Climate consensus capers

Climate change, the MSM, and the blogosphere. Guess which ones look like the amateurs.

Bias blinders

To say that the BBC has a left-wing bias is like saying that killer whales are a very unfortunate thing to find in one's bath tub. Whether it's radio or television or the Web, if you tune into a BBC programme, you can be fairly sure that it will cover all sides of the issue: Left of centre, left, and far left with anything to the right of Clare Short reserved for the more exotic anthropology documentaries.

That's fairly sure, but not absolutely certain. That's because we're talking about "bias" here, not lock-step ideological conformity. Even the BBC can't afford to employ enough commissars to vet every second of airtime for ideological purity–not and pay their executives and, for want of a better word, talent the sort of salary the BBC condemns in every other industry. For that reason, Jeremy Clarkson has not been taken out by BBC snipers, Gordon Brown's face does not stare out of the telescreens ala Big Brother (and I don't mean the reality show), and the occasional report on global warming sneaks past that hints that manmade global warming might not actually have been pronounced true on golden tablets presented from the hands of Blessed Gaia herself.

That, however, isn't good enough for some people. Back in the 1980s, when the Grauniad was baying for Margaret Thatcher's blood with great passion and minimal copy editing, there was a cartoonist called Steve Bell whose Trotskyite strip "If" denounced all of the British news media as being firmly in Maggie's pocket. Aside from reasons that involve a lack of medication, Mr Bell seemed to base this opinion on the dismaying lack of inclination by everyone down to the junior copy boys to demand that the entire Conservative cabinet be drawn and quartered as part of coronation ceremony of King Arthur Scargill the First. Anyone who didn't agree with the agenda was clearly a raving Fascist with a picture of Ian Smith in his wallet.

Now those days are back with Sunny Hundal in the pages of the Guardian railing that the BBC is a hot bed of global warming "denialism" on a par, if not below, 9-11 truthers and holocaust denialists. Why? Because even though the Beeb never met a global warming scare story they didn't like (Yesterday they claimed it was killing off wolverines) the Corporation is clearly an implacable foe of Blessed Gaia. It's obvious; editors who allow a story or two that isn't a spit-lathered warmenist screed are clearly stooges of the Earth destroying capitalist death machine.

Keep taking the tablets, Sunny.

How to report the news

Just read the news. I'll understand.

Caution: Profanity

NYT: "Who is Barack Obama?"

Now they ask?

Ministry of Truth

This from The Guardian:

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

One voice? One voice? I don't give a tinker's damn whether this is because the "profound emergency" is global warming, an affront to Blessed Gaia, or rampant Goldsteinism. This sort of openly proclaimed conspiracy to manage the news in the name of a political agenda, and in the wake of Climategate it can't be anything else, is a slap in the face of free men everywhere.

Dear God, how far we have fallen!

Update: the only decent response to this travesty:

This is an outrageous attempt to orchestrate media pressure. Go to hell.

Walter Burns, call your service

While The One is distracted by his war with Fox News, he might want to consider restraining orders on others.

Britain: Not as dead as it looks

Newsweek's Stryker McGuire indulges in the venerable sport of declaring Britain dead and the only thing left to do is for everyone to curl up in their shrouds to await burial. It's an old, old mantra that I've heard every time the country has hit a rough patch–usually sung by those who would be perfectly happy to grab a shovel and pile the dirt on.

Thing is, it keeps turning out to be wrong. Take defence, for example. As we've pointed out here on more than one occasion, the problem isn't that Britain can't afford a first-class military, it's that the government, regardless of party, prefer to pour money down Socialist rat holes that deliver nothing in return rather than pony up for an adequate defence budget. The same is true for just about any other problem that Britain faces. We could be out of the EU in an afternoon, the House of Lords could be "reformed" by putting it back the way it was just as quickly, and the crime rate would receive a healthy dent if the police were charged with catching criminals instead of enforcing Guardian diktats.

As Mrs Thatcher demonstrated, the problem is always less a matter of "can't' than of "won't". And sooner or later, freeborn Englishmen stand up and say "will".

Duelling headlines

BBC headline:

Pakistan Christians die in unrest

Times headline:

Eight Christians burnt to death in Pakistan after Koran is ‘defiled’

Ah, so they didn't just incidentally expire while some undefined "unrest" was going on.

Read the script

Memo to Miss Mabuse: Please stick to the narrative. Deviating from the accepted trope that everything The One does is historic tends to upset our newsreaders and makes them jump.

Priorities

War in Afghanistan, coup in Honduras, revolution in Iran, missile tests in North Korea,bloody repression in China, and CNN goes with... The Obama girls go sightseeing!

Somewhere Walter Burns is sobbing.

Ministry of Truth

America's ABC network crosses the line from bias to flat out government propaganda arm.

No doubt we'll soon be seeing ABC reporting that the chocoration has been raised 20 grams.

