Posted 7:30 AM by Peter Fallow
WHAT DRIVES IDEOLOGUES? William Powers has an interesting column on the forces that motivate ideologues. Here are the money grafs:

All media ideologues have one thing in common: anger. Scratch a real ideologue, left or right, and invariably what you find is a person who is working out some ancient vendetta against a parent, a sibling, a school, a company or some social group that rejected them and made them feel small. The anger became a passion, and passion can produce compelling, lucrative media content.

But should angry people own the landscape? American radio is a wasteland of niche-driven music programming, frat-boy humor and ideology-driven talk. What it lacks is heart, that simple, thoughtful, menschy desire to listen and learn from other people -- to connect -- that Larry King brought to radio ages ago, before he jumped to television. Aren't there any young Larry Kings out there? And if they aren't fire-breathing ideologues, will anybody ever hire them?

Hmm. Larry King. Simple, sure. But thoughtful?

For more, check out Andrew ("call me Andy") Cline's take on Powers' column. Cline's best line:

In other words, Powers just called Limbaugh/Moore and their ilk "craven, money-driven entertainers" without the overt name-calling.

Right on.

Posted 7:22 AM by Peter Fallow
AIN'T THAT SWEET: Remember David Von Drehle, the Washington Post reporter who told readers in Denver that the Post was a no-fun zone? Well, his co-workers threw a little party for him, complete with goofy hats.

Boy, those journalists! They're irrepressible!

Posted 8:10 AM by Peter Fallow
SO LONG, MR. ROGERS: Like most adults of a certain age (I'm nearly 37), I was saddened to learn of the death of Mr. Rogers. Yes, he became the butt of jokes from late-night comics, but he was a gentle mentor who was perhaps the most trustworthy kid-oriented TV personality in history. My mother, who was a highly regarded kindergarten teacher, was a tremendous fan of his work.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: There may be some truth in what New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges claims about how much intestinal fortitude his colleagues will display when bullets start flying in Iraq. But to say so in a journal that will be widely read by those folks? That's not going to make for a very fun "bus ride."

Posted 7:19 AM by Peter Fallow
THE POST GETS IT: In a remarkable editorial, The Washington Post answers critics who claim the paper has been leading a "drumbeat of war." I can't really add much more to this, so I'll just excerpt the pertinent passages:

For our part, we might begin with that phrase "rush to war." In fact there is nothing sudden or precipitous about our view that Saddam Hussein poses a grave danger. In 1990 and 1991 we supported many months of diplomacy and pressure to persuade the Iraqi dictator to withdraw his troops from Kuwait, the neighboring country he had invaded. When he failed to do so, we supported the use of force to restore Kuwait's independence. While many of the same Democrats who oppose force now opposed it then also, we believe war was the correct option -- though it was certainly not, at the time, the only choice. When the war ended, we supported -- in hindsight too unquestioningly -- a cease-fire agreement that left Saddam Hussein in power. But it was an agreement, imposed by the U.N. Security Council, that demanded that he give up his dangerous weapons.

In 1997 and 1998, we strongly backed President Clinton when he vowed that Iraq must finally honor its commitments to the United Nations to give up its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons -- and we strongly criticized him when he retreated from those vows. Mr. Clinton understood the stakes. Iraq, he said, was a "rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed."

When we cite Mr. Clinton's perceptive but ultimately empty comments, it is in part to chide him and other Democrats who take a different view now that a Republican is in charge. But it has a more serious purpose too. Mr. Clinton could not muster the will, or the domestic or international support, to force Saddam Hussein to live up to the promises he had made in 1991, though even then the danger was well understood. Republicans who now line up behind President Bush were in many cases particularly irresponsible; when Mr. Clinton did bomb Iraqi weapons sites in 1998, some GOP leaders accused him of seeking only to distract the nation from his impeachment worries. Through the end of Mr. Clinton's tenure and the first year of Mr. Bush's presidency, Saddam Hussein built up his power, beat back sanctions and found new space to rearm -- all with the support of France and Russia and the acquiescence of the United States.

After Sept. 11, 2001, many people of both parties said -- and we certainly hoped -- that the country had moved beyond such failures of will and politicization of deadly foreign threats. An outlaw dictator, in open defiance of U.N. resolutions, unquestionably possessing and pursuing biological and chemical weapons, expressing support for the Sept. 11 attacks: Surely the nation would no longer dither in the face of such a menace. Now it seems again an open question. To us, risks that were clear before seem even clearer now.

