http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wa...0,4414138.story

Since I can't post the whole article, I'm cherry picking lines that jumped out at me as incredibly unfair and clearly poor journalism.



What a frame..."The Democrat" "insists" something that's a clear matter of public record.



I sincerely doubt that he did either of those things. A candidate being clear and not equivocating on an issue - addressing yet another trumped up bullshit story on him, is characterized as a child calling "do over". How pitiful.



Can somebody sent this guy a dictionary? How does refining a plan mean overturning it?



His signature issue is transparency - but I think they mean that he didn't support the invasion. That's not the same as saying withdrawal from Iraq is his signature issue - what an off the wall claim. I don't know anyone who says "Obama's got a great withdrawal plan" when asked what he stands for.



*cough* rednecks *cough*
I think this is some cryptocon shit.



Nonsense. Misleading press pieces like this are slowing political momentum on the left so that they can have a horse race.



That's being very generous to the press...oh, it was HIS comments that caused the world to forget the definition of the word "REFINE".

Let's see how this guy talks about McCain:


Wow!

So is this guy a McCain guy? Tacked onto the end is this...



Maybe that was an attempt at fair play from the editor? I would have had this guy re-write this.

One problem....Obama has NOT altered his position. ALSO is not the appropriate word.

The guy leaves his email address. I'm sending this to him.

Go ahead and call him a neocon propagandist asshole,while you're at it!!

Hamoth, you must -- a brilliant dissection of slanted/lazy journalism to put it mildly.

Don't get me started on the publication in question and its rampant Zellification.

And here comes the AP...same talking points...check this out:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gXhIn6D...GubXUAD91MMSLG0


Still struggling..



He didn't immediate call a press conference...noooo...it was hasty, out of control, a shamble from the scramble!



Seriously...is there a dictionary shortage. He didn't leave the impression he would refine his position, he said that he would. How does that mean overturning it or reversing it?



Notice they don't compare what this "hard edged" opposition is? It's because he was QUITE CLEAR about invading being a stupid idea. That's what they are comparing...This is like saying:

Person A: "I am not opposed to breaking eggs, but don't smash them on the floor."
Person B: squish.
Person A:"Great, now I have to clean it up. Get me a mop."
Person B:"No. I thought you were against breaking eggs?"
Person A:"What does that have to do with it? Whatever, at least give me a paper towel."
Person B:"Why do you keep changing positions?"

Nonsense.



There we go again, insisting on those facts...

Person A: "You went out last night."
Person B: "No, I was here with you remember?"
Person A: "If you insist..."

UG!

Not as bad as the LA Times, but still has the talking points in there.

Edit:
Also adding I keep re-readin this:
"Now, as he faces an opponent who is a war hero, and tailors his message to the broader electorate"
It might just be terrible grammar...This could mean Obama is facing a broader electorate...that's why compound subjects should not lead pronouns.

Also, hit Google news and enter "refine". Nearly every American article puts "refine" in "quotes". "quotes" are a great way to imply someone is a lying douchebag without having the stones or case enough to justify saying it.

For example I might refer to the La Times as a "news" paper.

I might say that I'm shocked at which "journalists" are keeping their jobs over there.

According to the New York-based Jewish daily, The Forward, the purchase of the Times has stirred debate over how Zell, who has a reputation for being a "committed Zionist", would influence the paper's coverage of Israel.[6] One former Los Angeles Times political reporter, Ken Reich, assumes the paper's editorial policies will be shaped to "some degree." Reich said, "If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests... It would not take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East. I tend to expect this to happen."[6]

In a sharply critical June 2008 opinion piece for the Washington Post entitled, "The L.A. Times's Human Wrecking Ball", veteran Los Angeles-based editor and columnist Harold Meyerson took Zell to task for "taking bean counting to a whole new level", asserting that "he's well on his way to... destroying the L.A. Times."
(snip)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_zell

Perhaps, but this is something I've noticed with them from 2004 on. They just write like bitchy entertainment reporters - greedily clinging to juicy tidbits of cheap gossip and inuendo and posing as a gwoan up newspaper.

