NB Extra

OK, it's from Eason Jordan, who has a checkered past to say the least, but it's nonetheless stunning (bolds are mine):

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.

This controversy and the AP's handling of it call into question the credibility, integrity, and smarts of one of the world's biggest, most influential, most respected news organizations, the New York-based Associated Press.

This previous post from Friday night shortly after his hanging noted that CNN was giving Saddam Hussein the "Deceased Statesman" look.

The NY Times (HT Hot Air; scroll down, and look on left; direct link to pic is here; pic below is from my host's hard drive) has in a sense outdone CNN by giving Saddam the look of a charismatic, and from all appearances beloved, leader:

One suspects that this is just a warm-up for Castro when his time comes.

Headline:

Marines deny airstrikes used against insurgents in Ramadi

The corrected headline should be:

No Airstrikes Occurred at Ramadi, and We Don't Have the Integrity to Acknowledge Our Original Error in Reporting Them

Patterico has noticed ("L.A. Times (Almost) Admits Ramadi Airstrike Didn’t Happen") and promises much more later. Also, Hot Air has weighed in.

Here's a reminder of original LAT headline and subheadline in its original Nov. 15 story:

Iraqi residents say US airstrike kills 30 Victims include women and children, witnesses in Ramadi say. The military has no immediate comment.

The current LAT story claims that even more civilians were killed:

As noted in a Wednesday subscription-only editorial, Nancy Pelosi already has the steeply progressive tax system Democrats want:

The Top 1% Pay 35%

Maybe our liberal friends are onto something. They keep saying the rich should pay more taxes, and it turns out the rich already are! That's one of the valuable lessons from the IRS's annual study of income tax data, just released for 2004.

Americans who earned more than $1 million in adjusted gross income paid $178 billion, or an average of $740,000 per filer, in income taxes in 2004. That's up about one-third from 2002, the year before the Bush tax cuts in marginal income-tax and dividend and capital gains rates. The wealthiest 1% of tax filers paid a remarkable 35% of all individual income-tax payments that year.

I love the following analogy, but WSJ could have gone further with it:

Jeff Martin sets up his defense of, again, printing the names of lawful concealed weapons permit holders by revisiting a previous time in which he did the exact same thing. He justifies it by noting that someone who went on to win a Puleftist prize was involved. He claims:

Every day, it seems, Jim or Jayne or I take a call from someone who wants something kept out of the newspaper. It's usually a name... Each time, we listen. Each time, we refuse...

Yet we try to print everything. Here's why: We print the names of people in the news because that's our business... That means we'll tell them not only what's happening at the city council and at Iowa State University, but also who is arrested, who is having babies, who is selling his house (and for how much), who has died (and of what cause). People expect that from us.

If we leave out just one name, just one fact, we have failed in our mission and damaged our credibility. That's why we printed those gun permits in Iowa. It's the kind of journalism that goes to the heart of the First Amendment.

First, let's get the reason behind this "news" out of the way: It's a way for those who are against the Second Amendment to know who to shun, who to refuse to hire, and who to refuse to do business with. It's a list that tells (stupid) burglars exactly which houses to break into if they want to be armed.

Well they don't exactly print "every name". His paper may print the names of breeders, but they don't print the names of people who terminate babies. Isn't that also news? They don't print the names of licensed doctors and nurses who perform abortions. They don't print the names of people who get sex changes or the doctors who perform them, and they don't print the names of people at Iowa State who are performing stem cell research (outside of government funding.)

Why not? Because journalists go after people they are opposed to, not people they agree with.

Conservatives have grown used to the New York Times being unintentionally amusing.  It's been trying to pass off leftist bias as "news" for years.

So it's kind of - well, funny - to see how the Gray Lady has trouble handling something that's intended to be humorous.

Its December 10 obituary on actor Sid Raymond ends with:

"One of his last jokes involved a son sending a prostitute over to his widowed father, in his 90s, still a self-proclaimed ladies’ man. She tells him she is his birthday present and will give him super sex.

'I’ll take the soup,' he says."

It took a few days, but someone at the Times finally figured out that the "joke" wasn't funny.  So it gave it yet another try on a December 13 correction:

"The coordinated attack in Tayaran Square involved a suicide attacker who drove up to the day laborers pretending to want to hire them, then set off his explosives as they got into his minibus, Lt. Bilal Ali said. At virtually the same time — 7 a.m. — a bomb exploded in a car parked some 30 yards away."

ANSWER: Nothing satisfactory, as far as the company is concerned. Google has responded, but generically, and poorly. Meanwhile, press releases that verge on being pure pap are routinely displayed in Google News results.

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Background: This post is the latest relating to attempts that began here to get to the bottom of why all but a very small portion of news items published at Centcom.mil and its affliated sites are NOT being found or displayed by the Google News search engine. More background is here, here, here, and here, but this post should stand on its own for those who are new to the issue.

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I received this e-mail from Google News early Thursday evening (link supplied by Google News was made clickable for this post):

Hi Tom,

Thank you for your note about Google News. We apologize for our delayed response. Dan passed your email on to our User Support team so we can assist you. Please be assured that Google News currently includes the news site you mention. You can find articles from this publication in our results at the following link:

HERE

Additionally, please be aware that Google News doesn't currently include multimedia content, such as audio or video files. Google News offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. There aren't human editors at Google selecting or grouping the headlines, and no individual decides which stories get top placement. While our news sources vary in perspective and editorial approach, their selection for inclusion is done without regard to political viewpoint or ideology.

While we aim to include as many sources as possible in Google News, we can’t guarantee the addition of all articles and sources that are submitted to us. We appreciate your taking the time to send us your suggestions for how we can improve this service.

If you'd like more information about Google News, please check out our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/news/. Thanks again for taking the time to write.

Regards,
The Google Team

"The Google Team" totally missed and failed to respond to this very clear e-mail's main points, which were:

Zheesh -- How about "None of the below":

Slim pickings indeed. Perhaps we need to start looking for inanimate objects (e.g., 1982 - The Computer; 1988 - Endangered Earth), symbolic people (1950 - American Fighting Man; 1956 - Hungarian Freedom Fighter; 2003 - The American Soldier), or groups of people (1960 - US Scientists; 1966 - 25 and Under; 1969 - The Middle Americans; 1975 - American Women; 1993 - The Peacemakers; 2002 - The Whistleblowers). The list of all previous winners is here.

Perhaps YouTube, online forums, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and online media should be the Thing of the Year: The Shadow Media. Of course, Time would be writing about its own likely eventual demise, but it would fit.

Or readers may have better ideas.