Washington Post demonstrates how deep the Beltway meia corruption has reached

Selling access to lobbyists.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/washington-post-sells-access-obama-ot

One month to go before the Obama administration takes over

And I hope it goes by quickly.

The wreckage left behind by the Bush years is really something to behold.

Blinded by partisanship, conservatives and GOPers can't really gauge the depth of the disgust of average Americans with the Bush legacy.

It turned out to be a perfect storm of incompetence and ideology. Bush will be remembered for a string of words like Katrina, torture, Iraq, 9/11, bailout, housing bubble, Terry Schiavo, WMDs, Tora Tora, Abu Ghraib and more, with little if any positive feelings associated with any of those.

Indeed, if it wasn't for the exemplary leadership of Gates and Petraeus in their respective spheres and the devotion and talent of many thousands of soldiers and civil servants at lower levels who salvaged something resembling success out of the ill-advised Iraq adventure, we would be in an even worse way.

As it is, President Obama will have no honeymoon as he works full-bore to rescue the economy frmo dire straights while recasting our foreign policy in more sensibl directions.

I, for one, don't see how sinking $10 billion a month or more into Iraq can't have a negative effect on the economy back home. Is it a major cause, no, but that represents several hundred billion dollars of money that wasn't available for dealing with our domestic issues. The nonmonetary costs have been even steeper.

I'm hopeful that the team that Obama has put in place (in record time, by the way) will be able to head off the worst, but I fear that the "better" outcome will still not be anything we'll look back with any fondess.

In particular I'm afraid that the newspaper industry will not survive the coming 12 months. My paper is less vulnerable thatn most, but everyone is at risk. Quite a few major cities may find themselves without a daily newspaper.

There's a need for news gatherers no matter what the fate of the dead-tree media is. The question is who pays for the news gatherers once the dead-tree media expires. I don't think most people undertsand how much that the electronic media, bot old and new, leeches off the print media for stories and information. I've had more than one television reporter admit to me in conversation that they get most of their stort ideas from the newspapers. Very few of the online news sites do any orginal reporting, most also rely on print media and merely aggrgate those stories. At the end of the day there has to be someone attending the meetings, r eading the reports, interviewing sources and walking the beat to generate the news. Otherwise we're left with just press releases and pundits.

Sullivan makes an uncomfortable point

Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic online:

The MSM also made torture possible - especially cable news. Even PBS demanded that guests not use the word torture to decribe torture. The issue was barely present in the last campagn; and Bush has not been asked about his war crimes in any single exit interview so far. The AP and the NYT and the WaPo collude in robbing the English language of its plain meaning. This is not to bely that amazing work that many MSM reporters have done - from Dana Priest and Jane Mayer to Scott Horton and Charlie Savage. But so many of their editors seem unable to tell the truth about this country's war crimes in the past seven years.

This is not journalism

Apparently some "newspaper" person placed a tracking device on Simon Cowell's car. His lawyers warned the press in general about harassment, and I have to say that I think this steps well beyond any bounds of reasonable journalism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/01/simon-cowell-press-privacy

Now, Simon Cowell is a subject of legitimate public interest, but that interest stops well short of stalking the man. He has less expectation of privacy than the average person, but that doesn't mean he has no expectation of privacy at all. Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone thought this was a good idea. That, of course, is the problem today in many media circles, a lack of judgment about what is newsworthy and what is now.

At the same time that we have celebrities like Cowell being stalked we have serious problems such as the financial mess, the erosion of civil liberties by the government and unexamined questions about war and terrorism. Important stuff gets ignored and we have media overattention to trivia. Really, in the grand scheme of things are Simon Cowell's movements worth tracking by anyone? Who could possibly care?

Drudge simply IGNORES Palin report

The Drudge Report is a useful resource, but hardly an unbiased one. While finding room for a Washington Times story alleging some Obama thing or other with the Iraqis he completely ignores the report that found that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from being a state trooper.

The report is here: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/132565

Evidently you won't get linked to it off of Drudge.

Media has had it with the lies

Just read an AP story that spelled out no less than six different untrue or misleading McCain statements. That's six in one story -- and that was a regular campaign story, not some expose.

As a former reporter myself, I know nothing is more aggravating than to have someone lie to you to your face and expect you to print it, even though you know it's a lie, they know it's a lie and they know that you know it's a lie.

