MSM interviewer: Maybe we provoke them

Following Australia's announcement that it would send another contingent of military personnel to Afghanistan, Prime Minister John Howard had this exchange with Maxine McKew.

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, if as you say you can't rule out that possibility that we could have potential bombers right here in Australia, what if today's announcement, this redeployment to Afghanistan and our continued presence in Iraq is all the provocation they need?

JOHN HOWARD: Maxine, these people are opposed to what we believe in and what we stand for, far more than what we do. If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologising for the world - to the world - for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it's also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.

McKew's question is so naive that you might think Howard was responding to a student's question during a ministerial visit to Outback Intermediate School or some such place.

Alas, Maxine McKew is really a grown-up journalist. Her question was part of an interview aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. You can read it here.

As the interview ended, McKew seemed no more aware than when it started. Howard was strong, clear, and smart throughout.

Hat tip: Instapundit.com

London and our real enemies

London Sunday Telegraph editor Matthew d'Ancona reminds us of how some have resisted fighting this war, even claiming Bush and Blair were the "real problems."

The low point was the moment in March when the Tory whips, having forced the Government to insert an automatic expiry date into its Prevention of Terrorism Bill - the "sunset clause" - brayed that they were off to uncork the champagne. To celebrate what, I wondered at the time. Who was their real enemy? Bin Laden - or Blair?

Of course, some are still resisting. But in the aftermath of the London bombings, it's harder to resist.

This week, there were no champagne toasts in the Commons, no games or cheap shots or debating flourishes; only a collective flinch at reality's harshest smack. As the death toll clambered over 50, and the perpetrators were revealed to be British-born suicide bombers, the decadence drained from the system. The political consensus will not last, of course.

But the arguments that follow will be conducted in a new and awful context: namely, the absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, spelt out in the blood of Londoners, that this war is now being waged in our very midst. "It is a war," one Cabinet minister said to me. "People didn't believe that till last Thursday. But they do now."

d'Ancona outlines what needs to be faced by all of us as we prosecute a new kind of war. Here's the start of his outline:

This war, of course, is like nothing that has preceded it, which is why it is so tempting to call it something else: a criminal conspiracy, or a series of isolated atrocities carried out by psychopathic mavericks. And yet the analysis that the President and Prime Minister offered after 9/11 now seems more pertinent than ever.

We face three, inextricably linked threats: from Islamist fanatics, from the rogue states that harbour them, and from the deadly weapons which they seek to acquire. Only three months ago, Kamel Bourgass was jailed for 17 years for plotting to unleash ricin on London's streets. Bourgass failed. On July 7, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer, Mohammed Sadique Khan and another man succeeded with conventional explosive. What if it had been the other way round?

Denial's not an option for sensible people, is it?

d'Ancona's column is here. I hope you read it all.

Hat tip: Realclearpolitics.com

Here's The News & Observer

The lead headline in today's Fayetteville Observer:

Car bomb kiiis 18 children

The lead headline in today's Charlotte Observer:

"They are killing children." Outrage, grief follow Iraq blast that kills 27 - mostly kids - as GIs give out candy, toys.

The lead headline in today's Raleigh News & Observer:

Can Canes win fans back? The NHL and players are close to settling pro sports longest labor dispute.

The N&O doesn't mention the terrorist car bombing anywhere on page 1.

Blogger Hugh Hewitt debunks MSM "reporting."

Talk radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt picked up on a MSM attempt to make the London bombings seem the result of our overthrow of Saddam. Here's part of what Hugh said:

The (Washington)Post report tries to cover for the inane "Iraq is at fault" caucus by noting that:

"Still, the profile of the suspects suggested by investigators fit long-standing warnings by security experts that the greatest potential threat to Britain could come from second-generation Muslims, born here but alienated from British society and perhaps from their own families, and inflamed by Britain's participation in the Iraq war." (This and other bolds by Hewitt)

There is no evidence offered for this astonishing assertion that the Iraq war has anything to do with the massacre. Zero! And none is needed for the true-believers in the MSM. Is this "reporting?" Or cheerleading for an alternative reality where writers feel free to ascribe to murderers their motives?

On Monday, when he was undressing Ron Reagan as the dilettante that young RR is, Christopher Hitchings scolded him:

"I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean." (emphasis added)

Until the MSM grasp this point, they are worse than useless in the GWOT.

