Friday, March 10, 2006

Daily Star writes about the blogosphere

I would like to thank Lysandra Ohrstrom of the Daily Star for writing a feature article on the Lebanese blogosphere. My only wish is that the article had been more inclusive and incorporated more input from bloggers other than Tony, myself and Angry Arab.

I would also like to make another comment; she appears to have attributed the following quote to me:

"There is no Lebanese cause to speak of. What cause? Unless you are talking about fraud, sectarianism, clerical interventions, daily political oscillations and fakeries. That is why the cause for me has always been ... Palestine and socio-economic justice ... everywhere."

I've just checked my archives and made sure that I never wrote such a statement. I believe Angry Arab is the source of those comments.

Lysandra also committed the typical American error of treating "Abu" as a middle name and completely discarding it while writing her article. Therefore, she refered to me as "Hassan" rather than "Abu Hassan," and Asaad Abu Khalil as "Khalil" rather than "Abu Khalil." Of course, the fault does not lie with her, but rather with the Daily Star's editors who should have picked up on that common American error, and fixed it.


ANYWAYS... For those of you visiting the Lebanese Blogosphere for the first time, please visit Open Lebanon. It is a clearing house of Lebanese blogs, where you get links to the latest entries from some of the best blogs, including Beirut Spring, Lebanon Political Journal , From Beirut to the Beltway, Letters Apart, Lebanonesque, French Eagle, Jamal’s Propagandas Site, Cedars Awakening and Ms. Levantine .

Addendum: It turns out that I can't read properly, and that Lysandra did not attribute the quote to me, but I just didn't get it! Thanks to some of the commenters who pointed that out.

Addendum 2: Rampurple has published a very interesting entry on what some may term an "Orange lie" at the Lebanese Blogger Forum. It's great! Go check it out!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

She did NOT attribute the quote to you. Read her (lame) article again

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... I could swear that last quote was attributed to Raja, aka "Hassan", last night when I read it.

JoseyWales said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
JoseyWales said...

Did she mention that a lot of us think the Daily Star blows?

Didn't think so.

More important, she missed the STORY which is "blogging on/in Lebanon", not the political opinions of Raja, Tony and Angry Arab.

Anonymous said...

Raja and Kais' first impression was right.
The initial Internet version, published around midnight, as well as the "official" paper version of the Daily Star, attribute the quote to Raja.
They edited the online version later to correct the mistake.
The Daily Star badly needs good editors.
Anyway, the article misses the important issues. Who cares about Abou Khalil and Badran's hatreds and personal issues ? I would have liked an article about bloggers contribution to a new democratic Lebanon.

Master Blaster said...

Don't worry, Raja, she terribly misquoted me instead! In fact, it's so bad that there's one paragraph that's completely incomprehensible! In other places she just combined statements from different contexts, or separated comments from one context. Sigh... Oh well...

Anonymous said...

blogs are like personal medias right now, exposing multiple of opinion , and therefore a threat to "traditional" medias

what i like is the confrontation of idea and opinions

she missed that point in her article