The Journalist Dilemma part 2

Ok so the last post covered what is a journalist, and I’d like this post to focus on the behavior, once you figure this out.

One of the biggest things I want to discuss is honesty, not honesty in what you’re writing, not because it isn’t important but because I’d sure as heck hope that you know that lying in your publication is dishonest and wrong, just as much as lying to your mother. I want to talk about being honest about what and who you are. I’m going to use the Daily Kos and The Huffington Post, mainly because I don’t believe in a lot of the tactics of Ariana Huffington. I don’t believe the Huffington Post is a “news outlet”, I believe it is a blog site. No matter how big, that’s what it is. Arianna often takes things out of context and tries to stretch like there is no tomorrow. On ABC Huffington went after Beck claiming Beck was saying the adminstration was literally slaughtering people. If you listen to the Beck audio that isn’t what he is saying at all, not even in the ball park, not even in the right zip code. Roger Ailes who was also on the show confronted Huffington about articles on her site that went after him personally. Her reply was that the writer wasn’t employed by the Hufpo. What a joke of a defense, if it’s on your site, I don’t care who wrote it, you need to stand behind it. If you feel it is good enough to be put on YOUR site, then YOU need to vett it. It’s called the HUFFINGTON post, thus Arianna, you need to stand behind what goes on it. When Huffington came to Ithaca College last fall, I had pages of poorly written hit pieces about John McCain dying and so on and so forth, and 10 minutes of research could destroy the arguments being made. Few know it, but Huffington tried to employ Beck. I have also spoken to Beck, multiple times, and I don’t mean calling into his show, those who don’t take the time to do their homework or don’t like what he says love to try to tear him down, with the latest buzz word “Rhetoric”, but if they actually looked at the facts, they would see they are darn solid.

If that’s what Huffington wants to do that’s fine, it’s your right, but don’t you dare call yourself a “News outlet”. Be honest about what you are. Be honest about what your site is. People will still read it. I guarantee it. People read what they like and agree with. Leftists and progressives will still flock to the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos, regardless of what they are called. You cannot buy your credibility with a label, with those that have critical thinking skills you need to earn it. You need to show your outlet’s news is credible news worthy news, and not just blood thirsty hit pieces going after people you don’t like. arguments like “I don’t pay them, I just let them post it and put my name on it” can’t alleviate you of responsibility for your content.

So what’s the moral of the story? Be honest about what you are, and who you are. Be honest about your goals, and motivation. Be accountable for what you put your name on. Take responsibility for what your site does, and says, it is yours at the end of the day. If you are a left or right blog fine, go for it, but be honest about it. I don’t think anyone can accuse me or my blog of hiding what I am or what I believe, what about the rest of you, can you say that?

Are you or aren’t you? The journalist Dilema part 1

Ladies and gentlemen the $100,000,000 question; What is a journalist, who is a journalist, what makes you a journalist, so then what? This is the first part in a series of posts in regards to blogs, independent media, and what is journalism.

If you have spent any time at all in a journalism class or two you will know that one of the biggest questions is who is a journalist and what makes you a journalist. Are you a journalist as a blogger? What responsibilities do you have? Honestly, books have been written on the subject, and you could spend hours writing at a constant pace and still not cover the whole topic, but I am going to try to shed a little light on some aspects to consider.

First off, what is a journalist. I consider a journalist anyone who is telling the world something they don’t already know or trying to spread information that has vast public interest or is important to public interest. For instance, in my mind, I see no difference between a MSM reporter with a camera on their shoulder and a blogger with a camera phone shooting the same event. They are both trying to relay important information to the public, and thus, I would consider them journalists. They are now bound by the rules of traditional journalists. This includes ethics. I would consider bloggers and other who are acting in a journalist capacity, bound to the same ethical dilemmas as other journalists. What to print, attribution, fact checking, and more!

There seems to be a common theme that bloggers aren’t subject to the same rules as the MSM because they aren’t on TV and they didn’t go to journalism school and the such, and hey, it’s just the internet. I take serious issue with this, and the small soccer mom blogs aren’t the only culprits. Large blog outlets like the Huffington Post, who’s bloggers want to be considered journalists but don’t want to follow the rules of journalism. You can’t have your cake and eat it too! If you want to act as a journalist, great, go for it, welcome to the party, but this party has rules and if you want to hang you need to follow them. This means when something say “closed to press” that means you. You are now press, you need to follow the same rules. Bloggers are now getting press passes and being invited into the media tent, thus proving that the world is seeing them as journalists. I would recommend that bloggers check out the SPJ and its code of ethics, and start following them.

