Remember, journalists are supposed to be objective.
Now listen to what Chris Matthews has to say about the Clintons and Obama here, and tell me if it sounds “objective”.
Archive for the 'The News' Category
24
Mar
In the tank
It’s a scandal! It makes Katie look like a tyrant! She’s the Worst Person in the World!
Look at this video that totally zings Katie!
Or, don’t. It’s long a quite mundane. She “swears up a storm” with Bob Schieffer, according to the blog, but it’s more of a playful chat between two colleagues. In fact, Katie seems professional, nervous, but at the same time, holding a good rapport with her crew. I think whoever released this wanted to show how well Katie did. I don’t see where Drudge and Harry Shearer think this is a bad thing (Drudge says she’s WILD).
I was expecting a 5 minute profanity laced tirade by Katie. But this was beyond tame.
I know some of you don’t like Katie, and I’m not a fan of her politics & views, but come on– this was a news anchor doing well under pressure. Not worth $20 million, but she’s holding her own and having fun.
I wouldn’t really challenge Time on this. Of all the people in the world, we should really be scrutinizing Putin and his policies, especially his plans for local domination through manipulation of natural resources.
While Petraeus would also have been a good choice (and Al Gore would have been horrible, and Rowling a certainly-deserved surprise), Putin’s impact is certainly more global. Time named Hitler Man of the Year in 1938. Here’s what they said about him:
But the figure of Adolf Hitler strode over a cringing Europe with all the swagger of a conqueror. Not the mere fact that the Führer brought 10,500,000 more people (7,000,000 Austrians, 3,500,000 Sudetens) under his absolute rule made him the Man of 1938. Japan during the same time added tens of millions of Chinese to her empire. More significant was the fact Hitler became in 1938 the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today.
His shadow fell far beyond Germany’s frontiers. Small, neighboring States (Denmark, Norway, Czecho-Slovakia, Lithuania, the Balkans, Luxembourg, The Netherlands) feared to offend him. In France Nazi pressure was in part responsible for some of the post-Munich anti-democratic decrees. Fascism had intervened openly in Spain, had fostered a revolt in Brazil, was covertly aiding revolutionary movements in Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania. In Finland a foreign minister had to resign under Nazi pressure. Throughout eastern Europe after Munich the trend was toward less freedom, more dictatorship. In the U. S. alone did democracy feel itself strong enough at year’s end to give Hitler his come-uppance (see p. 5).
The Fascintern, with Hitler in the driver’s seat, with Mussolini, Franco and the Japanese military cabal riding behind, emerged in 1938 as an international, revolutionary movement. Rant as he might against the machinations of international Communism and international Jewry, or rave as he would that he was just a Pan-German trying to get all the Germans back in one nation, Führer Hitler had himself become the world’s No. 1 International Revolutionist—so much so that if the oft-predicted struggle between Fascism and Communism now takes place it will be only because two revolutionist dictators. Hitler and Stalin, are too big to let each other live in the same world.
Now, I don’t want to Godwin this thread before it starts, but it’s important to highlight those doing great good (Petraeus) and those doing great evil (Putin).
Make no mistake. Putin is organizing Russia into an energy empire, and it seeks to reconsolidate all the states that broke off from it under the weakness of one Mikhail Gorbechev and faltered under Boris Yeltsin. And as for opposition? It gets beaten, arrested, and/or killed. Even the celebrities.
But one thing I will say fearlessly to Putin. I was Man of the Year first. In your face, n00b.
…it’s debunked. There’s a video of Thompson at the Fire Station– and he seems to be having a good time.
What the hell is Roger Simon thinking? Of course there’s going to be cameras there, you dufus. It’s the information age. If you can’t write your story straight, it’s going to fly back in your face.
If I was still doing Aquanet Moments, Roger Simon would certainly qualify for one. Ass.
29
Nov
Another Plant?
Questioner LeeAnn Anderson is the assistant to one Leo Gerard, President of the American Steel Workers Union and John Edwards supporter. I didn’t find a direct link, but it’s certainly odd that all of these people with connections to unions or Democrat political operatives are well-represented of the 40 questions brought up in the YouTube debate.
Update: So far 4 of the 40 questions (and a possible fifth and sixth) are verified as Democratic political activists. What are the odds that 10% of the chosen questions (of 5000+ questions) come from DNC partisans?
If Anderson Cooper and his staff weren’t checking the backgrounds on their chosen questioners, then they’re incompetent. If they did know the background of their questioners, they’re partisans for the Democrats. One thing is for certain: I’m think I know who the Mole is.
