A media roundup

Reliapundit has been pointing out for years that the Fannie Mae scandal is similar to but bigger than Enron -- a point that is now being taken up elsewhere. How come the Fannie Mae scandal is hardly ever mentioned in the media and that none of the fraudsters have gone to jail? The fact that they were all prominent Democrats would not be relevant would it?

More lies from the Communist News Network: They claim that repeal of a compulsory helment law for motorcycle riders in Florida caused a big leap in deaths among riders. David Friedman points out that their own figures show the exact opposite.

The 16th century megadeaths among the Aztecs and other central Americans have always been blamed on diseases such as smallpox brought with them to the Americas by the white conquistadores. It now seems, however, that the deaths were caused by a native virus such as a hantavirus -- a virus that became more virulent because of a severe drought. Don't expect to read that in the media, though. White men must be blamed for everything.



Rather finally gets the boot: "The American broadcaster Dan Rather has left CBS News in a bitter departure after his 44 years as reporter, anchor and the face of the network was clouded by a reporting scandal over President George Bush's military record... Rather said his departure on Tuesday came after "a protracted struggle" with CBS executives who, he said, had "not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there" since he stepped down as anchor in March last year... Some said the departure of Rather, whose reputation was tarnished in 2004 by a subsequently discredited report on Mr Bush's military record, was an unceremonious end. "You never expect someone who's been the face of the network for so long to just be given an office which is essentially a closet, and then not to be given air time and then to have it leaked to the press that he's being booted," the New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta said. "It's jarring.""

The lying NYT again: "In Wednesday's "Israeli Attack Kills 3 Gaza Children," filed from Jerusalem, reporter Ian Fisher makes the now-discredited claim that an Israeli airstrike killed a family of seven Palestinians on a Gaza beach.... Perhaps Fisher should have picked up a copy of Monday's Jerusalem Post, which discussed how those vaunted "human rights officials" (from no less a body than Human Rights Watch itself) are backtracking from their initial assertions of Israeli blame: "On Monday, the Human Rights Watch, while sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, conceded for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the [Israeli Defense Force's] exonerating findings."

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