The post-Katrina poll results you didn’t hear about.

Tom Brodbeck in the Winnipeg Sun;

One television report this week had Mulroney calling former Tory cabinet minister Joe Clark “stupid” in the book.
Actually, what Mulroney really said in the book was that Clark was a weak leader and didn’t have the capacity to manage his caucus when he was party leader.
“I’m not so sure that he does today, although if he hasn’t learned anything over the last seven or eight years, he’d be a very stupid man, and he’s not stupid,” said Mulroney.
The TV report turned “not stupid” into “stupid.”
Maybe Mulroney’s not so crazy after all.

Update: He’s having server problems, but the post linked to below can be accessed here for now
In a lengthy entry, Jeff Goldstein begins by quoting Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in a report that takes dead aim at Katrina reporting;

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.
“Mr. Bush’s performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever during a dire national emergency,” wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a somewhat more strident expression of the conventional wisdom.
But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.
Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:
“The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”
For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.
Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.
So they libel as a “national disgrace” the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

Jeff then goes on to rip into Newsweek, page by page;

We know that Bush watches ESPN.� We know that the Iraq War is a failure.� We know that the President surrounds himself with yes men.� And all these things-when coupled with his “failure of imagination” (a more “imaginative” President presumably would have shredded the Constitution and dropped active duty troops into New Orleans over the objections of a sitting governor, and would’ve done so on Tuesday as the levees were breaking-in effect, anticipating what the local government was unable both to anticipate and prepare for) – highlight Bush’s failure.
In short, the dumbest, Chimpiest, most fascist President ever failed to be the most prescient, creative, Constitutionally “proactive” President ever.
This, my friends, is “journalism.”

Especially for those of you new to SDA and the blogosphere, I suggest you read Jeff’s entry. In his disassembly of the Newsweek article, he exposes that much of the coverage we’ve been treated to on Katrina and the responses of the various levels of government is, at best, pathetically superficial and selectively factual. At worst (and most of it falls into the worst category) it’s intentionally politicized and misleading.
Journalists, take note. This is why increasing numbers of Americans – and Canadians – are turning off their network news and cancelling subscriptions. The “art of omission” is a dangerous ploy in an age where the media consumer has near instant, unfiltered free access to legal and constitutional experts, transcripts, archival material, and witnesses on the scene.
When viewers and readers discover you are ignoring the details – in this case, details like the limitations placed on presidential powers by the US Constitution – in a transparent ploy to score political points, you damage the relationship with the information consumer on a multitude of levels.
That you inflict long term damage on your own professional credibility goes without saying. What seems less understood by your profession is that your actions convey a profound contempt for your readers and listeners. Disingenuously superficial and/or inappropriately politicized versions of current events are an insult to our intelligence – and we know it.
As frustrating as this facade of journalism is to those of us who have the time to seek out a variety of sources to sift fact from half-fact, there are sobering implications that go beyond immediate reporting. Subverting the legitimate public policy debate that should arise out of this disaster (both in the US and here – where Vancouver awaits the “big one”) places lives at stake. Our lives.
If you, as a member of the general public, don’t feel a little uneasy at the eagerness of a crocodile media whose tears mix with saliva as they report rising ratings “rising death tolls” , if you don’t realize that our lives are no more valuable to these people than those in a Baghdad cafe or New Orleans street, you’re deluding yourself.
Disaster and terrorism fatalities serve a political purpose for a significant number of people who are posing as journalists while they pursue a higher ideological purpose. In their eyes, we’re just so many potential body parts for the next Pulitzer Prize winning illustration of their world view. These people are not on our side. They’re on theirs.
Related: Katrina timeline, plus this Hugh Hewitt inteview with Mark Steyn.
Update: Ben Stein says “The real story is that the mainstream media rioted.”

I told someone privately a couple of days ago that the American media has lost the ability to sway public opinion in any appreciable way.
CNN/USA TODAY POLL: Only 13% blame Bush
They failed when they called a win for Gore, failed in their predictions of an “inflamed Arab street” the run-up to the Afghan and Iraq wars, failed in the “quagmire” reporting of the Iraq invasion, failed to pin blame for 9-11 on the Bush administration, failed to win an election for John Kerry, and today, they’re failing to turn an act of nature into a White House plot to “let black folks drown”.
There’s no mystery as to why – the American public is onto them. You’d think the freefall in newspaper subscriptions and network ratings would be a clue. As usual, the last ones to see the “root cause” are the media themselves.
(Update: Things like this don’t help either. )
Update to update : Or maybe not – Geraldo smeared by NYT?

