What was that thing about Pottery Barn?

Echoing my thoughts, the New York Times Maureen Dowd writes about the latest casualties in the Iraq media troops, CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and soundman James Brolan, 42, who were were killed, and correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, who was seriously injured:

The administration and some right-wing commentators have blamed the press for not reporting positive news in Iraq. The radio host Laura Ingraham has suggested that the press is "invested in America's defeat" and has mocked TV journalists for "reporting from hotel balconies about the latest I.E.D.'s going off."

Conservative chatterers have parroted President Bush's complaint that "people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an I.E.D. explosion."

But now two network personalities — Ms. Dozier and Bob Woodruff — have been severely injured by roadside bombs while embedded with the military, trying to do the sort of stories the administration wants.

"One thing I don't want to hear anymore," Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, told The Times's Bill Carter, "is people like Laura Ingraham spewing about us not leaving our balconies in the Green Zone to cover what's really happening in Iraq."

Even with constricted coverage, the tally of journalists killed in Iraq is now 71, more than the number killed in Vietnam or World War II. (This war is now six months short of the United States involvement in World War II, but at least then we knew we were winning by this point.)

Shaken by the CBS losses, networks were reassessing how to cover a story with such excruciating risks. Journalists in Iraq are hamstrung in Iraq just as the troops are, struggling, with ever greater frustration and higher costs, to do the job they were sent in to do.

As the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan told CNN recently, American officials often reject her requests for optimistic stories, saying: "Oh, sorry, we can't take you to that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be the victims of attack. Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage."

Operation Iraqui Freedom is really going great, hunh?

BTW: Here's the latest grim tally from Reuters.

Oh and don't forget the latest ''good news'' from Iraq.

The gang that can't shoot its mouth off straight

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Two weeks ago, Amir Taheri published an op-ed in Canada's National Post about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe. The story, reminiscent of Nazi Germany, quickly provoked outrage, but was just as quickly revealed to be a total fabrication. It also ran in the New York Post.

Apparently this is just the sort of reliable advice that President Bush needs. Yesterday, Taheri had a face-to-face with the President as one of a small group of "experts" on Iraq that visited the White House.

Here's the bit from yesterday's White House press briefing with Tony Snow:

Q Can you give us a readout on the President's meeting this morning with the Iraq experts?

MR. SNOW: Yes. Oh, my goodness, I forgot to bring the list. But actually -- do you have the list, Fred? Yes, it was an interesting meeting. What you ended up having was -- I've got all the names but one written down here. We had Wayne Downing, Barry McCaffrey, Michael Vickers, Amir Taheri, Fouad Ajami and Raad Alkadiri. And you had a combination there of military men and also scholars who are students of Iraq. And it was an interesting discussion that touched upon cultural issues, on political issues, on the state of affairs in Iraq. You had a number of people who've been there recently, General McCaffrey having returned just last month from his latest visit. Fouad Ajami last year had the occasion to sit down and speak with the Ayatollah Sistani, Ali al Sistani.

Recall that Taheri is a lobbyist/pr agent for neocons and neocon causes, whose cultural expertise on Iran is such that he couldn't even accurately name its cultural minister in his op-ed piece and who, judging from the evidence, alerted the Simon Weisenthal Centre in advance of the publication of his misleading op-ed, which then led to the circuitous loop of outrage and false stories.

Now this guy is advising U.S. Preznit George W. Bush?

Incidentally, I ran a few of the other names through Google.

This profile of Fouad Ajami from The Nation, April 10, 2003.

As for the reaction of the Arab street, the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation in Basra and Baghdad, the streets are sure to erupt in joy."

Raad Alkadiri is not so easy to pin down. He's ''director for Middle East and Africa in the Country Strategies Group at PFC Energy'' which is in the oil and gas consulting business and claims to be

... one of the pre-eminent strategic advisory firms in global energy. Combining a detailed knowledge and understanding of markets, countries and competition, PFC Energy is recognized in the global energy industry for the depth of its analysis and the integrity of its advice.

Barry McCaffrey:

According to an article written by Seymour Hersh published in 2000 The New Yorker, General McCaffrey committed war crimes during the Gulf War by having troops under his command kill retreating Iraqis after a ceasefire had been declared. Hersh's article "quotes senior officers decrying the lack of discipline and proportionality in the McCaffrey-ordered attack." One colonel told Hersh that it "made no sense for a defeated army to invite their own death. ... It came across as shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone was incredulous."

