Allah points me toward this Rick Moran post highlighting how some of the rest of the blogosphere is reacting to the Reuters story. The post title tells you most of what you need know, but hell—let’s pile on a bit After reviewing a litany of sites and their (predictable) reactions, Rick writes:
[…] for my lefty friends out there, let me make it absolutely clear that by examining the aftermath of what happened at Qana and Tyre in no way diminishes the fact that civilians lost their lives as a result of a bomb dropped by the IAF. That fact is not in dispute here. I think it a baldfaced lie to say that Israel deliberately targets civilians but I am not arguing that the IAF’s actions leave them blameless. They have freely admitted to making a mistake in Qana, apologized for it, and even changed their targeting regime to help prevent it ever happening again.
What does concern me is that you have become the unwitting propaganda pawns of Hizbullah when you ignore what Reuters has admitted doing; they have pulled every single one of Mr. Hajj’s photos from their archives because he has apparently been doctoring photos for weeks. The implications are staggering. It is now impossible to trust any “news†coming from Reuters. Anyone who does is a fool. And my gut feeling is that these revelations will not be confined to Reuters. It would not surprise me in the slightest if in the coming days we see similar stories about photos from AP, UPI, AFP and other wire service outfits.
And what about stringers being used by the big newspapers like the New York Times and WaPo? Can we really trust these outlets to vet their stringers and make sure that they are as unbiased as possible in this conflict? Can we be assured that the stringer’s BS detector is good enough to tell the difference between propaganda and news?
This story is a foreshock. The earthquake that may follow could rock the media establishment like no other event in our lifetimes. Am I exaggerating? I wonder what they’re talking about at AP today? Do you think they’re nervous over at UPI? Has someone been tasked at AFP with looking at old photos with a more critical eye?
These and other mainstream outlets live or die by selling the appearance of unbiased truth. By exposing Reuters as a propaganda arm of Hizbullah, the blogs have shown that the media emperors have little clothing left covering their behinds. And that’s the kind of perception that directly affects the bottom line.
Jeff Jarvis—who at one time, in the context of Katrina, spoke of the media’s need to tell the story beyond the mere facts—seems to have reconsidered, however temporarily.
Meanwhile, Reuters itself is in a world of hurt:
Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.
Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work.
“There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Szlukovenyi said in a statement.
“Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy.”
The news and information agency announced the decision in an advisory note to its photo service subscribers. The note also said Reuters had tightened editing procedures for photographs from the conflict and apologised for the case.
”Tightened editing procedures”?
More like hurrying out to pick up screws and duct tape even as we speak…
(h/t Michelle Malkin)
If the MSM continues at this rate, they’ll all be so unreliable before sundown.
Oh, wait….
TW: Can we run them out of town?
From Jarvis:
One wonders why anyone, especially a photographer and journalist, would feel compelled to amplify war. No matter what side you are on, does anyone really need to make war worse?
I don’t wonder. Just how blind can an MSM wag be?
Reuters should be feeling like the captain of the Titanic after he hit the iceberg. I don’t think they have the sense to start vetting all their stories and photos for accuracy and balance.
Shadenfreude. It’s not the TW, but it should be.
Good to know that the editing lock-down is just for this conflict, and all the rest of Reuter’s photos can be just as slap-dash as before.
Should be, but I doubt it. I think this shit has been going on for years and just because they got caught this time, they will gloss over it as best they can and then…go right back to doing again. Remember, they serve the larger truth.
Kelly hits the nail squarely. Reuters is undoubtedly seething not because of the fact of the fraud, but because it has been caught.
I do not contend that the photo-doctorology was part of some master plan by Reuters. But I believe the photos served Reuters purpose in seeking to villainize Israel.
When, oh when with the Jewish domination of the media make it all stop?
Yeah, but they never had to be accountable to the public before–experts, perhaps, but never to the guy in the street.
This revelation is a public service.
tw: image. Good grief.
I’m curious, who exactly is Reuters and why does he/they wish to villainize Israel. Just asking.
The editing is the problem. They let this stuff through without checking very carefully, and the lack of action on editors tells me they don’t care so much that it was done as that they were caught.
