Permanent link to MTA daily media news

I guess they couldn’t get the audio of a scream.
Feministe

The seeds of the new progressive blogosphere (by Violet Socks at Hillary’s Voice)
A list is taking shape of those political bloggers who are either pro-Hillary or at least fair in their coverage of the candidates — in other words, bloggers who aren’t raving Clinton-hating Obamabots. Versions of this emerging blogroll are popping up here and there… Why does this list matter? It’s not merely a question of knowing where to go for misogyny-free political commentary. These are the seeds of a new progressive blogosphere in the making. The Obamabots are poisoning the original netroots, transforming what used to be an arena for progressive politics into nothing more than a rabid, mindless He-Man Woman-Haters club.
Click through for a list of  Clinton friendly websites.

Cutting Through the Nonsense: 10 Reasons to Vote for Hillary (by D. Cupples at Buck Naked Politics)
This morning, I thought again about why I support Hillary — reasons beyond the intelligence, warmth and wit that would make her a great Happy Hour  partner.  I thought about what she will bring to the White House and how our nation will benefit in practical ways from her knowledge, skills and perspective.  Ten of my reasons are below.
1.  Hillary grasps economic concepts: knowledge a president will need in January — given our nation’s debt, job loss, credit crunch, recession….
2.  Hillary has a plan to get us out of Iraq, a plan that the 34 flag rank military officers who endorsed Hillary also find impressive.
3.  Hillary has a health care plan that offers broad coverage for Americans.
4.  Hillary’s Senate committee assignments encompass a wide array of issues — including veterans affairs, education, military issues, labor, health, and the environment — which give her a solid  foundation from which to help shape public policy.
5.  Hillary understands foreign policy and has dealt with officials from dozens of other nations…
6. Hillary has broad support among American voters… Hillary’s in a good position to compete with John McCain.
7. Hillary has demonstrated concern for fellow Americans — starting with her civil rights activities during college and her work during the seven years after college, which she devoted to public service (instead of taking her Yale law degree straight to lucrative arenas).
8.  Hillary has broad life experience…
9.  Hillary has learned how to get things done in Washington…
10.  Hillary is strong, resilient, and tenacious.  She has faced more scrutiny and ugly attacks than most politicians, yet she’s still standing.  Better than that, she’s still fighting.  That’s the spirit a president needs in order to solve the many grave problems our nation faces.

She Changes – People’s – Lives (by alegre at MyDD)
After finishing law school at Yale, she could have written her own ticket – gone to work for any big name law firm in the nation but instead she chose to go to work with Marion Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF).  She knocked on doors to find out why children weren’t enrolled in our public schools and she found that kids with disabilities the blind, the deaf or even kids with a mild learning disability weren’t being taught in our schools.  There weren’t even teachers who could help kids with mild dyslexia back then. So she took her findings to Congress and they passed a nationwide law that required our public schools to accommodate kids with special needs.  Kids like my sweet son… Hillary didn’t stop there guys – she went on to help pass other laws too.

RonK to Goldy’s Sister: If that’s not betrayal, what is? (by ronkseattle at The Confluence)
[To an Obama supporter:] You are endorsing “I’m Barack Obama, running for President and I approve this message. … Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected.”

You are endorsing the candidate who claims the middle class lost ground during the Clinton years.

You are endorsing the candidate who successfully framed the Clintons on accusations of race-baiting, through an elaborately orchestrated race-baiting campaign of his own.

You are endorsing the candidate who later claimed in passive voice that racial tensions just “bubbled up” between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries … and who preposterously asserted that America can’t make any progress on jobs, health or education without his admittedly incremental contribution to America’s admittedly residual racial divide … who frames his campaign in grossly counterfeit histories of the civil rights movement of the 60’s, the Reagan years of the 80’s and the Clinton/Gingrich years of the 90’s … who inspired you with a speech that claims a Clinton presidency would leave us in racial “stalemate” analogous to the slave state versus free state stalemate at the Constitutional Convention.

You are endorsing the candidate who gave Hillary the finger last week in Raleigh NC.
Click through for more.

Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate (UCLA)
The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain’s reward circuitry. “We may be hard-wired to treat fairness as a reward,” said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience.
And conversely, unfairness makes us uneasy and unhappy.  Which explains my disgust for the Obama campaign and all its acolytes.

Zogby Poll: Clinton Pushes Into Clear Lead in Pennylvania (Political Wire)
The last Zogby tracking poll before the Pennsylvania primary shows Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to pull away from Sen. Barack Obama and now leads, 51% to 41%, pushing her beyond the poll’s margin of error. Said pollster John Zogby: “Sounds like a radio station’s call letters, but remember WECM – white, ethnic, Catholic, men. That is what put Clinton into her double digit lead here in Pennsylvania.”
Well, that PROVES she’s a racist.

