Associated Mess

Associated Press is somehow annoyed that bloggers have been actually quoting them while linking to their articles, and now they've found their solution to the problem of people actually reading their stuff: they're going to bill every one of us who uses their news, regardless of fair usage rules of publishing...

I don't read their stuff when it's run in the dinosaur (print) media, any more. I rarely read past the first paragraph when something of theirs shows up on the RSS feeds at my e-mail homepage. They have been shown repeatedly to be either lax in the fact-checking or downright crooked, even in their photo publishing, so I usually look elsewhere for confirmation, anyway, when I run across something fed through their filters.

Now, there's a movement afoot among bloggers to boycott AP.

Quite frankly, I'd rather spend my energies mocking the AP, mostly by quoting their articles and pointing out every dadgummed error, flaw in reasoning, cheap shot, and so on which are so common to the news "service", and link them like crazy every time they publish something egregiously stupid or fraudulent. But I think Charles Johnson does a magnificent job of that, already. And so, the boycott probably makes sense, there.

On the other hand, I do have enough to mock and boycott here in my own neck of the woods... although I'm assured the local rag has improved a bit since the last editor got run out of Dodge. At least, now, when they label a news article as "local", they mean within 40 miles of this little city. It's a start.

Thought for the day

I've noticed, for the past couple of years, several conservative and moderate bloggers -- and a few columnists, too -- have taken up the game of "guess the party." That is, every time a newspaper reports on a scandal involving a politician, the reader is supposed to guess the party of that politician, based on clues within the article. Most Republicans have their party affiliation mentioned in the first paragraph of an article, while often the Democrats see a very late mention or no mention at all. It has been taken by these bloggers and columnists to mean that we have a press which very clearly shows its sides, even though it pretends to be an apolitical body.

I take it to mean that Republican scandals are so much less common than Democrat scandals, that, unless there is an early mention of the exception, we should assume the rule: the crook, liar, scoundrel, or whatever rogue it may be is probably a Democrat.

Otherwise, they'd have mentioned it right off the bat. Right?

Let us get our facts straight, please!

I really hate waking up in the wee hours and catching stupidity and/or lies in the network newsy broadcasts. That sort of thing can keep me up for hours afterwards, steaming and fuming and scaring the cats.

Last night was little different. Sometime in the hours between my having my friends come over and the oh-dark-hundred walk down my hall to the throne room, ABC's reporting staff "covered" (a repeat from either the evening news or Nightline, I'm assuming) the Dark Lord's announcement of his impending resignation. Okay, so the facts seem to be in order on that...

But then the reporter (and don't ask me his name. It was oh-dark-hundred, after all) said something about "after his terribly divisive political strategies and his leaking Valerie Plame's identity..."

Who leaked Plame's name, again? And who is the dismissive, divisive guy in D.C.?

I know there aren't many people paying attention to anything during the hours between midnight and dawn, but, could somebody please get a clue and at least strive for a little accuracy?

It would help me get back to sleep a little faster. Thanks.

NYT gets one 66.6% correct -- maybe

AS several bloggers have pointed out over the past 48 hours, the New York Times described the individuals arrested after the latest spate of attempted bombings in the UK as from the "disenfranchised South Asian population."

Mark Steyn answers the first part of that description:

Tim Blair provides a fine example of why The New York Times is an unreliable guide to the ways of the world:

In July 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people on London’s transit system, and another set of attacks failed two weeks later, bringing home to Britain fears of homegrown terrorist attacks among its disenfranchised South Asian population. Witnesses said the two men in the Glasgow attack were South Asian.

My dictionary defines "disenfranchised" as:

to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote

The "South Asian population" are British subjects with as much right to vote as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. If the Times is merely using the word to mean more generally "deprived", the July 7th bombers didn't exactly hail from the ghetto: Shehzad Tanweer rode around in his dad's Mercedes. Omar Sheikh, who's supposed to have plotted the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, was an English "public" (ie, private) schoolboy and a London School of Economics alumnus. The four would-be suicide bombers who attempted a follow-up Tube carnage on July 21st 2005 were discovered to have "more than £500,000 in benefits payments" from the bountiful British welfare state in their bank accounts.

So the next editor of Webster's might like to include a new New York Times definition of "disenfranchised": "complacent liberal assumption designed to reassure readers that they can fit this story into all the old cliches about the usual root causes"

At the time of that publication, those arrested had been recent immigrants, with real property (they had money enough for nice cars), education (several of them were physicians or medical students), and were from Jordan and Iraq... not exactly "South Asian." So, wrong on two counts about these guys' backgrounds (and many of the 7/7/05 bombers were even voters, having been born or naturalized as British subjects).

Well, now we learn that at least one of this recent spate of deadly doctors came from India and another from Pakistan, and, without citizenship, they're temporarily disenfranchised until or unless they apply for and receive citizenship in UK. So that's 2/3 accurate. But wait! Is either qualified to vote back home in their respective countries? Maybe this brings them back down to just being "South Asian," a score of 33.3% accurate.

Still, not bad, for the NYT.

But the Times is not the only journal to miss a few facts: somehow, according to the WaPo, the only tie they all seem to have is that they're "foreign physicians." Funny how they all have names like Mohammed and Abdulla, and, yet, have no common ground except their having become doctors without boundaries.
(HT: CQ)

Update: Christopher Hitchens has an observation about a further subject not accurately dealt with, in MSM coverage of the London car bombs: the target was women.

It's not that kind of bee

Yesterday's local paper ran a piece from the AP in anticipation of this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, about the challenge of finding the right words for the contest. Paragraph three, though, shows Joseph White is a little out of his league (emphasis and link mine):

The young competitors have spent months poring over word lists and dictionaries, probing the depths of entomology in an attempt to answer one nagging question: What strange word is Carolyn Andrews going to come up with next?

It would seem the author needs some time to brush up on his vocabulary, starting with etymologies.

What media bias?

John Hinderaker at Power Line blog has the latest Global Warming bias piece from the AP. First, they interview the world's foremost scientific expert on hurricanes, then proceed to hold him up as an object of scorn for speaking out against Gore's shrill alarmism.

Further, they then cite the UN release as though it were scientific consensus, when it is, in fact -- like Gore's stuff -- political maneuvering. As John quotes and comments:

Gray's statements came the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concludes the world will face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapt to climate change.

As we have noted elsewhere, the U.N.'s IPCC is a political body, not a scientific one, and its findings have been subject to withering criticism. But the AP implies that the U.N's report represents a scientific consensus. Next:

Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years.

Now it's explicit. The elderly crank who "rails" and disagrees with the U.N. is not part of "mainstream thinking," notwithstanding the fact that, as the AP acknowledges, he is the world's foremost authority on hurricanes.

This is downright appalling, and far from honest journalism. Take this along with a spoonful of Carolyn O'Hara's TNR column handing gems from on high about how the new, independent, "citizen" sources for journalistic reports will never compare to the stuff that gets hashed out behind closed doors (the old "seeing sausages made" comparison crops up), and we have a not-at-all-surprising dose of arrogance from the High Priests of the Temple of "Knowledge" Sans Provable Data.

The more I see of this media sale of pseudo-consensus stuff, the more I am reminded of an old bumper sticker I saw when I was younger: "EAT SH*T. MILLIONS OF FLIES CAN'T ALL BE WRONG".

Exactly what are these people trying to feed us?

Boycotting the campaigns (until it really matters)

In case anybody missed my column following the interminable Oscars ceremony this past winter, there may be questions as to why I haven't really covered the current campaign for the '08 elections. Well, Anchoress has said it even better than I could:

I resent like hell that these politicians - all of them, but I seem to recall it was Hillary who started early, forcing everyone else to do so, as well - began their stumping and fund-raising two years before an election. Some of them - like Clinton - barely finished their re-election celebrations before reaching out their hands for ‘08 campaign funds.

They’ve decided to be in our faces for an excessive period of time, and the acquiescent media is allowing it by covering their every belch and hiccup, but that doesn’t mean I have to read it and get sucked into a pre-election vortex that has no business forming just now. Our “public servants,” duly elected to represent their states, are running back and forth across the country giving speeches, eating festival food and raising money, money, money instead of attending to the concerns of their constituents, voting on pending legislation, FUNDING OUR TROOPS and otherwise doing what they were hired to do.

