This blog's a bitch!

Haha. Sarcasm saves you from telling someone what you really think about them! I can't help but be a meanie. Plus the movie Jarhead was corny!

It's so like valley girl talk English. Ugh.

According to this report

"Valley Girl has gone beyond a fad and is now rooted in different forms of English around the world," Ms Tagliamonte said. "Girls are the single most powerful force in the English language today." The research was among work discussed at the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society in New Mexico over the weekend.

Sali Tagliamonte, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, believes the strongest recent shift has been the spread of Californian "Valley Girl" style, promoted around the globe by television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The OC (which I don't watch..just cos it's not my type of show..thank you very much).

This style of speech is characterised by inserting drawled words such as "like" and "so" to add emphasis to a sentence, which rises in pitch at the end.

Damn. It's so like annoying. Like it's so duh and so irritating. Ugh. Just shut the fuck up!

What one gets for being honest

Cristina Bugayon, the 12 year old girl who found a bagful of money amounting to more than $3000 (140,000 pesos) and returning it to it's rightful owner, continues to get more rewards from different sectors of society for her honesty. The company who owned the money, Techpoint computer, gave her..whatelse.. a computer! Geez. She should at least get some monetary reward. I think when the news broke out and she was interviewed, she and the mother as well was hoping for a reward..a cash reward! Well, a councilor gave her close to $100 (5000 pesos). She should get more just to compensate for her honesty.

Man, if it was me who had found that huge amount..hmm..haha! I dunno. I would've gotten some bills! haha but..I do have conscience though so go figure!

In the defense of the media

From Editor and Publisher.com

In perspective, the media did not create the rumor that the miners were safe. Miscommunication, misheard phone exchanges, and optimistic gossip probably lay at the root of the bad information. Officials, too, were at fault for not immediately clarifying what they knew and what they did not. But the fact is, most Americans, including probably people who knew the miners, believed the three hours of saturation news reports on television and the Internet that the miners were "rescued.It's not really their fault. They just wanted to tell the story as it is.

I dont think the media should get all the blame from the erroneous reporting. I know they should've at least check and re check and confirm the accuracy of the reports and hearsay that indeed miners are alive. The mining officials should share the blame for not really saying anything...not until all the erroneous reporting came about.. and yeah after 3 hours at that. It's their job to give information. Correct one.

Media bashing

So now most media outlets like wire services, network television and most especially newspaper are under the radar of scrutiny because of the false and erroneous report saying 12 miners alive and survived the blast there by giving false hope to many of the miners relatives when in reality they were dead already! Whose to blame of all these bad reporting?

Mike Fetters, a spokesman for The Newseum, a Washington, D.C.-based museum about the media, says that slightly more than half of the 250 U.S. newspapers examined Wednesday by the staff at the museum published front-page stories that said the miners were alive.

Few of those stories raised doubts about the report's credibility. Most did not make clear to readers, for instance, that the news was based on secondhand accounts from family members of the trapped miners just before midnight ET Tuesday. Officials from the company that owned the mine had not confirmed that the men were alive.

Greg Mitchell, editor of the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, called the media's performance "disturbing and disgraceful" in an online column Wednesday morning.

"The job of reporters and editors is to stop and say 'we've got some possible good news, but it's not confirmed yet,' " Mitchell said later Wednesday in an interview. "That really didn't happen."

Read complete article here

Changing lanes

More like changing networks. Ted Koppel has joined Discovery Channel and left ABC network and his long running Nightline show. I used to watch that show back when cable here was still cable with good channels. Hehe. One of the best documentaries I've seen was from Nightline and it was about Sarajevo after the war.

I wonder why he left the network though. Shrugs.. just blogging some media news

Erroneous report turned joy into to sorrow for miners relatives

Miscommunication!

It's sad for those relatives of the miners hearing that only 1 has survived that mining tragedy instead of the reported 12. Erroneous reporting is blamed for the confusion.

Ben Hatfield, president of the International Coal Group said the erroneous information spread rapidly when people overheard cell phone calls between rescuers and the rescue command center.

Several relatives fainted when they were informed of the miner's death by company officials and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin during an early evening briefing inside the Sago Baptist Church. Others rushed ashen-faced from the scene, uncertain of the identity of the dead miner, each fearing he was a loved one.

Link via LATimes

The erroneous report only added to the rage felt by tired, angry and devastated relatives of those miners who are now feared dead.