Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Study: John Edwards Doesn’t Exist (by Greg Sargent at TPM Horse’s Mouth)
The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest campaign coverage index for January 6-11, a study that does its damndest to try to quantify which political figures are sucking up the most media oxygen and why. It found that Edwards only got 7% of political coverage during those days… You can make a valid case, I suppose, that Edwards didn’t merit more media attention during those days. Even post-Iowa he looked to be a long-shot for the nomination… But here’s the thing about this. For literally the past year we’ve been hearing justifications for the fact that Edwards, despite being competitive in Iowa polls, didn’t get the attention that his Dem rivals got… At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed and that this shouldn’t have happened to the extent that it did.
Edwards supporters are mounting a donation day tomorrow, Friday, January 17.  You can help by donating directly to the campaign.  Remember the #@$%&* FEC has disallowed matching funds for contributions made through ActBlue.

Media holds out hope for Giuliani (by Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars)
As recently as the summer, Rudy Giuliani was leading the field in Michigan’s Republican primary. As recently as early December, a Rasmussen poll showed him within two points of first place. [Tuesday], the former mayor finished a distant sixth, with a pathetic 2.8% of the vote. Consider this: Giuliani not only had well under half of Ron Paul’s support, he finished with a similar vote total to Dennis Kucinich — who was running in an uncontested primary and making no effort to actually win votes. Ouch. It naturally came as no surprise, then, when I saw this CNN headline: “Romney win may give a boost to Giuliani’s White House bid.” Yes, it appears bad news is good news for Rudy.

They’ve Really Come Full Circle (by dday at Hullabaloo)
Now, there’s nothing wrong with someone who isn’t a member of the political media holding a political opinion (for example, er, me), or even espousing that opinion on television. However, take a look at [sportswriter Stephen A Smith.'s] “comment” about [Tuesday] night’s Democratic debate: “SMITH: I was totally bored, Chris, I was totally bored and I was disgusted.”… Over the last few weeks, politics has devolved into the same subject matter as sports talk radio. And so a discussion between three individuals who want to lead the United States for the next four years is “boring” and devolves into freshman-year psychobabble about how one guy deferred to someone else and there weren’t any “fireworks” and the momentum stalled and it’s enough to make you “disgusted.”

You Sir, Are No Ronald Reagan (by digby)
I’m a bit baffled by this statement by Senator Obama: “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it…” I hate to say it because I’m going to get mercilessly roasted alive, but with all that jargon about government growing and growing without “accountability in terms of how it was operating” and “dynamism” and “entrepreneurship” it sounds an awful lot like DLC boiler plate.
Obama dogwhistles to the DLC and the Reaganites. Progressives here in Illinois elected him senator, and he immediately began to align himself with Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman. Many of us feel betrayed. Time to wake up, friends this is no Saint Barack.

Playing Telephone With MLK
How the press fanned the Dems’ “racial tension.”

Obama playing the race card (by Jeff Jarvis)
Times of London columnist Alice Miles minces no words in calling Barack Obama for playing the race card without merit against Hillary Clinton: “…The thin catalogue of complaints against the Clinton campaign from the Obama campaign were unfounded, manipulative and self-indulgent. At best they called into question the oversensitivity of Mr Obama, at worst they showed him willing to play a divisive race card that is damaging the entire Democratic Party and tarnishing a great and historic electoral contest for the centre Left. The whole episode has convinced me he isn’t tough enough for the White House…” She’s unafraid to say what we’re afraid to say in the U.S. And I think she’s right.
And so do I.

O’Reilly: ‘There’s not many’ homeless veterans. (Think Progress)
On [Tuesday] night’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly challenged John Edwards’ claim that 200,000 veterans “will go to sleep under bridges and on grates” because they are homeless. O’Reilly said, “They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? … If you know where’s a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.” The Washington Post checked into Edwards’ claim and reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs does indeed report that about 195,000 veterans are “homeless on any given night.”
Click through to watch the video.

How NBC Changed ‘The Facts’ To Block Dennis Kucinich From The Nevada Debate
NBC’s own appeal to the court reveals that it changed the program’s qualification rules.

