Posts Tagged ‘media’
FOX News Under Fire for Factual Accuracies
Washington, DC (AP) – The news division of the FOX network is facing criticism for its reliance on actual facts as part of its news coverage.
Conservative commentators, even some typically loyal to the network, have lashed out at the news team for resorting to a complete picture instead of using half-truths in an effort to paint Democrats as immoral.
“Its a disgrace,” said Ann Coulter. “This is not what we’ve come to expect from FOX, and they’d better get their act together if they want to hold onto their conservative credentials.”
Glenn Beck, a former FOX host, concurred. “Facts are things you get from networks beneath contempt, such as CNN,” he said. “The cause of right-wing conservatism is badly served when the flagship network of the movement resorts to techniques and content unbecoming of its viewership and reputation.” He said the network could reestablish itself as independent of factual accuracy if it made a concerted effort, but only time would tell if it could sustain that effort.
In this case, a FOX reporter mentioned reputable medical statistics on gunshot injuries and deaths, statistics that unmistakably frame gun control as a public health issue worthy of consideration. After angry reactions from the National Rifle Association and from Merle and Lydia Guntherspoon of Texarkana, Arkansas, the network retracted the report.
Other news media organizations have also been accused of factual accuracy, and responded in various ways. Al Jazeera, for example, has found itself trying, often unsuccessfully, to negotiate the boundary between journalistic plausibility and anti-Israel bias.
Some outlets have developed strict policies to forestall such criticism. The British Broadcasting Corporation, though recently mired in an ethics scandal, has only rarely let facts get in the way of its reporting, most notably in the Middle East, thanks to a rigid policy of always portraying one side in a conflict as wrong, facts notwithstanding. It remains unclear whether FOX will tighten its guidelines – or at least the enforcement of existing ones, if any – or will simply let the incident slide and assume the prevailing corporate culture will prevent a recurrence.
“I can see them going either way, really,” said media analyst Leis Daly. “FOX wants to maintain its reputation, so they might work hard to keep the facts from intruding on their work. On the other hand, the demographic that gave rise to FOX’s success, and from which it draws its ethics, embodies a conservatism so powerful that actually doing anything to effect change runs counter to everything it holds dear.”
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Blogger Mines Life for Material, Bores Hell Out of Readers
Chicago, IL (AP) – When a coworker sardonically suggested to Gregg Myers that he start a blog about his life, the 35-year-old accountant completely missed the fact that his interlocutor was trying only to shut him up. Now, Myers devotedly posts to his blog at least three times a week, regaling his nonexistent readership with the petty dramas of his humdrum life.
“I used to have to wait to talk to people to share with them my humorous little observations about life,” said Myers, whose last romantic relationship ended twelve years ago. “But online I can potentially reach a lot more people. You can only e-mail so many friends with office anecdotes and housekeeping annoyances. With my blog, if anyone wants to go back through the archive and follow the evolution of my writing, it’s so much easier,” said the career loser, who is either completely ignorant or in denial about the utter lack of visitors to his online ramblings.
Myers does occasionally stumble upon the visitor statistics on the administrator section of the blog, and mistakes the visits of bots, spammers and unlucky humans for genuine traffic. “People find my blog in the most interesting ways,” he mused as he programmed his DVR to record the Dora the Explorer episodes he would miss while at work. “Last week I saw that someone had found my blog by googling the phrase ‘mushroom onion squirrel’ – so I got repeat visits to my post about the differences between two major brands of instant soup mix, which also had some funny reminiscing about growing up in suburbia,” said the sad sack, pathetically unaware that at least 99% of search engine visits logged by blogging platforms are generated retroactively by link spammers and their ilk.
Lou Zerr, trying to force himself to look at Myers’s blog.
Myers is hardly alone, says Lou Zerr, who studies the habits of bloggers who lack what cultural anthropologists call a “life.” “You can find people like him almost everywhere,” says Zerr, who recently wrote a book on the subject, due out in May, called Deservedly Invisible. “The internet has allowed these people to come out of their shells just a a bit more, to allow them the illusion that other humans might care what they have to say. At the same time, the internet has also allowed other humans, many of whom have a life, to focus on other, more worthwhile pursuits, such as making fun of sad sacks such as Myers.”
Perhaps the peak achievement of Myers’s writing involved a day in which he found himself home sick from work, but still feeling reasonably good. He banged out six blog posts that day, beating his previous record of four. “It was a good day, in terms of creativity,” recalled the total dork. “Two of the posts were imagined dialogues between my toilet and the stuff that passes through it – and they were funny. You should see them. Another was a photo montage of funny-looking baby photos with captions that had Battlestar Galactica references. Great stuff,” continued Myers, but the remainder of his tale sailed into oblivion as the reporter originally assigned to the story self-immolated rather than listen to the rest.
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FOX Accuses Obama of Fathering Two Black Children
Obama, shamelessly posing with his black lover and children in the White House.
Washington, DC (AP) – FOX News reported this morning that several years prior to his election as President, Barack Obama fathered two children with a black woman.
“You won’t hear about this scandal from the fawning liberals over at CNN,” intoned the FOX anchor. “It takes reporters who are willing to go after the truth, not ignore everything bad there is about Obama.”
According to the report, Obama fathered the first child in 1998 with a black woman named Michelle, whom he had met while both were employed at the same Chicago law firm. The two continued their affair, producing another black child in 2001. Both children were born while Obama was serving in the Illinois State Senate. The FOX report noted that not a single major media outlet picked up on the scandal at the time, and that, said the anchorwoman, has only emboldened Obama as he continues to associate openly with the mother of those children, even bringing her with him to official state functions.
