Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (10280)	7/22/2006 3:41:08 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

'Some Blogger or Counterculture Ideologue' An interesting bit of press history appears on the op-ed page of today's Washington Post. Michael Berlin, who formerly covered the U.N. for the Post, explains how he and other reporters "got hold of a dynamite news story" in 1979: that Canadian diplomats in Tehran were sheltering several Americans from the then-new terror regime in Iran, which was holding several dozen Americans hostage. The reporters withheld the story, for the obvious reason that it "could put the lives of the fugitive Americans and their Canadian hosts in danger," until January 1980, when the Americans escaped Iran with the help of the CIA. Berlin writes: Do I regret not getting my scoop on the hostage story? Not a bit. Over the years, I've run into dozens of reporters who had a piece of the story before it broke, including those who covered the State Department for The Washington Post, and they all felt the same way. The Canada-hostage story proves that reporters and news organizations can be trusted, en masse, to make the right call on security information they uncover. And neither Iranian officials nor Iranian news media got wind of it. Do I think that a thousand reporters could be trusted today to make the same call that we did in 1979? I wonder. Even back then, there was the fear that some rogue reporter would ignore the pleas and go with the story. In today's journalism world, I fear that some blogger or counterculture ideologue using journalism as a political tool rather than as a mechanism for dispensing straight information, would make the wrong call. I hope I'm wrong about that. But as we noted in May(http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008452), the publisher of the New York Times is a counterculture ideologue. Does anyone really have confidence that he and his staffers are not "using journalism as a political tool"? opinionjournal.com

To: sandintoes who wrote (10280)	8/2/2006 10:01:27 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71588

New Study: TV Networks Have Pounded Bush for Five Years Posted by Rich Noyes on July 31, 2006 - 10:56. For nearly all of his presidency, George W. Bush has been on the receiving end of mainly negative — sometimes highly negative — coverage from the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, according to a new report from the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a nonpartisan research group. The only time the TV networks gave Bush mostly (63%) positive coverage was during the three months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and even then nearly four-in-ten on-air evaluations (37%) of the President were critical. The findings are included in the latest issue of CMPA’s Media Monitor newsletter, which reached my (snail) mailbox on Friday. So far, it has yet to be posted on CMPA’s Web site(http://www.cmpa.com/index.htm), which appears to make this NewsBusters posting a World Wide Web exclusive. The CMPA researchers examined network coverage of President Bush during various periods in 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006. With the exception of the post 9/11 period in 2001, they found that the networks invariably saddled Bush with mainly negative coverage. (A separate CMPA report from 2004 looked at Bush’s coverage during that year’s election, and also found mainly negative network news coverage.) In fact, according to the report, Bush’s coverage in early 2001 was so negative that even with the burst of positive coverage after 9/11, the networks that year still wound up presenting more condemnations of the President than praise. A summary of CMPA’s findings of how ABC, CBS and NBC have depicted President Bush during his first five years in office: 2001 (all) 61% negative 2002 N/A 2003 69% negative 2004 63% negative 2005 79% negative 2006 76% negative Among the top topics of the networks’ presidential news stories this year: the war in Iraq, the aftermath Hurricane Katrina, terrorism, illegal immigration and the Dubai ports deal, with the war in Iraq receiving by far the most coverage. newsbusters.org