We love ridiculous headlines just as much as we do stupid criminals, so we were pretty delighted to find this latest gem on Buzzfeed.In what has to be one of the funniest headlineswe've ever read, we learn what has to be some of the most obvious news of all time.WYFF4 must have known how cheeky this headline reads. It certainly did spice up a routine drug bust story. As for the criminal, we hope he gets help with his addiction, or at least thinks twice before hiding his wares in his such a, um, notorious location.
Facing Our Mother’s curse : Understanding the Evil Demon of UMNO
What is the truth?
KDN answer: Whatever we say it is
• Evangelical Christians say KDN confiscated 3,000 copies of the Malay-language Bible
• Evangelicals say govt had agreed to release the Bibles
• KDN warns newspapers for publishing “false news”
KDN says Bibles were not confiscated, merely “not released”
• KDN says govt did not agree to release the Bibles
• Newspapers publish KDN statement as a “correction”
• Conclusion: “the truth” is anything the KDN says. If not, editors and publishers go to jail (publishing “false news” is a criminal offence under the Printing Presses & Publications Act)
• Evangelicals say govt had agreed to release the Bibles
• KDN warns newspapers for publishing “false news”
KDN says Bibles were not confiscated, merely “not released”
• KDN says govt did not agree to release the Bibles
• Newspapers publish KDN statement as a “correction”
• Conclusion: “the truth” is anything the KDN says. If not, editors and publishers go to jail (publishing “false news” is a criminal offence under the Printing Presses & Publications Act)
The home ministry has reprimanded newspapers that carried statements by the Evangelical Christian Fellowship that KDN had “confiscated” a shipment of Malay-language Bibles, causing editors to shrink into self-censorship mode.
Self-censorship is abhorrent to those professional journalists who wish to live up to their professional principles and report the truth as they see it.
But self-censorship is the mode preferred by KDN and ruling party officials, as it forces editors and reporters to “play safe” by not reporting events in full, and sticking only to the official line as given by bureaucrats and ruling party politicians.
In the past, warning letters have been issued by KDN, reminding editors and publishers that the ministry expects them to practise self-censorship.
In other words, “self-censorship” is official policy, imposed on editors and not something most professional editors wish upon themselves.
But the fact also remains that, over the years, self-censorship has been internalised by many editors and reporters who see their role as that of supporting the prevailing official view. These editors and reporters see that long-term career prospects and success up the corporate ladder comes from toeing the line.
Editors have been jailed before, as “communists” and as “subversive elements” and as “anti-national elements”. Most of the time, those labels only meant that those editors were the victims of political power plays at the very top.
Repeated threats are now made about “reporting false news” — when KDN or ruling party politicians say that, what they really mean is that you did not report what we want to see.
It shows yet again why government and political control of the press must end, and media control laws abolished. Reform is long overdue — because bureaucrats and politicians continue to use the law as a tool of intimidation, as a form of bullying.
You made me look bad — so now I’m going to shut you up. That’s what KDN is saying.
This is plainly evident from the MalaysiaKini report yesterday about the KDN reprimands:
- “The Truth” lies is whatever the KDN says. It is “the only truth”
- If someone says something not in line with the KDN view, the media is held liable for reporting “false news”
- “The truth” about what the KDN does can only be found in what the KDN says it does
- If what others say about KDN does not follow the KDN version, the media are reporting “false news”
KDN has now threatened editors and publishers with criminal action because what the Evangelical Christian Fellowship said about KDN — it was not what the newspapers said about KDN — did not jibe with what the KDN wanted the public to see and hear.
If the Evangelical Fellowship was factually wrong, it is up to KDN to state the facts and let the public judge. If the newspapers factually reported what the Evangelical Fellowship actually said, the newspapers did no wrong.
It is KDN which is wrong. Because, it plainly appears, KDN officials are using the law to bully editors. Because KDN did not like the word “confiscated” but prefers to say “not released”. Because KDN did not like the fact that the Evangelical Fellowship believed the prime minister’s word that the Bibles would be released, and took the prime minister’s words to mean government approval.
In other words, KDN also wants you to know that the prime minister is not the authority. They, the KDN, are in charge. Or so they say. And you editors better go along or go to jail.
True or not? Or is this also false news?
t is often said that journalism is literature written in a hurry – and forgotten even faster. No product has a shorter shelf-life than the front page headlines of the morning papers. Perhaps it’s because of this brevity of relevance that journalism creates its own larger-than-lifeand twice as long-lasting-mythology about itself.
Saiful BukharI Thank God I'm a Bisexual UMMI is my Best Partner in Sex
We can't tell you how happy we are to bring you the third installment of Sassy Gay Friend just this month. Sure, our heroine-saving hero with a penchant for scarves is coming to us at a price -- product placement -- but at least we're getting to see more than just the occasional episode.
Last week's "Black Swan" episode was a hit, but this week S.G.F. gets back to his roots and helps out one of Shakespeare's ladies: Lady Macbeth.
"First of all, stop getting your political news from crazy old women who live in the bushes," isn't even the snappiest line in this rescue session, where S.G.F. convinces Lady Macbeth not to act like a crazed control freak. Watch the video below and check Sassy Gay Friend's spiffy new website and his Facebookfor more sassy gay goodness.
WATCH
gay and bisexual men's preferences about the characteristics of a future rectal microbicide for anal intercourse
I was introduced to this mythology early, when I joined The Statesman in what was then Calcutta in the latter 1960s. The great legends of The Statesman were the inseparable duo, Lindsay Emerson and Niranjan Mazumdar, the pillars of the paper’s famed editorial page. After the morning editorial conference, Lindsay and Niranjan would repair to the nearby Amber bar, where a corner table was permanently reserved for them. Following a largely liquid lunch, they would return to the office to write their edits.
On one occasion, a frantic editor, fearing a missed deadline, barged into Niranjan’s room and asked him what his edit for the day was about. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” replied Niranjan. “But it's already 3 o’clock, and we have to pass the page by 5,” protested the editor. “When are you going to know what you’re going to write?” he asked. “I don’t have to know what I’m going to write; my typewriter knows,” was the reply. And, The Statesman legend has it, within 20 minutes Niranjan’s typewriter had rattled off a word-perfect editorial. Thus are journalism’s myths born, and turned into a parallel history beyond the brief transience of headlines which are already dated and overtaken by other events by the time the ink has dried on them.
Impervious to the tyranny of clock and calendar, mythologies are beyond time and its transitory deadlines. And the natural haunt of mythologies is the time-pressured world of journalism. The older and more venerable the publication, the greater and grander the mythologies become. What was said by an English scholar about the Ramayana might be said about the folklore of journalism: If you read it as history, it is mythology; if you read it as mythology, it is history.
Little wonder that the TOI, the Old Lady of Boribunder, should have spawned a Valhalla of myth. From R K Laxman’s most uncommon Common Man, to the famed erudition of Sham Lal and the thundering broadsides of Giri Lal Jain’s editorials, the TOI’s pantheon of heroes defies both the perishability of time and the limiting confines of literal fact.
With sharp insight, and equally incisive wit, Bachi Karkaria – herself in no small danger of being co-opted into the TOI gallery of Immortals – has captured, and caricatured, the legendary myths that lie “Behind the Times”, as her book on the TOI is aptly named.
Is it for real? Was K Subrahmanyam, eminent nuclear strategist and bulwark of the TOI edit page, really called ‘Bomb Mama’ in affectionate reverence by his junior colleagues? Did Pritish Nandy, enfant terrible of the media world, actually say or do suchand-such outrageous thing? When, where, how and why exactly did so-and-so happen? Indeed, did it happen at all?
The answers to all these and similar questions lie, literally, behind the Times. Because, in that they shape both the times and the Times, myth and legend precede the actual. Or, to put it another way, the ‘f’ in ‘factual’ when borrowed from ‘fable’ makes for a timeless truth.
Did Niranjan’s typewriter really do that perfect edit in 20 minutes? You bet it did. Or, better still, it ought to have done. History records after the event; legend demands the event. Which of the two is truer? Which should be truer?
Take your pick.
Political Leaders and Activists Ask: Has the Future Arrived?
Doha, Qatar: When I arrived in the capital of Qatar, as one of the guest participants in the 6th annual Al Jazeera Forum focused on the Arab world in transition, it was clear the mood had changed.
In years past, the humiliation and oppression of the region was driving the discourse, but this year, events had taken a positive turn with popular youth revolutions catapulting the Al Jazeera TV networks into the global spotlight with governments falling and a new future emerging.
A revolt in Libya was topping the news, being described as civil war -- whether it is or isn't -- with Western intervention in the form of a no fly zone on the horizon to either protect that country's people from a mad dictator, or in Col. Gadaffi's view, use humanitarianism as a cover for an armed effort by foreign interests to seize the country's oil wealth.
Just as the Forum begun, we learned that an Al Jazeera Cameraman, Ali Hassan Al Jaber, who I met at an earlier Forum, was killed in Libya, likely a targeted killing because the Al Jazeera people I met believe Gadaffi put money on the network's heads.
Soon, the story it came to discuss also lost its standing at the top of the media agenda. The disaster in the East had displaced the crisis in the Middle East.
News waits for no man, woman or TV network, so within a few hours, as fate would have it, the natural calamity in Japan riveted the world.
Even Al Jazeera was leading with it, with some excellent reporting from the scene. The channel also tapped some of the images and analysis on Japan's NHK which offered a round the clock funereal telethon of a region dying along with it so many of its people. It was as gripping as it was so unbearably sad
A natural earthquake and tsunami had displaced a man made one. We clearly need to know more about Japan's nuclear plants, especially since the Obama Administration was planning to shovel billions to the same company whose plants are exploding and melting down.
The sounds of freedom in Tahrir Square had become yesterday's story even though that revolution is unfinished and demands follow-up. When the cameras go, public awareness often goes with them.
There have been rising death counts in the battles in Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya. Now Syria has seen protests and even Qatar was bracing for a "day of rage.'
