Tag Archives: Media

Our Liberal Media

Most of us on the left realize that despite the conventional wisdom that the media is “liberal” it generally leans to the right. It’s not unusual to see stories percolate in the right and then go straight into the mainstream media (look at “Obama’s Katrina” for a good example). Meteor Blades at Daily Kos did some number-crunching to prove the point that the media loves Republicans.

There were 137 individuals appearing on the Sunday talk shows who are now or have been governors, mayors, Representatives or Senators. Combined, they made 557 appearances. Of these, 242, or 43.3% were by Democrats and 315, or 56.6% were by Republicans. Not exactly fair and balanced even before calculating the D/R ratio in Congress. Of particular note, one independent Senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, made nine appearances, while the other independent, Bernie Sanders, made a single appearance.

The journalists on the panel were even more skewed to the right than politicians.

I did not sort the media representatives by where they fall on the political spectrum. There’s no doubt that Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard (56 appearances) is an ultra-conservative and David Corn of Mother Jones (two appearances) is an ultra-liberal. But in many cases, selecting was too highly subjective. The concentration of media they represent, however, is telling. Remember, this does not include the anchors:

From the Washington Post, 125 appearances; NPR (80); the Weekly Standard (70); The New York Times (63); CBS (48); ABC (42); The Wall Street Journal (25), CNBC (16), PBS (13), Time (12) NBC (12).

As regards left vs. right (excluding The Wall Street Journal), I stretched the terms a little and included the Huffington Post (10) and Slate (4) with the leftwing The Nation (7), Salon (4), Air America (5), Mother Jones (2), AmericaBlog (1) and The American Prospect (1). Total: 34.

On the right, CBN (2), National Review (8); Politico (14); the Weekly Standard (70); Washington Examiner (9) and the Washington Times (10). Total: 113, or 76% of the left-right grouping.

There are 4X more conservative journalists than liberal journalists on these panels. No wonder most of us on the left hate these shows and don’t watch them. The panels also skew heavily white and male.

I’m not sure how conservatives keep getting away with saying everyone knows the media is liberal but it seems to be accepted as a fact by the media establishment. I look at the make-up of the guests on Sunday shows and see that my viewpoint is just not represented. How is that “fair and balanced?”

Is Our Media Learning?

Back in December, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen had a proposal – fact check the Sunday morning talk shows. The proposal was eagerly embraced in the blogosphere but seemed to go nowhere. ABC’s Jake Tapper, the interim host for This Week has decided to give this a try:

The idea was first proposed by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen and I thought it worth a try. PolitiFact editor Bill Adair, the St Petersburg Times’ Washington bureau chief, and I know each other from fact-checking forums and such (I was at the Fact Check desk during the 2004 elections) so I asked him if he’d be willing to give it a try. He was.

Obviously I aspire to fact-check newsmakers during the show itself, but in addition to that, starting this Sunday April 12, after the show, you can read Politifact’s fact checks on ABCNews.com/This Week and at Politifact.com.

The guests for the show are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani will certainly keep those fact-checker busy. I hope this experiment works because the media has really become a place for politicians to deposit their talking points, and the media pretends they don’t know what’s true and what’s false. There’s no penalty for lying. Hopefully fact-checking can start killing those lies that become conventional wisdom (like the one that Rudy Giuliani is some kind of security expert).

The Media Gets A Clue

NBC’s Chuck Todd notices that the Tea Party movement isn’t a “grassroots” movement like it’s been portrayed by the media:

Chuck Todd actually gets this right on Meet The Press. Gregory played a clip of Dick Armey trying to say that the teabaggers represent the “center” of American politics as bizarre as that may sound and it was Chuck Todd who corrected that lie. FOX News grabbed them, promoted them, sent their hosts to caress and nurture them and were the first network in the history of broadcasting to become true political activists that worked to undermine a newly elected president.

…

(Videotape)FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): This is the broad center of American politics. Look at the polling data. Right now the tea party polls higher than the Republicans and the Democrats. And it is becoming increasingly clear to the electorate out there, and they’re expressing their understanding, it is the Democrat majority in Congress and the president that’s on the liberal fringe and we are on the center. There’s no doubt about it.

