Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Action Alert: Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is following up on Media Bloodhound’s reporting on how badly ABC, Time, and the Washington Post are treating Dennis Kucinich.  Click here and scroll down for the contact links.

Moore’s Law, as amended (by Jeff Jarvis)
Gordon Moore … said that his first version of his law had transistors doubling on chips in a year but the public version made that two years. He noted that it’s often said his law calls for doubling every 18 months but that’s not true; he didn’t say that… Search at Google for “Gordon Moore” and “18 months” and you’ll find lots of erroneous statements of the law… How does Moore assure there is a definitive statement of his law? How do we know it comes from him? Once it’s acknowledged as correct, how do we notify those who got it wrong so the can correct it and start spreading the right meme? Truth is a game of wack-a-mole.
There is a serious problem with online content, whether they be mistakes or lies.  Unless we develop a strategy to overwhelm the right-wing lies on search engines, they will live on and on and on.  To see what I mean, do a Google search on [“Al Gore” lies] without the brackets.  Right-wing lies about Al Gore being a liar dominate the search.

Law school dean fired for liberal ‘political views.’
About a week ago, the new law school at the University of California at Irvine hired Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known constitutional scholar, as the school’s inaugural Dean. But yesterday, Michael V. Drake, Irvine’s chancellor, fired him, “saying that he had not been aware of how Chemerinsky’s political views would make him a target for criticism from conservatives.” Chemerinsky confirmed his firing to the Wall Street Journal [Wednesday].
This is a follow-up to the Krugman excerpt about media timidity in the face of right-wing assaults that I posted yesterday.  Whoever right wingers can intimidate they will intimidate.

GOP Leader Boehner: If We Defeat Al Qaeda, “We” Will Have Paid “A Small Price” In Iraq (by Greg Sargent )
Okay, if this isn’t portrayed as a major gaffe, with wall-to-wall condemnations from the pundits, it’ll be stunning. (Editor’s note: That was meant to be bitterly ironic.)
Of course it was meant to be ironic.  If MoveOn said those exact words, the right-wing smear machine would rev up into overdrive.

Deaths of Soldiers ‘Brings It Home’ For ‘NYT’ Editorial Page Editor
“It brings it home and it reminds you how distant most people are from this war,” said Andrew Rosenthal, who said the seven soldiers — two died this week in Iraq — sent the soon-to-be-famous column critical of the war unsolicited to the paper. “It would be ludicrous to say this war has now touched us, but it has in a way. These are guys who had been more public.”

MAUREEN’S CHOICE:
You’d almost think it might be a criticism. Midway through [Wednesday] morning’s column, Maureen Dowd describes Petraeus and Crocker’s Senate testimony: … Testifying about matters of life and death, Petraeus and Crocker gave “shell game answers.” You’d almost think that might be Dowd’s focus—especially since the handsome general has been described as such a straight-shooter… But Dowd had easier scripts to flog—and she decided to dance with the script what brung her. Those “shell game answers” were noted in passing. This is how she started her column, a tribute to childhood’s non-end: “DOWD: Joe Biden didn’t talk that much yesterday—for Joe Biden.” Joe Biden talks too goddamned much! There! That felt good—that was much more familiar! Even when he doesn’t do it, it’s important to bring the tale up!

Syndicated Columnists React to Iraq War Testimony on Capitol Hill
NEW YORK The reaction of syndicated columnists to the Iraq War testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker has been mostly predictable along ideological lines. But not every conservative pundit has echoed the Bush administration’s stance.
Click through for specific examples.

U.S.-IRAQ: Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge
[At] their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting. [CENTCOM chief Admiral William] Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” and added, “I hate people like that”, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.
But MoveOn.org is RILLY, RILLY bad for asking if General Petraeus is General Betray Us.

“The Insurance Hoax” and the Business Press
Somehow, national outlets devoted to business news, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, and the Financial Times barely notice that 2005—year of the worst-ever insured loss in the history of the world—was also the most profitable insurance year ever, by a long shot. No one asked how that could be so. No one asked, moreoever, how it could be that, according to State Farm Insurance, Allstate Insurance Co. and Nationwide Financial Services Inc., Hurricane Katrina caused no wind damage—none at all—in thousands of cases. Commonsense alone calls that assertion into question. Worse, though, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page both mischaracterized the nature of the dispute between insurers and Katrina policyholders.

Are Oil Prices Rising or Is the Dollar Falling?
At mid-day, the NYT business section has headlines, one above the other, saying that the “Oil Hits Record” and “Dollar Reaches New Low Against Euro.” While these are presented as distinct stories arguably they are the same story. Imagine that the price of oil stayed constant in euros and the dollar fell by 4 percent against the euro (roughly what it has done over the last month, depending on the dates chosen.) Then we would expect that the price of oil would have increased by 4 percent in dollar terms.

