Permanent link to MTA daily media news

It’s time for… change!
The voters of New Hampshire have made their decision, and the big winner is: Change. Here’s the final vote tally:

Change — 43 percent

Hope — 28 percent

Hope For Change — 17 percent

Hair — 9 percent

Experience — 2 percent

Dennis Kucinich — 1 percent

Report reveals Vietnam War hoaxes, faked attacks
The author of the report “demonstrates that not only is it not true, as (then US) secretary of defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack [on Americans in the Gulf of Tonkin] was ‘unimpeachable,’ but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that ‘no attack happened that night”.
The Gulf of Tonkin was the first big government lie of my personal experience.  Next came Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War, which turned out to be a secret lie to keep the war going.  Then came Iran/Contra, the HUD scandals, the savings and loan crisis, the Gulf War, ignoring warnings that 9/11 was going to happen, and the Iraq War.  And those are only the biggest and most outrageous lies and betrayals.  A friend recently called me cynical about politics, but I disagree with that.  I’m skeptical, yes, I certainly am.  With good reason.  I’ve been lied to, time and time and time again.

Even Conservative Media Chorus Sings Obama’s Praises (by Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post)
Barack Obama, now the media’s odds-on favorite to win the White House, is drawing effusive praise from the chattering classes.
And if you’re an Obama fan, you’d best be wondering why that is.  Andrew Sullivan was on the Colbert Report Monday night singing his praises.  George Will loves him.  It’s because Obama is basically a DLC Democrat who tries to make himself look progressive.  You’d know that if you had followed his senatorial campaign as closely as I did, and as did Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report. And if you knew more about the tactics and affiliations of Obama’s main strategist, David Axelrod, you’d have even more questions.  Trust me when I tell you that the Republican oppo research teams are storing up this information, preparing to drop it on the nation if Obama is the Democratic nominee.  As to those who talk about Hillary’s negative ratings, you should take a look at Obama’s negatives. I’m all for change, and I’m all for hope.  But I’m for realism, as well.  Let’s not lean on a weak reed.  Again.  And be disappointed.  Again.

I … Love Rachel Maddow (by dday at Hullabaloo)
Rachel Maddow just relayed to Chris Matthews’ face that many in the blogosphere (she cited Talking Points Memo specifically) are blaming HIM and his misogyny as the reason undecideds broke late for Clinton. Matthews laughed it off, but there was some real bitterness there. This is glorious. If the media can understand that their catty, elitist, high school Heathers-like mentality will ultimately backfire, maybe they’ll shut their mouths for a second and rethink their job description.
But there’s always another point of view.  See below.

TPM Reader AL pipes up … (Talking Points Memo)
I’m a woman (Obama supporter) who has no particular issues with Hillary — liked the Clinton administration, think she’s competent, etc. I’d vote for her in the general. But the idea that people would vote for her simply because they’re “outraged” over media coverage these last few days is incomprehensible to me… [I]f they are, and that’s how they’re making their voting decisions, then they’re idiots. Voting to disprove a media narrative has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Truly.

Just Asking… (Political Wire)
Were [Tuesday’s] stories about an impending shake up in the Clinton campaign planted to lay the groundwork for a Clinton comeback story? If so, it was an absolutely brilliant move. Why were nearly all polls over the last five days wrong about Obama’s growing lead? For what it’s worth, we now know that the exit polls showed Clinton and Obama tied at 39% each, with Edwards at 16%. Did Clinton’s “emotional moment” yesterday really make a difference? Unlike in Iowa, Clinton beat Obama among NH women by double-digits. With Obama’s victory seemingly a lock, did independents vote for McCain instead?

Keith Spanks Matthews For His Delay Crush (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
Keith Olbermann … couldn’t resist a little playful poke at the juxtaposition between Chris Matthews excoriation of the Clintons’ political machine and his arms-open-wide intro and fawning interview of Tom Delay, who for whatever reason was asked to give his opinions on the primary [Tuesday night].
Click through to watch the video.

Mythbuster: Bad Bet (by Daniel Gross, Slate Moneybox)
So, I’ve been watching the action in one of the political futures markets this evening, Intrade. And the action in this prediction market has reinforced my opinion that these are less futures markets than immediate-past markets… At 6 p.m., this market had written Hillary Clinton’s entire presidential campaign off. At 9:30 p.m., it was calling a dead heat. What caused investors to change their minds so drastically in the space of a couple of hours? A few data points that went against the day’s prevailing conventional wisdom and polls.

‘Citizen Journalists’ Alter Political Landscape
The 24-hour news cycle that has made presidential races a spectacle has extended beyond the mainstream media as bloggers, YouTubers and “citizen journalists” have descended on the Granite State.

Facebook Fuels Interest In US Elections
Facebook’s tie-up with ABC News has helped fuel a massive surge in TV viewing of the pre-primary New Hampshire debates held at the weekend.

