Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Obama Extends Benefits To Gay Federal Employees (by The Cajun Boy at Gawker)
The AP [reported Tuesday] that the Obama administration plans to announce [Wednesday] that they’re extending the same benefits available to spouses of straight employees to the spouses of gay and lesbian federal employees… Interestingly, the move comes the day after two prominent gay men, activist David Mixner and blogger Andy Towle, announced that they would boycott an upcoming DNC fundraiser out of concern that the Obama White House was supporting policies detrimental to the gay rights cause. Coincidence?
And where did the idea come from? From Hillary, of course.

Obama OKs Some Benefits for Gay Federal Workers’ Partners (Truthdig)
It would take new legislation to extend full health coverage to the same-sex partners of federal employees, but President Obama, via presidential memorandum, will grant some benefits to them. The administration is already on thin ice with gay activists, some of whom are angry about a Justice Department brief defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the very law that prevents the government from recognizing the rights of gay couples.

Daniel Politi is not impressed:
Obama Throws Gays a Crumb (by Daniel Politi, Slate)
Due to this increasing disappointment in Obama’s administration, gay rights supporters couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the news. An adviser to the Clinton administration on gay issues tells the NYT that “more important now is what he says tomorrow about the future for gay people during his presidency.”

Discussing Obama and DOMA, Limbaugh litters monologue with anti-LGBT innuendo (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Reid Clarifies His Position On DADT: ‘We Would Welcome A Legislative Proposal From The White House’ (Think Progress)
During a press conference [Monday], Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) attracted attention when a reporter asked him whether the Senate will be pushing for a bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT): “…‘My hope is that it can be done administratively.’” The Obama administration has repeatedly resisted calls to suspend DADT by executive order. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs last month said that President Obama is looking for a “durable legislative solution,” and Obama himself has written that repeal of the policy “needs Congressional action.” Many LGBT bloggers immediately criticized Reid’s comments, saying that Obama and Congress were “playing hot potato over DADT.”

[Tuesday] in a statement to ThinkProgress, Reid’s office clarified the senator’s remarks, saying that what he is looking for is a “legislative proposal” from the White House. Additionally, while the Senate does not currently have a bill introduced, “a number” of senators are working on one.

…and your flag lapel pin, too! (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
When the whisperers and the naysayers try to appease the LGBTQ community that there is too much going on with two wars, the Great Recession, Healthcare reform, international tensions, and so forth, they need to be called on their bullshit… Right now, this very moment, the Dims have control of the White House, and the Congress, and enough of the Senate that they can make real change. By the midterm elections, they might not have it; hell they probably won’t have it if history is any guide. There is literally no better time than the present to make real progress. It will not happen on its own, the only thing that is missing is the political willpower and leadership…

What they are not willing to say (or put in writing) is that LGBTQ rights are not priorities. But let’s be honest for a moment: they are really saying that Human Rights are not a priority. I do not accept that, and I don’t think anyone else should either.

Some Media Reports Mischaracterize CBO Estimate of Senate “HELP” Health Reform Bill (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
The news media are widely reporting that, according to a partial and preliminary Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, health reform legislation that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) is developing would cut the number of uninsured by only 16 million people while costing $1 trillion over ten years. That conclusion, however, is incorrect… In essence, the CBO estimate covers only a part of the emerging HELP bill, and its findings about cost and coverage may differ substantially from what CBO finds when it analyzes the full legislation that the Committee issues. Observers would be well-advised to await such analysis before drawing conclusions about the legislation.

Health Care Reform Arithmetic for the Numerically Challenged (by Dean Baker)
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with preliminary projections of the impact of Senator Kennedy’s health reform bill. CBO had a projected cost of $1 trillion, with an addition 16 million people getting insured over this period. Republicans were quick to put the cost at $62,500 for each additional insured person. This is a good joke, but has no place in serious policy discussions. The relevant question is the cost per year ($6,250). If the projections were done over 20 years, then the cost would be $125,000 per insured person using the Republican methodology.

GOP Pushed For Incomplete Health Care Study, Then Politicized It: Hill Dems (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
On Monday afternoon, critics of a major health care overhaul seized on a report from the Congressional Budget Office showing that a Democratic reform bill could cost $1 trillion over ten years despite adding only 17 million Americans to the ranks of the insured. But the results are incomplete, and they know it. The CBO findings made for a traditional attack based around fears that the government would spend larges swaths of taxpayer money with minimum systematic change… The CBO’s findings, however, are for an incomplete piece of legislation, making the cost-per-coverage estimates much worse than they will ultimately be. Republicans on the committee knew this, according to Democrats. But they pushed for the bill to be studied by the CBO now. And when poor results came back, they ran with them.
I swear, it’s like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football.

And who kicked the empty air?
After CBO Analysis, White House Distances Self From Kennedy Bill (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
“This is not the Administration’s bill,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health care reform legislation, “and it’s not even the final Senate Committee bill.”… Gibbs’ reaction was the second from the White House in a matter of a few hours… Why the pushback? Because the CBO reported in a letter to Kennedy that his bill will cost $1 trillion over 10 years, adding only a net increase of 16 million Americans to the ranks of the insured — leaving tens of millions uninsured (depending on how many Americans you think are uninsured).

Or is it even worse?
Sebelius says Obama is working to perm[ane]ntly block single payer (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Health Justice[:] “Today, on NPR, Secretary Sebelius said that single payer is not only ‘off the table’ but that the President is considering measures to make sure it does not happen now or ever.” More than ever it is crucial that Congress pass no plan that prevents states from enacting their own single payer systems.
Joe Cannon says, “Obama has the balls to ask Americans to donate to his campaign for ‘real health care reform in 2009.’ I’m not making this up!”

ObamaCare: A Non-Existent Health Plan That Begins with Cuts (by Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report)
There is no Obama healthcare plan, “just mouthfuls of generalized rhetoric that changes with the moment, as Obama constantly woos the insurance, drug and hospital corporations.” However, Obama’s proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will take on lives of their own. That’s what Republicans have “been clamoring for for generations,” and Obama offered it to them, upfront. “In his rush to mollify the private healthcare profiteers, Obama has given away the pubic store.”

ZENO’S UNIVERSAL COVERAGE: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
We’re already spending twice as much as countries which already have universal coverage—and PW [a letter writer to the New York Times] is willing to pay more to get what they already have! The oddness of this framework would occur to almost anyone in a different context. To wit: You buy a car for $40,000. Your neighbor buys a car for half that amount–and his car is better! Someone then says your car can be almost as good as his–if you spend six thousand more. Almost anyone would see the oddness of that situation. And yet, that’s the situation which obtains with our health care system. But so what! PW is eager to spend [more]. In all likelihood, he doesn’t know … that we’re already spending twice as much as the countries which have what we want.

Other countries already have what we seek–and they spend half as much as we do!… Your current car cost 40 grand. But in France, they have better cars–for 20. For sixty years, your big news orgs haven’t told you that fact.

Fox Nation wonders if “Obama nationalizing health care” will be “the last straw” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Health Care Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality (by David Leonhardt, New York Times)
There are three main ways that the health care system already imposes rationing on us. The first … involves denying just about everything else. The rapid rise in medical costs has put many employers in a tough spot. They have had to pay much higher insurance premiums, which have increased their labor costs. To make up for these increases, many have given meager pay raises… So when middle-class families complain about being stretched thin, they’re really complaining about rationing. Our expensive, inefficient health care system is eating up money that could otherwise pay for a mortgage, a car, a vacation or college tuition.

The second kind of rationing involves the uninsured. The high cost of care means that some employers can’t afford to offer health insurance and still pay a competitive wage. Those high costs mean that individuals can’t buy insurance on their own…

The final form of rationing is … the failure to provide certain types of care, even to people with health insurance… The comparative-effectiveness research favored by the former Senate majority leaders and the White House has inspired opposition from some doctors, members of Congress and patient groups. Certainly, the critics are right to demand that the research be done carefully. It should examine different forms of a disease and, ideally, various subpopulations who have the disease. Just as important, scientists — not political appointees or Congress — should be in charge of the research. But flat-out opposition to comparative effectiveness is, in the end, opposition to making good choices.

“Health Care Rationing Rhetoric” (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
I believe that when it comes to health care, equity is the dominant principle. Everyone should have the chance to go to a beach, or the redwoods, or the Grand Canyon if they want to, these places shouldn’t be locked up as private property and completely inaccessible to those without the means to buy their way in. Everyone should have access to education as well, and in the same way everyone should have the access to health care. Access to life-saving and life-improving technology and treatments should not depend upon having sufficient household income. But if we don’t use the price mechanism to allocate health care resources, what mechanism do we use?… [I]t’s a question we’ll have to find a way to answer:

Excluded Voices (by Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review)
Ask any pol or business exec how to lower the cost of medical care, and most will reply “preventive care.” Average Americans apparently agree. A new poll by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Trust for America’s Health found that more than three quarters of Americans believe funding for preventive care should increase. The reasoning goes like this: if you catch illness early, it saves treatment costs in the long run. What can be more straightforward? Problem is, there’s oodles of evidence that prevention costs more than it saves.

Few in the media have cast a skeptical eye on preventive care as a magic wand that will make expensive medical care disappear. More should. To help those wanting to give audiences the complete story on preventive care, Campaign Desk talked to Rutgers research professor Louise Russell, whose work is well known in academic circles but less well known in the popular press.
Click through to read the interview.

Small business divided over requiring employer health care (McClatchy)
With 68 million workers, small businesses will have big clout in deciding the fate of President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system. In 1994, the small-business lobby, led by the National Federation of Independent Business, helped kill the Clinton administration’s plan, partly because it included an employer mandate. Since then, health costs have risen sharply. The proportion of small businesses that offer coverage also has fallen precipitously, to 38 percent last year from 61 percent in 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. The result: Among small businesses, there’s more support than there was in the past for government action of some kind.

Limbaugh on health care: “There is no crisis. … The crisis in health care here has been manufactured.” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Obama’s Latest Miniseries (by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post)
The screaming Drudge headline makes it sound like a major network had become a wholly owned subsidiary of the White House: “ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA.” The reality: Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer will be interviewing the president about health care next week… The Drudge item was based on a letter of complaint from the Republican National Committee, which said the programming could become a “glorified infomercial. . . . I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our party’s opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers,” chief of staff Ken McKay wrote.
Did the RNC complain when the networks gave George Bush as much time as he wanted to sell HIS policies?

Doocy dubs ABC the “All Barack Channel;” predicts health care forum will be “Valentine” to Obama’s “health care agenda” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

The question Pete Peterson never gets asked (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Morning Joe … hosted Pete Peterson, giving him an opportunity to plug his book and spread his doom and gloom about “entitlement reform.”… Nobody … asked Peterson about his opposition to health care reform in the early 1990s (“The issue is whether we can afford it. We can’t.”) Since then, health care costs have skyrocketed, taking Medicare costs with them. So the failure of health care reform in 1993/1994 not only resulted in tens of millions of Americans going without health care for the past 15 years, it also contributed to the soaring Medicare spending that Pete Peterson insists is a crisis. All of which suggests a second question somebody should probably ask Peterson: Why should we listen to you?

WSJ continues crusade against health care reform (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
The Wall Street Journal continues its assault on health care reform, warning of “total government control of the health markets.” Along the way, the Journal editorial hits the standard conservative media talking points on malpractice “reform.” The Wall Street Journal claims “trial lawyers and their stratospheric jury awards and settlements have led to major increases in the medical malpractice premiums, thus driving up the overall cost of U.S. health care.” But, as Media Matters has previously noted…: “…[M]alpractice costs amounted to an estimated $24 billion in 2002, but that figure represents less than 2 percent of overall health care spending. Thus, even a reduction of 25 percent to 30 percent in malpractice costs would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small.” [Emphasis added.]

The Journal then claims that as a result of lawsuits, doctors “practice defensive medicine, ordering unnecessary tests to immunize themselves if they do end up in court. Economists disagree on the precise burden of this legal fear, but some argue that it exceeds $100 billion a year.” Again, Media Matters has noted that these concerns are overblown: “…As FactCheck.org has noted, claims that ‘defensive medicine’ drives up medical costs — a principal Bush administration argument for tort reform — have been dismissed as inconclusive by the General Accounting Office and the CBO. The CBO went further, declaring that there is ‘no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending.’” [Emphasis added.]

More flawed AMA reporting (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Here’s how Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly describes the AMA: “The AMA, with about 250,000 members, is the nation’s largest physician group.” Connolly doesn’t give readers any context for that number. She doesn’t tell readers that 250,000 is less than a third of the 800,000 or so practicing doctors in America.  Or that the AMA membership figures include medical students and retired doctors, who account for about half of AMA’s members.  Connolly doesn’t tell readers that the AMA gets at least 20 percent of its budget from drug companies.  Nor does she tell readers the AMA has long opposed meaningful health care reform, and even opposed the creation of Medicare.
Ceci Connolly was demoted for her awful reporting on the 2000 campaign, especially making up demeaning stories about Al Gore. As you can see, she hasn’t changed her ways.

Obama: ‘Given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations,’ U.S. shoudn’t ‘be seen as meddling’ in Iran’s elections. (Think Progress)
Since [Monday’s] mass demonstrations in Iran over the disputed presidential elections, conservatives like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) have urged President Obama to “act” and make forceful statements against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s purported reelection. During a press conference today, Obama reemphasized his “deep concerns” about the election — but pointed out that, “given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations,” he wanted to make sure he did not appear to be “meddling” in Iranian affairs.
Click through to watch the video.

Obama rejects North Korea’s bid to be nuclear power (McClatchy)
Despite President Barack Obama’s assurance Tuesday that he won’t accept North Korea as a nuclear power, he has few options short of war and may have little choice but to find a way to live with the threat.

NKorea warns US of ‘thousand-fold’ military action (AP)
North Korea warned Wednesday of a “thousand-fold” military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked, the latest threat in a drumbeat of rhetoric in defense of its rogue nuclear program. Japanese and South Korean news reports said North Korea is preparing an additional site for test-firing a long-range missile that experts say could be capable of striking the United States. Russia’s deputy defense minister reportedly said it would shoot down any missile headed its way. The warning of a military strike, carried by the North’s state media, came hours after President Barack Obama declared North Korea a “grave threat” to the world and pledged that recent U.N. sanctions on the communist regime will be aggressively enforced.

The Three Essentials of Financial Reform (by Robert Reich, thanks to Economist’s View)
As the White House unveils its long-awaited proposals to prevent another Wall Street meltdown in the future, keep a lookout for three essentials. Without them the Street will revert to its old ways as soon as the coast clears…

1. Stop bankers from making huge, risky bets with other peoples’ money…
2. Prevent any bank from becoming too big to fail…
3. Root out three major conflicts of interest. (1) Credit-rating agencies should no longer be paid by the companies whose issues are being rated; they should be paid by those who use their ratings. (2) Institutional investors like pension funds and mutual funds should not be getting investment advice from the same banks that profit off their investments… (3) the regional Feds that are responsible for much bank oversight should no longer be headed by presidents appointed by the region’s bankers; non-bankers should have the major say, and the regional presidents should have to be confirmed by the Senate…

[T]he big bankers will fight every one of these with all guns blazing, and their lobbyists in full force. … Bottom line: Genuine financial reform will be almost as difficult to achieve as real universal health care. Immense private interests are amassed against the public interest in both cases because staggering amounts of money are at stake. …

The three steps to financial reform (by George Soros, thanks to Economist’s View)
Three principles should guide reform. First, since markets are bubble-prone, regulators must accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big… Second, … we must … use credit controls such as margin requirements and minimum capital requirements … to forestall … bubbles. Third, we must reconceptualise the meaning of market risk…

Markets are subject to imbalances… If too many participants are on the same side, positions cannot be liquidated without causing a discontinuity or, worse, a collapse… To avert a repetition [of the current crisis], the agents must have “skin in the game” but the five per cent proposed by the administration is more symbolic than substantive… It is probably impractical to separate investment banking from commercial banking as the US did with the Glass Steagull Act of 1933. But there has to be an internal firewall… The issuance and trading of derivatives ought to be as strictly regulated as stocks… Custom made derivatives only serve to improve the profit margin of the financial engineers designing them. In fact, some derivatives ought not to be traded at all.
That’s from a man who has made billions of dollars due to the market imbalances he talked about.

Steps to Financial market Reform (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
[S]ocialist sympathizer Robert Lucas, the Nobel prize winning economist at the University of Chicago … also favors extending regulation to the unregulated banking sector: “The regulatory structure that permitted these events to occur will have to be redesigned… The regulatory problem that needs to be solved is roughly this: The public needs a conveniently provided medium of exchange that is free of default risk or ‘bank runs.’ The best way to achieve this would be to have a competitive banking system with government-insured deposits. But this can only work if the assets held by these banks are tightly regulated.”

Is skin in the game the answer? (by Paul Krugman)
According to the Washington Post, one part of the soon-to-be-announced financial regulatory reform will be a requirement that lenders keep some “skin in the game”: “Lenders would be required to retain at least 5 percent of the risk of losses on each package of loan pieces, known as an asset-backed security…” Is that going to do the trick? I’d be more convinced if I hadn’t read my colleague Hyun Song Shin’s piece earlier this year… Shin argues that financial firms actually used securitization to take on more risk, not to sell it to unknowing clients. This suggests that forcing firms to hold on to some of the securitized debt won’t make much if any difference.

Has Anyone Noticed the Housing Bubble? (by Dean Baker)
Even a perfect regulatory structure will not work, if the regulators do not do their job. They will not have an incentive to do their job, if there are no consequences for not doing their job. In this case, we have seen the most disastrous possible regulatory failure — this is like the drunken school bus driver who gets all his passengers killed driving into oncoming traffic — and no one is held accountable. The message to future regulators is therefore to simply go along with the powers that be (i.e. the financial industry) and you will never suffer any negative consequences. It is remarkable that this perspective is completely absent from the coverage of President Obama’s regulatory reform proposal. The media failed dismally in its coverage of the housing bubble. They appear to have learned nothing from this failure.

Consumer prices rise less than expected in May (AP)
Consumer prices rose less than expected in May, fresh evidence that the recession is keeping inflation in check.

GM Finally Drops Controversial Jets But Not Without Cost To Taxpayers (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Six months after General Motors pledged to get rid of its fleet of private jets, the company is poised to finally get the planes off its books. But not before the aircraft cost the beleaguered automobile company – and by extension American taxpayers – an additional hundreds of thousands of dollars, including more than $240,000 for an airport hangar to hold the planes it never used.

Obama blocks list of visitors to White House (MSNBC)
Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

CREW SUES SECRET SERVICE OVER REFUSAL TO RELEASE WHITE HOUSE COAL EXECS VISITOR LOGS (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)
[On Tuesday], Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [filed] a complaint against the Department of Homeland Security based on the refusal of the Secret Service to provide CREW with White House visitor records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

FLASHBACK: Obama Promised To End ‘Secret Meetings’ And Make The White House The ‘People’s House’ (Think Progress)
MSNBC reports that the Obama administration has denied its request for the names of individuals who have visited the White House since the Inauguration… [B]efore his election, Obama promised that he would end the Bush administration’s practice of holding secret meetings in the White House, which is supposed to be “the people’s house”… The day after the Inauguration, Obama issued a memo saying, “my Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”… By opening up access to the White House visitor logs, Obama has an opportunity to fulfill his promise of making the White House the people’s house.

