financial times gets it wrong

in an article that appeared today on the ft.com website, the journalists quote a source as saying that the old neo-nazis were pro-israel. financialtimes. we hardly think that old new neonazis dead or alive are or have ever been pro-israel.

lazy journalism and the oslo massacre

how did the media jump from speculating whether or not the culprit of the oslo masscre was one of osama’s boyz to later thinking the dude that was picked up after offing a bunch of nordic teenagers was a right wing extremeist to now, calling the poster boy for aryan youth a christian fundamentalist–as he’s being labeled by the ultra p.c. nytimes.

rebekah brooks former ceo news international arrested

breitbart is reporting that rebekah brooks, who headed news international in the uk has been arrested. it’s always the woman or the black guy who takes the fall, innen-it?

news corp fights for life?

last week, news of the world, a 168 year old newspaper was closed down due to a phone hacking scandal the roots of which date back to 2007. the question now is, why after 4 years is this becoming an international issue?

under pressure, rupert murdoch withdrew his bid for the remainder of bskyb he doesn’t already own. and there are unconfirmed rumours that he might sell off his newspapers in the uk.

the guardian newspaper –always a reliable source, is running a story today which claims elisabeth murdoch, who once was heir to the throne controlled by her father, reportedly said that her brother james murdoch fucked the company.

u.s. newspapers are reporting that the fbi and/or the justice department want to investigate whether or not the phones of 9/11 victims were hacked too. which seems unlikely. although we never closely followed news of the world, we actually prefer other tabloids such as the weekly world news, the national enquirer, us weekly, bild zeitung, 20minuten and the daily mail. but if we had been, we suspect that the 9/11 hacking claim is baseless. but we have no real info about this. and even the washington post questions the allegation.

but it is curious that news corporation, which owns fox news in the u.s.–one of the few conservative media companies in the states and one of the few news organizations that dares to criticize the obama administration, might implode prior to the 2012 presidential election.

this implosion started with the firing of glenn beck–the populist, whose popular talk-television news program was recently axed by the network. beck, who started the 9/12 club, and is a favorite with the tea party movement, had a huge following and managed to scare up a couple of million folks for a ‘take back america’ rally last year in washington d.c.

let the conspiracy theories begin.

reuters tows government line?

in this article explaining why guantanomo bay won’t be closed as per barack obama’s campaign promise, the journalist allister bull or his editor makes the point of inserting ‘reluctantly’ into the following statement please note the italics are ours:

‘President Barack Obama, in a setback to hopes for the quick closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison, reluctantly signed a bill on Friday barring suspects held there from being brought to the United States for trial.’

you can read the full article here but bear in mind, the link is from yahoo and their links expire after a certain time.

for us at ablogaboutwhatever it was always clear that git-mo could not be closed. because the question was always, where will you put these guys? no state in the u.s. wants them. not even the governor michigan.

the most obvious choice would be to send the prisoners back to their home countries. but some of the prisoners are technically american. it is what spaulding grey (RIP) would’ve called, a slippery slope.

ipad versus newspapers and magazines

thought about using the headline ‘iPad vs. the media’ or ‘iPad vs. publishing’ but settled for newspapers and magazines. the iPad is great for reading books –if you can actually find one you want to read in the iBooks store.

when you initially venture to the iBook store, you are given a complimentary copy of ‘winnie the pooh.’ you can use it to practice flipping pages digitally, book marking stuff, changing fonts and so on.

as stated, the iPad is great for reading books. thus far we’ve failed to find one magazine that takes advantage of the flipping through the book experience. the app ‘vogue paris’ which really should be called ‘paris vouge’ along with german vogue are undoubtedly the worst offenders. the iPad versions are essentially glorified PDFs. as we weren’t prepared to splurge and spend upwards of 3.99 for an app, when we can purchase risk for 2.39, we did not have access to the video content.

but electronic video content is neither groundbreaking nor new. and as finely stated in this l.a. times article in the comment section at the bottom, why pay for an app that looks just like another version of the free website.

why the new york times sucks

how many different political satements can you find in this seemingly innocent article on twenty-somethings and arrested development. from the anti-traditional marriage stance to the bill reilly was wrong, it’s ok to be a single parent bit. it’s like a drive-by with plastic bullets. or ones of made of 0s and 1s.

abortion versus gay marriage in america

this post isn’t really about either. the question is, why is it that had a female judge ruled last week that abortion were legal (or illegal) in the united states or any singular state, the u.s. media would be all a chatter (dare i say a-twitter) about the fact that a woman –a woman! had decided the case. a gay male judge has ruled that not allowing gay marriage is unconstitutional in the state of california. this news item has been routinely ignored by the american media. it took the economist –the economist a uk rag about ECONOMICS to post that btw, the judge is gay –in parentheses, no less. no wonder americans all read uk newspapers. isn’t this a historical something-or-nother. and had the people who put up the funds to fight the proposition had known, do you think they had saved their money? questions for historians. unless they decide to ignore this tidbit of history. well, lets hope that some of these historians double majored in ECONOMICS.

did you know that the guardian is the second most read english language newspaper in the world. and that it comes from a country with around 65M people (or something like that. might be more like 60M but can’t be bothered to look this up at the moment), while the u.s. has over 300M?

has rolling stone magazine cost the u.s. the war

this is a legitimate question to ask. by all accounts from the prime minister of afghanistan and the minister of defense in germany, everyone was happy with general mcchrystal and his plans for afghanistan. many in the media doubt that the words uttered by mcchrystal and his posse were actually on the record and that rolling stone journalist, and believe michael hastings actually broke a journalistic code of ethics.

gay supreme court nominee

is this a legitimate headline? well, when sonia sotomayor was a leading candidate every article was about her being a latina. when george bush the elder nominated clarence thomas, every article at the time was about him being black. so why is that according to the washington post it is not fair game to mention that it is widely known with in the academic community, or at least according to one blogger it is, that elena kagan, from harvard (aka the woman who didn’t want the ROTC to recruit on harvard’s campus), is a lesbian. according to the washington post, most news organizations have a policy of not ‘outing’ public officials.

well if the argument is that there is a parallel between sexual orientation and race, we would argue that news organizations should refrain from EVER calling clarence thomas or obama black, referring to sonia sotomayor as a latina. and so on and so on. where’s the justice there. the real question is why is the obama administration even considering people such as kagan, and the governor of michigan who have never been judges and don’t have any kind of a paper trail. one could even go as far as to ask, why are ethnic minorities required to have attended one of the top 2 universities in the u.s. and have served as an appellate judge? is this the bush, ‘i was born with a silverspoon in my mouth, so there!’ double standard? we thought the democratic party was all about meritocracy. oh. my bad.