Morons Rule The World - Part II

O.J. Simpson is angry with the press for their coverage of Paris Hilton.

(Oh, also, of himself.)

Reporters should be careful: Simpson has killed for less.

Former NYC Mayor: "The New York Times Has Fallen"
Heh.

On the other hand, the New York Times appears to have discovered that Islamists want to kill innocent people. The bad news is, they're still trying to rationalize it. (Via Instapundit)

Intolerance Will Not Be Tolerated
The Press & Sun Bulletin depicts a lovely moment of harmony in the region:

June is gay pride month.

It's also a time to reflect on one's sins, including homosexuality, according to an evangelical leader planning a three-day rally in the Binghamton area, also in June.

Binghamton Pride Coalition's Pride Palooza lands on June 9, the same weekend as the NYPENN Franklin Graham Festival, which could draw as many as 10,000 people to Vestal and Binghamton sites. Franklin Graham, the eldest son of internationally known evangelist Billy Graham, has stated unequivocally that homosexuality is a sin.

Despite drastically diverging opinions, both groups are offering a proverbial olive branch.

How quaint.

"I'd like to invite them (members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community) to come to our meeting. I think everyone, no matter what your preferences, can certainly find hope in the message of the Gospel," said Art Bailey, director of the Graham festival. "People of all persuasions want you to look at everything with an open mind. I think we'd say the same thing."

There's just one problem: Nowhere in the article does the Gay Pride group ever extend their olive branch.

Last year, the annual Pride Palooza event attracted about 80 people to the Parlor City Commons in downtown Binghamton for live music, food and the typical trappings of a small festival. Organizers promote the event as a "celebration of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and allied communities."

Franklin Graham Festival is a three-day event featuring nationally known Christian musical acts and evangelical preaching meant to spread "the message of God's love," Bailey said. The event will likely bring thousands of Christians from varied denominations to Binghamton University's Events Center, the West Gym and the Veterans Memorial Arena in downtown Binghamton.

"Many people who come will have very different views from the man speaking," said Claudia Stallman of Binghamton, who directs the Lesbian and Gay Family Building project. "We're offering an alternative message in terms of the spiritual component. I think there will be plenty of people open to that."

"This is a celebration of diversity," Stallman said of Pride Palooza. "And I am hopeful that there won't be any folks who come here for the Franklin Graham Festival to disrupt in any way our celebration. The LBGT community has no plans to be disruptive in any way of the Franklin Graham Festival."

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that it was one group extending an olive branch, however disingenuous it may be, and the other group saying "we're celebrating diversity, so we hope to avoid contact with this group of people who we consider unacceptably different". I naively expected the quote to be more like "we hope Graham's followers will come down here with open minds and see it's not like they imagine".

I'm not quite sure why this was described as an olive branch, but I'd hope they accidentally edited out the part they were referring to, and that this wasn't it. Maybe they all need to read a little more David Wong.

Of course, I may not feel so harmonious in a few weeks: Last year, I lived in Endicott, and the only consciousness I had of the pride festival was the disco music piped down State Street.

This year, it's in my backyard, and I hate disco. A lot.

Bush Blamed
Apparently, the Associated Press believes that America used to be bound by the Kyoto Treaty, and that President Bush cancelled it all by himself.

It's almost like people who pay for newspaper subscriptions should file a class action lawsuit, or something.

Time Magazine Thinks We're Stupid
Ladies and gentlemen, we have hit a new low.

Time's Person of the Year: You

The cover has a foil mirror on it.

No, really.

The Cobra Strikes
Woefully manless NYT columnist Maureen Dowd interviews John Stewart and Steven Colbert, and is shocked at what she discovers: She isn't as important as she thinks she is.

I thought Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert might be a little nervous to meet with me. I was the real news commentator, after all, and they were the mock. They threw spitballs at presidents; I interviewed presidents before throwing spitballs at them. I had crisscrossed the globe to cover news stories, while these guys just put on dark suits and threw up imported backgrounds on a green screen. No doubt they would try to impress me with some weighty discussion about world affairs or the midterm elections. But when I walked into Colbert's office at The Colbert Report, just off Tenth Avenue in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, the two barely acknowledged me. Stewart, rumpled in a gray tee over a long-sleeved shirt, khaki cargo pants, black Timberland boots and a Mets cap, was sprawled in a chair with takeout coffee. Colbert, neat in a long-sleeved navy shirt, blue pants and wire-rimmed glasses, was sitting up straight next to him, holding a paper plate of fruit. They were already deep in a weighty discussion....At last, they turn their attention to me. Their gazes are not, as I'd expected, full of respect. They regard with amused disdain the old-fashioned, phone-book-size Radio Shack tape recorder I'd put on the floor between them.

