Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Crooks and Liars (by bluegal)

Paul Krugman has a blog: What I Hate About Political Coverage
Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – [political journalists] tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race… The important problem is that it fails to inform the public about what matters…. [And] this sort of coverage often fails even on its own terms, because the way things look to inside-the-Beltway pundits can be very different from the way they look to real people.

Small La. town gears up for big protest
JENA, La. – Tina Cheatham missed the civil rights marches at Selma, Montgomery and Little Rock, but she had no intention of missing another brush with history… Cheatham was among thousands expected to turn out in support of six black teenagers, known as the Jena Six, jailed for the beating of a white classmate. The event was heavily promoted on black Web sites, blogs, radio and publications.

Hardball: The Assault On Free Speech In America
On Tuesday’s Hardball, Joe Conason from The New York Observer and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink had a lot to say about Monday’s controversial tasering of a University of Florida student and go in depth about the state of free speech, or lack thereof, in America today. The discussion of free speech zones and political expression took an interesting turn when Benjamin claimed to have been pulled out out of a Hillary Clinton rally for wearing a shirt that read “Troops. Home. Now.”
Click through to watch the video.

http://www.attytood.com/2007/09/meet_the_future_savior_of_jour_1.html (by Will Bunch)
It figures. He’s a journalist. In fact, now 21-year-old University of Florida student journalist Andrew Meyer — or “The Andrew Mayer,” based on his personal Web site, TheAndrewMeyer.com — was so certain that he would become a famous wordsmith one day that his email address is, indeed, Famouswriterman@aol.com. Laugh if you must, but this is one man whose prophecy has already come true.

Kerry Taser Video Brings Record Traffic To ‘Gainesville Sun’
The incident “has taken on an interest beyond anything we could imagine,” Sun Executive Editor Jim Osteen tells E&P. “It is the most-watched video we’ve ever done.” But the clip’s real fame has come from YouTube.com, where it has drawn more hits than any other video of the incident on that site.

Uh, No, Your Tax Cuts Didn’t Pay for Themselves (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
The tax cuts paid for themselves? I wish the President and others would quit misleading people about this because it’s not true. His own economists don’t even believe that. I know some of you are tired of hearing this over and over, but somebody has to try to call them on this or they’ll just keep saying it, and the press seems unwilling to do so so.

What’s the Canadian medical system like, anyway?
Canada might as well be on the other side of the moon for as much as the U.S. press tells us about its health care system. Morton Mintz says he could find only one in-depth article on it, and that was published in 1992.

What’s Healthy?
The list of dietary, consumer, and lifestyle choices that can affect wellbeing is long; anybody who reads the morning paper or watches the evening news knows this. Journalists and the public have an insatiable appetite for usable science. Scientifically speaking, however, the effects of dietary, consumer, and lifestyle choices are often poorly understood. This isn’t such a bad thing; uncertainty is a natural part of the scientific process. But journalists and the public often do not understand the general structure and process of medical research studies, let alone the role uncertainty plays in them.

Know Your Sources
Truly bizarre and racist “authorities” on immigration keep finding their way into the mainstream press, writes Henry Fernandez. How does this keep happening?

AP Forgets Fallujah, Quotes Fictional Character (by Paul McLeary, CJR)
Looking through the coverage of the Blackwater story yesterday morning, I stumbled across the AP’s take, and it would be hard to find a less thorough accounting of recent history if you tried.

Where Does the Bush-Petraeus Strategy Lead?
The existence of the permanent bases has been something constructed under the radar, without any attention being paid by the press…. We know [of] at least four giant permanent bases, one in each quadrant of Iraq… These are small towns that are essentially being built up.

