Permanent link to MTA daily media news

I will be a guest on Tony Seton’s America Back on Track today at 3:30 PM ET.  Listen to Tony from 3:00 to 4:00 PM ET every weekday on the Quality News Network.

Huckabama Wins, a Few Observations (by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable)
Patrick Ruffini’s Twitter efforts once again proved that using Twitter for major event coverage will give you a substantial lead over anything the mainstream news can do with their efforts, and for substantially less money invested… Somehow, without even turning on any cable news networks, I was able to get minute by minute coverage of the caucus results from actual primary sources with a high degree of accuracy and interesting analysis. Friends, bloggers, countrymen – lend me your ears. Citizen journalism is here and it works. The MSM is officially on notice.

Obama Still Answering Questions About His Religion From Voters Who Don’t Know He’s Christian (by Greg Sargent at TPM Horse’s Mouth)
Mark Halperin has posted a press pool report that recounts a scene in Iowa today where Barack Obama faced still more questions about his religion from voters who have no idea that he’s a Christian… E-mails have circulated in recent weeks saying Obama is a Muslim or an atheist or took his oath of office on a Quran instead of a bible, none of which his true… This could only get more pressing, not less… If Obama becomes the Dem nominee you can bet that the rumors of his shadowy Muslim past will ratchet up a thousand fold.

Murdoch’s ‘WSJ’ Greets New Year — With Front-Pager on Kucinich’s UFO (Editor & Publisher)
NEW YORK It’s too early to say what changes are really afoot at the Wall Street Journal, in its first weeks after the Murdoch/News Corp. takeover, but a front page article today might raise a few eyebrows. Was there really any pressing need to cover Dennis Kucinich’s old, and much laughed over, UFO encounter, especially with him about to poll about 1% of the vote in Iowa?

HOORAY FOR IOWA!…. (by Kevin Drum at Political Animal, The Washington Monthly)
On CNN, Bill Bennett … celebrated the Iowa caucuses because there’s been “no violence, no killing.” That’s way better than Kenya! Anderson Cooper agrees, telling us that Iowans have invited strangers into their very own homes and…..haven’t killed them, I guess. CNN sure sets a low bar for extolling our fabulous electoral system, don’t they?

Flufftacular! (by Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo)
If Hillary only gets a third of the vote in Iowa it’s a “resounding rejection.” If McCain gets 18% he’s a hero …
Click through to watch the Chris Matthews video.

Lovin’ That Strategy (by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo)
Seems Ron Paul has pretty much smoked Rudy in Iowa. With about 2/3 reporting, Paul’s got about 10% and Rudy’s bringing up the rear with a healthy 4%. Will Fox let him debate?

Does the mass-media have political influence? (by Esther Duflo, Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at MIT, thanks to Economist’s View)
Rupert Murdoch’s ultraconservative cable television channel. Fox news was launched in the USA in 1996. In 2000, it was available to 20% of American homes. [A study taking advantage of that timing difference concluded] that Fox News caused an increase in the Republican vote of about a half percentage point, or 200,000 votes, enough to change the result of the 2000 presidential election.

What about the printed press?… Receiving a free subscription … upped the likelihood of voting in elections a year later by about 3.5%… [V]oters who had received the [Washington] Post were 11% more likely to vote Democratic than the group that hadn’t received any newspaper subscription. But strikingly, even the voters who had received the Right newspaper (the [Washington] Times) were even more likely than the control group (7%) to vote Democratic. And the political opinions of the two groups, in both cases, shifted towards the left (in comparison to the control group). This study therefore concluded that readers don’t let themselves be influenced by the given stance of a newspaper, also receiving a newspaper does increase the chance that they are active in politics…

Another more worrying possibility is that newspaper readers know how to decipher messages, while television viewers let themselves be manipulated.

It takes work to read a newspaper.  You have to pay attention.  You have to sift through what you’re reading and decide what makes sense and what doesn’t.  You have to consider why the writer is saying what he (because it’s usually a he) is saying.  Unfortunately, though, newspaper readership is declining.  It would be good to know whether people are bringing this same level of discernment to their internet reading.  I’d also like to know more about the psychological makeup of people who only get their information about the world from watching television vs. those who read, as well.

