What media bias?
Ubiquitous
"accountability journalism"? No longer would the venerable wire service stick
to reporting the facts; its new role was "to report whether government
officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the
promises they make." This led--surprise, surprise--to very critical coverage
of the Bush administration. But Barack Obama seems to have succeeded in
changing the tone of accountability journalism, as evidenced by this AP
dispatch from late last month:
After a sleepless, overnight flight to Oslo to accept
the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, President
Barack Obama made a not altogether surprising admission.
He was tired.
Who could blame him?
The AP goes on to describe the terrible pressures of the presidency. It does
sound like a really hard job. Then again, if Obama's tired, maybe it's because
he keeps promising not to rest:
� "Obama 'Will Not Rest' Until Healthcare Reformed"--headline, Agence
France-Presse, May 11
� "Obama: 'I Will Not Rest' Until Businesses Are Hiring"--headline,
RealClearPolitics.com, Nov. 23
� "Obama Says 'We Will Not Rest' Until Plotters Found"--headline,
Bloomberg.com, Dec. 28
Obama was on vacation in Hawaii at the time the AP reported he was tired, but
today he is back in Washington and the AP reports the poor guy did not in fact
have much of a rest:
Obama returned Monday to the White House he never really escaped.
Obama and his family took an overnight flight from Hawaii to
Washington, capping an 11-day holiday vacation sure to be
remembered more for the botched attempt to blow up a Christmas
Day flight than the hours spent on golf courses or at luaus.
The failed terror attack refocused the president's trip from
R&R on the island of Oahu to a river of memos from homeland
security aides.
Obama arrived back at the White House at midday Monday with
nothing on his public schedule--but much on his plate.
What's odd about these stories is that, intentionally or not, they're highly
unflattering even though sympathetic. Stressing how tired Obama is makes him
look weak. The AP's attitude is that he's not up to the job, but "who can
blame him?" That's accountability for you.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
Sid9
"Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote in message
news:kLOdnfWnsYkQ5d7W...@giganews.com...
> Remember when the Associated Press announced that it was embracing
> "accountability journalism"? No longer would the venerable wire service
> stick
> to reporting the facts; its new role was "to report whether government
> officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the
> promises they make." This led--surprise, surprise--to very critical
> coverage
> of the Bush administration. But Barack Obama seems to have succeeded in
> changing the tone of accountability journalism, as evidenced by this AP
> dispatch from late last month:
>
> After a sleepless, overnight flight to Oslo to accept
> the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, President
> Barack Obama made a not altogether surprising admission.
> He was tired.
>
> Who could blame him?
>
> The AP goes on to describe the terrible pressures of the presidency. It
> does
> sound like a really hard job. Then again, if Obama's tired, maybe it's
> because
> he keeps promising not to rest:
>
> France-Presse, May 11
>
> . "Obama: 'I Will Not Rest' Until Businesses Are Hiring"--headline,
> RealClearPolitics.com, Nov. 23
>
> . "Obama Says 'We Will Not Rest' Until Plotters Found"--headline,
Iraq, a military victory?
A Pyrrhic victory costing a trillion dollars, wrecked the lives of tens of
thousands of our military families, wiped out Iran's most potent enemy in
the region, neglected the real enemy in Afghanistan.
Some victory....and then leaving it Obama to clean up the mess
Cheney/bush,jr made.
Ubiquitous
Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. both died
this decade. That's not the only thing they had in common. Both began their
careers as segregationist Democrats but later repented and supported civil
rights legislation. Both had obituaries in the New York Times written by Adam
Clymer--but therein lie some differences:
The Thurmond obit, published June 27, 2003, was headlined "Strom Thurmond, Foe
of Integration, Dies at 100."
The Byrd obit, published today, is headlined "Robert Byrd, a Pillar of the
Senate, Dies at 92." (The early onilne headline said "Respected Voice" rather
than "Pillar.")
The Thurmond obit mentioned the senator's opposition to civil rights in the
third paragraph.
The Byrd obit, doesn't get to his opposition to civil rights--and his
membership in the Ku Klux Klan--until paragraph 16, the topic sentence of
which is, "Mr. Byrd's perspective on the world changed over the years."
Now it is true that Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as a "States' Rights
Democrat," so that he was a more important figure in the reaction against
civil rights than Byrd was. On the other hand, compare and contrast these
details from deep in the two men's obits:
Byrd, paragraphs 17-18: "Mr. Byrd's political life could be traced to his
early involvement with the Klan, an association that almost thwarted his
career and clouded it intermittently for years afterward. In the early 1940s,
he organized a 150-member klavern, or chapter, of the Klan in Sophia, W.Va.,
and was chosen its leader."
Thurmond, paragraph 16: "In 1940, he called on the grand jury in Greenville to
be ready to take action against the Ku Klux Klan, which, he said, represented
'the most abominable type of lawlessness.' "
There was one other big difference between the two superannuated senators:
Whereas Byrd remained a Democrat until his death yesterday, Thurmond became a
Republican in 1964. That may account for the somewhat different treatment they
got from Clymer's.
--
"If Barack Obama isn't careful, he will become the Jimmy Carter of the 21st
century."
Ubiquitous
be a lagging indicator of bad news and a leading indicator of good news--which
is another way of saying that reporters' usual approach can be summed up as
"always look on the bright side of life."
Things must be really getting bad, because the lagging indicator seems to be
catching up. We analyzed a dispatch by Christopher Rugaber of the Associated
Press that previewed today's jobs report and tried to explain away the
expected bad news. Later yesterday, though, Rugaber filed another dispatch
that was far dourer, including its title, "Evidence Mounts That Recovery Is
Hitting the Skids."
Rugaber weighs in again today with a story on the actual jobless numbers, and
his mood hadn't improved overnight. The title gave the bad news first:
"Payrolls Drop by 125K, Jobless Rate Falls." The story, too, begins with the
bad news, and swiftly explains why the good news isn't so good:
A weak June jobs report offered the latest evidence that the
economic recovery is slowing.
Employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since October,
the Labor Department said Friday. The loss was driven by the
end of 225,000 temporary census jobs. Businesses added a net
total of 83,000 workers, the sixth straight month of private-sector
job gains but not enough to speed up the recovery.
Unemployment dropped to 9.5 percent--the lowest level since July
2009--from 9.7 percent. But the reason for the decline was more
than 650,000 people gave up on their job searches and left the
labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren't
counted as unemployed.
Neither dispatch uses the phrase "jobless recovery," which was a staple of
economic coverage during the Bush years--even though, before the last few
months of 2008, unemployment seldom topped 6%.
Ubiquitous
tended to accentuate the positive since Barack Obama became president. On
Friday we pointed out some contrary examples, but NewsBusters.org's Tom Blumer
calls our attention to another subtle shift in the wire service's attitude--to
wit, a Friday report from Jeannine Aversa and Chris Rugaber:
A second straight month of lackluster hiring by American businesses
is sapping strength from the economic rebound. . . .
Unemployment is expected to stay above 9 percent through the midterm
elections in November. And the Fed predicts joblessness could still
be as high as 7.5 percent two years from now. Normal is considered
closer to 6 percent, and economists say it will probably take until
the middle of this decade to achieve that.
During the Bush years, unemployment seldom topped 6%. Blumer shows several
example of news reports describing figures in the 6% range as "persistent
unemployment." Unfortunately for his argument, most of his examples are from
sources other than the AP. Still, he quips, "Maybe the AP pair is subtly
informing us that as long as the Obama administration is in power and
Democrats control Congress, 'persistent unemployment' will be 'normal.' "
Ubiquitous
in the now-defunct email list for ideologically approved journalists--no
conservatives allowed--engaged in efforts to suppress news damaging to
then-candidate Barack Obama.
The Daily Caller reports ABC News's "tough questioning" of Obama at a 2008
debate with Hillary Clinton "left many of [the Journolist participants]
outraged":
"George [Stephanopoulos]," fumed Richard Kim of the Nation,
is "being a disgusting little rat snake."
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily
Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign
a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect
their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including
Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the
Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings
of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some
cases plotted to fix the damage.
Most damning is a long quote from a Spencer Ackerman, who worked for something
called the Washington Independent:
I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to.
It's not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright's defense.
What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going
after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's [sic]
and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot
of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to
let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant
fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us
all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what
we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead,
take one of them--Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares--and call
them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem
with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks
behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage,
which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Smashing somebody's [sic] through a plate-glass window seems like an odd way
to thread a needle, but atrocious prose is the least of the problems here. The
problem here isn't bias, either. Assuming Ackerman was an opinion writer
rather than a straight-news reporter, he was entitled not only to hold his
opinions but to express them.
But Ackerman was not engaging in a public debate; he was privately
strategizing about how to suppress the news. And his fellow journolists, while
disagreeing with him, did so "only on strategic grounds":
"Spencer, you're wrong," wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor
at the American Prospect. "Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn't
further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is
his new black friend, but because that makes it all about
character. The goal is to get to the point where you can
contrast some _thing_--Obama's substantive agenda--with this
crap." . . .
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with
Ackerman's strategy. "I think it's worth keeping in mind that
Obama is trying (or says he's trying) to run a campaign that
avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about,
and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the
Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if
it turns out he's not going change the way politics works?"
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. "Kevin, I'm not
saying OBAMA should do this. I'm saying WE should do this."
