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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
Confederate Yankee writes:
The headline on the Times Herald-Record Sunday was “Two Years in Iraq and… THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING.” It is accompanied by a photo of a worn plastic yellow ribbon tied around the base of a telephone pole, presumably to show flagging support at home for our troops, which the paper promotes on page 9 with a heavily-biased tabloid-quality story showing how the lack of yellow ribbons in the area shows flagging support for the war and our troops.
The problem is, the ribbon they show is a lie.
Hit that last link for the full story. The Times Herald-Record has some explaining to do.
- What a sad come-down for this great, world-famous, influential paper.Posted by Susan Norton on 03/21 at 10:54 AM • permalink
- Wait just a minute. Who is the journalist here? Who has the journalism degree on the wall? And who has the editors and fact checkers?
Why it’s the Times Herald-Record, that’s who. This fact checking by utility pole movers has got to come to a stop.
Posted by wronwright on 03/21 at 11:32 AM • permalink
- wronwright,
Is it okay when the “pole mover marker guy” has a Master’s in Technical & Professional Communications? I was between writing gigs at the time, and took that job as I still had a pesky need to eat…
Posted by Confederate Yankee on 03/21 at 11:47 AM • permalink
- Confederate Yankee. No, you have to be in the club and all the other real journalists have to say you’re a real journalist…Posted by richard mcenroe on 03/21 at 11:51 AM • permalink
- Yes, what Richard says. The people who comment here are comprised of lawyers, accountants, economists, business people, teachers, and the occasional utilty pole mover. Yes, from time to time our education, experience, and acument might seem to indicate that we smell a fraud when we read it. But that is an illusion.
It takes a journalist, a real journalist, to check the facts, to keep those facts in perspective and give them the proper weight (highlighting some facts and ignoring others that would only mislead the reader and take away from the overall theme of the article).
This is why news articles should be left to the purview of the real journalists.
Posted by wronwright on 03/21 at 12:01 PM • permalink
- What was I thinking? I will of course bow down the the stellar journalistic intellects above me…Posted by Confederate Yankee on 03/21 at 12:09 PM • permalink
- More like below you, Confederate Yankee!Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 03/21 at 12:15 PM • permalink
- Otter: it’s probably more a case of the road being widened due to increased traffic that causes the telephone poles to need moving.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 03/21 at 03:14 PM • permalink
- Sorry, I’ve been in an email discussion with the editor of the paper at hand. He doesn’t see bias, and I’m trying to explain it.
The poles need to be moved becuase someone got in a wreck some years ago and hit a pole that the courts judged was too close to the road. They now have to be a whopping TEN FEET from the road.
Not a whole lot room for error if you hit a patch of ice.
Posted by Confederate Yankee on 03/21 at 03:30 PM • permalink
- Actually it might be further. It wasa few years ago…Posted by Confederate Yankee on 03/21 at 03:39 PM • permalink
- CY, I know it’s a bit hard to understand. So allow me to explain how newspaper editors and television news producers see things.
We first must understand the scope of the problem. In our everyday lives we are faced with facts, zillions of them, maybe even fajillions. The cat went up Mrs. Peterson’s apple tree Sunday. The price of milk increased by a quarter. The US invaded Iraq. Facts, just tons and tons of facts.
The job of a newspaper is to collect the facts, compile them, collate and cross reference them, and assemble them together in such a way that reasonable conclusions can be made. But when the real world is filled with so many facts, how does a newspaper assemble them together and make conclusions based on them? The answer is, they don’t. That approach simply involves too much work and expense. Instead, they use the timeworn method used by news editors from time of the Magna Carta. They work backwards, starting with the conclusion and assemble the facts to support it.
Allow me to give you an example. When the newspapers became aware of the fact that George W. Bush was a pilot for the Texas Air National Guard, they made a conclusion: he was a spoiled punk ass rich boy from a wealthly East Coast family whose rich Republican daddy pulled strings to keep his worthless ass out of the war because he’s nothing more than a chicken shit coward. Ok, that’s our conclusion. Which I think consensus would show was pretty much considered irrefutable among news editors.
