Entries Tagged 'MediaSlackers' ↓

Yet again, thanks to Jon Stewart pointing out how retarded CNN is, we are blessed with watching clips of those retards do what they do best: lie their asses off. Who actually believes what the hell they “report” anymore, anyway? Unfortunately, the only time I’ve actually watched CNN in the last five years has been when I’m stuck in an airport terminal and the batteries on all THREE of my electronic, music-playing devices have died.

So, to recap: CNN has used video from Budapest in a report about Belgrade (for those of you not to quick with the world geography, those cities are in two different countries), faked transcripts to try and cover up an interview with a drunken fire official in Florida (it just explains so much, doesn’t it?) and now they are just admitting outright that they are using “unverifiable material” in their reporting. As Stewart said, “Why don’t you just send me the sticker and I’ll put it on my f*cking television.” Priceless!

I have watched PBS’ Frontline and Frontline World programs for years and continually look forward to what they present. I have given examples over and over again on this site of the fine work the Boston-based crew and their team of freelance reporters have done. Just a couple of days ago I promoted the bribery story that Lowell Bergman reported… Hell, Al Pacino has played the part of Bergman in a major Hollywood production, that’s how big a deal he is… But my streak of unchecked praise for this program has sadly come to an end with the news that broke a couple of days ago.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, reported a story last year entitled, “Sick Around the World” which Frontline produced and air on PBS. It was a thorough look into the health care systems in Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. I was very impressed with both the reporting AND the production of the story. So, with great anticipation came Reid’s follow-up report on the state of the American health care system entitled, “Sick Around America“. It coudn’t have been timed any better, with Obama promising to fix this clusterf*** of a system and everyone weighing in with their say. Well, I watched the report and I’m sad to say I wasn’t overly impressed. But after a little digging and another review of the program I realized why I wasn’t so impressed with the report.

Here’s the jist of what has come out since the airing of the story: In “Sick Around the World”, Reid presented the nationalized insurance systems in Canada and the UK as well as the privately run, government managed, non-profit insurance schemes in the other three countries. Each has its differences, but the fundamentals of each system are the same: Everyone gets coverage, everyone pays into the system equally (with government subsidies for the poor) and everyone makes money, more or less. Basic coverage is the exception, however and insurance companies are designed and required to operate as essentially non-profit organizations. If the insurers want to make money, in some countries they are allowed to do so, but only for elective, non-crucial procedures. A novel, but basic concept.

Well, the report last week spun things a little differently in the end. While Reid’s reporting set the scene and gave an insightful look into the current state of our system, the final product suggested something in direct contradiction to his findings in the previous series, not to mention his upcoming book. The report featured numerous insurance industry advocates all espousing their point of view, but not a single person was interviewed about a single-payer health care system; actually, it wasn’t even mentioned as an option! Reid has spoken out about what happened, thanks to the Corporate Crime Reporter:

“We spent months shooting that film,” Reid explains. “I was the correspondent. We did our last interview on January 6. The producers went to Boston and made the documentary. About late February I saw it for the first time. And I told them I disagreed with it. They listened to me, but they didn’t want to change it.”

Reid has a book coming out this summer titled The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care (Penguin Press, August 2009.)

“I said to them — mandating for-profit insurance is not the lesson from other countries in the world,” Reid said. “I said I’m not going to be in a film that contradicts my previous film and my book. They said – I had to be in the film because I was under contract. I insisted that I couldn’t be. And we parted ways.”

“Doctors, hospitals, nurses, labs can all be for-profit,” Reid said. “But the payment system has to be non-profit. All the other countries have agreed on that. We are the only one that allows health insurance companies to make a profit. You can’t allow a profit to be made on the basic package of health insurance.”

“I don’t think they deliberately got it wrong, but they got it wrong,” Reid said.

Reid said that he now wants to make other documentaries, but not for Frontline.

“Frontline will never touch me a again – they are done with me,” Reid said.

I have yet to see an excuse for this type of behavior or any sort of correction or contraction that could explain what Reid has stated. Frontline has tried, as you’ll see, but failed miserably I feel. All I can hope is that with enough pressure from the public, something will be done to correct this horrific lapse in judgment at worse or egregious error at best. Here’s just one example of the movement this has spawned, taken from the FAIR.org site (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) which compiled a petition to the Frontline producers:

To Whom This May Reach at FRONTLINE:

I am an Academy Award nominated and Emmy winning documentary filmmaker, and I am APPALLED at what I’ve been told you did with the work of T.R. Reid and “Sick Around America”. It is almost inconceivable to me that you would exploit, usurp and distort his good work in the manner it has been described by FAIR (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3756). Your actions reek of politics, of corporate influence, and of general disregard and disrespect for both this man’s work, and the truth. Let me guess: Big Pharma sponsors a LOT of PBS shows. Am I right? I’ll bet I am. Just can’t piss-off those for-profit mega-med corps now, can we?