Key Obama Ally Says President Obama Did Not Follow the Law in IG Firing (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
After being briefed [Tuesday] on President Obama’s firing last week of Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the president did not abide by the same law that he co-sponsored – and she wrote – about firing Inspectors General. “The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said… “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.”

White House Plays Hardball; Says Fired IG Walpin Was “Confused, Disoriented” Engaged in “Inappropriate Conduct” (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
Norm Eisen, the Special Counsel to the President, outlined a number of reasons why President Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin. “Mr. Walpin was removed after a review was unanimously requested by the bi-partisan Board of the Corporation,” Eisen writes in the letter, a copy of which was sent to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a key Obama ally who today expressed concern that President Obama did not abide by a law she wrote — and he supported as a senator — requiring 30 day notice to Congress before an Inspector General could be terminated… Eisen charged that at a May 20, 2009 board meeting Walpin “was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.”

Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit Against Obama Administration’s School “Turnaround” Plan (by Bruce A. Dixon at the Black Agenda Report)
Public-private partnerships between Chicago’s City Hall, where two men named Richard Daley have ruled more than 40 of the last 55 years, and a gaggle of corporate bagmen from the Gates, Bradley, Walton and other foundations have honed a disastrous “education reform” agenda that is now national policy. In Chicago, where dozens of neighborhood public schools have been shuttered and hundreds of experienced, predominantly black teachers fired in mid-career, resistance is brewing and spreading.

Obama drive for immigration reform faces an uphill road (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama, Democratic congressional leaders and advocates of revamping the nation’s immigration laws say that developing a comprehensive immigration bill this year is a top priority, despite an already full legislative plate that includes a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, overhauling America’s health care system, addressing climate change and conducting two wars.

Holder: DOJ Will Do All It Can To “Deter Violence” Against Abortion Providers (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Attorney General Eric Holder offered his most forceful condemnation to date of the murder of George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas doctor who ran a women’s clinic that provided late-term abortions, using the occasion to issue a broad warning about the rise of violent extremism. Speaking at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee conference on Tuesday, Holder pledged that the Department of Justice would do all it could to “deter violence against reproductive health care providers” and prosecute those who committed such acts.

FEMA Contracts Lost, Misplaced (The Note, ABC News)
With Hurricane season just over 2 weeks old the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General has released a report finding that FEMA needs to improve how it handles it’s disaster management contracts finding lost files, misplaced boxes and general shambles in the offices that oversaw billions of dollars of contracts. The DHS audit focuses on FEMA’s Acquisition Management Division (AMD) which oversees the contracting of services during a disaster ranging from shelter, to food and ice shipments and other essential services… According to the report, “A senior AMD management official said that ‘Lots of files are  missing—probably 30%.’”

New US climate report dire, but offers hope (AP)
Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours — global warming’s serious effects are already here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned on Tuesday in the grimmest, most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House.

CIA’s Technology Arm Taps Open Source for Enterprise Search
The company in charge of providing technology to the U.S. intelligence community has invested in an open-source firm to provide enterprise-search technology to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Why does the U.S. intelligence community have a private company in charge of providing technology to it? Why are we paying that company a profit, instead of hiring government employees to do the work? And why is there only one company—shouldn’t we be getting bids on this stuff?

Missile defense cuts won’t threaten security, Pentagon tells Congress (McClatchy)
The Pentagon Tuesday reassured senators that cutting $1.2 billion from the nation’s missile defense budget wouldn’t diminish the country’s ability to defend against a rogue missile attack from North Korea or Iran.

House passes war-funding bill, despite reservations (McClatchy)
A divided House of Representatives Tuesday approved by 226 to 202 a $105.9 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and help curb flu outbreaks.

House panel moves to stop detainee transfers (The Hill)
A House panel has approved legislation to prohibit the transfer of military detainees from Guantanamo Bay into the United States until the White House provides a plan.

Lawmakers ask Commerce Department to reject Gulf fish farms (McClatchy)
Citing environmental concerns and regulatory issues, Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and 36 other U.S. lawmakers have asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to reject a plan to allow fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lawmakers Controlling Government’s Budget File for Extensions on Personal Financial Disclosures (Open Secrets)
Members of Congress that control government spending and oversee the beleaguered financial sector are having a hard time getting their own finances in order, CRP has found. Forty of the 63 lawmakers who still haven’t filed their 2008 personal financial disclosure … reports, due May 15, sit on a congressional committee related to the federal budget, appropriations or financial sector oversight.

Ensign Admits to Affair (Political Wire)
Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) is admitting he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff, KLAS-TV reports. Said Ensign in a statement: “I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions… An aide in Ensign’s office said the affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008, with a campaign staffer who was married to an employee in Ensign’s Senate office. Neither have worked for the senator since May 2008. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity.” Ensign has been testing the waters for a possible presidential bid in 2012.

Ensign Whacked Clinton For His Infidelities, Called Them “Embarrassing” For Country (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Sen. John Ensign’s admission late Tuesday that he had an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer over the course of nine months doesn’t seem likely to cause the type of wall-to-wall coverage that similar marital slip-ups have in the past. But it should, at the very least, re-open the longstanding debate over how much attention should be paid to a politician’s personal life. And when it comes to this topic, Ensign’s own record of denouncing the affairs and misconducts of other pols could come back to haunt him. During the height of the scandal surrounding Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, the Nevada Republican denounced the president’s conduct as “an embarrassing moment for the country.”…

Weeks later, Ensign would call on Clinton to resign. “I came to that conclusion recently, and frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through,” he was quoted saying at the time. “He has no credibility left,” he added. At the time, Ensign was in a tight Senate race with incumbent Harry Reid, an election he would ultimately end up losing. And he didn’t shy away from trying to exploit the moral trip-ups in Clinton’s personal life to benefit himself and the GOP.

Sestak Staffing Up For Senate Race Against Specter (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
In yet another sign that Joe Sestak is dead serious about taking on Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Dem primary, Sestak has started building a campaign staff for a Senate race, according to a Democrat with direct knowledge of the conversations. Sestak has interviewed a number of people who would work for his statewide communications operation and online outreach effort, and has talked to candidates for his field operation, the Democrat says. Meanwhile, three chief media consultants on Sestak’s 2006 and 2008 House races — J.J. Balaban, Doc Sweitzer, and Neil Oxman of the Philadelphia-based firm The Campaign Group — have signaled to Sestak that they’ll work for him if and when he enters the Senate primary.

