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U.S. Media Blames Santa Monica College Professor for Burma Web Blackout
This afternoon, a news story attributed to Hollywood Reporter claimed: "L.A. professor triggers Myanmar Web shutdown." We're all too used to the sensationalist tendencies of today's media, but this headline is completely unfair and potentially devastating for Ryan McMillen, professor of English at Santa Monica College (or as the accuse-then-verify media reported, "professor of history").
The story isn't on the Hollywood Reporter Web site but it is credited as such by Reuters, WashingtonPost.com, and -- Holy Broken News -- it's the most viewed story on Yahoo!.
McMillen is probably not the best professor in SMC's English department. He's certainly not the easiest, however he is among the hottest according to RateMyProfessors.com.
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Why are these major news outlets using McMillen as a scapegoat for their incompetent coverage and inability to educate their audience?
McMillen received a video of last week's killing of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai. The Myanmar dictatorship claimed responsibility for Nagai's murder at point-blank range.
In an attempt to shed light on the 19-year Burma/Myanmar dictatorship's suffocation of freedom and killing of civilians, he forwarded the clip to CNN I-Report. Since -- at least according to the American Media -- the U.S. is the center of the world, McMillen's submission of the video led directly to the Myanmar dictatorship's shutting down of the Internet.
Read the headline again. An "LA Professor" -- not a fascist dictatorship -- charged with breaking the Internet? By the Hollywood Reporter?!?
Prof. McMillen is granted one quote -- albeit buried -- in which his predilection for evil shines through:
"The feeling of being just the conduit for a video of this power and importance -- a video which so starkly shows the depravity to which men will sink when compelled by a fascist state to follow orders -- was, truthfully, a feeling of power in itself."
To the gallows! Next, a Fox News special report: Why citizen journalism is the world's biggest threat to our freedoms.
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