Tuesday, January 24, 2012 #january 25 One Year Later: Social Media & Politics 3.0
A year ago, a revolution began in Egypt that still reverberates there -- as well as among other repressive regimes in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and beyond, including thousands of miles away in New York City, where "Occupy Wall Street" protests in turn took root and then flowered into literally hundreds of similar protests all around the world.
What if anything did it all have to do with the rise of social media?
Saturday, October 15, 2011 Insiders voice doubts about CIA's 9/11 story (4 comments)
As we sought to clarify how the CIA had handled information about the hijackers before 9/11, we found a half dozen former government insiders who came away from the Sept. 11 tragedy feeling burned by the CIA, particularly by a small group of employees within the agency's bin Laden unit in 2000 and 2001, then known as Alec Station.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 Jose Antonio Vargas Is an American Hero
Jose Antonio Vargas is incredibly brave to risk everything he has accomplished in this country in order to tell the truth-and to shine yet another but still much-needed light on the pressing need for comprehensive immigration reform in this country. He, and millions like him, have much to contribute to America -- and without people like them, our country will be far poorer.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 Volunteers of America Got to Revolution (3 comments)
There's rightfully been an outpouring of praise in this country for the brave revolutionaries of the Arab Spring. So here's a question to my fellow Americans: what are you waiting for? This country could be doing so much better than it is. It's time to volunteer again for America --and if that takes a revolution, so be it.
Saturday, May 28, 2011 Obama Comes for the Journalists (18 comments)
Citizens as well as journalists need to stand up for Risen and against the sleazy, Bush-like tactics of the Obamacrats and the burgeoning national security state. Otherwise, if you don't speak out when they come, first for the whistleblowers, and then for the journalists, when they come for you, there will be no one left to speak out...
Thursday, May 26, 2011 Obama Comes for the Journalists
It's bad enough that ever since President Obama took office, he has repeatedly gone after whistleblowers like Sterling with a cold vengeance, charging more people in cases involving leaking information than "all previous presidents combined," as Savage noted.
But Obama administration officials are no longer content just with targeting whistleblowers... Now they are coming for the journalists as well
Friday, April 15, 2011 Crossing Zero: How and Why the Media Misses the AfPak Story (7 comments)
When it comes to Pakistan, American journalists are helping to sustain a false and deceptive narrative and that's a real problem. As an example, on the left, Rachel Maddow ought to be challenging the narrative. Instead she looks to Dan Rather and Zbigniew Brzezinski who initiated the crisis. Why?
Thursday, April 7, 2011 We Media vs. Me Media
Few media chatfests are as valuable as the regular We Media gatherings.
Friday, April 1, 2011 Controlled Releases of Information? Apps to the Rescue!
The digital information revolution has disrupted the previously highly centralized world of nuclear public relations and spin, putting a stunning amount of information at our fingertips for the first time.
Monday, March 28, 2011 No Word for It: Imagining the Unimaginable
Tsunami is a Japanese word -- one sign of the island nation's intimate relationship with the destructive forces of the ocean that surrounds it. Despite the fact that the word is one of the few from the Japanese language to attain universal use, "tsunami" didn't even appear in Japanese government guidelines and standards for nuclear plants until 2006
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 No Word for Meltdown: The Return of Nukespeak
A Google search for the past month showed more than 1.93 billion hits for "meltdown. Yet the regulators at the NRC remain wary of listing the word that everyone else in the world uses to summarize the full horror of what will ensue if uranium fuel at the core of a commercial nuclear power plant is left uncooled long enough for it to melt.
Saturday, February 5, 2011 The Coming Media Convergence (4 comments)
Like it or not, the top Timesman and other leading mainstream media figures will inevitably soon find themselves learning from and eventually emulating the Guardian/WikiLeaks collaboration. Here comes the new media convergence!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 Programmers "frank, direct, negative" on PBS' Need To Know
When Need To Know, a new public affairs offering, premiered nationwide in May on PBS -- and on line at PBS.org -- the hybrid effort was met with an outpouring of negative reaction from media activists and public television viewers alike.
Monday, January 10, 2011 Hate Speech and Hateful Acts in Arizona
"It is our right and our duty to criticize the people who have put the fate of our country in peril," Rush Limbaugh said this week on his syndicated radio show."
Monday, December 13, 2010 Richard Nixon, Liu Xiaobo, Julian Assange and Us (2 comments)
"Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth."
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 Information Poverty and Giving Thanks
The ongoing digital information revolution has redefined poverty, making how much you know as important, if not more so, than how much you own.
Saturday, October 30, 2010 Axelrod Memo to Obama: Election 2012 (15 comments)
Nearly half of all Democrats are now turning against Obama and say he should be challenged for the party nomination.
Thursday, October 21, 2010 Bill O'Reilly: Juan Williams Died For Your Sins (1 comments)
Williams' remarks, although bigoted and fairly stupid, were made in an ill-executed attempt to counter O'Reilly's even stupider and more bigoted assertions.
Friday, October 15, 2010 Pentagon Hides Iraq War Deaths Tally (2 comments)
The information went unnoticed for months after being "quietly posted on the Web site of the United States Central Command without explanation." It was only recently discovered by the AP "during a routine check..."
Friday, October 15, 2010 Pentagon Hides Iraq War Death Tally
A spokesman at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., could not answer basic questions about the information." Iraqi Health Ministry officials were equally reticent and refused to discuss the American figures, which fall thousands of deaths short of those the Iraqis have compiled using actual death certificates.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 Everybody Knows Times Op-Ed Columnists Are Lazy (4 comments)
Everybody knows Op-Ed columns in the New York Times are, for all the obvious reasons, considered prime editorial real estate. But how many are aware they are apparently also unedited, poorly managed sinecures for lazy thinkers proffering unsupported assertions and analysis on both the left and the right side of the political opinion aisle?
Thursday, September 23, 2010 Are We Entering A "Fact Free" Period in Politics and Media? (3 comments)
as former president Bill Clinton observed on Good Morning America recently, "we may be entering a sort of period in politics that's sort of fact free""
Former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. made a similar point about the media recently in a speech about journalism, wherein he noted, "The future of accountability journalism is now at stake
Thursday, September 9, 2010 "News Bias" and The Media Battle Over the Meaning of 9/11 (7 comments)
Like the "Global War on Terror" spawned by the attacks, the ongoing struggle to interpret 9/11 now appears to be a war without end.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 Obama's Tricky Battle with the Military-Media Complex (2 comments)
Given that Obama has delivered on his promise in Iraq, why should we doubt next year's pending pullouts from both Iraq and Afghanistan? Simple: high military officials and their accomplices in the media ardently oppose both -" and the president is either unwilling or simply unable to confront them.
Monday, August 30, 2010 Obama and the Military-Media Complex (4 comments)
Obama has arguably met his self-imposed deadline. But will the powerful military-media complex allow him to remove "all US troops from Iraq" by the end of next year? Moreover, will they ever support his July 2011 deadline for US troops to begin leaving Afghanistan -" a country the US invaded earlier and has occupied longer than Iraq?
Monday, August 16, 2010 The Tillman Story -- Just Give Us Some Truth! (2 comments)
Of the many lies George W. Bush told us about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some were larger but none worse than that told about the death of Pat Tillman.
Friday, July 30, 2010 Big Journalism? No, Another Phony Breitbart Beatdown
I'd just joined Shirley Sherrod as an actor -" albeit in an exceedingly minor role, alas -- in another gussied-up, phony "journalism" beatdown by the conservative crackpot Andrew Breitbart.
Monday, July 26, 2010 America's Most Dangerous Man -- Barack Obama? (10 comments)
once again, instead of admitting mistakes and failures, the American President Barack Hussein Obama (like the American President Lyndon Baines Johnson before him) is trying to "defend his war strategy" and "reassert control over the public debate" on an unwinnable war.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010 PBS and Our "Need To Know" the Truth (7 comments)
A controversial new PBS news magazine aims at "revitalizing public media" while raising fears among viewers and questions about priorities.
Thursday, April 29, 2010 Strengthening Democracy Means Funding Independent Media
We're engaged in a war of ideas in which you can be right and still be wrong unless you can popularize and mainstream those ideas so they get adopted.
Monday, April 5, 2010 Not in Our Town: Communities Use Media to Combat Hate
Are you tired of the relentlessly battering beat of bad news delivered daily by our media? Did you ever wonder if that same media could be used instead for good? If so, here's a story that will lift your spirit and might also encourage you to get involved and help make change
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 Media Mutes General's Afghan Admission (3 comments)
an astonishing open admission of possible US war crimes by Obama's man on the ground in Kabul, senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan General Stanley A. McChrystal, was reported by Richard A. Oppel Jr. in the New York Times" and then promptly ignored by the rest of the mainstream media.