I raise my can of Diet Coke to her, in salute to a woman who says what needed to be said. I'm with the Anchoress 100% on this.

I don't intend to discuss the campaign, either, until at least the primaries are actually upon us -- or unless something truly newsworthy occurs. Whichever comes first.




I forgot to give credit where credit is due -- hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

Is America Ready?

John Hinderaker, at Power Line, asks of this Yahoo! 60 Minutes ad

if he might rephrase that, so I took the liberty of applying his question to a new version of the graphic:



It's small, and yet not too humble, I think.

Gratuitous postcard: "the sheriff is a ni--"

The NYT printed a shocking bit of news, this week. It seems that Mitt Romney is a ... wait for it... a Mor---!

I don't know where they get this stuff!

NYT assaults family of slain serviceman, gets away with it

Michelle Malkin has the news that none of the other biggies seems to be covering -- in light of the Arkin pile of manure that still stinks up the WaPo, I can understand that, but the NYT's conduct is abominable, as well.

It seems that, in direct violation of the rules which all journalists and publishers sign off on (rules, which I might add, are for basic common decency), the NYT not only ran the news of a soldier's death before the Pentagon had the chance to inform his family, but they ran a disturbing video of his actual death, at their website.

That's one helluva way to find out your loved one is gone -- have the press show you the film at eleven.

Now, I'm not a journalist, myself, but it seems to me the practice of allowing the authorities to inform families first is an old, honored one, and that even the crappy little bottom-rung papers like the one which publishes my rantings each week knows it well, and keeps that practice.

And yet, the NYT not only runs the video, but loses no privileges as a result!

It seems to me, not only do the editors and reporters for the Slimes owe the family a public apology, but they owe the rest of the troops over in Iraq and Afghanistan a display of genuine contrition. Not that I think they have a clue what contrition is, even with their gigantic print-media vocabularies.

Further, I think the Pentagon owes it to the families of all the troops to see that this sort of thing never happens again -- by removing the NYT blight from any embeds. If they can't do that, then I hope the soldiers who get stuck with Slimes reporters can figure out how to effectively maximize the time and skills of those "journalists."

WaPo "expert" demonstrates where his area of expertise lies

In receiving ass-kickings.

William W. Arkin, styled by the Washington Post as their military expert, has demonstrated precisely how well he understands both the military and the Constitution of the United States, and it's impressive... if he were a newborn.

In his blog entry, The Troops Also Need to Support The American People, he wrote this little gem:

I'm all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn't for them to disapprove of the American people.

In other words, the troops have expressed opinions, and We are not amused. Off with their heads!

But it goes downhill from there.

You should to read the article, first, then let it sink in, but then go over to Armed Liberal at Winds of Change, Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive, Fuzzy Bear's Fuzzilicious Thinking, Ace of Spades at AoSHQ (yes, twice!), Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters, John Hinderaker at Power Line (two of his, too!), John at OpFor, and even Chris Muir's cartoon strip, Day By Day. But mostly, try to read the comments at the original article's site. Michelle Malkin has exerpted a few and put together a texty-roundup of other good sites to read, for those who don't want to sully their computers by further visiting Arkin's site .

Update: Add Rick Moran at RWNH and Dan Riehl at Riehl World View to the must-read checklist, today.

And another thing: in Arkin's now-removed "apology" piece, responding to the reactions to his original screed, he made this interesting remark:

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

I do have to wonder what's wrong with a soldier -- or any other citizen -- having the belief that his (or hers) is the "one true nation," as Arkin puts it? Isn't that what patriotism really is?

If you don't believe that your nation is ultimately the one with the right answers, why in hell would you choose to defend it at all, in words or in body, here or in other lands? Why would you even stay in such a country you could not support, for that matter? If you lack faith in your own land and its people, shouldn't you be looking for a new address, in, say, Venezuela?

And, by indications in the last sentence, it seems to me, what we have is a clear case of projection. I could be wrong, though. I am certifiable, myself, after all. But at least I acknowledge how nuts I am. And I can usually spot the loony ... they say it takes one to know one.

NBC to add another hour of newsiness to morning programming

According to the wires, NBC is promising to add a fourth hour to its morning show, "Today." I can hardly wait until September, now. They'll surely show "sad and pathetic" O'Reilly who is fair and balanced on the airwaves, won't they? After all, I've never heard a single word of political commentary or bias come from a news anchor on NBC... but then, who needs words?

Trust the MSM? I don't think so!

Let's start with the reports from Police Capt. Jamil Hussein (and related issues), in Baghdad. The A(wT)P says he's their main source for lots and lots and lots of Iraqi news over the past few years. The bloggers questioned his ubiquity and his veracity, and Eason Jordan, hoping to improve his 'net cred, challenged two of the more vocal of those bloggers to accompany him to Iraq to see if they could find Capt. Hussein to ask him a few personal questions (like, "Where are you from, and how come you get reports from nearly every district of Baghdad, even though nobody in the US military or the Iraqi Ministry of Interior has heard of you?" "How come you say six mosques and several men were set afire, and nobody anywhere else in the city offers even the remotest confirmation?" etc.).

Here's what Mr. Jordan has to say now(HT:lgf):

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.

This controversy and the AP’s handling of it call into question the credibility, integrity, and smarts of one of the world’s biggest, most influential, most respected news organizations, the New York-based Associated Press.

If there's one thing Mr. Jordan is sensitive about, it's media credibility. Gateway Pundit has much more.



And then there's the NYT. Yesterday, it stated, among other things, that the cellphone Saddam snuff film was posted in its entirety on, among other sites, littlegreenfootballs.com. Not quite. And, when asked for a correction to be made, did they do it? Not quite.

Two of the largest, most powerful news sources in the world have serious problems getting their facts straight, and can't admit they even have a problem.

Bloggers like Charles Johnson are working up an intervention, but I wonder if the disease has gone too far to save the NYT and A(wT)P?

Saddam dead: cars, press and leftists explode

It's a natural result. Put a murderous thug to death, and some folks feel the need to go ballistic.

Saddam Hussein was hanged by the neck until dead, yesterday, and The MSM showed their undying devotion. This is what al-Reuters had to say about the event, too: Saddam hanged at dawn as bombs kill more than 60

Sure, there's a causal relationship there. If he hadn't been executed, there would never have been a car bomb, right? They never occurred anywhere in the world, or even in Iraq, until this morning. Uh huh. But it gets even more entertaining, as the article states:

A triple car bombing killed 25 in a Shi'ite district of the capital -- the sort of attacks that have pitched Iraq toward sectarian war since U.S. troops broke Saddam's iron rule.

So this violence is whose fault, again? Apparently, it's all because of one man:

President Bush, who called Saddam a threat though alleged nuclear and other weapons were never found, said:

"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself."

Of course, the requisite reference to the "grim milestone" made its way into the article supposedly on the death of a dictator:

The deaths of five troops pushed the American death toll to just a few short of the emotive 3,000 mark. Bush already faces mounting public dismay at the war as Iraq slides toward all-out civil war between Saddam's fellow Sunnis and majority Shi'ites.

You'd think their teeth would be worn down by their constant gnawing on that stone.

So how, then, does the left react to the reports? Not well.

Pitiful.

Red Sky at Morning, newspapers take warning

Some years back, my parents brought home a novel, Red Sky at Morning -- a "coming-of-age" tale set during the years of WWII (I occasionally still confuse it, in my mind, with A Catcher in the Rye, and I may be doing it again, here, since it's been more than three decades since I read the latter), full of humor and strength and grace and wit... all of which I missed the first time I read it, since I was only a callow teen.

