“Oh, I took the roofs road" --just one of the fascinating things at a new Iraq blog--Inside Iraq--
daily life in a war zone through the words of Iraqi journalists in McClatchy's Baghdad Bureau as they risk so much each day to survive. These are unedited first hand accounts of their experiences. Their complete names have been withheld for security reasons.
posted by amberglow
on Jan 17, 2007 -
9 comments
Studs Terkel, lengendary historian and radio host pays a visit to
Democracy Now! today. Audio and Video, as well as the transcript of this historic interview are
here. Also, the
WBAI pledge drive is this week too, please give what you can.
posted by wheelieman
on Oct 5, 2005 -
16 comments
Sy Hersh's Loose Relationship with the Literal Truth | Interesting article from
NY Metro which seems to condem Hersh's squirrely handling of facts while admiring his accomplishments & tenacity: "In bending the truth, Hersh is, paradoxically enough, remarkably candid. When he supplies unconfirmed accounts of military assaults on Iraqi civilians, or changes certain important details from an episode inside Abu Ghraib (thus rendering the story unverifiable), Hersh argues that he’s protecting the identities of sources who could face grave repercussions for talking. 'I defend that totally,' Hersh says of the factual fudges he serves up in speeches and lectures."
posted by jenleigh
on Jun 2, 2005 -
33 comments
Next in the "America slowly slipping toward fascism" saga: Reporter Convicted for Refusing to Give Identity of a Source. Mr. Taricani would be one of only a handful of journalists to go to jail for refusing to identify a source. Mr. Taricani was convicted in connection with a long-running federal investigation called Operation Plunderdome,
which resulted in the conviction of at least nine city officials, including Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who was sentenced to 64 months for racketeering conspiracy.
His bad: refusing to identify the person who leaked him an F.B.I. videotape in 2001 related to an investigation of government corruption in Providence.
posted by acrobat
on Nov 19, 2004 -
59 comments
"The most intriguing story in Washington these days is a subterranean conflict that reporters cannot cover because some of them are involved. A potent guerrilla insurgency has formed in and around the Bush presidency - a revolt of old pros in government who strike from the shadows with devastating effect. They tell the truth. They explode big lies. They provide documentary evidence..." - William Greider, on what could prove to be one of the defining power struggles of our time. Through a lens darkly, yes. But deniable ? - not plausibly.
As gossip, growing louder now, the shadow-war advances. Unstoppably?
No.
posted by troutfishing
on Jun 27, 2004 -
40 comments
Bush in Baghdad, Behind the Scenes. Drudge has posted Washington Post reporter Mike Allen's raw notes from the 2-day secret whirlwind trip to Iraq. It reads like a script from "The West Wing." (The stripped-down finished article
appears in Friday's
Post.) Meanwhile, some in the journalism field are
pissed, says Howard Kurtz. Says one: "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
posted by PrinceValium
on Nov 27, 2003 -
59 comments
U.S. Army Used Media Cover in Iraq for Own Ends which sounds like a big old bowl of yellow journalism but isn't really, at least I don't think so. It was more to refute the Iraqi Minister of Lies talking about the whooping the Iraqi war machine was delivering to the coalition forces.
The main issue that the reporters had was that they were only getting the one side of the story and not the Iraqi perspective.
But it raises some questions about the supposed objectivity of the media. Is this a proper use of them? To help achieve military goals? Or to try to avoid more unnecessary deaths?
posted by fenriq
on Sep 8, 2003 -
15 comments
Unbiased (ideally) but not inhuman (hopefully) The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at the University of Washington studies the effects of crazy badness ("if it bleeds, it leads") on reporters and studies ways in which the news media can better cover traumatic events in the life of the world: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. From a piece on the site, "9-11 Journalists Share Memories, Support," "Long before Sept. 11, he was interested in how journalists respond to the pain and misery they encounter in their work, and the lack of support they often find in a traditionally tough-minded business. Then he nearly died while photographing the World Trade Center attack, and found those issues hit closer to home than he ever imagined."
posted by jengod
on Jul 23, 2003 -
2 comments
Not All Iraqis Dancing in the Streets. To watch the
neutered embedded reporters, you would think that every Iraqi is overjoyed to see America in his or her country. But the reality seems to be quite different: "Why are you here in this country? Are you trying to take over? Are you going to take our country forever? Are the Israelis coming next? Are you here to steal our oil? When are you going to get out?"
posted by owillis
on Mar 22, 2003 -
35 comments
E-terrorism over-rated. Journalist Brian McWilliams exposes the media whoring of fellow "reporter" Dan Verton and "security intelligence" company mi2g. He shows just how easy it is to fake a "terrorist" organization online and finally gives some exposure to the amount of FUD that gets spread around by some reporters and a lot of comp. sec companies simply to make money.
Though I don't think Verton gets it:
"Although the hoax this week taught me a valuable lesson about the nature of information on the Internet, it's less clear that McWilliams' scheme has done anything to advance the understanding of cyberterrorism."
Um...yeah Dan. He showed just how half-assed a job some people do in actually verifying sources and Internet-based information. Kudos to your anti-FUD efforts, Brian.
posted by bkdelong
on Feb 6, 2003 -
8 comments
TRAPPED, CUFFED & BUSSED Two Diamondback (Univ. of Maryland student newspaper)reporters covering the IMF-World Bank protests were arrested Friday morning and manacled for 23 hours. Surrounded by hundreds of protesters in Pershing Park, Washington Metropolitan Police circled and arrested the entire group. Jason Flanagan and Debra Kahn were there as impartial observers, and despite the newspaper's efforts to release them, they were stripped of all their possessions - even their shoelaces. What follows is a first-person account of their arrest and detention.
posted by Ty Webb
on Oct 2, 2002 -
71 comments
Ideas have consequences. On the subject of the Daniel Pearl kidnapping, an interesting letter to Media News today (scroll down to the "Journalists as Political Operatives" item), reads in part, "I would not want to trivialize it for all the world, but I am constrained to point out that it was only recently that Mr. Pearl's newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, felt compelled to praise the book "Bias" which perports to lay bare the 'liberal bias' of mainstream journalism. In fact, the WSJ editorial board has for years persisted, along with other conservative commentators, to label journalists as political tools in service of a larger political agenda. The kidnappers of Mr. Pearl insist that he is a political tool, a spy, for some foreign government (one day the U.S., the next day Israel.) Where could they have possibly gotten the idea that journalists are not the dedicated professionals they claim to be but are instead something else in disguise?" Thoughts?
posted by nance
on Jan 31, 2002 -
35 comments
Got Milk? Two reporters win a lawsuit against Fox for being fired when they wouldn't lie about bovine growth hormone.
posted by thunder
on May 9, 2001 -
22 comments