“I am sleeping in here. And I am eating all my meals in here too. I have given up on makeup. I have not been outside in the sun for what seems like a long time. My family and friends can’t come in here to say hello.”
“Why isn’t someone trying to take back the controls from a bunch of box cutter-wielding ideologues …”
“This whole thing sucks!!! I feel drained, sad, angry, anxious. I want this to end!”
“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride of emotions this week. Nothing like being made the unwitting martyr to some bureaucrat’s apathy to shake one’s
confidence. I’ve swung from optimism, to resolve, to despair – often in the course of a single conversation.”

As the new season begins, watch to find out which members of the group emerge from this challenging outdoor survival experience as mature, self-reliant individuals, with a better understanding of how others view their behavior.

Slawko Klymkiw’s journey through the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is almost movie-of-the-week material, the kind he himself would commission for the Mothers Corps.
And if you believe that, then you will also believe the many accolades bestowed upon the man whose decision “to accept an invitation to take up a new, exciting and very different professional opportunity” happens to coincide with the current lockout that many say is the death knell of the CBC as we have known it.
Or, about the same time senior brass decided the NHL method of labour negotiation, a.k.a. starve the bastards out, was the only alternative to even more years of decaying revenues, self-centred programming and downward-spiralling ratings.
Or, a.k.a. exactly what Klymkiw had delivered in his 9 years as Executive Director of Network Programming for CBC Television.

Though, The Black Rod is more encouraging towards the CBC than most are.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a brief email from a host at 580 CFRA (Ottawa), requesting an interview. There was a mention that they had “stumbled on my website” when researching and that the leader of the Alberta Separation Party had been a former guest. After a few more exchanges, it was decided I’d be a guest late the next Thursday evening.
Wanting to be prepared, I then asked what the topic was, assuming it was on blogging or “western alienation” or something.
Heh. Not quite.

The Western Standard poll that was a hot blog topic last week has caught the attention of the mainstream.
…and Drudge.
…and the Chinese – who, I’m thinking, would prefer to hash out future resource deals with Paul Martin and Maurice Strong’s “New Canada” than they would an independent West.
Just a hunch.

Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell have a thoughtful and accurate article on how blogs impact media in Foreign Policy;

Blogs are becoming more influential because they affect the content of international media coverage. Journalism professor Todd Gitlin once noted that media frame reality through “principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters.” Increasingly, journalists and pundits take their cues about “what matters” in the world from weblogs. For salient topics in global affairs, the blogosphere functions as a rare combination of distributed expertise, real-time collective response to breaking news, and public-opinion barometer. What’s more, a hierarchical structure has taken shape within the primordial chaos of cyberspace.
[…]
[E]ven as the blogosphere continues to expand, only a few blogs are likely to emerge as focal points. These prominent blogs serve as a mechanism for filtering interesting blog posts from mundane ones. When less renowned bloggers write posts with new information or a new slant, they will contact one or more of the large focal point blogs to publicize their posts. In this manner, poor blogs function as fire alarms for rich blogs, alerting them to new information and links. This self-perpetuating, symbiotic relationship allows interesting arguments and information to make their way to the top of the blogosphere.
The skewed network of the blogosphere makes it less time-consuming for outside observers to acquire information. The media only need to look at elite blogs to obtain a summary of the distribution of opinions on a given political issue.
The mainstream political media can therefore act as a conduita between the blogosphere and politically powerful actors. The comparative advantage of blogs in political discourse, as compared to traditional media, is their low cost of real-time publication. Bloggers can post their immediate reactions to important political events before other forms of media can respond. Speed also helps bloggers overcome their own inaccuracies. When confronted with a factual error, they can quickly correct or update their post. Through these interactions, the blogosphere distills complex issues into key themes, providing cues for how the media should frame and report a foreign-policy question.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous – Des Moines Register sports writer Nancy Clark offers several journalistic gems in a rant featured at Captain’s Quarters;

In the new “journalism of assertion,” as the report calls it, information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its voracity.

Ed Morrissey;

Voracity. Yes, the Exempt Media gets voracious in its attempts to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their readers, especially those who deign to criticize their work. Unfortunately, I believe Clark meant “veracity”, which means “truth” and “accuracy”.
Great work so far on the part of the layers of fact-checkers and editors.

Heh.

Behind The Red Door

Ignore that.
I was just having a Bourque moment.

Drudge;

The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts’ two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals.
Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants. Both children were adopted from Latin America.
A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper’s “standard background check.”
Roberts’ young son Jack delighted millions of Americans during his father’s Supreme Court nomination announcement ceremony when he wouldn’t stop dancing while the President and his father spoke to a national television audience.
Previously the WASHINGTON POST Style section had published a story criticizing the outfits Mrs. Roberts had them wear at the announcement ceremony.
One top Washington official with knowledge of the NEW YORK TIMES action declared: “Trying to pry into the lives of the Roberts’ family like this is despicable. Children’s lives should be off limits.
The TIMES is putting politics over fundamental decency.”