Apparently, Dowd hasn't been to a shopping mall since 1987. Dowd also imagines that the reason news parodies are popular is because the masses now believe that the whole world has become a giant lie, thanks to George W. Bush!

DOWD: Your shows are like mirrors within mirrors, using a cycle of fakery to get to the truth. You've tapped into a sense in society that nothing, from reality shows to Bushworld, is real anymore. Do you guys ever get confused by your hall of mirrors?

STEWART: I didn't know we were going to have to be high to do this interview.

Things we have learned: Dowd is unaware that news satire has been popular for decades now, and that Stewart's show has been around longer than Bush. Yet, still greater shocks are in store for the reality-impaired:

DOWD: Your show has thrived during the Bush administration. Will you miss it?

STEWART: I remember people used to say, "What are you gonna do when Clinton leaves?"...I'd much prefer these guys to leave than to have to continue to make Lord Vader jokes about Cheney. I have great faith in institutional absurdity.

DOWD: But wouldn't, say, a President Obama be harder to make fun of than these guys?

STEWART: Are you kidding?

Why, no, she's not, John, and how dare you defame her infallible Obama!

On the other hand, Tim Blair notes that the editor of the New York Post understands what makes news sell: People wanting to read it.

"One of the things I've done at the Post is constantly ask everybody to listen to the market, to listen to their readers," Allan says. "It's a different approach than you generally see here in the US. Too many editors and too many journalists here feel that they have been 'chosen', that their view of the news and their opinions are what the readers should have. My approach is completely different. I try to listen to the readers and hear what they want from us. Then I work hard to give it to them."

Allan says humour is the classic example. "We say a feeling of wellbeing and happiness is a good thing, so we work hard to make people have a laugh everyday," he says. “But you go through the papers in this country and it's amazing just how absolutely humourless they are.

"Humour doesn't mean you can't be serious about news and politics and crime and everything else. But they have a problem with it because of this arrogant notion that it may make them look less important to their readers. The price of this arrogance is that folks are turning off. And worse still, the editors are then turning around and blaming the internet. What they should be doing is working harder to produce newspapers that people actually want to consume and enjoy and have fun with."

If only Maureen Dowd were fun.

A Degree In Journalislam
Do you experience abject terror at the thought of incurring the wrath of angry mobs? Is it sufficient to cause you to override your core beliefs about human liberty and free expression? Then a job at a British news outlet may be for you!

The Daily Star last night pulled a page that mocked Muslim law by turning the tabloid into the "Daily Fatwa" following a newsroom revolt.

Management acted after the Daily Star's National Union of Journalists' chapel held a stop work meeting that produced a resolution condemning the page.

The page included a "Page 3 burqa babes special" showing a woman in a niqab, as part of a feature billed as "How your favourite paper would look under Muslim law".

"The chapel fears that this editorial content poses a very serious risk of violent and dangerous reprisals from religious fanatics who may take offence at these articles. This may place the staff in great jeopardy. This chapel urges the management to remove the content immediately."

Alternately, if only they weren't British, the staff could carry guns. Meanwhile, it appears that the BBC realizes they are biased.

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

Well, duh.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.'

Admitting you have a problem is the first step.

In one of a series of discussions, executives were asked to rule on how they would react if the controversial comedian Sacha Baron Cohen - known for his offensive characters Ali G and Borat - was a guest on the programme Room 101.

On the show, celebrities are invited to throw their pet hates into a dustbin and it was imagined that Baron Cohen chose some kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a Bible and the Koran.

Nearly everyone at the summit, including the show's actual producer and the BBC's head of drama, Alan Yentob, agreed they could all be thrown into the bin, except the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

Holy freaking crap.

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive', about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'

Randall also told how he once wore Union Jack cufflinks to work but was rebuked with: 'You can't do that, that's like the National Front!'

The man was accused of being a neo-fascist for wearing his own country's flag?

Quoting a George Orwell observation, Randall said that the BBC was full of intellectuals who 'would rather steal from a poor box than stand to attention during God Save The King'.

There was another heated debate when the summit discussed whether the BBC was too sensitive about criticising black families for failing to take responsibility for their children.

Head of news Helen Boaden disclosed that a Radio 4 programme which blamed black youths at a young offenders' institution for bullying white inmates faced the axe until she stepped in.

But Ms Fitzpatrick, who has said that the BBC should not use white reporters in non-white countries, argued it had a duty to 'contextualise' why black youngsters behaved in such a way.

Andrew Marr told The Mail on Sunday last night: 'The BBC must always try to reflect Britain, which is mostly a provincial, middle-of-the-road country. Britain is not a mirror image of the BBC or the people who work for it.'

If everybody knows it, why are they all going along with it?

Congressman's Stomach "Like A Bowl Full Of Jelly"
Sorry about the lack of posting this week, kind of a strange week, but...

Infuriated by the apparent failure of a media feeding frenzy to bring down Dennis Hastert, the Associated Press's Laurie Kellman seems to have resorted to calling him a "fatty fat-fat".

A heavyweight in terms of both girth and political power...

So when the beefy, affable speaker lumbered to the microphones...

I can't help but think of how that would turn out if it were a male reporter writing about a female legislator.

Willing Tools
LGF notes: Reuters happily runs another bogus and misleading photograph.


Photo insufficiently dramatic? Just add some more drama in Photoshop: Extra buildings, clone some more smoke...

Here's the likely original. This is absurd, and the photographer to whom the fake photograph is credited is the same man, Adnan Hajj, to whom the "Green Helmet Man" photos at Qana were credited. The question is: Who's responsible for the Photoshoppery, for knowingly letting it get onto the wire, and will they be fired?

Yet Jefferson Morley, coincidentally on vacation for a month from his Washington Post blog after being thoroughly trashed by the blogosphere, was willing to act shocked at allegations that major media photographers are "willing tools" of Hezbollah and other Islamists.

Brave Sir Robin
Jefferson Morley, who was yesterday heckled savagely on this blog for his absurd and outright false post at his spot on the Washington Post's site about the Qana bombing (earning himself an Editor's Note clarifying the alleged death toll, oddly placed on a different URL from the original post so that people following links to it wouldn't see the correction or comments posted after the correction), today announces he's going on an all-month vacation.

That's quite a trip. I hope he enjoys himself.

Heh. This guy's such an easy target it could cause bloggers to generate a Smug Storm.

Safety Ensured
A head-scratching lead from The Daily Telegraph:

In these violent times, Um Ahmed takes steps to ensure her safety, strapping on a suicide belt before going to bed at night.

How self-defensive of her.

"I'm here for the interview."
This is roughly how much caution goes into your typical news report:

The BBC has revealed that a bewildered man it interviewed live on TV in the mistaken belief he was the editor of a technology website was, quite literally, "the wrong Guy."

He was Guy Goma, a graduate from central Africa, who had gone to the BBC's News 24 studios for a job interview.

Goma sat down in the BBC reception and waited to be called for the interview. A producer greeted him, led him to a studio, seated him on a stool and clipped a microphone to his lapel.

A business presenter then introduced the clearly startled Goma as the editor of a technology website and asked if he was surprised by computer company Apple's victory in a trademark dispute with The Beatles' Apple Corp.

He gamely answered [though English is not his first language], and grappled with two more questions about music downloading, before the flustered presenter thanked him and moved on.

It emerged only later that he was the wrong Guy, and that the producer mistook him for Guy Kewney, the real technology website editor.

Kewney, who watched the interview with astonishment at reception, said the mix-up was hard to explain because BBC staff had seen his picture in advance. Kewney is white and Goma is black.

The BBC has yet to say whether Goma got the job he applied for, as a data support cleanser.

I have to say, that's pretty much a job interview nightmare right there, like the story about the guy who goes into surgery and has the wrong hip replaced.

Ought There To Be A Law?
If there's one thing you take away from this blog, be it that the media has no clue what they're talking about:

One day after the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsiblity gave up trying to investigate the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, USA Today fronted a story about how the government is amassing billions of phone call records made by tens of millions of Americans.

If there are appopriate checks and balances in place to ensure that the program and its cousins are being run legally, they are not nearly as apparent as they need to be.

The feds believe that creating and maintaining the massive data base -- without warrants issued to telephone customers or to the companies themselves -- will help them track patterns in calling behavior by terrorists within the United States...

Well, yeah. Bear with me here, because this entire "scandal" is self-debunking:

All we know is that last year, the White House denied that any such warrantless intra-U.S. spying was going on at all....

Wait for it...

Meanwhile, how about those telephone companies -- AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon were the ones mentioned by USA Today -- that cooperate with the NSA in its domestic spying? Think they have some explaining to do as to why they have entered into contracts to provide the information? Think it's interesting that Qwest has reportedly refused to go along with the program? That tells me that there is no law that requires companies to provide such material to the government without even the formality of a warrant. So, why would those other companies so willingly give up their customers' privacy rights?

Why, yes, that's incredibly interesting, because anyone who applies "logic" would realize that there is no law forbidding people from voluntarily turning over information to law enforcement. In fact, it's only alleged that three companies agreed to cooperate. Generally speaking, you don't need a warrant to search somebody's house if they invite you to do so (nor to ask for their permission), and you don't need a warrant to view telephone records if the telephone company is happy to cooperate. The purpose of a warrant is to resolve situations where they won't give permission.

Even if a warrant were required, this is comparable to, for example, going to a shipping company and asking to see the receipts for parcels shipped on a certain day: While it may provide personal information about who shipped what to whom, there's nothing in law that requires those people to be notified of the search, because the information and property belong to the shipping company, and are maintained according to the contract established with the customer. Same goes for phone companies.

Same goes for everybody, in fact: I read an article many years ago about the software that Paypal runs on their servers on behalf of the FBI. (I can't find the original article, but the software had some cryptic name obviously assigned by hardcore geeks.) When the FBI feels that they need to check something, an agent goes down to their offices, enters the secure area, and sits down at the terminal used for this process. It's much smoother if Paypal actively cooperates than if they passively cooperate, forcing the FBI to get warrants or, worse yet, discriminating between which requests they cooperate with, thus potentially raising liability issues. Per their privacy policy:

We disclose information that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity, or to conduct investigations of violations of our User Agreement.

Anybody who's surprised by this has really been living under a rock: It's basically the information on your phone bill, hardly comparable to eavesdropping, and the media rants on that the story is "seismic" and a "bombshell", even though such things have been reported many times before. They aren't concerned about privacy, just about raising hysteria. This exact scenario appears to have been reported in the New York Times back in December, widely repeated by the media, and noone cared, so they're trying again.

Anybody who has been paying attention knows that companies are generally only obligated to keep your information exactly as private as they promised to in a written agreement. I used to do skiptracing investigations for a living, and it's just not Mission: Impossible to find out what sort of information a company has on file about someone. By the time you've found a guy who fell off the face of the Earth because he's laid up in Walter Reed from a landmine accident in Afghanistan and the guy who got arrested for cocaine after his scam "spray-on siding" company folded then jumped bail for Mississippi, or my favorite, the guy who was wanted by the FBI but we found him sitting in a bar in Denver, you are absolutely staggered by the amount of personal information available to any bozo with a working telephone.

Personally, I think the program is an absurd project, and people should be outraged, but not that the government asks people for information (although, it's a trend that needs reversing), rather that virtually any yahoo can get it if they manage to get the right guy on the phone at (apparently) AT&T, Verizon, or BellSouth. Of course, in the age of VoIP and competing internet providers, you don't particularly have to do business with anybody who won't promise to refuse such voluntary cooperation. If there aren't viable options for VoIP in that respect now, there will be, just like those that popped up in the webhosting business.

Gumbel's Bumble
One time, many years ago, I called the NBC operations office on a dare and asked them to fire Bryant Gumbel. When the man on the other end matter-of-factly asked me why I felt that way, for lack of a better explanation, I advised him that "he's kind of an idiot". At the time, it was just a dopey teenage prank, but now I realize that I can see into the future.

The former NBC and CBS morning news host concluded [his HBO show] by telling viewers that as for the Winter Olympic games, "count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em."

He condescendingly suggested viewers "try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

Wow. The Winter Olympics, Olympians, black people, NBC, Republicans, non-black athletes... Gumbel should probably apologize to everybody on Earth.

Also, I'd like to point out that if they'd stopped his career when I advised them to do so, NBC wouldn't have him trashing their programming on HBO now.

Yeah. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, "operations guy".

Ghouls Beyond Moral Repair
It's late, so this probably won't make sense when I wake up, but let me start off with a simple premise: When somebody accidentally shoots their longtime friend in the neck, it isn't a humorous moment.

Here's another simple premise: When somebody accidentally shoots their longtime friend in the neck, their longtime friend has a far greater and far more immediate crisis than they do, and that crisis gets priority.

That's why the media's frenzy over a rather typical hunting accident is so amazing. Indeed, many of the people fomenting this obsessive binge are the same people who have made careers of fomenting unfounded public terror of firearms, of treating all gun use as some kind of crime against humanity, yet when it's Dick Cheney, they can barely contain their glee. (The link is to the image of allegedly serious Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank appearing on MSNBC dressed in his impression of a hunting outfit as a little joke.)

Hunting accidents, like car accidents, occur when one or both parties mess up and bungle a principle of safety. Shit, unfortunately, happens, and it's a lesson in why those principles are taken so seriously, but Whittington is a private citizen, and you'd think that the guy could recover in peace and that Cheney could go visit his friend without the press speculating on his strategy and political motivations for doing so, like in this insane exchange:

MATTHEWS: Doesn't he have a special responsibility as someone in line to be President and Vice President of the United States to let people know that something this serious happened this Saturday?

SIMPSON: Nothing happened to the Vice President, so what did the people of America need to know? Nothing happened to the Vice President, nothing.

MATTHEWS: But he was the shooter in an accident that shot a guy.

Yeah, he was. If Governor Blagojevich, to use somebody readers here are familiar with, was the driver in a typical car accident that injured his daughter, that'd be a family situation, and if the media treated it the way they're treating this, I don't think anyone would hesitate to label them monsters. (In fact, given media handling of this incident, I wouldn't blame anybody for abolishing all media presence for the duration in such a case.) Dick Cheney has a hunting accident while he's out with his pal, that's certainly something that should be made known, but there's no "special responsibility" to issue some kind of emergency statement.

Serious journalism, in theory, shouldn't resemble Access Hollywood. An exacerbating factor that made it an issue of public significance would change the scenario greatly, but the simple fact of an accident alone just isn't the kind of thing that calls for in-depth coverage. That's the real issue here, and it's hardly a new one: The media isn't upset that Cheney had a hunting accident. The media isn't upset because they have reason to believe there's something fishy going on. The media is simply upset that they feel left out of an opportunity to invade and exploit someone else's personal crisis to which they feel they have some kind of claim, and since it's someone they don't like, they're unloading about it. It's perverse.

On the other hand, to seperate the ethical from the practical, the lesson here is that you can never lose by underestimating the mainstream media. It's sad, but the level of much of the media is the level of the beasts of the field, and it's been to the ongoing detriment of the Bush administration they treat the media as though they should be expected to get their facts straight then report them in a responsible, reasoned, and rational manner. (Again, ethical versus practical: We should expect it for ethical purposes, but in reality, we know it isn't going to happen.)

The media's indignation at their not being made a priority in a story which has absolutely zero significance to the lives of their readers and viewers, however, is idiotic. Perhaps from now on, I should alert CNN to all my personal incidents, take some file footage, just in case they might feel that they have a right to know and an obligation to inform the people that I slipped and fell on the ice the other day. I could've been killed.

Update: Ghouls.

Witch Hunt
The media's insane quest to find any non-scandal with which to persecute President Bush continues unabated:

The White House's site uses what's known as a Web bug - a tiny graphic image that's virtually invisible - to anonymously keep track of the number and time of visits. The bug is sent by a server maintained by an outside contractor, WebTrends Inc., and lets the traffic-analysis company know that another person has visited a specific page on the site.

Web bugs themselves are not prohibited. However, under a directive from the White House's Office of Management and Budget, they are largely banned at government sites when linked to cookies, which are data files that let a site track Web visitors.

Cookies are not generated simply by visiting the White House site. Rather, WebTrends cookies are sometimes created when visiting other WebTrends clients. An analysis by security researcher Richard M. Smith shows such preexisting cookies have then been read when users visit the White House site.