I’m surprised they didn’t pull out the old “fake, but accurate” defense. It worked so well the last time a major media outlet got caught telling the larger truth.
david: Are you really ignorant or are you just trying to pick a fight?
Sadly,No! :
The photographer added smoke to make it look like the whole city was aflame instead of one building, and rearranged the skyline with added buildings, just to make it look better in black and white?
From their comments:
A photographer who has doctored multiple photos was just being lazy? It’s a “faux controversy”?
The laziness is on the part of the Left bloggers and MSM. The pro-Hizballah photographer working for Reuters knew exactly what he was doing and figured he could get away with his fake photos because of the lazy MSM and the useful idiots on the Left.
I’m coming to the conclusion that a great deal of the Left is perfectly okay with pro-Hizballah propaganda. That they approve of it. This is why they’re so quick to accuse Israel of “targeting civilians” without any evidence of it, while ignoring the obvious truth that the party in the conflict that wants civilians to be killed (on both sides!) is Hizballah. And this is why they’re so incurious about all the media manipulation that’s been going on by Hizballah. I think they approve of the manipulations. What other explanation is there? Why would the Reutersgate scandal be a partisan issue unless some people don’t want fake photos from Reuters to be exposed as fakes?
A lot of these leftists are the same people who always seem to be hoping for more civilian deaths, whether it be in Afghanistan or Iraq. They use civilian deaths as propaganda just as Hizballah does, and have been doing so ever since America began responding to 9/11. The sad truth is, a lot of the Left blogs aren’t much different in mentality from the Reuters photographer staging and doctoring photos. And this is why they are trying so hard to make excuses for Reuters.
Although I’m a graphic designer by trade (and if you think only Reuters has problems with people doctoring images I have a bridge to sell you), professional photographers have mentioned to me that if you have to doctor an image (in the way that the ones disputed on Reuters) it just means you’re a shitty photographer.
Wurd….I have become one of them I must profess.
Which is no different then the media as whole viewed Rathergate.
Also, don’t the nutroots look a little like 1 trick ponies right now, Lamont 24/7? I mean I know they’ve got a lot off eggs in this basket, but in the big picture sense they a look a little dense/dopey.
Even in the big picture they look dopey.
They look like absolute fools, in particular DailyKos which is indeed 24/7 Ned Lamont, the most mediocre candidate I’ve seen in a long time.
Loaf
Pretty weird Dayv thinks copy and pasting in more <stike>missles</strike> flares into an image is a faux controversy…comments like these sort diminish their little circle jerk over Ben Demenche’s plagiarized movie reviews, doesn’t it?
loaf: If Lieberman loses tomorrow, prepare to see even more blatant hard-Leftism. They’re only keeping a lid on it not to scare moderate Democratic voters. They’re no more liberal than Chairman Mao.
Here’s a beauty! Apparently the same woman (same scar on left cheek, same mark under right eye) emoting on two different occassions, two weeks apart.
She must be the “better half” of the green helmet guy.
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extreme-makeover-beirut-edition.html
My point, obviously, is how do you attribute purpose to a news wire service. Even if you read minds, it is not a person. Are you saying this business has a political agenda? How would you even begin to make that case? Oh, I get it, it must be part of the “liberal media”, you guys are always pretending explains why the facts are always against you. You all are just pulling crap out of your rear ends. If I didn’t know better, I would guess you all are looking for ways to undermine their credibility to blunt future reporting that threatens the layers of denial that protect your world view.
Short blogsphere moral encapsulation in single sentences
Rightwing side of the Blogsphere: The doctored photos at best show the laziness of the MSM & at worst, their anti-Israeli bias in their reporting & information gathering… their actions should be questioned.
Leftwing side of the Blogsphere: Mel Gibson is a drunken racist!
I’m curious as to how pasting in more flares is factual?
In all likelihood that commenter probably doesn’t yet even know about the doctored photo cloning a defensive flare and captioning it as an offensive missile. The comments were written TODAY, days after this this first broke, and only seem to be just now discovering the first doctored photo, so they don’t really know what’s going on. This is because a lot of these people don’t look outside of their Left echo chamber which, for the most part, cannot bear to cover something broken by Little Green Footballs.
