posted on November 18, 2003 09:50:40 AM new
Two GREAT books I'd recommend to those who don't believe most media/news lean liberal....BIAS and ARROGANCE.
I watched the very informative Tim Russert interview of Bernard Goldberg this past Sunday.
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November 18, 2003
[TownHall]
Former CBS-TV correspondent Bernard Goldberg rocked the journalism world in 2001 with his best-selling book "Bias." It was an indictment of what Goldberg believes to be an unintended but pervasive liberal prejudice in America's television and print newsrooms.
Now, Goldberg is back with a more in-depth look at why this perceived bias exists.
In his new book, "Arrogance: Rescuing America From The Media Elite," there is plenty of fresh red meat for those who believe that too many people in the media hold a baseline view of things that runs too far to the left.
That point is well taken, but Goldberg presents a more significant one in "Bias." He amplified on this deeper message during a TV interview with NBC-TV's Tim Russert this past week. The author posits the existence of a "bubble" inside which most established national media live and work. By looking through an elite pair of myopically focused glasses, these media movers deceive themselves that everything revolves around their own business and social circles in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Along the same lines, political leaders often pose as being in touch with the electorate when they are anything but.
In other words, Goldberg's bubble is the true big tent, housing those on both sides of the political aisle. Make no mistake: Everyone from D.C. journalists to most U.S. representatives and senators draw an unstated and perhaps unconscious line in their minds and actions between their colleagues they see every day and those who live "back home." Most of them will tell you they are in touch with heartland America. What they won't tell you -- or admit to themselves -- is that this communion with the common man comes only occasionally, and only on the elitists' own terms.
posted on November 18, 2003 11:28:49 AM new
I see that you could not come up with a single fact to back up your statement on page 1. Oh well, I'm going to compile a list with links so that I'll be ready for the next time you try to sling your sleaze my way....a time saving operation and a more thorough presentation.
Based on your copy paste and further investigation I see No "libruuls" writing at townhall.com.
The media is monopolized by corporations and right now by the Bushco White House Corporation. Eighty percent of all media is now corporate owned.
It's very simple to understand. Editors and writers who may be liberals btw, know what they are expected to write in order to stay employed and achieve success in their job. If you are employed by a conservative, Bush loving corp. you don't get ahead by investigating and reporting too much about the infamous Plame leak, for example.
posted on November 18, 2003 12:14:49 PM new"When you live in the US and are a citizen, let me know..."
Twelve, quit playing games with me. What if I said I would only talk to you providing you were smart? I'd be missing out on your opinion, which I value, even if I didn't agree with it. Why feed your narrow-mindedness?
posted on November 18, 2003 01:35:39 PM new
None Are So Blind As Those Who Will Not See
PRAVDA
"In three years, George W. Bush and his odious regime have managed to destroy
the carefully-built climate of trust between the USA and the international community, to create the most venomous anti-American feeling the planet has ever known, to drive a wedge between the USA and the British public, traditionally the country's closest friends and to tear apart the tissue which bound the international community together in a framework of international law and norms, based upon dialogue, discussion and debate, in the proper forum, the UNO."
posted on November 18, 2003 01:46:03 PM new
Twelve, I have NEVER run down YOUR country. That's a lie. Show me. Not agreeing with the way a leader from another country handles things, is NOT putting the country itself down, or the people in it. Talk is cheap - back up your statements.
And while I'm at it, YOU should be the one that's lucky to have anyone here talk to you after your shameful revelations about how you feel about women, homosexuals, or anyone/anything else you don't understand. Your goal is to offend and degrade. In my eyes, a bit more self-centered and sickening than a person discussing feelings about a country's leader.
posted on November 18, 2003 02:18:24 PM new
This BS keeps happening over and over....You have a habit of somehow believing that you can divine the thoughts of others.