Swift Boat Vet “Appalled” by McCain Smear (by Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker)
Is the ragtag Vietnam Veterans against John McCain giving swift boating a bad name? Yes, said Swift Boat Veterans and POW’s for Truth treasurer Weymouth Symmes. “I don’t think there’s any truth to that at all. He was a hero, in my opinion. I’d be appalled if anybody questioned his war service.” The reason I asked is that the anti-McCain group seems to be piggybacking on the Swift Boat Vets in their recent mailer, which was sent out to 80 newspaper editors… In the mailer…, you can see the icon for the Swift Boat Vets for Truth in the lower left hand corner… [O]n closer inspection, the Swift Boat Vets icon has a North Carolina address, the same as the anti-McCain vet group. And we’ve been having an internal debate here at TPM whether, in a possible precaution against charges of infringement, it actually says Swift Boot Vets for Truth.
Click through to see the entire ad.  It’s infantile.

New Huckabee Adviser Called For ‘A Cop In Front Of Every Mosque’ Just ‘For Safe Keeping’ (Think Progress)
Earlier this month, Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton joined former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign as a “senior adviser” who “will work at the intersection of policy and strategic messaging.”… Three months before Pinkerton joined the campaign, he recorded an episode of Bloggingheads.tv with Mother Jones editor David Corn. During their conversation, Pinkerton declared that he would handle “American Muslims” by putting “a cop in front of every mosque” in America.

NYT should have hired a foreign policy realist, not an ideologue
Hiring Bill Kristol didn’t bring an “opposing view” to the New York Times’ op-ed page because it already has David Brooks, notes Stephen M. Walt. What’s missing in the Times and the rest of mainstream media is the voice of realism, he says. “Realists think foreign policy should be based on the world as it really is, rather than what we might like it to be. …In America today, the mainstream media is a realism-free zone.”

FAIR Media Advisory: Perilous Journalism in the Persian Gulf
George W. Bush’s goal of elevating the Iran threat … got a major boost last week from the news media, who failed to question the Pentagon’s alarmist account of an encounter between U.S. and Iranian boats.
Media Matters for America headlines

Fineman falsely asserted Obama “admitt[ed] he can’t manage his way out of a paper bag” during Las Vegas debate

Russert misrepresented Dems’ Iraq statements to suggest shift in “emphasis” from previous debate

Wash. Times falsely claims: “Hillary likens Obama to ‘pathetic’ Bush”

CNN’s Foreman falsely suggested Rangel’s attack on Obama over race issue “still being flung”

Buchanan: “Sí, se puede” is “the cause of the illegal immigration movement and the amnesty movement”

Media still touting “maverick” McCain

Dick Morris claimed anti-Clinton movie can’t be screened, but film’s executive producer says otherwise

Shelby Steele on Michelle Obama’s 60 Minutes comments: She was “facilitating her race’s manipulation of the American mainstream”

Columnist Prelutsky: Obama “sort of reminds me of David Duke”

Investor’s Business Daily: “Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?”

Following NY Times, The Hill misquoted Clinton’s civil rights comments

NY Times cited anonymous “critics” claiming Obama camp “raising the specter of violence … to raise Senator Obama to mythic stature”

Carlson: “many black churches are basically political organizations”

Matthews falsely asserted the Clinton campaign made “three mentions of Obama’s cocaine use”

On MSNBC, Corke and Cillizza falsely claimed NV paper quoted Obama admitting he lacks “experience” to “run a bureaucracy” and “be a CEO”

AP article latest to mischaracterize Clinton comment on civil rights

Newsweek mischaracterized Bill Clinton to claim he “call[ed] Obama’s appeal a ‘fairy tale’ “

CNN’s Snow falsely suggested McCain wants to preserve only Bush’s middle-class tax cuts

France eyes electronics tax for public TV: report
PARIS (Reuters) – France could tax new computer, television and mobile phone sales by 1 to 2 percent to help fund its state-owned TV channels, Les Echos newspaper reported on Thursday.

CRTC toughens media merger rules
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s communications regulator imposed new rules on Tuesday restricting cross-media ownership and setting limits on broadcasting mergers to ensure diversity in programming.

New CJR column to critique science/environment coverage
CJR’s Observatory column will be a guide to the best and worst of science and environmental journalism, says Curtis Brainard. “It will tell you where the press excels and makes bold innovations. And it will point out where it falls victim to spin, engages in alarmism, perpetrates false balance, misrepresents the science in peer-reviewed literature, or displays questionable priorities in news judgment.”

San Diego Union-Trib announces layoffs, outsourcing plans
“Not since the merger of the Union and Tribune over 15 years ago have we faced such wrenching changes,” says Gene Bell, CEO of Copley Press, which owns the Union-Tribune. “At the same time, never in our history have we faced revenue losses as dramatic as those of the last 12 months.” The paper cut 27 jobs throughout the company on Tuesday — five in the newsroom — and announced that it will outsource 18 artist positions in the advertising department.

