Permanent link to MTA daily media news

The new key question: How happy are you?
WASHINGTON — Is it time to offer day care for ailing older parents to give their care-giving children a break? Time for much bigger incentives for carpooling? Time to extend maternity and paternity leave substantially? The answer’s yes to all three if you accept the findings of a new kind of public attitude polling that’s gaining influence with corporate leaders and in government policy circles worldwide… [I]ts pioneers intend that quantified self-assessments of satisfaction will someday be as powerful as the gross domestic product and other economic measures.
Part of the problem with the bill of goods that has been sold to Americans—greed is good, freedom means choosing what to buy, owning things will make you happy—is that significant human needs aren’t just ignored or given short shrift. We’re taught that we’re bad for having those needs.  It’s all in the service of making us automaton cogs in the economic machine. I’d write a book about it, if I could ever find a publisher.  Democrats could take advantage of this anomaly, if they hadn’t been as bamboozled by the same 35-year PR campaign as most of the rest of America.

FoxNews.com headline of the day: (Talking Points Memo)
“Bush to Act as Key Negotiator at Mideast Peace Talks in Annapolis”
But McClatchy says, “Bush to open Mideast conference, but won’t stay for discussion”.  I heard part of his welcoming speech this morning on the radio, and it sounded completely apathetic.  He’s obviously just giving Condi her way, and doesn’t give a damn about it himself.

Perino: Bush wouldn’t lie to McClellan.
“[Monday] at the off-camera briefing, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said she has discussed Scott McClellan’s forthcoming book with the president, and Perino said President Bush ‘has not and would not knowingly pass false information.’”
But if he is a liar, he wouldn’t lie about this, now would he?

Lieberman Falsely Suggests Dems Never Acknowledged Any Progress In Iraq
Lieberman just went on Fox and gave an extended interview in which he repeatedly suggested that Dems won’t acknowledge any progress of any kind in Iraq. “It’s time that everybody including Democratic candidates get off this storyline,” Lieberman said. Lieberman is lying about the Dem position — and the evidence is no further away than…the front page of [Sunday’s] New York Times. In an article [Sunday], the leading Dems are on record reiterating what’s been their position for weeks now: They see some military progress, but note that this progress hasn’t produced the political reconciliation that was the original goal of the surge. Dems have said this again and again and again in recent weeks.

Good for the Jews (by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo)
When I was thinking about Will Saletan’s essay on the supposed innate mental inferiority of Africans, I thought about this comment from behavorial geneticist Eric Turkheimer over at Cato’s blog … “If I may address my fellow Jews for a moment, consider this. How would you feel about a line of research into the question of whether Jews have a genetic tendency to be more concerned with money than other groups? Nothing anti-semitic, mind you, just a rational investigation of the scientific evidence…” And as long as it’s just free inquiry we’re interested in, can we move ahead with that study into the Jewish propensity to dominate host nations and guile them into hopeless wars for their own enrichment? Or at least suss out the implications if the theory turns out to be true?

What Do Conservatives Spend Their Time Thinking About? (by Ian Welsh at The Agonist)
One answer is provided by Conservapedia’s most viewed list:
1. Main Page‎ [1,897,388]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,488,013]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,193]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [416,767]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,438]
6. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [328,045]
7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [325,547]
8. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [314,076]
9. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [262,015]
10. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [249,14]

For Neocons Like Power Line, Lying is a Feature, Not a Bug (by Mona at Unqualified Offerings)
Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff comes right out and admits he figured candidate W lied, and is glad the lies turned out to be such. (No, Mirengoff doesn’t use the word “lie,” but that’s what his euphemistic BS reduces to.) The dumb schmucks who took Bush seriously about the “compassionate conservatism”* thing, well, they are no longer useful (idiots), and thus not worth Mirengoff’s time. For they don’t realize that the compassion blather was a necessary peddling of false fodder to the electorate. To, you know, get a warmongering, neocon-friendly Republican elected.

People Do What People See (by John C. Maxwell)
One of the concepts I included in the new edition [of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership] is something I call “The Law of the Picture: People Do What People See.” It deals with the importance of the examples leaders give to their people. You see, good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.
When leaders are corrupt, corruption reigns.  And the only way the leaders will stop being corrupt is to Make Them Accountable.