For Clinton: A victory, is a victory is a victory (by John: south of Melrose at Liberal Rapture)
Obama is up to something in PA. The Obamites and MSM (surrogate Obamites) are setting up an expectation game that Clinton must be sure to counter. The important thing to remember: if Clinton wins she should stay in. There is no “margin” that means she won but really “lost”. That is “in the tank for Obama” media bullshit. With the Obamamedia it’s always over “if- she doesn’t win by this much or that much. I am sure if she wins PA the media say “she won, BUT if Clinton can’t win Guam’s Primary…. and so on and so forth. Besides Obama out spent her by millions. It should be close given how much money he’s spent in PA. So Hillary: A victory is a victory is a victory.

Justice Dept. to monitor Pa. primary
PHILADELPHIA, April 21 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department says it will monitor voting in Philadelphia during Pennsylvania’s presidential primary election Tuesday. The federal monitors will be deployed to try to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws, the Justice Department said in a news release Monday.
Our thoroughly POLITICIZED Justice Department?  It’s a relief that THEY’ll be on the job.

Obama avoids media in final days of PA
BLUE BELL, Pennsylvania (CNN) – It’s now been ten days since Democrat Barack Obama has made himself available for questions from his traveling press corps, and it appears as though that number could rise even higher… And at a diner Thursday morning, a reporter slipped in a question about former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas, but Obama responded by saying he just wanted to eat his waffle. Later that afternoon while taping an interview for “The Daily Show,” a reporter tried to ask Obama about a new Clinton ad and the Obama ad that came as a response. According to a pooled report, the White House hopeful asked the reporter if she was “supposed to be” asking a question then. He added that he would consider answering but that it would depend “on how well behaved you are.” In the end, he did not take the question.
Periodically, Senator Obama gets testy.  Oh, and how does he stay so thin if he’s eating waffles for breakfast?

No debate for Couric (Politico)
The North Carolina Democratic Party has dropped plans for an April 27 debate, which would have been moderated by CBS’s Katie Couric. Clinton had agreed to the debate; Obama did not, and the party said in a statement that the clock had run out to organize a debate. The party also cited worries about “party unity,” after last week’s combative debate in Philadelphia, a focused grilling of Senator Barack Obama on topics he would have preferred to avoid.
I still say that Obama has no idea what he’ll face if he’s the Democratic nominee.

Scared Of An Image Of bin Laden? (by Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft)
I am with Kevin Drum on the Obama campaign’s overwrought reaction to the latest Clinton ad: “Are the pro-Obama forces seriously trying to get their troops outraged over this latest ad from Hillary Clinton? Just because it contains a ten-second sequence of presidential crises (Depression, Pearl Harbor, gas crisis, Katrina, etc.) and flashes a half-second clip of Osama bin Laden as part of it? Spare me. Are Democratic political ads no longer even allowed to mention the fact that the next president is going to have to deal with the war on terror?” The reaction is overwrought and I think politically obtuse. It makes it seem like Obama really is afraid to discuss the war on terror.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil (by myiq2xu at Corrente)
It does appear that his history of community organizing is central to Obama’s identity, seemingly even more important to him than his work as a legislator. The mystery is how with all this community activity, Obama managed to remain ignorant of the fact that his benefactor, Antoin Rezko, wasn’t paying utility bills for his tenents, many of whom lived in Obama’s IL state senate district… Obama claims he knew nothing. His close relationship with Rezko continued until after Obama was elected to the US Senate. In fact, the deal with Rezko involving Obama’s home took place after Obama was a Senator, as did the alleged meeting with Nadhmi Auchi. Obama says he never heard any of Rev. Wright’s controversial statements either, despite attending Trinity UCC for 20 years. See a pattern?

Part III: Obama Adviser David L. Boren re: Foreign (inc. Energy) Policy (by GRL at InsightAnalytical)
In Part I I provided extensive information courtesy of Sourcewatch.org, A Project of the Center for Media and Democacy, on former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee David L. Boren’s right wing ties, and his close relationship to Robert Gates, former CIA director and current Secretary of Defense. In this post I will add a few more bits of information, including a rather surprising story about how Boren was involved in the outing of a CIA agent, and discuss some of Boren’s books and legislation involving foreign policy… and energy policy.

