Permanent link to MTA daily media news

WITH YOUR HELP, WE CAN GIVE PUBLIC RADIO HELL!
Thanks to those of you who helped Chuck Mertz of “This Is Hell” get to the third round of voting in the Public Radio Quest Talent Search.  Please help him go further.  Chuck is a true progressive and a great interviewer.  Click here, register if you haven’t done so already, then click on the picture of Chuck Mertz, then click on the right-most star.  It’s complicated, I know, but it’s worth it.  Trust me.  Please ask everyone you know to vote for Chuck.

WTF? Fox News RECYCLES 2-year-old Terror warning
Be very afraid, says Fox News, quoting Israeli “Counterterrorism expert Juval Aviv”: “U.S. Terror Attack — ‘Ninety Days at Most’” Now, that’s nothing new – quite literally, because there’s something very strange going on here: World Net Daily was running literally exactly the same interview, with exactly the same person, two years ago, on July 9th 2005.
I don’t know this site, but the links are included, and when I looked, the articles were as advertised.

A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle: The Great American Media Mind Warp
Watch television in countries with supposedly primitive media, and after a while you will be shocked at the technologically mediated and shape-shifted image of the world presented to Americans.

MySpace Partners with The Onion: Finally, Credible News from Fox
MySpace is putting out a tongue-in-cheek press release [Wednesday] to announce that comedy news purveyor The Onion is partnering with the “fledging” social network to bring “journalistic integrity and correct puntcuation[sic]”. The Onion’s video offering will appear on MySpace TV, and The Onion gets a MySpace page.

The infrastructure project
Calling all New York and New Jersey news organizations: Want to enlist your audiences in a networked reporting project that will have a huge impact on government and make a difference in all their lives — a project you couldn’t do without them? Get your audience to report on the failures of the infrastructure around them.

Did Senators Clinton, Dodd, and Schumer Really Know Nothing About the Housing Bubble?
This is the obvious unasked question in a Financial Times piece on plans for helping homebuyers who stand to lose their homes. It does seem incredible that these people could really have been oblivious to the unprecedented run-up in house prices over the last decade… Incidentally, the bailouts being discussed would quite likely benefit holders of mortgages that might otherwise be nearly worthless.

Washington Times Post hires right winger who wrote book calling Democrats “The Party of Death”
Yes, Ramesh Ponnuru should be writing for the Reverend Moon’s right wing rag, but no, the Washington Post apparently needs his voice. So, the author of “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life” is now a columnist for the Washington Post, which links to his bio at the National Review Online.

POST FLUNKS TEST
We’re often struck by the Washington Post’s editorials on public education. Case in point: Tuesday’s lead editorial, praising George Miller for supporting No Child Left Behind. As often occurs when the Post writes about testing programs, the editorial makes a basic mistake. It seems to think that annual testing can show a school how to fix the problems the tests may reveal.
Not to mention the Post’s conflict of interest on the subject of testing.

After Propagating False Iraq Intel, NYT’s Michael Gordon Now Echoing Bush Claims On Iran
In [Wednesday]’s New York Times, reporter Michael Gordon uncritically reports that the increase in “attacks on American forces” is the result of “a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran.” Gordon’s piece relies primarily on a single military source, fails to challenge the source’s information, and casually dismisses contrary opinions as the complaints of “some critics of Bush.”

US Army says allegations by TNR’s Baghdad Diarist are false
The Army says the soldier/journalist’s allegations are false, that his platoon and company were interviewed “and no one could substantiate the claims he made.” The New Republic’s investigation found only one inaccuracy in Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s “Shock Troops” column. || RELATED: J-prof calls Army’s refusal to release its report “suspect.”

Uglier and Uglier
The Weekly Standard, which has been leading the charge against [Scott Thomas] Beauchamp, says [an] unnamed military official told the magazine that not only had the Army found Beauchamp’s written accounts to be false but that Beauchamp himself has now signed a recantation of all his claims. So case closed; he fessed up. Yet when TNR contacted the Army public affairs a Maj. Steve Lamb told them: “I have no knowledge of that.”

Fake News For Jesus
[On] last Sunday’s Meet the Press … the round table included a “journalist” from the Christian Broadcasting Network. You know, the one run by screaming nutball, Pat Robertson?… [T]here is … a problem with having a “reporter” on the panel who works for a “news” network that broadcasts crazy Armageddon fantasies and endless lies. CBN actually makes FOX look professional.

Drive-Buy Journalism
Jamil Anderlini and Mure Dickie report that when the banking company, HSBC, and the China Charity Foundation recently held a celebration in Beijing, the event organizers paid attending Chinese journalists 200 renminbi ($26.40) as “transport money”. “It’s awful. It’s an embarrassment for Chinese journalism . . . and it’s corruption,” said Ying Chan, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong.

Time Spent With Media Falters, Digital Spawns Shorter Attention Spans
The rapid shift of consumers toward digital media options for news, information and entertainment is producing an unintended consequence for all of the industry’s stakeholders: It’s reducing the amount of time people spend with media.

Karp: NYT’s reported plan to kill TimesSelect isn’t surprising
Scott Karp says dumping the TimesSelect model makes sense, too. “As smart, talented, and insightful as the New York Times columnists behind the paid wall are, the are too many other smart, talented, insightful commentators publishing their thoughts on the web for free,” he notes.

Newspapers could learn from the Economist’s audio edition
The Economist’s audio edition is not a podcast; it’s the complete version of the magazine read out aloud word for word. “I can press the forward button and skip any story I want and move to the next one,” says John Duncan. “It’s rather like reading a newspaper in your car — you start most of the stories but you skip quickly past the stuff that doesn’t grab you in the first few seconds until you get to something that does.”
They could even include ads.

‘Chicago Tribune’ to Deliver ‘Chicago Sun-Times’
NEW YORK The Chicago Tribune is going to handle the delivery of rival the Chicago Sun-Times and 10 of its suburban sister publications.

Cable Networks Boost News Corp. Earnings
After reporting higher second-quarter earnings, Rupert Murdoch took aim at critics of his company’s $5 billion takeover deal with Dow Jones & Company.

Dow Jones Deal Prompts Call To Broaden Cross-Ownership Ban
Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. faces no such hurdle.

Google Indexing Cornell University Library for Online Access
Cornell University is digitizing much of its content at its Mann Library, and this will be accessible on the Internet with Cornell’s partnership with the Google Book Search Library Project… Only texts that are out-of-copyright will be made completely available for online access, and everything else will be scanned for basic info, similar to what you’ll find on Amazon, along with information on where the book can be purchased or borrowed.

NewsMarket Adds VideoCafe Just for Bloggers
The NewsMarket, an online resource for video news content, is launching VideoCafe, which is a service specifically for bloggers that need quick access to footage. VideoCafe will operate as a stand-alone website, offering video clips for bloggers that need more content for their sites… This puts bloggers and traditional media reporters on a more even playing field.