Banks Gone Wild (by Paul Krugman)
How did things go so wrong [with subprime lending]? Part of the answer is that people who should have been alert to the dangers, and taken precautionary measures, instead blithely assured Americans that everything was fine, and even encouraged them to take out risky mortgages. Yes, Alan Greenspan, that means you. But another part of the answer lies in what hasn’t happened to the men on [the recent] Fortune cover — namely, they haven’t been forced to give back any of the huge paychecks they received before the folly of their decisions became apparent.

FLASHBACK: As Halliburton CEO, Cheney Evaded U.S. Law To Do Business With Iran
In an interview with Fortune Magazine’s Nina Easton, Dick Cheney conceded that as Halliburton CEO he opposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, even though he now strongly supports them. Cheney explained that as a private sector official, he didn’t have any responsibility to be concerned about the impact of his company’s dealings with Iran:

Brooks Pushes Nonsense on Trade (by Dean Baker)
[T]he most serious inaccuracy in the [David] Brooks piece [Tuesday] is the claim that “once there was a bipartisan consensus behind free trade.” This is not true. The bipartisan consensus was behind trade policies that put less educated workers in competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. There has never been support for measures that would put our investment bankers, our lawyers, our doctors and our columnists in direct competition with workers in the developing world. (Perhaps Brooks does not know that if I opened a newspaper, and staffed it with foreign reporters and columnists who I quite explicitly paid one-half the wage of their comparably qualified U.S. counterparts, I would be arrested.)

How the Media Fuel Class Warfare
Media outlets aren’t just giving short shrift to organized labor. The avoidance extends to unorganized labor, too.

Marriott reportedly blocking AMERICAblog because of word “lesbian” (by John Aravosis at AMERICAblog)
Other than gay issues, what political issue do we write about that could be perceived as “porn”?… It’s also an issue that could adversely affect the discussion of Democratic politics online, to the extent that these companies have any political allegiances. Democrats, are you listening?

Media Matters for America headlines

NY Times claimed Bush is addressing “kitchen table issues,” but ignored Bush’s objections to Congress’ “kitchen table” efforts

Wash. Post article highlighted review of Post columnist Gerson’s book but omitted specific plagiarism allegation

Kornblut claimed Clinton change in rhetoric on health care plan, but offered no evidence

Wash. Post’s Hiatt distorted Obama’s education remarks, touted McCain’s “principles”

Ignoring his own history, Matthews asserted, “Huckabee has got the biggest free ride from the liberal media”

NPR aired without challenging GOP misrepresentation of CA electoral college initiative’s effect

Al Qaeda media wing says it will soon air new message from bin Laden
CAIRO, Egypt: Al-Qaida’s media wing announced Monday that it would soon release a new message from the terror network’s leader Osama bin Laden. As-Sahab said bin Laden would address European countries in the message. It did not elaborate.

Gunmen slaughter 11 relatives of Iraqi journalist
An Iraqi journalist said on Monday gunmen went on a killing spree in his Baghdad home, murdering seven children and four adult relatives in the latest assault on media staff in the war-scarred country. Dia al-Kawwaz, editor of Internet website Shabeqat Akhbar al-Iraq (Network of Iraqi News), said [Shiite] militiamen sprayed his relatives with bullets after storming into his house on Sunday.

Probe finds other DHS fake briefings
The fake October news conference held by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was not the first time a Homeland Security public affairs official has acted like a reporter by asking questions during a briefing. In January 2006, an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked a question during a news conference in San Antonio, Texas, according to an investigation by the Homeland Security Department — the parent agency of both FEMA and ICE.

Publisher Gets Web Readers to Fill the Pages of Its Magazines
[I]n 2006 [Halsey Minor, founder of CNet.com] met Paul Cloutier and Derek Powazek, Web-publishing veterans who were publishing a user-generated on-demand photo magazine called JPG. One issue took e-mail submissions and used a self-publishing service to sell downloads or print copies with the founders’ favorites… Online readers vote on their favorite submissions appearing at JPGmag.com. Then a tiny staff of 10 designs a layout for the winners and about 50,000 high-quality slick-looking magazines are printed six times a year. They are sold through $25 annual subscriptions and on newsstands for $6 each.

Kindle may help solve newspaper industry’s revenue problem
Dan Kennedy says Amazon.com’s new device has flaws, but “Kindle does offer a possible alternative to the free, Web-based regime that has been such a boon to consumers and a bane to publishers,” he writes. With Kindle, you can subscribe to newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for considerably less than it would cost to get the print editions. “I hope the Kindle is at least enough of a success so that we can arrive at some judgments over the next few years.”

