Permanent link to MTA daily media news

A sad commentary on our times: “McClatchy Takes Home Three National Journalism Awards”; “On Wall Street: McClatchy, Media General, and A.H. Belo Hit 52-Week Lows”

Spitzer’s Sex Life Is Weapon of Mass Distraction for Bunch of Bad News for Bush (by Lori Price at Citizens for Legitimate Government)
On Monday, we learned: The Iraq war will top 3 trillion dollars; a former Pentagon official has written a book attacking the CIA and other US officials over the US-led Iraq war; 5 US soldiers were killed in a Baghdad blast; an Iraqi tribal leader – the head of an ‘Awakening Council’ – and three others were killed in a Diyala province suicide bombing; CIA torture will continue, per Bush decree; the House Judiciary Committee has filed suit to force two White House officials to provide information about the firing of U.S. attorneys; more trouble for Carlyle group has surfaced; oil has soared to $108 per barrel; gas prices have reached a new record; a lawsuit has been filed claiming that the Fish and Wildlife Service is now in breach of its own mandate; an AP investigation has revealed that a vast array of pharmaceuticals are in the US water supply. Oh. Last but not least: The Dow and Nasdaq are down hundreds of points, again. But, here is the mainstream media’s headline: Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring.
Could this be another example of the misuse of the DOJ for political purposes?  It was a DC prostitution ring.  Wasn’t there ONE Republican involved?  And did they have warrants for the wiretapping involved?  I’m telling you, this is one of many incidents to come where the White House uses every function of government to make Democrats look bad, all in the name of getting a Republican elected president in November.

GOP ties other dems to Spitzer call girl scandal (Hot off the Trail, McClatchy Washington Bureau)
Just hours after news broke that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was caught on tape arranging the services of a call girl, Republicans are working to tar other Democrats with the scandal. The National Republican Congressional Committee rushed out statements tying five House Democrats to the scandal because Spitzer contributed to their campaigns.
Why do the media play along?  Why, for ratings, of course

Spitzer Interest Slows NY Times Web Site
NEW YORK (AP) – The Web site of The New York Times suffered substantial delays Monday as traffic spiked following its reports linking Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring.

Déjà vu: New Orleans Brothel Made a Federal Case, Adam Nossiter, Washington Post, June 3, 2002:
Hour after hour, month after month, 10 agents recorded the men’s demands, the [New Orleans] brothel keepers’ deals and the prostitutes’ complaints. The agents were listening on Sept. 11, in the days before and in the days after. With 90 calls a day to monitor, the listening post was busy.
The link I had no longer works, but there’s enough information to find the entire article at LexisNexis.  For more excerpts of articles about how we weren’t protected from terrorism before 9/11, visit What Did They Know…

Let’s Talk About Prostitutes. (by dday at Hullabaloo)
The President … just vetoed banning waterboarding, maybe the clearest sign that American democracy has become a joke and a dictator has been installed under our noses. The damage to our nation, our moral standing, our ability to act globally, is unquestionable, and the entire press corps knows this. But they won’t let it get in the way of their good time. “President Bush said an early farewell to political Washington on Saturday night, making his first appearance on the stage of the Gridiron Club of Washington journalists… The audience was surprised by Bush’s appearance and rose to applaud his attempt at singing.” The difference between the girls working at the Emperor’s Club and the Washington press corps is that the Emperor’s Club girls know exactly what kind of transaction they’re making. That, plus the fact that the result of a prostitute’s transaction has no victim, and the result of the press corps’ has thousands upon thousands. I know who I think is in the nobler profession.
And buying the services of the media is a lot cheaper.

Media tainted by anti-Clinton bias (by Bill Maxwell, St. Petersburg Times, thanks to No Quarter)
If we only had anecdotal evidence, I would be willing to question, or even dismiss, claims of media bias against Clinton. But each watchdog group conducted content analyses and crunched the numbers. When I conducted my own analysis, I found that real or perceived bad news about Clinton earned front-page placement more often than for Obama. Rarely have I seen a story about Obama’s influence-peddling pal from Chicago, Tony Rezko, on the front page. Nor have I seen much on the front page about Obama’s linguistic sleight of hand with NAFTA and the Canadians… With its coverage of the Clinton-Obama campaign, the Fourth Estate has failed miserably.

KellyAnne Conway Sends Obama To The Back Of The Bus (by Linda Milazzo at Media Channel)
On Larry King Live Republican strategist and owner of The Polling Company, KellyAnne Conway, stated that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were “arguing about whether she should let him SIT ON THE BACK OF THE BUS of her presidential ticket.”
It’s coming from so-called progressives, too.  Conway wants to get Republicans elected,   So what are the so-called progressives trying to do? They characterize every Clinton attempt to win the nomination is some kind of racial slur against Obama.  That won’t play well in the general election, no matter which Democratic candidate ends up as the nominee.

Independent vote might benefit Barack Obama (Rapid City Journal)
A decision is expected soon on whether South Dakota Democratic Party leaders will open their June 3 primary election to independent voters. “We’ve had some discussions about opening it up to independents,” said Rick Hauffe, Democratic Party executive director. “The only problem is, we’re very late in the game.”
YOU BET it’s late in the game.  Why is it that every time someone discusses changing some rules in favor of Clinton, she’s pilloried.  But when the discussion is about changing rules to benefit Obama, well, that’s fine and dandy.  That’s what’s SUPPOSED to happen.  Because, you see, he’s ENTITLED, and she’s trying to STEAL the nomination from him.  Does that sound like the aftermath of the 2000 election?  It certainly does to me.

WILLING TO DO AND SAY ANYTHING: (by Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler)
We humans can really make ourselves dumb when we adopt that old “shirts-and-skins” thinking. Just consider what Gene Robinson said in his Friday column… “Some states are more equal than others,” Robinson wrote—and the gentleman found the concept so strange that he even dragged Orwell into the stew! Why on earth would Pennsylvania “be more equal than” Wyoming?… Just for the record, why are some states considered to be “more equal than” others?… Could it be because two million Democrats voted in Ohio last week—and roughly ten thousand did so in Wyoming?… At this point, Robinson will plainly say anything. He’ll even look at you, as if in a daze, and pretend he can’t distinguish two million votes from the ten thousand votes they just cast in Wyoming.

CNN Elevates The Dialogue With A “Queen Kong vs. Barack-zilla” Analogy (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
This is proof that the primary season is making everyone a little punchy.  CNN has been reduced to likening Hillary Clinton to King Kong against Barack Obama’s Mecha-Godzilla in an “epic” duel of cinematic monster proportions.  I understand the need to find ways to cover the primary race–one that has basically the same narrative for the last year: two candidates running basically neck and neck down to the wire–differently.  But this is ridiculous, and really demeaning to Democrats as well…can you picture the same story done for the Republican race and the resulting outcry?

Bonus Quote of the Day (Political Wire)
“If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president? They are trying to hoodwink you.” — Sen. Barack Obama, quoted by Time, on the Clinton campaign’s attempts to suggest he would make a good vice presidential candidate.
In eight years, you may be ready.  Right now, you’re not.  She wants to put you through a training period, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Obama consulted on health board appointees, trial told
Sen. Barack Obama was among eight state officials and others consulted about who should be appointed to a state board that later became involved in what prosecutors describe as a fraud scheme, according to a memo from a Democratic official…The memo was discussed Monday at the trial of Antoin ”Tony” Rezko, a Chicago businessman who was a prominent contributor to Obama and Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Corruption trial threatens frontrunner
Central to the prosecution’s case against [political fixer Tony] Rezko is a $375,000 (£187,500) payoff – called a “finder’s fee” – that is alleged to have been skimmed illegally from investment fees paid by the Illinois state teachers’ pension fund. At least $10,000 of that money turned up in Obama’s campaign account through a donation by Joseph Aramanda, who according to prosecutors received $250,000 from the pension fund payoff and directed it to others at Rezko’s behest. The payment to Obama was made a year before Aramanda’s son was awarded his internship. Obama’s aides have denied any connection between the donation and the internship, and Joseph Aramanda has not been accused of any crime. Rezko has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.

