Objective “Reporting” versus Worthless Opinionated Beliefs

There's been considerable dissension and acrimonious dispute, since I inaugurated the Joe Blow Report, for declaring it's sole purpose is to report fact-based observations and arbitrarily refrain from expounding upon conjecture based worthless opinions and religious based beliefs.

In fact I recently reported the following quote about legendary Miyamoto Mushashi:

The Mind should be pure, uncontaminated by self-serving distortions and preconceived ideas.  The mind should be flexible, able to change shape according to the situation without resorting to rote learning.”

Today, I'm adding the following quote:

Living plants are flexible,

In death, they become dry and brittle.

Therefore, stubborn people are disciples of death,

but flexible people are disciples of life.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2011, Glenn Greenwald takes on this issue of “objective reporting in his: Bob Schieffer, Ron Paul and journalistic “objectivity” - Lessons the local Humboldt community should take to heart. Glenn observes:

Contrary to popular wisdom, there aren’t two types of journalists: those who express opinions and those who are objective.  The two types are those who honestly acknowledge their opinions and those who deceitfully pretend such opinions do not influence their journalism. One reason modern establishment journalism has become so corrupted and worthless is because of the conceit that they engage in some sort of objective reporting that is free of bias and opinion, even as they are the stalwart defenders of a clear set of political opinions and interests (those wielded by the same power factions which they pretend to hold accountable).  Any time someone is tempted to believe these fairy tales of objectivity, they should just re-watch this Schieffer interview.

The principals defined in that statement above are the reasons that led me to make my first observation regarding Dave Stancliff's opinionated and biased, newspaper published, article. Because the Times-Standard steadfastly continues to publish him regardless of his public conduct repudiating his credibility and theirs, a review of their published conduct reveals the pattern defined by Greenwald above:

One reason modern establishment journalism has become so corrupted and worthless is because of the conceit that they engage in some sort of objective reporting that is free of bias and opinion, even as they are the stalwart defenders of a clear set of political opinions and interests (those wielded by the same power factions which they pretend to hold accountable).”

The Joe Blow Report is replete examples of "bias and worthless conjectured opinions by the Times-Standard reporters. A rather striking and depressing indictment on this Thanksgiving Day.

--Joe

Ron Paul and WikiLeaks

The following was highlighted on MEDIAite.com and says an awful lot about Ron Paul:

Ron Paul’s Passionate Defense Of Julian Assange And WikiLeaks On House Floor

Mr. Paul concluded his speech with a list of questions for the American citizens to consider, the transcript of which is below (via FromTheOld.)

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?

Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

What are your answers?

--Joe