Breaking News That Isn't Breaking or News

So, I turn on the teevee to check out CNN and the Breaking News! banner tells me that Tom Ridge, in his new book, reveals that the Bush administration used the terror alert level for political purposes.

Well guess what?

Ridge revealed that so-called Breaking News! back in 2005.

WASHINGTON (2005)— The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation's homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.


"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"

CNN - "The most trusted name in news"

Pffft.

The CNN/MSM/Tom Ridge needs to sell books Bullshit Alert level currently sits at Elmo:



Update:

Amnesia-plagued boneheads and lying liars in action.



Hello? Google, anyone?
 

Bad Reuters! No Pulitzer for you!

Does it get much more embarrassing than this??

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

Insult to injury:

The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.

Reuters has admitted that it took the images from Russian state television channel RTR and wrongly captioned them as file footage originating from the Arctic.

RTR had also used the footage to illustrate stories about the North Pole expedition, but it is thought as library footage, and it never claimed it was actually of the flag-planting.

The pictures were first broadcast by RTR when the Russians were still several hours away from the North Pole.

Reuters distributed a package of clips that included the scenes from Titanic, alongside computer animations and footage of ships on the surface at the North Pole.

In its piece on the subject, two of the four Reuters pictures were from the Titanic filming.

Michael Moore Blasts Blitzer and CNN

If you didn't get the chance to see Monday's Situation Room, you missed Michael Moore blasting Wolf Blitzer and CNN.

Crooks & Liars has the video and here's the transcript.

Before Moore appeared, CNN ran a video segment by Dr Sanjay Gupta disputing some of the facts in Moore's film "Sicko":

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Sicko" throws hard punches at the United States healthcare system, and it seems just about everyone has something to say.

(SOUNDS)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moore was spot on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The facts, I think, support what I believe.

GUPTA: And Moore presents a lot of facts throughout the movie. But do they all check out? Keeping them honest, we did some digging and we started with the biggie. The United States slipped to number 37 in the world's healthcare systems.

It's true, 37 is the ranking, according to the World Health Organization's latest data on 191 countries. It's based on general health level, patient satisfaction, access and how it's paid for. France tops the list. Italy and Spain make it into the top 10. The United Kingdom is 18.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello!

GUPTA: Moore brings a group of patients, including 9/11 workers to Cuba, and marvels at their free treatment and quality of care. But hold on. That WHO list puts Cuba's healthcare system even lower than the United States, coming in at number 39. Moore asserts that the American healthcare system spends $7,000 per person on health, whereas Cuba spends $25 per person.

Not true, but not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 a year per person versus $229 a year in Cuba. And astronomically more money doesn't mean far better outcomes. In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average. So Americans do pay more, but the United States also ranks highest in patient satisfaction.

And Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures like hip replacement, cataract surgery or knee repair. That's not something you'll see in "Sicko" as Americans tell their tales of lack of coverage and suffocating red tape.

It's true that the United States is the only country in the Western world without free universal access to health care. But you won't find medical utopia elsewhere. The film is filled with content Canadians and Brits sitting in waiting rooms, confident care will come.

In Canada, you can be waiting for a long time. A survey of six industrialized nations found that only Canada was worse than the United States when it came to waiting for a doctor's appointment for a medical problem.

PAUL KECKLEY, DELOITTE HEALTH CARE ANALYST: That's the reality of those systems. There are quotas. There are planned wait times. The concept that care is free in France and Canada and Cuba, and it's not. Those citizens pay for health services out of taxes. And as a proportion of their household income, it's a significant number.

GUPTA: It's true that the French pay higher taxes and so does nearly every country ahead of the United States on that list. But even higher taxes don't give all the coverage everyone wants.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifteen-to-20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system of care run by the government.

