In an article last April, I predicted the decline of MySpace as a result of over-commercialization and desertion by bored users: “These examples of commercialization foreshadow precisely how the culture of MySpace will become tarnished and unappealing. Its members will come to feel disinterested and exploited.” Now the Washington Post is catching up with me. [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2006
Oct 27
NBC: Shut Up And…Oh Just Shut Up
Following the recent announcement of censorship by CNN and NPR when they refused to air ads for the film, “Death of a President,” it seems the dawn is not yet here, because it’s still getting darker. NBC has now refused to broadcast ads for the Dixie Chicks’ new movie, “Shut Up and Sing.” (See the [...]
Oct 27
DeadLines
Bush, Republicans turn to talk shows for help. “American radio talk-show hosts have become frontline warriors in a drive by President George W. Bush and his Republicans to pull off a surprise and maintain control of Congress in November 7 elections.” They “have become” frontline warriors? What does Reuters think they been doing for the [...]
Oct 26
Press Freedom Declines In U.S.
The Fifth Annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index is out and it doesn’t look good for the United States. In a field of 168 countries, the U.S. finishes 53rd, sandwiched between the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. The embarrassment of such a poor ranking is exacerbated by the fact that we dropped nine points [...]
Oct 24
Death Of A Prez Ads Nixed By CNN, NPR
Death of a President is a new film that has been generating both controversy and acclaim. It is the winner of the International Critics’ Award from the Toronto Film Festival. The film’s web site describes it as… “a fictional TV documentary broadcast in 2008, reflecting on another monstrously despicable and cataclysmic event: the assassination of [...]
Oct 24
Bigger Media Is Not Better Media
DUH! And now we have (more) proof. I’ll let the press release speak for itself: Today, the Benton Foundation and the Social Science Research Council released four independent academic studies (PDF) on the impact of media consolidation in the United States. The new research focuses on how the concentration of media ownership affects media content, [...]
Oct 23
Calame’s Cowardice: The New York Times Retracts Its Integrity
Last June, in a rare display of journalistic responsibility, the New York Times published an article exposing the Bush administration’s efforts to further undermine civil liberties by prying into private banking transactions without due process. The following month, Byron Calame, the Times’ Public Editor, backed up the story and the paper’s decision to publish it. [...]
Oct 22
DeadLines
YouTube Shared User Data With Studio Lawyers. Lawyers for Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures convinced a federal judge in San Francisco to issue a subpoena requiring YouTube to turn over details about a user who uploaded dialog from the movie studio’s “Twin Towers.” YouTube promptly handed over the data to Paramount, which on June 16 sued [...]
Oct 22
Terrorist Media Strategy = Bush Media Strategy
On October 21, 2006, President Bush delivered another in the series of radio addresses that seem now to be presidential obligations. [Can anyone explain why these anachronisms persist in an era when media access is so abundant?] In this address the president makes some interesting remarks that unintentionally correlate his media policy with that of [...]
Oct 21
NBC Layoffs – The Hidden Victims
The immediate pain of the just announced layoffs at NBC will be felt by the 750 employees that lose their jobs. But there is more harm in this plan, and it may spread even further. First, many analysts note that the bulk of the cuts are going to come from the news divisions. NBC has [...]
Oct 19
Fox Takes Both Sides
Maybe the Fox News Channel really is fair and balanced after all. With a nod to Stephen Colbert, here is an example of Fox’s famous even-handedness. On May 1, Fox’s Steve Doocy reported on the performance of a Bush impersonator at the White House Correspondents Dinner who worked alongside the president. Fair: “…the second president [...]
Oct 18
Murdoch’s Poison Pillory
A couple of years ago, Rupert Murdoch orchestrated the adoption of a “poison pill” that would act as an obstacle to any investor that sought to wrest control of News Corp. from the Murdoch family. John Malone of Liberty Media, who had been buying up shares of News Corp., was the unnamed target of this [...]
Oct 15
Media Ownership Rules Are So ’70s
Jon Healey, in an editorial for the Los Angeles Times, devotes the first 5 paragraphs of his October 14th column to a rambling conjecture that a vengeful Richard Nixon conspired with the FCC to bar newspapers from owning TV and radio stations in the same market. After this 250 word conspiracy theory on the inception [...]
Oct 14
Broken Media Covers Broken Government
“In the three weeks leading up to Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 7, CNN will marshal its resources and political expertise in multiple one-hour reports looking at the widespread dysfunction besetting Congress, the courts and the executive branch.” These words open a CNN press release announcing the network’s 2006 election coverage. The same notice closes [...]
Oct 12
The Theo-Con Game
David Kuo was a special assistant to the president in the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. He is a long-time conservative Christian activist who has also worked for Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft. Now he has written a book that demolishes BushCo’s disingenuous embrace of evangelical America. Tempting Faith is Kuo’s confessional account of an office [...]
Oct 11
The President’s Advisors Revealed
In case anyone is wondering who the President turns to when forming policy, he revealed some of the inner workings of his braintrust today at a press conference. In answering a question about Iraq’s future, the President said: “How do I know that would happen? Because that’s what the enemy has told us would happen. [...]
Oct 10
ABC News For Geezers
If you need another example of how decayed the lifeless body of the media is, Charlie Gibson, anchor of ABC News’ World News Tonight, has been kind enough to offer one. Gibson thinks that the ads during his broadcast are slanted too heavily to senior viewers. He complains that they, “bespeak an older audience.” Bespoken [...]
Oct 09
Jon Stewart’s Shermanesque Statement
Those people wearing “Stewart/Colbert ’08″ T-shirts can stop hoping. That’s the lede in an AP report dispelling speculation that the Comedy Central stars were gearing up for a White House run. Where they got the idea that the pair were really running is anybody’s guess. My guess is they got it from watching Comedy Central [...]
Oct 09
Brainless = Jobless
Joe Maguire, an editor with Reuters, is out of a job. His employer gave him permission to write a book on American Patriopath, Ann Coulter, but when he did so, he found himself unemployed. The book, “Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter,” is a response to Coulter’s “Godless.” It takes on Coultergiest’s many [...]
Oct 09
Cashin’ In, Sellin’ Out
On Fox News Channel’s The Cost of Freedom, they presented a segment they call Cashin” In. It’s billed as a program that, “tells you what you need to know to make your money grow and keep what you already have.” The October 7th, edition, however, tells you what they want to you to believe to [...]
