True, but somehow your words here seem very familiar. I wonder, why is that? ;-)
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They're going fast!
Posted on 10/02/2005 2:35:48 AM PDT by mal
Went to the SunTimes page, decided to read the "printer" version - slightly easier.
But when you click on that link you are taken to a bucolic - farmer in the field - video commercial sponsored by the ACLU! I kid you not - Steyn's column sponsored by the ACLU! There is a small option up in the corner that allows you to skip the commercial.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to find an NRA commercial anywhere near a Chomsky or Carter (as in jimmah) op-ed piece.
Whoa! Great point.
Very blount...there should have been bloggers there. MSM failed for the most part, and you can see various holes in every story told by CNN. A team of a dozen bloggers would have told the "missing" policemen story entirely, and cracked the entire episode 3 days after the hurricane. The buses parked downtown....they would have been live on the internet 12 hours prior to the hurricane. The behavior of the mayor...letting tourists stay in town...during the hurricane...would have been played out nation-wide and the guy would have been called a fool by 3rd day after the hurricane. We bloggers have missed various opportunities to right wrongs. Its time to pick up a digital camera, a cellphone, and start reporting real-life events. Count the media out...they have failed...its time to right this boat and start telling truths.
Perhaps not.
MSM and Hollywood subscribers/viewers continue to drop. And they see what works (Fox News, G/PG-rated films, Mel Gibson), but they absolutely refuse to imitate what works.
The media's response to decreased viewers is to become more outrageous. But viewers have a choice, and they refuse to be lied to or offended.
I don't think many people are demanding to be lied to. Unless they are leftist Bush-haters who need a steady supply of misinformation to feed their hate. But this is a relatively small percentage of the potential audience. To believe the media, you need to simultaneously believe that GW Bush is both incompetent and an evil genius.
I tend to believe that the MSM is orchestrated propaganda. Made mostly ineffective by the internet.
LOL! And how true: the MSM is now is the entertainment business, spinning yarns to compete with the amusement arms of the networks and film studios.
After decades of boasting about "hiring diversity," everybody in America's newsrooms is now so remarkably diverse they all make exactly the same mistakes. Oughtn't that to be just a teensy bit disquieting even to the most blinkered journalism professor?
None so blind as those that refuse to see!
Wow! Getting this in a Steyn thread is like a two-fer. Thanks.
By the list you posted, it's clear that you've fallen victim to media reports.
For starters, you're painting all of Louisiana with the New Orleans brush, and even worse, you're lumping all New Orleans residents with the very small pecentage who did not evacuate.
Most Louisiana evacuees left plenty early, made sure to fill their tanks and keep them filled days ahead of time, just like we do every time we're threatened by a hurricane.
The media has focused on a tiny minority of Louisiana Katrina victims in their coverage and you don't seem to be aware of that fact.
"The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled."
As I posted above, Steyn was a part of those media reports, so it's a bit rich for him to preach now about their inaccuracy. In fact, his were worse, at least most of the media reports made it clear that the stories of rapes etc were from a specific source (eg. Eddie Compass) whereas Steyn's report presented them as facts with no riders whatsoever. He has zero credibility on this subject.
But more importantly, they fed on this early "information" and proceeded as if it were fact. And they presented it as fact, it's not like they presented it as Louis Farrakhan and the "bombs".
True, but somehow your words here seem very familiar. I wonder, why is that? ;-)
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They're going fast!
Thank you for un-quidnuqing that.
That's what I kept thinking...aren't reporters Americans or just plain people anymore? Why weren't they bringing in water and carting people out...being part of the solution instead of being the problem? It reminded me of that news clip from a bunch of years ago where the camera kept rolling while that guy torched himself...it seems like their careers surpass their sense of humanity more often than not.
"But more importantly, they fed on this early "information" and proceeded as if it were fact"
Google up some of the stories from September 4th. None of the ones I see present anything as fact. They have eyewitnesses claiming to have seen things (including National Guardsmen) which are just presented as quotes and quotes from the chief of police also saying the same things. Steyn, writing at the same time, presents the events as established fact.
Point one - do you not want the media to report on things that they are told about but have not witnessed personally? I don't see any way that they could have actually verified or otherwise these reports. Point two - how is Steyn excused by being one step removed from the eyewitnesses? If he had been in New Orleans and heard the police chiefs words personally, you would condemn him for this article but because he's elsewhere and only see the reports of the police chief's words, then writes the exact same article, that's ok?
Err, no idea?
Actually, the list does an outstanding job in contrasting the almost total inaction by Louisiana authorities prior to the hurricane with the mass mobilization successfully undertaken by Texas.
It also demonstrates the professionalism of Texas' government officials as compared with the crying, cussing, looting, and vitriol-spitting of the amateurs who man important positions in Louisiana.
The Pelican State is a laughingstock.
No problem. I said it sounded familiar because I said practically the same thing here last week.
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They're going fast!
And they looted the truth! (and tried to gang rape Bush).
He's a columnist who takes the best information that exists at the time. As has already been mentioned, he is not a reporter on the scene.
Often the truth only comes out after the dust settles.
I don't think he's a hypocrite for discussing what's now known, especially since his essential point in the previous article was proven by the looting alone. The looting, of course, is verifiable fact.
At least he's willing to change his story when the known facts changed. Unlike, say, Dan Rather.
D
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