Media Matters for America headlines

Savage responds to “fascist, gay website named Media Matters”

Ignoring polling, The Note blamed Reid for ensuring “the return of polarized Iraq politics”

NY Times cited RNC release on Clinton health plan, but did not identify the RNC’s “commentators and analysts”

O’Reilly: Tasered UF student “biggest wimp in the United States of America”

NY Post contradicts itself, misrepresents what Clinton said about proof of health insurance

CNN’s Keilar reported that “the Senate voted to stop debate” on DC voting rights bill — but it was the Republicans

NY Times misrepresented Mukasey ruling on Bush’s authority to hold detainees

Reporting on Giuliani ad attacking Clinton, media don’t note he blamed troops for missing weapons

CNN’s Borger asserted Clinton has “a bit of a credibility problem” on health care, despite contrary poll

Armstrong Williams: By “B-word,” Thomas just meant that sexual-harassment plaintiff is “a tough broad”

The Hill reported Clinton’s health care proposal “comes at a heavy price tag,” failed to fully report her plan to pay for it

Going After Gore (by tristero at Hullabaloo)
I urge everyone to read Going After Gore by Evgenia Peretz in Vanity Fair. It’s as good as [Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler] says it is. And for those you who are just coming of political age now and weren’t aware of 2000, you will surely recognize that what the press is doing now – obsessing over Democrats’ haircuts while admiring the handsome presidential mien of the Republicans – was done back then. To catastrophic result.
Why hasn’t Bob Somerby published a book about the awful press coverage of politics?  Could it be due to the shortsightedness of publishers?  They don’t want to publish important information, they only want what they think will be blockbusters.

Australian PM Howard’s Party Bans Members From Gore’s Global Warming Speeches
Al Gore is currently in Australia speaking on climate change, where he has launched a “passionate attack on the climate policies of Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush.” Yesterday, he spoke to a sold-out crowd of more than 700 people, and tomorrow’s event is anticipated to have similar attendance… But according to the event organizer, Max Markson, Prime Minister John Howard’s Liberal Party have prohibited its members from attending the events.

China: Going For The Gold In Press Tyranny
With the Summer Games less than a year away, Beijing continues to permit the harassment of foreign journalists — and to jail its own press.

Dan Rather files $70M suit against CBS
Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and his former bosses Wednesday, claiming they made him a “scapegoat” for a discredited story about President Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War.

MGM launches HD channel on DirecTV
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc unveiled plans on Tuesday to launch a high-definition television channel this fall on the DirecTV satellite service with a mix of movies and original programs.

NBC to Offer Free Downloads of Popular Shows
NBC.com has announced a service called “NBC Direct” which will allow users to download NBC shows such as “The Office,” “30 Rock,” and “Heroes,” to their desktop. The NBC Direct software will allow users to view each episode for up to one week, at which point the license will expire. While free to view the shows, the videos will include advertising. NBC Direct will also include a feature for automatically delivering new episodes of NBC shows to users.

ABC to Distribute Streaming Video on AOL
Television network ABC has reached a deal to distribute its primetime shows on AOL. Shows will be ad-supported, with revenue being shared by the two companies. Advertising will also include geo-targeted ads, a portion of which will go to local ABC affiliate stations. Videos will be available starting today.

TMZ.com lets readers talk to the blog
TMZ.com, the fast-growing entertainment blog co-owned by AOL, has started letting readers post audio comments about items on its website for playback by other people at the site. That’s a next-generation leap from the written comments many sites have added.

Mobile Phone Web Users Nearly Equal PC Based Internet Users in Japan
TOKYO, JAPAN, SEPTEMBER 20, 2007 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a new study on mobile phone usage in Japan.  The study estimated that 53.6 million people are using a mobile device to access the Internet, a figure nearly equaling the 53.7 million who accessed the Internet from either a home or a work computer in June 2007.

Norman Lear’s push to register young voters coming to their cellphones
A youth voting project started led by television producer Norman Lear of Archie Bunker fame has a new corporate sponsor that will bring text and video urging 18-to-24 year olds to vote to their cellphones, USA TODAY’s Martha T. Moore writes. She says that Declare Yourself, a website  dedicated to registering young voters, has connected with Cricket Communications, a wireless provider.

MTV to launch activism social network
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Viacom Inc’s MTV will launch a new Internet social network sponsored by foundations operated by the founders of Microsoft and AOL to encourage youth activism.