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Closely related: Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper are going to have to go to jail if they don't reveal their sources in the Valerie Plame affair.

We wonder if AppleInsider and Think Secret staff will do the same.

Me three. Scott Adams of all people should be in touch enough with his nerd readership to realize that none of us would take kindly to that kind of sellout.

The only thing that comes to mind is that it must have been some serious chunk o' change that led to this. Maybe he thought that his strip had jumped the shark and he was going to grab what he could before the bottom falls out, ala Garfield.

In any case I'm sorry to see it.

That was a bullshit question submitted by a leftist reporter.

This is false, but it is the standard distortion peddled by administration backers. Thomas Wilson (the National Guardsman who asked the question) is on record as saying that he himself came up with the question, not the "leftist" reporter. (Leftist here, of course, being anyone who dares question our divine leaders.) Here's a link
for you.

Why do you hate the troops?

I think Slashdot is violating a patent.

Well the difference is less dramatic than I thought -- I admitedly wasn't thinking of the Fray --, but accoring to Nielsen, washingtonpost.com had a half million lead in overall audience and nearing triple the time spent per visitor. The unique visitors numbers are obviously are somewhat opposed to the article's figures, but that's web traffic stats for you.

I'm a reader of both Slate and WashingtonPost.com and the fact that Slate competes with the traffice of an entire newspaper with a huge staff is quite a compliment.

One could argue that spreading freedom and democracy is in our national interests, so our viewpoints are not as incompatible as you might think. After all, other countries that more or less subscribe to "our" way of governing and recognizing freedom are far less likely to be threats to us as compared to, say, hard-line theocracies like the former Taliban.

The primary distinction between our viewpoints, I suspect, is that you subscribe more to an ends-justify-the-means philosophy than I do. While there is some appeal to me for the pragmatism of that position, I feel that it's a very slippery slope to go down. Again, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, the administration may have honestly believed in an imminent threat to our national security.

What bothers me is that even now in the face of evidence refuting the claims used to justify the invasion of Iraq, our president and his team continue to gloss over the annoying details that don't fit their worldview. I feel strongly that there was some serious spin happening in the leadup to the war, and it persisted as the war progressed.

To what do you attribute the fact that so many Americans believe(d) that there was a concrete link between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Stupidity? Irresponsible journalism? I think it has a lot to do with certain key statements made by members of Bush's team.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06 -poll-iraq_x.htm
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000653667
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.htm l
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/26/tim e.iraq/

Those are just some of the top hits I got for a quick google search for "americans believe link saddam al qaeda".

My problem is that I feel that we the people were misled. If the case for war was so compelling, why did the Bush team need to gin up the rationalizations they've been using? It just doesn't pass the sniff test. We didn't see this level of questioning and divisiveness when we invaded Afghanistan. There was a clear threat in that case, and besides, they weren't an internationally recognized sovereign state (recognition by a handful of Arab countries notwithstanding).

Whatever. We're committed for at least the next four years. My unhappiness with the current state of affairs doesn't matter now. Unless I want to take up arms and try to start a revolution, I'm just going to have to sit tight and hope for the best.

I get lots of news from blogs. News I would otherwise never hear from the big 5 media companies. Slashdot keeps me appraised of changes in copyright legislation more effectively than any news outlet available. Macworld's online MacCentral blog is way better than a monthly print. I'd say that most of my news comes from the web these days. I don't subscribe to a newspaper. I rarely watch TV. When I do turn it on, they are usually discussing something I read online days or weeks earlier as if it were 'late breaking, up to the minute news!!' It seems to me that bloggers are doing a better job, and doing it for free. That has the mainstream worried. Yeah, blogs can be inaccurate as yesterday's Google picture archive story here illustrates, but retraction was fast and front page; Unlike what you will find in a newspaper.

Let me help further that point.

Spreading the Word (w/photos)

Col. Gary Brandl: Satan lives in Fallujah

In preparation for the attack, Christian Heavy Metal.

As for other interesting Iraq news for today:

US forces demolish a hospital and target another for releasing casualty figures; 70 journalists are embedded for the invasion; mot of the troops doing the invasion have no major combat experience; and a Georgia man commits suicide at Ground Zero to protest Bush and the war in Iraq.

Is this a division between the more intellectual America reading and writing newspapers, and the popular opinion?

More of a reflection that newspaper editorials only have a limited impact. There is far more of an impact from the previously mentioned propaganda network: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, etc., etc. In my hometown (Dallas) there are currently *two* radio stations, with pretty significant market share, whose only purpose is to spread GOP propaganda, 24 hours a day. The Democrats have no such partisan network.

