I will let this passage explain perfectly my thoughts on MSM’s failures:

Fairness and balance are appropriate goals for journalists. But being fair to sources and providing balance among them should not outweigh the need to be fair to the readers, and to the facts. And balance should not be reduced to giving various points of view equal time or space in a story. It ought to mean that truth gets treated like truth and lies get treated like lies. If you’re going to lose audience anyway, why not take a stand for something on the way down? Maybe that’ll inspire some more readers to stick around, too. Or even to take a fresh look at their local paper again.

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The fun really just doesn’t stop over at the Time Magazine with Joe Klein. It is finally nice to put the corruption of the Beltway Media into one great example. And it is not just Joe Klein, but sadly the Time Magazine and its editors for him, just read the following “correction” below that will appear tomorrow (found through Glenn Greenwald):

Editor & Publisher has obtained an advance copy of Klein’s correction, which will appear in Time’s print edition tomorrow:

Correction: I was wrong to write last week that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would require a court approval of individual foreign surveillance targets. The bill does not explicitly say that. Republicans believe it can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t. To read the disputed section of the bill, go to time.com/fisa.

Read the correction twice and then out loud just so you can see how strange that sounds. Joe Klein was so factually wrong that his whole article was absolutely pointless. Joe Klein and the editors involved need to be put on leave and monitored for a long time for Time to really restore its credibility in journalism.

Here’s another way to look at it, if Joe Klein is the supposed “liberal” columnist, then I’m a radical.

And I’m very much the independent moderate.

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The ongoing drama continues over Joe Klein’s continued laziness and ignorance on doing his job as a reporter. Sadly, what passes for journalism these days consists literally of the following:

 Seriously — this is really it, in its entirety:

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.

Leave aside the false description of what Klein wrote.

Yes, journalism now is all about reporting what one side says, reporting that as news, and then stating what the other sides says. Therefore, as “some people say” (another favorite line that really means little) if you ever want to know what bad or yellow journalism (essentially) is all about, go read Joe Klein’s articles or get a taste of the journalistic satire at Atrios:

Fresh Thread
According to sources, Rick Stengel has 32 child rape convictions. Stengel has yet to comment on these allegations, and I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out if they are true.

Makes you wonder sometimes why no one has yet sued over such false allegations that really seem go beyond protections enshrined in the First Amendment into accusations that can be disproved.

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Here’s a great real-life story by Paul Middler at The China Game to show how people try to get away with not doing their job in China:

In the case of Google AdWords in China, I have a story. One supplier I worked with was advertising its products to “the world”, but the ad reseller wanted to show that the advertisement was getting exposure, so what the reseller did was “turn on” the advertising so that it showed up on searches conducted inside China. In other words, when the factory went online to check its name in Google, because the advertising was targeted to China, it showed up. But the ad was not set to show up in the US or Europe, where they had prospective customers.

Now, I’m not on the PPC side of things, but I’m fairly certain with the average American (how many times have I had to explain what SEO is?) this could be done as well to show up in the US, but not in Europe or China, but claim it was being shown there as well.

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