|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Garry Wills
$18.45
By Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper
$10.17
$20
|
|
|
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — That might be going too far for a show that still averages 28.7 million viewers, but ratings are down. In part, the cause is the presence of an even more exciting reality show on television, and it’s not even really a show.
|
|
The shamelessly liberal “Boston Legal” tackles the schism that has occurred in the Democratic Party and, one presumes, among the show’s viewers. This clip picks up in the middle of a debate about the legality of poaching pledged delegates.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Do white right-wing preachers have it easier than black left-wing preachers? Is there a double standard?
|
|
By Joe Conason — As Jeremiah Wright gleefully tours the airwaves, inflicting severe political damage with almost every utterance, he is proving that racism isn’t the only obstacle to a black president.
|
bpbraves.net
|
UCLA professor Wellford Wilms, one of the nation’s leading authorities on the crisis of public education in America, offers a must-read counterpoint to Bush’s blather about “No Child Left Behind.”
|
|
Hillary Clinton tells Bill O’Reilly (always an elevator of conversation) that “I take offense at” the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Michelle Obama, meanwhile, would rather the press just move on.
|
Flickr / soggydan
|
While the spotlight is starting to singe the Democrats, it’s true that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have gotten heaping doses of attention compared with the supposed media darling, John McCain. Here’s one indication: The covers of Time and Newsweek have featured the face of an Obama or a Clinton eight times since Super Tuesday.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — The media tour he’s conducting is doing a disservice that goes beyond any impact it might have on Obama’s presidential campaign.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — This is supposed to be a big election, but it has given every sign in recent weeks of becoming a small one. As a result, the public and the media are showing signs of exhaustion with what had once been an exhilarating contest.
|
|
After laying low for some time, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been speaking out about the controversy that has tarnished his name. The minister seemed to enjoy this encounter with the media, too many elements of which relied on YouTube to lay out the facts of their stories.
|
|
Barack Obama has frozen out Fox News since he found himself the victim of the network’s attack journalism at the start of the campaign. Here he lifts the ban to run the gantlet with Chris Wallace on flag pins, the Rev. Wright and, to be fair, more substantive issues.
|
Flickr / NCBrian
|
Elizabeth Edwards has some insight into the media’s coverage of presidential campaigns, which she brings to a thoughtful Op-Ed in this Sunday’s New York Times. Beyond the current campaign, Edwards warns, “the future of news is not bright.”
|
|
By David Sirota — If television is the nation’s mirror, then no two TV characters reflect the intensifying “two Americas” gap better than Chris Matthews and “The Wire’s” Jimmy McNulty.
|
|
There’s a seasonal sport going on in the media: the age-old tradition of primary prediction. Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary gave a whole host of TV hosts and pundits another shot at handicapping yet another big race between dueling Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—but alas, as the contest concluded, heady excitement gave way to darker sentiments.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing.
|
White House / Paul Morse
|
Tony Snow, the pundit who became Bush’s press secretary, but then left because his $168,000 salary didn’t cut it, is returning to cable news. CNN has hired the Fox News veteran to be a conservative talking head.
|
Flickr / indio
|
Rupert Murdoch just can’t get enough of the New York newspaper scene. The News Corp. mogul, already in possession of the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, has worked out a deal to buy Newsday for about half a billion dollars. That paper is currently owned by another salty media tyrant, Sam Zell.
|
online.wsj.com
|
Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli is said to be leaving his post after 24 years at the paper—an unexpected development that media-watchers are attributing to conflict over new owner Rupert Murdoch’s plans for the newspaper.
|
AP photo / Rick Bowmer
|
By Chris Hedges — The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues.
|
nytimes.com
|
The Bush administration’s skill in working the media to promote its interests is not a new story, but The New York Times has just uncovered a new twist: According to the paper, administration insiders courted a troop of retired military men to serve as trained PR agents for the White House on major broadcast outlets.
|
cnn.com
|
When CNN commentator Jack Cafferty called the Chinese “a bunch of goons and thugs” on the air April 9, Chinese-Americans were listening—and Saturday morning, thousands protested outside Hollywood’s CNN building, demanding that he be fired.
|
AP photo / Jae C. Hong
|
By Bill Boyarsky — Journalists are famous for their dogged drive to “get the story.” But when it comes to situations like Wednesday’s campaign debate in Philadelphia, they have the ability to make stories, too—and the story ABC’s pundits created that night buried the most important issues of the day, at Americans’ expense.
|
|
In this “Daily Show” special feature, “Blessed Week Ever,” Jon Stewart surveys the American media’s scintillating coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit, from brilliant observations about the pope’s “gentle” ways to the glory of his White House visit, and offers his own take on just what President Bush might have said upon first meeting the pontiff. Popemania!
Posted on Apr 17, 2008
READ MORE 
|
AP photo / Matt Rourke
|
The Democrats met in Philadelphia Wednesday night for their 21st and probably finally debate. The Washington Post’s Tom Shales was horrified by what he saw, but not because of the candidates: “For the first 52 minutes ... Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news.”
|
|
Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films is behind this ad targeting Condoleezza Rice for her role in the Bush administration’s torture policy. The 30-second spot is set to air following Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Sen. Barack Obama is clearly a bad bowler. But it was not too long ago that African-Americans were not allowed in some bowling alleys. In Orangeburg, S.C., three young African-American men were killed for protesting against that town’s segregated bowling alley.
|
AP photo / Charlie Neibergall
|
By Stanley Kutler — With the so-called scandal over Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment, the media have once again abandoned impartiality and become active participants in the race for the White House.
|
|
It’s hard to believe, but Fox News is already 12! As the Murdochian news channel faces the inevitable growing pains of its ‘tween age, working hard to define President Bush’s legacy before he leaves office and displaying as many American flags as screen space will allow, “Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver salutes Fox with his own special tribute.
|
AP photo / Michael Conroy
|
Just when Hillary Clinton thought the flap over her 1995 trip to Bosnia had passed, her husband revived the topic—prompting her to issue him a gag order. Bill Clinton, campaigning Thursday in Indiana, brought up the media’s treatment of Hillary after she mischaracterized the scene and later acknowledged her mistake, but he apparently muddled a few facts himself.
|
abcnews.com
|
Silvio Berlusconi, billionaire, media mogul and former prime minister of Italy, is calling for voters to give him a substantial majority of parliament seats as he vies a third time for the country’s most powerful office. The elections, to be held Sunday and Monday, will decide whether the country is led by a center-left coalition or Berlusconi’s right-wing “Freedom Folks.”
|
nwitimes.com
|
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that CBS News is likely to part ways with its evening news anchor, Katie Couric, who earns about $15 million a year. Consistently in last place among the networks, CBS has been under pressure to right the ship, and was even reported to have considered outsourcing some news operations to CNN. CBS says no such plan is in the works.
|
|
Hillary Clinton has, for obvious reasons, tried to distance herself from her time on the board of Wal-Mart, the Arkansas company that, for many Democratic voters, emblematizes globalization and all those jobs that were shipped overseas that the candidates keep talking about.
|
|
A few months ago columnist Amy Goodman argued that the principal beneficiaries of our current campaign finance system are the media conglomerates that rake in all those advertising dollars. That’s especially true this week as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bombard Pennsylvania with commercials.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The most striking critiques of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have come not from her opponents or her enemies but from her most loyal friends.
|
Flickr / Mr. Littlehand
|
In an extraordinary 633-word retraction, The Los Angeles Times has renounced an article it published last month that claimed to have new information about an attack in 1994 on rap artist Tupac Shakur, who later was killed.
|
|
From TSA’s mood music to Obama’s bowling blunder, Bill Maher takes on the issues of the week, including the growing concern over the Democrats’ heated primary battle: “If voting can destroy the Democratic Party, then the party isn’t very democratic.”
|
Flickr / Joe Crimmings Photography
|
By Bill Boyarsky — Real politicians don’t quit. They are defeated, indicted, jailed, die or, in some jurisdictions, ousted by term limits. So don’t expect Hillary Clinton to surrender just yet.
|
Flickr / digiart2001
|
There was the Jason Blair scandal, the Judith Miller WMD fiasco, the John McCain (yawn) brouhaha and the appointment of neocon “never-get-it-right” William Kristol as an Op-Ed columnist, to mention a few New York Times blunders. All that and a shareholders’ assault make the Sulzbergers’ lock on ownership of The New York Times seem not entirely impregnable, explains Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff.
|
AP photo / Carol Phelps
|
By Robert Scheer — A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
Representatives of the International Olympic Committee have warned China that the estimated 30,000 journalists who will cover the Games in Beijing must have unimpeded Internet access. Concerns were raised after the Chinese government blocked access to certain sites during the recent unrest in Tibet.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Have you noticed something similar about those Obama campaign surrogates and the media soothsayers who have started a drumbeat to force Clinton out of the campaign? Hint: They tend to share a certain anatomical attribute.
|
|
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has announced what the media are calling a “massive overhaul” of America’s regulatory agencies, but columnist and liberal economist Paul Krugman isn’t impressed. Krugman doesn’t think the administration’s cosmetic solutions will mitigate our current economic crisis or prevent the next one.
|
|
The national media have made a pariah of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, by replaying carefully selected snippets of his sermons without context. Here are extended versions of two of Wright’s more controversial statements.
|
|
By Fred Branfman — What kind of look back to the ‘60s manages to almost entirely ignore or miss the point of the Vietnam War?
|
|
By David Sirota — Since the 1960s, bigotry has undergone an aesthetic makeover. Today, the most pernicious racists do not wear pointy hoods, scream epithets and anonymously burn crosses from behind masks. They don starched suits, recite sententious bromides and stage political lynchings before television cameras.
|
AP photo / Andy Wong
|
China has allowed a group of foreign journalists an escorted visit to Tibet. News reports from non-state sources are coming out of Lhasa for the first time since protests and riots began two weeks ago. One described part of the city as a “war zone.”
|
businessweek.com
|
With 20 debates between the Democratic candidates already in the books, and another scheduled before the Pennsylvania primary, it’s a little hard to believe that CBS News hasn’t yet had the opportunity to ask a few gotcha questions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Katie Couric may just get the chance.
|
chinadaily.cn
|
China has accused international media outlets of showing bias in news reports of the riots in Tibet. However, the media, too, have a gripe: Beijing has prevented foreign media from entering Tibet and neighboring provinces and has limited domestic access to foreign media reports.
|
|
Fox newsman Chris Wallace just bit the hand that feeds him talking points. While a guest on “Fox and Friends,” Wallace took his colleagues to task for their coverage of Obama and race, accusing them of both belaboring and distorting the story.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Arctic Tundra ‘Will Turn to Forest’
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
