Point me to the outrage

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
Good to see your "gives a ****" is consistent....

What exactly do you want me to say in light of the investigation being launched by Powell?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Re: Point me to the outrage

Originally posted by GePap
Where was the poly thread about this conservative commentator that got paid $250,000 by the Department of Education to speak for No Child Left Behind? Anyone?

I mean, with all the salivating we had from the right about CBS, one would think the keepers of "journalistic integrity" would have loudly jumped out to denounce such a grievous act, like the Government paying commentators with taxpayer dollars to shill for their own policies...

So, where was the thread?

Typical lefty response. Expecting conservatives to do all the work for the feckless lazy lefties.

I'm glad you finally rose to the challenge. (Likewise I finally rose to the appearance of a response)

Now that you have finally brought this travesty to life, Boo to Armstrong and more importantly to the crooks in the Department of Education

Happy?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

However speaking of outrage, and outrageous behavoir of the press. Why has there been no degree of outrage over Sarah Boxers NYT article where in she outs possible/potential CIA agents in Iraq when the whole establishment wanted the Bush admins head on a platter for outing Wilson's desk jockey wife.

Whose side are they on?

• January 18, 2005 | 5:04 PM ET

I was going to write a piece on media ethics, involving both the story that Armstrong Williams took money from the federal government to support its education policy and the not-really-comparable story that the Howard Dean campaign hired important lefty bloggers in the hopes of getting good blog-press. But you'll have to read this column and this blog post for more on what I think about Armstrong Williams, and this blog post for the skinny on the Dean story.

That's because the breach of media ethics that has me really exercised today happened not at a blog, or on talk radio, but at The New York Times. It involves this article by Sarah Boxer on the pro-American Iraqi blog Iraq the Model, and it features Ms. Boxer repeating speculation that the bloggers in question -- Iraqis whom she names -- are really CIA plants. This has some more respectable journalists upset.

Jeff Jarvis is deeply critical:

Sarah Boxer's story on IraqTheModel in today's New York Times Arts section is irresponsible, sloppy, lazy, inaccurate, incomplete, exploitive, biased, and -- worst of all -- dangerous, putting the lives of its subjects at risk.
...
So here is a reporter from The New York Times -- let's repeat that, The New York Times -- speculating in print on whether an Iraqi citizen, whose only apparent weirdness and sin in her eyes is (a) publishing and (b) supporting America, is a CIA or Defense Department plant or an American.

Ms. Boxer, don't you think you could be putting the life of that person at risk with that kind of speculation? In your own story, you quote Ali -- one of the three blogging brothers who started IraqTheModel -- saying that "here some people would kill you for just writing to an American." And yet you go so much farther -- blithely, glibly speculating about this same man working for the CIA or the DoD -- to sex up your lead and get your story atop the front of the Arts section (I'm in the biz, Boxer, I know how the game is played).

How dare you? Have you no sense of responsibility? Have you no shame?

Apparently not. Ed Cone observes:

Just in time for the conference on blogging, journalism, and credibility, a not-very-credible piece of journalism about blogging from the New York Times.
...
The credibility of the Iraqi bloggers -- of any bloggers -- is a reasonble subject for journalism. The Times could have written a credible article on this subject. But it didn't. Why not?

Why not, indeed? Is the Times guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy, by putting the lives of pro-democracy and pro-American bloggers at risk? Some soldiers in Iraq are charging the media with that sort of thing. I'm reluctant to level charges of treason, though, as I subscribe to a higher standard of proof than the New York Times. I think the real problem is that too many people are stuck in the 1960s. That's a point that Michael Gove makes in a different Times, the Times of London, today:

There is a particular point at which knowledge appears to end and a huge black hole begins. It seems to occur somewhere in the 1960s.

The specific event beyond which most commentators now find it difficult to see is the Vietnam War.

It has become the dominant reference point for discussion of any current military campaign. The war to liberate Afghanistan had barely begun before sceptics were suggesting that a "Vietnam-style quagmire" loomed. And from the moment plans were laid to topple Saddam's regime, cynics were certain that the Iraq war would lead, if not to Apocalypse Now, then to the quagmire to end all quagmires. . . .

The demand that we should learn from history makes sense. But, sadly, none of the comparisons so far drawn with Vietnam display a full sense of the nature of that conflict, or the one we face now.

One of the popular media myths in Vietnam was that there were no good guys on our side. The communists were authentic; our guys were all crooks and dupes. That assumption seems to have carried over here, as the only evidence Ms. Boxer seems to be able to muster for claims that the Iraqi bloggers are bogus is that they are pro-American -- and at the conclusion of her article, she makes clear that criticism of the Bush Administration gets automatic credibility as "genuine." (What must it be like to think so little of your country that you assume all praise of it is bogus? It must be... like working for the New York Times!)

At the moment, the New York Times is in court, demanding constitutional protection for its sources. If they're exposed, it fears, they may suffer consequences that will make others less likely to come forward in the future. That, we're told, would be bad for America.

But the New York Times has no compunctions about putting the lives of pro-American and pro-democracy Iraqis at risk with baseless speculation even though the consequences they face are far worse than those that the Times' leakers have to fear. It seems to me that doing so is far worse for America.

When journalists ask me whether bloggers can live up to the ethical standards of Big Media, my response is: "How hard can that be?" Not very hard, judging by the Times' latest.

Write a letter to Glenn Reynolds

Slate

[DinoDoc]

I predict a from GePap.

[chequita guevara]

Wow, what a bad article. Let's see, comparing a journalist getting secretly paid $250,000 of our money to hawk the Administration's policy to two bloggers who either shut down their website or made a declaration about the fact they they were working for the Dean campaign. Oh, and comparing the government deliberating outing a CIA agent as punishment for someone pointing out the Administration lied to a reporter doing investigation (or speculation) on her own.

What ever happened to the conservatives opposing the government doing what it's okay for private citizens doing?

And now, having read the original article I can see the Slate article is total BS.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

What???? Certainly his gives a f$ck is now again working after his initial OP.

[DinoDoc]

GePap is kind of a hypocrite when it comes to these things.

[chequita guevara]

And where did the real danger to these men come from? Well, from one of the blogger's own mouths.

His views took a sharp turn when his two brothers met with the president. There wasn't supposed to be any press coverage about their trip to the United States, he said. But The Washington Post wrote about the meeting, and the Arabic press ended up translating the story, which, Ali felt, put his family in real danger.

So it wasn't the NYT but the Administration turning this into a photo op, that put those men in danger. I love how conservatives take something and turn it into its opposite. This whole article is nothing more than an attack on Freedom of the Press and part and parcel of the whole conservatives arguing that liberal = traitor BS.

Why do you conservatives so hate the principles upon which this country was founded?

[DinoDoc]

Ogie is a Libertarian IIRC

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
GePap is kind of a hypocrite when it comes to these things.

No, I know when something is stupid, versus CRIMINAL.

What CBS was stupid. It was not even close to criminal.

What the administration did along with Armstrong- that may be criminal.

The difference is clear, obvious, and important. But I guess that kind of simple differences get lost once you cross into Dixie.

Oh,a nd good to see Che already handle ogie's bull.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
And where did the real danger to these men come from? Well, from one of the blogger's own mouths.

His views took a sharp turn when his two brothers met with the president. There wasn't supposed to be any press coverage about their trip to the United States, he said. But The Washington Post wrote about the meeting, and the Arabic press ended up translating the story, which, Ali felt, put his family in real danger.

So it wasn't the NYT but the Administration turning this into a photo op, that put those men in danger. I love how conservatives take something and turn it into its opposite. This whole article is nothing more than an attack on Freedom of the Press and part and parcel of the whole conservatives arguing that liberal = traitor BS.

Why do you conservatives so hate the principles upon which this country was founded?

I call complete and total BS. Thre is a significant difference between a voluntary meeting of the President and being involuntaryily libeled as a CIA agent. This yellow journalism escalated whatever danger these men may have self inclficted on themselves. Trash journalism at its finest, without the slightest bit of evidenciary proof being offfered to substantiate the inuendo. Glad however that you feel the need to defend them.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by GePap


What CBS was stupid. It was not even close to criminal.

Collusionof Mapes with Kerry campaign borders on criminal. Thankfully the whitewash that was an investigation glossed over any pretense of real investigation as it didn't even dare to state the obvious political bias underlying the Mapes/Rather 5 year obsession.
.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
I call complete and total BS.

I see you still haven't bothered to read the original article then. Too bad, otherwise you say things that don't appear in the article, instead of just aping the Slate article. You might want to do that to keep yourself from looking like a complete idiot, which I know you aren't.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I read the entire article 3 times and still see the implied slime of Boxers article on the three brothers. Implying that 2 of them are paid for shills and/or agents fromthe CIA. Absolutely the wrong thing to do. The least she could have done to 'break the big story' is use aliases.

[chequita guevara]

They used their real names on their blogs. She didn't out them, first. She isn't the one who started the rumour there was something fishy about them. That was another blog. She isn't the one that gave their names to the Arabic press, that was the Washington Post article which did a story on the two bothers meeting the President. Now, how did the Post find out about the meeting unless the White House told them.