Online Media

Update/Related (16:44 | May 17) P.J. Gladnick of "DUmmie FUnnies" (also an NB blogger) has a blog entry about Democratic Underground worrying about commenter bile over Falwell damaging their "cause."

Update (10:14 EDT | May 17): WikipediaReview.com picked up on this post. The discussion board's slogan: "Now with 100 percent better judgment, care, and sensitivity than Wikipedia itself." Check them out.

(Content warning: Inappropriate, crass comments from left-wing nutjobs excerpted below)

Joking that an elderly religious man died from suffocating on a penis is not my idea of anything "comical." It is to the George Carlin wannabes at Wonkette though, reporting on a vandalized Jerry Falwell page on Wikipedia:

Something happened to somebody famous, so guess what happened on Wikipedia … that’s right, the person’s page was comically vandalized! Nobody ever gets tired of a really good joke.

Accompanying that post was a screenshot of a Wikipedia page (it has since been cleaned up) which read: "Jerry Falwell choked on Pat Robertson's cock to death. THE END wootah."

You'll recall that in March, MRC's Brent Bozell wrote about Wikipedia's bias against conservatives, but this is ridiculous.

On Wonkette's part, posting such an item served only to provide another comment thread for wingunuts to spew hatred about Falwell and religious conservatives, such as this dirge by commenter "choirboy":

Updates at bottom: 

I want my MTV! Somewhere a soldier or sailor in Iraq or Afghanistan is probably thinking that today. According to the AP, on May 14, the Department of Defense blocked “worldwide” the US troops who use its networks and computers from accessing 12 popular websites that include, YouTube, MTV, MySpace, Blackplanet and Photobucket. The Defense Deparmene which the DoD said“take up a large amount of bandwidth, and others that can open up department computers to hackers and viruses.” (emphasis mine throughout)

US Forces Korea Commander (USFK) Gen. B.B. Bell explained in a memo sent out Friday that the new policy will not impact the military's ability to send and receive email, but the “Department of Defense has a growing concern regarding our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET. The Commander of DoD's Joint Task Force, Global Network Operations has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites.”

The AP delved into some of the issues involved:

Update below. (16:24 EDT)

I'm not a fan of Jerry Falwell, who died today shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University at the age of 73. That said, I am quite disgusted with the pathological hatred displayed by liberal bloggers in their reactions to his death.

Wonkette:

Jerry Falwell collapsed in his office this morning, and he’s in the hospital, and he’s “gravely unresponsive.”

At a time like this, people deserve sympathy and good wishes ... except for Falwell, who is an evil sonofabitch.

John Edward's former campaign blogger Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:

Today's religion page (B9) of the Washington Post featured a liberal theologian pushing a socialistic read of Scripture.

This week's question: "Was Jesus a social revolutionary? Why or why not?" The print edition headline for the May 12 "On Faith" feature read "What Does Jesus Want You To Do With Your Money?"

"On Faith" is an online "discussion" hosted by Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Post editors excerpted the response of "liberation theology" advocate Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite.

The religion of the left seems to be environmentalism, and the everyone knows what happens when religious figures on the right are exposed as hypocrites. Ted Haggard, Jim Baker and others have claimed to stand for one thing and privately lived a life that conflicted with their stated beliefs, and the media covered it non-stop. In contrast, the media ignore that the darling of the Democratic presidential candidates has again been nailed as an environmental hypocrite.

Barack Obama was outed as an SUV driver in 2006, who said at the same time, "the blame for the world's higher temperature rests on gas guzzling vehicles." Now, a year later, the Detroit Free Press' on-line site Freep.com reported similar contradictory behavior today and stated, "his choice to drive a V8 Hemi-powered Chrysler 300C emits a whiff of hypocrisy along with its exhaust fumes."  (emphasis mine throughout):

Updates at bottom of post.

The CBSNews.com blog "Public Eye" reported today that a retired general who has appeared in anti-Bush TV ads has been dismissed as a CBS News military analyst due to his political activism. Yet the CBS executive who defended the move seemed to almost blame CBS's at-home audience for the personnel decision.

Maj. Gen. John Batiste (US Army, Retired) may still be quoted on CBS's newscasts, he just won't get paid for it.

"We might still go to the general to ask about things, but not as a consultant to CBS News," CBS News Senior Vice President for Standards Linda Mason was quoted by editor Brian Montopoli.

Montopoli quoted Mason's rationale for asking Batiste to leave (emphasis mine):

Every day around lunchtime, CNN.com posts a humorous video as its "Funny Lunch" feature. The link stays on the site for a few hours at mid-day and can be found in the list of "Top Stories."

But today's video, Culture and Media Institute researcher Colleen Raezler noticed, was a gross-out spoof of diamond ads pegged to Mother's Day, which is this Sunday. Raezler informed me the link teased video for a "Mom's Day gem of a gift."

In a fake commercial spot for "Oedipus Diamonds," a young man is shown making out with an older woman as a narrator voices over his concern, disgust, and ultimate approval of a younger man's display of affection with a woman portraying his mother.

The video, entitled "Diamonds," was accessed here but the link will probably take you to a different video tomorrow. The video is permalinked here. A screenshot follows the transcript:

CBS's "Public Eye" editor Brian Montopoli punted yet another golden opportunity to press a CBS News executive (Linda Mason pictured at right*) on why the network won't name the producer it fired in early April for plagiarizing a Wall Street Journal column.

You will recall that the New York Sun reported on April 12 that Melissa McNamara, who also edited CBSNews.com's "Blogophile" blog, was fired for basing her script for a Katie Couric vlog entry on a Jeffrey Zaslow column.

On April 13, I wrote that Montopoli appeared "to have given up the fight with the execs in his network" after he failed to press CBS executives over their secrecy. Montopoli concluded an April 10 entry by merely accepting the company line:

FoxNews.com is following up on the Fort Dix terror plot by probing how the three illegal immigrant suspects got into the country in the first place.

Below the jump I've posted a creencap taken shortly after 2 p.m. EDT from the Fox News front page.

Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge contributed to the story, entitled, "Sources: Brothers Charged in Alleged Fort Dix Terror Plot May Have Been Smuggled Into U.S.":

FORT DIX, N.J. — The three brothers being charged as part of the alleged Fort Dix terror plot may have been smuggled across the border, FOX News has learned.

[...]

Four of the arrested men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.

Federal investigators are now checking whether the latter three lied on their immigration paperwork to remain in the United States.

A day after downplaying the Fort Dix terror plot story, MSNBC is promoting an NBC-Telemundo investigation into Hezbollah training camps in South America. (see screen capture below jump)

In "Hezbollah builds a Western base," Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem of NBC News report:

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.

 It's so easy, the cave men did it? LiveScience.com staff writer, Dave Mosher, wrote an article on Yahoo.com titled "Climate Change, Not Humans, Trounced Neanderthals" about Francisco Jimenez-Espejo, a University of Granada paleoclimatologist who “says a lack of evidence has left climate change weakly supported—until now. 'We put data behind the theory,' he said, filling in a large gap in European climate records when Neanderthals faded out of existence.”

He concluded from a detailed examination of evidence that Neanderthals disappeared from Earth more than 20,000 years ago at least partially because of climate change. As in global cooling.

Earlier today I wondered if MSNBC.com was bored with the Fort Dix terror plot story.

Well, here's an update. It appears they still are.

As of 7:00 p.m. EDT tonight, both FoxNews.com and CNN give the Fort Dix terror plot story prime real estate. Not so for MSNBC. See MSNBC screencap below and check here and here for Fox and CNN screencaps respectively.

A new study by my alma mater, the University of Maryland, looked at the online divisions of 19 major traditional print and broadcast media:

... to see which ones gave the users of their RSS feeds the same number of stories, the same range of news sources, in as timely a fashion as could be gotten if those users went to the individual website.

The Los Angeles Times, ABCNews.com, and Foxnews.com fared among the best RSS providers while the New York Times was among the worst. But the bottom line, the study concluded, was that:

... if a user wants specific news on any subject from any of the 19 news outlets the research team looked at, he or she must still track the news down website by website.

The main reason? The paucity of information RSS feeds give the reader:

The Greensburg tornado disaster was just the perfect excuse for another global warming item on ABCNews.com.

After all, the Associated Press and CNN have focused on an Iraq angle to devastating tornado damage, but finding an Iraq angle to everything is so, I dunno, 2004.

At any rate, on his "Science and Society" blog at ABCNews.com yesterday, reporter Ned Potter set out to find why tornado touchdowns have increased in the past few years.

I called the National Weather Service, which says that as of today it knows of 69 dead in tornadoes since Jan. 1, compared to 49 up to this point last year, and 38 deaths for all of 2005. It's worth looking around NOAA's Storm Prediction Center site; find it HERE.

Is there a reason? Shifting weather patterns? Shifting population patterns? Global climate change? Clayton Sandell was asked to put together some notes.

What's the big story this morning? Both FoxNews.com and CNN.com are still going with the Fort Dix terror suspect arrests as the top story. But as the screencap below (taken at 11:15 EDT) shows, MSNBC.com has "Major Flood: Rising Midwest rivers spark comparison to deadly '93 deluge" as the top story. (screencap included after the jump)

Granted, disaster stories are big news, particularly so close on the heels of the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado. But six immigrants, all of whom are suspected radical Muslims and three of whom are here in the United States illegally, is certainly a more compelling story for a top story.

Did the Dow’s ‘Bull Run’ Milestone Get to Your Paper’s Front Page Today?

Front page? Heck, the overwhelming odds are that it didn't get mentioned anywhere.

It should have been.

At CNNMoney.com, writers Alexandra Twin and Steve Hargreaves appear to be the only ones who even recognized the significance of yesterday's positive market close (bolds are mine):

Dow: Longest bull run in 80 years
Major gauges hit new milestones, but just barely; investors mull jobs report, oil prices, talk of a Microsoft-Yahoo merger.
May 4 2007: 4:09 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Dow Jones industrial average squeaked out another record high Friday, making this the longest bull run in 80 years, as investors cheered tame inflation numbers, talk of big mergers and a jobs report that appeared just right.

..... The Dow has now risen in 23 of the last 26 sessions, marking its longest bull run since the summer of 1927, when the indicator ended higher in 24 of 27 sessions, according to Dow Jones.

Turning the tables on John Kerry, and building on the snark of Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion -- That would make it the best stock market run since, well, Herbert Hoover.

I'm really blessed as an evangelical Christian to have Bill Redeker at ABCNews.com to tell me that my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ are "evolving."

The evangelical movement has long been considered a powerful political entity. An estimated 65 million Americans consider themselves conservative Christians. Their anti-gay, anti-abortion views are well known as is their support for mostly Republican political candidates.

But times are changing.

Now there are evangelicals speaking out on global warming and supporting adoption. Neither would have been endorsed only a few years ago.

Really? I must have missed the sermons all those years about how adoption is not Christ-like, despite the Bible using the adoption analogy to describe Christ's relationship with His Church.

And what about global warming? That's not really a concern germane to biblical ethics, although , yes, many evangelicals that happen to be conservative and Republican are likely to be skeptical of the theory of anthropocentric global warming.

Evangelical blogger Ted Olsen put it succinctly in a Christianity Today Liveblog post today (emphasis mine):

Here's a rather ludicrous headline from USA Today's "On Deadline" blog:

"Did a violinist in a red dress quash detente between Iran, USA?"

The story?

