The Sorta Funnies

"Fuck You CNN": How the Press Got It Wrong on Newtown

By Adam Serwer - MotherJones  | Fri Dec. 14, 2012

In the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut the immediate question was who had gunned down nearly thirty people, most of them children, before taking his own life.

Early reports, citing Connecticut law enforcement sources, identified the shooter as a twentysomething from Newtown named Ryan Lanza. A Facebook profile fitting that description was easily accessible, and social media users—from professional reporters to online onlookers—immediately assumed they had discovered the Facebook profile of the gunman who had perpetrated the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. News outlets including BuzzFeed, Mediaite, Gawker, and Fox News speculated that the account belonged to the shooter. Journalists from Slate, Huffington Post, CNN, and other news organizations tweeted links to the Facebook profile.

But it was the wrong guy. Press reports are now identifying the shooter as Adam Lanza. Ryan Lanza, identified as Adam's brother, has reportedly been questioned by police. According to the Associated Press, "a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers' first names." The result was that, for a few brief hours in the middle of the day, based on press speculation about the suspect's identity, social media users brought out the digital equivalent of pitchforks and torches, vilifying the alleged shooter's brother and haranguing Ryan Lanzas all across the intertubes.

Political cartoonist Matt Bors, who was Facebook friends with Ryan Lanza but didn't actually know him personally, was inundated with Facebook messages and friend requests as a result. "I was getting messages from people saying, why are you friends with a monster?" Bors says. Looking at Lanza's page, he saw desperate messages posted denying any involvement in the shooting, and posted them to his Twitter feed. "Fuck you CNN it wasn't me," Lanza's post read. (CNN itself did not post or broadcast the profile, though one of their reporters did tweet it.)

Here's the screenshot from Bors:

Meanwhile, other people named Ryan Lanza with Twitter feeds were deluged by followers and tweets. Facebook exploded with pages devoted to Ryan Lanza with screenshots taken from his profile. Several of them were some variation of this:

Or this:

But these are far from the only ones:

Very far from the only ones:

Lanza appears to have taken down his Facebook page*.

This isn't the first, nor sadly will it be the last time, that journalists and the masses jump to conclusions in the aftermath of a tragedy based on personal details from social media profiles. Shortly after the shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July, ABC reporter Brian Ross speculated on air that the suspect in that shooting, was the same person who had a profile on a tea party website. It turned out they were two different people who merely shared a common name. Ross was pilloried by left and right alike, and eventually apologized for"disseminating that information before it was properly vetted." Then another mass shooting that captured the nation's attention occurred, and lots of other people made the same exact mistake. The temptation to break the news of the shooter's identity overwhelmed the need to make sure they had the right guy.

*It was down for a while and is now back up.

Amber Lyon reveals CNN lies and war propaganda

Amber Lyon Blows Whistle on CNN

CNN Exposed: Emmy Winning Former CNN Journalist, Amber Lyon Blows The Whistle that CNN is paid by the US government for reporting on some events, and not reporting on others.

The Obama Administration pays for CNN content

Former CNN reporter Amber Lyon is claiming she has proof the Obama administration paid CNN to run certain stories and delete certain stories, most notably an interview with Nick Robertson who interviewed Mohammed Al Zawahiri regarding the Egyptian uprising and it being a protest for the release of the Blind Shiek, NOT based on a youtube video.

CNN Brings On Psychics To Tell Us What The Economy Will Be Like

vidlink

The US Government's Frontal Assault on Freedom

Hillary the Identity Thief
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The US print and TV media and the US government have made it completely clear that they have no regard for the First Amendment. Consider CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s reaction to the leaked diplomatic cables that reveal how the US government uses deceptions, bribes, and threats to control other governments and to deceive the American and other publics. Blitzer is outraged that information revealing the US government’s improprieties reached the people, or some of them. Blitzer demanded that the US government take the necessary steps to make certain that journalists and the American people never again find out what their government is up to.

The disregard for the First Amendment is well established in the US media, which functions as a propaganda ministry for the government. Remember the NSA leak given to the New York Times that the George W. Bush regime was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spying on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court? The New York Times spiked the story for one year and did not release it until after Bush’s reelection. By then, the Bush regime had fabricated a legal doctrine that “authorized” Bush to violate US law.

Glenn Greenwald writing in Salon has exposed the absence of moral standards among WikiLeaks’ critics. A number of American politicians have called for the US government to murder Julian Assange, as have journalists such as neoconservative propagandist Jonah Goldberg, who wrote: “Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?”

