Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities: 2012

The cities are listed from least dangerous to most dangerous. But it is recommended that travelers exercise extreme caution in any cities that find themselves on such a list. You might note that St. Louis, Mo., USA, has fallen off this top ten list. Last year, St. Louis occupied the #3 spot.

10. Caracas, Venezuela

Caracas is a city torn apart by drug trafficking and an abundance of petty crimes. Robbery is commonplace even in broad daylight, and the police have very little control over criminal activity. Many locals blame the government who is apathetic to these issues, much more protection is needed for many cities in Venezuela because it’s geological position makes it a drug running haven.

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9. Mogadishu, Somalia

The capitol of Somalia is still in turmoil and the outlook for 2012 is not bright. Civil war has torn apart the city (and the country) for two decades and political violence is very easily sparked. Accurate statistical data is almost impossible to obtain because of how belligerent local militias are, but it’s safe to say that Mogadishu is quite dangerous, an essentially lawless city with an abundance of bandits. A huge amount of it’s citizens abandoned the city three years ago leaving behind bombed out shells of buildings, but it remains as violent as ever.

8. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

While Rio de Janeiro has some fantastic beaches and beautiful landscapes, you should not be lulled into a false sense of security should you visit. There are many slum/shanty areas where about %20 of the population lives in economic turmoil, and this struggle has given way to an ongoing conflict between drug traffickers and the local police force. Tourists and travelers are advised to stay away from the mountainous regions and poor areas of the city, especially at night. The police are there to protect you, but be aware that bribery is commonplace with them and that you may need some money to get out of a bind.

7. Grozny, Chechnya, Russia

In the mid 1990′s a very destructive conflict began between Chechnya and Russia. Grozny was left in shambles after a barrage of shells, missiles, and dynamite tore the city asunder- there were thousands dead and the toll on the city was massive. While the fighting apparently ended in 2006, it remains a very dangerous place full of crime both organized and petty. It’s especially dangerous for western tourists because of high kidnapping rates.

6. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

The drug cartels in Mexico show no signs of slowing down their business, and Ciudad Juarez is one of the worst affected areas. The drug trafficking groups in Mexico are notoriously violent and stop at absolutely nothing to move their product, they have control over the region and can do pretty much whatever they want. This city has been called one of the most violent places in the world outside of war zones, and the police force is known to be corrupt. The blame for this violence is often attributed to the Mexican government, but others blame the ongoing American war on drugs that facilitates the illegal drug trade.

5. Bogota, Colombia

Bogota’s main problem lies in the drug trade and extremist political groups rebelling against the Colombian government, but fortunately there have been some improvements since the 90′s. The north side of the city is absolutely more safe that the southern regions, it’s advisable to stay in this area and no to wander past the city limits. Bogota is a great tourist destination with lots to see, just be careful and don’t stray too far from safe areas.

4. Baghdad, Iraq

Baghdad suffers from a very unstable political climate with many different factions destroying the city in their own way. The infrastructure has been torn apart by bombings and the streets are filled with unpredictable violence. The invasion by the United States in 2003 further escalated violence in the city and it has been a hostile place ever since. A lack of organization and infrastructure further exacerbate tension among Iraqis.

3. Guatemala City, Guatemala

Guatemala as a whole is riddled with crime because of a corrupt government and police force who are not at all equipped to deal with the abundance of criminal activity. The capitol has it the worst, the huge gap between the rich and poor is brought into stark contrast and robbery and violence are commonplace. It’s a shame because it’s such a beautiful city and country, but the corruption runs too deep for the streets to be safe.

2. San Pedro Sula, Honduras

This city in Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world and is considered even more dangerous than areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. Robbery is a rampant problem and almost everyone must carry a weapon of some sort for protection. Even minor disputes are often settled with violence and walking the streets requires extreme caution. Tourists are especially warned, anyone appearing to be a foreigner are specific targets for criminals.

1. Cape Town, South Africa

While Cape Town is a huge tourist attraction and a big city full of things to do, it also has extremely high crime rates and walking down the wrong street at the wrong time can put you in harms way. The disparity between socioeconomic classes is a major factor for criminal activity, and robbery is extremely common. Tourists are advised to do their research and stay in a relatively safe part of the city, don’t walk around unless the streets are well-lit with plenty of people out and be extra careful if you have to use an ATM.

_UrbanTitan

If you depend upon politically correct sources of information in making your travel plans, you are apt to find yourself in a very difficult situation sooner or later. Accidentally ending up in the wrong neighborhood can be a fatal mistake.

Reject the politically correct skankstream. Build a portfolio of sources of information that expose the world to you in all its stark darkness and light. You will save yourself a good deal of trouble.

Making the Bad Lady Shut Up

This article is adapted from a previously published piece on abu al-fin blog

In an excellent demonstration of the motto of leftist higher education: "Free speech for me but not for thee," the Chronicle of Higher Education has fired a blogger who was paid to contribute a contrary viewpoint. She was fired for publishing a viewpoint that was too contrary for the comfort of the academics to whom the Chronicle of Higher Education caters.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has fired our former editorial-page colleague, Naomi Schaefer Riley, for a blog posting on the Chronicle's website that offended 6,500 professors. Well, they're not all professors yet, but they are members of what calls itself the "higher-education community," for which the Chronicle is its trade paper. As best we can make out, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen, fired Naomi Riley for doing what she was hired to do—provide a conservative point of view about current events in academe alongside the paper's roster of mostly not-conservative academic bloggers. _WSJ

Ms. Schaefer Riley tells the story from her point of view:

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them."

