"How to Screw Up A War Story: The New York Times At Work"

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This is a fantastic article, and I strongly recommend reading it.

How To Screw Up A War Story: The New York Times At Work.

What was so shameful and embarrassing to me, an American journalist whose own Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, had just been driven out of existence by these same Kremlin bastards, is that Sasha was rightly frustrated. A Kremlin minder right and the Western journalists wrong? What has this world come to when the Kremlin has a better grasp of the truth than the free Western media?

Another quote, pulling into a separate post to keep the first post short:

A Myth Disproved

In late October, the BBC aired a documentary, What Really Happened in South Ossetia, that once and for all destroyed the neocon/mainstream American fairy tale about innocent, democratic Georgia: “The BBC has discovered evidence that Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region of South Ossetia in August,” the documentary reported.

The BBC used the results of its investigation to confront Britain’s foreign minister, David Miliband, with these new facts; Miliband conceded that Georgia’s behavior was “reckless,” and he vowed to confront its leadership with allegations that Georgia had deliberately targeted South Ossetian civilians with tanks and missiles.

But while the European media took its politicians to task over Georgia’s culpability, John McCain and his neocon advisers were able to set the agenda and paint the war in South Ossetia in deliberately false and alarming terms, backed by the unquestioning American media, leaving Barack Obama’s team with little choice but to fall in line with the “new cold war” fever or else risk looking like appeasers. Yet because of Team McCain’s close ties to Saakashvili, and the recent unmistakable revelations about Georgia’s guilt in launching the war, one investigative reporter, Gerald Posner, recently asked, “Did McCain Bury the Truth About Russia?”

Like so many other serious questions, it’s unlikely that the major American media outlets will bother answering that question.

The thing I find most interesting here is that we Internet users were pretty much clear that Georgia was the aggressor in this conflict, but if you trusted the mainstream media, you got a completely slanted and false version of the facts, almost 100% pure bullsh*t.

It's also interesting that it took three months for the Times to get around to admitting that maybe, just maybe, it screwed up... when the guys on the ground say it looked entirely deliberate at the time.

In the very early pieces of footage filmed by BBC, there were three separate scenes that should have caught the eye of whomever cared. Y'all may have seen them as well many times. Instead, BBC wailed about the Russian barbaric aggression:

1. A Georgian BTR (Soviet-design armored recon vehicle) slowly rolls down the residential street, its turret rotating 360 degrees as the turret gun is firing continuously. A question that pops up is WTF?

2. A Georgian soldier -- apparently a special forces member (with a disposable anti-armor tube on his back and a bunch of gear) -- sights two targets at the far end of the street, quickly brings his rifle up to the shoulder and begins firing away. One of the targets is a dog, the other one is a human. Which makes one wonder whether those two were really combatants.

3. A battery of Georgian grad systems sending volleys of rockets into the city, where the bright, fat balls of explosion indicate an apparent use of thermobaric munitions.

By the way, given fitting circumstances, for several days already I am waiting for USA to condemn Israel for "completely unprovoked" use of "disproportional" force, and there is.... nothing.

The Russians are bad, the Georgians are good. Why worry about the details? Right? Just like Israel is good and Hamas are terrorists. We Americans need look no further. We've looked into these countries eyes and seen their soul. Facts just get in the way of that.

If you want to be believed, the best thing is to build credibility by telling the truth most of the time. Always a lot of bullsh*t in time of war, and if the Russian government got hit with some bad press for a while I can't get too worked up about it. When I hear "Russian government" I don't tend to think about a big, open PR operation with high levels of credibility.

Say it ain't so! The NYT screwing up a story? Unbelievable given all the quality reporting they did ahead of the second Gulf War.

You guys seriously need to subscribe to some European newspapers or something.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

I got that impression from seeing the eyewitness accounts and various reports on Russian TV that day. Russians don't have the CGI budget or the acting skill to fake something like this - just look at how terrible our TV shows are.

Kehama wrote:

The Russians are bad, the Georgians are good. Why worry about the details? Right? Just like Israel is good and Hamas are terrorists. We Americans need look no further. We've looked into these countries eyes and seen their soul. Facts just get in the way of that.