Two Years Too Late (by Larry Johnson at No Quarter)
The Pentagon did not control all military analysts.  Some of us were offering an analysis at odds with the Administration’s happy talk and sunny scenarios.  I don’t blame the Pentagon for trying to get away with these shenanigans.  That’s like blaming a dog for sniffing another dog’s ass.  But I do fault the media for not doing their job.  They surrendered their critical thinking skills.  And as we have seen in the Barack Obama campaign, they are doing the same thing again.  So if Barack Obama manages to nab the nomination and get elected, don’t be surprised to find the New York  Times reporting in three years that the failed Presidency of Barack could have been anticipated but that the media was “scammed”.
Obama’s good friend Deval Patrick, whose words of hope and change he supposedly borrowed, is having a tough time delivering on those promises of hope and change as governor of Massachusetts.  See, skillful political strategists like Karl Rove and David Axelrod can often get a candidate elected, but then there’s that “The Candidate” moment when they actually have to start thinking about GOVERNING.

‘Bittergate’ storm shows how blogs have spread panic in US journalism (by Edward Helmore, The Guardian, U.K.)
If Obama is beaten in Pennsylvania’s primary vote on Tuesday then his comment that small-town voters bitter over their economic circumstances ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them’ may come to be seen as pivotal to his campaign. For the media, the episode shows how the internet is changing the reporting of politics. The event was closed to journalists; [event recorder and reporter Mayhill] Fowler was only invited because she had given generously to Obama. ‘We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities,’ she told the New York Times. ‘Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They thought I would put the role of supporter first.’… Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair media columnist, says this question is moot. ‘It doesn’t matter whose employ she was in or what function she was fulfilling. He said something and was duly recorded. [That's] the new reality [it's] useless to ignore. Everybody is going to know what you say. We’re going through a transformation process. There is no privacy. You cannot hide.’

In Politics, the Gaffe Goes Viral
Political gaffes have now entered a supercharged ecosystem of cable, bloggers and digitally enabled mainstream media outlets. Indeed nothing is more viral than a screw-up.

Despite Promise To Abolish Earmarks, McCain Uses Earmark-Funded Ferry As Campaign Trail Backdrop (Think Progress)
This week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is embarking on what he calls the “It’s Time for Action Tour,” which he says will spotlight “forgotten Americans.” “We will travel to areas of this country that in many ways have been forgotten and left behind,” McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt told USA Today. As part of the tour, McCain will visit “the remote town of Gee’s Bend” in Alabama in order “to ride a ferry across the Alabama River from Camden“… But McCain’s appearance at the ferry conflicts with his contention that he will abolish earmarks from the federal budget, considering that the Gee’s Bend ferry was funded by a federal earmark in the 2005 Transportation/Treasury Appropriations Act.

Addington, Gonzales Witnessed Gitmo Interrogations In 2002; Approved Of ‘Whatever Needs To Be Done’ (Think Progress)
Last month, ABC News revealed that President Bush’s most senior advisers approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics. Days later, Bush confirmed to ABC he “approved” of the tactics. In a forthcoming book, British international law professor Phillippe Sands further documents how the most extreme interrogation techniques — including stress, hooding, noise, nudity, and “dogs” — came directly from the White House and Pentagon.

Tortured Explanations (Center for American Progress)
Philippe Sands’ new book shows that those who drew up the United States’ post-9/11 policy on interrogation were woefully inexperienced and badly advised.

McClatchy’s Leila Fadel Cuts Through the BS on Iraq and Iran (by Bill W. at Crooks and Liars)
 Last week Bill Moyers sat down with Leila Fadel while she was stateside to receive a George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. In this interview she bluntly lays bare all the spin on Iraq and Iran in a way that is all too rare these days. I can’t say enough good things about this brave woman… McClatchy, one of the few sane voices on Iraq since before the invasion (when they were still known as Knight-Ridder) continues to impress.
Click through to watch the video.

Tony Snow Joins CNN as Political Contributor
Former White House press secretary Tony Snow will join CNN as a conservative commentator beginning today, it was announced by Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. A well-known and respected observer of politics with a longstanding news background, Snow will contribute to CNN as the network continues to broadcast winning political coverage.

EXPELLED…. (by Kevin Drum at Political Animal, the Washington Monthly)
I went out today and saw Expelled, Ben Stein’s documentary that posits a vast, worldwide conspiracy of Darwinists who are shutting down legitimate scientific inquiry into Intelligent Design. The official debunking is here if you’re interested, but I went mostly because I was curious about how good a film it is purely from an agit-prop standpoint. Answer: not very good. Stein’s basic problem is that during the first half hour or so he keeps his film sounding fairly reasonable. Maybe ID proponents really are getting the shaft! But it’s also deadly dull. After 30 minutes I was wondering how long he could possibly stretch this stuff out. Then it picked up. Unfortunately for Stein and the IDers, it did so only by becoming increasingly unhinged.

Mythbuster: Study: Costs of cutting greenhouse gases are actually small (McClatchy)
WASHINGTON — Americans won’t pay huge new electricity and heating bills, unemployment won’t skyrocket and the U.S. economy won’t be damaged in the decades ahead if Congress passes legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study released Monday.

Post’s Clarifying Efforts on Global Warming Don’t Clarify (by Dean Baker)
In its Sunday Outlook section, the Washington Post sought to clarify some of the competing claims about the costs of curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions… [T]he paper quoted John Engler, who is currently president of the National Association of Manufacturers, on one of the leading bills to curb GHG emissions: “it would be like every month having a press conference announcing that you were closing another 1,000-person plant.” That is intended to sound very scary. However, in normal times the economy will create close to 170,000 jobs a month. The threat of a 1000 jobs lost every month is equivalent to the number of jobs the economy typically creates in 4 hours. That is not altogether trivial, but this sort of economic impact would usually not be seen as grounds for obstructing policies that would otherwise be viewed as important. (The job loss because of the Iraq War was far greater.)

Rebuilding Loan Loss Reserves Hurts Bank Profits (by Dean Baker)
This is another one in the “who could have known?” category. The WSJ reports that stock analysts were apparently surprised that the profits of Bank of America and other banks would be hurt by the need to replenish loan loss reserves. If the stock analysts were really surprised on this one, then you have to wonder what these folks do for a living.

Media Matters for America headlines

• Matthews discussed “grumpy old men” who hang around diners “because they don’t want to be at home with their wives”

• Flashback: Media Matters had documented conservative misinformation from military analysts with hidden ties to Pentagon

• Rudov called himself a “feminist” on Your World, ridiculed study on housework as product of a “gyno-versit[y]” on O’Reilly

• AP made false comparison between generic Nov. poll and April head-to-head poll to suggest McCain momentum

• Ignoring McCain’s efforts to satisfy conservative base, NBC’s Gregory touted McCain’s “brand” as “being a maverick and being anti-politics”

• Dick Morris falsely asserted New World Foundation “gave money to the PLO” while Clinton was on foundation’s board

• NPR analyst Cokie Roberts apparently unaware that McCain said he is “glad to have” Hagee endorsement

• AP reported McCain’s “conce[ssion]” that it probably was a “mistake” to seek Hagee’s endorsement, but not his assertion that he’s “glad to have” it

EU to Criminalize Internet-Based Incitement to Terrorism
European Union justice ministers have agreed that using the Internet to publish bomb recipes or call for acts of terrorism to be committed should count as a criminal offence. The 27 member states agreed on Friday, April 18, to introduce as new offences “public provocation to commit a terrorist offence, recruitment, and training for terrorism” which would be punishable “also when committed through the Internet.” The commission’s proposal would also allow EU law-enforcement agencies to demand cooperation from Internet providers in order to identify the people making such calls and to ensure that the offending material is taken off-line.

Israeli troops may have targeted Gaza newsman: watchdog
A Palestinian cameraman killed by tank fire in the Gaza Strip along with five other civilians this week may have been deliberately targeted by Israeli forces, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday. The group said its on-site investigation of Wednesday’s death of Fadel Shana, 23, indicated an Israeli tank crew fired “recklessly or deliberately” at the Reuters news agency cameraman and his soundman.

NJ court requires subpoena for Internet subscriber records
NEWARK, N.J. – Internet service providers must not release personal information about users in New Jersey without a valid subpoena, even to police, the state’s highest court ruled Monday.

“McCaw” is the scariest film involving journalists since “Zodiac”
John Diaz says “Citizen McCaw,” a new documentary film, “is a cautionary tale, not only about the perils of a newspaper owner run amok, but of what can happen when one very wealthy and vindictive individual decides to use the legal system to inflict a living hell on mortals of lesser means.”

Media Generals: Editors Respond to ‘NYT’ Revelations (Editor & Publisher)
Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal defended the past publication of Op-Ed’s by nine former generals who had ties to the secret Pentagon propaganda program: “They are either critical of the administration, not writing about Iraq, or writing about specific issues. In no case is there someone offering an assessment.”

