This is some beautiful stuff someone captured. Apparently someone at CNN trying to put together a map of the areas of France not currently in flames and bursting with rioters managed to really screw up using Google Maps.

Check it out, it's almost like a public school student's attempt at making their own map of a country they know nothing about.

The World According to CNN

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

Gore peppers this speech with some annoying political swipes, but the core message is something that I have strongly believed for what is now a very long time.

Al Gore tells it like it is

For the last 2 1/2 weeks, the lives of the couple and their three children have been plunged into an unsettling routine of drivers shouting profanities, stopping to photograph their house and — most recently — spray-painting a slogan on their property.

Their house, a suburban fixer-upper the Voricks bought three years ago, was wrongly identified in a cable news broadcast as the home of a terrorist.

In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London.

Satellite photos of the house and directions to the residence were posted online.

This is, perhaps, the worst example of irresponsible journalism that I have EVER heard of. This is absolutely terrible!

Worst part:

The Voricks say they have yet to see or hear a correction.

There is a rumor that Fox fired Loftus (three weeks after the broadcast as word has started to get out) but I haven't found a reliable report.

Fox news provides innocent person's home address on air, labeled as a terrorist home!

Arnold is PodCasting. So is Rush

Where are the dems?

Welcome to California

Here's an example of making a story out of nothing:

] President George W. Bush's remark that a resolution to
] the North Korea nuclear arms dispute would be "either
] diplomacy or military" marks a shift in tone from his
] previous statements that played down the military option.
] In numerous other pronouncements, Bush had unequivocally
] ruled out a U.S. invasion of the North, without
] commenting on the possibility of a military air strike.

The question and answer, in context, are as follows:

] Good morning, Mr. President. This morning you reiterated
] diplomacy as the way to deal with North Korea. With all due
] respect, some people say that's precisely the wrong approach
] because diplomacy has produced nothing, while at the same
] time it has allowed North Korea to progress in its nuclear program.
]
] THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
]
] Q How do you -- what do you say to them?
]
] THE PRESIDENT: Well, then let's see -- if it's the wrong -- if
] diplomacy is the wrong approach, I guess that means military.
] That's how I view it -- it's either diplomacy or military. And I am
] for the diplomacy approach. And so, for those who say that we
] ought to be using our military to solve the problem, I would say
] that, while all options are on the table, we've got -- we've got a
] ways to go to solve this diplomatically --

To interpret this statement as a shift in US policy toward military options in NK is silly. Of course, the Republicans have been trained to say that everytime the media does something like this its because they are "liberal." This is just as much a fantasy. They do this for money. They do it to everyone. Its what they do.

Bush calls military a N. Korea option - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

noteworthy wrote:
] "We'll need to develop considerably more sophisticated ways
] of using these new means of communication that are now
] available to reach the many and diverse audiences."
]
] General Memetics, anyone?

The political parties are absolutely connected with the A-list bloggers that they want pushing out their perspective. Furthermore, the a-list publishes blogrolls. If you want to figure out where to inject a meme is all here... but I'd hardly call the audience there "diverse."

Who is speaking to the islamic world? Certainly not us. The language barriers are definately a problem. There is little real cross cultural dialog. But if you want something to hold a riot about in Afghanistan, its easy to find...

The use of the press as a microphone is a bit out-dated. Your message always gets distorted when it goes through that filter. You should communicate directly. Why isn't Rumsfeld blogging? Why isn't his blog translated into various languages? Why am I reading an article about Rumsfeld's statement instead of simply reading his statement? Why does he speak before the "World Affairs Council" when he could simply be speaking to the world? This isn't 1842 and you don't have to get all the fuddy duddies together in a room to have a conversation.

The pentagon has obviously been investigating the newsweek story. If there was a place where we heard directly from them how they were handling controversial issues it would be a powerful tool to cool fires. Want to understand what went down at Abu Gharib? Here is the Pentagon's website where they explain the situation and what they are doing about it. How can you be angry at an organization that takes responsibility for problems and addresses them in a visible way?

The way to combat bad information is with good information. Today there is no single clearing house that you can point to that explains what the hell we're doing in Iraq. The vacuum is filled with punditry, sensationalism, speculation, and foggy recollections.

I used to worry about government publications being propagandist, but frankly if everyone is free to criticise and the material is intelligent its not the same thing. The only dangerous environment is one in which you can't ask questions, or you don't bother to.

RE: Rumsfeld Laments Global Reach of War News

] Maybe it won't be so bad being cut off from the
] blogosphere. I look around the Web these days and find
] that Newsweek's retracted atrocity story has sent
] everybody into cloud-cuckoo-land. Every faction up and
] down the political spectrum has used the magazine's
] blunder as a chance to open fire on its favorite targets,
] turning this into a fevered hunting season for the straw
] men.

AKA the Bird Seller's Lament.

The blogosphere is talking about newsweek's irrelevancy. I'm sure they'll take this column from Brooks as defensive main stream media blog bashing. Its not. There won't be any great controversy when people stop reading political blogs. The numbers will just quietly go down. The authors will be howling all the way...

The Lament of David Brooks

noteworthy wrote:
] "We're happy to see The New York Times acknowledging the
] importance of subscription-based revenue that we have
] long seen as a key element," said Todd Larsen of the Wall
] Street Journal.
]
] Will you subscribe? Or will you say goodbye to Tom Friedman?

Goodbye Tom Friedman. Your insights were useful while they lasted. In 6 months no one will be talking about the New York Times.

RE: NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service

] One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues
] and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of
] Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into
] democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives
] and allow journalists to pretend they have done their
] job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news,
] they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the
] news.

...

] Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people,
] a people fed only partisan information and opinion that
] confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in
] mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less
] inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical.
] And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind
] of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

This is quite a rant...

Democracy Now! | Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias:

] Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller who refused to join the
] demonstration, said: "I don't think the report is true, but
] these crises work for those who want to make fights between
] people."

This astute observation applies to just about everyone involved in these events on all sides.

Newsweek Apologizes