At a conversation site where I spend some time, someone noted a Twitter posting from earlier today — well worth repeating: “What I like about April Fool’s Day: one day a year we’re asking whether news stories are true. It should be all 365.”
Posts under ‘Media Criticism’
Housing Bubble Coverage: Defending the Indefensible
Editor & Publisher: Newspaper Biz Editors Defend Mortgage Crisis Coverage. Did the growing mortgage credit crisis, which took a huge turn with last week’s collapse of Bear Stearns, get enough early coverage from newspapers? Top business editors at several of the nation’s major papers say yes, although a few admit some of the more complicated […]
On Media Credentials, Billionaires Don't Have to be Logically Consistent
Jon Garfunkel: Easy Mark: The Elephant in the Locker Room. (I)t’s still immensely foolish as it is to ban someone from the lockerroom because they call themselves a blogger. If a cutoff is needed, I’d suggest one based on the old standby, circulation. “Mark” is Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks franchise, and he’s […]
Off the Record? Not Unless You Agree Ahead of Time
Glenn Greenwald (Salon) writes: The most interesting part of the controversy over Obama advisor Samantha Power’s referring to Hillary Clinton as a “monster” — one might say the only interesting part — is that immediately after Power said it, she tried to proclaim that it was “off the record.” Here was Power’s exact quote: “She […]
WSJ Finds Scandal Only When It's Trial Lawyers in Bed with Pols
Hilariously, but unintentionally so as always, an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Lawsuit Inc.” wails over connections between trial lawyers and state politicians: Should state Attorneys General be able to outsource their legal work to for-profit tort lawyers, who then funnel a share of their winnings back to the AGs? That’s become a […]
American Media Treat Americans Like Shallow Dolts
Look at the covers of Time Magazine’s current edition: The rest of the planet gets a pointer to a thoughtful series of articles about globalization and mega-cities that have changed with the social and economic times. Americans get romance. (To be fair, the article is quite good.) Because, apparently, we are too shallow to buy […]
Oh, That Conrad Black
The New York Sun, often an entertaining read, published a commentary by one Conrad Black, identifying him in the tag line in this way: Lord Black is the author of “Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full” and “Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom.” True, I guess, but of course it’s missing the most salient […]
Again, Big Media Guy Tries to Make it Bloggers Versus Journalists
Jeff Jarvis ably shreds NY Times editor Bill Keller’s straw men. Sadly, Keller and other major media people are still making this a bloggers against professional journalists question, which is not the question at all, or at least hasn’t been for anyone who actually knows anything about the development of new media. Sheesh.
Meanwhile, Solid Reporting from NY Times
The New York Times, eschewing bogus journalism, takes on the raft of falsehoods Rudy Guiliani has been peddling to sell his presidential candidacy — and does it without the standard he-said, she-said mincing of words. In “Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again,” reporter Michael Cooper cites “facts” that are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain […]
On Klein's Errors, Time's Semi-Stonewall and the Net's Power
The furor surrounding Joe Klein’s misguided column of a week ago continues, incredibly, given Klein’s bizarre insistence on digging the hole deeper instead of forthrightly acknowledging error(s) and moving on. But this is not just about a columnist’s mistakes and tone-deafness. This is a debacle for the publication and company that employs him, because Time […]