Crappy news day

same ol', same ol'...

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Glenn on the drums beating for war with Iran

where did we hear all this nonsense before...? oh, yeah... i remember...

U.S. media takes the lead on Iran

Many have compared the coordinated propaganda campaign now being disseminated about The Iranian Threat to that which preceded the Iraq War, but there is one notable difference. Whereas the American media in 2002 followed the lead of the U.S. government in beating the war drums against Saddam, they now seem even more eager for war against Iran than the U.S. government itself, which actually appears somewhat reluctant. Consider this highly illustrative, one-minute report yesterday from the nightly broadcast of NBC News with Brian Williams, by the network’s Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim “Mik” Miklaszewski, which packs multiple misleading narratives into one short package:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross belong in a fear-mongering museum

I just saw this two-minute ABC News report from Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross that sinks to even lower depths than what I highlighted yesterday. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s a perfect museum exhibit for how empty-headed American media stars uncritically recite whatever they are told by government officials, exaggerate or fabricate bad acts by the designated Enemy du Jour while ignoring and suppressing the precipitating acts of America and its client states, and just generally do whatever they can to keep fear levels and war thirst as high as possible. This is nothing short of irresponsible propagandistic trash:

what a load of bollocks...

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Woo-hoo...! Gotta love them drones...!

glenn takes on the spin-fortified crap that passes for news on npr (yes, virginia, npr is a government spin-machine right along with all the rest of 'em) and also paints a picture of how military-spawned drone technology is rapidly coming to a neighborhood near you...

NPR’s domestic drone commercial

[...]

Even leaving aside the issue of weaponization (police officials now openly talk about equipping drones with “nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun”), the use of drones for domestic surveillance raises all sorts of extremely serious privacy concerns and other issues of potential abuse. Their ability to hover in the air undetected for long periods of time along with their comparatively cheap cost enables a type of broad, sustained societal surveillance that is now impractical, while equipping them with infra-red or heat-seeking detectors and high-powered cameras can provide extremely invasive imagery. The holes eaten into the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections by the Drug War and the War on Terror means there are few Constitutional limits on how this technology can be used, and there are no real statutory or regulatory restrictions limiting their use. In sum, the potential for abuse is vast, the escalation in surveillance they ensure is substantial, and the effect they have on the culture of personal privacy — having the state employ hovering, high-tech, stealth video cameras that invade homes and other private spaces — is simply creepy.

But listeners of NPR would know about virtually none of that. On its All Things Considered program yesterday, NPR broadcast a five-minute report (audio below) from Brian Naylor that purported to be a news story on the domestic use of drones but was, in fact, much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry.

speaking of commercials, glenn also offers this air force recruiting advert...



chilling, isn't it...?

going back to the subject of npr, i've long since accepted the fact that npr has been consciously and carefully shaped into just another government propaganda outlet... i still listen to it when i'm out and about in my truck because, despite its serious shortcomings, it's preferable to the rest of the mindless stuff that comes over the radio... but i've been known to scream at the top of my lungs while driving down the interstate while listening to the garbage that they're passing off as news... thank god for the internet...

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An email from a friend on Occupy Wall Street

this was waiting for me in my inbox this morning...

Interesting - 23 days straight of growing protests outside Wall Street of people with placards and organized marches that is spreading to other points in the country. All saying it's time for financial reform and to bring to justice the banking and wall street people that have not been convicted of the financial collapse of the country. Have you seen much in the papers on it or on the TV?! I haven't. It was a piece on CBS Sunday Morning.

i have repeatedly suggested that his attachment to traditional news media doesn't serve him well in the "keeping informed" department... he thinks he's in touch with what's going on but he's not, and what he IS in touch with is so loaded with corporate, propagandist spin, it's sometimes almost impossible to hold a discussion with him...

tom tomorrow on the same subject (courtesy of daily kos)...


(click on image for larger version)

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Juan Cole: Our news and their news

since i spend a great deal of my time outside the u.s., i am well aware of the sharp distinction professor cole draws between the drivel masquerading as news that we're fed in this country and the real news those elsewhere in the world receive...

