Media Lens: They quote Chomsky but prefer Stalin
They run their Message Board like dictators. Selectively silencing those whose views are a little too strongly held or expressed. The Rules are applied in an arbitrary manner - as in all dictatorships. Acolytes can attack safe in the knowledge that the worst sanction that will apply to them is the withdrawl of a message.
That's not to say that there isn't any dissent on the site. There are some very dilligent people who are asking interesting questions and debunking the Media Lens' myths – but I wonder if it is worth the effort?
The problem with people who like totalitarianism is they just won't listen to anything that questions their simplistic view of the world.
Information cannot be complex, vague, fuzzy, unimportant, ephemeral or just fun.
This is why they want every page of the Iraq Body Count web site to have an accompanying document stating how the figures should be used and covering every eventuality. And hold IBC liable for every incorrect use of their figures in the media.
This is why they have an almost religious belief that finding a single error in a thousand pages of information means that they can invalidate everything else in those thousand pages that is inconvenient to their world view.
This is why anything interesting in your posts will be ignored, derided, confused or missed no matter how many methods (or times) you try.
The IBC Alerts
"Blair is no Hitler, but in his speech he deployed a classic combination of impassioned rhetoric and breathtaking distortion. The response of the free press was as uniform as it was lamentable."
Falling At The Feet Of Power - Blair's Sincerity And The Media, David Edwards, March 21, 2003
Replace "Blair" with "Media Lens" and "the free press" with "Media Lens supporters" and you'll get a pretty good picture of what this is about.
The Paved With Good Intentions alerts are object lessons in dictator-speak. Repetitive points, stacked on top of each other and couched in a language that appeals to their totalitarian-minded readership.
The language is distorted the quoting selective.
Some of the information is plain wrong.
And the weasel words are sickening:
"What do these figures tell us about the sincerity
and honesty of the IBC editors? Absolutely nothing
- it is not at all our intention to challenge their
integrity. But there are some important points
that need to be made."
They then go on to raise fallacious point after fallacious point with the aim of portraying the IBC as insincere and dishonest.
Naturally, they don't print the conclusions themselves. They leave their acolytes to infer this information and bombard the chosen target with hundreds of emails with the dots crudely joined.
My thoughts on the first two Alerts attacking IBC are here:
Paved With Good Intentions - Part 1
Paved With Good Intentions - Part 2
And, if this political stuff is getting you down, visit my Apple home page and cheer yourself up with the beautiful song of a nightingale.
That's not to say that there isn't any dissent on the site. There are some very dilligent people who are asking interesting questions and debunking the Media Lens' myths – but I wonder if it is worth the effort?
The problem with people who like totalitarianism is they just won't listen to anything that questions their simplistic view of the world.
Information cannot be complex, vague, fuzzy, unimportant, ephemeral or just fun.
This is why they want every page of the Iraq Body Count web site to have an accompanying document stating how the figures should be used and covering every eventuality. And hold IBC liable for every incorrect use of their figures in the media.
This is why they have an almost religious belief that finding a single error in a thousand pages of information means that they can invalidate everything else in those thousand pages that is inconvenient to their world view.
This is why anything interesting in your posts will be ignored, derided, confused or missed no matter how many methods (or times) you try.
The IBC Alerts
"Blair is no Hitler, but in his speech he deployed a classic combination of impassioned rhetoric and breathtaking distortion. The response of the free press was as uniform as it was lamentable."
Falling At The Feet Of Power - Blair's Sincerity And The Media, David Edwards, March 21, 2003
Replace "Blair" with "Media Lens" and "the free press" with "Media Lens supporters" and you'll get a pretty good picture of what this is about.
The Paved With Good Intentions alerts are object lessons in dictator-speak. Repetitive points, stacked on top of each other and couched in a language that appeals to their totalitarian-minded readership.
The language is distorted the quoting selective.
Some of the information is plain wrong.
And the weasel words are sickening:
"What do these figures tell us about the sincerity
and honesty of the IBC editors? Absolutely nothing
- it is not at all our intention to challenge their
integrity. But there are some important points
that need to be made."
They then go on to raise fallacious point after fallacious point with the aim of portraying the IBC as insincere and dishonest.
Naturally, they don't print the conclusions themselves. They leave their acolytes to infer this information and bombard the chosen target with hundreds of emails with the dots crudely joined.
My thoughts on the first two Alerts attacking IBC are here:
Paved With Good Intentions - Part 1
Paved With Good Intentions - Part 2
And, if this political stuff is getting you down, visit my Apple home page and cheer yourself up with the beautiful song of a nightingale.
posted by g33kThug at 5:28 PM
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