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.") MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of "small-mindedness."

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an "invitation to debate." But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: "We've heard you," she tells my critics. "And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles."

When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were "reviewing" the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well. _Naomi Schaefer Riley_in_WSJ

The suppression of free speech on university campuses is being contested on a daily basis by FIRE -- the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. But the suppression of ideas and speech by publications and information outlets is a more difficult enemy to overcome.

Fortunately, the internet provides a number of ways to expose and counteract the grand project of information bias that infiltrates and permeates modern societies.

Thug-Monkeys of the JournoList Re-consider Tactics

End of the Fight Club?** Now JournoList eminence Matthew Yglesias tells us he has “come to think that ‘mean’ arguments are counterproductive.” …  Hard-to-resist working thesis: This is what happens when you end a private institution where ambitious young leftish political writers preen for each other (and Scoutmaster DeLong) by showing how vitriolic and thuggish they can be about their ideological opponents. … Jonathan Chait had to be especially mean on domestic issues to make up for his New Republicish pro-Israel positions. … P.S.: Yglesias is a nice guy. That’s the point. JournoList encouraged nice guys to try to be nasty. …

Source: Mickey Kaus, Daily Caller

Who are the thug-monkeys of the journolist skankstream? Here is a reminder:

1. Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, TheAmerican Prospect
2. Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal
3. Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO
4. Mike Allen - POLITICO
5. Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America
6. Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic
7. Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation
8. Ryan Avent - Economist
9. Dean Baker - The American Prospect
10. Nick Baumann - Mother Jones
11. Josh Bearman - LA Weekly
12. Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report
13. Ari Berman - The Nation
14. Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute
15. Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University
16. Brian Beutler - The Media Consortium
17. Lindsay Beyerstein - Freelance journalist
18. Joel Bleifuss - In These Times
19. John Blevins - South Texas College of Law
20. Sam Boyd - The American Prospect
21. Ben Brandzel - MoveOn.org, John Edwards Campaign
22. Shannon Brownlee - Author, New America Foundation
23. Will Bunch - Philadelphia Daily News
24. Rich Byrne - Playwright
25. Jonathan Chait - The New Republic
26. Lakshmi Chaudry - In These Times
27. Isaac Chotiner - The New Republic
28. Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic
29. Michael Cohen - New America Foundation
30. Jonathan Cohn - The New Republic
31. Joe Conason - The New York Observer
32. Lark Corbeil - Public News Service
33. David Corn - Mother Jones
34. Daniel Davies - The Guardian
35. David Dayen - FireDogLake
36. Brad DeLong - The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkeley
37. Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg News
38. Adam Doster - In These Times
39. Kevin Drum - Washington Monthly
40. Matt Duss - Center for American Progress
41. Gerald Dworkin - UC Davis
42. Eve Fairbanks - The New Republic
43. Henry Farrell - George Washington University
44. Tim Fernholz - American Prospect
45. Dan Froomkin - Huffington Post, Washington Post
46. Jason Furman - Brookings Institution
47. James Galbraith - University of Texas at Austin
48. Kathleen Geier - Talking Points Memo
49. Todd Gitlin - Columbia University
50. Ilan Goldenberg - National Security Network
51. Arthur Goldhammer - Harvard University
52. Dana Goldstein - The Daily Beast
53. Andrew Golis - Talking Points Memo
54. Jaana Goodrich - Blogger
55. Merrill Goozner - Chicago Tribune
56. David Greenberg - Slate
57. Robert Greenwald - Brave New Films
58. Chris Hayes - The Nation
59. Don Hazen - Alternet
60. Jeet Heer - Canadian Journolist
61. Jeff Hauser - Political Action Committee, Dennis Shulman Campaign
62. Michael Hirsh - Newsweek
63. James Johnson - University of Rochester
64. John Judis - The New Republic, The American Prospect
65. Foster Kamer - The Village Voice
66. Michael Kazin - Georgetown University
67. Ed Kilgore - Democratic Strategist
68. Richard Kim - The Nation
69. Charlie Kireker - Air America Media
70. Mark Kleiman - UCLA The Reality Based Community
71. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
72. Joe Klein - TIME
73. Robert Kuttner - American Prospect, Economic Policy Institute
74. Paul Krugman - The New York Times, Princeton University
75. Lisa Lerer - POLITICO
76. Daniel Levy - Century Foundation
77. Ralph Luker - Cliopatria
78. Annie Lowrey - Washington Independent
79. Robert Mackey - New York Times
80. Mike Madden - Salon
81. Maggie Mahar - The Century Foundation
82. Dylan Matthews - Harvard University
83. Alec McGillis - Washington Post
84. Scott McLemee - Inside Higher Ed
85. Sara Mead - New America Foundation
86. Ari Melber - The Nation
87. David Meyer - University of California at Irvine
88. Seth Michaels - MyDD.com
89. Luke Mitchell - Harper’s Magazine
90. Gautham Nagesh - The Hill, Daily Caller
91. Suzanne Nossel - Human Rights Watch
92. Michael O’Hare - University of California at Berkeley
93. Josh Orton - MyDD.com, Air America Media
94. Rodger Payne - University of Louisville
95. Rick Perlstein - Author, Campaign for America’s Future
96. Nico Pitney - Huffington Post
97. Harold Pollack - University of Chicago
98. Katha Pollitt - The Nation
99. Ari Rabin-Havt - Media Matters
100. Joy-Ann Reid - South Florida Times
101. David Roberts - Grist
102. Lamar Robertson - Partnership for Public Service
103. Sara Robinson - Campaign For America's Future
104. Alyssa Rosenberg - Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
105. Alex Rossmiller - National Security Network
106. Michael Roston - Newsbroke
107. Laura Rozen - POLITICO, Mother Jones
108. Felix Salmon - Reuters
109. Greg Sargent - Washington Post
110. Thomas Schaller - Baltimore Sun
111. Noam Scheiber - The New Republic
112. Michael Scherer - TIME
113. Mark Schmitt - American Prospect, The New America Foundation
114. Rinku Sen - ColorLines Magazine
115. Julie Bergman Sender - Balcony Films
116. Adam Serwer - American Prospect
117. Walter Shapiro - PoliticsDaily.com
118. Kate Sheppard - Mother Jones
119. Matthew Shugart - UC San Diego
120. Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight.com
121. Jesse Singal - The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
122. Ann-Marie Slaughter - Princeton University
123. Ben Smith - POLITICO
124. Sarah Spitz - KCRW
125. Adele Stan - The Media Consortium
126. Paul Starr - The Atlantic
127. Kate Steadman - Kaiser Health News
128. Jonathan Stein - Mother Jones
129. Sam Stein - Huffington Post
130. Matt Steinglass - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
131. James Surowiecki - The New Yorker
132. Jesse Taylor - Pandagon.net
133. Steven Teles - Yale University
134. Mark Thoma - The Economists' View
135. Michael Tomasky - The Guardian
136. Jeffrey Toobin - CNN, The New Yorker
137. Rebecca Traister - Salon
138. Tracy Van Slyke - The Media Consortium
139. Paul Waldman - Author, American Prospect
140. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
141. Moira Whelan - National Security Network
142. Scott Winship - Pew Economic Mobility Project
143. J. Harry Wray - DePaul University
144. D. Brad Wright - University of NC at Chapel Hill
145. Kai Wright - The Root
146. Holly Yeager - Columbia Journalism Review
147. Rich Yeselson - Change to Win
148. Matthew Yglesias - Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
149. Jonathan Zasloff - UCLA
150. Julian Zelizer - Princeton University
151. Avi Zenilman - POLITICO _thevailspot _Who Puts the Skank in the Skankstream Media?

