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I just watched a full hour (well, a commercial TV hour) conversation between Maddow and Stewart. It was wonk heaven. He was appearing in part, he said, because he wanted to address some concerns / criticisms about the meta-rally he and Colbert held.
One of the criticisms is that Stewart practices false equivalence: carefully pairing any mention of easily-found right-wing extremism with a mention of harder-to-find left-wing extremism. He was ready for that discussion. Stewart apparently spends his free time thinking about meta and media and how it affects public perception.
(I think Maddow could have challenged him more here - not her style though, and she usually does well letting interviewees speak. Is it the nature of his show to always demonstrate skepticism of both sides? Is it structurally harder for him to say "No contest here, these guys are telling the truth and these other guys are lying?" Stewart talked about a climate problem with cable news; is there a climate problem with his style of comedy?)
Highly recommended. She'll post the full interview, longer than the broadcast, sometime tomorrow morning.
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay after POLITICO reported that he made three campaign contributions to Democratic candidates. MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement Friday: "I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."
And tell me Glenn Beck has never contributed to his candidates? Rush Limbaugh? This is NBC quaking before the new majority. This is very bad.
Frank Guinta injected three hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars into his campaign that he either cannot or will not prove is his own money. All it would take is a bank statement.
If it is not Guinta's money, this is a basically a type of campaign finance money laundering.
Three hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars is the kind of money that easily translates into a TV ad that can move the needle one point, and deliver victory.
The New Hampshire media are largely stenographing this in the framework of silly season politics.
But this problem will not go away after the election. Eventually the truth will come out. If the New Hampshire media fall down on their job, we will have a brand new Congressman enveloped in a potential scandal from Day One. Won't that be great for our state?
I personally would rather be focused on Frank Guinta's desire to abolish Social Security, and a host of other issues where he is wrong for New Hampshire. And as I said above, Guinta can put this issue to bed easily and immediately.
Short diary, but offered as a brief diversion from your pre-primary scrambling. I was looking for something else the other day when I came across this collection of quotes on journalism.
"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." Thomas Jefferson (1786)
And perhaps the most famous from TJ:
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Thomas Jefferson (1787)
In 1797, Jefferson became Vice President.
"To the press alone, checquered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression." Thomas Jefferson (1799)
In 1801, he became President.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. ... The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them: inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors." Thomas Jefferson (1807)
More at the link, and not all of it grim. I liked this one.
"Journalists should be people in whom there is at least a flicker of hope." Sen. Paul Simon
The unofficial media arm of the GOP pays its party dues:
News Corp., which owns Fox News and the New York Post, gave $1 million to Haley Barbour's Republican Governors Association this year, according to the RGA's most recent filing.
The company's media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and the GOP. The company's highest-ranking Democratic executive, Peter Chernin, recently departed.
Every time you watch FAUX News, you are in a way assisting the effort to defeat John Lynch.
One more reason to change the channel - or better yet - toss out your TeeVee!
The killing of a police officer, and the imposition of the death penalty, are solemn issues; whether it's appropriate to try to derive political advantage from such a case is a question each of us can answer for ourselves.
Today the Concord Monitor editorial board answered:
Former attorney general Kelly Ayotte's televised campaign ads touting her success in prosecuting Michael Addison for the murder of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs are effective and accurate, but they use the grief of the victim's relatives for political purposes. That's both sad and wrong.
...Ayotte's recent ads are, at best, in poor taste. They say, in effect, "Vote for me because I successfully convinced the state to put a human being to death." Using Briggs's death to help elect a politician does not honor his sacrifice.
Anyone want to start up a non right-wing statewide paper? Pindell:
The Union Leader remains the state's largest newspaper, but a 6 month look into their circulation shows Monday through Friday circulation at 49,357. The study was conducted by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry standard organization that compiles these numbers for advertisers.
...In 1990 the paper celebrated the fact they had a circulation of 100,000.
