Posts filed under ‘Print Media’
Obama Calls Out Lazy Media, Fox and Limbaugh
(Image via CBSNews.com)
I like the plain truth President Obama told Steve Kroft in his 60 Minutes interview tonight:
You know, Steve, I gotta tell you, the — you guys in the press are incorrigible. I was literally inaugurated four days ago. And you’re talking about elections four years from now.”
And I like the plain truth he told The New Republic too:
One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.
Memo to Obama and all Democrats: Keep it up, hammer away at it, drive it home and for God’s sake, don’t let up!
The New York Times Reports Fact About Israel, But Then Changes its Mind
The lock the Israeli lobby in the United States has on the discussion of Israel’s occupation of Palestine is truly astonishing. Check out what the New York Times — a newspaper which says it offers “the world’s finest journalism” — did today when it told the truth (oops!) about that:
Screenshot #1. Note the headline: “Palestinians Set Up Camp in Israeli-Occupied West Bank Territory:”
(Image via ElectronicIntifada.net)
Uh oh. Israeli-occupied? That’s basically banned language around here because Israel doesn’t do things like that, or so “the worlds finest” journalists would have us believe. Look at how the headline reads now: “Palestinians Set Up Tents Where Israel Plans Homes:”
(Image via the NYTimes.com)
(More.)
Florida Newspaper Takes Poll: Is Hillary Clinton Faking Her Head Injury?
OMG. I just got off the phone with my 82-year-old aunt. We talked about a whole bunch of things, one of them was the Internet and computers and iPads. She said she “played” with her daughter’s iPad a few months ago but otherwise doesn’t use any computer or Internet technology and, as a matter of fact, she likes getting her news from a good old-fashioned newspaper, specifically the Palm Beach Post which she said is “really very good.”
So I decided to mosey on over to the Palm Beach Post’s website to check it out and lo and behold, look what I found, a poll asking this question:
Is Hillary Clinton really ill?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was unavailable to testify before congressional hearings into the attack on the U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, because she suffered a concussion in a fall.
Some critics of the Obama administration, however, expressed skepticism. U.S. Rep. Allen West, for one, said he thought she was suffering from the “Benghazi Flu.”
Initial investigations of the Benghazi attacks, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died, have been very critical of high-level State Department officials, several of whom have resigned or been reassigned.
However, official reports have not traced the blame up to Mrs. Clinton’s level.
Critics expressing doubt as to whether Mrs. Clinton really was ill have said they think she is trying to duck in-depth questioning about State Department failures.
[...]
What do you think? Is Hillary Clinton really ill? Take our poll.
Your takeIs Hillary Clinton really ill?YesNo
Oy, The Second Presidential Debate
Heading into this new week I’m already exhausted because all the attention in the US media is on Wednesday night’s second presidential debate. Nobody knows what will happen of course. It’s all about speculation. Predictions. What ifs. Could be. This or that.
We’re watching talking heads justify their own existence and their own paychecks.
A friend of mine had some simple advice for me last week: Don’t watch any of the debates so you can…sleep.
I’m thinking she’s right.
And another thing: So much is going on in the world but in order to save/make money, the MSM has laid off their foreign correspondents and the campaign is all they’ve got.
So, here we are. The Debates. That’s it.
If only we could train them to to think we care about real news.
NYT: Sources Can’t Review and/or Edit Quotes
Good: New York Times Bans Quote Approval
A New York Timesmemo that went out this afternoon says that “demands for after-the-fact quote approval by sources and their press aides have gone too far.”
The practice risks giving readers a mistaken impression that we are ceding too much control over a story to our sources, In its most extreme form, it invites meddling by press aides and others that goes far beyond the traditional negotiations between reporter and source over the terms of an interview.
“Starting now,” the memo continues, “we want to draw a clear line on this. Citing Times policy, reporters should say no if a source demands, as a condition of an interview, that quotes be submitted afterward to the source or a press aide to review, approve or edit.”
How newspapers like the New York Times ever started letting sources approve and/or edit their quotes is beyond me. I guess it was pressure from those same sources who threatened to make themselves unavailable to reporters if they didn’t and the acquiescence of reporters who were desperate to compete for “scoops” and “breaking news.”
That said, this is good news. I hope the Times sticks to it and every paper in the country follows.
The Washington Post Has Its Head in the Sand
You may have heard that Washington, D.C. experienced a horrific wind and rainstorm on Friday evening. I heard the mayor there say it was like a hurricane without the warning and the ability to prepare.
Power is out to thousands of homes.
Climatologists are linking the storm, known as a derecho, to climate change so the irony of these two side-by-side Washington Post headlines couldn’t be more profound:
(Image via @CCAN on Twitter)
On the left, “AN OIL RUSH UP NORTH” and on the right, “Outages could last for days.”
Our kids will see this as an iconic example of how the powers that be were silent even while evidence of climate changed slapped them upside the head.
Be Advised, Campbell Brown is Married to Dan Senor
Former CNN and NBC anchor, Campbell Brown
has an op-ed in tomorrow’s New York Times titled: Obama: Stop Condescending to Women:
WHEN I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. In numerous appearances over the years — most recently at the Barnard graduation — he has made reference to how women are smarter than men. It’s all so tired, the kind of fake praise showered upon those one views as easy to impress. As I listen, I am always bracing for the old go-to cliché: “Behind every great man is a great woman.”
Some women are smarter than men and some aren’t. But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.
You get the idea.
At the end of the piece, the Times identifies Brown as “a former news anchor for CNN and NBC.”
I think readers should know something else: Brown is married to Dan Senor,
who most famously served as Chief Spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq and as a Senior Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer in 2003 and 2004. Now he is the “foreign policy adviser” to Mitt Romney and the Romney campaign.
So here we have the wife of the foreign policy adviser to the Romney campaign writing an op-ed in the New York Times saying, essentially she’s sick of President Obama’s condescending tone when it comes to women but the reader isn’t told of her connection to the Romney campaign?
That’s wrong.
FYI – “Journalists Security Guide”
I’m putting this “Journalists Security Guide” up in part to save it for myself because I haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail yet but also to help throw it out onto the Internets.
The world isn’t safe for journalists anymore. Countries across the globe — the United States included — are instituting measures to restrict the freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
The international Committee to Protect Journalists issued these new, detailed (and frightening) guidelines this month as to how journalists can protect themselves in areas it never occurred to me they needed protecting:
Go to the original version here. There’s more.
It’s incredible what real journalists do to bring us news. Imagine being so passionate about what’s going on somewhere that you’re willing to do this:
(Image via CPJ.org)
Ugh. Bravo to real journalists everywhere. Jeremy Scahill, Sharif Kouddous and Tim Pool are among the best of the best. Fingers crossed for them.
The Corporate Media Pushing Romney For Prez
“Liberal media” my ass:
Romney uses a teleprompter?
Mitt Romney complained last week of a “vast left-wing conspiracy” in the media, but a study published today revealed the presumptive Republican nominee has enjoyed more positive press coverage than President Obama in recent months.
The Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that negative coverage of Obama outweighed positive coverage in each of 15 weeks between Jan. 2 and April 15. Romney, meanwhile, had six weeks of mostly positive stories and another four in which positive and negative coverage were roughly equal.
In fact, positive stories about the former Massachusetts governor have outnumbered negative ones almost 2-to-1 since the Feb. 28 Michigan primary, which Romney won.
No “Liberal Media,” Ahmadinejad Did Not Threaten To Wipe Israel Off the Map
Okay folks, let’s put this lie to bed once and for all:
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor acknowledged on Al Jazeera English (4/14/12) that Iranian leaders have never called for Israel to be “wiped” off the map.
Meridor agreed with interviewer Teymoor Nabili’s suggestion that the supposed remarks were never actually made; Iranian leaders, Meridor said,
come basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say “we’ll wipe it out,” you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed.
Hostile words, to be sure, but not the menacing threat endlessly reported in corporate U.S. media in recent years. (Iran, Israel and “wiped off the map” occur together more than 8,500 times in the Nexis news database in the last seven years.)
This has been a case of the U.S. media terrorizing its own citizens. So I’m sure we’ll be seeing corrections all over the place any minute now, you know, like all those corrections we saw after it turned out Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction.” (Yeah, right.)
Did E. J. Dionne Just Get the Memo?
Is this news to E.J. Dionne, a dean of the Washington punditocracy?
(Image via Wikipedia)
Two-paycheck couples, working because they must
Instead of fighting a phony mommy war over what Hilary Rosen said about Ann Romney, we should face the fact that most families these days cannot afford to have one parent stay home with the kids. This is not about “lifestyle” or “values.” This is an economic struggle highlighting yet again the social costs arising from decades of stagnating or declining wages and growing income inequality.
There is a profound class bias in our discussion of what mothers should or should not do. The public debate seems premised on the idea that all two-parent families have a choice as to whether one or both work. That’s still true for the better-off. But this choice is denied to most American families. They have had to send two people into the workforce whether they wanted to or not.
Ah, yeah, and that’s been true since about 1980 E. J. You really should get out more.
A Perfect Example of How the “Liberal” American Media Brainwashes Us
Wow. Here we have a perfect example of how the “liberal” American media brainwashes us into fearing or hating groups that those in power decide we should ah, fear or hate. This example is from today’s Washington Post.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has delivered a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that calls for a resumption of peace negotiations.
Got that? Palestinian Authority President Abbas wants to resume peace negotiations, but the Israeli lobby wants us to hate and fear the Palestinians (nobody bucks the Israeli lobby), so check out the photo the WaPo used to illustrate the article:
(Via.)
Amazing.
Dumbed Down America
Here are the Time magazine covers for next week’s issue:
Embarrassing for those of us who live in the U.S., imho.
View larger here.
Mitt Isn’t Going to Like This
This is the cover of the most recent issue of The New Republic:
And no, The New Republic isn’t a flaming liberal rag, it’s conservative, so I find this choice of cover photo pretty darn interesting. This is one of the ugliest pictures I’ve ever seen of anyone.
Newsweek is Pathetic
This is the real cover of the February 6, 2012 issue of Newsweek magazine:
Our presidential campaigns consist of nine second sound bites. Never mind a real discussion of the issues. And instead of being a check and balance on that tragedy, the media encourages it.
The United States Drops 27 Points in Freedom of the Press Index
Botswana, Namibia, Papua New Guinea and Niger are among the countries that rank higher in press freedoms than the United States in a new index released by Reporters Without Borders:
“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.
[...]
“This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom.
[...]
Led by President Yoweri Museveni, Uganda (139th) launched an unprecedented crackdown on opposition movements and independent media after the elections in February. Similarly, Chile (80th) fell 47 places because of its many freedom of information violations, committed very often by the security forces during student protests. The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.
Read more and see how other countries rank, here.
Time to hit the refresh button on what “they” tell us, that the United States is the worldwide beacon for freedom of the press.
Barney Frank Kicks Some A**
On January 20, the New York Times Magazine published an interview with the retiring Senator Barney Frank (D-MA) titled: The Not So Retiring Barney Frank.
This quintessential Barney Frank quote is my favorite part:
Interviewer: You’ve long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?
Barney Frank: No.
Interviewer: Why not?
Barney Frank: Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?
Interviewer: I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don’t smoke it.
Barney Frank: Do you think I’ve ever had an abortion?
Go get ‘em Barney!
Oh, and memo to the “interviewer:” Really? REALLY?
On Strike
Write Congress Now!
NOT IN THE US? PETITION THE STATE DEPARTMENT HERE
Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian on CNBC: “Why is it that when Republicans and Democrats need to solve the budget and the deficit, there’s deadlock, but when Hollywood lobbyists pay them $94 million dollars to write legislation, people from both sides of the aisle line up to co-sponsor it?”
#NewNYTSlogans
If you want a good laugh (or maybe a good cry) check out the suggestions being made as to potential new New York Times‘ slogans at:
#NewNYTSlogans
(Go here for the backstory.)
“Journalism” USA, Circa 2012
Somebody actually got paid to write this?
As Romney Jabs at Obama, Rivals Swing at Him
Ah, yeah. I mean, tell us something we don’t know.
TIME: Dumbing Down America
TIME magazine (1) either thinks Americans are idiots who don’t need or what to know what’s going on in other parts of the world, or (2) given the Occupy Wall Street movement, they don’t want to give us any ideas.
Here is the cartoonish cover of the December 5, 2011 issue of TIME that will be released in the U.S.:
And here is the cover of the same issue that will be released in Europe, Asia and the South Pacific:
What a radical difference.
Law Enforcement Asks Google to Censor YouTube
Get a load of this “Transparency Report” Google just posted:
We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.
That’s it. That’s all they wrote and we don’t know anything more but ah, I’m willing to bet the “local law enforcement agency” Google references is the government of Oakland, California. I mean, when you shoot a veteran in the head who has served two tours in Iraq it doesn’t look all that good. But beyond that, the United States is emulating China, for God’s sake. In China, searches containing the word “Occupy” have been blocked by by the government on a popular search engine called Sina Weibo.
So I’m waiting for wingers to have a fit. You know, because we don’t want to be like those commie “red” Chinese and censor our media do we? Hey? Hey?
Is anyone in a position of power (i.e., a 1%-er) going to denounce this?!
Headline of the Day
Am I drunk or am I really seeing this headline?
Here it is, though I suspect it’ll be gone sooner rather than later.
In a “Rational Universe,” Michele Bachmann’s Campaign Would be Over
In a rational universe everyone in the country would know about this and Michele Bachmann’s campaign would be either in very serious trouble or over:
Let’s try to wrap our heads around this. Bachmann’s opposition to raising the debt ceiling is one of the most important planks in her presidential platform. She has touted it in two ads, presenting it as a sign of her courage. She repeated it again last night at the debate, asserting that opposing the hike is “the right thing to do,” and even cited Standard and Poors’s downgrade as proof of her superior grasp of our fiscal dilemma.
Less than 24 hours later, the news emerges that S & P has confirmed that it was precisely this opposition to raising the debt ceiling, and the cavalier attitude towards default exhibited by the likes of Bachmann, that led to our downgrade.
The question of what led S & P to downgrade our credit rating is a matter of verifiable fact. And S & P has now confirmed that one of the central rationales of her candidacy is a key reason for their downgrade. What will she say when confronted with this fact? How will she explain it away? Will anyone even ask her to try to explain it?
In a rational universe, this would be devastating to her candidacy. Of course, the world of GOP primary politics is anything but a rational universe.
Chances are we won’t hear a thing about this on the corporate media, and for sure it won’t be reported on Fox, all of which is really pretty darn terrifying if you think about it for a minute. Here we have a woman who is running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and she is getting away with making a provable lie one of the central themes of her candidacy.
Yo, Ben Smith at Politico
Hey Ben Smith at Politico:
Please confirm as FACT that the people who challenged Mitt Romney today in Iowa were Democrats, as you stated — as FACT — on the “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell tonight on MSNBC.
Time Magazine: Why the Difference?
Check out the cover of the U.S. edition of the August 8 issue of Time magazine compared to the others:
See a larger version here, and see an even larger version of both covers here and here.
So, what does this tell us? Any good news about Islam is socially unacceptable in the U.S.?
(H/t Beth.)