The thug-monkeys of the skankstream want to tell everyone else what they should be thinking and how they should be behaving. They are being paid to shape your thoughts, actions, and voting patters.

But wouldn't it be nice if the relevant knowledge and information were made freely available, without political or philosophical spin? That way, you could form your own opinions, and make up your own mind for yourself.

Adapted from a posting on abu al-fin

Overturning Feminist Dogma: Massive Gender Gap Measured

Men and women have large differences in personality, according to a new study published Jan. 4 in the online journal PLoS ONE....The researchers used personality measurements from more than 10,000 people, approximately half men and half women. The personality test included 15 personality scales, including such traits as warmth, sensitivity, and perfectionism. When comparing men's and women's overall personality profiles, which take multiple traits into account, very large differences between the sexes became apparent, even though differences look much smaller when each trait is considered separately. _SD

In a promising sign of things to come, scientists from Italy and the UK have overturned an important block in the foundation of modern radical feminist dogma. Using new techniques of measuring personality, and taking greater care to compensate for measurement error, the researchers discovered important statistical differences in the personalities of men and women.

These findings could go a long way to explain the different types of personal and career choices which men and women tend to make.

In addition to their direct influences on mating processes, personality traits correlate with many other sexually selected behaviors, such as status-seeking and risk-taking (see e.g., [20], [34], [35]). Thus, in an evolutionary perspective, personality traits are definitely not neutral with respect to sexual selection. Instead, there are grounds to expect robust and wide-ranging sex differences in this area, resulting in strongly sexually differentiated patterns of emotion, thought, and behavior – as if there were “two human natures”, as effectively put by Davies and Shackelford [15]. _PLoSOne

Differences in status seeking and risk taking behaviours help to explain why males are willing to work more dangerous jobs and much longer hours in order to achieve material success and to attain higher status.

While feminist dogma blames sexist discrimination for the greater prevalence of men at the top of the professional and executive ladders of many occupations, arts, and industries, scientific research helps us to understand the truer and more general underpinnings of such differences in accomplishment.

As more research helps to round and fill in our understanding of important gender differences, we will be less likely to resort to government regulation, mandate, and legislation in order to "correct for" things that are actually intrinsic in the nature of human animals.

PLoSOne Study:

In conclusion, we believe we made it clear that the true extent of sex differences in human personality has been consistently underestimated. While our current estimate represents a substantial improvement on the existing literature, we urge researchers to replicate this type of analysis with other datasets and different personality measures. An especially critical task will be to compare self-reported personality with observer ratings and other, more objective evaluation methods. Of course, the methodological guidelines presented in this paper can and should be applied to domains of individual differences other than personality, including vocational interests, cognitive abilities, creativity, and so forth. Moreover, the pattern of global sex differences in these domains may help elucidate the meaning and generality of the broad dimension of individual differences known as “masculinity-femininity” [11]. In this way, it will be possible to build a solid foundation for the scientific study of psychological sex differences and their biological and cultural origins.

Pay close attention to how deeply feminist dogma has penetrated the skankstream media: compare media coverage of important research of this type with the hyperbolic coverage that is routinely given to "meta analysis studies" which deny important gender differences in specific preferences or aptitudes. It can be an enlightening experience.

Is Deadlocked Durban the Last Chance to Save the World?

...now it’s official. This year’s Durban Conference, the United Nation’s Convention on Climate Change, known as COP 17, is once again the last chance to save the world:

Churches claim Durban conference is mankind’s last chance

Rev. Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit, who leads the World Council of Churches, says the upcoming climate conference in South Africa is mankind’s ‘last opportunity’ to address climate change.

Can it be true? Is the deadlocked Durban Climate Conference truly the last chance to save the Earth? Or have we perhaps heard that sort of talk somewhere before?

Back in 1992, the Rio Earth Summit was promoted as the last chance to save the planet.

But then, so was Johannesburg in 2002.

But that was before the Bali climate conference became the last chance to save the world in 2007.

And let’s not forget Poznan in 2008 which was the last chance to save the world according to the World Wildlife Fund.

And who could forget the last chance to save the world at Copenhagen, as proposed to us by the UK’s leading expert on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern.

...The strangest thing about all this is that despite believing that it is now too late, several of these people are at the conference, and their items for discussion are not what to do before the end of the world.

Surely Nicholas Stern would be at home drowning himself in alcohol, or at least, making passionate love to strangers in lifts?

In fact, Stern is not only at the Durban Conference, he holds a number of prominent positions at COP17 and is even offering people advice about cutting down the use of fossil fuels – none of which seem to involve avoiding these kinds of conferences. _AsianCorrespondent_via_GWPF

Of course, if history is any guide, the world will have ended countless times before -- decades, centuries, and millenia ago.

The true question is: Why do people continue to fall for this same end-of-the-world scam, time after time? Why does the media uncritically repeat the doomsaying, why do academics both generate and echo these mouldy leftover prophecies of apocalypse?

We know why the doomsayers themselves continue to recycle these predictions of doom: They help to provide them with a lucrative income and the sort of jetsetting and partying lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. We know why the UN and its IPCC continue propagating this one-sided nonsense: Many trillions of dollars in climate reparations are at stake, $trillions which will flow through the fingers of the UN itself.

The US is being blamed for the failure of the Durban talks by much of the global skankstream media -- even though US carbon emissions have fallen, while emissions in most of the rest of the world have risen. The truth is, Obama's choices are limited.

If US voters had not turned against Obama and his dem-congress in 2010, the story in Durban might well have turned out quite differently, with the US siding with "the end of the worlders" in committing advanced nations to a massive, unpaid transfer of wealth and technology to the third world and emerging nations such as China and India. Such a commitment would quickly destroy any vanishing traces of affluence from the advanced nations of Europe and the Anglosphere.

But Obama cannot chance going so blatantly against US voter sentiment, so close to the next US presidential and congressional elections. And no matter how vehemently journalists of Europe and North America may condemn the US delegation for its "obstructionism" in Durban, they owe their continuing hopes for a prosperous future on the continuation of such obstructionism.

These AreSome Who Put the Skank in Skankstream Media

When we heard about the famous "JournoList" media cabal, and its determination to consciously slant the news coverage which is made available to the general public, we were naturally curious as to what type of fascist skank would involve himself in such a conspiracy. Like the ideologue editors of Wikipedia who work night and day to keep contrary ideas and points of view off the public page, like the Orwellian news editors who worked tirelessly to revise history -- over and over again -- the JournoList gang of skanks worked behind the scenes to frame the story and shape the spin of news and opinions, day after day.

We only now ran across a list of many of those who put the skank in the skankstream media. What a sorry crew. And yes, they are still out there, doing pretty much the same thing. But they are being more careful about the orchestration now that at least a few people know who they are, and how far they are willing to go.

1. Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, TheAmerican Prospect
2. Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal
3. Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO
4. Mike Allen - POLITICO
5. Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America
6. Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic
7. Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation
8. Ryan Avent - Economist
9. Dean Baker - The American Prospect
10. Nick Baumann - Mother Jones
11. Josh Bearman - LA Weekly
12. Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report
13. Ari Berman - The Nation
14. Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute
15. Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University
16. Brian Beutler - The Media Consortium
17. Lindsay Beyerstein - Freelance journalist
18. Joel Bleifuss - In These Times
19. John Blevins - South Texas College of Law
20. Sam Boyd - The American Prospect
21. Ben Brandzel - MoveOn.org, John Edwards Campaign
22. Shannon Brownlee - Author, New America Foundation
23. Will Bunch - Philadelphia Daily News
24. Rich Byrne - Playwright
25. Jonathan Chait - The New Republic
26. Lakshmi Chaudry - In These Times
27. Isaac Chotiner - The New Republic
28. Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic
29. Michael Cohen - New America Foundation
30. Jonathan Cohn - The New Republic
31. Joe Conason - The New York Observer
32. Lark Corbeil - Public News Service
33. David Corn - Mother Jones
34. Daniel Davies - The Guardian
35. David Dayen - FireDogLake
36. Brad DeLong - The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkeley
37. Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg News
38. Adam Doster - In These Times
39. Kevin Drum - Washington Monthly
40. Matt Duss - Center for American Progress
41. Gerald Dworkin - UC Davis
42. Eve Fairbanks - The New Republic
43. Henry Farrell - George Washington University
44. Tim Fernholz - American Prospect
45. Dan Froomkin - Huffington Post, Washington Post
46. Jason Furman - Brookings Institution
47. James Galbraith - University of Texas at Austin
48. Kathleen Geier - Talking Points Memo
49. Todd Gitlin - Columbia University
50. Ilan Goldenberg - National Security Network
51. Arthur Goldhammer - Harvard University
52. Dana Goldstein - The Daily Beast
53. Andrew Golis - Talking Points Memo
54. Jaana Goodrich - Blogger
55. Merrill Goozner - Chicago Tribune
56. David Greenberg - Slate
57. Robert Greenwald - Brave New Films
58. Chris Hayes - The Nation
59. Don Hazen - Alternet
60. Jeet Heer - Canadian Journolist
61. Jeff Hauser - Political Action Committee, Dennis Shulman Campaign
62. Michael Hirsh - Newsweek
63. James Johnson - University of Rochester
64. John Judis - The New Republic, The American Prospect
65. Foster Kamer - The Village Voice
66. Michael Kazin - Georgetown University
67. Ed Kilgore - Democratic Strategist
68. Richard Kim - The Nation
69. Charlie Kireker - Air America Media
70. Mark Kleiman - UCLA The Reality Based Community
71. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
72. Joe Klein - TIME
73. Robert Kuttner - American Prospect, Economic Policy Institute
74. Paul Krugman - The New York Times, Princeton University
75. Lisa Lerer - POLITICO
76. Daniel Levy - Century Foundation
77. Ralph Luker - Cliopatria
78. Annie Lowrey - Washington Independent
79. Robert Mackey - New York Times
80. Mike Madden - Salon
81. Maggie Mahar - The Century Foundation
82. Dylan Matthews - Harvard University
83. Alec McGillis - Washington Post
84. Scott McLemee - Inside Higher Ed
85. Sara Mead - New America Foundation
86. Ari Melber - The Nation
87. David Meyer - University of California at Irvine
88. Seth Michaels - MyDD.com
89. Luke Mitchell - Harper’s Magazine
90. Gautham Nagesh - The Hill, Daily Caller
91. Suzanne Nossel - Human Rights Watch
92. Michael O’Hare - University of California at Berkeley
93. Josh Orton - MyDD.com, Air America Media
94. Rodger Payne - University of Louisville
95. Rick Perlstein - Author, Campaign for America’s Future
96. Nico Pitney - Huffington Post
97. Harold Pollack - University of Chicago
98. Katha Pollitt - The Nation
99. Ari Rabin-Havt - Media Matters
100. Joy-Ann Reid - South Florida Times
101. David Roberts - Grist
102. Lamar Robertson - Partnership for Public Service
103. Sara Robinson - Campaign For America's Future
104. Alyssa Rosenberg - Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
105. Alex Rossmiller - National Security Network
106. Michael Roston - Newsbroke
107. Laura Rozen - POLITICO, Mother Jones
108. Felix Salmon - Reuters
109. Greg Sargent - Washington Post
110. Thomas Schaller - Baltimore Sun
111. Noam Scheiber - The New Republic
112. Michael Scherer - TIME
113. Mark Schmitt - American Prospect, The New America Foundation
114. Rinku Sen - ColorLines Magazine
115. Julie Bergman Sender - Balcony Films
116. Adam Serwer - American Prospect
117. Walter Shapiro - PoliticsDaily.com
118. Kate Sheppard - Mother Jones
119. Matthew Shugart - UC San Diego
120. Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight.com
121. Jesse Singal - The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
122. Ann-Marie Slaughter - Princeton University
123. Ben Smith - POLITICO
124. Sarah Spitz - KCRW
125. Adele Stan - The Media Consortium
126. Paul Starr - The Atlantic
127. Kate Steadman - Kaiser Health News
128. Jonathan Stein - Mother Jones
129. Sam Stein - Huffington Post
130. Matt Steinglass - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
131. James Surowiecki - The New Yorker
132. Jesse Taylor - Pandagon.net
133. Steven Teles - Yale University
134. Mark Thoma - The Economists' View
135. Michael Tomasky - The Guardian
136. Jeffrey Toobin - CNN, The New Yorker
137. Rebecca Traister - Salon
138. Tracy Van Slyke - The Media Consortium
139. Paul Waldman - Author, American Prospect
140. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
141. Moira Whelan - National Security Network
142. Scott Winship - Pew Economic Mobility Project
143. J. Harry Wray - DePaul University
144. D. Brad Wright - University of NC at Chapel Hill
145. Kai Wright - The Root
146. Holly Yeager - Columbia Journalism Review
147. Rich Yeselson - Change to Win
148. Matthew Yglesias - Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
149. Jonathan Zasloff - UCLA
150. Julian Zelizer - Princeton University
151. Avi Zenilman - POLITICO _thevailspot_via_instapundit

The skankstream is self selected and inbred -- much like a college faculty or a political party. They will tell you what they want you to think you know, and nothing else.

Any writer willing to involve himself with such a group of brainwashers is unlikely to ever become an honest broker of ideas or truthful reporter of happenings.

Most of you do not need us to tell you to be sceptical of the motives of mass opinion shapers. But it never hurts to be reminded of the level of corruption in the skankstream.

The News Media's Curious Slant on the Fukushima Incident

Due to the tragic earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, over 25,000 Japanese are dead or missing. At the Fukushima nuclear reactors, no one has died. Yet the news media has been stuck on full-hysteria mode over the Japanese nuclear reactors. The media is clearly focused on a goal other than reporting the important news of the day. What could it be?

As the situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant slowly winds down, the salient facts remain the same as they have been throughout: nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences. Economic damage and inconvenience resulting from the quake's effects on nuclear power have been significant, but tiny in comparison to all other human activities – the nuclear power plants in the stricken region have suffered less damage and caused less trouble to local residents than anything else that was there.

