Category Archives: culture

A Journalistic View of the Importance of Truth

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This is what too many journalists are saying about NBC’s Brian Williams’ lie about being on a helicopter in Iraq that was forced to land after being hit by an RPG. They’re making these statements, too, while eliding Williams’ subsequently discovered lies concerning his…reporting…in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and in Israel, before that, during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah. First up is Howard Kurtz, author of the piece from which the rest of the quotes below are taken:

What’s been striking to me is how many people are willing to end what has been a pretty solid career because of this one admittedly horrible mistake.

That’s because the career should end. The man has destroyed his credibility with his lie—a deliberate act, not a “mistake.”

Alan Colmes, as cited by Kurtz:

[I]t was “sad” to see this mistake “destroy a man and destroy his career.

No. Whether all of this destroys Brian Williams is up to Williams alone, what he chooses to learn from this, what he chooses to do about it. Whether it destroys Williams’ journalist career, it certainly should. He lied. At least three times.

Dan Abrams:

I am troubled by the fervor, occasional glee, and potentially disproportionate fury…. This alliance of certain capital-J journalists, conservative bloggers, and some who simply despise any rich and famous journalist are a formidable force.

No journalistic distortion there. Nope.

Joe Scarborough:

…the decision is made to judge what Brian Williams’ future should be, that that decision will be based on the entirety of his career and not on one or two or three mistakes.

Mistakes. I’m detecting a theme here. When a journalist lies, that’s just a mistake. No big deal. Nothing to see here.

Scarborough again:

If he exaggerated, if he puffed his chest out a little bit—news people do that.

Lies are just puffery. And since all news people do it, it’s OK. That Left morality, again: an act’s legitimacy comes from whether or not somebody else did it, or does it, too. Morality is not at all inherent in the act.

How can anyone ever believe what a liar says? Kurtz and his fellows apparently have chosen not to answer that one.

News Media

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First, there was Dan Rather and his nakedly falsified National Guard document, which he used on his 60 Minutes show to attempt to smear President George Bush the Younger.

Then there’s the constant smear campaign against folks like Governor Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as racists.

There’s the blatantly biased coverage of the Ferguson shooting.

Now there’s Brian Williams.

Brian Williams, the nation’s top-rated news anchor, has admitted fabricating a tale of being forced down by enemy fire in a helicopter over Iraq a dozen years ago.

Williams apologized on the air Wednesday evening, saying: “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago.”

A lie is just a mistake, is it? Well, yeah, if…recognition…of it by the perp comes 2 years after the lie, it’s of personal interest to the liar to play down the lie, and it’s a journalist doing the down-play. He did, finally, tell the Stars and Stripes straight up that

I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area—and the fog of memory over 12 years—made me conflate the two, and I apologize.

He only made the statement, though, after he’d been caught out by the helicopter crewman who were there—the ones who actually had been shot down by Iraqi ground fire.

He also said:

I would not have chosen to make this mistake. I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.

Except he did choose exactly that. Besides, how does one “conflate” the helicopter one’s in with another helicopter an hour and some miles away?

Is there anyone on the Left News Media who’s an honest journalist?

Oh, yeah: there’s also the woman who used to sit in the Secretary of State’s chair, Hillary Clinton, who lied about taking sniper fire in Bosnia.

And President Barack Obama’s repeated lies about Obamacare (and nearly everything else about his administration’s policies).

Is there anyone on the Left who’s honest?

Jordan Understands the Threat

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Regarding the ISIS-held Jordanian pilot Lt Muath al-Kaseasbeh: in the aftermath of the Japanese journalists’ butcheries, Jordan’s King Abdullah II ibn al Hussein appears to be taking a hard line. Correctly so.

Elijah Magnier, chief international correspondent for Kuwait’s Al Rai newspaper, told MailOnline: “I have reliable contact in the Jordanian government who says a message has been passed to ISIS.

“It warns that if they kill the pilot they will implement the death sentences for Sajida and other ISIS prisoners as soon as possible.

“There are other prisoners in Jordan that ISIS would like to free.”

A thing that might color the King’s decision: Catherine Herridge of Fox News thinks the second Japanese journalist had already been butchered at the time of the “negotiations” for a swap. The pilot may already be dead, also.

I’m not sure al Hussein’s line would work in the United States; it would start us down a slippery slope to what for us would be a very dark place. But I’m not at all going to criticize the King of Jordan for taking such a step should he find it necessary.

 

h/t Belmont Club

Academic Apostasy

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What are our post-high school academic institutions coming to?

Dartmouth Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Mike Mastanduno said this:

More than I’d like to, I hear this: “It’s really hard to teach on Thursday morning because of what the students do on Wednesday night.” I hear that from faculty. What I never hear, and what I’d love to start hearing from students is, “It’s really hard to do what we want to do on Wednesday night because of what’s expected of us on Thursday morning.”

Dude—party, man. It’s what we’re here for.

Maybe things might change a little, though. Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon is looking to make changes.

He wants to reorganize the dormitory system into “house communities” in which students will tend to reside for their college career instead of moving around frequently. Shockingly, they will

have dedicated space for study and social interaction….

Say, what!? Dude, chill.

But wait—there’s more:

I am asking the faculty to consider a number of ways to increase the rigor of our curriculum—from curbing grade inflation, limiting lay ups, to not cancelling classes around celebration weekends, to earlier start times for classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Dude, hold up—don’t listen to that Dean….

 

Dude….

Privacy Misbehavior

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Andrea Peterson of The Washington Post has a warning.

Recall that ‘way last November, Verizon was exposed as using a supercookie that they’d developed for the purpose: it sits on your cell phone and tracks, ostensibly for their own use, your cell usage (supposedly limited to your use on the Internet). And you can’t delete it.

It turns out that Turn, an online advertising company that works with Google and Facebook,

uses [the Verizon supercookie] to collect data that makes it easier for advertisers to place targeted online ads, according to the researchers.

Verizon says they’re “looking into this,” but they don’t say they’re putting a stop to it.

We are evaluating how third parties are using the UIDH in this evolving ecosystem and considering any appropriate response[.]

Peterson suggests that

Turn’s use of the identifier highlights how data about someone’s online tracking practices can sometimes be deployed beyond its original intent—making it harder than ever for consumers to control who has knowledge about their online activities.

And

Turn’s General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Max Ochoa, confirmed Mayer’s analysis of how its program worked in an interview with The Post.

Ochoa also thinks this is perfectly jake [emphasis his].

Clearing cookies is not a reliable way for a user to express their desire not to receive tailored advertising….
…
It is vital to note that clearing a cookie cache is not a widely recognized method of reliably expressing an opt-out preference.

Yeah—because the user didn’t use a bureaucrat’s special hoop. This, of course, is nonsense. The user didn’t clear the cookies because he didn’t have anything better to do with his time, so he just started putzing around with his cell phone. Leave it to an advertiser—and one that does his data collection for his clients in an entirely behind-the-scenes way—to pretend to this level of obtuseness.

Just as disappointingly, Verizon is pretending innocence in all of this.

“[I]t is unlikely that sites and ad entities will attempt to build customer profiles for online advertising” and noting that the identifier “changes frequently.”

Never mind that

While you have a Turn tracking cookie and are on the Verizon network, it kept track of the linkage between your Turn cookie and that Verizon Wireless tracking header,” he explained. “But if you get rid of the Turn cookie, the back end of that system would notice and reinstate that cookie based on the header.

It strains my credulity to think that the IT experts at Verizon wouldn’t understand this as they developed their supercookie and deployed it.

Hmm….