Americans live in a late capitalist society where the rich have gotten many times richer and the middle class has gotten poorer, where Wall Street bankers have stolen us blind and blamed us for living above our means, where persistent unemployment is worse than in the Great Depression, where most politicians and some judges have been bought by corporations or special interests, where authorities actively conspire to keep people from voting, where the government spies on citizens assiduously without warrant or probable cause, and where the minds of the sheep are kept off their fleecing by substituting celebrity gossip, sex scandals, and half-disguised bigotry for genuine news.

In the Arab world, masses of 20-year-olds have challenged their corrupt politicians and manipulative billionaires in the streets, demanding transparency, an end to arbitrary secret police, and free and fair elections untainted by influence-peddling and plutocracy. I have Arabic satellite t.v. on in the background most of the day, with its dramatic stories of personal risk and human tragedy and bold challenge to a rotten status quo. And I channel surf over to the American cable news and mostly find fluff or de-contextualized reports or, frankly, propaganda.

patético...

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Level 5 headed to Level 7...? Hmmm... Let's bury the bastard...

another morning and more increasingly bad news from fukushima...

Japan's nuclear safety agency raised the severity rating of the country's nuclear crisis Friday from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale, putting it on par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Ryohei Shiomi, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency, said Friday that the agency raised the rating of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear crisis on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 incident as having wider consequences.

The hallmarks of a Level 5 emergency are severe damage to a reactor core, release of large quantities of radiation with a high probability of "significant" public exposure or several deaths from radiation.

A partial meltdown at Three Mile Island also was ranked a Level 5. The Chernobyl accident of 1986, which killed at least 31 people with radiation sickness, raised long-term cancer rates, and spewed radiation for hundreds of miles (kilometers), was ranked a Level 7.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority has been saying since Tuesday that the crisis in northeastern Japan should be ranked Level 6 on the scale.

so, if it's only a level 5, why are they now considering the desperate, last-ditch strategy used for chernobyl...?

Japan weighs need to bury nuclear plant

Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.

mmm-hmmmm... but, not to worry, everything's still "fine," dontcha know...

Radiation levels recorded in areas near the plant did not pose an immediate risk to human health, said Michael O'Leary, the World Health Organisation's representative in China.

"At this point, there is still no evidence that there's been significant radiation spread beyond the immediate zone of the reactors themselves," O'Leary told reporters in Beijing.

Japan's nuclear disaster has triggered global alarm and reviews of safety at atomic power plants around the world.

President Barack Obama, who stressed the United States did not expect harmful radiation to reach its shores, said he had ordered a comprehensive review of domestic nuclear plants and pledged Washington's support for Japan.

[all emphases added]

i don't know about you, but i feel SO much better now...!

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Japan nuclear crisis worsens

every morning i get up and find the situation is getting worse...

The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities.

The announcement opened a new and ominous chapter in the five-day-long effort by Japanese engineers to bring the six side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and a tsunami last Friday.

there's a part of this situation as it's being treated by our super-rich, elite bought-and-paid-for media that's pure fear-mongering... i'm not buying into that part but what i am feeling most strongly is concern for the people affected, not only by the nuclear crisis but the tsunami and the earthquake, fercryinoutloud... my heart goes out...

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Just one of those SSDD days...

ennui catches up with me every now and then... guess it's just an occupational hazard when i spend as much time as i do keeping up with the state of the world...

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This is what happens these days when you attempt to present "un-spun" news

Al Jazeera’s Cairo office burned down by pro-Mubarak ‘thugs’

Al Jazeera's office in Cairo was stormed by a "gang of thugs" and set on fire along with all the equipment inside it, the Arab news network said Friday.

"It appears to be the latest attempt by the Egyptian regime or its supporters to hinder Al Jazeera's coverage of events in the country," the news network said in a statement.

"In the last week its bureau was forcibly closed, all its journalists had press credentials revoked, and nine journalists were detained at various stages. Al Jazeera has also faced unprecedented levels of interference in its broadcast signal as well as persistent and repeated attempts to bring down its websites."

"We are grateful for the support we have received from across the world for our coverage in Egypt and can assure everyone that we will continue our work undeterred," the statement added.

Al Jazeera also said its website "has been under relentless attack since the onset of the uprisings in Egypt." A banner advertisment on the news network's Arabic-language website was hacked Friday and replaced with a slogan reading, "Together for the collapse of Egypt." The banner linked to a page critical of the network.

you can go to this link to register your desire to see al jazeera offered on u.s. cable and satellite tv services...

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Democrats becoming Republicans? Republicans becoming Democrats? I'm so confoozed...!

the nyt...

Coalition for Obama Split by Drift to G.O.P., Poll Finds

Critical parts of the coalition that delivered President Obama to the White House in 2008 and gave Democrats control of Congress in 2006 are switching their allegiance to the Republicans in the final phase of the midterm Congressional elections, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election cycles among women, Roman Catholics, less affluent Americans and independents. All of those groups broke for Mr. Obama in 2008 and for Congressional Democrats when they grabbed both chambers from the Republicans four years ago, according to exit polls.

reuters...

Tea Party-backed Republicans spur party switches

For lifelong Republican Joe Errigo, deciding to cross party lines and support a liberal Democrat for New York governor wasn't nearly as difficult as one might expect.

Republican candidate Carl Paladino -- backed by the conservative Tea Party movement -- raised such political hackles he spawned a "Republicans for Cuomo" movement supporting Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

Similar groups can be found in heated races elsewhere nationwide, often those featuring Tea Party-endorsed candidates, attacked by Democrats and some moderate Republicans as extreme.

[...]

In Delaware, where Christine O'Donnell has Tea Party support, Republicans backing Democrat Chris Coons include a former state judge and former U.S. Congressman. A "Republicans for Coons" Facebook site reads: "Because we just can't support Christine O'Donnell."

In Arizona, "Republicans for Giffords" are backing Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords over conservative Iraq War veteran Jesse Kelly.

In Nevada, incumbent Democrat Sen. Harry Reid, who faces Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, counts among his Republican supporters an array of influential gaming and casino executives.

isn't it great reading the news in the morning so we can find out what's REALLY going on...?

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The American hikers detained in Iran - a "no-context" triumph for an NYT op-ed

ya gotta love our so-called news media... they never hesitate to step forward with stories and opinions unequivocally stating facts and taking strong positions... yes, they want to appear like they're doing their job and, to all appearances, they are... what isn't apparent, principally because it's almost never there, is the context so vitally necessary to truly understanding anything presented as "news" or "opinion"...

take today's nyt op-ed, calling on iran to follow its own rule of law and to release the three detained american hikers apprehended while hiking along the iran-iraq border (see my previous post here)... now that the hikers have finally been charged, after a year in confinement, with "illegal border crossing," the piece very reasonably lays out a strong argument that iran should observe its own law, a law which states that such an offense is punishable with a fine but not jail time... the piece goes on to lament that iran seems to be treating the three as pawns in its ceaseless game of taunting the united states...

never once in the piece nor in any other mainstream news media reports i've read on the detainees is the broader context mentioned, context that would point out that unlawful detention, detention without charges, and detention under potentially damaging physical and emotional conditions is precisely what the united states itself has been doing and continues to do, all under the justification of our superior moral authority: u.s. = good; iran = bad...

perhaps an even bigger piece of unmentioned context is how united states behavior is mirrored, emulated and even aspired to by other countries... the united states is always pushing its status as a role model in the world of nations and, while there are some who would snicker at such a boast (and i'm frequently one of them), the truth is that the united states does indeed set the bar for nation-state behavior in the foreign policy arena and, to a lesser extent, the internal domestic policy arena as well... i've heard officials of other countries, first-hand and in so many words, say, "well, what's the problem...? YOU do it, why shouldn't we...?"

lack of context in news and opinion reporting, reporting we should be able to rely on as not only factual but textured, complete and fully informative, is a very slippery slope... we need look no further than andrew breitbart's recent deliberate omission of a key part of shirley sherrod's speech to see just how dangerous and manipulative the absence of full context can be, but what we fail to realize is that the breitbart scam is only the tip of a very large iceberg...

why are we given so little context...? i don't think anyone with half a brain could miss the answer to that one... if we did have the full context or even half of it, we might arrive at very different conclusions about the meaning and implication of news events than we do currently... people are not stupid and, in fact, far from it... we are fully capable of rational thought and forming our own conclusions based on information and evidence at hand... when deprived of that information and evidence, we will form conclusions based on the information and evidence we're given... and that, my friends, is the whole idea...

Since their detention, the Americans have been denied access to their lawyer and allowed only one telephone call to their families and one visit from their mothers. There is particular worry now about Ms. Shourd, who spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement — the reason is unclear — and has a precancerous condition on her cervix and a breast abnormality, both of which require monitoring. The Iranians are withholding results of her medical tests.

It’s hard not to compare the hikers’ experience with that of Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who recently returned to Tehran. He claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had abducted him in Saudi Arabia. American officials said he was an informant who defected and then got cold feet.

Given the shady world of espionage, we may never know the truth. What we do know is that he was allowed to leave this country and was last seen embracing his family in Tehran. It’s long past time for the three Americans to have the same opportunity.

what about the host of detainees the united states has kept sequestered in places like bagram and guantánamo for years without charges and without any family visits at all...? don't they deserve the same opportunity...? don't they deserve the same empathetic treatment from the nyt...? isn't it important that we see the similarities between the our treatment of detainees and that of iran...?

yes, the circumstances of the hikers and the detainees in guantánamo are different but what isn't different is that we're dealing with real, live human beings... you can't call for decent treatment and following the rule of law for one set of human beings and not recognize that all human beings deserve that same treatment... yet it is the position of organs like the nyt, faithfully mirroring the position of our government, that OUR detainees are somehow in a lesser category, somewhere between wild animal and human... and yet we can still ask with perfectly straight faces, "why do 'they' hate us?"...

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More things that make me crazy - perversions of journalism

a keith olbermann special comment... worth watching not so much for his take on the shirley sherrod debacle tempest-in-a-teapot farce non-news news but because of his insight on how we're all being conned by our so-called "news" media...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

ordinarily i choose not to post on the manufactured distractions that pass for news in my country, but what this sad episode points out to me above all else is the vapidity, deceit and manipulation that passes for news in the united states... given all the incredibly, desperately important issues that we should be tackling in our national dialogue, it appalls me beyond words that the past four days has seen our media almost wholly devoted to a fabricated smear deliberately calculated to stoke the never-far-from-the-surface racism that, sadly, still underlies the american state of mind...

once again, glenn greenwald has the definitive view...

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane ... : "Politics in D.C. have become Seinfeldesque. Fights about nothing."

If you read and write about politics full-time and are thus forced to subject yourself to the political media -- as I am -- what's most striking aren't the outrages and corruptions, but the overwhelming, suffocating, numbing stream of stupidity and triviality that floods the brain. One has to battle the temptation to just turn away and ignore it all. Every day, day after day, is consumed by some totally irrelevant though distracting melodrama: what Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page, some "outrageous" snippet of a comment made by John Boehner or Harry Reid, some "crazy," attention-attracting statement from some fringe idiot-figure or TV blowhard that is exploited for superficial partisan gain or distraction value (hey, look over there: I think Michelle Bachmann just said something outrageous!!!!).

there's so much that needs our undivided attention and when i see all of our collective energy being squandered on such idiocy, it makes me C.R.A.Z.Y...!

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Oh, shit...! Major bummer...! [UPDATE: be VEWY AFWAID]

just what we need... another terrorist scare to keep us all cowering in our barcaloungers while we hand over more of our freedoms to our courageous leaders whose only desire is to keep us safe... yeah, right... what a load of bollocks...

The failed car bombing in Times Square increasingly appears to have been coordinated by several people in a plot with international links, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

The disclosure, while tentative, came as the White House intensified its focus on the Saturday incident in New York City, in which explosives inside a Nissan Pathfinder were set ablaze but failed to detonate at the tourist-crowded corner of Broadway and 45th Street.

Emerging from a series of briefings, several officials said it was premature to rule out any motive but said the sweeping, multi-state investigation was turning up new clues.

Separately, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also characterized the incident for the first time as an attempted act of terrorism. "I would say that was intended to terrorize, and I would say that whomever did that would be categorized as a terrorist," Gibbs said, sharpening the administration's tone.

Another U.S. official, recounting a conversation with intelligence officials, said, "Don't be surprised if you find a foreign nexus. . . . They're looking at some tell-tale signs and they're saying it's pointing in that direction."

i was in chicago yesterday doing something that i've been wanting to do for a long time - giving a talk on afghanistan... there's nothing i think is more worthwhile than taking the fear and mystery out of that country and getting people to think a little more deeply about all the propagandized bullshit we're fed constantly through our so-called "news" outlets... by sharing my personal experiences and highlighting some of the wonderful afghan friends i've made, if i succeeded in removing just a teeny bit of people's fear, i will consider my time well spent...

but it seems our government is hell-bent on keeping us groveling in fear... without any degree of certainty, our leaders are already hinting that dark, evil, foreign terrorist forces are now at work in our midst and we must be afraid, very, very afraid... why can't they just keep their fucking mouths shut until they have incontrovertible proof rather than dribbling out all this shit about "appears to have been coordinated," "attempted acts," "turning up new clues," "intended to terrorize," and "pointing in that direction"... what they're really saying is that, at this point, it's all conjecture... maybe they have some solid clues and maybe they don't but, ferchrissake, stop dangling that shit out there... the only purpose it serves is to feed our society's sick, voyeuristic need to collectively gasp, shudder, remain glued to our tv sets and sit back while those who have the most to gain from such a situation continue to "do what's best for us"...

[UPDATE]

ooooooooo... more tewwowism...

An FBI-led terrorism task force has taken over the investigation of the failed car bombing in Times Square because of indications it was connected to international terrorism, a senior law enforcement source said Monday.

i don't mean to make light of this but, fercryinoutloud, stop hypin' it, will ya, at least until the facts are in...

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Joe Bageant: "Americans are screwed, blued and tattooed" and it's Anderson Cooper's fault

the more i read joe bageant, the more i like him...

via alternet...

Class solidarity was such a good idea. It really was. Obviously, most of the people who need solidarity are in the world's laboring classes. After all, the rich have more than enough solidarity already, as was recently demonstrated by their successful execution of the greatest global financial heist in history. Oh sure, we'll see some state sponsored mock show trials of a few of them -- they always throw a few of their own out of the sleigh to the wolves during their escapes. The big heist was big news. Working Americans will be applying Preparation H to their keisters for a long time to come.

[...]

And for that I blame Anderson Cooper. That's right, CNN's boyishly good looking, sincere faced, Emmy Award winning Anderson Cooper. Let me explain.

Between the corporate and financial elites and the slobbering masses stands the American Information Class -- the reporters, talking heads, news anchors and pundits. In short, the entire gaggle of meat puppets and journalism hacks who have been cultivated and bred to be clueless by the university industry and others serving our corporate empire. In other words, serving global capitalism, and the national fictions it maintains, including that sizable piece of corporate feudal turf known as America. And that fiction is maintained through la danse des marionnettes de viande.

[...]