Too bad MSM news organizations won't examine what they're doing to imflame people inclined toward sympathy with the terrorists.

Hewitt's July 13 post provides links to the Post and Reagan/Hitchings pieces.

N&O editors' nonsense and others' good sense.

Following the London bombings, the News and Observer editorialized that "deprivation and suffering ... in Palestine and Africa ... feeds terrorism."

Deprivation and suffering feeds terrorism? Nonsense!

Deprivation and suffering don't feed a desire to kill children sitting beside their grandparents or asleep in their beds.

Deprivation and suffering don't feed a desire to kill homosexuals or Christians or Hindus or Muslims.

Deprivation and suffering don't lead people to time bombs so that one explodes minutes after the other, and just as rescue workers arrive to help victims of the first bomb.

Didn't the N&O's editors ever learn about Osama and Arafat's wealth; or that Atta came from a well-to-do family and had a university degree; or that America's best known terrorist, John Walker Lindh, was raised by an upper-middle class California family proud of its liberal orientation?

What would the editors think of a claim that wealth, formal education, liberalism or some combination of the three feeds terrorism? I hope they'd dismiss it as nonsense.

I could say more but I'll spare you for now, and instead offer links to the kind of great good sense I've never found in N&O editorials.

The first link is to Mark Steyn's 7/12 column in London's Daily Telegraph. Here's part of it:

Terrorism ends when the broader culture refuses to tolerate it. There would be few if any suicide bombers in the Middle East if "martyrdom" were not glorified by imams and politicians, if pictures of local "martyrs" were not proudly displayed in West Bank grocery stores, if Muslim banks did not offer special "martyrdom" accounts to the relicts thereof, if schools did not run essay competitions on "Why I want to grow up to be a martyr."

At this point, many readers will be indignantly protesting that this is all the fault of Israeli "occupation," but how does that explain suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there's not a Zionist oppressor for hundreds of miles? Islam has become the world's pre-eminent incubator of terrorism at its most depraved. Indeed, so far London has experienced only the lighter items on the bill of fare - random bombing of public transport rather than decapitation, child sacrifice and schoolhouse massacres.

The second link is to a London Times report of post-bombing British public opinion survey results on some security issues. The Times speaks of "variations," but it seems to me that British opinion is overwhelming in a one direction.

Here's a bit of the Times article. I hope you read the whole thing.

Those living the furthest away from London were the strongest supporters of tough action. While 95 per cent of Scots support security checks and baggage inspections at stations, 84 per cent in London and the South East back this measure.

Working-class respondents were stronger supporters than the middle classes of giving the police new powers. While 93 per cent of unskilled workers wanted the police to have new powers to arrest people suspected of planning terrorist acts, 79 per cent of professionals and managers did so.

Yes, there's 93 per cent here and 79 per cent there but it all adds up to the Brits, like most of us, not wanting to be killed. And they want their government to make sure their not.

Now if we could only convince some folks here that Americans feel the same way...

Is there bias at the News & Observer?

Raleigh News and Observer editors admit the paper tilts left on its editorial page.

How about its news coverage?

"No tilt or bias there," the editors claim. "Or at least hardly ever."

And what happens when an editor spots something in story selection or reporting that even hints of bias? We're assured the N&O quickly corrects the problem.

But if that's the case, why did the N&O run many stories, including a front-pager, about trips which may have violated U.S. House rules that Republican Rep. Tom DeLay took, without ever running a single story about similarly questionable trips Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi took?

Pelosi filed documents about her questionable trips with the appropriate U.S. House agency on June 30, years after she took the trips, and only after they became the subject of speculation in Washington.

The Washington Post has reported on Pelosi's trips but the N&O so far remains silent.

Why does the N&O give Republican DeLay's trips its front page treatment while giving Democrat Pelosi's trips its silent treatment?

And why was there no N&O coverage for almost two weeks of Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin's speech on the U. S. Senate floor comparing America's military serving at Guantanamo to Nazis, Stalinists, and Pol Pot's genocidalists?

The N&O only reported Durbin's remarks as part of an apology he was forced to make two weeks after his initial smear of our military. The N&O ran the story on the last page of the A section.

That from a newspaper whose circulation area includes some of our major military bases.

Is there bias at the News and Observer? The editors say no.

