7.12.09

clap trap, indeed

It should go without saying that people should be highly critical and always thoughtful when ingesting news.

The state of media makes more difficult for people to even want to stay current -- the downward spiral of the quality and consistency of online/independent journalism, and then the huddling of big media under powerful corporate umbrellas. Often the quality and integrity of journalism in general these days is questionable -- the laziness and the urgency to post online is blatantly obvious, even in simple spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Then along comes an article -- so vague, so unexplored, so lazy -- it's totally refreshing to the reader, who doesn't have to think very hard at all about what kinds of insane things are going on backstage.

A female and male journalist team from Canada and Australia, kidnapped last year in Somalia, are freed this year with the paying of a ransom, hiring of British mercenaries (in the following article called a "British company") and before leaving Mogadishu, a meeting with the president of Somalia himself, who is full of ridiculous, inane comments that are hilarious. Read an example...


I am sorry for the harsh things these two journalists endured -- although they (I assume) would have known the risk for foreigners in Somalia. But the media generated from it is pretty much the worst kind of crap -- soft, boring and lazy -- turning a potentially explosive story into a mushy, short feature story. Localized articles coming out of Australia and Canada contradict one another in basic facts -- for example, who paid the ransom. I could go on. But read for yourself.

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