Hillary Hostage Affair Addendum

Posted by on December 1, 2007 at 1:18 am. 1 Comments :

With the conclusion of the harrowing incident in New Hampshire, where hostages where taken at a Hillary Clinton campaign office, this may be a good time for a round up of how the media performed.

Guess what?

Fox News managed to commit some amateurish, and possibly dangerous, mistakes. First off, they identified the suspect as Troy Stanley whom they described as a paranoid schizophrenic. It’s bad enough to broadcast such inflammatory characterizations while the crisis is still in progress and an unstable perpetrator may be watching on a TV inside the crime scene, but it’s even worse if you finger the wrong guy. The actual perp is a New Hampshire resident known to local police as Leeland Eisenberg.

John Ehrenfeld at Brave New Films notes that Fox reported an end to the event at 4:15PM EST, announcing that all of the hostages had been released. There would be nothing wrong with that except that another hostage was released over an hour later at 5:37, and then another at 6:13. Once again, Fox’s mistakes had the potential to put lives at risk.

Finally, when the incident actually did conclude, Hillary Clinton gave a statement and held a brief press conference that was carried live on CNN and MSNBC. Fox News chose not to air Clinton’s remarks live, instead continuing with their “All Star Panel” discussion on topics unrelated to the breaking news.

However, Wanker of the Day Award goes to MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson. In a discussion with FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt, Tucker responded to an assertion that Eisenberg was driven to the hostage taking because he felt there was no other way to make himself heard, by saying:

“He should do what a lot of other mentally ill people do in this country and start a blog.”

Very funny, Tuck. In one fell swoop you’ve trivialized the horror that the hostages just endured, discounted the gravity of mental illness, and disparaged everyone who exercises their right to free expression on the Internet. The Doofus Trifecta.

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CBS News Seeks Blathering Idiot

Posted by on November 30, 2007 at 9:43 pm. NO Comments :

Check out this want ad from CBS (screen cap):

Company: CBS News
Position: Seeking Vibrant Reporter/Host for Eco Beat
[…] Description:
CBS is expanding its coverage of the environment. We seek a talented reporter/host for Internet video broadcast. We are looking for smart, creative, hard working up and comers, who can bring great energy, creativity and a dash of humor to our coverage. A deep interest in the environment and sustainability issues will serve you well.

You are wicked smart, funny, irreverent and hip, oozing enthusiasm and creative energy. This position requires strong people, reporting, story telling and writing skills. Managing tight deadlines should be second nature. Knowledge of the enviro beat is a big plus, but not a requirement.

Responsibilities include reporting and hosting two to three news packages per week plus daily writing for our blog. You should be comfortable using a video camera and the Internet. Be prepared to see America. Heavy domestic travel.

Send resumes, cover letters and links to katzn@cbsnews.com.

Dust off those resumes. Seriously, let’s send Mr. Katz a flurry of resumes from all of us wicked smart hipsters who don’t know crap about the environment. While we’re at it, let’s send CBS applications for political, financial, criminal, and health beats, even if we don’t know anything about that either. Apparently they don’t care. I’ve always wanted to be a war correspondent.


Clarence Thomas Should Shut Up

Posted by on November 30, 2007 at 4:04 pm. NO Comments :

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has officially jumped the snark. He has traversed so far past the horizon of satire that he can’t be made fun of anymore.

Thomas has long kept tongues wagging about how little wagging his tongue does while on the bench. The Wall Street Journal reports that…

“Through about 20 oral arguments this term, Justice Thomas has yet to ask a question from the bench […] Last term, through 68 hours of oral arguments, he didn’t say a thing either. The last time Thomas asked a question: Feb. 22, 2006.”

In almost two years, not a peep from Justice Thomas, even during a case that involved the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which he headed during the Reagan administration. We know that there is nothing wrong with his vocal chords because he speaks in the private sector far more frequently than his fellow justices. In one of those speeches (delivered this week for $100.00 per seat), Thomas defended his silence by attacking his benchmates:

“My colleagues should shut up!” he exclaimed.