GUPTA: So, there's no perfect system anywhere. But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts -- and he did fudge some facts -- there's one everyone agrees on. The system here should be far better. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And here's part of Moore's response:

BLITZER: Michael Moore is joining us now live from Detroit. Michael, thanks very much for coming in. You want to respond to anything ...

MOORE: First of all, Wolf, yeah, well -- yeah, I'd like about 10 minutes to respond to what was said.

BLITZER: Give us a couple of headlines, what you'd like to say.

MOORE: I don't talk in sound bites. So -- that report was so biased. I can't imagine what pharmaceutical company ad's coming up right after our break here.

But why don't you tell the truth to the American people? I mean, I wish that CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about what's going on in this country, whether it's with healthcare -- I don't care what it is. I mean, you guys have such a poor track record.

And for me to come on here and have to listen to that kind of crap. I mean, seriously, I haven't been on your show now for three years. The last time I was on, you ran a similar piece about "Fahrenheit 9/11" saying this can't be true what he's saying about the war, how it's going to be a quagmire, the weapons of mass destruction.

You know, and -- why don't you start off actually with my first appearance back here on your show in three years and maybe apologize to me for saying that three years ago, because it turned out everything I said in "Fahrenheit" was true. Everything has come to happen.

Everything I said. I mean, I was -- I took you in that film to Walter Reed Hospital and it took three years before you or any of the rest of the mainstream media would go to Walter Reed Hospital and see what was happening to our troops. So for me to have to sit here and listen again to more crap about socialized medicine or how the Canadians have it worse than us and all this, all the statistics show that we have far worse healthcare than these other industrialized countries.

We're the only ones that don't have it free and universal. And, you know, there's a -- there's a -- you said that Germany was the only one that was better than us in terms of wait times. The Commonwealth Fund last year showed of the top six countries, we were second to last, next to Canada. It showed that Britain, for instance, 71 percent of the British public, when they call to see a doctor, get to see the doctor that day or the next day. It's 69 percent in Germany. It's 66% in Australia. And you're the ones who are fudging the facts. You fudged the facts to the American people now for I don't know how long about this issue, about the war.

And I'm just curious when are you going to just stand there and apologize to the American people for not bringing the truth to them that isn't sponsored by some major corporation? I mean, I'll sit here for as long as it takes, if you can do that for me.

And that was just the beginning. Make sure you read and/or view the rest. Moore was on fire and Blitzer didn't know what hit him.

Related: Michael Moore's site
 

CNN Characterizes Iran's Population as Being Anti-Semitic

Political bias in news reports can often go by quite unnoticed, yet the subtle (and at times, not so subtle) messages contribute to how the audience forms opinions about the subject material.

Take this CNN report by Aneesh Raman on Thursday about the use of political cartoons during Iranian news broadcasts:

CNN's Aneesh Raman is in Tehran -- Aneesh.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, for the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is a new campaign against an old enemy.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

RAMAN (voice-over): It's often with anger that Iran's leaders speak about the U.S. But on state-run TV, the state has been trying a different tactic. Mixed into the main news channel are political cartoons, often starting with a slate like this one, which reads: "no explanation needed."

This one pokes fun at U.S. policy in Iraq -- Uncle Sam running between bombs, looking for an exit. And when he finds three doors, no such luck.

President Bush also often gets a grilling. Here, he's talking to the world about Iran's nuclear program, alleging Iran wants nuclear weapons, all while his nose grows longer like Pinocchio in front of a laughing globe.

The cartoons -- and there are many -- have even made their way onto YouTube, varying from anti-American riffs to others about Israel that outside of Iran would be defined as anti-Semitic.

As for those on the U.S. the intent is clear, at least to moderates like this professor at the University of Tehran.

With those three words, "outside of Iran", Raman implied that no one in Iran would see such cartoons as being anti-semitic.

That's a powerful media message against an entire country's citizenship that the US is now fiercely embroiled in a conflict with over its aspirations to develop, depending on who you choose to believe, either a nuclear energy program or nuclear weapons. It also obviously serves to elevate western concern for the fate of Israel if all Iranians are characterized as being "anti-semitic".

