07-09-2005 14:24									#61
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: Originally posted by Gatekeeper I'm not saying journalism is perfect — how can anything be whose origins rest with humans? But what cannot be denied is that journalists are often used as punching bags by those who have real agendas and, more often than not, they simply absorb the blows without complaint because, if they did complain, it'd "prove" this or that about so and so "biases."

	07-09-2005 14:40									#62
	Remove this text

quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara What I want is for them to have some balls and do what they promised, "Aflict the comforatable and comfort the afflicted."

You're under the mistaken impression that the media is homogeneous. It is not.

Some newspapers have the resources to do a good job, others do not. Some sections of a newspaper are hard-hitting while in the same newspaper there will be fluff like travel pieces or property stories.

There are still many journalists with the determination to tackle difficult stories.

Could the media do a better job? Yes, and that's true in every country.

And by the by, the bit about afflicting the comfortable was never a promise.

	07-09-2005 22:52									#63
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse Not me - I'm just bored by the CNN coverage

Heh. Thank goodness for books, exercise, computers and The History Channel's Roman Empire week.

Gatekeeper

	07-09-2005 23:06									#64
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

'I can't work out why CNN is so boring '

hmmm... they are not as colorful as cartoons you spend most of the day watching?? just a guess.

	07-09-2005 23:24									#65
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara Let's put it this way. With your "professionalism" these days, there's no way Woodward and Berstein would be allowed to uncover Watergate. The 70s were a golden age for journalism, but once it became "profesionalized" it started going downhill.

I'm calling that what it is: Bullshit. When's the last time you paid any attention to the Pulitzer Awards that journalists earn for their hard work? Year in and year out investigative pieces are honored; just because you happen to never hear of them for whatever reason doesn't mean the likes of Woodward and Bernstein aren't around anymore. My own employer has pissed off TPTB in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere WRT stories we've run, including a number of deeper look on Iraq issues, ranging from the "no armor" problem to the insurgents being dug in deeper than Rumsfeld, et al., are willing to admit publicly. And that's just a tiny sample of what we do, and we're far from being the only journalists out there.

If that's "going downhill" to you, Che, then you really do deserve to be pitied.

quote: I think there are two major problems with the media today, first, they're cowards. They are too afraid to challenge public authorities, except when it comes to sex or the evidence is overwhelming and has already been gathered for them by someone else.

Cowards? You post this as even now a New York Times reporter sits in jail because she refuses to reveal her sources to a judge? Oh, wait, that's right: She's protecting sources who certain members of the left (and others) would love to see fall, and fall hard. And there are other, "less prominent," journalists out there paying the price for their profession ... but, hey, since you don't hear about them, obviously they don't exist and their peers are all craven, gutless fools.

quote: The are afraid because they don't want to lose their access. They are afraid to go after corporate criminals, because they don't want to piss off their advertisers and they are afraid to be sued. Profit is more important than the public's right to know.

God Almighty. I'm not even going to bother with this part.

quote: As for corporate interference from the top, I know it exists. Look at what happened at the San Jose Mercury or the Fox news affiliate in Tampa. NBC never says anything negative about GE, ABC about Disney, etc. Journalists who don't tow the line find themselves without work.

I'm going to pull a Q here: it's TOE.

OK, back into serious mode: I speak from my experiences as a journalist who's employed by the second-largest media company in the United States. In my years in the profession, the only restriction I've seen on our reporting and/or editing is the fact that stories about the company that originate from outside sources (i.e. Reuters, AP, AFP and so on) get a look-see from the top editors in the newsroom to make sure they're factually correct.

Oh, there's other, little, things that sometimes percolate down from up top, but that's mostly style-related (i.e. making sure our Web site is prominently displayed somewhere on the pages and/or in articles so that folks can go there for further and/or late-breaking coverage of an issue).

quote: Do they dictate everything? No, they don't have to. Journalists self-censor.

Not even a tenth as much as you fantasize they do.

quote: I don't care whether the media is left-wing or not. What I want is for them to have some balls and do what they promised, "Aflict the comforatable and comfort the afflicted."

Afflict, damnit, afflict! AUGH! Comfortable! (Q, you've set a monster in motion!)

*cough* Ahem. All I care is that the media is as unbiased as it can possibly be. It's how I was educated and I'll do everything I can to ensure that remains the dominate force in journalism. If that means pissing off folks with agendas, then so be it.

In conclusion, Che, I could take your entire post, change a few things here and there and, voila!, I've got a right-wing argument saying the media is controlled by liberals. I've seen this for years now — left saying this, right says that — and, frankly, it accounts a great deal for why I get all preachy about the subject from time to time. That is, when I simply don't just and move on to more productive tasks.

America's journalists, for all their warts, are among the best in the world. That's been my experience in the field, FWIW.

Gatekeeper

	07-09-2005 23:59									#66
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

She makes CNN a lot less boring..

	08-09-2005 00:12									#67
	Increase the size of your Attachments

CNN is extremely dull though. Riz Khan and all the fellas. BBC is better.

	08-09-2005 00:16									#68
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I want Fox News Of course we got our own "fox" channels but it would be nice to have that.

	08-09-2005 00:17									#69
	Remove this text

BTW that's an ugly mug there ecthy, change it

	08-09-2005 00:18									#70
	Increase the size of your Attachments

It's one of the few with a smile on it. Change?

edit: it does look more positive on the real one though. I might as well just go for the lateral option and ignore you.

	08-09-2005 00:20									#71
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

or leave it. but that's so honest posting your real face. too honest. brings back memories from giancarlo and that's not good.

