Day: April 25, 2011

Strike That From The Record!

Think about this…if you made a statement in a legal situation can you go back and tell them to strike it from the record, as so you do not look like a lying moron?  It seems you can if you are in the US Congress….

Sen. Kyl had his lie expunged from the Congressional record…the one where he said that Planned Parenthood’s business is 90% abortion….once it was shown that it was a LIE…he and hius staff had it stricken from the official record…..

And now another congressperson is having something he said taken out of the record…….

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks told The Birmingham News. “People could quite clearly infer that socialism is what the other guys are promoting,” he said, referring to Democrats.Speaking against a budget proposal from Democrats on Friday, Brooks charged that the United States is at “risk of insolvency and bankruptcy because the socialist members of this body choose to spend money that we do not have.”

This is not the first time a House member from Alabama has suggested that his colleagues on the other side of the aisle are socialists. In 2009, Rep. Spencer Bachus said he had identified 17 House Democrats who were socialists.

Brooks didn’t say who — or how many members — in the House would fall under the socialist label.

Later Friday, Brooks made another floor speech in which he took aim at socialism. “Let’s talk about socialism for a moment. It’s greater and greater government micromanaging of our lives. It’s higher taxes to pay for it,” he said, sharing his view of where Democrats stand on federal spending.

What is this pre-occupation with socialism?….apparently if you say a thing enough eventually that blue hair old lady in Possum Creek, Alabama will believe it as fact …..and then Brooks mocked Dems as having thin skin….would that be the same thin skin that the Repubs had when some called Bush 2 a fascist?
Sorry, but I think that if one says a thing knowing that it is a slander then it should remain in the record for all to see and read….now they can say anything they want and when it is singled out they can go back and have it altered in the record…..that sucks!
One saving grace…there is always Twitter, youtube and facebook…..they can hide but they cannot escape their outright fabrications, which could be called….LIES!

Truth In Journalism

Easter is over……the weekend is over…..back to the mundane stuff that just pisses everybody off…….

For years I have been bitching about the media and how they seldom give the whole story and sometimes even make crap up to drive the news for the next week or so…..I have also bitched about how they allow politicians to give all their talking points and seldom make them answer any true questions on real issues….All cable news seems to be “manufactured news” put out to drive the weekly news cycle……something should be done!

But what could we possibly do to correct this situation?

First of all there is a problem…….The First Amendment does not permit government interference with “the freedom of the press.” What that freedom is, is among the great undefined terms in American jurisprudence. But its enduring strength is that few are willing to take the first step down the slippery slope of determining who is a journalist and who is not, and what constitutes good journalism and what does not. It’s all protected, for good or ill.

And there is the rub…….lying in journalism is kinda protected under the auspices of the Constitution….cool huh?

Beyond the Constitution thing……There is no licensing authority for journalists as there is for lawyers or doctors, but the Society of Professional Journalists puts forth a set of ethical standards, though it has no means to enforce them. First among them is: “Deliberate distortion is never permissible.” It should go without saying, but there it is.

The rest of the standards touch on basic tenets of honesty (don’t fabricate, mislead, deceive, silence opposing views), humanity (show compassion, respect and sensitivity to subjects who have undergone trying or traumatic events), and integrity (avoid conflicts of interest and disclose those that cannot be avoided).

But with the advent of the cable 24 hour news cycle….the professionalism has been lost and replaced with CRAP!  With conspiracies…..with innuendo…..and finally with out right lies……

It isn’t always that politicians deliver a pack of lies when they appear in public, though they may. And it isn’t that there is a lack of information available. Rather we are fed a starvation diet of news that is easily digested but not very nourishing.

What seems to attract the media and delight legions of supporters is a series of flimsy headline articles that play to the sympathies but not the intellects of voters. When it is said that the country should be run more like a business or, in some cases, like what families decide about fiscal matters sitting around the kitchen table we are required to make false choices. Neither the typical business nor the family home are examples that translate readily to national policy, but in the realm of instantaneous news delivery these images are often used to suggest it is possible to return to simpler times and simpler solutions in a world that grows ever more complex.  (from an article written by Ann Davidow for BuzzFlash)

Somewhere, someplace….we can only hope that someday journalist will return to giving the people the facts and nothing but the facts (thanx Joe Friday…good quote) and leave the unfounded editorializing for the editors….one day we will have truth in journalism!