Rebecca watches the watchdog.
if i were pbs, i'd ask, 'who are you to criticize?'
i got a call from a friend at cbs today. he was laughing about fair's alert. you can read an associated press article on it here. why was he laughing? i didn't ask. he read me 1 sentence, here it is:
Its researchers said they couldn't find a single peace activist had appeared on "NewsHour" during the six months studied.
why is that funny? fair (fairness and accuracy in the media - which is a group i like) has studied pbs' newshour. i don't like pbs. i don't care for the newshour. but fair brought the laughter on themselves. why?
a little 1/2 hour program called counterf**k put out by fair that can't address the war. if i were pbs, i would've asked the ap reporter to go back and ask steve rendell what peace activist counterf**k had on their program in the last 6 months?
there hasn't been 1. cindy sheehan hasn't been on. medea benjamin hasn't been on. leslie cagan hasn't been on.
if i were pbs, i would've driven that point home. i would've pointed out that fair has a 30 minute weekly program and week after week, they choose their guests. so if they can't provide peace activists when they chose guests, who are they to criticize pbs' newshour for not providing a guest?
that's why all the cackles and all the goofing off hurts fair. that's why counterf**k needs to get serious. they want to critique the newshour and they argue that the newshour doesn't provide peace activists. neither does fair. you can't count media critics or former heads of fair. they point the finger at pbs for no peace activist.
i can point the finger at pbs for that. but that's because i've pointed the finger at counterf**k for that same issue. due to counterf**k, fair comes off looking like a hypocrite.
now they might argue, 'we critique the mainstream news.' yes, you do and you study it to see what gets covered and what doesn't. when you see that peace activists are shut out, it's your job to provide a peace activist who will discuss that topic. counterf**k never did that.
if i were pbs, i would've responded, 'since fair hasn't been able to find a peace activist worthy of their own show, i think they're coming off like hypocrites and should spend less time issuing a report card on pbs and more time focusing on fixing their own problems.'
the friend is a mutal friend of c.i.'s and mine. c.i. was speaking today, 1st day since the operation last week, and i said i'd drop what i planned to write about tonight if it would mean 1 less call to c.i. i know c.i. was tired today and feeling sick on the plane. so i'm grabbing this topic and it's 1 i have covered before. counterf**k is embarrassing. friends at cbs news feel that they are under the microscope in ways that other networks aren't (i agree with that assessment). that's bad enough. but the fact that they regularly ignore the iraq war is even worse. the fact that they have not provided cindy sheehan or any other peace activist as a guest going back months means they haven't earned the right to point the finger at any 1 else.
the show is still a joke. it's a bunch of titters and giggles. the organization needs a woman's chair because there are so many insulting things going on. where was their look at elizabeth vargas being fired from anchor of world news tonight due to her pregnancy?
that wasn't important to them. doing their weekly i-hate-katie-couric fan club was. citing ratings as a critique was so beyond everything fair is supposed to stand for and the sort of shameful thing that happens far too often. and you know they never critiqued dexter filkins. they couldn't shut up about judith miller but they couldn't devote time to examining filkins' work. when thomas e. ricks outed filkins, in the pages of the washington post, as the go-to-boy for the u.s. military, they reduced that to a headline. and not even a full headline. they mentioned it for a sentence, maybe 2, and then were off on bill o'reilly.
that program has made a joke out of fair and that's why i have grown to hate that weekly thirty minutes of nonsense. fair is an important organization. counterf**k degrades it weekly. i'm not the only 1 that got a call today about this. i know that ___ was circulating the laughable ap story (with that sentence circled and 'hypocrite' written next to it). and the reason for that is counterf**k. the program needs to get it's act together and that's not going to happen by doing a semi-deep (truly superficial) look at new york times op-eds on abortion and acting shocked that women aren't writing the majority of them. what kind of an idiot doesn't grasp that you hardly ever get women on the op-ed pages of the times. maureen dowd's the token and on a good week you might get 2 more women. on a good week.
when men go on vacation, they are almost always replaced by men. once, thomas friedman was on vacation and 3 people filled in for him. 2 were women. that was the exception. but note even with the exception, you didn't get all women filling in for him. you never do.
so when they do these silly little guests that don't know anything they're talking about or when they cover chris hedges outing a source who lied to him and don't bother to point out what any 1 who read the article knows (that there were 2 sources who lied to hedges and he only outed 1).
