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POWER UNDIMINISHED BY FAKENESS
Sydney Morning Herald transcriber Alan Ramsey defends himself against accusations of laziness and Googlephobia. Hilariously, this ran on Saturday under the headline “Misquote, but message still true”:
Readers will recall the dark acceptance speech to a New York audience last December after Harvard Medical School named Bill Moyers, the eminent American journalist from US public broadcasting, and a former presidential press secretary, its fourth annual Global Environmental Citizen. The speech went unreported in this country’s mass media until I edited its 2500-word text down to 750 words on this page on March 9 under the introduction, “Here is a speech that should terrify you. If not, you deserve everything you get.”
Shrill religious and political zealots instantly fell on me. So did one of Sydney’s several blimpish print shrieks. Yet the power of Moyers’s speech, in its confrontation of the religious right in American politics and the Bush Administration’s insidious assault on environmental protection, was undiminished by an apocryphal quote Moyers eventually corrected (10 weeks later) but which remained intact in the Harvard website text. The Herald’s immediate correction of the misquote in my edited text did nothing to quell the shriek’s hysterics about “lazy journalism”.
As Attila the Pun asked on the day Ramsey’s “fake but true” Moyers column appeared: “Does anyone seriously think Ramsey will publish a proper apology?” No, we didn’t – and we’re still waiting for Ramsey to correct the small matter of that plastic Christmas turkey. The prestigious New York Times did so months ago.
Apparently the SMH’s ReaderLink is the service to contact about this.
I think you mean Thanksgiving turkey was real. The Christmas one may very well have been plastic…
Posted by William Young on 2005 03 31 at 01:21 PM • permalinkSpeaking of Googlephobia, the French are taking that scourge verrrry seriously:
French students are doing what all students do: surfing the web via Google. Now President Jacques Chirac wants to stop this American cultural invasion by setting up a rival French search-engine.
According to Jean-Noël Jeanneney, head of France’s Bibliothèque Nationale, speaking of the French version of Google:
”...this commercial company is the expression of the American system, in which the law of the market is king.â€? Advertising muscle and consumer demand should not triumph over good taste and cultural sophistication.
The flaws in the French plan are obvious. If popularity cannot arbitrate, what will? Mr Jeanneney wants a “committee of expertsâ€?. He appears to be serious, though the supply of French-speaking experts, or experts speaking any language for that matter, would seem to be insufficient. And if advertising is not to pay, will the taxpayer? The plan mirrors another of Mr Chirac’s pet projects: a CNN à la française. Over a year ago, stung by the power of English-speaking television news channels in the Iraq war, Mr Chirac promised to set up a French rival by the end of 2004. The project is bogged down by infighting.
Quell surprise!
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 03 31 at 04:09 PM • permalinkThere are several issues being raised here, all of them critical to the future of mankind:
1. Does the State do a better job of protecting the environment than the market? Remember Chernobyl?
2. Is Tim Blair really a blimp?
3. Are the French actually a really big comedy team?
4. Is Google a RWDB plot?
Your answers please in no more than 250 words. You have 30 minutes starting now.It’s Paddy McGuiness he’s referring to as blimpish. Paddy’s an extremely portly chap. Usually rival journalists dont’t criticise appearance (unlike us ratbags who make Phun of Phil).
Paddy is plenty used to it. Paul Keating, when prime minister (ALP), referred to Paddy as a “bloated toad” following an article he didn’t like. Gough Whitlam, ex-prime minister (ALP) in a speech described Paddy as “a toady who looks like a toad”. Clever, huh? (He was suggesting Paddy was a toady of the Right, presumably implying McGuiness’s right wing views weren’t his own.)
Shouldn’t Alan Ramsey be a focus of Media Watch? I mean, MW is an unbiased and principled reviewer of journalistic impropriety and shoddy reporting. Isn’t it?
Or is it only conservative reporting that it’s concerned with?
Damn it, I want answers! (slaps hand on desk, swears not to do that again, oowww)
Posted by wronwright on 2005 03 31 at 09:12 PM • permalinkI wrote a letter to the Australian Press Council about the fake “fake turkey” incident. They passed the complaint to the SMH. Some pinhead at the SMH wrote to me saying…
“everybody knows that the turkey wasn’t plastic; the term plastic turkey was used because it is much more simple than pre-cooked glazed ornament turkey.”
I responded by saying that the substitude term distorted the meaning and was chosen maliciously. Furthermore, the term display could have been used.
No response..ie get fucked murph
murph,
No kidding. At least they bothered to respond the first time. Just try to get a response from the LA Times.
The worst part about the “plastic turkey” myth is that George Bush was clowning with the soldiers in the mess hall and everyone in the room got a laugh out of it. Apparently pompous news editors and thick-headed leftist politicos have NO sense of humor…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 03 31 at 11:33 PM • permalinkheadline “Misquote, but message still true�
Some anonymous subbie at the SMH nails it, covert style. I wonder how long he’ll last.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2005 04 01 at 04:03 AM • permalink
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“blimpish”?
Is he calling you fat?
Are you gonna take that?