Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Cognitive Science and FactCheck.org, or Why We (Still) Do What We Do
A Sept. 4 article in the [Washington] Post discussed several recent studies that all seemed to point to the same conclusion: Debunking myths can backfire because people tend to remember the myth but forget what the debunker said about it… [Harvard psychologist Daniel T.] Gilbert’s studies show that… [w]e may initially believe whatever we hear, but we are fully capable of evaluating and rejecting beliefs that turn out not to be accurate. Our brains don’t do this naturally; maintaining a healthy skeptical attitude requires some conscious effort on our part. It also requires a basic understanding of logic – and it requires accurate information. That’s where this Web site comes in.
And those are the purposes of MakeThemAccountable—to make accurate information available, and to teach readers to be more skeptical.  Thanks to those of you who do donate, but to those who don’t, put your money where your beliefs are.  Click here to contribute, or click here to place an ad.  Traffic has doubled at MTA during the last year, but contributions have not kept pace.  Distorted media coverage of people and issues is the biggest problem progressives face, and this is how you can do your part to change that dynamic.

To other bloggers who may read this:  I have more than once recommended that we band together in asking for contributions.  I know there are people who would be more willing to contribute if they didn’t have to pick among hundreds of choices.  Let me know if you’d like to participate in a group contribution effort.  We could offer our readers the chance to be the Richard Mellon Scaifes of the left, for the cost of a movie ticket per month.

Stopping the press barons (by Robert McChesney)
For too long, everyday Americans have been kept in the dark about the media policies that inform and shape the democratic debate that guides our society… The problem sits squarely on the shoulders of public policies that make it good business to form massive media conglomerates whose mission is to cut costs, shed reporters and reduce output to the lowest common denominator. But when the spotlight is put on the process, the public interest always wins. It is why corrupt insiders work so hard to keep the policymaking process hidden behind closed doors, and then try to pollute public discourse with the most outrageous, misleading propaganda. Media ownership is a citizen issue of urgent importance - consolidation is a one-way street and there’s no turning back. Rich media equals poor democracy.
Play Whack-a-murdoch and then take action at StopBigMedia.com.

Rush Limbaugh Sets a New eBay Record
Catherine England, an eBay spokeswoman, said the winning bid on Rush Limbaugh’s auction set a record for the most expensive item ever sold for charity on the site. The item in question was a letter from Democratic senators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, blasting Limbaugh for using the phrase “phony soldiers” on the air. The letter sold Friday for $2.1 million… On his show Friday, Limbaugh said that proceeds from the sale, and a matching $2.1 million from his own coffers, would be donated to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The foundation chiefly provides scholarships to children of Marines who were killed while serving their country. Eugene B. Casey Foundation placed the winning bid.
This is just one small example showing how much more PR savvy the right has than we progressives are, as John Aravosis pointed out yesterday.  Why didn’t MoveOn think of a similar way to counter its congressional rebuke?

They All Do It (by digby)
Howie Kurtz published a lengthy excerpt of my post of yesterday in which I indicted the press corps for being susceptible to the particular types of nasty little smears and tidbits the Republicans specialize in and those end up setting the agenda for coverage… His comment … was this: “I agree that leakers often get to set the story line, but I also know that Democrats are not unfamiliar with the practice. (Remember the Bush DUI leak just before the 2000 election?) And those who leaked information about domestic surveillance, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons also had an impact.”…
Click through to read Digby’s recap of the truth about the revelations Kurtz attributes to the Democrats.  From what I’ve seen during the seven years I’ve been involved in politics, most of the revelations about Republican wrongdoing have come from Republicans, many of whom hate what they’ve seen happening to their party.

NYT Embraces White House Talking Point, Claims Bush’s Veto Proves He Can ‘Still Get His Way’
“We won this round on SCHIP,” claimed White House spokeswoman Dana Perino… The media have blindly picked up this administration talking point. In a New York Times article [Friday], authors Robert Pear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg called Bush’s veto “artful” and said it shows that he is able to “still get his way on Capitol Hill“… [But a] more significant measure of Bush’s power is the fact he has been unable to convince Congress to pass his major priorities, such as immigration and Social Security. Last month, Bush himself acknowledged that people don’t listen to him and in January, the American public already thought that Bush was a lame duck.
But this kind of talk by the White House plays well to the knuckle draggers.  I seldom hear from my right-wing crazies any more, but I got messages from several of them this week, crowing about Bush’s “win” and the Democrats’ “loss” and “weakness”.  A substantial portion of our population (the same 25% who stand by Bush no matter what?) care nothing about right and wrong, only about up and down.