Also, while BH is obviously nowhere near the big boy nat'l blogs or the readership of a UL (even in decline), this week we passed four million page views.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, the charge is being led by one of my daily reads, Andrew Sullivan. Why does it not occur to some that the spectrum of personal investment in sexuality is as broad as the spectrum of sexual orientation itself? Is it so hard to fathom that certain people, perhaps from a surfeit of mental profundity, are disinclined toward physical relationships? Some folks would swim every day if they could; others detest the water. Life is big and large and full of all kinds of fascinating people.
Two interesting reflections on Old and New Media have cropped up - both well worth a read.
First, Scott Brooks' farewell to the UL and the decline of local coverage:
I can think of dozens of times over the last two and a half years when officials were meeting in City Hall and I was the only one in the gallery.
And secondly, Rogert Ebert totally getting it about the nature of New Media's impact on his field.
This is a golden age for film criticism. Never before have more critics written more or better words for more readers about more films. But already you are ahead of me, and know this is because of the internet.
...Film criticism is still a profession, but it's no longer an occupation. You can't make any money at it. This provides an opportunity for those who care about movies and enjoy expressing themselves. Anyone with access to a computer need only to use free blogware and set up in business.
This is an Open Thread. Smack in the middle of a digital revolution, the outcome of which is unclear.
The high-profile murder of a nursing student in Henniker promises to give the Right new ammunition for the upcoming election... A tide of nativist sentiment, already sweeping the nation, coming up from actions in Arizona, is spreading rapidly... New Hampshire now has a poster child, the accused murderer, a muscular Haitian black man in cuffs will be seen on the front pages of the state's newspapers tomorrow morning...This "windfall" event will power some political careers...And weaken the case for a rational immigration policy.
We all "know" that our unusual president showed so much promise and has failed to live up to it. Except there are a few glimmers of hope left:
But by Election Day, 2010, Obama will have soundly achieved many of his chief campaign promises while running a highly competent, scandal-free government. Not bad for a guy whose opponents (in both parties) for the White House suggested he was too green in national life to know how to do the job - and whose presidency began in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis that demanded urgent attention and commanded much of his focus.
Information wants to be free. Asking readers to pay for what they can get elsewhere is a bad idea. Subscriptions and newsstand sales never covered more than the distribution costs for newspapers, which relied on advertising. But the death of newspaper classified and the inability for pull page grocery and auto ads to transfer to the internet have sapped newspaper traditional revenues. It is unlikely that online subscriptions will either generate any significant revenue or drive people to pick up the paper. It is likely to decrease the distribution, and thus the influence, of their product.
In the space of a few hours last night, I heard a hate radio personality infer that the Hutaree were a bunch of buffoons essentially set up by the government to appear to be dangerous, Sean Hannity casually refer to the Tea People as "Tim McVeigh wannabes" (to applause), and read this from Glenn Beck about the passage of health care reform:
Get down on your knees and pray. Pray. It's September 11th all over again, except that we didn't have the collapsing buildings.
I think it's time to get serious about the 24/7 Hate-Tainment industry. It plays on the easily victimized, the fearful, and the uninformed. And it's dangerous to the safety and well-being of the Grand Experiment of our democracy.
I'm not interested in using this frightening violence-baiting as a partisan exercise to bring people over to our team.
Rather, I would like to know what we as a country can do to prevent the Hate-Tainment industry from contributing to a real tragedy.
What can we do to counter the well-funded, morally vacuous puppeteers of this hate?
If there's one thing Republicans, Democrats, independents, politicians, activists, and observers of all stripes seem to agree on, it's that the news media has some serious room for improvement. A lot of that has to do with broad issues like attitude toward political spin, the things that get the most attention, etc. There are some specific issues, though, that are easy to identify and improve. Here are a few suggestions:
Stop reading Twitter feedback on national television. The world is in deep recession. Our country is at war. Our national government is paralyzed. Most political media outlets have plenty of talking heads who give their talking points without being challenged on the merits; we don't need you to elevate amateurs doing the same in 140 characters or less. It's not even selected insightful comments. Not all information is useful.
