Media Mythbusters Blog

We are starting a new daily feature here at MMB - a daily media bias roundup. I will be visiting the major blogs and news outlets to bring you links of interest in this area. All comments are welcome…

Let’s start the day with a post over at The New Editor - Conservatives are Happy Because We Don’t Care. It would appear that MSNBC thinks conservatives are happy because they don’t care what happens to others. Odd, it has always been my experience that conservatives care every bit as much as liberals - thus all the fighting you see daily. Could it be they are happier because they are more at peace with their conscience?

Over at BizzyBlog, we have a couple of good posts:

Jenna’s Wedding: An Excuse for Cheap Media Shots at Her, and Her Father - this is as close as America gets to a royal wedding. Jenna’s wedding really is a private affair and the media should keep their mitts off. She deserves congratulations and we hope that this is the happiest day of her life.

Also check out the comments on the New York Times and layoffs… Blaming Bush for everything - wow, wonder what they’ll do when President Bush is gone?

The Bookworm Room looks at Obama and his tendency to not be truthful and what this teaches all of us. All lies are not created equal *UPDATED*

Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee catches CNN in another goof concerning the Essex which is a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship. Huh?

More updates throughout the day…

Don Surber has a post up entitled Spin… AP turns good economic news into bad — by leaving some of the news out. Typical of the AP and this is a great article on the economy and finances…

And in much the same way as Bookworm Room, Flopping Aces brings up the issue of “Truth” as compared between John McCain and Obama - Obama - McCain Is Losing His Bearings By Speaking The Truth

Also check out Gateway Pundit on this - Victim Barack Obama Plays the Age Card Against McCain

And check out the latest updates and the reality of whether we actually captured the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq - AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ LEADER ARRESTED …Update: Maybe Not

JammieWearingFool covers the Bernie Ward perversion - Liberal Radio Icon Admits Distributing Kiddie Porn Guaranteed to raise your blood pressure and make you sick at the same time…

Little Green Footballs covers Ben Stein’s new movie ‘Expelled’ - Exposing the Distortions in ‘Expelled’ You really have to see this movie - we loved it….

From Lucianne.com - one of our favorites - comes more on the Media and Global Warming - Has Big Media Global Warming Bias Begun to Endanger the Public? From food shortages and fuel to taxes, etc., it’s hard not to think so…

See-dubya at Michelle Malkin exposes the ongoing damage Newsweek has caused with publishing lies concerning Gitmo and the Koran - Newsweek’s lie about Koran-flushing at Gitmo continues to bear fruit

From NewsBusters.org we have the following great posts:

US News’s Zuckerman: I Don’t Give to Politicians; Records Show He Has a Dozen Times

Outrageous: McClatchy Praises Terrorist’s ‘Charity Work’

Fox News Producer Canned for Cheering on McCain

Pulling Punches: WaPo Cancels Article for Being ‘Too Critical’ of Islam

Clinton Confidant: MSNBC, Chris Matthews ‘Shamelessly Biased’

Update: Links from other blogs on the media…

Pajamas Media
Economy Improves, Old Media Ignores
Media Giving Rev. Wright a Pass

Patterico’s Pontifications
The L.A. Times’s Errors in Its Piece on DNA and Cold Hits

Power Line
Greiling’s grandstanding

Snapped Shot
Embedded with the Enemy?

Townhall.com
WaPo Manufactures McCain Scandal

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

It seems to matter little whether the location is Gaza or Baghdad. If there is a way to spin a story, Associated Press reporters will find it.

Today, American forces called in an AC-130 for support when they came under fire in the Kazimiyah district of Baghdad.

The Associated Press editorializes:

The AC-130, a lethal tool used by the military since the Vietnam War, can slowly circle over a target for long periods.

Human rights groups have criticized their use in urban settings where militants may be among crowded populations of noncombatants. The four-engine gunships were also used to support the U.S. attack that took the western city of Fallujah from insurgents in November 2004.

What the Associated Press does not mention is that the modern AC-130U is the most complex aircraft weapons system on the planet, and the reason for its complexity is that the aircraft’s sensors, navigation, and fire control systems are calibrated to conduct exceedingly accurate surgical strikes. It is likely because of their precision strike capabilities that the AC-130U was chosen for this mission over other available means of attack.

