Monday, January 23, 2017

Thank You, Mr. Rather

Dan Rather had this to say on his Facebook page yesterday.  Bravo!

"These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

When you have a spokesperson for the president of the United States wrap up a lie in the Orwellian phrase "alternative facts”…


When you have a press secretary in his first appearance before the White House reporters threaten, bully, lie, and then walk out of the briefing room without the cajones to answer a single question…
When you have a President stand before the stars of the fallen CIA agents and boast about the size of his crowds (lies) and how great his authoritarian inaugural speech was….


These are not normal times.


The press has never seen anything like this before. The public has never seen anything like this before. And the political leaders of both parties have never seen anything like this before.

What can we do? We can all step up and say simply and without equivocation. "A lie, is a lie, is a lie!" And if someone won't say it, those of us who know that there is such a thing as the truth must do whatever is in our power to diminish the liar's malignant reach into our society.


There is one group of people who can do a lot - very quickly. And that is Republicans in Congress. Without their support, Donald Trump's presidency will falter. So here is what I think everyone in the press must do. If you are interviewing a Paul Ryan, a Mitch McConnell, or any other GOP elected official, the first question must be "what will you do to combat the lying from the White House?" If they dodge and weave, keep with the follow ups. And if they refuse to give a satisfactory answer, end the interview.


Facts and the truth are not partisan. They are the bedrock of our democracy. And you are either with them, with us, with our Constitution, our history, and the future of our nation, or you are against it. Everyone must answer that question."


Thank you.


Sunday, January 22, 2017

Oops

Not even two full days into his first term in office and this.


Friday, January 20, 2017

New Word?

This morning I was listening to CNN out of the corner of my ear as they reported on Donald Trump attending church services.  A reporter named John Zeleny said the following:

"Donald Trump indeed has been studying some history on its own.  He's been reading, I'm told, and WATCHENING and even, uh, listening to some old inauguration addresses..."
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Methinks Mr. Zeleny has been covering Trump too long.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Holy Shit!

Transcript from a Donald Trump speech. Speech?  Is that what this is?  Wow...

"Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us."

Here's another one if you're a glutton for punishment...

http://www.p2016.org/photos15/summit/trump012415spt.html


Friday, March 04, 2016

And Then...

KENS 5 News' Roma Villavicencio's article on Texas State Highway 130...Ugghh.


Friday, November 06, 2015

Ano Nymous

An anonymous writer for ABC News wrote this:

"In dashboard video from Caban's car, Golden is seen sloshing back and forth in the back seat..."

People don't slosh.  Liquid does.

Link

Dead Ringer

A writer named Rachel Wold wrote this for the website SportsNaut.  It's at the end of the article:

"It should definitely be interesting to see if McNair has any response to to Kluwe's quite opinionated letter that really drags the old owner through the ringer."

Here's the link.

You're Fired!

A Lifestyle writer named Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosel wrote this gem for MSN:

"Another company, YourEDM, caught wind that one of its employees participated in the foolishness, and reportedly posted this message saying that it fired he or she as well."

Yikes!

Friday, October 30, 2015

Cooperation

"Investigators say the person who abandoned the snake could be charged with animal cruelty.  The reptile is now re-cooperating at an animal shelter in Riverside county."

An ABC America This Morning anchor on 10/30/15.  I could not find his name anywhere.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Fallacy of Ambiguity - Again...

I've been watching CBS News Up to the Minute in my hotel room for the past four days...

The cadence and diction of of Anne Marie Green's speech as she does the news in the early mornings is driving me positively batty.  I hate it,but can't seem to change channels for 15 or so minutes.  Ms. Green's stress on words and syllables is often so poorly placed that it's not clear what the point of a particular sentence is until the context of the story is clear.

It's astounding to me that broadcasters are paying people to read news when they clearly don't have a mastery of speech and reading.

She's not alone in her poor reading habits. The Fallacy of Ambiguity is everywhere.  I need to start a list of poor news readers and narrators.