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Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Does anyone still get their news from the networks?

For the first time in years I watched the network evening news. In this case I watched NBC's coverage of the arrest of the Times Square bomber.

They said a number of times that Faisal Shahzad was a "lone wolf." Their Pakistan correspondent said that there were no arrests made there, and their terrorism expert tslked about how inept the bomb-making was and how he clearly acted alone (he said words to the effect of "he must have been asleep during bomb class.")

Yet, a couple of hours before the broadcast, the news broke over the wire services that Pakistan did arrest several people in connection with the case. Even the MSNBC website mentions that!

I knew that the news broadcasts were bad, but I had no idea that they were that incompetent.

Or, worse, that they are so invested in the idea that this was not an organized Muslim terrorist attack that their wishful thinking affects what they choose to report.