Deeds Edges McDonnell in New Poll (Political Wire)
An Anzalone Liszt Research (D) poll in Virginia finds Creigh Deeds (D) leading Bob McDonnell, 42% to 38%. The poll was conducted for the Democratic Governor’s Association. Deeds has a 48% to 14% favorability rating while McDonnell has a 43% to 19% rating.

The Left Flank (by Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Right Wing activists wield more power than the Progressive activists. And the reason is, in my opinion, Right Wing activists put their issues first, their pols second. They remember what elections and politics are actually about – what the policy looks like in the end… George Bush LOST the 2000 election and barely won the 2004 election. His agenda was disfavored by the American People. And yet he got his agenda through the Congress… The American Presidency is only weakened on policy when Democrats hold the office. This is, in part, because the Left Flank of the Democratic Party is incredibly ineffectual.

I once thought that the Left blogs could help to change that. But it seems there is much more interest in being Charlie Cooks and Stu Rothenbergs or in engaging in food fights with the Right blogs and Glenn Beck than in shaping the policy of the country.

Cannonfire

As Furor Over Palin Joke Rages, Letterman Rises in the Ratings (New York Times)
Monday night, when Mr. Letterman offered his extended apology to Governor Palin and her family, he had his best night yet in the continuing late-night competition against NBC’s new “Tonight” show star, Conan O’Brien. In preliminary national ratings, Mr. Letterman pulled in 700,000 more viewers than Mr. O’Brien Monday night, 3.9 million to 3.2 million, his biggest margin yet over his new competitor. Mr. Letterman routinely trailed the former “Tonight” host Jay Leno by a million viewers or more. But as he has since his start on June 1, Mr. O’Brien was dominant among the younger viewers most television networks prefer — because most advertisers do —  winning by margins exceeding 100 per cent in categories like viewers between the ages of 18 and 34.

This is your progressive movement on 1935: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
Last Thursday, Campbell Brown asked a panel to evaluate Letterman’s jokes about Palin. Twice, Jeffrey Toobin said he disapproved of the old coot’s “slutty” joke. “I have a problem with the slutty line,” Toobin said. “I think that was totally inappropriate.” The second time around, progressive thinker Sam Seder offered his own “analysis.” This is your progressive movement on the year 1935: “…[F]rankly, I don’t even think that joke was sexist, per se… [H]e didn’t [call the governor of Alaska a slut]! He said–he talked about her slutty makeup!… There is a big difference there, because he is talking about appearance.”…

The cluelessness there is just stunning. Presumably, this resembles the way most white people “reasoned” in 1935. In that era’s majority entertainment, it was routine to subject African-Americans to standard forms of ridicule. People like Seder couldn’t see the problem with that. The jokes weren’t “racist, per se”–and everyone laughed! What was the fuss all about?… By the way: It’s great to see Seder has a daughter. As David Letterman once might have joked: What a lucky girl!

Glenn Beck declares: “I don’t care who the person is, we don’t make fun of their families” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Beck in April: Glenn Beck mocks Obama’s aunt’s “limp”

What’s 100,000 or so deaths “to retain political and professional credibility”? (by Will Bunch at Attytood)
A journalist named Michael Hastings has a must-read piece … analyzing what went wrong with media coverage in the run-up and then during the war in Iraq. As Hastings deconstructs it, there were many factors, including lack of foreign policy expertise by the journalists covering the story, a focus on the story from the White House perspective and on the politics of it all, and not the actual policy. But Hastings focuses on the reason that I find the most chilling: That Beltway journalists felt that staying with “the pack” — avoiding what would be a contrarian, and thus uncool (my word) position — was the safest way to climb the well-paying and prestigious career ladder.
It’s exactly what many so-called progressive bloggers did in 2008 by trashing Hillary Clinton and making a god of Obama.

The US Mainstream Media: Selective Omission and Planned Misinformation (by Solomon Comissiong at the Black Agenda Report)
There is method to the maddening homogeneity and shallowness of the U.S. corporate media. “Keeping the public as dumbed down as possible keeps their corporate clients happy and their political partners in power.” Media corporations advertise that they sell “news,” but what they’re really marketing is a daily defense of imperial rule. That’s why, for example, “they won’t tell you how so-called ‘free trade’ policies create sweatshops, plunder, mass migration, and civil unrest.”

Gene Randall “Reporting,” Inc. (by Brad Jacobson, Columbia Journalism Review)
Former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall’s video “report” for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism. But the Randall-Chevron production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media critic put it, “over to the dark side” and how that might further muddy the line between news and corporate advocacy…

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley’s investigation presented multiple perspectives while Randall’s included only Chevron officials and consultants. Everyone interviewed in Randall’s piece, in other words, was paid by Chevron, including Randall himself. Randall’s video also clearly strives to resemble an authentic news report, employing classic stylistic TV news techniques, while never informing the viewer it’s a Chevron production. Most deceptive, however, is that Randall—looking like the consummate TV newsman—begins the video with the accompanying graphic “Gene Randall Reporting” and concludes with the voiceover: “This is Gene Randall reporting.”

PBS Blesses Old Religious Shows, But Bans the New (Washington Post)
The Public Broadcasting Service agreed yesterday to ban its member stations from airing new religious TV programs, but permitted the handful of stations that already carry “sectarian” shows to continue doing so. The vote by PBS’s board was a compromise from a proposed ban on all religious programming. Such a ban would have forced a few stations around the country to give up their PBS affiliation if they continued to broadcast local church services and religious lectures.

Jeffrey Rosen gets around to reading Sotomayor’s opinions; will other media notice? (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Jeffrey Rosen has, more than a month after writing “The Case Against Sonia Sotomayor” — gotten around to actually reading some of the judge’s opinions.  And the result is a much more favorable take on Sotomayor than he previously offered. Now, I don’t take Jeffrey Rosen seriously, and you shouldn’t, either.  Not until he corrects the factual errors that have been brought to his attention.  But the elite media doesn’t really mind that Rosen crops quotes to make it appear the speaker is saying the opposite of what he really said, or that he refuses to issue a correction, so they continue to take Rosen quite seriously.

So it will be interesting to see if Rosen’s more favorable assessments of Sotomayor get repeated and referred to in media coverage of her nomination as much as his critical assessments have been. But I won’t hold my breath.

Newsbusters falsely claims Bush would have won statewide Florida recount (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Newsbusters’ Mike Sargent pretends that George W. Bush would have won a statewide Florida recount in 2000. In fact, the very study on which Sargent bases that claim found that Al Gore would have won had there been a full statewide recount.  As the Washington Post put it: “An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins.”

Report ties increase in hate crimes to ‘anti-immigrant vitriol.’ (Think Progress)
A new report by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund shows a close correlation between the increasingly volatile immigration debate and a growing number of hate crimes against Latinos and “perceived immigrants.” The report, “Confronting the New Faces of Hate,” calls out a number of restrictionist groups that consistently invoke anti-immigrant rhetoric as they try to make the case against immigration… According to the Washington Post, hate crimes against Latinos have been going up for four consecutive years, jumping from 426 to 595 incidents in the last year alone with a 40 percent overall increase between 2003 and 2007.

Army Officer: Bomb North Korea Before They Nuke Us, Like Iraq (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
Who was that insane lieutenant colonel telling Fox News we should bomb North Korea? That would be Robert Maginnis, who fought the gay menace for the Family Research Council, then claimed Iraq had many horrible weapons. Maginnis [on Tuesday] warned Fox’s Shep Smith about how North Korea has Taepodong-2 missiles on the pad ready to launch, possibly aimed at the U.S… Keep in mind Maginnis’ track record. Eight years ago, he participated in the a Pentagon program in which generals shilled for war, even though he felt “manipulated” and “very disappointed” with the quality of intelligence, as he later told the New York Times.

Neo-Nazis are in the Army now (by Matt Kennard, Salon)
Since the launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has struggled to recruit and reenlist troops. As the conflicts have dragged on, the military has loosened regulations, issuing “moral waivers” in many cases, allowing even those with criminal records to join up. Veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder have been ordered back to the Middle East for second and third tours of duty. The lax regulations have also opened the military’s doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members — with drastic consequences.

Georgia court ban on ‘exposing’ children to ‘homosexuals’ axed by state Supreme Court. (Think Progress)
In 2007, Eric and Sandy Ehlers Mongerson divorced, and a Georgia trial judge awarded custody of their four children to Sandy and visitation rights to Eric. Inexplicably, the judge also held that Eric was “prohibited from exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.” Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously threw out the trial judge’s ban.

Drugs Won the War (by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times)
This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won. “We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”… Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average… Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad… Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment.

Media Matters for America headlines

NPR’s Zwerdling understated LGBT criticisms of Obama’s DOMA brief

Media deceptively claim stimulus funds going to “train station” that “hasn’t been used in 30 years”

Wash. Times minimized Princeton alumni group’s opposition to admission of women, minorities

Parroting GOP, media claim stimulus funding “guard rail to nowhere” — but project was cancelled

Ignoring ABC statement, Kudlow alleges ABC will devote programming to “help sell” Obama’s health care plan

More media misrepresent scope of preliminary CBO analysis of health bill

Blitzer did not challenge Boehner’s false claim that CBO scored “public option”

USA Today misleadingly described Judge Hamilton’s record in reporting Sessions’ attack

NY Times, Tapper misrepresent scope of CBO’s analysis of draft health reform bill

Politico did not note that it’s Luntz — not Obama — who’s talking about a “Washington takeover” of health care

The Kid at the State Department Who Figured Out the Iranians Should Be Allowed to Keep Tweeting
Jared Cohen, a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, placed a call to Twitter Monday, inquiring about their plan to perform maintenance in what would be the middle of the day, Iran time. Twitter then postponed their maintenance until the middle of the night Iran-time.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warns online media
Iran‘s opposition announced a third day of street demonstrations Wednesday as the country’s most powerful military force warned of a crackdown against online media in its first pronouncement on the deepening election crisis.

North Korea Says U.S. Journalists Admitted to Smear Campaign
North Korea said that two U.S. journalists whom it jailed last week had admitted to a politically motivated smear campaign. Official media said they crossed the border illegally “for the purpose of making animation files to be used for an anti-DPRK (North Korea) smear campaign over its human rights issue.”

Analyst: Half of U.K. Local and Regional Papers Could Shut By 2014
Up to half of the U.K.’s local and regional newspapers could shut within the next five years, an analyst warned. Claire Enders, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, told committee that newspapers would close across Britain because revenues would collapse by 52% between 2007 and 2013.

UK News Bosses Tell MPs: Let Us Fight Google Together (Paid Content)
UK newspaper publishers, in their latest plea for regulatory reform, want to be allowed to collectively lobby Google for story payments. It was among a litany of woes Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall, Johnson Press CEO John Fry and Trinity Mirror CEO Sly Bailey—sitting at the same table together—reported to the House of Commons’ culture, media and sport select committee’s inquiry on the future of local and regional media on Tuesday. Newspapers have made the Google-should-pay case before but this is the first time publishers have publicly discussed collaborating to tackle the Google problem, and it says everything about how pressing their problems are.

China Communist Party newspaper to expand coverage
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, is expanding its coverage as part of a reported multibillion-dollar drive to expand China’s international media influence. The staid daily that chronicles the activities of the party leadership and publishes editorials praising official policies plans to expand from 16 to 20 pages with more coverage of breaking and international news, it said in a notice on its Web site Tuesday. The newspaper’s 72 foreign and domestic bureaus will be upgraded, it said, without giving details.

China: Use of Controversial Software to Filter Web Is Optional, Official Says
An official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that while computer makers were required to supply an Internet filtering program on all new computers, they were not required to install it.

Vegas paper gets subpoena to ID online commenters
A Las Vegas newspaper says it has been served a federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about readers who posted comments on the paper’s Web site.

You Don’t Have a Right to Anonymity (by John Cook at Gawker)
A British court has ruled that the Times of London is free to unmask an anonymous British blogger, just ten days after the National Review caused [an] uproar by outing a left-wing blogger named Publius. This is a good thing… [T]he notion that anonymous publishers have a right, in perpetuity, to keep their identities a secret—or that people who learn their identities are honor-bound not to reveal them—is nonsense. In both Blevins’ case and Horton’s, the motive behind their anonymity involved the inconvenience to their personal lives that would be entailed if they were revealed as the authors of their own ideas. Horton risked the ire of his employers, not to mention the victims and their relatives involved in the cases he discussed. And Blevins wrote that he didn’t want his left-wing advocacy to interfere with his private law practice, his law-school classroom, or his relationships with conservative family members. There’s nothing noble in proclaiming the value of ideas that you don’t have the courage to advocate to your own family…

There’s nothing inherently wrong with blogging anonymously…, though some motivations are more cowardly than others. And much good can and has come from people who are free to write the truth without bearing the consequences. But the decision to do so carries with it certain exceedingly obvious risks, and when the jig is up, it’s best for anonybloggers to endure the scrutiny with dignity rather than complain that people who had no obligation or interest in preserving their anonymity have behaved as such.