Iranian Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki exchanged pleasantries with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during regional talks in Egypt this week, but reports suggest that he didn't stay for dinner Thursday night because of concerns about the way a female violinist was dressed.

"I have been told by one of the U.S. State Department officials, who did not want to be named, that as soon as Secretary Rice walked in, Manuchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, left. But then [Mottaki's] excuse was that there was a lady violinist who was wearing a sexy red dress -- she was wearing a shawl on it -- but he was objecting to the fact the lady was wearing a revealing red dress," says Mahtab Farid, a reporter with Radio Farda, a U.S. government-funded radio station that broadcasts in Farsi.

While being interviewed on Friday's “Today” show by Meredith Vieira, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews attempted to explain the rationale behind a bizarre question he posed to Republicans the night before at the debate he moderated. Matthews had asked the presidential candidates: "Seriously, would it be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?"

Republicans laughed in unison, with Mitt Romney retorting: "You have got to be kidding."

On the May 4 "Today," from the site of the debate, the Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, Matthews defended his question:

Directly following the tragic death of Katherine Sykes, the mother of the Wisconsin conservative radio talk show host and blogger Charlie Sykes, liberal talk show host Micheal McGee, Sr. has come out with this statement, live on his radio show (via Channel 12):

“Mother Sykes, she dead. To me it’s the vengeance of God. I ain’t got no tears. Matter of fact a woman that would have a fool like that deserve whatever is coming her. She raised a sure enough idiot,” McGee said on his radio show. “My instincts say Charlie Sykes killed his momma, cuz she live out in this big palace in Mequon all isolated. He got tired of waiting for her money.”

Where is the outrage? Only one small local media outlet, Channel 12, and a number of blogs (Badger Blogger, Marquette Warrior, Michelle Malkin and Gop3.com) have covered it. If this story was reversed, and a conservative said this about McGee's mother, the entire national media along with Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be on the scene. The article on Channel 12 has indicated that McGee's next show will not air but subsequent shows are not in jeopardy yet. Without public outcry, this type of double standard will continue.

Weighing in on Time's "Swampland" blog, journalist Joe Klein opined that the best question of last night's GOP primary debate was the infamous "What do you dislike most about America" question. Klein slammed the candidates' performances, but particularly picked on Romney, whom he mocked as overly optimistic:

I could imagine him doing the Reagan nice-guy, slightly-boggled head twitch, especially when he was asked the question of the night: What do you dislike most about America?

Romney's answer: I love America. Great. Good. Great Great. Creative. People. The American People. Love. Great....

[...]

This is a basic DNA difference between the parties. Republicans see the American people as perfect; the American government as an alien import from France. You put America and Flawed in the same sentence, and any Republican will go all (faux) De Toqueville--great good great good etc.

Barack Obama's campaign has gotten itself into a bit of trouble over a Myspace profile. Not just any Myspace profile, however:

For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

But as the site exploded in popularity in recent months, the campaign became concerned about an outsider having control of the content and responses going out under Obama's name and told Anthony they wanted him to turn it over.

It's commencement speech time again at colleges and universities across America. Goshen College is one of the few to have already graduated its class of 2007, and CBS producer Greg Kandra took notice. Kandra plugged a speech by the Rev. Joy Carroll Wallis* at Goshen College:

In the days to come, we'll be reading a lot of snippets from commencement speeches. 'Tis the season. Some will be hilarious. Some dreadful. A few will actually say something that make you put down your morning coffee and think. This speech is one of those.

[...]

Print it. Save it. Share it. It's worth it.

So I'm following Kandra's advice. I printed it (should I buy a tree-offset too?) and I'm sharing it with you. Unfortunately it contains the usual liberal platitudes you hear in a college commencement speech. Here's a sample:

Joan Baez?

Yeah, before my time too, but the Vietnam Era folk singer/protester (pictured at right on the washingtonpost.com front page earlier) scored a publicity coup today. In addition to space in the letters-to-the-editor section, the Post dispatched writer Teresa Wiltz to cover Baez. So what was so deserving of giving an aging Vietnam Era folk singer so much attention?

Why, a complaint against Army brass, of course.

Apparently the Army couldn't accomodate her planned appearance at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with rocker and liberal Iraq war critic John Mellencamp. (A Post music critic covered Mellencamp's set in the April 28 paper)

Of course nowhere in Wiltz's article did she interview any concertgoers to see if anyone really missed the earth-shattering experience that is hearing Baez's music.

What's more, Wiltz left unconsidered how negatively injured soldiers might receive Baez's decidedly politically-infused folk music and ultra-left wing leanings. Mellencamp is no Bush fan, but it's hard to accuse the rocker of being opposed to the institution of the military itself. (see correction below)* (continued...)

One great thing about liberal journalists blogging is that without the constraints of editorial oversight, they can let their hair down even more than usual, unleashing their biases as fast as their fingers fly over the keyboard.

Time magazine's Joe Klein is no exception. The journalist and formerly anonymous author of "Primary Colors" shared with readers of the "Swampland" blog today his complaints about a Bush administration that "trafficks" in publicity stunts such as the May 1, 2003, carrier landing. Klein went on to complain that Donald Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense in the history of the Republic who, along with "the spinners who gave us the Abraham Lincoln stunt" should be "emptying bed pans at Walter Reed."

Klein's ire draws from liberal talking points about the four-year old "major combat operations" speech. You know the meme "Mission Accomplished" and an end of "major combat operations" were impossibly rosy scenarios in light of the ongoing insurgency.

But for the record, Klein himself described the war as having been won shortly after President Bush's USS Abraham Lincoln speech.

From the May 19, 2003, Time magazine, emphasis mine:

The screencap at right is a few hours old, but the visual was striking to me.

Notice how "STALLED: Slow auto sales blamed on housing market, gas prices" and "Fuel cost rise is fast, furious" are stories with prime real estate and a visual aid.

But also take note of the top item in the "In the news" digest:

"Venezuela takes over oil field operations from big firms."

Geopolitical instability and inefficient allocation of resources from state-run oil enterprises in Venezuela and other oil-producing countries are one factor in the rising cost of petroleum products. Unfortunately the way Chavez's May Day oil grab is being reported, it's little more than a footnote.

"Man Who Claims to Be Prophet Muhammad Alive and Well in Hoboken, Says It's Cool to Eat Pork"

Imagine that headline on ABCNews.com. And imagine the story included no Muslim imams or scholars to denounce the charlatan. Well, that's pretty much what ABC did today on an old story front-paged on its Web site today (see screencap on the right), only the religion in question was Christianity (and the fake Jesus in the story lives in Houston).

Here's the headline for the March 6, 2007, story by Jim Avila (yes, the dateline is correct, this story is over a month old):

Jesus Might Be Alive and Well in Houston
Jose de Jesus Drinks, Smokes and Claims to He's [sic] the Second Coming

Although a quick search of the Web draws up the speech, available here (with video and audio links), rare is the online news service that links to President Bush's remarks on May 1, 2003, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Notice, for example, no link to the speech in this story at CBSNews.com that follows Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) latest swipe at the Iraq war. (see related post here)

Since the media don't reprint excerpts of the speech nor give readers the links to the original source material, here are some comments from May 1, 2003, that point to President Bush warning Americans of an ongoing struggle to establish Iraqi democracy and counter the threat of terrorism (portions in bold are my emphasis):

Last Friday on her "Couric & Co." blog, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric asked gun control advocate Paul Helmke 10 questions in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. I critiqued her agenda of questions to Helmke here. Today, Couric gave equal time to gun rights advocate Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho).

Yet a review of the questions to Craig betrays Couric's leanings towards Helmke's pro-gun control position as well as some ignorance of the modern history of gun control (see her 10th question, for example).

Below are the questions to Craig with my comments/snark included in italics. Portions in bold are my emphasis: