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In an interview with Sky News Australia, the News Corp. tycoon laid out his vision for the future of the news business, which bears little resemblance to the present state of the news business. Murdoch said he would soon begin charging for online content, block Google searches and ... (continued)
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kean.edu
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By Bill Boyarsky — I’ve been thinking of I.F. Stone while reading the growing stack of reports and essays giving recommendations on how to save the declining news business. The outrageous solution increasingly favored by the journalism establishment is one that Stone would have hated—turning to Washington for help.
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Flickr / jarrodtrainque
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The original cable news network has slipped to fourth and last place with prime-time viewers between ages 25 and 54, trailing Fox News, MSNBC and HLN. The conventional wisdom is that Americans prefer their news with a heavy dose of opinion, but CNN could be losing viewers because, as the “Daily Show” points out (after the jump), they’re just bad at gathering news.
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Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner —
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World Economic Forum
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likened a report in a Swedish tabloid that said Israeli troops harvested organs from dead Palestinians to “medieval libels that Jews killed Christian children for their blood.”
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AP / Kevin Frayer
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Tensions continue to build before Thursday’s presidential election in Afghanistan. After a spate of violence in the capital city of Kabul on Tuesday, including a suicide car bombing that killed at least eight people and wounded 53, the government banned local news outlets from reporting any similar incidents on election day.
Posted on Aug 18, 2009
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Media Matters caught CNN’s Erica Hill asking, “What are the real proposals here for public insurance? And why is it so unpopular?” Not sure where she gets her info, since polls here, here, here, here, here and here say a majority of Americans like the idea.
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nerve.com
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It’s no secret that Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly don’t get along, but the two TV personalities have drastically scaled back their attacks on one another ever since a private meeting between GE and News Corp. CEOs determined the feud was bad for the bottom line.
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cubaheadlines.com
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After vexing Cuban officials (and citizens, no doubt) for three years, a U.S. government-sponsored electronic billboard that featured news and information blips tailored for a Cuban audience from an American-friendly angle has been switched off in the interest of changing the diplomatic tone between the two countries.
Posted on Jul 27, 2009
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By Marie Cocco — The greatest sorrow in marking Walter Cronkite’s death is the necessity of acknowledging that we have replaced his work ethic and wisdom with puffery and ideological pontification.
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© 2001 Reese Erlich
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By Reese Erlich — In the fall of 2002, Walter Cronkite agreed to be interviewed about the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. That interview was never published. Looking back at the transcript seven years later, Walter’s views proved quite prescient. Here’s some of what he told me.
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AP / File
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One of the news industry’s longest-living legends, Walter Cronkite, died of cerebrovascular disease Friday at the age of 92. Over the course of his storied career as the anchor of CBS News, Cronkite covered some of the biggest events of the 20th century. He himself coined his famous and often-quoted sign-off line: “And that’s the way it is. ... ”
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adsoftheworld.com
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So, Time and Newsweek have had to reinvent themselves in the face of flagging circulation numbers and built-in relevance issues (i.e., they were created at a time when there were too many newspapers, crazy as that sounds now), but as The Atlantic’s Michael Hirschorn notes, there’s one weekly news digest that’s going strong while others falter.
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White House / Samantha Appleton
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President Obama is still wildly popular and he seems determined to revel in it by popping up three times a day to make a statement or greet a world leader. However, Joel Connelly writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “a president should take time out of the public eye, and not tire out the country.”
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By Ellen Goodman — Journalism is famously described as “the first rough draft of history.” But the history of this Iranian moment is a first, rough hailstorm of bits and bytes, tweets and texts. In the tweet of Mousavil388: “One Person=One Broadcaster.”
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rackjite.com
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It seems that immigrant bashing isn’t the ratings fertilizer it used to be. Just ask CNN blowhard Lou Dobbs, who hitched his wagon to a xenophobia boomlet only to discover that angry white men are a fickle bunch.
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Flickr / NCinDC
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Since the year 2000, National Public Radio has increased its audience by 47 percent, with an 8.7 percent jump in the last year alone. That might have something to do with the collapse of the news media over the same period. While newspapers try to compete with Craigslist, NPR has acquired more foreign bureaus—and a bigger morning audience—than the major network news divisions.
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Susan Jacoby’s lucid new book reminds us that the Hiss case offered a vengeful postwar right a golden opportunity to tar the New Deal as a crypto-communist conspiracy—and why it still matters.
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No one expects the former “Inside Edition” host and Fox News provocateur to be a class act, particularly not since he made his intentions with that falafel clear, but what Bill O’Reilly does with a pipe metaphor in this clip is just lame.
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Flickr / Aaron Escobar
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The Truthdig Podcast is back and better than ever. This week the panel tackles our obsession with imperfect athletes, the first days of the Obama administration and the decline of media. Special guest Megan Tady, campaign coordinator for Free Press, joins James Harris and Josh Scheer.
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By David Sirota — One thing is obvious after Michael Phelps’ marijuana “scandal”: Our society is addicted to fake outrage—and to break our dependence, we’re going to need far more potent medicine than the herb Phelps was smoking.
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By Joe Conason — Having allowed his Republican opponents to dominate the economic debate, Obama used his first news conference to rebut them—coolly and civilly, yet without leaving any doubt that he can strike back harder if necessary.
