A gesture of courage and defiance...followed by abject and embarrassing cowardice:

'Everybody Draw Muhammad Day'

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/may-20-everybody-draw-muhammad-day.html

'Cartoonist Backs Down From Everybody Draw Muhammad Day'

http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/theampersand/archive/2010/04/27/everybody-draw-muhammad-day-artist-backs-down.aspx

I like the original, myself:





Muslims continue to intimidate and threaten all freedom of expression in the democratic West.....

I think you mean extremists?

OK then, Muslim extremists.

[Although, I'd feel a whole lot better if more 'moderate' Muslims came out vocally against this kind of thing. I understand that they're afraid too, but at some point a line in the sand has to be drawn]

Here you go

If you're looking for a truly neutral, honest, reliable, uncensored press, I must ask where you've also searched for unicorns, fairies, and imps.

The alternative to government owned media is corporate media like CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and others. These networks are necessarily bad at being impartial, necessarily bad at being neutral, and necessarily censored because their success depends so much upon the contentment of other corporations who provide income via advertisements. This creates tremendous bias because the advertisers must be placated.

When they were thinking of making an American Top Gear show, Jay Leno went public and said it would never succeed. The reason? Because as soon as the hosts go and tare apart a car, calling it rubbish, pointing out its faults, and doing everything else that top gear is known for, immediately the manufacture of the car they trashed would pull all their advertising from the network. Since the show would eventually trash every make sooner or later, that's a fatally high cost for a corporate network in the United States to swallow. Usually these advertisers do not make their power over networks visible, because their profits do best when the public are blind to these matters. Rest assured, every show you watch, every news segment you watch on corporate owned TV is somehow influenced by the capital interests involved. Even the sensationalism is calculated to increase revenue, even when it comes at the cost of accuracy. There can be no free press in this arrangement.

Government owned media poses different problems, but what I would argue, is that you need both, in order to balance out each other. You can't rely on corporate TV to be sufficient, but you can't rely on government TV to be either.

As to Al Jezeera, they have one thing going for them. They don't normally consider Britney Spears, American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars to be "news." If I had a dollar for every circus and spectacle that our mainstream press tries to pass off as "news" I would have a very well funded independent news agency of my own by now. With enough money left over to save the Big Three, update the grid so it can withstand all the computers & AC units we throw at it in the summer, with enough money left over to bail out Greece, Iceland, and California.

I know EVERYTHING about how public-service broadcasting works: I LIVE in Canada, where the CBC makes the BBC look like FoxNews, and carries an especially loathsome form of hatred [yes, 'hatred'] of America. The only thing I watch on it is Hockey Night In Canada every Saturday evening in the dark months. I deluge my MP with demands that the government privatize it forth with and pester like-minded friends to do the same.

I WILL give Channel 4 credit: 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' is one of the best documentaries on that scam out there, and dealt a hard body blow to this hoax even before the release of those hopelessly compromising emails. Can you say 'Thank you, Maggie!'

And I'm the OPPOSITE of reactionary [as was Thatcher]: I believe the world has to be delivered from that now-quaint and always-unworkable historical mistake of the mid-19th century called 'socialism' as quickly as possible. It belongs on the shit-pile of history, not just in the former Soviet Union, but everywhere else as well.

-- Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:35 am --



What power or influence do you, as a citizen, have over government-controlled media?

The answer is 'none'.

A permanent, self-perpetuating cadre of people who are difficult to fire and don't have to answer to ANYone are in a position to take millions in taxpayer money and do exactly what they like with it.

If you don't like what a particular government does, you can vote against them, and if enough people vote against them you can chuck that government.

If you don't like a particular privately-owned network or a particular show, you can not watch that particular network or that particular show. Your money need not go to bank-rolling that network. You have a CHOICE.

With a government-owned network, you HAVE no choice, whether you watch it or not: your money will be taken from you to fund it regardless of how much you utilize it.

That's simply WRONG!!!!!!

-- Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:50 am --

I wonder how enthusiastic tragic clown would be about the BBC if it were staffed from top to bottom by people like ME?

-- Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:29 pm --




Strangely enough, I'm looking for no such thing.

You want to know what drives me batty? The smug claim of 'journalistic objectivity' made by media organizations that practice the OPPOSITE of that.

I say: DROP all these claims. If you're a human being, you have a point of view, wrong or right, good or bad.

I prefer the press of continental Europe: there, rarely do you find the silly pretence of 'objectivity' in journalism. 'Le Figaro' is staunchly conservative, 'Le Monde' is left-of-centre, 'L'Humanite' is Communist.

It should be the same in North America: the New York Times is hard left, the Washington Post is left-of-centre, the WSJ is mostly conservative. Let them openly and honestly DECLARE their ideological allegiances, and then be prepared to back them up.

Honesty is the best policy here as everywhere else.

Remember that Continuum falacy we talked about?

We did?!?! Apply it to this case.

-- Wed Apr 28, 2010 2:33 pm --



Yes, and there's a good reason for that...the BBC felt the pressure on them from the Balen Report [worth googling] and wanted to bend over backwards to counteract criticism from that quarter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy
The one about drawing lines.

Probably shouldn't mix metaphors either.

I'm sure you're an absolute joy at parties.

Incidentally, bold underlined caps don't magically grant your claim more veracity. You're also using Canadian public broadcasting to attack British public broadcasting, which is a tad facetious of you. While they're both publicly-funded they're also entirely separate corporate entities.


A documentary that wouldn't have been possible without Channel 4's share of the UK TV license fee.


Do you have private medical insurance then? While I'm in no way a screaming Marxist (see some of my replies to Armed Communist Pikachu in other threads), I am more than happy to give socialism credit for bringing about such things as a national health service, which Canada has (as you'd obviously know). Then again, I don't see having a social conscience as a bad thing. We'd all be twisted, selfish misanthropes like Ayn Rand otherwise.


If you kept delivering quality shows like Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes I'd have no problem with it.

I think that underestimates the power of the people in the American system. If people cared about what was on PBS enough, they could easily exert pressure on the network by using their elected officials to do so.

The thing about the power of the American electorate, is that it normally lays dormant. Most every day Americans are so caught up in the spectacles & circuses of day to day life that they're not very politically active. This gives officials the impression that they can do virtually what ever they want, without consequence. You'd have a better chance at influencing what happens on PBS than you would at influencing your city's decision to use red light cameras [of which there is always more voters against than for, but politicians simply don't care what the people actually want and hire private companies to tax drivers using the cameras as a hidden revenue source]. This isn't the fault of the elected officials so much as the fault of the voters. As they say, you get the government you deserve. When voters in a republic ignore the workings of government and let politicians get away with virtually anything, and then continue to have such indifference election after election after election, then that generates a scenario under which the people appear to have no real power in the system.

Regarding the bias of the press, how many networks actually say that they're "fair & balanced"? Actually a better question: at what point did our major news agencies start to proclaim neutrality in political matters? This must be a modern phenomenon, for our press going back to before the federation even existed were politically and socially biased. There was no effort to hide this throughout most of our country's history. Everyone knew who controlled the major papers & what their political views were [often enough the owners of major papers were politically active themselves with political careers known enough to make them household names]. There are still papers in this country that have names attesting to their original 19th century biases [i.e. the "City-name Democrat" or the "City-name Republican"].

The way I see it, if you want to know how scared people are of extremists in Islam vs Christianity or Judaism, just look how scared many are to depict Muhammad, now compare that to depicting Jesus, whether it is respectful or not. That should be proof enough how real and scary the threats are coming from the extremists in Islamic culture. I'd rather spend a day with extremist Christians then a day with extremists in Saudi Arabia, Iraq or other Islamic countries. I've seen the videos of the beheadings done by these people, which involved sawing the head off with what appears to be a dull blade, extremist Christians may not be my favorite people but they aren't going to saw my head off while I'm gurgling and blood pouring out of my neck or stone me to death for being trans.

So true!!! It's is rather scary...I found out about 4 years ago that I'm about 1/8th Saudi. My grandmother's dad was actually a Saudi who fled the country when he converted to Catholicism, as back then he would have been killed for such. Since France has always basically had an open door to Middle Easterners exiled from their home countries, that is where he ended up, where he married my French great-grandmother and had 15 kids! I found this out trying to do my genealogy...he apparently took on a French name, and no one knows what his birth name was...so my search basically ends with him.

My mom's side of the family are white supremacy extremist Christians, but I don't fear for my safety from them. Not to say they would be pleasant to me (I haven't talked to most of my family since I came out to them, I knew it would be like being in a hornet's nest) but even at that I am not afraid of physical harm, just preaching and telling me how I'm in sin.

At least they aren't arresting women for getting sun tans! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/7639728/Suntanned-women-to-be-arrested-under-Islamic-dress-code.html



Getting back on topic though, I find boycotts and/or threats to be silly regardless when they are used (there are exceptions of course). Usually the opposite occurs and it peaks people's interests so in turn they end up viewing the controversial material. The Passion and Da vinci Code come to mind! Still it seems absolutely asinine to me to threaten violence and death over depicting a religious figure regardless of the religion, talk about backwards.

It seems the biggest controversy regarding the Balen Report has been the BBC's consistent refusal to release the report's findings to the public. However, the report was prompted by complaints coming from both sides – pro-Israel and pro-Arab – regarding the BBC's purported bias.



I guess you don't remember the infamous John Nathan Turner era of Doctor Who. Ugh

-- Nephele