Political disruptions pale in importance as the world's attention is mesmerized by the dreadful sights of villages and peoples being destroyed by a crush of water and moving earth. Exploding nuclear plants gave us all something new to worry about just before Hollywood releases a new wave of terrifying disaster movies. Apocalyptic fiction can never keep up with harder to comprehend 'faction.'
Back at the opulent Sheraton Hotel in Doha, ironically and perhaps prophetically designed to look like a pyramid, the young bloggers and activists who came to tell their story seemed a bit out of place. Sleeping in a posh hotel certainly beats sleeping in the streets, but the setting added to the surrealistic spectacle of a people oriented gathering held where the elite meet to eat.
On the other hand, why not some luxury for these media warriors? Why shouldn't some of the kazillions earned in Qatar from fueling the cars of the west go into funding Middle East movements for justice?
The Gulf States can afford to pay back (or forward) -- and should, even as their rulers of Saudia Arabia and The Emirates have invaded Bahrain to try to contain protests that could come their way.
The theme of the event was "winds of change," a term that first gained currency about the fight against apartheid.
"The success or failure of these political transformations will determine the future of the entire region," Al Jazeera's program reads.
"What are the odds that these uprisings will give rise to a new political order, given the forces of the old regimes and external forces exerting pressure to retain crucial levels of control?"
Two days of panels explored these issues in the context of social justice, democracy, transparency, global politics and more local concerns. As someone who focuses on media as politics, I didn't have far to look for a media angle.
This revolution itself is amplified by media. It is promoted, in part, by new social media and publicized in "old" media. The blogs, the cellphones, Facebook and Twitter are all part of it.
Yes, this revolution is also being televised as the ultimate state of the art multi-media experience.
The Al Jazeera anchorwoman who opened the Forum made clear that social media and TV media can work together -- and does. It converges as much as diverges; it builds a cumulative impact reinforcing each other but it is the people who stood up to resolve their grievances made it happen, They deserve the credit.
Yes, the mediagenic images and interactive energy has an appeal for a media savvy, web-focused generation that doesn't just watch someone else's tubes but wants to shape their own.
Al Jazeera was, nevertheless, at its center, providing visibility and legitimacy. It is no longer a small alternative outlet, even though most Americans don't know that because the world's most important network is barely available in a land that touts its "free" media.
Denigrated by politicians and shunned by nervous cable outlets, Al Jazeera is still fighting for airtime in the USA even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now praises it as "must watch, real journalism." (Her remarks, of course, served a promotional agenda since they were uttered at a hearing seeking funding for a government propaganda outlets.) Even she is using Al Jazeera's popularity to better fund networks that she hopes can compete with it.
Started in 1996 out of a failed BBC experiment, it has grown into a multi-channel mega network with documentary and sports outlets and news channels in Arabic, English Turkish, Balkan languages and Swahili, so far.
It has a study center, a training center and offers a range of social media platforms. Its web sites are big and getting bigger.
• Al Jazeera Network has more than 65 bureaus across the globe -- the majority are rooted in the global South.
• Al Jazeera Network has more than 3,000 staff members across the world, including more than 400 journalists from more than 60 countries.
• Al Jazeera English has more than 1,000 highly experienced staff from more than 50 nationalities, making AJE's newsroom among the most diverse in the world.
I was told that a recent commentary of mine about Bernie Madoff on AlJazeera.net drew a whopping 238,000 page views worldwide.
One of the panels here was focused on discussing how what was once called the "CNN effect" has been displaced by the "Al Jazeera effect." The former was about a cable network that won influence with the men at the top; the latter is about winning credibility and respect from people at the bottom.
I heard a term there on the lips of an Al Jazeera executive that I never uttered by any American media exec in my years of media watching and working at ABC, CNN, and CNBC among others. The term is "oppression" -- as in being a voice for the voiceless, standing up for oppressed people.
Al Jazeera explicitly links its media efforts to the fight for democracy and free speech.
CNN, these days, like Fox and MSNBC, is more about supercharged domistic partisan opinion. Al Jazeera is more about universal human rights, facts and journalism, although when it does offer opinions it always offers more than one.
Its slogan has always been, "the opinion and the other opinion."
Al Jazeera credits its success to being a trusted and vital source of information. It does real reporting and its own investigations.
Their multi-ethnic army of global correspondents comes from the world's leading media outlets while it also taps diverse freelancers. It can compete with and often out scoop BBC and CNN because top staffers once worked for those outlets and know how to do it.
And it has no sacred cows. Its "Palestinian Papers" exposed the Palestinian Authority's complicity with Israel in negotiations. The PA is now among the channel's detractors even as the audience in the region was glued to its embarrassing findings.
Some of the panels seemed uneven with a predictable discourse but speeches by Turkey's Foreign Minister and Brazil's ex-President Lula livened it up.
The Al Jazeera Forum asks: "has the future arrived"?
The answer is a qualified yes but not as an end point. Most of the delegates seem to agree, change is a process, and it is underway. One speaker compared the recent uprisings to the events of l968 which I played a small role in.
The future is always arriving, and whatever happens, will continue to do so as long as the sun rises in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment