Three days after he was killed, CNN found a journal belonging to late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. The journal was found on the floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded...For CNN, the ambassador's writings served as tips about the situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. CNN took the newsworthy tips and corroborated them with other sources.
I understand that I was naive and, arguably, stupid to have been near Tahrir Square. I take full responsibility for poor judgement in this respect. However I did not simply march into Tahrir Square with a camera held up high; I was so captivated by the atmosphere on the bridge that I just kept walking, and tried to turn around as soon as I released how close to Tahrir Square I actually was. Again, my lack of spatial awareness was my own mistake, as I was not familiar with the area. I had felt so safe on the bridge surrounded by women and children, and I wish I had turned around as my friends and I had originally planned, before we became caught up in the wonderful, celebratory atmosphere. I understand why many people feel I am foolish to plan to return to Egypt. But I will take a long time to prepare for my next visit, will set up a wide support network to ensure my safety, and will never take the kind of risks I did last Sunday again. Moreover, I feel a sense of duty to bring something good out of all this,
On MSNBC, the African-American author Karen Hunter complained the news service transcribed Obama's speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did--specifically including the "dropped g's."
...Hunter called the AP's version "inherently racist," sparring with New Republic contributing editor and noted linguistics expert John McWhorter, who argued the g-less version "is actually the correct one," noting that the president's victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly "he can switch into that [black] dialect."
Whatever the reason, Hunter found it offensive. "I teach a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people's grammar, because you don't want them to sound ignorant," she said. "For them to do that, it's code, and I don't like it."
It's worth noting that the same sorts of arguments arose during George W. Bush's presidency, with the White House cleaning up the president's speeches to make him sound smarter, and news outlets sometimes not doing so.
According to Mark Smith, the AP reporter who filed the story, Obama was making a point by dropping his g's, making the transcription a no-brainer.
...Conservative bloggers agree--mainly because the story showed Obama pandering to a black base.
"The first job of a journalist is to report a story as accurately as possible," Howard Portnoy wrote on HotAir.com. "Part of the job of reporting Obama's speech last night was to highlight his obvious pandering, which is borne of desperation. The only element missing from the story is whether any of the listeners were offended by the president's 'blaccent.'"
..."He was specifically, and intentionally, using an African-American linguistic style to emphasize his message," a conservative blog called the Last Refuge noted.
Al Jazeera Afghanistan Bureau Chief Samer Allawi Convicted
Farik Muhammad Allawi, born in 1966, from Sebastia, who resides in Pakistan and serves as Al Jazeera's Afghanistan bureau chief, was arrested on 9.8.11 at the Allenby Crossing, on suspicion of involvement in Hamas activities. During his investigation by the Israel Security Agency, Allawi admitted that was recruited in 1993, while in Pakistan, to Hamas. Until 2004, he served there as a member of the "Supreme Palestine Committee", which supervises and directs Hamas institutions.
He also collected donations for Hamas-affiliated organizations such as "Al-Aqsa Association" and the "Palestinian Information and Media Center." In the framework of his activities for the SPC, Allawi went to Syria in 2001 and 2003 in order to report on his activities to Musa Abu Marzook, deputy to Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Khaled Mashal. In 2004, Mashal asked Allawi to work for him...
Allawi also admitted that in 2000, during a meeting with a Hamas operative in Dubai, he agreed to carry out military or organizational activity for Hamas. He even proposed, on his own initiative, to work to aid Hamas in advancing its goals by utilizing his position as a journalist with Al Jazeera.
In 2006, Allawi met with Hamas operatives in Qatar, who served as Al Jazeera correspondents, and agreed with them that they would exploit their work with Al Jazeera in order to strengthen Hamas by – inter alia – criticizing American operations in Afghanistan and expressing support for the Palestinian "resistance."
In 2010, during an additional meeting with Hamas operatives in Qatar, Allawi was asked to work to strengthen public opinion in support of Hamas and the Palestinian struggle by – inter alia – criticizing American activities.Allawi's investigation shows that Al Jazeera is exploited by Hamas, which makes use its journalists in order to advance its goals.
After a seven-month retirement, Helen Thomas has a new journalism gig: columnist for the Falls Church News-Press in Virginia, as the ARLnow blog in Arlington, Va., reports.
The 90-year-old retired from Hearst newspapers in June after a media uproar over controversial comments she made about Israel. That move sent shock waves through the press corps and left White House reporters scrambling to see who'd get Thomas' front-row seat in the briefing room.