The discovery and subsequent inquiries by The Associated Press prompted the White House to investigate. David Almacy, the White House's Internet director, said tests conducted since Thursday show that data from the cookie and the bug are not mixed - and thus the 2003 guidelines weren't violated.

Smith said the White House and WebTrends could have avoided any appearance of a problem by simply renaming the server used at WebTrends.

Uh, so, the White House's site has a traffic counter, just like this site and every other site in the world. One can see why the Associated Press felt this had to be looked into: It's obviously a situation of comparable importance to Cheney's use of the electrical outlets on his own plane, the contents of Bush's iPod and what Cheney wears to memorials.

Good God, what is with these people? (Via The Corner)

You can get your own evil invisible traffic analysis counter just like the one the White House uses for your website, free at Statcounter.com.

Reporters: "Our personal lives are unbelievably important."
It's the latest non-scandal to be picked up by the media.

After a four-day overseas trip that took him to four countries in the Middle East, Vice President Dick Cheney really wanted to get his iPod charged for that long return flight to Washington.

Seriously: ABC News thought this was worth publishing. Why?

Since it is his plane, the vice president's iPod took priority and was plugged into one of the only working power outlets on Air Force Two, frustrating reporters who were trying to file stories.

Tomorrow, CNN's Wolf Blitzer devotes an entire segment of The Situation Room to recounting the harrowing story of a New York Times columnist who went without breakfast because nobody told him his favorite diner would be closed until 9 o'clock.

CNN: Where They All Have To Wear Helmets
Are you a French Muslim from somewhere in North Africa? CNN is looking out for your political correctness!

Hard to say because it's been 11 days since two African-American teenagers were killed, electrocuted during a police chase, which prompted all of this.

African-American? Good God. Aside from the obvious:

#1: Did they even know if they were black or Arab when they said that?

#2: Might it have been worthwhile for Lin to point out that there was some disagreement about whether there was actually a police chase?

Sunburned, Overweight Florida Tourist Still In Denial
New CBS News president Sean McManus doesn't think CBS News is biased.

At a Tuesday meeting with CBS News staff, new CBS News President Sean McManus asserted that the people of CBS News "do a darned good job at" shutting out their political opinions and so "I don't see" any liberal bias in CBS News coverage. Vaughn Ververs recounted in a Tuesday evening posting for the "Public Eye" blog on CBSNews,com: "Asked if he feels the need to address perceptions that CBS has a left-wing bias, McManus said no, adding, 'it's very difficult for any reporter or producer to completely and totally shut out his political opinions, but what I've seen at CBS News, people do a darned good job at doing that. I guess if I saw that creeping into our coverage I would have to address it, but I don't see that in our coverage, I think we have been falsely accused of that at times.'"

Apparently, McManus missed CBS News' hilarious Election Night 2004 coverage, as an increasingly deranged Dan Rather insisted that Ohio wasn't lost, that what mattered was "the strongest image of who won", credited himself for holding up the official election results ("You feel it, you can feel it, you can almost touch it, you're right there, then some overpaid television anchor can come up and say 'You know what? This state may not be going your way after all'.") and accused Ed Bradley of "agreeing with Karl Rove" when he dared to suggest that the numbers showed Kerry had inevitably lost, arguing that "if a chicken has wings, that doesn't mean it can fly" while Bradley actually put his hand over his face, ashamed to be a part of this.

Meanwhile, Mary Mapes has published her book, "I Used To Work In TV" and, well, hey, she's not bitter.

The Freepers and their lockstep like-minded fellow travelers moved as a group, like a school of sharks sweeping toward an unaware and unarmed victim.

CBS was like some sunburned, overweight Florida tourist with a cut foot, floundering and flapping in the water alone in the surf.

The Freepers swarmed CBS not because it was right or fair but because they could.

On Web sites such as Powerline, INDC Journal, Allahpundit, and Spacetownusa, the bravehearts of the blogging world worked anonymously in what appeared to be huge numbers, in unison, to destroy the Bush-Guard story, to uphold one another's wild and hateful claims, to outshout, outargue, and outblog anyone who dared to disagree.

