Here he is....ready for action! All Trolls Beware!
Posted on 02/03/2005 9:23:28 AM PST by BJungNan
News forum that caught CBS fake National Guard documents shines light on another media blunder
"I need you all to look at this photo and tell me if you think the vest is what is being issued and worn in Iraq. Also does the M-16 shown look small?" - posted on 02/01/2005 11:26:05 AM PST by Dog
"Ok, some things I'd like to point out... first, that vest, and those boots, they aren't military issue, if they are I've never seen em. Next, the mag in the M4 isn't issued I believe, it looks like a mag you would buy for civilian use." - posted on 02/01/2005 11:27:15 AM PST by BladeLWS
"Is this a hoax? The 'captured soldier' suspiciously looks like a doll for sale on the internet." - posted on 02/01/2005 11:27:22 AM PST by BlackRain
"Did you ever consider becoming an investigative journalist? You just broke this story wide open." - posted on 02/01/2005 11:29:45 AM PST by 1LongTimeLurker
" I can't take any credit for the find. These guys deserve the credit - MilitaryPhotos.net - posted on 02/01/2005 11:35:09 AM PST by BlackRain
"hee hee ....how embarrassing for AP." - posted on 02/01/2005 11:35:35 AM PST by Gator101
So goes a thread on the internet news forum Free Republic as a story about a toy soldier being held hostage was still being reported as a real hostage situation by the mainstream news media.
As noted in the thread reposted above, in this case Free Republic was not the first to discover the doll become "hostage" story - MilitaryPhotos.net was - but as the most popular political news forum on the internet, it was first to amplify the mainstream media mistake. And it was way ahead of that media in getting the story out.
It was the same news forum that first broke the CBS fake National Guard documents story. And so it has been on many other stories on a daily basis. Free Republic with its tens of thousands of citizen reporters, and commentators - albeit most of them amateur has become an influential source of news.
In this age of the communications revolution, two way news has become a reality. Free Republic has taken that revolution a step further.
And for fact checking - with those same tens of thousands of forum participants having expertise in a variety of fields and professions, you can find no better fact checking source for finding out a GI hostage was really a GI Joe.
Give credit where credit is due.
See post #51. GI Joe, under threat of death from VERY small weapon.....
Word has it, he scared the crap out of his captors just with his stare.....they quickly turned him loose.
Cody does have that "ZOT of Death" stare!
Free Republic with its tens of thousands of citizen reporters, and commentators - albeit most of them amateur has become an influential source of news.
#####
Kudos to all citizen reporters and commentators.
I think I will replace "retired" with my new title "citizen commentator."
Pretty accurate summary of what happened.
We need a memorial Wall of Anti-Hoax Warriors. Dog, you've got the Buckhead award w/oak leaf cluster!
Just a thought: "FR mentioned" would be a good add to the thread title.
Dan
Is it "life-like hair?"
LOL*** I usually avoid MJ pictures, but this one is a winner!!! Go SpecOps Cody!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1333608/posts?q=1&&page=1
Web Site Claims GI Captured in Iraq
My Way News ^ | February 1, 2005 | ROBERT H. REID
Posted on 02/01/2005 1:22:09 PM CST by Peach
I think the MSM realized it was a fake right away, but they choose to run with it, in order, to take away from the Iraqi election.
Come-on a G.I. Joe doll. Next a Pres. Bush doll will be grabbed, that will be BIG news.
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
Woohoo! Congrats, guys!
Here he is....ready for action! All Trolls Beware!
Sacre bleu...his mouth is closed!
When the Columbia disintigrated...it was first reported here, on Free Republic...
Freepers on teh West Coast were posting to a Live Thread, watching the shuttle de-orbit towards its landing in Florida....Soon aaafter it crossed the coast, the reports were that it "didn't look right" and that "It looks like it broke apart"....
Long before anyone, even NASA, realized or recognized the enormity of the disaster... Free Republic had posted contemporaneous eye witness reports, and these reports were bolstered with "expert" commentary...
This place is the best news organization I know of....
Eagles up!
Captive U.S. Soldier Doll Rescued by Bush Doll by Scott Ott
(2005-02-01) -- Just hours after Islamic militants in Iraq threatened to behead a kidnapped U.S. soldier doll, the camouflaged action figure was rescued in a daring nighttime operation by a toy George W. Bush action figure.
The nine-inch-tall replica of the president left Andrews Air Force Base in a scale model of Air Force One within minutes after the Pentagon learned of the kidnapping from a picture on an Islamic website.
The top-secret flight was reminiscent of the life-size president's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad in 2003. During the long trip, the presidential doll was programmed to say intimidating things in Arabic, and reportedly spent several hours practicing his kung-fu grip.
Even as the mission was secretly under way, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-MA, went before the Senate to call for the immediate withdrawal of 12,000 military action figures from Iraq.
Upon hearing of the Bush doll's successful mission, Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, warned against "overhyping" the significance of the apparently heroic deed.
http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/002050.html
That's a huge hurdle for the MSM to overcome. They may be able to stick 15 producers on a story. All of whom are professional journalists likely to have only a surface knowledge of the subject they are covering.
But FR -- and the aggregation of smaller sites and blogs out there -- possess tens of thousands of people who may be subject matter experts in a particular story. While it may seem "suspicious" to some outsider that a particular Freeper picked up on something so quickly, it shouldn't be the least bit surprising that a Freeper found an error quickly. Because there inevitably are groing to be some Freepers who are going to know that subject cold.
Even for "honest" members of the MSM, this presents a huge problem. Especially when you consider how modern technology like PhotoPhop, scanners, etc, makes it easier to create a convincing hoax. Being first with a scoop is a legitimate goal for a news outlet, but they have to balance that against not getting taken in by a scam. But because they lack the virtually infinite pool of fact checkers available to a place like FR, they're not going to be able to submit it to the same scrutiny as us. That makes it almost inevitable that they are going to be busted.
I don't mean to excuse a lot of the tripe they put out there, though. It's obvious that their biases sometimes affect the scrutiny to which they put various stories. Virtually all of them came out and denounced the SBVT almost immediately. They had a presumption that what they were saying was false, until proven otherwise. OTOH, CBS took the exact opposite tack with Dubya, going so far as to claim that he had to prove that the underlying "sense" of the documents were false even if the documents themselves admittedly were inaccurate. They clearly manufactured their own problem.
Anyway, I think its interesting to see how the blogosphere and websites are affecting stories reported by the MSM. They've got to be a lot more cautious than they've been in the past, or they're going to end up with a lot of egg on their faces a lot more often.
LOL!
Well said!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.