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Last updated on July 16th, 2017 at 10:15 am
John Pilger has a fan in Melbourne … and Robert Fisk has a fan in India:
It’s ironic that ‘fisking’, the blogger’s verb for aggressive or hostile fact-checking, is named after Robert Fisk, Britain’s most distinguished foreign correspondent, who has lived in and reported from the Middle East for the past quarter of a century …
That a great journalist who has survived danger and risked death to live in the region he reports from, whose reportage has made him the doyen of Middle-Eastern reporting, should become the blogosphere’s measure of unreliability, tells us something about the frictionless sterility of the blogger’s online world.
Or it might tell us something about Fisk’s unreliability. (Incidentally, reports of Fisk’s retirement seem to have been premature.)
“frictionless sterility…” I saw some products advertising this over in the Personal Hygiene section…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 09 29 at 01:47 PM • permalink
…is pining for the days when the Middle East was inhabited by romantic Bedouin warriors in flowing robes with really cool scimitars stuck in their belts…
Sorry. I saw that John Milius movie. All those guys were Scottish…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 09 29 at 01:49 PM • permalink
I gott your “frictionless sterility” riiiight here.
Is it too much to ask that Fisk accepts an assignment in Burma ?
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2007 09 29 at 02:26 PM • permalink
One man commenting on another man’s “Custer-like mane”, “raffish linen suit” and sartorial splendor is just a little too poofy for me.
#7–Both articles are teaming with a “love that dare not speak it’s name”.
Oh, it hasn’t been the love that dare not speak its name for quite some time. More like the love that squeals at ear-piercing decibels for constant attention and approbation.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 09 29 at 05:02 PM • permalink
Now this could just be me, but from the blogs I visit regularly —The Daily Dish at http://www.andrewsullivan.com for example…
LOL. And “Fisking” is not exactly the blogger’s verb for aggressive or hostile fact-checking. More like a point-by-point factual refutation of the kind of dilettante crap Fisk is prone to writing. And it must be done with wit and style (not hostility) to be a genuine Fisking. I wonder is he knows that it was Andrew who first crafted the “Fisk” as we know it.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 09 29 at 05:23 PM • permalink
Let’s recall Fisk’s 2003 reporting from Baghdad, as noted in ABCWatch:
Robert Fisk has a proud record of reporting what he sees. He has travelled to dangerous places and described unflinchingly what is happening. He prefers to speak to the people caught up in conflicts rather than report what the generals, politicians and spokesmen are saying.
Or what his fellow journalists in Baghdad are saying. On the first edition of this evening’s PM on Radio National…Paul McGeough was asked to comment on Fisk’s report that he had seen tanks massing for a counter-attack.
“Yeah, well, Robert Fisk gets a bit windy at times. I was on the same bus as Fisk and there were two or three tanks. And half a dozen troops getting a drink from a creek.”
A bit windy! How about downright, mendaciously delusional.
Posted by walterplinge on 2007 09 29 at 06:45 PM • permalink
You don’t get to have “lived in and reported from the Middle East for the past quarter of a century” by being impartial and telling the blunt truth about those with whom you have to daily mingle or get access. Just as the BBC’s Alan Johnston, and a certain other reporter, got out alive from their respective kidnappings because, to paraphrase their hosts, they’d established a history of friendliness and sympathy to the Middle Eastern ‘position’.
I think Fisks biggest dissapointment might be he hasnt been awarded his Rightful honours like his role model before him.
One of fisks finest moments Australian army size to double.
(bugger cant find any footage of him being beaten, was it filmed?)
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 09 29 at 07:21 PM • permalink
Looks like Pilger has some friends at the ABCess ‘s Movie Show too:
DAVID: Still, it’s difficult not to get aroused when you see and hear some of the attitudes expressed….
MARGARET: He’s pretty outrageous, that guy.
DAVID: He’s full on, isn’t he?
MARGARET: And I think he’s the reason to see the film and I think that’s the reason to see the film in a cinema, because I think that shared outrage is a pretty powerful thing…
[ a ninety-two minute hate?]…You know, because basically he’s saying, “Come on world, are you stupid? Of course, America, you know, sort of like disregards human and civil rights all around the world just so we can make more money.”
DAVID: Mm.
MARGARET: And it’s sort of like, “Really!” You know, it’s sort of like outrageous that he thinks we’re stupid for not realising it.
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 09 29 at 07:29 PM • permalink
meant to link that movie watch transcript
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 09 29 at 07:37 PM • permalink
For those not familiar with Allendes regime a little wikki may help
“This included nationalization of large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking), and government administration of the health care system, educational system, a program of free milk for children (given out arbitrarily by GAP “Group of Personal Friends of the President”), and a greatly expanded plan of land seizure and redistribution (already begun under his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva,[12] who had nationalized between one-fifth and one-quarter of all properties liable to takeover [Collier & Sater, 1996]). The Allende government’s intention was to seize all holdings of more than eighty basic irrigated hectares”
Mugabe in America?
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 09 29 at 07:52 PM • permalink
“hostile fact-checking” Interesting idea that making sure you have got something right is an emotional binge… typical of the left’s mindset.
This commentator doesn’t know that Fisk has been very slow to get into the internet. Why? Because bloggers expose his god-like old style journalism and solemn pronouncements as rubbish.
Like Pilger and Adamski, he needs highly protective environment.Could it be that decades in the M-E has turned Fisk native -in an area not known for anything so much as its warped media and propaganda?
You must have missed Evan Williams fellating Pilger in the Australian as well- there’s an awful lot of Australian journalists who secretly desire to be Pilger- that patrician, weathered look, that shameless self promotion, that utterly blinkered following of straight out of the book marxist ideology, that addiction to polemics, that blatant ignorance of clear facts that don’t suit an agenda, that certainty of BBC4 funding- what’s there not to aim for with the average Aussie talentless hack?
As far as I’m concerned the traitorous bastard should get the Wilfred Burchett treatment and have his passport pulled- let him live in some commie shithole like Venezuala or North Korea that he so adores, and put up with the same level of deprivation and repression the average slob does in such benighted adresses.
I’m really embarrassed by the fact I once owned a copy of Heroes– Jeebus I must have been an insufferable twat.
- TFM
How about Fisk with special head wrapping?.CheersPosted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 09 29 at 10:23 PM • permalink
Martin has always pushed to be considered a “serious journalist”. Although he has spent the last few years hosting specials for Nine, he makes a point of reminding people he started out at the ABC and was a reporter on Nine before succumbing to the lure of populist TV, which saw him host Midday for nine years and then ACA for five.
2003
In order to get your head around how Pilger thinks, you need to purchase a pair of Perception Altering & Conditioning Optics.
A pair of PACO glasses will change forever the way you see the world.
If you put them on at a Liberal Party function, the scene will change to Nurenburg with the Fuhrer addressing the faithful.
Pictures of US/British/Australian troops marching anywhere will be displayed as the Wehrmacht marching into Poland.
Abu Graib will become Auschwitz.
Guantanamo becomes a gulag.
Kevin Rudd will appear as Moses descending from Mt Sinai (complete with halo and appropriate music).
Pol Pot will appear as the friendly owner of your favourite local asian restaurant.
Michael Moore will shed 500lbs and seem to make sense.
One you have your very own set of PACO glasses, you too will have your worldview changed in a way you never expected.
Brain transplant sold separately.
Side effects include a voracious desire to listen to Mike Carlton and a fondness for well chilled chardonnay.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 12:13 AM • permalink
Was Che ever interviewed by Pilger?
I am sure it would make a great diary entry.
Pity Che didn’t have him shot though.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 12:23 AM • permalink
If you refer to the item about the soup tureen ear-rings, that’s one of mine; the only good point of such horrible affectations is that they serve to cover part of her scone- she’s one case in which I’s support mandatory burkhas (and muzzle). And her whiskery mate is an even bigger deadshit- they serve some purpose though in an inverse way- any fillum they hoot about should be avoided like an escaped mental patient with a hatchet.
#35- Fungus I get, but Pixie? It’s certainly lead to a lessening in ocular combustion if they pixillated her puss, but there’s still the sound of her strident, self-important pie hole to contend with.
I used to quite enjoy the movie show on Briz 31, which featured a retired Marine called Chuck and some emptyheaded hippy bimbo whose name escapes me. Chuck used to delight in baiting the daft bint, and showing her up to be a vacuous parrot, much like B1 and B2 on the Movie Show; I believe the silly tart in question now works at the ABC.
Don’t you reckon she looks like John Gorton in a Debbie Reynolds wig?
That’s a bit unfair, Habib, John Gray Gorton* was a war pilot or something and got his smashed-crab face in a plane crash.
Pixie looks like that naturally. She hasn’t changed in years, just got older… more wrinkled.
(You’re right, though.)
*he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force, where he served as a fighter pilot. He survived two serious crashes, and in one he suffered severe cranio-facial injuries, requiring extensive re-constructive surgery that left his face permanently disfigured.
Plastic surgery now aint what it used to be…
the blogger’s verb for aggressive or hostile fact-checking
Or, possibly, the blogger’s verb for accurate fact-checking and correcting the hogwash put out by agenda-driven idiots.
It’s clear that Robert Fisk, in contemplating the “total failure” of his thirty years of journalism, is pining for the days when the Middle East was inhabited by romantic Bedouin warriors in flowing robes with really cool scimitars stuck in their belts, instead of the fatcat princes, treacherous demagogues, and religious fanatics of today. But he’d never admit that.