Media News

Why Our Political Culture Sucks: The Hill Decides What’s Left Leaning

4:36 pm EST July 7th, 2011 | Media | 3 Comments

I recently read The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media (recommended) and one of the points the book makes is the habit of the media of declaring what’s within bounds. That is, before a proposal or law or anything comes up for discussion in the public sphere, the media has already decided for us just what the parameters are. That’s often why on the progressive side, ideas that the public has shown support for — or even a sizable minority — are considered out of bounds by the media. They don’t report, because they’ve already decided.

Case in point. Kent Conrad is a Democratic senator in North Dakota. By design, within the Democratic tent, he’s a moderate. So why did The Hill describe Conrad’s budget proposal, which is pretty middle of the road stuff, as “left-leaning?”

For an actual “left-leaning” budget proposal, you’d have to look to the offering from the House Progressive Caucus. But the mainstream media did give that proposal the sort of tongue-bath it’s given the Ryan plan to kill Medicare.

Why? It was out of bounds.

Report: Rupert Murdoch Paper Also Targeted Families Of 7/7 Terror Bombing For Phone Hacking

10:09 pm EST July 5th, 2011 | Conservative, Media | 29 Comments

Wow. Even for the company that brings us Fox News, this is stunning.

The phone-hacking crisis enveloping the News of the World intensified on Tuesday night after it emerged that Scotland Yard has started to contact the relatives of victims of the 7 July 2005 attacks to warn them they were targeted by the paper.

The revelation that bereaved family members may have had their mobile phone messages intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the paper, in the days following the 2005 London bombings will heap further pressure on the title’s owner, News International, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed in the attack at Edgware Road tube station, confirmed that he had been contacted by officers from Operation Weeting, the Met’s investigation into phone hacking. He said they had told him his mobile phone number, ex-directory landline number and address had been found in records made by Mulcaire that were recovered from the investigator’s office in south London.

Foulkes’s solicitor, Clifford Tibber, who represents several families who had relatives killed in the terrorist attack, said the news had “come as a terrible shock” to them as they prepared to mark the sixth anniversary of the bombings this week.

Topic: News Corp., Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch Newspaper Hacked Dead Girl’s Phone, Interfered In Investigation

12:00 pm EST July 5th, 2011 | Conservative, Media | 16 Comments

From the same people who bring you the Fox News Channel, and use the same ethical reasoning:

The News of the World illegally targeted the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family in March 2002, interfering with police inquiries into her disappearance, an investigation by the Guardian has established.

Scotland Yard is investigating the episode, which is likely to put new pressure on the then editor of the paper, Rebekah Brooks, now Rupert Murdoch’s chief executive in the UK; and the then deputy editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned in January as the prime minister’s media adviser.

The Dowlers’ family lawyer, Mark Lewis, this afternoon issued a statement describing the News of the World’s activities as “heinous” and “despicable”. He said this afternoon the Dowler family was now pursuing a damages claim against the News of the World.

Milly Dowler disappeared at the age of 13 on her way home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 21 March 2002.

News Corp has no shame, but would the people who employed this jackal for years do otherwise?

Topic: News Corp., Rupert Murdoch

Superman, The Reporter, For Real

3:59 pm EST July 1st, 2011 | Comic Books, Media | 3 Comments

CJR has a pretty superficial look at how journalism is portrayed in Superman: The Movie. The writer spends a lot of time writing about David Carradine’s monologue about how Clark Kent is just a front for Superman (a theory I think is a lot of bunk, especially in regards to post-Crisis Superman, where Clark is the main character and Superman is the outlet).

But even beyond that, the writer seems to have missed the role that the Daily Planet has in the world of Superman. First, Superman is at the planet because where better to be (in theory at least) than a major newspaper (the Planet is basically the New York Times of the DC Universe) to be at the nerve center of the world? If you’re Superman and you work at the Daily Planet, the world’s biggest most Superman-level stories come to you.

In Superman The Movie we see the major role of journalism in defining the world from the instance in which Lois Lane spends a night flying with Superman. As she lands and he flies away, she notes to herself about the stranger who has been nameless up until that point: “what a super man.” The next morning the lead story in the Daily Planet is “My Night With Superman” and that becomes his name. Furthermore, Superman chooses to speak only to the Planet because he knows they have respect and authority and will get the story right. In addition to his attraction to Lois, she is their best reporter. And while she begins falling in love with him, there she is with her notebook getting the answer to who he is (a visitor from a planet far, far away), why he’s there (to help), and what his vulnerabilities are (he can’t see through lead).

I concede that the movie does not have a lot of shoe leather reporting in it, but let’s not kid ourselves, Superman was a summertime action-adventure film, not a deep treatise on a reporter in the city.

That said, in the Superman comics, there have been instances where Superman has learned that he can best effect changes not as Superman, but as reporter Clark Kent. I remember an issue where he was able to expose the corruption behind a developer who wanted to tear down a home, not by using his fists as Superman but by digging into the company as reporter Clark Kent.

