Home » Posts tagged 'brian williams'
Tag Archives: brian williams
Screw the Pooch
Screw the Pooch
I first asked Dr. D. a few years ago if I could turn one one his comments at the Automatic Earth into an essay. The following illustrates why I asked. Not sure he understands why some of his rants stand out while others do not, but they certainly do. Go to the Automatic Earth comments section to figure that one out. He’s there every day.
And you’re free to disagree of course. And I myself am good, have an essay on the same topic waiting but love the view from over there. Nothing not to like.
It USED to be that when a newspaper catastrophically screwed the pooch as we Yanks say, people would cancel their subscription to such a piece of pure, useless, misleading garbage.
Dr. D.: Legally, the path is pretty clear and incredibly old. It’s always been illegal to slander (in voice) or libel (in print) someone. The Covington kids are following this right now. It’s illegal everywhere, including Britain and New Zealand, and the legal threshold has a couple of bullet points. There has to be provable damage, the facts provided have to wrong, they have to be specific, and so on. Then you sue civilly for compensation in measure with the damage caused. Pretty simple. But if it’s actual libel of the sort anyone actually means, not just “I disagree with you”, then all these elements are absolutely in play. No false accusations, no just getting the facts wrong on accident.
What’s more, the government is never the plaintiff. Although in theory I suppose they could get standing, in practice slander and libel are prosecuted BY private people AGAINST private people, which eliminates a major element of government censorship and repression.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes
The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes
February 5, 2015. There is a brouhaha underway about an American journalist who told a story about being in a helicopter in a war zone. The helicopter was hit and had to land. Which war zone and when I don’t know. The US has created so many war zones that it is difficult to keep up with them all, and as you will see, I am not interested in the story for its own sake.
It turns out that the journalist has remembered incorrectly. He was in a helicopter in a war zone, but it wasn’t hit and didn’t have to land. The journalist has been accused of lying in order to make himself seem to be “a more seasoned war correspondent than he is.”
The journalist’s presstitute colleagues are all over him with accusations. He has even had to apologize to the troops. Which troops and why is unclear. The American requirement that everyone apologize for every word reminds me of the old Soviet practice, real or alleged by anti-communists, that required Soviet citizens to self-criticize.
National Public Radio (2-5-15) thought this story of the American journalist was so important that the program played a recording of the journalist telling his story. It sounded like a good story to me. The audience enjoyed it and was laughing. The journalist telling the story did not claim any heroism on his part or any failure on the part of the helicopter crew. It is normal for helicopters to take hits in war zones.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Faux News
Faux News
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
It’s beginning to appear that ‘ol Abe might have been wrong. We have seen war after war after war, intervention after intervention after intervention, crisis after crisis after crisis where there is every reason to think that the stories were complete bullshit. If you thought those videos of captives being beheaded by ISIS or burned alive might be fakes, you’re probably right. If you thought the stories of chemical weapons in Syria or WMDs in Iraq, or nuclear bomb factories in Iran were made-up stories, you were undoubtedly right.
The fact is that governments around the world use the most outrageous lies to provoke behaviour, both domestically and abroad. And the evidence is clear that the media are either willing accomplices to these frauds or they are stupid beyond comprehension.
Just yesterday, an American ‘journalist’ named Brian Williams went on television to admit that he had lied about a story he reported a few days ago. Of course, he had an excuse for it – but he didn’t apologize for all the other lies he and his colleagues have perpetrated over the years.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NBC’s Brian Williams is Forced to Admit His Tale of Being on a Downed Helicopter in Iraq Was Pure Fantasy
NBC’s Brian Williams is Forced to Admit His Tale of Being on a Downed Helicopter in Iraq Was Pure Fantasy
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.
The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
– From Stars and Stripes article: NBC’s Brian Williams Recants Iraq Story After Soldiers Protest
Just in case you still harbor any doubt that mainstream media is nothing but a pathetic amalgamation of useless liars and propagandists…
Enter NBC’s star reporter Brian Williams. A man apparently so vain and attention starved that he actually invented a war story from 2003 to make himself look tougher. Then he continued to tell the false narrative until U.S. soldiers called him out on it.
What an complete and total embarrassment.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