TODD: I don’t know they are in the center. I mean when we did our own polling on this it’s clear that the tea party gets a big benefit because there is one news organization that gives them a huge bump all the time. I mean they are favorable among Fox viewers is through the roof and the rest of the country sort of doesn’t know a lot about these folks. But the message of the tea party sort of saying the government doesn’t work, these institutions and we’ve got to shrink the size of government, is tapping into what we were just discussing before which is this — not disgust but sort of this distrust of all institutions that are out there. Government included.

Will the media also admit now that Faux News is a branch of the Republican Party? They also feature several potential Republican presidential candidates on a daily basis and were Scott Brown campaign headquarters during the election. Seriously though, is this what our politics will turn into because of the new court ruling? Will all our candidates now be media stars?

The Haiti Disaster Brings Out Teh Stupid

We’ve already heard about the disgusting statements of Pat Robertson about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Rush Limbaugh also couldn’t help making an ass of himself about the Haiti crisis.

On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama’s hands by allowing him to play up his “compassionate” and “humanitarian” credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to “boost his credibility with the black community.”

As if that weren’t enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.

Limbaugh also seems to feel we’ve done enough already for Haiti: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

The U.S. gives 0.9% of our budget to foreign aid. The biggest recipients are in the Middle East: Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan. The GDP of Haiti (2008) is $6.95B, the GDP of the U.S. is $14.2T. Haiti has a per capita income of $400/year. It’s desperately poor, but Limbaugh resents the pennies we send there, I guess.

Fox News followed Limbaugh’s lead in turning this into some kind of political issue. Faux News ran the president’s statement on Haiti word-for-word with this headline “Pres. Obama Reacts to Haiti Earthquake Faster Than Christmas Bomber.”

They do realize that no one died in the attempted Christmas underpants bomber attack, right?

The mainstream media, like the good little sheep they are followed right in Limbaugh’s footsteps.

Elected in part out of revulsion at the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Obama now finds himself confronting an even more devastating and complex humanitarian crisis.

And, adding irony upon irony, the racial context of New Orleans is writ large in Port-au-Prince. Katrina cost George W. Bush what little standing he had among moderates in his own party in part because the shocking images of suffering in New Orleans were so racially imbalanced.

Now the Obama administration’s competence and compassion will be tested in a similar racial context—and with a much worse infrastructure. Obama and his aides understand all of this. The president was out early today with a strong statement about American efforts to deal with the aftermath of the devastating Haitian earthquake.

Shorter Newsweek: Obama has to respond because the victims are black. They are just saying it in a nicer way than Limbaugh did.

Bulo Remembers 2009-“Please Accept Our Apologies”

People are human. They make mistakes. And most journalists fall into that category. The human part, I mean.

Story errors are generally ‘corrected’, if at all, in tiny one paragraph increments buried deep in the paper days after the mistake was printed. At least with American mass media newspapers.

Fortunately, (a) sometimes the correction is funnier than the error, and (b) in some developed countries, like Great Britain for example, journalists are less reluctant to make fun of their own foibles when making corrections.

Which leads me to one of those annual lists that I look forward to every year: Crunk’s 2009: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections.

A few examples should clue you in on why this is one of my yearly faves:

News Tribune (Washington State):

“A photo caption on Tuesday’s Page A8 said a student was performing the Heimlich maneuver on a dummy.

The student was actually playing around and pretending to choke the dummy.”

British Medical Journal:

During the editing of this Review of the Week by Richard Smith (BMJ 2008;337:a2719,doi:10.1136/bmj.a2719), the author’s term “pisshouse” was changed to “pub” in the sentence: “Then, in true British and male style, Hammond met Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, in the pub and did a deal.” However, a pisshouse is apparently a gentleman’s toilet, and (in the author’s social circle at least) the phrase “pisshouse deal” is well known. (It alludes to the tendency of men to make deals while standing side by side and urinating.) In the more genteel confines of the BMJ Editorial Office, however, this term was unknown and a mistake was made in translating it into more standard English. We apologise for any misunderstanding this may have caused.