Obama Pastors’ Sermons May Violate Tax Laws
On Christmas morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. compared presidential candidate Barack Obama’s impoverished childhood to Jesus Christ’s.. Mr. Wright wasn’t at a convention or a campaign stop. He was standing at the pulpit before the mostly African-American congregation of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, where Sen. Obama has worshiped for more than 20 years… Mr. Wright’s and his successor’s repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

No great mystery to how public figures can get good press
John Diaz says those who consistently get positive media attention practice “the three A’s” — accessible, accurate and articulate. “Of those, accessibility accounts for 80 percent of the equation. …[Hillary Clinton] hasn’t done herself any favors with her rationing of accessibility. If you want to challenge the narrative that you’re inauthentic and a control freak, well, a good start would be to make yourself more available to journalists’ questions.”
Obama hasn’t been accessible to the media.  But he’s been their darling.

McCain Compares Himself To Progressive Icon Teddy Roosevelt (Think Progress)
In a trippy new web video, John McCain includes a long excerpt from a fiery speech by Theodore Roosevelt… The movement that John McCain now leads, of course, opposes a meaningful minimum wage (much less a living wage), works to dismantle social insurance programs like Social Security, fights against workers’ right to organize, and seeks to repeal the estate tax [, which are all exactly the opposite of what Teddy Roosevelt stood for]. But other than that, John McCain and Teddy Roosevelt are a perfect fit.
And don’t forget, Roosevelt had to LEAVE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY to pursue his goals.

NPR gets complaints about “lovefest” with conservatives
NPR received some praise for its recent “Conversation with Conservatives” series, but judging by the anger in e-mails and phone calls to the network, “one might have thought NPR was handing out applications for joining the Republican party rather than providing edifying conversations,” writes ombud Alicia Shepard. One listener called it a “lovefest with the radical right-wing nuts.”
Why on earth didn’t they also do a “Conversation with Liberals” series?  Were they just looking for trouble?

Global Warming Denier Group Set To Recycle Attacks on Al Gore
[Tuesday], the ultra conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will launch a new round of television ads attacking former Vice President Al Gore for his leadership on climate change. The right-wing Washington Times gleefully reported on CEI’s ad buy on Saturday: “Al Gore’s opulent lifestyle and his virtuous plea to save the planet from global warming don’t mesh, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which announced plans yesterday for a new national advertising campaign to showcase the contrast before the American public.” In fact, Al Gore has worked diligently to reduce his own carbon impact. After a thorough renovation of his house — complete with a fight to obtain zoning permission for solar panels — Gore has one of the first 14 homes in the United States to receive the LEED gold certification for efficiency and green practices… This is not the first time CEI has tried to distract attention from global warming science in order to attack Gore. Last year, it produced two ads asserting the virtues of carbon dioxide. The ad campaign had the Orwellian title, “They call it pollution. We call it life.”

Rove: ‘I Fully Expect To Be Indicted By The End Of The Year’ (Think Progress)
Karl Rove, former senior aide to President Bush, spoke to a hostile crowd at the University of Iowa yesterday evening. Students and local citizens protested his appearance at the university and “staged a mock trial” for Rove inside the student union before the speech. During the lecture, Rove lashed out at hostile questioners, telling one man his comment showed “a simple, stupid mind” and chastised what he said were “stupid statements” from the audience. Rove also said that former Amb. Joseph Wilson “lied” about his 2002 trip to Niger and accused an audience member of “perpetuating libel” on the U.S. military for asking about the real number of deaths in the Iraq war… Responding to a question about CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s outing, Rove, seemingly joking, added: “I haven’t been indicted yet, but I fully expect to be by the end of the year.”
Jason Leopold, who broke the story of the Rove indictment last year, tells me via email that he thinks Rove is teasing him–and us. I always assumed Jason was right about Rove being indicted, and the indictment used as some kind of leverage against Rove.  When the leverage worked, the indictment was quashed.  Jason said Rove’s lawyer still refuses to release the letter “that supposedly exonerated Rove”, as Jason put it.

David Gregory Headlines New Show in Tucker’s Timeslot (by Rachel Sklar at The Huffington Post)
MSNBC announced a slate of changes [Monday] afternoon, leading with their new election-themed show: “Race For The White House” with David Gregory. The NBC White House correspondent has been a utility player at NBC/MSNBC for some time, regularly stepping in as a guest host — and demonstrating his range — on the “Today Show” and “Meet The Press.”… The show will premiere on March 17th. Also, “Live with Dan Abrams” is officially undergoing a name change to “Verdict with Dan Abrams,” which will also launch on March 17th. The name change has been in the works for some time but had been on hold during the heated political primary run. As well, NBC NewsChief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell will be anchoring MSNBC each weekday afternoon from 1-2 p.m. ET.
I think David Gregory is a good choice.  But can’t they find one woman to host a show?  Not Andrea Mitchell, she’s a diehard Hillary hater.

Shenon: Zelikow Designed Bush Administration’s Pre-Emptive War Doctrine In 2002 (Think Progress)
In his new book, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” New York Times reporter Philip Shenon alleges that 9/11 Commission staff director Philip Zelikow had an obvious conflict of interest while serving on the panel. Zelikow allegedly scaled back criticisms of the White House and did not inform the Commission he helped Condoleezza Rice set up Bush’s National Security Council in 2001… This weekend on CSPAN’s Book TV, Shenon bolstered the case that Zelikow was inextricably tied to the administration. Shenon said Zelikow authored the September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), which outlined the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war and helped make the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Serious Problem: Wages Are Rising in China (by Dean Baker)
The NYT reports that “China has a rapidly aging society that demographers warn could present significant problems. Already, the work force is defying the popular impression that the labor supply is endless. Factories have reported shortages of young workers in recent years.” What’s the problem here? There is not literally a shortage of young workers, as the paper claims. The problem is that firms would have to raise their pay rate, which they don’t want to do. China is not close to being short of labor in the sense that it doesn’t have enough people to do what needs to be done. Wages are rising rapidly, which is what should happen in a developing country. This may put some factory owners out of business, but who cares?
Isn’t that how the “free market” is supposed to work?

Busting Myth, People Turn More Liberal With Age
The stereotype of a cranky old man, set in his ways, getting more conservative by the day, is an enduring one. But new research has debunked the myth that people become more conservative as they age. By comparing surveys of various age groups taken over a span of more than 30 years, sociologists found that in general, Americans’ opinions veer toward the liberal as they grow older.

Media Matters for America headlines

• Blitzer said McCain “knows what negative campaigning is” because “he was the victim” of it — but he was also the perpetrator

• Andrew Sullivan declared Clintons have “a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward”

• IBD editorial claimed “FARC seems to have an inside line to Obama’s campaign”

• AP article on McCain’s “nationwide fundraising drive” ignored previous reporting on McCain’s public financing predicament

• O’Reilly again attacked Huffington Post as using “same exact tactics that the Nazis used”

• Kondracke claimed McCain’s “position on comprehensive immigration reform” could win over Hispanics — but he’s abandoned it

• CNN’s Foreman let Cliff May falsely accuse Dems of trying to prevent government from “bug[ging] terrorists and terrorist suspects abroad”

• Ignoring repeated statements making her position clear, NY Post asserted “Clinton hedged on whether Obama is a Muslim”

Afghans threaten attacks on troops over cartoon
Thousands of Afghan students blocked a highway and threatened attacks on foreign troops on Sunday in the latest protest against the reprinting of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish papers.

Islamophobic Gibberish Taints U.S. Media Discourse on Middle East (by Rami Khouri, Middle East Online, posting at AlterNet)
It’s the “Yellow Peril” all over again.

Investors question NYT’s real estate ownership, Red Sox stake
The hedge funds looking to get seats on the New York Times board want the company to sell the Boston Globe, its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox and the new Times corporate headquarters. A person close to the funds says: “I think it’s safe to say that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It’s not clear how a newspaper, a baseball team and Midtown real estate add value to one another.”

Everything in the paper needs to be rejustified or reinvented
“Nothing in the paper can be there because it’s always been there,” writes Scott Karp. He notes that newspapers used to see the web as a complement, a value add to the print edition. “Now they have to flip the equation. The web is at the center, and the print newspaper must add value, as a complement.”

“We are uncomfortable with the term ‘citizen journalism’”
“We prefer the term ‘community journalism,’” says Todd Wolfson, one of the organizers of the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia, recipient of a $150,000 Knight Foundation news challenge grant. “Many of the people whom his organization and an immigrant rights group, Juntos, are teaching to make video reports for streaming on the Internet are not citizens,” writes Noam Cohen. “Many are not even legal residents.”

AP Editors Debated How To Release ‘Drug-Tainted Water’ Series
Senior Managing Editor Mike Silverman admits editors wrestled with the dilemma of releasing too much information in advance or waiting too long and overwhelming others with the massive report. “We debated when to move it and felt it was unrealistic not to move it at all in advance,” he said.

Memo To The FCC: Stop Obscenity, Fine CSPAN (by Danny Schechter at Media Channel)
It’s Time To Protect The Public From Detestable Disclosures

Who cares what overpaid, over-blowdried anchors think?
A University of Arkansas audience tried to get Anderson Cooper to give opinions on current events, but the CNN anchor declined. “I believe in facts and information and not in opinion,” he said. “I do not care about what an overpaid and over-blowdried anchor — and I include myself in that category — thinks about the issues, and I don’t think others should either.”

Using a Founding Father to Promote the Art of Letter-Writing
HBO and the Postal Service are co-sponsoring a multimillion-dollar campaign promoting letter-writing in tandem with HBO’s upcoming “John Adams” mini-series.
Hey, good luck with that, Postal Service, but I’m afraid that genie has escaped the bottle forever.  Future background books on famous figures will rely on email messages, not letters.

Iger: Disney to Reap $1 Billion Online
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Walt Disney Co. expects to collect $1 billion in revenue from online content this fiscal year, a significant rise from estimates for fiscal 2007, CEO Robert Iger said Monday.

Hulu makes public debut, adds Warner Bros shows
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hulu, the online video joint venture of News Corp and General Electric’s NBC Universal, will make its public debut on Wednesday with programming from Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros Television Group, Lionsgate and from sports leagues.

Facebook users can share Paramount movie clips
Paramount Pictures will become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet. The unit of Viacom Inc. is teaming with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to launch the VooZoo application on Facebook.

Sprint ‘Revs’ up cellphone for fast network
Sprint Nextel is upgrading one of its cellphone models so that it can connect to a faster data network, doubling its download speeds and boosting upload speeds by about eight times.

News Corp will not fight Microsoft for Yahoo
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch said on Monday his News Corp (NWSa.N) would not get into a fight with Microsoft Corp over Yahoo Inc , confirming what most industry and Wall Street observers suspected.

Games that give your gray matter a workout
Both “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” for the DS and “Downstream Panic” for the PSP have much to offer gamers looking to give their gray matter a good workout, and both are well-worth sinking your hard-earned coin — not to mention your precious time — into.