Call me skeptical on this, too: Bush Castigates Iran, Calling Naval Confrontation ‘Provocative Act’
President Bush chastised Iran on Tuesday for committing a “provocative act” by confronting United States Navy warships in the Persian Gulf over the weekend. The Pentagon released video showing Iranian speedboats maneuvering around the American convoy.
Amazing timing, don’t you think?  With Bush about to go to Israel and hear from the Israelis how to attack Iran?

Top White House aides to write Middle East blog
Senior White House aides are planning to record notes from President Bush’s trip to the Middle East in what White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called “just a little bit of a blog.”

Kristolnicht: The Decline of The New York Times (by Ernest Partridge at The Crisis Papers)
During my career I have refereed hundreds of submissions to scholarly journals. These journals insist that the referees set high standards, since only a very few submissions are accepted for publication. None of these journals allow what [editor Andrew] Rosenthal would have us believe is the NYT Op-Ed standard: “It is my job to give readers [as] broad a spectrum of views to read as we can manage.” No, Mr. Rosenthal, it is your job to give your readers intelligent, informed, cogent commentary, from columnists with a proven record of factual accuracy, foresight and integrity. William Kristol fails on all counts.
Click through to read the entire essay.  Dr. Partridge documents the list of errors reported by the Times as fact in the last 20 years, and the major omissions to their reporting.  So if their reporting is that bad, why should we expect their opining to be any better?

Parade’s Bhutto Cover Gaffe Costs Papers Credibility (by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online)
This past Sunday, the obviously outdated cover-story headline for Parade magazine, “Is Benazir Bhutto America’s best hope against al-Qaeda,” puzzled and bemused subscribers to the roughly 400 newspapers which distribute the magazine supplement… How can a publication with a two-week gap between printing and distribution hope to cover news?… Sadly, the egg isn’t just on Parade’s face. In the eyes of readers, the outdated Parade cover probably undermined the credibility of every newspaper that distributed it.

Parade publisher says Bhutto interview too important to spike
Randy Siegel says Parade went to press on Dec. 21 and was already on its way to 400 newspapers when Benazir Bhutto was killed on Dec. 27. The web version of the story was updated, but it was too late to change the magazine and he didn’t want to ask newspapers not to distribute it at all. “We decided that this was an important interview to share with the American people.”

A Dynasty Isn’t a Democracy
The [Los Angeles] Times’ bravest op-ed writer [Rosa Brooks] discusses how early U.S. media coverage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination largely neglected the dynastic passing of leadership in her Pakistan Peoples Party: “A champion of democracy passes along political leadership in her will, leaving it to her husband and son? That’s dynastic politics, not democratic politics…. But you won’t find even a hint of this in the reactions of the leading presidential contenders from either party, or from the White House, or from most leading U.S. media commentators.”

Mythbuster: The Wal-Mart effect (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, thanks to Economist’s View)
[F]edgazette findings suggest that Wal-Mart has a slightly positive effect on counties where the retailer decides to set up shop. But the effects are small; one could call the results mostly a wash. As a result, maybe the most concrete—and surprising—conclusion is that Wal-Mart’s presence (or lack thereof) has little or no predictive power regarding the economic success or failure of a county.

Medicare’s Excess Drug Payments (by Dean Baker)
The Washington Post reported on the increase in nationwide drug spending in 2006 which was associated with the Medicare drug benefit… It compares the 6 percent discount from retail prices negotiated by insurers in the program with the 18 percent discount obtained by Medicaid.  It would have been useful to include a comparison with the Veteran’s Administration, which average close to 40 percent. The implied savings for Medicare and its beneficiaries from such discounts would be almost $40 billion a year.
$40 billion here, $40 billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Mythbuster: France best, U.S. worst in preventable death ranking
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

Question They Should Ask: Why Didn’t They Recognize Unsustainable Run-Up in House Prices? (by Dean Baker)
USAToday quotes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as saying that the recent run-up in house prices was unsustainable and that a correction is “inevitable and necessary.”… This raises the obvious question — why didn’t Paulson and others in positions of power recognize that this sharp run-up in house prices was unsustainable? Isn’t this part of their job? Or, if they did recognize it, why didn’t they warn the public? In fact, they were still encouraging people to buy homes in the middle of this bubble, including moderate income people who just threw away their life’s savings. The media should be asking Paulson, Greenspan and the others these very pointed questions. Why aren’t they?

Gibson’s question shows “astounding ignorance” of profs’ pay
ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson said at Saturday’s debate: “If you take a family of two professors here at Saint Anselm, they’re going to be in the $200,000 category that you’re talking about lifting the taxes on.” A faculty union president says Saint Anselm faculty can only “fantasize about salaries that Gibson assumed were the case.” The average salary for a full prof at the school is just over $77,000 while  assistant profs make under $50,000.
Well, Gibson only knows HARVARD and YALE professors.  How could he possibly know anything about professors at lowly, unimportant colleges?