Welcome readers from Michelle Malkin. Feel free to explore this blog in its tiny little glory!
UPDATE: The statistics are in. You just won the lottery– twice!
It should be noted that Tom Brokaw was, IMHO, the best of the Jennings/Rather/Brokaw triumvirate that dominated nightly news in the 80s/90s. But he’s a member of the MSM machine, the same machine that doesn’t see a problem with the current journalism that dominates the airwaves. And in his latest discussion with Laura Ingraham, he still doesn’t understand that it was the media culture that he propagated that led to the rise of conservative talk radio. With the anchors and reporters on 60 Minutes, the Nightly News shows, Dateline, 20/20, and others (with the exception of straight-shooter John Stossel) during the 80s/90s all propping up a liberal bais, it’s clear that many people wanted an outlet– a second option. And that option was conservative talk radio.
Had the news been “fair and balanced”, there would have been less of need for people to seek out an alternative market. Many people didn’t like the constant harangue that came from ABC/NBC/CBS, and CNN and the cable market were not influential in the 80s. You couldn’t watch CNN at work, and you couldn’t surf the web to read news stories. Instead, you had your radio, and on that radio you could listen to NPR for more of the same or find Rush Limbaugh for something very different.
Market forces drove the rise of Rush Limbaugh, make no mistake. There was an untapped market of people who were alienated by the MSM in the 80s and 90s, and Rush and Co. recognized it. They arrived with a new message on an old medium, and suddenly there was outcry from the MSM. In their arrogance, instead of understanding why Rush was so popular, they condemned talk radio and treated it with great contempt. Instead of nipping it in the bud, they let it blossom, all the while claiming their garden was better looking.
We expected Newsweek to hire Markos Moulitsas. That wasn’t much of a surprise. And I certainly didn’t think they’d hire someone to counter the Daily Kos founder, or if they did, it would be someone like Andrew Sullivan.
Well, I was wrong. And on this day you could hear millions of heads belonging to nutty Leftwing freaks exploding in unison.
However, this does grant an enormous amount of credibility to Marcos. Just think, he’s gone from a Lefty Blogger with a big site to a man who’s the counter-balance to a former Presidential adviser– and adviser to the nefarious Bu$$$$hitler, nonetheless.
That’s the message Newsweek is sending– the Nutroots are equally as important as a #1 Presidential Adviser.
The most recent Global Warming scare piece comes from the Washington Post and reporter Doug Struck. The title, “At the Poles, Melting Occuring at an Alarming Rate”, is patently false. While the North Pole has seen accelerated warming recently, the South Pole, in particular, Antarctica, has seen an increase in the ice pack and no significant change in the overall temperature on the continent.
Struck trots out the usual doom & gloom. His opening spells it all out:
For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it’s not fiction.
Depends on the extent of the warming, Doug. We are, after all, coming out of a Little Ice Age. Aren’t things supposed to get warmer? If the temperature record goes back to the middle of the LIA, and we are now approaching a climate optimum, much like the Medieval Warm Period, the world will warm up, and it will be the “warmest years on record” when you compare them to a stunted ice age.
More doom & gloom:
Animals are on the move. Polar bears, kings of the Arctic, now search for ice on which to hunt and bear young. Seals, walrus and fish adapted to the cold are retreating north. New species — salmon, crabs, even crows — are coming from the south. The Inuit, who have lived on the frozen land for millennia, are seeing their houses sink into once-frozen mud, and their hunting trails on the ice are pocked with sinkholes.
Let me rewrite that paragraph.
Animals are on the move. Polar bears are now adapting to new hunting grounds and their numbers are increasing. Seals, walrus and other species are migrating further north to find their comfort zone. The Inuit, who have lived on the frozen land for millennia, are now experiencing warmer temperatures. Their hunting periods are now longer, and their hunting grounds now have new game which has come from the south.
Whew! I thought we were all goners. Now, notice his selective reporting on the South Pole:
At the South Pole, ancient ice shelves have abruptly crumbled. The air over the western Antarctic peninsula has warmed by nearly 6 degrees since 1950. The sea there is heating as well, further melting edges of the ice cap. Green grass and beech trees are taking root on the ice fringes.
Things are growing where they weren’t growing before! Heavens to Betsy! Also, notice that he neglects to mention anything about thickening ice sheets and temperatures elsewhere on Antarctica. Why? It would blow a hole in his fearmongering, that’s why. And then he trots out Larsen B:
When the Larsen B, an Antarctic ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, collapsed in 2002, “it was a big glaring clue that something not natural was happening,” said Hugh Ducklow, director of ecosystems for MBL Laboratories in Woods Hole, Mass. “The geological evidence suggested that was stable for at least 10,000 years, back to the last ice age. And it literally disintegrated in three weeks.”
The Larsen B Ice Shelf is on a peninsula which sticks far out from the center of Antarctica. To make such a broad statement about the warming dangers based upon the collapse of Larsen B is akin to making a diagnosis on the health of a patient by only examining their finger.
Two long-term studies examined the temperatures in Antarctica, and found the continent was cooling. One, from Nature, reports on the decline in temperatures over the past few decades. The other shows the thickening of the Antarctic ice sheets.
More doom:
As the air warms over Canada, Alaska and Siberia, the melting permafrost releases millions of tons of trapped carbon and methane, further accelerating the encroaching disaster. Greenland’s moving glaciers pick up speed, likely bringing in this century the first three feet of a possible 23-foot rise of the seas that would ultimately inundate New York City and South Florida and drive millions of people from low-lying areas of Asia.
So, if the temperature is rising, and the release of CO2 and methane from the permafrost is going to cause more greenhouse warming, then why do we have to curb CO2 emissions? Permafrost GW gas contributions would dwarf anything mankind produces. That just means we’re doomed. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!
Or are we? The world warmed about 1000 years ago. There wasn’t any significant disruption in the world climate then. In fact, the human civilization boomed. It was a spectacular time for architecture, agriculture, & learning.
More doom:
The ice shelves collapsing in western Antarctica bring glacier melting there, pouring as much water into the sea as Greenland. Eventually, the giant frozen continent of eastern Antarctica, so far insulated from the rest of the warming planet, may begin to melt. The thermohaline ocean circulation pattern begins to slow.
“I just don’t see a happy ending for this,” said Ted Scanbos, who studies the polar ice at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.
“Every computer model I run shows the world flooding. It’s so depressing, my computer jumped out of my window last week and fell 3 stories to its death,” said Scanbos.
And later in the article, he cranks out the “Day After Tomorrow” scenario. Sadly, I wish I was making this up.
As the Arctic ice melts and ice shelves collapse in the Southern Ocean, vast areas of open water are exposed. The water absorbs heat from the sun that until now was reflected by the ice. As that heat warms the seas, the treadmill is expected to slow, the IPCC has reported. In the worst case, it could stop. The previous time that happened, 15,000 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was plunged into a brief and brutal ice age, apparently within decades.
So let me get this straight. If it continues to warm, then it will suddenly get cold again. And when that happens, the glaciers will reform, the North Pole will be covered in ice again, and the overall temperature of the planet will adjust back to “normal” for Laurie David and Al Gore. In other words, the world has a built in mechanism to deal with warming, just as it has for the past 100 million years! What an idea!
In other words, when the world warms, it’s a short-lived phenomena that we should enjoy and take advantage of.
So, please stop scaring your readers, Doug. Everything is going to be fine. Smell a flower or two. Watch some “Three Stooges”. Enjoy life instead of concentrating on imminent destruction.
Others blogging: Hot Air
Sounds funny, right? Sounds like a farce?
A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.
Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq .
“I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead,” said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. “People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don’t talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more.”
I’m actually speechless at the blatant transparency of this article. “McClatchy Newspapers: All Bad News, All The Time”?
07
Oct
What is “Good news?”
From Hot Air. Here’s the video:
I find it absolutely amazing, starting with the answer from Robin Wright. For the past 5 years, we’ve been inundated with soldier death counts and civilian death counts in Iraq. Some of those stories have been true– others, less so. But I think that the number itself has been reasonably reported. For 5 years.
And now that there’s a decline, Robin thinks it shouldn’t be reported because the numbers might not be totally accurate. Get that? They’re good enough to print when they’re bad news, but if they’re good news, they have to be vetted.
On the other hand, you’ve got the CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr who’s unwilling to publish the information because she doesn’t know if it’s a trend or not. Got that? It’s a trend only if it fits the perceived trend of those reporting the news. Notice that’s happening here– the news is being edited for content by those reporting it. In other words, the Fourth Estate is out there reporting what they want us to see, not what is actually going on. Doesn’t this violate every ethical standard of journalism?
If I go to Wikipedia (trusted information source!), and look up “ethics journalism”, I get a page on the Journalism ethics and standards. And featured prominently is Objectivity:
Interference with reporting by any entity, including censorship, must be disclosed
So how about if the reporter interferes with their own reporting? What’s that?
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