An Iraq news roundup at Winds of Change. (Including info on how you can help with private charity projects.) And unlike the mainstream media – this one isn’t brought to you by Al Qaeda stringers!
Prompted by the strong suspicion that the “6 Sunnis burned alive” story is fraudulent, Michelle Malkin is compiling the growing list of questionable media sources in Iraq as others begin to dig into this story more deeply;

***4:30pm Eastern update: when it rains, it pours…here’s a third must-read from milblogger John Noonan raising questions about AP stringer Bassem Mroue…more from Lorie Byrd on media malpractice…***
***8:58pm Eastern update: more questions for the AP…see Allah and See-Dubya: “Who is Qais al-Bashir?”…more here…still no word from AP in response to my query this morning…***
***All of Curt’s latest updates here at the Flopping Aces back-up site…Gateway Pundit has a round-up and chronology busting the Associated (w/t) Press for using bogus source Capt. Jamil Hussein…***
***11pm Eastern…yet another story challenged at Flopping Aces, with e-mail confirmation from CENTCOM…see Dan Riehl…Bruce Kesler, who has long diagnosed MSM stringeritis, weighs in…

Lots and lots of links provided there.

I’m beginning to have some doubts about the reader/listenership claimed by mainstream media outlets. For the past few days, the story of the successful court battle waged by New Brunswick blogger, Charles Leblanc, has been spreading through the mainstream media, from the New York Times, to CBC.
I just finished listening to an interview on Mike on Crime over Rawlco talk radio, and once again, his blogsite was mentioned, along with clear instructions on how to find it.
So, where is the traffic?

No eastern media bias here;

Take note of the appearance of scare quotes in the headline. I checked this purported news item looking for the third-party source – as it turns out, the only people the headline “quotes” are Globe writers Dawn Walton and Katherine Harding;

Alberta’s role as the bad boy of Confederation will be decided next Saturday [….]

Some of the bigotry in the reader responses is a little more overt.
h/t Cal, in the comments.

Or buy from enemy propogandists. Patterico;

Last Friday, my reader Tom Blumer sent me a link to an interesting blog post, by a blog called “One Oar in the Water,” which attacked the L.A. Times story about the Ramadi airstrike. The post quoted what purported to be an e-mail from a soldier who was involved in the Ramadi incident. The e-mailing soldier claimed that the “Times correspondent in Ramadi” has ties to the insurgency, and is knowingly repeating enemy propaganda:

The [L.A. Times article] is an example of why you simply cannot believe most media reports coming out of Iraq. The LA Time[s] reporter, Solomon Moore, is not in Ramadi. He relies on an Iraqi stringer here who has ties to insurgents. In this article, Moore repeats almost verbatim, insurgent propaganda we have intercepted. The fighting in question occurred in my battle space within Ramadi and I was personally and intimately involved.

The soldier then disputed certain assertions made in the L.A. Times article. The soldier said that there had been no airstrike, and that only a few insurgents had been killed, by small-arms fire and tank fire.

It’s a long post, and carefully researched.
Related – Via Mudville Gazette, “all the news to not bother telling you about”;

Fighting back: the city determined not to become al-Qaeda’s capital.
While the world’s attention has been focused on Baghdad’s slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate.
A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda’s reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi’s battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.

Oct 31st– Ottawa Sun columnist Greg Weston, on the “Peter MacKay must apologize for sexist remark” story his industry kept on life-support for 10 days;

A few hours after Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay first landed in the Commons doghouse over his canine reference to Liberal MP and former flame Belinda Stronach, she of eternal good nature was shrugging off the locker-room remark, telling her dinner companions that night: “Let’s let sleeping dogs lie.”

Fast forward three weeks to Nov 21st and pay attention to how our esteemed columnist decorates his own prose;

As Rona Ambrose returns to Canada from last week’s beatings at the UN climate change conference in Nairobi, we are beginning to wonder if the federal environment minister is perhaps missing her briefs.
[…]
Gosh. Caught with her briefs down again.