Thursday, March 18, 2010 Health Care reform Needs Media Reform (3 comments)
One would think that a four billion dollar giveaway to Big Media and Big Pharma, which drives up health care costs that are already spiraling out of control, would be part of 'health care reform' aimed in part at cutting costs.
Friday, March 12, 2010 Second Mistrial for Shock Jock Hal Turner
Internet shock jock and F.B.I. confidential informant Hal Turner beat the rap again when his second federal "Death-Threat Trial," ended in yet another mistrial.
Thursday, March 4, 2010 A Victory for Online Journalists
Mayor Mike Bloomberg has finally done the right -" and democratic -" thing in reversing a previous boneheaded decision by the New York Police Department to deny official "working press' passes to reporters at online or nontraditional news outlets -" such as this one!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Stop the Nukespeak-- And Tell Us the Truth About Nuclear Power! (2 comments)
Proponents speak of "health effects" when they really mean "cancer." Accidents such as the infamous one at Three Mile Island are merely "anomalies," "significant events" or "abnormal occurrences" -- and when they recur, they are re-dubbed "normal abnormalities." Radioactive substances such as Strontium-90 are measured in "sunshine units," and when deadly plutonium somehow goes missing, it's simply a "MUF -" materia
Thursday, February 4, 2010 American Journalism -- Busy Being Reborn (1 comments)
The notion that a free society requires a free press is almost universally acknowledged. So is the fact that many legacy media outlets -" the New York Times and The Nation among them -" now face a resource emergency. The industry's "lost revenue model" -" the subject of seemingly endless posts, articles, speeches, books and above all industry conferences -- has made it increasingly difficult to pay for newsgathering.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 Google to China: Drop Dead! (4 comments)
Does a company with a stated corporate goal of "Don't Be Evil" really deserve praise for finally pulling the plug on its longstanding cooperation with the Great Firewall of Chinese Internet control? I think not.
Friday, December 18, 2009 Happy News Year?
Please join me in bidding farewell to The Aughts -- the first decade of the Twenty First Century. When it came to all things media, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times..."
Monday, December 7, 2009 Afghanistan No Exit (2 comments)
Further evidence that the peace-prize-president – while outwardly engaging in his usual “enigmatic and epigrammatic split-the-baby-in-half Yoda/Spock-speak” – was actually proposing to wage war more intensely -- and not only for eighteen months, after which we all get to go home.
Thursday, November 12, 2009 Media, Money & Sun Myung Moon
Through an adroit combination of money, media and the consistent promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon had rapidly reinvented himself and was soon hailed at the White House.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Iraq & Afghan Wars: Just Give Me Some Truth
When it came to the war in Iraq, “I should have been the canary in the coal mine,” Alissa Rubin wrote this week in the New York Times. “But like so many others around me, I did not want to believe what I saw.”
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 The Kabul Class of 2009
The “'forgotten war' in Afghanistan, as news outlets had once called it, is suddenly very visible.” NBC News' chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel – who made his name covering The war in Iraq – put it well when he spoke to the New York Times from Kabul this week: “It's like the Baghdad class of 2003 is now the Kabul class of 2009.”
Thursday, October 15, 2009 Rush Limbaugh and the NFL's Higher Standard (1 comments)
It was obvious from the start that Rush Limbaugh's bid to buy into the NFL was doomed. But why do NFL owners hold themselves to higher standards than the rest of us?
Thursday, October 8, 2009 The Human Sacrifice Channel
Alito described his proposed -- and perhaps fanciful and hypothetical -- “Human Sacrifice Channel.” “I mean, people here would probably love to see it,” he said. “Live, pay per view, you know, on the Human Sacrifice Channel.”
Friday, September 11, 2009 Network News Chiefs: The Future's So Bright (1 comments)
While celebrating Murrow and citing Cronkite, network news heads remain in a state of denial about their industry's challenges.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 Happy Birthday, Mr. Internet! (1 comments)
It was forty years ago today -- the birth of the Internet!
Thursday, June 11, 2009 Patrick Fitzgerald's Private Jihad (1 comments)
"To put it plain and simple," Fitzgerald wrote, "if in fact you publish the book this month and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued."
Monday, June 1, 2009 Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz - How MSNBC Became a Liberal Mecca (4 comments)
Despite the startling success of Maddow and the recent addition of Schultz to an increasingly liberal lineup that also includes MSNBC's first breakout star Keith Olbermann, getting anyone other than on-air talent like Schultz and Maddow to admit the obvious - that the rising cable net is in the process of re-branding itself as the left-winged equivalent of right-leaning industry leader Fox News can be difficult.
