The Whine thread.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

I'm a bit ticked off now. We've had this huge debate here in Sweden about a new electronic surveillance law - a law that technically would allow our version of the NSA (called the FRA) to monitor all telephone and computer traffic. This has upset a lot of people who feel that an Orwellian society is just around the corner.

Myself, I have suspected that there is more to it than that, a hidden reason that the politicians cannot talk about openly. So when I found information that about 80 per cent of all Russian Internet and telephone cable traffic goes through Sweden, things got clearer. This is what the FRA is after. But of course Swedish authorities cannot say this officially.

Anyway, I wrote a column about it in my newspaper on June 23rd, but it didn't make the big national headlines. But today, one of Sweden's largest daily newspapers - Svenska Dagbladet - made this a big "scoop" and suddenly it was national news. I guess something isn't deemed news if it's published in a regional newspaper. And I'm pretty convinced that this "national news guy" took the information from my column, but without crediting me...

[Distracted]

Plagiarism sucks.

[Alelou]

That's pretty typical. You don't have a press association, or somewhere you guys all hop on and comment so you can get your suspicions out there? Here it could become a discussion point at Romanesko or gawker or media bistro or whatever. If nothing else you could point out your paper ran with the story FIRST.

In the run-up to the Iraq War one of the only serious attempts by American media to cover the story of how flawed the intelligence was came from the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, which serves local papers, not the national papers of record. And they were mostly ignored, except by the government itself. Here's some of the relevant transcript from Frontline on PBS:

JAY ROSEN, Assoc. Prof. of Journalism, NYU: The way that the press was sold and spun and turned around and just fooled by the White House in the run-up to the war represents more than just a missed story. How can one say that we have a watchdog press after a performance like that?

Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 2002: "OFFICIALS' PRIVATE DOUBTS ON IRAQ WAR"

NARRATOR: In fact, there was some WMD reporting that did get the story right.

CLARK HOYT, Knight Ridder Washington Editor, 1999-`06: What we were doing was following reporting. And good solid reporting was telling us one thing, and that's what we wrote.

NARRATOR: Clark Hoyt was Knight Ridder's Washington editor during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

CLARK HOYT: What we were hearing, from very good sources, was really nothing has changed with Iraq.

NARRATOR: But as they continued their skeptical reporting, Hoyt says they began to feel heat from the government.

CLARK HOYT: Someone in the Defense Department called our reporter a communistic Bolshevik. Others said, "You know, all you guys have in this town is your reputation and your credibility, and we're going to get you. We're going to get that."

San Jose Mercury, September 7, 2002: "LACK OF STRONG EVIDENCE CLASHES WITH WHITE HOUSE WARNINGS"

CLARK HOYT: I will say, at times, it seemed very lonely because you kept looking around and saying, "Where's everybody else?"

[Escriba]

That sucks, KTR. I understand your anger (that you diplomatically describe as been "a bit ticked off".) Knowing that you noticed something before everyone else makes you feel better?

CLARK HOYT: Someone in the Defense Department called our reporter a communistic Bolshevik.

I didn't know there was another type of Bolshevik

[Asso]

That sucks, KTR. I understand your anger (that you diplomatically describe as been "a bit ticked off".) Knowing that you noticed something before everyone else makes you feel better?

CLARK HOYT: Someone in the Defense Department called our reporter a communistic Bolshevik.

I didn't know there was another type of Bolshevik

EH EH!

[Alelou]

It's so QUAINT! I don't think people have used that term to try to intimidate anyone since the Nixon administration or maybe a little bit the Reagan administration. In fact, it was probably one of those guys.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

That's pretty typical. You don't have a press association, or somewhere you guys all hop on and comment so you can get your suspicions out there? Here it could become a discussion point at Romanesko or gawker or media bistro or whatever. If nothing else you could point out your paper ran with the story FIRST.

Well, I phoned both the national TV station and the our news agency (we only have one with a de facto monopoly; it's a small country) and told them. The TV news apparently yanked the segment, which had aired this morning, from the evening news (at least I didn't see anything about it). It remains to be seen how the news agency will handle it. Then I posted on my blog, which got linked to from the news article in that other paper. And despite me being on vacation I wrote I small piece about it for tomorrow's paper (my newspaper).

The thing is, I cannot prove that that other reporter took the news from me. But a lot of the reasoning were very similar.

[Alelou]

Well, at least you got to make the point that you got there first.

I have a new whine: My kid has Lyme Disease. One of his mosquito bites I'd failed to zero in on turned out to have the characteristic 'target' pattern and his weird up-and-down fever was completely in keeping with that diagnosis. And it's very common around here, unfortunately, because of all the frickin' deer ticks. So for the next three weeks he's on doxycycline and can't go out in the sun.

It could be worse. We caught it early. I wasn't sure of my job situation so I didn't enroll him in camp, and we don't leave for Florida until next month. So he'll just have to sit tight at home.

The bite was under his arm but I feel like a bad mommy that I didn't notice. I was also a bad mommy not checking him for ticks. On the other hand, the kid is 13, so I feel like a bad mommy if I do get too involved in looking at the kinds of places ticks end up. But nagging him and my husband continually, "Did you check for ticks?" is clearly not enough.

Guess I should be more like a monkey mom.

[Bether6074]

Oh no! You did say that you caught it early so that is very good. Don't blame yourself. The ticks ARE all over up here. I hope he feels better soon.

[Alelou]

Yeah, Rensselaer County is way up there in the stats for this one. I've taken ticks off him and me before, but never when they've really burrowed in for a day or more as this one clearly had time to do. We never even saw it. Gah!

[Distracted]

Yep. As the mother of an Eagle scout, I can tell you.... ticks just LOVE to hide in places that teenaged boys won't let their mom see unless they're dying. Even if their mom is a doctor.

[CX]

You know, I've only ever had a tick get me in my bathing suit area once, and that was this summer, years after the last camp-out I'd ever gone on. But ticks have been pretty bad this year because it was so dry this spring.

[Bether6074]

Once my youngest had one on her head. She was only 1 1/2 years old at the time and I never saw it because of her hair. We couldn't give her the preventative antibiotics because she was deathly allergic to both kinds the doctors recommended. We just watched her and hoped. Luckily she never came down with it. I've had them on my back, arms, legs...nasty things.

[JadziaKathryn]

Is it me, or is the North American tick plague getting worse every year?

[Bether6074]

There are definitely lots of deer up this way. My husband should know...he's hit 7 (and now must deal daily with the associated pain from all of the accidents) while driving to work.