Marvelous spinoff after the Tribune takeover - and being fired from the NEW LA Times ...
Truthdig, a progressive online magazine aka www.robertscheer.com

.....
Scheer said in an interview with "Democracy Now!" that the paper's owner, the Tribune Company, currently owns a newspaper and a television station in the same market, which is illegal^{[citation needed]}, and may have fired Scheer in an attempt to make it easier to obtain a waiver permitting the dual ownership from the FCC. An estimated 300 people protested Scheer's firing outside the Times downtown office, and many readers, including actress Barbra Streisand, publicly announced the cancellation of their subscriptions to the Times.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scheer...es_relationship

Well now I've stepped in it. Peter wrote me back and says he would be happy to answer my questions and provided me a number to call him. I'm going to prepare an outline of questions, and then I will call him on Monday.

I have to say that I'm surprised that he A: Read more than the first sentence, and B: politely responded. I had to apologize for my rude and insulting tone ( I didn't really expect him to read my email ) . I asked him how a story like this comes into being, who edited it, and if there are resources he suggests I consult to learn more.

Here are a few of the questions I have.
1. About editors, do you feel that they are there for the authors in the same capacity that they used to be?

2. How was this story created?

3. How many drafts were there?

4. Who edited it?

5. How long did the whole process take?

6. How many people contirbuted to the final written piece?

7. How much freedom were you given in authoring this and what was the nature of the assignment when it was given to you?

8. What research was done? Is this basically a paraphrased AP release, or did you make calls to the campaigns and do leg work / phone work on this?

9. Critics of this story have said that it's furthering an argument between two arbitrary poles, that group all of Obama's positions as "anti-war" on one side, and McCains as "pro-war" on the other side. Do you feel that this characterization of the candidate's position is an accurate one?

10. What did you feel were the lessons learned from the swift boat reporting of 2004?

Some specifics on the article that begged clarification or justification:

1. You write about "Obama's attempts to explain his stance". Which stance? The article is about his stance on withdrawal phase of the OEF, and he has clearly outlined his time table. Are you having a hard time understanding his stance?

2. calling a rare do-over news conference is a pretty loaded term rife with implications. When this is preoceeded with a sentence citing such weak evidence as "empahsis" that "might" "seem" to "signify" a "slip", this seems unjustified - like a hefty bit of editorializing for someting that could just as easily be spun unfairly the other way to say "Ending questions, Obama rapidly responded to the media's quibles". Why the school-yard rhetoric?

3. What is Obama's Singature issue? In the article you surprised me (an Obama supporter) by saying it's his withdrawal plans. How does one come to define what a candidate's signture issue is? I based it on what he has a good record for in his career, and what he talked about in speeches and his books.

4. Throoughout this article a forumula of assertion followed by a few select facts to back it up appears. For example it is claimed that he has moved to the center...and a few facts are provided to prove this. It is claimed that he has changed his position, and text from his website is provided (out of context) to back this up. But one can cherry pick anyobody's words to back up any claim. The question I have is which came first, the characterizations or the lists of facts?

5. Did you personall go to Obama's site to get that quote? And if so, why did you ignore that next to that quote you listed, he also disproves your prior claim that his position has changed for political convenience: "; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

6. In the article the word "refine" is put in quotes, as if to signify to the reader that this word is not being used as intended. After reviewing Obama's remarks I can't understand how this was decided. You are clearly not alone in this characterization, however what facts are used to justify this special effort made to qualify the Senator's comments?

7. Taken in the plain meaning from websters, "refine" means to improve upon. Is this enough to justify the claim that Obama has reversed or changed his position?

8. If not, then how is the ending of the article justified in saying that McCain has "also" changed his position?

9. Why are characterizations such as Obama "struggling", "hastily", "scrambling", etc being used where McCain is characterized as "fighting", "Responding", and "hero".

