ONLY conservative media outlets are not "fair and balanced"??? Give me a break. That statement alone proves how terribly unfair and unbalanced Gawker itself is!
I should also say that I think it's a symptom of the media's relentless drive for mediocrity and sham-equivalence that anyone who works for this cult rag is taken seriously (including nutty Tony Blankley), just because they take a far right position on every issue in American life (and because Moon is a close friend of the Bush family).
@Mediahohoho: I agree with you provided you extend the similar descriptors to the liberal rag d/b/a the NY Times.
I think the downfall of newspapers has coincided with grouping them with entertainment vs just being the news. They lost their niche when they started competing with other forms of entertainment.
@momof3wildkids: I absolutely do not agree with you about the New York Times. There is absolutely no comparison between the two papers and the only thing they have in common is that they're printed on newsprint and both have Times in their names. All similarity ends there.
@Mediahohoho: Can you honestly say that the NYT is blemish free in this area? If so, I'd like some of the Kool aid you are drinking. It is always fun to escape reality now and again.
@momof3wildkids: You're missing my point about the seriousness of journalism practiced by the two Times. Is the New York paper "blemish free"? Of course not. Does it have its faults? Of course. Is there any comparison between it and its nutty DC namesake? No, not for a person with an IQ over 80.
The Washington Times is, in every aspect, a joke. It's a propaganda sheet owned and operated by a cult leader who is also a convicted tax fraud. Its international and domestic reporting resources pale are scant. It exists only to push a particular political point of view, which exists, per its mass marrying owner, on the far, far right of the political spectrum.
That you would compare the two--and set up an equal sign between them--only serves to call into question your own critical thinking facilities. Watching Fox News will do that to you.
@Mediahohoho: "Watching Fox News will do that to you." Oh, now I get it. Reading and viewing only one side of the political news spectrum enhances critical thinking capabilities.
@Mediahohoho: Ah the classic liberal pseudo-intellectual bs: since you don't agree with me, you must be less intelligent than me. If that is your comeback, it is pretty weak. Meh.
Wow, you really managed to pull this discussion a long way from where it started. I started out talking about how I think the Washington Times is a joke because it is owned and operated by a cult leader who maintains that he is the Korean reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
As such, I believe the amount of cognitive dissonance required of anyone who considers himself or herself a serious journalist would be too great for them to keep the journalist side of their mind operational.
There's no comparison between that situation and any other media I can think of. There is no equal sign between the WT and other media, because to my knowledge, neither the NYT nor any other media with either a left or right slant is owned by someone proclaims to be the modern day reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
As for the Fox News comment, sorry, but I have noticed that otherwise intelligent people shut down their critical thinking abilities after watching a lot of that network. It's just an observation. I have no idea whether you are more intelligent than me; it wouldn't be that great a feat if you were. But I have noticed that you tend to peddle the same fact-free cant that permeates that network 24/7.
@Mediahohoho: If you dismount from your high horse for just a moment, you can look back and see that I agree with you about the WT. All I am saying is that they are hardly unique. NYT is a series of editorials, not news; and is run by a man named Pinch for God's sake. You can hardly claim that he is unbaised as he is allegedly boinking a Kennedy.
What I am attempting to point out that there is hardly a difference between WT, NYT, Daily Show and Gawker. This makes getting "news" difficult. One must read/watch a variety of media outlets in order to come up with some semblance of what is going on in this nutty world of ours. How very sad.
I will grant you that Pinch keeps his craziness more on the down-low than Asian Jesus. For that, I am grateful and he gets one point.
@momof3wildkids: "What I am attempting to point out that there is hardly a difference between WT, NYT, Daily Show and Gawker.
And what I am attempting to point out is that this is bullshit.
NYT is a series of editorials, not news; and is run by a man named Pinch for God's sake.
The most superficial perusal of the New York Times on any given day proves that this is demonstrably false, although I'm sure it makes a boffo talking point on The Factor.
Stories about events may indeed reveal an editorial bias, especially those about domestic politics (John McCain's lobbyist fellating, for instance); however, the majority of the news reporting in the paper manages to avoid that bias simply because of the breadth of news reported. Which is why it's still the paper to read if you want to know about a cyclone in Myanmar or a bus plunging in Ecuador.
And you do know that "Pinch" Sulzberger's nickname came from Spy Magazine, yes? His dad, much more respected, was named Punch. To say he's a bad publisher seems to be a bit of an understatement (although I confess to be bored shitless by the NY Times inside baseball that get played on Gawker, probably because it's one of the few major media companies (including News Corp., by the way) that I haven't worked at.
And the Washington Times editorial? Well--and this is really my point--who in their right fucking mind would read a newspaper owned and operated by a cult leader who claims to be Korean Baby Jesus? Unless, of course, they were ravenously desperate to have their political point of view validated by any outlet with the word Times on its masthead.
So...we are at what we middle-brow pseudo-intellectuals call an impasse. I maintain that there is no equal sign between the Washington Times and the New York Times. You maintain that there simply must be for anyone to be able to criticize Mr. Moon's paper. If that puts me on a "high horse" then so be it. Although I must say it feels less like a high horse than a Shetland pony.
I guess Sun Myung Moon, the proprietor of the laughable Washington Times as well as the Korean reincarnation of Jesus Christ is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Good. To. Know.
@CountryClubRepublican: Oh, it's not just a conservative paper. It's a conservative paper run by the Korean reincarnation of Jesus Christ, who also happens to be a convicted tax fraud who marries thousands of strangers at a time and makes people who belong to his church work for free.
