We’re often scolded that as bloggers, we’re not real journalists.
This morning the nation awoke to an act of madness. My cell phone screen was covered in updates as I got out of bed half an hour in advance of a planned interview on America’s Morning News. I’m sure most bloggers’ and reporters’ cell phones were the same.
I hit Google to find out what I could. I hit Twitter to see reactions and pick up details. That’s how I picked up Piers Morgan’s disgraceful tweets. As I prepped for the radio interview, news broke that the gunman’s name was James Holmes. I went on the air, talked about the story but didn’t speculate on the gunman’s motives since nothing was known about him yet. AMN’s hosts handled the story with perfect restraint.
After the interview I hit Google again. I hit Facebook hard to scour for a James or Jim Holmes in Aurora, Colorado. I watched Twitter to see if anyone else had anything confirmed.
I’m sure ABC News’ Brian Ross was searching Google and Facebook and Twitter at about the same time I was. So were thousands of other bloggers and reporters.
But I couldn’t come up with anything tying any of the James Holmes’s I found to the massacre in Colorado. I didn’t post any of what I found. Neither did most other people who were doing similar searches.
ABC News’ Brian Ross, on the other hand, reported on the air that his “investigation” had led him to a Jim Holmes who had connections to a Tea Party group. That turned out to be completely and totally false. Ross leaped to a predetermined storyline — Tea Party = violence — smeared an innocent man and changed that man’s life forever. Did Brian Ross ever stop to think that he could be sparking more violence?
At least if we’re confronted with physical danger, most of us now live in states where it is legal to carry firearms to defend ourselves or we can find some other way to defend ourselves and our loved ones. But how can we defend ourselves from the irresponsible, opportunistic mainstream media smear? We’re all at the mercy of “reporters,” scare quotes intended, like Brian Ross now.
Also read:
The Irony of the Propaganda and Lies Machine
1)I find it ironic that ABC and CNN and their conspiratorial hacks would go out of their way to leap on “gun owners” and the Tea Party in connecting them to violence, but drove that same clown car in reverse at Ft. Hood., refusing to connect it with it’s actual motive.
2)I find it ironic that the oozing slime at ABC and NBC continue to “edit” out facts, words, and “fuzzy up” pictures in order to make a community watch captain into a racist killer, but serially ignored the death of Brian Terry and 300 Mexicans.
3)I find it ironic that the Propaganda and Lies machine will never hold itself accountable for egregious acts of conspiracy and treason, but it maintains the faux mantle of prosecutor of accountability on behalf of radical leftist ideals.
The scum that conspire to destroy our information stream with their lies of omission and commission deserve nothing but contempt.
Non-violent contempt…but contempt. And far from timidity and silence. It is high time we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Ironic isn’t a synonym for predictable, you know.
A situation is ironic when what happens is the opposite of what is expected to happen. Man bites dog.
When the Marxist Socialist Media lies to the American people coming and going, there is no irony involved. This is who they are. This is what they do.
They have collectively bought into an evil ideology and are working to forward the evil agendas that are derived from that ideology. They work to obfuscate the truth and to provide cover for the efforts of fellow travelers to forward those evil agendas.
An ironic situation would be one where they actually told the complete and unvarnished truth, from the beginning, without any attempt at spin, and without being backed into a corner first.
Ross already apologized but didn’t explain why he went straight to the Tea Party list, or why he didn’t look for a confirmation, both examples of Journalism 101. ABC will now compound this with a third grievous error by passing on as if this were nothing much.
If the firestorm lasts long enough, and if the slandered Jim Holmes complains long enough, ABC might force Ross into an on-air personal apology. But you will never, ever get Ross or anyone else at ABC to explain why they decided that a Tea Party connection justified rushing to air with the speculation.