Make sure you stay tuned for part 2….

Big Government breaks a video and the MSM and their thugs ignore it…

Below is a video broken on BigGovernment.com. The site is one of a few run by Andrew Breitbart. He also maintains, big journalism and big hollywood. I would definitely classify these as independent media as they are not corporate owned or operated. They are large sites with many different bloggers and contributors. This particular video was posted by Liberty Chick. The video shows SEIU members trying to strong-arm and intimidate local hospital workers. At one point in the video one of the SEIU thugs assaults a member taping the series of events. As she curses at the individual you can see absolute hate in her eyes as she hits the cameraman and knocks the camera to the ground, breaking it, and disrupting the filming, audio continues to roll, but the camera was definitely damaged. This is the thuggery that has been going on for months now and been completely ignored by the mainstream media. SEIU thugs beat up and individual outside a healthcare rally over the summer and the only play it got was on Beck and Rush. I really don’t care if it is SEIU, if you are a reporter and you see that a union is promoting violence, you play it. The MSM talks about telling people what they need to know, not just what they want to know. Well it seems that goes out the window when the unions that are padding the pockets of Washington politics are out beating people up in the street. The media is quick to jump on the bandwagon and run the story that someone yelled the “n-word” with 90 minutes of the alleged occurence, without any fact checking what so ever, and zero evidence, but when there is video of SEIU thugs beating up and African-American man on the street, they don’t find it important. All this shows is the absolute bias and worthless of the MSM. They are so blinded by their bias that they fail to do their job. Breitbart is actually offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who can provide proof of the alleged “n-word” incident. Watch the video below and see how you feel about the oh so wonderful SEIU after this.

Wikileaks isn’t telling the whole story…big surprise

It’s easy to be an arm-chair quarterback. It’s easy to sit from a comfy chair in a news room and come out and blast the US forces involved in the incident as bloodthirsty murderers and “corrupt, lacking any moral compass”. I would challenge that most of these people have never witnessed the horror of war from a soldiers POV. Not a war correspondent, not a journalist, but a soldier. A soldier who has watched his best friend get shot, or blown to pieces by an IED detonated by a cell phone. I am referencing the footage released by wikileaks. The footage from an Apache helicopter during a conflict in Iraq where two Reuters journalists were killed. The full video plays 38 minutes, and I’ve watched all of it, multiple times. Wikileaks goes out of their way to slow down the video and stop the video to point of things that make the soldiers look like killers and murderers. They DON’T stop to show the man holding the RPG or the man with an AK. Wikileaks how just show it’s bias. It also showed it’s bias when the founder of wikileaks got on TV and on biased shows like “Democrazy now” and passed judgement on the soldiers and military processes he knows nothing about instead of letting the video speak for itself. You can CLEARLY see at 1:35-2:00 on the raw footage that there is a man with an RPG and several men with AK-47, which changes a lot. This puts the blame on the reporters. When you see/hear AH-64 Apache Longbows circling over head, the last place to be is hanging out with a bunch of guys carrying machine guns and anti-armor weapons. And as for the van, sorry, a war zone isn’t a place to play hero. You had kids in the car, what on earth did you think the Apaches were going to do when they see a van come in and start grabbing bodies, just let you drive off? You can try to blame the soldiers, but none of you were there. And if you watch the raw footage without wikileaks little biased notes, you can see that these pilots did what they were supposed to and followed all military procedures. Those journalists knew what they were doing when they went into the street and they should have known better to hang around with armed individuals with the military circling overhead. I worked with military helicopters for 3.5 years, they aren’t quiet. They are loud, and you know they are there, they can be heard for miles. Those that are coming out and blaming the soldiers are simply using this incident as another excuse to vilify and demonize the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Teebow vs Mancrunch.com

