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More Unequal Labeling, Misinformation at the Los Angeles Times

By Dave Pierre | June 18, 2006 - 21:57

An article in today's Los Angeles Times (Sunday, June 18, 2006) on the Presidential ambitions of U.S. Senators is accompanied by an informational box with photos and brief profiles of various Senators. The box was compiled by Times staffer Janet Hook.

Can you catch the problems?

Republicans:

George Allen, Virginia: A favorite of some conservatives for 2008, but first has to fight to win reelection to the Senate in 2006.

Sam Brownback, Kansas: Very close to religious conservatives, having built his Senate career around issues they care most about, such as opposing abortion and stem-cell research.

BBC- Marine Sanctuary Good But Bush STILL Bad

By Warner Todd Huston | June 18, 2006 - 18:49

This story got almost no coverage in the US press (and that's because they cannot bring themselves to say a good word about a Bush environmental success), but on June 15th, president Bush signed an order that placed 140,000 square miles of Hawaiian Island waters off limits to fishing and other intrusions.

The BBC report dutifully reveals how happy environmentalists are over Bush's decision to bypass the years long process to negotiate this deal and simply sign an order protecting these waters. Bush has the authority under the 1906 National Antiquities Act to sign a law that protects such sites instantly, bypassing further machinations.

Naturally, they don't seem all worried over THIS exercise of executive power!

AP Wrings Its Hands Over Deportation of Illegals

By Mark Finkelstein | June 18, 2006 - 17:09

Cue the violins. AP has produced a two-hanky tear-jerker on illegals afraid of being deported. The headline sets the tone: 'Immigration sweep brings fear to community'.

Other mournful morsels from the article by AP writer Elliot Spagat:

  • "Fewer parents are walking their children to school in this border city's Linda Vista neighborhood."
  • "A sense of unease has spread in this community of weather-worn homes." [Nice touch with 'weather-worn'!]
  • "People rarely leave their houses now to go shopping," Osorio, 37, said as she clutched a bottle of laundry detergent in a barren courtyard. 'They walk in fear.'" [Extra credit, Elliot, for the clutched detergent bottle.]
  • "Her husband, Juan Rivera, 29, has stopped taking their two children to the park on weekends. 'We want to go out but we can't.'"
  • "In a blitz that began May 26 . . . It was the latest salvo . . . " [Nice war imagery!]

93 Senators For Withdrawal From Iraq?

By Tim Graham | June 18, 2006 - 14:20

Okay, a little bit of nitpicking on a Sunday. Deep in the regional sections of the Sunday Washington Post is the latest breakdown of how the D.C. area Senators and Representatives have voted on important roll calls. It seems the Post headline writer spun it perfectly backwards on the Senate vote on withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq by the end of 2006. John Kerry thought of pushing it, but Sen. Mitch McConnell put it up for him. The vote was 93 to 6 against withdrawing troops quickly from Iraq. But here's the headline in the Post:

WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ
For: 93 / Against: 6

The next sentence explains "The Senate tabled (killed) a Republican amendment to the 2007 defense budget calling on the administration to begin major troop withdrawals from Iraq late this year." Yes, that means 93 Senators voted to table/kill the withdrawal proposal, the opposite of the Post headline.

SO CALLED "CHUBBY OSAMA BIN LADEN" VIDEO" DISCOVERED" IN AFGHANISTAN

By Zan Overall | June 18, 2006 - 14:16

I am a new member of NewsBusters. I cannot find the thread that I read concerning the June 2006 meeting in Chicago of members of the 9/11 Truth Movement. One lone 9/11 Truther (let's call him Alex) was confronting a barrage of cheap shots from NewsBusters members. I would like to weigh in, being involved in the 9/11 Truth Movement. If someone can tell me how to find that thread I will just weigh in there but being unable to find it I am starting this new topic. Alex raised the question of the video supposedly accidentally found of OBL at a dinner party celebrating the success of 9/11 and admitting responsibility. The American government used it to bolster their claim that OBL was the guilty party. Alex pointed out the phony nature of the video, including the chubby look of OBL. For God's sake, according to the "wanted poster" on the FBI website (fbi.gov), he is some 6' 4" tall and weighs in at 161 pounds, as I recall.

Is Dan Rather Launching a Competitor to NewsBusters?

