Journalistic Issues

Day One: Suspicious-but-not-explict emails.
Day Two: Explicit instant messages, but no evidence Foley met with boys.
Day Four: Instant message indicating Foley was indeed seeking to meet and possibly had already met with a boy.

Foley deserves what he's gotten and what is likely to come. But it seems increasingly plausible that the timed release of information - of ever-escalating seriousness - is part of a calculated campaign to keep the story in the news and inflict maximum political damage on the GOP.

That would seem the logical inference in light of the latest information promulgated this afternoon by ABC News. An article written by Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer, E-mails Show Foley Sought to Rendezvous with Page, contains the text of an instant message session in which Foley expressly tells a boy "I want to see you." Foley also mentions "I miss you a lot since San Diego," suggesting that perhaps they had already met.

Who says the BBC even tries anymore to be a straight news source that has not taken a side in the ideological debate?

Here is how their latest article on Pakistani President Musharraf starts:

West 'will fail' without Pakistan

'We helped the West' Pakistan's president has warned the West would be "brought to its knees" without his country's co-operation in the so-called war on terror.

That was pretty smooth, BBC! One might almost imagine that it was Musharraf that said the "so-called war on terror".

But, look closer. No quote marks around those words. That means it is the BBC, not Musharraf, that is calling the Global War on Terror a so-called war!

Rioting and threats of violence from Muslim extremists have apparently triumphed once again over the First Amendment. According to psychoanalyst Dr. Nancy Kobrin and noted feminist Phyllis Chesler, who wrote the introduction, Kobrin's new book, "The Sheikh's New Cloth: The Naked Truth about Islamic Suicide Terrorism", was to be published in November by Looseleaf Law Publications, Inc., but Dr. Kobrin's contract was suddenly cancelled over concerns for their staff's safety.

"A new study says Republicans hate puppies. Don't believe me? Ask Professor Johnson."

Eric Zorn, in the keynote speech at the Media Relations Faculty Recognitions Luncheon at DePaul University, says journalists and professors need each other. Journalists are not respected as knowledgeable in any field, and professors have no mouthpiece for their ideas. A reporter can increase the credibility of a story by getting a professor to attest to the "trend" being claimed, while the professor gets his name in something other than the campus paper or a tiny academic journal.

An editor driving to work notices that there are lots of pre-fab garden sheds in backyards along the way. A growing number, he suspects.

So he summons a reporter when he gets to work and assigns him what I’m calling a “more and more.”

As Clarice Feldman points out here at The American Thinker, after weeks of front page coverage of allegations of racism against Senator George Allen in the Virginia Senate race, the Washington Post suddenly reversed course and used an editorial to suggest enough is enough, but only after serious allegations of irresponsible and potentially racist behavior on the part of Democrat Jim Webb surfaced.

After countless front page Washington Post stories overplaying Sen. Allen’s “Macaca” remark, and extensive coverage of charges against Allen, obviously orchestrated by Professor Sabato (who seems to have retreated from claims suggesting he had personal knowledge of Allen’s racism), a story has emerged about Webb’s racism which is more direct and damning.

David Folkenflik's NPR story on the crying-at-Simon-and-Garfunkel speech at Harvard in June by New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse displayed a stunned Daniel Okrent, the first Times "public editor"; a troubled editor of the Oregonian newspaper; a supportive Jack Nelson, her former "Washington Week" colleague on PBS, who admits he wouldn't be as supportive if Greenhouse were spouting pro-Bush sentiments; and a set of Times editors who will not comment on the record. Chickens.

Folkenflik's story on NPR.org (not an exact match with the story aired on NPR Tuesday) claimed that "charged commentary" wasn't common in our mainstream media:

The declassification of parts of the National Intelligence Estimate spells out the ramifications of a major triumph in the War on Terror: the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the report was finalized in April, before Zarqawi's death). The NIE states:

Al-Qa’ida, now merged with Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s network, is exploiting the situation in Iraq to attract new recruits and donors and to maintain its leadership role. • The loss of key leaders, particularly Usama Bin Ladin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Zarqawi, in rapid succession, probably would cause the group to fracture into smaller groups. Although like-minded individuals would endeavor to carry on the mission, the loss of these key leaders would exacerbate strains and disagreements.

On the 25th, The AP reported that a Muslim "scholar" was denied a temporary business and tourism visa by the State Department for one Tariq Ramadan, resident of Switzerland.

The story, however, makes the State Department's actions seem petty and uninformed. It makes the denial of the visa seem more a result of "racism" than one based on substance. In fact, the reasons that this "scholar" was denied a visa were given short shrift whereas a defense of Ramadan was given full throat.