Gosh.
Well, this makes for an interesting juxtaposition. For all the controversy, the alleged MacKay comments don’t appear in the public record – the Commons Speaker Peter Milliken having ruled as much.
But this is no “he said -she said”. Greg Weston has not only affixed his name to this trashy piece of commentary, his editors at the Sun signed off on it. But set aside the question of the sexism double standard for a moment – it’s not as though we’ve come to expect moral consistancy from our mainstream keyboard jockeys.
What puzzles me is the metaphorical elephant in the room.
Greg Weston is a professional writer. As we of the media-consuming unwashed masses know full well, professional political writing is hard. It’s like, a gift. Lots of people can think up funny, biting commentary – but it takes a real pro to know which rhetorical ammunition to load when sizing up one’s target. It’s like comedic timing – they’re just born with it.
So, that’s why I’m scratching my head. If “briefs down” imagery is deemed suitable for describing the behavior of female Members of Parliament in the Canadian mainstream press, why waste such a disconnected metaphor on Environment Minister Rona Ambrose?
Just think of the milage (not to mention, peer approval!) Weston might have wrung out of this bit of linguistic cunning if only he’d had the presence of mind to turn his “briefs down” brilliance towards the MP of “eternal good nature”, that former Minister of Complex Files?
Opportunity, lost.
(Though admittedly, on a technical level, it probably fails the strict definition of metaphor.)
h/t Mark Collins, at Daimnation.

Pieter Dorsman learns the truth of an old Chinese proverb – “the man who believes what he reads in the newspaper Is the man who has never been interviewed“.

The power outage is continuing over here, in fact it got worse this morning when another storm knocked out numerous trees and power lines. Of course, this has attracted media attention and on Friday night we got a visit from a local TV-crew interested in how we were making out.
They came the right time, we had just grilled some great chicken on the BBQ, opened up an Australian Shiraz and getting ready to enjoy our dinner in front of the fireplace. The interviewer was trying hard to find bad news or some discord over our predicament, but even our children confirmed that we were doing fine when the camera lights were directed on them. I’ve not been interviewed on TV much, but it occurred to both me and Irene how hard some of these media outfits thrive on the negative rather than the positive. Only this afternoon some other journalists were in town soliciting quotes about how poorly the local power utility was doing in restoring services, but the contrary is true: they’re working around the clock to make things work again.

(OK, so it’s an old Saskatchewan proverb. Just remember where you heard it.)

A commentor wonders;

Check out the poll at canoe.ca re: the US losing its moral high ground in Iraq. I have revisited to and seen the number of votes increase from around 4000 to 5000 and now over 6000 and the percentages have not changed (24%, 12%, 17%, 47%). The source code appears to me to be fixed, but my html knowledge is lacking for me say for sure.

Here’s the link to the poll. I have no idea whether this is the case or not, but it’s worth a test. For once, I’m going to ask that readers vote “no”, only because the answer represents the lowest percentage and is most likely to be affected by an influx of votes.
(Also, a quick look-see at the page source by someone with better knowledge of coding would be useful.)
UPDATE – test over. It took quite some time, but we’ve managed to move the “no” vote from 12% to 13%, so unless it was manually changed, it looks as though the poll is functioning properly.
It is worth noting , that the poll questions have essentially provided two possible responses for those who would vote “no” to the specifics of the question – “does the guilty plea by a Marine diminish the US moral ‘high ground’ in Iraq’.

Glenn Reynolds;

THE DEMOCRATS WIN, AND THE SUN STARTS TO SHINE! “Poll: Afghans express confidence in country’s direction, security.”
Who knows what else will suddenly get better this week?

Watch for more of this. Lots more.

Hugh Hewitt’s site received 125,000 visits yesterday;

On Wednesday morning –oblivious to the feelings of the troops and their families– the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz intoned that “[t]here isn’t anybody, including in the Bush administration, who believes that Kerry meant to insult the soldiers in Iraq with his clumsy joke.
On Wednesday afternoon –even after Kerry had published a half-apology (and an unsatisfactory one to much of the military if my e-mail is good indication), MSNBC’s Chris Matthew was demanding of former Kerry campaign manager Bob Shrum why Kerry had apologized to people whom he had not insulted.
Within the Manhattan-Beltway media machine there was utter cluelessness as to opinion about Kerry’s statement, Kerry’s refusal to apologize, and then Kerry’s non-apology apology, a cluelessness so profound as to be easily mistaken for contempt.
No other group would be treated with such casual disregard than the American military. They were the target of the barb, but their opinions about it and the man who hurled it were not consulted, and indeed, positively avoided. Much more important in the eyes of the MSM is what elite pundits and prestige reporters thought of what Kerry said and what Kerry did.
Why were so many so eager to defend Kerry instead of the troops?
A handful of Democrats instantly understood that Kerry had crossed an unacceptable line, though many including Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown rushed to defend their patron as opposed to the military they soon hope to represent.
In MSM, there were almost no voices willing to recognize the slander and demand an apology.
New media moved to make sure the military’s view was heard, but it was the military itself that ultimately settled the issue.
One picture —now a famous picture— utterly routed the MSM. It did so because it came from the military that had heard and understood what Kerry had said, and what he had not apologized for. Whether or not the old media carries the picture on front pages today (which would have been an obvious decision in any newsroom not deeply biased against the military and in favor of Democrats) most Americans will have seen it and laughed and laughed at John Kerry. Ridicule is the best revenge, and the troops have it.
But the American electorate also has a very clear example of how the media has been covering the war, the 2006 campaign, and, yes, the military for the past few years. The big MSM names want another Vietnam, and they pursue that storyline with a relentlessness that isn’t deterred even by plummeting circulation and declining viewership.
It is surpassingly strange to watch an industry will its own destruction. But stranger still if the culture within which it lives does not object to the design.

Someone in the comments asked a very good related question, and it’s one I’ve wondered about myself – “Why does the leader of the fourth party in Parliament receive such a disproportionate amount of media coverage?”.
The answer of course, is that while Jack Layton’s leftist ideology consigns his party to the basement of the Canadian mainstream, it nonetheless represents that of the first party in Canadian media.
Thus, it’s no accident that the majority of coverage Canadians receive about Iraq and Afghanistan tends to be filtered through that pink-toned lens, as though the battles waged there exist in isolation. It helps to explain why the activities of Islamists in Pakistan, India, Somalia, Nigeria, Chechnya, Indonesia, Thailand, France, Holland, (and until very recently, Darfur), receive next to no attention at all.
Their leftist world view is solidly rooted in the politics of envy, the tap root – anti-Americanism. Deprived of the ability to tie the atrocities commited by Islamic terrorists (excuse me, “insurgents”) to decisions made by a Republican administration, they simply cease to exist as atrociites at all.

*********
Addendum to “Much more important in the eyes of the MSM is what elite pundits and prestige reporters thought” – As I was posting this, I was listening to a lengthy rant by Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferer and ratings basement dweller, Keith Olbermann (MSNBC), playing over the Canadian radio airwaves.
Charles Adler – radio dedicated to the relentless pursuit of the opinions of other pundits.
More – Greg Staples had the same reaction.

Mario Loyola notices something;

I would just like to point out that the New York Times appears to have doctored the slide referred to in this brilliantly well-timed bit of election propaganda by removing the classification markings which are invariably found at the top and bottom of these slide (even when they are unclassified — and this one was classified, as Central Command has already confirmed). I want to know whether there is any level of national secret the Times is not willing to betray for the political advantage of its pet causes. And I would like to know what else they may have doctored on the slide.

Hugh Hewitt interviews Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. As lengthy as they are, I’ve exerpted only small portions – the exchange lasted 3 hours. It’s a must read for those of you still clinging to the notion that there isn’t an overwhelming left-leaning bias in the news industry – the “default setting”, as some of us call it. This is from one of their own.
Halperin was on the show to discuss his new book on US political strategists, The Way To Win, and throughout the interview, holds fast to the assertion that revealing his own political viewpoint to the audience is inappropriate for someone in his profession. (He also believes that journalists should refrain from voting). Hewitt disagrees;

HH: All right. Now let’s…then let’s put the plumb lines down on issues. Are you pro-choice?
MH: Hugh, it’s the same thing on issues as it is on candidates. I don’t think it’s appropriate, if you’re going to cover these things, to talk about views. I will say this, Hugh. I will say that many people I work with in ABC, and other old media organizations, are liberal on a range of issues. And I think the ability of that, the reality of how that affects media coverage, is outrageous, and that conservatives in this country for forty years have felt that, and that it’s something that must change. But what my views are, are not important, and just like I said on not voting, I think having views and expressing them is a dangerous thing. I have opinions and thoughts, but I think talking about them is only bad for America.
***
HH: Mark, if you’re all left-handed, you’re not going to be able to hit from the right side of the plate, all right? If you’re all left-handed, you’re not going to be able to cover pro-life politics the right way. If you’re all atheists, you’re not going to be able to understand…
MH: That’s why we need to have the newsroom not filled with people who are all atheists, or anti-2nd Amendment.
HH: But if we can’t figure that out, how in the world…
MH: We have to work on it, Hugh. We can’t give up. We have to work on it.
HH: But how do we know you’re working on it when you won’t answer the questions?
MH: Because I’m telling you that my views, to the extent I have them, and I’m very good at pressing them out of my brain, do not impact my attempt to be fair to everyone I cover.
HH: But Mark, was Mary Mapes fair?
MH: No.
HH: Okay. There are more Mary Mapes. Even if we believe for a second…
MH: Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Stop going back…
HH: …and there’s no reason to believe you…
MH: Stop going back to the stuff we agree on, because we can talk less about the book if you do that. I agree with you that the Mary Mapes’ of the world are ruining it for the rest of us, and they are the dominant majority. We’ve got to fix it.
***
MH: You’re asking me should people be skeptical? I think anyone who’s conservative should be skeptical of anything the old media does. But if they look at what we say in the book about the old media, if they look at the quality of ideas, I think that they’d have no reason to be skeptical, that the book is not a straightforward and honest account of not just the right, but of the left, and of the media.
HH: But the old media is overwhelmingly liberal, correct, Mark Halperin?
MH: Correct, as we say in the book.
HH: And so everyone that you work with, or 95% of people you work with, are old liberals.
MH: I don’t know if it’s 95%, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper. And it goes from the big and major like CBS’ outrageous story about President Bush’s draft record right before the 2004 election, to the insidious and small use of language describing Nancy Pelosi’s liberal policies and ideas different than they would Newt Gingrich’s conservative ones.
HH: And that’s what I’m getting at. Inside of ABC News political division, how many people work with you, Mark Halperin, in that division?
MH: You know, it’s hard to quantify it, because you’ve got people involved in a political year like this one, or during a presidential race, you’ve got hundreds of people who are touching our political coverage. There aren’t very many people, just a handful of us, are full-time political reporters.
HH: But with editorial control, a producer, an editor…
MH: It’s literally hundreds…
HH: Okay.
MH: Because again, you’ve got people on Good Morning America, people on World News Tonight, or World News, we call it now. So literally hundreds.
HH: Of those hundreds, what percentage do you think fairly, honestly, are liberal, and would vote Democratic if they voted?
MH: The same as in almost every old media organization I know, which is well over 70%.
HH: Isn’t it…Thomas Edsall, in an interview that I know you read, because you wrote me about it, he said 95…
MH: I think 95’s well overstated…
HH: He said 15-25:1 in the Washington Post, liberal to conservative. Do you think that’s fair?
MH: Absolutely. And again, I mean, look. John and I work for old media organizations. We write things in the book that most people in old media won’t admit. But we’re proud of our organizations, but I don’t want to say it’s singular to ABC. It’s in all these…it’s an endemic problem. And again, it’s the reason why for forty years, conservatives have rightly felt that we did not give them a fair shake.
***
HH: And these liberals…you know, Terry Moran on this program said…Terry Moran on this program from ABC, your colleague…
MH: Right.
HH: …said that the media hates the military, has a deep suspicion of it. Do you agree with that?
MH: I totally agree. It’s one of the huge biases, along with gays, guns, abortion, and many other things.
***
HH: Three books, The Looming Tower, America Alone, and Imperial Grunts by Lawrence Wright, Mark Steyn and Robert Kaplan. Have you read any of them.
MH: Not a one.
HH: Does media read widely?
MH: No. We say in the book that reporters are more likely to write books or steal them from book parties than to read them. And I’m not an exception to that. I’m constantly in the midst of covering a presidential campaign, and for the last year, finishing my book and promoting it. So I tend to not read serious books as much as I should, and that I’m not an exception amongst reporters.
HH: How about…you just answered that. How about in television? Are they even less well read than the print media?
MH: Oh, yeah.
HH: And so…
MH: Though not everybody. Not uniformly. I have plenty of colleagues who read serious books all the time, and sometimes write them. But compared to the responsibility that we have to be informed and help inform, we should read more.
HH: And so, it’s basically a very ill-informed group of very influential people who are driving modern media coverage of politics.
MH: Not to a person, but certainly that’s more true than it should be.
HH: A lot more true than it should be.

Set aside some time to read the whole thing.
It should also be printed out and left on the desk of every editor and reporter in the country, but somehow, I don’t think that’s likely to happen – these aren’t egos naturally suited for speaking truth to self.
Update – a timely item this morning;

An analysis by the Center for Media and Public Affairs of midterm election stories aired on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts Sept. 5-Oct. 22 found that 2006’s coverage has been almost five times as heavy as in the 2002 midterm elections: 167 stories, compared with 35 four years ago.
The study found that three out of four evaluations of Democratic candidates’ chances of winning — such as sound bites — were positive, compared with one out of eight for Republicans. Coverage has been dominated by two major themes: the effects of the Foley scandal, and the impact the Bush presidency is having on the party’s congressional candidates.
The Foley scandal produced 59 stories alone, compared with 33 on Iraq and 31 on terrorism/national security issues. “What’s hurting Republican candidates is the media’s focus on two non-candidates: Mark Foley and George W. Bush,” says center director Robert Lichter.

Editor and Publisher reports grim news in the mainstream media battle against the growing strength of an internet insurgency ;

The Los Angeles Times reported that daily circulation fell 8% to 775,766. Sunday dropped 6% to 1,172,005
The San Francisco Chronicle was down. Daily dropped 5.3% to 373,805 and Sunday fell 7.3% to 432,957.
The New York Times lost 3.5% daily to 1,086,798 and 3.5% on Sunday to 1,623,697. Its sister publication, The Boston Globe, reported decreases in daily circulation, down 6.7% to 386,415 and Sunday, down 9.9% to 587,292.
The Washington Post lost daily circulation, which was down 3.3% to 656,297 while Sunday declined 2.6% to 930,619.
Circulation losses at The Wall Street Journal were average, with daily down 1.9% to 2,043,235. The paper’s Weekend Edition, however, saw its circulation fall 6.7% to 1,945,830.

It’s a quagmire.
And then, there’s the matter of the walking wounded. With staff cuts taking place across the industry, hard questions are being asked.

Of course that you need journalists, but for what?
To re-package the same news from the same sources?
To attend the same boring press conferences?
To publish today the same news that our readers knew YESTERDAY?
To produce pages and pages of commodity information with no value added?

However, there’s one bright bright spot amidst the carnage;

The New York Post today surpassed the Daily News and The Washington Post to become the 5th largest newspaper in America after bucking the national trend and chalking up a whopping 5.1 percent jump in circulation. The Post’s average paid circulation was 704,011 for Monday to Friday in the six-month period ending Sept. 30, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported.

Maybe it’s not the medium, after all.
Maybe it’s the messengers.

Confesses;

“I’m not sure it’s any good for anyone if we end up commenting on each other without actually understanding each other. In this case, I imagine that it would only have informed my story and gotten your points across to a wider audience if I’d we’d actually spoken before I wrote.”

Who’s this “we’d” Panetta speaks of? (Notice the word “I’d” is left orphan in the middle of that sentence – suggesting there was a bit of rewording before it was sent.)
The use of “we” suggests a shared responsibility – if only Kathy Shaidle had the presence of mind to discuss the “news brief” with the CP before the unresearched speculation appeared in print.
Kathy has the full email exchange. Unbelievable, but a useful insight into what goes on behind the scenes.
Just don’t expect to see any retraction or corrections from CP/CTV.
(My own email response to Panetta follows in the extended entry.)

Continue reading →

If one only read the CBC’s account, you’d be led to believe that the controversial remarks of a senior Muslim cleric in Australia occurred in a vacuum;

A senior Muslim cleric in Australia apologized Thursday after he was widely condemned for recently reported comments he made about women and rape, but said he would not step down from his position.
Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali denied he was condoning rape in a sermon last month when he compared women who don’t wear a headscarf to “uncovered meat,” suggesting they invite sexual attack.
But Hilali apologized to any women he had offended, saying they were free to dress as they wished.
Hilali was quoted in the Australian newspaper as saying in the sermon: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come to eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s?”
“The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred,” he was quoted as saying, referring to the headdress worn by some Muslim women.
Hilali issued a statement Thursday saying The Australian had selectively quoted from the sermon, and that he was shocked at the reaction.
“I would like to unequivocally confirm that the presentation related to religious teachings on modesty and not to go to extremes in enticements,” the statement said.
“This does not condone rape; I condemn rape,” he said. “Women in our Australian society have the freedom and right to dress as they choose; the duty of man is to avert his glance or walk away.”

Read the CBC item carefully.
Now,we go to the Sydney Morning Herald for the part they left out;

As well, by revealing so unequivocally his primitive views of women, Hilaly destroyed the claims by cultural relativists that Sydney’s series of gang rapes by Muslim men had nothing to do with culture or religion.
“If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street … without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?” he said in the sermon to 500 people last month at Lakemba mosque. “The uncovered meat is the problem. If the meat was covered, the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it … if the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.”
Then in a clear reference to the gang rape trial of Bilal Skaf, he said: “A woman possesses the weapon of seduction. It is she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us … then it’s a look, then a smile, then a conversation … then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.”
The only incitement committed by 18-year-old Ms C, who was raped 25 times by up to 14 men including Skaf in 2000, was being Australian. Sitting on a train, dressed for a job interview in her best suit, and reading The Great Gatsby, she was a slut, an “Aussie pig” as they called her later, while boasting: “I’m going to f— you Leb style.”
“I looked in his eyes. I had never seen such indifference,” she said.
Hilaly was simply echoing what the father of four Pakistani-born gang-rapists from Ashfield once said of the young victims: “What do they expect to happen to them? Girls from Pakistan don’t go out at night.”
Hilaly’s younger, Australian-born counterparts have been saying the same thing for years.
“A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world,” Sheik Feiz Mohammad told 1000 people at Bankstown Town Hall last year. “Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world … strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses.”

Like the selective reporting on yesterday’s anti-war rallies, the damning stuff is left on the cutting room floor.

This bit of tongue in cheek penned by the Toronto Star’s Public Editor, Sharon Burnside;

“The Star does not quote unnamed sources who make critical comments about others — and that’s as it should be, since readers would have no idea who the sources are, nor if they had motive for mischief-making.”

h/t Chris Selley, (who has the punchline).

Strategy Page;

The U.S. Department of Defense is now taking its requests for corrections public through a website known as For the Record (located at http://www.defenselink.mil/home/dodupdate/index-b.html). Here, the Department of Defense is openly calling for corrections from major media outlets, and even noting when they refuse to publish letters to the editor.
The most recent was this past Tuesday, when the DOD published a letter, that the New York Times refused to run, which contained quotes from five generals (former CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, current CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, MNF Commander George Casey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, as well as his successor, Peter Pace) that rebutted a New York Times editorial. This has been picked up by a number of bloggers who have been able to spread the Pentagon’s rebuttal – and the efforts of the New York Times to sweep it under the rug – across the country.
[…]
The DOD is pushing back, not only putting out requests to correct the record (with the refusals published as well), but also citing stories of heroes that the media has failed to cover – usually two or three a week. Among these are accounts of those who have been awarded medals for battlefield bravery, like Navy Cross recipients Robert J. Mitchell Jr. and Bradley A. Kasal, as well as Silver Star recipients Juan M. Rubio, Sarun Sar, Jeremy Church, and Leigh Ann Hester. The DOD has also followed CENTCOM’s lead in running pieces on what terrorists actually say – another item largely ignored by the mainstream media.

“No, I represent the people, you represent the media.”

Video here.
Via Powerline.

An employment initiative at Canadian Press;

“What else does this CP reporter get wrong in the stories they file each day?”

For the purpose of illustration, the [BBC] executives were given a scenario in which Jewish Comedian Sasha Baron Cohen would participate in a program titled ‘Room 101’, a studio program where guests would be asked for their opinions on different issues, and allowed to symbolically throw things they hated in a garbage bin.
The executives were asked what they would do if Cohen decided to throw ‘Kosher food’, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bible, and the Quran in the garbage bin.

Related: Biased BBC blog.