Al-jazeera reports that some Pirates in Somalia had some fatally bad luck

Six members of a group of Somali pirates who hijacked and later released a Saudi-owned oil tanker are reported to have drowned along with their share of a $3m ransom. The pirates were among eight men whose boat overturned off the coast of Kenya in a storm as they left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff that ended on Friday, a pirate and a relative of one of the dead men said.

“Six of our boys perished at the sea while coming from the released Saudi supertanker,” Mohamed Said told the AFP news agency.

“The small boat that was carrying those killed and eight who survived was overloaded and at high speed, we have been told by the survivors.

“They were afraid of a chase from outsiders [foreign naval forces] who invaded Somalia waters,” he said.

The group’s $300,000 share of the ransom was also lost, he said.

IFJ: Journalists Blast Israeli Pressure On Journalists

IFJ - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the world of journalism to raise its voice in protest over Israeli government pressure on media trying to cover the Gaza conflict. The Government has imposed a blockade on the world’s media trying to report on the crisis inside Gaza.

The IFJ call comes as another Palestinian journalist was reported killed - the fourth victim of recent Israeli military action in Gaza. Eyhab Al Wahidi , who worked as a cameraman for the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation in Gaza, was killed with his wife and mother in law yesterday when Israeli troops shelled their home in Gaza city. The family children were injured.

“The media crisis in Gaza has become intolerable,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “The systematic manipulation and control of media trying to report on Gaza and the casualties being sustained inside the territory require a concerted response from the world’s media.”

MEDIA COVERAGE OF GAZA: Peace Activist Avi Avnery writes from Israel:

Nearly seventy years ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.

Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.

IN THIS WAR, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the Israeli army - with its airplanes, gunships, drones, warships, artillery and tanks - and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a thousand, perhaps one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite.

Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story, not to mention the daily demonstrations of the Israeli peace camp. The rationale of the Israeli government (“The state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets”) has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are a retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all.

Only when the horrible scenes from Gaza started to appear on Western TV screens, did world public opinion gradually begin to change.

Israel’s Supporters Encouraged to Use Videos as Part of Lobbying Effort

“Everyone is asking what is it that we can do to help Israel. Here is something very easy. In the last 2 days, Israelis have released great videos on YouTube.com so their message can offset the Arab propaganda around the world, which wants to stop Israel from protecting its citizens. Help get these messages out to everyone. Our own Jewish community, our Christian friends, the White House, President-elect Obama’s people, federal, state & local politicians, business people, etc. Please send these messages out as quickly as possible to help Israel in order to give enough time to finish the job. Email to everyone and anyone you know. We have all complained that Israel suffers from a lack of good PR. This time, the are doing it right and we need to help. Video: The children of Sderot want missile fire to stop! and another video: Let’s Play Pretend.

• WATCH THIS LISTENING POST REPORT FROM ALJAZEERA: Focus: Media Coverage of Gaza

Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post): On Media and the Bailout

Have you heard what’s going on with the government’s almost trillion-dollar bailout and how your money is being spent? Do you know all you need to know about who’s managing all that taxpayer money — and how effectively it’s being used?

Not if you’re getting your news from cable TV. Judging by where the media are focusing their attention, you’d think the Blago/Burris/Reid and Kennedy/Paterson/Cuomo soap operas are the biggest issues facing the nation — and that little thing about the potential collapse of the world’s largest economy is just a sideshow.

Why have the media shown such relatively little interest in the utter lack of transparency about the bailout? Is it because they are still in campaign mode — addicted to small bore, quick burn-out stories?

The time has come to recalibrate. As Obama transitions to governing mode, so should the press. Admittedly, governing stories aren’t usually as sexy as campaign stories — but the reason we cared so much about the campaign in the first place was to get to the governing.

• An Editor Murdered in Sri Lanka

Nalaka Gunawardene writes about the murder of editor Lasantha Wickramatunga

ADDRESS FROM THE “IGLOO:” Palin Surfaces, Attacks Media

Sarah, “you betcha, I‘m running” Palin or as Dick Cavett bestowed upon her the sobriquet, “The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla,” [hilarious read] was back in the news — AGAIN — this weekend promoting a right wing documentary on Barack Obama, HowObamaGotElected.com.

NOTE: Cavett wrote [linked above] –“And, she [Palin] concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)”

Here’s a report from Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald “Unbearable Mama Grizzly clawing way to Oval Office

Like a Nixonian Nanook of the North, Sarah Palin emerged from her igloo this week whining, griping, giving me an excuse to trash her again and you an excuse to call me unspeakable names in the comment section beneath this story online.

It’s a win-win all the way around!

This time, sympathetic and conservative talk show host John Ziegler interviewed Nanook (I stole that from Ground Zero of Palin hatin’, MSNBC) for a documentary on the 2008 race. As of yesterday, the nine-minute clip on YouTube had nearly 750,000 hits, proving that mama “grizzly,” as she called herself, remains irresistible.

We just can’t get enough. She’s like Elvis come back from the dead!

Anyway, looking radiant in her trademark rimless glasses and a pretty peach suit, Sarah Smile hid her simmering rage beneath cheerful “you betchas” while fricasseeing just about everybody - including the campaign staff of John McCain, the guy who made her career.”

Music Video of the Day: “Happy 74th Birthday” - If I can Dream

LETTER

Jim Houle writes:

Your Op-Ed piece is good. We have to keep our eye on Obama and continue to call him on his transgressions from the path he initially seemed to be following back in the campaign. To that end, we started www.Obama-Watch.us on Election Day.

Dissecting The Dissector

I recently sent a pen pal of mine in Ohio a copy of my book Plunder. He sent back a picture with the notes he has taken. I brace …

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE WINS GOLDEN GLOBE: And the Winner is.

Interesting isn’t it that foreign correspondents who rarely get heard or seen in US media put on this major awards show which all the celebs flock to? I have read many reports suggesting it is a bogus group, kept alive and prospering by NBC. Who knows more?

The news keeps coming but I must be going so I have to leave it here. The problem with weekends is that I have material from Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I am sure some of you will find all of this too much but I can’t get enough.

Your letters always welcome. Write dissector@mediachannel.org