In what will definitely go down as a huge media blunder for the year, the coverage of last night's "rescue" of 12 miners from a West Virginia coal mine is "tragically on display," News.com's Scott Ard informs - and will be forever, most likely. In case you haven't heard about this, there were reports on Wednesday morning that 12 miners that were trapped in a mine were found alive - information that was passed on to the families of the miners, as well as the news media. Unfortunately, the timing of the information coincided somewhat with the printing times for many newspapers, and many front pages this morning heralded the rescue of these individuals in almost-but-not-quite war font. Unfortunately, the (mis)information about the rescue was rescinded just hours later, leaving the families in disarray when it turned out that only one man survived, and egg on the face of big media. While Ard is right to point out that sites like that of NYTimes.com should have removed the wrong story from its front page, it is important to note that these stories shouldn't be deleted from sites as a whole. If not only for the many hyperlinks they surely attracted when the news was fresh, but to prove a point.

In my office cafeteria today, I saw the cover of USA Today carrying a similar headline, and it felt peculiar to look at. If anything, it's a reminder about how delicate the news business is and how the 24-hour news cycle can create a situation like this. It's easy for a broadcast or even online news site to "retract" its story and get the correct facts out there, but a newspaper takes 24 hours before someone sees the "fix" - that's tough.

This leads me back to something that "Imus in the Morning" producer Bernard McGuirk said on this morning's show about the situation - that the "silver lining" in this whole story is that the media looks bad for running with unconfirmed facts, and that it basically served them right. While I don't necessarily agree with that statement, because "checking your facts" could have been any reporter getting two individuals to confirm the story here, I can see where people might think that way. But here, even the government believed that these people had been saved.

The Free Press of Namibia has a column Friday that points out a difference between the American media's coverage of the latest audiotape believed to be from Osama bin Laden and the differing focus by the Arab media. While it is not surprising that there would be a variance in view in general between these two regions, it seems to be very specific in this case. The editorial states that Arab media is sticking to the oil-related points that bin Laden makes, while American outlets are making the Iraqi elections the 'highlight' of the tapes.

Some examples pulled from Google News:

CNN, "Bush: 'Stakes are clear' in Iraqi elections", December 29, 2004
CNN, "Purported bin Laden tape calls for Iraqi election boycott", December 27, 2004.
MSNBC, "Voice on tape is bin Laden, say U.S. investigators", December 28, 2004
NYPost, "Osama Tape Urges Iraqi Election Boycott", December 28, 2004

While this is in no way conclusive, it does appear that this particular batch of coverage does seem to focus on the elections - which are apparently the bulk of the content of the tape. It should be pointed out that a tape found on December 16 contained more of a push to harm the exports of oil to the U.S., and this tape merely "reiterated" the directive.

Sure, Al Jazeera leaves a lot to be desired, but if the Arab media is looking at one particular angle of a story, is it not worthy of coverage by American media? At the very least, it could offer some direction to our government as to the possibility of serious oil problems.

RatherBiased.com reports on the news that Asif Iqbal, a man who had his picture run on the August 4 news in a story about another man with the same name, may sue CBS for "falsely labeling him as terrorist suspect." This is not the first time Iqbal has had this problem - it stems from 2002, when another man with the same name, presumably the suspect that CBS intended to show on television, was labeled as a potential terrorist.

Brian Stelter over at TVNewser posts Tuesday about the training that CNN sports correspondents have gone through in preparation for their time covering the Olympics in Athens, Greece. According to a report from the UK's Independent, CNNers have gone through what is referred to as extensive 'hostile environment' training, which included what to do if a bomb explodes and "how to resist being taken hostage."

A few weeks ago, reporters from the Associated Press went through a simliar course prior to their venture to Greece. Staffers informed TMD that Centurion, which bills itself as "the world’s leading risk assessment training company," came in to do a one day workshop to teach the AP Olympic coverage team how to handle themselves when traveling overseas. Unfortunately, the one day workshop did not cover what to do if you are being kidnapped, so I'm not sure the AP will be quite as prepared as some other news organizations should anything unfortunate occur. Only the five day session covers these topics - Centurion calls it their "HEFAT," or Hostile Environments and Emergency First Aid Training. Further checking through Centurion's offerings brings you to the "Olympics Countdown" service, which does cover "personal awareness and security," but not HEFAT's "Hostage abduction and enduring captivity" session, in case you're interested.

