics put him in the ambulance, Estrada insisted.
The police report confirms Estrada’s account, not Booker’s. According to the document signed by Newark Detective Vincent Vitiello, Miller “expired from his injuries at University Hospital.”
NRO has taken issue with similar inconsistencies in Booker’s retelling of the tragic event; kudos to Gartland for tracking down witnesses.
Gartland also takes aim at several other stories that have become part of the Booker lore, among them, Booker’s drug-dealing pal T-Bone, whose existence NRO called into question after Rutgers University history professor Clement Price told us Booker conceded to him in 2008 the character was an “invention.” Garland tracked down a fellow resident of Brick Towers, the Newark housing complex where Booker lived when he claims to have met T-Bone:
“There was never a T-Bone,” said a 32-year-old former resident of Brick Towers, the former housing complex where Booker lived and where “T-Bone” supposedly plied his drug trade.
“There was a T, and there was a Bone from Prince Street,” he recalled. “T was in Brick Towers.”
T was bloodthirsty, his acquaintance recalled. “Booker and T didn’t have no run-in. If they did, Booker wouldn’t be walking around now,” he said.
Booker and his campaign are standing by his tall tale about T-Bone. Indeed, Booker is digging himself in deeper, telling NJTV’s Michael Aron not only that the charge is a “right-wing fabrication” but that, as a young man in Newark, he knew “literally hundreds” of drug dealers and that, when he became mayor, he held some sort of support meetings for them in his home and even allowed them to spend the night. What a guy.
Gartland also turns his attention to the superhero mayor’s actions in the wake of the 2010 blizzard that blanketed the northeast. Time chonicled how Booker and his staff personally shoveled streets and delivered diapers to a woman who was snowed in and couldn’t leave her home to purchase them. Gartland tracked her down:
Barbara Byers confirmed to The Post that Booker, in one of the more colorful accounts of his heroic, hands-on approach to governing, delivered Pampers to her home. But the press never questioned how she felt about it.
“I always found it weird that no one asked me about what happened,” she said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t have diapers because I didn’t go shopping. It was two days later and nobody cleared our street.
“He’s a very nice man, but he isn’t a good mayor,” she added. “If he would have done his job, I would have been able to do for myself and gone out. It took three days for someone to come by with a plow the first time.”
Then there’s Booker’s eulogy to Newark education activist Judy Diggs. It really is worth watching the video, available in full here. Diggs, Booker told a crowd of Democrats at a fundraiser outside of Newark, “was out of the most artful and eloquent user of curse words I have ever met.” “She used them like you and I would probably use punctuation marks in a sentence,” he said, to raucus laughter. Diggs, Booker recounted, had also died “a poetic death”: reading to schoolchildren. Except that she didn’t. As I noted here and as Gartland notes in his piece, Diggs died in her office.
“It makes sense for him to go to Yale and to go to Summit and tell all these stories because he don’t have to answer the questions,” Tyree Diggs said. “If he says it here [in Newark], he has all kinds of questions to answer.”
Read Gartland’s piece in its entirety here.
It’s astonishing that Booker is now 15 years into his political career, and, largely through anecdotes we are now coming to see are full of holes, has amassed dozens of high-profile backers in Silicon Valley and around the country who fell in love with his “story.” Thanks also in part to these emotional anecdotes, he is now and set to become the junior senator from New Jersey. Maybe one of these days a prominent national political reporter will ask him about what increasingly looks like his troubled relationship with the truth.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on September 23, 2013, 07:45:40 PM
Didn't Booker also just happen to show in time to pull someone out of burning house? That was probably some sort of set up too come to think of it.
Title: Our Truest Lies
Post by: G M on September 24, 2013, 05:24:32 PM
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
September 24, 2013 4:00 AM
Our Truest Lies If the truth doesn’t serve social justice — well, tell a noble lie. By Victor Davis Hanson
At the end of John Ford’s classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the editor of the local paper decides not to print the truth about who really killed the murderous Valance. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Legends now become facts in America at almost lightning speed. Often when lies are asserted as truth, they become frozen in time. Even the most damning later exposure of their falsity never quite erases their currency. As Jonathan Swift sighed, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”
After the recent shooting tragedy at the Washington Navy Yard, cable news shows, newspaper reports, and talking heads immediately blasted lax gun laws. The killer, Aaron Alexis, had mowed down 20 innocent people — twelve of them fatally — with yet again the satanic AR-15 semi-automatic “assault” rifle. The mass murdering was supposedly more proof of the lethal pathologies of the National Rifle Association and the evil shooter crowd that prevents good people from enacting proper gun-control laws. Once more an iconic tragedy had the chance — in a way that even the near-simultaneous shooting of 13 in Chicago did not — to energize the nation to do the right thing and ensure that no other such mayhem would follow.
Then the assault weapon vanished into fantasy. Instead, over the course of the week, it was slowly learned that the unhinged Alexis had somehow passed at least two background checks, legally bought a shotgun, modified it, and for 30 minutes shot and reloaded it to slaughter the innocent. Are we to outlaw the owning of shotguns despite background checks and lawful purchases? Vice President Joe Biden, remember, had recently urged Americans to obtain old-fashioned, all-American shotguns for protection rather than dangerous semi-automatic assault rifles. If a shotgun could be used to commit mass murder in the middle of a military installation, how could any gun-control law, short of the confiscation of all guns, ensure that such heinous crimes could not be repeated?
Few seem interested in other, less politically correct, less melodramatic solutions. It was reported that Alexis had been treated for severe bouts of mental illness, yet apparently without endangering his security clearances. Like the deranged Sandy Hook mass murderer, Adam Lanza, Alexis was also pathologically addicted to playing violent video games for hours on end. Further controversy arose over the fact that most military personnel are not allowed to carry weapons at facilities like the Navy Yard.
Unfortunately, few of our elites dared to question the mental-health industry’s approach to treating the unstable, especially its resistance to properly monitoring whether those being treated as outpatients are taking their medications. Few faulted the entertainment industry for the savage genre of the modern video game. Should we also blame the incompetence of the agencies that conducted the background checks? Was the Pentagon to blame for not allowing military personnel and contractors to carry weapons while on their own federal military facilities?
After all, none of those considerations served the larger progressive purpose of restricting gun use and ownership. More likely, these other disturbing truths threatened liberal assumptions about First Amendment rights and freedom of expression. If the white extremist Timothy McVeigh, the iconic anti-government terrorist, long ago showed us how generic right-wing extremism could lead to atrocities such as the Oklahoma bombing, then the African-American, pro-Obama, Buddhist, Thai-speaking Aaron Alexis, who murdered without an AR-15, was hardly useful as an indictment of much of anything deemed Neanderthal.
All this is old hat. We still do not know exactly what happened that night of the tragic fatal confrontation between Travyon Martin and George Zimmerman. But we at least do know that most of the fables initially peddled by the media were demonstrably false — but even now not remembered as demonstrably false. George Zimmerman was not a bigoted “white Hispanic” who used racist language in his 911 call as he deliberately hunted down a black suspect. And he really did suffer visibly bleeding head wounds from a hard blow of some sort from Trayvon Martin. The latter was not a diminutive model student or the vulnerable pre-teen pictured in most media photos. Even photoshopping and doctoring tapes could not create a teachable moment out of such chaos.
No matter; such a moment was created anyway. Without any statistical support, our moral censors still wished to traffic in narratives of white racist vigilantes hunting down innocent African-American male teens. That narrative served as a reminder of why we have a civil-rights movement of the sort championed by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who fiddle while thousands of minority youths are gunned down each year in our inner cities. In other words, as far as the Zimmerman trial went, the human story of tragedy, misjudgment, accident, reaction, and overreaction simply did not serve the larger liberal effort to address perceived issues of social justice. Tragedy was better served by melodrama, and both Zimmerman and Martin became cutout caricatures rather than tragic individuals.
The same may be unfortunately true of the infamous Matthew Shepard case. The savagely murdered gay youth was probably not, as we were told for years, the victim of the rage of Wyoming redneck homophobes, energized in their hatred by the sexual prejudices of an intolerant culture. The truth was more complicated, though Shepard’s fate just as tragic.
A 13-year-long investigation by a gay writer, who reexamined the Shepard case with the intention of writing a screenplay, instead suggests that it might be more likely that Shepard was cruelly tortured and beaten into a coma by methamphetamine-crazed psychotics, who may on prior occasions have shared their drug use with Shepard and intended to rob him. For all their crude macho talk, the two evil perpetrators may have been bisexual themselves. Shepard’s own homosexuality, in other words, seems to have been incidental to, not the cause of, his lamentable death. If Shepard’s sad fate must be an icon of anything, it more likely serves as a warning that the vicious meth cartels in rural America are out of control, and the addicted can ensnare and murder anyone, including naïve college students. Again, no matter — what was false has served noble purposes in a way that what was true will not.
Many of the progressive tales that Americans grew up with in the 20th century have also been proven either noble lies or half-truths. The American Left has canonized the narrative that anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were framed, subjected to a show trial, and then executed as a result of widespread American prejudice, xenophobia, and reactionary fear-mongering. Their executions sparked worldwide protests, novels, and plays reacting to the intolerance of a morally suspect America. Yet decades later, most historians, while they concede that the trials of 1921 did not match jurisprudence of a near-century later — nevertheless also quietly accept that the two were indeed anarchist terrorists, and at least one was probably guilty of armed robbery and murder, and the other of being an accessory after the fact. Bigots do not always arrive at bigoted verdicts.
Liberal culture likewise assumed that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on false charges of spying for the Soviet Union and that at least one of them had not really passed on secrets about the American atomic-bomb project. The two accused became causes célèbres as thousands worldwide rallied to save them from dangerous American know-nothings. Their messy electrocutions were supposedly likewise symptomatic of a paranoid America lashing out at easy victims in an era of Red-baiting, anti-Semitism, and rank McCarthyism.
The truth was in comparison banal. While we know that the Soviets would probably have gotten the H-bomb soon anyway, and that they claimed they were still our allies when they received top-secret American information, and while we know too that today the Rosenbergs would probably have received 20-year sentences, we also know from Soviet archives that they both worked as Soviet spies, who passed to our enemies information about nuclear weapons and other valuable classified projects.
There was no greater liberal icon than Alger Hiss, a smooth, debonair diplomat and foundation head, who likewise was supposedly ground up by the right-wing buzz saw with unfounded charges of spying and treason. While we are still not sure of the degree of damage that Hiss actually did, it is clear that he was at some point in his life a Soviet spy — a damning fact for an American diplomat at times entrusted with matters of the nation’s security during the early Cold War. That disturbing truth, however, was minor in comparison to the larger untruth that the Hiss case represented the dangerous excesses of reactionary America. So Hiss became a sort of progressive Great Gatsby, a fake, self-inventing himself into something grand that he was not.
In recent memory, several popular icons of revolutionary resistance have been revealed as frauds and worse. Che Guevara — locks, beard, and motorcycle — was a psychotic thug who enjoyed executing his political opponents. Bill Ayers by his own admission was “guilty as hell” of being a violent terrorist; until he had the bad luck of hawking on 9/11 his memoir of his terrorist days, he was on the road to canonization. Rigoberta Menchú was not quite a gifted author who revealed the horrors of right-wing repression in a cry-of-the-heart memoir of resistance. More likely, she fabricated stories in service to her perceived higher calling of exposing brutal reactionary class violence against the poor.
Popular icon Mumia Abu-Jamal was not framed for a crime he did not commit because of endemic institutionalized racism, but rather really did shoot and kill a Philadelphia police officer. All the progressive protests in the world cannot alter that fact. Angela Davis was not quite a sincere advocate of those unduly incarcerated. While a jury found that the guns she supplied a number of San Francisco murderers did not constitute her own culpability for the attack on the Marin County courthouse, she was nonetheless an unrepentant Stalinist. Of those who suffered in the Communist archipelago, she once scoffed, “They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.”
In more recent days, from Tawana Brawley to the Duke lacrosse team, the theme remains disturbingly the same: The original progressive untruth proves far stronger than subsequent pedestrian correction. The point was not that the Duke players did not rape a black stripper and commit a “hate crime,” but that they were the sort who in theory could have, and she was the sort who in theory could have been raped by virtue of her race and gender — a virtual truth that trumps a known lie.
We are left not with the truth that Aaron Alexis bought a shotgun to murder, but with the conjecture that he could have bought legally an AR-15 and therefore in some sense figuratively did — despite the later and less publicized corrections. If it takes some mythologies about Matthew Shepard to expose the plague of homophobia, why indict a noble lie to promote an ignoble truth? What difference does it make what actually happened between shooter Wesley Cook and slain officer Daniel Faulkner, when the Mumia myth serves larger agencies of social change?
Like Orwell’s dead souls, we live in an age of statist mythology, in which unpleasant facts are replaced by socially useful lies. So we print the legend that better serves our fantasies.
Title: WSJ: More on CNN's translation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2013, 05:07:43 PM
Our friends at the Cable News Network are objecting to our Thursday editorial ("Holocaust Denial in Translation") that noted subtle but significant discrepancies between what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking in Persian, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, and what CNN's viewers heard in the English translation of his remarks. In a Twitter post, Ms. Amanpour insists that "CNN reported exactly what Rouhani said."
Er, not exactly, Christiane.
Ms. Amanpour's interview is gaining notice because it seemed to have Mr. Rouhani denouncing the Holocaust. CNN's English transcript of the interview quotes the Iranian leader as "speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust" (our emphasis), while adding that "whatever criminality they [the Nazis] committed against the Jews, we condemn."
But as we pointed out in the editorial, Mr. Rouhani never uses the word "Holocaust." He merely speaks of "aspects of historical events." Our independent translation of Mr. Rouhani's remarks confirms this, as does Arash Karami of the Iran Pulse website, as does the transcript provided by Mr. Rouhani's office, as does the semi-official Fars news agency, which is demanding its own correction from CNN.
The point may seem small to Western ears, but it's significant in the context of a regime for which Holocaust denial is an article of ideological faith. Ditto for the second comment: Mr. Rouhani did not speak narrowly of Nazi crimes against Jews, but more broadly of crimes "against the Jews and the non-Jews." This distinction is also important, because central to the claims of Holocaust revisionists is the lie that Jews were not the deliberate and principal target of Nazi genocide.
Lest there be any doubt about Mr. Rouhani's careful word play, he also weighed in on the subject during an appearance this week at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We condemn the crimes by Nazis in the World War II," he said, again without speaking of a Holocaust. "And regrettably those crimes were committed against many groups, many people, many people were killed including a group of Jewish people."
As the New York Sun points out, "a group of Jewish people" is a telling way to describe the six million murdered by the Nazis. Maybe Mr. Rouhani has to be so rhetorically evasive because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has denounced "the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust"—a statement you can find on his official, English-language website.
Meantime, we note with amusement that Ms. Amanpour objects to our agreeing with the accuracy of the Fars translation, as opposed to CNN's: "Stunned by willingness of [Wall Street Journal editorial] page and others to jump into bed with Iranian extremist mouthpiece like FARS." Which is funny, because the interpreter on whom CNN relied for its mistranslation was part of Mr. Rouhani's Iranian government entourage.
So we will not be offering an apology to CNN, though we will be happy to accept theirs.
Title: Seymour Hersh
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2013, 08:57:59 PM
Interesting read about a controversial journalist's current thoughts:
Title: "Such is the power the Clintons wield over the national media"
Post by: ccp on October 05, 2013, 08:07:59 AM
Exactly. Look what happened to Weiner. He leads in the NYC polls and then more pictures come out about him doing the same thing AFTER first being exposed. But that was not what did him in. Its was the comparisons to the Clintons. That is what got the MSM decidedly motivated to trash him. Can't have him hurt politically their '16 candidate:
*****The Death of the Hillary Movies
Brent Bozell's column is released twice a week.
Brent Bozell III L. Brent Bozell October 4, 2013 3:00 AM Arts & EntertainmentMediaHillary Rodham Clinton
On the same day, CNN and NBC both dropped their plans to make movies about Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, it looks like a win both for the Clintons and for RNC chair Reince Priebus, who boldly told the two networks that they wouldn't be moderating any GOP presidential debates in 2015 or 2016 with those promotional films in the pipeline.
Apologies might be owed from The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which prematurely waved a white flag: "God grant Reince Priebus the serenity to accept liberal media bias. ... The Hollywood-media complex is going to line up hard behind Hillary's 2016 Presidential bid, and this is the first salvo. Mr. Priebus can't stop it, he can't even hope to contain it, so all he has done is open himself to complaints that he's acting as Lord Republican Media Censor."
The same charges of censorship aren't often lobbed at the Clintons, whose idea of "message discipline" doesn't just pertain to their own statements, but toward "discipline" of anyone who might damage their lifelong narrative of ambition.
Charles Ferguson, the leftist documentarian signed up by CNN Films, wrote a commentary for The Huffington Post explaining why he was canceling his movie. "When I approached people for interviews, I discovered that nobody, and I mean nobody, was interested in helping me make this film. Not Democrats, not Republicans — and certainly nobody who works with the Clintons, wants access to the Clintons, or dreams of a position in a Hillary Clinton administration."
Then he added: "Not even journalists who want access, which can easily be taken away."
Ferguson's road to nowhere began with a Hillary Clinton functionary named Nick Merrill. "He interrogated me; at first I answered, but eventually I stopped." Hillary would not agree to an off-the-record conversation. Longtime aide Phillippe Reines "contacted various people at CNN, interrogated them, and expressed concern about alleged conflicts of interest generated because my film was a for-profit endeavor."
CNN declined to comment on this pressure campaign. Ferguson said he believed that Clinton aides tried to stonewall his attempts to persuade people to talk on camera. "They knew this wasn't a whitewash," he said. "And my very strong impression was that anything other than a whitewash is something they don't want to support."
Such is the power the Clintons wield over the national media.
There is still one Hillary movie project on the horizon, a biographical film called "Rodham" that focuses on Hillary's 1974 work for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate probe. An early script leak to the Daily Beast had fictional — and sensationalistic — elements. Hillary is asked if she and Bill have premarital sex, and she replies, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'sex' means."
The leaked script also suggests Hillary had a flirty relationship with Bill Weld, the future liberal Republican governor of Massachusetts (who also served on the House Watergate effort). That ends when young Slick Willie calls on her birthday and plays the saxophone over the telephone, both "Happy Birthday" and "Hail to the Chief." This apparently seals their lifelong bond.
The early script also had Hillary dropping all kinds of F-bombs, especially of the "mother" variety, "much to Bill's delight." It shouldn't be shocking to find that the moviemakers are hiking backwards on this vulgar trail. James Ponsoldt, the director attached to the project, told The Atlantic Wire that he's "not really interested in airing the dirty laundry of famous people" and the story "predates any of the feelings people have about the Clintons, for better or for worse," but that is simply not true.
The New York Times reported that a "person briefed on the film's progress said the script had been toned down" after the script leaked, and "the new version, this person said, will be more genteel, with a greater focus on the love story." Because, as we all know, the Clintons would like the media elites to describe Bill's romantic style as "more genteel."
It remains to be seen if this Watergate-era project is any more likely to be finished than the CNN and NBC films. It currently has no cast and no financing. The political '70s aren't churning out hits. In recent years, Oliver Stone's "Nixon" and Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon" grossed $13 million and $18 million in America, respectively.
The likeliest Hillary movie on the horizon is another documentary from the feisty conservatives of Citizens United. When they produced "Hillary: The Movie" in 2008, Clinton liberals took them all the way to the Supreme Court, only to lose. Part Deux should be a doozy.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM****
Title: 2nd media post for the day
Post by: ccp on October 05, 2013, 08:19:15 AM
My vote would go to either Steyn or Marc Levin. "Can you imagine" Marc Levin going up against Paul Krugman on prime time? Yes that would be great. I doubt Levin would want to be on network TV though. Especially ABC. Yet it would be good for the cause to have a great spokesperson on a MSM. Will occasionally makes a few good points but he is tired and NOT much of a spokesperson for conservatives. Levin love him or hate him would fire shots heard around the world. Will whispers and few hear. Just my take.
Title: The Truth About Robert Spencer...
Post by: objectivist1 on October 21, 2013, 06:13:13 AM
The Truth about Robert Spencer
Posted By JihadWatch.org On October 21, 2013 @ frontpagemag.com
The charge: Both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have labeled the group that Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller founded as an anti-Muslim hate group.
The facts: Robert Spencer is no more “anti-Muslim” than foes of the Nazis were “anti-German.” It has become common, because of the efforts of Islamic supremacist and Leftist groups, to equate resistance to jihad terror with “hate,” but there is no substance to this. Spencer’s work has been entirely dedicated to defending the freedom of speech and the principle of equality of rights for all people before the law.
The SPLC keeps tabs on neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. And that is good. But the implication of their hate group label is that the group that Spencer and Geller founded, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is another one of those, which is false. While the SPLC may have done good work in the 1960s against white racists, in recent years it has become a mere propaganda organ for the Left, tarring any group that dissents from its extreme political agenda as a “hate group.” Significantly, although it lists hundreds of groups as “hate groups,” it includes not a single Islamic jihad group on this list. And its “hate group” designation against the Family Research Council led one of its followers to storm the FRC offices with a gun, determined to murder the chief of the FRC. This shows that these kinds of charges shouldn’t be thrown around frivolously, as tools to demonize and marginalize those whose politics the SPLC dislikes. But that is exactly what they do. Its hard-Left leanings are well known and well documented. This Weekly Standard article sums up much of what is wrong with the SPLC.
The ADL traffics in the same reckless defamation. They have libeled the preeminent lawyer and orthodox Jew David Yerushalmi as an “extremist,” an “anti-Muslim bigot” and a “white supremacist.” The ADL has even condemned Israel for fighting anti-Semitism. According to Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance: “The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – biggest Jewish ‘defense’ organization — admits in private that the biggest danger to Jews since WWII comes from Muslim Jew-hatred, but because it fears offending its liberal donors and being charged with ‘Islamophobia,’ the organization remains essentially silent on the issue. In a study of ADL press releases from 1995 to 2011– a good if not perfect indicator of ADL priorities – we found that only 3 percent of ADL’s press releases focus on Islamic extremism and Arab anti-Semitism.” (For the full study, see www.charlesjacobs.org.)
The ADL has defamed many people. The ADL was successfully sued for over $10 million for defaming a Colorado couple, whom they accused of bigotry. The judgment was confirmed by every court that reviewed it, and was ultimately paid by the ADL. This was the largest defamation judgment in the history of the State of Colorado — paid by the Anti-Defamation League.
The charge: Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller were both banned from Britain because of their founding of “anti-Muslim hate groups.”
The facts: The letter to Spencer from the UK Home Office said he was banned for saying: “[Islam] is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society because media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.” This is a garbled version of what Spencer actually said, which is that Islam in its traditional formulations and core texts mandates warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. This is not actually a controversial point to anyone who has studied Islam. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, in his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.
A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law endorsed by the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, says that the leader of the Muslims “makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax,” and cites Qur’an 9:29 in support of this idea: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden-who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book-until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled.” [‘Umdat al-Salik o9.8]
Also, the assumption that the British government is fair, consistent, and judicious in such judgments is false. Just days before Spencer and Geller were banned, the British government admitted Saudi Sheikh Mohammed al-Arefe. Al-Arefe has said: “Devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. Allah said that if a man fights the infidels, the infidels will be unable to prepare to fight.”
That was acceptable in Britain. Spencer’s work, which has consistently been in defense of human rights, was not. He has never advocated for or condoned violence. Spencer and Geller are challenging this capricious decision and are confident they will prevail.
The charge: Robert Spencer inspired the Norwegian terrorist mass murder Anders Behring Breivik, who cited Spencer many times in his manifesto.
The facts: This charge is meant to imply that Spencer calls for violence and that Breivik heeded his call. This is absolutely false. In all his quotations of Spencer, Breivik never quotes him calling for or justifying violence – because he never does. In fact, Breivik even criticized him for not doing so, saying of Spencer, historian Bat Ye’or and other critics of jihad terror: “If these authors are to [sic] scared to propagate a conservative revolution and armed resistance then other authors will have to.” (Breivik, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, p. 743) Breivik explains in his manifesto that he was “radicalized” by his experiences with Muslim immigrants in the early 1990s, before Spencer had published anything about Islam (See Breivik, p. 1348).
Breivik also hesitantly but unmistakably recommended making common cause with jihadists, which neither Spencer nor any other opponent of jihad would ever do: “An alliance with the Jihadists might prove beneficial to both parties but will simply be too dangerous (and might prove to be ideologically counter-productive). We both share one common goal.” (Breivik, p. 948). He even called for making common cause with Hamas in plotting jihad terror: “Approach a representative from a Jihadi Salafi group. Get in contact with a Jihadi strawman. Present your terms and have him forward them to his superiors….Present your offer. They are asked to provide a biological compound manufactured by Muslim scientists in the Middle East. Hamas and several Jihadi groups have labs and they have the potential to provide such substances. Their problem is finding suitable martyrs who can pass ‘screenings’ in Western Europe. This is where we come in. We will smuggle it in to the EU and distribute it at a target of our choosing. We must give them assurances that we are not to harm any Muslims etc.” (Breivik, p. 949)
Investigative journalist and author Daniel Greenfield explained:
Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic goes so far as to call a prominent researcher into Islamic terrorism, Robert Spencer, a jihadist. The Washington Post admits that Spencer and other researchers are not responsible for the shootings, but sneers nonetheless. And the New York Times and a number of other outlets have picked and touted the “64 times” that Spencer was quoted in the shooter’s manifesto…
The “64 times” cited by the Times and its imitators reflects lazy research since the majority of those quotes actually come from a single document, where Spencer is quoted side by side with Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice….
Many of the other Spencer quotes are actually secondhand from essays written by Fjordman that also incorporate selections of quotes on Islam and its historical background. Rather than Breivik quoting Spencer, he is actually quoting Fjordman who is quoting Spencer.
Quite often, Robert Spencer is quoted providing historical background on Islam and quotes from the Koran and the Hadith. So, it’s actually Fjordman quoting Spencer quoting the Koran. If the media insists that Fjordman is an extremist and Spencer is an extremist — then isn’t the Koran also extremist?
And if the Koran isn’t extremist, then how could quoting it be extremist?
The New York Times would have you believe that secondhand quotes like these from Spencer turned Breivik into a raging madman….
Breivik was driven by fantasies of seizing power, combined with steroid abuse and escapism. He used quotes from researchers into terrorism to pad out his schizophrenic worldview, combined with fantasies of multiple terrorist cells and an eventual rise to power.
This is not so different from lunatics who picked up a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” and then set off to kill a celebrity. A not uncommon event, for which J.D. Salinger bears no responsibility whatsoever.
The charge: Robert Spencer denies the Srebrenica genocide and justifies Serbian war crimes against Muslims.
The facts: This charge implies that Spencer approves of violence against innocent Muslims, which is absolutely false. It is based on two (out of over 40,000) articles published at Jihad Watch in 2005 and 2009 questioning whether the massacre of Muslim civilians in Srebrenica in 1995, which was unquestionably heinous, rises to the level of an attempt to exterminate an entire people. Neither was written by Spencer and neither approves of the killing of Muslims or anyone. In ”Srebrenica as Genocide? The Krstić Decision and the Language of the Unspeakable,” published in the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, Vol. VIII in 2005, Katherine G. Southwick writes:
In August 2001, a trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) handed down the tribunal’s first genocide conviction. In this landmark case, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić, the trial chamber determined that the 1995 Srebrenica massacres—in which Bosnian Serb forces executed 7,000-8,000 Bosnian Muslim men—constituted genocide. This Note acknowledges the need for a dramatic expression of moral outrage at the most terrible massacre in Europe since the Second World War. However, this Note also challenges the genocide finding. By excluding consideration of the perpetrators’ motives for killing the men, such as seeking to eliminate a military threat, the Krstić chamber’s method for finding specific intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims, in whole or in part, was incomplete. The chamber also loosely construed other terms in the genocide definition, untenably broadening the meaning and application of the crime. The chamber’s interpretation of genocide in turn has problematic implications for the tribunal, enforcement of international humanitarian law, and historical accuracy. Thus highlighting instances where inquiry into motives may be relevant to genocide determinations, this Note ultimately argues for preserving distinctions between genocide and crimes against humanity, while simultaneously expanding the legal obligation to act to mass crimes that lack proof of genocidal intent
If Spencer is guilty of “genocide denial,” so also is the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal. In reality, neither are. The raising of legitimate questions does not constitute either the denial or the excusing of the evils that Serbian forces perpetrated at Srebrenica or anywhere else.
The charge: Robert Spencer blames all Muslims for the crimes of Islamic jihad terrorists who are condemned by the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.
The facts: This charge is never accompanied by any quote from Robert Spencer, because it has no basis in reality whatsoever. He has never blamed all Muslims for the crimes of jihad terrorists. He has called upon peaceful Muslims to acknowledge the fact that Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, and to take action to mitigate the ability of these texts to incite violence. This call has not generally been heeded.
The charge: Spencer has argued that there is no distinction between American Muslims and radical, violent jihadists.
The facts: What Spencer actually said was that U.S. Muslim organizations have been slow to expel violent jihadists or report their activities, and so they move freely among peaceful Muslims. He was referring to the fact that there is no institutional distinction between Muslims who reject jihad terror and those who embrace, so jihadis move freely in Muslim circles among those who oppose them and claim to do so. In other words, there are no “Islamic supremacist” mosques and “moderate” mosques. There are just mosques, and there are both peaceful Muslims and jihadis in some of them. The Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon in April 2013, were members in good standing of the Islamic Society of Boston. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s most vocal Muslim organization, has counseled Muslims in the U.S. not to speak to the FBI.
The charge: Spencer and Pamela Geller sponsored ads that equated all Muslims with savages.
The facts: In reality, the ad said: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.” The savages to which the ad was referring, obviously, were those jihadis who have massacred innocent Israeli civilians such as the Fogel family and celebrated those massacres.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Title: Professional, unbiased Journalist Martha Raddatz!
Post by: G M on October 23, 2013, 04:17:23 PM
ABC’s Martha Raddatz Lauds Hillary Campaign Appearance: 'She Was on Fire'
By Paul Bremmer | October 21, 2013 | 17:30
At this point, really, what difference does having an election make? Watching Sunday's Good Morning America, you get the feeling that the liberal media have already anointed our country’s next president. On the October 20 edition of the program, ABC’s Martha Raddatz declared that Hillary Clinton was “on fire” while campaigning for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe on Saturday.
Co-anchor Dan Harris kicked off the Hillary watch by pretending that Mrs. Clinton was making a comeback: “[A] lot of people talking this morning about the return of Hillary Clinton, attending her first political rally in four years on Saturday.” [See video below the break.]
Was Hillary ever gone? She was in the spotlight as U.S. Secretary of State for four years, and since leaving that post she has appeared at numerous public events, if not campaign rallies. In addition, the media have been talking about her 2016 presidential aspirations from the moment she left the State Department until now. Far from making a comeback, she has been in the media spotlight essentially since 1991, when her husband began to run for president.
Harris then brought Raddatz into the discussion, and the senior foreign affairs correspondent cheered Mrs. Clinton’s campaign appearance: “This was the first explicitly political event for Hillary Clinton in four years, and she was on fire campaigning for the Virginia gubernatorial candidate, her old friend Terry McAuliffe. She was a big draw, lots of applause and lots of fire bombs aimed at the Republicans.”
Raddatz then excitedly relayed one of Clinton’s so-called “fire bombs” aimed at the GOP:
"Listen to this one. 'Recently in Washington, unfortunately we've seen examples of the wrong kind of leadership,' Clinton said. 'When politicians choose scorched earth over common ground, when they operate in what I call the evidence-free zone, ideology trumping everything else, that is not the kind of leadership we need in Virginia and America today,' she added."
It’s interesting how a journalist can get so excited when a Democrat throws a “fire bomb” at the Republican Party. Republicans who launch similar attacks on Democrats are routinely denounced as divisive ideologues who care more about their party than the country. Case in point: how the media have treated Ted Cruz recently.
What’s more, this speech that featured “lots of fire bombs aimed at the Republicans,” according to Raddatz, also included a call for national unity to replace division. According to ABCNews.com, Mrs. Clinton made this remark: “I don’t have to tell you, I hope, that the whole country is watching this election. Watching to see whether the voters of Virginia lead the way of turning from divisive politics, getting back to common sense and common ground.” But nobody at GMA bothered to mention this hypocrisy.
This is hardly the first time Raddatz has fawned over Hillary. Back in January, after Mrs. Clinton testified before the Senate on Benghazi, Raddatz described her as “combative, charming, disarming and clearly ready for a fight.” In May 2012, Raddatz exclaimed that the then-secretary of state was “cool” and “trending.” And on yesterday’s This Week, which aired shortly after GMA, Raddatz could barely contain her elation at the thought of Hillary running for president.
Below is a transcript of the segment:
DAN HARRIS: Shifting gears now, a lot of people talking this morning about the return of Hillary Clinton, attending her first political rally in four years on Saturday. There she is at a campaign event for her old friend Terry McAuliffe, who is running for governor in Virginia.
HILLARY CLINTON: I've been out of politics for a few years now and I've had a chance to think a lot about what makes our country so great.
HARRIS: As you might imagine, this has set off another feverish round of tea leaf-reading about Hillary’s potential presidential ambitions. So let's go to Washington now and ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who is filling in for George Stephanopoulos on This Week. Martha, good morning. Since leaving the State Department, Hillary has studiously avoided politics -- until now. So what, if anything, should we read into yesterday's appearance?
MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, good morning to you, Dan. You know, those tea leaves seem to be easier to read this morning. This was the first explicitly political event for Hillary Clinton in four years and she was on fire campaigning for the Virginia gubernatorial candidate, her old friend Terry McAuliffe. She was a big draw, lots of applause and lots of fire bombs aimed at the Republicans. Listen to this one. “Recently in Washington, unfortunately we've seen examples of the wrong kind of leadership,” Clinton said. “When politicians choose scorched earth over common ground, when they operate in what I call the evidence-free zone, ideology trumping everything else, that is not the kind of leadership we need in Virginia and America today,” she added. She is a long way from announcing anything, Dan, but each day it seems clear that Hillary Clinton is itching to get back in the political theater.
HARRIS: Yeah, that does not sound like the rhetoric of somebody who has forsaken politics permanently.
RADDATZ: Certainly doesn’t.
HARRIS: Martha, thank you. And by the way, we're looking forward to watching you on This Week this morning.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 23, 2013, 05:08:07 PM
"HILLARY CLINTON: I've been out of politics for a few years now and I've had a chance to think a lot about what makes our country so great."
This has NO basis in reality. And yet the morons love this stuff.
The part before the "and", and the part after are both just so full of crap. Only the Clintons could tie TWO obnoxious lies one after the other in the same sentence.
She is the most divisive figure I can think of after Obama. Even worse.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2013, 06:44:54 PM
Good episode tonight of Crossfire: Newt, Van Jones, Howard Dean (who actually was thoughtful and respectful!-- maybe being out of power suits him , , ,) and some Rep congressman. Good conversation by bright, well informed people. Though he is of "the enemy" I must say that VJ handles himself graciously. He is intelligent, and comes prepared. He and Newt seem to interact well. Newt seems well suited to this format.
Title: MIT Tech Review: The Decline of Wikipedia
Post by: DougMacG on October 25, 2013, 07:40:17 AM
Long, interesting story out of M.I.T. about challenges over at Wikipedia:
Harvard Medical School, his accident, his work and his criticisms of this President.
"Krauthammer, 63, sits atop one of the highest perches in the news media. Every night on Fox News' Special Report, he is the star of Bret Baier's political panel. Every Friday, his column appears in the Washington Post and scores of other papers (he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for commentary)."
Title: CNN reporter: Team Obama threatens unfavorable reporters' jobs
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2013, 02:07:13 PM
As the election drew near, Republicans in districts with Fox News became more likely to vote with their party, and Republicans in districts without Fox News less likely to vote with their party. Democrats, however, behaved the opposite. Democrats in districts with Fox News became less likely to vote with other Democrats.
Title: Napolitano fired?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2013, 06:53:54 PM
I can't play this on the computer where I am but the headline is disconcerting , , ,
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=52b_1329796059
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on November 10, 2013, 08:14:27 PM
Judge Andrew Napolitano, Canceled Fox Host, Tells His Fans To Stop Angry Emails
Posted: 02/14/12 11:54 AM ET | Updated: 02/14/12 12:13 PM ET
Judge Andrew Napolitano is trying to calm his outraged followers after the cancellation of his Fox Business show.
The low-rated network axed "Freedom Watch," along with the rest of its prime-time lineup, last week.
Ever since then, Napolitano has had to send repeated messages to his fans to stop bombarding Fox News with angry emails.
In his latest note, posted to his Facebook page on Monday, Napolitano sounded a note of optimism, even as he sternly told his team to cut it out:
In television, shows are cancelled all the time. Two of my former shows have been cancelled, and after each cancellation, Fox has rewarded me with more and better work. This cancellation--along with others that accompanied it--was the result of a business judgment here, and is completely unrelated to the FreedomWatch message. It would make a world of a difference for all of us, if you would KINDLY STOP SENDING EMAILS TO FOX. I am well. Your values are strong. I will continue to articulate those values here at Fox. But the emails many of you are sending are unfairly interfering with my work and that of my colleagues here. The emails even violate our values because they interfere with the use of private property. I have accepted the cancellation decision with good cheer and a sense of gearing up for the future. You should as well. As a favor to me, and as I have asked this past weekend, PLEASE STOP SENDING EMAILS TO MY COLLEAGUES AT FOX ABOUT THE CANCELLATION OF FreedomWatch; and please stop NOW.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2013, 07:02:58 AM
Looks like I posted an old story. Sorry. :oops:
Title: on Krauthammer
Post by: bigdog on November 16, 2013, 06:33:51 AM
As I've said before, I sincerely enjoy reading Krauthammer.
Title: NY Times: The sleaziest of the hypocrites, Media Bias on Open Display
Post by: DougMacG on November 26, 2013, 08:06:24 AM
Somewhere in the congressional thread over the summer I think we came to agreement that both parties were guilty of hypocrisy on the question of ending the filibuster in the Senate. Republicans threatened to change the rules and Dems screamed about how wrong it was. Now Dems did it and Republicans are upset. It depends on who is in power. Bias from the inside the political arena perhaps is normal, expected, even 'rational'.
Good thing we have these great unbiased institutions reporting on it all known as the mainstream media, who can just look at it with consistency and objectivity.
Enter the NY Times. It would "desecrate" the Senate if the R's do it, but merely allow for a vote if the Dems do it.
NYT, 2005, A Republican proposal that never happened "would DESECRATE the Senate’s time-honored deliberative role and of its protection of minority rights":
"Of all the hollow arguments Senate Republicans have made in their attempt to scrap the opposition’s right to have a say on President Bush’s judicial nominees, the one that’s most hypocritical insists that history is on their side in demanding a “simple up-or-down vote” on the Senate floor. Republicans and Democrats have used a variety of tactics, from filibuster threats to stealthy committee inaction on individual nominations, in blocking hundreds of presidential appointments across history, including about one in five Supreme Court nominees. This is all part of the Senate’s time-honored deliberative role and of its protection of minority rights, which Republican leaders would now desecrate in overreaching from their majority perch."
"Democrats have hardly been obstructionists in their constitutional role of giving advice and consent; they have confirmed more than 200 Bush nominees, while balking at a mere seven who should be blocked on the merits, not for partisan reasons. This is a worthy fight, and the filibuster is a necessary weapon, considering that these are lifetime appointments to the powerful appellate judiciary, just below the Supreme Court. In more than two centuries, only 11 federal judges have been impeached for abusive court behavior. Clearly, uninhibited Senate debate in the deliberative stage, with the minority’s voice preserved, is a crucial requirement."
"Senator Frist, with the help of Vice President Dick Cheney, would sidestep a Senate precedent requiring two-thirds’ approval for a rules change and instead have a simple majority strike down the filibuster on judicial nominees. He promises that there would be no effect on other legislation, but the damage would be incalculable. Democrats are already vowing procedural paybacks and gridlock."
"A few moderate senators from both parties – realizing that the Senate’s prestige is at stake, as much as its history – are seeking a compromise. We hope President Bush will step in to help find a solution. Otherwise, warns his fellow Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the result will be the harmful crimping of minority rights in a proud deliberative body and “a dark, protracted era of divisive partisanship.” "
That all makes sense as long as they are consistent.
NY Times, 2013:
"For five years, Senate Republicans have refused to allow confirmation votes on dozens of perfectly qualified candidates nominated by President Obama for government positions. They tried to nullify entire federal agencies by denying them leaders. They abused Senate rules past the point of tolerance or responsibility. And so they were left enraged and threatening revenge on Thursday when a majority did the only logical thing and stripped away their power to block the president’s nominees."
"In a 52-to-48 vote that substantially altered the balance of power in Washington, the Senate changed its most infuriating rule and effectively ended the filibuster on executive and judicial appointments."
"From now on, if any senator tries to filibuster a presidential nominee, that filibuster can be stopped with a simple majority, not the 60-vote requirement of the past. That means a return to the democratic process of giving nominees an up-or-down vote, allowing them to be either confirmed or rejected by a simple majority."
"Republicans warned that the rule change could haunt the Democrats if they lose the White House and the Senate. But the Constitution gives presidents the right to nominate top officials in their administration and name judges, and says nothing about the ability of a Senate minority to stop them. (The practice barely existed before the 1970s.)"
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 26, 2013, 08:29:26 AM
President Cruz could have rows of federalist society members lined up to fill judicial openings and scotus vacancies.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2013, 12:40:34 PM
a) Someone correct me if I heard it wrong, but I heard somewhere that the DC circuit opening go back to Bush's presidency. T or F?
b) My understanding is that the DC circuit has a low workload and is officially current. In contrast, several other circuits are well behind. This seems not to have engaged the Dems interest.
c) Bret Baier Special Report last night quoted some gems from two of the nominees. The woman is a raving femi-nazi liberal fascist and the man quoted still has not absorbed Heller's holding that the Second is an individual right. Both seem to me worthy of filibuster.
Title: Media Manipulation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2013, 11:09:23 AM
Title: Prager also sees the pravdas
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2013, 12:45:47 PM
http://www.dennisprager.com/live-world-lies/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2013, 08:38:51 AM
160 v 3 Media Reports? According to our friend L. Brent Bozell, "When Crystal Mangum falsely accused several Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, there were 160 major television news stories in the first five days after the players were arrested, but in 2013, when Mangum was convicted of murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison, there were only 3 major television news stories, a difference in coverage of 5,233%." Another fine example of race-bait reporting preferences.
Title: Media Issues: IRS Flagged Groups for Anti-Obama Rhetoric, ABC, CBS, NBC slient
Post by: DougMacG on December 04, 2013, 10:24:41 AM
Does anyone have an update to this story, of when the MSM, ouside of a WSJ opinion piece, has properly covered this bombshell?
IRS Documents Reveal Agency Flagged Groups for 'Anti-Obama Rhetoric,' Big Three Refuse to Report
ABC, CBS and NBC have so far refused to report the latest bombshell in the IRS scandal - a newly released list from the agency that showed it flagged political groups for "anti-Obama rhetoric." On September 18 USA Today, in a front page story, reported the following: "Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns specifically about 'anti-Obama rhetoric,' inflammatory language and 'emotional' statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status."
Not only have ABC, CBS and NBC not reported this story they've flat out stopped covering the IRS scandal on their evening and morning shows. It's been 85 days since ABC last touched the story on June 26. NBC hasn't done a report for 84 days and CBS last mentioned the IRS scandal 56 days ago on July 24. ----------------------------
I tried searching NY Times - nothing.
Title: This is a wake up call
Post by: ccp on December 12, 2013, 09:55:40 AM
I never heard this before. How many other "journalists" are bribed to be spokespeople for interest groups? I guess others are too with their ghost written books, speaking engagements etc.
PolitiFact's Forked Tongue The site once vouched for its "lie of the year." By James Taranto December 13, 2013
PolitiFact.com, the Tampa Bay Times's "fact checking" operation, is out with its "Lie of the Year," and it's a doozy of dishonesty: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.' "
Just to show how fast the news can move, back in September this columnist tweeted: "If 'I didn't set a red line' isn't named 'Lie of the Year,' @PolitiFact is a state propaganda agency." "I didn't set a red line"--the reference was to Syria's use of chemical weapons, in case you've forgotten--didn't even make the top 10. Yet our September tweet proved to be mistaken: We cannot fault PolitiFact for the lie it chose instead.
Which isn't to say PolitiFact doesn't function as a state propaganda agency. For in the past--when it actually mattered, which is to say before ObamaCare became first a law and then a practical reality--PolitiFact vouched for Barack Obama's Big Lie.
In her lie-of-the-year write-up, PolitiFact's Angie Holan includes the following acknowledgment:
In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama's statement Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and partially wrong. We noted that while the law took pains to leave some parts of the insurance market alone, people were not guaranteed to keep insurance through thick and thin. It was likely that some private insurers would continue to force people to switch plans, and that trend might even accelerate.
Her "half true" acknowledgment is itself a half-truth. As the Washington Examiner's Sean Higgins noted last month, in October 2008 PolitiFact rated the same statement, from then-candidate Obama, as flatly "true," on the ground that "Obama is accurately describing his health care plan here."
We're not making this up. PolitiFact actually rated Obama's promise as "true" on the ground that in making the promise, he was making the promise.
To be sure, there are some epistemological complexities here. The cancellation letters from insurance companies provide concrete proof that Obama's claim was false, evidence that was necessarily lacking in 2008, 2009 and 2012. Likewise, the reporting of our colleagues on the news side of The Wall Street Journal established with a previously lacking specificity that Obama told the lie with full knowledge and intent to deceive.
One might have reasonably suspected, in 2008 and certainly in 2009 and 2012, that Obama was lying. But one could not prove it, because it was not yet a factual assertion. In 2008 it was but a promise, which Obama might or might not have intended and might or might not have been able to keep. By 2012, we now know, it was a full-fledged fraud, but exposing it conclusively as such would have required a degree of expertise few journalists have.
In other words, it's not that PolitiFact was wrong to withhold its jejune "pants on fire" designation from the Obama statement in 2008, 2009 and 2012. It was wrong even to make a pretense of "fact checking" a statement that was, at the time, not a factual claim. Its past evaluations of the statement were not "fact checks" at all, merely opinion pieces endorsing ObamaCare.
Lots of people wrote opinion pieces endorsing ObamaCare, and some are still at it. Apart from the substance of the arguments, there's nothing wrong with that. But selling opinion pieces by labeling them "fact checks" is fundamentally dishonest. In this case, it was in the service of the most massive consumer fraud in American history.
Title: Media covers up “very opinionated socialist” school shooter
Post by: G M on December 17, 2013, 04:09:55 PM
The media was more ideological than the Arapahoe shooter
posted at 9:31 am on December 15, 2013 by Jazz Shaw
The latest school shooting to take place in the country, perpetrated at Arapahoe High in Colorado by Karl Pierson, lacked many of the elements we’ve come to expect from the inevitable media circus which follows such events. The shooter was a student, for one thing, more reminiscent of the Columbine event than the more recent Newtown or Washington shipyard attacks. Also, the extent of the carnage, while still horrible, was fortunately considerably more limited. Authorities are saying that he came equipped for and with the intention of causing widespread harm. He brought a pump action shotgun (model not released yet that I’ve seen) with plenty of extra shells, several Molotov cocktails and a machete. Yet in the end, he injured two students – one gravely – and lit one fire in the library before taking his own life.
Given Pierson’s current, room temperature status, we may never fully discern his intentions and motivations, but early investigations may provide some clues.
But students who witnessed the attack later clarified that it was the school librarian and debate team coach, identified as Tracy Murphy by NBC affiliate KUSA in Denver, who was the target of Pierson’s rage.
Steve Miles is an English teacher who taught Pierson as a freshman, told the Associated Press that Pierson had recently been cut from the debate team, but he didn’t know why…
“‘Revenge’ is the word that I chose,” [Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson] Robinson told reporters. “This is where our initial investigation is taking us. We know that there was some controversy between the student suspect and the teacher.”
In the end, this may have been a case of a sick individual seeking revenge who also decided to “make a big splash” on his way out. Whether his will to carry out a mass slaughter faltered when the moment arrived or alert response tactics by the school made targets largely unavailable may remain one of the unknowns. But we still can’t refrain from trying to read more into the shooter’s motives and defining them through the usual ideological lens.
What’s been discovered so far seems to indicate that Pierson was well and truly embedded in an early, liberal world view. His disparaging comments about Republicans on social media, combined with his self-professed love for Keynesian economics makes that much clear. But the circumstances of his attack make it difficult to think that he arrived at school that day hell bent on striking a blow for the progressive agenda. Far more likely was the Sheriff’s analysis that he was there to kill the debate team coach who he perceived as having wronged him.
But that doesn’t mean that some ideological tilt and bias wasn’t discovered. As Mediaite reported, the Denver Post was apparently busy making sure he didn’t come off looking too far to the left.
In a profile on the shooter in the Denver Post which focused on his “strong political beliefs,” several of Pierson’s classmates offered their impressions of the shooter. One of the shooter’s classmates described him as a “very opinionated socialist.” Shortly after that post was published, however, that description was edited out. The current copy simply describes him as “very opinionated.”
If his own friends testified that he was a self-described socialist, why not report that as part of the story? I think that question pretty much answers itself. You can read the current version of the Denver Post story here. As near as I can tell, they have still neither returned the copy to its original form nor made note of the deletion.
Finally – and this should go without saying – when the inevitable calls for more gun control begin in the wake of this tragedy, they can be entirely ignored. This was yet another case of a person with no reported criminal record legally purchasing a shotgun (not an “assault rifle”) and shells in accordance with even the most restrictive laws. No background checks or bans on magazines or “excessively dangerous” guns would have prevented it. So spare us the sanctimonious speeches and lets figure out how families, communities and churches can do a better job of spotting problem individuals and keeping them from arriving at this sort of juncture in the future.
Title: Re: Media covers up “very opinionated socialist” school shooter
Post by: G M on December 17, 2013, 04:15:11 PM
Checked Huffpo and found no mention of the socialist orientation of the shooter. Why is that, BD? They sure were able to blame Sarah Palin for the Tucson shooting.
Title: Re: Media Issues, Huffington Post
Post by: DougMacG on December 21, 2013, 11:50:02 AM
I know that it is a mistake to link to the HuffPo, but I think might interest some of you. It is a talk given in March: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-murrie/what-if-technology-has-killed_b_3679320.html
I know you were chided for posting from Huffington Post. I want to say I disagree. I enjoy the freedom to post from right wing sources and hope to not have content dismissed just for that reason. I want to know opposing perspectives and Huffington Post is more than a left wing source. BD's posts are always well marked for source. I appreciate that he reads and posts very interesting material from places that others like me would otherwise miss.
This format makes it easy to rip back on the bias, accuracy or validity of any story and I plan to keep doing that, but hopefully not dismiss without considering the merits.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 21, 2013, 05:11:21 PM
Amen.
Title: Media Issues: PolitiFact received Pulitzer for its own Pants on Fire falsehood
Post by: DougMacG on December 30, 2013, 09:49:19 AM
What is now the Lie of the Year, was then ‘We rate his statement True’. They were off by roughly a hundred million health plans.
"PolitiFact’s pronouncements about Obamacare were widely repeated by pro-Obama reporters and pundits, and had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. Indeed, in 2009, PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2008 campaign."
"The highlight of Holan’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” article was that it completely ignored Holan’s own “True” rating of the “keep your plan” claim back in 2008."
“The promise was impossible to keep,” says Holan in her December piece. Now she tells us! But none of the key facts that made that promise “impossible” in 2008 had changed by 2013. The President’s plan had always required major disruption of the health insurance market; the Obamacare bill contained the key elements of that plan; the Obamacare law did as well. The only thing that had changed was the actual first-hand accounts of millions of Americans who were losing their plans now that Obamacare was live.
(read it all) Strange that self proclaimed fact checkers seem to have the most bias and worst accuracy of all.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Slow Learners
Post by: DougMacG on January 02, 2014, 07:24:22 AM
Politico has a headline for the ages up right now: “Management Experts Knock Obama.” Management “experts” are just noticing now, after five years, that Obama’s lack of experience is significant. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/01/slow-learners.php http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/obamacare-obama-management-experts-101620.html?hp=t1
“No one asked you to write code or be a technical expert, but the expectation is you can set up a process,” said Kellogg School of Management professor Daniel Diermeier. “Companies do it every day.” ----------------------------
Maybe in year seven Politico will find discover he is dishonest.
Title: Re: Media Issues, NY Times Mis-Leads on Economics Too
Post by: DougMacG on January 02, 2014, 07:30:29 AM
Times reporter David Kocieniewski falsely accused two economists, Craig Pirrong and Scott Irwin, of corruptly “reaping rewards” by “defending Wall Street” as “one part of Wall Street’s efforts to fend off regulation.” Specifically, Pirrong and Irwin have contradicted, on academic and empirical grounds, the perennial left-wing canard that “speculators” drive up prices in commodities markets. Kocieniewski’s reporting is wrong, and not even consistent, as it relates to Pirrong and Irwin. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/the-ny-times-looks-in-the-wrong-place-for-corrupt-academics.php
Now Professor James Hamilton (UCSD) has entered the fray. http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2014/01/a_lack_of_ethic.html He reprises the attacks that others have made on the Times’s dishonest reporting. He begins:
David Kocieniewski of the New York Times is guilty of some outrageously bad journalism in the form of a groundless ad hominem attack on the reputation of two professors for the sole purpose of reinforcing the prejudices of his misinformed readers.
Harsh words, but Hamilton backs them up. Having established that Kocieniewski smeared the two economists groundlessly, he goes on to address the underlying question: are speculators responsible for rising prices in recent years of, for example, crude oil? This is a question that Kocieniewski did not directly address, but the whole point of his hit piece was to try to discredit those who have demonstrated that one of the Left’s favorite talking points is false. Hamilton writes:
Let me pose the question a little more precisely for anyone who actually wants to investigate this issue. Do financial speculators drive the price of oil to a value at which the quantity physically produced exceeds the quantity physically consumed? Because if the answer to that question is no, then it is fundamentals of supply and demand, not financial speculators, that are all you would need to know to calculate what the price of oil will be.
That is an empirical question that can be answered, and the overwhelming weight of academic research demonstrates that the New York Times theory of commodity prices is wrong.
Title: But, they have the proper academic credentials!
Post by: G M on January 02, 2014, 03:32:14 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on January 10, 2014, 06:30:52 AM
In my experience it is obvious the big IT companies were very willing partners in rigging IT systems to be hacked, tracked, and without any chance of privacy.
For years my experience has been it is totally impossible to keep a determined hacker out of one's system. One can turn off the internet networking connections or take out the cards etc. Still this will not totally work. I remember speaking to someone 10 yrs ago from the David Gordon board that I suspected the private companies are using government sponsored terrorism strategies as an excuse to claim they HAD to be able to have ways to get into everyone's electronic devices. I was right. (I wish I could pick stocks as well :cry:)
The IT companies all know what they were doing. The are totally complicit.
I am not sure that they were not already doing this before 911. Some people still don't get it.
I had one young man yesterday who is in IT say he doesn't see the big deal if anyone reads his emails. "1981 so what"?
People don't get the freedom they are losing till it is gone. Younger people will never even know what hit them.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2014, 08:23:04 AM
All true, but better on the Internet or the Privacy threads , , ,
Title: NY Post: Bidgegate vs. IRS scandal
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2014, 06:05:34 AM
Title: 50K for the talking shmoe?
Post by: ccp on January 15, 2014, 06:30:46 AM
My question is who in their right mind pays 50 grand to hear THIS guy talk?
****The Mirror
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: Is he violating a network rule?
At NBC, there’s a rule that if anchors give a paid speech to a for-profit enterprise — the kind they may be covering in their role as journalists — they have to give the money they receive to charity. It’s not a secret rule. It’s been in place for nearly 20 years to prevent conflicts of interest. Everybody knows about it. But is everyone following it?
How about Joe Scarborough?
According to a well-placed source at MSNBC, the “Morning Joe” co-host may have been pocketing the proceeds from some of his many highly paid speeches, in direct violation of network policy. That’s what some of his co-workers suspect anyway, and they’re resentful about it.
There’s no doubt Joe has been doing a lot of speaking lately. He is repped by William Morris Endeavor chief (and Entourage prototype) Ari Emanuel, and exclusive to the Leading Authorities speakers bureau in Washington. The details — and fee structures — are all over the web: If Joe speaks east of the Mississippi, he gets $51,000, swanky hotel not included. For a trip to the West Coast, the fee jumps to $56,000, again hotel not included. When he speaks in New York, Joe doesn’t need a hotel, since he already works there, but he still makes $45,500. Not bad for an hour of talking. His co-host Mika Brzezinski frequently joins him on stage.
That kind of money could make a host pretty sympathetic to the people who are paying him, some of whom might wind up in the news some day. You can see why the networks are concerned about conflicts. NBC laid down its policy in 1996, when it banned employees from accepting money from corporations and trade associations that lobby government or take public positions on issues. All paid appearances must be approved by management.
Does Joe follow these rules? The Daily Caller‘s Mirror blog reached out to Scarborough, as well as to MSNBC’s PR department with that question. Does Joe give the money to charity or keep it for himself? If he’s following NBC policy, could we see the relevant portion of his tax return? But they ignored us. Neither even responded.
They may have to respond in coming days. Spend just 10 minutes on Google and all kinds of questions about Joe’s speaking career arise. For example, is there a connection between paying Joe for a speech, and appearing as a guest on his show?
You decide. In late May of 2013, Joe and Mika gave what appears to be a paid speech at a conference sponsored by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. Exactly three months later, the Detroit chamber’s CEO, Sandy Baruah, appeared as a guest on “Morning Joe.” The show was broadcast live from the factory floor of one of the chamber’s most important member companies, Ford Motors. The discussion topic: What can Detroit do to earn more government bailout money
CRUZ: “My focus is on the abuse of power of this President. Let’s take something like the IRS scandal-“
SCHIEFFER: “Do I take that as a yes or a no?”
CRUZ: “What you can take is that my focus is standing and fighting right now in the Senate to bring back jobs and economic growth. Let me tell you something that is deeply concerning—the abuse of power from this Administration. We’ve seen multiple filmmakers prosecuted and the government’s gone after them. Whether it’s the poor fellow that did the film that the President blamed Benghazi and the terrorist attacks on, turns out that wasn’t the reason for the attack but the Administration went and put that poor fellow in jail on unrelated charges. Just this week it was broken that Dinesh D’Souza, who did a very big movie criticizing the president, is now being prosecuted by this Administration.”
SCHIEFFER: “Senator-“
CRUZ: “Can you image the reaction if the Bush Administration had went, gone and prosecuted Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn?”
Title: The top headline news "search" on Yahoo news.
Post by: ccp on January 31, 2014, 06:34:56 AM
Does anyone actually believe this is the top news search on Yahoo at this time. There has to be some computer generated volley of contrived searches to get this promoted to the top so people will read this. A form of advertising. Does anyone believe anyone would otherwise care about this persons appearance on some up coming program? I wonder how many other things we read on news is similarly so. I wonder if Yahoo is paid for this or just the financiers behind this person have paid people to generate hits to promote this to the top:
Title: Trust Huffington Post
Post by: G M on February 04, 2014, 01:52:16 PM
Huffington Post caught lying to attack gun rights
See also media bias / Huffington Post
(http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/f3/cc/1343076132_9387_1.jpg?itok=nQLHQOIw) Huffington Post Screenshot: Huff-Watch
July 23, 2012
A site called, "Huff-Watch," which tracks, exposes and confronts the Huffington Post's biased, openly left-wing reporting, has caught the partisan propaganda mill blatantly lying about the Dark Knight massacre to advance its radical anti-gun agenda.
On its main page at 7:45 a.m. on July 23rd, the Huffington Post had an image of a man standing in front of dozens of assault rifles, with the headline, "Suspected Aurora Shooter Amassed Huge Arsenal Online With No Background Checks." And when you clicked on the story, it took you to another page with the headline, "Aurora Shooting: Suspect Was Able to Buy Weapons, Ammunition Online Without Background Checks."
From Huff-Watch:
“ A reasonable reader could only infer from this headline that the Aurora madman was able to obtain the weapons he used in his massacre online --- with no background checks. And look at the picture of those scary weapons! Those must be the ones (or like the ones) that he... supposedly bought online, with no background check. Shocking!!!”
But these headlines are both flat-out lies. No one can buy guns on line without background checks, as Huff-Watch was quick to point out. The only thing James Holmes could have purchased for his killing spree that way is ammunition, which the fine print of the article goes on to explain is somehow what the headlines meant by "weapons."
This is a standard print media tactic: Outrageously misrepresenting what happened with fraudulent headlines and then counting on people not to read to the last paragraph of the story, where all the facts that debunk the entire rest of the media spin are always contained.
For the record, even after being confronted on this stunningly sleazy and dishonest attempt to deliberately misinform the public early on, the Huffington Post still has this outrageous partisan misinformation in its current coverage of the event (as I write this at 4:30 p.m. EST on July 23rd).
Additionally, as I have noted here and here, the news media's coverage of this atrocity has been egregiously one-sided and unapologetically partisan, but this has got to be the most jaw-droppingly erroneous attempt to distort the truth yet.
Title: O'Reilly's Interview with Obama...
Post by: objectivist1 on February 10, 2014, 06:21:13 AM
Obama Lied With Every Word
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On February 10, 2014
“My first thought was, he lied in every word.” So began Browning’s famous poem and so began Bill O’Reilly’s interview of Obama.
Obama’s game plan was to exploit Bill O’Reilly’s image by rebranding himself as a post-partisan politician with common sense solutions. Repeating his dishonest refrain, “That’s not a liberal or a conservative agenda” or “It’s not a Democratic or Republican thing” he tried to reinvent himself as a politician for all people to the FOX News audience.
Some of the policies that Obama kept insisting were neither liberal nor conservative, neither Democrat nor Republican, included raising the minimum wage, raising taxes and yet another stimulus plan. These policies may be archetypically liberal, but Obama carries his own reality with him, his own mathematics, his own history, his own dictionary and his own moral code which he adapts to the moment.
Julia’s sugar daddy, whose ObamaCare disaster comes packaged with a marriage penalty that can go as high as $10,000, insisted with a straight face that he is always campaigning for family values.
When Obama doesn’t like a question, he rephrases it. Challenged by Bill O’Reilly on the 72 percent out of wedlock birth rate among black women, he rephrased it as a question about the importance of men paying child support and taking responsibility for their children.
But he avoided the M word: marriage.
There was no marriage in the Life of Julia and no marriage mentioned in Obama’s long stumbling reply. No husbands and wives; only “men” like stray dogs being told to take responsibility for their children.
Instead Obama pivoted from child support to the economy to the lack of jobs to education, spinning around until the compass needle pointed right back to his welfare state agenda.
Obama’s policies punish married couples while rewarding single parents, promoting a culture where marriage is disposable and the family is only one option among many, and his solution to solving a problem created by the welfare state, by the collapse of industry, extended education regimens and generous social rewards for single motherhood, was more of the same.
According to him, the only way to put out the fire is with more gasoline.
Challenged on vouchers, Obama lied to protect the education union lobby and claimed that school vouchers don’t improve performance for minority students.
“Every study that’s been done on school vouchers, Bill, says that it has very limited impact if any,” Obama said. In reality, a recent study by Matthew Chingos of the Brookings Institution and Paul E. Peterson of Harvard showed that school vouchers increased black college enrollment by 24%.
That’s a dramatic difference but not one that Obama and his backers are interested in because they don’t care about black students except as counters in the welfare state’s bankrupt budget game.
Obama is willing to annoy teachers unions and public school fanatics by offering some limited support to charter schools, which is more than the new generation of left-wing extremist politicians like Bill de Blasio will do, but he isn’t about to risk the whole system that indoctrinates generations of voters and bestows union dues on Democrats running for public office.
Studies have shown that minority students stuck in failing schools have the most to gain from vouchers. Obama has spent enough time on education policy to know that truth, but instead he chose to lie on national television by claiming that not only some select studies, but that “every study” supports his education lobby anti-student position.
On Keystone, Obama challenged O’Reilly’s job numbers even though he had used the methodology of treating temporary jobs as “created jobs” when pitching programs. After the latest positive State Department report, with no remaining basis for further delays, Obama shifted responsibility over to Kerry, as if the Senator from Damascus were qualified to overrule the experts who had already spoken.
Last year Obama claimed that he was hindering the Keystone pipeline over global warming worries. Now that it has gotten the Warmist seal of approval, he’s building another wall of obstacles while pretending to be a disinterested party.
Asked if he was the most liberal president in history, Obama claimed that Nixon was more liberal than him because he started the EPA. Anyone else would have been laughed off the stage for that alone. The EPA had been assembled out of legislatively created organizations, and Nixon’s State of the Union in 1970 had emphasized clean water and air, not Obama’s warmist carbon fantasies.
“Street litter, rundown parking strips and yards, dilapidated fences, broken windows, smoking automobiles, dingy working places,” Nixon had said running down his list of things that needed cleaning up. And he concluded by emphasizing, “We need a fresh climate in America, one in which a person can breathe freely and breathe in freedom.”
That climate of freedom is the opposite of what Obama and his secretive and vicious EPA thugs who, carry out armed raids on Republican donors and use covert emails and secret coordination with activist groups to sideline the law while trying to regulate everything on the planet as a pollutant, represent.
Haltingly, Obama invoked FDR and insisted that the country needed to spend 2 trillion on infrastructure. “That’s not a liberal or conservative agenda.” Not unless you consider FDR’s New Deal a liberal agenda.
Obama insisted, “We could put people to work right now.” But he had already promised and failed to deliver on that in his first term. In his second term, he is still dishonestly promising to create shovel ready jobs, after already admitting that there was no such thing, while ridiculing Keystone’s jobs.
“We have not massively expanded the welfare state,” Obama claimed even as food stamp enrollment has increased by 70 percent under him so that 1 in 5 households are now on food stamps. Eight million people have been added to the rolls and ObamaCare is set to increase the already bloated rolls by another 3 to 5 percent in some states.
The number of Americans on disability has increased by 23 percent under Obama. The 5.9 million added to the disability rolls represent more than double the number of jobs that he claims to have created.
“They gotta work hard, they gotta be responsible,” Obama finished. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s how you and I ended up sitting here talking.”
The culmination of all his absurd lies was the pretense that his elevation to the highest office in the land after spending not even a full term in the senate was on the basis of merit. Two years after going from the Illinois State Senate to the United States Senate, he had already launched a campaign for the White House making him the least qualified candidate put forward by a major party in a century.
In the White House, Obama hasn’t worked hard and he hasn’t been responsible. He has made it on the strength of his ability to string together one lie after another after another, covering each disaster with a fresh deception. His interview with Bill O’Reilly represented that same politics of dishonesty.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on February 10, 2014, 06:37:28 AM
"Obama Lied With Every Word"
Doesn't seem to matter much does it.
He is a Democrat after all.
Title: Professional Journalists not at work...
Post by: G M on February 12, 2014, 04:16:07 PM
February 11, 2014 12:00 AM Poof: A Scandal Disappears The press has decided that the IRS’s targeting of conservatives is not newsworthy.
By Mona Charen
Remember the IRS scandal? It’s gone. Poof. So flaccid has press interest in the story become that President Obama made bold in an interview with Fox News to say that there was not a “smidgen of corruption” in the IRS’s conduct, and that the matter concerned only some “bone-headed decisions out of a local office.”
It requires terrific confidence in the passivity of the press to float the discredited “Cincinnati did it all” dodge since we know that IRS employees in that office were taking direction from Washington. We further know that IRS offices in California, Oklahoma, Washington, D.C., and other places have been identified as singling out groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names.
Obama’s confidence in the press is not misplaced. Despite juicy opportunities to delve into the story of government abusing its power, reporters have let the matter drop.
There was no “smoking gun” showing that Obama personally ordered the harassment of conservatives, some explain. Is that the standard? Because it seems that the press applied a different yardstick to Chris Christie. Well, there’s a “scandal attention cycle,” says the Columbia Journalism Review. To some extent that’s true. But there are different rules for Democrats, and particularly for Obama.
To review: When the behavior of the IRS was first revealed in May of 2013, the press furor was considerable. For a week or so, it was almost as if the press remembered how to cover the administration aggressively. The president was alarmed enough about the damaging story to hold a press conference. “If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups,” he said, “then that is outrageous, and there is no place for it, and they have to be held fully accountable. . . . You should feel that way regardless of party.” He continued, “I have got no patience with it, I will not tolerate it, and we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.”
Or not. Now it’s just “bone-headed decisions out of a local office.” This is tamely accepted. If it concerned just a local office, why did Obama fire the director of the IRS? Why did Lois Lerner plead the Fifth and resign? (Republicans on the House oversight committee erred by not granting her use immunity and questioning her intensely on what really happened. They could still do it.)
It was also a non-scandal when the Justice Department appointed an Obama donor to investigate the IRS. Nor did the press follow up on uncontested accounts of IRS employees leaking confidential taxpayer information — which is a felony. The donor list of the National Organization for Marriage was leaked by someone at the IRS to the Human Rights Campaign, a group that supports same-sex marriage.
Last week, Catherine Englebrecht, a small businesswoman from Texas who founded True the Vote and King Street Patriots, testified about her ordeal at the hands of the federal government. Though she had never been audited in her life before exercising her First Amendment rights, after she became politically active she was subject to personal and business audits by the IRS going back several years. Then the FBI came knocking to ask about someone who attended one of the meetings of the King Street Patriots. The IRS returned with an armamentarium of questions about True the Vote. Then OSHA showed up to examine her business with a fine-tooth comb. (They fined her $17,500.) Finally, the Englebrechts were graced with a visit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Englebrecht’s experience should chill anyone concerned about government intimidation, overreach, arrogance, and abuse of power. But most of all it should alarm the press — supposedly the fierce guardians of the First Amendment. The press made Sandra Fluke a household name when she testified before a House subcommittee about the terrible injustice she would suffer if taxpayers did not purchase her contraceptives for her. Yet Catherine Englebrecht, an ordinary person merely attempting to join with other Americans in petitioning the government for redress of grievances, was hammered by a succession of powerful government agencies. Not even a bleat from the press about this flagrant assault on free speech.
It is an article of faith that agencies will operate in a strictly neutral and nonpartisan fashion when enforcing the law. If they become politicized, we’ve entered banana-republic territory. The press, by failing to beat the drums on this, is complicit in corruption that goes far beyond a “smidgen.”
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Title: Media: CBS Blames Global Warming for Bad Winter
Post by: DougMacG on February 15, 2014, 09:52:46 AM
You knew this was coming.
During the February 13 broadcast of CBS This Morning, host Charlie Rose and his guest turned to the topic of this year's harsh winter, calling the extreme cold an example of global warming. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/02/13/Horrible-Winter-CBS-Says-Blame-Global-Warming
Did they mention no warming in the last 17 years, proving all alarmist models that rely on continuously compounding acceleration to make their conclusions are wrong.
I haven't heard yet if the southwest drought caused 20 feet of snow so far in Steamboat, upstream in the Colorado River basin.
What happened to reporters just reporting the news. Or why not use an honest moniker: CBS - Agenda Driven News
Title: Media/celebrity/entertainment/politician/hollywood/wallstreet "complex" Issues
Post by: ccp on February 22, 2014, 06:36:29 PM
Recently Mobama was criticized for the cost of her dress at the white house party for the French guy. So now we see her in a dress with advertisements on its low cost and how anyone else who wants one can buy it. Why does her outfits have to be topics for news reports? What is she a walking marketing gig for fashion designers now? I expect this stuff from Hollywood celebrities walking their endless awards ceremonies to themselves but of our First Lady?
****Michelle Obama's Black Jumpsuit on The Tonight Show: Get the Look!
Us Weekly February 21, 2014 11:20 AM
Michelle Obama's Black Jumpsuit on The Tonight Show: Get the Look! . View gallery
Michelle Obama's Black Jumpsuit on The Tonight Show: Get the Look!
FLOTUS really can do no fashion wrong.
For her latest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, Feb. 20, Michelle Obama looked incredibly chic in a black jumpsuit. She accessorized the cowl-necked one-piece with a wide black belt with leather piping and black pointy-toed kitten heels.
PHOTOS: The Obama family -- just like Us!
If the first lady's look has you jumping for a jumpsuit, try the similarly styled Mango Draped Neckline Jumpsuit. At $89.99, the sleeveless jersey piece features an elastic waist and a flattering cowled neckline. Finish the FLOTUS-inspired styled with the Three-Strap Sash Belt from Mango ($14.99) and a black heels.
Michelle Obama's Black Jumpsuit on The Tonight … First Lady Michelle Obama rocking a black jumpsuit during an interview with host Jimmy Fallon on Feb …
Obama, 50, also showed off her comedy (and dance!) skills in the "Ew!" sketch with Fallon, 39, and Will Ferrell, both in drag. After a "triple hand hug," Sara (Fallon) says, "Wow, Michelle, you're pretty strong. You could totally be in the Olympics."
"Well, thank you, Sara. I do try to exercise every day," Obama replies.
"Really? Because I think exercise is ew," Sara says.
"Exercise is not ew. You just have to find an activity that is right for you. For example, I like to dance, play tennis, even do some push-ups," Obama explain. The group then breaks out into a dance party.
This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Michelle Obama's Black Jumpsuit on The Tonight Show: Get the Look!
Title: Nancy Grace's disgrace as an attorney
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2014, 10:36:38 PM
Title: Patriot Post: The soft bigotry of low expectations
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2014, 08:54:35 AM
CNN's Don Lemon may have let the cat out of the bag when it comes to the Leftmedia's cozy relationship with Barack Obama. We know that most in the media agree ideologically with the president, and that sharing his goals means carrying his water. But Lemon admitted that race plays a significant part, too: "As journalists, you know, you weigh whether you -- how much you should criticize the president, because he's black, what have you. But then you have to do it, because ultimately you're a journalist." Except that the criticism is rarely forthcoming, leaving Obama's race as a trump card. A former president had a phrase for this sort of thing: "The soft bigotry of low expectations."
Title: Re: Patriot Post: The soft bigotry of low expectations
Post by: DougMacG on March 03, 2014, 10:45:57 AM
Title: PP: Sharyl Atkinson quits CBS over bias
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2014, 10:14:01 AM
Reporter Quits CBS Over Bias
CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson is calling it quits following months of contentious negotiations with the network, whose executives were becoming increasingly prejudiced against her work. Recall that Attkisson was virtually the only reporter in the mainstream media to investigate this administration's many scandals, most notably Fast & Furious and Benghazi. The veteran reporter has complained about CBS's liberal bias for some time now, while the network is accusing her of agenda-driven reporting. Leave it to the Leftmedia, who do their best to shield Obama from his many blunders, to accuse a single truth-seeking journalist of being biased.
Title: Why is big tech so liberally biased?
Post by: ccp on March 15, 2014, 10:01:38 AM
Typical "editorial" piece that comes up on Yahoo "news". Not will MSNBC cost the liberals elections. Or is Huffington Post costing Democrats votes? Or is Obama hurting the Democrat party? No. Only mocks of the Tea Party or anything conservative:
Title: Why Thomas Sowell never won a Pulitzer?
Post by: ccp on March 26, 2014, 05:38:31 PM
Well, of course we know why......
Doug's point that Thomas Freidman won the Pulitzer three times made me wonder how many who hail from the right have won. Bret Stephens was the first one in a decade according to this piece. Gotta love this though:
"A January 2012 column on the latter topic helped contribute to his win. Entitled “The GOP Deserves to Lose,” Stephens eviscerated the GOP presidential candidates then..."
In a comparatively rare feat, a conservative writer has won a Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious award in journalism. Bret Stephens, who writes a column for the Wall Street Journal primarily about world affairs is the first conservative to win the award in more than a decade.
Congratulations are certainly in order to Stephens for pulling off the win, especially since the very liberal Columbia University is in charge of the award.
While Stephens’s views on some social issues like gay marriage have not won him fans among devout conservatives, he certainly deserves the award. I’ve long been a fan of his prose, his independence, and his willingness to take on the conventional wisdom on topics like global warming and the complete disaster otherwise known as the Republican presidential nominating process.
A January 2012 column on the latter topic helped contribute to his win. Entitled “The GOP Deserves to Lose,” Stephens eviscerated the GOP presidential candidates then in the race and then condemned Republicans like Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, and Haley Barbour for refusing to run.
“This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn’t because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November — or, rather, when he does — the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.”
Stephens is the first conservative to win the commentary award since his Journal colleague Dorothy Rabinowitz won it in 2001*. That year was a rare one in Pulitzer history as it marked the second consecutive year that a conservative had won the award, something which had not happened since the 1970s. In 2000, Paul Gigot, also with the Journal, won the prize.
In recent decades, the Journal has been the home to all of the few conservative writers who have been awarded a Pulitzer. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer was the last non-Journal conservative to win the award in 1987.
For a full list of Pulitzer commentary winners going back to 1970, click here. You can find samples of Stephens's work here.
In less laudible Pulitzer news, the committee continued its tradition of ignoring conservative editorial cartoonists by honoring Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
* Note: I am not counting Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, the 2010 award winner, as a conservative. She is a right-leaning moderate.
Title: Murdoch & Fox
Post by: ccp on April 11, 2014, 05:50:48 AM
"Murdoch was defiant when asked if the right-leaning Fox News Channel’s editorial content has hurt the political discussion or even the Republican Party itself. "It has absolutely saved it,” he said."
I agree. Without Fox or talk radio one half of the nation would have No voice.
********* Rupert Murdoch speaks: politics, divorce and how Fox News 'saved' the political debate
Eric Pfeiffer By Eric Pfeiffer 17 hours ago Yahoo News
Rupert Murdoch arrives at the 2014 Academy Awards in February (Reuters)
Media mogul and News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch sat down for his first interview in nearly five years.
The still very active and opinionated 83-year-old opened up to Fortune about a number of personal and political details during the interview, including his current favorite potential Republican candidates for 2016.
Murdoch told Forbes the 2016 presidential election “is between four or five people," and he places Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan atop his personal rankings. He called Ryan “the straightest arrow I've ever met.”
Some other highlights (Fortune subscribers can read the full Q&A):
Fox News Channel's slant
Murdoch was defiant when asked if the right-leaning Fox News Channel’s editorial content has hurt the political discussion or even the Republican Party itself. "It has absolutely saved it,” he said.
On how he's aging
He says, "My mother just died at 103, so that's a start. You should live 20 years longer than your parents. That may not be realistic, but I'm in good physical shape, according to the doctors. And don't worry — my children will be the first to tell me if I start losing some mental ability. That will be the time to step back.”
His biggest (professional) mistake
Primarily, buying MySpace for $580 million: “It was one of our great screwups of all time."
He also opened up about his 2013 divorce from Wendi Deng. “Everything has sort of come at once," he said. "But I was in an unhappy situation, and all I'm worried about ... is two beautiful little girls from that marriage. And they come and stay with me a great deal. I feel like I've turned over a new page in my life.”
On two of his most famous newspaper properties
Murdoch says the New York Post may go to an all-digital version within 10 years but that the Wall Street Journal will likely exist in both print and digital form for a longer period of time.
What he thinks people don’t understand about him
“They perhaps tend to think I've not got as thick a skin as I have. You know, I don't mind what people say about me. I've never read a book about myself," he said.
How he brought his son Lachlan back into the fold at News Corp.
"Lachlan and [younger son] James and I had a very serious talk about how we can work as a team. We had two or three hours together. Lachlan was not not going to come back. It was a question of how we would work together."
Follow Eric Pfeiffer on Twitter (@ericpfeiffer).
Title: Media Issues: John Hinderacker, Powerline vs. Washington Post
Post by: DougMacG on April 11, 2014, 08:21:28 AM
I don't know if anyone has followed this. Post "journalists" were busted taking false Koch brothers Keystone XL talking pints directly from Dem party. They keep correcting without correcting. I recall that Dan Rather also ran up against Powerline fact checking, came up with the 'false but true' defense - and lost.
My Questions to Juliet Eilperin, and a Message to Jeff Bezos, by John Hinderacker
Over the last few minutes, I sent the following four tweets to Washington Post reporter/Democratic Party propagandist Juliet Eilperin:
Why won’t you answer my questions about whether your false reporting on Keystone is coordinated with the Democratic Party?
You know perfectly well that Keystone has nothing to do with Koch. Why do you perpetrate a lie, along with Whitehouse and Waxman?
You know that Keystone would damage Koch economically. Why do you perpetrate a falsehood based on 3% leasehold ownership?
The public demands answers. You are going to have to account for your false reporting. Did you coordinate with the Dem Party?
If you follow me on Twitter @jhinderaker–as you should!–you can retweet these tweets. You can also tweet messages directly to Ms. Eilperin @eilperin. We are not going to let this rest until we get answers from the Washington Post and from Henry Waxman and Sheldon Whitehouse.
Finally, Jeff Bezos, this is for you: I have no idea what your political views are, but I assume you are a Democrat, like most rich people. Maybe you knew, when you bought the Washington Post, that it is nothing but a corrupt mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. If so, nothing about the Post/Keystone scandal will surprise you; on the contrary, you will probably applaud the Post’s latest effort to fool its readers so as to promote the Democratic Party’s interests.
But on the off chance that you thought you were buying a real newspaper, you should be shocked to learn that the Post cannot respond to a simple question: does the Post coordinate its reporting with Congressional Democrats, or does it not? If the Post were an honest paper–a real newspaper, part of an actual free and independent press–that would be an easy question to answer. That the Post is unable to respond speaks volumes. If this isn’t what you thought you were buying, you should clean house.
Title: Greta Van S anally rapes Dem politician
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2014, 10:49:01 AM
Title: excerpted from today's Benghazi thread
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2014, 06:46:36 AM
Yet Krauthammer’s other point about a lack of mainstream media interest is just as germane. Some of that lack may be driven by the reality that Ben Rhodes’ brother is CBS News President David Rhodes, who was not enamored with former CBS investigative report Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting on the attack, despite the fact that she had been one of the few reporters to follow the story wherever it led. Yesterday in interview with Glenn Beck, Attkisson said she was glad to see “a little more light” shed on that relationship, even as she bemoaned the incestuous relationship between Big Government and Big Media, and the increasing level of intimidation aimed at journalists who refuse to abide that collaboration.
Title: Drudgereport giving me heartburn
Post by: ccp on May 04, 2014, 05:21:39 AM
My second 'negative' pessimistic post of the day. I wake up feel refreshed and then I go to Drudge just to get aggravated. The media had no problem with releasing the contents of an illegally recorded *private* conversation between Sterling and his essentially prostitute friend ("I should have paid her") because it fit their liberal narrative, but now suddenly how dare this guy release to the public Kerry's comments which are FAR more important to the world because it is not in *their* narrative:
****Josh Rogin Washington Bureau
05.02.14
Damn Right I Taped Kerry’s ‘Apartheid’ Talk
And if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it in the exact same way.
Ten years ago, when I was a rookie reporter for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, I looked up to Joseph Nye as a sacred figure, the preeminent American expert on Japan. So it hurt a little when Nye wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday to accuse me of “sneaking in” to a meeting of the Trilateral Commission last week in Washington, where John Kerry made explosive remarks warning that Israeli could become “an apartheid state.”
But I don’t blame Joseph Nye for accusing me of unethical journalism practices. He is not a journalist and he does not know the “rules” of journalism, both written and not so. I do. I’m a reporter. I know the rules and I follow them meticulously. In ten years of reporting for five different top news organizations, I’ve never broken an agreement with an official or a source and I never will. My living is dependent on that reputation and I worked hard to earn it.
If a reporter agrees that a conversation or event is off-the-record, then of course he cannot print what was said during that interchange. But the unwritten rule—the one that directly applies here—is that if a reporter enters an off-the-record event uninvited and has not agreed to the off-the-record terms, he is free to report what happens inside that event. It’s the responsibility of the event organizers to keep reporters from entering events without invitations. As long as the reporter does not misrepresent himself and does not attempt to conceal a recording device, the event is fair game. That’s the rule.
Did I enter the Trilateral Commission event with Kerry, tape it, and then reveal to the world what our Secretary of State is saying to influential world leaders behind closed doors?
Damn right I did.
Other outlets, including Politico, rushed to publish posts alleging I “sneaked” into the meeting and “secretly” recorded Kerry, based on the Nye letter. They reported “great frustration at the State Dept.” over the story. Politico also dredged up a story from 2009 when Jeffrey Goldberg accused me of being a bad Jew and worse for reporting on his interview of the Israeli ambassador at a local synagogue on Yom Kippur.
(I did issue a minor correction to that story. But on the charge of being a bad Jew? Like Hebrew National, I answer to a higher authority.)
The Daily Caller pointed out that even as Politico called me a “repeat offender,” its reporter acknowledged that although attendees agreed to keep the meeting off the record, “Rogin, who was not invited to the event, was not bound by this agreement.”
The Huffington Post pointed out that Nye didn’t actually present any real evidence that I was inside the meeting at all, saying only that I was recognized by a “friend” who was a member of the commission. The unnamed “friend” would not put his name in front of the accusation. Nye declined multiple times to explain why. But it really doesn’t matter.
“If Rogin attended and did not explicitly agree to any off-the-record ground rules, and did not misrepresent himself in the process, the comments are fair game to report.”
“If Rogin attended and did not explicitly agree to any off-the-record ground rules, and did not misrepresent himself in the process, the comments are fair game to report from a journalistic standpoint,” the Huffington Post explained.
Reporters can never reveal how they get their stories. Our processes, even our tricks, are sacred. They are the only advantage we have against the powerful people and organizations trying to keep information out of the public eye. They have hundreds of public affairs personnel, millions of dollars, and the ability to enforce tight control of media access to the leaders we trust with our national security and diplomacy. We have only our sources, our savvy, and our willingness to do what’s necessary to find out the things our government is trying to hide, within the bounds of the rules.
Nevertheless, in the interest of transparency, I will make this one time exception to my rule of never talking about my reporting process. Here is exactly what happened.
Friday morning I got a tip from a source that Kerry would be speaking at the Trilateral Commission meeting at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, a luxurious place just far enough away from downtown DC to avoid random foot traffic but still only 10 minutes from my office by taxi. The State Department had disclosed Kerry’s appearance there and marked it “closed press” in their daily scheduling note, but had not disclosed the location. I hopped in a cab.
I got there early so I parked myself in an empty room near the lobby and finished up another story I was working on. At about 2:30, the time of Kerry’s scheduled remarks, I walked over to the meeting room, walked straight to the front entrance of the room, nodded politely to the staffer at the door (she nodded back) and entered along with dozens of other people who were filing in.
Nobody ever asked me who I was. I didn’t have a name tag but many of the invited attendees weren’t wearing theirs so nobody thought anything of it. As the approximately 200 attendees got settled in for the Kerry speech, I found a seat in the corner, opened up my laptop, placed my recorder on my lap in plain sight, turned it on, and waited for the fun to begin.
A fellow journalist—I won’t say who, but you can read a list of the ones that attended the event here—spotted me in the hallway before the event. We made chit chat and talked about The Trilateral Commission in general terms. He mentioned that he was a member of the Commission. He didn’t ask me if I was a member or was invited and I didn’t volunteer any information either way. I have no idea if he is the “friend” who ratted me out to Joseph Nye.
Kerry stuck mostly to his script, but veered off at times, as he often does. I was focused on his remarks about Ukraine, when he seemed to reveal new information about intelligence collection on Russia and promised new sanctions. (I finished up a story from the room, and attributed Kerry’s remarks to “an attendee,” because there I was. Once I got home and had a chance to listen to the tapes, I sourced Kerry’s remarks to a recording obtained by The Daily Beast.) Kerry’s remarks on Israel were typical for him, until he dropped the now infamous A-bomb.
I left in the middle of the Q&A because I had another appointment. We will probably never know what else Kerry told the Trilateral Commission behind closed doors. I was proud to be able to bring my readers a story about what our top diplomat says about an important issue when he didn’t think the cameras were rolling. I expected some pushback and anger from the State Department. I was surprised that so many people bought the spin that I somehow I had done something unethical.
If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in the exact same way. Event organizers and public officials should be forewarned. The public disclosure of this episode may make it harder for me to enter rooms the powerful people don’t want me in, maybe not, we’ll see. If it does, no worries, I’ve got plenty of other ways to get important and true information about our government to my readers. I don’t have to break the rules to break news.
I will admit to one ethical indiscretion in the reporting of these stories. While I was waiting for Kerry to get to the meeting, I partook of the lunch buffet and made myself a plate of pork loin, chicken, and a very nice rice pilaf. Professor Nye, my apologies. Please send me a bill.****
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 04, 2014, 06:17:26 AM
If the left didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 04, 2014, 06:37:03 AM
"If the left didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all."
Good point. No standards at all except what suits them. Either personally or with their progressive agenda.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 04, 2014, 06:39:26 AM
Title: Media recruiting mass killers
Post by: prentice crawford on May 26, 2014, 07:08:31 PM
Media reports exploiting mass murders for ratings, and pushing anti-gun agenda, inspiring the suicidal to become mass killers much like terror groups recruit suicide bombers.
What Drives Suicidal Mass Killers: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/what-drives-suicidal-mass-killers.html?_r=0
The Media Needs to Stop Inspiring Copycat Murders. Here's How. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/the-media-needs-to-stop-inspiring-copycat-murders-heres-how/266439/
Mass murderers want glory and fame. Somehow, we need to stop giving it to them. http://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5749416/don-t-give-elliot-rodger-in-death-the-fame-he-wanted-in-life
Mental health care in the U.S. needs a check-up http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mental-health-care-in-the-us-needs-a-check-up/2014/04/16/f5289e30-c036-11e3-b574-f8748871856a_story.html
P.C.
Title: Bizarro world , , , how to answer?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2014, 07:09:55 PM
If the media are so liberal, where are all the Union-friendly news shows? I see lots of pro-big business & pro-investor shows. Where are the shows for worker interests? And, other than MSNBC, where are the pro-Union guests? I see lots of guests making the pro-corporate, anti-union arguments. Where are all the union defenders in the "liberal" media?
If the media are so liberal, why do they keep focusing on debt/deficit/austerity and not the arguments against austerity that all the liberal economists are making?
If the media are so liberal, why did they ignore the 2011 Tar Sands protests in DC and the hundreds of arrested protesters, including a renowned NASA scientist?
If the media are so liberal, why have they completely ignored the controversy surrounding the drilling of the Alberta Tar Sands?
If the media are so liberal, why did they parrot Bush's link between Iraq & 9/11, and his claim that Iraq still had WMD's, while ignoring the many experts who could disprove these claims?
If the media are so liberal, why did they cheerlead us into the Iraq war, while censoring those who opposed it?
If the media are so liberal, why did they virtually ignore the largest anti-war protest in the history of mankind on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, but have since given plenty of mostly uncritical coverage of much smaller Tea Party protests?
If the media are so liberal, why did they give so much free publicity to Paul Ryan's "brave", "heroic" budget plan...while they ignored the Progressive Caucus's People's Budget?
If the media are so liberal, why did even Bush's own press secretary think the media was too deferential to him?
If the media are so liberal, why did they run the fake ACORN voter fraud stories & the faked ACORN video stings, then virtually ignore it when ACORN was vindicated and proven innocent of both?
If the media are so liberal, then why do the "liberal" TV stations gladly air tons of liberal-bashing campaign ads by right-wing groups?
If the media are so liberal, why do they keep covering-up for Wall Street and hiding the rampant criminality there?
If the media are so liberal, why was their coverage of right-winger Margaret Thatcher's controversial legacy so fawning and one-sided?
If the media are so liberal, why did they ignore proven and admitted GOP election fraud?
If the media are so liberal, why is there a virtual news blackout of the Trans-Pacific Partnership controversy?
If the media are so liberal, why did they virtually ignore the biggest climate change rally in US history on Februray 17?
Since then, I've seen plenty of right-wing guests on the news urging Obama to approve Keystone and criticizing him for delaying it (even just this morning on MSNBC, with zero argument from the host!), but nobody to explain why there's a huge movement against it.
If the media are so liberal, why did they constantly demonize leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, even promoting anti-Chavez disinfo?
If the media are so liberal, why do they treat far-right views as mainstream?
If the media are so liberal, why was coverage of Occupy Wall Street mostly hostile or dismissive?
And if you try to argue that all my sources above are "liberal biased", you'd just be proving my point. If the truly liberal alternative media are the only ones pointing these things out, then obviously the mainstream corporate media isn't very liberal
Title: Speaking of "bizarro"
Post by: ccp on June 01, 2014, 07:49:09 PM
What does the board think of this discussion of liberalism. After reading this I am more confused than ever about what is "LIBERALISM" . According to this author it depends what age and what region and what country you are talking from.
For example, does this make any sense at all of what we think liberalism is in this country in this day and age:
"Unlike conservatives, who fear change, liberals welcome it because they believe that changing societies can be stable. Unlike socialists, who think the advent of Utopia needs to be administered, liberals aim to create the conditions in which each person can thrive in his or her own way unburdened by dictatorship."
If you ask me I think of liberals as just the opposite. That is more akin to statism.
Anyway, please read on and get confused:
*****Liberal thought
On the barricades
An eloquent study of a belief under siege May 24th 2014 | From the print edition
Liberalism: The Life of an Idea. By Edmund Fawcett.Princeton University Press; 468 pages; $35 and £24.95. Buy from Amazon.co.uk (ISBN=unknown)
SOMETIMES it seems as if liberalism is slowly caving in. Western democracies are battered by partisanship and populism. Inequality is undermining social cohesion. Governments are unconvincingly shoring up expensive welfare states that have failed to match their promise. Meanwhile, the running is being made by places such as Turkey, which has an intolerant majority, and China and Russia, where power cannot be contested. “Liberalism” by Edmund Fawcett is not only a gripping piece of intellectual history, it also equips the reader to understand today’s threats—and how they might be withstood.
“Liberal” in the vocabulary of Mr Fawcett, for many years on the staff of The Economist, does not mean Democratic in the American sense, fanatically free-market in the French, or bearded and sandals-wearing in the British. Instead liberalism is a protean set of beliefs—in progress, scepticism towards authority and respect for individuals—that have been central to the formation of modern Western democracy. Neither is Mr Fawcett setting out to write directly about today. Instead, he traces the evolution of liberalism from its roots in the Enlightenment. The result is a scrapbook, assembled out of thumbnail biographies and historical vignettes, interleaved with philosophical argument and snippets of economics. Mr Fawcett’s erudition and his voluminous list of sources attest to a lifetime’s engagement with liberalism, both in the academy and at the hustings.
Though the sketches are sometimes tantalisingly brief, the scrapbook method gives the book two distinctive traits. One is that France and Germany feature almost as much as Britain and America. John Stuart Mill and James Madison have to share a berth with François Guizot, the French statesman and historian who, long before Lord Acton, articulated the liberal conviction that power corrupts, and Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, the German who founded the first credit unions. Mr Fawcett tears the blinkers off the view that liberal thought was essentially Anglo-Saxon—and that, correspondingly, France and Germany even today are not truly liberal.
The other distinction, following from this, is the book’s sheer scope, which ranges from monetary theory to social Darwinism and from the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the contrasts between anarchy and dissent. Mostly, these juxtapositions shed light on the adaptability of liberalism—of how, as Mr Fawcett writes, it has “no Marx-Engels Standard Edition”. Occasionally, though, the bedfellows jar; it is odd to find the British Conservative Michael Oakeshott in the same tent as the French Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre.
Adaptability is one reason for thinking that liberalism can withstand today’s challenges. Mr Fawcett argues that it was born not just out of a desire for liberty, but also to cope with the violent revolutions unleashed at the end of the 18th century. Unlike conservatives, who fear change, liberals welcome it because they believe that changing societies can be stable. Unlike socialists, who think the advent of Utopia needs to be administered, liberals aim to create the conditions in which each person can thrive in his or her own way unburdened by dictatorship.
However, as liberalism has spread, these impulses have become silted over. What remains is often a diminished combination of elections and a narrow, market-based version of freedom. Mr Fawcett provides a timely reminder that liberalism is much richer—more concerned with those who lose elections than those who win them, wary of concentrated power wherever it may be found, and committed to the intrinsic worth of every individual.
Liberalism is indeed under siege. Those who would fortify the walls would do well to study the foundations. Mr Fawcett’s book offers an admirable archaeology.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 01, 2014, 08:53:10 PM
Leftists are not liberal and they certainly are not progressive. Oppressive is a more accurate term.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 02, 2014, 01:48:23 AM
Ummm , , , we are drifting from the subject matter of this thread , , ,
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 02, 2014, 02:13:06 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues, IRS scandal, Lois Lerner lost emails
Post by: DougMacG on June 17, 2014, 08:52:50 PM
Late afternoon on Friday the 13th, the IRS informed Congress on page 15 of a 27 page letter that 26 months that the Lois Lerner emails had been destroyed. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) knew this for months, even before the current IRS commissioner testified that his agency would produce all of them! http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/17/irs-knew-lerner-emails-were-missing-for-months-lied-to-congress/
I don't see where the details of how this transpired were reported in the mainstream media, NY Times, for example. I google the details and see nothing but right wing sites. I'm bet NYT etc covered the President alleging it was a "phony scandal" with precision. How about covering the evidence that proves him wrong?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on June 17, 2014, 08:58:06 PM
Has professional journalist Martha Raddatz covered the story?
Title: Will's college and rape comments
Post by: ccp on June 22, 2014, 11:32:31 AM
What is wrong about this statement?:
****“The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous.”****
Article below.
-----------------
George Will dumped: Prize winning author George Will dumped after column on rape
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch told their readers that they would no longer run George Will's column, calling his latest post about sexual assault "offensive and inaccurate." Was this right--or should he be free to voice his opinion as a columnist? Play
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch told their readers that they would no longer run George Will's column, calling his latest post about sexual assault "offensive and inaccurate." Was this right--or should he be free to voice his opinion as a columnist?
June 21, 2014
American newspaper columnist George Will is a journalist, author and Pulitzer Prize recipient. The Wall Street Journal once called him “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America.” He’s also out of a job, at least in syndication with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who dumped the conservative political writer for an incendiary piece he wrote about sexual assaults on our nation's college campuses.
In his column, carried originally by Will’s employer The Washington Post, the 73-year-old author said colleges and universities “are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.”
As a case in point, Will linked and discussed a rape charge out of Swarthmore College in Philadelphia. A student was in her dorm with a guy that she’d already been sleeping with for about three months. Quoting PhillyMag.com, Will wrote:
“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. “I basically said, ‘No, I don’t want to have sex with you.’ And then he said, ‘OK, that’s fine’ and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.”
Will said that the Obama administration is “riding to the rescue of ‘sexual assault’ victims” like the Swarthmore student, who filed a rape charge six weeks after the incident above. Will went on to write:
“The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous.”
Will claims that “Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process” and adopt a minimal standard of evidence. Will also mocked out campus “trigger warnings” – a standard of speech designed to protect sexual assault victims from having their encounter brought back up in their minds. To Will, trigger warnings “swaddle students in a ‘safe,’ ‘supportive,’ ‘unthreatening’ environment -- intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant.”
He closes by writing:
“What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism.”
Will’s full column can be read here.
Tony Messenger, the St. Louis Dispatch editorial editors, said he had already been considering dumping Will from the paper, but that Will’s column on rape “made the decision easier.”
“The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it,” Messenger wrote.
Since the column first appeared back on June 6, a petition at MoveOn.org has pulled in close to 46,000 signatures. The petition is calling for the Post to fire George Will. The co-authors of the petition, who are both from the women’s activist group UltraViolet, wrote:
“ George Will makes his living writing columns that many people disagree with. But his latest column has gone too far. Rape is a serious crime--accusing women of making it up and arguing schools shouldn't be addressing sexual assault puts both women and men at risk. By publishing George Will's piece, The Washington Post is amplifying some of the most insidious lies that perpetuate rape culture. It's not just wrong – it's dangerous.”
Other petitions have been thrown up online, and even state senators are weighing in with their rebukes of George Will. Thus far, the Post is standing by Will, calling his column “within the realm of reasonable debate.”
Will is not going down without taking a few swings however. In a discussion on C-SPAN yesterday, seen here in a YouTube upload, Will lashed out at his critics, saying that “indignation is the default position of certain people in civic discourse. They go from a standing start to fury in about 30 seconds.”
Will blames the Internet for creating a free-for-all forum of name-callers who cannot read, write or think on their own:
“I think it has something to do with the Internet, a wonderful thing. It has lowered, indeed erased, the barriers to entry into public discourse. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately, the downside to this, and there’s a downside to everything, is that among the barriers to entry that have been reduced is you don’t have to be able to read, write or think. You can just come
Title: Wesbury-esque
Post by: G M on June 25, 2014, 11:02:24 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on June 26, 2014, 08:09:40 AM
"its-everybodys-fault-but-obamas/"
I remember the libs so outraged about Reagan that they couldn't tear him down. "Teflon" President they called him.
I guess it didn't matter that the country just happened to be doing far better when he left office then when he came in.
Now the President's party is the other one and he is half minority, and he gets a pass from all the MSM.
I guess the fact the country is far worse now then when he took office is not an issue.
Perhaps enough voters are catching on so the Dems are simply bringing in new future voters with promises that we will pay for. The Republicans are bought off and complicit.
Title: More Wesburyesque from the Associated Press wing of the Democrat party
Post by: ccp on June 26, 2014, 08:54:18 AM
Why a grim US economic picture is brightening
Associated Press By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and MARTIN CRUTSINGER June 24, 2014 5:45 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — When the government updates its estimate Wednesday of how the U.S. economy fared last quarter, the number is pretty sure to be ugly. Horrible even.
US economy shrank at steep 2.9 percent rate in Q1 Associated Press U.S. economy contracts sharply, consumer spending revised down Reuters Economy in U.S. Shrank in First Quarter by Most in Five Years Bloomberg U.S. Economy Shrinks by Most in Five Years The Wall Street Journal U.S. consumer spending misses expectations on weak services Reuters
The economy likely shrank at an annual rate of nearly 2 percent in the January-March quarter, economists estimate. That would be its bleakest performance since early 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession.
So why aren't economists, businesses or investors likely to panic?
Because most agree that the economy last quarter was depressed by temporary factors — particularly the blast of Arctic chill and snow that shuttered factories, disrupted shipping and kept Americans away from shopping malls and auto dealerships.
Since then, the picture has brightened. Solid hiring, growth in manufacturing and surging auto sales have lifted the economy at a steady if still-unspectacular pace. That said, sluggish pay growth and a stumbling housing rebound have restrained the expansion. But the economy's recovery continues.
"We had a very bad first quarter, but the first quarter is history," says Craig Alexander, chief economist at TD Bank. "It doesn't tell you where the economy is going, which is in a direction of more strength."
Wednesday's report will be the government's third and final estimate of the economy's first-quarter performance. Here are five reasons economists are looking past last quarter's dismal showing and five reasons the economy still isn't back to full health.
If the economy really was tumbling back into recession, you'd see businesses laying off workers — or at least clamping down on hiring. That isn't happening. Employers are adding jobs at the fastest pace in 15 years. That's a pretty clear sign that they see last quarter's troubles as temporary. And layoffs are down. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, has fallen 10 percent since the first week of January.
With summer in full swing, it might be hard to remember the brutal winter. But the cold damaged the economy last quarter. Spending on autos, furniture, clothes and other goods rose at the slowest pace in nearly three years. With snow blanketing building sites, home construction plummeted in January. Alexander estimates that winter weather slowed economic activity by about 1.5 percentage points on an annual basis.
Yet the impact didn't reflect fundamental problems in the economy. Americans who postponed car purchases during winter simply bought cars during spring instead. Auto sales jumped to a nine-year high in May.
Another drag on growth last quarter was probably also temporary: Companies sharply cut back on their restocking of goods. That wasn't unexpected. It occurred after companies had aggressively ramped up restocking in the second half of last year. The slowdown in the January-March quarter reduced annual growth by 1.6 percentage points, the government said. With growth strengthening since spring began, businesses are restocking at a faster rate again. Inventories grew 0.6 percent in April, the most in six months.
Last quarter's economy will look bleak in part because the government needs to correct a mistaken assumption. It previously figured that health spending soared last quarter after many Americans obtained insurance on the Obama administration's health care exchanges. But when data was released this month, there was no sign of such additional spending.
As a result, consumer spending probably grew at a 2.3 percent annual rate last quarter, not the 3.1 percent previously estimated, according to JPMorgan Chase. Consumers have accelerated spending since then: Retail sales surged in March by the most in four years — and again in April and May, boosted by auto purchases. This month, consumer confidence reached a six-year high. That's a hint that spending will further strengthen.
After slipping in the first quarter, partly because of weather-related disruptions, factories are making more machinery, cars, furniture and computers. They're hiring and giving workers more overtime, which translates into bigger paychecks.
Jason Anderson of CertainTeed, a manufacturer in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, said sales of the company's roofing shingles, siding, insulation and other building products have rebounded since last quarter. The company is building a 150,000-square-foot factory in Jonesburg, Missouri.
"We're still optimistic about the growth trajectory of the United States," Anderson says. "All our plans are still on track."
___
Most analysts think the economy is growing at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the current quarter and will expand at a 3 percent rate for the rest of the year. The Federal Reserve foresees a similar improvement.
Still, that pace would leave growth for the full year at about 2.25 percent, only slightly above last year's 1.9 percent. And despite all the positives, it's worth keeping in mind that a truly robust economy wouldn't be thrown off so much by severe weather.
Here are signs that the economy still hasn't achieved full health:
At the top of most economists' worry list is housing. Rising home prices and higher mortgage rates have put homes out of reach for many would-be buyers. Even for people willing and able to buy, there aren't enough homes for sale. All of which has slowed purchases, which fell 5 percent in May compared with 12 months earlier.
Builders started work in May on just over 1 million homes at an annual rate, below the pace of the final three months of last year. The slowdown translates into fewer construction jobs, smaller commissions for Realtors and reduced sales of furniture, appliances and garden supplies.
Yet there are signs that the housing market is stabilizing. Price gains are slowing. And mortgage rates have dipped. That could boost sales in coming months.
In fact, data released this week suggested that this may already be happening. Sales of new and existing homes jumped in May.
Another threat: Middle East turmoil, particularly in Iraq, could cause oil and gas prices to spike. That would leave consumers with less money to spend on other goods and could limit growth. Crude oil prices hit a nine-month high Thursday. Gas prices averaged $3.68 Monday, about a dime higher than a year ago.
STAGNANT WAGES
While layoffs have fallen back to pre-recession levels and hiring is steady, the economy still isn't delivering what most Americans probably want most: A decent raise. Average hourly pay, adjusted for inflation, slipped 0.1 percent in May compared with a year earlier. It's still slightly lower than when the recession ended in June 2009. Flat pay limits consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of economic activity.
LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT
Despite the pickup in hiring, 3.4 million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer — more than double the pre-recession figure. Some may find jobs as the economy recovers. Others will give up searching and return to school, retire early or care for relatives. Economists worry that the longer people are out of work, the more their skills erode. Having many former workers permanently frozen out of the job market can slow growth. Last week, Fed Chair Janet Yellen expressed concern that long-term unemployment could create "permanent damage" to both those suffering through it and the broader economy.
The unemployment rate has fallen to 6.3 percent, a five-year low, from 10 percent in October 2009. But much of the drop has occurred because many people have given up on their job searches, retired or stayed in school and never started looking. The government counts people as unemployed only if they're actively seeking work. The rate has tumbled in large part because many of those out of work aren't being counted as unemployed, not because hiring has soared. The percentage of Americans working or looking for work has reached a 35-year low.
___
Contact Chris Rugaber on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/ChrisRugaber
Title: Hypocrisy exemplifed at Pravda on the Hudson (POTH)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2014, 03:04:51 AM
“Three years ago the Supreme Court threw away decades of precedent and watered down the religious liberty of all Americans. . . . By radically changing the ground rules for deciding claims of religious liberty, the Court alarmed organized religion, civil liberties organizations of all stripes and Senators as different in outlook as Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Orrin Hatch of Utah. . . . The Religious Freedom Restoration Act reasserts a broadly accepted American concept of giving wide latitude to religious practices that many might regard as odd or unconventional. The bill deserves passage. . . . With the Restoration Act, Congress asserts its own interest in protecting religious liberty. It’s a welcome antidote to the official insensitivity to religion the Court spawned in 1990.”–editorial, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1993
“The Supreme Court’s deeply dismaying decision on Monday in the Hobby Lobby case swept aside accepted principles of corporate law and religious liberty. . . . It was the first time the court has allowed commercial business owners to deny employees a federal benefit to which they are entitled by law based on the owners’ religious beliefs, and it was a radical departure from the court’s history of resisting claims for religious exemptions from neutral laws of general applicability.”–editorial, New York Times, July 1, 2014
Title: DNC spokeswoman Martha Raddatz interviews Gov. Perry
Post by: G M on July 08, 2014, 10:22:34 AM
She appears to be auditioning (again) for an administration position. Or is ABC News part of the administration? Too bad that level of partisanship is accepted in the so-called mainstream. He handled it beautifully.
I would think that as a rule in an interview with a dignitary, the Governor of Texas for example, the journalist would spend half the time letting them get their message out and half the time challenging them back with the tough, critical questioning, instead of all attack, all the time. If they don't have a message worth hearing, then don't invite them on the program.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 09, 2014, 05:41:02 AM
The line between this administration and the palace guard former known as the MSM is very blurry. I think Raddatz thinks of herself as a White House employee anyway.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2014, 08:53:53 AM
Title: Dem Congressman calls out Qatar/Al Jazeera's support of Hamas
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2014, 03:44:17 PM
Second post
Democratic Congressman Calls Out Qatar's Hamas Support on Al-Jazeera America by John Rossomando IPT News July 18, 2014 http://www.investigativeproject.org/4467/democratic-congressman-calls-out-qatar-hamas
A congressman's recent criticism of Al-Jazeera America's Qatari owners for funding of Hamas has renewed questions about the network's journalistic integrity. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also slammed the network's coverage of the latest round of fighting between Hamas and Israel during his July 9 appearance on the network.
"Every one of those rockets [fired by Hamas into Israeli cities] is a war crime, almost every one," Sherman said, noting that Hamas seeks to hit civilian targets. "Of course it's a war crime committed by Hamas. And of course the owners of this TV network help fund Hamas."
Allegations have floated for years about members of the Qatari royal family meddling in editorial decisions of Al-Jazeera's Doha-based English-language sister network. A State Department cable from December 2009 stated that Qatar was using Al-Jazeera as "an informal tool … of foreign policy."
This lack of editorial independence came into focus in 2011, when Qatari superiors ordered the re-editing of a two-minute video package that appeared on Al-Jazeera English. Qatari network officials modified the segment to ensure that comments by Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani at the United Nations led the segment, even though staffers judged Al-Thani's comments as being less important than other speakers that day, such as President Barack Obama.
Al-Jazeera America strives to publicly distance itself from its Qatari parents and portray its product as "unbiased, fact-based … in-depth journalism." A look at its coverage of the current Gaza conflict, however, calls its claim of being unbiased into question.
The network's pro-Hamas slant has been exhibited in its disproportionate emphasis on deaths of Palestinian civilians without almost any critical mention of Hamas's intentional use of human shields – considered a war crime under international law.
Similarly, Al-Jazeera America reporters have made scant reference to the terrorists' use of densely populated areas to fire rockets or of Israel's warning civilians to leave targeted areas prior to bombing.
For example, a July 15 segment of its program "Consider This" focused on the plight of Palestinian children in Gaza. Moderator Wajahat Ali omitted any reference to how the terrorist group endangers children's lives. Ali repeated the mantra about Gaza's population density without a single reference to how Hamas uses mosques and civilian buildings to launch rockets.
During his appearance on the network, Sherman also slammed Al-Jazeera America for dismissing Hamas' threat to Israeli civilians because their rockets had not killed anyone at a kindergarten in Israel.
"… [Y]ou on this TV station say, 'well maybe it's not a war crime because it's not successful, the rocket didn't hit a kindergarten – it was aimed at a kindergarten but it didn't hit a kindergarten – so then it's not reprehensible,'" Sherman said.
U.S. officials have harbored concerns about the Qatari royal family for years and even interceded to stop some of the money it sent to Hamas.
A confidential State Department cable from February 2006 describes former Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who founded Al-Jazeera by a royal decree in 1996, as a "a big friend of Hamas." He notably pledged $400 million to Hamas's cash-strapped government in Gaza during an October 2012 state visit. However, recent reports indicate that the U.S. blocked the transfer of money to Hamas.
Back in 2006, Al-Thani gave $50 million to the then Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
Al-Thani may have abdicated in 2013 in favor of his son, but the change has not lessened Qatar's financial commitment to Hamas. Qatar's Prime Minister Abdullah bin Naser bin Khalifa Al Thani announced in June that Qatar would give Hamas $60 million to pay the salaries of its civil servants in Gaza.
That kind of open support frustrates American diplomats.
"Officials should make known USG concerns about the financial support to Hamas by Qatari charitable organizations and our concerns about the moral support Hamas receives from Yousef Al-Qaradawi [a popular Muslim Brotherhood cleric living in Qatar]," U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Joseph E. Lebaron wrote in a 2009 secret cable to Washington. He also made clear "high-level Qatari political support is needed" to curtail terror financing.
Hamas received much of its money in Qatar through charitable foundations or popular committees, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal told Al-Hayat in 2003. Meshaal noted that Qatari TV occasionally organized days when it would collect donations to assist the intifada happening at the time.
Qatar twice provided sanctuary to Meshaal after he wore out his welcome elsewhere. Jordan kicked him out in 1999, and he had to leave Damascus in 2011 after relations between Hamas and the Assad regime soured over the Syrian civil war. Qatar has allowed Hamas to maintain offices in Doha for years.
Qatar Charity, formerly the Qatar Charitable Society and also controlled by the Qatari royal family, has long been suspected of maintaining close ties with Hamas. A secret cable from July 2003 suggests that the charity likely had ties to Hamas. The charity collaborated with the Hamas Ministry of Education 2009 to build schools, according to the Daily Mail. Such schools indoctrinate children with pro-jihadist propaganda.
Osama bin Laden discussed Qatar Charity in 1993 as an important fundraising source for al-Qaida – underscoring its long history of funding terrorism.
Another example of Qatar's complicity with Hamas fundraising has been in its allowing Qaradawi, who heads the Union of Good, to operate within its borders. Treasury Department officials stated in a November 2008 press release that Hamas's leadership created Union of Good in 2000 shortly before the start of the second Intifada to "facilitate the transfer of funds to Hamas."
Qaradawi has hosted a program on Al-Jazeera's Arabic channel where he has advocated Palestinian suicide bombings.
Al-Jazeera America came into being after the Al-Jazeera Media Network purchased Current TV from former Vice President Al Gore and other investors in January 2013. Worries about Qatar using Al-Jazeera America as a propaganda tool surfaced almost immediately.
Al-Jazeera America interim CEO Ehab Al Shihabi fought back hard against those accusations in May. "I am not Qatar. I don't represent Qatar," Al Shihabi told the Paley Center for Media. "I am, you know, separate from Qatar government. I took a grant like what [the] BBC has."
"And the whole concept exercise really is built up on the asset of Al-Jazeera Media Network," he added, "and if I'm not successful to build up on that asset that means I am not a right business person."
Other than Al Shihabi, all of the network's top executives are Americans who previously worked for American networks such as CNN or ABC.
Questions about Al-Jazeera America's editorial independence and slant persist, despite those American hires.
Temple University journalism professor Christopher Harper, a veteran reporter who has covered the Middle East since 1979, noted in a column following the network's launch last August that Al-Jazeera America was not about news, and that its product reminded him of Soviet propaganda. Al-Jazeera America gave Qatar a "seat at the political table in the United States," Harper wrote, adding that it was not likely to make money in the already crowded cable news market.
He has proven correct thus far. Its viewership has been practically non-existent, averaging 15,000 viewers during prime time.
Al-Jazeera America's uncritical coverage of the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)'s effort to weaken the terrorism watch list is one example of the slanted coverage. The FBI cut off contact with CAIR in 2008, based on evidence it uncovered tying CAIR and its founders to a Hamas support network. A federal judge also ruled in 2009 that the evidence established "at least a prima facie case as to CAIR's involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas."
Al-Jazeera America anchor John Siegenthaler Jr. interviewed CAIR-NY board member Lamis Deek on June 25 concerning a federal judge's ruling that the watch list was unconstitutional. Siegenthaler never asked Deek about the national-security considerations stemming from the judge's ruling and seemed to sympathize with CAIR's position.
"I think it is simply providing one side of a story. It doesn't rise to Soviet propaganda, but it certainly is propaganda for one side," Harper told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
A July 10 broadcast of the network's program "Inside Story" hosted by longtime former National Public Radio announcer Ray Suarez provides another example of this slant. Suarez sought to discuss the failure of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, except for one critical part of the story – someone to present Israel's perspective. Peace would be possible, Suarez and his three guests agreed, if only Israel were to cooperate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
None of the guests, including Gershon Baskin, head of the Israel-Palestinian Think Tank; Aziz Abu Sarah of the Middle East Justice & Development Initiative; or former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Dan Kurtzer, made any reference to Hamas' refusal to renounce violence or its commitment to Israel's destruction, nor provocations by members of the Palestinian Authority calling Israel the occupied "1948 lands," nor Abbas's statements of solidarity with Hamas as far back as 2009.
Suarez noted that Baskin had past contacts with Hamas and proceeded to ask him how he would handle peace negotiations with the terrorist group, regardless of the fact that Hamas's charter and recent statements show it has no desire for peace with Israel. The host then referred to Palestinian terrorism as the "armed struggle" – a term Hamas leaders use to describe their terror attacks against Israelis.
Abu Sarah suggested that Palestinians should consider a one-state solution where Palestinians and Jews would live side by side in the same state – something he said "would mean the end of the Jewish state."
Suarez's political bias has been well-known for years. He narrated an April 2007 PBS documentary, "America at a Crossroads: The Muslim Americans," which dismissed CAIR's links to terrorists as the work of "a small band of conservative and pro-Israeli groups, who accuse it of having an extremist agenda."
"There have also been claims that some members of CAIR have terrorist links. But there have been no charges linked to CAIR itself," Suarez said.
Information about CAIR's extremism was readily available at the time the documentary aired. These included CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad's 1994 endorsement of Hamas; convictions of CAIR leaders such as Randal "Ismail" Royer and Ghassan Elashi; and its opposition to terrorism investigations.
Conservative journalist Cliff Kincaid questions why Al-Jazeera America continues to operate despite Qatar's terror ties and argues that it should be labeled foreign propaganda.
"Al-Jazeera's entry into the U.S. media market, in violation of the law, was tantamount to giving American broadcast facilities during World War II to 'Tokyo Rose' and 'Axis Sally,'" Kincaid said. "Its broadcasts in the U.S. are not being labeled by cable and satellite providers as foreign propaganda under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. "In addition, the deal was not reported to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) of the Treasury Department, in violation of the law."
Clearly, the terror ties of Al-Jazeera America's Qatari owners should be further examined by U.S. regulatory authorities and members of Congress because many questions remain to be answered regarding the network's independence from foreign control.
Title: Professional journalism in action
Post by: G M on July 22, 2014, 05:56:16 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on July 30, 2014, 09:27:34 PM
"Gamechanger Salon is comprised of “experienced change makers from different ‘worlds’ of the movement to share stories, honest reflections, interesting articles, and provocative ideas on how we build a stronger, more coordinated, more game-changing movement for the 21st Century” according to the policy manual"
Who the hell are these people and who asked them to change our "world" and what the hell are they to decide what is best for the rest of us.
Again the disease *narcissistic liberalism*. They are so impressed with their own intelligence. They know better then most in the world and they are going to fix it. The ignorant "masses" just don't know better. We need their help. We just don't know it.
And what does this exactly mean:
*experienced change makers"
you mean progandists, deceivers, manipulators, divide and conquer, fascists, bribers, extortionists, con artists, snake oil salesmen?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on July 30, 2014, 11:45:04 PM
"Gamechanger Salon is comprised of “experienced change makers from different ‘worlds’ of the movement to share stories, honest reflections, interesting articles, and provocative ideas on how we build a stronger, more coordinated, more game-changing movement for the 21st Century” according to the policy manual"
Who the hell are these people and who asked them to change our "world" and what the hell are they to decide what is best for the rest of us.
Again the disease *narcissistic liberalism*. They are so impressed with their own intelligence. They know better then most in the world and they are going to fix it. The ignorant "masses" just don't know better. We need their help. We just don't know it.
And what does this exactly mean:
*experienced change makers"
you mean progandists, deceivers, manipulators, divide and conquer, fascists, bribers, extortionists, con artists, snake oil salesmen?
Well, yes.
Title: Runs in the family.
Post by: ccp on July 31, 2014, 07:43:57 AM
Incompetence and anti-Semitism. And...
Of course. A rapid defense on Huffington Post. Could anyone imagine the outcry if a Conservative slipped and said what was on her mind about a guest. Taking this into context one must remember that her father is a definite Jew hater from the Carter years. Perhaps she will apologize and of course bygones will be bygones. As long as she is a liberal we know her heart is in the right place :wink::
Title: Zbigniew
Post by: ccp on August 02, 2014, 07:51:09 PM
Nothing like giving a failed NSA from a failed Presidency a chance to give his worthless anti-Semitic (as he always has been) opinion. So his daughters remark "morning Jew" was not just a slip of the tongue. Here he goes off again:
Brzezinski: Netanyahu 'making a very serious mistake'
Discussion in 'Middle East & Africa' started by Hazzy997, Yesterday at 4:29 AM. Yesterday at 4:29 AM #1
Brzezinski: Netanyahu 'making a very serious mistake'
Watch"Fareed Zakaria GPS," Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
Fareed speaks with former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski about Israel's military operation in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on CNN told Wolf Blitzer that the invasion of Gaza was a strategy to demilitarize Gaza, explaining the use of force. But it has been quite a robust use of force…Do you think that it is going to succeed, the Israeli strategy?
No, I think he is making a very serious mistake. When Hamas in effect accepted the notion of participation in the Palestinian leadership, it in effect acknowledged the determination of that leadership to seek a peaceful solution with Israel. That was a real option. They should have persisted in that.
Instead Netanyahu launched the campaign of defamation against Hamas, seized on the killing of three innocent Israeli kids to immediately charge Hamas with having done it without any evidence, and has used that to stir up public opinion in Israel in order to justify this attack on Gaza, which is so lethal.
I think he is isolating Israel. He's endangering its longer-range future. And I think we ought to make it very clear that this is a course of action which we thoroughly disapprove and which we do not support and which may compel us and the rest of the international community to take some steps of legitimizing Palestinian aspirations perhaps in the U.N.
Title: Pravda complicity in Hamas propaganda
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 03, 2014, 09:51:38 PM
Title: What Hamas wants
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2014, 11:59:14 AM
Much has been made of the lopsided coverage of the Gaza conflict, with reporters being chastised for allowing either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian biases to seep through into their reporting and in some cases their tweets and Facebook posts. Questions like, “Does reporting death tolls convey a sympathy for the Palestinians?” float through newsrooms and editorial meetings, with few good, concrete answers emerging, and reporters thousands of miles away in the field unmoved by editorial handwringing anyhow. This is lamentable but in some ways inevitable — the best reporters on this conflict are presumably ones who have a deep understanding of the long history and can therefore contextualize it, but that deep understanding often starts to erode objectivity. But many of the criticisms of bias — some well-founded, some questionable — ignore the most glaring example of media malfeasance that is routinely perpetrated when covering this war, which is either the result of anti-Israel bias or successful Hamas PR strategy. It boils down to three words. Time and time again you hear it on the news when discussing negotiations with Israel: “What Hamas wants...” Hamas wants a cease-fire; Hamas wants the Gaza border blockade lifted; Hamas wants their tunnels left alone; Hamas wants a Palestinian state. All these things may be true of the political arm of Hamas. But rarely is it mentioned in a news report that Hamas’ primary objective, its main goal, what it really wants and what its military arm is designed and determined to get, is the total destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews.
Watch Here
It’s a crucial component that’s regularly left out of news reports. But any story that does not mention this among Hamas’ chief demands is not an intellectually honest or complete one. Few in the media seem to grasp this, the effect of which has been to create a gauzy and nebulous moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas that isn’t really there. Those who have understood this have had to assert it vigorously and explicitly (as I am doing here), which only highlights how pervasive the problem is. Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic writes, as if explaining it to a fifth grader, “The goal of Hama — the actual, overarching goal — is to terrorize the Jews of Israel, through mass murder, into abandoning their country. If generations of Palestinians have to be sacrificed to that goal, well, Hamas believes such sacrifices are theologically justified.” It’s truly bizarre that writers like Goldberg need to put this conflict in such stark terms. It’s not as though Hamas has been coy about their desires. In the Hamas Covenant, or charter, written in 1988, it states that its “struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” and calls for the “obliteration” of Israel. “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!” In 2006, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Al-Zahar said he dreamed of “hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it.” Later that same year, Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said Hamas would never recognize the “usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem.” Hamas has intermittently, when politically helpful, tried to suggest that its enemies aren’t all Jews, just Zionist Jews who, as they see it, occupy Palestine. But it isn’t hard to find contradictions. As recently as 2012, in an August sermon, Ahmad Bahr, Deputy Speaker of the Hamas Parliament, called all Muslims to jihad: “Why? In order to annihilate those Jews.” He goes on, “Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.” In scrubbing media coverage of Hamas’ true intentions, blatant as they are, the media is giving the impression that Hamas “just” wants a few discrete demands answered like Hitler “just” wanted Poland. It isn’t biased to reflect sympathetically on Palestinian casualties, or even to question Israel’s strategies. But if the media is truly interested in covering this conflict accurately, it needs to start by acknowledging that Israeli aggression and Hamas aggression are not motivated by the same end goals. Israel wants peace. Hamas wants genocide.
Title: Professional journalist Soledad O'Brien
Post by: G M on August 13, 2014, 07:20:47 PM
Title: David Brock - sounds like he goes with the highest bidder
Post by: ccp on August 14, 2014, 08:16:04 AM
David Brock
Very odd. A conservative and then suddenly he is not. He is a flaming liberal. He reminds me of that other white haired turn coat named Crist from Florida:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born November 2, 1962 (age 51) Washington, D.C., United States
Education University of California, Berkeley
Occupation journalist, author
David Brock (born November 2, 1962) is an American journalist and author, the founder of the media group Media Matters for America.[1] He was a journalist during the 1990s[2] who wrote the book The Real Anita Hill and the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton.
In the late 1990s, Brock's views shifted significantly towards the left, although he still considers himself a conservative Democrat. In 2004, he founded Media Matters for America, a non-profit organization that describes itself as a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."[3]
Contents [hide] 1 Background 2 Shift to the left 3 Books 4 References 5 External links
Background[edit]
Brock was born in Washington, D.C., and was adopted by Dorothea and Raymond Brock.[4] He has a younger sister, Regina. Brock was raised Catholic; his father held strong conservative beliefs.[4]
Brock grew up in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, where he went to Our Lady of the Assumption School, and later attended Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey.[5] He then attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper, sometimes expressing conservative views. He was an intern at The Wall Street Journal. He graduated from Berkeley with a B.A. in history in 1985.
In 1986 he joined the staff of the weekly conservative news magazine Insight on the News, a sister publication of The Washington Times. After a stint as a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in March 1992 Brock authored a sharply critical story about Clarence Thomas's accuser, Anita Hill, in The American Spectator magazine. A little over a year later, in April 1993, Brock published a book titled The Real Anita Hill, which expanded upon previous assertions that had cast doubt on the veracity of Anita Hill's claims of sexual harassment.
The book became a best-seller. It was later attacked in a book review in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker, and Jill Abramson, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The two later expanded their article into the book Strange Justice, which cast Anita Hill in a much more sympathetic light. It, too, was a best-seller. Brock replied to their book with a book review of his own in The American Spectator.
In the January 1994, issue of The American Spectator, Brock, by then on staff at the magazine, published a story about Bill Clinton's time as governor of Arkansas that made accusations that bred Troopergate.[2] Among other things, the story contained the first printed reference to Paula Jones, referring to a woman named "Paula" who state troopers said offered to be Clinton's partner.[2] Jones called Brock's account of her encounter with Clinton "totally wrong," and she later sued Clinton for sexual harassment, a case that became entangled in the independent counsel's investigation of the Whitewater controversy and eventually led to the impeachment of the president. The story received an award later that year from the Western Journalism Center, and was partially responsible for a rise in the 25-year-old magazine's circulation, from around 70,000 to over 300,000 in a very short period.[citation needed]
Shift to the left[edit]
Three years later, Brock surprised conservatives by publishing a somewhat sympathetic biography of Hillary Clinton, titled The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. Having received a $1 million advance and a tight one-year deadline from Simon & Schuster's then-conservative-focused Free Press subsidiary, Brock was under tremendous pressure to produce another bestseller. However, the book contained no major scoops. In Blinded by the Right (2002), Brock said that he had reached a turning point: he had thoroughly examined charges against the Clintons, could not find any evidence of wrongdoing and did not want to make any more misleading claims. Brock further said that his former friends in right-wing politics shunned him because Seduction did not adequately attack the Clintons. He also argued that his "friends" had not really been friends at all because of the open secret that Brock was gay.[6]
In July 1997, Brock published a confessional piece in Esquire magazine titled "Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man," in which he recanted much of what he said in his two best-known American Spectator articles and criticized his own reporting methods.[7][8] Discouraged at the reaction his Hillary Clinton biography received, he said, "I . . . want out. David Brock the Road Warrior of the Right is dead." Four months later, The American Spectator declined to renew his employment contract, under which he was being paid over $300,000 per year.
Writing again for Esquire in April 1998, Brock apologized to Clinton for his contributions to Troopergate, calling it simply part of an anti-Clinton crusade.[2] He told a more detailed story of his time inside the right wing in his 2002 memoir, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, in which he settled old scores and provided inside details about the Arkansas Project's efforts to bring down Clinton. Later, he also apologized to Anita Hill.
In 2001 Brock accused one of his former sources, Terry Wooten, of leaking FBI files for use in his book about Anita Hill. Brock defended his betrayal of a confidential source by saying, "I've concluded that what I was involved in wasn't journalism, it was a political operation, and I was part of it. . . . So I don't think the normal rules of journalism would apply to what I was doing."[9] Also in 2001, only months before Brock finished production of his book, "Blinded by the Right," he was committed to the psychiatric ward of Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington.[10]
Brock directly addressed the right-wing "machine" in his 2004 book, The Republican Noise Machine, in which he detailed an alleged interconnected, concerted effort to raise the profile of conservative opinions in the press through false accusations of liberal media bias, dishonest and highly partisan columnists, partisan news organizations and academic studies, and other methods. Also in 2004, he featured briefly in the BBC series The Power of Nightmares, where he stated that the Arkansas Project engaged in political terrorism.
About the same time he founded Media Matters for America, an Internet-based progressive media group "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."
Brock announced in 2010 that he was forming a super-PAC, American Bridge, to help elect liberal Democrats, starting with the 2012 election cycle.[11] In describing Brock's intentions for the super-PAC, The New York Times referred to Brock as a "prominent Democratic political operative"[1] (mirrored by The Washington Post's characterization of him as a "former journalist-turned-political operative")[12] and New York Magazine referred to Brock's "hyperpartisanship."[13]
In 2010, Brock's assistant, Haydn Price-Morris, carried a concealed Glock handgun while attending events with Brock. He even illegally brought the gun to events in Washington, D.C. Price-Morris said he carried the firearm to protect Brock.[14] In the same year, Media Matters donors had "restricted" $612,500 to be applied to “gun and public safety issues." [15]
In a 2011 interview with Politico, Brock vowed to wage "guerrilla warfare and sabotage" against Fox News.[16]
In early 2014, Brock was named to the board of Priorities USA Action as the super-PAC also announced its support for a possible Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016.[17]
Books[edit] The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story. Free Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-02-904656-2 The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. 1996, Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-83770-3 Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. 2002, Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4000-4728-4 The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. 2004, Crown. ISBN 978-1-4000-4875-5 Free Ride: John McCain and the Media with Paul Waldman. 2008, Anchor. ISBN 0-307-27940-5 The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine with Ari Rabin-Havt. 2012, Anchor. ISBN 978-0-307-94768-0
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Luo, Michael (23 November 2010). "Effort for Liberal Balance to G.O.P. Group Begins". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 June 2011. 2.^ Jump up to: a b c d "Reporter Apologizes For Clinton Sex Article". CNN. March 10, 1998. Archived from the original on 2008-06-14. Retrieved 2008-10-17. 3.Jump up ^ "Who We Are". Media Matters for America. Retrieved 2008-09-23. 4.^ Jump up to: a b Stated in Brock's Blinded by the Right 5.Jump up ^ Brock, David. "Blinded by the right: the conscience of an ex-conservative", p. 14. Random House, 2003. ISBN 1-4000-4728-5. Accessed January 30, 2011. "... when I arrived at my all-male high school, Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey, I was singled out and ridiculed for being different." 6.Jump up ^ Bruni, Frank (2002-03-24). "Sorry About That". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-11. 7.Jump up ^ Alicia C. Shepard , "Spectator's Sport", American Journalism Review, May 1995. Retrieved February 15, 2008. 8.Jump up ^ David Brock, "Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man", Esquire, July 1997. 9.Jump up ^ Kurtz, Howard (2001-09-01). "Jerry's Kidding, Edited Out". The Washington Post. 10.Jump up ^ http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/05/22/20020522_143906_brockb.htm 11.Jump up ^ Ruggiero, Mark (14 January 2011). "Bridge to Somewhere: Democrats Launch Fundraising Super-PAC". Campaigns & Elections. Retrieved 25 June 2011. 12.Jump up ^ Farhi, Paul (3 December 2010). "Outfoxed by Fox News? No way.". The Washington Post. Retrieved 26 June 2011. 13.Jump up ^ Zengerie, Jason (22 May 2011). "If I Take Down Fox, Is All Forgiven?". New York Magazine. Retrieved 11 June 2011. 14.Jump up ^ http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/12/inside-media-matters-sources-memos-reveal-erratic-behavior-close-coordination-with-white-house-and-news-organizations/6/ 15.Jump up ^ http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/15/thedc-top-ten-interesting-nuggets-from-media-matters-2010-tax-records/ 16.Jump up ^ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51949.html 17.Jump up ^ Confessore, Nicholas, "Biggest Liberal 'Super PAC' to Fund Possible Clinton Bid", New York Times, January 23, 2014. Retrieved 2014-01-23.
External links[edit] Media Matters for America David Brock at the Internet Movie Database Appearances on C-SPAN Booknotes interview with Brock on The Real Anita Hill, June 13, 1993.
Works by or about David Brock in libraries (WorldCat catalog) Anti-Drudge, Brock Profile in Guernica Magazine Right-Wing Journalism dialog with David Brock and Tucker Carlson, Slate (June 25, 1997) David Brock, "His Cheatin’ Heart," The American Spectator (January 1994) (The "Troopergate" Story)
Title: Media beleived Hamas lies
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2014, 04:46:53 AM
[Hamas Lied About Everything. And the media believed it.](http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/hamas-lied-about-everything-and-the-media-believed-it?omhide=true) ==========
Click here to watch: [Hamas Lied About Everything. And the media believed it.](http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/hamas-lied-about-everything-and-the-media-believed-it?omhide=true)
It’s the Mideast equivalent of "Dog bites man," but it took the media nearly a month to recognize its sheer obviousness: Hamas lies. Hamas lies systematically, instructing civilians to misinform the foreign press. It lies habitually, with a formidable record of mendacity from previous conflicts. And it lies guiltlessly, convinced that the objectives of ‘resistance’ supersede quaint notions of truth-telling. Nonetheless, since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge over a month ago, Western media have relied on Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry – as here, here and here – for casualty tallies. As one reporter told the Washington Post, when it comes to body counts, the Hamas Health Minister Ashraf Al-Qidra is "the only game in town." For his part, Qidra has acknowledged that he considers any fatality who has not been claimed by an armed group as a civilian. And for its part, the Hamas leadership almost never admits its operatives have been killed – and instructs Gazans to do the same. Consequently, Qidra’s running total labels three-quarters of Gaza deaths as civilians. The result has been thundering condemnation of Israel for “indiscriminate” bombing (according to the United Nations Human Rights Council), and even targeting civilians deliberately (as per The Guardian). “The world stands disgraced,” bellowed the head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency on July 30, in words run by The Guardian in a banner front-page headline the next day. Human Rights Watch charged Israel with "collective punishment," and even the United States – the Jewish state’s closest friend – lamented, "Israel has to do a better job to avoid civilian loss of life." After nearly a month, however, the media has belatedly cottoned to the Hamas game. Over the last week The New York Times, Al Jazeera and the BBC – none of them traditional redoubts of Zionist fervor – have begun casting doubt on their own previously reported statistics.
In a front-page story on Wednesday, the Times compared and analysed data provided by both Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations. That analysis determined that the population most over-represented in the death toll – men ages 20 to 29 – were also those most likely to be militants: Though they make up just 9 percent of Gaza’s overwhelmingly young population, they account for more than a third of its fatalities. By contrast, women and children under 15 – the least likely to be combatants – account for 71 percent of the population, but one-third of its deaths. The following day Al Jazeera published the names – provided by the Hamas Health Ministry – of all of 1,507 known fatalities. Al Jazeera is owned by Qatar, one of Hamas’s chief benefactors and diplomatic champions, and yet a breakdown of the names’ age and sex reveals the same pattern: Men of combat age are disproportionately represented. On Friday, the BBC’s head of statistics released his own breakdown, based on data provided by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He concluded: "If the Israeli attacks have been ‘indiscriminate’, as the U.N. Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women." The U.N.’s figures, in other words, effectively disprove its own damning allegations of indiscriminate force. In response, the office of the high commissioner offered merely that it "would not want to speculate about why there had been so many adult male casualties." It had no similar qualms, however, in republishing its own purely speculative estimates as hard data: the "Facts and Figures" section of its website says 1,407 Gazan civilians have been killed – roughly the same number cited by Hamas. The U.N., after all, uses the Hamas-supplied figures as a starting point for its own, to which it adds information from media reports (which, again, often rely on those same Hamas numbers) and reports by Palestinian nongovernmental organizations. Many of those NGOs, however, are also of suspect credibility. The oft-cited and reassuringly named Palestinian Center for Human Rights, for example, defines anyone not actively conducting militant activity – say, a Hamas sniper on a tea break – as a civilian. Its figures for civilian casualties are higher even than those of Hamas. Objective analysis of the available data reveals that rather than civilians making up the “vast majority” of Gaza deaths – as the media regularly reported – the proportion appears closer to half. Hundreds of dead civilians are hardly reason to celebrate, but a 1-to-1 civilian casualty ratio is remarkably low by the grim standards of war. Coalition efforts in Afghanistan, for example, produced a 3-to-1 ratio, and 4-to-1 in Iraq. Given Hamas tactics of firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas, the toll in Gaza could have been immeasurably higher. Why, then, do the media continue to accept Hamas propaganda unchallenged? Partly because the death of any civilian – particularly children, who are half of Gaza’s population – is heart-rending. Partly because the heat and fog of war make precise figures unknowable until well after the fighting. Partly because the narrative of a guerrilla militia confronting a modern military makes for compelling copy, and partly – perhaps mainly – because of Hamas intimidation and restrictions on the ground. Hamas mendacity, however, is old news. During its first major clash with Israel in 2008-09, for example, the organization claimed that fewer than 50 of the dead had been combatants. Years later, it conceded that the total had been identical to that acknowledged by Israel: between 600 and 700. It is therefore all the more extraordinary that journalists cast their usual skepticism to the winds and instead followed the script of an unrepentant, unreliable terror outfit. Hamas has taken a beating in its latest battle with Israel, but so too has media credibility.
Hamas now says it deported foreign journalists from Gaza for documenting rockets launches from civilian areas, according to a video translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). In an interview with Mayadeen TV, Isra Al-Mudallal, head of foreign relations in the Hamas Information Ministry, confirms that Hamas security personnel would confront journalists suspected of filming its terrorist operations.
"So when they were conducting interviewers, or when they went on location to report, they would focus on filming the places from where missiles were launched. Thus, they were collaborating with the occupation," al-Mudallal said. "These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip. The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another."
"Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral," added Al-Mudallal.
Throughout the latest conflict, Hamas has threatened and interrogated Western journalists, preventing them from covering the terrorist organization's use of human shields.
Recently, a Spanish journalist confirmed that Hamas launched rockets from the press hotel in Gaza, according to the Algemeiner website. Fernando Gutierrez, writing for Metilla Hoy, tweeted in Spanish: "On Saturday, 9th of August, Hamas launched a batter of rockets from press hotel. What was their intent? To provoke Israel to kill us? #SaveGazaFromHamas."
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Title: Steve Emerson: Who watches the watchers?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2014, 02:14:10 PM
by Steven Emerson The Jerusalem Post August 16, 2014
The performance of the media in covering the Israel-Gaza conflict remains the one area of investigation that is sorely needed.
As is the historical pattern concerning Israel, last week began the growing tsunami of groups - representing the United Nations, The Hague, the European Union, human rights groups, and other non-governmental organizations - announcing their intention to "investigate and review" the military actions under taken by Israel and Hamas during the past five weeks to determine if "war crimes" were committed.
We know from past history the demonstrable manifestation of the vitriolic anti Israeli (and some might add anti-Semitic) bias by nearly all of these organizations clamoring to declare Israel guilty of war crimes, as they have repeatedly accused Israel in the past of everything from massive human rights violations to war crimes to genocide.
No other country in the world - even those like the Sudan, North Korea and Iran - who have committed genuine massive human rights violations - have ever been the object of such massive condemnations as Israel has selectively been. And as far as the official inclusion of Hamas actions into the investigative agenda of these groups, we know that their inclusion is only window dressing, designed to give the false veneer that their investigations are "even handed."
Yesterday, the UN announced that nearly 2,000 civilians were killed in the Ukrainian battle with the pro Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine in the past 2 days alone. Two-thousand in two days? In five weeks, Gaza suffered 1,957 deaths, of which most were actual terrorists, not civilians, as the mainstream media and UN agencies had speciously alleged. But don't expect any onslaught of investigations by the UN or human rights groups. And where was the international media coverage of the 2,000 deaths in eastern Ukraine? AWOL of course.
Indeed. the performance of the media in covering the Israel-Gaza conflict remains the one area of investigation that is sorely needed. And if truth be told, why should the media be afraid of an assessment of its performance? After all, it is a profession that claims the moral high ground, asserts that it is only pursuing "the truth," claims that it is the only institution in a free society that can provide accountability to the actions of the government, hence the moniker "Fourth Estate" for the media, and portrays any criticism of its performance as somehow an attack on "free speech."
But who watches over the watchers?
Well, no one actually does. Yet the media likes to proclaim they are self-policing and that any external oversight would be a violation of the fundamental right to free speech. So from time to time, ever so rarely, we actually witness the media admitting to mistakes and inaccuracies in its coverage. Generally speaking however, those admissions of wrongdoing are initiated not by the high priests in the mainstream media but by "lesser" media on the periphery of the priesthood, outside observers and critics who have caught the media with their hands in the cookie jars and by truly honest journalists, few as they are, snubbed and derided by the mainstream media. Just look at how established journalists Bernard Goldberg and Sharyl Attkisson were viciously denigrated and attacked by the mainstream media after they had the chutzpa - actually integrity - to criticize the performance of their own co-religionists.
What is at stake here is the very honesty and accuracy of the mainstream media's coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. Specifically, how honest, fair and accurate was the mainstream media - such as The Washington Post, National Public Radio, The New York Times, and CNN - in covering Hamas actions in Gaza, Hamas human rights violations and atrocities, and Hamas threats to journalists. We know all too well how they covered Israeli actions in Gaza. Coverage of the deaths and damage in Gaza was covered wall to wall by both print and television, often without providing the critical context that the Israeli targets were Hamas terrorist missile launching sites, Hamas command and control headquarters, and Hamas military sites - all embedded in Gaza's civilian population centers, from schools to hospitals to UN Centers.
In the coverage provided by those above named media outlets, there was not one photo of one Hamas terrorist, not one photo of a Hamas missile site embedded in a civilian area, such as a UN school, hospital, apartment building, kindergarten. There was not one story or photo of Hamas executions of Palestinian dissidents. And there was not one story about direct Palestinian threats to and harassment of journalists if Hamas suspected them of actually showing any of the above. Thus, it was with amazingly refreshing candor that we witnessed Foreign Press Association (FPA), an organization of 480 international journalists covering Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, actually issue a statement last weekcondemning the threats by and intimidation of journalists by Hamas.
It's worth reprinting the actual text of the FPA statement, known for its antipathy to Israel than for any criticism ever issued of Hamas.
"The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month. The international media are not advocacy organizations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground. In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media. We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a 'vetting' procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA."
A truly extraordinary statement. But did the mainstream media in the US actually report on this self-indictment? Not one mainstream media outlet said a word. Not one.
Worse, some journalists like the Jodi Rudoren, New York Times bureau chief in Israel, dismissed the FPA statement with total disdain. In a blog posted by the media oversight group CAMERA, Rudoren's response to the FPA statement was short and sweet: "Every reporter I've met who was in Gaza during war says this Israeli/now FPA narrative of Hamas harassment is nonsense."
The CAMERA blog then went on to cite the numerous reports by journalists, after they left Gaza, of how Hamas threatened, intimidated and manipulated them.
But all that must have been part of a fabricated Zionist narrative according to Rudoren. And so must have been the report about the planned massive Hamas multi tunnel attack that was to occur near the period of the high holy days. This planned attack was intended to kill up to tens of thousands of Israeli civilians. But in the more than 800 stories filed by The New York Times during the five-week war, the Times never reported a word of it. Why? According to an email that I obtained that sent by Rudoren, she claimed she spoke to an Israeli military official who dismissed the planned Hamas attack as "totally false, a rumor, no evidence whatsoever."
When I asked Peter Lerner, an IDF spokesperson about this plot, he said, "Israeli military intelligence confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hamas had planned to carry out this multi-tunnel attack in order to kill thousands and thousands of Israeli civilians." Nearly every single Israeli media outlet--even those like Ha'aretz known for their ultra left views--reported on this mass murder Hamas plot. But left unreported for readers of the Times, thanks to a manifestly pernicious ideological agenda of its bureau chief in Israel.
Rudoren was interviewed on CNN's Reliable Sources on July 30, 2014 The show's host, Hala Gorani, revealed CNN's own unvarnished anti Israeli bias in the questions she asked of Rudoren: "Jodi, we have been showing our viewers and international networks have been running these images of absolute devastation and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Are Israelis in their own country seeing these same images?
Rudoren responded: "Not as much. I mean, certainly some. But in some ways you have to seek it out. I -- someone told me that they were watching Al Jazeera so that they could get the other side as well."
In fact, as anyone watching Israeli television, there was extensive coverage of the damage inflicted by the IDF in Gaza. Rudoren's statement that Israelis had to sneak viewing of Al-Jazeerah was simply a fabrication. But to CNN, it was incredulous that Israelis could not disown their own government for defending them from the thousands of rockets reigning down on the entire population and the dozens of tunnels dug into Israel to carry out mass murder attacks. Unlike CNN, Israeli television also showed how Hamas had stored munitions and launched missiles from mosques, hospitals, schools and UN facilities. Israeli TV also showed photos of Hamas command and control facilities at Al Shifa hospital as well as photos of the actual munitions and missile launching sites embedded in civilian areas.
On another CNN Show that aired on August 3, 2014, host Brian Stelter acknowledged that viewers had complained that CNN was deliberately refraining from showing pictures of Hamas terrorists or how they operated out of civilian areas.
Stelter: "So are reporters in Gaza under pressure from Hamas? Are they being intimidated into only showing civilians, and not the people Israel calls terrorists?
Well, I asked the executive in charge of international here at CNN, Tony Maddox. And he says no.
Let me put his comments up on screen: "Our in-field reporters have repeatedly say that Hamas militants are rarely to be found on the streets of Gaza. We have had no intimidation from Hamas and received no threats regarding our reporting. They have so far refused all requests for interviews in Gaza.
Title: Huffpo professional journalist
Post by: G M on August 17, 2014, 06:19:57 PM
Title: Two accounts overheard. They are similar
Post by: ccp on August 17, 2014, 10:00:47 PM
Did Brown double back and rush the officer? He was shot 6 times all from the front. An 18 y.o. who just manhandled a much smaller store clerk might think he was indestructible. It wouldn't surprise me if the robbery is dropped from the evidence as prejudicial. We'll see:
Oh, man, I didn't realize we were still talking about this. I hope we don't judge an entire organization based on one person. If so, that could seriously skew the results of any organization.
And, I know you've said that we should never trust HuffPo, but within hours of you posting the quoted article, I received this from a person who knows stuff: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-grenier/senate-rdi-report-lies-obfuscation_b_5663595.html
Weird that a former director of the CIA CTC would publish in a completely "untrustworthy" source.
Title: Not newsworthy
Post by: G M on August 21, 2014, 12:52:15 AM
Oh, man, I didn't realize we were still talking about this. I hope we don't judge an entire organization based on one person. If so, that could seriously skew the results of any organization.
And, I know you've said that we should never trust HuffPo, but within hours of you posting the quoted article, I received this from a person who knows stuff: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-grenier/senate-rdi-report-lies-obfuscation_b_5663595.html
Weird that a former director of the CIA CTC would publish in a completely "untrustworthy" source.
Yeah, actually it is weird, especially when you look at the other Huffpo stories that pop up next to it. Such as the performance artist that is going to sleep with a different man every day for a year.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: bigdog on August 21, 2014, 04:07:30 AM
Not really. Newspapers often include the News of the Weird column, for example.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 21, 2014, 05:45:48 AM
I am not bothered by bias (or wierdness) at the Huffington Post in the same way I am with ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, LAT, Mpls Startribune, etc., so called mainstream. They can do what they want with their brand name, and we can call them out on it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 21, 2014, 06:34:51 AM
Interesting media question posed, what would happen to the level of protests and violence in Ferguson if the media cameras were not rolling? Certainly the race baiters would go home.
Title: Al Jazeera America cuts staff
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 21, 2014, 10:34:47 AM
It would be nice if little details like the deceased being 6'4" and 280 pounds got mentioned , , ,
The hippies at Red State are questioning media reports from Ferguson: http://www.redstate.com/2014/08/19/ferguson-pushback-begins-look-sketchy/
Well, there is an archaic concept of suspending judgement until all the facts are known and possibly waiting for the due process under law to take it' s course.
Title: The power of facebook, twitter, youtube -
Post by: ccp on August 24, 2014, 08:52:13 AM
On the plus side, it's been years since he killed anyone.
Credible source!
Title: Would I lie to you?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 04, 2014, 11:39:10 AM
Would I lie to you? by David Harris Toronto Sun August 30, 2014 http://www.investigativeproject.org/4555/would-i-lie-to-you
What's heading our way, in this terrorist-bloodied world? We depend on international media to help us find out.
So it's time to look at some dirty secrets, foreign correspondent edition. Trench coats and panamas have given way to sat phones and moral ambiguity. An ideal starting point in understanding this media ambiguity – and its occasional, sinister undertones and implications for us – is the Israel-Hamas war.
The penny should have dropped well before today's Gaza crisis. No later than April 11, 2003, in fact.
That day, CNN admitted in the New York Times that it hid and manipulated reality, though the wording was more delicately self-regarding. Prior to the 2003 defeat of Saddam Hussein, CNN couldn't reveal fully the monstrous excesses and threatening nature of his Iraq, because, said chief news executive Eason Jordan, the network's Iraqi staff risked retaliation.
Problem: Jordan didn't explain why, having been prevented from reporting honestly there, CNN nonetheless insisted on keeping its financially rewarding Baghdad post operating before and during the 2003 war. Some critics concluded that an appetite for big, wartime money-making ratings outstripped CNN's taste for truth, with some ambitious journalists playing along.
Have media done similar things in Gaza?
International media boasts its courage and iconoclasm. But while saturating us with stories about Gazans' suffering, many journo outfits come up strangely short. Yes, we need to know about Palestinian casualties – even if Gaza's people freely elected a Hamas government on a platform of eradicating Jews and Christians.
But brief mention of Hamas' human shields is about as far as media venture into the designated terror organization's inhuman nature and inhumane operations. Surprising, given that ISIS is a four-letter word for Hamas.
The result: Virtually no press photos emerge of ferocious Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other "fighters." And no MSM interest in the UN's Palestine refugee agency's pattern of Hamas-friendly hiring at its facilities, including of teachers in schools packed with munitions. Are Hamas chiefs hiding in hospitals and mosques? Extrajudicial killings of Israeli "collaborators"? Gazan kids killed by a short-falling Hamas rocket? Who cares? Cut to pictures of Israeli tanks.
Big Hamas questions have hardly been touched, especially in the early weeks of the struggle. Why? Some media inadvertently exposed the secret.
The Wall Street Journal's Nick Casey tweeted a photo of a Hamas mouthpiece at Gaza's main hospital, and asked, with "the shelling, how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media." Then, with that courage and iconoclasm we hear about, the tweet was yanked.
You want iconoclasm? Take Libération, the French hard-left daily founded by that rolling barrage of mistresses and metaphysics, Jean-Paul Sartre. Libération reporter Radjaa Abou Dagga said Hamas had offices near Shifa's emergency room, then announced that heavies served him notice: "You will leave Gaza fast and stop work." And, presto. Dagga's article disappeared from "Libé's" web page, replaced by a sniveling, self-rebuking note: Dagga's report was "dépublié" – "depublished," withdrawn – "at the author's request."
Fear of becoming ISIS-styled, halal-slaughtered journalists? Keeping options open for future postings on Islamist territory? A combination? Fear surely rules in Hamastan. Whispered stories describe Gaza-based scribblers facing Hamas death threats, and the Foreign Press Association has belatedly condemned terrorist intimidation. But maybe CNN-type ambitions are at work, too.
Either way, correspondent Uriel Heilman put it best. Covering the Israel-Hamas fighting, Heilman wrote that unreported Hamas censorship and press self-censorship mean the public is "only getting half the story." "And where I come from," he added, "a half-truth is considered a lie." Something to remember when relying on media for intelligence about our future in a dangerous world.
- A lawyer with 30 years' experience in intelligence affairs, David B. Harris is director of the International Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.
Title: Pravdas befuddled by Baraq's speech
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2014, 10:14:16 PM
From May 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i4tuuy1jsw
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 04, 2014, 07:52:50 AM
I see this thread has hit over 200,000 reads.
Good work gentlemen!
Title: NY Slimes trying to rewrite history- Saddam's WMD
Post by: G M on October 15, 2014, 05:30:13 AM
http://minx.cc:1080/?post=352462
Title: VP Cheney's son discharged from military for cocaine! Media in frenzy!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2014, 10:55:30 AM
Navy Discharges Biden's Son for Drug Use This has got to be awkward for Joe Biden. For years, he has championed a tough "inherent resolve" in the war on drugs. When he was a young whippersnapper senator during the Reagan years, Biden advocated for a "drug czar" to lead the charge against Colombian snow, Mexican brown and Mary Jane. And when Biden made it to the White House, even when other Democrats fell away and admitted the war on drugs was too draconian, the number two Democrat still pushed the Obama administration towards tougher drug policy. But now, the U.S. Navy has discharged Joe Biden's son, Hunter, because he tested positive for cocaine use. Biden's office is refusing to comment, saying Hunter is a private citizen. We wonder what Joe thinks of his policies now -- of the tough incarceration rates, of the SWAT teams -- since his own son has fallen into the net Biden helped weave. And then imagine for a moment Biden was a Republican.
Title: Professional Journalist!
Post by: G M on October 20, 2014, 07:34:51 PM
Title: Bill O'Reilly's comments
Post by: ccp on October 31, 2014, 05:30:26 AM
Well these views by Bill are hardly disgusting as this writer would like us believe but I would certainly say they are clumsy and do highlight a problem with those on the right having some sort of problem speaking to or about minorities without sounding foolish. I don't know why many on the right have such a hard time with this topic:
Fox News host makes disgustingly racist comments about African Americans
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly makes racist comments about African American voters.
The 2014 midterm elections are only days away and most polls predict that Republicans will pick up seats in both the House and the Senate. While the general consensus is that Republicans could very well win enough seats to gain the majority in the Senate, one Fox News host thinks that it won't be with help from many African Americans.
When President Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney to win reelection in 2012, he was able to secure 93 percent of the black vote. That advantage helped propel Obama to a second term in the White House and left Republicans scrambling back to the drawing board. Only two years later and Obama is sitting on his lowest approval rating of his presidency, a very unimpressive 39 percent, and the administration is reportedly privately worried about a dangerously low turn out among black voters and other minorities.
The issue of race in politics was discussed on the October 30 edition of "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News. Host Bill O'Reilly welcomed Tavis Smiley, African American host of "Tavis Smiley" on PBS, to discuss how Republicans and Democrats both handle the courting of African Americans and the black vote. O'Reilly insisted that Republicans care about African Americans, but just appear as if they don't because "they’re more intimidated than uncaring.” Smiley questioned what they were intimidated by, asking "are black folks scary?” O'Reilly quickly responded, stating "no, no," insisting that "the white Republican power structure is afraid of black Americans.” “
“They don’t know how to treat them, how to speak to them, they don’t know anything about the culture, and they don’t want to be called a racist bigot, so they stay away."
O'Reilly told Smiley that Republicans don't care enough to put the effort in, knowing that they won't receive many votes in return. Smiley said that Democrats take for granted the support they receive from the African American community, but that Republicans are viewed in a negative light. O'Reilly stated that "white privilege" had nothing to do with the struggles of African Americans communities, rather blaming the “disintegration” of individual black families for their own problems.
This isn't the first time that O' Reilly has made controversial comments dealing with race and "white privilege." Earlier this month, O'Reilly and Jon Stewart had a heated discussion on the topic that brought the issue into the main stream. While Republicans are not expected to move the meter on the black vote, Democrats are starting to see their firm grasp loosen. Politico pointed out in an October 30 article that Democrats are using the recent shooting deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, as highlights in multiple radio and campaign flyers in an attempt to bring out the black vote for next week's midterm elections
Title: professional journalism
Post by: bigdog on November 10, 2014, 05:43:20 AM
Title: "Journalists" get revisionist about Gruber
Post by: G M on November 18, 2014, 12:17:16 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/353237.php
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 18, 2014, 09:05:44 PM
We haven't seen a revelation of a president caught lying to the American people like this since the day Alexander Butterfield told the nation about listening devices installed in the Nixon White House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeQXopJ5U-Q
We know who was paying Gruber. We know what he was telling them behind closed doors. We know the lies and deception were intentional, and we heard the lies repeated over and over, without hesitation or regret - in order to get a government takeover of healthcare.
They defrauded the American people, the CBO and the US Supreme Court.
Is there someone in the mainstream media who has fully covered the details and significance of this story?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on November 18, 2014, 09:30:55 PM
Well, I can tell you no one is angrier than Obama, who of course just found out about this. I figured he might have heard about Gruber,who was just a guy from his neighborhood, from famed professional journalist Martha Raddatz, but a quick search of the ABC news site shows she hasn't yet done a story on it yet. Strange...
I blame YouTube, Bush or global warming, er...climate change.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2014, 08:55:14 AM
No doubt the Pravdas are going to give full-throated coverage to the fact that Gruber has made something like $5 MILLION from various govt. contracts, including $400,000 from HHS and that Team Obama trumpeted him as a disinterested expert who confirmed its numbers and that they, the Pravdas, spread it forward , , ,
Title: Suppress the story
Post by: G M on November 19, 2014, 02:47:34 PM
Title: David Horowitz: Black Skin Privilege and Ferguson...
Post by: objectivist1 on November 21, 2014, 09:16:27 AM
David Horowitz - Friday, November 21, 2014 - www.truthrevolt.org
The nation awaits the verdict in Ferguson and prepares for the vindictive retribution of the lynch mob that has been tearing the city up for months, and thirsting for the blood of officer Darren Wilson not because he is guilty but because he is white. The chief encourager of the lynch mob is now the president of the United States, preceded by his former attorney general and his chief adviser on race relations who is also the nation’s leading racist, Al Sharpton. That is the disturbing reality we face as a nation, and have been facing now for decades ever since the civil rights movement was itself transformed into a lynch mob under the leadership of Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. That is the stark truth around which there is a national silence because the racists and their mobs are largely black.
When a Neighborhood Watch guard shot Trayvon Martin in February 2012, a chorus of civil rights activists concluded that he had been killed because of his race. Michael Skolnick, the political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, spoke for the consensus in an article he titled, “White People You Will Never Look Suspicious.”
I will never look suspicious to you. Even if I have a black hoodie, a pair of jeans and white sneakers on ... I will never watch a taxicab pass me by to pick someone else up. I will never witness someone clutch their purse tightly against their body as they walk by me. I won’t have to worry about a police car following me for two miles, so they can ‘run my plates. I will never have to pay before I eat. And I certainly will never get ‘stopped and frisked.’ I will never look suspicious to you, because of one thing and one thing only. The color of my skin. I am white….[1]
Skolnick spoke for those who rushed to condemn the Watch Guard, George Zimmerman, calling him a racist and killer in advance of the evidence, and demanding his arrest. It was the pervasive theme of the outrage even though Zimmerman was of Peruvian descent and not “white.” To make the racial case, Zimmerman’s accusers labeled him a “white Hispanic,” and disregarded the fact that he was Latino with a great-grandfather who was black. Speaking for the many, Congressional Black Caucus member Hank Johnson claimed that Martin was “executed for WWB in a GC—Walking While Black in a Gated Community.”[2] It was the unmistakable implication of President Obama’s own statement on the case: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”[3] For the already convinced, Trayvon Martin was killed not because of anything he had done, but because he was a black man in a racist culture, and therefore racial prey.
As it happens, the term “white skin privilege” was first popularized in the 1970s by the SDS radicals of “Weatherman,” who were carrying on a terrorist war against “Amerikkka,” a spelling designed to stigmatize the United States as a nation of Klansmen.[4] Led by presidential friends, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, the Weather terrorists called on other whites to renounce their privilege and join a global race war already in progress.
Although their methods and style kept the Weather radicals on the political fringe, their views on race reflected those held by the broad ranks of the political left. In the following years, the concept of “white Skin privilege” continued to spread until it became an article of faith among all progressives, a concept that acc-ounted for everything that was racially wrong in America beginning with its constitutional founding. As Pax Christi USA, a Catholic organization, explained: “Law in the U.S. protects white skin privilege because white male landowners created the laws to protect their rights, their culture and their wealth.”[5] This was the theme of A People’s History of the United States, the most popular book ever written on the subject, now part of university curricula across the nation.
Eventually, the concept of white skin privilege was embraced even by liberals who had initially resisted it as slander against a nation that had just concluded a historically unprecedented civil rights revolution. This was because the concept of white skin privilege provided an explanation for the fact that the recent Civil Rights Acts had not led to an equality of results, and that racial disparities persisted even as overt racists and institutional barriers were vanishing from public life.
The inconvenient triumph of American tolerance presented an existential problem for civil rights activists, whom it threatened to put out of work. “White skin privilege” offered a solution. As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained: “white skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose,” but is rather an unavoidable consequence of the “transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society.”[6] In other words, even if white Americans were no longer racists, they were.
A parallel concept favored by progressives was “institutional racism.” This was the idea that even in the absence of actual racists, the values and standards of American institutions by their very nature discriminated against non-whites. These two sophistries made possible new battles and continued the life of campaigns that annually lured millions of dollars into the deep pockets of “anti-racist” organizations and movements, even as racists were no longer detectable in the institutions themselves.
Lynching Whites
What reality is there to the claim that white skin is privileged and black is not? Is it really the case that non-whites are the exclusive targets of racial vendettas, while whites enjoy protection from racial prejudice and collective suspicion? No sober individual could possibly think so.
In fact, for decades, at the hands of progressives white males have been the prime villains in the nation’s classrooms, and the principal targets of disapprobation and presumptive guilt in the general political culture as well. Not that long ago, the nation witnessed a public scandal as racially charged as the Trayvon Martin case in the public lynching of three white male students at Duke University. Like other institutions of higher learning, Duke prides itself on its racial tolerance. There are no more sacred principles on campuses generally than racial tolerance, diversity and inclusion. As everyone knows, however, but few will take the risk to observe, these principles extend to every race but whites.
When an anonymous individual drew a noose on the office door of an African American faculty member at Columbia University the entire university community concluded that it was an act of racism, and the institution was virtually shut down to express collective horror that such an event might occur. This all took place before there was any indication that its message was racial or that its perpetrator was not the faculty member herself – which has been a not infrequent occurrence on campuses before.
When three white members of the Duke lacrosse team were accused of rape by a black prostitute, on no evidence whatsoever, the campus not only did not defend the presumption of their innocence, but rushed with intemperate haste to punish them as though they had already been tried and convicted. The university expelled them, the lacrosse coach was fired, the lacrosse season terminated, their names were published and 88 members of the Duke faculty signed an open letter condemning their racist deed.[7]
The cloud of suspicion and presumption of guilt that engulfed the students ruined their reputations and put their lives and careers on halt. It lasted for more than a year with no challenge from university officials or public authorities or the mainstream media. Yet it was entirely based on the false and malicious accusations of a local prostitute and drug addict, whose record of criminal behavior and absence of credibility were eagerly overlooked because she was black. While the faces of the innocent accused were plastered across the national media where they were portrayed as racists and rapists, the accuser herself was protected, and her name withheld throughout the case—even after her criminal libels were exposed.
The nameless accuser was a professional stripper who had been hired to entertain a fraternity party. A fellow stripper, who was also black and present at the event, denied the rape had ever taken place. One of the accused rapists proved that he was not even present when the attack was alleged to have taken place. Yet he was judged guilty all the same by the civil rights crusaders. Guilty because he was white. White skin was enough evidence to get all three students indicted by the local district attorney who was seeking votes in an election year among a constituency that was largely black and now racially inflamed (although the national press averted its eyes from this aspect of the case as well).
Leading the calls for punishment before trial were racial agitators Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Jackson was first out, attempting to secure a conviction by decrying the long “history of white men and black women and rape and assault,”[8] as though the criminal actions of a minority implicated every person of the same gender and color. Jackson also proposed to have his organization pay all tuition costs for the faceless criminal accuser should she want to attend college.[9] The clear implication was that unlike her rapists whose parents (being white) could afford a Duke education, the benighted woman was denied such an opportunity by a racist society. Not to be out mau-maued, Sharpton claimed, “this case parallels Abner Louima, who was raped and sodomized in a bathroom [by a New York City police officer] like this girl has alleged she was.”[10] The fantasizer of this ludicrous connection was a man practiced in the art of racial libels, including the infamous (and almost identical) accusations made by his infamous client Tawana Brawley who ruined the lives of six innocent white males by making false accusations of rape against them. After six years of inflicting hell on his victims, Sharpton eventually lost a libel suit brought by one of his victims. But even being a convicted liar failed to disqualify Sharpton as a civil rights “leader” since his victims were only white.
A professor of English named Houston Baker emerged as Duke’s homegrown racial arsonist, leading a posse of Duke faculty members in a public condemnation of the accused students in an ad that appeared in the Duke Chronicle. Baker charged that “white male privilege” had permitted the alleged perpetrators of “this horrific, racist incident” to remain “safe under the cover of silent whiteness.”[11] Whiteness had given them “license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech and feel proud of themselves in the bargain.”[12]
A year later, the three lacrosse players were exonerated, and the district attorney was sacked as conclusive evidence showed that there had been no rape and they were innocent of any crime. But the mob leaders Jackson, Sharpton and Baker, never had to face consequences for their maliciously, racially motivated deeds, never were made to apologize for their racism, or concede that that’s what it was. Call that immunity black skin privilege.
The Duke travesty has left the front pages and faded in memory, along with the many other episodes of racial injustice to whites, that were never openly acknowledged as such. Not only have we have reached a national moment when innocent whites are presumed guilty on the basis of their skin color, but blacks are often presumed innocent when the evidence points to their guilt. This is true whether the crime they commit is false witness, as at Duke, or a double homicide, as in O.J. Simpson’s murder of his wife and a stranger. Simpson was defended by a “dream team” of the nation’s best lawyers and the televised trial was closely watched by the entire nation. When a mostly black jury acquitted the murderer, the overwhelming majority of Americans who had watched the trial viewed the verdict with horror. But not black America, which cheered and celebrated this miscarriage of justice as a racial “payback.” No one called that racism. That’s another black skin privilege.
In America today, blacks generally can conduct racist assaults on whites and count on “civil rights” activists and the media not to notice. In the two months following Trayvon Martin’s death, black assailants carried out at least 14 fourteen known attacks against white victims with the idea of “avenging” the fallen youth.[13] In East Toledo, six juveniles beat a 78-year-old white man, shouting: “This is for Trayvon ... Trayvon lives, white [man]. Kill that white [man]!”[14] In Gainesville, five blacks shouting “Trayvon!” beat a 27-year-old white man, leaving his face permanently disfigured. In another Gainesville incident, a black crowd shouting “Trayvon!” assaulted and stomped on a white man who was trying to recover his female companion’s purse from the hands of a black thief.[15] In Chicago, two black teenagers beat and robbed a 19-year-old white man because, as one of the attackers explained, they were angry about Trayvon Martin.[16] In Baltimore, a group of blacks beat and robbed a white man, stripping him naked, then posted a video of the assault online with the caption: “me an my boys helped get justice fore trayvon.”[17] In Mobile, a white man named Matthew Owens was brutalized by twenty African Americans armed with brass knuckles, bricks, chairs, bats and steel pipes after he asked them to stop playing basketball in the street directly in front of his home.[18] As the assailants left the scene, one of them looked back at the victim, who was bleeding profusely, and shouted,: “Now that’s justice for Trayvon!”[19] It is unlikely that many Americans have heard of these racial attacks, because the perpetrators are protected by a media that does not want to notice that the racists are black, and their victims are white.
Within weeks of the Trayvon Martin shooting, a parallel killing occurred with the skin colors reversed at a Taco Bell restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. A 22-year-old black motorist got into an altercation with Daniel Adkins, a 29-year-old, mentally disabled “white Hispanic” who was walking by. When the argument grew heated, the motorist drew a gun and killed Adkins. When police arrived at the scene, the black shooter claimed that Adkins had swung a bat or metal pipe at him, although no such items were found at the scene. Arizona, like Florida, has a “Stand Your Ground” law that allows a person to use deadly force to protect himself when faced with a life-or-death confrontation.[20] A protective media withheld the shooter’s name, and there was no racial mob calling for his head. Unlike George Zimmerman, the gunman was not arrested nor charged with a crime. Call that black skin privilege.
If you’re black and possibly guilty but a white person is involved, the media will actively volunteer to be your advocate. This was true in the Duke case, where the New York Times and other papers convicted the accused in advance of any legal proceeding. In the Trayvon Martin case, the media withheld details of the crime that were damaging to Trayvon in order to protect him and indict Zimmerman — that the mainly white community he had entered at night had been the target of a rash of recent break-ins and burglaries by young African-American men;[21] that the hoodie Trayvon wore was a uniform for burglars; and that Trayvon had been suspended from school after burglary tools were discovered on his person along with unaccounted-for jewelry.[22] At the same time, the press flooded the airwaves and front pages with sentimental photos of Trayvon as an innocent adolescent, while withholding others of the six-foot-two, 17-year-old who beat the smaller Zimmerman to the ground, smashing his head on the concrete and causing him to scream repeatedly for his life before he fired his gun in self-defense.
Looking at the Martin case, black skin privilege means you can form a lynch mob if the target is a “white” man and the press will overlook it; you can demand a judgment in advance of the facts, and can conclude his guilt in advance of a trial. You can even take “justice” into your own hands by threatening his life as the Black Panthers did, or twittering his home address like vigilante filmmaker Spike Lee and comedienne Roseanne Barr did in the hope that someone might go after him.[23] If this isn’t a rebirth of the cracker mentality of the segregated South, it is hard to know what would be.
But it is events under the national radar that take the biggest toll. Black skin privilege means the national media will fail to report an epidemic of black race riots that have targeted whites for beatings, shootings, stabbings and rapes in major American cities recently. A determined reporter, Colin Flaherty, broke ranks to document these rampages in a book titled, White Girl Bleed A Lot, after a statement made by one of the rioters.[24] As reported in Flaherty’s book, there have been hundreds of black race riots in more than fifty American cities in the last few years,[25] including more than a dozen each in Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, New York, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Kansas City and Denver. In July 2011, to cite an illustrative example, a mob of African Americans created what the local NBC affiliate called an “astonishing” amount of violence at downtown Philadelphia restaurants, hotels and bars.[26] Afterwards, the politically correct police chief said he feared for the safety of the rioters.[27] But after surveying the mayhem, the city’s black mayor made an unprecedented public statement. “You have damaged your own race,” he said to the culprits, and in a pointed reference to the Martin case, he added, “Take those God darn hoodies down.”[28]
Crime Statistics
In the liberal culture, black skin privilege has created an optical illusion, persuading progressives that white-on-black attacks are commonplace events, rather than the other way around. In fact, there are five times as many black attacks on whites as the reverse. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which relies on crime victims to identify their assailants, 320,082 whites were victims of black violence in 2010, the latest year for which statistics are available, while 62,593 blacks were victims of white violence.[29] But these raw statistics understate the pattern. In 2010, the white and black populations in the United States were 197 million and 38 million, respectively.[30] In other words, blacks committed acts of interracial violence at a rate 25 times higher than whites (849 per 100,000 versus 32 per 100,000).[31]
This pattern has been among the most consistent findings of criminal-justice research for many years and for a wide variety of crimes. Nationwide there were an estimated 67,755 black-on-white aggravated assaults in 2010, as compared to with just 1,748 white-on-black crimes of the same description. In other words, blacks committed acts of interracial aggravated assault at a rate 200 times higher than whites (181 per 100,000 population versus 0.9 per 100,000).[32]
The physical threat to African Americans from whites is actually minimal compared to the epidemic of black violence against whites. The National Crime Victimization Survey reported approximately 13,000 black-on-white rapes in the United States in 2010, and 39,000 black-on-white robberies, both violent crimes against persons. By contrast, the numbers of white-on-black rapes and robberies reported in the same surveys were so infinitesimal that whites were estimated to have accounted for 0% of all rapes and robberies committed against black victims in the United States.[33]
To stoke the fires of racial grievance in the face of these contrary facts, civil rights advocates pretend that the statistics lie or that merely mentioning them is an act of racism. They tell us that black criminals aren’t actually criminals; the true culprit is the white “unjust justice system” that “profiles” blacks and creates this racist illusion. “Unjust justice system” is the term favored by Los Angeles congresswoman Maxine Waters, who explains, “the color of your skin dictates whether you will be arrested or not, prosecuted harshly or less harshly, receive a stiff sentence or gain probation or entry into treatment.”[34] Bill Quigley, legal director of the left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights, agrees with her conclusion: “The U.S. criminal-justice system is ... a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.”[35]
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also agree. At a debate during the Democratic Party primaries in 2008, Obama ignored the facts and charged that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, [and] receive very different sentences” for “the same crime.”[36] Not to be outdone, Clinton denounced the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African Americans proportionately than whites.”[37] No member of the press disturbed their duet by pointing out that African Americans commit many more crimes proportionally than whites. This is black skin privilege at work, and illustrates how prevalent anti-white racist attitudes have become in the political culture.