The love that will not shut up

An Ur teleprompter

I'm used to the press fawning over Mr Barack Hussein Obama in terms that make the coverage of "Camelot" look like a newspaper lynching, but this piece by Matt Frei of the BBC makes me wonder if Mr Obama shouldn't file for a restraining order. Nor is it an anomaly–not when the AP declares that the problem with the Iranians is that they haven't been exposed to The One enough to love him properly or when the media is so agog over Hope and Change that they don't even bother to deal with basic logic and arithmetic.

Some commentators, even in the MSM, have begun to notice this and are wondering if the press isn't slacking at its job. Of course, that depends on what their job is.

What I find most interesting about this is not what is happening now, but what may come in a few months or years if the MSM doesn't stop acting like the official record of Barchelle's dates. I sincerely doubt that Mr Obama can keep voting "present" and blaming everything on his predecessor or how wicked America was before he came along while making uplifting yet empty speeches and spending money like it's the wastepaper that it will soon become. It can't last forever. The facade has to break wide open in a way that even the Matt Freis of the world can't ignore.

Then we'll see news coverage go one of two ways: First, The One will cross the Fourth Estate, as he's crossed so many of his other erstwhile supporters, by failing to bail out the New York Times or not sending Rush Limbaugh to Gitmo and we'll learn again that the MSM isn't the lapdog of Obama, but an ally who is quite capable of turning on him when their own agenda is thwarted. The other is that sooner or later the economic mess will be his alone, Iran will go nuclear and Israel will react, or the Jihadis will make a major strike against an American target. Then the MSM will continue to carry the can for The One no matter how bad things get and we'll have an American version of what's unfolding in Britain today where Mr Gordon Brown does his replay of Hitler in the bunker while the BBC carries on a bizarre attempt to convince the world that Brown is a paragon among men, New Labour will survive to win the next election, and Andrew Marr gets a pony.

Either way, I'm making popcorn.

Obama promoted

Mr Barack Hussein Obama according to Newsweek editor: "Sort of God."

Update: Be fair, he did get the seas to stop rising.

Update: Parisian restaurateur encounters The One and lets reality go for a Burton:
"I saw God before me."

Shock Horror on the Campaign Trail

The New York Times allegedly killed a story that would have damaged Mr Barack Hussein Obama's chances of being elected president.

And in other news, the Mafia may be involved in organised crime.

Truth to Power!

With allegations surfacing that Barak Hussein Obama's administration threatened an investment bank (No, not that threat) for trying to fulfill its legal obligation to its investors, the AP files this searing report that rips aside the hideous facade of the White House.

Those of a nervous disposition are advised to refrain from following the link.

Update: A modest proposal.

Bye Bye, PI

The Seattle Post Intelligencer ceased publication today with only truncated online version of itself as a memorial–while it lasts, anyway.

I can't say that I'm too unhappy about this. It's always sad to see a newspaper go belly up and it does raise the question about how news reporting is going to carry on until it learns to adapt to the new technology, but the loss of a left-wing rag like the PI is no great loss. Newspaper bias is no sin. In fact, in Britain it's a sign of a healthy market of opinion. However, British papers must operate in actual competition. Cozy Labour papers must rub shoulders with Conservative papers who must contend with Liberal Democrat broadsheets and this keeps them all on their toes. In the United States, however, daily papers generally operate in a monopoly–or worse, a false duopoly with two so-called "competing" newspapers sharing plants, facilities and world views. In Seattle, this boiled down to the newspaper business dividing between the leftist Seattle Times and the raving leftist Seattle PI. We will pass over the paper for aging Troskyites, the Seattle Weekly, and the sexually incontinent Stranger with more quiet dignity than they deserve. This sort of bias is tolerable if the papers concerned remain open about their bias, but when, as the PI did, the bias is marketed as the only reasonable and "moderate" view this becomes unacceptable. When the paper in question is published in a city and state run by a political machine with whom the paper is ideological hand in party glove and willing soften the pedal and turn the blind eye, then it becomes a disservice.

It's also an appalling business model. As one commentator pointed out, it's like a burger bar refusing to offer cheeseburgers to the half of the market that is clamouring for them because the manager doesn't like cheeseburgers and he thinks that people who eat cheeseburgers are beneath contempt. In the Seattle PI's case, they refused to sell cheeseburgers and now their burger bar has been reduced to those little wheelie carts that you see in the West End after the pubs close.

Trouble is, there are a heck of a lot of those carts out there, as the online PI will soon learn. As for myself, I'm truly going to miss the Letters to the Editor page. Browsing through it was to be transported into a strange, parallel world where it is always a tie-dyed 1968.

Real or What?

I haven't found much that really peaks my interest in this American election, though I am amused by the cult of personality that has grown up around Barrack Obama–especially as it's manifest in the MSM as parodied in this piece in The Times:

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

Or, if this German reporter's account of meeting Obama in a gym is sincere, maybe parody isn't that far off (emphasis in the original):

He goes and picks up a pair of 16 kilo weights and starts curling them with his left and right arms, 30 repetitions on each side. Then, amazingly, he picks up the 32 kilo weights! Very slowly he lifts them, first 10 curls with his right, then 10 with his left. He breathes deeply in and out and takes a sip of water from his 0,5 litre Evian bottle.

