The Beeb

The local NPR station likes to broadcast the BBC news at noon. Thanks to them, I know that when I hear a journalist with an English accent I'm being lied to.

Jefferson on journalism

The more things change...

TO JAMES MONROE

Monticello, Jan. 18. 1819

You oblige me infinitely, dear Sir, by sending me the Congressional documents in pamphlet form. For as they come out by piece-meal in the newspapers I never read them. And indeed I read no newspapers now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, as being the only truths we can rely on in a newspaper.

NYT bogosity

Wolfram Research's Theo Gray uses Mathematica to dismantle, pulverize and incinerate a snarky little chart in a recent issue of a New York "news-paper".

Here's the Mathematica Demonstration Theo wrote.

Why are the media squandering their credibility?

Because they won't need credibility come the Glorious Millenium of Obama.

Well-crafted death propaganda

I'll reproduce this little bit of death propaganda in its entirety, as heard on NPR (of course) this morning. Lefty memes and traditional NPR tropes galore:

• the obfuscating term "stem cell research"
• human beings as property to be disposed of
• the only choices: help other couples or discard embryos
• be like the rich and well-educated ignorati of Chicago: support embryonic stem cell research
• and a special kick in the face for Catholics

Couples seeking infertility treatment overwhelmingly support embryonic stem cell research. The data comes from a new survey of patients at a Chicago fertility center.

Nearly three in four infertility patients said they think unused embryos should be available for stem cell research. And it matters what those people think, says Doctor Tarun Jain.

JAIN: These embryos belong solely to the infertility couples who created them. They are in charge of what happens to these embryos.

Jain directs in-vitro fertilization at the University of Illinois Fertility Center. His survey shows infertility patients are more likely to back stem cell research than the general population is.

JAIN: If they have these extra embryos, in general they would prefer to help other couples rather than discard these embryos.

Jain found that support for stem cell research increases with age, income and education levels. Catholic respondents show the same level of support as the whole survey population.

I’m Gabriel Spitzer, Chicago Public Radio.

Benedict XVI on the media

This excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI's second Regina Cæli address in 2005 seems appropriate for the current silly season in America: the media can promote knowledge, dialog and peace, or prejudice, contempt and violence. The perennial remedies are personal responsibility, objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good.

Responsibility and respect for human dignity seem to be basic human habits learned (or not) at a young age in the family; perhaps objectivity and sight of the common good are habits of thought that come with maturity. Can they be taught? Are they? What would an objective media serving the common good even look like? [how about C-SPAN? -ed.]

Anyways,

World Communications Day is being celebrated this Sunday on the theme: "The communications media: at the service of understanding among peoples". In today's world of imagery, the mass media effectively become an extraordinary resource to promote solidarity and understanding within the human family. We have had incredible proof of this recently on the occasion of the death and solemn funeral rites of my beloved Predecessor, John Paul II. It all depends, however, on how these means are used.

These important tools of communication can support reciprocal knowledge and dialogue or, on the contrary, fuel prejudice and contempt between individuals and peoples; they can contribute to spreading peace or fomenting violence. This is why an appeal must always be made to personal responsibility; all must do their part to ensure objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good in all forms of communication. In this way they contribute to bringing down the walls of hostility that continue to divide humanity, and to strengthening the bonds of friendship and love which are signs of God's Kingdom in history.

(Hmm... insidious politics worked its way back in.)

What do Quaker maids wear?

"I remember them fondly," she recalled.

91%

How can this be? I haven't watched teevee news for a decade and haven't read national news in a newspaper for five years or so, but my Pew News IQ is 91. The only answer I missed was the number of US troops killed in Iraq since 2003 - I guessed a little high.

The Associated Press and fair use

Ann Althouse says "You go, girl" to Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who says, "Sue me, AP!", while Nancy Nall sees AP's point.

Crappy journalism

My guess is that journalists who can't write go into teevee journalism. Take a look at this report from the CBS affiliate WCAX in Burlington, Vermont: we have a number used in place of a word...

The community is 1 of the most conservative in the Amish Christian sect.

...and no notion of how crapping in a bucket is a central tenet of Amish religious belief:

And the practice has been to collect the waste in a bucket and dump it onto a field. But the county says they have to install a holding tank and hire a certified sewage hauler.

Swartzentruber is refusing to pay the fine of more than $500. During a break while tilling a field, he told The Associated Press he'd rather go to jail than violate his religious principles.

I suppose it has something to do with their religious notion of simplicity in all things, but the reporter shouldn't make me rely on suppositions.

Angling for a job

Looks like AP journalist Ron Fournier wants to be President Hillary Clinton's press secretary come next January.

A look at public-school abuse of students

Take a look at Hidden Violations by the Illinois-based Small Newspaper Group. As Mark Shea might say, it's reason #345234234 to homeschool.

Someone needs to buy Manny Mogato a dictionary

This isn't quite a picture of panic:

FEATURE-Philippine Catholics afraid of Muslim homeland deal
05 Dec 2007 00:04:18 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Manny Mogato

DATU BLAH SINSUAT, Philippines, Dec 5 (Reuters) - When Christians in the southern Philippines heard that the government and Islamic rebels had agreed to expand a homeland for Muslims on their island, they panicked.