It works better than spewing it out your mouth, you should try it sometime.
– Noticing that no staff material reviewers have been called to task, or even mentioned, my guess is they did zero review of these pics, nor any of the other 920 in his work. Which when you think about it, allowing direct publication with no editorial review, is even more damning. I think the way they’re handling this is a smoke screen so no one asks that question.
– It was also cute the way they ducked the issue of the repost of the “only slightly” faked original, after pulling the original faked original. BTW, the media at large is not covering this to any extent. When things get dicey the Lame stream media tend to circle the wagons, so I’m not so sure that there will be any long terms repercutions out of this. Depends on how hard outlets like FOX hammer on it, and for how long. The war/Iraq sucks most of the oxygen out of the news cycle.
Anyone expecting the photodoctoring scandal to lead to more objective reporting or more thorough editing is living in a fool’s paradise. Rathergate blew up mainly because CBS’s competitors had every incentive to embarras their rival. However, all the major news outlets are Reuters’ customers, so expect them to run and hide from this story lest their own standards be called into question.
Loaf, true that…and this of course does not even rise to the level of the greatest journalistic crisis in the History of journalism – removing “the” substantial, thought provoking, ad hom fuckity, fuck, fuck comments on WAPO blog, so lefto’s only have to yawn. /sarcasm off.
”…If I didn’t know better…”
– Well you’re in luck, since you just performed a perfect bowel movement of your asshat mouth.
– My guess is, reading your Libturd propaganda, is your “world view” consists of lock step kumbaya’s, burning candles, and breathlessly awaiting the introduction of the play station III.
Well, at least you’ve taken that first step, albeit unintentionally, and admitted you have a problem with facts.
I mean, really, why didn’t you go with, “I know you are but what am I?” Do you talk this way to people in real life?
Al Reuters cheats because there is a market for their crap. Competent editors, photographers, and writers are expensive, and apparently unnecessary.
They’ll cavil and quibble and be back to the same crap in a month.
Let’s see if any major news organization has the balls to drop the service.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, but they can photoshop it.
tw: home, as in the truth hits….
David, to answer your initial question: Reuters is an international news organization that—like a variety of other such services—employs people who subscribe to a narrative under which Israel “illegally occupies” a magical land known as “Palestine.” I derive this conclusion from the vim and frequency with which Reuters (among other such services) publishes provable falsehoods that are ultimately—ta da—proven to be false. Like the “Jenin” massacre.
There is a constant narrative that pervades coverage by Reuters, the AP, and individual networks such as CNN, in which Israel bullies, murders, and steals land. The coverage is typically heavy-handed and portrays Israel as a Goliath that cares not a bit about non-Jewish lives. Concurrently, terrorists are legitimized as “militants,” and their attacks are never described as ending the lives of “civilians.”
I do not expect everyone to recognize this, so I won’t press the point. It is my perception, and it is based on observation, not—as you suggest—on some self-proctological procedure.
I thought it might be fun or interesting to argue back and forth with you all, maybe see what kind of case you try to make for what, on the surface, seem weird paranoid fantasies. Who knows, maybe I can be convinced. However, the level of discourse here is clearly sewer-grade and below. Never mind.
I have a couple more suspicious photos here
Who says it has to be either/or? Looks like both to me …
david: My asswipe detector is getting better over time. Good.
The problem with Reuters is that it is staffed mostly by British lefies who are infected by a particularly destructive strain of anti-Americanism and anti-semitism.
I realize I have no chance of convincing you–no, you’re too smart, aren’t you?–but I suggest that others refer to the alarming work of Melanie Phillips’ Diary, Natalie Solent’s Biased BBC blog, and Harry’s Place among others, if they require proof of Britain’s tragic meltdown.
I can live with bad news as long as I’m comfortable that it is reasonably dispassionate. I have a strong suspicion, however, that you can’t.
Oh, and don’t give yourself airs, Barbie. You come here loooking to pick a fight and them complain when someone takes a swipe at you.
– Sure ‘nuff sport. Like you didn’t bring it with you when you came in. Here’s your bag of lip shit. Don’t let the door hit you in your Marxist ass.
Do you seriously think the news service serves no purpose? You said it, not me.