Most people will remember this controversy, and while it is a little old, it is still a valid example of  the “discrimination or censorship” arguement.. I put them in quotes for a reason, and I’ll get to that. Let’s review the controversy. Leading up to the Superbowl, it was announced that CBS would air a pro-life ad starring NCAA football star Tim Teebow and his mother, backed by Focus on The Family, a large Christian organization. This caused a whole uproar and serious controversy. The ad was not seen by critics before the actual airing. Critics claimed the unviewed ad promoted violence against women and would lead to violence. CBS stood firm that they would air the ad. At the same time, CBS announced it would not air an ad put out by a male gay dating website. Gay rights activists claimed discrimination.  CBS came out and said that the ad did not meet their broadcast standards for the game. Well the game came, and the Teebow ad aired…it turned out a whole fuss was made for a whole lot of nothing. The ad was short and vague. The term abortion was never mentioned and the ad stayed general. Anyone who claims the commercial promoted violence now looked like a nut. However the Mancrunch.com ad showed two men making out, and by intimate. You can view both ads below:

There is more to this…some might claim that CBS refusing to air the MC ad, is censorship and should not be allowed. I however disagree completely. The good news about the country we live in is that if you own a company, you get to decide what it does. CBS is a private company, and exists in what is known as “The private sector”. Meaning this company decides its own actions. If CBS decides it wants to run an ad for the KKK they could. It would not be good for the company or for public relations, but they could do it, it’s their company, and as long as they don’t violate broadcasting rules, they can air whatever they want. I don’t feel the incident was discrimination or censorship. No parent was going to be asked an incredibly awkward and upsetting question because of the Teebow ad. However you know full well that the parents were going to be faced with a lot of questions they may not want to answer due to the MC ad. I side with CBS on this, it’s their company and they made a call. Regardless of whether or not you agree with it, it’s their right, and not censorship.

Lies Glenn Beck Allegedly Told me…

So after a small debate, and an accusation that Glenn Beck made up that Jeffrey Immelt is a liberal and an adviser to President Obama, it’s time to do some research. Well after some easy googling anyone can plainly see that GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is a liberal. He may not be a far left progressive, but he is by no means a conservative. Immelt is a supporter of Obama and endorses Cap-and-Trade, a policy almost uniformly opposed by republicans and completely opposed by true conservatives. While Immelt claims to be a republican, his actions show otherwise. He is a strong Obama supporter, and member of an Obama economic advisory board. This “board” just so happens to also include SEIU secretary-treasurer Anna Burger and professors from both UC Berkley and Harvard, well known liberal institutions.

The entire Time Story can be read here: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/02/05/ges-jeff-immelt-pay-caps-bad-obama-good-oh-and-ge-made-18-billion-last-year/

The full list can be found here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aZQBRrbv8ssk&refer=home

Claims that GE is a conservative company are also far stretched. Points made about GE’s past involvement with Ronald Reagan are pointless observations. That was 30 years ago, and GE’s current campaign of “green” energy such as windturbines, an idea often scoffed at by conservatives, and the content of it’s subsidiaries shows otherwise.

GE also happens to own NBC and it’s affiliates. Critics claim that MSNBC is only liberal because it can’t beat FOX for the conservative audience and in an attempt to do so would air white suppremicists and other sketchy sources from the far right. MSNBC was not trying to be better than FOX at gaining conservative viewers. with these tactics. Anyone who actually cares to talk to real conservatives knows full well that the mainstream right does not endorse white supremicists and conspiracy theorists. Any producer would know this and not put these people on. They did it in an attempt to discredit and belittle the right to a left audience who doesn’t care to know the truth about the right, and what they actually believe.

While I don’t belive Jeffrey Immelt is a far left progressive, I believe he is left of center. He can claim to be whatever he wants, but my momma always told me actions speak louder than words, and Immelt’s actions have liberal written all over them. NBC and it’s affiliates are eaily left, and on many days “Far Left”. If MSNBC is doing it for ratings, then why haven’t they changed their tune, because being left isn’t working. Their rating are in the toilet. The ratings for March are as follows:

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,284,000 viewers
CNN – 446,000 viewers
MSNBC – 461,000 viewers
CNBC – 173,000 viewers
HLN – 312,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 2,544,000 viewers
CNN – 687,000 viewers
MSNBC –1,038,000 viewers
CNBC – 182,000 viewers
HLN –555,000 viewers

Numbers courtesy of http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/ratings/top-news/cable-news

So as for the theory that NBC and MSNBC are liberal because they couldn’t get ratings being on the right, I doubt it. Because their ratings from being on the left aren’t anything to be proud of. I don’t buy it, not for a second. I believe Olbermann believes exactly what he says each night. But that’s another story for another post.