"We started buying some weapons to defend our families and community," said Berting, a coconut farmer, whose farm sits in the heart of a mainly Muslim province in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Berting, who declined to give his last name, is a Catholic whose grandfather settled in the area nearly 80 years ago when Christian farmers moved to the lush jungles and valleys of mostly Muslim Mindanao.

A conflict between Catholics and Muslims has raged on the island for the past 40 years, resulting in the deaths of 120,000 people. But now the sides say that they are close to a final peace deal and might sign an agreement next year.

After a decade of stop-start negotiations, the government and the country's largest Islamic rebel group agreed last month on the boundaries of a proposed homeland for Muslims, who make up around 20 percent of Mindanao's population.

The next media attack?

From Michael Yon via Glenn Reynolds:

GREAT COUNTERINSURGENCY, KID — don't get cocky: "I had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with General Petraeus. Very interesting series of helicopter flights to several bases. Bottom line is that progress is clear and real, but there are tough days ahead and al Qaeda, for instance, is far from dead. The mood is of cautious optimism, with a concern that some of the very positive media lately might set expectations too high. (That’s right: many military leaders are concerned that the media lately might be too positive.)"

Now I see what the news outlets are up to. They'll start reporting the good news from Iraq and paint it as a paradise so any al-Quaeda breakouts that come along will make it seem worse than ever. When some Mohammad al-Asshat with a bomb blows up himself and the local dogcatcher, journalists will be able to report about the flagging surge, grim milestones, resurgent violence and whatnot just in time for the early primaries.

Preternatural blogging

How does he do it? I forget which of the prolific Blossers runs the Ratzinger Fan club, but he sure makes it look easy when it's not.

Farewell to the bookmobile

Anna Badkhen writes in the Boston Globe about the declining fortunes of the bookmobile. A guy from the Decatur Public Library drove one to Findlay every other week during the summers of the late 1970s. That's where I found my first Isaac Asimov, the sci-fi novels of the 1970s, and a lot of astronomy and cosmology - I'd carry home an armload to stack on a table in the living room and make my way through them in the following days,

The Findlay Bag Ladies

Here's a good article from Dave McClain on the Bag Ladies of Findlay, Illinois (my hometown) - they sew sleeping bags, stuff them with toiletries & personal items and donate them to the Northeast Community Fund Center in Decatur, Illinois to be distributed to the homeless.

Five dollars?

So Lisa was reading this week's Catholic Post and found a small notice about a seminar in Peoria next month that she'd like to attend. When she saw it cost $5.00 per person, she did a double-take and checked that it was sponsored by a Catholic organization; most Catholic activities - even "days of reflection" or whatnot - are priced way out of our league. She read the notice to me while we were working on supper - it sounded Catholic but when she got to the $5.00 part I paused - "That's not the Catholic Post, is it? Five dollars?"

Speaking of money, the Post also had a creepy article about a new push for "stewardship" in the diocese of Los Angeles. The thing read like a Pravda feature about the new Five Year Plan and even featured brave peasants boldly confronting a priest who didn't understand the new idea of stewardship. Apparently these financial Stakhanovites were eager to give but the priest didn't want to preach about money. Reeducation changed that and now he's a steward, too.

Small-town news in the 21st century

This is the future of reporting - these jounalists know what to do with the internet (they could make their urls a little more friendly, though :-)

Don't miss Pauline Briney's weekly column called Methinks. She's been writing essays and poetry for decades and is one of the best essayists around. She was blogging like Lileks when Lileks was in diapers:

At my age, every day is a present and I intend to make the most of each one. Some of my friends say they hate birthdays and they hate getting older. Not me, I've never been an age that caused me to want to go back, because I've learned that every age has its own compensations. Well, I'm only 83 so I'll let you know more about more birthdays when I get old.

She has the Lileks eye for local history, too:

The Sept. 30, 1966 issue of the Findlay Enterprise included this portion of an advertisement for the Johnston’s supermarket located in Findlay. In the top left picture are Cratous and Rita Benner; in the bottom left picture is Gladys Mowry with an unidentified clerk; and Merle Minor is pictured in the photograph at right. Of interest to current-day shoppers, prices for items on sale included, for example, sirloin steak for 99 cents per pound; Del Monte tuna for 29 cents a flat; Meadow Gold ice cream for 69 cents per one-half gallon container; No. 1 Illinois Jonathan apples for 49 cents for a four-pound bag; and Banquet frozen meat pies, six eight-ounce pies for $1.

Going to war and coming home

Dr Jonathan Shay of Boston has won one of this year's Macarthur prizes for his work with American veterans - using Homer's stories of war and homecoming to treat soldiers who fought in Vietnam. From the Boston Globe (registration required):

When Boston psychiatrist Jonathan Shay wanted to understand the psychological toll of the Vietnam War on the veterans he treated, he turned to the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." The classical Greek epics perfectly encapsulate the mental damage of combat, said Shay, who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston.

Online: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character; Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming; NYT, 2003; Hellenic Communication Service, 2003.

Kinda like Easter

Here's an article from the Philadelphia Daily News about the hectic preparations for Yom Kippur (starts tomorrow night) in a large Philly synagogue, Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

But "hectic" bordering on "frantic" may best describe the days leading up to Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown Friday.

"I haven't slept in weeks," Carol Perloff, communications director for Congregation Rodeph Shalom on North Broad Street, said this afternoon. "It's like a meeting of a small nation."

Sounds like the folks who prepare Holy Week & Easter liturgies.