Today the New York Times (4/3/12) has a long report detailing how the Obama White House has politicized the regulatory process, apparently partly out of a fear of being portrayed by Republicans as "an overzealous and job-killing regulator." It's an interesting piece, covering an array of regulatory decisions. One of the more interesting media anecdotes was the suggestion that fear of Fox News motivates some of the White House's decision-making. A recommendation that calorie information for movie popcorn should be made public, for instance, was thought to be unnecessary and would probably be lampooned on Fox News as an especially [...]
Mar
02
2012
How Breitbart Got Away With His Lies
By 68 Comments
Kudos to Paul Farhi of the Washington Post (3/2/12) for talking about the obvious deceptions and inaccuracies in right-wing publisher Andrew Breitbart's work: News organizations found, for example, that the ACORN videos–which purported to show a young Mr. Breitbart ally named James O'Keefe posing as a pimp seeking advice from the organization about how to establish a brothel and evade taxes–actually presented a heavily edited account of what had happened. An investigation by the California attorney general's office concluded that O'Keefe had added footage of himself and an ally dressed in flamboyant costumes that they had not worn to ACORN's [...]
Aug
04
2010
Howard Kurtz Defends His Defense of Fox in Sherrod Debacle
By 39 Comments
In Howard Kurtz's latest column (8/2/10), the Washington Post media reporter bemoans the new media atmosphere as a "search-and-destroy culture" that is "as likely to vilify journalists as political and corporate leaders." Kurtz counts himself among those vilified journalists, citing recent criticism over his defense (7/22/10) of Fox News' handling of the Shirley Sherrod debacle: I know what it's like to be caught in the crossfire. When I reported that Fox News did not air the Sherrod video until after she had been fired, I got hammered by the left, and some commentators just ignored the chronology. (And conspiracy theorists [...]
Jul
23
2010
Howard Kurtz Absolves Fox in Sherrod Smear
By 7 Comments
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (7/22/10) defends Fox News against charges it promoted Andrew Breitbart's fraudulent Shirley Sherrod story–because, he says, Fox's news division didn't even address the story until after Sherrod resigned. In an extensive defense of Fox, Kurtz also cites an e-mail circulated by a Fox executive to the channel's news division, cautioning news staff to be careful with the story. Here's Kurtz: But for all the chatter–some of it from Sherrod herself–that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn't touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the [...]