And then this conclusion:

In 1998 Mr. Clinton explained to the nation why U.S. national security was, in fact, in danger. "What if he fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? . . . Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."

Some argue now that, because Saddam Hussein has not in the intervening half-decade used his arsenal, Mr. Clinton was wrong and the world can rest assured that Iraq is adequately "contained." Given what we know about how containment erodes over time; about Saddam Hussein's single-mindedness compared with the inattention and divisions of other nations; and about the ease with which deadly weapons can move across borders, we do not trust such an assurance. Mr. Clinton understood, as Mr. Bush understands, that no president can bet his nation's safety on the hope that Iraq is "contained." We respect our readers who believe that war is the worst option. But we believe that, in this case, long-term peace will be better served by strength than by concessions.

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 6:33 AM by Peter Fallow
NEW AJR: The new issue of the American Journalism Review is online. Check it out here.

There's something that leaps out to me about this month's issue. Several of the issues covered (press access in a time of war, shoddy coverage of business, the flap over the New York Times' obsession with Augusta National) have been bouncing around in blogs for months now. Perhaps AJR should consider adding a blog, just to stay current.

Posted 10:35 AM by Peter Fallow
BLOGGER SUCKS: What the hell happened today? I've been trying to post ONE GODDAMN THING since about 10:30 a.m. Now I've got to go to work.

I swear to God, if I cared more about blogging, I'd switch to a different service. But I'm going to wait and see how things shake out in the wake of the Google purchase.

Posted 7:23 AM by Peter Fallow
WHY DON'T THEY LIKE ME: That's what Saddam Hussein sniffed to Dan Rather at the end of Rather's interview with the Iraqi tyrant. Check out Howard Kurtz's story here.

Posted 8:29 AM by Peter Fallow
JACK'S BACK: Slate's Jack Shafer dissects a silly, waffling editorial on Iraq in the New York Times. Check it out. (Hint: It's the same one the National Review ripped into yesterday.)

Posted 8:24 AM by Peter Fallow
US AGAINST THE WORLD A study conducted by a German media-watchdog group reveals that world press coverage of America currently is the most negative it's ever been. I'm not really surprised by this.

Posted 8:16 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE MEDIA BASHING: USA Today has its version of the "media ignores anti-war protesters" story. It's a pretty balanced piece, and there's not much more I can add to it.

But there's something that's been bugging me about this latest strain of media bashing. Those who claim that the anti-war position hasn't been getting adequately covered are missing the point. Outside of straight-news coverage of protest marches (how many attended, who spoke, how traffic was backed up, etc.), it seems to me that the anti-war position is best served by opinion pieces on the editorial pages. As William Powers pointed out on Friday in the National Journal:

The media are chary of all demonstrations, and with good reason: These are inherently synthetic events, orchestrated to promote one point of view at the expense of all others. A protest march is pure political burlesque.

With that in mind, I think the media have done a relatively decent job. After all, we have to remember that anti-war groups would love to see this Page One headline three or four times a week: "In speech, Chomsky derides U.S. plans for Iraq war." But how "newsworthy" is that? Like many of the complainers, I realize the problems inherent in relying on the government to provide virtually all coverage of a war. But if newspapers start lavishing column inches on speeches by activists, or on one-sided public forums, it will become all too easy for media watchdogs to take the opposite tack and say, "Hey, the public supports the use of force to remove Saddam from power. Why the hell is there all this coverage of Chomsky speeches and non-debate debates?"

The media may have been slow to react to anti-war protests, but once it did, it gave them fairly hands-off coverage. After all, very few news organizations have even made a cursory mention of the Stalinist roots of A.N.S.W.E.R. (something USA Today's story doesn't touch on, either).

And once again, if you think there is has been no debate about Iraq, check out Michael Kelly's column in the March Atlantic. It's a reminder that we live in the most heavily saturated media atmosphere in human history, one where a vast range of opinion and information is just a click of the mouse or the TV remote away.