Hamas are terrorists. Facts don't get in the way of that. But nice try.

Spunior wrote:

Say it ain't so! The NYT screwing up a story? Unbelievable given all the quality reporting they did ahead of the second Gulf War.

You guys seriously need to subscribe to some European newspapers or something.

I hate to be all conspiracy this conspiracy that, but there is a great deal in the way that the NYT reported both this event and the Iraq War that speaks volumes to a wider agenda that can't be ignored. It's actually pretty discouraging

A Myth Disproved

But while the European media took its politicians to task over Georgia’s culpability, John McCain and his neocon advisers were able to set the agenda and paint the war in South Ossetia in deliberately false and alarming terms, backed by the unquestioning American media, leaving Barack Obama’s team with little choice but to fall in line with the “new cold war” fever or else risk looking like appeasers.

I found the bolded section above to be strange. This implies that Obama's team had information that the conflict was caused by Georgian aggression, and yet chose not to take McCain's camp to task for spreading "deliberately false and alarming" misinformation to the public. It seems strange that the Obama campaign would have avoided such an opportunity; is it more likely that they did not have the full picture which has now been painted?

shihonage wrote:

Hamas are terrorists. Facts don't get in the way of that. But nice try.

So are the Israelis. What's your point?

Aetius wrote:

So are the Israelis. What's your point?

Every issue has two sides. To assume both those sides to be equally at fault can be alluring, as it makes the individual feel "unbiased" and "freethinking", but it also opens you to being manipulated, especially if it is very beneficial for the significantly more evil side to maintain that illusion.

Many susceptible minds have been lured into that trap. Everyone wants to feel empathic and open-minded after all. That desire toward a sense of enlightement, is what Hamas and their ilk exploit to gain public sympathy.

Wikipedia wrote:

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.[1] At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism.[2][3] Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.

...

The concept of terrorism is itself controversial because it is often used by states to delegitimize political opponents, and thus legitimize the state's own use of terror against those opponents.

Reference

Sorry to get all dictionary-ish, but yes Shiho, given Israel's disregard for the safety of non-combatants, they are practicing terrorism in their retaliatory strikes on Palestine.

Royce wrote:
A Myth Disproved

But while the European media took its politicians to task over Georgia’s culpability, John McCain and his neocon advisers were able to set the agenda and paint the war in South Ossetia in deliberately false and alarming terms, backed by the unquestioning American media, leaving Barack Obama’s team with little choice but to fall in line with the “new cold war” fever or else risk looking like appeasers.

I found the bolded section above to be strange. This implies that Obama's team had information that the conflict was caused by Georgian aggression, and yet chose not to take McCain's camp to task for spreading "deliberately false and alarming" misinformation to the public. It seems strange that the Obama campaign would have avoided such an opportunity; is it more likely that they did not have the full picture which has now been painted?

Everyone exposed to media outside of the US mainstream had access to that information. Unfortunately the average American voter doesn't use that access and believes what is portrayed in the mainstream media.

If the Obama camp had come out on the side of the truth they would have looked like supporters of 'evil' Russia to the uninformed.

shihonage wrote:
Aetius wrote:

So are the Israelis. What's your point?

Every issue has two sides. To assume both those sides to be equally at fault can be alluring, as it makes the individual feel "unbiased" and "freethinking", but it also opens you to being manipulated, especially if it is very beneficial for the significantly more evil side to maintain that illusion.

Many susceptible minds have been lured into that trap. Everyone wants to feel empathic and open-minded after all. That desire toward a sense of enlightement, is what Hamas and their ilk exploit to gain public sympathy.

There is an equally strong allure to a 'good' versus 'evil' view of the world; where you don't have to think about the history or the complexities of a conflict. This approach also leaves people open to exploitation and manipulation.

What do you guys make of stuff like this? I feel it's worse than Iran's photoshopping a fake missile launch.

Edwin wrote:

What do you guys make of stuff like this? I feel it's worse than Iran's photoshopping a fake missile launch.

Whether Israel is right or wrong, it looks like reprisals against Jews have started in Europe. Great going, Israel.

To be fair, Iran didn't photoshop a fake missile launch, they added additional missiles to a real missile launch. To be even more fair, journalists on "our side" do the same thing to sexy up war footage, sometimes in embarrassingly obvious ways. There was a controversy not too long about about a Lebanese photographer working for Reuters doing some photoshopping of his own. He provided this high quality gem:

IMAGE(http://www.camera.org/images_user/doctored%20photo.jpg)

If you want to get really poetic about it, NO photographs are fair because they all have borders and none of them show time.

Besides, we all know that the Iranian missile test actually looked like this:

IMAGE(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3181/2659603879_19b1f1a273.jpg?v=0)

LobsterMobster wrote:

Whether Israel is right or wrong, it looks like reprisals against Jews have started in Europe. Great going, Israel.

Hm?

BadJuju wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Whether Israel is right or wrong, it looks like reprisals against Jews have started in Europe. Great going, Israel.

Hm?

Link.

Shiho wrote:

a) Israel always warns the civilian population in the areas they're about to bomb (rather unconventional and soft for a country in a state of war, but they do it anyway). It often warns away the people they're trying to eliminate, but they're just content destroying military installations.

Objectively, I have trouble faulting a military for operating in an area where they've warned civilians they will be operating, even if those civilians do not heed their warnings.

I'm not in the "Israel is a bunch of bullies!" camp or the reactionary "Hamas is a bunch of terrorists!" camp. Just saying that if a civilian decides to remain in a war zone, they are taking certain risks. If a civilian decides to remain in a place that is going to be bombarded or otherwise flattened, they are suicidal. This isn't to say that soldiers should automatically shoot anything that moves because hey, fair warning.

Y'know, I don't really know what the hell I'm saying. Only that this is more complicated than the good, the bad, and the innocent.

shihonage wrote:

a) Israel always warns the civilian population in the areas they're about to bomb (rather unconventional and soft for a country in a state of war, but they do it anyway). It often warns away the people they're trying to eliminate, but they're just content destroying military installations.

So UN schools are now considered military installations?

I could make the same argument that Israel doesn't care about the sanctity of life for non-Jews since they are killing Palestinians at the rate of 60:1, most of which have been civilians. That level of slaughter is also being justified by religion--Judaism, not Islam.

Farscry wrote:

Sorry to get all dictionary-ish, but yes Shiho, given Israel's disregard for the safety of non-combatants, they are practicing terrorism in their retaliatory strikes on Palestine.

It's been well-documented that

a) Israel always warns the civilian population in the areas they're about to bomb (rather unconventional and soft for a country in a state of war, but they do it anyway). It often warns away the people they're trying to eliminate, but they're just content destroying military installations.

b) Hamas is notoriously known for exploiting their own civilian population for maximizing their own casualties. They do this to gain sympathy with the gullible Western press, who cannot understand the severity of their dedication. They put children on roofs of buildings they don't want bombed (and often those aren't bombed). They put rocket launchers near kindergardens, cafeterias, and other civilian installations. They hide their soldiers in the midst of civilians. There are videos and written records of Hamas leaders encouraging this behavior. This is the true face of Jihad.

You, and many others, are being successfully manipulated. Your sympathies to the human condition are being played on by those who do not care about the sanctity of human life - even that of their own people.

P.S. Israel's low casualties in this particular scenario are result of a missile tracking system that alerts the targeted areas in advance. Given how many bombings they had to endure, this system comes in pretty handy.

Higgledy wrote:

There is an equally strong allure to a 'good' versus 'evil' view of the world; where you don't have to think about the history or the complexities of a conflict. This approach also leaves people open to exploitation and manipulation.

Many followers of Islam have been swindled into that view. Israel's approach is openly different. They even treated some Palestinian wounded in this conflict. Civilians, of course. Despite the fact that those also have been brainwashed and remain dangerous.

In fact their hospitals routinely treat people from the Palestinian Authority.

OG_slinger wrote:

I could make the same argument that Israel doesn't care about the sanctity of life for non-Jews since they are killing Palestinians at the rate of 60:1, most of which have been civilians.

It's a war. If you're a pacifist that's totally fine but the fact is that they are fighting and people die in wars. People who win wars don't slow or stop killing just the situation seems unfair.