But the one section of the novel which stayed with me long after I reread the book and grasped the larger picture was the one particular scene in which the kids were playing a sort of game of "Dare". Across the lumpy ground of a field lay a dead horse. It had been lying there on the warming ground long enough to become badly bloated and extremely ripe. The kids' game was to get as close as they could to the corpse, then dash back away to safer ground. The protagonist decided he would run as fast as he could, then reach out to "tag" the remains before swinging around and returning, thereby upping the stakes of the game... and he stumbled badly on the last steps of the approach. If memory serves me correctly, the result impressed the other kids, but the memory and the stench remained with him for long years.

Well, that bloated horse is lying out there in the middle of the public eye. The kids dashing up to it are the moonbat left, and far too many members of the Democratic party. And they're being goaded into running faster and closer by the MSM.

Long months ago, I'd believed that bloggers like Ed Morrissey gave a proper burial to the so-called "domestic spying" stuff that the lefties complained Bush was perpetrating in violation of the Constitutional right for privacy while talking to terrorists calling from overseas (which Amendment was that, again?).

Unfortunately, the latter case has clawed its way from the dirt nap it was taking, and is looking once more for brains to consume horse's asses to play games with. Naturally, this happens because (a) the MSM thinks it can still get away with selling fiction as real news by saying "some say", and (b) Congress is getting a small change in partisan makeup, so the Democrats are feeling their oats:

Leahy and other Democrats have complained about Bush's tactics in the war on terror, particularly the Republican president's warrantless domestic spying program that Democrats and some Republicans say violates the law.

Dead horse, meet Patrick Leahy. Morrissey answered your complaint very well, 'way back in February:

the White House had kept key Democratic leaders abreast of the program since its 2001 inception. They then wanted to get the public irate over what they kept calling "domestic spying," but eventually realized that the public thought it reasonable to check on international calls from suspected al-Qaeda terrorists during a war against them.

Call me adolescent, but I can't wait to see the cool moment when Leahy repeats the action from the novel.


On the plus side, at least a few bloggers have beaten the MSM at what is supposedly the media's top game: John Hinderacker and his colleagues at Power Line have done the necessary virtual legwork to put another bit of horse-hockey to rest.

The poor lefties couldn't let a little bit of humor at the expense of one of their role models be forgotten (Swift Boat! Swift Boat! Liar liar hat's on fire!), and just couldn't MoveOn. John and some of his readers asked a few serious questions, ran a few leads back to their sources, and applied a spot of reason, andthe moonbats who believed they had an Aha! moment were shown the error of their ways... without the help of a single MSM stringer. (Who would have thought that a little blog like that could destroy all their beautiful wickedness?)

(My apologies for switching metaphors in midstream. I think the first horse was still dead.)

This nag is done.

Journalism as a source of cheap amusement

Via Ace of Spades I came to this WSJ piece of smug superiority which made me giggle uncontrollably. I especially enjoyed the part where author Joseph Rago wrote

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage.

Apparently this young journalist has never read the news as she is wrote out here in the dingles. Yes, the MSM in the BIG CITY may have some real journalists spending weeks on a single subject... and then, if they work for the BIG PAPERS, they can even editorialize without catching multiple levels of the underworld from their BIG-TIME EDITORS (okay, so the last link is to history. It's still worth considering, IMO).

Out here in the sticks, the news our MSM regularly follows up on has to do with such high-impact stuff as the increase in the number of spider webs on the editor's dashboard, the changing of a menu at the editor's favorite restaurant, and the occasional piece of information we all need, such as "'An Inconvenient Truth' is not propaganda." snicker snicker.


Actually, as one reads almost all the way at the end of his riff on blogs, Rago writes,

Certainly the MSM, such as it is, collapsed itself. It was once utterly dominant yet made itself vulnerable by playing on its reputed accuracy and disinterest to pursue adversarial agendas.

In that statement lies the ultimate truth for why the amateurs are gaining ground on the so-called professional news media. The MSM stopped being an outlet for journalism, and became a wolf PAC, more interested in selling its agenda than in distributing actual news. They abandoned the original principle of disseminating information, and went for propagandizing, without even bothering to check to see if their sources were legitimate.

The MSM may be "big-time", but until they learn to clean up their acts, I expect I'll be getting more real news from the bloggers than I will from the networks.

And I seriously doubt if I will ever find anything useful in my local paper. Ever. Ever ever ever.