MediaNews uses Topix for online newspaper comments
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. newspaper publisher MediaNews Group Inc has enlisted Topix.com to run the online forums and comments sections that people use to discuss articles they read in its papers, Topix said on Tuesday.

Report: Online Real Estate Ad Revenue to Eclipse Newspapers by 2012
No doubt the collapsing housing market has played a huge role in the downturn of real estate classified advertising. But for those who think this is all cyclical, a new report from Borrell Associates suggests that once the spending flows again, it’s going to the Internet.

On Bad Day For Newspaper Stocks — Sun-Times Media Group Sinks 23%
CHICAGO The share price for Sun-Times Media Group (STMG) hit a 52-week low Monday on a bad day generally for newspaper stocks. The 4 p.m. closing price of $1.10 was off 33 cents, or 23.08%, from its opening.

F.C.C. Chief Seeks Votes to Tighten Cable Rules
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — The head of the Federal Communications Commission is struggling to find enough support from a majority of the agency’s commissioners to regulate cable television companies more tightly… One of the Democrats, Jonathan S. Adelstein, recently joined with one of the Republican opponents of the measure to try, unsuccessfully, to postpone the vote, commission officials said. Mr. Adelstein complained that Mr. Martin has been unfairly rushing other commissioners to complete the finding.

Save Tucker?
“Rumors have been flying recently that Tucker Carlson could soon be on the way out at MSNBC.” Tucker’s show is “in real danger of being canceled,” according to an NBC official, but the right won’t let him go down without a fight. TVNewswer reports that a few of Tucker’s die-hard fans have launched a petition drive to “save Tucker.”… Contact MSNBC here and tell them what you think of Tucker’s show.

Top 9 gifts for online journalists
Tis the season for gratuitous gadget ogling. OJR staffer Noah Barron gives you a seasonal roster of the year’s hottest toys for techno-savvy reporters.

ABC News + Facebook = Epic Fail (by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable)
We noted this weekend that ABC would be joint venturing with Facebook on the politics section of the site, showcasing ABC News’ political coverage of the campaign. I assumed (incorrectly, it would appear) that Facebook would be the big winner in the partnership, as ABC wouldn’t be getting any ad revenue for their work. As it turns out, the big losers in the deal are both of them. An overwhelming majority of Mashable! readers have pledged that they’d never use the US Politics/ABC News application on Facebook.

MySpace News Feeds, Coming to a Profile Near You (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
Newsfeeds. Everybody’s got them, and MySpace wants them too. You’ll find them added to your account in the next month or so, alerting you to all of your friends’ activities. This isn’t the only time MySpace has moved to better emulate Facebook, which seems to have all the right moves when it comes to engaging users and promoting useless information.

News Corp’s Expanding Ad Network (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
Weeks after announcing the FIM ad network for MySpace and other sites included in the News Corp. umbrella, the ad network is being extended even further into Murdoch’s empire… What started out as an ad network for News Corp, being specific to MySpace, it will be expanded to incorporate more of the company’s media sites, and perhaps even further beyond that. The ad network is not expected to conflict at all with MySpace’s existing relationship with Google.

Google and Other People’s Content
The eternal story line in media is “Google is moving into [fill in the blank].” In recent weeks, Google announced its Android operating system for mobile phones and its OpenSocial standard, which will link applications across major social-networking sites, so long as (for now, at least) they’re not named Facebook. As several blogs discovered, in November the company filed a patent application for a Google magazine of sorts, which would allow users to collate Web content around which Google would wrap targeted ads. It’s also launching a job ads initiative.
News Corp goes after ads and Google goes after content.  What kind of battle of Titans is this going to be?

Strike-Bitten TV Sellers Fear Coughing Up Cash
If Dispute Isn’t Settled by Q1, Buyers Will Look for More Than Make-Goods

NBC in pact to use TiVo’s viewership data: report
NEW YORK (Reuters) – General Electric Co unit NBC Universal has reached an agreement with TiVo Inc to become the first major broadcaster with the right to use the digital recorder company’s research and interactive advertising products, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday in its online edition.

NewsFlash: Online Video Ads Work (by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable)
As it turns out, the outlook might not be bleak for online video after all. VC Dennis Miller said that it was a few weeks back, but network websites like ABC, NBC and CBS that stream online their network TV shows are having a hard time selling advertisements to keep up with their inventory… The news is vindication for the Writer’s Guild, but is even more major vindication for independent online content producers, who have been evangelizing this stuff for years.