This accidentally fell out of her pocket when I bumped into her. Took me four goes.

Wednesday, May 18

World

From Out Of The Mouths Of Media Personalities

Via Radioblogger, this little snippet from Chris Matthews' Hardball discussing the Newsweek kerfuffle:
CM: This is a really tragic SNAFU by Newsweek.

RW: Oh, it's a tragic SNAFU, two paragraph article that has lasting damage to U.S. policy, to preventing a clash of civilizations that everyone has feared.

RW is Robin Wright of the Washington Post; the Washington Post owns Newsweek.*

What's my point, you ask?

Well, both Chris Matthews and Robin Wright used the term SNAFU to describe this incident.

SNAFU doesn't mean "unfortunate mistake". It doesn't mean "regrettable failure to meet expected standards".

It means Situation Normal - All Fucked Up. So score one for an accurate representation of the mainstream media by the mainstream media.

* Specifically, the company that owns the Washington Post, the Washington Post Company, owns Newsweek. Also six TV stations and miscellaneous bits and pieces.

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World

Checks and Balances

Newsweek 100 Point Publishability Test

Note: Your story must score 100 or more points on this test to be published in Newsweek. If you are unsure of any questions, ask your editor. That's why you have an editor, unlike those upstart bloggers.

Evidenciary Basis

Physical evidence or video/film footage: 80 points
Notarised or verified documentary evidence: 70 points
On-record first-hand source: 60 points
Independent confirmation: 50 points
Off-record first-hand source: 40 points
Second-hand source: 30 points
Some guy you met in the pub: 20 points
Random phone call, letters in crayon, email in ALL CAPS, mysterious voices: 10 points
Left-wing blog: 50 points
Right-wing blog: -50 points

Finance

Makes Newsweek advertiser(s) look bad: -30 points
Makes Newsweek competitors look bad: 30 points
Makes Newsweek competitors look so bad they might sue: -30 points

Other Considerations

Makes for a funny headline: 10 points
Allows Newsweek to maintain a pretence of neutrality: 20 points
Allows Newsweek to maintain a pretence of neutrality while getting in jabs at the administration: 40 points
Makes Democrats look bad: -20 points
Makes Europe look bad: -10 points
Makes America look bad: 50 points
Makes Republicans look bad: 70 points
Makes George Bush look bad: 90 points
Makes Karl Rove look bad: You may already have won!

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Saturday, May 14

World

The World Stood on its Head

I didn't even know they had the New York Times on Bizarro World:
As the old newsroom saying goes, "If it bleeds, it leads." And while it is understandable that newspapers like to report stories about violence, crime, conflict and mayhem, it means that good news is often relegated to the back pages, if reported at all. This happens the world over, be it in Boston, Berlin — or Baghdad. People who live in Boston or Berlin know, of course, that the bad news is never the whole story. Baghdad, on the other hand, is far away, and Westerners have no choice but to rely on reporters to tell us everything that is happening there. And while there's no denying that there is much bad news — the recent spate of audacious attacks by the insurgents is a prime example — the international press has been so focused on the setbacks that few readers are likely know about [sic] the daily parade of small triumphs that mark slow but steady progress. Consider a month's worth of such stories.
The byline?
Arthur Chrenkoff, Helene Silverman, Norman Hathaway.
What happened to the New York Times we all knew and loathed?

(via Tim Blair)

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World

O Canada!

Canada, 2005:
A senior government official said the prime minister won't be taking any direction from Clarkson.

"The Governor General receives advice from her first minister. She doesn't tender it," the official said.

Australia, 1975:
On 17 October Whitlam told an interviewer that the Governor-General could not intervene in the crisis because he must always act on the advice of his Prime Minister.
And we all know how that one turned out.*

First time as tragedy, second time as farce.

* For my overseas readers, Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam government on November 11, 1975.

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Friday, May 13

World

Dogpile on the UN

The UN Dispatch, a blog sponsored by - but in no way representing the opinion of - the United Nations Foundation, has developed an unhealthy fixation on Roger L. Simon.

They ask,

Is Simon's hyper-focus on a single UN-related issue based on deep convictions? Unbending principles? Moral outrage?
It is true that along with Claudia Rosett, Simon has been consistent in holding the UN's feet to the fire over the Oil-for-Food scandal - UNSCAM - which just happens to be the largest case of embezzlement in history. He hasn't been so thorough in covering, for example, the UN's tardiness in providing aid to tsunami victims or their insistance on five-star housing when inspecting disater areas, or on the endless rounds of peacekeeper sex scandals, and taken little advantage of the opportunities for black humour made possible by the presence of Syria and Cuba on the UN Commission on Human Rights.