WSJ staff concerned about Murdoch’s view on story length
Rupert Murdoch repeated last week that he believes the Journal’s front-page feature stories are too long, which set off an alarm in the newsroom in the days following, reports John Koblin. “Reporters and editors worried that Mr. Murdoch’s plans would diminish a famed Journal institution, the so-called ‘leder’ stories,” he writes. ALSO: Murdoch scales back his ambition to make WSJ.com entirely free.
But after reading one of those long stories, stop and ask yourself what you’ve learned from it.  In my experience, the answer has been “nothing”.

Zell tells Newsday staff that Tribune hasn’t been run well
Sam Zell’s observation brought an “appreciative applause,” reports Daniel Wagner. The Tribune’s new boss made his first visit to Newsday and, writes Wagner, “employees approached him with a mixture of curiosity and excitement — wondering about the man behind the quirky, jocular e-mails they had been receiving, and relieved to see new leadership atop a corporation that experienced frequent setbacks in recent years.”

The Rocky’s New Capitol Blog: 6 Easy Fixes (by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online)
On Jan. 9, the Rocky Mountain News launched a new blog, Live from the Colorado Legislature, featuring live coverage from the floor by the Rocky’s Capitol reporters… So far, this project seems like more of the same — impersonal, traditional news stories. Fortunately, the Rocky could quickly implement some easy fixes for these basic problems:  1. Style: Loosen up!… 2. Bylines In most of the posts to this blog, you don’t know who is writing because apparently their blogging tool or layout doesn’t provide bylines…
Click through for more suggestions.

EXCLUSIVE: Our Monthly Top 30 Most Popular Newspaper Sites — ‘Newsday’ Pulls Ahead of WSJ.com
Newsday’s online traffic edged past The Wall Street Journal Online in the month of December, according to the latest data from Nielsen Online.

Former DEA agents sue over depiction in ‘American Gangster’
A group of retired federal drug enforcement agents sued NBC Universal on Wednesday, saying the movie American Gangster falsely made them out to be villains in the story of a Harlem heroin trafficker played by Denzel Washington.

Disney delays Stage 9 (Hollywood Reporter)
Disney’s ABC has indefinitely postponed the debut of a unit charged with launching original online series. The unit, known as Stage 9, planned to distribute its first offering in February with one of four shortform episodic programs scheduled to roll out this year. A Disney spokeswoman declined comment. Disney isn’t saying why Stage 9 is being put on the back burner, but sources indicate the parent company does not want to risk inflaming the guilds with a venture intended to grab digital revenue — a sore point in strike negotiations.

U.S. Judge Blocks Comcast’s PEG Move
A federal judge Monday issued an order blocking Comcast from requiring thousands of customers in Michigan to obtain a digital set-top box in order to view public, educational, governmental channels controlled by local governments. Comcast had wanted to migrate the PEG channels from analog to digital to free up bandwidth to provide more HD programming and video-on-demand services. Analog-only customers would lose PEG access today (Jan. 15) if they failed to obtain digital set-tops.

Granicus Raises $10 Million For Streaming Government Meetings (Paid Content)
SF-based Granicus, a company that helps governmental organizations stream meetings online, has raised a $10 million first round from JMI Equity. The company’s products allow governments to stream the same meetings that are frequently seen on community cable channels, while incorporating extra data, such as minutes and vote tallies.

Flickr Now Streaming the Library of Congress’ Pics (by Kristen Nicole at Mashable)
In conjunction with Flickr’s new program called The Commons, the Library of Congress has added about 3,000 of its millions of photos to Flickr albums so far… [A] very central goal for The Commons is the leveraging of the larger user base to help organize all of these photos, by way of tag words and comments. When it comes to web media, its this meta-data that makes the content richer and more valuable. And that’s exactly what the Library of Congress is hoping for: help organizing all those millions of digital images.

Tell us what our content is about (by Jeff Jarvis)
I’m excited by the Flickr Commons project with its first effort, asking us to tag and identify Library of Congress photos and find the gems in the mine… The beauty of opening up archives is that the people will, indeed, tell you what your content is about and find those diamonds. In the long run, the archives will become more valuable than if they are locked behind a toll booth.

Review: Humans take on search queries
NEW YORK – With no fear of the confusion that can arise from text-message shorthand, a new search service is employing a novel tool to answer queries sent by cell phones: human beings.