JULY 2008

MATT DRUDGE'S SECRET FANS

We have noted before that, contrary to popular image, among the biggest readers of Matt Drudge are other journalists and that more than a few of his stories are planted by these journalists in order to drive readers to their copy. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post confirms this:

Chris Cillizza, The Fix In interviews with more than a dozen operatives -- many of whom are rightly classified "Drudgeologists" for their intimate study of the likes and dislikes of the man and the site -- two major reasons are offered.

First and foremost, is the depth -- and the quality -- of Drudge's readership. Drudge's number of unique visitors is regularly touted but what is more important, in terms of his ability to drives news cycles, is that every reporter and editor who covers politics is checking the site multiple times a day.

Phil Singer, former deputy communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign and now a Democratic consultant, called Drudge's "elite readership" a key to his influence. Singer added that a walk through any press filing center at a debate reveals every other laptop, at least, has Drudge's website up on its screen.

The second major reason for Drudge's influence, according to the Fix's informal poll of Drudgeologists is his ability to sniff out a potentially big story when others -- including reporters -- miss it at first glance.

"He can identify what's a big deal even when the reporters who actually cover and report on an event don't realize what they have," said one GOP strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. "He scoops reporters' scoops."

Kevin Madden, a Republican operative now with the Glover Park Group, said that Drudge's site serves as a "national political assignment editor of sorts for those covering the campaign trail."

Katie Levinson, former communications director for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, echoed Madden's sentiment: "The Drudge Report has become the must-read for TV anchors and radio personalities before they go on air, for bookers sorting out what's 'newsy' in a non-stop news cycle, and for political candidates looking to avoid getting blindsided by the press."

Regardless of the reason given for Drudge's power, to a person, everyone The Fix spoke to agreed that there is no single tool more powerful in the modern media for breaking a story or turning up the volume on a little-noticed comment.

The trouble with MSNBC & CNN is that they can't tell the difference between breaking news and broken news - Josiah Swampoodle

JUNE 2008

REAL JOURNALISTS DON'T EARN $5 MILLION A YEAR

CHRIS HEDGES, TRUTHDIG Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.

The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation's greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.

No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview.

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system. In the slang of the profession, these television courtiers are "throats." These courtiers, including the late Tim Russert, never gave a voice to credible critics in the buildup to the war against Iraq. They were too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American patriots. They never fought back in their public forums against the steady erosion of our civil liberties and the trashing of our Constitution. These courtiers blindly accept the administration's current propaganda to justify an attack on Iran. They parrot this propaganda. They dare not defy the corporate state. The corporations that employ them make them famous and rich. It is their Faustian pact. No class of courtiers, from the eunuchs behind Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed itself into a responsible elite. Courtiers are hedonists of power.

LET THE RUSSERT REVISIONISM BEGIN

RUSSERT COVERAGE: NO ONE LOVES JOURNALISTS LIKE JOURNALISTS DO

NETWORKS SLASH IRAQ COVERAGE

BRIAN STELTER, NY TIMES According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.) CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

LEONARD DOWNIE LEAVES THE WASHINGTON POST

From our overstocked archives. . .

SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - Behind the mediocre and mirthless miasma of the Washington Post lurks the quiet influence of St. Leonard the Incorruptible, AKA executive editor Len Downie. As Charlie is to his Angels, so St. Leonard is to his media minions. Only on special occasions does he step forward to issue a Postic bull, including the other day when he actually wrote the following: "As I am often reminded, journalists are people, too. They cannot be expected to cleanse their minds of human emotions and reactions to highly charged political campaigns or controversial issues. But we do ask Washington Post reporters and editors to come as close as possible to doing just that. In my own case, as some know, I no longer exercise my right to vote. As the final decision-maker on news coverage in The Post, I refuse to decide, even privately, which candidate would make the better president or member of the city council, or what position I would take on any issue. I want my mind to remain entirely open to all sides and possibilities."

If this true of Downie, it would make him the only person in the history of journalism to possess such qualities. Certainly there is no evidence of it in his paper, one of the most persistently biased journals of the nation. We recommend to him instead of such idiotic cant a more sensible goal of well-reasoned, perceptive, and honest subjectivity which, among other things, would permit the employment of actual human beings as journalists. In any case, at least one member of the Post establishment does not share Downie's view. In 1992, your editor was accosted on 15th Street by publisher Don Graham who asked whom I was supporting for president. When I told him I was backing Jerry Brown, he grabbed my arm, raised it, and shouted to all adjacent citizens, "Look I've found one, an actual Jerry Brown supporter!"

WASHINGTON POST: NOT ENOUGH REPORTERS TO COVER GREEN PARTY

WHEN WILL JOURNALISTS CONFESS THEY WERE WRONG - JUST LIKE MCCLELLAN?

FORMER ABC REPORTER CLAIMS NETWORK TOLD HER TO SOFT PEDAL BUSH BAD NEWS

MAY 2008

HOW MEDIA USE OF NUMBERS PLAYS THE RACE CARD

PENTAGON PLANT APPEARED ON NPR 67 TIMES

APRIL 2008

MEDIA IGNORES LACK OF FLAG PINS ON CLINTON AND MCCAIN (NOT TO MENTION CHARLES GIBSON)

WHAT WOULD JFK HAVE TOLD CHARLES GIBSON?

JOSSIP About a month ago, [David Gregory] joined NBC colleague Tim Russert at a Washington D.C. restaurant for dinner, where he showed his lack of appreciation for the help. . . The twosome's waitress somehow messed up their dinner order, and Gregory - whom CBS is supposedly "enamored" with in their hunt for a Katie Couric replacement - let's say, caustically reminded her how bad she erred. . .Russert chewed Gregory out for his tactless behavior. "Russert warned Gregory never to behave that way in front of him again," says a spy. And once MSNBC got wind of the story, they made Gregory "promise up and down to change his behavior" before they handed him the 6pm slot, we're told. . .

MARCH 2008

WHY IS THE MEDIA TRYING TO GET CLINTON OUT OF THE RACE?

SUBPRIME MEDIA COVERAGE OF A PRIME SCANDAL

DANNY SCHECHTER, EDITOR & PUBLISHER - "It is somewhat surprising," Larry Elliott, economics editor of London's The Guardian observed recently, "that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans." If such a fraud was taking place, and if Wall Street's financial crisis, according to the usually staid Economist, was on the edge of "disaster" with a "financial nuclear winter" waiting in the wings, why were American news consumers among the last to know?

On the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, our press was papered with retrospectives that dealt with every aspect of the conflict except its own miscoverage. At the same time, another and, arguably, more serious crisis had been underway longer and covered even more poorly.

The New York Times finally got around to examining war reporting as a business not journalism story on March 24 (below the fold), well after the unhappy anniversary. The story cited as a prime excuse for the fall-off in coverage, a study suggesting a "decline in public interest" as if that was not influenced by the lack of the issue's visibility. Other factors were the expense and danger of covering a Iraq.

Those excuses cannot justify the fact that most of the reporting on Wall Street's woes started only after the market melted down in August 2007,and not as this crisis built in intensity since 2001 when a housing bubble was engineered to replace the failed dot.com bubble. The financial world is not in Baghdad, not risky or expensive to cover. In fact, most media outlets have correspondents on the scene every day.

Was the press just not paying attention as hundreds of billions of dollars were swept into exotic structure investment vehicles over years, and then sliced and diced into CDO's and so-called asset based securities? A New York Times columnist even admitted that experts and advocates first warned them in 2001 that predatory lending practices were devastating poor neighborhoods but the issue was not covered in any depth for five years. This has resulted in nearly three million families facing foreclosure and the rest of us losing share and home values. . .

Most of the coverage has been relegated to not widely read business sections that focus on the ups and downs of the markets and the way the collapse of these arrangements have affected the fortunes of CEOS and business enterprises, not citizens, consumers and most of all homeowners, many of whom are or will be losing their homes.

Dean Starkman ,who studied the spotty "business" coverage in detail for the Columbia Journalism Review, concluded: "Today, as the credit crisis unravels, the business press can be fairly blamed for inattentiveness to the growing strains on middle-income borrowers. Maybe that's why so many middle-income people don't read it."

There is more to this very sad failure. Many newspapers and TV outlets were complicit. They accepted and made tons of money carrying slick and often deceptive advertising for shady mortgage lenders and credit card companies encouraging readers and viewers to accept more debt. Some major newspaper are tied into local real estate syndicates and get kickbacks from sales tied to their extensive advertising of homes for sale. . .

What's worse is that the coverage may have missed the truly criminal aspects of this crisis, the issue so far being raised mostly overseas. This will be fought out in courtrooms worldwide when those who purchased worthless mortgages sue the companies who sold them knowing their true value. Why are the RICO laws not being used to prosecute a scam involving so many "entangled" companies? There is no shortage of data on this fraudulent and discriminatory scheme.

Already the FBI is investigating 17 mortgage companies. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who never figured out that waterboarding is torture, now says his department is trying to figure out whether there is a larger criminal story.

Don't hold your breath for him to figure it out. Where is our mighty media that devoted so many acres of print to investigating Eliot Spitzer's victimless hypocrisy in looking into a far deeper failure that affects all of us and the future of our society?

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO THE NY TIMES

FEBRUARY 2008

ENDANGERED SPECIES: THE NEWSPAPER CARTOONIST

MEDILL REPORT - "Newspapers are getting rid of cartoonists at an alarming rate. They're trying to make themselves as irrelevant to readers as possible," said Milt Priggee, former cartoonist for Crain's Chicago Business. "The first thing a human being recognizes is visuals. Children can recognize images before they can read the written word. The very first person you should be hiring when you start a newspaper is a cartoonist."

According to Kent Worcester in a 2007 article by the American Political Science Association, "the waning of two-newspaper cities, the consolidation of the newspaper industry, and outsourcing in the form of substituting syndicated material for staff-generated material" are all to blame.

The result has been a drastic cut in staff cartoonist jobs, from 2,000 in the early 20th century, to nearly 200 in the 1980's, to less than 90 today. . .

Ted Rall, an editorial cartoonist whose work appears in more than 140 U.S. newspapers, has witnessed a "continuing trend away from editorial cartoons to illustrations of the news."

"These are cartoons that kind of don't tell you anything you didn't already know," said Rall.

Nick Anderson is a staff cartoonist for the Houston Chronicle and the 2005 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

"Occasionally I will indulge in something funny, and it's fine to keep readers engaged with something lighthearted," said Anderson. But "the operative word in editorial cartoons is editorial."

"What you see printed in national editions is definitely watered down and safe," said Anderson. "But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of good, pointed commentary going on."

POLL: INTERNET REPLACING TRADITIONAL MEDIA AS NEWS SOURCE

JANUARY 2008

A DIFFERENT KIND OF NEWSPAPER WAR

JONATHAN ROWE, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW - Out here in West Marin County, California, we live in a quiet, constant state of siege. The rolling ranchlands and ocean beaches are iconic. Point Reyes National Seashore, which occupies much of the coastland, draws more than two million visitors a year. You scan the unspoiled hills and it is not hard to imagine encampments of developers, waiting like guerrillas for their moment to descend. . .

The protected seashore is expanding literally to the edge of Point Reyes Station, which is the closest thing to a hub. More tourists are coming, traffic is increasing, and second and third homes are proliferating. . . The resulting tensions are ripe journalistic fodder, but instead of just covering them, the local paper itself has become a focal point.

The Point Reyes Light is almost as iconic as the landscape it inhabits. In 1979, the Light became the little paper that could, when it won a Pulitzer for its investigations of the cult-like Synanon, a local drug rehab center whose officials once left a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a critic. But the prize meant less to local readers than did weekly news about the National Seashore's expansion plans, run-off into Tomales Bay, and reckless motorcycle riders who accelerate into blind curves and fly off coastal Highway One (not that anyone's grief would be less than total about that). It was our forum.

But a couple of years ago, the Light changed hands, and the new owner soon became an embodiment of the worst fears for the area the newspaper used to symbolize.

Now West Marin has a second weekly, the West Marin Citizen, which has made a strong start with the Light's disaffected readers. "Newspaper war" may be too strong a term; the competition is low-key, as is most of life out here. Like former spouses at a social gathering, the two weeklies barely acknowledge one another's presence. But the advertiser and subscriber bases are limited (total population is about 15,000) and few people expect that two papers can survive for long. . .

http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_language_of_strangers.php

NAT HENTOFF: 50 YEARS OF PISSING PEOPLE OFF

NAT HENTOFF'S GREATEST HITS

TIMES OMBUDSMAN: HIRING KRISTOL WAS A MISTAKE

EDITOR & PUBLISHER - In a message that probably is not going down well in The New York Times' front office, the paper's public editor, Clark Hoyt, has called the controversial hiring of William Kristol as an op-ed columnist a "mistake."

He also wrote, in his column today, that of nearly 700 messages he has received about the selection, only one praised the pick. Arthur Sulzberger, he revealed, "was surprised by the vehemence of the reaction.". . .

Hoyt concludes the column: "This is a decision I would not have made. But it is not the end of the world. Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down.... If Kristol is another [William] Safire, he has the chance to prove it. If not, he and the newspaper will move on, and the search will resume."

DECEMBER 2007

LAUREATE OF THE DEPARTED

MARGALIT FOX, NY TIMES - Hugh Massingberd, a celebrated former obituaries editor of The Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page required reading by speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully ill of the dead, became the recipient of his own services after dying in West London on Christmas Day. He was 60 and lived in London.

The cause was cancer, according to The Telegraph. The newspaper announced Mr. Massingberd's death in an expansive obituary that described, not unkindly, his being "invariably strapped for cash" and the "gourmandism" and "bingeing" that had turned him "into an impressively corpulent presence whose moon face lit up with Pickwickian benevolence.". . .

HR was also a shy autodidact who had never been to college; a past editor of Burke's Peerage, the venerable record book of the titled families of Britain and Ireland; the author of dozens of books on the English aristocracy; a recognized authority on the country homes of England, stately and moldy alike; and a rabid theatergoer whose enthusiasm for "Phantom of the Opera" was undimmed by the fact that he had seen it more than 50 times and knew every word and every note by heart. . .

In 2002 The Spectator, a British weekly magazine, described Mr. Massingberd as "an English eccentric of the sort Hollywood imagines shoot snipe in their underpants."

Mr. Massingberd did not actually shoot snipe in his underpants, but he did once pose for a photograph dressed as a Roman emperor garlanded with sausages, as his obituary in The Telegraph helpfully reminded readers on Thursday. . .

One Telegraph obituary, from 1991, opened this way: "The Third Lord Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55, provided through his character and career ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle. His chief occupations were bongo drummer, confidence trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer."

Another, from 1988, memorialized Peter Langan, a London restaurateur: "Often he would pass out amid the cutlery before doing any damage, but occasionally he would cruise menacingly beneath the tables, biting unwary customers' ankles."

And there was this much-quoted line, also from 1988, which appeared in The Telegraph's obituary of John Allegro. A once-renowned scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mr. Allegro later advanced a theory that Judaism and Christianity were the products of an ancient cult that worshiped sex and mushrooms. His obit in The Telegraph pronounced him "the Liberace of biblical scholarship."

P.U.-LITZER PRIZES FOR 2007

MEDIA COVERAGE OF ISLAM MASSIVELY BIASED

NOVEMBER 2007

HOW CBS PLANS TO COVER THE ENVIRONMENT

POSTAL HIKES COULD DRIVE ALTERNATIVE JOURNALS OUT OF BUSINESS

FIRST WE LEARN WOLF BLITZER WORKED FOR AIPAC. . . NOW IT TURNS OUT THAT ANDERSON COOPER INTERNED AT THE CIA

RADAR- Anderson Cooper has long traded on his biography, carving a niche for himself as the most human of news anchors. But there's one aspect of his past that the silver-haired CNN star has never made public: the months he spent training for a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale-a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA-Cooper spent his summers interning at the agency's monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. His involvement with the agency ended there, and he chose not to pursue a job with the agency after graduation, according to a CNN spokeswoman, who confirmed details of Cooper's CIA involvement to Radar.

THE ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER CON

Sam Smith

Having been putting out alternative publications since before they had a name, I have long been fascinated by the claim of certain free urban weeklies that they are "alternative." As I wrote early in their existence, when you read them you got the impression that when the revolution came, the guerillas would come down the mountain wearing jackets from Bloomingdales, on Head skis and listening to Walkmen. Jack Shafer, then editor of the Washington City Paper put me straight, explaining, "Look, we're not an alternative news medium; we're an alternative advertising medium."

