AP Treason - Murder?
At first this would seem like a trivial news story. It took me some time to realize the significance. Then I remembered seeing real time video of America military vehicles (and American soldiers) being blown up by road side bombs. As I watched, I assumed the video had been supplied by the Islamic Terrorists to the news media for propaganda purposes (this had been done when Reagan was trying to keep Communism out of South America). But now I realize the video was being taken by an employee of the Associated Press.
The fact that Tom Curley is making such strong statements indicates to me that AP is deeply involved in this situation. AP could easily be involved with treason (giving aid and comfort to the enemy) if they knew that Bilal Hussein was getting information from the Islamic Terrorists about where and when the road side bombings were to occur so that he could be in place to video the event. I consider AP and Bilal Hussein committed murder if they failed to inform American military people of the intended attack on American soldiers.
There have been so many things in the past six years where the news media have disgraced themselves that it is incredible. http://narj-clirus.blogspot.com/ The news media all over the world needs to repent of the abuses of freedom of the press and establish a code of ethics to prevent future abuses.
There used to be a phrase, "all the news that is fit to print". News that represents treason and murder is not fit to print no matter what the competitive pressures are. The news media needs to focus on the things Americans have in common instead of the headline grabbing extreme positions that lead to more headline grabbing extreme positions by those who want to grab headlines.
A Code of Ethics for Journalists could go a long way to help journalists prevent treason, murder and domestic extremism.
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AP Chief Slams Case Against Photographer
Nov 24 03:29 PM US/Eastern
By LILY HINDY
Associated Press Writer
U.S. Seeks Criminal Case Against AP Photographer
NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military's plan to seek a criminal case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges or evidence against him makes a mockery of American democratic principles, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday.
"This is a poor example—and not the first of its kind—of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to share with the Iraqi people," Curley said in a column in The Washington Post.
The U.S. military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a complaint against Bilal Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29.
Military officials have alleged that Hussein, 36, had links to terrorist groups but are refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.
Previously, the military suggested an array of possible lines of investigation, including claims that Hussein offered to provide false identification to a sniper seeking to evade U.S.-led forces, that he possessed bomb-making equipment, and that he took photographs that were synchronized with insurgent blasts.
Hussein, a native of Fallujah, was detained in Ramadi on April 12, 2006.
"We believe Bilal's crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even more of a marked man," Curley wrote.
Hussein was part of the AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005.
A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said Saturday that Curley's column reflected a "fundamental misunderstanding of the Iraqi court system as well as the detainee process."
Maj. Bradford Leighton said that Hussein's detention without charge was legal under a United Nations mandate, and explained that the case would proceed differently than it would in the U.S. because the Iraqi system follows different procedures and rules about disclosing evidence.
"It's not like our system," said Leighton. "The evidence is presented to a judge and the judge makes the decision whether the case goes forward."
Leighton said that if the first judge decides there is a strong case, he will send it to a three-judge panel for the trial.
An AP investigation of the case compiled last spring and made public Wednesday concluded that the series of accusations against Hussein do not hold up to scrutiny.
Curley said the military has refused to answer questions from Hussein's attorney, former federal prosecutor Paul Gardephe, since announcing its intentions to seek a case against him. The military would not even share the exact date of the hearing, Curley said.
"How is Gardephe to defend Bilal? This affair makes a mockery of the democratic principles of justice and the rule of law that the United States says it is trying to help Iraq establish," Curley said.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
But the Band Plays On
But the Band Plays On
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010564
"Until Proven Innocent" is a stunning book. It recounts the Duke lacrosse case in fascinating detail and offers, along the way, a damning portrait of the institutions--legal, educational and journalistic--that do so much to shape contemporary American culture. Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair--the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline--was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture's most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America's supposed racial divide.
----------------------------
Could a Code of Conduct for Journalists have prevented the distorted media storyline?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010564
"Until Proven Innocent" is a stunning book. It recounts the Duke lacrosse case in fascinating detail and offers, along the way, a damning portrait of the institutions--legal, educational and journalistic--that do so much to shape contemporary American culture. Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair--the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline--was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture's most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America's supposed racial divide.
----------------------------
Could a Code of Conduct for Journalists have prevented the distorted media storyline?
Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased
Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, November 01, 2007 4:30 PM PT
Journalism: The debate is over. A consensus has been reached. On global warming? No, on how Democrats are favored on television, radio and in the newspapers.
Related Topics: Media & Culture
Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.
Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."
The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.
Breaking it down by candidates, the survey found that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the favorites. "Obama's front page coverage was 70% positive and 9% negative, and Clinton's was similarly 61% positive and 13% negative."
In stories about Republicans, on the other hand, the tone was positive in only a quarter of the stories; in four in 10 it was negative.
The study also discovered that newspaper stories "tended to be focused more on political matters and less on issues and ideas than the media overall. In all, 71% of newspaper stories concentrated on the 'game,' compared with 63% overall."
Television has a similar problem. Only 10% of TV stories were focused on issues, and here, too, Democrats get the better of it.
Reviewing 154 stories on evening network newscasts over the course of 109 weeknights, the survey found that Democrats were presented in a positive light more than twice as often as they were portrayed as negative. Positive tones for Republicans were detected in less than a fifth of stories while a negative tone was twice as common.
The gap between Democrats and Republicans narrows on cable TV, but it's there nonetheless. Stories about Democrats were positive in more than a third of the cases, while Republicans were portrayed favorably in fewer than 29%. Republican led in unfriendly stories 30.4% to 25.5%.
CNN was the most hostile toward Republicans, MSNBC, surprisingly, the most positive. MSNBC was also the most favorable toward Democrats (47.2%), Fox (36.8%) the most critical.
The anti-GOP attitude also lives on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." There, Democrats were approvingly covered more than a third as often as Republicans. Negative coverage of Democrats was a negligible 5.9%. It seemed to be reserved for Republicans, who were subject to one-fifth of the program's disparaging reports.
Even talk radio, generally considered a bastion of conservatism, has been relatively rough on the GOP. On conservative shows, Obama got more favorable treatment (27.8%) than Rudy Giuliani (25%). Sen. John McCain got a 50% favorability rating while Mitt Romney led the three GOP candidates with 66.7%.
The PEG-Shorenstein effort is only the latest to conclude that the mainstream media tilt left. Others include Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter's groundbreaking 1986 book "The Media Elite"; "A Measure of Media Bias," a 2005 paper written by professors from UCLA and the University of Missouri; and Bernard Goldberg's two books, "Bias" and "Arrogance." All underscore the media's leftward leanings.
The media, of course, insist they are careful to keep personal opinions out of their coverage. But the facts tell another story — one that can't be edited or spiked.
---------------------------------------
Over and over again the concept of a Cultural War is proven and the part the news media plays is obvious.
There is a cultural war in America between Christians and Atheists. This war is being fought on the battlefield of politics. The battles are in the voting booth. The prize in the cultural war is the hearts, minds and souls of the children. The Atheistic liberal news media greatly influences both domestic and foreign policy by constantly reporting only bad news about Christians, conservatives and Republicans and only good news about atheists, liberals and democrats. The agenda of the Atheistic liberal news media is to promote extreme environmentalism, socialism, feminism, pornography, abortion, homosexuality and the Atheistic Lifestyle by having democrats in control of government.
The news media has too much power to influence domestic issue, foreign issues and American elections. Freedom of the press is not a freedom to abuse the press.
This problem could be greatly reduced by a mandatory Journalistic Code of Conduct.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, November 01, 2007 4:30 PM PT
Journalism: The debate is over. A consensus has been reached. On global warming? No, on how Democrats are favored on television, radio and in the newspapers.
Related Topics: Media & Culture
Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.
Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."
The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.
Breaking it down by candidates, the survey found that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the favorites. "Obama's front page coverage was 70% positive and 9% negative, and Clinton's was similarly 61% positive and 13% negative."
In stories about Republicans, on the other hand, the tone was positive in only a quarter of the stories; in four in 10 it was negative.
The study also discovered that newspaper stories "tended to be focused more on political matters and less on issues and ideas than the media overall. In all, 71% of newspaper stories concentrated on the 'game,' compared with 63% overall."
Television has a similar problem. Only 10% of TV stories were focused on issues, and here, too, Democrats get the better of it.
Reviewing 154 stories on evening network newscasts over the course of 109 weeknights, the survey found that Democrats were presented in a positive light more than twice as often as they were portrayed as negative. Positive tones for Republicans were detected in less than a fifth of stories while a negative tone was twice as common.
The gap between Democrats and Republicans narrows on cable TV, but it's there nonetheless. Stories about Democrats were positive in more than a third of the cases, while Republicans were portrayed favorably in fewer than 29%. Republican led in unfriendly stories 30.4% to 25.5%.
CNN was the most hostile toward Republicans, MSNBC, surprisingly, the most positive. MSNBC was also the most favorable toward Democrats (47.2%), Fox (36.8%) the most critical.
The anti-GOP attitude also lives on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." There, Democrats were approvingly covered more than a third as often as Republicans. Negative coverage of Democrats was a negligible 5.9%. It seemed to be reserved for Republicans, who were subject to one-fifth of the program's disparaging reports.
Even talk radio, generally considered a bastion of conservatism, has been relatively rough on the GOP. On conservative shows, Obama got more favorable treatment (27.8%) than Rudy Giuliani (25%). Sen. John McCain got a 50% favorability rating while Mitt Romney led the three GOP candidates with 66.7%.
The PEG-Shorenstein effort is only the latest to conclude that the mainstream media tilt left. Others include Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter's groundbreaking 1986 book "The Media Elite"; "A Measure of Media Bias," a 2005 paper written by professors from UCLA and the University of Missouri; and Bernard Goldberg's two books, "Bias" and "Arrogance." All underscore the media's leftward leanings.
The media, of course, insist they are careful to keep personal opinions out of their coverage. But the facts tell another story — one that can't be edited or spiked.
---------------------------------------
Over and over again the concept of a Cultural War is proven and the part the news media plays is obvious.
There is a cultural war in America between Christians and Atheists. This war is being fought on the battlefield of politics. The battles are in the voting booth. The prize in the cultural war is the hearts, minds and souls of the children. The Atheistic liberal news media greatly influences both domestic and foreign policy by constantly reporting only bad news about Christians, conservatives and Republicans and only good news about atheists, liberals and democrats. The agenda of the Atheistic liberal news media is to promote extreme environmentalism, socialism, feminism, pornography, abortion, homosexuality and the Atheistic Lifestyle by having democrats in control of government.
The news media has too much power to influence domestic issue, foreign issues and American elections. Freedom of the press is not a freedom to abuse the press.
This problem could be greatly reduced by a mandatory Journalistic Code of Conduct.
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