ANOTHER STATEMENT WITHOUT BASIS
Helenjw
posted on March 30, 2003 11:08:16 AM edit
I asked, Where, Linda did I excuse the horrible behavior of Saddam??? Please back up your allegations
I asked, Where did I address Saddam's behavior "since the war began. Please copy and paste.
Now you state....
To be clear here....I'm not saying you have stated, "I support Saddam, I believe everything he has ever done was right." But in every post you've made, you EXCUSE all Saddams behaviors....and blast your president. You blame Bush for the actions he has taken, but you lay NO blame at the feet of Saddam. None.
You haven't posted one single comment that I made to support your allegation stating., "Helen - See...you excuse the horrible behavior of Saddam
You haven't posted one single comment that I made about Saddam's behavior "since the war began"
Now, my question is how do I EXCUSE Saddam Hussein. Is it your opinion based on the fact that I don't discuss Iraq and Saddam as much as I discuss our country and Bush?
You must be accusing me based on omission of evidence.
posted on November 18, 2003 02:39:06 PM new
last time kraft... you are not a citizen of the US, running down my President is running down my country...
Those others you mention are topics I will discuss with foreigners...
posted on November 18, 2003 03:11:39 PM new
austi - I'd more agree with this readers opinion of the Russian site you posted. Also their 'About Us' link gives insights too.
Filtered News...11/17/2003 15:42
A Note From Our Reader:
It would do wonders for the credibility of your website if editorials were clearly marked instead of being in bold headlines on the front page listed under "World" as if the editorial was actual, unbiased news, had a worldly perspective, etc.
If the news wasn't slanted and filtered, and if there wasn't a constant anti-US undertone to all the "reporting" on the site, this site would be better off. Just a little note to help turn your website into an actual source, one which intelligent people would source, not just for people who seek news that will tell them what they want to hear...
I understand fully that freedoms of press aren't all they could be in Russia, and that people are used to being told what to do and believe over there, and also that Russia's press has a long history of anti-US propaganda, but I expected a more honest look at the news, from a Russian perspective. I didn't expect as much propaganda and as much news that is so obviously filtered.
Perhaps educated Russians seek their news elsewhere?
While I am not assuming that by way of collusion with the Russian government you are filtering Americas quest for a foreign policy
the news, I don't doubt that you do this because of the thorough brain-washing you have received as a Russian citizen, if in fact you are. If you are not a Russian citizen you are likely some other brainwashed person. I don't believe fervently in my government (the US) to the point where I will broadcast my views to the world, masqueraded as "news". That is a job better left to idiots. Your ideologies taint each word on your site. You and your site's main editors and whatnot obviously cannot report on the news without letting their opinions distort the story to the point where the entire article becomes questionable in nature. Such selective bias is unacceptable when you seek real news. Facts.
Anyway, I will continue to stop in from time to time because I like to read Russian news, but I have already learned not to trust this site and to keep my guard up for filtered, biased reporting from Pravda.Ru...you are far worse than FOX 5 in the US ever will be.
[and this was what I just loved the most.....]
I do, however, pity the people who believe all the things on this site without learning about the other 3/4 of the story...the 3/4 which contradict your 1/4 of a real story.
A Note from Our Reader, Rob
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editing to add helens statement so she can keep her files in order.
posted on November 18, 2003 02:06:52 PM
What breathtaking truth, Austbounty! Thanks for the link to that story in Russia.
Now, does reading that story make me a Russian lover or a commie?
Helen
[ edited by Linda_K on Nov 18, 2003 04:03 PM ]
posted on November 18, 2003 04:26:16 PM new
Move your boyfriend's nose first and I will think about it...
Of course you will need to come to me so I can do it... like that will happen... LOL
posted on November 18, 2003 06:14:27 PM new
Shoot!, I swan coz I be dam if I’m gonna let some plug-ugly Mosquitoes fixin ta tell me from over yonder in meaner than a skillet full of rattlesnakes Moscow how to run my country; when they couldn’t pour rain out of a boot with a hole in the toe and directions on the heel.
