A few journalists are reporting on how FEMA recently staged a fake news conference. I’ve been reading about it over the weekend and saw that Michelle Malkin is covering it as well. Using Photoshop, I created a new logo for them!

Drudge linked to an interesting investigative piece that shows that 9 out of 10 of “journalists” who donated to political campaigns donated to Democrats. Surprise, surprise.

Now after hearing how talk radio in part helped inform the public about the idiotic shamnesty bill that congress tried to pass, some senators want to curb the freedom of speech of talk radio hosts in order to make the public less informed about the political process! So they can attempt to hoodwink the American public into accepting shamnesty, since if we have an open debate about it it’s obviously not going to pass. We need border security with a huge concrete fence, not reward criminals.

Since conservative talk radio is MUCH more popular to say the least than leftist talk radio, the markets have shown that conservative talk radio is more successful. No big deal. Conservative senators are not out calling for CNN to be banned and other liberal outlets to be curtailed simply because they dislike their bias. But we have two leftist senators–Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton, calling for “legislative fix” for talk radio! This is unconstitutional! The government cannot censor things just because they disagree with them. There are exceptions to free speech, such as defamation, libel, slander, false light, obscenity, but none of these apply. These two anti-free speech leftist Senators want to curb the freedom of speech of talk radio hosts because they disagree with them! What a bunch of fascist pigs!

Hear the radio interview.

Michelle Malkin points out the flawed policies of some journalism schools.  I’ll have a Master’s in Journalism and Media Studies in a few weeks and thank goodness the University of South Florida is a little more with it when it comes to tests.  That said, some, but not all, of the professors definitely have defended the “fake but accurate” scandal of the National Guard memos.

The American Pundit and Suitably Flip also weigh in.

Well another hack is at it again. First Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, now a novelist admits to plagiarizing, by “accident” of course.

According to an Associated Press story (Young Author Admits Borrowing Passages), Harvard University sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan’s hyped up novel has many instances of borrowed passages and blatant copying:

Kaavya Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” published in March by Little, Brown and Company, was the first of a two-book deal reportedly worth six figures. But on Sunday, the Harvard Crimson cited seven passages in Viswanathan’s book that closely resemble the style and language of the novels of Megan McCafferty.

The Harvard Crimson reports on the similiarities from her book and two books by Megan F. McCafferty Sloppy Firsts (2001) and Second Helpings (2003):

At one point, Opal Mehta contains a 14-word passage that appears verbatim in McCafferty’s book Sloppy Firsts.

In that example, McCafferty writes on page 6 of her first novel: Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You’ll see where it’s gotten me.

Viswanathan writes on page 39 of her novel: Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadn’t gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two.

Page 237 of McCafferty’s first novel reads: Finally, four major department stores and 170 specialty shops later, we were done. Similarly, Viswanathan wrote on page 51 of her novel: Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys….

…

The parallels between Viswanathan’s novel and McCafferty’s second work are equally striking. For instance, page 67 of Second Helpings reads: …but in a truly sadomasochistic dieting gesture, they chose to buy their Diet Cokes at Cinnabon.

And Viswanathan writes on page 46 of Opal Mehta: In a truly masochistic gesture, they had decided to buy Diet Cokes from Mrs. Fields…

Many more examples of similiar passages can be found here.

A blog by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from the Los Angeles Times has been suspended due to ethical violations.? Apparently he defended his own columns and posts with pseudonyms like “mikekoshi.” Patterico, the Los Angeles blogger and county prosecutor found this out by noting that the IP addresses of Hiltzik and “mikekoshi” were the same. Read more about it.

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports

The paper said in an online editor’s note that Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes the Golden State column, had admitted posting remarks on both his Times blog and on other Web sites under names other than his own. The Times said it is investigating the matter. Editor Dean Baquet declined comment, and Hiltzik said he could not comment.

It’s one thing to write under a pseudonym, but another thing to deceive readers by defending your column with fake personas. Hiltzik should have just commented on the posts himself, under his own name.