Mediocre Media 2
Save this online in Del.icio.us. [?] Vote For this PostThis is the second edition of the Mediocre Media, highlighting errors, bias, hidden agendas and other problems with the (usually mainstream-) media. Bloggers of all political stripes are welcome to submit posts for inclusion in the article. Here's all the information on submission guidelines and the easy process to have a post included in the Mediocre Media carnival. *Updated since first publishing*
I need to give special thanks to Ann "Dr Sanity" Santy and Gavriel "AbbaGav" Raanan for their great help in publicizing this, when it was still just a concept. On a related note, anyone interested in hosting this in the future should just contact me.
In addition, thankyous go out to the previous edition's contributors, namely
Joerg at Atlantic Review,
AbbaGav at AbbaGav,
My father at Mindware Dental Educational Seminars,
Jon Swift at Jon Swift,
Muse at Shiloh Musings,
Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality, and finally
Barak at IRIS Blog.
Just before we begin, I'd like to invite you to see how I think bloggers might be empowered to fight the terrible Al Jazeera television network, which advocates violence and terrorism. In addition, I point you to new Centrerion: Canadian Politics writer Ilya's post on the NEFA Foundation, which has footage of pro-terrorism demonstrations.
This edition,
Stephen Littau at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds presents 10 Terms and Phrases to be Wary of. A true classic in the literature of media criticism, including an examination of 'activist vs. lobbyist' (you may recall similar criticism of 'militant' in Abbagav's submission from last week) and 'democracy', whose semantic difference with liberalism we've discussed before.
Muse at Shiloh Musings presents Oy Headlines. Muse analyzes a headline to demonstrate how words subtly shape perception. Emotional and simple in style, I liked this no frills, straight to the point post.
Jon Swift at Jon Swift presents Dear Michelle Malkin.... Jon says that he "wanted to call up Michelle Malkin but I couldn't find her telephone number anywhere on her site so I wrote her a letter instead." He's obviously got a sense of humour, too: "I would send you my telephone number, but I'm afraid that there are some debt collectors with whom I've had a slight misunderstanding, and, well, I'm sure you understand." The topic is Malkin's brush with protesters and the press over some writing of hers.
Michael McCullough at Stingray: a blog for salty Christians presents The Natalee Holloway case: is it worth all the attention? It's a dissapearance (murder?) case in Aruba involving a pretty blonde American. While he sympathizes with the girl and her family, Michael asks pertinent questions about why that case is being covered. (Though I feel a bit conflicted about sending traffic to a site aiming to convert people to Christianity... I'm strongly opposed to the practice of actively trying to get people to convert to one's religion, aka proselytism.)
Update: Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality presents Turned off by turning off. Says Josh: "TV Turn-off Week is big in American schools. This year, they're trying for even more support by running childhood obesity up the flagpole." The post is part common sense reasoning, part rant. Why bother to turn the TV off when the PC's right there, and when you can watch the same things on it too... Amongst other insights.
Lastly, though Sanity didn't submit this herself, I thought you might care to view her latest on Osama and his videotapes (is it just me, or is the man a megalomaniac looking to become some kind of strange pop music video-type icon? Eminem already spoofed him...)
Also, Honest Reporting follows up on last edition's post about FIFA's entry into politics (it's at the bottom; FIFA is the soccer federation that runs the World Cup), and criticizes the Independant's graphics.
Related articles in the categories of media, terrorism, and language:
Media and education people snob technology
Canada's political system - commenters had some editorial corrections on semantics and language
Western Chants and Arab Chants
Dan Pipes advocating racism?
posted by lecentre @ 3:30 p.m.
2 Comments:
Hey Lecentre,
If you're ever wary of linking to certain sites (eg proselytising ones), you could always link to them with the nofollow tag. This way you're not contributing to their pagerank, something which you seem to be concerned about.
Ciaos,
Ilya
Good point Ilya. See people, I told you the guy was smart! I'd rather find some other way though... This one's going to take some thought.
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