You mean like Die-bold? Halliburton?
No, a lot of the facts are often with us. That’s why papers have page A-18. That’s where you’ll find news about Afghanistan, strong economic growth, those 500 rounds of Sarin and Mustard gas we found in Iraq, the Oil-for-Food scandal, Saddam’s connections with the Taliban, William Jefferson’s freezer, etc. Pages A-1 through A-17 mainly deal with setbacks in Iraq, the price of gas, and what the Dixie Chicks think about Bush (it’s tasty).
Wow, that’s quite self-serving of you, and rather ironic. The actual facts of this case makes clear that Reuters has biased freelancers slanting its news, yet you’re in total denial of the very idea of bias reporting (unless it’s Fox, of course). Dare we say this is because their reporting bolsters the many layers of denial that protect your worldview?
Oh yeah, you came in here with a completely open mind.
Pot, kettle, etc.
If you walk in here with your pants around your ankles, you’re going to get spanked, david.
David me lad. Let me help. Do you honestly think that anyone cares about what you might find fun or interesting, or that the quality or what you’ve posted would tempt anyone to try to convince you of anything?
– Let me take a wild guess. Freshman Lib-arts major.
Interesting, a liberal leftist actually had the balls to use the word “facts”?
Seems like, everywhere one turns, the “facts” spouted by the liberals are turning around and biting them on their asses.
Every single “Liberal Talking Point” for at least the past 5 years has been thoroughly debunked, yet you fools still keep quoting them ad nauseum, denying, twisting, turning, obfuscating, manipulating, and just flat out ignoring the “facts” when they do not go your way.
Go play on a freeway, David.
TW: The ways Liberals play with facts is humorous.
Allow me to enlighten all with some more Babelfish interpretation. Using the new Self-Serving Bullshit to English filter, I have what I believe to be a very good translation of David’s last comment.
Translation: I thought it might be fun to bait and insult you without having to actually argue my point, which is manifestly correct.
Translation: I’ve made up my mind, and there’s no convincing me otherwise
Translation: Well, clearly, it seems some of you have the nerve to take the bait and rebut what I, the smartest person in the room, has said. You redneck trash are hardly worth my time–Project Runway is coming on in another hour.
Cripes. After reading David’s garbage, it made me actually miss Actus.
Steady, now.
I now think the Leiberman blackface and gay photoshops are real. I mean they LOOK more real that Fraudters.
While it’s nice this Reuters scandal is slowly trickling into the MSM, it sure is frustrating to read their stories.
For example:
Um, it also added a bunch of cloned buildings to change the skyline, and made the fake-darkened and cloned smoke sppear to be coming from more than one building in a more heavily populated area.
This, too, is not the full story. The doctored photo cloned a defensive flare, and the caption of the photograph incorrectly read: “An Israeli F-16 warplane fires missiles during an air strike on Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, August 2, 2006.”
They didn’t just make one defensive flare look like three; they presented them as three offensive missiles.
The article says nothing about the four other B.S. photos – the two PowerLine posted, and the two Drinking From Home posted.
Nor do they mention any concerns about the green helmet guy, where certainly some investigation needs to be done.
I’m afraid we’ll just have to hold the MSM’s hands and walk them through these matters. Perhaps one of the bloggers should do a post that summarizes all aspects of Reutersgate thus far so it can be easily read by the lazy MSM.
david,
if Reuters, the MSM, et al., don’t have an agenda, then we would see roughly half of these ‘photoshop mistakes’ favoring Hezbolla and half of these ‘mistakes’ favoring Israel, wouldn’t we?
But we don’t see these ‘mistakes’ and ‘editorial misjudgements’ going both ways. Interestingly, they always seem to go one way.
Funny, that. No agenda, indeed.
– Looks like poh widdle david just got his moonbat ass “Roto-Reutered”.
On a rail, yes.
But first we tar and feather them.
Very, very nice…although one little quibble, you forgot Wal Mart.
Don’t you see? It’s Israel’s fault for kicking up the dust that got on his lens. 926 times. over a decade.
