There are no words that can sum up the evil visited upon the 12 victims in Paris today, sparked by satirical cartoons lampooning Islam. Those who use violence against innocents to try to prove a point simply lack the intelligence and rational thought to achieve their ends any other way.
And so it is with the these terrorists. They were so offended (on behalf of a supposedly omnipotent and all-powerful being) that they decided to kill the people responsible for publishing a cartoon and anyone who got in their way. The response throughout the day once the news became widespread is yet more evidence that the pen can and will outlast the sword.
This evening a friend of the blog called out CNN The Lead reporter Jake Tapper, on a point about terrorists killing other Muslims in the name of Islam. The following was the last paragraph in a blog post on The Lead's blog about online terrorist chatter regarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370:
"But there's been a very strong push back from some of these jihadist forums that there were Muslims on board, an so taking down an airplane that killed Muslims was at its core an act not supported by Islam," said Jones.
This is a classic bullshit argument by terrorist organizations like Al Qaida, who claim that killing co-religionists goes against Islam and, thus, against their murderous dogma. It is well known that Al Qaida actually murders more Muslims than any other group of people in their terrorist acts, which Nihar called out to Tapper.
A lot of the reaction was "Oh, well, everyone knows the Post is trash" or "Oh, well most of cable news is garbage anyway." I don't necessarily disagree with either of those sentiments, but at the same time they are news outlets and are looked to in times of information demand (the latter certainly more than the former.)
Today's "reporting" has shown why outlets like the New York Times and the major networks are still the king of clean and polished reports for breaking news. While outlets like CNN and AP and Boston.com were reporting that a suspect was in custody and heading to the courthouse, the Times and the major networks held off on reporting this.
Just for contrast, I'll write what was confirmed, and then in bold what was extracted from that by some irresponsible media outlets:
Of course, this led to everyone scrambling to get to the courthouse, amassing outside. Then a bomb threat was relayed to the courthouse, causing a massive evacuation made much more logistically complicated thanks to all of the reporters who were there on false reports of a suspect in custody. It was a microcosm of shoddy journalism complicating legitimate law enforcement activities. A shameful one, at that.
I lump in all of the cable news networks together. If you're a right winger, you watch Fox News. A leftie? MSNBC is where you head. Stuck in an airport? CNN. The one thing all channels have in common is that they are driven by ratings over journalism and are not legitimate sources of good, hard information.
I will take this time to call out the Twitter account @BuzzFeedNews. Tweets like "Police SUV with dark tinted windows just pulled around to the back." or "WCVB: Van back into U.S. Fed. courthouse." are just asinine. Yes, law enforcement vehicles (including tinted SUVs and vans) can be found outside of a federal courthouse, sometimes moving, on any day of the year. To report this as some kind of significant news event is borderline predatory for pageviews and retweets. One thing it cannot be categorized as is news.
A friend of mine made a good point today. Assume that CNN or some other outlet was first in getting the scoop of an arrest. Next week, most people would forget who had it first. But everyone will certainly remember when CNN blasted "SUSPECT ARRESTED" on their website. They'll remember CNN anchors excitedly saying that an arrest has been made in the case. People don't forget that kind of misstep.
So what do we know? Well, for one, CNN learned absolutely nothing from their healthcare misreporting less than a year ago. We learned that for some reason, executives still view CNN as an industry-leader in the breaking news category. We learned that Wolf Blitzer and Jon King should not be on air during breaking news events. Unless you're interested in the relatively mundane traffic patterns outside of the Moakley Courthouse, @BuzzFeedNews probably isn't a good feed to follow. And when someone cites "a source," wait until clearer reports come out, preferable with a named official, before taking something and running with it.
Tonight is the debut of the new CNN show Parker Spitzer, with "rational conservative" political columnist Kathleen Parker and disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. CNN is banking on this show and given the recent NY Mag article "Chasing Fox," they're pretty desperate to gain viewer share at the coveted 8pm time slot.
Just to get biases out of the way, I'm not a huge fan of Spitzer's. Plus his actions have led to our current governor, who's even worse. So in other words Spitzer not only screwed six-diamond hookers, he also screwed New York.
As far as Kathleen Parker goes, I know little about her. I know she's spoken out against Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck in the past, so she could be one of those rare conservatives who approaches the realm of politics cerebrally more than vocally.
Today CNN has an article on high speed rail in the United States. Reading it, one can become very excited at the prospect of riding trains going over 100 mph to your destination in a timely and cheap manner. However, anyone who has had any experience on Amtrak and its infamous inefficiency and high prices knows that the dream of cost-efficient high speed rail in the United States may be just that: a dream.
To begin with, I want to look at a few quotes from the article:
Yes, I am picking on CNN again. I clicked on a story about this mysterious BP oil cap that suddenly arrived on the scene (only 3 months late) and was amused, and a bit saddened, at the news organization's bizarre word choice.
Their lead was, "The verdict Friday: so far, so good. But don't break out the champagne just yet." Champagne? Who the hell said anything about celebrating any facet of this oil spill and the pathetic response to it? Is it great that the cap is on and seemingly working for the time being? Absolutely, but this is one step in an extremely lengthy process. The ramifications from this disaster - economical, ecological, environmental - will extend beyond three decades, possibly more. I don't think anyone will be breaking out the champagne at all.
I know I've been picking on CNN lately, but it's so easy. I got a Breaking News email alert stating that BP was working on yet another soon-to-be failure. Usually I just delete them and move on with my day, but the last clause really caught me (I'm a sucker for the semi-colon). "Oil flows freely into Gulf." That's not breaking news, as oil has been flowing as free as a bird into the Gulf for the last 82 days. What's breaking news is that the geniuses at BP who have discovered how to get at oil miles below the ocean's bottom cannot stop a leak in one of their own pipes a mile below the ocean's surface. Every day that goes by I am further amazed at the utter lack of ability at a $246+ billion company. You think $20 billion is enough to pay for all damages resulting from this confluence of ineptitude? Not even close. What's breaking news is just how clueless everyone involved seems to be.
I happened upon this on CNN last night. I was already a little peeved about the whole Lebron James self-serving press conference thing ("The Decision" - are you kidding me?) and when you pair that with a story about some celebrity who I don't care about's manicure, you're bound to garner my ire. This is why CNN specifically, and 24 hour news networks in general, has lost serious points in the "respect" column.
Ostensibly in an effort to cater to the partisan ideologues that watch 24-hour news networks and provide them with their ratings, CNN hired conservative blogger Erick Erickson in March to contribute to John King's program. On his radio show on Thursday, Erickson said that if a census worker with an American Community Survey form came by his house, he would "pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door." He went on:
"They're not going on my property. They can't do that. They don't have the legal right, and yet they're trying. The servants are becoming the masters. We are working for the government. We are becoming enslaved by the government."
Today CNN is just realizing how embarrassing it is to have Lou Dobbs associated with your name. Dobbs, who has latched onto the whole "birthers" movement like a dog in heat, will simply not let go of the debunked rumor that Obama was not born in the United States and, according to Section II Article 1 of the Constitution, is thus ineligible to be president. While Dobbs states that the only reason he brings up the birthers movement is to be fair (he states that he believes Obama was born in Hawaii), it's like giving equal airtime to the person who says 2+2=5, because it would not be fair to simply say they're "wrong."
Instead I wanted to discuss a cable news network Howard Beale wannabe. While this blog makes a good point about what we should shed light upon, and what we should simply ignore and allow the public ridicule to overtake, my argument is that if we do ignore something like Dobbs' embarrassing "reporting" about Obama's birthplace, it might reach more mainstream markets like, I don't know, CNN or something (oops). Seriously, it's fine if we see folks like Hannity or Beck or Dobbs as the jesters they are; there to make a buck while entertaining folks. It's when we start taking them seriously that we run into trouble.
A lot of folks are saying just ignore Dobbs, which I am wont to do. I've seen his show a few times, but getting through an entire episode is torturous. As Dobbs' ratings continue to drop, CNN might have no choice but to dump him (notice they'll allow him to be a national laughing-stock on company time, but cut into ratings and ad revenue and you get the ax). But the fact that the birthers movement has even made it to a semi-reputable news agency like CNN speaks volumes; no more is it relegated to the Daily Show or Colbert Report or Fox News to be laughed at; it's now "news." In honor of Dobbs, tomorrow's post will be baseless claims that I don't personally believe, but I feel need to be given sufficient airtime, such as the revelation that Dobbs was actually born in Antarctica and illegally entered the United States on the back of a polar bear. Peace.
For those of you lucky enough to have never seen or heard of Lou Dobbs, I commend you. Unfortunately I have seen and heard the things Lou Dobbs says on a regular basis, and his xenophobia is hard to take sometimes. It's common knowledge that Dobbs (who makes millions a year and, previous to his "transformation" into a sensationalist news reporter was an oft-ignored business reporter) fights for the middle class of America and sees globalization as the worst thing in the world (besides illegal immigrants). For example, Dobbs has said that he resents holidays that do not strictly celebrate America and that people who are attached to their homeland in some way (such as Irish folks who celebrate St. Paddy's Day) are splitting America up because they don't celebrate America's commonalities. It's interesting to hear this from Dobbs because he is married to a Mexican-American named Debi Lee Segura de Dobbs. Of course, her last name is from a very old tradition in Spanish speaking countries that involves tracking lineage through last names. Using Dobbs' logic, his own wife is one of the Americans in this country who are attached to their homeland and not spending all of their time celebrating America's commonalities. I'd also be interested to know if the Dobbs household does anything for traditional Mexican holidays such as El Dia del Muerto (which, under Dobbs' logic, would be un-American).
Dobbs also has a history of using inflated numbers when it comes to scaring his viewers into believing that illegal immigration is the product of the devil himself. For instance, he once had a correspondent on his show who said that there were 7,000 cases of leprosy, attributing the large rise in leprosy cases (which turned out to be a false report in the first place) to our "open" borders. Dobbs also has said that illegal aliens make up 1/3 of our federal prison system - another incorrect "fact."
But it is not Dobbs' lack of fact-checking or his xenophobic stance on illegal immigration that spurned this post. It is his recent comments concerning race, particularly Condaleeza Rice's statement that America has a "birth defect" in its history (slavery) and this makes it difficult to discuss race honestly and frankly. She says that the legacy of slavery and its repercussions still reverberate today (which, in my opinion, they do). When Dobbs heard this, he lost it. The irony of his tirade is that his comments prove Rice's point. When he is about to call black politicians who argue what Rice has said "cotton pickers" he is embodying what is wrong with America today and its history:
Now I'm not going to argue about what he said. He clearly said "cotton" and then puckered his mouth up to start with a "p". The only combination I can think of with the word "cotton" and a word starting with the letter "p" is "cotton picker," which, of course, is a derogatory name aimed at black people due to the institution of slavery that this country (indeed, the Constitution) condoned and allowed to thrive.
What is even more interesting is the fact that CNN tried to clean up the transcript of Wolf Blitzer's show that night (another CNN anchor who has made dumb statements in the past). The word "cotton" was nowhere to be found in the transcript, which can be read here. From what I can understand neither Dobbs nor CNN has made a statement regarding his comments. I'll be interested to see how this works out, but my guess is that Dobbs will not be punished or anything like that. His sensationalism that he calls "The Lou Dobbs Show" brings in ratings and money talks, even more than Dobbs does.