Through sheer repetition and lack of corrective information, the myths of white skin privilege have made a deep imprint on the culture generally and the culture of black Americans in particular. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, 84% of black Americans feel that the justice system treats them unfairly.[38] But while it is true that blacks are arrested in numbers greater than their representation in the population, it is it is also true that they commit crimes in far greater numbers than their representation would warrant. African Americans are 12.6% of the U.S. population,[39] but they account for 38.9% of all violent crime arrests—including 32.5% of all rapes, 55.5% of all robberies, and 33.9% of all aggravated assaults.[40] Is this because they are arrested for crimes they didn’t commit? Are they only “guilty of being black”? In fact, the statistics are compiled by interviewing the victims of these violent crimes, which in the case of crimes committed by blacks are mostly black themselves. In 2010, black perpetrators were responsible for 80% of all violence against blacks (including 94% of homicides), while white perpetrators accounted for just 9% of all violence against blacks.[41]
Another inconvenient fact for the promoters of the racial “injustice system” myth is that numerous high-crime cities with majority-black populations and high black arrest rates are run by African American mayors and African American police chiefs. Among them are Detroit, Jackson, Birmingham, Memphis, Flint, Savannah, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. Cognizant of the methods that police use to fight crime and the disproportionate contribution of blacks to crime rates, the former black police chief of Los Angeles, Bernard Parks said: “It’s not the fault of the police when they stop minority males or put them in jail. It’s the fault of the minority males for committing the crime. In my mind, it is not a great revelation that if officers are looking for criminal activity, they’re going to look at the kind of people who are listed on crime reports.”[42] But this sensible attitude has not penetrated the leadership of the Democratic Party nor the nation’s morally degraded civil rights movement.
Affirming Racism
Crime is only one of the areas where black skin privilege fogs the nation’s brain on racial matters. Under the banner of “leveling the playing field,” the rules of the game have been systematically rigged—against whites and in favor of blacks. Speaking for the dominant culture in our universities, and for the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority, Columbia University law professor Patricia Williams, who is black, explains: “If the modern white man, innocently or not, is the inheritor of another’s due, then it must be returned.”[43] (Innocent or not!) Attorney General Eric Holder is of a similar mind. In February 2012, he expressed amazement over the fact that anyone could seriously think that racial preferences might be bad social policy: “The question is not when does [affirmative action] end, but when does it begin ... When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”[44] Or, as the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall put it more candidly to his fellow justice William O. Douglas: “You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it’s our turn.”[45] The current Supreme Court majority is sympathetic to this view.
This collectivist view of guilt and debts that erases individuals and their accountability is now entrenched in America’s institutional framework. In the 1970s, affirmative action was successfully redefined to mean racial preferences for non-whites, and a new standard was set for admissions policies at universities across the United States. Though black students’ median SAT scores in any given year were at least 200 points lower than the median for white students,’ blacks were admitted to virtually all academically competitive schools at much higher rates.[46] The pattern of racial privilege for blacks persists to this day, not only in undergraduate colleges and universities, but also in professional training schools for aspiring doctors and lawyers. At the University of Michigan Medical School, for instance, the odds favoring the admission of black over white applicants with the same background and academic credentials have ranged between 21-to-1 and 38-to-1.[47] At the University of Nebraska College of Law in recent years, the black-over-white admission ratio was 442-to-1;[48] and at Arizona State University Law School, 1,115-to-1.[49]
Inevitably, the racial bias does not stop with the admissions process. Once a university accepts black students, under-qualified for that school though they may be, it is imperative that they remain in school and eventually graduate, poor performance notwithstanding. This is because high minority dropout rates jeopardize not only a university’s reputation among advocates of racial preferences but also its formal accreditation. To reduce minority attrition and “level the playing field,” many professors evaluate the work of black students using a lower standard than they use for their white and Asian peers, a practice which the late sociologist David Riesman labeled “affirmative grading.”[50] A blunter characterization was made by a professor at one of California’s state universities, who observed: “We are just lying to these black students when we give them degrees.”[51] By lowering the standards for black students—without admitting that they are doing so—universities are also lying to their graduates’ future patients and clients, many of whom are likely to include large numbers of blacks themselves.
Because maintaining racially “diverse” student bodies is now a legal obligation, some schools have taken to providing monetary incentives to black students who meet normal standards, a privilege not offered to their white and Asian peers. At Penn State, beginning in the early 1990s, blacks were paid $580 if they were able to maintain a C average, while those with a B average or better were given twice that amount.[52] In 2011, Yale University announced that it would provide free tuition to black public high school graduates with a GPA of at least 3.0 and a good attendance record.[53] No white student with a 3.0 GPA need even apply to Yale. Monetary incentives have been implemented with younger students as well. In 2008, Harvard professor Roland Fryer spearheaded an initiative to pay underachieving black fourth-graders in New York up to $250 for improving their grades, and as much as $500 for seventh-graders.[54] The ugly racial condescension that goes with these reward systems (not to mention the incentives such advantages provide to students to be content with underperforming) attracts little or no notice. There are also thousands of college scholarships and fellowships earmarked exclusively for nonwhite students.[55] These are made available by private organizations, individual schools, publicly and privately held corporations, the federal government, and state governments.
These scholarships, grants and rewards are not made to students who first demonstrate that they are actually disadvantaged by race or any other factor. Many of the recipients come from quite privileged backgrounds. The benefits are granted to these students because of their race. No one would think of providing such scholarships to white students while excluding others. That would be racist. No one pays much attention to the gross injustices done to white students from all economic backgrounds, who are denied places because they “inherited” unspecified and undocumented advantages by virtue of their skin color.
Nor are racial privileges for blacks limited to educational institutions. Since the 1970s, most major corporations (and a host of smaller ones) have implemented wide-ranging race-specific strategies for recruiting minorities, sponsored scholarships for minority recipients, funded internship programs earmarked exclusively for nonwhite high school and college students, paid current and former employees a “reward” merely for identifying the names of potential “diversity candidates,” and given financial bonuses to managers for successfully recruiting and/or promoting a significant number of black employees.[56] In an effort to maintain their diversity profiles and to keep their coveted black workers from seeking greener career pastures, many companies have established minority employee organizations that sponsor mentorship and self-help programs, produce newsletters, organize fundraising activities, and provide forums in which nonwhites in the labor force can air their grievances.[57] And of course, all of these measures also serve to separate their workers on the basis of race.
Needless to say, since government is the real source of these segregated arrangements, racial privileges are ubiquitous in government hiring practices. Police and fire departments nationwide go to great lengths to recruit black applicants. Where those applicants have failed the qualifying examinations in disproportionately high numbers, departments have simply thrown out the results, lowered the standards, or created new definitions of what constitutes a passing grade. One of the most blatant manifestations of the obsession with diversity involved the Boston Fire Department. A pair of white identical twins, Philip and Paul Malone, both failed the department’s qualification test and consequently were dropped from the applicant pool. Two years later they took the test again, at a time when the department was under pressure from a court-ordered affirmative action plan to hire more minorities. In an attempt to exploit the judicial mandate, the Malones re-classified themselves as black, claiming to have recently discovered that their long-deceased great-grandmother was of African ancestry. Their exam scores this time around were 57% and 69%, respectively—far below the 82% cutoff point for white applicants, but more than sufficient for black applicants. The Boston Fire Department hired the “black” Malone twins.[58]
Black Racism
Like the racial injustice against blacks that preceded it, the racial injustice enforced on behalf of blacks has damaged them as well as whites. It has empowered incompetence and sown resentment, and ensured that racial tensions persist nearly half a century after the Civil Rights Acts outlawed racial barriers. A 2009 Quinnipiac University poll asked respondents, “Do you think affirmative action programs that give preferences to blacks and other minorities in hiring, promotions and college admissions should be continued or … abolished?” Discriminated-against whites favored “abolished” by a margin of 64% to 27%, while the black beneficiaries, not surprisingly, favored “continued” by 78% to 14%.[59]
Racial bias is now such an integral part of America’s political culture that in 2008 black skin privilege elected a president of the United States. Absent this privilege, is the career of our 44th president conceivable? What political novice, lacking notable legislative or professional achievements, having spent his entire career on the radical fringes of American politics, and having encumbered himself with an unrepentant terrorist and a racial bigot as his close political collaborators, could even think about winning a major party presidential nomination, let alone being elected? Absent black skin privilege, what candidate with such a checkered past could go virtually un-vetted by the national press, or receive a pass from his political opponent on matters that would sink the fortunes of a candidate of any other race?
Black skin privilege guarantees not only exemptions from intellectual and political standards that others are required to meet, but from moral standards as well. What white celebrity, having shot his brother as a juvenile, dealt cocaine as an adult, and stabbed a rival business executive with a five-inch blade could count an American president among his friends and be invited to host his political fund-raisers? But rapper Jay‑Z did exactly that during Obama’s 2012 re-election run, and both he and the president could remain confident that no one would suggest it was a problem.[60]
Black skin privilege is a license not only to commit no-fault crimes, but to be openly racist without adverse consequences. White celebrity bigots, like Mel Gibson, are routinely condemned and shunned as pariahs, as they should be. It would be hard to imagine a white counterpart boasting that he had voted on the basis of skin color, characterizing non-whites as racists, and repeatedly using the word “nigger” to salt his wisdom. When this outrage was committed by black actor Samuel L. Jackson, however, nobody gave his racism a second thought. In February 2012, Jackson told Ebony magazine, “I voted for Barack because he was black. ’Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people—because they look like them…. That’s American politics, pure and simple. [Obama’s] message didn’t mean [bleep] to me. When it comes down to it, [whites] wouldn’t have elected a nigger. Because, what’s a nigger? A nigger is scary. Obama ain’t scary at all.... I hope Obama gets scary in the next four years, ’cuz he ain’t gotta worry about getting re-elected.”[61] This ignorant and repellent outburst (whites do vote for blacks) resulted in no consequences for Jackson; he didn’t even lose his job as spokesman for Apple’s popular iPhone.[62]
Racist behavior isn’t even a disqualifier for civil rights leaders if they are black. Leader of a “civil rights movement” is how the media characterized Louis Farrakhan during his Million Man March, and Wikipedia still does today. What white racist could hold a march to protest black supremacy and air the grievances of white males, and expect to receive respectable press coverage let alone attract nearly a million whites to follow him? But Louis Farrakhan did just that with blacks.[63] A white racist of Farrakhan’s ilk couldn’t get 5,000 sympathizers to march on Washington, let alone 500,000. That’s a black skin privilege. What white spiritual leader could support the torture-murders of South African blacks, compare Israel to Nazi Germany, and still be regarded as a moral icon? A black cleric like Bishop Desmond Tutu can.[64] What racial arsonist and convicted liar, whose incitements led directly to the incineration of seven individuals, could be regarded by the national media as a civil rights spokesman, and then hired as a TV anchor by NBC?[65] Only a black demagogue like Al Sharpton. Only a black racist like Sharpton could find himself lauded by an American president (as it happens, Barack Obama) as “a voice for the voiceless and ... dispossessed.”[66]
Nor have bigoted advocacies and anti-Semitic slurs cut short the career of America’s other celebrated race hustler. On the contrary, Jesse Jackson’s inflammatory rhetoric and racially motivated campaigns have endeared him to Democratic presidents and made him a millionaire many times over. Despite his success as a black man in America, he lectures Americans on how white racism is “the rot of our national character.”[67] That defamatory charge is the source of his impressive income. By threatening major corporations with racial boycotts that he alone can prevent, Jackson has been able to extort lucrative ransoms not only for the organizations he runs but for himself and his immediate family. In one celebrated case, he called off his threatened boycott of Anheuser-Busch after the company agreed to sell his sons one of its beer distributorships at a specially reduced price, making them millionaires in the bargain. [68]
Despite the baggage he carries, Jackson has been able to make two high-profile runs for the presidency and remain a national civil rights figure. During his first presidential outing, he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and New York as “Hymietown,”[69] indiscretions that would have ruined other politicians but only caused a hiccup in his campaign. He received 3.5 million votes during the primaries—enough to earn him a keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic convention.[70] His anti-Semitism resurfaced in October 2008, when he predicted that an Obama presidency would provide a welcome counterbalance to the “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades.” [71]
Black skin privilege has enabled Jackson to enjoy a career that would be denied to any non-black politician, while accumulating high-level honors along the way. He has been awarded more than forty honorary doctorates by American universities.[72] He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton, the highest award a civilian can receive,[73] while the U.S. Post Office put his likeness on a pictorial postal cancellation, making him only the second living person to receive such recognition.[74] He has used this undeserved respect, in conjunction with other black demagogues, to transform a civil rights movement that once stood for race-neutrality in the law, into a vigilante posse seeking one law for “people of color” and another for the rest of America.
Destroying the Diverse Union
Those who attempt to rationalize racial bigotry when it is bigotry on behalf of blacks usually claim that this injustice is designed to redress a historic one, correcting the results of previous discrimination. There is certainly a truth here. Even as black skin privilege has meant widespread injustice to others, it has also brought benefits to a historically discriminated-against group, although individual blacks today would be hard put to claim that racism has been an impediment to their own achievements and successes. Many beneficiaries of racial preferences may also have put the unfair advantages they received through racial preferences to good use. But perpetuating unfairness and inflicting injustice on others because of their skin color is a dangerous proposition, whatever the benefits that may accrue to some.
Racial privilege does more than merely damage the unlucky individuals who are its victims. When enforced by government and backed by law, it tears at the very fabric of the social order, regardless of whom it benefits. The wounds that the principle of separate-and-unequal inflicts on the community are incomparably greater than the damages incurred by individuals or the benefits that accrue to them. Building racial bias into the framework of the nation compromises the neutrality of the law that governs us all. It corrupts the standards that make a diverse community possible, and creates a racial spoils system that is the antithesis of the American dream, which was Martin Luther King’s dream as well. By corrupting the principle of neutrality, racial privilege breaks the common bond between America’s diverse communities and undermines the trust that makes the nation whole.
“All men are created equal” is the creed that makes a diverse nation possible. But a flaw was built into the original construction, which is open to multiple interpretations, including destructive ones. The most destructive of these is the idea that government can and should “level the playing field.” It is this idea that has given birth to the new racism. Obviously, all people are not created equal but are born with disparate abilities and characteristics. People are clearly unequal in beauty, intelligence, character, upbringing, and other vital aspects of personhood that lead directly to inequalities of celebrity, power, wealth and social standing. Because these inequalities are rooted in human nature, there can never be a level playing field. Moreover, the efforts to produce one must lead (and historically have led) to the loss of individual freedom. This is because the field can only be made equal—and then only superficially—by governmental force as an all-powerful state takes the earned fruits of one person’s labor, intelligence and talent and distributes it to those it prefers, and does so in the name of “social justice.”
The American Founders understood that there is an irreconcilable conflict between freedom and equality, between individual liberty and equal results. They understood that “social justice” in practice is just a rationale for the taking of one person’s achievements, and giving them to others who are favored by the party in power. What is justice to some is necessarily theft to others. It is an “injustice justice system.” In order to block such levelers, the founders created a Constitution that guaranteed property rights and instituted a system of checks and balances to frustrate their designs. The purpose of these constitutional checks, as their chief author James Madison wrote, was to thwart the “rage … for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project.”[75] History has proven the wisdom of the Founders’ concern.
In a free society composed of unequal individuals, the drive to level the playing field is a totalitarian desire and a threat to freedom because it empowers government to confiscate the talents and earnings of some for the benefits of those it favors. The expansion of governmental power into every individual sphere whatever its justification entails a loss of freedom for all. Since the targets of the levelers are the creators of society’s wealth, an inevitable result of social justice is generalized poverty and economic decline.
In a free society, composed of individuals who are unequal by nature, the highest government good is neutrality in the treatment of its citizens before the law. One standard and one justice for all. This is the only equality that is not at odds with individual freedom. It is the only equality that can make a diverse community one. A nation that respects individual rights and protects individual freedom cannot be sustained if there is one standard for black and another for white; one for rich and another for poor. It can only be sustained by a single standard -- one law and one justice for all.
Title: Memory hole
Post by: G M on November 25, 2014, 07:36:51 AM
Title: Ann Coulter on Ferguson...
Post by: objectivist1 on November 27, 2014, 07:10:49 PM
Leftists Willing to Fight to the Last Drop of Black Blood
Posted By Ann Coulter On November 27, 2014
The riot in Ferguson reminds me, I hate criminals, but I hate liberals more. They planned this riot. They stoked the fire, lied about the evidence and produced a made-to-order riot.
Every other riot I’ve ever heard of was touched off by some spontaneous event that exploded into mob violence long before any media trucks arrived. This time, the networks gave us a countdown to the riot, as if it were a Super Bowl kickoff.
From the beginning, Officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown wasn’t reported like news. It was reported like a cause.
The media are in a huff about the prosecutor being “biased” because his father was a cop, who was shot and killed by an African-American. What an assh@le!
Evidently, the sum-total of what every idiot on TV knows about the law is Judge Sol Wachtler’s 20-year-old joke that a prosecutor could “indict a ham sandwich.” We’re supposed to be outraged that this prosecutor didn’t indict the ham sandwich of Darren Wilson.
Liberals seem not to understand that they don’t have a divine right to ruin someone’s life and bankrupt him with a criminal trial, just so they’re satisfied.
The reason most grand jury investigations result in an indictment is that most grand juries aren’t convened solely to patronize racial mobs. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was basically demanding an indictment of Wilson before Big Mike’s body was cold. It was only because of racial politics that this shooting wasn’t dismissed without a grand jury, at all.
Obama says anger is an “understandable reaction” to the grand jury’s finding. Why? And why — as almost everyone is saying — are we supposed to praise the “peaceful protests”?
There’s nothing to protest! A cop shot a thug who was trying to kill him. The grand jury documents make perfectly clear that Big Mike was entirely responsible for his own death. Can’t the peaceful protesters read?
The night of the riot, Obama said the law “often feels as if it is being applied in discriminatory fashion.” Maybe, but not in this case — except toward Officer Wilson.
I know liberals were hoping they had finally found the great white whale of racism, but they’re just going to have to keep plugging away. They might want to come up with a more productive way to spend their time, inasmuch as they’re about 0:100 on white racism sightings.
Anyone following this case has seen the video of Big Mike robbing a store and roughing up an innocent Pakistani clerk about 10 minutes before being shot by Officer Wilson. They’ve seen him flashing Bloods gang signs in photos.
They know Brown’s mother was recently arrested for clubbing grandma with a pipe over T-shirt proceeds. They’ve seen the video of Brown’s ex-con stepfather shouting at a crowd of protesters after the grand jury’s decision: “Burn this bitch down!”
Liberals will say none of that is relevant in court, but apparently they don’t think actual evidence is relevant either. It’s certainly relevant in the court of public opinion that the alleged victims are a cartoonishly lower-class, periodically criminal black family.
TV hosts narrated the riot by saying it showed “the community” feels it’s not being listened to. Only liberals look at blacks looting and say, See what white Americans made them do?
That’s their proof of injustice — look at how blacks are reacting! (While I don’t approve of the looting part, I do approve of the whole throwing-bottles-at-CNN part.)
The looters aren’t the community!
The community doesn’t want black thugs robbing stores and sauntering down the middle of its streets. The community doesn’t want to be assaulted by Big Mike. The community didn’t want its stores burned down.
That community testified in support of Officer Darren Wilson. About a half-dozen black witnesses supported Officer Wilson’s version of what happened. One was a black woman, who saw the shooting from the Canfield Green apartments. Crying on the stand, she said, “I have a child and that could have been my son.”
And yet, she confirmed all crucial parts of Wilson’s account. She said “the child” (292-pound Big Mike) never had his hands up and the cop only fired when “the baby” was coming at him. “Why won’t that boy stop?” she asked her husband.
I always want to know more about the heroic black witnesses. They are put in a position no white person will ever be in and do the right thing by telling the truth — then go into hiding from “the community” being championed by goo-goo liberals.
White people don’t feel any obligation to defend some thug just because he’s white. Only blacks are expected to lie on behalf of criminals of their own race.
But real heroism doesn’t interest liberals. They only ooh-and-ahh over blacks with rap sheets. The only meaningful white racism anymore is the liberal infantilization of black people.
Title: Irony-- reported who posted Officer Daren Wilson's address , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 30, 2014, 09:31:29 PM
Title: Charles Barkley Defends Darren Wilson...
Post by: objectivist1 on December 01, 2014, 05:50:50 PM
Rush Limbaugh correctly observed today on his radio show that Charles Barkley is probably the only man in America who can say whatever he chooses about race, and will experience zero blowback from the media:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 01, 2014, 10:36:55 PM
Awesome. Please post on the Race thread on SCH as well.
Title: Media Morons:Drilling for oil won't lower gas/oil prices, CNN Money, 2011
Post by: DougMacG on December 02, 2014, 08:11:24 AM
Cognitive Dissonance of the Left, Economic Illiteracy and Media Issues, all one in the same!
This is under NEWS, not opinion!
Adding to the supply won't lower the price? Why not? Worst case doesn't it lower the future price increases - which is lowering the price!
"The United States simply doesn't have enough oil to move world markets. Plus, any increase would be offset by OPEC." Huh? Wouldn't it be the opposite. They have to produce more yet to get the same revenue or profit.
Gas Prices Drill baby drill won't lower gas prices
The United States simply doesn't have enough oil to move world markets. Plus, any increase would be offset by OPEC.
By Steve Hargreaves, senior writer April 25, 2011: 11:22 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Every time gas prices reach record highs the call goes out for more oil drilling. This year it's no different.
The problem is this: While increased oil and gas drilling in the United States may create good-paying jobs, reduce reliance on foreign oil and lower the trade deficit, it will have hardly any impact on gas and oil prices.
That's because the amount of extra oil that could be produced from more drilling in this country is tiny compared to what the world consumes.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on December 02, 2014, 11:31:01 AM
Heh!
Title: Re: Media Morons:Drilling for oil won't lower gas/oil prices, CNN Money, 2011
Post by: DougMacG on December 02, 2014, 09:31:20 PM
We were right and they were wrong, but they learned nothing from it and will continue on with biased and ignorant reporting. The msm won't provide as simple an economic axiom as increasing supply puts downward pressure on price. We have to compete with only facts and truth on our side. No mainstream amplifier.
It was the same argument made against ANWR production. New supplies will be too little to make an impact on a global market and will take 10 years to affect market prices anyway, 15 years ago. But it doesn't take 10 years to affect a futures market! Further on energy, they could go back and discover that keystone XL would have been a good move 6 years ago, with a positive ripple effect throughout the economy and the safest way to move what we are already transporting and using.
For the most part, you have to go to a conservative site to learn a fact that disrupts a liberal media talking point.
Title: Re: Media Issues, Time Person of the Year ...
Post by: DougMacG on December 02, 2014, 09:48:19 PM
Time Person of the Year will be the Ferguson inspired rioters. This is a prediction not an announcement. (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/29/ferguson-protesters/19660827/)
Time Person of the Year should be - the lead engineer on fracking. Or maybe the incoming Republican Senate. Or: the new prime minister of India.
Title: Re: Media Morons:Drilling for oil won't lower gas/oil prices, CNN Money, 2011
Post by: G M on December 03, 2014, 01:16:30 AM
We were right and they were wrong, but they learned nothing from it and will continue on with biased and ignorant reporting. The msm won't provide as simple an economic axiom as increasing supply puts downward pressure on price. We have to compete with only facts and truth on our side. No mainstream amplifier.
It was the same argument made against ANWR production. New supplies will be too little to make an impact on a global market and will take 10 years to affect market prices anyway, 15 years ago. But it doesn't take 10 years to affect a futures market! Further on energy, they could go back and discover that keystone XL would have been a good move 6 years ago, with a positive ripple effect throughout the economy and the safest way to move what we are already transporting and using.
For the most part, you have to go to a conservative site to learn a fact that disrupts a liberal media talking point.
Exactly.
Title: Fault lines
Post by: G M on December 10, 2014, 06:15:56 AM
https://ricochet.com/fault-lines/
Title: Spot the missing narrative
Post by: G M on December 10, 2014, 02:50:06 PM
Michael Brown is a real common name. How do we know this is the same guy? I'm not familiar with the website.
Good point.
Title: HarperCollins' subsidiary removes Israel from Middle East school atlases
Post by: DougMacG on December 31, 2014, 08:04:07 AM
You wouldn't want to offend the wipe-Israel-off-the-map crowd with - the truth - in a text book. How will the children learn to hate and attack them if they can't find Israel on a map? ------------------------------------------------------------ Leading Publishing House Wipes Israel Off Its Map http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/189335#.VKQb93sizQO HarperCollins' subsidiary remove Israel from school atlases for Middle Eastern countries to appease 'local preferences.'
HarperCollins' subsidiary Collins Bartholomew, which specializes in maps, are selling "Collins Middle East Atlases" to English-speaking schools in the Gulf states which depict Jordan and Syria extending all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.
Collins Bartholomew told The Tablet that the reason they wiped Israel off their maps was that including the Jewish state would be "unacceptable" to their customers in the Gulf states.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2014, 02:50:17 PM
Please post this in the Islam vs. Free Speech (Buy Danish) thread and in the Israel thread as well. Thank you.
Title: FOX fires two for dishonest editing of police protesters
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2014, 03:00:31 PM
Title: No logic just arguments going in all directions
Post by: ccp on January 11, 2015, 08:35:49 AM
Crossing their own paths, negating each other and just an example of illogical liberal thought.
Objectivist,
The hypocrisy is startling and frankly annoying.
It is absurd watching the cable news shows twisting the terrorist event in every direction trying to make sense of it in a way that fits liberalism
First we have the issue of "freedom of the press".
Yet the expression of Muslim "satire" is clearly politically incorrect and is insulting. Watching MSLSD people make illogical lines of reasoning to fit this paradox is mind boggling.
Then we have Fox and other stations talk about bravery of journalists on one hand and on the other say they understand networks/papers not showing the cartoons that led to the attack. But, I love this, if ALL the news outlets would publish the cartoons and I guess stand "in solidarity" it would be great. So why doesn't this happen?
And as in your post we have everyone on the left bending over backwards doing the limbo (falling on their asses as far as I am concerned) pointing out that it ain't most Muslims doing this. And it is not part of the religion when it clearly is if one takes a literal interpretation of the Quran, Koran or how ever one chooses to spell it.
Then there is far more. Fitting Muslim terrorism (which is really war) into some sort of "law breaking" category simply requiring more police and security responses is just silly. But then, even if one does call it a war it is not a war on "terrorism", not a war on Isam, but a fight against an entity that they can't even name. Even "Radical Islam" is now politically incorrect (ie.: Howard Doosh).
Got to love it. Calling this Islamic terror is politically incorrect and totally unacceptable, but making dark humor of Mohammed with political satire is now defensible.
Why can't we just say there is a LARGE minority of Muslims who want to kill us and take over as much of the world as they can?
No it ain't thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands it is hundreds of miillions. The Muslim experts estimate that there are maybe 15 of Muslims who are outwardly supportive of Jihad and probably more that secretly are sympathetic.
Title: FOX messes up badly and apologizes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2015, 10:06:31 AM
Title: Univision
Post by: ccp on January 18, 2015, 06:46:06 PM
Univision, Biggest Spanish-Language Network, Shut Out Of Republican 2016 Debates Posted: 01/17/2015 3:56 pm EST Updated: 01/17/2015 3:59 pm EST
JORGE RAMOS NEW YORK -- The Republican National Committee announced Friday which networks landed 2016 presidential debates -- and Univision, the most-watched Spanish-language network, didn't make the cut.
How Republicans engage with Univision this election cycle is being closely watched given that the network reaches 96 percent of Hispanic households, a key demographic for either party hoping to win the White House. On Wednesday, BuzzFeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo described Univision, which has aggressively covered immigration reform, as “one of the Republican Party’s biggest, most complex, most painful challenges.”
In a statement to The Huffington Post, Univision spokesman Jose Zamora didn't specifically address the Republican Party's decision, but spoke broadly of the need for both parties to engage the network's large audience.
"There is a very simple political reality -- Hispanics will decide the 2016 presidential election," Zamora said. "No one can match Univision’s reach and ability to inform, provide access and empower Hispanic America. Anyone who wants to reach and engage Hispanics will have to do it through Univision. The Hispanic community deserves to hear the policies and views of all political parties and Univision is committed to providing access to all points of view. We have an open invitation to all political parties to address our community on issues of importance and relevance. Candidates should not miss the opportunity to inform and engage with the fastest growing segment of the electorate."
Jorge Ramos, the top anchor on Univision and Fusion, an English-language network launched through a partnership with ABC, said in a statement that both Republicans and Democrats "have to make sure that their debates don’t look like the 2015 Oscar nominations,” a reference to the lack of diversity among Academy Award nominees.
“The new rule in American politics is that no one can make it to the White House without the Hispanic vote,” Ramos continued. “So we still expect all candidates from both parties to talk to us on Univision and Fusion. I believe that Latinos and Millennials will decide the 2016 presidential election. The sooner Republicans and Democrats realize this, the better their chances to win the White House. It’s always a strategic mistake not to include in your plans the fastest growing segments of the electorate.”
NBC and Telemundo (the second-biggest Spanish-language network, owned by NBCUniversal) will partner on a Republican debate in Florida in February. The other networks selected were Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, ABC and CBS.
An RNC spokesman declined to comment on the decision.
But clearly some in the party don't feel the network has treated them well. RNC chairman Reince Preibus told BuzzFeed earlier this week “it’s highly questionable whether we’re treated fairly on Univision.”
Still, Preibus and others do engage with Ramos, an immigration reform advocate. The two sparred earlier this week over the Republican Party’s position on the issue. And Priebus will also appear Sunday on Univison’s “Al Punto,” a public affairs show hosted by Ramos.
While immigration may be the biggest hurdle for Republicans in engaging with Univision this cycle, there also appear to be concerns about the network given that part-owner Haim Saban is a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter.
Univision wasn't the only network shut out of the Republicans debate schedule, with liberal cable network MSNBC and Bloomberg TV also not getting selected. The difference, however, is that Republicans aren't looking to reach MSNBC's viewership, and the two business networks selected, CNBC and Fox Business, reach larger audiences than Bloomberg.
Title: Hush hush
Post by: prentice crawford on January 19, 2015, 02:58:14 AM
Attempted hijacking possibly terror related, not being reported by mainstream media. Oh and they don't mention in this little report that he was wearing a burka. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/man-armed-knives-killed-police-ohio-airport-cops-article-1.2070141
Hashim Hanif Ibn Abdul-Rasheed shot dead outside Ohio airport after ‘attempting to stab’ police officer: cops
The 41-year-old Columbus-area man was armed with several knives when he used a woman's ID to try and buy a plane ticket Wednesday afternoon, police said. When he returned to his illegally parked car, Abdul-Rasheed lunged at cops with a knife before being shot several times, officials said.
BY Sasha Goldstein /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /
Thursday, January 8, 2015, 10:52 AM Members of the bomb squad check out a parked SUV at Port Columbus Airport on Wednesday after police shot a man in Columbus, Ohio. Chris Russell/AP
Members of the bomb squad check out a parked SUV at Port Columbus Airport on Wednesday after police shot a man in Columbus, Ohio.
A 41-year-old Ohio man armed with several knives tried to buy a plane ticket with a fake ID before being gunned down by police after lunging at an officer with a blade outside the Columbus airport, police said.
Hashim Hanif Ibn Abdul-Rasheed had parked illegally outside the ticketing terminal and was acting bizarrely as he tried to buy a ticket to an undisclosed location Wednesday afternoon. He showed off a woman’s ID to try and make the buy at one point before he was rebuffed, cops said.
Airport police called a tow truck to remove the illegally parked vehicle from the departures lane just before 1 p.m. Wednesday when Abdul-Rasheed returned.
“The man initially spoke with the officer then suddenly produced a knife and lunged at the officer, attempting to stab him,” the Port Columbus International Airport said in a statement. “The officer fired at the suspect, who momentarily dropped to the ground and then got back up and continued advancing towards the officer. A backup officer responded at which point the suspect quickly moved towards him with the knife forcing the officer to retreat backwards towards the terminal entrance where a third officer was positioned. The third officer shot multiple times, striking the suspect, ending the attack.”
Emergency vehicles converge at the ticketing level at Port Columbus International Airport after an airport police officer shot and killed Hashim Hanif Ibn Abdul-Rasheed after a confrontation Wednesday in Ohio.
When cops searched Abdul-Rasheed’s body, they discovered “additional knives.” Police called in a bomb squad to investigate the car and a search turned up “suspicious items,” officials said.
The entire incident was captured on surveillance video, police said. The shooting remains under investigation.
The disturbance caused some delays of just over an hour and an area of the ticketing lobby was closed off as the car was searched for explosives.
Police haven’t described the man’s motive.
“At this point this is just a violent encounter between an armed man and the officers here,” Columbus Police Sgt. Rich Weiner told reporters.
P.C.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 19, 2015, 03:58:53 AM
Unless he can be linked to a tea party group, this won't make national news.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on January 19, 2015, 02:52:22 PM
I am not sure I believe this poll which just happens to come out the day before the SOTU. If true it is amazing what lower gas prices can do:
Title: Sharyl Attkinson gives serious speech at Hillsdale U.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2015, 09:49:12 PM
For those of you who do not recognize the name, she has done OUTSTANDING work on Operation Fast and Furious and Benghazi. Her research was hacked off her computer, apparently by some secret govt. agencies. About one hour.
Not the most exciting of speakers, but the content is quite rich.
She does very well on TV panel talk shows.
For other journalism talks by serious people see http://www.hillsdale.edu/outreach/cca/iii?utm_campaign=CCA+Promotion&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=15702801&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_lqjqfGNdXdaeH7tkb92T3-uoGWRLuW-no7TuI169sswyBKhTYobcQjygdD4p1oROAuwk0Wkx3GP8biu-kOkoKm72RFA&_hsmi=15702801#email1
Title: Blow sucks
Post by: G M on January 27, 2015, 06:56:38 PM
I don't see any more reliable information here than in the reports they claim to refute. "Found no evidence" means - what?
"An investigation by [Eric Holder's] Justice Department"... (Reported by "Media Matters').
They also have found nothing on Fast and Furious, IRS, Executive Privilege, and the changing and canceling of passed laws.
Stuck backspace key sounds like the video in Benghazi. In June 2013, CBS News confirmed that the CBS News computer was breached, using what the network said were "sophisticated" methods. They did not identify the party or parties behind the breach.
- They didn't identify the party in the report but they launched a lawsuit against the Obama administrotion DOJ based on its results. Right? Maybe OIG does not detect "sophisticated" methods and
The DOJ OIG report means the government's starting point is to DENY the highly illegal (treasonous?) hacking of a private journalist's records. We "found no evidence" doesn't mean evidence won't still be discovered. And it does not mean a disinterested professional has taken a look, IMHO.
"As Post opinion writer Erik Wemple first reported, the review found that "Attkisson is not and has not been under investigation by the FBI.""
- Maybe she was under investigation by the White House. Would fit the pattern of the IRS scandal perfectly, starting top-down while leaving plausible deniability and document and communications stonewalling all along the trail.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on January 31, 2015, 02:28:00 PM
The only thing with less credibility than Holder's DOJ is media matters.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 31, 2015, 04:15:03 PM
Thank you Doug.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on February 01, 2015, 08:44:24 AM
Ever wonder about the timing of these reports let alone their veracity?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2015, 04:13:02 PM
The Goldberg File By Jonah Goldberg February 06, 2015
Dear Reader (Unless your’re Brian Williams, who’s busy helping the brave boys at the Alamo),
Okay, so I am not immune to piling on Brian Williams, but I have to say that I think this is being overblown.
Yesterday, I was the guest host on Bill Bennett’s radio show. When I wasn’t performing some of the greatest mime ever recorded on radio (prove me wrong!), I took a lot of calls. One of the callers was livid about Williams, insisting that we have another Dan Rather situation here. I stopped my rendition of “Man in a Box” to respond that I didn’t think so.
As I wrote at the time -- and said on air yesterday -- and will look for any opportunity to say again, Dan Rather climbed up the Jackass Tree and hit every branch on the way down. Rather tried to take out a president he didn’t like with forged documents he should have known were forged. He defended the forgeries, attacked his critics, fell back on the defense that the story was fake but accurate, and in every way dragged the mess out far longer than any rational man would and, let’s be honest, more than I could ever have hoped. As I wrote in 2004:
Yes, I know: Schadenfreude -- taking pleasure in another’s misfortune -- is sinful in itself, and suggesting that the Almighty is in on the fun makes it doubly so. But what other explanation could there be? At every turn Dan Rather has had the opportunity to do what is both right and smart and instead he’s gone with Plan B. The metastasizing clownishness of Rather’s entire persona is one of the most glorious and enjoyable spectacles of the modern media age. If these trends continue, by the middle of October Rather will be showing up to read the news in a giant orange wig, shiny red nose and a flower that squirts seltzer whenever he mentions one of those hurricanes he loves so dearly. It is quite simply The Greatest Story Ever.
The Williams story strikes me as something far less than the Greatest Story Ever. It’s really kind of sad and pathetic. Some people embellish stories, lots and lots of people. The fish always gets bigger. The girl at the bar gets hotter. The other guy in the fight gets tougher. At some point the embellishments cover up the original, like layers of graffiti. That’s what Williams did. Don’t get me wrong. He lied and his apology minimized the size and duration of the lie. But the nature of the lie wasn’t nearly as bad as those of countless others who yoked deceit to a partisan agenda or for political gain. He was trying to praise the military and wanted a little more of their glory to rub off on him.
Compared to Richard Blumenthal using his fictitious claim of serving in Vietnam to bolster his foreign-policy bona fides; or John Kerry embellishing his own record to denigrate the U.S. military and our country; or Bill Clinton lying about so, so, so many things, Williams’s lie is just a sad case of an overpaid front man for the peacock network trying to add some brightly colored feathers to his plumage. See John Hinderaker’s take for some good speculation as to why he did this.
If Williams was a personal friend and I caught him in this lie, it wouldn’t end our friendship. I would give him a lot of grief over it, sure. “Hey, Brian, remember that time that small town sheriff wouldn’t let you spend the night and you ended up taking down his whole department with nothing but a rock and a hunting knife? Oh wait, that was Rambo. From your stories it’s hard to keep you two straight.”
Does Williams’s lie matter? Of course it does. As Hinderaker notes, Williams is wildly overpaid to do a job that is largely theatrical. In a free market, if that makes sense, so be it. But as Peter Parker learned when he didn’t stop the crook who ultimately killed his Uncle Ben, with great power (and great paychecks) comes great responsibility. Williams is paid millions of dollars to do the following:
1. Look good on camera 2. Read true things from a teleprompter about news stuff 3. Be trustworthy 4. Not spontaneously combust or become some sort of lycanthrope on camera (werewolf, werebasset, Lou Albano, etc.).
I’m sure he does other things. Some news anchors actually work hard at putting together the newscast. But the point is that Williams doesn’t have to do that. He does have to do the things listed above. If he got a face tattoo depicting a biker-gang orgy, he’d lose his job. If he suddenly came down with some strange malady that caused him to read the news in Elvish (which, by the way, is how you say “Elvis” with a mouthful of crackers), he’d lose his job.
As for being trustworthy, the question remains whether this is a big enough of a breach to justify losing his job. That probably depends on what we learn in the days ahead about other statements Williams has made and how he handles himself. Should he lose his job over what we know already? Maybe. I don’t know. On the one hand, if he was really counseled to stop telling the story and kept doing it, then he’s got real problems. On the other hand, I don’t take NBC News seriously, and having damaged goods in the anchor chair might be a good thing.
Rarely am I so torn about an issue that matters so little.
Title: Was NBC in on it?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2015, 04:19:44 PM
Title: The narrative
Post by: ccp on February 06, 2015, 08:18:19 PM
Yes. The "narrative". Anyone else fed up with this "s..t"?
The LA Times of course.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2015, 11:57:46 PM
POTB= Pravda on the Beach
Title: misinformation & propaganda
Post by: prentice crawford on February 10, 2015, 06:17:16 PM
Snopes part of misinformation & propaganda machine for Leftists. http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/patientzero.asp CDC admitted disease imported as states data reveals illegal immigrant links http://www.examiner.com/article/cdc-admitted-disease-imported-as-states-data-reveals-illegal-immigrant-links P.C.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on February 11, 2015, 07:54:57 AM
Good find PC. Yet true to form Obama blames Americans for it. Some refused vaccines so it is THEIR fault.
Title: NBC knew
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2015, 04:17:31 PM
Title: We cannot even get the truth from our health care leaders.
Post by: ccp on February 12, 2015, 08:37:07 AM
Regarding PCs post another issue is the misinformation from out health care leaders at the CDC, DHHS etc who purposely ignore the fact that these diseases are brought to the US from people from other countries, by focusing on the small minority here who have not gotten their vaccinations.
Political/and personal financial agendas are rampant in health care.
Title: Rev. Al gets canned
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2015, 10:47:01 AM
Title: This is becoming a race "riot". But I mean a laughing riot!
Post by: ccp on February 23, 2015, 07:10:13 PM
This is getting weirder by the day. Now he is being sued for discrimination by some Black organization for "looking the other way" when Time Warner and Comcast allegedly discriminate against Black owned media. It couldn't be their product doesn't sell. It is of course because they are black owned. Of course. So let me try to get this straight. We have a street thug shaking down companies to pay him off so he doesn't call them racists. Yet he himself is a total goes around accusing anything that breathes and is white racist. Then we have another Black group calling him a discriminator because he doesn't call the companies they claim are discriminating them as racist.
And I would assume because this group now suing him cannot be called racist (his usual offensive move) because they are black. Are they hiring Black or Jewish lawyers. :lol:
******Rev. Al Sharpton Being Sued $20 Billion in Racial Discrimination Lawsuit
By Robert Hoggard -
Feb 23, 2015
Allegedly, Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of National Action Network, is being sued $20 billion dollars by the National Association of African-American Owned Media, a California limited liability company; and Entertainment Studios Networks, Inc., a California corporation.
Mediate reports, “Comcast and Time Warner Cable were served with a lawsuit from a group of African-American media owners seeking $20 billion — yes, “billion,” with a “b” — for discriminatory practices, and alleges that Al Sharpton and his organizations received big money to look the other way.”
The Hollywood Reporter writes, “Even though the FCC hasn’t yet ruled on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, one group has already filed a lawsuit claiming at least $20 billion in damages from the way the two giants allegedly discriminate against black-owned media.”
The Hollywood Reporter also reports that “Sharpton objects that the budget for National Action Network is not even $4 million, and as for his MSNBC show, he believes he has the most successful show in the 6 p.m. hour at MSNBC, that ‘the numbers speak for themselves.’ The lawsuit seems to count Sharpton’s reported $750,000 annual salary at MSNBC as part of the $3.8 million and leverages past criticism of the noted civil rights leader that’s rooted in him allegedly turning an eye and forgoing boycotts and protests on corporations upon receiving monetary contributions to the National Action Network.”
Sources tell The Buzz that perhaps Rev. Al plans to share with the press these looming accusations specifically. His show “Politics Nation” airs every evening at 6pm.
The 30 some page lawsuit against Rev. Al, Comcast/Time Warner, N.A.A.C.P, and others which is seeking a trial can be viewed here.*****
Title: Shame on Sean Hannity!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2015, 04:32:33 PM
Cause Célèbre, Scorned by Troops
By DAVE PHILIPPSFEB. 24, 2015 Photo In a photograph provided by Todd Fitzgerald, a specialist, the platoon is seen on patrol in Kandahar, Afghanistan, near the site where the shooting took place.
Nearly two dozen soldiers from an Army platoon were on patrol in a dangerous valley in southern Afghanistan when a motorcycle sped toward them, ignoring commands to stop.
As he tells it, First Lt. Clint Lorance, the platoon leader, ordered his men to fire just seconds before the motorcycle bore down on them that July day in 2012. But the Afghans were unarmed, and two died. The next year, Lieutenant Lorance was found guilty at a court-martial of second-degree murder, one of the few times an American soldier has been convicted of a crime for actions in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. He is serving a 19-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
But the case is far from over. Mr. Lorance, who was dismissed from the Army, has become a cause célèbre for conservative commentators, including Sean Hannity of Fox News, who say the Obama administration punished a soldier for trying to defend his troops. Three Republican House members — Duncan Hunter of California, Matt Salmon of Arizona and Ryan Zinke of Montana — have asked the secretary of the Army to review the case. And more than 124,000 people have signed a petition to the White House demanding a pardon. Photo Clint Lorance, an Army platoon leader who was found guilty of second-degree murder in connection with the shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians in 2012, in a photograph provided by his mother, Anna Lorance.
“The warfighter doesn’t always have the benefit of time, given lives are always at risk in a war zone,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter, sent in January, saying the case “deserves a high level of attention and scrutiny.”
That chorus of supporters, however, is notable for what it lacks: members of the platoon itself.
Though many members of the platoon have never publicly expressed their views of the case, nine came forward to testify against Mr. Lorance at his trial, and in interviews several have contradicted Mr. Lorance’s account of a split-second decision to protect his troops. The picture those soldiers paint is of a young lieutenant who, during just three days in command, ordered soldiers to fire repeatedly on unarmed Afghans, tried to falsify reports in order to cover up his actions and so alienated and outraged his troops that they refused to follow orders and turned him in.
“War is hard, there is collateral damage. I get that — I’ve got my own stories,” Staff Sgt. Daniel Williams said in an interview. But Sergeant Williams, who was on his third tour in Afghanistan and was a squad leader in the platoon, added, “That’s not what this was; this was straight murder.”
Mr. Lorance’s lawyers have cast doubt on the platoon members’ accounts, noting that the nine soldiers who testified against him were granted immunity. The lawyers also point to newly uncovered evidence suggesting that the men on the motorcycle may have had ties to enemy bomb makers — a detail that was not revealed to the defense before the trial.
“If the entire evidence had been turned over, this case would be decided differently,” said John Maher, Mr. Lorance’s lawyer. He is appealing the conviction and asking the Army to grant clemency.
Mr. Lorance is barred by the Army from speaking to reporters. But he denied any wrongdoing in an August 2014 letter to the general presiding over his court-martial, saying, “My sole purpose during my tenure as a platoon leader was to bring my men home safely.” Continue reading the main story
The events of that day continue to haunt many members of the platoon. Some, stalked by anger and regret, say they have trouble sleeping. One cried while talking about how the episode tore apart the platoon. One recently checked into a clinic for post-traumatic stress disorder, saying the calls to free Mr. Lorance had revived disturbing memories.
In 2012, the platoon — part of the Fourth Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment — was based in an outpost overlooking a mud-brick village amid fields of grapes in Kandahar Province.
The region is a Taliban stronghold, and four months into the deployment, four men in the unit were severely wounded, including the original lieutenant. Lieutenant Lorance, a 28-year-old with no combat experience, was sent as a replacement.
Mr. Lorance enlisted in the Army in 2002, became a military police officer and did tours in South Korea as a traffic officer and in Iraq guarding detainees before being commissioned as a lieutenant in 2010.
Anna Lorance, his mother, said he was a thoughtful and generous child growing up in rural Texas. After joining the Army at 18, he sent $250 a month to his grandmother.
“He has always put everything he has into helping and protecting people,” she said.
Soldiers who served with him before Afghanistan described him as a top performer.
He “always expected the right thing to be done and the mission to be complete,” Joshua Campbell, who served with Mr. Lorance in Iraq, said in an email.
But soldiers in Afghanistan said Lieutenant Lorance had arrived at their outpost seemingly set on harsh tactics to subdue local insurgents.
“He looks like the all-American sweetheart when you meet him,” Sergeant Williams said in an interview. “But he was just so aggressive. One of the first things he said to us was, we are going to go in Gestapo-style with night raids, pull people out of houses, make them afraid of us.”
The afternoon he arrived, Lieutenant Lorance ordered one of the team’s sharpshooters to fire into the village from the outpost, with the shots hitting inches from civilians, according to trial records. In one case, he ordered the sharpshooter to toy with a man by firing near his head and both shoulders to box him in.
Lieutenant Lorance then ordered the sharpshooter to aim near children and women in a grape field next to the outpost. The sharpshooter, Specialist Matthew Rush, refused.
“I said, ‘You know, they’re kids,’ ” Specialist Rush testified at the court-martial.
Lieutenant Lorance told the soldiers the next morning that the Army’s rules of engagement, governing when they could use deadly force, had changed and that they were now allowed to fire on any motorcycle they saw. Soldiers testified that they were shocked but did not argue.
At the trial, Army prosecutors showed that the rules had not changed — a fact they suggested Lieutenant Lorance would have known.
(Mr. Fitzgerald at his home in Tennessee. He was an Army specialist standing near Lieutenant Lorance when orders were given to fire on a motorcycle. The former lieutenant is serving a 19-year prison term in the deaths of two Afghan civilians. Credit Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times)
A few minutes into that morning patrol, while walking through a field of grapes, a private named James Skelton spotted a motorcycle in the distance carrying three men and called it out to Lieutenant Lorance. News media reports based on interviews with Mr. Lorance’s family and lawyers have described the motorcycle “speeding toward the platoon,” giving the lieutenant only seconds to act. But soldiers testified that the bike was about 200 yards away and could not have reached the platoon’s position in the grape fields.
Without asking for more information, Lieutenant Lorance, standing in a low spot where he could not see the motorcycle, told the soldiers to “engage,” soldiers testified.
“Nobody fired initially,” Todd Fitzgerald, a specialist in the platoon who was standing near the lieutenant, said in an interview. “There was no reason to. Then Lorance said, ‘Why isn’t anyone firing yet?’ ”
Private Skelton fired two shots that missed.
The men on the motorcycle stopped, got off and looked around, soldiers testified, trying to figure out what had happened. Lieutenant Lorance radioed a nearby truck that had a machine gun with an order to fire. Sergeant Williams, who watched through a high-powered camera at the outpost, saw two bursts from the gun truck take down the motorcycle driver, then, after a pause, a man with a wispy white beard. A third man fled into the village.
“I got on the radio and was, like, what the hell just happened?” Sergeant Williams said in an interview. “There was no threat from those guys whatsoever.”
Lieutenant Lorance then told the machine-gunner to fire at the motorcycle, but a boy had come to retrieve it, so the gunner refused.
“I wasn’t going to shoot a 12-year-old boy,” the gunner, Private David Shilo, testified.
Soldiers searching the dead men found only a pair of scissors, an identification card, some pens and three cucumbers.
Women and children came out of the village, screaming and crying, soldiers said. Mr. Fitzgerald said in an interview that the lieutenant turned to him and said, “If anyone tries to touch the bodies, shoot them.” Then, as the villagers confronted the platoon members, Mr. Fitzgerald said, Lieutenant Lorance swore at them and said, “Shut up or I’ll kill you, too.”
In the letter seeking clemency, Mr. Lorance acknowledged making “some statements that framed me as someone I am not,” but said those statements were just “an attempt to establish common ground with the battle-hardened troopers of the new platoon.”
Mr. Lorance’s lawyer said his decision was reasonable because there were enemy fighters in the area.
In the village, the lieutenant radioed a false report to commanders that the villagers had carried away the bodies before they could be identified, soldiers said. That day, members of the platoon reported the falsification to the company commander. In the court-marital, members of the platoon who testified gave a consistent account of Lieutenant Lorance’s actions before and after the killings.
Mr. Lorance did not testify, saying only during the sentencing phase, “I take full responsibility for my actions and the actions of my men.”
Don Snyder, an author in Maine who has interviewed Mr. Lorance in prison and started the petition drive to pardon him, said Mr. Lorance was trying to appear tough for his men and got caught up in his own act.
“It’s a tragedy like something out of Shakespeare,” he said. “He became the bully and the monster he was trying to protect everyone from.”
A spokesman for Mr. Hunter, who was a Marine officer who served three tours in Iraq, said the congressman did not dispute the platoon members’ accounts but believed that, given the confusing nature of combat, Mr. Lorance should be given leniency.
“It might be true Lorance wasn’t the Army’s best soldier,” the spokesman, Joe Kasper, said. But the sentence, he said, “under the circumstances is excessive.”
Members of Mr. Lorance’s former platoon say his actions ripped apart their tight-knit group.
“It tainted our entire service,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. He choked up when he thought of the effect on men from the platoon.
“We gave a lot, sacrificed a lot. To see it destroyed, that was bad enough,” he said. “Every time a new story calling him a hero happens, I don’t sleep. I lay down in my bed and close my eyes and lay there all night until the sun comes up.”
Title: CNN caught fibbing about DHS and purported dangers of right wing extremism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2015, 06:47:54 PM
UPDATE: CNN Lied About “Right-Wing” Extremism Threat Greater Than ISIS
Police State
By: Derrick Broze Feb 26, 2015 4
Despite a widely circulated article from CNN, the latest DHS report on extremism does not state that Right-Wing Extremism is more dangerous than ISIS.
Last week we reported on the newly released intelligence report produced by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigations which called attention to an apparent domestic terror threat from ” right-wing sovereign citizen extremists.”
The report claimed that there have been 24 sovereign citizen attacks in the United States since 2010. According to the report these “extremists” believe they are not bound by the law and will assert their rights on a regular basis when confronted by police. This could be a traffic stop or refusing to obey court orders.
Now Reason.com has obtained the actual report - CNN failed to show a copy of the report – and it offers stark contrasts from what was originally reported. Despite CNN claiming that the threat from sovereign citizens was greater than ISIS or included “right-wing” extremists, the report does not state that at all. In fact, the entire report does not even use the term “right-wing” or even mention the Islamic State. Statements on the alleged danger of right-wing extremists came from a separate report and quotes from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Not the actual report itself.
Some key points CNN failed to mention include the fact that the majority of individuals who identify as sovereign citizens are nonviolent. Instead the report focuses on “sovereign citizen extremists,” or SCEs. The report finds that violence from these individuals is at best sporadic and expected to stay “at the same sporadic level” in the coming year. The violence in these cases is rarely planned in advance, the report concluded. This can include plotting a murder or sending threatening letters, however they tend to be traffic stops gone wrong. Twenty-four cases of violence connected to this apparent movement have been documented since 2010. Only 2 of those 24 cases involved SCEs successfully killing anyone. Hardly the growing threat CNN wants you to believe.
As I wrote last week, when governments criminalize innocent actions of free people there will be resistance. When governments propagandize the people to mistrust those who assert their rights, there will be division. Ultimately it is up to each of us to communicate with our neighbors and family members so they understand the difference between those pursuing violence and those attempting to live free. A full list of the incidents from the DHS report appears below.
One last thing to remember as you look at these 24 incidents: At least one of them (Schaeffer Cox) was arrested after being encouraged and essentially entrapped by federal authorities. Knowing the FBI’s history with creating or encouraging terror attacks using confidential informants, it is important to take the information provided by the DHS with a grain of salt.
Click here for an interactive map of the incidents.
• March 2010: Brody James Whitaker shoots at the Florida State Highway Patrol after a traffic stop.
• April 2010: Walter Fitzpatrick plans a “citizens’ arrest” of a Knoxville jury foreman who refused to indict President Barack Obama.
• May 2010: Jerry and Joseph Kane get into a shootout with the police after a traffic stop. They kill two officers and are themselves killed.
• June 2010: A sovereign citizen begins a multi-year series of written and verbal threats against law enforcement officials in Sweetgrass, Montana.
• September 2010: Victor Dwayne White of West Odessa, Texas, shoots and wounds two sheriff’s deputies and a utility worker who came onto his property to access an oil well. A 22-hour standoff ensues.
• January 2011: David Russell Myrland is arrested after threatening to use “deadly force” if necessary to “arrest” the mayor of Kirkland, Washington, and other officials.
• March 2011: Francis Shaeffer Cox conspires with confederates to kill a judge and an IRS officer in Anchorage, Alaska.
• June 2011: A domestic disturbance call brings police to the home of William Foust in Page, Arizona; Foust is shot and killed in the ensuing altercation.
• July 2011: James Tesi of Colleyville, Texas, fires on police after an attempted traffic stop.
• November 2011: A property dispute brings the authorites to Rodney Brossart’s home in Lakota, South Dakota. He threatens to shoot the officers, and a stand-off follows.
• February 2012: Vahe Ohanian visits a California Highway Patrol station and a sheriff’s station in Santa Clarita, California, threatening to “snipe” officers. (*)
• February 2012: Matthew O’Neill pleads guilty to sending an envelope containing white powder to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
• August 2012: In LaPlace, Louisiana, a traffic stop leads to two shootouts with members of a small sovereign-citizen group headed by Terry Lyn Smith, one at the vehicle and the second at a trailer park. Two police officers are killed and three wounded.
• September 2012: Phillip Monroe Ballard attempts to solicit the murder of the judge presiding over his tax trial. • March 2013: Jeffrey Allen Wright of Navarre, Florida, threatens officers with a gun when they try to serve a warrant. He is shot and killed.
• June 2013: In Snellville, Georgia, a man sends police a letter threatening death if they interfere with members of a sovereign-citizen group called the “Embassy of Granville.”
• June 2013: Lewis Pollard points a gun at officers at his Fruita, Colorado, residence. He is shot and killed.
• July 2013: Eric Stanberry Jr. pulls a gun on a security guard outside a Nashville strip club, identifying himself as a “sovereign peace officer.” Police tase him.
• July 2013: An incarcerated sovereign citizen plans to kill a federal agent and a witness.
• July 2013: David John McCormick refuses to let the Coast Guard board his boat. After lunging at one of the crew, he is arrested for assaulting a federal officer.
• August 2013: David Allen Brutsche and Devon Campbell Newman are arrested for allegedly planning to “arrest,” “try,” and “execute” police officers.
• March 2014: Israel Rondon of Middleburg Heights, Ohio, fires at deputies serving a warrant. He is killed.
• June 2014: When deputies try to serve an eviction notice on Earl Carlson Harris of Ashland, Oregon, he threatens them with a rifle and is killed.
• June 2014: On federal land in Nevada County, California, Brent Douglas Cole allegedly fires at employees of the Bureau of Land Management and the California Highway Patrol as they attempt to tow vehicles from Cole’s unsanctioned campground. The following two tabs change content below.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 01, 2015, 09:18:28 AM
The country has 18 trillion debt and the MSM as always turns it around and blames Republicans in Congress for trying to reign in some costs as a "dark cloud". I don't understand why the Cans are not out in public every second they get debunking this.
Title: Re: Media Issues, Gruber Obamacare videos
Post by: DougMacG on March 03, 2015, 07:10:14 AM
Short video at the link. Sharyl Attkisson's interviews the guy who found the Gruber Obamacare videos.
A financial adviser who lost his health insurance plan looked into the ACA. Why couldn't the mainstream media do this research or figure this out before it all hit?
Short video at the link. Sharyl Attkisson's interviews the guy who found the Gruber Obamacare videos.
A financial adviser who lost his health insurance plan looked into the ACA. Why couldn't the mainstream media do this research or figure this out before it all hit?
Title: National Journal on Hugh Hewitt
Post by: DougMacG on March 13, 2015, 08:19:51 AM
Along with John Hinderaker of Powerline who has done local radio here, I find Hugh Hewitt to be a conservative on radio who is thoughtful and persuasive without the flame throwing that I think turns centrists and undecideds away from conservative talk and comment. Lately he has been getting all the best guests, often first, stumping Jeb Bush on naval capabilities and posing very tough questions about Obama to David Axelrod, for examples.
Real Clear Politics entitles their link to the piece today, the "GOP Establishment's Go-To Pundit".
"He is tough but fair, as they say," "he's an intellectual's ideologue" He puts out full transcripts because "you don't want the media to filter for you what [the guest] said." ...named Hewitt as the first conservative figure who will get to ask questions of the candidates. His selection was widely praised, inside the party and out. ...predicted that Hewitt "is probably the most likely to ask a debate question that knocks a candidate out of the race."
[Reince] Priebus wasn't stingy with his praise. "He's a star on talk radio and a star in the conservative media circles and someone who I think is reasonable but tough," he told me. "And I think he's very well respected no matter where you fit in in our party."
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 14, 2015, 03:48:30 AM
I like Hewitt, though I can't hear his show where I live now.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 24, 2015, 07:01:13 AM
Anyone notice a problem with Breitbart's website? Every time I try to log on I get sudden stops with warnings about spyware. Seems like the site is sabatagued.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 09, 2015, 08:21:46 AM
Geraldo just contradicted himself.
On Fox I heard him call himself a "Republican". I suspected he is saying that to humor the audience but that he is not telling the truth.
On his radio show this AM he stated how he hopes that Hillary "wins". He ain't no Republican. You cannot be for Hillary and be Republican.
The two cancel each other out.
I thought he was a straight shooter but I guess not.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 09, 2015, 09:32:19 AM
Geraldo is an egotistical ass. That is all.
Title: On Trudeau
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 22, 2015, 11:14:27 AM
Note, local Fox affiliates have nothing to do with the Fox News channel. Not that matters to lefty bloggers flecked with spittle as they take part in the two minute hate for any media outlet that doesn't push their narrative.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 03, 2015, 05:49:55 PM
Nonetheless a shameful moment for that affiliate.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 03, 2015, 06:40:16 PM
Another chapter in the ongoing story of disruptive innovation. It wasn't that long ago that someone first suggested Craigslist to us for our rental ads. Besides the cost, we were getting terrible service with advertising at the local monopoly newspaper, having to commit on Wednesday for what we will need on Sunday for example. Now major city newspapers barely have a classified section. There is now an awful lot of news, weather, sports, opinion and classifieds that people can get online for free. Almost everything. Meanwhile the quality has mostly gone up. (Just reading this forum would put you ahead of almost any traditional news magazine.)
One has to be careful with sources. There was a online story over the weekend that water levels dropped 8 feet on Lake Meade with the earthquake. It turned out the damage was to a sensor. But the traditional media has always been loaded with errors, deception and bias too, (often pointed out here) so that is nothing new.
Title: VDH on NR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 26, 2015, 10:36:19 AM
The Home of Intellectual Populism Could Use Your Help By Victor Davis Hanson
I have written for National Review since the third bleak day after September 11, 2001, and have not missed a column since. I live and work on the West Coast, but the editors and writers at NR in New York over the years have seemed like a family, with long traditions back to, and reverence for, William F. Buckley's original vision of a conservative voice in the wilderness of growing liberal chaos.
In the 21st century there are now all sorts of conservative media in a way undreamed of when Buckley created National Review. But few have such deep roots as NR and welcome such diverse views. In over 13 years, I have never had a column spiked, though often on issues such as war, peace, immigration, or the particular Republican nominees vying for the presidency my views were not necessarily those of either the editorial staff or fellow conservative writers. In other words, a wide conservative spectrum - paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, tea-party enthusiasts, the deeply religious and the agnostic, both libertarians and social conservatives, free-marketeers and the more protectionist - characterizes National Review. The common requisite is that they present their views as a critique of prevailing liberal orthodoxy but do so analytically and with decency and respect.
I support National Review because it is a professional and humane organization that tirelessly makes the case that what is called liberalism is not liberal and that what we are told is progressivism progresses nowhere but to serfdom. And that collective and state-run empathy for the poor and dispossessed is not a Great Society, which depresses individual initiative and makes us all collectively poorer, but rather is best expressed as allowing the citizen of a free society to prosper on his own initiative, and thereby enrich the entire commonwealth.
In the 21st century, National Review has opened new pathways of reaching younger professionals and students, with an Institute, symposia, and lecture series. Its cruises are unique - natural meeting places for some of the greatest Americans one can find, from all walks of life, who share a common worry that wherever liberal engineers think they are driving America, all sorts of people simply do not wish to go - and won't! Intellectual populism is a National Review cruise and get-together.
Let us all support National Review, each according to his or her station, as the country reawakens from its six-year slumber. And as it rediscovers what has been lost, National Review will be there each day to help us rebuild.
www.NationalReview.com
Title: Ny Times vs. Erdogan of Turkey
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2015, 07:47:53 PM
Erdogan vs. the New York Times, and Democracy by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News May 28, 2015 http://www.investigativeproject.org/4861/erdogan-vs-the-new-york-times-and-democracy
For 13 years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has worked to impose his Islamist vision on Turkey's proud secular democracy, reshaping the country into a neo-Ottoman republic. His success can be credited in no small measure to his manipulation and intimidation of the press, and the occasional censorship of social media and the Internet overall. Now, in a gesture that betrays either Islamist imperialism, sheer ignorance of Western democracy, or both, Turkey's president and former prime minister is expanding his reach, raising his fist – and, he hopes, his influence – at the West, using the New York Times as his target.
Infuriated by a "shameless" May 23 Times editorial that called him "increasingly hostile to truth-telling" and accused him of "brute manipulation of the political process" in the upcoming June 7 elections, Erdogan accused the paper of "overstepping the limits of freedom" and "meddling in Turkish politics." Speaking in Istanbul on Monday, the Turkish leader called on the Times to "know its place," and alleged that if the paper were to criticize U.S. leaders, those leaders "would immediately do what is necessary" – an ominous suggestion that spotlights his own way of dealing with journalists who say things he doesn't like: he puts them in prison, often on charges of "terrorism." In 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalists cited Turkey as the leading imprisoner of journalists for the second year in a row. The release of eight of those journalists in 2014 put the country in second place, but signs are strong that 2015 will see the country take the lead again.
Indeed, only days after his rant against the Times, Erdogan took revenge on former Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, revoking his promise to grant him "honorary citizenship" and instead calling him "an enemy of our government and of our country." That change of heart appears to have come when someone on the president's staff uncovered a Jan. 4 article Kinzer penned for the Boston Globe, in which he observed, "Once seen as a skilled modernizer, [Erdoğan] now sits in a 1,000-room palace denouncing the European Union, decreeing the arrest of journalists, and ranting against short skirts and birth control."
This is hardly the first time Erdogan has wrestled with the "Gray Lady." In 2014, the then-prime minister refuted the Times' report that Turkey had allowed weapons to flow into Syria to aid ISIS. Turkey, he insisted, "is against terrorism of all kinds, indiscriminately." It was an ironic statement at best, coming from a man with Muslim Brotherhood sympathies who is also the leader of a country that allegedly serves as a Hamas headquarters. It is also worth noting that while Erdogan called Kinzer an "enemy of the government," he openly welcomed members of the Brotherhood expelled from Egypt after the fall of Mohamed Morsi.
But it wasn't just the article Erdogan found problematic, he also criticized the Times' use of a photograph of him exiting a mosque, claiming it suggested that he and the mosque were responsible for recruiting jihadists for ISIS. The paper subsequently apologized for the image, saying it was "published in error." That led Erdogan to crow locally that he had triumphed over the Times – and so, he meant to suggest, over America. Similarly, in the aftermath of the latest Times conflict, he warned that the Times no longer rules Turkey: "They are used to ruling the other side of the world from 10,000-15,000 kilometers' distance," he declared. "But there is no such Turkey. There is no more old Turkey. There is a new Turkey."
It was a typical Erdogan gesture: he often seeks that kind of triumph – not only over America, but over the entire world. He has famously stated that Muslims, not Columbus, discovered America, a position he defended with the assertions that "as the president of my country, I cannot accept that our civilization is inferior to other civilizations," and that "Western sources shouldn't be believed as if they are sacred texts."
At speeches in Europe, he has exhorted Turkish-Europeans to resist assimilation. "Assimilation is a crime against humanity," he told an international audience of 20,000 who attended his 2008 speech in Cologne, Germany. And in 2013, in a highly controversial move, he demanded that the Dutch government place Turkish-Dutch foster children only in Muslim homes – despite the fact that there are few Muslim families offering to house foster children.
More recently, the Islamist party he founded in 2001, the Justice Development Party (AKP), went so far as to proclaim that "God is on our side" in the upcoming parliamentary elections – a statement that in itself defies the deepest principles of a secular, democratic republic. It is a position also in keeping with Erdogan's neo-Ottoman agenda, which to date has included the institution of mandatory religion classes and lessons in Arabic-Ottoman script in all Turkish schools. (Kemal Ataturk banned Ottoman script with the founding of the Turkish Republic, replacing it with a Latin alphabet aimed at Westernizing Turkey, turning it away from its Islamic and Arab history.)
Much about Erdogan's vision, in fact, can be read into this reinstatement of Ottoman Turkish; as the Washington Post observed, his opponents have taken the move "as a sign of the creeping Islamization of Turkey's resolutely secular society that has taken place under Erdogan's watch. Bans on headscarves and veils have been lifted by Erdogan. The number of students studying in state-run religious seminaries has grown from 63,000 in 2002, when Erdogan first came to power, to nearly 1 million today – a statistic the Turkish president celebrates." Not for nothing did Erdogan promise early in his administration to build "a new religious youth."
From all of this emerges a confused, somewhat bizarre understanding of the role of the written word, be it in journalism or religious text, and a confusion between the two. It is forbidden to criticize Mohammed, for instance, but it is equally forbidden, evidently, to criticize Turkey's president (as it is the leaders of most, if not all, Muslim countries).
Indeed, a 16-year-old schoolboy was arrested last December on charges of insulting the president over comments defending secularism and alleging government corruption. In an Islamist society – that of political Islam – there is no distinction between Islam and the state: to criticize one is tantamount to criticizing the other.
In the same way, Erdogan's aim of creating a "new Turkey" that restores the Ottoman Empire and is more powerful than America or Europe, is akin to the ideal of a world Caliphate – a world under Islam. Already it is plain that, as he gradually erodes the legacy of a secular Turkey, increasingly he paves the way for the sharia state he has reportedly advocated in the past. What he may not realize is that the harder he tries to silence these truths, the clearer he makes them.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
Title: Virgin Mary and Mohammed disrespect treated differently by POTH
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2015, 01:44:30 PM
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/new_york_times_ignored_15_unpaid_tickets_of_obama_in_2007.html Strange, it is as if there is some sort of agenda at play...
Yes, strange all the way around. Was there any possibility they could do this investigation and then NOT print it when it turns out they uncovered NOTHING? There used to be an unwritten rule about not going after the spouses and family - at least until they become politically involved. This non-story is about Mrs. Rubio. 4 tickets in 20 years for the candidate is nothing. It means he is driving himself around and trying to get himself to a lot of things. Legal authorities would look more at how many tickets in the last 6 or 12 months, not 2 decades.
One analyst called the NYT story a parody. Hard to distinguish the Times from the Onion.
This story actually helps Rubio. Getting all these things out there now so that they don't come out later as a surprise is a good thing for the campaign. Same with the story about his friend having troubles.
The analogy to the Obama non-coverage is made worse by the fact that Obama had no intention of ever paying his tickets, even to become a US Senator, until he decided to run for President. Who could have seen that level of arrogance and privilege coming? And they still don't cover it.
Does the Times have an agenda, or a double standard? 'ya thin? Do they hold themselves to any sort of journalistic standard for consistency? Not in the least. Now we wait and see if Martha and Candy step in with outrage, defending the integrity of their profession, lol.
You would think the so-called professional journalists would try to put out a high quality work product - a notch above what they call the bloggers in pajamas. But they don't.
Title: Diane Rehm of NPR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2015, 09:46:57 PM
Wait, you mean professional journalists might actually be pushing a political agenda?
NFW !
Title: New York Times: Overpriced Bird Cage Liner...POTH turns down Mohammed ad.
Post by: objectivist1 on July 04, 2015, 06:15:17 AM
MUHAMMAD CARTOON IN THE NEW YORK TIMES? OF COURSE NOT.
by PAMELA GELLER 1 Jul 2015 - breitbart.com
Last Monday, the New York Times ran a lavish full-color image of a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made out of condoms. If they thought twice about offending Roman Catholics’ religious sensibilities, they gave no public hint of doing so. And so my human rights organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), decided to test their commitment to free speech by submitting an ad featuring a cartoon of Muhammad – the winning cartoon from our free speech event in Garland, Texas, which the Times had refused to run in their coverage of the jihad terror attack on our event.
Predictably, it rejected our ad as well. AFDI submitted the ad, featuring Bosch Fawstin’s cartoon of Muhammad exclaiming, “You can’t draw me!” and the cartoonist answering, “That’s why I draw you,” with the caption “Support Free Speech,” to run on Sunday, July 5, at the staggering cost of over $40,000.
Our ad is not obscene or offensive in any objective sense. It is a statement about how free people are not going to submit to violent intimidation and allow bloodthirsty thugs to curtail our freedoms.
But for the Sharia-compliant New York Times, even that was too far over the line. The Times’ John Shaw wrote me: “I have checked with our advertising acceptability department and this ad does not comply with our acceptability standards because it is offensive on religious grounds. We thank you again, but we will not be able to accept the ad.”
Offensive on what religious grounds? Sharia. For years now, the New York Times has adhered to and enforced the strict code of Islamic law. Bowed and cowed, the Times will not violate the vicious and archaic blasphemy laws under the sharia: it will not criticize, mock or otherwise mock Islam, no matter how high the death toll or how gruesome the jihad.
Back in 2012, the New York Times ran a full-page ad calling for Christians to leave the Catholic Church. When AFDI submitted a mirror image of that same ad, making the exactly the same declaration concerning Islam, the ad was rejected out of hand. We used the same language as the anti-Catholic ad. The only difference was that ours was true and what we described about the mistreatment of women and non-Muslims under Islamic law was true. The anti-Catholic ad, by contrast, was written by fallacious feminazis. Nonetheless, in a craven capitulation to Sharia blasphemy laws, the Times rejected my ad.
Bob Christie, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for the New York Times, called me to advise me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. Christie said that the Times would be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”
During our conversation, I asked Christie, “If you feared the Catholics were going to attack the New York Times building, would you have run that ad?”
Christie responded, “I’m not here to discuss the anti-Catholic ad.”
I said, “But I am, it’s the exact same ad.”
He said, “No, it’s not.” I said, “I can’t believe you’re bowing to this Islamic barbarity and thuggery. I can’t believe this is the narrative. You’re not accepting my ad. You’re rejecting my ad. You can’t even say it.”
Christie then sent me a follow-up letter, claiming that the Times was going to “delay publication in light of recent events in Afghanistan, including the Quran burning and the alleged killings of Afghani [sic] civilians by a member of the U.S. military. It is our belief that fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the region in danger.”
The publication “delay” is, of course, still going on.
Not to be outdone, the Washington Post rejected the ad as well. Video here and here.
It was most disingenuous for the New York Times to refuse to run our counter-jihad ad based on their concern for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Liars. The New York Times has done more to jeopardize the safety of our troops than any mainstream media outlet, with the possible exception of Newsweek. Was the Times concerned that they were putting our troops’ live in danger when they ran front page articles on Abu Ghraib every day for a month? Starting on May 1, 2004, the New York Times had a front page article on Abu Ghraib every day for 32 days.
Who leaked the NSA wiretaps under FISA, jeopardizing not just troops but American citizens, or the highly classified Pentagon order authorizing special ops to hunt for al-Qaida in the mountains of Pakistan?
The New York Times exposed SWIFT (which put military and civilians at great risk of jihad). SWIFT was a legal secret program that gave the government access to a massive database of international financial transactions, using “broad subpoenas to collect the financial records from an international system.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in 2006, “The president is concerned that, once again, the New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is protecting the American people.”
Despite the obvious hypocrisy of the Times, the mainstream media fell into line. It took a couple of days to get their arms around how to frame the Times’ self-enforcing of Shariah, but the Huffington Post and the left lemmings soon began to follow the Times’ line, claiming that running my ad would endanger lives.
Really? What nerve. What is lower than using our brave men and women to cover for the Times’ cowardice and anti-freedom editorial policies? That is so … left.
And now, with their running the Pope condom “art” but refusing to run my free speech statement, their cowardice and hypocrisy are fully exposed.
Title: Unfit to print
Post by: G M on July 14, 2015, 05:51:26 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues - Dan Rather Truth is all false
Post by: DougMacG on October 13, 2015, 07:37:37 AM
Beware of a false movie named truth:
Truth and the New York Times The paper of record shills for a movie that claims to exonerate Dan Rather—against all evidence.
By Scott Johnson, Minneapolis attorney and Powerline co-founder
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1012sj.html
The documents on which Rather based the second segment proved to be fabricated on Microsoft Word in the computer era, not typewritten in the early 1970s by Bush’s commanding officer or anyone else. The content and format of the documents also betrayed their fabrication. --------------------------------------------------------
Yes, the false documents were produced with a Microsoft proportional spacing font a decade before Microsoft for MS-DOS was developed. It was the author Scott Johnson and Powerline who, via contributions from readers, were first in media to expose the fraud.
Truth in liberal-speak means false. Learn to translate if you find yourself following mainstream media or culture.
Title: Re: Media Issues - Dan Rather Truth is all false
Post by: G M on October 13, 2015, 08:33:54 AM
Doug, these are Professional Journalists! They have credentials!
Truth and the New York Times The paper of record shills for a movie that claims to exonerate Dan Rather—against all evidence.
By Scott Johnson, Minneapolis attorney and Powerline co-founder
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1012sj.html
The documents on which Rather based the second segment proved to be fabricated on Microsoft Word in the computer era, not typewritten in the early 1970s by Bush’s commanding officer or anyone else. The content and format of the documents also betrayed their fabrication. --------------------------------------------------------
Yes, the false documents were produced with a Microsoft proportional spacing font a decade before Microsoft for MS-DOS was developed. It was the author Scott Johnson and Powerline who, via contributions from readers, were first in media to expose the fraud.
Truth in liberal-speak means false. Learn to translate if you find yourself following mainstream media or culture.
Title: Almost like they have some sort of agenda...
Post by: G M on October 13, 2015, 01:31:56 PM
Title: Liberal news jackals
Post by: ccp on October 15, 2015, 10:40:06 AM
I was one of the medical students "rescued" in Grenada in 1983 before I finished my training at Rutgers in NJ.
I will never forget how when a group of us brought by C 130 transport from the island of Grenada (Granada is in Spain) where brought to the air force base in South Carolina we were rushed by so called reporters. They shoved microphones in our faces and began asking us what we thought of the invasion and Reagan. The shock and disappointment on their faces when we overwhelmingly thanked our military, our country and our President.
Thank God for America.
Well right at that time one reporter literally ran over to tell the other jackal reporters that there was ONE student who was criticizing Reagan for "invading a sovereign nation".
Immediately as though they were running to escape a burning building they yanked the microphones from us and rushed the ONE "f"ing liberal to interview him so they could have what they really wanted.
A story that students were bashing Reagan and the US military.
Remember this was the first military action after Vietnam when the libs were all over the military.
I learned then first hand how 95 % of the people could be for something but the news media, looking for a story, and especially one that has the liberal slant will focus and give loud voice to the 5% all the while covering up that it is only a small minority opinion.
The vast majority of us praised Reagan. The news jackals couldn't stand it.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ppulatie on October 15, 2015, 11:03:11 AM
I would imagine you have a couple of stories about that bit in Grenada? Were you by chance rescued by "Gunny Highway" and his Force Recon unit? :-D
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 15, 2015, 12:06:50 PM
86th airborne. I met a few soldiers who were there. One just recently, who said I was the first one he met who was there.
Between Grenada and barracks bombing in Lebanon which occurred at the same time we finally saw a resurgence of respect for our military after the flower children clowns of the 60's thought they co opted the right to criticize our soldiers who risk life and limb to protect us.
As for Gunny Highway ( a great movie), there were many of them on the Island.
No one would have ever believed we would have a President and a Democrat party who would make our country the villain in the world today.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 15, 2015, 12:26:22 PM
CCP: "I was one of the medical students "rescued" in Grenada in 1983 ..."
What an experience! I never knew that.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 15, 2015, 01:57:34 PM
What a thrill it was to be on the White House lawn watching Reagan give a speech. Nancy standing proudly at his side slowly turning her gaze from one side of the audience to the other with a glistening radiance.
The bravery of our troops was a sight to behold. I was not brave. I was studying only to find myself in the middle of a battle. :-o
Most importantly 90% of the Grenadians were happy the US invaded and kicked out the Cuban backed communist regime.
Now we have some punk in the WH who embraces communism...... Embraces Cuba..... Who disrespects this country every day..... :x
Your damn right I am angry.
Title: Mystery fire
Post by: G M on October 16, 2015, 09:24:21 AM
Kessler: It's false but we're not going to award it any Pinocchio's, our measure of falsehoods.
Elizabeth Warren / Thomas Piketty: We count income without counting all income.
We use these arguments to justify more programs but don't count the trillions in programs we already waste.
You can point out the falsehoods all you want; we're going to keep on quoting false studies.
Washington Post has locked me off their site. Good riddance.
Title: Re: Washington Post "Fact Checker" just can't say Pinncchio for Liberal Lies
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2015, 02:32:58 PM
"We like in an era of unbridled corruption in government and the media. This is why I am leaving law enforcement."
Unlock the jails, sic the IRS on your enemies, a brother and sister can marry, everything is legal - except for anything I might want to do.
Rush had a proposal after the Obama election. Have two systems and let them compete. He was referring to the tax system but maybe we could use it for everything. Social security, welfare, over-taxation beyond your share of the cost of constitutional government? Opt out. Meth legal? Fine, but we don't pay your healthcare and can shoot you if you come at us looking crazed or start stealing our stuff. Paid family leave, $50 minimum wage, free day care from day one, fine, opt in. Just quit forcing this stuff down our throats and then telling us it doesn't count when we measure the income of the recipients - when it is their primary source of income!
Title: Comparison
Post by: ccp on October 26, 2015, 02:44:00 PM
The front page of the Newark Star Ledger had this story about Christie. Hillary lying to the world with no remorse is OK. But this my friends, this, is a big deal deserving any media time whatsoever let alone the front page: :wink:
This guy replaced Tim Russert!: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/10/29/two-weeks-after-correcting-himself-cnbcs-harwood-lies-about-rubios
I went through and read the debate this morning. Wow, are those questioners partisan jerks!
I would expect fairer treatment if the DNC hosted the Republican debate.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on October 29, 2015, 11:00:24 AM
The more I read in the news about the back lash to the phony leftist moderators (probably got their scripts from big Wall Street leftists tied to the Clinton campaign or DNC or both) the more I am excited to see how the Republicans finally unifying around this.
That dirt ball Harwood may have done more than anyone else to motivate and unify the party.
Title: Re: Even the "journalists" lie for political reasons
Post by: G M on October 29, 2015, 12:09:24 PM
This guy replaced Tim Russert!: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/10/29/two-weeks-after-correcting-himself-cnbcs-harwood-lies-about-rubios
I went through and read the debate this morning. Wow, are those questioners partisan jerks!
I would expect fairer treatment if the DNC hosted the Republican debate.
The DNC did host the Republican debate, as usual.
Title: A Dick Morris story about POTH from 1995
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2015, 11:51:56 AM
How Media Bias Works By DICK MORRIS Published on TheHill.com on November 3, 2015 What happened to the email scandal? Or the Clintons' speeches? Or the uranium deal where Vladimir Putin got control of our mines? Or Hillary Clinton's lie about the Benghazi terrorist attacks being caused by a video? Or any of the scandals the media pursued with such zest and vigor until last week?
Some say that Hillary Clinton's winning the 2016 Democratic primary by surviving the Benghazi hearings. Others say there was nothing there in the first place.
The truth is that the four-year rule kicked in.
The four-year rule, widely honored but never admitted by the media, provides that it can be critical of the Democratic Party, President Obama or the Clintons for only three out of every four years. But when an election year looms, it has to cut it out and fall in line behind the party and its likely nominee, Hillary Clinton.
In other words, when the stakes are down, they have to cut out the criticism.
Two weeks ago, Vice President Biden decided not to run for president. From that date on, the harsh media criticism of Clinton stopped, and it will remain stopped until after Election Day 2016. The four-year rule has taken over.
I was exposed to the four-year rule in 1996. As Bill Clinton ran for reelection, I got a call from the managing editor of The New York Times, Joseph Lelyveld. He wanted an interview with the president. His request came after months of the Times savaging Clinton with every kind of criticism. Almost single-handedly, the Times kept the Whitewater scandal alive, joyously chronicling its every twist and turn. How, I thought, did they think Clinton would grant them an interview? So they could continue to savage him?
Anticipating my hesitancy, Lelyveld assured me that "we don't think people care about what happened in Arkansas years ago." Translation: Give us the interview and we won't ask him embarrassing questions about Whitewater. From now on, we are on the pad.
I relayed the request to the president. He was, to say the least, disinclined to cooperate. Then I repeated Lelyveld's line about the events in Arkansas years ago. Clinton still said no. But Mike McCurry, our press secretary, and I strongly urged him to relent.
He did so, muttering how much he hated the Times.
Then, to my shock, Todd Purdum, the Times reporter who was to conduct the interview, called and asked to meet me beforehand. When we met, over drinks at the Hay-Adams Hotel, he sketched out for me the questions he planned to ask and solicited my advice on any additional ones I might suggest. Talk about softballs. We got the questions in advance and even could chip in a few of our own. It was the easiest pre-interview briefing I've ever conducted. The president practiced hitting softballs out of the park all day.
The interview was the kindest and most gentle we ever had, and a cover story in the Sunday Times Magazine featured the president's picture on the cover.
The sycophantic coverage continued all year. This publication, which had caused more angst than any other for three years, now rolled over and played dead.
I learned then about the right of passage and the three-out-of-four rule. Now it is Hillary Clinton's turn to benefit. So don't count on the media to continue to tell the truth about the former first lady now that she is the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Of course, that doesn't mean that we can't go after her. But we will be on our own. The media resonance we're accustomed to hearing as we talk about the Clinton speeches or Benghazi or the private email server has stopped. Now we will hear only the sounds of the media's silence. It's time to rally behind the party.
Title: No worries, he's a professional journalist!
Post by: G M on November 14, 2015, 12:26:15 PM
Title: Re: Media Issues, John Dickerson, CBS
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2015, 08:40:41 AM
Rare kind words by me for a member of the mainstream media. I believe that I remember Dickerson as either a thought leader of the left as political correspondent for Slate. Now I find him to be quite good as moderator of Face the Nation and also debate moderator. One exception was when he wouldn't break his own format to ask an additional followup when twice his (valid) question was ignored in the debate. Another is that he met with the campaigns before the debate and they all seemed prepared for all the questions. Will he do that in a general election debate?
Title: Man bites dog
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2015, 03:54:28 PM
This woman ! on CNN !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inv6MrzdQZI
Title: Re: Media Issues, Stephen Colbert
Post by: DougMacG on November 20, 2015, 09:55:58 AM
We aren't a good sample but I was wondering what people think of Colbert on the Late Show. In a political sense, Letterman was probably worse so maybe it doesn't matter.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/colbert-drops-to-3rd-place-behind-kimmel-as-new-poll-shows-cbs-host-alienating-audiences/ Colbert Drops to 3rd Place Behind Kimmel as New Poll Shows CBS Host Alienating Audiences
Ratings-Plagued Colbert Mostly Liked By Democrats and Atheists http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/stephen-colbert-ratings-drop-democrats/2015/11/19/id/702919/#ixzz3s3UpYmtJ
Even with Hillary as a guest he took second: Hillary Clinton-Stephen Colbert Ticket Finishes Second To Drew Barrymore-Jimmy Fallon In Late-Night Ratings Race http://deadline.com/2015/10/hillary-clinton-stephen-colbert-beat-by-jimmy-fallon-tv-ratings-1201596355/
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 20, 2015, 10:03:19 AM
Glad to hear it!
Title: CNN mis-edits Trump?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2015, 10:00:20 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2015, 05:57:36 PM
Nice find GM!
Title: CNN "Journalist" Caught Red-Handed Doing Media Favors for Hillary
Post by: G M on November 25, 2015, 02:44:24 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/360274.php
CNN "Journalist" Caught Red-Handed Doing Media Favors for Hillary; Politico's Mike Allen Caught Red-Handed Promising Hillary's People a "No Surprises" Interview of Chelsea, in Which Questions Would Be Worked Out Beforehand
Hillary wanted some self-serving quotes publicized, and CNN's "journalist" -- the same one who just got suspended for her liberal angst about concerns about Syrian refugees -- duly complied.
She also hit Rand Paul for not attending all the hearings -- just as she was seemingly asked.
Here's that journalist reporting back to Team Hillary about the anti-Rand-Paul tweet she'd tweeted out at their apparent behest:
She also pumped out this quote that Hillary's people wanted out there:
Meanwhile, Gawker catches Politico's Mike Allen promising the Hillary staff (Phil Reines, I think) a "no surprises" interview of Chelsea. I won't link them, but instead will link the Washington Post's alleged journalistic column "The Fix," which, when presented with evidence that a liberal colleague in the media is promising against-the-rules favors to a liberal politician, affixes blame squarely where it belongs: on conservative critics of the media who allege that liberal reporters do favors for liberal politicians.
Here's Mike Allen's email promising a very cozy, reputation-boosting interview for the black hole of negative charisma Chelsea:
We're hosting a Politico New Leaders Brunch on Sunday, Jan. 20, with a brief on-stage interview with moi. We would love to honor Chelsea Clinton, and it sounds like she has some issues, marriage and others, that she enjoys talking about these days. This would be a way to send a message during inaugural week: No one besides me would ask her a question, and you and I would agree on them precisely in advance.
This would be a relaxed conversation, and our innovative format (like a speedy Playbook Breakfast) always gets heavy social-media pickup. The interview would be "no surprises:" I would work with you on topics, and would start with anything she wants to cover or make news on. Quicker than a network hit, and reaching an audience you care about with no risk.
The Washington Post's The Fix column immediately spins for their pal, and lets you know who the real villains are here.
A bit of context might be helpful here, since we’re talking about events that happened almost three years ago: President Obama had just been reelected, and Allen was requesting an interview with Chelsea Clinton on inauguration weekend, which is basically one big party in DC. The news of the moment in Clinton world was that Hillary was just a couple weeks away from stepping down as secretary of state, having previously said she would not serve in Obama’s second term.
One interpretation of Allen’s e-mail to Philippe Reines, the Clinton aide, goes something like this: Hey, I’m looking for just a few minutes with Chelsea during an important time for her mom. This isn’t a probing,"“60 Minutes"-style sit-down, so don't worry about fielding anything out of left field.
Not so bad, right?
But the Republican translation will likely go more like this: What can I do to make Chelsea look good because, as we all know, I and my Web site (and most of the media) live to serve the royal family of the Democratic Party.
The GOP field has already put the media on blast this campaign season. There was that memorable rant by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas during the third primary debate....
He then goes on to note, disapprovingly, the criticisms lodged about the media by Republican candidates.
Elsewhere in the article, he casts Republican criticisms of the media as phantasmal -- though allowing that this incident looks like it could be evidence of that paranoid fear.
And you can bet the Republican presidential candidates -- who often accuse the media of pro-Clinton bias-- will pounce on this as confirmation of that belief. It's a ready-made "liberal media" conspiracy theory...
Republican White House hopefuls sometimes go looking for bias where it's not obvious, or nonexistent. But, in this case, they won't have to look very hard. This time, Politico made their job easy.
Pro-tip for The Fix: A conspiracy requires more than one person. Mike Allen's wrongdoing was just his wrongdoing.
It's your rushing to his defense, and attacking his critics, all over an incident you concede looks very bad, that makes it a liberal conspiracy.
You're all in this together, and you make it more obvious every single day.
Glenn Thrush: We Do This All The Time. It's No Big Deal.
Correction: Chris Cilizza is the main voice of The Fix, but he's not the only voice -- and he did not write this particular column. I have omitted his name from the post.
Title: Megyn Kelly on Planned Parenthood shooter
Post by: DougMacG on December 01, 2015, 07:48:26 PM
Megyn Kelly is all over the media bias covering the Colo planned parenthood shooter: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2015/12/01/watch-megyn-kelly-n2087464
Title: Unsolved mystery!
Post by: G M on December 06, 2015, 01:17:22 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on December 08, 2015, 03:11:20 PM
Out of no where I suddenly see this site sponsoring far left biased stories supposedly tailored to "millennials". I wonder if Soros is funding this and making them the contacts to get them noticed.
http://mic.com/
Title: Man bites dog 2.0
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2015, 12:24:54 PM
Title: Clinton News Network
Post by: ccp on December 11, 2015, 07:30:07 AM
CNN - no surprise here. GM did you see CNN's latest commercial for the upcoming Republican debate? I thought it is totally obnoxious, money grubbing, disgrace. I loved Trump demanding 5 million from the liberal network. I think all the Republicans should demand a percentage of the take.
Title: Re: Clinton News Network
Post by: G M on December 11, 2015, 07:56:17 AM
CNN - no surprise here. GM did you see CNN's latest commercial for the upcoming Republican debate? I thought it is totally obnoxious, money grubbing, disgrace. I loved Trump demanding 5 million from the liberal network. I think all the Republicans should demand a percentage of the take.
I don't have cable.
Title: CNN and Pravda on the Hudson's curious headlines about jihadi attack in Israel
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2015, 09:11:08 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on December 24, 2015, 11:07:13 AM
Now the headlines are Megyn (egotist) Kelly vs (Trump) the egotist in the marketing gimmicks for the next debate.
Trump should get paid $5 million for his performance from Fox.
Just like celebrity headlines about who is divorcing who, who is sleeping or cheating on who, who is feuding with who. It is all bullshit to promote sales.
Now the debates have become commercialized crap.
Title: Salon sends inconvenient truth down the memory hole
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2015, 07:19:49 PM
Title: Rolling Stone and Sean Penn
Post by: ccp on January 10, 2016, 09:41:06 AM
This is just so despicable I don't know what to say. As a victim of organized crime this is just another example of how people idolize cruel people. I sincerely hope with all my heart and soul that something tragic befalls Sean Penn:
Title: Christy should have held back the weather according to left
Post by: ccp on January 25, 2016, 08:48:54 AM
Of course it is his fault and he did little to protect people who continue to own property in shore regions at their risk.
I don't want a single tax dollar given to these people. "i've been down here for five years and have never seen it this bad" states one liberal who was interviewed. What, is she a teacher. No I don't feel sorry for her:
*****Chris Christie Apparently Missed All The Criticism Of His Response To Flooding "I think you're just making it up," the New Jersey governor said. 01/25/2016 10:30 am ET | Updated 36 minutes ago Igor Bobic Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post X
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) says he's unaware of criticism about his response to severe flooding in his state after Winter Storm Jonas.
"I don't even know what critics you're talking about," Christie said in response to a question from The Huffington Post's Sam Stein on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday. "There is no residual damage. There is no residual flooding damage. All the flooding receded yesterday morning."
"I have not heard any of that criticism, I have not seen any of that criticism, and I think you're just making it up," he added.
Prior to the storm, the New Jersey governor was in New Hampshire, an early primary state crucial to his presidential aspirations. On Saturday, the day after he returned to his state from the campaign trail, Christie held a press conference in which he downplayed the effects of the storm and said that New Jersey "dodged a bit of a bullet."
Indeed, central and northern sections of the state that were devastated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 fared much better during Winter Storm Jonas. But some residents of southern New Jersey weren't so lucky.
"I was in my waders in three feet of water and my friend is saying Gov. Christie is on TV saying it's not that bad," Maggie Day, whose home and store were damaged as a result of flooding, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Oh yeah? Gov. Christie should come down here and get in his fishing waders and live my life."
Another resident, Maui D'Antuono, suggested Christie was in a hurry to get back on the campaign trail.
"He couldn't claim a disaster because that would mean he'd have to stay here," D'Antuono said. "Once the insurance claims come in, that will really tell the tale of the damage. I know he's busy trying to be our vice president and all that, but the Shore really took a pounding."
After the storm, New Jersey shore towns were battered by flooding and surges of water up to 10 feet high. At one point, 94,000 power outages were reported. Residents of the island community of Stone Harbor feared the damage could be on par with the destruction from Superstorm Sandy.
Marissa Rigby, a resident of Wildwood, which was hit particularly hard by the storm, expressed shock at the governor's words.
"I don't know how he could possibly say that. I've been down here about five years and I've never seen it this bad," she told CBS.
On Monday, Christie's lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, and Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin will be visiting the areas hardest hit by flooding to assess the damage Christie says does not exist.****
Title: From MIC. Another leftist propaganda hit piece
Post by: ccp on January 27, 2016, 05:26:52 AM
Again this "news" site appears on Yahoo news out of no where to purportedly give the millennials the "facts" they "need to know". Conclusion, the readers are supposed to come away with is (of course) that Benghazi investigation and its' offspring email investigation is all partisan without any basis in facts that Hillary is even involved. I knew what the conclusions would be even before I read the article. All I had to do was see MIC. What a great scam. Have rich leftists fund this group of kids to have them brainwash the millennial peers. As an aside I wish they would get rid of these terms millennials generation x and Y baby boomers etc and just say babies from the 60's 70's 80s's or similar time frame. It would be so much simpler then trying to figure out who they are even talking about:
Title: illegal to ask question at debate
Post by: ccp on January 28, 2016, 05:27:11 AM
I wonder if this is what Trump knew - that on illegal is going to ask a question. If so he certainly is going to be "set up". OTOH some would argue he should simply prepare his response to this and turn it into a home rum for those of us who know unlimited immigration beyond which we can absorb and illegal to boot is harming Americans. You think minorities would not appreciate that point? I know many would. Plus Trump could point out this conflict of interest to the world on prime time on a network that is part of the "establishment" selling Americans down the river for cheap labor. It is NOT a racial or ethnic or religious issue. It is an issue of wanting to help Americans first than we see how to include others into our nation from where ever they come from. What is so hard about that? A person with a good mouthpiece and a good platform could do this. I think this might embarrass Fox more than not showing up to debate. And FWIW there is no doubt Kelly tried to put Trump out of the game the first Fox debate. Her point was valid but her tone and insistence was over the top.
*****Michelle, my Michelle on Breitbart about Murdoch and immigration, Fox:
Michelle Malkin: When Open-Borders Media Are in Charge of Debates, Voters Lose
@michellemalkin@michellemalkin/Twitter by JULIA HAHN27 Jan 2016Washington D.C.245 Conservative commentator and best-selling author Michelle Malkin slammed Fox News on Twitter for the network’s decision to allow someone who entered the country illegally to participate as a questioner in tomorrow night’s Republican presidential debate.
Malkin tweeted: “FoxNews debate questioner Dulce Candy was an illegal immigrant. I’m sure her q will be fair.”
“When open-borders media are in charge of debates, voters lose,” Malkin later tweeted– explaining why the interests of American victims of open borders immigration policies go largely unrepresented at presidential debates.
As Malkin highlights in her new book Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best & Brightest Workers, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch is the co-chair of one of the most powerful open borders immigration lobbying firms in the country, the Partnership for a New American Economy.
As Breitbart News has previously reported, this undisclosed conflict of interest may perhaps explain the treatment GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has received from the network.
Via his immigration lobbying firm, Murdoch has endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)79% ’s 2013 amnesty bill, as well as Rubio’s 2015 immigration expansion bill know as the Immigration Innovation Act. Murdoch has also articulated his support for Rubio’s desire to give citizenship—and, by extension, voting rights and welfare access–to illegal immigrants.
Malkin points out that while someone who entered the country illegally will be represented in the Fox News debate, American citizens harmed by the nation’s open borders immigration policies are unlikely to be represented.
“Illegal alien & Muslim activist get key roles at FoxNewsGOP debate. Victims of illegal alien crime & jihad shut out,” Malkin tweeted.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 28, 2016, 08:32:07 AM
"Her point was valid but her tone and insistence was over the top."
Her tone was typical for msm vs Republicans in debates, not the softball they wish to expect from allegedly conservative media.
A point from Rush, when they pay these guys $6 million a year (a gal in this case), they do not expect them to namelessly and facelessly read the news or ask a basic issue question. They expect them to become part of the story. Also RNC and DNC sells the debate rights to these media outlets for them to run at a profit. It should be the party hosting and the networks picking it up because of public demand. The Presidential race is public domain IMHO, not the exclusive right of a network. To add the obvious, the format is really not a debate.
Title: Unreported conflict of interests
Post by: ccp on January 29, 2016, 06:19:48 AM
While conflicts of interest happens frequently in medical publications it is considered very unethical not to report upfront those conflict of interests and that those conflicts be published with the piece being published. (Not that everyone does as they should, but just saying).
IMO the following is VERY unethical to say the least. If Luntz or Fox were totally ethical they would have reported this. Fox has lost respect from the left day #1, but I do believe they have lost some respect from at least some righties including me these past 6 months. I am not interested in their personalities such as Kelly. I want the news. I don't really like her. She is aggressive which is good but that said it is way too much about HER:
While conflicts of interest happens frequently in medical publications it is considered very unethical not to report upfront those conflict of interests and that those conflicts be published with the piece being published. (Not that everyone does as they should, but just saying).
IMO the following is VERY unethical to say the least. If Luntz or Fox were totally ethical they would have reported this. Fox has lost respect from the left day #1, but I do believe they have lost some respect from at least some righties including me these past 6 months. I am not interested in their personalities such as Kelly. I want the news. I don't really like her. She is aggressive which is good but that said it is way too much about HER:
Title: Rupert Murdoch, Huma Abedin, and Saudi prince, sitting in a tree , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 01, 2016, 05:05:26 PM
Anti-Trump Saudi Prince Tied to Both Rupert Murdoch And Hillary Aide
Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images/AFP by Lee Stranahan - Breitbart News - 1 Feb 2016 Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch is partnered in multiple media ventures with Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaweed Bin Talal, including an Arabic religious TV network with a direct tie to Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin. Both Prince Alwaweed Bin Talal and Murdoch’s Fox News network have become vocal critics of GOP Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. On December 11, 2015 Bin Tala took to Twitter to savage Trump:
The Al-Resalah TV network is a venture created by Alwaleed in association with Rupert Murdoch. As The Guardian reported in 2010:
A company headed by the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal says it plans to launch a new Arabic television news channel in partnership with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network. The prince said the Kingdom Holding company’s 24-hour channel “will be an addition and alternative” for Arab viewers. It will compete with al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera.
Al-Resalah TV’s stated goal is to “present true Islam” but the network’s programming has been often been radical. As The Sun reported in 2006:
[M]uch of the content on his TV channel is overtly anti-Western. On March 31, the secretary-general of Al-Resalah, Sheik Tareq Al-Suweidan, gave a speech at Dialogue between Europe and Muslims, a convention in Copenhagen that the channel was covering. “The West have done strategic mistakes … they underestimate the power of Islam,” he said. Sheik Suweidan praised the election of Hamas and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, warning: “The West have no chance but to deal with Islam, and we are extending our hands in peace and dialogue – you have slapped it. We do not accept insults.”
According to the official website of Prince Alaweed, one of the members of the Supreme Advisory board for his Al-Resalah TV network is “Dr. Abdullah Naseef, President of World Muslim Congress and President of Forum For Social Studies (FFSS).”
As Breitbart News has extensively documented, Al-Resalah TV board member Dr. Naseef is the longtime benefactor of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s family business, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
As Vanity Fair reported:
When (Huma) Abedin was two years old, the family moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where, with the backing of Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the president of King Abdulaziz University, her father founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think tank, and became the first editor of its Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, which stated its mission as “shedding light” on minority Muslim communities around the world in the hope of “securing the legitimate rights of these communities.” … It turns out the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs is an Abedin family business. Huma was an assistant editor there between 1996 and 2008. Her brother, Hassan, 45, is a book-review editor at the Journal and was a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, where Nasseef is chairman of the board of trustees. Huma’s sister, Heba, 26, is an assistant editor at the Journal. … In his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which Andrew McCarthy () claims “has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”
The Muslim World League was the mother organization of two groups the U.S. government thinks was involved in funneling money to terrorists–the Rabita Trust and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). Both groups are listed on the Treasury department’s website of terrorist organizations. Naseef’s Rabita Trust co-founder Wa’el Hamza Julaidan was one of the founders of Al Qaeda.
These connections have been hidden by the mainstream media. Breitbart News demonstrated attempted to muddy the connection between Saudi Arabian raised Huma Abedin and Nassef when questions about Abedin were raised by a group of Congress members in 2012.
It’s been widely reported that Bin Talal is a large investor in Murdoch’s Fox News, but much less attention has been paid to Al-Resalah.
In early 2015, Bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company reduced his stake in Murdoch’s News Corp to 1 percent but maintains a 6.6 percent interest in 21st Century Fox, which controls Fox News. As CNN Money reported:
News Corp. is Murdoch’s publishing operation, made up of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal as well as the book publisher HarperCollins. The more valuable 21st Century Fox is home to a host of television and film properties such as Fox Searchlight, the Fox broadcasting network and Fox News. … “We have a strategic alliance with Rupert Murdoch for sure and I have been with him for the last 15 or 20 years,” Alwaleed said. “My backing of Rupert Murdoch is definitely unwavering.”
The connection between Alwaleed, Murdoch, Abedin, Hillary Clinton and Saudi Arabia are troubling given a number of recent events.
Prince Alwaleed is boasting about his role in impacting U.S. elections. As Breitbart News Network’s Aaron Klein reported, the Saudi Arabian news site Sabq claims that “Alwaweed Bin Talal caused a decline in Trump’s popularity.”
CNN reported in 2008 that “donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation include amounts of $10 million to $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” Huma Abedin was hired as a consultant to the William J. Clinton Foundation after Clinton left her role as Secretary of State.
Abedin is also at the center of Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal.
Huma Abedin’s mother currently lives in Saudi Arabia and runs the Journal for Muslim Minority Affairs and is also a dean at a woman’s college there.
Title: Pravda on the Hudson organizes tours to Iran
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2016, 09:17:45 AM
Title: Sheperd Smith sucks up to Hillary
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2016, 01:29:31 PM
Hillary Emails: Fox News Shep Smith Sucks Up To Top Clinton Aide By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN Published on TheHillaryDaily.com on February 4, 2016 Lost among all of Hillary's "classified" and "top secret" emails is one interesting one from Fox News Anchor Shepherd Smith. It seems Smith got into an argument with Eric Goosby about which of them liked Cheryl Mills more, (Goosby was U.N. AIDS Coordinator at the time)
Mills, of course, was Hillary's Chief of Staff.
After this third grade incident, Smith decided to suck up to Mills and bring this heavy dispute to her attention. Smith told her that he wore an "I Love Cheryl Mills" pin!
So cute! (GAG!!!)
Here's the email text:
From: Shepherd Smith [mailto: Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2013 12:39 PM To: Mills, Cheryl D Subject: Very short funny story
Dear Cheryl,
After what had to be a pretty trying week I thought you might enjoy this. My two other very favorite people at State are Eric Goosby and Zeenat Rahman. Well, last week I got in kind of an argument with one of them. Eric and I were debating who thought the most of you, he or I. He threw me a curve ball when he brought up how great your husband also is and probably thinks he won the day, but he would be incorrect. In thinking about it I don't believe I've ever heard anyone say anything negative about you (of course, my wearing the "I like Cheryl Mills" pin might inhibit some people from being too negative C). I've asked Shannon Smith to look out for Zeenat when her boss comes over. Have a great weekend and get a little rest.
Best wishes, Shepherd
***So was it a suck up to the Hillary Clinton team? We report. You decide.***
Title: Media bias in two photos
Post by: G M on February 06, 2016, 10:14:31 AM
Title: Roger Stone
Post by: ccp on February 08, 2016, 06:18:40 AM
Article from 2008 but still has import for today. He worked for Trump who let him go. Definitely an unusual character, behind the scenes political operative who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. Jeffrey Tooban wrote this article after being brought to a swingers club with Stone:
Title: In case anyone here was NOT aware of this
Post by: ccp on February 08, 2016, 05:33:05 PM
MSNBC decided to come out with a revelation that the FBI has confirmed it is criminally investigating Clinton. This could be why few except the hard core libs even watch this station. The begrudgingly come out with the news months after what the world already knows. I guess they couldn't cover for the gal any longer.
Title: Another anti Republican debate "moderator"
Post by: ccp on February 13, 2016, 01:24:49 PM
Why is it the Democrats are never interviewed by Republican leaning moderators but the opposite continues to happen?
Going for the throat seems new. Maybe not a bad thing. What makes these so called news people they don't have to reveal their conflicts of interest? They want to be celebrities, ok, this also comes with celebritism:
Title: MSNBC run by racists
Post by: ccp on February 27, 2016, 06:49:18 AM
First the "Reverend" Al now this. Isn't the pattern obvious? :wink: Perhaps Al, Melissa, and BLM should team up and form their own cable network. Maybe a few hundred people would actually watch:
Title: Brit Hume - Murdock playing to suck up to Hillary now?
Post by: ccp on February 29, 2016, 06:41:23 PM
Like I posted before. The "bargaining down" of Petraeus' charges was to make it easier for Hillary to get off. People kept using Petraeus' example to compare to her situation. Now the left has the ability to respond that what Hillary did is not that big a deal and should be forgiven just like Petraues' was forgiven with a misdemeanor. For Hume to claim no "criminal intent". I suppose there was no attempt at a coverup. In any case something is wrong here if Hume is coming out in Hillary's defense:
Hume on Hillary Emails: ‘Not a Huge Case,’ ‘You Don’t Have Any Criminal Intent’
by PAM KEY29 Feb 20163,250 Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered,” while discussing the possibility of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton being indicted as a result of the current FBI investigation into her handling of classified material on an unsecured email server during her tenure as secretary of state, Fox News senior political contributor Brit Hume said there were enough questions about the circumstances of Clinton’s case that an indictment isn’t a slam dunk.
Partial transcript as follows:
HUME: Worth remembering, David Petraeus was convicted of a misdemeanor. Now that was bargained down no doubt. But if you look at—I read various legal analyses of these—and a good case can be made there is an indictable felony here, and very good case can also be made there is not. My guess is that she won’t be indicted.
HARRIS: Agreed.
HUME: Think about this for a minute. If you come down to it, and she is nominated by one of the major parties, and you have not a huge case, and you don’t have any criminal intent, are you going to indict? Is it wise to indict a nominee of a major party? Is that the right way to do it? Is that the right thing to do?
HARRIS: Well it is if there is a crime.
TANTAROS: Not only that, Brit, the fact that her staff took the classified information and moved it to a public server, and then the conspiracy to try and hide it, that alone is a felony punishable up to 10 years.
HUME: It is. Who is likely to be indicted? I think —
(cross talk)
TANTAROS: I agree she won’t get indicted.
(cross talk)
HUME: They might indict members of her staff. Whether they will indict her I think is very much in doubt.
Title: I'm sure bigdog would explain that she is a professional journalist
Post by: G M on March 07, 2016, 07:05:08 AM
It's almost like the media acts as a PR arm of the dems. Who knew?
You'd think MS and NBC would want to get their names off of that network.
John Dickerson discussed the questions with both sides before the first debate. (SeeBS)
Maybe candidates can submit answers in advance too so they can all get on the same page with the followup.
I'm guessing Megyn Kelly and DT don't get together and go over the questions before their debates. Nor Chris Wallace and his charts screen.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 12, 2016, 07:55:39 AM
He is not "caught" in the chaos, he seeks it out and puts himself into the middle of it. I don't know why members of the media have become the topics of some stories. But they all seem to become celebrities after these episodes and their careers are enhanced:
Why did he try to correct himself when he had it right the first time?
"My Muslim faith"
Sormetimes, people accidentally tell the truth.
Title: media fairness?
Post by: ccp on March 28, 2016, 05:44:37 AM
I would like to see the liberal Couric interview several Democrats about what they think about their front runner being a criminal and a serial liar who has used her office to collect bribes:
Title: MSM ignoring as much as it can about the email story
Post by: ccp on March 29, 2016, 04:46:01 AM
The credit belongs to a few minor players not the media. Author gives some credit to the Wash Post but the WP only details the story from the work of the other smaller players using the FOIA. There is no comparison to the WAsh Post's involvement to Watergate, when it was a Republican. I notice how Bernstein recently is twisting logic on its' head trying to rationalize the import of this story to the dust bin. Again thank God for Judicial Watch and the others involved here:
I only pray that Obama will not be able to cover this up, sweep it under the rug, make some phony misdemeanor deal, pardon, or otherwise not enforce the law. I would not hold my breath. We have seen him not enforce the law so many times before.
Title: WaPo withdraws 147 FBI agent claim
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 30, 2016, 06:45:29 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on March 30, 2016, 07:47:46 AM
We have heard the number of 150 before. Months ago.
And look at this at the end of the article:
"The media continues to scandalize Hillary Clinton during the FBI's probe, even though legal experts have repeatedly explained that Clinton is unlikely to face prosecution and have termed an indictment "ridiculous."
Liberals just have no shame
" legal experts have repeatedly explained that Clinton is unlikely to face prosecution and have termed an indictment "ridiculous."
A sad commentary on our legal profession. Well, I have seen many physicians disappoint me over the years. Not that I profess to be a saint but I have seen many with zero shame. That's the way it goes.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on March 30, 2016, 03:52:07 PM
We have heard the number of 150 before. Months ago.
And look at this at the end of the article:
"The media continues to scandalize Hillary Clinton during the FBI's probe, even though legal experts have repeatedly explained that Clinton is unlikely to face prosecution and have termed an indictment "ridiculous."
Liberals just have no shame
" legal experts have repeatedly explained that Clinton is unlikely to face prosecution and have termed an indictment "ridiculous."
A sad commentary on our legal profession. Well, I have seen many physicians disappoint me over the years. Not that I profess to be a saint but I have seen many with zero shame. That's the way it goes.
Laws are for the little people.
Title: Media Issues, Paid TV, NCAA Championship game viewership down 37%
Post by: DougMacG on April 06, 2016, 10:58:01 AM
I tend to hang out with affluent sports fans of tennis and hockey where all the coverage is on cable, so I am the only person I know who can't go home and watch the big game. All my tenants in 'poverty' and on assistance have cable too. That bill gets paid before rent. Now even the debates are proprietary on cable.
I pay for the Twins stadium because the team is a 'public entity' but can't see a game televised. Their loss, from my point of view. Not caring frees up a lot of time for better things than spectator sports and commercials.
Even the finals of the events I would enjoy are now off broadcast.
Paid TV made sense to me as an alternative to commercials. But that isn't the path they've taken.
I hope you-all are getting your money's worth out there, but if we all refused to pay their exorbitant prices, the big events would still be free and open to the public.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 06, 2016, 12:23:44 PM
"I pay for the Twins stadium because the team is a 'public entity' but can't see a game televised."
No one can convince me that taxpayers should subsidize professional sports team. Something wrong in Denmark.
"Paid TV made sense to me as an alternative to commercials." Most of my cable shows have loads of commercials.
I just signed up for Levin TV at $59/ yrs. I'll let the board know after I check it out how it is.
Title: Michael Savage
Post by: ccp on April 07, 2016, 05:47:00 PM
I rarely see much written about him. He is banned everywhere it seems:
Title: Re: Media Issues, Chris Wallace interviews President Obama
Post by: DougMacG on April 10, 2016, 12:41:35 PM
Nice photo opp for both; weak on substance for both. Wallace asked many good questions and then folded on follow up. http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/ http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2016/04/10/exclusive-president-barack-obama-on-fox-news-sunday/
Stopping ISIS is his number one job. - I thought Climate Change was our number one national security threat. No one calls him out on his lunacy.
We obtained the President's "guarantee" that no political factors will influence the handling of the Hillary Clinton email case. - No followup regarding Fast and Furious, IRS targeting or keeping our healthcare plan if we like it. I understand giving deference to the President, but then why even have the interview?
From my proposed questions: [What are the] reasons why the American people gave you a no confidence vote in 2010, again in 2014... and why the US Senate is now giving you a no confidence vote on your Supreme Court pick? [NO ONE TRUSTS YOU.]
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 10, 2016, 02:48:20 PM
"NO ONE TRUSTS YOU"
Right. And that is why his "guarantee" means virtually nothing. Who can be even remotely confident politics will not enter into AG Lynch's decisions?
Without honesty we have nothing.
Title: Media Issues, No follow up on "careless" handling of top secret information?!
Post by: DougMacG on April 11, 2016, 07:50:29 AM
Right. And that is why his "guarantee" means virtually nothing. Who can be even remotely confident politics will not enter into AG Lynch's decisions?
Without honesty we have nothing.
More points from that interview: Obama said Hillary was "careless" with her email account. But "carelessness" with "Top Secret" classified documents is the definition of Gross Negligence, which is a very serious felony in question that puts unconnected people in prison.
Again, no follow up. Wallace didn't know that or was too star stuck to mention it?
I like Chris Wallace and he makes every effort to be a 'professional journalist' by today's lousy standards, but I have never thought of him as anything to the right or to the center of any other network even though his show appears on Fox. This was a career making opportunity for the young journalist (of 68). It looked more like a career ending interview.
Asked about his worst mistake, the President admitted he had absolutely no followup plan for the day after the Libya intervention, even though he accused Bush of exactly that in Iraq, and again, no follow up. Was that his worst mistake or was it abandoning the gains we made in Iraq and handed this strategic country over to ISIS? Again, no follow up. Because those are the rules of the lightning round? Is this a game show or a Presidential interview??
If a viewer doesn't know more than they're hearing on the screen or read between the lines, it looked like a humble and accomplished President handling tough, direct questions from a professional journalist. No mention that he has run our country into the ground domestically in ways that can't be walked back and enabled crisis after crisis to spread across the globe over the last seven years.
In the first Dem debate, other 'journalists' (John Dickerson?) did one follow up for each lie or evasion with the candidates, Hillary in particular. So she effortlessly answered the followup with a second non-answer, knowing that's all there is and moved on.
That isn't tough treatment when everyone knows the question wasn't answered.
ccp: "Without honesty we have nothing."
Right. And because they are asked nothing and say nothing, they wasted my time and same for everyone else who watched. The 99% who didn't watch made the right choice, learned more by ignoring him than I did by watching, listening and trying to learn something.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on April 11, 2016, 08:43:04 AM
"Obama said Hillary was "careless" with her email account"
Yes and how about this one:
Obama On Clinton Emails: "There's Classified & Then There's Classified"
This is the same lawyerly ridiculous parsing of words that is the same Democrat trickery as "it depends on what the meaning of is is".
Same bull crap; And I am sure Wallace thanked Obama and shook his hand for the privilege of this interview.
Title: Re: Media Issues - the double standard lives on
Post by: DougMacG on April 11, 2016, 10:15:54 AM
Obama On Clinton Emails: "There's Classified & Then There's Classified"
Good catch on that. That is the political answer for all this from the Clinton camp, not the Presidential view from a man sworn to uphold the constitution and enforce the laws of the land.
Out of 2079 classified emails after promising us there were none, let's say a hundred or a thousand of them were not that sensitive or could have been publicly sourced elsewhere. SO WHAT?! That has nothing to do with the alleged crime, and MANY of the others were sensitive, even TOP SECRET.
It is possible that the information that led to the disclosure or schedule, location, and operation of Ambassador Stevens enabled the attack and his murder. Or other less famous disasters...
But to the President, WHEN DID YOU KNOW? Why didn't you do anything about it? Why are you shooting political diversion answers back on a law enforcement question? wAs it legal, what she did, sending and receiving classified information over an unsecure private server? Aren't YOU the chief law enforcement officer in the country? Not the Attorney General. Was her reason for doing it true? Is there a consequence? WHEN? Didn't this only come up because a Republican committee was digging into things while the official policy of your administration was, "4 Americans are dead, whether for one false reason or another, at this point WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!
When America got its chance to question its President and no one showed up. Chris Wallace will retire and make millions off a book about how historic it was to sit down with the President and not do his job.
We can't drop this subject without pointing out the obvious double standard. If a second term Republican President sat down with the lead person on the opposition network after 7 years of failure and scandal, he or she would not get kid gloves treatment or get away with political diversion answers to real questions.
Title: Stephanopoulos will interview the Empress Dowager
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2016, 10:01:51 AM
Maybe they will call this kind of toughness 'Hardball' or is that tag already taken...
Let's score the interview here and see if he gets any real answer from her to any tough question.
Title: Re: Media Issues, NY Times math error
Post by: DougMacG on April 18, 2016, 11:50:54 AM
Soon the corrections section will be bigger than the news section. This one is a doozy...
Correction: April 10, 2016
An article on March 20 about wave piloting in the Marshall Islands misstated the number of possible paths that could be navigated without instruments among the 34 islands and atolls of the Marshall Islands. It is 561, not a trillion trillion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/magazine/the-secrets-of-the-wave-pilots.html Hat tip, John Hinderaker, President of Center for the Amerian Experiment, co-founder of Powerline
Title: Celebrities, media, entertainment industry and politicians
Post by: ccp on May 01, 2016, 09:20:38 AM
Title: What did anyone else think?
Post by: ccp on May 03, 2016, 07:43:40 AM
Did anyone see O'Reilly ask Krauthammer last night if he was offended but Wilmore's comments (who I never heard of before all this) at the end of his WCD diatribe. Krauthammer, of course said, "no" and then he asked O'Reilly what 'he' thought and of course he said "no" ( I don't believe it) Personally I was offended by it. It was classless IMHO and racist. As was half his dialogue( racist). I didn't mind the part about him growing up and not being able to see a black quarterback in the NFL lead a football team and now we have had a black who has lead the free world. I thought that was actually touching, but the other racial stuff offended me with it being persistent and purposely in our faces.
Just my one man's opinion.
Title: Re: Celebrities, media, entertainment industry and politicians
Post by: DougMacG on May 03, 2016, 10:10:30 AM
The business about Cruz's dad and Lee Harvey Oswald with the National Enquirer as a source was particularly egregious.
I often wake early and for me "Fox & Friends" starts at 0600. I can't stand watching it any more and often wind up on CNN :-o :roll: :-o where Chris Cuomo leads the team. He's better than F&F. (BTW as a reporter for "Fox Files" he once did a 7 minute piece on the Dog Brothers).
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 04, 2016, 08:16:48 AM
"I often wake early and for me "Fox & Friends" starts at 0600. I can't stand watching it any more and often wind up on CNN shocked rolleyes shocked where Chris Cuomo leads the team. He's better than F&F. (BTW as a reporter for "Fox Files" he once did a 7 minute piece on the Dog Brothers)."
My cable impressions of late:
I have been watching Fox less and less. Sometimes OReilly. I like Judge Napalitano. Judge Judy I like because I agree with her. Otherwise there is not much to see there anymore. The 'five' is a waste of time. Hannity who I usually agree with is just too partisan on our side. Kelly no longer attracts me to her show. etc.
I do actually like Chris Cuomo. The only Cuomo I can stand to listen to. He is reasonable and doesn't make sarcastic faces like the CNN babes every time they are interviewing anyone from the right. Morning Joe isn't too bad if one can put up with the parade of Democrats.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 04, 2016, 09:12:55 AM
On FOX I continue to have high regard for Special Report w Bret Baier; I watch it every day. Because we have Satellite TV other than that I record and surf my way through the litter for the things I find worthy.
Title: Wonder if the Clinton machine is behind this?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2016, 10:33:49 AM
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 05, 2016, 12:37:34 PM
While humiliating and embarrassing and marriage threatening and sad for the 2 young children I don't see why this effects his Fox career.
I mean Geraldo Rivera makes 2 million a year with Fox. He was never monogamous. Didn't he write a tell all book about his hundreds of dalliances?
Title: Professional journalists update
Post by: G M on May 06, 2016, 09:58:37 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/363286.php
I think we share the same level of shock, reading this.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2016, 10:58:31 AM
This article was discussed in some detail last night on the panel on Special Report with Brett Baier. It IS important. Can we get the URL of the original Samuels article?
Title: The Aspiring Novelist who became Obama's foreign policy guru
Post by: G M on May 06, 2016, 04:12:52 PM
This article was discussed in some detail last night on the panel on Special Report with Brett Baier. It IS important. Can we get the URL of the original Samuels article?
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 07, 2016, 05:21:22 AM
Look at how stupid this is. "The Illinois way is failing Democrats". The title should be "the Democrat way is failing Illinois". It is so frustrating how the Dem party gets off easy.
Seven Takeaways from the NY Times Profile of Failed Novelist Ben Rhodes
BY: David Rutz May 5, 2016 12:51 pm
White House national security adviser Ben Rhodes is profiled in a New York Times Magazine feature about how Rhodes, who holds a master’s degree in creative writing, became President Obama’s “foreign policy guru.” Here are seven takeaways:
1) Rhodes was frustrated the day of Obama’s 2016 State of the Union because the story about Iran kidnapping 10 American sailors couldn’t be hidden longer from the public.
Rhodes was annoyed that he couldn’t successfully suppress the ugly story from breaking before Obama gave his final State of the Union speech:
For much of the past five weeks, Rhodes has been channeling the president’s consciousness into what was imagined as an optimistic, forward-looking final State of the Union. Now, from the flat screens, a challenge to that narrative arises: Iran has seized two small boats containing 10 American sailors. Rhodes found out about the Iranian action earlier that morning but was trying to keep it out of the news until after the president’s speech. “They can’t keep a secret for two hours,” Rhodes says, with a tone of mild exasperation at the break in message discipline.
Author David Samuels relates in real time how Rhodes intends to fix the situation, which he predicts the press, or “they,” will report by playing to Middle East stereotypes:
Standing in his front office before the State of the Union, Rhodes quickly does the political math on the breaking Iran story. “Now they’ll show scary pictures of people praying to the supreme leader,” he predicts, looking at the screen. Three beats more, and his brain has spun a story line to stanch the bleeding. He turns to Price. “We’re resolving this, because we have relationships,” he says.
The sailors were set free the next day, unharmed. Secretary of State John Kerry later praised Iran for making sure the U.S. sailors were “well taken care of” and thanked its authorities for their “cooperation and quick response.” Iran state television released embarrassing photos of the sailors with their hands on their heads for propaganda purposes, and the navy commanders responsible for the capture were later awarded medals by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
2) Apparently, Rhodes’ name rarely appears in news articles because he is “invisible” and “not an egotist.”
It has been rare to find Ben Rhodes’s name in news stories about the large events of the past seven years, unless you are looking for the quotation from an unnamed senior official in Paragraph 9. He is invisible because he is not an egotist, and because he is devoted to the president. But once you are attuned to the distinctive qualities of Rhodes’s voice—which is often laced with aggressive contempt for anyone or anything that stands in the president’s way—you can hear him everywhere.
Rhodes constantly appears with on-the-record quotes in news reports, actually. A Nexis search reveals his name has appeared 2,489 times in major publications since the beginning of the Obama administration, and he also appears on cable and network television shows as a spokesman for the White House. The idea that he is not an egotist also seems belied by the multiple comparisons in the article of him to Holden Caulfield, the angsty, judgmental teenage protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye.
3) Rhodes, who is not an egotist, is so tight with the president that he says he doesn’t know where he begins and Obama ends.
Staffers spoke in awe of Rhodes’ ability to know what Obama is thinking, “a source of tremendous power,” and Rhodes feels like he’s not sure who he is anymore:
Part of what accounts for Rhodes’s influence is his “mind meld” with the president. Nearly everyone I spoke to about Rhodes used the phrase “mind meld” verbatim, some with casual assurance and others in the hushed tones that are usually reserved for special insights. He doesn’t think for the president, but he knows what the president is thinking, which is a source of tremendous power. One day, when Rhodes and I were sitting in his boiler-room office, he confessed, with a touch of bafflement, “I don’t know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.”
4) Like his boss, Rhodes smoked a lot of pot in high school.
Rhodes’s mother and father are not interested in talking about Rhodes. Neither is his older brother, David, who is president of CBS News, an organization that recently revived the effort to declassify the contents of the redacted 28 pages of the Sept. 11 report on the eve of Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia, on which Rhodes, as usual, accompanied the president. The brothers are close, but they often go months without seeing each other. “He was like the kid who carried the briefcase to school,” Ben says of his brother, who worked at Fox News and Bloomberg before moving to CBS. “I actually didn’t do that great in high school because I was drinking and smoking pot and hanging out in Central Park.”
5) Rhodes pushed a fictional narrative that Obama saw an opportunity to make a nuclear deal with Iran beginning in 2013, when elections brought “moderates” into power.
Samuels writes that this idea was “largely manufactured” by Rhodes for the purpose of selling the deal the public. In fact, Obama insiders knew the president had desired to make an agreement with Iran since he first took office. Such ideas are “often misleading or false.” Rather, Rhodes says, the grand Obama foreign policy narratives of nonproliferation and peace with adversaries neatly “converged on Iran” and the nuclear agreement:
The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency.
“It’s the center of the arc,” Rhodes explained to me two days after the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was implemented. He then checked off the ways in which the administration’s foreign-policy aims and priorities converged on Iran. “We don’t have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues,” he said. “We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, ‘AIPAC doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the Israeli government doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the gulf countries don’t like it.’ It’s the possibility of improved relations with adversaries. It’s nonproliferation. So all these threads that the president’s been spinning — and I mean that not in the press sense — for almost a decade, they kind of all converged around Iran.”
Obama was “actively misleading” with the idea that this negotiation began because of this so-called “moderate” faction’s rise in Iran:
In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in 2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to pursue a policy of “openness,” which included a newfound willingness to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: “Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not.”
While the president’s statement was technically accurate — there had in fact been two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the JCPOA — it was also actively misleading, because the most meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012, many months before Rouhani and the “moderate” camp were chosen in an election among candidates handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration.
6) Rhodes doesn’t care for Hillary Clinton, grouping her in with “The Blob” of “morons” and American foreign policy “establishment” figures. He also doesn’t like people who “whine” about security lapses abroad.
Samuels writes Rhodes “arguably knew more about the Iraq War” than even then-Sen. Obama when he joined his campaign in 2007, and he has contempt for “Iraq-war promoters” like Hillary Clinton and people who “whine” about security lapses abroad:
He had also developed a healthy contempt for the American foreign-policy establishment, including editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and elsewhere, who at first applauded the Iraq war and then sought to pin all the blame on Bush and his merry band of neocons when it quickly turned sour. If anything, that anger has grown fiercer during Rhodes’s time in the White House.
He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.
7) Leon Panetta would “probably not” say that Obama is still serious about stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
The former secretary of defense was not confident that Obama could promise to do all in his power to stop Iran from getting an atomic bomb:
As secretary of defense, he tells me, one of his most important jobs was keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, from launching a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They were both interested in the answer to the question, ‘Is the president serious?’ ” Panetta recalls. “And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops.
“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him.
“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”
Panetta also didn’t sound fond of Rhodes, referring to him opaquely as one of a group of “staff people” who assumed they knew where Obama wanted to go with a decision and effectively forced him down that path:
“There were staff people who put themselves in a position where they kind of assumed where the president’s head was on a particular issue, and they thought their job was not to go through this open process of having people present all these different options, but to try to force the process to where they thought the president wanted to be,” he says. “They’d say, ‘Well, this is where we want you to come out.’ And I’d say ‘[expletive], that’s not the way it works. We’ll present a plan, and then the president can make a decision.’ I mean, Jesus Christ, it is the president of the United States, you’re making some big decisions here, he ought to be entitled to hear all of those viewpoints and not to be driven down a certain path.”
Title: Re: Seven Takeaways from the NY Times Profile of Failed Novelist Ben Rhodes
Post by: DougMacG on May 07, 2016, 01:21:33 PM
More on this Obama genius here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/05/the-runt-of-rhodes.php
"Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. ..." Uuuugh.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 08, 2016, 04:15:12 AM
"Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. ..."
Sure . As long as the administrations are Democrat. No one believes the press will not go after the truth in Republican administrations.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 08, 2016, 04:30:26 AM
"Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. ..."
Sure . As long as the administrations are Democrat. No one believes the press will not go after the truth in Republican administrations.
That is a compelling reason to vote for Republicans. Because that's the only way to be sure there will be press oversight.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 09, 2016, 06:58:46 AM
This is on Yahoo news today. That support for the Republican stance blocking Garland is "collapsing". First look a the author of the article. A far left lawyer. Second look at the poll infromation. Nearly all the people polled are black or single women. Third even the poll admits 42% don't even know who Garland is. So what is written in this article is worthless. Total propaganda. Yet it is right at the top of Yahoo news. I can only imagine how the questions were worded. Ok ask a single young mother and a Black if they think the Republicans should confirm Obama's SCOTUS nominee. Gee I wonder how they would respond.
No biggie. Add up the numbers and publish in the news with title trumpeting the results as fact.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 10, 2016, 03:52:53 PM
Wow. What a hit on Megyn!
She went after Trump. Big mistake for the Trumpists.
I thought her question in the debate was valid in view of Trump's history. But the way she asked it, and the way she persisted (not totally unlike her usual style though) was clearly meant as a hit job. Little did she, or me or us know, that getting Trump to say vulgar or outlandish things would not detract but would instead strengthen his support among his disciples.
As for Megyn she has turned me off a while ago with her Turmp like narcissism. In that regard they are exactly alike. Besides she is not a real blonde and she certainly has had some plastic or other work done. She is no longer a newscaster and is now of a self promoting celebrity. She will try to get into movies probably now at least on the side.
The must have blond hair dye in the elevators at Fox just down the hall from the shop that sizes the blue the pink the green the red miniskirts
Title: Dana say it ain't so!
Post by: ccp on May 11, 2016, 08:52:24 AM
Dana is now as vulgar as Donald and is even now guilty of the very same name calling she authored a critical letter of Donald from a group of conservative women. She must not have known the commentator is a BRC carrier and has to have very severe surgery. The surgery can be life saving but having to go through with it is horrendous:
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: G M on May 11, 2016, 10:11:14 AM
Things certainly have gotten ugly. I think there ismuchmore ugliness ahead though.
Title: Trending lists are manipulated
Post by: ccp on May 12, 2016, 09:07:38 PM
Facebook selecting what news stories to "trend" is not surprising. For a long time I felt Yahoo either gets bribed to trend certain headlines or people or / and the people, usually celebrities are trending as a result of phony computer generated clicks.
Title: Ben Rhodes, NPR and lies
Post by: G M on May 20, 2016, 03:42:56 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/363603.php
Group ID'd as One of Ben Rhodes' "Force Multipliers" In Selling Iran Deal Also Gave $100,000 to NPR to "Help" It "Report" on the Deal
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2016, 05:19:15 PM
Whoa. Worth noting and remembering.
Title: Soros funding NPR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2016, 08:23:28 AM
Read this latest dispatch from Omri Ceren, political analyst and The Israel Project senior adviser, breaking down the blockbuster AP story on how the group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media. It is an extraordinary window into how media is bought and paid for. It’s deeply disturbing, like watching sausage being made.
Here’s the back-story on how and why the media supported the most dangerous “deal” in American history — Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran. “A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group’s annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.” Aaron Klein notes, not mentioned in the AP article is that the Ploughshares Fund is financed by billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
For those of you smart enough to never trust big media — here’s the concrete evidence of your “tin foil hat” theories.
AP: In The New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran’s nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.
Omri Ceren: In his NYT profile, Ben Rhodes put the Ploughshares Fund at the center of the echo chamber constructed by the White House to sell the Iran deal: “We are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this… We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else” [a].
The Ploughshares Fund is a donation hub that has distributed millions of dollars in recent years to groups pushing the Iran deal. After Congress failed to defeat the deal, Ploughshares President Joseph Cirincione published a video and letter boasting about how the echo chamber – over 85 groups and 200 people – was created with Ploughshares money: “groups and individuals were decisive in the battle for public opinion and as independent validators… they lacked a common platform – a network to exchange information and coordinate efforts. Ploughshares Fund provided that network… we built a network of over 85 organizations and 200 individuals… We credit this model of philanthropy – facilitating collective action through high-impact grantmaking – with creating the conditions necessary for supporters of the Iran agreement to beat the political odds” .
The Associated Press just published a deep dive into Ploughshares’s most recent annual report, which details some of those 85 organizations and 200 individuals. The full article is pasted below. The AP broke down the network funded by Ploughshares into three kinds of groups:
— Journalists and media outlets (this is the part that’s getting the most attention, and includes NRP and at least two unnamed writers who were funded to write at Mother Jones and The Nation):
Ploughshares has funded NPR’s coverage of national security since 2005, the radio station said. Ploughshares reports show at least $700,000 in funding over that time. All grant descriptions since 2010 specifically mention Iran… Previous efforts… Ploughshares has set its sights on other media organizations, too. In a “Cultural Strategy Report” on its website, the group outlined a broader objective of “ensuring regular and accurate coverage of nuclear issues in reputable and strategic media outlets” such as The Guardian, Salon, the Huffington Post or Pro Publica. Previous efforts failed to generate enough coverage, it noted. These included “funding of reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones and a partnership with The Center for Public Integrity to create a national security desk.”
— Think tanks and nuclear-issues associations:
The 33-page document lists the groups that Ploughshares funded last year to advance its nonproliferation agenda. The Arms Control Association got $282,500; the Brookings Institution, $225,000; and the Atlantic Council, $182,500… Princeton University got $70,000 to support former Iranian ambassador and nuclear spokesman Seyed Hossein Mousavian’s “analysis, publications and policymaker engagement on the range of elements involved with the negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”
— Lobbies:
Other groups, less directly defined by their independent nuclear expertise, also secured grants. J-Street, the liberal Jewish political action group, received $576,500 to advocate for the deal. More than $281,000 went to the National Iranian American Council.
On May 5 the NYT published its profile of Ben Rhodes, in which Rhodes bragged about creating an “echo chamber” with the Ploughshares Fund to sell the Iran deal on the basis of false pretenses [a]. A few hours ago the AP published a deep dive into Ploughshares showing that the group is funding a range of lobbies, policy shops, and journalists and media outlets, all of which are bouncing Iran messaging back and forth between each other .
Aspects of the Ploughshares network had already been reported out. In Feb 2012 the WFB reported on Ploughshares funding NPR [c]. In March 2015 the WSJ reported “the Ploughshares coalition includes a former Iranian government spokesman, the liberal Jewish organization J Street and a group of former American diplomats who have held private talks with Iranian government officials… [and] the Arms Control Association” [d]. In July 2015 the WFB printed details of a Ploughshares conference call that brought together White House officials with over 100 participants, in which groups were told to prepare for a “real war” that would involve “blitzing the hell out of the Hill,” pressuring Congressional Democrats, and leaning on Jewish groups [e][f]. In August 2015 Commentary published 1,500 words and a couple dozen links naming names in the network [g].
What hadn’t been widely discussed – until today’s AP story – was that Ploughshares has been directly funding journalists and media outlets in the context of the politicized Iran deal fight. In case you’re running down this angle, here are some documents published by Ploughshares Fund describing the group’s efforts in its own words.
— In 2014 Ploughshares commissioned a “Cultural Strategy Report.” It laid out how the organization could use PR firms, Hollywood studios, video games, and journalists to create a “cultural strategy that could complement existing funding and operational activities.” Here is part of the section describing directly funding journalism [PDF here – h]:
Similar to an academic chair, directly fund one or more national journalism positions at media outlets like The Guardian, Salon, Huffington Post, or Pro Publica, whose exclusive “beat” and focus of investigation and reporting would be nuclear weapons, disarmament, and nonproliferation… We understand that similar efforts supported by Ploughshares Fund in the past did not generate the desired volume of coverage (funding of reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones and a partnership with the Center for Public Integrity to create a national security desk). However we feel this strategy would be more successful by focusing on themes, media outlets and journalists who resonate with the target audiences (youth and faith communities) and by pursing this strategy in concert with other approaches.
— In 2015 Ploughshares published a video and letter from Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione titled “How We Won.” Cirincione boasted that the group leveraged its funding so lobbyists, policy voices, and journalists could “coordinate efforts” to push the Iran deal. The video ends with a scrolling list of groups involved. The letter goes into detail on how Ploughshares leveraged funding to create its network :
These groups and individuals were decisive in the battle for public opinion and as independent validators… they lacked a common platform – a network to exchange information and coordinate efforts. Ploughshares Fund provided that network. Often, networks can make all the difference… We built a network of over 85 organizations and 200 individuals in favor of a negotiated solution to the Iranian crisis… We credit this model of philanthropy – facilitating collective action through high-impact grantmaking – with creating the conditions necessary for supporters of the Iran agreement to beat the political odds. A lot of work is now being done on how the Iran deal echo chamber worked and funded. Two other articles from the last 48 hours: how Ploughshares also funded faith groups to be part of the pro-deal network [j] and how the network was mobilized this week to attack witnesses who testified in front of the House Oversight Committee on the White House’s sales campaign [k].—
Read this latest dispatch from Omri Ceren, political analyst and The Israel Project senior adviser, breaking down the blockbuster AP story on how the group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media. It is an extraordinary window into how media is bought and paid for. It’s deeply disturbing, like watching sausage being made.
Here’s the back-story on how and why the media supported the most dangerous “deal” in American history — Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran. “A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group’s annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.” Aaron Klein notes, not mentioned in the AP article is that the Ploughshares Fund is financed by billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
For those of you smart enough to never trust big media — here’s the concrete evidence of your “tin foil hat” theories.
AP: In The New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran’s nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.
Omri Ceren: In his NYT profile, Ben Rhodes put the Ploughshares Fund at the center of the echo chamber constructed by the White House to sell the Iran deal: “We are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this… We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else” [a].
The Ploughshares Fund is a donation hub that has distributed millions of dollars in recent years to groups pushing the Iran deal. After Congress failed to defeat the deal, Ploughshares President Joseph Cirincione published a video and letter boasting about how the echo chamber – over 85 groups and 200 people – was created with Ploughshares money: “groups and individuals were decisive in the battle for public opinion and as independent validators… they lacked a common platform – a network to exchange information and coordinate efforts. Ploughshares Fund provided that network… we built a network of over 85 organizations and 200 individuals… We credit this model of philanthropy – facilitating collective action through high-impact grantmaking – with creating the conditions necessary for supporters of the Iran agreement to beat the political odds” .
The Associated Press just published a deep dive into Ploughshares’s most recent annual report, which details some of those 85 organizations and 200 individuals. The full article is pasted below. The AP broke down the network funded by Ploughshares into three kinds of groups:
— Journalists and media outlets (this is the part that’s getting the most attention, and includes NRP and at least two unnamed writers who were funded to write at Mother Jones and The Nation):
Ploughshares has funded NPR’s coverage of national security since 2005, the radio station said. Ploughshares reports show at least $700,000 in funding over that time. All grant descriptions since 2010 specifically mention Iran… Previous efforts… Ploughshares has set its sights on other media organizations, too. In a “Cultural Strategy Report” on its website, the group outlined a broader objective of “ensuring regular and accurate coverage of nuclear issues in reputable and strategic media outlets” such as The Guardian, Salon, the Huffington Post or Pro Publica. Previous efforts failed to generate enough coverage, it noted. These included “funding of reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones and a partnership with The Center for Public Integrity to create a national security desk.”
— Think tanks and nuclear-issues associations:
The 33-page document lists the groups that Ploughshares funded last year to advance its nonproliferation agenda. The Arms Control Association got $282,500; the Brookings Institution, $225,000; and the Atlantic Council, $182,500… Princeton University got $70,000 to support former Iranian ambassador and nuclear spokesman Seyed Hossein Mousavian’s “analysis, publications and policymaker engagement on the range of elements involved with the negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”
— Lobbies:
Other groups, less directly defined by their independent nuclear expertise, also secured grants. J-Street, the liberal Jewish political action group, received $576,500 to advocate for the deal. More than $281,000 went to the National Iranian American Council.
On May 5 the NYT published its profile of Ben Rhodes, in which Rhodes bragged about creating an “echo chamber” with the Ploughshares Fund to sell the Iran deal on the basis of false pretenses [a]. A few hours ago the AP published a deep dive into Ploughshares showing that the group is funding a range of lobbies, policy shops, and journalists and media outlets, all of which are bouncing Iran messaging back and forth between each other .
Aspects of the Ploughshares network had already been reported out. In Feb 2012 the WFB reported on Ploughshares funding NPR [c]. In March 2015 the WSJ reported “the Ploughshares coalition includes a former Iranian government spokesman, the liberal Jewish organization J Street and a group of former American diplomats who have held private talks with Iranian government officials… [and] the Arms Control Association” [d]. In July 2015 the WFB printed details of a Ploughshares conference call that brought together White House officials with over 100 participants, in which groups were told to prepare for a “real war” that would involve “blitzing the hell out of the Hill,” pressuring Congressional Democrats, and leaning on Jewish groups [e][f]. In August 2015 Commentary published 1,500 words and a couple dozen links naming names in the network [g].
What hadn’t been widely discussed – until today’s AP story – was that Ploughshares has been directly funding journalists and media outlets in the context of the politicized Iran deal fight. In case you’re running down this angle, here are some documents published by Ploughshares Fund describing the group’s efforts in its own words.
— In 2014 Ploughshares commissioned a “Cultural Strategy Report.” It laid out how the organization could use PR firms, Hollywood studios, video games, and journalists to create a “cultural strategy that could complement existing funding and operational activities.” Here is part of the section describing directly funding journalism [PDF here – h]:
Similar to an academic chair, directly fund one or more national journalism positions at media outlets like The Guardian, Salon, Huffington Post, or Pro Publica, whose exclusive “beat” and focus of investigation and reporting would be nuclear weapons, disarmament, and nonproliferation… We understand that similar efforts supported by Ploughshares Fund in the past did not generate the desired volume of coverage (funding of reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones and a partnership with the Center for Public Integrity to create a national security desk). However we feel this strategy would be more successful by focusing on themes, media outlets and journalists who resonate with the target audiences (youth and faith communities) and by pursing this strategy in concert with other approaches.
— In 2015 Ploughshares published a video and letter from Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione titled “How We Won.” Cirincione boasted that the group leveraged its funding so lobbyists, policy voices, and journalists could “coordinate efforts” to push the Iran deal. The video ends with a scrolling list of groups involved. The letter goes into detail on how Ploughshares leveraged funding to create its network :
These groups and individuals were decisive in the battle for public opinion and as independent validators… they lacked a common platform – a network to exchange information and coordinate efforts. Ploughshares Fund provided that network. Often, networks can make all the difference… We built a network of over 85 organizations and 200 individuals in favor of a negotiated solution to the Iranian crisis… We credit this model of philanthropy – facilitating collective action through high-impact grantmaking – with creating the conditions necessary for supporters of the Iran agreement to beat the political odds. A lot of work is now being done on how the Iran deal echo chamber worked and funded. Two other articles from the last 48 hours: how Ploughshares also funded faith groups to be part of the pro-deal network [j] and how the network was mobilized this week to attack witnesses who testified in front of the House Oversight Committee on the White House’s sales campaign [k].—
Title: Michelle Fields milking it
Post by: ccp on May 23, 2016, 10:51:23 AM
While I was not happy Trump and more precisely Lowandowski didn't simply apologize this 28 yo is getting unbelievable coverage from the event. Like Megyn kelly who is a bigger celebrity thanks to Trump. http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/22/media/michelle-fields-huffington-post-donald-trump/
Title: NPR Pay for Play on Iran deal
Post by: G M on May 24, 2016, 01:20:07 PM
Oops! NPR admits it did cancel interview with Iran-deal critic POSTED AT 3:21 PM ON MAY 24, 2016 BY JOHN SEXTON
Share on Facebook 14 14 SHARES National Public Radio admitted Monday that it did cancel an interview with Rep. Mike Pompeo, a congressional critic of the Iran deal, despite having told the Associated Press last week that it had no record of contact with him.
Last week the AP revealed that National Public Radio had taken $100,000 in 2015 from the Ploughshares Fund, a group that White House adviser Ben Rhodes said was helpful in setting up a media “echo chamber” to pass the deal. NPR flatly denied that the donation had any impact on their coverage of the deal. From the AP report:
“It’s a valued partnership, without any conditions from Ploughshares on our specific reporting, beyond the broad issues of national and nuclear security, nuclear policy, and nonproliferation,” NPR said in an emailed statement. “As with all support received, we have a rigorous editorial firewall process in place to ensure our coverage is independent and is not influenced by funders or special interests.” There was just one problem with this blanket denial from NPR. According to Rep. Mike Pompeo, a critic of the deal, NPR had canceled an interview with him even as it gave air time to Rep. Adam Schiff, a supporter of the deal. Once again, NPR denied it. A spokesperson told the AP it had no record of Pompeo’s requests to be featured on the air discussing the deal. That was it, cut and dry.
Only it wasn’t true. The Washington Free Beacon reports NPR has now reversed itself:
An NPR producer contacted Pompeo’s office on Aug. 4, 2015, to schedule an interview with the lawmaker, according to an email viewed by the Free Beacon.
“We’d like to do this but not live tomorrow morning. Can we schedule a tape time for tomorrow morning or Thursday to air in Friday’s show? This will give us more time to figure out better audio options as well,” NPR producer Kenya Young wrote to Pompeo’s office, according to a copy of the email.
“Let’s aim for Thursday morning at 10am Eastern,” Young wrote later in the day. “I’ll assign a producer in the morning who will get in touch with you, confirm a time, and set up an engineer to tape sync the interview in Kansas. Thanks for reaching out. You’ll hear from someone on my team in the morning.”
NPR decided to nix the interview the following morning… An NPR spokesman told the Free Beacon, “Rep. Pompeo was booked to discuss the Iran deal in August 2015, but the interview did not take place.” NPR also issued another anodyne statement about editorial firewalls that supposedly prevent their stories from being influenced by big donations to cover specific issues. But when asked by the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo to explain the initial statement to the Associated Press, denying it had been in contact with Rep. Pompeo, NPR stopped responding. That doesn’t look suspicious at all.
Let’s just state the obvious here. NPR took money ($700,000 over a period of several years) from a group that the White House has identified as part of the Iran deal echo-chamber. NPR says that money didn’t influence coverage, and yet one of the outspoken critics of the deal had his interview canceled and, a month later, had his 2nd approach to the network rebuffed. It has all the appearance of bias. For that matter, NPR’s decision to host Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione on two occasions to offer positive (and partisan) political spin for the deal looks a lot like pay-for-play.
Title: Professional Journalist Katie Couric!
Post by: G M on May 27, 2016, 06:23:21 AM
Katie Couric Decried ‘Edited’ Planned Parenthood Footage, Then Doctored A Gun Owner Interview When the Planned Parenthood videos broke, Katie Couric jumped on the campaign to discredit them as 'edited.' Her new gun control documentary is inexcusable. Mollie Hemingway By Mollie Hemingway MAY 26, 2016
A new Katie Couric documentary advocating gun control was deceptively edited to make Second Amendment supporters look foolish, audio released by the supporters shows.
In “Under the Gun,” Couric asks a group of gun rights supporters, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?” The documentary filmmakers spliced in footage of the activists sitting silently for nine seconds. One man looks down, seemingly uncomfortable, during the awkward silence. The documentary then moves on to the next scene of a cylinder on a revolver being closed.
Couric documentarians fabricated this moment, using footage from a session that was unrelated to the question asked. In fact, according to audio of Couric’s interview provided by the gun rights activists, they all rushed to respond to to Couric, providing answers based on principle and practical concerns. “Well, one — if you’re not in jail, you should still have your basic rights,” said one of the gun owners. Others responded as well.
You can watch the offending section — and hear the actual audio that was spliced out — here. It’s a stunning betrayal of journalistic ethics.
This willful and malicious doctoring of evidence to support an agenda is so unconscionable that even CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other media outlets made note of it.
Couric should have disclaimed the documentary and publicly acknowledge her error. Instead, the film’s director Stephanie Soechtig indirectly admitted she spliced in false footage when she issued the following statement:
My intention was to provide a pause for the viewer to have a moment to consider this important question before presenting the facts on Americans’ opinions on background checks. I never intended to make anyone look bad and I apologize if anyone felt that way. This mealy mouthed mush was described as an apology at CNN while The Washington Post openly mocked the “apologize if” construction of the response. Erik Wemple of the Post added that he’d never seen a “thinner, more weaselly excuse” than the one proffered by Soechtig. For her part, Couric said “I support Stephanie’s statement and am very proud of the film.”
Wemple says that’s nowhere near good enough and concludes, “An apology, retraction, re-editing, whatever it is that filmmakers do to make amends — all of it needs to happen here.”
Of course, this type of cut-and-splice “journalism” is common these days. Journalists have been praising “The Daily Show’s” use of deceptively edited interviews for as long as “The Daily Show” has deceptively edited them. Pretty much every time we hear that some cable comedian has “destroyed” some outgroup or the views the outgroup holds, that’s thanks to deceptive editing.
A few other things are worth noting here. One is how media outlets praised this faux-documentary prior to this particularly egregious example of manipulation. The AP’s story by Lynn Elber was headlined, “Gun violence gets more nuanced, probing coverage.” I’d hate to see something non-nuanced or non-probing! The article goes on to say the documentary “examines why those on opposite sides of stricter gun laws can’t find common ground.”
On Media Treatment of ‘Edited’ Videos You know where this is going. Beginning last July, the Center for Medical Progress began releasing videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the trafficking of human body parts obtained from abortions performed in clinics. The videos were shocking. Planned Parenthood began robotically issuing talking points calling the videos “edited” or “deceptively edited,” in an attempt to protect its organization from a public relations nightmare.
That Planned Parenthood would respond to these videos in such a way is not surprising. But our entire media industrial complex attempted to circumvent the findings of the Center for Medical Progress’ videos by calling them “edited” or “deceptively edited” as well. If they said it once, they said it eleventy billion times.
It is true that all video journalism is edited. One hundred-freaking-percent of it. Every single video package you watch on the nightly news is edited. None of these videos are called “edited,” of course, but they are. In the same way that all other video journalism is edited, yes, the Center for Medical Progress’ was, too.
But unlike every other documentary team, the Center for Medical Progress did something telling. They released, along with their mini-documentaries, the full unedited footage they obtained in their undercover journalistic efforts.
Planned Parenthood paid for an audit of the videos from a left-wing Democratic opposition research firm called Fusion — an audit that the media were happy to accept and spread — to support the talking point that the videos were edited. Even so, that audit admitted “no widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.”
An independent audit and forensic analysis of the videos likewise said that they were “authentic and show no evidence of manipulation.” As I wrote on Twitter:
Follow ✔ *nothing* like this was done in @ppact videos, yet “journalists” can’t refer to them without calling them “edited." https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/735489139236298752 … 9:19 AM - 25 May 2016 148 148 Retweets 105 105 likes Indeed, when Katie Couric ran interference for Cecile Richards, doing a lengthy sit-down puffball interview and a tour of an abortion clinic where she didn’t once mention, uh, abortion, she twice decried the videos as “edited.” Couric is a long-time pro-abortion activist, not just using the mainstream media to advocate it, but having marched in support of the right to end unborn human lives. Last week on David Axelrod’s podcast, she said that her parents were major influences on her, specifically citing her mother’s volunteer work for Planned Parenthood and the fact that her mother invested in Trojan condoms when she learned about the AIDS crisis. Classy!
An accompanying write-up of the Cecile Richards interview falsely stated:
The videos, some of which were edited together in a way to depict Planned Parenthood employees talking about selling fetal tissue, which is illegal, rocked the organization. The media have straight-up adopted Planned Parenthood’s false “deceptively edited” talking points and carried the water for Planned Parenthood’s campaign against the Center for Medical Progress. Here, one of their perky own in the mainstream media is caught red-handed actually deceptively editing in the service of gun control, and the most outrage The New York Times can muster is the headline, “Audio of Katie Couric interview shows editing slant in documentary, site claims.” What a joke our mainstream media are.
Photo Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
Title: Professional Journalists find this story un-newsworthy for some reason...
Post by: G M on May 27, 2016, 09:17:43 AM
Title: stick to making movies a hole
Post by: ccp on May 27, 2016, 09:49:34 AM
Another hollywood liberal with a political agenda at a commencement speech.
Oh how special . We are just a world of hate. Just love one another people now.....with pepsi music in background. Oh what a great message. Go out in the world and fight for Muslims, for gays, fight for Democrat Party blah blah blah:
sorry i can not always control my contempt for these people.
Title: Re: Professional Journalist Katie Couric!
Post by: DougMacG on May 27, 2016, 10:08:16 AM
Excellent coverage of this! (Here in this Federalist / G M post I mean, not in the press.)
"It’s a stunning betrayal of journalistic ethics. This willful and malicious doctoring of evidence to support an agenda..."
The AGENDA is the point. Subtle bias in every story in every outlet is worse. This just blows the whole thing into daylight for everyone - who doesn't care anyway - to see. This is not just bad journalism, like sloppy or lazy or made a mistake. This isn't journalism at all. An infiltration of leftist activists into our institutions has been discovered and exposed. It was a total and complete, hostile takeover. Like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather before her, she was the face of the CBS evening news and they all did it in their own way, night after night. Leftists took over our most trusted institutions, from the face of our news, to our k-12 teaching and college professors, to our DOJ and our IRS. There was a war and we lost by not showing up. It isn't that that favor one side or the other; they are acting to undermine the foundation on which the country was formed, the Second Amendment in this case, life, national security, war and our other freedoms in other cases.. It isn't that this one incident was blatant; it is that the sum total of this is treasonous. My humble opinion.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: ccp on May 27, 2016, 10:25:17 AM
Couric who likes to hobnob with the celebrities has done this kind of stuff before.
No biggie.
Title: Telemundo staging the news at anti-Trump rally
Post by: G M on May 29, 2016, 11:24:08 AM
Title: More Deceptive Editing From Pay Channel "Documentarians"
Post by: G M on June 01, 2016, 11:38:21 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/363792.php
More Deceptive Editing From Pay Channel "Documentarians:" AR-15 Rifle Inventor's Quote Truncated to Suggest the AR-15 Is Just as Deadly as Its Military Cousin the M-16 He did say the AR-15 was just as deadly as the M-16, a quote that HBO's "Real Sports" (real except for all the lying) included.
What they deliberately omitted was what he said immediately after saying the AR-15 was just as deadly as the M16 -- "When firing semi-auto only" and that "the select fire M16 on full auto is of course more effective."
If their case is so strong, why do they have to continuously lie about it?
Alternately, this could be yet another case of willful ignorance by the anti-gun assholes. They honestly do not seem to understand the difference between single-shot and burst-fire weapons most of the time, or at least seem to think that any gun that "looks sort of military-ish" is a burst-fire weapon.
Title: Re: Media Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2016, 11:39:07 AM
I signed up for Western Journalism and hit Like for its FB page.
Title: Obama State Dept. Admits Doctoring Briefing Tape...
Post by: objectivist1 on June 05, 2016, 07:59:41 AM
Obama State Department admits briefing footage ACKNOWLEDGING DECEPTION on Iran deal INTENTIONALLY DELETED
Posted By Pamela Geller On June 4, 2016
The Obama administration can do whatever it wants. It can lie openly and brazenly to the American people — in service of Iran’s jihad — and there is never any accountability. And this comes after Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and a myriad of other scandals at which the lapdog media did everything it could to cover for this corrupt and feckless regime. Treason on a massive scale.
“State Department admits briefing footage on Iran deal intentionally deleted,” Fox News [1], June 1, 2016:
The State Department, in a stunning admission, acknowledged Wednesday that an official intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a top spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.
“There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in admitting that an unidentified official had a video editor “excise” the segment.
The State Department had faced questions earlier this year over the block of missing tape from a December 2013 briefing. At that briefing, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.
Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”
However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect.
Officials initially suggested a “glitch” occurred.
But on Wednesday, current State Department spokesman Kirby said someone had censored the video intentionally. He said he couldn’t find out who was responsible, but described such action as unacceptable.
While saying there were “no rules [or] regulations in place that prohibited” this at the time, Kirby said: “Deliberately removing a portion of the video was not and is not in keeping with the State Department’s commitment to transparency and public accountability.”
Kirby said he learned that on the same day of the 2013 briefing, a video editor received a call from a State Department public affairs official who made “a specific request … to excise that portion of the briefing.”
Kirby says he has since ordered the original video restored on all platforms and asked the State Department’s legal adviser to examine the matter. He said no further investigation will be made, primarily because no rules were in place against such actions….
Title: Networks cover GOrilla 6 times more than ISIS Mass Christian Beheadings
Post by: DougMacG on June 05, 2016, 06:10:53 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 08, 2016, 06:33:36 PM
I wonder if those persons with the high up skirts sit with their legs crossed like they do on Fox You know . those that are not the male gender who wear tiny body hugging skirts and cross their legs we they are prim and proper.
I wonder if my calling them "persons" is acceptable.
Female, Ladies, girls , women, madamoiselles, babes chicks, broads , hos is all out.
Am I even supposed to mention that I looked at their legs? is that incorrect PC?
It is fine for them to wear that clothing but I suppose I make any kind of comment about it I am thus a chauvinist. A pig?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on June 08, 2016, 06:42:41 PM
As a white male, you are always in the wrong, unless you have a -D after your name.
I wonder if those persons with the high up skirts sit with their legs crossed like they do on Fox You know . those that are not the male gender who wear tiny body hugging skirts and cross their legs we they are prim and proper.
I wonder if my calling them "persons" is acceptable.
Female, Ladies, girls , women, madamoiselles, babes chicks, broads , hos is all out.
Am I even supposed to mention that I looked at their legs? is that incorrect PC?
It is fine for them to wear that clothing but I suppose I make any kind of comment about it I am thus a chauvinist. A pig?
Title: Should Anderson Cooper should be removed?
Post by: ccp on June 15, 2016, 03:22:57 PM
Depending on the definition of phobia, the gay view of Islam is not irrational fear.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 22, 2016, 12:44:08 PM
Good point
I resent this belittling descriptive adjectives that calls everything phobia that the left and their media echoes keep throwing out all over the air waves. This is less about fear than being angry and pissed off and resentful.
Title: If they have such a good point, why do they need to lie?
Post by: G M on June 22, 2016, 05:26:01 PM
AR-15 Inventor Says HBO Grossly Distorted His Views On Guns A recent anti-gun segment on ‘Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’ didn’t lie about what I said, it just omitted key parts, which changed the meaning. MAY 31, 2016 By Jim Sullivan
The anti-gun HBO sports interview misrepresented much of what I had said. They were apparently trying to make the AR-15 civilian model seem too dangerous for civilian sales. They didn’t lie about what I said, they just omitted key parts, which changed the meaning.
The examples I most object to are: 1) When I appear to say that the civilian-model AR-15 is just as effective or deadly as the military M16, they omitted that I had said “When firing semi-auto only” and that “the select fire M16 on full auto is of course more effective”; and 2) the interviewer pretended not to understand the relevance that, due to the Hague Convention, military bullets cannot be expanding hollow points like hunting bullets that give up all of their energy in the target body instead of passing through with minimum wound effect, with most of the energy still in the bullet and wasted.
Instead we (Armalite) went the small-caliber, high-velocity route and gave the bullet the right twist of 1:14 to be stable in air but unstable in tissue, where it tumbled and gave up all of its energy in a few inches and complied with Hague. This gave us a small cartridge that was half the size, weight, and recoil of a 7.62 NATO so the soldier could carry twice the ammo, fire controllable full auto, and be far more deadly out to 300 yards, the three characteristics that determine military rifle cartridge effect.
But 5.56 can’t complete with hunting cartridge bullets, which can legally be expanding hollow point that are more lethal than tumbling. Their lethality is based entirely on how powerful they are. 5.56 is only half as powerful as the 7.62 NATO (.308) hunting bullet. That doesn’t mean I’m not pleased to see AR-15s sell on the civilian market. It just means I didn’t realize they would 57 years ago. And I’m not on the wrong side of any gun issue unless someone wants to argue that an infantry rifle cartridge should kill a cavalry horse at 1,000 yards (30-06 criteria).
Jim Sullivan is an American firearms inventor who helped design the AR-15. He also contributed to the Ruger M77 rifle, and the M16, Stoner 63, and Ruger Mini-14 rifles, and is largely responsible for the Ultimax 100 light machine gun.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2016, 07:01:33 PM
Those who are trained with firearms recognize that the AR is a great defensive weapon against home invaders, especially for urban environments. It's great for women to defend themselves and their families. Why do anti-civil rights totalitarians want women to be victims?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on June 23, 2016, 02:57:17 AM
There is a movie about a society where only the military and police have guns. It's called Schindler's List.
Title: Ministry of Truth's allies in Hollywood
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2016, 10:16:41 AM
Unless I'm missing something here, this is another sickening commentary on our media, you have to read right wing sites to get news, not just opinion.
In a Google News search for stories about Hillary's email issues, the first, non-right wing story to come up is a USA Today opinion calling Hillary's email situation a "pseudo-scandal", written by a Clinton surrogate. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/06/16/hillary-clinton-email-non-scandal-column/85718386/
NOTHING about the story I learned here on the forum via links in Crafty's posts.
Title: The MSM is uninterested for some reason
Post by: G M on July 03, 2016, 12:01:30 PM
Missing: Noor Salman, and the media's interest in her.
Title: New generation of Ministry of Truths; yes just ask them they know
Post by: ccp on July 03, 2016, 02:28:51 PM
Look at the face on this kid. He can hardly be 25 years old. Right out of the hot bed of progressive radicalism of Univ of Chicago. He is an editor? at the Huff post. All of a sudden these kids get behind an ipad and they are experts,editors, editorialists, opinionists, policy experts on every subject one can think of, spokespeople for whole generations......
And Huff makes millions. And Soros like rich guys fund these kids on MIC news to propagate the March Forward speak . What a racket:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/sam-levine
Title: Dick , a National Enquirer writer now?
Post by: ccp on July 15, 2016, 05:09:07 PM
I wonder if he wrote the recent headline about "crooked Hillary". I do not admit to buying the rag / mag but i so admit reading while on line at the supermarket! Hey what am I supposed to do while waiting. Read candy wrappers?
I was surprised that they hadn't done something like this. Anytime someone is willing to die with sdomething like that, they're trying to send a message. Shooting someone these days isn't nearly terrific enough (even children expect worse from their video games).
Title: POTAH: Murdoch Brothers-- what happens next at FOX News?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2016, 06:44:11 AM
Murdoch Brothers’ Challenge: What Happens Next at Fox News?
By BROOKS BARNES and EMILY STEELJULY 17, 2016
Lachlan Murdoch, left, and his brother James Murdoch, the executive co-chairmen of 21st Century Fox, called for an internal investigation into Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment lawsuit against the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes. Credit Drew Angerer/Getty Images
LOS ANGELES — They have shaken up 21st Century Fox’s profile in Washington, replacing their father’s Republican lobbying chief with a Democratic one. They have jettisoned film executives, overhauled foreign TV operations and dug into the evolution of cable channels like National Geographic.
Their father, Rupert Murdoch, handed them the reins of 21st Century Fox only a year ago. But since then, James and Lachlan Murdoch have been remaking the company at breakneck speed.
Yet there remains one corner of the company — a critically important one — where the generational shift has not been visible: Fox News.
The brothers have left it alone for two reasons. First, Fox News, which continues to dominate in the ratings, contributes roughly 20 percent of the conglomerate’s annual earnings, and any changes, even seemingly minor ones, could endanger that profit. Second, Roger Ailes, who has run Fox News for 20 years, has little interest in corporate oversight. He has sparred with Lachlan Murdoch in the past — and won.
But the Murdoch siblings now have little choice. Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News host, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Mr. Ailes on July 6. Her charges have resulted in a public-relations nightmare for Fox News, and 21st Century Fox now faces questions about succession planning at the linchpin operation. In short, analysts say, it has become the Murdoch brothers’ biggest leadership challenge since taking over.
Moving with notable speed, the Murdochs hired the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to run an internal investigation. A leader of the firm’s inquiry is Michele Hirshman, a former deputy New York attorney general known for helping Eliot Spitzer fend off criminal charges in the federal prostitution case that led to his resignation as governor. Ms. Hirshman’s team, which includes multiple Paul, Weiss partners and associates, has started to interview employees and review emails.
Mr. Ailes, 76, a towering figure in media and Republican politics, has denied any wrongdoing, and 21st Century Fox has expressed its “full confidence” in him.
Even so, James and Lachlan Murdoch, along with lawyers and their father, who has been phoning in from vacation, have had daily discussions about the crisis, according to two people briefed on the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private company dealings. Given the importance of Fox News to the company, the high profile of Mr. Ailes and the seriousness of the allegations, the Murdochs want to make sure impartial and thorough consideration is given to the matter.
There are also things to consider beyond the specifics of Ms. Carlson’s lawsuit. What happens if the investigation turns up nothing to support her claims but finds a hostile workplace nonetheless?
Upending Fox News with a seismic leadership change, particularly as the presidential election season intensifies, is a scenario the brothers are not eager to confront. Despite their personal feelings toward Mr. Ailes, which run cool, and despite their eagerness to modernize 21st Century Fox, the company needs Mr. Ailes, analysts say.
In addition to the more than $1 billion in profit it delivers annually, Fox News gives 21st Century Fox a weapon in talks with cable and satellite operators: Carry all of our networks, and at favorable terms, or we will withhold the enormously popular Fox News. Without the omnipotent Mr. Ailes in charge, Fox News could quickly lose its focus and become less of a juggernaut. Moreover, Mr. Ailes has no clear replacement.
A spokeswoman for 21st Century Fox declined to comment for this article.
In June 2015, when Rupert Murdoch named his sons, James, now 43, and Lachlan, 44, as his successors, the reaction in Hollywood — and even inside 21st Century Fox, to a degree — was subdued. Most people figured the brothers would be timid, at least until their father, who held on to the title of executive chairman, stepped more firmly aside. (James Murdoch was named chief executive and Lachlan Murdoch was named executive chairman, but the company says the two manage in tandem.)
There were some early awkward moments. During a conference call last year with analysts to discuss quarterly financial results, Lachlan Murdoch seemed to struggle, while James Murdoch seemed to signal that this was less a partnership than a one-man show. But the brothers swiftly fell into step and began to exercise their new power, in some instances catching their own executive ranks by surprise.
In September came a $725 million deal to buy control of the National Geographic roster of cable channels and print publications. News of the deal was met with skepticism by many National Geographic employees, who questioned whether their organization’s scientific standards would be threatened by closer alignment with 21st Century Fox — and, in particular, with Fox News, where some commentators have questioned global warming.
On the day the deal was announced, James Murdoch, a supporter of environmental causes (his wife, Kathryn, is a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund), calmed the National Geographic troops at a town hall meeting. He apologized for some of the programming that 21st Century Fox had previously put on the National Geographic channels under a more limited partnership, saying it did not meet the brand’s standards or promise.
In January, the brothers restructured 21st Century Fox’s international channels business, a roster of some 350 channels that generates $3 billion in annual revenue, resulting in the departure of the division’s chief executive, Hernan Lopez. In February, they started a voluntary buyout program aimed at older movie and television personnel — Fox News and Fox local stations were excluded — resulting in the departures of nearly 400 people.
The moves have continued apace. In April, Michael Regan, the company’s longtime lobbying chief, was replaced by Chip Smith, a veteran Democratic strategist. Hulu, which is co-owned by 21st Century Fox, said in May that it would begin selling a bundle of cable and broadcast channels. The brothers have sought to be industry leaders when it comes to piping television directly to consumers — whether in India with Hotstar, a streaming service that now has 72 million users, or with the Fox broadcast network, which last week began testing a similar app.
The brothers recently put into motion a regime change at their film division by abruptly announcing that Stacey Snider, the studio’s co-chairwoman, would succeed Jim Gianopulos as movie chief.
“You have to have a real appetite for change,” James Murdoch said at an analyst event in June. “Our biggest risk, our single biggest competitive threat, is our own incumbency.”
And yet there Fox News has sat — an island that, until now, has fallen into the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” category.
James and Lachlan Murdoch have long had a complicated relationship with Mr. Ailes. About a decade ago, Mr. Ailes and Lachlan Murdoch faced off in a power struggle that eventually led to Lachlan’s unexpected resignation from his father’s empire. James Murdoch has been careful not to criticize Mr. Ailes in public, but people close to him say that he has expressed private concerns that the Fox News brand casts an unfavorable shadow on other parts of the company, particularly in Hollywood.
The friction between Mr. Ailes and the brothers came into public view last summer, when Mr. Ailes told an interviewer that he would continue to report directly to Rupert Murdoch. A week later, a company spokeswoman said that Mr. Ailes would report to Lachlan and James and continue his “longstanding relationship with Rupert.” The next week, in announcing a new multiyear contract for Mr. Ailes, the company said he would report jointly to Rupert, Lachlan and James.
A timeline for the Paul, Weiss investigation has not been disclosed. Although reported by some news outlets as an “independent” review commissioned by the company’s board, that description is not correct. The firm was retained by 21st Century Fox not only to investigate but also to provide legal advice. (The rarer true independent review would preclude legal advice.)
Even so, questions have surfaced about the firm’s independence, in part because of an unconnected case. Last year, the National Football League hired Paul, Weiss to conduct an inquiry into underinflated game balls used by the New England Patriots. The firm later represented the N.F.L. in a related court proceeding, drawing criticism from a New York judge for serving as both investigator and retained counsel. (That judge’s ruling was reversed on appeal.)
A spokeswoman for Paul, Weiss declined to comment.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 19, 2016, 04:25:43 AM
I didn't watch the RNC last night. But reading the headlines in the media is reported only the negative. All controversy. "Racist", "hate", "plagiarism", "white", "anger", "dark and stormy", "fear", and not one positive adjective in any headline anywhere in the usual sources I read for news.
We don't hear plagiarism claims when Hillary basically copies others when she takes their ideas . We don't hear much about it with Obama. We don't hear much about the "I have a dream" speech being plagiarized.
Title: How the Media Covers Up Muslim and BLM Terrorism...
Post by: objectivist1 on July 19, 2016, 07:45:24 AM
How the Media Covers Up Muslim and #BlackLivesMatter Terrorism
Every Muslim and #BlackLivesMatter Terrorist is just a “troubled loner.”
July 19, 2016 Daniel Greenfield
No sooner are the bloodstains and bits of human flesh hosed off the concrete from the latest Muslim or #BlackLivesMatter terrorist attack and the grieving families ushered through the cold metal doors of impersonal morgues to identify the bodies of their loved ones that the vultures of the media rise above a wounded city and begin spinning the same old lies.
The propaganda, the artful selection and deselection of facts, have become as familiar to us as they were to any of the residents of the Soviet Union or North Korea. Anyone who pays attention knows not only that they are being lied to, but can easily predict the lies that they will be told on the evening news even before they actually hear them being spoken out loud.
We always knew that the Muslim terrorist, even before he was identified, would turn out to be a secular loner who was depressed over his family life. All the media had to do with Mohammed Bouhlel, the Islamic terrorist who murdered 84 people in Nice, France was to replay the same exact narrative as the one that they had fed us with Omar Mateen, the Islamic terrorist who murdered 49 people in Orlando.
Irreligious, depressed loner with family problems. Check. No connection to Islamic terrorism. Suggestion of mental illness. Check and check. Insistence on his lack of interest in religion? One final check.
Mohammed shouted “Allahu Akbar,” the ancient Muslim battle cry that originated with Mohammed's murder of Jews whose meaning is that Allah is greater than the deities of non-Muslims, but the media persists in its dedication to burying the truth in a shallow unmarked grave at midnight behind CNN headquarters.
Gavin Eugene Long aka Cosmo Setepenra, who murdered three police officers in Baton Rouge, was also unstable. Much like Dallas cop-killer Micah Johnson, who was also another “unstable loner.”
What do Mohammed and Gavin, Micah and Omar all have in common? They’re inconvenient killers.
The left supports the ideologies, black nationalism and Islam, in whose name they carried out their crimes so the media has to redirect attention away from the ideology to the individual.
It doesn’t matter that the killers were very clear about their motives. What matters is hiding the truth.
Every Muslim or #BlackLivesMatter terrorist is just a crazy, depressed loner unable to cope with life’s problems. Descriptions emphasize that they were not part of a group; particularly the groups that the media is attempting to carry water for. Instead Micah Johnson was “reclusive” even though he spent his time partying with a laundry list of racist black nationalist groups, including the New Black Panther Party.
Omar Mateen was a “loner.” Mohammed Bouhlel, the Nice killer, was a “troubled, angry loner with little interest in Islam”. Or perhaps he was a “bitter loner” or even a “weird loner” who became “depressed.”
The key word here is “loner.” Loners aren’t part of a group. When you call a Muslim terrorism a loner or a #BlackLivesMatter terrorist “reclusive”, then there’s no need to look at the movement they were part of. Loners have no movements. Neither do recluses. They’re just “weird” and “unstable” people who go crazy for incomprehensible reasons.
Like depression. Or the weather.
Propaganda rarely gets more obvious than this.
And it’s not just the media. The “troubled loner” narrative comes from the very top down.
Obama insisted that it was “very hard to untangle the motives” of the Dallas cop killer and that he would leave it to “psychologists” but that “the danger is that we somehow suggest the act of a troubled individuals speaks to some larger political statement across the country.”
Micah Johnson had been very clear about his motives. He was a black nationalist activist angry about #BlackLivesMatter issues who said that he wanted to kill white police officers.
Obama contended that Johnson was clearly crazy because, “By definition if you shoot people who pose no threat to you, you have a troubled mind.” By that definition, the Nazis were all “troubled.”
But Obama had cultivated no similar ambiguity after the Charleston massacre. Instead in his eulogy he said that Dylann Storm Roof “surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress.”
And then he demanded that after the actions of one “troubled loner,” the Confederate flag had to come down across the country.
But not all troubled loners are created equal.
Roof’s massacre was part of a larger pattern and a bigger history. But each act of Islamic terrorism or black nationalist violence is purely of the moment and has no larger meaning. Its perpetrators are crazy and their political motives don’t matter. Even though Islamic terrorism has over 1,000 years of history behind it and violence associated with black nationalist groups goes back quite far, neither really exists.
Once again this is what propaganda looks like.
The “troubled loner” narrative is a tactical weapon of spin. When the killer is ideologically convenient, then he’s not a troubled loner, but a representative of a larger political movement. When he’s ideologically inconvenient, then his ideology will hardly be mentioned, only his personal problems.
Your average political terrorist who is willing to kill a bunch of people over the weekend will generally not have the perfect life sitting in his vest pocket. The odds will be very good that his apartment will be messy, his personal life messier and that plenty of people will remember him as a loner or strange.
Of course the same thing could have been said about Adolf Hitler and much of the Nazi elite.
Political radicalism attracts unstable people. This does not mean that we can ignore the ideologies of political radicals by reducing them to personal pathologies. Doing so with a political movement is dishonest and futile. The Nazis could not have been defeated by pretending that they didn’t exist.
It’s the political allies of a terrorist movement who are most likely to play the game of pretending that ideological atrocities are really personal quirks. And that we should focus on the latter not the former.
The media spin on Micah Johnson and Eugene Gavin Long, Omar Mateen and Mohammed Bouhlel is propaganda with a purpose. The purpose is protecting the media’s political allies from being linked to the atrocities being committed by their friendly neighborhood Islamists and black nationalists.
Every Muslim and black nationalist terrorist is crazy. Because the alternative is admitting that both movements use violence to achieve their goals. And that their political allies on the left are complicit in their crimes.
As the violence increases, so do the cover-ups. Anyone who reaches the obvious conclusion about Islamic terrorism and #BlackLivesMatter is dubbed a bigot. A rash of politically motivated killers are dismissed as lunatics. Gun control is revived, not just for its own sake, but as a convenient distraction.
Just as the crimes of Communism dragged the left deeper into the cover-up with each bloody year, so too the crimes of Islam and black nationalism stain the left’s hands a darker shade of red every single month. And eventually there will be no choice left but to bring down the curtain and tell the truth.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 19, 2016, 08:12:15 AM
"The “troubled loner” narrative is a tactical weapon of spin. When the killer is ideologically convenient, then he’s not a troubled loner, but a representative of a larger political movement. When he’s ideologically inconvenient, then his ideology will hardly be mentioned, only his personal problems." YES if an isolated policeman in a Southern State guns down a black (in the rare event) he is never a troubled mentally ill person but a cold blooded killer who is part of a systemic racist police problem
But a Muslim guy screaming alal akbar (whatever) while slaughtering innocents is never part of a larger systemic group that preaches hate terror and murder he is always a troubled young man who just needed a job etc....
Title: "Allahu Akbar"...
Post by: objectivist1 on July 19, 2016, 08:41:36 AM
The phrase, by the way - contrary to most media statements - translates NOT as "God is great," but as "Allah is GREATER" (than all other 'false' gods). This is an important distinction. Regardless - as Daniel Greenfield points out - even when a person is screaming this as he slaughters innocent people, he is simply "troubled."
Title: Eh tu Ann, Megyn?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2016, 10:19:43 PM
Title: CNN propaganda
Post by: ccp on July 23, 2016, 11:48:33 AM
"Just doing my job" - exactly playing the CNN jornolister's job of pushing identity and racial politics. THAT is his job:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxcAN0t6GrI
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 25, 2016, 08:13:19 AM
Got to watch those jornoLISTERS with a fine tooth comb. Whatever happens to the Repub party they really need to spend big time on countering propaganda.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2016, 06:35:03 AM
"We failed in part because the mainstream media was having too good of a time to help. Last spring, Stop Trump operatives told me they brought damning stories to mainstream outlets. The response was usually: “We’re not interested in covering that — right now.”'
NO . This is not why you "failed". You "failed" because there simply was no other candidate that was acceptable.
As for media lack of interest in covering hit pieces on Trump. That may be somewhat true but Trump is well known and already has very high negatives. He "hit" himself many times with his own words and he was still # 1.
No Jonah. There simply is no other Republican who got it right.
Title: Gaslighting
Post by: G M on July 27, 2016, 04:56:08 PM
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/53547.html
Gaslighting
Posted by Sgt. Mom on July 26th, 2016 (All posts by Sgt. Mom)
There was a brief hiccup of indignation last week regarding the French police choosing to downplay the fact that the dead hostages taken by Islamist terrorists at the Bataclan music hall had been viciously tortured and their bodies mutilated. There was the same brief hiccup of indignation when it appeared that the German police likewise chose to downplay those instances of sexual abuse perpetrated on local women by so-called Syrian “refugees.” A commenter on one particular thread discussing this observed, acidly, that we were now well into Pravda and Izvestia country, where the published news stories must be carefully scrutinized and parsed to tease out the actual facts; what is released regarding certain occurrences is not meant to inform us. Instead, such reports are meant to appear as if we are being informed, but the actual intent is to conceal and not to offend those in political power.
I’ve begun to believe, though, that our establishment media and those elements of the Ruling Class (in the Anthony Codevilla sense) who control or collude with them are going well beyond simply obscuring current events – but are deliberately practicing a kind of mass-gaslighting on us all. Gas-lighting? Oh, yes; this is a definition, courtesy of the Urban Dictionary:
A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, sometimes called Ambient Abuse where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity … A more psychological definition of gaslighting is “an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim – having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception.
False information presented – making us doubt our own memories and perception of events. Systematically withholding factual information from us. Having the gradual effect of making us anxious, confused, less able to trust.
Yep – we’ve been gas-lighted all right; and some of us more than others. I’d say that the African-American community is being royally gas-lighted by the Black Lives Matter organizing cadre, and the Democrat party has also been gas-lighted in a grand scale into believing (or pretending to believe) that Hillary Clinton is the most qualified presidential candidate evah! Barack Obama takes the absolute prize, though – in having gas-lighted himself into believing that he is the very best US President in our history. Discuss.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2016, 05:00:27 PM
DDF see my post under electoral process about pro and cons of felon voting. Your question is a good one. Why should a felon not be able to vote once they have paid their "debt" to society?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DDF on July 28, 2016, 08:24:08 AM
DDF see my post under electoral process about pro and cons of felon voting. Your question is a good one. Why should a felon not be able to vote once they have paid their "debt" to society?
I did see it. Unfortunately, there is not a single instance that I can think of where people are granted their freedom by the people that think they're superior, without massive conflict involved. They freed the lsaves. Look what that took.
I'll add, I read in interesting comment on there. that if you've ever driven while drinking, ever driven 15 miles over the speed limit (or anything else like that), you too are a felon that didn't get caught.
I'm not all that intereted in voting rights. I'm interested in full restoration of rights, without having to spend piles of cash that people don't have, in order to grant them that which apparently comes from a power greater than man (our rights).
Asking someone else's permission for your God given rights is just silly. If it is a case of someone committing a crime so grave (sexual, murder, treason), punish them accordingly, kill them, whatever, but don't paint them all with the same life sentence. You're just asking for a fight the moment you run across the right one, and God help people if they ever organize.
Unfortunately, in the real world, that presents some problems none of us want, but I understand it... both sides of it. not respecting someone else's rights is wrong 100% of the time.
People need to be more reasonable, and they almost never are, unless it costs them personally. That's the truth of it.
I'm no one's slave.
Title: Economist finally shows it's true colors
Post by: ccp on July 28, 2016, 07:05:44 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2016, 09:46:09 PM
:-o :-o :-o
That said, the point of Open vs. Closed is quite correct as are the comments about the costs of Closed. What is utterly missing however is any kind of realistic assessment of the costs of Open in the current context.
The vapidity of the analysis is staggering.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 29, 2016, 07:30:11 AM
The authors also don't consider that the globalist movement is not just about free trade but is even more importantly about the erasure of "borders", concept of country and sovereignty , and nation hood.
I am not against fair trade but I don't want to see our country disappear and we become subjects of the UN or some other single world leadership .
Title: Should FOX have covered this speech?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2016, 06:40:59 PM
The authors also don't consider that the globalist movement is not just about free trade but is even more importantly about the erasure of "borders", concept of country and sovereignty , and nation hood.
I am not against fair trade but I don't want to see our country disappear and we become subjects of the UN or some other single world leadership .
The left and the bureaucrats may mix and conflate these but free trade and giving up sovereignty are two different matters.
Also, government picking winners and losers in industry via selective taxation (tariffs) is an act of leftism no matter who commits it.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2016, 07:28:12 AM
Drifting away from the subject of this thread , , ,
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 31, 2016, 01:26:54 PM
It's good to know but quite an uphill battle to know Snopes, PolitiFact, Google and Facebook are all against us in addition ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, AP, Reuters, NYT, LAT, WashPost, StarTrib etc, (plus nearly all k-12 teachers, college professors and curriculum writers).
This article makes it sound like PolitiFact is the more reliable source. In this one case, yes. Overall, no, IMHO. They are not generally able to keep their bias out of it.
I think I'd rather see two opposing sides debate a fact rather than have one source of unknown reliability become known as definitive.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, NY Times
Post by: DougMacG on August 02, 2016, 08:07:36 AM
POSTED ON JULY 27, 2016 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, MEDIA BIAS, RUSSIA THE NEW YORK TIMES: TWO CONFLICTING EDITORIALS, ONE CYNICAL MOTIVE James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal captures the shameless partisanship of the New York Times in just a few sentences. The sentences come from editorials that appeared in 2012 and 2016 regarding the views of the Republican presidential candidates on Russia.
Here is the New York Times on March 29, 2012:
Two decades after the end of the cold war, Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s ‘No. 1 geopolitical foe.’ His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.
Here’s the Times today, July 27, 2016:
Regardless of whether Mr. Putin is out to help Mr. Trump, voters would be right to question the judgment of a candidate who has shown so much admiration for such a dangerous adversary.
Credit: James Taranto, WSJ http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/07/the-new-york-times-two-conflicting-editorials-one-cynical-motive.php
Title: Pravdas fail to do basic research on the Khans
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 02, 2016, 03:05:37 PM
POSTED ON JULY 27, 2016 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, MEDIA BIAS, RUSSIA THE NEW YORK TIMES: TWO CONFLICTING EDITORIALS, ONE CYNICAL MOTIVE James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal captures the shameless partisanship of the New York Times in just a few sentences. The sentences come from editorials that appeared in 2012 and 2016 regarding the views of the Republican presidential candidates on Russia.
Here is the New York Times on March 29, 2012:
Two decades after the end of the cold war, Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s ‘No. 1 geopolitical foe.’ His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.
Here’s the Times today, July 27, 2016:
Regardless of whether Mr. Putin is out to help Mr. Trump, voters would be right to question the judgment of a candidate who has shown so much admiration for such a dangerous adversary.
Credit: James Taranto, WSJ http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/07/the-new-york-times-two-conflicting-editorials-one-cynical-motive.php
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Title: Lewandowski again
Post by: ccp on August 03, 2016, 03:46:56 PM
I was glad when he was fired so what happens , he is hired by CNN after which when they note his partisanship point out "he is still paid by Trump" then set him up too.....
I thought he was going to be out of the picture or at lest behind the scenes but instead CNN turns him into the topic.
So, to boil it down to it's essence, the Guardian blames the Jews. Shocking.
Title: From Instapundit: Media coverage on Bush vs. Obama
Post by: G M on August 18, 2016, 06:10:35 PM
FLASHBACK: OBAMA RIPPED BUSH’S ‘UNCONSCIONABLE INEPTITUDE’ DURING HURRICANE KATRINA.
Today, Obama is out golfing with “actor/Seinfeld creator Larry David and business exec/Obama Campaign fundraiser Jonathan Lavine,” CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller tweets.
Incidentally, after her party and its media fully exploited the crisis to take back the House and Senate in 2006, DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile finally confessed at CNN, “Bush came through on Katrina.”
UPDATE: “David Toms knows full well he’s on shaky ground where the FedExCup is concerned,” PGA Tour.com reports. “Only 125 players advance to next week’s Playoffs. He’s 121st — just 11 points removed from the bubble boy – so Toms was planning on playing in the Wyndham Championship that begins Thursday. Life got in the way, though. Toms is from Louisiana, born and bred. And while his home in Shreveport was spared serious damage from the recent relentless rains, family in Baton Rouge felt Mother Nature’s wrath. So just before noon on Wednesday, Toms made the decision to withdraw from the Wyndham Championship. He was replaced in the field by Andres Romero, who comes to Sedgefield ranked 195th in the FedExCup. ‘I had it all worked out,’ Toms said. ‘I know I am in a precarious position with the FedExCup. ‘But some things are more important than golf.’”
But not if you’re our semi-retired POTUS in full lame duck YOLO mode, it seems.
Title: The American News Media Sucks
Post by: G M on August 19, 2016, 01:07:38 PM
Louisiana floods. Tens of thousands flee their destroyed homes. Billions of dollars in damage. Unknown number of deaths. Huge natural disaster.
But several days in and I’m still running into people who are like, huh? A flood in Louisiana? You mean Hurricane Katrina, right? They haven’t heard a thing about it.
That’s because the American news media looks at every single event and asks itself a few simple questions before they decide how much coverage to give something.
First, is there anything we can milk from this story to bolster our worldview? Y/N
Yes. Cover the shit out of it 24/7 breathless panic attack, and demands that we DO SOMETHING. (said something is almost always give the government more power).
No? Meh.
Second, is there anything in this story which could potentially make democrats look bad? Y/N
Yes? What emails? Fuck you.
No? See #3.
Third, is there anything in this story which will make republicans look stupid or evil? Y/N
Yes? Holy shit! Run it! Run it! New Orleans has been utterly destroyed because George Bush controls the weather and hates black people and his incompetence and evil racism has ruined this once beautiful American icon of– (and put that on a loop for the next three weeks)
No? Do we need any filler?
#2 and #3 are for most major media since they predominantly swing left, but for Fox you can just flip the democrat/republican, and they’re just as bad.
Fourth, does this event in some way affect us personally? Y/N
Yes? DROP EVERYTHING! RUN THIS OR WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!
No? Eh… we’ll talk about it for a minute if we’re not too busy.
My favorite example of that last one was from several years ago. Different flood, Tennessee this time. And a river was about to break its banks. About fifty thousand homes were in immediate danger. The news was in the middle of saying which counties needed to run for their lives so as to not drown—
WE INTERUPT THIS REPORT FOR A VERY IMPORTANT BREAKING STORY
And then, I shit you not, the news flipped to Times Square in New York City, where GASP, somebody left a cooler unattended. COULD IT BE A BOMB?! This is literally down the street from our offices, and Dear God, it could be terrorists! We go now live to where the NYPD has moved people away from this Murder Death Bomb and have called in their Bomb Squad in their big scary Hurt Locker suits. Go ahead NYPD Lieutenant!
Bored looking NYPD cop: “Uh, the bomb guys are gonna go poke it. Don’t worry. There’s no need to panic. It’s probably just a cooler that some tourist forgot, which happens like ten thousand times a day here and at every other tourist spot in the world. Odds are it isn’t terrorism, but we always check to make sure. I don’t even know why you’re filming us.”
You heard the NYPD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!
And then they covered it for the next forty minutes straight. With the cameras all pointed at this Styrofoam container LIVE because it is going to BLOW any second! And all of these nervous anchors talking about it in hushed tones while I’m thinking, you know, I’ve got friends in Tennessee, I wonder if they’re running in front of a tidal wave right now? And the news was like FUCK SOUTHERNERS CAN’T YOU SEE THERE IS AN UNATTENDED COOLER HERE WHERE WE LIVE?! Oh, wait… And the NYPD confirms it contains sandwiches.
But then fifteen minutes of analysis about the sandwiches later, and experts pontificating on the fear inherent in unattended sandwiches… what were we talking about before all the excitement? Oh… Yeah… And everybody in Tennessee has died. Very tragic. So anyways, let’s see what this movie star wore to some party none of you were invited to—
If you keep these four simple questions in mind you can predict with quite a bit of accuracy how many minutes of airtime a story gets, the size and position of newspaper columns about it, and how prominent it will be on websites.
Let’s say there was a mass shooting.
#1. The media loves it some gun control, so initial reports will be how we have to DO SOMETHING!
#2. If it turns out to be a white boy off his meds, then they’ll continue to cover the hell out of it. But if it turns out to be a Muslim yelling Allah Akbar right after the democrat president told everybody terror is contained or that if you’re worried about Muslim refugees it can only be because you are racist, then the coverage drops.
#3. Did the current GOP candidate for president say something stupid about the event? (pretty good odds of that!) Let’s talk about his stupid comments about the event instead of the actual event.
#4. All this is moot if it took place somewhere the reporters actually give a damn about. Garland, Texas? Ha!
Change the shooting around. Random good guy shoots the bad guy one minute in? Zero coverage. Which is why when I’m arguing against gun control folks, and I bring up Random Good Guy With Guns making a difference, and they proclaim that never happens, and I immediately list off a dozen… They stare at me blankly. Those events never get reported because of the media world view.
Change it around again. A psycho who has glommed onto Black Lives Matters murders a bunch of cops. That’s a tough one for our noble reporters, because they really want to push gun control, but they’ll let it slip after a day or two so they can go back to their regular narrative about racist cops gunning down choir boys who were just standing on the corner minding their own business.
Are there bad cops making bad shoots? Sure. But you wouldn’t ever know how many because the media is too fucking stupid crying wolf about everything, justified or not, to ever actually delve into anything as complicated as Use of Force laws.
These simple questions explain why some terrorist attacks get covered, and others don’t. If they can spin the terrorist attack to be about gun control, then they’ll cover it a lot. But then when the same exact kind of attack happens in a country that has incredibly strict gun control, it’ll be a human interest tragedy story, which will quickly fade from the American news in a day or two. And if it is a Muslim terrorist attack in a 3rd world country (like the vast majority of them are in reality) then it will get absolutely zero coverage, and very few people in America will have a clue what you’re talking about.
Mumbai? Westgate? Blank stares.
These biased jackasses never come anywhere near the truth. It is all about narratives bolstering existing world views. I’ve been involved in a bunch of news stories over the years, and the resulting reports seldom have anything to do with the reality.
Think about any topic you are an expert on, and then think about how pissed off you get when you see the news fuck it up. Problem is, they suck that much at everything.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”― Michael Crichton
So we’re all walking around, thinking we’ve got a clue about stuff, when in reality we’ve been fed bullshit by idiots.
The left side of media requires everybody to be secret angry racists (other than them, obviously), and racial incitement makes great TV. So, cop shoots a white dude. Nobody cares. Cop shoots a black dude, before the crime scene people have even finished taking pictures and nobody has a clue what actually happened, it is getting tons of coverage. People get pissed. And if the news gets lucky somebody burns a Walgreens, which makes for great ratings.
If you watch the news you’d think that America was dissolving into this ultra-violent mega crime wave. When in actuality our murder rate is way down (When I was in Europe recently, everybody I talked to thought that America was like Mad Max, which tells me their news sucks as much as ours does) There are a handful of urban areas with lots of violent crime, but the rest of America is actually pretty damned peaceful (probably because we all died in floods the media never covered).
But, see #4. The media is based out of these big urban areas. Which is why they don’t give a shit about Louisiana or the rest of us, unless of course, they can somehow milk our tragedies for political points.
When it comes to politics this bias is taken to an absurd level. There are plenty of legit reasons to despise either presidential candidate. But what is most political coverage about? Stupid minutia, half of which is made up. So when you get into a discussion with a zealot who has been educated by watching their side’s news, the debate turns into clueless garbled soundbytes, and half the time they don’t even have a clue what you’re talking about, because it never made it past #2 or #3 to get covered.
Or worse, it was so big the media had no choice but to cover it, but they did it so flippantly or dismissively that people think it was no big deal, or they go into partisan excuse making damage control mode to minimize it. When in reality it was a colossal fuck up, where if there was any integrity left in the process, the people involved would have gotten tarred and feathered.
No policies are ever looked at based on what they’ll actually do, it is more, rah rah, go team. Notice that when they were trying to pass Obamacare all of the news coverage was sob stories about poor sick people denied coverage? That’s because all of that pesky accounting saying the thing was destined to choke didn’t fit the worldview. And now that it is falling apart (like everybody who could do math predicted it would) is there much coverage? Don’t be silly. Once it implodes I’m sure it will come as a huge shock, which will cause another big crisis which requires them to DO SOMETHING.
This bias is why the news either portrays vets as poor illiterate dupes sucked into the Imperialistic war machine because you couldn’t get real jobs (like a Barista or HuffPo contributor) so somebody needs to DO SOMETHING or you’re a war mongering ticking time bomb of PTSD addled murder rage waiting to explode in an orgy of violence, and somebody needs to DO SOMETHING.
This absurdist, pundit, echo chamber bullshit just keeps getting more and more obnoxious.
Now you assholes can’t even be bothered to talk about one of the biggest natural disasters in recent history, because it might somehow smear your dude.
And after all this, the American news media is simply baffled that nobody trusts them anymore. No shit, Sherlock. That’s because you suck. The sooner you dinosaur hacks plod off and die from shitty ratings, the better off we’ll all be.
Title: American Journalism Collapsing Before Our Eyes...
Post by: objectivist1 on August 21, 2016, 12:21:16 PM
American journalism is collapsing before our eyes
By Michael Goodwin August 21, 2016 - The New York Post.
Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.
The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations.
The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.
The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.
Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.
By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media’s reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.
Liberal bias in journalism is often baked into the cake. The traditional ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable leads to demands that government solve every problem. Favoring big government, then, becomes routine among most journalists, especially young ones.
I know because I was one of them. I started at the Times while the Vietnam War and civil-rights movement raged, and was full of certainty about right and wrong.
My editors were, too, though in a different way. Our boss of bosses, the legendary Abe Rosenthal, knew his reporters leaned left, so he leaned right to “keep the paper straight.”
That meant the Times, except for the opinion pages, was scrubbed free of reporters’ political views, an edict that was enforced by giving the opinion and news operations separate editors. The church-and-state structure was one reason the Times was considered the flagship of journalism.
Those days are gone. The Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages.
A recent article by its media reporter, Jim Rutenberg, whom I know and like, began this way: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”
Whoa, Nellie. The clear assumption is that many reporters see Trump that way, and it is noteworthy that no similar question is raised about Clinton, whose scandals are deserving only of “scrutiny.” Rutenberg approvingly cites a leftist journalist who calls one candidate “normal” and the other “abnormal.”
Clinton is hardly “normal” to the 68 percent of Americans who find her dishonest and untrustworthy, though apparently not a single one of those people writes for the Times. Statistically, that makes the Times “abnormal.”
Also, you don’t need to be a detective to hear echoes in that first paragraph of Clinton speeches and ads, including those featured prominently on the Times’ Web site. In effect, the paper has seamlessly adopted Clinton’s view as its own, then tries to justify its coverage.
It’s an impossible task, and Rutenberg fails because he must. Any reporter who agrees with Clinton about Trump has no business covering either candidate.
It’s pure bias, which the Times fancies itself an expert in detecting in others, but is blissfully tolerant of its own. And with the top political editor quoted in the story as approving the one-sided coverage as necessary and deserving, the prejudice is now official policy.
It’s a historic mistake and a complete break with the paper’s own traditions. Instead of dropping its standards, the Times should bend over backwards to enforce them, even while acknowledging that Trump is a rare breed. That’s the whole point of standards — they are designed to guide decisions not just in easy cases, but in all cases, to preserve trust.
The Times, of course, is not alone in becoming unhinged over Trump, but that’s also the point. It used to be unique because of its adherence to fairness.
Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly confesses. Shame would be more appropriate.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 21, 2016, 01:12:01 PM
CBS, NBC and ABC
Clinton BS National broadcast for Clinton American broadcast for Clinton
and of course the Clinton news network -> CNN
Title: Breitbart
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2016, 01:16:58 PM
Has anyone noticed the explosion of pop up ads on Breitbart since this guy Bannon is now officially part of Trump campaign (rather than unofficial).
I don't even want to go that website anymore. It has become a total nuisance.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2016, 02:54:13 PM
PITA :-P
Title: Nothing of concern
Post by: G M on August 24, 2016, 07:13:29 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 25, 2016, 07:20:06 PM
"Look who is donating to the Clinton Slush Fund"
Newsmax is interesting. I keep getting right wing emails from them nearly every day and from I don't know where or were they ever requested So one would not think they're donating money to Clinton is because the believe in her or even like her.
It cannot be anything more then to pay a bribe or protection money. It is as clear and obvious as day!
Title: Trump leaves Coulter's butt hurting
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2016, 02:51:15 PM
Title: Where is that clip?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2016, 10:32:05 PM
Where is that clip catching CNN editing things to make it looks like the sister was calling for peace?
Title: CNN tosses truth down the Memory Hole
Post by: Admin on September 03, 2016, 03:37:23 AM
Here is one version...
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 03, 2016, 10:24:02 AM
I saw this before. Probably on Breitbart. They took the rant out of context and by doing so completely changed the tone and message.
CNN has always been the 'politically correct' and favorableyClinton biased megaphone but the Trump bashing of late has completely wiped out even a hint of impartiality.
The other day they were bashing and undermining Trump's speech at the Black Church even BEFORE he gave it by saying it was scripted by a pastor and therefore it is just empty words.
As though anything Clinton has ever said was not scripted and poll tested up the behind.
The MS-media-government complex is totally corrupt. With news people going to and fro from government to media jobs . ........
Title: 2nd post
Post by: ccp on September 03, 2016, 11:03:46 AM
I love when lefist media come out and exclaim the "Clinton campaign should be worried about ...." We all know that this really means the "reporter or journolister" is throwing out the warning that he or she is worried for Clinton about it and this is a heads up tip to the Clinton mob.
Also the call to close down the Clinton Global Initiative is just because it is the right thing to do but just because the media is worried about the political damage it is doing and they want to put it is the past and protect Clinton. So when ever it comes up again the LEftist media can easily dismiss it and point out it is "CLOSED DOWN" so lets move along folks. This is "NO LONGER and ISSUE"... blah blah blah.
Title: sOlodAd again
Post by: ccp on September 04, 2016, 06:57:52 PM
Just when one thought she would just go away she's back .
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2016, 04:36:11 PM
Good question. Reminds me of Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns".
Title: It is about time
Post by: ccp on September 09, 2016, 08:32:49 AM
We have to admit it is with rare pleasure to witness the LEFT squirm when one of its' :-D :-D own actually dishes on a Democrat . Now they know what it is like to be a Republican up against their relentless onslaught:
Title: Journalism is...
Post by: G M on September 09, 2016, 08:27:45 PM
David Burge @iowahawkblog
Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2016, 12:28:49 PM
I don't understand this deceptive "jornolister" who claims to write from the perspective of the "right" She is as LEFT wing as all the other WP people . Who holds them and Jeff Bezos accountable?
Soon we will hear Clinton blame some obscure person for saying something against the prophet as instigating these legitimate attacks with "disgusting" offensive remarks.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on September 18, 2016, 04:59:22 PM
Soon we will hear Clinton blame some obscure person for saying something against the prophet as instigating these legitimate attacks with "disgusting" offensive remarks.
Title: Our Forum linked
Post by: DougMacG on September 29, 2016, 07:42:04 AM
Our forum linked in the 'major media': ) https://www.hotgas.net/2016/09/fact-checking-hillary/
Title: Geographic Media Manipulation
Post by: DDF on September 29, 2016, 12:44:47 PM
Same paper, same dates, different markets. Feeling manipulated yet? Anyone doubt that the media isn't bias geographically? Read the headline under the each photo.
Title: Politico
Post by: ccp on October 02, 2016, 10:50:12 AM
More outrageous claims from Politico:
"Trump’s claim that widespread voting fraud could swing the presidential election has been widely debunked; a national study discovered only 10 cases of fraud by misrepresentation from 2000 to 2012—1 in every 15 million eligible voters."
Instead the problem is that poll watchers could intimidate (democrats ) from voting:
We know just from the reports of voter fraud we have posted on this site for years that is a complete bold faced lie.
Title: Media is complicit in crime
Post by: ccp on October 03, 2016, 06:15:29 AM
Voter fraud ? What voter fraud? This "allegation" has been debunked as per politico. Why a study in 2012 showed maybe one in 15 million votes is a fraud according to that jornolistic web site. That is like saying that there may be one fraudulent vote in the entire NYC-NJ metropolitan area.
October 05, 2016 Multiple Pages From Orwell to Gladwell and Back
In politics, secrecy and silence are becoming less practical, while noise and distortion are coming to dominate. Thus, the 2016 election raises questions of how strategies of political power are evolving as we move from an age of information scarcity to one of superabundance.
Almost by definition, the powerful in the future will still continue to exercise dominion over the minds of men, but their methods of manipulation will change.
The technology of power is moving from the past’s emphasis on privacy and concealment toward more contemporary techniques of diversion, bias, misconception, and willful stupidity. The crude methods that George Orwell summed up in his image of the incinerator-chute “memory hole” are growing into more sophisticated devices for providing the public with misleading frameworks for mentally organizing (or rationalizations for simply ignoring) the overload of available facts, thus making it harder to remember or understand politically inconvenient knowledge.
In the past, outright censorship was more useful. During the Egyptian counterrevolution over 3,300 years ago following the reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten (a.k.a. Amenhotep IV), his statues were smashed and his name laboriously scraped from the walls. His memory, and that of his queen Nefertiti and son Tutankhamun, were largely expunged from history until the archaeological discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Admittedly, the history of the damnatio memoriae in which losers are excised from the chronicles is inherently paradoxical because it’s hard for us to know if it happened unless it failed at least enough for us to have heard of the unperson.
Still, erasing facts and even people from history could sometimes work because in the past, information was scarce since reproducing it was so expensive.
Even without political ill will, simply maintaining the knowledge already existent was difficult: Libraries, for example, might catch fire and texts (and thus knowledge) could be lost forever.
With the invention of the movable-type printing press in the West in the 1400s, redundancy began to win the war against knowledge decay. Eventually, there were enough copies of books that knowledge was unlikely to be fully expunged.
In modern times, the urge to retcon reality is no doubt as strong as in the past. But information storage and communication are so cheap that old techniques such as book burnings can hardly be counted upon anymore to root out all copies of data.
In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith labors at the Ministry of Truth rectifying the past, rewriting old newspapers to fit with the latest party line of who are now the good guys and who the bad guys. “In the current year, we now know that plenty of people would join the Volunteer Auxiliary Thought Police for free.”
In the Soviet Union a half decade after 1984 was published, the abrupt fall of Stalin’s successor Beria led to a letter-from-the-editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia instructing readers to cut out the admiring article on Beria and replace it with the enclosed expanded articles on the Bering Sea and other alphabetically adjacent topics.
We see some of the old-fashioned memory-hole techniques at work currently with Wikipedia.
For example, the heroine of Hillary Clinton’s debate climax, Venezuelan immigrant Alicia Machado, has labored tirelessly for two decades to make herself famous in the Spanish-speaking world. But most of the former Miss Universe’s renown has come from multiple scandals, such as being accused by witnesses of driving the getaway car when her boyfriend shot his ex-brother-in-law and then threatening the judge in their case with murder. (Here’s her amusing answer on CNN when Anderson Cooper asked her about those allegations.)
In reality, Machado is a cross between two characters on Tina Fey’s sitcom 30 Rock: Jane Krakowski’s Jenna Maroney, a dim but relentless, publicity-seeking, aging actress doing whatever it takes to hang on as a celebrity; and Salma Hayek’s Elisa Pedrera, Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy’s homicidal fiancée who, while unknown in the U.S., is notorious in her native Puerto Rico for murdering her husband in a jealous rage.
Of course, that Machado is an utter stereotype of the telenovela actress means that it’s harder for gringo goodthinkers to understand her, since they’ve been indoctrinated that pattern recognition is wrong.
Machado’s many skeletons in the closet raise questions not only about her credibility but also about Hillary’s judgment, and, most important, about just how much vetting immigrants get. In an era when it’s easy to look people up on the internet, why was Machado, who is notoriously drawn to violent men, recently granted the vote?
Last week, you could still find on Wikipedia two of Ms. Machado’s more recent misadventures:
In 2005, Machado was engaged to baseball star Bobby Abreu. During their engagement she was on the Spanish reality show ‘La Granja’ where she was filmed on camera having sex with another member of the show. Shortly after the video surfaced Abreu ended their engagement.
On June 25, 2008, Machado gave birth to her daughter, Dinorah Valentina. She issued a statement that the father of Dinorah was her best friend Mexican businessman Rafael Hernandez Linares after Mexican news sources, quoting the Attorney General, reported that the father was Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez, a drug lord.
But mentions of these imbroglios have since been memory holed on Wikipedia. Editors have offered bizarre excuses for deleting the most interesting information about Hillary’s heroine, such as that the diva is not a “public figure,” an assertion that would surely wound the actress more deeply than allegations that she’s a gangster’s moll.
That points out an answer to one of the more obvious questions about the plausibility of Orwell’s 1984: How can they afford that? Is it really fiscally feasible even for a totalitarian government to employ an army of salaried Winston Smiths to alter history?
Yet it’s naive to imagine that a government would have to pay people to do this kind of thing. In the current year, we now know that plenty of people would join the Volunteer Auxiliary Thought Police for free.
The memory hole, however, isn’t the only technique for regulating ideas. Among professional journalists, a trend is to take refuge in pedantic obscurantism about the meaning of terms. For example, Donald Trump’s reference to Alicia’s notorious tape of sex with a fellow reality-show participant as a “sex tape” has been widely denounced as totally lacking in verification, even though you can watch it yourself in ten seconds.
For example, Maureen Dowd wrote in her column in The New York Times that Trump is “offering no evidence that one exists.” Dowd is a worldly woman, so her submission to the party line must feel at least a little bit humiliating for her.
Orwell called this process crimestop, or “protective stupidity.” Trump brings out in journalists, to a remarkable degree, “the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments…and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.”
Similarly, race riots with arson and looting have been redefined as “protests.” For example, The Washington Post sniffed this week:
Donald Trump said Monday that “race riots” are happening every month amid deep divisions across the country, apparently referring to protests that have erupted in response to police violence against minorities.
You may have watched on video Black Lives Matter rioting in Charlotte in September and in Milwaukee in August (“We need our weaves!”). But, you see, those weren’t, technically, riots. They were just violent protests against violence.
Orwell endorsed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the structures of language determine what can be readily thought. Sapir-Whorf has been subject to numerous learned objections that befuddle 1984’s central point that there’s a practical psychological reason why social justice warriors engage in so much language policing: The world is complicated, and language is a tool for understanding it. While it’s not impossible to think clearly without a sharp vocabulary, it’s definitely harder. And that’s the essential goal of SJWs: to muddle your minds.
Other maneuvers include the big information monopolies putting a thumb on the scale of public opinion via sneaky practices such as shadow banning (which apparently happened to Dilbert author Scott Adams over the weekend) and rigging autocompletes to suggest some topics and avoid others.
Generally, these micro-distortions come and go, leaving their victims wondering if they were just imagining their persecution.
For example, way back in January 2010, I pointed out that Google was absolutely refusing to suggest “Pat Buchanan” as the prompt when you typed into the search box “Pat Bu.”
Today, though, Google does. But it has never offered an apology or an admission of whatever the giant monopoly was attempting to accomplish with this petty gaslighting, nor any indication of how widespread the practice is.
Most important, in an age of abundant information, the master templates for understanding the world determine which of the myriad facts will register in the mind and which will be ignored as unwanted randomness not fitting the pattern.
Therefore, the single most important mind-control technique is what Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Hunter calls “the narrative”:
The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide “These are the lies we tell today.” No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they have chosen to live their lives.
For instance, consider the question of why blacks tend to get shot by the cops more than Asians do. The simplest, most Occamite answer is: for the same reason blacks get shot by other blacks so much—on average, African-Americans are more violent than Asian-Americans.
The overwhelming abundance of social-science data supports that view. But that’s definitely not part of the narrative. Instead, as Hillary instructs us, we must subscribe to fashionable conspiracy theories of “implicit bias” and “systemic racism.”
Hillary, in effect, is running for president on a dumbed-down version of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 best-seller Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which advised going with your gut reactions, except when they are factually wrong or politically incorrect.
As Hunter might point out, these are the unconscious assumptions that serve to make the media feel better about themselves.
But, of course, the Gladwellian implicit-bias theory of not thinking is really just a pseudoscience elaboration for what is at its core an Orwellian Two Minutes Hate of straight white men. Hate is the KKKrazy Glue that holds together Hillary’s coalition of the fringes.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 06, 2016, 03:08:39 PM
Can also see a similarity to the Borg from Star Trek Next Generation:: As we become more bionic and more connected we lose individualism and freedom. We all are sucked into the collective which in present terms is political correctness and "resistance (to the elite liberals) is futile":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)
While Borg are though of as villains in the show their counterparts of today are considered heroes or so the propaganda goes .
Title: Stephanopoulos asks Team Clinton's questions
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2016, 07:52:46 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 21, 2016, 07:26:33 PM
Does anyone think the revelation that Brazille sent Clinton the question before the debate is anything but the tip of the iceberg?
I would be shocked if Clinton does not know most questions in advance. Obamster does too . They screen any members of the press who get within 100 feet of them.
I suspect that is one reason he is so shocked and pissed when any reporter actually dares to ask him a challenging question.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2016, 10:28:16 PM
GM: :-o :-o :-o
Title: Podesta admits to polling fraud
Post by: ccp on October 23, 2016, 06:07:55 PM
I won't say anything in terms of what I have had to say about the polls, other than they are trash. I'll end it there.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, NY Times says reject Rubio in Florida, elect the lefti
Post by: DougMacG on October 24, 2016, 08:30:01 AM
I can't see the distinction between the left and the media, could go in either thread. This is the official editorial board of the NY Times, not a leftist columnist. And it's not about Rubio, it's about removing all alternatives to leftist rule.
Source: NY TIMES Sunday, editorial page. I omit the link intentionally; not going to promote their shameful viewpoint. Just would like to point out that destroying all the reasonable alternative voices on the right to Trump is a good part of what created Trump. Once he loses, the media, establishment conspiracy has completed the entire takeover. The only glitch is the chance that we have a 2010, 2014 type turnout year, and Trump wins and the R's carry the House and Senate by however small a margin and it is the other party that is in seemingly permanent disarray.
Title: Even Geraldo is shocked at media bias
Post by: ccp on October 25, 2016, 07:28:31 PM
although he says he never saw proof until now. :roll:
Not only Wa compost and NY slimes but add to that CNN.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Wash Post fact check Russian Uranium deal
Post by: DougMacG on October 26, 2016, 07:30:12 AM
Sorry, no link. Instead of reporting on the true story told in 'Clinton Cash' about the Clintons accepting huge speech and Foundtion money in exchange for the go-ahead for Russia to buy American Uranium assets, the Washington Post writes it as a 4 Pinocchio story about how well or poorly Donald Trump worded the accusation. At the end they suggested a wording that State was one of 9 agencies... Anyone who has followed the story knows that and among those 9, the State Dept was the lead agency.
The questioned whether Trump had proof that the Secretary of State had any involvement with a highest level, national security decision that was made by her department. I would hope she did. Good grief.
I wonder if they question whether she really ran her department because she is a woman, or because she took a pretty hard hit to the head.
Quid, Pro. And Quo, all proven in this story, so the Wash Post can't find what the meaning of the word is is and gives politicians their 4 Pinocchio rating to point to innoculating themselves from their party's and administration's corruption.
"Fact Check" has become a contrary indicator with these institutions.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Wash Post fact check Russian Uranium deal
Post by: DDF on October 26, 2016, 07:50:20 AM
The questioned whether Trump had proof that the Secretary of State had any involvement with a highest level, national security decision that was made by her department. I would hope she did. Good grief.
This has become a common theme to anything Hillary has had something (or should have had), to do with.
It is a legal defense. Plain and simple.
It is much easier to defend incompetence than mens rea, which is needed in almost any crime. They make her seem stupid and incompetent on purpose. She is anything but.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 26, 2016, 08:12:48 AM
"It is much easier to defend incompetence than mens rea, which is needed in almost any crime"
This morning guest LEFT commentator, Eugene Robinson from the wash compost was blaming *Cheryl Mills* for the emails that prove Obama knew (of course he didn't notice the lack of "state.gov" another lawyer trick) before he was on TV saying he only learned of it from the news like you and me ( :roll: :x). The people around Hildabeast did not "serve her well". Thus deflecting the responsibility from "her" to her "aides".
And of course he ignores any notion that Obama lied or was obviously covered up the whole thing
Not surprising though from Eugene who wears race colored glasses all day long and about everything he sees.
Title: Mark Levin reading my posts
Post by: ccp on October 28, 2016, 08:15:53 AM
:-D
In May I posted this:
"As for Megyn she has turned me off a while ago with her Turmp like narcissism. In that regard they are exactly alike. ......." "She is no longer a newscaster and is now of a self promoting celebrity. She will try to get into movies probably now at least on the side. "
The must have blond hair dye in the elevators at Fox just down the hall from the shop that sizes the blue the pink the green the red miniskirts (the Ailes effect)
Mark on the Megyn Kelly - Newt ambush where again she tried to make herself the story:
"It is much easier to defend incompetence than mens rea, which is needed in almost any crime"
This morning guest LEFT commentator, Eugene Robinson from the wash compost was blaming *Cheryl Mills* for the emails that prove Obama knew (of course he didn't notice the lack of "state.gov" another lawyer trick) before he was on TV saying he only learned of it from the news like you and me ( :roll: :x). The people around Hildabeast did not "serve her well". Thus deflecting the responsibility from "her" to her "aides".
And of course he ignores any notion that Obama lied or was obviously covered up the whole thing
Not surprising though from Eugene who wears race colored glasses all day long and about everything he sees.
They better be defending it. The penalties for treason are stiff. If I was them, I would be acting like I had an IQ of 60.
Title: I must admit this is rather funny
Post by: ccp on October 28, 2016, 02:32:09 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsb-5dIqEBw
Title: Wikileaks shows us the presstitutes
Post by: G M on October 30, 2016, 03:59:25 PM
Bigdog unavailable for comment on the professional journalists, with credentials!
The fact that they don't even attempt to hide it anymore, is disgusting. My wife is a journalist and television reporter as well, and the subject of impartiality presents itself to her, and she has to maintain it.
The journalists back home don't even try.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 31, 2016, 08:50:52 AM
"Bigdog unavailable for comment on the professional journalists, with credentials!" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Possible taunting violation here. I have known Bigdog to update his view in the face of new information. Let's be nice and get him back. )
Were any of these pretend journalists fired, suspended or shamed or are we now to the point where being thought of as in bed with the campaign is worn as a badge of honor?
Is there one person on that leftist list that the other side, Trump or a Republican, would also believe they could plant a story or narrative?
91% of mainstream stories on Trump are negative. http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/10/study-91-percent-of-trump-coverage-on-broadcast-news-was-negative-230297 Given the view of the general electorate, that proportion should be no worse that 70%.
Do they ever go beyond the shiny object lead story and pick an issue like Obamacare failing, ISIS strategy failing, China policy failing, economic policy failing? Do they on their own cover the fact we have the highest corporate business tax rates in the world and one candidate wants to raise them further, kill off businesess and jobs, and one candidate wants to fix that? Or run a story that in a time of black lives matter awareness the abortion issue is killing black babies at 5 times the rate white babies, http://www.blackgenocide.org/black.html, one candidate wants that to continue that, no problem, and the other's policies would curb it, sent back to the states. Is it partisan to report on life and death stories or real consequences of policies based on facts that no one else is talking about?
Instead, because of the above, we get these planted story, planted wordings, repeat chamber montages where 2 or 3 dozen outlets and analysts are saying the exact same thing as if it's true and it's their own original thought. It's worse than real Soviet Pravda where they only had one outlet.
Remember 'gravitas', what Bush lacked and had to acquire: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2007/11/30/gravitas_montage_explains_it_all
Trump's rigged talk is dangerous, media montage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ4juxYA41o
Trump has a narrow path to victory, the planted media narrative one day, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/10/28/media_mantra_trump_s_narrow_path Narrow path, narrow path, Trump has a narrow path, narrow path, narrow path... ... ...
Dozens of outlets, same biased BS. Now we know exactly how it gets started and spreads. ABC heard it from Podesta, not from CBS, CNN, Washington Post, etc. nor did they come up with it on their own.
It used to be called PLAGIARISM when you put something out there as your own without giving credit to the source. Do they still teach THAT in journalism school or do they openly teach, advance the narrative, ends justify means?
Title: CNN at it with the selective editing again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2016, 11:43:18 AM
ABC News staged crime-scene shot, photograph shows by Dylan Byers @CNNMoney November 4, 2016: 3:07 PM ET abc news ABC News correspondent Linsey Davis stood in a field in Woodruff, South Carolina, and relayed the gruesome details of how a 30-year-old woman had been held captive in a storage container allegedly by a registered sex offender.
Behind her, yellow police tape with the words "SHERIFF'S LINE DO NOT CROSS" flapped in the wind, indicating the scene of the crime.
In fact, the police tape was tied to ABC News' own equipment just off-camera, a photograph obtained by CNNMoney shows. Sources with knowledge of the matter say the tape was placed there by ABC News for the purpose of its inclusion in the live shot.
The photograph, sent by an anonymous source, shows the tape running no more than 30 feet and tied to camera stands at both sides. In Davis' segment, which was broadcast on ABC's "Good Morning America," it is impossible to tell where the tape ends.
"This action is completely unacceptable and fails to meet the standards of ABC News," Julie Townsend, the vice president of communications at ABC News, told CNNMoney. "As soon as it was brought to our attention, we decided to take the producer out of the field, and we're investigating further."
This is not the first time ABC News has doctored a shot.
In April, ABC News producer David Fazekas created a fake reservation list for a segment about a restaurant in upstate New York that was thought to be among the most exclusive in the world.
Fazekas later told The New Yorker that the chef "wouldn't let us see his actual list, so I wrote it myself—like a reenactment in a documentary."
"There are services on the Internet that generate fake names," Fazekas said.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 09, 2016, 09:30:49 PM
A couple of election points:
1. The media gave Trump 90% of the coverage in a 17-way race in the primaries. Through wikilwaks we find out they were colluding with Hillary to get her the weakest opponent. Then in the general election the coverage switched to 90℅ negative on Trump including a 10 year old tape and 20 year old allegations all timed for October.. How did that work out?
2. Fact Checkers, WashPost ran a Pinocchio summary at the end rating Trump worse than Clinton. Reading through it I found that Trump was making valid points and the fact checker was just nitpicking his wording and with Hillary they completely ignored her most outrageous lies. N I'm not surprised, just making a note of it.
3. NY Times did a major editorial endorsing his opponent when Rubio was running about even. He won by 8 points.
They get judged and paid on their clicks so I am mostly not putting links anymore in referrals to bad reporting and meaningless commentary.
The media is so biased yet people are sometimes seeing through that.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 10, 2016, 07:37:59 AM
"The media is so biased yet people are sometimes seeing through that."
It is reasonable to conclude that without talk radio, and to MUCH less degree Fox, and the internet with Drudge etc Hillary would now be President.
Most of us would have been kept in the dark by the main stream media about most of Clinton's scandals .
We would not have known that many of us feel the same way and if one was to believe the MSM that every one thinks like libs.
Title: Pravda on the Hudson befuddled
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2016, 01:07:40 PM
To our readers,
When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years — cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity.
After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome? Most important, how will a president who remains a largely enigmatic figure actually govern when he takes office?
As we reflect on this week’s momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly. We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.
We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers. We want to take this opportunity, on behalf of all Times journalists, to thank you for that loyalty.
Sincerely,
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. Publisher
Title: Huffington Post Announces possible Bolton pick, "Extreme Militant"
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2016, 02:52:41 PM
Donald Trump Leaning Toward Extreme Militant John Bolton As Secretary Of State
a) Wouldn't it be our enemies that are the "extreme militants"? And if so, wouldn't you want a pretty serious Secretary of State to organize against them?
b) Didn't Hillary Clinton vote for all the same wars Ambassador Bolton supported? Plus one additional in Libya that never was brought to Congress.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 15, 2016, 03:27:15 PM
I would much rather see him over then Rudy who of course i like but I don't see a mayor as best choice for foreign relations.
"Wouldn't it be our enemies that are the "extreme militants"? And if so, wouldn't you want a pretty serious Secretary of State to organize against them?"
LIbs hate "America". They are for one global world and of course who do you think they feel should run it.
Soros and crew want to make us all subservient to him and the rest of his crew Brussels.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2016, 09:04:44 PM
Wrong thread. This belongs in Trump Administration.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Major Newspaper Endorsements 57-2
Post by: DougMacG on November 16, 2016, 07:56:36 AM
How much more help did she need? Amazing that he overcame this kind of bias - or does anyone believe the bias was limited to the editorial page? -------------------------------------------
Note: previous post deleted out.
Title: Megyn Kelly
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2016, 06:04:40 PM
Does anyone understand why we are seeing Megyn Kelly plastered everywhere?
When the journalist is the news item there is a problem.
I don't recall ever hearing of someone hawking a book about themselves who calls them self a journalist.
is it just me or is there something very wrong with this woman constantly playing the female victim cared for her own self aggrandizement. For someone who is so victimized she is certainly doing pretty well.
Title: VDH in Newsweek
Post by: ccp on November 18, 2016, 06:32:58 PM
I didn't know they would print a piece from probably my favorite opinion writer. This IS refreshing: http://www.newsweek.com/why-did-americans-choose-trump-over-clinton-521965
:-)
Title: EU orders press not to report terrorists
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2016, 08:27:02 AM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Face the Nation, no questions on affiliations
Post by: DougMacG on November 20, 2016, 08:15:47 AM
Just after I posted the Keith Ellison, Caroline Click piece published last week, John Dickerson questioned him on Face the Nation and not a single question about his past or present affiliations was asked. Just given a platform to continue the campaign against Donald Trump.
I'm not surprised, just making note of it.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 20, 2016, 08:57:12 AM
"not a single question about his past or present affiliations was asked"
Another example of why I have come to conclude Steve Bannon is needed. I don't always agree with Breitbart's articles but we need more warriors in the media who will stand up for our side and push back.
We have to call the MSM when ever and where ever we can and should.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 20, 2016, 03:51:10 PM
I saw the interview and commented the very same thing to my wife.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 21, 2016, 06:01:14 PM
Rush is probably right. The MSM will run for comments from Obama on most everything Trump does. We will see if Obama obliges them:
Title: Liberal Puerto Rican prof defends Trump on charges about Mexican rapists
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2016, 09:57:32 AM
The media needs to stop telling this lie about Donald Trump. I’m a Sanders supporter — and value honesty Trump's words on Mexicans have been misconstrued by all sides. This liberal, Puerto Rican professor says enough Alberto A. Martinez
The media needs to stop telling this lie about Donald Trump. I'm a Sanders supporter -- and value honesty
It’s time to start cleaning up the mess of misinterpretations about Donald Trump.
Back in June, I first saw Mr. Trump announcing his candidacy for president. What he said about unauthorized immigrants seemed ridiculous so I laughed. I showed the video to friends, and I laughed again. His words were poorly chosen.
But something worse happened. People interpreted Trump’s words in the most awful and offensive ways.
In one of my courses, at the University of Texas at Austin, I asked my students: “What has Donald Trump said that you found most offensive?” One student raised her hand high: “He said that all Mexicans are rapists.” I asked a coworker the same question. He replied: “He said that all Mexican immigrants are rapists.”
I explained that Trump said no such thing. This is what Trump said:
“When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. […] When Mexico sends its people they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you; they’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting.”
You might well dislike Trump’s words. I did. But let’s not make it worse. He did not say that all Mexicans are rapists. Yet that’s what many commentators did. For example, Politico misquoted Trump by omitting his phrase about “good people.” They said he was “demonizing Mexicans as rapists.” They argued that Mexicans do not really commit more rapes in the U.S. than whites. But that’s not what Trump claimed.
Similarly, other news sources misrepresented his words in offensive ways:
The New York Times: “Trump’s claim that illegal Mexican immigrants are ‘rapists.”
Time Magazine: “Trump’s comment that Mexican immigrants are ‘rapists.’”
Associated Press: “Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals”
CBS News: “Trump defends calling Mexican immigrants ‘rapists.’”
L.A. Times: “describing Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists.’”
Fortune: “in a speech branding Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.”
Hollywood Reporter: “he referred to Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists.’”
Huffington Post: “He called Latino immigrants ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists.’”
The Washington Post: “He referred to Mexicans as “rapists.”
Compare such words with Trump’s words. Which is worse? Writers excerpted the phrase: “they’re rapists,” as if it were about all Mexican unauthorized immigrants, or worse, about all Mexican immigrants, or even worst, about all Mexicans. But that’s not what he said. That’s not what he meant. It was just a remark about some of the criminals crossing the border.
The trick for misrepresenting Trump’s words can be used against anyone.
For example, on October 7, at a Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton answered the question: “Which enemy are you most proud of?” She replied: “In addition to the NRA, um, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, um, the Iranians.”
If you do to her what the media did to Trump, then you should believe that Hillary Clinton is proud to be the enemy of 77 million citizens of Iran, plus millions more living outside Iran, including mothers, children, and disabled people. But that’s not what she meant.
On November 6, at the MSNBC Democratic Candidates Forum, Bernie Sanders said: “we have to pass a constitutional amendment that everyone in America who is 18 years old or older is registered to vote.” He said everyone. Someone might then write: “He proposed that everyone who is in the U.S. should vote, everyone who is 18, even illegal immigrants, tourists, and terrorists.” But that’s not what he meant.
It is no wonder that many people think the media is grossly dishonest. No wonder Mr. Trump’s critiques of the media make his followers cheer.
Trump was discussing crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants. Is it true that some people who illegally cross the border from Mexico are good? Yes. Is it true that some others commit crimes? Yes. Is that a problem? People disagree. Some conjecture that unauthorized immigrants don’t commit more crimes than U.S. citizens. But crimes by unauthorized immigrants, even murders, would not have happened if those individuals had not entered the U.S.
Time for a disclosure. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Spanish is my first language. I voted for Obama. I live in liberal Austin, Texas, where I work as a tenured professor of history. I’ve never voted for a Republican. My preferred candidate for U.S. president would be Elizabeth Warren. Since she is not running, my preferred candidate is Bernie Sanders.
Anyhow, discussions about illegal immigration are ruined by lack of data. I asked my friends, university faculty: “How many people do you think are deported per year in the U.S.?”
There are two kinds of deportations: some are caught near the border and “returned,” others are “removed” by a court order. Consider the border patrol agents, personnel, the bureaucracy, the lawyers, the resources needed to find people and deport them. How many were deported in 2014?
One of my friends guessed 3,000. Another guessed 10,000. Another guessed 50,000—which would really be a lot of people, imagine.
Actually, in fiscal year 2014, the U.S. deported a total of 893,238 foreigners! That’s a huge number. It includes 577,295 deported by the Department of Homeland Security, plus 315,943 deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Among the latter, 2,802 were classified as suspected or confirmed gang members.
Since 1990, the average is 1.2 million deportations per year. The highest in U.S. history was 1.86 million foreigners deported in the year 2000. That’s astonishing.
How many were criminals?
We don’t know because most criminals are not caught. Plus, many who are accused are not convicted because of a lack of evidence. Still, in 2014, the U.S. deported 177,960 convicted criminals. Surprisingly, 91,037 were already convicted criminals before they even entered the U.S.
At the University of Texas at Austin, the football stadium can seat 100,119 people. I have seen it full. I’ve see more than 100,000 people at once—it’s an incredible sight. It’s a staggering swarm of people. I have seen them yelling all at once.
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It is utterly astonishing to me that this stadium would fail to seat all the convicted criminals deported in a single year.
Back to Mr. Trump. Did he unfairly single out Mexicans when complaining about crimes by unauthorized immigrants?
By far, most Mexicans are good people. However, since Mexico shares a large frontier with the U.S., and many Mexicans face economic hardships, most of the reported illegal immigration into the U.S. is from Mexico. Accordingly, in recent years roughly 76% of criminal unauthorized immigrants are from Mexico.
What kinds of crime? It is strangely difficult to find national statistics on homicides, sexual assaults, and thefts, by unauthorized immigrants. But there is relevant data for some states.
The Texas Department of Public Safety identified 207,076 foreign aliens who were booked into Texas county jails from October 2008 through August 1, 2014. Their term “foreign aliens” includes both foreigners who are in Texas legally and foreigners who entered illegally. They were accused of 357,884 crimes in those 70 months, including these charges: 4,413 terroristic threats, 60,973 robberies and larcenies, 6,636 vehicle thefts, 78,682 assaults, 12,869 sexual assaults and offenses, 1,113 kidnapping, and 3,089 homicides.
That includes, an average of 1,383 charges of sexual assaults per year, in Texas alone. The real number of rapes and sexual assaults is larger since many victims do not report these crimes. According to the National Crime and Victimization Survey, 2008-2012, approximately 68% of sexual assault crimes are not reported. So I estimate that foreigners commit roughly 4,000 sexual assaults in Texas each year.
In Texas, roughly 529 foreigners per year were accused of committing murder. Plus, the FBI reports that 36% of homicides nationwide remain unsolved.
These crime rates are staggering and offensive. None of the women and men who were killed in by unauthorized immigrants in Texas would have died if the murderers had not entered the U.S. illegally.
These are not just words. Pause for a moment to think about a Texas woman whose husband was murdered one night. Think about parents who never saw their son again because he was murdered. Think of the thousands of families standing at the cemeteries.
I’ve only summarized murders and sexual assaults. Consider drugs and drug violence. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, most illegal drugs come from Mexico, including most cocaine and heroine. Most methamphetamines also are smuggled from Mexico. The 2015 National Drug Threat Survey finds that methamphetamines are the drugs that most contribute to property crimes and violent crimes. You get the point. There are tremendous problems of drugs, murders, and rapes caused at the porous border.
Without knowing the data, it was easy to be offended by Mr. Trump’s crude words when he announced his candidacy. However, seeing the data above, I understand his concerns.
Here’s what Trump said right after his words quoted above:
“And it only makes common sense, it only makes common sense: they’re sending us not the right people, and it’s coming from more than Mexico, it’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably, probably from the Middle East. But we don’t know because we have no protection, and we have no competence. We don’t know what’s happening. And it’s gotta stop. And it’s gotta stop fast.”
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We can disagree about some points. Is the Mexican government really sending criminals to the U.S.? On July 5, Trump said: “The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” This claim might be false if Mexico does not intentionally send criminals to the US. At its best, this statement seems plausible if Trump meant that conditions generated in Mexico by its government lead some criminals to the U.S.
In any case, Trump proposes to secure the southern border by implementing various security measures. His most recurring proposal is to build a wall, along areas of the border lacking natural barriers.
His proposal has been widely criticized. Some people construed it as a sign of racism, xenophobia, etc. However, I can understand why many of Trump’s followers actually cheer: “Build the Wall! Build the Wall!”
First, there are the worries about murders, drugs, crimes, and terrorism. Presently, countless many unauthorized immigrants walk into the country, unchecked. In fiscal year 2014, the Border Patrol made 468,407 apprehensions along the southwest border. By comparison, the Border Patrol only made 18,244 apprehensions in all other regions.
But one point sticks in my mind. Namely this: there already exist a long series of fences and walls between Mexico and the U.S. These fences and walls span parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. As of early 2012, the Department of Homeland Security had completed 652 miles of fences and walls. Trump did not build all that. It was mandated by Congress. Walls are common along many countries’ borders, such as Spain, China, France, Greece, Pakistan, Israel, etc. The border between the U.S. and Mexico spans roughly 1,950 miles. Trump wants a wall that will be 1,000 miles long, including areas already covered.
I’m not trying to convince you about a wall. My point is just that it’s neither impossible nor ridiculous. A main reason why many border areas have fences instead of walls is just that walls are more expensive.
Trump says that everyone who didn’t enter the U.S. legally should return to their countries. “They have to go.” We might well disagree. But his view is closer to Immigration law. If you prefer amnesty then lawmakers have to create a law to that effect. Trump insists: “I want people to come in, but they have to come in legally.”
Regardless, countless many people think that Trump is racist against Mexicans. I suggest that anyone who thinks that should count how many times Trump has praised Mexicans.
Most unauthorized immigrants are good people. But still, the media wrongly blamed Mr. Trump for their own misrepresentations.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 30, 2016, 06:24:41 PM
Wrong thread.
This belongs Legal Issues, Homeland Security and Freedom, Intel, Legal Issues, or the Sovereignty thread.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DDF on November 30, 2016, 07:46:09 PM
This belongs Legal Issues, Homeland Security and Freedom, Intel, Legal Issues, or the Sovereignty thread.
My bad... I searched them both and since they both came up here, that's where I put it. I'll delete it.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 01, 2016, 11:26:01 AM
No worries, just being my usual Thread Nazi self :lol: Take it as a compliment. It means I want the post to be findable down the road. :-D
Title: hot gas now sparta report?
Post by: ccp on December 04, 2016, 07:31:23 PM
This site as was hotgas seems rather cumbersome to mover around:
https://www.spartareport.com/about-us/
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth - MSM major newspaper endorsements 57 Hillary-2 Trump
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2016, 08:29:54 PM
G M: "No one cares what they [MSM] have to say. If Trump were to walk on water, the MSM would scream "Trump aquaphobic!"
:-D
Among those getting it wrong this past election, the major newspaper endorsements were 57-2 Hillary over Trump.
Still, the continuous drivel takes a toll. It is possible to overcome them when they are dead wrong but their echo chamber and wide reach will eat up a Republican or conservative when he or she screws up.
Besides almost every network and newspaper, also caught in the left bias are Google and Facebook. ------------------------
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304606-final-newspaper-endorsement-count-clinton-57-trump-2 And the people went a different way.
Final newspaper endorsement count: Clinton 57, Trump 2
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has received fewer endorsements from the editorial boards of the nation's largest newspapers than any major-party presidential candidate in history. Among the top 100 largest newspapers in America, just two — the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville — endorsed Trump. The Review-Journal is owned by Sheldon Adelson.
Title: Van Jones
Post by: ccp on December 07, 2016, 09:45:48 AM
This could go under SJW threat but this guy moonlights as journolister since that is only way he can pay his bills:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 08, 2016, 05:10:28 AM
Huffington post the LEFTS copy of Drudge and now this to copy Breitbart. The big difference , the "elephant in the room", is that the LEFT already has the MSM. We don't:
What a business this huckster has turned his self promoting BS into. Of course the crook that he is blames "fake news " for the witch's loss.
People are crazy to give this crook money in my view not because he is LEFt but because it is all a scam.
Title: FOX and Megyn dish from Pamela Geller
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 08, 2016, 11:08:17 PM
Pamela Geller: Megyn Kelly Says ‘No Question’ That I’m a ‘Hateful Person’ Breitbart News, December 8, 2016: Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
In hitting President-elect Trump and supposedly defending the freedom of speech, Megyn Kelly on NPR Wednesday night referred to “Pam [sic] Geller, who there’s no question is a hateful person, who held this Draw Muhammad contest down in Texas.”
Kelly said this in the context of defending the freedom of speech: “Now she’s a provocateur and she’s not a fan of anyone who’s Muslim from the sound of what she says, but this is America and she has the right to say those things. And she has the right to have a contest like that.” But in smearing me as “hateful,” she demonstrates that she doesn’t really know what was at stake when Islamic jihadis attacked our free speech event in Garland.
Why am I hateful for standing for the First Amendment? Is she copying the tactics of Islamic propagandists, smearing as “hateful” those of us who refuse to submit to the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth?
And I’m a “provocateur”? Why? The Garland attack was part of a longstanding jihad war against the freedom of speech. Those who say I provoked the jihadis don’t remember, or care to remember, that as jihadis were killing the Muhammad cartoonists in Paris, their accomplice was murdering Jews in a nearby kosher supermarket. Were the Jews “hateful”? Did they “provoke” the jihadis?
I held the event in the same venue where Muslim leaders held a conference in support of the sharia, in support of the ideology behind the Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre. Was that provocative? Should we submit to the devout Muslims who use violence to impose the speech laws under the sharia? Drawing Muhammad offends Islamic jihadists? So does being Jewish, as many anti-Semitic attacks have proven. How much accommodation of any kind should we give to murderous savagery? To kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.
Megyn Kelly should know that.
What does Megyn Kelly know about my work as a whole? What did she do to help Rifqa Bary, the Ohio teenager who was threatened with death by her father for converting from Islam to Christianity? What has Megyn Kelly done for the other Muslim girls who wanted to live a free life, and whom I helped to safety?
Megyn Kelly has never had me on her show. She covered the jihad attack against our free speech event in Texas for over a week but did not have me on. How does she know what I think, or why I did what I did? She made her “stand” for free speech regarding the Garland jihad attack while excoriating me. The thing about Kelly is that she assumed my mantle and championed my work while attacking and smearing me; that is the hallmark of a true second-hander.
Meanwhile, the scallywags, scoundrels, and misanthropes to whom she gives a platform on her show are reprehensible. Kelly has oppressors and terror-tied operatives on her show, including representatives of the Hamas-tied Council on American (CAIR). The lovefest between Megyn Kelly and Michael Moore pulled the curtain back on the RINO news network. It was jarring.
Ever since Megyn Kelly got her mancut haircut (emulating iconic female TV personality Diane Sawyer), she has seemingly been on a mission to move to the alphabets (ABC, NBC, CBS).
Sadly, Rupert Murdoch’s left-wing sons, Tweedledee and Tweedledum (who took over after Roger Ailes was stupidly forced out) have made complete asses of themselves furiously trying to keep her. They have offered her over 20 million dollars a year. Why? She has alienated the Fox News audience by attacking Trump and shamelessly trying to curry favor with left-wing news executives at the big three.
The auction for her services never materialized, and Kelly has kicked it up several notches, making her show unwatchable. The good news? Hannity has skyrocketed, pulling even with her in the ratings and at times surpassing her.
I hope her ego gets the better of her and she goes. She will go down with that ship. We saw what happened when FOX gave her a special on the FOX Network. She bombed.
Drop Kelly and replace her with Tomi Lahren. Two birds, one stone. We the people get our kind of gal, and the Murdoch idiots get a millennial icon. Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.
Title: Challenging Breitbart's legitimacy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2016, 06:38:01 AM
"Obama Urges Soldiers to Question Trump’s Authority, ‘Criticize Our President, , ,In his final address to America’s armed forces, President Barack Obama reminded troops that once Donald J. Trump becomes president, soldiers have a duty to question his authority and criticize him.’"
Reading the actual speech shows the Breitbart headline to be spectacularly untrue. My error in taking Breitbart seriously.
Let's discuss.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 09, 2016, 09:01:54 AM
I don't have the time to sift through all the particulars. Yes, when quotes are taken out of context the meaning can be totally the opposite of what was intended.
I don't agree with some of Obama's strategy and he certainly puts it all in a way that seems to argue he is right about everything. No surprise there. So his speech is certainly not without bias.
That said, one definitely has to read Breitbart with a grain of salt as well. A lot of what they post is the same as Huffington compost just from the right not left in the sense it is out of context, distorted, exaggerated, and occasionally not true at all.
For my part I read both sides to some extent and try to find the truth that way. Sadly I sometimes conclude there is no way to know the truth or simply there is no truth. It all comes down to opinion , wishes, desires, beliefs and the rest. More so lately I keep concluding to myself that there are no answers or good answers period.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Russia hack the White House and no one reported on it
Post by: DougMacG on December 12, 2016, 08:31:31 AM
John Hinderer, Powerline:
REMEMBER WHEN THE RUSSIANS HACKED THE WHITE HOUSE’S COMPUTERS? You probably don’t. We broke the story on Power Line in October 2014, writing about it here, here, here, here, here and here. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/something-happening-here.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/something-happening-here-an-update.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/something-happening-here-contd.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/is-the-washington-press-corps-covering-up-another-obama-administration-fiasco.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/more-on-the-obama-administration-scandal-that-the-washington-press-corps-tried-to-bury.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/04/russias-invasion-of-white-house-computers-the-story-still-has-not-been-told.php
The White House’s computers were down for weeks because of the intrusion by a “foreign power,” which the administration finally identified as Russia. It wasn’t just the White House, either; it was the entire Executive Office of the President, which comprises a good chunk of the executive branch. Nor was that all: the State Department’s computer system was hacked, too.
While we pounded away at the story, the White House refused to respond to our inquiries. The Washington press corps, which must have known that the White House’s computers were out of action, maintained a discreet silence, declining to write about the Russian hack, even though many D.C. reporters no doubt followed the story on Power Line. Why the coy silence? Because it was October 2014, weeks before the midterm elections, and the story reflected poorly on the Obama administration, which didn’t even discover the intrusion itself. It turned out that American officials were alerted to the Russian hack of the White House and State Department by an unidentified ally (I’m guessing Israel).
Only when the election was safely over did news outlets like CNN report the story (“How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House”). Throughout, the Obama administration minimized the story, claiming that no harm was done and only unclassified material was accessed–an excuse that, as CNN wrote post-election, “belies the seriousness of the intrusion.”
Now, the same news outlets that refused to cover the Russian government’s hacking into White House and State Department computers and email systems try to tell us that an intrusion into Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s and John Podesta’s email accounts by someone–allegedly the same Russian government–is a story of world-historical importance. What a load of bulls–t.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 15, 2016, 10:50:01 AM
This ain't the way to rate news. Have liberals at a jounalist school label news with I guess some sort or grade?
Why should we trust this obviously liberalDemocrat guy zuckerberg. He has already , along with all the tech Gods chosen sides. He is not neutral. This is way too much power to this kid.
The only way I see it, is to have news feeds delivering information from multiple sources and political spectrums. Readers will just have to sort it out. We can't even trust our government. Look at how Obama distorts the information always in his political favor.
DNC staffers wrote questions for CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer when he interviewed Trump, new batch of 8,000 WikiLeaks emails reveals
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2016, 12:27:41 PM
"DNC staffers wrote questions for CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer when he interviewed Trump, new batch of 8,000 WikiLeaks emails reveals"
yesterday watching the poppy harlow continue harrassing every right sided guest to criticize Trump for not expressing outrage at Trump being the "only one" alive not to be mad about Russia influencing our elections all I could think of is every one of those guests should have shot back in her face the outrage anyone with half a brain should have about Clinton getting questions pre debate from CNN people. We can add the above to what right wing guest should responds the CNN obnoxious Trump smear campaign.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2016, 03:09:43 PM
:-o :-o :-o
I'm shocked, absolutely shocked!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on December 19, 2016, 05:54:16 PM
I could have sworn that we were told that these were professional journalists who shouldn't be questioned.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2016, 06:20:33 PM
Yesterday was the Poppy harlow show and today the ERin Burnett who in CNN style had guests on while talking about the the gunning down of the Russian ambassador in Turkey. Her whole focus was to get any and all guests to criticize Trump for tweeting that it was an Islamic terrorist. Perhaps they are indignant he tweets , and thus goes around them so they are annoyed.
This is their post election MO. Take anything that Trump does or says and have guests on the show and then GRILL them to say something disparaging about Trump - irregardless of the topic.
Right wing guests need to throw the hypocrisy back in their faces.
Compromise. What compromise? There is none.
Title: Fake news!
Post by: G M on December 20, 2016, 07:38:07 AM
"Getting a third term in the White House just seems to be really difficult. And Barack Obama is not going to finish with a ground-shaking economic boom. ... if the GOP takes the White House, I think the chances that they also take the House approach 100%."
Logic had it right. Polling had it wrong.
Title: Trent Franks must read the forum
Post by: ccp on December 29, 2016, 07:07:21 PM
Another famous person who read DB forum . He must have seen my post of 12/11:
*****Well what are these allegations? That Putin hacked in to both DNC and RNC and only released DNC stuff? What about the Clinton emails? I have not heard any thing alleged that disputes the information released was not true though I few Dems are of course making such suggestions. The concept that Russia may have selectively released information that exposes real corruption is one to ponder. Because if any of this is true then that basically is what they did.
*They did the job our media refuses to do. *
Would it have been ok if they just release information revealing corruption on both sides? Would it not be ok and allow the corruption to go silent? Just wondering. Maybe we should just do the same to Putin. Can we? Just release the truth.****
Title: No, Media, the Election Wasn’t ‘Hacked’ — Stop Saying It Was
Post by: G M on December 31, 2016, 07:54:45 AM
http://heatst.com/politics/media-election-hacked/
No, Media, the Election Wasn’t ‘Hacked’ — Stop Saying It Was Home Politics By Stephen Miller | 12:40 pm, December 30, 2016
When President Obama announced Thursday he was taking retaliatory measures against Russia for its role in cyber-attacks against Democratic Party institutions, the mainstream media pounced.
They listened to the Obama administration describe Russia’s “aggressive harassment,” “malicious cyber activity” and “data disclosure activities,” and quickly seized upon an ominous phrase: “election hacking.” Election hacking took off so fast that the narrative needed an attendant and drink cart accompanying it.
To be perfectly clear, there is zero evidence of actual election hacking, such as the hacking of voting machines, paper ballots or voter fraud on the part of Russia in an effort to install Donald Trump into the White House. There’s no evidence Russia employed a massive cloaking device from a secret submarine in Lake Erie, over the state of Wisconsin, where Hillary Clinton did not campaign once during the general election.
There’s no evidence Russia influenced Clinton campaign operatives to steer SEIU members on the ground away from Michigan. As of yet, there is no proof it was Russia who directed Lena Dunham to campaign in North Carolina, or the aged cast of the West Wing to stump in Ohio. There is no evidence that rural voters in Pennsylvania, whom Mrs. Clinton ignored in the final weeks of the campaign, are actually Russian spies. It is still not known whether Katy Perry is in fact a Russian agent.
If any actual electoral fraud was engineered by Putin and Russia, giving Hillary Clinton almost 3,000,000 more votes than Donald Trump is an amazing cover.
But again, none of this occurred on the day Americans went to the polls. The word “hacked,” or variations thereof, does not appear in the White House statement and only once, prefaced by “allegedly” in the DHS statement. There is no evidence of any illicit activities occurring on Election Day.
John Podesta was hacked. The election was not. Podesta’s emails were stolen, not via some sophisticated cyber operation, but through a common email phishing scam, the same ones your grandparents fall for when you catch them writing a big check to that wonderfully nice and thankful Nigerian prince.
There was no forced breach of information, or Russian agents hanging from ceilings at Langley, or stealing files from offices late at night . No one broke into the DNC and stole discs in a daring midnight raid. The information was given willfully and ignorantly by Podesta and his staff. They are the ones responsible.
If the illegal attainment of leaked information is considered “hacking the election,” then file the 2012 election under being hacked as well.
So the question becomes why is our national media intent on spreading misinformation about a “hacked election”? It certainly looks purposeful, if not downright dishonest.
On Yahoo News, a recent purveyor of fake news, the headline initially read: “US Sanctions Russia over vote hacking.” It has since been changed to the more accurate: “US hits Russia for election meddling.” Hopefully this becomes a trend, because plenty of outlets have been repeating the “hacked election” formulation.
"Vote hacking" is the #fakenews headline the media is pushing based on no evidence that Russia actually hacked votes https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-expels-35-russian-intel-agents-over-vote-193213160.html … 12:13 PM - 29 Dec 2016 787 787 Retweets 721 721 likes CNN blasted out a tweet saying “Obama issues an executive order against 6 Russian individuals and 5 Russian entities over election hacking.”
Politico’s breaking news tweet read: “White House sanctions Russia over election hacks,” as did NPR’s, stating “President Obama orders sanctions against Russian intelligence services officials in response to election hacking.” The New York Times’ headline stated: “U.S. Punishes Russia for Election Hacking, Ejecting Operatives.”
Tom Winter of NBC News tweeted out the name of an alleged suspect wanted by the FBI for his role in the “election hacking.”
NBC News: Documents & officials say Evgeniy Bogachev who is alleged to be part of election hacking has been wanted by the FBI in other cases 12:23 PM - 29 Dec 2016 629 629 Retweets 444 444 likes Matthew Dowd of ABC News, in a not-so-subtle jab at Donald Trump, tweeted: “What is more problematic for US national security: few thousand Mexicans coming across the border for work, or Russia hacking our election?
What is more problematic for US national security: few thousand Mexicans coming across the border for work, or Russia hacking our election? 12:42 PM - 29 Dec 2016 193 193 Retweets 456 456 likes It’s worth nothing, ABC News is now assisting Facebook in fact-checking newsfeeds for fake news, as is the Associated Press, which also reported on Obama’s “retaliation for election hacking.”
News organizations obsessed with a sudden new found mission of loyal fact checking and accuracy when it comes to a Donald Trump presidency apparently are letting these rules slide when it pertains to the election that put him in the White House. Whether intentional or not, the media’s misreporting appears to be influencing the public’s perception of events.
According to a study published in the Washington Post, almost one half of Hillary Clinton voters now believe that Russia hacked the election itself, specifically vote totals, despite the Obama Administration stating no such hack occurred. It’s not hard to guess why so many might have gotten that impression — they’ve been reading about a “hacked election” for weeks.
Is this a purposeful effort on behalf of mainstream outlets and the people charged with relaying information to undermine a Donald Trump presidency? Who knows? It might just be that they are using “election hacking” as shorthand for “Hey man, maybe don’t click suspicious viagra links in your gmail.”
If media outlets want to continue to sound the alarm about “fake news,” they should be more concerned with accuracy in their reporting. This looks sloppy, biased and, worst of all, malicious. On the plus side, the Obama administration should be applauded for finally coming around to the threat Russia poses even if it only took his party losing an election to do so.
Title: Huff Post upset WSJ will not call Trump lies lies
Post by: ccp on January 02, 2017, 05:04:27 AM
It was only in the last one to two years any media called any politicians' lies - lies. I even recall posting I wish that they would start using the "L" word when it is clearly that.
After 8 yrs of lying Democrats and every single media person avoiding the work "lie" it become very frustrating. Where was Huff post during 8 yrs of the lying Obama? Or the 25 yrs of lying Clintons?
Now, rather suddenly , it is imperative we call politicians (Republicans) liars.
Title: WSJ: Trump's Method to his Madness
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2017, 11:24:15 AM
By Gerald F. Seib Jan. 2, 2017 12:23 p.m. ET 249 COMMENTS
Is it method or madness?
That is the question perplexing the world as President-elect Donald J. Trump continues his unorthodox campaign-season communications habits. He tweets, apparently randomly. He wades into subjects that he could easily avoid. He picks fights.
It is a risky approach. By weighing in on all sorts of matters large and small, Mr. Trump already may be in danger of devaluing the most valuable asset any president has, which is the bully pulpit. Will any individual message from the new president have the impact he wants if it is lost in the static of running commentary?
It’s also hard to argue that a presidential communication can have the depth, texture and subtlety often required when it comes in 140 characters.
Yet it also would be a mistake to dismiss Mr. Trump’s transition-season interventions as random musings. That was a mistake his opponents made consistently through a long presidential campaign.
In fact, there seem to be specific objectives behind many of Mr. Trump’s seemingly scattershot missives and comments. Often, say those who know him, he is posturing or positioning in pursuit of broader goals. He doesn’t mind roiling the waters in the process—and, as a consequence, some of what he says isn’t to be taken literally.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who speaks regularly with Mr. Trump and is developing a lecture series and book examining Trumpism, suggests the president-elect is in this regard similar to Franklin Roosevelt, who sometimes seemed to cultivate chaos in preparing the ground for his initiatives. Mr. Gingrich also predicts the style won’t change: “My advice is to relax. It’s going to be this way for eight years.”
So what might Mr. Trump be trying to accomplish? There are three likely goals:
He is positioning himself for a negotiation or a deal. Mr. Trump has said that a good way to understand how he operates is to read his book, “The Art of the Deal,” which describes his approach to business negotiations. And in any negotiation, the opening posture isn’t the same as the bottom-line position. More From Gerald F. Seib
Ten Red-State Democrats May Hold the Balance of Power Dec. 26, 2016 Why a Russian Hacking Inquiry Is in Trump’s Best Interests Dec. 19, 2016 Listen Closely: Trump Proposes Big Mideast Strategy Shift Dec. 12, 2016 Trump Shuffles the Ideological Deck Dec. 5, 2016 Group Launches Effort to Protect Moderate Candidates Dec. 4, 2016
The best example may be the way Mr. Trump has approached China, a country with which he figures to have plenty of tough negotiations on trade and military maneuvering in the South China Sea. His opening bid came when decided to accept a call from the president of Taiwan, a step that was sure to rile the government in Beijing. He then followed with a series of tweets saying that the Chinese don’t ask for permission to take steps that irritate the U.S., implying they shouldn’t expect the new president to worry too much about keeping them happy either.
“That was the surest signal to the Chinese that things are going to be different,” says Mr. Gingrich.
Then, when the Chinese navy snatched an American underwater drone from the waters of the South China Sea, Mr. Trump, seemingly unprompted, tweeted out a message to the Chinese that the drone wasn’t that important and that they could just keep it—even as the U.S. Navy was scrambling to try to retrieve a valuable piece of sensitive equipment. The apparent goal was to lower the value of the drone in Chinese eyes, lest they think they could use it as a bargaining chip with the new president.
He is seeking to control the agenda. Early-morning tweets have a way of establishing what everyone else will be compelled to talk about that day. They also have had a way of upstaging the man who still happens to be the president, Barack Obama, annoying the White House and potentially creating confusion abroad about who really is in charge.
Thus did Mr. Trump tweet that the U.S. should veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank before that resolution was even formally debated, and that the U.S. should be prepared to enlarge its nuclear-weapons arsenal soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Russia might do the same. In both cases, the question immediately became what the new president thought as much as what the current president might do.
He is creating rabbits for others to chase. For two weeks Mr. Trump nursed along the idea that he might pick former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as his secretary of state. Ultimately, he didn’t—but he sparked a string of news stories suggesting he was reaching out to embrace former enemies, and distracting from less beneficial topics such as potential conflicts of interest in his nascent administration.
Certainly there is danger in leaving the world unsure which messages to take literally, and in trying to handle subjects as sensitive as nuclear-weapons strategy on the fly. But it’s also likely Mr. Trump knows exactly what he is doing.
Title: Pravda on the Potomac (WaPo) has $600M CIA contract???
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2017, 08:02:12 AM
Russia Today is asserting:
"WaPo refuses to add disclosure about $600M CIA contract. In 2013, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. Only 4 months later, he was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA. So the CIA has a direct connection to the Washington Post, the paper of record in our nation's capital, but they refuse to add a disclosure to stories they write about the CIA"
Is this true?
Title: WaPo's owner Bezos has BIG contract with CIA
Post by: ccp on January 03, 2017, 08:59:51 AM
This is true. From Huffington Post no less going back to 2014:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 04, 2017, 05:22:23 AM
I for one will not miss Kelly from FN. Will we see her tru colors on NBC? More feminism or Trump bashing or more Leftist leaning tendencies . I don't know. But I won't be watching NBC any more than now which is essentially not at all.
OTOH I am not sure an unabashed, "no matter what" , Trump supporter taking her place is good or not.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 07, 2017, 09:46:36 AM
Media purposely distorts Trumps firing ambassadors. Obama fired all the Bush ambassadors and I don't remember hearing a single peep about. These are not lifetime appointments. Their shift is up. Go home. No controversy here. I don't know how we can defeat the msm CNN ha become the worst of bunch. .
For the record, I have been burned more than once on FB for citing Breitbart. I am pretty fg irked.
I' d vett everything from Brietbart, it's as untrustworthy as the Washington Post.
Title: Re: WaPo takes on Breitbart
Post by: DougMacG on January 07, 2017, 12:12:39 PM
"I'd vett everything from Brietbart, it's as untrustworthy as the Washington Post."
Or the NY Times. It's a good comparison. There was Breitbart the man, deceased, a very aggressive investigative journalist. Breitbart the website is an agenda driven outlet just as eager as Wash Post and NYT to advance their narrative at the expense of accuracy. And then there is the double standard. When NYT or Wash Post gets it wrong they just run a correction - or not. When Breitbart gets it wrong they are forever deplorable and unworthy of ever citing again even when right.
Title: Media, Ministry: Kaine the tie-breaking vote in the Senate as VP, 78% chance
Post by: DougMacG on January 09, 2017, 12:08:15 PM
Media and The Left are overlapping threads. Looking back at this from the Huffington Post never gets old. )
Republicans Set To Lose Senate Control Democrats have a 78 percent chance of getting 50-plus seats in November, the HuffPost Senate model shows.
Most models give the Democratic ticket of Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) at least an 80 percent chance of winning the presidency. That would make Kaine the tie-breaking vote in the Senate as the vice president, shifting Democrats back into the majority by a 51-50 split. --------------------------------------------------------
Tim Kaine is becoming the trivia question no one can answer and Mike Pence the 46th President of the United States, with 80% certainty, lol.
Title: A professional journalist! With credentials! On guns!
Post by: G M on January 10, 2017, 06:23:48 PM
Remember, they have layers of fact checkers and editors!
Washington Post Reporter Doubles Down On Fake News About Guns
Instead of just admitting and correcting a simple reporting error about the .22 LR rifle caliber, Washington Post reporter Mike Rosenwald doubled down on his ignorance. January 10, 2017 By Sean Davis
It’s bad enough when a newspaper like the Washington Post publishes fake news, but it’s even worse when its own reporters double down on their ignorance and refuse to correct the record when blatant journalistic errors are brought to their attention.
Washington Post reporter Mike Rosenwald published a lengthy attack on efforts to remove suppressors–mufflers for firearms that can reduce the report of a gunshot by approximately 30 decibels–from the list of highly regulated items covered by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Although actual firearms can be purchased easily following an instant background check, the process of legally purchasing a suppressor, which is not a firearm and is incapable of shooting any projectiles, can take more than a year and cost hundreds of dollars above and beyond the price of the actual suppressor. Hearing protection advocates say the suppressor regulations not only make little sense, but they also lead to the infliction of needless hearing damage on those who regularly use firearms.
Instead of providing an accurate reflection of the suppressor debate and the facts surrounding it, Mike Rosenwald chose to glibly dismiss the legitimate claims and concerns of those who actually understand how firearms and suppressors work while elevating the specious claims of gun controllers who oppose any efforts to make it easier for law-abiding citizens to purchase and use suppressors for hearing protection. The most shocking assertion by Rosenwald, and one which cast significant doubt on the rest of his reporting, was that a .22 LR rifle–far and away the smallest and weakest readily available rifle caliber on the market–was actually a “high-powered rifle”:
But gun-control activists say silencers are getting quieter, particularly in combination with subsonic ammunition, which is less lethal but still damaging. They point to videos on YouTube in which silencers make high-powered rifles have “no more sound than a pellet gun,” according to one demonstrator showing off a silenced semiautomatic .22LR.
Firearms experts reacted with shock that a reporter for the Washington Post would make such an outrageous and obviously absurd claim, and that the claim would somehow survive editorial scrutiny:
The .22 LR caliber is so weak that it’s considered cruel and inhumane to hunt anything but varmints with it. Just to give you some perspective, in the picture below showing dozens of different rifle cartridges side by side, the .22 LR round is the tiny one at the very far left of the top row:
rifle-caliber-comparison
International gun control advocates don’t even go so far as to claim that .22 LR is “high-powered.” GunPolicy.org, a global gun control outfit that was run by the University of Sydney, says the term “high-powered rifle” is “used to differentiate larger-calibre (centrefire), factory-made repeating long guns from single-shot shotguns, .22 calibre rimfire rifles, and home-made firearms.”
Rather than being a “high-powered” round, .22 LR is so low-powered that it’s what many parents and instructors use when teaching young children how to shoot. That doesn’t mean it’s harmless, but there is simply no planet on which .22 LR comes even close to resembling a “high-powered” rifle cartridge. It is a nonsensical claim that instantly discredits anyone who makes it. But rather than admit error and issue a correction, Mike Rosenwald doubled down. And he doubled down in the most absurd way possible: by mocking anyone who corrected him, and then by refusing to provide any source or data to back up his absurd claim:
Nothing says journalistic integrity and trustworthy reporting like making an absurd claim, mocking everyone who called it absurd, refusing to provide any source information to back up the claim, and then telling everyone else to do the reporter’s research for him.
Unfortunately for Rosenwald, it appears that Google is actually too “high-powered” for him to use and fully understand. By his own veiled admission, Rosenwald apparently based his claim that .22 LR is a “high-powered rifle” on the fact that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) sometimes utilize the caliber in limited circumstances (there’s no evidence of any other modern military on the planet issuing .22 LR rifles for any purpose beyond varmint control or plinking). Had Rosenwald followed his own advice to use Google to verify simple facts, he would’ve learned that IDF sometimes issues .22 LR rifles in extremely limited circumstances not for combat purposes, but to kill small animals and injure violent protesters. The only reason the IDF turned to the .22 LR in the first place was because it wanted something less lethal than the standard military-issue 5.56mm round and which could be deployed at greater distances than non-lethal rubber bullets. Nothing says “high-powered” like a rifle that’s only used to injure protesters, amirite?
So to review: Washington Post reporter Mike Rosenwald made an outrageous claim with no basis in reality, mocked everyone who pointed out that his claim was absurd, doubled down on his ignorance, made another outrageous claim to support his original outrageous claim, and then promptly stepped on a rake because he was too lazy to do the simple research he snidely demanded that everyone else do on his behalf.
Earlier this week, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote a long article demanding that conservatives stop using the term “fake news” to criticize coverage from outlets like the Washington Post. I’ve got a better idea: we’ll stop using the term “fake news,” especially fake news about guns, when the Washington Post stops publishing it.
Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 13, 2017, 04:42:17 AM
How about this CNN and the rest of the pompous phonies:
Title: How to save CNN from itself
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2017, 02:08:54 PM
By JESSICA YELLINJAN. 26, 2017 Continue reading the main story Share This Page
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Photo Credit Alec Doherty
In 2004, eight years after he’d sold CNN to Time Warner, Ted Turner, the network’s founder, sounded an alarm about the dangers of corporate ownership of news organizations. Mr. Turner wrote that in his day, “we put journalism first, and that’s how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch.” In his view, “quarterly earnings obsessed” corporate owners would not have the same priorities because “the emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits.”
His warning is especially chilling today, when the integrity of the press matters more than ever. Unfortunately, in the past 20 months CNN’s management has let down its viewers and its journalists by sidelining the issues and real reporting in favor of pundits, prognostication and substance-free but entertaining TV “moments.”
Still, I believe the network can again play an essential role. At its best, CNN is a journalistic enterprise with unparalleled reach and resources, connecting its viewers with people and conflicts half a mile or half a world away.
That’s why I believe that as a condition of Time Warner’s bid to merge with AT&T, CNN should be sold to a new independent entity. This sale would also include CNN international, Headline News and its digital and related properties. Though AT&T has dismissed talk of a sale, one could be compelled by regulators. A consortium of concerned Americans — philanthropists, foundations, small-dollar donors — could fund a trust to operate an independent CNN dedicated to news in the public interest. Subscription fees from cable and other service providers, along with ad revenue, would allow the network to support itself. Continue reading the main story Recent Comments ghost867 6 minutes ago
Most of what I've seen from CNN post Trump has been surprisingly good. Like they woke up from an 8 year coma or something -____-Seriously... Brad H 6 minutes ago
It is sad how much CNN has declined. I'm tired overall of most news really being commentary or personality driven. I would like to see a... bozicek 9 minutes ago
CNN is getting criticized because it covered him more than the other Republican candidates? His poll numbers were the highest, therefore CNN...
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I became a devoted viewer of CNN in 1989, during its coverage of the standoff in Tiananmen Square. I remember my father telling me that the only reason the Chinese government didn’t massacre those kids right away was because CNN had cameras on the scene.
From Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall, from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to Hurricane Katrina, CNN provided exhaustive live, on-the-ground reporting. Its saturation coverage has had such a profound impact that there’s even a term for it: “the CNN effect,” the power to shift policy and inspire empathy by keeping eyes on unfolding events.
Consider how far CNN departed from this model in the last election. Even though CNN has many able journalists prepared to report stories and talk to voters in communities across the country, its programs were dominated by pundits in Washington and New York squabbling over tweets and polls.
From a journalistic perspective, this model poses real problems. Surrogates are held to a different standard from reporters and often given airtime even when they’ve proven to be reckless with the truth. CNN’s expert input is often of questionable value, as evidenced by the panel last Saturday night, which at one point consisted of one woman and eight men discussing the Women’s March.
But from CNN’s perspective, a pundits-on-panels model offers several benefits. To start with, it’s cost effective. On-the-ground reporting requires expensive crews, satellite trucks and travel. With far less effort, news executives can present polarized, high-drama debates that spike viewers’ outrage and short-term ratings. Most of that recent drama was centered on Donald J. Trump, who, during the early months of the campaign, got coverage from CNN that dwarfed that of the other 16 Republican contenders.
All this was about one thing, and it’s not better journalism. It’s bigger profits. Insiders have reported that CNN made more than $1 billion gross profit in 2016, at least $100 million more than the company projected.
While CNN made its numbers, it missed the story. After the election, CNN’s own media critic, Brian Stelter, rightly told the audience, “Some of you watching right now are having a very hard time trusting this channel.” And yet Time Warner’s chief executive declared 2016 a “killer year” for CNN.
Is there any reason to believe the pressure to maximize profits will decrease after AT&T spends $85 billion to buy Time Warner?
Freed of the relentless pressure to drive up profits, an independent CNN could rededicate itself to “journalism first.” Reporters could focus on informing the audience and exposing wrongdoing. This would create opportunities for journalistic rigor, risk and innovation.
There are instructive comparisons. Nonprofits like PBS and NPR often cover issues with more complexity and nuance than corporate-owned networks. The Center for Public Integrity, ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting are more fearless about holding power to account. Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
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In my 15 years as a TV reporter, seven of them at CNN, almost every time I visited a newsroom, an office on Capitol Hill or an official in the White House, CNN was on. This hasn’t changed. The network still has an outsize impact on the world of politics and media, perhaps one reason President Trump has singled out CNN in his attacks on the press.
Thanks to CNN’s innovative technology, seasoned journalists and global reach, it can again be the world’s most trusted TV news brand. But only if the coming years are different than the last.
A healthy democracy needs trusted news sources to which all citizens can turn. Given the new administration’s hostility to dissenting voices and willingness to strong-arm corporations, we need independent and responsible media outlets more than ever before. I believe that CNN could once again be the place Ted Turner envisioned and built years ago. A strong independent CNN that answers to no one but the public would be a powerful force to safeguard our democracy.
Jessica Yellin is a former chief White House correspondent for CNN.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, polling accuracy?
Post by: DougMacG on January 26, 2017, 04:27:59 PM
Real clear politics: President Trump Job Approval: Gallup 46% | Rasmussen 59% | Quinnipiac 34%
25 point spread, how can that be?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2017, 07:18:19 PM
:-o :-o :-o
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 26, 2017, 08:16:31 PM
"25 point spread, how can that be?"
maybe the numbers go up and down with the daily tweets.
Oh he tweeted this I love him. Next day he tweeted that I hate him.
Tweetle dee tweetle dum
I am glad he is in our side because otherwise I could not take 4 yrs of this.
OTOH it is hard to feel sorry for the Left after what they have been doing to us for the past 25 yrs.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 27, 2017, 07:37:28 AM
It's too early to measure, but what an amazing difference. Media report historically horrible approval at inauguration and Rasmussen measures it at 57%.
Different samples but I suspect it is a quite different way they ask the question. Making polls to move people rather than to measure movement.
Title: USA Today deceives on good guy with gun
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2017, 11:54:42 AM
https://patriotpost.us/posts/47062
Title: NBC anchor Andera Mitchell wrong/lying? again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2017, 04:18:52 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 10, 2017, 07:51:38 AM
it was certainly a surprise to me to find out what a big Leftist liberal Cronkite was after he reitred in his later years. He certainly hid his personal views very well I thought.
Not like today with many of the pundits ( oh excuse me , I mean jornolists)
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 12, 2017, 02:00:46 PM
Wasn't it a week or so ago when there were rumors Trump would not go to the WH correspondents dinner? So the libs, true to their usual deceitful from are trying to re write history and claim they were the one's who would not go. In any case the dinner has become a pig sty and should be ignored by this WH and should have been long ago as I have mentioned last few years:
Title: fall from grace
Post by: ccp on February 22, 2017, 07:57:43 AM
to bitter old man because he just cannot stomach Trump
Quit Republican party fired from Fox and now goes on MSNBC to be useful idiot
He has some good points with regards to budget def. and spending issues but still , i find it hard to stomach this guy anymore . He is a the classic beltway guy now:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2017, 11:04:39 AM
Though he is a beltway guy in many ways, many of his points have merit. There ARE some fundamental contradictions that will be put to the test. Good luck to Will at MSNBC-- maybe he will rediscover some of his animating fire in the progressive maelstrom over there.
Title: AIM takes on CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2017, 07:51:05 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 24, 2017, 03:08:57 PM
CNN true to form tries to attack Trump for leaving them out.
Why should he invite them. They are 24 /7 trying to attack him and delegitamize him. So they have the chuzpah to question him when he doesn't feel like be gracious to them.
He ain't going to win them over no matter what he does , unless he turns into a total liberal over night , so why bother.
I say good for him.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DDF on February 24, 2017, 03:17:14 PM
CNN true to form tries to attack Trump for leaving them out.
Why should he invite them. They are 24 /7 trying to attack him and delegitamize him. So they have the chuzpah to question him when he doesn't feel like be gracious to them.
He ain't going to win them over no matter what he does , unless he turns into a total liberal over night , so why bother.
I say good for him.
I echo that sentiment.
Title: What a difference eight years makes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2017, 07:27:27 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 01, 2017, 05:07:52 AM
From above article
I saw this in first paragragh:
"For crying out loud, the guy became a political fixture in the Republican Party by promoting the racist lie of birtherism."
I read this and decided not to continue reading the article .
Right the fact that Obamas past was murky his publisher noted he was born in Kenya and he refused to show us his birth certificate for years had nothing to do with it. right
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2017, 09:21:00 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 06, 2017, 07:10:54 AM
I could swear this is almost the exact same article as about one month ago trying to make a case against Reince (from the Left wing news outlet of course):
Title: NYTimes bias
Post by: DougMacG on March 14, 2017, 11:12:24 AM
In discussions with liberal friends, it came up that the NY Times has no bias. If an admitted liberal sees no bias, maybe the paper's bias matches his or her own.
Meanwhile, conservatives say they don't need to open to the opinion page of the NY Times, the opinions are all over the front page!
One part of bias is when media select stories to support their own narrative, the narrative that supports their person or agenda. An easier way for a liberal to see that is to turn to the Drudge Report or Brietbart and look at which stories tend to go to print, often stories that support Trump. But Brietbart and Drudge aren't held up by anyone as mainstream, unbiased, professional sources, the way that the NY Times, Washington Post, CBS News etc. are.
The other component of bias is to look at what doesn't get covered in 'mainstream media' such as the NY Times. The most recent examples of the last 8 years would be almost any scandal of the Obama administration. I am amazed by how many liberals who follow national news closely everyday have never heard of Fast and Furious or think IRS targeting didn't happen.
Fast and Furious to them, if it existed at all, was a botched law enforcement operation. Law enforcement? Botched? 'ya think?
You won't find a report in so-called mainstream media that doesn't mention that Eric Holder was exonerated. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/opinion/fast-furious-and-foolish.html Holder exonerated?? It was a major operation in his department, inexplicable, that happened under his watch, and he was 'exonerated' because he had no knowledge of it?? All while being held in Contempt of Congress for blocking inquiry.
But who cares about Eric Holder. The US government under President Obama sold and placed arms across national borders for no good reason with no controls on it and that killed people in Mexico and came back to kill us. If this happened today, every story would point to Trump and the "Trump Administration", front page, and he would face impeachment and resignation pressures. Does anyone doubt that?
Then there was Benghazi talking points and after the election we learn they deserve 'investigation'. Investigation?? Did they look at Hillary's emails or the President's unsecured messages to her unsecured server? No. They had no clue and the administration had no investigation, only blocked the ones in Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/us/politics/feinstein-to-investigate-benghazi-talking-points.html The Monday morning headline after the Sunday morning talk show episode should have read: "Obama Administration lied to the Nation About Terror Attack That Killed Ambassador" That is, unless the NY Times really didn't know what really happened a week after the attack. We know who put Susan Rice up to that; the President and Secretary of State made the same false insinuations.
Skip to the largest scandal of the Obama administration, IRS targeting. Since at least 1791, equal treatment under the law has been the law of the land and that liberty may not be denied without due process. (cf. 5th amendment) And yet it was - without consequence. I hate Hitler and Nazi analogies but who else, maybe the communists ruling China, forcibly stops their political opponents from organizing and participating in opposition to their own reelection. Nowhere is this allowed in the world of countries we consider to have consent of the governed, except in the US, under Obama, and under the watchful eye if our mainstream media. Again, the head of the department and the head of the nation are exonerated for having no knowledge of what happened under their direction, and that was determined by having no investigation.
Hundreds and hundreds of conservative groups were blocked from equal political participation by force of law while the IRS commissioner was cleared for visits to the White House 157 times, compared with his predecessor visiting twice - yet no one had any knowledge. And no one paid a price. Lois Lerner plead the 5th, meaning what? The answers to the questions would all incriminate her. And the scandal died there.
The IRS admitted it (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/irs-admits-targeting-conservatives-for-tax-scrutiny-in-2012-election/2013/05/10/3b6a0ada-b987-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html?utm_term=.9ba5c260fbbc) and the NY Times prints this: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/us/politics/republicans-call-for-irs-inquiry-after-disclosure.html "I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives gives G.O.P an Issue to Seize on"
The GOP may gain some political advantage from having been victim of the worst political crime of our republic? That's the story?? And it's in the "politics" section of the NY Times?! Is that what deprivation of unalienable fundamental rights is, political?
Did they then go out and interview ANYONE about what it felt like to be inside one of the 426 groups admittedly blocked? NO. http://thehill.com/policy/finance/282307-irs-targeted-426-groups-report
I wonder if the New York Times covered the Japanese-American internment camp chapter in our history with a headline about what political advantage these victims might gain from it?!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Rachel Maddow felony
Post by: DougMacG on March 16, 2017, 06:40:46 AM
Unauthorized disclosure of a tax return is a felony.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 16, 2017, 11:07:13 AM
a) the felony would be by the IRS agent, not Maddow;
b) in that the actual document apparently was stamped "client copy", there is a plausible inference that the document came from Team Trump, thus no felony;
c) yes there are journalists who solicit felonious behavior by government employees
Title: Twoweeksagonews.com
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2017, 10:16:57 PM
As recommended on Tucker Carlson-- this site looks quite promising!
www.twoweeksagonews.com
Title: FOX pulls Napolitano
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2017, 09:22:38 AM
Title: MSNBC and Sean Spicer
Post by: ccp on March 29, 2017, 05:28:05 PM
Spicer rightly stands up to reporter's attack line of questioning and of course he is being racist sexist and the rest and the criminal who lost the last election is already at it again running for '20:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2017, 01:20:09 PM
Same pattern. Have your party members show up to a "town hall" with scripted points and then scream and yell and complain , tip off local LEFTIST media so they can dutifully show up to tape the whole thing and then post all over the Associated depressed airwaves to pump up the "resistance and hatred " for Republicans :
Same pattern. Have your party members show up to a "town hall" with scripted points and then scream and yell and complain , tip off local LEFTIST so they can dutifully show up to tape the whole thing and then post all over the Associated depressed airwaves to pump up the "resistance and hatred " for Republicans :
hid their knowledge that Susan Rice was involved in Trump surveillance and release of names: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-03/cernovich-explains-how-he-learned-about-susan-rice We all know the leftist media is totally dishonest and cover for their LEFTIST pols.
The media was sitting on these stories??
That's how Drudge broke through. He had sources in news rooms, published what they wouldn't - starting with the Lewinsky affair.
As this story breaks out, it raises more and more questions. Who in the administration knew? PRESIDENT OBAMA, for one, and who knew in the media - playing along with the left talking points, like Candy Crowley after Benghazi.
It is quite sad that a guy like Donald Trump turns out to be more honest than the New York Times, Bloomberg and CBS combined.
'Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and it all makes sense.' - Instapundit
Should read, dishonest Democratic operatives with bylines, but maybe that is redundant.
Title: Re: Media or the 'right' get it wrong too, Tucker Carlson, Peggy Noonan
Post by: DougMacG on April 06, 2017, 07:09:46 AM
Stop using false facts and fake news of the left. Famous people NOT reading the forum. Please see economics and political economics threads for the debunking of Piketty-Saez. Also the implication that a penalizing investment doesn't hurt income from labor is denial of science. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Tucker Carlson & Peggy Noonan Mimic Piketty & Saez By ALAN REYNOLDS https://www.cato.org/blog/tucker-carlson-peggy-noonan-mimic-thomas-piketty-emmanuel-saez
In a recent Wall Street Journal column defending Obamacare 3.8% surtax on investment income on joint returns above $250,000, Peggy Noonan ends by quoting Tucker Carlson’s Fox News interview with Paul Ryan which questioned the now-suspended health plan’s elimination of that surtax:
“Looking at the last election, was the message of that election really, ‘We need to help investors?’ I mean, the Dow is over 20,000. Are they really the group that needs the help?…“The overview here is that all the wealth, basically, in the last 10 years, has stuck to the top end. That’s one of the reasons we’ve had all the political turmoil, as you know. And so, kind of a hard sell to say ‘Yeah, we’re gonna repeal Obamacare, but we’re gonna send more money to the people who’ve already gotten the richest over the last 10 years.’ I mean, that’s what this does, no? I’m not a leftist, it’s just—that’s true.”
Mr. Carlson used the word “wealth” rather than income. He said, “all the wealth … in the last 10 years, has stuck to the top end.” He surely meant income, however, since the latest wealth estimate from the Survey of Consumer Finance was in 2013, and wealth of the top 1%, like income of the top 1%, clearly fell from 2007 to 2013. Despite “shared prosperity” Clinton campaign chatter, there were no gains to share. John Weicher at the Hudson Institute notes that, “Between 2007 and 2013, the poor became poorer, but so did the rich and the people in between.”
Tucker Carlson is not a leftist and neither is Peggy Noonan. Yet to define what is “true” about income growth over 10 years, they are relying wholeheartedly on the socialist team of French economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
When media celebrities disparage the “top end” they do not mean Fox News anchors (who earn millions); they mean the “Top 1%” who earned more than $442,900 in 2015 according to Piketty and Saez. When claiming all the gains over the last 10 years have “stuck to” the top 1%, Carlson appears to have accepted the same source Hillary Clinton abused when she claimed “more than 90 percent of [income] gains have gone to the top 1 percent.”
What “stuck to the top end,” to use Tucker Carlson’s phrase, is the Top 1% share of gains since 2009. Prior losses are forgotten. The “last 10 years” is simply redefined as starting with 2009, not 2007.
In the latest version of this ruse, Saez says, “Top 1% families … capture[d] 52% of total real income growth per family from 2009-2015.” Of the many deceptions the Piketty-Saez team has inflicted on us over the years, this one may well be the most politically popular and most economically ridiculous. It has fooled many fools.
What goes unmentioned, is that the Top 1% first “captured” 49% of the losses from 2007 to 2009. Students of New Math might imagine the 52% gain from 2009 to 2015 compensated for the 49% loss from 2007 to 2009, but that deserves an “F” grade (because the 52% gain is calculated from a much smaller base).
Avg Income of Top 1 Percent
The graph shows what actually happened to average pretax incomes of the Top 1%, as estimated by Piketty and Saez.
From 2007 to 2015, average real incomes of the Top 1% fell by 11.9%, even before taxes.
Top incomes fell much more after taxes because top tax rates were increased from 35% to 39.6% in 2013, the arbitrary and discriminatory 1990 PEP/Pease limits on exemptions and deductions were restored, and an extra 3.8% Obamacare surtax was inflicted on those supposedly privileged stockholders.
When conservative media commentators rely on deceptive leftist statistics to make their points, they might as well be leftists.
Title: Stand back, professional journalists at work!
Post by: G M on April 07, 2017, 01:08:23 PM
Layers of fact checkers and editors! With credentials!
PolitiFact Retracts ‘Mostly True’ Ruling That U.S. Removed ‘100 Percent’ of Syria’s Chemical Weapons 'Subsequent events have proved John Kerry wrong'
BY: Alex Griswold April 6, 2017 10:56 am
Fact-checking website PolitiFact on Wednesday retracted a 2014 article that found it "Mostly True" the Obama administration helped broker a deal that successfully removed "100 percent" of chemical weapons from Syria.
"We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out," then-Secretary of State John Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in July 2014. Kerry was referring to a deal the U.S. and Russia struck in September 2013 in which the Russians agreed to help confiscate and then destroy Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile.
When making its ruling, PolitiFact cited a statement from Ahmet Üzümcü, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
"The last of the remaining chemicals identified for removal from Syria were loaded this afternoon aboard the Danish ship Ark Futura," Üzümcü said in June 2014.
In the end, PolitiFact called Kerry's claim "Mostly True" because there were still discrepancies between how many chemical weapons Syria claimed to have and how many outside observers claimed the country had.
"There are still 12 former chemical weapon production facilities which need to be destroyed," one human rights worker told the site.
Nearly three years after Kerry's comment, a chemical weapons attack devastated a rebel-controlled village in northern Syria, killing somewhere between 70 and 100 noncombatants, including dozens of children. The United States has fingered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as the perpetrator of the attack.
The next day, PolitiFact pulled its earlier fact-check "because we now have many unanswered questions."
"We don't know key details about the reported chemical attack in Syria on April 4, 2017, but it raises two clear possibilities: Either Syria never fully complied with its 2013 promise to reveal all of its chemical weapons; or it did, but then converted otherwise non-lethal chemicals to military uses," the site wrote.
"One way or another, subsequent events have proved Kerry wrong," PolitiFact concluded.
Title: Re: Stand back, professional journalists at work! PolitiFact
Post by: DougMacG on April 09, 2017, 08:16:24 AM
We already knew these phony 'fact checkers' are Democrat operatives with self-appointed titles, but this kind of thing exposes that fact check for everyone.
Who awards truth to something like the Clinton Administration ending nuclear weapons in North with words and gifts the Obama Administration ending the nuclear threat in Iran with words and cash, or believing that Putin was going to remove weapons from his Middle East ally?
Only a dishonest partisan could believe those kinds of statements.
You can keep your doctor and keep your health plan if you like it too. 'We are fact checkers and we know it's true because we want to believe it and our Democratic leaders said it is so.' A better indication is that they are lying when their lips move.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on April 09, 2017, 08:53:20 AM
"Who awards truth to something like the Clinton Administration ending nuclear weapons in North with words and gifts the Obama Administration ending the nuclear threat in Iran with words and cash, or believing that Putin was going to remove weapons from his Middle East ally?"
With the horrors yet to come, this will be Obama's true legacy.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, The Dopes at Snopes
Post by: DougMacG on April 10, 2017, 10:13:58 AM
"Who awards truth to something like the Clinton Administration ending nuclear weapons in North with words and gifts the Obama Administration ending the nuclear threat in Iran with words and cash, or believing that Putin was going to remove weapons from his Middle East ally?"
With the horrors yet to come, this will be Obama's true legacy.
From famous people reading the forum to just great minds thinking alike...
While we were writing about the partisan peabrains at PolitiFact, Steven Hayward at Powerline followed up with a post called "The Dopes at Snopes". )
He writes about the gender pay inequity over at Thin Lizzies's office (Elizabeth Warren) where they pay women 71 cents to the men's dollar. They use all the same logic to justify Elizabeth Warren's misogyny that applies to the economy as a whole, why the whole fake news issue is bogus:
Fairly comparing pay rates between men and women who work in Senator Warren’s office is therefore a challenge because not many of her staffers hold the same job titles, and even among those who do, pay discrepancies between men and women are not obvious when education and experience are factored in.
That explanation should be used to give Warren 4 pinnochios, not against her critics pointing out her hypocrisy.
It's a shame the self appointed fact checkers are no better at it and no more accurate or unbiased than the rest of the media and politicians they cover.
Title: Peggy Noonan wins Pulitzer
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2017, 05:39:18 AM
Title: Re: Brett Stephens - no loss
Post by: DougMacG on April 13, 2017, 10:43:04 AM
but also a Hillary Clinton voter
Stephens did not say he voted for Hillary; Levin is saying he helped her by not supporting Trump.
Trump gave plenty of reasons to doubt him. Hadn't heard of the nuclear triad, agreed with Bernie Sanders and moveon.org on Iraq, dispose of NATO, etc. Trump has educated himself and shifted since. Trump was wrong on his economic analysis that won him the rust belt, Mexico, China and bad trade deals are the reasons for your troubles. No, your Michigan problems reside in Washington DC and Lansing and they are excess taxation and over-regulation. Among Trump's character revealed was labeling opponent Carly "That Face!" [and Ted, "lying Ted"; he paid no taxes because "I'm Smart"]. Not hard to be turned off that candidate.
Stephens is a foreign policy guy. If you ignore the campaign and look at their histories, Clinton was the hawk and Trump was the Ron Paul.
Also beware of Stephens' immigration weakness, but my experience is that Bret Stephens is normally a great foreign policy thinker and writer - with the exception of the areas where I disagree with him. )
Mark Levin is tough on people who disagree with him on anything. Just hated Rubio, for example. Turned against Trump too.
In the Levin link 'Trump’s GOP has left me', Stephens ends with: "If I can’t get my Grand Old Party back, I’d rather help build a new one."
That is exactly what Levin says every broadcast evening.
In the other link, he criticizes Ted Cruz for running to win the right-most side of the Republican party instead of running to win the nation. That is pretty much what I was saying then even though I agree with Ted Cruz on issues.
Title: ABC apologizes after being caught editing deceptively
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 13, 2017, 09:39:15 PM
Title: Say it ain't so Bill
Post by: ccp on April 19, 2017, 12:19:32 PM
I will miss O'Reilly. :cry: Didn't always agree with him but usually did.
We all knew he was a major egotist but if he was really abusing women like Ailes was then his departure is definitely for the best. He will make a lot of women and lawyers rich now...........
I am thinking this Fox news person would be a great replacement :-):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trish_Regan
She is really good on the Fox news business station. And she seems to be on the the right politically.
Title: Glenn Beck on Bill O'Reilly and FOX
Post by: DougMacG on April 19, 2017, 02:08:40 PM
I'm no fan of Bill O'Reilly and I don't watch cable, but a company settling lawsuits is not evidence, and the most recent claim is not credible.
Glenn Beck laid this out on radio this morning. He went through the same thing. They declared they would get Bill O'Reilly for his views before they found out what he might have done wrong. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity next. The group is Media Matters and their mentor is Bill Clinton, not exactly a symbol for fighting sexual harassment.
No link but check glennbeck.com or the blaze for the story if interested.
Title: POTH goes after O'Reilly and FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2017, 09:02:11 PM
The JTA's profile of Bret Stephens posted below is a largely fair and accurate portrait of the extraordinary career of a fantastic writer. But I have one problem with it. I have a problem with the article's strange, unfair and distorted portrayal of the Post's former publisher Tom Rose. During his tenure as publisher of the Jerusalem Post, in 2002 Tom Rose hired Bret Stephens, then a young editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal in Europe, to serve as editor of the Jerusalem Post, a major newspaper with a global audience. This would have been an enormous promotion for anyone. It was certainly a career maker for a 28 year old writer. Bret Stephens in turn hired me to serve as a senior columnist and deputy managing editor of the paper. This too was a major development in my career. Until then, I had no significant exposure to the English language audience. I was then serving as a senior writer for Makor Rishon. I was then, and remain still today, deeply appreciative to Bret for recruiting me to the paper. There are many things that I appreciate about Bret, beyond the fact that he hired me. The role he played in getting Tom fired is not one of them. This is very old news, and would not be worth recalling, except that strangely, for no apparent reason, the 13 year old episode was highlighted in the JTA profile of Bret, on the eve of his move from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. Over the years that passed since his departure from the paper, Tom and I struck up of friendship. We haven't spoken for several months, and it is important for me to note that at he did not, and never would, ask me to write about this. In fact, I imagine he wouldn't want me to say anything at all. But like I said, we haven't spoken for awhile so I am doing what I think is right, under these strange circumstances. Tom was hired by Hollinger to serve as the Post's publisher with the specific duty to de-unionize the paper. Not surprisingly, a lot of people hated him for it. Bret's hire was also part of the transformation the Post underwent under Tom's leadership from a cumbersome, expensive, local Israeli paper, owned by the Histadrut labor union if I am not mistaken, into a lean, global publication, that ran on a streamlined budget. If Tom hadn't been there, Bret would not have received the opportunity of his lifetime, (and he wouldn't have hired me, giving me an opportunity of my lifetime). Tom, like Bret, (and like me), has his share of rough edges. He is however, a brilliant, exceedingly competent professional and a wonderful person. He doesn't deserve to be assaulted again, 13 years later in a weird attempt to provide a foil for Bret's many good qualities. It is unfair and it feels vindictive. I have to say that I am mystified at the motive. I wish Bret the best of luck at the New York Times. He is a gifted writer and he did me a great service 15 years ago when he asked me to join him at the Post.
Title: Rush on the underlying theme of the O'Reilly affair
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2017, 06:31:34 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 21, 2017, 07:43:17 PM
EVen Michael Savage who generally makes no secret that he does not like OReilly (he calls him the leprechaun) was incensed on how the LEFT and the class (less) action lawyers can get away with destroying someone with allegations He was not defending OReilly if he did harass women only that there is no due process. He is already guilty in the court of public opinion and he will be forever tarnished over this. He also added most of what we have heard is so over blown.
My God it is alleged among others he committed the following "crimes": he called somebody blond he called someone hot chocolate he called someone attractive
Title: Tucker Carlson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2017, 12:26:03 PM
Title: Leftist Fascism Reaches New Lows in Blatant Thuggery, as "Mainstream" Left Cover
Post by: G M on April 27, 2017, 05:48:13 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/369500.php
April 27, 2017 Leftist Fascism Reaches New Lows in Blatant Thuggery, as "Mainstream" Left Covers Up for Them and Blames the Right This is the post I delayed because I didn't know how to write it.
I won't write it. I'll just link the stories.
I will just repeat my urgent warning and threat: The rules you make for us are the rules you also make for yourselves. If you're comfortable with that, then I suggest you begin making serious preparations for the hell you are determined to unleash on this once-peaceful country.
Leftist "Anti-Fascist" Criminals Threaten to Attack and Drag Off Any Republicans in Portland's Annual Rose Parade; City Cancels Event. I don't know if they'll also be mounting a serious investigation into who made these threats and then prosecuting them to the worst the law will allow. I suspect they'll do neither.
Here's Althouse on it.
The New York Times previously blamed Milo and the rightwing for making the leftwing riot and physically attack people in Berkeley. They now do so again in the case of threats against the safety of author Ann Coulter.
Ms. Coulter, the acid-penned conservative writer, canceled a planned appearance on Thursday after the political organizations that invited her rescinded their support over fears of violence. "It's a sad day for free speech," she said. Howard Dean and Sarah Silverman are "acid-tongued." (Not penned; they don't write.) If rightwing criminals threatend to assault them over speech, would the New York Times be searching for what they have recently called "false equivalency" between the two competing sides-- one side that says they have the right to speak without fear of assault, and another side that says if they speak they'll be physically attacked?
Jim Ruttenberg specifically called for an end of this practice of seeking "balance" were there was none -- in the New York Times itself. Of course, he meant that in the sense of not giving "balance" to conservative claims when leftist claims were so obviously the truth and All Conservatives Are Liars.
Notice they've gone back to seeking "balance" when the obvious malefactors are their fellow violent, fascist progressives.
But across the country, conservatives like her are eagerly throwing themselves into volatile situations like the one in Berkeley, emboldened by a backlash over what many Americans see as excessive political correctness, a president who has gleefully taken up their fight, and liberals they accuse of trying to censor any idea they disagree with. The situation adds up to a striking reversal in the culture wars, with the left now often demanding that offensive content be excised from public discourse and those who promote it boycotted and shunned.
A striking reversal? "Now"?
The left has been doing this with increasing militancy since the 1980s.
How fucking old and out of touch do you have to be to call this "striking reversal" as happening "now"?
It has happened and happened and grown worse every year precisely because the alleged "responsible voices" of the left, who could be expected to chastise their misbehaving correligionists and tell them to stop, have in fact covered up for them every step of the way, thereby tacitly approving of them and encouraging them to go further.
Remember the "Climate of Hate," where it was posited that somehow Sarah Palin had inspired a deranged man obsessed with the mind-control patterns of regular English grammar to shoot a Representative who didn't take his theories about grammar seriously?
If you believe in a "Climate of Hate" encouraging violence from more excitable members of a political cult, then you must also believe that the left's endless justification and excuse-making for violence -- when not openly calling for it-- creates a Climate of Hate on the left for visiting violence on the right.
You can't deny that. It's non-deniable.
What the Times and the left are doing, therefore, is simply supporting the Climate of Hate, and hoping to cause violence. So long as it's directed against the right people.
The rest of the article (so far as I could read) is less egregious than that opening -- claiming the victim provoked the attacker -- but that rhetorical excuse for political violence is quite enough.
I'm pretty sure that if Rush Limbaugh defended, justified, and make excuses for right wing gang violence the Times would not say the left "provoked" them by "throwing themselves" into "volatile situations" (like state-funded college campuses).
The mayor of Berkeley -- who liked a By Any Means Necessary Facebook posts (BAMN being one of the violent groups, as their name would imply), and who has ordered police to stand down and let BAMN and antifa attack citizens at random -- says that both antifa and the right which baits people into assaulting them are mutually to blame, and Mother Jones, naturally enough, agrees.
Keep your eye open for when Mother Jones speaks in the passive voice -- no human actor specified -- and when it gets suddenly specific about a human actor involved in an outcome.
On the eve of what was shaping up to be the latest in a string of violent clashes in Berkeley, California-- When a mugger attacks a citizen for his money, it's a "clash," but usually we do note who criminally attacked the other to start this "clash."
--between militant far-right and far-left activists, Who's throwing M80s and bricks into crowds? Eh, doesn't matter. Niggling detail. There's a Higher Truth to be discovered.
-- Mayor Jesse Arreguin vowed that police would act aggressively to quash illegal behavior. "Berkeley is about the free exchange of ideas, but that's not what's happening," he said in an interview at City Hall late Wednesday. Why? Who is it who is stopping the free exchange of ideas -- Ann Coulter, or the terrorists who threatened to harm her for speaking her ideas?
"So I think going forward we are going to need to have a more visible police presence at these incidents and intervene." A confession that the standing orders have been to let Antifa attack whoever it likes, and that the only problem he sees her is that the attacked have begun counter-attacking.
Protesters who engage in violence or vandalism, Arreguin warned, will be arrested and prosecuted "to the fullest extent of the law." Which ones? You only arrested one guy at the Milo riot. I have a feeling you'll be arresting more of the attacked than the attacking.
Ever since a planned speech at the University of California-Berkeley in February by far-right media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was canceled amid a rash of violence and property destruction,
Amidst a rash of violence and property destruction which self-generated itself with no identifiable human agents behind it.
.... Berkeley has become a prime target for right-wing groups mobilizing under the banner of "free speech" ... Ah. The right-wing is targeting Berkeley. Under the banner of quote-unquote "free speech."
...and trolling political opponents with bigoted rhetoric. They can't name who is committing the violence and property damage, but they're Johnny on the Spot when it comes to Naming and Shaming those guilty of "trolling."
Alt-right and other far-right demonstrators have repeatedly scuffled with antifa counterprotesters in the city, most recently on April 15, when protracted brawls led to the arrest of 20 people. They mutually "scuffled." No one, say, began attempting to storm the state where permitted speakers were legally speaking.
They add this, after noting Ann Coulter cancelled her appearance, but "fanned the flames" of wishing to speak without being physically assaulted:
alt-right agitators have vowed to cause mayhem whether she shows or not. Again, Mother Jones finds its voice in being able to identify the trouble-makers, a task it found strangely elusive when it came to BAMN and antifa violence earlier.
And is antifa also vowing to battle in the streets?
I guess we'll never really know. It's just these alt-righters, I guess.
Title: Bret Stephens speaks truth in popping cherry at POTH
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2017, 02:59:04 PM
I subscribe to it but I am tired of the progressive onslaught influence in nearly *every* article . Either about railing at white people , men, climate change, race , and the rest.
I am reading Goldberg's introduction article for this month issue about genius and she turns it into a rant about/against white men . See for yourself:
National Geographic: now another liberal rag though with beautiful pictures
Now along with reading my medical journals I have to be forced to see liberal dogma on a daily basis. I don't have to turn on MSNBC or CNN but I can't avoid all this media onslaught for all angles. I can't get medical updates by listening to talk radio. :cry:
Title: Re: National Geographic: now another liberal rag
Post by: G M on April 30, 2017, 10:07:07 AM
I subscribe to it but I am tired of the progressive onslaught influence in nearly *every* article . Either about railing at white people , men, climate change, race , and the rest.
I am reading Goldberg's introduction article for this month issue about genius and she turns it into a rant about/against white men . See for yourself:
National Geographic: now another liberal rag though with beautiful pictures
Now along with reading my medical journals I have to be forced to see liberal dogma on a daily basis. I don't have to turn on MSNBC or CNN but I can't avoid all this media onslaught for all angles. I can't get medical updates by listening to talk radio. :cry:
Title: Re: National Geographic: now another liberal rag
Post by: DougMacG on May 01, 2017, 06:59:06 AM
Strange to live in a world where the Scientific American, National Geographic and New England Journal of Medicine have all been destroyed by leftism.
Having control of all the networks and major newspapers, and Google and Facebook, is not enough; now they are taking over Fox news too. You have to find conservative media by word of mouth. Yet people still seem to know the left is wrong. Dems and leftism has lost 10 points or more of support in many states since the last leftist takeover.
Title: Re: Media, Colbert vulgarity on Trump
Post by: DougMacG on May 03, 2017, 01:43:31 PM
Remember when 'comedians' at least pretended to have balance? Neither do I.
What Caused Venezuela's Collapse Is No Mystery — Except To Economically Illiterate Journalists
Economics: Why is it that reporters keep scratching their heads about Venezuela's descent into extreme poverty and chaos? The cause is simple. Socialism. End it and you will end the misery.
When the New York Times wrote about Venezuela's ongoing collapse a year ago, it described how the country was suffering "painful shortages … even of basic foods," and how "electricity and water are being rationed, and huge areas of the country have spent months with little of either."
Here is how the Times explained the reason for Venezuela's dire situation: "The growing economic crisis (was) fueled by low prices for oil, the country's main export; a drought that has crippled Venezuela's ability to generate hydroelectric power; and a long decline in manufacturing and agricultural production."
There's no mention — not one — of the fact that Hugo Chávez tried to turn Venezuela into a socialist paradise, policies that his successor Nicolás Maduro has continued. The Times' coverage is par for the course.
Venezuela was never a model free market economy. A couple decades ago, the Heritage Foundation gave it a 59.8 ranking on its Index of Freedom — which measures how free or government-controlled an economy is. That put it at the edge of being "moderately free."
Then Chavez nationalized the oil industry, agricultural operations, transportation, power generation, telecommunications, steel production, banks. Today Venezuela is the third least free economy in the world, ahead of only Cuba and North Korea.
As a direct result of those actions, Venezuela went from being on the wealthiest countries in South America — one rich in natural resources — to a country where people are literally fighting for scraps of food. Last year, Venezuela's economy shrank 18%. The unemployment rate is 25% and climbing. Inflation could reach 2,068% next year. Riots have become routine.
As we have noted many times in this space, it is socialism, not oil prices or the weather or greedy businessmen or any other such factor that's to blame for Venezuela's economic crisis. This is what socialism produces. Always and everywhere. It is as close to an iron law of economics as there can be.
Yet reporters continue to obfuscate, if not totally ignore, this economic reality when they try to explain to readers what is going on down there.
The Los Angeles Times says that it's only "anti-government protesters" who "blame Venezuela's economic crisis on the policies of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez." While "supporters of the government say the culprits are a drop in international oil prices as well as 'corrupt' business leaders."
There's no attempt made by the reporter to say who is right.
An explainer by the Associated Press says the "oil boom and bust" is to blame for the crisis. "The plunge in world oil prices has left the government owing money across the board, from foreign airlines to oil service companies. Most of the anti-poverty gains made under Chavez have been erased and people are grappling with severe food and medicine shortages."
USA Today said that the reason Venezuelans were resorting to hunting dogs and pigeons for food was because "although Venezuela has the world's largest petroleum reserves, the country has suffered from a combination of lower oil prices and tight limits on dollar purchases that have cut off vital food and most other imports. The result has been a plunging economy and the world's highest inflation rate — above 700%."
Others blamed a drought for the country's problems. The Wall Street Journal reported last spring that "the newer hardships are water scarcity and increasingly critical power blackouts — a byproduct of the lack of water in a country dependent on hydroelectric dams."
Why do reporters ignore the obvious? We'd surmise that it's largely because liberal journalists are infatuated with the idea of socialism.
Here's how the AP lovingly described Chavez: "a political outsider promising to upset the old order and funnel some of the country's enormous oil wealth to the poor. Poverty rates fell sharply during his administration, and many people continue to see him as a beloved Robin Hood figure who gave them houses, free health care, better education and a place at the table in government."
That list of "accomplishments" reads like the Democratic Party platform.
It is their unwillingness to admit that socialism can't work that drives so many mainstream journalists to look for something, anything, else to blame when socialist economies invariable fail.
Title: Re: The mystery of Venezuela's collapse
Post by: DougMacG on May 08, 2017, 01:24:37 PM
quote author=G M http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/what-caused-venezuelas-collapse-is-no-mystery-except-to-economically-illiterate-journalists/ What Caused Venezuela's Collapse Is No Mystery — Except To Economically Illiterate Journalists ...
More on that: As Venezuela Implodes, NBC Avoids Naming the Cause: Socialism http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2017/05/07/venezuela-implodes-nbc-avoids-naming-cause-socialism
Leftists should be proud of what their policies wrought. Not just an end to obscene prosperity, but also genocidal weight loss. ---------------
I like this line from GM's post: The list of Chavez / Maduro accomplishments reads like a Democratic Party Platform.
The economic results are relevant to the US political economic argument.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 08, 2017, 02:14:09 PM
It is hard to believe Sally Yates was acting AG for all of , what, 11 days ! One would think she was Eisenhower who led us through WW2 for goodness sakes with the front and center media/Democrat part circus.
So she claims she warned Trump about Flynn who has long been FIRED and long gone.
So what ?
What is she some sort of hero?
So because some obvious partisan stated he should be fired Trump was to take her biased word for it?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on May 08, 2017, 02:27:51 PM
It is hard to believe Sally Yates was acting AG for all of , what, 11 days ! One would think she was Eisenhower who led us through WW2 for goodness sakes with the front and center media/Democrat part circus.
So she claims she warned Trump about Flynn who has long been FIRED and long gone.
So what ?
What is she some sort of hero?
So because some obvious partisan stated he should be fired Trump was to take her biased word for it?
Title: JW on the case
Post by: ccp on May 08, 2017, 03:01:29 PM
Given their track record, it should be pretty good.
Title: James Clapper Won't Give Straight Answer on Whether He Gave Unclassified Informa
Post by: G M on May 08, 2017, 03:39:26 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/369664.php
May 08, 2017 James Clapper Won't Give Straight Answer on Whether He Gave Unclassified Information to a Reporter to Plant a Story Clapper repeatedly said he did not give classified information to a reporter, "knowingly or wittingly."
But he didn't say if he gave unclassified information.
I proposed on Twitter he should be asked just that.
Follow Baby Goat Alliance @AceofSpadesHQ Good question for Clapper: is he a source for the partisan Democrat shills at @CNN, whether of clasified or non-classified info? 12:00 PM - 8 May 2017 10 10 Retweets 13 13 likes
Senator Grassley did ask. He asked something like, "Have you ever given information of an unclassified nature to a reporter to get a story planted in the newspaper?"
Clapper's answer was -- and this is just from memory, but this is close -- "Uhhhhmmmmmmmm... well if it's not classified, it's not leaking."
The entire hall exploded in gales of laughter -- which I take to be "You've got to be fucking kidding me" laughter, not "Yeah, you tell 'em!" laughter.
Watch this story -- also watch the media not cover this big moment.
NBC did, in a tweet, but I don't think you'll see this moment on the evening newscasts:
Follow NBC News ✔ @NBCNews "Unclassified is not leaking": James Clapper when asked if he'd ever leaked unclassified information to the press 1:49 PM - 8 May 2017 218 218 Retweets 464 464 likes
They're going to bury this story, just like they bury stories about other people they feel, for some strange reason, must be protected.
Almost as if they have personal reasons they won't report on questions as to whether Clapper fed them information.
You will also note the CNN reporters -- who feel strangely compelled to flack for Clapper -- mounting pre-emptive defenses of him.
Follow Jake Tapper ✔ @jaketapper Context for the young'uns: Every president tries to make the story How Did The Scandal Get Leaked instead of How Did The Scandal Happen? 5:45 AM - 8 May 2017 2,997 2,997 Retweets 8,269 8,269 likes
Context for anyone who's stupid enough to go to Jake Tapper for "analysis:"
Anytime there's a leak about a Republican, the media's story is about the (negative) contents of the leak.
Anytime there's a leak about a Democrat, the media ignores the contents of the leak and focuses with laser precision and intensity about what terrible skullduggery and crimes were committed in the process of leaking.
Does Jake Tapper remember Valerie Plame? She got her liberal husband the gig of reviewing the WMD evidence in Iraq -- did the media concentrate on that, or about how this dastardly leak occurred?
Quite very much the latter. They campaigned openly for a special prosecutor to find out who leaked this and ultimately got one -- and a prosecution, and a conviction.
Is Jake Tapper now calling for a special counsel to investigate how classified information and surveillance on unmasked Americans made it to the press?
No, he's not. Now he's warning the "young'uns" against being distracted by attempts to ask questions into exactly how so much information that passed across IC desks made it on to the air at CNN.
Even more brazenly, CNN's John Roberts grunting hunched silverback gorilla John King and Dana Bash accused Trump of witness intimidation for firing out a tweet undermining Sally Yates:
CNN's John King did not mince words while discussing President Donald Trump's Monday morning tweet about Sally Yates's upcoming congressional testimony. "I used to cover the courts a lot," he said. "A lawyer would call that witness intimidation."
CNN colleague Dana Bash chimed in by saying, "Completely!" before adding, "from the President of the United States!"
Here was Trump's tweet-- and I think this is a good question:
Follow Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel. 7:43 AM - 8 May 2017 11,260 11,260 Retweets 37,954 37,954 likes
Theory: CNN doesn't want to know who leaked because they already know who leaked, and they don't want to go to jail shielding their sources like Judith Miller was forced to do in the Valerie Plame prosecutions they acted as cheerleaders for.
Watch this story, folks.
The more they want to bury it, the more it needs to be dug into.
Title: "Hate Crime" Reported on By Washington Post 15 Times Turns Out to Be Hoax
Post by: G M on May 08, 2017, 05:12:23 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/369655.php
May 08, 2017 "Hate Crime" Reported on By Washington Post 15 Times Turns Out to Be, Get This, a Hoax; Washington Post Refuses to Run a New Story On the Hate Hoax Old news, but whatever:
Shortly after the election last year the media became obsessed with a rise in reported hate crimes. One incident which was widely reported at the time involved a church in Bean Blossom, Indiana which had been spray-painted with a swastika and the phrase "Heil Trump." A slur for gay people was also painted on the church. This week police revealed the crime was actually a "false flag" carried out by the church's own organist, who is himself gay.
In its initial report on the incident, the Washington Post quoted Rev. Kelsey Hutto on her decision to leave the graffiti in place for a few weeks. "It's no secret that the atmosphere of hatred has kind of permeated the nation right now," Hutto told the Post. According to the Daily Caller, the Post mentioned the incident in 15 separate stories.
Although this is now four days old, it remains unreported by the Washington Post as a freestanding, new news story.
A google search for the Washington Post fails to disclose the name of the hoaxer ("George Nathaniel Stang"). A search of the Washington Post's own records turns up only this -- quite down the page, which is where they want it to be:
Acts of Faith This Indiana church was defaced with "HEIL TRUMP" graffiti -- and is keeping it By Sarah Larimer
November 15, 2016
Note the headline remains at the Washington Post. Also note the date-- from six months ago. This is their original story -- they just added an update to it. Without changing the headline to "HOAX "HATE" INCIDENT IN INDIANA" or whatever.
Update May 8, 2017: The Brown County Prosecutor’s Office charged George Nathaniel Stang with institutional criminal mischief, following a lengthy investigation. Stang, 26, was the organist at St. David’s Episcopal Church, according to a news release. "Stang stated that he wanted to mobilize a movement after being disappointed in and fearful of the outcome of the national election," the release stated. That's the only Washington Post reportage on it -- adding an update to a six month old story that no one will see unless they search really hard (I didn't find it on my first look, as I was expecting it to be, you know, in the past week).
And they kept the headline intact.
And the rest of the story, too, it appears, though I wouldn't bet against stealth deletions.
Published on Nov. 15, 2016: The Rev. Kelsey Hutto said she learned about the graffiti from an organist, who had arrived at St. David’s Episcopal Church on Sunday morning.
Hutto called the authorities and went to the central Indiana church herself, where she saw what had been spray-painted on its walls.
"HEIL TRUMP," read one message.
Etc. The rest of the story is just the same from November 15, 2016, same narrative, same panic about an explosion of hate crimes.
It's just -- the entire thing was false from the start.
And they just added this "update" to a flagrantly wrong story today, despite the fact this broke last week. And they still haven't given this story its own, you know, story. Just a parenthetical update to a long-buried story they hope no one will see.
Democracy Dies in Darkness, doesn't it?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 10, 2017, 03:47:44 PM
The left wing media HAS to be bribing inside people for dirt. They have to be . This otherwise makes no sense:
Paragraph after paragraph of different angles to look at a shiny object.
President Trump said Comey wasn't doing a good job.
A minute before the firing, everyone in the country thought Comey was not doing a good job.
Even Comey said he has long believed a president can fire an FBI director for any reason or no reason.
No honest person in America believes the laws of the land were even-handedly enforced over Comey's tenure.
Do you remember the uproar from the last time a president fired an FBI director, Bill Clinton firing William Sessions in 1993?
Neither do I.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 11, 2017, 07:27:19 AM
Doug agreed. some Republicans are as they always do showing weakness in the face of the Dem party and the complicit third party media intimidation.
They need to stand together and fight the LEFT.
I am dubious they will.
LEft Media (and add Sheppard Smith) frenzy storm then the immediate "surveys" (after blanketing all news outlets with negative Trump stuff ) and the Repubs start bailing out .
There is not another day. This is it now. my opinion.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2017, 08:23:30 AM
Good interview last night by Trump on Judge Janine (whom I can't stand)
Title: hillary held to unfair standard
Post by: ccp on May 14, 2017, 11:14:27 AM
so says this "legal scholar". Being labelled "crooked" is just so unfair.
Title: Morris on Roger Ailes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 18, 2017, 01:30:41 PM
In Praise Of Roger Ailes By DICK MORRIS Published on DickMorris.com on May 18, 2017 Roger Ailes belongs right up there with William Buckley as a key force in adapting and popularizing modern conservatism for a new audience. Just as Buckley rescued us from the me-too-ism of the New Deal era, so Roger helped us find our voice after Reagan had left the scene.
In a thoroughly modern style, he did it not by his speeches or writings but by creating a media format, in Fox News, that let others articulate what was in our hearts and on our minds. Without Ailes, we would still have to be content with the droppings of the conventional media, accepting their center-left synthesis of current opinion.
But Ailes made it possible for us to be heard. He created the pre-conditions for our political triumphs.
And, in the process, he forced other outlets to choose their paths. MSNBC has found success in becoming the liberal alternative. CNN has yet to find its place.
Now, we can only hope and pray that the Murdoch family does not undo all the good it has done. Without Roger to keep them on the conservative path, we don't really know what to expect.
But Roger Ailes will be a loss for us all. Rest in Peace.
Title: Flashback: Obama, Over Objections of the British, Gave Russia the Serial Numbers
Post by: G M on May 18, 2017, 02:34:07 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/369818.php
May 18, 2017 Flashback: Obama, Over Objections of the British, Gave Russia the Serial Numbers of the Trident Nuclear Missiles We Sold to the UK, Confirming the Size of the UK Nuclear Arsenal —Ace
But that's okay, because Obama was The Prince Who Was Promised.
But where were these Democratic and left-wing Krakatoas [Ponuru uses "volcanoes" as a metaphor for Democrats suddenly erupting with natsec Concern -- ace ] when Obama gave Putin the identity and whereabouts of Great Britain's nuclear missiles? The Telegraph of London cited U.S. Embassy cables that it received via Wikileaks and summarized in its February 4, 2011, edition. "A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the 'New START' deal," Matthew Moore, Gordon Rayner, and Christopher Hope wrote.
According to their report on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), "the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK's Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US."
The authors continued:
Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain. "This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this," Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute told The Telegraph. "Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal."
Obama's treaty was amazingly cold as it back-stabbed America's cousins, from the Scottish Highlands to the white cliffs of Dover. The secret U.S. cable originated in "Mission Geneva." Dated February 25, 2010, it summarizes a meeting that had occurred on February 9 between American and Russian arms negotiators, including decisions on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Item No. 13 detailed "An agreed statement on the transfer of Tridents II SLBMs to the United Kingdom."
The Parties agree that, in order to increase transparency in relation to the use of "Trident-II" SLBMs, transferred by the United States of America to equip the Navy of Great Britain, the United States of America shall provide notification to the Russian Federation about the time of such transfer, as well as the unique identifier and the location of each of the transferred missiles. Wait -- the location of the hidden missiles?
You may be hearing of this for the first time (I am myself), and that's because the media didn't report it.
Title: Bob Beckel fired for racial comment
Post by: ccp on May 19, 2017, 05:34:18 PM
Keep Watching the News, But Be Very Skeptical of Everything You Are Told BY JACK DUNPHY MAY 21, 2017
President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) It took a few years of police work to turn me into a discerning consumer of news. My family had subscribed to the Los Angeles Times as I grew up, a practice I continued as I went off to college and later joined the Los Angeles Police Department. The paper’s left-of-center leanings didn’t much concern me at the time as I, after coming of age in the days of Watergate and President Nixon’s downfall, and after being indoctrinated at a Jesuit high school and in college, shared many of these same leanings.
Then I became a cop, a job that offered an unequaled view of the many ways liberal politicians infantilize and enfeeble the very people they purport to help. It was on this Road to Damascus journey that I also learned to read and watch the news with a critical eye. I was working in South Central L.A. in a time of escalating gang violence, and even as it reached horrific levels it was largely ignored by the Los Angeles Times and other local media. And when crime was covered, it was most often in a way that made the police seem at least as responsible as the criminals for what ailed the city.
This was especially so in the Los Angeles Times, whose reporters and editors – even its editorial cartoonist – seemed to harbor a grudge against the police in general, the LAPD in particular, and police chief Daryl Gates most of all. I found that as I read the Times’s stories about the LAPD, the facts were invariably presented in a light that was more favorable to police critics than the police themselves. If any nuance was implied, the benefit of the doubt was always given to the crooks, never to the cops. This was most obvious to me when I read stories about incidents in which I had been involved. I once watched a Times reporter working through the crowd that had gathered after a racially charged incident in South Central L.A. Though I was within earshot as she interviewed people who expressed reasonable opinions on what had happened, when the story appeared the next day it was the loudest, most obnoxious, and most ignorant voice in the crowd who was quoted. The story itself wasn’t false, or “fake news” in today’s parlance, but it was incomplete, presenting only one version of events when others had been given to the reporter. This could only have been by design.
It has been with this experience in mind that I have read newspapers and watched television news ever since. In the frothing media maelstrom that now surrounds the Trump administration, it is important to maintain a certain level of skepticism. A reader taking in a story about the president in any major newspaper would be wise to imagine a prologue at the outset, one that goes something like this:
The story you are about to read was written and edited by people who a) voted for Hillary Clinton, b) think Donald Trump is a menace, and c) are appalled that 63 million of their fellow citizens – all those ignorant rustics out there in the howling wilderness between Beverly Hills and the Hudson River – could have so abased themselves as to choose Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton. Furthermore, these same reporters and editors go about their daily lives with no contact with anyone who might have a different opinion, and if they were to encounter one by accident they would run shrieking from the room. Every one of these people hope to be their own era’s Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein and be remembered as the journalist who saved America and the world from Donald Trump. And finally, these aspiring Woodwards and Bernsteins have ready access to what seems to be an endless supply of aspiring Deep Throats, anonymous “administration sources” equally desirous of seeing President Trump impeached, jailed, or otherwise rendered impotent. Which brings us to the latest (at least as of this writing) media revelation of something certain to doom the Trump presidency—the “Comey memo.” Perhaps like you, I first heard of the memo on radio and television, where it was breathlessly described as “devastating” and “extremely serious” and in other similarly grave terms. “The president obstructed justice,” we were told. “This may finish him.”
And then I read the New York Times’s story on the matter, after which I said, “That’s it?” As reported by the New York Times, now-former FBI Director James Comey wrote a memo on a meeting he had with the president, who, we are told, urged Mr. Comey to drop the inquiry into Michael Flynn’s foreign ties. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump allegedly told Mr. Comey. Keep in mind that the Times reporter, Michael Schmidt, had not himself seen the memo, but relied on portions of it that were read to him over the telephone by an anonymous source.
So, we have a portion of a memo we have not seen and whose entire contents is unknown, being read over the phone by a person we do not know. From this we are to conclude the president should be impeached. Count me among the unpersuaded.
To start with, absent the larger context of the complete memo, if it indeed exists, it’s impossible to determine how damning it truly is. Did the president attach any conditions to his expressed hope for an end to the Flynn investigation? Did he say, for example, “If the evidence doesn’t pan out, I hope you can let this go”? Or did he say, “No matter how much dirt you have on Flynn, I hope you can let it go”? Judging from the way the New York Times (and almost everyone else) has covered the Trump administration, my suspicion is that the quote was isolated precisely for its inflammatory implications, but that when viewed in its full context the memo will amount to little.
But now to the larger point: By firing James Comey, did President Trump hope to end the Flynn investigation and any other FBI inquiries into his administration’s ties to Russia? If so, he’ll be disappointed. I can’t claim to have much inside knowledge of the FBI, but over the years I have worked with some agents on joint investigations. Based on this admittedly limited knowledge, I find it inconceivable that the investigation would shut down based on Mr. Comey’s ouster. If anything, the tempo and aggressiveness of the investigation would only increase, as the involved agents would be all the more eager to demonstrate their independence from political considerations.
So, the investigation will indeed continue, but now under the direction of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And with the continuing investigation will come all the leaks and rumor-mongering to which we are growing so wearily accustomed. Let us hope that Mr. Mueller can uncover the facts and let justice be done quickly.
In the meantime, Mr. Trump might enjoy any number of successes that will be overlooked in favor of the latest “explosive revelation.” Mr. Trump could simplify the tax code, he could bring peace to the Middle East, he could cure cancer, he could part the Red Sea, and the front-page, above-the-fold story in the New York Times would still be about how he failed to rewind a Blockbuster video in 1983.
Keep watching the news, gentle readers, but be skeptical of what you are told.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 22, 2017, 03:17:14 PM
It really is remarkable watching the lackies on CNN going crazy trying to down play Trump and everything he says and bring the topic back to this big investigation. You can hear the desperation in their voices and in the facial expressions .
Faaaaareeeeeed, I have news for you . Obama did not give this speech despite having 8 yrs to do so.
OTOH McCarthy also thinks this speech had some Obama similarities : :-o http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447857/trump-saudi-arabia-speech-islamic-terrorism-sharia
Title: These are professional journalists with credentials!
Post by: G M on May 22, 2017, 07:53:20 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 24, 2017, 01:26:21 PM
Don't care that Shep is gay (he has openly said this) but he definitely is a Dem.
Title: Backlash!
Post by: G M on May 24, 2017, 06:12:30 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/369888.php
May 23, 2017 Manchester Suicide Bomber Named: Gary "The Garester" Eddington Nah just fuckin wit ya, it's Salman Abedi, and the keening cries warning against #Backlash! have begun.
Question: Why is there never a warning about Backlash before the suspect is named?
Answer: Because if the suspect turns out to be one of the few the media can claim are "right wing" (Nazis, etc.), then the media does not warn against backlash, but actively crusades in favor of it.
If this guy turned out to be anything that could be plausibly mischaracterized as right wing -- tweeted in favor of Brexit, etc. -- the media would be blaming this right now on Donald Trump and his supporters, and demanding they take accountability for their hatred.
But, it's not, so the media set down its "Backlash is Good and Necessary" script and picked up its "Backlash is Bad" script.
Born in Manchester in 1994, the second youngest of four children his parents were Libyan refugees who came to the UK to escape the Gaddafi regime. His parents were both born in Libya but appear to have emigrated to London before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester where they have lived for at least ten years.
Here's a very common claim:
Follow Net @killbobaggins Salman Abedi was born and raised in this country do NOT blame this tragedy on the refugee status of his parents. 9:24 AM - 23 May 2017 1,153 1,153 Retweets 2,618 2,618 likes Twitter Ads info & Privacy
Yes, but a large, large number of terrorists are in fact second-generation sons of immigrant families. Think of the Tsarnaevs, and many, many others.
That's a fact -- and it is also a fact that had the first generation not been admitted, the second generation could not have murdered the population that welcomed them.
One can see how this happens. Young men (in particular) have outsized egos and enjoy heroic narratives they can pretend to be a part of. They also tend to be easy targets for Identity Politics/Racist messaging and conspiracy theories, puffing themselves up as heroes fighting against the Jews/Blacks/Whites/Muslims/Christians/Whoever.
We see this pattern again and again as the second generation of immigrant families, searching for some kind of identity, purpose, and "heroic" role for themselves, picks up the mantle of intense and dangerous hyper-ethnocism their parents may have been fleeing in the first place.
From a Sean Spicer parody account (note he spells it Sean Spicier);
Follow Sean Spicier @sean_spicier ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, which means finding a motive could take years 5:26 AM - 23 May 2017 800 800 Retweets 1,688 1,688 likes Twitter Ads info & Privacy
A CNN analyst has already claimed it's actually a right-wing "false flag" attack:
Follow Raven @KazeSkyz WOW - CNN just blamed the Manchester suicide bombing on a "right wing false flag" - these people are DERANGED!#ManchesterTerroristAttack 5:40 PM - 22 May 2017 1,301 1,301 Retweets 1,921 1,921 likes Twitter Ads info & Privacy
CNN is always screaming about the craziness of conservative conspiracy theories -- but they are warmly receptive to conspiracy theories emanating from their fellow hardcore progressive agitators.
Meanwhile, the same prog toads that shriek that we must not "normalize" Trump are now counseling that we must normalize Islamic terror:
This only goes to prove that we must Impeach Trump Immediately, obviously -- as I'm told was the talking point on CNN and MSNBC last night, as both networks chose to ignore the Manchester attack and only occasionally run a chyron about it. (A commenter tells me my source is wrong and that CNN did cover it, some. Obviously, though, I was being a bit hyperbolic in my original claim.)
I'll Ride With You Update: The "invent false stories to change the narrative" script has been deployed already.
View image on Twitter View image on Twitter Follow The Safest Space @TheSafestSpace Cosmo has since deleted this tweet (the guy pictured is Sikh) 🙈 11:33 AM - 23 May 2017 609 609 Retweets 1,746 1,746 likes Twitter Ads info & Privacy
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2017, 08:27:54 AM
"Yes, but a large, large number of terrorists are in fact second-generation sons of immigrant families. Think of the Tsarnaevs, and many, many others."
For example, the gay night club killer.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on May 25, 2017, 08:44:49 AM
"Yes, but a large, large number of terrorists are in fact second-generation sons of immigrant families. Think of the Tsarnaevs, and many, many others."
For example, the gay night club killer.
Yup. Or this piece of garbage: (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Hasan_nidal.jpg)
Funny how their concept of jihad seems a bit different than the leftist definition of jihad we have been told.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2017, 09:30:19 AM
I had forgotten that he was son of immigrants.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on May 25, 2017, 09:38:42 AM
Hasan's parents were "palestinian". al-Awlaki's parents were Yemeni.
Title: Gosh, deliberate lies to push a narrative
Post by: G M on May 25, 2017, 07:24:34 PM
From www.ace.mu.nu
Cosmo Sucks
After the terrorist attack in Manchester this week, many people rose to the occasion magnificently, as people always do. Of particular note was how the Sikh community responded. Like this fellow:
sikh 1.jpg Of course, none of this is surprising, as the Sikh community has a long history of dealing with Muslim violence. Cosmo asks to use the photo in reporting the story stateside. Oh, that's nice, you might think, it's a good story, be some nice publicity for the Sikhs.
Sikh 2.jpg
So Cosmo runs the story:
Sikh 3.jpg This isn't an accident, the driver was correctly identified in the source material. This is a deliberate LIE to feed a narrative. Fuck you Cosmo.
Title: Facebook and "fake news"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2017, 09:28:44 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 27, 2017, 10:53:30 AM
Look how Haden uses his twisted logic to tell us what a "dark" place we are in :
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/05/27/gen-michael-hayden-intv-smerconish-kushner-reports-sot.cnn To think that Trump might not trust our government that he might feel (through surrogate Kushner) to set up back line with Russia?
Why would the Trump team ever think that?
more fake news if you ask me.
Title: Facebook
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2017, 08:53:39 PM
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39947942
Title: What is wrong with this page?
Post by: ccp on May 30, 2017, 05:18:19 AM
Claim made the adored man of the left , JFK, was the youngest president. He was not. Teddy Roosevelt was.
He could have been the biggest abuser of women though.
Title: Macron: "They are no longer journalists"
Post by: DougMacG on May 30, 2017, 09:39:17 AM
From another thread, I would like to save this French President quote for future use.
Mr. Macron minced no words when it came to responding to a question about why his campaign had shut out two Russian-associated news organizations, Russia Today and Sputnik
Mr. Macron responded: “When press organs sow defamatory untruths, they are no longer journalists. They are organs of influence.”
WASHINGTON—Circling every level multiple times with no luck whatsoever, Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker was frustrated Tuesday that every space in the parking garage was taken up by an anonymous source. “I’ve gone around and around, but I can’t find a single spot that isn’t already filled by an unidentified White House leaker,”
Title: CNN, the rodeo clown, and Kathy Griffin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 31, 2017, 12:38:37 PM
NATIONAL SECURITY The New York Times Just Outed The CIA’s Top Iran Spy
JUNE 2, 2017 By Bre Payton In an article published Friday, The New York Times outed the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) top spy overseeing the organization’s efforts in Iran. The paper justified its outing of the undercover CIA spy and his role within the agency by saying it was necessary since the agent is “leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.”
Yes. That really happened.
In an article entitled “C.I.A. Names New Iran Chief in a Sign of Trump’s Hard Line,” the newspaper of record revealed that Michael D’Andrea, who previously led the hunt for Osama bin Laden, will now be in charge of the agency’s operations in Iran.
As the Times explained in its report, Iran is “one of the hardest targets” for the CIA to keep tabs on.
“The agency has extremely limited access to the country — no American embassy is open to provide diplomatic cover — and Iran’s intelligence services have spent nearly four decades trying to counter American espionage and covert operations,” the article noted.
So the Times has apparently made it the newspaper’s mission to make the agency’s work much more difficult and far more dangerous by publicly identifying the man in charge of its covert operations in the Persian country. The paper’s rationale? The report’s authors claimed that because the newspaper already outed D’Andrea in 2015 as the official in charge of a CIA drone program, ignoring desperate pleas from the CIA at the time to keep his name secret in order to protect both the agent and overall national security, it was kosher to out him as the agency’s new Iran chief in 2017.
Here’s what the Times article says (emphasis added):
The C.I.A. declined to comment on Mr. D’Andrea’s role, saying it does not discuss the identities or work of clandestine officials. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because Mr. D’Andrea remains undercover, as do many senior officials based at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va. Mr. Eatinger did not use his name. The New York Times is naming Mr. D’Andrea because his identity was previously published in news reports, and he is leading an important new administration initiative against Iran. The bolded portion of the excerpt above links to a piece dated April 25, 2015, in which D’Andrea is identified as the man in charge of growing the CIA’s drone programs in Yemen and Pakistan. But the paper’s real reason for outing D’Andrea, who was depicted as a character known only as “The Wolf” in the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” is that he’s an Iran hawk likely to oppose the previous administration’s attempts to normalize the nation by giving it billions of dollars, trading it terrorists for hostages, and blessing its nuclear program.
The Times‘s flimsy rationale doesn’t make sense. Just because the paper said he was in charge of handling drone strikes in a few other countries in a two-year-old article doesn’t justify outing him as the CIA’s top spy in a country that is now considered to be the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
As The Israel Project’s Omri Ceren pointed out on Twitter, the fact that the CIA officials who spoke to the Times did so under the condition of anonymity because D’Andrea is still undercover means that the newspaper article is indeed outing him. And his safety is now likely in jeopardy thanks to the Times.
Follow Omri Ceren @omriceren "Mr. D'Andrea remains undercover... The New York Times is naming Mr. D'Andrea" https://twitter.com/omriceren/status/870684316191174656 … 10:56 AM - 2 Jun 2017 65 65 Retweets 38 38 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy Follow Omri Ceren @omriceren Iran proxies kidnapped & tortured to death CIA's Lebanon station chief. Mailed US officials tapes of the torture http://canadafreepress.com/2006/thomas102506.htm … https://twitter.com/omriceren/status/870684316191174656 … 10:16 AM - 2 Jun 2017 123 123 Retweets 70 70 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy In 1984, longtime CIA operative Bill Buckley, who was working as the agency’s station chief in Lebanon, was kidnapped by Hezbollah and tortured to death. In 2011, over a dozen CIA spies were captured in Lebanon by the terrorist group Hezbollah. The spies were reportedly working to uncover details about Iran’s nuclear program at the time. In 2010, the CIA’s bureau chief in Afghanistan, who was at the time tracking down leads on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden as well as Al Qaeda cells throughout the world, was forced to leave the country after his name was released. And just a year after that, the Obama administration accidentally included the name of the CIA’s Kabul station chief in a press release, exposing the undercover agent to possible kidnapping or assassination by Islamic terrorist groups.
In 2003, after the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame was revealed in an article by journalist Robert Novak, congressional Democrats demanded criminal investigations and eventual prison time for the individual responsible for leaking Plame’s name. No elected Democrats have yet called for a criminal investigation to determine who illegally leaked the name of the CIA’s top spy overseeing U.S. efforts in Iran.
Bre Payton is a staff writer at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter.
Title: CNN creates Muslim demonstration
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2017, 10:10:09 AM
WASHINGTON POST COVERS UP LEFT-WING VIOLENCE IN PORTLAND
After the election of a president it hates, the Washington Post adopted as a slogan “democracy dies in darkness.” But “darkness” isn’t a problem in our society. With the media explosion of the past few decades and the constant glare of the news cycle, the problem, if any, is confusion. The danger is being blinded by the lights.
But adopting the slogan “democracy dies in darkness” should carry with it a duty to shed light. The Post sheds none in this disgraceful story by Leah Sottile about events in Portland, Oregon yesterday. The headline (paper edition) reads: “Portland right-wing rally draw huge counterprotests.”
Note the Post’s use of the term “right-wing” in its headline to describe the rally. In a headline, it’s defensible to use short-hand to describe the rally. However, “pro-Trump” would have been a better choice, inasmuch as the rally was organized with the specific intent of supporting the president. If the Post wanted to insist on “right-wing,” the headline should have described the event as a “right-wing free speech rally,” as it did in the internet version of the story.
In the story itself, Sottile should have dropped the short-hand and named the group that organized the rally — Patriot Prayer. She didn’t do so until the very end of the article. By that time, she had repeated the term “right wing” four times. This isn’t just bias; it’s juvenile.
Sottile uses the term “left-wing” once to describe the counterprotesters. But when she does, she calls them them “left-wing, anti-fascist” protesters. As will become clear in a moment, there was nothing anti-fascist about the thugs in question.
But these are quibbles. The real problem is Sottile’s utter failure to describe what actually happened in Portland. She spends half of the article talking about events other than the rally — e.g., the stabbings of a week ago. Her obvious goal is somehow to tie the pro-Trump demonstrators to events like the stabbings, even though they had nothing to do with them.
When Sottile finally gets to rally, she fails to report on the attack by the “left-wing, anti-fascists” on the Portland police. In her account, these good-natured folk merely “chanted, blared music, and held paper-mache spiders and skeletons.” In her account, the police responded by declaring their protest unlawful and “deploying a volley of flash grenades into the crowd of counterprotesters” (no mention here that they are left-wing).
In reality, the left-wing protesters attacked the police. Jazz Shaw at Hot Air provides a good account, based on the reporting of media outlets more honest than the Washington Post — e.g., CNN and AP, believe it or not — as well as the Portland Police’s twitter account (in real time).
At first, the “anti-fascists” exchanged insults with their antagonists. But then, they started to throw glass bottles and bricks at the officers.
I happened to have CNN on at around this time. The CNN anchor asked the reporter which group of demonstrators had hurled bricks and bottles at the police. The question had to be asked, though it almost answers itself. The CNN reporter stated unequivocally that the bricks and bottles were thrown by the black clad “antifa” (anti-fascist) protesters, not the peaceful pro-Trump contingent.
According to the police, the initial incidents of rocks and bottle throwing at the original site of the protests were contained pretty quickly and most of the action moved to the Chapman Square location where the masked leftists were ready to mix it up. This resulted in the police making arrests and the confiscating weapons. The weapons included bags of bricks, chains, and razors.
(Shaw is careful to note that there was another group of anti-Trump protesters present, made up of immigrant rights, religious, and labor groups. They do not appear to have engaged in violence).
The Washington Post managed to miss all of this. In its telling, the anti-fascists are last seen chanting, listening to music, and being attacked, apparently for no reason, by the police.
Democracy dies when mobs shut down free speech and violently resist the result of an election. That’s what the “anti-fascists” are trying to do. The Washington Post isn’t promoting democracy when it shrouds these efforts in darkness.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 05, 2017, 02:48:34 PM
“democracy dies in darkness.”
A Republican elected and indeed Trump and suddenly we are in "dark dark period of history "
reminds of the black death of the 500s or 1300s or the millions who died in WW 2
The world has descended into darkness........
woe is me :-P
Title: Another mystery that may never be solved...
Post by: G M on June 05, 2017, 04:19:30 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370060.phpJune 05, 2017
Melbourne, This Time: Somali Man With Violent Criminal History Shot Dead By Police After Taking a Hostage and Shouting "This is For ISIS, This is For Al Qaeda" He killed one man and injured three cops.
He had previously been charged with planning a terrorist attack on an Australian military base -- but was acquitted.
And then there's this:
A man reportedly called the local Channel 7 newsroom during the siege to say "This is for IS, this is for Al-Qaeda". That's so hard to read.
Victoria Police statement said they are investigating whether the incident is terrorism related.
The Independent reports police will disclose the man's identity and motivation at a more appropriate time.
In fact, the Independent seems to try to give credence to the "his motive may never be known" claim by claiming that Al Qaeda and ISIS never work together. The implication being, this guy couldn't possibly be telling the truth.
Here's an idea: Maybe he has no particular preference for either group, but adheres to the animating spirit of both: the Islamist conquest of non-Islamic societies through blood and fear.
So another case of police and media saying the Islamist terrorist's motive may never be known, despite him shouting his motive to the world, and in fact having been previously tried for planning a terrorist attack.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 05, 2017, 05:12:45 PM
"He had previously been charged with planning a terrorist attack on an Australian military base -- but was acquitted"
must have been an islmaphobic charge.
Must of been just another white man accuser trying to take away this mans rights.
Title: Did Hannity fall for this and I for Hannity?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2017, 05:39:00 PM
Nets Ignore Oversight Report Showing Holder Impeded Fast and Furious Investigation
By Nicholas Fondacaro | June 8, 2017 12:46 AM EDT
While the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) spent Wednesday focusing on a Senate hearing they were hoping would implicate President Trump in obstruction of justice, they ignored a House Oversight Committee report that showed President Obama’s administration did just that. “An absolutely blistering report tonight out saying the Obama administration in general and former Attorney General Eric Holder in particular repeatedly lied to the family of a slain Border Patrol officer about the weapons used in his death, and stonewalled efforts to get at the truth,” announced Fox News’ Bret Baier on Special Report.
Baier handed the segment off to Correspondent William LaJeunesse, who reported that “Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died in December 2010, killed by guns tied to an Obama administration plan that armed Mexicans. A scandal officials tried to hide by wrongly claiming executive privilege.”
“The [Justice] Department’s belated admission that those 64,000 pages were not privileged, puts the gold seal of authenticity on the House's bipartisan vote to hold the attorney general in contempt,” testified Senator Chuck Grassley at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
According to the committee’s report, the evidence of the federal government’s knowledge of the botched program was damning. “Emails contained in the House Oversight Committee’s report shows top officials knew the ATF sent guns to Mexico even before Terry’s death,” LaJeunesse explain. There was even correspondence between high-ranking officials blowing off the danger they put people in. As was mentioned in the report:
“It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked,” said a deputy attorney general. A colleague replied: “It's not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of U.S. guns are being used in Mexico, so I’m not sure how much grief we get for guns walking.” Months later, two of those guns were used against agent Terry, a fact denied to Congress and Terry’s family. “My only goal was to make sure he was laid to rest with honors. That honor has been insulted by cover-ups and deception by the very people he served,” condemned Josephine Terry, Brain Terry’s mother, at the Wednesday hearing. “Only one possible motivation remains for all those involved who have covered up Fast and Furious. That is to conceal their own shame and disgrace.”
LaJuenesse also noted how “the report claims the administration try to stop the investigation by discrediting whistleblower John Dodson.” “I was lied about and disparaged, publicly attacked, ridiculed, libeled, I've been transferred 11 times, denied promotion, ostracized, barred from government workplaces, and banned from public buildings,” Dodson told the House panel.
Ignoring breaking developments in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal is nothing new for the Big Three Networks. Back in mid-April of this year, they skipped over the news that Mexican and U.S. officials had arrested Brian Terry’s murderer. “The suspected shooter in the 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has been arrested…” announced CNN’s Jake Tapper at the time, “38-year-old Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes was taken into custody in Mexico Wednesday, it was part of a joint operation between the two countries.”
Transcript below:
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
DONATE FNC Special Report June 7, 2017 6:18:37 PM Eastern
BRET BAIER: An absolutely blistering report tonight out saying the Obama administration in general and former Attorney General Eric Holder in particular repeatedly lied to the family of a slain Border Patrol officer about the weapons used in his death, and stonewalled efforts to get at the truth. Correspondent William La Jeunesse tonight on Operation Fast and Furious.
[Cuts to video]
JOSEPHINE TERRY: My only goal was to make sure he was laid to rest with honors. That honor has been insulted by cover-ups and deception by the very people he served.
WILLIAM LAJEUNESSE: Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died in December 2010, killed by guns tied to an Obama administration plan that armed Mexicans. A scandal officials tried to hide by wrongly claiming executive privilege.
CHUCK GRASSLEY: The [Justice] Department’s belated admission that those 64,000 pages were not privileged, puts the gold seal of authenticity on the House's bipartisan vote to hold the attorney general in contempt.
LAJEUNESSE: Emails contained in the House Oversight Committee’s report shows top officials knew the ATF sent guns to Mexico even before Terry’s death. “It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked,” said a deputy attorney general. A colleague replied: “It's not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of U.S. guns are being used in Mexico, so I’m not sure how much grief we get for guns walking.” Months later, two of those guns were used against agent Terry, a fact denied to Congress and Terry’s family.
TERRY: Only one possible motivation remains for all those involved who have covered up Fast and Furious. That is to conceal their own shame and disgrace.
LAJEUNESSE: Even the Border Patrol which sent Terry’s team into the desert, didn’t know about the operation.
ROBERT HEYER: I believe that if Brian Terry and his team had known this information, chances are Brian would be alive today.
LAJEUNESSE: The report claims the administration try to stop the investigation by discrediting whistleblower Don Dotson.
JOHN DODSON: I was lied about and disparaged, publicly attacked, ridiculed, libeled, I've been transferred 11 times, denied promotion, ostracized, barred from government workplaces, and banned from public buildings.
[Cuts back to live]
LAJEUNESSE: Lawmakers noted no one from the ATF or Justice Department was fired or seriously disciplined for the cover up.
Title: CNN Forced to Correct Report From ‘Anonymous Sources’ After Comey Proves It Wro
Post by: G M on June 10, 2017, 08:11:36 AM
CNN Forced to Correct Report From ‘Anonymous Sources’ After Comey Proves It Wrong Home Politics By Emily Zanotti | 2:53 pm, June 9, 2017
It’s already clear the mainstream media was one of Thursday’s biggest losers. Former FBI director James Comey ripped the New York Times and other news outlets for using anonymous sources and classified material they didn’t understand to report on Trump’s ties to Russian officials.
But in the wake of Comey’s testimony, CNN added to its own embarrassment. Thursday night, the network was forced to issue a correction after it reported—for two days straight—that once under oath, Comey would dispute the President’s claims that Comey had assured him he was not under FBI investigation.
The story, titled “Comey Expected to Refute Trump,” was (of course) based on the word of “several anonymous sources.” Four reporters—Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus—were listed on the byline.
“Trump has made a blanket claim that Comey told him multiple times that he was not under investigation,” the now-corrected story claimed, according to the Washington Post. “But one source said Comey is expected to explain to senators that those were much more nuanced conversations from which Trump concluded that he was not under investigation.”
All evening Tuesday and all day Wednesday, CNN ran with the story, blaring its Comey prediction boldly on their on-screen banners. Several CNN panels discussed the story. One of the story’s authors, Borger, was adamant that her sources were on the money.
Find out how the state that revolutionized the way we drive has taken off again. In the world of aerospace, Michigan has landed among the top 10 states for major new and expanded facilities. That’s Pure Michigan. Ad by MEDC “Comey is going to dispute the president on this point if he’s asked about it by senators, and we have to assume that he will be,” Borger told one panel. “He will say he never assured Donald Trump that he was not under investigation, that that would have been improper for him to do so.”
That story turned out to be very wrong.
Comey’s opening statement, released Wednesday, supported the President’s claim that Comey had told him repeatedly that he was not under investigation. On Thursday, Comey testified that not only did he reassure Trump on several occasions, but that he, Comey, saw absolutely nothing wrong in his actions.
CNN added a correction to its story that spins the matter in a rather odd way.
CORRECTION AND UPDATE: This article was published before Comey released his prepared opening statement. The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published. Technically, Comey did more than “not directly dispute” Trump’s claims. He actually came out and said he spoke to the President several times and told him that he was not under investigation. But okay, CNN, you do you.
Title: Our Treasonous Media Is a Clear and Present Danger
Post by: G M on June 12, 2017, 09:23:45 AM
Our Treasonous Media Is a Clear and Present Danger BY SARAH HOYT JUNE 11, 2017 CHAT 178 COMMENTS
My dad, in teaching me Portuguese history, used to repeat an aphorism, “A weak king makes a strong people weak.” This often ran to my head during the ill-fated reign of Barry the Smug.
But we’re not, thank heavens, an absolute monarchy, which is where that saying originated. Our danger comes from another area. Weak presidents, mentally slow representatives, and various functionaries who are not so much incompetent as on the other side -- all of them pale before the risk our media presents.
I’m fifty-five. In several countries and at several times, I’ve been present at events that were newsworthy. I can say as Heinlein did at a little older than I, that I’ve never been present at an event that the media reported accurately. More interestingly, I’ve been present at many events that you’d think – and were – newsworthy but that were never reported at all.
I’m also not precisely stupid. I can read print if it’s six feet tall and in letters of fire. I think I was fifteen when I tweaked to the fact that the media had a narrative, which was roughly “eventually the proletarian revolution wins over the world, and we’re all happy forever and ever.” This is why most people in Europe thought of Cuba as a paradise well into the eighties; why idiots still adorn themselves with t-shirts of the mass murderer Che Guevara; and why people who’d flinch at declaring themselves fascist don’t hesitate to call themselves communist.
This is worldwide. That’s what the media is, that’s what they do.
But the United States has always been a thorn in their flesh. In the rest of the world, even conservative people buy the urgency of global warming, for instance, and are willing to put up with nonsense restrictions in the name of stopping it. I’ve given up on arguing it with my family because it’s just not worth my time. “Everyone says it” so it must be true. In the same way, my relatives in Europe believe a whole lot of impossible nonsense, such as lifestyles in Russia are at the same level as in the U.S. Or that people in China live better than we do. Not worth the argument.
Still, even in the heyday of mass media, before there were blogs, the U.S. never fully bought the narrative pushed, wholesale, by news media, entertainment, literature, and arts. If we had, we’d never have elected Reagan. Call this the result of being the descendants of misfits and never-fit-ins, the goats pushed out from every other country or who left before they could be kicked out. (Me.)
And now we have blogs. The dominance of the mass media in the U.S. is a sometime thing. Oh, sure, they can still push their pap at old people and millennials, but their hold on the American mind has become weaker and weaker.
The last election was a bucket of cold water, a warning that they won’t have even that much power much longer.
So, like people who know the end is near, they’ve pulled out all the stops and gone insane. My friend Charlie Martin has documented some of their insanity here, here, and here. Then there’s this via Ace of Spades.
All of this is annoying to us, but the news still gets out in the U.S., more or less. Okay, shut-ins like my mother-in-law don’t always get it, but most people do.
The problem is the rest of the world. Europe’s news media is to the left of ours and takes their clues from the often unhinged reporting of CNN, whose bilge pours out from every airport TV everywhere.
Over the years I’ve gotten used to my parents having things completely wrong because they get them from their news, such as thinking McCain, Romney, and Trump are all “extreme right wing” and “very Christian.” I’ve gotten used to friends from abroad in professional forums thinking that the U.S. is under martial law; that people without insurance are kicked out of our hospitals to die in the sidewalks; that we are all very very poor. It’s what their TV tells them. If they didn’t think the free market bred poverty, they’d kick out their socialist masters.
But the problem is this: it’s gotten worse, and in a way that hurts us. The media is endangering us all by exaggerating Trump’s supposed faults, and by pumping up "nothing burger" movements like Occupy Wall Street, or making people believe that Black Lives Matter is a huge movement all over the country, or for that matter that white people are shooting black people down in cold blood all over the country.
Like the continuous bows and apologies of Barry the Smug, this nonsense projects an image of a materially divided U.S., one that is in open revolt against its chief executive who is probably a Russian ringer.
We can’t afford this while fighting enemies like China and Weaponized Islam, or even Russia. All these cultures can’t even understand the concept of a free press, much less of a press that runs down and misrepresents its own country.
The idea that we’re fractured and weak, continuously blared by our traitorous media, is the rough equivalent of a “Kick me… with nukes” sign on the back of America.
And the almighty idiots will be shocked when their beloved large cities go up in flames.
So what can we do? Not much. For a long time I’ve kicked around the idea of a site like Instapundit, but in several languages (I can do three, I have friends who can do others) but I am, first and foremost, a fiction writer and time is scarce.
Besides, I’m not sure it would “take.” Portugal is at least as much online as the U.S., and most people understand enough English to read the news. But most people stay to the “safe, official” sites.
The little we can do is this: in forums, in gatherings with foreign nationals, slap down their ridiculous notions, and be ready with links to prove they’re wrong. Disputing stories of our miserable existence is not as effective as laughing at them.
If it’s possible, email airport administrations and tell them how sick and tired you are of CNN. This type of vocal complaint is a weapon the left uses and we need to learn to use, also.
Above all, deny the mass media money: don’t subscribe, don’t advertise. Make them drink their own ink to survive.
We can’t restrict the press: they’re supposed to be free. The fact that they’ve been colonized by Marxists who keep everyone to the right of Lenin out doesn’t mean we shouldn’t allow them to be their own idiotic selves.
We just might end up paying dearly for the failure of the media as an institution to be, even vaguely, on the side of America.
You’d think our government would run propaganda, as they did during the world wars of the 20th century, but even Trump shows no inclination to do it. Maybe that only works with Democrats in power. And so, we must do what we can, in manners big and small.
Do all you can do to mitigate the media’s influence and the lies they tell to foreigners. We might get lucky. It might be enough.
Title: More than just five...
Post by: G M on June 14, 2017, 09:01:12 AM
HuffPost Spikes Article Demanding Execution of Trump and His Collaborators 248 Shares Tweet 35 By Tim Graham | June 14, 2017 11:07 AM EDT The Huffington Post -- home of some notably hateful rants, like the ex-Washington Post writer who said unlike George W. Bush, "You could argue that even the world’s worst fascist dictators at least meant well" -- has a line contributors can cross. On Sunday night, it was the notion of executing President Trump for treason...and a cast of accessories including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, the Vice President, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Speaker of the House!
The unhinged HuffPost contributor was Jason Fuller, who proclaims he opposes "extremism" in politics: "I live in a small American town and work a low-wage job. I have seen the best and worst in society and in America and am constantly speaking out to try and bring about change. Many of my tweets and blogs are critical of what I see as erosions of civil liberties and freedom, as well as bullying and extremism." Now it only says "This post from The Huffington Post Contributor Platform is no longer available on our site," but his screed was cached here:
Impeachment Is No Longer Enough; Donald Trump Must Face Justice 06/11/2017 10:39 pm ET
Impeachment and removal from office are only the first steps; for America to be redeemed, Donald Trump must be prosecuted for treason and — if convicted in a court of law — executed. Fuller didn't exactly need the strongest evidence:
There is very little doubt left that Trump and his team colluded with members of the Russian government to try and rig the election in his favor, even if the Russians did not outright hack the voting process itself; while we may not yet have 100% incontrovertible proof of their collusion, the administration’s attempts to hide previous contacts with the Russians, their willingness to blatantly lie about their communications, and the contents of Trump’s meetings with former FBI director Comey are all incriminating on their own. Proclaiming war on ISIS? Also treasonous;
That Trump fails to recognize how much he is assisting ISIS with his rhetoric — or simply does not care — is a subject for debate, but it is a fact which he cannot dispute. By choosing to ignore this fact, he is aiding the greatest foreign adversary in the modern world and therefore committing another act of treason. [Italics his.] Then Fuller gets to the execution of the accessories:
This same argument also applies to top-ranking White House and Republican aides, including — but likely not limited to — Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Vice President Pence. While they may not be participating quite as directly as Trump himself, the fact that they support his agenda and are helping to protect him means that they are accessories and are thus also committing acts of treason. All must face justice.
Much has been made of the possibility of impeaching Trump, but this will not happen as long as Republicans maintain control of Congress. However, Trump’s impeachment and removal from office are no longer enough....
Draining the swamp means not only ejecting Trump from the presidency, but also bringing himself and everyone assisting in his agenda up on charges of treason. They must be convicted (there is little room to doubt their guilt). And then — upon receiving guilty verdicts — they must all be executed under the law. Anything less than capital punishment — or at least life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security detention facility — would send yet another message to the world that America has lost its moral compass. [Bold emphasis is his.] The real question at this point: is HuffPost going to keep publishing this wacko?
Fuller's piece is still posted at Medium, and he tweeted it out before it was taken down by HuffPost:
Title: Umm, , , should this have been published?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 14, 2017, 02:47:18 PM
When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Arizona in 2011, the media knew exactly what to blame: hateful right-wing rhetoric. Today is a good day to replay this sampling from our libertarian friends at Reason.com:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oSLR3bW4vI
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 15, 2017, 09:17:01 AM
yeah . we are just kumbaya now - for about 5 seconds. Can't we all just get along yadayada .......
:roll:
Title: Fake News Network, Get This, Publishes FakeNews About Subject They're Girlishly
Post by: G M on June 15, 2017, 02:57:38 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370238.php
June 15, 2017 Fake News Network, Get This, Publishes FakeNews About Subject They're Girlishly Ignorant of (Guns), Refuses to Correct; CNN's Media Reporter Says "I'm not playing your game" of Journalistic Accuracy CNN claimed the SKS that Rachel Maddow-inspired assassin James Hodgkinson used was a "variant of the AK-47."
It's not. And that's important, because claiming it's a "variant" of the fully-automatic AK-47 makes it a lay-up for banning by the gun-grabbers; CNN's "error" just happens to track with the language that gun control groups would prefer.
In fact, the one-shot-per-trigger-pull SKS was developed before the AK-47, making it hard to see how this gun could be a "variant of" the full-auto AK-47.
But they refuse to correct.
Several observations:
Once again, I repeat that the media's ignorance here is an ignorance they're proud of. They don't like icky boy-stuff; they like lots of whipped cream on their moccachinos.
This is Genteel Ignorance, a cultivated ignorance that one is proud of, like an aristocrat proud that he has no idea how to fix his own door. We have "people" for that, after all.
And the soft-handed Media Reporter Oliver Darcy, I'm sure, is quite proud that his hands never get any dirtier than the keys on his MacbookPro.
Second: These people pretend to be experts. They claim they know what The Facts!!! are. Capitalizations and italicization required.
Yet, when errors of fact are pointed out to them, they say "I'm not playing your game, man."
If you don't care about The Facts!!!, then, as Mary Katharine Ham once said, What is the point of you?
The media claim to be general experts in the cognitive decathalon. Yet any time someone attempts to correct them, they say "Facts are dumb and don't matter."
The media, as far as journalistic accuracy and facts go, is like a surgeon who intends to remove your pancreas. When you say, "Wait, doc, you said part of my liver," he says: "Pancreas, liver-- what's the diff, really? They're both Weird Organs that no one can really understand."
Finally, on that point, the media's claim is that they don't want to ban all guns, just the "bad" ones of particular propensity to misuse in mass assaults.
But then, when you point out they repeatedly misidentify which "bad gun" is involved in an attack, they tell you they don't care about such petty details.
So:
Media: We don't want to ban all guns, you Paranoid Gun-Lovers. We only want to ban the Bad guns.
Expert: But you just completely botched your identification of the "Bad" gun involved here.
Media: That doesn't matter, they all need to be banned eventually anyway.
They're giving the game away, and they don't even care that their lying is not even of the half-hearted level of exertion any longer.
They want you to know they're lying -- just as a serial killer, ultimately, wants you to know he's the one.
They're each proud of their respective butcheries. They want to be famous for them.
They are not just murdering facts; they are unleashing a Great Revolution with their ritualistic torture of basic facts. What is the point of doing so, if the world does not know who the Author of these noble murders is?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 18, 2017, 09:10:42 AM
From the far left Newsweek with the usual immediate attack on any favorable Trump polls - "Right-leaning Rasmussen Reports". Got to keep Trump down in the media . Keep him down . no let up. The fake news media continues its political activism:
Whenever the media uses the passive voice to describe violence, you know the side they are rooting for did it. "Violence broke out at pro-Trump rally" means leftist thugs attacked people with MAGA hats.
Title: Huff compost
Post by: ccp on June 19, 2017, 05:38:21 AM
now suddenly the work 'Muslim' is in headline of attack in UK: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Title: Re: Huff compost
Post by: G M on June 19, 2017, 07:27:49 AM
Title: Tucker Carlson in hospital for appendicitis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2017, 05:18:43 PM
Get well soon Tucker! We need you!!!
Title: Ben Stein
Post by: ccp on June 20, 2017, 05:10:10 PM
Recalls the fake news on Nixon and now with Trump. He must love watching Carl Bernstein still bloviating in all his glory and doing the same shtick he has for close to half a century:
https://spectator.org/fake-news-tonight/
Title: Serious Read: How Facebook ate the news
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2017, 10:43:32 AM
"Accordingly, in December, Facebook kicked off a fact-checking initiative in partnership with a number of brand-name media institutions like the Associated Press, ABC News, Politifact, and the Washington Post to make sure that the stories relayed from other sites on Facebook’s news feed were true. How much is Facebook paying their partners for their service? Zero. And in that nice round number lies the story of how and why the American media collapsed, and much more.
"The reality of the American media is that Google and Facebook own nearly the entire advertising market—which means that once-powerful American media brands like The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and every other website you visit are more or less the equivalent of random bloggers who provide their content to Facebook for free. Does spending billions of dollars to produce a good that someone else gives away for free—without paying you a dime—sound like a good business to be in? Well, it’s not."
See the whole thing at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/238195/zuckerberg-public-enemy-no-1?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=f45f58097b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-f45f58097b-207194629
Title: Re: Media and polling
Post by: DougMacG on June 24, 2017, 06:28:53 PM
ccp: "Interesting. unexpected increased Repub turnout was reason the polls were off by ~ 6%?"
Another unfortunate fact is that polling is generally done by media. Their mission is to influence the outcome more than to report on the process and they are only judged professionally by their final poll - which was much tighter.
They have burned their own bridge and people generally now know they are worthless, biased and wrong.
Title: Broken journalism
Post by: G M on June 26, 2017, 03:59:52 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370355.php
June 26, 2017 CNN Publishes Single-Source Claim on Russia Investigation, Then Disappears It, Then Finally Retracts; Forbids Reporters From Running Any Russia Story Without Permission, Promises "Discipline" Before getting to that, Camille Paglia said last week that the Democrat Party had broken journalism, and that it would take "decades" to heal the wounds.
It would take decades to recover if they ever self-critiqued and self-corrected, which they're psychologically incapable of doing.
"It's obscene," she said. "It's outrageous, OK? It shows that the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood. There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What's happened to the major networks? It's an outrage." "I'm a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK?" she continued. "And I think it's absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that's going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”
Now on to the newest CNN #FakeNews: CNN reported, on the basis of a single anonymous source, that a Trump associate did business with Russia, and that he's now the target of a criminal probe.
They then retracted. First, they seem to have done so without acknowledging the retraction, just deleting all mentions of the story in their Twitter fed and nuking links to it.
But after Buzzfeed asked where the story went to, they issued a note stating it had been retracted, and failed to even meet CNN's Like Whatever Man exacting editorial standards for Russia reporting. If you can imagine such a thing.
CNN claimed Senate investigators are looking into whether or not Scaramucci discussed lifting sanctions with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the $10-billion Russian Direct Investment Fund, in a meeting just four days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. “CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund,” CNN said in its editor’s note, “That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”
Given that CNN is actually apologizing, and nuking the story from orbit, I have to guess that this story didn't just fail to meet their "editorial standards," whatever those might turn out to be when discovered, but was objectively and perhaps actionably false.
CNN is now forcing reporters to pre-clear all "Russia-related" stories by high ranking editors before publishing anywhere -- including social media -- and promising "discipline" over this error:
Over the weekend, CNN's executives busied themselves with a new process for reporting on Russia, Buzzfeed later learned. According to an internal memo, all reporting from CNN on that topic will have to get specific approval from executives before appearing on any of their platforms. Jon Passantino's source says that disciplinary action will also be forthcoming over last week’s debacle... When a report is so fake that even CNN is panicking over it-- well, that's CNN showing us what it really is. A hotbed of conspiracy theorists and vulgar partisans.
Title: CNN Producer "CNN Russia narrative is bullsh*t"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2017, 11:30:38 PM
Title: HUGE CNN scandal
Post by: ccp on June 27, 2017, 05:41:15 AM
Their own producer admitting what we all KNOW to be true. CNNs reporting on Russia Trump connection is a ratings and political hit job by a bunch of phony fake news liberals:
American Pravda: 'Project Veritas' Catches CNN Producer Admitting Russia Story Is "Mostly Bullshit," "About Ratings"
In a video released overnight by 'Project Veritas' founder James O'Keefe, CNN producer John Bonifield is caught on film admitting that the network's constant coverage of the Trump-Russia narrative is "mostly bullshit" and "the president is probably right to say [CNN] is witch-hunting [him]."
He also noted the story is "good for business."
"I haven’t seen any good enough evidence to show that the President committed a crime," he said. "I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the President is probably right to say, like, look you are witch hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof."
He also said: "It’s a business, people are like the media has an ethical phssssss…All the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business."
About CNN CEO, Jeff Zucker, the producer said: "Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with that, let’s get back to Russia."
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on June 27, 2017, 06:18:50 AM
Wait, aren't these Professional Journalists? With credentials?
Title: journolists
Post by: ccp on June 27, 2017, 07:29:39 AM
GM:
"Wait, aren't these Professional Journalists?"
Yes but you spelled it wrong. You might mean *JURNO*lister
Three lib jurno listers get canned. The rest of them still there and CNN which has lost all credibility
Fareeeeeed must be pissed.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on June 27, 2017, 09:00:48 AM
Also the same group that conspired with the Hillary campaign...
Sadly, CNN, NYT et al have an accuracy rate no higher than Bretibart and Infowars. And it isn't typos or fact check issues. It's intentional deception and narrative feeding. Crafty and others have been calling these outlets 'Pravdas'. But it's worse than that. The Soviets only had one outlet of propaganda. Here we have a multitude of different sources confirming the same false information. You can 'fact check' through the first three pages of google result sources and get the same wrong answer.
32% trust journalists, 16% of Republicans, about the same number that didn't hear or misunderstood the question. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx
Title: CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2017, 09:37:24 AM
https://patriotpost.us/posts/49876
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE
Title: Gotta love it
Post by: ccp on June 28, 2017, 12:58:42 PM
Progressive Journalists Are Outraged At The NRA For Pointing Out Leftist Violence
Two days before an assassination attempt on Republicans, the NRA posted a video on Facebook warning of leftist violence. Progressive journalists are now pretending political violence is the NRA's fault. JUNE 29, 2017 By Sean Davis Barely two weeks after a progressive Democrat activist attempted a mass assassination of Republican officials, progressives are outraged at the NRA for noting that the Second Amendment gives people the right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, from people who might try to assassinate them or their families.
You might not remember it because the news media pivoted away from the story as quickly as possible, but just two weeks ago an anti-Trump Bernie Bro tried to assassinate a bunch of elected Republican officials while they practiced for the annual bipartisan Congressional baseball game. Just days after the New York Times revealed that Republicans regularly practiced at a public park in Alexandria with minimal protective detail, the shooter showed up at the park and started surveilling it. According to the FBI, he even took pictures of the location. Before opening fire on the lawmakers, the shooter also confirmed that the assembled officials were Republicans.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of Republicans responded to the attempted massacre by noting that unconstitutional laws in D.C. actually prevented the Republican officials from carrying firearms for the purpose of self-defense (although the shooting was in Virginia, most lawmakers reside in D.C., meaning D.C. law effectively bans them from carrying anywhere in the area since they would eventually have to return to their homes with the firearms).
Progressives, however, are outraged at Second Amendment defenders for having the audacity to claim a right to self-defense in the wake of a mass assassination attempt. On Thursday, failed Baltimore mayoral candidate and Black Lives Matter gadfly Deray McKesson raged at Dana Loesch and accused her and the National Rifle Association (NRA) of “white supremacy” for noting in a prophetic promotional video filmed in April that progressive activists were becoming increasingly violent.
Follow deray mckesson ✔ @deray This NRA ad is an open call to violence to protect white supremacy. If I made a video like this, I'd be in jail. 5:56 AM - 29 Jun 2017 18,468 18,468 Retweets 26,715 26,715 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy “They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance,” Loesch states in the video. “All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia, to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.”
“And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for the outrage,” Loesch concludes. You can watch the full video here. Rather than undercutting Loesch’s claim that progressives reflexively scream racism whenever anyone challenges them, McKesson only underscored her point by accusing her of being a white supremacist for pointing out violence committed by leftists.
On June 12, just two days before the progressive Democrat activist opened fire on GOP members of Congress and other innocent civilians just minding their own business, the NRA reposted the video on Facebook. That aroused the ire of Michael Goldfarb, a liberal journalist who writes for the Guardian, who took to his Facebook page to condemn the NRA.
“This new NRA propaganda piece is the most disturbing video I’ve seen,” Goldfarb wrote in response to the June 12 NRA post on Facebook featuring the Loesch video. “Not surprising but disturbing. Reinforces my despair that America is not going to get out of its mess without bloodshed.”
Two days after that Facebook post by the NRA, a Democrat political activist tried to murder a park full of Republican politicians.
Judging by his Twitter and Facebook feeds, neither of which mentions the June 14 anti-GOP assassination attempt even a single time, Goldfarb appears to be unaware that bloodshed happened quite recently, that it wasn’t perpetrated by the NRA, and that the shooter was a vocal progressive activist who loved Bernie Sanders and hated President Donald Trump. Goldfarb did, however, take time to attack Trump and his supporters, Vice President Mike Pence, “GOPygmies,” and British conservative Boris Johnson. He does not appear to have ever condemned the June 14 shooter who nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)
Anne Applebaum, another liberal journalist and former member of the Washington Post editorial board, hopped onto Twitter and did her best to amplify Goldfarb’s rage at the NRA for noting on Facebook, two days before an anti-Republican assassination attempt, that progressives were becoming increasingly violent and unhinged in their opposition to the Trump administration and the Republican Congress.
Follow Anne Applebaum ✔ @anneapplebaum Watch this NRA recruitment video: calls on real Americans to arm themselves to fight liberals. Violence is coming. https://www.facebook.com/michael.goldfarb.3/posts/10211954351510125?notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic¬if_id=1498717179258238 … 3:42 AM - 29 Jun 2017 1,025 1,025 Retweets 998 998 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy Like Goldfarb, Applebaum also appears to be under the misimpression that no major political violence occurred in the U.S. in recent weeks.
Rather than attempting to exploit what happened in Alexandria earlier this month, Dana Loesch and the NRA predicted it. And rather than acknowledging the reality of what happened, McKesson and Goldfarb and Applebaum chose instead to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and scream at the NRA and its allies for pointing out the need to protect the right of self-defense in the wake of a politically motivated assassination attempt on Republicans. Projection — in this case, progressives accusing people on the Right of plotting violence while completely ignoring excusing constant violence being perpetrated by the Left — is one thing. But what we see in these examples isn’t just projection. It’s outright denial of reality. It’s the Big Lie on steroids: don’t just refuse to acknowledge one of the most heinous acts of political violence in recent memory, convict the other side for acts that haven’t even been committed.
The fact of the matter is that it wasn’t the NRA that tried to murder a bunch of its political opponents. It wasn’t the NRA that published the location and security details of its foes. It wasn’t the NRA that surveilled a park and confirmed that everyone in it had the “wrong” politics before unloading on them. No, that was done by a progressive Democrat activist. All the NRA did was point out leftist violence and note that Americans have a God-given right, affirmed by the U.S. Constitution, to defend themselves and their loved ones from that very violence.
To Golfarb and Applebaum and McKesson, the NRA’s crime wasn’t committing or fomenting violence. The NRA’s crime was refusing to let leftist violence go unnoticed.
Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.
Title: CNN Tries To Move Forward After Its Latest Humiliation
Post by: G M on June 30, 2017, 10:04:38 AM
CNN Tries To Move Forward After Its Latest Humiliation Kurt Schlichter |Posted: Jun 29, 2017 12:01 AM
“Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary beings who refuse to be forced into one or more specific genders,” began CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, employing the network’s prescribed group salutation. “I have gathered you all today here in the CNN newsroom to discuss this Anthony Scaramucci Russia story we retracted and how it has had a negative impact on our network’s sterling reputation for journalistic integrity and objectivity. Hey, pay attention! Stop laughing!”
The room quieted down. Even Don Lemon looked up from the bar, where he was mixing a cosmopolitan.
“Listen, people….,” Zucker began.
“I identify as an otherkin and that’s humanocentric!” shouted a producer dressed in a bright blue fox costume. The network was rightfully proud of its “a-furry-mative action” outreach to the marginalized furry and brony communities.
Zucker sighed. “Before I go on, I just want to make sure that O’Keefe guy isn’t secretly taping us again. You’re the sharpest, keenest investigative journalists in the business – any sign of him?”
“Nope, he’s totally not here,” replied a voice from the audience, a young white man dressed like Superfly.
“Great. Now this Scaramucci story was a big problem, and not just because we got caught. As you know, Russia is ratings gold, but if we keep coming up empty we’ll leave our audience as unsatisfied as a woman married to a liberal man,” Zucker explained, using an analogy his audience could relate to. “We just can’t keep reporting shaky Russia stories about billionaires based on single, anonymous sources that turn out to be fake news.”
“So … avoid slandering billionaires? Maybe focus on rodeo clowns and so forth?” suggested Jim Acosta.
“Exactly,” replied Zucker. “Don’t do this kind of thing to people who buy their lawyers in bulk! I’m not saying pick on people who can’t fight back against a giant media company but, you know, try and pick on people who can’t fight back against a giant media company.”
A cheerful voice from someone in the front row cried out: “I got a new puppy! His name is Woofy!”
“Yes, Chris, you’ve already told us all about Woofy several times,” sighed Zucker.
“Woofy likes to bark at squirrels, and my brother is governor!”
“That’s terrific, Chris. Someone, get him his fidget spinner. Anyway, starting now, we’re instituting new policies for handling Russia stories. Stop groaning! This important! From now on, we’re going to need your Russia stories to all have an element of truth.”
The room erupted into chaos.
“What the hell?” screeched Wolf Blitzer. “Preposterous!”
“Wolf, your name is sort of like my puppy Woofy’s!” said Chris Cuomo. “Sort of.”
“Never!” snorted Christiane Amanpour, who had been annoying Jake Tapper because her enormous pink gyno hat was blocking his view.
“Look at it spin!” piped up Chris Cuomo between delighted giggles.
Jim Acosta stood up and adjusted his tie. “I want to register my outrage and disapproval of this hateful attack on the free press in the strongest possible terms!”
“Oh, knock it off, Jimmy. There’s no camera here,” Zucker said. “From now on, your anonymous sources have to actually exist. That’s final. I’m sorry people – calm down! – but you can’t quote sources who don’t exist.”
From the back, Don Lemon finished his drink and howled, “The voices tell me MANY THINGS!”
“Look,” said Jim Sciutto. “Like my friend Don, I deeply believe that invisible voices in our heads can be legitimate news sources. Especially if a different voice in our head confirms what the first voice told us.”
“But don’t you understand,” stuttered an indignant Brian Stelter. “Don’t you know that democracy will die in darkness if you impose arbitrary rules on us that limit our ability to report things that never happened?”
“Look, I know this represents a sea change in how CNN operates, but there’s a lot of heat on us right now,” said Zucker. “Personally, I’m still heartbroken that we were unable to go forward with our plans for CNN Kidz Newz Nite With Kathy Griffin.”
“Kathy is a saint and she was robbed!” yelled Don Lemon, who staggered up the aisle, pausing to “accidentally” spill his fresh cosmo on Jake Tapper.
“Hey!” shouted Tapper. “That suit cost more than your pec implants!”
“Get out of my head!” screamed Lemon, who began sobbing. He’d been an emotional train wreck since the defeat of his friend Hillary, who he had steadfastly defended against all sorts of awful people who insisted on telling the truth about her.
“Settle!” howled Zucker. “We are journalists! We are all about our sacred duty as reporters to tell the truth to our viewers in an objective and professional manner! And also ratings. Sweet, sweet, life-giving ratings.”
“Sometimes daddy used to come home late at night with his special friends and they were all dirty and had shovels. They always took the cannoli,” Chris Cuomo said to John Berman, who got up and moved down three chairs.
“All right, all right, let’s move on to solutions. Cooper, your eyebrows are fine, so put down that mirror and pay attention! Now, we’ve had some troubles, but we’re going to come back stronger. The consensus is that the best way to do that is by leveraging exciting, diverse talents and marginalized minority voices, like Shaun King…”
“You want to tell him?” Jake Tapper whispered to Brooke Baldwin.
“Nope.”
“And Sally Kohn,” said Zucker. “Their smart, common sense takes on current issues will help reach out to red America on whatever issues those hicks care about.”
Just then a young production assistant with “#Resist” tattooed across xis forehead rushed over to the network president and handed him a note. He read it and furrowed his brow.
“People, listen up! Trump just tweeted ‘This Russia fake news is fake. Failing CNN is failing. Sad!’ Clearly, he’s hiding something, and I’m guessing its collusion. Put up the ‘TREASON WATCH’ chyron and someone get Louise Mensch on the phone! This is not a drill – we’re flooding the zone! CNN is back!”
The crowd broke up as people rushed to their places. And while a producer led Chris Cuomo by his soft hand to the anchor chair, he was heard to say, “I got a new puppy! His name is Woofy!”
Title: O'Keefe strikes CNN again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2017, 10:08:35 PM
She still great to look at too! Jonathan Gruber got his butt kicked in for lying by her few months back.
Its great to see people on the right calling out these libs for their lying BS. I wish more Republican "law makers" would do the same. How about it Ryan?
Title: Bartiromo vs. Podesta
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2017, 09:56:25 AM
Here's the full segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9U5zxVyTqA
Would love to see some fact checking on Podesta's claims , , ,
Title: RT: Pravda on the Hudson retracts
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2017, 09:57:48 AM
Could we please have some sources other than RT on this?
Title: When is a Trump tweet not newsworthy?
Post by: G M on July 03, 2017, 02:15:23 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370483.php
July 03, 2017 Trump Tweets Out Support for Charlie Gard; Media Refuses to Mention Follow Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so. 7:00 AM - 3 Jul 2017 25,445 25,445 Retweets 76,095 76,095 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy
The media, strangely, chose not to report on this tweet.
Though maybe that's not so strange-- many have entirely embargoed the name "Charlie Gard" from their coverage.
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter Follow Stephen Miller ✔ @redsteeze When Trump tweets, media is all over...oh... 8:26 AM - 3 Jul 2017 1,137 1,137 Retweets 1,661 1,661 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy
Meanwhile, Francis seems to be disputing his advisory council and now saying he supports Charlie Gard's parents' right to choose what "care" is given to their child.
“He prays for them, wishing that their desire to accompany and care for their own child to the end will be respected.” Ed Morrissey notes that the word Crux (the magazine that was quoted from) translated as "care for" is better translated as "treat," as in "medically treat:"
Veteran Vatican reporter Francis X. Rocca translates it into a more explicit reference to “treat” the baby from the official Italian-language statement.. View image on Twitter View image on Twitter Follow Francis X. Rocca ✔ @FrancisXRocca Italian text of pope's statement in support of Charlie Gard's parents and their "desire to accompany and treat their baby till the end" 11:08 AM - 2 Jul 2017 40 40 Retweets 32 32 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy
"Treat" might be the better translation -- wordreference.com lists the first definition of the word in question (curare) as "nurse," and then "take care of." Obviously you can see the word "cure" lurking around in there.
I wouldn't get too hopeful that Francis is having a general change of heart on his liberal instincts -- he just refused to renew the term of service of a conservative Cardinal.
Title: Terror attacks in U.S. receive five times more media coverage if perpetrator is
Post by: bigdog on July 03, 2017, 05:42:40 PM
OMG! Does that include professional journalist Martha Raddatz? Why are they so islamophobic ? Please do explain.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 03, 2017, 07:22:52 PM
we also hear more about Muslin terrorists attacks then we do about slaughter by Blacks of blacks in our inner cities
so whats the point? political maybe?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2017, 07:50:49 PM
BD:
While I get the three particular events mentioned in the article, I confess to not a little suspicion as to the criteria for calling a violent incident "terrorist" when it is not jihadi driven-- the numbers given (12% are jihadi) seem distinctly implausible.
There is also the matter of the larger world-wide Jihadi movement, , ,
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on July 03, 2017, 09:30:48 PM
This just in, there were NO jihadist attacks on the World Trade Center between February 27th 1993 and September 10th 2001!
MIND. BLOWN.
:roll:
Title: The Hill: Media Errors fuel Trump attacks
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2017, 09:06:35 AM
Hey lefties, 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a guidebook.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on July 04, 2017, 01:29:57 PM
GM: "...there were NO jihadist attacks on the World Trade Center between February 27th 1993 and September 10th 2001!"
That wasn't within the time frame studied but I was thinking that too, was that a 'terror incident' deserving equal coverage or was our country attacked in a way more comparable to Pearl Harbor? How was the Pearl Harbor attack covered? ("This day will live in infamy.")
Is Muslim vs. non-Muslim perp the isolated difference in the offences and coverage compared? From the article: "Muslims committed 12.4 percent of terrorist attacks in the United States between 2011 and 2015 — but received 41.4 percent of news coverage."
That alone doesn't tell us if we are comparing a same or similar amount of carnage.
"They found, for example, that the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, in which three people were killed and a score wounded by two Muslim attackers, received almost 20 percent of all coverage relating to U.S. terror attacks in the five-year period."
That incident admittedly skewed the study. How many people were terrorized that day in Boston and across the country in the aftermath when the terrorist went hiding, armed, for days in the community? Was it the three dead, the scores injured, the thousands present, the millions who lived in the search area, or the hundreds of millions who were following it? Fewer people would have been terrorized if the media did not cover it. Should they not cover it? Should they have covered it less? And now from Boston we go to crop reports... (Or should we have a Chechnyan travel ban?) One dangerous guy was hiding for a couple of days. In Chicago thousands of dangerous guys are hiding in plain sight everyday. I agree the media under-reports the people terrorized by murder and crime in America's (Democratic-run) inner cities.
Is Islamic terror the series of individual incidents we see or is it larger, declared war on billions of people who do not follow the chosen Islamic path? I take them at their word; this is a war. I would compare the coverage of this pattern of attacks on the western world more with WWII than with isolated incidents of carnage committed by non-Muslim psychos. The fact this is an ongoing, planned campaign to destroy all of us where the danger doesn't end with the death of the shooter or bomber is a big part of what makes it so terrorizing IMHO.
But they downplay it on the networks as they over-cover it, "we don't yet know the motive" - when every viewer does.
Title: A new low for CNN: doxxing
Post by: G M on July 04, 2017, 11:03:42 PM
CNN Threatens To Expose Non Compliant Citizen for Thinking Wrong Thoughts… #CNNblackmail
sundance 3 hours ago In an article identifying the originating source of the wrestling gif tweeted last week by President Donald Trump, CNN says they’ll keep his name private so long as the person remains compliant to the media thought police.
The direct threat is: “CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”
Andrew Kaczynski of CNN might want to contemplate the wisdom of playing this game. After all, using open sources someone with an investigative skillset might come up with an address he probably would rather not have out on the internet.
145 E 16th St #6K, New York, NY 10003
Is that his currently? Maybe, maybe not. It wouldn't be hard for someone in NYC to do some footwork and determine if it is a valid address for this reporter..
The left should keep in mind that they will have to live under the same rules they decide to play by.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 05, 2017, 04:49:21 AM
Yup.
CNN and the rest of the libs went right after this guy ala mob style.
Threats to destroy his life, extort promises from him to keep muzzled and then publish his apology.
It reminds me of Stalin both torturing and or threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings forcing virtually all of them to "confessA" to some sort of "crime" so he can justsify sending them off to Siberia or shooting their brains out.
Notice how THEIR sources are kept secret even if they make claims about a President of the US but if someone disparages *them* they become a mafia style hit mob.
Title: PS
Post by: ccp on July 05, 2017, 06:23:32 AM
I notice CNN never said a peep about the Kathy Griffen video maker.
His name is known and he seems to have gotten a free pass .
Title: The Internet strikes back at CNN's doxxing threat
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2017, 08:00:55 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoduJyVhPd0
Title: Bigdog makes an important point about islamic terror in the US!
Post by: G M on July 05, 2017, 09:39:59 AM
Pew Research Center estimates that there were about 3.3 million Muslims of all ages living in the United States in 2015. This means that Muslims made up about 1% of the total U.S. population
I missed it at first, but Bigdog is raising an important point about the terrorist threat from the muslims living in the US. I look forward to seeing you flesh this out in the Duck of Minerva or the lawfare blog. Perhaps you could write an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Trump's travel ban pointing out this important fact.
Thanks Prof!
Title: Help me find Jewish terror attacks in the US between 2011 and 2015
Post by: G M on July 05, 2017, 06:45:23 PM
Working off of Bigdog' s important insight into the disproportionate amount of terror attacks from muslims in the US, I thought I would compare it to the number of terror attacks from Jews in the US in the same time period.
Funny enough, I can't find any. And yet Jews are roughly 1.4 percent of the US population.
Bigdog, would you be so kind as to explain the disparity in these rates.
Thanks in Advance.
Title: Did CNN target wrong meme?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2017, 11:34:39 PM
Title: civil legal options available?
Post by: ccp on July 06, 2017, 04:38:44 AM
I am not sure why this guy could not sue CNN. I am sure there must some legal experts who would gladly take such a case.
Because he made an attempt at humor involving CNN and Trump?
While CNN has made a fortune doing everything possible to damage and destroy Trumps's Presidency.
Because the guy made a disparaging post against Muslims CNN thinks they have the right to destroy , extort, blackmail, threaten this guy/gal?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Muslim vs Non Muslim terror coverage
Post by: DougMacG on July 06, 2017, 07:39:30 AM
Right for GM's math. They are not 12% more dangerous but more than 12 times more likely to commit a major terror act. My hunch is that is understated by the methodology. The study uses "meet the widely used definitions of terrorism", but there is no easy or perfect line between terrorism and mass murder and they chose a particular time period.
In support of the study, there are criminal and terror acts committed by non-Muslim Democrats that go under-reported all the time, 100 people shot in Chicago over the fourth, Steve Scalise back in intensive care, black lives matter inciting cop assassinations, for examples.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Muslim vs Non Muslim terror coverage
Post by: G M on July 06, 2017, 08:41:16 AM
Right for GM's math. They are not 12% more dangerous but more than 12 times more likely to commit a major terror act. My hunch is that is understated by the methodology. The study uses "meet the widely used definitions of terrorism", but there is no easy or perfect line between terrorism and mass murder and they chose a particular time period.
In support of the study, there are criminal and terror acts committed by non-Muslim Democrats that go under-reported all the time, 100 people shot in Chicago over the fourth, Steve Scalise back in intensive care, black lives matter inciting cop assassinations, for examples.
All very important points.
Title: We Should Cheer CNN’s Ritual Suicide
Post by: G M on July 06, 2017, 08:43:47 AM
We Should Cheer CNN’s Ritual Suicide Kurt Schlichter |Posted: Jul 06, 2017 12:01 AM
If you ever had any doubt that Donald Trump was right that the mainstream media is the enemy of the American people, CNN corrected your inexplicable inability to comprehend this painfully obvious truth by choosing July 4th to threaten some guy for daring to make fun of Its Medianess Holiness. Apparently, if you dare defy the media it has the right to wreck your life - as long as you are an anti-Obama rodeo clown or a meme-making rando on Reddit. If you are a zillionaire like Anthony Scaramucci with the bucks to hire top flight law firms and Gawkerize its lame carcass - which I would have done in a split-second if CNN had lied about me the way it did about him - then you get a free pass.
Instead of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, CNN's new motto is apparently “Confront the afflicted and settle with the comfortable.” Every time I see the CNN logo I hear James Earl Jones's voice intoning “This is CNN, and we suck.”
But actually, maybe we should all thank CNN for its work guaranteeing Trump’s second term.
Now, before we move on, someone is going to point out that the meme guy is kind of a jerk and said stuff that offends decent people. So? How is that the point? This is a multi-billion dollar media corporation using all its power to threaten an individual into not criticizing it. How is that ever okay? And don't pretend for a minute this media extortion precedent gets limited to outlier Reddit guys. Normal Americans are next.
The media babbles about “principles,” but as soon as they become inconvenient then out the window go those precious “principles.” A silly wrestling gif supporting the president “promotes violence against the media,” but a week before that funding a play where President Trump is stabbed to death was artful political commentary? That’s my objection to all this recent “principles” talk. They are never actually promoting “principles.” It is always a scam and a pose designed to stop other people from acting in, or defending, their own interests. These “principles” never, ever require the people allegedly holding them to not act in, or defend, their interests.
CNN has all sorts of “principles” it uses to bludgeon its opponents, none of which ever seem to limit CNN’s own actions. How convenient.
President Trump sees this and not only calls it out but refuses to back down even an inch in the face of the media’s predictable “Oh, well, I never!” campaign of conservashaming. That's why we see wussy Fredocon Republicans like Jeb! and Kasich trotted out to sadly shake their heads; they're always willing to submit to this nonsense and obediently trash conservatives in the name of principles that they never, ever apply to the media or to their liberal string-pullers. But Trump doesn't play that, and whatever his other faults, it's glorious.
Normal Americans are receptive to Trump’s attacks on the media because they hate the mainstream media too. They are now woke to the unarguable fact that the mainstream media is almost entirely composed of liberal activists who hate normal people and who see absolutely nothing wrong with using their platform to aggressively promote a leftist agenda, all while presenting themselves as non-partisan public servants.
It’s all a lie, and we know it, and beyond the hate directed at us, having the hypocrisy of it rubbed in our faces is even more galling. You know, if you want the prestige and honor due a nonpartisan, objective truth teller, you need to actually be a nonpartisan, objective truth teller. If you won't do the hard work of doing that, then you don't get the benefit. You want respect? Try earning it.
But the media doesn't want to have to do that. It wants its cake, and to eat it too, and further, it wants to make us bake it lots of cakes and write on them “Best Wishes Upon Your Voluntary Transformation From Boy To Girl By The Mere Power Of Your Wanting To Because That Is Totally A Thing And So Is Global Warming And Russians.”
It’s reassuring to see the near universal contempt for CNN’s creepy extortion gambit, and perhaps by the time this column runs the CNN brain trust will have listened to their general counsel, who has probably aged 15 years in the last 15 days, and apologized, retracted, and fired everyone associated with this unbelievable idiocy.
Or it might double down, because CNN's innovative ratings strategy appears to be focused entirely toward identifying and pursuing a smaller, more select audience composed solely of members of the elite Complete Idiot demographic.
Whatever. I just want CNN to collapse, and I want to laugh at its twitching corpse. And then superstars like noted legal scholar Chris Cuomo can focus on important things, like his new puppy Woofy.
Perhaps the best part of all of this is the indisputable fact that CNN’s own actions have validated every bad thing Trump has ever said about the lying media. That he was totally and completely correct about CNN's moral bankruptcy makes it all the sweeter.
As much as it is a joy to see CNN shred its pretenses and act openly as we always knew it wanted to, this sort of thing is not good. There is a cultural war underway already, and this only makes it more likely to get worse. When the media takes a side, it makes the other side its enemy. That’s a conscious choice. And CNN seems happy to help feed the fire by embracing its liberal fascist id.
Title: The joy of CNN memes
Post by: G M on July 07, 2017, 10:05:30 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYgN20S_Tjs
BTW, CNN not winning!
Title: CNN getting doxxed!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2017, 02:39:03 PM
I again see that Bigdog's insight into the disproportionate threat of islamic terrorism in the US is validated.
I commend you sir! It can't be easy to proclaim such ideas in today's leftist groupthink dominated academia.
Title: Media Issues, The moment ABC News realized Donald Trump won the election
Post by: DougMacG on July 10, 2017, 12:17:56 PM
Live at the Morgue, featuring Stephy war-room Stephanopolous and our own favorite :wink:, the professional and unbiased Martha Raddatz at 10:00: "They didn't listen to us."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVwsHRCuBoc
Title: And They Claim TRUMP Is Collaborating With Russia?
Post by: G M on July 11, 2017, 06:33:21 AM
And They Claim TRUMP Is Collaborating With Russia? BY CHARLIE MARTIN JULY 10, 2017
The Washington Post is really starting to piss me off. And Politico. And (of course) CNN.
I thought of it when I read Politico's story about how Trump's efforts to catch leakers were having a "chilling effect" on the intelligence community. To which my reaction, of course, was to say "Freakin' A! What did you think it was supposed to do!"
Well, okay, I didn't say "freakin'".
This came out about the same time as the congressional report that there has been a damaging intelligence leak every damned day since Trump was inaugurated.
Some are more important than others, of course -- it was just embarrassing when it was leaked that the U.S. was wiretapping the Russian ambassador (no -- really!?) and a little frustrating when the press leaked that the 35 Russians expelled and the Russian diplomatic facilities closed by Obama were actually doing intelligence collection (gee, no kidding? Have you ever looked at the antenna farms on the roof of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco?).
Some of the leaks were far worse, like confirmation that the Obama administration had been listening to, unmasking, and distributing conversations with thousands of "U.S. Persons." In that case, the damage was to whatever remaining trust Americans might have that the NSA and CIA aren't being used as political arms of the administration; this is a subtle cancer on the legitimacy of either agency. The degree to which "Russian collusion" is still an issue, while this story is not, ought to be a major crisis for the credibility of American media, but I'm afraid that boat has already left the bus station.
The worst of it, though, is the Washington Post story a few days ago:
Follow Greg Miller ✔ @gregpmiller Obama secretly ordered cyberweapons planted in Russian networks. It will be up to Trump whether to use them. http://wapo.st/2rISxYT?tid=ss_tw … 4:53 AM - 23 Jun 2017 Photo published for Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault The White House debated various options to punish Russia, but facing obstacles and potential risks, it ultimately failed to exact a heavy toll on the Kremlin for its election meddling. washingtonpost.com 132 132 Retweets 123 123 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy Golly, folks at WaPo, does no one see the problem here?
The article starts out:
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Okay, look: if it's so sensitive that it can't be in the presidential daily brief but it's delivered "eyes only" to Obama and three aides, what is it doing in the Washington Post?!
SPONSORED
Oh, and just in passing, we have Clapper, Obama, and three aides. Which three aides? You've just told us that someone revealed that information to you, and it pretty much has to be one of those five people. Unless there's a secret pardon for them, one of them just violated the Espionage Act.
It goes on:
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race. But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
So here we are revealing that we have a source leaking Putin's secret instructions about damaging Hillary's campaign. At this point, there are basically two possibilities: either this information is being fed to us as disinformation, or we just blew a highly placed source inside the Kremlin. If it's the second case, the Washington Post just not only eliminated a valuable source, but they probably killed someone.
But it goes on:
Over that five-month interval, the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could “crater” the Russian economy. .... Obama also approved a previously undisclosed covert measure that authorized planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow. The project, which Obama approved in a covert-action finding, was still in its planning stages when Obama left office. It would be up to President Trump to decide whether to use the capability.
So let's translate this: the Obama administration considered a bunch of counter-attacks (and eventually just did some sanctions), but they also started planning much more serious cyberattacks that could be installed now and fired later. They expected them to be finished in the next administration, which meant under Trump.
Only now, the Washington Post just told the world, including the Russians, about them. This almost certainly means that they've completely eliminated the possibility these attacks might be used, and have also realized we had the capability.
Which is the point at which I tweeted back to Greg Miller "What the hell is wrong with you?!" or something to that effect.
I mean, let's sum it up: in this one story, the Washington Post just leaked two extremely sensitive chunks of information, blew a source that probably took years to develop and who, if lucky, was spirited out of the country before FSB took him to the Basement of No Return, then told the Russians that not only did we have the capability to install "cyberbombs" in their infrastructure, but were actively making plans. (Oh hey, all you Democrats who were talking about hacking Podesta's emails being an "act of war"? THIS is what a cyberwarfare act of war would look like, not just embarrassing someone.)
And why? To add to the story about Trump colluding with the Russians by implication. Oh, and one other reason: these leaks now mean that Trump probably can't use the cyber-"weapons" that were being discussed.
The overuse of the word "treason" is a sort of pet peeve of mine, as I've written before. Well, this still doesn't quite make it, because we're not actually at war with Russia. (If we keep leaking stories about how we're preparing to attack their infrastructure, it could happen yet, however.) But at this point it seems clear that Miller and the leakers did this purposefully, and the leakers did it in violation of their oaths and with utter disregard to the safety of the United States of America.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 11, 2017, 06:50:50 AM
Please post in Intel Matters as well.
Title: MSNBC cuts audio as soon as Clinton meeting with Ukraine comes up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 12, 2017, 01:29:49 PM
i like the poster in one comment who envisions Sergeant York storming the Bastille! :lol:
Title: The Media Is Executing the Tricks They Wargamed Out in Their "JourOlist"
Post by: G M on July 17, 2017, 04:15:13 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370697.php
John Sexton: The Media Is Executing the Tricks They Wargamed Out in Their "JournOList" ListServ With Abandon Important reminder from Sexton: the JournOLists, who now occupy positions of authority in the media, and are also Agents of Infection for the herd, worked out these techniques in 2008, and are deploying them now.
The JournOlisters went into a frenzy after the Jeremiah Wright story. The three strategies they proposed for disappearing the story were (as John Sexton categorizes them) "Kill it" by smearing mainstream media people writing about the story, "Ignore it" by simply refusing to report on it at all, and smearing anyone even talking about the story as "racists."
Sexton points out that these tactics -- once considered controversial enough that even fellow JournOListers had qualms about them -- are now simply SOP for the DNC Media now:
The Journolist discussion took place nearly a decade ago, but in retrospect, I’m struck by how these three basic approaches—kill it, ignore it, call them haters—seem like media archetypes now. You can probably think of your own examples but the ones that come immediately to mind are CBS News decision to sit on video showing President Obama had not called the Benghazi attack terrorism the day after the attack. You may recall that Obama was widely considered the loser of the 1st presidential debate with Mitt Romney. He needed a comeback win. And the winning moment of the 2nd debate was his exchange with Romney on Benghazi. Obama claimed he had called the attack terrorism the next day. But an excerpt from 60 Minutes which remained on the cutting room floor showed that wasn’t true. CBS News knew it had the clip which would cut the legs out from Obama after the 2nd debate and it sat on until a couple days before the election when it quietly posted it online.
And on that, I hear very good things about Sheryl Attkinson's new book "The Smear," which recounts all the bias and #FakeNews of the past couple of years -- most of which you've probably forgotten about, as there's so much new #FakeNews every day.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 17, 2017, 05:02:13 PM
"The Media Is Executing the Tricks They Wargamed Out in Their "JournOList"
no doubt this is coordinated with the DNC
Rush was pointing out that the drive byes are beside themselves about other media that opposes them like drudge breitbart fox and talk radio they are pissed they cannot control the entire conversation anymore like the scum did wiht Nxion
Title: Megyn Kelly going down in flames
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2017, 02:30:56 PM
Title: OAN: One America Network
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 27, 2017, 07:22:31 AM
On our satellite TV, FOX is 360, FOX Business at 359 and various other news and public interest channels are nearby. CNN is at 202 for some reason.
Recently I noticed OAN at 347. My wife googled a bit and apparently behind it is a San Diego businessman with other media interests as well. I would say that OAN's orientation is "Trumpist".
There is near zero attention to the reporters and who they are. There is near zero Washington gossip. There are very few commercials (perhaps because the network/channel is new?). What there is is LOTS of news about all kinds of things from around the country and around the world-- with occasional quickie segments on American history.
At present the show is one hour that repeats, with each hour replacing older segments in the one hour loop as new ones become available.
Worth keeping an eye on I'm thinking , , ,
Title: OAN
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2017, 07:50:28 AM
http://www.oann.com/
Title: Snopes founder accused
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 01, 2017, 01:58:13 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2017, 02:25:30 PM
Need a citation for the NYT fake newsing a few days ago that DOJ was starting an investigation into anti-white discrimination but it turned out to be anti-Asian discrimination.
Title: Media collusion with DOJ to squash tarmac story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2017, 11:38:33 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2017, 03:04:59 PM
second request: I need this to shut someone the F up.
Need a citation for the NYT fake newsing a few days ago that DOJ was starting an investigation into anti-white discrimination but it turned out to be anti-Asian discrimination
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 05, 2017, 04:28:36 PM
second request: I need this to shut someone the F up.
Need a citation for the NYT fake newsing a few days ago that DOJ was starting an investigation into anti-white discrimination but it turned out to be anti-Asian discrimination
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.
Title: POTH caught again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2017, 04:57:00 PM
The Leftmedia has one objective: To vilify the Trump administration whenever the opportunity arises. Of course, this opens the door to gross bias and stories that are just flat-out wrong. The coinage for this is the now-ubiquitous term "fake news." The New York Times was caught once again spreading propaganda in its report on the latest Climate Science Special Report (CSSR). The final draft contains the typical anxiety-laden language of how man-made global warming will be significantly detrimental to humanity. But the Times' politicking of the CSSR's plight is even worse.
Initially, Fox News points out, "The [NYT] story ... said the draft report 'has not yet been made public' but 'a copy of it was obtained by The New York Times.'" Only that erroneous claim didn't fly for very long. And it wasn't whistleblowers who exposed the Times' duplicity.
Rutgers professor Bob Kopp, who contributed to CSSR, tweeted, "It's not clear what the news is in this story; posted draft is public review draft from Dec, and WH review hasn't yet missed Aug 18 deadline" to officially endorse the CSSR. A few moments later he added, "The Times' leaked draft has been on the Internet Archive since January, during the public comment period." Kopp's colleague Katharine Hayhoe likewise tweeted, "Important to point out that this report was already accessible to anyone who cared to read it during public review & comment time. Few did."
Translation: Nothing was really leaked at all. The Times' story now contains this correction: "While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times." Oops. What the Times saw was a chance to exploit an obscure report to further its agenda of portraying Donald Trump as a Neanderthal who "could change or suppress the report" without the public's knowledge. It also attempted to paint ecofascists as good Samaritans who had no choice but to "leak" a report to save humanity. Instead, the public now has even more proof that the Times continues to lack journalistic integrity.
Title: Media decides antifa now the new greatest generation
Post by: G M on August 16, 2017, 05:13:15 PM
I recall being told that these are professional journalists.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -G. Orwell
Title: Off Drudge - you have got to be kidding!
Post by: ccp on August 17, 2017, 04:00:16 PM
I recall being told that these are professional journalists.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -G. Orwell
Third International ASSOCIATION OF POLITICAL PARTIES WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica See Article History Alternative Titles: Comintern, Communist International
Third International, also called Communist International, byname Comintern, association of national communist parties founded in 1919. Though its stated purpose was the promotion of world revolution, the Comintern functioned chiefly as an organ of Soviet control over the international communist movement.
The Comintern emerged from the three-way split in the socialist Second International over the issue of World War I. A majority of socialist parties, comprising the International’s “right” wing, chose to support the war efforts of their respective national governments against enemies that they saw as far more hostile to socialist aims. The “centre” faction of the International decried the nationalism of the right and sought the reunification of the Second International under the banner of world peace. The “left” group, led by Vladimir Lenin, rejected both nationalism and pacifism, urging instead a socialist drive to transform the war of nations into a transnational class war. In 1915 Lenin proposed the creation of a new International to promote “civil war, not civil peace” through propaganda directed at soldiers and workers. Two years later Lenin led the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, and in 1919 he called the first congress of the Comintern, in Moscow, specifically to undermine ongoing centrist efforts to revive the Second International. Only 19 delegations and a few non-Russian communists who happened to be in Moscow attended this first congress; but the second, meeting in Moscow in 1920, was attended by delegates from 37 countries. There Lenin established the Twenty-one Points, the conditions of admission to the Communist International. These prerequisites for Comintern membership required all parties to model their structure on disciplined lines in conformity with the Soviet pattern and to expel moderate socialists and pacifists.
The administrative structure of the Comintern resembled that of the Soviet Communist Party: an executive committee acted when congresses were not in session, and a smaller presidium served as chief executive body. Gradually, power came to be concentrated in these top organs, the decisions of which were binding on all member parties of the International. Moreover, Soviet domination of the Comintern was established early. The International had been founded by Soviet initiative, its headquarters was in Moscow, the Soviet party enjoyed disproportionate representation in the administrative bodies, and most foreign communists felt loyal to the world’s first socialist state.
The realization that world revolution was not imminent led in 1921 to a new Comintern policy in order to gain broad working-class support. “United fronts” of workers were to be formed for making “transitional demands” on the existing regimes. This policy was abandoned in 1923, when the Comintern’s left wing gained temporary control. Joseph Stalin’s assault on the left group of his party, however, brought the expulsion of the Comintern’s first president, Grigory Y. Zinovyev, in 1926 and a further rapprochement with moderate socialism. Then Stalin’s move against the right wing of his party led to another turn in Comintern policy. In 1928 the sixth congress adopted a policy of “extreme leftism” set forth by Stalin: once again, moderate socialists and social democrats were branded as the chief enemies of the working class. The dangers of the rising fascist movement were ignored. In Germany in the early 1930s, the communists focused their attacks on the social democrats and even cooperated with the Nazis, whom they claimed to fear less, in destroying the Weimar Republic. World revolution was once more to be considered imminent, despite Stalin’s own concentration on “building socialism in one country.” At the Comintern’s seventh and last congress in 1935, Soviet national interests dictated a new policy shift: in order to gain the favour of potential allies against Germany, revolutionary ardour was dampened, and the defeat of fascism was declared the primary goal of the Comintern. Now communists were to join with moderate socialist and liberal groups in “popular fronts” against fascism. By now the Comintern was being used as a tool of Soviet foreign policy. The program of popular fronts ended with the signing of Stalin’s pact with Adolf Hitler in 1939. Soon, however, Germany and the Soviet Union were at war, and in 1943 Stalin officially dissolved the Comintern in order to allay fears of communist subversion among his allies. From the Soviet point of view, Moscow was confident of its ability to control the foreign communist parties; and, in any case, much of the Comintern organization was preserved intact within the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1947 Stalin set up a new centre of international control called the Cominform, which lasted until 1956. The international communist movement broke down after 1956 owing to a developing split between the Soviet Union and China, among other factors.
Title: Pat P going after "morning decaf" Joe
Post by: ccp on August 18, 2017, 06:28:35 AM
James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History JIM TREACHER Blogger 11:30 AM 08/22/2017 1930 We’ve been hearing a lot about “right-wing violence” lately. If we’re to believe our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, there’s a Klansman on every street corner and a Nazi under every bed. There’s nothing more terrifying than a “white nationalist” who lives in his mom’s basement, which is why it’s okay for feral Antifa children to beat these guys up and drench them with balloons filled with piss. It’s “self-defense.”
But what happens when an act of violence is irrefutably motivated by left-wing ideology? What happens if, for example, a Bernie Bro named James T. Hodgkinson shoots at a bunch of congressmen for the explicit reason that he hates Republicans and wants them dead? How do we fit that into the preferred narrative?
We can’t. There’s no way. So we just leave it out entirely. Kristina Peterson, WSJ:
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R., La.) is relearning how to walk after being shot at a congressional baseball practice earlier this year, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) said… “It was very emotional for us,” Mr. Ryan said at the end of the town hall held in his Wisconsin congressional district. “He has a long road ahead of him, but he’s going to be OK. His body’s healing.” Mr. Scalise has undergone multiple surgeries after being shot in the hip on June 14 and was readmitted into the intensive care unit in early July due to infection concerns. He is now in rehabilitation and undergoing extensive physical therapy, Mr. Ryan said. I’m glad Rep. Scalise is on the mend. But as I read that WSJ story, I can’t help but notice there’s no mention whatsoever of who shot him, or why. He’s recovering after “being shot.” Passive voice. A gun went off and a bullet hit him. No other details.
Who was the shooter? What was the motive? Did it just happen on its own, somehow? Is this normally how the WSJ reports on politicians who’ve been shot?
If James T. Hodgkinson had been a Trump supporter who shot and almost killed a Democratic congressman for political reasons, he’d be the most infamous man in America. But now, just two months after his attempt to murder a group of Republican lawmakers, he’s not even worth mentioning.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think the press is sad that Hodgkinson didn’t succeed.
Title: Asian announcer with "wrong" name
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2017, 06:28:40 AM
ESPN hides Robert Lee: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/08/22/espn-pulls-asian-american-announcer-from-virginia-football-game-because-has-confederate-generals-name.html
Title: Levin
Post by: ccp on August 24, 2017, 09:05:31 AM
On the "Constipated News Network " like only Levin can do:
ESPN hides Robert Lee: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/08/22/espn-pulls-asian-american-announcer-from-virginia-football-game-because-has-confederate-generals-name.html
Title: The DNC-MSM turns on the DNC-Antifa
Post by: G M on August 30, 2017, 02:33:29 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/371357.php
Bad polling?
Title: CNN Host Takes Bullhorn and Whips Up Antifa Crowd;
Post by: G M on September 01, 2017, 02:09:42 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/371382.php
CNN Host Takes Bullhorn and Whips Up Antifa Crowd; CNN Refusing to Answer Questions About Incident W. Kamau Bell hosts Perspectives, a community outreach program that runs from 4:15am to 4:25 am.
And he's now leading Antifa chants.
Tucker Carlson discussed this last night.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2017, 03:37:47 PM
I saw Tucker last night. As usual, he was awesome.
Changing subjects, I would like to mention once again the OAN: One America Network. With no opinions and no attention paid to the teleprompter readers, it has damn near four times the amount of news per hour as the other networks-- and there is no liberal/progressive bias!!! There are many stories about other parts of the world that I find interesting. The only drawback is a relatively slow turnover of stories. What you see in the evening is pretty much what you saw in the morning. Once a day suffices.
Title: MSM-DNC hiding Comey-Hillary story
Post by: G M on September 02, 2017, 12:41:34 PM
Nets Censor Bombshell That Comey Didn’t Wait for Facts to Rescue Hillary
By Scott Whitlock | September 1, 2017 11:53 AM EDT
Conclusion first, facts second. That, allegedly, was the mentality of ex-FBI Director James Comey in dealing with Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal. Yet this revelation was ignored by ABC, CBS and NBC on Thursday and Friday. Comey, who was fired by Donald Trump in May, decided against criminal charges of Hillary Clinton before 17 interviews of witnesses were even complete. Fox News, MSNBC and CNN all highlighted the story.
Yet, despite a combined nine and a half hours of air time on Thursday night and Friday morning, the networks couldn’t be bothered. To be clear, the reason for ignoring this damning development WASN’T Hurricane Harvey. That natural disaster (deservedly so) garnered a lot of coverage.
But NBC’s Today, a four hour program, on Friday devoted four minutes and two seconds to finding the best new coffee maker. CBS This Morning looked at the future of Uber for three minutes and 53 seconds. (CBS News covered the story, but online.)
ABC’s Good Morning America promoted “Force Friday” for two minutes and 17 seconds. Force Friday celebrates the release of new Star Wars toys. ABC is owned by Disney, the company that owns the sci-fi franchise. GMA made sure to tell viewers they could purchase toys on Walmart.com, a sponsor of the show. What was that journalists were saying about collusion and shady connections between powerful forces?
Clearly, there was time for Comey on the networks.
Fox News Special Report host Bret Baier found the news to be a “fascinating development” and informed viewers: “Senate Republicans say they have evidence that then-FBI director James Comey came to his conclusions on the Clinton case long before all the facts were in about Clinton’s mishandling of classified information.”
Fox reporter Catherine Herridge explained:
According to senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI records indicate that former Director James Comey drafted a conclusion apparently exonerating Hillary Clinton the e-mail case two months before the investigation was over and before the FBI interviewed Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, IT specialist Brian Pagliano and Clinton herself. The FBI transcripts from interviews with two senior Comey aides are now coming to light after a records request from the Republican leaders on the Senate committee. They said it appears that in April or early May 2016, Comey had decided against criminal charges before 17 interviews were complete. Writing to the FBI, the Senators added, “Conclusion first, fact gathering second. That's no way to run investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard.” After he was fired by President Trump, Comey told Congress Loretta Lynch was the one who had politicized the e-mail case. The ignoring of this twist in the Comey story is a contrast to the coverage of the ex-FBI Director’s congressional testimony. In June, excited CBS journalists touted, “historic” “history” that could shape U.S. “History.”
Thursday’s revelations were less historic, apparently.
A transcript of the FNC segment is below:
BRET BAIER: A fascinating twist tonight on the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. Senate Republicans say they have evidence that then-FBI director James Comey came to his conclusions on the Clinton case long before all the facts were in about Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. Chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge is here tonight to explain. Good evening, Catherine.
CATHERINE HERRIDGE: Well, thank you, Bret. According to senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI records indicate that former Director James Comey drafted a conclusion apparently exonerating Hillary Clinton the e-mail case two months before the investigation was over and before the FBI interviewed Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, IT specialist Brian Pagliano and Clinton herself. The FBI transcripts from interviews with two senior Comey aides are now coming to light after a records request from the Republican leaders on the Senate committee. They said it appears that in April or early May 2016, Comey had decided against criminal charges before 17 interviews were complete. Writing to the FBI, the Senators added, “Conclusion first, fact gathering second. That's no way to run investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard.” After he was fired by President Trump, Comey told Congress Loretta Lynch was the one who had politicized the e-mail case.
SENATOR RICHARD BURR: Was your decision influenced by the Attorney General’s tarmac meeting with the former President Bill Clinton?
JAMES COMEY: Yes, ultimately in a conclusive way.
BURR: Were there other things that contributed the you can describe in an open session?
COMEY: At one point, the Attorney General attorney general have your directive enough to call it an investigation but to instead call it a matter.
HERRIDGE: But the new time line shows that Comey was drafting his statement even before the tarmac meeting. This finding comes a day after the FBI said it denied request for Clinton e-mails citing a lack of interest. Bret?
Title: Why????
Post by: ccp on September 06, 2017, 12:26:29 PM
There is no way Charlie Rose will let him come out without ambushing him or Trump in some way. Just not going to happen where Bannon will come out like a "Rose" ( no pun intended)
So why do this for 60 minutes if not for his own glory?
Title: Journolist word of the day:
Post by: G M on September 06, 2017, 04:11:23 PM
The Media Really Likes Using One Word to Describe Trump's DACA Decision-- 'Cruel' BY PJ VIDEO SEPTEMBER 6, 2017
Grabien released this montage proving that the mainstream media has an echo chamber; that they all like to use the same exact words to describe current events. In the case of President Trump rescinding the DACA protections, they all used the same word, "cruel." CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CNBC, Univision... all the same word. But there's no bias here, no way!
Is Trump's DACA decision "cruel"?
Title: Re: Journolist word of the day: "Cruel"
Post by: DougMacG on September 06, 2017, 05:12:38 PM
Wouldn't 'cruel' be the opposite, bringing your children to live where they are illegal. Signing an Executive order that violates federal law and the constitution. Circumventing Congress and leaving the people you say you are protecting one election and one signature away from reversal of the policy? Cruel, if you ask me.
That said, isn't it embarrassing for our state media that they are so easily exposed for their unoriginality, collusion and plagiarism.
It begs the question, who is your puppet master? These montages have been putting themselves together since the 'gravitas' the Dick Cheney pick brought, what young George Bush lacked - according to (all of) them.
This is worse than the old Soviet Union; they only had one channel of state-run, Orwellian bullsh*t.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 06, 2017, 06:13:34 PM
I suggest a bipartisanship deal
we grant all the illegal kids citizenship
and their parents.
Thus the Repubs will be so *NICE* and *HUMANE* and be *WHO WE ARE* (speak for yourself Obama )
and we only require one thing. That they can stay in this country only if for the rest of their lives they vote for Republicans.
If recommend that we will see the DNC sending over the boarder by bullet trains.
We all know as Rush apply puts it , this is a Dem Party voter drive.
They can't bribe enough people here to vote for them so ship em in as fast as possible.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on September 06, 2017, 08:25:43 PM
Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't have a right to our tax dollars and citizenship? Who?
thanks to the bashing of W during Katrina every hurricane etc now turns into a week of national hysteria 24 /7 on the news cycle and every politician tripping all over their feet to warn threaten cry and act scared and drop billions in airlift relief before the storm even hits.
I turn away from the news when this happens . Tiring if you ask me.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2017, 08:50:54 PM
Looking to the upside, I'm thinking President Bush is looking , , , wait for it , , , presidential. :-D
Title: Google Bias documented, again and again
Post by: DougMacG on September 12, 2017, 09:05:56 AM
Title: Isn't the real story that NYT reporter
Post by: ccp on September 18, 2017, 08:30:09 AM
is stalking? No reasonable expectation of privacy due to being a public restaurant? Is it reasonable to expect someone is at next table taping your conversation? one person state or district vs two person state. None are *no person*
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 22, 2017, 04:29:45 AM
Crafty , Do you think the NYT should also have to register as a foreign (Russian) media source? :-D
Title: Dershowitz: Why Is the Media Playing Down Valerie Plame's Nazi-Level Antisemitis
Post by: G M on September 22, 2017, 04:23:06 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/371690.php
Dershowitz: Why Is the Media Playing Down Valerie Plame's Nazi-Level Antisemitism?
The Entitled Caste protects other members of the Entitled Caste. That's the whole point of an Entitled Caste.
Related: Check out this thread from Omri Ceren noting that Plame is just talking the way Obama and Kerry talked about American Jews having a divided loyalty and controlling the country for Israel's interests.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Toasted Weiner, defended by Maddow MSNBC, Toobin CNN
Post by: DougMacG on September 25, 2017, 08:21:04 PM
Some must see tv, click on the video links. Anthony Weiner sentenced today. Flashback to the media defending him and trashing Breitbart for 'exposing' him. Maddow does an entire segment on how he might have been hacked, and how Breitbart is always wrong, never apologizes...
Some must see tv, click on the video links. Anthony Weiner sentenced today. Flashback to the media defending him and trashing Breitbart for 'exposing' him. Maddow does an entire segment on how he might have been hacked, and how Breitbart is always wrong, never apologizes...
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 05, 2017, 12:18:39 PM
I don't recall where but there was an interview on cable with Bezos ant ther interviewer asked him if he bought the Wcompost to influence politics (of course in usual leftist fashion)
and he resolutely said no not all.
some people in the audience could be heard busting out laughing.
the interview if i recall had a smirk on his face but did not follow up.
*Bezos , we are not all as brilliant as you but we are not that stupid either!*
Title: Media needs to stop inspiring copycats
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2017, 05:04:40 PM
Not sure I agree with some of this, but a subject worth considering
The Media Needs to Stop Inspiring Copycat Murders. Here's How. After a wave of teen suicides in the 1980s, news outlets began reporting on these deaths more cautiously. Similar guidelines could help prevent more shooting sprees.
sandy-hook-graphic3.jpg After the Newtown shootings, newspapers printed detailed information about the killer and his methods. (McClatchy Papers)
You might not have noticed, but the mass media rarely reports on suicides, particularly teen suicides. When it does, the coverage is careful, understated, and dampened. This is no accident: Following guidelines endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Mental Health, the media carefully and voluntarily avoids sensationalizing such deaths especially among teenagers. They almost never make the news unless the person is a public figure; methods of suicide are rarely mentioned; suicide pacts are not reported upon.
This is for good reason: Suicide, especially among teens, is contagious. It's a morbidly attractive idea that offers an established path of action for a troubled youngster. And we know from research in many fields that establishing a path of action -- a complete narrative in which you can visualize your steps and their effects -- is important in enabling follow-through.
This, for example, is exactly why political campaigns ask people about where and how they plan to vote -- imagined events are more likely to be carried out in real life. If you have a full story in your head, you are more likely to enact it, step by step. We also know such "contagion" effects are especially strong in adolescence and young adulthood -- an especially turbulent time for mental health.
In the Middle Ages, psychosis may have involved visions of the devil. Today, it can involve dressing in pseudo-combat gear and walking through a public place in a blaze of violence.
As a sociologist, I am increasingly concerned that the tornado of media coverage that swirls around each such mass killing, and the acute interest in the identity and characteristics of the shooter -- as well as the detailed and sensationalist reporting of the killer's steps just before and during the shootings -- may be creating a vicious cycle of copycat effects similar to those found in teen and other suicides.
Indeed, the rate of mass public shootings in the United States has been accelerating. In 2012 alone, there were at least a dozen of them. Seven dead at an Oakland college in April. Five killed at a Seattle coffee shop in May. Twelve killed in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in July. Six murdered at a Wisconsin Sikh temple in August, and six more killed in Minneapolis in September. Three dead in the Milwaukee spa shootings in October. And most recently, and unimaginably, 20 children as young as six, along with six adults, murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The trend is disturbingly clear.
As many have pointed out, these mass public rampages are inextricably linked with the availability of high-capacity guns and ammunition, as well as with lack of strong mental health infrastructure -- especially for those in late adolescence and early adulthood, the typical onset period for major psychotic disorder.
But it's also important to recognize that while mental illness plagues every society, the ways people express it are heavily influenced by the norms, heroes, anti-heroes, and spectacles of their own places and times. In the Middle Ages, psychosis may have involved visions of the devil, snakes, or witches. In the 21st century, it can involve dressing in pseudo-combat gear, donning numerous high-powered rifles, and walking through a public place in a blaze of violence. The shock value is part of the goal -- and the higher the shock value, predictably, the higher the ensuing media coverage, which fuels interest in the shooter and creates a whirlwind of attention and spectacle.
My aim here is not to blame the media: such events have undeniable news value, and there is intense public interest in uncovering their details. But it's important to recognize that such incidents are not mono-causal, and sensational news coverage is, increasingly, part of the mix of events that contributes to these rampages.
We need to figure out how to balance the public interest in learning about a mass shooting with the public interest in reducing copycat crime. The guidelines on reporting on teen suicides were established after a spate of teenage suicides in the United States, some through suicide pacts, in the 1980s. Those who created the guidelines looked at examples from other countries -- for example, the subway suicides in Vienna in the 1980s, which decreased after the media changed its coverage -- and provided specific recommendations: Don't refer to the word suicide in the headline. Don't report the method of the suicide. Don't present it as an inexplicable act of an otherwise healthy person.
With that as a model, here are some initial recommendations.
1. Law enforcement should not release details of the methods and manner of the killings, and those who learn those details should not share them. In other words, there should be no immediate stories about which guns exactly were used or how much robo-cop gear was utilized. There should be no extensive timelines -- no details about which room was entered first or which victim was killed second. In particular, there should be no reporting of the killer's words, or actions before or during the shooting.
Yes, I am a scholar of social media and I understand that these things will leak. But there is a big difference between information that can only be found if you really look for it and news stories that are blasted by every television station and paper in the country. At a minimum, we can and should greatly delay the release of these details by weeks, if not months.
2. If and when social media accounts of the killers are located, law enforcement should work with the platforms to immediately pull them. Yes, there will be screenshots, and again, I am not proposing that such information can be entirely shut out. But by making it harder to find, we can dampen the impact of the spectacle.
3- The name of the killer should not be revealed immediately. If possible, law enforcement and media sources should agree to withhold it for weeks. The identity can be released later during trial (if there is one) or during the release of the investigative report. Once again, merely delaying the release of information may greatly reduce the spectacle effect. The name may "leak," but that is very different from the full blast of attention that currently surrounds the perpetrators immediately after each incident.
Similarly, the killer should not be profiled extensively, at least not at first. There should not be an intense search for clues or reasoning beyond "troubled person commits unspeakable act; wish he had gotten help earlier," in as flat a reporting style as possible. We know that the killers tend to be young men, and they tend to have mental health issues. We do not need to know which exact video games they played, what they wore, or what their favorite bands were.
4. The intense push to interview survivors and loved ones in their most vulnerable moments should be stopped. This, too, may help reduce the sense of spectacle and trauma.
I don't claim that these are the only and best ways to deal with this issue. but I offer them as fodder for a conversation that I hoped will be taken up by media and mental health experts. And we shouldn't be concerned that such guidelines will be impossible to follow. Just yesterday, news outlets revealed that Richard Engel of NBC had been kidnapped in Syria -- and released. The information about his capture, though obviously newsworthy, was held back in order to aid the negotiations and rescue efforts.
There are many such cases of media voluntarily acting to dampen coverage of certain events, especially when it involves one of their own. Let's entreat them to do it for the sake of potential shooting victims as well.
Title: another read off Sparta report
Post by: ccp on October 06, 2017, 04:40:16 PM
A important news flash from NYT in N Korea - they make good pizza over there and children are having a grand time :
Title: Media, Chris Wallace Fox News Sunday smears NRA
Post by: DougMacG on October 09, 2017, 10:12:05 AM
I wish to revise and retract anything positive I have said about Chris Wallace. His interview the with NRA executive director yesterday was AWFUL. He blamed him, accused him, spewed liberal talking points, interrupted, didn't let him answer. Not fair, no balance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhX07uILJDE https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-chris-wallace-takes-nra-to-task-you-need-to-address-this
2 or 3 of their panelists were worthless too. Juan Williams every week for balance? Not exactly compelling TV or analysis.
One thing in media, why they don't split their time something like 50-50, allow a guest to give his/her side of it and also challenge them where they are wrong or where there is another side to it.
This is noteworthy in media because it seems that Fox News is ripe for replacement on the right. They want to be fair and balanced and end up on the far left part of the time. That leaves an opening a mile wide for a conservative alternative to emerge.
NRA already agreed with 'bump stock' regulation. What else would have helped here? http://abc7.com/nra-open-to-regulation-of-bump-stock-device/2494412/
Disclaimer, I don't watch cable news so must admit an occasional once a week peek is not a full examination. Their radio news however often speaks with the same liberal talking points of the hated MSM.
Title: Squelching the Weinstein story in 2004; SNL squelching it this week
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 09, 2017, 01:12:52 PM
Title: Fake News in the Age of Facebook
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2017, 11:28:09 AM
The "fake news" problem isn't just about "alternative facts." The problem has more to do with the spin, the narrative, the context that inclines you to believe, for example, whether there was or was not collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and officials of the Russian government. And the problem is that 60 percent of Americans get their news through social media, mostly Facebook, which uses mysterious algorithms to customize each of our news feeds, selecting all and only what interests me, as computed from every time I press "Like" or forward an article to friends.
It's not just Facebook. Sit with a friend or, better yet, a friendly enemy — someone you know has political views contrary to your own — and, using your own devices, type the same entries into your respective Google search windows. Try "BP," standing for the oil company that used to be British Petroleum but tried rebranding itself as Beyond Petroleum. You and your friendly enemy — perhaps your crackpot brother-in-law? — are going to get different results from your searches because of what Google knows about each of you and what you've searched before. If you are an avid environmentalist and he's a rabid lefty, you'll get more results about the environmental effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster while he'll get more about its nefarious corporate causes. Trending Toward Personalization
Personalization has a long and illustrious history, best understood in contrast with its opposite, the mass market of the post-World War II boom. The structure of that marketplace featured mass production that reduced costs with economies of scale. The customer was a mass market that was only gradually differentiated, first by demographic characteristics — age, income and education — and later by psychographics such as likes, dislikes, values and personality traits.
From 1983 until 1986, I served as the director of research for SRI International's Values and Lifestyles Program. Our clients were mostly marketers trying to match their messages about the right product for the right customer through the right media. As early as the 1980s, it became clear that this matching game — never an issue for mass markets — would only become finer-grained as technologies and media evolved. Demographic and psychographic segments would be sliced and diced into subsegments until finally, with the advent of the internet, we arrived at markets of one.
As Farhad Manjoo describes the process in his book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society:
"The mainstream is drying up. In some ways, we are returning to the freewheeling days before radio and television launched the very idea of mass media — the era of partisan newspapers and pamphleteers. But our niches, now, are more niche than ever before. We are entering what you might call the trillion-channel universe: over the last two decades, advances in technology… have helped turn each of us into producers, distributors and editors of our own media diet."
Personalization has its bright sides. It can make shopping easier: Instead of wandering aimlessly down the endless aisles of vast department stores, Amazon will guide you toward the book you might like next based on what it knows about your recent purchases. For the customer, personalization can mean that whatever messaging manages to reach her, she will not be subjected to blaring announcements to the mass market; the ads she receives will be about only the things she's interested in. They will be targeted.
And that's what Facebook can sell to its advertisers: its success at solving the matching game; its ability to put in front of you, next to your news feed, all and only those things it knows you and your friends are interested in.
Personalization reverses the polarity of the messaging in the marketplace. Instead of all push from producer to consumer, now it's pull from consumer to producer. Rather than passively listening to broadcasting from the networks, or narrowcasting from the cable channels, today's consumer is narrowcatching by pulling from the internet, via Google, whatever he or she wants to know. Politics and the Filter Bubble
Thanks to personalization, marketers and customers can find each other more easily. But what is good for the marketplace and the consumer is not necessarily good for the polity and its citizens, as Eli Pariser makes clear in his book The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think.
"Ultimately, the filter bubble can affect your ability to choose how you want to live. To be the author of your life... you have to be aware of a diverse array of options and lifestyles. When you enter a filter bubble, you're letting the companies that construct it choose which options you're aware of. You may think you're the captain of your own destiny, but personalization can lead you down a road to a kind of informational determinism in which what you've clicked on in the past determines what you see next — a Web history you're doomed to repeat. You can get stuck in a static, ever-narrowing version of yourself — an endless you-loop."
Founding head of MIT's Media Lab and columnist for Wired magazine Nicholas Negroponte put it this way:
"Imagine a future in which your interface agent can read every newswire and newspaper and catch every TV and radio broadcast on the planet, and then construct a personalized summary. This kind of newspaper is printed in an edition of one... Call it the Daily Me."
From another authoritative source, Pariser quotes Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
"Most people will have personalized newsreading experiences on mobile-type devices that will largely replace their traditional reading of newspapers. And that kind of news consumption will be very personal, very targeted. It will remember what you know. It will suggest things that you might want to know. It will have advertising. Right? And it will be as convenient and fun as reading a traditional newspaper or magazine."
But what is convenient and fun for the reader is not always good for the citizen. Pariser himself says: "The filter bubble will often block out the things in our society that are important but complex or unpleasant. It renders them invisible. And it's not just the issues that disappear. Increasingly, it's the whole political process."
In a world that's becoming fragmented into friends of friends, "the news" becomes equally fragmented. In place of different views on the same world, people are living in different worlds. This ontological point is a main theme of Manjoo, who writes:
"While new technology eases connections between people, it also, paradoxically, facilitates a closeted view of the world, keeping us coiled tightly with those who share our ideas. In a world that lacks real gatekeepers and authority figures, and in which digital manipulation is so effortless, spin, conspiracy theories, myths, and outright lies may get the better of many of us."
Unintended Consequences
Now this is not what the early inventors of and writers about the internet had in mind. Geniuses like Norbert Wiener, who helped invent cybernetics, and Douglas Engelbart, who invented the mouse, wanted to facilitate a more connected and friendly world. As Pariser describes what I'll call "The Dream" that united many of us in the San Francisco Bay Area during the lifetime of Wired magazine, "Despite their libertarian orientation, the writings of Esther Dyson, John Perry Barlow, and Kevin Kelly... fairly ache with a longing to return to an egalitarian world."
In his just-published World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, Franklin Foer cites Kevin Kelly's description of the ultimate book, following on Google's digitization of all books: "The real magic will come in the second act as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before."
Foer, who was not so incidentally the editor of the New Republic, a left-wing publication by any measure, expostulates on The Dream:
"There was a political corollary to this prelapsarian dream. Not only would volumes melt into one beautiful book, disagreements would fade too… As readers worked together to annotate and edit texts, they would find common ground. The path of the network takes our most contentious debates and leads them toward consensus. Facebook puts it this way: 'By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term.'"
But that's not exactly the way it's working out. As Fred Turner puts it in From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism:
... "to the degree that the libertarian rhetoric of self-reliance embraces a New Communalist vision of consciousness-centered, information-oriented elite, it can also permit a deep denial of the moral and material costs of the long-term shift toward network modes of production and ubiquitous computing."
And further:
"Even as they suggested that such a world would in fact represent a return to a more natural, more intimate state of being, writers such as Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, and John Perry Barlow deprived their many readers of a language with which to think about the complex ways in which embodiment shapes all of human life, about the natural and social infrastructures on which that life depends, and about the effects that digital technologies and the network mode of production might have on life and its essential infrastructures."
I think Turner is being a little rough on my friends and, after 32 years of crossing paths and working together in the San Francisco Bay area, I count each of them as a friend. But he has a point. Fixing a Network Gone Wrong
Is there a remedy for this network gone wrong? According to Foer, Pariser, Manjoo and Turner, the internet has evolved from unifying force for social solidarity to a divisive bubble machine. Foer calls for a regulatory fix, a Data Protection Authority akin to Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But reviewers give that idea little credibility.
Foer's take on the current state of the news media veers from the apoplectic to the righteous:
"Google and Facebook … are, after all, organizing the entire output of humanity.
"Of course, this is not an innocent activity — even though the tech companies disavow any responsibility for the material they publish and promote. They plead that they are mere platforms, neutral utilities for everyone's use and everyone's benefit. When Facebook was assailed for abetting the onslaught of false news stories during the 2016 presidential campaign … Mark Zuckerberg initially disclaimed any culpability. 'Our goal is to give every person a voice,' he posted on Facebook, washing his hands of the matter. It's galling to watch Zuckerberg walk away from the catastrophic collapse of the news business and the degradation of American civic culture, because his site has played such a seminal role in both. Though Zuckerberg denies it, the process of guiding the public to information is a source of tremendous cultural and political power. In the olden days, we described that power as gatekeeping — and it was a sacred obligation."
While often as critical as Foer when lamenting the way social media has evolved, Pariser is ultimately more optimistic when it comes to the future. He quotes one of the inventors of the internet:
"'We create the Web,' Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote. 'We choose what properties we want it to have and not have. It is by no means finished (and it's certainly not dead).' It's still possible to build information systems that introduce us to new ideas, that push us in new ways. It's still possible to create media that show us what we don't know, rather than reflecting what we do. It's still possible to erect systems that don't trap us in an endless loop of self-flattery about our own interests or shield us from fields of inquiry that aren't our own."
In the meantime, as an antidote to echo chambers like Fox News, MSNBC or Facebook's news feed, the four books cited in this column read like celebrations of the need for something like Stratfor.
Title: I'm just shocked to learn of this media corruption!
Post by: G M on October 11, 2017, 11:51:04 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 21, 2017, 12:39:43 PM
"non consensual sex"
Rape ???
or she had an sexual affair and is claiming he coerced or harassed her ???
$ 32 million is a lot of dough !!!
There are a lot of women who around the world who would love that kind of harassment. Sorry politically correct folks but , true.
Title: Megyn Kelly has about pissed off everyone
Post by: ccp on October 25, 2017, 07:39:32 AM
She pissed off many pro Trump Republicans with her non stop attacks on him and the LEFT hates her because she worked for Fox ( a crime ) and had a right ward lean. She can't please anyone now:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2017, 11:10:47 AM
Bought Sharyl Attkinson's book "Smear" for my nephew , , , after I give it a quick read first for myself :lol:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: rickn on October 26, 2017, 04:41:47 AM
I heard somewhere recently that O'Reilly, who was divorced in 2011, had been dating Lis Wiehl. And then there was a falling out between the two. There could have been business relationships intertwined with their personal relationship.
The only thing I would note about the timing of the complaints is that these women complainants appear to play this card when their contracts are up for renewal. Fatal Attraction was big at the box office in the late 1970's. I guess the lesson of that movie has been forgotten by many - even those old enough to have seen it during its original release. :wink:
Title: speaking of Fatal Attraction
Post by: ccp on October 26, 2017, 07:20:23 AM
Rick,
Prior to " Fatal Attraction" was a movie called "Play Misty for Me" (1971) starring Clint Eastwood.
The theme from Fatal Attraction was clearly taken from this earlier movie right down to the psychotic knife attack at the end. Perhaps you have seen it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Misty_for_Me
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2017, 09:28:13 PM
I have three very clever nephews and a couple of months ago had a very enjoyable political conversation with one of them. Though a Dem, I was very proud of how he conducted himself in the conversation. Like many good people being fed only by pravda sources he doubted what I was telling me and invited me to back my assertions up.
Of course I mentioned this thread, AND I bought him Sharyl attkisson's "The Smear"-- which I will be sending him tomorrow.
Title: Tucker is awesome!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2017, 07:59:50 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_sLX8CiJec
Title: CNN : first lady is secretive
Post by: ccp on November 03, 2017, 05:55:51 AM
Melania would have to be foolish to speak to CNN about anything beyond the weather. CNN is guaranteed to turn everything she says around on her and make it as negative as possible:
Modern Media, Superiority Complexes, and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect by Dystopic | Nov 3, 2017 |
Social media is full of long-winded, acrimonious debates about politics, sociology, cats, etc… It’s enough to make a man seriously consider giving it up completely. My colleague at Liberty’s Torch discussed cutting that particular line earlier, and though I have not done what he did, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think about it. Mostly, the arguments are just for show. People don’t expect to win hearts and minds in them, not really. Rather, it’s often just a virtue signal, or the refilling of narcissistic supply.
A few posts in, and the insults about stupidity, bigotry, Dunning-Kruger, and otherwise will make themselves known. And in them we see the true purpose of many such debates: feeling superior. If you infer that your opponent is a Nazi, you feel morally superior to him. If you call him stupid, you can feel intellectually superior. The bigger the audience, the better, so more people can affirm your superiority over your enemy. The actual issue at hand is rarely as important as these feelings. Find me a Facebook debate, and I can almost guarantee you at least one participant who is engaging in this behavior.
And since no one is really arguing in a dialectical manner (though you will see the word “facts” repeated as mantra for things that aren’t), nothing gets resolved. No new knowledge is gained, no insight or deeper understanding. It is purposeless mental masturbation. It certainly doesn’t make one an intellectual, or more intelligent.
What I’ve come to realize is that this behavior on social media is a microcosm for our society at large. The same behavior applies at the highest levels of media and politics. Most of these people have no idea what they are talking about, even most of the so-called experts (contrary to Tom Nichols’ assessment of political expertise). Find me an expert pilot, and we can go through his records, how many hours he’s logged, on what aircraft, and with what results. It is demonstrable. There is no similar metric for media talking heads, especially where results are concerned. And for politics, and measure of this is bound to be skewed by the political views of its members, such that our reliance upon it is already suspect. This leads to an environment of low accountability. Oh, sure, if a man like Dan Rather gets snookered by some fake memos very publicly, the house of cards can fall down on him. But the mistake has to be high profile enough and, paradoxically, covered by the media enough, for it to get out in the first place. Michael Crichton explained the problem as the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Observe: Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.
But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
A combination of superficial understanding and political narratives results in articles and news programs that make no sense. The percentage of the problem attributable to either feature varies widely from case-to-case. Sometimes it is blatantly political, and it cannot be explained by ignorance. Other times, it is probably best explained with stupidity. Most cases are probably a little of both. The media and its supporters, meanwhile, are quite blind to this. I came across this gem this afternoon, and it made me laugh out loud for the sheer stupidity of it:
The amusing thing is how easy this is to disprove. A quick glance at the SAT scores of incoming college students, broken down by major, is sufficient to reveal the error (see page 13 here). Of the STEM majors, all outscored journalists (see: engineering, physical sciences, mathematics, computer/information sciences). Some did so by staggering margins (see: mathematics). That the author of that tweet couldn’t be bothered to check his work, when claiming high intellect, is actually pretty damned hilarious. It’s enough to make me wonder if the guy is secretly trolling. Anyway, point is, try Michael Crichton’s test for yourself. It’s something I’ve spoken of before – I just lacked the convenient name for it. Talk to other people who have done the same for different subjects, people you trust. You’ll soon see just how wrong the media is. Trump frequently calls CNN fake news, but in reality pretty much every outlet I’ve seen is full of shit to greater or lesser degree. Sometime I’d like to see a counter for how many times individual journalists have been caught in lies, or made serious mistakes driven by stupidity and ignorance. These are the same people who, like the randoms on Facebook, want to demonstrate how enlightened they are, how wise, all-knowing, and progressive. They have a bigger podium, of course, and more spectators. But the motivations are similar enough. It’s all about appearances and narcissistic supply. It all boils down to a statement even a toddler could understand, and likely hears frequently on the playground. “I’m better than you! Neener-neener!” But they aren’t willing to do the work. They all expected Hillary Clinton to win, right up until she didn’t. Never forget how badly they called that election. If you get amnesia about their smaller mistakes, at least hold on to that one. They pretend to expert status. Meanwhile Trump, the supposedly stupid bigot, baits them like a matador. It’s comical how he plays them.
They want so desperately to shout down this man. I once thought it was because of his immigration policies – and I have no doubt that was a major factor, at least at first. But I’ve come to realize that there’s a deeper reason. He makes them look like idiots. He hurts their egos. Because, deep down, they know they aren’t the superior intellects they pretend to be. They know they are fake news. And he not only sees through them, he’s exposed them as frauds in front of the world. This they cannot forgive, or forget.
Title: The Spin Doctor is in the House
Post by: G M on November 08, 2017, 07:33:28 PM
The Spin Doctor is in the House by Dystopic | Nov 8, 2017 | Culture War |
It’s been a crazy last few days, hasn’t it? Before we get into the meat of today’s entry, I want to express both my sorrow for those who died in the Texas shooting, and my deep respect for the men who fought back against the shooter and ran him down. You may kill people in Texas, if you are evil enough and determined enough, but know that Texas will kill you back. The two men who fought back did so quickly and decisively, before more lives could be lost. As for those who died in the shooting, I can only say that a just and true God awaits them. He knows His own. Others have said more, and said it better than I can, so I will leave it at that, for now.
Something else has been on my mind for a while as well. Rand Paul was recently attacked by a neighbor while out mowing his lawn. The neighbor broke 5 of his ribs, such was the fury of the assault. But that isn’t what bothers me per se. While I generally like Rand Paul (and that’s significant praise from me – I loathe most politicians), this hardly ascends to the level of the Scalise shooting, right? Well… kind of, in a different way. Check out this article:
Rand Paul is not a perfect neighbor, says community developer
First off, HOAs are generally as loathsome as any other political entity (which is what they are, don’t let them claim otherwise). But this is a fascinating bit of spin. Rand is not a “perfect” neighbor. Note the choice of words. My friends, none of us are perfect neighbors. I’m sure I do things that irritate some of my neighbors, and they have done things that irritate me from time-to-time, though I am generally blessed with neighbors who are very good people. Mostly, we all get along anyway. Hell, some of them are even good friends (and yes, it is still possible to irritate your good friends sometimes, too).
Point is nobody is perfect. Lack of perfection by no means excuses the actions of Rand’s neighbor. It counts for nothing at all. Zero. Zilch. So why mention it?
Dear readers, the spin doctor is in the house. It’s time to make the attack on Rand look, if not excusable, then at least less bad. This is media and its allies in politics conducting damage control. They can imply that, oh maybe the neighbor shouldn’t have attacked Rand BUT and then insert a long stream of excuses that diminishes the impact of the crime. Let us fisk a few of these, shall we?
The history between U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and his neighbor, who is accused of attacking him, is filled with years of angst and petty arguments over misplaced lawn trimmings and branches, the neighborhood’s developer said.
Ah yes. Misplaced lawn trimmings and branches excuse violence. What? Note that it doesn’t even mention who was misplacing the trimmings. The piece insinuates that it’s Rand’s fault, because of the not perfect headline, but it stops short of claiming that. This is common media rhetorical technique, such that if it came out that the trimmings were the neighbor’s, and not Rand’s, the journalist can escape by saying he didn’t really claim that.
The two men have been neighbors for more than 17 years, said Boucher’s lawyer, Matt Baker, in a statement Monday.
While there’s no official word on what caused the fight, Skaggs suggested it might have stemmed from Paul allegedly blowing lawn trimmings into his neighbor’s yard.
Again with the weasel wording. Skaggs suggested that it might have allegedly stemmed from this. Yet the inattentive reader is given the picture that Rand was being an asshole. Pure rhetoric. No facts.
There have been disagreements in the past, Skaggs said, over lawn clippings or who should cut down a tree branch when it stretched over a property line. The two men live on different streets but their lots join and their homes are 269 feet apart, according to Google Maps.
Skaggs described Boucher as a “near-perfect” neighbor, but he said the libertarian politician is a different story.
By near perfect, I wonder if Skaggs means ‘shares my political orientation?’ But that is rhetorical supposition, and at least I’ll admit it is.
Paul “was probably the hardest person to encourage to follow the (homeowner’s association regulations) of anyone out here because he has a strong belief in property rights,” said Skaggs, who is the former chairman of the Warren County Republican Party.
Ah. A libertarian-leaning Republican has a strong belief in property rights. Why, what a crime that is! It almost drives a man to break 5 of his ribs! Look carefully at the last bit, however, where the journalist drops “former chairman of the Warren County Republican Party.” This is another rhetorical technique. The author can insinuate that Skaggs’ criticism of Rand is justified because they share a political party, thus deflecting the notion that the criticism is rooted in politics, not substance. But we are not informed if Skaggs is still a Republican, or if he is a liberal Republican, or anything of the sort.
Skaggs noted the 13 pages of regulations are extensive. But even from the start of Paul’s residence in Rivergreen, Skaggs said Paul has been difficult to work with. “The major problem was getting the house plans approved,” Skaggs said. “He wanted to actually own the property rights and build any kind of house he wanted. He didn’t end up doing that, but it was a struggle.”
So Rand wanted something the HOA was not prepared to approve, but ultimately decided to follow the HOA guidelines. Why, that’s just terrible isn’t it? Why is this even news?
But Rob Porter, a 20-year friend of the senator, said he had never even heard of Boucher before.
“When I saw Rand after the incident, he even acknowledged that he hadn’t talked to Boucher in years,” Porter said. “If there was some kind of ongoing rift, i wasn’t aware of it and Rand didn’t act like he was aware of it.”
At least the author acknowledges this. If there was an ongoing feud, as Skaggs and the author imply, why would no one else be aware of it? But even if there was a feud, how does that justify even slightly attacking Rand that way?
Voter records from March 2017 show Boucher registered as a Democrat, but his lawyer said Monday that politics had nothing to do with the dispute between neighbors.
Boucher’s lawyer, Baker, said he would not comment on what the argument was over until he conducted more interviews with other neighbors.
Somehow, I very much doubt this is true. It sounds like standard lawyer boilerplate.
“We would really like to see this all over and you back in your house and him back in his house and try to be friends with each other, even though you’ll never like each other,” Skaggs said he told Boucher.
This Skaggs guy, if the author is accurately quoting him, is an idiot. How can you “be friends with each other even though you’ll never like each other”? It makes no sense. That is word salad, devoid of any meaning. What I think Skaggs is trying to communicate here is that the neighbors should pretend to be friends, even though they hate each other’s guts. So Skaggs criticizes Rand for being imperfect, but tells the attacker that he’d really like to see everyone just be friends.
And people wonder why I hate HOAs. Too bad they are almost inescapable, short of moving to the country, these days.
Title: Fusion GPS bribing reporters ?
Post by: ccp on November 09, 2017, 04:01:17 PM
A while back I posted how I suspect insiders are being paid off by reporters for dirt on Trump
This story suggests the reporters are paid off by Fusion GPS:
This fusion GPS is like a mafia crime business that is running all over DC doing the dirty work mostly for the DNC /Clintons/ and the vast Left wing conspiracy (not sure if the never Trump boys involved as well)
Title: It's almost like they have an agenda of some kind...
Post by: G M on November 10, 2017, 04:50:29 AM
Observe How The Media Describes Stephen Willeford’s Firearm Vs. Devin Kelley Posted at 10:55 pm on November 8, 2017 by Carl Arbogast
It must pain some members of the press to have to report on Stephen Willeford. Willeford, a certified NRA instructor, prevented Devin Kelley from killing more people in a Sutherland Hills, Texas church. Willeford, who lived next door, heard the gunshots and responded. Sutherland fired at Kelley who, like a coward, dropped his gun and ran.
If there’s anything the media hates, it’s a story about a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun. Worse for them is knowing the guy is an NRA instructor. But it goes further than that. Looking through the stories about Willeford, a pattern emerges in their reporting.
Here are some examples. CNN:
When Devin Patrick Kelley opened fire inside First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday, Stephen Willeford, who lives near the church, grabbed his own gun and ran out of the house barefoot to confront the gunman. USA Today:
Willeford said he had very little time to think Sunday when his daughter told him about the shooting. He loaded his magazine and ran across the street to the church, not even taking the time to put on shoes. When Willeford saw the gunman, he exchanged gunfire. Huffington Post:
Willeford said he grabbed his rifle from a safe and ran barefoot to the church when his daughter told him about the shooting. Once there, he confronted 26-year-old gunman Devin Patrick Kelley and the two traded gunfire. NPR:
Willeford says his daughter alerted him to what sounded like shots being fired at the nearby First Baptist Church. That is when, he said, he got his rifle out of his safe. Inside Edition:
Willeford said he was at home in Sutherland Springs when his daughter heard gunfire at the church. He grabbed his rifle, loaded it and ran barefoot to the church. Notice what Willeford is using? A rifle. A gun.
What they don’t tell you is Willeford used an AR-15. That’s right. One of those “military-style assault weapons” they’re always crowing about.
Do you see how it is? Nearly every story about Kelley talked about the type of gun he used and naturally, the stories were punctuated by describing the gun as “military style” and an “assault weapon.” But Willeford just used a gun. Or a rifle.
Here’s a Google search of “Devin Kelley military style” and just look at the host of stories that come up describing his rifle that way.
Should we expect anything different from the press?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 10, 2017, 06:21:12 AM
" Worse for them is knowing the guy is an NRA instructor "
Rush had a quiz question :
what is the one thing that all the mass murderers had in common?
someone called in to guess if it is that NONE of them were NRA members.
Rush said that is exactly the right answer
Title: yeah right immigration
Post by: ccp on November 13, 2017, 07:20:00 AM
yeah right Shep . And Reagan caused the spread of aids
your agenda is obvious and wrong.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2017, 08:43:52 AM
ccp, Clinton crime family thread: "Seth Rich" the man who out of no where was shot in the back during a robbery attempt and then NOT robbed almost zero mention about it by the "drive by's" ----------------------------------------------------------- That brings us to Michelle Malkin, Silence on the Sleaze, column today.
Regarding early accusations on Roy Moore, I told someone who reads, watches and listens to news everyday that there is a sitting Senator indicted, charged and on trial right now for corruption. I got a blank stare back. She hadn't heard a word and I wouldn't tell her. I let her google it and see for herself.
Silence on Sleaze-Bob Menendez Michelle Malkin Michelle Malkin |Posted: Nov 15, 2017 Silence on Sleaze-Bob Menendez
Michelle Malkin Silence on Sleaze-Bob Menendez
The verdict is in.
I pronounce Democrat leaders, left-wing feminists and Beltway journalists guilty of gross negligence and hypocrisy over a dirty rotten sleazeball in their midst.
For the past 11 weeks, Bob Menendez has been on trial for 18 counts of bribery, fraud and corruption involving nearly $1 million in gifts and donations. The jury remained deadlocked as of Tuesday. A new Media Research Center analysis reported that ABC, CBS and NBC devoted 40 times more of their morning and evening TV newscast coverage this past week to Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged sexual assault accusers than to the ongoing federal trial of one of the Democrats' most powerful, visible and entrenched figures on Capitol Hill.
Four years ago, when the FBI raided the Florida home of creepy Democratic donor and eye doctor Salomon Melgen, Menendez suddenly remembered that he had failed to pay back his "hermano" $60,000 for private-jet flights to the Caribbean -- where Melgen owns a tony home in the private Casa de Campo resort.
As the party-boy buds tell it, their two decades of favor-trading were innocent, brotherly acts of affection. That little reimbursement thing for joy rides shuttling Menendez, his girlfriend, his son and his son's office manager around the world? It "fell through the cracks," the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and lawyer explained.
Oopsie.
As government investigators discovered, the "friendship" entailed much more than backslaps and beach nights. Melgen was convicted this spring on 67 counts of massive Medicare fraud totaling $90 million. Prosecutors allege Menendez and his staff pulled strings and put pressure on public officials to back off Melgen's billing blow-up. Menendez asserts he did nothing illegal and acted not out of obligation to a high-dollar donor, but because of his sincere policy concerns about how Medicare is run.
How noble.
My favorite M&M production involves what I dubbed the 36DD visa program. This is not in dispute: Menendez and his staff pressured the State Department to expedite the foreign tourist and student visa approval processes for a bevy of buxom foreign beauties. One of them, Brazilian actress and porn pinup star Juliana Lopes Leite (a.k.a. "Girlfriend 1"), had her F-1 student visa application moved to the top of the pile in 2008 after Menendez and his staff intervened as a favor to model-lovin' Melgen.
Another, Rosiell Polanco-Suera, testified that her rejected visa application (along with her sister's) received reconsideration and instant approval after Melgen promised to "fix it" by reaching out to Menendez.
Flying the crony skies on taxpayer time. Systematically bilking sick old people. Turning America's visa programs into an international dating app for Dem donors.
Ho-hum.
Top Democrat leaders, so quick to call for the resignation of GOP candidates convicted in the court of public opinion, remain noncommittal about where they'll stand if Menendez is convicted. Liberal media partisans are deliberately ignoring the story because they are incapacitated by Trump Derangement Syndrome. Women's advocates looked the other way at Justice Department court filings on "specific, corroborated allegations that defendants Menendez and Melgen had sex with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic."
The collective silence on Sleaze-Bob -- busy raising more than $6 million for his re-election campaign and legal defense fund -- roars louder than Melgen's private jet engines.
Turns out "The Resistance" can't and won't resist a crapweasel when Democratic Party coffers and the balance of power in Washington are at stake.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Leftism Branded
Post by: DougMacG on November 17, 2017, 02:43:11 PM
I hear plenty of like minded people calling the mainstream media liberal. But when do we stop calling them "mainstream".
Previous post: "A new Media Research Center analysis reported that ABC, CBS and NBC devoted 40 times more of their morning and evening TV newscast coverage this past week to Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged sexual assault accusers than to the ongoing federal trial of one of the Democrats' most powerful, visible and entrenched figures on Capitol Hill."
Other studies, NYT and networks 93+% negative on Trump.
I don't watch cable but CNN is on and in view right now in a semi-public area (an inner-city McDonalds). All of their banners are one-sided, no attempt at balance. The sound is off, just banners programming people.
When do we stop calling Fox conservative and the others mainstream, using the language of the Left? Conservative is a synonym for non-partisan, common sense, only partisan when people attack common sense and the American Creed. Isn't CNN consistently more on-message partisan-Left than Fox is to the right with their never-Trumpers and Chris Wallace running their signature show? NYT is no more neutral than Breitbart and no more accurate than PowerlineBlog. ABC, NBC, CBS could be directed right out of the DNC, and at times have been caught, cf debate questions.
This is an area where Trump has been successful, and vice versa, his success comes in a big part from calling them out. But Trump alone is not nearly enough. We know whi we are and then take them seriously again next time they publish something.
What more can people do? I don't know but to start with, think like a liberal. Our side should be writing letters of complaint to companies (the airport commission for example) that put that drivel out there like they are just playing something unbiased as a public service. If the banners are written for or by the DNC, then half the public should be offended and say so.
Trump is also on the right track name calling them, fake news. Sarah Palin called them lamestream media, but we need to go further. Rate them, rank them and label them, and keep it up to date so they have some incentive to improve and so people pointing this out have evidence to point to. I'm not going to track their hosts, guests and banners 24/7, but I would like to be able to point to a reputable organization that does.
They stole and now own our language. Socialism should equate with oppression and widespread poverty, economic failure, and these outlets should be labeled socialists to the extent the support that. CNN and NYT should be labeled as opponents of the administration and the networks labeled propogandists, not news organizations. In our town the startribune is called the 'red' star', used to be the' star and sickle'. Some on the right refer to SeeBS, Meet the depressed and deface the nation. A start but not reaching anyone beyond preaching to the choir. Likewise for Breitbart and Sparta, they aren't about to replace the existing networks and newspaper sites. The Blaze is putting a product out there...
Who is calling out Harvard, Nobel and the UN every time they are mentioned. And who is building better institutions to replace them? (No one.)
What else can we do?
We are 44 internet pages into documenting media abuse of truth and balance. Now ought to be the time to start doing something about it.
Title: Caroline Glick goes after Bret Stephens
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2017, 11:26:07 AM
This Is Why We Can’t Trust Factcheckers, Part Infinity It's another op-ed column masquerading as a fact check. NOVEMBER 28, 2017 By David Harsanyi
During a speech at the Tax Foundation last week, Vice President Mike Pence dropped a meaningless but innocuous political talking point about the U.S. economy. “There are more Americans working today than ever before in American history,” he reportedly said. ---------------------- There all kinds of context issues one could point to minimize the importance of that fact. All of a f'ing sudden, the Washington Post is concerned about Workforce Participation Rate, and to show the falloff they post and chart only figures prior to Trump Pence taking office.
"the numbers are technically correct" they admit, so they give him 3 out of 4 Pinocchios.
He made a perfectly true statement and they called it a three alarm lie. Where were they the last 8 years?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/11/28/pences-claim-that-more-americans-are-working-today-than-ever-before-in-american-history/?utm_term=.5049f4e44d8c [Don't click on this drivel.]
Title: CNN 's purported mission
Post by: ccp on November 28, 2017, 03:52:58 PM
https://cnnsoc185.wordpress.com/vision-statement/
Anytime Trump stands up to them they scream and holler who he is attacking their first amendment right. No he is not. He is not sending in tanks into to Atlanta to shut them down or brown shirts to tear up their presses etc.
Trump has a right to call them on their real mission : to destroy him in any way they can.
(while promoting leftist dogma)
Title: Re: WaPo busts O'Keefe sting effort
Post by: DougMacG on November 28, 2017, 04:03:56 PM
My view: Good for O'Keefe for going after the originator of the story against Roy Moore, and give credit where due, good for the Washington Post in this case for smelling a rat and putting truth ahead of agenda.
O'Keefe doesn't try very hard to fool his targets. He tries to leave all kinds of obvious clues for them to overlook so that the viewer will easily judge that they should have known. He is a risk-taker and this one didn't pan out.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 28, 2017, 07:13:39 PM
Exactly.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on November 28, 2017, 07:41:56 PM
Judicial Watch and O'Keefe's team are two of the most important groups fighting for freedom in this era of American history.
Title: Every one has the right to free speech
Post by: ccp on November 29, 2017, 05:18:47 AM
Just ask this confirmed liar, Mike Hayden... everyone can say what ever they want - EXCEPT Trump - he should NOT be allowed to speak his mind:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, biggest story?
Post by: DougMacG on November 30, 2017, 08:09:43 AM
Waiting for the results, which was the biggest story in 'professional journalism', North Korea now able to reach Washington DC with nuclear warhead missiles or Matt Lauer out?
Title: For many on the LEFT these sex stories are the biggest
Post by: ccp on November 30, 2017, 08:51:33 AM
" which was the biggest story in 'professional journalism', North Korea now able to reach Washington DC with nuclear warhead missiles or Matt Lauer out? "
For many on the LEFT it is by far the Lauer story. Why, because is all a set up to get Trump. They are establishing platforms to launch an all assault on Trump. They know they can't make the case till they make argument that we should not tolerate any of this "behavior".
From Wikipedia on Gloria Allred :
*Allred is representing at least 28 women who accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and/or other sexual misconduct.[60] She is also representing three women who accuse Donald Trump of sexual misconduct — claims which Trump has denied, and which first arose during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.[61]*
read the paragraph about Gloria Allred , http://deadline.com/2017/11/2018-sundance-film-festival-lineup-jane-fonda-idris-elba-competition-movies-list-1202216273/
Recent Democrat explaining the Party needs to take the moral high ground. Really ? :roll: Why now? :
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 30, 2017, 09:43:20 AM
They won't have Trump circled until they get Franken out first. It seems like what Trump said and what Franken did are roughly the same thing. http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/30/politics/al-franken-groping-allegation/index.html
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 30, 2017, 11:03:07 AM
And the Weenie Reps are playing right into it!!! :roll: :x :x
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 01, 2017, 05:13:19 PM
This was Matt Lauer's best day all week.
:-P
Title: ABC suspends Brian Ross
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2017, 04:35:06 AM
Title: POTH: Trump team emails w Flynn
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2017, 05:38:09 AM
WASHINGTON — When President Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in February, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official during the presidential transition and then lied to his colleagues about the interactions.
But emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
While Mr. Trump has disparaged as a Democratic “hoax” any claims that he or his aides had unusual interactions with Russian officials, the records suggest that the Trump transition team was intensely focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal despite a request from the Obama administration that it not sow confusion about official American policy before Mr. Trump took office.
On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Mr. Trump’s victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times.
It is not clear whether Ms. McFarland was saying she believed that the election had in fact been thrown. A White House lawyer said on Friday that she meant only that the Democrats were portraying it that way. Continue reading the main story Russian Hacking and Influence in the U.S. Election Complete coverage of Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
ABC Suspends Reporter Brian Ross Over Erroneous Report About Trump DEC 2 Wrenched From Scandal to Success, Trump Looks Ahead, and Over His Shoulder DEC 2 Trump Says He Fired Michael Flynn ‘Because He Lied’ to F.B.I. DEC 2 Mueller Removed Top Agent in Russia Inquiry Over Possible Anti-Trump Texts DEC 2 Deck the Halls With White House Folly DEC 1
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Michael Flynn Pleads Guilty to Lying to the F.B.I. and Will Cooperate With Russia Inquiry DEC. 1, 2017 Documents Reveal New Details on What Trump Team Knew About Flynn’s Calls With Russia’s Ambassador DEC. 1, 2017 WHITE HOUSE MEMO Flynn’s Guilty Plea Looms Over a White House on the Verge of a Tax Cut Success DEC. 1, 2017 A Split From Trump Indicates That Flynn Is Moving to Cooperate With Mueller NOV. 23, 2017
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But it is evident from the emails — which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications — that after learning that President Barack Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia. The Trump advisers feared that a cycle of retaliation between the United States and Russia would keep the spotlight on Moscow’s election meddling, tarnishing Mr. Trump’s victory and potentially hobbling his presidency from the start.
As part of the outreach, Ms. McFarland wrote, Mr. Flynn would be speaking with the Russian ambassador, Mr. Kislyak, hours after Mr. Obama’s sanctions were announced.
“Key will be Russia’s response over the next few days,” Ms. McFarland wrote in an email to another transition official, Thomas P. Bossert, now the president’s homeland security adviser.
In an interview, Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer handling the Russia inquiry, said there was nothing illegal or unethical about the transition team’s actions. “It would have been political malpractice not to discuss sanctions,” he said, adding that “the presidential transition guide specifically encourages contact with and outreach to foreign dignitaries.”
The only problem, Mr. Cobb said, was that Mr. Flynn had lied to White House officials and to F.B.I. agents about what he had told the Russian ambassador. Mr. Flynn’s misstatements led to his firing in February and his guilty plea on Friday to charges of lying to federal agents.
With Mr. Flynn’s plea and agreement to cooperate with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating the Russian election interference, the inquiry edges closer to Mr. Trump. The president tried to persuade the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to drop the bureau’s criminal investigation of Mr. Flynn, and fired Mr. Comey after he failed to comply.
Mr. Trump and his aides have suggested that his concern about Mr. Flynn’s potential legal jeopardy was motivated mainly by the president’s admiration for his former national security adviser’s military service and character.
But the new details about Mr. Flynn’s Russia contacts underscore the possibility that the president may have been worried not just about Mr. Flynn but also about whether any investigation might reach into the White House and perhaps to the Oval Office. That question will be at the center of any consideration by Mr. Mueller of whether Mr. Trump’s actions constituted obstruction of justice.
The Trump transition team ignored a pointed request from the Obama administration to avoid sending conflicting signals to foreign officials before the inauguration and to include State Department personnel when contacting them. Besides the Russian ambassador, Mr. Flynn, at the request of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, contacted several other foreign officials to urge them to delay or block a United Nations resolution condemning Israel over its building of settlements.
Mr. Cobb said the Trump team had never agreed to avoid such interactions. But one former White House official has disputed that, telling Mr. Mueller’s investigators that Trump transition officials had agreed to honor the Obama administration’s request. Photo K. T. McFarland made clear in an email exchange that the Trump presidential transition team was intensely focused on relations with Russia. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
Mr. Bossert forwarded Ms. McFarland’s Dec. 29 email exchange about the sanctions to six other Trump advisers, including Mr. Flynn; Reince Priebus, who had been named as chief of staff; Stephen K. Bannon, the senior strategist; and Sean Spicer, who would become the press secretary.
Mr. Obama, she wrote, was trying to “box Trump in diplomatically with Russia,” which could limit his options with other countries, including Iran and Syria. “Russia is key that unlocks door,” she wrote.
She also wrote that the sanctions over Russian election meddling were intended to “lure Trump in trap of saying something” in defense of Russia, and were aimed at “discrediting Trump’s victory by saying it was due to Russian interference.” Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story California Today
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“If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote.
Mr. Bossert replied by urging all the top advisers to “defend election legitimacy now.”
Mr. Flynn, who had been fired by Mr. Obama as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was the point person for the transition team on policy toward Russia and other countries. After Mr. Trump named him as his national security adviser in November, Mr. Flynn began briefing him — some say daily — on foreign policy.
Ms. McFarland, who served until May as deputy national security adviser and is awaiting confirmation as ambassador to Singapore, was sometimes referred to by other transition officials as “Flynn’s brain.” She could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Flynn’s Dec. 29 call with Mr. Kislyak was one of the first formal interactions between the incoming administration and a foreign government. On that winter day, Mr. Trump’s closest associates were scattered around several warm-weather locations.
Mr. Flynn was in the Dominican Republic. Other senior members of Mr. Trump’s transition team, including Ms. McFarland, were at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Kushner was vacationing in Hawaii with his family.
Obama administration officials were expecting a “bellicose” response to the expulsions and sanctions, according to the email exchange between Ms. McFarland and Mr. Bossert. Lisa Monaco, Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, had told Mr. Bossert that “the Russians have already responded with strong threats, promising to retaliate,” according to the emails.
In his phone call with Mr. Kislyak, Mr. Flynn asked that Russia “not escalate the situation,” according to court documents released on Friday. He later related the substance of the call — including the discussion of sanctions — to a senior transition official, believed to be Ms. McFarland. A few days later, he briefed others on the transition team.
Mr. Flynn’s intervention appeared to have a dramatic effect. To the surprise of foreign policy experts, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, did not immediately respond with retaliatory expulsions of Americans from Moscow.
Mr. Trump praised that decision in a tweet, writing: “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) — I always knew he was very smart.”
It is uncertain how involved Mr. Trump was in the discussions among his staff members of Mr. Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador. Mr. Spicer told reporters on the morning of Dec. 29 that the president-elect would be meeting with his national security team, including Ms. McFarland, that day. A phone call that included Mr. Trump, Mr. Flynn, Ms. McFarland, Mr. Priebus and Mr. Bannon was scheduled for 5 p.m., shortly after Ms. McFarland’s email exchange. It is unclear whether the call took place.
Mr. Cobb said that Mr. Trump did not know that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak in the call. After the inauguration, “Flynn specifically denied it to him, in the presence of witnesses,” he said.
Some legal experts have speculated that the contacts during the transition between Trump aides and foreign officials might violate the Logan Act, a law that prohibits private American citizens from working with a foreign government against the United States. But the act has not been used to prosecute anyone since the 19th century. Mr. Cobb said the law “certainly does not apply” to a presidential transition team.
The day after the president fired Mr. Flynn, he talked about the F.B.I. inquiry with Mr. Comey, the agency’s director. Mr. Comey has said the president urged him to drop the inquiry. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump said, according to a memo that Mr. Comey wrote immediately afterward. The White House has denied that account. The president fired Mr. Comey in May.
Testifying before Congress in June, Mr. Comey declined to say whether the president had fired him to impede the investigation. “I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct,” he said. “I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense.”
Title: The Damage the Media Meltdown does to Democracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2017, 11:58:08 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2017, 04:30:55 PM
That article is five months old.
Title: more twisted logic from the Left
Post by: ccp on December 12, 2017, 07:06:10 PM
No giant uprisings about the Jerusalem announcement and the LEFT is furious so Vox twists it to sound like Trump failed to create the violence he "wanted":
Left in medicine is S for sinister. Or from the Latin word sinnestra. sounds about right (no pun intended).
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, fake News and leaker investigations
Post by: DougMacG on December 18, 2017, 09:57:21 PM
An interesting point made on radio today:
There have been a rash of fake news stories on major media lately. Perhaps these fake news stories are planted in an effort to discover who the leakers in the administration are and because it's fun to suck the opposition media into a trap of reporting blatant, unforced errors.
The WashPost won't give up their sources, but the people who gave the leaker the slightly falsified info knows who they gave the false info to.
Title: Media "Fact Checkers" Claimed Economy could NOT hit 4% growth
Post by: DougMacG on December 19, 2017, 03:06:40 PM
AP, CNN AND BLOOMBERG FACT CHECKERS CLAIMED ECONOMY COULDN'T HIT 4%
Trump promises 4% growth. Economists say no way. - CNN
Donald Trump has a big promise for the U.S. economy: 4% growth.
No chance, say 11 economists surveyed by CNNMoney. And a paper published Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco backs them up.
"No, pigs do not fly," says Robert Brusca, senior economist at FAO Economics, a research firm. "Donald Trump is dreaming."
The Republican presidential nominee made the promise in a speech in New York in September. "I believe it's time to establish a national goal of reaching 4% economic growth," he said.
So what's realistic? The San Francisco Fed estimates the "new normal" for annual economic growth to be 1.5% to 1.75%. That's far lower than the period from World War II to 2004, when growth typically hovered between 3% and 4%.
It's time to embrace the malaise. The era of greatness is done.
But wait, the pigs are flying. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-fact-check-trump-imagines-percent-growth-51626346
AP FACT CHECK: Trump imagines 6 percent growth - AP
President Donald Trump is holding out the prospect of 6 percent growth in the U.S. economy. Put that down to puffery.
By most signs, economists say the country will be lucky to achieve consistent annual growth much over 2 percent.
A look at the president's remarks at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday:
TRUMP:
—"So we're at 3.3 percent GDP. I see no reason why we don't go to 4 percent, 5 percent, and even 6 percent."
—Speaks of GDP "getting up to 4, 5, and even 6 percent, because I think that's possible."
THE FACTS:
Federal Reserve officials and most mainstream economists expect economic growth to hew closer to 2 percent. There are no signs the economy is capable of delivering a phenomenal and rarely achieved growth rate on the order of 6 percent.
These aren't facts. They're opinions. But lefties have long ceased being able to distinguish between the two. They shout things that they feel and then insist that anyone who denies them hates science.
Trump is officially making an economic promise that will be nearly impossible to keep - Business Insider
"To get the economy back on track, President Trump has outlined a bold plan to create 25 million new American jobs in the next decade and return to 4 percent annual economic growth," reads the White House site.
The 4% GDP promise is one that Trump has made before, but now it is the official promise of the White House and the president.
The only problem is delivering on this promise will be incredibly difficult.
Currently, the US is stuck in a slow growth pattern since the financial crisis and has been unable to escape the 1.5% to 2.5% annual growth corridor over the past seven years. This is lower than the 3.1% percent average annual GDP growth we've been experiencing since 1950.
While there are a number of reasons for this — sluggish corporate investment, Americans saving more of their income, low wage growth, and more — it would take a monumental task to return the US to nearly double its current annual growth rate.
Reversing the course of this will be difficult, especially in just four years,
How about one? http://fortune.com/2017/12/07/trump-us-gdp-growth-rate-economy-6-percent/
Trump Thinks the U.S. Could See 6% Economic Growth. The Data Says Otherwise. - Fortune
According to Bloomberg, Trump claimed that the combination of high consumer confidence, job creation, and tax cuts would create this considerable growth. Trump claimed that he sees “no reason why we don’t go to 4, 5, even 6%.”
Unfortunately, Trump didn’t explain exactly how this jump would happen, and few economists support his claim. In a Bloomberg survey of 80 economists, only one forecast showed a growth above 4%.
We have a winner.
Title: tax bill NOT unpoplular
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2017, 06:15:10 PM
unless your poll is mainstream media who only asks those who pay no taxes if they are for tax cuts for the "rich":
PS I am for tax cuts for everyone. But like Michael Savage (not nearly as rich however) I am going to get a tax increase and am not happy.
Title: I don't know why they just couldn't cut rates for everyone......
Post by: ccp on December 20, 2017, 12:11:18 PM
"In the campaign, Trump had the best tax plan. This isn't exactly that but it's the best plan that could get through this Corker-Flake-McCain Congress."
I think it is a very safe bet to make that this is the last tax cut we will ever see. Certainly in my life time.
At least for a time we rid this nation of the Obama effect. But the Left is not going to just fade away.
Next we need to stop this ridiculous open borders and chain migration stuff.
Title: Re: Media "Fact Checkers" Claimed Economy could NOT hit 4% growth
Post by: G M on December 21, 2017, 06:22:38 PM
This just proves the economy is very, very racist.
Trump promises 4% growth. Economists say no way. - CNN
Donald Trump has a big promise for the U.S. economy: 4% growth.
No chance, say 11 economists surveyed by CNNMoney. And a paper published Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco backs them up.
"No, pigs do not fly," says Robert Brusca, senior economist at FAO Economics, a research firm. "Donald Trump is dreaming."
The Republican presidential nominee made the promise in a speech in New York in September. "I believe it's time to establish a national goal of reaching 4% economic growth," he said.
So what's realistic? The San Francisco Fed estimates the "new normal" for annual economic growth to be 1.5% to 1.75%. That's far lower than the period from World War II to 2004, when growth typically hovered between 3% and 4%.
It's time to embrace the malaise. The era of greatness is done.
But wait, the pigs are flying. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-fact-check-trump-imagines-percent-growth-51626346
AP FACT CHECK: Trump imagines 6 percent growth - AP
President Donald Trump is holding out the prospect of 6 percent growth in the U.S. economy. Put that down to puffery.
By most signs, economists say the country will be lucky to achieve consistent annual growth much over 2 percent.
A look at the president's remarks at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday:
TRUMP:
—"So we're at 3.3 percent GDP. I see no reason why we don't go to 4 percent, 5 percent, and even 6 percent."
—Speaks of GDP "getting up to 4, 5, and even 6 percent, because I think that's possible."
THE FACTS:
Federal Reserve officials and most mainstream economists expect economic growth to hew closer to 2 percent. There are no signs the economy is capable of delivering a phenomenal and rarely achieved growth rate on the order of 6 percent.
These aren't facts. They're opinions. But lefties have long ceased being able to distinguish between the two. They shout things that they feel and then insist that anyone who denies them hates science.
Trump is officially making an economic promise that will be nearly impossible to keep - Business Insider
"To get the economy back on track, President Trump has outlined a bold plan to create 25 million new American jobs in the next decade and return to 4 percent annual economic growth," reads the White House site.
The 4% GDP promise is one that Trump has made before, but now it is the official promise of the White House and the president.
The only problem is delivering on this promise will be incredibly difficult.
Currently, the US is stuck in a slow growth pattern since the financial crisis and has been unable to escape the 1.5% to 2.5% annual growth corridor over the past seven years. This is lower than the 3.1% percent average annual GDP growth we've been experiencing since 1950.
While there are a number of reasons for this — sluggish corporate investment, Americans saving more of their income, low wage growth, and more — it would take a monumental task to return the US to nearly double its current annual growth rate.
Reversing the course of this will be difficult, especially in just four years,
How about one? http://fortune.com/2017/12/07/trump-us-gdp-growth-rate-economy-6-percent/
Trump Thinks the U.S. Could See 6% Economic Growth. The Data Says Otherwise. - Fortune
According to Bloomberg, Trump claimed that the combination of high consumer confidence, job creation, and tax cuts would create this considerable growth. Trump claimed that he sees “no reason why we don’t go to 4, 5, even 6%.”
Unfortunately, Trump didn’t explain exactly how this jump would happen, and few economists support his claim. In a Bloomberg survey of 80 economists, only one forecast showed a growth above 4%.
We have a winner.
Title: NYC libs have no clue what they are talking about
Post by: ccp on December 22, 2017, 02:35:18 PM
Due to no small part the MSM has in brainwashing people with "Trump's plan is VERY unpopular:
It sounds like she had a good relationship with Andrew Breitbart, also with someone there now. There was distinct turn after the departure of AB. Maybe Bannon gone was part of negotiations to land this great writer and analyst and turn the publication around. Breitbart may become a more trusted source going forward.
Title: Media Issues, Did O call an African country a "Shitshow", or No?
Post by: DougMacG on January 18, 2018, 09:05:05 AM
Hat tip to Larry Elder radio.
Snopes says "Mostly False". Oddly in liberal speak that means a conservative called out a liberal and it's True.
"WHAT'S TRUE President Obama reportedly used the term "shit show" in private to refer to the escalating violence in Libya following the death of Muammar al-Qaddafi."
"WHAT'S FALSE ... Obama's remarks were widely reported by the media at the time." ?
Were there 200 mentions on CNN in the first 3 days? -------------- If your country is 'fecalized', the issue of the reported characterization is vulgarity, not racism or accuracy.
Title: CNN man bites dog
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2018, 10:23:12 AM
Title: Wapo: Big Changes at LA Times (Pravda on the Beach)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2018, 09:36:37 AM
Links of interest at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/anything-could-happen-amid-newsroom-clashes-los-angeles-times-becomes-its-own-story/2018/01/26/f8c2d382-02b6-11e8-9d31-d72cf78dbeee_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.c612da1fcf59&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
such as http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/01/newsonomics-who-and-what-is-the-new-l-a-times-network/
‘Anything could happen’: Amid newsroom clashes, Los Angeles Times becomes its own story By Paul Farhi January 26 at 6:09 PM
Passersby gaze at news photos outside the Los Angeles Times building in downtown L.A., where journalists have voted to unionize for the first time in the paper’s 136-year history. (Richard Vogel/AP)
The news has been frenetic lately for reporters at the Los Angeles Times. Massive wildfires swept a region just getting over a historic drought, followed by deadly mudslides, and then the explosive Turpin family child-abuse saga — a chain of events that tested the chops of the prizewinning newsroom.
But some of the biggest news at the Times has been coming from within its downtown headquarters. The paper — one of the largest and most important news organizations in America — has been beset by turmoil the past two weeks, prompting questions about its future.
After decades of successful resistance by management and years of demoralizing cutbacks, the Times’s journalists voted overwhelmingly last week to unionize. Before bargaining can begin, however, reporters are concerned about a plan by the Times’s management to reorganize the way the paper produces news.
Under a new “pyramid” structure proposed this month, a network of non-staff contributors would produce the bulk of the information the Times publishes online. Reporters say the paper has quietly begun hiring a cadre of editors to supervise the reorganization, which would effectively create a new company within the company.
The man who introduced the plan — blindsiding the newsroom when he presented it to an investor conference in New York — was publisher Ross Levinsohn, the fifth person to hold that title in the past five years. Last week, Levinsohn was suspended by the paper’s owner, Chicago-based Tronc, after NPR revealed a series of sexual harassment allegations against him in previous jobs. The company said it is investigating.
The state of play at the Times, as well as the existential dread swirling around it, was neatly summarized in a tweet this week by Matt Pearce, a Times national reporter and an organizer of the union effort: “Basically, anything could happen at this point at the L.A. Times and people in the newsroom could only be half surprised by it. We’re hiring [editors] that aren’t being announced to the newsroom, our publisher wants to turn us into a pyramid, and by the way, he’s under investigation.”
In fact, more shoes are dropping.
On Thursday, reporters protested after top editor Lewis D’Vorkin suspended Kimi Yoshino, the Times’s financial editor. His reason was unclear — neither party would comment — but Times reporters say D’Vorkin suspected that Yoshino had been a source for other media reports about the Times, including an unflattering profile of D’Vorkin in the Columbia Journalism Review, which dubbed him “LA journalism’s ‘Prince of Darkness.’ ”
“We were very upset to learn yesterday that Kimi was abruptly asked to take a leave of absence and not even permitted to return to her office to collect her belongings and turn off her laptop,” said a letter signed by Times business journalists and promptly disseminated online. “This treatment of Kimi is a serious cause for concern.”
A spokeswoman for Tronc said it could not comment on employee matters.
D’Vorkin, who took over as Times editor in November, is a controversial figure in media circles. At Forbes, he undertook some unorthodox steps to arrest the magazine’s declining fortunes — including setting up a network of outside contributors to write stories for Forbes.com, some unpaid and some compensated on the basis of how many readers their stories attracted. He also permitted ads that blurred the lines between promotional content and news stories.
As the Times newsroom organizing committee characterized it in a letter to Tronc’s board on Tuesday, D’Vorkin “devalued Forbes’ journalism by sullying it with unpaid contributor content, pay-for-clicks schemes and troubling presentations of advertorial.”
Only days into his new job at the Times, D’Vorkin drew the enmity of many in his newsroom by his response to complaints lodged by the Disney Co. over a Times series that detailed Disney’s influence over city officials in Anaheim, home of Disneyland. In the face of Disney executives’ protests, D’Vorkin ordered his journalists not to promote the Times’s own stories on social media. The entertainment giant is a key advertiser as well as a news source for the Times.
He also declined to reveal details of his meeting with Disney executives about the issue or to publish more than a few paragraphs about the paper’s discussions with the company, which had drawn national attention. D’Vorkin declined to comment for this article, referring a reporter to Tronc’s corporate spokesman.
The nonresponse appears to go to the heart of one of the central complaints by people at the paper: that a company engaged in communications doesn’t communicate very well with its own employees.
“It’s frustrating to hear about plans that we weren’t consulted about,” Anthony Pesce, a Times data journalist, told The Washington Post. “This paper is comprised of smart and engaged journalists who want nothing more than to see [the paper] succeed.”
Amid the tumult, the Times has produced some of the best journalism in its 136-year history. In addition to its penetrating series about Disney, it broke a huge scandal in July involving a former dean at the University of Southern California’s medical school. It has been a leader in revealing sexual harassment allegations against leading Hollywood figures, such as directors James Toback and Brett Ratner. And in 2016, it won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, its 44th Pulitzer.
But even those triumphs have come at a price. In August, Tronc fired the paper’s four top editors following an investigation triggered by staff complaints about the handling of major stories, including those about the USC dean.
Tronc (the unusual new name is shorthand for Tribune Online Content) is an offshoot of the long-troubled Tribune Co., which emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2012. Tronc owns what had been Tribune Co.’s newspaper assets, including the Times, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News.
Like almost every newspaper in the United States, the Times and its parent company has been buffeted for years by a precipitous decline in advertising and the flight of subscribers. During the 1990s, the Times had more than 1,000 journalists. It now employs about 400. Still, the events of recent days seem to have left both the newsroom and its readers a bit dazed and unsure of what’s coming next.
One Times reader conveyed the bafflement in a tweet on Friday: “I subscribe to LAT b/c I think it’s impt to support my local paper, & their journalists do great work. But what’s going on there is awful. Is it helpful or counterproductive for me to cancel my subscription?”
Title: Matrix Zuckerberg
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2018, 12:31:01 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2018, 09:21:06 AM
Good to see that Breitbart has taken Caroline Glick on board. With the departure of Bannon is it becoming a more serious and more responsible source of news?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2018, 09:54:44 AM
To Stir Discord in 2016, Russians Turned Most Often to Facebook
By SHEERA FRENKEL and KATIE BENNERFEB. 17, 2018
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, faces renewed questions about why the social network didn’t catch the Russian activity earlier or do more to stop it. Credit Eric Risberg/Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — In 2014, Russians working for a shadowy firm called the Internet Research Agency started gathering American followers in online groups focused on issues like religion and immigration. Around mid-2015, the Russians began buying digital ads to spread their messages. A year later, they tapped their followers to help organize political rallies across the United States.
Their digital instrument of choice for all of these actions? Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram.
The social network, more than any other technology tool, was singled out on Friday by the Justice Department when prosecutors charged 13 Russians and three companies for executing a scheme to subvert the 2016 election and support Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign. In a 37-page indictment, officials detailed how the Russians repeatedly turned to Facebook and Instagram, often using stolen identities to pose as Americans, to sow discord among the electorate by creating Facebook groups, distributing divisive ads and posting inflammatory images.
While the indictment does not accuse Facebook of any wrongdoing, it provided the first comprehensive account from the authorities of how critical the company’s platforms had been to the Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. Facebook and Instagram were mentioned 41 times, while other technology that the Russians used were featured far less. Twitter was referenced nine times, YouTube once, and electronic payments company PayPal 11 times.
It is unprecedented for an American technology company to be so central to what the authorities say was a foreign scheme to commit election fraud in the United States. The indictment further batters Facebook’s image after it has spent months grappling with questions about how it was misused and why it did not act earlier to prevent that activity.
Jonathan Albright, research director at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said the indictment laid bare how effectively Facebook could be turned against the country.
“Facebook built incredibly effective tools which let Russia profile citizens here in the U.S. and figure out how to manipulate us,” Mr. Albright said. “Facebook, essentially, gave them everything they needed.” He added that many of the tools that the Russians used, including those that allow ads to be targeted and that show how widespread an ad becomes, still pervade Facebook.
Facebook, with more than two billion members on the social network alone, has long struggled with what its sites show and the kind of illicit activity it may enable, from selling unlicensed guns to broadcasting live killings. The company’s business depends on people being highly engaged with what is posted on its sites, which in turn helps make it a marquee destination for advertisers.
When suggestions first arose after the 2016 election that Facebook may have influenced the outcome, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, dismissed the concerns. But by last September, Facebook had disclosed that the Internet Research Agency had bought divisive ads on hot-button issues through the company. It later said 150 million Americans had seen the Russian propaganda on the social network and Instagram.
The resulting firestorm has damaged Facebook’s reputation. Company officials, along with executives from Google and YouTube, were grilled by lawmakers last fall. Facebook has since hired thousands of people to help monitor content and has worked with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel leading the investigation into Russian election interference. It has also changed its advertising policy so that any ad that mentions a candidate’s name goes through a more stringent vetting process. Mr. Zuckerberg has vowed to not let Facebook be abused by bad actors.
Yet Facebook’s multiple mentions in Friday’s indictment renew questions of why the world’s biggest social media company didn’t catch the Russian activity earlier or do more to stop it. How effective the company’s new efforts to reduce foreign manipulation have been is also unclear.
Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president of advertising, waded into the discussion on Friday with a series of tweets that argued that Russia’s goal was to sow chaos among the electorate rather than to force a certain outcome in the election. On Saturday, President Trump cited those tweets as evidence that Russia’s disinformation campaign was not aimed at handing him a victory.
In Silicon Valley, where Facebook has its headquarters, some critics pilloried the company after the indictment became public.
“Mueller’s indictment underscores the central role of Facebook and other platforms in the Russian interference in 2016,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who had invested early in Facebook. “In its heyday, television brought the country together, giving viewers a shared set of facts and experiences. Facebook does just the opposite, enabling every user to have a unique set of facts, driving the country apart for profit.”
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global policy, said in a statement that the company was grateful the government was taking action “against those who abused our service and exploited the openness of our democratic process.”
He added that Facebook was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation ahead of this year’s midterm elections to ensure that a similar manipulation campaign would not take place. “We know we have more to do to prevent against future attacks,” he said.
Facebook has previously questioned whether law enforcement should be more involved in helping to stop the threat from nation state actors. Facebook said it worked closely with the special counsel’s investigation.
YouTube did not respond to a request for comment, while Twitter declined to comment. PayPal said in a statement that it has worked closely with law enforcement and “is intensely focused on combating and preventing the illicit use of our services.”
According to the indictment, the Internet Research Agency, created in 2014 in St. Petersburg and employing about 80 people, was given the job of interfering with elections and political processes.
The group began using American social media to achieve those aims in 2014, when it started making Facebook pages dedicated to social issues like race and religion. Over the next two years, the indictment said, the Russians stole the identities of real Americans to create fake personas and fake accounts on social media. The group then used those to populate and promote Facebook pages like United Muslims of America, Blacktivist and Secured Borders.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 17, 2018, 06:48:29 PM
"Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, faces renewed questions about why the social network didn’t catch the Russian activity earlier or do more to stop it"
LOL now it is Zuckerberg who cost Clinton the election. When will this ever end? :cry:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2018, 09:21:23 PM
May I suggest that that is not the point but rather to set up a hue and cry for FB to become the arbiter of what is Fake News? Hence my subject line of "Setting Facebook up to be the Ministry of Truth".
Title: CNN skullduggery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2018, 08:18:04 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Fake news and polling: Tax rate cuts
Post by: DougMacG on February 22, 2018, 08:38:02 AM
From the previous post, CNN was caught by O'Keefe of not being a news organization, and caught again here. Thanks for catching this. Yet people keep watching and quoting what comes through including people who know better. ---------------------
Mentioned on the tax thread, but tax rate cuts are the perfect example of the media's main trick. Barrage you with negative information and then poll on the popularity.
Tax cuts are Trump coverage so therefore they are covered 95% negative on average. It was a scam, it was crumbs, it is a tax cut for the rich, I can't remember if they got to treason on this one or not. Then they poll, what do you think of the tax cuts?
They can move public opinion maybe 10% in the long run and more than that in the short run. But they fully stop the truth from eventually coming out. Ir Republicans had followed the false polls, they would have backed off of their best accomplishment.
These kids enter the political theatre and deserve to have all their points answered. But no matter what they say or do, the rebuttal should have stuck to substantive answers on political issues. What Laura said wasn't bad (UCLA is hard to gt into?) but at least for the sake of keeping sponsors she should have stuck to the issues. ------------------------------
The sponsor boycott is more evidence that the same forces of the Left pull the strings with the 'student movement'. Exact same reaction as to Rush regarding 'student' Sandra Fluke, 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh%E2%80%93Sandra_Fluke_controversy The kids aren't making original arguments or using original leftist tactics.
Title: Ralph Peters: Why I left FOX News
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 31, 2018, 11:04:07 AM
Would someone post this please?
Title: Re: Ralph Peters: Why I left FOX News
Post by: DougMacG on April 01, 2018, 05:54:26 AM
An ad for “Fox and Friends” outside the Fox News Channel studio in New York. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) By Ralph Peters March 30 You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.
This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.
As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.
Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave.
My error was waiting so long to walk away. The chance to speak to millions of Americans is seductive, and, with the infinite human capacity for self-delusion, I rationalized that I could make a difference by remaining at Fox and speaking honestly.
I was wrong.
As early as the fall of 2016, and especially as doubts mounted about the new Trump administration’s national security vulnerabilities, I increasingly was blocked from speaking on the issues about which I could offer real expertise: Russian affairs and our intelligence community. I did not hide my views at Fox and, as word spread that I would not unswervingly support President Trump and, worse, that I believed an investigation into Russian interference was essential to our national security, I was excluded from segments that touched on Vladimir Putin’s possible influence on an American president, his campaign or his administration.
I was the one person on the Fox payroll who, trained in Russian studies and the Russian language, had been face to face with Russian intelligence officers in the Kremlin and in far-flung provinces. I have traveled widely in and written extensively about the region. Yet I could only rarely and briefly comment on the paramount security question of our time: whether Putin and his security services ensnared the man who would become our president. Trump’s behavior patterns and evident weaknesses (financial entanglements, lack of self-control and sense of sexual entitlement) would have made him an ideal blackmail target — and the Russian security apparatus plays a long game.
As indictments piled up, though, I could not even discuss the mechanics of how the Russians work on either Fox News or Fox Business. (Asked by a Washington Post editor for a comment, Fox’s public relations department sent this statement: “There is no truth to the notion that Ralph Peters was ‘blocked’ from appearing on the network to talk about the major headlines, including discussing Russia, North Korea and even gun control recently. In fact, he appeared across both networks multiple times in just the past three weeks.”)
All Americans, whatever their politics, should want to know, with certainty, whether a hostile power has our president and those close to him in thrall. This isn’t about party but about our security at the most profound level. Every so often, I could work in a comment on the air, but even the best-disposed hosts were wary of transgressing the party line.
Fox never tried to put words in my mouth, nor was I told explicitly that I was taboo on Trump-Putin matters. I simply was no longer called on for topics central to my expertise. I was relegated to Groundhog Day analysis of North Korea and the Middle East, or to Russia-related news that didn’t touch the administration. Listening to political hacks with no knowledge of things Russian tell the vast Fox audience that the special counsel’s investigation was a “witch hunt,” while I could not respond, became too much to bear. There is indeed a witch hunt, and it’s led by Fox against Robert Mueller.
The cascade of revelations about the Russia-related crimes of Trump associates was dismissed, adamantly, as “fake news” by prime-time hosts who themselves generate fake news blithely.
Then there was Fox’s assault on our intelligence community — in which I had served, from the dirty-boots tactical level to strategic work in the Pentagon (with forays that stretched from Russia through Pakistan to Burma and Bolivia and elsewhere). Opportunities to explain how the system actually works, how stringent the safeguards are and that intelligence personnel are responsible public servants — sometimes heroes — dried up after an on-air confrontation shortly before Trump’s inauguration with a popular (and populist) host, Lou Dobbs.
Dobbs has no experience with the intelligence system. Yet he ranted about its reputed assaults on our privacy and other alleged misdeeds (if you want to know who spies on you, it’s the FGA — Facebook, Google and Amazon — not the NSA). When I insisted that the men and women who work in our intelligence agencies are patriots who keep us safe, the host reddened and demanded, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the — you fill in the blank.” As I sought to explain that, no, the NSA isn’t listening to our pillow talk, Dobbs kept repeating, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the — fill in the blank.”
Because I’d had a long, positive history with Dobbs, I refrained from replying: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the talk-show host.”
I became a disgruntled employee, limited to topics on which I agreed with the Trump administration, such as loosened targeting restrictions on terrorists and a tough line with North Korea. Over the past few months, it reached the point where I hated walking into the Fox studio. Friends and family encouraged me to leave, convinced that I embarrassed myself by remaining with the network (to be fair, I’m perfectly capable of embarrassing myself without assistance from Fox).
During my 10 years at Fox News and Fox Business, I did my best to be a forthright voice. I angered left and right. I criticized President Barack Obama fiercely (one infelicity resulted in a two-week suspension), but I also argued for sensible gun-control measures and environmental protections. I made mistakes, but they were honest mistakes. I took the opportunity to speak to millions of Americans seriously and — still that earnest young second lieutenant to some degree — could not imagine lying to them.
With my Soviet-studies background, the cult of Trump unnerves me. For our society’s health, no one, not even a president, can be above criticism — or the law.
I must stress that there are many honorable and talented professionals at the Fox channels, superb reporters, some gutsy hosts, and adept technicians and staff. But Trump idolaters and the merrily hypocritical prime-time hosts are destroying the network — no matter how profitable it may remain.
The day my memo leaked, a journalist asked me how I felt. Usually quick with a reply, I struggled, amid a cyclone of emotions, to think of the right words. After perhaps 30 seconds of silence, I said, “Free.”
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2018, 06:08:35 AM
Thank you Doug.
Reactions to Col. Peters article?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2018, 09:55:58 AM
I agree that FB AMZN GOOG are eavesdropping on us far more then the NSA.
(though we read or hear that at times the NSA is somewhat jealous or interested in getting some, at least , of this data)
Peter's: " Yet I could only rarely and briefly comment on the paramount security question of our time: whether Putin and his security services ensnared the man who would become our president. Trump’s behavior patterns and evident weaknesses (financial entanglements, lack of self-control and sense of sexual entitlement) would have made him an ideal blackmail target — and the Russian security apparatus plays a long game."
Me : This is the paramount security question of our time?
Peters: "As indictments piled up, though, I could not even discuss the mechanics of how the Russians work on either Fox News or Fox Business. (Asked by a Washington Post editor for a comment, Fox’s public relations department sent this statement: “There is no truth to the notion that Ralph Peters was ‘blocked’ from appearing on the network to talk about the major headlines, including discussing Russia, North Korea and even gun control recently. In fact, he appeared across both networks multiple times in just the past three weeks.”) All Americans, whatever their politics, should want to know, with certainty, whether a hostile power has our president and those close to him in thrall. This isn’t about party but about our security at the most profound level. Every so often, I could work in a comment on the air, but even the best-disposed hosts were wary of transgressing the party line."
Me: I am not sure what he means as "indictments pile up" . The mandate was to find collusion and to my knowledge none has been found. Indictments are on other alleged crimes. As for Trump being a blackmail target this is just a conspiracy theory at this time. He is putting the theory before any evidence . He would do well promoting this theory on CNN.
My last lament: How come we never see a single person come out of CNN or MSNBC or ABC or CBS EVER point out the Left's hypocritical propaganda?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2018, 10:07:45 AM
A friend comments on Col. Peters:
"I’ve met Peters, and have generally liked some of his past work. That said, he’s always been full of himself, and a bit too convinced he’s the smart guy. I’m not a Fox watcher, but , , , (t)he fact that they’re not anti-Trump suggests that they’ve maintained a shred of sanity. And the fact that they aren’t doing the “Russia, Russia, Russia” freakout indicates they’re smart enough to be skeptical. If he’s convinced that there’s evidence of wrongdoing by Trump he should state what the evidence is, or shut his pie hole."
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2018, 10:36:51 AM
What is you opinion of the R Peters piece CD?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2018, 11:29:18 AM
In no particular order:
a) FOX does seem to have gone down somewhat; there are more Barbie and Ken dolls; fewer greybeards with education and life experience. That said, their best remains top flight: Bret Baier, Katherine Herridge etc, but it does sadden me to say that the quality of the panel on Bret Baier has become uneven; on good nights as good as it ever was (filtering out the loss of Charles Krauthammer) but on some nights it is filled with hacks from the Washington Pravdas. The new Mark Levin show on Sundays has deep content (but tends to be too somber-- I fear it will not last).
For example, Judge Janine of the grating voice is there only because she is a hack for Trump.
OTOH Tucker is fg AWESOME!!! (but a bit blind on Russia)
b) There is considerable sucking up to President Trump-- given the need to "balance things out" this is not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it goes to far. The evening line up becomes but variations on a theme.
c) The sucking up includes avoiding difficult questions about Trump's verbal softness on Russia. IMHO there IS something weird about it , , , what to make of Trump's out of left field comments yesterday about leaving Syria soon? WTF? The point is not whether this is a good and/or necessary idea, but why is it a surprise to the Pentagon?!? And to our men there in the field? And to our allies? Is he just flapping his gums at the cost of making the fight immeasurably harder by casting doubt in the minds of friend and foe alike about American will? An ugly question crossed my mind , , , Is this surprise announcement consistent with a man who just had to take a hard line on the Russki assassination in Britain letting Putin know not to worry-- that their understanding (whatever it may be) remains in place?
I remain of the point of view that we are BADLY overextended militarily and in great need of shortening the list of things to do:
a) Iran-- Bolton calls for ending the nuke deal and pre-emption, Iran's move for land bridge to the Mediterranean as a possible trigger for war with Israel b) The Norks-- Bolton calls for pre-emption c) China-- the South China Sea AND Trade War d) Russian adventurism in Europe and the Middle East, cyber war e) the Middle East in general f) etc etc etc
I love Tucker Carlson, but he took some cheap shot at Peters on both Russia and the Iraq War when Peters was last on his show. Being Tucker, the shots had some serious sting to them and I can easily picture Peters still being sore , , ,
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Ralph Peters leaves Fox
Post by: DougMacG on April 02, 2018, 07:41:20 AM
"I’ve met Peters, and have generally liked some of his past work. That said, he’s always been full of himself, and a bit too convinced he’s the smart guy. I’m not a Fox watcher, but , , , (t)he fact that they’re not anti-Trump suggests that they’ve maintained a shred of sanity. And the fact that they aren’t doing the “Russia, Russia, Russia” freakout indicates they’re smart enough to be skeptical. If he’s convinced that there’s evidence of wrongdoing by Trump he should state what the evidence is,"
I agree with the above. I also don't watch Fox News (outside of Fox News Sunday on network) so I can mostly speculate. I've posted Ralph Peters analysis here when I've liked it or agreed with it. I think Peters' views have changed more recently. For one thing he was a Hillary supporter: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/ralph-peters-the-man-too-militaristic-for-fox-news/ Fine, but you can get plenty of that elsewhere. Regarding the Trump-Russia complaint, would somebody please tell us what Trump did that deserves the controversy. My God we have been patient.
Virtually all pundits believe they don't get enough face time to fully express their views. I see conservative panelists on shows like Meet the Press get about one sentence in and I wonder why they didn't use their 10 seconds more effectively. What Peters doesn't see about himself is that maybe he isn't that telegenic, maybe his thoughts aren't that unique or profound, maybe his presence isn't in demand from the Fox hosts or viewers. The Washington Post is publishing his view because he is attacking Fox News, not as a military analyst. I don't see Fox competitors like MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS rushing to sign this free agent.
Searching 'youtube ralph peters' brings up, "Ralph Peters calls President Obama a Total Pussy on national television, Ralph Peters goes too far, even for Fox News. He accused conservative Fox host Tucker Carlson of sounding like a Nazi sympathizer from the 1930s! Some self reflection might be in order instead of blaming others.
Join the club, most Americans don't get a free podium to express views with unlimited face time to a nationwide television audience - that someone else built.
Maybe he can join the forum and share his views with an audience that Crafty built. ------------------------ Regarding Fox News, fair and balanced? [Crafty] "what to make of Trump's out of left field comments yesterday about leaving Syria soon? WTF? "
Yes, someone could have taken that statement apart and other tidbits of nonsense. There is a need for a network that covers all the news, from both sides, and is objective, not just fills the conservative gaps that the liberal bias media misses. And there is a need for a place where conservatives can hear the best conservative views. Fox might be trying to hit on both counts and missing on both. They will likely get less conservative over time and leave a gap to their right for new entrants like the other networks left for them. Meanwhile, they already developed a brand that will never be trusted as fairly covering both sides.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 02, 2018, 12:42:15 PM
" The new Mark Levin show on Sundays has deep content (but tends to be too somber-- I fear it will not last). "
The first one with Walter Williams was good but I agree somewhat somber is a goo description . I did not see much of the Lee interview and I missed yesterday
Mark is more dynamic on the radio then on TV. While I understand the lack of emotion is not to turn off viewers it also makes it boring except to those who already know him I think.
" I don't see Fox competitors like MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS rushing to sign this free agent."
I assume they will interview him with two questions
Do you hate Trump?
Will you be 'able' to not say anything negative about Obama?
If yes to both - he has a lucrative consulting job with CNN though not likely MSLSD.
Simple as that
Title: a moment of integrity at CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 03, 2018, 10:50:05 AM
Title: Minnesota Public Radio Links conservatism with white supremacists, neo-nazis
Post by: DougMacG on April 18, 2018, 10:35:15 AM
Please read John Hinderaker's account of this. Anatomy of a Smear http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/04/minnesota-public-radio-anatomy-of-a-smear.php ----------------------- Center for the American Experiment did amazing reporting on Edina Schools, formerly the top district in the state, now as bastion for leftist indoctrination. The reporter was ripped, labeled and name called, but not challenged on the facts. The reporting was excellent and the article was picked up by many, many conservative outlets, Drudge Report, Brit Hume. Fox’s Dana Perino, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist whose recent book was the #1 best seller on Amazon for several weeks. The piece became one of the Weekly Standard’s most-read articles of 2018. Power Line, Real Clear Politics, InstaPundit (three times), Fox News, the Kansas City Star, the Independent Women’s Forum, Intellectual Takeout, Education News, Breitbart, The American Conservative, PJ Media, Erick Erickson in the Macon, Georgia Telegraph, Legal Insurrection, Frontpage Magazine, Hot Air, Alpha News, and DBMA Public Forum: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1337.msg108535#msg108535
Instead of mentioning those sites of mainstream conservatism, MPR linked the story to nazi and white supremacist sites. Hinderaker tried to reach them back for explanation and was denied.
WHO.HOLDS.THEM.ACCOUNTABLE??
Title: Re: Minnesota Public Radio Links conservatism with white supremacists, neo-nazis
Post by: G M on April 18, 2018, 11:19:59 AM
They are not accountable. That’s why they feel free to do this. Also, they will continue to be funded by money seized at gunpoint by the IRS and Minnesota tax authority.
Please read John Hinderaker's account of this. Anatomy of a Smear http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/04/minnesota-public-radio-anatomy-of-a-smear.php ----------------------- Center for the American Experiment did amazing reporting on Edina Schools, formerly the top district in the state, now as bastion for leftist indoctrination. The reporter was ripped, labeled and name called, but not challenged on the facts. The reporting was excellent and the article was picked up by many, many conservative outlets, Drudge Report, Brit Hume. Fox’s Dana Perino, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist whose recent book was the #1 best seller on Amazon for several weeks. The piece became one of the Weekly Standard’s most-read articles of 2018. Power Line, Real Clear Politics, InstaPundit (three times), Fox News, the Kansas City Star, the Independent Women’s Forum, Intellectual Takeout, Education News, Breitbart, The American Conservative, PJ Media, Erick Erickson in the Macon, Georgia Telegraph, Legal Insurrection, Frontpage Magazine, Hot Air, Alpha News, and DBMA Public Forum: http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1337.msg108535#msg108535
Instead of mentioning those sites of mainstream conservatism, MPR linked the story to nazi and white supremacist sites. Hinderaker tried to reach them back for explanation and was denied.
WHO.HOLDS.THEM.ACCOUNTABLE??
Title: Re: Minnesota Public Radio Links conservatism with white supremacists, neo-nazis
Post by: DougMacG on April 18, 2018, 12:47:40 PM
Strangely: [MPR] "About 5 percent of our total funding comes from government sources, mostly in the form of program grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting." https://www.mpr.org/about/faqs
It's only 5%? Why not make it 0% from the taxpayer? I think they cling to the neutral image that the name "public radio" gives them even though everyone knows they go almost non-stop with blatant liberal bias. Honesty and Leftism have little overlap so renaming it National Liberal Radio isn't even considered.
In this case, liberal bias is not the complaint. It is the reckless racial slur they put on their opponent and refuse to correct.
I guess they can't go liberal and argue with logic all at the same time. Must resort to slurs.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Correspondents' Dinner video
Post by: DougMacG on April 29, 2018, 09:04:35 AM
Michelle Wolf, alleged comedian, turns correspondents' dinner into what it was always was, a leftist fest, only cruder.
Title: MSM gets what they earn
Post by: ccp on April 29, 2018, 09:36:36 AM
I saw Wolf last night.
It simply shows the MSM for what they truly are. Trump was absolutely great in what he did by not going to this celebrity self back slapping self congratulatory falsely claimed as some sort of celebration of the first amendment award network money making show.
But alas, and of course, we have the usual cast of dupes undermining the President's point with Kasich and Paul Ryan showing respect for this charade.
I am very glad Ryan is out . Just wish it was now not later. He is done. I wonder if he thinks he is setting up for a possible come back when Trump leaves center stage. :|
Kasich on CNN (of course) today (anyone who wants to get on CNN simply come out publicly in some way making Trump look bad and you will be on the next day!) talking about some "middle of the road" and compromise and the usual rhino foolish nonsense that was tried for nearly 30 yrs of Bush family politics. Kasich with his "ocean" of Americans in the middle . Yeah right .
The libs were all glowing over that front page funeral photo of W with his arm around (OMFG) Hillary, and H Bush in the chair and the Bamas etc that it is so wonderful that these people of "class" were able to get along so well and above it all.
What the photo said to me is thanks to H we got Bill Clinton, and thanks to W we got Obama. To me it does look like a DC swamp. For those who did not see the pic here it is :
And for good measure here is the Huff truly Compost's take on Wolf who is labeled as "bold":
POLITICS 04/29/2018 12:06 am ET Updated 22 minutes ago Here Are Michelle Wolf’s Boldest Moments At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner Kellyanne Conway was not pleased. headshot By Carla Herreria
21k 110 Comedian Michelle Wolf took the bold route during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night.
She roasted those in ― and out ― of the room, focusing on President Donald Trump’s questionable wealth, slamming Democrats for not doing anything, and going after Trump administration officials who attended.
Kellyanne Conway, a target of Wolf’s jabs, was expressionless as the comedian suggested journalists stop bringing Conway on their news shows.
“If you don’t give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie,” Wolf said. “It’s like that old saying: If a tree falls in the woods how do we get Kellyanne under that tree?
“I’m not suggesting she gets hurt,” Wolf clarified. “Just stuck.”
Check out Wolf’s boldest moments during the 30-minute roast below.
1. When she wanted her appearance to be over, like a porn star “when she’s about to have sex with a Trump.”
The comedian started the roast by getting straight to the point.
2. When she was “starstruck” over Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her “perfect smoky eye.”
“Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
3. When she said Trump’s personal lawyer is the only person who can shut her up.
“It’s 2018 and I am a woman. So you cannot shut me up unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”
4. When she hit Trump where it hurts the most.
“Mr. President, I don’t think you’re very rich. Like, you might be rich in Idaho, but in New York, you’re doing fine,” Wolf said, before leading the audience in a back-and-forth on how broke Trump really is.
5. When she called out the news media for being obsessed with Trump.
“I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you.”
6. When she knew she wasn’t Roy Moore’s type.
“I’m 32 years old, which is an odd age. Ten years too young to host this event and 20 years too old for Roy Moore.”
7. When she supported Trump’s plan to arm teachers with guns.
Subscribe to the Politics email. How will Trump's administration impact you?
They need to get those school supplies somehow.
8. When she said it was too easy to make fun of Republicans.
“Democrats are harder to make fun of because you guys don’t do anything.”
9. When she explained why Trump was off-limits.
“I would drag him here myself, but it turns out the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab. He said it first. Yeah, he did.”
10. When she admitted that she doesn’t want Trump to be impeached.
“Because just when you think Trump is awful, you remember Mike Pence.”
11. When she went for Hillary Clinton.
Well, Michigan is pretty close to Washington, D.C.
12. When she reminded everyone what’s going on in Flint, Michigan.
It’s been four years.
Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Here’s how. HuffPost BEFORE YOU GO PHOTO GALLERY Inside The White House headshot Carla Herreria Reporter, HuffPost Suggest a correction MORE:
looks Huff compost this am - they call Wolf "bold" !
AdChoices POLITICS 04/29/2018 12:06 am ET Updated 22 minutes ago Here Are Michelle Wolf’s Boldest Moments At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner Kellyanne Conway was not pleased. headshot By Carla Herreria
21k 110 Comedian Michelle Wolf took the bold route during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night.
She roasted those in ― and out ― of the room, focusing on President Donald Trump’s questionable wealth, slamming Democrats for not doing anything, and going after Trump administration officials who attended.
Kellyanne Conway, a target of Wolf’s jabs, was expressionless as the comedian suggested journalists stop bringing Conway on their news shows.
“If you don’t give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie,” Wolf said. “It’s like that old saying: If a tree falls in the woods how do we get Kellyanne under that tree?
“I’m not suggesting she gets hurt,” Wolf clarified. “Just stuck.”
Check out Wolf’s boldest moments during the 30-minute roast below.
1. When she wanted her appearance to be over, like a porn star “when she’s about to have sex with a Trump.”
The comedian started the roast by getting straight to the point.
2. When she was “starstruck” over Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her “perfect smoky eye.”
“Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
3. When she said Trump’s personal lawyer is the only person who can shut her up.
“It’s 2018 and I am a woman. So you cannot shut me up unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”
4. When she hit Trump where it hurts the most.
“Mr. President, I don’t think you’re very rich. Like, you might be rich in Idaho, but in New York, you’re doing fine,” Wolf said, before leading the audience in a back-and-forth on how broke Trump really is.
5. When she called out the news media for being obsessed with Trump.
“I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you.”
6. When she knew she wasn’t Roy Moore’s type.
“I’m 32 years old, which is an odd age. Ten years too young to host this event and 20 years too old for Roy Moore.”
7. When she supported Trump’s plan to arm teachers with guns.
Subscribe to the Politics email. How will Trump's administration impact you?
They need to get those school supplies somehow.
8. When she said it was too easy to make fun of Republicans.
“Democrats are harder to make fun of because you guys don’t do anything.”
9. When she explained why Trump was off-limits.
“I would drag him here myself, but it turns out the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab. He said it first. Yeah, he did.”
10. When she admitted that she doesn’t want Trump to be impeached.
“Because just when you think Trump is awful, you remember Mike Pence.”
11. When she went for Hillary Clinton.
Well, Michigan is pretty close to Washington, D.C.
12. When she reminded everyone what’s going on in Flint, Michigan.
It’s been four years.
Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Here’s how. HuffPost BEFORE YOU GO PHOTO GALLERY Inside The White House headshot Carla Herreria Reporter, HuffPost Suggest a correction MORE:
Title: Ben Shapiro: CNN lies on school shootings
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 21, 2018, 12:07:20 PM
Title: Re: Media, Roseanne Barr, Green Party candidate
Post by: DougMacG on June 01, 2018, 07:57:57 AM
Barr filed with the Federal Election Commission as a Green Party presidential candidate in January 2012. She formally announced her candidacy for the party's 2012 presidential nomination on February 2, 2012. On July 14, 2012, she came in second,[81] losing the nomination to Jill Stein.
Barr was given a prime speaking role at the Green Party National Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, but decided to instead send surrogate Farheen Hakeem, Muslim co-chair of the Green Party, to speak on her behalf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseanne_Barr
Title: Re: Media, Roseanne Barr, Green Party candidate
Post by: G M on June 01, 2018, 11:01:09 AM
Barr filed with the Federal Election Commission as a Green Party presidential candidate in January 2012. She formally announced her candidacy for the party's 2012 presidential nomination on February 2, 2012. On July 14, 2012, she came in second,[81] losing the nomination to Jill Stein.
Barr was given a prime speaking role at the Green Party National Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, but decided to instead send surrogate Farheen Hakeem, Muslim co-chair of the Green Party, to speak on her behalf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseanne_Barr
Crazier than a bag of cats.
Title: Re: Media, Roseanne Barr, Green Party candidate
Post by: DougMacG on June 01, 2018, 11:40:22 AM
Yes. Crazy as batsh*t and her craziness has no foundation in conservatism. Raise taxes, "greatly increase" welfare, "greatly decrease" defense. Trump was "the lesser of two evils", she said on Jimmy Fallon, says more about Hillary than her support for Trump. https://votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/135262/roseanne-barr/#.WxGRkkgvyyI
But somehow "Hillary Supporter" is not the mainstream first name of Harvey Weinstein: https://abcnews.go.com/US/harvey-weinstein-indicted-rape-criminal-sexual-act-charges/story?id=55545228
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2018, 05:43:37 PM
Useful debating points-- thanks.
Title: Joy Reid blog posts put down the Memory Hole
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2018, 07:32:25 AM
Title: Re: Media, The Vulgar New Yorker, Samantha Bee words against Ivanka
Post by: DougMacG on June 05, 2018, 02:54:56 PM
Pardon me but I need to cut and paste this exactly as published to make this point of their vulgarity and the true ugliness of their freedom of press opinion. This is the prestigious New Yorker writing explicit drivil masked as analysis and deep thinking:
“Cunt” makes of womanhood something repugnant, and so does Ivanka, who embraces the shine and the softness of femininity at the same time that she rejects its bravery, love, and power. [They are saying it was right of Samantha Bee to call her a feckless one.]
Good God. People I know subscribe to this.
Title: Professional, credentialed journalists!
Post by: G M on June 08, 2018, 05:07:55 PM
Title: Sharyl Attkisson: 50 Media "Mistakes" in the age of Trump
Post by: DougMacG on June 19, 2018, 04:40:12 AM
While NBC Meet the Press is still obsessed with Trump "Lies", who is tracking Media "Mistakes"?
Here is a top 50 list from Sharyl Attkisson to get it started. Forgive the long post but each one of these is an important story. Read this at the link to get all sources linked.
https://sharylattkisson.com/2018/06/10/50-media-mistakes-in-the-trump-era-the-definitive-list/ ... 1. Aug. 2016-Nov. 2016: The New York Post published modeling photos of Trump’s wife Melania and reported they were taken in 1995. Various news outlets relied on that date to imply that Melania—an immigrant—had violated her visa status. But the media got the date wrong. Politico was among the news agencies that later issued a photo date correction.
2. Oct. 1, 2016: The New York Times and other media widely suggested or implied that Trump had not paid income taxes for 18 years. Later, tax return pages leaked to MSNBC ultimately showed that Trump actually paid a higher rate than Democrats Bernie Sanders and President Obama.
3. Oct. 18, 2016: In a Washington Post piece not labelled opinion or analysis, Stuart Rothenberg reported that Trump’s path to an electoral college victory was “nonexistent.”
4. Nov. 4, 2016: USA Today misstated Melania Trump’s “arrival date from Slovenia” amid a flurry of reporting that questioned her immigration status from the mid-1990s.
5. Nov. 9, 2016: Early on election night, the Detroit Free Press called the state of Michigan for Hillary Clinton. Trump actually won Michigan.
Nancy Sinatra via Twitter
6. Jan. 20, 2017: CNN claimed Nancy Sinatra was “not happy” at her father’s song being used at Trump’s inauguration. Sinatra responded, “That’s not true. I never said that. Why do you lie, CNN?…Actually I’m wishing him the best.”
7. Jan. 20, 2017: Zeke Miller of TIME reported that President Trump had removed the bust statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. The news went viral. It was false.
8. Jan. 26, 2017: Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “entire senior administrative team” had resigned in protest of Trump. A number of media outlets ranging from politically left to right, including liberal-leaning Vox, stated that claim was misleading or wrong.
9. Jan. 28, 2017 CNBC’s John Harwood reported the Justice Department “had no input” on Trump’s immigration executive order. After a colleague contradicted Harwood’s report, he amended it to reflect that Justice Department lawyers reportedly had reviewed Trump’s order.
10. Jan. 31, 2017: CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported the White House set up Twitter accounts for two judges to try to keep Trump’s selection for Supreme Court secret. Zeleny later corrected his report to state that the Twitter accounts had not been set up by the White House.
11. Feb. 2, 2017: TMZ reported Trump changed the name of “Black History Month” to “African American History Month,” implying the change was untoward or racist. In fact, Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had all previously called Black History month “African American History” month.
12. Feb. 2, 2017: AP reported that Trump had threatened the president of Mexico with invasion to get rid of “bad hombres.” Numerous publications followed suit. The White House said it wasn’t true and the Washington Post removed the AP info that “could not be independently confirmed.”
13. Feb. 4, 2017: Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported on “Inside the White House-Cabinet Battle Over Trump’s Immigration Order,” only to have the article updated repeatedly to note that one of the reported meetings had not actually occurred, that a conference call had not happened as described, and that actions attributed to Trump were actually taken by his chief of staff.
14. Feb. 14, 2017: The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo reported about supposed contacts between Trump campaign staff and “senior Russian intelligence officials.” Comey later testified “In the main, [the article] was not true.”
15. Feb. 22, 2017: ProPublica’s Raymond Bonner reported CIA official Gina Haspel—Trump’s later pick for CIA Director—was in charge of a secret CIA prison where Islamic extremist terrorist Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, and that she mocked the prisoner’s suffering. More than a year later, ProPublica retracted the claim, stating that “Neither of these assertions is correct…Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.”
16. April 5, 2017: An article bylined by the New York Times’ graphic editors Karen Yourish and Troy Griggs referred to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, as Trump’s wife.
17. May 10, 2017: Multiple outlets including Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported the same leaked information: that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey shortly after Comey requested additional resources to investigate Russian interference in the election. The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo, and CNN’s Sara Murray reported the information in sentences and paragraphs that omitted attribution, as if it were an established fact. The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker, Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa wrote news articles in the style of opinion pieces and from an omniscient viewpoint as if they were somehow in the mind of Trump. For example, they reported, “Every time FBI Director James B. Comey appeared in public, an ever-watchful President Trump grew increasingly agitated that the topic was the one that he was most desperate to avoid: Russia.” (Other reporters —Reuters’ Dustin Volz and Susan Cornwell— did properly attribute the claim.) The Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said the media reports were untrue and McCabe added that the FBI’s Russia investigation was “adequately resourced.”
18. June 4, 2017: NBC News reported in a Tweet that Russian President Vladimir Putin told TV host Megan Kelly that he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite: that he did not have compromising information on Trump.
19. June 6, 2017: CNN’s Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus; and ABC’s Justin Fishel and Jonathan Karl reported that Comey was going to refute Donald Trump’s claim that Comey told Trump three times he was not under investigation. Instead, Comey did the opposite and confirmed Trump’s claim.
20. June 7, 2017: In a fact-check story, AP reported erroneously that Trump misread the potential cost to a family with insurance under the Affordable Care Act who wanted care from their existing doctor.
21. June 8, 2017: The New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman reported that Comey testified Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Comey not to call the Russia probe “an investigation” but “a matter.” Weisman was mistaken about the attorney general and the probe. Actually, it was Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch (not Sessions) who told Comey to refer to the Hillary Clinton classified email probe (not the Russia probe) as “a matter” instead of “an investigation.”
22. June 22, 2017: CNN’s Thomas Frank reported that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” The report was later retracted. Frank and two other CNN employees resigned in the fallout.
23. December 2, 2017: ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that former Trump official Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was going to testify that candidate Trump had directed him to contact “the Russians.” Even though such contact would not be in of itself a violation of law, the news was treated as an explosive indictment of Trump in the Russia collusion narrative, and the stock market fell on the news. ABC later corrected the report to reflect that Trump had already been elected when he reportedly asked Flynn to contact the Russians about working together to fight ISIS and other issues. Ross was suspended.
24. July 6, 2017: Newsweek’s Chris Riotta and others reported that Poland’s First Lady had refused to shake Trump’s hand. Newsweek’s later “update” reflected that the First Lady had shaken Trump’s hand after all, as clearly seen on the full video.
25. July 6, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, CNN and numerous outlets had long reported, as if fact, the Hillary Clinton claim that a total of 17 American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia orchestrated election year attacks to help get Trump elected. Only three or four agencies, not 17, had officially done so.
26. Aug. 31, 2017: NBC News’ Ken Dilinian and Carol Lee reported that a Trump official’s notes about a meeting with a Russian lawyer included the word “donation,” as if there were discussions about suspicious campaign contributions. NBC later corrected the report to reflect that the word “donation” didn’t appear, but still claimed the word “donor” did. Later, Politico reported that the word “donor” wasn’t in the notes, either.