Denver Post:

Because of a reporter’s error, Bill Husted’s column on Page 3B on Sunday contained an item about a tombstone for “Elway the Drug Sniffing Dog.” The tombstone was digitally fabricated for a blog and does not exist.

Not to mention the DeKalb Post hed: “Hooker  Named Lay Person of the Year”.

There’s dozens and dozens of ’em over at this Regret the Error site. And, a shoutout from the author to the internets for ‘calling bullshit’ when the media won’t.

All in all, I am reminded of a French movie that I never saw nor wanted to see (or was it an Edith Piaf song?): ‘Je Ne Regret Riens’.


Best Wishes to Joe Rogalsky

We at Delaware Liberal received official word last night that Joe Rogalsky will be leaving as Gov. Markell’s press secretary to reconnect with his family and then to take on other challenges. Official in that it came from Joe Rogalsky. I, for one, will miss him.

He made clear that he remains a strong and enthusiastic supporter of the Governor.

FWIW, I think that Joe did a superb job at getting the Governor’s message out there. He was especially skilled at tying the press releases to the ongoing themes of the Administration. If only the national D’s were as skilled at message management.

This is a young man’s job, IMHO, and there’s a high burnout factor. You have to be available all the time. When something unexpected breaks, you are under the most intense deadline pressure not only to get the story out there, but to coordinate the administration’s response. One year seems about right to me.

Not only was Joe’s work prolific, but I appreciated the level of detail. You rarely had to seek additional info to make sense out of one of his releases.

I think that Joe has served both this Governor and our state well. He hinted that something interesting might be coming down the track for him, and I, for one, will look forward to it.

For now, I wish him some well-earned R ‘n R as he recharges his batteries.

Bulo Remembers 2009-Most Interesting Ideas of the Year

For the ninth consecutive year, the New York Times Magazine has published its Year In Ideas section. If you have a brain, you’ll want to read it. It is, as the title suggests, thought-provoking.

I even found one idea that, were I a state legislator, I’d turn into a bill as soon as possible (more on that a little later).

Unlike the ogres at Time Magazine, this is a very user-friendly list, and you can easily find your faves. Here are some of mine:

Music For Monkeys–(anyone who works in retail understands this concept). BTW, a question for the barristers on this board: If you work in retail, are forced to listen to insipid Xmas music all day, and suddenly go postal upon hearing  “Holly Jolly Christmas” for the 598th time this season, can you be held accountable for your actions?

The Myth of the Older Deficient Employee-Tom Waits put it best when asked why he signed with the punk-based label Anti: “I was told they needed some adult supervision.”

Vampires Meet High Art-Not all the ideas are necessarily good ideas…although this mash-up would work great with opera (“First, we kill all the tenors.”) I’m reminded of Pauline Kael’s one-sentence review of “A Night At the Opera”: “The Marx Brothers, doing to ‘Il Trovatore’ what SHOULD be done to ‘Il Trovatore’.”

Hi-Tech Mosquito Destruction-Sounds promising. Just hope this isn’t the same guy that developed the ‘squirrel-proof’ bird feeder.

And this is but a small sample.

As to my idea for legislation, here it is:

The Cul-de-Sac Ban–It’s not really a ban. If you want to build one of these communities, fine. Just be aware that, since you make no provisions for thru-traffic and since all traffic from your community spills out onto a busy highway, you will be responsible for all maintenance and upkeep on your private road. That includes snow-plowing. As things now stand in Delaware, if a cul-de-sac road meets state standards, then, after a relatively brief period of time, the state assumes responsibility for the upkeep of the road from the maintenance association. This despite fact that the road is serving no public purpose and works against smart growth by failing to provide “connectivity, with ample through streets connecting them to other neighborhoods and nearby commercial areas.”

There is no reason for the State to pay to maintain roads that are built contrary to the public policy of the state. So pass ‘Bulo’s Law’. I promise to sell out: I will never cavil with the legislator brave enough to stand with me in opposition to the Cul-de-Sac Cabal. Uh, unless it’s Monsignor Lavelle…

Obama: Media Critic

Sometimes there are moments when you know that Obama just gets it. Here’s another one of the those moments from Time (via Balloon Juice):

But then Obama made a turn, and went after the press, specifically the group of network correspondents who had interviewed Obama on his trip to Beijing.