To do that would mean forcing Ross to admit that when he thinks of the Tea Party, he thinks of violent, gun-toting right-wing nut jobs. Or if you asked him on what basis he came to see the Tea Party as a clue to the identity of the gunman — since there’s never been a Tea Party-related violent incident (as opposed to the many involving the OWS crowd), Ross and ABC would end up having to concoct some sort of tortured analogy between the Tea Party and Timothy McVeigh, which would put them in an even worse position than they are right now.
I certainly hope the guy who was named erroneously sues for libel.
This year’s “Richard Jewell Is the Centennial Park bomber/the Washington Sniper is an Angry White Man” award goes to…
Would Mr. Holmes be in a position to file lawsuits against ABC and Brian Ross? The only thing that may stop those character assasins may be financial i.e. several million dollar lawsuit.
The Courts are a notorious safe haven for Journalistic corruption.
Brian Ross is not sorry and the Propaganda and Lies Media simply has a narrative, it does not have news.
I very accidentally watched Diane Sawyer host a festival of deceit on the Sean Hannity interview with George Zimmerman. The manner in which that entire piece was displayed was a journalistic disgrace.
(I was stuck in a room where it was on and could not leave)
It is a treasonous, poisonous, disgraceful …radical leftist narrative and it most decidedly is NOT “news”. But there is no accountability…except us.
If we don’t turn off those TV’s and announce why, if we don’t boycott those sponsors and announce why…we have no recourse. It is stupefying that THEY would be screaming like stuck pigs if this happened to them ONCE…and we suffer it hundreds of thousands of times each week.
The courts are no help. Pointing it out has PROVEN to be useless in stopping them. There is no doubt it is intentional. Yet we do very little except point at it and that simply is not enough. They have no integrity, they have no honor, they have no conscience. You can’t shame them. You can’t sue them. And clearly what we are doing can’t stop them. It doesn’t even slow them down.
Boycott them. It is our only hope to hold them accountable.
Maybe tomorrow, as I’m trying to figure out how to boycott advertisers/sponsors on ABC, I can remark: Oh! There’s an App for that!
Mr Jim Holmes has been libeled. Why couldn’t he file lawsuits? He’d probably be able to settle out of court for five or six figures. It’s not like a network doesn’t have deep pockets! Then, he could donate it to his Tea Party!! See, everybody wins!! America, what a country!!
I have already sent messages through ABC’s website on this, and retweeted Iowahawk’s tweets on this subject. Brian Ross ought to be fired, for incompetance, malice or just to be an example to others who look to automatically associate the Tea Partiers with violence. I am sick of this meme, and angry with the white-hot fire of ten thousand burning suns of those mainstream media who have been perpetuating it.
http://open.salon.com/blog/sgt_mom/2011/08/03/terrorism_tea_party_hobbits
Almost a year ago, I ditched posting at Open Salon over this – I couldn’t stand it any more. Anybody got a list of sponsors of GMA?
I actually watched ABC’s network news program tonight looking for some sort of mea culpa.
Diane Sawyer opened with…
‘Another safe part of American life was shattered by an assault weapon.’
Later, the disgraced Brian Ross was the second correspondent who relayed elements of the story.
Apology?
Didn’t happen.
I guess throwing out smears of tea partiers is explanable as ‘fog of war’ stuff.
They are definitely queing up the ‘guns are too easy’ meme that will be the long lasting liberal spin on this.
Fire Brian Ross.
Not that it matters. I fired him and Diane Sawyer and Matt Lauer and Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer years ago.
– have let such trolls overrun what was once an island of information among Kos, MM and PuffHo. So long, PJM.
You are already recognized for your wisdom and restraint, Mr. Preston. The level of thoughtfulness that was exercised by you and a majority of the blogosphere is commendable.
And then there is ABC and Brian Ross.
Speaking in a very general way, I find the difference between conservatives and liberals to be that conservatives are pragmatic rationalists who tend to see what’s in front of them and don’t have authoritative views on what’s not in front of them.
