The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Flex
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Fuck you, Ayn Rand, there's a new crazy asshole who writes shit-tastic fiction on the scene, one Glenn Beck: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006110032

This book looks awesome.
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Flex wrote:Fuck you, Ayn Rand, there's a new crazy asshole who writes shit-tastic fiction on the scene, one Glenn Beck: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006110032

This book looks awesome.
Holy frijoles! I'll be getting a copy once it hits the dollar bin.
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Because it's true …
Image
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Dr. Medulla wrote:Because it's true …
http://i.imgur.com/wCSEZ.jpg
Ahahaha!!!!
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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I think discussion over WikiLeaks and the U.S. bringing the hammer down on investigative journalists and whistleblowers has been documented across a few threads here, but I think this story works well here:
Iceland has passed a sweeping reform of its media laws that supporters say will make the country an international haven for investigative journalism.

The new package of legislation was passed unanimously at 4am yesterday in one of the final sessions of the Icelandic parliament, the Althingi, before its summer break.

Created with the involvement of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, it increases protection for anonymous sources, creates new protections from so-called "libel tourism" and makes it much harder to censor stories before they are published.

"It will be the strongest law of its kind anywhere," said Birgitta Jonsdottir, MP for The Movement party and member of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which first made the proposals. "We're taking the best laws from around the world and putting them into one comprehensive package that will deal with the fact that information doesn't have borders any more."
Because the package includes provisions that will stop the enforcement of overseas judgements that violate Icelandic laws, foreign news organisations are said to have expressed an interest in moving the publication of their investigative journalism to Iceland. According to Ms Jonsdottir, Germany's Der Spiegel and America's ABC News have discussed the possibility.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 02591.html

Good on Iceland, it's heartening to see some folks doing what's right. This could be a serious boon for the public in coming years, especially here in the United States, as the hammer continues to drop on journalism which isn't state-sanctioned.
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Flex wrote:I think discussion over WikiLeaks and the U.S. bringing the hammer down on investigative journalists and whistleblowers has been documented across a few threads here, but I think this story works well here:
Iceland has passed a sweeping reform of its media laws that supporters say will make the country an international haven for investigative journalism.

The new package of legislation was passed unanimously at 4am yesterday in one of the final sessions of the Icelandic parliament, the Althingi, before its summer break.

Created with the involvement of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, it increases protection for anonymous sources, creates new protections from so-called "libel tourism" and makes it much harder to censor stories before they are published.

"It will be the strongest law of its kind anywhere," said Birgitta Jonsdottir, MP for The Movement party and member of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which first made the proposals. "We're taking the best laws from around the world and putting them into one comprehensive package that will deal with the fact that information doesn't have borders any more."
Because the package includes provisions that will stop the enforcement of overseas judgements that violate Icelandic laws, foreign news organisations are said to have expressed an interest in moving the publication of their investigative journalism to Iceland. According to Ms Jonsdottir, Germany's Der Spiegel and America's ABC News have discussed the possibility.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 02591.html

Good on Iceland, it's heartening to see some folks doing what's right. This could be a serious boon for the public in coming years, especially here in the United States, as the hammer continues to drop on journalism which isn't state-sanctioned.
A single light in the darkness. Especially given Obama's campaign rhetoric re. whistleblowers—fuck him and his administration's treatment of people who actually give a fuck about their government's hypocrisy and inhumane actions.
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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I thought it was worth noting that once every decade or so, Tom Friedman writes a fairly right-on article and it seems the stars have aligned once again:
On July 7, CNN fired its senior editor of Middle East affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she published a Twitter message saying, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah,” one of the most prominent Lebanese Shiite spiritual leaders who was involved in the founding of the Hezbollah militia. Nasr described him as “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

I find Nasr’s firing troubling. Yes, she made a mistake. Reporters covering a beat should not be issuing condolences for any of the actors they cover. It undermines their credibility. But we also gain a great deal by having an Arabic-speaking, Lebanese-Christian female journalist covering the Middle East for CNN, and if her only sin in 20 years is a 140-character message about a complex figure like Fadlallah, she deserved some slack. She should have been suspended for a month, but not fired. It’s wrong on several counts.
What signal are we sending young people? Trim your sails, be politically correct, don’t say anything that will get you flamed by one constituency or another. And if you ever want a job in government, national journalism or as president of Harvard, play it safe and don’t take any intellectual chances that might offend someone. In the age of Google, when everything you say is forever searchable, the future belongs to those who leave no footprints.

Then there is the Middle East angle. If there is one thing that we should have learned from our interventions in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, it is how few Americans understand these places. We need interpreters alive to their nuances.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opini ... ef=opinion
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Flex wrote:I thought it was worth noting that once every decade or so, Tom Friedman writes a fairly right-on article and it seems the stars have aligned once again:
On July 7, CNN fired its senior editor of Middle East affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she published a Twitter message saying, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah,” one of the most prominent Lebanese Shiite spiritual leaders who was involved in the founding of the Hezbollah militia. Nasr described him as “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

I find Nasr’s firing troubling. Yes, she made a mistake. Reporters covering a beat should not be issuing condolences for any of the actors they cover. It undermines their credibility. But we also gain a great deal by having an Arabic-speaking, Lebanese-Christian female journalist covering the Middle East for CNN, and if her only sin in 20 years is a 140-character message about a complex figure like Fadlallah, she deserved some slack. She should have been suspended for a month, but not fired. It’s wrong on several counts.
What signal are we sending young people? Trim your sails, be politically correct, don’t say anything that will get you flamed by one constituency or another. And if you ever want a job in government, national journalism or as president of Harvard, play it safe and don’t take any intellectual chances that might offend someone. In the age of Google, when everything you say is forever searchable, the future belongs to those who leave no footprints.

Then there is the Middle East angle. If there is one thing that we should have learned from our interventions in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, it is how few Americans understand these places. We need interpreters alive to their nuances.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opini ... ef=opinion
Sounds like Tom was too drunk to write one of his "let us now praise Chinese dictators" columns and got an intern to turn one in for him.
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Flex
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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If people here want an example of what actually tarring folks as anti-semites who are just critical of Israel is, this is a good example: http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-polit ... ate/print/
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Maybe we should just have a thread for every time Kate Beaton makes a new comic, but this critique of political cartoons made me chuckle mightily:
Image
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=277
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Tony Blair's decision to give all the royalties from his memoir to the troops has pissed me off like no charitable donation ever has.
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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I fart

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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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Silent Majority wrote:Tony Blair's decision to give all the royalties from his memoir to the troops has pissed me off like no charitable donation ever has.
Exactly. While his goverment took them to war and left them without correct uniforms etc....WANKER!
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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B-liar is very popular in parts of the States (the red ones probably) after standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush, so popular he can command a fuckin' fortune for a single speaking engagement.....Bet the cunt trousers that blood money without a second thought, how the fucker can sleep at night beggers belief... :angry:
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Re: The IMCT Media Criticism Thread

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This could go in a number of threads, but this works as well as any. Basically a collection of Hitchens' character assessments/assassinations: http://www.thesharkguys.com/2010/08/26/ ... test-hits/
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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