Monthly Archives: March 2009

More Jokes From Howard Kurtz

Posted on 03/31/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Quoting Washington Post/CNN media "critic" Howard Kurtz slamming Headline News for "talking about this constantly on cable for more than a week" and "feasting on this terrible situation," Brad Jacobson (Media Bloodhound, 3/30/09) also cites Kurtz railing against media obsession … Continue reading →

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White Media vs. Black Power

Posted on 03/31/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

The Maynard Institute's Richard Prince (Journal-isms, 3/30/09) has a look at "a two-day conference in Washington called '1968 and Beyond: A Symposium on the Impact of the Black Power Movement on America,'" with "hardly anyone from the mainstream media…there to … Continue reading →

Posted in Race | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Plane Crash Begets Military Budget 'Booster-Baloney'

Posted on 03/31/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

News reports on a March 25 F-22 crash in Mojave, Calif., that "contained some strange assertions about the cost of the F-22" have budget myth-buster Winslow Wheeler (Military.com, 3/28/09) decrying the "utter hogwash" that reporters printed "possibly based on the … Continue reading →

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S.F. Columnist Protests Protesters

Posted on 03/31/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Writing under the pen name Jami Tarn (CounterPunch, 3/27/09), one San Francisco lawyer is rallying against "a hate-filled column in the San Francisco Chronicle." Chronicle commentator Debra J. Saunders "insinuated that Tristan Anderson, still lingering in a coma in Tel … Continue reading →

Posted in International | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Panama: When Journalists Learned to Rally 'Round the Flag

Posted on 03/31/2009 by Jim Naureckas

With the discussion of Afghanistan sounding more and more like the debate over Iraq these days, we thought it would be worthwhile to point out how similar the media rhetoric around all of the U.S.'s recent wars has been. To … Continue reading →

Posted in International, Media Criticism | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Woman Journalists: Last In, First Out

Posted on 03/30/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Author and journalist Sheila Gibbons has some regrettably foreseeable news (Womens eNews, 3/30/09) on how female reporters who "worked hard to establish themselves in what had long been a male-dominated field" are faring in a time of massive media cutbacks … Continue reading →

Posted in Gender, Media Business | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

NPR's Afghanistan Stenographers Bureau Still Open

Posted on 03/30/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

NPR watchdog Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/28/09) would just "love to know what it costs NPR to station Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson in Afghanistan," from where she dispatches to U.S. public radio such "news" as U.S.-installed Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai telling reporters … Continue reading →

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Options to the Latest 'Absolutely Essential' Bank Plan

Posted on 03/30/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Looking back over how corporate "media abandoned any pretense of objectivity in pushing the original TARP back in the fall," when "they eagerly pushed the story that the economy would collapse if the TARP did not pass," Dean Baker (Beat … Continue reading →

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On TNR's 'Incredible Dereliction of Basic Journalism'

Posted on 03/30/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Jonathan Schwarz has a quick post (3/27/09) over on his A Tiny Revolution blog asking readers, "Have I Lost My Mind?" or "is it really true that the New Republic published a 6,000-word profile of Larry Summers" that wondered if … Continue reading →

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NYT Finds Comedy Gold in 0.1 Percent of New York's Budget

Posted on 03/30/2009 by Jim Naureckas

The New York Times reported today (3/30/09) that New York State government had reached an agreement on a $131.8 billion budget. The third paragraph of the front-page story by Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim reads: And despite the enormous fiscal … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

An Order of Paul Krugman–Hold the Economics

Posted on 03/29/2009 by Jim Naureckas

It's to self-described "establishment" journalist Evan Thomas' credit that he calls attention (Newsweek, 4/6/09) to economist Paul Krugman's progressive criticism of the Obama administration's financial bailout plan; corporate media generally pay much more attention to critics from the right. But … Continue reading →

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Pelosi: More Corporatization for Failing News Corporations

Posted on 03/28/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Free Press' Craig Aaron and Joseph Torres (Guardian.co.uk, 3/26/09) promptly knock down the scary development in which Nancy Pelosi recently "asked attorney general Eric Holder to consider loosening antitrust laws to help out struggling newspapers by allowing more media mergers. … Continue reading →

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National Papers as 'Paparazzi-Like Birdcage Liner'

Posted on 03/28/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

David Sirota has a new column (Creators Syndicate, 3/27/09) chronicling the nature of "newspapers' self-inflicted blows": First, financially strapped newspapers undermined their comparative advantage by replacing audience-attracting local exclusives with cheaper national content. Then the providers of that national content … Continue reading →

Posted in Media Business | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

D.C. Press Corps Boring Itself to Death

Posted on 03/28/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

Want to know if "the media did a great job" covering Barack Obama's second major presidential press conference? Jason Linkins says (Huffington Post, 3/25/09) you can "just ask the media! Because they'll tell you!" But "at the same time, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Economy, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

NYT: Home of the 'Insanely Selfish and Greed-Addled'

Posted on 03/27/2009 by Gabriel Voiles

The New York Times editorial page's lending of space to former AIG financial vice president Jake DeSantis' plea for "us all to reconsider our anger toward the poor overworked employees of his unit" has incurred some of Matt Taibbi's trademark … Continue reading →

Posted in Economy | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments