Now Cough

Friday, February 04, 2005

Aaaack

Another sunny, snowy day---good time to start a blog!

ZACK. ZAP!

If you have never lived in a city with a GOOD tabloid, you don't know what you're missing. The Philadelphia Daily News is one of the best. Word today that it's courageous, tenacious and sharp editor Zack Stalberg is leaving. Who can blame him, given the nonsense the corporate owners Knight Ridder are pursuing.
Details

FULL METAL JACKET

Let God sort 'em out:

"According to an audio recording of General (James) Mattis's remarks obtained by The Associated Press, he said: "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot.It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling."

He added, "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil."

General Mattis continued: "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

More about the straight shooter and his wrist slapping. (NYTimes reg. required):


DEEP THROAT

A bunch of Woodstein archives opened at a Texas university. And speculation that George Herbert Walker Bush (Poppy) was Deep Throat. But who really had a motive?


WINER DUDE

Oh, I'm stepping into a pile of doo now. Dave Winer, father of RSS among many other things, waves the flag for bloggers uber alles. And makes a lot of lame observations about THE MEDIA. The one that gets me is this:

Professional reporters won't criticize their employers. Ask any reporter. Could you run a story about your employer that was negative? If you can actually get them to answer the question, the answer is no. Most likely they'll deflect the question by saying something personal, about you! These are the same people who wax endlessly about accountability in politicians and leaders of tech companies. But for some reason they never seem to challenge the leaders of media companies. (Sorry for the sarcasm, they don't because they'd be fired if they did.)

Unlike bloggers, reporters for the most part are very concerned about appearances of conflict of interest. Reporting on one's employer is rife with credibility issues. That is usually the reason.

Oh and Dave should be careful about the use of the word never. Read Hard News by Seth Mnookin about how The New York Times investigated the disaster of the Blair scandal. Do all papers do this? No.

Do networks? Rarely. However, CBS did:

Excerpts from the 224-page Report of the Independent Review Panel on the Sept. 8, 2004, ``60 Minutes Wednesday'' segment titled ``For the Record,'' concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service:

"The panel finds that the vetting process for the Sept. 8 segment was seriously flawed. The panel believes that this was caused in large part by the speed with which this segment was produced. The panel also believes that the vetting process was not sufficient because too much deference was given to (segment producer Mary) Mapes because of her experience and much admired history at CBS News and ``60 Minutes Wednesday,'' as well as her association with (Dan) Rather. Rather does not appear to have participated in any of the vetting sessions or to have even seen the segment before it was aired."

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