Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Colorado Daily Publishes Eight-Page April Fool’s Wrap — And Makes Money
“It is the first time we did an April Fool’s wrap,” said Assistant Managing Editor Matt Zalaznick. “We have had the first few pages with joke stories in the past, but this year we did a little extra work.” It apparently paid off with numerous ads for the ‘Stale Daily’ edition.

April Fool’s Day story round-up (The Telegraph, U.K.)
British newspapers have continued the tradition of inserting spoof stories into their pages to mark April Fool’s Day. This year, readers were faced with a plethora of improbable tales, but some sounded more believable than others… Gordon Brown recruits Carla Bruni as a style guru… Sarkozy to be stretched… James Bond should be bisexual, says Daniel Craig…
Click through for more.

Wal-Mart Backs Down in its Litigation Against Brain Damaged Former Employee (by Jonathan Turley)
It appears that the national outcry over Wal-Mart’s litigation against Deborah Shank — a brain-damaged former employee — has forced the giant corporation to back off. It will no longer try to collect $400,000 from Shank and her cancer-victim husband. The company chose April Fool’s Day to send a letter to Shank that it has decided to drop its effort to take money that she won in an injury lawsuit against a trucking company that left her brain damaged. Wal-Mart’s top executive for human resources, Pat Curran, simply said that the company spontaneously decided to reexamine its policy in the case — not mentioning media stories condemning the heartless litigation campaign against the Shanks. The problem, of course, is that the store forced this family to litigate this case while trying to pay bills and grieve for a lost son. It was not the humanity but the publicity that drove the change of heart.
Calling people (and corporations) out when they act irresponsibly works.  Too bad we don’t do it more often.

A Fake Group Fights for Monsanto’s Right to Deceive You
The American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology, or Afact, calls itself a “grass-roots organization” that came together to defend their right to use the artificial growth hormone recombinant bovine somatotropin, also known as rBST or rBGH, in their milk production. What they do not tell you is that Afact is not only an organization of dairy farmers. The group actually has close ties to Monsanto, the makers of rBGH, which is marketed under the brand name Posilac.

How the Internet is Changing American Politics (video)
Arianna Huffington, Jeff Jarvis, Micah Sifry, Jay Rosen and Lisa Tozzi discuss 2008 campaign tactics, question the horserace mentality of election coverage, debate the role of the media and even question the nature of truth.

Project for the Old American Century

Beginning tomorrow, I will boycott Air America Radio (by vastleft at Corrente)
I bought an XM radio the week that Al Franken’s late, lamented show premiered on “America Left,” which was XM’s initial venue for most of Air America’s programming. Whenever I was in the car, I was glued to that station. Now, it’s hard for me to remember why I rooted for them to survive Chapter 11. At this point, it is all Hillary Hate, all the time. I’m a fucking Democrat, goddamn it, and I have been my whole life. Like just about half of the Democrats voting in the primaries, my preferred candidate is Hillary Clinton. And when I turn on the Randi fucking Rhodes show, and she’s playing “Witchy Woman” and cackling, yes cackling, about how “Witchy” is one letter off from what she really means, I am fucking done with your piece of shit network.

Sydney Morning Herald: “’We were outside the Wa-Wa [a local convenience store] this week and we got quite a few Republicans,’ [an Obama volunteer in Pennsylvania] said. ‘We give them two forms – one to change their registration now for the primary and one so they can switch back later,’ she said.”
This adds evidence to the piece I posted yesterday, “Primary Follies”.

Obama Girl’s hard-times hometown has soft spot for Clinton (McClatchy)
HAZLETON, Pa. — This bleak former coal town in northeastern Pennsylvania occupies a unique perch in this year’s presidential contest. It’s the hometown of “Obama Girl,” the New York City model of YouTube fame whose racy videos proclaiming her crush on Barack Obama are definitely not campaign-sanctioned. Her parents still live here, and her unlikely career break has gotten older, working-class whites talking more than they otherwise might have about the young black politician from Chicago. This is Clinton country, however. It’s close to Scranton, home to Hillary Clinton’s father, grandparents and great-grandparents, and it’s full of white ethnic working-class voters, who’ve sustained her campaign so far, especially in the Rust Belt.
Hillary Clinton has never forgotten where she came from.  Maybe that’s why the Washington elite hates her so.  Too bad the Obama girl has turned her back on her roots.

Gaza’s Obama Campaign (Media Channel)
While US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton in the polls, Palestinians in Gaza are launching their own attempt to boost his campaign.
Please try to imagine the furor if this were an effort for Clinton.  Click through to watch the video.

Another Shift in the Wind for Clinton and Murdoch (New York Times)
Rupert Murdoch organized a fund-raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton two years ago; now his daughter is holding one for Barack Obama.
You can be certain that the so-called progressive media will be ecstatic over the Obama fundraiser, and will frown and wag their fingers over the Clinton one.

Howard Dean: Only 2 Ways Fl and MI Will Be Seated (by Jeralyn at TalkLeft)
Howard Dean on CNN [Tuesday]: There are only 2 ways Michigan and Florida delegates will be seated. One is if Hillary and Obama agree on a plan. The other is after the nominee is chosen when she or he will control the credentials committee. In other words, Florida and Michigan are not getting seated in time to have a say in the nominee. If I were a voter in Florida or MIchigan, I’d be livid. The one thing neither Dean nor the DNC can control is whether the superdelegates consider the votes in Florida and Michigan. They can factor the votes into their own calculations of the popular vote. They can factor them into their decision as to which candidate is more electable in November. Florida and Michigan voters who want their vote counted ought to let the superdelegates from the other 48 states know.
Click through for links to lists of superdelegates you can contact.

Since FDR was first nominated only on the fourth ballot… (by lambert at Corrente)
… this campaign should be decided on July 1 why? Because Howard Dean says so? Howard, Howard….Show some leadership on disenfranchising FL and MI. Then we can talk. About 470 superdelegates are publicly supporting either Obama or Clinton. Dean said he wants those who haven’t declared to “make their wishes known well before the convention” is held Aug. 25-28. That way the party can focus on the general-election campaign against Republican John McCain, he said. So, we’re having a convention why, then? Wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense to make sure there were 527s attacking McCain relentlessly, right now? Surely, we don’t need a nominee to attack McCain; that’s just specious.

Clinton’s Bosnia Gaffe Makes Her Top Newsmaker (Project for Excellence in Journalism)
Democrats are finding out that being in the news isn’t necessarily good news. A week after Barack Obama was besieged by the Rev. Wright furor, Hillary Clinton’s memory and veracity came under fire. Does all this make John McCain the big winner?

Obama to Get Endorsement of Lee Hamilton
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton is backing Sen. Barack Obama in an endorsement that could boost the presidential hopeful’s national security standing, The Associated Press has learned. Hamilton, who during a three-decade House career rose to be chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, also was vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission. He planned to announce his endorsement of Obama on Wednesday.
The headline should read, “CO-CHAIR OF WHITEWASH 9/11 COMMISSION ENDORSES OBAMA”.  Yeah, Clinton was vying for that one.

Barack Obama’s Latest Pastor Problem: Anti-Gay Rev. James T. Meeks (Gay Wired)
Just as the dust surrounding Sen. Barack Obama’s long-term association with controversial minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright has begun to settle comes new reports of the democratic presidential hopeful’s connection to another racially divisive public figure—the stridently homophobic Rev. James T. Meeks, an Illinois state senator who also serves as the pastor of Chicago’s 22,000 member strong Salem Baptist Church… The problem for Obama is that Rev. James Meeks, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preaches a message that appears to be directly at odds with the promise of hope, unity and bridging social, racial and political divisions upon which his campaign is built.  Over the years, Rev. Meeks has garnered significant media attention as a result of a number of racially charged remarks he’s made from both behind and out in front of the pulpit.

Who’s Scrubbing the Trinity United Church of Christ Website? (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
The website for Sen. Barack Obama’s church — Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago — not long ago described the “Black Value System” in the “About Us” section of its website. And it used to provide a link to the Trumpet Magazine that once gave an award to Louis Farrakhan — a magazine published by Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s daughter. No longer. You can see the old webpage, including both the Black Value System and a link to Trumpet HERE. Interestingly, Trumpet used to have a web presence and now it doesn’t seem to.
Click through for more links to information now scrubbed.

Freedom Rider: Twenty Questions (by Margaret Kimberley at the Black Agenda Report)
[H]ow many times can Barack Obama insult an old friend before it appears they never were friends, after all – or that Obama has problems defining friendship? Dive into Margaret Kimberley’s spring ruling class madness quiz. Confirm whether or not insanity is verbally contagious.

Four More Years of Black Irrelevance (by Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report)
It is easy to spend hours on the insanity that falls under the general heading of Obamamania – the imagined positions taken by the candidate, the things never promised that Black folks swear to have personally heard and seen. But the great tragedy of the current campaign season is the total failure of what passes for Black leadership to have any influence on the growing Obama phenomenon, a corporate manifestation that has never promised anything to Blacks, yet claims to be the center of a “movement.”

CNN catches McCain making contradictory statements about Sadr. (Think Progress)
In an interview with CNN [on Tuesday], Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed that he has long understood the influence of Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr: “I said he was still major player and his influence is going to have to be reduced and gradually eliminated.” But in a report on The Situation Room today, the network noted that just two weeks ago McCain — trying to paint a rosy picture of Iraq — described Sadr very differently while speaking to CNN’s John King in Baghdad: “His [Sadr’s] influence has been on the wane for a long time.”
It’s a really big deal when the corporate media point out a McCain “misstatement”.  Click through to watch the video.

McCain tries running on family legacy (by Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars)
Sen. John McCain kicked off his “biographical tour” Monday morning, seeking to connect key moments in his life to his policy agenda. The first stop was Meridian, Miss., home to McCain Field, a naval air station named for his grandfather and namesake, John Sidney McCain, who was a four-star admiral. Mississippi is also the ancestral home of the McCain family… Voters may very well take into consideration McCain’s military service in the 1960s when deciding who to support, but it’s hard to imagine anyone factoring in McCain’s lineage — the senator has every reason to be proud of his family history, but it’s not quite as relevant to the country as, say, McCain’s healthcare plan.

McCain Nearly Left Republican Party (Political Wire)
On a tour to promote his latest book, former Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal claimed that Sen. John McCain was once going to leave the Republican Party and caucus with Senate Democrats, according to a report from the Business & Media Institute.
Said Blumenthal: “And although he doesn’t want to talk to reporters about it now, there was a time and I was privy to some of those who were involved, did conduct negotiations through third parties about whether or not he would leave the Republican Party and become an independent more or less aligned in the Senate with the Democrats.”

Detroit mayor’s staff launches anti-media e-mail campaign
Kwame Kilpatrick’s staff is encouraging Detroiters to “push back” against what they contend is unfair media coverage of the embattled mayor. Kilpatrick’s spokeswoman insists there’s nothing wrong with using city hall phones and fax machines to have residents to respond to the so-called Media Watch campaign. “It’s our job to monitor the press,” she says. “People call us all the time. I don’t think that’s a misuse of city funds. It’s part of our job.”

Why Is Congress So Anxious to Make Homeownership Unaffordable? (by Dean Baker)
That is a question that reporters might try asking proponents of Congressional plans to prop up housing prices in bubble inflated markets. There is no obvious public interest that i can see in sustaining above market house prices. The housing bubble has prevented millions of young families or people moving into places like New York, Boston, Los Angeles from being able to afford to buy a house or alternatively forced them to stretch their budgets hugely and take on dangerous debt levels.  It might be reasonable to think that Congress would want these prices to return to trend levels as soon as possible. Instead it seems determined to use taxpayer dollars to sustain inflated prices. Someone should as them why.

What’s missing in stories about states and revenue shortfalls
They rarely point out that government officials refuse to tighten their belts in tough times. “It’s called living within your means,” writes Jack Shafer. “But news stories rarely reflect this sentiment.”

Media Matters for America headlines

• 2000 campaign video shows McCain hyping time in Vietnam, despite his — and media’s — false claims to the contrary

• Scarborough, Brzezinski advance myth that McCain “stayed with” his immigration position

• Limbaugh: “[A] lot of these feminists and women … think they’re owed” a Clinton win; “they’ve had two or three abortions

• Hugh Hewitt falsely claimed Obama had gotten “into a debate about abortion rights for minors” when he made “punished with a baby” comment

• Savage: “I would round up every member of the ACLU and of the National Lawyers Guild and I’d put them in a prison in Guantánamo and I’d throw the key away”

• LA Times misled on “maverick” McCain’s immigration stance, defense of votes against Bush tax cuts

• Doocy again falsely suggested Dean called McCain “blatantly opportunistic” for citing his war record

• Newsweek’s Bailey referred to Clinton’s emotional NH moment as her “most famous moment of trying to be like an average human being”

• Hannity falsely claimed Obama was “talking about the issue of abortion” when he made “punished with a baby” comment

Big price hike + thinner coverage = canceled print edition
Steve Outing was ready to drop the Boulder Daily Camera’s print edition some time ago, but his wife resisted. “What put her over the edge — and allowed me to prevail with my suggestion of abandoning print — was the most recent bill. It included a significant price hike, just as we were noticing the paper and its coverage get thinner and thinner. Pay a lot more and get less? …For a product that increasingly is less useful in light of online alternatives, there was no motivation to accept the price hike.”