10. Do you agree that referring to McCain as a war hero is an accurate and complimentary term without acknowledging Obama as a civil rights hero for his service as a volunteer constitutional lawyer? Is service in war more suitable for mention than service in other areas?

(If I have to clarify: The nonpartisan reader is left to wonder why one heroism is mentioned every time the candidates name is mentioned, but another variety of heroism is not - this seems like a typical bias that a fair editor should help catch.)

EDIT: I forgot to say, I would love input on these questions, ways to sharpen them and or make them more clear and fair. I'm particularly interested in feedback from our resident members of the press.

This is insane! Obama did not lie us into war! Obama did not remove the Constitution! Obama did not remove our good name throughout the world and put in its place a swastika!

Now we wish to blather over stances in democracy! This is misdirection that would be envied by the great Houdini himself.

This blatant propagandizing media circus while our very fabric of society hangs by a thread. We celebrate as the hand of God himself writes on the wall. The hour of the death of America is at hand, where is the media to publicize that?

That's why I would like to make some good out of an opportunity to candidly interview an LA times reporter. I would like to make this a story about "how news is crafted" basically. This is an issue about product quality control with the media. I want to know how this happens.

“But conventional thinking in Washington lined up for war. The pundits judged the political winds to be blowing in the direction of the President. Despite - or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions. Too many took the President at his word instead of reading the intelligence for themselves. Congress gave the President the authority to go to war. Our only opportunity to stop the war was lost.

I made a different judgment. I thought our priority had to be finishing the fight in Afghanistan. I spoke out against what I called 'a rash war' in Iraq. I worried about, ‘an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.’ The full accounting of those costs and consequences will only be known to history. But the picture is beginning to come into focus.”
—Barack Obama, Clinton, Iowa, September 12, 2007

... more


At a Glance :

Judgment You Can Trust

Bring Our Troops Home

Press Iraq’s leaders to reconcile

Regional Diplomacy

Humanitarian Initiative

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/


Just more attack .... spin .... only !

Trying to show Obama as a flip-flopper is just rovian politics. Saying that the surge worked is a political victory for McCain. That worthless fook Murtha has had some recent comments about the surge too. Don't ask me why I have license to call Murtha a worthless fook, not worth the time.

Reality is that Iraqis are to be credited with reductions in violence but the Summer is not over yet. And did the Bush Adminstration itself add to the chaos because of Conflicts of Interest concerning the Oil industry itself like Hunt Oil of West Texas and Kurds ?

Keeping the eye on the ball here, Rove is trying to minimize Obama's ability to raise money. It's all about money to people like Rove who will exploit Christians for his own objectives in my opinion. So Rove in his disillusioned world in my opinion, seeks to discredit a finanacial difference between democrats and republicans. That is part of McCain labelling Obama as dishonest turning down public financing. Hell if the Republicans had not run the economy into the toilet, maybe public financing would have sufficed, not now though.

Anyway, the summer is not over yet in Iraq. Whitehouse makes statements like "We are confident we can make future security arrangements with Iraq very soon". Meanwhile Iraqis are looking to the expiration of United Nation's security Agreements expiring in late December as a possible date in resolution of these conflicts. If Bush keeps interferring with Iraq's Oil Industry it may never be resolved. In addition, there is no telling if stability would have normalized sooner if Coalition troop reductions were exercised in the past. Bottom-line is now Gates is calling the shots and I would not fuck with him. There is enough chaos now without politics.

Good-luck.

Oops, you know when you own Rove he'll say, "Do the Numbers" and cop an arrogant attitude like Addington or Yoo. He's a pussy in my world, a lapdog to the Devil.

Obama is a new player in politics. His public financing was one of brilliance, inspiration, and worked perfectly well against the big money players. The rules of public financing were broken by McSame while Obama changed his mind with good reason. Is it right to point out a man changing his mind when the other has broken law? Obama is still using public money, it is just through another conveyance. When we address this during the debate, perhaps McSame will be able to give us his reasoning for breaking the rules, as we all know why Obama changed his mind. The answers will show where their loyalties lay.

More fodder .... for you .

Attacking" McCain's Military Record
What Wesley Clark really said; how the press missed it

By Zachary Roth
...
This is the perfect embodiment of the press's unbelievably destructive habit of assessing every piece of campaign rhetoric for its political acuity, rather than for its validity and accuracy. Clark's comments may (or may not) have been impolitic. But that has no bearing on their validity or lack thereof—which is how the news media should be evaluating them.
...


Ads like this just slipped through, I guess. Even if McCain weren't running on his military record, it's undoubtedly something that could convince many voters, rightly or wrongly, that he has the experience to be commander in chief. Why should it be out of bounds for Democrats to argue that McCain's particular military experience has done little to prepare him for the decisions he'll have to make as president?

...
Like Klein, the NBC team couldn't resist playing political consultants, pronouncing that Clark's comments "weren't helpful at all to the Obama campaign," without bothering to consider whether Clark's argument might make sense.
...
Arguing that a person's record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute "attacking" their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/attacking...ilitary_rec.php

WOW. That add did him NO favors. I hope they run the heck out of it.

First they kinda amateurishly try to build him up...they make some interesting questions and then show him looking helpless in a cot. I thought it was a spoof and read for the "paid for by comedy central" or something...

Yea really lame ...

.... all the subliminal "false messages" flashed across the screen too ...

been out there for 3-4 months, minimum !

The problem is, (1) He after being captured gave up everything without becoming a Vietnamese citizen. (2) Being a Vietnamese ace is not a plus (3) He really sucks to listen to, I hate that whistling S he has, plus, he makes chloral hydrate look like an amphetamine, paint drying a sports event, coma look like a heart attack. (4) I can trust him like fire wont burn. (5) Not only was he born with a silver spoon, he carries it in his ass. Has he actually earned one damn dollar that did not come from the government, or his new mommy? (6) How does free trade put people to work other than cashiers, truck drivers, and long shoreman? (7) What the hell is his plan to pay off this damn debt without putting America back to work. We can take all of the schooling in the world, without a job, we are the most educated unemployed people in the world.(8) How about making steel here, what a concept. How about making cars here, how about making something other than unemployment.(9) How about telling the truth, like about your money raising, ect... assbag. (10) I cant wait to get a new job from that Columbia trade deal, perhaps I can sell coffee from my red wagon to all the illegals around here. They love buying from pushcarts on the sidewalk.

Do any of you want to add to these questions? Is there anything you would like to ask one of the reporters behind one of these manufactured stories? Imagine that he is sitting right in front of you...what would you want to learn from this person?

Holy shit...he's at it again.





On and on and on.

The LAT has become what appear to be a right wing rag.

I would like to know why they did not verify their stories. Why is it that I can watch the BBC and hear the truth and not on our stations here.

He started wearing the lapel pin when a veteran gave him one, and asked him politely to wear it for his buddies.

Huh...do we have a link on that? I'll mention it to this guy when I speak with him on Monday.

I get ya...I'll ask him how his stories are fact-checked.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/...1779544,00.html

I suppose that the main question I would ask him is this:

What you feel the role of inference plays in political articles? You are mainly objecting not to the body of the article but the inferences it leads to. Should a reporter be cognizant of the inferences injected into the subtext of the article which are a reflection of the author's biases?

Great job!

I'd ask him what does he mean by "nuanced"? Seems to be the catch word the corporate media is using replacing "flip-flop" with Kerry. Is anything that isn't black and white "nuanced"?

Also question on patriotism is right on - why does he associate POW w/ patriotism consistently and contrasting with Obama as if he doesn't measure up? Did he listen to Obama's speech on patriotism and maybe he should report on the "nuances" of patriotism!

I agree remind him of difference between opposition to starting the war and "managing" the mess the Republicans and McCain left.