TVNewser Turning Into Drudge?

Posted by on July 27, 2007 at 1:41 pm. 3 Comments :

People who are in the television news business, or are interested in following the inside machinations of the media, have come to rely on a spunky little site called TVNewser. Recently, its founder, a college student at the time, Brian Stelter, graduated and was hired by the New York Times.

Well, it’s only been a week and there are already signs of trouble, as seen in this excerpt from an item about newsman Bob Franken:

“…his cousin, ex-Saturday Night Live star Al Franken, a rabid leftie, is running for the Senate in Minnesota.”

This is a disturbing and inauspicious beginning for new TVNewser, Chris Ariens. It exhibits the kind of juvenile disparagement one might expect from Matt Drudge. You could have reasonably described Franken as Liberal or Progressive, but “leftie” is a deliberately pejorative abbreviation. And what exactly is “rabid” about Franken’s positions, which fit squarely within the mainstream of America that is overwhelming against the war in Iraq, in favor of universal health care, worried about global warming, and disapproving of Bush and Cheney?

The next day, TVNewser had an item about liberal groups pressuring FNC advertisers. However they never reported on Bill O’Reilly’s targeting of liberal bloggers and their sponsors, which is what motivated the liberal groups to respond in kind.

This isn’t the first instance of a dubious omission. A couple of weeks ago, Glenn Beck filled in for Paula Zahn on CNN. He bombed in the ratings, but TVNewser, whose mission it is to report on such ratings performance, never mentioned it.

Jupiter Media purchased TVNewser’s parent, Media Bistro, earlier this year. While I have no reason to criticize Jupiter, I believe it is worth noting that the spunky little web site is now part of an expansive, publicly traded, Internet conglomerate.

Whether or not these changes are responsible for the recent degradation in tone at TVNewser, I can’t say with certainty. However, I can say that if this is what I can expect from TVNewser in the wake of Stelter’s departure, I will certainly not consider it a useful resource in the future, and I suspect that many others will agree with me.

Feel free to email your thoughts to TVNewser.

Find us on Google+
Advertisement:

Random O’Reilly Ramblings

Posted by on July 27, 2007 at 1:26 pm. 2 Comments :

The Fester: “This [raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy] would result in assets being moved offshore to places like Curacao, which (sic) ironically far left financier George Soros has a base.”

I’m sure O’Reilly just forgot to mention the U.S. companies based offshore like Accenture, Tyco, Transocean, etc. And it probably just slipped his mind that Republicans in the House are opposing, and Bush has threatened to veto, legislation that would rein in such activity.

The Fester: “One of our competitors, CNN’s Paula Zahn, leaving that network. And I’d just like to say, Ms. Zahn did a nice job with the program. It was very professional. CNN, in stark contrast to the dishonest (sic) at NBC News, is generally a classy outfit. And we enjoy the competition because it is honest. I hope good things happen to Paula Zahn.”

This uncharacteristic fawning couldn’t have anything to do with Zahn’s future employment, could it? Fox is launching their new business network October 15, and they are going to need on-air personnel. Zahn’s friend and former colleague, Liz Claman, recently left CNBC with a non-compete clause that expires on … October 15. Wouldn’t it be an amazing coincidence if the woman O’Reilly just lavished praise upon ended up at his boss’ new network?


Republicans Are Afraid Of YouTube

Posted by on July 27, 2007 at 12:35 pm. 3 Comments :

News Corpse readers are aware that I was not impressed with the Democratic debate co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube (see The Two Hour YouTube Commercial On CNN and We Report. CNN/YouTube Decides). But my objections were based on execution, not on YouTube or the introduction of citizen participation in the electoral process. Despite it’s shortcomings, there is merit in venturing out into new constituencies and the broadcast did attract a record number of 18-34 year olds.

Republicans, however, are shrinking from the ghastly specter of pajama-clad netizens. So far, only John McCain and Ron Paul have RSVP’d. The others have not actually sent their regrets and they may yet agree to attend. But Mitt Romney was overtly dismissive, saying…


“I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

Perhaps so. But the real question is, “If you can’t stand up to a snowman on YouTube, how can you stand up to Al Qaeda?”

Update: A coalition of Republican bloggers has mounted an Internet campaign to Save The Debate. From their web site:

“Republicans cannot write off the Internet […] If you approach the Internet from a position of paralyzing fear, you will be out-gunned, out-manned, and out-raised at every turn. It is fundamentally unacceptable to surrender to the Democrats on one of the most important battlefronts of this election.”

This online petition has the potential to be effective, except for one thing: It’s online and Republicans are afraid of that.


The Not Issuing Orders Guy

Posted by on July 27, 2007 at 3:29 am. NO Comments :

After having endured years of the comedy stylings of a bumbling War President who variously describes himself the Decider Guy or the Commander Guy, the circle has finally closed around an alter ego that is a far more believable persona for our little chameleon.

Aboard Air Force One, the President’s press secretary, Tony Snow, presided over what he called a “speed gaggle.” Near the end, a reporter managed to squeeze out a probing question:

Question: “Tony, if the President can order the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia not to pursue criminal contempt charges, doesn’t that sort of put him in the position of being able to determine unilaterally what executive privilege is?”

That seems like a nicely pointed question that reasonably seeks an explanation for an apparent overreaching on the part of the White House. Let’s see how Tony handles it.

Mr. Snow: “Well, the President can assert executive privilege, but you’ve misstated the way this works. In fact, the Department of Justice has the responsibility — the Department of Justice has already published an opinion; furthermore, there is a longstanding series of opinions out of the Department of Justice from Democratic and Republican administrations that talk about the inapplicability of criminal contempt of Congress citations when it comes to people asserting executive privilege.

So, number one, the President is not issuing orders; this is something that falls under the purview of the Department of Justice. And number two, legal precedent all points in one way and it would not be the way contemplated by the House Judiciary Committee.”

Holy Transformer, Batman! The Deciding Commander Guy has turned into the Not Issuing Orders Guy. What makes this even more fantabulous is that it is wholly untrue that the Department of Justice has responsibility for asserting executive privilege. That is an authority reserved for the President. But even if the DoJ did have jurisdiction, it would be just a tiny bit unseemly for them to exercise it when the subject of the investigation is the Attorney General himself.

However, things may not be quite as bad as they appear when you consider that this Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is uniquely qualified to assert a privilege he doesn’t have and then conveniently forget that he had done so.


Fox Attacks! O’Reilly Cracks

Posted by on July 26, 2007 at 3:06 pm. 3 Comments :

Over the past few days (years, really), Bill O’Reilly has been exhibiting the classic symptoms of a persecuted paranoiac. His utterly irrational fixation on what he calls the “vicious hate site,” DailyKos, is a hauntingly disturbing window into his deranged soul.



Video from FoxAttacks.

 
 
It began with an attack on JetBlue for daring to be a sponsor of the YearlyKos conference next month. By taking the coward’s way out and caving in to O’Reilly’s bullying, JetBlue only threw jet fuel on the fire.

O’Reilly’s pretense is that the “far left” DailyKos is not an appropriate host for a forum in which all of the Democratic candidates have agreed to appear. The truth is, he’s just angry and jealous because the same candidates declined to participate in a Fox Noise sponsored debate.

Just to set the record straight on who is the hate-monger, yesterday O’Reilly chastised the controversial Colorado professor, Ward Churchill, for describing others as Nazis and declaring that that,

“…instantly disqualified Churchill from any serious teaching role.”

This caused me to wonder if doing the same thing disqualifies one from being a TV commentator. Because O’Reilly had this to say about DailyKos just six days earlier:

“The hate this Web site traffics in rivals the KKK and Nazi Web sites.”

An even better example occurred on December 13, 2005, when the peace advocacy group, World Can’t Wait (WCW) published an ad protesting Mr. Bush and the war in Iraq. Here is how O’Reilly reported this news and his response:

The ad goes on to say, “People look at [the Bush administration’s policies] and think of Hitler – and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.”

Now that kind of extremism is just stupid. But the Third Reich allusions are interesting, because early in Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi brown shirts did the same thing that World Can’t Way (sic) and other radical extremists are doing now, disrupting speeches, denying opposing points of view.

I’m impressed, frankly. O’Reilly just managed to condemn WCW as stupid for alluding to Bush as a Nazi and in the very same paragraph he alluded to the WCW as Nazis (without calling himself stupid). And his complaint about “denying opposing points of view,” runs a little thin since his original complaint about DailyKos was that it was allowing opposing points of view.

If there were an Irony Olympics, O’Reilly would sweep the Gold.


We Report. CNN/YouTube Decides

Posted by on July 25, 2007 at 1:53 pm. 2 Comments :

The one clearly positive aspect of this “ground-breaking” experiment in television journalism, is that watching cutesy citizens asking evasive candidates questions that hunky moderators won’t follow-up on, is still better than watching washed-up reporters asking the same questions even more boringly.

Many in the media have declared the experiment a success. The Washington Post proclaimed that, “The debate underscored the arrival of the Internet as a force in politics.” That’s if you don’t count Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004; or MoveOn.org; or George Allen’s “macaca moment” last year; and the list goes on.

What they might be touting as success is how effectively the debate did achieve one of its goals: They got young people to watch. With a total audience of 2.6 million, it was a notable showing for a debate so far in advance of an election. Also, CNN reported getting 45.5 million page views on its Web site. But the real coup is that 407,000 of those viewers were in the coveted 18-34 year old demographic. The CNN broadcast was the 9th most viewed (pdf) debate in history in that demo. Of the top ten, it was the only one broadcast this electoral season (the others were in 2004). It was also the only primary debate. And all nine of the others aired within five weeks of an election. That would have to be considered a respectable performance.


 
However, the performance of the editors at CNN leaves something to be desired. While they found the time to include a talking snowman and a singing inquirer, for some reason they chose not to present YouTube’s top question as determined by the YouTube community. Could it be because the question dared to raise the specter of (gasp) IMPEACHMENT?


We report. CNN/YouTube Decides

Find us on Google+
Advertisement:

The Two Hour YouTube Commercial On CNN

Posted by on July 23, 2007 at 7:00 pm. 11 Comments :

Now that the first ever YouTube debate is completed, can we please promise not to have any more?

If you separate out the candidate’s answers and overlay the questions in text, the debate was no better or worse than any other debate. The participation of YouTube added nothing positive to the format or the content.

Since all of the videos broadcast were pre-selected by CNN, this could hardly be characterized as promoting the voice of the people. There were probably considerations by the CNN judges that included such irrelevancies as humor, entertainment value, charisma, and controversy. That is not an appropriate basis for engaging prospective occupants of the White House.

What’s worse, the gimmickry of this format is notable for whom it excludes. For instance:

  • Any questioner that doesn’t have a video camera or video skills.
  • Anyone who is uncomfortable performing on video or lacks public speaking skills.
  • All of those without Internet access or who don’t know how to upload files.
  • Internet users who are not registered with YouTube and don’t want to be.

This doesn’t seem like a format that encourages participation from a cross-section of America. If it was their purpose to produce a debate that was representative of the population, they failed.

What they succeeded at was promoting YouTube and it’s corporate parent, Google. The program was a two hour American Idol style commercial for a business that has a broad portfolio of vested interests in media and politics. CNN is partnered with Google who’s search engine is featured on their web site. And all of the political players on the stage have potential for benefiting Google’s regulatory agenda.

A far better experiment along these lines would have been a blog powered debate hosted by a broad-based and open site that allowed for more diverse and less moderated (or community moderated) participation. If CNN had such a site, I would not have objected to them using it. But since they don’t, something along the lines of the Huffington Post might be interesting.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much hope that that will occur. It’s a little too far off the radar of old media players like CNN. So we’ll have to endure these spectacles for some time to come. And of course, the Republicans are going to get the YouTube treatment next.


The Next American Fuhrer

Posted by on July 23, 2007 at 4:43 pm. 9 Comments :

Befitting a nation that prides itself on its entrepreneurial creativity, the United States is preparing the way for a uniquely American innovation in governance: a democratically elected dictator. And neither politicians, nor judges, nor journalists, are rising to oppose the coming tyranny.

This ominous prophecy of political thralldom is not a product of party or partisanship. Personalities are irrelevant. The threat hovers over the office of the presidency as it has been defined by the current occupant.

George Bush, aided by puppet master, Dick Cheney, has blazed a trail of executive power that is unprecedented. Together they have reshaped the presidency into a virtual monarchy. The founding fathers strove mightily to craft an executive that was accountable and vulnerable to the counterbalancing of coequal branches of government. They would certainly not approve of the measures that Bush has employed to demolish their long enduring work.

By consolidating power in the White House, BushCo is advancing an interpretation of American government that is openly hostile to the Constitution. This is more than a theoretical exercise. The principles advocated by all the President’s men and women have already been put into practice and their issue reads like a draft for Articles of Impeachment. As the founding fathers might say…

“Let Facts Be Submitted To A Candid World.”

  • Falsifying evidence of weapons of mass destruction to justify an unlawful war of aggression.
  • Directing the exposure of a covert CIA agent in time of war.
  • Using presidential signing statements to circumvent laws passed by Congress.
  • Illegal wiretapping and surveillance conducted against American citizens.
  • Extraordinary rendition and torture of detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
  • Illegal suspension of the right of habeas corpus.
  • Destruction of executive branch records whose preservation is required by law.
  • Unlawfully terminating U.S. attorneys for political purposes.
  • Employing executive privilege for the purpose of obstructing justice.
  • Suborning perjury by administration officials.
  • Threatening to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act for reporting government wrongdoing.
  • Dereliction of duty and failure to faithfully execute the office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This administration behaves as if there are no other branches of government, and no public opinion either. They espouse a philosophy that views the President as a “unitary executive.” In this view the President is not subject to Congressional oversight; laws are complied with on a voluntary basis; every act or document produced by the executive branch is regarded as privileged and secret; and the courts function as rubber stamps for the de facto despot.

This behavior is contrary to the values of a free, democratic society. Left unchecked it will lower the bar of governance and serve as a precedent for future administrations. The one sure way to vacate that precedent is to vacate the president – that is, to impeach Bush and/or Cheney. Many people may consider that to be a fanciful pipe dream. Congressional leaders have all but rejected the notion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that impeachment is “off the table.” Harry Reid, majority leader in the Senate, says that even a censure would be a waste of time.

Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?
7/5/07 Favor Oppose Undecided
All Adults 45% 46% 9%
Voters 46% 44% 10%
Democrats 69% 22% 9%
Republicans 13% 86% 1%
Independents 50% 30% 20%

The American people, however, have a completely different take on the matter, as reported in a new poll by the American Research Group. When asked if they favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush, 45% are in favor, 46% oppose. Those numbers include wide majorities of Democrats and Independents. The results are even worse for Cheney for whom there is an outright majority in favor of impeachment (54%/40%). In either case, there is clearly a sufficient measure of dissatisfaction to warrant the commencement of committee hearings to ascertain whether credible grounds for impeachment exist. Not to do so would be a dereliction of duty and failure of representative government.

The foregoing notwithstanding, Congress may well neglect their duty, ignore the public will, and decline to initiate hearings. Should that occur, the injury to the Constitution would still be an open and festering wound. While remedies like censure would be better than nothing, there is another path that ought to be explored which, as yet, has not been discussed in broad-based media.
Contine reading →


Enlisting Madison Avenue Or Drafting Joseph Goebbels?

Posted by on July 21, 2007 at 5:56 pm. 1 Comments :

The Washington Post has published an article describing the Rand Corporation’s new study: Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation. [PDF]

The conclusions of this study, which was commissioned (for $400,000) by the Pentagon, are both frighteningly obvious and just plain frightening. Their most profound observation appears to be that the U.S. presence in Iraq would have been better received if we had delivered cookies and milk instead of a torrent of bombs. We would have a more harmonious relationship with the locals if we weren’t kicking in their doors or shooting them at checkpoints.

What I’d like to know is where I can receive a commission from the Pentagon, because I could have told them this and I’d have done it for $200,000 (half-off offer for a limited time only).

The frightening part is that Rand analysts seem to think that the only shortcoming of U.S. planners in Iraq is that they failed to properly “brand” their “product.” Perhaps with the right logo and a catchy jingle we would now be perceived as liberators as we were promised by our leaders in Washington. The report also refers to Iraqi civilians as “consumers.” However, I’m not sure that the Iraqi people ever actually chose to shop with us.

The whole thing smacks of an advocacy of the sort propaganda pioneered by Edward Bernays and peddled by Joseph Goebbels (among others). This report manages to both trivialize the real human tragedy that our aggression in Iraq represents, as well as promote a solution that seeks to manipulate the victims rather than to redress and repair the damage done.

For its part, the Washington Post is playing along with the Madison Avenue crowd. Post staff writer, Karen DeYoung, obligingly helps to craft the White House’s message by authoring this bit of editorializing in the body of her supposedly news composition:

“While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been ‘We will help you.’ That is what President Bush’s new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq’s security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.”

Where did DeYoung get the idea that it was her job to characterize so pleasantly what Bush’s new strategy is striving for? Not only is she overreaching her journalistic boundaries, she is also flat out wrong. Bush’s new Iraq strategy is a surge of military force which is not really new at all – just an escalation of what has failed so miserably in the past.

In addition, DeYoung uncritically quotes Rand’s Todd C. Helmus, and Duane Schattle of the Joint Forces Command, saying things like “This isn’t just about going in and blowing things up;” or warning against operational hubris because, “Procter & Gamble doesn’t even do that.”

Not that I want to help Rand to shape their disinformation campaigns, but I can tell them one thing for sure. If they don’t do at least as good a job on the Iraqis as the American media has done in the U.S., they are never going to achieve their nefarious goals.


News Corp’s Editorial Board: A Rogues Gallery

Posted by on July 20, 2007 at 2:46 am. 5 Comments :

Defenders of journalistic integrity are nervously gnawing at their fingertips now that the Dow Jones board has recommended accepting Rupert Murdoch’s offer to purchase their souls. All that remains now is for the Bancrofts to meet and then reveal their decision. They can still block the sale.

Observers say that it is too close to call. There are a few noble members of the controlling shareholders group that are standing firm against Murdoch. There are also those who are salivating at the thought of the new riches the sale will bring them. For the rest, they would do well to consider the prospects News Corp is floating for the editorial board that is intended to keep a distance between Murdoch and the Journal.

The Rogues Gallery:

Theodore B. Olson: Olsen was Assistant Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, whom he also defended in the Iran/Contra scandal. He went on to become Solicitor General in the administration of Bush, the Elder. Later he represented Bush, the Lesser in the Supreme Court case versus Al Gore.

Jack Fuller: Fuller was president of Tribune Publishing Company, and former editor of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune Company is an unabashedly conservative enterprise and the Chicago Tribune is newsprint version of Fox News.

Thomas Bray: Bray is the former editorial-page editor of the Detroit News. He has a pre-existing relationship with the Wall Street Journal as a writer for OpinionJournal.com, which the Journal owns. At OJ he shared bylines with ultra-right wingers like Paul Gigot, John Fund, and Peggy Noonan.

Susan Hockfield: Hockfield is president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her post at MIT, she was a provost at Yale where she was at the center of a bitter controversy surrounding the Graduate Employees and Students Organization and its unionization efforts. She was staunchly anti-union.

With this preview of what Murdoch is proposing for the entity that is supposed to prevent him from influencing newsroom operations, we can see clearly that he is not the least bit interested in keeping his word or adhering to the terms of the agreement negotiated to preserve editorial independence. I certainly hope that the wavering Bancrofts and other shareholders are paying attention.

Update (8/1/07): The latest roster for the board now includes Lou Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press, Jennifer Dunn, former Republican House member, and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab.

If this means that Olsen and Hockfield are gone, I’d call this an improvement. But Dunn, Fuller, and Bray, could still cause trouble.