Republicans Finally Face-Off On YouTube

Posted by on November 29, 2007 at 12:43 am. NO Comments :

After initially declining to participate in a proposed CNN/YouTube debate, the Republican candidates have finally weathered the ordeal that had so frightened them at first. I could care less about the actual substance of the debate because it was so predictably a contest to see who could be more opposed to immigrants, gays, taxes, getting out of Iraq, and any variety of Clinton.

However, I would like to note that my criticism of the Democrat’s YouTube affair still holds true for this one. Specifically that, since all of the videos broadcast were pre-selected by CNN, this could hardly be characterized as promoting the voice of the people.

However, the Republican outing even surpassed the Dems for editorial misconduct. The first flaw was that CNN shuffled through 5,000 “citizen”-submitted video questions and managed to select one from Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, friend of Jack Abramoff, and erstwhile companion of Republican politicos everywhere. Secondly, CNN awarded another of the limited questions to General Keith Kerr, a current member of Hillary Clinton’s LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee. Debate moderator Anderson Cooper had to issue a post-debate disclaimer after being advised of the connection.

This is what happens when the media elites act as gatekeepers. Thousands of potential questions and CNN hands off two of the 34 selected to a well-connected lobbyist and a campaign operative. Then they fill some of the other slots with inanities like why Giuliani supported the Red Sox. And they try to pretend this circus represents the voice of the people.

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When A Confidential Source Is A Partner In Crime

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 3:24 pm. NO Comments :

When Judith Miller of the New York Times and Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper faced imprisonment for not revealing Karl Rove as the source for reporting that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent with the CIA, many observers, including me, objected to their perverse interpretation of what constitutes a “confidential source.”

“Reporters do need to be able to protect their sources without fear of legal consequences when engaged in the conduct of their profession as journalists, but not when they are acting on behalf of government hitmen and promoting propaganda. That’s not protecting your sources, that’s protecting your accomplices.”

Now that it is old news that Rove leaked classified information, Time’s former editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine is coming clean:

“Outing Valerie Plame, exposing a valuable (CIA) agent for no particular reason, didn’t, in my mind, merit protecting confidentiality,”

Thanks Norm. It only took you two years to realize that reporters who act as conduits for political operatives who are engaging in smear campaigns may not extend confidentiality to their comrades.


Bill O’Reilly: Censorship, Lies And Plunging Popularity

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 12:12 pm. 1 Comments :

A couple of days ago Bill O’Reilly again demonstrated his aversion to free expression as well as his penchant for dishonesty. An op-ed that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a paper that O’Reilly regularly castigates as “far-left loons”) laid out a case for Impeachment: If not now, when? The column was accompanied by a political cartoon that had Bush and Cheney dressed up for their mugshots.

That was more than enough to set O’Reilly off on a rant that amounted to a call for censorship (YouTube):

“Look at this. This is ridiculous […] It’s based on nothing […] I want you to excoriate them. Let them have it […] It’s wrong though for them to do it. Don’t you think that showing a mug shot of a sitting president, a sitting vice president is irresponsible?”

O’Reilly is outraged that anyone would exercise their First Amendment rights to express an opinion about the criminality of this administration. He believes that such open expression “diminishes intelligent conversation,” (as if O’Reilly ever engaged in one) and his response is to shut down conversation entirely. Note that O’Reilly is complaining about the cartoon, not the content of the article. Although he does say that the cartoon is “based on nothing,” despite the fact that it is attached to a well-documented column that enumerates specific justifications for investigating the President and his administration.

After once again calling the paper “loons,” (an example of his idea of “intelligent conversation”) O’Reilly attacks the paper’s credibility by smugly declaring that it has lost 40% of its readers in the past ten years:

“Almost half of their readers have said ‘We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to read you.'”

What O’Reilly leaves out is any actual context that would enlighten his viewers. The truth is that almost all major newspapers have suffered sharp declines in circulation over the past ten years. But more to the point, in only two years (Sept 2005 to Sept 2007) Bill O’Reilly himself has lost 33% of his total viewers and a whopping 59% of viewers in the all-important 25-54 age group. That’s more than half of his viewers saying, “We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to watch you.”

This brief exchange reveals much about O’Reilly. It shows that while he is vociferously objecting to the free speech rights of others, he will use his own platform to misinform his viewers. No wonder they don’t like him anymore.


Andrew Keen’s Fear Of Citizen Journalism

Posted by on November 27, 2007 at 1:32 pm. NO Comments :

In today’s Washington Post is an article audaciously titled Storming the News Gatekeepers. The author apparently meant to explore the nature of “citizen journalism” and its impact on conventional media and society. The end result however is far less significant than its ambitions as it focuses on a single Brooklyn blogger and fails to embrace the broader new media influence on the blogiverse.

At one point though, the article takes a noticeable dip in IQ by quoting Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture:

“The term ‘citizen journalist’ has an Orwellian ring to it. People are becoming Big Brother, either with a camcorder or a keyboard, and following the candidates around. It’s ridiculous. You can’t just be a great journalist, the same way you can’t be a great chef or a great soccer player.”

Journalists, he continues, “follow a set of standards, a code of ethics. Objectivity rules. That’s not the case with citizen journalists. Anything goes in that world.”

For Keen to associate citizen journalism with Orwell is…well…Orwellian. Big Brother, as illustrated in “1984” is the personification of an all-powerful and controlling government. The notion that the people, acting on their own behalf, could be characterized as such tyrannical overlords is preposterous to the point of idiocy.

Likewise, Keen’s dismissal of citizen journalists as distinct from the conventional variety, who are supposedly objective and have standards and ethics, is as insulting as it is naive. Sure, there are bloggers who fly fast and loose with facts, but the same is true for pundits on TV and in newspapers. The best of the online reporters actually have greater transparency and include live links to sources and documentation.

Keen obviously prefers media that is certified by corporate boards and is fearful of media that emanates from the streets. He would likely have denounced James Madison’s pamphlets as irresponsible and amateurish. On page 68 of his book he exposes his disgust for real people who have the temerity to engage in democratic discourse:

“The YouTubification of politics is a threat to civic culture. It infantilizes the political process, silencing public discourse and leaving the future of government up to thirty-second video clips shot by camcorder-wielding amateurs with political agendas.”

Contrary to silencing public discourse, YouTube and other web communities have expanded political dialog by including voices that previously were shut out of public debate. And the irony of Keen’s criticism of thirty-second video clips, without reference to the grandfathers of the genre – campaign ads – is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

Keen would like to leave the future of government up to news bites produced by the professional propagandists in Corporate Media ivory towers. Apparently the political agendas of the old-school media hacks are superior, in Keen’s mind, to those of average Americans. With any luck the future of government will continue to benefit from greater participation and diversity, and will keep as far away from Keen’s nightmarish abomination of democracy as possible.

For more on Keen and his book, see Lawrence Lessig’s excellent deconstruction.

For even more on Keen’s wankery, see his appearance on The Colbert Report where he favorably compares Nazis to bloggers saying, “Even the Nazis didn’t put artists out of work.”

I suppose that’s true if you define the corpses of assassinated artists as no longer being in the job market. What a repulsive piece of crap Keen is!


Save Tucker ?

Posted by on November 26, 2007 at 10:06 pm. NO Comments :

Time for bit of comic relief…

A couple of guys in Florida have launched a campaign to Save Tucker Carlson. How pathetic does your life have to be to descend to rescuing one of the lamest programs on TV? The web site alleges that Tucker’s rumored cancellation is…

“…part of a move by MSNBC to swing left and become “FOX for the Liberals,” dropping any pretense of objectivity or balance.”

Well, maybe it’s actually part of a move by MSNBC to … um … have an audience bigger than the Milli Vanilli Fan Club.


Poor Rupert: Nobody Listens To Him

Posted by on November 26, 2007 at 5:22 pm. 2 Comments :

As if any further evidence was required, we now have it straight from Rupert Murdoch’s own pursed lips that the fingers of his bony hand are pulling the strings at his media properties and setting editorial policy. Murdoch was interviewed by the British House of Lords’ Communications Committee as part of its inquiry into media ownership. The committee released these comments from the interview:

“For The Sun and News of the World, he explained that he is a ‘traditional proprietor.’ He exercises editorial control on major issues – like which party to back in a general election or policy on Europe.”

“He distinguishes between The Times and The Sunday Times and The Sun and the News of the World (and makes the same distinction between the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal).”

The way that Murdoch distinguishes between his various properties is that those for which he has legal or contractual barriers to direct manipulation he doesn’t tell them what to do, he merely asks them what they are doing. Is there any employee that would not know what his boss means to convey under such an arrangement? It also goes without saying that Murdoch doesn’t have to give much guidance to managers he selected precisely because of their fealty to his interests. In fact, he has already tapped his long-time editor at the London Times to be the new publisher at the Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch also expressed his opinion that his Sky News “could be more popular if it emulated his Fox News Channel.” He said that the reason it isn’t already doing that is because “nobody at Sky listens to me.” That’s especially funny when you consider that Sky News is run by James Murdoch, Rupert’s son.

Here in the U.S., Murdoch took a glancing blow from his beneficiary, Hillary Clinton. At a campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton was asked about media consolidation and the risk of having one man like Murdoch with so much control. Clinton responded that…

“There have been a lot of media consolidations in the last several years, and it is quite troubling. The fact is, most people still get their news from television, from radio, even from newspapers. If they’re all owned by a very small group of people – and particularly if they all have a very similar point of view – it really stifles free speech.”

That’s a good answer and Clinton is commendably a co-sponsor of the Media Ownership Act of 2007. Too bad she had to dilute the impact of her response by letting Murdoch off the hook:

“I’m not saying anything against any company in particular. I just want to see more competition, especially in the same markets.”

Murdoch, his son James, and several other executives at News Corp have contributed to Clinton’s senatorial and presidential campaigns. I would sure hate to think that those contributions might affect her decision making with regard to Big Media.

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Idiots At The New York Post

Posted by on November 26, 2007 at 10:09 am. NO Comments :

Does anybody at the New York Post read the New York Post?

This weekend Rupert Murdoch’s Post published the results of a survey that found that…

“Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.”

Accompanying that statistic was this blaring headline:

‘BLAME U.S. FOR 9/11’ IDIOTS IN MAJORITY
But just eight months after the World Trade Center attacks, the Post printed on their front page a story declaring that “Bush Knew” about warnings directed at U.S. civil aviation.

The following day White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush had indeed received…

“…vague warnings from intelligence agencies about possible hijackings last summer…”

Despite that admission, Fleischer called the headline “irresponsible” and “a poster child for bad journalism.”

So after publishing an article that alleged that federal officials knew about, but did not respond to, warnings about terrorist attacks, the Post now calls Americans who are aware of that fact “idiots.” Of course the real idiots are the editors at the Post who don’t even know what their own paper reports. But it’s even worse than that. After the “Bush Knew” issue hit the streets, Post editor Col Allen defended the headline saying…

“I reject the notion that the headline suggests that Bush knew about 9/11. . . . ‘9/11 bombshell’ was there to tell people this was a story about terror.”

Oh really? What was “Bush Knew” there to tell people if it wasn’t to suggest that Bush knew? Apparently, even when someone at the Post reads the Post they can’t understand what it’s saying – even its editor.


Tucker Carlson Gets A Vote Of No Confidence

Posted by on November 23, 2007 at 1:34 pm. 1 Comments :

MSNBC has been accused by many rightist pundits of adopting a liberal editorial policy. The sole basis of this charge appears to be the existence of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. In an interview with NPR, MSNBC Sr VP Phil Griffin denies the charge saying that it is the host’s personalities, not their positions that make them popular. So Tucker’s already starting at a disadvantage. Griffin acknowledges that the network is trading on the audience identifying with the program’s anchors.

“Keith Olbermann is our brand; Chris Matthews is our brand. These are smart, well-informed people who have a real sense of history and can put things in context.”

That is an unequivocal expression of the faith Griffin has in Olbermann and Matthews. But when he is specifically asked whether Tucker Carlson is also their brand, he pauses and says…

“He is right now.”

Not exactly a vote of confidence. Griffin seems to be hinting that his answer might be different if you ask him again in a week or two. Looks like the only thing Tucker has to be thankful for is his well-connected family and a contract for an upcoming TV game show pilot. I still can’t get over this project – a remake of “Who Do You Trust?”

The remainder of the segment featured a couple of choice comments from Olbermann:

On his righteous cynicism: “We gave these people every benefit of the doubt. Our naturally contentious political arrangement in this country was silenced for well over a year after 9/11. We got hosed. We were manipulated. That trust that we put in these people, they did not deserve.”

On O’Reilly’s dementia: “As usual, Bill-O’s King Lear act, in which he threatens somebody with terrible consequences and boycotts and plagues of locusts, has produced nothing tangible other than making the object of his impotent rage richer.”

Speaking of Bill-O, his frantic efforts to disparage NBC and his nemesis Keith Olbermann (whom he refers to as “the smear guy”) are butting up against reality. O’Reilly has been falsely bashing NBC as a network in total decline, but the truth is that NBC News beat ABC and CBS in total viewers for the 2006/2007 season. And on the heels of Brian Williams’ appearance on Saturday Night Live, NBC has won the 25-54 demo for the month of November so far. O’Reilly’s analysis, as usual, is worthless, unless you’re really into childish fiction.


A White House Awash In Lies

Posted by on November 21, 2007 at 4:03 pm. 1 Comments :

Former White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, is joining the ranks of castoff Bushies to belatedly embrace truthfulness in advance of the publication of a new book. This is a disturbing pattern amongst public figures who lie while in office and then recant their deception, after they’ve been ejected from their perch, with a tell-some memoir of their nefarious official activities.

In McClellan’s case, the publisher of his forthcoming tome teased the press with this tantalizing morsel:

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.”

“There was one problem. It was not true.”

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.”

This admission of administration dishonesty could rise to the level of impeachability (as if we needed another reason). It demonstrates a deliberate effort on the part of high ranking officials to mislead the public and to obstruct justice. And it is telling that this criminality was shepherded through the White House press machine with the complicity of McClellan who was either terminally naive or incompetent.

While it is useful that these revelations are coming out, it is galling that it took so many years to do so. The administration has successfully quashed any discourse on the issue by refusing comment when the case was being actively litigated and then declaring that it was old news when the litigation came to a close. Both of McClellan’s successors, Tony Snow and Dana Perino, are just as guilty of covering up this affair as McClellan was. When asked to comment on the McClellan book, Perino said:

“The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information.”

That contradicts the president who admitted that he does lie to the press when it suits him, as it did when former defense secretary Don Rumsfeld resigned.

Contrary to Perino’s protest, the President, along with many of his top advisers, is simply not to be trusted. And the same is true of the mouthpieces like Perino, Snow and McClellan, who will do and say whatever their leader asks of them. They will prevaricate obediently and then, many years later, seek absolution through the purifying glow of book publishing and million dollar advances. The rest of the media will largely ignore this misbehavior because they are either too stupid to ferret out the truth, too frightened to report it, or too compromised by their own involvement or dreams of future book deals.


Bill O’Reilly Insults The USO On His Afghan Junket

Posted by on November 21, 2007 at 12:34 am. 2 Comments :

Last week Bill O’Reilly left the comfort of his Manhattan studio to go on assignment. It was revealed this week that he had slipped surreptitiously into Afghanistan. As is his practice, his trip was not much more than a PR junket where he distributed Fox News swag and copies of his book, Culture Warrior. It is somewhat ironic that he would pawn that screed of an imaginary morality clash off on soldiers who are facing all too real dangers.

This time, though, O’Reilly wasn’t content with glorifying his own selflessness, he found it necessary to insult the sponsors of innumerable charities and entertainments – the USO. O’Reilly complained that they weren’t doing enough for the troops here:

“As far as I know, the only famous people in the past year were (country music singer) Toby Keith and me.”

When reached for a response, a USO spokesman corrected the record saying that they had hosted seven entertainment tours to Afghanistan this year. There were also 12 tours last year. Amongst the previous guests was the man that O’Reilly will only refer to as Stuart Smalley. Al Franken has, in fact, participated in six USO tours. And rather than going to promote a new book, he brought along country singers, TV stars, cheerleaders and put on a three hour show.

Someone should tell O’Reilly that Afghanistan is not just another stop on his book tour. And if he thinks the USO isn’t doing enough, maybe he should volunteer once in a while.