What’s the Difference, Jed?
Steve Benen and DougJ give NewsBusters' Tim Graham a hard time for noting that the Washington Post obituary for Patrick Swayze, who died overnight from pancreatic cancer, fails to give "Red Dawn" its due, quipping, "There are clearly no fortysomething Reaganites working in the Washington Post newsroom." I was prepared to chide Benen and DJ for failing to get a self-deprecating joke, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 15, 2009 14:33
NYT and the Farrell Rescue
[caption id="attachment_41922" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Corporal John Harrison (left) was killed in the SAS-led operation to rescue British journalist Stephen Farrell (right), which was launched after officials received intelligence that he was about to be moved into Pakistan's tribal areas"][/caption] Tunku Varadarajan argues the New York Times has a moral obligation for getting two people killed by sending Stephen Farrell into ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 15, 2009 13:39
Obama: Kanye West a ‘Jackass’
The big buzz on the blogs this morning is that ABC's Terry Moran -- best known as the brother of RWNH's Rick -- Tweeted "Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a "jackass" for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT'S presidential." The Tweet in question was soon removed with ABC providing this explanation to Politico: In the process of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 15, 2009 07:38
Protests and Media Coverage
A meme is developing among a handful of Progressive blogs, with Media Matters, Hullabaloo, Discourse.net, and Brad Blog all complaining that the Washington Post and NYT gave A1 treatment yesterday to the 9/12 protests while relegating anti-war marches in 2002 and 2005 to the inside pages. Steve Benen follows up and observes, There are competing angles to explain something like this, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 14, 2009 07:27
Post Trying to Macaca McDonnell
Republican Bob McDonnell enjoys a rather sizable lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds in his race for Virginia's governorship. But the Washington Post, which went after George Allen with amazing fervor in his 2006 race against longshot Jim Webb, is doing what it can to fix that. First, it ran a series of articles about a master's thesis McDonnell ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 9, 2009 11:21
NYT Disappears Blog Post
Rebecca Ruiz of the NYT Media Decoder blog wrote a post titled "NYTPicker Revealed. A Blogger With A Cause: Us," revealing David Blum as the anonymous blogger behind NYTPicker, that got picked up on Memeorandum. It has disappeared. Presumably, this is because -- as The Editors inform us in a subsequent post -- the information contained in said post ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 9, 2009 08:12
Olbermann vs. Beck
Keith Olbermann is going after Glenn Beck now, requesting Daily Kos readers and viewers of his own show to "Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere [Beck's radio producer], and Roger Ailes." Apparently, Olbermann found this "necessary after this in order to prove various cliches about goose and gander, and to remind everybody to walk softly and carry ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 7, 2009 09:21
Jenna Bush and the Meritocracy
Adam Serwer is incensed because he has "a lot of friends who spent a great deal of money, and went into a lot of debt, to learn how to be professional broadcast journalists" who are "now struggling to find work" and yet Jenna Bush Hager now has a job on Today despite having only a few years' teaching experience. As Glenn ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 1, 2009 07:40
American Royalty – Nepotism in Politics and Media
Glenn Greenwald laments the rise of "American royalty." They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 31, 2009 07:33
Mary Jo Kopechne
In my early morning Teddy Kennedy Dead at 77 media roundup post, I observed, "That the Chappaquiddick scandal didn’t make the first several paragraphs — or even first page — of several of these obits is quite remarkable. It would be like writing an obit for Richard Nixon that didn’t mention Watergate or one for Michael Jackson that glossed over ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 26, 2009 14:31
Hyperbole of the Day- Dead Kennedys Edition
The award goes to Chris Matthews for this: You know there's going to be a lot of talk about the tragic blessings of the Kennedy family, and the curse. And it's all nonsense. These people were courageous risk takers. Kathleen Kennedy, the girl, the oldest daughter, she was killed with her lover traveling on a plane ride she ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 26, 2009 11:59
Michael Jackson More Newsworthy than Afghanistan?
Americans' limited interest in foreign affairs has long been lamented. But surely, the war in Afghanistan deserves more press coverage than the death of a pop star? In my New Atlanticist piece "Michael Jackson Trumps Afghanistan in News Coverage" I explain why this in fact happened -- despite Afghanistan getting a seven month head start and the year being only eight ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 25, 2009 15:11
Jon & Kate Plus Don Hewitt Equals News?
This morning, Jeff Jarvis passed along Peter Daou's tweet "CBS Early Show Prioritizes Jon & Kate Over Don Hewitt’s Death," which linked this Consider This News video, itself prefaced "This speaks volumes about the state of TV news" My tweeted retort: "Old man dying yesterday not news?" Steven Taylor has some more detailed thoughts, notably that morning news shows have never been ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 20, 2009 14:33
Town Halls and T-Shirts
WaPo fashion critic Robin Givhan has irked some conservative bloggers by going after the town hall protesters for being a mite casual in their choice of couture. By and large, the shouters are dressed in a way that underscores their Average Guy -- or Gal -- bona fides. They are wearing T-shirts, baseball caps, promotional polo shirts and sundresses with bra ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 17, 2009 08:20
Intellectual Dishonesty
Conor Friedersdorf wants to ban several conservative talk hosts from news programs cable news networks on the grounds that they "consistently prove themselves to be intellectually dishonest, intemperate partisans whose very approach to public discourse is deeply destructive of it." This strikes E.D. Kain as "reprehensible" because "Intellectual dishonesty is not something you can scientifically pin down. One man’s intellectually ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 14, 2009 10:13
