Chris Hedges is an activist, and this is an attempt at building a narrative that he believes in. That narrative will be built no matter what the facts. This guy was a Bureau Chief for the New York Times. Yikes.
Economist Tyler Cowen discusses the ideas of Oxford economist Paul Collier from his latest book. Piece discusses an innovative approach to making natural resource wealth beneficial to a poor country's development, and negating some of the deleterious effects of such wealth. More book report than reportage, it's a clear and concise distillation of Professor Collier's ideas.
Surprising tidbit emerges from the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger proceedings. Well sourced story, told fairly and with a noted lack of sensationalism.
What is the sound of one axe grinding? Classic case of Bush Derangement Syndrome substituting for opinion and thought. Writer makes an allegation that Bush, as president, has the right to grant clemency, but if you follow the logic she employs, it wouldn't appear possible to use that power without it constituting an abuse. But she starts the article by criticizing Bush, and ends it that way, so it will have its fans. Bad writing, bad argument.
Attribution of all quotes. Video of his interviews. Risking life and limb to get the story. What about him is not a reporter? Yet Yon is dismissed, even on this website, as an opinionated blogger, and the AP and others, if they do choose to report on his stories, characterizes his reports as suspect. Inconceivable!
Advocacy journalism. The "facts" could be reported very differently. For example, Republicans facing reelection and scurrying about worrying about the war issue in 2008 are showing a notable lack of leadership. It could also be pointed out that Bush spoke to these issues yesterday, and explained that he will veto any legislation that tries to undermine the success of our efforts in Iraq. But if these items were reported accurately, it would undermine the concerted media barrage against the war and the administration that began the week. Don't let actual events interfere with their telling!
Interesting attempt to quantify the impact of Al Qaeda's media war/terrorism strategy. Do members of the "Atrocity of the Day" media realize that their industry's tendencies are being exploited by the murderous thugs in Al Qaeda? As far as Al Qaeda is concerned, the battle is not for Baquba, it's for real-estate on the front page of the NYT and minutes on the nightly CNN broadcast. As long as the major story in terms of "GRP" coming out of Iraq is terrorist atrocities, the bad guys win--even if the true major stories coming out of Iraq, stories of the actual fighting and diplomacy, tell things differently.
This is an opinion piece, and not an analysis of US public diplomacy to date. Public diplomacy, once less obscurely known as propaganda, is a special challenge in a country with a free media. When the media is hostile to the government, it is even more difficult to get the message out. I don't know how our administration is doing in the battle for "their" hearts and minds, but I hope it's doing a better job abroad than it is at home.
Hmm...taken alongside the WashPo article, it really seems like the administration is under siege from without and crumbling from within. Is it possible that this barrage is intended to convey that situation, whether it is true or not, in order to influence the president to accelerate whatever schedule he was considering for troop withdrawal? You know, journalists doing their part to make the world a better place? I think so.
I'm an atheist, and I do not applaud much about Ellison or the Investigate 9/11/Impeach CheneyBush crowd. I do applaud the author for mentioning the fact that there was someone wearing a 9/11 conspiracy T-shirt. It's nice to have documented the associations that many politicians seek out when building their base. Perhaps when common sense has begun to reassert itself on the left, a nice example can be made of the many Democratic politicians who have courted the wackjobs of the left. Only instead of lending the politicians and the wackjobs credibility, as these associations seem to do today, they will be damaging. One can dream...
Poll-driven impeachment proceedings are not a positive development in our political culture. Kucinich is a crank and his spotlight-seeking pronouncements are probably not beneficial to our political culture either. I just don't understand why this "story" deserves mention, and why Kucinich's comments on this matter are worth reporting--there's no substance in this piece. There's the mention of the law and constitution, but not of the laws Cheney is accused of breaking. It must be said, however, that the phrase "imperial vice presidency", nonsensical, oxymoronic and emblematic of Kucinich's confused view of how government operates, is pretty funny.
There is no new information in this piece, contrary to what a previous reviewer indicates. There is the impression given of new information, most likely in the service of assisting Novak's book sales. There hasn't been a new piece of information in this story since, apparently, prior to Fitzgerald's appointment. There has been the controlled release of misleading bits of information, designed to manufacture a scandal and keep a story going, but that is not the same thing as news.
Anonymous administration, Pentagon and intelligence sources casting sinister aspersions on the president, called in this piece by such an anonymous source the "heart of darkness." Minimizing reports of progress through rhetorical sleight. Oh, Congress--not exactly a lean, mean fighting machine. If the stakes weren't so high, observing the ditherings of our dysfunctional political class could be quite amusing. As it is, it promises tragedy to the people of Iraq most immediately, but our ill-informed, out of touch and dangerously short-sighted legislators threaten us all.