Posted 11:00 AM by Peter Fallow
THE POST IS A NO-FUN ZONE: David Von Drehle, a reporter at the Washington Post, tells the Denver Post that working at the capital's leading newspaper is not exactly a blast. Check it out here. (Link via Romenesko.)

In other Post-bashing dispatches, the paper's ombudsman, Michael Getler, answers readers' complaints that a story might have compromised special forces missions in Iraq.

Posted 9:21 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE TIMES RIPPING: Several folks in blogland have torn into this op-ed in the New York Times by French communist Regis Debray. (See here, here and here.) Regarding the Times' failure to correctly label Debray, Sullivan makes the strongest point:

What's news is that Debray was absurdly identified by the Times as "a former adviser to President Francois Mitterrand of France, editor of Cahiers de Mediologie and the author of the forthcoming 'The God That Prevailed.'". I say absurdly because Debray is far better known as an old communist, a supporter of political violence, an unabashed admirer of Fidel Castro, and a guerrilla fighter alongside Che Guevara. His hatred of the United States even led him to defend Milosevic and Serbian genocide in the late 1990s. He's a Pinter with blood on his hands. Isn't this relevant information? Did the Times know this and decide to ignore it?

But Debray is also the husband of Elizabeth Burgos-Debray, the woman behind the fraudulent autobiography "I, Rigoberto Menchu." It's a piece of communist propaganda about the so-called life of a Quiche Mayan from Guatemala, and it was required reading for a generation of college students. Check out the story here.

Posted 7:41 AM by Peter Fallow
WAR DEPARTMENT: The National Review rips into a wishy-washy editorial on Iraq in the New York Times. Check it out.

Posted 7:34 AM by Peter Fallow
POLITICS AND THE PRESS: The Washington Post has a good article on how the media like a simple script when it comes to covering presidential campaigns.

While some argue that front-runner status brings with it unbearable pressure and scrutiny, there is no better place for a candidate to be. The nation's political reporters will deny their power -- and may not fully realize the extent of their influence -- but recent history shows that earning the front-runner designation is an overwhelming advantage. As odd as it may seem to say at this absurdly early date -- the first primary is nearly a year away -- it now may be John Kerry's race to lose.

This sounds like a perfect example of one of Dr. Cline's structural biases of the media.

Posted 7:13 AM by Peter Fallow
RELIGION AND THE MEDIA: David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times has a nice piece on the coverage of religion in the American press. The column quotes Doug Underwood, author of "From Yahweh to Yahoo!: The Religious Roots of the Secular Press."

"Members of the faith community are on target," Underwood writes, "when they complain about the incapacity or the unwillingness of journalists to take seriously the importance of the spiritual dimension in the lives of so many people."

Indeed, media coverage of not just religion but also of politics, science, psychology and technology, among other subjects, would be "much better if journalists better understood the role religion plays as a motivating force in so many areas of society," says Underwood, a former reporter, who's an associate professor of communications at the University of Washington.

The cultural background of most journalists may help explain why this is so:

Surveys show that Americans are among the most devout people in the world, and spirituality is routinely cited as one of the most important forces in their lives. But Robert Bellah, a professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, once told me that most journalists are "simply blind to religion. They think it's ... something only ignorant and backward people really believe in.

"This is not necessarily a conscious judgment," Bellah said, just part of most journalists' "general worldview."

But Shaw raises a valid point about the media's treatment of religion:

The United States is a secular, pluralistic society, though, with a constitutionally mandated separation of church and state; the skepticism, iconoclasm and suspicion of authority that are intrinsic to the practice of journalism are inimical to the faith and obedience to authority that are intrinsic to the practice of religion.

True enough, and I support that skepticism toward the sometimes dangerous intersection of government and religion. However, I still believe that reporting on people of faith too often lapses into stereotype. Devout Christians are "easily controlled," "fearful" or "unable to come to grips with a changing modern world." And those are some of the nicer descriptions.

The media have no problem finding sensitive, nuanced, complex ways to report on racial minorities and homosexuals. Why are such approaches so infrequently used in reporting on people of faith?

Posted 12:16 PM by Peter Fallow
A CRY FOR ATTENTION: Maybe that's what motivated Aaron McGruder, the man behind the popular Boondocks comic strip, to give a speech at the University of Indiana where he claimed Republicans murdered Sen. Paul Wellstone.