27. Sept. 5, 2017: CNN’s Chris Cillizza and other news outlets declared Trump “lied” when he stated that Trump Tower had been wiretapped, although there’s no way any reporter independently knew the truth of the matter—only what intel officials claimed. It later turned out there were numerous wiretaps involving Trump Tower, including a meeting of Trump officials with a foreign dignitary. At least two Trump associates who had offices in or frequented Trump Tower were also wiretapped.
28. Sept. 7, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported Democrat leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi called President Trump about an immigration issue. Trump actually made the call to Pelosi.
29. Nov. 6, 2017: CNN’s Daniel Shane edited excerpts from a Trump event to make it seem as though Trump didn’t realize Japan builds cars in the U.S. However, Trump’s entire statement made clear that he does.
30. Nov. 6, 2017: CNN edited a video that made it appear although Trump impatiently dumped a box of fish food into the water while feeding fish at Japan’s palace. The New York Daily News, the Guardian and others wrote stories implying Trump was gauche and impetuous. The full video showed that Trump had simply followed the lead of Japan’s Prime Minister.
31. Nov. 29, 2017: Newsweek’s Chris Riotta claimed Ivanka Trump “plagiarized” one of her own speeches. In fact, plagiarizing one’s own work is impossible since plagiarism is when a writer steals someone else’s work and passes it off as his own.
32. Dec. 4, 2017: The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt and Sharon LaFraniere and other outlets reported that Trump Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland supposedly contradicted herself or lied about another official’s contacts with Russians. The story was heavily, repeatedly amended. CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, New York Daily News and Daily Beast picked up the story about McFarland’s “lies.”
33. Dec. 4, 2017: ABC News’ Trish Turner and Jack Date reported that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had recently worked with a Russia intelligence-connected “official.” But the Russian wasn’t an “official.”
34. Dec. 5, 2017: Bloomberg’s Steven Arons and the Wall Street Journal’s Jenny Strasburg reported the blockbuster that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Trump’s bank records. It wasn’t true.
35. Dec. 8, 2017: CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb reported that Donald Trump Jr. conspired with WikiLeaks in advance of the publication of damaging Democrat party and Clinton campaign emails. Many other publications followed suit. They had the date wrong: WikiLeaks and Trump Junior were in contact after the emails were published.
36. Jan. 3, 2018: Talking Point Memo’s Sam Thielman reported that a Russian social media company provided documents to the Senate about communications with a Trump official. The story was later corrected to say the reporter actually had no idea how the Senate received the documents and had no evidence to suggest the Russian company was cooperating with the probe.
37. Jan. 12, 2018: Mediaite’s Lawrence Bonk, CNN’s Sophie Tatum, the Guardian, BBC, US News and World Report, Reuters and Buzzfeed’s Adolfo Flores reported a “bombshell”— that President Trump had backed down from his famous demand for a wall along the entire Southern border. However, Trump said the very same thing in February 2016 on MSNBC, on Dec. 2, 2015, in the National Journal, in October 2015 during the CNBC Republican Primary debate, and on Aug. 20, 2015, on FOX Business’ Mornings with Maria.
38. Jan. 15, 2018: AP’s Laurie Kellman and Jonathan Drew reported that a new report showed trust in the media had fallen during the Trump presidency. But the report that AP cited was actually over a year old and was conducted while Obama was president.
39. Feb. 2, 2018: AP’s Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Chad Day reported that ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s opposition research against Trump was initially funded by a conservative publication: the Washington Free Beacon. AP corrected its story because Steele only came on the project after Democrats began funding it.
40. March 8, 2018: The New York Times’ Jan Rosen reported on a hypothetical family whose tax bill would rise nearly $4,000 under Trump’s tax plan. It turns out the calculations were off: the couple’s taxes would go actually go down $43; not up $4,000.
41. March 13, 2018: The New York Times’ Adam Goldman, NBC’s Noreen O’Donnell and AP’s Deb Riechmann reported that Trump’s pick for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, had waterboarded a particular Islamic extremist terrorist dozens of time at a secret prison; and that she had mocked his suffering. In fact, Haspel wasn’t assigned to the prison until after the detainee left. ProPublica originally reported the incorrect details in Feb. 2017.
42. March 15, 2018: AP’s Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson and Jeff Horwitz reported that a Trump advisory board official had been a Miss America contestant and had killed a black rhino. She actually was a Mrs. America contestant and had shot a nonlethal tranquilizer dart at a white rhino. Watch Sharyl Attkisson’s TEDx Talk: Is Fake News Real?
43. April 1, 2018: AP’s Nicholas Riccardi reported that the Trump administration had ended a program to admit foreign entrepreneurs. It wasn’t true.
44. April 30, 2018: AP reported that the NRA had banned guns during Trump and Pence speeches at the NRA’s annual meeting. AP later corrected the information because the ban had been put in place by Secret Service.
45. May 3, 2018: NBC’s Tom Winter reported that the government had wiretapped Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. NBC later corrected the story after three senior U.S. officials said there was no wiretap.
46. May 7, 2018: CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger reported that Trump’s personal lawyer, Cohen, paid $1 million in fines related to unauthorized cars in his taxi business, had been barred from managing taxi medallions, had transferred $60 million offshore to avoid paying debts, and is awaiting trial on charges of failing to pay millions in taxes. A later correction stated that none of that was true.
47. May 16, 2018: The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others excerpted a Trump comment as if he had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.” Most outlets corrected their reports later to note that Trump had specifically referred to members of the murderous criminal gang MS-13.
48. May 28, 2018 The New York Times’ Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and CNN’s Hadas Gold shared a story with photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken under the Trump administration. The article and photos were actually taken in 2014 under the Obama administration.
49. May 29, 2018 The New York Times’ Julie Davis reported the estimated size of a Trump rally to be 1,000 people. There were actually 5,500 people or more in attendance.
50. June 1, 2018 In a story about Trump tariffs, AP reported the dollar value of Virginia’s farm and forestry exports to Canada and Mexico was $800. It’s $800 million. Politicians are often fact-challenged. But for us in the media— our whole business is in facts. And we’ve played too fast and loose with our own.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 19, 2018, 05:34:00 AM
Doug, Did you see on Drudge the the WcomPost staff are yelling at Bezos to "share the wealth" after he saved them from unemployment?
Pretty ironic. If I were Bezos I would fire all of them and replace them with illegals. :evil:
Title: some thoughts on impeachment polls
Post by: ccp on June 22, 2018, 07:06:54 AM
Impeachment is for "high crimes and misdemeanors " Trump has done none of these
Source : Levin even Tribe who is a virulent leftist does not think Trump is guilty of this Constitutional definition
The polls is really saying that this many people are against his policies and want him out.
I was impeaching Clinton Perhaps his transgressions did not reach to the level of a Constitional definition what the framers meant for this way of getting a Pres out of office
I also would argue I was for impeaching Obama and I really believe the Constitional arugment that he should have been removed from office was VALID . Yet of course he has too much support and politically it could not have happened.
Bottom line: Left is calling for impeachment for no reason other then they don 't like Trump
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 22, 2018, 04:04:03 PM
someone should put a photo of children killed by collateral damage from drones strikes ordered by Barak with him sitting comfortably in his DC mansion looking at the bodies.
Title: Einstein was no racist
Post by: ccp on June 23, 2018, 04:20:50 AM
Did the lib include this quote of Einstein of Ghandi:
“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. (said of Mahatma Gandhi)”
― Albert Einstein, On Peace
He was not a racist . No he did review every thought before he spoke or wrote to be sure it is cleansed to the standards of the politically correct crazy Left of 2018.
Title: Why would Beck think anything different of
Post by: ccp on June 25, 2018, 03:06:13 PM
Title: New JUDGEJURYJURNOLIST (#2)
Post by: ccp on June 28, 2018, 03:54:31 PM
The obvious "revealed" : : http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/06/28/journolist-2-discovered-over-400-left-of-center-members/
:wink:
:-o I am shocked.
A left wing media cabal - no way . :roll:
Title: Kimbery Guidoyle - impressive indeed
Post by: ccp on July 07, 2018, 10:07:24 AM
I admit a am pleasantly surprised at how impressive she it. Behind every successful man is a good woman. Maybe she can get Trump Jr to run for office. Or she run with his connections:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth on abortion
Post by: DougMacG on July 09, 2018, 07:57:24 AM
Trying to listen to the Sunday shows with a critical ear, Fox News Sunday had guest host Dana Perino on yesterday. Dana looked nice and did a fine job with the program while Chris Wallace vacationed and makes his travel to Helsinki for the next summit. But it is what these hosts do not ask that goes otherwise unnoticed.
It is good that a supposedly conservative show and channel had a Leftist guest on, Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, and that she was treated with kindness and respect. Ms Hogue did a great job of defending the indefensible. They talked about polls, precedent, rights and Supreme Court nominations. It is what was not asked that irks me. http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2018/07/08/senator-lindsey-graham-on-north-korea-putin-and-trumps-scotus-pick.html
I would be happy if host in these interviews split the guest's time roughly in half, letting the guest present their view and then challenge that view. After discussing how popular abortion is and how long it has been the law etc., she could have asked:
When does human life begin? The position of NARAL is there is no life worthy of any protection in law before birth, is that right? But your opponents are all over media claiming that a 'baby' has "a beating heart 14 days after conception". Are they wrong? Isn't your side completely in denial of modern science and common sense here, that there is no life there before birth? If we can't all agree life begins at conception, why can't we at least agree that a human organism is clearly alive once it has a beating heart and it has DNA separate and distinct from the mother? Why isn't that at least worthy of contemplation of protections in the political processes of the states?
Opponents or Roe v Wade believe it is a wrongly decided case because the constitution does notspeak to the issue of abortion and that powers not granted expressly to the federal government are left to the states and to the people. Are they wrong? Where in the constitution does it speak to federal power to limit or ban protections for the unborn? Where in the constitution does it define trimesters which make up the specifics in the ruling of Roe? Is it not a wrongly decided case?
Black unborn are aborted at 5 times the rate of whites, is there not in fact a racist component of this that traces all the way back to the very founding of the nation's largest abortion provider and continues today? ----------------------- Can you imagine how the media would handle this issue if the sides were reversed? What would happen if a bunch of rich, powerful, white conservative men in Washington were insisting that inner city minority were afforded easy access to kill off their young before birth and women like Ms. Hogue were on the shows describing how inhumane that is and how evil it is to support that? Abortion would be stopped in its tracks immediately if the political and media sides were reversed. ---------------------- Strangely, this is the same person on the same issue, much tougher before she had the opportunity to host a major show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4SDquYcAg
Title: I thought California banned these...
Post by: G M on July 16, 2018, 06:08:14 AM
Suspect killed, officer injured in Calif. shootout AUG 22, 2014 2:05 PM EDT CRIMESIDER
BY CRIMESIDER STAFF / KCAL LOS ANGELES
sanbernardinoofficershooting.x-ms-bmp Ambulance arrives at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, Calif., after a shooting involving police and an alleged gunman in San Bernardino, Calif., Friday, Aug. 22, 2014 CBS Los Angeles
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- A police officer is in critical condition and a suspect is dead following an early morning shooting Friday near a Southern California nightclub, CBS Los Angeles reports.
A 31-year-old veteran officer and a new officer trainee were in an area known for criminal activity at around 2 a.m., to "check on some individuals," said Lt. Rich Lawhead of the San Bernardino Police Department.
The officers confronted a group of five people, who had just left a nightclub, in front of a home on a dead-end street and "almost immediately shots were fired," Chief Jarrod Burguan said.
A male suspect's gunfire wounded the senior officer, a 6-year veteran of the San Bernardino Police Department, twice in the upper body.
He was transported to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center for surgery. He remains in critical condition.
The training officer was able to return fire and wounded the suspect, who was a man in his 30s. He was also transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Police have not released the names of the officers or the suspect.
Five other people, including three women and one man, were taken in for questioning, CBS Los Angeles reports.
An assault revolver with high-capacity magazines and a revolver were recovered at the scene.
KCAL Los Angeles
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2018, 05:44:32 PM
If you think they get too cozy a deal from the USPS and went that overturned fine. But if you are using it as a club to punish a newspaper for it s particular stories that is something that can come back to haunt any of us.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2018, 10:28:35 AM
Amen.
Title: Motive of Toronto Jihadist Shooter a mystery
Post by: G M on July 25, 2018, 07:07:11 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/376272.php
Forever unknown.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 26, 2018, 04:42:53 AM
" Toronto Terrorist Faisal Hussain Visited ISIS Websites, Claimed by ISIS as a "Soldier of Allah:" Toronto Mayor Declares It's Time to Have an Honest Discussion About... Gun Ownership "
Not only that, he should not go to prison because none of this rage he had was his fault.
Instead he needs a good job and I recommend he get one in government. And maybe some community service where he simply lectures children on wrong ness of hate and Nazism and Fascism and Jihadism as well as the hate spewed from the present president of the United States.
He could then get invited on CNN for a fee to speak of his learning and life changing experience.
As for anyone he murdered, well again that wast the fault of Trump, guns , hate , and of course White American males.
Title: second post 7/26/18
Post by: ccp on July 26, 2018, 05:13:09 AM
How is he suppressing free speech when we have CNN shooting off their mouths 24 /7 100 % negative about the President since he said he would run for President?
More truly fake news.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 26, 2018, 09:21:53 AM
That clip was helpful is showing the actual dynamics involved.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 26, 2018, 09:43:50 AM
CD " That clip was helpful is showing the actual dynamics involved. "
yes. one can see her screaming at the top of her lungs questions clearly designed to embarrass and ignore what the meeting was really about CNN s latest "gotcha" scheme concerning Cohen tapes.
I give Dobbs credit to do this despite his own Fox news network 'reportedly' siding with CNN for reasons I am not clear although I am not clear as to what that was about.
Title: Re: Media covers the doubling of the growth rate
Post by: DougMacG on July 27, 2018, 08:12:01 AM
I wondered how the other side carries this so I looked at the Huffington Post. It's not there. I looked at the nation. It's not there. NPR news has it. The Story begins, "A key measure..."
But that's not quite right, it's not, "A key measure", it's the entire measurement of all transactions that happened in the economy in that quarter. Nice try to deflate it. Read further:
"Most economists caution this is likely to be a one-off growth spurt and not a new sustained trend."
Most economists? Then they quote one: "factor at play here is tax cuts. They're boosting the economy, but Shepherdson says that just creates "a short-term sugar rush to growth and then probably some sort of hangover eventually down the line."
Lessening the burden of government has a sugar rush followed by a hangover? And that's what most Economist believe?? Good grief.
"We are not the enemy of the people," said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor for the editorial page of The Boston Globe
'The Globe has reached out to editorial boards nationwide to write and publish editorials on Aug. 16 denouncing what the newspaper called a "dirty war against the free press."'
Just this maneuver alone suggesting that the media should EN MASSE denounce the President is evidence that the media is going after an elected President because he is trying to defend himself against endless attacks.
Sorry but you have been the enemy of half the population of the United States . That is fact.
Title: Omarosa : fake non news
Post by: ccp on August 10, 2018, 04:46:03 PM
“Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d/Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”
but then they suddenly become libs to fit in and protect their jobs
so the whatever her name is can be racist against whites but Brett cannot speak out about the NYT is bottom line.
his writings go to the garbage can from now on in.
I don't think I read him much anyway
isn't he one of those never Trump guys - the reason NYT offered him a jog.
Title: CNN now openly support anti US bigots and communists
Post by: ccp on August 14, 2018, 02:59:47 PM
here we go again with Mario's foolish kid who thinks he is in some sort of righteous fight against "hate" over a few hundred white supremacists in a land of 330 million.
since they are getting called out for the obvious hypocracy his response is to simply come out and defend as though it is some religious quality war of good vs evil
Can anyone tell what Antifa is so angry about in a free country? don't many of them go to college? who is bothering these people ? if CNN was not at this white rally no one would know or even give a hoot.
Title: Whoops! Somehow this little detail was omitted.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 20, 2018, 09:55:30 AM
It is strange how people turn. All I remember about Ralph Peters is that I thought he was a defense hawk. So was Hillary at one point. That alone doesn't make you a political ally. David Stockton turned against Reagan and so did Economist Paul Craig Roberts. That guarantees you podium on the other side, it doesn't make you right.
“People that only listen to Fox have an utterly skewed view of reality.”
Substitute PBS, CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NYT, etc and the same rings true.
“This is a distinctly un-American president who really doesn’t seem to like America very much, certainly doesn’t respect it. And he’s a president who appears to be enthralled to a foreign power, a hostile foreign power,” Peters said.
It looks like he adds no new insight, just a new personality to repeat the same message.
Hating or disrespecting Trump voters is not how you convert them to another side.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 22, 2018, 12:09:47 PM
I get where Peters is coming from. There IS plenty of suck up on FOX, especially on that morning show that the President loves. I love Tucker Carlson, but I thought he treated Peters very badly when he appeared on Tucker's show.
Title: Media In Full Cover-Up Mode over Mollie Tibbets' Murderer
Post by: G M on August 22, 2018, 02:20:13 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/376701.php
Media In Full Cover-Up Mode over Mollie Tibbets' Murderer The Overtly Racist New York Times deletes word "undocumented" before the word "immigrant" in headline.
As the Daily Caller wryly notes:
The removal of "undocumented" did not come with any news from law enforcement officials on the suspect’s immigration status. But the Overtly Racist New York Times didn't stop there. It also stealth-edited a piece about a 20 year old girl's murder to make it primarily a story about Trump-- Republicans Seize and all that.
Meanwhile, the media is replaying its Kermit Gosnell strategy, pronouncing this a Local Crime Story, despite the obvious relevance about a major unresolved national debate about immigration policy.
And when I say the Kermit Gosnell strategy, here's a reminder of what that looked like.
View image on Twitter View image on Twitter
jd mullane ☮️ @jdmullane PHOTO: Seats for media in Courtroom 304 at the Kermit Gosnell abortion "house of horrors" trial in Phila on Thurs.
6:44 PM - Apr 11, 2013 159 112 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy
There was a recent update to that infamous picture.
J.D. Mullane revealed that CNN -- the most trusted name in news -- was going to declare the picture #FakeNews. (Spoiler: It wasn't.)
Here was his reply:
jd mullane ☮️ @jdmullane Fun fact: After this pic of empty media seats at the Gosnell abortion/murder trail in Philly went viral, CNN called me and said the network was going to report it was a fake pic. I asked: ''Did your reporter at the trial tell you that?''
jd mullane ☮️ @jdmullane PHOTO: Seats for media in Courtroom 304 at the Kermit Gosnell abortion "house of horrors" trial in Phila on Thurs.
View image on Twitter 11:32 AM - Aug 16, 2018 1,171 669 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy
Title: CNN finds way to fire Paris
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2018, 03:47:50 PM
over his defense of Trump but of course the use a Clarence Thomas - like excuse:
As far as I know he was the last pro Trump person on CNN
Title: Media, CNN, Camerota versus Trump, Sununu
Post by: DougMacG on August 30, 2018, 07:11:42 AM
https://youtu.be/YnC0seSAYSg
A friendly interview turns ugly. After sharing a laugh, a story and a memory, the host turns the topic and the guest calls her out on it. Isn't it strange that the CNN that was designed to be neutral and played in airports, health clubs and around the world is so obviously and rottenly biased and agenda-driven. Stranger yet that after having their lunch eaten by Fox, they keep doing the same, wrong thing. There is still a giant void for a perceived neutral network.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 31, 2018, 05:53:49 PM
someone should go up to Maxine Waters and ask if she likes crackers and if she says no tape her and blitz right wing sites with her white hatred because that is just as stupid as this phony controversy is.
and the people that actually believe this or make a stink over nothing ..... :roll:
Title: Just like other communists did
Post by: G M on September 01, 2018, 01:26:08 AM
someone should go up to Maxine Waters and ask if she likes crackers and if she says no tape her and blitz right wing sites with her white hatred because that is just as stupid as this phony controversy is.
and the people that actually believe this or make a stink over nothing ..... :roll:
Title: speaking of Chuck Schumer "monkeying around"
Post by: ccp on September 01, 2018, 08:01:24 AM
You mean John McCain's greatest fan who wants to remove the name of one original signer of the Declaration of Independence off some DC building and get this: and put McCain's name on it.
Perhaps this was part of the back room deal that got McCain to stab the Republicans in the back by voting against the health care bill - I dunno. Of course McCain would have done this just to say FU to Trump .
As for me you can call McCain a hero for his military service.. I agree he certainly was and the ordeal he went through trying to defend his country and the courage not to leave his comrades in prison behind when he according to legend he had the chance was remarkably courageous . And I don't care if he cracked and gave up info while being tortured ( as I read he did from some reports ) , very few would not have3 done the same thing.
BUT,
After all that said he was a F'n traitor to the Republican party.
Maybe my memory is faded but I don't recall all this adulation from Crats for any Republican EVER! At least in my lifetime. (I guess Abe Lincoln who was a saint might be the only exception)
Title: bombed in theaters so show it on cable for free
Post by: ccp on September 03, 2018, 03:14:00 PM
Just a coincidence - it is being aired tonight the day before Kavanaugh goes to Capital Hill. :roll:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2018, 08:35:39 PM
I have it recorded.
Curious to see what she's been up to since I debated her in class over "National League of Cities v. User" (think I remember the name right, , ,it was the Feds were trying to impose minimum wage requirements on a State government's employees) :evil: :lol: :lol:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on September 04, 2018, 06:31:38 AM
Curious to see what she's been up to since I debated her in class over "National League of Cities v. User" (think I remember the name right, , ,it was the Feds were trying to impose minimum wage requirements on a State government's employees) :evil: :lol: :lol:
Let me guess, she was wrong then and is wrong now.
The federal government should control minimum wage for States paying their own employees, and that is supported in the constitution in article,,, uh,,,uh,,, oops, I don't see it in there! I wonder what her argument was and why we would promote her to a higher level of incompetence.
Ginsburg was confirmed 96-3. Senator Jesse Helms and two others voted against her.
Title: Media, C-SPAN, NPR one might say to the idea that a single president
Post by: DougMacG on September 05, 2018, 01:57:46 PM
I am listening to the Kavanaugh hearings on radio. With each interruption by protesters, they are switching the audio coverage from the microphones of the questioner and nominee to a room mic to broadcast and amplify the screaming of the protester even though the questions and answers continue. I find it odd they put focus on the one breaking the rules above the purpose of the hearing.
Title: Re: Media, C-SPAN, NPR one might say to the idea that a single president
Post by: G M on September 05, 2018, 02:10:55 PM
I am listening to the Kavanaugh hearings on radio. With each interruption by protesters, they are switching the audio coverage from the microphones of the questioner and nominee to a room mic to broadcast and amplify the screaming of the protester even though the questions and answers continue. I find it odd they put focus on the one breaking the rules above the purpose of the hearing.
I guess the dems wistfully discussing civility during the McCain funeral are done with that now.
Title: eavesdropping ?
Post by: ccp on September 07, 2018, 06:54:08 AM
I have not heard another possible theory as to the "leaks"
How about recording devices ? I would imagine state of the art sweeps would find these but with the advancement of tech the way it is , can we be sure?
Title: Anderson Cooper vs. Corey Booker
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2018, 11:53:08 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVbwPlz_h-4
Title: Re: Anderson Cooper vs. Corey Booker
Post by: G M on September 07, 2018, 01:09:59 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 10, 2018, 02:02:29 PM
Rush had a good point today
On how perfectly timed that the "anonymous " letter was published in the NYT within days of the Woodward book.
More hits will coming in the next few months. Wonder when the ambulance chasing MeTwo lawyers will hit the airwaves .
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2018, 06:37:31 PM
I had noticed that too, but I would add in Baraq's barrage to the notion as well , , ,
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 11, 2018, 04:11:22 AM
"I had noticed that too, but I would add in Baraq's barrage to the notion as well , , ,"
That is why I don't just listen to talk radio.
I gotta read DBF! :)
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on September 12, 2018, 07:12:02 AM
"how perfectly timed that the "anonymous " letter was published in the NYT within days of the Woodward book." ... the re-emergence of Barack Obama for the perfect media trifecta,
I noticed all of that too. It looks like it's all they've got and it's nothing compared to the Access Hollywood tape of 2016 that didn't quite seal that deal. It looks like all their best timing will be overshadowed by some rainfall on the East Coast this week.
I don't plan to read the Woodward book but from the discussions he seems to have missed the main point, Trump's policies. The Woodward book answers the question not asked, how did the policies go so wrong? But they didn't. We have a growth rate greater than the unemployment rate for the first time in a hundred years. We went from the worst business start-up rate in history to the best. Economic optimism is soaring. The first second and third quarter results are in and coming in set the table for the election. Trump just hit another homerun with Kavanaugh, making Republicans look constitutional, Democrats look anti-American, forcing a divide between candidates like Heitkamp, Donnelly, Manchin and McCaskill and the hard left of their party. Where is anonymous and Woodward on that? A brilliant pick - again.
One of the democratic hits on the tax cut was that the corporate rate cuts were made permanent and the individual rate cuts passed were temporary. Now the Republicans are forcing a vote on making individual rate cuts permanent as we come into the midterm elections. As they oppose what they called for, will the media call them out on it? No, never, and everyone knows it.
I'd rather have our facts than their media.
Title: Woodward and the FBI
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2018, 10:50:46 AM
You mean Brett did not go around telling everyone he was a virgin ?
You mean it was not known by everyone at Yale he was a virgin?
Maybe Stephanie Clifford who was maybe 5 y old can come forward and claim she had sex with him and describe his pecker.
Hark , Avenatti the Great is scouring the female students who were around at the time looking for ANYONE who will say she screwed around with Brett as we speak
Title: Sweden and FB censor gang rape
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2018, 06:39:47 AM
" resident Donald Trump said Monday on Fox News that he planned to put any members of the migrant caravan who apply for asylum into new “tent cities” that would be “all over the place,” sharpening his recent efforts to politicize the southern border ahead of next month’s midterm elections."
So Trump who is reacting to an invasion of thousands is "politicizing" the issue ahead of the election instead of him simply defending our borders against a Leftist organized mob invasion before the election.
" is comments come amid nationwide attention over a 3,500-member migrant caravan that has traveled through Central America and into Mexico on its way to the U.S. border, where many people traveling in the group plan to apply for asylum after fleeing violence in Honduras"
now it is back down to 3,500 which is the lowest number I have heard for 2 weeks. And of course they are all lovely people who just are fleeing violence.
" Top Story Trump Says He’ll Put Any Asylum Seeker From Migrant Caravan In ‘Tent Cities’ HuffPost Nick Visser,HuffPost 8 hours ago Reactions Reblog on Tumblr Share Tweet Email
President Donald Trump said Monday on Fox News that he planned to put any President Donald Trump said Monday on Fox News that he planned to put any members of the migrant caravan who apply for asylum into new “tent cities” that would be “all over the place,” sharpening his recent efforts to politicize the southern border ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
“We’re catching; we’re not releasing,” Trump said in the interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “So if they want to come over, we’re not even doing that. We’re not letting them into this country. If they apply for asylum, we’re going to hold them until such time as their trial takes place.”
The president said he would order the construction of tent cities that’d be “very nice.” But he said he wouldn’t spend “hundreds of millions of dollars” on “structures” to house anyone detained while awaiting the outcome of an asylum application.
“We’re going to put tents up all over the place,” Trump said, before noting that “they’re going to wait, and, if they don’t get asylum, they’re going to get out.”
His comments come amid nationwide attention over a 3,500-member migrant caravan that has traveled through Central America and into Mexico on its way to the U.S. border, where many people traveling in the group plan to apply for asylum after fleeing violence in Honduras. Trump said Monday he planned to deploy 5,200 troops to the region by the end of the week, even though the caravan itself, in which people are traveling mostly on foot, is weeks away from the border.
Critics have accused the White House of using the U.S. military to rally voters ahead of the midterms, especially since Republicans face a tough battle to retain control of the House of Representatives.
" Clara Long, a senior researcher for the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, said the proposal sounded like a “very expensive disaster” in the making."
So the response is a "disaster" not the fact we have nearly open borders as it is.
"“Having manufactured a crisis around the caravan, Trump is now explicitly vowing to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money on it. When it comes to children, immigration detention is never appropriate under human rights law,” Long said in an email to HuffPost"
So the whole response is "manufactured" (out of thin air ) and the "children" theme again . The poor children . " It’s unclear if his recent tent city proposal would be legal, and such a plan would likely provoke a fierce court battle."
We already know the LEFt will be filing lawsuits up the whazoo and there will be some Democrat Judge who will comply.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2018, 07:37:08 AM
My initial impression is that tent cities are a really good idea-- it solves the "tearing families apart" meme AND catch and release!
Well done President Trump!!!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on October 30, 2018, 01:43:14 PM
The tent cities should be located in Mexico.
Title: NPC flavored ice cream
Post by: G M on October 30, 2018, 01:51:02 PM
the real reason I post , is notice how FBI corruptly working with Irish Bulger to get the iTalian criminals but NO MENTION of who was at FBI then - Mueller . Where is his name?
Title: Re: Whitey Bulger
Post by: G M on October 31, 2018, 01:11:18 PM
the real reason I post , is notice how FBI corruptly working with Irish Bulger to get the iTalian criminals but NO MENTION of who was at FBI then - Mueller . Where is his name?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Steve Hayward (Powerline) on Jim Acosta (CNN)
Post by: DougMacG on November 08, 2018, 06:43:05 AM
He’s quite useful for Trump to have around, exposing the mendacity and self-regarding partisanship of the media on a daily basis. ... Trump ought to call a press conference and let Acosta ask all the questions, which would go poorly for Acosta, and also make the rest of the White House press corp resent Acosta. I say let that man make a fool of himself for as long as he wants. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/loose-ends-52-mostly-on-the-election.php
Title: FOX boycotts Twitter for allowing doxxing of Tucker
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2018, 04:31:18 PM
IF CNN keeps pushing their agenda that opposes the majority of Americans then I would not call them my friend
They are not a news organization . They are not just simply supplying information . They are distorting everything they can in every way they can to bring down a President I voted for . They are a one sided propaganda outlet for the Democrat Party .
So yes CNN you are and enemy of at least half the people of this country.
Title: Ted Olsen *was* the hero of the Right
Post by: ccp on November 14, 2018, 05:54:35 AM
I cannot believe Ted Olsen who is representing Acosta actually believes Acosta's freedom of speech is being silenced . What happened to this guy . All he does is take up leftist causes he is just a hired gun or a rino or what:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 14, 2018, 07:35:52 AM
ccp regarding Trump missed a cemetery visit: "The New Yorker is same as NYT."
Yes and you could say New Yorker is same as Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, The Nation. Is it news that a President did not visit a certain place? ________________________
Thread suggestion: I think we should split off a new topic for "Fake News". As we come into 2020, that term will only grow in usage and controversy. Media like Meet the Press and their guests say they've never seen such dishonesty and combativeness in a President. People on the other side who use the term 'Fake News' need to be able to list off multiples of major news stories in major news outlets in the Trump era that were patently false.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2018, 11:57:40 AM
Disagree on the Fake News thread; I am unhappy with the Pathological Science thread on SC&H and don't want to repeat those dynamics. Best to have it all in one thread where whether something is pathological or fake can be worked out.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 14, 2018, 06:56:34 PM
Understood.
Title: CNN and Acosta win?!?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2018, 08:25:40 AM
The dems/deep state/black robe tyrants have decided that Trump and our votes don't matter, and as such Trump is president in name only.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2018, 01:07:11 PM
Trump seemed calm enough in discussing it with Chris Wallace; basically "The judge says we need due process procedures. Fine, they are being drawn up as I speak."
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on November 16, 2018, 02:52:07 PM
Trump seemed calm enough in discussing it with Chris Wallace; basically "The judge says we need due process procedures. Fine, they are being drawn up as I speak."
Only the latest in a long line of incidents.
Title: NOt a brock or bill appointed judge
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2018, 03:00:59 PM
but one of Trump's own appointed judges!
perhaps to prove he is not in Trump's pocket??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_J._Kelly
Title: Re: NOt a brock or bill appointed judge
Post by: G M on November 16, 2018, 03:16:32 PM
Hey, just like our various rino-Flakes, he has to keep getting invites to the right parties.
Title: Trump: I'll Throw Acosta Out the Next Time He Acts Like a Child, Or I'll Just Wa
Post by: G M on November 16, 2018, 04:03:51 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/378179.php
November 16, 2018 Trump: I'll Throw Acosta Out the Next Time He Acts Like a Child, Or I'll Just Walk Out Myself
The judge made up some bullshit about a requirement of "due process" to cancel a hard pass, so Trump should just set up a tribunal, stocked with reliable people, who would evaluate "reporter" behavior and complaints from the White House about reporter behavior.
Then, "due process" satisfied -- until they Hawaiian judges discover a new Orange Man Bad penumbra and emanation in the Constitution.
But for now, Trump is saying he'll just toss him out again or cancel the press conference.
Jon Gabriel has an interesting suggestion: Trump should call on only Acosta, and only let Acosta speak for the full hour of a press conference.
Hey, if that's what the media wants -- the Jim Accoster Show -- then give it to them good and hard until they cry.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2018, 04:08:59 PM
"Jon Gabriel has an interesting suggestion: Trump should call on only Acosta, and only let Acosta speak for the full hour of a press conference"
Not a bad idea .
Another idea is to have a microphone that can simply be turned off. so if this self serving pervert keeps shooting his mouth off just turn the mike off and give another to someone else
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2018, 06:50:37 PM
Have a mike that can be told to give off an electrical shock.
Title: First Lady supposedly spends too much
Post by: ccp on November 17, 2018, 10:26:58 AM
Before the Huff post gets all bent out of shape (even more) by this :
Have a mike that can be told to give off an electrical shock.
Very funny. I won't be surprised if Trump just gives him his own podium and has him start fielding some of the questions - and quietly slips out the back of the room. The 'journalists' seem to have all the answers. Maybe they can just talk among themselves and report on that and he can go through his other channels.
Title: 2nd post today
Post by: ccp on November 17, 2018, 10:52:37 AM
Mark Levin wonders what freedom of the press/speech is all about in Judge's ruling on CNN/Aocsta/ Trump case:
I am not sure what procedure was broken or rules were broken when Acosta ordered out. For as long as I can remember it was understood you don't stand there and hog a microphone and continue to badger the President because you don't like him.
Suddenly we need to have WRITTEN CONTRACTURAL protocols? on how to act at a WH Press conference?
Title: Zuck annoyed the Left; now he is a frenemy
Post by: ccp on November 19, 2018, 01:32:18 PM
Major Media Ignore Dem Rep’s Nuke Comments Mainstream media remain silent on Swalwell comments
November 21, 2018 3:10 pm
Major media outlets have provided little or no coverage of a Democratic congressman's suggestion the government would use "nukes" against Americans who resisted efforts to confiscate semiautomatic weapons.
On Friday, during an exchange over his proposal to confiscate certain firearms, Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) suggested the government would use nuclear weapons against Americans who resisted confiscation efforts.
"And it would be a short war my friend," he tweeted. "The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they're legit."
Swalwell later claimed his suggestion the government would use nuclear weapons against Americans was "sarcastic" but did not respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment or clarification of his views.
Swalwell's comments were widely criticized by Republicans as well as gun-rights activists. Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) condemned Swalwell's statements. NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch responded to Swalwell by saying "threatening (either seriously or even facetiously, progressives tell me nuance and euphemisms are dead and everything is literal in meaning) voters with nukes because you, not they, don't understand the argument is both bad lawmaking and advocacy."
A Free Beacon search of television archive TVEyes found zero mentions of Swalwell's comments or the reaction to them in coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or MSNBC. A search of those outlets' websites returned zero results as well. A search of the New York Times website found zero stories on the comments.
CNN interviewed Swalwell the day after his comments suggesting the government might nuke Americans in a hypothetical gun confiscation effort but did not ask him about his tweets or even mention them, instead asking him about President Trump's comments on Nancy Pelosi.
The Washington Post included one of Swalwell's follow-up tweets in a daily news roundup, and 51 words out of a 3,000-word David Weigel newsletter. That newsletter dedicated 12 of those 51 words to note that "There was no corner of the Internet where this went over well." The paper provided no other coverage of Swalwell's comments.
In contrast, Fox News dedicated several online stories to the congressman's comments. Fox & Friends also discussed the story on air, as did Tucker Carlson.
Swalwell's comments also garnered stories from many right-leaning media outlets. The Washington Free Beacon, Washington Times, Blaze, Washington Examiner, and a host of other conservative outlets covered the congressman's comments.
Despite the relative silence on Swalwell's "nuke" comments, controversial comments made by others have received a great deal of coverage from major media outlets in the recent past.
In October 2016, former Republican congressman Joe Walsh tweeted he would be "grabbing [his] musket," if Clinton won the presidential election. News outlets gave the comment widespread attention. NBC News wrote a story on the comments. MSNBC asked Walsh about the comments live on air. CNN ran pieces on air and online. The Washington Post did multiple articles on Walsh's comments including one satirical piece entirely dedicated to Walsh's tweet.
More recently, reporter Eddie Scary posted a tweet last week with a photograph of Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) from behind and commented on her appearance, saying "that jacket and coat don't look like a girl who struggles."
The resulting controversy and backlash received widespread coverage across major print and television outlets. "Twitter lights up after journalist comments on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's outfit," an ABC News headline read. A New York Times piece recounted how Ocasio-Cortez was reinventing social media use. The Washington Post featured a headline describing how "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore clothing, a journalist tweeted a photo, and the Internet pounced."
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 26, 2018, 09:29:05 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issue
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2018, 02:59:12 AM
Rest in peace George Bush, a good and decent man, but mark me down as unimpressed by the accolades of journalists who most certainly never voted for him.
In all that he accomplished, George Bush won 37% of the vote in re election. One reason he lost was a recession that was 9 months over by the end of his term, fully unreported by the biased, activist opposition media.
The best Republican to the media is a soft and kind one that is easiest to defeat.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2018, 03:04:15 AM
He lost because of Ross Perot. Worth noting is that because of Perot, in both '92 and '96, Bill Clinton received a smaller % of the vote than did Donald Trump in 2016.
I think I have this right.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2018, 03:47:34 AM
He lost because of Ross Perot. Worth noting is that because of Perot, in both '92 and '96, Bill Clinton received a smaller % of the vote than did Donald Trump in 2016.
I think I have this right.
Ross Perot provided Clinton his margin of victory but George Bush lost because 63 percent of those who voted (and 100% of those who didn't vote) were uninspired to vote for him in reelection.
Those in the media especially he pleased by breaking his pledge were happy to stab him in the back after they broke him with unrelenting pressure on policy.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 05, 2018, 07:03:52 AM
" The best Republican to the media is a soft and kind one that is easiest to defeat. "
Exactly He was kind and nice and conciliatory . And that is why Republicans are facing extinction amidst the progressive onslaught. Same is true of his son W who is kind and decent, but then we got worse then Clinton .
If only Trump had some of the Bush traits...
or if the Bushes had some of his......
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on December 05, 2018, 07:05:35 AM
" The best Republican to the media is a soft and kind one that is easiest to defeat. "
Exactly He was kind and nice and conciliatory . And that is why Republicans are facing extinction amidst the progressive onslaught. Same is true of his son W who is kind and decent, but then we got worse then Clinton .
If only Trump had some of the Bush traits...
or if the Bushes had some of his......
It's just nice to know that once a squishy republican dies, he's no longer Hitler.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Fake News: Bush Grocery Store Scanner Story
Post by: DougMacG on December 07, 2018, 09:38:25 AM
They treat you so nicely if you are a kinder, gentler Republican? Not so much.
This story was fake from the beginning. https://www.apnews.com/61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b839 "One last time, for the record: It was not an ordinary supermarket scanner."
False from the beginning. NY Times ran with it, never retracted. The New York Times ran a front page account under the headline, “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed.”
NY Times WAS NOT THERE.
It was Feb 1992. Get him out. Where was his twitter feed? He couldn't or didn't fight back.
Just like CNN and Trump 2018, the mission is to bring him down, not report the news.
America wants a President who isn't so brash and self promoting, self defending? Wrong. H.W. Bush won 37% that year. 'W' let the world impugn him over lack of WMD when he had evidence of same that he never brought forward. Never fully defended his tax. Until hen lost Congress and they reversed course.
When America saw an accomplished and soft spoken Jeb Bush on the debate stage it reminded us of polite people not recognizing the media as the ruthless enemy it is out to eat them alive.
Title: no politically driven self interest here
Post by: ccp on December 11, 2018, 11:43:47 AM
If bama was still Pres it might or might not be him on the cover, but it would not be journalist.
all about Trump in the end - 24/7.
Title: Bill Kristol agan
Post by: ccp on December 12, 2018, 07:50:45 AM
and again and again.
After his latest venture is going bankrupt he , like all those like him find some way to keep making cash with their big mouths. He helped get us into the second Iraq war but he , like the rest of them , never go away .
He has his newest endeavor working on LEft wing media against his own party :
(like it or not Kristol - Trump is the party now! The stakes are higher then your head is )
Title: Re: Bill Kristol agan
Post by: DougMacG on December 12, 2018, 08:26:13 AM
The fight for the future of the party and the right to challenge the incumbent in the primaries is fair game. Articles like that David French piece yesterday distort the truth play perfectly into Leftist hands. When the never-Trump 'conservatives' cross over to supporting Democrats or just helping them win, they become former conservatives. Sorry to have lost them. Trump made two good Supreme Court picks, many more good appellate court picks, imperfect and incomplete tax rate reform, stood up to N.K. and China, broke down some trade barriers, repealed the administrative state of his predecessor and plans to build a wall. There is plenty more to do but it won't happen by knocking down and breaking up what is left of the coalition.
Title: Ater Trump what is Bill Kristol to do?
Post by: ccp on December 15, 2018, 08:47:12 AM
Not only did Relotius’ “exposé” on Fergus Falls make unrecognizable movie-like characters out of the people in my town that I interact with on a daily basis, but its very basic lack of truth and its bizarrely bleak portrayal of the place I love left a very sick, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach.
In 7,300 words he really only got our town’s population and average annual temperature correct, and a few other basic things, like the names of businesses and public figures, things that a child could figure out in a Google search. The rest is uninhibited fiction ------------------------
Title: Re: Media, Saudi Khashoggi, Qatari agent at the Wash Post
Post by: DougMacG on December 27, 2018, 08:13:12 AM
Copying this from Saudi thread, thanks for following up on this G M. What does this say about our media - that he was a 'journalust', a hero? He was a foreign operative and they were happy to broadcast his message without regard to its origin or purpose.
Saudi Khashoggi, Qatari agent at the Wash Post on: December 26, 2018, 06:02:47 PM by G M Quote from: DougMacG on December 25, 2018, 07:59:52 AM https://securitystudies.org/jamal-khashoggi-and-qatar-in-the-echo-chamber/
His columns and paychecks came right out of enemy propoganda. ------ http://ace.mu.nu/archives/378858.php
December 26, 2018 Washington Post More or Less Confirms That Jamal Khashoggi Was a Paid Qatari Intelligence/Propaganda Asset I can see how American "journalists" would regard this as the normal state of affairs and not really that different from a plain ol' "journalist."
Many journalists in the US are paid by Fusion GPS to plant Fusion stories, which in turn were funded by interested parties including foreign governments.
Quotes from the Washington Post below, with commentary added by streiff from RedState.
Perhaps most problematic for Khashoggi were his connections to an organization funded by Saudi Arabia’s regional nemesis, Qatar. Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government. Khashoggi also appears to have relied on a researcher and translator affiliated with the organization, which promotes Arabic-language education in the United States. ...
Khashoggi was never a staff employee of the Post, and he was paid about $500 per piece for the 20 columns he wrote over the course of the year. He lived in an apartment near Tysons Corner in Fairfax County that he had purchased while working at the Saudi Embassy a decade earlier. [Note: how did he live in the DC Metro area for about $10K/year?]
Khashoggi also appears to have accepted significant help with his columns. Salem, the executive at the Qatar foundation, reviewed his work in advance and in some instances appears to have proposed language, according to a voluminous collection of messages obtained by The Post. [Journalists accepting "significant help" from government operatives in writing stories is a fact of how journalism is conducted in the Middle East, the Post eliding over this speaks volumes.]
In early August, Salem prodded Khashoggi to write about Saudi Arabia's alliances "from DC to Jerusalem to rising right wing parties across Europe...bringing an end to the liberal world order that challenges their abuses at home."
Khashoggi expressed misgivings about such a strident tone, then asked, "So do you have time to write it?"
So in other words, Khashoggi was largely just a frontman for anti-Saudi propaganda written by an operative of the Saudi's chief Arab rival, Qatar.
"I'll try," she replied, although she went on to urge him to "try a draft" himself incorporating sentences that she had sent him by text. A column reflecting their discussion appeared in The Post on Aug. 7. Khashoggi appears to have used some of Salem's suggestions, though it largely tracks ideas that he expressed in their exchange over the encrypted app WhatsApp.
Other texts in the 200-page trove indicate that Salem’s organization paid a researcher who did work for Khashoggi. The foundation is an offshoot of a larger Qatar-based organization. Khashoggi also relied on a translator who worked at times for the Qatari embassy and the foundation.
...
On Oct. 3, one day after Khashoggi's death, while his fate remained uncertain, his researcher contacted The Post to say that he had a draft of a column that Khashoggi had begun writing before his disappearance. It was published two weeks later. [The likelihood that Khashoggi's last column was ghostwritten to take advantage of his disappearance by making him appear to be an Arabian Thomas Jefferson approaches certainty.]
streiff quotes Dave Reaboi of the Strategic Studies Group noting that it doesn't make sense for the Washington Post to reveal that the man they've been painting as a patriotic martyr for two months was in fact a shabby operative working for a government hostile to his native country except if the Washington Post knew that there were rumors about these texts and possible payments to Khashoggi and they sought to get ahead of a story they knew could no longer be suppressed
Title: Media, for the record, Weekly Standard put full praise on Trump-conomics
Post by: DougMacG on December 29, 2018, 07:38:20 PM
Great contrast of Trump versus Obama on economic policies and results by Fred Barnes, executive editor of Weekly Standard, October 19th 2018, just before the midterms. Not exactly never Trump. https://www.weeklystandard.com/fred-barnes/what-trump-knows-that-obama-didnt
Title: Ministry of Truth, worst media bias in my lifetime
Post by: DougMacG on January 02, 2019, 10:52:14 AM
Meet the Press, December 30, 20018. Time permitting. I would like to answer this point-by-point.
"In 2015, Angela Merkel, the Federal Republic of Germany’s first chancellor from what was East Germany, chose to welcome into Germany about 1 million people, many of them Syrians, fleeing Middle Eastern carnage. (As a percentage of Germany’s population, this was equivalent to America receiving 4 million.) "
I don't know what he is talking about . He is confused:
Title: Re: Angry George Will; again
Post by: DougMacG on January 06, 2019, 08:18:12 AM
He used to be sharp and insightful - most of the time, an independent conservative, not part of a movement.
The main gist is right, the reunification of Germany (with Germany) was amazing. I can't believe they even attempted it and they succeeded. Then his points on Brexit drift from his German topic. The European Union of which she is the face had Britain when she entered office and is losing them as she leaves. A direct failure of Merkel's - unless you think she didn't had major influence over all that went wrong with a centralized Europe.
George Will skips over the newer immigration crisis, the rapes, the pillaging, immigrant unemployment and non assimilation. How is Germany better off now with the new immigration crisis than before it? Will doesn't say because he can't. He offers no recognition of the difference of assimilating people from a totally different culture who do not want assimilation with those who do.
Merkel served longer than FDR. Impressive. Is that a good thing? She has been nearly ousted many times. She has been a mediocre ally to the US. Is that a small point worth skipping?
Germans like Obama better than Trump. That fits his column thesis how? Obama apologized for America, let them get American defense for free, have car tariffs ten times higher than ours. What is the good part of that? Facts like that led to Trump. Trump calls them out and makes them uncomfortable. They don't know exactly what he will do about it, is that bad? Not to me.
Judge where Merkel is now by what Germans think now and in what condition she leaves the country. Her own open borders scandal led to a rise of the German nationalists and a fall of her own party: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/03/merkel-support-falls-all-time-low-ruling-bloc-damaged-migrant/
Breaking up Europe and diminishing her own party, is that good for Germany, for Europe, from her perspective?
A younger, sharper George Will might have titled his obligatory Merkel column, 'Unforced Errors', and approached her bungled success from a different angle.
Title: amazing how cable nonsense network wastes their money
Post by: ccp on January 07, 2019, 08:11:39 AM
These two could not and did not get this done when they were in office.
Don't count Mia Love out but I see your point here. Trump received 39% of the vote in Love's former district, 61% picked other. She didn't embrace him and might be inclined to underestimate him.
Mia Love: "You have a president that says if you don’t give me a wall, I will own the shutdown. I thought the Democrats were like, ‘Great, take it. Deal done,’ because it was just, we don’t have to give you a wall, and you’re going to own a shutdown."
We watched that happen in the Oval Office but it doesn't make sense. The 'deal' the Democrats thought so great is to shut down the government to make Trump look bad. Fits their number one priority, screw the country, make Trump look bad. But who set the trap and who walked into it?
The border barrier was the signature issue in Trump's election and Love et al did NOT get it done while in power. Since the initial stalemate, Trump looks flexible and Democrats admittedly refuse to negotiate. Trump stayed at the White House, Pelosi went to the beach. The shutdown ownership flipped. Trump will get enough border barrier in the end to declare victory and voters can ask, why didn't Democrats agree sooner to what they agree to later and and spare us the drama.
Gutierrez is a waste of time, a good fit for the network:
"What I want to do is to go from this cruelty to a little bit of humanity versus our immigrant community.”
Cruelty? I thought we were talking about a border barrier. Cruel is to send your children across a continent with rapists and traffickers without parents, food or water. Effective, successful, border security will end that.
Title: Re: Ministry of Truth, worst media bias in my lifetime
Post by: DougMacG on January 07, 2019, 09:49:53 AM
On Sunday morning, December 30, ‘Meet the Press’ had a gala service preaching the climate-change religion. Famous climate preachers like Michael Bloomberg and Jerry Brown were featured speakers. they missed some opportunities and some old themes were nowhere to be found. They neglected to link the supposed, increasing pollution of the oceans with plastic to climate change. They forgot to mention the polar bear tragedy, and for some reason we don’t hear any more about malaria spreading to the temperate zones.
According to “Meet the Press,” “the science of climate doom is absolutely and completely settled science.” For that reason they determined that no time would be given to “climate deniers.” But seemingly they broke their own rule when a clip by the Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, was played. The foremost climate skeptic in the U.S. Senate, James Inhofe, was also given air time.
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and one of the world’s richest men, was given extensive air time. There was even a plug for his book: Climate of Hope. The book, written with the former president of the Sierra Club, is hilariously ignorant. Bloomberg is considering running for president as a Democrat. Formerly, he was a Republican. His embrace of global warming alarmism may be a bid for votes in the Democratic primaries where the voters are typically believers in loony climate change theories.
The one scientist on the show, Kate Marvel, has evidently given up science for a career promoting climate alarmism. She is contradicting herself by going along with climate alarmist fantasies -- in earlier public talks she was highly critical of the climate computer models that are the only basis for climate extremism.
The big theme of the “Meet the Press” presentation was that climate change is here and it is very bad. This completely mistaken claim was supported by various anecdotes from people that experienced floods, fires, or hurricanes. Floods are not new. For example, it is instructive to read the Wikipedia entry “Floods in California”. The great flood of 1861-1862 was far worse than anything since. Compared to the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, the 2012 superstorm Sandy was minor. The Great Prestigo fire in 1871, in Wisconsin, killed 1500 people. In comparison, the recent Camp Fire in California killed 89 people and burned less land. A major factor in forest fires is the suppression of fires, allowing fuel to build to the point where the fire becomes so violent that it can’t be easily suppressed.
Floods, droughts, heat waves, and tornados have been around forever and they aren’t getting any worse. But people’s memories fade with time, so the most recent weather outrage always seem to be worse than past outrages. So, it is clever to claim that carbon dioxide is causing extreme weather. It seems plausible because yesteryear’s bad weather has faded in our memories, or perhaps we only know about previous extreme weather because our parents or grandparents told us about it. Climate scientist John Christy provided written testimony to the House Energy and Power Subcommittee that demolishes the extreme weather thesis.
Craig Fugate, Obama’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator, was a member of the “Meet the Press” panel of experts. His educational background is paramedic school in Florida. He suggested that if only we had a carbon tax, $100 billion of disasters last year could have been avoided. A fallacy, since most carbon emissions come from Asia and having a carbon tax would not affect Asian emissions at all. Serious carbon dioxide emission reduction would be a long process that would require substituting nuclear electricity generation for fossil fuel electricity. But the environmental groups that are promoting fear of carbon dioxide are also afraid of nuclear energy. Wind and solar are not a solution that is effective for reducing carbon dioxide emissions because they are not remotely cost-effective for that purpose and they are always accompanied by backup fossil fuel plants emitting carbon dioxide. That point is explained in detail in my book Dumb Energy.
Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have been declining mainly because natural gas has been substituted for coal. Cheap natural gas is the result of fracking, bitterly opposed by the environmental left. The bigger fallacy is the claim that weather disasters are the result of carbon emissions. The scientific evidence for that popular idea is extremely weak science.
The mayor of Georgetown, Texas, a small city near Austin, touted his city’s conversion to 100% renewable energy. The city agreed to long-term contracts with a wind farm and a solar farm to take a portion of the electricity generated. The amount of electricity contracted for is considerably greater than the amount of electricity needed. The city sells the excess electricity into the market. That has turned out to be a losing proposition. To be clear, the city is not actually using the electricity from the wind and solar plants located hundreds of miles away. The electricity generated by the plants is fed into the Texas grid and distributed throughout the state. The claim of being 100% renewable is a bookkeeping claim based on buying more renewable electricity than is actually used. Obviously, the solar farm is not generating electricity at night or on cloudy days. The wind farm generates electricity to the extent wind happens to be blowing.
The staff of “Meet the Press” is either incredibly ignorant or pursuing an agenda of left-wing propaganda, or probably both. No quarter was given to “climate deniers”, a deliberate slur that equates anyone who questions climate alarmism with Holocaust deniers. The truth is that there are many serious and distinguished scientists that express skepticism concerning predictions of climate doom from carbon dioxide. The alarmist predictions by the computer climate models have failed repeatedly.
Global warming is a scheme for getting money and attention. It is fiercely defended because if the fraud was exposed, a lot of people would lose their jobs and be discredited. There is a kernel of truth in the idea that greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide may exercise a warming influence. That truth has been used as a springboard to making doomsday predictions that are almost certainly wrong. The fact that increased CO2 in the atmosphere has major positive effects on agriculture is not mentioned by the proselytizers for global warming doom. -------------------
"The staff of “Meet the Press” is either incredibly ignorant or pursuing an agenda of left-wing propaganda, or probably both."
For what it's worth, he has this backwards. The media-academia complex personified in this case by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press IS the core of the Left Wing and the Democrats are the willing accomplices.
Title: Insulting one's customers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2019, 03:13:07 PM
These women and girls are drawn by our open borders and sanctuary city / state laws. Whether this is 33% or 80%, how is that justifiably to a Liberal?
How do you 'fact check' that which is unreported and unprosecuted?
Leftists want illegals here for future and permanent voting advantage - but cannot say that aloud. With California all-but-Crafty liberal and the electoral college not going away ever, what more do they have to gain?
Title: Professional Journalism !
Post by: G M on January 10, 2019, 09:05:19 PM
They only care about the truth! We should trust our betters in the media!
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/379132.php
January 10, 2019 Local Seattle News Director Placed on Leave After Allegations He Deliberately Distorted the Video of Trump's Speech to Make Him Look Crazy Enemy of the People.
Shall we keep pretending otherwise?
In a statement, Q13 seemed to confirm that their video editor had intentionally altered the footage to make the president look crazy. "We are investigating this to determine what happened," said Q13's news director. "This does not meet our editorial standards and we regret if it is seen as portraying the President in a negative light. The editor responsible for editing the footage is being placed on leave while we investigate further.”
The video -- shown below side-by-side with the real video -- seems to leave little doubt that this was a deliberate manipulation of video to make Trump look insane. Watch the business with the tongue.
Title: MInistry of Truth
Post by: ccp on January 14, 2019, 06:28:44 AM
egotistical selfish slimes like them just never go away . they have to stick around just to torture us.
Title: Re: Media, top 50 conservative websites
Post by: DougMacG on January 18, 2019, 06:55:04 AM
Ranked I think by traffic. We should rank them by quality and delete the bad ones. https://pjmedia.com/trending/top-conservative-websites-for-2018/?fbclid=IwAR1oVhiSo_7mvglb2LKV-yK91FOPuZBymYJptqb8Z7A5TTU86KfMR4HZS5s 1-50:
Drudge Report Breitbart News The Daily Caller ZeroHedge The Western Journal The Daily Wire The Gateway Pundit Infowars Washington Examiner The Blaze Townhall WND National Review Newsmax PJ Media/Instapundit Twitchy American Thinker Hot Air Free Republic The Federalist Reason The Conservative Tree House BizPac Review Rush Limbaugh RedState Judicial Watch The Babylon Bee NewsBusters Power Line The Washington Free Beacon The Heritage Foundation Lucianne The Daily Signal The Weekly Standard CNSNews.com LifeSiteNews.com Weasel Zippers The American Conservative Louder with Crowder The Right Scoop The Federalist Papers Independent Journal Review (IJR) LifeZette FrontPage Mag Legal Insurrection American Greatness Spectator (USA) The Liberty Daily Campus Reform Bearing Arms
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 18, 2019, 08:11:17 AM
amazing how the media controls the debate on the shutdown
Trump this Trump that he does "not negotiate", " he started this " blah blah blah
IN fact he has tried to negotiate but the Dems ignore him to damage him. Despite fact being no reason for negotiations to start with - how about simply enforcing the immigration laws of the people for the people and by the people of the US?
what are we negotiating ? enforce the freakin laws!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues- Buzzfeed
Post by: DougMacG on January 19, 2019, 06:33:30 AM
ccp called it fake news right out of the gate. Mark Levin called out Mueller and said the "If true", then your staff committed a felony.
Note to fake news outlets, if you ran a story that's called "If true..." as your lead story, then you are fake news. If you ran it at all you are fake news. If people who don't watch your network are more informed than people who do, you are fake news. If you included with it more than 200 utterances of "impeachment" from your so-called "experts" and analysts, cf. CNN, MSNBC, you should be banned from the public airways or pay a fine commensurate with the public alarm damage you have done.
How did we know this was fake before Mueller called it out? Because all of the related stories have turned to be fake, from outlets of higher repute than Buzzfeed, like NYT, the New Yorker and CNN.
BUZZFEED IS NOT THE PROBLEM HERE. They are part of the repeat-what-you-heard, others-are-saying-it, syndrome they must teach in fake-journalism school. One has the nerve to run with bunk, I guess it was Buzzfeed's turn, and the others report that the story has been run and what the if-true consequences are until the public is in an irreversible frenzy. Real news, FYI, is when you verify first and then run it. Weird.
This is worse than nonsense. It is weaponized, militarized, narrativized disinformation intended to mobilize millions of people in a cause that undermines our republic. It is intentional and it is treasonous, as I see it.
Brett Kavanaugh isn't a rapist. Donald Trump isn't a Russian agent. The world doesn't have a fever. Socialism isn't 'fair' and doesn't make people 'equal'.
Dan Rather, no, there is no such thing as false but true. If your documents are false, your story based on the documents is false. The perpetrators then and now committed punishable fraud.
Freedom of the press is not a freedom to commit fraud of the highest consequence, to falsely proclaim fire in a crowded theater, or to commit treason.
On a more positive note, maybe Mueller is now motivated to wrap up and release his career-ending masterpiece.
Title: The Boomer mag loves AOC
Post by: ccp on January 20, 2019, 02:47:45 PM
AOC is the new deal maker . Sharpton Jackson they are all going to pay homage and hook up. Like other narcissistic commies AOC goes to Hollywood to hobnob with the celebrities .
She certainly hits a cord with the entitlement / free stuff / crowd:
He enlisted in Marine Corps reserves. Was a mechanic or an electrician - not a recon ranger. Went AWOL a few times at El Toro. Discharged as a private. Yes, most of this occurred during "Vietnam times."
Title: more on Nat Phillips
Post by: ccp on January 23, 2019, 05:47:28 AM
Wait I thought the Left despised the military in the Vietnam era? I remember back them totally chagrined and confused as to why so many chaffed those who served their / our country
Now suddenly the Left honors them?
Well I guess they do if the vets are angry leftists .
and what the heck does wounded knee have anything to do with the pro-life gathering at the Lincoln Memorial? (does he really have relatives who were their? or is this another Liz Warren moment?)
and notice there is NOT one Leftist smidgen about the "Black Israelites", at least some of whom, are racist shits .
Why do they call them Black Israelites anyway ? Are they freakin Jews or not.
I don't go around calling myself "white israelite".
Title: she is just so nice
Post by: ccp on January 24, 2019, 06:26:31 AM
In a positive way, yes. Whether it was her initiative or a P.R. person, for the cost of a pizza she puts herself in the news in a nice and selfless way. If only her show was that nice!
I didn't know Rachel was close with the Fox team. Reminds me of when the alligator doesn't eat the lawyer, they call it a professional courtesy.
Title: Re: she is just so nice
Post by: G M on January 24, 2019, 02:28:44 PM
In a positive way, yes. Whether it was her initiative or a P.R. person, for the cost of a pizza she puts herself in the news in a nice and selfless way. If only her show was that nice!
I didn't know Rachel was close with the Fox team. Reminds me of when the alligator doesn't eat the lawyer, they call it a professional courtesy.
All of our news is pretty much just pro-wrestling/reality tv.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2019, 02:12:02 PM
I happened to be watching either MSNBC or CNN while in the hotel room and thought the best wishes delivered with grace, respect, and without snark.
I also caught Brett's first show after the accident in which he briefly discussed the accident at the end. His tears of gratitude were few, real, and manly.
Title: Not impressed with the heartwarming expressions of concern
Post by: ccp on January 25, 2019, 02:34:48 PM
"I happened to be watching either MSNBC or CNN while in the hotel room and thought the best wishes delivered with grace, respect, and without snark."
So send the rescuers $40 of pizza with a quick online order from Dominos?
Right, Maddow spends all her time bashing half the country into leftist submission but is sooooo nice.
reminds me of stories of soldiers killing one another only to take a break on Christmas to share a smoke of sing merry christmas to one another and they go back to killing one another . But for the one day they were both so nice..........
Title: Britain's Telegraph apologizes to Melania
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2019, 09:09:12 AM
"...the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published. Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family. Mrs Trump did not leave her Design and Architecture course at University relating to the completion of an exam, as alleged in the article, but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model. Mrs Trump was not struggling in her modelling career before she met Mr Trump, and she did not advance in her career due to the assistance of Mr Trump.
We accept that Mrs Trump was a successful professional model in her own right before she met her husband and obtained her own modelling work without his assistance. Mrs Trump met Mr Trump in 1998, not in 1996 as stated in the article. The article also wrongly claimed that Mrs Trump’s mother, father and sister relocated to New York in 2005 to live in buildings owned by Mr Trump. They did not. The claim that Mrs Trump cried on election night is also false. ..."
- I count 13 major factual errors there. Other than that was the story true?
Title: Why is the media hiding this?
Post by: G M on January 28, 2019, 01:31:29 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/379458.php
January 28, 2019 Neo-Neocon: Nathan Phillips Proveably Lied About the Covington Kids, and Maliciously. Why Is The Media Completely Ignoring This? To be honest, I think she knows why.
But it's a question worth asking rhetorically.
She notes that the media has, of course, been very reluctant to correct their slanderous lies at all, and where they have backtracked, it has been equivocal and at the margins.
What about the proveable lies "Vietnam Vet Recon Ranger" Nathan Philips told about the boys to get this hate-pile started?
Is this a banana, or is this an apple? Are they even pretending to care about the truth any longer?
That is also rhetorical, of course.
It was Phillips himself who quite early on, during his Saturday interview with CNN that set the original tone and was widely disseminated, gave the following description of the Covington boys:
It looked like these young men were going to attack [the Black Israelites]. They were going to hurt them. They were going to hurt them because they didn't like the color of their skin. They didn't like their religious views. They were just here in front of the Lincoln -- Lincoln is not my hero, but at the same time, there was this understanding that he brought the (Emancipation Proclamation) or freed the slaves, and here are American youth who are ready to, look like, lynch these guys. To be honest, they looked like they were going to lynch them. They were in this mob mentality.
That is not some disagreement about who went up to whom, or whether the wall was mentioned by the boys, or what caps some of them wore. This is an extremely defamatory statement by a political agitator, designed to shape perceptions that the boys were vicious racists with a killer instinct. The language is purposefully inflammatory and of the harshest variety.
It is a lie, and unless Phillips is clinically insane and out of touch with reality (something I don’t believe is the case), it is a knowing and purposeful lie about a bunch of teenagers who were minding their own business. It is a lie so egregious, so foul, that I really lack words to describe the depth and depravity of that lie.
And as far as I can see, just about everyone is ignoring it now.
Including people on the right, she points out. As for my own reason for not stressing this: Well, I didn't see anyone collect up his lies into such a persuasive post before!
BTW, she has more of his flagrant deliberate smears, but I'm not going to steal the whole post.
She also mentions that he can be sued, except for the fact he looks like a smelly homeless bum with no money. But ah, she notes, there is every possibility that this was a put-up Information Operation from jump street, and some discovery might reveal who the people behind this op were.
I'm going to be linking him too much today -- it just works out that way -- but Tim Pool has video of Nathan Phillips' vicious, deliberate lies. Including one that Neo-Neocon doesn't mention, with Phillips claiming that Sandmann "slid to the right, slid to the left" to remain in front of him, blocking his movement. The video, of course, shows that this is a complete lie.
That video gets into the many Blue-Checks calling for violence against the Covington Kids, a point I'll get into more later.
Title: Sen. Cotton: Stalin like cover up of Green Deal
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2019, 08:26:06 AM
on the Left and their co conspirators in the media covering for the Dem prez candidates:
The professional leftist propagandists worried about Fox news?
Title: Ramos thanks Hannity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2019, 05:22:39 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyrcD7dMxCA
Title: Media on Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar's rage
Post by: DougMacG on March 05, 2019, 05:03:00 AM
The worst kept secret in Washington and Minnesota. Funny they didn't cover it when she ran for Senate, the first time, or the second time. I knew but not through anything I read in mainstream media. Now she's running against Democrats and it's all over the media. The story is that everyone has known all along, like Harvey Weinstein. If everyone knew and it's true and they have dozens of sources, why didn't they report it? The not so subtle conspiracy of American Leftist media is worse than the known slant of state run media in totalitarian regimes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/telling-reactions-tales-amy-klobuchars-rage/584104/ -------- Likewise for Minneapolis congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her anti-semitism and her immigration fraud marriage to her brother. No one but power line covered it when she was running for congress. Now she threatens to make Democrats look bad and it's all over the news.
Title: FOX kitties out
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2019, 02:32:41 PM
I dislike Judge Janine, but in point of fact she raises a fair question here. Too bad FOX kittied out.
https://www.spartareport.com/2019/03/michael-avenatt-stormy-daniels-split/ or have they ? i admit I don't watch them much.
I don't watch them either but believe the story is in the msm. Any bets on which one (Stormy) writes the book on their relationship?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 13, 2019, 05:20:52 AM
"Any bets on which one (Stormy) writes the book on their relationship? "
any bets she describes his uhem........in that book so 2 people will buy it?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2019, 09:46:00 AM
I see that WaPo is going after Tucker today for innuendo from 10+ years ago. Does anyone have access to the article? If so, would you post it here please?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on March 13, 2019, 10:30:20 AM
I see that WaPo is going after Tucker today for innuendo from 10+ years ago. Does anyone have access to the article? If so, would you post it here please?
Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi explains why Fox News sometimes embraces controversies caused by inflammatory comments from its hosts. (Patrick Martin/The Washington Post) Fox News is the most-watched cable network in the United States. Breitbart News is the 134th most-popular news site on the Internet, and has become notorious as a platform for the alt-right. Yet Breitbart seems to have higher standards than Fox News.
After the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos defended pedophilia (specifically, sexual relationships between adult men and 13-year-old boys whose organs are “mature”), he was forced to resign as a Breitbart editor. Tucker Carlson, by contrast, has not even been publicly reprimanded by his superiors at Fox News after the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America unearthed his vocal support for a child rapist — among many other sick statements he made between 2006 and 2011 during conversations with a radio shock jock who calls himself “Bubba the Love Sponge.”
Carlson defended Warren Jeffs, a polygamist cult leader who is now serving a life sentence for child rape. Carlson called the criminal charges "bulls--t" and said that “arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old is not the same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her.” (The case he was referring to actually involved a 14-year-old girl married by Jeffs to a 19-year-old cousin over her objections.) Carlson explained: “The rapist, in this case, has made a lifelong commitment to live and take care of the person, so it is a little different.” That prompted the co-host to call Carlson “twisted” and “demented.” If you’re not up to the moral standards of Bubba the Love Sponge . . . !
During other interviews on the same show, Carlson used the c-word to refer to the daughter of Martha Stewart, called Arianna Huffington a “pig,” and said women are “extremely primitive” beings who “just need to be quiet and kind of do what you’re told.” Apparently the “c-word” is a common part of Carlson’s vocabulary; former Salon editor in chief Joan Walsh writes that he once used it when speaking about her to a Salon intern.
Caught on tape saying reprehensible things, Carlson was typically and totally unapologetic. “Media Matters caught me saying something naughty on a radio show more than a decade ago,” he said, as if he had been belching in public. Then, like so many other right-wingers (including, of course, President Trump), Carlson refused to accept any responsibility or apologize for his conduct. Instead he portrayed himself as the victim — precisely what the right so often accuses the left of doing. Carlson complained that he was being chased by a liberal “mob” and cast himself as a First Amendment hero. It seems he and his Fox News colleagues uphold the right to express “independent thoughts,” defying the left’s demands for “total conformity.”
Even as Carlson was delivering this defiant statement on Monday’s "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Media Matters for America was releasing more examples of Carlson’s so-called independent thought: “Carlson called Iraqis ‘semiliterate primitive monkeys’ and said Afghanistan is ‘never going to be a civilized country because the people aren’t civilized.’ He also said he had ‘zero sympathy’ for Iraqis because they ‘don’t use toilet paper or forks’ and that the war could turn around ‘if, somehow, the Iraqis decided to behave like human beings’.”
Oh, and Carlson also disparaged President Barack Obama in a racist fashion (“Everybody knows that Barack Obama would still be in the state Senate in Illinois if he were white”); said that “everyone’s embarrassed to be a white man” even though “white men” deserve credit for “creating civilization and stuff”; and called efforts to increase diversity in radio programming “worse than Jim Crow.” Sigh, there’s plenty of homophobia, too.
Is there any odious “-ism” that Carlson is not guilty of? Even by Fox News’s low, low standards, this is appalling stuff.
Carlson’s racist, misogynistic and Islamophobic rants were revealed shortly after his fellow Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, delivered an anti-Muslim commentary on her show, claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is acting “antithetical to the United States Constitution” because she wears a hijab. Fox News rebuked Pirro for this bigoted statement. It remains to be seen whether Fox News will even give Carlson a slap on the wrist. He is, after all, the host of a highly rated nightly show, not a weekly show like Pirro’s, and thus is much more financially valuable. Fox News, Carlson says, is “behind us.”
Carlson’s defenders point out that his conversations with Bubba the Love Sponge occurred years ago and not on Fox News. But he defended statutory rape — female teachers having sex with underage boys — as recently as a 2015 podcast. And on his Fox News show, Carlson regularly rages against immigration and diversity. In December, he said that immigration “makes our own country poorer and dirtier.” White supremacists have become avid fans of Carlson; the white supremacist website Daily Stormer called him “literally our greatest ally.”
It is difficult to believe that any television network would give Carlson a forum to spew his bile or that any reputable company would underwrite it. Megyn Kelly was fired from NBC for only one offense — defending blackface Halloween costumes — and, unlike Carlson, she apologized. It is high time for both advertisers and network bosses, from Rupert Murdoch on down, to search their souls about their complicity in injecting this poison into the body politic. Carlson has a right to say whatever he wants — but he doesn’t have a right to say it on the most-watched cable channel in the country. He needs to go. Now.
Max Boot, a Post columnist, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a global affairs analyst for CNN. He is the author of “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right."
Title: Zucker (another messed up in the head Zuck)
Post by: ccp on March 13, 2019, 11:29:25 AM
"Max Boot, a Post columnist, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a global affairs analyst for CNN. He is the author of “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right."
Good riddance. If you hadn't left on your own you would have booted out you moron.
As Mark Levin pointed out, CNN Zucker's would just love to rid network of his competition.
Another media mogul who thinks he is God with his network plaything. All the employees trying to keep their boss happy with nothing but anti- Trump stories and spin as per the big shot mouth at the top.
Title: And now, another example of the double standard
Post by: G M on March 13, 2019, 02:32:53 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/380200.php
Eat a d*ck, Max Boot, you too, Media Matters.
Title: EU Media Literacy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2019, 07:51:40 AM
Title: It's like there is a common thread here...
Post by: G M on March 24, 2019, 02:03:22 PM
Sean Davis Verified account
@seanmdav Follow Follow @seanmdav More Hands up, don't shoot. Trump's a Russian spy. Kavanaugh ran a secret gang rape cartel. Covington kids assaulted a vet.
Never forget that these lies--and yes, they were outright lies--were deliberately peddled by all the same people for all the same reasons.
Title: Britt Hume goes trolling , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2019, 11:37:42 PM
“God forbid that I start telling some of the stories for how I’ve covered for that lame-ass organization,” Geragos told Carolla, before branding his former employer “the Know-Nothing Network.”
Hey Tucker or Laura please get this guy onto your shows to allow to please do tell these stories . :-D 8-) :-) :evil:
as an aside it is amazing CNN doesn't fire zucker . he has destroyed the network's already weak reputation.
Title: BBC pays up for false accusation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2019, 02:49:40 PM
Title: Why the hell is Zucker not fired?
Post by: ccp on April 03, 2019, 09:37:05 AM
but zucker who should get his butt canned is now floating idea to run for NYC mayor.
what a joke.
But NYC and NY State politics are a democrat nightmare. Joke is on the hard working people of NY - the ones who get stuck paying all the bills.
Title: BDS of right of center companies
Post by: ccp on April 04, 2019, 05:16:59 PM
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tucker-carlsons-show-bleeding-advertising-184531119.html despite sky high ratings some advertisers are stupid enough to not advertising on a hit show due to the scare tactics from the LEFT
advertisers loss .
I have an idea for these advertisers
why don't you advertise on programs that have no viewers like CNN or MSLSD?
that makes a lot of sense.
Title: PP: Metastising media mendacity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 04, 2019, 06:23:31 PM
Title: Late Charles Krauthammer on US media
Post by: DougMacG on April 07, 2019, 08:33:08 AM
Charles Krauthammer: "Rupert Murdoch identified a small but under-served niche market in America — half the country." https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/326842/
This small niche still being under-served.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 07, 2019, 10:09:05 AM
The messaging situation is terrible. This is proof of that. 80% got a tax cut. 17% think they did. That's a pretty big discrepancy, understatement! That along with a similar messaging problem on healthcare cost Republicans the House.
Trump is a one man messaging machine with his own flaws, and without him there is no messaging on the right or the center.
Title: Media, Last Year's Pulitzer, give it back!
Post by: DougMacG on April 11, 2019, 02:46:42 PM
With Yassir Arafat, Barack Obama and Paul Krugman winning Nobel Peace Prizes, we shouldn't be surprised that the documentarians of the Russian hoax, NY Times and Washington Post, won the Pulitzer Prize [for conspiratorial fiction?] last year.
Do these once prestigious awards care about brand name degradation?
The prize went jointly to the two publications for 10 articles apiece reporting on Trump-Russia developments throughout most of 2017, the chaotic first year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
All were fake news.
Title: Media are willing accomplices? No, the politicians are.
Post by: DougMacG on April 11, 2019, 03:42:03 PM
Conservatives are known to characterize the mainstream media in this sort of way:
Democrats and their "willing accomplices" in the media ...
Isn't it time to acknowledge that is exactly backwards. It is the media academia complex that runs the Left with an unspecified superstructure and it is the Democratic politicians who are the mere mortals that come and go, the useful idiots, the willing accomplices of the real power of the Left.
For example: Barack Obama wasn't calling the shots; he was a product of the Left, a product of their media-academic complex, a face, a voice, a vehicle, a follower not a leader, a place holder on the ballot and in the office carrying out their work for as long as he was able and willing to do that, and then another one or group will seek that job. When State Senator Obama sponsored a bill to allow the killing of the 'fetus' after live birth, was he leader expressing deep and strategic thought or was he the rookie seeking the support and favor of the higher powers?
Kamala Harris and a whole lot of others would like to be next to win the favor of the real Left, the power of the Left, and hold the highest office for them. To win that position she will need to say and support exactly the right things. If nominated she will face their Darth Vador, their kryptonite, Donald Trump, who represents the force of the opposition.
Whoever is chosen can count on 100% support of the largest newspapers and all the networks with few exceptions, publishing articles with timeliness and gravitas as needed even if patently false. The articles will call your opponent a Russian operative if necessary and run dozens and dozens of stories to back that up and they will be spread like clockwork to hundreds or millions across Google and Facebook. Fake economics and climate science will come out of academia to back them up, Paul Krugman at Princeton, PhD, Jason Furman at Harvard, PhD, Jonathon Gruber at MIT, PhD, Robert Reich at Berkeley, JD Yale, James Hansen PhD of UN IPCC, all the climate science bloc, the Scientific American and all the teachers and professors from highest level grad schools down to pre-school, while the opponents are limited in their reach to a couple of blogs, one cable outlet and now a President who can tweet. The candidate does not wield the power of the Left. The candidate is the recipient and place holder of the power on the Left.
Title: Re: Media are willing accomplices? No, the politicians are.
Post by: G M on April 11, 2019, 05:37:30 PM
Conservatives are known to characterize the mainstream media in this sort of way:
Democrats and their "willing accomplices" in the media ...
Isn't it time to acknowledge that is exactly backwards. It is the media academia complex that runs the Left with an unspecified superstructure and it is the Democratic politicians who are the mere mortals that come and go, the useful idiots, the willing accomplices of the real power of the Left.
For example: Barack Obama wasn't calling the shots; he was a product of the Left, a product of their media-academic complex, a face, a voice, a vehicle, a follower not a leader, a place holder on the ballot and in the office carrying out their work for as long as he was able and willing to do that, and then another one or group will seek that job. When State Senator Obama sponsored a bill to allow the killing of the 'fetus' after live birth, was he leader expressing deep and strategic thought or was he the rookie seeking the support and favor of the higher powers?
Kamala Harris and a whole lot of others would like to be next to win the favor of the real Left, the power of the Left, and hold the highest office for them. To win that position she will need to say and support exactly the right things. If nominated she will face their Darth Vador, their kryptonite, Donald Trump, who represents the force of the opposition.
Whoever is chosen can count on 100% support of the largest newspapers and all the networks with few exceptions, publishing articles with timeliness and gravitas as needed even if patently false. The articles will call your opponent a Russian operative if necessary and run dozens and dozens of stories to back that up and they will be spread like clockwork to hundreds or millions across Google and Facebook. Fake economics and climate science will come out of academia to back them up, Paul Krugman at Princeton, PhD, Jason Furman at Harvard, PhD, Jonathon Gruber at MIT, PhD, Robert Reich at Berkeley, JD Yale, James Hansen PhD of UN IPCC, all the climate science bloc, the Scientific American and all the teachers and professors from highest level grad schools down to pre-school, while the opponents are limited in their reach to a couple of blogs, one cable outlet and now a President who can tweet. The candidate does not wield the power of the Left. The candidate is the recipient and place holder of the power on the Left.
Outstanding point!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 11, 2019, 05:41:06 PM
Mark Levin was talking about the media cabal and its total one party rule. He is coming out with a book soon documenting this with hundreds of references .
Title: The implications here are deeply ominous
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2019, 11:35:58 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2019, 03:25:23 PM
Someone please paste this article:
Admit it: Fox News has been right all along - The Washington Post [Search domain www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/15/admit-it-fox-news-has-been-right-all-along/] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/15/admit-it-fox-news-has-been-right-all-along/ Apr 15, 2019 ·
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 16, 2019, 11:51:20 PM
Admit it: Fox News has been right all along - The Washington Post [Search domain www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/15/admit-it-fox-news-has-been-right-all-along/] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/15/admit-it-fox-news-has-been-right-all-along/ Apr 15, 2019 ·
Admit it: Fox News has been right all along
Attorney General William Barr appears before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday to make his Justice Department budget request. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
By Gary Abernathy Contributing columnist April 15 at 4:57 PM Gary Abernathy, a contributing columnist for The Post, is a freelance writer and former newspaper editor based in Hillsboro, Ohio.
Throughout most of southern Ohio, residents who watch cable news are predominantly glued to one channel: Fox News.
People there don’t watch Fox News to know what to think; they already know what they think, and they avoid news channels that insult their intelligence and core beliefs. Yes, Fox News is an echo chamber for the right, but no more than CNN and MSNBC are for the left, as far as conservatives are concerned. To be fair, when a Democrat is in the White House, the networks switch places, with Fox News criticizing every move, and MSNBC and CNN defending the Oval Office fortress.
But for now, while partisans on the left may quibble, the fact remains that on the subject of collusion with Russia by President Trump or his campaign, Fox News was right and the others were wrong. For at least two years, MSNBC and CNN devoted hour upon hour, day after day, to promoting the narrative that Trump colluded with the Russians, and that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was going to prove it. That turned out to be wrong.
Along with defending Trump, Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and, especially, Sean Hannity have been slammed for spending nearly two years clamoring for an investigation of the investigators, aligning themselves with the president’s claim of a politically motivated witch hunt. Most of the media portrayed such accusations as preposterous, designed merely to divert attention from Trump’s alleged misdeeds.
But then comes Attorney General William P. Barr, dropping a bombshell last week by declaring during congressional testimony that he thinks “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016, and that he is looking into it. Democrats and many in the media immediately blasted Barr for carrying Trump’s water. Barr soon clarified his remarks, saying, “I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I’m saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it.”
Just three weeks ago, before Mueller wrapped up his report, The Post — in a story representative of mainstream sources at the time — produced a mostly flattering profile of the new attorney general. “A Justice Department official told The Washington Post last month that Barr is viewed at the department as ‘a lawyer’s lawyer’ and is seen as less politically minded than his predecessors,” the story noted.
Timothy Flanigan, a former Barr colleague at the Justice Department, described Barr’s independent streak, saying, “If Bill starts getting the tweet treatment, Bill is a tough guy. He’s a tough, tough guy. Not that Jeff Sessions wasn’t, but I don’t think Bill’s just going to sit there and take it. I think he would make sure that the president understood that it is not really a smart thing to be lambasting the attorney general.”
Now, Barr is being cast by the liberal cable channels and others as an unscrupulous political hack attached to the president’s leash. On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Barr “may be whitewashing” his summary of the report. Such accusations represent an unlikely turn of events for a 68-year-old professional with an impeccable record and a career more behind him than in front of him.
For Fox News devotees in southern Ohio and other Trump strongholds, nothing from the Mueller investigation has provided cause to waver from their preferred news source. Meanwhile, even regular viewers of CNN and MSNBC must certainly recognize the straws being grasped to justify sticking with a conspiracy theory that has been largely debunked — although the expected release of Mueller’s report this week will probably provide just enough juice for one last effort.
After two years of conjecture from all sides, some hard truths have emerged. Russia did try to influence the 2016 election. Neither Trump nor his campaign conspired with Russia. The president’s actions did not rise to criminal obstruction of justice. And how and why this all began may well turn out to be the most troubling story of all.
During his confirmation hearing in January, Barr told senators, “I am not going to do anything that I think is wrong, and I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong. By anybody. Whether it be editorial boards, or Congress or the president. I’m going to do what I think is right.” Observers at the time took Barr’s comments as reassurance of his independence from Trump, but in hindsight it should be noted that he mentioned editorial boards and Congress first.
Barr’s career does not paint a portrait of someone who chases tin-foil-hat conspiracies. There’s enough evidence in the public record to raise valid suspicions that the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign was motivated not by real concerns about national security, but rather by a loathing of the candidate. And though new facts may emerge in the full, redacted report, they won’t change the larger truth. It would behoove serious journalists to put aside their political biases and delve into a story that might actually be worthy of Watergate comparisons — even if it includes the painful admission that Fox News has been right all along.
Gary Abernathy, a contributing columnist for The Post, is a freelance writer based in Hillsboro, Ohiio
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2019, 06:17:26 AM
Thank you.
Title: already tired of AOc which = "ass of the century"
Post by: ccp on April 18, 2019, 07:16:39 AM
every day now on yahoo news is the AOC reality show.
she says this or that or slams this person or schools that person etc.
it is like a Kardashian in Congress.
too bad she is from safe district maybe dems could come up with someone else but not likely
Title: Re: already tired of AOC
Post by: DougMacG on April 18, 2019, 07:42:32 AM
every day now on yahoo news is the AOC reality show.
she says this or that or slams this person or schools that person etc.
it is like a Kardashian in Congress.
too bad she is from safe district maybe dems could come up with someone else but not likely
Funny that these two or three get all the attention and the moderate ones in swing districts get none.
We can't tell the real Ocasio from the parodies: https://mashable.com/video/aoc-green-new-deal-message-from-future/ This is the real one.
Yes it is possible that AOC (and Omar) could be challenged in the primary in her own party and that is the only way she could lose her seat. It would call the question, is the whole party wacko Left or is that limited to about 5 representatives? We already know that getting caught breaking campaign laws won't remove her.
You think we're tired of hearing her, imagine how old school moderate Dems feel. They lost their party and most are not interested in being Republicans. No one speaks for them or if someone does it is not deemed newsworthy.
Her opponent, the previous incumbent, had damaging information on her and didn't use it because it would make him look weak. Losing to her made him look weak too. He was heir to the speakership and now we forget his name.
He still has his machine and his skills, should run against her and not take her lightly this time. It is not her overspeak that will get her, it was her killing of the Amazon deal. Since when are Dems anti-cronyism and anti-jobs?
I disagree with conservative who hope Dems keep going too far Left. We should hope they nominate candidates we can live with if they win. The far Left has already pulled what is normal WAY to the Left - roughly since JFK's death.
MABA 2020: Make Alexandria Bar-maid Again
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 18, 2019, 10:08:04 AM
I'm thinking chatter about AOC belongs on the Politics thread.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 18, 2019, 10:36:57 AM
well I thought this thread as it is kind of less about her, then the media giving her front page space on a daily basis. could go on both ........
Title: CA court issues stay against prosecution of journalist
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2019, 01:43:09 PM
Title: Levin on history of antisemitism at NY Times
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2019, 10:05:47 AM
Pasting CCP's post in the Anti-semitism thread here as well:
1/2 hr discussion on NYT history of anti semitism and more. Worth the time. I learned a few things I did not know like the NYT cover up or the Stalin caused famine in Ukraine as well as the cover up of concentration camps in WWII
I wondered if NYT is trying not to be a shill for Jews and instead is trying to appear not pro Jew.
In any case hard to believe Jewish controlled newspaper is this way. And Wash compost the same. Mark states , as I have here for yrs . for lib Jews, the Democrat Party is first and foremost:
"The Times appears not to know who its source is; the tax documents were mailed anonymously."
oh come on someone was paid a lot for this .......
some one somewhere is taking credit under the table ........
and so what, we already know he declared bankruptcy
Title: what is with napolitano
Post by: ccp on May 09, 2019, 05:27:38 PM
anyone know what is going on with Napolitano . making such a stink not about Mueller's absurd and obvious attempt to find something anything to bring Trump down to Trump's trying to defend himself for a political scorched Earth witch hunt.
what is his point?
anyone understand the sudden self righteousness going on ?
did Trump not invite him to the golf course in Benardsville?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2019, 05:57:35 PM
Yeah, I've noticed it too , , ,
Title: Re: what is with napolitano
Post by: G M on May 09, 2019, 06:44:22 PM
anyone know what is going on with Napolitano . making such a stink not about Mueller's absurd and obvious attempt to find something anything to bring Trump down to Trump's trying to defend himself for a political scorched Earth witch hunt.
what is his point?
anyone understand the sudden self righteousness going on ?
did Trump not invite him to the golf course in Benardsville?
It’s my understanding that Nappy reached out to Trump for a job and was rebuffed.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 10, 2019, 06:02:23 AM
"It’s my understanding that Nappy reached out to Trump for a job and was rebuffed."
This more than anything would explain not just his opinion but the fervor he promulgates his views to the delight of the libs Watch , he will be offered a new gig with raise at CNN
someone , an . attorney I took care of yrs ago in the hospital with colleague told me FOX pays him 400K per yr
Does anyone think if Trump gave him a job or judgeship he would not be saying any of this stuff? Just thinking "out loud"
Title: Strange, I was told they were professional journalists...
Post by: G M on May 11, 2019, 06:52:50 PM
Title: more evidence of double standard
Post by: ccp on May 12, 2019, 12:16:49 PM
journolist * sells* scandalous information about public defender to media in SF and has house raided.
I thought leaks are ok , because the public right to know is more important than any reasons not to look the other way - but in this case cocaine and infidelity is about a Democrat.
Title: Wait, I though leaks are good
Post by: ccp on May 12, 2019, 12:49:14 PM
They are but only when about a Republican . But when it is a crat this is what happens; the public right to know about infidelity and drug use about a public figure and someone who ran for mayor is suddenly off limits:
" Freelance journalist Bryan Carmody told the San Francisco Examiner that his home and office were raided by police and FBI agents because he had obtained a copy of the police report, and sold information from that report to the press following Adachi’s death on February 22."
In a way Rush Limbaugh would say it, "don't doubt me folks. I will say it again , the media is often if not frequently paying leakers off "
Title: Pravda on the Hudson on Hitler in 1922
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2019, 05:10:31 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 13, 2019, 07:02:02 AM
Well it was 1922 . I am surprised Hitler's name even got into the NYT. He had not even written Mein Kampf This was even prior to the Beer Hall revolt
He was a nobody then . But it is certainly eerie to think how he was underestimated.
I saw episode one on cable , again , just yesterday, about his rise to power. It is surmised that if not for the Great Depression he never would have gotten to the top.
But maybe we should learn from this NYT mention circ 1922 of him.
Should we simply laugh off AOC and TAlib and the rest of them ? - answer , no.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on May 13, 2019, 07:26:52 AM
maybe we should learn from this NYT mention circ 1922 Should we simply laugh off AOC and TAlib and the rest of them ? - answer , no. ------------------
NYT: Misjudging and underestimating evil since 1922.
But prescient and worldly that they covered him so early.
Yes, the depression made his rise possible. Also the zero sum economic theory that you grow your share only by taking from others, "annexing", conquering etc. Who sells that theory now? " AOC and TAlib and the rest of them"
Now the NYT follows the Iowahawk identified method of journalism:
Arab TV satellite channels are airing a series this year called Khaybar, referring to the Muslim massacre of the Jews of the town of that name in northwestern Arabia in 628 CE.
After the attack, some Muslims, including Muhammad, took surviving women as wives.
The Muslim conquerors charged the Jews a 50 percent tax on their crops and in 637, after Muhammad’s death, the Caliph Omar expelled the remaining Jews from Khaybar.
In Islamic tradition, the chant “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud,” which means, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” is used as a battle cry when attacking Jews or Israelis.
It was, for example, chanted on the Mavi Marmara Gaza flotilla ship in May 2010.
Title: emanual
Post by: ccp on May 22, 2019, 03:34:53 PM
soon to be annoying with partisan talk it looks like
of course cannot keep himself out of the limelight: https://pjmedia.com/trending/democrat-media-revolving-door-alert-rahm-emanuel-joins-the-atlantic-and-abc-news/
Title: Re: emanual
Post by: G M on May 22, 2019, 04:55:56 PM
soon to be annoying with partisan talk it looks like
of course cannot keep himself out of the limelight: https://pjmedia.com/trending/democrat-media-revolving-door-alert-rahm-emanuel-joins-the-atlantic-and-abc-news/
Seamless. Almost as if it’s just an extension of the DNC.
Title: Fake news bad business strategy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2019, 10:59:16 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 27, 2019, 10:18:34 AM
" .Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died on Friday. He was 90.”
Well, we don't see Floridians rafting towards Cuba now do we?
Only the NYT could phrase it this way.
Title: Re: Media, Venezuela coverage?
Post by: DougMacG on May 28, 2019, 10:45:55 AM
Mentioned just enough in the American media to know the disaster is true, but the blackout of conditions in Venezuela continues. 24 Democrats have announced for President. Has any one of them given a position on this or been asked a question about it?
I can't imagine what million percent inflation looks like, what water and electricity outages that don't end feel like. I can't imagine what it's like to live in a nation where the average weight loss is 24 pounds in one year: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-food/venezuelans-report-big-weight-losses-in-2017-as-hunger-hits-idUSKCN1G52HA Can yo imagine being in a place formerly the richest in its region where 90% now live below the poverty line? Wouldn't that be newsworthy?
The news almost-blackout here is stunning.
Now imagine the downfall in Venezuela is Trump's fault or that their economic policies mirror his instead of Leftist Democrats. Can you imagine how inundated we would be with stories, pictures, questions and details?
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Google News leans 6 to 1 Left
Post by: DougMacG on June 03, 2019, 04:47:15 AM
**Funny how this is treated quite differently. Almost like there is some sort of bias. I have been assured these are professional journalists, who should be trusted implicitly!**
NBC hires Chelsea Clinton; former first daughter joins Jenna Bush, Meghan McCain at network The Cutline Dylan Stableford ,The Cutline•November 14, 2011
Chelsea Clinton will be working on-air for NBC News, the network announced on Monday. The former first daughter will be a "special correspondent" for NBC "Nightly News" and its new primetime newsmagazine, "Rock Center With Brian Williams"--essentially working on stories that fit within NBC's "Making a Difference" franchise, the network said.
In a statement, NBC News president Steve Capus called Chelsea a "remarkable woman" and a "great addition" to the network. "Given her vast experiences, it's as though Chelsea has been preparing for this opportunity her entire life," Capus said. Williams said Clinton "possesses an uncommon understanding of humanity--on city streets, across this country and around the globe."
In a statement of her own, Clinton said, "people who imagine and implement solutions to challenges in their own lives, in their communities, in our country and in our world have always inspired me."
Clinton will be joining another former first daughter at NBC. Jenna Bush Hager, the daughter of George W. Bush, has been a "Today" show correspondent since 2009. Earlier this month, Meghan McCain, daughter of John, was named as a contributor to MSNBC.
Capus dismissed the notion that the hires of Clinton, Bush and McCain are little more than publicity stunts.
Chelsea Clinton "made it very clear that this is not going to be a surface-deep relationship," Capus told the New York Times. "She wants to be in the field for the shoot and in the edit room for the edit."
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 10, 2019, 05:00:03 PM
Thanks for the post.
Just what I mean.
Title: the left steals our words and turn it around on us
Post by: ccp on June 10, 2019, 05:03:20 PM
Today some guy on MSLSD says the Democrats are fighting with the Marquis de Quinsberry rules and Trump fights like a UFC fighter
Gee where have I heard that before?
I am hearing them spinning it around
To think the Dems fight like gentlemen means the man can't think at all.
Title: Re: the left steals our words and turn it around on us
Post by: G M on June 10, 2019, 06:29:29 PM
Today some guy on MSLSD says the Democrats are fighting with the Marquis de Quinsberry rules and Trump fights like a UFC fighter
Gee where have I heard that before?
I am hearing them spinning it around
To think the Dems fight like gentlemen means the man can't think at all.
Someone on our side fights back and it has totally fcuked up their OODA loop. They are used to Mittens and McLame.
Title: Omar staff admits shutting down Media inquiries StarTribune
Post by: DougMacG on June 13, 2019, 06:22:00 AM
Minneapolis, Ilhan Omar's district, is a one newspaper town. The red StarTribune ('Strib') is monopoly newspaper and Democratic party operative in the nation's 15th largest media market.
In the course of her campaign finance violations, a long, inside email chain has been exposed that is damning to the local media, if anyone cares. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/06/from-the-mixed-up-files-of-rep-ilhan-omar-4.php
Quoting an Omar staffer dealing with inquiries regarding the marriage with her brother for immigration fraud issue:
"Someone should reach out to talk off the record and shut it down with him as we do with the Strib."
From the comments section:
"I wonder if the reporters at the StarTribune are required to salute after getting their orders."
Omar filed joint tax return with husband two while married to husband one. Omar had a third child with husband two while still married to husband one. Omar's husband one (her brother) refers on social media to the children born during his marriage to Omar as his nieces. None of this is of interest to the newspaper of record. The StarTribune blathers that the story is about the misogyny, racism and Islamophobia of her accusers.
Title: Somehow, our totally trustworthy professional journalists are missing this story
Post by: G M on June 13, 2019, 01:24:33 PM
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully— (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.
Title: absolutely amazing Mike Savage makes a NYT article
Post by: ccp on June 18, 2019, 09:34:51 AM
Now that this early big backer of Trump has recently expressed some disappointment with Trump on his podcast - > WHAM! He gets a big piece in Pravda on the East River :
Title: Hidden by the media
Post by: G M on June 25, 2019, 12:17:44 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/381978.php
June 25, 2019 "Mayor Pete" Buttjudge Lambasted at Town Hall Over Being AWOL from His Job During a Police Shooting Controversy It's a white-cop-shoots-a-black-suspect controversy, and the suspect allegedly threw a knife at the cop, and the cop shot him dead.
But the cop's body-camera wasn't on, so there are, naturally, Concerns.
Where's Mayor Pete to reassure his community?
Oh right, he's out on the campaign trail accusing Mike Pence of giving him secret anti-gay telepathic dog-whistles on the many times they had working lunches together.
Buttigieg has come under scrutiny for the shooting as the South Bend Police have not hired as many non-white officers as some say they should. O'Neill was white and Logan was black, which only adds to the tensions over this incident in South Bend and the national debate about policing in minority communities. "We have tried but not succeeded to increase diversity in the police department and we need help," Buttigieg said the town hall on Sunday.
South Bend residents who showed up at the meeting expressed anger at Buttigieg and the South Bend Police. Crime has been a long-term problem in South Bend, and this incident highlights Buttigieg's failure to address the problem during his seven years as mayor.
During the town hall, members of the community ridiculed Buttigieg and the police chief for their alleged inability to eliminate the police force of racists.
You probably didn't hear that a top-tier Democrat candidate was being raked over the coals for racial insensitivity and failing to reduce crime from CNN or any of the other news networks.
I wonder why.
Oh wait, no I don't: It's because the media doesn't want anyone to know that Democrats are themselves accused of racism by racial activists. They want to hide this, to advance the narrative that only Republicans are so accused, because only Republicans are in fact racist.
Reporting on this story would force the media to acknowledge either that some Democrats are racist, or that sometimes racial activists make accusations based on very little except their own racial suspicions and racial animus.
Either way, it blunts the Democrats' never-ending attack on Republicans as racist, and the media won't have that.
Like their clickbait directors at Google, they have an election to rig, and they can't permit another Trump situation to happen.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 25, 2019, 02:21:29 PM
"Where's Mayor Pete to reassure his community?
Oh right, he's out on the campaign trail accusing Mike Pence of giving him secret anti-gay telepathic dog-whistles on the many times they had working lunches together."
Now Warren out gaying the gay man to garner the gay vote:
*reparations for gays *
For crying out loud
How can we end this crap?
Title: Say it ain't so Snopes!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 25, 2019, 03:16:40 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 02, 2019, 04:39:40 PM
likely will never hear anything from Cnn about this
they did their let me make this clear this is unacceptable blurb
BUT will they follow up and report the antifa punks hiding behind their masks who did this and plaster their names on national news like they wont on those on the Right ?
I won't bet on it.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on July 02, 2019, 04:44:50 PM
likely will never hear anything from Cnn about this
they did their let me make this clear this is unacceptable blurb
BUT will they follow up and report the antifa punks hiding behind their masks who did this and plaster their names on national news like they wont on those on the Right ?
I won't bet on it.
The KKK was the armed wing of the dems post CW I. Antifa is the armed wing of the dems pre CW II.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 02, 2019, 05:39:49 PM
"The KKK was the armed wing of the dems post CW I. Antifa is the armed wing of the dems pre CW II."
and that is the truth
Title: Guilfoyle
Post by: ccp on July 03, 2019, 04:57:00 PM
***She was previously married to California governor Gavin Newsom, a democrat who, coincidentally enough, slicks his long hair back in a remarkably similar fashion as Trump Jr.***
:-o :-o :-o
What ? ! ?
How weird..........
Title: Trump may be right
Post by: ccp on July 08, 2019, 06:53:01 AM
I read somewhere this would happen once the Murdoch kids and not the senior Murdoch himself is in charge the network will turn Left ward:, though they certainly have many Rightist spokespeople :
Title: Interesting to see who dictates how the MSM-DNC covers pantifa
Post by: G M on July 09, 2019, 10:49:26 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/382186.php
Almost like they are on the same side.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 10, 2019, 04:48:36 AM
compare that to the young man who was filmed right up in his face on international TV repeatedly with endless critical commentary who was bullied by the "Indian" "veteran".
man , i hope he wins a slander case the MSM.
Title: Goolag employees petition to deep six Breitbart
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2019, 10:45:09 PM
Title: case against Sandman tossed
Post by: ccp on July 29, 2019, 07:43:35 AM
by James Earl Carter Judge .
wait, though I thought case against media is still ongoing and case against Sandman tossed. if media can bully a white person like they did obviously with bias and political agenda intent then agreed. None of us are safe from slander.:
******Tags: Media Bias | covington | Nick Sandmann | washington post Covington Student's Lawsuit Against WashPost Dismissed Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky (Bryan Woolston/AP) By Brian Freeman | Monday, 29 July 2019 09:27 AM
Short URL| Email Article| Comment| Contact| Print| A A
Share The $250 million defamation lawsuit filed by a Covington Catholic High School student against The Washington Post for its coverage of his viral standoff in January with a Native American activist in Washington, D.C. has been dismissed, USA Today reported.
Attorneys for the Kentucky student, Nick Sandmann, said the coverage of the incident led to a "mob of bullies which attacked, vilified & threatened" Sandmann, according to the New York Post.
They alleged that the essence of the Post's first article on the encounter with Nathan Phillips conveyed that Sandmann had assaulted or physically intimidated the Native American activist, engaged in racist conduct, and engaged in taunts, USA Today reported.
But U.S. District Court Judge Willian Bertelsman said in his ruling on Friday that "this is not supported by the plain language in the article, which states none of these things."
Bertelsman accepted Sandmann's statement that he was only standing motionless across from Phillips, without ill intent, but ruled that Phillips, who told the media he felt threatened, had a First Amendment right to express his opinion, even if it turned out to be erroneous, and that the paper was within its rights to publish those views.
The Post said it's "pleased" with the judge's decision, issuing a statement that, "From our first story on this incident to our last, we sought to report fairly and accurately the facts that could be established from available evidence, the perspectives of all of the participants, and the comments of the responsible church and school officials," CNN reported.
Sandmann's parents plan to appeal the decision, with his father Ted Sandmann saying, "If what was done to Nicholas is not legally actionable, then no one is safe."
Read Newsmax: Judge Dismisses Covington Student's Lawsuit Against Washington Post | Newsmax.com *******
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 29, 2019, 01:04:57 PM
can we expect CNN to slip more questions ahead of time to Harris?
Certainly was not saying white supremacy induced murder is non existent or not a bad thing. But he is 100% correct in stating the degree of it is so totally blown out of proportion and trying to link it to Trump all political hysteria.
PS I don't waste my time with twitter otherwise I would twitter this above post to him. Don't know if he has email.
Title: Got to link the Republicans to everything bad
Post by: ccp on August 10, 2019, 06:47:41 PM
explain to me why Dick Cheney's name need be mentioned in this article.
Title: cnn
Post by: ccp on August 15, 2019, 05:10:39 AM
funny how when the market is doing great you hear almost nothing about it. this am there are a cast of leftist characters with giant grins on CNN happily chatting about tariffs and recession and dropping market and Trump all in the same 1 to 2 sentences
if Dems can come up with viable candidate we lose in '20. I am convinced
Title: Cuomo working out
Post by: ccp on August 15, 2019, 08:06:53 AM
one never knows when one gets a chance to throw a right wing "deplorable " down a flight of stairs so one must be ready
thank God I only have been calling him "Mario's kid" ( to reflect his partisanship) . not the dreaded "F " word that I did not know what even referred to till GM explained once to me on the board about a yr or two ago I think.
I remember back in my frat days 6 of my frat brothers tried to drag me upstairs to put my hand in the toilet as some sort of frat prank.
They could not get me free and carry me to the toilet so they gave up. I was proud of my strength back then .
But now at 62 Cuomo probably could shove me down the stairs.
Don't screw with a "CNN anchor" man. :-D
though Baldwin can throw me down any time ..........
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2019, 10:57:50 AM
Check out the younger Chris in the FOX Files piece on the Dog Brothers done in 1998 that I posted on the Martial Arts forum. :-D
Title: Leaked transcripts show POTH plans to craft Trump racism narrative
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2019, 01:07:52 PM
Wish this article was more coherent, but I suspect there is a real big deal here-- let's keep an eye out for clearer reports.
Title: O'Donnell apology sort of .
Post by: ccp on August 28, 2019, 02:22:21 PM
from O'Donnell,
"Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight."
Me,
this in one way to get 3 or 4 people to watch his show.........
Title: question remains : why?
Post by: ccp on August 30, 2019, 04:26:48 AM
Title: no such thing as "off the record"
Post by: ccp on September 02, 2019, 04:25:22 PM
when we are talking Trump
when will those around him learn?
Gotta love this one : "“Philip Rucker is one of the best and most scrupulous reporters in the news business,” Steven Ginsberg, national editor at The Post, said in response. “He has always acted with the utmost honor and integrity and has never violated Washington Post standards or policies.”
so off the record does not mean off the record for the Washington compost............
when will those around Donald learn to keep their mouths shut? No coincidence alcohol being served.
Title: Media role in Russia Trump collusion Hoax, Clapper, Jake Tapper, CNN
Post by: DougMacG on September 04, 2019, 07:29:50 AM
One point being made in the aftermath of the hoax is that this high of a level of surveillance did not happen without President Obama knowing about it and approving it. Another question is exactly when in a two plus year investigation did the special counsel Mueller know there was nothing to it.
Now the question is being asked, what role did the media play knowingly hyping a false story, i.e. fake news.
The NY Times and Washington Post both benefited from receiving a Pulitzer Prize for 5 articles each on what we now know is a false story. ------------------- Interesting story here about reports and accusations against CNNs Jake Tapper and his denial of having the Dossier and knowing it was rubbish while leaking its most salacious parts to help the story get wings.
For years now, there’s been a primary suspicion that CNN and Jake Tapper (who led the reporting on it) were tipped off about the Steele Dossier and a briefing to Donald Trump on it by James Clapper, who was still technically part of the Obama Administration at the time.
This all went down in January of 2017, when Tapper suddenly started reporting on details of the dossier and how the newly elected President had been told about it. The CNN newsman would later express his anger that Buzzfeed published the dossier, which showed it to be a farce in short order. Though he claims his objections were based on the unverified nature of the dossier, that doesn’t make sense. Why would CNN not want to the entire dossier published but at the same time be leaking parts of it if they felt it wasn’t proper to publish? The more obvious explanation is that CNN and Tapper really wanted to keep leaking damaging details of the dossier without its ridiculous nature being exposed. It was only after Buzzfeed printed it that it was able to be essentially debunked.
The former DNI later changed his story after he was confronted specifically about his communications with Jake Tapper of CNN.
“Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic,” the report continued. “Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information,’ a two-page summary of which was ‘enclosed in’ the highly-classified version of the ICA,” or intelligence community assessment. https://thefederalist.com/2018/04/27/house-intel-report-james-clapper-lied-dossier-leaks-cnn/
James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, is a player in the false story but also a media figure in the story's rollout and coverage, a paid analyst of CNN.
Jake Tapper is the Chief Washington Correspondent for CNN, anchor of the CNN weekday television news show The Lead with Jake Tapper, and anchor of the CNN and CNN International Sunday morning affairs program State of the Union.
"There are two explanations here. Either James Clapper lied to Congress or Jake Tapper is lying." ----------- What does Glenn Reynolds say, think of them all as Democratic Party operatives and it all makes sense. In this chapter of American history, this is far more diabolical and high reaching than ordinary partisan politics.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 04, 2019, 07:37:50 AM
ANYONE WHO THINKS THE MEDIA DOES NOT BRIBE PEOPLE
FOR INFORMATION / LEAKS
then consider this from Doug's post above :
"For years now, there’s been a primary suspicion that CNN and Jake Tapper (who led the reporting on it) were tipped off about the Steele Dossier and a briefing to Donald Trump on it by James Clapper, who was still technically part of the Obama Administration at the time."
"James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, is a player in the false story but also a media figure in the story's rollout and coverage, a paid analyst of CNN."
ANYONE WHO THINKS THE MEDIA DOES NOT BRIBE PEOPLE
Title: Napolitano usual anti Trump rant
Post by: ccp on September 06, 2019, 06:31:36 AM
ex judge :
"[T]he Republicans who rejoice in this will weep over it when a Democrat is in the White House. No president should have unconstitutional powers."
Me:
where have you been . Obama already had been doing this. and do you think if the Trump played nice the Democrats would for one second return the favor.
what is this ex judge drinking? just go away.........
--------------------------------------------------- Judge Andrew Napolitano: Trump Violating US Constitution Andrew Napolitano sits and speaks on television about president donald trump Judge Andrew Napolitano (AP) By Solange Reyner | Thursday, 05 September 2019 04:02 PM
Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano says President Donald Trump is violating the U.S. constitution by funding the border wall with federal money not approved by Congress.
"After Congress expressly declined to give him that money, Trump signed into law – rather than vetoed – the legislation that denied him the funds he sought and then spent the money anyway," Napolitano wrote in a scathing opinion piece for Fox News.
Napolitano also ripped Trump's so-called "tariff" war with China.
"The question regarding presidential power has also been asked with respect to Trump's imposition of sales taxes – Trump calls them tariffs – on nearly all goods imported into the United States from China. These are taxes that only Congress can constitutionally authorize."
Trump's abuse of presidential power, says Napolitano, has come up in previous administrations.
But Trump is setting a dangerous precedent.
"After years of faithless Congresses legally but unconstitutionally ceding power to the presidency, we have arrived where we are today," Napolitano wrote. "[T]he Republicans who rejoice in this will weep over it when a Democrat is in the White House. No president should have unconstitutional powers."
Read Newsmax: Judge Andrew Napolitano: Trump Violating US Constitution | Newsmax.com Urgent: Do you approve of Pres. Trump? Vote Here in Poll
Title: Surprise! Only Fox Reports on Joe Biden's Eye-Bleed; Rest of the "Mainstream"
Post by: G M on September 06, 2019, 06:54:00 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/383180.php
Ah, if only BigDog were here to explain down to us how that is an example of professional journalism.
Title: OAN sues Comcast
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 09, 2019, 04:54:25 PM
Title: Conrad
Post by: ccp on September 12, 2019, 05:00:46 AM
Brilliant guy I have to use online dictionary to decipher some of his exotic words at times
I don't know what to make of his criminal problems Frankly too complicated for me to understand
The case he makes for himself sounds like he was railroaded.
He is a strong Trump supporter which makes me sure that is why he in part at least got a pardon. He like me wished if Trump would only cut out the constant bullying and name calling he would get another 10 % to his approval column But he will be disappointed like everyone else in this regard
Title: Re: Conrad
Post by: DougMacG on September 12, 2019, 01:28:02 PM
Brilliant guy I have to use online dictionary to decipher some of his exotic words at times
I don't know what to make of his criminal problems Frankly too complicated for me to understand
The case he makes for himself sounds like he was railroaded.
He is a strong Trump supporter which makes me sure that is why he in part at least got a pardon. He like me wished if Trump would only cut out the constant bullying and name calling he would get another 10 % to his approval column But he will be disappointed like everyone else in this regard
Fraud convictions, all but one, were struck down on appeal and the rest pardoned by constitutional authority. For me that takes him back to presumed innocent unless there is good reason to think otherwise. It looks like contractual business differences were criminalized. Most unresolvable business disputes go through a civil court process instead, not criminal. In my business, people defraud me or attempt to all the time, pass a known bad check or make a bad promise to get more unpaid time in their house for example, and the city attorney won't touch it no matter the evidence.
I agree, Conrad Black' writings are excellent and should be judged on their own merits.
Title: VDH rapes CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2019, 10:01:49 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 18, 2019, 04:54:13 AM
" But the better question is whether CNN — which has ruined its reputation and profits in an Ahab-esque effort to destroy the Trump white whale — is any longer a media organization at all, or a failing entertainment channel, or a boring Orwellian Ministry of “Truth.”"
I love that metaphor.
I also like the one VDH uses where in Trump is Gary Cooper in the movie High Noon. Cooper as movie buffs will recall he throws his badge in the dirt at the end of the movie after cleaning up the town of a criminal gang who was thankless for his life risking efforts. Just like DC...... :-D
Title: In the Land of No Consequence, Bad Behavior Festers
Post by: G M on September 19, 2019, 05:05:27 PM
In the Land of No Consequence, Bad Behavior Festers What’s the point of having political power if you can’t protect your own people from egregious attacks or punish lawbreakers?
Julie Kelly - September 16th, 2019 Print Friendly, PDF & Email Another day, another whopper by the news media and their handlers in the Democratic Party.
Shortly after the New York Times published a “bombshell” article over the weekend that described more graphic, decades-old sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the paper was forced to post a significant correction to its original story.
“An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party,” the editors wrote. “The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.” The book, due for release this week, is authored by two Times reporters.
The correction was prompted not by the Times’ own fact-checking but after Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist and co-author of a book detailing the Kavanaugh debacle, identified the blatant error on Twitter early Sunday morning. (The Times has refused to review Hemingway’s book, which was released in July.)
But by the time “America’s newspaper of record” sheepishly admitted its (intentional) error, the damage had been done. Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment while celebrities and columnists wailed about the patriarchy, white privilege and, of course, the Bad Orange Man. Willfully ignorant zombies on the Left continue to regurgitate the falsehood.
Rewriting History The timing of the Times’ latest fraud is notable for its coincidence: Three years ago and one year ago this month, Democrats, with full complicity from the media, unleashed two of the most divisive and fabricated campaigns against Trump World: The Trump-Russia collusion hoax and the Kavanaugh rape charges.
In September 2016, Yahoo News posted its infamous article authored by Michael Isikoff that suggested Trump campaign aide Carter Page was a Kremlin tool—the piece was sourced by dossier author Christopher Steele and cited as evidence in the FISA warrant against Page—publicly fueling the nascent Russian collusion storyline. And in September 2018, the Washington Post identified Christine Blasey Ford as the woman accusing Kavanaugh of decades-old sexual assault.
But despite the widespread misconduct, malfeasance, and irreversible political, professional, and personal damage connected to both travesties, not one person—lawmaker, staffer, reporter, or witness—has been held accountable for their actions. The perpetrators, thus far, have suffered no consequences.
To the contrary, mouthpieces for both scandals are cashing in by selling books that rewrite history, or worse, fabricate more charges intended to inflict additional harm. (A former Comey aide and current CNN contributor also will release a book this week that whitewashes his former boss’s leading role in the Russian collusion hoax.)
No Evidence? No Problem Here are just a few offenses that remain unpunished: High-level public officials leaked classified information to the media—a felony—in 2017 in an attempt to destroy Page and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Top Justice Department officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, submitted fabricated evidence to a secret court while refusing to disclose the financial motivations of the key source. Several people, including Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson, misled Congress.
FBI agents accepted gifts and other perks from friendly news reporters in exchange for unauthorized leaks of nonpublic information. Several officials and sources, including Steele, lied to federal investigators, committing both perjury and obstruction of justice. Lawmakers such as Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) misled Congress and the American public about evidence of Russian collusion for years.
Where is the declassification of key documents, including texts and emails between key collaborators, we’ve been promised? Where are the Senate hearings to compel public testimony from the wrongdoers in these scandals?
Numerous witnesses, including Blasey Ford, made false statements to Congress and attempted to obstruct justice in a concerted ploy to delay a public hearing and permit time for more unfounded allegations to surface. (Recall how Blasey Ford’s celebrity legal team claimed she was afraid to fly despite social media posts boasting about her international travel.)
After the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee, then led by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), issued a lengthy report detailing the fiasco. The report concluded that “investigators found no verifiable evidence that supported Dr. Ford’s allegations against Justice Kavanaugh. The witnesses that Dr. Ford identified as individuals who could corroborate her allegations failed to do so, and in fact, contradicted her.”
Deborah Ramirez, a subject of the Times’ reporters’ new book and another alleged Kavanaugh victim, repeatedly refused to cooperate with the committee’s probe after she was featured in a lengthy New Yorker expose making more unfounded claims against Kavanaugh. “Committee investigators found no verifiable evidence to support Ramirez’s allegations,” the report stated.
In other words, these women made up false accusations against an innocent man and presented those phony claims to the United State Senate and to the FBI, which is a federal crime.
Grassley did refer two perpetrators in the Kavanaugh travesty, attorney Michael Avenatti and accuser Julie Swetnick, to the Justice Department: “I ask that the FBI investigate whether Mr. Avenatti criminally conspired with Ms. Swetnick to make materially false statements to the Committee and obstruct the Committee’s investigation,” Grassley wrote in October 2018.
Neither of them has been charged. Christine Blasey Ford now is heralded as a feminist hero and raked in GoFundMe contributions while Ramirez is enjoying yet another turn in the public spotlight.
Further, the journalists, columnists, cable news hosts and editors who perpetuated both scams at great cost to the country as a whole remain employed and unchastened. (Keep in mind that Fusion GPS paid “media companies [and] journalists” to report their political propaganda. A list of names remains under seal.) It’s hard to argue that conduct doesn’t meet the legal threshold of conspiring to defraud the United States.
Empty Threats, Unkept Promises Threats made by the president, Grassley, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and other Republican leaders to hold the perpetrators accountable are unfulfilled. As I wrote last November, Republicans, with few exceptions, are as responsible as Democrats for mismanaging the Russian collusion matter from the beginning.
Where is the declassification of key documents, including texts and emails between key collaborators, we’ve been promised? Where are the Senate hearings to compel public testimony from the wrongdoers in these scandals?
Where is an indictment or investigation into the people who have been referred to the Justice Department, including Steele, Avenatti, and Swetnick, by Senate Republicans? Where are the charges against former Obama officials who illegally leaked classified information to reporters more than two years ago? Where is the public hearing about the Justice Department inspector general’s reports on both the Clinton email investigation and Comey’s mishandling of his own memos? Where are the ethics charges against Schiff, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), and Senator Cory Booker (D.-N.J.)?
We are reassured constantly that Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham have all of this under control. But much like the costly delay in the Kavanaugh-Ford hearing, further delays foster more bad behavior, encourage more phony claims of wrongdoing against innocent people, and postpones the comeuppance that the American public is impatiently waiting to see.
The old adage that justice delayed is justice denied painfully applies here. Brett Kavanaugh and his family found this out—again—the very hard way. It’s time for Republicans, including and especially the president, to stop this injustice today. Trump tweeted several times over the weekend and on Monday about the latest smear on Kavanaugh, suggesting that “the Justice Department should come to [Kavanaugh’s] rescue.”
Last I checked, Trump is in charge of the Justice Department. Bill Barr, a lifelong Republican, runs the department. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell controls the Senate and Graham chairs the judiciary committee. What’s the point of having political power if you can’t protect your own people from egregious attacks or punish those who break the law to do so?
This isn’t a harmless game or an opportunity for pointless Twitter banter from the president. It’s time to follow through on empty threats and promises and stop this dangerous cycle. At this point, Republicans have no one to blame but themselves.
Julie Kelly Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review.
Title: Chuck Todd Media Issue: Hunter Biden already investigated, nothing there
Post by: DougMacG on September 25, 2019, 07:27:25 AM
I know we have a thread for the scandal, but the media treatment of it here is disgraceful. Chuck Todd of "Meet the Press" is a "professional journalist"?
More like Democratic operative and activist. Notice the nervous laugh he has when he makes his most indefensible points. Did I already say disgraceful.
Interesting story. Fox News, like National Review and others, never was in the Trump camp. The article references the Megyn Kelly episode. Before he attacked her, she laid into him with misogyny charges to start a debate, because people he had criticized included women. No one at Fox told her what tact to take. Like the other network faces, she wanted to raise her own profile, but being a serious questioner and treating him as a serious candidate with tough economic and foreign policy questions, in hindsight, would have had a better chance of taking him down.
Fox News on radio has the same biases of ABC, NBC and CBS. Their goal as I see it is to be one of them, not have a different take. On the other side of it, Fox still has opinion hosts like Sean Hannity that make the market think the whole network is conservative and they aren't. Chris Wallace isn't conservative and same for Rupert Murdoch's sons. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/fox-s-once-and-future-crown-prince-keeps-investors-guessing
Fox News started off conservative as a business decision, targeting an under-served market and succeeding. Now that they are number one and leadership is changing, their mission is shifting. As they move to the center and further left, where do conservatives go? --------------------- Discussing news with a liberal friend, I pointed out that the NY Times and Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for 5 pieces each on a story (Russia Trump collusion) that was false. On the scale of honesty and accuracy with Trump only a hair above zero, isn't it sad that the nation's top newspapers come in beneath him.
My friend asked, where do you go if you can't trust the main news, NYT or local StarTribune for examples to get it right? I have no easy answer for that. There is no one-stop-shop, not Fox News, not National Review, not WSJ, not Drudge, where I can refer someone who is not a conservative to get the news right. I have to search far and wide to find what I trust to be true. There are shows, columns and outlets that talk only to conservatives, but are complete turn-offs to others. Very few present the facts in a reasonable manner with great insight without obvious bias.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 27, 2019, 06:51:14 AM
news max
collects news from other outlets in a way that might be for both sides with conservative slant .
agee overall with you though
just have to slog thru multiple sites to try to get more balanced "news/opinion/propaganda" .
Even the news of "studies" are at least 50 % of time BS. Even academics are full of it a lot.......
We can add Shep Smith as a liberal Democrat. And CAvuto certainly is anti Trump.
Fox news therefore is really far more balanced than the 100% leftish MSM but no one on the Left will give them "credit" for it. Anything on the right has to be squashed , delegitimized, labeled "hate", etc.
Title: Drudgereport ?
Post by: ccp on September 30, 2019, 05:00:40 AM
more left wing slant the past week ?
:| :-o
Title: Re: Drudgereport ?
Post by: rickn on September 30, 2019, 05:56:54 AM
I got to know the views of Matt Drudge when he had a Sunday night radio show. I would call him a Pat Buchanan Republican, maybe an Ann Coulter and about where Trump is now. One of his big scoop sources was Breitbart, the man not the website. When the networks would sit on a story, he would run it anyway right off their desk. He broke the Monica Lewinski story when they sat on it if I recall correctly. Rightward bias and truth were both parts of the attraction; there was a real lack of sites to go to if you were not satisfied with the msm.
Now in the Trump era it, there is definitely a lack of a pro-Trump bias one might expect. Either Drudge the man is less involved or it is a business decision to aim for balance over bias. If anything, they lean slightly anti-Trump during his Presidency, IMHO. Good for them but they aren't really breaking stories anymore that can't easily be found elsewhere.
Title: Malkin on Ana Cardenas Navarro
Post by: ccp on September 30, 2019, 08:34:13 AM
who makes a name for herself by being a Latino pretending to be a Republican:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 13, 2019, 02:00:36 PM
yes , Kate McKinnon played (s) both.
For the record I never cared much for SNL even going back to the 70's.
I remember kids saying SNL is on and getting excited and me sitting there bored and wishing to do something else.
Some similarities to Clinton.
The latter is much more innately evil to me. Again if we lived in another age I feel Hillary would have slaughtered all Republicans who did not submit.
Title: Strassel: Inside the media's crusade to destroy President Trump
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2019, 07:01:40 PM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, The Climate of Alarmism
Post by: DougMacG on October 31, 2019, 06:26:42 AM
All drought is now human caused. Therefore all deaths from drought is blood on our hands. No need to prove it anymore because "the science is settled". Anyone who suggests pulling the US out of the Paris Accords is a genocidal murderer, even if the accords did not lower emissions or stop the rising of the oceans.
"As Donald Trump denies Climate Change, these kids die of it." [Posted previously in Cog Diss of the Left] http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/opinion/sunday/as-donald-trump-denies-climate-change-these-kids-die-of-it.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
This is not the work of one columnist of the the Left. It was the NYT who paid for his trip with camera crew to Madagascar in pursuit of inflammatory propaganda. This is a campaign of the Ministry of Truth that runs through nearly all of academia and media.
The logic is simple. Ignore two thousand years history of on and off droughts, hunger and famine in third world countries. Ignore the fact that places like Israel with similar or less rainfall are healthy and prosperous. Ignore their horrible, slash and burn land management practices in this region. Ignore that other parts of the island nation receive ample rainfall with not water capture, sharing or preservation. Ignore that this happens every el Nino. Ignore that China burns ten times more coal than any developed country. Ignore that fossil fuel consumption emits more water vapor than CO2 or that atmospheric CO2 content still rounds to zero parts per thousand, not exactly smothering us or blanketing the atmosphere. Blame Trump and affluence or whoever the Republican of the moment is.
Famine around the world is not getting worse. The US had record rainfall last year. CO2 emissions in the US have fallen as fracking has enabled the switch from coal to natural gas.
Children have been dying of famine, drought and poverty for as long as we can remember and Americans have been the most generous in the history of the planet in terms of assistance. Blame Americans.
Now children like Greta are dying of anxiety and depression as they are continually fed this line of BS unsupported in math, science and history.
Title: Media, CBS Jan Crawford
Post by: DougMacG on November 01, 2019, 07:51:51 AM
Just giving credit where credit is due, even though this is CBS [SeeBS]. Jan Crawford was one of my favorites from over at PBS News Hour because she could report on Supreme Court proceedings without noticeable bias.
Univ of Alabama undergrad, southern charm. U of Chicago Law School grad, a truly credentialed journalist, with no sarcasm needed to say that.
Here she eats up a never Trumper and an anti-Trumper 'journalist' and then flips back to the world series.
Simple point, like them or not, Trump's judicial picks are plenty qualified.
Title: Katherine Herrige of FOX going to CBS?!?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2019, 07:59:48 AM
VERY sorry to hear this! KH is an outstanding reporter, especially on intel and related issues.
Title: reported least biased media sources
Post by: ccp on November 05, 2019, 04:50:34 AM
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/
as per :
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
Title: The mooch
Post by: ccp on November 05, 2019, 06:32:57 AM
scarimucci
amazing how this guy who was a nobody previous to being picked by Trump for house press sec. , got fired in 2 days for incompetence is now a media darling making a new career out of bashing the guy who made him a celebrity.
only in the usa as they say......
talk about grifters and charlatans .......
Title: ABC squashed the Epstein story for three years.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 05, 2019, 07:14:05 AM
Title: George Friedman: Toward a theory of journalistic objectivity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 05, 2019, 09:18:00 AM
Toward a Theory of Journalistic Objectivity By: George Friedman
Last Sunday, I received an email from a close friend telling me and others that after 60 years he was canceling his subscription to The New York Times because he was tired of its bias against U.S. President Donald Trump and, even more, its failure to cover the world except through the prism of Trump. A few weeks ago, another friend of mine said that he was no longer able to write about the world without making clear the harm that Trump was doing and the disgraceful sort of man he was.
The interesting point is that one believed that The New York Times was falsifying reality with its hostility to Trump, while the other said that describing Trump in any way other than vile was falsifying reality. Few of us hold opinions we know to be false, and therefore few of us see ourselves as falsifying reality. We think of ourselves as clarifying reality and as being the victims of others. That makes each of us a spokesperson for truth and those who disagree with us as in error. The political question is how should we treat those we think are in error? One way is to think of them as reasonable people, to be respected even in disagreement. The other is to regard them as either too stupid to realize they are in error or deliberately corrupt. If you follow the latter approach, they are unreasonable people and unworthy of respect.
Both are very intelligent, reasonable men, and in other circumstances they would like each other. The issue here is not the intellectual, moral or emotional differences between the two, but how the media should present a president about whom they disagree. This debate transcends the current national frenzy over the president. We have had many such times in American history. Rather it is a question of what is the intellectually appropriate manner for a newspaper or other media to deal with the frenzy.
Opinion vs. Fact
The New York Times is clearly hostile to Trump. The Times would argue that it is not hostile but faithfully reporting the news, which in the case of Trump happens to paint him in a bad light. Its critics say that the paper deliberately interprets Trump’s actions in the worst possible way and, even worse, spends so much time disparaging him that it either has no space for other vital global news or views all world events as affected by Trump’s actions, no matter how marginal they might be.
This raises the question of what a newspaper ought to be. Benjamin Franklin published the Pennsylvania Gazette in the 19th century. It mixed news and opinion without shame. Early newspapers were not committed to neutrality. Franklin believed he was committing himself to truth, and achieving it by stating his opinion. The difference between The New York Times and Franklin rests in the fact that Franklin did not believe providing thoughtful opinion was unethical whereas modern journalism thinks that it should be presented on editorial pages, separate from the news pages. More precisely, modern journalism draws an ethical line between opinion and fact. But in practice it is hard to distinguish what is, from what ought to be. More important, the vision of what ought to be seems to define what is important. The hidden sphere of opinion rests not in how the story is being told, but in the choice of the story that should be told. In making decisions over what is and what isn’t important, the newspaper is already painted over by opinion.
The problem is not with approaching your life’s work as a journalist with a vision of the world. It is impossible not to. The problem is pretending, particularly to yourself and then to your readers, that your selections are devoid of prior choice, that the editor and reporter are blank slates, reflecting reality without prejudice. The presentation of facts without framework is impossible.
Ben Bradlee was the editor-in-chief of The Washington Post. He was a close friend of the Kennedys and he hated Richard Nixon. It was the Post that transmitted the information provided by Deep Throat, a senior FBI official, to the public. The fact that the Post didn’t reveal for decades that its secret source was an FBI official left out a critical dimension of the story. It was not that Nixon was not guilty, but it was also true that the source and Bradlee wanted Nixon to fall. The Post wanted to get Nixon, and Nixon committed a crime. Both statements can be true. But the Post pretended to be neutral and hid the fact that its source was in the FBI. The framework of motives was hidden from the public and dismissed when Nixon supporters charged the Post with burying important details.
An Evolution
According to contemporary journalism, approaching a newsworthy subject with a personal agenda is unethical. The difference between Franklin and Bradlee is that Franklin made no claims about journalistic ethics. Bradlee did. For Franklin, having a view on fishing or justice is not incompatible with being a good journalist. The only caveat must be that the view is openly stated and held to be true by the author. Indeed, Franklin reveled in using his paper as a platform. His ethical principle, if there was one, was that he stood responsible for what he wrote.
After World War II, there was an evolution in newspaper publishing toward the idea of journalistic objectivity. Most newspapers had political leanings before the war, and while these persisted after the war, the major newspapers sought increasingly to draw a sharp distinction between the editorial and news pages. Part of this had to do with the increased power of journalism schools and the rise of technocracy. Before the war, the local news beat was frequently covered by high school graduates with street smarts and little formal journalistic education. Over time, these reporters could be promoted to covering national and even international news. H.L. Mencken, one of the great reporters in the first half of the 20th century, symbolized this. He was a high school graduate who mixed reporting with his own pungent views liberally.
With the rise of journalism schools, journalism was seen through a technocratic lens paralleling the other professions. It possessed a method taught in journalism schools that required expertise. But more importantly, and less consciously, the journalism schools taught not only how to cover the news, but what constituted the news. It is hard to encapsulate what their vision of the news was, but we can get a sense by recalling what was covered by what used to be called the “mainstream press.” The mainstream press reflected the dominant ideology following World War II. It focused on the Cold War, on the American economy and on the politics of the two political parties and the framework in which they thought. The John Birch Society and the Communist Party were observed as oddities, not as valid movements.
Writing and editing without a framework is impossible. As I have said, the mere selection and rejection of what is to be published shapes the newspaper. One of the tasks of an editor is to decide what stories make it to print. There is only so much space in a newspaper or time on television, and there are many things happening in the world. The decision on how much space to devote to a subject derives from some concept of what is important and what is not. This is the foundation of journalism and almost any field. And that decision has its roots in some model of reality, whether it’s conscious or not.
The Problem With Modern Journalism
The problem is that modern journalistic ethics insist that simplistic objectivity is possible, and it compels journalists and newspapers to pretend that their political beliefs, or support for the Redskins, does not shape the way in which the news is presented. Franklin would never hide his personal views, nor would he ever see them as prejudices. Rather, in his mind they were well-honed reflections that he provided the world as a gift, without prejudice. In this sense, reporters at Fox and CNN are better journalists and more honest than those at The New York Times or The Washington Post. They make no bones about who they are, nor do they hide how they shape the news. They don’t have what used to be called the mainstream press’s objectivity and don’t pretend to have it.
Objectivity is not impossible. But the first step of objectivity is to know yourself and to be aware of what you are doing and why. Knowing your own motive and not being ashamed of it allows your readers to choose whether to read your publication and allows you to impose the discipline of your own intentions. At any case, it can’t be hidden and, over time, becomes readily apparent to your readers, who may approve or disapprove but will read your publication nonetheless to hear another view. But without that objective evaluation of your purpose, all other objectivity is lost.
True objectivity is enormously difficult, as all great things must be. I face this dilemma every day. I solve it not by pretending not to have a view, but by practicing an idiosyncratic method, geopolitics as I understand it, that allows me – I believe – to understand the world more deeply. To use geopolitics well, you must force yourself to separate your superficial political views from your work. That is not easy; I and my staff are human. But we believe that only by abandoning the politics of our time can we actually understand the deeper structure of things. We are less interested in whether Trump is right or wrong than in the underlying forces that created his presidency, and all other presidencies.
There is the objectivity of knowing your politics and the objectivity in caring for something other than the daily political discourse. But objectivity is more than simple neutrality. It is being conscious of your ends and the methods that help you to reach those ends, and freely admitting what those ends are. Objectivity is enormously difficult, as is rigidly separating belief in method from beliefs on current affairs. The objectivity I am speaking of has more in common with Benjamin Franklin than with contemporary journalism.
True Objectivity
It is impossible to be perfectly objective, even in my terms. But then it is difficult to love, to be courageous and to be just. The difficulty of each of these things does not excuse anyone from trying. The shallow claim to objectivity of contemporary journalism is transparent. That does not mean that objectivity is impossible, as imperfect as all things human might be. But clinging to an objectivity that is both simplistic and transparent undermines the Republic. Objectivity is not pretending not to have an agenda, but showing clearly what that agenda is. You cannot live without an agenda and you cannot free yourself from the responsibility of having it. And then the world can see the degree to which your agenda is profound or trivial. The agenda does not have to be a political goal, although if it is, then that is legitimate. For me, it is a consistent method of understanding how the world works and what things are more important than others. I try to make it clear that I am working from this model, geopolitics, and that the breadth and emphasis of what my organization, Geopolitical Futures, addresses comes from there.
Franklin made no bones about the reasons he chose to write as much as he did on what he did. This I think is true objectivity. Newspapers in the United States used to be unabashedly political, and that meant they covered some topics obsessively and ignored others. But we knew who they were. Defining objectivity as possessing no preconceptions works if you really have no preconceptions, but what human is a blank slate, and what human has the discipline not to care? Journalism, like all crafts, requires a structure that defines the proportions of their craft and then the content, and that structure must be visible to those who care to understand it. The mere assertion of objectivity is not such a structure. It is merely a principle that neither constrains nor compels.
Donald Trump will pass into history, and so too will the passions of the moment. But the problem of objectivity will live on. Anyone can claim to be objective. It is not a structure that guides or constrains. It is just an intent that does not impose order. The irony and intentions of Franklin can be understood and seen in his writing. The problem is not the writing of The New York Times or the selection of stories; it is the assertion of objectivity without definition or rigor.
Title: Remember, these are professionals with ethics and credentials!
Post by: G M on November 05, 2019, 05:18:49 PM
It is an amazing business story that one of the former big three networks doesn't split off and go neutral or center-right.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 07, 2019, 05:17:29 AM
" . It is an amazing business story that one of the former big three networks doesn't split off and go neutral or center-right. "
Good point because there would be a market for that.
Surely the big bosses are Deeemocwats first and business men second it appears.
If not Zucker would have been fired long ago.
As for MSLSD and Madcow they are making fortunes off Trump. he should get a cut.
Title: So much for whistleblower coverage at ABC and CBS
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2019, 02:18:07 PM
So Much for ‘Whistleblower’ Coverage at ABC and CBS Rival networks join forces to punish disclosure.
By James Freeman Nov. 7, 2019 3:56 pm ET
Co-host Amy Robach on the New York set of ABC’s "Good Morning America" in 2018. PHOTO: LOU ROCCO/ASSOCIATED PRESS In the 50 days since news consumers were told that a federal whistleblower was expressing his disapproval of a presidential phone call, CBS News has aired or published more than 100 stories on President Donald Trump and Ukraine. Counting stories from local affiliates, the number rises above 200. That’s according to the Dow Jones Factiva news archive.
But CBS hasn’t come close to the wall-to-wall coverage offered by rival ABC News. A Factiva search of ABC stories about Mr. Trump and Ukraine yields 687 results for the last 50 days.
More than 300 of the ABC stories specifically include the term “whistleblower”. And roughly all of the stories are derived from the original allegations formulated by the unnamed government employee in consultation with the office of Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.). Mr. Schiff publicly denied that such consultation had occurred but later acknowledged the fact as his falsehood was exposed.
Usually news organizations like ABC and CBS at least pretend to spend their days trying to report previously non-public information. But they recently decided not to report the name of the federal “whistleblower.” Ironically, the entire impeachment case hinges on an assumed political motivation by Mr. Trump for comments on a phone call that were not illegal. Yet by maintaining a blackout on the identity of the “whistleblower,” news outlets are impeding the public’s ability to learn about the possible political motivations of Mr. Trump’s accuser.
Not that the public can’t make a pretty good guess, given this January 2017 tweet from the alleged whistleblower’s lawyer, Mark Zaid:
#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately. #lawyers And then there’s this Zaid instant classic from July of 2017:
It’s very scary. We will get rid of him, and this country is strong enough to survive even him and his supporters. We have to. But it seems that the sudden reverence for the imagined Constitutional right of an alleged whistleblower to remain anonymous doesn’t extend to people releasing information from non-Trump organizations like ABC and CBS. In fact these organizations have joined together to punish disclosure and forcefully deter any future whistleblowing within their news divisions.
The New York Post’s Sara Nathan reported this morning:
CBS News has fired a female staffer believed to have had access to the tape of Amy Robach raging against ABC News, Page Six understands.
We reported on Wednesday that ABC News chiefs discovered a former employee could be behind the leak of the damning footage of Robach slamming the network for shelving her interview with Jeffrey Epstein’s “sex slave” Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Sources told Page Six that a former staffer had access to the footage of Robach as she aired her frustrations over a hot mike — and that employee was now believed to be working at CBS.
A TV source told us later on Wednesday that the woman was let go from CBS, after ABC execs alerted the rival network. ABC sources confirmed to us that they’d informed counterparts at CBS about the staffer “as a courtesy.”
This afternoon the Associated Press also is reporting that CBS has fired the employee. How lovely that two giant news organizations are willing to set aside their competitive differences and extend to each other the “courtesy” of helping to limit disclosure and dissent. And they say civility is dead!
On Wednesday Jeremy Barr noted in the Hollywood Reporter that ABC was making a serious effort to pull the mask off its internal whistleblower:
ABC News on Wednesday confirmed that it is pursuing the “source” of a leaked video that showed anchor Amy Robach expressing frustration with the network for not broadcasting an interview she conducted in 2015 with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s chief accusers.
“We take violations of company policy very seriously, and we’re pursuing all avenues to determine the source of the leak,” the network said in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter.
On Tuesday, the conservative advocacy group Project Veritas published the video... On Wednesday, journalist Yashar Ali reported that ABC has identified the individual who accessed the Robach video.
And now it seems that CBS, which as far as this column can tell hasn’t been harmed at all by the employee, has fired her on the principle that whistleblowing must not be tolerated—unless it damages people like Mr. Trump.
***
Title: Some Whistleblowers are more equal than others
Post by: G M on November 07, 2019, 05:02:29 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/384198.php
If you stop the professional journalists from protecting pedos, you will be made to pay.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, DT Jr on 'The View'
Post by: DougMacG on November 08, 2019, 07:32:30 AM
I didn't even like this guy until the Left (nd the FBI etc) started attacking him. He keeps a big smile and never says, let me finish, while they all scream at him. His 'girlfriend' holds her own too. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/11/07/donald_trump_jr_spars_with_abcs_the_view_hosts_on_whistleblower_impeachment_epstein.html
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2019, 11:22:32 AM
An example of fake news at work:
The accompanying commentary here is from someone I know who used to work for our government with high security clearance:
Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s buddy, leaked her name. The guy who went to jail was Scooter Libby, who had nothing to do with that leak. As I recall, he got sent to jail for perjury. Which probably means the FBI wanted to take someone down, and he drew the short straw.
It’s also useful to understand that the Ambassador actually did get the job from the CIA because his wife recommended him. And that it’s a dead certainty that he was allowed to publish the op-ed as a political hit on the administration. On no planet would the Agency hire someone to do something for them and not have an NDA. Finally, his op-ed basically confirmed that the Iraqis were looking for yellowcake in Niger. There was no other reason for them to be there.
The LAT writer either doesn’t know those facts, or doesn’t care to share them. Either way the article is a fabric of lies.
Also, Plame was deeply partisan when her name got leaked, and wasn’t really undercover anyway. She worked out of DC, and her cover had been blown to the Russians (and others) years prior by Aldrich Ames.
Title: Ethical, honest and professional journalists
Post by: G M on November 08, 2019, 07:35:14 PM
After Fiona Hill's testimony I was rather stunned to see Bret Baier and Wallace and the rest of the panel praise her as the "star of the day'.
I heard her. She seemed credible in that she spoke fast, without hesitation, with great knowledge and confidence. She radiated a career of experience. But when she got into the 'inter-agency consensus', 'veered from our talking points', and 'used irregular channels' crap, you realize these people think they run foreign policy and that the President and his confidants are trespassers on their turf. At some point you realize none of these "witnesses" witnessed anything and are wasting our time with their hurt feelings and presumptions. In other words, why are we here? Her feelings were hurt? This isn't how we used to do it? What were the results under the way we used to do it? Russia invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea? Military aid was paused 2 months over a corruption concern?? It was 'paused' 8 years under Trump's predecessor. How did you feel about that. Different because it was Obama. Did she see a bribe? Did she witness extortion? Did she hear someone say the goal was reelection? Or did they say they were trying to root out corruption?
Alternate reality: Coming out of polls is that people who watched the hearings saw something different than media reported. Viewership fell each day that the hearings continued. Worst for the Democrats was that every political junkie watched the hearings and then missed the BIG Dem debate was later that same evening. Record low viewership. No one watched and no one missed anything.
One word keeps coming out of all Trump attack attempts: 'nothingburger'. Meanwhile, Democrats haven't touched the (Trump negotiated) USMCA trade agreement, not even to criticize it. Nothing is going on in healthcare (except new Trump initiatives). No one (but Trump) is paying attention to China. We have the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment in history, with no thanks to the Democrat House or any Presidential candidate (other than the incumbent). ---- Jim Treacher (PJ Media) – Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.
Title: CNN anchor brings in Priest, friend to DEBUNK Rick Perry
Post by: ccp on November 25, 2019, 05:48:56 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2019, 09:10:41 AM
Dick Morris reports he is undergoing treatment for tongue cancer.
Title: Re: Media, Liberty Daily, Conservative Alternative to Drudge
Post by: DougMacG on December 01, 2019, 07:56:18 AM
https://thelibertydaily.com/
The Conservative Alternative to the Drudge Report
For reasons unknown at this point, Drudge Report became anti-Trump.
The first ten or twenty times I noticed that I thought it was just a coincidence, they were just posting balance, but now every conservative who looks there has noticed it.
Title: Drudge's clear change
Post by: ccp on December 01, 2019, 09:41:39 AM
" .For reasons unknown at this point, Drudge Report became anti-Trump."
Hey Doug. I agree 100 % after reading Drudge for decades it is obvious something has changed
from right leaning to VERY anti Trump not balanced.
I like the opposing views, and I would rather it not be Breitbart , BUT OTOH
if I want total anti Trump headlines blasting in my face every day I could go to Huff compost.
will check out the new site, thanks. I hope it is good. I would prefer alternative to Drudge at this point.
Title: Re: Drudge's clear change
Post by: DougMacG on December 01, 2019, 09:58:39 AM
" .For reasons unknown at this point, Drudge Report became anti-Trump."
Hey Doug. I agree 100 % after reading Drudge for decades it is obvious something has changed
from right leaning to VERY anti Trump not balanced.
I like the opposing views, and I would rather it not be Breitbart , BUT OTOH
if I want total anti Trump headlines blasting in my face every day I could go to Huff compost.
will check out the new site, thanks. I hope it is good. I would prefer alternative to Drudge at this point.
This site is more blatantly partisan than Drudge was. Drudge made his claim to fame by releasing the stories that big outlets were sitting on (cf. Monica Lewinski). Those stories tend to be on one side because MSM doesn't sit on anti-Newt, anti-Bush, anti-Trump stories.
There is still a void of great, professional, investigative, well-researched journalism, not the kind GM pokes fun at, journalism that doesn't care which side a big story comes down on.
Title: Drudge, everyone asking?
Post by: ccp on December 03, 2019, 08:27:42 AM
I remember in 1987 while listening to his show in Philadelphia he seemed pissed at Rivers for some reason and thought it funny to crack jokes after her husband had committed suicide.
For some reason that stuck with me ever since as I thought it possibly the cruelest thing I ever heard on radio. I never could get myself to like him after that - ever since . Just could not get out of my mind for some reason.
Now I wonder if he is making some sort of amends.
Title: Bongino Report
Post by: ccp on December 07, 2019, 07:10:46 AM
we'll see where this goes:
https://bonginoreport.com/
First heard Bongino on radio out in San Francisco while at company meeting.
Thought he was great from day 1. Sad he lost the Congressional race but we know many greats who have also lost :-D
Title: MSNBC and CNN use deceptively edited video to discredit Trump
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 07, 2019, 11:23:47 PM
He was talking about something very specific, his right to fire Robert Mueller, which he did not do.
Democrats' use of the video [in an impeachment hearing, if I understand this right] was to imply, infer that Trump believes there are no checks, no balances on any of his powers anywhere in the constitution, which is totally absurd. Obviously he is aware of the impeachment process.
No honest observer looks at that obviously out of context quote without curiosity of the context.
He should be impeached for a partial quote, out of context, if you are them, if you are deranged, if you are desperate, if you cannot win on the issues or the truth.
They keep proving his fake news claim true. You would think they would want to prove it false.
The media are no longer the willing accomplices of the Left. The academia-media complex is the Left and the Democrats are the willing accomplices advancing their agenda.
Truth will come out in a Senate trial and will win.
Imagine their frustration losing to him with 93% of media stories viciously against him. What would the score be on a level playing field?
Title: of course
Post by: ccp on December 11, 2019, 06:30:25 AM
Title: Re: Media, Matt Drudge gone, sold, Rassmussen Reports, not confirmed.
Post by: DougMacG on December 11, 2019, 01:44:26 PM
"Anyone who's been following Drudge for the last 25 years (!) has noticed an editorial shift at the site over the last year or so, with the aggregator regularly dropping the hammer on Trump, focusing on negative news about the president..."
Insider says award is made by a vote of one editor. She picked on commie teen who regurgitates what she is taught in government schools.
How did Greta win over Kamala. Racism rears its ugly head - at the imaginary Time magazine.
Circulation not going well, AARP is beating them by 20-fold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_magazines_by_circulation --------------------- Their reader poll had it right: The Hong Kong Protesters https://time.com/5747261/person-of-the-year-2019-reader-poll-results/
Title: CNN on the dossier then and now
Post by: G M on December 13, 2019, 03:13:13 PM
These are professional journalists with credentials! Brave truth-tellers far above bias or partisan loyalty!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 14, 2019, 05:04:18 AM
" .Brave truth-tellers far above bias or partisan loyalty!"
Just like the "career" Federal employees who honorably serve the Constitution and the country.
Just like the nonpartisan whistlesucker.
All above partisanship , bribes , self interest and who unanimously dedicate their lives to the service of all American citizens (and illegals) and upholding the Constitution.
Thank God for CNN to save us from tyranny , monarchy , dictatorship , and of course mental illness. ( more ccp sarcasm )
Title: Remove the emotion, start the conversation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2019, 07:16:16 AM
Title: Re: Media, Who impeached whom
Post by: DougMacG on December 19, 2019, 08:09:07 AM
The news is, House Impeaches Trump. As expected, NYT headline is, Trump Impeached.
Subtle difference but who took what action yesterday?
Title: All just so unnecessary
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2019, 08:25:46 AM
Sadly Trump's actions led to this ; was all this Gulliani's idea? (the Urkainian thing holding up funds for Biden thing) . I don't know. Just so unnecessary Biden was/is a loser anyway
but this impeachment thing insults ME and EVERYONE on my side
WE don't deserve this .
All this does is make me more committed to donate and pull that lever in 11 months!
Title: Re: All just so unnecessary
Post by: DougMacG on December 19, 2019, 10:09:10 AM
Sadly Trump's actions led to this ; was all this Gulliani's idea? (the Urkainian thing holding up funds for Biden thing) . I don't know. Just so unnecessary Biden was/is a loser anyway
but this impeachment thing insults ME and EVERYONE on my side
WE don't deserve this .
All this does is make me more committed to donate and pull that lever in 11 months!
They were for full speed impeachment for asking for the investigation favor before they knewthe funds were delayed. Funds that were "delayed" 8 years under Obama.
Either it is okay for these two countries to cooperate on corruption, this corruption, or it is not. If it is okay, then using a little leverage to nudge them is okay too. If it is not okay to look into corruption that points to a potential opponent, then ... the whole Obama White House, FBi, CIA, DNC, HRC would be going to the hoosegow (juzgao / jail) too.
The House is impeaching the Schiff parody, "I want you to make up dirt on my opponent". That didn't happen but almost every liberal convinces themselves it did. ----------------------- Trump didn't have to say the name Biden on the phone call with two dozen deep staters on it (and rape victims should be more careful how they dress).
The "already debunked" Ukraine thing in liberal-speak (cf. Chuck Todd, Schiff) doesn't have meaning to anyone but them after the whole debunked media-Democrat thing (cf. Russian collusion).
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2019, 10:30:12 AM
" .Trump didn't have to say the name Biden on the phone call with two dozen deep staters on it "
exactly. he handed them a gift whether we agree or not ( I don't ) it gave the enemy of the Left lawyers the "big fat pitch" they were waiting for with the legal games that all of this is.
The gotcha game . Blah blah blah .
We are a nation of laws for what so politiicians can just bullshit around them in ways that work for them?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2019, 01:34:12 PM
I take a hard line on this.
Perfectly reasonable for President Trump to let the Ukes know not to fear to look into Biden.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2019, 03:10:19 PM
" .Perfectly reasonable for President Trump to let the Ukes know not to fear to look into Biden"
Crafty I agree with you 100% . But it is a good thing Republicans control the Senate or we would be seeing Trump removed from office on this basis
the Dems don't give a hoot what you or I think.
Just saying...
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on December 19, 2019, 04:39:48 PM
" .Trump didn't have to say the name Biden on the phone call with two dozen deep staters on it "
exactly. he handed them a gift whether we agree or not ( I don't ) it gave the enemy of the Left lawyers the "big fat pitch" they were waiting for with the legal games that all of this is.
The gotcha game . Blah blah blah .
We are a nation of laws for what so politiicians can just bullshit around them in ways that work for them?
We are a nation of laws are for the little people.
They were plotting to impeach Trump the minute they knew Hillary lost.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 19, 2019, 07:17:01 PM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, SHARYL ATTKISSON 107 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era
Post by: DougMacG on December 24, 2019, 06:34:47 AM
A lot of mistakes in a relatively short period of time, all in one direction, against the President: SHARYL ATTKISSON 107 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List: https://sharylattkisson.com/2019/01/50-media-mistakes-in-the-trump-era-the-definitive-list/
1. Aug. 2016-Nov. 2016: The New York Post published modeling photos of Trump’s wife Melania and reported they were taken in 1995. Various news outlets relied on that date to imply that Melania—an immigrant—had violated her visa status. But the media got the date wrong. Politico was among the news agencies that later issued a photo date correction.
2. Oct. 1, 2016: The New York Times and other media widely suggested or implied that Trump had not paid income taxes for 18 years. Later, tax return pages leaked to MSNBC ultimately showed that Trump actually paid a higher rate than Democrats Bernie Sanders and President Obama.
3. Oct. 18, 2016: In a Washington Post piece not labelled opinion or analysis, Stuart Rothenberg reported that Trump’s path to an electoral college victory was “nonexistent.”
4. Nov. 4, 2016: USA Today misstated Melania Trump’s “arrival date from Slovenia” amid a flurry of reporting that questioned her immigration status from the mid-1990s.
5. Nov. 9, 2016: Early on election night, the Detroit Free Press called the state of Michigan for Hillary Clinton. Trump actually won Michigan.
Nancy Sinatra via Twitter 6. Jan. 20, 2017: CNN claimed Nancy Sinatra was “not happy” at her father’s song being used at Trump’s inauguration. Sinatra responded, “That’s not true. I never said that. Why do you lie, CNN?…Actually I’m wishing him the best.”
7. Jan. 20, 2017: Zeke Miller of TIME reported that President Trump had removed the bust statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. The news went viral. It was false. 8. Jan. 26, 2017: Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “entire senior administrative team” had resigned in protest of Trump. A number of media outlets ranging from politically left to right, including liberal-leaning Vox, stated that claim was misleading or wrong.
9. Jan. 28, 2017 CNBC’s John Harwood reported the Justice Department “had no input” on Trump’s immigration executive order. After a colleague contradicted Harwood’s report, he amended it to reflect that Justice Department lawyers reportedly had reviewed Trump’s order.
10. Jan. 31, 2017: CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported the White House set up Twitter accounts for two judges to try to keep Trump’s selection for Supreme Court secret. Zeleny later corrected his report to state that the Twitter accounts had not been set up by the White House.
11. Feb. 2, 2017: TMZ reported Trump changed the name of “Black History Month” to “African American History Month,” implying the change was untoward or racist. In fact, Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had all previously called Black History month “African American History” month.
12. Feb. 2, 2017: AP reported that Trump had threatened the president of Mexico with invasion to get rid of “bad hombres.” Numerous publications followed suit. The White House said it wasn’t true and the Washington Post removed the AP info that “could not be independently confirmed.”
13. Feb. 4, 2017: Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported on “Inside the White House-Cabinet Battle Over Trump’s Immigration Order,” only to have the article updated repeatedly to note that one of the reported meetings had not actually occurred, that a conference call had not happened as described, and that actions attributed to Trump were actually taken by his chief of staff.
14. Feb. 14, 2017: The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo reported about supposed contacts between Trump campaign staff and “senior Russian intelligence officials.” Comey later testified “In the main, [the article] was not true.”
15. Feb. 22, 2017: ProPublica’s Raymond Bonner reported CIA official Gina Haspel—Trump’s later pick for CIA Director—was in charge of a secret CIA prison where Islamic extremist terrorist Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, and that she mocked the prisoner’s suffering. More than a year later, ProPublica retracted the claim, stating that “Neither of these assertions is correct…Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.”
16. April 5, 2017: An article bylined by the New York Times’ graphic editors Karen Yourish and Troy Griggs referred to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, as Trump’s wife.
17. May 10, 2017: Multiple outlets including Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported the same leaked information: that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey shortly after Comey requested additional resources to investigate Russian interference in the election.
The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo, and CNN’s Sara Murray reported the information in sentences and paragraphs that omitted attribution, as if it were an established fact. The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker, Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa wrote news articles in the style of opinion pieces and from an omniscient viewpoint as if they were somehow in the mind of Trump. For example, they reported, “Every time FBI Director James B. Comey appeared in public, an ever-watchful President Trump grew increasingly agitated that the topic was the one that he was most desperate to avoid: Russia.” (Other reporters —Reuters’ Dustin Volz and Susan Cornwell— did properly attribute the claim.)
The Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said the media reports were untrue and McCabe added that the FBI’s Russia investigation was “adequately resourced.”
18. May 27, 2017: The BBC’s James Landale, The Guardian and others reported that Trump wasn’t bothering to listen to the translation during a speech in Italian by Italy’s Prime Minister. They drew that conclusion without asking the White House and based on a video that showed other political leaders wearing large headphones. The Guardian even claimed Trump was fake listening (smiling and nodding). After the reports circulated, the White House stated that, as always, Trump was indeed wearing an earpiece in his right ear.
19. June 4, 2017: NBC News reported in a Tweet that Russian President Vladimir Putin told TV host Megan Kelly that he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite: that he did not have compromising information on Trump.
20. June 6, 2017: CNN’s Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus; and ABC’s Justin Fishel and Jonathan Karl reported that Comey was going to refute Donald Trump’s claim that Comey told Trump three times he was not under investigation. Instead, Comey did the opposite and confirmed Trump’s claim.
21. June 7, 2017: In a fact-check story, AP reported erroneously that Trump misread the potential cost to a family with insurance under the Affordable Care Act who wanted care from their existing doctor.
22. June 8, 2017: The New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman reported that Comey testified Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Comey not to call the Russia probe “an investigation” but “a matter.” Weisman was mistaken about the attorney general and the probe. Actually, it was Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch (not Sessions) who told Comey to refer to the Hillary Clinton classified email probe (not the Russia probe) as “a matter” instead of “an investigation.”
23. June 22, 2017: CNN’s Thomas Frank reported that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” The report was later retracted. Frank and two other CNN employees resigned in the fallout.
24. December 2, 2017: ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that former Trump official Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was going to testify that candidate Trump had directed him to contact “the Russians.” Even though such contact would not be in of itself a violation of law, the news was treated as an explosive indictment of Trump in the Russia collusion narrative, and the stock market fell on the news. ABC later corrected the report to reflect that Trump had already been elected when he reportedly asked Flynn to contact the Russians about working together to fight ISIS and other issues. Ross was suspended.
25. July 6, 2017: Newsweek’s Chris Riotta and others reported that Poland’s First Lady had refused to shake Trump’s hand. Newsweek’s later “update” reflected that the First Lady had shaken Trump’s hand after all, as clearly seen on the full video.
26. July 6, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, CNN and numerous outlets had long reported, as if fact, the Hillary Clinton claim that a total of 17 American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia orchestrated election year attacks to help get Trump elected. Only three or four agencies, not 17, had officially done so.
27. Aug. 31, 2017: NBC News’ Ken Dilanian and Carol Lee reported that a Trump official’s notes about a meeting with a Russian lawyer included the word “donation,” as if there were discussions about suspicious campaign contributions. NBC later corrected the report to reflect that the word “donation” didn’t appear, but still claimed the word “donor” did. Later, Politico reported that the word “donor” wasn’t in the notes, either.
28. Sept. 5, 2017: CNN’s Chris Cillizza and other news outlets declared Trump “lied” when he stated that Trump Tower had been wiretapped, although there’s no way any reporter independently knew the truth of the matter—only that what intel officials claimed. It later turned out there were numerous wiretaps involving Trump Tower, including a meeting of Trump officials with a foreign dignitary. At least two Trump associates who had offices in or frequented Trump Tower were also reportedly wiretapped.
29. Sept. 7, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported Democrat leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi called President Trump about an immigration issue. Trump actually made the call to Pelosi.
30. Nov. 6, 2017: CNN’s Daniel Shane edited excerpts from a Trump event to make it seem as though Trump didn’t realize Japan builds cars in the U.S. However, Trump’s entire statement made clear that he does.
31. Nov. 6, 2017: CNN edited a video that made it appear as though Trump impatiently dumped a box of fish food into the water while feeding fish at Japan’s palace. The New York Daily News, the Guardian and others wrote stories implying Trump was gauche and impetuous. The full video showed that Trump had simply followed the lead of Japan’s Prime Minister.
32. Nov. 29, 2017: Newsweek’s Chris Riotta claimed Ivanka Trump “plagiarized” one of her own speeches. In fact, plagiarizing one’s own work is impossible since plagiarism is when a writer steals someone else’s work and passes it off as his own.
33. Dec. 4, 2017: The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt and Sharon LaFraniere and other outlets reported that Trump Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland supposedly contradicted herself or lied about another official’s contacts with Russians. The story was heavily, repeatedly amended. CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, New York Daily News and Daily Beast picked up the story about McFarland’s “lies.”
34. Dec. 4, 2017: ABC News’ Trish Turner and Jack Date reported that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had recently worked with a Russia intelligence-connected “official.” But the Russian wasn’t an “official.”
35. Dec. 5, 2017: Bloomberg’s Steven Arons and the Wall Street Journal’s Jenny Strasburg reported the blockbuster that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Trump’s bank records. It wasn’t true.
36. Dec. 8, 2017: CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb reported that Donald Trump Jr. conspired with WikiLeaks in advance of the publication of damaging Democrat party and Clinton campaign emails. Many other publications followed suit. They had the date wrong: WikiLeaks and Trump Junior were in contact after the emails were published. 37. Jan. 3, 2018: Talking Point Memo’s Sam Thielman reported that a Russian social media company provided documents to the Senate about communications with a Trump official. The story was later corrected to say the reporter actually had no idea how the Senate received the documents and had no evidence to suggest the Russian company was cooperating with the probe. 38. Jan. 12, 2018: Mediaite’s Lawrence Bonk, CNN’s Sophie Tatum, the Guardian, BBC, US News and World Report, Reuters and Buzzfeed’s Adolfo Flores reported a “bombshell”— that President Trump had backed down from his famous demand for a wall along the entire Southern border. However, Trump said the very same thing in February 2016 on MSNBC, on Dec. 2, 2015, in the National Journal, in October 2015 during the CNBC Republican Primary debate, and on Aug. 20, 2015, on FOX Business’ Mornings with Maria.
39. Jan. 15, 2018: AP’s Laurie Kellman and Jonathan Drew reported that a new report showed trust in the media had fallen during the Trump presidency. But the report that AP cited was actually over a year old and was conducted while Obama was president.
40. Feb. 2, 2018: AP’s Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Chad Day reported that ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s opposition research against Trump was initially funded by a conservative publication: the Washington Free Beacon. AP corrected its story because Steele only came on the project after Democrats began funding it.
41. March 8, 2018: The New York Times’ Jan Rosen reported on a hypothetical family whose tax bill would rise nearly $4,000 under Trump’s tax plan. It turns out the calculations were off: the couple’s taxes would go actually go down $43; not up $4,000. 42. March 13, 2018: The New York Times’ Adam Goldman, NBC’s Noreen O’Donnell and AP’s Deb Riechmann reported that Trump’s pick for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, had waterboarded a particular Islamic extremist terrorist dozens of time at a secret prison; and that she had mocked his suffering. In fact, Haspel wasn’t assigned to the prison until after the detainee left. ProPublica originally reported the incorrect details in Feb. 2017. 43. March 15, 2018: AP’s Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson and Jeff Horwitz reported that a Trump advisory board official had been a Miss America contestant and had killed a black rhino. She actually was a Mrs. America contestant and had shot a nonlethal tranquilizer dart at a white rhino.
Watch Sharyl Attkisson’s TEDx Talk: Is Fake News Real? 44. April 1, 2018: AP’s Nicholas Riccardi reported that the Trump administration had ended a program to admit foreign entrepreneurs. It wasn’t true. 45. April 30, 2018: AP reported that the NRA had banned guns during Trump and Pence speeches at the NRA’s annual meeting. AP later corrected the information because the ban had been put in place by Secret Service. 46. May 3, 2018: NBC’s Tom Winter reported that the government had wiretapped Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. NBC later corrected the story after three senior U.S. officials said there was no wiretap.
47. May 7, 2018: CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger reported that Trump’s personal lawyer, Cohen, paid $1 million in fines related to unauthorized cars in his taxi business, had been barred from managing taxi medallions, had transferred $60 million offshore to avoid paying debts, and is awaiting trial on charges of failing to pay millions in taxes. A later correction stated that none of that was true.
48. May 16, 2018: The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others excerpted a Trump comment as if he had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.” Most outlets corrected their reports later to note that Trump had specifically referred to members of the murderous criminal gang MS-13. 49. May 28, 2018 The New York Times’ Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and CNN’s Hadas Gold shared a story with photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken under the Trump administration. The article and photos were actually taken in 2014 under the Obama administration.
50. May 29, 2018 The New York Times’ Julie Davis reported the estimated size of a Trump rally to be 1,000 people. There were actually 5,500 people or more in attendance.
51. June 1, 2018 In a story about Trump tariffs, AP reported the dollar value of Virginia’s farm and forestry exports to Canada and Mexico was $800. It’s $800 million.
52. June 21, 2018 Time magazine and others used a photo of a crying Honduran child to illustrate a supposed Trump administration policy separating illegal immigrant parents and children. The child’s father later reported that agents had never separated her from her mother; the mother had taken her to the US without his knowledge and separated herself from her other children, whom she left behind.
53. June 22, 2018 MSNBC personality mistakenly stated that Trump had “banned” the Red Cross from visiting children separated from illegal immigrant parents.
54. June 28, 2018 After a newsroom shooting, a newspaper reporter falsely tweeted that the shooter “dropped his [Trump Make America Great Again] hat on newsroom floor before opening fire.”
55. July 10, 2018 NBC reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell reported that outgoing Supreme Court Justice Kennedy only retired after months of negotiations with Trump that concluded with Trump agreeing to replace Kennedy with Judge Kavanaugh.
Support Sharyl Attkisson’s fight against government overreach in Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI for the government computer intrusions. For more info visit: https://www.gofundme.com/sharyl-attkisson-4th-am-litigation
56. July 16, 2018 Washington Post reporter implied Trump doesn’t understand NATO countries. In fact, Trump met with the Finnish President at the NATO summit. Further, Finland is a NATO partner, just not a member.
57. Sept. 14, 2018 The New York Times issues a major correction (below) to an original “unfair” article about U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
58. Tues. Sept. 18, 2018 The New York Times falsely reported that a man, Mark Judge, testified he remembered an incident more than 30 year ago in which Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is accused of assault. Judge actually said the opposite: he does not remember such an incident, and that the allegations are “absolutely nuts.” The Times corrected its article in an editors’ note.
59. Sept. 23, 2018 Multiple news outlets report that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein has resigned or been fired. Neither turns out to be true. Axios and others eventually “update” and “clarify” their erroneous reports.
60. Oct. 14, 2018 NBC News falsely reports that President Trump praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Actually, Trump had praised the Union General Ulysses S. Grant.
61. Nov. 14, 2018 CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reports that President Trump has decided to fire a deputy national security adviser upon the First Lady’s demand. The Wall Street Journal reports the adviser has been “escorted out” of the White House. Later, it’s reported that neither case was true. “This did not happen. She is still here at the WH,” a senior official told the press. The adviser was reassigned to another job.
62. Dec. 24, 2018 It’s discovered that nearly everything written by a Der Spiegel reporter, who had been honored by CNN, about a supposedly racist Trump stronghold town was fabricated–like much of his other work.
Consider supporting the landmark Attkisson v. DOJ/FBI computer intrusion lawsuit: Attkisson 4th Amendment Litigation Fund 63. Dec. 26, 2018 NBC reports that Trump was the first President since 2002 not to visit the troops at Christmastime. But he (and First Lady Melania) did. NBC added a note to its story but left the false headline in place.
64. Jan. 1, 2019 CBS News claimed, in June of 2018, that Trump spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders would retire by the end of the year. She didn’t. As of May 2019, she was still on the job and there had been no correction or editor’s note. The same CBS story also quoted sources as saying the departure of White House assistant Raj Shah was also imminent. It wasn’t. Shah continued to serve seven more months.
65. Jan. 9, 2019 The New York Times issues a correction to a report that falsely stated former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort asked for campaign polling to be given to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who has ties to Russia President Putin. Instead, the Times now claims, Manafort actually asked his associate Rick Gates to give polling data to Ukrainian oligarchs –not Deripaska.
While working at Politico, one of the New York Times reporters, Ken Vogel, got caught sending drafts of stories to democratic officials. Another co-author, Maggie Haberman, was considered a “friendly” by Clinton campaign officials who turned to her when she worked at Politico.
“We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. We can do the most shaping by going to Maggie,” wrote Clinton officials in emails.
66. Jan. 11, 2019 Fox TV affiliate in Seattle, Washington airs fake, doctored video of President Trump that altered his face and made it appear as though he had stuck his tongue in and out while giving an Oval Office address.
67. Jan. 18, 2019 The Buzzfeed exclusive with anonymous sources implicating Trump in potentially criminal behavior (that Democrats and pundits said would be the nail in Trump’s impeachment coffin) is refuted in a rare rebuke from Special Counsel Mueller’s office. Buzzfeed stands by its reporting.
Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkisson’s work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.
68. Jan. 22, 2019 The New York Times and Washington Post are among the publications that issue corrections after falsely reporting that an anti-Trump activist had served in the Vietnam War.
Additionally, multiple news employees, including a CNN employee, apologize for mischaracterizing as the aggressors Trump-supporting teenagers at a pro-life rally.
69. Jan. 26, 2019 The UK Telegraph apologizes for all the facts it got wrong in a Jan. 19 article criticizing the First Lady.
Fight government overreach and double-standard justice by supporting the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund for Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI for the government computer intrusions. Click here.
70. Feb. 18, 2019 While some media outlets responsibly reported and properly attributed allegations in the racist attack alleged by actor Jussie Smollett, others did not. Some unskeptically furthered the narrative that Smollett, who is black, was attacked by Trump-supporting racists who put a noose around Smollett’s neck, shouted racial slurs, told him it’s “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) country, and poured bleach on him. While details are still emerging as of this date, Chicago police have stated that Smollett is no longer considered a victim of the crimes he alleged. The New York Times receives special mention here for adding a biased non sequitur in its early reporting that treated skepticism of Smollett’s story as if it were unfounded, and fit in a dig at President Trump’s son.
But the lack of progress in the investigation has fueled speculation about whether the report was exaggerated. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr., who is known to disseminate conspiracy theories on his Twitter feed, retweeted an article this week about Smollett declining to turn over his cellphone to the police.
71. Various dates: Other faked attacks reported by the news as if confirmed A week before Trump was elected, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Mississippi was torched and the words “Vote Trump” found painted on the outside. The mayor condemned the incident as a hate crime and stated it was “an attack on the black church and the black community.” However, police later arrested a black church member for the arson. They say the man staged the fire to look like an attack by Trump supporters. Even today, some of the corrected news reports retain headlines seeming to blame Trump. The day after Trump was elected, an incident at Elon University in North Carolina made national news. Hispanic students found a “hateful note” written on a classroom whiteboard reading, “Bye Bye Latinos.” After the story made news, it was learned that the message was written by “a Latino student who was upset about the results of the election.” Also the day after Trump was elected, a gay man — reportedly a filmmaker — claimed that homophobic Trump supporters smashed his face with a bottle outside a bar in Santa Monica, Calif. A bloody photo was posted on Twitter, and he was said to have been treated at a local hospital. Police investigated the media reports. They said no complaint was ever filed, there was no evidence of a crime, and a check of local hospitals showed no victim in such an incident. The week after Trump’s election, a Muslim student at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, claimed Trump supporters pulled off her head covering, and assaulted and robbed her. She later admitted fabricatingthe story. A month after Trump’s election, a Muslim-American woman claimed Trump supporters tried to steal her headwear and harassed her on the New York City subway. She ultimately was arrested after confessing she made up the whole story. 72. Feb. 26, 2019 It’s as good a day as any to point out that The Washington Post and others reported last November that Trump was imminently about to fire DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The Post confirmed this with five anonymous sources. The firing was said to be likely to happen the following week.
Nielsen remained on the job for five more months before resigning.
73. Feb. 27, 2019 Testimony by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen seemed to put the final nail in the coffin of the “dossier” claim reported by many— that Cohen had visited Prague to meet with Russians to help collude on Trump’s behalf. Cohen told Congress he’s never been to Prague or the Czech Republic, for that matter. McClatchy even reported that Cohen’s cell phone had pinged off Prague towers. Where did this apparently false information come from? “Four people spoke with McClatchy on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of information shared by their foreign intelligence connections. Each obtained their information independently from foreign intelligence connections,” reported McClatchy.
74. March 1, 2019 The Washington Post deleted a tweet containing false reporting about a January 19 incident regarding a standoff between Trump-supporting pro-life Catholic high school students and a pro-choice Native American activist. The Post wrongly stated, without attribution, that the activist had fought in the Vietnam War. The activist also falsely stated that a high school student had blocked him and “wouldn’t allow him to retreat.” These events were later called into question, and the Washington Post is being sued in a multi-million dollar libel suit over its allegedly false reporting and misrepresentations. The Post also posted an “editor’s note” on this date stating that “a more complete assessment” of the incident contradicted or failed to confirm accounts as originally reported, including that a particular student was trying to instigate a conflict.
75. Various dates Multiple reporters and media outlets have provided false information and/or quoted incorrect anonymous sources as to the timing of the release of Special Counsel Mueller’s report on Trump-Russia collusion. The Washington Post said it would be out in summer of 2018. Bloomberg said it would be shortly after the 2018 Midterm elections. In February 2019, CNN, The Washington Post and NBC reported the report was coming the last week of February. However, it was not announced at that time.
The release of the Mueller report in April 2019 belies countless news stories over more than two years. The report does not find collusion between Trump and Russia President Putin and also concludes there’s no evidence that any American conspired or coordinated with any Russian. The many who claimed there was hard evidence of collusion in hand proved to be wrong, yet there is no record of media apologies and corrections on these points.
76. May 29, 2019 The Wall Street Journal reports the Navy used a “tarp” to cover the name of the U.S.S. John S. McCain so that President Trump wouldn’t see it on his recent visit to Yokosuka, Japan. (The late Sen. John McCain frequently attacked Trump and cast a deciding vote contrary to McCain’s campaign promise to repeal Obamacare. Trump also attacked McCain and derided McCain’s performance as a soldier in Vietnam where McCain was held as a Prisoner of War.)
After the tarp news is reported, reporters quote McCain’s daughter attacking Trump as if he had given the orders to cover the name.
It is further reported that the U.S.S. John McCain was kept out of Trump’s view, and that sailors wearing hats with the ship’s name on it were turned away and/or given the day off so that Trump would not see the McCain name.
However, shortly after these news reports, key parts of the storyline began to fall apart.
The one grain of truth appeared to be that, in advance of Trump’s trip, a military official sent an email directing that the U.S.S. McCain be kept from Trump’s view. However, importantly, that direction was not followed. Further, Trump and White House aides indicated Trump played no role and was unaware of the direction.
Significantly, military officials stated that it was untrue that a tarp was placed over the ship’s name to block it from Trump’s view. They say it was the other way around: a tarp on the ship for maintenance was removed for Trump’s visit.
Further, U.S. officials said a paint barge in front of the U.S.S. John S. McCain was ordered to be moved for Trump’s visit and was gone by the time he arrived.
The tarpaulin was used as part of hull preservation work on the McCain and was removed on Saturday, two days before Trump delivered a Memorial Day address at U.S. Naval Base Yokosuka, where the McCain was stationed. All ships remained in normal configuration during [the President’s visit.
Cmdr. Nate Christensen, spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet, to NBC News Though the main components of the Wall Street Journal story appeared to have been debunked, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman oddly tweeted out a statement that the Times had confirmed the Wall Street Journal’s “excellent scoop.”
The main part of the story that the Times seemed to have confirmed was that unnamed White House officials were concerned about Trump seeing the McCain name and that sailors wearing ball caps that sported the ship’s insignia were turned away.
However, CBS News pointed out that “it is possible the reason they were turned away is that ball caps were not part of the dress code for the event.”
U.S. officials said about 800 sailors from more than 20 ships and Navy commands were present for the president’s visit and “all wore the same Navy hat that has no logo, rather than wearing individual ship or command hats.”
Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI
77. July 4, 2019 Several news outlets seemed to be victimized by a bad case of wishful thinking when they reported that President Trump’s Fourth of July celebration did not draw crowds. One analysis incorrectly claimed there were “small crowds.”
The Guardian featured a photo of an empty podium in Washington D.C. prior to the celebration and claimed the White House was “struggling” to draw crowds.
However, by any factual assessment, the crowds were, in fact, huge. That’s in spite of the bad weather.
78. January 2019 In January, New York Times, Vice and others reported on the “lost” immigrant children of the Trump administration. However, AP and other fact checks stated this was a misleading term. According to AP, the “lost” children were a matter of the government not being able to track them once placed with sponsors. In some cases this was because the sponsors– many in the U.S. illegally– would not respond to the government’s follow up phone calls.
It’s not highly unusual to fail to keep track of many minors who came unaccompanied to the border. During the last year of the Obama administration, HHS was able to locate 85 percent of the minors or their sponsors, according to an inspector general’s report. The Trump administration slightly exceeded that success rate in the last three months of 2017, even as it is accused of losing children.
79. July 13, 2019 In a story about a lawsuit alleging that candidate Trump forcibly kissed a campaign worker, CNN failed to mention that that lawsuit had been dismissed. It later corrected its story to include the information.
80. July 21, 2019 Many in the media uncritically report a Georgia State legislator’s racist and false claim that a “white” man at a grocery store told her to “go back where you came from.”
Media reports link the supposed hateful comment to President Trump because Trump recently said several Democrats in Congress should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
However, the following day, the legislator acknowledges the man did not say she should “go back to your country” or “go back to where you came from,” as she originally claimed. She goes on to say she told him to “go back.” The man adds he is not white, but a Cuban and a Democrat.
I know I told him to ‘go back.’
Rep. Erica Thomas, Georgia, a day after her original accusations After the legislator changes her story, the local news plays up the headline that the man “admits he swore,” rather than the far more important acknowledgement that her major claim was false. (See around 2:05 in the video near the end of the story.)
Even after the legislator retracted her original accusation, it remained widely published in national headlines and news reports.
81. July 21, 2019 An MSNBC contributor and law professor falsely tweets that Fox is not going to show upcoming Congressional testimony by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Trump-Russia investigation. When the error is pointed out, the contributor says she was just kidding and deletes her tweet–but not before it has been “liked” and “retweeted” thousands of times.
82. Aug. 2019 Multiple news outlets including CNN and MSNBC falsely reported that an illegal immigrant had her nursing baby ripped from her arms. The mother was not lactating, CNN later acknowledged.
83. Aug. 28, 2019 MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell apologizes for and retracts anonymous, unverified claims stating that Trump had loans with Russian co-signers. At last view, it appeared that far more people had seen or remarked on the initial information than the apology.
The now-deleted original tweet by O’Donnell stated: “A source close to Deutsche Bank says Trump’s tax returns show he pays very little income tax and, more importantly, that his loans have Russian co-signers. If true, that explains every kind word Trump has ever said about Russia and Putin.”
Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.
84. Aug. 28, 2019 Ken Dilinian of NBC News corrects a false report he and others disseminated claiming that starting October 29, “children born to U.S. service members outside of the U.S. will no longer be automatically considered citizens. Parents will have to apply for citizenship for their the [sic] children in those situations.”
Correction: Experts who have looked at new USCIS policy say it applies if a service member adopts a child overseas, but children born to service members on deployment would still automatically get citizenship. I deleted tweets with the incorrect info. https://t.co/xeu8I3zrkJ
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) August 28, 2019 85. Sept. 7, 2019 CNN and nearly every major media outlet criticized President Trump for tweeting that Alabama would likely be impacted by Hurricane Dorian. They claimed that was never the case. However, Trump was correct that multiple official hurricane advisories had put Alabama in a projected impacted area.
Watch for yourself.
There is no record of any corrections to these incorrect news stories. In fact, there are multiple follow ups repeating the false claims that Alabama was never in a projected path, and doubling down on the claim that Trump was inaccurate.
Rather than admit an error, some news outlets skirted the issue, parsing probabilities, “would” vs. “could,” the National Weather Service vs. the National Hurricane Center, and whether tropical storm force winds really qualify as hurricane effects.
86. Sept. 10, 2019 Citing anonymous sources, CNN and the New York Times reported— and other media repeated– claims that the CIA had to remove a top U.S. spy from Russia in 2017 because of concern over President Trump’s handling of classified information.
The CIA, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the White House strongly refuted the story. Other media, including The New York Times and Washington Post, also contradicted CNN and reported the decision to remove the spy happened before CNN said it did and for different reasons.
[CNN’s] reporting is not only incorrect, it has the potential to put lives in danger.
Stephanie Grisham, White House press secretary CNN’s narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false…Misguided speculation that the President’s handling of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence — which he has access to each and every day — drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate.
Brittany Bramell, CIA Director for Public Affairs The reporting is materially inaccurate… as a former CIA director, I don’t talk about things like this very often — it is only the occasions that I think put people at risk, when the reporting is so egregious as to create enormous risks to the United States of America, that I even comment the way I just did.
Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State At least some of the original stories remained posted a day later without correction, clarification or updating to include CIA’s refutation.
87. Sept. 16, 2019 The New York Times publishes an editor’s note about its recent story recounting a newly-reported accusation about an incident decades ago involving Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The editor’s note discloses for the first time that the Times never spoke to the alleged victim, and that the alleged victim had told friends she had no recollection of any such event. The Times reporters explained that that information had mistakenly been edited out of the story.
88. July 24, 2019 In testimony to Congress, special counsel Robert Mueller puts to final rest the widespread reporting in 2016 originating with Slate.com that claimed a Russian bank server had been illicitly communicating with Trump Tower. When asked about it by a member of Congress, Mueller replied that “my belief at this point is…not true.”
89. July 29, 2019 Vox.com’s Aaron Rupar tweeted that Trump suggested he was a “9/11 First Responder.” In fact, Trump stated the opposite: “I’m not considering myself a first responder.”
90. Sept. 25, 2019 The Washington Post, quoting anonymous sources, reported that President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence threatened to quit over an alleged whistleblower issue.
However, DNI Joseph Maguire issues a statement indicating the Post article was entirely false. “At no time have I considered resigning my position since assuming this role,” wrote Maguire in a statement.
91. Sept. 25, 2019 The Daily Beast and other media outlets reported that President Trump asked the President of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, eight times in one phone call.
However, the released transcript notes reveal Trump mentioned Biden’s son (not by name) one time. However, many in the media claimed the “eight times” allegation was really true because they counted each phrase in which Trump referred to possible corruption or the need for some sort of investigation.
(There are other areas of possible mistaken reporting regarding the same phone call, but they are generally subject to interpretation.)
92. Sept. 29, 2019 CBS News’s 60 Minutes reports “the government whistleblower who set off the impeachment inquiry of President Trump is under federal protection because they fear for their safety.”
Shortly after that report, the attorney for the unnamed “whistleblower,” Mark Zaid, tweeted out a statement that read: “NEWS ALERT: 60 Minutes completely misinterpreted contents of our letter.” (Sixty Minutes says it stands by the Scott Pelley report.)
93. Sept. 30, 2019 When a black girl claims white boys at school held her down, cut off her hair and called her “nappy” and “ugly,” the story makes national news. Multiple news outlets improperly report some details as if they are established as true, without proper attribution. For example, NBC writes, “The attack happened Monday…” and “The second boy grabbed her arms, while the third cut off some of her dreadlocks.” A local NBC affiliate writes: “…she was at recess and about to go down a slide when one of the boys grabbed her and put a hand over her mouth. Another boy grabbed her arms. A third boy cut off some of her hair.” CBS writes, “The incident took place…” (as if an incident had been factually established rather than was an allegation).
Many news reports also connect the attack to President Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence, by stating that the “attack” happened at “a Christian school in Virginia where Vice President Mike Pence’s wife works.”
However, it turns out there was no attack or “incident.” Three days after the initial reports, the child’s family reported the whole story was made up, and they apologized.
94. Oct. 13, 2019 ABC airs video purportedly showing a “slaughter” and “horrific report of atrocities” against Kurds by Turkey after President Trump withdrew U.S. troops. (The video is allegedly not combat video at all.)
CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight" Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 14, 2019 95. Oct. 16, 2019 Many major news outlets including Yahoo, USA Today, Roll Call, NBC, ABC and Fox quotes President Trump as saying Turkey’s invasion of Syria “is not our problem.” In a subsequent correction, NBC and others said, Trump actually said “it’s not our border.” However, hours after NBC’s correction, the initial allegedly false quote remains on Yahoo, USA Today, Fox, Roll Call, the Washington Times and other news sites.
96. Sun. Oct. 27, 2019 Multiple media claims state that President Trump was golfing during the U.S. raid in Syria that captured the head of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS, al-Baghdadi; and that a White House situation room photo had been “staged.” It turns out, according to later reports, that Trump had finished golfing and was at the White House during the operation. (Obama White House photographer Pete Souza had apparently originally tweeted out incorrect information on timing.)
97. Nov. 16, 2019 Rampant speculation ensues after a contributor to The Hill claims President Trump visited Walter Reed National Medical Center due to chest discomfort. A White House statement from Trump’s physician issued two days later stated that was not the case.
“Despite some of the speculation, the President has not had any chest pain, nor was he evaluated or treated or any urgent or acute issues. Specifically, he did not undergo any specialized cardiac or neurologic evaluations,” the president’s physician stated.
98. Nov. 19, 2019 London’s Daily Mail posts a sensational headline during the impeachment hearings against President Trump. It claims that a key witness, Ambassador Kurt Volker, had “walked back” his testimony in a way that was detrimental to Trump. When Volker was asked, in real time at the hearing, if the Daily Mail headline was correct and he had, indeed, changed his testimony, Volker stated that no. The headline was wrong.
99. Nov. 19, 2019 Agence France Press publishes a sensational story saying that more than 100,000 children are being held in migration-related detention in the U.S. under President Trump. It turns out that was the number in 2015 under President Obama.
AFP is withdrawing this story.
The author of the report has clarified that his figures do not represent the number of children currently in migration-related US detention, but the total number of children in migration-related US detention in 2015.
We will delete the story. https://t.co/p30UjEWl7u
— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 19, 2019 100. Nov. 28, 2019 Newsweek falsely reports that President Trump is spending Thanksgiving golfing in Florida at his Mar-a-Lago Resort. He was actually in Afghanistan serving dinner to U.S. troops. It’s the second year in a row that national media makes the same mistake. (The reporter, Jessica Kwong, was reportedly later fired.)
Trump headed to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops on Thanksgiving https://t.co/f7Xeqz1ZGQ Deleting this tweet because it was written before knowing about the president’s surprise visit to Afghanistan-an honest mistake. Story has already been updated, as shown in the screenshot. pic.twitter.com/g9CfPaV2kQ
— Jessica Kwong (@JessicaGKwong) November 29, 2019 101. Nov. 24, 2019 It turns out the same Newsweek reporter, Kwong, reported an allegedly misleading story the week before about President Trump’s tipping implying he’d been cheap.
Newsweek later updated the story to remove the headline reference to a “thin stack of cash” and include that it was 100 dollar bills, and above and beyond what Trump had already tipped the servers.
102. Dec. 3, 2019 (Allegation) Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) files a $435 million defamation lawsuit against CNN over a Nov. 23 CNN story that claimed Nunes had flown to Vienna, Austria in December 2018 to meet with a former Ukrainian prosecutor in to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Nunes says at the time CNN claimed he was in Vienna, he was actually in Benghazi, Libya and Malta for meetings; and Nunes produced photographs he says proves that. Additionally, he says he has never met with the named former Ukrainian prosecutor in Vienna or anywhere else.
(If evidence ultimately shows CNN was correct and Nunes is incorrect, this post will be updated and removed from the count.)
103. Dec. 9, 2019 It would be difficult if not impossible from a practical standpoint to list the thousands of the media reports, from the New York Times to CNN, that have now been proven false by information documented in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s misbehavior in investigating the Trump campaign.
Here, they will all be grouped together as one media mistake, but include nearly every major national media outlet that falsely reported, as if fact, that the discredited Democrat-funded “dossier” — submitted by the FBI to get a wiretap to spy on Trump associate Carter Page — was only a “small part” of the wiretap application. Also, the reports that Page was a Russian spy and the conduit between Trump and Putin. Also, the many insistences that Trump was a “Putin stooge” and coordinating with Putin or Russia, when the FBI’s own evidence now shows they never found anything remotely close to that. In fact, they appeared to disprove it.
104. Jan. 31, 2018 (Out of chronological order because it just came to my attention.)
Media reports in Dec. 2017 claimed the Trump administration banned officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using seven words.
In response, doctors posted photos of themselves with tape over their mouths.
It turns out documents showed there was “not a ban or prohibition on words but rather suggestions on how to improve the chances of getting funding.”
105. Dec. 25, 2019 (Allegation) An unusually unequivocal denial of a Wall Street Journal report come from the Trump administration. Trump officials say the anonymously-sourced report is “total false, untrue and baseless. It did not happen.”
If information comes to light that proves the Wall Street Journal source was accurate at the time, this post will be updated to reflect that.
106. Dec. 16, 2019 The news media widely misreport that the report by Dept. of Justice Inspector General Horowitz found “no political bias” in the Russia probe. As Horowitz made clear in his Congressional testimony, that is false.
Instead, Horowitz gave a limited, qualified opinion about a narrow part of the opening of the investigation, stating he could not find documentary or testimonial evidence that the serious political bias of various FBI officials impacted the original decision to open the probe into Trump campaign-related Americans.
Horowitz explicitly acknowledged that various FBI officials involved in the probe, including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had political bias against Trump.
He also stated, in Congressional testimony, that Christopher Steele, the political opposition researcher hired by the Clinton campaign to provide the anti-Trump “dossier” to the FBI, had political bias.
And he stated that it’s possible political bias was behind other inexplicable and egregious errors the FBI made during the probe, which he did not say was free of bias. Those matters, Horowitz testified, have been referred to the criminal probe and to the FBI to handle.
107. Aug. 5, 2019 (Out of chronological order because it just came to my attention.)
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace falsely claims that President Trump had talked about “exterminating Latinos.” She apologized the next day.
Title: Brokaw and Richard Jewell
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 26, 2019, 02:23:43 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 26, 2019, 02:36:08 PM
" .“NBC made a substantial $ payment to the family without going through contentious negotiaton,” he added. “Richard and his mother went through a painful time which I deeply regret. I hope we all learned a lesson, including the FBI which was my principal source.”
Well obviously NBC or the FBI did not learn any lessons.
but the rest of his points are appreciated.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on December 27, 2019, 06:44:40 AM
Richard Jewell died in 2007. I didn't catch the part where the media apologize to his face.
Unfortunately, fake news is real. How long does 'Russian spy' Carter page have to live in order to get his good name back? Decades after Richard Jewell, they had no shame spreading the tales of Christopher Steele, that never passed the smell test.
Title: POTP on Maddow and the Dossier
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 27, 2019, 12:54:26 PM
This is the sort of reflection the media should be doing: how did they fall for such an obvious bag of bulllshit, and why did they get it all so wrong?
Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart.
Erik Wemple Media critic Dec. 26, 2019 at 8:43 a.m. PST
Fifth in a series on the media’s handling of the Steele dossier. See Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.
In March 2017, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow invited Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) onto her show to talk Russia. She noted that in a House hearing, Schiff had cited the 35-page dossier of memorandums compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Ever since that document had burst into national politics — and surfaced on the BuzzFeed website in January 2017 — Maddow had closely monitored its reception.
Each time she addressed the dossier, she was careful to alert viewers that it was unverified. But she had espied some developments that appeared to support the dossier’s nitty-gritty. So she asked Schiff: “When you cited … that dossier, should we stop describing that as an uncorroborated dossier? Has some of the information of that been corroborated?”
Schiff sidestepped the question.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not. Over a nearly two-year investigation released on Dec. 9, Horowitz and a team of investigators reviewed at least a million records, interviewed more than 100 individuals and otherwise probed the actions of the FBI and the Justice Department in the Russia investigation. In so doing, they reached an answer to Maddow’s question.
Claims in the 35-page dossier fell into three pails, according to the report: “The FBI concluded, among other things, that although consistent with known efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections, much of the material in the Steele election reports, including allegations about Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location and title information, much of which was publicly available.”
The Horowitz team didn’t attempt an independent fact-check of the dossier, opting instead to report what the FBI had concluded about the document. Unflattering revelations pop up at every turn in the 400-page-plus report. It reveals that the CIA considered it a hodgepodge of “internet rumor”; that the FBI considered one of its central allegations — that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague for a collusive meeting with Russians — “not true”; that Steele’s sources weren’t quite a crack international spy team. After the 2016 election, for instance, Steele directed his primary source to seek corroboration of the claims. “According to [an FBI official], during an interview in May 2017, the Primary Sub-source said the corroboration was ‘zero,’” reads the report. The ubiquity of Horowitz’s debunking passages suggests that he wanted the public to come away with the impression that the dossier was a flabby, hasty, precipitous, conclusory charade of a document. Viewers of certain MSNBC fare were surely blindsided by the news, if they ever even heard it.
Name a host on cable news who has dug more deeply into Trump-Russia than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. She’s read hundreds, maybe thousands, of court filings; she’s read the plume of literature on Russia-Trump; and she’s out with a new book on the bane of petro-states: “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth.”
As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a clearinghouse for news increments regarding the dossier. Just days after BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, she reported on the frustration of congressional Democrats with then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who was declining to divulge whether his people had opened an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
Director Comey refused to answer my question about whether the FBI has investigated Trump campaign contacts with Russia — Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 10, 2017
Sorting through the silence from the FBI and the unverified claims in the dossier, Maddow riffed on her Jan. 13, 2017, program: “I mean, had the FBI looked into what was in that dossier and found that it was all patently false, they could tell us that now, right?” said Maddow. “I mean, the dossier has now been publicly released. If the FBI looked into it and they found it was all trash, there’s no reason they can’t tell us that now. They’re not telling us that now. They’re not saying that. They’re not saying anything.”
That line of analysis has gained some important context via the Horowitz report. The FBI did, in fact, find “potentially serious problems” with Steele’s reporting as early as January 2017. A source review in March 2017 “did not make any findings that would have altered that judgment.”
It was dossier season, in any case, for Maddow.
In March 2017, the host glommed onto recent reporting by CNN and the New Yorker to the effect that U.S. authorities had confirmed that “some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier,” according to CNN. The New Yorker wrote that U.S. intelligence had confirmed “some of its less explosive claims, relating to conversations with foreign nationals.” The “baseline” claim of the dossier — that the Trump campaign and Russia participated in a towering election conspiracy — hadn’t yet borne out, conceded Maddow. “But even if that is as yet in itself uncorroborated and undocumented,” she said, “all the supporting details are checking out, even the really outrageous ones. A lot of them are starting to bear out under scrutiny. It seems like a new one each passing day.”
So it went. Here’s a timeline:
On May 3, 2017, Maddow cited a CNN report that “parts of this dossier passed muster even in federal court when the dossier was used in part to justify a secret FISA court warrant for U.S. surveillance on a Trump campaign adviser.” Thanks to Horowitz, we now know that officials misused the dossier in this process, failing to disclose to the FISA court dossier-debunking information. Never place blind faith in the FBI!
“The Republican claim today was that the dossier has been increasingly discredited. That’s not true in terms of the public record about the dossier. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. As time goes on, more and more pieces do get independently corroborated,” Maddow said.
On Aug. 23, 2017, Maddow said: “[Even] though the White House and people from the Trump campaign and the Trump administration keep denouncing it as like this dodgy dossier, reporters routinely talk about it as unverified and uncorroborated. You know what? That’s less and less true all the time.” The comment followed a Senate Judiciary Committee interview with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, the research firm that engaged Steele to compile the dossier.
On Oct. 5, 2017, Maddow said that Steele had “a lot” of the dossier “dead to rights.”
On Dec. 8, 2017, Maddow aired a special report on the dossier. “Above all else, we know this about the now famous dossier: Christopher Steele had this story before the rest of America did. And he got it from Russian sources,” said the host, who used the term “deep cover sources” to describe Steele’s network. According to the Horowitz report, the “Primary Sub-source” for the dossier told the FBI that the information he/she passed along amounted to “word of mouth and hearsay.”
On April 16, 2018, Maddow cited the McClatchy story by Greg Gordon and Peter Stone that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had evidence that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague in 2016. The scoop would appear to have supported a key claim in the dossier that Cohen made the trip to meet with Russians for collusive purposes. According to the Horowitz report, the FBI determined that the claim about Cohen’s travels was “not true.”
On Oct. 17, 2018, Maddow played a clip of then-Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge posing questions to Joshua Levy, counsel to Fusion GPS and its co-founders. Pressed on whether the dossier had been substantiated, Levy responded, in part: “The central thesis to the first memo Mr. Steele wrote said that the Russians were helping President Trump win the presidency and give him information to win the presidency. The U.S. intelligence community has since found that that was the case.”
The release of the Mueller report in April provided a kick in the derriere for backers of the dossier. As Glenn Kessler pointed out in The Post, the central allegation of the dossier — an “extensive conspiracy between campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels and involving Russian diplomatic staff based in the US” as well as an "Agreed exchange of information established in both directions” — found no corroboration from Mueller’s investigation, even though the special counsel’s team was charged with probing just this matter.
Several days after the Mueller report emerged, Maddow addressed not the dissonance between Mueller and the dossier, but a point of possible corroboration. In perhaps its most famous allegation, the dossier claimed that Trump had rented a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow and “employed” prostitutes to perform a perverted ritual for him. It suggested that there were tapes of the show, the better to amass kompromat against Trump.
A footnote in the Mueller report, noted Maddow, bore a possible connection to this part of the dossier. It turned out that Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze had sent a text message to Cohen on Oct. 30, 2016, saying, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…” Those tapes were “compromising,” Rtskhiladze told the special counsel. However, he also said “he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.”
Seizing on the revelations, Maddow commented: “[According] to Mueller, Cohen then told Trump about that before the election. So that means Trump knew that somewhere in the former Soviet Union, a business buddy of his had taken action to make sure tapes, supposedly from Trump’s trip to Russia, those tapes weren’t getting out. Don’t worry, all taken care of. I took care of that for you, right?” she said.
With that, the dossier ceased performing its role as a central character on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” On the day Horowitz released his punishing report — with all its assertions about the dossier’s dubiety — Maddow chose not to focus on the integrity of the document that she’d once claimed was accumulating credibility on a nearly daily basis. She said this: “The inspector general debunks that there was any anti-Trump political bias motivating these decisions. They debunked the idea that the Christopher Steele dossier of opposition research against Trump was the basis for opening the FBI’s Russia investigation. It absolutely was not, and ‘Oh, by the way, no, there was no spying on the Trump campaign.’”
All legitimate points. Conspiracists including Fox News host Sean Hannity had indeed argued that the dossier triggered Crossfire Hurricane. But as the New York Times first reported in late 2017, the precipitating circumstance was intelligence from Australia indicating that a Trump campaign adviser had claimed Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
Since that Dec. 9 mention, the dossier has gone in hiding from “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Perhaps a full inventory of the dossier has yielded to coverage of President Trump’s impeachment — clearly a humongous story.
The case for Maddow is that her dossier coverage stemmed from public documents, congressional proceedings and published reports from outlets with solid investigative histories. She included warnings about the unverified assertions and didn’t use the dossier as a source for wild claims. There is something fishy, furthermore, about that Mueller footnote regarding the “tapes.” In their recent book on the dossier, “Crime in Progress,” the Fusion GPS co-founders wrote that Steele believes the document is 70-percent accurate.
The case against Maddow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document.
And when large bits of news arose against the dossier, Maddow found other topics more compelling.
She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry. In an October edition of the podcast “Skullduggery,” Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News pressed Maddow on her show’s approach to Russia. Here’s a key exchange:
Isikoff: Do you accept that there are times that you overstated what the evidence was and you made claims and suggestions that Trump was totally in Vladimir Putin’s pocket and they had something on him and that he was perhaps a Russian asset and we can’t really conclude that?
Maddow: What have I claimed that’s been disproven?
Isikoff: Well, you’ve given a lot of credence to the Steele dossier.
Maddow: I have?
Isikoff: Well, you’ve talked about it quite a bit, I mean, you’ve suggested it.
Maddow: I feel like you’re arguing about impressions of me, rather than actually basing this on something you’ve seen or heard me do.
After some back and forth about particulars of the Mueller report and the dossier with Isikoff, Maddow ripped:
“You’re trying to litigate the Steele dossier through me as if I am the embodiment of the Steele dossier, which I think is creepy, and I think it’s unwarranted. And it’s not like I’ve been making the case for the accuracy of the Steele dossier and that’s been the basis of my Russia reporting. That’s just not true.”
Asked to comment on how she approached the dossier, Maddow declined to provide an on-the-record response to the Erik Wemple Blog
Title: Wow Isikoff
Post by: ccp on December 27, 2019, 02:03:46 PM
standing up to Mad Cow. (sort of)
and he is no Republican by any stretch of any imagination
Title: Re: POTP on Maddow and the Dossier
Post by: G M on December 27, 2019, 05:33:44 PM
They didn't fall for anything. They helped build it.
This is the sort of reflection the media should be doing: how did they fall for such an obvious bag of bulllshit, and why did they get it all so wrong?
Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart.
Erik Wemple Media critic Dec. 26, 2019 at 8:43 a.m. PST
Fifth in a series on the media’s handling of the Steele dossier. See Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.
In March 2017, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow invited Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) onto her show to talk Russia. She noted that in a House hearing, Schiff had cited the 35-page dossier of memorandums compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Ever since that document had burst into national politics — and surfaced on the BuzzFeed website in January 2017 — Maddow had closely monitored its reception.
Each time she addressed the dossier, she was careful to alert viewers that it was unverified. But she had espied some developments that appeared to support the dossier’s nitty-gritty. So she asked Schiff: “When you cited … that dossier, should we stop describing that as an uncorroborated dossier? Has some of the information of that been corroborated?”
Schiff sidestepped the question.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not. Over a nearly two-year investigation released on Dec. 9, Horowitz and a team of investigators reviewed at least a million records, interviewed more than 100 individuals and otherwise probed the actions of the FBI and the Justice Department in the Russia investigation. In so doing, they reached an answer to Maddow’s question.
Claims in the 35-page dossier fell into three pails, according to the report: “The FBI concluded, among other things, that although consistent with known efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections, much of the material in the Steele election reports, including allegations about Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location and title information, much of which was publicly available.”
The Horowitz team didn’t attempt an independent fact-check of the dossier, opting instead to report what the FBI had concluded about the document. Unflattering revelations pop up at every turn in the 400-page-plus report. It reveals that the CIA considered it a hodgepodge of “internet rumor”; that the FBI considered one of its central allegations — that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague for a collusive meeting with Russians — “not true”; that Steele’s sources weren’t quite a crack international spy team. After the 2016 election, for instance, Steele directed his primary source to seek corroboration of the claims. “According to [an FBI official], during an interview in May 2017, the Primary Sub-source said the corroboration was ‘zero,’” reads the report. The ubiquity of Horowitz’s debunking passages suggests that he wanted the public to come away with the impression that the dossier was a flabby, hasty, precipitous, conclusory charade of a document. Viewers of certain MSNBC fare were surely blindsided by the news, if they ever even heard it.
Name a host on cable news who has dug more deeply into Trump-Russia than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. She’s read hundreds, maybe thousands, of court filings; she’s read the plume of literature on Russia-Trump; and she’s out with a new book on the bane of petro-states: “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth.”
As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a clearinghouse for news increments regarding the dossier. Just days after BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, she reported on the frustration of congressional Democrats with then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who was declining to divulge whether his people had opened an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
Director Comey refused to answer my question about whether the FBI has investigated Trump campaign contacts with Russia — Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 10, 2017
Sorting through the silence from the FBI and the unverified claims in the dossier, Maddow riffed on her Jan. 13, 2017, program: “I mean, had the FBI looked into what was in that dossier and found that it was all patently false, they could tell us that now, right?” said Maddow. “I mean, the dossier has now been publicly released. If the FBI looked into it and they found it was all trash, there’s no reason they can’t tell us that now. They’re not telling us that now. They’re not saying that. They’re not saying anything.”
That line of analysis has gained some important context via the Horowitz report. The FBI did, in fact, find “potentially serious problems” with Steele’s reporting as early as January 2017. A source review in March 2017 “did not make any findings that would have altered that judgment.”
It was dossier season, in any case, for Maddow.
In March 2017, the host glommed onto recent reporting by CNN and the New Yorker to the effect that U.S. authorities had confirmed that “some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier,” according to CNN. The New Yorker wrote that U.S. intelligence had confirmed “some of its less explosive claims, relating to conversations with foreign nationals.” The “baseline” claim of the dossier — that the Trump campaign and Russia participated in a towering election conspiracy — hadn’t yet borne out, conceded Maddow. “But even if that is as yet in itself uncorroborated and undocumented,” she said, “all the supporting details are checking out, even the really outrageous ones. A lot of them are starting to bear out under scrutiny. It seems like a new one each passing day.”
So it went. Here’s a timeline:
On May 3, 2017, Maddow cited a CNN report that “parts of this dossier passed muster even in federal court when the dossier was used in part to justify a secret FISA court warrant for U.S. surveillance on a Trump campaign adviser.” Thanks to Horowitz, we now know that officials misused the dossier in this process, failing to disclose to the FISA court dossier-debunking information. Never place blind faith in the FBI!
“The Republican claim today was that the dossier has been increasingly discredited. That’s not true in terms of the public record about the dossier. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. As time goes on, more and more pieces do get independently corroborated,” Maddow said.
On Aug. 23, 2017, Maddow said: “[Even] though the White House and people from the Trump campaign and the Trump administration keep denouncing it as like this dodgy dossier, reporters routinely talk about it as unverified and uncorroborated. You know what? That’s less and less true all the time.” The comment followed a Senate Judiciary Committee interview with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, the research firm that engaged Steele to compile the dossier.
On Oct. 5, 2017, Maddow said that Steele had “a lot” of the dossier “dead to rights.”
On Dec. 8, 2017, Maddow aired a special report on the dossier. “Above all else, we know this about the now famous dossier: Christopher Steele had this story before the rest of America did. And he got it from Russian sources,” said the host, who used the term “deep cover sources” to describe Steele’s network. According to the Horowitz report, the “Primary Sub-source” for the dossier told the FBI that the information he/she passed along amounted to “word of mouth and hearsay.”
On April 16, 2018, Maddow cited the McClatchy story by Greg Gordon and Peter Stone that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had evidence that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague in 2016. The scoop would appear to have supported a key claim in the dossier that Cohen made the trip to meet with Russians for collusive purposes. According to the Horowitz report, the FBI determined that the claim about Cohen’s travels was “not true.”
On Oct. 17, 2018, Maddow played a clip of then-Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge posing questions to Joshua Levy, counsel to Fusion GPS and its co-founders. Pressed on whether the dossier had been substantiated, Levy responded, in part: “The central thesis to the first memo Mr. Steele wrote said that the Russians were helping President Trump win the presidency and give him information to win the presidency. The U.S. intelligence community has since found that that was the case.”
The release of the Mueller report in April provided a kick in the derriere for backers of the dossier. As Glenn Kessler pointed out in The Post, the central allegation of the dossier — an “extensive conspiracy between campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels and involving Russian diplomatic staff based in the US” as well as an "Agreed exchange of information established in both directions” — found no corroboration from Mueller’s investigation, even though the special counsel’s team was charged with probing just this matter.
Several days after the Mueller report emerged, Maddow addressed not the dissonance between Mueller and the dossier, but a point of possible corroboration. In perhaps its most famous allegation, the dossier claimed that Trump had rented a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow and “employed” prostitutes to perform a perverted ritual for him. It suggested that there were tapes of the show, the better to amass kompromat against Trump.
A footnote in the Mueller report, noted Maddow, bore a possible connection to this part of the dossier. It turned out that Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze had sent a text message to Cohen on Oct. 30, 2016, saying, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…” Those tapes were “compromising,” Rtskhiladze told the special counsel. However, he also said “he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.”
Seizing on the revelations, Maddow commented: “[According] to Mueller, Cohen then told Trump about that before the election. So that means Trump knew that somewhere in the former Soviet Union, a business buddy of his had taken action to make sure tapes, supposedly from Trump’s trip to Russia, those tapes weren’t getting out. Don’t worry, all taken care of. I took care of that for you, right?” she said.
With that, the dossier ceased performing its role as a central character on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” On the day Horowitz released his punishing report — with all its assertions about the dossier’s dubiety — Maddow chose not to focus on the integrity of the document that she’d once claimed was accumulating credibility on a nearly daily basis. She said this: “The inspector general debunks that there was any anti-Trump political bias motivating these decisions. They debunked the idea that the Christopher Steele dossier of opposition research against Trump was the basis for opening the FBI’s Russia investigation. It absolutely was not, and ‘Oh, by the way, no, there was no spying on the Trump campaign.’”
All legitimate points. Conspiracists including Fox News host Sean Hannity had indeed argued that the dossier triggered Crossfire Hurricane. But as the New York Times first reported in late 2017, the precipitating circumstance was intelligence from Australia indicating that a Trump campaign adviser had claimed Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
Since that Dec. 9 mention, the dossier has gone in hiding from “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Perhaps a full inventory of the dossier has yielded to coverage of President Trump’s impeachment — clearly a humongous story.
The case for Maddow is that her dossier coverage stemmed from public documents, congressional proceedings and published reports from outlets with solid investigative histories. She included warnings about the unverified assertions and didn’t use the dossier as a source for wild claims. There is something fishy, furthermore, about that Mueller footnote regarding the “tapes.” In their recent book on the dossier, “Crime in Progress,” the Fusion GPS co-founders wrote that Steele believes the document is 70-percent accurate.
The case against Maddow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document.
And when large bits of news arose against the dossier, Maddow found other topics more compelling.
She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry. In an October edition of the podcast “Skullduggery,” Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News pressed Maddow on her show’s approach to Russia. Here’s a key exchange:
Isikoff: Do you accept that there are times that you overstated what the evidence was and you made claims and suggestions that Trump was totally in Vladimir Putin’s pocket and they had something on him and that he was perhaps a Russian asset and we can’t really conclude that?
Maddow: What have I claimed that’s been disproven?
Isikoff: Well, you’ve given a lot of credence to the Steele dossier.
Maddow: I have?
Isikoff: Well, you’ve talked about it quite a bit, I mean, you’ve suggested it.
Maddow: I feel like you’re arguing about impressions of me, rather than actually basing this on something you’ve seen or heard me do.
After some back and forth about particulars of the Mueller report and the dossier with Isikoff, Maddow ripped:
“You’re trying to litigate the Steele dossier through me as if I am the embodiment of the Steele dossier, which I think is creepy, and I think it’s unwarranted. And it’s not like I’ve been making the case for the accuracy of the Steele dossier and that’s been the basis of my Russia reporting. That’s just not true.”
Asked to comment on how she approached the dossier, Maddow declined to provide an on-the-record response to the Erik Wemple Blog
Title: POTH blows off historians on the 1619 Project
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2019, 06:49:47 AM
The ‘1619 Project’ Gets Schooled The New York Times tries to rewrite U.S. history, but its falsehoods are exposed by surprising sources. By Elliot Kaufman Dec. 16, 2019 6:54 pm ET
‘So wrong in so many ways” is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party.
The “1619 Project” was launched in August with a 100-page spread in the Times’s Sunday magazine. It intends to “reframe the country’s history” by crossing out 1776 as America’s founding date and substituting 1619, the year 20 or so African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Va. The project has been celebrated up and down the liberal establishment, praised by Sen. Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
A September essay for the World Socialist Web Site called the project a “racialist falsification” of history. That didn’t get much attention, but in November the interviews with the historians went viral. “I wish my books would have this kind of reaction,” Mr. Wood says in an email. “It still strikes me as amazing why the NY Times would put its authority behind a project that has such weak scholarly support.” He adds that fellow historians have privately expressed their agreement. Mr. McPherson coolly describes the project’s “implicit position that there have never been any good white people, thereby ignoring white radicals and even liberals who have supported racial equality.”
The project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is proud that it “decenters whiteness” and disdains its critics as “old, white male historians.” She tweeted of Mr. McPherson: “Who considers him preeminent? I don’t.” Her own qualifications are an undergraduate degree in history and African-American studies and a master’s in journalism. She says the project goes beyond Mr. McPherson’s expertise, the Civil War. “For the most part,” she writes in its lead essay, “black Americans fought back alone” against racism. No wonder she’d rather not talk about the Civil War.
To the Trotskyists, Ms. Hannah-Jones writes: “You all have truly revealed yourselves for the anti-black folks you really are.” She calls them “white men claiming to be socialists.” Perhaps they’re guilty of being white men, but they’re definitely socialists. Their faction, called the Workers League until 1995, was “one of the most strident and rigid Marxist groups in America” during the Cold War, says Harvey Klehr, a leading historian of American communism.
“Ours is not a patriotic, flag-waving kind of perspective,” says Thomas Mackaman, the World Socialist Web Site’s interviewer and a history professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He simply recognizes that the arrival of 20 slaves in 1619 wasn’t a “world-altering event.” Slavery had existed across the world for millennia, and there were already slaves elsewhere in what would become the U.S. before 1619.
But “even if you want to make slavery the central story of American history,” he says, the Times gets it backward. The American Revolution didn’t found a “slavocracy,” as Ms. Hannah-Jones puts it. Instead, in Mr. Mackaman’s telling, it “brought slavery in for questioning in a way that had never been done before” by “raising universal human equality as a fundamental principle.” Nor was protecting slavery “one of the primary reasons” the colonists declared independence, as Ms. Hannah-Jones claims. It’s no coincidence the abolitionists rapidly won votes to end slavery in five of the original 13 states, along with Vermont and the new states of the Midwest.
Ms. Hannah-Jones insists “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” Mr. Mackaman calls that claim “anti-historical.” Proving it requires her to belittle the most progressive declaration of modern history: “that all men are created equal.” Ms. Hannah-Jones calls this a “lie” and claims its drafters didn’t even believe it. The abolitionists disagreed. So did Martin Luther King Jr: He saw it as a “promissory note.”
Mr. Mackaman also protests Ms. Hannah-Jones’s “cherry-picking” of quotes to present Lincoln as a “garden-variety racist.” He attributes the misleading picture to her “totally racialist interpretation.” If whites and blacks are supposed to be “diametrically opposed to each other,” he says, “then you have to disregard all the history that runs contrary to that—and there’s an awful lot.”
Other “1619 Project” essays are similarly tendentious. Sociologist Matthew Desmond marshals substantially discredited research to tar the whole of American capitalism as a legacy of slavery. Legal activist Bryan Stevenson presents the war on drugs and broken-windows policing as successors to lynching, the Black Codes and other white “strategies of racial control.” Times columnist Jamelle Bouie claims Republican opposition to raising the debt ceiling in 2011 was of a piece with Southern defenses of slavery and Jim Crow.
Joseph Kishore, the Socialist Equality Party’s national secretary, says the “1619 Project” is aimed at legitimizing the politics of the Democratic Party and at “dividing workers” by race. “The interests of a black worker on the line in an auto plant and a white worker,” he says, “are fundamentally the same, and a million miles from the interests of an Oprah Winfrey or a Hillary Clinton.” He rejects the “pseudo-left politics” of identity, which “fight out conflicts within the top 10% or so over access to positions of power and privilege” through diversity programs, then “denounce white workers for being supposedly privileged even as they suffer from a decline in life expectancy and horrific social conditions.” Nobody is better at deflating the pretensions of progressives than the Left Opposition.
To be sure, the Trotskyists have wild ideas of their own: The World Socialist Web Site’s September essay claims “the event that had the greatest impact on the social condition of African-Americans” was the Russian Revolution. But the Times’s equally extreme ideas are being feted by the intelligentsia and turned into lesson plans for schoolteachers. “A re-education is necessary,” the “1619 Project” webpage warns. Even communists now tell the Times to cool it.
Mr. Kaufman is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
Title: Our nation's professional journalists mourn the loss of Suleimani
Post by: G M on January 03, 2020, 11:09:47 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/385126.php
Sad clowns.
Title: Credentialed and proven professional journalists
Post by: G M on January 04, 2020, 09:14:03 AM
Title: WSJ on Erik Wemple of WaPo's 11 part series on media and the Steele dossier
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2020, 06:38:26 PM
Erik Wemple, the Washington Post’s media critic, has produced an 11-part series (so far) on the press’s handling of the Steele dossier in the wake of its debunking by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The 10th installment consists of a simple “inventory” of TV talking heads and reporters insisting that large parts of the dossier had been “corroborated.” Notice that the statements Mr. Wemple has collected are mere declarations, the speakers offering little evidence or specificity about which parts had been corroborated. This is not journalism. This is availability bias, the social-science term for a readiness to embrace and repeat claims that are popular in one’s milieu.
What to Expect in a Senate Impeachment Trial
SUBSCRIBE He finds exactly one example of reporters claiming to have validated a Steele allegation through actual reporting—McClatchy’s famous story, which it continues to “stand by,” that Trump attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign. Read closely, though, and McClatchy only claims to have cited its anonymous sources accurately. No statement is offered that Mr. Cohen was actually in Prague.
I addressed another partial example myself here in February 2018—a Politico story that found a Steele allegation about Carter Page more believable because a Steele source seemed to know in advance about a Rosneft transaction that would not take place until late in 2016. As I showed, the whole world knew about the pending sale and had for years. This was an example of what Mr. Horowitz would later call a sprinkling of “publicly available” information in Steele that created a patina of credibility for the unwary.
Whether this was honest or dishonest dimwittedness by Politico, it is emblematic of a pattern that increasingly prevails in newsrooms—seeing only evidence that supports the desired story line.
The following should not need to be said: A claim is not credible just by virtue of its being made. A bunch of unsupported claims do not become more credible because they come in a bunch. A media pathology is the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” fallacy—i.e., one Christopher Steele allegation may be untrue, but, golly, they can’t all be untrue when there are so many.
Nor does a claim gain credibility when relayed by a “credible” source if that source doesn’t actually vouch for the claim. A meta version of this idiocy can be found in a new book by Mr. Steele’s PR handler, Glenn Simpson. Mr. Simpson insists that, although Mr. Steele doesn’t vouch for the truth of anything in his dossier, he’s prepared to vouch that none of its allegations originate in Russian disinformation.
In other words: He can’t tell you if his sources are lying but he can tell you their motives for lying.
This is just stupid—or a testament to how stupid Messrs. Steele and Simpson think their audience is.
One of Mr. Wemple’s installments concerns Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, who consistently hyped any mote that seemed to support the dossier while ignoring any beam of contrary information.
Let’s talk about stupidity. Human beings are intensely social animals. Our cognition is shaped partly by a powerful need to gain approval and maintain status. Many of the cognitive biases identified by scientists are actually shortcuts to cognitive outcomes that secure and protect our social standing; their adaptive value does not lie, as you might expect, in helping us make accurate assessments.
Now add the giant commercial incentives acting on Ms. Maddow to deliver the story her audience wants. It took no courage to be a media opponent of Donald Trump. It took courage to be an opponent of Mr. Trump and simultaneously an opponent of the Russia witch hunt (as a few were).
I’ve suggested that we could junk the U.S. journalism curriculum and replace it with Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” In its pages you will find the concept of availability bias mentioned above. You will also find a concordance to my original June 2017 “Anatomy of a Witch Hunt” column, which made extended reference to the indispensable work of Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein on availability cascades.
In half a generation, journalism would be transformed from today’s hit-or-miss business in which readers must work hard to sort out the reliable claims from the vapid grandstanding and fallacious reasoning. Meanwhile, those who take umbrage at the phrase “fake news” ought to spend some time examining the professional pathologies that make it so frequently apt.
Finally, kudos to Mr. Wemple. Coming unbidden to mind while reading his Washington Post series is an image of Conan wading into battle, his ax swinging, the heads of his enemies flying in all directions. Alas, a further satisfaction probably won’t be coming anytime soon: our media admitting that the Russian meddling that they blab about did not have one-millionth the impact on our politics that their promotion of the false Steele dossier did.
Title: Taibbi on CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2020, 11:43:51 AM
Wow. He's right on all of that. "[You] never said it? “That is correct,” Sanders said. Phillip turned to Warren and deadpanned: “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”
CNN has really pissed off the Left.
They burned their bridge with all Republicans, burned the middle with all the fake stuff. Now they've burned The Bern. Are you really still 'mainstream' if you've lost the right, left and center?
Title: Jake Tapper
Post by: ccp on January 17, 2020, 02:27:00 PM
:-o; [he may lose his job from the station who needs to have Monica Lewinsky famous for the most high profile blow job in history giving her wisdom on the hiring of Starr and Dershowitz]
no conflict of interest here folks . : https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/08/07/jeff-zucker-s-son-15-resigns-from-job
Title: Re: Media: PJ Media UP 312% year-over-year
Post by: DougMacG on January 23, 2020, 04:52:04 PM
PJ Media UP 312% year-over-year
We should partner with them. --------------------------------- TheRighting In December, @PJMedia_com posted a whopping 312% year-over-year rise in unique visitors, more than any other #conservative website. & it wasn't just #ImpeachmentHearings that drove its gains. Read our exclusive chart:
My term is a little out-dated but I call him the Hank Aaron of political commentary, meaning all time home run leader [before steroids spoiled that honor].
Greatest of all time. Irreplaceable. He gave voice to what so many people were already thinking. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Sell short on CIGar stocks. This is going to be VERY bad publicity for them.]
Title: Rush
Post by: ccp on February 04, 2020, 09:03:22 AM
talent on loan from God
"Greatest of all time. Irreplaceable"
yes
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2020, 10:40:33 AM
Mark Steyn could be a very interesting choice. He shines on Tucker C's show.
Mark Steyn is great. Very, very sharp, insightful and funny. Extremely well informed with an amazing memory for detail.
Title: The Truth about Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 11, 2020, 06:34:22 AM
Ironically, the media's softball treatment of the Dems has weakened them and the media's harsh treatment of Republicans has strengthened them to the point where it's no longer a fair fight.
Today we head into the first primary of the quadrennium and people are just now discovering the weaknesses of these weak candidates in a historically weak field.
Joe Biden, a buffoon? Who knew? They've been playing montages of his nonsense on conservative media for decades.
Bloomberg reduced crime in NYC by profiling perps in the hood by RACE and ordering the frisk of people who look like them? Who saw that coming?
Bernie was pulling for the Soviets worldwide in the Cold War. Butti fired the first black police chief in his town.
Next they'll tell us sweet Amy is a total bitch behind the scenes, put innocent blacks in prison for life without a witness, and Liz Warren's breakthrough academic research was a fraud (exposed on the forum). Say it's not all so.
Title: VDH : on the Babe Ruth of talk radio
Post by: ccp on February 12, 2020, 06:25:40 AM
Like Babe Ruth who is credited with saving baseball after the White Sox World Series scandal in 1919
Rush saved radio; VDH:
"Even stranger still, his ascendance coincided with the presumed nadir of radio itself. It was supposedly a has-been, one-dimensional medium, long overshadowed by television. Even in the late 1980s, radio was about to be sentenced as obsolete in the ascendant cyber age of what would become Internet blogs, podcasts, streaming, and smartphone television.
Stranger still, Limbaugh has prospered through two generations and picked up millions of listeners"
We have so few people who care about us in the media I always worried about his health. I feel he is like a family member or good friend
Title: Re: VDH : on the Babe Ruth of talk radio
Post by: DougMacG on February 13, 2020, 07:09:40 AM
Like Babe Ruth who is credited with saving baseball after the White Sox World Series scandal in 1919
Rush saved radio; VDH:
"Even stranger still, his ascendance coincided with the presumed nadir of radio itself. It was supposedly a has-been, one-dimensional medium, long overshadowed by television. Even in the late 1980s, radio was about to be sentenced as obsolete in the ascendant cyber age of what would become Internet blogs, podcasts, streaming, and smartphone television.
Stranger still, Limbaugh has prospered through two generations and picked up millions of listeners"
We have so few people who care about us in the media I always worried about his health. I feel he is like a family member or good friend
Same for me. Great column, brought a tear to my eye. On his first day of nationwide broadcast, I remember where I was, clicking through some stations, expecting nothing, and stopped and thought, WHO IS THIS? Someone who agrees with me?!
Everyone thought television made radio obsolete but radio frees you to carry on with a lot of activities. Television grounds you. VDH listens with headphones in his tractor when he's not teaching at Stanford?
Most of radio is noise. It takes pretty amazing content to make up for all the repeated commercials, news, traffic. But when you are tuned in, you learn of breaking news in almost real time.
Title: David Limbaugh on Rush
Post by: DougMacG on February 14, 2020, 09:31:35 AM
One aspect not mentioned yet, Rush was at "the tip of the spear", as brother David puts it, in the ideological fight. That he never backed down to all the attacks, he inspired a whole lot of others to stand strong.
They get tossed out of China yet the response from them is to propagandize Trump's messaging
I guess the failure to find Russian collusion, impeachment , and now to pin blame on Trump for a plague ( 55 % approve of his response to Corona despite 24 /7 media bashing of his handling of it).
is the reason.
Title: another left hit job
Post by: ccp on March 23, 2020, 09:18:12 AM
the morning after Anthony Fauci was on talks shows praising Trump and his closing down the travel from China and how Trump has NEVER said no to any of the health care experts recommendations
and stated Trump was very attentive to all things discussed, and asked many question the f in left wing media is at it again:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, CNN
Post by: DougMacG on March 25, 2020, 05:21:50 PM
Do CNN executives or investors ever wonder why they can't keep the viewers they once had, much less attract more?
Could it be because they now serve only unhealthy portions of partisan comfort food to gullible over-eaters?
- (Supply Side) Economist Alan Reynolds on twitter https://twitter.com/AlanReynoldsEcn/status/1242932916092633092
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, CBS spends 0 seconds on positive Trump polls
Post by: DougMacG on March 26, 2020, 08:31:15 AM
It was their OWN poll!
It's not easy keeping up the 93% negative stat.
"CBS Allows a Scant 10 Seconds on Own Poll Showing Majority Support for Trump on Corona" https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2020/03/24/cbs-allows-scant-10-seconds-own-poll-showing-majority-support
Usually a pollster can steer the results with the wording of the questions. I guess that backfired here.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 26, 2020, 08:35:49 AM
"It was their OWN poll!"
right
and the jerk just had to throw in at the end a negative sarcastic comment
"although this appears to be changing "
Title: pssssst. the blondes on FOx are not really blonde
Post by: ccp on March 26, 2020, 11:25:17 AM
Ah, I guess our masses of professional journalists haven't heard about this story.
Good. Better I think to let it stew slowly.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2020, 04:54:45 AM
cuomo with corona
he tells us trump says the 100 to 240 K could have been millions and then dismisses that as though it is not true
and then says ignore numbers all the while EVERY day Cuomo tells us about the numbers with a hashtag underneath that will usually include "Trump" just to keep the overt and covert message that this is his fault.
So now the numbers should be ignored when best case scenerios predict much lower than previous estimates.
same old prick who continues to insult half the country that are not partisan democrats. typical Cuomo
Title: The MSM-DNC marching in lockstep with the CCP
Post by: G M on April 01, 2020, 01:36:29 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/386627.php
Comrades.
Title: looks step MSM democrats China Communists
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2020, 02:25:03 PM
Sen. Tom Cotton was early on this. (Famous people reading the forum, see below.) He sounded the alarm (Jan 23?) on the Hugh Hewitt show where he appears regularly. He tweeted Jan 29, we need to shut down the flights from China. Trump did that the next day - to much criticism. This was while being tied up in the impeachment trial.
Cotton credited John Ellis - 'New Items' for his early awareness of the virus. Ellis combs international news for stories of interest and importance and distributes them every morning by email. I posted link to his newsletter here: https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1263.msg118358#msg118358 Hat tip, news items John Ellis https://newsitems.substack.com/welcome July 10, 2019. Should have put it on the media thread
The problem with the Ellis newsletter is that he keeps linking to places where I don't have subscriptions, but he captures or paraphrases the main points. They have a paid and a shortened free edition. --------------------------------------- Here on the Forum, Crafty and Stratfor had it first: Crafty_Dog Stratfor: Risks follow spread of new virus out of China « Reply #153 on: January 22, 2020 From the article: "The new virus will test pandemic management systems in China and internationally." ---------------------------------------- Next day, next post in epidemics, I posted NYT's first story on it: DougMacG Re: new virus out of China « Reply #154 on: January 23, 2020, 06:05:57 PM » https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage [Doug] "Quarantine a city the size of Wuhan? How?"
Referral to that story came to me from John Ellis News Items. ----------------------------------------
Also to the credit of Sen Cotton is his healthy skepticism of the statements coming out of China. As he stated then, their denials of massive numbers and denial of person to person contact do not match the extreme measures they are taking to contain it, locking down a city, Wuhan,the size of NYC, (and Hubei province, the population of 7 Londons).
Where was our attention when it should have been on this emerging story?
In China, the big New Year celebration was Jan 25.
In the US, besides impeachment, Kobe Bryant (and daughter and others) died on Jan 26, 2020, in between the first news stories of the virus and our first response to it. Do you know anyone, even among those who know nothing about basketball, who wasn't aware of that fatal helicopter crash? Do you know anyone, other than on the forum, who was aware of the virus, at that time, that would shut down the world economy within two months.
On Jan 30, Hugh Hewitt had Meet the Press's Chuck Todd on the show and asked him about the virus and Cotton call for a China travel ban. Todd pooh-poohed it. Hugh replayed his early coverage of this today and says the audio will be posted on his youtube channel. [The show airs too early for the west coasters.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzd0HpLq6ic Coverage starts Jan 20 with WSJ story.
It is the two months preceding all that, that interests me most, from patient zero to the first western alarm going off. China was jailing their whistleblowers. One of them died, the others 'missing'. That's when the world could have protected itself and started the search for the cure, the treatment, the containment. But we didn't because we couldn't. Because China lies. We still can't investigate how it started, because China lies and is STILL blocking the search for the truth.
Once we survive the medical crisis we are immersed in, I would like to accumulate all the early evidence and timeline of that, hopefully in its own thread.
Title: Media: NYT Opinion, Travel ban unjust, doesn't work, Feb 5 2020
Post by: DougMacG on April 07, 2020, 07:10:14 AM
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (4/6/2020) @nntaleb
"That NYT?
+Ran articles about irrationality of worrying about the pandemic +Opposed the travel ban +Now blaming the administration for not having stiffer travel ban"
Bloomberg's famously intense founding editor-in-chief, Matthew Winkler, weighed in, ... "It is for sure going to, you know, invite the Communist Party to, you know, completely shut us down and kick us out of the country," Winkler said. "So, I just don't see that as a story that is justified."
Title: Re: Media, Why was the story killed? Why was the reporter fired?
Post by: G M on April 14, 2020, 02:26:05 PM
Bloomberg's famously intense founding editor-in-chief, Matthew Winkler, weighed in, ... "It is for sure going to, you know, invite the Communist Party to, you know, completely shut us down and kick us out of the country," Winkler said. "So, I just don't see that as a story that is justified."
Bloomie loves him some sweet, sweet ChiCom money!
Title: The world retains its ability to surprise; the Chris Cuomo edition
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 14, 2020, 08:58:07 PM
Title: Re: Pravda on the Potomac smears S.D. governor
Post by: DougMacG on April 18, 2020, 04:30:29 PM
SD Governor, Kristi Noem. She is one of the good ones. See videos at link or youtube.
Powerline article title I think comes from the filthy treatment Wash Post gives to legitimate conservative viewpoint: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/05/dishonest-smearing-ilhan-omar/
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Bill Maher
Post by: DougMacG on April 19, 2020, 07:25:48 AM
"Trump calls you fake news. Don’t make him be right."
Title: Maher is funny clever
Post by: ccp on April 19, 2020, 08:32:38 AM
Bill Maher :
" hope shame " :-)
"Trump calls you (media) fake news , don't make him be right!"
Occasionally he stands up to the absurdity of the left's echo chamber, when he is not part of it himself.
Too bad he is not a Conservative.
Title: Media layoffs
Post by: DougMacG on April 20, 2020, 08:03:27 AM
“Roughly 33,000 workers at news companies in the U.S. have been laid off, been furloughed or had their pay reduced. Some publications that rely on ads have shut down.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/business/media/news-media-coronavirus-jobs.html
NPR Warns of Major Cuts Due to Coronavirus NPR will be instituting severe cost-cutting measures as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Wednesday internal memo, with a budget deficit looming as high as $25 million through fiscal 2021. . . https://thehill.com/homenews/media/493306-npr-warns-of-major-cuts-due-to-coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR3pQRrvPzsHY3oRN_9UGW6kh6O-nCelsh-EYAIoqdW2x-TAn9KgzmAqfgo
Read Steve Hayward's rip of the current mainstream media: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/our-garbage-media.php
Since they are all just telling the same old biased story, maybe not so many are needed to do that.
has it ever occured to these "investigative " jurnolisters" most of these calls. are from democrat operatives setting up the story
as a hit ?
the slimy dems call in with phony calls about drinking bleach then the poison control can report "more calls" just after something Trump said then THAT is now the story relayed to masses as truth.
The whole thing is BS
Title: VDH on Trump's press conferences
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2020, 02:47:48 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on May 01, 2020, 08:17:23 AM
Ronna McDaniel [https://twitter.com/GOPChairwoman/status/1255883948196069376] @GOPChairwoman Yesterday, a massive story broke about FBI malfeasance at the dawn of @realDonaldTrump ’s administration.
How many times did the mainstream media mention it during their morning shows? CNN: 0 CBS: 0 ABC: 0 NBC: 0 MSNBC: 0
Unreal.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 01, 2020, 09:22:20 AM
the corona problem has also given the left more time
to stonewall Durham too probably.
total silence with that.
hopefully it will go up to finally get some goods one the "fictional ONe himself " who we all know was clearly nodding approval to all of this if not actually directing it. (though probably both)
Title: Falun Gong and Epoch Times
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 04, 2020, 02:36:07 PM
Title: I like the original Wuhan virus name
Post by: ccp on May 04, 2020, 06:44:27 PM
“CCP Virus”
:-o
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth: NYT 1619 project wins discredited Pulitzer Prize
Post by: DougMacG on May 05, 2020, 05:19:42 AM
The fully discredited 1619 NYT story, utter bullshit, wins the fully discredited Pulitzer Prize, like clockwork, after their Trump Russia Hoax coverage won it just a couple of years ago.
"Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country" - I find that to be a strange statement of present tense and scientific fact. If true, we can only fix this genetic modification. Strangest of all is that nearly all anti-black violence today is committed by blacks, not mentioned in the narrative.
Her attack on Asian Americans for wanting equal treatment is bizarre: "a truly American irony". They should accept that we end discrimination against blacks by transferring it to Asians.
"We [blacks] are the most likely...to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable." - Huh? This Leftist, fiction writer is missing something in her blinder view. As recent as Obama, 98% supported the party of abortion, the policy today more violent than slavery, that afflicts black unborn at 5 times the rate of whites. Oops.
Correction notes: "A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them."
- You mean that obviously false, inflammatory statement, that schools are basing curricula on, in the original work was wrong and left wrong for 7 months after publication? Who knew??
Pulitzer here reminds me of when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize 10 minutes after his inauguration, just for being him.
When do people fully realize that names like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, NYT, Nobel, Pulitzer, United Nations, IPCC, SPLC, CDC, FBI, WHO - these are not good brand names. ------------------------------------------- The only Pulitzer the 1619 Project deserved was for fiction By Post Editorial Board, May 4, 2020 Leslie M. Harris, a black history prof at Northwestern, says she warned Hannah-Jones: “Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies.” https://nypost.com/2020/05/04/the-only-pulitzer-the-1619-project-deserved-was-for-fiction/ ------------------------------------------- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. [Yes, that's the nation-hating, award-winning title.] Black Americans have fought to make them true. By Nikole Hannah-Jones AUG. 14, 2019
My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that flag always flew pristine. Our corner lot, which had been redlined by the federal government, was along the river that divided the black side from the white side of our Iowa town. At the edge of our lawn, high on an aluminum pole, soared the flag, which my dad would replace as soon as it showed the slightest tatter.
My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers on a white plantation in Greenwood, Miss., where black people bent over cotton from can’t-see-in-the-morning to can’t-see-at-night, just as their enslaved ancestors had done not long before. The Mississippi of my dad’s youth was an apartheid state that subjugated its near-majority black population through breathtaking acts of violence. White residents in Mississippi lynched more black people than those in any other state in the country, and the white people in my dad’s home county lynched more black residents than those in any other county in Mississippi, often for such “crimes” as entering a room occupied by white women, bumping into a white girl or trying to start a sharecroppers union. My dad’s mother, like all the black people in Greenwood, could not vote, use the public library or find work other than toiling in the cotton fields or toiling in white people’s houses. So in the 1940s, she packed up her few belongings and her three small children and joined the flood of black Southerners fleeing North. She got off the Illinois Central Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa, only to have her hopes of the mythical Promised Land shattered when she learned that Jim Crow did not end at the Mason-Dixon line.
Grandmama, as we called her, found a house in a segregated black neighborhood on the city’s east side and then found the work that was considered black women’s work no matter where black women lived — cleaning white people’s houses. Dad, too, struggled to find promise in this land. In 1962, at age 17, he signed up for the Army. Like many young men, he joined in hopes of escaping poverty. But he went into the military for another reason as well, a reason common to black men: Dad hoped that if he served his country, his country might finally treat him as an American.
The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. Read all the stories. The Army did not end up being his way out. He was passed over for opportunities, his ambition stunted. He would be discharged under murky circumstances and then labor in a series of service jobs for the rest of his life. Like all the black men and women in my family, he believed in hard work, but like all the black men and women in my family, no matter how hard he worked, he never got ahead.
So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism. It deeply embarrassed me.
I had been taught, in school, through cultural osmosis, that the flag wasn’t really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement and that we had contributed little to this great nation. It seemed that the closest thing black Americans could have to cultural pride was to be found in our vague connection to Africa, a place we had never been. That my dad felt so much honor in being an American felt like a marker of his degradation, his acceptance of our subordination.
Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us.
In August 1619, just 12 years after the English settled Jamestown, Va., one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock and some 157 years before the English colonists even decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought 20 to 30 enslaved Africans from English pirates. The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship that had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola. Those men and women who came ashore on that August day were the beginning of American slavery. They were among the 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War. Almost two million did not survive the grueling journey, known as the Middle Passage.
Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land across the Southeast. They taught the colonists to grow rice. They grew and picked the cotton that at the height of slavery was the nation’s most valuable commodity, accounting for half of all American exports and 66 percent of the world’s supply. They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy. They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. They lugged the heavy wooden tracks of the railroads that crisscrossed the South and that helped take the cotton they picked to the Northern textile mills, fueling the Industrial Revolution. They built vast fortunes for white people North and South — at one time, the second-richest man in the nation was a Rhode Island “slave trader.” Profits from black people’s stolen labor helped the young nation pay off its war debts and financed some of our most prestigious universities. It was the relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies and the products of their labor that made Wall Street a thriving banking, insurance and trading sector and New York City the financial capital of the world.
But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.
A demonstrator at the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for black suffrage. Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.
Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.
The very first person to die for this country in the American Revolution was a black man who himself was not free. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive from slavery, yet he gave his life for a new nation in which his own people would not enjoy the liberties laid out in the Declaration for another century. In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.
My father, one of those many black Americans who answered the call, knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.
In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat at his portable writing desk in a rented room in Philadelphia and penned these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For the last 243 years, this fierce assertion of the fundamental and natural rights of humankind to freedom and self-governance has defined our global reputation as a land of liberty. As Jefferson composed his inspiring words, however, a teenage boy who would enjoy none of those rights and liberties waited nearby to serve at his master’s beck and call. His name was Robert Hemings, and he was the half brother of Jefferson’s wife, born to Martha Jefferson’s father and a woman he owned. It was common for white enslavers to keep their half-black children in slavery. Jefferson had chosen Hemings, from among about 130 enslaved people that worked on the forced-labor camp he called Monticello, to accompany him to Philadelphia and ensure his every comfort as he drafted the text making the case for a new democratic republic based on the individual rights of men.
At the time, one-fifth of the population within the 13 colonies struggled under a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before. Chattel slavery was not conditional but racial. It was heritable and permanent, not temporary, meaning generations of black people were born into it and passed their enslaved status onto their children. Enslaved people were not recognized as human beings but as property that could be mortgaged, traded, bought, sold, used as collateral, given as a gift and disposed of violently. Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such. As the abolitionist William Goodell wrote in 1853, “If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences.”
[Listen to a new podcast with Nikole Hannah-Jones that tells the story of slavery and its legacy like you’ve never heard it before.]
Enslaved people could not legally marry. They were barred from learning to read and restricted from meeting privately in groups. They had no claim to their own children, who could be bought, sold and traded away from them on auction blocks alongside furniture and cattle or behind storefronts that advertised “Negroes for Sale.” Enslavers and the courts did not honor kinship ties to mothers, siblings, cousins. In most courts, they had no legal standing. Enslavers could rape or murder their property without legal consequence. Enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including by those working for Jefferson himself. They could be worked to death, and often were, in order to produce the highest profits for the white people who owned them.
Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”
Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade. This would have upended the economy of the colonies, in both the North and the South. The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if some of the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.
Jefferson and the other founders were keenly aware of this hypocrisy. And so in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence, he tried to argue that it wasn’t the colonists’ fault. Instead, he blamed the king of England for forcing the institution of slavery on the unwilling colonists and called the trafficking in human beings a crime. Yet neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery, and in the end, they struck the passage.
There is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it. The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge. Like many others, the writer and abolitionist Samuel Bryan called out the deceit, saying of the Constitution, “The words are dark and ambiguous; such as no plain man of common sense would have used, [and] are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations.”
With independence, the founding fathers could no longer blame slavery on Britain. The sin became this nation’s own, and so, too, the need to cleanse it. The shameful paradox of continuing chattel slavery in a nation founded on individual freedom, scholars today assert, led to a hardening of the racial caste system. This ideology, reinforced not just by laws but by racist science and literature, maintained that black people were subhuman, a belief that allowed white Americans to live with their betrayal. By the early 1800s, according to the legal historians Leland B. Ware, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, white Americans, whether they engaged in slavery or not, “had a considerable psychological as well as economic investment in the doctrine of black inferiority.” While liberty was the inalienable right of the people who would be considered white, enslavement and subjugation became the natural station of people who had any discernible drop of “black” blood.
The Supreme Court enshrined this thinking in the law in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruling that black people, whether enslaved or free, came from a “slave” race. This made them inferior to white people and, therefore, incompatible with American democracy. Democracy was for citizens, and the “Negro race,” the court ruled, was “a separate class of persons,” which the founders had “not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government” and had “no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” This belief, that black people were not merely enslaved but were a slave race, became the root of the endemic racism that we still cannot purge from this nation to this day. If black people could not ever be citizens, if they were a caste apart from all other humans, then they did not require the rights bestowed by the Constitution, and the “we” in the “We the People” was not a lie.
On Aug. 14, 1862, a mere five years after the nation’s highest courts declared that no black person could be an American citizen, President Abraham Lincoln called a group of five esteemed free black men to the White House for a meeting. It was one of the few times that black people had ever been invited to the White House as guests. The Civil War had been raging for more than a year, and black abolitionists, who had been increasingly pressuring Lincoln to end slavery, must have felt a sense of great anticipation and pride.
The war was not going well for Lincoln. Britain was contemplating whether to intervene on the Confederacy’s behalf, and Lincoln, unable to draw enough new white volunteers for the war, was forced to reconsider his opposition to allowing black Americans to fight for their own liberation. The president was weighing a proclamation that threatened to emancipate all enslaved people in the states that had seceded from the Union if the states did not end the rebellion. The proclamation would also allow the formerly enslaved to join the Union army and fight against their former “masters.” But Lincoln worried about what the consequences of this radical step would be. Like many white Americans, he opposed slavery as a cruel system at odds with American ideals, but he also opposed black equality. He believed that free black people were a “troublesome presence” incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people. “Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?” he had said four years earlier. “My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.”
That August day, as the men arrived at the White House, they were greeted by the towering Lincoln and a man named James Mitchell, who eight days before had been given the title of a newly created position called the commissioner of emigration. This was to be his first assignment. After exchanging a few niceties, Lincoln got right to it. He informed his guests that he had gotten Congress to appropriate funds to ship black people, once freed, to another country.
An 1872 portrait of African-Americans serving in Congress (from left): Hiram Revels, the first black man elected to the Senate; Benjamin S. Turner; Robert C. De Large; Josiah T. Walls; Jefferson H. Long; Joseph H. Rainy; and R. Brown Elliot. Currier & Ives, via the Library of Congress “Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration,” Lincoln told them. “You and we are different races. ... Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side.”
You can imagine the heavy silence in that room, as the weight of what the president said momentarily stole the breath of these five black men. It was 243 years to the month since the first of their ancestors had arrived on these shores, before Lincoln’s family, long before most of the white people insisting that this was not their country. The Union had not entered the war to end slavery but to keep the South from splitting off, yet black men had signed up to fight. Enslaved people were fleeing their forced-labor camps, which we like to call plantations, trying to join the effort, serving as spies, sabotaging confederates, taking up arms for his cause as well as their own. And now Lincoln was blaming them for the war. “Although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other ... without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence,” the president told them. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”
As Lincoln closed the remarks, Edward Thomas, the delegation’s chairman, informed the president, perhaps curtly, that they would consult on his proposition. “Take your full time,” Lincoln said. “No hurry at all.”
Nearly three years after that White House meeting, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. By summer, the Civil War was over, and four million black Americans were suddenly free. Contrary to Lincoln’s view, most were not inclined to leave, agreeing with the sentiment of a resolution against black colonization put forward at a convention of black leaders in New York some decades before: “This is our home, and this our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers. ... Here we were born, and here we will die.”
That the formerly enslaved did not take up Lincoln’s offer to abandon these lands is an astounding testament to their belief in this nation’s founding ideals. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.” Black Americans had long called for universal equality and believed, as the abolitionist Martin Delany said, “that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.” Liberated by war, then, they did not seek vengeance on their oppressors as Lincoln and so many other white Americans feared. They did the opposite. During this nation’s brief period of Reconstruction, from 1865 to 1877, formerly enslaved people zealously engaged with the democratic process. With federal troops tempering widespread white violence, black Southerners started branches of the Equal Rights League — one of the nation’s first human rights organizations — to fight discrimination and organize voters; they headed in droves to the polls, where they placed other formerly enslaved people into seats that their enslavers had once held. The South, for the first time in the history of this country, began to resemble a democracy, with black Americans elected to local, state and federal offices. Some 16 black men served in Congress — including Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who became the first black man elected to the Senate. (Demonstrating just how brief this period would be, Revels, along with Blanche Bruce, would go from being the first black man elected to the last for nearly a hundred years, until Edward Brooke of Massachusetts took office in 1967.) More than 600 black men served in Southern state legislatures and hundreds more in local positions.
These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen. They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation and housing. Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school. Public education effectively did not exist in the South before Reconstruction. The white elite sent their children to private schools, while poor white children went without an education. But newly freed black people, who had been prohibited from learning to read and write during slavery, were desperate for an education. So black legislators successfully pushed for a universal, state-funded system of schools — not just for their own children but for white children, too. Black legislators also helped pass the first compulsory education laws in the region. Southern children, black and white, were now required to attend schools like their Northern counterparts. Just five years into Reconstruction, every Southern state had enshrined the right to a public education for all children into its constitution. In some states, like Louisiana and South Carolina, small numbers of black and white children, briefly, attended schools together.
Led by black activists and a Republican Party pushed left by the blatant recalcitrance of white Southerners, the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see. In 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, making the United States one of the last nations in the Americas to outlaw slavery. The following year, black Americans, exerting their new political power, pushed white legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act, the nation’s first such law and one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation Congress has ever passed. It codified black American citizenship for the first time, prohibited housing discrimination and gave all Americans the right to buy and inherit property, make and enforce contracts and seek redress from courts. In 1868, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment, ensuring citizenship to any person born in the United States. Today, thanks to this amendment, every child born here to a European, Asian, African, Latin American or Middle Eastern immigrant gains automatic citizenship. The 14th Amendment also, for the first time, constitutionally guaranteed equal protection under the law. Ever since, nearly all other marginalized groups have used the 14th Amendment in their fights for equality (including the recent successful arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of same-sex marriage). Finally, in 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the most critical aspect of democracy and citizenship — the right to vote — to all men regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
For this fleeting moment known as Reconstruction, the majority in Congress seemed to embrace the idea that out of the ashes of the Civil War, we could create the multiracial democracy that black Americans envisioned even if our founding fathers did not.
But it would not last.
Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country, as does the belief, so well articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the obstacle to national unity. The many gains of Reconstruction were met with fierce white resistance throughout the South, including unthinkable violence against the formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter suppression, electoral fraud and even, in some extreme cases, the overthrow of democratically elected biracial governments. Faced with this unrest, the federal government decided that black people were the cause of the problem and that for unity’s sake, it would leave the white South to its own devices. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure a compromise with Southern Democrats that would grant him the presidency in a contested election, agreed to pull federal troops from the South. With the troops gone, white Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systemic white suppression of black life was so severe that this period between the 1880s and the 1920 and ’30s became known as the Great Nadir, or the second slavery. Democracy would not return to the South for nearly a century.
A postcard showing the scene at the murder of Allen Brooks, an African-American laborer who was accused of attempted rape. He was dragged through the streets around the Dallas County Courthouse and lynched on March 3, 1910. Postcards of lynchings were not uncommon in the early 20th century. From the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas White Southerners of all economic classes, on the other hand, thanks in significant part to the progressive policies and laws black people had championed, experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people back into a quasi slavery. As Waters McIntosh, who had been enslaved in South Carolina, lamented, “It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.”
Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard home to Winnsboro, S.C. After serving four years in the Army in World War II, where Woodard had earned a battle star, he was given an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard got into a brief argument with the white driver after asking if he could use the restroom. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw the police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in his head with a billy club, beating him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just 4½ hours after his military discharge. At 26, Woodard would never see again.
There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence deployed against black Americans after Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded black people almost entirely from mainstream American life — a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.
Isaac Woodard and his mother in South Carolina in 1946. In February that year, Woodard, a decorated Army veteran, was severely beaten by the police, leaving him blind. From Special Collections and Archives/Georgia State University Library Despite the guarantees of equality in the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 declared that the racial segregation of black Americans was constitutional. With the blessing of the nation’s highest court and no federal will to vindicate black rights, starting in the late 1800s, Southern states passed a series of laws and codes meant to make slavery’s racial caste system permanent by denying black people political power, social equality and basic dignity. They passed literacy tests to keep black people from voting and created all-white primaries for elections. Black people were prohibited from serving on juries or testifying in court against a white person. South Carolina prohibited white and black textile workers from using the same doors. Oklahoma forced phone companies to segregate phone booths. Memphis had separate parking spaces for black and white drivers. Baltimore passed an ordinance outlawing black people from moving onto a block more than half white and white people from moving onto a block more than half black. Georgia made it illegal for black and white people to be buried next to one another in the same cemetery. Alabama barred black people from using public libraries that their own tax dollars were paying for. Black people were expected to jump off the sidewalk to let white people pass and call all white people by an honorific, though they received none no matter how old they were. In the North, white politicians implemented policies that segregated black people into slum neighborhoods and into inferior all-black schools, operated whites-only public pools and held white and “colored” days at the country fair, and white businesses regularly denied black people service, placing “Whites Only” signs in their windows. States like California joined Southern states in barring black people from marrying white people, while local school boards in Illinois and New Jersey mandated segregated schools for black and white children.
This caste system was maintained through wanton racial terrorism. And black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particular violence. This intensified during the two world wars because white people understood that once black men had gone abroad and experienced life outside the suffocating racial oppression of America, they were unlikely to quietly return to their subjugation at home. As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”
Many white Americans saw black men in the uniforms of America’s armed services not as patriotic but as exhibiting a dangerous pride. Hundreds of black veterans were beaten, maimed, shot and lynched. We like to call those who lived during World War II the Greatest Generation, but that allows us to ignore the fact that many of this generation fought for democracy abroad while brutally suppressing democracy for millions of American citizens. During the height of racial terror in this country, black Americans were not merely killed but castrated, burned alive and dismembered with their body parts displayed in storefronts. This violence was meant to terrify and control black people, but perhaps just as important, it served as a psychological balm for white supremacy: You would not treat human beings this way. The extremity of the violence was a symptom of the psychological mechanism necessary to absolve white Americans of their country’s original sin. To answer the question of how they could prize liberty abroad while simultaneously denying liberty to an entire race back home, white Americans resorted to the same racist ideology that Jefferson and the framers had used at the nation’s founding.
This ideology — that black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race — did not simply disappear once slavery ended. If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse. Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.
Just as white Americans feared, World War II ignited what became black Americans’ second sustained effort to make democracy real. As the editorial board of the black newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier wrote, “We wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who will enslave us.” Woodard’s blinding is largely seen as one of the catalysts for the decades-long rebellion we have come to call the civil rights movement. But it is useful to pause and remember that this was the second mass movement for black civil rights, the first being Reconstruction. As the centennial of slavery’s end neared, black people were still seeking the rights they had fought for and won after the Civil War: the right to be treated equally by public institutions, which was guaranteed in 1866 with the Civil Rights Act; the right to be treated as full citizens before the law, which was guaranteed in 1868 by the 14th Amendment; and the right to vote, which was guaranteed in 1870 by the 15th Amendment. In response to black demands for these rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.
For the most part, black Americans fought back alone. Yet we never fought only for ourselves. The bloody freedom struggles of the civil rights movement laid the foundation for every other modern rights struggle. This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did not provide the vote or equality for most Americans. But the laws born out of black resistance guarantee the franchise for all and ban discrimination based not just on race but on gender, nationality, religion and ability. It was the civil rights movement that led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which upended the racist immigration quota system intended to keep this country white. Because of black Americans, black and brown immigrants from across the globe are able to come to the United States and live in a country in which legal discrimination is no longer allowed. It is a truly American irony that some Asian-Americans, among the groups able to immigrate to the United States because of the black civil rights struggle, are now suing universities to end programs designed to help the descendants of the enslaved.
No one cherishes freedom more than those who have not had it. And to this day, black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment. Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees.
The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did. As one scholar, Joe R. Feagin, put it, “Enslaved African-Americans have been among the foremost freedom-fighters this country has produced.” For generations, we have believed in this country with a faith it did not deserve. Black people have seen the worst of America, yet, somehow, we still believe in its best.
They say our people were born on the water.
When it occurred, no one can say for certain. Perhaps it was in the second week, or the third, but surely by the fourth, when they had not seen their land or any land for so many days that they lost count. It was after fear had turned to despair, and despair to resignation, and resignation to an abiding understanding. The teal eternity of the Atlantic Ocean had severed them so completely from what had once been their home that it was as if nothing had ever existed before, as if everything and everyone they cherished had simply vanished from the earth. They were no longer Mbundu or Akan or Fulani. These men and women from many different nations, all shackled together in the suffocating hull of the ship, they were one people now.
Just a few months earlier, they had families, and farms, and lives and dreams. They were free. They had names, of course, but their enslavers did not bother to record them. They had been made black by those people who believed that they were white, and where they were heading, black equaled “slave,” and slavery in America required turning human beings into property by stripping them of every element that made them individuals. This process was called seasoning, in which people stolen from western and central Africa were forced, often through torture, to stop speaking their native tongues and practicing their native religions.
Edward Crawford Jr. returns a tear gas canister fired by police who were trying to disperse protesters in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated Press But as the sociologist Glenn Bracey wrote, “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.” For as much as white people tried to pretend, black people were not chattel. And so the process of seasoning, instead of erasing identity, served an opposite purpose: In the void, we forged a new culture all our own.
Today, our very manner of speaking recalls the Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them. Our style of dress, the extra flair, stems back to the desires of enslaved people — shorn of all individuality — to exert their own identity. Enslaved people would wear their hat in a jaunty manner or knot their head scarves intricately. Today’s avant-garde nature of black hairstyles and fashion displays a vibrant reflection of enslaved people’s determination to feel fully human through self-expression. The improvisational quality of black art and music comes from a culture that because of constant disruption could not cling to convention. Black naming practices, so often impugned by mainstream society, are themselves an act of resistance. Our last names belong to the white people who once owned us. That is why the insistence of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give our children names that we create, that are neither European nor from Africa, a place we have never been, is an act of self-determination. When the world listens to quintessential American music, it is our voice they hear. The sorrow songs we sang in the fields to soothe our physical pain and find hope in a freedom we did not expect to know until we died became American gospel. Amid the devastating violence and poverty of the Mississippi Delta, we birthed jazz and blues. And it was in the deeply impoverished and segregated neighborhoods where white Americans forced the descendants of the enslaved to live that teenagers too poor to buy instruments used old records to create a new music known as hip-hop.
Our speech and fashion and the drum of our music echoes Africa but is not African. Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own. As Langston Hughes wrote in 1926, “They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed —/I, too, am America.”
For centuries, white Americans have been trying to solve the “Negro problem.” They have dedicated thousands of pages to this endeavor. It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.
Ieshia Evans being detained by law enforcement officers at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2016 outside the headquarters of the Baton Rouge Police Department. Jonathan Bachman/Reuters At 43, I am part of the first generation of black Americans in the history of the United States to be born into a society in which black people had full rights of citizenship. Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just 50. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans.
What if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we have never been the problem but the solution?
When I was a child — I must have been in fifth or sixth grade — a teacher gave our class an assignment intended to celebrate the diversity of the great American melting pot. She instructed each of us to write a short report on our ancestral land and then draw that nation’s flag. As she turned to write the assignment on the board, the other black girl in class locked eyes with me. Slavery had erased any connection we had to an African country, and even if we tried to claim the whole continent, there was no “African” flag. It was hard enough being one of two black kids in the class, and this assignment would just be another reminder of the distance between the white kids and us. In the end, I walked over to the globe near my teacher’s desk, picked a random African country and claimed it as my own.
I wish, now, that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.
We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.
Correction August 15, 2019 An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was approved on July 4, 1776, not signed by Congress on that date. The article also misspelled the surname of a Revolutionary War-era writer. He was Samuel Bryan, not Byron.
Editors’ Note March 11, 2020 A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them. Read more.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer for the magazine. A 2017 MacArthur fellow, she has won a National Magazine Award, a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award. Adam Pendleton is an artist known for conceptually rigorous and formally inventive paintings, collages, videos and installations that address history and contemporary culture.
The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2020, 02:57:04 PM
Please post in the American History thread as well.
Title: Another leftist tool
Post by: ccp on May 05, 2020, 04:47:58 PM
fool who is elevated to hero worship status because he wants to pontificate against Trump
I will give you 3 guesses which propaganda network she works for. These people are "not correspondents". They try to manipulate the news and even make themselves the news - when they interview people they disagree with.
Title: republican wins so yahoo news
Post by: ccp on May 21, 2020, 05:26:02 AM
Does anyone think if Biden wins the headlines will be "senile man " wins. Or if Abrams is VP pick - "conspiracy theorist" who thinks white Republicans robbed her of Georgia governorship will effectively be our next President.
?
Title: melania to be on CNN townhall
Post by: ccp on May 21, 2020, 07:42:00 AM
there is zero way CNN will let her walk out looking good except if she contradicts her husband.
Title: Ex-president of CBS says MSM is biased
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2020, 11:14:03 PM
The ‘Liberal Leaning’ Media Has Passed Its Tipping Point A return to balance would be commercially unviable. The best solution may be an honest embrace of bias. By Van Gordon Sauter May 25, 2020 2:21 pm ET SAVE PRINT TEXT 1,155
President Trump arrives to speak with reporters in the White House, May 22. PHOTO: ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS About 35 years ago I was sitting at lunch next to Jeane Kirkpatrick, a onetime Democrat who became a foreign-policy adviser to President Reagan and later U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She was lamenting what she called the “liberal leaning” media. As the president of CBS News, I assured her it was only a “liberal tilt” and could be corrected.
“You don’t understand,“ she scolded. “It’s too late.”
Kirkpatrick was prophetic. The highly influential daily newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Boston are now decidedly liberal. On the home screen, the three broadcast network divisions still have their liberal tilt. Two of the three leading cable news sources are unrelentingly liberal in their fear and loathing of President Trump.
News organizations that claim to be neutral have long been creeping leftward, and their loathing of Mr. Trump has accelerated the pace. The news media is catching up with the liberalism of the professoriate, the entertainment industry, upscale magazines and the literary world. Recent arrivals are the late-night TV hosts who have broken the boundaries of what was considered acceptable political humor for networks.
To many journalists, objectivity, balance and fairness—once the gold standard of reporting—are not mandatory in a divided political era and in a country they believe to be severely flawed. That assumption folds neatly into their assessment of the president. To the journalists, including more than a few Republicans, he is a blatant vulgarian, an incessant prevaricator, and a dangerous leader who should be ousted next January, if not sooner. Much of journalism has become the clarion voice of the “resistance,” dedicated to ousting the president, even though he was legally elected and, according to the polls, enjoys the support of about 44% of likely 2020 voters.
This poses significant problems not only for Mr. Trump but for the media’s own standing. If Mr. Trump prevails in November, what’s the next act, if any, for journalists and the resistance? They will likely find Mr. Trump more dangerous and offensive in a second term than in the first.
More important, how will a large segment of the public ever put stock in journalism it considers hostile to the country’s best interests? Unfortunately, dominant media organizations have bonded with another large segment of the public—one that embraces its new approach. Pulling back from anti-Trump activism could prove commercially harmful.
On the other hand, how would the media respond to a Joe Biden victory (beyond exhilaration)? Will Mr. Biden be subjected to the rigor and skepticism imposed on Mr. Trump? Will he get a pass because he is a liberal and “not Trump”? The media’s protective coverage of the sexual-assault allegation against Mr. Biden is perhaps a clear and concerning preview to how his presidency would be covered.
The media seems uninterested in these issues of bias. But wouldn’t a softening of its editorial orientation bring new readers or viewers? Probably not. The growth of new customers would be more than offset by the defection of outraged members of the current audience. The news media seems very comfortable with its product and ability to sell it.
There’s probably no way to seal the gap between the media and a large segment of the public. The media likes what it is doing. Admires it. Celebrates it. There is no personal, professional or financial reason to change. If anything, the gap will expand. Ultimately, the media finds the “deplorables” deplorable.
Dan Abrams, ABC’s chief legal-affairs anchor and founder of the website Mediaite, has a novel but valuable idea for the media—candor. Speaking to the matter at February’s Rancho Mirage Writers Festival, Mr. Abrams said “I think the first thing that would help . . . is to admit . . . that the people in the media are left of center.”
It would be delightful if a publisher, an editor, a reporter, would just say: Yes, I am left of center! I’m proud of it. I think our reporting is accurate. It best serves the public. And the credibility of the media. So there!
Publications open about their bias might feel freer to focus on the specifics: story selection, presentation, facts, fairness, balance. Not devoid of subtlety for sure, but manageable.
Journalism affects social cohesion. Convinced of its role and its legitimacy, however, the media doesn’t seem to much care. And the other side can certainly enjoy throwing rotten tomatoes at distant targets.
But America won’t reunite until far more people can look at a news story in print or on the screen and, of all things, believe it.
Mr. Sauter was president of CBS News, 1982-83 and 1986.
Title: no scowls here I presume
Post by: ccp on May 26, 2020, 04:03:53 PM
Do I have to ask if the same scowling faces on MSDNC and CNN etc who criticized Donald for not wearing a mask are now unleashing their fury at the above teammates?
Title: NBC bans calling riots "riots".
Post by: G M on May 28, 2020, 04:47:49 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/387494.php
Title: Re: NBC bans calling riots "riots".
Post by: DougMacG on May 29, 2020, 05:26:52 AM
Police Station set on fire. https://video.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-precinct-engulfed-in-flames-amid-protest/570856672/
Where are the arson arrests?
Problem is, the authority they fight is themselves. These cities are run by these thugs. Leftists own the mayor's office and a 13-0 majority in the City Council. MN AG Keith Ellison got his start running these kinds of violent and violence threatening "protests". Now he is the chief law enforcement officer of the state? Good God.
One protest site is 8 blocks from my S Mpls home. All I need is a Trump sign in front and it will be ablaze.
Maybe today is a good day to buy property insurance.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 29, 2020, 05:38:49 AM
watched tucker last night Fox calls them riots and looting
which is exactly what it is
CNN of course calls them protests.
We don't have news anymore just DNC propaganda
Title: looks how the leftist media bends over backwards
Post by: ccp on May 29, 2020, 09:14:35 AM
remember at white supremacy rallies how the media would zero in on the roughly 10 people who would show up (out of millions) and make it sound like every white person in the state was there is KKK outfits
when the reverse is true with the town burning down they do the opposite just a bunch of justified protestors.
Title: what ever happened to social distancing and masks?
Post by: ccp on May 30, 2020, 10:02:51 AM
Title: drudgereport
Post by: ccp on June 08, 2020, 03:01:19 PM
reading it is totally demoralizing
what does Trump do
his usual speak to the choir rallies
the entire country is caving it seems
Title: The Woken Dead eating the brains at Pravda on the Hudson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2020, 06:49:08 PM
Cancel Culture Journalism Two liberal editors fall for violations against progressive orthodoxy. By The Editorial Board June 8, 2020 7:19 pm ET
The purge of senior editors at progressive newspapers this weekend is no cause for cheering. Their resignations are another milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture through our liberal institutions, and American journalism and democracy will be worse for it.
The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who’d seen the publication through difficult times, was pushed out over a headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.” It was atop a piece by architecture critic Inga Saffron, who worried that buildings damaged by violence could “leave a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia.” Staff members deemed the headline an offense to Black Lives Matter. They protested, and no amount of apologizing or changes to the headline were enough. Editor Stan Wischnowski didn’t last the week.
At the New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennet resigned Sunday after a staff uproar over an op-ed by a U.S. Senator. Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton wrote that military troops should be sent to restore public order in American cities when the police are overwhelmed. A staff revolt deemed the piece fascist, unconstitutional, and too offensive for adults to read and decide for themselves.
Our editorial last week opposed deploying active-duty troops, but the idea is legal under the Insurrection Act. George H.W. Bush deployed troops in 1992 to quell riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, and other Presidents have done it too.
Mr. Bennet defended the op-ed on Friday as part of his attempt to broaden debate in his pages, and at first so did publisher A.G. Sulzberger. But Mr. Sulzberger changed his mind the same day, suddenly declaring that the op-ed he had defended had not received proper editing and should not have been published. By Sunday Mr. Bennet, as true-blue a progressive as you can find, was out the door. James Dao, the opinion editor who had signed off on the Cotton op-ed, was reassigned.
An ostensibly independent opinion section was ransacked because the social-justice warriors in the newsroom opposed a single article espousing a view that polls show tens of millions of Americans support if the police can’t handle rioting and violence. The publisher failed to back up his editors, which means the editors no longer run the place. The struggle sessions on Twitter and Slack channels rule.
All of this shows the extent to which American journalism is now dominated by the same moral denunciation, “safe space” demands, and identity-politics dogmas that began in the universities. The agents of this politics now dominate nearly all of America’s leading cultural institutions—museums, philanthropy, Hollywood, book publishers, even late-night talk shows.
On matters deemed sacrosanct—and today that includes the view that America is root-and-branch racist—there is no room for debate. You must admit your failure to appreciate this orthodoxy and do penance, or you will not survive in the job.
Some of our friends on the right are pleased because they say all of this merely exposes what has long been true. But this takeover of the Times and other liberal bastions means that there are ever fewer institutions that will defend free inquiry and the contest of ideas that once defined American liberalism.
Title: Re: The Woken Dead eating the brains at Pravda on the Hudson
Post by: G M on June 09, 2020, 07:04:00 PM
Cancel Culture Journalism Two liberal editors fall for violations against progressive orthodoxy. By The Editorial Board June 8, 2020 7:19 pm ET
The purge of senior editors at progressive newspapers this weekend is no cause for cheering. Their resignations are another milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture through our liberal institutions, and American journalism and democracy will be worse for it.
The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who’d seen the publication through difficult times, was pushed out over a headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.” It was atop a piece by architecture critic Inga Saffron, who worried that buildings damaged by violence could “leave a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia.” Staff members deemed the headline an offense to Black Lives Matter. They protested, and no amount of apologizing or changes to the headline were enough. Editor Stan Wischnowski didn’t last the week.
At the New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennet resigned Sunday after a staff uproar over an op-ed by a U.S. Senator. Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton wrote that military troops should be sent to restore public order in American cities when the police are overwhelmed. A staff revolt deemed the piece fascist, unconstitutional, and too offensive for adults to read and decide for themselves.
Our editorial last week opposed deploying active-duty troops, but the idea is legal under the Insurrection Act. George H.W. Bush deployed troops in 1992 to quell riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, and other Presidents have done it too.
Mr. Bennet defended the op-ed on Friday as part of his attempt to broaden debate in his pages, and at first so did publisher A.G. Sulzberger. But Mr. Sulzberger changed his mind the same day, suddenly declaring that the op-ed he had defended had not received proper editing and should not have been published. By Sunday Mr. Bennet, as true-blue a progressive as you can find, was out the door. James Dao, the opinion editor who had signed off on the Cotton op-ed, was reassigned.
An ostensibly independent opinion section was ransacked because the social-justice warriors in the newsroom opposed a single article espousing a view that polls show tens of millions of Americans support if the police can’t handle rioting and violence. The publisher failed to back up his editors, which means the editors no longer run the place. The struggle sessions on Twitter and Slack channels rule.
All of this shows the extent to which American journalism is now dominated by the same moral denunciation, “safe space” demands, and identity-politics dogmas that began in the universities. The agents of this politics now dominate nearly all of America’s leading cultural institutions—museums, philanthropy, Hollywood, book publishers, even late-night talk shows.
On matters deemed sacrosanct—and today that includes the view that America is root-and-branch racist—there is no room for debate. You must admit your failure to appreciate this orthodoxy and do penance, or you will not survive in the job.
Some of our friends on the right are pleased because they say all of this merely exposes what has long been true. But this takeover of the Times and other liberal bastions means that there are ever fewer institutions that will defend free inquiry and the contest of ideas that once defined American liberalism.
Title: Bret Stephens bites the hand that feeds him
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 12, 2020, 02:49:20 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 28, 2020, 05:25:12 PM
holly cow
look at that headline!!!
The fucking Times people should get down on their knees and beg European Jews (the few that are left ) for forgiveness.
How about we go out there and paint on the street "European Jewish lives mattered" in front of the NY Soviet Times . Bunch of stinking commies
Title: here we go again
Post by: ccp on June 30, 2020, 07:09:04 AM
evidence came out the Brockster knew and with Biden coordinated the Flynn case ( anyone surprised they are really lying sacks of s?)
and instead the MSM starting with the NYT comes out with news that Russians pain Taliban bounties to kill US troops
and of course Trump comes out and denies "he knew" (again it is someone else's fault) and the next day we find out he was given written report about it.
Of course he knew.
So the brockster scandal is magic markered out and this story becomes the news.
I don't understand why no one says something to the effect that this may not have warranted a response.
Is it unusual for US _ Russia to fund each others enemies ?
Did not REagan supply OSama Bin Laden weapons to kill Russians ?
This must happen all the time.
Title: Maybe T did not know?
Post by: ccp on June 30, 2020, 08:25:36 AM
Title: Putin for life and China "strengthening their hold "
Post by: ccp on July 05, 2020, 08:10:34 AM
As per CNN and Bernstien the not so great - Trump made this worse:
The question historians may well debate in the future is not whether Trump's presidency affected Putin's and Xi's decisions but by how much his delusions changed the world in their favor.
No mention how H Bush Clinton, W Bush Barack the great all played nice with China allowing the Chikoms to march forward with their plans of world dominance. Trump was the first and only one to do anything about it . But of course it is all HIS fault.
And Putin running again making him the autocrat of Russia for life is of course with out a doubt Trump's fault.
Maybe if we had *real* journolism form CNN and Carl the BERnstine lib Democrat partisan he always was we would have had Presidents doing more to wake the world up sooner .
Title: here is some real journolism from Andrew McCarthy
Post by: ccp on July 05, 2020, 08:25:18 AM
that carly bernstein the former jewish guy now of the democrat Party religion will ignore :
Title: more propaganda
Post by: ccp on July 06, 2020, 06:51:04 AM
from the leftist yahoo "news"
headline : what does bad month for Trump mean for the economy but no where in the article does it answer the question which of course is they would drive the economy into the ground with regulation taxes free this and that and more:
also quoted of course are republican never Trumpers who are not only about getting rid of Trump but getting rid of "trumpism" from the Republican Party which is I take the views and concerns of the 63 million who voted for Trump.
The fact that the Dems will make DC a state, pac the Courts with progressive activists and end the filibuster does not bother them (never trumpers).
I can only think they want their swampy inside jobs back .......
And of course Yahoo calls this article "news" not left wing propaganda which is what it is.
Title: Letter endorsing free speech at VOX sparks uncivil war
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2020, 06:53:31 PM
Title: Drudge
Post by: ccp on July 08, 2020, 05:55:25 AM
now = daily beast , huffington report , politico , time, nyt , wpost , salon
may as well simply read those. who needs Matt
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on July 08, 2020, 10:23:33 AM
In 2019, Rasmussen Reports reported that Drudge had sold the site and was no longer involved in its operations, which would also explain the change in editorial direction; however, that reporting was not confirmed. Wikipedia
Matt Drudge is clearly gone from the site. All they kept was the format. You are exactly right with the narrative.
Title: Drudge
Post by: ccp on July 08, 2020, 10:47:58 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on July 18, 2020, 07:14:09 AM
Removing the names Washington and Jefferson from EVERYTHING, when will the W......... Post be changing its name?
Title: history is ignored except the parts that are PC
Post by: ccp on July 18, 2020, 11:47:53 AM
New York is named after this Duke of York:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England
A white man of fabulous wealth and of privilege and king of a nasty colonial power.
He also lived just after the first slaves were brought to the what is now the United States so they could make it the great nation it is today. He did not free any slaves I don't think.
What can we change NY to ? USSB : The "United Soviet Socialist Boroughs"?
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Murdoch is with Biden, isn't that Fox News?
Post by: DougMacG on July 19, 2020, 03:53:00 PM
Which network is for conservatives? --------------------------------------- https://www.mediaite.com/politics/rupert-murdochs-son-james-and-his-wife-donate-1-23-million-to-biden-campaign/
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2020, 04:16:38 PM
Well, the reason for recent moves at FOX are revealed!
OAN!
Title: The Woken Dead go for the kill on Tucker and Hannity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2020, 08:10:48 PM
Title: NYT doxxing Tucker
Post by: G M on July 21, 2020, 11:03:54 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/389245.php
Got privacy?
Title: wikipedia = leftist bent
Post by: ccp on July 22, 2020, 06:41:08 AM
explaining Drudge was more conservative to some degree is correct but not explaining how it has suddenly morphed into an anti Trump page with almost 100% negative stories of Trump and having half the wikipedia presentation on Drudge all about it promoting "conspiracy" theories proves to me wikipedia is written by left wingers :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report
Title: Re: wikipedia = leftist bent
Post by: DougMacG on July 22, 2020, 07:06:03 AM
"...proves to me wikipedia is written by left wingers "
Yes, mostly written by left-wingers
Title: Cathy Areus's lawsuit against Tucker imploding
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 24, 2020, 10:14:56 AM
Title: WSJ Editorial Page vs. Cancel Culture rot within the WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 24, 2020, 06:02:22 PM
A Note to Readers These pages won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure. By The Editorial Board July 23, 2020 7:44 pm ET SAVE PRINT TEXT 4,706
PHOTO: CHANG/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.
In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.
It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.
As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.
Title: Re: WSJ Editorial Page vs. Cancel Culture rot within the WSJ
Post by: DougMacG on July 25, 2020, 12:27:29 PM
I hope that wasn't their last editorial.
Title: Riots not newsworthy
Post by: G M on July 27, 2020, 11:50:10 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/389306.php
Funny that our professional journalists aren't covering this. I wonder why...
Title: if this were biden
Post by: ccp on July 27, 2020, 04:52:44 PM
the headline would be totally different it would be something more like Biden is trying to control drug costs and big pharm is not cooperating instead they the pharma Ceos refuse to meet with orange man:
Title: Biden Campaign thanks DNC-MSM
Post by: G M on August 12, 2020, 06:51:45 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/389592.php
But these are professional journalists!
Title: just in time pre election book
Post by: ccp on August 13, 2020, 06:20:04 AM
does not Woodward come out with a book just prior to every election?
just in time for liberal media circuit to parade his "findings" with them giving them more headlines and him lots of book promotion
wonder if there will be any positive things about Trump at all in book we know what it will say otherwise and will be nothing new with Democrat voting "inside " mostly anonymous sources telling us how crazy Trump is:
If only BigDog were here to assure me of how professional and unbiased the media is...
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 16, 2020, 08:18:50 AM
this explains the left's outrage when anyone should proclaim "all lives matter"
does not fit their plans
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2020, 09:05:30 AM
Glimpsed a piece yesterday riffing on "All Black Lives Matter".
Title: how does NYT report cause of death
Post by: ccp on August 16, 2020, 10:54:35 AM
I didn't think the information was released by family was it?
I go to jail and get stiff fines if I report confidential medical information where Nyt shit heads bribing hospital employees where they standing around in ER listening to care providers discussing what was going on
did Haberwoman go to ER saying she had chest pain so she could in a gurny close by to listen in ?
the self righteous high on their own self importance and virtuous self NYTimes, DNC left propaganda outlet goes after
from last yr article Western Journal: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/us/western-journal-highlights.html
Can you imagine that? They accumulate stories that fit a political narrative. OMG! https://www.westernjournal.com/ https://www.westernjournal.com/5-left-wing-lies-twitter-refuses-fact-check/ Strange that NYT and and the social media gatekeepers feel so threatened by this. The article:
How a Conservative News Site Thrived on Facebook and Google The Western Journal has had one of the biggest online audiences. But it now finds itself clashing with Silicon Valley tech giants. Here are highlights from a Times investigation.
Floyd G. Brown, right, a longtime conservative political activist, in 2008. Floyd G. Brown, right, a longtime conservative political activist, in 2008.Credit...Stuart Isett for The New York Times Daniel Victor By Daniel Victor Aug. 22, 2019
It may not be a household name, but few publications have had the reach, and potentially the influence, in American politics as The Western Journal.
Even the right-wing publication’s audience of more than 36 million people, eclipsing many of the nation’s largest news organizations, doesn’t know much about the company, or who’s behind it.
In a New York Times investigation, Nicholas Confessore and Justin Bank found that the site, which stokes outrage and curates a narrative in which conservatives and their values are under constant assault, is caught in a high-stakes clash between Silicon Valley and Washington. The site has struggled to maintain its audience through Facebook’s and Google’s algorithmic changes aimed at reducing disinformation — actions the site’s leaders see as evidence of political bias.
You can read the full investigation here. But if you have time only for the highlights, here’s what the reporters learned. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/facebook-disinformation-floyd-brown.html
The Western Journal’s audience is huge, but precarious. The publication does almost no original reporting, instead repackaging stories found elsewhere that fit into right-wing narratives chosen by the site’s editors. After an editor finds a worthy story, it is handed off to a pool of contract writers, most working remotely. Deadlines are tight: Most articles are filed within an hour or two, and some breaking-news stories are written in as little as 30 minutes.
It was a model that worked strikingly well — for a while. In the three years ending in March, Western Journal posts on Facebook earned three-quarters of a billion shares, likes and comments, nearly as many as the combined tally of 10 leading American news organizations.
But each of the tech giants began limiting its reach. Google News blacklisted it for what it considered deceptive business practices, Apple News followed after saying it produced stories that promoted “views overwhelmingly rejected by the scientific community,” and Facebook downgraded The Western Journal after it was repeatedly dinged on fact-checking sites.
Its founder has a history of divisive politics. Floyd G. Brown, who founded the site, is a political activist who has chosen writing as his weapon. He began his career with the race-baiting “Willie Horton” ad during the 1988 presidential campaign, which used mug shots of a black convicted murderer to stoke fears that the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, was soft on crime.
In the 1990s, he peddled opposition research and conspiracy theories about Bill Clinton. In the 2000s, he helped form a network of political action committees that made ads attacking Barack Obama, including one that questioned whether Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim.
The company also has unusually close ties with a pro-Trump PAC, America Fighting Back. Mr. Brown is the PAC’s chairman.
Mr. Brown’s son Patrick served as chief executive of the site until he stepped down in August to take a medical leave. Early in his publishing career, Patrick Brown initially focused on uplifting and nonpolitical stories, but eventually adopted its right-wing focus.
The site has amplified claims of political bias in Big Tech. Its leaders didn’t buy explanations from the technology companies on why the publication had been downgraded or suspended, echoing the common complaint in conservative media that Big Tech was biased against them.
To cope with the changes, it began, in the words of Patrick Brown, “backing into something that looks more like a traditional media company.” It launched a corrections page, removed thousands of old stories, published editorial standards and renamed its army of related Facebook pages to tie them to a single brand.
It has now rebounded, but is about half of its prior size. Later this year, the Browns will release a smartphone app intended to sidestep the gatekeeping of Big Tech.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 21, 2020, 06:17:42 AM
I agree he did a good job as far as delivery though a lot there that is nonsense
yet Wallace says "Trump "has been talking for months about Biden's mental acuity
why the "Trump" part Is it not obvious he has mental capacity problems?
EVERYONE has been talking about it. If, Wallace was truly honest he would say , we have all seen mental slips over and over again but not tonight while reading off teleprompter
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on August 21, 2020, 08:58:09 AM
I agree he did a good job as far as delivery though a lot there that is nonsense
yet Wallace says "Trump "has been talking for months about Biden's mental acuity
why the "Trump" part Is it not obvious he has mental capacity problems?
EVERYONE has been talking about it. If, Wallace was truly honest he would say , we have all seen mental slips over and over again but not tonight while reading off teleprompter --------------------------
If expectations hadn't fallen through the floor, this speech would be called slurred speech.
"And there has never been anything we've been able to accomplish when we've done it together."
Small gaffe, just mis-reading, slurring a speech. https://justthenews.com/video/joe-biden-gaffe-during-nomination-acceptance-speech
Remember, a real gaffe for a liberal is when they accidentally reveal the truth. That doesn't happen when reading a very carefully written and heavily rehearsed speech.
Now back to the basement.
Title: Intimidation of Media
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 21, 2020, 01:59:33 PM
Suddenly Trump polls evenly with Biden in blue state MN. The riot-loot-topple-monuments party of Ellison-Omar is not their father's Humphrey-Mondale Democrat-Farmer-Labor party. Favoring big government via elections suddenly moved to anarchy through street violence and burning down the city. Now people think about law and order. One group feeling that: blacks. Another group unexcited about the rising crime rate, loss of security: rich white liberals. They don't want to be Republicans but they aren't with the radicals.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 22, 2020, 04:41:28 AM
".Suddenly Trump polls evenly with Biden in blue state MN."
This is why Dems have the back up plan - just for tight races like this - (just in case)
democrats ready to pick these up? :
7,977 Minnesota Homelessness Statistics As of January 2019, Minnesota had an estimated 7,977 experiencing homelessness on any given day, as reported by Continuums of Care to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Title: stelter is an author
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2020, 08:03:19 AM
Title: kibitzing from the Commi News Network Democrats
Post by: ccp on August 26, 2020, 06:08:04 AM
no fake news here. :roll: :wink: Mario's other. kid and the lemon now saying Dems need to pay attention to the riots (now that it is showing up in favor of the republicans in the polls) (someone must have dropped a barbell on his head growing up.)
no mention that these two kibitzers have been ignoring this for months or them calling rioters peaceful protestors):
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 09, 2020, 11:09:54 AM
funny
like hollywood movies released on different days to maximize profits
all these Trump bashing books coming out in obvious coordinated fashion to try to maximize damage to Trump.
funny how it only works against Trump
nothing like against any democrat.
lets see what are the 3 trump bashing books coming next week?
Title: cramer calls pelosi crazy on CNBC
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2020, 05:55:36 PM
all over the internet - EXCEPT the AUDIO of it.
how is it possible that every site has the audio blocked
if anyone called Trump; crazy who would think it be hard to find on internet?
If anyone can find the audio on this please post
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2020, 06:06:39 PM
please disregard
previous post
I found out why I could not hear the tape of it
I had my computer sound turned off ! :-P :-o
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Woodward's revelations!
Post by: DougMacG on September 16, 2020, 06:15:52 AM
Remind me again, what was the premise of the short-lived hysteria over Bob Woodward’s book? That Donald Trump, in early February, knew that the virus could kill and was spread through the air?
This was universal knowledge. In the two weeks before Messrs. Trump and Woodward spoke, more than 550 published and broadcast news reports in the Factiva database likened the Chinese viral outbreak to the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. On Jan. 28, a week before they spoke and on the same day Mr. Trump received a White House security briefing on the virus, this column drew the 1918 analogy. It also highlighted an issue that would plague the world for months. Because of the inability of China and other countries to count mild or nonsymptomatic infections, we were operating on data that considerably overestimated the virus’s deadliness. - Holman Jenkins, WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-overestimates-trump-11600210915?fbclid=IwAR19gzkEBqueL6qI5ahZVqppoOSydXZZrkmhCT-16Ogargq4A_GJdTWEvlI
Title: drudge down and bongino report up
Post by: ccp on September 16, 2020, 09:46:34 AM
will not tell you the protestor laid down with head in front of police officer on bike just prior to picture and police officer got off bike then rolled over genius's head
to exclamations from mob holding camera feinting shock at the scene
Title: Judge rules Tucker not a news show
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2020, 09:50:03 AM
Title: NBC phone tapping? on with listening device?
Post by: ccp on September 28, 2020, 05:27:08 AM
Ok , let me get this straight
an NBC guy or gal was sitting by chance next to the head of CDC on an airplane and inadvertently overheard this conversation in total detail enough to report on negative news about anything Trump:
Oh would it be nice if everything Obama was as snooped as everything Trump we would finally get the goods on what we suspect must be true about a whole lot of stuff.
Title: Rasmussen
Post by: ccp on September 28, 2020, 07:45:12 AM
about the only public poll not manipulated to show results to the Democrat Party suggests most want ACB confirmed
funny
if one sees Fox poll CNN poll etc the numbers are strangely just the opposite. :wink:
Title: Journilisters
Post by: ccp on September 28, 2020, 02:24:33 PM
brilliant minds all come to same conclusion.
no, just same dem operative email chain
I remember a list of journolisters some yrs back
I counted the Jewish sounding names - came to est. ~40%
very disgusted in NJ
the seem to have no problem Ginsberg struggled to stay up to the very last breath she took on Earth thus bringing up that FACT to question her judgement , or her ability to be impartial as a justice .
Funny how their arguments could just as easily apply to their side . Oh but their so righteous
Frum isn't he in Lincoln project? How much cash is he siphoning off for his lifestyle ?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, NYT releases Trump tax data
Post by: DougMacG on September 28, 2020, 04:30:48 PM
NYT says Trump paid almost no federal income taxes. NYT broke federal law to release that. NYT paid no federal taxes. But we should be outraged about Trump.
What actually happened shows exactly why Trump didn't / couldn't release his tax returns. They attack if they're high. They attack if they're low. They have no idea about tax deference, tax avoidance, make no distinction between these and tax evasion. No allegation about wrongdoing. If there is wrongdoing, in their view, it is the tax code that has Biden's handwriting all over it.
Title: Re: Journolisters
Post by: DougMacG on September 28, 2020, 04:35:28 PM
Yes, you might think they would be shamed by being in the montages that show they are all saying the exact same thing at the exact same timed. Not an original thought. Their employer should fire them for the collusion in talking points, but in most cases it is the employers requiring the collusion in talking points.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on September 28, 2020, 05:16:08 PM
".NYT paid no federal taxes.'
WOW
why can't these New Yorkers bourgeois pay their fair share?
must be because their losses are greater then they income
or maybe tax avoidance
does anyone know anyone who volunteers to pay more than they legally have to?
Title: Thank God!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2020, 06:43:22 PM
Title: Alex Kotch author of above
Post by: ccp on September 29, 2020, 04:49:00 AM
his site Sludge is interesting. He is obviously a environmental advocate or champion or zealot whatever adjective you want to use. He does not seem to be particularly Democrat though
here he shows the big shot NY attorneys hosting money raisers for Biden. INcluding one of the inspiration for Gordon Gekko who after a lifetime of soaking as much money as he can and buying art is worried about the little guy and in 2016,
"In 2016, he endorsed Sanders, saying the senator was the best candidate for the economy because his policies would put more money into the pockets of low-income people, who tend to spend most or all of their income, which would stimulate the economy."
LOL - how is that for self righteous logic (or illogic IMO)
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, NYT "Fact Checking"
Post by: DougMacG on October 01, 2020, 10:09:23 AM
Posting this in it's entirety [with slight interruptions]. Will add comments later. Suffice it to say, "fact checks" require OPINIONS to analyze. Probably don't have to tell you how horribly biased and wrong this is.
Fact-Checking the First 2020 Presidential Debate Sept. 30, 2020 President Trump and former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr. concluded their first debate in Cleveland on Tuesday night. President Trump demonstrated a willingness to lie, exaggerate and mislead during the first presidential debate, repeatedly interrupting former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with attacks based on thin evidence. Mr. Biden appeared exasperated through much of the night but stood his ground, calling the president a liar and a racist and at one point saying, “Shut up, man.”
Mr. Trump refused to condemn white supremacists[FALSE], instead blaming “the left wing” for violence in American cities even though — as Mr. Biden pointed out — his own F.B.I. director had said that “racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a majority of domestic terrorism threats.
The president insisted that he paid “millions of dollars” in federal income taxes during 2016 and 2017. In fact, tax documents obtained by The New York Times show that in both years, Mr. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes. Mr. Biden repeatedly prodded the president to release his tax returns for those years. In response, Mr. Trump said “you’ll see it as soon as it’s finished, you’ll see it” — a promise he has repeatedly made and broken since becoming a candidate.
Several times, Mr. Trump focused his attacks on Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, mixing partial truths with misleading statements and falsehoods in a way that appeared designed to rattle his opponent. His claim that “The mayor of Moscow’s wife gave your son $3.5 million” was misleading. He claimed that Hunter Biden “takes out billions” from business deals in China, offering no evidence despite denials from Mr. Biden and his lawyer that he was paid for his role on the board of the company at issue. [Imagine for one second the shoe on the other foot, Eric Trump taking millions presumably to influence his father on policy.]
During clashes over the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Trump claimed that “young children aren’t” much affected by Covid-19 [TRUE], a statement proven false by the many children who have been infected or died from the disease. He exaggerated Mr. Biden’s plan to confront the virus, claiming that “he’ll close down the whole country.” The former vice president has said he would listen to scientists.
Mr. Biden was more truthful, but he did exaggerate and mislead in some of his answers. He said that “we left him a booming economy and he caused the recession.” In fact, the economy was not booming in the final year of Mr. Biden’s time as vice president, and Mr. Trump did not “cause” the pandemic recession. [They got two right!] The former vice president — who is known for gaffes — also got some facts wrong. He said that “we have a higher deficit with China now than we did before,” even though the trade deficit with China has fallen sharply.
“There aren’t 100 million people with pre-existing conditions.” — Mr. Trump
False. The president was challenging a statement by Mr. Biden. A 2017 report from the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that between 61 million and 133 million Americans under the age of 65 have pre-existing conditions. [FALSE, not conditions that make you uninsurable.]
“I was able to bring down the cost of renewable energy to cheaper than or cheap as coal and gas and oil.” [FALSE] — Mr. Biden
Mostly true. The Obama administration’s 2009 economic stimulus bill included over $50 billion in spending to promote renewable energy, such as wind and solar installations, the largest single investment in renewable energy in the nation’s history. Although the spending was plagued with some failures, including the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a solar company that Mr. Biden personally celebrated when it received stimulus funding, overall the stimulus is still credited with boosting the growth and driving down the cost of wind and solar power.
It is accurate that in some particularly windy and sunny parts of the country, wind and solar electricity are now as cheap or cheaper than coal or gas, but fossil-fueled electricity is still cheaper in portions of the country that do not have wind and solar facilities. [Umm, how about energy overnight when the sun and wind go dow, you idiots.]
“A solicited ballot, solicited, is OK. You solicit, you’re asking, they send it back, you send it back. I did that. If you have an unsolicited, they’re sending millions of ballots all over the country. There’s fraud.” — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. [FALSE, 9 states is a BFD. They are sending ballots to non-existent voters, now bought and sold on the free market.] Only nine states are automatically sending ballots to all registered voters, which is what Mr. Trump refers to as “unsolicited.” Five of them — Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Hawaii — have traditionally allowed voting by mail, and four, along with the District of Columbia, adopted the process in response to the coronavirus pandemic: California, New Jersey, Vermont and Nevada.
Of those states, only Nevada is considered a battleground. [ONLY NEVADA COULSD DECIDE THIS ELECTION.]
The issues Mr. Trump cited were from states that have absentee ballots, or what the president refers to as a “solicited ballot” and is his preferred method of voting. Only his later mention of issues in New Jersey referred to a state that was sending ballots automatically to all registered voters.
“He called the military stupid bastards. On tape.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. In a speech before U.S. troops in the United Arab Emirates in March 2016, Mr. Biden jokingly — not disparagingly — made the “stupid bastards” comment. Mr. Biden spoke about his visits to war zones and told the soldiers assembled that Americans “don’t fully understand the incredible sacrifices you make for our country,” before trying for an applause line that did not quite land.
“I have incredibly good judgment. One, I married Jill. And two, I appointed Johnson to the academy,” he said, referring to a female lieutenant from Delaware who had introduced him. Upon receiving a tepid reaction, he said, to some laughs, “Clap for that, you stupid bastards. Come on, man. Man, you are a dull bunch. Must be slow here, man. I don’t know.”
“It was driving energy prices through the sky.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. Mr. Trump responded to the moderator’s question about why he rolled back the Clean Power Plan, a set of Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to curb planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants, by saying they were sending energy prices skyward. In fact, most of the Clean Power Plan was never implemented: it was temporarily halted by a 2016 Supreme Court order and never reinstated before the Trump administration effectively rolled it back last year.
“Take a look at what happened in Manhattan. Take a look at what happened in New Jersey. … They’re losing 30 and 40 percent. It’s a fraud. [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is partly true, and partly exaggerated. In New Jersey, four men, including a sitting city councilman, were charged this year with criminal conduct involving mail-in ballots in local elections in Paterson. The state attorney general accused them of attempting to collect hundreds of ballots and dropping them off in mailboxes; state law limits ballot collection to three per person. The episode quickly ricocheted around right-wing news sites with blaring headlines claiming it “signals national trouble,” though it was an isolated case in a local election.
The local board of elections did reject 3,200 ballots, or 19 percent of those cast in that local election, but not just for claims or suspicion of fraud. Ballots can be disqualified for mismatched signatures or for other user errors.
And Mr. Trump’s reference to irregularities in New York were exaggerated. Nearly 100,000 voters were sent defective ballots, apparently because of a printing error, elections officials acknowledged this week, but they said that new ballots would be mailed out.
The episode also seemed to raise the possibility that a voter’s ballot could be credited to someone else. In fact, security measures make that sort of mistake extremely unlikely. Every voter must sign the outside of the envelope they use to mail in their ballot, and election officials compare that signature with signatures in city files of the person whose name is printed on the envelope. Mismatches are set aside and the voter is given a chance to correct the mistake.
“Today, there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They’re called poll watchers. It’s a very safe, a very nice thing. They were thrown out, they weren’t allowed to watch.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is exaggerated. Supporters of Mr. Trump were told they were not allowed inside newly-opened satellite election offices on Tuesday because they were not legally allowed to be inside. Philadelphia opened seven satellite election offices on Tuesday for early voting where voters can request, fill out and submit a ballot; they did not open up polling locations.
Philadelphia election law does not allow for poll watchers to come into satellite election offices, only polling locations. The Trump campaign also has no poll watchers registered in Philadelphia at the moment, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“They’re sending millions of ballots all over the country. There’s fraud. They found them in creeks.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is exaggerated. This is an apparent reference to a discovery last week by law enforcement officials of three trays of mail lying in a ditch alongside a highway in Greenville, Wisc. The mail — which appeared to have been headed to the post office — included “several” absentee ballots, according to Lt. Ryan Carpenter of the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff’s department turned the mail over to inspectors from the United States Postal Service, who are investigating.
Following the discovery, the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, cited these ballots, as well as several ballots found in a garbage can in Pennsylvania that Mr. Trump has also emphasized as part of his false narrative on dangers of mail-in voting, as evidence that it “a system that’s subject to fraud.”
“Every year, I get the call. California is burning. California is burning. If that was cleaned, if you had forest management, you wouldn’t be getting those calls.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. Mr. Trump’s response to Mr. Wallace’s question, “Do you believe that human pollution, gas and greenhouse gases, contribute to global warming?” was at odds with the scientific conclusions of the most recent United States National Climate Assessment reports, which are published by 13 federal scientific agencies and which stand to date as the most comprehensive and authoritative scientific assessment of the causes and impacts of climate change in the United States.
The 2017 assessment concludes decisively that humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization. And it found that tangible impacts of climate change had already started to cause damage across the country — including increasing water scarcity in dry regions and more severe heat waves and wildfires.
While forest management is believed to play some role in wildfires, the 2018 National Climate Assessment drew direct links between climate change and worsening wildfires in the west. And it concluded that if greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels continue to increase at current rates, the frequency of severe fires in the west could triple.
“Excuse me, Portland, the sheriff just came out today and he said, ‘I support President Trump.’ ” —Mr. Trump
False. Sheriff Mike Reese of Multnomah County, Ore., where Portland is located, said he does not support Mr. Trump. “In tonight’s presidential debate the President said the ‘Portland Sheriff’ supports him. As the Multnomah County Sheriff I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him,” Mr. Reese tweeted.
Mr. Trump may have been referring to comments made by one police officer about the protests last night in Portland: “if people liked our Trump government a lot more, we probably wouldn’t have this issue in the first place.”
“His own homeland security director, and as well as the F.B.I. director, says there is no evidence at all that mail-in ballots are a source of being manipulated and cheating.” — Mr. Biden
This is mostly true. Though Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, has not made this assertion, other intelligence and election security officials have said that mail-in voting for the November presidential election is safe from foreign intervention. They have emphasized that standard security measures and the decentralized nature of the United States’ election system make it extremely difficult for a foreign power to penetrate and change the results.
Officials also said that there is no intelligence indicating that any nation-state is making a coordinated attempt to undermine absentee voting or create fake mail-in ballots in a nationwide election, though there are local instances of fraud.
The Homeland Security Department did, however, has issued warnings that Russia and other countries may seek to amplify disinformation about mail-in voting.
Homeland Security Correspondent
“Almost everything I see is from the left wing.” [True] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. The statement came as the president was being pushed to forthrightly condemn white supremacists, and in an important moment in the debate, Mr. Trump did not condemn violent white racism. His own F.B.I. director said this month that “racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a majority of domestic terrorism threats. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said days later that “when white supremacists act as terrorists, more people per incident are killed.”
The Homeland Security Department also singled out the white extremist threat as a primary threat in a domestic terrorism assessment published last year. That framework also flagged anti-government groups, including antifa and armed militia groups. But former top officials in the Homeland Security Department have accused the Trump administration of downplaying the rise of domestic terrorism and even suppressing intelligence warning of the rise of white supremacy.
At the debate, Mr. Trump continued a record going back to the 2016 campaign of reluctance to distance himself from white racists who back him.
“They cheat. They found ballots in a wastepaper basket three days ago, and they all had the name military ballots, they were military, they all had the name Trump on them.” [True] — Mr. Trump
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump was referring to a case involving nine ballots in Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Earlier this month, federal law enforcement officials disclosed that they were investigating whether local elections officials improperly discarded the ballots, at least seven of which were cast for Mr. Trump.
The investigation is ongoing and the announcement unnerved election experts, who saw politics at play, in part because of the disclosure about whom the ballots were cast for. County election officials have attributed the discarded ballots to a clerical error and have said it was not a sign of widespread fraud or cheating.
“I want crystal clean water, and air. I want beautiful clean air. We have the lowest carbon. Look at our numbers now. We are doing phenomenal.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. Mr. Trump’s administration has rolled back or weakened over 100 environmental laws and rules, among them an Obama-era clean-water regulation that had been designed to reduce pollution in the nation’s rivers, lakes, wetlands and other public bodies of water. The administration has also significantly rolled back or weakened multiple Clean Air Act regulations designed to reduce pollution of both planet-warming greenhouse gases as well as soot and toxins from auto tailpipes, power plant smokestacks and oil and gas drilling sites. It is accurate that the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions have fallen slightly in recent years, but they are expected to increase in the coming years in part as a result of the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks.
White House Correspondent
“The fact is that I’ve gone head-to-head with Putin and made it clear to him, we’re not going to take any of his stuff. He’s Putin’s puppy. He still refuses to even say anything to Putin about the bounty on the heads of American soldiers.” — Mr. Biden [FALSE]
True. In July, Mr. Biden publicly announced that he was “putting the Kremlin and other foreign governments on notice” that as president he would “impose substantial and lasting costs on those who interfere with American elections.” Mr. Trump has offered virtually no words of concern or criticism about election meddling directed by Russian President Vladimir V Putin.
Nor has Mr. Trump condemned or warned Mr. Putin over a C.I.A. assessment that Russia’s military intelligence service covertly offered bounties for the killing of Americans service members in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump said that he did not bring up the report during a phone call with the Russian leader after it was released by the C.I.A. Mr. Trump has called reports of the bounties a “hoax,” but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took them seriously enough to warn his Russian counterpart.
“I’m OK with electric cars too. I’m all for electric cars. I have given big incentives for electric cars.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is false. Mr. Trump offered his backing for electric cars as evidence that he cares about reducing carbon emissions. But the president has actually tried to do away with tax incentives for consumers who buy them. [Subsidies for the rich.]
In 2019, Mr. Trump’s budget called for eliminating a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, which his administration said would save $2.5 billion over a decade.
In 2018, Mr. Trump also threatened to punish General Motors over its plan to cut jobs by dangling the possibility that he could end the federal tax credits that have helped underwrite that automaker’s electric-vehicle fleet.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who used to drive a Tesla, has also said that he believed the subsidy was unnecessary and that the segment of the industry should stand on its own.
“They want to take out the cows.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. Mr. Trump was misleadingly referring to the Green New Deal, a proposal to combat climate change released by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. It is not Mr. Biden’s plan. Though the Green New Deal would significantly alter the transportation and agriculture sectors, it does not literally call for the elimination of cars, airplanes or cows.
Outside the text of the legislation, however, a blog post on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s website describing the plan did note, “The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then.” Her staff retracted the post and said that it was incomplete and published by accident.
“Somebody has to do something about antifa and the left. This is not a right-wing problem. This is left wing.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. Some members of antifa, a loose movement of “anti-fascists,” have committed acts of violence. Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-proclaimed supporter of the movement, was also suspected of fatally shooting a right-wing activist who was part of a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Ore. Mr. Reinoehl was shot and killed by law enforcement agents before he could be taken into custody.
But Mr. Trump’s own top national security officials have said the movement has not represented the most lethal threat to the United States in recent years. Just this month, the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, said “racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, make up a majority of domestic terrorism threats. Mr. Wray and other top law enforcement officials have expressed alarm about antifa, but also armed militia groups that tend to be aligned with right-wing ideology.
The Trump administration often cites the killing of a Federal Protective Service officer in Oakland, Calif., as an example of the violence within demonstrations protesting police violence. But that fatal shooting was not committed by a protester but rather a member of the anti-government group the Boogaloo, an extremist ideology that seeks to bring about a second civil war. Members of the movement have sought to exploit the demonstrations to commit violence.
“We left him a booming economy. And he caused the recession.” — Mr. Biden [FALSE]
This is false. The economy was not “booming” in the final year of Mr. Biden’s time as vice president, and Mr. Trump did not “cause” the pandemic recession. When President Barack Obama and Mr. Biden left office, the economy was healthy, though growth had dipped below 2 percent in 2016 in part because of a contraction in business investment stemming in part from a plunge in oil prices rippling through America’s energy industry. Unemployment had fallen steadily.
Under Mr. Trump, economic growth accelerated from 2016, spurred by the fiscal stimulus of tax cuts and increased government spending and continued monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve. The first three years of Mr. Trump’s presidency were similar, in terms of economic and job growth, to the first three years of Mr. Obama’s second term.
The coronavirus pandemic plunged the United States into recession this spring. Mr. Biden and others have criticized Mr. Trump’s response to it, blaming him for deaths from the virus and a contraction in economic activity. But there is no evidence Mr. Trump’s actions caused the recession: every major wealthy country in the world has experienced a sharp economic contraction along with its outbreak of the virus.
“You know one of the reasons I’ll have so many judges? Because President Obama and him left me 128 judges to fill. They left 128 openings.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. While it is true that Mr. Trump had vacancies to fill when he assumed the White House, the reason is not simply that former President Barack Obama “left” the positions vacant. The Republican-led Senate refused to confirm many of Mr. Obama’s judicial nominees, including Judge Merrick Garland, whom Mr. Obama named to fill the vacancy left by the death in February 2016 of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court.
“His own former spokesperson said, you know, ‘Riots and chaos and violence help his cause.’ That’s what this is all about.” [FALSE] — Mr. Biden
This is true. Mr. Trump’s former counselor, Kellyanne Conway, told Fox News in August that Mr. Trump would benefit politically from unrest in American cities.
“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” she said.
“Seattle, they heard we were coming in the following day and they put up their hands and we got back Seattle, Minneapolis. We got it back, Joe, because we believe in law and order.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. Mr. Trump is taking undue credit for the relative calm that has settled in Minneapolis, a city roiled by protests in May. The governor, not the president, sent the National Guard there. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota activated the state’s National Guard on May 28, three days after George Floyd’s death. The guard tweeted at about 4 p.m. local time that it was ready to respond to the governor’s request.
Mr. Trump tweeted around midnight telling Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis to “get his act together” or “I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right” — an hour after the state National Guard said it had deployed 500 members to the city.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan told the Washington Post, that a conversation that Mr. Trump described “just never happened.”
“The mayor of Moscow’s wife gave your son $3.5 million.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. This claim is based on an investigative report released last week by Senate Republicans that accused members of Mr. Biden’s family of cashing in on his vice presidency. The report claims that Hunter Biden “had a financial relationship” with Elena Baturina, a wealthy Russian businesswoman and the widow of a former mayor of Moscow. The report based this claim on an unidentified “confidential document” showing that Ms. Baturina transferred $3.5 million in 2014 for “a Consultancy Agreement” to a bank account associated with a company called Rosemont Seneca Thornton, which was associated with Hunter Biden’s business partners.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer has said that he was not a co-founder of Rosemont Seneca Thornton, had no interest in it and did not have a financial relationship with Ms. Baturina. He did not respond to a question about whether Mr. Biden was paid by Rosemont Seneca Thornton or did consulting work for Ms. Baturina.
“I’ll have 25,000, 35,000, people show up at airports. We use airports.” — Mr. Trump [I think he meant 3500 which is true. No one's ever mixed up numbers, right?]
False. Airport hangars cannot accommodate crowds of that size. While Mr. Trump’s rallies in the past have attracted tens of thousands of attendees, in recent weeks the rallies that he has been holding at airport hangers have been far smaller. According to local news reports this month, a rally at an airport in Virginia drew an estimated 3,000 people, an airport rally in Michigan drew an estimated 10,000 people and a rally in Pennsylvania drew an estimated 7,000 people. Mr. Trump has a tendency to exaggerate his crowd sizes, starting with his inauguration in 2017.
“They had the slowest recovery since — economic recovery — since 1929.” — Mr. Trump [RUE]
This is misleading. Mr. Trump is right that the growth rate of economic output as measured by gross domestic product was slower after the recession that spanned 2007 to 2009 than it had been following other contractions.
But that fact is misleading in isolation. Growth had been slowing for decades as the population aged and other long-run trends caused the economy’s potential run rate to decline. Nor did growth pick up dramatically once Mr. Trump took office, aside from a short-lived jump on the back of his tax cuts.
It is worth noting that the 2007 to 2009 recession was the worst since the Great Depression, and its depth and length led to labor market scarring, which trapped many would-be workers on the sidelines of the job market.
“One in 1,000 African Americans has been killed because of the coronavirus.” — Mr. Biden [Trump's fault? FALSE.]
True As of mid-September, 1 in 1,020 Black Americans has died of Covid-19 — the highest rate of death when broken down by race and ethnicity. Since the early days of the pandemic, the coronavirus has disproportionately affected Black, Latino, Native, and Indigenous people, who are contracting the virus at higher rates and are more likely to be hospitalized for severe Covid-19.
1 in 1,220 Indigenous Americans, 1 in 1,400 Pacific Islander Americans, and 1 in 1,540 Latino Americans have died from the virus, compared to 1 in 2,150 white Americans and 1 in 2,470 Asian-Americans. Such statistics are supported by data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which note that people who identify as Black or African-American are more than twice as likely to die from the coronavirus, compared to their white neighbors.
“China ate your lunch, Joe. And no wonder, your son goes in and he takes out, he takes out billions of dollars. He takes out billions of dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This lacks evidence. Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is involved in a Chinese government-linked private equity fund, BHR Equity Investment Fund Management Co., that won a business license from the Chinese government. Hunter Biden was on the board of the fund when it was formed in late 2013, and he later invested roughly $420,000, giving him a 10 percent stake, after his father had left the vice presidency.
But Hunter Biden’s lawyer has said that he has never been paid for his role on the board, and has not profited financially since he began as a part owner. Hunter Biden left the board in April, according to a letter produced by his lawyer. But as of June, he still owned his stake in the fund, which he was trying to sell. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment about the status of that effort.
“I brought back Big Ten football, it was me and I’m very happy to do it. The people of Ohio are very proud of me.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This lacks evidence. President Trump publicly pressed the Big Ten to reverse its decision not to play football this autumn, and he even spoke to the league’s commissioner, Kevin Warren. But Big Ten officials, who voted this month to try to play beginning in October, insisted that they accepted no federal aid and that Mr. Trump was not a pivotal figure in the league’s deliberations.
“He’s going to be the first president of the United States to leave office having fewer jobs in his administration than when he became president.” — Mr. Biden [FALSE, Biden does not know the employment figures in 2024.]
This is misleading. Mr. Biden may be relying on the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s nonfarm payroll survey, which stretches back to the late 1930s, to arrive at this conclusion. But Herbert Hoover, who was president during the Great Depression, left office in 1933 at a time when the economy had fewer jobs than when he was elected in 1929, based on subsequent estimates. Mr. Biden’s statement also requires the unproven assumptions that Mr. Trump will lose the election, and that jobs will not bounce back to pre-crisis levels before November.
“We’ve had no negative effect and we’ve had 35-40,000 people.” — Mr. Trump
False. Mr. Trump claimed his rallies have had “no negative effect” because of the coronavirus and that as many as 35,000 or 40,000 people have attended the events. Both are untrue, as is a separate claim that his rallies have all been held outdoors.
At least eight campaign staff members who helped plan President Trump’s indoor rally in June in Tulsa, Okla., including members of the Secret Service, tested positive for the coronavirus, either before the rally or after attending.
Mr. Trump’s rallies have generally attracted just several thousand people, not the tens of thousands he claimed. While the president’s campaign had claimed that more than 1 million people had sought tickets for the Oklahoma rally, the 19,000-seat arena was at least one-third empty during the rally. A second, outdoor venue for an overflow crowd at the same event was so sparsely attended that he and Vice President Mike Pence both canceled appearances there.
“They said it would take a miracle to bring back manufacturing. I brought back 700,000 jobs. They brought back nothing.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is false. Mr. Trump did not “bring back” 700,000 manufacturing jobs, even before the coronavirus recession. In his first three years as president, manufacturing employment rose by just under 500,000 jobs. Through August, because of jobs lost to the pandemic recession, the sector it is down by more than 200,000 jobs from when Mr. Trump took office.
“He says he’s smart because he can take advantage of the tax code, and he does take advantage of the tax code.” — Mr. Biden
This is misleading. Mr. Biden missed the point. Mr. Trump’s taxes reveal he does take advantage of deductions and tax credits available to him. But the main reason he does not pay income tax is because his businesses have lost far more money than they make. [NYT should know.]
Because of the way the tax code works, businesses can use losses in one year to avoid paying income tax in future years. Mr. Trump has no shortage of losses. Take Trump National Doral, his golf course near Miami. Mr. Trump bought the resort for $150 million in 2012. Through 2018, his losses have totaled $162.3 million.
Overall, since 2000, Mr. Trump has reported losses of $315.6 million at his golf courses. And his namesake hotel in Washington, D.C., showed losses of $55.5 million through 2018.
“Young children aren’t. Even younger people aren’t.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. The president was referring to the relative risks to young people from the coronavirus. The vast majority of children do not become visibly ill when infected with the coronavirus. But while a strong immune system may protect them from becoming sick, they are far from immune [NOT WHAT HE SAID]. Several studies have shown that children can get infected and harbor high levels of the coronavirus. And a small proportion of children seem to develop a condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a severe and sometimes deadly overreaction of the immune system.
The debate on schools has mostly centered on whether children who are infected can transmit to others. The bulk of the evidence here suggests that children under 10 are about half as likely to spread the virus to others, but older children, particularly 15 and above, may transmit the coronavirus as efficiently as adults do. Teenagers are also about twice as likely as younger children to be infected with the coronavirus, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggesting that high schools and colleges may be important contributors to community spread.
“If we just wore masks between now — and social distanced between now and January, we would probably save up to 100,000 lives.” [WE ARE. TRUMP IS SAVING LIVES] — Mr. Biden
True. Scientists projecting the death toll of the virus in the United States have noted that, should the country maintain its current levels of physical distancing mandates and masking, more than 370,000 Americans could be dead by January 1, 2021 — about 165,000 more than the current death toll.
Should masking and distancing become very widespread, as Mr. Biden references, the total death count would be around 275,000, potentially saving nearly 100,000 lives. Models have also projected potential deaths if mandates were to ease, allowing further mingling and exposure. Eased mandates could catapult the country onto a path toward reaching 425,000 deaths by January of next year.
“I paid millions of dollars. Millions of dollars.” — Mr. Trump [NYT keeps referring to illegally obtained documents we can't see.]
False. While Mr. Trump appears to have paid a variety of taxes in recent years, including payroll taxes for his employees, he has paid very little in federal income taxes, according to tax documents obtained by The New York Times.
They show that in 2017, for example, Mr. Trump chose to pay $750 in federal income taxes. That was the case even though he reported earning some $15 million for the year, through a variety of sources. But on his federal tax return, Mr. Trump offset those earnings by reporting losses from his businesses and claiming a range of tax credits, including one that allowed him to reduce his liability under the alternative minimum tax from $7.4 million to $750. It is unclear how his accountants chose that number: Mr. Trump appeared to have sufficient credits to reduce his liability to zero. That same year, Mr. Biden paid about $3.7 million in federal income tax, his returns show.
“He’ll close down the whole country.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is exaggerated. Mr. Biden, who has stressed the importance of following scientific expertise in responding to the pandemic, is not promising to shut down the whole country.
In an interview with ABC News in August, Mr. Biden was pressed on what he would do “if the scientists say shut it down” and did respond, “I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists.”
But this month, Mr. Biden said, “There is going to be no need, in my view, to be able to shut down the whole economy.”
“I had to close the greatest economy in the history of the country.” — Mr. Trump [TRUE]
This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump often claims that his administration had fostered the best economy in history before the onset of the pandemic. But data show that the expansion that he presided over — which he inherited — failed to measure up to prior economic eras across several dimensions.
The expansion from 2009 through early 2020 was the longest on record. It saw years of strong labor market gains that pushed the unemployment rate steadily lower, until it hit 3.5 percent and held around that half-century low for much of 2019 and early 2020. The robust labor market led to stronger wage gains for low earners and helped to fuel consumer spending.
But many people remained on the job market’s sidelines: the employment rate for men in their prime, for instance, never rebounded to pre-crisis levels.
Output growth, which did receive a temporary boost from Mr. Trump’s tax cuts, has otherwise generally oscillated around 2 percent. That is roughly the level economists see as sustainable given modern productivity and demographic trends, and lower than the run rate that prevailed in prior decades.
And inequality remained very high. The top 1 percent hold almost 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, based on a Federal Reserve survey, while the bottom 50 percent of wealth-holders had only about 1 percent of the overall pie. Those 2019 figures are little changed from 2016, Fed economists said.
“Now we’re weeks away from a vaccine.” — Mr. Trump [TRUE]
This lacks evidence. Top health officials have said that a vaccine may not be widely available until next summer. Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the top scientist on the administration’s vaccine development program, recently said that Americans would most likely not be widely vaccinated until the middle of 2021, a timeline echoed by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Slaoui also said that the chance of having a vaccine by October or November was “extremely unlikely.”
Of the companies with vaccines in late-stage clinical trials in the United States, just one — Pfizer — has said that it could have initial results by the end of October, a time frame the company has clarified is a best-case scenario.
At the same time, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top health officials in the administration have said that there could be evidence of a vaccine’s effectiveness by November or December. If every aspect of the vaccines’ development and distribution goes exactly as planned, certain people in high-risk groups, including frontline health workers, could get vaccinated this year.
“H1N1. You were a disaster.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the first case of the H1N1 virus on April 14, 2009. The Obama administration declared swine flu a public health emergency on April 26. The Food and Drug Administration approved a rapid test for the virus two days later.
At the time, the C.D.C. had reported 64 cases and zero deaths. The C.D.C. began shipping test kits to public health laboratories on May 1 (at 141 cases and one death) and a second test was approved in July. From May to September 2009, the agency shipped more than 1,000 kits, each one able to test 1,000 specimens.
A vaccine became available in early October but, amid reports of shortages, President Obama declared the outbreak a national emergency later that month. The estimated death toll in the United States from the H1N1 epidemic was 12,469 from April 2009 to April 2010.
“Did you use the word ‘smart’? So you said you went to Delaware State but you forgot the name of your college.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
False. Mr. Biden, at a campaign event in South Carolina last year, claimed that he “got started out” out of Delaware State University, a historically Black university. Many in conservative media interpreted the comment as Mr. Biden claiming to have attended the university, when he attended the University of Delaware. But he was likely referring to the political support he received from the college when he first campaigned for Senate, as he has done in several other appearances.
In a September visit to North Carolina, Mr. Biden called Delaware State University “the best H.B.C.U. in America.” He noted that he began his political career after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr “and a lot of my support came out of that H.B.C.U.”
“I am a political product of Delaware State University, a great H.B.C.U.,” he said in May. “Delaware State University is the best. They’re the ones that brought me to the dance, they’re where I got started,” he said in March.
We in fact have 5 percent — 4 percent — of the world’s population, 20 percent of the deaths. [FALSE] — Mr. Biden
This is true. The global population is estimated to be around 7.8 billion; roughly 330 million people live in the United States, accounting for about 4 percent of it. More than 205,000 people have died in the United States — a fifth of the million who have died worldwide. About 40,000 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus are identified each day in the country, and roughly 300,000 each day worldwide.
“I closed it, and you said, ‘He’s xenophobic.’ You don’t believe we should have closed the country.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is misleading. Mr. Biden wrote on Twitter in March that “banning all travel from Europe — or any other part of the world — will not stop” the coronavirus, which critics seized on to argue that he was against imposing travel restrictions. A top Biden campaign official said in early April that Mr. Biden did support the Trump administration’s restrictions on travel from China.
Mr. Biden did accuse Mr. Trump of xenophobia. On the day the travel restrictions were announced by the administration, Mr. Biden said that “this is no time for Donald Trump’s record” of “hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science.” But he did not specifically tie the accusation to the day’s announcement.
“I’m cutting drug prices, I’m going with favored nations which no president has the courage to do, because you’re going against big pharma. Drug prices will be coming down 80 percent. You could have done it in your 47 year period in government. Nobody’s done it.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump has signed four executive orders on drug prices, which direct the Department of Health and Human Services to pursue various policies to lower drug prices. But none of them have gone into effect yet. The policy Trump described in the most detail, his “most favored nations” policy, will be difficult to implement without new legislation, and will be vulnerable to court challenges. And that policy would only influence the prices paid by the Medicare program for drugs, not the prices paid by Americans who buy their own health insurance or get it from their jobs.
“Your party wants to go socialist.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump was referring to Mr. Biden’s health care platform. The left wing of the Democratic Party has embraced Medicare for All, the universal government run insurance program advocated by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and a self-described democratic socialist.
But Mr. Biden has not embraced Medicare for all. He supports expanding the Affordable Care Act, which relies on the current system of private insurers. Mr. Biden would, however, favor adding a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act — a government run-program that would cover compete with private insurers.
“She thinks that the Affordable Care Act is not constitutional.” — Mr. Biden [FALSE]
This is exaggerated. Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, has expressed reservations about the reasoning in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s opinion in 2012 upholding a central provision of the Affordable Care Act. But she has not expressed a view about the constitutionality of the entire law or about a challenge to it pending in the Supreme Court.
“He’s in the Supreme Court right now trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act which will strip 20 million people from having insurance, health insurance.” — Mr. Biden [FALSE]
Mostly true. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department is arguing in Supreme Court briefs that the entirety of the Affordable Care Act should be overturned. The effects of that reversal would be far-reaching. Mr. Biden’s estimate that 20 million more Americans would lose health insurance is consistent with calculations from the Urban Institute, a Washington research group with a widely respected model that the measures the likely effects of changes in health policy. But that estimate is a bit out of date, since fewer Americans have coverage now than did before the coronavirus pandemic.
“Some of her biggest endorsers are very liberal people.” [TRUE] — Mr. Trump
This is mostly true. Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, has been endorsed by at least one prominent liberal, Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard. Many Democrats object to the process used to place her on the court without questioning her qualifications.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Chris Wallace questions and behavior
Post by: DougMacG on October 01, 2020, 10:16:41 AM
He starts right out with repeating a falsehood, the need to condemn white supremacists, trying to validate Biden's biggest lie. He inserts climate change. He gives almost no pushback on Biden, doesn't follow up even on unanswered questions. He tries to stop Trump from calling out Biden's falsehoods. He's a registered Democrat not trying to hide it.
Yet he's better than 99% or more of the MSM.
Title: How POTH knew about Trump's taxes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2020, 01:29:16 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 01, 2020, 02:23:10 PM
"Carlos Slim and the fifth generation members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family are making money selling a story that is based on information obtained from methods and sources it refuses to disclose and that paints Mr. Trump as somehow corrupt for doing things that the Ochs-Sulzberger family has itself been doing for years."
Carlos Slim - foreign influence of the upcoming election
story released few days before debate AGAIN from unknown sources timed so Democrat Chris Wallace can ask about it in the debate as I knew he dutifully would! He is such a goooooood jurnolist (er) and Fox is PROUD of him........n :roll:
possibly NYT accounting firm which in the article it points out is familiar with tax avoidance - but we will never know
because the NYT always "protects" it's sources - of course
Title: Chris Wallace, candidate Trump 2016 denouncing racism
Post by: DougMacG on October 01, 2020, 06:48:08 PM
Chris Wallace asked Trump the exact same BS question in 2016: https://mobile.twitter.com/ali/status/1311365156245561344
Title: NYT: “Hong Kong Is China, Like It or Not.”
Post by: DougMacG on October 02, 2020, 06:09:24 PM
“Hong Kong Is China, Like It or Not.” - NYT Regina Ip (She seems to like it.)
Title: CNN : Trump farts -> major scandal; anything Trump; does is a scandal
Post by: ccp on October 05, 2020, 06:12:49 AM
Anderson:
DR Gupta can virus be passed through farts?'
DR Gupta:
WEll, Anderson , we don't know , but if the PResident farted in that vehicle he could well have put the Secret Services agents at risk
Anderson:
'Sanjay , don't you think it is incredibly selfish and all political that the PResident would risk farting in the same car with other people just so he can get a photo up?'
Sanjay: 'Well Anderson, ,,,,,,,YES'
[all like a script]
And later in the evening Cuomo with his face as close to the camera as possible will scream at us the same theme
and Lemon will look stern grim and subtly shake his head while disparaging Trump for same reason
farting in car with SS agents
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 05, 2020, 06:22:13 AM
But they were wearing masks!
Title: Retire Chris Wallace, the full Crowley. VDH
Post by: DougMacG on October 05, 2020, 08:37:20 AM
Must read: https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/04/the-full-crowley/
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 05, 2020, 11:12:04 AM
"In answering, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnaney blew him out of the water. Unlike Roberts, she came equipped with all sorts of citations not just noting Trump’s prior denunciations of supremacists, but by doing so in such detail to reveal Roberts’ own obsessions. "
I am still undecided about Kayleigh.
Do I like listening, OR looking at her more? :-D
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 06, 2020, 07:06:08 AM
:-D
Title: the total hypocracy of CNN
Post by: ccp on October 06, 2020, 07:26:37 AM
frankly as a doctor I don't need to know every freaken O2 sat, every single temperature reading , his Cat Scan, his WBC results etc......
I know he has corona . I know he has a low but very real risk he could die. Do they not think he does not have full intensive like care at WH?
I don't need to see his vitals online so they can obsess (and pray he dies) about it every second of the 24/7 news cycle
What galls (bladders) me the most is how Tapper & Gupta go off on previous presidents covering their healthy details, but only the ones they hate : "Wilson " and of course "Reagan" is mentioned.
we never hear about Kennedy having. a very severe disease - Addison's, and that osteoporisis probably caused or at least contributed to his back problems not "war injuries".
And for Tapper to imply Biden will be open about his health ( though in this interview he suggests it without actually saying Biden said he will inform us of every detail
yet we all know Biden , his wife, the entire Dem Party and the Leftist Dem media complex are covering up his early dementia.
How about Hillary and the left wing mob complex covering up her health problems......
Title: Undecided not so undecided
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2020, 04:42:46 PM
Title: next debate moderator a Democrat
Post by: ccp on October 08, 2020, 07:03:05 AM
They always are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Scully
somehow questions are ALWAYS framed like they are democrat talking points
and then promoted as even handed simply because maybe both debaters get asked same question
but they are almost always Dem talking points
now Trump may cancel debate ..... let alone Biden
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2020, 07:30:59 AM
Apparently last night's moderator wrote a biography of Nancy Pelosi?
And the next one was an intern for Biden?
Do I have this right?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 08, 2020, 08:02:28 AM
". Apparently last night's moderator wrote a biography of Nancy Pelosi?
And the next one was an intern for Biden?
Do I have this right?"
Susan Page from Wikipedia :
her first book was published in 2019, a biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush titled The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty.[3] Also in 2019, she signed a deal to write a biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tentatively titled Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Arc of Power.[4]
probably a Dem but possibly a Bush Republican .............
as for the other guy, right on Wikipedia it states he is a Democrat
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2020, 09:56:25 AM
That might explain the absence of questions about her support for BLM, bailing out rioters, etc.
Title: debates always left wing talking point questions ; Coulter
Post by: ccp on October 09, 2020, 05:55:58 AM
and find Scheifler , is likely a democrat and his son ran as a democrat
and big pharma does not like Trump promoting cheaper drug prices and is predominately voting to the candidate who is promoting bigger government involvement in health care not cheaper drugs ->>>. Guess who. China Denyer Joe Biden
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Are these Polls right?
Post by: DougMacG on October 13, 2020, 08:21:00 AM
the real kicker is way down on page 12, where it is revealed that self-identified Democrats in the sample outnumber Republicans ... and "Strong Democrats" outnumber "Strong Republicans"...
In other words, what the poll showed is that Biden voters favor Biden.
[Making basic adjustments] "Trump trails by only 3%, which probably means he wins the Electoral College (and a second term)".
Can a major network based poll see a 14% lead for a candidate who will lose, this close to the election?
"Four years ago, in October 2016, an AP-GfK poll also showed that Trump had fallen 14 points behind Hillary Clinton right after their final debate — 12 days before the election. We all know how that turned out." ------------------- In addition to these errors, there is something we know called the shy Trump voter some of which can't tell their own spouse and or family. We know this phenomenon exists, we just don't know how large it is. ------------------- More polls: The Senate race gap in Michigan closed to 1% (NYT poll), within the margin of error. If this seat flips to R, Republicans hold the Senate and perhaps by a significant margin. Also, if this seat flips it probably means Trump wins Michigan which likely means he wins the election. Similar situation in Arizona. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/senate/
Title: Corrupt CNN , Zucker
Post by: ccp on October 14, 2020, 06:07:55 AM
Title: Re: Marist poll finds no reason why sports ratings are down
Post by: DougMacG on October 15, 2020, 06:32:23 AM
Sports are no longer the escape anymore that unites us and pulls us back from the real world full of politics and divides us. The networks are the co-conspirators.
The show is just not that good. Mostly hype and commercials. Seldom see the amazing play that keeps you coming back, except on endless replays.
It started with Commie Capernick. Discriminated on race to the tune of 125 million dollars. Poor guy, average pro-level talent and only his hair is black-ish. When sports made the main draw watching to see who and how many would dishonor his country the worst, fans found they could just read it the next day and not waste a beautiful afternoon sitting indoors watching it.
The NBA thing with the commies in China gave it all away. Are they about social justice or their own personal enrichment. They can't put their BS in our living rooms when we still have control of the off button.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 15, 2020, 06:51:55 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 15, 2020, 07:28:43 AM
In 2016, all the battleground state poll averages were wrong by 1-6.7%. (Half the individual polls were wrong by more than the average!)
I listened to Chuck Todd today explain how his network (and Marist) havre made the correction in their polls for the mistakes made in 2016. It's all a matter of which rural voters you ask, he says. Right. Then he reports his NBC double digit plus lead as fact. But he admits that he subtracts 3 points off the top of all the other state polls, 3 points points off the Dem lead. That and the margin of error is enough to flip most of these key state polls without further movement toward likely to come in the last weeks.
That leaves us with nothing to judge with but our own lying eyes.
Skin in the game: Betting odds are currently 65-35 Biden. That removes the intentional bias - but betters see the same polls we do. If polls are wrong, betters are at least partly misguided. Interesting that if Biden leads by 14, 16%(?) and the electoral college only corrects for 3 points of that, why aren't the betting odds 100-0? https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/betting_odds/2020_president/
There are demographic groups who are slipping away from their group think and indoctrination. For whatever reason, polls don't admit these movements until after the election. They just keep correcting for it as error.
Polls admit sampling error. They don't admit their structural errors, like disproportionately asking Biden voters who they favor.
Best guess today: National average 9 points Biden, RCP. Subtract more than 3 points and throw out all the stupid ones. Rasmussen latest: 5 points Biden. Subtract 3 point Trump advantage in electoral college. Biden leads by two. Within the 'margin of error'. That lead closes in the last two and half weeks. The election is a draw. Senate: same, slight lean R. House: Dem advantage. Republicans only win all if the polls really were way off.
Title: say it ain't so, Joe?
Post by: ccp on October 15, 2020, 09:10:23 AM
Joe:
"okay, it ain't so"
media we thought so , it is all now debunked
move on folks
just a conspiracy from Trump allies.
MSM polls: 48 % say Biden is trustworthy blah blah blah
come on Trump , you can't beat this senile corrupt guy?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Biden smoking gun, NY Post
Post by: DougMacG on October 15, 2020, 12:49:16 PM
Some indication the NY Post story is drawing attention because of the censorship.
"Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it." - AntiFragile, Nassim taleb
Biden admits he has a problem: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lashes-out-new-york-post-429486
And NOW it's a story...
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 15, 2020, 02:12:20 PM
Oh my God this is one of their defenses :
"There was no immediate indication of Russian involvement in the release of emails that the Post obtained, but its general thrust mirrors a narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies have described as part of an active Russian disinformation effort aimed at the 2020 election."
beside all his aides coming and stating I do not recall any meeting .........
" Lewinsky had sex with me but I did not participate"
" I did not meet with this Russian guy" - (he met with me).
" it did not affect US policy"
" nothing was done that was illegal"
what other jokes can we think of to do at the comedy club tonight?
I like this , when KamAla Harris told us that Joe Biden told her foreign policy was easy with her classic shit eating grin:
" it is all about the relationships"
Joe has good relationships around the world - China Ukraine ......
His family learned well how to conduct foreign policy based on "relationships".
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 16, 2020, 05:04:38 AM
Look carefully at what Twitter is saying to justify censoring the Biden story. If applied consistently, it’d mean that some of history’s most consequential journalism — the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks’ war logs, Snowden docs, Panama Papers, our Brazil Archive — would be banned. - Glenn Greenwald, twitter
Next they will ban criticism.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 16, 2020, 05:08:09 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 16, 2020, 05:21:12 AM
"Look carefully at what Twitter is saying to justify censoring the Biden story."
I won't get on twitter but I can imagine all the crazy twisted illogic pissed all over the internet trying to justify it
yet when NYT WP CNN publish anything anti Trump from anonymous source the veracity is NEVER questioned
now we here all these confabulations explaining why THIS story about Biden is not to be taken seriously
just sickening
The media exposes themselves - don't ever call us fake news. - or we WILL destroy you
you MUST suck up to us
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, CBS News
Post by: DougMacG on October 16, 2020, 08:16:53 AM
This should be about the hunter Biden hard drive oh, but it really read like a Babylon Bee parodyof CBS News, allegedly, supposedly, false story , debunked, Etc
Title: Shock: "Undecided Voter" at Biden Managed Photo Opportunity Was Actually...
Post by: G M on October 16, 2020, 06:19:29 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/390843.php
If only bigdog would explain how this was professional journalism...
Title: another one with genital photos
Post by: ccp on October 19, 2020, 12:01:06 PM
Title: Liz Harrington on Christine Amanpour yesterday
Post by: ccp on October 23, 2020, 04:19:20 AM
Liz made Amanpour a Democrat partisan warrior look like a fool yesterday
as the latter tried and tried to make Trump look bad
Liz turned it right around
We on the Right know we win when the lib smirks in response - always that little lib smirk. The Big Guy did it a lot last night in the debate when he was getting his ass handed to him.
Title: Christine Amanpour vs Liz Harrington
Post by: ccp on October 23, 2020, 02:46:04 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KUMqMWqL7w
PBS another media outlet like NPR that is big fake news
controlled by democrat partisans who masquerade as "objective journalists"
Title: Re: Christine Amanpour vs Liz Harrington
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2020, 04:10:33 PM
PBS another media outlet like NPR that is big fake news
controlled by democrat partisans who masquerade as "objective journalists"
That is horrible 'journolism'. Good to see someone fight back. Wow, they are not ready for criticism, living in their little bubble.
I tried to watch the Republican National Convention on PBS. Their moderators were Democrats, the correspondents were Leftists, the liberal guest were far left and their token 'conservative' [David Brooks, NYT] is an Obama supporting never-Trumper. That's fine but then they spend their camera time on these people knocking down the message while keeping us away from the speaker at the podium. It was unwatchable. To add insult to injury, this Democratic informercial was on public TV that takes public dollars support. PBS' latest trick, to follow twitter's lead blocking the Hunter Joe scandal is the nail in the coffin. They don't even pretend to be fair anymore.
There is a hole in the market a mile wide for someone to read the news evenly and objectively.
I remember when CNN was the envy of the world in their field. Now Al Jazeera is friendlier to the US and the administration than them. https://www.aljazeera.com/
I remember when the slant of the NY Times was subtle.
Now Fox is run by the Democrat generation of Murdocks and Drudge sold out to either Soros or a clone.
NY Post has stepped up. Liberal media called it a tabloid. I wonder if Alexander Hamilton was a tabloid writer. https://nypost.com/2020/07/03/alexander-hamilton-founded-americas-oldest-daily-newspaper/ Maybe we need NY Post TV.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, more media implosion
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2020, 04:44:04 PM
Title: Chuck Todd, the polls are manufactured products
Post by: DougMacG on October 29, 2020, 05:10:46 AM
Regular guest on Hugh Hewitt radio, Chuck Todd who is moderator of Meet the Press, said that the poles in 2016 were right but the analysis was wrong. I take that to men that like climate change, the published polls are adjusted data. They asked lots of questions to lots of people and someone who knows more than all of us put it together and says that Biden leads by four, for example.
In other words further, the pole is not what it claims to be. They did not ask 2000 people for example and these are the results. They asked even more people and they chose the results. They of course are biased by the results that their peers are publishing and by the results that they want to publish.
As long known, this makes a mockery of the published margin of error, which is the statistical, mathematical sampling error, and ignores a whole host of potential human errors including intentional error and outcome bissed errors.
Sampling error: imagine a huge jar of 200 million red and blue marbles all randomly mixed up throughout and randomly select a few hundred of them, count them and project the result for the entire population. The amount you can be wrong by is the sampling error. Evenly distributed is not what the demographics look like nationwide or in any state and that's not how the 'polling' process works. It's more like a secret sauce mixed up by some pretend, really smart people. And they are only judged by their final poll. All the rest is BS.
The final 2016 Wisconsin poll average that decided the election was wrong by 7 points. Think about that, how can all these polls be wrong by more than 2 or 3 times the 'margin of error', all in the same direction? Simple. They aren't polls, it isn't an evenly distributed electorate and it isn't random sampling. It's a media manufactured product, for better or worse.
Title: Chuck Todd on polls
Post by: ccp on October 29, 2020, 07:58:37 AM
From Doug post above,
"In other words further, the pole is not what it claims to be. They did not ask 2000 people for example and these are the results. They asked even more people and they chose the results. They of course are biased by the results that their peers are publishing and by the results that they want to publish."
Biden: "come on man, look at the data!"
Dems love to fool with data and interpret in ways to increase their power while ignoring totally anything that does not fit their march plans.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on October 29, 2020, 08:06:54 AM
Their methods don't mean they're wrong, just dishonest about what they are presenting. And we know they have no shame in being wrong, cf. NYT 1619 Project and Pulitzer prize for hoax coverage.
We know the 14-17 point lead polls are wrong. Those should be thrown out, not put in the averages.
Title: Total blackout of the story
Post by: G M on October 29, 2020, 12:57:15 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2020, 04:49:08 PM
Now that most everyone has voted apparently ABC and CNN are beginning to report the Biden & Son, Grifters and Traitors at large story-- just in time to impeach Joe so that Kommie Kamala can take over.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on October 31, 2020, 04:56:31 PM
Now that most everyone has voted apparently ABC and CNN are beginning to report the Biden & Son, Grifters and Traitors at large story-- just in time to impeach Joe so that Kommie Kamala can take over.
Funny how that works.
Title: Fox News part of the election night infowar op
Post by: G M on November 01, 2020, 01:33:28 PM
If you are listening to this network on election night or afterward, we will not declare a winner in the presidential race until The Associated Press does
should be concern mounts with more and more evidence of election fraud mostly in minority urban areas.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 13, 2020, 06:15:09 AM
Among the lessons coming out of 2020, could we all agree that mainstream media pollsters are non-essential workers. In the event if a future pandemic, if any businesses are shut down, pollsters are shut down.
Title: Words of the Media, Ministry of Truth, baseless, debunked
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2020, 07:35:30 AM
PBS, ABC, NBC, even Fox, can't report on the allegations of fraud in the election without first inserting the word "baseless".
During 'impeachment', they couldn't refer to the Biden corruption allegation in Ukraine without first inserting the word "debunked".
"Debunked" turned out to be bunk, and "baseless"? How about journalists investigate the base of it and get back to us.
Title: ReMedia, Ministry of Truth, Key state, ABC Wash Post poll off by 17%
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2020, 08:22:30 AM
ABC News-Washington Post poll found Biden supported by 57 percent of likely voters, far ahead of the president's 40 percent. The former vice president has gained 5 percentage points since the last ABC News-Washington Post poll in mid-September, while the president lost 6 points.
Wednesday's poll comes a day after a survey from the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed Biden leading by 9 points in the state, 53-44, among likely voters. Trump won the state four years ago by just less than 1 percentage point.
The ABC News-Washington Post poll was conducted Oct. 20-25 among 809 likely voters in Wisconsin. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.
Incompetence or electorate manipulation, voter suppression? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 15, 2020, 09:44:22 AM
".HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?"
It CERTAINLY IS amazing how all these people can be in on it and so corrupt
Most people could not imagine it because they still see the evidence as convincing or proof enough ( or don't want to)
You may get a rare honest MSM saying something like , ok there IS fraud ***BUT*** it is rare , uncommon, or a fluke or errors etc, but it is not nearly enough to affect the outcome blah blah blah
To me with my experience with this (not to reiterate ad nauseum :wink:)
I see it clearly and not surprised.
Most people just don't understand because they can't see it - clearly enough.
Like annoying dupes like David French who is just toooooo smart to *swallow* what he labels conspiracy theory
He would have probably believed the Nazis were not slaughtering Jews and others in camps because it is just to fantastical to believe in WW2. . I mean the NYT covered it up and FDR never mentioned it . So it can't be true.
We need an independent counsel. CAn't the Senate and DOJ appoint one before Dems can suppress all voter fraud allegations? they probably don't have the courage
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Journos - scripted
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2020, 02:29:18 PM
Take us to your leader. Who writes this BS. BTW, we don't have a democracy.
Title: Mainstream media Wrong by 17 on the House too
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2020, 02:44:52 PM
Predicted + 5 Dem Actual + 12 Rep. House election 2020. Shy "Trump" vote excuse = Bullsh*t. Wrong is wrong. Incompetent or intentional?
Title: With regards to James Woods from above Doug post
Post by: ccp on November 15, 2020, 03:23:09 PM
James Woods had near-perfect SAT scores, and an IQ of 184. He studied political science at MIT on a scholarship and revealed on "Inside the Actors Studio" that he has an IQ of 184
Title: Amerikan Pravda
Post by: G M on November 15, 2020, 05:33:31 PM
Far worse than Soviet Pravda where they only had one network and everyone knew they were lying. This is dozens of national outlets and hundreds of local ones all on the same page, word for word in some cases. They couldn't all be lying (about Trump being a Russian spy, welfare helps blacks, moderates in Iran, fetus isn't human life, America is a racist nation, police want to shoot blacks, planet has a fever, crushing free enterprise is "fairness", you don't need a gun, etc). Oops.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 18, 2020, 09:52:44 AM
Washington Post opposes constitutional process: "The electoral college, whatever virtues it may have had for the Founding Fathers, is no longer tenable for American democracy."
- Umm, the point of the constitution and the electoral college defined within is that we ade not a majority rule democracy.
but when CNN went out of their way to falsely abuse and accuse of Nick Sandmann and had to settle the amount of the settlement is a secret. and there is NO comparison to what CNN did to Sandmann and what Fox alleged about a very mysterious unsolved murder of Seth Rich
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 25, 2020, 05:55:09 AM
... what Fox alleged about a very mysterious unsolved murder of Seth Rich
"The network had falsely cast Rich’s death as a political conspiracy." (NYT)
- Falsely? Also 'guilty', the forum? Absence of evidence = evidence of absence?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, CNN vs. O'Keefe
Post by: DougMacG on December 02, 2020, 09:39:41 AM
CNN drops its #DefundThePolice narrative just long enough to call the police on James O’Keefe. -------- I hope they send out a social worker to help them with their feelings about being violated.
Title: Zucker's hoards call Tucker - Racist!!!
Post by: ccp on December 03, 2020, 05:38:17 AM
so tucker had project veritas on show
to prove what is obvious that zucker manipulates the news in favor of the Democrat Party
Title: wikipedia Obama vs Trump
Post by: ccp on December 04, 2020, 10:13:26 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama. - spectacular - any negative always reframed in positive way
note the picture of him jumping higher then the white men who can't jump while playing basketball
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump - monstrous - any positive not mentioned or only in negative way
note the picture of so called "cages" on Trump's page ; though they were built by Obama.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Bias, What bias?
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2020, 05:56:04 AM
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos promoted an upcoming “VEEP” roundtable reading to benefit progressives in Georgia runoffs and ended his “Good Morning America” segment by urging viewers to visit a fundraising page to elect Democratic senators. - Source, The Federalist
Literally, Democratic operatives with mainstream sounding shows on mainstream sounding networks. If it's free, and the hosts were chosen by someone other than you, it's far Left.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 05, 2020, 08:42:09 AM
George Stephanopoulos
I remember when this upstart obnoxious bullshit artist was the spokesperson for pedophile Bill Clinton
and when he would be getting interviewed on TV and how he would just *spin" and twist any question around in his answer to make BC look good.
Talk about a liar or hire.
To my recall that was the first real time I saw someone representing.a President who was so full of shit 100 % of the time.
He started it . He was far more obnoxious then BC. I have had a deep hatred of him since. Every time I see him I know I cannot believe anything he says or his sincerity .
Title: Re: Media, Populist Press - aims to replace Drudge
Post by: DougMacG on December 07, 2020, 06:51:21 AM
https://populist.press/
Title: Dominion found to be switching votes to Biden
Post by: ccp on December 07, 2020, 08:55:23 AM
See media is truly nonpartisan; why they even leak joe's secret thoughts.
And thank God he is pro police ......... after all.
he is on the right side of this issue - glory be - we have the right man in the oval office soon to fix America
blah blah blah
Title: Re: as usual media thinks were stupid
Post by: DougMacG on December 10, 2020, 04:03:30 PM
"That's how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we're talking about defunding the police. We're not." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Does a legitimate election winner talk like that? I can't find a date for the recording but it is obviously post election. He actually sounds more coherent and logical than expected, at least in the transcript. But he is wrong. His side was talking about defunding the police, and they followed that with cutting funding the police.
Minneapolis loses 100 police officers since George Floyd death: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/08/14/100-minneapolis-police-officers-expected-to-leave-department-by-years-end/
Minneapolis cuts millions from the police budget https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/10/us/minneapolis-police-budget-cuts/index.html
F*cking morons. Biden knows this is wrong but he couldn't be elected without these the support of these wackos.
When Biden is gone, we are left with nothing but the far Left wackos in power.
They are already preparing to move Biden out of the way. Did you here today's breaking mainstream news, Hunter and Joe were involved in corruption? Who knew?
Title: President Gaffe
Post by: ccp on December 10, 2020, 04:34:28 PM
"But he is wrong. His side was talking about defunding the police, and they followed that with cutting funding the police. "
also, he didn't have the courage tell his anti police crowd to shut up either.
almost certainly because he did not have the guts to speak against riots and protests
or "defund the police " calls until he , like Don Lemon And David Axelcommunist shit in their pants releazing how it hurt the big Gaffe at the polls.
only then did he, they change their tune only slightly will cities burned.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth response
Post by: DougMacG on December 11, 2020, 07:40:59 AM
Populist.press. the replacement for the China Soros Drudge takeover, used this headline for Time magazine big announcement:
Time’s Person Of The Year Implicated In Biden Crime Family FBI Investigation
No more biased than every front page NYT headline of the past 4 years.
Title: "China Soros Drudge takeover"
Post by: ccp on December 11, 2020, 07:49:34 AM
have not been able to determine who
but obvious some bid lib and or Chinese paid off Matt and took over covertly so everyone would think Matt simply turned on the orange man
Jonah Goldbergs mother reported she denies that this is Matt doing the reporting anymore and not just he "turned " on Trump she apparently knows him though she does not know the truth
F'g libs with their damned propaganda it is like the Soviet style propaganda machine
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2020, 08:11:32 AM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth: "Baseless" allegations
Post by: DougMacG on December 15, 2020, 11:17:06 AM
One more point on completing the investigation of this election is the media coverage of it. One example, our local monopoly newspaper, a mini-NYT wannabe, the Minneapolis StarTribune:
"Minnesota's Republican Rep.-elect Michelle Fischbach, too, has spoken in support of Trump's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud." https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-republicans-got-on-board-with-failed-bid-to-overturn-presidential-election/573370331/
- This is an article, not an opinion piece, and this is copycat journalism. Search baseless and any msm media outlet. They can't say election fraud without saying baseless charges. If they are proven wrong on this, they need to face consequences.