Wayne Downing:

"'The Iraqis really have got plans prepared,' said retired US Gen. Wayne Downing, a former commander in chief of the US Special Operations Command, at a recent symposium on Iraq. 'They are ready to take the war ... overseas. They would use whatever means they have to attack us.'"

What a team.

Mark my words: This Iranian yellow badges story will be the beast that won't die.

Hat tip to Patrick Kelly.

The Battle for Bunkum Hill

All out war has broken out between the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the Harper government, according to Global National with Kevin Newman.

Prior to the start of a news conference in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would contribute $40 million in humanitarian and military assistance to the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, members of the press gallery simultaneously got up and left, moments before the prime minister arrived in the room, in an act of defiance against new news conference rules imposed against the media.

Harper has come under fire from the media in recent months for limiting the parliamentary press gallery from having access to certain events and federal personalities.

I know that some excreTories think it's great that Harper isn't playing ball with the commie left-wing loony liberal MSM but there will come a time of reckoning. This is not the USA where you can bypass the news media by going on the late night talk shows. There are no late night talk shows here to go on. And there are only so many commercial minutes a party can afford to buy during an election campaign.

Despite what the Con-o-sphere thinks, the MSM, especially TV, are still where the overwhelming majority of people find their news. But it looks like the Blogging Tories didn't get the memo on that cold hard fact. Reaction from the Con-o-sphere here and here and here and here.

So the old media doesn't want to cover Stephen Harper under these new rules? Fine. Start shooting some press releases and doing online Q&A sessions with us bloggers. Might not be as engaging as video for the evening news, but if it keeps Canadians informed, why not? It gives the government a means of getting its message out, and subjects the government to questions from people with a fresh perspective. And no one thinks bloggers are uniformly left-wing the way the old media is perceived (not entirely fairly, by the way).

This promises to get funner still.

UPPITY DATE: Paul Wells has some thoughts here and here.

UPPER: Say, heeeeeeeeeeere's an idea from Geneva Gin.

A good old fashioned bowler hat. That is what. It should be used to collect the business cards of every journalist who wants to ask a question. The President of the PPG shakes it before the PM appears and places it conveniently close to the PM. When "The Statement" has been made and the floor is open for questions the PM picks one of the business cards out of the hat and invites that journalist to ask a question. No control by the PPG, No control by the PMO and no more long and rowdy line ups at a microphone.

But how will we know he reads the actual card he picks? And how will we ensure that French and English get equal time? And what about TV versus print? East versus west?

Forget I brought it up.

Not so friendly fire

Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell scores a touchdown with his examination of how the press was spun by the Pentagon when all-American hero Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan.

Noting that a criminal investigation has been opened, Mitchell writes

(W)e should not forget that the military not only lied to Tillman’s friends and family about the episode, but also--in the tradition of the Jessica Lynch affair—to the press. Eventually, the media played a key role in helping to get the truth out. As far as anyone knows, none of the Army officials who misled the world have been punished.

Tillman's mother, Mary, told The Washington Post on Saturday that she believes evidence of a crime has existed all along, and that the family's repeated calls for a criminal investigation were ignored until now. Her husband, Patrick Tillman Sr., commented, "if you send investigators to reinvestigate an investigation that was falsified in the first place, what do you think you're going to get?"

Puts that old right-wing smackdown of that controversial Ted Rall cartoon about Tillman's killing in a whole new light, doesn't it?

Oaf of Office

A blogowar has erupted over U.S. President George W. Bush's speech today.

In what was ostensibly a salute to military veterans, he went political, lacerating critics who have accused his administration of fixing the intelligence and manipulating the media in his zeal to attack Iraq. Here's the money quote:

The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges.

These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will.

As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them.

Oh. So speaking truth to power will lose the war that would have never been started if only more critics had spoken truth to power? Those of us waiting for the mainstream media to question his charges will be waiting a long time.

There's more:

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

Which revisionism of history would that be? The one that began with 9/11 and WMDs and nuclear threats and then shifted to the liberation of the Iraqi people from a brutal, vicious dictator and then shifted to bringing democracy to the Middle East? That one? 

Although some of us have been saying so for years, we all now know that the Iraq war was sold like some shoddy packaged good on the supermarket shelf, only the media gave it a whole lot of freebies while waving the flag.

Those some of us are still waiting for the media to 'fess up to their role in this debacle.

Heroic truth-tellers in the Watergate saga, the established media are now in disrepute, scandalized by unreliable "news" and over-intimate attachments to powerful court insiders. The major media stood too close to the throne, deferred too eagerly to the king's twisted version of reality and his lust for war. The institutions of "news" failed democracy on monumental matters. In fact, the contemporary system looks a lot more like the ancien régime than its practitioners realize. Control is top-down and centralized. Information is shaped (and tainted) by the proximity of leading news-gatherers to the royal court and by their great distance from people and ordinary experience.

Still, even as nearly 60 per cent of Americans say Bush is not honest, the man continues to speak with forked tongue, claiming that ''more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate'' who voted for the war "had access to the same intelligence'' as did the administration.

Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war ... These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

Uh ... not exactly, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, which takes particular exception to how mainstream media outlets reported on that claim.

While it's true that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence that the Bush administration pressured intelligence agents into altering their findings, the president still fudges the issue just a bit here. Yet neither the (New York) Times nor any of the major media outlets we looked at managed to pick up on his sleight of hand.

Fact is, as Harry Reid's "Rule 21" gambit pointed out last week, the initial Senate investigation only looked at how the intelligence community handled the information it collected -- and, as of yet, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has not investigated exactly what intelligence went to the president, whether all of it was taken into account and what the vetting process was at the executive branch.

Journalism isn't stenography, as Maureen Dowd recently reminded Judy Miller, and pointing out the nuances of a carefully worded political speech should be one of the hallmarks of the craft. So far today, that hasn't been the case.

More from Media Matters here.

Following President Bush's Veterans Day speech at Pennsylvania's Tobyhanna Army Depot, the Associated Press as well as Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer uncritically repeated Bush's misleading claim that the Senate Intelligence Committee disproved Democratic allegations that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Neither the AP nor Hemmer noted that the Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to report on its investigation into the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence and, therefore, has not addressed the Democrats' allegations. Indeed, "phase two" of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report would be the first such investigation into the alleged misuse of intelligence by proponents of the war.

In other words, contrary to what Bush said today, the bipartisan Senate investigation committee results are not yet fully known -- and the media had better make that clear to citizens. (The dirty details of the current load of crap coming from the right about who knew what and when are documented here.)

The Moderate Voice has a great round-up of today's coverage, both MSM and bloggy.

Don't miss some of the reaction from some of the Bushies' most faithful jackblogs, like Instapundit who says

The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way -- and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it's deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.

and this comedian

For the longest time we on the right have been wondering when President Bush was going to come out swinging against his critics on the war. As time has progressed and our victory in Iraq become more manifest, the drumbeat of leftwing lies and slanders about the war has merely grown louder and more strident. The endless shriek of leftwing lies have become more and more echoed in the MSM and in the senior leadership of the Democratic Party - to listen to the critics, the liberation of Iraq was begun with no justification whatsoever and has been an unmitigated failure from start to finish.

I'd add a punchline but it hardly seems necessary.

Goodwill Hunting

Winning the media over is winning at least half the battle, Israel is discovering.

Putting forward its message on Arabic media has become increasingly important for Israel since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000.

Efforts have been stepped up further following a withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip that Israel hopes will encourage better relations with the Arab world and end old animosities over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Which is why I just don't get the hostility from, ahem, some quarters in Canada towards Al Jazeera, the world's most-watched satellite network.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera was one of the first networks to put Israelis on air as part of an editorial policy of allowing opposing opinions since it started broadcasting in 1996.

Though condemned by many Arab governments for hard-hitting news and criticized by some Westerners who say it is anti-United States and anti-Israel, Al Jazeera's popularity has soared. It has also given Israel a hearing it never previously had in the region.

Other Arabic networks have followed. Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Sheikh said Al Jazeera did not give anyone a "platform for propaganda."

Seeing an Israeli speaking Arabic on television is far from being enough to overcome Arab anger at the Jewish state, abhorred for its tough handling of the Palestinian uprising, some analysts say.

"If he is wearing a military uniform and is justifying, in however nice a tone, settlement expansion and assassinations, I don't see how that will serve Israel's cause," said Jordan-based Mouin Rabbani of the International Crisis Group think tank.

"Often, it comes across as exceptionally brazen," he said.

But at least it puts the different perspectives out there, relatively unfiltered by those who spread hate through ignorance. This doesn't mean both sides don't have axes to grind on their own spin machines. They do. But no problem was ever solved without free, open and informed communication.

Disrupt This!

Gotta say, I really hate how management announcers on CBC Radio are calling the lockout of 5,500 workers a ''labour disruption."

How genteel. How disingenuous.

How about saying we've padlocked the doors, manned them with security guards and cut our workers off from their pay and benefits until they cave or CBC collapses, whichever comes first?

Why Al Jazeera Gets A Bad Name

IMPORTANT CORRECTION:

You want to know why Al Jazeera gets a bad name? Because this isn't Al Jazeera's web site -- and idiots like me sometimes think it is. It goes by www.aljazeera.com and, on its About page, explicitly states that it is not affiliated with the ''controversial Arabic satellite channel."

This is Al Jazeera's actual English site (english.aljazeera.net). That said, I can't find this story updated or corrected anywhere on its site. If somebody else does before I quit my computer this evening, please let me know.

ORIGINAL POST:

Maybe Fox News can get away with promoting false stories but the Arabic-language Al Jazeera can't.  Don't get me wrong: I think all news organizations should strive for accuracy, and correct their errors as quickly as possible.  But Al Jazeera really ought to be extra careful, because so many bad things can happen as a result of its errors.

This report, complete with gruesome photo, has been sitting on its web site for hours.

Two Israeli settlers stabbed to death a 12-year-old Palestinian boy near the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian sources said.

The Palestinian Interior Ministry said in a statement that Yazan Mohamed Mussa, 12, was killed due to an atrocious crime committed by two Israeli settlers.

But, as it turns out, the facts are different.

Palestinian Authority security forces have arrested two Palestinian youths they believe were involved in the stabbing of Yuzan Johar, 12, in Karyut near Shilo on Wednesday night.

Israeli security officials told The Jerusalem Post that PA security officials informed their Israeli counterparts on Thursday that the boy was killed by a Palestinian youth, and not by settlers as initially alleged. The officials said the incident appeared to be the result of a feud between clans in the village.

Despite this, Palestinian media reports on Thursday, including a statement issued by the PA Interior Ministry, continued to accuse settlers of responsibility for the youth's death.

Last I looked, the uncorrected story was prominently displayed on the front page of Al Jazeera's web site.

That's very bad news indeed.

Pants on fire

Courtesy of Editor & Publisher, a compendium of White House lies and obfuscations by flack-in-chief Scott McClellan regarding Karl "Bush's Brain" Rove's part in outing a CIA operative.

Here's a sample:

        Oct. 10, 2003

Q: Earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

A: I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.

Q: So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

A: They assured me that they were not involved in this.

Q: They were not involved in what?

A: The leaking of classified information.

Not to beat the thesaurus or anything, but the New York Times genteelly calls the most recent calumniations ''stonewalling."

... Terry Moran of ABC News prefaced his question by saying Mr. McClellan was "in a bad spot here" because he had spoken from the same podium on Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, and specifically said that neither Mr. Rove nor two other officials - Elliot Abrams, a national security aide, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - were involved.

Mr. McClellan disputed the characterization of the question but did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter.

You know, I used to think Ari Fleischer (caution; may not be workplace safe!) was slippery.  But you could lube a Hummer with McClellan's palm sweat -- if only he had any.

Watching the Watchers

Coming soon!

Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, which wants to "refederate" Canada, is launching a watchdog site called Media Bias:

In one election after another, the national media have steered public opinion toward left-liberal parties. Last year, they accused Steve Harper and the Conservatives of pursuing a "hidden agenda'' (which conveniently can't be shown to exist because it's "hidden") and said the Conservative campaign was "dogged" by "accusations of social extremism" - accusations which the media themselves initiated, to the benefit of the Liberals and NDP.

(SNIP ..)

At the Citizens Centre, we think it's time for a comprehensive, proactive approach.

What that approach is, is not clear - except that the Media Bias people "will systematically monitor the six national news sources that set the media course."

Let's see: CBC, CTV, Global, the Globe and Mail, the National Post and ... ?

This is gonna make this blogging thing a whole lot funner for sure.