It’s not just the photos–their print journalism is doctored, too. Tom Gross:
Rikki Hollander:
HonestReporting.com:
Reuters also banned the use of the word “terrorist”. Not just for “insurgents” in Iraq (many of whom do not even meet the definition as ‘indigenous’
, but for the 9/11 hi-jackers as well. If they’re not terrorists, who is?
Think about it. Reuters is saying there is no context in which a reasonable reporter of facts may use the word “terrorist” in an accurate manner. They are essentially stripping the word from the dictionary. Essentially, they are saying: “There is no such thing as terrorism”.
That is a powerful opinion, a statement of faith, really. A dark and ugly and hollow faith, but faith nonetheless. But it is not a fact, and Reuters constantly tells us of their devotion to fact. And isn’t it passing strange for writers to be subtracting words from the lexicon?
David,
The MSM avoids guys like Michael Yon because they are not considered “objective” enough,
but they have no problem hiring muslims who clearly have a dog in the fight.
The MSM are in a hard place. It is easy even for the most left leaning reporter to report from the US or Israeli side… but to get the Iraqi insurgent or Hezbollah side the MSM has to make a deal to accept whomever the terrorists will allow. Some of the muslim reporters and photographers acceptable to the terrorists have been shown to orchestrate, or at least participate in, staged events.
I’m not ready to make the leap from there to “all MSM are trying to bring down the USA and Israel” but I will say the MSM has willingly whored themselves out. In this case Reuters got caught at it….. and they had to know this guy was staging stuff…. or did that fresh looking Koran just happen to wind up burning on top of an otherwise well charred pile by extraordinary coincidence?
tw: the *attack* on credulity continues
Michelle Malkin wonders where the outrage from the UN is over today’s Hezbollah mortaring of a UN outpost… but aren’t friendly fire incidents usually dealt with internally?
David,
You also forgot to mention the facts that we are all chicken-hawks, wish nothing more then to destroy the Constitution, punish the poor, we’re racists, that we stole the elections in 2000 & 2004, the Republican Government blew up the WTC & shot down a passenger plane over Pennsylvania, bombed the Pentagon, secretly wish the Third Reich to rise again, we hate old people & are trying to steal their Social Security benefits, want to destroy the environment & drown kittens all in the name of Jesus or the Jooos, daily.
PMain – Pretty good list of moonbat delusions, but you “left” out Evil warmongering Zionizt Neocons who want to “own” womem’s wombs, run the press and government from Christian and Jooish pulpits and synagogs, and take away everyones freedoms and civil rights by actually expecting people to identify themselves, while we busily profile, and kill, brown people and babies, all just to steal the oil.
– The Left is certifiably insane.
I see. NewsCorp can be biased, but not Reuters.
Facts like the TANG memos? Or maybe facts like when the polls close in Pensacola?
david, I propose a little experiment for you. Do a LEXIS search on major-circulation dailies and broadcast/cable news transcripts for phrases made up of the following combinations: Column A—“liberal,” “conservative,” “left,” “right”; Column B—“hard,” “extreme,” “far,” etc. What I’m pretty confident you’ll find is that the Column B descriptors (and adjectives like them) are more frequently used to describe the right side of the political spectrum than the left. And that’s just one example. Milyo and Groseclose had an interesting methodology they applied to see where on the political spectrum could be located the experts cited by major media, and they found most major outlets to the left of the general public, at least in terms of the people they invest their credibility in.
Sounding a retreat so soon?
PMain, you forgot the plastic turkey, and the “silent Afghan genocide.”
SteveG: They didn’t mean to. It’s different.
Phone Technician in a Time of Roaming & Big Bang Hunter,
My most sincere apologies to you & my fellow Ring Wing conspirators… for in my haste to defend der Furher’s program, I did indeed forget those points as well. I’m amazed that given such a hefty work-load, we have managed to have time to libel Glen Greenwald, de-fame Uncle Joe Wilson, assassinate St. Fidel, frame Clinton & prepare for the invasion of Venezuela.
The Reuters headline of the day:
You know anybody who needs an “anti-stupid” pill?
I bet they didn’t have to walk far down the hall today to get that question answered.
Now this claim is an absolute hoot coming from a lefty.
What “facts” are those, David?
Let me guess…
Let’s add, for the sake of intellectual depth…Israel bad, Hamas and Hezbollah “misunderstood”…right?
Oh no, Wal Mart doesn’t have a political agenda per se. They simply want to cut down every tree and shut down every small business and small town center in America while forcing us all to work for slave wages. Of course, Ikea is not much better, it’s just that it’s European and markets directly to urban hipsters, thus making its sins quite excuseable. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cheap laminate furniture with unpronounceable names I gotta figure out how to put together.
Don’t you all ever wonder how ridiculous your belligerence appears to normal people? Oh, well. I guess it takes all kinds…
Anyone who shows belligerence to normal people has lost my vote.
Heh.
Would these be the normal people who can’t win elections?
Who’s normal?
Unless you mean “at right angles to”.
Actually David, I find their belligerence
towards you quite entertaining thank you
very much.
Keep up the good work guys!
David, please re-read the post in which I directly addressed you. You may disagree with me; you may be disappointed by my disinclination to undertake a debate with you—but please do not accuse me of belligerence. I was most civil.
You call this belligerence? This is how we treat insane, drooling idiot moonbats we like.
Has somebody else noticed this? Because what I saw in the images was two helmeted military figures, a woman with a braid and a man. And I based my entire previous position on that. But it seems like the whole issue was just a matter of smoke enhancement. Am I crazy? Does anyone else see the images? Check the initial post here; it was clear as a bell to me.
You have no idea what belligerence is. We haven’t even warmed up.
maybe a glass or two of wine would help, but seriously, can at least one other person check the image? The woman on the left has glasses and appears to be gazing with approval at the man on her right, whose face seems to be twisted somehow. Honestly, that’s what I thought the whole brouhaha was about. But nobody referenced it.
Belligerence, like…
comparing a sitting President to Adolf Hitler
photoshopping a previous Vice-Presidential candidate in black face or depicting him as a homosexual because he doesn’t follow party line
blocking a nominee to a federal bench because you find her too “Christian†or him too “Catholic†for your tastes
logging onto several blogs, of opposing viewpoints, under different names to pump up yourself, your arguments or to generate web traffic or book sales
protesting wounded members of the military outside a military hospital
politicizing a war while there are troops on the ground & in harms way
generating fake documents to accuse a sitting President of being AWOL, almost 40 years later
pelting a candidate for Governor w/ Oreos because he isn’t your definition of “blackâ€Â
by-passing the wishes of the electorate by attempting the force your views of marriage or morality by judicial decree, but if the same court rules against you regarding a re-count, an election is then stolen
or did you mean, David, trolling on a blog & not adding one iota to the discussion & judging the other commenter’s beliefs?
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist
thank God! the
Bristish Journalist
But seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.
Hezbollah recently rocketed a UN base inside Israel. I haven’t seen Koffi Anan out condemning Hezbollah though, for this or any of the dozen or two times Hezbollah has killed or attacked UN personnel.
It’s got nothing to do with your beliefs. It’s more your bizarre, hair-trigger aggression and juvenile name calling that makes you so revolting, and sad.
David,
Do you have a freaking substantive point? Or are you just going to stand there and pee on the rug?
David, you strolled in here and within two comments, had degenerated into condescension and an air of “above it all” arrogance. What did you expect?
And yet and still, the “substance” of your comment, such as it was, did get addressed. Comprehensively. In fact, you got pwned.
How do I know? Because you are studiously avoiding any response to those rebuttals by changing the subject and telling us that “mean people suck” or some such non sequitor.
Now go fetch me a juice box. Bitch.
Remember the righteous indignation after Qana?
David: I frequently go over to the left-wing sites to attempt reasonable discussions. What you received was loving kindness compared to Liberal Avenger and the like. If you really want to have a discussion, get off your high horse and actually listen to people. Otherwise, you’re just another troll to be bashed.
Make some reasoned arguments, emphasize similarities at least as often as you emphasize differences, and don’t act superior to the people here… you’re not. But you could get to be respected if you’re not just another troll. I have doubts though because you came in with an agenda and it’s pretty much been summarized already. We failed to recognize the wonder that is you and are therefore less than human in your eyes. So go back to Kos and whatever other automaton-factory blogs you frequent and laugh at how you pwned us.
