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Journalistic Integrity

January 30th, 2009 . by TexasFred

Journalistic Integrity

This morning there was a story floating around the net, I found it linked on Facebook, it has since been removed. The story is a complete SHAM.

The story is this: Military to Pledge Oath To Obama, Not Constitution and it has been posted on numerous sites including this one as well: Military to Pledge Oath To Obama, Not Constitution

Some people wonder why it’s taken so long for bloggers to become reputable in their reporting and commentary (Op/Ed pieces), I hold the above 2 posts up as testament to the fact, the blog world is STILL filled with IDIOTS!

Reactionary posting, *rumor mill* posting, the posting of unsourced and unverified stories, the “Well, I got it from a friend in an email and you know, they are always really good, they got it from this other friend and…”, that is the kind of CRAP that makes bloggers look bad!

I did a bit of investigation and almost immediately saw this entire story for what it was, a well constructed FAKE, a SHAM, a CRAP piece of slander journalism. One of the really great Mil-Blogs, BLACKFIVE, was also able to dispel this story and it’s associated sources as FAKE.

Folks, I have NO USE for Barack Obama, I make NO secret of that fact. That said, I will not be a part of, nor will I allow to stand, an outright LIE about the President of the United States of America. Barack Obama has his faults, on that nearly ALL of my readers will agree. We will have more than ample ammunition available to use against Obama in the blogs, we don’t have to make up lies. The truth will suffice.

I have NO problem with stating my OPINION, I do it quite often. But if I make a post that IS opinion, I make it quite obvious that it is just that, opinion. If you’re going to make a post that is based on news, from the MSM, or any other source, you had best be prepared to defend that post with a SOURCE. Citation is a writers best friend, and without citation, there can be NO journalistic integrity. It’s a simple matter of exercising professional and personal responsibility.

Don’t feed the *rumor mill*, check your sources, then recheck them, several times. If a blogger can’t post using responsible, and reputable information, then they need to stick to posting pictures of their kids and their cat, or talking about recipes. Go on splogging to your hearts content, but don’t try to pass off some fake BS like this as responsible blogging. Leave the serious blogging to REAL bloggers.


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Democrat sues Sen. Obama over ‘fraudulent candidacy’

August 24th, 2008 . by TexasFred
Lawsuit disputing U.S. citizenship based in part on discredited claims

A prominent Pennsylvania Democrat has sued Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission, claiming that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and, therefore, is not eligible to be president of the United States.

Philip J. Berg, a former member of Pennsylvania’s Democratic State Committee and former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, filed the lawsuit this week in U.S District Court, asking the court to declare Obama ineligible for the presidency and to prevent him from running for the position.

However, a WND investigation has found that at least part of Berg’s lawsuit relies on discredited claims.

A separate motion was also filed seeking a temporary restraining order on Obama’s presidential campaign until Obama’s eligibility can be verified.

The lawsuit claims Barack Obama’s eligibility is questionable on several grounds, including the allegation that he was born in Kenya to parents unable to automatically grant him American citizenship, that his Hawaii birth certificate is a forgery – a now discredited claim – that he was made a citizen of Indonesia as a child and that he retained foreign citizenship into adulthood without recording an oath of allegiance to regain any theoretical American citizenship.

Full Story Here:
Democrat sues Sen. Obama over ‘fraudulent candidacy’

I’d give anything if this were true, but I’m afraid that this particular guy is nothing more than a disenchanted Hillary supporter clutching at straws as he hopes against hope.

Irrefutable proof of fake birth certificates?? That was an effort that got a lot of people all fired up for nothing recently. A bit of sensationalism from a female blogger that plays real hard on her sex appeal and old fashioned hysterics to hold an audience.

However, FactChecker.org says it obtained Obama’s actual birth certificate and that the document was indeed real. The site discredited some of the claims of Internet bloggers, such as that the certificate as viewed in a scanned copy released by Obama’s campaign lacked a raised seal. FactChecker.org also established that many of the alleged flaws in the document noted by bloggers were caused by the scanning of the document.

A separate WND investigation into Obama’s birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren’t originally there.

I am not going to point fingers, make accusations, call names or say that anyone used the info on Obama and the so-called fake birth certificate for personal gain, but you know, I haven’t seen one word about this in an MSM setting, I haven’t seen one word printed as a retraction and I am pretty sure that WND is not posting this to support Obama, I know I’m not. What I see is a documentation of the comedy of desperation that this entire election process is turning into.

Obama is a disaster waiting to happen, naming Joe Biden as his VP is only adding fuel to the fire, there’s going to be plenty of blog shots to be taken without resorting to some incredulous sensationalism.

Denver is going to show the Dems and their followers for what they really are, verbal gaffs are already happening, there’s plenty of ammo at hand, all we have to do is sit back and glean facts as we separate reality from the truckloads of BS the Dems are spewing.

Obama and Biden are going to give Conservative bloggers the greatest writing opportunity we’ve had in quite a while. Stick to FACTS, use their words against them. Take the high road and maintain your journalistic integrity. That’s something that liberal blogs won’t do. And it’s something that Conservative blogs must do.


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NBC News is asked to set record straight on *deceitful* editing

May 20th, 2008 . by TexasFred

NEW YORK - The White House on Monday called on NBC News to set the record straight on “deceitful” editing of an interview with President Bush, in which correspondent Richard Engel asks whether comments about the president of Iran were directed at Barack Obama.

Bush aides were angered by how the president’s answer was portrayed when Engel questioned him about his condemnation of “the false comfort of appeasement” in an address last week to the Israeli Knesset. NBC stood by its treatment of the interview Monday.

Bush had mentioned the president of Iran in his speech and said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

Obama’s campaign considered that statement an attack on him, which the White House has denied.

Engel asked Bush if he was referring to Obama in his speech.

As it appeared on “Nightly News” Sunday and the “Today” show Monday, Bush’s response was: “You know, my policies haven’t changed, but evidently the political calendar has … And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you’ve got to take those words seriously.”

But the White House said NBC edited out these words that Bush said between those two sentences: “People need to read the speech. You didn’t get it exactly right, either. What I said was that we need to take the words of people seriously.”

See the full text of the White House letter

Full Story Here:
Complaint over Bush interview edit

I think most people that read here already know, I’m not a big fan of George Bush, I have never been a big fan of the guy, I think he’s a very ineffectual president, I think he took the wrong course when he took us to Iraq and there have been more than a few things said about his love of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.

When Bush speaks, you don’t have to edit it to get some kind of different message out there, and when the man is right, when I feel he’s right, I will come to his defense, and this time, I feel he’s very right.

If the MSM had their way, Obama would be in the process of coronation, he is the darling of the left leaning media, and yeah, I do include NBC in that group.

What the MSM needs to realize it this, it’s not their job to make the news, it’s not their job to interpret the news, their job is to report the news, exactly as it happened. The guy on the anchor desk isn’t a political analyst, he’s a talking head, most reporters are as dumb as a box of rocks and the guys in the editing room have no business editing out anything that isn’t beneath standards, regardless of who says it.

I am all for 1st amendment rights, I exercise mine here daily, but I don’t re-write the news. I use their story, exactly as it’s written, and then I add my perspective to it in the form of commentary, and if that were what NBC had done, reported exactly what the president had said, and then thrown in their commentary, with the caveat that it was commentary, then they did nothing wrong.

If they deliberately edited the words of the president to make it appear that he said something he didn’t, or to make their readers perceive his words in a way that was totally different than the specific intent, then NBC needs to ‘man up’ and admit they were wrong, change the story back to it’s original content and issue a very public apology to the White House, the nation and to President Bush.


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