More recently, these urban weeklies have become the voice of the gentry moving into our cities, modestly seeing themselves as part of a great renaissance and perpetuating the corporate-friendly myth that cool and hip are something you buy, attend or listen to rather than something you are.

Now the executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies is taking the con a step further: suggesting that these faux alternatives have some sort of proprietary interest in the word. As you read the following, it may help - or merely amaze - you to know some of Richard Karpel's own history as an alternative voice taking on the system as provided by his bio:

"Richard Karpel has been executive director of AAN since July 1995. Before joining AAN, he worked for nine years in varying capacities with the Video Software Dealers Association, the Encino, Calif.-based trade group for the home video industry. . . While working for VSDA when it was still jointly managed with the National Association of Recording Merchandisers -- which represents retailers of recorded music -- Karpel led NARM's government affairs program.

"In May 1980, he received a BS in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and three years later he received a Juris Doctorate from Chicago-Kent College of Law."

Wow, cool.

RICHARD KARPEL, AAN - Apparently, a guy named Leland Lehrman is running for the Democratic nomination to represent New Mexico in the U.S. Senate. I know this because I subscribe to Google Alerts set to the term "alternative newspaper," and I've received at least a dozen alerts notifying me of newspaper stories about the Senate race in which Lehrman is invariably described as an editor of "an alternative newspaper in Santa Fe."

I've got nothing against Lehrman, but his publication, The Sun News, is most assuredly not an "alternative newspaper." To its credit, The Sun News is pretty unique and doesn't fit comfortably under any label. I guess I'd call it a local journal of politics and opinion -- left-wing, "9/11 Truth Movement" - type politics and opinion, to be precise.

This isn't the first time that a publication that is not an alternative newspaper was mistakenly characterized as one. Community weeklies, GLBT papers, arts and entertainment tabloids -- they are all occasionally called alternative newspapers by confused reporters. Usually I just shrug it off. But today I decided that perhaps I could make some small contribution to human understanding and the brand equity of our member papers by pointing it out every time I see the term used incorrectly. . .

On behalf of the members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, I hereby plant our flag in the white space between the words "alternative" and "newspaper." We intend to defend this turf to the death!

A big part of the problem is that many people use the term "alternative newspaper" too literally. In the present case, for example, The Sun News is a "newspaper" -- can't deny that. And it certainly is "alternative," in the American Heritage Dictionary definition sense of the word, i.e., "Existing outside traditional or established institutions or systems," and "Espousing or reflecting values that are different from those of the establishment or mainstream."

But "alternative newspaper" is more than the sum of its parts. It is a term of art that describes newspapers that share a certain set of characteristics, which are roughly as follows:

Free-circulation tabloid. . . General interest coverage primarily focused on local news, culture and the arts. . . Extensive entertainment listings. . . Informal and sometimes profane writing style. . . Emphasis on point-of-view reporting and narrative journalism. . . Reporting that often concerns issues and communities that don't receive much attention from other media. . . Political philosophy and organizational culture based on tolerance for individual freedoms and social differences

With two or three minor exceptions, those characteristics apply squarely to all 130 AAN member newspapers. They do not all apply to The Sun News.

One final thought: At this point in our history, we are not interested in defending our use of the term "alternative." As I have explained to many reporters who have asked me accusingly, "So what makes your papers alternative, anyway?": In the 70s, when alternative newspapers first began appearing in large numbers in urban areas across the U.S. and Canada, we really did represent an alternative to the two daily papers, three television networks and handful of magazines that most North Americans were forced to turn to for news prior to the advent of cable TV and the internet. Now, with the explosion in media choices wrought by technology, we are just one of many alternative news sources. We recognize that and don't mean to imply we are the only media option outside of the mainstream. But after more than three decades of dropping the F-bomb in print and sticking it to the man, we've built up a certain amount of brand equity in the term "alternative newspaper," and we'd rather not share it with the likes of Leland Lehrman, thank you.

SUN NEWS
http://www.thesun-news.com/current.htm

CITY ATTORNEY BULLIES PUBLIC TV STATION AFTER IT DROPS HIM AS GUEST

SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE - San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre has expanded his investigation into the city's public-television station three months after the station canceled a public-affairs program that sometimes featured him as a guest.

Aguirre's latest demand for documents came several weeks after he issued a report accusing the station of "abrogat(ing) its duty to maintain objectivity and balance in its local public affairs television programming" by canceling "Full Focus," a public-issues program.

In recent months, Aguirre has suggested the station might have committed civil or criminal violations by canceling the show, on which Aguirre appeared as a guest 15 times from July 2003 until it left the air Aug. 1. . .

"Just about the last thing you want in a free society is a government official going in and mucking around in a newsroom and making programming decisions," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. . .

On Aug. 24, Aguirre asked the station to turn over "any and all emails, documents and other public records of KPBS' board members, officers or employees related to the decision to cancel the KPBS program 'Full Focus.'" Five days after that, he asked for documents showing how KPBS selects guests for its radio program, "Editors Roundtable.". . .

In an Aug. 29 letter to KPBS, Aguirre demanded "any and all emails, documents and other public records related to the selection of participants on the Editors Roundtable program during 2006 and 2007."

OCTOBER 2007

NEWSPAPER QUIETLY INTRODUCES PRODUCT LINKING

TIM MCGUIRE, CRONKITE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM, ARIZ STATE UNIV - Ford Motor Company owns football. American Express owns Texas. Pitney-Bowes owns business. If you didn't know that you haven't been reading the Arizona Republic's AZ Central.com this week.

Without fanfare AzCentral has started to put two green lines under words in stories on the Money section and the Sports section. It appears stories in news and local sections are immune, but the web site has ways around that. It also appears that the underlines can change from minute to minute. If you look closely at the ads on AzCentral you can figure out the service is supplied by Vibrant Media which offers Vibrant In-Text Advertising. . .

A quick check revealed that The Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Reno Gazette Journal and the Indianapolis Star are also using Vibrant Media. The Wall Street Journal reported on the AJC's use of the service in November of 2006. At the time the journal quoted Poynter Ethics guru Bob Steele criticizing the practice, but it certainly has stayed below my radar until this morning. My distinct impression was that AZ Central just started the practice in the last few days. A student brought it up to me on Tuesday, and I didn't have any idea what she was talking about.

Michael Coleman, Vice-President of Digital Media for AzCentral, told me late Friday that the site has been using Vibrant Media for "two or three weeks." Coleman described the relationship as a test and said this is not a "Gannett roll-out" of the concept even though some Gannet papers are using the system. "We've got a pretty non-committal contract with them, Coleman said. "The publisher made the call, and we decided to try it and see what happened." Coleman said the experimental aspect of the deal explains why nobody has announced this deal.

Coleman also explained that the relationship is only a "distribution deal." Az Central cannot sell advertising into the site at this time. The process is entirely automated, and Vibrant Media's computer constantly scans the text and conceptually matches words. There is a limit of three words per story. As Coleman said, "20 words in a story would confuse readers." Az Central is matching stories in Sports, Business, Entertainment, Travel and Home. Stories in the news sections are not being contextually matched. "We're not using news stories because this is an experiment," Coleman said. "We want to test the waters on other stories before we do anything to embarrass ourselves or cause integrity problems." Coleman offered his own example when he said he'd hate to see a local news story on a murder in which a gun manufacturer was advertised.

EXAMPLES
http://cronkite.asu.edu/mcguireblog/?p=32

MEDIA COVERING UP FOR HR CLINTON

AS it did for her husband in his first run for the presidency, the mainstream media is busy covering up for Hillary Clinton. We're talking history here - although there is plenty in the past that should be in the news and isn't. What we're talking about is current stories that are being suppresses. Three examples:

- HRC is using national secrets thief Sandy Berger as a major advisor. Berger's outrageous lifting of government documents never got the attention it deserved and he never got the punishment he deserved, but one might have imagined that he at least would not be on the fast track back to the White House again. Why Berger stole the documents remains a mystery although a reasonable assumption is that they were originals with embarrassing notations on them by HRC's husband.

- A lawsuit concerning HR Clinton's claims of non-involvement in a major fundraising scandal has been kept from view by most of the major media. While we don't know the outcome of the case, we do know that there is an allegedly smoking gun video and the possibility of criminal charges should HRC lose the case. Whatever the outcome, this is news right now.

