January 8, 2007

Comment Thread for Media Matters In the Meme Streets of Baghdad - 1

Hatched by Dafydd

Here you may post comments, thoughts, and suggestions anent our Michelle Malkin post, Media Matters In the Meme Streets of Baghdad - 1.

Fair warning to Michelle Malkin readers: Big Lizards has a very strict comment policy, and we nuke miscreants without remorse, pity, or warning. Honest disagreement is fine, but no obscenity, personal attack, or boorish behavior is tolerated.

The complete comment policy is found in this post. The hosts are always right. Tie goes to the runner.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 8, 2007, at the time of 5:04 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Sissy Willis

A big fat case of do as I say, not as I do. Media elites rightly consider holding political leaders' feet to the fire as their stock in trade, but until talk radio, Fox and the blogosphere came along, no one was holding them accountable. Continuing with the feet-to-the-fire metaphor, the right shoe is on the left foot, and the media's dogs are aching.

The above hissed in response by: Sissy Willis [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 6:40 AM

The following hissed in response by: Darleen

Nothing quite beats the hysteria of the MSM when their monopoly is challenged. And the appeal to authority (the constant sneering that us rubes don't have 'journalism' experience) is especially laughable ... the strength of the blogsphere is the ability to have actual experts in the field weigh in almost immediately on any particular subject without the self-serving filter of a reporter/editor/owner.

One infamous example being the exposure of Dan Rather's fraudulent memos. It was people like Charles Johnson, Jeff Harrell and Powerline that interviewed and brought in actual experts in the field .... not the cherrypicked sentence or two from people with little or no expertise.

The above hissed in response by: Darleen [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 6:46 AM

The following hissed in response by: SallyVee

Interesting that Malkin does not allow comments and that you find it necessary to warn Malkin's readers.

One reason I visit the Lizards is to escape what I find to be Malkin's offensive, terminally irritating flogging of blog-0-centric affairs which mean absolutely nothing to me. I think she is a "war blogger" in the sense that her tone and stance is perpetually combative and out of proportion about nearly everything, to the point that she lost credibility and my patience a long time ago. She has practically ruined the term "conservative" for me, and poisoned the entire debate about immigration -- an issue requiring serious discussion and realistic solutions.

That said, I dragged myself through your post, and even scanned Boehlert's long, overwrought screed, and found your comments to be a fair and persuasive defense of Ms. Malkin, and an elegant smack down of Boehlert. Malkin is fortunate that you chose to address the matter, since yours is a temperate and sane voice that I can still hear above the increasingly fringey and extraneous racket.

The above hissed in response by: SallyVee [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:03 AM

The following hissed in response by: moolamoo

Er, positing Boehlert as a friend of the MSM is a bit weird. His book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over For Bush, is a pretty stinging criticism of the MSM, and unlike right-wing criticism of the MSM, has the advantage of being true (the MSM has consistently portrayed the Iraq war as going better, not worse, than it actually is, and papers like the New York Times ran Bush cheerleaders like Judy Miller; the Washington Post's editorial page is wildly pro-Bush -- the MSM is pro-Bush, folks, deal with it).

Anyway, what it boils down to is that Malkin and co. went completely insane about this Jamil Hussein thing -- as though if they could only prove he didn't exist, that would mean that things were just fine in Iraq (when in fact Iraq is much worse than the MSM usually reports, folks). And not only were they insane, it turned out they were, as usual, wrong, and all that they achieved was possibly getting Jamil Hussein arrested and maybe killed. Good stuff, folks.

