My beloved hometown makes national headlines yet once again!

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My beloved hometown makes national headlines yet once again!

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Post tags: Drunk 4yr olds

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Feed enhanced by Better Feed from [...]]]> Obama should stop trying to be Nixon. And Fox News should quit trying to be Pravda.

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Couple of them are along the lines I think of, with some quibbles. [...]]]> I call it “media reform” because the most effective way I’ve seen to bring media changes is to open an outlet and lead the way. So, this guy has a list of eleven, mostly techy, things he’d do if he ran a media outlet.

Couple of them are along the lines I think of, with some quibbles. F’rinstance:

3. … Every print article would have an accompanying box called “Things We Don’t Know” — a list of questions our journalists couldn’t answer in their reporting. TV and radio stories would mention the key unknowns. Whatever the medium, the organization’s website would include an invitation to the audience to help fill in the holes, which exist in every story.

Very important not just for engaging crowd-sourced fact-finding, but also for contextualizing the information we do have in terms of what we don’t have.

4. We would create a service to notify online readers, should they choose to sign up for it, of errors we’ve learned about in our journalism. Users of this service could choose to be notified of major errors only (in our judgement) or all errors, however insignificant we may believe them to be.

Me, too. I’d do that.

6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.

Yeah – good sentiment. “Lying” is a dangerous term, and maybe it isn’t journalism’s role to be jury… but there is definitely room to say something along the lines of “but we have to point out this bullet list of information that seems to contradict so & so”.

We would replace certain Orwellian and PR-speakish words and expressions with more neutral, precise language. If someone we interview misused language, we would paraphrase instead of running direct quotes. Examples, among many others:

So and so is not worth some amount of money. He has financial holdings of that amount, or his wealth is such and such.

The activity that takes place in casinos is gambling, not gaming.

There are no death taxes. There can be inheritance or estate taxes.

Practices for which this nation and its allies have successfully prosecuted others on war-crimes charges are torture, not “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

A person who pays to stay in a hotel is not a guest. She is a customer. A guest, by definition, is not billed for the privilege.

Piracy is what people carrying guns on the high seas do: capturing ships, stealing cargo and turning crews and passengers into hostages, sometimes murdering them. Piracy does not describe what people do when they post digital music on file-sharing networks.

A tad nit-picky toward the end, but the dude’s heart is in the right place.

I generally like his “next-generation” tech kind of suggestions, too…

But what I would be worried about is a whole other can of worms. First, I would cover the real, existing political system as it is – but I would never frame an issues story around it. The issues would be dealt with in depth, employing the most rigorous research process to produce a product that

1) explains the ostensible goals of the proposals that are on the table,

2) mentions, where applicable, related goals and political motivations,

3) assesses accurately how well each proposal could be expected to advance the goals,

4) predicts unintended consequences for those proposals,

5) summarizes both the ostensible and the underlying motivations and points of opponents,

6) does the same for proposals that are not “on the table”, but that could be competently presented in the context of the stated goals, or that have been implemented elsewhere.

7) I must re-iterate, the above will be done rigorously, employing the best methods and review available.

That’s just for coverage of political issues. Regular news will be similarly vetted and presented in the most reality-grounded manner possible.

9) Limitations on our ability to do the above will be highlighted!

And all this is just at the reporting stage. Meaning, not for the job for the Sunday morning analysts – the job for reporters, editors, and consultants before the story goes to print. So we’ll be turning on its head the paradigm of “first with the story”.

That marketing technique was great in 1920… These days, it no longer matters who is first nearly as much as it matters who people trust enough to listen to. So, let ‘em go run to the empty heads on the 24 hr cable stations when news is BREAKING. But let ‘em be saying to each other as they stare at the _N_ crawler… “I need to hear about this from the Tête Syndicate so I’ll know what’s really going on.”

Let the market compete with that. If consumers don’t want a dose of reality with their news… screw ‘em – we’ll sell our presses to the highest bidder among the lowest common denominator and go to work writing fantasy novels.

Investors – use my contact page.

