Tag: Media Watch

Human Rights Network Perpetuates Bad “Reportage” of Ryan Skipper’s Murder

Buck Banks

You’d think something called Human Rights Headlines would be more concerned with the truth. I mean the thing quotes Montesquieu at the top of the page: “An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.” Well, on behalf of everyone, let me just say, Thanks, Human Rights Headlines, for the latest injustice perpetrated on the late Ryan Skipper and, by extension, everyone.

Thanks, Human Rights Headlines, for the latest injustice perpetrated on the late Ryan Skipper and, by extension, everyone.

Posted on the site is a “story” “bylined” Janvieve Williams that “reports” the facts of Skipper’s murder and the subsequent arrest of his alleged killers. But Ms. Williams didn’t write the piece. She didn’t interview anyone for it. She merely cobbled together newspaper reports — complete with the lies, smears and distortions Pensito Review has been pointing out in coverage of the murder for weeks — without attributing her sources.

And you wonder why weblobgs don’t get no respect.

Human Rights Headlines just regurgitated the bad reporting that’s been done by the Lakeland Ledger and other outlets in covering this case, compounding the inaccuracies and distortions by lumping them all together on one long rambling document. This headline thing is the work of something called Human Rights Network, which describes itself this way:

Underlying all human rights work in the United States is a commitment to challenge the pernicious belief that the United States is inherently superior to other countries of the world, and that neither the US government nor the US rights movements have anything to gain from the domestic application of human rights. Rather, in the view of a growing number of US activists, the US government should no longer be allowed to shield itself from accountability to human rights norms and the US civil, women’s, worker, immigrant, lgbt, prisoner and other rights movements stand to benefit, perhaps now more than ever, from an end to US impunity in this regard.

Such an avowedly internationalist and multi-lateralist stance has not been common to domestic rights advocacy in the United States since the Cold War. Its current resurgence in US rights work, from the death penalty to economic justice, signals a fundamental shift in the politics of US rights activism.

The resonance of human rights with progressive trends in US rights work ensures its increasing relevance to domestic activists. The movement for human rights in the United States is here and plans to stay.

After reading that, I’m kind of glad they didn’t write a real story about the Skipper murder because they probably would have really screwed it up. I can’t even tell what they supposedly do or stand for.

In the hope that they will remove their inaccurate and distorted piece of copyright infringement from the Web, I’m going to post a comment on the site with a link back to this post and Pensito Review’s other coverage of the Ryan Skipper murder. Maybe then they’ll do the human right thing.

Dogpile Metasearch Engine Pulls Ads Off Coulter Site

Trish

What a relief! I was muy dismayed earlier this week when I found out my favorite metasearch engine, Dogpile, advertised on Ann Coulter’s web site.

If you’re not familiar with a metasearch engine, also known as an aggregator, check it out. Dogpile — and the rest — put your search terms out there on many, many single engines, like the G-site and the Y-site, for examples, and give you the results from all of them, all at once. Plus, there’s a neat little mascot dog that wags its tail while you type in the box. Can’t beat that.

You can see why I was pretty heartbroken about the skank site ads. But before I unbookmarked Dogpile for good, I sent them an email and asked them to pull their ads from Harpy.com. At first, they said they were still mulling it over. I conferred with Jon, who suggested I help them clarify things by asking if they would have so much trouble deciding what to do if Coulter had used the n-word instead of the f-word in a public forum.

Very quickly, I was informed Dogpile had decided to pull its advertising from the Coulter site. Hooray!

The next time you’re trying to find something online, use Dogpile. I wish they had never been on Coulter’s site to begin with, but I applaud their decision to rectify the mistake.

USA Today Founder: I Was Wrong, Bush Is Worst President Ever

Jon Ponder

In his President’s Day commentary, USA Today founder Al Neuharth says that he once disputed the idea the George W. Bush was America’s Worst President Ever — but now he has seen the light:

Millions of people saw through Bush’s bluster from the get-go, while the people who control the media, and thus the message, completely bought into the packaging of Bush as a strong and decisive leader whose only failing was his stubbornness about protecting freedom.

A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying “this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst.”

“She’s wrong,” I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. “It’s very unlikely Bush can crack that list,” I added.

I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top.

Recognizing that we have a problem is a good first step, Al. But shouldn’t your hair be on fire? Our government is in the hands of the most incompetent, dimwitted and dishonest president ever. What are you going to do about it?