- HRC just withdrew her strange baby bond scheme less than a month after presenting it. Buried in an AP account is this: "Clinton first mentioned a so-called 'baby bond' last month in an appearance before the Congressional Black Caucus, saying it was just an idea and not a policy proposal. The idea was criticized by Republicans, and she told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Tuesday that it's off the table." As John Edwards' spokesman Chris Kofinus said, "Apparently, new polling data seems to have pressured the Clinton campaign to throw out the baby bond with the bathwater." We can't recall another major issue being dropped by a candidate so quickly. Again, that's news, but you'd only rarely know it from following the big media.

AUGUST 2007

WHAT TECHNOLOGY HAS DONE TO RADIO

BALTIMORE SUN - With all these new gadgets for listening to music -- from MP3s to state-of-the-art cell phones and laptops, not to mention satellite radio -- it's a wonder anyone is listening to good old-fashioned terrestrial radio. One theory says that so many listeners are spending money on newfangled technology that the ones left tuning in to terrestrial radio are doing so only because they can't afford the new toys.

"Because of satellite radio, more affluent people are going to use that service, so we have a smaller piece of the pie to slice up with the people remaining, who are not so affluent," said Bob Pettit, general manager of WCBM, the Baltimore talk-radio station at 680 AM. "The younger people are going to the new technologies. Radio used to be a very effective way to reach people aged 18 to 34. Now, not so much."

As a result, Pettit said, national advertisers are not turning to the old medium the way they once did, leaving the field to cheaper, and often local, ad buyers. In turn, the stations are obliged to charge less money because their demographic is poorer, he said, leaving the stations with less revenue.

But other people in the business consider that view heresy, and point to many ways in which the traditional broadcasters are holding their own. While they admit that radio audiences are declining, and that the amount of time people spend listening has fallen, they say that 230 million people, or about 93 percent of the U.S. population, still listen to some radio during any given week -- down from 96 percent a decade ago.

In contrast, upstarts XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have attracted a combined 14 million subscribers since their launches in September 2001 and July 2002, respectively. The two companies, which earlier this year announced their intention to merge, charge about $13 a month for access to hundreds of commercial-free channels, which can be accessed through special receivers and personal computers.

While those audience numbers are still comparatively small, millions more people have bought MP3 players and other music-playing gadgets, and sales remain hot in the young demographic that advertisers covet.

JOURNALISTS AND QUOTATIONS MARKS

DEBORAH HOWELL, OMBUDSMAN, WASHINGTON POST - I asked Post staffers and readers to comment on Post policy that using quotation marks means "those exact words should have been uttered in precisely that form. . . At The Post, the opinions varied from "we treat quotations as gospel" and "Any change of any comment put within quotation marks is an ethical breach" to "I just don't see the reason for quoting someone verbatim . . . unless it adds something to the story." Some reporters told me they follow their instincts rather than Post policy. . .

Some readers and Post staff members feel that preserving embarrassingly ungrammatical quotes is not fair and that cleaning them up is fine. . .

The reporters and readers who agreed that cleaning up quotes is okay used the same reasoning as Teresa Galloway of Ithaca, N.Y.: "The larger point is that people -- even very educated ones -- almost never speak according to the conventions of standard written grammar."

Post reporter and funnyman Gene Weingarten said: "What does 'exact' mean? Does it mean we are compelled to include every momentary digression, every cough or mid-sentence sneeze, and every little illiteracy or word-choice imprecision that someone might utter in the course of answering a question? I don't think so. I think we are held to several responsibilities, as journalists, and sometimes these rub up against each other a little bit. We are supposed to tell the truth as best we can. We are also supposed to be clear and concise, and communicate thoughts efficiently. . . . I think our responsibility to write clearly and compellingly requires us to be more than just a tape recorder."

In fact, Style editor Henry Allen blames tape recorders. "Before, we were told to quote the person as exactly as possible, and above all to get the sense of what was said. Then we got tape recorders. The exact quote was possible. But with the exact quote we sometimes lost the sense of what was said because the hesitations and digressions in the quote steered readers away from the context.". . .

Bob Steele, an ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute, which trains journalists, said: "Quotes should accurately and authentically reflect the words used in an interview. If we start changing words inside quote marks, then we raise questions about all other quotes. We will increase the distrust factor about the veracity of our journalism."

[The Review policy is to be as faithful as possible to the original, with a few exceptions such as:

- We routinely eliminate day references - "said last Thursday" - from the stories we cite as this becomes confusing when they are archived.

- We eliminate - including in the story above - gratuitous capitalization of words, exclamations points and capitals in the middle of words. We call this translating the quote into English, although lately things like corporatized capitalization has become so common that if we're rushed, we leave it in. Here's a question: why does the media and academia let corporations determine how English is used? Why shouldn't iTunes be Itunes? Apple has a right to make gadgets but not to screw up our language.

- We use ellipses heavily to indicate where matter is missing.

- We use obscenities without dashes and have done so ever since one of your editor's sons came home from pre-school and called his father a "doo-doo fucker." The battle for purity appeared to have been lost.

- We do not help lawyers ruin English by such things as putting capital letters in brackets where they weren't in the first place: "[W]e also went. . ." Neither do we include gratuitous abbreviations after every name in capital letters as in "the Society for the Prevention of Putting Parsley on People's Plates in Public Places [SPPPPPPP]." We regard our readers sufficiently intelligent to guess what SPPPPPPP means when it is used in the next paragraph.]

TV FAIRER TO CANDIDATES THAN PRINT MEDIA

An amazing chart accompanying a NY Times story about Fox News' bias towards Rudolph Giuliani shows that - in terms of interviews at least - the major networks have been far fairer to the range of Democratic and Republican candidates than has been the print media. As we have noted, in the first six months of this year the print media massively favored Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in its coverage. But despite Fox's obvious bias towards' Giuliani, the other networks have not only been fairer, they have shown almost a reverse prejudice, with Joe Biden getting twice as many interviews as Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee getting more than Giuliani. We suspect this has something to do with the ease of booking lower ranked candidates and who makes an interesting interview, but it certainly has produced some surprising results:

Number of TV network interviews through July 15

344 John McCain [top Republican on NBC]
304 Joe Biden [top Democrat on MSNBC]
270 Mike Huckabee [top Republican on MSNBC]
266 Bill Richardson [TOP Democrat on CNN]
261 Barack Obama
257 John Edwards
218 Mitt Romney
214 Christopher Dodd
196 Rudolph Giuliania [top Republican on Fox]
183 Duncan Hunter [top Republican on CNN]
173 Tom Tancredo
149 Hillary Clinton
129 Dennis Kucinich [top Democrat on Fox]
117 Fred Thompson

STORY

GRAPH

JUNE 2007

TIM RUSSERT INTERVIEWED BY ALAN COLMES

Colmes: What do you read everyday?

Russert: I read a lot. I read six and seven newspapers. I read the New York Times, the Washington Times, I read the Washington Post, [New York] Daily News, [New York] Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today.
Colmes: All those every single day?

Russert: I read the Weekly Standard, the New Republic. I love to read left, right, center. I want to know what everyone is thinking and why.

FAIR COMMENTS: We count two right-wing papers, five centrist papers (two of which have right-wing or right-leaning editorial pages), a centrist magazine and a right-wing magazine.

NBC PRODUCER FIRED AFTER BLOWING WHISTLE ON 'TO CATCH A PREDATOR'

RADAR - A respected former Dateline NBC investigative producer is claiming that her opposition the "To Catch a Predator" franchise got her wrongfully canned by the network. Marsha Bartel, who spent 21 years with NBC, was laid off last year as part of NBC's "TV 2.0" reorganization. But in a lawsuit filed against NBC in Illinois last week, Bartel claims she was actually fired after she refused to participate in the "Predator" stings because the network's arrangements with Perverted Justice and local police violated NBC News ethical guidelines.

According to the lawsuit, which was posted at the Smoking Gun, Bartel complained to network brass that "To Catch a Predator" presented a host of ethical problems and made quick work of NBC policies that she, as a producer, had a duty to comply with: The network pays Perverted Justice, a shadowy online vigilante group that trolls for perverts by posing as children; it "unethically pays or directly reimburses law enforcement officials to participate in the 'Predator' stings"; and "unethically provides unfettered access to live video feeds . . . to law enforcement officials." The lawsuit describes the filmed arrests of "Predator" targets as "dramatically staged" and claims that "NBC unethically covers up the fact that law enforcement officials act improperly . . . and goo[f] off by waiving rubber chickens in the faces of sting targets while forcing them to the ground and handcuffing them."