If anybody on the list objected in principle to Ackerman's idea of slandering
people, including a fellow journalist, as racist, the Caller missed that part
of the story. (We'll be happy to report it if a Journolist member would care
to supply us with the evidence.) What Ackerman proposed was to carry out a
political dirty trick in order to suppress the news and thereby aid a
candidate for public office. That's about as unethical as journalism can get.
The final product of this debate was a pathetic "open letter," which, as we
noted at the time, was signed by 41 self-described "journalists and media
analysts," nearly all of whom were affiliated with universities, left-wing
publications or left-wing think tanks. The letter does seem to have been more
of a collaborative effort than we guessed back then: the Caller lists eight
people who contributed to its drafting. Even so, what self-respecting
journalist shares a byline with 40 other guys?
"The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York
Times," the Caller reports, but thereafter was deservedly forgotten until now.
Obama weathered the Wright revelations, but it seems a stretch to give
Journolist the credit (or, if you prefer, the blame) for that. On the other
hand, are there other stories they did succeed in suppressing? We cannot know
as long as the full Journolist archives are secret.
These revelations also belie Journolist founder (and now Washington Post
commentator) Ezra Klein's defense of the enterprise back in March 2009:
As for sinister implications, is it "secret?" No. Is it
off-the-record? Yes. The point is to create a space where
experts feel comfortable offering informal analysis and
testing out ideas. Is it an ornate temple where liberals
get together to work out "talking points?" Of course not.
Half the membership would instantly quit if anything like
that emerged.
This statement is true only if parsed as a denial that an email list is an
ornate temple. Plainly the list was a forum where liberals got together to
work out talking points, as evidenced by that "open letter." Worse, it was a
forum where people employed as journalists conspired to suppress the
news--and, by doing so "off the record," used journalistic ethics as cover.
In 2009 Klein wrote that Journolist's policy of excluding conservatives was
"not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The
emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology."
"Call them racists." That's empiricism for you!
Ubiquitous
Now the media has gone from trying to create stories to openly lying. The
audio was pulled directly from the voicemail message. Nothing was altered.
�Everything that was recorded on my phone is what we released without change,�
said Randy Desoto.
***
The following voice mail message was inadvertently left on the cell phone of
Joe Miller campaign spokesperson Randy DeSoto.
The voices are believed to be those of the news director for CBS Anchorage
affiliate KTVA, along with assignment editor Nick McDermott, and other
reporters, openly discussing creating, if not fabricating, two stories about
Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller.
The following is a transcript of a call recorded after CBS Alaska affiliate
KTVA called Joe Miller�s Senate campaign spokesperson. The call failed to
disconnect properly. It was later authenticated by McDermott, who sent a text
to Randy DeSoto stating, �Damn iPhone� I left you a long message. I thought I
hung up. Sorry.�
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/58865471/Audio-KTVA
Clearly the reporters were conspiring to set up some type of smear of Joe
Miller. With glee, they even cite a recent controversy over an incident
involving the Rand Paul campaign, while discussing how they would spread the
story via social media after whatever incident they had in mind came off. It
also brings to mind another recent episode that ended with Jerry Brown�s
California gubernatorial campaign being caught up in controversy when someone
from Brown�s camp called Brown�s opponent, Republican Meg Whitman, a �whore.�
Barb May
> From the Miller Campaign:
>
> Now the media has gone from trying to create stories to openly lying.
Not all the media, only FOX News.
> Clearly the reporters were conspiring to set up some type of smear of
> Joe Miller.
Clearly it was just a couple of people sitting around the office
bullshitting. Perhaps if Miller had not been hiding from the press, and
openly contemptuous of them during the entire campaign, they might not
have such a poor opinion of him and they wouldn't be talking about how
easy it would be to screw him over. But idle chatter in a newsroom
doesn't constitute proof of intent.
Palin/Miller need something else to make this charge stick and they
don't have it because no action was taken. This is just a desperate
attempt by the Miller campaign to provide a narrative for why the voters
of Alaska rejected him (and by extension Sarah Palin) in favor of a
write-in candidate who was able to beat some very long odds and take him
down.
--
Barb
Bob
news:4cce...@news.x-privat.org...
The intent was obvious to thinking people.
Ubiquitous
Middle America, but they still have the Associated Press, which writes that
"House Republicans vow they will follow up with dozens of attempts to hack
away at what they derisively call 'Obamacare.' " As Tim Graham of
NewsBusters.org notes:
The media's coverage of the incoming GOP-controlled House of
Representatives could be called the March of the Mean Words.
When Democrats ascend to power, they pass "historic" and "landmark
reforms." When Republicans do the same, the media argot is
colorful and violent, sending unsubtle meat-axe messages of
conservative "assaults" and "attacks." . . .
Democrats create "accomplishments." Apparently, Republicans
can only "hack away derisively." Conservatives have nothing
positive to offer? Not if you're an AP reporter in Washington.
