Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Randi Rhodes is the Victim of a Violent Attack
Randi Rhodes was mugged on Sunday night on 39th Street and Park Ave, nearby her Manhattan apartment, while she was walking her dog Simon. According to Air America Radio late night host Jon Elliott, Rhodes was beaten up pretty badly, losing several teeth and will probably be off the air for at least the rest of the week. At of late Monday night we have not able to locate any press accounts of the attack and nothing has been posted on the AAR website.
There are discussions on the Randi Rhodes Message Board and Democratic Underground where you can wish Randi well.  I no longer have an email address for her.

Violent Crime Captures the Headlines: October 7 - 12, 2007
While crime coverage may seem like a staple of our news diet, last week was actually unusual in that three frightening stories of random violence generated coverage—with two making the top-10 story list. Plus, the media are all over Fred Thompson’s debate debut.

Microsoft’s Ballmer kicks off ANA show with claim that all media will be digital in 10 years
Phoenix—In his opening keynote presentation at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer said that in 10 years, all media will be digital, with tremendous ramifications for marketers, agencies and publishers.

Facing the News Business Model Crisis (by Rich Gordon)
The destruction of the print business is leaving an online business too small to support the cost of creating original content at all but the largest scales. Large-scale content markets — say,national sports or national business, possibly even a few national news providers like the Times — are now large enough (or close) to pay people to create content. What happens in Raleigh, N.C.? Or Peoria, Ill.? Or Carlisle, Pa.?

Paying for investigative journalism (by Jeff Jarvis)
I think that if we analyze the staffing and production devoted to investigation in American journalism, we’ll find that it’s a pretty damned small proportion of news budgets. And I suspect we’ll find that if it is not supported by large media organizations, it could be supported by foundations and public donation. That could come from independent organizations like Pro Publica and other… It also could come from independent journalists like Josh Marshall. There is one caution to this: These organizations can be backed by and run by people with axes to grind. And so we may find an imbalance in investigation. That’s why the role of the editor, the journalist upholding public standards, remains important.
You mean like the editors of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post editorial pages, Jeff?

Getting it wrong, letting it slide (by Edward Wasserman)
Why is it that the mightier the news organization, the likelier it will stand by ethical blunders that would shame a first-year reporter? Apparently, along with industrial mastery comes the right to deny, evade, whine and nitpick instead of owning up to what you did wrong and making sure you don’t do it again.

MARK GREEN TELLS THE TRUTH:
On Friday evening, Air America’s Mark Green did something astounding. Breaking every known modern pundit convention, he actually told the truth! Green actually blamed the mainstream press corps for its disgraceful conduct toward Candidate Gore!… If other liberals had spoken this way in the course of the past seven years, we’d be living in a vastly different political country… Green was speaking with Hardball’s Chris Matthews—and no one trashed Candidate Gore in quite the way that Matthews consistently. No one lied about Gore so incessantly. No one was uglier, ruder, more insulting.

General Advocating Victory Declaration Over Al Qaeda Pushed Bogus Storyline About Pat Tillman (by Greg Sargent)
[Monday’s] Washington Post reports that some generals believe that Al Qaeda in Iraq has been vanquished and want the U.S. to publicly declare that we have defeated the terror group. The leading general urging such a declaration of victory over AQI is Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal… But some interesting facts are dribbling out about General McChrystal. As Think Progress notes, he declared “major combat over” — way back in 2003… [And i]t turns out that General McChrystal also got into trouble for pushing the bogus storyline that now-legendary former NFL player Pat Tillman had been killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan.

The Murdoch Media Service Obliges GOP Lies (by Marcy Wheeler)
Gosh, what a remarkable coinkydink. This morning, Roll Call comes out with this story: “Specifically, Republicans are planning to use the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three U.S. soldiers in Iraq earlier this year to put a ‘human face’ on the [FISA] issue”… And on the very same day, Murdoch’s rag comes out with this story. “U.S. intelligence officials got mired for nearly 10 hours seeking approval to use wiretaps against al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping Queens soldier Alex Jimenez in Iraq earlier this year, The Post has learned.” [But] those soldiers died because [no Justice Department official was available to sign the warrant,] not because of any laws on our books. But god forbid the Republicans would actually leak the truth to compliant media outlets to accomplish their agenda.

Welfare as We Should Know It (by Dean Baker )
The NYT reports that the Treasury Department is coordinating the creation of a bailout fund that will be financed by several major banks, which will act to support the market in some of the exotic investment vehicles that they developed over the last decade. This should be reported as what it is, a bailout by the nanny state for the big boys who lack the ability to get by on their own in a free market.

The Battle of the Budget (Public Opinion by Ruy Teixeira)
The public favors increased domestic appropriations, but the Bush administration and their conservative allies refuse to listen.

Calvin Coolidge Redux
After rightly noting that presidential candidates “almost invariably” are “a bunch of very rich people,” [Gail Collins’] op-ed goes on to claim that “voters tend to admire wealth.”… Falling into a familiar pattern documented by FAIR over the years of the media trying to “weed out” candidates who do not meet the press corps’ ideological preferences, she calls for TV debates to exclude all but the candidates with the most campaign money to spend.