The comics have also dealt with the various outside influences on newspapers that we see in the real world. For a time in the late ’70s, Clark Kent wasn’t a print reporter but was a tv reporter for WGBS. A couple times, corporate conglomerates have purchased the Daily Planet in order to subvert its influence. Lex Luthor once bought the paper which eventually prompted Editor In Chief Perry White to quit in protest.

These outside forces want to subvert the Daily Planet because to the average every day citizen in the DC Universe, it is the news source they trust to give them the story in a fair, detailed manner. It’s a pretty good standard for news organizations in the real world.

Topic: Superman

Power Mad Senator Attacks Private Enterprise For Internal Decision

4:00 pm EST June 22nd, 2011 | Conservative, Media, Republicans | 5 Comments

That’s how a conservative would headline it if a Democratic senator demanded some sort of accounting from Fox News or one of their other favored outlets for an internal editorial decision. Only in this case the demander is idiot Senator Dan Coates who is demanding NBC account to him for the decision not to add “under God” to their golf broadcast’s version of the pledge of allegiance.

Did I mention that this is stupid?

Oh, also, the “under God” was not an original part of the pledge, and based on current conservative fashion should be seen as a bastardization of the words. But these people have shown us that their ideology is best described as malleable, or probably just amazingly disingenuous and dishonest.

Jon Stewart Beclowns Fox News, Politifact

10:25 am EST June 22nd, 2011 | Media | 3 Comments

This is the part when Stewart says “I drink your milkshake.”

Ed Henry To Fox, Process Already Underway

5:24 pm EST June 20th, 2011 | Media | 3 Comments

Fox Hires CNN’s Ed Henry

Ed Henry is reportedly moving from CNN to Fox News to become the network’s Chief White House correspondent. When asked by Media Matters, Henry declined to comment on Bill Sammon, Fox News’ Washington managing editor.

Last year, CNN came under criticism for hiring conservative blogger Erick Erickson, who described Michelle Obama as a “Marxist harpy wife and Supreme Court justice David Souter a “goat fucking child molester.” Henry defended the hiring.

Matt Bai Starts The Media For Huntsman Campaign

2:53 pm EST June 17th, 2011 | Media, Politics | 1 Comment

Jon Huntsman Jr. has no shot at the Republican nomination. Period. If his only demerits were his relatively moderate positioning (if not positions) he would be viable, but he is a former Obama administration official attempting to head today’s Republican party.

That’s a little like former FEMA head Michael Brown running against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 and thinking anybody would vote for him.

But that doesn’t deter the media, and especially not professional center-mush cheerleader Matt Bai who has a column on why we ought to take Huntsman seriously you guys.

As Bai almost always does, he gets in a dig at Democrats:

Democrats and some commentators tend to see the Republican Party right now as a kind of wild, barren land where nothing thoughtful ever grows.

Yeah, where would we get an idea like that? It isn’t as if there is a Republican electorate seriously pondering the end of Medicare, Palin/Bachmann as legitimate candidates, or that the President is a secret Muslim bent on subjugating America to global government. Right?

If you wonder why the coverage of the right from outlets like the Times has such a poor connection to reality, it is because writers like Bai refuse to acknowledge the movement and its party for the extremist beast it is.

In their world, because Lindsey Graham chats them up real nice at a dinner party, there’s no way they could be the reality-denying luddites those mean old Democrats make them out to be. For the mainstream press, the thought is unthinkable.

And that’s why a writer like Bai pretends this away and pens silly columns about how the primary electorate in the Republican party unlike every other election year is really this time going to be sweet and moderate and not crazy at all so they will vote for a moderate-ish Mormon former Obama administration member.

If you think otherwise, you’re one of those mean old Democrats.

Topic: 2012 Election, Jon Huntsman Jr., Matt Bai, New York Times

How To Debunk Crap From The Daily Caller Using One Simple Google Search

3:28 pm EST June 14th, 2011 | Conservative, Media | 2 Comments

From Jedediah Bila in the Daily Caller (a column that was promoted on Twitter by the Media Research Center’s Newsbusters):

Gee, I wonder why so many mainstream media writers and commentators aren’t pontificating about what the impact of depleted confidence in the economy will be on our president’s reelection potential?

At 3:22pm EST on Tuesday, June 14th, I searched Google News with the following 2 words: “economy obama” and got some of the following results:

Analysis: Obama 2012 — it’s all about jobs [Reuters]

Obama seeks ways around Congress to boost economy [LA Times]

Obama rejects notion that he’s out of touch on the economy [The Hill]

Obama Defends Economic Policies, Need for Tax Increases In ‘Today’ Interview [National Journal]

GOP’s economic focus may make Obama vulnerable [CBS]

This is why conservatism is crap. This is why conservative whining about the liberal media is crap. Their claims do not survive the scrutiny of basic fact checking.

This is mostly because they are lying.

Topic: Daily Caller