Sunday, June 09, 2024
Saturday, June 08, 2024
Seems Bad
“Crisis of conscience”: 20 years after the Abu Ghraib report, The New York Times published their investigation into the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, where the Israeli military has detained thousands of Palestinians, and describes the abuse taking place there. pic.twitter.com/GrqnrPhuS5
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 8, 2024
Seems Like A Bad Guy
He's on of the lads, but not one of the AMERICAN lads, so knives are out.
The phone hacking scandal has defined British journalism and politics since. There was a moment when it looked like the monstrous behavior of the press would be ever so slightly curtailed, and some people ever so slightly punished, and they all banded together and said "fuck you, no fucking way."
Desperate to stop the scandal and appease prosecutors in Britain and abroad, News Corp tapped Will Lewis, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, to clean up the mess.Lewis is the new WaPO publisher.
He did just that. In his telling, he cooperated with the authorities, revealed wrongdoing and helped set the operation on a new course. Some former colleagues and hacking victims, though, long believed that he helped News Corp cover up the extent of the wrongdoing.
The phone hacking scandal has defined British journalism and politics since. There was a moment when it looked like the monstrous behavior of the press would be ever so slightly curtailed, and some people ever so slightly punished, and they all banded together and said "fuck you, no fucking way."
Well, Well, Well
Can I get a list of acceptable topics to get vocally mad at national Democrats about, the ones that don't risk the return of the Bad Orange Man?
Friday, June 07, 2024
Client Journalism
I said British journalism is a sewer and that's because it's all "Dylan Byers journalism." Powerful people paired with their client journalists who do free PR for them at the behest of media outlet owners/editors. The top journalists are the ones with the top clients!
It was good to see Byers get the smackdown from his peers, a bit, as they are usually very resistant to criticizing each other. There should be some understanding that once access journalism takes over, there's no outlet for anything else.
It was good to see Byers get the smackdown from his peers, a bit, as they are usually very resistant to criticizing each other. There should be some understanding that once access journalism takes over, there's no outlet for anything else.
Money Well Spent
Amazing intelligence from our intellignce organization.
CIA assessment circulated among US officials this week concluded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likely judges he can get away without defining a post-war plan — even as the Biden administration has launched a full-court press to pressure him to bring an end to the conflict in Gaza."Full-court press" hasn't even included the customary sternly worded letters!
Learning The Tricks
Gotta admit that accusing your critics of being "activists" is a standard US journalist thing, so this Brit important is learning fast.
Washington Post Publisher and CEO William Lewis is drawing scrutiny after press reports described him as attempting to dissuade journalists — including those at The Post — from covering his involvement in a long-running British phone-hacking lawsuit.Left out of this account is how after Folkenflik refused the terms, Dylan Byers, the rich person's favorite free PR agent, ran with it.
...
The other press account came from NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, who published a story Thursday describing his experience with Lewis: After being named The Post’s next publisher, but before his first day on the job, Lewis “repeatedly — and heatedly” offered to give Folkenflik an exclusive interview about The Post’s future, in exchange for him dropping a story about new court documents in the phone-hacking case. He refused.
...
In his email to The Post, Lewis called Folkenflik — who published a book in 2013 on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire — “an activist, not a journalist.” Lewis added: “I had an off the record conversation with him before I joined you at The Post and some six months later he has dusted it down, and made up some excuse to make a story of a non-story.”
At that time, Lewis had just been named publisher and CEO by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, but had not yet started. In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations.
At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal, confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.
NPR published the story nonetheless. On Thursday, the spokesperson declined comment about that offer.
That first interview appears to have gone to Puck’s Dylan Byers. It ran a day after the Post’s piece in May.
British journalism is a sewer and this guy has no idea why people are criticizing him. This is just how things are normally done!dylan byers has a little buzzer on his desk that starts flashing every time a billionaire needs defending online
— Ashley Feinberg (ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social) (@ashleyfeinberg) December 10, 2018
All In Your Head
The presumption that long term illnesses - even ones with identifiable causes - are just psychosomatic or fakery has a long history.
I admit I used to be a bit more inclined to believe that kind of thing, but now I generally believe that people are sick when they say they are sick and understand that if they sometimes reach for "crazy"-sounding "conspiracy theory" explantions, it's because the official medical establishment has failed to provide them with a real one.
Over my life I've seen many conditions go from "fake" to "real" and the same for many asserted causes of those conditions. "Perhaps a virus keeps eating away at me or damaged bits of the body that do not heal well" is not actually a crazy concept!
The one I have always remembered, for no particular reason, was how the suggestion that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria instead of "stress" and diet was treated as nuts until it wasn't.
I admit I used to be a bit more inclined to believe that kind of thing, but now I generally believe that people are sick when they say they are sick and understand that if they sometimes reach for "crazy"-sounding "conspiracy theory" explantions, it's because the official medical establishment has failed to provide them with a real one.
THERE’S A STORY YOU HEAR about multiple sclerosis, that doctors all claimed it too was “psychological” until magnetic resonance imaging came along and revealed big white patches all over the brain scans of its sufferers. Heck, coal country doctors dismissed black lung as “psychological” as late as the 1950s, and when a female scientist even claimed to have isolated the microscopic “germ” that caused polio in 1930, she was written off as a fabulist quack. It would take another 92 years before the scientific consensus would make its way back to the germ theory of multiple sclerosis, and when it finally did, with the 2022 publication of a 20-year longitudinal study of thousands of Veterans Administration MS patients, it didn’t exactly break the internet.The link, worth a read, is about official Long Covid denial.
Over my life I've seen many conditions go from "fake" to "real" and the same for many asserted causes of those conditions. "Perhaps a virus keeps eating away at me or damaged bits of the body that do not heal well" is not actually a crazy concept!
The one I have always remembered, for no particular reason, was how the suggestion that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria instead of "stress" and diet was treated as nuts until it wasn't.
Find it all
The man won't be able to hide continuing to live the good life from any money he has hidden!
Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Thursday moved to liquidate his personal assets, agreeing to demands from the families of Sandy Hook victims whom he owes more than $1.5 billion in damages over his lies about the 2012 school massacre.
Thursday, June 06, 2024
Lock Him Up!
Might happen!
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday ordered former Trump White House aide Steven Bannon to report to jail by July 1 to begin serving a four-month sentence for his criminal contempt of Congress conviction.
Junk Fees
It is a problem when every transaction is a potential scam without easy recourse.
One rooftop bar and restaurant in downtown Los Angeles started charging a 4.5 percent “security fee,” much to the consternation of patrons. Reservation cancellation fees in New York City, if they’re even one minute after the restaurant’s deadline, can now cost as much as $100 per person.
The Biden administration has on several occasions lamented hotel “resort fees,” even tacked onto stays at hotels that cannot be seriously described as “resorts.” But hotel guests in Los Angeles sued Marriott last year over something else: a “hotel worker protection ordinance costs surcharge.” According to Marriott, the $10-to-$14-a-night fee helped them comply with a local law requiring personal security devices to protect hospitality workers from dangerous interactions with guests. The lawsuit estimated that a single airport Marriott makes $3.6 million annually off the HWPO junk fee—quite a bit for a system that amounts to a network of wireless pagers or walkie-talkies.
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