Media Matters for America headlines

George Will: GOP voters “have learned” that Giuliani “doesn’t flip-flop”

Reliable Sources panel questioned why Coulter keeps getting invited on television

CNN’s Collins did not challenge CEI fellow’s distortion of Gore’s sea level claim

Wash. Post article on earmarks quoted Stevens but not prior Post report that Stevens’ earmarks are being investigated

MSNBC labeled global warming skeptic Gray a “top meteorologist”

MSNBC’s Brewer claimed “even conservative Republican presidential candidates are trying to sidestep” SCHIP — but several support veto

CBSNews.com article contains language nearly identical to WorldNetDaily article, including falsehood

Wash. Post advanced myth that social conservatives are only constituency who vote their values

Wash. Post quoted White House saying not for Congress to “work[] out” whether Armenians suffered “genocide” — but Bush himself did in 2000

WSJ editorial said Bush supports a “20% expansion” of SCHIP — not according to CBO

Coulter: “I don’t think most Jews are as stupid as Donny Deutsch”

SC justices: Thomas’s biography ‘unseemly.’
Supreme Court justices reportedly are aren’t thrilled with Clarence Thomas’s new biography. The NY Posts’s Cindy Adams writes, “Phrases swatted about are ‘unseemly’ and ‘breach of decorum.’ Besides unraveling his life story, he has also delved into the ways and hows of the Court. They feel it ‘irresponsible’ for a sitting Supreme Court Justice to write about The Process.”

Bill Cosby’s New Book Full of Racial Stereotypes
Cosby’s new book continues to tar black communities and the black poor as dysfunctional, chronic whiners, and eternally searching for a government hand-out.

Leno keeping NBC up at night
As part of a high-stakes gambit engineered by NBC Universal executives three years ago, Leno agreed to step down in 2009 as “The Tonight Show” host to make room for Conan O’Brien. Afraid that O’Brien, whose talk show airs after Leno’s, would bolt to a competing network, taking his desirable young audience with him, NBC locked up his services by promising him “The Tonight Show.” But as the date has drawn closer, Leno has become frustrated, reluctant to retire from late night.

A Perky Debut for the Fox Business Network
The mood on Rupert Murdoch’s latest television venture was so giggly and upbeat that it belied its own crawl, showing sinking stock prices.

Market Movers
For all that blogs are becoming increasingly mainstream, the number of people who get a regular and predictable paycheck for blogging is still tiny. That number will rise, but it will never come close to the number of people who get a regular and predictable paycheck for old-fashioned reporting. In most of the blogosphere, the incentives and the rewards for generating content are very, very different from what is found in old-media companies.
Our need to put food on the table, on the other hand, is very, very similar.

World’s first TV-quality online network launches
CANNES, France (AFP) - The world’s first TV-quality online television network went on display at this week’s MIPCOM audiovisual trade show offering legal, free entertainment and raising questions about what this will mean for the massive TV business.

Digital deal nudging music into living rooms
DENVER (Billboard) - For Real Networks’ Rhapsody digital music service, there’s no place like home. The company has teamed with TiVo to bring subscription-based on-demand streaming music into the living room directly from Internet-connected TiVo digital video recorders. For subscription music services and Internet radio outlets, the deal serves as a blueprint for how Internet-based music can crawl out of obscurity and into the mainstream.

Nielsen Launches New Services to Track Web and Mobile Usage
The Nielsen Company has release two new services – Nielsen Online and Nielsen Mobile. Nielsen Online combines data from Nielsen//NetRatings and BuzzMetrics to measure not only traffic, but penetration in blogs, social networks, and other forms of user-generated content. Meanwhile, Nielsen Mobile offers data on how people use their mobile devices, such as usage of the mobile Web and their favorite brands.

Update TV Spots — Even After They’re Recorded
BlackArrow Aims to Place Relevant Ads in DVR, VOD and Broadband Programs

Google Reader Stats are Bullshit (With Proof) (by Pete Cashmore at Mashabel)
Google Reader stats, in case you don’t know, are bullshit. In fact, all Feedburner stats for most top blogs are bullshit due to the effect of default feeds. Want 80,000 free subscribers? How about 200K or more? Read on.

Biz-News Outlets Grow, but Will Ad Dollars?
It’s Tough for Brands to Stand Out in Crowd That Now Includes Fox, Too

AOL to Trim 2,000 Jobs in a Continuing Overhaul
The cutbacks are part of a plan to reorganize the company and focus on advertising-supported Web sites and on selling advertising on behalf of other companies.

Google skimps on its own advertising
SAN FRANCISCO - Like a gourmet chef who rarely eats out, Google Inc. feeds advertising services to hordes of other businesses while skimping on its own marketing.
Maybe Google skimps in dollars spent, but every appearance of Google Ads on millions, if not billions, of websites is an ad for Google.  Not only that, but the company announces two or three new things they’re doing every single day, which gets lots of free media coverage.