[ed: Before you ask, it is indeed TVNewser day here at TMD, hehe.]

TVNewser has a two part piece on a discussion he had with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, currently in the Sudan. Part 1 / Part 2. Amanpour is concerned about the lack of news coverage "by American news organizations, especially television news organizations," on war, ethnic cleansing, and humanitarian issues currently occuring in the African nation.

LGF's Charles Johnson posts about what he claims is the Associated Press' "PC Blindfold" - not mentioning Muslims or Islam in an article describing suicide bombings on Friday in Uzbekistan. The article he links to doesn't carry the text he includes anymore, but the Yahoo!-carried story may have been updated since its original posting.

Though the story does state that the group was "allegedly linked to al-Qaida," this doesn't seem to be specific enough. I searched around for a good portion of the text of the article Johnson linked to, just to see if it looked different in various places. I found a few articles that seem to contain additional differences from the original, including items at the Sacramento Bee, the Moscow Times, ABC News, AZCentral.com, and others. Many of these articles do reference "Muslims" or some related terms. In fact, if you look around enough, you'll find multiple versions of the same article - some were obviously edited for space, etc - which, if you do any basic research on how newspaper articles are put together, you'll learn that many, many times details are put into an article that don't make it past the editor's desk. That's why the "Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them about what you told them." rule is in effect when writing an article.

In a related story, the top item on the FOXNews.com website on Sunday contains exactly zero references to "Islam" or "Muslims." The report, if you haven't read it already, describes an announcement that the 'chatter' from al Qaeda seems to offer details on very specific threats towards financial institutions and buildings in the New York/New Jersey area as well as Washington, D.C. The article was put together by Kelly Wright and Anna Stolley of Fox, plus the Associated Press.

Blindfold, indeed.

According to the television schedule for Tuesday, none of the major broadcast networks - CBS, NBC, ABC - will be showing convention coverage from 10pm on. This only seems to be the case for Tuesday, though, with everything starting right back up on Wednesday night.

Any word on why this is the case?

[update] Matt Sheffield from RatherBiased confirms that CBS would not be covering the convention Tuesday, and adds that this development "is unsurprising since the nets seem to be taking an even bigger ratings hit than ever."

CableNewser's Brian Stelter gets an email from a FOX News staffer who claims that reporting the news in an unbiased way is not the manner in which things are done at the network. We're not talking about the hosted talk shows now - this is the news reporting itself.

The Los Angeles Times' Tim Rutten asks a question about how the media will be viewed when they cover this year's presidential elections in a piece entitled "How far will media slide into partisanship?" Since election years typically bring a lot of viewers to television, radio and print news, we can expect viewers to have an eagle-eye on the media. Rutten wonders if the accusations of bias in the media and lack of trust by the public will continue to drive down the value of the press by America's citzens. I wonder if the number of eyeballs combined with the possibility of blatant partisanship will be one of many nails in the coffin that contains the public's trust for coverage outlets.

Oh, and did you notice the pointedness in the title of Rutten's article?

The National Review posts an excerpt today from L. Brent Bozell III's new book, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media.

So we're back to the bias issue, on which Bozell makes some very solid points that I wholeheartedly agree with. Some on the left do claim that there is a right-wing slant to media outlets, not one to the left. One example below:

How many times do we hear liberals cite Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, Robert Novak, Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, and so on, as evidence of the conservative "dominance" of the media? What these liberals know full well is that all of these conservatives are commentators, not reporters; their work appears in opinion columns and on TV or radio talk shows — not in news stories in our newspapers or on radio or television news programs. None reports news, but rather they all react to it analytically and, by necessity, with prejudice.

The people who make this claim with their backup being the number of conservative commentators are obviously misinformed. However, I do believe that there are so many right leaning talk show hosts - especially on the radio - that many people feel they don't have the opportunity to hear what the left has to say. This tends to lead into people claiming "bias" - they are clearly confused as to what is news and what is commentary. But to say that while conservative talk show hosts outwardly claim they are conservative, while liberal news media people will never claim to be liberal is kind of an unfair comparison. While we may all feel that Dan Rather, Peter Jennings or whomever are personally liberal or conservative, isn't the whole point that they aren't supposed to claim one or the other?

I think the other unfortunate point that Bozell misses here is that the media is inherently liberal in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way. It's not that there aren't any reporters/anchors/newspeople that are conservative, but what about the possibility that conservatives just don't make up as much of the future news media population in the first place, probably even pre J-school?

Back in May, I posted on this topic in response to something Daniel Drezner had been talking about in the blogosphere - i.e. the number of left vs. right bloggers of note. CableNewser's Brian Stelter made a great point then, and I'm going to post his quote again. He said, "Journalists tend to lean liberal, which makes sense -- journalists enter the biz hoping to change the world and make it better. That's a liberal notion, eh?" I would stand behind this comment for a long time - or at least until someone could absolutely talk me down from the ledge. If you feel otherwise, please tell me - you don't have to have chromosomal evidence to the contrary, but I think that it just happens to work out that way. Don't the same things hold true in other industries? Unionized workers tend to lean one way, while stockbrokers may lean another. We could go on about this all day, but I think it's a point that needs to be taken.

I also believe that if we're going to have "media watchdog" groups, then they need to go in nonpartisan. I haven't found one group yet that doesn't go in targeting the other side of the party lines. They might report sometimes on the same side they're on, but it's not their focus. Bozell's Media Research Center is clearly conservative (though it doesn't pretend not to be) while David Brock's Media Matters is definitely looking to debunk the right leaning portion of the media. So again - if you're going to play this game, then go in clean.

Oh, wait - you're having trouble doing that? Well, if you haven't noticed, it's because everyone has preconceived notions and thoughts that flow along party lines. You don't even have to be a voter or be interested in politics to have them. If you landed on the planet in 1999, you might think that all Democratic Presidents sleep with interns and that Republican governors liked to execute people. You would also decide which of these things you dis/agreed with and which you identified with - or didn't.

I just wish that people would stop spending so much time complaining about what the other side was doing and that they were biased (hell, start taking billboards out so we can all say "no, really?" while driving down the highway already), and do something about it. It's like we've built a cottage industry for liberals to go after conservative media and conservatives to do the opposite. For all the statistics of times that Al Gore was mentioned as being "annoying" and that George Bush was looked at like an "idiot" by the media, something constructive should have been proposed that the media needs to do by now. Hell, get News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, Tribune's Dennis FitzSimons, Gannett's Douglas McCorkindale and their contemporaries together in a room and say, "Look - the commentary is fine, but the overall tone of your news networks or newspapers needs to change. Op-ed is great - leave it. Chris Matthews - fine. Bill O'Reilly - fine. Just report the news as news. If someone complains that you skipped a story because they think you're biased, state your case in rebuttal. But report the news. Make 'Fair and Balanced' an actual term of reality and not a joke."

I firmly believe that if everyone would stop complaining and start acting, this "argument" would get a lot easier to stomach, rather than making people go "oh, another frigging bias book."

[Thanks to Notorious MiG for the heads up on Bozell's item]

Jason Vest of the Boston Phoenix discusses the recently "unmasked" author of Imperial Hubris, and asks why the author, "Mike," was even anonymous in the first place. The book, the second installment from this author, is a critical piece on America's ongoing "War on Terror," and has garnered quite a bit of media attention. A week ago, the New York Times' Douglas Jehl wrote about the book and its origins, pointing out that the CIA had no real problem with the author's work, and that "the book had been vetted to insure that it not include classified information." But still, there's the anonymity thing. It was widely reported that "Mike" was concerned about repercussions from Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda and that this was the reason for the lack of a full name on the cover of the book.

So while "Anonymous" has not confirmed or denied his identity, many Washington insiders have reportedly known the author's name for some time now, but have not printed it as of yet. Is it because the CIA or another government agency has stated that the aforementioned "fears" were an issue, or is it a way to avoid the issues raised by the Valerie Plame situation? If it's a safety issue that the press is citing, then they're doing so with no merit. Vest reports that the author - who he names as Michael Scheuer - doesn't want the anonymity, and that any suggestions that he did would be incorrect. His editor at Brassey's, Christina Davidson, went as far as to send the CIA a letter that stated "To say that our author must be kept in the shadows because he has expressed fears about al Qaeda retaliation is patently false and impugns his courage," and followed that by asking that they not continue to do so in the future.

Will Scheuer's name make its way into the mainstream press anytime soon, or will they take the CIA's statements as word? While the press has a reason to make sure its collective bread is buttered (in other words, to be in the loop), it'd be kind of curious to see if this identity keeps being passed over, especially if this book stays in the public eye.

Conservative News Service's Robert Bluey wrote a few days ago that while coverage of President Reagan's life and times were prolific a week ago, it wasn't quite as praiseworthy as many people think. He quotes his company's parent, the Media Research Center, as stating "most accolades from journalists noted Reagan's optimism and patriotism, not his policies." The issue most Americans are concerned about is not what was said, specifically, but if the almost 24-hour coverage of the President's passing was the proper thing to do.

The point that should be discussed here is that the television stations may have just gone wall to wall for two reasons: public interest and ratings. If the networks were as biased to the left as is usually discussed, then would they have kept this up all week long? While "watch groups" like the MRC and Media Matters are great, they have one strike against them - they can create bias about the "bias" they are seeing. The MRC is quoted in this article as saying "Liberals like to attack him on a range of smaller issues, like AIDS and homelessness and so-called budget cuts." I hadn't realized that people weren't entitled to criticize government leaders on issues where they believe there were problems. Have you found any "liberal" person who hasn't given Reagan the praise he was due for being absolutely instrumental in the fall of the Soviet Union? I certainly heard commentary about that every single day while the proceedings were going on in advance of the funeral services last Friday.

This is, of course, a two way street. Liberals will always complain that their leaders are harshly treated on various policies by conservatives, and said conservatives will do the same when their party leaders receive criticism. Following that vein is a quote from another MRC staffer, who said that "journalists' negative views of Reagan were largely based on ideological differences." While this is valid in that a journalist's opinion shouldn't come into play when reporting on a news story, aren't "ideological differences" the entire point between opinion-based television shows on networks, such as those of Bill O'Reilly and Larry King? Politics are full of "ideological differences" - it's why you have political parties in play in the first place, isn't it?

Yesterday it was discussed that President Clinton's new book would be über-hyped, but that was combined with the question of whether or not there would be a huge public/media outcry over the coverage, à la last week's funeral proceedings for President Reagan. According to Matt Drudge, the hype is in full effect, and will be televised.

Drudge posts a memo from Viacom (CBS' parent company) President of Programming, Steve Rivers, which outlines a "must carry" event on Infinity radio stations next week, during which former President Clinton will discuss his new book on air for 60 minutes. No, not that "60 Minutes." That's a whole different ball of wax - CBS will air a sit down with Dan Rather and Clinton this coming Sunday, June 20th.

So the one question that remains is whether or not the public and concerned media folk will let this get a free pass. As Matt Drudge would say, this is "developing..."

Last week, I discussed a story about the firing of one of Russia's more prominent television journalists in the wake of what seemed to be a government movement to keep an investigation off the airwaves. This week, the Sacramento Bee picks up a Christian Science Monitor article that talks about the broader scope of censorship in Russia.

The Monitor's Scott Peterson writes about threats towards broadcasters when they are following various stories and describes what some in human resources would describe as a "hostile work environment" in more ways than one.

The Glasnost Defense Foundation reports that 10 journalists were murdered, 96 assaulted, and 24 media offices attacked in 2003. Some 378 court cases were also brought - down slightly from more than 400 for each of the previous two years - and in 24 cases the plug was pulled on programs while on the air.

I'm sure they're just lining up at J-school after hearing about these statistics. Oh, wait. No one heard about them.

According to this article by Tim Karr at MediaChannel.org, the power went out in Italy today for two radio stations and a television station right around the time coverage was supposed to go on-air for a protest towards President Bush's visit to the Vatican. The two radio stations, Radio Città Aperta and Radio Onda Rossa had planned cover the protests. At 8:30am, Enel, the electric company, shut down the power leading to the transmitter for just under four hours, citing necessary repairs. Reportedly, no warning was issued to the stations before they lost power.

At first, I would suppose it could just be a coincidence, but the Italian Green Party called MP Paolo Cento stated it would conduct an inquiry on the stations' behalf.

The folks at RatherBiased.com write that last night's CBS News broadcast was a prime example of bias on the part of the media - or, more specifically, CBS anchorman Dan Rather. According to the piece, Rather led off the program with a story about Enron which contained some clips of ex-employees of the energy trading firm tossing would-be barbs at President Bush. Normally this wouldn't necessarily be an issue to lead off with, as it was reportedly an exclusive for CBS News - but the third story of the evening was about the new government that was chosen to take control of Iraq after June 30th. This obviously assumes that most Americans would put the Iraq story at the beginning of the program, which it was - at least on radio - for most of the day. Is this an example of bias or just CBS going with an exclusive to open their newscast because they can?

[update] As described by Lee in the comments, the Enron folk were not bashing Bush in the CBS piece, from what I can garner in from the transcript. The Prop posts details over at coffeegrounds for your reading pleasure.

Editor & Publisher's, Dave Astor writes today about columnist Cal Thomas' comments on Fox News a few days ago, where Thomas stated that the media censoring itself regarding the war might be something he'd agree with.

Thomas said voluntary censorship "might force some in the media who believe anything they know or can find out is deserving of publication to realize that not everything is -- and to focus on their responsibilities as citizens as well as their privileges as journalists, which in my view, are linked."

The first thing that comes to mind after reading this passage is the whole "flag pin" issue that came up in the journalism world shortly after 9/11. If you don't remember, many journalists were instructed to remove pins that a lot of Americans were wearing while they were on camera, because it was believed that wearing the pins took away objectivity as reporters and broadcasters.

As for the first part of the statement, about determining what is "deserving of publication," I have a little bit more agreement with it. A lot of people have complained about Fox News going bonkers with "news flash" items, with every single story deserving a headline at the bottom of the screen. That's probably a good example. Another would be the constant reporting of WMDs and other items all throughout the "major fighting" portion of the war - when none had actually been found. Fact checking wasn't exactly being done everywhere, was it....?

Instapundit brings up some points regarding media coverage that were made by Dallas Mavericks owner and blogger Mark Cuban on his Blogmaverick.com site. Glenn Reynolds says "They're churning out Granadas and Chevettes and telling us that we're idiots for complaining" in response to a reader's comments about the media industry.

Ain't that the truth. What do we know? Think about it this way - if everyone starts covering the Kobe Bryant case, won't the ratings end up being good for it overall, if we feel that people watch the television news to hear what is supposed to be important and relevant to them? If network television as a whole is sitting there thinking that the lack of not reporting on sarin shells being found in Iraq means it's a non-story and unimportant, then they are horribly mistaken. Unfortunately, I believe that this could actually be the case when it comes to selective reporting. Liberal outlets "skip" stories, conservated outlets do the same, and they both lose out when it comes to those who use the Internet to do their own fact-checking and reading.

And before you comment, I really don't mean to take a potshot directly at Fox News with my title - it just fit the thought process for how it seems the powers that be in the media world think, right, left, or otherwise centered.

Do the requests of the press and lack of "extraordinary circumstances" surrounding the details of a grand jury's decision to send Michael Jackson to trial for child molestation create a situation where the information should now become public? The BBC News picks up some recent notes on the happenings surrounding this upcoming trial. With recent high profile court cases like those of Martha Stewart, Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson causing a media stir, many people feel the fervor over details can not only taint a jury pool, but can create unfortunate situations for others involved, including witnesses and family members of those affected. Does freedom of press apply in this situation?

Edward Levenson of the Bucks County Courier Times writes about an event that took place in New Hope, Pennsylvania where media critics like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! were present to talk about the coverage of the war by the news media.

It reads like a true love fest [/sarcasm], but there were some salient points I could agree with. One came from Jeff Cohen of the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting group who said that "the television networks tried to outdo each other in flag-waving before the war in Iraq, instead of examining the rationale for the war." I can't say I disagree with that on the whole.

Over at mediachannel.org, Philip Smucker has some choice words for the American news media. After describing the state of affairs pre-9/11, he writes about how the media adopted whatever was fed to them as word when the "War on Terror" started.

The American media's record from 9/11 to 3/11 is not encouraging. Prior to the attacks on September 11th, 2001, the mainstream American news media gutted its foreign news coverage. News magazines and networks eliminated half of their overseas bureaus. Stories from distant lands virtually disappeared from front pages and 30-minute prime time TV news shows.

So it did not come as a surprise to everyone in the business that US media outlets were so ill-prepared for the ensuing war on terror. Eager to satisfy their domestic audience's anger and newfound patriotism, news organizations regularly portrayed the warriors on our side as do-no-wrong wonder boys and the killers on the other side as wild-eyed fanatics.

I think some of the points he makes about not capturing the highest level al Qaeda targets, including Osama bin Laden, are great. It's not so much that the allied forces didn't catch him, it's that we just kept hearing "nope, we don't have him" over and over again, never really finding out why. A few months pass, and the party (and I don't necessarily mean political party) line is "Well, we think they made it to Pakistan" or something like that. It's like people are so worried about being booted out of "embedded" journalist posts that they were tossing softballs at officials.

The spirit of the article seems to be that "the media", whoever they might be, really was so enamored with the opportunity to get some foreign-based news that they had left behind in years past, that they forgot to do one thing - really report on things and do a little digging. I understand that security is an issue, and you don't want people telling locations of soldiers on television, but some of the comments heard on television were just "blah blah blah" after the first six times you heard them, leaving us with nothing other than grainy night-vision camera images and bouncy cameraphone shots from the back of a Hum-vee.

Joshua Micah Marshall writes today about how George W. Bush gave a speech today where he alludes that the media coverage in late '02 and early '03 in advance of Gulf War II caused much of the "ill effects" on our economy, not necessarily the fact that we entered the war, among other things.

[via FreeSpeech.com]

MSNBC's Dan Abrams wrote about how people are always thinking that every big trial will be worse than the O.J. Simpson murder trial in his "Closing Argument" feature. He's definitely right.

Except I totally disagree with him on one point, when he says "this has nothing to do with the big bad media putting themselves in the middle of anything." For instance, both MSNBC and Fox News have had various people on in recent months talking about the Kobe Bryant rape trial, and the Laci Peterson murder trial, and there is always some host who asks "could this be bigger than O.J.?" to whatever pundit, attorney, or Court TV guest that comes on. I'd have to really look back at some transcripts to tell you who exactly, but I'm notorious for flipping around between Fox News and MSNBC in the 10:30-12:30 time frame at night, and know for a fact that it happens. It's self-fulfilling in my estimation.

It's not like ratings are driven because people call up news stations and say "make sure you cover this for six hours today". They cover it for six hours, it does well, so they continue to cover it for six hours every day. If it were "dial a topic", it'd be another story... I'm sure there are opinions that differ from mine on this topic, but I think that the media is just as much to blame as the American public for this "fear" of huge trials as we get celebrities and high profile individuals in court for various offenses.

A lot has been said in recent days about how the press has handled the declaration of Weapons of Mass Destruction "absolutely" being in Iraq, and that being the cause for allied troops to go in and depose Saddam Hussein - a lot of it has focused on an interesting occurrence, namely, Bill O'Reilly's comments this past Monday on Good Morning America where he did give somewhat of an apology, as promised last year on March 18th, on the same Good Morning America program. While many would characterize O'Reilly as a tried and true conservative (which he is), he did come across as a poster-boy for what the Bush administration was saying. In reality, he's just giving credit to the administration for their statements, taking them as truth and communicating as such and adding his own insights and opinion to straight journalism.

For some great coverage of the story as a whole, check out this article by Tom Regan at the Christian Science Monitor in today's "Daily Update". The article covers how a lot of the media outlets, especially television networks, bought 100% in to the words that were given to them by members of the Bush administration with regard to going into Iraq this past year and for some incidents dating back to attacking al Qaeda operations in 2001. At the same time, many foreign media outlets took the exact opposite direction, or were in some cases just generally distrustful of what governments were saying, creating a relationship that was probably more than uncomfortable for various network-to-network dealings.

[update: 2/12/04] The National Debate has a link to a story at the New York Observer that talks about the lack of Dr. Bob Arnot on NBC's recent reporting from Iraq. Arnot claims a bias at the network, and voiced his opinion to NBC News' boss, Neal Shapiro, in a detailed letter which the Observer obtained and posted portions of.