This makes all the more curious a criticism of the media relayed by National
Public Radio:
Media critic Jay Rosen says mainstream news reporters don't
disclose what they believe enough of the time. . . .
Rosen says there would be a real benefit to such disclosure."
We can tell where the person is coming from and apply whatever
discount rate we want to what they're saying," Rosen says. "I
also think that it's more likely to generate trust. And this
is the main reason why I recommend 'here's where I'm coming
from' replace 'the view from nowhere.' "
That phrase--"the view from nowhere"--is what Rosen calls the
media's true ideology: not exactly on the right, and not exactly
on the left. It is, he says, the way news organizations falsely
advertise that they can be trusted because they don't have
any dog in the fight.
But if the AP reporter had done what Rosen advises, what he wrote would have
been indistinguishable from an opinion column. Far be it from us to disparage
opinion columns, and an honest one is better than a dishonest news story--but
there is a great deal to be said for the craft of reporting the news straight.
The NPR story goes on to say this:
Many old-line American news organizations are holding onto
those values–-or at least want to be seen doing so. NBC News
suspended Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough for failing to
get approval to make contributions to political candidates,
though both are opinion hosts on cable channel MSNBC. Their
suspensions were widely considered to be relatively light,
at just two days apiece. NPR terminated the contract of former
news analyst Juan Williams for repeatedly voicing personal
views in other news outlets.
That's right, NPR is touting its firing of Juan Williams as evidence of its
objectivity and lack of bias. OK, we suppose Rosen has a point. Here is at
least one news organization that may as well abandon any pretense of being
unbiased or objective.
--
The trouble with American journalism, in short, isn't that it's too skeptical,
but that it's too willing to throw skepticism to the wind when it suits the
agenda of proclaiming every war a Vietnam and every Republican president a
Nixon.
trotsky
> Pro-ObamaCare Democrats
From whom was this plagiarized, Ubi?
Ubiquitous
Strawman noted. Get back to us when you have a real argument to make.
--
"Admittedly, conservatives give as good as they get. The difference
between us and [leftists] is that we can argue as well as inveigh.
They can only hurl invectives." -- Don Feder
Steve Newport
The Corporate Media bias is anti-left, pro-right.
Tea Party Patriot Woman!
>
> The Corporate Media bias is anti-left, pro-right.
>
>
You're apparently unfamiliar with Bernard Goldberg's books "Bias" and
"A Slobbering Love Affair"?
I had to quit reading the newspapers years ago and quit watching everything
except Fox News, because the rest was socialist biased BULL SHIT.
SO be honest now, lying marxist shitsack.
trotsky
> Anonymouse wrote:
>> On 1/6/11 4:09 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>
>>> Pro-ObamaCare Democrats
>>
>> From whom was this plagiarized, Ubi?
>
> Strawman noted. Get back to us when you have a real argument to make.
Not TV related/troll alert/Ubi is a douchebag/etc.
Tea Party Patriot Woman!
tomcervo
James Taranto, from Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, Mike's usual font
of wisdom. As predictable as him sending replies to "poster" or "null".
Steve Newport
quit reading the newspapers years ago and quit watching everything
except Fox News
SN: You chose to. And you've been brainwashed.
Jane_Galt
Typical socialist smears.
--
- Jane Galt
Reporting from Galt's Gulch, somwehere in Colorado...
"Without America there is no "Free World"."
The reason that Progressivism-Socialism-Communism always fail, is that you
eventually run out of other peoples' money.
Obama and the Democrats: continuing the "Progressive" socialist agenda of
borrowing, taxing and insanely spending the country into collapse and global
socialism, in a Cloward-Piven fashion.
Colin E. Brayton
narratives even when they reinforce my current set of political
prejudices. I do not want my prejudices reinforced. I want to change my
mind if I need to. In my circles, it is generally anti-GOP, but the fact
is that I do not hate and fear Republicans, and would save one from
drowning if it were within my power.
I always say, politics should be covered a little like sports -- mixed
martial arts, perhaps. I am interested in the stories about the moves
that get made and the deals that get done, and their practical results.
Politicians, meanwhile, should be de-Elvisized. They should be treated as
what they are: overburdened, stressed-out wheeler-dealers prone to fits
of psychosis. Political journalism should be as boring -- or as
interesting -- as politics itself, which in fact boils down mainly to
sitting around conference tables hashing out details.
Anyway, good thinkology, Scarecrow. Even if I voted for the guy, the
forced Obama-Kennedy narrative got ludicrous fast.
boizebu in sambodia
--
nihil sub sole novum nec valet quisquam dicere ecce hoc recens est iam
enim praecessit in saeculis quae fuerunt ante nos
--
nihil sub sole novum nec valet quisquam dicere ecce hoc recens est iam
enim praecessit in saeculis quae fuerunt ante nos
Ubiquitous
death-penalty appeal in which a convicted murderer and the U.S.
government both asked the justices to grant a stay of execution based on
a law that does not actually exist.
