| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 4/3 |
| 2003/10/30-31 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia] UID:10869 Activity:moderate |
10/30 memo from Fox News staffer on whether they are
really 'fair and balanced.'. I guess it's not any
new information but it's interesting:
http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters#foxnews - danh
\_ "For the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up
through the ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom
are non-union, with no protections regarding what they can be
made to do, there is undue motivation to please the big boss."
Oh yeah. Objective journalism like the LA times who refused
to dig dirt at one point on Davis because claimed they don't do
that to political incumbents. They also had more than 20 (!?)
people working on digging up dirt on Arnie. Objective journalism
my ass. Fox is tame by comparison. They actually let people
lean both sides, as long as one side doesn't get the last word.
\_ Are you trolling? This is patently false.
\_ If you are referring to the LA Times story, it was all
over the news here in LA. Too bad it didn't make
national (or even state) news... Actually one wonders
why not... A bloody LA times reporter confirmed the
20+ figure.
\_ I think he referred to the "fox lets people lean both
sides" falsehood. About the dirt-digging, well I have
no knowledge of that but I'm not concerned. Davis has
been in politics a long time and dirt is out there.
Arnie on the otherhand declared candidacy just weeks
prior to a recall election, and therefore any dirt
would be very timely and informative.
\_ That 'falsehood' was a quote from that Fox-bashing
article posted above which started this thread,
you know the article you probably didn't read...
If that's bias, we need more bias in the media!
\_ Attempting "moral equivalency" between LA times and Fox News
is ludicrous. Are you really comfortable with the level of
systematic, intentional bias creation in that memo?
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2003/10/index.html#001768
\_ Actually, we need less of both. I'm sure people would laugh
at you if you said "Fox is tame by comparison".
\_ Why should they laugh at me? I believe bias in media is
unavoidable. What we need is less hypocricy by people
denouncing sins of which they are guilty themselves.
\_ They should just change the slogan of Fox News to
"The Patriotic News Channel" and be done with it. That's
more accurate for what they think they're doing.
\_ But it's not "patriotic" when a Dem is prez.
\_ yes because republicans are patriotic and dems are
sleazy commie traitors.
\_ You're in the wrong camp: it's the libs who yell
"hypocrite" and the cons who scream "unpatriotic."
Get your slogans right. |
| 4/3 |
|
| poynter.org/forum/?id=letters#foxnews -> poynter.org/forum/?id=letters Anonymous sources in a story about a high school football coach getting the team taken away because administrators were fed up with his temper, inappropriate comments, and foul language? I just dont see the value in using unnamed sources in a story like this. Maybe over allegations of more import: sexual abuse, physical violence orbribes to throw games. I know it came from a small paper and I dont doubt that this was big news there. But this has got to be the silliest example of using anonymous sources Ive ever seen. More concerning is Star Tribunecolumnist Doug Grows label of Wakefield as a national journalism hero. And again, let me say that I admire Wakefield for not buckling to the subpoena. I would like to say that I have never had any problems with anything that Maia has ever written for STATS. She is an expert on addiction and recovery, and widely published in the mainstream press. You might not like the fact that she has consistently challenged the way that drugs have been covered in the media along with the policies that drive this coverage. But that criticism has always been rooted in the best scientific information available and the best adversarial reasoning which is why, on this issue, it is ludicrous to impute a right-wing agenda. Scalia certainly isnt alone in restricting reporters from using tape recorders in Washington. In Congress, supposedly the great bastion of free speech rights, there are strictly enforced rules regarding using tape recorders, even for note-taking purposes. House Republican Leader Tom DeLay has weekly meetings with reporters that are announced pad and pencil only, and late House Speaker Thomas Tip ONeill used to have his staff remind reporters periodically that he didnt want them to use tape recorders when they talked to him at daily pre-session meetings. Sessions of the House and Senate have been broadcast on C-Span for the last 25 years, but reporters are still not permitted to use tape recorders in either the House or Senate chambers. House rules also restrict their use while interviewing members of the House in the Speakers Lobby. Supreme Court justices arent the only ones traditionally allergic to being tape recorded. Try using a tape recorder while talking to a State Department and White House official, and you may not get the interview. I once asked why, and was told the reason is that any official words reflecting United States policy should be written down in deliberate language, rather than spoken off-the-cuff. Tape recorders still arent permitted even for note-taking purposes in any court I have been in. They were not permitted even when Virginia courts set up satellite TV-fed overflow rooms during the recent Washington sniper trials, where reporters could use their computers to take notes but had to pledge not to use the recording functions computers contain. Getting dyspeptic over restrictions on using tape recorders is a distraction from far more significant issues involving the dangerous growth of secrecy in government that reporter groups should be fighting. In Hattiesburg, the reporters were allowed to get the information of what Scalia was saying, but just