13 July 2005

Old Media credibility watch

[source, source]

From today’s Corrections:

Live 8 Critic’s Notebook - In the Critic’s Notebook by Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn that ran in Section A on July 3, the term “ultraconservative” was added by a copy editor to describe Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. Hilburn, before interviewing O’Reilly about the social activism of U2’s Bono, had told the commentator he would not label him in a subjective way. The adjective that was inserted did not reflect that agreement or the critic’s views.

Oh yes, how much I yearn to have my own copy editor to insert biased language in to my posts and make me look like an idiot and a liar.

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Defining valid targets

Backspin notes one of several articles (two recent) that provide a timeline of caliphascist attacks, while completely ommitting any reference to attacks in Israel. I suppose it’s not relevant because wasn’t aimed at the ordinary working class or Republican voters.

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We have our facts, we don't need any lessons from reality

[source]

“A government memo published in the Sunday Times last weekend warned that a loose group of ‘extremist recruiters’ sympathetic to the al Qaeda network was targeting susceptible young Muslims, especially those with technical and professional qualifications in engineering and computers. Most did not have police records, it said.

On Tuesday, Iqbal Sacranie, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the BBC he had received the latest news from the police with ‘anguish, shock and horror.’”

The Post report tries to cover for the inane “Iraq is at fault” caucus by noting that:

“Still, the profile of the suspects suggested by investigators fit long-standing warnings by security experts that the greatest potential threat to Britain could come from second-generation Muslims, born here but alienated from British society and perhaps from their own families, and inflamed by Britain’s participation in the Iraq war.” [emphasis added]

There is no evidence offered for this astonishing assertion that the Iraq war has anything to do with the massacre. Zero! And none is needed for the true-believers in the MSM. Is this “reporting?” Or cheerleading for an alternative reality where writers feel free to ascribe to murderers their motives?

[…] I can find no mention of Iraq anywhere in the English press.

But there it is, in the Washington Post “inflamed by Britain’s participation in the Iraq war” without a shred of evidence to support it, but propped up by an ideology that refuses to consider any theory except those that condemn Bush.

Because blaming Bush means not having to do anything about the problem.

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