Sure, and I'm a 5 time Olympic gold medalist.

Washington's Times and Post: A difference

Let's compare The Washington Times' and Washington Post's July 11 covererage of The Center for Media and Public Affairs' study of the 3 major TV networks' coverage of President Bush during the first 100 days of his second term.

The Center's study is titled: "No Second Term Media Honeymoon for Bush." Its major finding: By a 2 to 1 margin, network coverage of Bush was negative.

With the lead, Bush finds no friends at networks, The Washington Times ran a 475 story that began:

President Bush just can't win with the broadcast networks.

More than two-thirds of the news stories on ABC, NBC and CBS covering the first 100 days of Mr. Bush's second term were negative, according to an analysis released today by the District-based Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA).

It's actually a slight improvement: During the first 100 days of his initial term in office, the coverage was 71 percent negative, according to a similar CMPA study conducted in 2001.

In comparison, President Clinton's first-term news coverage was 59 percent negative in 1993.

The Times provided comments by the center's director, specific examples of negative network coverage, and placed the study's findings within the context of past media Bush-bashing.

But Bush-bashing seems to be entrenched. The press "battered" the president during the 2004 election season, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism analysis of 817 print and broadcast stories that ran in October.

Mr. Bush "suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry," the study stated. "Overall, 59 percent of Bush-dominated stories were clearly negative in nature," while "just 25 percent of Kerry stories were decidedly negative."

The Post, on the other hand, didn't run any news story. But Howard Kurtz did mention the study at the bottom of his Media Notes column. Here's all of what Kurtz said:

President Bush got better network news coverage of the first 100 days of his second term than the first time around -- but only by a hair.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs says that 33 percent of the comments about Bush on the CBS, NBC and ABC evening news were positive earlier this year, compared with 29 percent during his first 100 days. ("NBC Nightly News" was kinder and gentler this year, with 43 percent positive evaluations.) In neither period, the center says, did the president approach the positive coverage accorded Bill Clinton (43 percent) or Bush's father (63 percent).

Findings such as those of the Center for Media and Public Affairs and Project for Excellence in Journalism are extremely important.

The Washington Post should report them more fully and fairly.
___________________________________________________________

There's an excellent blog, PostWatch, that reports on the sort of tilted Post coverage described here. Let's hope PostWatch can help improve the Post. Visit PostWatch regularly to see how they're doing.

Study confirms networks are anti-Bush

The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) self-describes as "a nonpartisan research and educational organization which conducts scientific studies of the news and entertainment media." It's just released a study of the 3 major TV networks' coverage of the first 100 days of President Bush's second term.

The study's title: "No Second Term Media Honeymoon for Bush." Its major finding: By a 2 to 1 margin, network coverage of Bush was negative.

While disturbing, the study's finding comes as no surprise. Nevertheless, it's important to have MSM's anti-Bush bias documented so data are there to refute people like Sen. Clinton, Bill Moyers and Paul Krugman when they whine about "vast right-wing media conspiracies."

Here's a link to CMPA's home page where you'll see a place to access the study. It's in pdf form.

Advice to the AP on false report corrections

The AP has issued the following correction:

LONDON - In a July 9 story about Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments on overcoming global terrorism, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

Instead of using a weasel phrase like "Blair did not specifically mention the Isreali-Palestinian conflict," the AP should just say, "Blair never mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Associated Press made that part up and sincerely regrets having to acknowledge that."

The AP's correction's here.

Hat Tip: Littlegreenfootballs.com

Dennis coverage up to the minute

Mudville Gazette has some of the best Dennis coverage.

Up to the minute reports, interactive graphics, information from weather stations hit by the storm: they're all at Mudville.

Just keep scrolling.

Having tech problems. Hope to be up by Sunday.

The lead pretty much says it.

But I'm putting posts together offline.

If things go well, I'll be up in proper form by Sunday afternoon.

If you know someone at Blogger who can help, please ask them to contact me.

Thanks.

I'll be back.

John

Urgent Request to the Left

STOP FEEDING THE ALLIGATORS!

Powerline's tribute to Admiral Stockdale

While working on a memorial to Admiral James Stockdale, I read Powerlineblog.com John Hinderaker's July 5 tribute.

I can't improve or add to what Hinderaker said. In the circumstances, I doubt he'll mind if I quote him in full. For those wanting to book mark, the link's here.