It's bad when even the ladies on The View are calling you out as a liar.

Some words that are really needed

Roger Simon "apologizes" on behalf of the emdia for daring to do its job this week with Palin: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13143.html

What I do for a living

A good post on copy editors

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061902920.html

The summer of our discontent

It's hard to believe, given the disastrous nature of the Bush era, that the Republicans are still competitive in this race. If there was any justice in the world, they would be sent, as a body, packing into the wilderness for 40 years to repent.

But, of course, justice in this world is in short supply, which explains our hope there is more justice in the world to come.

I think there are many reasons why the race is still close, and to the extent that some of those reasons persist in the fall, there's a chance McCain will pull it off.

In no particular order:

1. Democrats, as a rule, a pathetic losers. They are to party discipline what cats are to herding. They're so afraid of being portrayed as "weak" on various issues that they cave in to the most unreasonable GOP demands. Evidently they are completely clueless that this confirms for all to see that they are, indeed, weak.

2. People aren't paying attention yet. It's only August.

3. Iraq isn't as big a disaster as it was last year. This allows McCain to make short-term claims that he was "right about the surge" but the long-term story is still disadvantageous to the GOP. The bottom line is that the public has made up its mind on Iraq and there's little that can happen there that will make a difference.

4. People like and respect McCain. Or at least the ones that aren't paying attention (See No. 2, above) People who are paying attention are having some second thoughts because of No. 5, below.

5. Negative campaigning still works. Or, at least, it works to make voters see your opponent more negatively. McCain is gambling that he can pull Obama down enough to catch him without losing much ground himself. This is a gamble, however, because it assumes Obama will refrain from going negative himself. McCain provides plenty of ready ammo for negative campaigning, though, and he may regret opening that Pandora's box. McCain is banking on Obama not being ruthless enough to go tit-for-tat with negative ads. While I don't doubt that Obama would prefer not to go there, I think he's provided ample evidence he will do what he must to win. McCain may be misunderestimating his opponent.

6. McCain is popular with the press -- for a Republican. The press hasn't made up its mind on Obama. In part, it wants to like Obama, but because it knows it wants to like Obama it thinks it shouldn't like Obama. If that makes sense to you, you're a journalist. If it doesn't make sense to you then you're a normal person.

7. There's a portion of the electorate (of undetermined size) that isn't ready to vote for a black man under any circumstances. On the other hand, most of those people probably wouldn't vote for any Democrat and have already been factored into the likely vote. The only way this would make a difference is if there's a significant number of people who would otherwise have voted Democrat that won't because of Obama's race. Maybe there is. If the race is close, they may make a difference. My sense is, however, that the anti-GOP sentiment is probably strong enough that other factors will overcome this effect.

Once the convention's shake out things will become more clear

Press Secretary tells all ...

.. or at least lots.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10649_Page2.html

I always felt a little sorry for Scott McLellan because he really did seem like a decent sort of fellow who was uncomfortable in the role Bush placed him in. Most of Bush's other press spokesmen seemed to enjoy playing the press, like it was a game.

Clearly the press secretary's job is to put the best face on things possible, but there are boundaries of decency even for that kind of work. As in so many things, Bush has set a low bar.

Media's failure to cover the military

Glenn Greenwald has some interesting coverage of the military analyst scandal. It's a scandal that's not getting much mainstream media coverage because it shows the media in a bad light. Fortunately the blogs are keeping it from disappearing entirely.
Details here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

The short version is that the media has been relying on "independent: military analysts who aren't independent at all, but carefully selected by the administration to push the official line. Those analysts that play along get scoops. Those that don't get marginalized. Greenwald considers the whole thing to amount to an illegal domestic propaganda campaign. I'm not sure it rises to that level, as one rather expects the government to put the best face on things.

Who is to blame for this is the mainstream media. Considering that the country is involved in not one, but two full-scale wars,. that have been going on for years, one would think the media would be paying more attention to military reporting.

Of course, they don't. The general level of military and war reporting is abysmal. There are handful of people doing good work, mostly on the ground in the war zone, but the stateside background stuff is awful. There's a general lack of a critical eye and ear to official pronouncements and often no attempt at all to find some alternative voices.