Meanwhile at Daniel Drezner's blog, Suzanne Nossel is trying to convince the regulars the UN is not completely corrupt, comparing the UN's misappropriation of billions of dollars of Iraqi money to the fact that there is inadequate documentation for $100 million of US money spent on aid programs in Iraq. She does admit to some UN weaknesses:

Non-Proliferation - Top of mind this week, due to all the ferment over North Korea. This one's largely the fault of the Member States for not strengthening the UN's non-pro mechanisms. See this post at DA for more.

Combating Terrorism - The UN's anti-terror mechanisms are pretty weak. Annan has proposed a series of ways to strengthen them, and the U.S. ought to get behind this agenda.

Human Rights - The UN's human rights mechanisms have essentially been held captive by rights violators. This has got to change, and once again Kofi Annan has the makings of a good proposal on the table.

Public Relations - Always a weak spot, and one that undercuts the organization's effectiveness in many other areas.

The fact is that the UN has been totally ineffective in the first three areas, and all too effective in the last. The solution as Nossel sees it is to give the UN more money and power. The commenters take her to task as well as I could, and probably better.

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Tuesday, May 10

World

U.N. Sues U.S.

You all know the story of Oil-for-Food, right? The U.N. took over the sales of around $65 billion* worth of Iraqi oil over the period of a decade, and in turn provided food and medicine for the Iraqi people... Oh, and also provided palaces and luxury goods for Saddam Hussein and enormous kickbacks for everyone involved. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for.

Fast forward: The U.N. appointed an independent investigative committee to clear its name. Two of the senior investigators recently resigned in protest against the way the investigation was being run, and one of them, Robert Parton, turned over several boxes of documents to the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee in response to a Congressional subpoena.

Well, guess what? The U.N. - in the shape of chief investigator Paul Volcker - has filed a law suit to force Congress to return the documents.

The complaint said that the documents taken by Parton would damage the ability of the committee to complete its work and "potentially places at risk the lives of individuals who have cooperated" with the IIC.
Now that raises this niggling little question in my mind: The interim reports filed by Volcker have not presented any clear case for corruption - rather the reverse. Yet he claims that the evidence upon which he based those reports would put lives at risk if made public.

Why, exactly, Mr Volcker? What is it in those papers that is so damaging that it would lead to murder? And why isn't it present in your own reports?

A decade ago, I considered to US out of UN, UN out of US types to be part of the lunatic fringe. Today, I think they don't go nearly far enough.

(via comments on Roger L. Simon's blog)

* Originally I wrote $110 billion here, but that's incorrect. The $110 billion figure represents the sum of oil sales and aid contracts. Of course, with oil sales of $65 billion, there should be $65 billion in aid contracts, for a total of $130 billion... Leaving $20 billion to account for. The U.N. earned a 2% commission on the oil sales - around $1.4 billion - and there were other legitimate disbursements, but there is still a huge amount of money missing. And that doesn't even account for the kickbacks, which are included in the $110 billion worth of sales and contracts.

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World

Journalists Learn... Nothing, Take Two

From our favourite pathetic hack rag, the New York Times:
Bloggers often invoke these journalistic standards in criticizing the MSM
You're the one claiming to have journalistic standards, buster.
and insist on harsh punishment when they are violated.
Nope. We insist on the truth. Remember that?
The blogs that demanded Dan Rather's ouster
Which were?
accused him of old-school offenses: not sufficiently checking the facts about President Bush's National Guard service, refusing to admit and correct errors, and having undisclosed political views that shaded the journalism.
Bullshit.

There are only two possibilities: Either Rather was duped by an obvious fake, in which case he is too stupid to be on television (quite the achievement, that); or he perpetrated or was party to an obvious fake, in which case he's a lying weasel and too stupid to be on television.

Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, resigned this year after a blogmob attacked him for a reported statement at the World Economic Forum at Davos that the military had aimed at journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them.
Yeah. I wonder why he chose to resign?
Their complaint was even more basic than in Mr. Rather's case: they were upset that Mr. Jordan said something they believed to be untrue.
Well, upset that Eason was spouting anti-American propoganda at an international convention, yes.

But what the blogs asked for was the tapes made of the convention, so that we could determine whether the reports of what Eason said were accurate. Instead, he resigned.

