CBS lies about Atrios blog; progressive blogs under attack

[LynnTheDem]

In the case of Duncan Black, this is what happened. The author of the popular liberal blog Atrios, Black wrote under a pseudonym. All the while, he was a senior fellow at a liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America.

“People are pretty smart in assuming that if a blog is making a case on one side that it’s partisan,” Jamieson said. “The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan.”


That is not a legal problem, however, but an ethical one. Black eventually claimed credit for his blog and fellow bloggers heavily publicized his political connections.

But he is still blogging.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/08/politics/main659955.shtml

Dear CBS & David Paul Kuhn

I'm writing to you regarding your recent story titled "Blogs: New Medium, Old Politics." Your article, which was concerned with, among other things, whether "bloggers are credible," contained some errors.

First, the title of this blog is "Eschaton" and not "Atrios." This is apparent from the big black letters at the top of the page.

Second, you state that I had been working with Media Matters for America "all along" while I was doing this weblog. I began writing this weblog in April, 2002. MMFA only came into existence in May, 2004. I began working with them in June, 2004.

Third, you suggest I had an "ethical" problem. Could you be more specific about what that was? Having one's character impugned by a major media outlet is a serious matter.

Finally, a quote is positioned in your article such that it suggests my assocation with Media Matters for America makes me somehow "partisan" and that beforehand I therefore was perceived as non-partisan. I have never worked for a candidate or campaign, though I have never made my political views secret, any more than has the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. This blog is produced entirely using my own time and resources, and Media Matters for America is a non-partisan "501(c)(3) not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

Sincerely,

Atrios

http://www.atrios.blogspot.com

And worse yet to come for ALL bloggers?

Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech.

Of course "freedom of speech" is only a figure of speech, and censorship is of course mandatory in a fascist dictatorship society.

[izzie]

1. This seems to be all over the INTERNET this morning.

Crack down in a lot of Arab countries. I think it will come here also. Specially with this NYC cop taking over. This place will not be safe.

[LynnTheDem]

2. bush is a LYING CRIMINAL; only EVIL-DOERS need or want to silence

all dissent.

If you are HONEST, if you are TELLING THE TRUTH, then you don't need to silence dissent. You would WELCOME DISSENT.

bush & Cartel want to silence all dissent because THEY ARE LYING, because they KNOW they are lying, and the DISSENT they want to SILENCE is anyone that points out the FACTS which PROVE bush & Cartel are LYING.

It really is a shame that rightwingnuts are too stupid to even understand this very simple logic. If bushCartel were being TRUTHFUL & HONEST, then WHY would they need to silence dissent?

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. How will this effect Drudge?

Isn't he right-wing?

[LynnTheDem]

4. They mean only NON-rethugs will be hunted down

ANYthing and EVERYthing is ok IF you're a rightwingnut; molest a child? Lie the nation to war? Abortion? Murder? Lie, lie and lie?

IT'S OK...IF you're a rightwingnut.

[blondeatlast]

8. Not just RW, he's on their payroll.

See the proof in "The Republican Noise Machine" by David Brock.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. kick

[The Judged]

40. Republican Revolutionary solidoers are exempt under the new law!

[mandyky]

5. Watch CBS swing right

After Rather leaves, they'll probably go full banana on this type of dlander and character assassinantio, but they are just reading the RNC's press releases - that's all American media can do these days read the WH and RNC press releases. Walter Cronkite must be having fits.

[itzamirakul]

20. CBS courting Matt Lauer? (sp?)

I heard on AAR a couple of days ago that CBS may be courting Matt Lauer to replace Dan Rather. Talk about a media whore!

[mandyky]

26. And Tim Russert

Must be the media got the same memo the lobbyist got - hire republicans or else!

[Zynx]

6. This is outrageous.

How are blogs the same as other media? The whole premise of this article is crap.

[LynnTheDem]

7. Exactly.

It's OK for PAID media pundits to LIE, LIE, and LIE. Coulter, Hannity, Hume, Pigboy LIE EVERY SINGLE DAY.

CBS JUST LIED SEVERAL TIMES IN ONE ARTICLE. Provable lies.

Notice in the CBS bullshit it's pointed out that bloggers don't have a CODE OF ETHICS OR EVEN AN EMPLOYER! (how SHOCKING! GASP!)

CBS DOES have a code of ethics and an employer...so how come they have so many LIES in ONE article?

No wonder the world mocks America; the stupidest nation on the face of the planet.

[tsuki]

10. What about hate radio? Do they have a Code of Ethics? Or even

an Employer? Aren't they contract performers?

I am surprised that CBS is the first shot fired in the Bushco's war against freedom of speech on the internets.

[Garbo 2004]

39. Dear CBS: NYT is employer w. code. Explain Jayson Blair and Judith Miller.

Just for one example.

Perhaps better to compare bloggers to the Op Ed pages...some writers are fact based while having a definite point of view; others are full of point of view and distort and/or just ignore the facts that don't support their views and/or agenda.

However, don't pretend the same doesn't also apply to many of those who practice alleged "hard news" journalism in mainstream media outlets.

And then there's Fox.....
Murdoch didn't expect FNC (or also the NY Post I believe) to be profitable: their role is to function as unofficial mouthpieces for a political agenda. Kind of like a privately owned Pravda. And Scaife does the same thing. They don't have to be on any politician's payroll; more likely politicians are on their payroll.

So bloggers or Murdoch or Scaife? Or GE, Disney, Viacom? "Independent press" is virtually an oxymoron when applied to the corporate media.

[blondeatlast]

9. How are the RW blogs reacting to the proposed restrictions?

I haven't the nerve to venture into them, but I'm curious.

After reading "The Republican Noise Machine," though, I'm pretty sure they are somehow immune.

:puke:

[PATRICK]

12. Petty attack on critics and rivals

as they lose the business they will not do and are ashamed of the role they must defend against freespeakers on the Internet.

Unspeakably stupid, petty, spiteful and wrong. What more could one ask from a distinguished media giant doing a prostitute's work in treason against a free society?

Good to now we getting to them, but it is they themselves who are flushing their influence down the pipe.

Just leave us the f alone and stay with your incompetent national Enquirer careers in service of those big bad bullies of the idiotic right.

[evilqueen]

38. hear, hear

:toast:

[Briar]

13. Funny they don't mention

the Republican bloggers who spearheaded the campaign to discredit the Bush AWOL story by attacking Dan Rather.

Highly selective use of evidence...

[ewagner]

14. Bingo!

Very selective in their criticism.

[Supersedeas]

16. Odd? Must be that liberal media again

[robbedvoter]

17. Red Somner: GWB is good for Viacom, long live GWB

Other writings of the same hack:

On one side is the moderate wing, now under the stewardship of Reid, a Mormon who opposes abortion except in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the mother's life. On the other is the liberal wing led by antiwar and pro-abortion rights presidential candidate Howard Dean.

[robbedvoter]

15. I remember RW bloggers got a lot of positive press from that UNPROVEN

accusations.
Atrios used to post here and on bartcop. The fact that David brock is using the expertise of good bloggers takes nothing of either's credibility. A lot of known media figures (whores of not) have blogs. What is the conflict here?

[quaoar]

18. The internet is the only thing they can't control

Not yet, at least.

They'll come after it next -- to shut down the blogging community and to choke off the flow of political contributions to progressive candidates.

And they'll justify it as necessary in the war to fight terrorism -- "We have to have control over the internet because the terrorists are using it to communicate with each other."

[CrispyQ]

19. And the sheeple will follow. Will they ever wake up?

[Quill Pen]

29. Give to the Electronic Frontier Foundation...

...something tells me they'll need a fat legal fund to fight this.

http://www.eff.org/
http://www.eff.org/support/

[lostnfound]

21. They start off with the Daschle race to appear 'even-handed'.

What a disgusting article.

[donhakman]

22. My website is banned in China

Now in the US it is a real crapshoot if or when my pictures ever appear.

[Megahurtz]

23. What the hell???!!!

How can they restrict political speech on the internet? What is this, a gag order? :grr:
They cannot censor people's political opinions, it takes different opinions to vote for a candidate of one's own choice.

What do they think they're going to do, come and arrest us? Or give us a big fat fine? Or both? (of course, more MONEY for the GOP)

This is a constitutional issue.

They won't shut ME up, FUCK THEM!!! :mad:

NOBODY should stand for this garbage!!!

[jasmeel]

24. Can we start a campaign to fight back against this?

This is an issue where there should be broad support (right and left). Has anyone started a campaign against this with the FEC?