Despite this background, the details of which are now largely uncontested, hysteria continues to grip large sections of the news media and the internet. _Register

It is natural to be concerned about a disaster which might conceivably affect you or someone you care about. But intelligent people use such natural concerns as motivation to inform themselves on the facts. For a more balanced look at what is going on at the Fukushima reactors:

News roundup from Idaho Samizdat Nuclear Notes

A measured perspective on Fukushima from Brave New Climate

An interesting article published in The Atlantic suggesting that small modular nuclear reactors may receive a boost from higher level bureaucratic and political reaction to Fukushima. (H/T NEI Nuclear Notes)

The post-earthquake, post-tsunami incident at the Fukushima reactors is an economic and energy setback for the Japanese, as well as a public relations nightmare for the Japanese and the nuclear industry in general.

But the reason why the nuclear industry is being tarred so badly is because the world's media has focused its brightest lights on the reactors -- and decided to spew the most radioactively deceptive and misleading "reporting" as possible.

Yes, the world is becoming an Idiocracy -- it doesn't require a genius to see that. Corrupt and dysfunctional government school systems are not entirely to blame, either. Clearly the news and entertainment media play an even greater role in the education and informing of most citizens than the school systems, in the long run. If the media has chosen to dumb down and mislead the public, who will watch the watchers?

Am I saying not to worry about it, that nothing can go wrong? Just the opposite. I am saying to worry about it -- worry about everything. Worry so much that you are prepared for the worst that may come your way. Then hope for the best. Worry is just your brain's way of telling you to get off your lazy arse and learn what you need to learn, do what you need to do, and make whatever preparations you need to make.

No one should need to tell you to be very sceptical of anything you read or hear.

More on how the Fukushima incident may change the direction of the nuclear industry toward more "fail-safe" reactor designs.

Do You Trust the Media to Tell the Truth About Climate Doom?

As the global temperature has cycled from cold to warm to cold to warm again, the media has followed at almost lock step with it. But media cycles of climate doom, which mirror the climate cycles themselves, have roughly a ten to fifteen year time lag. It seems whenever the world warms up the number of global warming stories increases to match the trend; conversely when the climate cools down the media pull up on their long johns and warn of the next ice age. It is forthcoming for certain. _EnergyTribune

Natural climate cycles occur due to vast driving forces which are far more powerful than anything humans are capable of doing. But news media -- ever on the lookout for fantastic stories of impending crises -- will jump on any bandwagon that promises to sell advertising and subscriptions. As we have learned, there are always scientists who are willing to help create a faux catastrophe to make names for themselves -- and to get grants and ever-more publications. In this regard, "science" and the "news" media work hand in hand.

The oceans of the world store more than one thousand times more heat than the atmosphere. The vast majority of that heat is in the tropical waters. When the oceans warm so does the atmosphere; when they cool, global temperatures follow. The Pacific Ocean covers a third of the earth’s surface and exhibits a dominant impact on the global temperature. Around 1910 the tropical Pacific Ocean began to warm. The impacts of such a warming are not always readily apparent. It takes years for glaciers and sea ice to react to the gradual ocean warming. Such was the case in the 1910s and into the 1920s.

The huge social inertia generated by the ice age scare prior to 1910 continued to drive media fear stories of upcoming cold into the 1920s. Life was not as fast in those days and social change took place more slowly. On July 3, 1923 the Christian Science Monitor reported “Captain MacMillan left Wiscasset Maine announcing that one of the purposes of his cruise was to determine whether there was the beginning of another ice age as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would seem to indicate.” A year later on September 18, 1924 the New York Times declared the threat was real, saying “MacMillan reports signs of new ice age.” Earlier that year on April 6 the LA Times reported that Swedish scientist Rutger Sernander claimed there was “Scientific grounds for believing” that “When all winds will bring snow, the sun cannot prevail against the clouds and three winters will come in one, with no summer between.” Seems it was global cooling that was driving the headlines at that time.

Unknown to anyone during that time was the fact that the Pacific was beginning to warm and would continue to do so until the mid 1940s. Reacting to this ocean warmth the temperature of the earth began to rise as well. Concurrently the ice age stories began to fade from the headlines. Then on March 11, 1929, just five years later from the permanent winter story, the LA Times stunned its readers: “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer and that it will continue to get warmer.” On March 27, 1933 the New York Times headline read “The next ice age, if it is coming…is still a long way off.” In the same year meteorologist J. B. Kincer of the United States Weather Bureau published in the September Monthly Weather Review: “Wide-spread and persistent tendency towards warmer weather.” He noted out of 21 winters from 1912 to 1933 in Washington D. C. 18 were warmer than normal and all of the past 13 were mild.”

During the early 1920s the Atlantic Ocean began its cyclic 25 to 30 year warming trend. This warmer water combined with the warmer Pacific pumped up world temperature to the point where everyone began to take notice. By November 6, 1939 the Chicago Tribune published a story “Experts puzzle over 20 year mercury rise.” The story noted that “Chicago is in the front rank of thousands of cities throughout the world which have been affected by a mysterious trend towards warmer climate in the last two decades.” They knew it was warming but not why.

On August 2, 1952 the New York Times reported that Eskimos were eating cod, a fish not previously in their diet. The following year the Times reported that studies confirmed that summers and winters were getting warmer and it was because the oceans were changing again. _EnergyTribune

Human science is barely learning the truth behind various overlapping natural drivers of climate change -- and the vastly complex terrestrial mechanism for converting the driving forces into climate. The overly-simplified, over-hyped crusade of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming orthodoxy, is an empty shell of pseudo-scientific blather. The deeper you look into politicised science, the nastier and more destructive it looks.

Europeans Are Not Total Morons, It's Just The Media That Keeps Them In The Dark

More than 50 percent of Britons believe that polygamy is legal in the United States; in fact, it is illegal in all 50 states. Almost one-third of Britons believe that Americans who have not paid their hospital fees or insurance premiums are not entitled to emergency medical care; in fact, such treatment must be provided by law.