Then Thomas drew an absurd analogy between judges and surgeons saying that doctors don’t engage in seminars while in the operating room. If that’s an example of Thomas’ logical acuity we’re in bigger trouble than we thought. Doctors do, of course, have conferences to toss around theories and arguments for how to proceed before they ever step foot in an operating room. That’s a better analogy for what happens when justices conduct hearings. Justices in deliberations and composing their opinions would be more analogous to the operating room. But it doesn’t seem like Thomas even understands the duties required of him when he says…

“We are judges. This is the last court in a long line in our system. We are there to decide cases, not to engage in seminar discussions.”

Wrong, Clarence. You are there to assemble a thorough knowledge of the competing interests that the case presents. You ask questions in order to construct a legal foundation from which to form an opinion. You don’t decide the case until after you’ve heard the advocates from both sides and tested their legal arguments.

What a sad state of affairs that we have such an ill-informed and intellectually incurious member of our country’s highest court. We can only hope that he will develop a renewed appreciation for his family and resign to spend more time with them.


Rudy Call

Posted by on November 30, 2007 at 12:18 pm. NO Comments :

Mr. 9/11 is burnishing his credentials with an accounting scandal to go along with his sex scandal and his terrorist association scandal and his corrupt police commissioner scandal and…

From Politico:
“As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.”


Journalists Say Most Of Iraq Too Dangerous To Visit

Posted by on November 29, 2007 at 12:27 pm. NO Comments :

While the White House and its legions of RepubliPundits are busily pounding out praise for the newly tranquil environs of Iraq, observers at the scene have a very different tale to tell. The Project for Excellence in Journalism recently completed a survey of war correspondents that describes harrowing circumstances wherein 57% report that at least one of their Iraqi staff had been killed or kidnapped in the last year alone, and that…

“A majority of journalists surveyed say most of the country is too dangerous to visit. Nine out of ten say that about at least half of Baghdad itself. Wherever they go, traveling with armed guards and chase vehicles is the norm for more than seven out of ten surveyed.”

The survey recounts the experiences of seasoned reporters on a dangerous assignment. Many of them are frustrated that they are unable to thoroughly report on the everyday lives of Iraqi civilians because of the risk undertaken to gather information for a story. They cringe at scolding from stateside critics who complain that there aren’t enough “positive” stories about newly painted schoolhouses.

“…when journalists cannot cover a playground being rebuilt because it’s too dangerous to travel around the city, then that playground is not the primary story.”

Amongst the difficulties for reporters is access to sources. The survey reveals that the easiest sources to acquire are Iraqi civilians and foreign diplomats. It’s interesting to note that one of the most guarded groups are private contractors (i.e. Blackwater). Eighty-one percent of reporters say that they are “hard” or “impossible” to reach. That is second only in difficulty to Iraqi insurgents (90%). When enemy combatants and security firms paid for by American tax dollars share the same aversion to press inquiry, you have to wonder about the motives of each of them.

The safety impediments are not the only barriers to effective journalism. The Iraqi authorities are refusing reporters access to the sites of bombings and other violent incidents. That may make for a more uplifting tone from the media, but also one that is less representative of reality. You also need to take into consideration that some in the media are already soft-peddling the horrors of war. Take CNN’s John Roberts who admittted in an interview with Broadcasting and Cable that he is more concerned with not frightening away viewers or stirring up complaints from warmongers than he is about do his job:

“If we showed people the full extent of what we see every day in Iraq, we would either have no one watching us because they couldn’t stand to see the pictures, or we would get so many letters of complaint that some organization would come down on us to stop.”

The survey overall conveys a reality far removed from the emerging Eden of Democracy that the Bush administration is trying peddle. The tribulations of reporters are an important factor to consider when evaluating news items from war zones. If reporters are prevented from posting comprehensive accounts of their experiences because security concerns keep them from relevant scenes and sources, then that is a story in itself. And they shouldn’t have to suffer insults from the homefront studio-potatoes that whine about excessively “negative” coverage.