I’m happy as a gopher in soft dirt, bei’n from Texas’n’all.
Dag nab it! Them crooked as a dog's hind leg reds aint gonna tell me to jump when they say frog.
They oughta tend to their own rat killin.
Nuther thing; If you've done it, it ain't braggin.
So when theys done stopped preachin and gone to meddlin
There aint no tellin' me how the cow ate the cabbage.
posted on November 18, 2003 06:25:29 PM new Fox News fans misinformed, study finds EXTRACTS
Q1• "Is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization?"
Q2• "Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?"
Q3• "Thinking about how all the people in the world feel about the U.S. having gone to war with Iraq, do you think the majority of people favor the U.S. having gone to war?"
“Those who cited Fox News as their primary news source were far more likely to harbor fundamental misperceptions about one or more of these three questions than those who cited National Public Radio or PBS..”
On the question of a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, a frankly startling 67 percent of the Fox News primary-source crowd believed this to be true.
“NPR and PBS .. 16 percent of listeners glued to them also believe the Saddam-Osama link.
whether we have found weapons of mass destruction… 33 percent of Fox News watchers somehow still believe that we have.
(The president at one point said we did.)
Only 17 percent of those consuming mostly print media thought so,
and only 11 percent of the NPR-PBS crowd was operating under the same rather astonishing misperception.
On the matter of world opinion, 35 percent of Fox News-viewing respondents believe world opinion supported the U.S. war with Iraq, while only 5 percent of the NPR-PBS crowd believed this in the face of almost daily international criticism and/or consternation.
posted on November 18, 2003 06:27:50 PM new
Twelve, I have no desire to bake cookies or piss on deviants, of which I consider you one of. You have accused me of being against Americans and your country. Where is your proof, hotshot? On the other hand, you exclaim how bad American women are, along with American men and women who are homosexual, and how they all should be shot (or at least pissed on, in this case), while lauding the American Army, of which these very people are also a part of. You do see the hypocracy, don't you?
posted on November 18, 2003 06:41:30 PM newAchtung!
Y’all STOP meddling in US affairs.
USA citizens and peoples themselves
Mexico
Costa Rica
Guatemala
Nicaragua
Panama
Haiti
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Grenada
Venezuela
Ecuador
Colombia
Chile
Brazil
Italy
Israel
Libya
Congo
Angola
Sudan
Mozambique
Iraq
Iran
Afghanistan
Kuwait
The Kurds
India
Japan
Indonesia
East Timor
Kosovo
OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration.
Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old.
The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.
edited to add: Near the end of this article it says:
CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely "exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public.
Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence."
Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis for that?"
There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed, the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction."
Really?
One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links.
There is no Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring.
These documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be a slow process.
So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive.
Still, there is one relationship that is in dire need of help. It's the one in which Britain is so often caught in the middle, trying to play peacemaker. The rift to be healed is between Europe and America.
For the second half of the 20th century, they were solid allies; in just the first few years of the 21st, they have fallen out badly. The poll numbers are instructive. In this month's now notorious EU survey, asking Europeans which nations posed a grave threat to world peace, the US scored 53% - level with Iran and North Korea, the two remaining arms of Bush's "axis of evil". A September survey found just 45% of Europeans keen on a strong US global presence - a drop of nearly 20% on the previous year. In France, 70% believed global US leadership was "undesirable".
The relationship has got so bad, the starting point of a recent polemic on the topic - Robert Kagan's Paradise and Power - was that Europe and the US no longer even "occupy the same world". To simplify crudely, Europeans regard the US as swaggering, go-it-alone bullies, who want international rules to apply to others but never themselves and who regard force as a first rather than last resort. They are new imperialists, clumsily clodding around the world, enraging people by the billion.
posted on November 18, 2003 07:21:14 PM new
They maybe in the Military, but our military has a "don't ask don't tell" policy and their deviant azzes will be out on a bad Conduct discharge...
and for last time kraft... you disrespect MY PRESIDENT you DISRESPECT MY COUNTRY!!!
