Category: Media & Journalism

What’s the score?

Imagine trying to update your brackets for the NCAAs if your only source of information were, say, members of the White House Press Corps: “Texas Tech supporters were claiming victory Sunday after their regional quarterfinal game against Gonzaga. In Spokane, however, proponents of Gonzaga disputed this claim, noting that their team’s point total was equal to that of Kentucky’s and greater than that of Utah’s, and that both of these teams are advancing to the next round.”

slacktivist, in a great posting on how the sports section is “the last bastion of reality-based journalism.”

B.S. in Tulsa

The Tulsa World has written a threatening letter to BatesLine, a Tulsa-based blog. The following is from The World‘s letter:

The reproduction of any articles and/or editorials (in whole or in part) on your website or linking your website to Tulsa World content is without the permission of the Tulsa World and constitutes an intentional infringement of the Tulsa World’s copyright and other rights to the exclusive use and distribution of the copyrighted materials.

“[O]r linking your website to Tulsa World content” Linking? How could linking alone be a copyright violation?

BatesLine has much to say about The World and Tulsa politics.

News Flash: AP writer uninformed

The first two paragraphs of an AP article by Joseph B. Frazier:

Representatives of Northwest Indian tribes from seven states are in Portland this week to seek common ground on issues affecting them, and possible infringement on tribal sovereignty by the Bureau of Indian Affairs is near the top of the list.

The Office of Special Trusts, formed five years ago to improve accountability in the BIA, is drawing much of the acrimony.

Facts:
1. It is the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (not Office of Special Trusts).
2. It was established by federal statute in 1994 (that would be 11 years ago, not five).
3. It is not part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (though both are part of the Department of the Interior).

Ernie Stensgar, president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, said the formation of the office was announced at a meeting of tribal leaders five years ago by Interior Secretary Gale Norton with no tribal input.

Fact:
Gale Norton has been Secretary of the Interior for just four years, not five.

Egad!

From USA Today via Yahoo! News:

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get “government approval” of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

It could be worse; they could try to explain

Poor Bob Somerby. He’s been howling that the press hasn’t been willing to explain the Social Security proposals. But now that some in the media are attempting to do so, it’s worse.

Andrews’ explanation is so incoherent that we’ve been forced to rethink our own past stand! If this is the best the press corps can do, perhaps it’s really just as well that they took that pass back in Campaign 2000.…But Andrews’ account is almost wholly incoherent.

As Somerby goes on to point out, “Bush will soon propose a major change to our most important social program. Is American democracy, in 2005, capable of holding a real discussion?”

Time to talk

Alessandra Stanley discusses Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire in today’s New York Times.

“They said I wasn’t being funny,” the star of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” said, rolling his eyes expressively. “And I said to them: ‘I know that. But tomorrow I will go back to being funny,” Mr. Stewart said, adding that their show would still be bad, although he used a more vulgar expression.

And that is why his surprise attack on the hosts of CNN’s “Crossfire” was so satisfying last Friday. Exchanging his usual goofy teasing for withering contempt, he told Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson that they were partisan hacks and that their pro-wrestling approach to political discourse was “hurting America.”

More Stewart and Carlson

STEWART: It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.

CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you’re accusing us of partisan hackery?

STEWART: Absolutely.

CARLSON: You’ve got to be kidding me. He comes on and you…

STEWART: You’re on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.

The transcript

The video [Windows Media Player]

Tick tock

Bob Somerby dismisses Wonkette (Ana Marie Cox) and takes NBC to task for wasting time with her (scroll down to “Brokaw’s New Low”).

NewMexiKen has enjoyed reading Wonkette, but I have to admit her shtick is getting old and worn and not altogether becoming. Her 15 minutes may be about up.

Amen!

Functional Ambivalent is appropriately worked up about the “news” coverage of the debate.

This is the biggest, best-financed, most professional journalism machine in the history of the world, at a critical moment in our history, on a night when public interest is high and audiences are large just before a Presidential election…and that journalism machine walks through the coverage using the same template it would use if it were covering a Congressman’s speech in front of the Rotary Club of Bettendorf, Iowa. Get a Republican reaction…get a Democrat reaction…get the story filed and head to the bar.

As he says, “a news-like substance.”

No saved person left behind

The following is from Bill Moyers’ speech at the Society of Professional Journalists national convention on September 11, 2004:

How do we explain the possibility that a close election in November could turn on several million good and decent citizens who believe in the Rapture Index? That’s what I said – the Rapture Index; google it and you will understand why the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series which have earned multi-millions of dollars for their co-authors who earlier this year completed a triumphant tour of the Bible Belt whose buckle holds in place George W. Bush’s armor of the Lord. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the l9th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative millions of people believe to be literally true.

According to this narrative, Jesus will return to earth only when certain conditions are met: when Israel has been established as a state; when Israel then occupies the rest of its “biblical lands;” when the third temple has been rebuilt on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques; and, then, when legions of the Antichrist attack Israel. This will trigger a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon during which all the Jews who have not converted will be burned. Then the Messiah returns to earth. The Rapture occurs once the big battle begins. True believers” will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation which follow.

I’m not making this up. We’re reported on these people for our weekly broadcast on PBS, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you that they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That’s why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It’s why they have staged confrontations at the old temple site in Jerusalem. It’s why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the 9th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released “to slay the third part of men.’ As the British writer George Monbiot has pointed out, for these people the Middle East is not a foreign policy issue, it’s a biblical scenario, a matter of personal belief. A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed; if there’s a conflagration there, they come out winners on the far side of tribulation, inside the pearly gates, in celestial splendor, supping on ambrosia to the accompaniment of harps plucked by angels.

One estimate puts these people at about l5% of the electorate. Most are likely to vote Republican; they are part of the core of George W. Bush’s base support. He knows who they are and what they want. When the President asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, over one hundred thousand angry Christian fundamentalists barraged the White House with emails and Mr. Bush never mentioned the matter again. Not coincidentally, the administration recently put itself solidly behind Ariel Sharon’s expansions of settlements on the West Banks. In George Monbiot’s analysis, the President stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli expansion into the West Bank than he stands to lose by restraining it. “He would be mad to listen to these people, but he would also be mad not to.” No wonder Karl Rove walks around the West Wing whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” He knows how many votes he is likely to get from these pious folk who believe that the Rapture Index now stands at 144 — just one point below the critical threshold at which point the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the sky is filled with floating naked bodies, and the true believers wind up at the right hand of God. With no regret for those left behind.

The whole speech is well-worth your time.

Radio ratings

A number of people coming to NewMexiKen are looking for radio station ratings, something I blogged about once more than a year ago. (Google is a strange but wonderful wizard.)

The single best source I know of for such information is Radio and Records, which posts generalized radio ratings for 287 American markets on an ongoing basis.

Having it both ways

Bob Somerby spells it out:

APPLE PIE: At the Times, hapless Johnny Apple knows the script too. How does an earth-born human being manage to get this inept?

APPLE: Mr. Kerry’s Vietnam heroism may be a much easier sell than his views on the war in Iraq, if only because it is more clear-cut. Having cast several votes on several aspects of the current conflict, he is easy to portray as a straddler, a flip-flopper or a hair-splitter. Having said he would have taken a more international approach to the Iraqi problem, he finds Mr. Bush moving the same way.

Readers, did you follow the logic? According to Apple, Bush is moving in Kerry’s direction—but Kerry is somehow the flipper, the straddler! Johnny Apple knows the script. And he’s too fat and lazy not to type it.

All of Thursday’s Daily Howler is excellent.

Gephardt

NewMexiKen can’t be too hard on KOB-TV, after all they ran a report by Jeremy Jojola last Friday that included this blog. But there they were last night on the 10 o’clock news telling us that Richard Gephardt was Kerry’s choice as his running mate. Guess KOB reads the New York Post.

Me either

From Brad DeLong —

I have not yet figured out why so much of our elite press is so… what should I call it? Feckless. Corrupt (in the sense of well-rotted). Decadent. Why does William Saletan [Slate] find it funny that Kerry tries hard to give nuanced, reasonably-complete answers to questions about issues with nuances? Why do Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff [Newsweek] cover the government–rather than, say, cover something like advances in bartending–if they find debates over policy the equivalent of crossing the Gedrosian Desert? Why does Michiko Kakutani [The New York Times] think it pointless and boring to wake up early to watch the inauguration of the first democratically-elected president in sixteen years in a country of 130 million people?

Read whole entry.

50 best magazines

From the Chicago Tribune:

What makes a magazine great? The writing. The ideas. The photography. The design. Sure. But more importantly, a magazine’s worth depends on how it catches readers’ glances, and then their hearts. Here, Tempo presents its second annual 50 Best Magazines list. Our selections reflect the periodicals that we pay good money to buy, that we pile on our nightstands, that we devour on trains, that we consider to be the best at what they set out to do. There are more than 17,500 magazines published in this country, so choosing the 50 best was daunting. We argued, we concurred, we scoffed. And we welcome you to continue the debate.

Top 10

  1. Wired
  2. Real Simple
  3. The Economist
  4. Cook’s Illustrated
  5. Esquire
  6. The New Yorker
  7. American Demographics
  8. Men’s Health
  9. Jane
  10. Consumer Reports

Do they read their own paper?

From The Daily Howler:

Who except the New York Times could come up with a headline like this? Yesterday, Ralph Nader chose a running-mate. So here is today’s Times headline:

NEW YORK TIMES HEADLINE: Beating Kerry to Punch, Nader Picks a No. 2

The Times takes a pot-shot at Kerry again. And what is so comic about that headline? There isn’t a single word about Kerry in the report which the headline adorns! The reporter, Mark Glassman, doesn’t mention the Dem—but a fearless Times editor knew his brief, and concocted a headline which tweaked hapless John. This kind of work is not unknown at the Washington Times; phantom headlines are sometimes seen there. But now, the practice migrates to Gotham, infecting our most broken newspaper.

Freedom of the press (to sell T-shirts)

Free Press pissed at Pistons:

Teenagers selling T-shirts bearing an image of the Detroit Free Press’ Pistons championship front page were accosted before the team’s victory parade Thursday by Pistons officials who said they could not sell images of the league. …

At issue is whether the First Amendment protects newspapers when they print on something other than paper.

“We have the right to sell the Free Press image whether it’s presented on paper, on cotton or on titanium plates,” Fink said. “It isn’t an image of the NBA, it’s an image of our front page.” …

Some of the kids were able to sell shirts before being confronted by the alleged NBA officials. Detroit police officers were among their customers.

Kudos…

to the Santa Fe New Mexican for the awesome update to their web site. Among other things, you can now read the paper page-by-page and click on any item — even Jumble.

To NewMexiKen’s mind, The New Mexican is New Mexico’s best daily. Too bad it isn’t available for home delivery in Albuquerque.

Parody — a false, derisive, or impudent imitation of something

Very Very Happy parodies the Rightwing blogs, starting with Instapundit:

THE MEDIA’S WAR ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION continues unabated. Recent events have combined with the media’s anti-Bush agenda to paint a misleadingly dark picture of Iraq. If you received all your news from CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Army Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, the Sacremento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News, The Orlando Sentinel, The Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, The Lansing State Journal, the Dallas Morning News, the Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle, UPI, Reuters, or the Associated Press, you would be under the impression that things are pretty bleak in Iraq.

The Lileks parody is even better.