Missing In Inaction: Why An Opposition Party Matters
How can we expect the wider public to adopt a given understanding of their world – especially a radically disconcerting one which says that the person supposed to be keeping them safe in fact lied about national security – if somebody in a ‘legitimate’ leadership position isn’t serving that alternative reality up for their consideration?… The American public was actually skeptical about attacking Iraq up until near the invasion date. It took a massive Madison Avenue disinformation campaign to ultimately sell the war… [W]hat if the leadership of the opposition party was boldly arguing the alternative case, with, as it turns out in this scenario, a massive helping of truth on their side?… The same is true across the board of policy issues… [We could have had] a million Iraqis and thousands of Americans still alive today, a semblance of fiscal sanity, a revived New Orleans, a start on solving global warming, and much, much more – had there been an opposition party actually resident in America these last years.

The O’Reilly Fatuitousness: Billo and Norm MacDonald on “Secular Progressive Heaven” (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
“BO: That’s the liberal platform. They like that drug stuff. That’s secular progressive heaven you just described there, Norm. That’s what they want! Come on! It’s diversity, man. It’s diversity!”… FOXNews’ Bill O’Reilly talking with Hollywood actor and comedian Norm MacDonald, substituting for former Hollywood actor and comedian Dennis Miller on the Iowa caucus today and what they perceive as the Secular Progressive Heaven.

Unsupported and Untrue (by Dean Starkman at the Columbia Journalism Review) 
The lead story in a recent Wall Street Journal says that borrower fraud “goes a long way toward explaining why mortgage defaults and foreclosures are rocking financial institutions…” If the premise of this story is true, we need to seriously rethink the mortgage dilemma and tighten safeguards to protect lenders, Wall Street securities dealers and institutional investors against hordes of unscrupulous borrowers. And yet, the Federal Reserve has neglected to do anything of the kind in proposing new lending rules. Instead, these deal entirely with unscrupulous lending practices. But, of course, the premise of the story is not true.

Bloggers Rejoice! We’re Now Covered by the Freedom of Information Act. (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
At the tail end of 2007, President Bush signed into law the “Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007.” Cut that down to size and what you get is an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act. You know, that legal documentation that protects the likes of Perez Hilton when he decidedly scribbles all over images and posts them on the web. Well, even if that legal document didn’t entirely protect the likes of Perez Hilton, it does now, thanks to this long-winded amendment made to the FOIA.
Click through to read the specifics.

Media Matters for America headlines

Fox News video bio on Edwards noted criticism of haircuts, legal career — but Huckabee bio featured no criticism

Sun-Times columnist omitted key facts in listing “criticisms” of Obama

NBC’s Nightly News repeatedly noted Huckabee’s upcoming appearance on Tonight Show without reporting he crossed picket line

Matthews: “[L]ow 30 percent” result in Iowa for Clinton would mean “reject[ion] … by two-thirds” of Iowa Dems

Despite “excellent question” from a “kid[],” O’Reilly did not acknowledge falsehood in his book

Chris Matthews’ double-standard: makes Obama references like those he criticized from Kerrey

Hannity and Colmes left unchallenged Huckabee’s inconsistent statements on distribution of anti-Romney ad

Market value of US newspapers has fallen 42% since 2004
Nearly half the slide in the market capitalization of newspaper stocks came in 2007, when the shares lost a collective $11 billion, or 26%, of their value, reports Alan D. Mutter.

What’s Needed in 2008: Serious Newsroom Cultural Change (by Steve Outing at Editor & Publisher)
What we’d like your magic wand to do, news industry people kept telling me, is change the culture at our company and in our newsroom, because it’s holding us back and ensuring our ultimate failure.

Does Rosenthal know why people are upset about Kristol?
Writer Jon Schwartz tells Charles Kaiser that New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, who hired Bill Kristol as an op-ed columnist, “either (1) has no understanding of what the criticism re Kristol actually is, or (2) does understand but feels it’s his job to lie about it. Moreover, Rosenthal genuinely not understanding the criticism is arguably worse than him lying, since it would demonstrate he’s completely detached from reality.”

Post Targeted by Ad Campaign
The union representing about 400 post-production workers at The Washington Post launched a month-long advertising campaign against the company this week, seeking to jump-start stalled contract talks and get its members their first raise in five years… The union also created the Web site http://WashingtonPostUnfair.com to outline its complaints.

