Shorter Kurtz: We're feckless and it's your fault.

(frist?)

Golly! What an amazing statement! My seven-year-old daughter uses this logic when she is very very aggrieved.

yeah, imagine what would've happened if the media got behind the war, instead of fighting it every step of the way... i'm looking at you Judith Miller!

GC

That's been the wingnut position since Viet Nam.

This is why home-schooling is a bad idea.

If the press had done the right thing and succumbed to our demands for good news from Iraq, we would have believed all that bad news from Iraq.

That's not even mockery. That's what he's actually saying.

I never cease to be amazed at how easy it is to surprise us. Wingnuts have never been reasonable people, have never been intellectualy honest and have never seen a pit of slime so deep and disgusting that they wouldn't wallow in it. Why would we, any nof su be standing here ready to believe that there is a realm of stupidity that wingnuts won't resort to?

That said, the sheer audacity of this one is breathtaking.

How were we to know that they hadn't just made all that stuff up?

Some of it has been made up, unless you haven't paid any attention since the Koran incident. An astounding number of news stories are based on unnamed, uncheckable, and in some cases, what turns out to be non-existent sources. How many of the reports from Iraq are simply based on "police said?" What percentage of the facts are from first-hand reports by named reporters?

If there is one thing almost every returning soldier or Marine complains about, regardless of their political leanings, it's how the media has treated the war. This is not an imaginary issue, no matter how derisive you are.

"After all, didn't that Koran flushing incident turn out to be wrong?"

Or at least plausibly covered up?

Which is ultimately what is demanded - would the media please be as gullible as I strive to be?

Dude. They're trying.

Would you believe that "any nof su" = "any of us".

Missed him by (holds two fingers an inch apart" that much!

If Goebbels were alive, he'd be developing an inferiority complex.

After all, didn't that Koran flushing incident turn out to be wrong?

No, just misstated. A toilet bucket can't be flushed, but a Koran can be tossed into one.

An astounding number of news stories are based on unnamed, uncheckable, and in some cases, what turns out to be non-existent sources.

Mrs Malkin, i believe we've found you an escort!

I've often wondered why all of Fox News' reporters in the field in Iraq aren't reporting the good news. With all of the liberal media ignoring our many successes in Iraq, you would think Fox would have a superb chance to report on many heart warming, exclusive stories.

So right-wingers believe that the media has this crazy liberal bias that makes them misreport things, and this leads them to wrongly dismiss credible reports coming out of Iraq that all is not sound.

To most sane people, this would be strong evidence that the "liberal bias" hypothesis was dead wrong.

Let's see - We have slaughtered 100,000+ Iraqi's, tortured them with dogs, waterboarding and beaten them to death with batons. Our soldiers have raped their women. We have allowed their museums to be looted. Their economy is in ruins. They have no clean water and electrical service is spotty at best. Their country is littered with our depleted uranium, which will be dangerous for 20,000 years.

Yup, we need to get tougher with those camel jockeys.

Good God, am I the only one who is horrified by this barbaric suggestion??

If by "media treatment of the war" you mean that there must be numerous daily instances where U.S. forces accomplish something good, helpful or decent in Iraq, yet such event is bumped off the evening news by the latest car bomb attack, you would be entirely correct.

Of course, that would also be irrelevant, as had the American people been told that the cost of the invasion of Iraq was going to be a thousand or so dead a year, more wounded, and some multiple of that in dead Iraqis, the "political will" for the whole adventure would not have been there in the first place.

So ex-lib is Kurtz. Makes sense.

Stanley Kurtz is one of the guys on my permanent "ignore" list, but today's contribution to the public discourse is so obliviously unglued that it's worth passing along for its slapstick value alone.

How could you know this if he is on your “permanent "ignore" list”?

The twin pillars of the coming Bush approach to Iraq appear to be a "surge" in U.S. force levels combined with the sacking of the generals opposed to it.

For more, see:
"Surge and Purge: The Bush Strategy for Iraq."

Breathtakingly horrible. Sounds just as stupid as our Al. Are they related?

Let's see - We have slaughtered 100,000+ Iraqi's, tortured them with dogs, waterboarding and beaten them to death with batons. Our soldiers have raped their women. We have allowed their museums to be looted. Their economy is in ruins. They have no clean water and electrical service is spotty at best. Their country is littered with our depleted uranium, which will be dangerous for 20,000 years.

That most of these items are misleading, and some completely false, illustrates the problem.

Which ones are false or misleading, elmendorf??

I agree that the media has had (and continues to have) a dreadful anti-war bias. Bad news is given far more coverage than good news. E.g., Newsweek finally reported on the booming Iraq economy, but that's old news.

However, Kurtz sounds bonkers when he blames the media bias for conservatives not realizing how badly things were going.

"Which ones are false or misleading"

They actually have clean water mixed in with the dirty water.

In an early account of President Bush's Tuesday press conference, USA Today Online reported:

"The Baker-Hamilton Commission recommended a quick buildup of forces as part of an overall plan to arrest what it called a 'grave and deteriorating' situation in Iraq."

That is not accurate and I wonder who slipped it into the USA Today account.

USA Today often uses Associated Press reports at the outset of its coverage of an event and then replaces the AP material with a staff-produced rewrite. But I can find no AP account, early or late, that included the false report. And in the USA Today Online rewrite of the Bush press conference account that replaced the initial account, the false report was missing.

For the record, the official line of The Associated Press on the matter is as follows:

"Even the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which advocated removing most combat troops by early 2008, said it could support a temporary increase if U.S. commander believe it would be effective." You can see that this is at odds with the first USA Today Online account.

So -- who sneaked the false report into the early USA Today story.