“The flagrancy with which Obama thrusts this black lover of his upon the eyes of America is just plain shocking,” said FOX personality Bill O’Reilly. “Strom Thurmond may have fathered a black child once upon a time, but at least he had the decency not to acknowledge it publicly.” Thurmond, who died in 2003, was for decades a staunch South Carolina segregationist, and never addressed the black daughter he fathered as related to him; he did, however, support her financially.
“But Obama is just blatant about it,” continued O’Reilly, “and that’s just the problem with liberals. They have no respect for boundaries. Certainly not the US-Mexico boundary,” he added, referring to immigration policies that Republicans have maintained are not restrictive enough.
“It’s more than immoral – it’s also cynical,” said former Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a frequent Obama critic. “Those children will probably grow up to vote Democrat, to boot. And the country is paying for their posh accommodations, in the White House no less! Imagine! Black children in the White House! If this scandal isn’t worth an impeachment proceeding or two, I don’t know what is!”
Obama is not the first president to maintain an intimate relationship with a black woman and to father children through her. Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third chief executive, has dozens of black descendants through his slave Sally Hemming. But according to Palin, since Hemming and her immediate descendants knew their proper place and never got “uppity,” in her words, American society was willing to tolerate the indiscretion.
“But Obama’s shoving it in our faces - and making us pay for it!” said Palin. The black woman and her daughters enjoy Secret Service protection, while their housing and transportation are covered with taxpayer funds. “Even their dog is black!” she remarked, referring to Obama’s Portuguese Water Dog Bo. “We have to take back America!” concluded Palin.
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Thanks to the Olympics, Now Everyone’s Heard of London
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Obama Fakes Own Death; Lead Over Romney Increases
Marine-One taking off on its final trip (Faux News)
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Obama faked a fiery death in a crash of the Marine-One military helicopter this afternoon, the latest step in an increasingly chaotic and media-hyped reelection campaign.
After pretending to board the aircraft on the White House’s South Lawn, the President and First Lady actually descended into a trap door beneath the helicopter, which then took off and flew toward Andrews Air Force Base. About halfway there, the U.S. Marine crew reported engine trouble, and witnesses reported that the chopper crashed in a wooded area just outside Bradbury Heights on the Virginia-Maryland border.
Rescue teams dispatched to the site reported finding no bodies, whereupon the Obamas appeared on live national television to reveal the hoax. Alongside them were the helicopter crew, who had bailed out before sending the distress signal.
“Let’s make America exciting again,” said the President. “Let’s make sure the opportunities for adventure and suspense reach all Americans.”
In the thirty-five minutes between the initial reports of the crash and the televised announcement, the internet and broadcast media were haywire with coverage and commentary, a testament to the robust attention that the Obama campaign has generated. Despite lagging behind Republican Mitt Romney in fundraising over the last two months, the Obama campaign has managed to press its advantage in the default attention that a sitting president receives.
The wreckage site (Faye Kimmage).
A telephone poll by CBS News in the aftermath of the incident revealed that as a result of the stunt, Obama’s approval rating had jumped to 88% from 61%, and that his lead over Romney had grown, to 79% from 58%. If the election were held today, Obama would win in a landslide, the first victory in a presidential election by such a decisive margin since Ronald Reagan’s reelection over Walter Mondale in 1984.
The Romney campaign responded quickly, denouncing the incident as a “cheap stunt, and yet another way in which Obama is wasting taxpayer dollars.” The Romney press release also promised a much more impressive hoax, on par with the victory of George W. Bush over Al Gore in the 2000 election.
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There Should Be an Intelligence Test to Be Interviewed on National TV
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The AP Thinks You’ll Be Offended, So They Won’t Report It
Yesterday the Associated Press reported that a Romanian dictionary publisher had finally acquiesced to demands that an anti-Semitic slur be labeled as offensive. But the AP declined to mention the epithet in question, as if the English-speaking world would suddenly adopt a Romanian slur when so many good, workable anti-Jew names are already available in English, and when it’s unlikely a native speaker of English would pronounce the thing properly anyway. Read the piece yourself and take note.
In related news, a Tennessee jury convicted George Norton, 36, of Memphis, for a crime. This was considered a coup for the local district attorney, who managed to convince the panel to convict without ever specifying the nature of the crime. Experts anticipate a tougher time for the prosecution when the sentencing phase of the trial begins next week, as juries use the heinousness of a crime as a factor in sentencing. Court sources report that the unspecified crime calls for a mandated legal minimum of six months behind bars of some sort, but is vague on the details.
In sports, a team from the East Coast beat a team from the West Coast in a game involving an object propelled by one side or the other in an attempt to score in some way, but the reporters at the scene couldn’t be bothered to mention the sport, the arena or the identities of the participants. There were apparently some advertisements involving athletic gear companies and beer, and some cheering took place at some point.
The Environmental Protection Agency cited four companies for violating government regulations, but would not disclose which companies, their locations or the nature of their violations. An EPA spokesman refused to comment when asked whether the companies themselves were aware of the enforcement effort.
President Barack Obama vetoed some legislation without bothering to check what it was, and Congressional leaders themselves were not certain, either, as none had actually checked what it was they had sent to the White House. Congressional records are vague on the matter, as the stenographers and other record-keeping functionaries had used generic and non-specific terminology in logging the proceedings surrounding the legislation.
Finally, Italian renaissance artist and sculptor Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with a newly discovered work. The thing, made of some material and about the size of some other things, will undoubtedly shed new light on whatever it is art history experts spend their time talking about, but frankly, if the reporters were diligent about doing their work, we might be able to offer more than some ambiguous notion of seemingly important events.
Oh, and in Romania, many media pundits blamed the Jidan for the hubbub.