But Mr. Rather's and Mr. Jordan's misdeeds would most likely not have landed them in trouble in the world of bloggers, where few rules apply.
Look, bub:

One, no-one's paying us. Well, in the case of the big lefty bloggers, most of them are getting paid, but you don't have a beef with them, do you?

Two, any blogger trying to present the pathetic "Bush memos" as fact would be torn to shreds exactly the same way CBS was. Bloggers are equal opportunity piranhas.

Three, you're the ones claiming to have these lofty journalistic standards. Dickhead.

Many bloggers make little effort to check their information, and think nothing of posting a personal attack without calling the target first - or calling the target at all.
And many bloggers do check their information. And many, many journalists don't.
They rarely have procedures for running a correction.
Bullshit.

Bloggers run corrections all the time. And we don't bury them on page Q-17 either. Right there on the front page, strike out the wrong facts, add "Oops, looks like I screwed the pooch on this one, apologies to Mr Eastwood. And to the Association of Left-Handed Moose-Hunters too."

The wall between their editorial content and advertising is often nonexistent.
Eh? It's, like, fifteen pixels! Any more and it wouldn't fit on an 800x600 screen!
(Wonkette
Always bloody Wonkette with you.
a witty
Snort.
and well-read Washington blog, posts a weekly shout-out inside its editorial text to its advertisers, including partisan ones like Democrats.org.)
And?
And bloggers rarely disclose whether they are receiving money from the people or causes they write about.
And bloggers rarely do receive money from the people or causes they write about... Except on the left. But that's not what you're complaining about, is it?

Think I'm being too hard on this pathetic partisan hack? Let's look at the blogs he mentions:

Arianna Huffington's planned bloglike object
FishbowlDC
Drudge "I am not a blogger" Report
Daily "Screw 'em" Kos
Joshua Marshall
Wankette
Wankette again

Many bloggers who criticize the MSM's ethics, however, are in the anomalous position of holding themselves to lower standards, or no standards at all.
Would that be the bloggers you list above, or do you have someone else in mind? Do you have an example?

Look, bub, whether we have standards or not doesn't matter, because our readers have standards. If we bullshit our readers the way you do yours, they'll know, and they'll go somewhere else.

There are 8 million blogs on the naked Internet, and no matter what your readership may be today, you're just one of them.

That may well change. Ana Marie Cox, who edits Wonkette
Wonkette.
notes that blogs are still "a very young medium," and that "things have yet to be worked out." Before long, leading blogs could have ethics guidelines and prominently posted corrections policies.
Leading blogs - at least, the ones that have earned that place, like Instapundit and Powerline - don't need ethics guidelines and prominently posted corrections policies because they have ethics and they make corrections. Because, unlike a certain newspaper of record, their reputations are at stake with everything they write, and their reputations are their lives - as far as blogging goes.
Bloggers may need to institutionalize ethics policies to avoid charges of hypocrisy.
Sh'yeah, right.

One, bloggers aren't institutions. They're just people with a web page.

Two, you miserable hacks will accuse us of hypocrisy no matter what.

But the real reason for an ethical upgrade is that it is the right way to do journalism, online or offline.
Well, that's good to know.

So why don't you follow your own rules?

Oh, and does this mean that bloggers are journalists now? Can't have it both ways.

As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves.
Which completely misses the point.

In the (non-crazed-lefty) blogosphere's quest to reform the media, all we have ever asked for is accurate reporting.

That's it. Tell the goddam truth. Stop distorting stories, stop the use of weasel words, stop omitting inconvenient facts that undermine your worldview. Stop pretending to be neutral and objective when, well, this.

Stop, in a word, being journalists, and go back to being reporters.

Of course, that would deprive us bloggers of the club with which we have been beating you so severely - your own words - and force us to go out and find honest work, but hey, them's the breaks.

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World

Journalists Learn... Nothing

Associated Press, via The Age:
New York, NY
May 9, 2005 - 11:11AM

Journalists - those mainstream writers who believe rules are for other people - are fighting back against criticism that their work is unreliable, libelous or just poorly done.

Okay, they didn't write exactly that.

Meanwhile, same bat-section, same bat-paper:

John Davies, director of the company's solutions development market group, is eyeing the estimated 1.2 billion children aged 15-18 as potential notebook buyers and the world's estimated 760 million field workers, who could be in the market for a handheld device or smartphone.
1.2 billion children aged 15-18? Add to that the 4.5 billion children aged 0-14, and it's a wonder the 740 million adults left over have time to think in between changing nappies and grounding recalcitrant teenagers.

