The 5 Ballsiest Lies Ever Passed off as Journalism
#2.
Stephen Glass's Favorite Movie was Apparently Jerry Maguire
Before May 18, 1998, Stephen Glass was a 24-year-old reporter for The New Republic. His articles were funny and informative, and always pretty sensational. And, sure, there were plenty of subjects that screamed "Fraud!" after Glass had written about them, but no one likes the way they get represented in the paper. Especially when you lie about them, which Glass did, unabashedly. Despite all the complaints, what really brought Glass's downfall was a short article titled "Hack Heaven," which described both a hackers' convention and a business meeting between a teenage hacker and a "large California software firm" Jukt Micronics:
Another Hack Heaven.
Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who looks like an even more adolescent version of Bill Gates, is throwing a tantrum. "I want more money. I want a Miata. I want a trip to Disney World. I want X-Men comic [book] #1. I want a lifetime subscription to Playboy--and throw in Penthouse. Show me the money! Show me the money!" Across the table, executives from a California software firm called Jukt Micronics are listening and trying ever so delicately to oblige. "Excuse me, sir," one of the suits says tentatively to the pimply teenager. "Excuse me. Pardon me for interrupting you, sir. We can arrange more money for you..."
According to the story, Jukt Micronics was so eager to hire and please Restil because Restil hacked into their database, posted the salaries of every employee in the company on the company's homepage and garnished the entire hack with several pictures of naked ladies (also displayed prominently on the company's homepage). This was all, of course, total bullshit and, even though the story went through several fact checkers, no one noticed just exactly how bullshitty it was (so bullshitty, you guys). To be fair to The New Republic this was 1998, a time when many people actually did believe back-end mouth breathers were capable of taking down large corporations with just a few key strokes, presumably while listening to techno and posting pictures of boobs on the front page of the CIA website.
We guess the technology of '98 was so new and scary to the staff of The New Republic that they couldn't be bothered to club "Jukt Micronics" into a search engine. The article did, however catch the attention of Forbes Digital, and when word got around to Glass that those nerds at Forbes smelled a rat, he whipped up fake business cards, phony voicemail accounts in California, a dummy AOL members website for the software company and actually got his brother to pose as the voice of the CEO of Jukt Micronics. And he would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling Forbes fact-checkers, and also logic. Glass was fired within a day, and went on to write an unsuccessful novel based on his experiences.
#1.
Pulitzer and Hearst's Pissing Contest Started a Goddamn War
Stephen Glass and Dateline are opportunists. Ben Franklin's a Grand Imperial Dick Wizard and Mark Twain just likes screwing with people. But Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, ladies and gentlemen, are the fathers of yellow journalism.
Hearst and Pulitzer: total fuckbaskets.
In the late 1800s, Joseph Pulitzer (owner of The New York World) and William Randolph Hearst (owner of The New York Journal) were engaged in a vicious battle over who had the larger circulation. In an ethically questionable display of one-upmanship, the two media giants dick slapped moral reporting several times a day to out-circulate the other, each paper coming out with a story more sensational than the other paper published the day before.
When a rebellion in Cuba against the Spanish started brewing, Hearst and Pulitzer saw a golden opportunity; they'd report on the situation in Cuba to sell papers, and if the situation wasn't interesting, they'd make shit up because journalism is easy when you don't have a soul. Hearst and Pulitzer would take sensationalized, unverified stories of made-up atrocities, make those stories even more sensationalized and then feed the twice-baked-sensationalizations to the American people as the truth. And the people, thanks to the papers, believed that America had an ethical obligation to step in and save those Cubans.
Every John Q. Public with a paper assumed that the Spanish warlords were raping and murdering the poor, defenseless Cubans and leaving them in rotting piles on the side of the road, because that's the kind of story you write when you own a newspaper and are bored. When a Journal news photographer attempted to leave Cuba, reporting to Hearst that the situation wasn't as bad as Hearst had reported, Hearst sent a cable boasting, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Then the USS Maine, an American warship, blew the fuck up under questionable circumstances.
Post-explosion, President McKinley demanded an immediate investigation, but Hearst and Pulitzer demanded even more immediate "THE SPANISH DID IT" headlines. Their reporting was so immediate, in fact, that word had reached the American people about Spain's involvement in the sinking before the investigation even started. To this day, we don't know why exactly the Maine exploded, we just know why it didn't: the Spanish. But that didn't get in the way of headlines! What a scoop!
The catchy rallying cry that resulted--"Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!"--was just the propaganda tool a young and soon to be outstandingly mustachioed Teddy Roosevelt was looking for to satisfy his itch for a new war. Proving that no mere mortal can withstand Teddy Roosevelt, the war was over in a matter of weeks and Pulitzer and Hearst basked in the afterglow, all while continuing their reporting charades which included failing to mention that the iconic battle in the Spanish American War was actually thanks to an African American cavalry. Shine on you crazy diamonds!
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LOL, got an ad for a "New Media Journalism" degree program from Full Sail University with this article.
ReplyAnd are you sure you aren't thinking of Johnathan Swift attacking Partridge under the Isaac Bickerstaff pseudonym?
ReplyReally? Glenn Beck? You guys lose me completely with idiotic jokes like that. Neither funny or accurate. Just hating on the man for having a differing opinion seems to qualify you as dickjutsu masters yourself
ReplySounds like a Republican indeed
Glenn Beck isn't a dick for having "differing" views. He's a dick for being a fraud- He doesn't believe the crap he spews and contradicts himself at every turn in order to drum up irrational, nationalistic fury to further whatever bullshit agenda he latched onto this week. Seriously, just google "Glenn Beck Hypocrite" then double check the stories you find against quotes on his own website. He and Ann Coulter. They aren't dicks for being conservatives, they're dicks for being opportunistic frauds operating under the guise of "journalism", but only the sort of journalism where you don't have to check your facts or even be able to read.
On the other hand, he did kinda call that whole "Egyptian Brotherhood" will take over Egypt after the revolution thing, though. Blind squirrel I guess.
Dickjitsu is my new favourite word
ReplyWalter Durranty covered up Stalin's murders and was punished with.... a Pulitzer Prize. A textbook example of "everything people I like do is right no matter what" if there ever was. You think Fox is biased? Do you think ABC, NBC, CBS, and NPR are any different? You have to read everything and then try to filter out the BS.
Replythough, to be fair considering the amount of BS that Joe Pulitzer repeatedly printed out, it is a fitting prize.
"and this also marked the last time GM ran into any trouble whatsoever, at all." ah huh....
ReplyThis article sucks.
ReplyCreative comment, dude.
HAve u guys ever read the Sun, Daily Mail, or (thankfully closed down) News of the World? there stories would either be complet and utter bull shit, or gained through illigal means (phone hacking) the Sun and NotW are owned by the same man, the same man who owns the wall street journal and Fox, Rupert "big Roop" Murdock, abd its rumord that his papers hacking into familys of 9/11 victims phones for a story
ReplyBickerstaff's Paper much, isn't it?
ReplyWe're learning about Stephen Glass in my journalism class. He got a movie made about him.
Reply#1's depressing D; Spain has an interesting culture :3
ReplyGrand Imperial Dick Wizard
ReplyI'm using this.
CIA photo
ReplyI'll admit it. I, too, want X-men comic #1!
Replylol'd at 'dickjitsu'...totally lost it at 'fuckbaskets'. Rofl!
ReplyI got an ad for a journalism school at the bottom of the page...
ReplySo did I
"Dickjitsu." I'm still laughing.
ReplyJournalists never invent wars for dicksize competitions. #1 up there is simply the way power works in America. You'll be surprised to know that America, although formally a democracy, has 15 presidents from one extended family over its history - Obama and Bush are related. Look it up. And a third of the ruling class - judges, attorneys, army top brass, corporate overlords, bankers are from the same extended family. More to the point, see the book War Is a Racket by an American General. If America's arms companies or banks want a war somewhere, anywhere, they invent a reason using the press of the day. Since the top layer of all the moneyed and/or powerful Americans is from the same set of extended families, cooperation is guaranteed, or arranged through elaborate favours, like legal exceptions, pardons, special rulings in courts, etc. In exchange for this, anything needed gets printed as news. Necessary videos appear, needed experts appear and nod solemnly in agreement and so on. The latest glaring example is the invasion of Iraq for WMDs. Saudis committed Sept 11 and Iraq paid too heavy a price. Iraq has ZERO connection with Osama or 9-11. Yet most media outlets just nodded in agreement for 6 years straight. That should be #1.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesLook it up? Seems like a cheap cop out since you have no proof of it yourself. How could Bush and Obama be related? And another thing: America was NEVER a true democracy. It was founded as a REPUBLIC, which is a representational democracy.
Nobody is saying Iraq is responsible for 9/11. Catch up on your current events.
All three of you don't know shit.
I looked it up. Apparently they are all related to Adam and Eve, on Cain's side of the family.
Yes, it all makes sense. Obama, whose father is Kenyan and whose mother is Hawiian, must be related to the Bushes, who lived in Conneticut for the last 200 years. And yes, the Saudis totally carried out the world's worst terrorist attack against their #1 customer. And didn't the War is a Racket guy lie about his service record and join the communist party after retiring. I don't often use the phrase dipshit, but you geekfest are truly dipped in shit. You may now go back to writing your next manifesto.
you were one "sheeple" away from me getting d*****t bingo on this one.
please try harder next time
I wonder... is a free press really a good idea? I mean while it is true we have no government slob forcing people to call him a sex icon of the century or be beheaded, we also have nobody making sure what people get told is true. In the end I guess it boils down to who would we rather lie to us, they government, or the press?
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies...or, you have people who do fact-checking independently, tell everyone when fraud occurs, and then you kick the unscrupulous journalists out. Jeesh man, next you'll be going "Man, maybe democracy isn't any good because sometime a*****es get elected".
Everything needs checks and balances. Everything can be abused. The market needs it, businesses need it, the press needs, government needs it of course. If anything can abuse its power it needs checks and balances.
Unfortunately, government still doesn't have enough. Maybe if we had like 30-40 for different parts of the country, we could keep it in line with natural selection. I wonder why our Founders never thought of that. Oh Wait! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
I would totally move to another state to find a shorter tax code.
Of course I live in Texas, which would already have the smallest buearocracy.
I'm off topic aren't I?
What's this about?
Oh yeah...
FREE PRESS FUNNY!!!
Hey everyone, look at the picture of the newspaper in #1: That's where George Lucas got his idea for what Darth Vader should look like!!!
ReplyNo, that's the one true story in the paper warning of genuine Imperial attacks AND NO-ONE BELIEVED THEM! Why, oh why didn't someone on Tattooine read the paper that day? So many lives needlessly lost...