Seventy percent of Britons think the United States has done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000; in fact, America’s rate of growth of carbon emissions has decreased by almost ten percent since 2000, while that of the EU has increased by 2.3 percent.

Eighty percent of Britons believe that “from 1973 to 1990, the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons.” In fact, the United States sold just 0.46 percent of Saddam’s arsenal to him; Russia, France, and China supplied 57 percent, 13 percent, and 12 percent, respectively. _PJM

If Americans were unaware of the lobotomising effect of European media on undiscerning Euro-consumers, it would be easy to get the impression that Europeans are hollowed-skulled dolts with chronic heavy metal poisoning. One can be sure that is not the case by simply traveling to a number of European countries, and conversing on any topic other than politics. Doing that, one finds Europeans just as interesting and mentally stimulating as other Earth dwellers. It is only when straying onto political topics that the mentally stultifying effects of the media becomes all too apparent.

Europe’s unaccountable left-wing media spoon-feeds the European masses with a daily diet of sensationalist anti-American propaganda, so much so that ordinary Europeans have developed a thoroughly skewed perception of American reality.

For another thing, statistics show that Europeans are not nearly as well traveled in America as Americans are in Europe. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, some 11.4 million Europeans visited the United States in 2007, which is roughly 2.5 percent of the European population. (By contrast, a record 13.3 million Americans visited Europe in 2007, or roughly 5 percent of the U.S. population.) The lack of firsthand knowledge of the United States is arguably the biggest reason why ordinary Europeans cannot discern fact from fiction when it comes to America.

Nevertheless, this trend may be changing. Due in large part to the strong euro, the number of European visitors to the United States increased by 16 percent in the first half of 2008 alone. And Britons, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and many other Europeans visiting the United States for the first time are beginning to realize that the consistently negative images of America so meticulously constructed by Europe’s left-wing elites do not jibe with reality.

Certainly, a healthy exchange of visitors and ideas--leaving the heavily biased media out of the picture--would go a long way toward extending mutual understanding across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Another thing that would help besides simple travel, for more narrow-minded thinkers, is to broaden their range of reading materials beyond what they have become far too comfortable with. Going only so far as to confirm your bias day after day is a poor substitute for broadening horizons.

Journalistic Culture--Vacuous, Jejune, Absurd

It is obvious that there is something wrong with modern journalism. Fewer intelligent people trust the news media every day--with good reason. Journalistic fraud is so commonplace as to become a redundant phrase. How did this happen?

We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.

We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say “Tesco” to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, “Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers.” The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers does not register on their radar.

...

Source

Modern journalistic culture is a culture of authority from ignorance. It is fiction and propaganda served as objective reporting. Who in their right minds would accept anything produced by this culture at face value?

And that cuts to the heart of the problem. In a world of the psychological neotenate, the academically lobotomised narcissist, what does it mean to be of sound mind?

Groupthink breeds groupthink. Next level humans think for themselves.


Journalistic culture and university academic culture both fall neatly into the groupthink category. The self-censorship of both groups extends to membership restrictions--who can become a tenured member of the in-group (and who will be ejected if they display sufficiently independent thought). Think about it:

* Having an illusion of invulnerability
* Rationalizing poor decisions
* Believing in the group's morality
* Sharing stereotypes which guide the decision
* Exercising direct pressure on others
* Not expressing your true feelings
* Maintaining an illusion of unanimity
* Using mindguards to protect the group from negative information

This describes collectivist thinking very well. George Orwell in 1984 (chapter summaries and fulltext) portrayed a society where groupthink was unconscious and all pervading. If you have not read and contemplated the society of "1984" . . . nevermind.

Thinking for one's self is time consuming and requires effort. Many people are unwilling to devote the time and effort required to become independent thinkers. This has always been true, but is particularly true in cultures where the educational system discourages independence and encourages consensual groupthink.

That is where North American culture finds itself now. Dominant forces in society--the news media, government education, much of higher academia, popular media, many church organisations--all of these encourage immersion into the group mind at the expense of developing independent thinking.

Those of us who can see beyond what exists today, and a simplistic extrapolation of modern trends into the future, can identify each other by several means, and carry on a generally "beneath the radar" conversation about realities and necessities.

It is a many dimensional problem. The solution will probably contain at least as much complexity.
Update: More on the absurdity of journalistic culture here.

Modern Leftism: No There, There

A generous commenter might say that the modern left is living off its seed corn. But the sad truth is that the seed corn was eaten over a decade ago. The modern left is living off something far less savoury.

This same conundrum confounds Western liberals. They, as Postel documents, have been silent in the face of repeated student protests in Iran, imprisonment of Iranian activists and numerous other human rights violations that should have logically attracted their support. They are so locked in the singular prism of anti-imperialism that they are unable to make peace with the idea that it is liberalism rather than radicalism that is the true fighting creed in Iran. They are even less amenable to the reality that "the denunciations of U.S. Empire in Iran today are the rhetorical dominion of the Iranian Right, not the Left". As Postel states, "it is the reactionary clergy who wield the idiom of anti-imperialism and regime hardliners [who] legitimate the suppression of Iranian students". This aversion to recognising reality in Iran has exacted a huge cost; it has delegitimised the Western left and exposed its disinterest in championing the cause of Iranian liberals and pro-democracy fighters who suffer daily at the hands of an increasingly repressive regime. Postel exposes how the insistent prioritisation of anti-imperialism over all else has produced a repugnant inversion of itself - a new form of imperialism equally blind in its U.S.-centric perspective as its ugly counterpart.

