Mithridate Ombud's blog

Journalists far and wide are still crying about Rupert Murdoch possibly owning the Wall Street Journal. Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff said a Murdoch-owned WSJ would suffer "the loss of a few points of I.Q., a quickened pace, a higher sense of drama, less accurate, perhaps, but less tedious too, and, likely, a keener instinct for following the money." So for all of you psych majors who thought IQ scores were static; you've apparently never met a journalist who was told to be fair. By the way, isn't the most precious tenet of journalism "following the money"?

LA Times' Tim Rutten shocks us with the real reason the NY Times and Baltimore Sun reject forced embargoes and try to wreck your Harry Potter night with pre-dawn spoilers; "...it's about money." Harry Potter spoilers, classified information spoilers, apparently Pinch Sulzberger has a different take on "follow the money."

Drudge mentions that during a live press conference in Baghdad, CNN "reporter" Michael Ware heckled John McCain. Video from the event is sure to follow. What will be interesting to see is who in the mainstream press covers it. Will it be covered on CNN? Will the press gossip blogs mention it? Or will this be swept under the rug as usual?

"Objective reporter" Michael Ware is no stranger to spouting his personal opinions. In an interview with Bill Maher he said "I've been given a front-row ticket to watch this slow-motion train wreck … I try to stay as drunk for as long as possible while I'm here … In fact, I'm drinking now.”

Howie Kurtz tells us what we already know:

And, in truth, many journalists are probably rooting for a Democratic House. But not for the reason you might think. After six years of almost uninterrupted GOP control of Washington, divided government would produce what reporters like best: conflict. A spate of investigations and subpoenas of the Bush White House, led by such new committee chairmen as John Dingell, Henry Waxman, Barney Frank and Charlie Rangel, would liven things up for the capital's chroniclers.

Of course a divided government and the conflict it would produce will weaken the country and make us more susceptible to terrorist attacks, but who ever accused journalists of trying to make the U.S. stronger or safer? The job of journalists is to sell newspapers, not protect this great nation.

The Seattle Times tries to defend John Kerry's flub (I know, huge surprise):

His prepared text showed he meant to say those who aren't academically well-prepared might end up getting the country stuck in a war, as President Bush has done.

Ok, let's take that at face value and compare it to the facts:

Kerry received five Ds, including four in his freshman year, with a D in political science! Bush, during his time at Yale, got one D, in astronomy. Overall, Kerry finished Yale with a cumulative score of 76. Bush finished with a score of 77.

So if Bush who scored 77 might end up getting us stuck in a war, what would Kerry who scored a 76 end up getting us stuck in?

In the exhaustive search for WMDs in Iraq, CNN has left all stones unturned. These are the words right out of the mouth of CNN reporter Jane Arraf:

And if you had a bureau there, like we did, and it was a known bureau and a known company like CNN was, it was a beacon for everybody. It was a beacon for Iraqis who believed they had stories. Iraqis would show up, there would be Iraqis lined up outside the door. There... would be the Iraqis who told you they had nuclear documents in their basement and would you like to come and look [laughter]. You know, there was almost that pang when you turned somebody away, [you were] thinking, “Damn, maybe this guy really does have nuclear weapons in his basement, but I don’t have time.” So you never really knew.

[laughter]? Oh yeah, I'm really laughing about CNN ignoring nuclear evidence in Iraq. So many WMDs, so little time.

Bill Blakemore, the ABC News reporter in charge of making sure global warming gets covered fairly, said this in front of a group of journalists:

Of course [skeptics] play on the idea that we have to be ‘balanced,’” he noted. “It was very lazy of us for 10 years when we were asked for balance from the [climate skeptic] spinners. We just gave up and said ‘Okay, okay – I will put the other side on, okay are you happy now?’” he said. “And it saves us from the trouble of having to check out the fact that these other sides were the proverbial flat earth society.”

Hey, while you're not checking out the facts, why don't you not look into why Mars and Jupiter also have the same global warming problem that we do. How did humans screw those planets up?

Columnists often remind us how they don't have to be fair, balanced, or impartial in their products because they are paid to give their opinions, not to provide balanced or even honest coverage of topics like their news-breatheren. That is, unless you're a conservative radio host. Says NPR host Ben Merens:

In case you're wondering why the cartoons in the Atlanta Journal Constitution are so slanted, one need only look at this interview with Pulleftist Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich.