they treat that show like a comedy show for the really dumb. and that's hurting fair which is why counterf**k needs to get its act together. fair started to hold the media accountable. a noble goal. but counterf**k has made the organization a joke to the mainstream media because it is noted that they cover up for their favorites (as with ignoring the fact that hedges only named 1 source) and that they book silly guests who defend the mainstream and their interviewers just say 'uh-huh.'
on the chris hedges issue, before counterf**k had the guest from mother jones, c.i. had already noted that article on the chris hedges piece (falsely) linking saddam hussein to 9-11 (oh, you thought judith miller wrote that piece - a lot of media critics on the left credit it to her, but chris hedges wrote it). c.i. likes chris hedges but that didn't prevent c.i. from stating the obvious - the story, the new york times story not the mother jones 1, the new york times story that linked saddam and 9-11 mentioned 2 sources. hedges only outed 1.
and was the easiest 1. it was 'i don't know his name, he told me his name was __ but it turns out that's not his name. he was iraqi.'
and there was the increasingly dopey janine jackson interviewing the mother jones writer and never bothering to ask the obvious question: 'chris hedges mentioned 2 sources. did you ask him who the other source was?'
that never gets mentioned. it should have been asked. if you are truly a watch dog it should have been asked.
c.i. loves chris hedges' work. but that didn't mean c.i. played stupid. c.i. tackled the story before counterf**k did. click here to read c.i.'s critique.
and if you're in doubt that there were 2 sources, here's the link to the article hedges wrote followed by an excerpt, 'A Nation Challenged: The School; Defectors Cite Iraqis Training For Terrorism:'
Two defectors from Iraqi intelligence said yesterday that they had worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995.
They said the training in the camp, south of Baghdad, was aimed at carrying out attacks against neighboring countries and possibly Europe and the United States.
The defectors, one of whom was a lieutenant general and once one of the most senior officers in the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, said they did not know if the Islamic militants being trained at the camp, known as Salman Pak, were linked to Osama bin Laden.
'two defectors.' 'they.' 'defectors.' why was only 1 source outed since they both lied? if you're a watchdog, you're a watchdog. you don't play patty cakes or look the other way when you're covering a story just because some 1's a nice guy.
this is only 1 example of how they look the other way and attack some people and give others a pass. and the fact that they do that is why fair is losing impact with the mainstream media.
Its researchers said they couldn't find a single peace activist had appeared on "NewsHour" during the six months studied.
why is that funny? fair (fairness and accuracy in the media - which is a group i like) has studied pbs' newshour. i don't like pbs. i don't care for the newshour. but fair brought the laughter on themselves. why?
a little 1/2 hour program called counterf**k put out by fair that can't address the war. if i were pbs, i would've asked the ap reporter to go back and ask steve rendell what peace activist counterf**k had on their program in the last 6 months?
there hasn't been 1. cindy sheehan hasn't been on. medea benjamin hasn't been on. leslie cagan hasn't been on.
if i were pbs, i would've driven that point home. i would've pointed out that fair has a 30 minute weekly program and week after week, they choose their guests. so if they can't provide peace activists when they chose guests, who are they to criticize pbs' newshour for not providing a guest?
that's why all the cackles and all the goofing off hurts fair. that's why counterf**k needs to get serious. they want to critique the newshour and they argue that the newshour doesn't provide peace activists. neither does fair. you can't count media critics or former heads of fair. they point the finger at pbs for no peace activist.
i can point the finger at pbs for that. but that's because i've pointed the finger at counterf**k for that same issue. due to counterf**k, fair comes off looking like a hypocrite.
now they might argue, 'we critique the mainstream news.' yes, you do and you study it to see what gets covered and what doesn't. when you see that peace activists are shut out, it's your job to provide a peace activist who will discuss that topic. counterf**k never did that.
if i were pbs, i would've responded, 'since fair hasn't been able to find a peace activist worthy of their own show, i think they're coming off like hypocrites and should spend less time issuing a report card on pbs and more time focusing on fixing their own problems.'
the friend is a mutal friend of c.i.'s and mine. c.i. was speaking today, 1st day since the operation last week, and i said i'd drop what i planned to write about tonight if it would mean 1 less call to c.i. i know c.i. was tired today and feeling sick on the plane. so i'm grabbing this topic and it's 1 i have covered before. counterf**k is embarrassing. friends at cbs news feel that they are under the microscope in ways that other networks aren't (i agree with that assessment). that's bad enough. but the fact that they regularly ignore the iraq war is even worse. the fact that they have not provided cindy sheehan or any other peace activist as a guest going back months means they haven't earned the right to point the finger at any 1 else.
the show is still a joke. it's a bunch of titters and giggles. the organization needs a woman's chair because there are so many insulting things going on. where was their look at elizabeth vargas being fired from anchor of world news tonight due to her pregnancy?
that wasn't important to them. doing their weekly i-hate-katie-couric fan club was. citing ratings as a critique was so beyond everything fair is supposed to stand for and the sort of shameful thing that happens far too often. and you know they never critiqued dexter filkins. they couldn't shut up about judith miller but they couldn't devote time to examining filkins' work. when thomas e. ricks outed filkins, in the pages of the washington post, as the go-to-boy for the u.s. military, they reduced that to a headline. and not even a full headline. they mentioned it for a sentence, maybe 2, and then were off on bill o'reilly.
that program has made a joke out of fair and that's why i have grown to hate that weekly thirty minutes of nonsense. fair is an important organization. counterf**k degrades it weekly. i'm not the only 1 that got a call today about this. i know that ___ was circulating the laughable ap story (with that sentence circled and 'hypocrite' written next to it). and the reason for that is counterf**k. the program needs to get it's act together and that's not going to happen by doing a semi-deep (truly superficial) look at new york times op-eds on abortion and acting shocked that women aren't writing the majority of them. what kind of an idiot doesn't grasp that you hardly ever get women on the op-ed pages of the times. maureen dowd's the token and on a good week you might get 2 more women. on a good week.
when men go on vacation, they are almost always replaced by men. once, thomas friedman was on vacation and 3 people filled in for him. 2 were women. that was the exception. but note even with the exception, you didn't get all women filling in for him. you never do.
so when they do these silly little guests that don't know anything they're talking about or when they cover chris hedges outing a source who lied to him and don't bother to point out what any 1 who read the article knows (that there were 2 sources who lied to hedges and he only outed 1).
they treat that show like a comedy show for the really dumb. and that's hurting fair which is why counterf**k needs to get its act together. fair started to hold the media accountable. a noble goal. but counterf**k has made the organization a joke to the mainstream media because it is noted that they cover up for their favorites (as with ignoring the fact that hedges only named 1 source) and that they book silly guests who defend the mainstream and their interviewers just say 'uh-huh.'
on the chris hedges issue, before counterf**k had the guest from mother jones, c.i. had already noted that article on the chris hedges piece (falsely) linking saddam hussein to 9-11 (oh, you thought judith miller wrote that piece - a lot of media critics on the left credit it to her, but chris hedges wrote it). c.i. likes chris hedges but that didn't prevent c.i. from stating the obvious - the story, the new york times story not the mother jones 1, the new york times story that linked saddam and 9-11 mentioned 2 sources. hedges only outed 1.
and was the easiest 1. it was 'i don't know his name, he told me his name was __ but it turns out that's not his name. he was iraqi.'
and there was the increasingly dopey janine jackson interviewing the mother jones writer and never bothering to ask the obvious question: 'chris hedges mentioned 2 sources. did you ask him who the other source was?'
that never gets mentioned. it should have been asked. if you are truly a watch dog it should have been asked.
c.i. loves chris hedges' work. but that didn't mean c.i. played stupid. c.i. tackled the story before counterf**k did. click here to read c.i.'s critique.
and if you're in doubt that there were 2 sources, here's the link to the article hedges wrote followed by an excerpt, 'A Nation Challenged: The School; Defectors Cite Iraqis Training For Terrorism:'
Two defectors from Iraqi intelligence said yesterday that they had worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995.
They said the training in the camp, south of Baghdad, was aimed at carrying out attacks against neighboring countries and possibly Europe and the United States.
The defectors, one of whom was a lieutenant general and once one of the most senior officers in the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, said they did not know if the Islamic militants being trained at the camp, known as Salman Pak, were linked to Osama bin Laden.
'two defectors.' 'they.' 'defectors.' why was only 1 source outed since they both lied? if you're a watchdog, you're a watchdog. you don't play patty cakes or look the other way when you're covering a story just because some 1's a nice guy.
this is only 1 example of how they look the other way and attack some people and give others a pass. and the fact that they do that is why fair is losing impact with the mainstream media.
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