Words fail.

Lorrie Goldstein has published a portion of the CBC World View Employee Quiz;

Ready? Here we go:
(1) The most dangerous nation in the Mideast today is:
(a) Israel (b) Israel (c) Israel (d) Israel.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the CBC refuses to use the word “terrorist”.
For the CBC to describe suicide bombings in New York and London as “terrorist acts” would force them into the position of explaining why suicide bombings in Tel Aviv are not – and that might force an admission that they have chosen sides.

Angry is asking questions of a “shocked” Mike Duffy;

But Duffy admits a Liberal bias at some media outlets makes it difficult for Harper and the Conservatives to get their message out.
“I’ve just been speaking to a couple of young journalists and I was shocked,” he said.
“One young journalist in New Brunswick said to me, ‘when I see Stephen Harper I see the enemy.’ It’s not journalists’ place to have enemies.”

Was it a nice nap, Mike?

Not everyone behaved themselves while weathering hurricane Emily.

We were Allegro Guests as well and it was great that we were able to be in the Royal Hideaway Theater. It was so sound that you could hardly hear any wind blowning. The most annoying thing was listening to a CSC reporter from Canada complaining about Allegro guests being allowed to be in the Theater. She was an embarassment to any Canadian. She and her little group of friends were complaining to a Manager at one point that the Royal Guests should have had king beds put in for them. IT was unbelievable and the poor staff did not even know how to respond to such a ridiculous request. The staff were doing the best they could and were so organized and calm. My husband and I commend the staff of both hotels and are so mad at her behavior that we want to write a letter to CBC to complain about her representation of the station. Her name was Krista something. Does anyone know of her? What do you guys think?

CBC; CBC reporter Krista Erickson, on holiday in Playa del Carmen, said few people slept in the packed emergency shelter. People woke up screaming around 4:30 a.m. local time as drywall from the building’s roof started to collapse, she said. “Everyone is absolutely exhausted” and want to get back to their rooms on the resort, which appears largely intact, said Erickson

“… Yes, that’s her.
Just looking at her picture angers us. Even her article has nothing good to say about the hotels organization or preparation. What she did not write is that the part of the dry wall that came down was over the stage and the staff did not let people on the stage due to it not being fully secure. No one was hurt and people were not screaming. Now we are really going to write a letter about her. Thank you for the information.”

Here’s a story that is just made for some enterprising young blogger to dig into for Librano connections.
I say “blogger”, because all the enterprising young reporters are busy looking for ways to replace the word “terrorist” in their reports with “The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shares the goals of Al Qaida”.

‘Terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’: Exercise extreme caution before using either word.
Avoid labelling any specific bombing or other assault as a “terrorist act” unless it’s attributed (in a TV or Radio clip, or in a direct quote on the Web). For instance, we should refer to the deadly blast at that nightclub in Bali in October 2002 as an “attack,” not as a “terrorist attack.” The same applies to the Madrid train attacks in March 2004, the London bombings in July 2005 and the attacks against the United States in 2001, which the CBC prefers to call “the Sept. 11 attacks” or some similar expression. (The BBC, Reuters and many others follow similar policies.)
Terrorism generally implies attacks against unarmed civilians for political, religious or some other ideological reason. But it’s a highly controversial term that can leave journalists taking sides in a conflict.

I am trying very hard at this moment to resist a mental image of a fuel truck on its way through the front doors at 250 Front Street West – because I fear that is what it is going to take to loosen the grip of moral equivalence that has infected our Western media.
Memo To CBC. Islamofascism does not recognize “neutrality”. You have taken sides.
Theirs.

John G, in the comments;

How many of you know Stephen Harper had 2 members of his communications team recently resign. Probably most of you, since it was plastered as a leading headline in CP and most dailies.
Now how many of you know that Paul Martin just lost 2 members of his communications team? Hint: You’ll find it today in the Ottawa Citizen…if you look very closely at an almost unrelated story.
Why is it more newsworthy when Stephen Harper’s advisors resign than when Paul Martin’s do?

(Does anyone have a link, or a scan of the dead tree version?)
Got this one, thanks to a reader.

In the comments of this post from last week on the slaughter going virtually unreported in Thailand;

I am an expat Canuck living in Thailand. The death toll is more like 800 in a year and a half. Plus about 250 islamaholics.
I had a “friend” in Vancouver actually become angry when I told them about this saying “it’s not true, if it was true it would be on the news”
Well it’s on the news here, every night.
They kill monks, teachers, students, tree sappers, ANYONE who’s Buddhist, or not Islamic enough for them.
But according to the BBC it’s ALL the Thai Government’s fault for being “heavy handed” in it’s response.