The killer, Humberto Leal Garcia, who was executed yesterday, was a
Mexican national, though he had lived in the U.S. since age 2. He
claimed that the state of Texas had denied him access to Mexican
consular officials in violation of a treaty called the Vienna
Convention. But the court had previously held, in Medillin v. Texas
(2008), that there was no federal law enforcing that right. Leal in turn
argued "that the Due Process Clause prohibits Texas from executing him
while such legislation is under consideration," as the court noted in an
unsigned opinion (citations omitted):
This argument is meritless. The Due Process Clause does
not prohibit a State from carrying out a lawful judgment
in light of unenacted legislation that might someday
authorize a collateral attack on that judgment.
The United States does not endorse Leal's due process
claim. Instead, it asks us to stay the execution until
January 2012 in support of our "future jurisdiction to
review the judgment in a proceeding" under this yet-to-be
enacted legislation. It relies on the fact that on June 14,
2011, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced implementing
legislation in the Senate with the Executive Branch's
support. No implementing legislation has been introduced
in the House.
We reject this suggestion. First, we are doubtful that it
is ever appropriate to stay a lower court judgment in light
of unenacted legislation. Our task is to rule on what the
law is, not what it might eventually be.
Incredibly, four justices dissented, citing foreign-policy concerns.
The Leal case also provides an interesting example of media bias. Here's
how NPR described the crime in a story last month:
On the night of May 21, 1994, 16-year-old Adria Sauceda
attended a party on the south side of San Antonio. Witnesses
testified that the teenager ingested so much alcohol,
cocaine and marijuana she became extremely intoxicated.
A group of eight or nine young men took her into the backyard
and took turns sexually assaulting her. Anyone who tried
to intervene was told to back off.
Sandra Babcock, Leal's lawyer and a professor at Northwestern
University Law School, says when Leal arrived at the party
and learned what happened to Sauceda he "became very upset
and said that he was going to take her home."
Leal says that on the ride home, Sauceda tried to get out
of the car. Leal pulled over, she got out, he tried to get
her back in, they argued, he pushed her and she hit her
head. But Leal maintains he didn't kidnap her and he didn't
rape her. And that's the crux of his defense because without
those additional crimes, Leal would not have faced a capital
murder charge and a death penalty conviction.
"So although there was evidence that he was with her before
she died--and that he may have had some involvement in her
death--the evidence that shows that he committed a sexual
assault is reed thin, and the evidence that shows that he
kidnapped her is even weaker," Babcock says.
Fox News relies on official records in its description of the crime:
Adria Sauceda, 16, his victim, was found naked by authorities,
according to court documents.
"There was a 30- to 40-pound asphalt rock roughly twice the
size of the victim's skull lying partially on the victim's
left arm," court documents read. "Blood was underneath this
rock. A smaller rock with blood on it was located near the
victim's right thigh."
A "bloody and broken" stick roughly 15 inches long with a
screw at the end of it was also protruding from the girl's
vagina, according to the documents.
In his first statement to police, Leal said Sauceda bolted
from his car and ran off. After he was told his brother had
given detectives a statement, he changed his story, saying
Sauceda attacked him and fell to the ground after he fought
back. He said when he couldn't wake her and saw bubbles in
her nose, he got scared and went home.
That's quite different from the story the defense lawyer successfully
peddled to NPR--and remember, the defendant was convicted.
JRStern
wrote:
> This argument is meritless. The Due Process Clause does
> not prohibit a State from carrying out a lawful judgment
> in light of unenacted legislation that might someday
> authorize a collateral attack on that judgment.
>
> The United States does not endorse Leal's due process
> claim. Instead, it asks us to stay the execution until
> January 2012 in support of our "future jurisdiction to
> review the judgment in a proceeding" under this yet-to-be
> enacted legislation. It relies on the fact that on June 14,
> 2011, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced implementing
> legislation in the Senate with the Executive Branch's
> support. No implementing legislation has been introduced
> in the House.
>
> We reject this suggestion. First, we are doubtful that it
> is ever appropriate to stay a lower court judgment in light
> of unenacted legislation. Our task is to rule on what the
> law is, not what it might eventually be.
>
>Incredibly, four justices dissented, citing foreign-policy concerns.
might just set a record for the stupidest thing four justices have
ever voted for, ... not but I don't expect new records to be set in
the near future. the majority opinion a couple of years back on
eminent domain, was pretty much the stupidity record until today.
J.
Thanatos
web...@polaris.net (Ubiquitous) wrote:
> Our task is to rule on what the law is, not what it might eventually be.