So why'd the News-Press give her another chance?
Nicholas Benton, the founder, owner and editor of the News-Press, said in an editorial welcoming her back to journalism: "She is progressive, and following my more than eight hours of direct, one-on-one talks with her since the events of last June, I remain firmly convinced that she is neither bigoted, nor racist, nor anti-Semitic."
She'll write weekly on political affairs.
On June 8, Ms. Thomas declared herself retired following a torrent of angry criticism reacting to a spontaneous verbal comment she made that was taped the day before. Ms. Thomas' comments were intemperate and inappropriate, as she conceded afterward. They reflected her personal anger arising from the news that Israeli commandos had boarded a ship on a humanitarian mission to Gaza and had killed over a dozen volunteers.I am not giving that editor a second chance.
Ms. Thomas' views on a variety of subjects often differ from prevailing White House or other policies and positions. One of nine children born to Lebanese-Syrian immigrant parents, she has held to opinions different from many on U.S. policy toward the Middle East since the 1940s.
But her personal views have not tainted her highly-professional work for 50 years as a White House correspondent, except perhaps to inform the kinds of questions that she's never shied away from asking.
I have known Ms. Thomas since the founding of the News-Press in 1991. She visited our offices twice to meet readers and admirers. We share an appreciation for Eleanor Roosevelt and her work on behalf of the International Declaration of the Rights of Man.
She is progressive, and following my more than eight hours of direct, one-on-one talks with her since the events of last June, I remain firmly convinced that she is neither bigoted, nor racist, nor anti-Semitic. Her remarks in June were in response to a question about Israel, not Jews, and were intended to mean that in these times, Jewish people are free to live wherever they wish, because the era of anti-Jewish persecution is ended. That was not adequately expressed because of the impromptu nature of the incident.
As one who has championed the cause of inclusion in my newspaper for 20 years, who founded the Diversity Affirmation Education Fund for the Falls Church School System, I am proud that a journalist of the stature and professionalism of Helen Thomas is relaunching her career in my newspaper. She more than deserves, and I am honored to help provide her, the proverbial "second chance."
...In my view, the quality of reporting in the mass media has become far more politicized, biased, and ideological in recent years. Yet, of course, there are many prior examples.
Another reason why it is important to study such cases is that common patterns tell you just where things went wrong. The case of Harrison Salisbury's reports from Moscow in the early 1950s provide a good example.
Covering dictator Joseph Stalin's funeral in 1953, Salsbury wrote:
"Mr. Georgi Malenkov [the new leader, soon to be supplanted by Nikita Krushchev] and his comrades at arms appeared to have the support and enthusiasm of Soviet citizens of all walks of life....The words of Mr. Malenkov seemed to have sent a surge of hope through the Soviet listeners."
This quotation shows some common characteristics of American or Western journalists and analysts to this day:
--The belief that in a dictatorship the masses really do believe what their rulers tell them and love the dictator, moreover that one can adduce what they believe from official sources. A good recent example of this is the Western journalists who went into Iraq when Saddam Hussein was dictator and reported on how popular and benevolent the government was.
--The systematic reinterpretation of radical statements into moderate ones, simply refusing to believe that anyone could really be an extremist and mean it.
--The failure to report at all on extremist statements and inciting rhetoric. Why? Because the reporter or analyst assumes that all ideology is just meaningless words since everyone is essentially pragmatic. (Wrong!)
In addition, the journalist (or politician, or academic) believes that if he reports extremist statements on the other side he will thus inspire or give backing to "hardliners" at home. Thus, to speak honestly is interpreted as contributing to conflict and the victory of "bad guys." And what "bad guys" is he most concerned about? Those who are conservative in his own country or who merely believe that there is a big threat to be combated.
This is what I call the concept of "lying for peace" and it always fails, as in the whitewashing of Palestinian behavior in the belief that doing so will make it easier to resolve the conflict. The truth, of course, is that the reality of underlying ideology, tactics, goals, and politics will come back to bite those who ignore them.
During the cold war years that he spent as a Times correspondent in the Soviet Union, his reportage came in for criticism. Gay Talese, a former Times reporter, wrote later in "The Kingdom and the Power," that in those years there were Times readers who considered that Mr. Salisbury's "dispatches reflected excessive sympathy for the Soviet Union."
