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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.
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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This is such bullshit. He does the right thing and is getting blamed for this. Fuck, this makes me angry.
"Bullshit" is precisely the word. I put in a call to the Hollywood Reporter earlier to see what up, fwiw.
Wow, my bf and I were just complaining about the same headline this evening. If only college professors were that influential...
The Japanese journalist is shot point blank, the Burmese/Myanmar military "claims responsibility," i.e., admits guilt, and this English teacher is guilty because he shares the video with CNN?
During the Vietnam war, which some people of that gen are still fighting and arguing about, when a Vietnamese soldier (was it north, the VietKong? or I think, a South -- good guy -- soldier, which made it worse) was shown killing pointblank a barefoot villager fleeing the scene of a massacre, that was considered a huge turning point in the war and reason to stop it amidst major, major protests.
NOW this situation is totally upside-down. China gets away with turning the truth upside down like this, but Myanmar/ Burma isn't even a rich country, to the contrary, its dirt-poor and the military gets by on pandering to other dictatorships and a lucrative drug trade. So WHY do they get this huge pass on their murderous tyranny (old=fashioned as that sounds), when even the N. Korean dictator, the Iranian jerk who kills off gays so they can say they don't have any, and so on, at least get the moral finger pointed at them, even if no one bothers to do anything.
Have people become really stupid because with so much blogging taking over the media, there is no accountability or knowledge on the part of many who run these blogs -- some being downright idiots? Where DOES all the stupidity come from? That's not an idle question -- as we see here, stupidity and ignorance of current events and history leads to judgment on the wrong people, the very ones who are trying to be a force for good.
If a thousandth of the energy spent on the Mayor/ Mirthala story had been expended on what's going on in the world and why, this couldn't be happening.
I guess we're not allowed to use the word "fascist" to describe anything in this world. It hits too close to home.
So let's all shut our eyes, mouths, and ears. We are irritating the powers that be. Good.
Pissed in Pasadena,
This is ridiculous. This is a spiteful attack against a decent and caring human being who only did what he thought was right with the information he had. It is not just or fair to put any blame upon him whatsoever.
This is ridiculous. It is such a shame that when a decent and kind human being such as him who passed along some important information to CNN has gotten treated this way. It is horrible to see how the media can twist things around to make someone's good intentions look bad.