EckerNet.Com

This last weekend, I was in the middle of writing a post, when a friend came over to hang out. While reading my post over my shoulder, she asked if I would ever be interested in being a writer for a newspaper (admittedly her taste is questionable). I’m afraid my reaction was a knee-jerk “not a chance in hell” type reaction.

Noticing she was a little surprised at the venom I put in my response, I attempted to explain basically along the lines of working for any old media enterprise is pointless because there is zero credibility so what’s the point? I’m not sure I quite made my point clear, but since I know she reads this site and yet another example of what I was talking about popped up today. This time it was quite comical.

Here’s was a photo, that was published earlier before the media whitewashed it away :

Now I don’t think one has to be a firearms expert to know what is wrong here, as the caption reads:

An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.

Ok, there is no way those bullets were fired and hit her house….they haven’t been fired yet. Yet this photograph went by God knows how many levels of editors before it was published. Credibility? Zero.

And it’s not an isolated incident, it’s not even a topic I generally write on unless it’s way over the top, but here are a couple examples that were equally ridiculous just from my archives.

Now if that were it you could claim I’m making a spectacle of nothing. But let me point out, how in 20 minutes of searching just on Iraq some of the examples of media f-ups I found.

• Reuters reports on a massacre of 60 people…a real tearjerker….except it didn’t happen.
• Both AP and Reuters ended up retracting a story about a massacre of 20 people, because it never happened.
• TNR publishes Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s stories of war atrocities, that never happened.
• New York Times publishes the horrors that a Amorita Randall experienced in Iraq…except she’s never been to Iraq.
• The media in general buys into the horrible stories told by “Ranger” Jessie MacBeth….only problem being he’s never been in the military.
• Sacramento Bee publishes the Iraq war stories of Jimmy Massey about atrocities that never happened.
• Those 30 beheaded bodies NY Times reported on?? Never happened.
• Another set of 32 beheaded bodies?? Also didn’t happen.
• That 15,000+ wounded figure the media keeps using? Inaccurate.
• Gunmen beheading teachers in front of their students? Didn’t happen.
• Those claims that female US soldiers were dying of dehydration rather than risk rape to get to water?? Sorry, didn’t happen.
• Soldiers starving in Iraq? Nope, they just wanted some sweets.

Oh and who can forget Rathergate?? And I know there were more. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen, I’m just not interested in finding the links right now.

Now my point is that atrocities never happened. Or that massacres have never happened. Or there haven’t been beheaded bodies. I’m sure there have been. But repeatedly the media has been reporting stories that NEVER HAPPENED. If these stories are actually happening, why not just report those and then get back to talking about latest adventures of Paris Hilton’s snatch?

Because the media is a hollow shell of what it previously was. Instead of reporting news, they are so damned determined to present their version of reality that they either willingly make up stories, or else allow themselves to be duped by stories that to a truly unbiased person would be an obvious hoax.

Why would any self-respecting writer want to be part of that??? I’ll stick where I am thank you very much. After all, you think any editor would tolerate an endless series of top 11 lists?? Or poop-flavored thunderjournalism? Or endless liveblogging of lunchtime conversations? Or a writer that shows up once a month just to post pictures of dead animals? Or a bunch of drunks that get by by posting pictures of hot chicks every Friday?

Nah, I like the new media. The old media can go to hell.