The Associated Press reporter attempts to recall the image of the 40-year-old Vietnam-era AC-130A and it’s ability to saturate large area targets, portraying it as an indiscriminate and careless weapons system to use in an urban area… and so it is good we haven’t fielded that particular model in decades.

It’s a dishonest conflation of aircraft using technologies developed decades apart, but sadly emblematic of the kind of reporting we’ve come to expect where creating imagery is as important as reporting facts.

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Over the weekend, The Clinton campaign came under fire for a mailing that attacked Barack Obama’s horrific record on guns. The ad was inaccurate — it didn’t go nearly far enough in describing the number and kind of firearms Obama would like to see banned — but as Hillary’s record is every bit as suspect regarding the ubiquitous and yet poorly misunderstood semi-automatic action, I can understand why she wouldn’t want to undercut her own less-than-credible position.

Almost immediately after that story aired, however, Clinton came under fire for the choice of gun used in the add, a rare Mauser 66 with double-set triggers. Rifles with double-set triggers are rare in the United States, but are a feature more common in Europe. The problem was further compounded by the fact that the image was flipped to show the gun as a left-handed model, and the Mauser 66 was never released as a left-handed gun. The picture therefore portrays a gun that has never been made.

This is all very amusing for everyone but the Clinton camp, but you have to wonder if the gaffe wasn’t a gaffe at all.

With literally millions of stock photos to choose from “in the wild,” including hundreds of thousands of hunting rifle photos, including expensively-produced high-resolution photos that typically would be provided by manufacturers for public relations campaigns, the Clinton campaign “accidentally” ends up with a high resolution image of a decades-old rare European firearm for an American political mailer, and compounds that gaffe by flipping the image so that it portrays a gun that was never built?

I’d like to know very much how that picture was selected for the mailer, who selected it, and why they chose that particular photo to mirror image.

It could very well be that the mailer is merely the perfect storm of coincidences.

Or…

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Three days ago, I contacted Associated Press Director of Media Relations Paul Colford, asking him about photos taken by AP photographer Khalil Hamra, in Beit Lahiya, a town in the northern Gaza Strip, on Monday, April 28, 2008.

The caption for one Hamra photo read as follows, without a hint of uncertainty:

A Palestinian woman reacts as she stands next to a house hit by an Israeli shell that killed a mother and her four children, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, April 28, 2008. An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home on Monday, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast, officials and relatives said.

I asked Mr. Colford to “please acquire the other photos Mr. Hamra shot outside that home and send them to me… I should be able to tell which account is true by the simple differences between blast signatures of HEAT rounds used by Israel tanks impacting buildings, and the kind of blast that would be consistent with the Israeli account of a gunman carrying explosives that detonated.” Responding via email, Mr Colford suggested I should acquire the images somewhere else. It was a polite brush-off.

But the story told with such apparent certainty by Associated Press photographer Hamra and apparently deemed insignificant by Colford was never as certain as the media tried to make it sound.

An Israeli military inquiry into the incident has concluded that the family was indeed killed by a Palestinian militant’s explosives detonating. Tank shells were not fired into the home, a fact neither side now alledges. According to the IDF, a single airborne missile was fired from a drone at a cluster of four armed militants. How small was the missile? According to these video stills from an al Jazeera story, showing the missile’s impact point, quite small.

The “crater” according to al Jazeera.

A bemused civilian inspects the same missile “crater” as the reporter moves away.

Al Jazeera repeats Palestianian claims a that second missile was fired by the Israelis, but the visual evidence of the missile strike is not very convincing.

An alleged second missile “crater” outside the family home, estimated to be four inches deep.

As Noah Pollak pointed out in his Commentary story Factless in Gaza, “There is a deeper problem here: the manner in which news is gathered from Gaza, which has been inhospitable territory for western journalists for quite some time (remember what happened to Alan Johnston?). News organizations like the AP and Reuters rely, for their on-the-ground Gaza coverage, on Palestinian reporters and stringers whose objectivity and professionalism, to put it charitably, are in doubt.”

