ninme

I’m sensing a trend. There’s a feeling, as if… as if… As if maybe people are getting a little fed up with the media. Not that they’d actually stop watching, or anything. No that would be too productive.

LGF - The Forced Conversion That the Media Forgot

I’ve noticed something very odd about news reports on the release of kidnapped AP photographer Emilio Morenatti. Many of them compare it to the kidnapping of Fox News reporters Centanni and Wiig and describe that event—but not one of the mainstream news articles I’ve seen has mentioned that Centanni and Wiig were forced to convert to Islam as a condition for their release. It’s very unlikely that this omission of an important detail is an accident; there seems to be some kind of unspoken agreement to steer clear of it.

LGF - MSNBC Shills for Islam in Europe

MSNBC is running a special section on how wonderful it is that Europe is being overrun by Islam; here’s a video report about Spain that is so whitewashed and sanitized you’d think the Spaniards never had a problem with the Moors: Reviving Granada’s Muslim traditions.

Instapundit:

Reader John Kluge emails:

Isn’t the apparent shocking admission of liberal media bias a sign that the media thinks it has done its job and ended Republican control of congress? I seem to remember the same round of mea culpa’s after Clinton’s election in 1992. The media admitted after a Dem was safely ensconced in the Whitehouse that maybe they had been a little too hard on Bush and Reagan and needed to try to be more supportive of the government in the future and less suspicious of the government. Now with the Republican Congress in trouble two weeks before the election we get the NYT admitting it was a mistake to out the NSA funding surveillance and now this admission that maybe the networks are too liberal. To me this just the media seeing that its job is done now trying to reposition itself in the center and salvage a shred of credibility to be used in 2008.

Segueing cleverly from the media’s “job is done” to what’s left of Bush’s political capital (just so you know where I put the blame):

Best of the Web Today - A View From Iraq

In Germany after World War II, we controlled our sector with approximately 500,000 troops, directly administering the area for 10 years while we rebuilt the country and rebuilt the social and political infrastructure needed to run it. In Iraq, we’ve got one-third that number of troops dealing with three times the population on a much faster timetable, and we’re attempting to unify three distinct ethnic groups with no national interest and at least three outside influences (Saudi Arabian Wahhabists, Iranian mullahs and Syrian Baathists) each eagerly funding various groups in an attempt to see us fail. And we are.

If we continue on as is in Iraq, we will leave here (sooner or later) with a fractured state, a Rwanda-waiting-to-happen. “Stay the course” and refusing to admit that we’re screwing things up is already killing a lot of people needlessly. Following through with such inane nonstrategy is going to be the death knell for hundreds of thousands of Sunnis.

We need to backtrack. We need to publicly admit we’re backtracking. This is the opening battle of the ideological struggle of the 21st century. We cannot afford to lose it because of political inconveniences. Reassert direct administration, put 400,000 to 500,000 American troops on the ground, disband most of the current Iraqi police and retrain and reindoctrinate the Iraqi army until it becomes a military that’s fighting for a nation, not simply some sect or faction. Reassure the Iraqi people that we’re going to provide them security and then follow through. Disarm the nation: Sunnis, Shias, militia groups, everyone. Issue national ID cards to everyone and control the movement of the population. …

James [Taranto], there’s a lot more to this than I’ve written here. The short of it is, the situation is salvageable, but not with “stay the course” and certainly not with cut and run. However, the commitment required to save it is something I doubt the American public is willing to swallow. I just don’t see the current administration with the political capital remaining in order to properly motivate and convince the American public (or the West in general) of the necessity of these actions.

Wheat & Weeds - The Wuss Corps

For the sake of her kids –she’s a single mom– Katie Couric outright refuses to go to Iraq. Which spares us a lot of phony-baloney about her war-zone savvy. Unfortunately, we’re not so lucky where other reporters are concerned. Michael Fumento smacks down “The Modern Way of War Correspondence.” He starts with something we already know –that most reporters don’t leave their hotels in Bagdad and don’t have a flying fig’s idea what’s happening there. He moves on to the idea that just as you couldn’t report conditions in New Orleans from Detroit, so you can’t report on Haditha and Fallujah from Bagdad. So many funny examples of reporters exaggerating their danger. For example, we’re treated to harrowing tales of the dangers of landing at Bagdad Airport…

Skipping to the end (but click over to read the rest):

The London Independent’s Robert Fisk has written of “hotel journalism,” while former Washington Post Bureau Chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran has called it “journalism by remote control.” More damningly, Maggie O’Kane of the British newspaper The Guardian said: “We no longer know what is going on, but we are pretending we do.” Ultimately, they can’t even cover Baghdad yet they pretend they can cover Ramadi.

(And if they do admit it they use it as proof that they’re right “Bush has failed to make it safe!”)

With the exception of Stephen Vincent (whose informative posthumous book the Red Zone I’ve just finished), the only American reporters to be killed in Iraq are embeds, and Fumento closes with a nice tribute to them. How ’bout we ignore the Bagdad Brigade and listen only to embed reporting? Read the whole thing and keep it in mind when you read the papers.

And another one from Best of the Web:

Reader Russ Daniel makes an interesting point about the media side of the war:

I continue to be surprised at how well the Iraqi insurgency/terrorists play our media, and how few Americans realize that we are playing right back. It is my impression that many Americans realize that the terrorists are conscious of how their actions impact American resolve–but very few Americans realize how our actions impact Iraqi resolve. It’s as if Americans believe that our newspapers and media stop at the water’s edge.

For example, terrorists cause chaos in Iraq with a goal of making it appear to Americans that our military is wasting time, lives and effort over there. The mirror of that result comes when Democrats intentionally disrupt American efforts by portraying our soldiers as criminals. Don’t they realize that Iraqis will see these comments and will ultimately come to believe that they are wasting time, lives and effort by cooperating with us?

And that’s the thing that really burns me up.

Power Line - Setting things straight (click for video)

There was a revealing exchange the other day when a reporter from the Boston Globe asked Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney a rambling question about removing some tolls from the Mass. Turnpike. Eventually, Romney interrupted by joking, “Do you have a point of view on this?” The reporter responded, “I represent the people, governor.” To which Romney said, “No, I represent the people, you represent the media.”

Don’t that just wrap up the whole thing in a nice pretty bow?

Update:

The hits just keep comin’.

LGF - CNN: Giving the Terrorists a Fair Shake

Here are some very interesting observations from The Prowler about CNN’s airing of a mujahideen snuff film; according to an insider, this video was shown as a direct result of CNN’s Terrorist Outreach.