I suspect it might come as a surprise to Jews living in Iran that they are seen by Mr Raman as being "anti-semitic" under this blanket condemnation. "Iran's Jewish community is the largest in the Middle East outside Israel." There is no doubt that Jews face continual persecution in Iran. Hoewever, one can't then conclude that all Muslims are anti-semitic. They're not.

The media's tendency to apply monolothic characteristics to, in this case, the citizens of Iran whose speech is oppressed by its radical leaders to the point where all we in the west are allowed to see on our television screens if what we're being fed by big news organizations which may or may not have a political agenda of their own, is an unfair portrait of a country of over 68 million people who, despite their repression, have many varied opinions about the world and its people.

Furthermore, such generalizations diminish the very serious human rights abuses that many Iranians currently face at the hands of a crushingly oppressive regime. They certainly do not deserve to be made out as some sort of cohesive, groupthinking, hateful bloc so they can be promoted as being the enemy by the American media.

Demonizing an entire country's citizen population is what xenophobes and terrorists do. You'd think a major US cable news network would do everything possible to avoid that trap.
 

Politico.com's Reputation

This morning, before John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth held their press conference in which they sadly announced that Elizabeth's cancer was back but that John would continue on with his presidential bid regardless, Ben Smith of politico.com reported:

John Edwards is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, an Edwards friend told The Politico.

"At a minimum he's going to suspend" the campaign, the source said. "Nobody knows precisely how serious her recurrence is. It’ll be another couple of days before there’s complete clarity."

Once the Edwards actually held their press conference in which they announced his bid would go on without interruption, Smith issued a correction in which he said he had relied on a single source for his story. Bad move, obviously.

And that might be the end of it if Politico.com hadn't been involved in misreporting before, but it has. If you've followed the Democrats fight with the administration and Republicans over the Iraq war, you'll remember how the phrase "slow bleed" was attributed to John Murtha and just how much of a firestorm that caused. The problem is that John Murtha never used that phrase. Politico.com's editor was the source of it. To add insult to injury, when John Harris announced his culpability weeks later the damage had already been done. To top that off, he wrote that he was proud of what he'd done:

With a mixture of pride and remorse, I have a confession: I am the author of the Democratic Party's "slow-bleed strategy" for ending the war in Iraq.

I had nothing to do with the details of the plan that Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) floated two weeks ago. His plan was crafted to use the appropriations process to limit President Bush's options for mobilizing more forces in Iraq, while trying to protect Democrats from the accusation that they were abandoning troops in the field. As it happens, Murtha's idea is itself bleeding support, hit by a barrage of denunciations from people who say it does indeed amount to abandoning the troops.

In retrospect, it probably has already occurred to Murtha and his supporters that from a public relations perspective, "slow-bleed" was not the most winning description. How could they have been so stupid?

That's where I come in. "Slow bleed" is my phrase. Murtha had nothing to do with it. Neither did John Bresnahan, the reporter whose name was on the Politico story in which the "slow-bleed strategy" made its debut.

You can understand my pride of authorship. Editors labor in obscurity. Our job is to keep reporters from looking bad, and to let them take the credit when they look good. Rarely is there tangible evidence that we are having any impact. But in 20-plus years in the business, I can scarcely recall an instance when words typed on my keyboard have had such a loud and immediate echo.

Who takes pride in misrepresenting what a politican says just because it pulls him out of obscurity and then causes major political wars about the most serious issue facing the American people and government today? That's Rovian and it's selfish immaturity taken to its highest level.

The bottom line? Politico.com should not be considered a trusted source since its employees are obviously incapable of acting with any sort of journalistic professionalism. We already have enough problems dealing with what comes out of the mainstream media. If a new media organization wants to be considered legitimate and above that fray, it obviously needs to act with caution and integrity - something Politico.com has been lacking.