Media Matters for America headlines

Morris, Ingraham claimed Clinton’s expression of emotion raises questions about her national security credentials

ABC’s Snow labeled Clinton’s discussion of housing issues “tedious”

Matthews baselessly suggested Latino voters “want more of an open border”

Media revive characterization of Clinton as “calculating” after emotional moment in NH

Wash. Post’s Achenbach: Hillary Clinton “needs a radio-controlled shock collar so that aides can zap her when she starts to get screechy”

Boehlert: Kristol and Dowd, together at last at the NY Times

Olbermann named O’Reilly “Worst Person” for criticizing Edwards’ claim about homeless veterans

Job Cuts at McGraw-Hill Will Eliminate 3% of Staff
The McGraw-Hill Companies said it was cutting 611 jobs, or 3 percent of its staff, and taking an after-tax charge of $27.3 million, or 8 cents a share, in the fourth quarter.
Can the failure of the big publishing houses be due to the fact that like the big studios, they only want to publish blockbusters?  And there aren’t enough blockbusters around?  Why don’t they go back to publishing good books that make at least small profits.  Even small profits can build up.

Search warrant seeks access to paper’s computer servers
A judge, a district attorney and Kansas University police are being criticized by First Amendment advocates for a search warrant that seeks access to online subscriber files of the Lawrence Journal-World. Officials are seeking information about the identity of an individual who had posted anonymous comments on ljworld.com about a KU student who was found dead in a dorm room. The poster had made comments indicating the death was heroin-related.

Tired of all the kvetching about crises in the newspaper biz?
Here’s some good news: Jewish newspapering remains alive and well. Carlin Romano looks at Philadelphia’s Exponent and the New York-based Forward.

‘Wash Post’ Hires Outside Firm For Major Web Site Redesign
This marks the first time the Web site has brought in an outside firm for a design change, Washingtonpost.com Executive Editor James Brady said. “It is bigger than any other [redesign] since building it in the first place,” Brady says about his site, which first launched in 1996.
I hope they fix the search feature.  It’s terrible.

Critic: Online journalism is becoming a consumer product
Edward Wasserman has a problem with journalists’ pay being based on pageviews. Popularity Pay, as he calls it, “mistakes journalism for a consumer product, and conflates value with sales volume. Journalists don’t peddle goods, they offer a professional service, a relationship. …What’s more, the public routinely benefits mightily from stories that few people bother reading.”

Total Ad Spending Expected to Advance But Not in Newspapers
NEW YORK Total advertising spending in the United States is forecasted to rise 4.2% in 2008 thanks to the Summer Olympics and a deluge of political ad dollars, according to new projections from TNS Media Intelligence. But Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS, warned in a statement, “Offsetting this, a weakened economy will have a dampening effect on the boarder, core advertising market.”

FCC to probe Comcast data discrimination
The Federal Communications Commission will investigate complaints that Comcast Corp. actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday.

Pop Culture Pregnancies, Teen Edition (by Katha Pollitt, The Nation, posted at AlterNet)
Teens getting pregnant: bad. Teens having babies: good. If this makes no sense, wake up and smell the Enfamil: it’s 2008!

Top violinist to release record for free online
LONDON (AFP) – A top violinist is to release her next record for free on the Internet, in a bid to break down the elitist image of classic music, a report said Tuesday.

Second Life Removing Virtual Banks. How Will You Make Real Money Now? (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
Second Life is prohibiting the offering of interest or any direct return on an investment, whether in L$ or any other currency, from an object such as an ATM within Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. That’s a mouthful, but it boils down to heavier regulation of money that can be made in Second Life–more importantly, how that money is made.
Even virtual money in a virtual world needs regulation.  WHAT a surprise!

Yahoo Media Player Now Plays Music From Your Site (by Stan Schroeder at Mashable)
Yahoo’s web-based audio player … can now reproduce audio from other sites, too. More importantly, it has some interesting features under the hood. For example, it can now easily create a playlist out of all the songs contained on a web page. It also allows you to set the album art image, control the playlist sequence and song title, etc. There’s nothing revolutionary there, but it’s yet another sign that Yahoo has big plans for its Music service.

Wireless Start-Up Fails to Get Financing
Frontline Wireless, which wanted to build an innovative cellular network for both private use and local public safety agencies, has collapsed because it could not raise enough money to bid in the government auctions of wireless spectrum that start later this month. The company’s failure raises questions about the ability of the auctions to raise the $14 billion or more that the federal government wants in exchange for the broadcast spectrum that will be freed next year by the shift from analog to digital television.