<< BAD TO VERSE ~ MAIN ~ MEMORY TESTED >>
JOURNALISTS OF TOMORROW
Florida Cracker emails:
For two years a student newspaper publishes the sad letters of a little girl to her dad in Iraq. She begs him not to die. He does. They also publish her anti-war letters to President Bush. It was all a hoax. No daddy in Iraq, nothing. The reporters checked nothing for two years.
Hit the link for further links. Apparently the reporter who first wrote about the fake little girl now worries that the episode could affect his journalistic career.
UPDATE. What is it with Illinois student newspapers and bogus quotes?
The guy is worried? He’ll be the most respected journalist in the land.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 08 26 at 02:05 PM • permalinkWhy should he worry? NPR would be happy to have him!
Didn’t Dan Rather start his national network career with a bogus story after the JFK assassination?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 08 26 at 02:19 PM • permalinkAccording to the Chicago Tribune, the woman who spun the fake story (that the student newspaper guy fell for) is a former radio and television production student. Hey CBS, looks like your replacement for Mary Mapes is ready.
Hmmmm—I think I see the primary reason the reporter didn’t feel the need to do any fact checking:
“I’m rily mad at you and you make my hart hurt,”’ she purportedly wrote in one published letter to the president. “I don’t think your doing a very good job. You keep sending soldiers to Iraq and it’s not fair. Do you have a soldier of your own in Irak?”
Nah, he should go for the top: he’s ready for the New York Times.
Posted by nofixedabode on 2005 08 26 at 03:24 PM • permalinkOn Thursday, 10-year-old Caitlin Hadley sat between her parents on a couch in her mom’s office, retelling the two-year odyssey that began with her belief that she was going to be the star of a documentary film about a little girl named Kodee.
“It was sort of weird, but I had a lot of fun,” Caitie said.
Her father, Richard Hadley, is a pastor at a Nazarene church in Montpelier, Ind., and her mother works for the church’s regional office. Both said they felt they’d been scammed by Reynolds.
“I just realized that I didn’t know this girl,” Tawnya Hadley said. “In the profession that my husband is in, we move and meet new people all the time. What if she’d never brought Caitie back? We feel like we’re idiots.”
Yes. Yes, you are!!!
Caitie said that when she and Reynolds were with other people, Reynolds told her they were “filming.” Caitie was to pretend to be Kodee, and “she said I needed to act like a tomboy because Kodee was a tomboy.”
Caitie’s understanding was that everybody she met in Carbondale was in the movie, which was being filmed by hidden cameras. So when they went into the Daily Egyptian newsroom the first time, she pretended to be Kodee and believed that the reporters and editors were playing along as characters.
“I met all the people she had in the movie,” Caitie said. “We were always on camera, but I didn’t see any cameras.”
For crying out loud!!! It must be soooo easy to be a pedophile!!! “We’re making a movie! With hidden cameras!” And the parents validate all of this for the child! THESE PEOPLE ARE TOO STUPID TO BE ALLOWED TO KEEP CUSTODY OF THIS (or any) CHILD!!!!!
Posted by nofixedabode on 2005 08 26 at 03:51 PM • permalinkSomewhat off topic, but I found this piece genuinely moving:
“Cindy Sheehan kneels before a cross with her son’s name on it, touches his picture, wipes her tears. It’s an outpouring of emotion that is part of a scheduled news event organized daily for the television radio and print reporters who crowd in to capture a mother’s grief.”
Surprisingly, this is a San Francisco newspaper. You know as a liberal you’re in bad shape when even a SF paper is gettng cynical about you.
Posted by tim maguire on 2005 08 26 at 03:58 PM • permalinkBlock quotes taken from Chicago Times, sorry for lack of attribution. MSM getting hoaxed is funny, but parents this stupid get to me. Let’s all make it easy for the predators!
Posted by nofixedabode on 2005 08 26 at 04:04 PM • permalink#15 the other mother mentioned describes being at Crawford, and I paraphrase, not feeling quite right. Quite Right!
I refrained from ad hominem attacks against Sheehan inspite of the fact that she practiced no such restraint when referring to the President. It has been hard to be respectful of her status as mother of a fallen hero when she has prostituted herself and her son’s memory out for pimps posing as pacifists.What happened to the groups that used to help recovering Moonies? Didn’t they have programs that helped people who’d been brainwashed?
Sheehan needs her brain washed as well as her mouth.
Butch:
According to post-modern “theory,” there is no Truth; there is only Narrative. Journalism has embraced the post-modern paradigm.