This!^^^^^^^^^^^
It's ridiculous for the government go to court and say, "Your honor, we
know that it's perfectly legal to do X right now, but we don't like it,
and we're trying to pass a law against it, but until we can get it
passed, can you judicially order the defendant to stop doing X, which,
again, is perfectly legal for him to do?"
Mason Barge
wrote:
I don't see why it's so "stupid". I think it was a fairly difficult issue
to decide.
The Supreme Court has a right to consider international law and the US is
a ratified signatory to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of
1963.
Topaz
There was a book in ordinary bookstores called "An Empire of
Their Own". It was a pro-Jewish book but it showed that the Jews ran
Hollywood.
Here are some quotes from a magazine for Jews called "Moment".
It is subtitled "The Jewish magazine for the 90's" These quotes are
from the Aug 1996 edition after the Headline "Jews Run Hollywood - So
What?":
"It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish
power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most
influential production executives at each of the major movie studios
will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names."
"the famous Disney organization, which was founded by Walt
Disney, a gentile Midwesterner who allegedly harbored anti-Semetic
attitudes, now features Jewish personnel in nearly all its most
powerful positions."
"When Matsushita took over MCA-Universal, they did nothing to
undermine the unquestioned authority of Universal's legendary - and
all Jewish - management triad of Lew Wasserman, Sid Scheinberg, and
Tom Pollack."
Jewish control of the media:
MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN, owner of NY Daily News, US News & World Report and
chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American
Organizations, one of the largest pro-Israel lobbying groups.
LESLIE MOONVES, president of CBS television, great-nephew of David
Ben-Gurion, and co-chair with Norman Ornstein of the Advisory
Committee on Public Interest Obligation of Digital TV Producers,
appointed by Clinton.
JONATHAN MILLER, chair and CEO of AOL division of AOL-Time-Warner
NEIL SHAPIRO, president of NBC News
JEFF GASPIN, Executive Vice-President, Programming, NBC
DAVID WESTIN, president of ABC News
SUMNER REDSTONE, CEO of Viacom, "world's biggest media giant"
(Economist, 11/23/2) owns Viacom cable, CBS and MTVs all over the
world, Blockbuster video rentals and Black Entertainment TV.
MICHAEL EISNER, major owner of Walt Disney, Capitol Cities, ABC.
RUPERT MURDOCH, Owner Fox TV, New York Post, London Times, News of the
World (Jewish mother)
MEL KARMAZIN, president of CBS
DON HEWITT, Exec. Director, 60 Minutes, CBS
JEFF FAGER, Exec. Director, 60 Minutes II. CBS
DAVID POLTRACK, Executive Vice-President, Research and Planning, CBS
SANDY KRUSHOW, Chair, Fox Entertainment
LLOYD BRAUN, Chair, ABC Entertainment
BARRY MEYER, chair, Warner Bros.
SHERRY LANSING. President of Paramount Communications and Chairman of
Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group.
HARVEY WEINSTEIN, CEO. Miramax Films.
BRAD SIEGEL., President, Turner Entertainment.
PETER CHERNIN, second in-command at Rupert Murdoch's News. Corp.,
owner of Fox TV
MARTY PERETZ, owner and publisher of the New Republic, which openly
identifies itself as pro-Israel. Al Gore credits Marty with being his
"mentor."
ARTHUR O. SULZBERGER, JR., publisher of the NY Times, the Boston Globe
and other publications.
WILLIAM SAFIRE, syndicated columnist for the NYT.
TOM FRIEDMAN, syndicated columnist for the NYT.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post.
Honored by Honest Reporting.com, website monitoring "anti-Israel
media."
RICHARD COHEN, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post
JEFF JACOBY, syndicated columnist for the Boston Globe
NORMAN ORNSTEIN, American Enterprise Inst., regular columnist for USA
Today, news analyst for CBS, and co-chair with Leslie Moonves of the
Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligation of Digital TV
Producers, appointed by Clinton.
ARIE FLEISCHER, Dubya's press secretary.
STEPHEN EMERSON, every media outlet's first choice as an expert on
domestic terrorism.
DAVID SCHNEIDERMAN, owner of the Village Voice and the New Times
network of "alternative weeklies."
DENNIS LEIBOWITZ, head of Act II Partners, a media hedge fund
KENNETH POLLACK, for CIA analysts, director of Saban Center for Middle
East Policy, writes op-eds in NY Times, New Yorker
BARRY DILLER, chair of USA Interactive, former owner of Universal
Entertainment
KENNETH ROTH, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch
RICHARD LEIBNER, runs the N.S. Bienstock talent agency, which
represents 600 news personalities such as Dan Rather, Dianne Sawyer
and Bill O'Reilly.
TERRY SEMEL, CEO, Yahoo, former chair, Warner Bros.