CNN Poll: 88% say Rep. Stark should not apologize
CNN is reporting that 88% of those voting in their Friday morning online poll say there is no reason Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) should apologize for remarks blasting President Bush on the floor of the House of Representatives.
America wants the Democrats to fight back.  Why don’t more of them do it?  I do NOT get it.  Instead, many Democrats actually HELP the right wing.  See below.

Battered Spouses (by digby)
[T]he damned Democrats go right along with this nonsense and “hold meetings” and leak to the press about how they agree with the Republicans agreeing that Stark caused the distraction, and basically showing themselves to be a bunch of pathetic fumblers falling for this nonsense over and over again… Are they really battered spouses trying desperately not to say or do anything that will make their vicious, bullying batterer angry? Somebody call Dr. Phil for gawds sake. I have said it before but until the Democrats figure out how to deal with this, the Republicans are going to keep doing it. Why shouldn’t they?
I don’t remember that one Democrat blasting George Bush for joking about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction at the 2005 White House Correspondents Dinner.  Not one.

Frosts refuse to back down.
Despite the right-wing assault against them, the Frost family continues to press for children’s health insurance. The AP reports that Bonnie Frost will appear in a new radio spot “in support of Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s health care expansion proposal.”
Some ordinary citizens have more courage than our elected officials.

Pablo On Politics

Fox News anchor slams Bush’s SCHIP double standard.
Yesterday, on Fox News’ All Star Panel, conservative Roll Call editor Mort Kondracke slammed President Bush’s SCHIP “compromise,” which “cut[s] off about a million children from the rolls.” Kondracke called Bush out on making a prominent 2004 campaign promise to expand children’s health insurance.
Even a Fox News denizen can’t stand the hypocrisy.  Nor can the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader.  See below.

McConnell SCHIP stance criticized
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has warned about the slippery slope leading to “government-run health care for everyone” while rallying his colleagues against expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. But as a U.S. senator, McConnell gets government-run, taxpayer-subsidized insurance through the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program… When McConnell needed triple bypass heart surgery in 2003, he checked into the Naval Medical Center and was treated by the hospital’s clinical chief of cardiothoracic surgery.

NY Times Editorial Blisters Congressional Dems For FISA Cave-In (by Greg Sargent)
[T]oday’s Times brings an important new editorial that that … absolutely blisters the Senate intelligence committee for its FISA cave-in. More important, it supplies the necessary larger context for understanding what’s happening — specifically, that all too many Dem Congressional leaders are still nursing hangovers from their minority days and are acting as if the 2006 decision by voters to put them in control of Congress just never happened.
So it’s not just us kooky leftist bloggers who think the Democrats should be acting like winners, not losers.

Time’s Corliss says he was never threatened by Limbaugh
David Edelstein suggested this week that the journalist Rush Limbaugh intimidated into writing a softer story was Time’s Richard Corliss. That’s a “ludicrous fantasy,” says Corliss. He tells Joan Walsh: “The David Edelstein column, as it relates to me, is total bullshit, unfounded and irresponsible. Rush Limbaugh never called me, ever, and never uttered a hostile word in my direction. He certainly never defamed me, which leaves him one up on Edelstein.”

Libertarians Rising Libertarians Rising (by Michael Kinsley)
People were shocked a couple of weeks ago when Ron Paul–one of those mysterious Republicans who seem to be running for President because everyone needs a hobby–raised $5 million from July through September, mostly on the Internet. Paul is a libertarian. In fact, he was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1988. The computer revolution has bred a generation of smart loners, many of them rich and some of them complacently Darwinian, convinced that they don’t need society–nor should anyone else. They are going to be an increasingly powerful force in politics.
I think Kinsley has no idea what he’s talking about.  There are many more progressives involved in internet activism than libertarians.  MoveOn alone has three million members.  Besides, I don’t think Kinsley really knows what Paul stands for.  See below.

Ron Paul: US should end income tax, drop out of UN
Ron Paul — the libertarian Texas congressman and obstetrician — urged Christian conservatives today to support his bill to remove federal jurisdiction over abortion and marriage. He also called for ending medical care, food stamps, education and birthright citizenship to illegal immigrants.
At least Paul is openly radical.  He doesn’t try to pretend he’s not.

Tribune Deal Is Mired In FCC Rift Over Cross-ownership Rules
The $8.2-billion deal to take Tribune Co. private has become entangled in a newly inflamed debate over media ownership rules at the FCC that could pose problems for the transaction.

