EPHEMERA
Yellow Journalism
The Onion
The Daily Show
McSweeneys
SPACE.com
Michael Moore
BBC
History Channel
The Independent
Common Sense
Robert Ingersoll
AlterNet
therawstory
Crooks and Liars
Media Matters
Teeming Masses
Pandagon
Civil War Chronicles
Daily Kos
firedoglake
The Rude Pundit
Sadly, No!
TBogg
World O'Crap
Orcinus
Informed Comment
The Mighty Middle
Digby
Court Jesters
Bill Hicks
Robert Anton Wilson
Coast to Coast AM
Information Clearinghouse
Conspiracy Planet
The Smoking Gun
Shining Examples
Boycott Liberalism
Michelle Malkin
CapMag
Instapundit
Power Line
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History Breeds Futility
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
-John Adams
Saturday, January 06, 2007
  I TRUST GOOGLE MORE THAN SOME CLOWN IN-COUNTRY
CONSERVATIVE LESSONS

How to discredit the Mainstream Media:

1. Pick a news story, any news story, so long as it contains some kind of horrible story about conditions on the ground in Iraq.

2. Find the referenced source.

If the piece uses "Anonymous," then demand the names of the sources so they can be "verified." Do not show any recognition that this would probably get them murdered.

If the piece gives an actual name, ask CENTCOM, who hasn't managed a damn thing properly, to tell you whether or not one single person in a country of several million that is now in absolute chaos and hasn't really focused on keeping tabs whatsoever since it happens to have a massive refugee problem on top of sectarian reprisal killings and an occupying military, whether a name transliterated into a vague English approximation connects to a real person.

3. When there is difficulty tracking this person down due to Iraq being a complete hell on Earth, parrot endlessly how this completely calls into question the nature of the media and disproves all of the bad news that floods out of the country hourly. Also, the MSM is made up of traitors.

4. Pretend that you know the first goddamned thing about journalism.

5. Make the claim that, because the report given by the source could not be verified, this means the MSM are actively lying instead of just being possibly mistaken (at no point admit that the initial report might be correct: see Haditha).

6. If the source is finally located, refuse to change the narrative at all. Demand that every single detail fit into your preconceptions. If the updated story is reported by the original news agency, then use your initial claim that the agency has no credibility to question the accuracy of the confirmation, despite the fact that they were vindicated. Circular logic is your friend.

7. Call the source a liar. Constantly move the goalposts of the evidence necessary to satisfy your own intellectual curiosity. Make outrageous claims that the source has been fabricated. At no point back up any of your own accusations and yet demand excessive answers to your questions.

8. Say that you will only accept the testimony of someone hand-chosen by you, who just happens to share every single bias you yourself hold about the current situation. Hem and haw about your "independent" investigation which will most assuredly get to the bottom of things.

9. When it turns out that the source is threatened with arrest from his own government as well as pressure from the US military, use this as a plausible excuse for denying the existence of the source. Reaffirm your belief that, for some reason, the media would invent a source and story whole cloth and spend money and time investigating and defending their choices while attempting to justify their existence to right-wing fanatics demanding the assassination/jailing of journalists.

10. Demand the assassination/jailing of journalists.

11. When the source turns out to be, say, a police captain, scoff at how ridiculous it is to claim that finding a simple police officer and having them speak publicly about a possible sectarian killing would be a problem for anyone because, after all, law and order is absolutely fine in Iraq.

12. Demand photographic evidence. If they produce photographs, claim they have been doctored. If there is video, claim it is a trained actor. If the government confirms the source, claim that the government has been infiltrated. Remember: everyone is a dupe, a liar, a traitor or all three.

13. When it looks more and more like you were mistaken for hyping the story, refuse to apologize and claim hero status. You were only asking "the tough questions." You wouldn't have looked like such a fucking moron were the press not a pack of treasonous liars who refused to jump through every hoop you could possibly lay in front of them.

14. Declare that the story is about the media making things up even though there has been no evidence produced to actually support your affirmation. Complain that things are too vague to trust. Call yourself a skeptic; It sounds better than paranoid armchair "reporter."

15. Use the overblown flap to declare the media useless and call for tighter control. Demand that the military crackdown on the press in Iraq so that all the "good news" can finally be reported (no news would be good news). Go even further and demand more control of the media domestically.

16. Demand the assassination/jailing of journalists. And Democrats. And people who don't think Iraq has become shining beacon of stable Democracy. And liberals. And pacifists.

17. Go to Step 1.

--THE MANAGEMENT


Deacon @ 22:01 : comments: 0
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MATTER
The Two Things about History:
1.
Everything has earlier antecedents.

Corrolary: all culture, including religion, is syncretic; there is nothing purely original.

Second Corrolary: there's no question that a historian can't complicate by talking about what led up to it.

2. Sources lie, but they're all we have.

-Jonathan Dresner, "The Two Things"
Just the Other Day . . .
:: IT'S ALWAYS THE END OF THE GODDAMNED WORLD
:: STEALING FROM MAD MAGAZINE
:: GET THE FUCK OUT
:: UNSATISFYING
:: WAR CHEERLEADING AIN'T MUCH FUN ANYMORE
:: CHRONICLES OF MENDACITY
:: GRIM'S FAIRY TALE
:: AMERICAN POLITICS
:: CAPITALISM UBER ALLES
:: RATIONALIZING WAR FOR IDEOLOGY AND PROFIT
Delve
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