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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 02:03 pm
Media Watch fires in a scalding response to Mark Steyn:
The Jim Ball prize for media dupes is shaping up as a very tight contest.
We note The Australian’s Mark Steyn has renewed his run for the prize today.
But we don’t have room to deal with him here.
So until next week goodnight.
Australian taxes paid for every word of that. Meanwhile, Andrew Richards writes:
I will give $2,000.00 to the Salvation Army when Media Watch admits they were wrong on any major matter (other than, for example, screwing up an expose of the Wangaratta Courier for getting the footy score wrong again), i.e. on something important (like Steyn).
Or even if they expose the cutting and pasting or other journalistic shabbiness that is carried out by their lefty mates (such as Teflon Phillip), i.e. something serious.
Unfortunately (for the Sallies) I think my money is safe.
Andrew will provide copy receipt of payment upon loss of his bet.
UPDATE. Tim Lambert thinks “Abel Danger” is a person:
Abel Danger did not find that Atta was in Brooklyn before June 2000. In fact he stated that they had no firm evidence that he was in Brooklyn.
UPDATE II. Former Canberra Times staffer Steve Crispin writes to Media Watch:
The picture you showed of Jack Waterford, editor in chief of Canberra Times, on your show on Monday the 29th August 2005 was not Jack Waterford at all. Having worked at CT until recently, I can say I have no idea who that was as it was no one I recognise, but it certainly wasnt Jack. Perhaps you should update your library file pics. Its not like they dont print his pic every week in their newspaper.
And MW moderator (and executive producer) Peter McEvoy replies:
I’m afraid your right – apologies to Jack.
MW can’t even run the correct picture of a local media identity (or spell you’re) yet they presume to lecture Steyn on the possible movements of terrorists within the US five years ago. Sweet.
(Via Nora in comments)
UPDATE III. Tim Lambert thinks it’s terrific fun to rip off someone’s site (and then dodge phone calls and emails requesting an explanation). But mock his clumsy writing and Lamby wails with indignation:
If Blair’s reading comprehension skills were any good he would have noticed that I consistently referred to the Able Danger team as “they”. The word “he” in the sentence Blair quotes refers to the official who was talking to Jehl about Able Danger. Blair’s response is characteristic of the unserious and superficial nature of his blog. He has no substantive comments on Bryant or Able Danger, just repeated assertions that Steyn is somehow correct and a lame attempt at point-scoring with an out-of-context quote.
Poor baby.
UPDATE IV. Now he’s even whinier:
Blair has added another update—now his story is that he understood what I meant and all he was doing was mocking my “clumsy writing”. Even if this is true, it means that the sum total of his contribution to the discussion in five posts on Steyn and Bryant has been to discover a typo in the Media Watch transcript and some “clumsy writing” in one of my posts. Look up “superficial” in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of Blair.
Look up “Oh my God I’ve married an obsessive shrieking hypocrite!” and you’ll see a picture of Lambert’s wife.
A few weeks ago I did a quick run through MW’s targets. Results: News, 9 and 7 were the top targets accounting for over 55% of all negative comments. News alone copped a whopping 30% and 9 and 7 on 13% each. SBS, which makes a habit of running Islamofacist and Leftie propaganda as Dateline and the like, copped no negative stories, unFairfacts just 7% and the ABC 9% although some of these stories were about how the ABC management didn’t allow journos and the orkers collective to pursue a more strident independent, code for harder left wing, line. Your ABC? More like their ABC!
Posted by platey mates on 08/29 at 11:40 AM • permalink
So now they get paid for just mentioning people they don’t like? Why don’t they just run through a list, instead of the pretend exposes? (it would save money):
“Here’s tonights Media Watch. We don’t like Tim Blair, Mark Steyn, Arthur Chrenkoff or Piers Ackerman. They’re fascist book-burners. That’s all for this week. Goodnight.”
Posted by Scott Campbell at Blithering Bunny on 08/29 at 11:56 AM • permalink
Sounds like Atrios has been moonlighting.
Posted by Jim Treacher on 08/29 at 12:05 PM • permalink
If Tim wasn’t so stingy with comment space-I’d really blast this guy.
Posted by madawaskan on 08/29 at 12:14 PM • permalink
- Notice how they praised a web-site for duping the MSM into thinking Bush Snr. was going to be at the Forbes Global CEO conference – Media Watch don’t have to watch out for blogs unless they are sites like Chrenkoff’s blog, or anything other site that is evil.