Was it the staff writer who submitted the report or an editor who changed what had been submitted to suit his/her political viewpoint?

And, just for the record, who came on board and killed the false report?

What is going on at USA Today Online?

Pat, we were outside of PS 69 in West Baghdad discussing the marvelous paint work at that most modern school, when an IED went off in the background.

The paint, (is that Sherwin-Williams, Alex?) consists of two coats of a delightful Puce over a base coat. Those very recent red splatters are being touched up by that superb paint crew from Halliburton even as I speak - T & M of course. Amazing how they able to step over all of those bodies to touch up. Real freedom pros in action.

The Jeld-Wen windows will allow a great deal of needed light into the classrooms - What's that, Alex? Oh yeah, the glaziers have arrived to replace the broken glass - Hmmm, those Medics do seem to be doing an amazing job of removing those shards. However, the new Hunter-Douglas blinds seem to be ok, Pat

Well, Pat, freedom is, indeed, on the march. Er, that was PS 96 - The IED kind of flip flopped it, ala Kerry - Yuk, yuk, to you too, Pat

Newsweek finally reported on the booming Iraq economy, but that's old news.

I don't think you were trying to make a pun, but it was funny anyway.

On the flip side, if the conservative media and the Republican administration it serves had been more restrained in selling the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, I might be more inclined to care what they have to say now. But, the inflamed and unsubstantiated propaganda they spewed leaves them with zero credibility in reflection of how we arrived at this mess.

I guess the facts have a liberal bias. Damned facts.

G Spot1: I guess the facts have a liberal bias.

Facts? Wingnuts are post-modernists. There are no "facts" or "objective reality" (though I'm not sure that argument works well against IEDs).

Here's a typical example of media bias, from Reuters today:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces have captured a senior al Qaeda in Iraq leader accused of killing hundreds of Iraqi civilians, including women and children, the U.S. military said in a statement on Wednesday.

The military said the "terrorist leader," whom they did not identify, was captured on December 14 in the northern city of Mosul in a raid which also netted five other suspects.

Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader", which is a way of implying that the military's description may not be trustworthy.

It will be interesting to see how much focus the media give this story. Anyone think it will be the lead story? Anyone think it'll be on the front page?

Conservative distrust of the media's very real bias has inclined us to dismiss reports about problems in Iraq that are real.

Frankly, I had a bit of a problem parsing this sentence, until I broke it down to these simple assertions:

1. The writer considers himself a Conservative;

2. The media is very biased (I impute that as being against Conservatives or Conservative ideology);

3. Conservatives distrust the media;

4. There are major problems in Iraq;

5. Conservatives dismissed media reports about major problems in Iraq.

My goodness! Five delicious propositions all in one sentence. I'm sure that many of you would love to eat them for lunch.

Why not declare the war "over" and a "victory"?

That'd be great news.

"Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader", which is a way of implying that the military's description may not be trustworthy."

And your point is . . . ?

E.g., Newsweek finally reported on the booming Iraq economy, but that's old news.

No, what's old news is that the "booming Iraqi economy" claim has been debunked on these threads several times, and yet "ex-liberal" is unabashedly dishonest enough to cite it again.

Blame the media for not doing its job in the sendup to the Iraq War.

Had the media done its job, a fully informed American public never would have permitted a war.

Of course, the Congress did not do its job either.

The media and the Congress also failed the American people in the runup to the Vietnam War.

Lessons learned? Never.

Well gosh, ex-lib, since our military rounded up and sent to Quantanamo some poor punks whose only crime was herding goats on the wrong side of the hill, it seems that a bit of journalistic caution is advised.

Credit where due: Kurtz had the vision to use "inclined" as a verb...

I have the antidote to Stanley Kurtz.

To do this justice, I should just reprint the whole post here, but I'll just do a link and a snippet and ask EVERYONE to read it.

Jay Rosen writes about Ron Suskind and, in so doing, basically captures in one place so much good stuff and so many good points, one would think I was paid to shill for the guy.

Never heard of Rosen before today, say it on the Huffy Post, read the whole thing, and went, "damn! That's it!"

In Without a Doubt (subtitled “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush�) Suskind was not talking about an age old conflict between realists and idealists, the sort of story line that can be re-cycled for every administration. It wasn’t the ideologues against the pragmatists, either. He was telling us that reality-based policy-making—and the mechanisms for it—had gotten dumped. A different pattern had appeared under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The normal checks and balances had been overcome, so that executive power could flow more freely. Reduced deliberation, oversight, fact-finding, and field reporting were different elements of an emerging political style. Suskind, I felt, got to the essence of it with his phrase, the "retreat from empiricism.�

Yes - the Bush Administration does reflect a 'retreat' from all things scientific or empircal.

Remember this article to you favorite wingnut relatives this holiday season.

Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader", which is a way of implying that the military's description may not be trustworthy.

Er, no, those aren't scare quotes, they are attribution quotes, that indicate that the description is a direct quote from the military source, not a characterization by the author of the article.

Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader", which is a way of implying that the military's description may not be trustworthy.

no, dim-wit. those are not "scare quotes". those are just quotes. and they're there because the reporter is quoting what someone said. the reporter can't verify who the "terrorist leader" is, because the military won't provide his name, so the reporter can only report that someone is calling this other person a "terrorist leader".

Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader"

ex-, those are not scare quotes. They likely indicate that the story is directly quoting the description of the captured man given to the press by the US military.

Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader"

ex-, those are not scare quotes. They likely indicate that the story is directly quoting the description of the captured man given to the press by the US military.

Shorter Stanley Kurtz: "The media's insistence on reporting the truth about Iraq forced us to ignore the truth about Iraq."