Beta life (by Jeff Jarvis)
NYU student Cody Brown delivers a neat take on the discussion about process v. product journalism last week, making distinctions between batch and real-time processing of journalism (read: The New York Times as opposed to blogs)… Brown says that for print, the “gestalt” is “batch processing.” How should it develop its brand? “As the voice of god.” How should it publish information on a developing story? “Cautiously… Compare and contrast with his take on online. Gestalt: “”Real Time Processing. Information is processed on the fly.” Brand? “An open platform… How to publish? “Instantly. When a page is able to be updated at any frequency, corrections can be made just as fast. Rumors and gossip can be used as leverage to get sources, who otherwise wouldn’t, to spill what they know…

It’s not just the standards, tradition, and ego of the legacy press that prevents it from enjoying the benefits of beta, Brown argues, but the perception and value of its practices and reputation. That would seem to argue that it’s impossible for the legacy to update from product to process. I’m not sure I agree, but I do think that Brown put the challenge clearly through one end of the prism. The question is whether the legacy press – for the benefit of its staff even more than its audience – can issue enough caveats to enable it to work real-time. Forget blogs in this discussion. Will The New York Times ever be comfortable working on the standards and practices of 24-hour cable news? Can it afford to? Don’t they have to?

Study: U.S. Newspaper Biz Expected to Lose $25 Billion by 2013 
The newspaper industry in North America will shed some $13 billion in revenue by 2013, according to new research from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Total advertising will fall by a cumulative 32.7%. 

AP eyeing better deals with Internet heavyweights
The Associated Press hopes to negotiate more lucrative licensing deals with major Web sites while mining new revenue from advertisers and readers as the 163-year-old news cooperative adapts to Internet-driven changes in the media. Chief Executive Tom Curley touched upon the AP’s financial priorities in a Tuesday interview after a meeting with employees in which he discussed possible revenue opportunities and initiatives to protect online content… Without offering specifics, Curley said the AP expects its revenue to fall this year and next…

Curley identified new licensing contracts with the AP’s largest Internet customers as his top priority… Readers also might be asked to pay to read and see some of the AP’s content, either on mobile devices or on computers, Curley said.

Yahoo Newspaper Consortium Adds Five Members (Paid Content)
The possible sale of Yahoo’s HotJobs would be a huge blow for members of the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium, as the alliance is the only source of help-wanted-ad revenue for nearly 200 papers. But that’s apparently not deterring papers from joining. The newspaper alliance announced five new members… The Yahoo alliance has been one of the few bright spots for newspapers in recent months. A recent estimate by AdAge found that the two-and-a-half-year-old consortium sold $50 million in Yahoo ad inventory, with about “several million” dollars in sales being added each week.

For Yahoo Newspaper Consortium Members, Targeting Is Now The Draw, Not Job Ads (Paid Content)
For websites still joining ad alliances like the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium and quadrantONE, the appeal is in the targeting and ad assistance—not the job listings. For the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, HotJobs was initially a main selling point, but with unemployment currently at 9.1 percent, job ads aren’t so hot these days. None of the five new consortium members have signed on for the HotJobs service. Instead, the newspapers all cited a desire to access Yahoo’s targeted inventory and online ad saleforce training.

Newspapers May Want to Rethink How High to Build Pay Walls
Forecast: Digital Ad Revenue Expected to Grow Again in 2011

Musictoob Launches Linking Tool For Bloggers… (Paid Content)
Pop music news and gossip site Musictoob thinks it has found a way for some aggregators to get around accusations of stealing content. The site has launched a new tool that lets any blogger link to outside stories, which then show up under the blogger’s URL but are still hosted on the site of the original publisher. Musictoob says that both the blogger and the site he or she links to register page views (A small frame also shows up on the top of the page.)… “Everybody who comes to the party gets rewarded,” says Michael Rovner, the general manager of Musictoob. “It’s actually loading—it’s not us stealing page views.” Musictoob is using the service, which it calls the Tuna Platform, on its own site—and it’s also now giving it away for free.

‘Boston Globe’ Iran Photo Gallery Nets 750,000 Page Views in First 24 Hours 
The Big Picture blog on Boston.com posted a very popular photo gallery this week of photos from the election demonstrations in Iran. The photographs, all from wire services, offered graphic evidence of the severity of the protests, and generated tremendous attention on Twitter and current affairs blogs.

‘Buffalo News’ to Print ‘NYT’ National Edition
The Buffalo News reports that it will begin printing The New York Times national edition in fall for distribution as far as Rochester and Toronto. The deal follows approximately $950,000 in press upgrades at the News, mostly for additional color capacity. The Times will be printed on one of the plant’s 5-year-old KBA Colora presses, the News on the other.

Hirschorn: The Economist Benefited From Being Semi Competent About the Web (Paid Content)
Michael Hirschorn writes an essay explaining why the British magazine is thriving while Time and Newsweek are in the inexorable state of decline despite their frenzied efforts… “By repositioning themselves as repositories of commentary and long-form reporting—much like [The Atlantic], it’s worth noting, which has never delivered impressive profit margins—the American newsweeklies are going away from precisely the thing that has propelled The Economist’s rise: its status as a humble digest, with a consistent authorial voice, that covers absolutely everything that you need to be informed about…”

But the more intriguing analysis…: “While other publications whore themselves to Google (NSDQ: GOOG), The Huffington Post, and the Drudge Report, almost no one links to The Economist. It sits primly apart from the orgy of link love elsewhere on the Web.” His point: by not whoring itself out completely on the Web, people value its print product more, while the opposite has happened at Time and Newsweek: they have succeeded to a larger extent online, as the print version declines.

MSLO Starts Selling Downloadable ‘How To’ Videos; Part Of `Martha University’ (Paid Content)
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia  has opened up Martha University, a section of the media company’s website that will sell “how to” videos covering recipes, entertaining, home decor and weddings. The videos, which are powered by iAmplify, a New York-based audio and video content distribution firm, will be sold for prices ranging from $5.95 to $12.95. Speaking at an industry event last month, Martha Stewart told paidContent that this new venture did not mean the company would be abandoning its ad-supported online model. Instead, it is meant to gauge consumers’ appetite for pay-to-download video. It will serve as a broader test of how much internet users will pay for content, something every media company is looking at right now.