....Postel recounts an incident in which Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, during a visit to the U.S., was confronted by an anti-war protester who suggested that she stop talking about human rights abuses in Iran because her arguments could be appropriated by the neo-conservatives. Ebadi's response was clear and unequivocal: "Any anti-war movement that advocates silence in the face of tyranny can count me out."

....This book is a timely indictment of the Western left's apathy, which justifies itself by constructing a deceptively dualistic model of Western engagement with the world. The time has come for the emergence of a new "radical" liberalism that rejects such misguided political perversions....

Source

Blind subservience to earlier generations of thinkers--revered in spite of their patent inferiority--is the hallmark of the modern left. With academia, journalism, and the popular media firmly under the thumb of blind leftists, it becomes ever more important for the alternative streams of thought and action made possible by the new media technologies to come to the forefront.

Journalists May be Unintelligent, But They are Certainly Biased

Journalists are a lot like actors in many ways. Generally flakey and prone to superstition and groupthink. Few journalists have the talent and courage to stand out from the crowd, and present original, fact-based stories. The more we learn about how modern journalism is done, the more typical Jayson Blair seems to be of journalists. Most simply do not get caught.

James Q. Wilson, an expert in government and public policy, takes a look at how the media has presented the Iraq military action by the US coalition.

Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40 percent of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51 percent of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77 percent were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89 percent were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94 percent were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

....Thankfully, though, the press did not cover World War II the way it has covered Vietnam and Iraq. What caused this profound change? Like many liberals and conservatives, I believe that our Vietnam experience created new media attitudes that have continued down to the present. During that war, some reporters began their coverage supportive of the struggle, but that view did not last long. Many people will recall the CBS television program, narrated by Morley Safer, about U.S. Marines using cigarette lighters to torch huts in Cam Ne in 1965. Many will remember the picture of a South Vietnamese officer shooting a captured Vietcong through the head. Hardly anyone can forget the My Lai story that ran for about a year after a journalist reported that American troops had killed many residents of that village.

....Reporters and editors today are overwhelmingly liberal politically, as studies of the attitudes of key members of the press have repeatedly shown. Should you doubt these findings, recall the statement of Daniel Okrent, then the public editor at the New York Times. Under the headline, is the new york times a liberal newspaper? Okrent’s first sentence was, “Of course it is.”

What has been at issue is whether media politics affects media writing. Certainly, that began to happen noticeably in the Vietnam years. And thereafter, the press could still support an American war waged by a Democratic president. In 1992, for example, newspapers denounced President George H. W. Bush for having ignored the creation of concentration camps in Bosnia, and they supported President Clinton when he ordered bombing raids there and in Kosovo. When one strike killed some innocent refugees, the New York Times said that it would be a “tragedy” to “slacken the bombardment.” These air attacks violated what passes for international law (under the UN Charter, people can only go to war for immediate self-defense or under UN authorization). But these supposedly “illegal” air raids did not prevent Times support. Today, by contrast, the Times criticizes our Guantánamo Bay prison camp for being in violation of “international law.”

....mainstream outlets like the New York Times have become more nakedly partisan. And in the Iraq War, they have kept up a drumbeat of negativity that has had a big effect on elite and public opinion alike. Thanks to the power of these media organs, reduced but still enormous, many Americans are coming to see the Iraq War as Vietnam redux.

....This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone’s interests.

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines, and television programs we enjoy.

Source.

Not many people are motivated to look beyond exclusively negative media coverage, to the "new media" outlets run by veterans of Iraq. Fewer still are motivated to look at the history of the various political and religious movements that come together in the current violence in today's Iraq, and neighboring countries. The multi-level truth of Iraq and today's middle east (including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran), is somewhat beyond the interest and comprehension of most people--who are otherwise occupied.

Iraq is a disaster, no question of that. The entire arab world is a disaster, if the truth be known. Oil wealth conveys a false image of progress in some arab states that fools many.

The trick is to find better ways to keep the disaster of arab countries contained to the arab countries--without paying too high a cost in western lives. Because if the arab madness escapes to the world at large, many intelligent people will look back on the current "quagmire" in Iraq with nostalgia.

A Journalist's Worst Nightmare: Robot Fact Checkers

Recent cases of journalists caught red-handed fabricating and obscuring the news includes the memogate scandal by CBS News, the Eason Jordan coverups by CNN, the New York Times fabrications of Jayson Blair, CNN's fabrication of war crimes in the Tailwind report, and many other examples of the mainstream media attempting to influence public opinion through false reporting.

Now journalists will have even more reason to be looking over their shoulders. Advanced computer programs will be constantly scanning news reports, and scrupulously evaluating journalistic sources for evidence of fabrication and misrepresentation.

The new research will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and teach them to tell the difference. A simplified example might be to look for phrases like "according to" or "it is believed." Ironically, Cardie said, one of the phrases most likely to indicate opinion is "It is a fact that ..."

The work also will seek to determine the sources of information cited by a writer. "We're making sure that any information is tagged with a confidence. If it's low confidence, it's not useful information," Cardie added.

....The results, she added, will always include pointers to the original sources, so that when a computer draws some conclusion, human beings will be able to look at the original material and determine whether or not the conclusion was correct.

Source.

The blogosphere has been successful in exposing a great deal of journalistic misconduct, which has become endemic in the news media. Now the big money is being put behind the effort to hold frequently dishonest and capricious journalists to account for their well-paid manipulations.