Just a suggestion to our friends in media who may be surfing through as we await the first sensational photos of Canada’s Schoolgirl Killer[tm] on her scheduled release from prison.
Get your heads out of your collective ass.
Karla Homolka is only newsworthy because you decided to make her so. Perhaps it’s laziness or budget constraints. Perhaps it’s because you’re genuinely ignorant of the numbers of equally cold and vicious offenders who are released without fanfare every year.
Or, most probably – perhaps it’s because you have her wedding videos and lots and lots of made-for-tv footage of her flipping her golden locks.
Whatever it is, I don’t care. Karla Homolka is not important.
This is.

In the spirit of my interviews with MPs Monte Solberg (1, 2, 3, 4) and Andrew Scheer (1, 2), I created the Blogging Tories Podcasting page because I wanted to get the whole Blogging Tories community in on the action.
If you’ve been thinking of getting into podcasting, here’s your chance. The Blogging Tories today has officially launched its Postcasting Tories site.
I’ve purchased branding on the iPodder software for ease of use to our audience (the Blogging Tories feed is already integrated) so go there now and download it from our servers (PC and Mac available).
The idea is to integrate podcasts from members of the Blogging Tories community into one Podcasting feed that is downloaded regularly by the Podcast Aggregating software run by our global audience. Whenever a new podcast becomes availiable, the software downloads it automatically for the user.
I’m currently trying to round up some conservative radio pundits and personalities to include in the podcast XML feed as well. If you’re such a radio personality, let me know and I’ll put you in the feed! Of course, if you’re not a Canadian radio celebrity — here’s your chance to tryout!
Conservative talk radio has hit Canada… in podcast form.

Via Maz, in the comments, this item at Reason;

[A]mong the people increasingly “less trusting of the professional behavior” of journalists are . . . journalists! A survey of professional journalists by Euro RSCG Magnet, a PR and marketing outfit, and Columbia University, found that “45 percent of journalists are less trusting of the professional behavior of their own colleagues — up from 34 percent in 2003.” Many of these journalists were unhappy about the recent unpleasantness involving Dan Rather: “78 percent believe that Rathergate has profoundly altered the media’s credibility.”

I wonder if the survey included a question about how many professional journalists believe that the Rathergate memos were “fake but accurate”? That might provide a clue or two about this “altered credibility” issue.

The welcome news is that “93 percent of journalists said they are being ‘excruciatingly careful’ in fact-checking their stories in 2005 — a huge increase from 59 percent in 2003, likely a reflection of the press’s declining credibility.” The grabber here is here is that in 2003, 41 percent of journalists said they were being something other than ‘excruciatingly careful’ in fact-checking their stories.
The survey actually focused on journalists’ attitude toward blogs. “[O]nly 1 percent believe blogs are credible,” yet “more than half of journalists use Weblogs regularly, with 28 percent relying on them for day-to-day reporting.” Assemble those responses as you wish. Many pro journalists use blogs, the survey reported, to find story ideas and sources.

I presume those surveyed were excluding their own blogs in the “not credible” demographic making up 99% of their blog reading. The only thing growing faster than the blogosphere is the subgroup of professional journalists who are getting on board. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the least these latecomers might do is drop the sniffy ‘tude – the blogosphere exists because millions of their own customers are dissatisfied with the quality, accuracy and honesty in professional journalism, and have taken control of their own news gathering. They might do their own profession a favour by setting aside their assumptions about the imperfect nature of blogging for a while, and listening to bloggers and our readers. We are, after all, the very people they’ve been hard at work alienating over the past two decades.
Or not. Whatever. We’ll continue doing what we doing and they can continue fretting over ratings declines, staff cuts and dropping circulation numbers, and delude themselves that the two phenomenon are unrelated.
From the E marketer piece;

“The findings of the study validate what we have known for some time: that blogs are playing a more significant role in the way information is transmitted to readers and journalists alike, and may profoundly alter the media and communications landscapes,” said Aaron Kwittken, CEO of Euro RSCG Magnet. “The fact that the media are using blogs for reporting and research also demonstrates that blogs have an enormous potential to not only influence the general public, but to influence the influencers – journalists and the media – as well.”
The study finds that some 70% of journalists who use blogs do so for work-related tasks. Most often, those work-related tasks involve finding story ideas, with 53% of journalist respondents reporting using blogs for such purposes. But respondents also turn to blogs for other uses, including researching and referencing facts (43%) and finding sources (36%). Fully 33% of journalists say they use blogs as a way of uncovering breaking news or scandals.

You don’t say. Although things are slowly improving, there is a continuing pattern of blog chatter (and hard research) weaving its way into editorials and mainstream reporting without attribution.
Is it not time for the profession to establish protocols that give the credit due when they lift information from “citizen journalists”?