Words do not express my disappointment and disgust- mainly because I have always had such respect for the work Frontline has done. Your webpage of “Guidelines on Journalistic Styles and Practices” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/us/guidelines.html) states that “We ask for the viewer’s trust.” Well, you’ve certainly lost mine.

Very Sincerely,

William Gazecki
http://www.williamgazecki.com

As an update to the petition, it appears Frontline has responded, but without much in the way of promising to correct the issue on-air. Let’s hope they do so soon. To me, this is the essence of what defines a Media Slacker. I’m just disappointed I have to point my finger at Frontline this time.

Update II: Last night, Sunday April 5th, Lesley Stahl issued an on-air correction about her mistakes from the previous week’s story about Conficker. She called it a correction, but it wasn’t even that much. Here is the transcript of her apology which lasts all of about 21 seconds as a part of the introduction to Andy Rooney’s weekly blathering.

“A correction now. We made a mistake last week in using a photograph in a story we called “The Internet is Infected,” about the computer worm known as Conficker. I described the picture as a gang of young Russian hackers. They were not. The photo was provided to us by an Internet security company that appeared in the story.”

I have included below the video of the correction with the original piece just below. However, please note that I have had to include the original story from YouTube (I’ve only listed the second half) because CBS has edited the video on its website to cut any mention of the photo, any hacker by the name of Tempest and other things which were proven to be incorrect. The portion of edited video on CBS’s website occurs at the 10:36 mark. You can see the cut portion, lasting 19 seconds, in the YouTube video below.

But tell me, what should CBS have done in this circumstance? Instead of simply acknowledging the mistake, apologizing to the Finnish kids defamed in the story and moving on, the 60 Minutes team decided on a different route. They made a mistake, attempted to correct it but in the process also deleted any evidence of the mistake from their website. If CBS wants to be taken seriously as a news organization, this crap cannot continue. We know CNN falsifies transcripts and inputs video from Hungary in a story about Serbian rioting, but for CBS to now stoop to this level is unacceptable.

Watch CBS Videos Online

The Internet is Infected, part 2:

I’m back from a mini vacation and full of inspiration to crap on some of the mainstream media sources responsible for continually providing misinformation and slacking in their duties to report the news. One of the main subjects we have discussed often is the use of words and what those words actually mean, versus what they are intended to describe when used. Last November I wrote, ‘When, in the world of words, did ‘war crimes’ become ‘policy disputes?’ and then in February I railed on Steve Kroft (of 60 Minutes) for again using the term “Islamic Insurgents” to describe the local Taliban and Al-Queda forces fighting in Pakistan. Kroft was right to classify some of the Al-Queda members as insurgents, but by definition anyone who lives in a local area is not an insurgent (i.e. most of the Taliban and Al-Queda fighters the Pakistani army and US forces are battling).

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing out the latest idiocy of the Washington Post. In an article (generally a pretty good one) on torture during the Bush administration, the Post continues to use the term “harsh interrogation methods” instead of “torture”. Why, when it meets the definition of torture to a T, won’t these people just use the word?!? Something I quoted in November is well worth repeating here to emphasis this point. Glenn Greenwald, of Salon.com, wrote,

“Hence:  ”war crimes” were transformed into “policy disputes” between hawkish defenders of the country and shrill, soft-on-terror liberals.  “Torture” became “enhanced interrogation techniques which critics call torture.”  And, most of all, flagrant lawbreaking — doing X when the law says:  ”X is a felony” — became acting “pursuant to robust theories of executive power” or “expansive interpretations of statutes and treaties” or, at worst, ”in circumvention of legal frameworks.””

I’m sorry, but is Brian Williams completely unable to find positive stories on his own? And since when does the national media, especially those on television, think that “good news” is actual news? From MSNBC:

“So he (Williams) made a plea seconds before the end of NBC’s newscast on Wednesday: We’re looking for good news. Nominate people doing good work, perhaps a random or regular act of kindness in a cruel economy, and we’ll tell some of their stories.”

Are you fricken kidding me? Go find these good stories yourself! That’s your job!!