Thursday, May 21, 2009 Prairie Home Torture Companion (3 comments)
Garrison Keillor claims to be a liberal. He and we - should know better. Keillor has just joined the already large and ever-growing list of allegedly 'liberal' media figures who either advocate or apologize for torture.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Media Torture (2 comments)
As Bowden explained in the formerly august pages of The Atlantic, "The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter...Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced."
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 Babes in TortureLand (7 comments)
While speaking recently at Stanford University, where she steadfastly defended the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogation" policies, ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revealed herself to be a Summa Cum Laude graduate of the Richard M. Nixon School of Government.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Torture and the Media (3 comments)
Hell should reserve a special place for those journalists who abdicated their professional and constitutional duties in support of torture in exchange for access and exaltation.
Thursday, April 9, 2009 Times to Globe: It's hard out here for a pimp!
"From the moment The Times Co. purchased The Globe in 1993 it has treated New England's largest newspaper like a cheap whore."
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Daily We
The conventional wisdom about social networks is that people filter out dissonant news and opinions, and instead flood themselves with news and views that merely confirm their prejudices. But new evidence suggests that in seeking information online, just the opposite happens.
Thursday, March 19, 2009 Why Media Brands Can't Be Trusted
Internet users put considerable trust in search engines as the online equivalent of traditional gatekeepers. But most are not even aware that sponsors pay for their links or that most search engines do no verification whatsoever of the information links they offer.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Brands, Credibility and Cesspools (2 comments)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes the Internet is a "cesspool" of false information, and that filters are needed to help sort through the muck and mire. Predictably, corporate executives like Schmidt offer their corporate "brands" as the answer
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 Public Displays of Connection (2 comments)
A still-growing body of academic research supports the notion that online networks (such as Facebook or Slashdot, to name just two) actually make finding and sharing credible news and information more possible than it was in the previous era of legacy media.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 The New Breed of New Media Researchers
"Previous theories about social networks are wrong," Fogg states forthrightly. "Because earlier researchers don't get what is happening online." He says that unlike face-to-face, 'offline' social networks, online social networks lend themselves to easy group formation. The resultant looser, more extensive social ties then lead to more diverse, and ultimately more trustworthy and credible news and information delivery.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Embedded Business Press Misses Story of the Century
Just as our mainstream news reporters failed to do their job in alerting us an impending and fairly obvious disaster prior to the war in Iraq and then 'embedded' themselves with the very people they were supposedly reporting on during the invasion and subsequent occupation - so too did our complaisant business press
Thursday, February 12, 2009 Word of Mouse (1 comments)
Will emerging media -- including 'viral' emails, blogs, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and other new platforms such as YouTube and Twitter -- help solve journalism's trust-and-credibility problem?
Monday, January 19, 2009 Twitter Journalism
The first report of the miraculous rescue of 150 passengers from a US Airways jet floating in the Hudson River also provided the latest evidence if indeed it was still needed that emerging social media are not only supplementing but supplanting the legacy mainstream media.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Facebook Journalism
With slumping public approval, journalism is facing a crisis of trust. We're looking at how people can find and share credible news and information in hopes of regaining this trust. Do you think Facebook plays a role in this process at all? If so, how?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 Ponzi Democracy (8 comments)
Who was Ponzi, what exactly did he do and why, nearly a hundred years later, does he and his eponymous scheme still resonate?
Monday, October 13, 2008 McCain Sowing Seeds of Hatred (1 comments)
When Representative Lewis -- a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement recently denounced the McCain/Palin campaign for its use of divisive rhetoric and said the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminded him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Governor George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s, he was calling it like it is.
Friday, September 5, 2008 Beating the Press-Literally
only in America could a man who has called the corporatized, in-the-tank, mainstream media his "base" -- the media that made him its darling and hailed him for his supposed 'straight talk' -- run against that very same media, bashing it figuratively while "peace officers" were doing so quite literally in the streets of St. Paul...
Thursday, August 21, 2008 The Truth, Jon Justice...and the American Way? (1 comments)
t's not a stretch to ponder whether on-air remarks such as Jon Justice's call for 'bloodshed in the polling places' could one day prove to be the spark that turns such ominous hate speech into real-life acts of hatred and real people's skulls into yes -- real red mush...