That's funny, I have an algorithm in my brain that matches up Washington Times, mass weddings and dead people with poisoned Kool-Aid frothing out of their mouths. And that's just their foreign affairs desk.
I'm kind of thinking the same thing here as many of you. I can understand a computer pulling the pic, but who the fuck doesn't at least glance at their product before allowing it to publish? It just kinda smells like horseshit to me.
@rudolphdude: No, if anything malicious was involved, it's to link the idea of "oh man Chicago is such a crime-ridden corrupt place" to the Obama Administration. No one would interpret this as "wanting Obama's kids to be murdered", but to link in reader's minds "crime" with Obama.
There was a mystery written once and read twice maybe in which a full-page ad in a newspaper showing a bedraggled cop on the beat one dawn under the legend "After A Long Eventful Night" was yanked, thus messing up the secret code of numbers runners, and all because its facing page depicted a winsome couple just arising from bed. It was a great story and I think everyone should go read it now.
It's not a conspiracy, but it is extremely bad taste and they obviously used the Obama children's image because the public is drawn to them. To use their image in a story about murdered children is a "little" over the line.
@Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate: It is more than a little over the line, but it shows poor judgment more than anything. Stupidity, yes; conspiracy, I think not.
@momof3wildkids: That's why I put "little" in parentheses. Also I use parentheses just to piss off some people around here who don't like these punctuation devices. So to them, I'd like to add- make sure you picture me doing air-quotes at the same time (with eyebrows lifted, natch).
05/19/09
05/19/09
05/19/09
*comment would have been 31.7 percent more amusing had I bothered to figure out how to make the accents appear over the "e"s
05/19/09
05/19/09
I think the downfall of newspapers has coincided with grouping them with entertainment vs just being the news. They lost their niche when they started competing with other forms of entertainment.
05/19/09
05/19/09
05/19/09
05/19/09
The Washington Times is, in every aspect, a joke. It's a propaganda sheet owned and operated by a cult leader who is also a convicted tax fraud. Its international and domestic reporting resources pale are scant. It exists only to push a particular political point of view, which exists, per its mass marrying owner, on the far, far right of the political spectrum.
That you would compare the two--and set up an equal sign between them--only serves to call into question your own critical thinking facilities. Watching Fox News will do that to you.
05/19/09
05/19/09
05/19/09
05/19/09
Wow, you really managed to pull this discussion a long way from where it started. I started out talking about how I think the Washington Times is a joke because it is owned and operated by a cult leader who maintains that he is the Korean reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
As such, I believe the amount of cognitive dissonance required of anyone who considers himself or herself a serious journalist would be too great for them to keep the journalist side of their mind operational.
There's no comparison between that situation and any other media I can think of. There is no equal sign between the WT and other media, because to my knowledge, neither the NYT nor any other media with either a left or right slant is owned by someone proclaims to be the modern day reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
As for the Fox News comment, sorry, but I have noticed that otherwise intelligent people shut down their critical thinking abilities after watching a lot of that network. It's just an observation. I have no idea whether you are more intelligent than me; it wouldn't be that great a feat if you were. But I have noticed that you tend to peddle the same fact-free cant that permeates that network 24/7.
05/19/09
What I am attempting to point out that there is hardly a difference between WT, NYT, Daily Show and Gawker. This makes getting "news" difficult. One must read/watch a variety of media outlets in order to come up with some semblance of what is going on in this nutty world of ours. How very sad.
I will grant you that Pinch keeps his craziness more on the down-low than Asian Jesus. For that, I am grateful and he gets one point.
05/19/09
And what I am attempting to point out is that this is bullshit.
NYT is a series of editorials, not news; and is run by a man named Pinch for God's sake.
The most superficial perusal of the New York Times on any given day proves that this is demonstrably false, although I'm sure it makes a boffo talking point on The Factor.
Stories about events may indeed reveal an editorial bias, especially those about domestic politics (John McCain's lobbyist fellating, for instance); however, the majority of the news reporting in the paper manages to avoid that bias simply because of the breadth of news reported. Which is why it's still the paper to read if you want to know about a cyclone in Myanmar or a bus plunging in Ecuador.
And you do know that "Pinch" Sulzberger's nickname came from Spy Magazine, yes? His dad, much more respected, was named Punch. To say he's a bad publisher seems to be a bit of an understatement (although I confess to be bored shitless by the NY Times inside baseball that get played on Gawker, probably because it's one of the few major media companies (including News Corp., by the way) that I haven't worked at.
And the Washington Times editorial? Well--and this is really my point--who in their right fucking mind would read a newspaper owned and operated by a cult leader who claims to be Korean Baby Jesus? Unless, of course, they were ravenously desperate to have their political point of view validated by any outlet with the word Times on its masthead.
So...we are at what we middle-brow pseudo-intellectuals call an impasse. I maintain that there is no equal sign between the Washington Times and the New York Times. You maintain that there simply must be for anyone to be able to criticize Mr. Moon's paper. If that puts me on a "high horse" then so be it. Although I must say it feels less like a high horse than a Shetland pony.
05/19/09
05/15/09
Being naive and sophomoric is not the way to go through life.
05/15/09
05/15/09
05/15/09
05/15/09
05/15/09
I just don't agree with this one.
05/15/09
05/15/09
05/14/09
05/14/09
05/14/09
05/14/09
To use their image in a story about murdered children is a "little" over the line.
05/14/09
05/14/09
Also I use parentheses just to piss off some people around here who don't like these punctuation devices. So to them, I'd like to add- make sure you picture me doing air-quotes at the same time (with eyebrows lifted, natch).
05/14/09
05/14/09