NYT Libels Germany on Unemployment
The NYT really wants Germany to weaken its welfare state and is very upset that the German people don’t share its view. That is what readers would conclude from an article commenting on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s two years in office.

Prosecutors Conclude: Russian Reporter Jumped Out of Window — Was Not Pushed
MOSCOW Prosecutors have concluded that a reporter who died after falling out of a stairwell window of his apartment building committed suicide, a newspaper reported Wednesday. The death in March of Ivan Safronov, a military affairs writer for the daily Kommersant, prompted wide speculation among Russian media that he was killed for his work, which included reports on failed missile tests and secret weapons deal to Syria and Iran.

If Couric’s trip to Iraq was a ratings stunt, it didn’t work
“CBS Evening News” tied a record low with just under 5.5 million viewers last week when Katie Couric traveled to Iraq and Syria.

CBS Defends Katie Couric’s Iraq ‘Puff Pieces’: Bloggers Are ‘Not Intelligent’
Last week, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric reported from Iraq, but her stories largely repeated the Bush administration’s talking points… A MoveOn.org member recently wrote to CBS, expressing the opinion that Couric’s reports appeared to be “puff pieces scripted by the institutions it purports to be investigating.” CBS’s response questioned the “intelligence” of the person, adding that he or she probably found the “information from a blog somewhere”.
Click through to read the entire email message.

Keith Olbermann’s Top 9/11 Story: The Promotion Of Failure In Bush Administration
Countdown’s #1 story on [Tuesday’s] special 9/11 edition was some of Keith Olbermann’s best work to date. In this clip, he runs down the astonishing and outrageous list of Bush administration lackeys who, instead of being demoted or fired for their failures surrounding the September 11th attacks and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq, were promoted and awarded medals for those failures.
Click through to watch the video.

U.S. Viewers Watched an Average of 3 Hours of Online Video in July
RESTON, VA, September 12, 2007 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its comScore Video Metrix report for July 2007, revealing that nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online video during the month. Google Sites topped the July rankings with both the most unique video viewers and most videos viewed.

Get an early taste of the new fall shows
The fall TV season has yet to begin, but that won’t stop networks from unveiling some new shows early. They’re just doing it elsewhere. CBS this week started streaming the pilot for sitcom Big Bang Theory online, and this month it is showing both Bang and soapy drama Cane on American Airlines flights for an estimated audience of 4 million captive passengers. Several hundred thousand online viewers saw Fox’s K-Ville… And this week, would-be fans can catch the opening episode of Nashville, a reality series about country music hopefuls, on multiple sites.

TV Veterans Produce Web-Only Show
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The creative minds behind such TV shows as “Thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life” are launching a Web-based show, hoping to find the artistic freedom online that they say is lacking on broadcast networks. The show, called “Quarterlife,” will debut Nov. 11 on MySpace.com and will also be paired with its own social networking site that will include story extras as well as career, romance and other information for the show’s young audience.

WEB WAGS DOG
September 13, 2007 — A new alliance between Yahoo! and MTV marks a rare instance in which material first designed for the Internet is making its way to mainstream television. Yahoo! Music has entered into a deal to distribute “Nissan Live Sets,” an original online music performance series it produces, through MTV’s high definition channel MHD

Out-of-print tunes get new life in digital world
Hank Thompson last had a hit song in 1983, but people have more access to his music now than they’ve had in years. Last month, Capitol Records made 18 of the Country Music Hall of Famer’s albums, recorded from 1948 to 1964, available as downloads.

IBM avatar turns spoken words into sign language
Here’s a productive twist on the animated characters known as avatars that carry out fantasies in virtual computer worlds. IBM Corp. researchers have developed an avatar that can translate spoken words into sign language.

These Ads Brought to You by National Public Broadcasting
NPR, WGBH, PBS.org Acquire Sales Organization

Plans to drape Inquirer building in ads draw criticism
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on its own plan to temporarily drape the Inquirer-Daily News Building with a massive advertisement for the Jerry Seinfeld-backed film “Bee Movie.”

Why Journos Should Care About Online Ad Networks (by Amy Gahran)
Advertisers want — and are willing to pay for – relevant exposure to relevant markets. That builds their business. In other words, they’re starting to learn that 500 clicks on an online ad, or targeted exposure of their ad to 20,000 site visitors in a context relevant to editorial content, probably benefits them far more than shotgun-style, largely irrelevant exposure to the 200,000 circulation of your Sunday paper, or to the overall 100,000 daily visitors to your site.