Bartel referred a telephone call to her attorney, who did not immediately return a message. A spokeswoman for NBC said in a statement, "We have been transparent about our reporting methods, including the role of law enforcement and Perverted Justice. Although the reports have been subject to some controversy, audience reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. NBC News is proud of its reporting and we believe this lawsuit is without merit."

MAY 2007

MEDIA SPINS FALSEHOODS ABOUT CHAVEZ

FAIR - The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chavez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.

According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes, the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chavez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chavez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, is refusing now to renew the license of this television station that has been critical of his government."

Though straighter, a news story by the Associated Press still maintained the theme that the license denial was based simply on political differences, with reporter Elizabeth Munoz describing RCTV as "a network that has been critical of Chavez."

In a May 14 column, Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl called the action an attempt to silence opponents and more "proof" that Chavez is a "dictator." Wrote Diehl, "Chavez has made clear that his problem with [RCTV owner Marcel] Granier and RCTV is political."

RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevision and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks' participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup - hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chavez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter: "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."

What RCTV did simply can't be justified under any stretch of journalistic principles. When a television channel simply fails to report, simply goes off the air during a period of national crisis, not because they're forced to, but simply because they don't agree with what's happening, you've lost your ability to defend what you do on journalistic principles.

The Venezuelan government is basing its denial of license on RCTV's involvement in the 2002 coup, not on the station's criticisms of or political opposition to the government. Many American pundits and some human rights spokespersons have confused the issue by claiming the action is based merely on political differences, failing to note that Venezuela's media, including its commercial broadcasters, are still among the most vigorously dissident on the planet.

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chavez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107

APRIL 2007

MEDIA REVOLUTION HASN'T PRODUCED A BETTER INFORMED PUBLIC

PEW SURVEY - A new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs. On average, today's citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago. The new survey includes nine questions that are either identical or roughly comparable to questions asked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2007, somewhat fewer were able to name their governor, the vice president, and the president of Russia, but more respondents than in the earlier era gave correct answers to questions pertaining to national politics.

In 1989, for example, 74% could come up with Dan Quayle's name when asked who the vice president is. Today, somewhat fewer (69%) are able to recall Dick Cheney. However, more Americans now know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is generally considered a conservative and that Democrats control Congress than knew these things in 1989.

The survey provides further evidence that changing news formats are not having a great deal of impact on how much the public knows about national and international affairs. The polling does find the expected correlation between how much citizens know and how avidly they watch, read, or listen to news reports. The most knowledgeable third of the public is four times more likely than the least knowledgeable third to say they enjoy keeping up with the news "a lot."

Well-informed audiences come from cable (Daily Show/Colbert Report, O'Reilly Factor), the internet (especially major newspaper websites), broadcast TV (News Hour with Jim Lehrer) and radio (NPR, Rush Limbaugh's program). The less informed audiences also frequent a mix of formats: broadcast television (network morning news shows, local news), cable (Fox News Channel), and the internet (online blogs where people discuss news events).

More than nine-in-ten Americans (93%) could identify Arnold Schwarzenegger . . . An equally large proportion of the public identified Hillary Clinton as a U.S. senator, a former first lady, a Democratic leader, or a candidate for president. Clear majorities can also correctly identify Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (65%) and Sen. Barack Obama (61%). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is recognized by about half of the public (49%).

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319

DANA MILBANK, PLAYGROUND BULLY

SAM SMITH - There are few more repugnant journalistic habits than to making fun of the weak. We journalists were put on this earth to keep the powerful under control, not to ridicule those without power. But it's a principle without value in Washington, especially by playground bullies such as Dana Milbank of the Washington Post who - like bullies everywhere - shores up his insecurities by making fun of those he feels it's safe to beat up. The latest example is a Milbank article ridiculing Dennis Kucinich's efforts to impeach Richard Cheney, even making fun of Kucinich's size by noting he was " standing perhaps 5 feet 6 inches tall in shoes" and wearing "a solemn face as he approached the microphones, which nearly reached his eye level."

As a political tactic, Kucinich's effort is certainly debatable, but in a decent world - by any standard of traditional American values - Cheney would be eminently impeachable. Cheney and his boss have done more damage to the American republic than any White House in our history.

The fact that we are logistically and politically unable to deal with this problem is no joke. But for Skull and Boner Milbank, it is far more important to stay in tight with the local power structure than to worry about the future of the republic. The fact that Kucinich is right - as he has been about a lot of things - makes no difference; he's just not preppy and conventional enough for Milbank's taste.

But Yalie snobbery won't change the course of history for the better in the slightest. Milbank should consider the fact that during over two-thirds of the quarter century or so that America has been going down the tubes, a fellow graduate of Yale has been in charge of this country, two of them members of this own infantile secret society. That is nothing to be snobbish about.

MILBANK'S ARTICLE

SAM SMITH, JUNE 2005 - Dana Milbank's snotty attack on critics of White House behavior as revealed in the Downing Street memos illuminates a carefully concealed truth about the media: its definition of objectivity stops at the edge of anything left of center. Standard Democratic policy is okay, even a liberal quote or two, but anything further to the left is simply excluded from coverage unless - as in Milbank's case - it is there to ridicule.

Milbank's dislike for the left began long ago and writes of it in a style that might be called unmaturated preppie. For example, in September 2000 the Washington Post reporter said one of the presidential candidates, Ralph Nader, that his "only enemy is the corporation." Skull & Bonesman Milbank also described Greens as "radical activists in sandals." Since your editor was soon to speak with Nader at an event in Washington, I brought along a pair of sandals so Milbank's description would not be totally false. Of course, he didn't show up because Nader and the Greens fell into that classic media category: important enough to scorn but not important enough to cover.

Being among the last progressive journalists in the capital I am conscious of the massive disinterest of the rest of the media in anything left of center. When I started in 1964, my work was appealing enough to mainstream journalism to be offered jobs at the New York Times and the Washington Post. I was frequently called by journalists wanting to know what was going on in the civil rights or anti-war movement. These calls were seldom hostile: the left was a reality that needed to be covered and even the Post had some good reporters on the case. I tried, then as now, to serve as an helpful interpreter rather than as a rhetorical advocate and even developed a few friends along the way.

But these days I rarely get calls from the conventional media. Jim Ridgeway of the Village Voice, down the hall from my office, reports a similar phenomenon. Two guys with decades of history and background about progressive politics that is considered totally irrelevant by establishment Washington. The left, progressive movements, and social change are simply not thought to be worthy subjects by the corporate media - or by NPR for that matter.

The exception is that it is generally presumed amongst the media that progressives are fair targets for mockery. In a recent article in the faux hip Vanity Fair on Jeff Gannon, David Margolik and Richard Gooding offered as a positive that Gannon "balanced off some of the left-wingers in the room such as Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter, and a Naderite, who once asked McCellan whether, given the administration's support for the public display of the Ten commandments, President Bush believed that the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' applied to the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

The fact that the authors considered that a stupid question tells much about the sorry state of Washington journalism. Further, Russell Mokhiber often tells more important truths in one column than Vanity Fair does in a whole issue.

The trend is also confirmed by Harry Jaffe of the Washingtonian who has published a list of a score of political blogs that DC journalists like. Not one is to the left of Democratic Party liberalism, which these days means saying, "right on" to whatever conservative Democrat is in charge. Of the 20 sites, only two are on my list - the libertarian Hit & Run and the poll-heavy Real Politics. The common characteristic of many of the others is their utter predictability.

Put simply, the media doesn't like the left, social change, Greens, or progressive thought. It deals with them by ignoring them or mocking them, in either case excluding them from its own perverted definition of objectivity.

FAIR, 2005 - After over a month of scant media attention, mainstream U.S. outlets have begun to report more seriously about the "Downing Street Memo," the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of British government officials that indicate the White House had already made up its mind to invade Iraq at that early date, and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading rather than seeking a peaceful solution.