All Ramadan's "reasons" that he and his attorneys ascribe to the supposedly illegitimate government action are included in the article, but only one small paragraph explores the State Department's reasons for denying the visa... and that in the words of the ACLU!

Have you heard that conservatives and Christians involved as part of the radical extreme Christian Right who met over the weekend in Washington DC for the Family Research Council’s Action meeting aptly called The Washington Briefing are in a dire state of distress, depression, despair and despondency? I was shocked as I read through tons of articles from some of the 100 media who attended the briefing.

MSNBC states that the speakers of the briefing, “… expressed scepticism [sic] about what their engagement in 2004 had delivered.” Since Tony Perkins stated that, “I don't think enthusiasm is as strong as 2004," that means, according to the liberals, that the world has crashed and burned for conservatives who voted for President Bush.

On tonight's Nightly News, NBC anchor Brian Williams played excerpts from former President Bill Clinton's meltdown on Fox News, then turned to an "expert" for "perspective" - former Clinton staffer David Gergen. Gergen and Williams downplayed Clinton's display of anger, calling it a "four or five on a scale of ten" compared to previous private Clinton hissy fits.

On the Thursday, September 21, 2006, episode of his radio show, host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Thomas B. Edsall, who up until recently was a senior political reporter for the Washington Post. He had been with the paper for 25 years. Through precise and direct questioning by Hewitt, Edsall admitted something that is rarely heard from a liberal these days. In a shocking admission, Edsall articulated that the biases of the mainstream media are "overwhelmingly to the left." He also proposed that Democratic reporters outnumber Republicans "in the range of 15-25 to 1"!

In the interview, as Hewitt and Edsall discussed the rise of conservative talk radio and the biases of the mainstream media, Edsall stated the following:

EDSALL: ... I agree that whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left.

Liberals at the University of Georgia demonstrated their trademark tolerance by sabotaging the conservative student paper, The Georgia GuardDawg.

Reports the GuardDawg:

Vandals targeted the University of Georgia's conservative student newspaper, The Georgia GuardDawg, Thursday night, stealing over 1,200 newspapers and leaving incendiary and hateful remarks on their distribution bins. Seven of their eight bins on campus were affected. The Georgia GuardDawg had just released their September issue when the thefts occurred.

"Our September issue focused on the issue of free speech. Perhaps these violent individuals should read our paper first to learn the importance of free speech," Kirby stated. "Our principles of free speech and family values are ideals that these perpetrators do not want others to read. They oppose this common sense philosophy so strongly that they committed a crime."

It appears that North Carolina Radiologist Ken Shelton, who apparently fed Salon a negative story on Senator George Allen just prior to an election is also quite an Environmental Activist, so much so that it may be linked to the only time Shelton has acknowledged donating money to a political candidate.

Friends of the Falls was formed shortly after then Attorney General Mike Easley and Hendersonville attorney Sam Neill recommended that the N.C. Council of State consider invoking eminent domain on land surrounding the waterfalls if suitable protection and public access could not be negotiated.

As noted in the Salon article, Shelton donated $1,000 to a Sam Neill political campaign. Friends of The Falls is an environmental group and according to this website Shelton is one of its leaders. He appears to be very active with the group.

Jules Crittenden, writing in the Boston Herald, examines the Associated Press' actions in light of the detention of AP photographer Bilal Hussein, captured by Coalition forces with al Qaeda terrorists and a weapons cache earlier this year:

The Associated Press, the reliable just-the-facts news agency you and I once knew, no longer exists. Amoral propagandists have taken over. It is not only in the disturbing matter of Bilal Hussein, AP photograher and al-Qaeda associate, being held without charge in U.S. custody in Iraq that this is evident. But also in the departure from balanced, nonpartisan coverage that has always been the AP’s promise to us, its customers...

In today's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz writes of comments made by Thomas Edsall, who until recently served as a political reporter for the Post.

Mr. Edsall is quoted from an interview: (The) "mainstream media presents itself as unbiased, when in fact there are built into it many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left."

He also mentions he's never voted for a Republican presidential candidate and estimates that reporters vote for Democrats by somewhere between 15 to 1 and 25 to 1.

OK, so the mainstream media's persistent liberal bias isn't earth shattering news to most of us. Still, it's good to occasionally see an honest insider willing to admit the bias exists.

The San Francisco Chronicle has finally found a "hate crime" it can write about.

No, it isn't the hate crime of self-proclaimed terrorist, Omeed Aziz Popal, who drove his SUV into pedestrians throughout San Francisco, killing one, paralyzing another, and injuring many... no not that story. Why Omeed was just a poor, sick-in-the-head fellow, not an Islamist terrorist despite that he claimed to be to all who would listen to him.

I have looked at quite a few San Francisco Chronicle articles, and none of them have used the words "hate crime" in connection with the Aziz Popal story. (Here is a typical oneFamily cites history of mental problems, where the Chronicle never seems to get around to accusing hate crimes, but does feel sorry for the perpetrator)

Liberal press critics are quite the paradox. Most such writers like Eric Alterman, Michael Wolffe, and Michael Massing, are pretty sophisticated about the media in non-political matters, but when it comes to politics, they can't help repeating a slightly toned down version of rhetoric you'll find over at the Daily Kos. They deny the press is tilted toward the left (ignoring scores of content studies and surveys of reporters) and yet they cheer when the media chooses to favor the left, as if that's the media's natural role. Which it is, of course--if you're a liberal

This line of thought is far too common among left-wing media critics. In an interview with the Huffington Post, writer Michael Massing provided a textbook example of it, arguing that the press has properly began pushing back against the Bush Administration while also saying that conservative critics are fundamentally wrong in their opinion of the media:

My working hypothesis on all this, which I have mentioned in some of those articles, is that the more powerful the President, the more timid the press. There's an inverse relationship between the popularity of the President and the willingness of the press to challenge him. And right now, Bush's popularity is very low. I think we're seeing the press pushing back in a very strong way. If I were writing an article today about what's been happening, I would say more about how the press has been pushing back. And I think there's a big appetite for this among readers. The Bush administration is so beleaguered and has done so many things that have upset the public that the press sees an opening and has been moving to take advantage of it.

The New York Times and Washington Post are now attacking provisions of a defense appropriations bill that would ensure that military chaplains can pray in accordance with their own personal beliefs (i.e., pray in the name of Jesus). A Times editorial calls the bill “an attempt to license zealot chaplains to violate policies of religious tolerance.”

A Washington Post article goes a step farther – calling for calling for a “no prayer” policy at public events, according to an article in CNSNews.com, saying the “best resolution” (to its perceived problem) is to “discourage prayer…as inherently and unnecessarily divisive.”

In a clear attempt to throw cold water on the potential positive economic impact of falling energy prices, an Associated Press article yesterday got sloppy with the credentials of those it sought out for quotes. It also conveyed a false impression that all of those quoted were not impressed with what falling energy prices might do for the economy.
Here is the headline and first paragraph of the article:

Economists Wary of Falling Energy Prices

WASHINGTON (AP) — It should only be this simple: Oil prices plunge 20 percent, leading businesses and consumers to ramp up their spending, which gives a nice jolt to the economy. That seems to be the conventional wisdom on Wall Street right now, where the pullback in energy prices is being cheered by investors. But some contrarians think that view could be missing the point.

But not all of those quoted are economists, and not all of those quoted are contrarians.

Here is the roster of the quoted (not in the same order as the article):

Apparently it's not just me.

Back when I was in college, I was involved in journalism in various capacities, in the classroom and at student newspapers. I couldn't help but notice in each place I went, women far outnumbered men. The Star-Tribune of Minnesota has picked up on a similar trend in the television industry. Men seem to be disappearing:

In TV news these days, a good man is hard to find.

At the networks, men still rule -- Katie Couric notwithstanding -- but at the local level, women have taken the lead. Nationally, they account for 57 percent of TV news anchors. [...]

The male disappearing act starts in the classroom. At the University of Minnesota this fall, women outnumber men 227 to 125 in the professional journalism major, which includes broadcasting. Ken Stone, a broadcast journalism professor who spent 20 years working in radio and TV news, has 10 women and six men in his advanced reporting class; he said that's as balanced as it gets.

Stone traces the trend to the 1970s, when women and minorities protested about domination of the airwaves by white men. One of his first journalism professors asked the men in his class to stand up, then told them, "Get a new career, there are too many of you." [...]

"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" premiered on NBC tonight, and it looks like more of the same old, same old. Judd Hirsch's character, in charge of the Saturday Night Live-like show flew into a snit when the network standards and practices exec forced him to pull a skit called "Crazy Christians".

With the gun control movement running for the hills nationwide, opponents of the Second Amendment have taken comfort in the fact that many of America's largest cities remain solidly in the anti-gun camp. In such places, it's not uncommon for local government officials to initiate so-called gun buyback programs where police purchase weapons citizens bring in, no questions asked.