Friday, July 25, 2008 The Shock Jock Racket (4 comments)
Angry citizen reaction to the latest cynical, cyclical outpouring of hateful speech over the public radio airwaves top-rated talk show host Michael Savage's despicable attack on autistic children as "brats, morons and idiots" has once again injected America's talk radio problem back into the mainstream news cycle.
Friday, June 20, 2008 Is the Tyranny of Right-Wing Radio Coming to an End? (2 comments)
Conservative fears of an impending Democratic attack on talk radio - dubbed the "Hush Rush" effort in an homage to top-rated radio talker Rush Limbaugh -- continue to escalate, despite ample evidence that such an assault is unlikely to occur when (as is likely) Democrats sweep back into power in the forthcoming elections in November.
Thursday, June 12, 2008 Talk Radio's Last Stand? (4 comments)
Leading hard-right conservatives, led by their talk radio "shock jock" shock troops, have been worrying aloud about the supposed return of the long-defunct Fairness Doctrine ever since their stunning success last year in defeating bi-partisan immigration reform. The latest salvo is the Newsmax report, headlined "Battle for Talk Radio: Powerful Foes Want to End the Gabfest," which cleverly combines the usual talk radio tropes.
Monday, June 9, 2008 Laura Ingraham: Right-Wing Radio's High Priestess of Hate (2 comments)
Laura Ingraham -- the only women among the top conservative radio talk show hosts, or 'shock jocks" -- is profiled in this excerpt from my new book "Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio."
Friday, May 23, 2008 The Most Savage Shock Jock of All (1 comments)
Who is Michael Savage? On its surface the question seems obvious: he's a 66-year-old nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host whose program, The Savage Nation, airs five days a week from its home base of KNEW in San Francisco. He's a former MSNBC cable television talk host who was fired after four months on the job after he told a phone caller, "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig."
Wednesday, March 5, 2008 Working the Refs
Hillary won this week by working the refs.
By constantly complaining about coverage, and relentlessly focusing on charges that the news media has favored Barack Obama and treated him far more gently than herself, Hillary was finally able to staunch the bleeding and stage a desperately needed, last minute comeback that will keep her in the game
Saturday, February 2, 2008 The Not-So-Great Debate
Hillary won by not losing and Obama lost by not winning. Simply appearing presidential-he certainly has grown into at least looking the part - wasn't, and isn't, enough to put him over the top. In order to continue his momentum and vault into the lead, he needed to show that there are large differences between him and Hillary on crucial issues and other than on Iraq, he failed to do so.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 First Black President? (3 comments)
Remember back in the last century, when Toni Morrison playfully dubbed Bill Clinton our first "Black President?" Back then, it was considered cool to have a "black president" - as long as he was really white, of course! But how will the race card play in the high stakes presidential poker game now doubling down, when hidden decisions taken in darkness center on the real possibility of a real "first black president?"
Friday, January 4, 2008 They Report, They Decide?
Should Big Media decide for the rest of us who is - and more importantly who is not - a viable candidate for president? It's bad enough that thus far the reporting of this year's quadrennial presidential pursuit has been even more insubstantial than ever, focused on the horse race, the fundraising, the polls, the pundits, the haircuts and assorted other bits of silliness - anything other than actual issues...
Friday, December 21, 2007 Time to Cover Up? (3 comments)
Is Time magazine's "full" and "complete" transcript of its "Person of the Year" interview with Vladimir Putin a fraudulent cover up? It appears so. A glaring factual error was apparently edited out of the transcript in an attempt to spare top executives embarrassment over an exchange at the beginning of the recent chat between the Russian leader and Time.Inc editor in chief John Huey, Time managing editor Richard Stengel and d
Thursday, December 20, 2007 Good News, Bad News
In this age of media scams and scandals, of paid opinion and information warfare, of partisan power plays and the corrupt nexus of Big Media and Big Politics, how and where can we find quality news and information we can trust?
Saturday, November 17, 2007 The Imus Enablers Are Back (2 comments)
It didn't take long for the Don Imus enablers to re-emerge. Just months after the racist, sexist and homophobic shock jock was fired for his on-air characterization of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's" - and less than two weeks after Citadel Broadcasting announced his return to radio - the Big Media and Big Politics elite are crawling out of the woodwork to embrace Imus all over again.
Saturday, November 3, 2007 Imus Returns (4 comments)
Now, to no one's surprise, the self-styled "I-Man" is back, courtesy of the Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, which has announced that Imus will return to radio December 3 during morning drive time on WABC-AM in New York -- the same city where he was unceremoniously banished from the airwaves last spring.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 The Media Conscience of a Liberal (3 comments)
Rory O'Connor sits down with one of America's top economists, Paul Krugman, who also happens to be one of the country's leading opinion columnists. Krugman's opinions about the media may surprise you..
Tuesday, July 3, 2007 OhourNews (1 comments)
Can citizen journalism really change the world? Many skeptics still doubt it can even change the news industry, and still question, despite much evidence, whether ordinary citizens can really function as journalists. But why not?
Saturday, June 16, 2007 Mirror, Mirror
It may sound like a fairy tale, but it's true: when reporters and editors at a small Idaho newspaper held a mirror up to their community and exposed rampant pedophilia, they paid a heavy price at first. But their courageous journalism eventually paid off, as circulation skyrocketed, and their paper is now among the nation's faster growing dailies.
Thursday, May 17, 2007 How to End the Reign of Shock Jocks (15 comments)
Those who would like to see an end to racist, sexist and homophobic remarks by so-called 'shock jocks" such as Don Imus or Opie and Anthony should pressure the mainstream media corporations that hire and promote them, as well as the sponsors who advertise on the programs.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 The Price of Press Freedom (1 comments)
Thursday is World Press Freedom Day, a day when all of us citizens, media professionals, governments, non-governmental organizations and what has come to be known as "civil society" - should remember and celebrate the crucial role a free press plays in democracy and development.
Thursday, April 12, 2007 Buy Bigelow, Fight Bigotry
The corporate overlords at CBS and NBC won't fire Imus unless they have to for financial reasons. So let's support the sponsors who have pulled out, and lean on the ones who haven't ... yet.
Friday, April 6, 2007 Ken Burns, You're Better Than That!
How did Ken Burns and PBS manage to construct a multi-hour, nationally broadcast series of public television about World War II without including any interviews with Hispanic American veterans?
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 Time to Change The Back Channel
Sunday's NY Times Magazine cover story by Max Frankel is the most recent and stunning example of the Times' weird worldview. The paper's former executive editor concludes that "the real lesson" of the recent Scooter Libby trial is that Washington's "black market in information" is an evil necessary for democracy.
Friday, March 23, 2007 Twenty Questions with Conde Nast Chief Tom Wallace
What is reclusive billionaire Si Newhouse really like? Is Vogue's Anna Wintour really the devil? Can the Web save print? The last of the multi-million dollar magazine launches? One of Big Publishing's big players tells all
Friday, March 9, 2007 The Fall Guy
But before the rest of us join in the jurors' "tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby," let's remember that the sword Libby has fallen on to protect his higher-ups will likely yet prove to be a blunt one.
Friday, February 9, 2007 Libby Trial Principals Should "Stop Hurting America" (1 comments)
Whatever the confusing, calamitous and corrosive perjury and
obstruction of justice felony trial of Scooter Libby may be about - war,
power, death, destruction, lies, manipulation, you-name-it - it's first and foremost a trial of the media, by the media and for the media...or to be more precise, the mainstream media in the world's most powerful democracy.
Thursday, January 25, 2007 Helping Lara Logan
An unusual plea from CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan highlights the fact that the network television's coverage of the Iraq war still leaves something to be desired.
Thursday, December 21, 2006 20 Questions with CBS News Head Sean McManus
Sean McManus was named President, CBS News, in October 2005. For the past decade, he has also been the head of CBS Sports.This is the latest in an ongoing series of question-and-answer sessions between Rory O'Connor and leading American media executives. Previous conversations have featured CNN chief Jonathan Klein, Fox News head John Moody, Time magazine editor Richard Stengel, and others.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 News You Can Trust (3 comments)
NewsTrust, a new social news network, is an online way to identify quality, trustworthy journalism.
Thursday, November 16, 2006 9/11: Conspiracy of Incompetence (3 comments)
A new look at 9/11 in light of Peter Lance's new book about bin Laden's master spy, "Triple Cross."
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 Not in Our Media?
Do you ever wonder why our media devote so much time and energy to covering those who produce hate crimes - and so little to covering those who reduce them?
Thursday, October 12, 2006 Time Is On His Side
Time magazine's new Managing Editor Richard Stengel says no to objectivity, yes to ;informed opinion,' and embraces the Internet.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 The Evolution Of Political Campaign Advertising
Top political media strategists on both the Democratic and republican side of the aisles talk what impact new players, new money, new technologies, more noise and more clutter are having on presidential campaign advertising, and conclude that they have "lost control."
