Well, its not started off as anything informative at all...Rather's asking shitty questions, and Saddam is giving shitty answers...
was filmed by iraqi television crews... questions were all okay'ed before interview... was filmed at saddam's office... what the hell did you think this would be? it is saddam using rather as a tool to get his word out. did you really expect ground breaking news and answers?
CBS is only interested in the spectactle. That's why they're using up a whole segment talking about the ridiculous notion of a debate between Bush and Saddam
Bush/Hussein debate: "Sad-dum - I promise to never gas my own people or invade all of my neighbors. Do you want to make the same pledge here tonight?" S.H. - "Ohh, look at the time. I have a torture to attend. So sorry, Mr. Bush. I have to leave now."
Re: Re: Rather Interview of Saddam Really? No self-respecting journalist would have accepted such conditions,
Re: Re: Re: Rather Interview of Saddam self-respecting or not...that is what was said on the news tonight. rather was the only one allowed in the palace, nobody else was with him when he went to the interview. it was an all iraqi staff including; the camera crew and the translator for the interview. plain and simple; rather wanted to be able to say he interviewed saddam for the final time and i dont think he <nor cbs> cared about the restrictions that the iraqi government put upon the process.
Before we go off to roast Rather and CBS for this media spectacle (and no, I didn't watch, so I really have no idea what I'm talking about!), I have to give them at least some props. I mean, this is a far cry from Tom Brokaw anchoring NBCs coverage of the Afgan bombing from freakin Salt Lake City. Rather probably has sold out many times over by now, but I'd say he's still the closest thing we've got to a major news anchor who even resembles the old school boys. Brokaw, Jennings, and the rest of the pretty boy crew are utter lightweights.
Re: Re: Re: Rather Interview of Saddam this was all about February ratings and propaganda. Both Rather and Hussein got what they wanted and needed.
That's exactly what I mean! Actually, I was thinking back to this speech by John MacArthur, pub. of Harpers from way back in 1993. He's talking about the style of journalism that we're losing in America, and comparing it to Henrietta Stackpole from Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady." Anyway, me mentions Rather by name... "A journalist can’t hope to do much good unless he gets hated a good deal. That’s the way he knows his work goes on. Henrietta, who works for The New York Interviewer speaks in the honest journalist idiom displayed in my book by Dan Rather, who denounces the new era of what he calls “suck-up journalism.” He describes to me how he’s become an alien in a world in which his boss is urgent to become more likable—not hated, but more likable. Rather can remember the day not so long ago when reporters were rewarded for being more like Henrietta Stackpole." Now this might be mostly Rather doing some self-mythologizing. Notice the line, "he describes to me how he's become...." I'd feel better about this picture of Rather if MacArthur more explicitly endorsed it. But at least one can think back to the time when Rather had the audacity to put some tough questions to the president of the United States. And the rest of the corporate press turned on him like he was a boor crashing their little tea party.
Boy, that was a waste of an hour of my life watching that last night. My 20 month old son would have asked better questions...
It's just pathetic to watch a somewhat respected American journalist grovel to a dictator. While they both got out of the piece what they wanted, Saddam definitely got the upper hand by controlling the entire show. BTW - don't invite Dan to the journalist Bernard Goldberg's house. Dan and the suits there ran him off of CBS due to Goldberg actually having an opinion about something and publishing it in the WSJ.
Re: Re: Re: Rather Interview of Saddam In that case, no self-respecting journalist would have gotten the interview.
I wasn't there so I don't know EXACTLY what happened. But when Goldberg pointed out a left-wing bias in the networks in an editorial in the WSJ around '96 or '97, he became persona non grata around CBS. Maybe it was a stupid move on his part, who knows. Dan used to be friendly with him and Goldberg was a respected journalist and producer and suddenly they cut him off. Let's say that Dan has an "agenda."
For starters, Pizza "For the most part, Goldberg's book is a farrago of anecdotes, hearsay, and unsupported generalizations. But at one point he strays into territory that can actually be put to a test. That's when he claims that the media "pointedly identify conservative politicians as conservatives," but rarely use the word "liberal" to describe liberals." "For purposes of comparison, I took the names of ten well-known politicans, five liberals and five conservatives. On the liberal side were Senators Boxer, Wellstone, Harkin, and Kennedy, and Representative Barney Frank. On the conservative side were Senators Lott and Helms, John Ashcroft, and Representatives Dick Armey and Tom Delay. Then I looked to see how often each of those names occurred within seven words of liberal or conservative , whichever was appropriate." "In fact, I did find a big disparity in the way the press labels liberals and conservatives, but not in the direction that Goldberg claims. On the contrary: the average liberal legislator has a thirty percent greater likelyhood of being identified with a partisan label than the average conservative does." http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/bias.html http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/table.html
His book Bias was filled with unsubstantiated "facts" "proving" a liberal bias in the media. For example, he says the "liberal media" overstates the threat of AIDS Apparently, by "specific groups" he must mean Sub-Saharan Africa and by "specific practices" he must mean sex, right? Because otherwise he's just saying that it's just the gays who get the "gay cancer," right? He says that the mainstream media "got it right" after September 11 and that the bias disappeared. By "disappeared," of course, he meant "said exactly what the government wanted them to say." So apparently "bias" means "not agreeing with the government all the time." Of course, whenever there are statistic that don't back up Goldberg's claims, he just ignores them (see again AIDS and the affected). But it's Dan Rather (who by the way, said after Sept. 11 that he would line up whereever Bush wanted him to) who has the "agenda"
So just for the record now, Cascarino has cited Goldberg as "proof" that Dan Rather has an agenda (quiz: does anybody on Fox have an agenda or do they always play it straight?). He's also unfamiliar with William Safire, noted liberal on the pages of the New York Times.
By "specific groups" he was referring to the fact that the preponderance of those infected with HIV are gay people and IV drug users. I don't have CDC statistics handy, but the transmission of HIV through heterosexual sex among people not in a high-risk group is quite low. He was pointing out the fact that media outlets in the 80s used scare tactics to make AIDS look like everyone's problem when it was not. He contends that that's a liberal tactic. I believe the threat to people not engaging in high-risk behavior was somewhat overblown by the media but it also had the positive effect of calling attention to the disease and increasing the funding for a cure. So the liberal media indeed had an agenda but through dumb luck it actually had a positive outcome.
I know what he was referring to. He just wasn't telling the truth. See, just saying it doesn't make it true. Check some facts for a change. Unless they live in Sub-Saharan Africa of course. Your willful ignorance is astonishing. It wasn't?!? You see, using his bigoted buzzwords like "high-risk behavior" to argue his case only makes you look bigoted and ignorant. Unless that is what you were going for. You still haven't proved that the media is liberal, but keep trying. And remember, facts are your friend.
Pizza, that's because they don't exist! By far more heterosexual people in the world have AIDS. It's not even close, dude.