Well, at least Reuters (of all people) managed to figure out the significance of the test, even if the Boeing PR people couldn’t. Here’s the lead of their story:
The U.S. military shot down a target ballistic missile over the Pacific Friday in the widest test of its emerging antimissile shield in 18 months, the Defense Department announced.
A professor explains. Unsurprisingly it’s (you guessed it!) biased and lousy reporting.
Inflation during the Bush administration has been much like it was during the Clinton administration. Even so, back then, we liked the economy. Now we hate it. So, what exactly is the problem? The “record setting” budget deficits, perhaps? Not really. Stagnant wages? Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ll take a look at these a bit later, but for now, my point is that any story you read about some aspect of the economy ought to include simple charts like these. Those two stories about budget deficits and stagnant wages — like almost all stories about the state of economy — don’t do that. You can learn more from a few informative charts than you can from reading the words of a reporter who has an agenda that is advanced, not by showing you the actual numbers, but by using bumper-sticker slogans to create the impression that things are “spiraling out of control.” Oh wait, that’s the phrase reporters use to characterize Iraq. Well, they don’t use charts for that purpose, either (and for the same reason).
Mostly it illustrates the great lengths to which scientists must go these days to shape stem cell research to fit the dictates of religious conservatives who have imposed their own view of morality on the scientific enterprise.
This following a piece on cluster bombs where they “dictate” the terms of weapons sales from the Pentagon to protect Lebanese. They have also “imposed their own view of morality on the” war “enterprise.”
At least both views of morality coincide on the ethics of cluster bomb use in stem cell research.
Zombie Time has an exhaustive expose of the media’s slander against Israel in the ambulance incident. It would be both appropriate and ironic to give this piece a Pulitzer. It will never happen, of course.
I wonder if I could dig up an old interview by Mike Wallace with Hitler, in which Mr. Wallace told us how reasonable, rational and serious he seemed? All they wanted was Lebensraum, after all.
In fact, I thought about seeing if I could dig it up on Routers, but I didn’t have the time, and it now turns out that Philip Klein already did it.
I hope that this photographer never gets another gig, but I’m sure that he’ll probably get a plenty of offers from Middle Eastern media.
[Update a few minutes later]
I should add that Reuters gets a little credit (but not that much) for admitting it quickly (unlike CBS did). Of course, they had little choice, since the fakery was so blatantly obvious (though not much more so than the Rather memos).