For his part, Mr. Salisbury emphasized that his reports had been subjected to heavy censorship by the Soviet authorities, and he later criticized Times executives for not labeling them "Passed by Soviet Censor."
Yet censorship was not a problem for him in writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning series of 14 articles: he typed much of it in a room at the Hotel Algonquin after his return from Moscow.
The series included what he later described as "observations of reality as I had seen it in Russia from the Neva to the Amur, from the Lena to the Volga, a detailed reconstruction of Stalin's terror, an overview of Russia's real life -- the drunkenness, the bureaucracy and the famine of goods, services and ideas after nearly 40 years of Bolshevism -- a firsthand glimpse of the new leaders, the new policies, the extent to which they were, and were not, breaking from their Stalinist roots."
Though the articles won widespread praise, it was not unanimous. Robert Manning, a former editor in chief of the Atlantic, wrote later that "critics on the right damned the series for softness toward the Communists."
Sir, - Isi Leibler's drubbing of Haaretz editor David Landau for his remarks at a recent Limmud Conference in Moscow comes, unfortunately, two years late ("Shame on 'Haaretz,'" November 7). Landau's admission that he ordered the low-keying of corruption by Israeli political leaders in order to protect the peace process - known as the "etrog behavior" of left-wing journalists, a phrase coined by Amnon Abromovitch - was first uttered at a Limmud conference in Nottingham, England. It was proudly declared in response to a question I had put to him from the last rows of a lecture hall filled with almost 300 people about the journalistic ethics of the absence of criticism of political corruption.
Like now, also then: When challenged, Landau declared that the "peccadilloes" of Ariel Sharon were minor compared to the greater damage, in his opinion, caused by revenant Jewish residents in the communities throughout Judea and Samaria.
His remarks were generally accepted, which caused me disappointment in the morality of the participating British Jews.
YISRAEL MEDAD
Shiloh
Four days after the abduction of Gilad Shalit in Kerem Shalom last June 25, Channel 10 reporter Shlomi Eldar began trying to bring the soldier home. For four days he couldn't shake the feeling that he had to get involved - that holding an Israeli captive in Gaza changed the rules of the game...
...Eldar went to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in the belief, which turned out to be naive, that he would find a receptive listener, maybe even Ehud Olmert himself.
"Olmert was new on the job, and most of the people with him were new, too, and I didn't know them that well," says Eldar. "To avoid an unnecessary delay, I first called Lior Horev, the spokesman for the PMO. I told him that I had to reach the prime minister because I had something in connection with Gilad Shalit, and that I couldn't elaborate anymore than that for now. He promised to get back to me.
"I put down the receiver and suddenly I get a call from the Shin Bet. They say: 'We hear you want to speak to us.' Who wants to speak with them? Why did they think to send me to the Shin Bet? I explained to them that it was a discreet and important matter related to the PMO and that I wasn't acting as a journalist now and certainly wasn't interested in talking to the Shin Bet.
"A few hours later I get a call from Major General Gadi Shamni, the prime minister's military secretary, and it was a conversation I'll never forget. He asked: 'What do you want to tell me?'" (Eldar imitates the haughty, militaristic tone of Shamni's voice). "And I tell him, 'Not over the phone. I can come to see you in Jerusalem first thing tomorrow morning to talk with you seriously. It's important.'"
Why not over the phone?
"Maybe I'm paranoid, but I always have the feeling that my phone is being tapped and I really thought that this was something that deserved special treatment. At least a meeting of a few minutes. And then Shamni started to pressure me, 'Yalla, talk on the phone. Nu, do you know whom I speak to on this telephone? Come on, talk.' Finally, I said to him, 'Listen, I have information about Gilad Shalit and I have someone who could cautiously and quickly handle the contacts with the kidnappers, better than anyone else.' I explained that it was someone who had access, someone to whom they were much indebted and that it could be settled quickly. And that the faster Israel acted, the easier Shalit's return would be and the lower the price.
"He asked me, 'Who is this person of yours?' I told him, Sami Abu Samhadna. He told me, 'We've got plenty of mediators, everyone will want to mediate, only we're not willing to pay a price for Shalit's release, at least not now. If we come to a dead end, we'll talk with you. Who knows?' His voice was full of scorn. As if to say, who are you to interfere in matters that are so far above your head? His contempt and arrogance toward me made me feel very uncomfortable. From the beginning I was afraid that I was stepping into a place that wasn't mine, but I knew that there was an avenue that had to be explored, and so I was very hurt by this response.
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