BS-ometer hits the jackpot on story of naive Iraqi teen who made that quixotic trip to Iraq
By Aussiegirl
Northeast Intelligence Network exposes the true background of the Hassan family and the not-so-innocent trip of their 16-year-old son Farris to Iraq. Shades of Berhooz in "24" -- this family is a dead ringer for that family.
Check out dad's ties to one of those phony Middle East "charities", check out dad's use of an alias, how about Farris (aka Behrooz) Hassan's meetings with Hezbollay in Beirut. A regular little journalism struck innocent youth -- ya! Funny that all those star struck reporters and reporterettes didn't dig up this information. Instead, as usual, the blogosphere digs up the truth.
Northeast Intelligence Network - News
18 January 2006: Farris HASSAN, the 16-year-old Pine Crest student from Fort Lauderdale who left the comforts of his $4 million family home on December 11 for Iraq, claimed that he made the trip to put his lessons of his “immersion journalism” class into practice, and selected Iraq out of humanitarian concerns for the Iraqi people. His story quickly caught the attention of the media, who portrayed this young man as adventurous but naive, and his worried parents clueless to his intentions until they received an e-mail from him when he was in Kuwait. Upon his return home, he would certainly face the consequences from his concerned parents, despite his ostensibly altruistic intentions.
With all of the reporters covering the story, however, it appears that no one did any research into the background of the Hassan family, or made any attempts to verify the young man’s story. If they had, they might have been compelled to ask some very basic – but extremely important questions.
posted by Aussiegirl @ 10:46 PM
1 Comments:
Nice post Aussiegirl, your “BS-ometer” seems to be working just fine!
This story and the way it was reported is exemplary of the half-baked, effort that pass for “journalism” in this country as driven by the ceaseless 24-hour news cycle. Throwing something incomplete at the screen or half done onto the front page has become the norm and not the exception even though the shelf life of a story would support a more diligent effort.
The herd mentality then takes hold and every body is regurgitating the same incomplete story. Having already been “scooped” they have no desire to expend any further effort to dig deeper. The MSM also count on “the public” not having the requisite attention span to demand better, and point out their shoddy work. Their falling ratings and readership should tell them they have a problem, but the media bigwigs will continue misinterpreting what the ratings mean and never take the time to correct the errors that are leading to their inexorable decline.
The “new media” will continue to hold their feet to the fire for as long as they/we have the freedom to do so.
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