Exclusive: Top 30 Newspaper Sites for March
The Wall Street Journal online and the Web site of The Dallas Morning News made big gains in March with unique traffic. Both sites saw their traffic rise at least 90% compared to the same period a year ago. The data is the latest from Nielsen Online, which ranks the top 30 newspaper Web sites by monthly unique traffic.

NYPost.com Homepage Takeover; Even More Of A Tabloid For GossipGirl (by Rafat Ali at Paid Content)
Among the most garish takeovers of a homepage of a major news site ever, and it has to be seen to be believed. This NYPost.com takeover by Gossip Girl comes on the same day as sister paper Wall Street Journal did its own editorial makeover.  Somewhere, a little bit of WSJ soul died today.
Click through to see a graphic of the front page.

Chicago Tribune: We’re staying silent on Wrigley Field issue
Should the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority buy Wrigley Field from Tribune? The Chicago Tribune editorial board says it wants what’s best for the city, the Cubs and Tribune. “That self-interest diminishes whatever credibility we would bring to this important discussion. So we must recuse ourselves.”

Tribune Nears Sale Of Newsday To News Corp: Report (by Staci D. Kramer at Paid Content)
Looks like Rupert Murdoch may be on his way to some kind of odd New York trifecta … WSJ is reporting that parent News Corp is close to a $580 million deal with Tribune Co. to acquire Newsday.  Citing sources “familiar with the situation,” WSJ says the terms would put the Long Island paper in a JV with the NY Post and some non-newspaper assets; News Corp would own most with Tribune holding less than 5 percent. Even if the two companies come to terms, the deal likely would face some opposition and would have to be approved by federal regulators given News Corp’s other area holdings.

For political news, cable is now king (by Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald)
WASHINGTON — When the polls close in Pennsylvania Tuesday night, network television viewers will have a choice: They can watch Kristi Yamaguchi flash some cunning new moves on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, see if Sharon or Sheila gets kicked out of the house on CBS’ Big Brother, or stare at old Saturday Night Live skits on NBC. But if they want to find out who won the Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, they’ll have to tune in to a cable news channel. In an election year that features the most dramatic and hard-fought campaign in 40 years, TV’s broadcast networks have all but ceded coverage of politics to their upstart cable competitors.

Science confirms ‘The Colbert Bump’
Democrats who appeared on “The Colbert Report” raised about 44 percent more money after their appearance than they did before. Republicans, on the other hand, didn’t fare as well after their Colbert appearance.

Couric “is my anchor today, tomorrow and in the future”
That’s what CBS chief Les Moonves told CBS News staffers on Friday. He said he was “proud” of Katie Couric and that CBS was lucky to have her. Top network execs tell Howard Kurtz the public display doesn’t change the reality that Couric is likely to give up the anchor chair after the election.

How to Create Killer Niche Web Sites Without Hiring (by Steve Outing at Editor & Publisher)
The trick to succeeding in the future will include adding on to the traditional news-gathering function, most likely serving new niches with deep coverage. How the heck are you going to do that?

More Bells, Whistles and Packets of All Sorts
With so much of the publishing industry shifting to the Web, magazine executives are trying to use their print products as a tactical advantage with advertisers.

Overhaul for Web Site of Essence Magazine
Essence will be the latest magazine to try to refashion itself online for a daily, rather than a monthly, audience.

Disney Looks to Nature, and Creates a Film Division to Capture It
Betting that audiences are hungry for nature documentaries, the Walt Disney Company has created a new production banner to deliver two nature films a year starting in 2009.

The Demise of the ‘Chick Flick’ (by Sarah Seltzer, RH Reality Check, posted at AlterNet)
Studio heads are bewildered that big-budget chick flicks are bombing. Maybe they should stop making movies about rich, thin, white women.

French Supermarket Giant Carrefour Plans Movie Download Store (Paid Content)
Latest to launch a movie download store – and the latest amongst the supermarkets to try their hand – is France’s Carrefour. The world’s second largest retail group after Wal-Mart is to offer download-to-own and download-to-rent films and TV shows in France, Spain, Belgium and Italy. President Christophe Geoffroy (via THR): “It’s very important for Carrefour to have more than one point of sale. We have to be in contact with the consumer in their homes as well as in-store. We know full well that the market forecast for VOD is low at the moment, but we are convinced that it will develop over the coming years and we want to provide a legal solution for customers to see the best possible content.”

What Do Christian Fundamentalists Listen to on Their iPods? (by Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet)
Daniel Radosh takes readers on a trip to the parallel universe of Christian pop culture — be prepared for a very weird, tame ride.

Video of 41-hour elevator ordeal is Net hit
A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade.
We have lost our minds.