Newsweek Pares an Issue in August
Newsweek typically skips a week of publication around Christmas, the Fourth of July and in August, printing a double issue to cover each two-week period. This summer, however, Newsweek readers will receive two double issues in August, on top of the one in July. 

Gisele Bundchen Mag Covers Strike Out at the Newsstand
Gisele, it turns out, doesn’t sell. Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar each put Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen on covers this year, and both promptly had their worst-selling issues off the newsstand in 2009. “It might be that she’s losing her looks,” quipped Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak.

Crowdsourcing comes to radio.
The emerging phenomena is being used to allow listeners to develop a station’s playlist in real-time. San Mateo, CA-based Jelli has developed a social music service that allows radio listeners — through online voting — to choose what should play next. CBS Radio’s “Live 105” KITS, San Francisco is the first station to deploy the technology.

Radio Hall of Fame to add three.
Three radio giants have been selected for posthumous induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame. The list includes Puerto Rican legend Jose Miguel Agrelot, who becomes the first Hispanic ever inducted into the NRHOF. Also being honored are longtime Phillies announcer Harry Kalas and Chicago talk host Studs Terkel.

Sorry, There’s No Way to Save the TV Business
It Should Take Its Cues From What Happened to Newspapers

Nielsen Concedes News Ratings Error 
Nielsen Media Research has conceded making an error and is performing a recount after the company’s ratings on Tuesday initially indicated that ABC’s World News most likely had its smallest audience ever.

Reception problems linger after DTV transition
The shutdown of U.S. analog TV service on Friday appears to have gone relatively smoothly, but as expected, a lot of viewers are having problems getting the stations they want.

Analyst: Why The Bullish Forecasts For In-Game Ad Spending Are Justified (Paid Content)
Various reports are forecasting that marketers will spend billions of dollars on in-game ads over the next five years—with some even saying that spending could grow by almost 30 percent to top $1 billion next year(per ClickZ). Meanwhile, the IAB is proposing new standards to help make it easier for companies to buy, sell and quantify the value of in-game ads. But with all forms of advertising taking budget cuts, is this bullishness around in-game ads justified? Yes—according to Citi Investment analyst Mark Mahaney.

Guessing game: How much money is YouTube losing?
Internet video leader YouTube Inc.’s losses have been overblown by some analysts, but corporate parent Google Inc. doesn’t mind the misperception, according to a study to be released Wednesday… San Francisco-based RampRate reasons the perception of large losses at YouTube helps Google negotiate more favorable contracts with movie, TV and music studios licensing their video. What’s more, copyright owners also are less likely to go to court in pursuit of unpaid royalties and damages if they believe YouTube is a big money loser.

Microsoft To Scale Back Its YouTube-Rival Soapbox (Paid Content)
Two years after making a strategic decision to launch a user-generated video upload service of its own rather than buy another site, Microsoft is pulling back from the market. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Erik Jorgensen tells CNET that the company is rethinking the strategy around the service it launched—Soapbox. Rather than continue to offer a wide selection of uploaded videos, Microsoft wants to create a “forum where bloggers and citizen journalists can post videos relevant to areas in which MSN focuses, categories like entertainment, lifestyle and finance”—if it keeps the service up at all.

MySpace to cut 30 pct of jobs to boost efficiency
MySpace said Tuesday it is cutting nearly 30 percent of its work force in a bid to become more efficient, bringing its staffing level more in line with its more popular rival, Facebook. The move, the latest cost-cutting effort at the site, comes less than two months after the unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. hired former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta, 39, as its new chief executive. It also comes a day after data from tracking firm comScore show Facebook has caught up with MySpace in monthly U.S. visitors for the first time.

FIM Layoffs Underway; Unlike MySpace, No Specifics (Paid Content)
Fox Interactive Media quietly is cutting corporate staff… Is FIM being dismantled? Not now but it sounds like a very real possibility. In the meantime, it will be as lean as they can make it. Currently, FIM includes MySpace, Photobucket, Fox Sports Interactive, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, AskMen, the Fox Interactive Media Audience Network and the Digital Publishing Group.  The layoffs follow news that FIM has canceled plans to consolidate staff at a new Playa Vista office and is trying to get out of that lease.

Amazon Buys Mobile Product Search Startup SnapTell (Paid Content)
Amazon.com search subsidiary A9.com has purchased SnapTell, a startup that offers users a way to search for product information from their mobile phones. Its free iPhone and Android apps let people take a photo of a piece of media—like a DVD, CD, or video game—and then immediately see product information, including reviews.

Facebook Tests Twitter-Like Real Time Search (Paid Content)
Likely feeling left out of the real-time search craze, Facebook said Tuesday evening that it had started testing an update to its search service that includes “up-to-the-minute results” from status updates, notes, and links. The results are broken down into two groups: Those from the accounts of friends and those written by users who have made their profiles and content available to anyone.

Mac News Briefs: Daz 3D releases enhanced version of animation program
Daz 3D announced a new free version of its 3-D art and animation package Tuesday while rolling out an enhanced version of the application featuring professional-level tools.

DirecTV to offer targeted ads in 2011: WSJ
U.S. satellite television provider DirecTV Group is planning a new service allowing advertisers to reach viewers based on their locations, the Wall Street Journal said.

Cell Phone Execs Will Face Questions On Text Messaging Price Hikes
Over the last few years, telephone companies have been hiking up the price for text messages from as little as one-cent per message to 25-cents or more depending if the text is plain text or a multimedia text with photo, video, or audio.

Verizon and AT&T deny collusion on texting prices
U.S. wireless carriers Verizon Communications and AT&T took issue with assertions that they colluded in setting prices for text messages, saying on Tuesday that prices for most customers had fallen and the market was competitive.

IRS, Treasury want cell phone tax repealed
Company-issued cell phones might feel like a leash to some workers, a tether to the office even in their off-hours. They also are a taxable fringe benefit, something the Obama administration wants to change. The administration Tuesday asked Congress to repeal the widely ignored tax on the personal use of company cell phones, calling it outdated and difficult to enforce. The request comes a week after the Internal Revenue Service sparked an outcry when it sought ideas for how better to enforce the law.

Greeks to register prepaid cell phones
Greece’s prepaid mobile phone users will now have to register their identities in a bid to tackle illegal immigration and other crime, the communications minister said Tuesday.