I’m reading a book I find exceedingly fascinating. It’s called American Brutus, and it’s a fairly new biography of John Wilkes Booth, by Michael W. Kauffman. John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln are two figures about which most of us think … Continue reading →
In my previous post on the Koran/urine-splashing incident, I spent some time wondering why this story got so much coverage. Some things were fairly obvious: yes, the MSM seems determined to report anything that might reflect badly on Bush and … Continue reading →
The subject? Today’s elections in south Lebanon. The assignment? Compare and contrast: Here’s exhibit A, an article submitted by Reuters, via Yahoo News. Here’s exhibit B, an article submitted by IC Publications (I’d never heard of them before, but they … Continue reading →
Cannibalizing from my own comments again, from Roger’s: As I went to my computer today, and my home page came up (Yahoo news), and I saw that the lead story (AP, naturally) was headlined, “U.S.: Gitmo Quran Was Splashed With … Continue reading →
I’m not surprised that USA Today seems to be leading the pack in curbing its use of anonymous sources (see this earlier post of mine for a discussion of the history of the anonymous source). After all, its founder, Allen … Continue reading →
The following is a portion of a comment I wrote during this discussion over at Roger Simon’s. Roger had posed the question “what is ‘fair and balanced’?” The context of the query was that he and others are engaged in … Continue reading →
One story, four headlines. The story: in 2002-2003 some Guantanamo detainees told FBI investigators that guards had flushed a Koran down the toilet, and desecrated the Koran in other ways. Now, the headlines: Yahoo news: FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards … Continue reading →
Well, it turns out you can blame it on Watergate. The recent prominence of anonymous sources in the Newsweek Koran-flushing story tweaked my curiosity about the history of the practice. To the best of my recollection, the newspapers of my … Continue reading →
I fear I’m getting boring here, carping on the MSM again ( getting boring? ask my critics. You’ve been boring for a long time now.) But here it is again. Via Michael Totten, I read this recent fisking of a … Continue reading →
Our old friend Jennifer Loven reports on what was essentially a cooperative meeting between ally Karzai and President Bush, and tries her best to spin it into a quarrel. I know that reporters generally don’t write their own headlines, so … Continue reading →
Yesterday, NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column defending Newsweek against the bloggers. Brooks writes that, instead of criticizing the media, we need to focus on “the extremists, the real enemy,” the ones who bear the true responsibility for … Continue reading →
I found the following comment by blogging psychoanalyst Shrinkwrapped on this post by Roger Simon about the Newsweek Koran-flushing fiasco. I was so taken with what Shrinkwrapped wrote that I reproduce it here in full: I have written before about … Continue reading →