[PLUG] [OT] Something to mull over the weekend

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Sat, 8 May 2004, Michael Robinson wrote:
> It's been a bad week.  Even the press is embarassed to some degree
> reporting, a first really.

It's got to be embarrassing to admit that your pony can't show.

> I hope it raises the bar on our hopes for the individual person and
> causes a ripple affect here at home in a positive way, the way the super
> bowl scandal did.

I'd hardly call a tit a "scandal".  Sheesh.  It wasn't even displayed
sexually.  Just some body part out there in the open.  Grow up.

And I'd hardly call increased censorship "a ripple [e]ffect in a positive
way".

> If it didn't make us angry, the Iraqi people would be right in thinking
> that we aren't commited to their freedom.

Well, when we're shooting them and putting them in prisons and deciding
how their nation should be run and by whom, well, we're clearly not
committed to their freedom.

> I don't blame Rumsfeld or Bush, shame how investigations are just
> getting started and already a problem that Rumsfeld may not have been
> able to predict or prevent is being used by some to pressure him into
> resigning.  I think this country believes in innocent until proven
> guilty.

OK.  But what does it take to show that these guys are guilty of just
plain lying whenever they like to suit the current spin?

Here's a really nice example of Rumsfeld just lying the way he always has,
but forgetting that this is 2004 and we actually have instant access to
prior records to show inconsistencies:

<URL: http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/ >

Man, I love that one.

These guys (and I mean everyone with the opportunity, really) have been
manipulating the press, particularly television, for years and getting
away with it.  Finally, the resources exist to prevent the large scale
fraud that has been perpetrated for the last several decades.

Jerry Mander, in his book _Four Arguments For The Elimination Of
Television_, describes one flaw of the medium as being an inability to
revise, research, and correct.  This particularly applies to live
broadcasts where information that is incorrect can be given by honest
mistake and taken as fact by the audience who might not be tuning in at
some later hour when the correction is issued.  (And unlike print media,
there is no public archive of corrections for later perusal.)  This has
led to certain public figures purposely giving false information to
television broadcasters for immediate effect knowing full well that it can
later be corrected or denied with very little risk of being challenged on
the spot.  Until very recently, it was common for a person interviewed on
television to simply say, "That's not what I said" and offer some
variation that cannot be challenged in the immediate context and therefore
will be considered truth by the majority of the viewers.

I can just imagine that Meet The Press (the source of the clip noted
above) has a team of folks sitting off-screen with tons of digital
transcriptions of interviews and press statements and conferences through
which they can grep and instantly queue to the interviewer for display.

This clip is a great example of that because it's clear, at first, that
the interviewer is surprised that Rumsfeld would deny Iraq was considered
an imminent threat, but then has evidence to contradict within seconds.

The technology is very powerful.  It's good to see it used as a force of
enlightenment once in a while.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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