WikiLeaks’ critics could not make it clearer that they do not believe in accountable government. And to make certain that the government is not held accountable, WikiLeaks’ critics are calling for every possible police state measure, including extra-judicial murder, to stamp out anyone who makes information available that enables the citizenry to hold government accountable.

The US government definitely does not believe in accountable government. Among the first things the Obama regime did was to make certain that there would be no investigation into the Bush regime’s use of lies, fabricated “intelligence,” and deception of the American public and the United Nations in order to further its agenda of conquering the independent Muslim states in the Middle East and turning them into US puppets. The Obama regime also made certain that no member of the Bush regime would be held accountable for violating US and international laws, for torturing detainees, for war crimes, for privacy violations or for any of the other criminal acts of the Bush regime.

As the cables leaked by a patriotic American to WikiLeaks reveal, the US government was even able to prevent accountable government in the UK by having British prime minister Brown “fix” the official Chilcot Inquiry into the deceptions used by former prime minister Tony Blair to lead the British into serving as mercenaries in America’s wars. The US was able to do this, because the British prime minister does not believe in accountable government either.

The leaked documents show that the last thing the US government wants anywhere is a government that is accountable to its own citizens instead of to the US government.

The US government’s frontal assault on freedom of information goes well beyond WikiLeaks and shutting down its host servers. In a December 2 editorial, “Wave goodbye to Internet freedom,” the Washington Times reports that Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski has “outlined a plan to expand the federal government’s power over the Internet.”

The obvious, but unasked, question is: Why does the US government fear the American people and believe that only news that is managed and spun by the government is fit to print? Is there an agenda afoot to turn citizens into subjects?

Perhaps the most discouraging development is the accusation that is being spread via the Internet that Julian Assange is a dupe or even a covert agent used by the CIA and Mossad to spread disinformation that furthers US and Israeli agendas. This accusation might come from intelligence services striving to protect governments by discrediting the leaked information. However, it has gained traction because some of the cables contain false information. Some have concluded, incorrectly, that the false information was put into the documents for the purpose of being leaked.

There is another explanation for the false information. Diplomats concerned with advancing their careers learn to tell their bosses what they want to hear, whether true or false. Diplomats understand that the US government has agendas that it cannot declare and that they are expected to support these agendas by sending in reports that validate the undeclared agendas. For example, the US government cannot openly say that it is endeavoring to create a climate of opinion that gives the US a green light for eliminating the independent Iranian government and re-establishing an American puppet state. US “diplomats,” a.k.a., spies, understand this and fabricate the information that supports the agenda.

In my opinion, the most important of all the cables leaked is the secret directive sent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to 33 US embassies and consulates ordering US diplomats to provide credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers, frequent-flyer account numbers and biographic and biometric information including DNA information on UN officials from the Secretary General down, including “heads of peace operations and political field missions.”

The directive has been characterized as the spy directive, but this is an unusual kind of spying. Usually, spying focuses on what other governments think, how they are likely to vote on US initiatives, who can be bribed, and on sexual affairs that could be used to blackmail acquiescence to US agendas.

In contrast, the information requested in the secret directive is the kind of information that would be used to steal a person’s identity.

Why does the US government want information that would enable it to steal the identities of UN officials and impersonate them?

The US government loves to pretend that its acts of naked aggression are acts of liberation mandated by “the world community.” The world community has been less supportive of US aggression since it learned that the Bush regime lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, the UN has not given Washington the green light Washington wants for a military assault on Iran. Neither has the UN given Washington the extreme sanctions that it wants the world community to impose on Iran.

As the UN refused Washington’s menu of sanctions, Washington unilaterally added its own sanction package to the UN sanctions, to the dismay of the Russians and other governments who believed that they had arrived at a compromise with Washington over the Iran sanctions issue.

Could it be that Washington wants to be able to impersonate UN officials and country delegates so that it can compromise them by involving them in fake terrorist plots, communications with terrorists real or contrived, money laundering, sex scandals and other such means of suborning their cooperation with Washington’s agendas? All the CIA has to do is to call a Taliban or Hamas chief on a UN official’s telephone number or send a compromising fax with a UN official’s fax number or have operatives pay for visits to prostitutes with a UN official’s credit card number.

The report in the Guardian on December 2 that the CIA drew up the UN spy directive signed off by Hillary Clinton is a good indication that the United States government intended to compromise the United Nations and turn the organization, as it has done with so many governments, into a compliant instrument of American policy, to an extent even greater than is already the case.

Perhaps there is another plausible explanation of why the US government desired information that would enable it to impersonate UN officials, but as a person who had a 25-year career in Washington I cannot think of what it might be.

CNN reporter: CNN censored footage of ‘war crime’ in Iraq War

By Daniel Tencer - Sunday, September 19th, 2010

A former CNN Iraq correspondent suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder says his employers wouldn't run footage he filmed of what he describes as a war crime by US troops, an Australian news source reports.

Michael Ware, who covered Iraq for CNN from 2006 until last year, describes the incident as "a small war crime, if there is such a thing."

In 2007, Ware was with a group of US soldiers in a remote village in Iraq that was under the control of al Qaeda militants. Ware says there was a teenage boy in the street carrying a weapon for protection.

‘‘(The boy) approached the house we were in and the (US) soldiers who were watching our backs, one of them put a bullet right in the back of his head. Unfortunately it didn't kill him,’’ Ware told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as quoted at the Brisbane Times.

Ware said his footage of the incident was deemed "too graphic" by CNN bosses to be placed on the air.

The Brisbane Times quotes Ware:

We all spent the next 20 minutes listening to his tortured breath as he died.

I had this moment … that I realized despite what was happening to this man in front of me, I'd been more concerned with the composition of my (photo) shot than I was with any attempt to either save him or at the very, very least ease his passing.

I indeed had been indifferent as the soldiers around me whose indifference I was attempting to capture.

Ware became "obsessed" with the footage of the incident, playing it repeatedly, said John Martinkus, a journalism teacher at the University of Tasmania and a friend of Ware's.

"Part of him was like, ‘How could I just stand by and watch that happen?’ It was a really horrible, stark moral choice that he faced and he still wrestles with that,’’ Martinkus said.

Ware says the footage belongs to CNN and he can't release it himself.

The Australian citizen returned to his native Brisbane last December to recover from the trauma of nearly a decade in war zones (he covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Time prior to moving to CNN.)

Members of his family say he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and endures "nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia and mood swings," according to the Brisbane Times.

Ware was reportedly kidnapped during his stint as a war correspondent. In the incident, recounted at Men's Journal, he was grabbed by followers of the al Qaeda warlord Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

They dragged Ware into an anonymous building in Baghdad, hung up a banner, and were preparing to tape his execution with his own camera — until an Iraqi friend of his, a former Baathist, insisted they spare his life. “I didn’t leave my hotel room for three days after that,” he said. “I was nauseated for weeks.”

Ware thus became "the only Westerner to be captured and later released by Al Qaeda in Iraq," reports ABC in Australia.

The CNN correspondent has been known for occasionally stepping into controversy. In 2006, he aired partial footage of militants stalking and killing US troops, prompting then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to declare that "CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film."

In 2007, some bloggers accused Ware of disrupting a Baghdad press conference by Sen. John McCain, who at the time was gearing up for a White House run. Ware denied the allegation, and Raw Story reported that video evidence backed up Ware's denial.

CNN anchors attack the scourge of anonymity

BY GLENN GREENWALD |  SATURDAY, JUL 24, 2010 (updated below - Update II)

CNN's Kyra Phillips and John Roberts spent a good five minutes yesterday expressing serious concern over what they called "the dark side" of the Internet:  the plague of "anonymous bloggers" who are "a bunch of cowards" for not putting their names on what they say, and who use this anonymity to spread "conspiracy," "lunacy," "extremism" and false accusations (video below).   The segment included excerpts from an interview with Andrew Keene, author of Cult of the Amateur:  How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture, who explained that the Real Media must serve as "gatekeepers" to safeguard the public against the dangers of anonymity on the Internet.  Roberts demanded that bloggers should "have the courage at the very least to put your name on it," while Phillips announced:  "something is going to have to be done legally. . . . these people have to be held accountable, they're a bunch of cowards."

These CNN journalists have a very good point, of course:  it was, after all, Internet bloggers -- using the scourge of anonymity -- who convinced the nation of a slew of harmful conspiracy theories:  Saddam had WMD,an alliance with Al Qaeda, and responsibility for the anthrax mailings.  Anonymity is also what allowed bloggers to smear Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, and Steven Hatfill with totally false accusations that destroyed their lives and reputation, and it's what enabled bloggers to lie to the nation about Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight, countless U.S. airstrikes, and a whole litany of ongoing lies about our current wars.  And remember when anonymous bloggers spewed all sorts of nasty, unaccountable bile about Sonia Sotomayor's intellect and temperament?  Just as Roberts lamented, blogs -- as a result of anonymity -- are the "Wild West of the Internet . . . . like a giant world-wide bathroom wall where you can write anything about anyone."