had to do it the old fashioned way from their notes. The only difference I hear in his defense and that of other recent prevaricators is that hes a bully about it. Herald-Leader reported that the owner of a liquor store made a similar accusation against Breslin. Although Breslin attempted to meet Mike Parker for the column he was writing, he never did. Breslins column was about a judge who allowed a local cable channel to broadcast his trials. This part is factual: While watching the trial of a man accused of bouncing checks, Parker recognized the man, remembered he was holding bad checks from the defendant, and took the checks to the courthouse. Breslin took it from there, writing that Parker set down a beer he was drinking and dived for the cash register for the checks and took them to the courthouse. Parker, who was 29 at the time, raced up a hill toward the courthouse, Breslin wrote, and burst into the the courtroom, shouting and waving the checks over his head. I look at it as being made fun of, the aggrieved Parker told a reporter. Just the way he handled it made me look foolish, like a drunken hillbilly. Parker said he had never talked to Breslin, who was writing for the New York Daily News then. Parker denied drinking beer that day, said the he did not run to the courthouse but rode in a car. The judge confirmed that Parker had not burst, shouting, into his courtroom. Breslin took part of his account from Commonwealths Attorney Thomas J. Except for the quotes and the description of Parker bursting into the courtroom, Smith said, the story had been fairly accurate. Breslin said in a telephone interview that he relied on the description of Parkers actions as told by court officials. He said he tried several times to talk with Parker and stopped by his store, which he described as a modern liquor store as big as a bowling alley and certainly the property of a wise businessman. Theres not a letter on Romenesko that uses the word, and I havent seen a news story, column, or editorial that does so. There are several that decry the fact that federal marshals in the employ of one of the supposed guardians of our constitution acted essentially as hired goons, seizing and destroying the property of journalists. Nobody called this censorship that Im aware of, but until Triplett, nobody defended the sleazy, frightening, and perhaps criminal act either. And if Tripletts not clear on why this incident is so troubling, heres some reading material for him. Maybe with some further consideration, hell at least appreciate the irony of this happening just after Scalia got finished extolling the virtues of the constitution and the freedoms its supposed to protect. The reporters were not told they couldnt report on the speech or not quote from it, they just couldnt make an audio tape. While it likely could have been handled better, this isnt the end of democrary and the death of the First Amendment. I know its good sport to criticize Scalia, but it is quite conceiveable that he had nothing to do with the request to erase the tapes. The school messed up and didnt make the announcement or clarify with reporters they couldnt record, the Marshals panicked, and now we have Erasegate. To pre-empt the chorsuses, I will agree that they were recording to make sure the quotes were accurate. But lots of people - including the reporters who cover the Supreme Court on a daily basis - write about Scalia without recording what he says. There are many venues where recording isnt allowed, yet journalism still happens, stories are still written, and quotes are still quoted. KRAMER : With all due respect, to borrow a phrase from our national security advisor, this issue goes far beyond the question being asked of Hattiesburg American readers: Are you troubled that United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia prohibited the media from recording his public appearances in Hattiesburg? The core questions now are does Justice Scalia have the right to use federal marshals to enforce his policy however misguided and do marshals have the right to seize recordings or force reporters to destroy them? As for the policy itself, its enabled by people who continue to invite the justice to speak about the Constitution even when they know his ground rules abridge freedom of the press. Perhaps the real answer is to say thank you but no thank you when that request is expressed. Its only fair that I acknowledge being at a brief Scalia appearance in Aspen last summer where the ground rules changed several times. The justice knew his audience, which included other public officials, also included a number of journalists. Smith conveniently fails to understand is that, if I didnt think this was news, why did I ever go after it - on pure gut, instinct - in the first place? Once I had what one media analyst called a stunning scoop, the real question is why the Portland Press Herald never printed it andwhy Jeannine Guttman allegedly didnt know about it? Smiths claims about Guttm... |
| www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2003/10/index.html#001768 The gay writer Mark Simpson used the word to satirize what he saw as consumerism's toll on traditional masculinity. Men didn't go to shopping malls, buy glossy magazines or load up on grooming products, Mr. Simpson argued, so consumer culture promoted the idea of a sensitive guy -- who went to malls, bought magazines and spent freely to improve his personal appearance. Everyone following Dean closely on the campaign trail knows two things. First, the man is an unrepentant cheapskate -- during the weekend before the last debate, while most other campaign staffers stayed in a Detroit skyscraper, 113 Team Dean slept at a budget hotel. Their 116 latest delves into a little bit of legislative skullduggery to which the mainstream press has not yet caught on: an effort by the White House and Republican Rep. Bill Thomas to push through a series of massive corporate tax breaks worth $135 billion. Now you might think