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| 5/23 |
| 2007/5/9-14 [Politics/Domestic/911, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:46572 Activity:kinda low |
5/9 Pheonomenal interview with NBC Terrorist Analyst (Steve Emerson) about
the recent terror arrest. Includes commentary about how serious it
was, and how it was covered by the press. -emarkp
(Warning: 18MB mp3)
link:csua.org/u/ino
\_ Steven Emerson: crank:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1443
\_ Quite likely a Mossad agent spreading disinformation.
\_ That's it! It's the Joooooos!
\_ Surely you understand the difference between the
"Joooooos!" and the Nation of Isreal. On second thought,
perhaps you do not.
\_ Always the way Jew haters claim to be PC yet justify
hating Israel. I'll bet you even have a Jewish friend!
\_ A Jewish wife, even. But if it makes you feel better
to believe that I am anti-Semetic and out to get you,
be my guest.
\_ You think that makes it ok sort of like how so
many African-American comedians and rappers use
the N-word? It's never ok.
\_ It's never okay to critisize Isreal's foreign
policy, because some crank might call you
anti-semtic for doing so? Gotcha.
\_ FAIR: a bunch of cranks.
\_ He's a crank, they're cranks, you're a crank. You know what
the odds of The Press actually covering something up are?
Nil.
\_ Oh, you mean like how everyone was slow to mention that the
guys were Muslims and three were illegals?
\_ I heard both almost immediately from NPR and Australian
Broadcast Corporation. Who do you listen to?
\_ Typical American isn't listening to either or even
aware it is possible or there's even a reason to.
American news certainly didn't report it.
\_ It certainly never happens in France.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1639538,00.html
\_ The Press don't cover stuff up? Wow, naive. The Press is
just a bunch of people like anyone else. Sometimes they
get busted big time like Dan "False but Accurate" Rather,
or the faked pictures coming out of the Israel/Gaza area.
But since they're the only source of information for most
people, they can and do cover all sorts of things and get
away with most of it. How would you know otherwise? Some
blog? pft.
\_ If you have one source of information, sure, faking
things is easy, and covering it up is done all the time.
In a case like this where all of the details are
available to the public, where's the cover up? I missed
it.
\_ Most news today comes from AP or Reuters so no they
really don't have more than one source and in a case
like this if you were reading the newspapers or
watching cable or nightly news you didn't know. Glad
you were tuned in to Australia's news. Americans
didn't know for a while and even then were only told
because of information leak from places like AU.
Fortunately the days of Dan Rather and his followers
are numbered but many many many of the dinosaurs
from his era are still in power running the news.
\_ So what you're really decrying is that most
American news outlets get their news from two
sources, not that these news outlets are actively
covering up the news. I can get behind that;
the Americans and Brit intel services got bit in
the ass by the one-source problem when it came to
the Niger memo. Also, none of this rescues
Steven Emerson from being a self-appointed
terrorism expert with a penchant for overstating
the danger and attempting to rile up anti-Islamic
sentiment.
\_ Reuters = AP for the most part so one source.
And when all the news comes from one source
like in any industry you get the monopoly
effect: crap product due to lack of
competition. So the question becomes, is it
crap product because of monopolistic
incompetence or is it crap because some people
are pushing an agenda? I'd say a fair amount
of each. Why else would anyone have to read
news from another country to find out what is
going on in their own? As far as Steven
Emerson goes, I have no idea who he is, have
not seen him on TV or read his article(s) and
don't really care so I'll happily accept your
description of him as a self appointed expert.
Given that he's a self appointed expert, how
or why is he on TV or any other media getting
any attention? Because the news is crap in
this country. Self appointed experts being
just one sign of that.
\_ Agreed on the crap product; I tend to lay
blame for such on laziness rather than mal-
intent. The thing is, it takes an effort to
put out good news, and simply reaching for
the loudest name on a list is not enough.
There was a scene in Control Room that
illustrated this, where an editor just
grabbed a talking head with an opposing
view rather than taking the time to find
a person with an actual thought-out and
informative viewpoint.
\_ I've read enough insider info and seen
enough on-air or in the papers to have
an honest belief that agenda driven ill
will is responsible for a fair amount of
the broken media system today. My
favorite in recent years was the 2004
election with Dan Rather on air (I love
Dan, he's so blatant) trying desperately
to claim that Bush could still lose even
though it was mathematically done and his
co-anchor (forget his name) trying to
correct him, leading to Dan to tell the
other guy he can't do math, the other guy
responding he was a math teacher for 20
years before broadcasting. Dan looked
positively ill. Most of it is more
subtle than Rather because they are acts
of omission such as the identity of these
guys. You can't know what you can't
know, eh?
\_ Dan Rather is one guy. One guy on one
network does not a cover-up make.
Hell, even Murdoch's Faux News Channel
isn't a cover-up. It's a farce, but
it's not a cover-up.
\_ "Dan Rather" is used as an example
because it's so easy and obvious.
I could have used other names and
events but I wasn't looking for an
"Oh yeah, URL?!" response. As far
as Fox is concerned, they lean
right. CBS, ABC, CNN, NBC all lean
left about the same distance. Big
deal. It is still wrong and stupid
that an American has to read Aussie
news to learn about an event in the
U.S.
\_ Fox doesn't _lean_ right. The
Tower of Pisa _leans_ right,
from a certain perspective. Fox
actively promotes attacks on
people and views not
sufficiently conservative.
That's not _leaning_, that's
actively promoting. Also, lack
of coverage is bad reporting,
not cover-up. Agreed that it's
not acceptable. |
| 5/23 |
|
| www.fair.org/index.php?page=1443 terrorism expert Steven Emerson help push the world toward nuclear war? On Sunday, June 28, a sensational story appeared in the British newspaper The Observer: "Pakistan was planning nuclear first strike on India." war was credited to an unnamed "senior Pakistani weapons scientist who has defected." The next day, papers on the Indian subcontinent were full of the news. "The scenario is frightening," stated the Times of India (6/29/98). On Wednesday, July 1, a USA Today report by Barbara Slavin named the defector, Iftikhar Chaudhry Khan. The press scrambled to contact New York lawyer Michael Wildes, who represents Khan in his attempt to get political asylum. Emerson, in an odd role for a journalist, worked behind the scenes to interest reporters in Wildes' client. A top network news producer says his congressional sources and news contacts were tipped to the story by Emerson. Slavin says she was mainly convinced of the story's legitimacy because of one of the Observer's three writers was associated with the prestigious military analysis group Jane's, but that Emerson's involvement added credibility. Attorney Wildes himself says, "Emerson was helpful in corroborating information and making scientific clarifications." As the story matured, skepticism mounted about Khan, especially after sources in Pakistan described him as "a former low-level accountant at a company that makes bathroom fixtures." Emerson's priorities Emerson has escaped notice in the affair--but his efforts had helped craft a hard-to-erase public perception that Pakistan was the bad guy among Asia's nuclear novices. He presents himself as a journalist, yet he handed off what appeared to be a major story to rivals. A closer look at Emerson's career suggests his priority is not so much news as it is an unrelenting attack against Arabs and Muslims. From this perspective, his gambit with Khan seems easier to understand: Pakistan is a Muslim nation, while India's nuclear program has long been linked to Israel. As the Indian Express noted (6/29/98), Pakistani politicians were "convinced that they were about to be attacked by India, possibly with Israeli assistance." Emerson's willingness to push an extremely thin story--with potentially explosive consequences--is also consistent with the lengthy list of mistakes and distortions that mar his credentials as an expert on terrorism. Those blemishes had, for a time, seemed to drive Emerson from major news outlets. Muslim crusade--an "anti-terrorism" journal that he uses as a soapbox, associates whose reputations aren't as damaged as his, and, as in the Khan episode, staying behind the curtains. Emerson was back in the news last August--when terrorist bombs shattered US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. While most Americans watched the grisly nightly news in open-mouthed dismay, self-styled anti-terrorism experts seemed to be jostling with one another to grab a few minutes on Rivera Live, the Today show and CNN. For a brief few days, they even displaced the Monicagate pundits. In the vanguard of the chattering heads was Emerson, whose past errors were quickly forgotten in the wake of African and Middle Eastern carnage. "Middle Eastern Trait" Emerson gained prominence in the early '90s. He published books, wrote articles, produced a documentary, won awards and was frequently quoted. He gets to people who were at the events," says Jeffrey T Richelson, author of A Century of Spies. Emerson's book, The Fall of Pan Am 103, was chastised by the Columbia Journalism Review, which noted in July 1990 that passages "bear a striking resemblance, in both substance and style" to reports in the Post-Standard of Syracuse, NY Reporters from the Syracuse newspaper told this writer that they cornered Emerson at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference and forced an apology. A New York Times review (5/19/91) of his 1991 book Terrorist chided that it was "marred by factual errorsand by a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias." His 1994 PBS video, Jihad in America (11/94), was faulted for bigotry and misrepresentations--veteran reporter Robert Friedman (The Nation, 5/15/95) accused Emerson of "creating mass hysteria against American Arabs." Emerson was wrong when he initially pointed to Yugoslavians as suspects in the World Trade Center bombing (CNN, 3/2/93). He was wrong when he said on CNBC (8/23/96) that "it was a bomb that brought down TWA Flight 800." Emerson's most notorious gaffe was his claim