You're also relying on 20 year old studies as to what percentage of reporters consider themselves liberal.

NOT TRUE. The Pew Research Center conducted the study just this year (2004) and released its findings MAY 2004. I EVEN SAID THAT IN THE ESSAY. A synopsis can be found here.

...If you refuse to believe that, than consider this, if reporters are constantly surrounded by information maybe you should consider why with all that information they would be liberal? Perhaps it's because being liberal is what intelligent people are?

Ahh... Here it is, ladies and gentleman, for your viewing pleasure: the "enlightened liberal." He professes tolerance, but anybody who disagrees with him surely must be stupid... or--better yet-- evil . He likes to assume that only he can appreciate the fine arts and the complicated public affairs. Therefore, it only makes sense that he and his ilk dictate how the rest of us should live and what we should hear and see. After all he knows what's best for us--even if we can't see it for ourselves.

-Grym

A U.S. Army internal study of the war reveals, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times, that as the Iraqi regime was collapsing that day, U.S. Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad. It was a Marine colonel who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said, with the PSYOP team making it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi action.

First, the colonel, who was not named in the report, selected the statue as a "target of opportunity." Then the PSYOP team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians, many of them young people, to assemble and assist.

But Marines had already draped an American flag over the statue's face. "God bless them, but we were thinking from PSYOP school that this was just bad news," the PSYOP member wrote in the report. "We didn't want to look like an occupation force." A PSYOP sergeant quickly replaced the American flag with an Iraqi flag.

"Ultimately," the Los Angeles Times report concluded, "a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the PSYOP team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children."

"Broke" the story? LOL. More like introduced a conspiracy theory. I watched the whole thing live and there were well more than "half a dozen" Iraqis there. IM's "proof" were pictures *after* the statue fell when most of the were busy dragging saddam's head down the street.

Is it a conspiracy theory when an army report confirms it was staged by the US military?

Not to mention broad shots of the plaza showed it to be surrounded by US tanks and practically empty, save for the small crowd around the statue.

Admit it: you got played by the Bush administration.

Actually, I don't remember that. Would you kindly provide a link to your charge against Hannity?

Also, the charges of a liberal bias in the mainstream media have been well-documented by objective reviewers. Some 34% of journalists in national media identify themselves as "liberal", while only 7% say they are "conserative." The general public self-identifies as 20% liberal, 33% conservative. Do you have any statistics to back up your charges against Fox News?

That's really hard to do. Let me take 15 seconds to find some...
Source 1
Source 2
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This is absolutely correct. The newspaper's suit was a public request for apology, not an actual suit. The suit was for exactly 1 dollar.

Illinois new coverage
Patriots for Bush.com blurb

However, Michael Moore did not wish to publicly apologize for the date mistake at the time. His production company later did admit the mistake in a letter to the newspaper.

The Pantagraph own coverage.

I was not able to find out what became of the suit, though.

Here's another example of "information and culture control":

Continental: Complaints Led to Drop-'Doonesbury' Poll

By Dave Astor
Published: July 21, 2004 11:50 AM EST, updated at 1:20 PM

NEW YORK A poll that resulted in a vote to drop "Doonesbury" was defended by the head of a Sunday-comics consortium.

"It was not a political statement of any kind," Continental Features President Van Wilkerson told E&P. "I personally don't have an opinion about 'Doonesbury' one way or another."

Wilkerson said he conducted the survey because Garry Trudeau's comic "created more controversy than other strips." In the poll e-mail he sent Continental's newspaper clients this spring, Wilkerson wrote: "(I)t is my feeling that a change in one of the features is required. I have fielded numerous complaints about 'Doonesbury' in the past and feel it is time to drop this feature and add another in its place. ... If the majority of the group favors a replacement, you will be expected to accept that change."

Of the 38 papers that run the Continental-produced Sunday comics section, 21 wanted to drop "Doonesbury," 15 wanted to keep it, and two had no opinion or preference. "I wouldn't call the vote [to drop 'Doonesbury'] overwhelming, but it was a majority opinion," Wilkerson said.

One of the 15 papers, The Anniston (Ala.) Star (Click for QuikCap), expressed public dismay with the vote yesterday -- saying the decision amounted to censorship. In an E&P interview after that article appeared, Star Executive Editor Troy Turner said: "Sure, 'Doonesbury' causes editors headaches from time to time, but there is a proven readership for it. Newspapers need to think of readers first, or they will continue to struggle."