More: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/trump-tv.html Major Networks Cut Away From Trump’s Baseless Fraud Claims The three big broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — cut away from President Trump’s news conference at the White House on Thursday as the president lobbed false claims about the integrity of the election.
Mr. Trump timed his appearance to air during the networks’ evening newscasts, which draw the biggest collective audience in TV news. But the anchors broke in after a few minutes to correct some of his falsehoods.
“We have to interrupt here, because the president made a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting,” said Lester Holt, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor. He added, “There has been no evidence of that.”
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth: "Baseless" allegations
Post by: G M on December 16, 2020, 08:01:42 AM
Being part of the leftist machine means never having consequences.
One more point on completing the investigation of this election is the media coverage of it. One example, our local monopoly newspaper, a mini-NYT wannabe, the Minneapolis StarTribune:
"Minnesota's Republican Rep.-elect Michelle Fischbach, too, has spoken in support of Trump's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud." https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-republicans-got-on-board-with-failed-bid-to-overturn-presidential-election/573370331/
- This is an article, not an opinion piece, and this is copycat journalism. Search baseless and any msm media outlet. They can't say election fraud without saying baseless charges. If they are proven wrong on this, they need to face consequences.
More: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/trump-tv.html Major Networks Cut Away From Trump’s Baseless Fraud Claims The three big broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — cut away from President Trump’s news conference at the White House on Thursday as the president lobbed false claims about the integrity of the election.
Mr. Trump timed his appearance to air during the networks’ evening newscasts, which draw the biggest collective audience in TV news. But the anchors broke in after a few minutes to correct some of his falsehoods.
“We have to interrupt here, because the president made a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting,” said Lester Holt, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor. He added, “There has been no evidence of that.”
Title: Our professional, apolitical journalists hiding this story for some reason...
Post by: G M on December 16, 2020, 08:02:39 AM
There is absolutely nothing wrong with voting with your wallets or your channel choices. FIX News fcuked on on election night with their BS coverage and now they are reaping the consequences.
Not sorry to see them bleeding ratings and money.
Title: Maddow on Tucker
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2020, 09:05:48 AM
this guy Josh Klein is a child of holocaust survivors
now this Democrat lover is comparing TRump and anyone who supports him to rats and Nazis
as a Jew I feel I can call him out : dumb ass jew
I don't apologize Elie Wiesel who is head and shoulders above Klein knew better.
Title: Re: election fraud deniers, a deplorable lack of curiosity
Post by: DougMacG on December 26, 2020, 07:37:26 AM
ccp, Just want to say I like the title, election fraud deniers. Yes, that is the side in denial. Without doubt there was widespread fraud fraud and without doubt it was one sided. Without doubt there is conspiracy of news and information sources to cover it up. I can't help but wonder when we speak of our Democratic friends or honest Dems who just see issues from a different point of view, why are you in denial? Why don't you want to know what happened? Why don't you want everyone to know what happened?
What were all the efforts from the beginning to loosen all fraud protection like declaring ID laws racist? Isn't THAT racist? Then to keep widening the timeframe of the election and to try to make it all vote by mail and vote by stranger collection and dropoff. Good God. These are not efforts to build confidence or accuracy in elections. These are the setups for fraud. If you are the enabler, you are the co-conspirator.
Then with everything bad that is political, the first words out of the 'honest' supporters is that both sides do it. No they don't. There isn't some rural precinct where the split is 80-20 in favor of Trump that had more votes counted than eligible voters. The filth happened in 6 big Dem cities in divided, plus a few others in blue states. Nowhere else.
Was it enough fraud that it swung the result? We don't know for sure. How can we know without investigating. But why deny what we do know? Why not look into it as far as you can?
Taking from the words of Capt. von Trapp not asking the Nazis why they are at his gate with their lights off, Democrats and media, redundancy apology, suffer from a deplorable lack of curiosity.
I would call it a dangerous lack of curiosity. How is a fraudulent takeover of America any less dangerous than every other fascist, communist or totalitarian takeover?
Famous last words, it can't happen here. We're too what? Virtuous? Apparently not.
Title: Then with everything bad that is political, the first words out of the 'honest'
Post by: ccp on December 26, 2020, 09:00:42 AM
YES !
a typical liberal ploy
they NEVER admit one inch to anything then finally to cut you off or to blow you off they will say well, "both sides do it!"
Libs are not open minded
their way or the high way no in between
Title: Quelle surprise at CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2020, 12:48:25 PM
CNN couldn't get Russian collusion or vote fraud right but they are certain on who ordered what redecorations when. Is this the coverage their readers viewers crave? Which CNN reporters was in the private Trump residence for corroboration, or did they just rush to press to beat the enquirer, truth be damned?
Is dark wood and white marble on the way in or out? I don't even know who is right here.
Title: Trump charges $ 1,000 for Mar a Lago NY eve party- so what
Post by: ccp on December 31, 2020, 08:33:22 AM
So I looked at what mrs baraq charges, not for a full night of entertainment, but to listen to her speak for not sure how long:
$ 67 at least and average 267 .
where are the headlines with the implied outrage ? https://www.vividseats.com/theatre/michelle-obama-tickets.html
Title: Man bites dog; CNN allows statement that T
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2021, 08:03:41 AM
Title: Fareeeeeeeeed
Post by: ccp on January 03, 2021, 08:41:28 AM
".'Dirty Little Secret'—Trump Was Tough on Russia!"
Are you kidding me.
and whose secret Fareed ? -> your lying fake news station and the 95 % of the rest of the media
he would never have "spilled the beans" on the "dirty little secret" 2 mo ago
dirty bastards
and what really weird thing did he just say on CNN about US - CHina relations - I can't find it now
Something about Obama people were fooled by China and now they will have to get tough but very carefully as not to offend China or something absurd etc.
Title: Re: Fareeeeeeeeed
Post by: DougMacG on January 03, 2021, 09:16:09 AM
".'Dirty Little Secret'—Trump Was Tough on Russia!"
ccp: "Are you kidding me. and whose secret Fareed ? -> your lying fake news station and the 95 % of the rest of the media ..."
Readers of the forum knew. Trump governed exactly the opposite of what a Putin puppet would have done, starting with shrinking their main revenue source with his advocacy of fracking and US energy production. "Oil and gas make up 59% of Russia's exports" https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/russia-economy-facts-2019-4-1028116037
He stood up to them on the Russian German pipeline, NATO funding, NATO expansion and on missile defense, to name a few.
If you were a Russian (or Chinese) puppet, what US policies would you pursue? Coincidentally it perfectly matches the Biden Harris agenda. Will THAT ever come up on Fareeed's network?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, coverage of latest Trump phone call
Post by: DougMacG on January 04, 2021, 08:45:02 AM
The latest Trump phone call in the news with the Georgia Sec of State was about fighting and correcting opposition committed vote fraud, getting the count accurate, and was not at all about asking him to commit a crime on his behalf, as portrayed by the press including the partial sentence I heard on Fox radio news.
After fully explaining what he was talking about he said find 14,000 votes. That meant you don't have to prove all three hundred thousand bad ballots that were cast, you can stop when you prove the threshold plus one.
What else would be the objective of an election challenge?
Trump knew there were lawyers and participants on the call. This wasn't some secret, criminal effort.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2021, 09:15:13 AM
Amen and Awoman.
Title: yahoo news
Post by: ccp on January 05, 2021, 06:30:38 AM
every bit as much BS as DNCCNN has their company of millennials
who are anti conservative right their biased opinions
this one from the girly millennial going after right wing news sites
if she hates USA as it is now just wait till she gets real taste of socialism and one party controlled leadership
and I should add once her college tuition debt is pain courtesy of tax payers and those who do pay their tuition
she , like Charlton Heston who was warned by Dr Zalus in 'Planet of the Apes ',
"Don't look for it, [Taylor]. You may not like what you find."
Title: Media diverted while corona went viral
Post by: DougMacG on January 05, 2021, 08:09:34 AM
Tucker clip had this. While coronavirus was the biggest emerging threat in the world, Democrats and media (redundancy alert) forced all US attention to impeachment over an innocent phone call.
The 'first case' was tracked back to Nov 17 2019 (or earlier): https://www.dtnext.in/News/World/2020/03/13123650/1219836/Chinas-1st-COVID19-case-traced-back-to-Nov-2019.vpf On December 27, Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told Chinese health authorities that the disease was caused by a new coronavirus.
Fox News Jan 3, 2020: https://www.foxnews.com/health/mysterious-respiratory-illness-china-food-market-sickens-44-officials
CNN Jan 7, (someone there watches Fox): https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/health/china-pneumonia-intl-hnk/index.html
Compare that to their coverage of the impeachment trial conducted January 16 – February 5, 2020. A thousand time more coverage, or was it more?
Tragically, the virus had been spreading for months before it was brought to out attention by our asleep at the wheel press. Not one western media outlet had a reporter embedded in Hubei Province, a world trading, urban center 7 times the population of London? The world lost months of containment and preparedness as the story, not the virus, was contained.
How come our media's collaboration with Communist China failed to yield a 'scoop'? https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coronavirus-outbreak-and-cover-up-ee65211a-afb6-4641-97b8-353718a5faab.html
By Feb 1, the Washington Post knew the pandemic was made hundreds of times worse by the false information and coverup of the Chinese regime: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/02/01/early-missteps-state-secrecy-china-likely-allowed-coronavirus-spread-farther-faster/ Now back to impeachment coverage.
The phone call! Can you believe Trump wanted corruption investigated? In the Ukraine!!
By summer, even the Democrat Party at the Dem National Convention were silent on their own impeachment accomplishment and 100% focused on blaming the Wuhan virus on Trump. Likewise with the media. Right out of Orwell.
Yet the death toll might be 95% lower if China hadn't lied or if an investigative media, if we had one, had called them out early on those blatant lies. China didn't know it spread person to person until late January even while everyone involved included four jailed doctors could see it go viral? https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2020/03/covid-19-china.page
Our media didn't know? Or were they just too busy?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 05, 2021, 09:47:34 AM
".Yet the death toll might be 95% lower if China hadn't lied or if an investigative media"
you mean the country that sealed of Beijing to protect top CCP members yet let corona positive people fly all over the world .... :-(
and Wall Street of course yawns and keeps funding the DNC
Title: 28 Times media and Dems excused Lefty violence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2021, 07:52:21 PM
On your left, E. Lake St and Minnehaha, former 3rd precinct station Minneapolis Police Department, burning to the ground.
On your right, Trump supporters wearing masks, outdoors, waving American flags, traveled to Washington to support their candidate and ensure honest elections.
Simplified for you by the media... On your left, good. On your right, evil.
Title: noonan; ultimate DC cocktail party attendee
Post by: ccp on January 10, 2021, 03:57:52 PM
Matt Taibbi: “The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media. Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize……What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.’
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 13, 2021, 08:55:58 PM
The media said, "baseless allegations" maybe a hundred thousand times.
Why don't they now say, 'meaningless impeachments'?
Title: Media, How about unbiased news, or at least real balance that matches the nation
Post by: DougMacG on January 18, 2021, 07:15:59 AM
LINCOLN — Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Joe Ricketts is preparing another venture into the news business, and he’s chosen Omaha as his launching pad.
Ricketts is hiring staff to launch an online national news outlet called Straight Arrow News that he said will do what other outlets aren’t doing — providing news without a political slant.
“I think there’s a gap in the market — there’s no source for unbiased, fact-based news. And I believe there’s a business opportunity there,” he said.
“Some people say you can’t have unbiased news. I want to prove them wrong with Straight Arrow News,” he said.
In the past few weeks, online job advertisements have been posted for a video editor, senior producer, news reporter, and motion graphics designer/producer for Straightarrownews.com. The ads say the endeavor will be “dedicated to unbiased, nonpartisan reporting” and is projected to start in February. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a real need for this, news without slant. We'll see if they can do it.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 18, 2021, 01:42:50 PM
"citing pandemic and streaming", [and bad programming].
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Beyond bias or slant, everyone who disagrees is wrong.
Post by: DougMacG on January 19, 2021, 11:08:57 AM
NPR Today:
"Even though the election was not close, 70% of Republicans believe the falsehood that the election was stolen." - MORE-ah LIES-en reporting.
- THIS is inciteful on so many levels. If we are wrongly thinking the election was stolen, maybe it's because you people are acting like fascists covering up the stealing of an election.
Title: bad orange man trying to "sabotage "
Post by: ccp on January 20, 2021, 07:19:55 AM
never heard a peep about this when Obama
was president ( and after he left )
when he was *sabotaging Trump * and Republicans every step of the way
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Cafe76.org, Patrick Pu
Post by: DougMacG on January 21, 2021, 08:18:21 AM
'Our' Pat is setting up new shop at:
Cafe76.org
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 22, 2021, 06:03:49 AM
Biden fist-bumps members of the media during inaugural parade As a military procession and parade escorted President Joe Biden's motorcade to the White House for the first time as President, Biden and his family exited their vehicles to walk the final stretch. Source: CNN
Celebrating a win with his teammates.
The game is softball. Question asked by the media, Mr. President, are you going to unite the country?
Unspoken answer: No.
At this point in the Trump Presidency, the media was calling for his impeachment.
Title: while Mr President and "Dr. Biden"
Post by: ccp on January 22, 2021, 06:25:34 AM
walk from Capital to WH to immediately sign leftist legislation while pretending he is going to unify us :roll:
PS I would have loved to write a term paper that could have been done in 2 weeks to get the title of "doctor" elites things we can't have .........
Title: Mis-Trust of Media
Post by: DougMacG on January 22, 2021, 07:48:03 AM
For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media, according to data from Edelman's annual trust barometer shared exclusively with Axios. Trust in social media has hit an all-time low of 27%. Fifty-six percent of Americans agree with the statement that "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations." Fifty-eight percent think that "most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public." When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans. https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html https://www.axios.com/trust-crisis-government-business-media-2e614f4b-0bc4-4f3b-97ea-5eac34ea09fc.html
Title: WaPo does the Memory Hole for the 'Ho!
Post by: G M on January 24, 2021, 07:14:57 PM
Title: Media silence on Pelosi Tesla scandal
Post by: DougMacG on February 02, 2021, 01:31:39 PM
The local paper didn't find reason to cover it: https://www.startribune.com/search/?q=pelosi+tesla ALL SECTIONS SEARCH STAR TRIBUNE Results: pelosi tesla Sorry, your search for 'pelosi tesla' did not match any documents
Nothing at NYT either: https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=pelosi+tesla
Hard to discuss news when one side has a blackout.
Like ccp says, nothing to see here folks, move along.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 02, 2021, 02:04:35 PM
"Like ccp says, nothing to see here folks, move along."
I should have cited the source for this
Crafty Dog though I forget the date
Title: another victim of Leftist cancel culture: Lou Dobbs
Post by: ccp on February 05, 2021, 04:57:56 PM
a loss for us https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/05/fox-news-cancels-lou-dobbs-show/ it was no problem when media did not accept Trumps election for yrs......... :x
Maybe it'll be the Juan Williams hour or they can sign Paul Krugman or Larry Tribe. Looks like Fox is already run by the next generation of Murdocks, and communicate through the LA Times. Too bad.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2021, 06:43:36 PM
Coincidentally FOX is having a tryouts hour. Trey Gowdy, Mark Steyn, and others are among the contenders.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on February 05, 2021, 06:52:14 PM
aka defended the interpretation of the law to apply equally to Trump as compared to application to Democrats
The article begins: WASHINGTON — By the time George Nader pleaded guilty last year to possessing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor..."
Yes. Hit job. They start with the worst kind of offender, then associate him with the one to be hit. But it is perfectly normal for a constitutional lawyer to provide legal defense to an undesirable client. Anyone can uphold free speech if it pertains to motherhood and apple pie. Wait, maybe not motherhood anymore with the gender presumption and maybe not pie, gluten in the crust it might be properly banned speech, but you know what I mean.
Title: another NYT propaganda piece
Post by: ccp on February 10, 2021, 08:46:54 AM
they as always the do and make it sounds like Republicans leaving the party in droves
as though it means jack crap
Democrats leave the NYT party just as much in less then a minute I can google this :
Title: More great work from Andy "Deep State Shill" McCarthy!
Post by: G M on February 10, 2021, 09:45:45 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/392615.php
Title: Why Are the Feds Hiding Brian Sicknick's Medical Report?
Post by: ccp on February 10, 2021, 10:14:49 AM
strange indeed
the fact he died after the incident - maybe a day later was never to my knowledge revealed before the silence on the details is not coincidence autopsy report should be available by now in such a prominent suspicious death
timing is coincidental. to say the least
a blow to the head or fall could lead to a stroke days later from intracranial bleed
you might not see external injury on the head
That said making the deceased officer the face of impeachment as per Nat Rev seems to be clearly stretching the facts as we serfs are aware of
I would think at a real trial and not a show biz trial the defense would have full access to the autopsy report witnesses etc Maybe they do - ? Does Andrew McCarthy know more than us or simply the same gossip we read in the NYT WP FB etc?
Title: more horseshit from media and hollywood Tony
Post by: ccp on February 12, 2021, 08:35:10 AM
This was the evidence they presented to the Senate and the nation.
Doesn't evidence have chain of custody requirements?
The guard shooting the one lady, Babbit, looked like an assassination to me. He shot one person, dead on, then disappeared. The attack gave him cover to make that hit. There was no other context in the video. Shooting one person and walking away was the plan to drive back the crowd? How did the antifa guy know what was going to happen. He instigated, then circled back to take the video. Some might call that incitement, insurrection, treason.
Then the other big violence was the fire extinguisher murder that never happened, made up by the NYT? We were asking the first day, where were the deaths?
Title: Media, Rest in Peace Rush Limbaugh
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2021, 07:55:03 PM
His loyal followers called themselves “Dittoheads,” to indicate they agreed with everything he said, without even needing to think his statements through. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/17/rush-limbaugh-death-conservative-radio-host-432140
No, Politico. That's not what that means.
Title: Media, Rush
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2021, 09:07:11 PM
Where else do you get this kind of analysis? Who else found you this clip? Only Rush,
Others: Clinton's a liar (name call). Rush: Clinton's a liar, here's more evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbEK7YVFUlY
Title: Media, Rush versus Harry Reid
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2021, 09:19:23 PM
The Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to get Rush cancelled. Here is Rush's response. Pure class.
---------------------- Aside on Rush's career: Here is a compilation of Rush the DJ (under a pseudonym) 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPgO9NLy-7A
He learned broadcasting before telling his political views on air. ---------------------- Rush with Barbara Walters on 20/20, 1993 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ud1wOxilGg
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 25, 2021, 09:51:46 AM
great circa '74 compilation
I didn't know he was a DJ
Also like the Barbara Wawa interview
Rush literally carried me through the Clinton yrs I was doing hospital consulting back then and was often in the car and all I could think about is thank God there is Rush and others who just can't stand Bill Clinton
that was before I was on the internet and have other outlets like DB to share my points of view with like minded individuals
Rush will not be forgotten
Title: No justice
Post by: G M on February 25, 2021, 06:39:13 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/392940.php
Title: Media, Top 100 Conservative Websites
Post by: DougMacG on March 07, 2021, 03:10:32 PM
Not the way I would rank them, but gives ideas of where to look for good coverage.
Next year: FHOF
https://forum.nehemiahreset.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Top-100-Conservative-Websites.pdf Below is StoppingSocialism.com’s official list of the top conservative news sites and conservative websites for February 2021.
That one belongs off the list and the error makes the rest suspect. Someone was asleep at the wheel. I just thought some of the unfamiliar ones night be worth checking.
Steve Hayward of Powerline linked the list saying, Hey we're number 37. [They are better than that, IMHO.]
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on March 07, 2021, 10:05:15 PM
Alien is the legal term in Federal Law. My wife was a Legal Alien prior to her naturalization.
8 U.S. Code § 1101 - Definitions U.S. Code Notes prev | next (a)As used in this chapter— (1)The term “administrator” means the official designated by the Secretary of State pursuant to section 1104(b) of this title. (2)The term “advocates” includes, but is not limited to, advises, recommends, furthers by overt act, and admits belief in. (3)The term “alien” means any person not a citizen or national of the United States. (4)The term “application for admission” has reference to the application for admission into the United States and not to the application for the issuance of an immigrant or nonimmigrant visa.
Title: Pravda on the Potomac's "find the fraud" lie
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 16, 2021, 03:31:52 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 16, 2021, 04:51:03 AM
"Why did the Post issue a correction? Why not let the myth live on? Because a digital copy of the conversation was found in the trash on the Georgia state investigator’s office computer and the Post and its accomplices would be exposed as the liars they are. Why was it deleted in the first place and why wasn’t it turned over to the Washington Post as evidence to support the provocative allegations? We know that answer now: because the recording didn’t say what the “source” alleged."
And who is head of the Georgia state investigative office ? Why, it is the Georgia secretary of state: Brad Raffensperger!
Title: Re: Pravda on the Potomac's "find the fraud" lie
Post by: DougMacG on March 16, 2021, 08:35:08 AM
Thank you exposing this further than the understatement, "misquoted". The Post created the lie or spread the unverified lie from a biased, lying source with reckless non-journalistic negligence and malice with intent to do harm.
False but true? I had that lie repeated back to me from more than one Trump hating 'friend' as evidence of Trump's recklessness. But you know that 'correction' does not mitigate Trump's recklessness in their view, even though the evidence of it they cited was false.
I have asked from the beginning, if this man and this Presidency is/was so bad, why do they need to lie, misquote or take out of context what he says and does to make the case? He didn't lower taxes on the rich. He didn't coddle dictators. He didn't increase emissions or make climate change worse. He didn't start wars or turn his back on allies. And he didn't try to overturn the result of an honest election. But even the Post with the resources of the richest man in the world couldn't land a punch on him using truth.
Title: another Tump voting white supremacist assaults Asian
Post by: ccp on March 16, 2021, 01:32:42 PM
One more rant on this, it wasn't just the Washington criminal Post that got this wrong, but the entire Washington echo chamber that includes CNN, CBS 60 Minutes, NBC News, WSJ, who falsely claimed they independently verified this lie. They were lying about the story AND lying about the journalistic process they did not go through before reporting.
This is bigger than getting a big story wrong. It exposed their ability to get every story of political side-taking wrong because it exposed (what we already know) they have NO journalistic standards. Coined by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, they are political operatives with bylines, but really they are corrupt, lying, deceitful political operatives posing dishonestly as media. I'm not trying to go negative, hateful or to name call, but I'm tired of having our characterizations of them understate the problem.
Some of this rises to the level of criminal fraud, for example the circular use of the corrupt media to plant and raise up the false from the start Steele Dossier that led to public funds wasted on a $32 million investigation into nothing (nobody paid anyone to pee on the bed) and a midterm held under a cloud, changing the direction of the country. Talk about aiding and abetting insurrection!
Why is there no consequence for being wrong, intentionally wrong in media?
If the media outlets, Washington Post, 60 Minutes, CNN and at least a dozen more, would fire everyone involved in the deceit to protect the organization, that is one thing, but it is the organizations that are corrupt and the employees that are doing exactly what they are paid to do, advance a narrative, not report honestly. Is there nothing criminal about falsely hollering fire in a crowded theater, knowing the mayhem that will result will cause enormous damage and destroy lives and careers? -------- https://www.wsj.com/articles/recording-of-trump-phone-call-to-georgia-lead-investigator-reveals-new-details-11615411561 (No it doesn't)
WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE ELECTION 2020 (No it isn't)
"During the six-minute call, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal (No it wasn't) , Mr. Trump repeatedly said that he won Georgia. “Something bad happened,” he said (No he didn't) .
Title: Re: Media echo chamber
Post by: G M on March 17, 2021, 03:47:21 PM
One more rant on this, it wasn't just the Washington criminal Post that got this wrong, but the entire Washington echo chamber that includes CNN, CBS 60 Minutes, NBC News, WSJ, who falsely claimed they independently verified this lie. They were lying about the story AND lying about the journalistic process they did not go through before reporting.
This is bigger than getting a big story wrong. It exposed their ability to get every story of political side-taking wrong because it exposed (what we already know) they have NO journalistic standards. Coined by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, they are political operatives with bylines, but really they are corrupt, lying, deceitful political operatives posing dishonestly as media. I'm not trying to go negative, hateful or to name call, but I'm tired of having our characterizations of them understate the problem.
Some of this rises to the level of criminal fraud, for example the circular use of the corrupt media to plant and raise up the false from the start Steele Dossier that led to public funds wasted on a $32 million investigation into nothing (nobody paid anyone to pee on the bed) and a midterm held under a cloud, changing the direction of the country. Talk about aiding and abetting insurrection!
Why is there no consequence for being wrong, intentionally wrong in media?
If the media outlets, Washington Post, 60 Minutes, CNN and at least a dozen more, would fire everyone involved in the deceit to protect the organization, that is one thing, but it is the organizations that are corrupt and the employees that are doing exactly what they are paid to do, advance a narrative, not report honestly. Is there nothing criminal about falsely hollering fire in a crowded theater, knowing the mayhem that will result will cause enormous damage and destroy lives and careers? -------- https://www.wsj.com/articles/recording-of-trump-phone-call-to-georgia-lead-investigator-reveals-new-details-11615411561 (No it doesn't)
WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE ELECTION 2020 (No it isn't)
"During the six-minute call, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal (No it wasn't) , Mr. Trump repeatedly said that he won Georgia. “Something bad happened,” he said (No he didn't) .
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 17, 2021, 04:12:18 PM
same staffer leaked to WP same as original story
Fuchs
who worked under the raffsenberger shit
who thanks to him allowed Abrams to steal all 3 elections in Ga clearing way for Dems to destroy country
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2021, 06:15:26 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 26, 2021, 04:14:45 AM
I was left with the impression the whole press conference was a staged practice perfromance and the press were supporting actors while the lead actor played a part
questions were made to look tough but always delivered in a respectful way leaving the door open for any answer to be acceptable to them .
I don't recall any pushing or prodding no real follow up no accusations similar to were hurtled to DJT 75 % of the time unlike DJT who would call on enemy jurnolists Biden would go down a list of pre picked names that were in the *script*
Even for this we are told he had to take days to rehearse
the country is executive branch is being run by a nameless non elected band of communists who like the CCP are covering and lying about what they are really doing.
Title: two major CA newspapers losing big money
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2021, 06:50:54 AM
cry baby holt cannot get over that he and his liberal propagandists cannot control the flow of news or information any more.
This makes me ponder the past when most if not all the news flowed the AP or networks TV news stations
In those days we did not know that Cronkite was a flaming liberal; perhaps because he tried to report the new s ; not make it ; shape it; or distort it like now
or did he?
maybe we were hearing more propaganda then we ever knew back then
Title: not white tied to Nation of Islam
Post by: ccp on April 02, 2021, 02:53:08 PM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, The Taranto Principle
Post by: DougMacG on April 05, 2021, 04:46:46 PM
"According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans." - https://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-taranto-principle/86573/
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, The Taranto Principle
Post by: G M on April 05, 2021, 06:27:24 PM
"According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans." - https://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-taranto-principle/86573/
The dem vote fraud machine makes that irrelevant.
Title: "60 Minutes is Toast", the fall of Dan Rather, 2004
Post by: DougMacG on April 08, 2021, 12:23:34 PM
This story needs to be told and studied, brought back to relevance by the new 60 Minutes smear on Gov DeSantis.
The story starts around 10:00 in the video linked below. It starts with the context of a string of other false accusations against the Bush administration all pushed by big media against a Republican administration, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, etc. that make this fraud unsurprising. Then they tell the story of how a dozen or more falsehoods were exposed that proved the incriminating document to be a fraud. The officer writing it retired a year earlier; the font it is written with wasn't invented until decades later, etc. Mostly it proved CBS had no journalistic standards whatsoever when it came to bringing down their adversary. CBS let the false story sit 12 days (coming into an election) and never did admit the 'error'. https://www.c-span.org/video/?185831-1/internet-journalism-news
Powerline Post: "The 61st Minute" https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2004/09/007699.php
NY Times story on the false documents, "Fake but Accurate", whatever that means. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/us/the-2004-campaign-national-guard-memos-on-bush-are-fake-but-accurate-typist-says.html
With contrast to Trump and now DeSantis, this was not President Bush fighting back. This was people in places like this doing that for him.
Title: As usual,our professional journalists aren't truthful or accurate
Post by: G M on April 10, 2021, 05:54:28 PM
Title: Quality Read: How to have a trustworthy press
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2021, 02:16:07 PM
Must the Justices Create a Trustworthy Press? Why not just hire smart people and ask them (or free them) to do honest reporting?
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. April 9, 2021 6:39 pm ET SAVE PRINT TEXT 416
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
No writ exists in the Constitution for journalism’s holy of holies, the 1964 Times v. Sullivan Supreme Court ruling that allows us falsely to defame public figures as long as we do so without “actual malice.” Such is a longstanding argument given new currency by veteran federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman in a dissenting opinion already covered repeatedly in these pages.
And yet constitutional matters aside, the Supreme Court in 1964 defined a pretty good standard if journalists cared to adopt it. It requires them really to care whether what they are reporting is true.
Alas, counterexamples are a daily occurrence. The now-independent journalist Andrew Sullivan details the media’s insistence on characterizing, without evidence, the Atlanta shooter as racially motivated. The now-independent journalist Glenn Greenwald dismantles a Vox journalist’s video clip suggesting a sheriff’s deputy flippantly said the shooter “had a bad day.” (The full video shows he was faithfully conveying what the shooter himself had stated.)
The now-independent journalist Bari Weiss examines the media’s concealment of the fact that many “racist” assaults on Asian-Americans are carried out by blacks. Mr. Greenwald returns to the fray to eviscerate journalists at CNN, MSNBC and NBC for claiming a U.S. intelligence report showed the Hunter Biden laptop story to be Russian disinformation (the report made no such claim).
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP Opinion: Morning Editorial Report All the day's Opinion headlines.
PREVIEW SUBSCRIBED Here’s an example of my own: NPR’s Tom Gjelten, in an unctuous sermon in which he lets us know he prefers what he imagines to be Joe Biden’s refugee policy to Donald Trump’s , intones, “In 2016, the last year of the Obama presidency, the United States resettled 85,000 refugees in this manner. But under Trump, the resettlement program was nearly shut down. Last year, fewer than 12,000 refugees were admitted, the smallest number in the history of the U.S. refugee program.”
You have to be some kind of journalist not to notice an intervening variable that might mess up the comparison, namely a global pandemic. In fact, the 12,611 who were admitted in the 2020 fiscal year were out of a mere 30,113 who applied, a 71% drop from the previous year for reasons enumerated in an annual report to Congress: “travel restrictions in and out of refugee processing sites worldwide,” “reduced flight availability,” a U.S. economic lockdown and school closures that made transferring to the U.S. less urgent.
The honest comparison would be to the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when the Trump administration admitted 92,623 refugees (i.e., human beings fleeing violence), a number the Obama team never approached in its best year.
READ MORE BUSINESS WORLD Joe Biden at His Worst April 6, 2021 Fourth Covid Wave Targets the Young and Restless April 2, 2021 Like 2016, 2020 Isn’t Going Away March 30, 2021 H.R.1 Is Democrats’ Survival Strategy for 2022 March 26, 2021 NFL, Beeple See a Far-Off Future March 23, 2021 We should understand: In its currently diminished state, journalism’s narrative-itis is partly an economizing move. When a new story emerges, multiple reporters and editors have to invest in understanding its essence and details; they have to reach a consensus on how it should be reported. This takes time. People need to be paid. Good people cost more. Whereas no recrimination is possible if a narrative of racism is claimed or implied. That’s the great thing about “systemic racism.” We can assume its presence and never be wrong. No need ever to run a correction. No need to fall afoul of woke colleagues, which might cost us our jobs.
And journalists wonder why their work is so little prized by consumers. They wonder why their pay isn’t higher.
Whenever I touch on these subjects, readers email me to say journalism doesn’t pay; the smart kids go to Wall Street, Silicon Valley, medicine or law. An economist of international renown emails to say the same “brain drain” also afflicts teaching, politics and government. A reader scoffs that being a member of a profession means “accepting liability for one’s professional actions with appropriate levels of malpractice insurance. . . . Modern journalism is an industry, not a profession.”
And yet when it comes to CNN or the New York Times or the Washington Post, these are good jobs. They could attract good people if publishers decided they want independent, careful thinkers, not incurious conformists. Amid the travails of our industry, The Wall Street Journal never had to lower its hiring standards, though I understand the same might not be so of struggling regional papers like, oh, the Miami Herald.
An uninvited email arrived from the Society of Professional Journalists. It went: “To all journalists, everywhere, thank you, for your work, your dedication, your patience, your care, your camaraderie, your amazing ability to set aside your own emotions and pain [over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot].”
This absurd vanity is the flip side of a lack of courage. To be any kind of professional means being willing to tell the client a truth he doesn’t want to hear. All it would take to put our business back on track is a few top editors saying, “Let’s pride ourselves on the intellectual quality of our work—on putting only rigorously vetted factual and logical claims in front of the public.”
Title: ChiComs trash Epoch Times offices in HK
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 12, 2021, 06:56:48 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on April 14, 2021, 07:36:10 AM
ccp: "populist press which is over the top publication IMHO"
- Yes, too bad. We didn't need a publication that answers 'Asshole Trump did this today' with 'Scumbag Biden did that'. We need real news sites that report what really happened without leaving out half the facts and screwing over the conservative point of view.
Title: CNN caught yet again; this time on Black-Asian attacks
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2021, 01:04:41 PM
If only Bigdog were here to explain how the media is professional and non-biased...
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2021, 03:28:21 PM
Fk. :cry: for the woman.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 16, 2021, 03:43:59 PM
where is the racist in chief Baraq Obama on this
absent as far as I know when the story does not fit his race hustle
telling is it not what an angry racist blow hard he is
Title: CNN pulling hair out since it is tough for them to race hustle this
Post by: ccp on April 22, 2021, 07:21:21 AM
there is NOthing to criticize here (police officer handled this perfectly) so watch them go crazy over not being able to fit it into their usual race hustle narrative they struggle not about the justification as much as they are annoyed they can't just hold this case up as another white officer murdering a black child:
Title: Youthful hijinks!
Post by: G M on April 22, 2021, 02:03:23 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/393534.php
No need for police involvement.
Title: Tucker program being attacked ?
Post by: ccp on April 23, 2021, 08:53:52 AM
while watching Fox news and particularly Tucker I have notice this past week
delays of several seconds of audio or both video audio
occurring
I never see it on any other station
Are libs sabetoging his program?
Anyone else notice this ?
Title: New York Times Has Just Been Caught In Two Monstrous Lies
Post by: DougMacG on April 23, 2021, 09:23:24 AM
Sicknick and Russian bounties. ---------------------------------- https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/21/the-new-york-times-has-just-been-caught-in-two-monstrous-lies/
The New York Times Has Just Been Caught In Two Monstrous Lies
On Tuesday, the public learned that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes. Just a few days before that, the public learned that the “Russian Bounty” story was fake. In other words, in the span of a week, the “newspaper of record” has been exposed for grossly misleading the public about two major stories — both designed to discredit President Donald Trump. ----------------------------------
NYT won the Pulitzer Prize as recently as April 2018 - also for lies: https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/24/flashback-wapo-nyt-pulitzer-prize-trump-russia/
How do they worse than lie, but lie to advance a false narrative agenda and keep their good reputation among their highly educated readers?
Personally I hate being found to be wrong with what I say and write. When it happens, I want it corrected instantly, even retroactively, and I wish it never happened. I don't advance my agenda by being wrong on underlying facts. And yet they have millions of readers, and an even bigger agenda, and seem to be perfectly comfortable being wrong, time after time after time.
Title: Senator Cotton speculates if Schiff is source of Russian bounty fabriction
Post by: ccp on April 23, 2021, 09:28:34 AM
Yes, a house liberal, sort of a parody or parrot of liberal talking points. It's a waste of viewer time giving him equal time with good guests and panelists. If he ever came over to reason he would be fired for no longer being the house liberal. They should save the money and the pretense of balance and just show the liberal view on the screen straight from Biden, AOC, etc. and have people of reason and second level thinking answer it.
When was the last time Juan Williams won an argument on Fox? How often did the Washington Generals beat the Harlem Globetrotters? Once in 1971, they say.
Title: Juan
Post by: ccp on April 28, 2021, 06:46:50 AM
".They should save the money and the pretense of balance "
yes
he is just totally annoying to viewers ; just there to piss us off ; you know what crap will spill out of his bouche even before he opens it If I wanted to hear that I would go to CommunistNewNetwork or MSLSD
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2021, 07:03:19 AM
Distorting the original meaning of the term, we can say he is a useful idiot.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, 60 Minutes, Princeton Professor says No Thank you
Post by: DougMacG on May 02, 2021, 06:12:55 AM
Power Line POSTED ON MAY 1, 2021 BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, MEDIA BIAS COUNTING THE WAYS WE HATE “60 MINUTES”—A NOTE FROM ROBBIE GEORGE Needless to say, Power Line has a history with “60 Minutes.” Hence I thought it worth passing along a note from Robert P. George to “60 Minutes” this week. Prof. George—”Robbie” to his friends—is the McCormack Professor at Princeton, the chair originally created for Woodrow Wilson, and subsequently filled by Edward Corwin and now by Robbie. He is renowned for his genial nature (as you might expect from a proficient banjo player), and good relations with people on the left with whom he disagrees. He team-teaches a very popular course with the far-left Cornel West.
Thus, for Robbie to send this note to “60 Minutes” is remarkable: -----------------( "Earlier this week I received an email message from a Producer at 60 Minutes requesting an interview for a segment they are working on concerning scientific developments in the area of embryo research. Here is my reply:"
Dear Mr. _________: Thanks for your note. I have been a professor for thirty-six years. I have been involved in a serious way in public affairs for nearly thirty. I have been interviewed in various media hundreds—perhaps thousands—of times. Most of those experiences have been fine. Even hostile interviewers have permitted me to present the case for my perspective on an issue or set of issues and, in nearly every case, quoted or reported what I said accurately. There was, however, one major exception. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had with media. I regret to say it was with 60 Minutes. And there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that it was driven by ideological bias.
As it happens, the subject was the very one about which you have written to me—the biological and moral status of the developing human embryo. I had served (or was serving—I can’t remember the timing) on the President’s Council on Bioethics and we had done a major report on embryonic stem cell research.
Things actually began well. I gave an hour long off-camera interview to someone associated with 60 Minutes (I’ve forgotten his name) who asked thoughtful, intelligent questions, listened carefully to my answers, and asked excellent follow-up questions that made clear that he understood my points. All this lulled me into thinking that this was a serious inquiry. Then came the on-camera interview with Lesley Stahl. It was a series of “gotcha questions” which revealed not the slightest acquaintance with what I had said in the pre-interview. Trying to answer such questions for a format such as 60 Minutes is simply hopeless. Exposing the mistaken or tendentious assumptions built into the questions exhausts one’s time and energy. I was stunned by the experience and, frankly, angered. The intensity of my anger increased when I saw the broadcast. The editing seemed designed to mislead viewers as to what my views and arguments were. I was appalled.
I said to myself then and there that I will never again have anything to do with 60 Minutes. The recent business with Ron DeSantis brought memories of my unhappy (to say the least) experience with the show flooding back.
The subject you have asked about is an important one and, as you noted, there have been significant recent developments pertaining to it. I would love to participate in an effort accurately to inform the public of these developments. I lack confidence, however, in 60 Minutes, and for that reason must decline.
Yours sincerely, Robert George
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 02, 2021, 09:32:51 AM
Robbie George used to be a Dem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P._George
no conservative should ever go on 60 minutes again Fox perhaps should have a show that calls out 60 minutes perhaps
Title: NYT and WaPo retract misintel lie about Rudy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 03, 2021, 05:19:24 AM
One point is that they are consistently wrong. Another is that they seem to be in collusion with each other.
We are only getting belated retractions on the tip of the iceberg of their errors, where it can be demonstrably proven they are wrong. What about the rest of it? When they get it wrong, cf. Russian Collusion Pulitzer Prize, do they ever look deeper and investigate WHY did they get it wrong? Is there a consequence for being wrong? Anyone fired? What about wrong by omission? Did they ever report that we had the highest worker wage growth in decades, under Trump, pre-covid, after the so-called tax cuts? Lowest unemployment rates of blacks and minorities? Missed it.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 03, 2021, 07:56:26 AM
".Another is that they seem to be in collusion with each other."
I love when Tucker has the montages of people from all over the media and DNC fronts using the EXACT same words when putting the spin on the story
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 03, 2021, 08:17:55 AM
Curious coincidence that Pravda on the Hudson and Pravda on the Potomac are 'fessing up in the immediate aftermath of the Rudy raid.
Title: we keep hearing about the "threat of domestic terror"
Post by: ccp on May 04, 2021, 02:43:55 PM
I have yet to hear what evidence do they have for this imminent threat
a bunch of chats.
I find this from the DC compost it is truly amazing how MSM manipulates the data
exaggerates and defines Right wing terror while ignoring or poo pahing Left wing "crimes" to manipulate the numbers .
Like the black guy who committed "suicide by cop" not being categorized as domestic terror.
just prior to DOJ under Garland asking for another 80 million for domestic terror funding .
we all know who they are looking at and why . :-( https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/
The new endless DNC/media cabal talking point CAn just picture Cuomo's face right up in ours looking so serious and grim while talking some retired gov official paid by CNN the liked of McCabe or other skewing all the data etc
he will be discussing this in the next few days now for sure
Title: NRO goes after Tucker
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2021, 04:35:54 PM
of course nothing stated about who / what was in the rest of the buiding
this would have been perfect place for terrorists to hide out - under the "protection" of the Associated Palestinians , excuse me , I mean Associated Press.
Title: Re: AP offices blown to rubble in Gaza
Post by: DougMacG on May 15, 2021, 10:44:30 PM
of course nothing stated about who / what was in the rest of the buiding
this would have been perfect place for terrorists to hide out - under the "protection" of the Associated Palestinians , excuse me , I mean Associated Press.
“If AP did not know that Hamas was in the building, then they are incompetent reporters. If AP knew that Hamas was in the building but kept silent, then they are complicit. If AP comprehended that it would be used as a human shield, then it is a Hamas collaborator.” PJ Media commenter
Title: hamas in same building as AP
Post by: ccp on May 16, 2021, 02:39:44 PM
"If AP did not know that Hamas was in the building, then they are incompetent reporters. If AP knew that Hamas was in the building but kept silent, then they are complicit."
almost certainly the latter who would think for one second they did not know and enjoyed the immediate news feed propaganda to report the Palestinian side as fast as it comes in .
you know the Amanpour types.
they are lucky as shit the IDF notified them to escape with their petty little lives before the building blown to smitherines
in my view
Title: FOX viewers outperform
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2021, 05:46:12 AM
Watching him on Fox He is not as cool calm and collected as Rush. Calling Geraldo names and yelling at him (though right ) would not have been Rush's style.
Title: I find myself watching newsmax more
Post by: ccp on May 23, 2021, 08:15:41 AM
AP FACT CHECK: House GOP falsely blames Biden for gas prices -----------------------------------------------------------------------
You have to be a complete political economic ignoramous to not know gas prices are up because Joe Biden won the election and Democrats control Congress.
Gas prices went up with that news and then again with his first act as President shutting down a key pipeline. Democrats in control especially the ones holding Biden's strings are not hiding the fact that they want you off of fossil fuels and they will do that by limiting the supply.
LIMITING SUPPLY CAUSES PRICES TO INCREASE, all other thinks equal. Look it up.
They WANT price increases. They CAUSE price increases. Then they dodge the blame using neutral sounding sources like AP as their stooges.
Electricity prices are already more than double what they should be because of Democrat policies, which like the Fannie Mae financial meltdown include the acts of Republican in name only implementing, suporting and continuing the Democrat agenda. Who does THAT hurt? Are the rich worried about their electric bill, or is it the poor and working people who live paycheck to paycheck most affected?
Nice thing about gas prices is that they post them on giant signs and everyone driving by is affected. Media can't hide that. Maybe they should post the payroll taxes they take from young Democrat earners on giant signs.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, CNN lost 71% of its age 25-54 viewers since Trump!
Post by: DougMacG on May 26, 2021, 09:52:11 AM
AP FACT CHECK: House GOP falsely blames Biden for gas prices -----------------------------------------------------------------------
You have to be a complete political economic ignoramous to not know gas prices are up because Joe Biden won the election and Democrats control Congress.
Gas prices went up with that news and then again with his first act as President shutting down a key pipeline. Democrats in control especially the ones holding Biden's strings are not hiding the fact that they want you off of fossil fuels and they will do that by limiting the supply.
LIMITING SUPPLY CAUSES PRICES TO INCREASE, all other thinks equal. Look it up.
They WANT price increases. They CAUSE price increases. Then they dodge the blame using neutral sounding sources like AP as their stooges.
Electricity prices are already more than double what they should be because of Democrat policies, which like the Fannie Mae financial meltdown include the acts of Republican in name only implementing, suporting and continuing the Democrat agenda. Who does THAT hurt? Are the rich worried about their electric bill, or is it the poor and working people who live paycheck to paycheck most affected?
Nice thing about gas prices is that they post them on giant signs and everyone driving by is affected. Media can't hide that. Maybe they should post the payroll taxes they take from young Democrat earners on giant signs.
Title: CNN down 70%!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2021, 08:19:46 AM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, Treacher, Burge, Modern 'Journalism'
Post by: DougMacG on May 28, 2021, 08:34:08 AM
Hat Tip PJ Media Instapundit. Quite prescient, note the dates 2014, 2013. Bringing these to the top here. These apply to the Pravda screeners at Google, Facebook, Twitter as well:
A bit long but the article cited in the 2014 Atlantic piece about the prejudice of "jurnolisters" covering the Israel Palestinian situation and how they are in a sort of club that to join , participate in , and write about, it follows a theme describing Israel as a moral failure.
Title: MSM now admit due to Trump making the claims
Post by: ccp on June 01, 2021, 04:46:04 PM
now they have their dude and dudess. safely in office I still have not heard evidence that the virus leaked from the lab that is really something new that we have NOT HEARDS all along
we knew scientists had gotten sick early on we knew it was too coicidental it started around one of the few labs in the world doing that research and we could see miles away the CCP were covering it up and we could plainly see they blocked travel to inside China but not the rest of the world
of course they knowingly released it to the world
even Faucis denying it seemed quits suspicious from day one
hard to believe someone so savvy he retains his job throughout several presidencies is so naive he trusts Chinese communists
------------>>>>
I can't for the screaming that will occur from election audits
the looks of pure hatred on CNN analysts
when some one challenges their made up "big Lie"
Title: NYT = Propaganda arm of the Democrat Party
Post by: DougMacG on June 03, 2021, 04:18:49 AM
I say let him leave Fox and get MSM job Conservatives like myself who watch Fox hate him and do not trust him
Title: Re: Chris Wallace a registered Democrat
Post by: DougMacG on June 14, 2021, 07:17:19 PM
I agree. He had a good run as a registered Democrat trying to run a neutral program on a conservative network. He crossed the line for me at the disaster known as the debate. I wrote to Fox and I haven't watched him since.
Title: Fox journalist bashes Fox - while on air with the company she works for
Post by: ccp on June 15, 2021, 10:49:34 AM
IMHO she will not win brownie points from me for a cowardly act
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2021, 10:55:59 AM
I await the specifics.
Title: Media, "Rush Limbaugh" Show ends today
Post by: DougMacG on June 18, 2021, 11:33:02 AM
It's been a tough time for conservatives on radio since Rush's somewhat sudden departure.
We first heard the name Dan Bongino. More recently, a duo of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton was announced to take his slot. Rush is a nearly impossible act to follow. He was both informative and entertaining. It wasn't the gimmicks like the update songs; it was content and delivery.
Anyway, good luck to whoever goes next. Maybe if the replacements do not monopolize market share, there will be room for 'more voices and more choices' on more stations putting out the good word of love of freedom.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 18, 2021, 12:04:19 PM
I am not always sure who I am listening to
I think I heard Travis
and maybe Buck
they are good - and so far probably a better fit for Rush's audience perhaps then Dan Bongino whose tone is a bit harsh for dittos heads. (tho he is someone I agree with 90% of the time)
However, I do get turned off when they start playing recordings of Rush for long periods. Not sure why but perhaps because I already likely heard it.
While some of the recordings are quite prescient, Rush is gone and I want to hear the latest.
Just my take
Agree, we do have more voices out there and that is great!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2021, 06:25:18 PM
I take the Rush clips to show that the new hosts are part of the same mission as Rush. After they become established in their own right I anticipate the Rush clips receding.
For the record, the rhythm of my day does not have me listening to the show all that often-- and that was the case for Rush as well.
Title: Newsmax viewership > Fox
Post by: ccp on June 30, 2021, 04:36:43 AM
So blacks can not vote by drive through in Houston (like the rest of the state) so they are being suppressed is Wallace's going to the end of the Earth to find a way to make it look as though the Texas voting law "suppresses " votes. Right....... :wink:
It is so easy to resolve this :
No Republican ever go on his show again! Why can our side not simply do this ? Every Sunday a prominent R goes on his show and gets ambushed . And every week another Republican does the same thing. How stupid . He is not worth it.
He would then only be able to get crats on his show and we will see if he does the same BS to them.
Then when no one watches he will be fired.
Title: Becoming more obvious all the time...
Post by: G M on July 15, 2021, 10:00:34 AM
Title: Narrative Agenda Media
Post by: DougMacG on July 16, 2021, 08:16:53 AM
A friend from the other side mentioned this week that the news is a lot calmer now that Trump is out. A point in favor of Dems he made in follow up was that, like them or not, at least the Obama administration had no real scandals.
This guy is honest, great guy (with an exclamation point), multi-decade friend, really helped a mutual friend in a time of need, served his country as a US Marine, happens to be black, knows I am conservative, and we weren't even arguing, he was just pointing out what he learned by living through these times following ordinary amounts of media coverage. No Obama administration scandals.
In response I mentioned the IRS targeting scandal, far worse than anything Nixon ever did, stopped all his opponents from organizing coming into his own reelection. He hadn't heard a word of it.
I don't see how we unite a country where there are two sets of news with no overlap at least on their side. We aren't seeing the same news, facts or issues.
Over at Instapundit they say, paraphrase: Journalism, cover the biggest story, with a pillow, until it stops breathing. Either it fits the narrative, it advances the agenda, or it can't get even a mention no matter how big a story it is.
Case in point, this morning over on the election fraud thread:
Title: I did not know Cavuto has so much say at Fox
Post by: ccp on July 17, 2021, 07:43:52 AM
Besides his management job, Cavuto also runs three of his own shows, “Cavuto Live,” “Coast to Coast,” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”
Funny I had no idea As soon as I see him I change the channel.
Besides boring he has nothing interesting to say
I agree about Tucker , I look forward to his show as well as Great One Mark Levin who has a show :-D Steve Hilton as good but his conversations with guests are mostly repetitive and lose my interest after 10 minutes.
Kudlow has been good and a few others on Fox business Maria still turns me on.
So there are others at Fox So Cavuto I ignore but that sniveling little mouse face Wallace I seen not to be able to ignore because he always had to have his usual ambush theme to himself his self serving headlines and to "prove " to anyone who listens what a tough interviewing "journalist" he is .
News max is very good and I watch that more
Gutfield is a waste of time once in while I laugh but just not interesting
Hannity is with the program but too much a broken record repeating the same memorized lines over
Ingraham ok best when she has Dinesh D'Souza on who has talent to express thoughts I only wish I had
VDH of course ALWAYS great to listen to - even if he didn't answer my email - :-)
The daytime shows are mostly a total waste and yes the endless parade of girls with the 1 inch makeup and the tight body forming outfits of choreographed colors ...... dressing them up like barbies is not going to get me to watch if the topics and discussions are worthless and boring ..........
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2021, 08:41:49 AM
Yes to Mark Levin!
"Kudlow has been good and a few others on Fox business; Maria still turns me on." Yes.
Title: Tucker has the right enemies
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2021, 05:58:59 AM
Title: CNN Biden Town Hall Ratings Flop
Post by: DougMacG on July 23, 2021, 09:34:51 AM
Pretty high level guest, CNN had the President of the United States on for a Town Hall Meeting and did not beat the ratings of their arch competitor Fox:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 31, 2021, 06:24:40 PM
I disagree with above article
I doubt Lindell was making money off the Fox adds anyone
for goodness sakes we have watched his commercials for what seems like forever so many times does anyone really think there are new buyers for his pillows anymore
I think he was losing money and that this was excuse to pull the adds who cares about HIS opinion anyway
there are other conservatives then Tucker Ingraham and Hannity how about Bartilomo Hilton Levin Kilmeade Jeanine
BTW his pillow stinks I saw one at some local store and it is a piece of garbage no better than one at Walmart.
As for the election fraud still waiting for the evidence I don't doubt it of a second but without it we are still screaming into a wind about it
and with it the MSMDNCWOKELBTQNAACPCOPORATEDEMLAYWER crowd will be bashing the findings till the end of the human race anyway.
But at lease *we* will finally know the truth.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2021, 07:21:09 PM
For me the relevant point here is that FOX refused to air his ad.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, RCP on media
Post by: DougMacG on August 04, 2021, 12:22:58 PM
Sincerest form of flattery, I noticed RealClearPolitics copied our format today with a "Media" sub-heading followed by two stories that show the Ministry of Truth phenomenon going on in the narrative agenda media. Following that are 3 negative stories on the [Biden] economy. Usually they follow an opinion story with an opinion form the other side. What is the other side of these? We want coverups, and gas and house prices are unaffordable, real wages are going down, it's all good? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- realclearpoitics.com
Media & Politics
CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Ignore House Republicans' Wuhan Lab Report
Report: NY Times Quashed Covid Origins Inquiry "in Early 2020"
U.S. Economy
"It Has Never Been Like This": House Price Spiral Worries U.S.
Fed's Waller Says September Taper Call May Be Warranted
Gas Prices On the Rise Again ------------------------------------------------------------------- Links to media stories:
CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS IGNORE BOMBSHELL HOUSE REPUBLICAN WUHAN LAB REPORT https://www.outkick.com/cnn-nbc-abc-cbs-ignore-bombshell-wuhan-lab-report/
New York Times quashed COVID origins inquiry The Times, according to two well-placed sources, refused to investigate the biggest story of our time https://spectatorworld.com/topic/new-york-times-quashed-covid-origins-inquiry/
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 04, 2021, 01:34:27 PM
"For me the relevant point here is that FOX refused to air his ad."
the Fox news conservatives will pick it up if any truth behind it I would think..........
Murdock boys have at least not stopped Shawn Laura Mark and Tucker from pointing out election irregularities though the daytime "news" hosts and not the opinion people probably have been
Title: Tucker: POTH on the Chi Com payroll.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2021, 02:30:30 PM
Tucker, Sean, and Laura have FOX's best ratings.
Here Tucker rapes Pravda on the Hudson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtOjn2g8Xkk
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on August 04, 2021, 03:48:54 PM
I like his pillow. I avoid his tv ads by not watching anything but streaming services.
One of the few vocal HNWI guys on the right, I go out of my way to support him because he is vocal and will spend his money to support our causes.
I doubt Lindell was making money off the Fox adds anyone
for goodness sakes we have watched his commercials for what seems like forever so many times does anyone really think there are new buyers for his pillows anymore
I think he was losing money and that this was excuse to pull the adds who cares about HIS opinion anyway
there are other conservatives then Tucker Ingraham and Hannity how about Bartilomo Hilton Levin Kilmeade Jeanine
BTW his pillow stinks I saw one at some local store and it is a piece of garbage no better than one at Walmart.
As for the election fraud still waiting for the evidence I don't doubt it of a second but without it we are still screaming into a wind about it
and with it the MSMDNCWOKELBTQNAACPCOPORATEDEMLAYWER crowd will be bashing the findings till the end of the human race anyway.
But at lease *we* will finally know the truth.
Title: Dinesh defends Lindell
Post by: ccp on August 05, 2021, 05:05:43 AM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, covering for Biden keeps getting harder
Post by: DougMacG on August 23, 2021, 07:09:29 AM
Headline, NYT column today: "Biden Did the Right Thing Badly in Afghanistan" Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Redefining rational thought. How do you do the "right thing" badly. All in all, he wasn't doing the right thing if you can analyze beyond a first grade level. Did he get our equipment and technology out? Did he get our people out safely? Will gays, Christians be slaughtered?
We went 18 months without an American casualty. Finally he got that stopped.
Title: Leftist apologist spin
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2021, 10:00:30 AM
"Biden Did the Right Thing Badly in Afghanistan" Maureen Dowd, New York Times
I noticed another Leftist twisting of the truth being spouted about on MSLSD and CNN :
yes , it looks bad now but a yr from now we will be sooooo happy Joe had the courage to pull us out we will forget what is happening now.
Fareeeeed Zakaria fails to mention when the terrorist attacks begin we will be reminded all over again .............
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, Jack Ma, SCMP
Post by: DougMacG on August 29, 2021, 08:54:25 PM
What happened to the South China Morning Post? It went the way of The Drudge Report. Under new management, suddenly the editorial slant has taken an about-face. Hong Kong based SCMP, I thought, had a daring streak occasionally printing what the regime may not wish. No more.
Also, Alibaba and SCMP owner Jack Ma, richest man in China, formerly, he disappeared for 3 months and came back reclusive and re-educated.
The regime of China is quite an evil and controlling force.
You have had to refrain from rigging the last election if you really wanted to know what Trump would do. This one is on whoever calls the shots for Biden/Harris.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 30, 2021, 05:35:19 AM
"Column headline yesterday:
.......
....... How do you say, Chutzpah?"
Doug, Was this written by Mitt Romney?
Title: A very interesting point
Post by: G M on September 03, 2021, 08:05:34 AM
Something Missing September 2, 2021 | Sundance | 366 Comments Just a short note of something rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things….
We are told by the powers that be – that approximately 6,000 to 7,000 American citizens were rescued by daring efforts of the U.S. State Department and U.S. military in evacuations from Kabul airport. Okay, fair enough… that’s a good outcome. Happy to hear it; we can debate the other 116,000 at a later time.
However, it seems a little odd now that there’s no videos of the survivors of the Afghan crisis arriving at airports. No crowds or families greeting the extracted American residents; no human interest stories and local broadcasted news coverage of relieved Americans, husbands, wives, daughters or sons arriving back in their hometown…. nothing.
Six to seven thousand Americans saved from the clutches of the Taliban, and not a single story of those Americans arriving home to the waiting arms of their loving family.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on September 04, 2021, 06:33:55 AM
Mainstream Media Outlets Ignore Report on Biden’s Compromising Call with Afghan President.
Except for a few mainstream media outlets, including USA Today and The Washington Post, there has been no reporting on the story from publications like The New York Times.
Additionally, the major networks – CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC – appear to have completely ignored it, according to a review of transcripts on media monitoring service TVEyes. Fox News media reporter and Mediaite alum Joseph Wulfsohn first brought this to light on Thursday, citing transcripts, in what he called “a media blackout in the bombshell report.”
Title: Media, Peggy Noonan is (at least) 12 years past her sell by date
Post by: DougMacG on September 07, 2021, 07:51:26 AM
She's 71 but this is not about age. It's about being wrong. If liberals want her, they can have her, but anyone who supported Obama, Biden AND Harris is not an ally or thought leader of mine. She did great work somewhere in the 1980s and was a Clinton skeptic in the 90s. So what. She doesn't belong as a regular columnist on the opinion pages of the WSJ unless the other side wants her to express the opposing view. Otherwise she is wasting valuable real estate.
See Scott Johnson at Powerline: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/high-noonan-3.php
Coming into the 2008 election Noonan wrote about Obama:
"He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice."
About Kamala Harris she wrote: “The Rise of Kamala Harris.” Subhead: “The daughter of East Bay professors grew up to become an excellent performer of politics.”
Mark Pulliam: Thin gruel from Peggy Noonan. If Kamala Harris is so smart, why did the daughter of a Stanford professor, whose parents both got graduate degrees at UC Berkeley, end up at Howard? Hastings is a second-tier law school, well below Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and even USC. Failing the bar exam shows a lack of smarts. No mention of Willie Brown? Sugar coating her controversial tenure in California? WSJ readers interested in “the rest of the story” should check out my profile of Harris [“The next Obama”] in the Winter 2016 issue of City Journal. https://www.city-journal.org/html/next-obama-14181.html
Elise Nappi: This reads like a press release written by someone who has never worked for Harris, since rumor has it she doesn’t have too many fans among her underlings, but by a sycophant. To say that Harris “didn’t do well” in the primary is being overly kind. When she exited, she was polling at 2% nationally and 7% in her home state. “An excellent performer of politics”? Are you kidding me? Is that what she was doing when she viciously attacked Justice Kavanaugh during his Senate Confirmation hearings? Peggy Noonan has lost all credibility with this ridiculous piece.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2021, 04:52:19 PM
Her bio of Reagan "When Character was King" was superb.
But to the comments above I can only say "Amen."
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on September 08, 2021, 07:53:29 AM
Title: WT: Lindell vs. FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 04, 2021, 05:43:40 AM
Lindell returns MyPillow ads to Fox News, but alliance is over
BY JOSEPH CLARK THE WASHINGTON TIMES
MyPillow ads returned to Fox News last week but CEO Mike Lindell says the relationship is still on the rocks.
Mr. Lindell pulled all advertising from Fox in July after he said the network refused to run ads promoting his online platform and his three-day cyber symposium on 2020 presidential election fraud.
“I still think Fox has done more damage to our country than all other media outlets combined,” Mr. Lindell told The Washington Times on Friday. “It’s the same relationship. I think they’re horrible.”
Mr. Lindell’s high-profile dustup with Fox News peaked in July, when he pulled all MyPillow ads, which was once one of his company’s biggest promoters.
The move cost MyPillow $1 million per week in revenue.
Mr. Lindell’s symposium in South Dakota was supposed to unveil evidence that a Chinesebased hack of the election helped President Biden defeat former President Donald Trump.
He claimed to have 37 terabytes of “irrefutable” evidence that hackers, who he said were backed by China, broke into election systems and switched votes in favor of Mr. Biden, which he planned to present at the event.
Mr. Lindell launched into several tirades against Fox News during the event in August, claiming the network refused to cover claims that the election was hacked.
“Shame on you, Fox,” Mr. Lindell said to cheers from the crowd during his opening remarks at the symposium. “Disgusting that they haven’t talked about this election. At least we know where CNN and all these terrible outlets come from. At least they attacked, and then we can at least get the word out.”
Mr. Lindell concluded his symposium without presenting specifi c evidence that China hacked the election. The event reached an estimated audience of 40 million online viewers and roughly 500 in-person attendees including Republican state and municipal lawmakers.
Mr. Lindell said Fox continues to reject any ads that promote his online platform, FrankSpeech.com, on which Mr. Lindell livestreamed the full duration of the symposium. The site also hosts several documentaries that claim the 2020 election was defrauded, and streams “Lindell TV,” a nightly broadcast that often focuses on election fraud claims.
Mr. Lindell said after he pulled his ads from Fox in July, he approached the network on multiple occasions with ads for Frank-Speech.com that were rejected.
“And the third one, they said, ‘We don’t like what your content is that Frank Speech,’” Mr. Lindell said. “So then I did a fourth ad and directed into MyPillow. And then they said I couldn’t use the word ‘frank’ or ‘frank speech’ in the ad.”
Mr. Lindell said Fox continues to refuse any ads for FrankSpeech. com or any ads that mention his online platform or the word “frank.”
“It’s disgusting what they’ve done,” he said.
In response to inquiries by The Times, Fox News pointed to a previous article in The Daily Beast where Fox confirmed that they had rejected multiple ads they received from Mr. Lindell but denied Mr. Lindell’s “characterization of the conversation.”
Mr. Lindell said his goal in returning to Fox was to continue to get the word out about the 2020 election, which he continues to claim was tainted by fraud. He said his ads that run on Fox direct viewers to the MyPillow website, which directs visitors to Frank-Speech.com.
“The ad I ran last night, it directs them to MyPillow.com selling patriotic products and Bible pillows, and then from there, I get them to FrankSpeech,” he said. “This is all about trying to get our country, trying to get awareness out.”
Despite the August symposium failing to provide proof of a Chinese hack, Mr. Lindell remains on his crusade to prove the election was stolen.
His mission also continues to cost Mr. Lindell dearly both financially and in terms of reputation.
In February, the voting machine company Dominion sued Mr. Lindell and MyPillow for $1.3 billion in damages for defamation based on his allegations the election was rigged. In June, Mr. Lindell filed a $1.6 billion countersuit citing the First Amendment and claiming that Dominion had infringed on his right to free speech.
He remains undeterred.
Mr. Lindell is backing a class action case against Dominion Voting Systems alleging the voting machine manufacturer has violated the First Amendment rights of “ordinary Americans” who “participate in the public debate regarding election integrity and security,” by waging “lawsuit warfare” against those who speak out. The suit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Colorado.
He said he has little hope for repairing his relationship with Fox News.
“I think all the hosts that are on Fox have turned their back on the country,” he said.
“It’s the same relationship. I think they’re horrible,” MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said about his relationship with Fox News. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Title: Lindell on Fox - redux
Post by: ccp on October 04, 2021, 07:14:05 AM
:roll:
I don't know which is more silly
him
balance of nature
or Huckabee demeaning himself for a buck hawking some nonsense sleep aid
all a joke
Title: Re: Media, Trump wants Pulitzer revoked
Post by: DougMacG on October 04, 2021, 08:32:58 AM
From above: Lindell, Lin Wood, others have become a waste of time. Be careful who we follow. Reflects on us. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trump wants Pulitzer revoked.
He is right on this. The whole thing was bullshit. How come Trump needs to point this out. Don't Pulitzer, NYT and Wash Post have their own quality control departments?
"The economic recovery from the pandemic recession lies behind the crisis, coming after a year of retrenchment in coal, oil and gas extraction. Other factors include an unusually cold winter in Europe that drained reserves, a series of hurricanes that forced shutdowns of Gulf oil refineries, a turn for the worse in relations between China and Australia that led Beijing to stop importing coal from Down Under, and a protracted calm spell over the North Sea that has sharply curtailed the output of electricity-generating wind turbines."
Title: "we need to have a conversation"
Post by: ccp on October 12, 2021, 08:38:33 AM
this is the latest new phrase craze:
"we need to have a conversation ......"
Does anyone else find this annoying
we have already chosen sides till we have turned blue in the face and some pundit on cable will make a proclamation that we need " a conversation " as though that is so enlightened or has any chance of being helpful
all this means to me is we "need to compromise" which is exactly what we don't need
for example:
"we need to have a conversation on immigration reform"
My view:
No we don't . We need to enforce law , close the borders and send those who are here illegally back to where they come from and prevent them from trying to vote or run around collecting mail in ballots for their own benefit.
what else is there to talk about or converse?
Title: Re: "we need to have a conversation"
Post by: DougMacG on October 12, 2021, 09:44:54 AM
Annoying because it means exactly the opposite of its literal meaning, like everything else Leftist.
"Conversation" means we talk, you listen. Your view will be deemed ________ (racist, sexist, anti-science, etc) and will no longer be allowed to be spoken, written, heard, read or repeated.
A real conversation in politics would be something like a Lincoln Douglas debate series with the best minds on both sides allowed to explain their views on issues and be heard. That's not what the Left means by "let's have a conversation".
Title: Re: "we need to have a conversation"
Post by: G M on October 12, 2021, 10:59:42 AM
Annoying because it means exactly the opposite of its literal meaning, like everything else Leftist.
"Conversation" means we talk, you listen. Your view will be deemed ________ (racist, sexist, anti-science, etc) and will no longer be allowed to be spoken, written, heard, read or repeated.
A real conversation in politics would be something like a Lincoln Douglas debate series with the best minds on both sides allowed to explain their views on issues and be heard. That's not what the Left means by "let's have a conversation".
Exactly.
Title: Brian Stelter, CNN, why isn't there a NYT on the right?
Post by: DougMacG on October 14, 2021, 05:18:54 AM
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/10/11/cnns_brian_stelter_why_isnt_there_a_new_york_times_of_the_right.html ---------------------- A not-unbiased look at the situation. Still he swerves into some truths. The central truth is admission all the main media are on the Left and that half the country (more than half) hates that.
Fact is that the main reporting is all left slanted and conservative media, even here, is limited to rebutting their errors and filling in their omissions. In that game, they are always on offense and we are always on defense.
Title: Joe Rogan hammers Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Post by: G M on October 14, 2021, 09:17:13 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/396008.php
Lying liars at CNN.
Title: Re: Joe Rogan hammers Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Post by: G M on October 14, 2021, 05:29:19 PM
ooooh he sent flirty emails to MSFT people .... what an evil man he is. while he was married !!!
[heavy on the sarcasm]
Look this has already been aired, he got divorced and paid her 40 billion for his evil behavior.
I am not a huge fan of Bill's politics or his plan for corona early in the epidemic, or his ruthlessness while at MSFT but I do recognize and respect his attempts at spending most of his fortune in positive non selfish ways.
I am just sick of the self righteous media .
Title: Re: Just to celebrate Bill Gates daughter's wedding
Post by: G M on October 19, 2021, 08:15:05 AM
ooooh he sent flirty emails to MSFT people .... what an evil man he is. while he was married !!!
[heavy on the sarcasm]
Look this has already been aired, he got divorced and paid her 40 billion for his evil behavior.
I am not a huge fan of Bill's politics or his plan for corona early in the epidemic, or his ruthlessness while at MSFT but I do recognize and respect his attempts at spending most of his fortune in positive non selfish ways.
I am just sick of the self righteous media .
His plan to depopulate the planet?
Title: Re: Just to celebrate Bill Gates daughter's wedding
Post by: G M on October 19, 2021, 10:14:27 AM
ooooh he sent flirty emails to MSFT people .... what an evil man he is. while he was married !!!
[heavy on the sarcasm]
Look this has already been aired, he got divorced and paid her 40 billion for his evil behavior.
I am not a huge fan of Bill's politics or his plan for corona early in the epidemic, or his ruthlessness while at MSFT but I do recognize and respect his attempts at spending most of his fortune in positive non selfish ways.
I am just sick of the self righteous media .
His plan to depopulate the planet?
Title: “Republican conspiracy theory”
Post by: G M on October 21, 2021, 05:08:12 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2021, 06:56:17 AM
I have and liked Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism". I liked Hayes as a member of the Baier panel. I find both of them to be intelligent and thoughtful, even when I disagree with them, and worthy of being on FOX whether they agreed with Trump or not.
That said, this seems a bit "panties in a bunch". Perhaps a play to jump for a contract elsewhere?
Title: Re: maybe we can get rid of chris wallace too
Post by: DougMacG on November 23, 2021, 08:40:21 AM
Yes. Chris Wallace rose to the highest level of solo hosting a Presidential debate, then ran the worst one ever. Did no homework on the real issues that would come up, and handled it the opposite of even-handedly.
I have not tuned in since except tidbits that tell me he is the worst kind of awful, posing as impartial and doing the opposite.
He is a young 74. He can still go spend his prime years coming up at CBS or wherever Dan Rather went, as far as I am concerned. Fox News deserves someone with actual impartiality if we can't have just one network with a center right bias, like the majority of the nation.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 23, 2021, 09:22:10 AM
"I have and liked Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism"
:-o
I can relate to being annoyed by Trump that Goldberg did not like him but he pissed me off with his never Trumpism
to the extent he hurts the Right overall
to my knowledge he is NOT a warrior for the right but more of a rino bush type
if I recall he talks of bipartisanship compromise
which is foolish while the LEFT talks of endless marching forward that looks at bipartisanship and compromise as a temporary inconvenience - not a solution
Tell me how my interpretation of Gold B. is wrong with Republicans like him = > we lose
that said I have not and do not want to read his book plus I think he is overrated as a thinker to start with.
Title: The Pravdas bury another Hunter story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2021, 03:06:34 AM
Title: MSNBC host used Cuomo advisers spin "like verbatim"
Post by: DougMacG on December 01, 2021, 05:55:33 AM
We know that's what they do, but this is in their own words, smoking gun. "News Anchor" is part of PR department for Dem politicians. An established fact, not an accusation. -------------------------------- https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/11/30/nbc-news-has-some-explaining-to-do-after-cuomo-revelations-implicate-prominent-msnbc-anchor-n484443
Smith bragged that MSNBC host Katy Tur was using her talking points about Cuomo live on air.
“I’m texting w Katy Tur,” Smith wrote to the group. “Katy is saying my spin live. Like verbatim.”
Title: Cuomo back by January says Stelter
Post by: ccp on December 02, 2021, 07:49:24 AM
Title: The Wires of War
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2021, 08:08:39 PM
READ FOR REFLECTION-- the first three and the last two paragraphs in particular: ‘The Wires of War’ Review: How Online Lies Become the Truth
First, cook up an ‘untruth.’ Then ‘layer’ it, obscuring its source. At any hint of suspicion, use a ‘firehose’ to drown out the correct details.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO By Joseph C. Sternberg Nov. 30, 2021 6:20 pm ET
The scam runs something like this: You start with what’s known as “placement.” “Some untruth is cooked up,” Jacob Helberg tells us. “The disinformation can be completely fabricated” or “it may originate with hacked or compromising information.” Next comes “amplification,” using shells or false online identities to disseminate that cooked-up untruth. From there one proceeds to “layering,” in which intermediaries “obscure the original source of disinformation and spread propaganda far and wide.” The coup de grâce arrives with “integration,” the point at which the lie has been so widely propagated that it becomes accepted as truth.
Mr. Helberg here isn’t describing the process by which theSteele dossier, concerning Donald Trump’s alleged Russia collusion, deranged American politics for five years. Instead, the author’s purpose in “The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power” is to explain how Russia and China, among others, seek to wage digital war on America and its allies.
A worthwhile meditation on this so-called gray war might reflect on how we often wage such a war on ourselves. With the Steele dossier, a series of absurd allegations concocted—sorry, “placed”—at the instigation of a desperate presidential campaign were amplified and layered via campaign operatives, reporters’ anonymous sources and a pathologically gullible Federal Bureau of Investigation before achieving integration nirvana at the precise moment Mr. Trump’s alleged exploits in a Moscow hotel room were first “reported” on cable news.
"The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power"
Alas, Mr. Helberg focuses only on the foes outside the gates. He is correct that malign foreign powers view the internet as a battlefield on which to wage asymmetric war. He offers a comprehensive, if often jumbled, account of the forms such warfare can take, whether the “software war” playing out as social-media misinformation or the “hardware war” for access to your smartphone and the secrets about you it can reveal. Russia is a primary combatant in the former; China, the latter.
We get a long account of Russian misinformation efforts during and after the 2016 presidential election. We get a retread of debates about technological infrastructure, from Huawei’s communications equipment to Apple’s Chinese-built iPhones, and a warning about how hackers can shut down power to large sections of major cities, such as a “devastating” 2016 blackout in Kyiv triggered by a phishing attack. It’s all worth repeating, although Mr. Helberg, a senior adviser at Stanford University’s Center on Geopolitics and Technology, has little new to offer about the contours of these conflicts. This is especially irritating given his past as a Google senior manager.
Because what we’re really here for is Mr. Helberg’s experience as a leader in Google’s battle against misinformation in its news-related products. He dangles that prospect before us in his opening pages, recounting the day in 2017 that he and other executives discovered that the Vladimir Putin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) had purchased “thousands of dollars of ads on Google” during the 2016 election. Too bad we only learn here what “the media later reported” since, as Mr. Helberg writes, “I can’t recount many of the sensitive internal details.”
This matters because although we now understand that Russian and other propagandists try to confuse politics in many Western democracies, it remains hard to discern to what extent they succeed, or how. Mr. Helberg describes the techniques Russian troublemakers deploy online. These include blasting tweets in farcically ungrammatical English and “firehosing,” or flooding the internet with false or misleading stories about a news event to drown out the correct details.
Presumably Google has some internal data on the effectiveness of such strategies, but if it does Mr. Helberg is keeping shtum. Instead, the reader repeatedly encounters variations on “It’s difficult to know how many of these [Russian] efforts paid off, but some did.” Says who?
As an example of Russian success, Mr. Helberg offers an anecdote about Trump activists in Florida allegedly paid by Russians active on social media to stage a 2016 piece of street theater mocking Hillary Clinton. However, Mr. Helberg neglects to mention that this performance seems to have gone unheeded by anyone, including Florida voters—until Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller dredged it up two years later in an indictment of the IRA. Only at that point did the stunt show up in the newspapers. Is that amplification, or layering? Elsewhere, Mr. Helberg writes of the apparent Kremlin firehose that sprayed denials of responsibility for the 2018 nerve-agent poisoning, in Salisbury, England, of Russia’s former intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and others: “If you are unaware of or confused by exactly what occurred, then the Russians did their job.” Except the next sentence suggests they didn’t: “The facts, however, are widely accepted.”
Mr. Helberg’s caginess about what Google and other tech companies know about such malign online activities (and what they are doing about it) undermines the author’s policy recommendations, which boil down to “trust us elites more.” He suggests Washington pour more funding into Silicon Valley to counter gray warfare, so the technologists can sort things out in coordination with the same Capitol Hill denizens who chased fake “collusion” claims for years. Ditto his suggestion that citizens cross-check anything they read online against the reports of “authoritative sources” such as the New York Times—a source so authoritative that it shared a Pulitzer Prize with the Washington Post for their now-debunked reporting on the Russia-collusion narrative.
The glib opacity of reporters hiding behind anonymous sources, of tech companies hiding behind trade-secret algorithm tweaks, and of lawmakers and FBI agents hiding behind everyone else, is a direct cause of the distrust that’s corroding America’s democracy from the inside, a phenomenon Russia and China happily exploit but don’t necessarily cause. The first question for any serious examination of information warfare—a question with which Silicon Valley giants, intelligence officials and the media steadfastly refuse to engage—is the extent to which those institutions’ own neuroses make them bigger gray-war patsies than any Trump voter.
It is not like Tucker has not gone HARD after Hunter, but still this surprises. That said, I do remember Tucker speaking well of his personal interactions with Joe over the years.
Title: second coumo -out
Post by: ccp on December 04, 2021, 02:29:02 PM
Title: outrageous
Post by: ccp on December 05, 2021, 09:11:16 AM
"The relief would come in the form of a payroll tax credit earmarked for local news organizations . . . [and] will provide $1.67 billion over the next five years for newspapers, websites, radio and TV stations, and other outlets that primarily cover local news. If eligible, they could reap up to $25,000 for each locally focused journalist they employ in the first year and $15,000 in each of the next four.
The bill also encompasses large chains (such as Gannett) “that include publications focused on local coverage.”
One can suggest this billion-dollar corporate media bailout is less crass than paying them by the editorial—but not by much."
Is there a Constitutional issue here?
The government supporting news organizations.
Is there evidence that the dole outs go to Left wing more than Right wing? Who decides where the moolah goes?
And is anyone monitoring this ?
How can we let the public know about this sleaze if the bribe recipients are the news (propaganda ) outlets themselves ?
Title: Replacements for Chris Cuomo
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2021, 02:28:32 PM
Good riddance. I used to believe he was a down the middle journalist but he pulled a Candy Crowley in 2020 and I have no time for him ever since. I hope they pick someone good to replace him on Fox News Sunday. The rest of the Sunday shows have (also) become horrid.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2021, 04:46:53 AM
My wife has strongly disliked him for a long time now.
Title: Dick Morris torches the phony Chris Wallace
Post by: ccp on December 13, 2021, 05:14:20 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 18, 2021, 10:21:09 AM
I wonder about this part:
"Repeatedly invoking The New York Times’s name in an unprofessional way that imperils the reputation of Wirecutter, The Times, and all of our journalists is a clear violation of our policies," the statement continued."
I wonder if she has simply left out "NYT" if they would have given her a medal or promotioin.
MSNBC will pick her up.....
Title: msm paying up for slander / defamation case against Sandmann
Post by: ccp on December 19, 2021, 09:01:16 AM
how does the NYT get protected attorney client privileged memos anyway
it has to be through leaks
I thought this is illegal.
I will not be surprised if it does gets reversed by partisan judge on appeal anyway.
For some reason they are treated like they are God because freedom of the press is enumerated in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Doesn't that beg at least two follow up questions:
Isn't Project Veritas "press" too? Yet we sic the FBI on them like they are terrorists for pursuing truth.
If the First Amendment is truth beyond question, what the hell happened to the Second (and the rest of the document)?
Title: Media, Ministry of Omission, Most Unreported Story of 2021, or EVER?
Post by: DougMacG on December 26, 2021, 07:32:16 AM
My vote for most underreported story in the world in 2021 OR EVER is below. Somehow the link is still up in the Washington Post, yet I have never heard it mentioned anywhere except in my posts on the forum. This is in the "WEATHER" section of the Washington Post where the "news" editors were (apparently) unable to censor it. It's not news?
South Pole posts most severe cold season on record, a surprise in a warming world While the rest of the world sizzled, the South Pole shivered with an average temperature of minus-78 degrees over the past six months.
By Jason Samenow and Kasha Patel October 2, 2021 at 8:45 a.m. EDT
This story, first published Friday evening, was updated Saturday morning.
Amid a record hot summer in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, beset by devastating fires, floods and hurricanes, Antarctica was mired in a deep, deep freeze. That’s typically the case during the southernmost continent’s winter months, but 2021 was different.
The chill was exceptional, even for the coldest location on the planet.
The average temperature at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station between April and September, a frigid minus-78 degrees (minus-61 Celsius), was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/KHTBN7PKQRBV5EZAAC5Q6V2NXM.jfif&w=767) The sun rises at the South Pole on Sept. 23, ending the long, dark Southern Hemisphere winter. The photo was taken by South Pole Station Facility Engineer Jeff Keller. --------------------------------------------------------------------
These are not adjustments or models or opinions. These are actual temperature readings.
We are not talking about one cold day or temperature reading. THAT IS A 6 MONTH AVERAGE!
What kind of logic tells you the Arctic tells the whole story of the earth's climate and the South Pole tells you nothing?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 26, 2021, 07:47:48 AM
saw something about some snow expected in the northeast.
so it was labeled :
flight down to "extreme " weather
clearly an allusion to think "climate change"
human civilization coming to end evidenced by mid winter snow fall :roll:
I think is was written by "millennial" who are all being brainwashed in schools .
Title: Funny how quickly BurnLootMurder's Christmas Massacre got MEMORY HOLED
Post by: G M on December 28, 2021, 04:14:34 PM
It's a good sign that a conservative opinion piece is published in a site that would once be considered mainstream media, once as biased as all the others.
There are liberal 'news' sites and there are conservative opinion sites, what I am on the lookout for is the most neutral and unbiased news sites where a person could just read facts and news stories wherever they might lead, and where the opinions on these sites might cover the leading ideas on both sides.
Title: POTP on Gutfield
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 11, 2022, 11:05:48 AM
Her visits to Colorado and to see victims of a deadly Christmas parade crash in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and a trip last Friday to tornado-ravaged areas of Kentucky are a “prime example” of the responsibility she feels, she said. It’s what she would want as a regular person who survived a natural disaster or other tragedy.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, No Shame
Post by: DougMacG on January 19, 2022, 06:37:32 AM
Polling intended to change results, not reflect them. That was Washington Post / ABC News, kind of big names in media.
Last poll before election, Biden opens GAPING 17 point lead in key state Wisconsin, the state that won it for him in 2016.
Actual margin was roughly 0.0% just like 2016.
WTF.
Today's RCP average generic ballot poll is 42.7 R versus 42.1 D when everyone knows Dems are sunk.
We do we put up with such bad, DISHONEST polling, and media coverage overall.
Do 'honest' liberals ever get tired of being lied to?
Title: CNN bashes Fox last night
Post by: ccp on January 19, 2022, 06:52:39 AM
Brianna Keilar , who gained a ton of weight apparently ,
was bashing Fox of dishonesty misleading
with "false" "lies" "conspiracies" "threat to democracy"
they bring on a few disgruntled Fox people to bash their former employer for being the above adjectives ( no irony lost that these clowns then go on CNN whose anchors lie cheat propagandize for the benefit of one political party )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANISyVlGgOk
thats what a loser station does when no one watches ... gee I wonder why Fox has multiple times viewership then communist news network
Zucker is trapped cornered and desparate
I guess when you are losing you turn to donuts.....
Title: Re: CNN bashes Fox last night
Post by: DougMacG on January 19, 2022, 07:59:54 AM
Brianna Keilar , who gained a ton of weight apparently ,
was bashing Fox of dishonesty misleading
with "false" "lies" "conspiracies" "threat to democracy"
they bring on a few disgruntled Fox people to bash their former employer for being the above adjectives ( no irony lost that these clowns then go on CNN whose anchors lie cheat propagandize for the benefit of one political party )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANISyVlGgOk
thats what a loser station does when no one watches ... gee I wonder why Fox has multiple times viewership then communist news network
Zucker is trapped cornered and desparate
I guess when you are losing you turn to donuts.....
When CNN started, they were THE 'cable news network'. They covered the world and did so without obvious or noticeable bias. Ted Turner was believed to be center right - pre Jane Fonda.
As recently as shock and awe in Baghdad 2003, they were the cameras for the world. They deserved to be on in airports.
Their bias started way before Trump but their reaction to Trump, to being called :Fake News", was unbelievable. The more they were called out for fake news, the more they dedicated all programming to fake news and taking sides. Same for MS-NBC.
Fake News is not a difference of opinion. It is false takes on news stories and news stories made up altogether. Like the Russian Collusion hoax. Yes they were following the lead of the NYT and Washington Post, but they did not have one person checking the story for accuracy before going on the air with it, day after day after day, all totally false.
Then they use the great fake news by omission trick. NOTHING on the Hunter Biden story before the election. Nothing on so many other things. Show me the CNN Headline News that says Black and Hispanic unemployment hit all time lows under Republican economic policies or that wage growth hit all time highs for everyone but the very wealthiest. Coverage of those historic feats DID NOT HAPPEN.
As PJ Media likes to say, "Journalism" is covering the biggest stories of the the day - with a pillow until they stop breathing.
You can watch these channels all day long or listen to NPR all day and still not know the biggest stories of the day. Unbelievable.
Now they've lost 90% of their viewers, found out (shockingly) their best hosts were male chauvinist women abusers, lost all credibility - and still will not change course.
Title: Eh tu, NBC?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2022, 04:17:44 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ9jxStco7g&t=82s
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, PBS: "Insurrection"
Post by: DougMacG on February 02, 2022, 07:09:11 AM
I tuned in to PBS yesterday... whatever the 10am central time show is...
They had two professor on from prestigious academic institutions. The first one was going on and on with stories about the worst racism of the late 1800s, how blacks were still not free. The point was to make the connection with the "Jan 6 insurrection". Sorry. There is no connection except that Leftists call small government advocates racist.
They asked the second professor to comment on the wacky point of the first one. He said he couldn't agree more and added that it was the first time a confederate flag had been inside the Capitol in a hundred and whatever number years.
Then the program wrapped up with their pleasant elevator music to close it out the segment. I couldn't help thinking I was listening to a parody of PBS.
What a bunch of hate mongers. There was no insurrection, fyi. And the issue (they don't want addressed) was election fraud, not race. The only racism is their projection of their own. Republicans led the fight to free the slaves. Republicans passed the civil rights laws. Republicans today want blacks to have full rights, freedoms and responsibilities in our country. Democrats didn't and don't.
Worse yet is to find out in another thread here that the only piece of supporting "fact" they came up with for their narrative was perhaps a ""false flag operation.
Title: Zucker resigns over affair @ CNN
Post by: ccp on February 02, 2022, 08:31:28 AM
:wink:
I wonder if he would have if the networks viewership had been great rather then in the dumps
though Fox is down too; Including me - watching less how many times can I hear Laura screeching about vacs ? or Steve Hilton for the much
Title: as for PBS
Post by: ccp on February 02, 2022, 08:37:09 AM
Doug wrote :
"I tuned in to PBS yesterday... whatever the 10am central time show is..."
speaking of PBS ( just another CNN MSNBC)
Buckley's old Firing Line show
now led by anti Trump Rino suffering from Trump/Maga DerangementSyndrome
Margaret Hoover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hoover
watching her is like watching MSNBC or Don Lemon, Cooper and the rest of the girl crew at CNN.
same for Ananpour all leftist bs day and night with the fake air of being objective and professional journolism ("jurnolister")
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2022, 10:51:57 AM
"though Fox is down too"
People are exhausted by the overload of the data of the fustercluck.
Too much overlap between Tucker, Sean, and Laura.
I find myself appreciating Martha-- very good, substantive prepared interviewer, good guests, and she is more about the actual news than herself. Still like Brett, but the show is less than it was e.g. losing Katherine Herridge, the guests are the panel are distinctly less than the heyday with Krauthammer etc.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 02, 2022, 03:04:02 PM
"People are exhausted by the overload of the data of the fustercluck."
- I don't watch Fox. Have tried to listen to the program in place of Rush L but am exhausted by the shiny object coverage of the vaccines and mandates. Even if they are 100% right, it's not entertaining to hear it over and over and over.
"the guests [on the 5?] on the panel are distinctly less than the heyday with Krauthammer etc."
- The world lost something with the loss of these people.
I used to joke about Colorado television while traveling: Every second they aren't showing highlights of the latest Broncos game they are losing market share. Conservative media thinks they lose audience every second they aren't trash vaccines, masks and mandates. Got it already.
This pandemic will be over shortly and we have lost two plus years of what was already lousy messaging.
Title: Tucker's audience
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2022, 04:42:50 PM
so what the NYT uses insiders and digs up dirt on Republicans all day long
spy craft is used for corporate theft *all day long* I was followed by PIs constantly at one point for song lyrics. insiders were bribed to con us on and on
it is used all day long in politics
what do you think the Steel Dossier was as bought and paid for by Hillary and her mob?
The NYT presents this non story with headline that only dirty Trump Republicans do this.
Title: the yahoos tell us biden is crushing it on the economy
Post by: ccp on February 08, 2022, 04:03:54 PM
Too bad. Great site. Worst poster Paul M is annoying their best poster Steve H to the boiling point. We'll see what comes out of it.
Conservative in-fighting is bad. We need all who oppose the radical Left to make a majority. Or we lose.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 14, 2022, 08:12:45 AM
"Conservative in-fighting is bad. We need all who oppose the radical Left to make a majority. Or we lose."
absolutely
problem it is often tough to tell how much news about Trump is true vs bs to read that Trump was ripping up papers certainly is consistent with his temperament
OTOH it is certainly consistent with the TDS suffering MSM to exaggerate this story
do we know Obama kept every single shred of paper he laid eyes on? do we know Obama the great snake simply knew when to not write things down so there would be no record
of course not
thinking it past this ....
this is exactly why we need Trump policies - but without Trump
we don't need this sort of personality problems inserting themselves into the war we need to wage on the LEFT - IMHO.
I did not see the entire interview of Desantis last night on LLL but what I did see is that he has the same fighting spirit as Trump ......
a bit less entertaining, but also with(out) the personality flaws!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth and Durham
Post by: DougMacG on February 14, 2022, 11:28:04 AM
Modern Journalism - Cover the big stories of the day - with a pillow - until they stop breathing. - Treacher? at PJMedia. ----------------------------
I wasn't the only one to notice the coverage of Durham identifying the Hillary Clinton campaign as the principle behind the espionage against the Trump organization was coming only from the right.
https://www.oann.com/durhams-latest-findings-get-little-coverage-from-mainstream-media/ ---------------------------- NPR lead story: Study finds Western megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years (Nothing on coldest winter in Antarctica ever)
Nothing on Durham and treason.
NPR Search: Durham, All Programs 2,090 results found in 23ms
The Trump-Russia Probe's Special Counsel Has Charged A Lawyer With Lying To The FBI by Ryan Lucas September 16, 2021 • …A Washington attorney who specializes in cybersecurity issues has been indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI ahead of the 2016 election …
Barr Makes John Durham, Investigating Russia Probe, A Special Counsel by Ryan Lucas December 1, 2020 • …Attorney General William Barr has appointed John Durham as special counsel, ... --------------------------------- CBS Face the Nation Sunday: Nothing https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-face-the-nation-02-13-2022/
ABC This Week: Nothing
NBC Meet the Press: Pence rebukes Trump. GOP Censures Cheney and Kinzinger. Nothing on Durham.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 14, 2022, 05:24:37 PM
Doug writes:
Modern Journalism - Cover the big stories of the day - with a pillow - until they stop breathing. - Treacher? at PJMedia. ----------------------------
I wasn't the only one to notice the coverage of Durham identifying the Hillary Clinton campaign as the principle behind the espionage against the Trump organization was coming only from the right.
https://www.oann.com/durhams-latest-findings-get-little-coverage-from-mainstream-media/ ---------------------------- NPR lead story: Study finds Western megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years (Nothing on coldest winter in Antarctica ever)
Nothing on Durham and treason.
NPR Search: Durham, All Programs 2,090 results found in 23ms
The Trump-Russia Probe's Special Counsel Has Charged A Lawyer With Lying To The FBI by Ryan Lucas September 16, 2021 • …A Washington attorney who specializes in cybersecurity issues has been indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI ahead of the 2016 election …
Barr Makes John Durham, Investigating Russia Probe, A Special Counsel by Ryan Lucas December 1, 2020 • …Attorney General William Barr has appointed John Durham as special counsel, ... --------------------------------- CBS Face the Nation Sunday: Nothing https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-face-the-nation-02-13-2022/
ABC This Week: Nothing
NBC Meet the Press: Pence rebukes Trump. GOP Censures Cheney and Kinzinger. Nothing on Durham.
do we ever hear US INTELLIGENCE report when it is on the Demo side?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Drudge Report is Dead
Post by: DougMacG on February 16, 2022, 06:37:39 AM
Now we know whose money brought it down (HRC).
The outlet that broke the Monica Lewinski story is one more phony site not interested in Durham's blockbuster story that names the Hillary campaign as the origin of the Trump Russia hoax.
Don't bother click there ever. The site is up but the content is gone.
Issues and Insights has the story.
How do people like that sell out? With a top ten website, he could made all the money he ever wanted and kept his good name.
Whatever the real story is, you won't ever find it there.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Giving Hillary a Pass - again
Post by: DougMacG on February 16, 2022, 06:42:37 AM
Mr. Schott has gone to great efforts to hide his address. Most people can't find it using open sources.
I did.
So, is it morally correct to publicize his address and phone numbers?
Title: Not newsworthy!
Post by: G M on February 18, 2022, 02:12:32 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/397884.php
For some reason…
Title: ironic
Post by: ccp on February 18, 2022, 03:25:29 PM
"The corrupt Jacobin media is cheerleading as their antifa/anonymous allies dox and abuse people for donating $40 to the Freedom Convoy, and cheerleading the tyrant Trudeau's seizing of bank accounts without legitimate authority to do so, but this -- bailing out a BLM assassin (and "journalist") and vicious antisemite, using funds provided by George Soros... this is, as they say, fine"
well if this guy who should NOT be out on bail is mad the Jews are controlling politics
as I have myself said they do wield a lot of influence though 90 % is on the side of BLM
so how ironic.
if he was a white anti semite this would headlines and blasting endlessly CNN MSNBC blowhorns for a week
Title: WSJ: Durham vs. the Press
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2022, 12:55:18 AM
In Durham Investigation vs. the Press, Who’s the Straight Shooter? Instead of ankle-biting, big media might join the special prosecutor in airing the secrets of 2016.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Follow Feb. 18, 2022 6:21 pm ET
John Durham, famously tight-lipped, gave a rare speech at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, Conn., four years ago. The first words out of his mouth concerned the “awesome power” of prosecutors and the importance of proceeding in secret because sometimes the prosecutor’s suspicions about people are wrong.
When President Trump named Mr. Durham in 2018 to be U.S. attorney for Connecticut, so eager were the state’s two Democratic U.S. senators to take credit that they rushed out a statement noting Mr. Durham’s “immense respect as a no-nonsense, fierce and fair prosecutor.”
The Bush and Obama administrations trusted him to investigate potential CIA abuses. The Clinton administration trusted him to investigate FBI corruption in dealings with the Boston mob. Mr. Durham, after 45 years, became untrustworthy to Democrats and their press allies only when he began investigating a matter inconvenient to Democrats and their press allies—when Trump Attorney General William Barr tasked him with reviewing the FBI’s Russia-meddling investigations.
And yet, if he’s so untrustworthy, hard to explain is the extraordinary decision by the Washington Post, based solely on a Durham indictment, to retract several of its stories lending credence to the Steele dossier, saying it no longer could stand by its own reporting.
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP Opinion: Morning Editorial Report All the day's Opinion headlines.
PREVIEW SUBSCRIBED This brings us to the irony of the press carping about Mr. Durham; it ankle-bites at side aspects of his proceedings, since nobody can really counter the colossal burden of his revelations, that the press and FBI let themselves be manipulated into promoting baseless smears against a presidential candidate and president.
The latest buzz concerns his case against Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann, accused by Mr. Durham of lying to the FBI to conceal a Clinton campaign role in spurious evidence he was presenting of Trump-Russia collusion.
A new filing doesn’t bring new charges. It simply asks a judge to examine potential conflicts of interest involving Mr. Sussmann’s legal counsel and certain Clinton campaign associates. If the filing contains any “aha!” value, it reinforces the revelation that Clinton agents were behind a now-discredited story at Slate.com and the New Yorker magazine that Mr. Trump, a Russian bank and a Michigan healthcare company were in secret computer cahoots.
The filing also adds a tidbit: One of the clients whose web data a Sussmann associate cynically exploited was the White House itself. Cue an uproar.
As I suggested to emailers last weekend who were on fire about the news, maybe just wait and let Mr. Durham show us in the courtroom what it all means. All along, my guess has been that he’s less interested in racking up convictions than in exposing how the press and FBI participated in their own gaslighting for partisan ends.
It wasn’t some off-the-wall whimsy to suggest, in 2019, that candidate Joe Biden might do himself and the country a favor by endorsing the Durham investigation. Crazies on both sides could step back from the brink. It would benefit Trump voters especially to know that, while some of the paranoia they’ve been encouraged to adopt may be unfounded, their concerns aren’t unreasonable and are being treated respectfully by the legal system. Likewise, Democrats and Hillary Clinton supporters had every reason also to be upset about galumphing actions of the FBI in 2016, which likely cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency.
Instead of circling the wagons, major news outlets might try giving Mr. Durham some competition in getting to the bottom of these matters. The moment is propitious. Despite Sarah Palin’s loss this week in a libel action against the New York Times, her case only adds to a groundswell for overturning a 58-year-old Supreme Court precedent granting the press extraordinary immunity when it falsely defames a public figure. Others, including Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have urged such a revisiting. Congress, in less than 12 months, may be in the hands of Republicans who take a dim view of the media.
This would be a good time for the press to show it’s not just another corrupt interest group, that it really does seek to report, without fear or favor, the truth about matters rightly important to the public. A large irony must be noted. The “self-censorship” and “chilling effect” the Supreme Court worried about in 1964 has become rampant, not from lawsuit fears but because the press frequently is unwilling to pursue news that would be unwelcome to its partisan allies.
All the more so because news outlets not only had a front-row seat, in real time, for the matters Mr. Durham is trying to reconstruct in retrospect. The press was also an actor. Its behavior in promoting one of the biggest partisan lies in American history deserves to be reported on too.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 20, 2022, 05:44:40 AM
"Sarah Palin’s loss this week in a libel action against the New York Times, her case only adds to a groundswell for overturning a 58-year-old Supreme Court precedent granting the press extraordinary immunity when it falsely defames a public figure. Others, including Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have urged such a revisiting."
interesting
Title: Re: WSJ: Durham vs. the Press
Post by: DougMacG on February 20, 2022, 05:58:32 AM
Great analysis.
"news outlets not only had a front-row seat, in real time, for the matters Mr. Durham is trying to reconstruct in retrospect. The press was also an actor. Its behavior in promoting one of the biggest partisan lies in American history deserves to be reported on too"
- Who in msm will do that (honestly)?
Title: Forbes fires guy who published Fauci's salary
Post by: ccp on February 20, 2022, 02:19:07 PM
and to be even more obnoxious mentioned he will be in the Smithsonian and to host an event by Hillary in 3/22
"Major political parties are weak (as in the case of the old center-left parties in Britain, France and elsewhere) or themselves behaving in anti-democratic ways (as with the Republican Party in the United States.).
These problems have given Putin and his top aides confidence to act aggressively"
NYT
of course. shifts the blame *wrongly* onto *its'* political enemies => it is Trump and the US Right that caused this....
Title: Re: NYT idiocy
Post by: DougMacG on February 21, 2022, 10:40:15 AM
"These problems have given Putin and his top aides confidence to act aggressively"
- Any 5 second clip of the leader of the free world or his side kick would give him "confidence to act aggressively".
Title: Don't let the MSM-DNC memory-hole Biden's permission for a limited incursion
Post by: G M on February 22, 2022, 09:28:11 AM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/397938.php
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, NYT POTH, Communist views reach the crossword
Post by: DougMacG on February 22, 2022, 12:06:41 PM
New York Times appears drunk on its hatred of American capitalism.
The 49th clue in the newspaper’s Feb. 22 (2022) puzzle read,
“Vice encouraged by capitalism.”
Their answer: “Greed.”
I will keep my profanity-laced response to that to myself.
via 'newsbusters'
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on February 23, 2022, 08:10:23 AM
Yahoo link from ccp's Ukraine post, Trump praises Putin:
"In an appearance on the right-wing talk radio program "the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,"
That's funny. Aren't they just a radio show? Number one in the country? Isn't that MAINTREAM by definition? Not fringe or wing.
Do we say left-wing with: Reported by left-wing Yahoo? This Week with Lefty George Stephanopolous? Meet the Left-Wing Press with Chuck Todd? Left-Wing Stephen Colbert Show? Jimmy Kimmel? Reported by left-wing New York Times? Washington Post? Left-wing Nobel Peace Prize, Left wing Pulitzer Prize, Left wing Harvard university?
How come the identification of bias is unidirectional? ARE THER NO JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on February 23, 2022, 09:22:27 AM
"Do we say left-wing with: Reported by left-wing Yahoo? This Week with Lefty George Stephanopolous? Meet the Left-Wing Press with Chuck Todd? Left-Wing Stephen Colbert Show? Jimmy Kimmel? Reported by left-wing New York Times? Washington Post? Left-wing Nobel Peace Prize, Left wing Pulitzer Prize, Left wing Harvard university"
WE do but NEVER from the MSM though; they present themselves as objective and try to emphasize all opposition is "right wing" (aka white supremacists Nazis what have you)
I find this annoying and outrageous too
they marginalize us en bloc the best they can
Title: "CRIPPLING"
Post by: ccp on February 25, 2022, 08:06:46 AM
"The hypocrisy is insane", and this is just one example of it. It goes on all day, everyday.
Why do you have to be a 'right winger' to see blatant hypocrisy and that there are two sets of rules?
We ask for (demand?) equal treatment under the law. Why can't we demand equal treatment under journalism. If it's not equal treatment, then it's not journalism.
It's what Glenn Reynolds says:
"THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG."
Title: Endless propaganda
Post by: G M on March 02, 2022, 04:16:29 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 02, 2022, 04:23:46 PM
"The stories of the 13 guards on an island telling the Russian naval ship to fuck off… yeah, it was a lie (turns out they surrendered)"
I thought is was BS
we kept getting shown some video of an island and some Russian language in background then a image of a destroyer
and nothing else we are led to believe there were these guys cursing at Russians who then blew them up I was thinking so where is the God damn explosion?
tomorrow we read how 20 ,000 Ruskis died 50,000 gave themselves up they are all starving and crying
Obviously this military exaggeration or BS I don't know if from Ukrainians but some certainly from our "intell" pumping the NYT and WP with BS
Title: Re: Endless propaganda
Post by: G M on March 02, 2022, 07:06:30 PM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2022, 06:56:53 PM
Sorry, but IMHO Alex Jones belongs outside our circle. We have plenty of good arguments to make without having to resort to him and the attendant facilitation of effective attacks by the other side.
Title: that did not take long
Post by: ccp on March 22, 2022, 11:27:06 AM
for communist media to criticize justifiable viewing "America must lead New World Order":
Sorry, but IMHO Alex Jones belongs outside our circle. We have plenty of good arguments to make without having to resort to him and the attendant facilitation of effective attacks by the other side.
Did Alex Jones take money to push the ClotShot?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 22, 2022, 08:00:33 PM
Too many horseshit things associated with him e.g. the killing of the 26 children in Conn. were a fraud blah blah blah. PLEASE let's not drag him in here!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on March 22, 2022, 08:20:23 PM
Too many horseshit things associated with him e.g. the killing of the 26 children in Conn. were a fraud blah blah blah. PLEASE let's not drag him in here!
Despite that and other things, does he not have a better track record that our "Professional Journalists"?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 23, 2022, 01:57:08 AM
Don't care.
Asking you not to bring him here.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on March 23, 2022, 06:31:51 AM
"Russia!Russia!Russia! Ukraine! Pay no attention to the end of America."
Foreign policy, domestic policy, must choose only one? I see the two as intertwined.
Our election fraud, loss of freedoms and expansion of the central state helps Russia and China justify theirs.
My view is that the US turned left, away from freedom in 1991-1993, right when young, almost free Russia was impressionable. Our indifference to freedom left the world missing a role model, and coincidentally Russia never became free.
I disagree with the idea that too much attention is placed on the fact Russia has invaded a neighbor, is taking territory, killing a thousand (so far), forcing millions to flee and threatening two more neighbors (so far), see GPF post, while running up against ... western indifference.
That isn't why our borders are unprotected or why dead and incapacitated people here still vote.
The common thread I see is public (and media) indifference. Where is the outrage applies to both sides of it.
Funny that Russia didn't do this during the recent time we were growing our economy, building our wall and building up our defense.
American weakness at home and totalitarian expansion abroad look to me like two sides of the same coin.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 23, 2022, 06:48:12 AM
"Funny that Russia didn't do this during the recent time we were growing our economy, building our wall and building up our defense.
American weakness at home and totalitarian expansion abroad look to me like two sides of the same coin."
good points
my own feelings is that we are WEAK 30 trillion in debt forced to flog our selves with climate change too dependent on essential foreign products not enforcing the border letting inflation run wild a divided nation patriotism declining too focused on race gender
before we escalate problems over seas we need to get our house in order
Ukraine is not Nato.
they are not making most of our chips like Taiwan.
yes the MSM 24/7 images of crying children and mothers etc is heartbreaking
I remember when Bush tried to help Somalia I thought that was great - look how that turned out
I remember when Bush junior invaded Iraq to get rid of the monstrous Hussain family I thought that was great - look how that turned out
for some such as Levin to say is more like fighting Hitler etc and not Vietnam Korea Afghanistan etc -
I say he is wrong and frankly is reckless
we protect our real interests - the long view - shore up our massive domestic problems keep a strong military and forge alliances with our friends
Title: Poll MSM did not fool the public
Post by: ccp on March 23, 2022, 01:27:33 PM
this is good news if true,
means the MSM BS is seen for what it is by most: https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/conflict-o-finterest-hunter-biden-trafalgar-poll/2022/03/23/id/1062609/
Title: Bonfire Pt. 1
Post by: G M on March 23, 2022, 11:00:51 PM
Title: Lara Logan- anti-semite?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2022, 03:21:34 PM
I am more than a little gob-smacked here , , , Michael Yon has repeatedly spoken very well of her and she seemed really sharp in Afpakia, but , , , WTF?!?
I am more than a little gob-smacked here , , , Michael Yon has repeatedly spoken very well of her and she seemed really sharp in Afpakia, but , , , WTF?!?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2022, 07:55:17 PM
Fox Nation’s Lara Logan Suggests Theory of Evolution Is a Hoax Funded by Jews Lara Logan’s latest anti-Semitic dog whistle is a claim that Charles Darwin only came up with the idea of evolution because Jews paid him to
By RYAN BORT
Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, speaks prior to presenting Father Patrick Desbois with the Lantos Human Rights Prize during a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on October 26, 2017, to honor his work and foundation, Yahad-In Unum, in researching and uncovering genocidal practices around the world. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, speaks prior to presenting Father Patrick Desbois with the Lantos Human Rights Prize during a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on October 26, 2017, to honor his work and foundation, Yahad-In Unum, in researching and uncovering genocidal practices around the world. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
It wasn’t long ago that Lara Logan was a correspondent for CBS News, which is a little hard to believe considering the types of conspiracy theories she’s been pushing since she left the network. The latest came during an appearance on the right-wing podcast “And We Know,” during which Logan suggested that the theory of evolution is the result of a wealthy Jewish family paying Charles Darwin to devise an explanation for what gave rise to humanity.
“Does anyone know who employed Darwin, where Darwinism comes from?” Logan, now with Fox News’ streaming service Fox Nation, asked. “Look it up: The Rothschilds. It goes back to 10 Downing Street. The same people who employed Darwin, and his theory of evolution and so on and so on. I’m not saying that none of that is true. I’m just saying Darwin was hired by someone to come up with a theory — based on evidence, OK, fine.”
Logan rambled for a bit longer, but her point was that evolution is a “chicken or the egg” debate and “you can’t answer it scientifically” and, while we’re here, Jews are trying to control the world with their money. Media Matters caught the claim on Monday:
The Rothschilds, who Logan says is responsible for the theory of evolution, are a Jewish family that often shows up in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) famously wrote on Facebook that the Rothschilds funded a space laser that started the California wildfires.
Logan and Greene share more in common than anti-Semitic comments. Both the Fox Nation host and the bigoted, virulent conspiracy theorist lawmaker have pushed Russian propaganda since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last month. Greene has blamed Ukraine for the invasion, while suggesting the nation’s military is rife with Nazis. Greene, however, at least made some sort of superficial effort to insist she’s not a Putin supporter. Logan made no such effort.
“Whether you like Putin or don’t like him, Putin is not willing to be a part of whatever global governing structure is coming our way,” Logan said last week on a right-wing podcast. “Vladimir Putin has been very calculating, he’s been very careful … he’s said for 15 years that he would not tolerate NATO expansion.”
“He’s the man standing between us and this New World Order,” she added after rambling about Ukrainian biolabs funded by Hunter Biden.
The idea of a “New World Order” constructed by Jews is a trope of anti-Semitic rhetoric. We’re starting to notice a pattern in Logan’s conspiracy theorizing.
In This Article: Anti-Semitism, Lara Logan, marjorie taylor greene
Title: MSM-DNC being forced to admit Hunter Laptop real
Post by: G M on March 30, 2022, 12:16:29 PM
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=398443
Title: Re: MSM-DNC being forced to admit Hunter Laptop real
Post by: G M on March 30, 2022, 05:38:33 PM
Mike makes this point from WSJ James Freeman and is, I wholeheartedly agree, a brilliant observation about the Media’s name game"
"What’s in a name?
James Freeman at The Wall Street Journal brilliantly answers this way: “The current custom in journalism holds that legislation sponsored by Democrats carries the title preferred by Democrats, while a Republican-sponsored bill carries the title preferred by Democrats.
“Therefore modern newsroom policy dictates that President Joe Biden’s desired assault on taxpayers shall be called ‘Build Back Better’ but Florida’s new law shielding 7-year-olds from state-sponsored gender identity lectures must be labeled ‘Don’t Say Gay.’ ”
He adds: “This policy of granting exclusive legislative naming rights to one party is of course intended to influence rather than inform public debates."
The Republicans are immediately and always put in the position by MSM of being on the defensive .
Title: The master of propaganda
Post by: G M on April 27, 2022, 03:39:50 PM
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth, "placement" of the ACLU Amber Heard Wash Post op ed
Post by: DougMacG on April 28, 2022, 04:48:29 PM
Strange that Washington Post knew the ACLU was writing and negotiating the placement of the Amber Heard Op Ed, centerpiece of the Johnny Depp defamation trial. The were all conspiring to give it maximum impact, with no concern for veracity.
Nothing new about that except that what typically happens behind the scenes is now in public view.
Maybe he should be suing the Post - and ACLU. Bezos has more money than Ms. Heard.
Title: Tucker is correct on MiniTru!
Post by: G M on April 29, 2022, 10:20:42 AM
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=398904
Line in the sand.
Title: Ministry of Misinfo
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2022, 10:47:51 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 01, 2022, 02:27:26 PM
"Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 @TulsiGabbard Biden is just a front man. Obama, April 21: social media censors “don’t go far enough,” so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the 'Ministry of Truth' (aka Disinformation Governance Board)."
It is not because he liked the restaurants in DC that the Great Snake bought a house there.
MSM knows We all know
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2022, 08:57:30 AM
Witness to body language of all concerned that day that Baraq came to the White House.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on May 02, 2022, 08:58:31 AM
Out of graduate school, I worked for the National Democratic Institute, an organization that provides training and support to democratic activists around the world. I worked on programs in Russia and Eurasia. We were often the victims of Russian propaganda, which sought to paint us “CIA-sponsored instigators of color revolution” (we weren’t). I’ve always been interested in the effects of social media on society, so when Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution happened, I felt a strong pull to go there and work on issues related to disinformation. As a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow, I advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues. I watched from Kyiv as the U.S. election unfolded and America woke up to the threat of information warfare. That’s where the idea for the book was born.
The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.
Out of graduate school, I worked for the National Democratic Institute, an organization that provides training and support to democratic activists around the world. I worked on programs in Russia and Eurasia. We were often the victims of Russian propaganda, which sought to paint us “CIA-sponsored instigators of color revolution” (we weren’t). I’ve always been interested in the effects of social media on society, so when Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution happened, I felt a strong pull to go there and work on issues related to disinformation. As a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow, I advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues. I watched from Kyiv as the U.S. election unfolded and America woke up to the threat of information warfare. That’s where the idea for the book was born.
The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.
Out of graduate school, I worked for the National Democratic Institute, an organization that provides training and support to democratic activists around the world. I worked on programs in Russia and Eurasia. We were often the victims of Russian propaganda, which sought to paint us “CIA-sponsored instigators of color revolution” (we weren’t). I’ve always been interested in the effects of social media on society, so when Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution happened, I felt a strong pull to go there and work on issues related to disinformation. As a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow, I advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues. I watched from Kyiv as the U.S. election unfolded and America woke up to the threat of information warfare. That’s where the idea for the book was born.
The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.
Out of graduate school, I worked for the National Democratic Institute, an organization that provides training and support to democratic activists around the world. I worked on programs in Russia and Eurasia. We were often the victims of Russian propaganda, which sought to paint us “CIA-sponsored instigators of color revolution” (we weren’t). I’ve always been interested in the effects of social media on society, so when Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution happened, I felt a strong pull to go there and work on issues related to disinformation. As a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow, I advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues. I watched from Kyiv as the U.S. election unfolded and America woke up to the threat of information warfare. That’s where the idea for the book was born.
The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.
Navalny wrote that Putin taught the world an important lesson this year about how “a path that begins with ‘just a little election rigging’ always ends with a dictatorship,” which “always leads to war.”
Title: charles blow
Post by: ccp on May 26, 2022, 01:45:58 PM
swipes FOX news and right wing media use of phrase for inner city murders galore
"American Republicans". Not sure who he is denigrating (?conservatives )
“No other country has the level of American carnage, but no other country has American Republicans,”
I did not know inner city and rural gangs are American Republicans .
Title: Re: charles blow
Post by: G M on May 26, 2022, 03:32:42 PM
Approximately 4% of the US population commits about 50% of the homicides. The vast majority of these homicides take place in cities and states not run by republicans.
Title: free ice cream to all those who can stomach hrs of the 1/6 show
Post by: ccp on June 09, 2022, 06:38:48 AM
with of course
JURNOlisters in attendance
asking the pre selected viewers what there shock and awe reactions to the "block bluster" revelations are
maybe I should go pretend I am a lib then when I get interviewed (hopefully on live TV) say there is noting presented we do not already know and state this partisan kangaroo show is Dems desperately trying to get attention away from their failed policies ahead of the electio
Title: Re: free ice cream to all those who can stomach hrs of the 1/6 show
Post by: G M on June 09, 2022, 07:43:20 AM
No matter how they hype this, the majority of the public isn't buying it.
asking the pre selected viewers what there shock and awe reactions to the "block bluster" revelations are
maybe I should go pretend I am a lib then when I get interviewed (hopefully on live TV) say there is noting presented we do not already know and state this partisan kangaroo show is Dems desperately trying to get attention away from their failed policies ahead of the electio
Title: Re: Understand that the same methods are being used against us-PsyWar
Post by: G M on June 10, 2022, 08:24:19 AM
Title: Pravda on the Hudson hit piece on the Epoch Times
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2022, 05:46:46 AM
How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and right-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire.
Give this article
Kevin Roose By Kevin Roose Published Oct. 24, 2020 Updated March 9, 2021 阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版 For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers.
The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.
First, it embraced President Trump, treating him as an ally in Falun Gong’s scorched-earth fight against China’s ruling Communist Party, which banned the group two decades ago and has persecuted its members ever since. Its relatively staid coverage of U.S. politics became more partisan, with more articles explicitly supporting Mr. Trump and criticizing his opponents.
Around the same time, The Epoch Times bet big on another powerful American institution: Facebook. The publication and its affiliates employed a novel strategy that involved creating dozens of Facebook pages, filling them with feel-good videos and viral clickbait, and using them to sell subscriptions and drive traffic back to its partisan news coverage.
In an April 2017 email to the staff obtained by The New York Times, the paper’s leadership envisioned that the Facebook strategy could help turn The Epoch Times into “the world’s largest and most authoritative media.” It could also introduce millions of people to the teachings of Falun Gong, fulfilling the group’s mission of “saving sentient beings.”
Today, The Epoch Times and its affiliates are a force in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of The Daily Caller and Breitbart News, and with a similar willingness to feed the online fever swamps of the far right.
It also has growing influence in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. The president and his family have shared articles from the paper on social media, and Trump administration officials have sat for interviews with its reporters. In August, a reporter from The Epoch Times asked a question at a White House press briefing.
It is a remarkable success story for Falun Gong, which has long struggled to establish its bona fides against Beijing’s efforts to demonize it as an “evil cult,” partly because its strident accounts of persecution in China can sometimes be difficult to substantiate or veer into exaggeration. In 2006, an Epoch Times reporter disrupted a White House visit by the Chinese president by shouting, “Evil people will die early.”
Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist and a former chairman of Breitbart, said in an interview in July that The Epoch Times’s fast growth had impressed him.
“They’ll be the top conservative news site in two years,” said Mr. Bannon, who was arrested on fraud charges in August. “They punch way above their weight, they have the readers, and they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
But the organization and its affiliates have grown, in part, by relying on sketchy social media tactics, pushing dangerous conspiracy theories and downplaying their connection to Falun Gong, an investigation by The Times has found. The investigation included interviews with more than a dozen former Epoch Times employees, as well as internal documents and tax filings. Many of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, or still had family in Falun Gong.
Embracing Mr. Trump and Facebook has made The Epoch Times a partisan powerhouse. But it has also created a global-scale misinformation machine that has repeatedly pushed fringe narratives into the mainstream.
The publication has been one of the most prominent promoters of “Spygate,” a baseless conspiracy theory involving claims that Obama administration officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. Publications and shows linked to The Epoch Times have promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread distorted claims about voter fraud and the Black Lives Matter movement. More recently, they have promoted the unfounded theory that the coronavirus — which the publication calls the “CCP Virus,” in an attempt to link it to the Chinese Communist Party — was created as a bioweapon in a Chinese military lab.
The Epoch Times says it is independent and nonpartisan, and it rejects the suggestion that it is officially affiliated with Falun Gong.
Like Falun Gong itself, the newspaper — which publishes in dozens of countries — is decentralized and operates as a cluster of regional chapters, each organized as a separate nonprofit. It is also extraordinarily secretive. Editors at The Epoch Times turned down multiple requests for interviews, and a reporter’s unannounced visit to the outlet’s Manhattan headquarters this year was met with a threat from a lawyer.
Representatives for Li Hongzhi, the leader of Falun Gong, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did other residents of Dragon Springs, the compound in upstate New York that serves as Falun Gong’s spiritual headquarters.
Many employees and Falun Gong practitioners contacted by The Times said they were instructed not to divulge details of the outlet’s inner workings. They said they had been told that speaking negatively about The Epoch Times would be tantamount to disobeying Mr. Li, who is known by his disciples as “Master.”
The Epoch Times provided only partial answers to a long list of questions sent to its media office, and declined to answer questions about its finances and editorial strategy. In an email, which was not signed, the outlet accused The Times of “defaming and diminishing a competitor” and displaying “a subtle form of religious intimidation if not bigotry” by linking the publication to Falun Gong.
“The Epoch Times will not be intimidated and will not be silenced,” the outlet added, “and based on the number of falsehoods and inaccuracies included in the New York Times questions we will consider all legal options in response.”
Clarifying the Truth
Falun Gong, which Mr. Li introduced in China in 1992, revolves around a series of five meditation exercises and a process of moral self-improvement that is meant to lead to spiritual enlightenment. Today, the group is known for the demonstrations it holds around the world to “clarify the truth” about the Chinese Communist Party, which it accuses of torturing Falun Gong practitioners and harvesting the organs of those executed. (Tens of thousands across China were sent to labor camps in the early years of the crackdown, and the group’s presence there is now much diminished.)
More recently, Falun Gong has come under scrutiny for what some former practitioners have characterized as an extreme belief system that forbids interracial marriage, condemns homosexuality and discourages the use of modern medicine, all allegations the group denies.
When The Epoch Times got its start in 2000, the goal was to counter Chinese propaganda and cover Falun Gong’s persecution by the Chinese government. It began as a Chinese-language newspaper run out of the Georgia basement of John Tang, a graduate student and Falun Gong practitioner.
By 2004, The Epoch Times had expanded into English. One of the paper’s early hires was Genevieve Belmaker, then a 27-year-old Falun Gong practitioner with little journalism experience. Ms. Belmaker, now 43, described the early Epoch Times as a cross between a scrappy media start-up and a zealous church bulletin, with a staff composed mostly of unpaid volunteers drawn from the local Falun Gong chapters.
“The mission-driven part of it was, let’s have a media outlet that not only tells the truth about Falun Gong but about everything,” Ms. Belmaker said.
Mr. Li, Falun Gong’s founder, also saw it that way. In speeches, he referred to The Epoch Times and other Falun Gong-linked outlets — including the New Tang Dynasty TV station, or NTD — as “our media,” and said they could help publicize Falun Gong’s story and values around the world.
Two former employees recalled that the paper’s top editors had traveled to Dragon Springs to meet with Mr. Li. One employee who attended a meeting said Mr. Li had weighed in on editorial and strategic decisions, acting as a kind of shadow publisher. The Epoch Times denied these accounts, saying in a statement, “There has been no such meeting.”
The line between The Epoch Times and Falun Gong is blurry at times. Two former Epoch Times reporters said they had been asked to write flattering profiles of foreign performers being recruited into Shen Yun, the heavily advertised dance performance series that Falun Gong backs, because it would strengthen those performers’ visa applications. Another former Epoch Times reporter recalled being assigned to write critical articles about politicians including John Liu, a Taiwanese-American former New York City councilman whom the group viewed as soft on China and hostile to Falun Gong.
These articles helped Falun Gong advance its goals, but they lured few subscribers.
Matthew K. Tullar, a former sales director for The Epoch Times’s Orange County edition in New York, wrote on his LinkedIn page that his team initially “printed 800 papers each week, had no subscribers, and utilized a ‘throw it in their driveway for free’ marketing strategy.” Mr. Tullar did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Belmaker, who left the paper in 2017, described it as a bare-bones operation that was always searching for new moneymaking ventures.
“It was very short-term thinking,” she said. “We weren’t looking more than three weeks down the road.”
A Trump Pivot By 2014, The Epoch Times was edging closer to Mr. Li’s vision of a respectable news outlet. Subscriptions were growing, the paper’s reporting was winning journalism awards, and its finances were stabilizing.
“There was all this optimism that things were going to level up,” Ms. Belmaker said.
But at a staff meeting in 2015, leadership announced that the publication was in trouble again, Ms. Belmaker recalled. Facebook had changed its algorithm for determining which articles appeared in users’ newsfeeds, and The Epoch Times’s traffic and ad revenue were suffering.
In response, the publication assigned reporters to churn out as many as five posts a day in a search for viral hits, often lowbrow fare with titles like “Grizzly Bear Does Belly Flop Into a Swimming Pool.”
“It was a competition for traffic,” Ms. Belmaker said.
As the 2016 election neared, reporters noticed that the paper’s political coverage took on a more partisan tone.
Steve Klett, who covered the 2016 campaign for the paper, said his editors had encouraged favorable coverage about Mr. Trump after he won the Republican nomination.
“They seemed to have this almost messianic way of viewing Trump as the anti-Communist leader who would bring about the end of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Klett said.
After Mr. Trump’s victory, The Epoch Times hired Brendan Steinhauser, a well-connected Tea Party strategist, to help make inroads with conservatives. Mr. Steinhauser said the organization’s goal, beyond raising its profile in Washington, had been to make Falun Gong’s persecution a Trump administration priority.
“They wanted more people in Washington to be aware of how the Chinese Communist Party operates, and what it has done to spiritual and ethnic minorities,” Mr. Steinhauser said.
All In on Facebook
Behind the scenes, The Epoch Times was also developing a secret weapon: a Facebook growth strategy that would ultimately help take its message to millions.
According to emails reviewed by The Times, the Facebook plan was developed by Trung Vu, the former head of The Epoch Times’s Vietnamese edition, known as Dai Ky Nguyen, or DKN.
In Vietnam, Mr. Trung’s strategy involved filling a network of Facebook pages with viral videos and pro-Trump propaganda, some of it lifted word for word from other sites, and using automated software, or bots, to generate fake likes and shares, a former DKN employee said. Employees used fake accounts to run the pages, a practice that violated Facebook’s rules but that Mr. Trung said was necessary to protect employees from Chinese surveillance, the former employee said.
Mr. Trung did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the 2017 email sent to Epoch Times workers in America, the Vietnamese experiment was a “remarkable success” that made DKN one of the largest publishers in Vietnam.
The outlet, the email claimed, was “having a profound impact on saving sentient beings in that country.”
The Vietnamese team was asked to help Epoch Media Group — the umbrella organization for Falun Gong’s biggest U.S. media properties — set up its own Facebook empire, according to that email. That year, dozens of new Facebook pages appeared, all linked to The Epoch Times and its affiliates. Some were explicitly partisan, others positioned themselves as sources of real and unbiased news, and a few, like a humor page called “Funniest Family Moments,” were disconnected from news entirely.
Perhaps the most audacious experiment was a new right-wing politics site called America Daily.
Today, the site, which has more than a million Facebook followers, peddles far-right misinformation. It has posted anti-vaccine screeds, an article falsely claiming that Bill Gates and other elites are “directing” the Covid-19 pandemic and allegations about a “Jewish mob” that controls the world.
Emails obtained by The Times show that John Nania, a longtime Epoch Times editor, was involved in starting America Daily, along with executives from Sound of Hope, a Falun Gong-affiliated radio network. Records on Facebook show that the page is operated by the Sound of Hope Network, and a pinned post on its Facebook page contains a promotional video for Falun Gong.
In a statement, The Epoch Times said it had “no business relationship” with America Daily.
Many of the Facebook pages operated by The Epoch Times and its affiliates followed a similar trajectory. They began by posting viral videos and uplifting news articles aggregated from other sites. They grew quickly, sometimes adding hundreds of thousands of followers a week. Then, they were used to steer people to buy Epoch Times subscriptions and promote more partisan content.
Several of the pages gained significant followings “seemingly overnight,” said Renee DiResta, a disinformation researcher with the Stanford Internet Observatory. Many posts were shared thousands of times but received almost no comments — a ratio, Ms. DiResta said, that is typical of pages that have been boosted by “click farms,” firms that generate fake traffic by paying people to click on certain links over and over again.
The Epoch Times denies using click farms or other illicit tactics to expand its pages. “The Epoch Times’s social media strategies were different from DKN, and used Facebook’s own promotional tools to gain an increased organic following,” the outlet said, adding that The Epoch Times cut ties with Mr. Trung in 2018.
But last year, The Epoch Times was barred from advertising on Facebook — where it had spent more than $1.5 million over seven months — after the social network announced that the outlet’s pages had evaded its transparency requirements by disguising its ad purchases.
This year, Facebook took down more than 500 pages and accounts linked to Truth Media, a network of anti-China pages that had been using fake accounts to amplify their messages. The Epoch Times denied any involvement, but Facebook’s investigators said Truth Media “showed some links to on-platform activity by Epoch Media Group and NTD.”
“We’ve taken enforcement actions against Epoch Media and related groups several times,” said a Facebook spokeswoman, who added that the social network would punish the outlet if it violated more rules in the future.
Since being barred from advertising on Facebook, The Epoch Times has moved much of its operation to YouTube, where it has spent more than $1.8 million on ads since May 2018, according to Google’s public database of political advertising.
Where the paper’s money comes from is something of a mystery. Former employees said they had been told that The Epoch Times was financed by a combination of subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners. In 2018, the most recent year for which the organization’s tax returns are publicly available, The Epoch Times Association received several sizable donations, but none big enough to pay for a multimillion-dollar ad blitz.
Mr. Bannon is among those who have noticed The Epoch Times’s deep pockets. Last year, he produced a documentary about China with NTD. When he talked with the outlet about other projects, he said, money never seemed to be an issue.
“I’d give them a number,” Mr. Bannon said. “And they’d come back and say, ‘We’re good for that number.’”
‘The Moral Objective Is Gone’ The Epoch Times’s pro-Trump turn has upset some former employees, like Ms. Belmaker.
Ms. Belmaker, now a freelance writer and editor, still believes in many of Falun Gong’s teachings, she said. But she has grown disenchanted with The Epoch Times, which she sees as running contrary to Falun Gong’s core principles of truth, compassion and tolerance.
“The moral objective is gone,” she said. “They’re on the wrong side of history, and I don’t think they care.”
Recently, The Epoch Times has shifted its focus to the coronavirus. It pounced on China’s missteps in the early days of the pandemic, and its reporters wrote about misreported virus statistics and Chinese influence in the World Health Organization.
Image A screenshot of an Epoch Times video, “Digging Beneath Narratives,” on YouTube.
Some of these articles were true. But others pushed exaggerated or false claims, like the unproven theory that the virus was engineered in a lab as part of a Chinese biological warfare strategy.
Some of the claims were repeated in a documentary that both NTD and The Epoch Times posted on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than five million times. The documentary features the discredited virologist Judy Mikovits, who also starred in the viral “Plandemic” video, which Facebook, YouTube and other social platforms pulled this year for spreading false claims.
The Epoch Times said, “In our documentary we offered a range of evidence and viewpoints without drawing any conclusions.”
Ms. Belmaker, who still keeps a photo of Master Li on a shelf in her house, said she recoiled whenever an ad for The Epoch Times popped up on YouTube promoting some new partisan talking point.
One recent video, “Digging Beneath Narratives,” is a two-minute infomercial about China’s mishandling of the coronavirus. The ad’s host says The Epoch Times has an “underground network of sources” in China providing information about the government’s response to the virus.
It’s a plausible claim, but the video’s host makes no mention of The Epoch Times’s ties to Falun Gong, or its two-decade-long campaign against Chinese communism, saying only that the paper is “giving you an accurate picture of what’s happening in this world.”
“We tell it like it is,” he says.
Ben Smith contributed reporting. Jack Begg contributed research.
Title: POTH slimes the rise of Epoch Times
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2022, 08:41:35 AM
Title: Re: NYT poll '22 is closer then thought
Post by: G M on July 13, 2022, 08:56:19 AM
Exactly. "For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it."
no longer get great insights anymore only rehashing of headlines I already know from reading online
RIP Rush. :-(
Title: Re: Rush not only the master radio host but super investor
Post by: DougMacG on July 15, 2022, 06:24:34 AM
I agree 100%. He was entertaining and was loaded with great insights. It takes a lot of good content on a very consistent basis to overcome the wasted listener time of talk radio commercials.
Unfortunately he was irreplaceable.
Title: Why is the MSM hiding this?
Post by: G M on July 17, 2022, 08:35:26 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG660H1JjWU
We know why.
Title: NPR vs> PBS public funding
Post by: ccp on July 17, 2022, 12:01:06 PM
" A source at the Commerce Department later showed me the complaint that his predecessor, an assistant secretary, had faxed to the editor-in-chief of Time magazine the day before I was fired. It was explicit, and called for them to pull the story.
Time’s editors showed in July 1994 that they believed their job was not to uncover the truth but to provide political cover to Democrats in Washington."
The Commerce Secretary was :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Brown
(I don't know who the assistant was but of course the secretary was involved too)
Title: See BS memory-holes the diversion of NATO weapons in Ukraine
Post by: G M on August 08, 2022, 08:01:38 AM
Title: Re: I wonder exactly how much MSM
Post by: DougMacG on August 30, 2022, 12:23:56 PM
ccp: "I wonder exactly how much MSM can sway elections, 5 to 10 % or more? ... I am thinking maybe up to 20 % at times"
Agree, that is about the range. There is long term effect and there are the current stories, and depends on how well the competing message gets out other ways.
Media couldn't hide prosperity under Trump pre-covid, and can't hide inflation, recession, energy costs or war and geopolitical bungling now.
My view, this story about Oz is exactly upside down. PA is a Dem state, Dems have a horrible record and horrible candidate. A sharp, charismatic Republican with both party and Trump backing threatens to take that from them. It is Oz closing the gap, polling almost within the margin of error before the real messaging even begins.
Title: Drudge massive Left turn
Post by: ccp on September 01, 2022, 07:03:47 AM
Title: Wikipedia Slurs the Epoch Times
Post by: DougMacG on September 03, 2022, 09:13:10 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times
First slur in the hit piece is the accusation it is a "far right" newspaper. This is documented in footnote 1) that circles the globe to find it is true because a Daily Beast reporter said so.
Censored in China is another reason not to trust it. Really? Isn't that a badge of honor?
Title: Re: Wikipedia Slurs the Epoch Times
Post by: G M on September 04, 2022, 08:09:23 AM
First slur in the hit piece is the accusation it is a "far right" newspaper. This is documented in footnote 1) that circles the globe to find it is true because a Daily Beast reporter said so.
Censored in China is another reason not to trust it. Really? Isn't that a badge of honor?
For the left, yes.
The left admires the CCP, unless they are in pretend to care about human rights mode.
Title: The rape of the American mind
Post by: G M on September 04, 2022, 09:16:33 PM
all very strange someone on news max on the Rob Schmidt show last night claimed only explanation Jordan and most (3/4) of Republicans against this bill is they get money from tech or media .
I would not be surprised but don't know who is telling truth or lying......
see show from 9/29/22 and go to minute second 1:38 to 12:24 minute segment:
TDS seems to be the same outcome on those who suffer from it as lobotomies
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 07, 2022, 04:05:23 PM
MSM
no open borders desperate people and children and families only no economic problems more jobs in history big oil screwing us over hunter - yes he evaded taxes on a gun he owned iran deal needed every breeze drizzle and snow flake and rainy day or absence of rain or cough sneezing death due to climate emergency EV - great GV threat to humanity Repubs - threat to democracy Repubs - racist sexist anti anything not white or male Repubs - danger to women MAGA - little hitlers mussolinis stalins
Title: Kayne West
Post by: ccp on October 10, 2022, 06:27:46 AM
I could only listen to the "ye" "interview" with Tucker for a few minutes
He would ramble on in circles with as far as I could tell non linear thought making to me at least, little sense
Tucker would intermittently laugh - I had not clue as to what he was laughing at
because West made zero sense to me
basically was saying " I will say what I want " as should everyone ..... or something like that
did anyone else watch this dribble?
I was wondering if he was actually goofing Tucker - talking total nonsense and Tucker fell for the act as if the guy is just so smart that no one could understand him
I wondered if behinds the scenes he would laugh and say Tucker is duped falling for gibberish
After at most 15 minutes I had to change the station and not waste my time....
Title: Kanye West
Post by: DougMacG on October 10, 2022, 06:43:14 AM
Did not see it and know almost nothing about him (world's richest musician?), but even being all over the map on his opinions, he is a public figure thinking for himself and not in lockstep with the party that thinks they own vote of all people in his (racial) demographic.
I wish people in my demographic group would start thinking for themselves.
Title: Tucker and Kanye
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2022, 12:08:28 PM
yet other leftist news people suggested they interviewed Lurch and he was fine
can't be both who is lying or covering up his disability .
this not just ear hearing problem he likely has damage to his temporal lobe of the brain
even after he reads he sounds cognitively impaired
On one of the clips I heard he said "Joe Bin" meaning 'Joe Biden'. When I make speech errors like that, I hear it and correct it. He didn't. Something is wrong.
The President has some of the same for different reasons. Needs people to 'clarify' what he said or to explain he 'didn't mean to say'. (Do we need more of this?)
Politically, attacking a person for his disability is dangerous. But it seems fair to question his ability to do the job.
The main problems with Fetterman are: soft on crime, wrong on the issues, will vote 100% with the party that dug this hole, and doesn't know how to fix it. The stroke doesn't change that.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 12, 2022, 05:34:49 PM
"Politically, attacking a person for his disability is dangerous'
in this case it is not it is common sense no matter what the libs say
it is a valid reason he has no business being in the Senate any more than Biden has as President
libs will ignore but independents may not
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2022, 08:22:17 PM
If Hannity is representative, then IMHO there's needs to be a relentless attack on issues as well.
Title: ET: Bobulinski on Corrupt Legacy Media and FBI
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2022, 11:38:34 AM
Tony Bobulinski Exposes the Corrupt Legacy Media and the FBI Despite shocking revelations from Bobulinski, Hunter Biden continues to be protected by the legacy media Stu Cvrk October 12, 2022
In an hour-long interview with Tucker Carlson on Oct. 4, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, ripped the scab off a festering wound that the Biden family (and their many enablers) hoped had long been healed (and forgotten) forever.
Two years ago, the New York Post broke a bombshell story about a laptop abandoned by Hunter at a computer repair shop in Delaware. The shocking revelations from emails and files on that laptop illuminated a Biden crime family operation that has been ongoing for decades.
For example, several of the emails retrieved included “a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month,” the Post reported. Pozharskyi thanked Hunter for his assistance in arranging a meeting with his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, in Washington.
Enter Bobulinski, who confirmed the Biden family’s corrupt dealings with communist Chinese-linked companies in a Tucker Carlson interview on Oct. 27, 2020. He also stated in that interview that Joe Biden received a cut from every corrupt deal. Biden was euphemistically referred to in some emails as “the Big Guy.”
As the laptop emails and Bobulinski interview directly contradicted Biden’s frequent claims that he had “never spoken to his son” about his overseas business initiatives, the Biden presidential campaign went to battle stations in orchestrating a complete cover-up consisting of immediate public denials by Biden and campaign operatives, the FBI burying the laptop and preventing access to it by anyone outside of the Department of Justice, and the orchestration of a public letter signed by 50 former intelligence officials who claimed that the emails from the laptop “showed signs of a Russian disinformation operation.”
Most important, given the explosive nature of the story, was the construction of a legacy media narrative that echoed the Russian disinformation nonsense, with zero investigative follow-up reporting conducted and the bombshell revelations quickly dropped down the media memory hole to minimize political damage to Biden.
And thereby, their blatant collective interference in the 2020 election pulled it off for Biden.
All Roads Lead to Hunter
Biden’s elder son Beau was being groomed for a political career to replace his father in the Senate until his untimely death from brain cancer in 2015. Grooming younger son Hunter for politics wasn’t an option, given his long history of drug abuse and other hedonistic behavior, but that could have been why he briefly served as a public relations officer in the naval reserve until booted for testing positive for cocaine in 2014—to punch a ticket as a step toward replacing his gravely ill brother. But of course, his personal demons wrecked that possibility, so he continued his “lobbying career” and service as his family’s “bagman.”
Interestingly, Hunter was still serving in the naval reserve when the first of his big China deals was hatched with BHR Partners in 2013. Enter Bobulinski, one of Hunter’s partners in the deal. Hunter and Bobulinski knew that the Chinese “partners” involved in that deal were directly connected to the Chinese intelligence services. Did they report their contacts with Chinese intelligence operatives to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI, as they were obligated to do? This was yet another troubling aspect in Hunter’s infamous career that has been filed down the memory hole—and indeed never even mentioned—by the Democrat media complex.
Tony Bobulinski
Except for an occasional article from independent media, there has been near-total legacy media silence about Hunter’s laptop and especially Bobulinski to this very day. A simple web search of the name “Bobulinski” evinces zero articles by CNN, zero by CBS News, six by NBC News, with reporting ended on Oct. 30, 2020 (including three disparaging mentions in MSNBC show transcripts in October 2020), and eight by ABC News ending in a typical AP article on Oct. 28 that spun the story into a nothing-burger by claiming the emails and Bobulinski’s allegations “couldn’t be verified.”
What happened to the vaunted legacy media investigative reporting that can somehow dig and spin dirt on Donald Trump incessantly for years but somehow can’t be bothered to investigate the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop? Not a single mention of Bobulinski has been made by any of these legacy media outlets since Oct. 30, 2020!
In the meantime:
A poll conducted by Newsbusters on Nov. 24, 2020, found that “full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump.” And nary a peep from the legacy media about that poll!
After more than a year of denial, The New York Times finally admitted that the laptop is, in fact, legitimate, which the Times buried in a March 2022 story summarizing Hunter’s tax evasion investigation.
Conservative commentators like Cal Thomas have called out The New York Times and others for their “dereliction of duty,” as reported by The Washington Times: “Not only did the Times and other major and social media ignore the story, in some cases the story was deemed fraudulent and blocked on several platforms.” Perhaps most insightful was this comment: “The tardy tacit admission by the Times that the New York Post was right will add to the view of many that today’s journalism is driven mostly by agendas and not facts.”
A July 2022 Rasmussen poll reported that “fifty-two percent believed the [laptop] story was buried so as to not damage Joe Biden’s presidential aspirations [while] 32% say it was ignored because it was a ‘partisan hit job.’”
Bobulinski apparently grew tired of the FBI’s apparent inaction in investigating and charging Hunter, as well as the lack of media reporting on the subject. To call attention to that malfeasance, he dropped some incredible bombs during his interview with Tucker Carlson on Oct. 4.
He reiterated Joe Biden’s complicity in and knowledge of Hunter’s various overseas business dealings. Silence from the legacy media!
Bobulinski confirmed again that Hunter committed fraud by diverting money from a Chinese company, of which he owned 20 percent, to an American LLC, of which he owned 100 percent. This was disclosed to the FBI in 2020. Where’s the indictment for fraud and tax evasion?
He stated that he voluntarily gave an interview to the FBI in October 2020, disclosing damning evidence, including emails, that confirmed all of his allegations made in the 2020 Tucker Carlson interview (and more).
While that five-hour FBI interview was being conducted, Bobulinski stated that he received a phone call from James Biden’s number but that no one spoke when he answered his cell phone. Who but someone at the FBI could have possibly tipped James Biden et al. that Bobulinski just happened to be in the middle of an FBI interview at that particular moment? Where are the legacy media investigative reporters beating down the doors of the FBI for the details on this bombshell?
Bobulinski confirmed that the FBI assigned Timothy Thibault as the agent to manage the Bobulinski whistleblower investigation but that neither Thibault nor anyone else at the FBI has followed up with him after the FBI interview on Oct. 23, 2020. No follow-up with a key material witness in the FBI’s supposed investigation of Hunter’s laptop? How do you spell “sham investigation”? (Note: Thibault “resigned”—or perhaps was forced out—in August after allegations surfaced that he “shielded Hunter Biden from criminal investigations into his laptop and business dealing,” the New York Post reported.
Concluding Thoughts
The legacy media have yet to report on the Bobulinski interview with Tucker Carlson despite the damning allegations made of criminal conduct by the Biden family, as well as the apparent complicity of the FBI in continuing to cover up that criminality. It’s as if the Bidens, the corrupt FBI, and the equally corrupt legacy media have no play left other than to maintain the fiction that the Bidens are “innocent” of any crimes of fraud, corruption, or obstruction of justice, and that any allegations and evidence “simply can’t be confirmed.”
The wound that Bobulinski reopened may not be healed without some serious indictments. And we should all thank him for exposing the legacy media’s continuing political corruption in service of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 13, 2022, 05:52:47 PM
".Why worry...the 31 Trillion debt will never be paid back. There are only two options, 1) Print even more and debase the currency, generate more inflation and pay back in cheap dollars, b) Print so much that a reset is necessary either due to WWIII or some fake Climate Crisis. After which they will bring out the CBDC's and print as much as needed. "
nothing to see here we have a jan 6 committee clown show that is far more important! just watch CNN
and Cheney got "BIG WIN!" states the DNC Drudge report - > trump can be deposed!!!
hey I though Christopher Andrew Licht was going to move CNN to center
but alas he is just another democrat what a shocker
I predict tapper's show's ratings will go over the falls if not already there maybe they began at the bottom
you turn on CNN and it is all the same dnc stuff.
five card monty with the news anchors and act like he turned things around and things have changed and we are all to be duped .
:roll:
Title: Understand how much money, technology and effort is used to propagandize us
Post by: G M on October 14, 2022, 08:14:27 AM
Title: funny
Post by: ccp on November 07, 2022, 03:58:26 PM
some where I saw headline
"WORLDS RICHEST MAN URGES TO VOTE REPUBLICAN!"
funny I try to find that now
all I see is Musk urges twitter followers to vote Republican
the richest man part deleted
no wonder then next several richest are all democrats
buffet gates zuckerberg apple people the google crowd and on and on
Title: huff compost
Post by: ccp on November 07, 2022, 04:49:44 PM
***Musk Endorses Republicans As Concerns Grow Over Twitter’s Impact On Elections Twitter's new CEO tweeted before Election Day that he wants Republicans to take control of Congress, "given that the Presidency is Democratic."***
for once we have a big tech on OUR side
enjoying watching the libs scream cry and wail
after what they and their tech people have done to us.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 09, 2022, 06:25:23 AM
looks like EJ will be the last man laughing
maricopia county - again
nothing to see just snafu
either way the smile is wiped off my face this AM
Title: Tulsi joins FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2022, 10:08:59 AM
NOT MENTIONED is the vast majority is gang violence mostly black and to lesser extent latin gangs
look at Chicago - they have mass shootings every weekend
funny how that FACT is totally ignored
so the narrative can be sustained -
must be white supremacy and the fault of too many guns.....
and "HATE"
Title: Re: near 700 mass shootings
Post by: DougMacG on November 25, 2022, 06:48:05 AM
Right, changing definitions and fitting the narrative. The Idaho college mass murder was with a knife. The Colo Springs hate crime against LGBTQ was committed by a perp identifying "non-binary" with plural personal pronouns. What murder isn't a hate crime?
How many real mass shootings are in "gun free zones"?
What do you wish you had in your hand aimed back at them when someone is shooting at you?
Polling for more gun control seems to vary: with which way the wind is blowing and how the question is asked: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/11/19/support-for-stricter-gun-laws-drops-under-50-poll-finds---lowest-rate-in-16-years/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_gun_control_in_the_United_States
Title: brace yourself for endless angry congressional hearings
Post by: ccp on November 25, 2022, 08:23:13 AM
Title: Tucker vs. Pete Buttgig
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2022, 02:00:40 PM
Tucker accused Mayor Pete of denying he was gay , , , until he didn't.
Pete's husband has rejoined by saying at the time Pete was in the "Don't ask, don't tell army". This does seem like a fair rejoinder. Did Tucker not realize or was he taking a cheap shot here?
Title: NR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2022, 03:19:27 PM
Title: Media, Peter Thiel and CNN to the highest bidder
Post by: DougMacG on January 02, 2023, 06:50:01 PM
Peter Thiel (Republican donor) and CNN to the highest bidder...
Just a rumor... - John Ellis News Items today
Title: Michael Steele pissed about the revelations painted to "stain" Biden
Post by: ccp on January 12, 2023, 02:17:00 PM
it really just never ceases to amaze me what a traitor this guy is
we all know he was made RNC head only to try to attract more minorities to our party
watch minute 13:20 to 17:40
on how he keeps pushing the Biden situation is so different (apples and oranges ). unlike John Turley states it is not . They are both apples not apples and oranges though maybe different apples:
https://topnewsshow.com/katy-tur-reports-1-12-23/
This guy Steele really made fools of the Republican Party that is for sure never again should we elect such a fool...
McDaniel is no fool but she has been unsuccessful 3 x over time for her to take background role IM very HO
Title: SHOCKING don lemon and even poppy push back on [schyster] schumer
Post by: ccp on January 14, 2023, 10:21:35 AM
Title: ET: Skynet now writing for CNET
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 19, 2023, 05:25:31 AM
Popular tech news outlet CNET was recently outed for publishing Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated articles about personal finance for months without making any prior public announcement or disclosure to its readers.
Online marketer and Authority Hacker co-founder Gael Breton first made the discovery and posted it to Twitter on Jan. 11, where he said that CNET started its experimentation with AI in early Nov. 2022 with topics such as “What is the Difference Between a Bank and a Credit Union” and “What are NSF Fees and Why Do Banks Charge Them?”
To date, CNET has published about 75 of these “financial explainer” articles using AI, Breton reported in a follow-up analysis he published two days later.
The byline for these articles was “CNET Money Staff,” a wording, according to Futurism.com, “that clearly seems to imply that human writers are its primary authors.”
Only when readers click on the byline do they see that the article was actually AI-generated. A dropdown description reads, “This article was generated using automation technology and thoroughly edited and fact-checked by an editor on our editorial staff,” the outlet reported.
According to Futurism, the news sparked outrage and concern, mostly over the fear that AI-generated journalism could potentially eliminate work for entry-level writers and produce inaccurate information.
“It’s tough already,” one Twitter user said in response to Breton’s post, “because if you are going to consume the news, you either have to find a few sources you trust, or fact check everything. If you are going to add AI written articles into the mix it doesn’t make a difference. You still have to figure out the truth afterwards.”
Another wrote, “This is great, so now soon the low-quality spam by these ‘big, trusted’ sites will reach proportions never before imagined possible. Near-zero cost and near-unlimited scale.”
“I see it as inevitable and editor positions will become more important than entry-level writers,” another wrote, concerned about AI replacing entry-level writers. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.”
Threat to Aspiring Journalists A writer on Crackberry.com worried that the use of AI would replace the on-the-job experience critical for aspiring journalists. “It was a job like that … that got me into this position today,” the author wrote in a post to the site. “If that first step on the ladder becomes a robot, how is anybody supposed to follow in my footsteps?”
The criticism led to CNET’s editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo to respond with an explanation on its platform, admitting that starting in Nov. 2022, CNET “decided to do an experiment” to see “if there’s a pragmatic use case for an AI assist on basic explainers around financial services.”
CNET also hoped to determine whether “the tech can help our busy staff of reporters and editors with their job to cover topics from a 360-degree perspective” to “create the most helpful content so our audience can make better decisions.”
Guglielmo went on to say that every article published with “AI assist” is “reviewed, fact-checked and edited by an editor with topical expertise before we hit publish.”
‘Boneheaded Errors’ Futurism, however, found CNET’s AI-written articles rife with what the outlet called “boneheaded errors.” Since the articles were written at a “level so basic that it would only really be of interest to those with extremely low information about personal finance in the first place,” people taking the inaccurate information at face value as good advice from financial experts could lead to poor decision-making.
While AI-generators, the outlet reported, are “legitimately impressive at spitting out glib, true-sounding prose, they have a notoriously difficult time distinguishing fact from fiction.”
Crackberry has the same misgivings about AI-generated journalism. “Can we trust AI tools to know what they’re doing?” the writer asks.
“The most glaring flaw … is that it speaks with unquestioning confidence, even when it’s wrong. There’s not clarity into the inner workings to know how reliable the information it provides truly is … because it’s deriving what it knows by neutrally evaluating … sources on the internet and not using a human brain that can gut check what it’s about to say.”
Title: mother of "activist" killed by police "angry and powerless"
Post by: ccp on January 22, 2023, 06:50:45 AM
The Federalist frames this perfectly. CNN admits truth, two years and two elections too late, while they (The Federalist) exposed in a timely manner.
I had a scandal discussion with a friend last week. He brought up 'Santos' to see what I thought about a lying Republican. I said (what ccp just said), yes he should resign, just as soon as soon as Biden and people like Schiff do. Digressing into scandals it turned out this friend knew something of Hunter's troubles but nothing of the brother (turns out there are two brothers of Joe in the Biden crime family).
It frustrates me what liberals (in this case a moderate) don't know about the facts. This friend has an engineering degree, Harvard MBA, is a CFO, subscribes and reads NYT and WSJ plus local paper -he brought up political scandals and hadn't heard of James Biden. Same friend could still remember Neil Bush's involvement in the S&L scandal,1980s, it fit the narrative,, but nothing on this one.
What we have at CNN and all of them is lying by omission and lying by denial of real stories.
Like ccp said, where is the Woodward and Bernsteins on this? NY Post in this case and The Federalist, but no one followed. More than a handful of of deep staters said it was Russian misinformation and that was the end of it. Then we find out it's true and no one cares. We find out our own "intelligence" and "investigative" agencies helped cover it up and there's no outrage!
My question is this, nothing to do with lying Leftists, when do people like this, people who, like us, want to be honest observers, when do they become aware and get tired of being lied to and having facts witheld in their expensive subscriptions?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2023, 03:07:28 PM
"When do people like this, people who, like us, want to be honest observers, when do they become aware and get tired of being lied to and having facts withheld in their expensive subscriptions?"
THIS.
Title: ATT cancels Newsmax from Direct TV
Post by: ccp on January 25, 2023, 06:46:04 AM
Glad to see you G M! I got as far as I could stand into the video and didn't get my question answered. What is the validity of what he said about the elementary school shooting. Not looking for a lecture on free speech. I favor that. I don't favor giving false speech a bigger megaphone. What exactly did he say? Is what he said true? Did what he questioned need questioning?
Or is he just loud noise in the room making 'our side' look bad.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on January 26, 2023, 07:03:31 AM
Glad to see you G M! I got as far as I could stand into the video and didn't get my question answered. What is the validity of what he said about the elementary school shooting. Not looking for a lecture on free speech. I favor that. I don't favor giving false speech a bigger megaphone. What exactly did he say? Is what he said true? Did what he questioned need questioning?
Or is he just loud noise in the room making 'our side' look bad.
Understand that he is the canary in the coal mine. Everything they do to him, they'll do to us.
Note that he was the FIRST, but far from the last banned from social media.
Which was more harmful, the idea that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked, or that the mRNA therapy ClotShot was "Safe and Effective"?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 26, 2023, 08:38:58 AM
"Which was more harmful, the idea that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked, or that the mRNA therapy ClotShot was "Safe and Effective"?"
My thinking on this: I reject the comparison. Answer the first on its merits, same for the second.
I will stipulate, everything to do with vaccine information, efficacy and dangers was botched. Blocking truths and valid opposing opinions was wrong and destroyed confidence - perhaps forever. If a perfectly accurate information set came out tomorrow, how would we know?
My question was on the first one. From what I can see, this canary did not go into that coal mine. If he did, I think he would have witnessed unspeakable carnage. If one doesn't have a kind word to say for the grieving, then silence might be a good choice.
To deny basic facts is the Left's approach. It doesn't work for our side. It doesn't advance the search for truth or the pursuit of an honest debate.
I still don't know what he said, why he said it or if he retracted it.
What I know is projection. They call us deniers while they deny so much, from basic economics to unintended consequences, even temperatures. We don't need someone purportedly of the right doing outrageous denial.
His right to speak and his right to be wrong are separate from our choice to associate, repeat, amplify or defend him.
MHO
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2023, 02:12:46 PM
"His right to speak and his right to be wrong are separate from our choice to associate, repeat, amplify or defend him."
Yup.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on January 26, 2023, 02:15:24 PM
denying mass murder of children
to me is like denying the Holocaust
no excuse no defense from me
the family of those murdered should be outraged
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2023, 02:35:49 PM
Yup.
Plenty of serious examples of the suppression of free speech.
We have serious matters at hand and have no time for such unforced errors.
To allow ourselves to be associated with him would forever stain us an unserious people.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on January 26, 2023, 02:47:09 PM
Joe Rogan says ‘misunderstood’ Alex Jones was right about Jeffrey Epstein: ‘That is a f—ing fact’
JOE ROGAN Joe Rogan discusses his personal politics and position on Alex Jones, Aug. 13, 2019. (Image: YouTube, The Joe Rogan Experience, video screenshot) ** FILE ** Joe Rogan discusses his personal politics and position on Alex Jones, Aug. 13, 2019. (Image: YouTube, The Joe Rogan Experience, video screenshot) ** FILE ** more >
By Douglas Ernst - The Washington Times - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 Joe Rogan says Alex Jones of Infowars is the “most misunderstood guy on the planet” despite being right about financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The eponymous host of “The Joe Rogan Experience” told his millions of subscribers that the same people who dismiss Mr. Jones cannot deny his accuracy on two controversial issues — genetic testing around the world and sex trafficking on Epstein’s infamous island.
“I know Alex so well. I’ve known Alex for like more than 20 years,” Mr. Rogan said Tuesday. “We’ve been hammered together so many times. That is the most misunderstood guy on the planet. … He needs somebody to go, ‘Alex, slow down. You had a real good point there.’ He even agreed with me. We talked about it. I said, ‘you just need like a rational journalist who’s next to you to, like, study.’ He’s like, ‘You’re right. You’re right. I do need that.’ I go, you need someone who just balances it out. Look, he was right about all this Jeffery Epstein s—-. That is a f—-ing fact. Alex Jones called this years ago. Years ago.”
Epstein was found dead in New York’s Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center last weekend, which prompted a federal investigation.
Mr. Jones was banned by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter Apple and Spotify in 2018 after the companies accused him of violating their terms of service.
Facebook’s rationale, in part, included the claim that he was “glorifying violence.”
“[Alex Jones] was saying that [Epstein and fixers] take a lot of famous people to this island and they have all these young girls that this guy hooks them up with,” Mr. Rogan continued. “He was talking about this years ago. Now, it is mainstream news. … This is a fact, man. … Some people don’t represent the best aspects of themselves right to people and then other people try and define them.”
Mr. Rogan also agreed with the statement that the Infowars creator was ahead of the media when it came to controversial genetic testing experiments.
He then addressed misconceptions about his own show and personal politics.
“The more famous you get, the more people try and define you in a way that’s detrimental or dismissive and limiting,” he said. “I’ve noticed that after this Bernie Sanders thing that I did. I am not right-wing at all, so stop saying that. It’s silly. It’s foolish. I’ve interviewed right-wing people. I am 100% left-wing. The only things that I disagree with about left-wing people is support for the military, support for police, and the Second Amendment. That’s probably it. Everything else across the board, I lean way left.”
Mr. Rogan said he would “100% vote” for Mr. Sanders, although his favorite 2020 hopeful in the Democratic Party is Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2023, 07:39:12 AM
Interesting piece- which was from August 2019. When was Sandy Hook?
BTW, I see our own Epstein thread started 8/14/2019:
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was December 14, 2012
And?
Someone asked.
Unless I missed it, still no answer to what did he say (why did he say it) and when did he retract it?
Forget the dollar amount, was the jury wrong? Were the facts in the case wrong? ----------------
John Lennon, 1968: "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow."
- That was advice for the Left. For the right maybe we could draw the line at Sandy Hook deniers. Even if they are really nice people and right most of the time. (I'm not saying he is. I know very little about him.)
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2023, 08:52:56 AM
Wanted to verify if it was before Rogan's comments.
Anyway, as interesting as Rogan's comments are, and as pertinent as the free speech arguments are, I'm still thinking he is a seriously unsound example for us to use when we have such a plethora of serious qualified people who have been cancelled and their careers ended.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on January 27, 2023, 09:56:27 AM
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was December 14, 2012
And?
Someone asked.
Unless I missed it, still no answer to what did he say (why did he say it) and when did he retract it?
Forget the dollar amount, was the jury wrong? Were the facts in the case wrong? ----------------
John Lennon, 1968: "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow."
- That was advice for the Left. For the right maybe we could draw the line at Sandy Hook deniers. Even if they are really nice people and right most of the time. (I'm not saying he is. I know very little about him.)
John Lennon is dead and forgotten by today’s generation, but they are being taught by the generation that was taught by the people who carried pictures of Chairman Mao.
CRT doctrine would probably soon be familiar to what Patty Hearst was taught in SLA captivity.
Title: 2nd post ie: Alex Jones
Post by: ccp on January 28, 2023, 08:13:11 AM
since I never listened to AJ only know of him the way I know of QAnon - through Left wing media
I was curious about his Sandy Hook denial up to 2019 and what that was even all about :
It's hard to imagine the federal government doing something criminal to further gun control. :roll:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 28, 2023, 07:34:16 PM
Hard to know whether the acknowledgement of the reality of Sandy Hook was sincere or prompted by the lawsuit.
Regardless, I have had a hard on for AJ for a long time and I file him under a mental heading similar to that of DEBKA-- even though sometimes right, the irresponsibility, the bombast, and the recklessness of the accusations make him unworthy of association.
We have plenty of other sounder people with whom to make our case with those whom we wish to persuade. With AJ we lose credibility with these people.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on January 28, 2023, 08:09:19 PM
Hard to know whether the acknowledgement of the reality of Sandy Hook was sincere or prompted by the lawsuit.
Regardless, I have had a hard on for AJ for a long time and I file him under a mental heading similar to that of DEBKA-- even though sometimes right, the irresponsibility, the bombast, and the recklessness of the accusations make him unworthy of association.
We have plenty of other sounder people with whom to make our case with those whom we wish to persuade. With AJ we lose credibility with these people.
AJ allows unheard voices, such as Matt Bracken and Joseph Paul Watson exposure they otherwise wouldn't have.
AJ has been right about many things, including Epstein, the WEF and the ClotShot.
Yes, his professional wrestling level histrionics irritates the living shit out of me, but there is wheat to be found amidst the chaff.
When does the MSM get sued for the "Trump is a Russian agent" lies?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 28, 2023, 08:51:52 PM
Point acknowledged, but we have plenty of people who think that Epstein was killed, and plenty of people who warn of the WEF and of the vaxxes who come without the baggage of AJ.
Title: Sandy Hook
Post by: DougMacG on January 28, 2023, 09:31:12 PM
If I read this right, the massacre occurred in 2012.
Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and the other six were adult staff members.
The man under discussion denied it and was a large voice on the airwaves. Was sued in 2018. Admitted it happened in 2019. Seven years later!
The man is a moron, or am I missing something .
A jury said his reckless and false speech injured, damaged people.
Falsely holler "fire" in crowded theater? It was something like that. At least a jury thought so.
Who cares what his views on other issues, taxes, spending, cultural issues, defense, border security, gun control.
Main point was already offered. If he is on our side, he makes our side look bad, really bad.
It's been said, a moderated forum is like having invited guests in your living room for discussions on topics of interest.
Whether or not the shootings and deaths occurred seems like an easy enough thing to verify, if so inclined. There were witnesses, death certificates, funerals, loud sounds, blood on the floors and walls. He stuck with massacre denial for seven years? Why wouldn't you ask that guy to leave the discussion? If the massacre really happened, he's a moron, and a jerk. Right?
Title: Response to Doug, part 1
Post by: G M on January 29, 2023, 09:14:32 AM
"A jury said his reckless and false speech injured, damaged people.
Falsely holler "fire" in crowded theater? It was something like that. At least a jury thought so."
Yes, You Can Yell 'Fire' in a Crowded Theater On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito repeated the common myth that "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" is unprotected speech. EMMA CAMP | 10.27.2022 2:57 PM
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Samuel Alito next to a cartoon of a theater on fire on a tan background (Illustration: Lex Villena; Maksim Pauliukevich ) Though it is a popular misconception, it's perfectly legal to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. However, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito hasn't seemed to have gotten the message.
Despite sitting on the highest court in the land, directly deciding what is—and isn't—protected by the First Amendment, Alito delivered repeated on Tuesday a common constitutional myth. Whether the remark reveals a deep-seated misconception about First Amendment jurisprudence or was simply a momentary slip-up is unclear.
On Tuesday evening, Justice Alito, delivered remarks at The Heritage Foundation, as part of the think tank's Joseph Story Distinguished Lecture. During the lecture, Alito spoke on a wide swath of issues—ranging from his early legal career to substantive due process. He also expounded at length on the state of discourse and free speech on college campuses, particularly law schools.
"Based on what I have read and what has been told to me by students, it's pretty abysmal, and it's disgraceful, and it's really dangerous for our future as a united democratic country," Alito said. "We depend on freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is essential."
Alito emphasized the particular role that law schools have in fostering "rational debate" and holding firm to the principle of free speech, saying that some schools were "not carrying out their responsibility."
However, Alito's trouble began when he was asked where he would "draw the line between protected and unprotected speech." Alito emphasized the importance of protecting "any speech involving public issues, involving politics, government, history, economics, law, science, religion, philosophy, the arts," but he noted that the First Amendment doesn't protect all speech, including "extortion and threats," defamation, and "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater."
However, Alito is simply wrong that "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" is unprotected speech. The erroneous idea comes from the 1919 case Schenk v. United States. The case concerned whether distributing anti-draft pamphlets could lead to a conviction under the Espionage Act—and had nothing to do with fires or theaters.
In his opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." However, this idea was introduced as an analogy, meant to illustrate that, as Trevor Timm wrote in The Atlantic in 2012, "the First Amendment is not absolute. It is what lawyers call dictum, a justice's ancillary opinion that doesn't directly involve the facts of the case and has no binding authority." The phrase, though an oft-repeated axiom in debates about the First Amendment, is simply not the law of the land now, nor has it ever been—something made all the more apparent when Schenk v. United States was largely overturned in 1969 by Brandenburg v. Ohio.
"Anyone who says 'you can't shout fire! in a crowded theatre' is showing that they don't know much about the principles of free speech, or free speech law—or history," Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression President Greg Lukianoff wrote in 2021. "This old canard, a favorite reference of censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It's repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations."
While Alito's mistake is a common one, it is particularly frustrating because, as a Supreme Court Justice, he should know better. The popularity of this myth poses real threats to free speech. "You can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre," is often invoked to justify unconstitutional restrictions on speech and to overstate restrictions to the First Amendment. When this myth is adopted by a Supreme Court Justice—no less, the lone dissenter in two recent 8–1 First Amendment cases—it spells danger for our broader cultural understanding of free speech, as well as the values held by those in power.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2023, 09:30:31 AM
Acknowledged that OWH's comment was dictum, and acknowledged that the decision in which it was made was overturned, but that does not mean that the respect in which it was, and is, held was overturned.
In this regard, many legal scholars have pointed out that given the complex procedural posture of the case that Marbury v Madison was dictum as well, but if you were to argue that judicial review is not the law of the land you would be laughed out of court.
Title: Re: Response to Doug, part 1
Post by: DougMacG on January 29, 2023, 10:15:36 AM
Looking forward to response part two. The jury verdict could be wrong and I shouldn't have mentioned it and happy to delete it. I noticed the quick change to 'yell fire' from falsely doing so. You can intentionally invite mayhem without consequence? My point never was about freedom of speech. It was about escorting people like that out of my association, whether it be my living room, my political party or social media if I owned or ran it. He can have his speech but not my podium.
The truth would have been a good defense for him. Just show those 26 are still alive, or maybe that they died of sudden death syndrome pre-vaccine, but I don't think so..
The heart of my point was, what kind of moron thinks Sandy Hook massacre didn't happen, retracts it years later only after he is sued, and what a waste of our limited time it is to care what he thinks or says about anything else. If this denial story is true, I keep trying to get context, I wish to not be any part of repeating, amplifying or drawing attention to anything about him.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2023, 07:07:21 PM
Well said.
Title: left wing media at it again
Post by: ccp on January 30, 2023, 06:28:05 AM
Title: Response to Doug, part 2
Post by: G M on January 30, 2023, 07:57:20 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDnYVPq7Q4c
Start after 5 minutes.
Much like the legal doctrine of "Orange Man Bad", "Alex Jones Bad" means constitutional protections and established legal procedure are irrelevant.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2023, 08:45:32 AM
2+ of that three-fer? Hard pass.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on January 30, 2023, 12:30:22 PM
Legal analysis, but I wanted to know what he thought happened at Sandy Hook, what he said and why that's a valid opinion to hold and espouse. But skip it if that part of it doesn't interest you.
Title: Bill Maher to CNN?!?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2023, 04:27:50 PM
A fair point , , , unless there are legit security issues?
Is this Lindell's argument?
Basically.
Security issues? BS.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2023, 12:04:44 PM
If I were responsible for the security of the Capitol building I'm thinking some of the footage would reveal capabilities that I would not want the truly nefarious to know about.
I'm thinking if I were Speaker McCarthy I would not want to be politically vulnerable to such accusations.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on February 25, 2023, 12:07:03 PM
If I were responsible for the security of the Capitol building I'm thinking some of the footage would reveal capabilities that I would not want the truly nefarious to know about.
I'm thinking if I were Speaker McCarthy I would not want to be politically vulnerable to such accusations.
They should already assume that is compromised and have reworked the cameras. Those cameras were most likely installed by outside contractors that had to bid under public notice contracts.
Title: Bill Maher
Post by: ccp on March 01, 2023, 08:41:23 AM
on CNN last night
saw part of it
1) was mostly his own opinions about Democrat + Republicans Woke bad - Democrats/liberals good; MAGA bad - Republicans wrong 2) Jake "the snake" Tapper was interviewing him - and he was his usual incompetent Democrat partisan obnoxious self and destroyed any chance I will watch Maher if he stays
my take away - CNN is not changing
Title: Maher on the Woke Red Guard
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2023, 04:21:32 PM
Sorry I thought you said the Republican Speaker IS part of the deep state.
Another day, another beat up on Republicans, down to dirt. A cheap name call with no point attached to it.
So called conservatives in the past would say Reagan, Newt, Rush and so on should do more to stop Marxism, and now it's wokism, McCarthy and deep statism.
The person who needs to do more to save this country can usually be found in the mirror.
Title: Re: McCarthy adding conditions on footage to Tucker
Post by: G M on March 02, 2023, 09:29:30 AM
Deeds, not words matter. Sorry if I am tired of the endless “Gosh guys, we tried” failure theatre from republicans.
Strange how the left wants to hide the WORST DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY from the American people, and as usual, with the direct assistance of republicans.
Sorry I thought you said the Republican Speaker IS part of the deep state.
Another day, another beat up on Republicans, down to dirt. A cheap name call with no point attached to it.
So called conservatives in the past would say Reagan, Newt, Rush and so on should do more to stop Marxism, and now it's wokism, McCarthy and deep statism.
The person who needs to do more to save this country can usually be found in the mirror.
Title: Re: McCarthy adding conditions on footage to Tucker
Post by: DougMacG on March 02, 2023, 10:30:40 AM
The Left wants to destroy every freedom we know and the right doesn't do enough to stop them.
That is not the same thing.
Want them to do more, fight harder? Elect more of them and elect better ones.
Some day you'll post YOUR plan. Tell us who would be YOUR leader. How YOU will know which are good and which will cave when they get to Washington. How YOU will win supermajorities when you don't have a single one elected yet. Looks easy from the armchair, speaking of words over deeds. Undermining those who are trying to save us is easy - and self defeating.
Meanwhile you say leave the blue-run divided states, retreat to the reddest counties of the reddest states and live off the land, out of their reach - without ever asking or noticing how those counties and those states came to be red. SOMEBODY that came before you did the hard work of securing and preserving the freedom.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2023, 12:28:39 PM
The point about the J6 Tapes could have gone in the Insurrection thread but I posted it here because of the role Tucker plays in this story.
The immediately following comments on all sides can and should be developed on "The Way Forward for the American Creed" thread.
For the record, in that regard having watched his hour on Mark Levin I am seriously impressed with Ron DeSantis.
Title: CNN fast to bottom
Post by: ccp on March 03, 2023, 03:10:53 PM
Title: WT: Trump vs. FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 07, 2023, 06:32:57 AM
Trump, Fox News feud reshaping 2024 political landscape
Tensions boil over at CPAC after Bannon criticizes Murdoch
BY SETH MCLAUGHLIN THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The beef between former President Donald Trump and Fox News is getting ugly and is leaving an indelible mark on the early jockeying in the 2024 presidential race.
Mr. Trump has laid into Rupert Murdoch, chair of Fox Corp., and Trump allies have piled on, accusing the nation’s most-watched news network of selling out, turning its back on the MAGA movement, and trying to tip the scales in favor of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
The simmering tensions boiled over at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington where former Trump adviser Steve Bannon sparked one of the loudest ovations of the fourday confab after he blasted Mr. Murdoch.
“People were standing on their chairs and saying, ‘[expletive] Fox,’” Mr. Bannon told The Washington Times.
He is among a growing faction in the Trump universe who say Mr. Murdoch, global investment billionaire Ken Griffin and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are part of a cabal trying to derail Mr. Trump’s reelection bid.
“I am not trying to shut down Fox, but there is zero probability we will allow the rootless cosmopolitan elite that are the Murdochs — these foreigners — to basically say Trump will not return to the White House,” Mr. Bannon said. “It will not happen.”
Mr. Bannon said he is looking into filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Fox News of giving free campaign contributions to Mr. DeSantis vis-a-vis its coverage.
“It shows such a lack of respect for the audience,” he said.
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.
Fox News has long been viewed as the home for Republican and conservative viewpoints, much like MSNBC has been the natural habitat for Democratic and liberal voices.
The once-strong bond between Mr. Trump’s political movement and Fox News has been strained since the network called Arizona for President Biden in the 2020 election.
The decision infuriated Mr. Trump and his supporters, most of whom hold the stolen election claims as an article of faith and remain skeptical of Fox News.
Conservative radio host John Fredericks said Fox News has given Mr. Trump’s third bid for president short shrift. He described the relationship between the MAGA movement and Fox News as “tenuous.”
“The fact that they didn’t cover President Trump on one thing he did between his announcement in Mar-a-Lago and his CPAC speech is absolutely despicable,” Mr. Fredericks said.
“Murdoch can do what he wants, I don’t care. We have built a new alternative media,” he said. “If they don’t want to run our stuff, if they want to make believe we don’t exist so that they can be controlled and kneel to woke corporations and Wall Street, that is fine. Their viewership is gonna dry up.”