The mainstream media has been failing to do its job on this issue, partially out of ignorance and quite a bit out of arrogance. Reporters often pride themselves on being able to report on anything, but there are some fields that really do require special levels of knowledge and can't be safely entrusted to GA reporters. An obvious one anyone can understand is sports. That's an entirely special operation in every news source because you've got to know what you are talking about and when you don't it's obvious.

Other special knowledge beats include business and science. The military is also a special knowledge beat that's not suitable to the GA approach.

First you have to start with the facts ...

.. if you want to solve a problem.

That is, a clear-eyed facing of the truth provides the best chance for dealing with a crisis. If, on the other hand, you lie about the problem -- especially to yourself -- then solving it is out if the question.

Unfortunately the Bush administration's reaction to unpleasant facts to to hide them, deny them and ignore them. For example, the government's "core inflation" figures strip out food and fuel because those are "too volatile." But, of course, right now those are precisely the costs that are killing us! And real-life consumers can't "strip out" those costs. They have to pay them.

This brings up the wider problem of the government's official inflation measure, which critics say is off the mark anyway, outside of the food/fuel issue because it's adjusted incorrectly when compared to real-life costs of living. For example, by the former methodology the inflation rate is much worse now. My own personal experience tracks the old number better than the new one.

It's a dangerous game the government plays when it fiddles with its reputation for credibility. As the Communists eventually found out, once lost it's impossible to regain.

Media notice

Making a good point here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/17/115418/357/706/497618

New media embarasses the old

The Smoking Gun website exposes a major L.A. Times story about Tupac Shakur by a prize-winning investigative reporter as being based on a con-man's hoax. The paper apologizes and will almost certainly be facing major league lawsuits which it might very well lose.

The apology here: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-me-tupac27mar27,0,2043351.story

The Smoking Gun here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0325081sabatino1.html

For those who doubt that the new media is eclipsing the old, this should be exhibit No. 1 to shake that belief.
This is a big deal from the media standpoint. In the newsroom I work in there has been some reluctance to take web media seriously, but I think that reluctance is misplaced. Naturally one can't accept everything that appears in an online report as accurate, but that's also true of print media. I had a friend's grandmother once who swore that what she read in The National Enquirer must be true because they wouldn't have printed it if it weren't true. That was a touching bit of faith but it wasn't true then and isn't true now. Just because something is committed to the printed page doesn't make it so.
The key to credibility in print as well as online media is transparency. In the L.A. Times story, as so many that get into trouble, there's a lot of reliance on unnamed sources. A lot of the big national media outlets have gotten into a bad habit of routinely using unidentified sources. This simply has to stop. There are rare times when you need to use somebody who can't be identified, but when the rare becomes routine it's a problem.
This is less of a problem with more regional and local papers, which very rarely rely on unidentified sources. I've worked at four different small to mid-size daily newspapers and at all of them there was a very high bar to using an unidentified source. It might get OK'd once or twice a year at such a paper.
Especially in stories out of Washington, a look at the N.Y. Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal you will find unidentified sources almost every day. In many cases it's not obvious why the privilege has been granted. There are partisan attacks and self-serving administration statements given the dignity of print while not giving the reader the means to evaluate the source.
Guys, stop it!
If the source won't allow an ID then don't use the comment! It's as simple as that. Rove needs you to print his spin a lot worse than you need to use it. Really.
If the print media and national broadcast media is to retain any shred of credibility (which, in turn, is its only real edge over the new media) it has to tighten up.

New York Times losing credibility

Here's a good analysis: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/torture_/2008/02/textual_criticism.php

As an aside, in political stories the New York Times routinely does sloppy things that we, at our small-city daily, would never tolerate in a story about the City Council, for example. It almost seems like they believe that now they are big-time reporters at the big-time newspaper they no longer need to do things like properly source material.

Annoying TV teasers

It used to be that the television teaser shown just before the commercial break would be the first or second thing they showed you when you got back.
Lately I've noticed that they've gotten in the habit of delaying the viewers' gratification beyond all reason. Now they'll mention a news story and you'll go through two or three commercial breaks without the damn thing showing up.
Come on! I don't think it's a winning strategy for winning me back to TV viewing to remind me why the Internet is less frustrating. I've been watching TV for 50 years and I'm tired of the manipulation.