Recently in News Media Category

I received an email back from the editor of AsiaNews with regards to their crazy story on the looming North American Union and the Amero. Attached was a letter from the article's author that was a history lesson stating that the US government doesn't always do what the people want. I realized then that I over-emphasized the ridiculousness of the ideas in the article and under-emphasizing the flimsiness of the author's sources.

I sent a clarifying email, pointing out that whatever my difference of opinion with the author, his research did not even reach high school levels of acceptability. Just to recap, here's what the author offered as evidence that "the United States along with Canada and Mexico, appears to be getting ready to launch a new single currency - the Amero":

• a report by the Council on Foreign Relations. The report nowhere calls for an Amero.
• a clip of a CNBC report he found on YouTube. The report cites no evidence, it's an interview with some conspiracy theorist who urges viewers to google Amero and see what the government is planning.
• a webpage of an alarmist far-right US radio host. The site features pictures of fake Amero coins which were made by a private Denver company.
• a suggestion that the Denver mint, currently being renovated, is actually being turned into an Amero factory.
• a Wikipedia page. The page he references merely discusses the CFR report and notes that one of its members has publicly called for an Amero.

Not one single person was interviewed. Not one actual piece of evidence that there are plans for an Amero was presented. He simply touted internet rumors.

If they can publish this, how do we know they're getting Lebanon, Indonesia or, for goodness' sake, Chinaright? This is a Church institution putting this stuff out. This is very very frustrating.

I read AsiaNews just about every day. It's a news service compiled by the Church's missionary congregation that features reports from around the world. Until today, I assumed they were a fairly reliable source of news.

But if they can get something like this so drastically wrong, one has to wonder what else they get wrong.

Really? Do they really think this?

It's on Wikipedia and YouTube - it must be true! And the Denver mint is being converted into an Amero-factory AS WE SPEAK! AMERICA LOSES MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY NEXT WEEK!

Here's the kicker:

If you read the entire article, you'll discover that the author did not interview a single person. It's based entirely on what likely amounted to 5 minutes of googling. He encountered some kooky websites - likely the products of either one-world wannabe master-planners or nationalist conspiracy-theorist fear-mongerers who respectively have dreams or nightmares about the North American Union - and wrote them up as newsworthy. Had he tried talking to actual Americans he would have found that not only is the idea of a looming North American Union a fiction, it's also opposed by any American with any sense. Sure, it's possible to find individuals, like former Mexican president Vincente Fox and various (looney-tunes) think tanks and opinion journalist, who favor the idea, but there are certainly no plans in the works.

I'm not being flippant here, this is kinda serious. I honestly don't care that they got this particular story wrong. I can't imagine it hurting anybody to propagate the idea that a North American Union is coming. This would be a laughing matter if it weren't for the source.

The problem is that up until now, I've considered AsiaNews a reliable source. They report on wars, refugees, famine, disease and religious tensions (including the persecution of Christians) around the world, and I've assumed they get reports from contacts "on the ground" so to speak. Yet this article was clearly written by somebody who does not live in America and has not the slightest clue about such things as a North American Union and a continental currency. If they can get something so completely wrong that's so easily refutable, how can we honestly trust what they have to say about complex civil wars on the other side of the world? We should hope that they take greater care to verify stories about more serious subjects, but really, how can we know that?

I have emailed the editor and asked for an explanation. I'll let you know what I hear.

Ouch. I have to agree about their international coverage, though it's important to note that the Economist is also valuable because in all of its coverage, it packs a lot of punch into very brief articles. I appreciate that.

I was just listening to a piece from NPR's On the Media about the Google purchase of YouTube. The analyst pointed out that three years ago. if you were predicting the future of the Internet, YouTube, MySpace and iTunes would not have been on your radar.

Furthermore, in the past month:

I generally appreciate NPR, but their commentariat is the absolute worst, and sometimes I just don't get to the dial fast enough, and so I find myself listening to ageing nutbag Daniel Schorr get all misty-eyed reminiscing about Fidel Castro while spitting in the face of the Cuban exile community.

Emphasis mine. Funny that Schorr doesn't mention that Castro also survived millions of Cubans whom he immiserated in poverty, and tens of thousands of Cubans who've drowned in the Caribbean trying to flee his tyranny, and thousands more Cubans who have been killed by landmines trying to reach the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, and thousands of Cuban dissidents who died in prison or were executed after no trial or a show trial.

None of this matters to award-winning media legend Daniel Schorr when he spies an opportunity to stick his thumb in the eyes of Castro's enemies.

Austin Ruse tries to peer into the soul of my favorite Vatican reporter. A very interesting article. I pretty much agree with Ruse, but I hasten to add that I don't much care where Allen's sympathies lie because he performs a marvelous job as a reporter. He doesn't editorialize and he treats a subject with a precise fairness.

Still, Allen's prejudices can sometimes bubble to the surface, such as during his coverage of the release of Deus Caritas Est when he told NPR that the encyclical was Pope Benedict's version of "compassionate conservatism." Blech. Thanks for gettin' the message out, John. In that light, it is good to keep in mind that despite the great pains he goes to to present his stories fairly and accurately, he is a man with beliefs and a point of view, but nobody is immune from that charge.

I've had these links bookmarked for a while, but am trying to clean house, so here they are, posted with relaively little comment.

Cathy Seipp sort of bugs me (all pro-choice "conservatives" do, I guess), but she's pretty good at exposing journalistic lunacies. Read this and contemplate the fact that much of what is commonly called "news" is written by such narcissists.

Stanley Kurtz is rock-solid on marriage. He had a good column a few weeks ago whose money quote is the subtitle: "If everything is marriage, then nothing is."

Read the rest.

...can be found in one sentence here.

Now most sane people might say that voting is the way the citizen participates in his democracy. But that's not how the press sees it. They see their product as the liturgy of democracy. So what does that make them? The priest, bishop, pope.

That odor you smell is the stench of smug self-importance. It's also the smell of irony: the irony of an East Coast Liberal telling men - not the national collective mind you, but individual citizens - that their identity comes from what they read in the NY Times and the Boston Globe. So much for individuality and disdain for institutional pre-programming! I guess adhering to a common faith is only bad if that faith is in God.

UPDATE: Added previously omitted link.

I subscribe to Yahoo's RSS feed for opinion articles. Yes, I have to deal with junk from The Nation and Ted Rall, not to mention The Huffington Post. In the end, it's been worth it for Maggie Gallagher, and the occasional Bill Buckley piece that is coherent these days.

Imagine my chagrin yesterday when I opened the feed and saw a piece from.... Wonkette!

That's the last straw. I'm dumping Yahoo.

Can NPR stop pretending that Dahlia Lithwick is an analyst? Every time she opens her mouth the piece should be labeled "Liberal spin."

Discussing two of Judge Alito's rulings: that a Christmas display was constitutional "even though" it contained "overtly Christian symbols" and a decision to let Christians evangelize ("proselytize," she says) at a public school, she said Alito "has clearly been a fan of allowing greater entanglement between Church and state."

Entanglement. This is how these people really think.

in France?

Would it be politically incorrect to note that this is the fourth report I've read on this in the past three days and the first to note the Muslim flavor of the rioters?