By Greg Sheffield | June 18, 2006 - 12:49

Tom Johnson mentioned on NewsBusters a New York Times article that said Dan Rather would be teaming up with NBA Dallas Mavericks owner/billionaire, Mark Cuban. Rather is interested in hosting a small weekly show for Cuban on his HDNet cable network.

But another venture Rather is looking at is his own company called "News and Guts." Kind of like "News Busters," except the antidote.

Mr. Rather also said that in April, in anticipation of what seemed to be his imminent departure from CBS, he had formed a company — he named it News and Guts, in a nod to what he considers the pillars of his professional life — through which he plans to create several other journalism ventures, including, perhaps, a blog. (Though he has not yet settled on a title, he says he has ruled out one: "I'd Rather Say This.")

When It Comes to the Military, Is the Mainstream Media Still 'Yellow'?

By Tom Segel | June 18, 2006 - 12:13

Younger Americans may not be familiar with the term, “Yellow Journalism”, but it is part of our history and has been around for more than 100 years. It first was used in 1898 to describe the writings of such historic figures as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. It was common practice during those years for journalists, led by Pulitzer and Hearst to print inaccurate information, opinion as news, distorted accounts of events and biased interpretations of anything with which the writer disagreed. Because there was no other source of information, newspapers gained huge political power and had few challenges to anything put into print. Those citizens who had a better understanding and grasp of events taking place in America labeled the practice of lying to the public in print...Yellow Journalism.

Censorship galore...

By ThoughtPolice | June 18, 2006 - 12:03

Wow, a site that is supposedly against the liberal devil's censorship just censored one of my most important posts about 9/11.  I'm not surprised as this post would have affected alot more people than My and Weiss' 88 post rant about who is right and who is wrong.  Too bad Newsbusters, you just did a dissservice to the American people and the World...

NBC's Richard Engel Appalled That Iraqi Journalists Haven't Hyped Haditha

By Tim Graham | June 18, 2006 - 05:16

For his latest Media Reality Check on the rush to cover the alleged Marine massacre at Haditha, Rich Noyes discovered evidence that NBC's Baghdad-based reporter Richard Engel really does sound like he's a senior fellow at the Peter Arnett School of Advanced America-Hating Journalism. He's lecturing the Iraqi journalists for being appallingly slow on spreading the Haditha story before it's proven: Rich's summary of this quote was "Iraqis Falling Down on the Job."

Reporter Richard Engel: "Not mentioned in the [Iraqi TV news] broadcast: Haditha, where U.S. Marines allegedly murdered 24 civilians last November. It was first reported here in detail last week, and only then because the incident was denounced by the Prime Minister. Now, it’s barely on the news. Today at state-sponsored al-Iraqiya TV, we asked the news director why."

Weekly Standard: Adrift?

By Amy Ridenour | June 18, 2006 - 00:45

Quick on the heels of its recommendation that conservatives support the Senate pro-amnesty immigration bill (for political rather than principled reasons, yet), the Weekly Standard is apparently laying the groundwork for a change in the conservative position on global warming.

From the June 12 issue, in an article by Contributing Editor Irwin M. Stelzer praising Treasury Secretary-designate Hank Paulson with all the enthusiasm usually reserved for people named Bush, comes this:

Then there is the environment, a policy area in which the Bush administration is in something of a time warp. No honest person can with certainty assert that global warming is a threat. But any responsible person can see that the evidence is sufficient to suggest that it might be, and that some action to contain emissions of greenhouse gases is an insurance policy worth having. Paulson is Wall Street's greenest titan, chairman of the Nature Conservancy, a bird-watcher, an advocate of a greenhouse gas emissions trading system for the United States and of mandatory curbs on emissions if voluntary action proves inadequate. At Goldman, he allocated $1 billion for investment in renewable energy and energy-saving projects. He is likely to make his voice heard in an administration that is said to be ready to move from its justifiable opposition to the Kyoto treaty to more positive proposals for emissions reduction.
No word from the Weekly Standard on the price tag of the "insurance policy worth having" (known as 'cap and trade' to those of us speaking plainly) as if 1) the cost wasn't billions, to be borne mostly by those who can least afford it, and 2) the "insurance policy" would actually lessen global warming IF (a big IF) the environmental left's position on global warming is accurate.

Will we soon see the Weekly Standard join the New Republic in name-calling skeptics of the notion that slowing the U.S. economy would have a notably beneficial impact on the world's weather?