Writers Guild to Picket Golden Globes
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association had hoped last-minute negotiations with the Writers Guild of America would allow the Golden Globes to go on. But the guild said late Wednesday that striking writers still intend to picket the Jan. 13 ceremony.

With Nods to the Strike, Late-Night Hosts Return
Eight weeks after their writers went on strike and plunged their shows into reruns, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien returned to late-night television Wednesday with original shows in which both the Iowa caucuses and the new facial hair on two of the hosts loomed large. .. Both of the late-night shows on Comedy Central, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” with Stephen Colbert, are scheduled to return Monday.

Few Viewers for Infancy of Fox Business
About 6,300 people, on average, on any given weekday, are watching the new Fox Business Network, according to early estimates compiled by Nielsen Media Research.

Congressional Quarterly explores sale of CQ Press division
Poynter’s Congressional Quarterly says CQ Press “has operated at an outstanding pitch over the past decade …[but] with changes throughout the publishing industry, it’s no longer possible for a company such as ours to direct investment capital to all of our business units.” The company says it wants to direct its resources primarily toward the St. Petersburg Times and CQ’s publications division, along with its other properties such as Governing, Florida Trend and Tampa Bay Newspapers.

For Celebrity Magazine, Pregnancy Is a Bonus
It is widely assumed within the publishing industry that OK! paid the Spears family for the exclusive rights to the pregnancy news. US Weekly, another celebrity magazine, cited sources who said that Jamie Lynn’s mother, Lynne Spears, had sold the pregnancy story for $1 million, printing the assertion on the cover of last week’s issue.

TV Sucks, Internet Rules. UK Advertising Goes with the People. (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
[I]n the US, the most dismal of all advertising channels is the radio, with online advertising surpassing this medium for the first time in 2007. Yes, the world is changing. What are you going to do about it? CBS has seemed to take a few steps in the expected direction, upping its initiatives for a larger web presence as well as pushing radio and music content deeper through the web. And as advertising methods get more and more clever (and more entities get to stick their hands in the pot), it’s only a matter of time before advertisers find ways to force us to view their ads… What I [fear] is an overwhelming sense of control that advertising could take when it comes to our media.
If advertising provides the only financial support for new media, advertisers will call ALL of the shots.  There’s an alternative, but no one wants to listen.

Net-nanny state worth watching
FROM the moment the internet was declared the new frontier of free speech and expression, governments everywhere have agonised over how to control it. For totalitarian regimes, free political speech represents a direct threat. For law-enforcement agencies, the ability of terrorists to build networks more easily increases the risks to public safety. For parents, the fear that chat-room sex-pests are stalking children is one more thing to worry about. It is understandable that governments want to aid police and give parents peace of mind. The decentralised nature of the internet makes exerting control over what is on it difficult. Nonetheless, state censorship is a growing trend worldwide.

Napster Increases Service Prices; Market in Wait-And-See Mode (Paid Content)
Napster, the online music service, has quietly increased its monthly subscription prices, from the previous $9.95 a month to a relatively big jump to $12.95, a jump of 30 percent, according to an e-mail it sent out to subscribers. It says this is the first price change in four years, and will take effect beginning on January 30. It is offering current members the same old price if they sign up for another year.

Sony, Warner Virtual World Cinemas Sign Widevine for DRM Protection (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
Widevine’s DRM securities solutions have been integrated into Gaia online for the specific use of protecting Flash-based content distributed in the virtual world by Warner and Sony Pictures Television. As you may recall, Warner and Sony have begun showing content on Gaia as the virtual social network makes a concerted effort to bring in more videos to be shown in its network… Widevine’s participation in this all will also be protecting the advertising content that’s included in Warner and Sony’s distributed content.

U.S. album sales down, digital sales up
LOS ANGELES – U.S. album sales plunged 9.5 percent last year from 2006, continuing a downward trend for the recording industry, despite a 45 percent surge in the sale of digital tracks, according to figures released Thursday.

Startup aims for free Wi-Fi in Frisco
SAN FRANCISCO – A Silicon Valley startup is promising to blanket San Francisco with free wireless Internet service, reviving a crusade that crumbled last year after two much larger companies, EarthLink Inc. and Google Inc., scrapped their plans to build a high-speed network for Web surfing.