	08-09-2005 00:20									#72
	Put an end to popups!

Giancarlo? If more people get that flashback I MUST change it back.

I might go for that Chinese chick but then I never really knew her.

	08-09-2005 00:23									#73
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

post pictures from china!

	08-09-2005 00:28									#74
	Remove this text

btw I'll post the asses from the beach voley championship too but first i have to buy a laptop (big story)

	08-09-2005 00:28									#75
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Idid in my thread, they're all with me on them though, couldn't be arsed to post any of the cities or the like.

Might still do so later though!

	08-09-2005 00:29									#76
	Suffering from ads?

Well fooker did you get any chance to grab any of those asses?

What was your job there anyway, fork the sand fields for the enxt match or what?

	08-09-2005 00:31									#77
	Tired of ads?

I couldnt grab them because they were so far away. my job was to enjoy them

	08-09-2005 00:32									#78
	Tired of ads?

for only 5 euros!

	08-09-2005 00:35									#79
	Increase the size of your Attachments

The American news media seems to be improving from what I've gathered following Katrina. In fact, I read this article recently on BBC. Pretty interesting.

quote: Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media? By Matt Wells Los Angeles As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing. But unlike Watergate, "Katrinagate" was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis. Instead of secretive "Deep Throat" meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power. Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina. National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account. They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests. Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states. It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration. 'Lies or ignorance' But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington. The most spectacular example came last Friday night on Fox News, the cable network that has become the darling of the Republican heartland. This highly successful Murdoch-owned station sets itself up in opposition to the "mainstream liberal media elite". But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters. On other networks like NBC, CNN and ABC it was the authority figures, who are so used to an easy ride at press conferences, that felt the full force of reporters finally determined to ditch the deference. As the heads of the Homeland Security department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) appeared for network interviews, their defensive remarks about where aid was arriving to, and when, were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance. And you did not need a degree in journalism to know it either. Just watching TV for the previous few hours would have sufficed. Iraq concern When the back-slapping president told the Fema boss on Friday morning that he was doing "a heck of a job" and spent most of his first live news conference in the stricken area praising all the politicians and chiefs who had failed so clearly, it beggared belief. The president looked affronted when a reporter covering his Mississippi walkabout had the temerity to suggest that having a third of the National Guard from the affected states on duty in Iraq might be a factor. It is something I suspect he is going to have to get used to from now on: the list of follow-up questions is too long to ignore or bury. And it is not only on TV and radio where the gloves have come off. The most artful supporter of the administration on the staff of the New York Times, columnist David Brooks, has also had enough. He and others are calling the debacle the "anti 9-11": "The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled," he wrote on Sunday. "Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield." Media emboldened It is way too early to tell whether this really will become "Katrinagate" for President Bush, but how he and his huge retinue of politically-appointed bureaucrats react in the weeks ahead will be decisive. Government has been thrown into disrepute, and many Americans have realised, for the first time, that the collapsed, rotten flood defences of New Orleans are a symbol of failed infrastructure across the nation. Blaming the state and city officials, as the president is already trying to do over Katrina, will not wash. Black America will not forget the government failures, and nor will the Gulf Coast region Beyond the immediate challenge of re-housing the evacuees and getting 200,000-plus children into new schools, there will have to be a Katrina Commission, that a newly-emboldened media will scrutinise obsessively. The dithering and incompetence that will be exposed will not spare the commander-in-chief, or the sunny, faith-based propaganda that he was still spouting as he left New Orleans airport last Friday, saying it was all going to turn out fine. People were still trapped, hungry and dying on his watch, less than a mile away. Black America will not forget the government failures, nor will the Gulf Coast region. Tens of thousands of voters whose lives have been so devastated will cast their mid-term ballots in Texas next year - the president's adopted home state. The final word belongs to the historic newspaper at the centre of the hurricane - The New Orleans Times-Picayune. At the weekend, this now-homeless institution published an open letter: "We're angry, Mr President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. "Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been, were not. That's to the government's shame."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4214516.stm

	08-09-2005 00:44									#80
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Maybe, maybe not. Elements of the print media have been exposing hard truths about Iraq for more than two years now to, seemingly, no real effect (unless one counts opinion polls as reflective of an entire nation).

Gatekeeper

	08-09-2005 03:50									#81
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by My Wife Hates CIV 'I can't work out why CNN is so boring ' hmmm... they are not as colorful as cartoons you spend most of the day watching?? just a guess.

Hello stranger

No, I don't watch much Fox

But prising the remote off my kids and getting the TV off the freakin cartoon channel is a daily battle.

	08-09-2005 09:31									#82
	Support Apolyton

My prediction: Shepard Smith quits Fox News



Interesting that David Brooks of all people (who is one of the biggest cheerleaders of the Bush Administration) publicly lashed Bush, and it wasn't just a, "well the President screwed up a little," it was outrage, and his outrage on the situation mentioned the magnitude of the situation.


This isn't a small mistake like Cheney showing up to a somber event wearing hiking boots and a silly coat, it's a major catastrophe.

Some people need to quit now with the party line defensebotting and be honest about what is going on.

	08-09-2005 09:41									#83
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Well we can start with just about anything Dan Rather did, like claiming that the vast majority of Vietnam Veterans were insane and dangerous. He interviewed insane people who claimed to have been Vietnam vets (but who were in fact simply insane) and then extrapolated his bogus control group to the population at large. When confronted with the truth he stonewalled just like he did about the Bush forgeries.

Ah, some things never change. Rather...

Mainstream Media