[CitySky]

25. perspective

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - "Mahatma" Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi


(Picked this quote up today from anther thread. more here: http://www.phnet.fi/public/mamaa1/gandhi.htm )

[4democracy]

27. kick

[Seldona]

28. Just what does this censorship mean?

Are they seriously saying that a person cannot exercise his right to free speech on the internet?

Restricted use?

Honestly I have not heard this before, and I am having a tough time believing this can happen in America.

Are they going to start throwing people in jail for using political speech on the internet?

I need to pick my jaw up off the floor.

[Skarbrowe]

30. I watched a 3 hour documentary Power of Nightmares. Bad news

At least I'm pretty sure that was the title. I watched it from 2 to 5 this morning. I'm still tired as hell. This is an frightening but interesting documentary that explains the rise and comparison of neocons and radical Islamists. Sorry if I've written Islamists incorrectly. I've got about 2 minutes to post and my broadband just went out.

My main point on this post is that things are much more dangerous than I ever imagined. We've been taken over people. Maybe I'm still upset about subjects in the documentary, but I don't think we have even come close to how bad it's going to get in this country if you're not white, married with 2.1 children, attend the local baptist church and are willing to give up ALL personal freedoms in the name of your god and your country.

For the first time ever, I understood what a conservative republican means when they constantly call "us" liberal. Liberal means to them "too much personal freedom" and that is dangerous for the "unity" of a nation. Neocons want to hold back or reign in personal freedoms in the same way that radical Islam does, only in a tiny bit less restrictive way.

There was too much in the documentary and I'm not explaining it very well. I had literal nightmares every time I shut my eyes after watching this. I'm not sure if this Adam Curtis has it completely right, there are always degrees to everything, but this certainly made you think and take a good look at what you are facing in the United States government in 2004.

Please forgive mistakes in spelling and names. I'll post on this again when I get my connection fixed. Or, maybe someone else here knows about this British documentary already.

Oh, another reason I posted on this thread is because I watched it ON the INTERNET. Maybe this won't be possible in the future.

[rman]

32. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (BBC)

Excerpts from part 3: "The Shadows in the Cave".

...
Tony Blair: "Not a conventional fear about a conventional threat.
But the fear that one day these new threats of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states and international terrorism, combine to deliver a catastrophe to our world."
...
"I just think these dangers are there, i think that it is difficult sometimes for people to see how they all come together. I think it is my duty to tell it if i really believe it, and i do really believe it. I may be wrong in believing it but i do believe it."


"What Blair argued, was that faced by the new threat of a global terror network the politician's role was now to look into the future, and imagine the worst that might happen and then act ahead of time to prevent it.

In doing this, Blair actually followed an idea that had been developed by the Green movement. It was called the Precautionary Principle.
Back in the 1980's thinkers within the ecology movement believed the world was threatened by global warming. But at the time there was little scientific evidence to prove this.
So they put forward the radical idea that governments had a higher duty: they couldn't wait for the evidence because by then it would be to late.
They had to act imaginatively, on intuition, in order to save the world from a looming catastrophe.

In essence the precautionary principle says that not having the evidence that something might be a problem is not a reason for not taking action as if it were a problem.
That's a very famous triple-negative phrase, that effectively says that action without evidence is justified.
It requires imagining what the worst might be, and applying that imagination upon the worst evidence that currently exists.
...
But once you start imagining what could happen, then there's no limit; "what if they had access to it", "what if they could effectively deploy it", "what if we weren't prepared".
What it is, is a shift from the scientific "what-is", evidence-based decision making, to this speculative, imaginary "what-if"-based worst case scenario.

And it was this principle that now began to shape government policy in the war on terror.

In both America and Britain, individuals were detained in high security prisons, not for any crimes they had committed but because the politicians believed or imagined that they might commit an atrocity in the future, even though there was no evidence they intended to do this.
The American Attorney General explained this shift to what he called the Paradigm of Prevention. Ashcroft: "Waiting for a crime to be committed or waiting for there to be evidence of the commission of a crime, didn't seem to us to be an appropriate way to protect the American people".

Under the preventative paradigm, instead of holding people accountable for what you can prove they have done in the past, you lock them up based on what you think or speculate they might do in the future. ... The government short-circuits all the processes that are designed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, because it simply doesn't fit this mode of locking people up based on what they might do in the future.

The supporters of the precautionary principal argue that this loss of rights is the price that society has to pay when faced with the unique and terrifying threat of the Al-Qaida network.
But as this series has shown the idea of a hidden organized web of terror is largely a fantasy. And by embracing precautionary principal the politicians have become trapped in a vicious circle. They imagine the worst about an organization that doesn't even exist. But no-one questions this, because the very basis of the precautionary principal is to imagine the worst without supporting evidence.

How will we ever know when it is over, how will we know when the threat is gone?"...


info (no transcript):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

[Stephanie]

31. I don't understand - how can they restrict political speech?

How is that even possible, let alone legal? How would they do it?

[JAbuchan08]

34. From now on any expression of preference for a candidate

and/or any expression of "liberal" ideas will be considered a "campaign contribution" unless of course you are a right wing "news" outlet or commentator then you are free to lie with impunity and you are just "expressing your opinion."

[robbedvoter]

35. remember the months right after 911? Professors, reporters fired,

Secret service descending on guy who talked about W at the gym?
They toned it down a bit, for the coming elections. Now that it's stolen, back to it. The word "legal" is for YOU, not for them.

[BrklynLiberal]

37. In a Fascist state whatever they want to be illegal is illegal... n/t

[Obviousman]

33. Where did u hear about the FCC censoring the internet?

[BrklynLiberal]

36. AND what about the RIGHTWING NUT blogs that lie thru their teeth??? n/t

[IceOwl]

46. Here's one!

http://conservativetruthsquad.blogspot.com/

[Dr Fate]

41. Notice how anything Liberal is labeled "partisan" and "not objective"

Weird, huh?

[grasswire]

42. this will never fly

Can you imagine the precedent? They would have to start controlling people who write letters to the editor and those who pass out flyers and those who stand in public places to demonstrate. Those are all contributions to politicians during campaign season, I guess. Posts on message boards, call-ins to talk radio.....all fair game if they start down this path.

It'll never work. They just want to get their grimy paws on the Net.

[bluedonkey]

44. It will happen

sooner or later!Free speech is only for their side.No more Bill of Right!
We,the people cease to exist.
We need to organize outside the Net.

[demwing]

47. It may happen, but we have to draw a line in the sand

Not organize outside the net. Let them take this tool away?

FUCK NO.

If we keep backing away, we'll back ourselves into a damn corner. Once there, we'll have to fight--or die.

Why not pick our own battleground?

[EFerrari]

43. Canned BS

Notice the false dilemna? Atrios, by day a liberal, by night a liberal blogger. (The conflict would be?)

And the melodrama: "But he is still blogging." Just hilarius. Especially when most people will read it on the CBS website. I especially enjoy reading about internet conspiracies on MSM websites!

I hope Atrios gets some good traffic out of this mendacity.

[IceOwl]

45. Censoring the internet shouldn't stop anyone

If it comes down to this, form encrypted mailing lists. Start your own paper news zine. Write graffiti if you have to. The end of free public speech on the internet is not the end of free speech.

Paper is available at many different kinds of stores. Photocopiers are everywhere. Bubblejet printers are cheap, and ink is cheaper if you know where to look (ie places that recycle cartridges might sell them for as low as $18). Spraypaint is available at any hardware store, and you can even make stencils from bristle board from any dollar store.

Don't wait for the bastard squad to clamp down. Fuck shit up every day.

[Cats Against Frist]

48. Right-wing, fascist blogs, programs and publications

ALWAYS claim to be "right,"(on edit: impartial or correct) and they don't necessarily scream "WE'RE PARTISAN!!!!" from the rooftops -- think of the NRO, and the Weekly Standard pretending there's no such thing as a "neocon," and what of the networks who get commentators to come on, without mentioning exactly what an "AEI fellow," is or something of that nature. Or FOX news for that matter.

Rush Limbaugh claims to be the "truth" all the time, and further, the gatekeeper of "common sense."

Right-wing does NOT want to have to claim partisanship, because they want their propaganda to be "the new objectivity," after they take down "old media."

[Warren DeMontague]

49. This is the same F.E.C. that responded with a mighty shrug

to the blatant hijacking of the airwaves for political purposes by Sinclair Broadcast Group?

Nauseating.

[pacalo]

50. We have the Constitution on our side.

I'll continue to express my opinion in a non-threatening manner, as I've always done. If they come after me, it will be in violation of my freedom of expression. The law is on our side. I see "class action suit" written all over this ridiculous restriction to the internet.

[IHeart1993]

51. It's censoring of the Internet....

....that'll bring people to the streets here in the United States.