Since they had their conclusion, the next question became what facts can be mustered to prove this pretty darn irrefutable conclusion? Well, that’s where it got a little dicey. In reality, there was not all that much out there to support it. A conclusion so near certain that most editors felt that they shouldn’t be censored from publishing it by petty concerns over facts, evidence, and ethics. Indeed if the public would just let them chuck the fact collection part of their business, they could simply cut to the chase and publish the conclusions. As they see them. Much easier. They could even make up nice little fictional stories to provide the background if that is what is needed.
So when the TANG memo was faxed, well, there it was, a fact that supported a darned near absolutely positive conclusion. Of course, the possibility that the memos were not actually authentic and thus not techically facts per se does not mean that the conclusion was wrong. Because it was irrefutable. It’s just that technically there were no facts which could be shown to support the conclusion. Yet.
The same thing is present in your case. The editor started out with, I think we can all agree on this, an absolutely uncontestable conclusion that the WAR IN IRAQ WAS WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, AND THAT AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR IT IS DECREASING. So starting out with this, well, irrefutable conclusion, the question becomes what facts can be assembled to show that the WAR IN IRAQ WAS WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, AND THAT AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR IT IS DECREASING? Well, the yellow tape that surrounds utility poles, of course. It’s as clear as water, can’t you see it. And you bringing up the point that the yellow tags have nothing to do with the war does nothing to diminish the conclusion that the WAR IN IRAQ WAS WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, AND THAT AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR IT IS DECREASING. Because that is irrefutable.
It’s the conclusions that are important, not facts. Do you understand now?
Posted by wronwright on 03/21 at 04:22 PM • permalink
- Ah, I see.
Its great to have such a genius as you among us, the lil people…
Posted by Confederate Yankee on 03/21 at 04:30 PM • permalink
- Genius you say? Yes, well. That’s certainly the conclusion. And the fact that there are absolutely no facts to support it is not important.
Besides, I always have the yellow ties around the utility poles to support it.
Posted by wronwright on 03/21 at 04:42 PM • permalink
The poles need to be moved becuase someone got in a wreck some years ago and hit a pole that the courts judged was too close to the road. They now have to be a whopping TEN FEET from the road.
Ahhh, OK. I was hoping Andrea’s explanation was correct but had a sinking feeling it would be more like what you’re saying.
Here in Massachusetts, ten feet from the road would (literally!) be two feet into my bed.
- Man. Wronwright’s sarcasm kung fu is the best. (Genuflects.)Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 03/21 at 08:40 PM • permalink
- Otter — Happens every spring. The poles on each side of the road move toward each other. Where do you think little utility poles come from?Posted by richard mcenroe on 03/22 at 12:09 AM • permalink
- wronwrite:
We first must understand the scope of the problem. In our everyday lives we are faced with facts, zillions of them, maybe even fajillions. The cat went up Mrs. Peterson’s apple tree Sunday. The price of milk increased by a quarter. The US invaded Iraq. Facts, just tons and tons of facts.
But this is so idiotically simple! The price of milk went up .25, so Mrs. Peterson’s cat went up the apple tree in protest, driving the US to invade Iraq! Why does it take the ever-so-intellectually superior “journalists” to figure that one out? 😉
Posted by mamapajamas on 03/22 at 12:38 AM • permalink
Otter — Happens every spring. The poles on each side of the road move toward each other. Where do you think little utility poles come from?
Sorry, richard, but that’s wrong. Them poles are migrating; that’s how they get closer to the road. The yellow ribbons are there to mark which poles can be hunted in season.
The next article by the Times Herald-Record will be a scandal on how Evil Republicans (TM) used their influence to start a war so that yellow ribbons would be tied on the poles by Dumb Red State Voters (TM) in order for the Oligarchs Of America (i.e., Karl Rove) to hunt poles to their hearts content. I hear that they are tasty eating; exceptionally fine specimens hang on many a Republican wall.
Simple, really. wronright is correct as to what the editorial staff is thinking. But once again, the editorial staff of some clueless element of the MSM has been manipulated by Our Master Karl Rove.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 03/22 at 01:23 AM • permalink