Gandelman calls to account the NYT for biased reporting and manufacturing a story about Fred Thompson. Connects it to the campaign season. As the NYT belittles Republican challengers and performs its usual service on behalf of whoever the self-anointed decide ought to be our next president, it will be interesting to see how impactful will be the blogosphere's attempts to counter this advocacy with sunshine and its own advocacy.
As a non-lawyer, I can't really argue about the law with a lawyer, so instead here's a pure hominem attack. It's important to remember, whenever reading anything by Glenn Greenwald, that Glenn Greenwald is a highly problematic figure to be lauded on a site like NewsTrust. He misrepresents the opposing viewpoint rather than confront it head-on, in fact that seems to be his main argument method. He used to go around making up fake identities and posting laudatory comments about himself or taking his own side in blog comments section arguments. Why, when these facts are well known, is Glenn Greenwald taken seriously? I can't do it.
Mr. de Villepin can add "bad fixer" to his C.V., alongside bad Foreign Minister, bad Prime Minister, bad literary critic and bad historian. It's a confusing story, and unclear in what capacity M. de Villepin was involved, though that may not be the fault of the reporters--details are still emerging. The most shocking thing about this story so far is that Sarkozy, it seems, is still squeaky clean.
This story grew some legs, and of course, as evidenced by an unhappy reviewer below, the distortions have begun. First, Yon is not a "blogger." In the story itself, Michael Yon clearly contextualizes this anecdote. The official refuses to give his name, the story is hearsay. Should it have been excluded from the dispatch? Perhaps, but I'm not so sure. The author explains that due to the brutality he has witnessed the story is plausible. And he doesn't report it as though it's a verified incident, he reports the event of being told the story and having it translated.
Let's see...regurgitate findings from a single source (a hatchet-job itself). Focus on the most "sinister" "arguments" and distort them even further, declaring that Cheney's "influence has been entirely malign." This is formulaic robo-writing from someone with advanced Bush Derangement Syndrome, and it should not be treated seriously. It's echo-chamber clatter, and if it wasn't in the New Yorker, it would be totally ignored. Similar "pieces" are on view in the letters section of any alt weekly, among other paragons of journalistic and literary output. If I were to attempt a parody of this Hertzbergian style, it would look a lot like this column. In fact, one could rather easily program a computer to spit out columns like this, ... More »
All sources are named, which is nice. Declassified French documents are made reference to, and readers are pointed where to go for further investigation. The larger point--that the French foreign policy at the time of the Rwandan genocide was concerned with rising Anglo-Saxon rather than genocide--is well taken. It is also relevant to today's events, as much ink has been spilled over European objections to our foreign policy, with the assumption made in many cases that the critiques are based on humanitarian concerns. That is a dubious assumption, and stories like this make it apparent why that is so.
Extremely sketchy story on the details. Basically feels like the reporter took some press release from the "human rights" community and decided to use it as an excuse to bash the US. Headline says it all--in a world full of illegitimate regimes, the organizations listed in paragraph 2, Amnesty Int., Human Rights Watch "and other groups" spend an awful lot of time calling "to account" the US. Real courageous.
An interesting piece of analysis of the changing role and requirements of war reporting. The author, a former soldier, sees journalists necessarily "choosing sides" just in order to stay alive while reporting on a war. This is due to the fact that combatants have realized how important is information flow, and controlling it is now a big part of waging war. As the author puts it, "Whether they like or not, journalists are in the army now." Pretty chilling thought that necessarily calls into question our received notions of journalism.
It's laudable that story names its "expert" sources. It's not so laudable that the prosecutor is the only person to be contrasted with the experts claiming the plot's severity is "overblown." That gives a perhaps intentionally misleading notion that no one other than someone personally invested in the outcome would take this case seriously. It implicitly casts the prosecutor's "nonexpert" opinion as being totally contradicted by transportation "expert" opinion, by the rhetorical trick of omission rather than by reportorial coup. Lame use of the "appeal to authority", and anyway, these authorities--are they really authoritative on this subject?
Exciting story. No sourcing, and no verification of his stated credentials or details of any anecdote, all of which are contested elsewhere. Romantic, exciting and very, very hard to believe. Highly politicized presentation displaying extreme anti-capitalist assumptions and a seeming lack of economics/common sense--from a former "chief economist" at a consulting shop.
This is analysis, so it would be unfair to fault it for having an opinion. That doesn't change the fact that it portrays a rather silly opinion, one that indicates that the author misconceives human nature, recent history and current events. Beyond the observation that our acquiring bigger guns and attempting to better protect ourselves makes our putative opponents uncomfortable, there isn't much sense to this piece.
