Permanent link to MTA daily media news

I will be a guest on Head-On with Bob Kincaid today at 6:00 PM ET.  Listen to Bob from 6:00 to 9:00 PM ET every weekday on the Head-On Radio Network.

Stampeding the democratic process (by Brian Cathcart at New Statesman, U.K.)
Like it or not, the news media are part of this election and not mere observers. The whole presidential campaign, on which so much depends, is as much a dialogue between candidates and reporters as it is a conversation between candidates and voters, and for reporters the responsibilities that go with that are heavy ones. Groupthink, pack journalism and stampeding won’t do.
Rebel against the stampeding herd by donating to the John Edwards campaign today.  His candidacy has been crippled by his lack of media coverage.

Randi Rhodes Puts Robert Wexler Over 200,000 (by David Swanson at After Downing Street)
The Randi Rhodes Show worked its magic [Thursday] just as it used to do for www.afterdowningstreet.org almost three years ago. Congressman Robert Wexler came on and discussed the need for Cheney impeachment hearings. His petition at http://wexlerwantshearings.com passed the 200,000 mark before the show was over.

How The Pentagon Planted A False Story
Senior Pentagon officials used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story.

Merchants Of Trivia (by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone)
Why do the media insist on reducing one of the most exciting presidential primary seasons in American history to a simple horse race?

no gop front runner yet, as long as you don’t actually count the delegates (skippy the bush kangaroo)
the cw nowadays (or, as it changes so fast, perhaps nowaminutes), is that there is no front runner in the gop race as of yet… the funny thing about this insistance that “nobody’s ahead,” is that the actual delegate count begs to differ. cnn’s election center 2008 has romney with a comfortable 30 pledged delegates to huckabee’s 17. john mccain’t trails with a lackluster 7… oh sure, there are the national polls in which mccain’t is leading. to which we say, hey, aren’t those the same national polls that used to tout rudy “can’t beat ron paul” guiliani as the front runner?

Media’s NH fiasco more than just another embarrassment
“It was a plea of nolo contendere,” writes Rem Rieder. “In the starkest of terms, the premature Obama coronation and Clinton obituary showed all too clearly that the current political coverage model is utterly broken.” It’s not just horse-race coverage, he says; it’s picking the winning horse well before the starting gun is fired.

Resource: After the Surge: U.S. Army Chief of Staff Casey Is Right to Be Worried (Center for American Progress)
Rather than tinkering at the margins, the United States must be prepared to either keep several hundred thousand troops deployed in Iraq indefinitely or begin an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces. The Center for American Progress has released a detailed plan, “How to Redeploy,” about how to implement a safe and responsible redeployment of all U.S. forces from Iraq within 10-12 months. In order to lessen the risks of redeploying troops from Iraq, the Center’s “Strategic Reset” plan offers a comprehensive approach involving the regional diplomatic efforts required to get Iraq’s leaders and its neighbors to play a more constructive role in stabilizing the Middle East.

The Conservative Agenda: Serving African Americans?
The conservative agenda has not served African Americans well, according to key economic indicators.
And it’s not just African Americans who aren’t served well by the conservative agenda.  Just look at the sample below of Conservative Truths:

The Number Of Food Insecure Households Is Higher During Conservative Presidencies

There Are More Families Living Below The Poverty Level During Conservative Presidencies

The Number Of Murders Committed Is Higher During Conservative Presidencies

The Median Income Of Households Is Lower During Conservative Presidencies

The Percentage Of Families Holding Any Debt Is Higher During Conservative Presidencies

The Rate Of Suicides Is Higher During Conservative Presidencies (this same phenomenon is also true in Britain and Australia)

Bernanke Hits the Panic Button, Media Don’t Notice (by Dean Baker)
The reality is that the economy is in serious trouble and the honchos like Bernanke don’t really know what’s going on. These folks completely missed the housing bubble as it grew to ever more dangerous levels. As the bubble has started to deflate, they now recognize that we have a problem, but they have no idea how bad it is or how to deal with it. It is time for economic reporters to level with the public on this fact and stop doing PR work for Bernanke and the rest assuring people that everything is okay.

Media Matters for America headlines

Media again ignore McCain’s skipped vote while highlighting ad attacking Clinton over earmark for “Woodstock Concert Museum”

Fox’s Gallagher on 1930s MI labor movement: “organization by way of strikes, votes, violence”

Wash. Times reprinted portions of Investor’s Business Daily attack on Obama’s faith

Wash. Times’ Jennifer Harper in Clinton article: Assertiveness is “masculine”

Dobbs claimed as “fact” baseless assertion that half of Culinary Workers Union “are illegal aliens”; CNN’s Crowley did not challenge

AP failed to report Edwards’ claim about homeless vets is supported by VA statistics

Goldberg on MSNBC: “Hillary Clinton is essentially like the agricultural minister from the Soviet Politburo”

CNN’s King falsely suggested McCain opposed flying of Confederate flag during 2000 SC primary

Purporting to assess accuracy of Obama ad, AP truncated Obama quote on Iraq

Novak repeated false assertion that Bill Clinton “referred to Obama’s candidacy as ‘a fairy tale’”

Boston Globe joined NY Times in falsely suggesting that Hagel and Clinton took different positions on Iraq war resolution

With women, Matthews administers the “Chris Matthews test”

Pakistan expels NY Times reporter
Pakistan has expelled a New York Times Magazine reporter who interviewed Taliban leaders and visited southwestern Baluchistan province. The journalist, Nicholas Schmidle, whose report “Next-Gen Taliban” appeared in the magazine on the weekend, was deported on Friday.

ABC News subpoena quashed in sex case
WASHINGTON – A woman accused of running a high-end Washington prostitution ring cannot demand documents from ABC News as part of her defense strategy, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

“Citizen McCaw” debuts March 7 — if lawyers don’t stop it
The documentary about the Santa Barbara News-Press saga bills itself as “the story of an epic struggle for the soul of journalism.” The film’s producers have received four letters from News-Press owner Wendy McCaw’s lawyers and an attempt at a subpoena of all raw footage — a demand that was rejected by a judge.

Media Tenor Takes Over Operations of Mediachannel.org
Media Tenor, the leading international media research and analysis company with offices in eight countries, has taken over the administration and financial management of Mediachannel from Globalvision Inc, the company that created and has produced the unique internationally-oriented media watchdog and news network since Feb. 2000.

State of New Hampshire stops issuing ID cards to journalists
The state employee who handled that chore says just about anyone can call himself a journalist these days, and he doesn’t want to be put in the position of having to decide who’s a legitimate member of the news media.

Directors, Hollywood studios reach deal
LOS ANGELES – Hollywood directors reached a tentative contract deal Thursday with studios, a development that could turn up the pressure on striking writers to settle their 2-month-old walkout that has idled production on dozens of TV shows. “Two words describe this agreement — groundbreaking and substantial,” said Gil Cates, chairman of the Directors Guild of America’s negotiations committee. “There are no rollbacks of any kind.”

Chicago Trib’s “hyper-local” site now covers 21 communities
Triblocal.com expands this week to include 13 more suburbs. The Tribune launched the website in April to let readers publish stories, photos and blogs about their neighborhoods and communities.

Newsday’s online traffic edges past WSJ.com in December
Newsday managed to double its traffic compared to December 2006 data. It’s in the #4 position in the latest web traffic rankings. NYTimes.com is #1, following by USAToday.com and washingtonpost.com.

What Happens When Blogs Go Mainstream? (by Annalee Newitz, AlterNet)
Will blogs take on all the bad habits of the mainstream media or will it help the media progress just a bit further toward independence of thought?

Exploding TV (by Jeff Jarvis)
David Muir, CEO of WPP’s The Channel, gives the agency’s ad share projections for the UK. Online is now at 25% (far ahead of the U.S., by the way) and they predict it will surpass TV — and all other media — next year. But he cautioned that 79% of that online advertising goes to search.