Even shorter Stanley Kurtz: "It's your fault I'm an idiot."

Someone should inform Mr. Kurtz that the transportation and document forgery industries are doing extremely well due to the increased demand from the 100K plus Iraqis fleeing the country every month.

Feel better, ex-lib?

Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader", which is a way of implying that the military's description may not be trustworthy.

Or it could also be an arcane typographical convention indicating what I'm told those in the business call a direct quote.

But more telling is your assumption that good journalism would involve repeating the military's description without question. I mean, if the military says he's a terrorist leader, only a flaming liberal would question the description, right? And those hundreds (at least) who've been released from US custody were also terrorist leaders, no quotes needed -- until the time of their release, when they no longer were terrorist leaders.

Conservative distrust of the media's very real bias has inclined us to...

Clearly the only "news" shows "conservatives" watch are on Comedy Central.

That most of these items are misleading, and some completely false, illustrates the problem.
Posted by: elmendorf

I agree that the media has had (and continues to have) a dreadful anti-war bias. Bad news is given far more coverage than good news. E.g., Newsweek finally reported on the booming Iraq economy, but that's old news.
Posted by: ex-liberal

So willfully inaccurate on so many levels. Where to start? Going with elmendorf's assetions about the media being misleading, you are right about that but you're heading in the wrong direction. As this bipartisan hearing by Reps Kucinich and Paul examines the methodology and validity of the Lancet Study, we begin to see that there have not been ~55,000 Iraqi civilian deaths sine we invaded, but most likely 650,000 Iraqis killed. Or as Kucinich helps put it into perspective:

According to the United Nations, the population of Iraq was 25 million in 2003, and we have now learned that since then, an estimated 650,000 have perished to violence. Now, if such a rate of violence were to be inflicted against the U.S., we would have lost about 7.8 million Americans. Such a level of violence is unimaginable, but this is the level of violence that the civilians in Iraq are subjected to.

So yeah, the media isn't being accurate, but the bias definitely favors President Bush and his war of choice, not the other way around as you claim.

As to ex-lib's assertion that the Iraqi economy is booming, the reason that hasn't been reported is that, for some reason, the media isn't buying the BS:

"Nearly 5.6 millions Iraqis are living below the poverty line, according to our most recent studies. At least 40 percent of this number is living in absolute and desperate deteriorated conditions," said Sinan Youssef, a senior official in the strategy department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, adding that this level of poverty is a 35 percent increase over the level before 2003.

Can we assume that you'll be heading over to Iraq ex-lib to take part in this "booming" economy?

Woah ... not including the accidental duped posts, that's *four* smackdowns of ex-lib's "scare quotes" in a row ...

Bob

Tyro, cleek and cmdicely, I disagree with you. Those are scare quotes.

When a newspaper uses a quote as part of the report, is is supposed to quote an entire statement, not just 2 words.

I agree that the quotes indicate that the words "terrorist leader" were given to the press by the military spokesperson. However, putting just those two words in quotes indicates that the reporter doesn't necessarily agree with the military spokesperson.

Here's an exaemple. Today's New York Times has a headline, U.S. Sees Progress in Talks With North Korea Chances are their source may have used the word "progress." Nevertheless, suppose the headline read U.S. Sees "Progress" in Talks With North Korea. That would imply that the reporter doesn't necessarily agree that progress it taking place.

I saw this very reasoning from Senior management years ago. A project failed. They blamed the quality and testing group, because the group 'should have given them advance warning.' Documents were produced which showed they had been warned, but the warnings were ignored. Senior managements response: "Still your fault. You should have made us believe you."

It is to cry.

ex-liberal:

Yeah, but "terrorist leader" wasn't used in a *headline*, either. Context is supplied in the body of the article.

You can't compare quotes in headlines (which are rarely if ever used) with quotes in the body of an article.

Bob

I usually type FAUXLib, as I do believe that the young boy who posts as ex-lib was never a liberal and he certainly is FAUX.

However, as I do not find him to be trust worthy of imparting any news of factual basis, I will use " on each side of his handle - "ex-liberal"

Why does Schaife waste their money on this intern?

ex-liberal: Note the scare quotes around "terrorist leader", which is a way of implying that the military's description may not be trustworthy.

Even if your characterization were accurate, which would be a matter of opinion and yours is clearly biased towards giving the quotation marks the meaning "scare quotes," how does this demonstrate bias, much less bias against the war?

It would, if the characterization had been true, have been evidence that the media doesn't trust the military, but that reputation has been earned; it is not the result of "bias." Just ask Pat Tillman's relatives or Jessica Lynch herself, to reference instances of military lying.

In any event, the military has been wrong (and lied) before when identifying certain captured individuals as even simply "terrorist" much less "terrorist leader", so it is premature for the press to accept their identification until confirmed over and over and over again.

ex-liberal proves yet again that the conservatives's greatest enemy is truth, which is why they are constantly trying to defeat it by posing false allegations against those who report it.

amazingly, instead of slinking away in sheer embarrassment, "ex-liberal" defends his/her/its stupid, groundless, false statement:

When a newspaper uses a quote as part of the report, is is supposed to quote an entire statement, not just 2 words.

No, that's simply not true. A partial quote is not only perfectly acceptable, but also preferable when indicating a direct quote as part of a paraphrased statement.

In addition, it's possible -- I don't have a transcript -- that the words "terrorist leader" were used outside of the context of an "entire statement". Example:

Q: How would you describe the person captured?

A: A terrorist leader.

Rough example, but you get the idea.

Seriously, "ex-liberal," it's like you aren't even trying any more. I'm glad you realize that your bullshit fools no one at all, but this statement is so obviously clueless and dishonest that it begs the question of why you even bother.

Shamelessness from a wingnut? Perish the thought...

Media bias is a real problem in this country. It is part of what is driving the great partisan divide and squashing informed political discourse. This degrades the ability of people to make good decisions because they do not know what sources to trust. Why is this hard for a liberal to believe or understand?

What amazes me is that a group of people who vote 85 - 90 % Democratic ( my personal guess since none of them will actually share their voting record ) in a country that is more like 50-50 Democrat-Republican actually have the arrogance to believe that they can produce an unbiased product. This is what is unbelievable.

Media bias is a real problem in this country. It is part of what is driving the great partisan divide and squashing informed political discourse. This degrades the ability of people to make good decisions because they do not know what sources to trust. Why is this hard for a liberal to believe or understand?

What we refuse to accept is the erroneous assertion that the bias is liberal.

Why is it hard for you to understand that?

Tyro, cleek and cmdicely, I disagree with you. Those are scare quotes.

Well, you are quite simply wrong. So?

When a newspaper uses a quote as part of the report, is is supposed to quote an entire statement, not just 2 words.

Now, I don't have (for instance) an AP stylebook handy, but AFAIK standard journalistic style is to put in quotation marks anything that is being used because it is a direct quote from some source, and not a characterization by the journalist, whereas scare quotes are outright forbidden in standard journalistic style (they may appear in editorial content, of course, or in material that it itself quoted in journalistic material.)

I agree that the quotes indicate that the words "terrorist leader" were given to the press by the military spokesperson.

IOW, that they are properly used attribution quotes, not scare quotes.

However, putting just those two words in quotes indicates that the reporter doesn't necessarily agree with the military spokesperson.

Any time any material (whether two words or an entire paragraphj) is placed in quotation marks it indicates that it is the statement of a third party that the journalist isn't vouching for. This is also true when the material is explicitly paraphrased (as in, “The military said...”.)

However, there is a particular problem sometimes with paraphrases where a secondary characterization may be ambiguous as to whether it is from the material being paraphrased or the author.

For instance, if a journalist were to write:

The military said the terrorist leader was captured on December 14 in the northern city of Mosul in a raid which also netted five other suspects.

It would be somewhat unclear if the person who was captured was fairly characterized as a "terrorist leader" on the basis of objective evidence available to the reporter, or if the characterization that the captured person was a "terrorist leader" was simply part of the claim made by the military.

Expanding this to:

The military said the "terrorist leader," whom they did not identify, was captured on December 14 in the northern city of Mosul in a raid which also netted five other suspects.

Removes the ambiguity.

You seem to prefer either dishonest reporting (not identifying unverified claims of third parties as such at all) or ambiguous reporting (concealing which characterizations are taken directly from a source at face value, and which are the journalists own conclusions) over honest, direct, unambiguous reporting.

Why?

What is easy to blow past in these discussions is the fundamental explination for how we got into this mess, namely "to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail."

Well, that is half of the explination, the other half is that Bush and his administration were too stupid to realize the inherent risk of maintaining the military force we do -- that risk being sooner or later you can't help but use it.

You know, the men and women of our armed forces have made heroic sacrifices since this country was formed.

What may need to occur is some more sacrifice, in this case perhaps another ten to fifteen years of doing in Iraq what the British had to put up with in Northern Ireland, before even the dumbest person of voting age in this country realizes that WWII and the Cold War are officially over.

There is not going to be a 21st century version of "Band of Brothers" for some future Speilberg to make, because all of the nations which have the resources to field vast armies basically realize the futility of ground-acquisition conflict on that scale.

Even the idiot Bush administration has figured this one out, which is one reason why we are not attempting to invade North Korea at the moment, or for that matter at any time.

What the idiot Bush administration did not, obviously, figure out, was the incongruity of having a military desiged to liberate France from Nazi Germany attempt a decades long police action.

Of course, the idiot Bush administration did not also realize that this was a police/nation building action, but that is beyond obvious.

However, at this point, there needs to be quite a long rhetorical retreat from the "war or terror" and its the Democrats who should be leading such rhetorical retreat.

It is only because the rhetoric fit the armed forces we have that we got into this mess, and for those of us who always argued that the words "war on terror" were more dangerous than ridiculous, well, frankly, I would have been much happier if things had turned out better.

Sometimes being right all along totally sucks.

Its difficult, and tricky, becuase at every step along the way some NeoCon bullshitter will be attempting to make the arguments Kevin has already cited.

But this "war on terror" meme has simply got to go.

Media bias is a real problem in this country.

What liberal media?

This issue has been talked to death--the media was in the tank for the Iraq war and did not do its job. Period. End of story. Ever heard of Judith Miller? Those front page stories in the New York Times?

"Media bias" is a myth--the Bush administration has had the most favorable coverage of any in the modern era. It has been consistently shown that the media has failed to hold the Bush administration properly accountable and to properly question the particulars with regards to the war on terror.

One very good example--Bob Woodward. When Woodward was writing about how "decisive" Bush was, the Bush administration was praising Woodward and giving him access that most journalists would only dream of.

As soon as Woodward pulled back the curtain and wrote something that blew the administration out of the water--State of Denial, suddenly, we went back to this mythical liberal bias.

Give it a rest, dude. It ain't selling when Bush sits at 33% in the approval rating polls and it ain't selling when people know we need to get our troops out of Iraq.

Hansen: Media bias is a real problem in this country.

No, it is a myth promoted by conservatives who are at war with the truth.

BTW, if you really think that 85-90% of the media are liberals, please explain why conservatives refuse to enter into journalistic careers and why it wouldn't be their own fault for refusing to take careers in this area?

Funny how conservatives also think that teachers are 85-90% liberal too.

So, why aren't conservatives engaging in teaching careers?

Explanation: they are selfish and greedy and couldn't give a damn about education or the truth. Thus, they disdain careers that focus on real facts, preferring careers where myth and belief and the law-of-the-con-game rule.

Wait...wait...maybe in the spirit of the thread, "ex-liberal" obliged us with a bit of self parody?

But who could tell?

From Wikipedia

Quotes are also sometimes used for emphasis in lieu of underlining or italics, most commonly found on signs or placards. This is discouraged not only because it is an improper usage, but also because it is easily confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation... (my boldface)

For sale: “fresh� fish, “fresh� oysters

The first statement above could be construed to imply that the word fresh is not being used with its everyday meaning, even so far as to mean that the fish or oysters are anything but “fresh.�

Similarly, even if the quotes around the words "terrorist leader" were innocent, they could easily be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation marks. The editor left quotes (or added quotes) which he or she knew some readers would interpret as casting doubt on the military's version.

they are selfish and greedy and couldn't give a damn about education or the truth. Thus, they disdain careers that focus on real facts, preferring careers where myth and belief and the law-of-the-con-game rule.

Which perhaps explains why so many members of the Christian clergy identify as Republican?

Here's an exaemple. Today's New York Times has a headline, U.S. Sees Progress in Talks With North Korea Chances are their source may have used the word "progress." Nevertheless, suppose the headline read U.S. Sees "Progress" in Talks With North Korea. That would imply that the reporter doesn't necessarily agree that progress it taking place.

In the case of your example, aside from being in a headline vs. body as Bob points out, you have a paraphrase of the subjective impression of one party (the U.S. [executive branch, presumably; headlines are notoriously truncated]). There is only one potentially controversial characterization ("Progress") presuming, of course, that the fact of talks with North Korea is not a disputed point.

So, US Sees Progress in Talks With North Korea carries the same meaning as US Sees “Progress” in Talks With North Korea, as both convey unambiguously that the “progress” is the opinion of the U.S., not that of the headline writer.

This is not at all parallel to the earlier case, and is, therefore, a very bad analogy.

Media bias is a real problem in this country. ... Why is this hard for a liberal to believe or understand?

Oh, it's easy to believe and understand; it's just that the media's biases aren't, as dishonest conservatives -- but I repeat myself -- like to claim, liberal.

I am more inclined to put stock in a J-school definition than Wikipedia. Didn't you see Colbert save the elephants, single-handedly?

Behar tried to soften the gabfest controversy Tuesday, in anticipation of Clinton's appearance, calling the Rumsfeld-Hitler comparison a "faux pas," and telling viewers: "I don't think Rumsfeld is an evil person in his heart, I just think he did some terrible things in this war, and he was very controversial.

Scare quote above ("faux pas"), ex-liberal, or not?

Bush, speaking to reporters in the Indian Treaty Room of the Old Executive Building, said he would "gather all" recommendations from Gates, military leaders on the ground, diplomats and interested Iraqis for a way forward in Iraq.

How about "gather all" in the above, ex-liberal?

Reaction to Behar's — and the show's — latest blow-torch attack of the Bush administration ranged from an official "no comment," to a head-shaking "jerk."

How about "jerk" or "no comment"?

Explanation: they are selfish and greedy and couldn't give a damn about education or the truth. Thus, they disdain careers that focus on real facts, preferring careers where myth and belief and the law-of-the-con-game rule.

Google_This: Don't you see that beliefs like this are really counter-productive to a better society. If I went around thinking that half the people in the country are "selfish and greedy", I would not be able to have a decent discussion with them. I invite you to actually engage some intelligent conservatives in a discussion and discover for yourself their motives, fears, feelings, and agenda. Either that or you could continue to congratulate yourself on how caring you are that you refues to associate with that "selfish and greedy" bunch and remain in ignorance.

I invite you to actually engage some intelligent conservatives in a discussion and discover for yourself their motives, fears, feelings, and agenda.

I'll settle for engaging honest conservatives, because the people who you're encouraging us to speak to are the 33% that will always support the war in Iraq, always support Bush, and who can't stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

Iraq terrorist leader Zarqawi "eliminated"

Remember, ex-liberal, the truth will set you free [from conservatism].

Embrace it.

Iraq terrorist leader Zarqawi "eliminated"

Remember, ex-liberal, the truth will set you free [from conservatism].

Embrace it.

ex-liberal:

What I don't understand, ex-lib, is why you believe that "terrorist leader" should be taken as a statement of simple fact, and not a characterization by the people who captured him? What about the presumption of innocence?

Would you have preferred "alleged terrorist leader" to using quotes?

Bob

Similarly, even if the quotes around the words "terrorist leader" were innocent, they could easily be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation marks. The editor left quotes (or added quotes) which he or she knew some readers would interpret as casting doubt on the military's version.

In short, "ex-liberal" embraces Kurtz's "logic" (now there are some scare quotes for you, "ex-liberal").

I invite you to actually engage some intelligent conservatives in a discussion and discover for yourself their motives, fears, feelings, and agenda.

What Pale Rider said. However, since most of the examples of "conservatvies" on these boards consist of the likes of Hansen, "ex-liberal", "minion of rove," Matthew Marler, etc. etc. etc., we discuss with the conservatives we have, not the conservatives we wish we had.

