With Reuters and the AP exaggerating the “graffiti” perpetrated by a famous rocker’s daughter, it’s only expected that NYC’s tabloids would follow suit. And they didn’t disappoint. Here’s Theodora Richards splashed across the front pages as if she painted a subway train.
Last night, Jon Stewart mocked the media for its rampant and wildly speculative coverage of a so called mystery missile off the coast of Los Angeles. Despite the high likelihood that it was a jet, the Post fired off its own East Coast version with this opening salvo: “First California. Now they’re shooting at Queens!” Cause clearly, an errant “missile” headed out to sea story isn’t sensationalist enough, this baby needs a specific target.
From today’s Daily News: “A group of hipsters are suing the NYPD, accusing cops of busting up their bash, arresting them, and eating their pizza!” A group of what? Do they mean young people from Brooklyn? Since when did the world’s most all encompassing nonsensical word also now include visitors from Mexico? And to think that this same paper calls a literally challenged principal “moronic.”
The New York Post, one of the few media outlets that still calls a proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan the “Ground Zero mosque,” says it has definitive proof the World Trade Center’s boundaries extend further than the site by way of a map detailing the dispersion of human remains. It was created by firefighters searching for people after the attacks and the tabloid is now using it to polarize things worse than they already are, noting that some remains were found only “348 feet to the south of the mosque site at 45 Park Place.” (click ridiculous map to enlarge) |NYP|
If the Post is going to refer to a squat populated by Caribbean immigrants as a “Rastafarian drug den,” the least they could do is get the neighborhood right: The Black Lady Theater is located in Crown Heights, not Bed-Stuy.
In what has to be one of the most ridiculous news stories ever filed, WPIX describes the recent vandalism of several Banksy pieces in NYC as a “war” between rival graffiti groups. But that wasn’t the only absurd reportage going on in this highly misinforming clip. Read more »
The New York Times isn’t just going to sit idly by and pen snarky memos in response to the Wall Street Journal’s battle for NYC. So, they launched a counterattack by way of an ad positioning themselves as seasoned vets on all things city-related and their rivals as rookie pussies. Shots fired!
In a city that prides itself on mass transit, I’m still not sure who the New York Post caters their numerous, anti-pedestrian plaza stories to, but the tabloid is once again trashing the public-space creating initiatives. Warning “motorists” about the city’s plans to expand the car-free “malls” to other areas, the paper ran this photo with the caption, “BLOCKED CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD: Crowds jam Times Square’s pedestrian plaza yesterday…”, fully completing their propagandist reportage.
Photo:Chad Rachman/NYP
For Fox News, the theory is, if you repeat falsities enough they eventually becomes true. Unfortunately for them, pesky fact checkers don’t subscribe to the magical incantation method and so the Daily Kos compiled a video montage showing them consistently misreporting about the New England Journal of Medicine. Read more »
Shouldn’t there be some sort of rules for how long MSNBC’s correspondents can speculate wildly on every facet of a high speed chase without having any real information? Earlier, Contessa Brewer and Tamron Hall offered a play by play of a person driving fast down a LA freeway with cops in pursuit. Luckily it came to an end under a tunnel, totally killing their chance to drone on through the handcuffing.
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