Th next time you hear “According to X, Y is so,” rather than “Y is so,” or “Y is not so,” you are hearing the victory of Narrative over Truth.
Why do I love Brit Hume? He will at least grimace when repeating someone else’s crap.
Posted by buzz harsher on 2005 08 26 at 05:59 PM • permalinkCome now Butch, this type of thing wins Pulitzer Prizes doncha know.
Take a look at Janet Cook for instance and her fake 1981 8-y-o crack addict.
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 08 26 at 06:00 PM • permalinkIt’s amazing to see the scummy depths which people are willing to plumb in order to shore up false foundations for teetering egos.
This may well be a virulent form of that there ‘manufactured consent’ which has been driving the Moore-on conspiracy ‘activists’ to drown themselves in the deep-end of their feverswamp.
Firstly, does Kodee represent a case of Bush-Derangement-Syndrome by proxy? Secondly, I love the bit about how the ‘aunt’ subsequently showed up pretending to be, not herself, but her twin sister. A bit like Mohammed Atta reappearing in Jonelle Bryant’s office shortly after his first unsuccessful interview, pretending to be somebeody else entirely, behind the cunning disguise of a pair of spectacles.
Reporting by this newspaper and others since then has found that Hastings is actually Jaimie Reynolds of Marion, a 2004 graduate of SIU. And Kodee is actually the daughter of a pastor in Montpelier, Ind. The man portraying Dan Kennings is Patrick Trovillion of Vienna, who says Reynolds paid him for his role.
Maybe I’m missing something but what the hell are the pastor and spouse doing while these two creeps are showing off 10-year-old Caitlin in another state?
...and according to the Chicago Tribune article, “The woman involved used an acquaintance to play Kennings, going so far as to take him and the little girl to a church in Detroit this spring, where they spoke to a group of children inspired by their story.”
Again, what the hell kind of parents are these?
I think the reporter is deserving of the Helen Thomas Award for Reporting the Truth-the-Real-Truth-Not-What-The-Neocons-Want-You-To-Think-Is-The-Truth.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 08 26 at 07:15 PM • permalink“I’m rily mad at you and you make my hart hurt,”
...“I don’t think your doing a very good job. You keep sending soldiers to Iraq and it’s not fair. Do you have a soldier of your own in Irak?”
While the mythical child’s spelling is dreadful, her punctuation is superb.
A pity the author lacked a backwards “R” key.
That would have increased the “awwwe-factor” by ten-fold.
Unfortunately, I live within about 5 minutes of Carbondale, and this idiocy is becoming more and more common at Southern Illinois University. During the RNC, a whole bunch of “Big Muddy IMC” indymedia “journalists” from there zipped up to Manhattan to get themselves thrown into jail. Last year, a professor was almost lynched for using in class materials a book that apparently implied that perhaps the world wasn’t entirely racial-victimhood-centric. It’s getting creepy. Some of us here in Southern Illinois call Carbondale “Little Chicago” because the student body is like a freakin’ colony.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2005 08 26 at 09:39 PM • permalinkOK, this is hitting a little too close to home, folks.
I’m a SIU grad, class of ‘75. And even though we derisevely called the Daily Egyptian the “Daily Erection”, the SIU School of Journalism had (and I stress “had”) a good reputation, as one of the best in the country.
But, that was twenty years ago, and it seems their standards have slipped.
And Aaron is right about SIU being “Little Chicaaago”. A large portion of the student body is from Chicago. The reason I heard the most was “It’s the farthest I could get away from Chicago, and still be “in state”.
I always knew that bad (liberal) influence was going to be the ruin of an otherwise fine university!!
Anyway…go Salukis.
“I’m rily mad at you and you make my hart hurt,”
Looks like Margo’s been hitting the keyboard again . . .
Posted by Young and Free on 2005 08 26 at 10:29 PM • permalinkrinardman: Yes, go Salukis. It’s come a long way since R. Buckminster Fuller (yes, *that* Buckminster Fuller) taught there.
Still, a faint shred of hope exists inside all of us that our underground plot (“underground” as in, supported by about 90% of the local populace) to secede from upper Illinois will still come through before the Chicago Democrats finish their retirement commune on Lake of Egypt.