Liberals tend to have a pre-determined view of the world that amounts to a complete and cogent narrative where everything is set in place. A lack of context and facts is helpful to this.
As an example, presenting mere facts about crime that reflect a preponderance in the black community is considered racist, though it is simply a set of statistics. Liberals never consider that ignoring facts by race is demonstrably more racist.
Liberals will occupy a default position that anyone from anywhere in the world and in any numbers will continue America’s bright legacy though they may come from cultures where a doorknob is a Rubik’s Cube. There is no such thing as cultural stupidity in the liberal world though there is massive evidence of it for anyone who cares to see it. Otherwise how in the hell did America come to occupy its position? Everyone would be equally successful.
If a sports league was the world, a liberal would tinker endlessly to mitigate, excuse and blame in a fruitless attempt to socially engineer until the last place team became the first place team, even if the first place team was destroyed in the process and standards forever lowered to that of the last place team.
This is the equivalent of adjusting your speedometer so 60 reads 100 and you thus go “fast,” as in The Marching Morons.
Liberals are fakes. If you help one fix their brokedown car, they’ll quickly come around to your solution if it works, no matter how stubbornly they insist their view is correct and yours not. But in a society with few immediate consequences, liberals can wreck America in a slow and agonizing slide that in 100 years will reduce this nation to a sh-thole. Parts of it already are according to Victor Davis Hanson and others.
As I mentioned on another blog earlier this eveing, I wrote ABC NEWS on their Contact Us as there was no category for what I had to say. (“Other”)
I was polite espressing my opinion about the middle school level “investigatiove” reporting of Brian Ross
This is the robo-response I received:
“Thank you for writing to the ABC TV Network headquarters. Your request and/or comments should be made to your LOCAL STATION directly.”
?
Seems clear ABC doesn’t read its mail, and/or want to hear what the public has to say.
The irony of this — and why other reporters at ABC and the higher-ups in the news department should be furious at Ross, Stephanopolous and the GMA people — is that ABC News was the first outlet to correctly identify that the gunman was from San Diego. They were the ones who interviewed Holmes’ mother and got the “You’ve got the right person” quote.
By all rights, ABC News should be doing a media victory lap for being out in front on tracking down the identity of the shooter. But they can’t, because any attempt to do that brings it back to the fact that Brian Ross shat all over their scoop less than a hour earlier, by letting his liberal wishful thinking run amok, and connecting the attacks to the wrong James Holmes simply because he knew in his heart any Tea Party connection meant the odds were probably 95 percent this guy was the killer.
All I can think of after the 1996 Olympic Bombing and jumping to call Richard Jewel “the suspect” and not the hero he was. It force them to call someone “person of interest” until they are really a suspect. The person found in a goggle search was not even a “person of interest”. He and the whole tea party at once was holding the guns. Now there will be a new title for someone with the same name and a Google search.
Mr Jewel successfully sued, now it is time for the Tea party to class action sue for defamation the same way CAIR sued and threatened to keep the Ft. Hood shooting, a work place accident.
I remember a movie where a man was accused of rape and ultimately exonerated.
His life was ruined.
He came for the accuser and did the dirty deed.
His explanation was that he was owed one.
These pieces of sh_t, Ross, Sawyer and Blitzer deserve to be tared and feathered.
Boycot ABC, CNN and NBC and more importantly, their ADVERTISERS.
Spread the word.
The rich part of all this is that between George Stephanopolus, Tea Party Jim Holmes, and shooter James Holmes, the guy least likely to have been mentally ill on July 19 was the Tea Party fella.
Thanks ABC.
Stephanopoulos, not Stephanopolus. I failed “Advanced Greek Names for $100″ in college.
Class action time against ABC. If criminal law won’t raise a finger to defend broad swaths of Americans who have been defamed by the “angry haters” network, may the civil process bankrupt them.
Ross should keep his job, as an albatross around ABC’s exposed neck.
I seem to recall a man named Barnum saying that, “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.”
The Left thanks you for your free publicity, no doubt.
Me, I never watch them.
Anyone that watches the alphabet networks ought, especially after complaining about them for X number of years, ought to be confined and put under adult supervision. 90% of conservative media is amplifying the daily agitprop and then hyperventilating because they’ve discovered the daily agitprop falls short of some Mayberry Standard of good citizenship.
Notice how the professional racial/gender/muslim grievance lobby react to situation they don’t like. Now, compare that to the reaction conservatives deliver when they are called the most vile names possible. Conservatives take pride in playing by Mayberry Rules and our opponents know they have nothing more fearful than a ballot to worry about. They don’t even have to worry much about the elections because they control the bureaucratic levers and can always find a turncoat in a court somewhere to get their way.
The Left plays by Prison Rules, we play by Mayberry Rules and we think if we preach to the choir hard enough and long enough we will defeat The Left. The Left is waging a non-violent Civil War and we are just trying to correct the record. The Left, and most “moderates and independents” are not fact-driven, yet we keep trying that approach to win them over.
Are you talking about the Marquess of Queensbury rules? John Mayberry was a first baseman for the Kansas City Royals.
A new word for reporters who “jump the gun”(sorry) to name conservatives as perpetrators before finding out all the facts;
Rossholes.
This is where Twitter can be an effective tool to call out “journalists” What would Breitbart do? The “media” will try to burry another enormous error but with technology today, bloggers, twitter can be used to expose the bias.
Anytime I get a survey that asks where I get my news, I alway check the box for internet news sites / bloggers and not TV, news magazines. If I cannot validate a story with a link to a source document / video, I remain skeptical, without the internet, I could not be an informed voter, how sad…
I hope ABC ratings drop along with the other alphabet channels. CNN is dropping ratings, Microsoft just pulled the plug on MSNBC, Comcast cannot be happy about further ratings declines. I rarely watch FOX anymore, they fail to report many stories and spend too much time reporting “polls” than hard news.
Be Breitbart, expose the Democratic Media Complex
I do not see any of you conservatives mentioning the deplorable act of a fellow blogger named John Hawkins from Right Wing News who posted a facebook page of a James Holmes from Aurora. Did he smear the guy as a tin hat liberal or an occupier? No. But he did falsely link to a person who was not the same person who committed the horrific act. I believe this blogger is at the same level with Brian Ross when it comes to “reporting.” The James Holmes whom John posted on his blog felt compelled to post a message on his facebook page telling people he was not the guy. I called John out on it on his Facebook page in which he instantly banned me from it. http://www.rightwingnews.com/crime/is-this-james-holmes-facebook-page/ As a conservative how follows right minded bloggers I was appalled by his post and you should be too.
Dearest dear THE AMAZING Amitji
Why did Brian Ross rush to get the erroneous Tea-Party link onto the air?
Because like every other link they try to make between violence and the Tea-Party, it’s too late to get it on the air if they wait for the facts. The fact is that the Tea-Party is the LEAST violent, LEAST racist, and MOST polite movement in recent American polital history
Brian Ross should be fired, for blaming a completely inncoent guy for a murder, just because he had a similar name, and was in the Tea Party. Normally I oppose firing people for mistakes like this, since honest guys on the right have been victimized by this approach. But this guy did not make just one mistake, he is a serial abuser, as in this link: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/is-brian-ross-a-reliable-reporter
He also did a completely false slime on Wayne Newton.
Any guy responsible for this long a series of biased and shoddy journalism should be fired, in an effort to finally set a better ethical standard at ABC news, if they are not already so corrupt that change is even possible.
I have not watched the MSM since the mid 80s and I am vindicated all the time. Perhaps more and more people are catching on. Boycotting sponsors will help I guess but even more effective is simply for enough people to stop watching, since that is what the sponsors are paying for. Freedom works.