Permanent link to MTA daily media news

FCC Votes to Allow Media Consolidation
The FCC voted 3-2 today to lift a ban on a a broadcaster also owning a newspaper in the same market, so long as the market is one of the 20 largest in the U.S. (along with a number of other conditions), the Washington Post reports. The cross-ownership ban was originally approved in 1975 to preserve diversity of viewpoints and promote economic competition.

Free Press Blasts FCC Media Ownership Vote
Despite strong congressional opposition and over 100,000 public comments against another big media giveaway, … “The public simply won’t stand for another massive giveaway. They are sick and tired of partisan shouting and celebrity trash being passed off as news. They want more choices, more variety, more diversity—not more of the same. The growing public outcry is only going to get louder.”

Mike Huckabee Gets His Media Close-Up: December 9 – 14, 2007
The unlikely surge of former Arkansas Governor helped generate the biggest week of coverage for the presidential campaign so far in 2007. But as Huckabee is learning, some media attention is more welcome than others. Plus, the Mitchell report turns steroid abuse in baseball into a front-page story—some might say at long last.

Countdown: Senator Chris Dodd On The FISA Victory (by Logan Murphy at Crooks and Liars)
Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Chris Dodd, appeared on Tuesday’s Countdown to discuss his victory on the Senate floor… Senator Dodd showed the same passion and leadership talking with guest host Alison Stewart as he did [Monday] night on the Senate floor, vowing once again to filibuster the bill in January if immunity is still included and saying that to do so would be pretending like these crimes never happened. Dodd, unlike most of the Democratic leadership, shows no fear of President Bush, excoriating him for trampling all over our Constitution.
Click through to watch the video.

Wall Street Journal did a lousy job covering itself last week
That’s what Anna Bahney says. You had to read the New York Times to learn about the Journal’s sweeping newsroom changes and the paper’s plans to kill the Marketplace section. Bahney writes: “After stumbling at the start of the News Corp. deal, when top [WSJ] editors sat on news of the offer for a week until it broke elsewhere, the Journal recovered its poise. The difficulty increases now that Journal reporters and editors are News Corp. employees. But that very difficulty makes the task all the more important.”

Bill Clinton is right… (by Eric Boehlert at Media Matters)
He might be the former president of the United States, but when Bill Clinton dared critique the press for the vacuous way it covers campaigns, he got smacked down by the media elites who unleashed their contempt and, fittingly, misstated what Clinton had said. Such is the state of affairs where, as Clinton noted, campaign issues have faded so far in the rearview mirror for the press that they’ve dipped below the horizon… If arrogant journalists think they get to have the last laugh — that they have total immunity and that they get to make the rules and decide the campaign narratives — than they are painfully out of touch. Because more and more polls indicate that news consumers are fed up with the shallow, pointless type of coverage that the mainstream media is producing.

MSNBC Analyst Blames Hillary For Not Talking About Vince Foster’s Death (by Greg Sargent at TPM Horse’s Mouth)
[MSNBC media analyst] Steve Adubato hits Bill Clinton for blaming the media for unfair coverage of his wife, writing:  “What’s really ironic about Clinton’s argument is that it has been the Clinton campaign that has been exceedingly secretive about disclosing the former First Lady’s records when she was in the White House. Bill and Hillary want the media to focus on are only the positive aspects of her experience but won’t say a word about such topics as ‘Travelgate;’ ‘Whitewater;’ exactly how Vince Foster died; missing billing records; or Hillary’s role as architect of the failed effort for universal healthcare.”
Earth to Adubato:  It’s exactly the media’s overplaying of the non-scandals you mention that Bill Clinton was complaining about.  I guess you missed all the exoneration memos.

Editor: Check Snopes.com before accusing us of a cover-up
A caller to the Tampa Tribune wanted to know why the media weren’t reporting a story about Hillary Clinton and the Black Panthers — a tale the woman had heard on Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story.”  Joseph H. Brown writes: “The reason the press hasn’t ‘covered’ this story is that it’s totally untrue. It’s an urban legend that’s been snaking its way across the Internet for years.”

Hardball: Chris Matthews Calls Hillary Clinton Supporters “Castratos” (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
We’ve documented and made fun of Chris Matthews’ man-crushes before. How many times have we seen him get starry-eyed and gushy over Bush’s raw manliness, Fred Thompson’s manly smell or Mitt Romney’s broad shoulders? But his misogyny–especially as it applies to Hillary Clinton–is really offensive. [Speaking of male supporters of Hillary Clinton, Matthews asked,] “aren’t you appalled at the willingness of these people to become castratos in the eunuch chorus here, or whatever they are? What do you call them? I don’t know what they are. What do you think of these people?”
Click through to watch the video.

For Clinton, A Matter of Fair Media (by Howard Kurtz)
“She’s just held to a different standard in every respect,” says Mark Halperin, Time’s editor at large. “The press rooted for Obama to go negative, and when he did he was applauded. When she does it, it’s treated as this huge violation of propriety.” While Clinton’s mistakes deserve full coverage, Halperin says, “the press’s flaws — wild swings, accentuating the negative — are magnified 50 times when it comes to her. It’s not a level playing field.”