MARK GOLIN, VP and Creative Director, AOL
WARREN LIEBERFORD, Pres., Warner Bros. Home Video Div. of AOL-
TimeWarner
JEFFREY ZUCKER, President of NBC Entertainment
JACK MYERS, NBC, chief.NYT 5.14.2
SANDY GRUSHOW, chair of Fox Entertainment
GAIL BERMAN, president of Fox Entertainment
STEPHEN SPIELBERG, co-owner of Dreamworks
JEFFREY KATZENBERG, co-owner of Dreamworks
DAVID GEFFEN, co-owner of Dreamworks
LLYOD BRAUN, chair of ABC Entertainment
JORDAN LEVIN, president of Warner Bros. Entertainment
MAX MUTCHNICK, co-executive producer of NBC's "Good Morning Miami"
DAVID KOHAN, co-executive producer of NBC's "Good Morning Miami"
HOWARD STRINGER, chief of Sony Corp. of America
AMY PASCAL, chair of Columbia Pictures
JOEL KLEIN, chair and CEO of Bertelsmann's American operations
ROBERT SILLERMAN, founder of Clear Channel Communications
BRIAN GRADEN, president of MTV entertainment
IVAN SEIDENBERG, CEO of Verizon Communications
WOLF BLITZER, host of CNN's Late Edition
LARRY KING, host of Larry King Live
TED KOPPEL, host of ABC's Nightline
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN Reporter
PAULA ZAHN, CNN Host
MIKE WALLACE, Host of CBS, 60 Minutes
BARBARA WALTERS, Host, ABC's 20-20
MICHAEL LEDEEN, editor of National Review
BRUCE NUSSBAUM, editorial page editor, Business Week
DONALD GRAHAM, Chair and CEO of Newsweek and Washington Post, son of
CATHERINE GRAHAM MEYER, former owner of the Washington Post
HOWARD FINEMAN, Chief Political Columnist, Newsweek
WILLIAM KRISTOL, Editor, Weekly Standard, Exec. Director
Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
RON ROSENTHAL, Managing Editor, San Francisco Chronicle
PHIL BRONSTEIN, Executive Editor, San Francisco Chronicle,
RON OWENS, Talk Show Host, KGO (ABC-Capitol Cities, San Francisco)
JOHN ROTHMAN, Talk Show Host, KGO (ABC-Capitol Cities, San Francisco)
MICHAEL SAVAGE, Talk Show Host, KFSO (ABC-Capitol Cities, San
Francisco) Syndicated in 100 markets
MICHAEL MEDVED, Talk Show Host, on 124 AM stations
DENNIS PRAGER, Talk Show Host, nationally syndicated from LA. Has
Israeli flag on his home page.
BEN WATTENBERG, Moderator, PBS Think Tank.
ANDREW LACK, president of NBC
DANIEL MENAKER, Executive Director, Harper Collins
DAVID REMNICK, Editor, The New Yorker
NICHOLAS LEHMANN, writer, the New York
HENRICK HERTZBERG, Talk of the Town editor, The New Yorker
SAMUEL NEWHOUSE JR, and DONALD NEWHOUSE own Newhouse Publications,
includes 26 newspapers in 22 cities; the Conde Nast magazine group,
includes The New Yorker; Parade, the Sunday newspaper supplement;
American City Business Journals, business newspapers published in more
than 30 major cities in America; and interests in cable television
programming and cable systems serving 1 million homes.
DONALD NEWHOUSE, chairman of the board of directors, Associated Press.
PETER R KANN, CEO, Wall Street Journal, Barron's
RALPH J. & BRIAN ROBERTS, Owners, Comcast-ATT Cable TV.
LAWRENCE KIRSHBAUM, CEO, AOL-Time Warner Book Group
http://www.ihr.org/ http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
Ubiquitous
mainstream media (in this case ABC, CBS and NBC) coverage of the
presidential campaign. Compared with their coverage of Democrats in 2007,
MRC finds, the MSM has been beastly toward this year's GOP contenders. The
nets have had "little airtime for the GOP frontrunners" and have been
"hitting the candidates with a liberal agenda" when paying them any
attention at all.
An earlier MRC report [2] found that the NBC News/Politico debate was a
"hatchet job," though the center liked the subsequent CNN/Tea Party Express
one.
Well, dog bites man and all that, but to the extent that the media are
hitting GOP candidates now with hostile liberal questions, they're doing
the ultimate nominee a favor by toughening him up for next fall. Barack
Obama is not going to go easy on his opponent, and anyone who can't
withstand tendentious questioning from the likes of Brian Williams isn't
prepared to go one-on-one with the president.
[1]: http://www.mrc.org/RealityCheck/uploads/2011-09-22-RealityCheck.pdf
[2]: http://www.mrc.org/realitycheck/realitycheck/2011/20110913053028.aspx
---
Barb May
> The conservative Media Research Center
--
Barb
Ubiquitous
wrote:
>> The conservative Media Research Center
>
>...is a right-wing propaganda organ
--
Barb May
redirect replies.
Ubiquitous wrote:
> In article <4e80...@news.x-privat.org>, bar...@nonofyourbusinessx.tv
> wrote:
>> Ubiquitous wrote:
>
>>> The conservative Media Research Center
>>
>> ...is a right-wing propaganda organ
>
> Ad hominem noted.
organizations, you moron.
That last part was an ad hominem, but ad hominems are not allways
fallacious if they are relevant, and in this case the fact that you are
a moron is quite relevant to your incorrect use of the term.
--
Barb
Ubiquitous
>Ubiquitous wrote:
>>> Ubiquitous wrote:
>>>> The conservative Media Research Center
>>>
>>> ...is a right-wing propaganda organ
>>
>
>organizations, you moron.
--
Ubiquitous
The federal government under the Bush administration ran an
operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to
suspected arms traffickers--the same tactic that congressional
Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama's
administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials
said Tuesday.
And here's the lead of an AP dispatch today:
The Obama administration has tracked down and killed Osama
bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and other al-Qaida leaders. Yet,
in spite of those successes, Republicans and some Democrats
in Congress remain intent on challenging the administration's
policies for handling captured terror suspects.
The AP will use every tool in its shed, from the tu quoque to the
outright non sequitur, to hold accountable those who would question the
Obama administration.
Ubiquitous
So enthused about promoting the far-left protests, ABC anchor Diane
Sawyer on Monday night's World News championed “the Occupy Wall Street
movement” by ludicrously claiming that “as of tonight, it has spread to
more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries -- every
continent but Antarctica.”
Protests against the wealthy in “thousands of countries,” including
Cuba, China and every country in Africa? Per the U.S. State Department,
however, there are only 195 nation states in the world, so Sawyer
imagined five times as many protests as could possibly have occurred.
(Video below)
She proceeded to advance the agenda of those protesting by running down
statistics to illustrate income inequality: “So how much does the top
one percent in this country earn? Well, on average their incomes, $1.1
million. Compare that to the bottom 90 percent, 100 million households.
They earn an average of $31,000.” She fretted that since the 1980s, “the
top one percent saw their incomes go up more than 11 times what the rest
of America saw.”
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/diane-sawyer-claims-wall-street-protests-hav
e-‘spread-more-thousand-countries’
[UPDATE: Cities, not countries. In the video of the October 10 World
News, posted on ABCNews.com and usually drawn from the updated version
prepared for the West coast, Sawyer hyped the protesters this way:
“We’ll bring you up to date on the protesters, that Occupy Wall Street
movement. As of tonight, it has spread to more than 250 American cities
and more than a thousand cities around the world -- every continent but
Antarctica.”]
CBS and NBC on Monday night once again ran full stories on the
protesters, providing day after day coverage they never offered the Tea
Party.
On the NBC Nightly News, Mara Schiavocampo tried to mainstream the
crowds by exploiting kids, beginning her story: “Today demonstrations
continued in cities across the country, including here in New York where
protesters were joined by some new, younger voices. From school, to the
streets. On day 24 of the Occupy Wall Street protests, demonstrators
were joined by a group of students on their day off.”
Schiavocampo then showed a bite of a little girl who pleaded: “I want to
make the world to be a better place.”
Ubiquitous
And now we learn that the "impartial" media is working behind the scenes
to help the OWS protesters while at the same time pretending to
objectively report on it.
--------------------
The Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media
members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members
report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy Wall
Street email distro public and searchable. The names in the list are a
veritable who's who in media.
http://owsmail.dc406.com/
Journolist 2.0 includes well known names such as MSNBC's Dylan Ratiga
and Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who both are actively participating;
involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald
plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear. The list
also includes a number of radical organizers, such as Kevin Zeese.
In these emails we see MSNBC's Ratigan, hawking his book in the
footnotes, instructing occupiers on how properly to present their
demands and messages while simultaneously appearing on television
reporting "objectively" on the story (when he's not taking part in the
protests himself as content.)
We've only begun to discover the full scope of the media's involvement
and are still combing through the archives after the list was brought to
our attention late last night.
We know that the original movement was kicked off by a Soros-funded
group called Adbusters; that union groups and radicals routinely
overthrow leadership unfriendly to an occupation of the occupation
(check out how Occupy St. Louis was hijacked by ACORN off-shoot MORE);
and now we know that media, including MSNBC itself, is apparently
helping occupiers better influence the public by both writing their
messages and giving them a platform.
So how long are we going to pretend that this is a "grassroots"
uprising?
And how can the media continue to report on the Occupy movement
objectively when it's also a part of it?