Adnan Hajj was by far the most obvious example of dishonest journalism by the Palestianian media as he manipulated images he sold to Reuters, but the facts are that the very essence of news reporting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon are conducted primarily by reporters with a deep and personal interest in the stories they are reporting, often under the direction of terrorist groups that are not above “suggesting” stories and guiding media coverage with the barrel of a gun.

Internationally respected news organizations such as Reuters, AFP the Associated Press, and the BBC have proven themselves time and again to be very susceptible to being manipulated by agenda-driven journalists and photographers. Moreover, they seem not to care very much about passing along staged photos and biased information as long as it allows them to publish something. The news organizations will likely never admit it, hating Israel is big media business, and stories alleging that Israeli military forces are killing innocent Palestinians sell very well in the global media market.

As a result, initial reporting of this incident squarely places the blame for the blast on the Israeli military, without seriously looking for any other possible cause. It is both a business decision (these kinds of stories sell) and a practical one (unbiased reporting is not allowed by militant media handlers that guide and spy upon reporters and photographers).

That armed militants were moving among civilian homes for cover is never mentioned, and their argument that “it couldn’t have been our explosives, because I have some pictures of some explosives that didn’t blow up right over here” is readily digested with a degree of acceptance because there is no viable alternative.

Truly, truth is not an option.

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

It isn’t “what did he know, and when did he know it,” but instead appears to be “he knew it all along, and is trying to hide it.”

That is the impression left when reading this article in the NY Post today.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright would be happy to see Barack Obama’s presidential campaign derailed because the pastor is fuming that his former congregant has “betrayed” their 20-year relationship,

The Post has learned. “After 20 years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn’t know about Jeremiah’s views during those years, that he wasn’t familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn’t hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal,” said the source, who has deep roots in Wright’s Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter.

And perhaps most damning:

“Rev. Wright, as well as other senior members of his church, believe that Obama has betrayed over 20 years of their supposed friendship.”

If the source is correct, other senior leaders of Trinity United Church of Christ know that Barack Obama was familiar with the radical content of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. For Obama to say otherwise is a betrayal of the pastor and the church.

The obvious implication is that Obama knew precisely what Wright’s views and positions were for 20 years, and Obama “never batted an eye” until Wright’s positions became too much political baggage for the Senator’s presidential aspirations.

The implication is obvious. Either:

• Barack Obama believes in the angry, paranoid and racist teachings of Jeremiah Wright and the Marxist liberation theology of his church, and is lying about it in public in hopes of getting elected, which is essentially the betrayal Rev. Wright accused him of in front of the National Press Club Monday morning, or;
• Barack Obama’s membership in Trinity United Church of Christ and his relationship with the pastoral staff and congregation were nothing more than a 20-year lie of convenience and exploitation of the Church and Wright of Homeric proportions.

No matter how you slice it, Obama is guilty of an epic deception in his quest for power, and potential supporters should start to wonder just how much he’s willing to lie to them to get elected if he’s already betrayed a 20-year-old relationship in that pursuit.

I don’t know if the United Church of Christ has a process for excommunication, but it would be interesting as an intellectual exercise to speculate about Trinity excommunicating Obama for his actions. He has obviously embarrassed the church and the man who grew it into what it is today, and has done as much as he possible can to separate himself from the church, short of locking the door and burning the congregation inside (a tactic, by the way, actually used by his cousin’s supporters in Kenya this past January).

Exit Question: If TUCC did excommunicate Obama, would it hurt him or help him as a candidate?

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

“No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching.”

Rev. Otis Moss, Trinity United Church of Christ, March 23, 2008

“The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” he said. “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.”

“They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs,” he said.

“If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either.”

“I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church,” he said. “But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.”

Barack Obama, Winston-Salem, NC, April 29, 2008

Ace pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter, if in language a bit more colorful than I typically use.

Too little, too dishonest, and too late. Obama cuts into Wright for being precisely the man he has been for the past 20 years.

Wright has been consistent, and Obama has proven to be precisely what everyone feared — just another cheap empty suit, willing to say or do anything according to the requirements of the polls.

Far from being the Messiah, he makes for even a shoddy secondhand Brian.

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Several people have forwarded me a link this morning to the Democratic National Committee ad against John McCain that shows two American soldiers at the moment an explosion goes off beside them.