And on their Web sites there is no disagreement. They hate in unison, they speak with one angry voice, they each make themselves bigger by staying as close together as possible.

Tim Blair refutes her insanity:

The woman's delusions are extraordinary; CBS is able to "swarm" practically every household in the US, but websites find obvious fault with a story and suddenly CBS is some kind of Dickensian orphan boy brutalised by Big Media tyrants posting one-liners from their PCs. Get a grip, Mapes!...as INDC Journal points out: "Neither Powerline, nor Spacetown, nor INDC Journal worked anonymously during the scandal."

Read the whole thing. Including comments.

All The News That's Fit To Quash
Jeff Jacoby wonders why the media prioritizes as it does:

The announcement on Oct. 25 that the first genuinely democratic national charter in Arab history had been approved by 79 percent of Iraqis was a major piece of good news. It confirmed the courage of Iraq's people and their hunger for freedom and decent governance. It advanced the US campaign to democratize a country that for 25 years had been misruled by a mass-murdering sociopath. It underscored the decision by Iraq's Sunnis, who had boycotted the parliamentary elections in January, to pursue their goals through ballots, not bullets. And it dealt a humiliating blow to the bombers and beheaders -- to the likes of Islamist butcher Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who earlier this year declared ''a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy" and threatened to kill anyone who took part in the elections....

But that isn't how the mainstream media saw it.

Consider The Washington Post. On the morning after the results of the Iraqi referendum were announced, the Post's front page was dominated by a photograph, stretched across four columns, of three daughters at the funeral of their father, Lieutenant Colonel Leon James II, who had died from injuries suffered during a Sept. 26 bombing in Baghdad. Two accompanying stories, both above the fold, were headlined ''Military Has Lost 2,000 in Iraq" and ''Bigger, Stronger, Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of US Deaths." A nearby graphic -- ''The Toll" -- divided the 2,000 deaths by type of military service -- active duty, National Guard, and Reserves.

From Page 1, the stories jumped to a two-page spread inside, where they were illustrated with more photographs, a series of drawings depicting roadside attacks, and a large US map showing where each fallen soldier was from. On a third inside page, meanwhile, another story was headlined ''2,000th Death Marked by Silence and a Vow." It began: ''Washington marked the 2,000th American fatality of the Iraq war with a moment of silence in the Senate, the reading of the names of the fallen from the House floor, new protests, and a solemn vow from President Bush not to 'rest or tire until the war on terror is won.' " Two photos appeared alongside, one of Bush and another of antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan. And to give the body count a local focus, there was yet another story (''War's Toll Leaves Baltimore in Mourning") plus four pictures of troops killed in Iraq.

The Post didn't ignore the Iraqi election results. A story appeared on Page A13 (''Sunnis Failed to Defeat Iraq Constitution"), along with a map breaking down the vote by province. But like other leading newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times, it devoted vastly more attention to the 2,000-death ''milestone," a statistic with no unique significance apart from the fact that it ends in round numbers.

Except, of course, for how incredibly ridiculously tiny of a number it is. If you didn't read blogs, you might've missed the Constitutional vote entirely.

My personal favorite was the NYT's clumsy, dragged out headline: "2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, a Grim Mark". Defenders of the MSM's handling of the war often say that they believe the media has a responsibility to tell us "the whole story". So why aren't they outraged?

Update: What Marine Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr wrote in his letter to his girlfriend, found after he was killed in action:

Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.

What the New York Times quoted:

Sifting through Corporal Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine's girlfriend. "I kind of predicted this," Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. "A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."

Good thing they're out there reporting The Whole Story (TM). Scum. More despicable selective quoting stunts from the NYT at the link.

One thing should be obvious - you can't trust anything you read in the New York Times....

With that in mind, this email from a soldier addressing the NY Times reprinted at Michelle's site offers damn good advice:

Should I die in Iraq, on this, my third tour, my wife will have in her possesion, a letter from me to be released to the press, should some slimy dirtbag like you try to make it look like I served in anything other than an honorable manner.

Given the media's general filth, that'd be good advice for just about anyone, military or civilian. Apparently, the only way you'll get a correction is if you're alive to sue them. The old rule about documenting everything is still good, too: On the off chance you ever have to clear your name against some pencil-necked greaseball and it's a "he said/she said" situation, a good journal of your actions can be the evidence that tips the scale.