And then 3 seconds before the end, we get this…’Mark Steyn has renewed his run for the prize today’..sorry out of time, can’t explain why..goodnight.
If the Media Watch’s concept was to point-out what NOT to do, I’d think they were spot on….but they’re not, and we pay for that crap.
What’s extraordinary about this childish thing is that Steyn has already won by any reasonable standard.
They said he was a fool to believe that female bureaucrat’s story because it was a known fact that Atta was not in the US then. Thus moving the goalposts far into their own territory and putting the burden of proof on themselves.
All he had to do is show that there are lots of plausible ways that Atta COULD have been in the US then. Which he has. The bureaucrat’s story could still be horseshit and Steyn would still be right– that their dismissal was unwarranted.
But “we don’t have time right now but we know we’re right” is amazingly lame as a response. Why does this program exist? What has it ever done right?
Scathing? Ooh! I can hear Steyn laughing all the way from New Hampshire.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 08/29 at 12:59 PM • permalink
- *Scalding*
D’oh! Where’s my damn coffee and donuts???Posted by Spiny Norman on 08/29 at 01:00 PM • permalink
But we don’t have room to deal with him here.
Ah, the old Fermat defense. You know, “I have discovered a very elegant proof, but I don’t have room in the margins to show it to you right now…”
Wonder if they’ll ever get around to backing this up. Since they’ve been skinned by Mark once already, I think this may be the last we hear of it. Or they’ll put out something that’s so totally in denial of Mark’s evisceration of their previous work that it’s unintentionally hilarious.
Posted by Joe Bonforte on 08/29 at 01:01 PM • permalink
If time is the only issue to have a full debate on this matter, then how about flooding Media Crotch with demands for a _real_ debate about their charges?
I’ve tried to start the ball rolling with this posting to their Web page comments section:
“WELL, how about doing a feature item on Mr. Steyn with a live on-air debate against Mr. Steyn, as he himself suggested, next week? Surely you can _make_ time for that to better inform your viewers? And that’s one transcript that worldwide Internet readers, like myself, would be pleased to read. Or is debate and outreach to a worldwide audience not part of your show’s mandate?”
Or is trying to pressure Media Crotch just not on?
Posted by andycanuck on 08/29 at 01:20 PM • permalink
Media Watch has always been smug and bitchy but that final comment must rank as a new low.
I’ve got a feeling Mark Steyn is destined for the Jim Ball prize. It doesn’t matter what he says/writes now, MW have been attacked front on by a conservative and he will pay the price of all who offend against the regime.
If Steyn doesn’t get it my bets are on Andrew Bolt or Janet Albrechtsen.
After watching last night’s risible effort on the publicly funded ABC’s Media Watch program, it became apparent that the poor little show has finished its fight for life.
Now it is time to do the decent thing and turn off its life support.
Once the must-see show on the ABC (occasionally it was worth suffering through 4 Corners first), it has become a ventilated corpse, utterly brain dead, only being kept alive by the drip feed of public funding.
I blog therefore I am.
— Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 08/29 at 07:10 PM • permalink
It has to be agreed that Mike G is spot on: MW has moved the goalposts far into its own territory where Mark Steyn can’t lose. To win MW would have to prove definitively that Atta was somewhere else at the relevant time, eg , being held for the duration in a German prison ( we can rely on a record of that nature ).
By contrast, if Atta’s urban planning lecturer in Hamburg now pops up and says: “ In the second half of April and first half of May that year Atta was here in Hamburg working on an assignment which he then submitted on May 15 [ so he couldn’t possibly have been in the USA in the period Johnelle X claims he was] “; this would not prove anything other than an assignment was submitted in Atta’s name in Hamburg on May 15. And even that would require absolute faith in the absence of potential for error in lecturer’s system of academic records.
Own goal from MW – not that they’ll ever acknowledge it.
Posted by Luigi Vercotti on 08/29 at 07:13 PM • permalink
The story on the picture in the Adelaide ‘Sunday Mail’ was a complete beat up.
Yes, the photo was nothing to do with Housing Trust…but everyone in South Australia already knew this! How?
Well the ‘Sunday Mail’ published a retraction and explanation in the paper on Sunday! Not only is Media Watch a week behind us here in Adelaide (hard to believe this is possible) but they obviously rejected not only the editor’s letter but the public apology that was published the day before.
Long ago I realized MW was controlled by one backroom guy who responded to a reasoned complaint of mine derisively after this manner: ‘whatever I replied wouldn’t please someone like you’. Ad Hominem is their only ‘method’.