Shortly before five o’clock Obama comes over and sits directly next to my cross-trainer on the mat. First he does 10 sit-ups, then stretches. Then he looks at his watch and says to his bodyguard: “It’s time, let’s go.” Quickly I ask: “Mr. Obama, could I take a photo?”. “Of course!” he answers, before asking my name and coming over to stand next to me.

“My name’s Judith” I reply. "I’m Barack Obama, nice to meet you!” he says, and puts his arm across my shoulder. I put my arm around his hip – wow, he didn’t even sweat! WHAT A MAN!

Good Lord.

So Much For The Obesity "Epidemic"

Seattle PI headline:

World food crisis hits home
Costco seeing higher demand for staples

Translation:

Panic buying at food outlet
Media hype drives out common sense

A Cloudy Crystal Ball

The Seattle PI on 19 March 2008 shows a profound mixture of wishful thinking masked as prophecy:

Spring's sprung earlier, warmer
Climate change puts the greening season ahead of schedule for many species in the Northwest

And a month later my spring plantings were wiped out by a series of frosts and snowstorms.

Nice one.

Bu-Bye

Chuck Gilbert shares his thoughts on his last day as a professional reporter:

Friday was my last day as a reporter, and it also happened to be the deadline for this article. I am now a former journalist, a designation held by many prestigious figures at local homeless shelters and brothels. Journalism is one of those fields you enter when you think you can make the world a better place and leave when you realize you can make your own world better simply by getting a different job. In terms of the raw altruism required, working for a newspaper is kind of like doing a stint in the Peace Corps, only the hours are worse and everybody hates you.

I wish I'd had his guts when I ended a couple of previous careers.

No Cheese for You, No Jobs for Us.

How the Seattle Times is like a burger bar that refuses to serve cheeseburgers.

Mind you, it doesn't help when the burger is a bit rancid as well.

Grim Reporting

With grim crocodile tears, grim the MSM grimly reported that the grim United states grimly passed the grim milestone of grimness in the grim war in grim Iraq as grim American grim casualties of grimiosity grimly reached the grim number of 4000.

When grimly asked why the grim MSM grimly gives grim front (grim) page grim-prominence to such an out-of-grim-context number while grimily ignoring non-grim grim-type other grim news about grim-positive grim developments since the grim surge grimly started working with grimness or, indeed, why the grim MSM never reports on grim grim milestones of any other grim conflicts or grim armed grim forces (especially those of the grim enemy), the grim MSM just looked grim.

If the MSM wasn't working so hard to make political capital out of Coalition deaths while giving succor to the enemy, this would almost be funny.

Almost.

Brian Cohen, Call Your Service

Telegraph headline:

Easter warning: crucifixion is bad for you

Good to see the news media on top of things.

Living In Their Own Little World

And now it's guess the caption time from the AP. How do you think the flag burners in this photo were referred to? Guess again:

Pakistani human rights activists burn a Danish flag at a protest rally to show their anger over the reproduction of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Denmark, Thursday, Feb. 21, 200, in Gujaranwala, Pakistan.

Human rights activists? Somebody needs to increase his medication.

Blacklash and Moonbeams

A convenience store in Glasgow owned by a "man of Pakistani descent" was vandalised by persons unknown who "set a fire" and the Al AP's Tariq Panja is there on the scene to triumphantly declare that it is a confirmed sighting of the Bigfoot of journalism: The Inevitable anti-Muslim Backlash.

Ignoring the fact that the identity and motives of the vandals are completely unknown to the reader, Mr. Panja not only claims that this is part of a wave of anti-Muslim attacks and implies that the BNP is behind it, he even manages a marvelous bit of alchemy by mixing in one alleged bit of graffiti at a mosque and less than two-dozen unspecified incidents that turn a vandalised shop into "fire-bombed businesses" (note both the plural and escalation of the offence) without need to cite any specifics.

Imagine if, during the Falklands War, the AP had turned a Saturday night dust-up at the Argentine Steak House in Aberdeen into an anti-Argentinian pogrom and you get the idea.

No Respect

The AP's Thomas Wagner puzzles over why all those doctors became involved in a terrorist plot and for all his research and pondering cannot come up with a single common denominator as to what could cause these professional men to plant car bombs in London and Glasgow. Could it be a religious motive. No, of course not. Don't be silly.

It is enough to make one show genuine sympathy for the Jihadists. I mean, here they are shouting from the rooftops that they're a load of crazed Muslim fanatics dedicated to establishing a worldwide Caliphate and have sworn war to the knife against any infidel or fellow Muslim who does not subscribe to their twisted brand of Islam and you can't even get the Western elite to give you a look in. What do you have to do to be taken seriously as a power-hungry megalomaniac around here?

Double Standard

Hezbollah refuses to recognise the Lebanese government, telling it to hand over power or else.

Strangely, NBC does not call this civil war.