Hard reporting has been in short supply recently. What the USA needs today, Al, is the best journalism you can muster. The public needs to know the real reason Bush and Cheney took the country to war in Iraq. We still don’t know who from Enron was involved in writing Cheney’s energy policy in 2001. And — this may seem trivial and personal, but it isn’t — we need to know if Bush has started drinking again. Unlike Pres. Clinton’s sex life, Bush’s ability to cope with the pressures of the presidency are a matter of grave national security concern.

Whispering Campaign Against Iran Grows

Trish

The mainstream media has reached a new low in failing their sole mission to give us information we need to make good decisions. Instead, they are reporting the carefully assembled “facts” about Iran’s involvement in Iraq without questioning — or even naming — the source. Here’s the lead to an ABC story:

“The officer briefed reporters on condition he not be further identified…” Huh?

High-tech roadside bombs that have proved particularly deadly to American soldiers are manufactured in Iran and delivered to Iraq on orders from the “highest levels” of the Iranian government, a senior intelligence officer said Sunday.

The officer, briefing reporters on condition he not be further identified, said that between June 2004 and last week, more than 170 Americans had been killed by the bombs, which the military calls “explosively formed projectiles.”

Those weapons are capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

The officer said American intelligence analysts believe the EFPs are manufactured in Iran and smuggled into Iraq on orders from the top of the Iranian government. He did not elaborate.

Who is this mystery “senior intelligence officer” and why on earth would we accept his information without demanding his identity? What possible reason is there to keep his identity secret? And who has the greater need? Mr. X, to get out his information? Or the press, to reveal it to us? I’d wager their need to put this out is much greater than ours to get it, especially since they are making sure we can’t judge its accuracy.

Have we not learned any lessons about the miserable mistake of letting the Bush administration spoon-feed us their version of the facts, and what happens when the press rolls over and becomes mere transcribers? Can you say, “Here we go again?”

Air America May Have Buyer

Jon Ponder

Reuters:

The bankrupt parent of talk-radio network Air America is close to being bought by a group of investors led by a New York-area family, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing sources.

The French family of Westchester, New York, owner of New York City-area television concern WRNN, is leading a group of investors in a bid to buy the assets of Piquant LLC, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Richard French Sr. has owned WRNN since 1993.

Words to Live by in 2007

Buck Banks

Fab vocab: It’s a new year. We need some new words to deal with it. Advertising Age’s Media Guy, Simon Dumenco, offers some terms for our times.

VIRAL VIDIOT: Anybody who thinks she or he can be the next Lonelygirl15.

GOOGLE EARTH: An animated mapping service from Google. Also: what the planet Earth will be renamed circa 2009 when Google executives look at their cash balance sheet and decide to make an impulse real-estate buy.

HUFFINGTON PEST: Common household pest that’s attracted to warm, bright places, such as computers and TV studios.

WIKI: Hawaiian for “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” See also: user-generated content.

FIREFOXY: What most bloggers aren’t. Sample usage: “Is Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing, like, the only Firefoxy blogger in the world?”

ZUNE: Microsoft’s new music player. Also [slang]: a poseur; a wannabe. Usage: “Dude, you look like such a Zune in that shirt.”

VISTA: Microsoft’s new operating system. Also: a scenic view populated with bugs and security holes.

MASH-UP: When one thing that’s not good enough on its own joins up with another thing that’s not good enough on its own — and they, like, make out and have babies and stuff. Usage: “Zune should think about doing a mash-up with the new Adam Sandler movie.”

MICROSOFT: What Bill Gates feels in his pants when he thinks about Sergey Brin, Larry Page and/or Steve Jobs.

Read the entire list here.

More for the Rest of Us

Buck Banks

This just in from High Times:

Steve-O (Steven Glover) is quitting all drugs, except for pot. “I’m going to make more money, have more sex, become more famous and quit smoking,” the CelebStoner stuntman told The Sun in England where he was born in 1974. “I’m quitting all drugs too. I quit cocaine and I’m off nitrous oxide. So now I’m just a pothead.

The co-star of the Jackass movies and MTV’s Wildboyz was arrested for smuggling pot into Sweden in 2003 as part of an “international drug smuggling skit” the Swedish government didn’t find so funny. He’d swallowed a condom filled with marijuana and hash at the Oslo Airport in Norway en toute to Stockholm. After boasting about the skit to reporters, Swedish police arrested and jailed him for five days.