There is no way out of our culture manufacturing machinery. We're not in charge. It would be bigger than any one of us because it consists of all of us. It tells us all we are individuals supremely worthy of our silliest notions and desires, thereby making us soft and lazy, infantilized an incapable of truly effective solidarity as a people. Instead, we are fed Tea Party drivel. Even if CNN decided to send Coop to Guiyu to cover the blood poisoned worker women with the deformed children, the result would be the same. The guy in Cedar Rapids would see further proof that "Me live in best place in world. Got Cheetos." Or perhaps a nice Cotes du Rhône if you are a member of the commodity drugged educated faux middle class.

And I wanna say to them: "Not for much longer, buddy. Not much longer. And you can thank Anderson Cooper and a helluva lot of other people like him who do not have a clue, but nevertheless inhabit your very mind, for that."

enjoy it while it lasts...

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I'm having trouble facing the news of a new year

yaknowhutimean...?

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What percent of the world's population AREN'T the major news organizations interested in...? Would you believe HALF...?

from the europe blog post by hamish macdonald on al jazeera...

I was recently passed this link by John Owen at London's City University journalism school and thought it might be of interest to others.

The 'Hum News' posting considers what it calls the "Geographic Gap" of the contemporary news environment. That is, world news is covered by a very small number of news organisations and those organisations choose to only cover a small portion of the world's news. I know it sounds like a riddle, but it is the reality of international news.

Although there is now a proliferation of news outlets, particularly online, there are in fact fewer reliable, independent organisations actually gathering the information and delivering it in a balanced fashion.

Hum News points out that while there are 237 countries or territories in the world, the four biggest news organisations only report from 121 countries. This means there are 116 countries not covered. By Hum's calculations that is:

"almost half the world, and 4 billion people"

Of course, it would be foolish for us to expect that news organisations cover every single thing that happens everywhere in the world. But just how important are the 116 countries not covered by the big news organisations?

from juan cole...

63 of these ignored countries and territories are desperately poor.

All this has security implications for the United States. What do you want to bet that in the late 1990s, Afghanistan was in the 116? Hard to know an attack was being planned out there if you don't know the place exists.

What HUM does not say is that the ignoring of the 116 comes from the news corporations' profit motive, which is increasingly driving them to ignore most real news in favor of infotainment. Desperately poor 4th world countries? Not entertaining.

professor cole also points out that those four news organizations supply the world with 90% of its news... he also notes this about al jazeera...

Aljazeera's model, being backed by the Qatar Foundation, may be one of the few ways out of this information gap. Aljazeera English does a better job covering subsaharan Africa and Latin American than any other Anglophone news service, and they pay attention to the poor and working people.

the times i've had the opportunity to watch al jazeera, i confess to being quite impressed with both the depth and the breadth of its news coverage... sure, like every news organization, it has its spin, but, overall, it's remarkably objective... i've learned things from al jazeera about what's going in the rest of the world i would never have learned otherwise...

keep in mind that virtually all of al jazeera's news clips are posted on its youtube site here...

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"Complex issues require world class reporting" - d'oh

a step in the right direction...

from raw story...

Radio talk show hosts offer little more than "noise" and "predictable" opinions -- so they won't be invited to talk on CNN shows anymore, says an exclusive report at MediaBistro's TV Newser blog.

Blogger Chris Arlens reports: "TVNewser has learned, and a CNN spokesperson confirms, that in his morning editorial meeting today, CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts."

Continues Arlens, "'Complex issues require world class reporting,' Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is 'all too predictable.'"

ok, fine, cnn... now let's see some "world class reporting" on complex issues... it ain't been much in evidence for a very, very long time...

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"Tweet, tweet, tweet and then they puke down your throat"

scott ritter on how to get the information we need to function as responsible citizens...



brasscheck tv...

The US has - hands down - the most propagandized population in the world.

Even people in North Korea have a firmer grasp of reality.

Why is this so?

It's the news media. They've mastered the art of reporting nothing and making it seem like it's something.

They're also very creative and convincing first class liars. Kind of like Bush Republicans.

What's the solution?

Scott Ritter has an answer and thanks to the Internet, more and more people in the US are breaking free of the info-lock.

what ritter is really talking about here is how we need to hone our skills in pattern recognition... if we truly want to be informed in this day and age, it is vital that we dedicate ourselves to the acquisition of solid information, information that it is OUR responsibility to make sense out of...

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Our totally "professional" and "objective" news media

ya, right...

watch this and then tell me our so-called "news" media haven't pulled out all the stops for john mccain...



jed does the deconstruction...

Of the five points, the third is the most clear cut example of bias on purely objective grounds, but I think that each demonstrate clear bias towards McCain.

1. Gibson started by setting up John McCain’s most recent Iraq surge attack on Barack Obama, parroting McCain’s attack almost verbatim, without any critical analysis. He then allowed McCain to speak unfiltered for nearly a full minute, attacking Barack Obama the entire time. Gibson did not give the Obama campaign an opportunity to respond.


• Also worth noting: In addition to not giving the Obama campaign a chance to respond, Gibson failed to report on John McCain’s stunning flip-flop (at least rhetorically) on the virtue of a 16-month timetable.
2. Gibson then jumped to Obama in France, saying the Sarkozy had lavished “effusive” praise upon Obama that “bordered on an endorsement.” By itself, this might have been a fair segment, but it was a highly suggestive way to phrase things, particularly in light of the previous story in which McCain had challenged Barack Obama on issues of war and peace.


3. Gibson then turned to George Stephanopoulos to discuss polling in the wake of Obama’s overseas trip.
   
   
   • He noted that Obama is leading in national polls, but then said that recent state polls show Obama is losing ground in key swing states. Stephanopoulos then took over, using as evidence three new Quinnipiac ("Q") polls (Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota).
   • Stephanopoulos failed to disclose the dates that the polls were taken and curiously excluded a fourth Q poll released in the swing state of Wisconsin on the same day as the other three. (The Wisconsin poll had Obama leading by 11.)
   • Gibson asked Stephanopoulos to explain why the polls were tightening, but Stephanopoulos failed to note that these polls were outliers. (For example, while the Q poll in Minnesota does show a tightening race, Pollster.com shows Obama with a 12.5% average lead, even factoring in the Q poll.)
   • Stephanopoulos concluded his discussion of the Q polls by saying that there’s no question that Barack Obama hasn’t seen evidence of a bump in the polls after his overseas trip. The thing Stephanopoulos didn’t tell viewers was that none of the polls were conducted before his most high profile event, the speech in Germany. In fact, the polls were conducted from the 14th-22nd, so they were mostly conducted while Barack Obama was still on U.S. soil. Stephanopoulos must have been aware of that information, which leads to the conclusion that he intentionally withheld it deceive his viewing audience.
   • Stephanopoulos also failed to note that both the national tracking polls of both Gallup (+5) and Rasmussen (+4) showed Barack Obama gaining ground from before he left for the trip.
4. Gibson closed the discussion with Stephanopoulos by raising what he said the McCain campaign descrimed as a serious error: Barack Obama’s decision to not visit troops in Germany. Of course, it seems very likely that some politics was played by the DoD to screw around with Obama, and in any case, the whole issue is entirely symbolic, certainly not more important than probing McCain's flip-flop on timetables. Predictably, Stephanopoulos agreed with McCain that Obama should have gone to visit the soldiers.


5. Gibson finished by promoting Stephanopolous’ interview with McCain this Sunday from Phoenix, Arizona, and for no apparent reason, he said that he was confident that mccain would talk about the German troop visit issue again. Hmm. How does he know?

It should now be clear that ABC News cannot be trusted -- its journalistic integrity has been succesfully challenged far too many times. At this point, we have to acknowledge that ABC News is at least as pro-McCain as FOX News, and its impact is certainly far more insidious because most people don’t realize just how tilted their “news” really is.

and, of course, most folks, sitting in the comfort of their living rooms, won't have the slightest idea that they're being fed a pile of warm, steaming shit...

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One of THOSE days...

i'm looking for something uplifting and all i see is the usual sobering crap...

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