Saturday, October 13, 2012

Why we cannot trust the Newsmedia; Announcing the Winners of the Inaugural Walter Duranty Prize

PJ Media
First some background: The Duranty Prize is named after the "somewhat notorious Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times between 1922 and 1936, Walter Duranty.
".....  To review for those in this room — most of whom do know — for some fourteen years Walter Duranty, then the most famous and respected foreign correspondent in the world — also, as it happens, a Brit — whitewashed the repressive evil deeds of the Soviet Union....
"He did this whitewashing most prominently in the case of the Ukrainian Holodomor: the forced starvation of between 1.2 and 12 million ethnic Ukrainians, depending on whose estimates you believe. In other words, a lot of people. Duranty called that genocide “an exaggeration and malignant propaganda” in the newspaper of record.  ....
Newsweek's Lorraine Ali and the Ghost of Walter Duranty
Why do we call the New York Times the New Duranty Times?
Runner-up; Andrew Sullivan;
...".If you have any doubts about what Sullivan thinks of Israel, his answer came in a column he wrote only a few days ago: “We give the Israelis everything they ask for and they give the U.S. nothing in return.
...."The second reason Andrew Sullivan deserves the prize is for his neverending and relentless crusade to prove that Sarah Palin was not the mother of her Down Syndrome baby, Trig."
.... "Finally, we must also cite Sullivan’s over-the-top cover story for Newsweek on Obama. In his eyes, the president is a conciliator of the center willing to work with Republicans, but foiled by right-wing Republicans bent only on his destruction. He does not refer to Bob Woodward’s new book, in which Woodward reveals Obama as a chief executive who eschewed cooperation across the aisle and sought instead to implement an unpopular health care program without any Republican support." 
FIRST RUNNER-UP by Roger Kimball;  
"The selection committee of the 2012 Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity is delighted to award its commendation and second-place prize to Bob Simon for his supremely untruthful report “Christians of the Holy Land,” which aired last April on CBS’s storied news show 60 Minutes."

DURANTY PRIZE WINNER by Claudia Rosett;

The selection committee is pleased to bestow the Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity on reporter Joan Juliet Buck and editor Anna Wintour, for their... fearless dismissal of the truth in ... “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.”
...."With Syrians engaging in rather more active citizenship than Asma, in her charity works, apparently had in mind, the Assad regime tried to suppress the uprising by killing its own fellow citizens — shooting, shelling, jailing, torturing, and murdering even children. Unlike in Duranty’s day, thanks to modern technology it did not take long for these horrors to hit the headlines. Vogue’s paean to the Assads was abruptly exposed as one of modern journalism’s most mortally embarrassing makeovers.
With instincts worthy of the old Soviet politburo, or for that matter, the Assad dictatorship, Vogue’s initial response was neither to apologize nor to correct the record, but simply to delete the article from its web site."

More on the Ryan-Biden debate

Gargoyle Joe Is Your Debate Firewall?  "Last night while showing off his expertise, Biden claimed the US is Israel’s best friend and that Obama and Netanyahu have personally met 12 times. Both are lies: Obama pledged to create some distance from Israel and the two have met nine times.

“Foreign Policy” Joe stated emphatically that the consulate in Libya had not asked for additional security, intelligence experts did not warn of an attack and that he knows from security briefings that Iran is a long way from getting an atomic bomb.
"Unfortunately Ryan failed to point out that Thursday’s Washington Post had printed the emails asking for additional security at the consulate and he failed to ask Biden if the “intelligence experts” who assured him Iran is a long way from the bomb are the same ones who promised him the Libyan consulate was in no danger."
smile-day
Biden’s whoppers   "Some of the whoppers are shameful. If we had a free press, one or more of these whoppers would lead the news until next week’s presidential debate. They would be deemed to raise a profound questions of the man’s fitness for office, let alone the presidency. I want to itemize four of these whoppers:"...
From Punching the Left; The VP debate was an ambush. 
"If you can't win your own fights, hide behind a bully." 
"And whereas Ryan was sincere and forthright, Biden, when not acting like a drunken mime, spent the debate lying about the Obama administration’s past four years.  He lied about Libya, he lied about the President meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ”dozens of times”, he lied about Obama’s definition of “millionaires” – if you make $200,000 a year, congratulations, you’re a millionaire! – , he lied about Sarah Palin talking about death panels in their 2008 debate, he lied about Medicare, and maybe most appalling, he lied about how close Iran is to going nuclear."   Hat tip to Spencer Wolfe at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook

Ryan was Bidened and almost Borked


Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

Podcast: Kristol Reacts to the Vice Presidential Debate
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Twitter frowns on Joe Biden's laugh  "Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan were the two candidates onstage at Thursday’s vice presidential debate, but a third character emerged: Joe Biden’s laugh, which didn’t escape the notice of tweeting politicos"
.Another Poll Shows Biden Won Debate
"A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds respondents think Joe Biden performed better than Paul Ryan in Thursday night's vice presidential debate, 42% to 35%".

WaPo fact checks the vice-presidential debate One such:  “Prior to the election, prior to him being sworn in, Governor Romney was asked the question about how he would proceed. He said, ‘I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to get bin Laden.’”   Biden

"Romney made this statement in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
"But Biden has ignored the rest of the interview, in which the AP quoted Romney as saying “he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.” Just a few days later, Romney expanded on his remarks during a debate:"
“We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person — Osama bin Laden — because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.” (emphasis added)     Via JustOne Minute
Does anybody know or care that Biden lied so often and has been refuted by so many diverse sources? Certainly not the "progressives" I know.
Well let me tell ya. My record stands for itself. I never say anything I don’t mean. Everybody knows, whatever I say, I do. And, uh, my whole life has been devoted to leveling the playing field for middle class people, giving them an even break.
"So, per Biden, egalitarianism, that is, government dispensing enforced fairness, is the essence of his political philosophy. And so, he really is something of a communist, the essential slogan of which is:

....From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!

Do you know who this man is?

Hint: a classic movie

The glasses will make it extra hard for you. Put your guesses in the comments section below this post if you care to take a shot.

Hint: he goes with the guy pictured at right.

If nobody responds, I'll leave it unanswered. 

By the way, the last one I had was of Shemp Howard, brother of three Stooges' Moe.
The Tunnel Dweller