A June 7 White House press conference with George W. Bush and Tony Blair offered the first public response from Bush to the memo, and with that came an upswing in U.S. media attention. But some in the media took it as a chance to lash out at the activists who have been bringing attention to the story all along. On June 8, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank referred to Downing Street Memo activists--some of whom were offering a cash reward for the first journalist to ask Bush about the memo--as "wing nuts." He also offered an illogical explanation for the memo's low media profile:

"In part, the memo never gained traction here because, unlike in Britain, it wasn't election season, and the war is not as unpopular here. In part, it's also because the notion that Bush was intent on military action in Iraq had been widely reported here before, in accounts from Paul O'Neill and Bob Woodward, among others. The memo was also more newsworthy across the Atlantic because it reinforced the notion there that Blair has been acting as Bush's 'poodle.'"

Milbank had reported the same day that his paper's latest poll showed that only 41 percent of Americans approved of the Iraq war--which makes one wonder when exactly the war would cross Milbank's threshold and become unpopular enough to make the memo newsworthy. . .

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2545

PROSECUTOR HARASSMENT OF MEDIA DOESN'T PRODUCE EVIDENCE

GENE POLICINSKI, FIRST AMENDMENT CENTER - Unless I've missed something, the outcome of the [Josh] Wolf case - and the apparent non-news contained in his video of a clash between police and protesters - is yet another non-result for prosecutors in a host of cases where journalists have been jailed or threatened with jail for not disclosing sources, confidential information or other newsgathering material.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days in 2005 for not honoring a grand jury subpoena seeking her source in a CIA leaks case. Ultimately, former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI for not disclosing to investigators his role in leaking the identity of former officer Valerie Plame. Significance of Miller's information in convicting Libby: none.

Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters were on track to follow Wolf into prison for refusing to identify the source of leaks about federal grand jury testimony in an athletes-and-steroids investigation. But officials discovered the identity of the leak's source without hearing from the journalists. Significance of the reporters' confidential information in the ultimate disclosure - and punishment - of the source, an attorney: none.

Providence, R.I., television reporter Jim Taricani was placed under house arrest for four months for defying a court order to reveal who illegally gave him a secret FBI videotape showing a Providence official taking a bribe. The case was concluded by the time Taricani - who as a heart-transplant recipient was permitted to serve his sentence at home rather than in a jail cell - was incarcerated. Significance of his confidential information in terms of the bribery case at hand, and in the ultimate disclosure - and punishment - of the source, an attorney: none.

There's a pattern here. Journalists have been jailed or threatened with jail in various high-profile cases - no small matter to them, no small matter of expense and angst for their publications and no small challenge to the First Amendment's guarantee of a free and independent press. Apparent value of the journalists to prosecutors and the process of justice: None in the cases at hand, and minimal in terms of adding legal luster to a well-established 1972 Supreme Court decision that says journalists have no legal "shield" in federal court from being compelled to testify.

This is not to say that resisting court orders is a lightly done thing. But in terms of results, and the occasional bureaucratic bluster involved in bringing reporters to heel, Shakespeare described it best: "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.aspx?id=18375

MARCH 2007

STUPID JOURNALIST TRICKS

SAM SMITH- One of the ways that journalists and their employers dismiss or trivialize a problem they don't want to deal with is to call it a conspiracy theory. Journalists didn't always act that way. There was a time when broad skepticism was one of the hallmarks of a good reporter. But that changed as American democracy, global reputation and culture began to disintegrate even as journalists gained status in a failing establishment responsible for these declines. With a major vested interest in elite decisions, those who criticized or doubted them were increasingly assigned the role of conspiracy theorists, whether out of journalistic bias, ignorance or indolence.

Despite the ubiquity of the canard, Lizzie Widdicombe of the New Yorker deserves notice for taking it all to a higher level. The New Yorker, which too often serves as an intellectual Leisure World for smug liberals, ran a trivial piece by Widdicombe about electronic voting that began:

"Nothing excites an electoral conspiracy theorist like electronic voting machines. There's the latest foul-up in Florida (eighteen thousand votes lost in the Thirteenth District in November), or the Princeton professor-you can watch him on YouTube - who in less than a minute hacks into a voting machine and plants software redirecting votes from candidate - George Washington" to "Benedict Arnold." In 2002, the federal government mandated that states upgrade their voting systems. New York is among the last in the country to do so-the slowness, depending on whom you ask, derives either from caution or from incompetence. In the meantime, the city's Board of Elections has called in an unlikely authority: the voting public.

"A couple of weeks ago, a notice appeared in local papers announcing that all voting-machine venders being considered for a state contract would give a demonstration of their wares in Staten Island. The event was part of an "American Idol"-like series of shows around the city, to culminate in a hearing at which voters will voice their opinions about the machines. . . "

A serious journalist might at least wonder why New York is treating such an important matter as a popularity contest rather than as an objective examination of one of the most important issues of our democracy. But even more significant in this case is an article by Ronnie Dugger that appeared in 1988, one of the first to point out the dangers in electronic voting. If media and politicians had paid attention to Dugger (and similar work three years earlier by David Bernham in the NY Times) we might have saved ourselves a lot of misery. As Dugger's article noted two decades ago:

"As of the most recent tests this year, errors in the basic counting instructions in the computer programs had been found in almost a fifth of the examinations. These 'tabulation-program errors' probably would not have been caught in the local jurisdictions. 'I don't understand why nobody cares,' Michael L. Harty, who was until recently the director of voting systems and standards for Illinois, told me last December in Springfield. 'At one point, we had tabulation errors in twenty-eight per cent of the systems tested, and nobody cared.'

This piece of rank conspiracy theory appeared in the New Yorker.

The moral is: be careful whom you call a conspiracy theorist. It may just take 20 years for the truth to begin to seep out.

DUGGER'S ARTICLE
http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/dugger.shtml

BURNHAM'S ARTICLE
http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/burnham1.shtml

LARRY BENSKY

LARRY BENSKY will be leaving Pacifica radio and KPFA at the end of April. Bensky has long been a model of alternative journalism at its best and is one of a handful of alumni of Ivy League media (Jim Ridgway, Bill Greider and your editor are others) who chose a journalistic path outside the conventional media. He survived a number of difficult institutional struggles at Pacifica to remain a beacon in an ever darkening American night.

LARRY BENSKY - This decision has been difficult. First, to leave an organization with which I first began working thirty-eight years ago. And, at the same time, possibly ending my work in broadcasting, having first started in junior high school.

While many factors have gone into my decision, the principal and overwhelming element has been demographic. I will be 70 years old on May 1. . . With whatever years and energy I have left, I would now like to explore other means of being, and of expressing myself. . .

Throughout these many years, and in the many different types of programming I've done, I've never gone on the air without a thrilling sense of connectedness. And an equally deep sense of how much being a broadcaster is a privilege, as well as a responsibility.

Throughout this time, as I hope you've been able to hear, I've tried not to "leave my game in the dressing room," as they say in sports. Everything I could bring to broadcasting, all the knowledge and wisdom I could summon from myself and others, I've tried to provide. . .

SUNDAY SALON - Perhaps best known as national affairs correspondent for Pacifica Radio from 1987-1998, Bensky covered numerous national and international events for Pacifica, including the Iran-contra hearings in 1987, the confirmation hearings for four Supreme Court justices, the 1990 elections in Nicaragua, and numerous demonstrations and protests in Washington and elsewhere. Most recently, he anchored Pacifica's live coverage of the September 11 Commission hearings, and co-anchoring Pacifica's coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican conventions, as well as the Presidential debates. He was anchor for Pacifica's extensive coverage of the post 2004 election controversy in Ohio.

He won the George Polk award for his coverage of Iran-contra, and has won five Gold Reel awards from the National Association of Community Broadcasters. Before his work for Pacifica, Bensky was one of the original "underground" newscasters and talk show hosts on "alternative rock" stations KMPX and KSAN in San Francisco. He has also been a political activist since the 1960's, working with nuclear disarmament and anti-war groups in New York, Paris, and San Francisco.

Before (and during) his broadcasting career, Bensky has been a print journalist and editor, including positions as managing editor of Ramparts Magazine in 1968, Paris editor of The Paris Review (1964-66) and as an editor of the New York Times Book Review. For fifteen years he was a political writer and columnist for the East Bay Express, and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times book review, and The Nation.

http://www.sundaysalon.org/larrybensky.asp

THE IDEA MILL: FACTS AS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

SAM SMITH - One of the characteristics of government at every level is how much harder it has become to get basic facts. Washington, DC, for many years had an annual report called Indices that was jammed with factual information about what was happening in the city. After the federal government put the city into a form of colonial receivership and a purportedly reform administration was named, the book became one of the first things to disappear.

