The Brilliance of the Media

[KillerYoda]

Inspired by this thread:
http://tfproject.org/tfp/showthread....threadid=10621

This isn't who you trust, more of a fun thread. During the war, what were the best news fuckups you remember related to the situation in Iraq?

Mine comes from FOX (how peculiar, right?) who had a tendency to report things as fact before all the details were in:

One night on FOX, it was reported that soldiers had found a "100 by 100 acre factory for manufacturing WMD." An hour or two later, it was referred to as being "10 by 10 acres, possibly bigger." Eventually, I never heard anything else about it. It was the incredible, shrinking WMB factory. I checked FOXnews.com, but couldn't find any story on it, I guess it was just on TV.

[Liquor Dealer]

This is almost the same as another thread dealing with the media. Yesterday on the Fox website their was a long piece dealing with a newspaper in the upper midwest - not being polite - just can't remember where it was - (Minesota I think)the gist of the whole thing was that this paper had a policy of being as close to politically correct as it could get - the story was dealing with sports - the paper would use no tern that dealt with Native Americans ( We used to call them Indians but that too is apparently not corr.....) Anyhoo - this paper sanitized everything to fit these ideals - no 'Skins or Savages or --- you get the idea. I cannot find this or I'd put the source up. The whole idea of being "politically correct" was allowing the news to be totally distorted - the same was apparently true in a bunch of new school books that had been "politically corrected" in California - when they were finished there was nothing left that even resembled history.

In a way I can understand the mess that CNN created for them selves in dealing with the Iraqi government - they were willing to make a deal with the devil to keep their reporters in Iraq when others had been expelled - but why? If they could not actually report the news as it happened did it matter?

I think we need to go back to - this is what I saw - I told you what I was told - take it with a grain of salt and decide for yourself! That approach, according to those in the news business will not sell.

[The_Dude]

i loved it when geraldo screwed up. drawing maps of allied positions and compromising them.

what a dumbass, he always finds ways to screw up.

[4thTimeLucky]

I fondly remember going to bed hearing about a column of 80 to 200 vehicles leaving Basra.

I woke up to find that 3 vehicles had left to attack coalition forces. The tanks were destroyed immediately.

The next day an army officer was asked what had happened. The story he gave was that the drivers had been forced from their homes and made to drive the tanks in a suicide mission under threat of their families being executed.
He was asked how he knew this.
His answer: "They were driving in an eratic formation."

[Dragonlich]

The biggest fuck-up would probably be the outcry over the looting of the museum, which wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said.

It turns out that less than 3000 items are missing, instead of the 170,000. It also turns out that it isn't sure those 3000 are actually missing, since the storage rooms were always a complete mess. Finally, the ones that were stolen, were taken from a storage facility where the door wasn't locked, which indicates an inside job...

But still, everyone blames the US.

[Daval]

Originally posted by Dragonlich
The biggest fuck-up would probably be the outcry over the looting of the museum, which wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said.

It turns out that less than 3000 items are missing, instead of the 170,000. It also turns out that it isn't sure those 3000 are actually missing, since the storage rooms were always a complete mess. Finally, the ones that were stolen, were taken from a storage facility where the door wasn't locked, which indicates an inside job...

But still, everyone blames the US.

Didnt they find all but about 50 pieces in a safe in the sub-basement of the central bank?

[Sparhawk]

Originally posted by Daval
Didnt they find all but about 50 pieces in a safe in the sub-basement of the central bank?

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32129-2003Jun8.html?nav=hptop_ts">Link!</a>

33 pieces missing. *yawn* what a non-story.

[Neuromancer]

Gday peoples (im new here)
was quite interested in this thread as im studying media at uni and theres been allot of focous over here (australia) about America's media and there .. shall we say.. patriotism to the cause (not that its mutch different here) do you guys think that you have a biased media or do people not care ? i mean if some one like col Oliver North was a pundit over here he would probably be booed of the stage (id like to think anyway)
wht are ur thoughts?

[Sparhawk]

Originally posted by Neuromancer
Gday peoples (im new here)
was quite interested in this thread as im studying media at uni and theres been allot of focous over here (australia) about America's media and there .. shall we say.. patriotism to the cause (not that its mutch different here) do you guys think that you have a biased media or do people not care ? i mean if some one like col Oliver North was a pundit over here he would probably be booed of the stage (id like to think anyway)
wht are ur thoughts?

what a great idea for a new thread *hint hint*

[seretogis]

Originally posted by Liquor Dealer
Yesterday on the Fox website their was a long piece dealing with a newspaper in the upper midwest - not being polite - just can't remember where it was - (Minesota I think)the gist of the whole thing was that this paper had a policy of being as close to politically correct as it could get - the story was dealing with sports - the paper would use no tern that dealt with Native Americans ( We used to call them Indians but that too is apparently not corr.....) Anyhoo - this paper sanitized everything to fit these ideals - no 'Skins or Savages or --- you get the idea.

You are probably thinking of the "Star Tribune", not-so-affectionately known as the "Red Star" by non-liberals in MN.