Trust In Media

Blogging 1 Comment

With the continuing silence on the Kerry/Cambodia story in the major media – despite an acknowledgement, retraction and revision by his campaign – is there little wonder that “a survey of 10,000 blog readers earlier this year conducted by Blogads found that 61 percent of respondents found blogs to be “more honest” than other media outlets.”

Hodder gives four reasons for trusting bloggers over general- assignment reporters:
Niche expertise. Newspapers try to cover the whole world, while bloggers can be experts with a deep knowledge about a topic like open-source software or micro-biology.
Transparency in motives. Bloggers are upfront about their biases and subjective approach, and they have greater freedom to speak from the heart and use a personal voice. Most journalists are constrained by an institutional objectivity. “I often read a reporter’s story and wonder, what’s their experience? Where are they coming from? What’s the context? What do they really think?” Hodder says.
Transparency in process. Bloggers link to documents, sources and supporting evidence to buttress their own authority. “The top-down press articles I see are written as if they’re not connected to anything, as if they just came out of a vacuum,” she says.
Forthrightness about mistakes. When bloggers err, the credible ones publish a mea culpa and take responsibility, with the corrected information alongside their original posting. Not so with newspapers, whose front-page mistakes are corrected in an inside page, or broadcast news, where mistakes are almost never acknowledged.

Good article.

John Kerry’s Orthodox Christmas

Insufferable Twits 2 Comments

Searing memory, updated;

kerry.jpg

“Mr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968, eating kutia, varenyky and pampushky on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared–seared–in me. And this pysanky my Baba sent me.”

Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci

Radioactive No Comments

Italian journalist and former war correspondant Oriana Fallaci’s new book Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci which warns of an Arab invasion of Europe and criticises authorities for allowing it to become ‘a colony of Islam’, has sold 500,000 copies of in a single day. They have begun reprinting a second edition.
The Belmont Club notices the kneejerk reaction that the work is evidence of racism.

Instead of meeting these serious accusations head on, the Left declares the
entire argument malformed, haram, taboo, inappropriate and therefore inadmissible. Fallaci’s propositions are never allowed to evaluate to a definite value; they must remain, on pain of breaking the world, forever null. Like the old jailhouse story of prisoners being forced to drink out an unflushed toilet unless they confessed, where one prisoner complains that his rights are being violated because there’s a fly in it, these newspaper responses miss the point by such a margin that one suspects they are on another planet; in a universe where Islam can never, like Christianity before it, consist of humans struggling to reform their faith. That would grant unacceptable equality to those who are fated to play the role of victims. In that twilight, blinkered world, Darfur, Kashmir, Ambon, Mindanao, Nigeria, Madrid and 9/11 disappear entirely while mock horror at racism fills every available space. And the toilet is fine but for the fly.

The Islamic Oprah

Insufferable Twits 5 Comments

Memri follows up on the case of Ranya Al-Baz, a Saudi TV host.

On April 4, 2004, Yunis left her in a hospital in a state of unconsciousness. The story received extensive media coverage in the Arab world, and the abusive husband was arrested. He was first accused of attempting to kill his wife, but the charges were subsequently reduced to the use of severe violence. Yunis was sentenced to six months imprisonment and 300 lashes.
However, Ranya decided to pardon her husband – a measure allowed by Saudi law. Yunis was spared the lashes and was released in early July after three months imprisonment.

The domestic abuse experts weigh in;

Sheik Abd Al-Hamid Al- Muhajir who asked rhetorically: “[In the case of] a wife who endangers her husband and her own life, what’s better, that she gets slapped or that she ruins her family, herself, and society?”
Egyptian Sheik Muhammad Al-Massir of Al-Azhar University also explained the circumstances in which a husband is allowed to beat his wife. If a woman is disobedient, he explained on the Saudi-based channel Iqra TV, ” a woman for whom marital life is important suffers when she is left alone in the bed. If we get to a point where abandonment [in bed] does not pain her and words do not deter her, we may have come to the stage of beatings.”

More here, including insight into the subject from Muslim clerics in North America.

Intelligent Intelligence Policy

Terrorism 3 Comments

David Frum asks some obvious questions about intelligence “failures”;

I’m beginning to think that maybe the weakest link in America�s intelligence system isn’t the spooks who generate the intelligence. The weakest link may be the users, the policymakers. But then, the users, the policymakers are ultimately elected. So maybe the problem is us.
That’s the question that keeps hitting me as I read and reread the 9/11 report this summer. Yes, it tells of many disturbing intelligence failures. But even more disturbing are the intelligence successes – the many times that Osama bin Laden was within reach in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 and yet still nothing was done.
Why not? Well ultimately because decision-makers flinched from the consequences of making a mistake. They feared alienating world opinion and offending and upsetting the voters. In other words – they didn’t act because they weren’t sure that the public wanted them to act.

I would point out that this is what divides politicians from statesman.
Policy makers who place public opinion above national security don’t deserve much sympathy for their errors – they have lost track of their priorities. When national security is at stake, priority number one is not re-election, no matter how you want to fold and tweak the rationale.
But I also agree with Frum about the responsibility of both the public and the media to grow up and behave like thinking adults.

We’re not going to get an intelligence service that takes risks until its leaders know that the public will accept that risks sometimes go wrong, sometimes badly wrong. Accepts – and forgives.
Any sign of that? Not much, not in the current media environment anyway. The current environment accepts bold risky intelligence strategies that succeed – while reserving the right to brutally condemn those that fail. Not exactly a good formula for curing gun-shyness.

That’s because the media has also found ways to rationalize their behavior in placing election of their favoured ideological sons over the security of nations and their citizenry.

Auditor Bites Brison

Insufferable Twits No Comments
Public Works Minister Scott Brison:
“As you can well imagine, procurement of this magnitude poses huge challenges as to the best approach to take. In this case, we used the yardstick of selecting the bidder who provided the lowest price consistent with fully meeting all technical requirements. I am pleased to say that officials of the Auditor General have commented favourably on our use of this approach.”		 Office of Auditor General;
It is impossible to say whether the lowest-cost compliant approach is bad or good, Ms. Hebert said. “Under some conditions, this approach is fair and it’s good and it leads to good value. In this case did it? We have not done an audit.”

Via The Monger.

Hippie Priest

Political Animal No Comments

Bush critic Chris Suellentrop ;

After last week’s Democratic convention, I felt that John Kerry had become the favorite in the presidential race. Now, after only two days with President Bush, I’m not so sure. He’s that good. Unlike many people, I’m not threatened by the president’s religious rhetoric. It must be the Midwestern Catholic in me. Like the people in the audience, I find it familiar and comforting. I can see why so many people believe the president is “one of us,” no matter how rich or how elite his background. And I can see that Kerry will have a tough time besting Bush in all three debates.

Via Occam’s Toothbrush

That Cloud On The Horizon

Gopher News 1 Comment

… is a herd of millions of growing spring calves with nowhere to go.
While BSE has slipped from the news cycle in urban areas, the border to the US remains closed to Canadian cattle because of a single case of BSE diagnosed a year and a half ago. A crop of new feeder calves will be heading into a winter with few buyers – there isn’t enough capacity in the Canadian meatpacking industry to process them – much less the cull cattle, which are now virtually worthless.
Nothing is going to change until after the US election cycle – in a close race, nobody is going to rock any boats unneccessarily. If Bush is defeated, don’t look for it to open after the elections either – Kerry’s a “country-of-origin labelling” (translation: clueless about the intricacy of the food industry) protectionist and proud of it.
Yet on the retail front, the prices of beef remain nearly as high as they were before the crisis. While I don’t begrudge the meatpackers and retailers the opportunity to make lemonade out of someone else’s discarded lemons, it isn’t helping to encourage consumption. Margins have always been slim in the cattle industry – and even worthless cattle have to be fed. Something’s going to give. A massive cull is being proposed.
Tomorrow another online petition to open the border comes online. I’m not very optimistic about these campaigns, but if you want to sign on, here’s the link – Opentheborder.com
Can’t hurt, anyway.
(link tip – Charles McDonald, who always has useful observations and good catches, and who should consider starting his own blog.)

Statement Of Claim

Political Animal 3 Comments

Gadhafi writes another check.

Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million to some victims of a bloody terror bombing at a Berlin disco nearly two decades ago, making another step in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s effort to rebuild relations with the West.
The deal, coming after much larger settlements for the bombings of two U.S. and French airliners, does not cover 169 American victims, including two soldiers who died in the blast at the La Belle disco on April 5, 1986. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation for them in U.S. courts.

Not as satisfying as chasing the little dictator into a hole in the ground… but progress, nonetheless. Now, would someone please start the ball rolling on Yassar Arafat?

“Unwarrantable Self-Abasement” – An Antidote

Blogging 2 Comments

Ghost Of A Flea offers this worthy quote to highlight this week’s Winston Review;

“The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians … Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.”
— Winston Churchill, April 24, 1933

Go read the collection.

Lively Transcript

Media 4 Comments

For fans of Bill O’Reilly and Paul Krugman.