Indeed, what's especially noble about establishment media journalists such as those on CNN, what vests them with so much deserved Credibility, is how much they hate anonymity because of how cowardly and unaccountable it is.  There are several examples from the last 24 hours alone which demonstrate these high journalistic standards.  Here is a Washington Post article from yesterday by Philip Rucker on the criticisms of the Obama administration from the Left:

"As a party, we respect the role that people like [Markos Moulitsas] and his blog play and understand that their role is to try to push the envelope further than it might be pushed otherwise," said a senior Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "This has been the busiest and most successful Congress since the Great Depression and it's been accomplished with big majorities. I don't think anyone can argue that it would be better if Democrats are in the minority or have smaller majorities."

So there, the Post granted anonymity to a "senior Democratic official" in order to reveal how great the Democratic Party is and how vital it is that they win as many seats as possible in the election.  Then there's this U.S. News & World Report article from yesterday on Newt Gingrich's presidential run:

Conservatives we talked to said that Gingrich is on to a good political issue should he run for the presidency. "Newt is going to be a very strong candidate," said one supporter, a Washington political strategist and fundraiser.

There, U.S. News granted anonymity to a supporter of Gingrich to say what a strong candidate Gingrich is.  And then there's this extremely important and probing article from The New York Times today on the hurt feelings which many friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton (i.e., their large donors) are experiencing as a result of not having been invited to Chelsea's wedding:

"I'm good enough to borrow a plane from, but not good enough to be invited to the wedding?” complained one Clinton friend, who remembered the times he handed over his jet and his pilot to take Bill Clinton around the country but had not landed a coveted invitation to Chelsea Clinton’s nuptials. . . . "I'm sure there are some people who are lobbying discreetly," said someone who has known the Clintons for decades. "If they're on the list, they will ballyhoo it quietly, and if they’re not on the list, their noses will be out of joint. I know some people whose noses are out of joint." (Like most F.O.B.'s -- Friends of Bill -- the person did not want to be quoted by name, swearing by the wedding’s code of silence.) . . . "It's not a political rally, it's not a state affair," said one longtime Clinton supporter who was not invited but was still nervous about upsetting the former president. 

Click here to see but one of countless examples of how much CNN itself hates cowardly anonymity.  The catty, harmful insults in the 2004 campaign that John Kerry "looks French" and John Edwards is the "Breck Girl" were introduced to the public by The New York Times' Adam Nagourney, quoting an anonymous Bush aide.  And, of course, pick any random Politico article from any day which shapes cable news coverage and Washington chatter for the week, and it's certain to be based in this formula:  one anonymous person said X and another anonymous person denied this.

At least anonymous bloggers are very clear and truthful about what they are:  often citizens whose jobs or other interests prevent them from attaching their names to their political expression.  By stark contrast, all of these establishment media outlets perpetrate a total fraud on the public by pretending that they have standards for when anonymity will be used even though, as these examples from the last 24 hours alone prove, they routinely violate those alleged standards for absolutely no reason.  It just never ceases to amaze how much establishment journalists like Roberts and Phillips love to rail against the Evils of Internet Anonymity when reckless, cowardly anonymity -- for purposes ranging from catty, trivial gossip to pernicious propaganda and everything in between -- is a central tool of their "profession" and of the political class they cover.

[The most noteworthy part of this segment might actually have come toward the end, when Roberts -- out of absolutely nowhere -- volunteered this creepy confession: "I always caution young people: never post a naked photograph of yourself on the Internet"; if there's anything needing greater attention, it might be Roberts' bizarre propensity for walking around starting conversations with "young people" about that].

UPDATE:  As several commenters noted, this is the same Kyra Phillips responsible for one of the more disgusting television moments of the last decade.  In April, 2003, she interviewed the doctor treating Ali Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who had just lost 15 relatives, including his father, pregnant mother and three siblings, as well as both of his arms, in an errant American missile strike on the Baghdad suburb where he lived.  While this child had burns all over his body, some of them infected, putting him in constant pain, Phillips asked his doctor this question:

Doctor, does he understand why this war took place? Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the meaning? Does he understand it?

As Joan Walsh put it at the time:  Phillips asked this "question" after the doctor explained that Ali said he hopes no other "children in the war will suffer like what he suffered"; "Phillips seemed shocked by Ali's apparent inability to understand we were only trying to help him."  Walsh wrote that the boy's physician had "to explain [to Phillips] that the doctors were more interested in treating the boy than indoctrinating him:  'Actually, we don't discuss this issue with him because he is -- the burn cases, and the type of injury, he's in very bad psychological trauma'."  I have no doubt that Kyra "Operation Iraqi Freedom" Phillips would be eager to explain to you how she -- unlike those hordes of wretched, anonymous, partisan Internet bloggers -- is an Objective Journalist who doesn't allow any opinions to infect her "reporting."  Of course, since the opinions she expresses are the Right Ones, she -- unlike Octavia Nasr -- still has a job on CNN, crusading for High Journalistic Standards.

UPDATE II:  Jim Henley notes the other strange aspect of this whole episode:  Phillips and Roberts used the fraudulent Shirley Sherrod video as their jumping off point to attack "anonymous bloggers," but, as Henley says:  "Andrew Breitbart is a lot of things, but 'anonymous' is none of them. The Sherrod lie got as far as it did because, in CNN-spokesmodel circles, Breitbart is a celebrity. A trusted brand. That's why everyone from the Emm Ess Emm to the Obama administration jumped on the lie so quickly."  Indeed, the Sherrod episode negates rather than bolsters the point about anonymity which the CNN readers thought they were making, since the primary culprit in that fraud used his real name.

People spill a lot of ink on complex explanations for the profound flaws of the establishment media, but often, the proximate cause is simply the pure denseness of media stars (though they are chosen to be media stars by the corporations that own them because of, not despite, this denseness, which leads back to the more complex questions about what establishment media outlets are and the functions they intend to fulfill).

Over half of CNN's viewers bail on CNN

CNN loses viewers (makes sense). Fox gains viewers (does not make sense!).

CNN Fails to Stop Fall in Ratings
By BILL CARTER

CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.

CNN had a slightly worse quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the last three months have included compelling news events, like the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care, and CNN, which emphasizes its hard news coverage, was apparently unable to benefit.

The losses at CNN continued a pattern in place for much of the last year, as the network trailed its competitors in every prime-time hour. (CNN still easily beats MSNBC in the daytime hours, but those are less lucrative in advertising money, and both networks are far behind Fox News at all hours.)

About the only break from the bad news for CNN was that March was not as bad as February, when the network had its worst single month in its recent history, finishing behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but also its sister network HLN — and even CNBC, which had Olympics programming that month.

CNN executives have steadfastly said that they will not change their approach to prime-time programs, which are led by hosts not aligned with any partisan point of view.

But the numbers are stark: For the network’s longest-running host, Larry King, who has always been regarded at CNN as the centerpiece of prime time because he drew the biggest audiences at 9 p.m., the quarter was his worst ever.

Mr. King’s audience dropped 43 percent for the quarter and 52 percent in March. He dropped to 771,000 viewers for the quarter from 1.34 million in 2009. More alarming perhaps, Mr. King, whose show has been regularly eclipsed by Rachel Maddow’s on MSNBC (and is almost quadrupled by Sean Hannity’s show on Fox), is now threatened by a new host, Joy Behar on HLN (formerly Headline News.)

In her first full quarter competing with Mr. King at 9 p.m. Ms. Behar wound up beating him in the ratings 21 times.

CNN has given no indication that any changes in its lineup are imminent, but recently announced that it would try a series of specials in a talk-show format at 11 p.m. with its current 10 p.m. host, Anderson Cooper. The specials are interpreted by some at the network as a trial run for a new 9 p.m. show with Mr. Cooper.

Mr. Cooper has long been regarded as the strongest host at CNN, but his show has suffered badly as well. For the quarter, Mr. Cooper dropped 42 percent in viewers and 46 percent among the 25-to-54-year-old audience that the news channels use for their sales to advertisers.

In the past, CNN relied on big audiences for Mr. King’s show to deliver viewers to Mr. Cooper. Now Mr. Cooper sometimes finds himself losing to repeats of shows on MSNBC and HLN. (At the other end of prime time, Campbell Brown’s show on CNN at 8 had its worst quarter ever with the 25-to-54-year-old audience.)

Even in the morning, CNN is sliding. Its “American Morning” show dropped behind “Morning Joe” on MSNBC in total viewers for the first time; it still beat the MSNBC show among 25- to 54-year-olds, though it was down 29 percent from a year earlier.

At the same time, Fox News, which had its biggest year in 2009, continues to add viewers. Greta Van Susteren’s show was up 25 percent from a year earlier. Bill O’Reilly, whose show commands the biggest audience in prime time with 3.65 million viewers, was up 28 percent, and Glenn Beck was up 50 percent from a year earlier.