But it’s not going to come easily and it is going to require a level of cooperation and a willingness to work strategically together that we have not seen over the last several years. And frankly, this town and the way the political dialogue is structured right now is not conducive to what we need to do to be globally competitive. And all of you are leaders in your communities — in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here — it is important to understand what’s at stake and that we can’t keep on playing games.

I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews. Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin’s book. (Laughter.) True. But it’s an indication of how our political debate doesn’t match up with what we need to do and where we need to go.

Pretty pointed stuff, and I have little doubt that the president was actually irked by this at the time. [He also remembers the content of the interviews inaccurately. See update below.] Through both the campaign and his presidency, Obama has made little secret of his disdain for some of the horse-race, tabloid elements of the press corps–though his political and communications staff are not above sometimes exploiting those same tendencies for their own benefit. Obama meets regularly off-the-record and on-the-record meals with columnists who his advisers see as more intellectually substantive (or politically influential). But he has not done the same with beat reporters, whom, as he suggested Thursday, sometimes do a disservice to the country with the journalistic equivalent of ambulance chasing. (In fairness, one man’s ambulances–Town Hall shoutfests! Sarah Palin Facebook posts! etc.–are another man’s news, and columnists also chase them.)

Seriously, after the last two weeks of news media coverage (Salahi obsession, Tiger Woods obsession) can anyone doubt that the media is broken? It’s not just Obama’s Asia trip, either, almost every subject is broken down into some kind of conflict with the media doing little to actually educate people about what is true and what isn’t true. Is anyone really surprised that the public is hopelessly confused about the stimulus, health care reform or climate change?

We hear all the time – newspapers are dying. Newspapers are dying because journalism is dying. Journalism is dying the need for journalism is stronger than ever.

White House Gatecrashers: Fascinating?

We haven’t covered the story of the state dinner crashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi here at DL because it didn’t seem like a big deal. The Salahis managed to get past Secret Service security, which raises some eyebrows, but ultimately nothing happened. The Salahis managed to get photographed with Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Biden and even President Obama. It’s quite embarrassing for the Secret Service but it will lead to improved security procedures in the long run, right? So why has this become a media obsession?

The story is being covered endlessly in the media. The Washington Post has a long story about the Salahis, which is embarrassing for them – exposing them as fame whores with padded resumes. A quick Google search yielded more than 3000 articles about the incident. There’s even talk about a Congressional investigation into the incident and the Salahis could even face criminal charges.

So, what do you think? Is this story fascinating? Why is the media obsessed and what does it say about our media that this story obsesses them?

More Like This Please! Shep Smith Dismisses the Talking Points

You have to see it really, but there is a transcript here. Shep Smith had on repub Representative John Barrasso from Wyoming for a discussion of the Public Option for health insurance reform, which definitely did not go as the Representative likely expected. Not only is it remarkable that Smith understood the Public Option and how it fits into any reform effort really well, but the jaw-dropping thing about this interview is how utterly intolerant Smith is for the routine talking points. Barasso wanted to talk about “government-run health care” and Smith sets him straight. Barasso wanted to talk about Medicare cost and budget issues and Smith re-orients the conversation to noting how health care costs have gone up while insurance profits and lobbying costs have gone up. There’s definitely more at the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT61GNLBclk[/youtube]

And a note to reporters everywhere — this is how you deal with the talking points.

More Like This Please!

Fox News has apparently been whinging that President Obama did not appear with them in the WH blitz to appear on all of the talking heads shows this Sunday morning.    Why would that be?  Here is the WH spokesman answering that to ABC news:

“We figured Fox would rather show ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ than broadcast an honest discussion about health insurance reform,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told ABC News. […]

“Fox is an ideological outlet where the president has been interviewed before and will likely be interviewed again,” Earnest said. “Not that the whining particularly strengthens their case for participation any time soon.”

Nothing wrong with reminding people of the fact that Fox Noise continues to be the PR arm of the RNC. And nothing wrong in letting them live with their ideologically driven choices.