Journalistic Issues

Organizations large and small, decent and hateful, terrorist and peace loving are reporting and commenting on the barbaric killings of two American soldiers in Iraq. One of them headlined its report:

Al-Zarqawi's successor gets the credit

So which organization put out the headline giving al-Zarqawi's successor credit for the barbaric killings? Did you guess al-Qaeda? That's very reasonable. Al-Qaeda certainly wants to build up al-Zarqawi's successor. What's more, al-Qaeda encourages its members and anyone else to kill American soldiers in Iraq. It's eager to give anyone credit for doing that. But it wasn't al-Qaeda. The headline comes from the Associated Press. Are you shocked? I was.

I long ago decided the AP is an untrustworthy, liberal/leftist agenda driven outfit passing itself off as a news organization. Still, the AP's Al-Zarqawi's successor gets the credit headline shocked me.

What to do? Letters to the editor? Most certainly. We need to let our local editors know they can't fool us any longer with the old "the AP did that" brush off. The editors of our papers pay the AP to do what it does. After we've done that, we need to do more.

We need a national conversation about how to provide our country as quickly as possible with an alternate news media that supports what America supports, civilization.

Hat Tip: Mike Williams

CBS radio news just ran an item on the departure of Dan Rather. There was a surprising bit of candor in which CBS reported that Rather had "expressed frustration, feeling he'd been shelved by the network."

There was also a bit of - presumably - unintentional humor. We were treated to a clip of the Washington Post's [very liberal] media critic Tom Shales informing us that Rather "was a very activist anchor, and he changed the role of anchor."

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.

Here's one of those stories that sounds weird but may make perfect sense. According to Saturday's New York Times, Dan Rather is "seriously mulling" an offer to "develop and be the host of a weekly interview program on a high-definition television channel known as HDNet." 

The Times' Jacques Steinberg also reports that "in addition to the one-hour interview program, which could eventually include '60 Minutes'-style investigative reports that he would prepare, Mr. Rather said he had been asked to commit to deliver at least two documentaries a year to HDNet."

Rather told Steinberg that the offer to join HDNet came from none other than the channel's co-founder Mark Cuban, who's been on TV quite a bit himself lately during ABC's coverage of the NBA finals between the Cuban-owned Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat.

A recent Washington Post article claims “More than 500 children die annually from accidental gunshots: Some shoot themselves, while others kill friends or siblings, often after discovering a gun.”

To understand how a biased or under-educated writer makes an inaccurate and misleading error, we must first clarify the term “child”. Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “childhood” as: “The state or stage of life as a child…the time from birth to puberty.” Oxford defines “puberty” as: “The period during which adolescents reach sexual maturity and become capable of reproduction, distinguished by the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics.” In terms of age, there seems to be general agreement that this ability to procreate occurs by the age of 15: childhood is over by then.

Earlier this week, the Media Research Center released a new study documenting the fairly heavy coverage ABC, CBS and NBC have provided of yet-unproved claims that U.S. Marines engaged in a “massacre” in Haditha, Iraq last year. The study found those same networks have provided relatively paltry coverage of the select group of American heroes who’ve been given the military’s highest honors: the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, the Air Force and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Today’s Washington Times (Jennifer Harper) has a nice summary of our study’s key findings, plus some reaction from the multi-national force in Iraq. Excerpts from her article, “‘Bad News’ Rife in military coverage”:

Stephen Spruiell at NRO's Media Blog rightly whacks Slate's John Dickerson -- formerly a White House reporter for Time magazine and the son of pioneering network TV reporter Nancy Dickerson -- for his assertion Monday that liberal bloggers merely want the press to improve, but conservatives can't stand that the press exists, that they want them.....dead?

One of the healthiest things about the left-wing blogosphere is its confrontational dislike of the mainstream media. There's a distinction here with the media's critics on the right. At some level, the right doesn't much like that the press exists. They don't want to fix it, they want to drive a stake through its heart. The left, on the other hand, just wishes the establishment press would do a better job.

Big Hat Tip to Michelle Malkin . . .

Various media around the world have been using this shocking photo to smear the US Marines in connection with the Haditha incident.

As Michelle Malkin has reported, the photo has nothing to do with US Marines: "The photo is of fishermen executed in a Haditha stadium by terrorists six months before the Nov. 19 incident under investigation by the US military."

