Do you remember that story about cops having to arrest some idiot for swimming in the oily gulf?

[readmoreoften]

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/man_arrested_for_swimming_in_g.html

There was a little discussion about whether or not the police should interfere with idiots who do stupid crap. I vaguely remembered it until the other day when I went to an environmental forum. The photos were familiar: the white crosses with the names of everything destroyed by the spill, the mural of BP as the grim reaper. There was another in the mix that didn't make sense though. It was a pair of hands in handcuffs. The person who took the pictures happened to be in the room. He's a student who traveled across the gulf to assess the information and capture photos for a political project at Texas A&M. I know him. He's a pretty calm, rational, level headed kind of guy. Definitely not a grandstanding type.

He says he never went near the water. The BP-owned police patrolling the area made up the charge to get him and his camera out of the area. Then AP just came and ran with the cop's story without a thought. He said the whole experience was absurd, and he didn't make a big deal of it. But I remembered the story.

It made me think about how much we argue about this or that "idiots" motivation after reading something in the news. How interesting and sad that we may be arguing about manufactured characters that don't exist and situations that never occurred.

[RKP5637]

1. Some of the M$M here will eventually be as bad as the cold war Russian propaganda. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Correction, it already is

FOX News <---------- evidence A
CNN <--------------- Evidence B
And yes at times MSNBC

And don't get me started with some of the wire services....

[RKP5637]

3. Yep, agree. I was thinking that, but gave them some wiggle room. Bad move on

my part. Years ago I used to listen to Radio Moscow on shortwave and now I hear a similar version here. FOX News is certainly a good example of propaganda that never stops...

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Me too, and you perhaps remember

when Perestroyka came. YOU COULD taste it... in the stories and how they were written.

[RKP5637]

7. At that stage I had taken to listening to the TV. I do miss the old powerful transoceanic

shortwave broadcasts. There was always something magical in tuning them in...

[Toucano]

4. I actually trust Pravda more than the New York Times about some things.

Not 100%, but maybe 20% more.

[RKP5637]

6. I have some friends that rely on NYT for everything, I've often cautioned

them not to use one news source as the absolute truth.

[readmoreoften]

8. My guess is that it's less maliciousness on APs part and more bad and lazy reporting.

Small-time AP reporters barely make a living. They get the bare bones info and blab it. Very little investigating going on anymore. This is a trend I've seen when I've been around AP reporters interviewing the antiwar movement.