Reality is not subjective. Allowing talking points from each party to be broadcast/printed is not journalism. It is not sufficient to show both sides and assume that truth and common sense lie at the midpoint between the parties. Sometimes, people in politics make claims that are false. Sometimes an entire party stands behind falsehood. When that happens, it is the media's responsibility to challenge those people, even if it means alienating a political constituency. Failure on this point is the reason we've spent the past seven years in Iraq.
Not all news is in Washington. Politicians react to news. That's part of handling public affairs. When politics consumes the news, a feedback loop is created ensuring that our government is occupied with mindless nonsense. Barack Obama is not the President of a high school student body. Have some perspective.
Stop creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Voters decide elections, not pundits. When you write off and ignore candidates with less name recognition and less money as soon as the race starts, you ensure they lose the opportunity to catch up. You think Barack Obama was a dark horse for the Democratic nomination in 2008? Tell it to Richardson, Biden, and Dodd, who were shut out from the start. Those three didn't lose in Iowa and New Hampshire come January 2008; they lost in the newsroom in 2007. Do not comment as if with the perspective of history when you do not have the perspective of history.
When discussing legislation, be specific. Just as it is standard practice to note an elected official's party and constituency, it should be standard practice to note a bill's official name and number. Congress and most if not all states have online databases of legislation that include text, description, sponsors, etc., and this is useful information. It's especially important with respect to legislation whose description could be ambiguous as to a specific bill. How many different bills have been introduced in Congress that could be referred to as "the healthcare bill"?
There's a reason The Hill is only read on The Hill. If you're not writing/commenting for an insider audience, adjust your focus and perspective. Narrative and messaging would be more in proportion to their actual importance if you didn't devote so much reporting to narrative and messaging. Sometimes it's as if the only parts of politics that get covered are the parts that don't deserve coverage.
Stop reporting gossip. Political media should not act like Hollywood tabloids. Anonymous hearsay about the President's Chief of Staff using bad words is not news. Where Chris Matthews takes his dry cleaning is not news. Nobody needs to know if Heidi Montag supports Wall Street reform. Basically, if it's on Politico: Click, it's not news.
Either have an opinion or don't. Commentators are commentators and journalists are journalists. There needs to be a clear line in between. Raising "concerns" with a question mark at the end of the headline doesn't absolve you of bias. Was that a Terrorist Fist Jab?
Grow up and get over the shiny objects. Balloon boy. Anna Nicole Smith. Natalie Holloway. Michael Jackson's trial. Michael Jackson's death. These are just a few items that received all-consuming wall-to-wall coverage on the 24-hour news channels. That's not news. Some of it belongs on the E! channel, some of it belongs on the back page of a local paper. It's not a Presidential election. And by the way, during the two out of every four years that are now spent in Presidential elections, the earth continues to rotate upon its axis and the world continues to function. Elections should be about more than election narrative.
[Note: A slightly different version of this item will appear in Friday's edition of The New Hampshire Gazette. - The Ed.]
As the party allegedly responsible for all aspects of the management of our venerable institution the Editor would like to apologize for his rotten performance. True, readers have frequently expressed appreciation for the paper as it has been. But they are not in a position to see what it ought to be.
The New Hampshire Gazette has three natural advantages which lift it right out of the quicksand engulfing the common run of corporate-owned, profit-driven rags.
One is, of course, our unparalleled seniority. Americans have always been fascinated by the new and flashy, but they have not lost their respect and appreciation for the old and authentic.
Another is that our overhead expenses are low enough - almost nonexistent - to cause any other publisher to gnash his teeth in bitter envy.
Finally, and perhaps most important, we are utterly independent. Unlike the typical corporate-owned newspaper dutifully paying lip service to the First Amendment, with our independence we can actually use it. We're sure it is this latter quality which inspires our readers to support the paper.
What we find frustrating is the knowledge that with the financial advantage we enjoy, we should be reaching far more readers. The cost of printing additional papers is negligible. In fact, it's insanely cheap - about a nickel per copy.
Distribution - getting the papers to where people can pick them up - is really the only challenge. For years now, volunteers have handled our distribution in downtown Portsmouth.