You are not a citizen but some foreign outsider...
This is last time I will address you on this
From here on out this is what you get:
What's your favorite cookie recipe there kraft?
When was the last time you were here austbounty? When did you vote last? What state was that?
What I thought... nothing for his own country nothing for the US...
AIN'T LIFE GRAND...
[ edited by Twelvepole on Nov 18, 2003 07:28 PM ]
posted on November 18, 2003 07:27:15 PM new"They maybe in the Military, but our military has a "don't ask don't tell" policy and their deviant azzes will be out on a bad Conduct discharge..."
Good, you DO see the hypocricy!
My favorite cookie? White chocolate chip with macadamia nuts and raisins. What about you?
posted on November 18, 2003 07:42:53 PM new
Poll....polls....polls....it ALL depends on how they are worded.
Here's one the WSJ posted from the Guardian....an accepted news source to those on the left..
Exaggerating Anti-Americanism
As the president heads to London for a state visit, we've heard a lot of hype about planned protests by America-hating Brits. But a poll by the Guardian, a left-wing paper, suggests these people represent only a fringe:
The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world." It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair.
Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world. . . .
The ICM poll also uncovers a surge in pro-war sentiment in the past two months as suicide bombers have stepped up their attacks on western targets and troops in Iraq.
Opposition to the war has slumped by 12 points since September to only 41% of all voters. At the same time those who believe the war was justified has jumped 9 points to 47% of voters. . . .
The detailed results of the poll show that more people--43%--say they welcome George Bush's arrival in Britain than the 36% who say they would prefer he did not come.
DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 16 — Equatorial Guinea's president had his opponents imprisoned and tortured, had his presidential predecessor executed by firing squad, helped himself to the state treasury at will. State radio recently declared him ''like God.''
Teodoro Obiang might seem an unlikely candidate for warmer relations with Washington, except for one thing — his tiny West African country's got a tremendous amount of oil.
With America looking increasingly for alternatives to oil from the Middle East, West Africa — and dictators like Obiang — aren't looking so bad.
To the dismay of human rights activists, Washington reopened its embassy on the tropical country's island capital of Malabo last month after an eight-year shutdown.
Although no U.S. ambassador is serving in Malabo, Obiang's critics say reopening of the embassy gives tacit approval to a repressive regime that lets little of the country's newfound oil wealth trickle down to its 500,000 people, who are among the poorest on Earth.
''It sends the wrong signal, because we don't think there's been any improvement in terms of governance and the human rights record,'' said Sarah Wykes, an oil expert at the London-based rights group Global Witness.
American diplomats say the embassy was reopened partly to provide consular services to the growing community of 3,000-5,000 American oil workers. They also say it's better to try to change governmental behavior with direct contacts.
In 1993, the then-U.S. ambassador in Malabo took a tough stand against Equatorial Guinea's rights abuses, and received an anonymous note saying he would return to the United States ''as a corpse.''
Two years later, the embassy was closed. Washington cited budget constraints, but the move was widely seen as a rebuke to Obiang.
American oil firms were still around, though, and a few weeks later they discovered large offshore oil deposits in the area.
These days, Obiang speaks of his nation becoming ''the Kuwait of Africa,'' and he's not far off the mark.
West Africa's Gulf of Guinea already supplies the United States with 15 percent of its oil imports, and analysts say that share could grow to 25 percent by 2015.
The oil boom has transformed Equatorial Guinea's economy. Oil revenues now account for more than 60 percent of the gross national product, which once rested on a precarious foundation of fishing, forestry and small cocoa and coffee crops.
American diplomats say the embassy was reopened partly to provide consular services to the growing community of 3,000-5,000 American oil workers. They also say it's better to try to change governmental behavior with direct contacts.
Government with only one standard - wealth. Wheeeee! Daily KOS
