Did Jon Stewart Hurt America?

Dan Drezner notes that "We're coming up on the five-year anniversary of Jon Stewart's verbal skewering of Crossfire in particular and the whole genre of left-right cable gabfests in general.  Stewart said these kind of shows were 'hurting America' because of their general blather and failure to ask politicians good, sharp questions." Dan poses the Reaganesque question, Are you better off than ...

Obnoxious Web Ads

Having run advertising-supported websites myself for several years, I'm appreciative of the need to run ads and get reader clickthroughs. And the mass media is struggling to figure out a sustainable business model. But some of the ads are getting to be too much. Take this one at The Hill: No, not the banner ad on the top.  Or ...

McGurn: Latimer No Star

William McGurn, head speechwriter for most of President George W. Bush's administration, takes to the WSJ today to discuss what a failure former junior speechwriter Matt Latimer was at his job.  Oh, it truly pains McGurn to write this about a young man he hired -- indeed, he "would have taken them to the grave" -- but Latimer is now ...

Obama Overexposed?

President Obama has gone on virtually every network but Fox in a weekend tour de force that continues tonight: The president's week-long media blitz has left no other network behind. The president has appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes," Bloomberg and CNBC and will appear on five public affairs talk shows on Sunday: ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," CBS's "Face the ...

Jon Stewart on ACORN Scandal

I'm a couple days behind on my "Daily Show" viewing but Ed Morrissey points me to this clip of his reaction to the ACORN scandal, in which the community organizers offer helpful advice to a fake pimp-hooker combo in evading criminal detection and claiming their underage Central American sex slaves as dependents on their taxes. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon ...

Conservative Media Scoops Mainstream Media

A series of scandals uncovered by conservative outlets and ignored by the mainstream press are starting to raise some uncomfortable questions. The right-wing media’s single-minded focus on a handful of targets over the past months and its success in pushing those stories into the mainstream have underscored the sharp divide between traditional news organizations and the bloggers and talk show hosts ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...