Stupid Media Comment of the Day

From a CNN television segment about a small plane that crashed during an emergency landing on a higway today:

The plane "...might have clipped an 18-wheeler while flying lower than usual." (emphasis added)

Gee, you think?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Freedom of (Some) Speech

It was recently announced that Kevin Sites, freelance war videographer, will be awarded a Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism. Editor & Publisher covered the award announcement by saying:

Kevin Sites, a freelance photojournalist for NBC, will be awarded the 2005 Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism on May 12 for his decision-making process after he witnessed and taped a U.S. Marine killing an unarmed Iraqi man in a mosque.

Sites decided to share the tape with the military, then he worked with NBC to create a "well-nuanced story that aired 48 hours after the incident," according to the Payne announcement. Since he was working as a pool photojournalist at the time, Sites shared the tape with the other news organizations in the pool.

When Sites was criticized after other outlets used the footage, he answered the critics and explained his decisions in detail on his Weblog, www.kevinsites.net.

In response, one of my favorite blogs weighed in by calling Sites a traitor, while another was surprisingly reserved, though his comments section made up for it. These blogs, of course, were hardly the only ones with this general viewpoint.

From both legal and ethical standpoints, calling Kevin Sites a traitor is ignorant. Not stupid, mind you, but ignorant of the law. It isn't a matter of "I think" or "in my opinion," they are quite simply, technically, wrong in calling Kevin Sites a traitor.

One cites Article III, Sec. 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." (his bold. --C.Y)

Kevin Sites shot a video of real events, unedited, and undoctored, and even ran it by the U.S. military before release. That is not treason. Furthermore, the assinine "logic" of some people that "well, he knew if could be twisted against us, so he's guilty" would not only stifle the First Amendment, but completely eviscerate it to a totalitarian extent. These people don't support the freedom of speech, just the freedom of some speech, that of which they personally approve.

I'll tell you what, my friends: go ahead and start a movement to prosecute Sites for your understanding of treason. You will of course also charge the journalists and producers, writers and editors who furthered this travesty by mentioning it in network broadcasts, cable news shows, and in national, regional, and local newspapers. I won't personally miss Olbermann, Dowd, or Krugman much, but I will miss Hannity, Krauthammer, and Will.

While you are at it, of course, you'll also have to charge the career Marine officers who released the tape for publication. I think that is a pretty short chain of command, just a few PR officers and maybe a general or two. Probably only a dozen or so all told. As active duty military, they will of course face the possibility of execution for their treason. Do they still use firing squads at Leavenworth, or does the military now allow lethal injections for enemies of democracy?

Nothing like the idea of putting a Few Good Men to death to underscore your shaky understanding of the Constitution, right guys?

Guys?

There are higher allegiences more important than the United States, and that if you honor these higher ideals, the best interests of the country are served as a natural consequence.

I'm sorry, but we disagree on this one.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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EXCLUSIVE: CBS Insurgent Capture Photo

Confederate Yankee was able to scoop the MSM/DNC today, obtaining this exclusive photograph of the capture of a CBS video cameraman arrested as a suspected insurgent in northeastern Mosul, Iraq.

I'm all news, all the time. Full power, tall tower. I want to break in when news breaks out. That's my agenda. Now, respectfully, when you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the, quote, 'liberal bias' in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this respectfully but candidly to you, I don't know what you're talking about." -- Dan Rather

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Martinez-Shiavo Memo

I'm really glad I decided not to post on the so-called Shiavo memo. It was just gut instinct not to blog it, but it just didn't feel right. Michelle Malkin made a similar choice as well, not that it kept stupid liberals from sending her e-mail saying she was wrong for something she never wrote.

But the real blame goes to the MSM/DNC for blowing the reporting of this story in the first place (which they have yet to account for to the best of my knowledge), and to bloggers too willing to consider this on par with the forged TANG documents far too early without sufficient evidence.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Delusions of Supremacy

Tom Elia at the New Editor dug up this self-parodying gem in response to Paul Krugman's smug post "An Academic Question" in the NY Times:

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman ("An Academic Question," column, April 5) is correct that the lack of conservative faculty members in college is caused not through bias but by deficiencies in conservative ideology.

From the laissez-faire, anti-unionism of late-19th-century Republicans to the melding of those trends in today's neoconservative movement, the result of conservative ideology has almost always been deleterious for the majority of Americans.

Academics look at evidence and come to conclusions. Today's conservatives start with a conclusion and then try to find anything to support that conclusion to the exclusion of all contrary evidence. Their arguments tend to fall apart under the lightest scrutiny.

It is no wonder that the vast majority of well-educated academics are "liberal."

Brandon Bittner

Royersford, Pa., April 6, 2005

I have another explanation, Mr. Bittner: If you can't do, teach. Academia may not only attract liberals, but it is the only practical area in which it can exist.

Mr. Bittner may assume liberal superiority all he wants, the fact remains that though liberals dominant the university, this ideological domination is quickly destroyed by real world market forces once students leave the academy. If liberal ideology were as superior as both Mr. Krugman and Mr. Bittner haughtily opine, then college graduates would not only emerge from universities with a liberal ideology, they would retain that ideology far after graduation and would be quite successful in the professional world.

But that supremacy doesn't exist, does it? The vast majority of industry leaders are capitalists, not marxists. In fact, the vast majority of most businesses, from industry leaders down through the "tail" are capitalists, rejecting liberal egalitarian theology out of hand.

In addition to not surviving contact with the business world, liberalism doesn't well tolerate contact with the ballot box. Liberals holding a supermajority in academia, and therefore, this "superior" ideology should then dominate American life and politics across the board. Yet, conservatives and moderates dominate every level of government as voters consistently reject liberalism across the vast majority of the country.

Mr. Krugman and Mr. Bittner are welcome to fondle their delusions of liberal supremacy in the academy. It is the final place it exists.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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MSM/DNC Bias

Cassandra has an awesome article up on MSM/DNC bias (Hat Tip: Instapundit) that anyone interested in the media or politics should read.

I've always thought about Democrats and the media being two separate entities, but in another post, Cassandra provides a definition of the MSM/DNC as "two arms of the same beast" that makes near-perfect sense to anyone who followed the apparent lockstep coordination between the media and the DNC in the 2004 election cycle.

I think you'll be seeing that new acronym (MSM/DNC) a lot from now on, and MSM/DNC is going to hate every mention for it's accuracy.

That's one buzzword that isn't going down the memory hole.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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