The power of one…

It is often said that small independent figures can never match the power of large outlets like the New York Times. And while this is often the case I don’t believe it is always true. Often small independent figures in media can do things the mainstream media fails to do. A perfect example is Glenn Beck with his radio show. I would consider him an independent outlet when he is on the radio doing his own show, which is owned and operated by Mercury Radio Arts, a company he owns, which also puts out fusion magazine.

There are several examples of this. 1st, Beck’s e-mail newsletter rivals the circulation of the New York Times. At last count, the NYT only beats the newsletter by a few thousand, which may sound like a big number, but when you think about it, isn’t that much. Also Beck has been successful in bringing about change in the current Obama administration when he target devout communist and 9/11 truther Van Jones. Jones would eventually leave the White house under the cover of darkness and was quickly moved to the Center for American Progress.

In these two small examples you can see that an individual with a radio show has managed to meet the level of power once only possible by a large outlet like the New York Times. So the next time you want to write off the 3rd most listened to radio show in America as a teeny voice in a crowd of yelling, think again.

In Case You Didn’t Know Where I Stand…

I will be happy to outline, where I stand, why I stand there, and why I’m standing there taller than ever!

In case you missed it from my last post I am a conservative. I am a fiscal Conservative and I am a social Conservative. I have been since I joined politics for a lot of reasons. I believe Government is like fire. A useful tool, but not easily controlled, and when left free will burn down your house and everything else around it. I don’t believe it is the responsibility of the government to take care of every part of your life. I believe the Government is here for one reason, to protect us from bad guys. Not to protect us from ourselves. If you want to climb into a car and not wear a seat belt, go for it, it’s your life. I don’t believe it’s the Government’s role to be our parents. I also believe in keeping what you earn. I am all for police, and fire departments, but the private sector has shown time and time again that it is superior to government run business and programs. If you want an example, let me draw it out in crayon for you. The USPS is currently appealing to congress to cancel Saturday mail delivery because the balance sheet is so soaked in red ink. But UPS is flourishing. I received a package from UPS yesterday, I was not home to sign for the package, so I called the number on the little slip they left for me. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. They gave me the option of picking it up that day. I gave the machine a phone number and within the hour the called me to tell me I could pick up my package between 7 and 8 that evening. So let’s review. USPS has to cancel a delivery day to keep operating. But I can call UPS and they will take my package off a truck and give me a special entrance to pick up my package after hours. Private Sector > Gov business.

I am against government control and government infringing on personal rights. I am against it when Republicans do it, and when liberals do it. I don’t believe in socialist policies like the redistribution of wealth, which I believe this administration is doing.

I also believe in social conservatism. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I am pro-life. I believe morals are important to a successful nation.

This is where I stand.

Welcome to Ithaca

Welcome to Ithaca,

The land of diversity and acceptance, unless of course you are a conservative and not the member of an “oppressed minority”. This may come as a shock to you, but simply try to play the role of a conservative in a classroom full of people that don’t know you, and you will see. You will be faced with unfounded personal attacks, and claims based in little to no fact. Tell people you are against affirmative action and universal health care…then duck and cover.

So in an effort to try and bring some understanding, let me clear up a few myths:

Myth: Conservatives hate everyone who doesn’t agree.

Fact: That’s actually the other side. Most conservatives, which believe it or not aren’t hicks and hayseeds and can read, love to have a educated and civil debate over issues with people from all sides.

Myth: Conservatives hate gays!

Fact: First, you can’t generalize an entire group. Second, while many conservatives are against things like gay marriage, they don’t hate gays. I am against gay marriage, but I don’t hate all gay people. I have friends that are gay. I know a number of conservatives that are all for gay marriage. You can’t generalize like that.

Myth: Conservatives are racists!

Fact: Are there racists in America? Of course, but for every white person that hates black people for the color of their skin, I will show you a black person that hates whites for the same reason. Being against social programs like affirmative action and race based scholarships doesn’t make someone racist. It is much more likely that programs such as these are in fact discriminatory and racist and do nothing to end racism.

Myth: Conservatives hate the poor!

Fact: Nothing could be farther from the truth and statistics prove that conservatives donate exponentially more to chaitable causes then liberals. Conservatives against blanket social programs are not anti-poor they are pro individual responsibility. The recent images of people in America dying in the streets for lack of healthcare are nothing more than falsities and shock tactics.

I could go for days on what conservatives actually believe versus what they are portrayed to believe. So the next time you are ready to launch into a conservative based one what you THINK they believe, why don’t you ASK them first, and have a civil discussion from there!