In Which We Find the Media as Broken as the Republican Party

I wish I could stop being stunned at how badly our MSM can be in telling the public about the issues of the day. But I’m seeing more and more criticism of the coverage of this issue that I wonder if we aren’t looking at a point somewhere in the next weeks or months where our media does some of the sheepish navel gazing that followed when it became really plain that the Iraq War was done on a very large bed of lies that the media did little (except for the McClatchy organization) to try to check up on.

Farewell — Bob Herbert’s Last NYT Column

Bob Herbert has spent years writing about lives and challenges of those increasingly voiceless and often invisible in our society.   He has been a fiercely moral voice writing about the immorality of torture, killing, institutional injustice against the poor, or working people or minorities — always making the case that you can’t be a great nation by demonizing and dehumanizing those who aren’t so fortunate.  There is alot to commend about his career — I probably remember best his writing against torture and his dogged effort to not let the people of Tulia targeted by law enforcement out of control get out of our sight.

30 Media Heroes

Having some fun with the Salon Hack 30 list, Greg Mitchell over at The Nation challenged his readers to create the 30 Media Heroes list.

It Would NOT Be OK If A Democrat Did This

You’ve probably read already how the teatard candidate for AK-Sen had his hired security guards handcuff and detain — at a public event — a local blogger who wanted ask Miller about some questionable bits about his employment with the Fairbanks North Star Borough. But if you look around the intertubes today, you can [...]

The News Journal Admits to Deficient Political Coverage

Yesterday, John Sweeney took to the pages of the NJ OpEd page to tell us what we already know — that the media isn’t doing an especially good job at getting political candidates to discuss in detail their approach to issues of concern to voters:

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 [...]

This Can’t Be A Surprise, Can It?

But nor can it be a surprise that Republicans are judging other people’s packages, can it?

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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: