Posts by ThiChi

""Positive human-interest accounts about the armed forces are rare. The press tends to ignore battlefield vignettes from military news services, which could offer an expanded perspective to the public.
For example, 30 U.S. airmen and soldiers delivered school supplies and toys -- gifts from American children -- to an Iraqi village on Monday. Yesterday, Air Force medical teams airlifted a critically ill Iraqi infant and her mother to an Ohio hospital for treatment. ""

I wonder why some just can't deal with positive news?

92

One Soldier's Viewpoint of Iraq

by ThiChi in

one soldier?s viewpoint of iraq.

greetings (names withheld).

as i head off to baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in iraq, i wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media.

ThiChi

You guys really crack me up....

Fox News Fair And Balanced?
By Reed Irvine
November 6, 2003

Salon, a liberal Internet magazine, recently published a long article about a former Fox News employee who scoffs at Fox?s claim that it provides its audience with news that is fair and balanced. Charlie Reina, 55, who left Fox last April after working there for six years as a writer, copy editor and producer, decided to unburden himself about the highly successful cable news channel when Chris Wallace disclosed that he was leaving ABC to take over as host of Fox?s Sunday morning talk show. He said that Wallace?s description of Fox?s reporting as serious, thoughtful and evenhanded had shocked him into posting a message on the Internet to set the record straight.

Reina had previously worked for AP Radio, CBS Radio News and ABC. It must have been a shock for him to transfer to a news organization where liberal Democrats were not running the show and the staff was diversified. It included liberals, moderates and conservatives. If he was uncomfortable in that environment he didn?t make it known to his employer. A Fox spokesman said that Reina liked to boast that he was a liberal Democrat. It appears that his six years at Fox may have moderated some of his liberal views.

He wrote, "Part of what Fox?s message is, and I have to say that to a certain extent I agree with it, is that political correctness is a terrible thing. There are a lot of assumptions that are simply made and not questioned, and a lot of that, liberals like me have perpetrated. And I have to agree there is too much of that."

Reina?s efforts to cite bias that he observed at Fox are not impressive. He cites one case in which he says he refused to do a story about a controversial environmental issue the way his editor wanted it done. He says the editor told him not to let the pro-environmentalists have the last word. If there is any area in which a lot of assumptions are simply made and not questioned by the liberal news media, it is environmental issues. In 1989, Time?s senior editor, Charles Alexander, admitted that in covering the environment, "we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy." When he headed CNN, Ted Turner, who confessed that he was fanatical about the environment, not only had CNN air many dubious environmental programs, but he also boasted that he had been able to influence the TV networks to do "a lot of environmental programming." Telling Reina to not let an environmentalist have the last word can be seen as a subtle reminder that Fox did not want him to cross the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.

Reina says that before he went to work for Fox he was never told how to slant a story. That is probably true, because the editors in the liberal organizations where he worked knew that he was a liberal and didn?t need to be told to give his stories a liberal slant. That was not what Fox wanted. Salon asked, "So people at Fox know what management?s political views are and they know that management wants to see those views reflected on their television screens?

They must have been disappointed by this response from Reina: "Yes, but it?s not because the people on the second floor?Roger Ailes and so forth?come down and say, ?This is what we want.? It kind of filters down. And very often, the people overreact and take it upon themselves and do things that even management wouldn?t expect them to do." He cited an example. When a judge ruled that the words "under God" should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, a Fox anchor said, "Because we want you to have as much information as possible about this important story, we want you to be able to go right to the source. We?re giving you the address and phone number of the judge." Reina said, "Everybody knew that was a call to harass this guy." He said that when the people on the second floor saw that they stopped it immediately.

A spokesman for Fox says that Reina?s records show no evidence that he ever complained about editorial policy. He didn?t get the highest ratings, and when the Iraq War put a strain on the staff he was asked to pitch in and do some extra work. He refused, and that led to his separation from Fox. He was described as a "disgruntled employee." He wasn?t working as a journalist when Salon interviewed him.

Reed Irvine is the Publisher of the AIM Report and can be reached at [email protected].

32

They are playing the Iraq abuse video's all over British tv

by Brummie in

i had hoped the pics would have been faked, the terrorists must be over the moon

ThiChi

I find this article very apropos...

