Journalistic arrogance personified

Posted by: Sister Toldjah on October 25, 2007 at 11:14 am

It’s not a good day for the Sacramento Bee, as the blog post one of their reporters (Bobby Caina Calvan, from their Baghad bureau) wrote (which looks like its been deleted) about a soldier in Iraq who had never heard of the Knight Ridder news organization, has generated widespread attention for the arrogance it personifies from the MSM. You can read the recaptured, unedited post here, and background on the post here.

Calvan’s faux “bravado” may have earned him high praise from his liberal media colleagues, but from a PR standpoint he’s not doing the MSM any favors with regards to the well-founded belief that the media is comprised primarily of anti-war/anti-military agenda-driven journalists.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Trackbacks

13 Responses to “Journalistic arrogance personified”

Comments

  1. Lissa says:

    ST, there’s been a lot of discussion about this in the blogosphere, but the part I found most interesting was at LGF. An astute commenter notes another insight into MSM Business-As-Usual, pointing out a blogpost that details how a story was CREATED — we’re talking “the story that was already being composed in my mind” followed by “We would have to gather the details by telephone. We would have to write around what we could not get.” Since Calvan’s taken down his blog you’ll have to rely on the excerpts, but it’s pretty amazing. LINK

  2. Ryan says:

    Amazing how a comments section that long is so united against him.. what a complete jerk.

  3. G-Monster says:

    I read the story and the comments on Bobby Calvans blog. He sounds like a typical mediot. I don’t know Knight Ridder either. And it sounds like a joke name.

  4. sanity says:

    George Bush has competition now.

    According to the media, Global Warming is to blame for everything now – not George Bush.

    Sen. Reid: ‘One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming’…

    Global Warming is to blame for hurricanes

    Global Warming is to blame for increased Temperatures

    Global Warming is to blame for deaths of .

    Global Warming is to blame for tornados.

    ect ect ect

    The sad thing is we are supposed to be a technological society, that rely on facts, hard facts for scientific discovery.

    We have not seen ‘hard facts’ that justify this reaction.

    It is sad that we cannot seem to come together and say, let’s get to the bottom of this before we cause mass hysteria.

    Has Global Warming become the new ‘religon’?

  5. PCD says:

    Posters over a Patterico’s Pontifications have screen shots of the originals.

    Calvan is so stupid and arrogant that Al Qaeda thinks he’s more of a weapon against us than a video of him being beheaded and begging for his life would be.

  6. sanity says:

    sorry screwed up the link accidentally – could you fix for me please ST, be much appreciated.

  7. Fixed, sanity.

    Did you post this in the right thread? I did one on global warming and Reid yesterday …

  8. Lissa – I’ll check it out. Thanks :)

  9. docweasel says:

    I’ve saved the entire page of Calvan’s post with all the comments
    LINK

    I’ve also posted some emails I exchanged with Bobby Calvan, where he seems genuinely contrite, -right before he took the entire blog down :P

    Also, I posted an email defending him from someone claiming to be a colleague, from the SacBee server so may be legit. Just more grist for the mill.

  10. Great White Rat says:

    From docweasel’s archive post:

    My visits to the Green Zone are always a joy when I pass through checkpoints manned by Peruvian troops, with whom I have established a rapport. Sure, they are sticklers for rules,

    Except, apparently, for rules about the credentials you need to get into the Green Zone.

    The Americans, however, are the absolute worst.

    In other words, the American troops do observe the rules, and really do enforce security.

    But I’ll bet the mortgage money that if this sniveling little twit comes under fire from AQ, he’ll run to the Americans for protection, not the Peruvians.

    If we wanted to use our cell phones, we would have to make the far walk beyond the barricades and razor wire. We would have to put ourselves in danger by standing out in the middle of downtown Baghdad where I could become a potential target.

    Unlikely, unless AQ’s started deliberately shooting their allies.

    I asked him how he could not possibly know that Knight Ridder was one of the country’s largest newspaper chains.

    Shorter Calvan: “I am The Center Of The Universe…”

    “I thought you said you also knew the Miami Herald” I retorted.

    “We’re bigger than the Journal” I replied. “You never heard of Knight Ridder?”

    “…and I play with sock puppets.”

    Why don’t you call? That’s your job, isn’t it?” I made it known that I was jotting down his name.

    No, his job, right about then, was keeping unsavory characters out of the Green Zone. He’s lucky I wasn’t the soldier, or he’d have been face down on the ground with a rifle against his head while we waited for security to haul him off.

    The funny part is that TCOTU really thinks he’s important, pulling this “do you know who I am” nonsense like a discount store John Kerry.

    Ryan’s right, by the way. It’s been many moons since 200 comments were posted on a thread and every single one of them was critical of the original post. Truly an astounding feat of imbecility.

  11. forest hunter says:

    I thought the same thing GWR. Now THAT is MORE than a consensus!

  12. Great White Rat says:

    After a few days of being beaten senseless by the entire blogosphere, Bobby’s reactivated his site with a half-hearted apology .

    Apprently he felt the need to regurgitate the obligatory “I support the troops” message.