Republicans Finally Face-Off On YouTube

Posted by on November 29, 2007 at 12:43 am. NO Comments :

After initially declining to participate in a proposed CNN/YouTube debate, the Republican candidates have finally weathered the ordeal that had so frightened them at first. I could care less about the actual substance of the debate because it was so predictably a contest to see who could be more opposed to immigrants, gays, taxes, getting out of Iraq, and any variety of Clinton.

However, I would like to note that my criticism of the Democrat’s YouTube affair still holds true for this one. Specifically that, since all of the videos broadcast were pre-selected by CNN, this could hardly be characterized as promoting the voice of the people.

However, the Republican outing even surpassed the Dems for editorial misconduct. The first flaw was that CNN shuffled through 5,000 “citizen”-submitted video questions and managed to select one from Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, friend of Jack Abramoff, and erstwhile companion of Republican politicos everywhere. Secondly, CNN awarded another of the limited questions to General Keith Kerr, a current member of Hillary Clinton’s LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee. Debate moderator Anderson Cooper had to issue a post-debate disclaimer after being advised of the connection.

This is what happens when the media elites act as gatekeepers. Thousands of potential questions and CNN hands off two of the 34 selected to a well-connected lobbyist and a campaign operative. Then they fill some of the other slots with inanities like why Giuliani supported the Red Sox. And they try to pretend this circus represents the voice of the people.

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When A Confidential Source Is A Partner In Crime

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 3:24 pm. NO Comments :

When Judith Miller of the New York Times and Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper faced imprisonment for not revealing Karl Rove as the source for reporting that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent with the CIA, many observers, including me, objected to their perverse interpretation of what constitutes a “confidential source.”

“Reporters do need to be able to protect their sources without fear of legal consequences when engaged in the conduct of their profession as journalists, but not when they are acting on behalf of government hitmen and promoting propaganda. That’s not protecting your sources, that’s protecting your accomplices.”

Now that it is old news that Rove leaked classified information, Time’s former editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine is coming clean:

“Outing Valerie Plame, exposing a valuable (CIA) agent for no particular reason, didn’t, in my mind, merit protecting confidentiality,”

Thanks Norm. It only took you two years to realize that reporters who act as conduits for political operatives who are engaging in smear campaigns may not extend confidentiality to their comrades.


Bill O’Reilly: Censorship, Lies And Plunging Popularity

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 12:12 pm. 1 Comments :

A couple of days ago Bill O’Reilly again demonstrated his aversion to free expression as well as his penchant for dishonesty. An op-ed that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a paper that O’Reilly regularly castigates as “far-left loons”) laid out a case for Impeachment: If not now, when? The column was accompanied by a political cartoon that had Bush and Cheney dressed up for their mugshots.

That was more than enough to set O’Reilly off on a rant that amounted to a call for censorship (YouTube):

“Look at this. This is ridiculous […] It’s based on nothing […] I want you to excoriate them. Let them have it […] It’s wrong though for them to do it. Don’t you think that showing a mug shot of a sitting president, a sitting vice president is irresponsible?”

O’Reilly is outraged that anyone would exercise their First Amendment rights to express an opinion about the criminality of this administration. He believes that such open expression “diminishes intelligent conversation,” (as if O’Reilly ever engaged in one) and his response is to shut down conversation entirely. Note that O’Reilly is complaining about the cartoon, not the content of the article. Although he does say that the cartoon is “based on nothing,” despite the fact that it is attached to a well-documented column that enumerates specific justifications for investigating the President and his administration.

After once again calling the paper “loons,” (an example of his idea of “intelligent conversation”) O’Reilly attacks the paper’s credibility by smugly declaring that it has lost 40% of its readers in the past ten years:

“Almost half of their readers have said ‘We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to read you.'”

