Friday, July 16, 2010

Take care in selecting news sources

Journalists on the government payroll are not to be trusted:



The importance of independent journalism in a bought and sold world has never been more important. Being on the payroll of a government department – I was recently discussing with a prominent old-time reporter about the number of corporate journalists providing information to intelligence services – means that transparency is lacking.



Attached to the above is a link to a ZSpace article on alleged secret U.S. funding of anti-Chavez journalists in Venezuela, this funding supposedly meant to help in the overthrow of the government. Ironically, the author of the linked expose is Eva Golinger – proclaimed by Chavez "the bride of Venezuela" – the editor of the Correo del Orinoco International newspaper, which is funded by the Venezuelan government. (The article originally appears at her blog, Chavez Code.)


The journalist prattling about the dangers of government funded journalism and then linking to an article by a government funded journalist is, of course, "best selling" author and journalist extraordinaire Antony Loewenstein. The Golinger article probably popped up in Loewenstein's news feed of anti-U.S./pro-Chavez items and after a quick read, without researching the author's credentials, he copied, pasted and posted a massive 417 word excerpt after attaching the ludicrous 65 word introduction above.


Anyone relying on Loewenstein as a reliable source of information on any subject, ever, is misinformed.


 

2 Comments:

Anonymous Dan Lewis said...

Anyone relying on Loewenstein as a reliable source of information on any subject, ever, is misinformed.

Indeed. Yet having established himself as an Israel-hating Jew, he is a favorite of "Our" ABC and Fairfax, who are happy to ignore his frequent errors, incompetence, intellectual dishonesty and lousy writing.

Too bad they haven't worked out that his Jewish credentials are zero. I could convert to Islam in a matter of seconds and then run around starting articles "As a Muslim..." I would have about as much credibility.

9:31 PM  
Anonymous P. Dant said...

His headline on that post:

"Journalists on the government drip-feed like to love their masters"

Huh? I think that's verb maybe? Something about feeding like?

Can someone translate?

10:30 AM  

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