You've satirized numerous presidents. How's this presidency different?
Previously, whether I was dealing with a Republican or a Democratic president, I always felt that they were kind of up to the job, basically. And this president, to me, doesn't seem that way at all. It's very scary to me that he occupies the office.

That doesn't sound so impartial. Are you a Democrat?
I am...

Some of your cartoons are kind of dark.
We're in a dark time in history now. The country is needlessly divided.

Yes, needlessly divided. All we have to do to be undivided is convert to liberalism. Just like we're needlessly at war with militant Muslims and all we have to do to stop it is convert to Islam.

It can be hard for people working in journalism to publicly talk about the bias that they see in their co-workers every day. There are a number of risks involved when you take sides against the overwhelming majority of people in your industry.

Take a look at this interview with Daniel Hernandez, staff writer for LA Weekly and formerly a journalist at the LA Times. It is an insightful peek behind the curtain of MSM. The LA Times isn't going to be able to write this one off as a crazed conservative. Daniel is an independent thinker and his breadth of writing toes no conservative line.

Forced liberal pity is a common pitfall in well-intentioned journalism, patting your subjects upon the head, regarding others as provincial. I find this highly disrespectful.

I owe The Times lots. They taught me so much. But The Times has a very clear, very rigid tradition on how to report the news.

Shortly after I got there, I started having these long, tortured thought sessions with myself about my participation in the MSM. I saw how the people and places the paper chose to cover were automatically political decisions because for every thing you chose to cover there is something you chose to not cover. I started realizing that the mainstream style on reporting the news that most papers employ is not really concerned with depicting the truth, but concerned primarily with balancing lots of competing agendas and offending the least amount of interests as possible.

I saw how so much was looked at from certain assumptions and subtexts, and a very narrow cultural view. When I raised questions about such things, I was told we were writing for a "mainstream reader," which I quickly figured out is basically a euphemism for a middle-aged, middle-class white registered Democrat homeowner in the Valley. From where I stand today, I had very little in common with this "mainstream reader" and I didn't care to be in this person's service.

The Sun-Sentinel put up an article about how the first nuclear reactor in Tehran "was provided to the Iranians by the United States."

U.S. officials point to these activities as evidence Iran is trying to construct nuclear arms, but they do not publicly mention that the work has taken place in a U.S.-supplied facility.

The Sentinel is hiding a little something themselves. The part they are leaving out is the party in control at the time - Democrats. It was during the reign of Johnson that this happen, kind of like how it was under the reign of Clinton North Korea jumped into the nuclear game.

Since we're on the subject of nuclear warfare, also worth a mention is the procurement of all of our most secret nuclear missile secrets while Al Gore sipped lemonade and lined his pocket with John Huang's money.

You may recall the past items I've posted about journalists who think they are exempt from the same behavior that they inflict on the rest of us. CBS News anchor Diann Burns is suing her contractors for skimping on her $3 million house because she is black. Of course the contracter gave her $92,000 in free perks, but she's still upset that they aren't going to fix the rain gutters on the neighboring house so they don't spill water in her yard. Obviously the neighbors are also doing this because she is black.

The punch line is this request to the court:

The filing asks that all attorneys, experts and court personnel involved in the case sign a "secrecy agreement," which would last up to five years after the suit has ended, barring them from talking about aspects of the case publicly or peddling pictures of the interior of the home.

The filing, which will be the subject of a Thursday court hearing, says that the luxury home is Burns' and Watts' "castle and refuge from the daily pressures of life," and that they "will suffer unreasonable annoyance and embarrassment if pictorial or verbal descriptions of the interior of their home" are made public and "may attract curiosity seekers, depriving them of the privacy and peace of the home to which every human being is entitled."

The filing specifically asks a judge to prevent information from being given "to the general public or the media" about the inside of their home...

Next time you see a reporter doing a live stand-up in front of an innocent victim's house, remember how this hypocritical CBS anchor believes that every human being is entitled to privacy and peace in their home.

In what has to be the biggest stretch of all time to personally attack the President, the LA Times tries to blame the bad behavior of a French frog on George W. Bush.

NOW WE KNOW why France's team captain lost his cool in the World Cup finals and France lost the trophy to Italy. Terrorism.

Zinedine Zidane, who is of French and Algerian ancestry, head-butted an Italian player who insulted him. Although Zidane in an interview Wednesday would not say what words provoked him, a lip reader hired by the Times of London claims Marco Materazzi called Zidane "the son of a terrorist whore.'' That's pure trickle-down politics. From the White House to the soccer pitch, "terrorist" has "cooties" and "your mother wears combat boots" flat beat as the top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st century.

Who's surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade. Old McDonald left the farm for the NSA, and now it's here a terrorist, there a terrorist, everywhere a terrorist.

That has to be the most sophomoric reasoning I've ever encountered in a newspaper. George Bush didn't make Marerazzi say what he did. George Bush didn't force Zidane to act like a French frog.

But this fits hand in glove with the party-line liberal view of personal responsibility -- that there is none.

• The Tribune Company lost 62 percent of their earnings.
• McClatchy kept earnings about the same though they lost almost 5 percent of their circulation.
• Media General lost 47 percent from a year ago.
• Gannett lost 8.3 percent.

Of course, none of the papers will admit that their bias and reportage are to blame for their problems. Instead it is all the fault of Internet activities, Craigslist, the uncooperative entertainment and auto industry, and a "weak operating environment." Leave it to journalists to blame even thier financial problems on the environment.

I would highly suggest any newspaper publishers wanting to save their papers take a tip from my recent Newsbusters post on the real problem.

We here at The Daily Iowan recently learned that the July 6 column "Minimum wage no-brainer" was largely plagiarized from a report released June 29 by the Democratic Policy Committee. On behalf of The Daily Iowan staff, I sincerely apologize and deeply regret that such a piece appeared in our newspaper.

Per staff policy, the harshest possible action has been taken against this employee, and John Heineman will no longer work for this publication. We performed an investigation of all his previous work since joining the paper in the fall of 2005. This search revealed no prior cases of plagiarism.

The FBI "scrambling" to pick up suspects stopped a terror plot by jihadists trying to blow up the Holland Tunnel, flooding Manhattan.

Counterterrorism officials are alarmed by the "lone wolf" terror plot because they allegedly got a pledge of financial and tactical support from Jordanian associates of top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before he was killed in Iraq, a counterterrorism source told The News.

It's not clear, however, if any cash or assistance was delivered.

No, and it probably will never be clear again. Thanks, New York Times.

TomPaine.com goes to anti-Bush author David Corn for an article called "The Timid Times." In it, he claims the New York Times isn't really anti-Bush, and could be much harder on the President. He is progressively wrong on nearly every point he makes.

The Times and other papers occasionally publish graphic photos of wounded and dead Iraqis, but not enough to represent accurately and fully the daily tragedies occurring in Iraq... Everyday there are bodies—often headless bodies bearing signs of torture and mutilation. The paper generally does not put photographs of such atrocities in front of its readers. But imagine if it did, with regularly placed detailed photos of civilian casualties in Iraq on the front page. White House officials and others, no doubt, would complain about the demoralizing impact on U.S. public opinion regarding the war in Iraq.

I'm sure Mr. Corn isn't suggesting that U.S. soldiers decapitate, torture and mutilate civilians, is he? I actually agree with Mr. Corn on this issue, show Americans what terrorists do to innocent civilians. The reason the New York Times won't do it is two-fold; readers will quit buying the gory paper and it would actually solidify support against the heinous terrorists...

You're the boss at the New York Times. The warden at the jail holding celebrity snoop Anthony Pellicano issued an order barring anyone other than family and lawyers from seeing him. Getting a scoop with Pellicano will certainly boost newstainment sales.

Do you:
A. Respect the order and write stories without talking to Pellicano.
B. Appeal to a judge to lift the order.
C. Send in a "reporter" with a 20 year old law degree and California State Bar credential card who may or may not have filled out a form stating "Purpose of the visit: legal" which forces Pellicano out of his cell and into "outrage."

If you answered C, you could be New York Times management.

"Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever." - Michael Corleone, The Godfather

Mark Hohmeister writes for the Tallahassee Democrat about picking editorial cartoons. While he admits to being liberal, he also notes that one shouldn't pick editorial cartoons based on your personal ideology. Last week he made the mistake of picking one where Uncle Sam was reading the New York Times with the masthead saying "All the Treason Fit to Print."

He heard back from unhappy readers, which didn't surprise me, but he also heard from his former publisher of the Democrat, who said:

"In more than 50 years of various responsibilities for newspapers and editorial pages, I've defended a lot of editorial cartoons. But this one is indefensible."

Is it? I've yet to hear from anyone who can tell me what the Times did was not a violation of Title 18, 794 right down to the letter of the law. Greg Sheffield also pointed out a previous time the media walked away with the blood of American soldiers on their hands.

What should be indefensible is the fact that journalists profit from spilt blood. Peace and tranquility is not in the best interests of the media.

The St. Petersburg Times ran an article about Hazleton, Pennsylvania where the mayor has proposed making English the official language and to fine those who employ illegal aliens. The Hispanic population in Hazleton has grown tenfold since 2000 and now makes up one-third of the town. They write:

It's about time, some longtime Hazleton residents are saying. About time someone did something to stop these people from acting so brazen, walking around like they own the place. Staring you down on the street, making you stop your car to let them cross.

Even some Hispanics who usually support the mayor are nervous, because who can tell just by looking whether a brown-skinned person is here legally or illegally? Your citizenship status doesn't matter to the guy in line at the doughnut place, who says: These people are everywhere. They're like cockroaches.

Notice anything missing? Quotation marks? Names?

One type of journalism is where the reporter talks to people in the town and when they say things the reporter quotes and attributes them to a person or maybe even keeps them anonymous if there is cause. The other type of journalism already knows what people must think and the reporter quotes the voices in his or her head. This goes past various levels of editors who also think it is a good idea. The Times could not deduce that one way to tell if "a brown-skinned person is here illegally" is whether or not they can speak English, a requirement of citizenship.

Jon Carroll has this to say about the New York Times / White House animosity:

The Times is a good target... Also, the name of the New York Times contains the word "New York." Many members of the president's base consider "New York" to be a nifty code word for "Jewish." It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the Jews without (a) actually saying the word "Jew" and (b) without irritating the Israelis. A number of prominent Zionist groups think the New York Times is insufficiently anti-Palestinian, so they think the New York Times isn't Jewish enough.

Since George W. Bush has done more to protect the future of Israel than any Democrat on the planet, why would he want to "campaign against the Jews"? He continues:

Do we really believe that the terrorists are reading the New York Times for clues on what to do, or not do, next?

I don't know, let's ask the dead al-Zarqawi:

To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance.

He's not just a reader, he's also a contributor.

From The New York Daily News:

A few hours after a televised display of saccharine warmth and affection between Barbara Walters and Star Jones Reynolds - who yesterday surprised her "View" colleagues by announcing she's leaving in mid-July - their relationship turned very chilly indeed.

Never mind Walters' previous public assurances that Jones Reynolds was welcome to stay on the show as long as she wanted. Yesterday, "The View's" alpha female - the show's co-owner and co-executive producer - told me that she lied "to protect Star" from the damaging news that ABC long ago decided not to renew her contract.

Remember, a lie is never acceptable from a public figure.

UPDATE: The View transcripts (via Drudge)

"The network made this decision based on a variety of reasons which I won't go into now. But we were never going to say this. We wanted to protect [S]tar. And so we told her that she could say whatever she wanted about why she was leaving and that we would back her up."

Well I'll be, The View is a news program after all. If she did this to protect someone she dislikes, just think what she's done to protect the people she likes.

After several discussions over the last few days from people who say "specifically, what law did the New York Times violate?" Here it is. The legal remedy for what the New York Times has done is the death penalty and confiscation of the newspaper.

U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, § 794
§ 794. Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government

(a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate… to any foreign government, or to any faction or party… whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States… any document, writing… plan… or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury or, if there is no jury, the court, further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power… directly concerned… early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack; war plans; communications intelligence…. or any other major weapons system or major element of defense strategy.
(b) Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to… any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
(c) If two or more persons conspire to violate this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
(d)
(1) Any person convicted of a violation of this section shall forfeit to the United States irrespective of any provision of State law—
(A) any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds the person obtained, directly or indirectly, as the result of such violation, and
(B) any of the person’s property used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part, to commit, or to facilitate the commission of, such violation.