At the other end are the well documented assaults on public information by the Bush administration. While there is much variation in between, it remains true that many aspects of governance are becoming conveniently complicated and obscured so that no one - including the media - really know what's going on.

Here's one example: once you could tell what a city was doing in the housing field by how much public housing there was. Now the number and complexity of subsidies is enormous and no one really knows what is happening. As a result it doesn't get reported.

What if you had a generally accepted standard developed my reporters and public interest groups that defined just what information people deserved to know about housing? It might include

- Number of public housing units

- Number of subsidized housing units identified by name of subsidy, average percent of cost subsidized and number of units

- Number of subsidized housing units provided by non-profit groups identified average percent of cost subsidized, and number of units

- Distribution of subsidized units by ward or other subdivision

- Number of persons on waiting list for subsidized or public housing.

- Average length of wait

- Number of persons in city who can't afford the median rent

- Ten year trend in all of the above.

At first the standards could be put forth by a group like the Society of Professional Journalists or a consortium of journalism schools or public interest groups. It could be initially done at the local, state or national level. It would not be long, I suspect, before you would find candidates for mayor, governor and even president bragging that they observe these standards.

There could also be annual ratings of these governments as to how well they are doing.

One journalist - formerly with Jack Anderson - wrote me:

|||||||

I think this is an incredible idea. As an old journalist who came up through the ranks covering City Hall, the County Commission, the School Board, the police, etc., etc. I am perpetually stunned by the total lack of information the local newspaper provides these days about where public funds are going. (and even more stunned at the total passivity of the readers)

This kind of "open government" reporting used to be routine, and started to be obfuscated (I believe) in the Reagan years. Now it's gotten so murky that none of the young journalists even know what real reporting actually looks like. . .

I think it's really about returning to what the original standard of openness in a democratic society started out to be and continued to be for two centuries. It's really only in the last few decades that it's fallen by the wayside, in my opinion.

I think that your idea of getting urban journalists together to compile a list of essential facts every city should provide its citizens would be a fabulous reminder to every community of what the relationship between the local government and the community is supposed to be. Such a dialogue would then naturally become an issue in all campaigns.

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FILLER ITEMS FOR YOUNG JOURNALISTS

[Del Marbrook kindly featured your editor on the Student Operated Press site and an associated podcast. As part of the project, I sent along a few suggestions for young journalists]

Sam Smith

The basic rules of good journalism are fairly simple: tell the story right, tell it well and, in the words of the late New Yorker editor, Harold Ross, 'if you can't be funny, be interesting.'

Journalism is to thought and understanding as the indictment is to the trial, the hypothesis to the truth, the estimate to the audit. It is the first cry for help, the hand groping for the light switch in the dark, the returns before the outlying precincts have been heard from.

Serve not as an expert but rather in the more modest and constructive role of being the surrogate eyes and ears of the reader. Consider yourself a guide who has traveled this trail several times before and thus might remember where the clean water is to be found, the names of some of the rarer plants and possibly even a shortcut home.

Help citizens tell their government what to think instead of helping government tell the people what to think. Serve your readers, not your sources.

The greatest power of the mass media is the power to ignore. The worst thing about this power is that you may not even know you're using it.

Contrary to the view of many editors, most people still like finding out who, what, when, where, why and how more than hearing in the first sentence how it all affected Roberta Mellencamp, 46, of East Quincy. Try to sneak the news as near the beginning of the story as your editor will allow.

News is something that has happened, something that is happening or something that is going to happen. News is not what someone said about what is happening nor what someone perceived was going to happen nor what the editors thought the impact of something happening would be on its readership

One of the traits of a good reporter is boundless curiosity. If you can pass a bulletin board without looking at it, you may be in the wrong trade.

Reporters don't have to be smart; they just have to know how to find smart people.

Strive to match A.J. Liebling's boast: 'I can write faster than anyone who can write better and I can write better than anyone who can write faster.'

Objectivity, it has been said, is just the ideology of journalism. I've never met an objective journalist because every one of them has been a human. Try going after the truth instead. It's an easier and more fulfilling goal.

The best way to get past writer's block is to write crap. Then, the next morning, save what isn't crap and finish the story.

Don't be afraid of seeming a bit dumb. It's a good way of getting both the kind and the pompous to open up to you.

Think of journalism not as a profession but as a trade, a craft or an art. Your copy will be a lot better as a result.

Avoid the rituals of journalism whenever your boss will let you. For example, news conferences are just a way to keep large numbers of journalists away from the news for awhile. Eugene McCarthy once said that reporters were like blackbirds on a telephone wire. One flies off and they all fly off. If you have a choice, do something else.

Study anthropology. The greatest unintended bias in journalism comes from being a part of a culture different from that about which you are writing.

If something happens that makes you say, 'Holy shit!,' it may well be news. Check it out.

Act like a homicide detective. Follow and report the evidence but only as far as it takes you. Be prepared for lots of unsolved stories.

I.F. Stone noted that most of what the government does wrong it does out in the open. Don't assume that the story is buried. It may just be on page 27 of the report.

Repeat what people say to you as a question and often they'll think you haven't understood and will try to explain it better to you.

Find an easy shorthand on the web or elsewhere and learn it.

G. K. Chesterton said that 'journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones died' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive. If you're writing well about Lord Jones that will no longer be true by the end of the story.

Learn to hear the real story and best quotes as you interview someone. If you approach an interview just as a stenographer, you'll be so busy writing you may miss your own story.

Some of the best stories out there are numbers. Most journalists are educated in the social sciences or English and so tend to ignore numbers. Some even treat them as just another adjective. Go after numbers as if you were an IRS agent and you'll be surprised how many scoops result.

Following some of the above may get you fired. Find out which before it happens.

STUDENT OPERATED PRESS
http://www.thesop.org/index.php?id=4516

DEL MARBROOK
http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com/

FEBRUARY 2007

THE COLONEL JOHN R. STINGO AWARD

[Given in memory the late New York columnist who, as AJ Liebling put it, never \permitted "facts to interfere with the exercise of his imagination."]

Media mythology is giving a big boost to the campaigns of Clinton and Obama by constantly referring to the fact that they would be the first woman or black elected to the White House. While this is true, it obscures a basic question: so what?

Behind the mythology is an assumption that this would be hard for Americans to do. A recent Harris poll shows, on the contrary, that over 85% of Americans would be comfortable voting for a Catholic, black, Jew, female, or Hispanic candidate for president. In other words the election of Clinton or Obama would be a statistical novelty but not a social hurdle.

Furthermore, the media never mentions the two types of candidates Americans would be most prejudiced against: gays and atheists. Only 55% say they would vote for a gay, and 45% for an atheist.

ANOTHER STINGO TO THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA for the myth that Israel defines American Jewish opinion on the Mid East. For example, while Prime Minister Olmert strongly supported the Iraq war, American Jews are the religious group most in opposition (77%) followed by rationalists (66%) and Catholics (53%)

SCRIBES ESCHEW SPARKLING INTRODUCTORY SEMANTICS

YOUR EDITOR has a new hobby: collecting Washington Post headlines that seem to have been written by his high school history teacher, Lucinda Iliff, in her faded print dress and bullet proof shoes. We have already mentioned one concerning the recent massive one-inch storm DC experienced, but to get the full flavor here are three days' worth of snow headlines:

Bracing for an unwelcome glaze

Across area a gusty wintry wallop

DC still in winter's frozen grip

And it's not just the weather that produces this sort of dainty announcement. Here's another from today's paper:

250,000 condoms deployed for HIV awareness, prevention

That George Bush; he'll do anything to win in Iraq. Hope they got a farewell party

JANUARY 2007

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS MUZZLE CRITICISM OF BUSH AT THEIR DINNER

ATTYWOOD - Look, we realize that the White House Correspondents Association dinner is a "fun" event, and it would be nice, in theory, to free it from the shackles of the supposed adversarial relationship between the press corps and the president it covers.

But sometimes, life and art imitate each other just a little too closely. When we saw earlier this week that the WHCA had chosen Rich Little -- who we used to watch imitate Richard Nixon and Bob Hope on Johnny Carson in the early 1970s, if we were allowed to stay up that late -- to follow last year's ruckus over in-your-face funny Stephen Colbert as the main entertainer, we were willing to let it go.

