You know, I once thought of starting a blog called “CNN sucks”. It’s frequently on in the gym, and that brief exposure of a few hours a week is enough to make me want to weep for the state of American news reporting.

One of the things that really gets me about CNN is the fact that in an effort to be “impartial” they frequently report positions which are absurb and frequently false, however they report them on an “equal footing” with everything else. As a followup to my previous post, let’s look at this example.

The West’s publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over Hamas’ win in the Palestinian elections, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tuesday.

Now let’s review. The cartoons were published on September 30, 2005, and the election was in January 25, 2006. This means that anyone with even a second grade education and no knowledge of international affairs should be able to dismiss Khamenei’s comments as provably false, (not unlike a lot of what he says), yet CNN, by entirely misconstruing the concept of “equal time” has decided that lies are apparently worth granting equal time with truth.

update: I forgot to mention the other thing that bugged me about the quoted passage above. The article states the claim first, and then cites it. Since the claim is also not in quotation marks, a casual reader glancing quickly over the article might come to the conclusion that the Israeli backing of the cartoons is a fact, rather than the ramblings of an insane crackpot.

Another Update: One of my intrepid readers has pointed out that this article in particular was written by the AP and not CNN. In retrospect I suppose it was unfair to taret CNN alone for this, as this is a problem that’s indemic throughout American media, CNN is simply a convenient target.

So I learned a few interesting things today about the cartoons of Muhammad (see them all here), which have produced such an outcry in the Muslim world. First of all, the cartoons were published in September of 2005. Why did it take 5 months for these “Spontaneous demonstrations of anger” to erupt? Also the cartoons where initially published by the newspaper as an experiment into the limits of free speech when it came to Islam, since the newspaper feared that Islam was becoming a taboo subject since people were afraid to write anything negative about it for fear of reprisal. (Much like Theo Van Gogh). I guess their fears were justified.

For the first time that I can remember, I really didn’t have a strong preference for who would win this year’s super bowl (which just ended). Both teams had good story lines, had clearly earned their spot (rather than getting lucky), and neither had ever evoked any particular feelings from me in the past (by, say, beating the Eagles in the NFC championship like Carolina and Tampa Bay, whom I rooted against). What I kept telling people was that I would wait till Sunday morning and see which team had had players arrested for picking up prostitutes the night before, and I would root against them. Although I did decide at game time that I would root for Seattle based mostly on sympathy for certain Seattle-based friends of mine, I believe I’m still fairly impartial. I can therefore say, that I think it was without a doubt some of the most one sided officiating I’ve ever seen in a game of this high a level, in any sport.

Seattle’s first touchdown which was called back would have been a touchdown 9 out of 10 times. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a light pushoff get called offensive pass interference before.

On Pittsburgh’s first touchdown, Roethlisberger was not accross the line. You can clearly see that when he landed the ball was short of the goal line. Some people tried to argue that the ball crossed while he was in the air, but assuming he was moving forward continuously while in the air (an assumption in line with the laws of Newtonian physics), the point at which the ball would have been the farthest forward would have been the point at which it landed (which halted motion entirely). If it wasn’t accross then, it never got accross.

Then there was the Pittsburgh interception when Hasselback got called for a penalty for blocking below the knees. Hasselback was making a tackle. You can’t call a blocking penalty on someone who was making a tackle! It’s absurd! Tripping someone up by going for their legs is the standard method of tackling someone running flat out in the open field.

Then there was that holding call that even John Madden couldn’t find. This was on Seattle’s final drive and they had completed a pass down to the 2 yard line. True, a Seattle lineman had a hand in the face of a Pittsburgh lineman, but at the time they were facing each other, his hands stayed between the shoulder pads, and he avoided the facemask. Although it’s not the prettiest block ever, it’s legal. The call pushed Seattle back out of field goal range (instead of being 2 yards from the end zone), and effectively ended any hopes of a comeback that Seattle may have harbored.

Now, I’m not someone who believes in conspiracies. I don’t think the league told the referees to ensure a certain team won for marketing reasons, but I do think the penalty calling was one sided and sloppy, and seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the game.

update: It looks like 62% of football fans and Michael Smith agree with me.

I got an email the other day from an old college friend I’ll call PB for the sake of privacy.

I wanted to let you know that on January 12th Talia and I were married. We took a couple weeks in Peru where we got married, it was a great time. We just notified our parents on January 27th when they visited NYC as we hadn’t told anybody beforehand of our plans.

PB – I salute you for having the courage to do what so many others before you have only dreamed of. A wedding with no interference help from the parents.