I just don't read the msm anymore. Keeps my blood pressure down. I feel sorry for the poor saps who only get their news from that source.
anonymous | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 5:46 pm | #

Hell, I don't eve4n read the local rag anymore.

Wait, I do read the comic page and occasionally the local restaurant reviews.

If I want a good laugh, I read the editorial page. Short essays that a high school junior lit class would mock. Letters to the editor asinine.

Their national and international coverage is ripped from the AP wire. You can guess what that's like.

A few good trees died in vain...on a daily basis.
Good Ole Charlie | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 6:15 pm | #

Whew! That was a bit of a rant! I feel better just for having read it!
Thank you!
suek | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 7:27 pm | #

So many on the left claiming to support the troops by wanting to bring them home...

When those troops get home, they might speak truth to power.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 7:28 pm | #

Well, actually the reporter did cover the subject very well, almost balanced if you read the whole thing.

Plus it helps to know that she was hoodwinked a little. She doesn't know that Iraqis always tell stories so that they are the victim and leave out any thing that is good. (such as getting aid through the local US military). The Iraqis also don't say that most of them have been smuggling for hundreds of years and are not poor innocent farmers.

The fact that the border was used by bad guys is brought out in two different places.

I think the good Prof. didn't read past the first three or four paragraphs and assumed (rightly so, if you go by past performance) that it was another piece critical to the American military.

PS I am definatly not an appoligist for the MSM.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
Papa Ray | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 7:29 pm | #

Mostly OT, but don't miss this tearjerker, Pat:

'The Inheritance of Loss,' by Kiran Desai:
Wounded by the West
doug | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 7:51 pm | #

I was watching a movie and they had a quote from Machiavelli. I dug it up, and it was even better than the snippet in the movie:

The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy... They never went by that saying which you constantly hear from the wiseacres of our day, that time heals all things.
They trusted rather their own character and prudence -- knowing perfectly well that time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad.
- Machiavelli, Il Principe, III (ibid.) -


I also bumped into this one, which seems equally relevant to our times, although having nothing specifically to do with Iraq:

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.
- Machiavelli, Discorsi, 1.3 (trans. LJ Walker, B Crick) -

Methinks I need to read more Machiavelli.
Oh Bloedige Hel | Email | Homepage | 02.12.06 - 8:29 pm | #

The Message (1976)

In March, 1977, Black Muslims in the US took 149 people hostage and demanded that The Message be banned. The siege ended with one reporter dead and loads of hostages beaten, stabbed or shot.
Quotes
Abu Sofyan: Mohammed, there is still doubt in my heart.
Khalid: If we were to cut off your head, it would remove all your doubts.
doug | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 12:18 am | #

> She doesn't know that Iraqis always tell stories so that they are the victim and leave out any thing that is good.

Papa, if she's going to report on the place, she should know things like this.

Further:
> almost balanced if you read the whole thing.

That isn't the reading habits of most newspaper readers. Only a small percentage of articles are completely read by people. This is why, for the most part, the first para should be a summary of the fact therein, and you place "the most important things" at the front, not way down in para 25.

Most people read the headline and the first para. A percentage will read a few more paras. Only a small number will read the whole thing.

People don't generally read newspapers, they scan newspapers.

.

Reporters -know- this. *Editors* -particularly- know this.
Oh Blutige Hölle | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 12:25 am | #

OBH, Papa Ray often bends over backwards to give his opponents every benefit of the doubt.

So he can fire both barrells when appropriate.

Point taken, though.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 9:04 am | #

Seeing America through the eyes of the NZ Herald (courtesy of the Mudville Gazette) emphasises the strategy of the Left. They control the MSM; the foreign press echoes them; in the link below our national security thus becomes a politicized football game with guess who winning?

In fact the NZ Herald predicts the winner (of the 2006 midterm elections). "With anxiety running high about Iraq, the economy, the botched response to Hurricane Katrina and corruption scandals in the Republican Party.."


Almost all of those 'talking points' above are manufactured by the MSM. (We're 'anxious about Iraq' because the MSM create it, as one example.) There is no honest debate about the issues on a national level, only spin and bs. The President (here) is stonewalled on any assertion. There is a visceral hatred. The Democratic answer to national security ( head in the sand) worked during the Clinton years: why rock the boat? Let's live pre-9/ll! Is the LA City Council (Weiss) not a better authority on terrorist threats?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ sectio...jectID=10367995
jg | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 11:02 am | #

doubleplusungood refs unpersons.
doubleplusungood refs unevents.
memhole.

war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
oceania has never been at war with eurasia
rejoice comrades! chocolate ration of 20g has been increased to 10g
bush is goldstein
bush is goldstein
bush is goldstein...
Ken | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 12:54 pm | #

There is nothing about the left and its media pets that enrages me more than the double-dealing, hypocritical, and obscene moral relativity that has taken the place of critical judgment and honesty.

I'm beginning to doubt whether there really is any moral relativity going on any more. At least with moral relativity, you'd see two sides of a story and a contorted explanation why they hold equal weight.

Instead we are given one side of the story. On Iraq, on NSA wiretaps, on Cartoons... etc etc... and told how evil we are with every deference given to those who call for our deaths.
krakatoa | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 1:44 pm | #

"Speaking Truth to Power" has to be one of the most self-serving platitudes that ever came along. You 'speak truth to power' by demonstrating against something you don't like. That the demonstration doesn't do one damn bit of good doesn't matter - YOU 'spoke truth to power'! It makes you feel really good about not accomplishing ANYTHING.

The media 'speaks truth to power' - and what gets accomplished? Their version of 'truth' may well bear little to no relationship to reality as we know it (which is really laughable when I hear folks on the left describe themselves as a 'reality-based community' - most of them wouldn't know reality if it snuck up behind them and set off a car bomb) and in fact may be a very real and diligent effort to HIDE reality in favor of the fiction the MSM wants to pass out.

We ARE in a clash of civilizations, of cultures - and pretty soon the US MSM is going to have to figure out what side they're on. Are they pro-freedom, or pro-censorship? Pro-western values? Or simply trying hard to not offend anyone who might actually, you know, try to blow their asses up? Just being anti-Bush isn't going to cut it - they're going to need to actually stand for something.
JLawson | Email | Homepage | 02.13.06 - 2:08 pm | #

We ARE in a clash of civilizations, of cultures - and pretty soon the US MSM is going to have to figure out what side they're on.

They already have.
The Enemy's Side.
Ken | Email | Homepage | 02.14.06 - 7:37 pm | #

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Cale | Email | Homepage | 02.02.07 - 9:55 pm | #