But then we read this. The cowardice of these people -- who sat there on mute for months while the president made plans to start a war under false pretenses -- is astounding. Little now says he has an understanding not to bash Bush or mention the war:

"Little said organizers of the event made it clear they don't want a repeat of last year's controversial appearance by Stephen Colbert, whose searing satire of President Bush and the White House press corps fell flat and apparently touched too many nerves.
"'They got a lot of letters,' Little said Tuesday. "'I won't even mention the word Iraq.'

Little, who hasn't been to the White House since he was a favorite of the Reagan administration, said he'll stick with his usual schtick -- the impersonations of the past six presidents.

"They don't want anyone knocking the president. He's really over the coals right now, and he's worried about his legacy," added Little, a longtime Las Vegas resident.

OK, free speech means you also have a right not to say anything or criticize anybody. But for the White House press corps to instruct Little not to "knock" the president smacks of a kind of censorship, from the very people that we've placed in the front line trenches of free speech.

America desperately needs a press corps that's more eager to offend the White House, not less eager.

http://www.attytood.com/2007/01/dont_mention_the_war.html

AMERICAN MEDIA OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM TO FOREIGN LANDS

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE - The rush of job recruiting ads on Monsterindia.com tells the story of the latest class of workers to watch their trade start migrating to another continent. "Urgent requirement for business writers," reads one ad looking for journalists to locate in Mumbai. "Should be willing to work in night shifts (UK shift)."

Another casts for English-speaking journalists in Bangalore with "experience in editing and writing for US/International Media.". . .

Remote-control journalism is the scornful term that unions use for the shift of newspaper jobs to low-cost countries like India or Singapore with fiber-optic connections transmitting information all around the world. But the momentum for "offshoring" to other countries or outsourcing locally is accelerating as newspapers small and large seek ways to reduce costs in the face of severe stresses, from sagging circulation and advertising revenue to shareholder pressure. . .

WAN, a Paris-based organization representing 72 national newspaper associations, conducted a global survey of about 350 newspapers in Europe, Asia and the United States, and company executives reported that they expected the outsourcing to increase, although few were willing to farm out all of their editorial functions.

Since then, the memos have been churning: The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio announced its intentions to shed 90 graphic design jobs and ship out the work to Affinity Express in Pune, India. The Contra Costa Times, a California newspaper newly acquired by Media News Group in the breakup of Knight Ridder, revealed plans to shift ad production positions to Express KCS in India, which bills itself as the "world's media back office."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/19/business/outsource.php

DECEMBER 2006

BLACKS AND LATINOS PREFER ABC EVENING NEWS

RICHARD PRINCE, JOURNAL-ISMS - NBC's Brian Williams "Is First Among Anchors," a New York Times headline reported, citing new "sweeps month" Nielsen ratings - but the "first" ranking does not hold true among African Americans and Latinos. At evening news time, those viewers continue to prefer ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson," according to ratings breakouts made available to Journal-isms by Nielsen Media Research.

The overall ratings from Nov. 2 to Nov. 29 show "NBC Nightly News" in the lead with 9,566,000 viewers; followed by ABC's "World News" with 8,920,000 and "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" with 7,782,000 viewers.

Among African Americans, ABC comes out on top, with 1,387,000 viewers, followed by CBS with 1,056,000 and NBC with 961,000. Among Hispanics, ABC is even more dominant, although the Hispanic numbers are low for all the broadcast networks. The numbers do not include cable, where Spanish-speaking Latinos might be watching Spanish-language Univision.
The Hispanic figures show 509,000 watching ABC, 258,000 tuning in NBC, and 220,000, CBS.

"'World News' strives to reflect the diversity of this country, and we are thrilled that our audience has responded to that," ABC News spokeswoman Natalie Raabe said.

Paul S. Mason, senior vice president of ABC News, the only African American to hold such a position at any of the three major broadcast networks, added for Journal-isms that ABC's owned-and-operated stations, which are in major markets, tend to do very well. Those markets have higher concentrations of African Americans and Latinos. It's also true that the "Oprah Winfrey Show" serves as a strong lead-in for those stations' evening news shows in many cities.

http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/061211_prince/

LIBERAL BLOGGERS ON THE TAKE

MEDIA CHANNEL - It turns out that sections of the blogosphere are selling out to get in, taking money from the very politicians they write about. This sounds like the old state subsidies that were a staple in the old Soviet Union and in today's China. Years ago, the CIA was exposed for similar practices.

Is this part of the larger corruption of our politics? It's hard not to think so. It certainly shows why so much of the "journalism" and opinionizing about politics is so divisive and polarizing, to the detriment of our democracy which is already being poisoned by so many attack ads and negative campaigning. . .

The New York Times, an institution that, of course, has a strong self-interest interest in discrediting a popular medium that competes with its own, carried an almost page-long chart showing how political parties are paying off certain bloggers for placing items and by hiring them as "consultants."

http://Mediachannel.org

K. DANIEL GLOVER, NY TIMES - This year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research.

After the Virginia Democratic primary, for instance, James Webb hired two of the bloggers who had pushed to get him into the race. The Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut had at least four bloggers on his campaign team. Few of these bloggers shut down their "independent" sites after signing on with campaigns, and while most disclosed their campaign ties on their blogs, some - like Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits - did so only after being criticized by fellow bloggers. . .

Potential presidential hopefuls like Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain already are paying big-name bloggers as consultants, and Julie Fanselow of Red State Rebels said on her blog she would entertain job offers from Howard Dean, Barack Obama, John Edwards or Al Gore.

"This intersection isn't going away," Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, an elite blogger hired by campaigns, wrote earlier this year, "and I hope more and more bloggers are able to work to influence how campaigns are run."

[Daily Kos appears to be the biggest offenders but others include writers for Huffington Post, MyDD and Salon

LIST OF BLOGGERS ON THE TAKE
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/03/opinion/03opchart.gif

NOVEMBER 2006

The Ritual of the Words

Sam Smith

My view has long been that news is something that has happened, something that is happening or something that is going to happen. News is not what someone said about what is happening nor what someone perceived was going to happen nor what the editors thought the impact of something happening would be on its readership.

Once again, I find myself in the minority. It turns out that by current media standards about the only thing that matters any more is what someone said about something.

Thus we find ourselves being forced marched through the semiotic swamp left by the Dixie Chicks, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, newly elected senator Jim Webb, Jimmy Carter and others who have said things some thought they shouldn't have. In some cases, such as Richards, it was instantly clear that the words were stupid and wrong, a fact that could have been covered in less than one column inch. In other cases, such as Webb, the comments were refreshing enough to merit passing praise but hardly in the category of hard news. In a few instances, such as the Dixie Chicks, the words had such clear economic effects and social implications that they were worthy of further examination.

But together with numerous other examples - such as Tim Russert playing a decades old video tape to Jimmy Carter to find out whether he still agreed with what he said when he was governor - the media is teaching public figures that it's not what you do that matters; it's what you say about it.

The obsession seems to stem from the boomer blarney that life is all about branding. Act wrong and you can easily cover it up with the right words, but use the wrong words and you've had it. The fact that the words may be the product of inebriation, the apology for them the product of hypocrisy, and the discussion of them the product of mass cultural insincerity is of no import. It is the Ritual of the Words that matters, the closest many in America's elite come these days to a religious practice.

The key factor is that the certain words are unacceptable. It doesn't make much difference if the words are truly offensive - as in the case of Richards - or only out of step with conventional thinking as in the case of Jimmy Carter speaking of Israel's apartheid or the Dixie Chicks being embarrassed about Bush coming from Texas. When deportment is the issue, and the media is the judge, you don't get time off for being right.

On the other hand, some figures do get immunity. For example, I'm still waiting for the mainstream media to point out the irony of Jesse Jackson - who once referred to New York as 'Hymietown' - serving as an arbitrator in the Richards matter. I have yet to see a conventional journalist tackle the several reports of Hillary Clinton's past anti-Jewish remarks. And, of course, the mainstream media has been a leading participant in the most vehement display of ethnic prejudice since the days of the old south: the current campaign against Muslims and Arabs.
Further, as it has been demonstrated in the Richards case, the media can take a bad incident and help make it far worse, in this case including the unprecedented damper on free speech of a prospective financial settlement by a comedian who annoyed members of his audience. Will comedy nightclubs now require signed releases from their customers?

Finally there is the hypocrisy of a society that treats blacks as b