Fox News, in prior years, had a big presence at CPAC. That was not the case this year. The network pulled out of the event. Media row instead featured an assortment of Trump-inspired networks and talking heads, ranging from Mr. Fredericks to Right Side Broadcasting and Real America’sVoiceNews, which airs Mr. Bannon’s “War Room” show.
Mr. Bannon was smack in the middle of it all. Crowds salivated for the chance to catch him in person and watch him tape “War Room.”
The simmering tensions are playing out amid a legal battle between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems. The company has brought a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network for knowingly promoting false claims that the company was involved in election fraud.
The case appears to be headed to trial.
Mr. Murdoch, in recently released testimony, admitted that he “seriously doubted” the rigged election claims and said, “We thought everything was on the up-and-up.”
The revelations have opened up the network to stiff criticism from both the right and left, including the charge that the decision to air the bogus claims helped fuel the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Mr. Trump has come at it from a different angle. He has said if Mr. Murdoch does not believe the election was stolen, “then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOs should get out of the News Business as soon as possible.”
On Monday, Mr. Trump doubled down on his criticism with a 3 a.m. post on Truth Social, his social media platform.
“How does Rupert Murdoch say there was no election fraud when 2000 Mules shows, on government tape, that there were millions of ‘stuffed ballots,’ & Elon Musk released the FBI/Twitter Files, where pollsters say that the silencing of information made a 17% difference in the Vote,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Then there was, of course, FBI/Facebook, another big election integrity fraud costing millions of Votes-& this doesn’t even count all of the many other ways they cheated, or the fact that they avoided State Legislatures?”
The movie “2000 Mules” was produced by conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza who used purported “geotracking” data from cellphone apps to trace people, or mules, allegedly involved with stuffing ballot drop boxes in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The claims were never substantiated
Title: WSJ: The FOX News Lawsuit and the Public Taste for Lies
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 08, 2023, 09:01:08 AM
The Fox News Lawsuit and the Public Taste for Lies The case exposes the dilemmas of ‘post-objectivity’ journalism. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. hedcutBy Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.Follow March 7, 2023 6:04 pm ET
Two years ago, on the subject of the public’s disturbing preference for fictionalized “news,” I doubted the legal merits of voting-machine claims against Fox News but suggested the lawsuits nevertheless “represented a healthy impulse to get the evidence before a forum where evidence still matters.”
Voila. Fox opinion hosts, at least in the one-sided evidence presented so far, are shown to have been privately scathing about Donald Trump’s election claims even as they gave air-time to Trump allies Fox viewers plainly wanted to hear.
The moment isn’t an exact analog to a prominent podcaster admitting the lie about Hunter Biden’s laptop being a Russian plant because he also approved the lie, but it’s close.
It’s pleasant at least to know that Fox opinion hosts, such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, had their wits about them on the evidence and the requirements of evidence. If as much attention were paid to revelations about other news outlets’ faulty handling of the Russia-collusion farce, Hunter Biden’s laptop or the FBI’s actions in the 2016 election, we might be getting somewhere now.
Fox can comfort itself that its on-air sources took responsibility for their own allegations, unlike so many collusion stories where anonymous sources were allowed to advance their false claims under the imprimatur of major news organizations.
Fox viewers were also left in no doubt they were hearing a widely criticized, highly questionable, minority viewpoint about the election outcome. Fox’s own news anchors told them so. So did almost every other news outlet.
A question this column has wrestled with more than once: When are the lies of a disreputable and widely discredited figure like Mr. Trump a bigger danger to the republic than lies that receive the near-universal endorsement of the establishment and its institutions?
The moment is bigger than it seems. Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya have lent their names to a growing call for a Covid commission, also endorsed by this column, albeit for the limited purpose of examining the government’s pandemic messaging, though it may be a distinction without a difference.
All the questions Profs. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya ask could also be asked of the media, starting with the one at the bottom of it all: Why ignore or downplay the reality of mild and asymptomatic spread and its visible corollaries? From this mistake flowed so many misguided, inefficient pandemic actions aimed at protecting the least-at-risk, which almost certainly did more harm than good. From this also flowed so much of the false and manipulative messaging now rightly being criticized, about masks, natural immunity, vaccine risk and benefit, and even the likelihood of dying from Covid.
In one way, I dissent from the critique of our health-care absolutists: The demand for their ministrations bubbled up from below. On Dec. 28, 2020, the New Yorker magazine devoted almost a whole issue to investigating the pandemic—not the pandemic in front of its face, the pandemic of media myth, in which competent government officials somehow can stop a new, easily transmissible, world-wide respiratory virus from spreading.
In an in-house publication of the Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, virologist Jesse Bloom was speaking of the lab-leak hypothesis but his words strike me as having a wider applicability. He noted the strange spectacle of scientists and others caring less about finding the truth than about rooting for “one or the other possibility to be true.”
Yes, and this collapse of respect for evidence is making society stupid. Social media is blamed at least by those who don’t blame Mr. Trump for the lies of his enemies as well as his own. But the mechanism is unspecified. The mechanism, it seems to me, is “operant conditioning,” or the simplest form of learning, the kind that paramecia do, in unconscious response to rewards and punishments in the environment.
Thanks to the very implausibility of the Trump claims, in the crisis at Fox News the unconscious became conscious. Participants aired their cognitive dissonance in anguished internal exchanges that are now part of the public record. The Trump allegations were newsworthy. The audience wanted to hear them. But they were also false. The moment is strikingly reminiscent of the secretly recorded lament four years earlier of a New York Times editor in front of his entire staff about the paper’s failure to deliver the Trump collusion story its readers wanted.
The algorithms guarantee our future won’t be without news sites that try to please their audiences. But the opportunity is obviously present also for news outlets to be a resort and refuge for consumers who want disciplined, rational, evidence-respecting claims that self-respecting reporters and editors have vetted and put their imprimatur on.
The ChatGPT moment, as almost everyone has realized in the past few weeks, makes even more important the survival of news businesses that maintain respect for evidence and standards of evidence.
Title: we are no smarter than a bunch of paramecia
Post by: ccp on March 08, 2023, 10:11:11 AM
"Yes, and this collapse of respect for evidence is making society stupid. Social media is blamed at least by those who don’t blame Mr. Trump for the lies of his enemies as well as his own. But the mechanism is unspecified. The mechanism, it seems to me, is “operant conditioning,” or the simplest form of learning, the kind that paramecia do, in unconscious response to rewards and punishments in the environment."
scroll down to LEARNING PARAGRAPH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramecium
:-o :-o :-o
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 08, 2023, 10:19:14 AM
"But they were also false. The moment is strikingly reminiscent of the secretly recorded lament four years earlier of a New York Times editor in front of his entire staff about the paper’s failure to deliver the Trump collusion story its readers wanted."
WE ABSOLUTELY DID SEE EVERY VOTING CHANGE IMPLEMENTED AND MONEY FLOWING AND LAWYERS DESCENDING ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY ; BALLOT HARVESTING ALL BEING DONE IN FAVOR OF THE CRATS.
Me: The smart response would absolutely be to mistrust the election Only a dumb ass dupe would not question it.
" news [that] resort and refuge for consumers who want disciplined, rational, evidence-respecting claims that self-respecting reporters and editors have vetted and put their imprimatur on."
Me:
Listening to O'Reilly's podcast his opinion is sadly, such news outlets that provide unbiased information simply DO NOT SELL. Like the paramecium we want to hear news that jives with our opinions
Title: Why the Dems and their propaganda organs are in full panic mode
Post by: G M on March 08, 2023, 10:58:28 AM
Julie Kelly: I did 2 radio interviews on the ride to O’Hare this morning. When I finished, the driver asked if he could tell me something about January 6. (Me: oh sh*t) Driver: “January 6 was a movie. It was made by Democrats and the media. None of it was real.” (Me: Phew) He went on… “They do this in the Middle East (he’s middle eastern). I watched this my whole life.” “It’s not real. They did it to take out Trump.”
(Me: leaves nice tip) (This is why regime and their media cut outs are in full blown panic mode.)
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 08, 2023, 11:02:10 AM
“January 6 was a movie. It was made by Democrats and the media. None of it was real.”
can't we at least be objective here?
it did happen
hundreds broke into the Capital and trump did not care for hours
it was not 9/11 or Pearl Habor , or 1812 but lets not go totally silly about it either
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 08, 2023, 04:28:42 PM
OTOH the J6 of the J6 Committee WAS a movie.
Title: What are they afraid of?
Post by: G M on March 09, 2023, 07:29:44 PM
indeed the Governor was more gracious than I would have been.
look at some of the replies claiming he did not answer the question when he clearly did in a logical considerate way.
these people are so mixed up in their heads and are a small minority
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 10, 2023, 07:35:44 AM
"Think Swalwell ever took FangFang on special tours of the Capitol? https://www.aei.org/op-eds/explain-the-chinese-spy-sen-feinstein/ Anytime a dem/government official cites "national security" it means covering up something criminal or a fact that damages their narrative."
Hence my choice of words:
"to immunize against "security of the Capitol" accusations"
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on March 10, 2023, 07:50:38 AM
"Think Swalwell ever took FangFang on special tours of the Capitol? https://www.aei.org/op-eds/explain-the-chinese-spy-sen-feinstein/ Anytime a dem/government official cites "national security" it means covering up something criminal or a fact that damages their narrative."
Hence my choice of words:
"to immunize against "security of the Capitol" accusations"
It sure failed to do so. See what McTurtle (DC Uniparty) said:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 10, 2023, 07:51:44 AM
Well OF COURSE the UniParty flaps its gums! Duh! OTOH McCarthy has defensive counter, whereas a full and general release would likely result in some users enabling such attacks to have merit/look like they might have merit.
Well OF COURSE the UniParty flaps its gums! Duh! OTOH McCarthy has defensive counter, whereas a full and general release would likely result in some users enabling such attacks to have merit/look like they might have merit.
Like what? Please give me an example of what could be exposed.
Title: Tucker played the Jan 6 Committee partisanship in reverse
Post by: ccp on March 10, 2023, 08:11:20 AM
I noticed no video I read it was to be for 4 days but I think only two and some simply repeated viewings
He did not report it right he was calling the whole 1/6 thing a scam etc
it was not a scam - we all saw it happened we saw videos of people crashing into the capital
but he completely ignored that and provided some counter video material that DOES HAVE MERIT but made it sound like that was the only reality when it was not.
there are two realities and both sides are picking and choosing their team's side and totally ignoring the other
as for Mitch McConnell - I truly detest the man I doubt his concussion will knock some sense into him. In any case if he does not return one of his lackey's will take his place.
Title: PP:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 10, 2023, 09:37:51 AM
Why Didn't Pelosi Release the J6 Video? "I'm actually not aware of any member of the committee who had access [to the videos]."
Mark Alexander
House and Senate Demos and their Leftmedia talkingheads and scribes are apoplectic about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's release of video feeds of protesters inside the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. McCarthy chose to release those feeds to Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an effort to provide some modicum of balance about what happened inside the building because former Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent her last two years lying about those events and using her histrionic J6 "Insurrection™ Inquisition" to propagate those lies as political fodder ahead of last year's midterm election.
Given that the anticipated GOP congressional "red wave" turned into a "red ripple," despite Joe Biden's abysmal approval ratings, Pelosi's strategy to keep the "fear Trump" sentiments invigorated two years after Donald Trump's departure worked.
We have written both objectively and thoroughly about the J6 protest and riot. We have pulled no punches about the violent jackass thugs battling police outside the Capitol building, nor hidden the mostly docile protesters milling about inside the Capitol. Given the violence outside the building, Capitol Police did what they could to de-escalate a resurgence of violence inside the building. With the exception of the unjustifiable shooting death of Ashli Babbitt by inept Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd, they largely succeeded.
We also thoroughly documented the circumstances regarding the death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter, who died a day after the riot of natural causes as confirmed by the U.S. Capitol Police. However, the Biden administration had that information intentionally suppressed for months so that Pelosi and Chuck Schumer could desecrate his life of service by using his death as political fodder.
For the record, while no police officers were killed by J6 protesters, despite continued assertions to the contrary, there were 140 police officers injured that day (more than the 114 claimed by Capitol video expositor Tucker Carlson). By contrast, six months earlier, according to a federal government assessment, "Federal Protective Services, the Secret Service and the Park Police reported that at least 180 officers were injured during the demonstrations" by actual insurrectionists at Lafayette Square outside the White House — violently assaulted by Black Lives Matter radicals and antifa movement fascists who were attempting to establish a "Black House Autonomous Zone."
But you don't hear about the Lafayette Square assault on officers because that "summer of rage violence" nationwide was just one of the "burn, loot, and murder" riots fomented by Biden and his "unity cadres" in connection with their pre-2020 election "systemic racism" lie.
Tucker Carlson's assessment of the videos would be far more credible if he would not make absurd claims like asserting that Capitol Police acted like "tour guides." That and other equally spurious assertions have earned him some Republican pushback. That notwithstanding, his assessment of the prosecution of "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley is largely spot on.
What's next?
Speaker McCarthy will be releasing all the video feeds to the public in conjunction with a Republican investigation of the Demos' J6 Committee. At that time, other news outlets can then draw their own conclusions about what happened inside the Capitol.
Remarkably however, Pelosi's former J6 Committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), claimed this week that his committee members did not have access to the videos: "I'm actually not aware of any member of the committee who had access. We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video." He added that release of the footage is "strictly a new policy that the new speaker has put in place."
That raises a key question that nobody is asking: Why didn't Pelosi release the J6 video?
The short answer is obvious: Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer wanted to maintain total control on the J6 narrative, and they succeeded.
Title: Understand how they manipulate and control us
Post by: G M on March 11, 2023, 11:32:27 AM
the CEO of Comcast , owner of Direct TV, is Brian Roberts who
is a MAJOR activist for the DEMOCRATS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_L._Roberts
:wink:
Title: most prolific wikipedia editor according to ... Wikipedia
Post by: ccp on March 24, 2023, 08:14:04 AM
check this out "list" of top contributors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits
we don't even know who these people are
likely IT lefties
maybe liberal university people maybe even CCP or Ruski moles
funny this guy who is supposedly the biggest editor with over half mill edits :-o
is 38 yo son Russian Jews who lives with parents near DC and likes opera and is committed to put more about notable women on the website so apparently he has nothing better to do
he has credits on TIME mag and CBS news -
no mention who he votes for , but I could guess it ain't Republicans
Title: Re: most prolific wikipedia editor according to ... Wikipedia
Post by: G M on March 24, 2023, 09:10:25 AM
check this out "list" of top contributors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits
we don't even know who these people are
likely IT lefties
maybe liberal university people maybe even CCP or Ruski moles
funny this guy who is supposedly the biggest editor with over half mill edits :-o
is 38 yo son Russian Jews who lives with parents near DC and likes opera and is committed to put more about notable women on the website so apparently he has nothing better to do
he has credits on TIME mag and CBS news -
no mention who he votes for , but I could guess it ain't Republicans
If you don’t know
You know.
Title: NRO: In defense of FOX in the Dominion Suit
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2023, 08:14:25 AM
NR PLUS MEMBER FULL VIEW Why the Legal Case against Fox News Might Fail
On the menu today: An in-depth interview with Paul Clement, the former solicitor general representing Fox News in the defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.
Inside Fox News’ Defense against the Defamation Claims
Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I have a column built around an interview with Paul Clement, the former solicitor general under George W. Bush and the lawyer representing Fox News in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems Corporation and a similar $2.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic.
At issue in the Dominion and Smartmatic cases is not whether you like Fox News, or whether you liked or disliked how they covered former president Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen, or whether all the emails and text messages released in the discovery process are embarrassing to the network. (Make no mistake: They are.)
The case hinges upon the voting-machine companies’ proving that something Fox News said or did during the post-election period was not covered by the First Amendment’s protections as they relate to defamation. One of the first points in Fox News’ defense is that Dominion and Smartmatic may have legitimate defamation claims against President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, or any number of other Trump-campaign surrogates who made false claims about the voting systems. In an early filing in this legal battle, Clement wrote: “If those surrogates fabricated evidence or told lies with actual malice, then a defamation action may lie against them, but not against the media that covered their allegations and allowed [the guests] to try to substantiate them.”
Clement and Fox News are arguing that journalists cannot and should not be held financially and legally liable for the answers of their guests after they ask a question.
“From the Fox perspective, the principle here is incredibly important,” Clement told me. “This isn’t going to be the last story where there are allegations that are newsworthy, and they’re newsworthy because the president is making them, or a governor is making them, or a presidential candidate is making them.”
Both cases are filed in New York State court, and New York law governs the substantive-defamation issues in each. In a 1995 case, Brian v. Richardson, the New York Court of Appeals held — in the context of allegations of election interference printed on the op-ed page of the New York Times in 1991 — that a reasonable viewer, when considering a statement in the “over-all context in which the assertions were made,” would understand the statement “as mere allegations to be investigated rather than as facts.” In other words, reporting an allegation does not, by itself, meet the legal threshold for defamation.
In Brian v. Richardson, one of the key points was that the claims appeared on the op-ed page and thus were sufficiently labeled as opinion. Clement argues that this is comparable to the claims on programs like that of Lou Dobbs.
Dobbs was one of the Fox News hosts who most ardently and enthusiastically embraced the claims that the election was stolen, and that sinister machinations had altered the vote totals. On November 30, 2020, Dobbs thundered, “This president has to take, I believe, drastic action, dramatic action, to make certain that the integrity of this election is understood, or lack of it, the crimes that have been committed against him and the American people.” Dobbs had his program canceled in February 2021.
But Clement argues those are expressions of opinion protected by the First Amendment; many cases have established the precedent that an opinion is not a statement of fact and is not defamatory, as it expresses the speaker’s subjective views.
“A lot of [Dobbs’] statements that come the closest to supporting what Giuliani or Powell said, those statements themselves are protected opinion,” Clement told me. “The broader nature of the Lou Dobbs show is important context for trying to figure out whether that’s opinion or not. . . . These are the statements that come closest to pure opinion, which is independently protected under the First Amendment.”
Jeanine Pirro concluded an interview with Powell on November 18, 2020, and said, “Sidney Powell, good luck on your mission.” Some will contend that statement goes beyond reporting what Powell is claiming and represents a de facto endorsement of Powell and her unproven conspiratorial allegations. But Clement contends that’s reading too much into Pirro’s words.
“If you’re going to say things like, ‘good luck’ or ‘thanks for coming in,’ and you’re going to interview sympathetically, maybe one network is going to get a guest to come on that another network isn’t going to get,” Clement told me. “But that’s all got to be protected, because that’s the freedom of the press in action, as far as I’m concerned. . . . The law can’t be that you’re protected if you report the allegations skeptically, but you’re not protected if you report the same allegations sympathetically. That’s how we get to the truth in some of these situations.”
Clement contends that there’s a curious omission from the Dominion lawsuits against Fox News: Maria Bartiromo’s interview with Donald Trump November 29, 2020 — his first television interview after the election — in which the president ranted:
You have leaders of countries that call me, say, that’s the most messed-up election we have ever seen. You start with these machines that have been suspect, not allowed to be used in Texas, the Dominion machines, where tremendous reports have been put out. We have affidavits on — from many people talking about what went on with machines. They had glitches. You know what a glitch is. That’s — a glitch is supposed to be when a machine breaks down. Well, no, we had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account. So, they’re not glitches. They’re theft. They’re fraud, absolute fraud. And there were many of them, but, obviously, most of them tremendous amounts, got by without us catching.
If any statement after the election qualifies as defamation of Dominion, Trump’s would be it. But it’s not cited in the Dominion suit, likely because no one in their right mind would dispute that the fact that the sitting president was making such claims was legitimate news.
“If you take a step back and think what statements and by whom would have most moved the needle on people’s perceptions of Dominion, it has to be President Trump saying it moves the needle more than Sidney Powell saying it,” Clement said Friday. “It’s the most newsworthy thing imaginable.”
With the release of all the embarrassing texts and emails, Dominion may well be winning the fight in the court of public opinion.
“Does it make the job a little more difficult or a little more challenging? Sure,” Clement admits. “But I think everybody in the legal process is or should be used to this, and so I think we will be able to focus in on the relevant questions.”
“My job is to focus on what I can control and what’s inside the courtroom,” Clement told me. “I’m not surprised that Dominion has played it the way that they have. Have they had fun in the discovery process? Sure. But ultimately what’s going to matter in the trial court and in the courts of appeals is the broader First Amendment principles that are at stake here.”
Clement points out that the law’s definition of actual malice focuses entirely upon the speaker, and that the views of other figures in the institution are immaterial. “Under the First Amendment, it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter that somebody else in the Fox corporate chain had a different view of these allegations than Lou Dobbs or Maria or Jeanine Pirro . . . in a court of law, those kinds of distinctions matter a great deal, and all that really matters is the intent of the speaker at the time of the speech.”
Clement laid out how this case will have far-reaching ramifications for conservative media, or any media organization that goes against the grain of the coverage of other news organizations.
“It is pretty obvious, given where we are right now, when there are allegations or denials, Fox is going to report them differently than they’re going to be reported in a lot of the mainstream press,” Clement told me. “In order for the First Amendment principles to work here, they have to be neutral. Conservative media faces a built-in challenge in these libel and defamation cases. If the New York Times gets sued, it’s going to be able to point to a dozen other mainstream-media household-name media companies that reported the same thing in a same way. It’s like they have a built-in defense. Given the way the media works, in the balance of reporting, the conservative media, or somebody like Fox, is in a much more vulnerable position. If they report it, and the underlying allegations aren’t true, they’re much more out there on an island.”
From my perspective, Fox News earned a lot of fair criticism for the way it handled the nonsensical conspiracy theories put forth by Trump and unhinged acolytes such as Giuliani and Powell. But the country, and all its news organizations, were in uncharted waters. We’ve never had a president whose legal advisers made up stories about Venezuelan hackers or the CIA director having been injured in Germany while trying to seize an election-related computer server. Individuals who were in traditionally powerful positions — the president and his private legal team — were utterly deranged. Sidney Powell later contended in a filing in federal court that “no reasonable person would conclude that [her] statements were truly statements of fact.”
But there’s a wide gap between the questions, “Is this good and responsible journalism?” or “Did Pirro, Dobbs, and the rest handle these cockamamie conspiracy theories with the appropriate level of skepticism while on camera?” and the question, “Is this the kind of decision that makes a company liable for a collective $4 billion in damages?” And it’s very tough for a court to impose sanctions upon Fox News without inflicting collateral damage on the current First Amendment protections of journalists.
Title: populist press is back
Post by: ccp on March 28, 2023, 10:58:29 AM
https://populistpress.com/
Title: All about the narrative
Post by: G M on March 29, 2023, 07:27:15 AM
Tucker and Glenn Greenwald on our hot war with Russia.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2023, 09:35:00 AM
As a patriotic American I have a big problem with the notion that it is OK to sign and violate a secrecy agreement and in so doing reveal sources and methods.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on April 16, 2023, 09:37:03 AM
As a patriotic American I have a big problem with the notion that it is OK to sign and violate a secrecy agreement and in so doing reveal sources and methods.
Like Hillary and Vindman did? Biden?
Title: all very odd; why is media on side of government now
Post by: ccp on April 16, 2023, 10:50:36 AM
remember this that was a giant hit with the leftist media:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
it was ok when Nixon was the president now a democrat
must have something to do with the change of msm heart on the issue, I think Like the press breathlessly overflowing with adrenaline and oxytocin and orgasmic joy to rush to print and into (jurnolisters) new casts any "reports" that would harm DJT
that said I am with Crafty this 21 yo should be sentenced to 40 yrs in jail only spared the death penalty due to age. we need to set an example for goodness sakes
Title: Re: all very odd; why is media on side of government now
Post by: G M on April 16, 2023, 12:48:29 PM
remember this that was a giant hit with the leftist media:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
it was ok when Nixon was the president now a democrat
must have something to do with the change of msm heart on the issue, I think Like the press breathlessly overflowing with adrenaline and oxytocin and orgasmic joy to rush to print and into (jurnolisters) new casts any "reports" that would harm DJT
that said I am with Crafty this 21 yo should be sentenced to 40 yrs in jail only spared the death penalty due to age. we need to set an example for goodness sakes
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 18, 2023, 09:14:19 PM
the emails did them in and surprised me as well. I don't get why the Fox hosts were letting Lindell Powell Rudy and whoever else come on the air if they did not agree that it held water.
This really hurts our side . We know the election laws were all rigged against Trump and Republicans . I don't know about the machines. Nothing could be proven clearly.
This is the start of a suing frenzy domino effect. Now I hear they want to go after Newsmax O'Reilly states Fox can survive this, but not Newmax:
The worst part is the MSM lies every day and they know full well they are lying and slandering ........one can only imagine all their revealing emails we never get to see.
it is like writing songs, then having them stolen and the thieves who sing them turn around and call us crazy liars .
Title: Local fine people story, not newsworthy
Post by: G M on April 19, 2023, 12:07:26 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 19, 2023, 04:53:16 AM
"I don't get why the Fox hosts were letting Lindell, Powell, Rudy and whoever else come on the air if they did not agree that it held water."
To the extent that they were REPORTING the accusations by major players, I don't have a problem.
To the extent that they were ENDORSING the accusations publicly while doubting them privately, they have/had a problem.
Though I am sympathetic to NEWSMAX's orientation, I hardly ever pay it any attention-- it is too flagrantly partisan, even for me haha. Ditto for OAN. That said, I would hate to see them bankrupted by lawfare!!!
Title: Pay no attention...
Post by: G M on April 19, 2023, 07:25:15 AM
All they can do is say the *GOP* investigation and totally ignore the veracity of the straight forward evidence and zero interest is pursuing it themselves
the smug visibly drawn faces on CNN's panel biased discussion of this last night with depression facies on Dana Bash and the rest of them.
Conservatives cannot get fair shake - ever from this media not at all new - just worse then ever.
Title: Re: CNN zero credibility plain to see
Post by: G M on April 22, 2023, 10:28:47 AM
All they can do is say the *GOP* investigation and totally ignore the veracity of the straight forward evidence and zero interest is pursuing it themselves
the smug visibly drawn faces on CNN's panel biased discussion of this last night with depression facies on Dana Bash and the rest of them.
Conservatives cannot get fair shake - ever from this media not at all new - just worse then ever.
Title: Some news stories are more equal than others...
Post by: G M on April 22, 2023, 10:37:32 AM
Title: Hey Andy, I have a suggestion for your next NRO article!
Post by: G M on April 24, 2023, 03:40:07 PM
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/404141.php
Title: Tucker Up!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2023, 08:30:39 PM
Tucker up, Buttercup! With Carlson out at Fox, and Matt Walsh pulled from YouTube, is the Uniparty making its move?
JEFF GOLDSTEIN APR 24, 2023 On the day I finally became verified on Twitter — which also happens to be my youngest’s eleventh birthday (Happy Birthday, Tanner!) — Fox News has announced it is parting ways with Tucker Carlson, host of what was the single most popular cable TV news show, and the only show on a major network that I can think of that matters in any important way to the national political dialogue. Per the LA Times, Rupert Murdoch made the final decision — purportedly over a discrimination suit — but most likely because Murdoch despises his own audience and always has. Murdoch was also none too pleased with Carlson’s willingness to state unequivocally that Big Pharma was granted the power to harm so many of us, or that federal agents were clandestinely placed undercover on January 6, which “60 Minutes” assures us is just plain silly, Mr Conspiracy Pants!
Love him or not — agree with him or not — Tucker Carlson’s voice is strong, unique, and bracing. Unlike, say, Sean Hannity, whose narrative brush strokes are driven by instructions on the paint-by-numbers canvas provided by his GOP and corporate handlers, Tucker was one of the few on-air talents on FOX you could see at times wrestling against the network’s hidden restraints, which we’ve all long known were there, and which we’ve all long known were being used to keep certain stories out of the news cycle and to foster certain narratives that the Uniparty favors or even promotes.
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To me, it was obvious at the time of his release of January 6 footage — and the sudden and inexplicable stoppage of that release during subsequent shows — that bosses at Fox had applied the clamps to the January 6 story, and that Tucker had unfortunately buckled. Since then, though, his edge has only sharpened. He has, it seems, come to understand just exactly how important his voice has become to the New Right — which shouldn’t be confused with the “alt right.” The New Right has adopted more populist positions than the establishment GOP, certainly; and yes, they fight more effectively than Conservative Inc., because they’re willing to get dirt underneath their fingernails without fretting about their recent manicures. But more than that, Carlson’s connection to the New Right is in his nascent understanding of the ideology that is driving both the left and, by proxy, those in the Uniparty who are happy to go along with it.
Carlson, that is, understands that what we are witnessing isn’t politics and culture within the Enlightenment paradigm upon which the country was built, founded, and — through its law — framed. Instead, it is a toxic brew of applied postmodern Theory, cultural Marxism, and a move to globalize a re-worked iteration of communism under the twin values of “sustainability” and “inclusivity.” This is what Klaus Schwab means when he calls for a “move from a Production and Consumption to a Sharing and Caring economy metaphor”. To achieve this move, Schwab and his coterie of Supervillains have made it clear that they will insinuate these new values into our children, who — having been raised to insist upon such values inorganically yet obsessively — will become the vanguard for the Great Reset, the clay out of which Schwab and the transhumanist elite who run him will mold the new New Man. As I’ve argued with some frequency recently, what we are witnessing is Maoism marketed to the Western aesthetic. It is the real existential threat to this country — not “climate change,” not global overcrowding — and with it, to Western civil society, individualism, individual liberty, and all the other “discourses” of power Theory seeks to “problematize,” up to and including rationality, reason, Science, and the material world as anything useful outside the discourses that describe and maintain it. I find it no coincidence that calls from the government to rid the national dialogue of Carlson, or Matt Walsh — who likewise has made a clear call to defend the true — have led to predictable responses from media organizations or tech giants. They’ve been given the illiberal excuse to censor what they cannot abide. The truth is an obstacle to their remaking of the world. The Uniparty is a collaborator in the Great Reset — and the mainstream press is the voice of the Uniparty.
In a keynote speech for Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary Friday night (the night of his last show, coincidentally), Carlson spoke out about the pressure, in his sphere and in the political and cultural sphere more largely, to conform to the “new new thing, the poisonous thing, the silly thing” — even when it is clear that what you are being asked to do is deny truth and mouth a social liturgy you don’t believe in. He talked about his sadness in watching people he knew becoming “quislings” and “cowards”; he bemoaned the pressures to create the national reality through narratives he knew not to be true: the efficacy of the Covid vaccines; the Sainthood of George Floyd; the war in Ukraine. Carlson was making explicit that wrestling with restraints he had before merely shown through the indices most common among hostages, but which we nevertheless could sometimes see in his mannerisms, or in the cast of his eyes. Opines Carlson, “a fact of nature and of theology and of observable reality” is that there is a “countervailing force at work always,” a
counterbalance to the badness. It’s called goodness. And you see it in people. So for every ten people who are putting ‘he and him’ in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures, there’s one person who’s like ‘no, I’m not doing that. Sorry, I don’t want to fight. But I’m not doing that. It’s a betrayal of what I think is true. It’s a betrayal of my conscience, it’s a betrayal of my faith, of my sense myself, of my dignity as a human being, of my autonomy. I am not a slave, I am a free citizen. And I’m not doing that. And there’s nothing you can do to me to make me do it.
Continues Carlson a moment later:
Once you say one true thing and stick with it, all kinds of other true things occur to you. The truth is contagion — lying is, but the truth is, as well. And the second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this with this — and I don’t want to get supernatural — but you are filled with this power. Try it. Tell the truth about something… The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become. That’s completely real. And measurable in the way you feel. Of course the opposite is also true […] We should, in this sad moment, of profound and widespread destruction of the institutions that people who share our views built, by the way — earlier generations who would agree substantially with every person in this room, they built those and now they’re being destroyed, and that’s so depressing — but we can also see, rising in the distance, new things, new institutions led by new people who are every bit as brave as the people who came before us. Amen.
In important ways, Carlson is extending Orwell’s famous maxim that “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” And as others — including very recently myself — have done, he’s putting to words and voice his refusal to surrender to those very “new new things, poisonous things, silly things” that we’re being told, without hesitation, that we must and will conform to.
Beyond that, though, Carlson has reached a more fundamental realization, which he explains thusly:
It might be time to reassess the terms we use to describe what we’re watching. So when I started at Heritage, the presumption was — and this is a very anglo-American assumption — the debates we’re having were kind of rational debates about the way to get to mutually agreed-upon outcomes…so like, ‘we all want the country to be more prosperous and free and people to be less oppressed or whatever, so we’re going to argue about tax rates, and I think higher taxes gets you there,’ you’re a Keynesian, or you might disagree, your Austrian, or whatever. But the objectives is the same: so we write our papers and they write their papers, and may the best papers win. I don’t think that’s what we’re watching now at all. I don’t think we’re watching a debate over how to get to the best outcome […] I’m just saying this as an observer of what’s going on, but there’s no way to assess, say, the transgenderist movement, with that mindset. Policy papers don’t account for it, at all. If you have people who say, ‘I have an idea: let’s castrate the next generation, let’s sexually mutilate children,’ I’m sorry, that’s not a political debate […] That has nothing to do with politics. What’s the outcome we’re desiring here? An androgynous population? Are we really yearning for that? I don’t think anyone could really defend that, as a positive outcome. But the weight of the government and a lot of corporate interests are behind that. Well what is that? It’s irrational. […] When the Treasury Secretary stands up and says ‘you know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion,’ that’s like an Aztec principle, actually. There’s not a society in history that didn’t practice human sacrifice. Not one, I checked […] What’s the point of child sacrifice? Well there’s no policy goal entwined with that. That’s a theological phenomenon. And that’s…the point I’m making: none of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government — the largest human organization in human history — decide that the goal is to destroy things — destruction for it’s own sake, ‘hey, let’s tear it down’ — what you are watching is not a political movement, it’s evil. […] Good is characterized by order, calmness, tranquility, peace…lack of conflict, cleanliness — cleanliness is next to Godliness — […] and evil is characterized by their opposites: violence, hate, disorder, division, disorganization, and filth. So if you are all in on the things that produce the latter basket of outcomes, what you are really advocating for is evil.[…] I think two things: one, we should say that — stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates where we are using the terms we used in 1991, where…I could win the debate if I marshaled more facts…, and two, maybe we should all take like ten minutes a day to say a prayer about it.
What Carlson is recognizing is that the Western world has been overtaken by alien ideas, specifically anti-American ideas, in the sense that they were born originally from French thought (though it’s true that some of the applied ideas grow out of native theory produced alongside postmodern thought, borrowing some of its tenets). Most important to the postmodern conception of the world — which underlies much of cultural Marxism — is constructivism, which reduces everything observable to a matrix of power dynamics determined through tensions in discourses, themselves designed to normalize, to maintain, to ossify. Postmodern Theory, therefore, has as its goal to pressure, investigate, and “problematize” what it posits are stultifying discourses; to unmask them; to expose their power; to “free” us all, to the extent we can be said to be an “us” at all, from the oppression of the meta-narratives that control us. The purest formulation of this can be found in Queer Theory, which I’ve recently written on at some length, and whose theoretical maneuvers it pays to familiarize yourselves with, in my view. Once ordered this way, power dynamics are policed through intersectionality, which acts as the final arbiter where at one time the metaphysical notion of truth held sway. Whether you’re religious or not doesn’t matter; you are living through a spiritual battle, like it or not.
The upshot of his remarks — even without knowing much about the internal and intentional inconsistencies and abstruse formulations that make up Theory — is that, what Carlson sees as “evil,” is everything Theory aims to do: to commit violence against tradition; to hate the status quo and the standards that govern it; to disorder the known universe by claiming it fundamentally unknowable; to divide us into our various constructed identity packs, which we pit against one another in an atomic attempt to achieve peak “authenticity”; to disorganize the social order by constantly aiming to “queer” it; and to redefine filth as Godly, and Godliness as a form of constrictive filth that represses the human as god. The social construction of sex or gender intentionally blurs lines and posits a gender spectrum while declaring the sex binary non-existent. From this grows the natural progression toward blurring all delineating boundaries, with age being the real prize for the left. In the constructivist worldview, age — and the idea of “consent” that goes along with it — must be broken down, and children granted “universal human rights,” which are merely rights that prevent parents from claiming dominion over their own children.
This is the rupturing of the nuclear family the Marxists have long wanted, because without the family to repeat tradition, tradition can be killed off and replaced with new values determined by, and policed through, the State. The State becomes God. Or rather, those forces that control the State. And if some elites want the intellectual cover to diddle the kiddies, they can simply sniff and point to the glutted argot of diseased relativism to justify their actions. After all, they’re merely queering moribund constructs. With their shriveled old dicks.
As I wrote elsewhere, “‘Queer theory’ is ‘critical race theory’ is ‘critical consciousness’ is the Marxist rejection of the individual as individual. Cultural Marxism is determined to raze norms, sow chaos, tear families asunder, and reduce being to collective conformity. I reject its premises as fully as I reject its adherents. I will not comply.”
It seems Tucker Carlson won’t comply, either. That Fox News has signaled it will comply — and indeed in many instances has already been complying — means that, in the mainstream of extant major news outlets, there are none left to stand athwart the new new thing, the poisonous thing, the silly thing, yelling stop.
The institution has been fully taken.
What we do next is up to us.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2023, 09:07:37 PM
In his prime he was a mediocrity at best, but his theory here is not without logic.
All this litigation is just lawfare using the methods first used against Alex Jones to silence anyone not towing the DC Uniparty line. The only voiced permitted on the right will be the highly scripted, controlled opposition propaganda (The conservative case for drag queen story hour, Next on Hannity, Kaitlin Jenner explains how transing your kids furthers American liberty!).
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/kayfabe/
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 25, 2023, 08:17:00 AM
he is not a moron he is actually quite smart you may want to listen to your podcast if you have time - he is quite logical and clearly mid right of center I would estimate
BO may not be a revolutionary like you but he makes a lot of sense and more pleasant to listen to then Mark Levin who is great but getting a bit hard to take on a regular basis due to his screaming yelling and name calling - just exhausting . I understand he is as pissed, as I am, but that said ,it is a bit punishing to listen to him stir up my anxiety more then it already is.
Title: FOX fires only reason people watch FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2023, 09:12:43 AM
Title: Pretty sharp analysis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2023, 03:06:47 PM
The Disparate Interests of Tucker Carlson and Fox News
On the menu today: There’s lot to keep in mind as the cable-news world reacts to Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News, and an update on the single most important news story of 2023.
Tucker Carlson and Fox News Part Ways
Tucker Carlson’s sudden departure from Fox News was so unexpected, the channel was running commercials promoting his show Monday morning. There are some facts you should have in mind when attempting to make sense of Carlson’s departure.
Tucker Carlson’s final program attracted 2.65 million viewers. Over the past year, there’s been an intriguing shift in Fox News’ viewership, as last year, Carlson’s show did not have the most viewers on the channel — as it had since 2020. In fact, the show with the most viewers on Fox News in 2022 wasn’t even in prime time. It was The Five, a panel program featuring Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino, Jesse Watters, Jeanine Pirro, and rotating hosts Jessica Tarlov, Geraldo Rivera, and Harold Ford Jr. that airs at . . . well, five o’clock on the east coast.
Note that Fox News overall has the highest-rated and most-watched programs in cable-news prime time, by a considerable margin:
Fox News, once again, dominated the cable news rankings in 2022. This time, however, it was The Five, not Tucker Carlson Tonight, which averaged the largest total audience on cable news with 3.42 million viewers at 5 p.m. The Five’s first place finish in 2022 marks the first time a non-primetime program was the most-watched show for a calendar year in cable news history.
Tucker Carlson Tonight ranked No. 2 in total viewers in 2022 (3.3 million), ahead of third-place Jesse Watters Primetime (2.86 million), the network’s newest offering. Hannity, meanwhile, dropped to No. 4 in total viewers, averaging 2.81 million in 2022. Hannity had been the the most-watched show on cable news from 2017-2020.
Overall, Fox News is home to nine of the 10 most-watched cable news shows of 2022, with MSNBC’s 9 p.m. hour falling to No. 10 after a fourth place finish in 2021.
Ratings numbers over the past two decades demonstrated a consistent pattern: The most valuable real estate in cable news was the 8 p.m. hour at Fox News, followed by the 9 p.m. hour, followed by the 10 p.m. hour. While the personality and talents of the hosts no doubt influence ratings, I would argue that the declining viewership over the course of the night reflects a hard reality about the demographics of cable-news viewers. In 2021, the median age for both Fox News and MSNBC viewers was 68 years old, and the median age for CNN viewers was 64 years old. Hour by hour, Fox News and other cable-news viewers go to bed, and/or fall asleep in their recliners.
(The audience for news, as a whole, is on the older side. Out of everyone who watched Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this year, 73 percent of the audience was age 55 or older, and just 5 percent were between the ages of 18 and 34.)
Yesterday, the Drudge Report noted, “FOX ‘TUCKER’ PULLED 2,646,000 VIEWERS IN FINAL AIRINGS. . . . FOX ‘O’REILLY’ HAD 3,776,000 AT EXIT. . . .”
The audience for cable news is shrinking. In 2022, Fox News viewership was relatively steady, down just 1 percent from 2021, but MSNBC viewership was down 22 percent and CNN viewership was down 34 percent. That decline continued into the early months of 2023; it is worth noting that comparing early 2022 to early 2023 is comparing coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to a more “regular” news environment.
As of 2017, “The average price of a 30-second ad on Tucker Carlson Tonight was $13,779, the highest rate on cable news.” It is reasonable to assume that up until his departure, Carlson still had the highest advertising rates in cable news or near the highest, and that his prices increased since 2017, at least at the pace of inflation.
But it is also worth noting that year by year, threats of an advertiser boycott took their toll on Carlson’s program. As of 2021, some of the biggest advertisers on Carlson’s program were MyPillow, AliveCor, Relaxium, Lear Capital, Nutrisystem, and PureTalk USA. My guess is that unless you’ve watched Carlson’s program, you haven’t heard of those companies, other than MyPillow and NutriSystem. Carlson’s high ratings were somewhat offset by the effects of the advertiser boycott. He attracted a huge audience, but apparently most of America’s biggest companies just didn’t want to be associated with him.
There is no doubt that Tucker Carlson represented a valuable contributor to the network, and likely he was the Fox News Channel MVP. But the drop-off with a substitute host is likely to be manageable in the coming weeks and months — note that Jesse Watters’s audience last year was 86 percent of Carlson’s audience — and remember that Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly proved replaceable in the long run. Fox News viewers like the particular hosts, but they love the overall tone, style, slant, and attitude of the network.
(If you are a lesser-known, lesser-accomplished Republican presidential candidate whose true desire is to host a Fox News show, this morning, you should reconsider whether you should spend the coming year shaking hands in diners in Iowa and New Hampshire, or whether you should find some way to meet and charm Rupert Murdoch. The presidency pays $400,000 per year, and you live in public housing. Carlson reportedly made between $15 million and $20 million a year at Fox.)
Fox News, like the rest of the Fox empire, is in business to make money. Informing the public is what it does in the process of making money.
Perhaps Rupert Murdoch’s decision to fire Carlson represents the latest step in a pattern of erratic decision-making from the 92-year-old Murdoch, as Semafor suggests. But it is just as likely that Carlson’s departure reflects a confluence of factors pushing the Murdoch–Carlson relationship past the point of no return.
Carlson’s former head of booking, Abby Grossberg, filed a lawsuit against the network, contending that she was subjected to a hostile and discriminatory work environment.
I have no doubt that Carlson’s comments about Fox News management — “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” “A combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening” — and his colleagues irked Murdoch as well. It is likely that Carlson’s populist, anti-establishment worldview — which included attending and speaking at the funeral of the president of the Hell’s Angels — increasingly did not align with that of Murdoch, who had soured on Trump after the 2020 election. Rupert Murdoch might be a pirate king, as Financial Times columnist John Gapper described him last weekend, but the emphasis is on king. Murdoch wants to thrive and profit from attacking the establishment, while Carlson wants to tear down and overthrow the establishment.
I suspect there was another factor at work, as well.
Fox News’ $787 million payout to Dominion wasn’t even close to Rupert Murdoch’s biggest legal settlement that stemmed from unethical acts in the world of journalism. “A phone hacking scandal involving Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper empire in the United Kingdom has proven much more costly over the past decade or so. The financial fallout of that scandal topped £1 billion, or $1.24 billion, according to a 2021 investigation by Press Gazette, a British publication focused on the media industry.”
And back in 2011, Murdoch shut down his tabloid newspaper News of the World, after “accusations that the paper illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages of murder and terror victims, politicians and celebrities.” At the time, the newspaper’s political editor said, “I can only assume he (Murdoch) feels the brand has been so badly damaged that the best thing to do is a scorched earth policy and get rid of it. But it’s one hell of a decision.”
In other words, when Murdoch senses a high enough level of legal and financial liability, he cuts his losses and closes up shop.
The real problem for Fox News wasn’t the past potential liability in a defamation lawsuit, although it’s worth remembering the network still faces the $2.7 billion Smartmatic lawsuit. No, the real problem is that a settlement that large makes Fox News a tempting target for other defamation lawsuits in the future. If you are the subject of reporting or commentary on Fox News and feel the comments went beyond expressions of opinion to defamation, and you have deep enough pockets to afford the lawyers, you might as well sue the network. Maybe the network will fight you, or maybe the network will pay a bundle to make the lawsuit to go away.
Post-settlement Fox News needs guardrails, guidelines, and clearer assurances that its on-air talent won’t stumble into some other costly defamation lawsuit. How likely is it that Tucker Carlson welcomed a change that would give some risk-averse network lawyer some veto power over the content of his show?
Title: O'Reilly on Carlson
Post by: ccp on April 26, 2023, 05:32:09 AM
I would also add the claims of sexual harassment claim of a producer who claims he mocked Nancy Peslosi's cleavage and used the "C" word in front of her :roll: [Fox's girlie problem]:
Producer suing Carlson for sex discrimination celebrates his departure In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg accused Carlson and Fox of sexism and harassment, alleging that his show's workplace was replete with examples of misogyny. Her lawsuit claims, among other things, that mocked-up photographic images depicted then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "in a bathing suit revealing her cleavage" and that staffers were polled — on two separate occasions — on which of two female candidates for Michigan governor they would rather have sex with.
"Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client," said Tanvir Rahman, one of Grossberg's lawyers, in a statement Monday afternoon. "Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the S.D.N.Y. case and we look forward to taking their depositions under oath in the very near term."
Fox also booted the senior executive producer of Carlson's show, Justin Wells, who also is named as a defendant in that lawsuit.
Title: dem propaganda outlet DNYUZ: mccarthy faces big test
Post by: ccp on April 26, 2023, 07:56:12 AM
Title: OReilly
Post by: ccp on April 26, 2023, 05:47:23 PM
I know I have been posting a lot of his talk shows of late
but last night he pointed out while he had a marketing professor on that for any cable news host to be viewed twice a week is very good Tucker was one of the few , or maybe the only one who average repeat viewers more then that I know myself I finish work at 8PM and run in to turn Tucker on since usually his talks are like no other . definitely did not always agree or like they way he would state some things but he was usually worth the listen.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 26, 2023, 05:50:19 PM
Exactly so!
My TV allowed me to record his shows-- a great blessing!
And I watched without fail.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: G M on April 26, 2023, 06:43:49 PM
Title: clear why people don't trust the press
Post by: ccp on April 30, 2023, 12:29:08 PM
watched part of it. last night
most of biden speech - the usual save democracy in peril and shoutouts to the wokesters and BLM
along with clear slowing of speech and delay in delivering trying to be able to read the teleprompter or crib notes .
Also watched the Roy Wood jr. diatribe - a ton about reparations and etc. The usual bashing of Republicans , Fox etc. "scandal was the theme"
But he did have some digs at CNN NYT WP and the Left wing latter referred to on CNN as jokes at "our expense " only in passing
some of the jokes were indeed in poor taste - ignored by MSM
the real meat or implications of course , ignored . I did not see MSPCP mention it at all
today I only see articles such as Biden's "best jokes" Biden has such a good sense of humor he jokes about his age and CNN hacks trying to rationalize his dementia does not even matter.
And the usual republicans going after Harris because she is black [not totally incompetent].
then the comparison of Harris to Dan Quayle ; which is NOT EQUAL.
the press ignores the substance of the dig at both sides of the media of course
Title: Re: clear why people don't trust the press
Post by: G M on April 30, 2023, 12:45:00 PM
most of biden speech - the usual save democracy in peril and shoutouts to the wokesters and BLM
along with clear slowing of speech and delay in delivering trying to be able to read the teleprompter or crib notes .
Also watched the Roy Wood jr. diatribe - a ton about reparations and etc. The usual bashing of Republicans , Fox etc. "scandal was the theme"
But he did have some digs at CNN NYT WP and the Left wing latter referred to on CNN as jokes at "our expense " only in passing
some of the jokes were indeed in poor taste - ignored by MSM
the real meat or implications of course , ignored . I did not see MSPCP mention it at all
today I only see articles such as Biden's "best jokes" Biden has such a good sense of humor he jokes about his age and CNN hacks trying to rationalize his dementia does not even matter.
And the usual republicans going after Harris because she is black [not totally incompetent].
then the comparison of Harris to Dan Quayle ; which is NOT EQUAL.
the press ignores the substance of the dig at both sides of the media of course
The Gun Control Act (GCA), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), makes it unlawful for certain categories of persons to ship, transport, receive, or possess firearms or ammunition, to include any person:
convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; who is a fugitive from justice;
who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 802);
who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
who is an illegal alien;
who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
who has renounced his or her United States citizenship; who is subject to a court order restraining the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of the intimate partner; or
who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2023, 05:20:39 AM
if I click on the "data" page for North America and peruse the first couple of pages all I see is left wing propaganda "data"
"gun violence" "demonstrations with guns" "anti- LBGTQ" "anti HSCU demonstrations" "anti women events". targeting women in politics :roll: "anti invasion of Ukraine demonstrations" "anti critical race theory demonstrations" "anti protests activity by states " "anti covid"
FINALLY SEVERAL PAGES IN I FIND SOMETHING ABOUT BLM IN 2020. So I thought good . Finally a piece on left wing demonstrations. So I read into it and instead it points out "94% of BLM non violent but most confronted by police !!
on page with this headline US Crisis Monitor Releases Full Data for 2020 is this :
Key Trends: 2020 THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT Sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May, the latest wave of protests associated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement accounts for 47% of all demonstrations in the US last year.2
"ACLED records more than 10,330 demonstrations associated with the BLM movement across more than 2,730 locations in all 50 states and Washington, DC States with the most events: California (1,151); New York (615); Florida (487); Illinois (430); Texas (425) The vast majority of these events — 94% — involved no violent or destructive activity Nevertheless, over 9% of all BLM-linked demonstrations — or nearly one in 10 events — were met with intervention by police or other authorities, compared to just 4% of right-wing demonstrations3 When responding to BLM-linked demonstrations, authorities used force4 more than 51% of the time, compared to just 33% for right-wing demonstrations"
Title: Speaking of "Mostly Peaceful Protests"
Post by: G M on May 06, 2023, 08:40:44 AM
saw about 1 to 2 minutes of him on the Vanderbilt's kid show on CNN with white hair and beady eyes behind the black glasses congratulating the Zoom masturbating attorney on his new triumph - which is of course a left wing hit job on Conservatives . The left will love to invite this forgotten joke back on prime time to discuss his "insights" and "research".
PS I don't recall his legal analysis on CNN ever being helpful at all. nothing like Jon Turley , Alan Dershowitz , Brett Baier , or for that matter Mark the Great One.
Title: Re: Pay no attention...
Post by: G M on May 07, 2023, 03:44:42 PM
The NEW CNN (after claims from new ceo it would be more centrist ) ===>>>
The OLD CNN
as expected same bunch of partisan a holes Tapper Blitz Vanderbilt, Acosta Bash Camerata Burnett now Collins and there panels of partisans and rinos Hutchison Kinzinger Goldberg
they should be fired and sent for group therapy for TDS
Title: The Vanderbilt white haired black glasses man
Post by: ccp on May 12, 2023, 05:25:51 AM
". You Have Every Right Never To Watch This Network Again After Trump Town Hall "
LOL I have to admit . I cannot deny I get a gut sense of joy watching Anderson Cooper and the rest of the mob experience such negative feelings since they do it to me 24/7/365 with their lies and deceptive propaganda .
Title: FOX soap opera
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2023, 07:54:20 AM
Obviously a direct response to Mark's show to again point the finger at our country as evil.
scum bags
"After Daniel Oh immigrated from South Korea with his family as a young child, he moved to Canada then the US, where casual racism was a daily reality."
It's really funny if you know the typical thoughts on race commonly articulated in Asia.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2023, 03:49:29 PM
I had a goodly taste of this back in the mid-80s when I was seriously dating a Taiwanese girl. Even went to Taiwan with her and visited her twin sister in Japan.
But when push came to shove she was ashamed for us to socialize with her Chinese friends in Monterrey Park. A deal breaker.
IIRC somewhere on the forum here is a Chinese detergent ad wherein a young black man is thrown into a washing machine and comes out Chinese when the detergent washes the blackness out of him.
Title: This didn't age well
Post by: G M on May 17, 2023, 08:07:53 AM
Just posted it on my FB page-- a super potent moment for it!
But Sirrrrrrrrrr............
Title: I hope she sues all those who went after her
Post by: ccp on May 18, 2023, 05:23:54 AM
defaming her, trying to ruin her life, making it into some sort of racial storm, posting video of her that goes round the world over a dispute about a bicycle :
lets see msLSD, cnn. ben crump, (I would be shocked if Reverend Sha[kedown]
should all pay up .
We need attorneys that take on the role of fighting the race hustlers such as crump
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on May 18, 2023, 05:29:27 AM
"But Sirrrrrrrrrr............"
RIGHT!
but the phony patronizing way in which she uses of the word to pretend respect
when she is actually spitting on his face with her responses and questions and we all know she hates his guts , his policies, and is part of the Dem cartel trying to destroy him
:wink:
Title: Don't mention Durham...
Post by: G M on May 18, 2023, 07:11:35 AM
Title: Bongino leaves FOX 2.0
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2023, 06:54:06 AM
Former Fox News host Dan Bongino revealed why he departed the network amid rumors and speculation surrounding Tucker Carlson, who exited the network just days later.
Bongino confirmed that he was leaving Fox News in April but signaled at the time that the parting was mutual. However, after Carlson’s exit, there were also rumors about why Bongino may have left.
“I think a lot of people think this may be some kind of anti-Trump thing. I gotta say—that wasn’t my case,” Bongino told former Fox host Megyn Kelly on her podcast Friday. “I was not targeted. My show, they were dying to re-up—we negotiated for an entire year. So I can’t tell you like, ‘Oh, Fox got rid of me,’ because they didn’t,” he said.
“I negotiate my own deals. I don’t have an agent. I do my own business deals. I don’t need any, I do my own business,” he added, saying that Fox “wanted the show” but “I just had a different vision for my role at the network and that’s okay. I’m not the Saturday guy, Megyn, I’m sorry I can’t work six days a week.”
“I’ve got young kids and I’m not working six days a week,” he added. “And even though we recorded the show on Friday, you know, the inside baseball of Fox, what happens when there’s breaking news? Which with Trump out there is all the time—you gotta be on,” Bongino said.
According to Bongino, who hosts a podcast on Rumble, he said Fox News included an offer in which it would be able to call him in to cover breaking news at any time.
“It’s hard—so I couldn’t do it. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not gonna work out.’ So I definitely was not fired. Liberals are just making that up … but I’m not the easiest guy to deal with Megyn,” Bongino. “And the thing, I think [what] your success out there on your own has bought you is freedom. Money buys freedom,” he remarked.
Bongino did not make mention of why he believes Fox News parted ways with Carlson last month. Both Fox News and Carlson have offered virtually no public details, and, when asked about rumors about Carlson’s contract, a spokesperson for Fox previously directed The Epoch Times to the initial news release announcing the host’s departure.
During a podcast episode in late April, Bongino announced that he and Fox parted ways and that it would be effective immediately. He indicated that his departure was not due to a recent lawsuit that Fox News had settled, but he conceded: “The timing’s not great.”
“The show ending last week was tough. It’s not some big conspiracy theory, I promise you. There’s no acrimony,” Bongino said on April 20. “We just couldn’t come to terms on an extension. That’s really it.” He added: “I really enjoyed myself there. They were good for me for ten years.”
In a statement at the time, Fox News confirmed his departure. “We thank Dan for his contributions and wish him success in his future endeavors,” he said, without elaborating on why he departed. Fox News also said it will air “Lawrence Jones Cross Country” in place of Bongino’s program on Saturday, while a new schedule will be announced in the “coming weeks,” according to a statement.
As for Carlson, the former Fox host released a now-viral Twitter video last week saying that he will bring his formerly top-rated program to the social media platform. Details about that endeavor were not provided.
Changes at Fox? Earlier this week, the Drudge Report aggregation website, in an article that appeared to cite anonymous sources, claimed that Fox News would re-do its primetime lineup after Carlson’s departure. That would include bumping Sean Hannity to the 8 p.m. ET timeslot that Carlson had hosted, while there were also rumors alleging that host Laura Ingraham would be leaving.
But a Fox News spokesperson refuted the rumors around Ingraham, who hosts a 10 p.m. ET show, by saying that she is staying with the network. It’s not clear, however, if she will remain during Fox’s primetime lineup.
A spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Wednesday that “reports based on various tweets by left wing activists are wildly inaccurate” and that “Laura Ingraham, the top-rated woman in cable news, is now and will continue to be a prominent host and integral part of the FOX News lineup.” Regarding whether Hannity will move, the spokesperson said that “no decision has been made on a new primetime line-up and there are multiple scenarios under consideration.”
On Friday, more reports citing anonymous sources surfaced that claimed Fox News recently carried out a series of layoffs, including the slashing of its entire investigative division. A report from Rolling Stone cited an unnamed Fox employee and another alleged staffer, although the network hasn’t yet released a comment.
Title: It's different because...
Post by: G M on May 21, 2023, 10:26:44 AM
THAT SHOULD BE THE HEADLINES BUT FAT CHANCE WITH THIS MEDIA TOOL OF THE DEMOCRATS ...
Title: this story simply disintegrated
Post by: ccp on May 26, 2023, 07:00:32 AM
any follow up on this ? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65679329
story simply vanished drives around in empty uhaul with duck tape back pack and nazi flag , supposedly made threats to the Pres and nothing more to the story ?
very odd must not be a "LEFT friendly" story line .......
Title: Re: this story simply disintegrated
Post by: G M on May 26, 2023, 07:06:38 AM
They got their picture into the public consciousness. Remember, most people DON'T read the articles. "NAZI FLAG"
any follow up on this ? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65679329
story simply vanished drives around in empty uhaul with duck tape back pack and nazi flag , supposedly made threats to the Pres and nothing more to the story ?
very odd must not be a "LEFT friendly" story line .......
Title: The correct conspiracy theories!
Post by: G M on May 26, 2023, 08:01:17 AM
Brings back memories of early "nudge" and expising the slippery slope argument against slippery slope arguments.
"Don't Nudge Me There.". WSJ 2013. Sadly prescient. Cass Sunstein, Obama official and author of 2008 book called "Nudge" writes a supportive NYT book review about "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism". Right at the heart of today's Leftism.
Brings back memories of early "nudge" and expising the slippery slope argument against slippery slope arguments.
"Don't Nudge Me There.". WSJ 2013. Sadly prescient. Cass Sunstein, Obama official and author of 2008 book called "Nudge" writes a supportive NYT book review about "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism". Right at the heart of today's Leftism.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on June 14, 2023, 08:23:17 AM
"Not until paragraph six, however, did the author reveal that these bomb threats that were emailed to news outlets in multiple states “accused the retail chain of betraying the LGBTQ+ community.”
:x
Title: Working for the FUSA feral government
Post by: G M on June 15, 2023, 06:20:37 AM
I think they are the same - one day decides to be a man ; next the other - depending on which scam they need to perpetuate that day.
:wink:
Title: Matt Walsh: FOX goes full DEI
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2023, 12:12:12 AM
The Matt Walsh Report The Betrayal At Fox News Is Even Worse Than We Imagined
For 120 straight weeks, Fox News was the most-watched cable news network in primetime. Its main competitors, MSNBC and CNN, never came close. In the key advertising demographic — people between the ages of 25 and 54 — Fox News was the undisputed leader.
But last week, after nearly two months of declining ratings following the ouster of Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ streak came to an abrupt and very unceremonious end. Last Friday, Fox News recorded its worst performance in primetime in the network's history. Just 109,000 people between the ages of 25 to 54 tuned into Tucker Carlson's old 8:00p.m. time slot, to watch the replacement show "Fox News Tonight."
How bad is that? To put it in context, "Fox News Tonight" was ranked 41st out of all cable news shows on Friday. This is the time slot that used to routinely be ranked number one. Now YouTube streams of people playing with Legos get more viewers. And keep in mind — Fox News attracted those 109,000 viewers on a very busy news night, after the announcement of Donald Trump’s indictment. Not many people cared what Fox News anchors had to say about the indictment of a presidential frontrunner.
Whatever you make of that, it’s clear that the implosion of Fox News is well underway. And it’s showing no signs of stopping. This week, as Tucker discussed on his Twitter show Thursday, Fox News executives publicly condemned a veteran producer who wrote a banner criticizing Joe Biden. Five years ago, the banner wouldn’t have attracted any attention whatsoever. But under the current leadership at Fox News, it led to the producer leaving the network within 48 hours. Here’s Tucker:
Clip 1
That banner is the most interesting thing that’s happened in that time slot for about two months, so of course Fox News cracks down on it. What’s happening at Fox feels familiar. The network is on the same trajectory we saw with Bud Light, then Target. Fox News executives, for some reason, are destroying their own product, and now they've lost the trust of their customer base. They didn’t just fire their top-performing host in the single most important hour in television, without providing any justification for it. Now they’re punishing producers too. They’ve also been relentlessly promoting transgenderism across all their platforms. They’ve made Caitlyn Jenner one of their top contributors. In every article about Dylan Mulvaney, or any other trans activist, they diligently make sure to respect their preferred pronouns.
Fox News’ parent company, Fox Corporation, is even sponsoring a pride parade. All of this is driving Fox News’ viewers away. It’s hard not to wonder what’s happening at Fox News, and whether there’s any chance the company —– which was once trusted by millions of people —– can ever recover.
We just obtained a series of internal documents from Fox News employees that illustrate how deep the rot goes, and how unsalvageable the whole organization truly is. These are documents that are produced by Fox Corporation, and presented to Fox News employees when they login to their employee portal. Any Fox News employee can access them. I encourage you to read the entire thread on Twitter and get all the facts on the story. I must warn you, though, what we found included very sexually explicit content. I don’t have to tell you that I have a lot to say about that.
The documents show that the leadership of Fox Corporation despises their viewers, and everything they stand for. This is a company that abhors not only traditional values, but also basic human decency, it would seem. Am I overstating things? Let's see. In honor of Pride Month, Fox Corporation is now encouraging employees of Fox News to read literature about “glory holes.” You read that right. These are literal holes in restroom walls where men anonymously receive oral sex. Fox's executives want their employees to learn all about them. Now if you went up to a co-worker and started talking in graphic detail about “glory holes,” you’d get hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit. But this is what Fox is telling its employees to read. And that's not the only pornographic topic Fox is pushing on its workers.
In addition to the porn, Fox is also encouraging everyone at the company to donate to organizations that administer sterilizing hormones to young people —– including homeless youth. This is something that, on-air, Fox News occasionally pretends is a bad thing. But internally, Fox Corp. is promoting it, with enthusiasm. Pull back the curtain, and there's not much daylight between the Fox boardroom and the faculty lounge at U.C. Berkeley.
Actually, in some respects, Fox is even worse than Berkeley. Fox has gone high-tech with its DEI agenda. Just in case any employees at the network stepped out of line, the documents we've obtained also show that Fox leadership experimented with an artificial intelligence program that pushes "diversity, equity and inclusion" in the workplace. The AI, called Eskalera, advertises that it can track the progress of organizations towards certain “DEI” goals. That’s its main function.
Yesterday we uploaded the documents outlining all of this on my Twitter feed. You can check them out there if you haven’t already. Again, the materials come from Fox's employee portal. Here's a screenshot of one of the documents:
Clip 2
You can see that Fox Corp encourages its employees to donate to a variety of organizations, and says it will even help match funds to these groups. Let's go through a couple of them.
According to Fox, employees should donate to the Trevor Project, because it's supposedly devoted to helping "LGBTQ young people ages 13-24." How exactly does the Trevor Project help these youths? As the National Review reported recently, they run a chat room that allows 13-year-olds to connect with LGBTQ adults to talk about sexually explicit topics. As the National Review put it, it's a "pandora's box of depravity." Reportedly, there’s no age requirement or verification whatsoever. In many cases, these adults tell children in the chatroom how to obtain medications, and products like chest binders, without alerting their parents.
One chat from an adult, which children could see, began with the adult talking about his urge to masturbate — it goes on from there in graphic detail. In another chat hosted by the Trevor Project, an adult starts talking about "doggystyle," and a user under the age of 18 responds, saying he also wants to try it. None of this is new information, by the way. It's been reported for months. Fox wants their employees to support the Trevor Project anyway.
They're also telling employees to donate to the Ali Forney Center. That's a group that says it takes care of homeless young people. On their Twitter account, the Ali Forney Center boasts about injecting these young people with cross-sex hormones — hormones that will sterilize them. They say they provide "life-saving services like hormone replacement therapy for our young people."
Clip 3
So they're taking at-risk youth, and they appear to admit that they’re flooding their bodies with irreversible chemicals. This is all right out in the open. And Fox supports it.
As if to erase any doubt about that, Fox also encourages donations to the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which openly brags about giving hormones to children. They even uploaded a video of a mother "surprising her trans daughter with first dose of hormones."
Clip 4
YouTube took down that video for terms of service violations, but a screenshot is still on Twitter. By itself, all of this is alarming. Again, Fox is matching employee donations to these far Left groups. How much of your monthly cable bill is funding this barbarism? And why exactly are Fox executives taking the position that their employees should support the chemical sterilization of minors?
We obtained other documents from the Fox employee portal, and after reviewing those documents, the answer is obvious — to me anyway — Fox is run by a bunch of highly dedicated, godless perverts. There's really no other way for me to describe this: They want to impose their sexual fantasies on other people, whether it's children or their own employees.
We know that because Fox's executives recommend several books for their employees to read.
Clip 5
One of the books is called "Fairest." It's by Meredith Talusan. Here's a quote from the book, early on.
"I'm sorry but what's a glory hole?” I asked. The chuckles in the room aimed themselves at me. Gavin leaned forward so I could see him. In the half-second before he spoke, I noticed that he was beautiful. A glory hole is an opening drilled into the side of a restroom stall, he said like we were reading out of a dictionary…”
What follows is a graphic description of how a glory hole works. I can’t even share with you what most of this book says — at least, I won’t. This is a book that Fox executives tell their employees will "expand [their] perspective." The author goes on to elaborate in ways that I will not share, but again, it’s all on Twitter if you’d like to read it for yourself.
Clip 6
In case you're tempted to think that Fox executives recommended this book by mistake, you should know they also tell their employees to read a novel called "Red, White and Royal Blue." It's about a fictional gay relationship between the prince of Wales and the president's son. It starts off with this dialogue, which can best be described as barely literate.
"Listen," Alex tells her, "royal weddings are trash, the princes who have royal weddings are trash, the imperialism that allows princes to exist at all is trash. It's trash turtles all the way down." "Is this your Ted Talk?” June asks. "You do realize America is a genocidal empire too right? “Yes June, but at least we have the decency to not keep a monarchy around,” Alex says, throwing a pistachio at her."
Why does Fox encourage its employees to read this horribly written dialogue about how America is a genocidal empire? It's hard to say. The book doesn't linger on that topic very long. Very quickly it also devolves into gay erotica.
"Henry gets a grip on Alex's hips and pulls him close, so Alex is properly straddling his lap, and he kisses hard now …” And it gets much worse from there, but again not anything I want to share.
By the way, Fox also recommends a book for its employees read to their children. It’s an illustrated book starring a unicorn, which is clearly intended to be a symbol for being gay or trans or nonbinary, et cetera.
Clip 8
Fox also tells employees to watch videos of activists, including a Ted Talk in which a woman explains that undergoing a medically unnecessary double mastectomy was a sign of strength. Watch:
Clip 9
What we're seeing is a top-down effort by Fox executives to ensure that radical gender ideology, and all of its deranged excesses, is dominant at every level in the company. But of course, not every Fox employee wants to go along with this. That might be why, last year, Fox experimented with a solution to whip those employees in line. It’s an AI platform called Eskalera, which tracks employees’ commitment to the cult of DEI. Here's how VentureBeat describes Eskalera.
Clip 10
"Eskalera creates AI-based Inclusion Index to measure a better workplace. … Eskalera today unveiled the Inclusion Index, a new system for organizing companies that encourages and quantifies inclusive culture. Using organizational analytics, the Inclusion Index is aimed at real-time measurement of a company’s diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts."
If you check the Eskalera website, and do some reading on what "services" this AI performs, it's truly creepy stuff. Eskalera advertises that it pulls in data from a variety of sources, including company email and payroll systems. It generated a “peer comfort index” and a “diversity index,” based in part on how often employees “practice micro-affirmations.” Those are apparently the opposite of “microaggressions,” and it appears Fox is all about them.
Clip 12
Eskalera produces data that guides company leaders, telling them which departments aren't inclusive enough. The system is supposed to guide hiring, terminations, raises — everything.
What's the end result of all this? What happens to a news organization when the executives promote radical gender ideology and perverted reading materials? What happens when they bring in a woke AI to monitor everyone?
You get the current state of Fox. It's a company where it seems that many of the employees hate Fox News viewers. Here’s the Instagram page of one influential Fox News employee, to give just one example. He has pronouns in bio, of course — he goes by he/him.
Clip 13
In one post, this employee calls conservatives "hicks" for complaining about drag queens who target kids.
Clip 14
In another post, he defends the anti-Catholic hate group "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence." “And Catholics wonder why we have an order of Nuns to push back on this ridiculous garbage," he wrote. To be clear, this Fox News employee is defending a group that openly mocks Catholics, putting on perverted and blasphemous displays like this in public:
Clip 15
There are a bunch more posts that make it clear this employee has contempt for Fox News viewers. It's not worth going through all of them, but there's a clear connection between these posts and the content that Fox News viewers see. Some of his posts are about his work on the Fox News website. He says he was "so happy" Fox News got to use the image he made after Joe Biden won the presidency, for example.
This is all very bad, to put it mildly. And now the question is, where do we go from here? What happens next? Well, in the few hours after we first posted our investigation, several prominent conservatives, as expected, stayed silent and refused to amplify it. These are people who are terrified of losing the opportunity to appear on Fox for a couple of minutes. Terrified of not being able to go on Fox and promote their next book, or their podcast, or whatever. They’d rather lose their integrity than lose that.
But several major figures did speak out, to their great credit. Utah Senator Mike Lee, for example, wrote, “This kind of deliberate alienation of its own audience might not end well for Fox News. But for the fact that there is no other large cable news company in America that is widely known as conservative (or even right of center), this account could prove devastating.”
Scott Adams wrote simply, “My brain is exploding.”
James Lindsey observed that “ESG/CEI likely is behind both this and Tucker's removal at FOX. Fox is now openly known to be part of the ESG cartel.”
Blaze host Steve Deace said “Just read this thread. Complete and total vile filth from Fox News.”
Jeremy's Razors Sale. 30% off
Other commentators — including people who stand to get disinvited from Fox, permanently, for speaking out — spoke out as well. Jason Whitlock, a frequent guest on Fox, publicly thanked us for the investigation.
Benny Johnson wrote, “This is insane. You need to read this. Fox News is a 5th column. A Trojan horse in the city walls.”
Robby Starbuck, another regular on Fox, tweeted, “I will not appear on a Fox News show until they drop their attacks on Tucker and fire the person responsible for this vile memo.” And Chaya Raichik, the founder of Libs of TikTok, wrote, “I visited Fox HQ a few times. On one occasion I noticed a bunch of screensavers with the words "Fox Pride" in rainbow colors. I remember thinking it was very strange. It all makes sense now. Fox needs to get their act together.”
All of these people and more, at some significant personal cost, responded to our investigation. They were willing to call out a wrong when they saw it, regardless of whether it impacted them professionally. Credit to them for that, and now we need many more to speak out. Every conservative is quick to criticize corporate wokeism — and for good reason — but Fox must not be given a pass. Quite the opposite.
So the question is: what do Fox News executives think about all of this? Do they object to their parent company recommending books about pornographic topics to their employees? Fox News’ audience deserves to know.
After I posted yesterday’s tweet thread on our investigation last night, we reached out to Fox News executives about this. We still haven’t heard back. So far, Fox doesn’t seem to think its viewers deserve any kind of explanation whatsoever. That may be more revealing than what we uncovered, frankly.
Why explain this? As we said on Twitter, maybe it’s because Fox doesn’t really care what its viewers think. Fox, like many big tech platforms and major corporations, is primarily owned by enormous institutional investors, particularly Blackrock and Vanguard. These massive funds consolidate the wealth of millions of Americans, and then use their combined power to pursue a radical agenda most of those Americans oppose. They are Fox’s real customers. And they’re getting exactly what they want.
Title: You are getting sleepy
Post by: G M on June 18, 2023, 09:32:01 AM
Title: Patriot Post: Fukk FOX
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2023, 10:13:19 AM
In Memoriam: Fox News The onetime answer to the Left's corporate media monopoly has gone all in for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Douglas Andrews
Here's a story you won't find on Fox News: Fox News sucks.
Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh — he of the fiendishly funny "What Is a Woman?" mockumentary — recently obtained internal communications from Fox News employees revealing that the onetime fly in the Left's mainstream media ointment now encourages its employees to support all manner of LGBTQ organizations, including the employment of an artificial intelligence monitoring system to track its employees' commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In a withering and at times grotesque 25-part Twitter broadside, Walsh takes the network to task.
"A screenshot of a Fox employee portal shared by Walsh showed that the company encourages employees to donate to the Trevor Project, the Ali Forney Center, and the L.A. LGBT Center," Walsh writes, referring to three particularly radical organizations that the company supports. "Fox also encourages employees to read explicit LGBTQ books like one that gives a sexually explicit description of a 'glory hole' and another that describes pornographic scenes between two gay characters."
Some of the material in Walsh's thread is utterly obscene, beyond indecent. But if you're curious, well, knock yourself out.
We wonder: What would Roger Ailes think about this transformation? What would he think about the network he created to break up the Left's monopoly on the news?
More important: What must Fox News employees think? Walsh notes that Fox's woke leadership — the same leadership that sent the wildly popular Tucker Carlson packing — has introduced an AI program that monitors its staff via a social credit scoring system that would make the communist Chinese blush. As The Daily Wire reports: "Fox executives told employees to sign up for Eskalera, an AI program that helps people 'engage in activities that will deepen' their 'understanding of identity' and 'explore more nuanced D&I concepts.'"
And get this: "Eskalera says it pulls in data from various sources, including the email and payroll systems. It generates a 'peer comfort index' and a 'diversity index,' based in part on how often employees 'practice micro-affirmations.'"
It's downright creepy, no?
As Walsh notes in the 13th installment of his Twitter-based broadside: "Fox further recommends that employees listen to podcasts like 'Queery' and watch various TED Talks about 'LGBT life.' In one of those talks, a woman explains that undergoing a medically unnecessary double mastectomy is a sign of strength."
In the final three installments of Walsh's exposé, he points to the real powerbrokers at the network — its ESG-driven institutional investors:
Do the executives and owners just not know what's happening in their company? Are they trying to comply with some onerous New York State Law? Do they not care? Do they actually support this nonsense? Fox News' audience deserves to know.
Or maybe Fox leadership isn't concerned with how the audience feels because they're not really beholden to those viewers at all. Like YouTube, some of Fox's largest shareholders are enormous institutional investors, particularly BlackRock and Vanguard Group.
These massive funds consolidate the wealth of millions of Americans, and then use their combined voting power to pursue a radical agenda most of those Americans oppose. They are Fox's real customers. And they're getting exactly what they want.
Many years ago, having observed the success of Fox News amid the struggles of all the other broadcast news outlets, we figured one of those networks — ABC, NBC, or CBS — would break ranks with its liberal brethren and join Fox News on the center-right. Our thinking was that rather than continuing to do battle for viewership and advertising dollars in a bloody red ocean, one of them would venture off into the clear blue waters where Fox News had virtually no competition for half the country's viewers and the advertising revenue it thereby commanded.
Needless to say, we were wrong.
As one Twitter commenter put it, "Time to budlight Fox News."
Title: McCarthy vs CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2023, 04:49:00 PM
Title: MSNBC, Humor in the headline?
Post by: DougMacG on June 27, 2023, 06:21:15 AM
MSNBC Headline:
"We'll Probably Never Know If Bias Seeped Into Biden DOJ" --------------------
No. I suppose you won't.
Maybe an impeachment trial or two will help.
You say possible bias. I say treason.
Strange that neither Microsoft nor the once great NBC can get their brand name back from this failed rogue enterprise, activists posing as journalists.
Covering the biggest stories of the day - with a pillow until they stop breathing. (Iowahawk)
Title: FOX fires Tucker's team
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2023, 08:02:31 AM
FOX CANS ITS RATINGS MACHINE… ‘Shockingly Callous’: Fox News Fires Remaining Tucker Staffers In Show’s Final Stroke
Fox News has fired the remaining staffers from Tucker Carlson’s show as the network announces a new primetime lineup, Daily Caller confirmed Monday.
The network let go of at least nine remaining staffers, including long-standing producers, in a move described as “shockingly callous” by one former Fox News producer who spoke to the Daily Caller.
“Some of the producers fired have been at Fox for well over a decade,” the producer told the Daily Caller.
Title: funny how the media reports Biden corruption
Post by: ccp on June 27, 2023, 09:14:41 AM
rather then pointing out the evidence of corruption
(they were falling all over themselves to report corruption when it was nixon or accusations against Trump)
they always preface "republicans " are the ones saying it
in other words to reduce credibility or substance to the charges from overwhelming evidence
What picture do they lead with? There are LOTS of pictures of the actual riot. Why not show the actual rioters?
Title: Why isn't Foxweiser covering this?
Post by: G M on June 30, 2023, 10:22:48 AM
Armchair Warlord @ArmchairW Imagine the reaction if this was a map of Moscow.
Meanwhile, looking at the FoxNews front page - even clicking through to the global section - I can't find a single story on the deadly, nationwide riots gripping France.
Title: Imperioli clarifies
Post by: ccp on July 05, 2023, 03:17:55 PM
I could care less https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/michael-imperioli-clarifies-remarks-forbidding-160127814.html
but I love this part :
“After turning down invitations to appear on various news programs, "
no doubt the beady eyed horn rimmed Vanderbilt or his network MSPCP, PBS and the other suspects read his rant on the internet and immediately at the crack of dawn the next AM called him to come on their propaganda DNC outlets to get him to bash Republicans , the SCOTUS and of course interject Trump's name
:roll: :wink:
Title: Fox is NOT the "enemy of the people"
Post by: ccp on July 08, 2023, 06:22:12 AM
oh these MAGAS who are so in love with the idol and one and only chosen king drives just as nuts as the LEFT - almost anyway
Title: NRO: Pravdas puppets of Intel Community
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2023, 12:12:00 PM
The Media’s Scandalous Infatuation with the Intelligence Community
From left: Former FBI director Andrew McCabe on CNN's "The Situation Room," August 12, 2021; former CIA director John Brennan on MSNBC's "Inside with Jen Psaki," June 11, 2023; and former DNI James Clapper on CNN, June 26, 2023.(CNN, MSNBC/via YouTube)
By BECKET ADAMS July 9, 2023 6:30 AM
The intel-to-newsroom pipeline is both nauseating and dangerous.
The current relationship between the intelligence community and major media is not just uncomfortably chummy, it’s dangerous.
We’re in a bad place when the “watchmen” of our republic are apparently at the beck and call of professional liars, dismissing the worst abuses by intelligence officials and platforming them with plum newsroom “analyst” gigs.
Under John Brennan’s leadership, the CIA spied on the United States Senate.
Brennan’s flunkies created a fake online profile to access the network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose Democratic members were at the time investigating the CIA’s torture program. Once inside, CIA agents read emails written by Senate investigators. The spies then made criminal referrals based on bogus information. During this entire ordeal, Brennan lied repeatedly, both publicly and behind closed doors, about the spying.
Brennan currently serves as a national-security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
Elsewhere, a 2018 report by the Justice Department inspector general found that disgraced former FBI official Andrew McCabe had leaked sensitive information about the Hillary Clinton email investigation to members of the press. According to that report, McCabe lied to his boss, then–FBI director James Comey; lied to members of the FBI’s Inspection Division, sometimes while under oath; and lied to agents for the Office of the Inspector General.
McCabe currently serves as a senior law-enforcement analyst for CNN.
As the director of national intelligence, James Clapper testified under oath before a congressional committee that the National Security Agency had not, in fact, collected data on millions of Americans. It had. He lied.
Clapper currently serves as a national-security analyst for CNN.
Despite their egregious lies, these men have gone on to have successful careers in news media, serving as supposedly trustworthy and reliable “experts.” Never mind that they had no qualms about lying for personal, professional, and/or ideological reasons. Never mind their exceptional abuses of power.
Despite having every reason to distrust these agencies and the men who head them, the press has adopted an almost reflexively pro-intelligence-community position in both its news coverage and commentary. Indeed, it’s not just hiring these washed-up spooks; it’s also promoting the intel communities’ preferred narratives. This latter trend especially reached absurd heights this past week when the New York Times went to bat for a CIA warrantless spying program opposed by Republicans and Democrats.
“G.O.P. Threatens Spy Agencies’ Surveillance Tool,” reads the headline. The subhead adds, “With hard-right Republicans attacking federal law enforcement agencies and unwilling to extend their broad powers, a major warrantless surveillance program targeting foreigners overseas may face new limits from Congress.”
Remember, in the Times’ framing, it is the Republicans who are the bad guys, not the agency with a “warrantless surveillance program.” The story’s framing is even more comical when one reads the opening paragraphs:
An intensive drive by right-wing Republicans in Congress to vilify the F.B.I. with charges of political bias has imperiled a program allowing spy agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign targets, sapping support for a premier intelligence tool and amplifying demands for stricter limits.
The once-secret program — created after the 9/11 attacks and described by intelligence officials as crucial to stopping overseas hackers, spy services and terrorists — has long faced resistance by Democrats concerned that it could trample on Americans’ civil liberties. But the law authorizing it is set to expire in December, and opposition among Republicans, who have historically championed it, has grown as the G.O.P. has stepped up its attacks on the F.B.I., taking a page from former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters.
You’ll note that Democratic opposition to the surveillance program does not inspire similarly negative coverage by the Times. The paper’s ire is reserved exclusively for Republicans. Also, let’s not forget that the Times won a Pulitzer in 2006 for its efforts to uncover the scope of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which surveilled a rotating list of both domestic targets as well as “about 5,000 to 7,000” individuals overseas “suspected of terrorist ties.” The Pulitzer committee even gushed at the time that the paper’s “carefully sourced stories on secret domestic eavesdropping” had “stirred a national debate on the boundary line between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberty.”
The Times article also includes the following lines (emphasis added):
But far-right lawmakers have embarked on a louder and more politically loaded effort to fight the measure. They have seized on official determinations that federal agents botched a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser and more recent disclosures that F.B.I. analysts improperly used Section 702 to search for information about hundreds of Americans who came under scrutiny in connection with the Jan. 6 attack and the Black Lives Matter protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
This is such a generous and charitable retelling of the wiretap scandal as to be near-identical to state propaganda. For the record, the FBI, which had good reason to believe that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign fabricated the Russian collusion story from thin air, submitted inaccurate, incomplete, unsupported, and even intentionally falsified information to justify its surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign.
What are we even doing here, folks?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on July 09, 2023, 02:55:33 PM
"You’ll note that Democratic opposition to the surveillance program does not inspire similarly negative coverage by the Times. The paper’s ire is reserved exclusively for Republicans. "
couple with the fact these spies are getting good gigs in left wing media
and we see opportune one sided leaks to the Left wing media ...........
and one connects the dots
who says leakers are not being bribed ?
Title: remember Eleanor Clift
Post by: ccp on July 17, 2023, 07:38:03 AM
definitely one of the most stupid reliably Democrat pundit on TV
Title: quotes used wrongly
Post by: ccp on August 11, 2023, 08:50:37 AM
from DeSantis thread added here:
It is one thing when the press inadvertently take a quote out of context but when it is done on purpose
of Trump will do it too to Ron.
I don't recall Ron taking Trump quotes out of context....
Yes, usually nice guys finish last in politics (look at Romney , Mc Cain)
I recall with dismay my quote being taken out of context in 1983. I was flown to Newark NJ from SC airforce base from Grenada.
I was met at the airport by a local reporter who was running up to us asking our views of Grenada invasion.
One wanted to interview me at my home later. Or perhaps he called us later I don't quite recall.
He from the city newspaper and later one from the Newark Star Ledger came to my house and interviewed me as a home town witness to the invasion.
At one point I remember perfectly clearly I said , " once the US soldiers came and rescued us I was not scared"
MY goal was to thank the US military and give them credit for courage and the sense of pride that they helped US citizens abroad. I know the real purpose of the invasion was not the medical students but to prevent the Cubans from using an airstrip for their military advantage.
Yet, I saw with dismay the quote in the newspaper was among other things, printed as " I was not scared"
Taken out of the full quote made it appear I was boasting about courage I did not have instead of giving credit to the soldiers who earned it.
I can honestly say I was not particularly brave and of course was in shock and fear when while standing on our landlords porch on the hillside and seeing a helicopter wing around from behind the hill and whiz past us right before our eyes , and seeing two Grenadians who appeared to be all of about 16 years old holding AK 47s I certainly was intimidated.
How would I fight back ? Throw heavy medical books at them?
Yes it is one thing when quotes are taken out of context or misquoted by accidental mistake, but when taken out of context the whole meaning can be changed, masked or reversed.
Sickening when this is done on purpose......
:x
Title: Zeihan: Why we can't trust the media
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2023, 06:30:02 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDkRHku2epE
Interestingly, apart from Middle East issues, he recommends Al Jazeera.
When I was in Jordan for a month, I watched lots of AJ and must say I get where he is coming from.
I will be giving AJ a try:
https://www.aljazeera.com/
Title: another CNN lie
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2023, 06:31:33 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on August 15, 2023, 10:35:24 AM
held hands ?
grounds for firing ?
she is an attractive lady and has a million dollar smile
till she opens her mouth and spurts out DNC material....
Title: Late night left wing hosts are off the air for 3 months and no one noticed
Post by: DougMacG on August 16, 2023, 07:36:27 AM
All had declining audiences before they went off the air. This is the first I've heard that they were gone. Good riddance. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/08/07/nolte-left-wing-late-night-hosts-disappear-for-3-months-and-no-one-cares/
SNL missed three months of making fun of Biden. Maybe that was the motive for the strike.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2023, 10:42:40 AM
:-D
Title: cynical smart ass MSM
Post by: ccp on August 17, 2023, 05:41:14 AM
Sure would be nice if Republican Kentucky would elect a republican governor. But they didn't and they won't. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/governor/2023/kentucky/
Title: DeSantis message - "do not leak"
Post by: ccp on September 01, 2023, 09:22:25 AM
So message in NYT
something else is going on with all these leaks to NYT WP and CNN
One comment at about the 50 minute mark, they were discussing Biden losing it but agreed he showed up well enough for the debate. They agreed that at one point Biden did start to lose it, and Rush said, paraphrase, then you let him off the hook by talking over him.
Title: CNN surprises
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2023, 07:05:40 PM
I feel this is very bad He is sounding more and more like a vengeful dictatorial maniac .
I am not voting for him to get Revenge to soothes HIS demons.
This will enrage his opposition even more
We need to win hearts and minds
not settle scores
for longer term success
woe unto us if he wins and goes down this road the next time Democrats win......
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2023, 07:54:30 AM
He is not without reason on the evil of what was done to him, but
a) this seems well over the top, and
b) this seems to be seriously counter-productive juju.
Title: O'Reilly : organizations behind Dem propaganda machine
Post by: ccp on October 01, 2023, 11:10:46 AM
go to the podcast Sept 26 "Killing the Witches is Released, the Tucker Carlson Interview, .... "
and start at 28:39 seconds
"Who is behind Democratic propaganda "
in other words these are at least part of the MSM echo machine that propagates the same stuff over and over again AND at the same time blocks conservative media.
He gives 3 of the orgs behind it. Implies 3 more to be named later on.
1) K & L Gates (William Gates Sr.) 1601 K St.
https://www.klgates.com/ (suspcious - I go to page and it does not let me link to any of the information there )
2) Akin Gump Strauss Power Feld LLP 201 K St.
https://www.akingump.com/en/sectors/energy/power
3) Foreign Policy For America Action Network 1301 K St.
https://www.fp4america.org/
Title: 60 Minutes fluff piece on Garland
Post by: ccp on October 02, 2023, 08:55:23 AM
same old Merick about he is neutral on applying the law, does not communicate with Biden/administration (maybe not directly :wink:); mentions the line "Trump appointed" DA Weiss.
no mention of obvious slow walking and failure to do anything about Hunter investigations or the phony deal that Judge rightly stopped a month ago or so.
no mention of other DA clearly preventing Weiss from enforcing the investigation, no mention of whistle blowers , claiming he has no knowledge of any of this
and is even pressed to push the "sympathy" card by discussed how his family escaped the Holocaust during which he even became tearful (rightfully so and understood by me) though that does not explain the lack of pursuit of Hunter's crimes. He states he became interested in being in law enforcement prosceuctor due to what happened to his family and how he wants justice not partisanshiop is his life's mission.
That all said he is either lying , corrupt or totally a buffoon who has no idea what is going on in his DOJ.
The next episode was on Sam Bankman Freed. Even with this the MSM makes an anti - Republican dig - pointing out how SBF helped bankroll McConnell to get only anti Trumpers into the Senate with only a 1 to 2 second mention that SBF contributed to Dems too.
Totally ignored was that 90 or 95 % of SBF went to fund Democrats - outrageous left wing media
Always pushes the anti Republican card .
rare execptions when MSM goes after a DEm such as Menendez only seems to occur when it appears safe that the replacement will also be a Dem.
Title: Re: 60 Minutes fluff piece on Garland
Post by: DougMacG on October 02, 2023, 01:11:11 PM
"does not communicate with Biden/administration (maybe not directly :wink:); "
Not directly but both report to the same boss?
"... how he wants justice not partisanship is his life's mission."
- Doesn't it seem the exact opposite?
Lying vs buffoon, I would say scripted and rehearsed. His version of the truth.
It doesn't take a lot of coordination for everyone to know they are supposed to screw Trump and protect Democrats.
Title: new round of Democrats congratulating themselves
Post by: ccp on October 07, 2023, 09:18:21 PM
National Academy of Television Arts & Science’s 2023 News & Documentary Emmy Awards
as if MSM is not making money off commercials during their reporting :roll:
probably much more than their usual Republican bashing stories !
MSM -> evil = Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, Fox, X, and anyone who is white.
Title: Biden’s Handles Began Concealing Mishandled Classified Docs Before 2022 Midterms
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 12, 2023, 09:49:43 AM
This could be filed under more than one topic, and is certainly yet another example of the abject hypocrisy of most on the left, particularly the regressive “Progressive” left:
for example she does not retort to this guy that Hamas fires endless rockets into Israel which then must elicit a strong response she does not mention that destroying Jewish Israel state is in Hamas charter see my post under anti semitism thread.
Title: Breanna Morello: FOX fired me for not vaxxing
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2023, 11:00:52 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 13, 2023, 08:54:03 AM
DeSantis has very rational answers to Palestinian exchange
but headline reads :
"you had my vote, but you don't now"
from ANONYMOUS voter.
that alone exposes the bias.
Title: Andrea Mitchell
Post by: ccp on October 13, 2023, 01:50:55 PM
Married to Alan Greenspan since 1997.
Amazing how everyone knows everyone in DC .
One giant bedroom.
Title: Stratfor opines on X
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2023, 06:24:11 PM
X's Struggle to Contain Israel-Gaza Disinformation Bodes Ill for Its Election Preparedness Oct 13, 2023 | 19:43 GMT
A week into the Israel-Gaza war, the proliferation of false or misleading information on X (formerly known as Twitter) illustrates the platform's content moderation challenges, suggesting that threat actors will have more opportunities to use X in their efforts to sway public opinion ahead of major upcoming elections. Since the conflict erupted on Oct. 7, various media reports have revealed significant shortcomings in the platform's ability to prevent and remove misinformation and disinformation. Over the past week, numerous widely shared posts on the Israel-Gaza war have been found to contain content that is either partially false or entirely fabricated, making it difficult for users — as well as researchers and open-source intelligence professionals — to discern truth from reality. The situation reached a critical point on Oct. 8, when X owner Elon Musk posted personal recommendations for users to follow accounts known for spreading misinformation, such as @WarMonitors and @sentdefender, both of which played a part in spreading deepfake images in May of an explosion at the U.S. Pentagon. Though Musk ultimately deleted the post, it still had over 11 million views before being taken down. Musk has also failed to delete accompanying posts (which appear on all users' feeds as part of X's updated algorithm) that encouraged users to trust X for the truth rather than traditional media sources, claiming that the mainstream media is to blame for misinformation.
Some of the false posts that have spread on X in recent days include videos of explosions and buildings collapsing, positioned to appear as if they were a series of rockets fired by Hamas, but were actually years-old images taken during the Syrian civil war. Users have also shared a violent video appearing to show an Israeli woman being tortured by Hamas that, in reality, was footage taken in 2015 of a 16-year-old being burned to death in Guatemala. Other X accounts have spread false claims that Iran had entered the Israel-Gaza conflict, and that the U.S. embassy in the Lebanese capital of Beirut had been evacuated. A fabricated document purporting to show White House plans to give Israel $8 billion in aid, along with a fabricated BBC report claiming to show evidence that Ukraine sold NATO weapons to Hamas, have circulated on the platform as well over the past week.
Disinformation actors also created a fake account impersonating the Israeli English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post, whose legitimate website had been taken down for several days by Anonymous Sudan (a hacktivist group with alleged ties to the Russian state) following the initial outbreak of the conflict, in hopes of spreading false information about the war. In one post that received over 700,000 views, the fictitious/impersonation account spread claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been hospitalized. The seemingly significant uptick in false information on X follows a number of other changes to the platform that have undermined content moderation efforts, including the removal of headlines from links, new subscription plans and reported cuts to its election moderation team. Most recently, on Oct. 4, X announced that it would no longer supply headlines to contextualize article links, with links instead appearing as the primary image included in the article. This forces users to rely on often vague or arbitrary images to guess what an article may be about, at times falling prey to misleading images about the contents of a link and creating confusion for those searching for information about a particular subject. On top of this, one benefit for users who pay for X's new Twitter Blue subscription service is having their posts reach more people by being prioritized on other users' feeds. The consequent deluge of paid content has, in turn, helped fuel the proliferation of false information on the platform, as posts from more authoritative primary sources are now often being buried beneath promoted posts from paying subscribers who could be anyone, despite having official-looking checkmarks next to their names.
In late September, X reportedly cut election moderation teams, along with its election misinformation reporting tool, at least for U.S. and Australian users, though a similar feature is still available for EU users that enables reporting of content that may have ''negative effects on civil disorders or elections.''
In December 2022, Musk dissolved then-Twitter's Trust and Safety Council, a group of 100 independent academics, civil leaders and activists who sought to combat hate speech and other harmful content on the platform. The move to scrap the council then kicked off a series of other changes to the platform's moderation efforts.
In November 2022, X rolled out its new ''Twitter Blue'' paid subscription service, which gives paying users a blue checkmark to verify their account — a feature previously reserved for high-profile users like celebrities and politicians. Content from these paying users is also promoted to the top of user timelines above content from non-paid users.
The proliferation of false content on X since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza conflict suggests that nation-state actors, along with domestic political groups, will have an easier time exploiting the platform for influence operations, seeking to sway public perceptions in the leadup to numerous major elections in the coming year. Content on X in the early days of the Israel-Gaza conflict has been characterized by a highly accelerated rate of disinformation, with various actors attempting to control the narrative, offering a preview of what is likely to be a wave of fake content on the platform surrounding a number of prominent elections that will be held across the world through the end of 2023 and throughout 2024. An early preview may come as soon as Oct. 15, when Poland will hold general elections in which pro-Russian threat actors have strong incentives to deploy disinformation to weaken Polish support for Ukraine and cause further fissures with the European Union. Looking ahead, not only will threat actors be able to take advantage of X's content moderation challenges, but many will use generative AI tools (which overall are harder to detect) to fabricate video, audio, text and other content to make false information appear more convincing. This will provide additional opportunities for threat actors to spread narratives that aim to achieve a wide range of ends ahead of a series of major elections in 2024, such as the Taiwanese presidential election in January 2024, Indian general elections between April-May 2024, elections for the European Parliament in June 2024, and U.S. general elections in November 2024. Russian, Chinese and Iranian threat actors in particular will be active on the platform throughout these election cycles to influence public perceptions to align more with their interests, exploit divisions among social groups, and undermine trust in democratic processes. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its 2023 Annual Threat Assessment specifically cited Russia and China as states pushing disinformation to promote authoritarianism in a broader conflict with democratic governments. Iran, too, has leveraged social media in the past to spread disinformation and attempt to influence public opinion and will continue to do so in the future, though its efforts have tended to be less sophisticated and failed to gain much traction. In at least some countries holding upcoming elections, including the United States, domestic political groups will also take advantage of X to spread fake content, particularly deepfakes and other content fueled by generative AI, focusing on politically salient issues and depicting opposition parties and politicians in unfavorable and fictitious circumstances.
Earlier this year, the European Union launched a pilot program that assesses how successful various tech companies are at fighting disinformation. On Sept. 26, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova noted that the program found that X is ''the platform with the largest ratio of misinformation or disinformation posts,'' with disinformation accounts on X also more likely to have recently joined the platform and have more followers than legitimate accounts.
Slovakia's Sept. 30 parliamentary elections were characterized by a flurry of false posts on social media, including AI-generated content, with more than 365,000 election-related disinformation posts on Slovak social media in the first two weeks of September detected by U.K.-based nonprofit Reset, whose analysis also found that disinformation posts generated five times more exposure than average posts.
Title: Some Media Denying Atrocity Images are Real
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 15, 2023, 10:11:49 AM
Legal Insurrection is tracking Hamas atrocities with numerous links here:
As well as a piece about how Hamas and their media handmaidens are seeking to falsify claims of atrocity by claiming AI tools are showing images to have been doctored and such:
I see Newsweek getting involved in speaker vote by printing this.
:wink:
Big deal :roll:
Title: BBC Feigns Impartiality
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 17, 2023, 07:51:38 PM
Perhaps this is yet another dog bites man story, but I’m running into similar self delusion on the left where the Israeli/Hamas war is concerned in various places. On the one hand they appear to understand on a visceral level that defending Hamas is beyond the pale, yet have some sort of backhanded reflex that inspires equivocation or worse. Truth be told I’m enjoying their discomfort—I get the feeling there is a lightbulb dimly beginning glow above various left wing heads as they grapple with unspeakable acts their True Believers are tying to cajole them into embracing—and they don’t know which direction they want to be pulled and so spout wan platitudes they know to be false.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on October 18, 2023, 07:32:51 AM
Likely the truth = Drudge - > "Saudi crown prince snubs Biden"
vs.
likely the cover up =
CBS - > "mutually agreed" upon cancellation of meeting
Title: A Biden Donor working for a Corporate Biden Donor Leaks Trump's Taxes
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 18, 2023, 07:55:27 AM
This could likely be filed several places, but for my money the big takeaway here is that a Biden donor working for Booz Allen, a major government contractor just awarded a a $2 billion contract to upgrade IRS systems and also major Biden and Democratic party donor is the employer of said contractor that most media sources media sources won't/don't identify. The leaking contractor appears to be heading toward some sort of legal wrist slap for the felonies he committed, and that may have had a hand in Trump's 2020 electoral loss.
Title: Media No Longer Controls the Narrative
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 22, 2023, 05:43:48 AM
I follow Clarice Feldman on FB, and post a lot of the pieces she finds here. Every Sunday she publishes an opinion essay she calls “Clarice’s Pieces.” This week’s charts how the MSM has lost control of the Hamas narrative:
Title: Media Machination Map
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 23, 2023, 04:10:42 PM
Great piece detailing all the reflexive asshattery associated with the “Israel Bombs Hospital” “story,” that does a fine job of taking the MSM apart along the way:
Title: New WH gig: Chief of Picture Placards
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 30, 2023, 09:31:13 PM
Well here’s a surprise: media fails to report Biden can’t competently call on media to ask him questions without a media picture placard. Dan Quail was excoriated for reading verbatim a misspelled card reading “potatoe,” press can’t emit a peep when President can’t handle a press conference without a cheat sheet showing reporter’s photo and order they are to be called on. And I’d make book that he’s also been coached on what those reporters will ask during these “spontaneous” press conferences.
Title: Dr. Professor Mrs. FLOTUS Jill & the Other Guy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 30, 2023, 10:17:06 PM
2np post.
A fine barometer indeed. FWIW, in the ed biz an EdD is right up there with doctor of homeopathic medicine:
John LeFevre @JohnLeFevre A simple way of framing the bias and pettiness of the NYT: In the same article, they write “Ben Carson” and “Dr. Jill Biden.” He grew up in poverty during the Civil Rights movement, graduated from Yale, and became a renowned brain surgeon. She was Hunter’s babysitter and Joe’s mistress, got her EdD as a Senator’s wife, and briefly taught community college English.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2023, 05:47:04 AM
"A simple way of framing the bias and pettiness of the NYT: In the same article, they write “Ben Carson” and “Dr. Jill Biden.” He grew up in poverty during the Civil Rights movement, graduated from Yale, and became a renowned brain surgeon. She was Hunter’s babysitter and Joe’s mistress, got her EdD as a Senator’s wife, and briefly taught community college English."
How very telling.
Title: Dr. Jill's dissertation
Post by: ccp on October 31, 2023, 08:06:23 AM
My goodness, what unmitigated twaddle. Reads like the papers that would show up at the community college writing center I was a tutor for BEFORE a serious edit. And I know it’s a quirk, but I think that people that double space after periods when using a proportional font are candidates for protective restraint.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2023, 07:49:03 PM
1Hey! I don't know what proportional font is but I do double space!
Title: The Old Gray Hag Employs a Hitler Fan
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 31, 2023, 07:49:10 PM
It’s worth noting Weiss considered herself a liberal until witnessing nonsense like this while writing for the NYT:
1Hey! I don't know what proportional font is but I do double space!
A proportional font is one where smaller letters take up less room in a typed line than a large one as an “i” requires less space than an “m.” Back in the bad-old-typewritten days, non-proportional fonts like Courier where every letter was given the same amount of line real estate were the norm, necessitating a double space after a period so the reader had a visual cue that one thought had ended and a new one begun.
Once proportional fonts came on the scene a single space proved to be enough of a visual cue after a period for readers, so much so that a double space became superfluous. Don’t believe me? Go find a publication that lists an editor using double spaces after periods. To old editing salts like me double spaces after periods look like a written version of proudly parading about w/ one’s fly down: something too obvious to not see, though the owner of the undies on full display manages to somehow miss it anyway.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2023, 05:09:17 AM
OTOH the elderly eyes of old curmudgeons like me appreciate the clarity of the visual clue of double space :-D
Title: Factual Journalism, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Schellenberger
Post by: DougMacG on November 03, 2023, 11:59:27 AM
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 10, 2023, 03:20:54 PM
honest *satire*
so no reason to apologize for this image
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2023, 03:38:39 PM
Living its credo of "Democracy dies in the darkness".
A peak moment of irony.
Title: Palestinian Transubstantiation: How “Non-Combatants” are Created
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 10, 2023, 06:52:47 PM
Check out this Hamas footage. How many of the combatants are in uniform while fighting the IDF? None. When they'll meet their maker, how do you think the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry will describe them? You're right: "civilians". Another reason to question everything they say.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth, Peggy Noonan
Post by: DougMacG on November 13, 2023, 08:35:53 AM
Latest article of Scott Johnson at Powerline and links to past articles detailing Peggy Noonan's rapid decline, yet she still holds valuable real estate on the WSJ editorial page.
(Doug). Let's see, she endorsed Obama, Biden and Harris but is still a great conservative thinker. Without using profanity I would just say, not possible.
Here own judgments don't pass her own smell tests.
I used to highly admire her.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 13, 2023, 09:32:16 AM
Noonan falls into the waste basket of other supposed prominent ex "Conservatives":
Scarborough George Will Nicolle Wallace Michael Steele Margaret Hoover
to name a few off the top of my head
Yes, I get hating Trump as I do, but that does not mean the response should be to act, speak and become a Democrat!!!
The enemies are still the Democrats!
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2023, 01:57:14 PM
I appreciate that article on Noonan. A lot of specifics there of which I was unaware.
Title: US Pravdas Ignore Hamas Protest at the DNC
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 15, 2023, 08:52:22 PM
Pretty amusing: lotta tweets about the DNC being evacuated due to about 200 no doubt “mostly peaceful” pro-Hamas protesters at the DNC’s DC office facility as Capital Police in riot gear arrive on scene. Nothing about it in the WaPo, NYT, WSJ among other media sources save Reuters:
https://apple.news/ApVdlSFXOSD6X5jOkDXHSbQ
Were it 200 people wearing red MAGA hats (with at least %25 of them being FBI plants, no doubt) the apocalyptic reporting would be insufferably difficult to avoid.
Title: This is How They Do It
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 16, 2023, 12:11:05 PM
DNC Jewish front group hires itself to create a poll claiming ¾ of all US Jews support Biden:
'Journalism, cover the stories of the day, with a pillow, until they stop breathing.'
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: DougMacG on November 17, 2023, 07:13:49 AM
Notable quote:
"You can’t fight a firehose of falsehood with a squirt gun of truth."
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
Title: The March that no one heard about
Post by: ccp on November 17, 2023, 07:20:22 AM
Just sent email to someone who helped organize bus trip to DC for march and inquired as to what estimate number of attendees she would attest to. I am unclear if the estimate of close to 300 K is about right or not since the MSM ignored the whole thing
Levin states that both the WP and NYT reported on it on ~ pps 20 and 21.
I think he said one of them had one crappy picture that only should the heads of several marchers rather then view of the 100s of thousands and reported that the number of attendees was in the "thousands"
I almost went. Bough ticket had reservation but then after finding out the physical requirements and the entire schedule from 5 AM to 10 PM from door to door I did not think I could physically do it. Donated my ticket and another donation to the cause.
If 5 white supremacists showed up at a rally the MSM would be all over it screaming how white right wing supremacy is on the rise and the biggest threat to democracy.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2023, 07:45:56 AM
I am rather consistently hearing the number 290,000 on FOX and other friendly sources. The footage and pics I have seen fully support that.
One of my top students and his wife (the Uke descended Russian Jew now American whom I have referenced here various times) went as did another student of mine.
Title: Using the Passive Voice to Conceal Active Atrocity
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 17, 2023, 08:12:34 PM
Pay no attention to what created the corpse behind the curtain:
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on November 20, 2023, 08:49:41 PM
" I am rather consistently hearing the number 290,000 on FOX and other friendly sources. The footage and pics I have seen fully support that.
One of my top students and his wife (the Uke descended Russian Jew now American whom I have referenced here various times) went as did another student of mine."
Thank you for that info.
Which makes all the more disgusting how the MSM ignored it!
But if 10 to 20 white supremacists show up somewhere such as in Wisconsin we read headlines:
"White supremacists marching in Madison!!!!!"
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2023, 05:45:11 AM
Yup.
Title: NRO nails Pravda on the Potomac POTP as pro-Hamas
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2023, 09:49:38 AM
Paraphrasing Ronald reagan, it's not that (the Left) is ignorant, it's that so much of what they know isn't so.
Of course Joe was involved in the business, and the business was shaking down people for money. Who got Hunter onto taxpayer flights? Who came to the dinners? Who posed for the pictures? Who got their policies implemented? Who watched the money roll in, millions of dollars? Who benefited from that? Are they trying to say he's stupid? Didn't know what was going on? Better not answer that.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on December 14, 2023, 08:11:02 AM
" Of course he was involved in the business, and the business was shaking down people for money. Who got Hunter onto taxpayer flights? Who came to the dinners? Who posed for the pictures? Who got their policies implemented? Who watched the money roll in, millions of dollars? Who benefited from that? Are they trying to say he's stupid? Didn't know what was going on? Better not answer that."
Prof John Turley says what we all know:
the DNC media response
"but there is zero/no proof Joe did anything wrong" is simply mind boggling.
He has never seen such lying across the DNC / media board.
VDH - nihilism on steroids in a fashion never before seen in the US
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2023, 12:37:27 PM
POTH gets more shameless and arrogant every day.
Title: POTH Editor Looks Captain Obvious in the Eye
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 16, 2023, 09:33:54 PM
Funny , 90% of the media is DNC Leftist propaganda.
Today Alexdouche(rod) was on CNN I think, and was calling out Trump for admiring Putin
To bad the other person did not respond "really Axel" and say this:
Under your faux idol Obama, Putin took over Crimea Under Biden he invaded Ukraine Under Trump Putin stayed within his borders.........
perhaps that would shut his yap for a few minutes
Title: Re: Chris Hayes Trump used propaganda to brainwash
Post by: DougMacG on December 19, 2023, 05:05:10 AM
The economy after the Republican tax bill (and before covid) was so good you didn't need propaganda to spread the word. It came to all sectors, exactly the opposite of what was told, only for the rich. Headlines told us how much and how irresponsibly Republicans cut taxes and then growth was so great that revenues increased anyway. We achieved the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment in history. Those are not economic indicators to sneeze at. Those are accomplishments so great that Pres. Biden with his Pres. Obama advisers tried to steal them as his own.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, AP: "Conservative Weapon"
Post by: DougMacG on January 03, 2024, 06:10:37 AM
When the Dems or Left have a scandal, the story is about "Conservative Attacks".
You'd think the msm got the memo on that and would avoid fitting perfectly into their caricature. But no ...
The Associated Press Headline: Harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism Story by By COLLIN BINKLEY and MORIAH BALINGIT, AP Education Writers •
I'm sorry but what the hell do conservatives have to do with her academic fraud? No one else looked into it?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2024, 06:55:11 AM
Regarding AP: Jesse Waters had a segment the other night about how AP is taking "donations" from global warming groups to hire more reporters to cover , , , drum roll , , , global warming.
Title: Gay Resignation a Win for Alt Media?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 03, 2024, 09:04:43 PM
Title: Six take aways from town hall yesterday as per CNN slant
Post by: ccp on January 05, 2024, 09:09:53 AM
#1 their take on the evil Trump (of course this is CNN after all)
#2 DeSantis tried to appeal to broader electorate
#3 discussed guns (of course this is CNN after all)
#4 Nikki on her Civil War answer (of course this is CNN after all)
#5 abortion (of course this is CNN after all)
#6 there expectations
Nothing about how they disagree with Biden, or his failures immigration economy foreign policy, expanding racial division etc. in this review . Just cherry pick the left agenda points to take home. :roll:
Title: Epstein Misdirection
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 05, 2024, 10:06:52 PM
she can't even mention "his" name! censors his victory speech!
As much as I wanted someone other then Trump I would love to see him win for many reasons one big one being to stick it back into the faces of MSM clowns like Madcow.
Has Alexdouche on CNN been witnessed to have his drawn depressed face since he results yet. Presumably Obama was on his knees last night begging Michelle to run. "don't worry baby, I'll tell you everything you need to know and do"
:-D
Title: Biden called "your boy ", "my boy"
Post by: ccp on January 16, 2024, 08:28:34 AM
watch Jen Psaki and Black Michael Steele call Joe Biden "my boy"
can anyone imagine the uproar if the other way around?
Title: President Herbert Hoover's great granddaughter interview Sununu
Post by: ccp on January 21, 2024, 09:43:36 AM
and of course the conversation is directed towards trying to bash DJT
Sununu is clearly a Rino but he makes honest points about Trump. The interview gets very hot at the 15:30 mark as the Hoover just can't get over how Sununu will in the end vote for Trump the presumed nominee:
Title: "Republicans say"
Post by: ccp on February 03, 2024, 08:30:26 AM
This is so annoying .
Instead of ever saying what is obvious to any open minded objective observer MSM seems to preface any criticism of Biden or democrats by saying :
"republicans say"
as though it is just political gamesmamship and not the truth or valid in any way.
if Republicans say it , it must be nonsense conspiracy stuff. and they never preface with "democrats say"
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2024, 08:44:36 AM
From BBG's post:
"The old model went away: you had an oligopoly over both advertisers & readers, and real-estate agents and car dealers paid for your social purpose. Now they don’t need you.”
To which I would add that revenues are now driven by clicks on Social Media, hence the tendency to click-bait headlines and articles.
Title: DIP: Deceptive Imagery Persuasive
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2024, 08:51:17 AM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cwS5HQFWKSU
Title: Big Brother has something he wants you to think , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2024, 01:52:36 PM
"Chief of Border Patrol (BTW it is border *PROTECTION* not "patrol") just said exactly that"
To Senator John Kennedy.
Many chiefs would say great bill for a 15 % raise :roll:
Title: Captain Obvious Eludes The Hill
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 08, 2024, 02:01:05 PM
I’m putting this here because, as Doug and I believe others have pointed out, there are already laws on the books that could be enforced, many of which Biden made a Big Deal out of NOT enforcing as he entered office. Does The Hill note this? Off narrative so nope. Oh, and the Border Patrol approves of this plan? Do you think maybe perhaps by chance that has something to do with the 15% bribe raise embedded in this bit of smoke and mirrors. Does The Hill bother to connect those obvious dots? Was that question rhetorical? How ‘bout this one?
White House pits immigration deal collapse as GOP vs. Border Patrol Border Patrol Union endorses Senate border deal •The Hill News / by Alex Gangitano / February 08, 2024 at 02:38PM
The White House on Thursday framed the bipartisan border security deal collapse as a move by Republicans that contradicts Border Patrol, which endorsed the deal.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a memo that law enforcement’s situation at the U.S. southern border is getting “more urgent” and that Border Patrol has asked Congress for more funding.
“But congressional Republicans — highlighting Donald Trump’s fear that securing the border would hurt his personal politics — keep slamming the door in the face of the brave men and women at the border. Congressional Republicans have been happy to say ‘yes’ to border photo ops for years,” Bates said. “Now, DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is running out of money for its removal operations and detention capacity.”
“Congressional Republicans are saying ‘no.’ They are choosing Donald Trump, smugglers, and fentanyl traffickers over law enforcement at the border,” he added.
In remarks earlier this week, President Biden highlighted that the bill had the backing of the National Border Patrol Council, the border patrol union that endorsed Trump in 2020. He blamed Trump, who came out in opposition of the legislation, for torpedoing the bill for political reasons and accused him of trying to intimidate Republican lawmakers into opposing the bill.
Bates, in the memo, also argued that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “mocked” Border Patrol for their support of the bipartisan bill when he said on Fox News, “I think it does have something to do with the pay structure that's in the bill.”
“Unfortunately, this is a pattern for House Republicans — in front of TV cameras, they claim to support law enforcement. But then they turn around and vote ‘no’ when it matters,” Bates added.
Biden’s reelection campaign also has framed the collapse of the deal as Republicans preventing Border Patrol agents from having resources. The campaign called out Trump on Wednesday for standing in the way of resources going to Border Patrol agents to handle the situation.
Title: TANGLE
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2024, 09:20:09 AM
I have posted two items today from TANGLE.
I am on its mailing list and today is the first day I have given it a proper read. Though I disagree with certain things, I am definitely intrigued by today. Seems to be sincere in its search for integrity in analysis.
Title: The Left Only Protects Reporters that Parrot the Party Line
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 01, 2024, 10:28:28 AM
More travails for one of the (then) CBS reporters to that broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, among other stories unflattering to both Repub and Dem administrations:
Title: Medhi Hasan on Newsnation's Cuomo
Post by: ccp on March 02, 2024, 12:27:45 PM
Suddenly, now that Trump takes his defense to the SCOTUS it is no longer a legal story - it is a political story . How screw ball is this? The whole story from the beginning was a "political" story not a "legal" story as soon as Dems twist the laws to fit prosecutions of Trump.
But no, Medhi claims it has only become political now that a conservative leaning SCOTUS might rule in Trump's favor. He also is another one to call for Court packing claiming that is what Repubs did to get the Conservative majority .
To make it all about the dangers of Trump threat to all women (though Dems cannot define for us what women are anymore) https://www.yahoo.com/news/jill-biden-puts-donald-trump-200023176.html
WHAT IS REALLY AMAZING IS SHE IS NOT CAMPAIGNING ON HER HUSBAND'S RECORD.
We all know why.
She should be charged with elder abuse, for not letting her husband retire.
Biden has been TERRIBLE for women.
Latest NYT poll, 48% STRONGLY DISAPPROVE of the job he has been doing (the job SHE has been doing). That includes a lot of women strongly disapproving.
Trump did not strike down Roe v Wade, the Court overturned a badly decided case (like it did with Dred Scott and Plessy), and Trump has been the MODERATE on new abortion restrictive laws. What has Biden been moderate on since the Left puppeteers took him over?
Also, Trump didn't stick his finger up Tara Reade. Why is JILL keeping those personnel records from us while Trump is civilly charged for something way less credible with no evidence available. If we had any kind of media, they would be screaming for release of those records.
The main economic dissatisfaction with Biden and the Democrats is INFLATION. Does DOCTOR JILL not know that hurts women and children disproportionately?
There oughtta be a rule that pets and spouses stay out of the White House - at least during business hours. Did she bother to leave the White House for her attack politicking? Does she have security clearance. Those documents, same as Trump was charged felonies for were in her house too.
Isn't she as complicit as Joe in Hunter's business. She is there every minute to protect him, sees all the goings on, benefits financially from it and does nothing to stop it - all these years. She's doctor, why can't she pay the part of the household expenses that Joe needed Hunter's help with?
Sticking with her priorities, tell us what's so exciting and freeing about killing your unborn? What happened to safe, legal and rare? Joe was pro-life and Catholic most of his life. But political pressures and opportunism TRUMP core principles - and life of the most innocent.
Let's get one thing clear. She's not looking out for Joe's best interest. She looking out for hers.
Title: PJ media = CNN "collapse?"
Post by: ccp on March 03, 2024, 07:55:48 AM
Fox news 1.3 million viewers while better is not good either. Bill O'Reilly points out it was 4 million + when he was there
Cable news is bleeding out.
I don't know where I will get my news from.
I don't do FB or TT.
Is that where everyone is going?
Building my own RSS feed with Feedly.com. FWIW since I started w/ Feedly several years ago other RSS aggregators have come along, some with better ratings than Feedly in sundry app stores, but it's where I got started & I don't want to put the effort into migrating & learning the new app isn't one I like.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2024, 05:55:37 AM
Ummm , , , Clueless Boomer here.
What is a RSS feed?
Title: Your Daily Dose of Schadenfreude
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 04, 2024, 06:00:47 PM
Yes. He is excellent. And wow, is she obnoxious. He is SO restrained to not at least say, hey I don't talk over you when I don't like what you say.
When you have core principles and focus, you don't get confused by diversional questions.
BTW, the Trump argument they started with is a pretty good one. US slavery has been gone for 160 years, but we keep telling all blacks they are still being persecuted and plenty of them feel it. If so, doesn't it make you emphasize with the person facing the most public persecution imaginable? Yes, wrongful imprisonment is like slavery. That's not a reach and it's not racist.
I like that he repeatedly combined what black voters want with what all voters want. Black issues, women's issues, gay issues, these are American issues. Stop dividing us all up into pieces.
Title: First of all it was not *rape*
Post by: ccp on March 10, 2024, 11:25:50 AM
what about NY state passing a low to singularly allow Caroll / Conway to bring this case in front of Leftist judge and jury.
" In May, a jury did not find Trump liable for the alleged rape but awarded Carroll $5 million after finding the former president liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. "
IT WAS NOT **RAPE**! you lying sleeze Stephanopolous !
Title: Joe is so kind he is spreading 100s of billions across US
Post by: ccp on March 11, 2024, 09:21:46 AM
any idiot leader could tell us he is so wonderful and spend like mad. Then when Congress puts a stop to it the media will tell us how mean Congress is.
Then when questions about the debt are raised - we will be told the problem is the rich do not pay their fair share
And the cycle of BS goes on for infinity
as does our debt.
Title: 2nd post
Post by: ccp on March 11, 2024, 09:46:26 AM
Could Trump sue George Stephanopolous for slander?
GS kept saying over and over again Trump was found guilty of "rape". That is an outright lie meant solely to damage Trump.
Why not sue NBC and GS ?
Title: Re: 2nd post
Post by: DougMacG on March 11, 2024, 09:56:27 AM
"Could Trump sue George Stephanopolous for slander?" -------------------------------------------------------
Wouldn't you think so? Stephie can pay Trump's outstanding slander bill. But no. We have these strange public figure laws. You can say anything you want about Trump all day long. A legal expert will have to explain how and where those lines are drawn. Dominion voting machines sold all over the world are not a public figure?
https://www.minclaw.com/public-figure-defamation/
Title: headline:White Lawyer Fired After Calling Black Judge 'Animal'
Post by: ccp on March 11, 2024, 10:12:34 AM
NO
he called her a *political* animal
which has totally different meaning and is NOT RACIST as headline tries to imply.
Title: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues, SNL mocking rape?
Post by: DougMacG on March 11, 2024, 12:30:47 PM
Or were the just mocking the person who wants to bring a huge and horrible problem to the forefront? Same thing.
Left is having a field day mocking Sen. Britt with her story of migrant rape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WcdSjGDPsI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40-Ebdt_0QA
Am I the only one offended?
Libs can't make the connection so I'll help. Biden is leaving the border open on purpose and now cartels are now in control of it. Rape and human trafficking are the rule not the exception. It's affecting MILLIONS. Fentanyl killing our people is the other product coming in. 80,000 known terrorists too, coming to kill us. Or do terrorists come to make a better life for themselves? (Out of 9 million people that doesn't mean they're all terrorists.) Chinese spies coming too. Not all the Chinese coming are spies but some/many are.
And not one Leftist nor their amoral followers gives a damn.
Moderate, retiring Sen. Mitt Romney thinks Sen Britt should be VP: https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/03/10/mitt-romney-issues-complete-total-endorsement-katie-britt-vice-presidential-pick/ Tells you what kind of an extremist she isn't.
PS Timing of the rape wasn't important when they were pretending to believe Justice Kavanaugh did it 37 years prior, or was it 36, or 38?
We may have to merge the Left and the Media threads, seeing no difference.
The Academy Awards Itself was on yet another Trump hating network with nothing but Trump hating people laughing more about that than their movies.
I hate to mention when Trump is right, but he is the front man. They really hate you, me, us, anyone who opposes them, no matter how far over the dangerous cliff or loony fringe they go.
Title: media mocks the truth
Post by: ccp on March 11, 2024, 01:12:29 PM
"Left is having a field day mocking Sen. Britt with her story of migrant rape."
yes divert attention away from the reality of rape murder human trafficking on the border by claiming her story was 10 y o and has NOTHING TO due with their beloved candidate.
It is worth noting some other firsts: Mexico’s crime syndicates and their paramilitary forces have never earned so much money from cross-border smuggling, and it is reported that their proceeds from human smuggling are surpassing those from drug smuggling for the first time.
yet the LEFT mocks because they believe all this will wipe out Republicans power which of course is the goal.
Title: Meghan Kelly hits back at Stephanopolous
Post by: ccp on March 11, 2024, 07:36:54 PM
Remember when you little shit went after all the "bimbos" "nuts/sluts" with James Carville who quite legitimately accused Clinton of rape (in one case) and sexual assault and you , you little shit did everything you could to destroy them?
remember that you little shit?
and with the approval of self-appointed world's leading feminist Hillary.
Oh but now suddenly you are a champion of a woman who make totally nonsensical claims she was raped in the department store.
She can't remember hardly any of it. two friends of hers (who surely are crats) claim oh yeah they remember she mentioned it 30 yrs ago and law changed just to get Trump
how about that you little shit.
time to go after little shits like him.......
Title: Re: Megyn Kelly hits back hard at Stephanopolous!
Post by: DougMacG on March 12, 2024, 08:45:29 AM
Hey ccp, This is a really good and deserving takedown of George Stephanopoulus. Your paraphrasing of it is perfect. Somehow she does exactly that without lowering her own professionalism.
Everyone should read this. It's hard hitting (understatement), detailed and sourced. He is a slimeball who never should have been hired (we knew that then) and should be fired today. Somehow he was missed by the 'me too' movement. Is that over now? Can't they still come back and get him? Of course not, he has privilege. And that movement, as it applied to the Left, was just a fad. They only wanted Trump.
George S' behavior now is despicable. His behavior then was criminal in my view, enabling harassment, assault, rape and just general rotten treatment of women that they pretend to abhor when Trump or whoever on the right is accused. These things really happened. State troopers testified etc. Clinton was disbarred for being caught lying under oath about it. Semen on the dress. Impeachment, the real kind. Almost removed. The public shaming and destroying of the accusers just enabled the abuse and encouraged more of it. But little Stephie never paid a price for his central role. Just the opposite. He holds a position in high esteem, and then reverts to same behavior shaming sexual assault and rape victims, right from the network host, moderator's desk. No one calls him out on it, or calls the network out on it. And then in steps Megyn!
Having a JD background shows through in a couple of aspects of this. (A 51% preponderance standard in the context of an alleged criminal act is still a person presumed innocent until proven guilty in this country, except on the major networks.) And being 53 with a few battle wounds from the industry. She keeps growing and improving. The need for this kind of fighting back has never been greater.
Her best work yet.
Title: use of phrase "FAR RIGHT"
Post by: ccp on March 18, 2024, 12:55:36 PM
patriotism sovereignty nationalism
does not = Nazism
that would be like calling all Muslim immigrants murdering Jihadis, no?
Title: BBC BS: Claims Lack of Bias While Parroting Hamas
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 21, 2024, 11:33:38 AM
Curiously BBC Jewish employees report antisemetic workplace bias, yet the BBC nonetheless claims there's nothing to see here, move along and read the latest Hamas press release we've gussied up and treated like responsible journalism:
The Hamas Broadcasting Corporation The BBC has become the most powerful disseminator of murderous disinformation in the world
MELANIE PHILLIPS MAR 21, 2024
BBC Broadcasting House, London The BBC Director-General, Tim Davie, appears to be well satisfied with the broadcasting organisation he runs. He told the Commons culture, media and sport committee this week that the BBC’s news coverage of the war in Gaza was “balanced and fair”.
This is what might be called a state of terminal pathological denial.
Far from being balanced and fair, the BBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza constitutes an institutional emergency. This national and international broadcasting icon, bound by its Charter obligations to uphold the highest standards of balance and objectivity, has behaved as the broadcasting arm of Hamas.
Day after day, its news coverage and analysis of the war in Gaza has been characterised by an eye-watering degree of selective reporting, distortion and malice. It has uncritically parroted demonstrably nonsensical Hamas claims, such as “30,000+ Palestinian civilians killed” of whom “70 per cent are women and children” — with not one of those killed, apparently, being a Hamas combatant despite Israel’s estimate that it has killed 13,000 Hamas combatants so far.
Day after day, it has broadcast harrowing pictures of Gazan civilian casualties without telling its audience that, even according to Hamas’s exaggerated figures, Israel’s ratio of under 1.5 civilians killed for every combatant is a vastly lower rate of civilian casualties in war than has ever been achieved by any other country’s armed forces, including Britain and America.
It has repeatedly reported alleged atrocities, inspiring public fury and outrage, only to find days later that these were false claims. On October 17, the BBC reported that an Israeli rocket hit al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian patients and staff. As Tom Gross has noted in Sapir journal:
A further BBC news report was headlined “Indescribable Scenes at Hospital.” Perhaps the scenes at the hospital were “indescribable” because the hospital hadn’t been hit at all. It was the hospital parking lot that had been hit, producing far fewer casualties. And it had not been hit by an Israeli bomb but by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, evidently fired from a nearby cemetery. Israel doesn’t bomb hospitals.
In November, the BBC reported that Israeli troops had targeted medical staff during a raid on the al Shifa medical complex in Gaza City. In fact, what the IDF spokesperson had said was:
Our medical teams and Arabic speakers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need.
In December, the BBC accused Israeli troops of “carrying out summary executions in the Gaza Strip” of 137 Palestinian civilians and burying them in unmarked graves. Two weeks later, after pressure from Conservative MPs, it ran an apology for reporting this Hamas fabrication. But by the time it issued its grudging apologies for all these errors, the blood libels it had broadcast had incited further hatred of Israel in Britain and beyond.
The indefatigable researcher David Collier has painstakingly unearthed multiple examples of wholly compromised sources that the BBC uses for its pernicious coverage. Time after time, it relies on people who are Hamas supporters, terrorism sympathisers or Jew-haters. Collier has caught the BBC red-handed — and yet it still won’t acknowledge its gross and serial derelictions of duty.
Collier’s recent discoveries involved the BBC’s Orwellian “fact-checking” Verify team. On March 1, BBC Verify published a story about the 100-plus deaths that occurred during the chaos surrounding an aid convoy in Gaza. The story was built around the eyewitness testimony of a Palestinian journalist named Mahmoud Awadeyah, who claimed to the BBC that the Israelis had fired “purposefully” at the Gazan men approaching the aid trucks.
Collier discovered that this “journalist” worked for outlets connected to Hamas and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Collier also found him celebrating deadly terrorist attacks, along with images of him dining with a leading Islamic Jihad terrorist. In response, the BBC merely doubled down and said:
The fact that someone has expressed an opinion on social media doesn’t automatically disqualify them from giving eye-witness testimony.
So to the BBC, celebrating terrorism is “expressing an opinion”.
On March 12, Collier wrote, BBC News / BBC Verify published an exclusive story that accused Israel of abusing Gazan medical staff. Britain’s Israel-bashing Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, was quick to tell the world that this report was “very disturbing”. It was indeed; but not for the reasons he assumed.
For Collier discovered that the piece relied entirely on three Arabic speaking journalists and three “witnesses” from the hospital. He then discovered that the three journalists, two of whom worked for the BBC, had between them celebrated the October 7 pogrom, supported the Israel boycott and written hatefully about Jews. Of the three “witnesses”, the first was a doctor who in 2021 had celebrated rocket attacks against innocent Israeli civilians; the second had posted an encomium to a Palestinian terrorist; the third was an activist for Fatah who in the past had also glorified terrorism.
The BBC presumably decides that there is no need to “verify” such sources.
There’s much, much more about the BBC’s malevolent coverage of Israel on Collier’s website as well as on Honest Reporting and CAMERA UK. The endemic nature of the BBC’s animus against Israel has prompted repeated horrified protests by Danny Cohen, a former BBC director of television. He wrote this week:
The BBC has been on notice for many months that it has a serious problem with anti-Israel bias in its newsroom. This means that it has also had months to address it. And yet nothing seems to have changed. How can this happen and keep happening? The answer can only be one of two things: either senior BBC managers don’t care about this ongoing bias and are happy to let it continue, or they can’t control it. Either is a gross dereliction of their duty.
It is also a terrible failure of responsibility by the BBC in an environment in which antisemitism is exponentially on the rise and Britain’s Jewish community feels under a level of threat that many have not experienced in their lifetimes. The BBC is contributing to this poisonous atmosphere with reporting that is biased and highly emotive.
A former attorney-general, Sir Michael Ellis, told MPs last month that “the relentless bias of BBC News coverage has contributed to the record levels of intimidation and attacks on British Jews”. He said:
Dozens of current Jewish employees at the BBC are understood to have filed formal complaints about their concerns over antisemitism, describing it as a grim and frightening time to be Jewish at the corporation. The BBC’s senior management has fundamentally failed to deal with this problem and uphold its own guidelines, and the organisation now appears complicit in peddling misinformation and allowing antisemitism to fester. And in those circumstances, I have come to the conclusion that the BBC is institutionally antisemitic.
The BBC director-general wrote to staff last month to warn them about rising antisemitism. The Times (£) reported:
Tim Davie called on the organisation’s 21,000 staff to treat each other with “consideration and respect” as he indicated his discomfort with a number of antisemitic incidents that have beset the BBC. “As many of you may have seen, sadly in recent weeks we have been alerted to some antisemitic behaviour by people who worked with us,” he wrote. “I want to be clear that there can be no place at the BBC for racist abuse of any kind, whether towards our Jewish colleagues or indeed colleagues from any background or belief. Any form of antisemitism, Islamophobia or racist abuse is abhorrent, and we will always act whenever it occurs. We must play our role to build understanding and tolerance.”
Given the way these incidents have all been batted aside by senior BBC executives, and the degree to which the BBC’s shocking coverage of Israel has fanned the flames of anti-Jewish incitement, this feeble flapping of the wrist was, to put it mildly, utterly inadequate.
The influence and reach of the BBC place it in a different league from other broadcasting organisations. For decades, it was regarded as the kitemark of truthfulness and fairness, balance and objectivity. It has now become the most powerful disseminator of murderous disinformation in the world.
Title: Bobulinski threatens FOX/Tarlov with lawsuit
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2024, 03:10:35 PM
I could only watch for ~ 10 minutes All one sided left wing loons for the most part criticizing everything about him with absolutely no positive evaluation of his conservative credentials as being valid.
VICE news on cable is also a left wing hit piece on Rs.
Title: Re: VICE: dark side of the 90's : Rush Limbaugh
Post by: DougMacG on March 24, 2024, 11:15:54 AM
Rush Limbaugh spoke the truth better than perhaps anyone in the history of western civilization media .
Doesn't everyone have "talent on loan from God? Yet that is their first hit on him.
I've had very little interest in radio since he died. The signal to noise ratio is way too low, and most of the hosts don't know more than we do.
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 24, 2024, 11:25:51 AM
agree with you Doug
i don't listen to daytime radio
although I only did when Rush was on 1 to 3 PM usually when I was in the car I had a travelling job '95 to '99 consulting to hospitals so would enjoy rush when driving in between locations (and not flying)
and he helped me keep my sanity during the frustrating Clinton yrs.
I do like Mark Levin but probably listen more to podcasts then radio as he is getting harder to listen to for 1 to 2 hrs as his points are excellent and I do learn things I cannot hear anywhere else but more and more he is literally SCREAMING and it gets tiring for that reason.
I like Bill O'Reilly who is right of center and rational and logically and definitely he does bring up topics I hear no where else or hear from him first.
Others I listen to is Meghan Kelly , Newt, VDH not on radio per se but podcasts.
Dersh has his own podcast but so far have only tried once or twice .....
But no doubt I agree with you 100% - Rush was king on a daily basis. His interpretations and insights were unique.
As for the rest , they simply get their topics from news off the website like I do anyway and offer nothing more. Like the "Five" Gutfeld waters etc though Laura has some good rants summarizing things
Title: this weeks 60 minutes hit piece on Trump and Rs
Post by: ccp on March 25, 2024, 09:18:36 AM
Here is the full video: https://youtu.be/sQRX5LqCqoc?si=PTw_CoS2tVSjMcYk
Is it an interview or a debate? Kristen is so mean and bullying. Ronna comes across as very reasonable. Keeps pushing forward when she can but keeps getting shouted down and interrupted.
Meet the press, a great American institution, has been destroyed. Completely unwatchable.
--------------- Morning Joe, a threat to our narrative : https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2024/03/25/morning-joe-nbc-fire-ronna-mcdaniel-well-never-have-her-show
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on March 25, 2024, 03:51:25 PM
bottom line
the LEFT does not want us to have any voice shut us down 100%
and nothing we say should be allowed to be aired
and it is only what they want people to hear
We are seeing a total blanket frenzy of shutting us down everyway they can.
Everything we say is lies conspiracies and a threat to Democracy
I never dreamed I would see this in the US boy was I wrong
Title: Free Beacon spells out RonnaGate context
Post by: DougMacG on March 26, 2024, 07:52:57 AM
This is the biggest thing in their small world. Bigger than 10-7. Bigger than 9/11. This is a bomb dropped right in their lap.
Remember that Ronna is not a fire-breathing right winger. She is Ronna McRomney, the peacemaker in the Republican Party.
I never knew I liked her until I saw the uproar.
Free Beacon compiles a list of things that didn't offend the same parties. ------------- What in the Actual F— Is Wrong With These People? (NBC News Edition) Andrew Stiles March 25, 2024
We regret to inform you that America's journalists are in the midst of another temper tantrum. This one is in response to NBC News's decision to hire former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor. The network's own employees are in open revolt, incensed at the prospect of having to share screen time with a Republican who hasn't completely disavowed Donald Trump.
NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd, a former Democratic campaign aide, slammed NBC executives for hiring someone with "credibility issues" and a history of "gaslighting." Democratic scion Mika Brzezinski urged the network to "reconsider its decision." Host Kristen Welker issued a trigger warning over the weekend before airing her interview with McDaniel on Meet the Press. Nicolle Wallace read a passage from a book about tyranny and bemoaned the degradation of "our sacred airwaves."
It wouldn't be the first time so-called mainstream journalists have revealed themselves to be hopelessly out of touch with the average Americans they claim to care about. The partisan tantrum over McDaniel's hiring suggests they are incapable of self-awareness.
Perhaps we can look forward to further discussion of this "scandal" on Inside with Jen Psaki, the MSNBC weekend show hosted by the former press secretary to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Psaki could invite MSNBC contributor Robert Gibbs, another Obama press secretary, to share his thoughts on the matter. In the following segment, MSNBC contributor Ben Rhodes, the former Obama national security adviser who bragged about manipulating "clueless" reporters, could explain why McDaniel's hiring is good for Iran.
Better yet, MSNBC host Joy Reid could deliver an unhinged monologue denouncing the network for endorsing "white supremacy." Reid was promoted in 2020 to fill the time slot vacated by Chris Matthews, the former Democratic aide who argued it was racist to refer to Barack Obama as "Obama." Matthews resigned abruptly after being accused of sexual harassment, whereas Reid did not resign after online sleuths uncovered bigoted posts on her old blog. She blamed it on hackers. (It wasn't hackers.) She got promoted anyway.
Reid could continue the conversation with MSNBC political analyst Al Sharpton, the formerly obese racial agitator who instigated deadly anti-Semitic riots in New York City during the 1990s. Sharpton continues to use his platform on MSNBC to sow racial division. For example, he argued that criticizing Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned in disgrace earlier this year amid a flurry of scandals involving serial plagiarism and anti-Semitism on campus, was "an attack on every black woman in this country."
This is the same network that hired Martin Bashir, who compared criticizing the IRS to using the n-word and ultimately resigned after inviting his viewers to defecate in Sarah Palin's mouth. This is the network that employed Melissa Harris-Perry, best known for making fun of Mitt Romney's adopted black grandchild, and Ed Schultz, best known for calling Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut," and Brian Williams, best known for lying about coming under fire in Iraq, and Touré Neblett, a 9/11 truther accused of sexual harassment who suggested Holocaust survivors benefited from "the power of whiteness." The less said about former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann the better.
This is the network that could have broken the story of Harvey Weinstein's long history of sexual misconduct in 2017. Alas, reporter Ronan Farrow said NBC stonewalled his investigation after Weinstein leveraged his Democratic political connections and threatened to expose Today anchor Matt Lauer's own history of sexual misconduct. Farrow gave up on NBC, published his story in the New Yorker, and won the Pulitzer Prize.
NBC is hardly unique among so-called mainstream media networks. The top journalist at ABC News is George Stephanopoulos, who served as White House communications director under Bill Clinton and was exposed by the Washington Free Beacon for failing to disclose his $75,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation while reporting on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2015. The network's longtime investigative journalist, Brian Ross, was eventually forced out after reporting a false story about Donald Trump in 2018. Ross won several journalism awards in 2012, the same year he baselessly accused a Tea Party member of committing a mass shooting in Colorado.
ABC News anchor Amy Robach complained in 2019 that the network refused to air her interview with one of Jeffrey Epstein's accusers in part because it involved Prince Andrew and the network was worried about losing access to the British royal family. On a related note, Epstein threw a dinner party for Prince Andrew in 2010 following Epstein's release from prison for sex crimes. Stephanopoulos attended along with other prominent journalists, including Katie Couric and Charlie Rose.
Then there's CNN, where Dan Rather used to regularly appear on a show called Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter, the media reporter who once ran an entire segment on Donald Trump's typos. Rather was a longtime CBS News anchor until his abrupt termination in 2006 after reporting a false story about then-president George W. Bush's service record in the National Guard. Jeffrey Toobin returned to CNN as a commentator earlier this year despite announcing his "last day" at the network in 2022. He is best known for masturbating on a Zoom call with colleagues, as well as for sleeping with his coworker's daughter and then pressuring her to have an abortion.
These are the people who are mad at NBC News for hiring a Republican. They still can't figure out why most Americans don't trust journalists to tell the truth. They don't deserve to be taken seriously. They are full of shit.
Title: "bloodbath"
Post by: ccp on March 26, 2024, 08:19:27 AM
So she goes on MSDNC and lies to us daily and gets rich doing so.
Title: Judas Scarborough
Post by: ccp on March 27, 2024, 08:16:06 AM
net worth pops up at 20 million
we know he wasn't rich prior to MSDNC gig
like this.
Ken Buck wants to get rich now too.
Title: The C-Clamp & High Toe Gives it Away to Those in the Know
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 27, 2024, 02:18:21 PM
Some great points made here. The unwashed masses have no ability to look at this pic and understand what all is connoted to someone well versed in firearm use, but that doesn’t keep our media overlords from making political hay:
If the anti-gun argument is so strong, why does their every argument rely on deceptions if not outright falsehoods?
Title: Meghan Kelly on drudgereport
Post by: ccp on March 28, 2024, 09:13:28 AM
there was some talk on her show that reports indicated Trump made fun or disparaged Drudge at Mar a Lago and word got back to Drudge
If true just another instance where the big mouth screwed himself (and thus us) in the ass as we see Drudge now is 100% anti Trump / Maga 24/7
Title: Re: Meghan Kelly on drudgereport
Post by: DougMacG on March 28, 2024, 12:03:55 PM
Maybe so but I think something else happened. It was speculated that it was sold. Drudge must have had a non-disclosure because he wouldn't speak about the change.
It used to be one of the top sites on the internet. He broke the story of Monica Lewinsky. I think Breitbart worked for him.
Then one day you and I noticed there were nothing but left-wing stories there.
Now it seems that Drudge isn't one of the top 1000 websites in the world. https://ahrefs.com/top
Title: Who Needs Buried Ledes When they can be Swung Like a Hatchet Instead?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 28, 2024, 05:37:13 PM
Check out this lede from a story on Trump in The Hill:
“Country musician Lee Greenwood is defending the “God Bless the USA” Bibles he's selling in partnership with former President Trump, who is set to go on trial next month over hush money payments made to an adult film star.“
Jeepers, Hill, you figure you might want to mention that the gent making the “hush money” claim is a convicted perjurer? Or explain why a “news” story opts to embrace editorial irony by segueing from bibles to porn? Nah, that would remove the ad hominem power of the lede….
I’ve been viewing various woebegone “loss of trust in institutions” pieces of late. The fact those moaning the loudest seem oblivious to this sort of hatchet job speaks volumes.
Title: Associated Press Has No Shame
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 01, 2024, 11:05:49 AM
AP actively supports the Hamas narrative while turning a blind eye to events occurring literally outside their front door in Gaza:
Hamas-shielding AP went too far By seeking a journalism prize for its propaganda, AP showed it is irredeemably evil APR 01, 2024
Never write angry, but this injustice is so outrageous, I might be tempted to think that self-righteous anger is a good thing in this case. But self-righteous anger belongs to God alone for He knows far more than we ever will.
So I will stick to my lane and try to deal in a calm manner with the unadulterated evil of the Associated Press. Under leadership no longer moored to facts or objectivity, it has become a worldwide propagandist for Hamas and other Islamic terrorists. Commies, too.
AP just won an award for its pro-terrorist coverage of the Palestinian attack on Israel. People call it Hamas but it is just like blaming only the Nazis for World War II because the vast majority of Germans — like the Palestinians now — were all in favor of destroying Jews and anyone else who got in their way.
For years, AP’s bureau in Gaza City provided cover for the military intelligence of Hamas. As long as AP was in there, Israel could not bomb the place.
This was an open secret. Matti Friedman wrote of it in The Atlantic in 2014:
When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)
So Hamas as launching rockets protected from exposure by AP for years. Finally, Israel had enough in 2021 and called up AP and gave its staff an hour to vamoose before the IDF destroyed the building. The AP played dumb. Its president and CEO at the time, Gary Pruitt, “We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building. This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
No indication?
The Atlantic article was every indication that Pruitt or anyone else in management needed. The magazine laid out how AP and the rest of the news organizations do the bidding of Hamas. AP hired Hamas-approved local writers and photojournalists and failed to disclose this to readers and the news groups that paid AP for stories and photos.
If AP was not doing that — as Pruitt implied — then AP management had a duty to fight this defamation.
But it was not defamation. It was the truth — the very kryptonite of the modern news organization. And so Pruitt and the rest of the people who are supposed to make sure AP’s sticks to journalism ignored the story. They hoped it would go away.
And it did go away until October 7, 2023, when Palestinians broke the 15th ceasefire between Israel and its various attackers over the past nearly eight decades. The Palestinians raped, tortured and murdered 1,400 Jews, torturing their bodies afterward. It was a sneak attack that AP knew about in advance because when the attackers attacked, AP was there to record the savagery.
Or so a lawsuit claims.
The New York Post reported in February, “Several survivors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel have accused the Associated Press in a new lawsuit of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization by using freelance photojournalists believed to be embedded with the violent militants.
“The plaintiffs — Israeli-Americans and Americans who attended the Nova music festival raided by Hamas as well as loved ones of victims — are suing the news outlet for damages under the Antiterrorism Act, according to the federal complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida Wednesday night.
“They are being represented by lawyers working with the nonprofit National Jewish Advocacy Center who accuse the major media company of ‘materially supporting terrorism’ by paying alleged Hamas-associated photojournalists for images captured during and immediately after the Oct. 7 invasion.”
The lawsuit says, “There is no doubt that AP’s photographers participated in the October 7th massacre, and that AP knew, or at the very least should have known, through simple due diligence, that the people they were paying were longstanding Hamas affiliates and full participants in the terrorist attack that they were also documenting.”
The Post said, “the majority of the complaint focuses on one photojournalist, Hassan Eslaiah — who has been accused of being a Hamas associate even before the terrorist groups’ bloody invasion of Israel.”
He’s the one being smooched by the Hamas commander in the photo.
Now if I faced such serious allegations, I would refrain from drawing attention to it, but AP believes it is untouchable. AP submitted the work of Eslaiah and 5 other tag-along terrorists for a journalism award. It is called spiking the ball.
AP tells readers these are just freelance photographers, but when it comes to promoting an award, they are members of Team AP.
The Organizer reported, “Freelance photojournalist Ali Mahmud, who contributed to the Associated Press and accompanied the Hamas terrorists during the October 7, 2024 attack in Israel has won the Team Picture Story of the Year awarded by Donald Reynolds Journalism Institute in the United States for the photograph of Shani Louk who was paraded naked by the Hamas terrorists before killing her.”
It’s like giving Hitler an award for the lampshade he made.
Make no mistake, this is just as evil. Those photos are trophies displayed by these terrorists on AP’s payroll. The story was polite — “Ali Mahmud is one of the journalists that travelled with terrorists into Israel and extensively covered the attack” — but these are military photographers in the Palestinian army.
My how times have changed. 14 years ago, Hearst Newspapers forced Helen Thomas to resign after she said Israelis should go back to Europe. Now such sentiment wins you an award, especially if you help terrorize Israelis.
Journalists generally are an untrustworthy group of gougers, as Breitbart reminded readers over the weekend.
It reported, “Journalists in the White House press corps covering President Joe Biden’s administration habitually steal insignia items from Air Force One, four people told West Wing Playbook.
“The looting reportedly grew to such a degree under Biden’s tenure that the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, NBC correspondent Kelly O’Donnell, issued a terse reminder that stealing from Air Force One is not allowed, several individuals who saw the off-the-record email confirmed to Playbook.”
The thieves took:
Wine glasses Tumblers Gold-rimmed plates Embroidered pillowcases Of course they have no ethics, which is why no one should be surprised that Hamas terrorists would win a journalism award.
AP is not good at its propaganda because the majority of Americans still support Israel over the barbarians who include AP journalists.
It has not been easy for Israel. Obama and the rest of the American left (as well as the useless dolts at the UN) have played a big roll in deflecting attention from what Hamas did into lies about hospitals being bombed. Gaza City seems to have the world’s highest hospitals per capita level in the world.
That’s because Gaza City is one big human shield for an underground military base.
And AP’s office may have moved but it is still an intricate part of that shield. It is hypocritical of AP to complain about Trump’s treatment of the press while voluntarily serving as a PR team for terrorists. Is it money from a payoff or just deep-seated anti-Semitism?
Title: Re: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2024, 11:26:05 AM
The MSM is suddenly almost all in the Palestinian narrative now.
seems to correlate with Biden needing Michigan votes....
Title: About that Attack on the Judge’s “Child …”
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 01, 2024, 10:50:47 PM
… the “child” in question in a 25 year old digital media lobbyist that has done over $10 million work for Adam Schiff.
Thank goodness for honest journalists like Julie Kelly and her investigative skills:
Ties Between Judge Merchan's "Child" and Adam Schiff Represent Major Conflict in Hush Money Trial Loren Merchan's firm was paid $4 million by Adam Schiff at the same time he conspired with Michael Cohen to take down Donald Trump. Cohen will be a witness in Judge Merchan's courtroom next month.
JULIE KELLY APR 01, 2024
At the end of 2019, Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was leading the first impeachment effort against President Donald Trump.
After months of making accusations and conducting Congressional inquiries related to Trump’s July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—a conversation Democrats described as a “quid pro quo” attempting to trade military aid for an investigation into the Biden family’s corrupt business deals—Schiff and six other Democrats delivered articles of impeachment to the Senate in January 2020.
That same month, Schiff’s campaign committee paid a new Chicago-based consulting firm $600,000 for digital media buys presumably to spread the word via email, text, and social media/online advertisements that the California congressman planned to oust Trump.
The firm, Authentic Campaigns, is headed by Loren Merchan, the 34-year-old daughter of the New York judge now overseeing the so-called hush money case against Trump. Judge Juan Merchan just set an April 15 trial date for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s multi-count indictment accusing Trump of falsifying business records related to a payout made to former porn star Stormy Daniels over an alleged sexual encounter. (Trump repeatedly denies the allegation.)
Contrary to hand-wringing assertions that the former president and his allies are unfairly “attacking” Judge Merchan’s “child,” Loren Merchan’s lucrative contracts with some of Trump’s most prolific enemies are fair game.
Her ties to Schiff are especially troubling given Schiff’s role in refurbishing the reputation of one of Bragg’s star witnesses: disbarred lawyer and convicted perjurer Michael Cohen.
The Fixer, The Child, and Shifty Schiff
According to Federal Election Commission reports, Schiff’s campaign committee paid Authentic Campaigns more than $3.7 million for digital media acquisitions between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020. In addition to the media buys, Schiff paid Authentic Campaigns $215,000 for “digital consulting fees.”
During the same time period that Merchan’s firm raked in nearly $4 million, Schiff turned Cohen, Trump’s lawyer who paid Daniels $130,000 allegedly to keep quiet before the 2016 election, against his former client.
Merchan’s work for Trump’s biggest antagonist on Capitol Hill helped her earn a coveted “rising star” award from Campaign & Elections magazine in 2020. As president and partner of Authentic Campaigns, the editors swooned, Merchan “is setting new benchmarks'' in the digital media space by “doing ground-breaking, historical work for clients like Jon Tester, Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, and others.”
But that client list represented Trump’s basis for asking Judge Merchan to step down from the case. (Trump’s attorneys also cited Merchan’s attempts to pressure former Trump Organization CEO Allen Weisselberg into accepting a plea deal on tax fraud charges. Weisselberg took the plea offer; Merchan then sentenced the 75-year-old veteran with no criminal record to serve five months at Rikers Island, one of the most dangerous prisons in the country.)
“Your Honor should recuse himself from this case,” Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles, Trump’s defense attorneys, wrote in May 2023. “Your Honor’s daughter’s close connection to President Trump’s political adversaries and her work at, and financial interest in, a firm which is deeply engrained with Democratic politics raises real and legitimate concerns about this Court’s impartiality. The financial well-being of Your Honor’s daughter depends at least in part on the success of Authentic. And Authentic’s business model is one that requires it to attack President Trump and support individuals and causes in direct competition with President Trump.”
Merchan, who has presided over numerous Trump-related cases and will oversee the May trial of longtime Trump confidant Steve Bannon in New York for alleged fraud, denied Trump’s request in August 2023.
Denouncing Trump’s “speculative and hypothetical scenarios” as to how the judge and his daughter would profit off the court proceedings against Trump, Merchan attached to his order a three-page analysis by the New York Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics to bolster his decision not to recuse.
The committee concluded that the case does not “directly or indirectly” involve Merchan’s daughter. Further, the committee opined, Loren Merchan’s business is “not a [party] or likely [witness] in the matter.”
While perhaps the assessment is technically true, the suggestion that Merchan’s business is unrelated to the proceedings before her father’s court is provably false. Schiff’s testimonial on the Authentic Campaign website bragged how the company “helped me build a digital program that exceeded all my expectations.” Schiff further noted that the firm “allowed me to connect with supporters across California and the country.”
Did that involve using Michael Cohen, who is expected to testify on behalf of the prosecution in Judge Merchan’s courtroom next month, as part of the company’s digital campaign to raise money for Schiff? After all, the $4 million figure paid to Merchan’s firm in 2019 and 2020 represents almost 40 percent of the total disbursements paid out by Schiff’s committee that cycle—no small amount. Did Loren Merchan advise Schiff on any matter related to Cohen?
It is relevant because Schiff was in cahoots with Cohen throughout 2019. Schiff traveled to New York at least four times to meet with Cohen to discuss his February 2019 public testimony before Congress; Schiff later insisted Cohen’s appearance had “bolstered his credibility.”
Twice that year, Schiff’s committee privately interviewed Cohen under the ruse of investigating Trump-Russia election collusion. But committee members also questioned Cohen about the alleged hush money scheme. At one point during the House Intelligence Committee’s deposition, investigators asked Cohen if Trump was speaking in “code” about the alleged hush money payment to Daniels.
Schiff released transcripts of both depositions in May 2019. “The public also deserves the chance to judge Cohen’s credibility for themselves, including by examining some of the evidence he provided to the Committee.
That same month, Schiff’s committee paid Merchan’s firm $57,500 for consulting and more digital media buys.
Judge Merchan, Not Trump, is Responsible for the Unwanted Scrutiny
Further, Schiff remains a client of Loren Merchan while opining about the case now before Judge Merchan. “If justice demanded that Michael Cohen go to jail for a scheme directed by someone else, justice also requires that the person responsible for directing the scheme must answer for their offenses against the law—and that person is Donald Trump,” Schiff said in a statement released in March 2023.
According to an analysis by the New York Post, Schiff’s Senate campaign committee—he is running to replace the late Dianne Feinstein—has paid Authentic Campaigns more than $10 million. The Post also reported that Schiff cited the Bragg indictment in emails looking for campaign donations, raising questions as to whether Authentic Campaigns was involved in those solicitations.
That alone justifies Merchan’s recusal, but the judge remains intransigent. One could even argue Merchan is goading Team Trump by allowing Cohen to testify, a move Trump opposes, while prohibiting Trump from criticizing his former “fixer.” In a gag order issued last week, Merchan banned Trump from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding.” The group includes Cohen.
Trump’s lawyers indicated they will file another motion to recuse. If Merchan has any integrity left, he will step aside not just to salvage his own reputation but his daughter’s, too. If he doesn’t, the only individual responsible for so-called “attacks” on his “child” is Judge Merchan himself.
Title: Pay No Attention to the Terrorist Behind the Microphone …
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 02, 2024, 04:07:06 PM
… or those that carry their water. This could go more than one place, but given the duplicitous manner in which the US press is presenting the issue, I’ll drop this piece documenting the abject abandonment on anything resembling a journalistic standard here. The TL;DR? Al Jazeera is using its reporters to relay Israeli positions to Hamas, when its reporters aren’t outright fighting for Hamas. But hey, Qatar funds ‘em both so perhaps that’s too diffuse a connection for our fearless media natterers to tease apart:
The Real Reason Al Jazeera Faces Suspension in Israel
by Seth Mandel
Yesterday, Israel’s Knesset passed a law allowing for the temporary license suspension of media organizations that are found to materially aid a wartime enemy outside of their practice of journalism. The bill is clearly aimed at Al Jazeera, the Qatari state propaganda mouthpiece. It is not, however, a reaction to the propaganda itself.
That may sound confusing. In fact, this issue provides a good example of how to spot a good-faith critique of Israeli policy among the mounds of bad-faith straw men you’ll encounter online.
A large segment of the media and academia filter their commentary according to whether it abides by a specific narrative of the conflict: Israel=bad. The saga of Al Jazeera highlights this tendency.
Israel is not considering banning Al Jazeera because of “bias” or misinformation. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a different explanation among the commentariat.
CNN claims the bill stems from the fact that “Netanyahu’s government has also long complained about Al Jazeera’s operations, alleging anti-Israeli bias.”
Now, CNN can very easily fact-check the suggestion that Netanyahu is shutting down media with anti-Israel biases. Has CNN been shut down? The CNN reporters should very quickly get an answer to that question.
Is it because, as former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt claims, Israel is an authoritarian state and “that’s what authoritarian regimes often do”? Bildt’s objections are interesting, in that he has been a European Union supporter and official throughout his public career, and the European Union, as Bildt surely knows, banned Russia Today and Sputnik two years ago.
This offers us a clue as to why Bildt feels the way he does: He’s experiencing psychological projection. After all, as an EU spokesman spelled out: “The Kremlin regime transformed state-controlled media into instruments of information manipulation and information warfare. That is why the European Union banned [a] number of them, including Russia Today and Sputnik from EU media space.”
It could be, then, that Bildt sees in Israel’s actions echoes of his beloved EU’s “authoritarianism,” though to Bildt that’s the good kind of authoritarianism. It’s only bad when Israel does it.
Bildt will be happy to know that this isn’t why Israel has considered temporarily suspending al Jazeera.
What about White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s contention that the move is “concerning” because it threatens “freedom of the press”? Or Ian Bremmer’s suggestion that this is “not a sign of a healthy democracy”?
The “good” news, if we can use that word, is that the White House and the ChatGPT-programmed think tankers of the Twittersphere are simply spreading misinformation. Having nothing to do with the EU’s explicitly speech-based ban on Russian networks, Al Jazeera has crossed two non-journalism-related lines.
The first is that Israel intelligence agencies claim to have caught Al Jazeera passing along Israeli troop locations to its Hamas allies, which are funded by the same regime as Al Jazeera. That is, Qatar is simply coordinating between its military wing and its propaganda wing.
The second is that Al Jazeera has been found giving press credentials to multiple people who turned out to be soldiers in Hamas’s war on Israel. That would be indisputable grounds for suspending an agency’s credentials.
In the course of its Gaza operations, the IDF has found troves of documents that identify a great many of the Strip-based terrorists, some of whom work for Al Jazeera. Ismail Abu Omar was wounded in an IDF strike in Rafah. Al Jazeera claimed him as their own, flew him back to Qatar for treatment, and expressed deep outrage. Israel responded that Abu Omar was indeed an employee of Al Jazeera—while spending much of his time as a deputy company commander in Hamas’s East Khan Younis Battalion. Abu Omar appears to have participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion. As Jonathan Schanzer wrote here in March, “In a bizarre twist, Abu Omar actually signed his name to a Telegram photo of a murdered IDF soldier whose body was taken by Hamas into Gaza.”
There’s Mohamed Washah, whom one could find on Al Jazeera video reports and who also, according to numerous documents and photographs, serves as a prominent Hamas tank commander. Two Al Jazeera “journalists” were killed in a strike in January; one of them turned out to have been a rocket-specialist for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other a drone operator with Hamas.
How “journalisty” this all sounds to you probably depends heavily on whether you think a reporter’s first obligation is to kill Jews. I received my journalism degree without taking a single class on joining a foreign terrorist army, so it is not recognizable as the journalism I personally was trained to do—but your mileage may vary.
Now, a good-faith critique of Israel’s proposed ban might engage with this fact—that the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera appears to have been an organizational arm of the Qatari-funded Hamas terrorists who butchered 1,200 innocent Israelis on Oct. 7. Perhaps the law is still too vague, or you worry it gives Israel too much leeway to ban actual journalistic outfits under the same rules. Or you fret that the 45-day suspension is too easily extended. Even a passing familiarity with Israel’s Supreme Court would cure you of such worries, but not everyone possesses that passing familiarity. At the same time, an argument made out of ignorance can still be one of good faith.
What isn’t good faith, however, is any one of the above-mentioned arguments made by prominent political figures and supposed experts in the field of foreign affairs.
I watched this the other night and was AMAZED that media liar Collins did not ask the simple question to the Palestinian (doctor!) why not demand Hamas to stop using their people as shields and surrender immediately so the blood shed can stop.
Funny how they let these Jew haters solely blame Israel when it is they who started this and pledge to the death to kill Jews.
Title: Re: how media allows Palestinians to warp the message
Post by: DougMacG on April 03, 2024, 07:21:15 AM
I watched this the other night and was AMAZED that media liar Collins did not ask the simple question to the Palestinian (doctor!) why not demand Hamas to stop using their people as shields and surrender immediately so the blood shed can stop.
Funny how they let these Jew haters solely blame Israel when it is they who started this and pledge to the death to kill Jews.
I watched the Twin Cities Leftists gather for a "Free Palestine" rally Saturday. Also watched a couple of my Jewish tennis buddies drift away from Biden and the Democrats on this. They never seemed to notice that (non Jewish) conservatives from flyover country have cared more about the survival of Israel more than their own party for decades now.
They also never seemed to notice the similarities between the persecution of conservatives and the revival of antisemitism on campuses and elsewhere.
It's not like me to remain silent but they need to discover on their own, soon, that with the primaries over, only one man, the mean tweet guy, has any possibility to at least slow the continued march to far Leftism in the country and the world.
A throwaway vote for 'no labels' makes sense only if you are fully unaware of the stakes we face.
Meanwhile Communist China feeds the chaos in America through tiktok, while TikTok is banned in Communist China.
Title: Fired (Sports) Journalist: Biden Interview Scripted
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 03, 2024, 01:32:44 PM
And I’m sure it was not the only one, just the only one we know about:
Title: Andrew Weismann net worth ~ 50 mill
Post by: ccp on April 04, 2024, 06:30:02 AM
:-o
https://oneworldinformation.com/andrew-weissmann/
all over hawking a propaganda book
"rule of law!!!"
"no there there!!!"
:roll:
PS his voice sounds like he needs nasal surgery
Title: No Mountain, No Molehill, but a Book Deal Made Instead
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 06, 2024, 05:55:11 PM
There are a lot of takeaways from this piece, but what I think is worth noting are the mentions of Democratic Party operatives working to pressure putative witnesses to the claimed sexual assault. Much as various accusations against Biden have withered on the vine as subtle and not so subtle operatives work to make them vanish, the same tactics are used in reverse to make mountains where nary a molehill was to be found:
By Kathleen Parker
Christine Blasey Ford is promoting her new memoir to acclaim from certain quarters, including a glowing review by the New York Times. Meanwhile, the man she accused of being a witness to her alleged sexual assault by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh more than 40 years ago can’t get his own book reviewed or even mentioned by mainstream newspapers.
You know me. I can’t resist flipping over a cow paddy to see what’s underneath.
Ford, you’ll recall, is the California psychologist with two front doors in her house who, in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018, accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a high-school-era party while another boy, Mark Judge, allegedly stood by. Judge, who kept his distance and silence during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings — in part, he has said, to avoid further harassment by Democratic interlocutors — released his own version of those events and the aftermath in “The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi” (2022).
As with Kavanaugh, Ford’s accusation against Judge was embraced by most of the news media despite an absence of evidence or corroborating testimony. No one who was supposed to have been at the party where Ford was allegedly assaulted remembered it, or her. Ford herself was unable to nail down the year the party took place (but settled on 1982 after several stabs) or where it was held, how she got there, how she got home or any other details, except that she herself had consumed just one beer, according to her testimony. Her claims against Kavanaugh ultimately were unsubstantiated.
Even so, the awards and accolades for Ford keep coming. During a recent appearance on “The View,” she was nearly sanctified for her “bravery.” Not one of the “View” chin-wags seemed to have done any research. They merely checked the box next to “female” and continued to hold in contempt the male who became a Supreme Court justice. Whoopi Goldberg summed it up: “To face those people the way they were looking and dealing with you, that is bravery under a whole different kind of fire.”
A fair-minded person would also wonder what it was like to be in Kavanaugh’s seat.
And what about Judge? “Roadkill” is the way constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley described Judge’s invisible role in this tale. Of course, Judge and Kavanaugh were and are distinct people whose adult lives could not be more different. Kavanaugh was the kind of boy who kept a detailed calendar of his busy activities and who had a stellar career as a federal judge.
Judge, who chronicled his heavy-drinking school days in his 1997 book, “Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk,” was a teenage alcoholic who had to claw his way to sobriety and suffered accordingly. He told Martha MacCallum during a recent Fox News interview that the effects of being essentially locked in a stockade for public ridicule and condemnation included “suicidal ideation” and “economic issues.”
Under interrogation by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh was forced to review his youthful beer consumption, which he admitted was gustatory. He wasn’t alone; Ford was a drinker, too, according to friends and outlined in the deeply researched book “Justice on Trial” by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino.
In my own research for a book that never came to fruition, I also learned that Ford was a party girl, which means she and I would have been friends. Her real “best friend” at the time, Leland Keyser, was known as her designated driver in those days, according to several of her friends cited in yet another book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” by New York Times writers Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. A straight-A student and athlete who became a professional golfer, Keyser had her driver’s license at the time of the alleged assault. Keyser, who felt pressured by Ford’s supporters to confirm Ford’s story, testified to the FBI that she had no recollection of any such party and didn’t know Kavanaugh.
When intimidation didn’t work, Ford and her friends implied that Keyser’s testimony couldn’t be trusted because she had “significant health challenges,” as Ford put it during her testimony. It didn’t take long for the meaning here to become public. Keyser had at one point become addicted to painkillers prescribed for golf-related back and neck injuries. She has suffered years of surgeries and pain that continues today, thanks to her commitment to recovery. No meds. She also has had to cope with the psychological effects of her persecution by the anti-Kavanaugh brigade. At least one person from Team Ford tried to persuade her to adjust her story. She refused.
Meanwhile, after five years of silence, Judge has emerged from his bunker with both barrels blazing. One can stand only so much smearing. He was, after all, accused in the public arena of variously urging Kavanaugh on or trying to stop him, all the while laughing, according to Ford. Like Kavanaugh, Judge was presumed guilty — a tragic by-product of the “believe the woman” orthodoxy that emerged during the #MeToo movement — and justly wants to have his say.
It takes guts to try to breach the #MeToo iron curtain, as Judge is attempting to do. It takes no courage at all to enrich yourself at other people’s expense, as Ford has done. Even if she believes her own story or suffered some traumatic event at some time, in the absence of evidence or corroboration, a measure of doubt is called for. This doesn’t necessarily mean she lied, as Hemingway and Severino have noted. Both Judge and Keyser, it seems, deserve the applause Ford is receiving for perpetuating a questionable history that has damaged so many people, not to mention the judicial system she says she has sought to protect. We know the truth is otherwise, thanks to a video capture of Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, saying that her client wanted to block Kavanaugh because of fears he would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade. Ford’s fears might have been justified, but her tactics — which have netted her $1 million in donations plus overnights at Oprah’s — were not. Nothing good grows under a cow paddy, but Ford sure did step in one.
I was watching Cuomo last night and he had the whistle blower on the air and actually to my surprise agreed to him
then he screwed it up by saying he has no clue as to why he was labled a shill for the Dems (when with CNN) he needs to go back to his therapist for more insight.
:wink:
I don't think anyone at say Newsmax or the conservatives at Fox would insult us by claiming they are not conservative - only the LEFT does that.
Title: NPR: Nattering “Progressive” Rants Mea Culpa
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on April 11, 2024, 09:40:36 PM
25 year NPR business reporter takes his organization to task for uncritically embracing the “Progressive” world view as it unflinchingly vectors Trump Derangement Syndrome:
I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.
Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.
By Uri Berliner
April 9, 2024
You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite. It doesn’t precisely describe me, but it’s not far off. I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.
So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we’ve covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI.
It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.
But it hasn’t.
For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.
Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story. What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.
Russiagate was not NPR’s only miscue.
In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.
The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.
When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.
Politics also intruded into NPR’s Covid coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin—supporting the hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan, China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists. But that wasn’t the case.
When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.
Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive. Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an influential scientific paper known as “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Its authors wrote they didn’t believe “any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die. And understandably so. In private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his colleagues, “I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape or natural.”
Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story. We didn’t budge when the Energy Department—the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research—concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.
Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”
When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague compared it to the Bush administration’s unfounded argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won’t get fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related. Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.
NPR editor Uri Berliner tells how the network lost America's trust in The Free Press
Uri Berliner near his home in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 2024. (Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Free Press)
I’m offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization. You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America. Like others who have served in the top job at NPR, he was hired primarily to raise money and to ensure good working relations with hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR’s programming.
After working mostly behind the scenes, Lansing became a more visible and forceful figure after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. It was an anguished time in the newsroom, personally and professionally so for NPR staffers. Floyd’s murder, captured on video, changed both the conversation and the daily operations at NPR.
Given the circumstances of Floyd’s death, it would have been an ideal moment to tackle a difficult question: Is America, as progressive activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s—in law enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism that lets evidence lead the way. But the message from the top was very different. America’s infestation with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our mission was to change it.
“When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism,” Lansing wrote in a companywide article, “we can be agents of change. Listening and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself accountable for this.”
And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In confessional language he said the leaders of public media, “starting with me—must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves—body and soul—to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions.” He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission, the “North Star” of the organization. Phrases like “that’s part of the North Star” became part of meetings and more casual conversation.
Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.
These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).
All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If, as NPR’s internal website suggested, the groups were simply a “great way to meet like-minded colleagues” and “help new employees feel included,” it would have been one thing.
But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA—an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a section on DEI, requires NPR management to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI Accountability Committee.
In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.
Conflicts between workers and bosses, between labor and management, are common in workplaces. NPR has had its share. But what’s notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.
And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.
Today on Honestly Bari talks to Uri about this essay and his decision to publish it. Listen here:
There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.
The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.
More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the “intersectional” lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed. That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.
For nearly all my career, working at NPR has been a source of great pride. It’s a privilege to work in the newsroom at a crown jewel of American journalism. My colleagues are congenial and hardworking.
I can’t count the number of times I would meet someone, describe what I do, and they’d say, “I love NPR!” And they wouldn’t stop there. They would mention their favorite host or one of those “driveway moments” where a story was so good you’d stay in your car until it finished.
It still happens, but often now the trajectory of the conversation is different. After the initial “I love NPR,” there’s a pause and a person will acknowledge, “I don’t listen as much as I used to.” Or, with some chagrin: “What’s happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?” In recent years I’ve struggled to answer that question. Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.
In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”
For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations.
Throughout these exchanges, no one has ever trashed me. That’s not the NPR way. People are polite. But nothing changes. So I’ve become a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes heartbreaking.
Even so, out of frustration, on November 6, 2022, I wrote to the captain of ship North Star—CEO John Lansing—about the lack of viewpoint diversity and asked if we could have a conversation about it. I got no response, so I followed up four days later. He said he would appreciate hearing my perspective and copied his assistant to set up a meeting. On December 15, the morning of the meeting, Lansing’s assistant wrote back to cancel our conversation because he was under the weather. She said he was looking forward to chatting and a new meeting invitation would be sent. But it never came.
I won’t speculate about why our meeting never happened. Being CEO of NPR is a demanding job with lots of constituents and headaches to deal with. But what’s indisputable is that no one in a C-suite or upper management position has chosen to deal with the lack of viewpoint diversity at NPR and how that affects our journalism.
Which is a shame. Because for all the emphasis on our North Star, NPR’s news audience in recent years has become less diverse, not more so. Back in 2011, our audience leaned a bit to the left but roughly reflected America politically; now, the audience is cramped into a smaller, progressive silo.
Despite all the resources we’d devoted to building up our news audience among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers have barely budged. In 2023, according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population, which is 14.4 percent black. And Hispanics were only 7 percent, compared to the overall Hispanic adult population, around 19 percent. Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.
These are perilous times for news organizations. Last year, NPR laid off or bought out 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts following a slump in advertising revenue. Our radio audience is dwindling and our podcast downloads are down from 2020. The digital stories on our website rarely have national impact. They aren’t conversation starters. Our competitive advantage in audio—where for years NPR had no peer—is vanishing. There are plenty of informative and entertaining podcasts to choose from.
Even within our diminished audience, there’s evidence of trouble at the most basic level: trust.
In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It found that “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’ ” Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about.
With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.
Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.
A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.
Uri Berliner is a senior business editor and reporter at NPR. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @uberliner.
"Jurors in this trial will listen to testimony and decide whether Trump is guilty of any of 34 counts of falsifying business records. Their decision to convict or acquit must be unanimous. If they cannot agree on a verdict, the judge can declare a mistrial. If jurors have a reasonable doubt that Trump is guilty, they must acquit him. If they convict him, the judge will be the one who decides the sentence, not the jurors."
On one hand I find it unlikely all the jurors are such Trump haters they can get unanimous decision to convict but I also find it very possible we will have a hung jury and a mistrial since to acquit we need all 12 jurors.
But then it would be, if I understand it correctly Bragg would have to be willing to seek a new trial.