That didn't stop the Times of London from running it on June 1st, alleging it was of the alleged Marine action in Haditha. The Times later apologized.

Not that there's been any doubt as to the politics of NPR and PBS - home to world-class Republican haters such as Bill Moyers. Still, it's instructive to see just who has launched a massive organizing effort to ensure continued taxpayer funding of the two organizations. Turns out . . . it's none other than the far-left MoveOn.org.

Here's a mass email sent out today by Move-on:

From: Noah T. Winer, MoveOn.org Civic Action
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 12:27 PM
To:
Subject: Deadline tomorrow! Re: Save NPR and PBS (again)

A book about the semi-retired Dan Rather (remember him?) would seem to be a tough sell at this point, even if it carried a catchy title like The Da Rather Code. That said, a biography to be published right around the time Katie Couric takes over the CBS Evening News does juicily report that Rather endorsed the bumping-off of a prominent CBS colleague.

Here's part of today's New York Post Page Six item on the book:

In "Lone Star," an unauthorized bio of Rather out this September, Alan Weisman writes that [Morley] Safer "has not been a friend of Rather's for years, since their days in Vietnam." The final straw came when Rather took over for Safer not long after Safer's jolting report about the burning of a Vietnam village by a platoon of U.S. Marines.

TV writer Bill Carter reports on the deaths of two CBS news crewmen while following a U.S. patrol in Iraq -- "Deaths of 2 in CBS Crew Lead to Painful Reassessments." CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier remains in intensive care.

"The roadside blast in Baghdad on Monday that killed two CBS News crew members and seriously wounded a third has deepened concerns among television network executives about the risks their crews face trying to cover the Iraq war, some arguing that television reporters may be even more exposed than those in print journalism."

Near the end, Carter lets two news executives take some timely blasts at conservatives, and radio host Laura Ingraham in particular:

Anyone who pays even scant attention to the news cannot have helped but see that CBS news correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, was severely injured by one of those insidious IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that have been responsible for so many of the casualties to coalition forces and common Iraqi citizens in Iraq over the last few years.

Ms. Dozier is certainly brave enough for taking the call to go to Iraq and attempt to learn what it is like there and to file her stories from that turbulent region. There is certainly no reason to laugh at her injuries. It is also sad that members of her news crew were killed by the same explosion. We see the names of those men in every report about this incident. Cameraman, Paul Douglas, and sound man, James Brolan, lost their lives in pursuit of the story that day. Brave souls all, regardless whether you think their work is ultimately good or bad.

I've often read that plants grow better when exposed to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Yet, when the Associated Press mentions the subject, what it says is: Global warming boosts poison ivy.

The AP report, as published May 29 by the Boston Globe, begins:

Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday.

And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050.

Could there be a new sheriff on the block at Fox News Watch?  Brash lefty Neal Gabler often manages to get the last word, but on last evening's show he was soundly put in his place by National Review editor Rich Lowry, substituting for Cal Thomas.

The topic was the recent press leaks that have compromised a number of highly-classified anti-terrorism programs including the secret prisons for Al-Qaeda members, the monitoring of Al-Qaeda related phone calls and the gathering of phone calling patterns. 

Predictably, Gabler was highly critical of the prospect of the government going against those who, by publishing the leaks, potentially cause significant damage to our national security interests:

Since NewsBusters first broke the story about Google News capriciously terminating its relationship with conservative e-zines and web journals, and followed (with the help of writer and software developer Marc Sheppard) with a detailed analysis of the ramifications of such unrestrained power, the blogosphere has been abuzz with this issue.

One of the key players in this sad tale, Frank Salvato of The New Media Journal, posted an interesting response to Google’s banishment at his website that included a list of competing search engines as well as his opinion on the issue: “Google News and Google Search Engine are on a campaign of political correctness that sees them denying access to their service to any website - be it news, opinion or a hybrid of both - that dares to address the subject of radical Islam.” Salvato continued:

ABC News has officially picked Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson to shore up World News Tonight. Is that good news for conservatives? Well, when he hosted the 2004 town-hall style debate between President Bush and John Kerry, Gibson chose a balanced set of questions that equally represented liberal and conservative concerns. Good for him -- that’s a balancing act that previous town hall moderators, like PBS’s Jim Lehrer and ABC’s Carole Simpson, failed to do.