The soldiers are on screen for just a split-second, just long enough for viewers to see that there was an explosion, but not long enough to know if the soldiers pictured survived uninjured, if they were wounded, or if they were killed (note: Both soldiers survived. See final update below).

More than 3 full decades after the last U.S. soldier left Saigon, the party of Bill Ayers still revels in the imagery of blowing up U.S. soldiers as part of their political expression.

Update: RNC slams ad as deliberately distorting what McCain said (a fair charge) and demands that the networks pull the ad off the air.

As for the source of the video clip, we’re a little closer to running that down — it was used in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, a movie completed no later than April of 2004. The clip came from the first year of the war.

Additional Update: Charlie Foxtrot notes that the same networks who placed restrictions on 9/11 imagery did not apparently have the same problem with this Democratic National Committee ad.

And because it matters, both U.S. soldiers survive the blast (h/t Political Punch).

From The Jawa Report:

By: Rusty Schackleford

***Exclusive: Must Cite Jawa Report***

The British press is under a gag order not to reveal the name of al Qaeda’s main fundraiser and go between in Britain. The man, identified only as “G”, was one of five who had successfully challenged in the British High Court the government’s powers to freeze terrorist suspects assets.

For instance, this Times piece:

The man, who can be identified only as G, is one of five people who challenged the Treasury’s powers to freeze terrorist suspects’ bank accounts in a successful High Court action…

The judge banned publication of G’s name but The Times is aware of his identity, which is published on a United Nations Security Council list of terrorist suspects linked to al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

This will probably come as a shock to no one, but since the British press won’t reveal “G’s” name yet give every possible hint as to his identity, here it is: G is MOHAMMED AL GHABRA.

read more…

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Playing a very dangerous game:

The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary.

Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The U.S. plans to publicize the weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.

The allegations, which couldn’t be independently verified, mark a further hardening of U.S. rhetoric on Iran, which senior American officials now describe as the greatest long-term threat to Iraq.

This month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian support for Shiite extremist groups had grown. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said for the first time that he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the shipments.

Iran has long denied that its government knowingly funneled weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militants there. It has derided the U.S. claims as propaganda. Several senior U.S. military officials said the weapons caches would undercut the Iranian denials and provide new evidence of continuing Iranian support for Shiite militants across Iraq.

“You can see the manufacturing dates right on the armaments themselves,” one senior commander in Baghdad said. “These are very clearly weapons that were made in the last month or so.”

Markings, of course, are easy to fake, and the truther fringe of the “Bush lied, people died!” sect are sure to accuse the Administration and/or elements of the military with doing just that. Much harder to fake, however, are the materials used, certain tool marks, and other mechanical and electrical components. Taken together, the component pieces form a unique signature that EOD experts can read like a fingerprint. As far as our military is concerned, the markings only serve to confirm what explosive experts could already tell from even unmarked weapons.

This is a stupid mistake by Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime, coming at a time when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is celebrating stunning military successes in Basra and other parts of the Shia south against Iranian-backed “special groups” within Muqtada al-Sadr’s Madhi Army militia. The recovery of this cache can only help Iraq’s central government grow even more cohesive, upsetting hopes for a failed Iraqi state and U.S. defeat.

Iran’s foreign policy is turning out to have been very poorly calculated as of late. One can only wonder what their next gaffe will be, and what affect it may have on the hardline regime in Tehran.

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee:

Eric Boehlert starts off his article cracking on warbloggers for the “Jamil Hussein” fiasco, claiming that it imploded. Well, he’s half-right: Jamil Gulaim Innad al-Jashami embarrassed the Associated Press when I outed him as a man hiding behind a pseudonym when they swore his “Hussein” identity was real. AP has refused to discuss “Hussein” since I published that story.

Boehlert also wants to attack some bloggers for not covering Bilal Hussein and his release under Iraq’s new amnesty law, but isn’t it Boehlert himself being deceptive when he “forgets” to mention that 300 other suspected insurgents were given amnesty that exact same day, undermining his thesis that it was Bilal Hussein’s innocence, not amnesty, that set him free?

“Imploded.”

I think he understands what that word means, but not to whom it applies.