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.

This Modern World

A War Worth Fighting? (Center for Amnerican Progress)
Last week was the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ruy Teixeira asks: What does the public really want on Iraq?

Compassion Meditation Changes The Brain
ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2008) — Can we train ourselves to be compassionate? A new study suggests the answer is yes. Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples’ mental states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Liberals have allowed to go unchecked a 35 plus year, multi hundred million dollar campaign to convince Americans that compassion is foolish, and that helping people actually harms them.  But as we’ve seen from recent studies, cooperating with each other makes us feel good, giving to others makes us feel good.  That means cooperation and compassion are built-in traits, just as is selfishness.  They are traits that help us live together in groups.  They are important.  And as we see from this study, they can be nurtured.  I’d write a book about it if I could ever find a publisher.

Obama blames ‘ethic of greed’ for economy (Politico )
Barack Obama went to New York Thursday and blamed lobbyists, greedy businessmen and complacent Washington politicians for creating “an ethic of greed” that led to today’s foreclosure crisis. Not long after he left the stage, the Democratic presidential hopeful attended a fundraiser held by his campaign in a room in the Manhattan headquarters of Credit Suisse, one of the major investment companies caught up in the subprime lending mess. [Emphasis added.]

Obama: Talks Economy, But Takes Subprime Companies’ Money (by SusanUnPC at No Quarter)
[From the Clinton campaign:] On Monday, the Obama campaign responded to Hillary unveiling a comprehensive plan to deal with the housing crisis by attacking her for taking contributions connected to subprime lenders. Campaign manager David Plouffe said: “If we’re really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we’re going to need a leader who doesn’t owe those industries any favors.” As it turns out, those were just words… Today, Senator Obama gives an economy speech followed by a fundraiser at - you guessed it - one of the top 10 issuers of subprime loans in America, Credit Suisse. In fact, Senator Obama has taken more money from the top 10 issuers of subprime loans than BOTH Senator Clinton and Senator McCain.
Click through for a detailed listing.  And there’s a video.

Smears and Tears: How Obama’s National Security Week Turned Into the Mendacity of Hype (by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, writing at No Quarter)
The past week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and the milestone of the 4,000th American soldier killed in that disastrous adventure. Commemorating and underscoring the urgent need for a new policy direction, Senator Clinton delivered a serious and detailed address clearly setting out her vision for and commitment to ending the conflict… My wife, former CIA agent, Valerie, and I accompanied Senator Clinton to Philadelphia the day after her speech. Valerie pointed out in her comments how, in the run up to the invasion, the administration lied to the Congress and the American people about the nature and the seriousness of the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration’s willful twisting of intelligence was crucial to manipulation of the press, the public and the Congress. Not until months later, after the invasion, did the facts of the administration’s distortion of intelligence slowly begin to trickle out, partly as a result of my own efforts in a New York Times opinion piece in July 2003.

Understandably, Senator Obama’s speech on race relations overshadowed Senator Clinton’s policy pronouncements… In the immediate aftermath, the Obama campaign dispatched several foreign policy surrogates to blitz the airwaves, supposedly to offer alternatives to Clinton’s recommendations. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Hillary was subjected to yet another round of personal abuse, denigration and ridicule rather than a serious debate of the issues. The real subtext of the Obama campaign was to attack Hillary in order to distract from Obama’s association with his anti-American preacher. National security went un-addressed. Rather than filling in his largely absent record, Obama had his surrogates engage in what can be termed the mendacity of hype.

Accused Saddam Agent Says He Met With Hillary at White House (New York Sun)
A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996… Mrs. Clinton and her defenders may claim that no one could have known in 1996 that Mr. Hanooti would become an agent of Saddam Hussein, engaged in what a grand jury and federal prosecutors say was a criminal conspiracy. The indictment charges that the conspiracy began “in or about 1999.” Mr. Hanooti has pleaded not guilty.
So why even write about it, New York Sun, if there couldn’t possibly have been any wrongdoing?  Oh, that’s right.  Catchy headlines matter, even if there’s nothing to back them up.  I expect Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann to make a big deal of this.

Origins of the “Tonya Harding Option” (by tom at Corrente Wire)
[December 28, 2007 7:49 AM:] “ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd in Vinton, Iowa Thursday that he’s not going to pull a Tonya Harding on his rival candidates. ‘Folks said there’s no way Obama has a chance unless he goes and kneecaps the person ahead of us, does a Tonya Harding,’ Obama joked, referring to the female skating champion who conspired to harm a competitor during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. ‘We decided that’s not the kind of campaign we wanted to run,’ he said.”
Until they did.

The Obama Campaign’s Strategic Blunder – They Made it Personal (by Angie Pratt, writing at OpEd News)
When the Obama campaign made its claim of racism against Hillary after theNew Hampshire primary they made a booboo.  A big one.  Prior to that Clinton’s supporters were open to entertaining a vote for Obama.  Maybe he’d be OK. The evening of Hillary’s win in New Hampshire the claim came out that Hillary had somehow cheated.  Somehow she had gotten white folks to vote for her because she was white and Obama was black… Well … if it worked once … try it again.  So the Obama camp called the Clintons racists again and again and again – at every opportunity. The national media loved it.  It fit with the stereotype that many wanted to tag Hillary with anyway – that’s she’d do anything to win – including playing the race card… The problem with this approach and the strategic blunder for the Obama Campaign is that in the process of calling the Clintons racists they were also calling Hillary Clinton’s supporters racists too.  They made it personal… Now many Hillary’s supporters aren’t going to vote for Obama if he wins the nomination.  Remember those fabled moderates and independents that Obama said he’d be able to win?  They aren’t going to vote for him either.  They got lumped together with the Hillary supporters and labeled racists too. So much for being a uniter. The Obama Campaign should have never played the race card.  The consequences will reverberate well past the election.

If Obama Has The Nomination Wrapped Up, Why is His Campaign Going After Clinton So Hard? (by Mark Halperin at The Page, Time)

1. They want to drive up Clinton’s negatives as high as they can, to keep her from improving her standing in head-to-head matchups with McCain, because they know the Clinton campaign would use such polls as an important electability talking point with superdelegates.

2. They want to get the media focus off of Rev. Wright.

3. They want to demonstrate their toughness (to themselves, to the Republicans, and to those watchful superdelegates).

4. They want Clinton to feel there is a cost for staying in the race.

5. They want to remind superdelegates that Clinton would carry substantial baggage into the general election as the nominee.

6. They want to improve Obama’s standing with white voters by artfully playing the Lewinsky card (as when they talked about the circumstances that led to Bill Clinton being photographed in the White House with Rev. Wright).

7. They are angry at the Clinton campaign.

8. They think — contrary to the media conventional wisdom — that Clinton can still beat them.

9. Because they can: the media continues to highlight the Clinton campaign’s negative tactics in a disapproving way, but only rarely points out the intensified negative tone and rhetoric Obama’s campaign has been using – even though it conflicts with the candidate’s professed desire for a new kind of politics.

TPM’s Josh Marshall Encourages YouTubes “to Make Sen. Clinton Look as Foolish as Possible” (by Carlos at No Quarter)
“Progressive” blogger Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo continues his obsession with the “Hillary Clinton-Bosnia-Sniper” story. On Thursday, as of 21:00 ET, Marshall totally ignores the major foreign policy speech by Sen. Obama for more pressing matters: YouTube mashups! “The Clinton-Bosnia-Sniper story seems to be peaking. And there have been a lot of snippets of video swirling around YouTube with this or that part of the story. But most of them are incomplete or rapid-fire-cut or edited to make Sen. Clinton look as foolish as possible. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld used to say. We do those kinds of videos too. But since you’ve probably seen a lot of those, we wanted to go back and put together all the key moments in roughly chronological order — what Sen. Clinton said on different occasions, the key video from the trip, what other eyewitnesses say, what her spokespersons and aides say, etc.”

Obama’s economic speech was surprisingly given zero front page coverage. The indictment of the Puerto Rico governor was also ignored. Clinton’s call for Democratic unity was also ignored… Earlier this month, TPM fired veteran political writer Linda Hirshmann for “not making the case for Obama.” Their reason: “We’re focusing on getting our long-standing regulars and folks covering things we don’t on the blog.” Covering things like, YouTube mashups of the Bosnia visit?
My comment: Josh also stopped Greg Sargent from posting on his Horse’s Mouth blog, part of the TPM family.  They’re citing technical reasons, so I guess it’s just coincidence that Greg was one of the few people calling bullshit on the media’s coverage of Hillary Clinton.

I never liked Slate (by Jeff Jarvis)
And now I like them less. They have a flack send me email bragging that they’ve started a Hillary death watch. Fuck Slate. Wearing your Obama button, Jake? Later: OK, I’m being intemperate. The wine talking. And frustration. But I really am sick of the media efforts to do in Clinton. The lack of self-awareness about it is shocking.

Obama Shill Ed Shultz Gets The Axe At WINZ (by Ron Mills at Broward’s Blog)
“Big Head Ed” Schultz has been canceled from http://940winz.com Miami/Fort Lauderdale radio. Miami, one of radio’s largest media markets has seen the slipping ratings of the Ed Schultz show for months and replacing him with a Live show of Thom Hartmann.

Changing the Minds of Superdelegates (by Susan Estrich, Real Clear Politics)
I had to laugh last weekend watching New Mexico Governor and superdelegate Bill Richardson, who was everywhre endorsing Barack Obama, taking a moralistic stance on superdelegates respecting the will of the people. Come again. Which people? Would that be the people of his home state, who he will actually be “representing” at the convention, or the people of the 48 states that will be allowed to vote on the first Credentials Challenge, or the people of the 50 states who will be voting if Hillary ultimately has even one more vote than Obama on the question of seating Florida and Michigan? If you do the math, you quickly come to the conclusion that neither candidate, barring some truly unexpected landslide, is going to win this nomination on the basis of pledged delegates alone. As the rules structure it, there is no “will of the people,” or at least not one strong enough to support a nominee. Unless you want to change the rules in the middle of the game, the fact is that it will be up to the superdelegates to do what they were put there to do: decide who is most electable, and cast their votes accordingly.

WAS DEMOCRATIC DONORS’ LETTER TO PELOSI A RANSOM NOTE? (Capital Eye)
Prominent backers of Hillary Clinton sent a multi-million-dollar message to Capitol Hill this week: Watch out, Nancy Pelosi. In a letter to the Speaker of the House that urged her to stay out of the debate over how superdelegates should cast their votes, the 20 major Democratic donors didn’t call direct attention to the fortune they’ve given to the Democratic Party, but they did remind her of their “enthusiastic” support over the years. The Center for Responsive Politics has found that the letter-signers, along with their spouses, have contributed $23.6 million to Democrats since 1999, including $554,000 to Clinton’s campaigns and PAC — 10 times what they’ve contributed to Barack Obama. Nearly $3 million has gone to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party fundraiser for the Democratic members Pelosi leads in the House.

Obama’s Schemes to Tiptoe Past the Devil (by Glen Ford at The Black Agenda Report)
Barack Obama likes to pretend that he is a deeply spiritual man, but he failed to sneak past the white gods of retribution when it appeared Obama paid insufficient homage to the greatness of the American historical legacy. The Senator thought he could sneek his way between the National White American Gods, most of them slaveholders and Indian-killers, and the Black guardians of American’s true history of genocide, chattel slavery and constant aggressive war. Obama got caught by both sides, and wound up mumbling gibberish about holding a dialogue between irreconcilable belief systems. In fact, Obama has maneuvered himself into a position of irrelevance to both sides.

Somebody give Barack Obama a Map to the U.S. Senate Chamber -  If You Dare; A Look at Obama’s Voting Record (Creative Youth News Team)
[Click through for] Obama’s 2005, 2006 and 2007 voting record.   The first couple of years of this was collected by a national liberal Democratic organization.  The news team at Creative Youth has thoroughly checked that part out in Thomas.loc.gov and found it to be completely accurate.  Then the CY News Team, using Thomas.loc.gov, brought it up to date through … the end of 2007.  A lot of Obama’s absences are not listed below because we just got tired of saying he didn’t bother to vote on this issue or that issue.  If you read the ones we listed, you’ll get the idea.  Based on his voting record when … he was present, the liberals may have gotten a better result from his absences than his votes.  If you are a liberal, get out your vomit bags and see who Obama is and what he really stands for.  If you are a conservative, you are going to love him after you check out his record. 

WPer: The media tend to put Chelsea Clinton on a pedestal
A Washington Post chatter accuses the “Reliable Source” gossips of “hating on” Chelsea Clinton for months with no let up. Amy Argetsinger responds: “I think there’s been a tendency in the media and popular culture to put her up on a pedestal, to treat her as a sacred cow — to overpraise her for rather normal behavior, to regard her as a fragile child when she’s a 28-year-old woman willingly putting herself out on the campaign trail (and then sometimes setting arbitrary boundaries around herself).”
Well, considering how they put Barack Obama on a pedestal, it hardly seems unreasonable to do the same for Chelsea.

McCain’s “Senior Moments” a Product of Bush’s Iran Propaganda (by Gareth Porter, IPS News, posted at AlterNet)
McCain’s gaffes have been a reflection of how thoroughly he has internalized neoconservative spin.

Imitation is the sincerely form of publicity (Buzz Machine)
Tracey Ullman does a dead-on imitation of Arianna Huffington on her new show.
Click through to watch the video.

The BBC airs broadcast - CIA role claim in Kennedy killing
New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy’s assassination has been brought to light.

Analyze the Housing Bailout Proposals! (by Dean Baker)
One of the reasons that we’re sitting here in a recession, facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression (according to Alan Greenspan) is that most reporters never reported on the housing bubble as it grew to ever more dangerous levels… As Congress considers bailouts, reporters don’t seem to have picked up their game…  The papers and broadcast media should be presenting some analysis of [the candidates’ proposals to solve the crisis] to their audience. It hasn’t been visible so far.

Another Philosophy Lecture from the Washington Post (by Dean Baker)
The Post tells us that: …: “on taxes, McCain has reversed his opposition to President Bush’s 2001 tax plan and now supports making the cuts permanent.”… I wouldn’t be so cynical as to suggest that Senator McCain would abandon his economic philosophy for political advantage, but maybe we shouldn’t rule out this possibility. How about if the Post just reported the politicians’ statements and positions on issues and spare us the speculation on their “economic philosophy?”

Media Matters for America headlines

• Wash. Times’ McCaslin misrepresented FEC spokesman, advisory opinions, to raise questions about Clinton’s Elton John concert

• MSNBC anchor, guests ignore Obama’s prior condemnation of anti-Israel statements in church newsletter and by his pastor

• AP uncritically quoted McCain claim that Obama will “raise taxes” on homeowners

• Dick Morris again falsely claimed Clinton said Chelsea “was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11″

• Just weeks after criticizing McCain for exploiting campaign finance laws, Wash. Post dubbed him a “champion” of campaign finance reform

• MSNBC’s O’Donnell issues “clarification” for falsely claiming McCain “called for Don Rumsfeld’s resignation”

• Morning Joe reported that Saddam allegedly financed three Dems’ Iraq trip, but not that DOJ reportedly said they didn’t know

• Wash. Post’s Dobbs criticized Clinton for citing “somewhat misleading” 1996 Post report that the Post has yet to correct

• Media report that McCain now insists on respect for U.S. allies — but ignore 2003 smears of Germany and “aging movie actress” France

• MSNBC’s Brewer on McCain’s housing crisis speech: “Is this a real turning point for him, being this specific and detailed on what the economy needs?”

Indonesian ministry Web site hacked over porn ban
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Hackers have defaced the Web site of Indonesia’s information ministry in response to a government move to restrict access to pornographic material on the Internet, an official said on Friday.

China and Tibet: The Spin Campaign
A sophisticated media strategy combined with strong domestic nationalist sentiment helps Beijing counter negative publicity

Tibet monks disrupt tour by journalists
LHASA, China - A group of monks shouting there was no religious freedom disrupted a carefully orchestrated visit by foreign reporters to Tibet’s capital Thursday, an embarrassment for China as it tried to show Lhasa was calm after recent deadly anti-government riots.

Kenya’s Emerging Indy Media (by Michelle Chen, In These Times. posted at AlterNet)
Amidst the ongoing chaos in Kenya, an alternative media system driven by ordinary Kenyans is rising.

Britain to overhaul video game ratings system
LONDON (Reuters) - The British government plans to introduce a new guidance rating system for video games and a code of practice for social networking Web sites to help protect children.

Philippines to get own Playboy, but no nudes
MANILA (AFP) - The Philippines will get its own edition of Playboy magazine — only without the nudity that made the US version famous, the editor-in-chief of the local edition said Thursday.
They may have to actually read the articles.

Dutch MP’s anti-Islam film gets barbs, cheers on YouTube
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Snippets of an Islam-bashing film by Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders were causing a stir Thursday on YouTube, where they triggered cheers and barbs among thousands of viewers.