The above hissed in response by: moolamoo [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:04 AM

The following hissed in response by: Akaky

Wow, any more mixed foot metaphors and you'll need a podiatrist to put your foot down. If you'll pardon a really strained comparison, what the MSM faces nowadays is, to my mind, roughly comparable to the fix the LAPD found itself in with the OJ Simpson case. For years the LAPD cut corners on investigations, sometimes deliberately, sometimes in order to get around the bureaucracy and to make the detectives' lives easier, sometimes just because of sheer laziness. No one called them on the casual attitude or the slackness until the Dream Team put the LAPD's procedures under a microscope and was able to blow significant holes in the prosecution's case because the LAPD didnt follow its own rules for handling evidence, etc. With the MSM, what you have are large, well-financed corporations that have always been able to, like doctors, bury their mistakes, and if anyone didnt like it, well, there was precious little they could do about it. The aggrieved party could write a letter to the editor, which might or might not be published, or sue for slander, which is difficult to prove, since you would have to prove malice aforethought. But with the Internet, the blogs, and talk radio this lock on information has been broken, and like any cartel, the MSM does not like it one bit. Hence the screeches of people like Boehlert. The sudden fondness for the fairness doctrine that a good many media people seem to have developed in the past few years has less to do with any committment to fairness and integrity in media, and everything to do with restoring the integrity of the MSM's echo chamber.

The above hissed in response by: Akaky [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:09 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Moolamoo:

Eric! Nice to have you here. Beware, there are two more parts coming...

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:23 AM

The following hissed in response by: HShort

Big Lizard:

I'm not overly interested in the question of if 'Jamil' exists or not. The question has always been about the veracity of the information reputed to this 'source'; and thereby on the credibility of the AP which couldn't wait to spread it around the globe. The truth about the existence of 'Jamil' can never be verified now beyond a reasonable doubt, and it isn't worth the trouble to try and find out since the evidence that can be verified is overwhelming against the veracity of everything attributed to this invisible 'source'.

What can be determined beyond a reasonable doubt, is that the AP has screwed the pooch so bad on this that it stands convicted of being nothing more than a slipshod organization which doesn't have the foggiest comprehension about professional or ethical standards and further more doesn't care. Its reporting is agenda driven, and their agenda is not that of uncovering the truth of a matter. This isn't anything new since the AP is simply conducting business as usual in the manner of all yellow press rags since the time of the first printing press and they are happier than pigs in you know what to utilize the invisible 'Jamils' to further their agenda.

Eric 'Blowhard' Boehlert is just a creature of his environment that has found his niche.

However, beside the question of the credibility of the MSM, there is another question concerning how the blog sphere envisions itself in all this. For the most part what seems to be happening is bloggers simply reacting to MSM foibles. Only rarely do they come up with news stories on their own, such as the Air America fiasco. And yes I am familiar with some of the mil-bloggers who have embedded with our troop in Iraq and risked their lives to give the view from the ground. I sincerely appreciate what they have done, but in one sense this too is simply a reaction to the slanted MSM reporting.

In regards to Iraq I wish someone would report on the Kurds. I could care less about Michelle going to Iraq to track down the invisible 'Jamil'. But I would be sincerely interested in having her report on the situation in the Kurdistan Region. Why? Because the Kurds are the success story of the Iraqi War. The Kurds make up a quarter of the whole country, and counter all the negativity and therefore all the MSM's agendas as well - and that's why you don't hear anything about the Kurds.

To paraphrase from their website (http://www.krg.org/): the Unified Government of the Kurdistan Region is "secular, pluralistic, and democratic". It represents nearly 6 million Kurds in Iraq who do not go around blowing each other up. In fact, the Kurdish region is so safe that the British Foreign Office just lifted travel advisories to the area. The Kurdish people are strongly pro-American, and:

"There has not been a single U.S. fatality, during the entire course of the war, in the Kurdistan Region".

Of course, part of this is because the US did not commit any large scale US ground forces in this area because Turkey blocked access. In the long run this was a blessing because it meant US military involvement took the form of Special Forces assets working in conjunction with Kurdish forces who did the actual fighting to take back their homeland from Saddam's thugs.

But again: The AP and the MSM won't report on any of this.

If you wonder why I care, its because I remember the Montangards and how my fine country sold some of the finest friends we ever had down the river. And I remember the slime balls who cheered about it, the same slime balls that are cheering now for the success of their pathological Islamic fascist soul brothers. And that's why I am curious if the blog sphere is going to blissfully ignore them as well because maybe all the blog sphere is good for is covering the MSM like fleas on a dog.

The above hissed in response by: HShort [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:38 AM

The following hissed in response by: SallyVee

HShort: exceptional post. Especially this point:

[...] beside the question of the credibility of the MSM, there is another question concerning how the blog sphere envisions itself in all this. For the most part what seems to be happening is bloggers simply reacting to MSM foibles. Only rarely do they come up with news stories on their own, such as the Air America fiasco...

and this:

[...] In regards to Iraq I wish someone would report on the Kurds. I could care less about Michelle going to Iraq to track down the invisible 'Jamil'. But I would be sincerely interested in having her report on the situation in the Kurdistan Region...

As for the Motagnards, I only learned about these amazing people from a Nelson DeMille novel (Up Country) -- in which he treats them with supreme respect and admiration.

The above hissed in response by: SallyVee [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:50 AM

The following hissed in response by: moolamoo

Dafydd, I ain't Boehlert, though I'll cop to having read his book.

Anyway, since you didn't respond to any of the rest of it I assume you accept the truth of my assertion that the MSM is pro-Bush, that the MSM has portrayed the situation in Iraq as much better than it actually is, and that the Jamil Hussein obsession was nuts.

The above hissed in response by: moolamoo [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 7:54 AM

The following hissed in response by: In Vino Veritas

Next time, break the prozac in half.

The above hissed in response by: In Vino Veritas [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 8:26 AM

The following hissed in response by: Barney15e

Anyway, since you didn't respond to any of the rest of it I assume you accept the truth of my assertion
Moo, Eric, whatever, I guess you missed this part.
Beware, there are two more parts coming...
But, be careful assuming your assertions are validated when people are really just ignoring you. Your ego may over inflate a bit.

The above hissed in response by: Barney15e [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 8:52 AM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

And to think this used to be such a quiet peaceful little place, just us regulars.

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 10:35 AM

The following hissed in response by: Capitalist Infidel

But, be careful assuming your assertions are validated when people are really just ignoring you. Your ego may over inflate a bit.

Bingo! When skimming those kinds of comments the only conclusion is that he/she is not a serious person. Ignoring them is the best thing to do.

The above hissed in response by: Capitalist Infidel [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 10:37 AM

The following hissed in response by: Karl

re: Your question as to why Media matters always refers back to their own posts, rather than source material.

A benign interpretation is that they do it to inflate their traffic figures and, on a more technical level, to inflate their Google page rank.

Another benign interpretation is that that the source material may go offline and self-linking avoids the need to check that.

A less benign reason would be that the source did not really support what MM wrote about it and they hope people won't check the source to discover that.

Your example seems to fall into that last category, though the first category can always be a factor.

The above hissed in response by: Karl [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 11:46 AM

The following hissed in response by: Karl

HShort:

Michael Totten blogged a stint in the Kurdish region of Iraq in February, for example here. I also wish there was more reportage and blogging from the north, but at least Totten did more than the MSM.

The above hissed in response by: Karl [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 11:54 AM

The following hissed in response by: karen

The curious thing about AP's Jamil Hussein scandal; all of the "records" of him or his tall tales are derived solely from AP "reporter" Steven R. Hurst. If this isn't a case of Hurst having an imaginary friend, then Hurst needs to find a better real-life liar as his sole source!

However, Hurst does have a long and shameful "journalistic rapsheet" of emboldening the terrorists in Iraq, pushing the "grim milestone" agenda to the exclusion of nearly all else. No wonder the AP is trying to obfuscate.

Hurst's AP Iraq "reporting"

LS

The above hissed in response by: karen [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 12:23 PM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Hey, I am with Sally Vee. Malkin lost me a long time ago. But I love Dafydd.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 12:46 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

In Vino Veritas:

Next time, break the prozac in half.

Wait -- wouldn't that make me more crazy?

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2007 1:48 PM

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