Exclusive: ‘Wash Post’ Edges Up Monthly List of Top 30 Web Sites
The Washington Post edged up in the Web site rankings as the second most-visited Web site in September with about 9 million monthly uniques. The New York Times topped the list of 30 newspapers with 14.6 million unique monthly visitors.

Juicing Up the Revenue: Options
Amy Gahran is right that ad departments need to be souped up… Here are some possibilities… News orgs’ ad reps could help businesses buy ads in other media. The ad department could become a one-stop shop, enabling the businesses to buy all its advertising through a single rep… Businesses could buy clearly labeled “columns” in which they can dispense information and advice about their areas of expertise… For a fee, obituary consultants could help families tell a story about their loved one, using any combination of text, audio, photos and videos… Many newspaper sites offer RSS feeds, but according to the Bivings Report none of those feeds include ads. Other options include audio and video ads; page and site design and hosting; search of advertisers in certain area; and grouping ads that complement each other, such as dinner and a movie. These ideas were appropriated from and inspired by Mark Cuban who’s not even in the industry.

Randi’s return sparks wingnut pile-on
“Did something happen to me?” That’s how Randi Rhodes opened her show [Thursday]. After three days recovering from a mysterious fall, she explained that she really didn’t know what happened to her. “I was watching football in an Irish pub,” she told listeners. “I went out to smoke a cigarette, and the next thing I knew I was down on the cement, face down, bleeding.”… [S]he fired off an email [to her employers] stating that she was mugged, just to make things less complicated… I don’t know how or why the story grew to me being brutally beaten or attacked,” she claimed. Rhodes did not file a police report.
Click through to listen to the audio.

CBS confirms 2006 Raw Story scoop: Plame’s job was to keep nukes from Iran
CBS News has confirmed, in advance of a 60 Minutes interview with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame to be run this Sunday, that Plame “was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.”… RAW STORY first revealed Plame’s Iran mission and the damage done to CIA operations by her outing in a February 13, 2006 story by Raw investigative editor Larisa Alexandrovna.
Congratulations, Larisa!

Scripted Dramas Top Draw, and Most Vulnerable to Writer’s Walkout (by John Rash)
A look at this week’s top 10 shows just how high the stakes are if writers strike, as scripted series are still the reliable draws. Most of the top 10 were tenured dramas, ones with nuanced characters and serialized stories. In other words, the very kind of shows that are most script-dependent… [I]f it’s a prolonged, protracted labor battle it could fundamentally alter network TV.

Roadblock Hits Stephen Colbert Campaign for President — Commie Plot?
COUMBIA, S.C. Comedian Stephen Colbert has been saying he’ll be running a presidential campaign in early voting South Carolina — and he’ll be reaching millions of voters Sunday when he appears on NBC’s “Meet the Press” — but he may have trouble getting on a ballot.  And he may face Federal Election Commission sanctions, as well… Colbert could face action … if the comedian continues to promote the run on the cable network — due to laws barring corporate campaign contributions, Politico.com reported Friday. It may hinge on whether his candidacy is viewed as a complete, or only partial, “joke.”

U.S. satirist Jon Stewart renews TV contract
Political satirist Jon Stewart has renewed his contract with the Comedy Central cable TV channel in a deal that will keep his award-winning mock newscast “The Daily Show” on the network through 2010.

Fox News To Air Frank Gaffney’s ‘Alarmist’ ‘Unfair’ Documentary On Islam
This Saturday at 9 PM EST, Fox News will be airing Islam vs. Islamists, a documentary following “moderate Muslims who have challenged the ‘Islamists’ who espouse a more radical view of their religion“… [I]n April, PBS decided against airing the film as part of its America at a Crossroads series. Burke leveled accusations of political bias, claiming that the network decided to pull the program “after he refused to fire” [two of the producers], both of whom head the right-wing Center for Security Policy. PBS’s actual complaints dealt with the film’s inaccuracies.

U.K. Newspapers Aim for World of Readers
Online Dailies Are Growing Three Times That of Overall Internet Traffic

Comcast blocks some Internet traffic
Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

Google: The $200 Billion Gorilla
On the heals of its earnings report [Thursday], Google has hit a new all-time high and surpassed the $200 billion mark in terms of market value. For some perspective, that is more than News Corp, Disney, Viacom, and CBS are worth … combined. The number makes Google the second largest technology company in the world, trailing only Microsoft.

MediaNews goal: 20% of ad sales to come from web by ‘12
That’s up from 7% now. To reach the 20% goal, MediaNews will create Web sites separate from its 57 daily newspapers to attract younger readers.