Taken from xn; read, comment, think, post.

[xiane]

From xn:

News meme starting....NOW

“How would the folks back home feel if they knew their sons and daughters
were getting limbs blown off so that Iraqi politicians could jaunt off to Tehran
and say warm and fuzzy things about the crazy old man who gave us the Iranian
hostage crisis? And what kind of surrealist cover story would the GOP propaganda
machine come up with to convince the Fox News audience that fighting and dying
to keep Khomeini lovers in power is really a good thing?”

From Arianna Huffington: Iraq: The War We Are Not Being Shown

So, how bout a news meme, eh? Drop this in your LJ and invite
your flist to do likewise. News like this *needs* to be spread far and wide, and
we clearly can't count on corporate media to put this kinda stuff on page 1
above the fold where it belongs. We need to *be* the news.

Comments

[oberstgreup.livejournal.com]

You do understand the difference between "News" and "Opinion", don't you?

For another opinion piece folks might want to drop in their journals, see
http://slate.msn.com/id/2122395/ You say tomayto, I say tomahto.

As for Arianna Huffington, you might want to check out her distribution in the corporate media before claiming they're ignoring or suppressing her views or the points she raises. Her column is syndicated in a number of papers including the LA Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Diego Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Dallas Morning News, which means her print audience easily exceeds the number of persons reading LiveJournal. If you wonder why she isn't carried more widely, check out http://www.thecre.com/fuel/OregonianAnalysis.htm for an opinion on that. But her views aren't that far off from those of Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins, or Eric Alterman, all of whom have massive audiences due to syndication in the corporate media.

All of which adds up to: This isn't a news meme, it's a spin, hype, misinformation, and bluster meme. Nobody needs to add more fuel to those fires.

[xiane.livejournal.com]

It's called "considering possible other sides." Notice that I myself added nothing to the post other than "think and discuss." I've said nothing because I don't know enough to say anything. I'm still observing. The opinions of others is always insightful, though.

FWIW, I knew that a. you'd probably be the only one to respond, and b. you'd respond with exactly that tone. :)

Thanks for adding some links and your take on things. And thanks for at least wanting to expound on your take on the matter. At least YOU care. [unlike the majority, it seems, so far.]

[oberstgreup.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I should have been more clear and addressed those remarks to the meme's author.

I'm always happy to listen to and consider other sides. It's the refusal to admit there are other legitimate points of view, and the blind attribution of support for other points of view to evil, stupidity, malignant conspiracies, etc. that gets under my skin.

The Huffington piece skirts close to that edge in suggesting that the facts she cites are being suppressed by the mainstream media (which is odd given that she writes for and in the mainstream media), but your friend xn goes way over it in saying that anyone with a different opinion is the moral equivalent of a child molester. That's the sort of thing I mean by hype and bluster, and the failure to understand the difference between opinion pieces and news stories and how each is properly treated in the media (and then drawing conclusions from that error) is what I mean by misinformation and spin. Spreading that sort of nonsense and hate around leaves people less, not more, informed.