What can we say of an ABC management that has let such a creep push the program constantly so far to the left of respectability that it has utterly destroyed itself this year.
Media Watch admits stuff up! Uses wrong photo.
Instead of Jack Waterford of the Canberra Times it is, apparently some unsub.
Here is the fulsome apology from the producers:
But more likely we stuffed up with the wrong photo.
and
Dear Steve (Steve Crispin CT’s editor in chief),
I’m afraid your right – apologies to Jack.Send in the hounds!
— Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 08/29 at 09:37 PM • permalink
- I came, I switched on the ABC, I watched flabbergasted!
I now await, breathless, for Media tWat’s “withering putdown” next week.
Spiny Norman (#11) may “hear Steyn laughing all the way from New Hampshire”, but I think I can hear him saying “Liz, go ahead, make my day, creep!”Posted by pick-your-pun on 08/29 at 10:12 PM • permalink
Nora, that’s delicious! Especially in light of MW’s first story deriding the Sunday Mail for the same crime.
And did they really say “your right, apologies to Jack”?
How can you not shake your head in wonder at the antics of these “special” children in their sandpit?
Posted by James Waterton on 08/29 at 10:54 PM • permalink
- Hey James,
It’s there, just follow the link.To the point of being a bore on the subject, Media Watch needs to be axed immediately.It serves no useful purpose these days except to provide a taxpayer-funded sheltered workshop for journalists.
Bloggers can and are holding the media to account in a far more comprehensive and meaningful way than Media Watch can in 15 minutes.
Best of all, there is no pretense of non-partisanship on the Net – just choose your own biases.
— Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 08/29 at 11:02 PM • permalink
Bwahahahahahaha! “Abel Danger”.
So much for Tim Lambert’s credibility.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 08/29 at 11:17 PM • permalink
I thought Mark Steyn made a very good point in his column. Does anyone really expect that he would have been able to write a 2 or 3 page letter of reply to MW outlining his case and then have it treated fairly? Of course not. MW would have taken 7 or 8 words at random from each page and put them together to form some totally misrepresented ‘quote’. I also thought Jacksons closing comments were akin to a school kid ‘taking their bat and ball and going home’ because they know they are beaten. Absolutely pathetic.
“Abel Danger”
I guess Tim Lambert has never heard of code names. He must lead a pretty sheltered life…..although that’s pretty obvious from the rest of the dribble he broadcasts to the universe.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 08/30 at 01:16 AM • permalink
Who watches Media Watch, (which is essentially a big whinge by a bunch of losers who couldnt get a real job) especially when its up against Who Wants to be a Millionaire (where winners are grinners) yaaaaay
You would think the O-So-Smart lefties would make a killing, its only a quiz on general knowledge, maybe its the cultural undertone that is not nuanced enough.
- “UPDATE. Tim Lambert thinks “Abel Danger” is a person:
Abel Danger did not find that Atta was in Brooklyn before June 2000. In fact he stated that they had no firm evidence that he was in Brooklyn.”“Tim, according to Lambert’s blog the post you link to doesn’t exist. “Lambert has pulled his `Abel, Able’ post after being completely crushed by several very knowledgeable contributors to his site who shot him down in flames AND that was after he `stealth edited’ his original post to remove the embarrassing evidence of his missunderstandamatingness of the subject.
Typical of Lambert – rushes to his keyboard in a rush of triumphant fervour – “I got Steyn” he gloats, only to be torn to shreds on his own blog and made to look even more like a superficial nonentity than he normally does.
- Dear Diddums,
re #49 It’s because we care and love too muchre #50 With deference to my darling Nicky I’d much rather look at Tim than Liz Jackson.Love and kisses,
NoraPosted by The Thin Man Returns on 08/30 at 03:07 AM • permalink
Blerko she looks rather good for someone with 8 children doncha think?
Posted by Andrew Ian Dodge on 08/30 at 09:51 AM • permalink
Australian taxes paid for every word of that.
Tim and Mark have the ability, at will, to make pants fall down among the ill-informed.
I swear, I can’t picture certain on-camera personalities anymore without their appearing in my mind as bug-eyed and speechless, ready to retrieve their waistbands as soon as the red light goes off.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 08/30 at 01:42 PM • permalink
Why does Tim Lambert look exactly as I suspected he did?
Posted by Aaron – Freewill on 08/31 at 08:37 AM • permalink
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Let’s face facts, folks – in a battle of wits, the Media Watch crew is defensless…