It took me nearly a minute to find out that the estimated world population of children aged 15-18 is 480 million. Data here. Of course, you have to be sufficiently awake to realise that with a global population of roughly six billion, you're not going to find one-fifth of that in a four-year age bracket.

Blogs: Fact-checking an ass near you.

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World

Portrait of an Extreme Right Winger

Via Ace, an interesting test to plot your political position against British opinion.

Like most of these tests, it has two axes, one involving economics, the other in this case involving "crime and punishment, Europe, and other transnational issues".

For the latter, they say:

A person on the extreme right of this axis is likely to agree with all of the following statements:

  • Prisons are too soft on criminals

  • The UK should withdraw from the European Union

  • Most immigrants are not beneficial to the UK

  • Some crimes are so serious that the only proper punishment is the death penalty

  • It's more important to punish criminals than to rehabilitate them

  • The government should not give any more aid to poor countries
I regard myself as a centrist, or a little bit right of centre. On this scale, I am indeed a centrist, with 38.2% of people to my left, 26.5% to my right, and 35.3% more-or-less agreeing with me.

Fine. Most of those statements draw a "yes, but..." or "no, but..." response from me, which makes me not just a centrist but a moderate. Ewww.

On the economic scale, though, they cough up this hairball:

A person on the extreme right of this axis is likely to agree with all of the following statements:

  • Britain's railways should remain in private ownership

  • Rich people already pay enough tax

  • I am comfortable with the way that genetic engineering is being used in the food industry

  • The UK was right to go to war in Iraq

  • Most people should take responsibility for saving enough for their retirement, rather than relying on the Government to pay a big enough pension to live on

  • This country should try to become more like the United States of America than like France or Germany
Ble?

There are three basic policies under discussion here:

1. Socialism (points 1, 2, 5 & 6)
2. Government oversight of industry (3)
3. Intervention (4)

Now, we know for a fact that socialism destroys countries. How destructive it is depends on how much socialism you add to the political mix. A country with a healthy economy (the U.S., for example) can cope with a certain amount of socialism (Medicare, Social Security). Ratchet it up to 100% and no matter what human and material resources you start with, your country will collapse (Soviet Union).

So points 1, 2, 5 & 6 aren't questions of opinion, but questions of fact. And yet they are represented as extreme right-wing views.

Point 4, The UK was right to go to war in Iraq, is a little different. I have always supported the war in Iraq for humanitarian and geopolitical reasons, but I think the humanitarian reasons alone should suffice. But again, this is represented as an extreme right-wing view.

Point 3, on genetic engineering, is different again. Most of the European protests over GM food are ill-informed and foolish, but there are real concerns, both over GM food and over the conduct of large companies.

Anyway, my position - I agree strongly with the liberation of Iraq and that the U.K. should become more like the U.S. and less like France and Germany; and I agree moderately with the other four points - my position is significantly to the right of 96.8% of people who have taken this test. And only 0.4% are to my right.

Either that sample is way skewed, or Britain is doomed.

(Note also that they cite Oliver Kamm - Oliver Kamm! - as an extreme right-winger. Doomed, I tell you.)

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Wednesday, May 04

World

The Cost Of Being Australian

I'm an Australian through-and-through. There are few other countries in the world where I'd want to live - America, Japan, some of the "new Europe" countries like Hungary - and probably none that come before Australia. But living here comes with a cost.

Amazon U.S:

Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
by Hugh Hewitt

List Price: $19.99
Price: $13.99 & Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. See details
You Save: $6.00 (30%)
Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours from Amazon.com. Sold by Amazon.com.

Want it delivered Thursday, May 5?

72 used & new from $9.99
Edition: Hardcover
Angus & Robertson Australia:
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
Author: Hugh Hewitt

Millions of people are changing their information acquisition habits, and theWeb log, or "blog" has become a popular source. Hewitt helps readers positiontheir business or organization at the forefront of this information movement.160 pp.

Online Price
$36.95
Click to Add to Cart

Publisher: Nelson Books
ISBN: 078521187X
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256

This title is in stock at the supplier but must be ordered from the US. Approximately 10-15 days plus delivery time

Click Here for Shipping Costs

Prices and Stock Availability may vary between www.angusrobertson.com.au and Angus & Robertson Stores. All Prices in Australian Dollars
The Aussie dollar is currently at US$0.77. That makes Blog cost US$28.45 - twice the U.S. retail price.

Hey, Jeff Bezos! You already have the amazon.com.au domain, maybe it's time to, y'now, do something with it? It's not like you have any serious competition...

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