that, with the country already facing massive deficits and Congress looking at an $87 billion price tag for the first stage of Iraq reconstruction, the administration would be hesitant about such legislation -- especially since President Bush has already reduced taxes on corporations by 40 percent during his time in office. What's especially amazing about this legislation is that, at a time when President Bush is asking thousands of American soldiers to risk their lives in Iraq, the administration and Republicans in Congress are pushing a bill that would give multinationals -- many of which already use offshore tax havens to avoid paying Uncle Sam -- yet more ways to shirk their fair share. Back in the summer of 2001, most people thought that Donald Rumsfeld would be the first member of Bush's cabinet to depart. Democrats didn't like him, of course, and neither did the career military folks at the Pentagon. More surprising -- and maybe more significant -- was that Republicans on Capitol Hill (whose ranks Rumsfeld once belonged to) were grumbling about his autocratic style. September 11 changed all that, briefly making him a hero. Jones says that GOP sentiment on the Hill towards Rumsfeld 119 appears to be souring to pre-9-11 levels. For a while now there's been a certain amount of buzz about the new "investor class," which, according to its enthusiasts, is a group of free-market zealots who will save the GOP from the demographic problem posed by the slow-but-steady decline in the proportion of white people in this country. The Washington Post recently took a 121 look at the subject, but Ruy Teixeira says the Post 122 got it wrong: The Post also points out that only 37 percent of stock-holding Americans hold individual stocks directlyagain consistent with other available data. But the Post fails to point out what other data show clearly: the growth of stock-holding among Americans is mostly driven by increased indirect stock-holdingbasically mutual funds held in retirement vehicles like 401s and IRAs. For example, Survey of Consumer Finances data show overall stock-holding among American households increasing from 32 percent to 48 percent between 1989 and 1998. But in that period, direct stock-holding went up just 6 points, from 13 percent to 19 percent, while indirect stock-holding increased 18 points, from 25 percent to 43 percent. That's a particular problem in the context of the article because, as the article stresses, there is no convincing evidence that indirect stock-holding has any effect on ones political views. In other words, by far the most popular form of stock ownership and the one that has mostly driven the rise in stock-holding among Americans currently has little political importance. It's also worth recalling that as the Enron debacle taught us, the interests of the typical small investor are by no means always aligned with the interests of the sort of high-level corporate managers who tend to vote Republican. Kevin Drum has a 123 post up discussing a 124 chart taken from a recent Economist 125 article demonstrating that CEO compensation per dollar of net profit has increased five-fold in the past 40 years or so. There's no possible justification for this in market terms, and while it's possible to look at it as a classic case of bosses screwing the workers, it's also a case of the bosses screwing the small investors who don't get to have a real say in the management of the companies they ostensibly own. It's almost axiomatic at this point that whenever President Bush gives a press conference or answers reporters' questions, we can expect some kind of blunder or gaffe. Pressed on whether his speech last May declaring an end to major combat in Iraq, delivered under a "Mission Accomplished" banner, was premature, Bush 127 told reporters that, in essence, it was the Navy's fault for putting the sign up. Or as press secretary Scott McClellan parses, "We took care of the production of it. Abraham Lincoln does absolutely nothing to absolve the administration of a very obvious series of 128 easily foreseable errors and oversights regarding post-war planning for Iraq. The notion that Bush's landing on the Lincoln was anything but a very carefully stage-managed public-relations stunt is literally unbelievable. Let us keep in mind the attention to detail we witnessed last May. The carrier was re-routed so as not to make port before the president's scheduled visit. When that carrier got too close to land anyway, the White House made sure the ship's heading was such that the shoreline would not be visible in photographs and videos of the president's speech taken by the press. Not long after the Lincoln speech, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times got the Bush team on record 129 gloating about what a good job it had done: The most elaborate -- and criticized -- White House event so far was Mr. Bush's speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that White House communications staffer Scott Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Mr. Bush's landing in a flight suit and his early evening speech. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call "magic hour light," which cast a golden glow on Mr. All of this is perfectly fine -- the president has one of the best media teams in memory, many members of which were in fact recruited from television networks. What's funny is that Bush and McClellan are trying to shuck responsibility for it now -- hey, it wasn't us, it was Ensign Johnson! The rest of Bumiller's article is worth reading, as it illuminates various other examples of how carefully this White House manages such events: Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops. On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Mr. Bush in profile, his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone. And on Monday, for remarks the president made promoting his tax cut plan near Albuquerque, the White House unfurled a backdrop that proclaimed its message o... |