Don't you see that beliefs like this are really counter-productive to a better society. If I went around thinking that half the people in the country are "selfish and greedy", I would not be able to have a decent discussion with them. I invite you to actually engage some intelligent conservatives in a discussion and discover for yourself their motives, fears, feelings, and agenda. Either that or you could continue to congratulate yourself on how caring you are that you refues to associate with that "selfish and greedy" bunch and remain in ignorance.
Posted by: John Hansen

Don't you see that believing half the country is ignorant is really counter-productive for a better society? I invite you to actually engage with Democrats and liberals and find out why we have these views of Republicans so that you may be able to get to know yourselves better.

There are a lot of fucked-up people in this world.

Correcto - There is soooo much "open" discussion in Utah, Idaho and other parts of Deseret.

Hansen: Don't you see that beliefs like this are really counter-productive to a better society. If I went around thinking that half the people in the country are "selfish and greedy", I would not be able to have a decent discussion with them.

You are the one that said the country is 50-50, not me; I am not a prisoner to your fantasy world of "fact."

I invite you to actually engage some intelligent conservatives in a discussion and discover for yourself their motives, fears, feelings, and agenda.

When I find them, I do.

Haven't found any here.

Besides, intelligent is not inconsistent with greedy and selfish.

And believing someone to be greedy and selfish is not inconsistent with an ability and willingness to discuss things with them.

It is conservatives who refuse to allow dissent and who want to marginalize and isolate liberal thought and speech.

Remember all the times the GOP threw "protesters" out of Bush events?

Probably not; you have selective memories.

Either that or you could continue to congratulate yourself on how caring you are that you refues to associate with that "selfish and greedy" bunch and remain in ignorance.

Believing someone to be selfish and greedy is not the same as refusing to associate with them.

That is a tactic of conservatives - a refusal to associate with those with whom they disagree. See reference to Bush events above.

Christ believed in the sins of those he associated with; he spoke with and preached to prostitutes, lepers, and other societal rejects.

Only in the mind of a conservative would belief in someone's sins be equated to disassociation.

That you believe the two are connected says a lot more about you than it does about me.

Similarly, even if the quotes around the words "terrorist leader" were innocent, they could easily be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation marks.

Ironic and altered-usage quotation marks aren't used in standard journalistic style (and are frowned upon in formal writing generally), because they conflict with important uses of quotation marks to identify short direct quotes and/or to make use-mention distinctions (though domains in which the latter is common tend to prefer singlequotes for use-mention and double quotes for direct quotation, to disambiguate those two; still, that leaves no room for ironic/altered-usage quotations.)

So, presuming that people are aware they are reading a newspaper, there should be no particular risk of a literate reader confusing a short direct quote for a use of scare quotes.

The editor left quotes (or added quotes) which he or she knew some readers would interpret as casting doubt on the military's version.

The only reason they would cast doubts on the military's version is if the reader didn't trust unsubstantiated assertions by the military. Since the statement was, in fact, an unsubstantiated assertion by the military, the only "doubts" would be those resulting from the objective facts of the information available to the journalist. (OTOH, those inclined to blindly trust the military but to distrust independent judgment of journalists, either in general or the particular source, would find the characterization more credible this way.)

These are exactly the kind of doubts (or credibility, depending on the reader's biases) that the media should preserve: those that exist when the reader stands in the shoes of the journalist.

You seem to prefer, instead, deliberate obfuscation of the facts to suppress doubts that you don't share, or to create doubts that you prefer.

Why?

Isn't Kurtz's argument basically "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" redux? And if so, is there any reason it can't contain some (overblown) kernel of truth, just as the fable reflects a reality we've all seen from time to time?

I'm actually not of the belief that conservatives are inherently any more intentionally dishonest than anyone else. We all have our fact filters, things we emphasize and deemphasize dependent on our core values.

Which isn't to say that dishonest conservatives don't exist or don't have high places in the media and punditocracy. Only that people who follow those cues are doing something other than deliberatly lying about something they know the truth about. They may have allowed themselves to be misled -- but that's a different thing than intentional dishonesty.

Bob

if you really think that 85-90% of the media are liberals, please explain why conservatives refuse to enter into journalistic careers

They think 85% of the MSM is liberal. There's more to journalism than the MSM. This is a big difference. The NYTs, ABCNews, NBC, etc hire libs. They don't hide it. They'll have a token conservative but usually they're really moderates who seem conservative. George (ABC) and Tim (NBC)were liberal activists. But the media is now much larger that the NYTs and ABC.

The problem was better defined by David Brooks of the NYTs over a year ago. Liberals and conservatives live in different worlds with different information streams. What exposure I get to the NYTS, ABC, especially the BBC, AP and Reuters I immediately discount.

It's made for a dramatic difference almost all for the good. It's why Kyoto was voted down 95-0 (in a resolution) amd remains a scam and why tax rates stay in the mid 30's. It's how we found our Joe Wilson and Cindy Sheehan were such bizarre frauds, all about Xmas in Cambodia, Dan Rather, etc.

You think Dan Rather is as honest as the day is long. I don't believe a word he says. If you don't think it matters you are fools. Further, all the trends tell us this is just the beginning with newspapers falling to #4 as the source of news behind TV, Radio and the internet.

What should be in scare quotes is the military's characterization of all Gitmo detainees as the world's "most dangerous terrorists".

If that were true, then the military has let out about 90% of these "most dangerous terrorists."

Who would trust someone who would let our worst enemies go free?

Who would trust someone who would lie abou8t the status of its detainees roughly 90% of the time?

Why shouldn't the media treat military characterization of the people it captures with some sense of caution?

Inquiring minds want to know, ex-liberal.

Isn't Kurtz's argument basically "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" redux? And if so, is there any reason it can't contain some (overblown) kernel of truth, just as the fable reflects a reality we've all seen from time to time?
Posted by: Shelby

So we should look for the pony inside Kurtz's pile of crap?

If you find it, let me know. I'll be surprised if it's worth the effort.

Don't you see that believing half the country is ignorant is really counter-productive for a better society? I invite you to actually engage with Democrats and liberals and find out why we have these views of Republicans so that you may be able to get to know yourselves better.

cyntax: If I believed that half the country is ignorant I wouldn't include "Political Animal" on my list of can't miss blogs would I?

They may have allowed themselves to be misled

Why would anyone allow themselves to be misled?

And, as if on cue -- here comes rdw to soundly thrash my statement of conservative good intentions ...

Different information streams?

Dude, you exist in an atmosphere with an entirely different chemical structure.

Bob

Christ believed in the sins of those he associated with; he spoke with and preached to prostitutes, lepers, and other societal rejects.

Yeah, and look where it got him! There is no difference between the judgementalism of the Roman bureaucrats of 2,000 years ago and the judgementalism of the Bush administration--the dude we know as Christ would be sitting in Guantanamo Bay right now if he were walking around on this Earth--his fell-good message of love and tolerance would be heresy to the horrorshow and the torture policies brought to us by the current "Christians" who claim to have the moral authority to lead us.

Why, that Jesus fellow would be considered a hippie, and we all know that the worst thing you can be in this world is an advocate of peace and love, especially when we're at war against...who exactly? Stateless individuals who use the tactic of terror? Is that who? How about we go catch the guy who perpetrated all this nonsense? Doesn't anyone who claims to be a conservative want to honestly discuss why the most powerful nation in the world can't catch an old, sick and megalomaniacal six-foot-five dude with a noticeable coterie of unhappy little bad apples around him?

mrck1: What I don't understand, ex-lib, is why you believe that "terrorist leader" should be taken as a statement of simple fact, and not a characterization by the people who captured him? What about the presumption of innocence?

Would you have preferred "alleged terrorist leader" to using quotes?

Bob, I luv ya, but you seem to be arguing against yourself. Earlier you said the scare quotes don't imply doubt that the captured person is a terrorist leader. Here, you say the scare quotes do so imply, and properly so.

IMHO there's no need to use quotes or "alleged", because the article says the individual wasn't named. Therefore, it's clear that any description of him is attributed to the military, without confirmation by the reporter.

What exposure I get to the NYTS, ABC, especially the BBC, AP and Reuters I immediately discount.

[rolls eyes] Obviosuly, Wooten. Your sole value here, other than as a source of amusement, is in conveying the delusions of the powerline crowd.

Different information streams?

do you watch Fox?

rdw: They think 85% of the MSM is liberal.

Gee, I guess Blacks should never have tried to enter any profession that was 85% or greater White, cause being a minority in a profession is good enough reason not to pursue a career in that particular field, at least according to rdw.

That's conservative "logic" for you!

To the extent anyone is still reading, I googled and read what apparently is a relatively famous piece of war-news reporting "The Death of Captain Waskow" written by Ernie Pyle from the invastion of Italy in WWII.

I don't know what the reaction was to that piece in 1944, but if someone wrote something similar today, the entire "Conservative" (all quotes hereon are scare) media would do everything in their power to destroy them.

The media was not so different during WWII, the difference was that the American public had a pretty good understanding of what was going on in WWII, and a story like Pyle's would hardly swing public opinion on the war one way or the other.

Today, its not that the reporting is doing the "war" no justice, its that the "war" itself is not just.

You think Dan Rather is as honest as the day is long.

You mean the guy who hasn't been sitting in the anchor chair since March 9, 2005 and who had dismal, third place ratings for about a decade? That guy?

rdw: Why would anyone allow themselves to be misled?

You would be in the best position to answer that question, having been a victim of this phenomenon.

Shorter Kurtz, if he were Homer Simpson after forgetting to pick up Bart at soccer practice:

"I know you're mad at me right now, and I'm kinda mad too... I mean, we could sit here and try to figure out 'who forgot to pick up who' until the cows come home. But let's just say we're both wrong and that'll be that."

Hey, rdw's back!

What exposure I get to the NYTS [?], ABC, especially the BBC, AP and Reuters I immediately discount.

Uh huh. Which, no doubt, is why you were convinced several months ago that the Democrats' chances of capturing a Congressional majority were "gone now." How did that election turn out for you, Wootten? Please remind me again what happened to Crazy Curt Weldon and Senator Rick.

I have no doubt you do get your information from other sources - like NewsMax, Michelle Malkin, WorldNetDaily, and other rather-less-than-unimpeachable sources. Shall we talk about Jamail Hussein? or how many books Jimmy Carter signed?

rdw:

Why would any good German blindly follow a mandman like Adolf Hitler?

ex-liberal:

No, I don't think the attribution to the military is clear in context. Imagine if the "terrorist leader" was Zarqawi. My guess is that you wouldn't see the quotes, because by the time of his death it had become universally acknowledged that whatever else Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was, he was certainly a terrorist leader by anyone's definition.

All the quotes do here is affirm for the reader that the characterization came from the military. If a reader chooses to doubt that characterization or believe it speaks only to the reader's preconceptions about the military's track record in identifying terrorist leaders. Some might not question it. Some might doubt it vigorously. That's not an issue for the reporter -- especially, as Chris Dicely pointed out, that scare quotes are not part of the AP stylebook precisely to avoid such explicit characterizations of an ambiguous situation.

Bob

"ex-liberal," given that Bob is valiantly defending the point that conservatives aren't necessarily dishonest, it's poor form to undercut his position so quickly and completely.

