February 22, 2011
Listen to this guy. Yes, the things that are happening in Libya right now are very exciting, and it is nice watching oppressed people rallying to overthrow their oppressors. However, I have been disappointed in a lot of the coverage of the events: I don't think too many news sources are effectively conveying how insane Gaddafi is.
Al Jazeera English, I solute you. In a few short paragraphs, you have portrayed Gaddafi as crazier than I had ever imagined, and the bar was already set pretty high.
If only these lunatic ravings wouldn't assuredly result in much blood shed.
I'm surprised my typo hasn't precipitated snarky comments. I guess a preemptive solution would be for Flip to correct my mistake. In the future I will concentrate more when typing and not rely on spell check.
Special thanks to Jessica for noticing the error, and suggesting I suspend all thoughts of chemistry for a while and dilute my time with other activities.
Don't worry, we all noticed the error. Just silently judging.
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Dear Channel 13 news team,
Um, yea hi. I don't mean to bother you, I do realize that you are professionals who are very good at your jobs and have a big TV station to run. It's just that, you see I turned on your 10 pm newscast on Sunday to find out what's going on in Libya and there wasn't a lot of information.
Sure, I got footage of some people outside the Galleria with an anchor providing voice over about how people had "allegedly been killed or imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime." That was then followed by a smash cut to an image of Saif al Islam Gaddafi taken from Libyan state TV and an anchor reading an excerpt from the speech he delivered earlier where he said that the "reports of hundreds of people being killed are exaggerations." My first thought was "that's a pretty balanced story, it gives me the viewpoints of two different groups of people without commenting or endorsing either."
Then I read Al Jazeera. It turns out that those "exaggerations" Saif Gaddafi spoke of were coming from Human Rights Watch and eyewitnesses inside the hospitals. I read a little bit more and it seems that in the rest of his speech Saif Gaddafi went on to say that military bases and tanks had already fallen to the rebels, which didn't make it on to your show. I guess you figured that, since it's a local news cast a grass fire in Montgomery County is more important than the fate of a nation. Don't get me wrong I understand, it was Sunday after all. Low staff days always make it difficult to fact check statements.
It's not like there is a report from a some governmental department that deals with foreign states criticizing Libya's human rights record that's available for free on the internet. It's not like there's some large international news gathering organization that could send you a story about what happened there. I know sometimes you don't have the time to get all the facts in and you have to run with what you have.
I've been there, besides Libya's only been in the middle of a revolution for five days and the guy in your package getting his roof replaced, he'd been waiting almost three years. I should go, the BBC just reported that Libya's ambassador to China has resigned.
Sincerely,
Alex Wukman
posted by zieglerfe at 08:40PM CST on February 22