Basically no one who studies firearms policy believes these initiatives actually work to reduce crime or take guns away from criminals. Research by the DOJ and even Harvard University have discounted the effectiveness of buyback programs. Just a few months ago, the liberal Boston Phoenix alternative newspaper ran an article that contended they enable criminals to afford newer, more deadly weapons. Most of the time, the bulk of residents selling their guns are older, as are their firearms--not exactly the kind of people you'd see engaging in armed robbery.

All of this information can be easily found on the internet. Surely the District of Columbia, which hosted a buyback program over the weekend, was aware of it. One would hope that at least one person at the Associated Press or the Washington Post knew that gun buyback programs don't work, or that they'd at least have the journalistic inclination to look into how effective such initiatives are. But hard-hitting, thoughtful local reporting isn't exactly in high supply in America's newspapers today, to say nothing of research critical of liberal shibboleths.

Today's starter: Did the AP earn Pulitzers for collaborating with terrorists? Probably, argues Power Line.

First there was "Dowdification," named after the NYT columnist's deliberate truncation of a speech by President Bush to falsely imply he had said al Qaeda was "no longer a problem. Now, Patterico (aka Patrick Frey) suggests a new term, "Isikoffed" for the Newsweek reporter who similarly truncated a memo by Alberto Gonzales to make the Bush admin look like it considers all the Geneva Conventions to be "quaint" when it comes to the war on terrorism. Instead, Gonzales was making the sensible point that some of them, such as the requiring prison guards to provide inmates with scientific instruments and athletic clothes, are obsolete.

That the MSM has not sufficiently corrected the record on this point continues to be a problem since many liberals in and out of the blogosphere continue to believe this bit of misinformation.

Update 11:02. While you're over at Patterico's, be sure and read his post about how the LA Times is providing cover for a left-wing church leader who basically said voting for Republicans is a sin.

Reuters reported on Saturday (hat tip to Drudge) that the controversial British film about the assassination of President Bush actually won a critics’ choice award at the Toronto Film Festival. I imagine you’re all surprised:

"Death of a President," which stirred controversy in the days ahead of the festival, took home the Fipresci prize, which is chosen by international critics. The film, a fictional documentary showing the assassination of President Bush, was noted by the jury "for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth."

See, now that’s exactly what moviegoers want these days: a film that distorts reality to reveal a larger truth. Of course, in a disturbing sort of way, that’s better than the normal media blathering which distorts reality to reveal a tapestry of lies in order to further the goals of one of the nation's major political parties. But, I digress:

Not everyone is happy to see gasoline prices drop. On CNN's Live Saturday, network senior political correspondent Bill Schneider raised the question of whether dipping prices are part of a conspiracy orchestrated by big oil companies.

Said Schneider about lower gasoline costs: "That's good news for Republicans if only because it could reduce voter anxiety." He then noted: "Industry sources cite a lot of reasons, including higher fuel inventories, a so far mild hurricane season, the truce between Israel and Lebanon. But this oil industry critic believes that what drove prices up was speculation. And a report from a bipartisan congressional investigation may be having an impact."

"This oil industry critic" was one Tyson Slocum of the Naderite Public Citizen. Schneider then speculated that, "The dropping prices may last just a couple of months. Long enough to get through the November election. Could that be what the oil companies want?"

The Chronicle today has published a piece titled "Border fences -- and fantasies", that claims that illegal immigration has increased because of the California border fence project (Called operation Vanguard) and calls the larger border fence approved by Congress recently "tomfoolery".

The piece, though, is contradictory and filled with absurd reasoning in its desire to torpedo a larger border fence idea. On one hand the Chronicle claims that the current fence has not stopped immigration and is useless, yet on the other has caused immigrant's to bring their entire families because the fence keeps them inside.

The Associated Press seems to think that Bush's terror related questions are mere election ploys, solely talking points being cast about to help Congressional Republicans to win elections in the upcoming 2006 midterms.

Bush has been undertaking an intense effort to clear up the issues surrounding both his NSA surveillance questions as well as questions surrounding the legal rights that captured terrorists have and just how the Administration might treat them once in US custody. These are questions that have been brewing since the attacks on 9/11/01 and, with recent Supreme Court decisions, dents have been put in the President's conception of what he can and cannot do causing the president to seek solid answers.

The Fitzpatrick Plame investigation has spurred the New York Times into examining how their reporters conduct themselves. Apparently, the Gray Lady wants her staff to act more like terrorists and drug dealers. Reporters are being told to delete emails, destroy notes, and use disposable cell phones in order to stymie future investigations.