Can Edwards attended a rally for Rahman and noted the (predictable) focus of the media;
Media turnout was good. There were, by my count, four television cameras there, including one from NBC Nightly News. The producer for Andrea Mitchell, a guy named Carl, kept asking question after question designed to elicit a critical response towards President Bush. Finally I had to say something.
“This is not a political issue. This is about a man in Afghanistan who is going to die because he believes in Jesus Christ…It’s a human rights issue…There are political overtones to everything, but that’s not why we’re out here. That’s not why President Bush should act…If y’all turn it inot a political issue–conservatives vs. Bush or conservatives vs. liberals– then you will have failed to get the message out.”
As they so often have. Because journalism is no longer about delivering factual information about current events in appropriate context. It’s become a faux-profession increasingly populated by individuals who aspire to influence political outcomes and public policy – but who are too lazy (or too stupid) to earn that right by running for political office the old fashioned way.
Update: What I said.
Let’s examine the uselessness of a journalism degree. It confers nothing of quality or usefulness. The best journalists never had one. (Mark Steyn never went to college.) A classroom won’t give you honesty or talent.
What you’ve got is a guild of like-minded lemmings with no background in the subjects they report on. No wonder that junk science abounds or that stories lack a historical context.
Your employment is conditioned on following the publisher’s agenda. Independent thought isn’t wanted.
There is better analysis of issues on blogs nowdays by people in specific fields or with an interest in a particular subject.
Here’s a story from Malaysia Today http://www.malaysia-today.net/Blog-e/2006/03/muslims-almost-totally-dependent-on.htm
where ex PM Mahathir admits that no Muslim country can be considered a ‘developed nation’. When will we westerners start worrying about the elephant in the living room instead of the piss-ants in the basement?
Truer words were never spoken, Penny.
I have a journalism degree myself. It is the tombstone of my youthful ambition and desire to be a journalist.
There is simply no way to challenge the groupthink of the MSM from within. It can only be brought down from without.
There were nineteen – 19 – WTC hijackers. Each had been told by Allah to …..
Maybe Paul Hellyer is right?
Watching Jennings’ UFO special prompted Hellyer to finally read US Army Colonel Philip J. Corso’s book The Day After Roswell about the Roswell UFO Incident … (Wikipedia)+
Nineteen
There’s an extremely interesting post at Terrorism Unveiled which is following the progress of Mohammad Reza Taheri Azar’s trial. Azar attempted to do “God’s will” by running over students on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill in early March. Taheri Azar’s explanation of his actions compel attention.
I am a servant of Allah. I am 22 years old.
…
Taheri Azar treats the number 19 as some kind of public key which allows him to decrypt messages which come direct from Allah. In this case, the plaintext says:
In the Qur’an, Allah states that the believing men and women have permission to murder anyone responsible for the killing of other believing men and women. I know that the Qur’an is a legitimate and authoritative holy scripture since it is completely validated by modern science and also mathematically encoded with the number 19 beyond human ability.
Commentary
It probably never occurred to the thousands of people dying in flames or under rubble in the World Trade Center that their doom may have had anything to do with the number 19. They might have seen the number scrawled, like graffiti on some storefront mosque or printed on some obscure handbill. Yet they never suspected its significance. But who would have guessed that in the early 21st century messages emanating from a void beyond space would instruct apparently sane human beings to fly wide-bodied aircraft into Manhattan skyscrapers? +
http://www.fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/
MSM have improved slightly within the last year but basically they missed the essence most of the important events of the last six years.
They pass over them,without doing any investigative research, in a matter of a few days. It is almost as if they are afraid to find something compelling.
I could give what I think are reasons for this but, in the end, there really is no excuse. Thank God for the internet.
The left never ceases to be behind the wrong issue! Here they are going after Bush, who won’t be even standing for election. They have yet to explain how they failed to defeat a president involved in an unpopular war, uncertain economy and hostile international environment.
I don’t understand this blinding fixation with the foibles of certain media outlets. I’m a big fan of the blogosphere as most of you can probably imagine but you’ll find plenty of atrocious journalism on the internet too.
When was the last time I heard someone calling a blog on bad journalism on SDA? Is that because there isn’t any or do you hold what you call the MSM to a higher standard?
WOO HOO! Thank you Penny!! I have been saying that same exact thing for a long time now. A journalism degree confers NOTHING on people but a veneer of make believe legitimacey. Then they can hang the (make believe) title of “professional journalist” on themselves. There’s NO SUCH THING as a “professional journalist”. REAL professionals have set standards of education, set standards of practice. If these standards are not met then they cannot practice in that profession.
REAL professionals also have agreed upon standards of ethical practice which they must adhere to or they will be prvented from practicing. Do you think if low-life scumbag Peter C Newman applied at ANY newspaper for a job he would be denied because he has questionable journalistic ethics? NO! He would be hired in an instant.
The fact is any f**kin idiot off the street can blow the right editor and get hired as a journalist. There are no standards to practice this OCCUPATION. They truly are bottom feeders.
Aaaaahhh poor Jose! Are ther bloggers picking on poor defenseless journalists again? TOUGH!
The MSM sees fit to critique EVERYONE in every walk of life for whatever reason they see fit. If they find blogger criticism too much to take, too bad. They arrogant MSM has had it coming for a long time. Payback’s a bitch.
And, Jose? If you “don’t understand this blinding fixation with the foibles of certain media outlets” you really must NOT be giving it much thought.
Drunken “journalism” from the MSM: +
Drunk Time Magazine Bureau Chief slams Bush, American troops in Iraq
He called the situation in Iraq, like �watching a slow trainwreck� then goes on to tell Maher how is drinking now and that he�s drunk at the moment. (with video) via nealenews.com
http://www.exposetheleft.com/2006/03/25/michael-ware-maher/
Who do the MSM have to answer to?
Shareholders?
Advertisers?
Consumers?
I am curious just how far they can actually go.Other than the public’s conscience,what limits the extent to which they can omit,make up,or twist facts to push an agenda.The last thing we can expect is the industry to police itself.Even as stories of bias and fabricated reporting surface almost daily,it is almost comical watching the MSM trying to avoid eating it’s own.
Seems to me,at least in Canada,with the VERY limited diversity in media that it is damn near a licence to brainwash the masses.
The scary part?It’s working.
I wonder if any of Cam’s comments made it to the the airwaves or in print?
Drunken “journalist” Time reporter/Iraq Bureau Chief Ware was “embedded” with the terrorists in Iraq for 3 months in 2003. Ware:A prime example of the suicidal left liberal MSM.
Ware’s anti-Americanism, his self-hatred, his hate for his own country is here. Traitor. +
Walter Duranty* in Iraq. +
Time reporter: Iraqi resistance finely organized, cutthroat
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) –Attacks on coalition forces in Iraq are expected to increase leading up to the transfer of power in July, according to the top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
Time magazine reporter Michael Ware gained exclusive access to the Iraqi insurgents, spending months with them for this week’s cover story. Ware shared his experiences and observations Monday with CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien.
O’BRIEN: [You spent] three months with the insurgents, how did you gain access and were they initially fearful about talking to you?
WARE: Very much so. It’s been a very slow process. A lot of gumshoe journalism, establishing trust with one contact, gaining trust with that person and then going on from one to the next. This large network, this sophisticated unit we have found came to me, asking specifically for me, on a recommendation, I’m thinking, from another resistance group.
O’BRIEN: At the same time, they must have assumed that as a reporter you would then take this story and make it public, or are you now worried about reprisals as the story is the cover story in Time, and you are making the rounds talking about this?
WARE: Well, this was the purpose for which they invited me in. They made this very clear. They said, “We want you to see everything. Come and watch, listen, report everything that you see and hear.” They want to tell the world what’s going on.
And what I saw was the first taste of what the American military has been hinting at, a greater degree of sophistication, an evolution in the guerrilla war. We’re seeing a hard edge to some of the resistance fighters.
O’BRIEN: That’s the second time you’ve used the word sophistication. It is a truly fascinating article. You write about the organization and the hierarchy. Is it loosely organized, or give me a sense exactly how it works from the inside.
WARE: Over the months, I spent a lot of time with a wide number of resistance groups, some of them very small and ad hoc, almost amateurish. This network, and I say network, stands out. This isn’t just one cell, this is at least eight cells with individual commanders, probably more, answering up a chain of command that leads to a mysterious figure from the regime and perhaps indirectly even to Saddam.
They operate in a coordinated fashion, they gather intelligence, they do surveillance, and when they go out in the field, nothing is left to chance. Everything is finely organized and they are really well supplied. +
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/08/cnna.ware/
* Duranty:
[PDF] Walter Duranty: Stalin�s Man in Moscow
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
this campaign has been to compel The New York Times to withdraw the Pulitzer Prize it awarded in 1932 to its Moscow. correspondent, Walter Duranty for his …
http://www.ualberta.ca/CIUS/stasiuk/st-articles/2003-06-18_Walter%20Duranty.pdf –
penny: Well said.
Jose: of course “journalists” are held to a higher standard than bloggers. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s their profession, they’re paid to write, report the facts in a fair and unbiased manner. Most have failed miserably. We bloggers are part of that bunch known to the MSM as “the great unwashed”, just dumb smelly peasants.
Most journalists I’ve met have an ego a lot bigger than their talent.
As usual Jose has come up with half thought amd halfwitted comments. Does it not seen right to you that journalists be held to a higher tsandard than anyone who writes in a blog? As usual, you are trying to compare apples and oranges. Journalists get paid to write their articles and it is their job to express opinions.. at least this should be their job. Many of us on Kate’s blog.. or any other, are expressing our opinions… and most of them come from the heart.
I agree with Penny. A degree in Journalism really doesn’t tell you much. As usual, real life is the best school. Having a degree in journalism gives you some background and some theory to build your own writing technique around. Journalism is no different than many other professions. Experience makes the good better. Most people feel better when they see the Surgeons holding the knife with some grey starting to show in their temples… rather than a someone who looks like they could be dating yuour teenager.
What really is unfortunate is that there are many journalists who start to think they are amongst the few intelligent life forms on the planet, after reading their own columns for too long. When they become too arrogant to exist amongst us commoners, they get sent to the big posting.. which is on Parlament Hill. There they whine and moan their final years away until they get their Golden Handshake.
Grant “Does it not seen right to you that journalists be held to a higher tsandard than anyone who writes in a blog?”
It’s hypocritical to hold someone to a higher standard than you maintain yourself and then act all superior to them. That’s the point I was making.
John, you made an excellent point. Where are the defined and measurable standards for journalism? Every other profession adheres to a standard and gets fined or sued when they deviate.
The publics only hope is to fact check them without mercy, get rid of the entrenched media whores one Dan Rather at a time and shut our wallets to their products.
Here’s a 5 year stock chart of the NYT’s
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/intchart/frames/frames.asp?symb=nyt&time=&freq=
The damn fools would rather be out of business than drop their leftist agenda. Fine with me. It pretty much tells the story of how much the public thinks of them since 9/11.
Hey, steve, here’s a contest for you. I’ll short a hundred NYT’s shares Monday and you go long. We’ll post our results a year from now.
penny
You know newspapers are a poor investment. I wasn’t born yesterday. I never thought you’d actually try to take advantage of a guy right here on Small Dead Animals. Do Conservatives have no boundaries? Does everything come down to the “deal”? Come on relax, give your money to a professional and forgetaboutit.
Muslims Killing Muslims: It’s Payback Time.
Headline not from the MSM. +
STRATEGYPAGE ON IRAQ:
Deaths from revenge killings now exceed those from terrorist or anti-government activity. Al Qaeda is beaten, and running for cover. The Sunni Arab groups that financed thousands of attacks against the government and coalition groups, are now battling each other, al Qaeda, and Shia death squads. It’s not civil war, for there are no battles or grand strategies at play. It’s not ethnic cleansing, yet, although many Sunni Arabs are, and have, fled the country. What’s happening here is payback. Outsiders tend to forget that, for over three decades, a brutal Sunni Arab dictatorship killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shia Arabs. The surviving victims, and the families of those who did not survive, want revenge. They want payback. And even those Kurds Shia Arabs who don’t personally want revenge, are inclined to tolerate some payback. Since the Sunni Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the population, and no longer control the police or military, they are in a vulnerable position.
After Saddam’s government was ousted three years ago, the Sunni Arabs still had lots of cash, weapons, and terrorist skills. Running a police state is basically all about terrorizing people into accepting your rule. For the last three years, the Sunni Arabs thought they could terrorize their way back into power. Didn’t work.
Yes, they chose unwisely. +
via instapundit
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20060326.aspx
steve d. asked: “Does everything come down to the “deal”?” Yup.
Loney ends his statement with: Alhamdulillah.
See below for alhamduillah*.
Loney: The enemy within Canada. +
Statement By James Loney (Recently Freed Hostage In Iraq)
Toronto Star ^ | March 26, 2006 | James Loney
Posted on 03/26/2006 4:53:52 PM PST by Loyalist
This is a transcript of a statement made by James Loney upon his return from Iraq, where he had been held hostage for nearly four months. Loney made the statement on March 26 at Pearson International Airport. +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603654/posts
*Alhamdulillah: Information From Answers.com
Alhamdulillah Arabic الحمد لله Transliteration Al-Hamdulillah, Alhamdulillah Translation “Praise to God” Alhamdulillah means “Praise to God” in …
http://www.answers.com/topic/alhamdulillah – 29k –
*Sisters Area – Alhamdulillah for Islam
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world !
http://www.islamway.com/sisters/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=342 – 24k –
Well said Kate, that is the best definition of Fox News I have ever heard.
Read Carnage and Culture.
Its why the robots cannot win over the humans.
Its why the east cannot win over the west.
It’s hypocritical to hold someone to a higher standard than you maintain yourself and then act all superior to them. That’s the point I was making.
Bloggers, having an admitted bias, are critical of journalists who write with bias without admitting bias. And that, somehow, makes bloggers hypocritical. Especially if they’re on the right.
No wonder leftists haven’t a seat at the grown-up table.
Jose: “It’s hypocritical to hold someone to a higher standard than you maintain yourself and then act all superior to them. That’s the point I was making.”
Are you serious, or are you just making noise. Networks work with massive budgets, international wire agencies like AP and Reuters, and pay huge sums to have people “on location”. They do this under the banner of providing to the world the truth. That is why hard news must be more or less opinion-less, otherwise it is no more than propoganda and filtered. Op-ed on the other hand, is opinion; which doesn’t even try to pretend it is news.
What has happened though, is that the line between Op-ed and hard news has blurred to the point that regular gumshoes, who are supposed to be bringing hard facts to us, are using a host of tricks to alter the news to fit it into their own personal world veiw. Bloggers on the other hand are Op-ed writers, who use their choice of facts to support their opinions. The world does not, and is not, supposed to depend on them for hard facts.
What’s happened though, is that the hard news sources have become so Op-ed oriented, that they are hardly more reliable than bloggers, and in many cases less so because they “pretend” to be unbiased. Bloggers are open about their point of veiw while journalists are increasingly dishonest fakes pretending to be unbiased, while selling a product as bias as any blogger would ever dish up.
Bloggers serve us by calling bullshit as they see it in the MSM. Rather than making news in most cases, bloggers dissect it and reveal for all to see the unbelievable hoax being foisted on society, which is the laughable notion of an unbiased, truth reporting MSM.
Your idea of comparing bloggers to the MSM shows in incredible lack of understanding of the different rolls being played.
Ol Hoss “Bloggers, having an admitted bias, are critical of journalists who write with bias without admitting bias.”
I don’t fault anyone for being critical. But repeating the same old whines several times a day is at best boring and at worst pathetic.
And bloggers doesn’t equate to right wing. Just take at the ten most popular blogs.
Jose,
“It’s hypocritical to hold someone to a higher standard than you maintain yourself and then act all superior to them. That’s the point I was making.”
1) MSN is not a “someone” they are huge corporations with resources that the bloggers do not have.
2) Some of the MSN is funded by public money – as far as I know, none of the independent bloggers are. I don’t pay taxes for them.
3) Since anyone … I do mean anyone … can start a blog, there is a real good chance that there will be a lot more bad ones than good ones. The shit ones will have little to no traffic, the good ones will have a lot of traffic.
4) If a good blog site goes through a stretch of not relating … they will not be read.
Not everything can be measured with the same yardstick. Standards – whats that? Who set it? Different playing fields, different game, different entities … and your talking standards?
“Standards” is the last thing I want to see … it would always go to the lowest common denominator … in this case the asshats in MSN.
BTW: Jose you always have the option not to go to the blogs you don’t want to … just like some of us have decided to be extremely selective in our consumption of MSN and the blogs we frequent.
Jose,
“But repeating the same old whines several times a day is at best boring and at worst pathetic.”
Is this your comment on MSN re: Emerson?
Maybe the bloggers are to impressionable – they’ve grown up with MSN.
If Jose doesn’t like “the same old whines several times a day” he has 2 options. Ecourage his MSM friends to improve their behavior or shut up and not apy attention to conservative blogs. I, for one am not going to stop critisizing the left wing news media. They a a powerful ally of the Liberals and should therefore be attacked with the same intensity with which we would attack Liberals themselves.
Abdul Rahman update
From FoxNews… The court’s decision was sure to anger at least some of the clerics who have strongly demanded that…
If Yale’s president wants to educate a deserving Afghan, I’ve got just the woman for him
Jewish World Review ^ | March 27, 2006 | John H. Fund
Posted on 03/27/2006 5:04:18 AM PST by rhema
NEW HAVEN, Conn. � The BBC calls Malalai Joya the most famous woman in Afghanistan. On Thursday the 27-year-old women’s rights activist, a member of the Afghan Parliament, mounted a stage at Yale and turned her fire on the university’s decision to admit a former Taliban official as a special student.
“All should raise their voice against such criminals,” she told a crowd of 200. “It is an unforgivable insult to the Afghan people that he is here. He should face a court of law rather than be at one of your finest universities.” The Yale Daily News reported that the large attendance at her speech showed that the former Taliban official “continues to be widely controversial.” Last night the Yale College Council, the undergraduate student government, began debating a resolution urging the university’s administration not to admit Mr. Hashemi as a regular sophomore in the fall.
Ms. Joya has standing to speak for Afghan women. She ran an underground school for women during the Taliban’s rule and today receives frequent death threats after giving speeches in Parliament against “fanatical warlords.” She is strongly critical of U.S. support for her country’s new government, which she claims is increasingly influenced by warlords, as evidenced by the now-abandoned attempt to try an Afghan named Abdul Rahman for the capital crime of converting to Christianity. “Why has $12 billion in foreign aid not made it to my suffering people?” she asked me during an interview. “Fraud and waste have largely diverted your aid to others.”
But it was her criticism of Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the 27-year-old Taliban ambassador-at-large turned Yale student, that stuck in the minds of some audience members at a reception afterwards. “Before I was like, who cares if the guy was Taliban or not?” Yigit Dula, a sophomore from… +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603842/posts
Someones got to call the MSM on their BS.
Why not me?
Go suck you thumb elswhere!
In reality, there are many ‘professions’ that don’t hold their members accountable. I mean, journalism ain’t exactly brain surgery. The sad part is that the unwashed masses tend to believe what they read.
That’s one reason why I saw so many Letters to the Editor last week from people that were absolutely astounded that Afghanistan would put to death a Muslim to Christian convert. “Why are we there supporting these savages?” (to paraphrase) they said.
Well folks, that is simply part and parcel of Islam. You’re either born into it. Or you sign up. Or you live in servitude. Or you die.
If you were born into it and leave for another religion like Christianity (only Judaism could be worse) then you are marked for death. You are more than persona non grata. Your ass is grass.
If more people were properly informed about the real facts – Islam, politics, life in general – then we might actually move forward as a nation.
Don’t hold your breath…
Apparently the Chritian convert has ‘disappeared’. Let’s hope he is being helped by friendlies, rather than laying dead in some ditch.
http://channels.netscape.com/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1104&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20060328%2F0648112396.htm&sc=1104
Here is an excerpt:
The international outrage over Rahman’s case put Karzai
in a difficult position because he also risked offending
religious sensibilities in Afghanistan, where senior
Muslim clerics have been united in calling for Rahman
to be executed.”
The use of the term ‘religious sensibilities’ in this context leaves me dumbfounded. How anyone can refer to the strident shriekings of a murderous barbaric cult-following mob as ‘relgious sensibilities’ is beyond me.
Italian minister Will Ask For Asylum For Afghan Convert
Posted by areafiftyone
On 03/28/2006 5:37:32 AM PST � 6 replies � 51+ views
Breaking News.ie ^ | 3/28/06
Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini will ask the government to grant asylum to an Afghan man who had faced the death penalty in his home country for converting from Islam to Christianity, the Foreign Ministry said today. Fini was among the first to speak out on the man�s behalf. He will ask for the permission at a Cabinet meeting tomorrow, a ministry statement said. +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
So bloggers are journalists then.