Prager’s Hypocrisy: Romney’s Religion Shouldn’t Matter, Ellison’s Religion ‘Undermines America’ (Think Progress)
Last November, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress. When he announced that he was going to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran, right-wing talk show host Dennis Prager protested, arguing that Ellison would “embolden Islamic extremists”…  What’s most interesting is that [Tuesday] — when a Republican candidate, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, is under attack for his Mormon beliefs — Prager seems suddenly concerned about the role religion plays in the political choices of some Americans.

Ex-Mormon Cartoonist Says Romney Not Telling Truth
As an ex-Mormon, Arizona Republic editorial cartoonist Steve Benson has strong opinions about current Mormon Mitt Romney. He said the Republican candidate’s recent speech on religion should not be trusted by media people and other Americans.

Phone-jammistas Behold! (by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo)
The guy close to the center of the [2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scancal] was the media operative/consultant hired to run the operation, Allen Raymond. And he’s written a new tell-all book, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative… Of all the phone-jam scammers, he was the only one who not only took his criminal justice lumps but seemed genuinely to want to wash his hands of the whole rotten business. The rest, as you’d expect, are back on the GOP payroll in most cases after a short pitstop in the can. Raymond on his sojourn in the slammer: “After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals wasn’t really any great ordeal.”

Jonah Goldberg’s got a new book and guess what it’s about? (by John Amato at Crooks and Liars)
“Liberal fascism,” I kid you not.

Media Matters for America headlines

Savage rant: Media Matters made up of “yokels and drunks,” “cretins,” “rat snitches,” “snitch perverts,” and “scum”

Taking lead from Drudge, conservative echo chamber hypes Clinton photo

Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com yet to correct false Princeton assault story

NY Times’ Healy omitted Rose’s on-air comments about ending Clinton interview

Fox’s Angle falsely claimed, under FISA, government is “forced to treat foreigners overseas as if they were Americans” inside U.S.

During Giuliani interview, Hannity again failed to disclose reported appearance at Giuliani fundraiser

CNN’s Beck mimed Hillary Clinton shaving her face

Matthews asserted that Clinton got Register endorsement “thanks to her husband’s lobbying with its female editors and publisher”

“64 Journalists Killed Worldwide in 2007, the Most Since ’94″
More journalists have been killed worldwide in 2007 than in any year since 1994, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent group that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.

What journalists can learn from the screenwriters strike
The screenwriters are turning to venture backers, and creating an alternative to being beholden to the studios… Until the last year or so, journalists saw little alternative than to work for big, well-established, professional-salary-paying media companies. But then the companies started shedding higher-priced talent in cost-cutting… But within the last year, middle-aged, middle-income job fears have given way, in part, to new models, new beginnings… Look at some of the sprouts popping up this year. Politico, led by leading journalists from the Washington Post, Time and the New York Times, launched. ProPublica’s been announced. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger… We’re at the beginning of this re-ordering of the entertainment/news world… But maybe that means the opportunity to reform and reformulate will come faster too.

Chicago Tribune raises newsstand price a quarter, to 75 cents
It’s the paper’s first daily newsstand price increase in more than 15 years. The Sunday edition stays at $1.79. A Tribune spokesman tells the Sun-Times that the increase was ordered by the paper’s managers and was not a directive from Sam Zell.

Pruitt remains bullish on McClatchy, newspaper industry
“No, I don’t think the sky is falling,” says McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt. “Certainly newspaper stocks are out of favor on Wall Street. That’s happened before, and that will happen again. But we’re not going to go away.” His company’s shares closed Monday at $12.75, down more than 80% from their 2005 peak and their lowest finish in more than 15 years.

Newspapers scramble to change the way they sell ads
With web companies beginning to dominate the market for local ads online, newspapers are hiring sales teams that specialize in the digital market and creating new editorial packages to sell. “Local media companies, because they are based in the communities they serve, would seem to have an edge over Internet sellers when it comes to persuading the diner or corner hardware store to take out an ad,” writes Emily Steel. But instead of tailoring their sales to local businesses, many publishers initially focused on selling ads to big advertisers who were already buying space in their print editions.

SPECIAL REPORT: Outlook for Campaign Ad Revenue 2008
Are free videos taking the place of paid spots in print — and on TV? Not completely. For the first time since John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon, newspapers are daring to believe they and their Web sites will get more than their usual miniscule share of candidates’ media buys.

Amazon Selling Sellaband Artists, and You Get a Profit (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
Sellaband asks the users to become investors in up and coming artists and bands, in return for a stake in the band. $10 will get you a one five thousandth stake, and you get to keep some of the profits once the band makes it big. So you’d better do your part to help promote. Now Amazon is doing its part as well, by dedicating a special section to the music produced by those artists from Sellaband.

Universal Music Settles Lawsuit Against XM Satellite Radio
Universal and other major record labels had sued XM over its Pioneer Inno portable music player, which enabled subscribers to record music on the device for playback later.

On-Demand Video Service MovieBeam Closes
LOS ANGELES (AP) – MovieBeam, an experiment in video-on-demand launched by The Walt Disney Co., has shut down as part of its new parent company’s reorganization under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. The 4-year-old service, which transmitted movies over the air for storage on a set-top box that was a like a hard drive, ceased operations Dec. 15.

Laugh at the Web Clips, Then Buy the Gel
With the increasing interest among marketers in embedding brands in entertainment programming, a viral campaign is arriving that spoofs the concept — while at the same time playing up the product.