Posts Tagged ‘media’

Gee in the middle of a War a group chooses to release…

Posted: July 26, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, war
Tags: , , , , ,

…a bunch of classified documents in the hopes of derailing the effort.

So on Morning Joe we have a panel of people all against the war commenting on it. (In fairness the entire regular panel is against the war anyway so they would have to have a guest on to defend it.) Is there outrage, is there anger and this kind of leak? Nah.

They are less excited about it then you would expect, they say it is info we mostly already know, no big surprises. Harold Ford makes the correct observation that war is generally not clean and easy and the administration needs to explain that to the public. Barnicle points out that “this is Bush info” is not going to fly.

Will anyone be prosecuted for this? Unlikely. That would depress the administration’s base that is already depressed going into a midterm. They may or may not care about Afghanistan but they sure care if it is lost on their watch.

You can be sure about one thing, you will see none of the media outrage that you did over the Palme Affair.

Bottom line, this is dishonorable act by people who don’t understand the meaning of the word and care less for the well being of the troops and the country than they do about their agenda. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent that the law allows. This will take place sometime after the Beatles reunite by using Voodoo to revive zombified remains of George and John.

Memeorandum thread here

Update: Stacy links, thanks

Is CNN based in China or something?

Posted: July 24, 2010 by datechguy in media, opinion/news
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CNN reports want to censor the blogs. We have seen this stuff for years No Sheeples Here puts it very well:

Uh, no John, we’re not a bunch of cowards. The corporate-controlled media is the coward. You didn’t see any blogs selling out our intelligence community like The Washington Post did in its three-part story Top Secret America.

Bloggers do the work that journalists used to do. Oh, and the pariah of the dead tree media—The National Enquirer—has scooped the lamestream media so many times we’ve lost count.

When you visit a blog you know exactly what you’re getting. Unlike so-called journalists who “claim” not to be biased, bloggers are up front about their biases. Bloggers on the right, for the most part, are rarely paid. I know this blogger isn’t. I don’t advertise here. The one advertisement you see at the top of the sidebar is placed there gratis because I love everything Old Glory stands for.

I don’t get paid here either (except per hit on my examiner work) but feel free to kick into DaTipJar if you think that needs to change.

On and if you want to see an example of the media’s self censorship of stories they don’t want reported, consider this from Moe Lane (all emphasis mine):

The mayor being Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan, of course. If you read the story, it has been conceded by all parties that drinking was involved; but apparently only a on-the-spot field breathalyzer test was deemed necessary to clear the driver, who, again, is the brother-in-law of the mayor of Bethlehem, who is now running for Congress. Any particular reason why the city never followed up on a possibly-booze related accident that injured one of its police officers, and is apparently now stonewalling reporters on it?

What? This is a local matter, and thus no big deal? Yeah, well, that’s what they said about Bill Delahunt and the Amy Bishop cover up.

“Who?” Precisely.

The left’s greatest strength is as a gatekeeper keeping stories from going beyond a short blub in a local paper on at the AP. Let’s add one more example from a while back

The silencing of Summers was easy to miss. The Washington Post did not report it. The New York Times gave it three sentences. The Los Angeles Times ignored it, except for one nonstaff op-ed.

By contrast, the briefly martyred Chemerinsky — who was hired, fired (based on conservative complaints about his political views), and rehired (thanks in part to free-speech conservative support) as founding dean of a new law school at UC Irvine — inspired 17 articles and editorials in the Los Angeles Times, two articles and an outraged editorial in The New York Times, and one article in The Washington Post.

Quick question. How many stories has CNN done on Journolist, lets to go the CNN site and do a search. Here is the one result in its entirety:

Be in the know: Today’s political bullet points
Posted: 05:09 PM ET

Editor’s note: Occasionally we will ask influential politicos to send us their top three bullet points that are driving the day’s conversation in and outside Washington.

Firedoglake.com Blogger/Founder Jane Hamsher:

– Democrats decide to fund war but not teachers.

– John McCain votes against border security.

– Dan Choi Calls the Closet a Poison, a Deadly Toxic Disease.

RedState.Com Editor Erick-Woods Erickson:

– In pushing back against Andrew Breitbart, Democrats and Shirley Sherrod have overplayed their hand and wiped out pretty much any sympathy for Ms. Sherrod on the right.

– Democrat panic is setting in at the state level as they realize control of legislatures might be slipping away from them, hurting Democrat redistricting efforts.

– The ongoing leaks of the left-wing Journolist is continuing to solidify opinion on the right that the media really is on the left and the left really projects their own issues of violence onto the right.

Filed under: Bullet Points

That’s it? The daily caller has been revealing tidbits for days and the only mention is from a bullet point submitted by a conservative blogger? What is this, the Washington Post?

That’s why they hate the blogs and Fox, the monopoly is broken.

Memeorandum thread here.

Why would a person answer any question of a journalist…

Posted: July 22, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, oddities
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…who when asked himself on a matter of national interest gives such a response?

If you are in the business of asking people questions for a living I would think you should not be so shy about answering them.

Tom Friedman makes a great point but misses an important one…

Posted: July 19, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, media
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Friedman makes a couple of good points concerning the Octavia Nasr firing in his column today:

Augustus Richard Norton, of Boston University, a Shiite expert, said this about Fadlallah, whom he knew: “He argued that women should have equal opportunities to men and be well educated. He even argued that women have a right to hit their husband back because it was not appropriate for a spouse to be beaten by their husbands. He was not afraid to speak about sexuality, and he even once gave [a mosque sermon] about sexual urges and female masturbation. It was common to find young people who followed his writings all over the region.” Indeed, Nasr later explained that her tweet about Fadlallah was because he took a “contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on women’s rights.”

Remember this is an islamic cleric in Lebanon, after reading several books on woman’s repression in Islamic we need a lot more of this, second good point:

Ghaddar said she came to understand that “only figures like Fadlallah could change the status quo. People who position themselves as anti-Hezbollah, critics of resistance, or atheists, will rarely be heard within the Shia community, because people will not listen to them. … Fadlallah on the other hand could reach out to the people because he was one of them. … People like him, if strengthened, can bring about real change. He is one of those rare people whom Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership feared … because people liked him and respected him.”

These are both legitimate things to consider about the guy (If he was Stacy McCain he would have also played the “My God she is Hot“ card) as is the point that only someone on the team will be listened to.

However you miss the most important point. He was in favor of dead Jews, LOTS of them. Regardless of the other stuff he was still a terrorist. Defending and supporting him is like defending Albert Speer. You can make any amount of excuses you want, he’s still a Nazi. I’ve mentioned this type of thing before:

It’s like saying Tessio is a scoundrel and Clemenza is not. They’re all friggen Mafia! They are by definition all scoundrels.

Or to put it even better consider this exchange from the Classic movie The Great Escape. Where the C.O. points out the risks of such a plan to the med:

Ramsey: I have to point out one thing to you, Roger. No matter how unsatisfactory this camp may be, the high command have left us in the hands of the Luftwaffe, not the Gestapo and the SS.

Bartlett: Look, sir, you talk about the high command of the Luftwaffe, then the SS and the Gestapo. To me they’re the same. We’re fighting the bloody lot. There’s only one way to put it, sir. They are the common enemies of everyone who believes in freedom.

That’s is the critical point and Friedman misses it. They are the common enemy. There was no nuance here. If she said the same thing about a Bin Ladin deputy would we even have to ask if she should be fired?

Update: memeorandum thread here.

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