Turner added that he doesn't recall Continental doing polls about any of the other 22 comics in its package; "Doonesbury" was singled out. Wilkerson acknowledged that the survey was out of the norm.

The Continental head said he doesn't know exactly when "Doonesbury" will leave the package; he's currently polling clients to see if they want to replace it with "Agnes," "Get Fuzzy," "Pickles," "Zits," or another comic.

If Continental does pull "Doonesbury" from the package, "we will find a way to run it in the Sunday paper," said Star Editorial Page Editor Bob Davis. He noted that the Star already publishes the daily "Doonesbury" in an unusual locale: the back page of the "A" section.

As previously reported, Star Publisher H. Brandt Ayers e-mailed Wilkerson to say he and his paper's editors "strongly object to an obviously political effort to silence a minority point of view. For years, my New Deal father bore the opposition views of Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks, and I believe he would have fought an effort to silence them a by a simple majority vote. This is wrong, offensive to First Amendment freedoms."

"Doonesbury" -- which appears in more than 1,400 papers via Universal Press Syndicate -- has made a lot of news this year with strong criticism of President Bush and the Iraq war. In one sequence, Trudeau offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove Bush served in the Alabama National Guard. And, in an ongoing story line, the B.D. character lost a leg in Iraq and is dealing with the aftermath of that devastating injury.

The 38 papers running the package from Salisbury, N.C.-based Continental are predominately located in the Southeast.

Dave Astor (dastor@editorandpublisher.com) is senior editor for E&P.

I know it will sound abhorringly naive but shouldn't The New York Times have as a prime interest independent and objective journalism instead of profit driven opinion-articles passed as objective journalism? Didn't they have to appologize for participating in the national hype (that means acting as a propaganda instrument) for the war against Iraq?

A newspaper acting as a propaganda instrument is something very alarming to happen in a democratic country. That's what happens in fascist, communist and oppresive regimes in general. No wonder Michael Moore's movie/documentary is so wildly accepted. The people want the truth but the number of them that trusts US corporate media anymore decreases by the day.

That is exactly one of the major points in that new book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", written by an anonymous senior US intelligence official (now thought to be Michael Scheuer).

The book claims that bin Laden may strike the US before November to get the public to rally around Bush, as the anonymous official is "very sure [the terrorists] can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now" (the Bush Administration). Read more at this Guardian Article.

That agreement was with the U.N. Are we the U.N.?

Attempt to assassinate Bush Sr.

Was that a response to us attempting to assassinate Saddam? Or, Kaddafi, or Castro, or [insert long list of U.S. successful and unsuccessful attempts to assassinate foreign leaders from South America to Asia]?

Giving aid and comfort to terrorists

Who? The U.S.? If it were that, then why not invade North Korea, or Iran, or Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia...etc? The answer is below.

Refusing to cooperate with the UN.

Again, are we the U.N.?

Being a rat-bastard tyrant

Finally, the honest answer. But, only partially honest. His daddy was made a fool by Saddam, and everyone knew that if Shrub got into office, the Iraqis would pay. Shrub's Secretary of the Treasury reports that plans for invading Iraq were in the making only within a few days of Shrub's theft of the election. If it were simply a matter of being a rat-bastard, there are plenty of others further along the road to bastard-hood: North Korea's loony leader for one. The problem is, no oil there, so no business drive to get there. Afghanistan proved a perfect, inarguable cause. Not for the one you think. True, Bin-Loonie was there, but that was simply the inescapable argument for invasion. If we could tame that country (only an asteroid dropped from space could achieve that), we could finally lay that oil pipeline we've been planning on for the past 30 years. Unfortunately, CNN and FauxNews channels don't cover this little bit of history, but we've been in a chess game with the Russians and Chinese for this bit of inhospitable land for quite a while. By the way, this is also why we're "friends" with Pakistan.

Simple failture of Washington/Baghdad diplomacy

No. Simple failure of Shrub Administration/U.N. diplomacy. His daddy was better at it, but this numbskull couldn't control his trigger finger. His only half-way feasable argument (even Powell had to excise some of the outright lies from the deceptive rhetoric he was forced to spew to the U.N.'s collective face) of Weapons of Mass Destruction have vanished into thin air, leaving a unpleasant odor that the rest of the world blames us for.

'they're trying to get nukes'

Again, why not invade Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, or Pakistan? They're the biggest terrorist threats outside of Afghanistan. They've been attempting to get nuclear long before Iraq, and have actual terrorist ties. The reason is this was a personal vendetta and business agenda, and he used to this country to fulfill it. If he should force Iraq's oil wells within U.S. corporate controls in the process of taking revenge, all the better. This monkey has to go come November.

You're right in that Shrub didn't attack Iraq simply for Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's just what he used to sell it.

The truth is, the rest of the world was behind us going into Afghanistan because that's where t

Underground tunnels, pfft. We'd still see trucks taking stuff from stockpiles near Baghdad to places on the edges of Iraq. Nothing like that happened. Ever noticed how the White house hasn't spoken about WMDs since the summer? Could it be they've figured out that shifting the "fabled WMD" hot potato to other countries, especially those who have helped the US war on terror, is a bad and futile move?

Colin Powell's speech was refuted point for point.

But there's not a whole lot of detail you can get with spy satellites. What? What about the sophisticated satellites that supposedly can read license-plate numbers? The sat images that can tell a woman's cup size from space? Just because the administration screwed up, you're going to blame the hardware now? Agh, and they say I drink the Kool-Aid.

Google News already has made arrangements with some leading news sites that use registration schemes -- such as The New York Times. Google News users who click on links to NYTimes.com articles at Google News go directly to the article -- there's no intervening registration screen -- even if they're not already registered at NYTimes.com. This works, explains product manager Mayer, because the site allows Google's spiders to crawl its content and include links in the Google service. When a non-registered user hits a NYTimes.com page, the site will recognize that it's a referral from Google News and serve up the content

Note that under the so-called "Patriot Act", not only will the FBI be able to seize these kinds of records, but it will be illegal for the media to report on any such seizure. How's that for the ability to rewrite history, Soviet-style?

Details here.

The FBI was never here, go about your business.

Although they've had it coming for some time, and I can't think of any other dotcom outfit that deserves to bite it as spectacularly as DC, I have to admit that I'm going to miss those crazy bastards.

I really thought if anyone had a shot at revolutionizing the way that advertisers and media exploit consumer data, it was DigitalConvergence.

What continues to amaze me about DigitalConvergence is the sheer enormity of it. The scale of the undertaking, the breadth and scope of it all, it dwarfs some of the larger dotbombs of record. If/when it actually completely explodes, it seems like it would signal the definitive end-of-the-dotbomb-era... .(who else at this scale has yet to bite it?) DC is the archetypical dotbomb. A privately held company valued most recently at well over $500,000,000.00, which reported revenues in 1999 of only $1,500,000 (and a loss of $4,000,000).

A company which continues to incur enormous costs in the manufacturing and distribution of their devices (what might 10,000,000+ CueCats cost to build and ship to retailers? who can imagine?) and seems to have no hope of profitability, ever...

A management team populated by players from Time Warner, AT&T, GE, Disney, Barings, etc.

A CEO (who owns 50% of the company) who seems pathologically given to making unfathomably exaggerated marketing claims, including, "We think we're the fourth evolution of computing. A cat can do everything a mouse can't!" , and "It's a torrid love affair I'm having with the power to mold not only an industry, but also the mind-set of America's consumers..." (As an aside, this man should be forced to eat his every press release and media clipping as punishment for this sort of hubris...).

In his prior career hosting a tv show called "NetTalkLive", he claimed, "Our show reaches into 802,000,000 million homes each week..." - Yes, roughly 1/6th of the world population is tuning in to watch an informercial (although conveniently, the Nielsen ratings system didn't track shows like NetTalkLive that run during the dead-zone of infomercial hours on d-grade & public television channels...)

Other gestures of indulgence include spending a ton of money in decorating the offices of DigitalConvergence to be "feng-shui" compliant ("...the building should face in a direction that is positive for the company's owner or chief executive...", plants and water are added to the environs because "....plants represent growth and water represents money..." (well I guess they've been smoking the plants and lighting the water on fire...).

I look forward to the case studies on this corporation. I suspect that we'll see lots of people conclude, "It probably doesn't make good business sense to entrust hundreds of millions of dollars to people who claim to be marketing-geniuses, and yet somehow fail to focus on that most basic of marketing fundamentals, determining the needs of the consumer."

Other interesting reading material, for those concerned....

a funny "Dallas Observer" article and a not quite as funny but still very interesting article from "Editor and Publisher" online.



"If you build it, they will laugh."

From Steve Outing:

What TiVo Teaches Us About the Internet

"The conclusion I arrive at is that big ads on online content and news sites will not be a big success. While the online news and content industries are headed down this new path of more intrusive online ads, it well may prove to be the wrong way. Just as television advertising will need to adapt to the realities of TiVo users like me skipping over commercials, Web publishers must deal with the same issue."