Press can't let abuse story go

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published May 21, 2004

Accounts and graphic photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse persist in the press despite the fact that the story has run its course.
The world already knows salient details of the prisoner humiliation and nudity, the causes of the abuse are under official investigation, and the courts-martial have begun. Yet, the caterwaul in the press against the American military and the war in Iraq continue.
"U.S. faces growing fear of failure," noted one recent Washington Post headline.
ABC was the first to air yet another set of photos -- these showing two U.S. soldiers grinning next to the body of an Iraqi at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Al Arabiya, an Arabic broadcaster, also aired the photos of Army Spc. Charles A. Graner and Spc. Sabrina D. Harman -- both facing a court-martial for prisoner abuse.
As usual, the source of the photos remained unidentified. ABC billed them as "an exclusive" and noted that the soldiers were "posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison's showers."
Positive human-interest accounts about the armed forces are rare. The press tends to ignore battlefield vignettes from military news services, which could offer an expanded perspective to the public.
For example, 30 U.S. airmen and soldiers delivered school supplies and toys -- gifts from American children -- to an Iraqi village on Monday. Yesterday, Air Force medical teams airlifted a critically ill Iraqi infant and her mother to an Ohio hospital for treatment.
The news focus is elsewhere.
Earlier this week, Reuters news service announced that three of its "journalists" -- actually two Iraqi cameramen and a driver under contract -- had been beaten and taunted by Army paratroopers in January.
But an Army investigation released yesterday cleared the soldiers of charges and categorized the incident as "a closed case."
The report noted that "the soldiers clearly believed that these same Iraqis had attacked them previously" and pronounced that the charges of humiliation made by the Iraqis against the soldiers "are not credible."
Tim Graham of the Media Research Center (MRC) noted yesterday that the "gay marriage story" overtook the prisoner abuse story in the press, but only for a day.
"This abuse story is just not going away. It's still the first topic on most network news," Mr. Graham said. "And there's strong focus on the court-martials, on the bad apples -- it's as if those troops represent the military at large, as far as the media is concerned. That is very discouraging."
The center has been following "the bias problem" among broadcasters who use the abuse story to build a case against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. As a sample, the group tracked abuse stories from April 29 through May 11 on NBC and found that the network aired 58 stories on the abuse in that period.
The MRC also found, however, that in the past year, NBC had aired only five stories on mass graves found in Iraq from the Saddam Hussein era.
?Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.

29

"DF'ing does not prevent us from being decent,courteous,considerate,humane"

by Englishman in

*** w74 8/1 pp.

466-473 maintaining a balanced viewpoint toward disfellowshiped ones *** .

13:1, 7.. 18 family members can carry out these scriptural obligations and yet not show themselves out of harmony with a congregational action disfellowshiping one of the family circle.

ThiChi

I did not notice the date of the WT, reading it, I thought it was New information. I felt a joy that the Jws were finally "getting it," I was thinking, "wow, sounds like Ray Franz is back, it echos his words in his second book, ISOCF......

However, when I noticed the date, 1974, Ray probably did write it......

28

What's Your View of Telling A Lie???

by minimus in

jw
friends

do you believe that telling a lie is generally no big deal?

do you try not to lie?

i know some that will speak the truth no matter how much it might hurt.

ThiChi

Lying can be dived into two types: white lies and black lies. A black lie is a statement we make that we know is false. A white lie is a statement we make that is not in itself false but that leaves out a significant part of the truth.

The CIA uses a more elaborate classification: White, gray and black propaganda, gray being a single black lie and black propaganda a black lie falsely attributed to another source.

29

Donald Rumsfeld caption time,

by William Penwell in

.

"oh crap, am i in a lot of doggie doo doo.

ThiChi

Our Nation?s Defense Secretary is doing a great job, and I look forward to another 4 years of his service on the Bush team! We have work to do...two down and six to go.....


Iran	Iraq	Syria	Lybia

Ali Khamenei	Saddam Hussein	Bashar al-Assad	Moammar Gadhafi

Cuba	North Korea	Sudan	Afghanistan

Fidel Castro	Jung-Il Kim	Umar Bashir	Osama bin Laden

398

Wasn't Saddam ousted for doing precisely this sort of thing?

by Simon in

utterly disgusting.

those responsible should be lined against a wall and shot.

publicly.. i think that would win more hearts and minds than bombing cities and using gunships on civilian areas.. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4855930/.

ThiChi

I agree:

""Truman was right to insist that peace would only be realized after the "obliteration" of the Japanese war machine, just as Bush is right about "defeating" the Taliban, al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. It is, therefore, necessary that in the pursuit of real and lasting peace, Israel also be free to destroy its enemies - meaning the terrorists and, yes, their sponsors, who are at war with her, and that she do so before they obtain devastating weapons of mass destruction. ""