Proposed: A counteroffensive to preserve serious journalism
Here are the guiding principles behind Carl Sessions Stepp’s campaign:

* Make it better not worse;

* Make it astonishingly, irresistibly better;

* Make it easier, not harder, to use and enjoy; and

* Involve everyone from school kids to staff members to senior subscribers in the ultimate group science project of creating the greatest news outlets imaginable.

‘LAT’ Fall on ‘Puffy’ Story Reveals New Scrutiny Of Documents
The Los Angeles Times’ apparent reliance on fabricated FBI records that wrongly linked rapper Sean Combs to the shooting of Tupac Shakur raises new concerns over using documents from anonymous sources — and posting them online. “You are more vulnerable to your critics, but also more accountable,” says the Poynter Institute’s Bob Steele.

CEO: WSJ won’t cut biz news to make room for political news
“Whatever happens to the design, the key thing is we will put more national news in [the Wall Street Journal] and more political news in it,” says Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton. “But that will be through additional pages because what we will never do is forsake its role of being, above all, the world’s business newspaper. That is its place in the world, it is the reason it’s prospered.”

Barrett returns to BusinessWeek after three months at WSJ
In January, Paul Barrett resigned from BusinessWeek to rejoin the Wall Street Journal. He’s now returning to BusinessWeek in his previous role as assistant managing editor for investigative projects.

Forget Dolan: Newspaper biz doesn’t need another amateur
James Brady on the men who want Newsday: “I’m indebted to Rupert Murdoch for several very good jobs, appreciate Mort Zuckerman as an East Hampton neighbor and ballplayer, get pretty good cable services from James Dolan for a price, and that’s about it. If one of them gets a share or all of Newsday, my money is on either Murdoch or Zuckerman, with a nod to the former. Dolan? Forget it: The newspaper biz doesn’t need another amateur. Especially a spoiled rich kid who owns the team.”

Oscar-winning “Nuremberg” writer dies in L.A
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Abby Mann, who won an Oscar for writing the 1961 drama “Judgment at Nuremberg” and devoted his career to exposing failings in the U.S. criminal justice system, has died, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site on Thursday.
One of the finest movies ever made.

LeBron James Vogue Cover Criticized For “Perpetuating Racial Stereotypes”
(AP) When Vogue announced its April cover starring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen, the magazine noted with some fanfare that James was the first black man to grace its cover. But the image is stirring up controversy, with some commentators decrying the photo as perpetuating racial stereotypes. James strikes what some see as a gorilla-like pose, baring his teeth, with one hand dribbling a ball and the other around Bundchen’s tiny waist. It’s an image some have likened to “King Kong” and Fay Wray. “It conjures up this idea of a dangerous black man,” said Tamara Walker, 29, of Philadelphia.

Greenspun Media’s Las Vegas Life magazine goes online-only
Killing the print version of the monthly magazine “is a very painful decision for our company and for me personally,” says Greenspun Media president Michael Carr. “While Las Vegas remains insulated from several [economic] issues, we are not immune. As a result, our company has been examining all cost areas of operations in an effort to preserve our future growth strategies and balance them with the realities of today’s economics.”

Squeezebox Duet unleashes music on your computer
Squeezebox consists of just two components: a standard-size remote controller with a 2.4-inch, color LCD screen and a paperback-size black receiver that attaches to your stereo or powered speakers.

Gossip Web Site Denies Wrongdoing 
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The college gossip Web site JuicyCampus.com has criticized a consumer fraud investigation launched by the New Jersey attorney general. “JuicyCampus has not violated any laws,” reads an unsigned statement posted on the Web site earlier this week.

Google Paid Clicks Data Generate Debate
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - New data confirming slowing growth in Google Inc.’s paid clicks renewed debate Thursday on Wall Street over whether the Internet search company’s revenue can quickly adjust to changes it made in how it generates clicks.

Comcast to Stop Hampering File-Sharing 
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Under pressure from federal regulators, Comcast Corp. reversed its stance over hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers and promised Thursday to treat all types of Internet traffic equally.

AT&T plans MediaFlo mobile TV service for May
NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc said on Thursday it would launch mobile television services in May from MediaFlo USA, a unit of Qualcomm Inc , in an effort to bolster revenue from services other than phone calls.

Future Mobile Phones Will Have Blazing Speed, Biochips To Diagnose Ailments
DoCoMo said it has been able to demonstrate a mobile phone with a molecular delivery system for molecular communication, among other advances.