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So Kudos to Rep. Fox for [...]]]> Alright – every one that bet on “It’s already happened, you idiot”, come collect your prize. You can also have the 2:1 payout on the Not Michelle Bachman… as far as I know the only nationally elected official to advance the euthanasia trope in July was Virginia Foxx of NC:

So Kudos to Rep. Fox for heading up the crazy train….

Weirdly, Sarah Palin wasn’t far behind, and Michelle Bachman appears to be just itching to work in a “Death Panel” reference of her own.

More.
And, more.

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Post tags: Euthanasia Meme, healthcare, Sarah Palin, Virginia Foxx

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Fred Thompson hosted a much longer session of … what do you call it when distortion follows insinuation follows [...]]]> The short form of the new, revoltingly vituperous talking point, and a response to it is here. However, this is just a small part of appears to be a large scale coordinated message campaign.

Fred Thompson hosted a much longer session of … what do you call it when distortion follows insinuation follows distortion, and every bit of it is accusations of unimaginable wickedness? Anyway, whatever you call it, the AARP has responded. Unfortunately, Mark Twain was very correct in his observation that a lie will make it halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. I expect large numbers of gullible Americans to be outraged at the Democrats’ plans to kill the elderly… and no amount of fact-checking will cure it. That’s the sad thing.

Update: Yes, it’s a coordinated campaign.

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Post tags: Betsy McCaughey, Fred Thompson, healthcare, Obama

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1) Yes, there was a minor and childish internet conspiracy on an atheist website to rate down Comfort’s book. Such childish conspiracies often happen when a book is published from a controversial [...]]]> I’ve been following this saga, and while I would ordinarily be the last to defend Ray Comfort, I do have a few things to say.

1) Yes, there was a minor and childish internet conspiracy on an atheist website to rate down Comfort’s book. Such childish conspiracies often happen when a book is published from a controversial author or on a controversial subject. But, if you wonder what others see to dislike in the “new” or the “militant” atheism, this is representative, in its own small way.

A side note on that – I think that Amazon should have some sort of small test to at least make it difficult for a non-reader to review a book. Perhaps three words on three pages to show that you at least have it in your possession. Or a multiple choice quiz on the content. Nothing too imposing, of course.

Anyway, I understand why Comfort and his compatriots are put off by this bad behavior. Kneecapping contentious dullard is still kneecapping – and it should be refrained from.

2) Another gripe I have is with Myers’ characterization of Comfort as “stupid”. It’s not that I think Comfort is smart. I haven’t had a lot of contact with him. Certainly his abject failure to understand why his central anti-evolution and anti-atheism theses fail doesn’t speak well of his analytical ability. Certainly after years of having the worst of his errors explained to him, he continues to repeat them. He’s not an intellectual giant. On the other hand, he’s a human being and I fail to see what purpose it serves to publicly call him “stupid”. I don’t see that it serves any purpose in this context except to strengthen the animosity. So, I disapprove of that.

I’m sure you can search the archives of this blog and find cases where I’ve said something intemperate about some of the characters whose careers are made out of saying dumb things to gullible people in order to advance a counter-productive agenda. In other words, I’ve done what I complain about from Myers. I grok him. But I still think it’s something that in cooler moments we should apologize for and try to avoid.

Someone like Comfort exists to be tweaked. I won’t deny that. But save that tweaking for someone who has the patience to do it with good humor and in a non-alienating way… I say.

P.S. Myer’s criticisms of Comfort’s claims are of course accurate. I think they’re also unnecessary – no one could take him seriously outside of WorldNetDaily’s devoted readership – and they aren’t going to listen to facts, anyway.

P.P.S. Comfort himself behaves rather badly, too – taking a very arrogant tone in presenting his very adolescent arguments. Certainly it can be said that bad behavior toward him is simple reciprocation.. I just don’t think you should reciprocate that kind of behavior.

P.P.P.S. This type of bad behavior is also deplorable. And funny when you get caught.

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Post tags: PZ Myers, Ray Comfort

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Feed enhanced by Better Feed from [...]]]> Good call on the part of the Chattanooga Police force. They obviously can tell a journalist from a rancorous self-promoting prig.

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