But as a frequent fill-in on World News Tonight and on Good Morning America, Gibson has rarely tinkered with the media elite’s liberal template:

Following the practice of other media outlets, the 3pm PST (6pm EST) top-of-the-hour headlines on ABC News Radio failed to identify Rep. William Jefferson as a Democrat. The Democratic congressman is under investigation for bribery after being caught on videotape accepting $100,000.

The report, about 30 seconds long, alternately referred to Rep. Jefferson as a "Congressman" and "Louisiana Congressman." However, the story never tagged him as a Democrat.

"Culture of corruption," anyone?

An editorial in Saturday's Washington Times highlighted the discovery by the MRC's Rich Noyes, as detailed in a Friday NewsBusters posting, about how “Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who 'broke' the news that three major U.S. telecommunications companies were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, is listed as a donor to former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, according to a search of the Center for Responsive Politics Web site.”

The May 20 editorial, “Spinning, Spying and USA Today,” recounted: “With Verizon and BellSouth both challenging USA Today's report on their alleged participation in NSA's surveillance programs, it's not yet clear whether or to what extent the claims in the Gannett daily's much-discussed article are true. What's clearer is that USA Today reporter Leslie Cauley has ties to the Democratic Party, which the Media Research Center's 'NewsBusters' Web site unearthed yesterday. Searching through campaign-filing records, Rich Noyes discovered that Miss Cauley gave $2,000 to then-Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt in 2003. That's the type of activity that journalists normally avoid if they wish to be perceived as objective...” (How Rush Limbaugh also picked up the posting, follows)

Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who last week “broke” the news that three major U.S. telecommunications companies were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, is listed as a donor to former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, according to a search of The Center for Responsive Politics Web site, www.opensecrets.org

A search found a listing for "writer and journalist" Leslie Cauley, indicating she gave $2,000 to Gephardt on June 30, 2003, when Gephardt was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. And that seems not to be her only tie to Democratic politics (see Update below)

Speaking in the Headlines and Biographies lecture series at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Dan Rather says today's journalists have an "urge to be so polite, this mandate not to offend anyone - anywhere."

Journalists afraid to bash President Bush? That's unlikely. Of course, the president's low approval ratings have more to do with conservatives hating Bush than liberals, and Rather could not possibly understand criticisms of Bush that did not originate from left-wing MSM initiatives.

Reports Canadian Press:

The veteran U.S. television journalist lamented a trend in today's news that sees reporters rely on euphemisms and tact as though they were conducting international diplomacy instead of telling people exactly what is happening in places like Washington or Ottawa.

"I don't know where this urge to be so polite, this mandate not to offend anyone - anywhere, anytime - came from, but in a journalistic sense, I wish it would go away," he said.

A new study by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University says that within the last 12 months, 70 percent of 527 randomly chosen newspaper reporters said they had been accused of bias. But most journalists offered excuses as to why they did what they did.

Reports Editor and Publisher:

More than half of newspaper journalists in a recent survey believe an unethical or unprofessional incident occurred in their newsroom within the past five years, while seven out of 10 said they had been accused of bias in the past 12 months, according to a study released today by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

But at least 70% of those polled more often pointed to "factors beyond their control" as the cause of such poor ethical perceptions, rather than their own newspapers' actions.

Is it any wonder television news doesn't have much credibility?

This from the Washington, DC, Craigslist:

I know this is a long shot, but it's worth a try. This month I attained my B.S. degreee in journalism with a minor in marketing. I hope to one day soon be a leading broadcast journalist, but feel that my small chest is holding me back.

I am seeking understanding, kind-hearted people who are willing to invest in my A-cup breasts and help me finance a breast augmentation surgery and advance my career in broadcast journalism.

The surgery will cost $3,000 and get me up to a full C-cup. I believe that this is the final piece that I need to have more self-confidence and gain better job opportunities.

In this day and age, I know how important looking good is for any career. I know this surgery will increase my chances three-fold on top of my education, experience and talent.

Please reply if you can help. This is not only an investment in my confidence; It is an investment in my fruitful career. Thank you.

The New York Times is involved in another scandal. The issue is one that journalists always raise about bloggers: lifting material from somewhere else.

The New York Post reports:

Four paragraphs about Forbes magazine's search for an investor that appeared in The New York Times yesterday closely resemble passages from a London daily that ran the day before.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, who wrote the bylined Times piece, blamed it on a "stupid error" by Times desk editor.

"An editor added the paragraphs into the story not realizing it was part of my notes," he said.