But first, get me a juice box. Bitch.
cynn: you didn’t answer me in the previous thread, do you think it is okay for the media to mislead dumb people? Is it the reader’s fault for trusting them?
If I recognized the wonder that is david, do you suppose he would stop whining?
On the other hand it is always nice to watch people be rude almost out of the gate and then be shocked at the reception they get.
Can we get you a fainting couch david?
david: Apparently, your date stood you up; otherwise, you would not be checking back here every five minutes to cast scorn upon us. As far as I’m concerned, you can have the rest of the night off.
But first, get me a juice box. Bitch.
cynn: I can’t tell what you’re referring to. You
mention a link in your post, but I don’t see one.
You guys are paranoid, deluded jerks. Hey, why are you being soooo mean? I just came here to talk.
Well, I can see that you guys don’t want to have a serious intellectual discussion. I’m leaving and I’m taking my supreme wisdom with me.
Hang on, I want to try:
David, your first comment was sarcasm. ahem answered it with a question: were you honestly ignorant of who or what “Reuters” is, or was your comment sarcasm? Your next comment was, in large part:
…which clarifies the fact that you meant your first comment as sarcasm, and adds both a patronizing tone and a scatalogical dimension that hadn’t been present before in the brief exchange between you and the PW regs. So. Following that comment, we have topsecretk9 wondering how a doctored photo (multiple flares) AND an inaccurate caption (“missiles”) supports your contention that it’s the right side of the blogosphere rather than Reuters that has a fact problem. And then BMoe points out the obvious: that producing crap from the correct end of the digestive/eliminative system is generally a better idea than reversing the process, which, yup, you can rightly take as BMoe’s opinion of your opinion, just as ISTM we your ideological opponents can rightly take your opinion of our opinion as “crap,” since you said it and all. BBH chimes in with one scatalogical word and a stereotypical representation of your side of the “debate,” such as it is.
Your response: You ignore topsecretk9’s challenge to your argument and go straight for BMoe’s comment on the worth of your opinion, which is informed by topsecretk9’s challenge.
Etc., etc., ad nauseam… You never do address topsecretk9’s question, nor the later point about the Hezbollah/Hamas-leaning “no using the word ‘terrorism’” pattern of reporting and photojournalism at Reuters, which directly addresses your first sarcastic comment, but instead focus on the scatalogical and insulting tone that you introduced.
If you walk into a room, make a sarcastic comment to the group there assembled, clarify when questioned about your intention that you really did mean to be sarcastic and add further ad-hominem insult to your first comment, ignore substantive challenges to your comment but follow up opinions about your snooty attitude with repeated accusations that the tone in this room is below you… you don’t come across as above the room, fella. You come across as unable to answer the challenges.
So can you answer the challenges, or have you been convinced that your first opinion about the incorruptibility of Reuters may not be correct, in spite of your disapproval of the tone?
Adding to the challenges, have you seen the smoke picture? Good Lord, I could’ve done a better job adding smoke. What excuse does Reuters’s photo editing staff have for missing the obvious cloning in that picture? They were too busy? That picture should have jumped off the screen to even the laziest photo-editor, if s/he knows his/her business. So do they not know their business, or might there be an agenda at work? What would Occam say?
Uh … “David’s too young to use a Razor”?…
bMoe: Tried to send this via email, but as usual I did something to screw up my email account:
Sorry for the delay. Thought it better to respond in email because you might not be following the thread anymore. The media has for a long time misled “dumb” people, i.e. people who actually think the media (all persuasions) reports the unvarnished truth. And, yes, I tend to think it is the information consumers who bear the responsibility to analyze what they are bombarded with. It’s a buyer’s market; if I have something to sell you and I can make it pretty enough, you might buy it. The hook is that the media capitalizes on its perceived stance of “being there.” We are not “there,” and have to accept the reports as received wisdom. How do I know what conditions are in the Middle East? I have to count on the media to apprise me. And if I’m fooled for lack of due diligence, it’s my fault.
I tend to give some journalists like Seymour Hirsh and Dar Jamail some credit; however, I still monitor the blogs of people from the region for background.