Pretty soon, they’ll talk about us the way New Yorkers talk about “going upstate”, and we’ll have to learn to mix their girlish cocktails.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2005 08 26 at 10:39 PM • permalinkFabricated identities, faked letters, exploited children, credulous parents, no verification…
... what is this, the internet? Is this how stalkers used to invade chat rooms before there were chat rooms?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 08 27 at 12:25 AM • permalinkRinardman may not be available, so I’ll elaborate: The story goes that the whole region of Southern Illinois is called “Little Egypt” because during a drought in the old days, our crops survived intact. So, our grain fed the midwest, like ancient Egypt. So, the Southern Illinois University newspaper is the Daily Egyptian, the mascot is the Saluki, etc….
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2005 08 27 at 01:23 AM • permalinkAccording to post-modern “theory,” there is no Truth; there is only Narrative.
Imre’s column in today’s Australian is relevant to this:
...he must surely be aware that many people regard philosophy itself as the art of bullsh*t. The closest he comes to such a recognition is in the suggestion that a certain kind of philosophy - broadly, what we would call postmodernism - has promoted bullsh*t’s cause by claiming the quest for accuracy itself may be a false lure, and only sincerity matters. I take it that Frankfurt’s fellow US philosopher Richard Rorty was suggesting something similar in his famous aside about Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction: “He’s given bullsh*t a bad name.”
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 08 27 at 02:19 AM • permalinkHanyu (#33)
I totally agree with you. When these adult’s political persuasions allow them to exploit children in this way, there is something seriously wrong (and VERY creepy) about their morals and their attitude to the care and protection of children.
What sort of ratbag “church” would appoint creeps like this as their spiritual advisors?
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 08 27 at 06:15 AM • permalinkNow, for some REAL journalism, check out Dennis the Peasant
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 08 27 at 11:58 AM • permalinkRe ``Little Egypt’’ - several towns in the southern tip of Illinois have Egyptian names, such as Cairo and Thebes. And of course Memphis is just downriver a ways, in Tennessee. No idea how or why they were given those names, but there they are.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2005 08 27 at 03:55 PM • permalinkWell, Cairo, IL is pronounced Ka’-ro (long a). Illinois typically butchers foreign names, like Ver-sales, and San Joze, and Vye-enna, etc. My favorite is on the northern edge of southern IL. It’s a little town spelled Beaucoup, and pronounced Buckup.
Anyway, I knew a ‘73 SIU journo grad who refused to believe ‘bludgeon’ was a word, couldn’t spell well, and had severe punctuation and grammar problems. She went into public relations, but no teaches Jr. High English. Shudder.
I taught at SIU in 1999-2000, and the place is a disaster area. At that time they had 5 tenured professors of Russian and *1* Russian major. They couldn’t fill 3 Russian classes. The buildings were falling apart. My department had 6 tenure-track profs. One got tenured and promptly took his tenure to Nebraska. All but one of the others fled in either Fall 2000 or Fall 2001.
Total disaster area.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 08 28 at 12:20 AM • permalinkJorg: Now you know better than that… Chicagoans butcher foreign names. (Been to Des Plaines lately, where they *pronounce the S’s*?)
We butcher Cairo, but have a funny habit of getting the French names right. (This leads to much hilarity when you’re trying to explain where you want to go to a Chicago cab driver, who barely speaks English to begin with. “Deh Plane.” “What?” “I want to go to Deh Plane.” “Where is that?” “Deh Plane, boss, Deh Plane!”)
We also call it “soda”. They call it “pop”.
They are wrong. As usual.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2005 08 28 at 12:39 AM • permalinkYesterday’s edition of the West Australian carried an article by former editor Paul Murray on a book by Robert Manne. Essential drift: Manne is really upset by the growing indifference of the public toward the big issues, said indifference being signified by the falling circulation numbers for newspapers everywhere. They just don’t care any more, Manne wailed. Murray, with a sad sigh, agreed. Then I come to Tim’s site and find this. Bloody hell, is it any wonder that the MSM sits lower than a snake’s areshole in the public’s estimation?
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2005 08 28 at 01:44 AM • permalinkMake that ‘lower than a snake’s arsehole.’
Apologies to aresholes everywhere.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2005 08 28 at 01:47 AM • permalink#55 Dave S and everyone else
Excuse my language, but someone rip that silly bitch a new one. I am so farking over this bloody victim mentality.
*cue whining: poor me, I didn’t want to do it but I had to or her wouldn’t let me watch Days of Our Lives (or some such crap).
Get over yourself, skank. Stop playing games with children and be a fucking adult. Take responsibility for your actions. If your life is so miserable that you get your kicks manipulating people then blaming everyone except yourself, then do me a favour and stop breathing. Fucking oxygen thieves.
/end rant/must take zoloft
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2005 08 29 at 07:10 AM • permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
I don’t know why. MSM journalists make shit up all the time.