Category Archives: Media

More Chinese Censorship?

From WaPo:

A freelance videographer, jailed for refusing to turn over footage of a demonstration to state investigators. The incarceration has become widely publicized as Chinese authorities search for his footage.

Jin-Hua Tseng, 24, has spent 169 days in a Beijing prison after declining to reveal the location of unaired videotape he shot of a chaotic July 2005 protest in Shanghai against China’s treatment of the Falun Gong movement. A police officer suffered a fractured skull and a police car was vandalized during the melee.

Ohh, wait.

That wasn’t in China, where state authorities won’t blink before throwing you in jail for 169 days. This is in the US:

A freelance videographer, jailed for refusing to turn over footage of a demonstration to federal investigators, became the longest-incarcerated journalist in U.S. history Tuesday.

Josh Wolf, 24, has spent 169 days in a federal prison after declining a federal subpoena for unaired videotape he shot of a chaotic July 2005 protest in San Francisco against the Group of Eight summit in Scotland. A police officer suffered a fractured skull and a police car was vandalized during the melee.

“The longest-incarcerated journalist in U.S. history”? Seeing that mark crossed is not a good sign for the future.

The Boston Shakedown

After finding a way to make the Keystone Cops look competent, the City of Boston has managed to coerce Turner Broadcasting into paying for the cost of the security debacle we witnessed last week:

BOSTON — Turner Broadcasting Systems and a marketing company have agreed to pay $2 million compensation and apologize for their advertising campaign that caused a widespread terrorism scare, the attorney general said Monday.

The agreement with several state and local agencies resolves any potential civil or criminal claims against Turner and Interference Inc., said Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Authorities feared bombs had been planted when they found more than three dozen blinking electronic signs with a boxy cartoon character giving an obscene hand gesture Wednesday in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville.

The signs, part of a publicity campaign for Cartoon Network’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” also appeared in nine other big U.S. cities in recent weeks, but created little interest.

But in Boston, bomb squads responded to reports of the devices in a subway station, on bridges and elsewhere.

You’ve got to hand it to Boston. Not only did they manage to get someone else to foot the bill for their idiocy, they even found a way to sneak some pork in there too:

As part of the settlement, $1 million will be used to reimburse the agencies and $1 million will be used to fund homeland security and other programs. Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc., and Interference Inc. also will issue a public statement accepting full responsibility and apologizing for the incident.

Because, of course, anyone would have been fooled by a Lite Brite and a few batteries.

Nick Gillespie puts it best at Hit & Run:

Boston can no longer be taken seriously as a city. It alone–out of a total of 10 cities subjected to the same ad campaign–spazzed out like this.

Insert appropriate Red Sox joke here.

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An Incredible Overreaction

Should Capitalists Be Added to the Endangered Species List?

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”- Ronald Reagan

These days, it seems as though capitalism is under relentless attack. We hear almost daily the demagoguery of such terms as “economic inequality,” “the income gap,” “price gouging,” “obscene profits.” Just yesterday the Senate overwhelmingly passed an increase in “the living wage” for “the working class.” On any given day, politicians use this language to show how much they “care” about us poor working stiffs and lament the rewards for high achievers.

John Edwards likes to give his “Two Americas” speech to illustrate how unfair it is that some Americans, through hard work, investing, perseverance, and making difficult choices, make disproportionately more than those who make poor choices and underachieve. Hillary Clinton wants to take the profits away from “BIG OIL” and “invest” in government programs to find more efficient, cleaner, and less expensive alternative energy sources. Never mind that government has been investing in such programs for decades with very little return.

Capitalism has always had its adversaries but where are its defenders? They are not in the halls of congress and certainly not in the Oval Office. President Bush, ever the “compassionate” conservative chastised business leaders for “overpaying” executives. Meanwhile, only three Republican Senators (no Democrats) voted against raising the minimum wage. With all this angst against profit makers, it’s only a matter of time before these same politicians will want to impose a “maximum wage” with higher “windfall profits” taxes or by some other means.

Where are the Republicans who stand for small government? Where are the disciples of Ronald ReAgan, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand? Is it time to put capitalists on the endangered species list?

Maybe, maybe not.

Wayne Dunn writing for Capitalism Magazine seems to believe that this type of anger towards achievement is as old as time. In Dunn’s article “An Open Letter to Businesspeople” he writes about how its time for the achievers to stop apologizing to the low achievers for being successful.

Throughout history, those of you who actually invent the things the rest of us use, who create the jobs the rest of us need, who produce the goods the rest of us merely purchase, haven’t been awarded even so much as a shred of recognition from traditional moral codes. Instead you are maligned as “materialists,” condemned as “profit-chasers,” reviled as “ruthless,” vilified as “greedy,” disparaged as “worldly.” They who couldn’t create a match stick or run a dog pound sneer at you who create microchips and run factories.

But when the castigators need money, or a labor-saving device, or a bridge built, or a building erected, or a disease cured, to whom do they run? They who renounce “this world” rely on you who do not. They who scorn “mere” human achievement depend on you who achieve. They who repudiate money bank on you who earn it. They who proclaim that the mind is impotent benefit from minds that are not.

It’s high time that we who believe in capitalism stand up and extol its superior values and support those who will do the same if we do not want to see our free market system go the way of the dinosaurs.

More Evidence Of Global Warming

Early Spring? We need Kyoto!

A new pair of hands pulled Punxsutawney Phil from his stump this year, so it was only fitting that the groundhog offered a new prediction.

Phil did not see his shadow on Friday, which, according to German folklore, means folks can expect an early spring instead of six more weeks of winter.

Since 1886, Phil has seen his shadow 96 times, hasn’t seen it 15 times and there are no records for nine years, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999.

However, not everyone was convinced. One Global Warming Denier had this to say:

Rick McFerron, an administrator at Indiana University of Pennsylvania some 30 miles away, walked the whole way to the ceremony to celebrate his 60th birthday and to raise money for breast cancer research.

He said he was skeptical of the groundhog’s prediction.

“It’s supposed to get bitter cold this weekend,” McFerron said.

Just how much did Exxon pay you, McFerron?

Old Media vs. New Media

(Cross posted here at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds)

A rather interesting comment was posted in response to a minor point I made about the new media vs. the old media in a post I wrote entitled The Scales of Justice Need Rebalancing. I thought the comment raised some interesting questions that deserved to be answered in a post of its own as opposed to a response to the response on the original post.

My original point had to do with the MSM’s (the old media’s) incomplete, sloppy, and biased coverage of the so-called Duke Rape Case and how bloggers and talk radio (the new media) managed to turn the tide against the narrative the MSM was trying to establish. The MSM basically convicted the lacrosse players before they had their day in court. When it comes to accusations of rape or sexual assault, all too often the MSM automatically presumes that women never lie about these sorts of things, therefore; the men who are accused of the act are guilty. Very few in the MSM were even open to the possibility that Crystal Magnum (the stripper who accused the lacrosse players) was lying; few wanted to hear the other side of the story or even ask some very basic questions.

The following is the statement I made in the original post:

Thanks in-part to talk radio, bloggers, and others in the alternative media asking questions the MSM failed to ask, everything seems to be swinging in the defendants’ favor.

William L. Anderson of LewRockwell.com made a much stronger case for the way the new media exposed the unethical and quite possibly criminal behavior of the District Attorney Michael Nifong. Anderson’s main point is that had it not been for the new alternative media, the other side of the story might not have come to light and Nifong could have gotten away with his framing of the young men in question.

This time, the new media got it right but was this good investigative reporting or just luck? The person who commented on my post who identifies herself as VRB believes it to be the latter:

I found the bloggers to be just as bad as MSN [the MSM?], they just happened to wind up on the right side. They did all their best to vilify the alleged victim before all the facts were in. They looked for every snippet of so called evidence to prove their point. Most seem to be saying if you are a whore you can’t possibly be raped and rapist aren’t smart enough to drug or use a condom. Of course all their arguments were so high minded how dare anyone questioned their motives. I think that bloggers are beginning to think the power they have, gives them truth. They just got lucky, so I wouldn’t pat them on the back. Bloggers are not any more pure than the rest of society.

I am sure that there were bloggers out there who instinctively went the other direction without considering any evidence but there were others who were fair-minded and only wanted to get to the truth. I hadn’t weighed in on the issue up to now but when the story first broke, I was concerned that the MSM wasn’t telling the entire story. I cannot speak for others but I would never be one to say that it would have been impossible for the lacrosse players to have raped Crystal Magnum because she was a ‘whore’. I wasn’t there, nor was anyone who commented on the case other than Magnum, the other stripper, and those who were at the party. All any of us can do is ask questions and draw our own conclusions.

When those in the new media started asking the questions, we discovered problems with Magnum’s story (such as the timeline), statements from witnesses (the other stripper, Magnum’s cab driver, etc.), a lack of DNA and other forensic evidence to implicate the accused players (some of which was withheld by Nifong), a report that Magnum had made false rape charges in the past, and other reports that cast doubt on Magnum’s version of events. In the end, all Nifong had to go on was Magnum’s ever-changing statements.

As to the motives, veracity, and ‘high mindedness’ of bloggers in the new media I just have to say they come in all shapes and sizes and are by no means ‘any more pure than the rest of society.’ Some are not at all concerned about accuracy and shoot from the hip while others do their homework and rival the veracity of MSM reports. Bloggers come from a much more diverse array of backgrounds, opinions, and motivations. It’s quite proper to question the motives of anyone who presents information (whether in the old media or new media) and VRB is correct in saying that power does not in any way equal truth.

Having said that, those in the new media who did ask the questions and uncovered facts about the case where much of the MSM failed do deserve a ‘pat on the back’. To avoid embarrassment, the MSM had to start asking the questions that ordinary people with laptops were already asking. If not for the new media, who knows what would have happened in this case?

The only reason the new media is gaining influence is because the old media is no longer adequate. The old media has one agenda and is driven by that agenda. The old media is much easier to censor and control than the new media; this is why some powerful people want to bring the new media down with legal restrictions such as McCain-Feingold and the so-called fairness doctrine.

One of the things that drew me to blogging was when bloggers exposed the forged documents in Dan Rather’s story on George W. Bush’s National Guard service. At the time I didn’t even know what blogging was. I was already skeptical of much of how the MSM reported the news as if everything they reported was stone cold fact. But when this fraud was exposed, I became even more skeptical. There is usually more than one side of the story but all too often, the MSM only presents the side they like. Now the new media has filled some of the void.

There is one problem no one seems to address when it comes to media of all kinds: the media consumer. Yes, you and I are the main problem. Far too often, we do not think critically about the news and receive it passively.

As consumers of the news, we should ask the same questions journalists are supposed to ask: who, what, when, where, how, and why. These are very simple questions that are rarely explored. For example: Why does the minimum wage need to be raised? Who says it should be raised, politicians or economists? What are the positive and negative consequences of raising the minimum wage? When should it be raised? How should it be raised? How will it affect the economy?

Apply these questions to any problem or issue and you will find that these questions are often not answered in the news story. Always be prepared to question the answers.

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