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radaronline.com
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A survey of stimulus coverage by Media Matters has found that watching TV news may actually shrink your brain. Well, that’s not fair, but it certainly won’t teach you much about stimulating the economy. That’s because the personalities that populate the airwaves—and not just Fox News—are given license to repeat untruths over and over again.
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Bill O’Reilly must be some kind of highly dedicated comedian who has managed to fool the country with a series of elaborate Andy Kaufman-esque stunts. How else to explain moments like this, exquisitely captured by Stephen Colbert, when the “Factor” host unintentionally ridicules himself ad absurdum?
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Two of Britain’s biggest networks, Sky and the BBC, have refused to air a two-minute fundraising appeal on behalf of Gaza. The decision not to broadcast the spot, produced by a committee made up of Britain’s biggest aid agencies, has triggered public outcry, condemnation from politicians and a formal investigation by the BBC Trust.
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By David Sirota — With the release of three new reports, there’s no debate anymore about who was correct and who wasn’t concerning the economic collapse and the Wall Street bailout. The studies prove that progressive critics were right and the Washington ideologues and the pundits were wrong.
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By Ellen Goodman — Sen. Robert Byrd, 91, announced that he will give up the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee to Sen. Daniel Inouye, 84. The torch has passed to a new generation.
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Flickr / Brave New Films
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By Marie Cocco — The giant discounter is the only store where hard-squeezed consumers can afford to buy anything, and so it has kept posting sales gains amid the retail bloodbath.
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us.penguingroup.com
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An insightful book discloses how a confidence game combined pride and cunning and stupidity to bring America to the brink of catastrophe.
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Collage: Flickr / specialklikethecereal / buddhakiwi
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While John McCain is still searching for a reason he should be president, he has a new reason Barack Obama shouldn’t be: The Illinois senator once had dinner with a Palestinian. Or, as McCain sees it, he attended a terrorist convention with a PLO spokesman and William Ayers.
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christiansciencemonitor.com
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The oft-repeated narrative of print news going to the pits has gained another protagonist, as the century-old Christian Science Monitor recently decided to cease its daily print edition, banking now on the Internet as its key distribution mechanism.
Posted on Oct 29, 2008
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rockthetruth.blogspot.com
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There wasn’t a whole lot of love in the room for cable news channel MSNBC during a luncheon in Beverly Hills on Monday for television executives and actors from both ends of the political spectrum.
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By Eugene Robinson — Opinion surveys, voter registration totals and cable television ratings indicate that Americans have been engrossed by the marathon presidential campaign. In a week and a half, it’ll be over. What will we do to fill the void in our lives?
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain and Sarah Palin are going to try their best to make us talk about anything but the big issues facing our country, because most Americans think Barack Obama’s solutions are better.
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Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin about a number of controversial topics during the latest installment of her interview—evolution, abortion, homosexuality—but the VP nominee appeared to have the hardest time when pressed to say what newspapers and magazines she has read: “Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.”
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cbsnews.com
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The “CBS Evening News” host brought a little heat to her sit-down with the Alaska governor: “I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?” Update: Full video
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Carolyn Eisenberg takes a close look at Melvyn Leffler’s “For the Soul of Mankind” to ask whether our current troubles are rooted in a history that continues to haunt us.
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Flickr / buddhakiwi / altered for comment
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ABC plans to air portions of Charles Gibson’s exclusive interview with Sarah Palin all over its air, hoping to squeeze every last drop of ratings out of the VP nominee’s first unscripted appearance. But there’s a byproduct of ABC’s scheduling: Palin’s one foray into media accountability will appear more like several.
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iamatvjunkie.typepad.com
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While MSNBC reshuffles its anchor chairs, thanks in part to criticism from rival media outlets and a certain presidential candidate, Fox News continues to be a loudmouth right-wing spin factory. Is it a case of the boy who cried “terrorist,” or is there a double standard for Murdoch’s media empire? Truthdig contributor Elliot Cohen has more.
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nymag.com
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Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will no longer anchor MSNBC’s coverage of major political events, but will instead provide analysis for the network’s David Gregory, who will sit in the anchor’s chair. The network was under pressure, both internal and external, to rein in its two leading men, whose politics are well known. Olbermann himself initiated the move.
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Griff Jenkins of Fox News got a little more free speech than he bargained for after taunting, er, interviewing some antiwar protesters marching in Denver.
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Right, so Vladimir Putin’s criticism about the Western media’s coverage of the ongoing clash between Russia and Georgia is certainly not completely unfounded, but media bias isn’t confined to the West. Consider this recent story from Russian news source Pravda.ru, headlined “Russia: Again Savior of Peace and Life.”
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A BBC team in Georgia was busy reporting on the conflict there when a Russian plane turned toward the journalists and opened fire.
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“Audition” details the life story, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, of a pioneering journalist-entertainer who reported the news while making it in ways both admirable and troubling.
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Mr. Fish
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The renowned author sits down with Truthdig literary editor Steve Wasserman to tell stories about his books, the many loves of his life—including dinosaurs and Halloween—and his own starring role in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rise to fame.
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Jon Stewart takes a whimsical look at Barack Obama’s excellent adventure while Stephen Colbert notes that, with the entire news establishment chasing the senator, “I am the Edward R. Murrow of who’s left.”
Posted on Jul 23, 2008
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AP photo / Mark Lennihan
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By Chris Hedges — The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress.
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