Readers who go to Powerline will see I added a few paragraph breaks. That was done to provide "pause moments." Also, I didn't reproduce Powerline's photo of Admiral Stockdale because I don't know how to do that.
____________________________________________________________________________________

A Hero Passes

Admiral James Stockdale died today at age 81.

Most people remember Stockdale, if at all, for his performance in the 1992 Vice-Presidential debate with Al Gore and Dan Quayle. At one point Stockdale yielded the floor, confessing that he was "out of ammunition."

Many thought the aging veteran a bit odd. But he was one of this country's great military heroes. In his forties, he flew more than 200 missions in Vietnam before he was finally shot down and captured. He was the highest ranking Naval officer captured by the North Vietnamese.

Stockdale was imprisoned for more than seven years, four of them in solitary confinement, two in leg irons. But while he was imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton, he became the leader of the American POWs, devised communications systems, and encouraged resistance to the Communists' propaganda efforts.

For this he was tortured repeatedly.

Stockdale was awarded the Medal of Honor. His citation reads, in part:

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while senior naval officer in the Prisoner of War camps of North Vietnam.

Recognized by his captors as the leader in the Prisoners' of War resistance to interrogation and in their refusal to participate in propaganda exploitation, Rear Adm. Stockdale was singled out for interrogation and attendant torture after he was detected in a covert communications attempt.

Sensing the start of another purge, and aware that his earlier efforts at self-disfiguration to dissuade his captors from exploiting him for propaganda purposes had resulted in cruel and agonizing punishment, Rear Adm. Stockdale resolved to make himself a symbol of resistance regardless of personal sacrifice.

He deliberately inflicted a near-mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate. He was subsequently discovered and revived by the North Vietnamese who, convinced of his indomitable spirit, abated in their employment of excessive harassment and torture toward all of the Prisoners of War.

By his heroic action, at great peril to himself, he earned the everlasting gratitude of his fellow prisoners and of his country.

Admiral Stockdale was a student of Greek philosophy and the author of four books. He returned to the Republican Party after his uncharacteristic venture into public life in 1992.

Never has anyone displayed more courage in the service of his country. RIP.

MSM v. Blogger

At Mudville Gazette, Greyhawk calls our attention to two demonstrations, and compares MSM coverage of one with blogger coverage of the other.

It's one of those posts that upset MSM fans for being nothing more than the truth.

Two thoughts on the Supreme Count nomination

The other night I heard "an expert" on TV whose name I didn't catch say:

I think all those people talking about the short list and who's on it don't really know much, and the few people who do know about the list aren't talking.

That sounds about right. Let's nominate him for the short list of "Experts Worth Listening To"

The Democrats keep saying they want the new justice to be just like Justice O'Conner. The President, they claim, has "a responsibility" to appoint someone who will rule on cases as she has and presumably would continue to rule had she stayed on the court.

Well, what if we were already doing what the Democrats are asking, replacing one justice with another likely to be very similar when making decisions? And suppose we had been doing that for more then a 100 years; and, sure enough, one justice was a lot like the justice he or she replaced.

Wouldn't that mean that with the court deciding 8-1 in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case to uphold the doctrine of “separate but equal,” that we would still have segregation today, with the court upholding it by an 8-1 vote?

MSM editor on bloggers "who... hate" MSM

In his July 3 column, Raleigh News & Observer public editor Ted Vaden said:

Let's don't get so spooked by the current animus against anonymous sources, much of it fanned by talk show hosts and bloggers who love to hate the "mainstream media," that we deprive readers of information that can't be obtained any other way. (Bold mine)

What Vaden calls "the current animus against anonymous sources" is actually a well-founded and growing public distrust of how MSM sometimes use anonymous sources.

Remember the anonymous source Dan Rather and CBS used as the basis for a story about the President's National Guard service? The public was told by CBS its source was "unimpeachable."

Then, thanks primarily to bloggers' reporting, we learned who CBS's "unimpeachable" source was: longtime Bush-hater and Democratic Party activist Bill Burkett.

We also learned that as a condition of providing what turned out to be fake documents, Burkett demanded CBS arrange for him to speak to Joe Lockhart, a high-ranking staffer in Sen. Kerry's campaign. CBS quickly complied; and Lockhart made sure to call Burkett.

"Unimpeachable" indeed!

The public isn't growing distrustful of MSM's source use because of "bloggers who love to hate" MSM. It's growing distrustful because its watching and listening to both MSM and bloggers, sifting through the facts, and behaving reasonably.

Blogger Ed Driscoll has a terrific post detailing MSM's often testy and defensive animus toward bloggers who are just providing facts MSM should have provided in the first place.

Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds.

G 8 Summit reporting cum Live-blogging

Powerlineblog says the place to go for G 8 reporting and analysis, including live-blogging is Charmaine Yoest's Reasoned Audacity.

Take me to Gleneagles, Charmaine.

Kelo's Song: "Your Land Is My Land

Reacting to the recent U. S. Supreme Court Kelo decision, the NY Times' John Tierney writes today about what happened over the decades in his native Pittsburgh when government condemned land and neighborhoods for "renewal."

Pittsburgh has been the great pioneer in eminent domain ever since its leaders razed 80 buildings in the 1950s near the riverfront park downtown. They replaced a bustling business district with Gateway Center, an array of bland corporate towers surrounded by the sort of empty plazas that are now considered hopelessly retrograde by urban planners trying to create street life.

At the time, though, the towers and plazas seemed wonderfully modern. Viewed from across the river, the new skyline was a panoramic advertisement for the Pittsburgh Renaissance, which became a national model and inspired Pittsburgh's leaders to go on finding better uses for private land, especially land occupied by blacks.

Bulldozers razed the Lower Hill District, the black neighborhood next to downtown that was famous for its jazz scene (and now famous mostly as a memory in August Wilson's plays). The city built a domed arena that was supposed to be part of a cultural "acropolis," but the rest of the project died. Today, having belatedly realized that downtown would benefit from people living nearby, the city is trying to entice them back to the Hill by building homes there.

Did the government learn anything? Well, Tierney gives us the thinking of Pittsburgh's Mayor.

Yet the mayor still yearns for more acquisitions. He welcomed the Supreme Court decision, telling The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that eminent domain "is a great equalizer when you're having a conversation with people." Well, that's one way to describe the power to take people's property.

The right to confiscate private property gives politicians enormous power and sets developers to currying favor with them. No wonder most politicians are so eager to see their confiscatory power increased.

Tierney hopes a future Supreme Court justice will take a trip to Pittsburgh.

But I think a future Supreme Court justice would have a different view of eminent domain after touring Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, especially those that escaped urban renewal: the old-fashioned business districts with crowded sidewalks and the newly gentrified neighborhoods with renovated homes and converted warehouses. The future justice would quickly see what sets the success stories apart from Gateway Center and East Liberty. No politicians ever seized those homes and businesses for a "better use."

It's a great column. And don't you just love the lead: "Your Land is My Land?"

Michelle Malkin is too kind

New Republic editor Peter Beinart says conservative talk show hosts headed to Iraq are not "real journalists."

Michelle Malkin sets Beinart straight on that, and reminds him of what some "real journalists" at his own magazine have done, including an associate editor fired for fabricating stories.

I think Malkin was too kind. She could have reminded Beinart of journalist Eason Jordan and CNN's deal with Saddam's regime: Access for CNN in exchange for softball reporting.

Who's not qualified to provide coverage from Iraq?

And Malkin didn't mention Dan Rather and CBS's statement that their then anonymous documents source was "unimpeachable," even as they knew Bill Burkett was a longtime Bush-hater and Democratic activist who had demanded access to a top Kerry aide, Joe Lockhart, before turning over the documents to CBS.

How many hundreds of journalists "reported" the Jennin massacre that never happened?

I could go on but today's a holiday.

For Mudville Gazette: No better day

"Happy Fourth of July," to the Greyhawks at Mudville Gazette.

24/7/365, Mudville Gazette serve the needs of our troops, their families and friends, and the rest of us looking for practical ways to support the troops and get information on the war on terrorism free of MSM leftist spin.

One of the Greyhawks' most valuable services involves giving voice to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere through posting. Today, for instance, there are many posts from troops in Iraq discussing their feelings about the Fourth, their activities today, and in one case, setting NBC's Brian Williams straight on America's history.

On Mudville's main page it says:

The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him, that prefers to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.

The Greyhawks do all of that and more.

Visit Mudville Gazette at least once a day.