Mr. O’REILLY: …I’m appointing Russert as president of the United States right now, OK? I talked to Tommy Franks the other night, and I said, ‘You know, what’s this weapons of mass destruction deal?’ And he was the general that commanded the war. He said, ‘Before we went to war, Egypt and Jordan told me,’ Tommy Franks, all right, ‘that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I passed that along to President Bush.’ So you’re sitting there in the White House, Russert, OK–frightening thought, but you are–and you’re getting your top general going, ‘I just heard from Egypt and Jordan weapons of mass destruction are there.’ Blair’s telling you, ‘MI6–weapons of mass destruction.’ Putin’s telling you, ‘Russian intelligence–weapons of mass destruction.’ Your own CIA chief is telling you, ‘Slam dunk weapons of mass destruction,’ according to Woodward. Now the 9-11 Commission harshly criticized Clinton and Bush for not doing enough to get bin Laden. That was one of their main thesis, and I believe that and I think everybody does. So you’re told by Jordan, Egypt, Russia, Britain, your own guy, ‘Weapons of mass destruction.’ You know Zarqawi, a top al-Qaida lieutenant’s, sitting in Baghdad because he just had a leg operation, all right? You know that. You know, as the 9-11 Commission pointed out, there’s been repeated contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam. You know all this. And you don’t move against Saddam? So they did have the WMDs. Say there was an anthrax attack on Krugman’s apartment block, OK? You’re sitting there, you had all this information, you didn’t act. Impeachable offense. He had to act. That’s the truth.
Prof. KRUGMAN: No, the truth–look, you’re talking all about commissions and governments that were under political pressure, and we have some independent stuff, right? The best reporting was actually by Knight Ridder, which was talking to the analysts off the record and not to the top officials. And this is the fall of 2002. And all the analysts said, ‘You know, they’re exaggerating this threat. We’re under enormous pressure to go and find reasons to attack Iraq.’ And you’ve actually got people who are close to the administration, like, you know, editorialists at The Washington Post, Jim Hoagland saying– boasting about how we’re managing to put the screws on these CIA analysts who don’t want to believe that Saddam is such a threat. So, come on, this is rewriting history. And the fact of the matter, as…
Mr. O’REILLY: Like I’m going to believe a Washington Post editorial writer over all the people I’ve cited.
[…]
Mr. O’REILLY: Why doesn’t your newspaper, The New York Times, do some investigating? You did 48 Abu Ghraib front-page stories…
Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh…
Mr. O’REILLY: …but you haven’t been able to do any oil for food investigations. I wonder why.
Prof. KRUGMAN: Because nobody has any information, right?
Mr. O’REILLY: Nobody has any?
Prof. KRUGMAN: Nobody has anything except these claims of all this come from Ahmad Chalabi, who The New York Times has learned a little bit to be wary of.
Mr. O’REILLY: Well, maybe you assign a couple of reporters to do that, you know. I mean, Abu Ghraib, I think we got the story there.
Prof. KRUGMAN: No, we didn’t.
Mr. O’REILLY: Oh, we didn’t? Forty-eight front-page stories, we still don’t have it?
Prof. KRUGMAN: We didn’t. No. Read the appendices. Read the appendices to the Taguba report. There’s much, much worse than anything that most of the public has heard about yet.
Mr. O’REILLY: All right. Well, maybe it’s right. And if there is, I want to read about it.
Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah. Well…
Mr. O’REILLY: And I know I will in your paper. But I ain’t gonna read oil for food investigation there.
Prof. KRUGMAN: But let me just come back. The…
RUSSERT: Bill, why are you suggesting The New York Times won’t be aggressive in pursuing oil for food?
Mr. O’REILLY: Because they use stories to bludgeon the Bush administration. They use their front page–here’s the deal.
Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh God.
Mr. O’REILLY: Abu Ghraib, horrible story, awful, OK. Off-the-chart bad. Twenty-eight front-page stories in the Chicago Trib, no bastion of conservatism. Forty-eight front-page stories, all of the last 20 just repetitive, what we already knew, in The New York Times.
Prof. KRUGMAN: So you…
Mr. O’REILLY: They use that story to drive public opinion against the present administration, which the paper despises, and that’s the fact.

Heh.
The National Debate has more.

Flight 51

Terrorism 7 Comments

Reader Charles MacDonald; “It’s now 30 years since the Syrians shot down flight 51 with the loss of all aboard:”

On Aug. 9, 1974, UN Flight 51 was flying from Beirut to Damascus on a routine supply run for Canadian peacekeepers manning the Golan Heights. The outcome was anything but routine.
Aboard the Buffalo aircraft were five crew and four passengers: Mirau, a native of Swift Current, Sask.; Capt. George Foster, 44, of Calgary; Master Cpl. Ronald Spencer, 29, of Quebec; Cpl. Bruce Stringer, 23, of Kitchener, Ont.; Capt. Robert Wicks, 39, of London, Ont.; Cpl. Morris Kennington, 30, of Britain; Cpl. Michael Simpson, 26; Master Warrant Officer Gaston Landry, 35, of St-Francois d’Assise, Que., and Warrant Officer Cyril Korejwo, 47.
The flight was cleared by air traffic control in Damascus to descend for landing.
“Just as they were letting down, the Syrian surface-to-air missile battery along the highway opened up with one missile,” said Roger Landry. “The pilot managed to avoid that first missile.”
But the pilot — it’s unclear whether Mirau or Foster was actually flying the plane — couldn’t avoid a second missile. It took out the left engine.
A third went through the fuselage. Everyone on board was killed — the largest single-day loss of life in Canada’s peacekeeping history. The time was 11:50 a.m.
Landry was allowed into the crash site a day later. The Syrian army had cleaned up most of the evidence, but he did find electrical wiring with Russian writing on it — from the missiles’ firing systems.

Today is the 30th Anniversary of the loss. And Charles is right – don’t look for our UN Peacekeeper lovin’ media to notice.

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