Category Archives: The Press

What Would You Do?

“Britain’s defense chief decided Friday to immediately pull Prince Harry out of Afghanistan after news of his deployment was leaked on the U.S. Web site the Drudge Report,” according to this morning’s AP report.

The ministry asked the media not to speculate on Harry’s location — or how and when he would return — until he was back in Britain. . . . The ministry deplored the leak by “elements of the foreign media.”

The ministry knew this was a problem, so they had plans for keeping Harry safe. But if you were a newsman with a strong website or paper like The Drudge Report, would you report the prince’s secret location? Do the people have a right to know something like this?

Incredible

Roger Kimball asks why anyone believes the NY Times about anything. He quotes fellow blogger Bob Owens to summarize:

[T]he bizarre emphasis of the New York Times upon veteran violence without the provision of context can be understood by remembering that Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the Times, once said during the Vietnam War that if a North Vietnamese soldier ran into an American soldier, he’d rather see the American soldier shot.

NY Times Can’t Please Anyone

The NY Times has taken flak for hiring Bill Kristol as a regular op-ed columnist from readers and its own editor. Now, Gaius points to criticism from The Times of London. “Excuse me, but what on earth is going on?” Times’ op-ed editor Daniel Finkelstein asks. “[C]onsidering that Kristol represents a large strand of American opinion (even if it is a smaller strand of NYT reader opinion) it is entirely unremarkable that his columns should be commissioned.”

Is the Media Trustworthy?

“Less than half of Americans, regardless of partisanship, have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media,” according to a Gallup poll.

You know, I suspect it is actually responsible for media outlets to simply repeat what officials have said. The other day I heard a brief report in which the Republicans said a bill extended its target audience and the Democrats said the bill did not. Is that not a matter for media investigation, something they can verify independent of the officials quoted? The bill either covers the same number or types of people as it did before or it covers more or less. And if it can’t be determined because of the murkiness of the bill’s language, then the lawmakers should be ridiculed. This is just one point of distrust I have for most media outlets.

Crash course in English

I love this story to death.

See, there’s this Czech speedway racer who got knocked unconscious in an accident. And when he regained consciousness, he was speaking perfect English, a language he was only beginning to learn at the time. (It faded, unfortunately.)

Does this bring the promise of a new (though painful) means of enhancing international communication?

Or does it just mean that all we English speakers are brain damaged?

Another American Spectator Online Column

Once again The American Spectator Online has fallen victim to my charm, and printed a column by me, just as if it came from a serious person.

This one is the the third, and probably the last, of the Pastoral Letters From the Future.

Nothing but a link tonight

Sorry, nothing much tonight either. I gotta run around and do stuff, and give somebody a ride too. But here’s a link from Redstate, which amuses me. (Warning: it’s political.)

I promise I’ll try to post something tomorrow.