What we need are more volunteers: people with half an hour or so to spare, every other week, who are willing to take 100 or 200 papers around to a dozen places or so, somewhere where they'll be going anyway.
We don't all the details worked out yet. We haven't worked out a management system yet. We thought we'd start with the one indispensible part - the people.
We believe there are enough people out there willing to help with this to make it possible for us to greatly expand our readership. But the only way to find out is to ask. If this sounds like your kind of fun, e-mail the editor at this address: editors [at] nhgazette.com.
The Commonwealth's own Scott Harshabrger is on it. Joe Conason writes in Salon:
In San Diego, for example, the ACORN employee shown on the tapes is someone whose primary language is Spanish, not English. The report notes that "in the released video, his participation amounts mostly to nodding or saying 'OK.' It is difficult to determine what this employee is responding to because the videographers' statements are obscured by a voiceover inserted later."
After O'Keefe and Giles left the San Diego office, that same employee called a cousin who worked in a local police department "to ask him general advice regarding information he had received about possible human smuggling" -- a reference to O'Keefe's claim that he was bringing in young girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. The police report concerning that call shows that officers followed up later, only to be informed by the ACORN employee that the incident was a "ruse."
That's a pretty significant detail.
In Philadelphia, O'Keefe's suspicious behavior likewise alerted the ACORN staff that something was amiss, and the police were informed there as well. No video of the visit to the Philly office was ever released by O'Keefe and Breitbart, although Harshbarger notes that "some of the released videos contain scenes of the sign of the Philadelphia ACORN office and shots of Philadelphia's head organizer with no audio."
Contrary to the claims of right-wing critics, who complain that Harshbarger failed to interview any of ACORN's adversaries, the lawyer and his colleagues were rebuffed when they tried to speak with O'Keefe and Giles. Amy Crafts, a Proskauer associate who co-authored the report, told me that she made several efforts to contact the video producers both in person and through their attorneys.
Good thing our kneejerk Congress abandoned ACORN already.
Certainly not the first time - just the latest example:
Shea-Porter quiet on war
Reaction to surge has arrived slowly
By SHIRA SCHOENBERG
Monitor staff
December 04, 2009
Does Carol Shea-Porter agree with President Obama's war strategy in Afghanistan?
Within hours of Obama's speech Tuesday night, the congresswoman's fellow Democrats, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Paul Hodes, weighed in with generally positive views of the president's policy. Republican Sen. Judd Gregg gave his opinion the day before.
Shea-Porter, however, gave little response. Asked yesterday for her views on the speech, Shea-Porter, through spokeswoman Jamie Radice, responded, "I have not heard anything to change my mind. However, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, I look forward to hearing from (Defense) Secretary (Robert) Gates and Admiral (Michael) Mullen tomorrow, and General (Stanley) McChrystal and Ambassador (Karl) Eikenberry next week."
Let me get this straight:
* Carol Shea-Porter talks about Afghanistan, entirely consistently with all previous comments dating from her trip there in May, on the morning of Obama's speech. The Monitor article includes it ("I have not been in agreement" with the decision to send 30,000 more troops.) as the last graf of a piece headlined "Shea-Porter quiet on war".
* Judd Gregg also gives his views before the speech.
* Paul Hodes issues a press release after the speech which does not give a firm position one way or another. Senator Shaheen's is also ultimately non-committal.
This article makes no sense at all unless you start to wonder whether there is one state media standard for Carol and another for other NH pols.
Adding: I think the source of this double standard has two roots: 1) that someone who not only had the insight to be against the Iraq war, but also the courage to be an activist about it, in the eyes of the punditocracy can never be a legitimate member of Washington, even while she remains a leader on veterans' issues, and 2) that Carol represents a district in which the Union Leader, a media organ perpetually hostile to her, still has some ability to influence other state media outlets.
All of which makes it incredibly important for us to have Carol's back every single time she is maligned. It is such a truly rare thing to have someone so genuine representing "the rest of us," that we bear a larger responsibility than is customary in making sure we hold on to that representation.