Bob, I luv ya, but you seem to be arguing against yourself. Earlier you said the scare quotes don't imply doubt that the captured person is a terrorist leader. Here, you say the scare quotes do so imply, and properly so.

No, "ex-liberal," because they aren't scare quotes. The direct quotes indicate that the identification as a terrorist leader comes from the military, not the reporter, and are a necessity unless the reporter has firsthand information indicating the person is in fact a terrorist leader.

Really, "ex-liberal", you don't seem stupid -- other than for embrasing the inherently dishonset wing of conservatives (if you please, Bob), so the only conclusion is that you're being dishonest, and deliberately so.

Okay, Bob, I'll admit I'm being snarky in paraphrasing Mark Twain. Of course intellectual dishonesty isn't an inherent characteristic of conservatives in general. I do maintain, though, that some of the regular conservative posters here have exhibited enough dishonesty to justify the snark, and I see no reason at all to give them a free pass.

Indeed, I'm greatly encouraged and amused that the likes of Matthew Marler, John Hansen, the neoconservative shill "ex-liberal" and the like so consistently resort to dishonesty. They're conceding, up front, that there's no honest defense of the Bush Administration's mendacity, incompetence and corruption.

But I also maintain that the relentless dishoensty is offensive, and intentionally so, especialyl in the case of "ex-liberal." There people simply aren't here for the kind of honest discussion Hansen claims to champion. They're here to piss on the carpet, pure and simple.

There's nothing wrong with being a "conservative" so long as you remain connected to "reality."

I've always been socially liberal but fiscally conservative; I would say that we should make gay marriage perfectly legal and allow gay couples to adopt and become foster parents and I would say that if the Federal government were to freeze spending for a couple of years and maybe eliminate large, unwieldy parts of itself like the Dept. of Education and HUD (based on their track record, is this really money well spent?) that I would be perfectly OK with that.

If I had been of age in 1980, I would probably have been considered a Reagan Democrat as well. I don't know.

But to say that there's this notion where every Democrat has to be a flaming liberal, that's completely wrong; Democrats can have "conservative" beliefs and opinions because not one party has all the answers and a monopoly on the truth.

It'll be interesting to see how someone like Senator James Webb can function in Washington DC--I'm thinking he's a guy that will make everyone mad at him at one point or another and maybe we need more people like that in public life.

So quit with the bullshit--talking to an "honest" conservative doesn't mean I would have to be talking to a "Republican" because, at this point, I refuse to believe that someone with actual conservative beliefs would support what this administration has been doing since day one.

To quote Bono:

"Will it make it easier on you now
You've got someone to blame?"

cyntax: If I believed that half the country is ignorant I wouldn't include "Political Animal" on my list of can't miss blogs would I?
Posted by: John Hansen

Well, what were you suggesting then when you lecture us that we think half the country is greedy and seflish? The view you're attributing to us is not an accurate characterization of what liberals and Democrats think.

And we all remember that dirty liberal media trick -- Bush Administration officials leaking classified WMD lies to Judy Miller of the NYT -- in order to set up the echo chamber proving that Saddam Hussein had WMD because it was on the front page of that bastion of liberal bias, New York Times

cmdicely, I missed your comment about the AP Stylebook. I don't have one either.

My guess is that it would not only prohibit scare quotes, but it would also prohibit usage that could be mistaken for scare quotes. However, that's simply my guess.

Note that the word "captured" was not in quotes, even though it's that word probably also came from the military spokesperson. What does it mean, that the reporter used quotes around "terrorist leader" but not around "captured"? A normal reading would be that the reporter accepts that somebody was captured, but questions whether the captive is truly a terrorist leader.

I guess the facts have a liberal bias. Damned facts.
Posted by: G Spot1

"Facts are meaningless; you can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! Facts, schmacks." - Homer Simpson

That's conservative "logic" for you!
Posted by: Google_This

Logic and rdw have never been introduced.

ex-liberal: Note that the word "captured" was not in quotes, even though it's that word probably also came from the military spokesperson. What does it mean, that the reporter used quotes around "terrorist leader" but not around "captured"? A normal reading would be that the reporter accepts that somebody was captured, but questions whether the captive is truly a terrorist leader.

Are you really as idiotic as you appear?

Confirmation of the identification of a captured individual requires time and can, as proven time and again by our military, be wrong.

One is rarely wrong about one's own actions undertaken, however.

Assume the reporter arrives at an arrest site moments after the suspect is apprehended:

'The police entered the building and captured the "rapist".'

Not, '[t]he "police" "entered" "the building" and "captured" the rapist.'

Are you really too stupid to realize that the military has time and again captured an alleged terrorist only to determine later that they apprehended the wrong person or the person they apprehended wasn't actually a terrorist at all?

Are you really that stupid?

Really?

We'd like to know.

The military characterized the captured individual as a "terrorist leader".

They've been wrong before, on the order of hundreds or even thousands of times.

The person might simply be a "terrorist," rather than a "terrorist leader."

Or, they may simply be an innocent bystander fleeing a shooting zone whom the military mistook for the person they thought was going to be there.

Get a grip on your sanity, it's slipping away.

You mean the guy who hasn't been sitting in the anchor chair since March 9, 2005 and who had dismal, third place ratings for about a decade? That guy?

That guy who was the USAs longest serving anchor and who you STILL think is honest.

Well, what were you suggesting then when you lecture us that we think half the country is greedy and seflish? The view you're attributing to us is not an accurate characterization of what liberals and Democrats think.

My comments in that post were directed to Google_this - not to everyone posting here.

I missed your comment about the AP Stylebook. I don't have one either.

Sorry, "ex-liberal," your admission that you're speaking from ignorance doesn't mean that you're not also being dishonest.

yo