What O’Reilly leaves out is any actual context that would enlighten his viewers. The truth is that almost all major newspapers have suffered sharp declines in circulation over the past ten years. But more to the point, in only two years (Sept 2005 to Sept 2007) Bill O’Reilly himself has lost 33% of his total viewers and a whopping 59% of viewers in the all-important 25-54 age group. That’s more than half of his viewers saying, “We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to watch you.”

This brief exchange reveals much about O’Reilly. It shows that while he is vociferously objecting to the free speech rights of others, he will use his own platform to misinform his viewers. No wonder they don’t like him anymore.


Andrew Keen’s Fear Of Citizen Journalism

Posted by on November 27, 2007 at 1:32 pm. NO Comments :

In today’s Washington Post is an article audaciously titled Storming the News Gatekeepers. The author apparently meant to explore the nature of “citizen journalism” and its impact on conventional media and society. The end result however is far less significant than its ambitions as it focuses on a single Brooklyn blogger and fails to embrace the broader new media influence on the blogiverse.

At one point though, the article takes a noticeable dip in IQ by quoting Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture:

“The term ‘citizen journalist’ has an Orwellian ring to it. People are becoming Big Brother, either with a camcorder or a keyboard, and following the candidates around. It’s ridiculous. You can’t just be a great journalist, the same way you can’t be a great chef or a great soccer player.”

Journalists, he continues, “follow a set of standards, a code of ethics. Objectivity rules. That’s not the case with citizen journalists. Anything goes in that world.”

For Keen to associate citizen journalism with Orwell is…well…Orwellian. Big Brother, as illustrated in “1984” is the personification of an all-powerful and controlling government. The notion that the people, acting on their own behalf, could be characterized as such tyrannical overlords is preposterous to the point of idiocy.

Likewise, Keen’s dismissal of citizen journalists as distinct from the conventional variety, who are supposedly objective and have standards and ethics, is as insulting as it is naive. Sure, there are bloggers who fly fast and loose with facts, but the same is true for pundits on TV and in newspapers. The best of the online reporters actually have greater transparency and include live links to sources and documentation.

Keen obviously prefers media that is certified by corporate boards and is fearful of media that emanates from the streets. He would likely have denounced James Madison’s pamphlets as irresponsible and amateurish. On page 68 of his book he exposes his disgust for real people who have the temerity to engage in democratic discourse:

“The YouTubification of politics is a threat to civic culture. It infantilizes the political process, silencing public discourse and leaving the future of government up to thirty-second video clips shot by camcorder-wielding amateurs with political agendas.”

Contrary to silencing public discourse, YouTube and other web communities have expanded political dialog by including voices that previously were shut out of public debate. And the irony of Keen’s criticism of thirty-second video clips, without reference to the grandfathers of the genre – campaign ads – is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

Keen would like to leave the future of government up to news bites produced by the professional propagandists in Corporate Media ivory towers. Apparently the political agendas of the old-school media hacks are superior, in Keen’s mind, to those of average Americans. With any luck the future of government will continue to benefit from greater participation and diversity, and will keep as far away from Keen’s nightmarish abomination of democracy as possible.

For more on Keen and his book, see Lawrence Lessig’s excellent deconstruction.

For even more on Keen’s wankery, see his appearance on The Colbert Report where he favorably compares Nazis to bloggers saying, “Even the Nazis didn’t put artists out of work.”

I suppose that’s true if you define the corpses of assassinated artists as no longer being in the job market. What a repulsive piece of crap Keen is!


Save Tucker ?

Posted by on November 26, 2007 at 10:06 pm. NO Comments :

Time for bit of comic relief…

A couple of guys in Florida have launched a campaign to Save Tucker Carlson. How pathetic does your life have to be to descend to rescuing one of the lamest programs on TV? The web site alleges that Tucker’s rumored cancellation is…

“…part of a move by MSNBC to swing left and become “FOX for the Liberals,” dropping any pretense of objectivity or balance.”

Well, maybe it’s actually part of a move by MSNBC to … um … have an audience bigger than the Milli Vanilli Fan Club.