Bash the Messenger

Scooter Libby and Sandy Berger

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Jul 052007
 

Hillary Clinton on Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence:

Today’s decision is yet another example that this administration simply considers itself above the law. This case arose from the administration’s politicization of national security intelligence and its efforts to punish those who spoke out against its policies… This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.

Yet is there a single news reporter who asked her how this statement would be applied to Sandy Berger if she is elected president?

(Thanks to Michael Reagan and his column for reminding us about Sandy Berger. No thanks to the main stream media, though.)

Google’s news selection

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Jun 262007
 

Google News has been giving a lot of play to the Supreme Court decision in the student vs school case. Yet to read the headline news late tonight, there was no news about the Supreme Court and political speech. Earlier today, Google gave some play to both Supreme Court decisions, but now their minds seem fixated on drugs. (Yeah, I know they say a computer program picks the stories. Blaming the computer is one of the oldest dodges in the book. That one was going around before most of these Google people were even born.)

Besides, a search for “Supreme Court Federal Election Wisconsin Right Life’ gives 281 hits, while a search for “Supreme Court Morse Frederick”gives only 245.

Journalese definition of “many”

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Jun 212007
 

The Best of the Web at opinionjournal.com  is more tolerant and easygoing than I am.   I admire them for that.   I suggested in …but acknowledged… that journalists not be allowed to use the word “but.”  After reading Best of the Web, one realizes that it might suffice to publish a dictionary that explains the special definitions of words like “but” and “many”, as used by journalists.

 … according to the AP’s Sara Kugler, “many believe [it] could be a step toward entering the 2008 race for president.”

To make sense of this assertion, you need to be fluent in the dialect of American English known as Journalese. In Journalese, many can be either singular or plural, and it is a first-person pronoun.

Which is to say, Bloomberg is the candidate of the media, ideologically as well as professionally. The positions Kugler enumerates are all very popular among journalists. And while they are also popular among Democrats, Democratic politicians do not necessarily support them, or support them sincerely.

The URL: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010234

…but acknowledged…

 Bash the Messenger, Schools  1 Response »
Jun 132007
 

Time to pick on the Kalamazoo Gazette and Julie Mack some more.

Bureaucracy or efficiency? Granholm would expand role of intermediate districts; critics say they are a waste.

One reason given for ISDs is that they do things that school districts themselves cannot easily manage. And to some extent, that’s true. It’s hard for smaller school districts to run specialized facilities and hire highly specialized workers who serve only a few students. That doesn’t mean ISDs are the best way to deal with it, though.

A couple of  paragraphs from the article:

Olson, the education analyst for the Mackinac Center, said ISDs are a waste of money and should be scrapped. He said local districts could pick up services such as vocational and special education, but acknowledges a funding mechanism would be necessary.

“We could have an incentive structure that would allow schools to compete for the privilege of educating special-education children,” Olson said.

There is a sneaky put-down of this Olson here.  It’s those two words, “but acknowledges.”  Given what he is quoted as having said, Julie Mack could as well have written “and suggests a funding mechanism.”  Or even more exuberant words, such as “can barely contain his enthusiasm for the possiblilities.”  But instead she makes it sound as though she did a gotcha that put him on the defensive.    It’s a good ploy, if your editor lets you get by with it.

 I mean, it’s as if I tell her I’d like to go on a bicycling vacation in Russia (which is true) and then she goes back to her office and writes, “…but he acknowledges that he will need to travel outside the country to do this.”  Well, duh.   But if she wants to make it sound as though I’m being defensive about some huge flaw that I hadn’t planned on, that’s the propaganda technique to use.

I hereby propose a journalism reform.  News writers should not be allowed to say “but acknowledges.”  Maybe they shouldn’t even be allowed to use the word “but”.   Most of the time “and” would do just as well, and would be more neutral.

Julie Mack’s Consensus on ISVs

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Jun 122007
 

Finally, after years of remarkably good behavior for a Democrat, Jennifer Granholm may be letting her true colors show.

The following headline is from the lead article on the front page of the Kalamazoo Gazette (Sunday June 10, 2007):

Bureaucracy or efficiency? Granholm would expand role of intermediate districts; critics say they are a waste.

That could be the article that launched a thousand blog posts, but let’s start with this paragraph.

There is general consensus that Granholm’s proposal is a move in the right direction. But educators question the idea of mandatory collaboration, saying flexibility is needed.

General consensus? Perhaps there is a lot of support for the general thrust of Granholm’s proposal, but no data were presented to support this assertion. Now I suspect that if you add up all the time that reporter/writer Julie Mack spent talking to people about this issue, you’d find that the vast majority of her time was spent talking to people who support this kind of centralization of schools. Maybe she mistook that for general consensus. (I don’t know that for sure, but I have as much data to support my statement as Julie Mack presented to support hers.)

BTW, back in Mrs. Bredberg’s English class in the 1960s, we learned that Ms. Mack’s propaganda technique is known as the bandwagon ploy.

Bernard Shaw was born yesterday

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Jun 062007
 

Bernard Shaw laments:

“Unfortunately, Fox News is the ratings leader . . . on the cable side of the business, and what Fox puts on the air is not news.”

What Fox does, he said, is “commentary, personal analysis.”

Calling himself “very straitlaced [and] very old-fashioned,” Shaw said: “When anchors are reporting the news, they should report the news and allow the viewers at home to decide what they think about issues.

Retired anchor Shaw laments effects of Fox on his beloved CNN

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. People have been complaining about the editorialization of the news for long before FOX news even existed, and for good reason. Why it’s only FOX that provokes these concerns makes one wonder just how oblivious these mainstream news people are.

Here’s a small example of what has been going on for decades and decades. These are all headlines for the same news:

  1. Rice lashes out at Chavez’s closure of popular TV station
  2. Rice Speaks Out on TV Shutdown
  3. Rice Protests Venezuelan TV Closure
  4. Rice Condemns Pulling of Venezuelan TV Station
  5. Rice, Venezuelan foreign minister spar over TV station closure
  6. Condoleezza Rice Concerned About Press Freedoms in Venezuela

If that isn’t personal commentary and editorializing, I don’t know what is. If I were Chavez, I’d prefer the first one. It makes Condoleeza Rice sound like she lost control, suggesting a raving maniac. If I were Condoleeza Rice, I’d prefer one of the others, perhaps the 3rd or 6th, because it makes her sound like a responsible human-rights activist.

It’s a relatively minor thing, but this sort of things has been going on forever. It’s not new with FOX. CNN didn’t get into it by apeing FOX.

Minor edit to clarify an antecedent, 6-Jun-2007

News organization prefers dog-bites-man stories

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Jun 022007
 

Man-bites-dog vs Dog-bites-man. That’s one that the leftwing news media like to trot out to excuse themselves when they’re trying to cover up Democrat scandals or manufacture Republican ones. They need man-bites-dog stories for the front page, they tell us.

So here’s Charlie Gibson of ABC news explaining why he decided to lead with a dog-bites-man story and play down the man-bites-dog one. Jerry Falwell was controversial; therefore his story didn’t deserve coverage:

From the Washington Post, May 17:

“NEW YORK, May 16 — After word arrived Tuesday afternoon that Jerry Falwell had suffered a fatal heart attack, Charlie Gibson was determined not to lead his newscast with the preacher’s death.

“”It lends importance to a figure whose legacy contained a lot of positives and a lot of negatives,” says the ABC anchor, who was once a reporter in Falwell’s home base of Lynchburg, Va. “It venerates the subject to an extent that I didn’t think belonged there. He was a controversial figure.””

The parody page of The Weekly Standard (May 28) gets credit for bringing this item to our attention.

Formatting edited, 6-Jun-2007

Ask someone else

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May 312007
 

Sen. Clinton says “You’ll have to ask someone else.”

Why is that? Does she think a candidate for president should not have opinions on matters of public policy?

“Those weren’t gifts. Whatever I’ve done, I complied with Senate rules at the time. That’s the way every senator operates,” Clinton said. The senator deflected a question about whether she believed the rule, which has since been changed, was good policy.

“Those were the rules. You’ll have to ask somebody else whether that’s good policy,” she said.

Clinton defends private jet travel

That’s a misleading headline, btw. It’s not so much that she accepted private jet flights, as it is who it was who was providing those favors. I see that some newspapers obscured the issue even further, though, by headlining it: “Clinton defends jet travel.” Not a one of them headlined it, “Clinton defends relationship with Vinod Gupta.”

 Posted by at May 31 2007 21:45

They said

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Mar 042007
 

From the Boston Globe, headlined: Russian riot police break up protest against the Kremlin

Police clubbed protesters and dragged them into waiting buses yesterday in response to a defiant demonstration against the Kremlin in the heart of President Vladimir Putin’s hometown.

Several thousand members of liberal and leftist groups chanted “Shame!” as they marched down St. Petersburg’s main avenue to protest what they said was Russia’s rollback from democracy. The demonstration, called the March of Those Who Disagree, was a rare gathering of the country’s often fractious opposition.

It was at least the third time police have moved in to break up an anti-Kremlin protest in recent months.

“They said,” there has been a rollback from democracy? How come that rates a “they said”? There wasn’t a “they said” for the phrase, “fractious opposition.” There wasn’t a “they said” for the word “defiant.” So how come “rollback from democracy” gets that tag? Does Putin deny that he’s rolling back democracy?

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