The Israeli army said its soldiers came under fire from militants hiding in the school and responded. It accused Gaza's Hamas rulers of "cynically" using civilians as human shields.

The question is whether you believe them. I do, because there are records of Hamas pushing this approach. It gives Israel bad PR, and the public eats it up.

I could make the same argument that Israel doesn't care about the sanctity of life for non-Jews since they are killing Palestinians at the rate of 60:1, most of which have been civilians. That level of slaughter is also being justified by religion--Judaism, not Islam.

Again. Palestinians are killing themselves (with help of Hamas). They're doing "suicide by cop" on a larger scale. Hamas is notorious for sh*t like this.

As for the "ratio", it is due to Israel's technically sophisticated missile alert system. It is ridiculous to fault them for having low casualties, as they're the one side that isn't actively involved in maximizing their own casualties.

LobsterMobster wrote:

If a civilian decides to remain in a place that is going to be bombarded or otherwise flattened, they are suicidal.

Where are they going to go? Gaza is about 24 miles long and 3-7 miles wide along it's length. Even a small state like CT dwarfs it in size. Not a lot of places for people to go. Particularly when we're talking about people without a lot of coin.

Funkenpants wrote:

Where are they going to go? Gaza is about 24 miles long and 3-7 miles wide along it's length. Even a small state like CT dwarfs it in size. Not a lot of places for people to go. Particularly when we're talking about people without a lot of coin.

Not the whole area is bombed at once. The areas surgically targeted get warnings to evacuate to nearby areas. They're not launching MOABs in there, its very localized and there's ample time to get away on foot. They give warnings several minutes ahead, while their own missile tracking system only gives Israelis less than a minute to get away from the blast.

So I leave my house or neighborhood and come to it being blown up, but I'm going to be unhappy about that only because I'm being brainwashed by Hamas? As I said earlier, I'm indifferent to both sides fighting over that worthless piece of ground, but it sounds like everyone is going to end up just as angry and homicidal at the end of this.

Funkenpants wrote:

So I leave my house or neighborhood and come to it being blown up, but I'm going to be unhappy about that only because I'm being brainwashed by Hamas?

Your house isn't going to be blown up, unless it is a known and confirmed Hamas hideout, or there's a rocket launcher on your roof. Israel has been gathering intelligence for a long time before striking back.

As I said earlier, I'm indifferent to both sides fighting over that worthless piece of ground, but it sounds like everyone is going to end up just as angry and homicidal at the end of this.

It isn't over a piece of ground. Israel gave up Gaza in a meek attempt to establish peace. In response, their hospitals and various installations on that territory were ripped apart for parts, rocket launchers were installed, and they came under a series of bombings from the very territory they just gave up "for peace".

Their goal now is to neutralize the threat and stop the attacks.

Funkenpants wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

If a civilian decides to remain in a place that is going to be bombarded or otherwise flattened, they are suicidal.

Where are they going to go? Gaza is about 24 miles long and 3-7 miles wide along it's length. Even a small state like CT dwarfs it in size. Not a lot of places for people to go. Particularly when we're talking about people without a lot of coin.

If I knew tanks were going to roll through my neighborhood and airstrikes were going to flatten my home, and I lacked a car or other passage, I'd start walking.

shiho wrote:

Your house isn't going to be blown up, unless it is a known and confirmed Hamas hideout, or there's a rocket launcher on your roof. Israel has been gathering intelligence for a long time before striking back.

Your house isn't going to be blown up, unless it is believed to be a Hamas hideout. Their intel is not perfect and after a certain point, they're going to say that something is "confirmed enough" to turn into a crater. I'd imagine that level of confirmation has a direct link to incoming fire and that in a bad enough situation, "Yep, those are houses" is good enough to level a row of houses.

Again, it's a war. You can argue that it's justified, you can argue that Israel is protecting itself, but please don't try to make them out to be white knights rooting out the evil terrorists and killing only the badguys, because we all know that is not how things work, ever.

I'd like to see your sources for these claims, sihonage. I suspect they're probably Israel.

Israel is about as truthworthy as the Bush Administration; they lie even when they don't have to.

Malor, that article I linked alone confirms a number of my claims. The source is BBC.

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