Austin’s Circ Veep: Expect More Single-Copy Price Hikes
“I think you are going to see a lot of papers doing it in the next six months, I think a lot of papers are reviewing it,” Harry Davis, American-Statesman circulation vice president, said after his paper raised its single-copy price from 50 cents to 75 cents on Tuesday, the first such increase in 15 years. “I think you will see more of it this year.”

Rosenstiel: “It’s something of a race against time” for papers
“The [newspaper] company that emerges, I think, is the one that’s going to say, we can’t be prudent, we have to take a gamble,” says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “We’re going to not cut this company and we’re not going to trim our news staff and we’re not going to reduce this product down that much because that ultimately is going to kill the golden goose.”

Latest Report Adds Kushner To The List Of Potential Newsday Suitors (Paid Content)
Add Jared Kushner, owner of the New York Observer, to the pool of potential suitors for Newsday, according to the Wall Street Journal… Kushner, a principal in the family real-estate firm Kushner Cos, acquired the weekly Observer in 2006. His interest in Newsday is described as “preliminary” for now; like Murdoch and Zuckerman, he likely sees some economies and synergies with the print edition. Kushner also has been spending online, buying PoliticsNJ.com and launching a 50-state political news network. 

Film criticism hasn’t gone away, it’s just on a new platform
David Carr asks: Are print critics really so all-important with the web full of debates about all manner of film? Village Voice Media executive editor Michael Lacey says worrying about whether every city has its own critic seems silly at a time when major metro dailies can’t afford to cover the presidential race.

CNN ratings for viewers 25 to 54 up 90% in the first quarter
For the first time since 2001, CNN managed to beat Fox News in prime time for one quarter of the year in the viewers 25 to 54 category. Among total viewers in prime time, Fox maintained its leadership position with an average of 1.8 million viewers, while CNN had 1.3 million viewers.

CBS Moves Ahead With Layoffs in News
News operations at several local CBS stations started a series of job cuts this week as the network itself, CBS News, moved ahead with plans to lay off about 1 percent of its nearly 1,200 employees.

Bush library loses web address to cybersquatter. (Think Progress)
The Dallas Morning News reports that while the Bush library has found a physical home at Southern Methodist University, it is having difficulty finding an online home. “Some of the very best addresses are gone — snapped up for a mere fistful of dollars by squatters who have no connection to the library yet hope to make fun of the president, protect him or simply cash in on his name.”

Fed unveils online maps to search for problem mortgages
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve on Tuesday made available a new set of online interactive maps designed to provide a clearer, more localized view of where problem mortgages are.
Huh?  I don’t see the importance of this.

Google has lots to do with intelligence
When the nation’s intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information about everything from al Qaeda to North Korea, they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc.

Radiohead allows fans to remix new single
LONDON (Billboard) – Radiohead is using the Internet for another initiative built around its chart-topping album, “In Rainbows.”

Deal puts ‘Sopranos’ on Canadian cell phones
TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) – Bell Canada on Tuesday began delivering full episodes of “The Sopranos” to its mobile phone subscribers as part of an agreement with HBO.

Sprint to Sell IPhone-Like Device
LAS VEGAS (AP) – Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.

Intel Makes a Push Into Pocket-Size Internet Devices
Intel plans to proclaim that the next big thing in consumer gadgets will be the “Internet in your pocket.”.

Microsoft promises full Web browser for mobile
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it would offer full Web browsing for cell phones this year, following the footsteps of Apple Inc’s iPhone, which has won praise for the way it displays Web sites as they would appear on a computer.

Nokia creates Internet ‘tablet’
Sprint Nextel Corp.’s new ultrafast cellular data network is getting some support from Nokia Corp., which said Tuesday it is going to launch a Web-browsing “tablet” for the WiMax network when it goes live this summer.

Australia Cancels Broadband Deal
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) – The Australian government has terminated a 958 million Australian dollar ($869 million) agreement with a Singapore-backed consortium to build a rural broadband network, officials said Wednesday. The termination of the OPEL network funding is likely make an upcoming tender for the government’s planned fiber-to-the-node network even more competitive.

NBC to Revive a Mainstay of Early TV
Sponsors will get a say in content and its name on the show.

Reynolds Ads Say Tobacco Oversight Is Burden F.D.A. Doesn’t Need
The tobacco giant is attacking the F.D.A. as weak and overextended amid a Congressional effort to empower the agency to regulate the tobacco industry.

It’s Not Just Size of the Audience That Matters
How TV Measurement Is Moving Beyond Mass to Track Viewer Behavior