Do you want to fully understand why many people no longer trust the infotainment industry? Examine just this small sample from the Feb. 6, 2006 issue of Newsweek, in an article called Palace Revolt (emphasis mine):

Counsel to the vice president is, in most administrations, worth less than the proverbial bucket of warm spit, but under Prime Minister Cheney, it became a vital power center, especially after 9/11.

This is what passes for reporting today for Newsweek, and is not the only example of Democratic Underground-quality commentary in this group effort from Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas.

There is one bright side, however. Unlike another shoddily-sourced, politically-driven Newsweek article, it does not appear anyone will immediately die as a result.

This time.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:54 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman were both seriously injured today in Iraq as the result of an IED detonated in an ambush. AP, via ABC News:

Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were hit by an improvised explosive device near Taji, Iraq, and were in serious condition at a U.S. military hospital, ABC News President David Westin said.

The two were embedded with the 4th Infantry Division and traveling with an Iraqi Army unit.

The U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad confirmed that the ABC News team was involved in an attack but declined to provide further details to The Associated Press. An official military statement was expected to be issued later Sunday.

Reuters has more details about both men.

Woodruff, 44, is from Michigan and joined ABC in 1996. He has reported from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from Italy for the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI and from Yugoslavia during the conflict in Kosovo. He had also covered the Justice Department in Washington.

Vogt, 46, is Canadian and lives in Aix-en-Provence in France. He is an Emmy award-winning cameraman and filmed the aftermath of the Asian tsunami from Sri Lanka.

Neither AP nor Reuters mentions any possible casualties among the Iraqi or American soldiers traveling with Woodruff and Vogt. Whether this is typical media myopia or the result of the military not releasing casualty data remains to be seen.

I sincerely hope both Woodruff and Vogt have a full recovery, but I find that I care more about the Iraqi and American soldiers fighting for the future this fledgling democracy.

American soldiers experience war in Iraq months at a time. Iraqi soldiers and police are there facing danger on a daily basis, with no respite but victory or death. A reporter looking to get "street cred" in a quick in-and-out 24-72 hour junket without really bothering to learn what is really going on the way, say, Ernie Pyle or Kevin Sites, or Michael Yon has, just doesn't touch me the same way.

I wish them both a speedy and full recovery all the same.

1-31 Update: My point proven:

"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.

Not to me, gentlemen.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:29 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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As a fake scholar, fake artist, and fake Indian, I always though the story of Ward Churchill would be hard to beat.

Timothy P. "Nasdijj" Barrus, an Opie-looking wannabe Navajo who killed off two imaginary children on his way to a national magazine award that he parlayed into three nonfiction books about people who never existed, before he got into writing gay porn while living as the father of a suburban white kid while at some point faking involvement as a soldier in the Vietnam war, takes the cake:

After the Esquire piece, Nasdijj published "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams" in 2000, followed by "The Boy and His Dog Are Sleeping" -- which won a PEN award -- and "Geronimo's Bones." He wrote that he was the son of an alcoholic Navajo mother and a white cowboy father who raped and beat him. He said he grew up in migrant labor camps.

His former brother-in-law, Stephen Cheetham of Lansing, said Barrus had no such life. Cheetham said he hadn't seen Barrus since the 1970s, but over the years his two children told him what they heard of Barrus from their mother.

"I had heard that he was writing stories under different names," Cheetham said Thursday. "Something about how he claimed to be a Vietnam veteran at one point, claimed to be a Native American Indian at another point.

"His parents were a very middle-class, working, typical American family. He was never involved in Vietnam, he was never a Native American Indian, his parents weren't Native Americans -- there wasn't anything like that in his past."

It gets weirder:

In the 1980s, Barrus gained attention in some gay circles as a writer of pornography; other gay writers didn't think his work sounded authentic.

"I had some serious doubts about how gay he ever was," said Lars Eighner, a writer of gay literature who had mainstream success with his books. "It's a house of mirrors when you deal with him."

Barrus' third novel was about gay soldiers in Vietnam, but taken as a fictionalized memoir. Eighner said his gay literary friends didn't believe Barrus was ever in Vietnam.

I think he called that book Victor Charlie In My Chocolate Factory.

In a shocking related story, militant gay liberal activist John Aravosis of Americablog was discovered to be none other than David Hasselhoff.

Rusty is having fun with this story as well.

Update: Read Navahoax in the LA Weekly which broke this story and also has a link to "Nasdijj's" blog.

And Phin's got a song...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:26 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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ABC News still can't basic facts about the NSA surveillance story correct, as ABC reporter Jessica Yellin proves in her story, Ex-CIA Lawyer, No Legal Basic for NSA Spying.

She stumbles—or perhaps intentionally misleads—in the very first paragraph of her story:

Former CIA General Counsel Jeffrey Smith will testify in House hearings that there is no legal basis for President Bush's controversial National Security Agency domestic surveillance program, ABC News has learned.

The section I bolded highlights a key factual error in Yellin's article, which is this fact that the NSA intercept program was decidedly non-domestic in nature.

Yellin's incorrect assertion is one common to many in the media.

Deb Reichmann of the Associated Press, makes the claim as well, even though she contradicts herself by noting, that Bush "Â…gave the NSA permission to eavesdrop without a warrant on communications between suspected terrorists overseas and people inside the United States."

Josh Meyer and Daryl Strickland get it wrong in the LA Times, as does Scott Shane of the NY Times and literally dozens of other journalists.

Someone please alert the media that a call between people in two countries is, by definition, not domestic. This is sloppy reporting, betraying the fact that the journalists covering this story are ignorant of the subject matter they are covering. Or could another factor be in play?

Certainly, our crack corps of media professionals wouldn't dream of purposefully trying to muddy the waters to push a certain political agendaÂ… would they?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:17 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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