that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing showed "a Middle Eastern trait" because it "was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible." Emerson had been a regular source and occasional writer for the Washington Post; his name doesn't turn up once in Post archives after Jan. USA Today mentioned Emerson a dozen times before September 1996, none after. "He's poison," says investigative author Seymour Hersh, when asked about how Emerson is perceived by fellow journalists. In 1997, for example, an Associated Press editor became convinced that Emerson was the "mother lode of terrorism information," according to a reporter who worked on a series that looked at American Muslim groups. As a consultant on the series, Emerson presented AP reporters with what were "supposed to be FBI documents" describing mainstream American Muslim groups with alleged terrorist sympathies, according to the project's lead writer, Richard Cole. One of the reporters uncovered an earlier, almost identical document authored by Emerson. "He had edited out all phrases, taken out anything that made it look like his." Another AP reporter, Fred Bayles, recalls that Emerson "could never back up what he said. We couldn't believe that document was from the FBI files." Emerson's contribution was largely stripped from the series, and he retaliated with a "multi-page rant," according to Cole. AP Executive Editor Bill Ahearn does not dispute that the incident happened, but refuses to comment or to release documents because the episode was deemed an "internal matter." A ranking AP editor in Washington says: "We would be very, very, very, very leery of using Steve Emerson." Also during Emerson's lean years, he scored a November 1996 hit in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (11/3/96)--owned by right-wing Clinton-basher Richard Mellon Scaife, who also partially funded Jihad in America. Considering Scaife's patronage, it is not surprising that Emerson declared that Muslim terrorist sympathizers were hanging out at the White House. Emerson had a similar commentary piece printed three months earlier in the Wall Street Journal (8/5/96), one of the writer's few consistent major outlets. Tampa's "terrorists" His most fruitful media foray during this period was at a Tampa, Florida, newspaper. Emerson's Jihad in America video had, in part, targeted Islamic scholars at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Following Emerson's leads, a reporter for the Tampa Tribune launched a series of articles in 1995 titled "Ties to Terrorists." The series and subsequent articles relied on Emerson as a primary source. The Tribune's managing editor, Bruce Witwer, wrote in a July 15, 1997, letter to an attorney: "Emerson is an acknowledged expert in the field, while he may be controversial. But the information that Emerson is "controversial"--much less Emerson's record of mistakes and the allegations of bias that swirl around him--has never been disclosed by the Tribune to its readers. The Tribune's articles lacked balance and fairness, according to other newspapers that have covered the events, including the St. The Herald (3/22/98) ran a lengthy analysis of the Tribune's reporting and concluded the Tampa newspaper had ignored "perfectly innocent" interpretations of activity, giving vent only to characterizations that suggested "extremely dark forces were on the prowl." Among the Tribune's and Emerson's charges are that Muslims, while at the University of South Florida, were active Islamic Jihad commanders. Emerson told Congress: "One of the world's most lethal terrorist factions was based out of Tampa." If that's so, federal agents must have missed something. Although the FBI and INS have been searchi... |
| media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1639538,00.html uk One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians. Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service LCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been "excessive" and could even be fanning the flames of the violence. Mr Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars. "Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today. "Having satellites trained on towns across France 24 hours a day showing the violence would have been wrong and totally disproportionate ... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you're broadcasting," he said. Mr Dassier denied he was guilty of "complicity" with the French authorities, which this week invoked an extraordinary state-of-emergency law passed during the country's war with Algeria 50 years ago. But he admitted his decision was partly motivated by a desire to avoid encouraging the resurgence of extreme rightwing views in France. French broadcasters have faced criticism for their lack of coverage of the country's worst civil unrest in decades. Public television station France 3 has stopped broadcasting the numbers of torched cars while other TV stations are considering following suit. "Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?" asked Patrick Lecocq, editor-in-chief of France 2 Rival news organisations today questioned the French broadcasters' decision to temper coverage of the riots. John Ryley, the executive editor of Sky News, said his channel would have handled a similar story in Britain very differently. We would have monstered the story, and I didn't get the impression that happened in France," he said. |