Seattle P-I: Haiku Contest Was 'Bad Call' - But We're Still Not Publishing Photos! By Bill Hobbs | August 22, 2007 - 18:41 ET
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is apologizing for its decision to run a haiku contest about its decision to not run the photos of two men sought by the FBI for questioning related to possibly terrorist-related activities involving the Seattle-area ferry system
The paper's "online reporter" Monica Guzman writes on the paper's "Big Blog":
****The paper's decision not to run photos of the two Seattle ferry passengers sought by the FBI didn't take long yesterday to become part of a widespread debate that provoked readers around the country.
It also spread throughout the blogosphere. While most blogs pointed directly to the debate, some made some poignant comments about the topic of yesterday's Daily Haiku contest, a topic that -- considering the sensitivity of the issue -- was probably not the best we could have come up with.
While the Big Blog mixes fun and news on a daily basis, in this case we undermined a serious issue and a serious debate, and made it seem as if we in the newsroom didn't acknowledge its importance.
So thanks to all the bloggers who pointed this out. We agree it was a bad call and will learn from the experience.
P.S. -- We're not going to pick a winner.
Seattle PI Continues to Refuse to Aid FBI in Terror Probe By Bill Hobbs | August 22, 2007 - 08:31 ET
The Seattle Times today has published the photos of two men the FBI wants to locate and talk to in regards to their suspicious behavior aboard several Puget Sound ferries in recent weeks, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer continues to refuse to do so - even though the photos have now been widely published in the Seattle area and nationally via other media outlets and the blogosphere. As we discussed yesterday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer offered a haiku contest related to the case , but refused to help the FBI locate the men by publishing their photos.
Today's Seattle P-I has a second story on the investigation, but again refuses to publish the photos even though, as its own story says, "The release by the FBI on Monday of photographs of two men who had been spotted in "suspicious" behavior on state ferries comes at a time when authorities are getting increased reports of unusual activity on the nation's largest ferry system."
The paper's justification for continuing to refuse to publish the photos:
****The P-I elected not to publish the photos, citing civil liberties and privacy concerns, which editors felt outweighed the newsworthiness of the images. "We have no confirmation that these men's behavior was anything but innocuous, and to forever taint them by associating them with terrorism under these circumstances is not consistent with our policy," said David McCumber, P-I managing editor.
Ah, well, at least the paper's haiku contest is giving its readers a chance to vent about the situation, in the three-lines/5-7-5 syllables construction of a haiku. Six of the best so far:
Possible danger?
Political correctness!
Paper fails duty.
How irrelevant
The Post Intelligencer
Goodbye dinosaur
Our lives endangered
Sanctimonious P-I
Editors -- BONEHEADS!
A magical place,
where 9/11 never
happened. Seattle.
PI wants Haiku
To justify its dumbness
Task Impossible
2 comments:
Intelligencer?
Not in any shape or form
Post-I, We Post Not!
You may have noticed the little brouhaha last week in Quebec, when some protestors, aptly described as "sad" by the Prime Minister, got together to throw crap at the police because the "three amigos" were meeting to conspire secretly to divert Canadian water en masse to Mexico to feed the demands of globalization for more cheap surf and sand hotels (with indoor wave pools) so that more poor Mexicans can be turned into hotel maids, cabana boys, and grass cutters in their own country and won't be in such a hurry to invade America.
Anyway, some of these protestors of the conspiracy so keen we don't really know what it was all about were infiltrated by undercover cops, as most people would hope and expect. But now, these protestors are acting as if this is the scandal of the year. If not for these cops provoking the people, there would have been no violence, because of course those protestors wearing masks and anarchist symbols, carrying projectiles, didn't gather from all corners to go to Montebello in order to cause trouble and it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been provoked. As one veteran protestor interviewed by the CBC noted, "of course they wanted to provoke us... to make us look bad!" In this view of the world, the cops are just a bunch of macho thugs whose prime desire is to make leftist people look bad, to discredit their and presumably the Islamic opposition to globalization. The cops would much rather have a riot on their hands than go home after a quiet day with accolades for keeping the peace because the cops are playing a long-term game to destroy the left. The cops are so smart. Or maybe the point is that they're so dumb and short sighted. I'm just not sure...
And the CBC reported all this with a straight, indeed somber and serious face. Just another example of how large segments of our "intelligentsia" are divorced from reality and living in a highly ritualized fantasy of civil rights protestors taking on the KKK in their day-job role as policemen. Sad to watch our civilizational suicide in action. But then the P.I. was the paper that printed an article by some professor 9/11 conpsiracy nut, wasn't it?
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