Another choice nugget of wisdom:

"Republicans do what psychotic, power- hungry megalomaniacs are supposed to do," McGruder said, with what sounded almost like grudging admiration. "The Republicans play the political game the way it's supposed to be played — dirty, underhanded and messy, and violent," he said.

McGruder admits he's played the papers who subscribe to his comic for a bunch of chumps:

Speaking without notes and keeping up a give-and-take with the audience, he said his goal has been to get a provocative point of view into the newspapers by wrapping it in a cute package.

"Media manipulation is a wonderful thing," he said.

Amazing what spoiled, successful leftists will say when they think no one is looking. Then again, maybe it's not so amazing. Here's one of the first things I ever blogged. It's about an interview with McGruder from The Nation.

Posted 8:26 AM by Peter Fallow
JACK'S BACK: Jack Shafer of Slate looks at some gleeful media coverage on big budget deficits in states controlled by Republican governors. He singles out the New York Times and the Washington Post for writing stories about how such states will be forced into unpopular tax increases.

However, Shafer points to ignored research from -- gasp! -- conservative think tanks indicating that the states got into their predicament by going on a spending spree during the economic boom years of the 1990s. Or, as Shafer so eloquently puts it:

Rather than placing a cap on spending in the face of budgetary surpluses, the states acted as if they had won the lottery. They added new programs and expanded existing ones. They hired more employees. And then came the Judgment Day of the crash.

Shafer is afraid to pull the trigger on "liberal bias" on this one, though he does raise a valid point at the end:

Conservatives blame the dastardly liberal press for the, uh, deficiencies of such stories. Me? I blame 1) a lazy press corps, which loves to write its stories straight out of the mouths of official sources, and 2) cheapskate publishers who could hire number crunchers to inspect the state budgets and assess the fiscal damage directly but won't.

Laziness and cheapness are certainly factors in how such one-sided, incomplete reports make it into newspapers. But let's not forget that deadline pressure is often to blame for these things.

Also, you can't discount the possibility that the newsworthiness of GOP leaders forced to go against their principles and raise taxes was such an irresistible news hook that it lessened the chances for a hard-target search for contrary evidence, especially among reporters with a liberal mind-set. (I'm not saying they deliberately ignored such evidence; I'm just saying that they might be more inclined not to look for it.)

Posted 8:05 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON THE PROTESTS: Just after a post about the media being soft on the protesters, this comes up. The San Francisco Chronicle did a little research using aerial photography and determined that the protest march in that city last week drew approximately 65,000 -- not 200,000, as was claimed by march organizers and the police.

Meanwihile, William Powers has another excellent column on the media. This time, he looks at why the media gave so much coverage to last week's anti-war rallies. Powers' theory is that the coverage could serve as a sort of de facto public opinion poll, and it indicates that the case for war hasn't been made convincingly yet.

I have my own theory. I think the media caught so much hell for "ignoring" the last round of protests that it were determined not to face such criticism again. Here's Powers' excellent observation of the media's attitude toward protest marches:

The media are chary of all demonstrations, and with good reason: These are inherently synthetic events, orchestrated to promote one point of view at the expense of all others. A protest march is pure political burlesque.

True enough. But as I've written a few times before, never, ever underestimate the power of a letter-writing campaign or loud complaining to influence a newspaper's coverage, especially if your cause could be construed by most people as liberal. The more nutbags the executive editor has to talk to on the phone, the greater the chances that "chariness" toward a story will disappear.

Posted 7:43 AM by Peter Fallow
DEAN'S WORLD: Dean Esmay sent me a note about this column in the Wall Street Journal. The piece asks why the media hasn't been asking too many questions about the background and beliefs of some of the organizers of recent anti-war rallies. It makes an absolutely valid point:

The media's mystical belief that demonstrators against war are holy people dates back to the Vietnam War, when the idea of the "dissident" emerged. The Vietnam "dissenters" achieved coequal status as First-Amendment standard-bearers, at which point they gained immunity from the sort of questioning that normally chases society's villains and disfavored into the ditch. For decades the organizers of these marches have understood this.

Vietnam was a complicated time, a mess, and idealism bled easily into naiveté. Still, you have to wonder if this no-questions-asked reporting hasn't reached the point of absurdity when a primary organizer of the demonstrations, United for Peace & Justice, can suffuse its Web site the week after with mainstream press reports that read like press releases.

I also think we can't overlook the influence of editors and producers who came of age during that golden era of protest. Perhaps a little baby-boomer nostalgia could explain the soft-pedaling of Stalinists.

While I'm at it, please check out Dean's campaign to get as many folks as possible to sign up for the Campaign for Democracy and Human Rights in Iraq. It's a most worthy goal.

Posted 9:08 AM by Peter Fallow
REMEMBERING DANIEL PEARL: One year ago, Daniel Pearl was murdered by religious fanatics. To honor his memory, the Wall Street Journal has posted a column from his father, Judea. Read it and remember. These words jumped out at me:

Danny was killed because he represented us, namely the ideals that every civilized person aspires to uphold -- modernity, openness, pluralism, freedom of inquiry, truth, honesty and respect for all people. Decent people of all backgrounds have consequently felt personally targeted in this crime, and have been motivated to carry on Danny's spirit.

Rest in peace, Daniel.

UPDATE: It was a year ago today that we learned Daniel Pearl was in fact dead. Until this day, we, the journalists, had held out hope that he was still alive and would be safely returned to his family. We were wrong.

Posted 7:10 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA CRITIC BY DEFAULT: Jack Horan is the Virginia district attorney who will be handling the D.C. sniper case, and he compares the Washington Post and the New York Times in this interesting article from the Washington City Paper. To sum it up:

Horan has thrown into stark relief how the dailies respond when challenged on their facts: the Post, openly and humbly; the Times, secretively and arrogantly.

Check it out. (Link via Romenesko.)

Posted 8:08 PM by Peter Fallow
ATLANTIC'S BLOG ARTICLE ONLINE: That Michael Kelly column in The Atlantic that I blogged about here on Feb. 5 is finally online. Check it out here.

Sadly, Atlantic's online version doesn't supply links to the bloggers it mentions. With that in mind, here's that list again:

Mark Steyn, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, John Ellis, InstaPundit, Virginia Postrel, Josh Marshall, Armed Liberal, Big Arm Woman, Bitch Pundit, Cato the Youngest, Cold Fury, CounterRevolutionary, Nikita Demosthenes, The Fat Guy, Flit, FuturePundit, Gut Rumbles, Horsefeathers, The Inde-Pundit, Pundit Watch, Rantburg, RealClearPolitics, Right Wing News, War Liberal, Dr. Weevil, PejmanPundit, The American Times, Michael Barone, Romenesko, Microcontent News, The Note, Political Wire, Slashdot, NewsMax, Rich Galen, the Volokh Conspiracy, James Lileks, GeekPress, Eve Tushnet, Max Power, Man Without Qualities, The Corner, and Junk Yard Blog.

Again, it's nothing huge, but it's pretty cool. (Sorry, some of the links are out of date.)

Sadly, the plug for Lying In Ponds, which appeared in the "Primary Sources" department in the print edition, isn't online yet, or may not be posted at all.

Posted 7:40 AM by Peter Fallow
VENEZUELA'S MEDIA WOES: To ensure freedom of speech in Venezuela, the government must put strict controls on freedom of speech. And perhaps that would be a good idea for America, too. That's the thrust of this silly column from Naomi Klein in The Nation.

President Hugo Chavez's desire to convert Venezuela into a worker's paradise along the lines of Cuba has been met by tremendous resistance from the "wealthy families" that own the media. Oh yeah, and a huge percentage of the Venezuelan people, too, who have engaged in mass protests against his rule. But using Klein's "strong media" model, they've only been whipped up into this frenzy by the reactionary forces of the media. Read this entire passage:

During the recently ended strike organized by the oil industry, the television stations broadcast an average of 700 pro-strike advertisements every day, according to government estimates. It's in this context that Chávez has decided to go after the TV stations in earnest, not just with fiery rhetoric but with an investigation into violations of broadcast standards and a new set of regulations. "Don't be surprised if we start shutting down television stations," he said at the end of January.

The threat has sparked a flurry of condemnations from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. And there is reason for concern: The media war in Venezuela is bloody, with attacks on both pro- and anti-Chávez media outlets. But attempts to regulate the media aren't an "attack on press freedom," as CPJ has claimed--quite the opposite.

Venezuela's media, including state TV, need tough controls to insure diversity, balance and access, enforced at arm's length from political powers. Some of Chávez's proposals (such as an ominous clause banning speech that shows "disrespect" to government officials) overstep these bounds and could easily be used to muzzle critics. That said, it is absurd to treat Chávez as the principal threat to a free press in Venezuela. That honor clearly goes to the media owners themselves. This fact has been entirely lost on the organizations entrusted to defend press freedom around the world, still stuck in a paradigm in which all journalists just want to tell the truth and all threats come from nasty politicians and angry mobs.

This is unfortunate, because we are in desperate need of courageous defenders of a free press at the moment--and not just in Venezuela. After all, Venezuela isn't the only country where a war is being waged over oil, where media owners have become inseparable from the forces clamoring for "regime change" and where the opposition finds itself routinely erased by the nightly news. But in the United States, unlike in Venezuela, the media and the government are on the same side.

Klein thinks a powerful government committee with the ability to censor messages it doesn't like will be "courageous defenders of a free press." I guess because it's worked so well in places such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

What can you say to such idiocy? (I especially loved the bit about "the opposition" to a war "over oil" in the U.S. being "erased." Here's proof that she obviously hasn't been paying attention.) Then again, this is The Nation, which New Republic publisher Martin Peretz succinctly describes in this article: "The Nation is edited for aging ex-communists on the West Side. On the Upper West Side."

So true.

For more on Ms. Klein, I recommend this scathing review of her work from The Economist. And here's an equally scathing review of her most recent book, Fences and Windows.

Posted 7:02 AM by Peter Fallow
JACK'S BACK: Jack Shafer of Slate has the third part of his media bias series online. In this installment, he opens the reader mail. It's a good read, with many valid points raised on all sides. Check it out.

Posted 9:26 AM by Peter Fallow
OUR COVER IS BLOWN! There's a new book on the media out, and newspaper folk aren't going to like it. It's called Beat the Press:

On page after page, authors Al Guyant and Shirley Fulton portray journalists as a cynical and manipulative bunch who ingratiate themselves with their subjects and then trick them into saying something "stupid, guilty, foolish or worse." It is possibly the most unflattering portrait of the press since Janet Malcolm declared every journalist a "confidence man."

These are some of the tricks reporters might use to "coax information" from a source, according to the book: ask for your opinion, banter with you, and put the results in the story—even though they never include their own "snide remarks," "use prolonged silence . . . to get you talking," throw "rumors, accusations and distortions" at you, and repeat things someone has allegedly said, in hopes of making you "lose your cool."

Well, I've certainly seen some of that behavior, but it's not as widespread as these guys are making it sound. (That's been my experience, anyway.)Still, I might have to find this book just for shits and giggles.

Posted 9:04 AM by Peter Fallow
KRUGMAN WATCH: Matthew Hoy, the bane of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, analyzes Krugman's media analysis here. Check it out.

Posted 7:21 AM by Peter Fallow
MARCHING OFF TO WAR: There are plenty of stories about the Pentagon's plan to allow journalists to join frontline troops in Iraq. Here's the New York Times' story, and here's USA Today's take.

I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised to see this much openness from the military. Let's see if it holds up.

Posted 7:15 AM by Peter Fallow
TIMES TELLS TOO MUCH? The New Republic is questioning the wisdom of The New York Times releasing key information about the capture of al Qaeda terrorists in Jordan. I kind of agree with them. This could easily force them to change tactics, thus making the future capture of other terrorists even more difficult.

Of course, it's also possible that the Times' sources knew that al Qaeda has already changed its communication techniques. I seem to remember some stories many months ago about other al Qaeda code words. For example, a "flower" indicated a biological attack, and so on.

Posted 7:35 PM by //page
HE'LL BE BACK: The Media Minder is snowed in eight miles away from home. He won't blog from work, a good practice, so posting will be light for the next couple of days. I would fill in, but he probably wants to keep his readers.

Posted 9:57 AM by Peter Fallow
AUGUSTA NATIONAL UPDATE: Here's something I meant to post the other day and forgot. Jim McCarthy, a media consultant for the Augusta National Golf Club, has a column protesting the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's overkill on the controversy surrounding the club's refusal to admit women as members. It's now exceeded the New York Times in its enthusiasm for the story.

Posted 1:45 PM by Peter Fallow
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! I hope you can share it with someone special. I know I will.

Posted 1:43 PM by Peter Fallow
CLUELESS NEWSPAPER OWNERSHIP WATCH: I saw this the other day on Romenesko, and just had to post it. It appears that Ryan Phillips, the new publisher of the Montgomery Journal in Montgomery County, Maryland, is a real jackass. And not because he has a Confederate flag in his office and lunches at Hooters. (Hell, a couple of my good friends used to manage Hooters restaurants. Great job when you're 25.) It's because of this:

Former reporters and editors at the paper say that Phillips, who did not graduate from college, was unprepared for the job. "At one point Ryan said: 'Why do we need copy editors? All they do is cut copy that sits around the ads,' " Scheltema said.

Yeah. "Cutting copy" is all we do. That, and writing headlines and photo captions, designing the look of the news pages (everything from placement of stories to the photos used), verifying facts and spelling and grammar, and making sure the goddamn production schedule gets met. Oh yeah, and keeping the fucking coffeepot full -- another job no one else seems capable of doing.

Other than that, we're completely expendable...

Jesus Palomino, what an idiot.

Posted 7:11 AM by Peter Fallow
BUSH CRITIC SLAMS MEDIA COVERAGE OF BUSH: How's that for a headline, huh? Well, here's the story. Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon, now has a one-man show, "Bush are Us," playing off-off-off Broadway. The "so-called liberal media" aren't reporting on it, and some big newspapers have been highly critical of Miller's work. It just proves that the media are in Bush's pocket, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

A little more than a year ago, I blogged about an article Miller wrote that revealed his utter contempt for those who hold political views different from his. Check it out here. As I wrote at that time:

Miller's article can be summed up thusly: people who don't agree with Mark Crispin Miller are anti-intellectual dolts, and their sometimes unsophisticated criticism of the enlightened Mark Crispin Millers of the world threatens to engulf us all in a dark night of right-wing censorship and bad grammar.

Again, go here for more.

UPDATE: Well, it seems Mark Crispin Miller was being a bit dishonest in his interview. Check out this passage:

Even the oft-labeled "liberal" newspapers can fall victim to touch-up jobs, Miller maintains. He refers to a recent Washington Post profile of News York Times columnist Paul Krugman, which described how Times Executive Editor Howell Raines barred Krugman from accusing Bush of "lying" during his presidential campaign. Yet on the same op-ed page, conservative columnist William Safire called Senator Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar."

It turns out Safire called Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar" in 1996, when she was first lady and not (openly) running for any political office. Safire used the term in a column about the Travelgate escapade. (Read all about it here.)

Posted 6:39 AM by Peter Fallow
DUMPING ON DOWD: Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard questions Maureen Dowd's intelligence here. Check it out.

Posted 12:28 PM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS DEBATE, PART 17,935: And now for something completely different. Here's a piece on media bias from conservative movie critic James Bowman. It's a good read, but it spends as much time addressing the liberal mind-set of moral superiority as it does the question of bias. I think they could be linked in many circumstances, but not always. Anyway, check it out. (Via Henry Hanks.)

Posted 12:18 PM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS DEBATE, PART 17,934: Part II of Jack Shafer's excellent series on media bias is up at Slate. Once again, it's a very fair and balanced look at a difficult issue.

For a great commentary on Shafer's piece, check out Andrew Cline's Rhetorica. I'll only add that, as a conservative (and one who was a liberal Democrat until about 1995), I still strongly believe that most reporting on crucial social issues comes from a left-of-center point of view. (Coverage of political races is fairly balanced, I believe.) Nowhere is this more true than in coverage of racial issues, as detailed in William McGowan's Coloring The News.

For more, check out old-time liberal Jim Sleeper's excellent Liberal Racism. Sleeper, by the way, had one of the more memorable lines about the media's soft coverage of racial issues. In a review of McGowan's Coloring the News, Sleeper wrote:

This country's vast race industry of activists, consultants, foundation officers, civil rights lawyers and government monitors enhances its funding, job lines and moral cachet by playing up bad racial news and discounting the good. ... (J)ournalists should be investigating the race industry, not working for it.

Amen to that.

Posted 9:13 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON ALTERMAN: The estimable CalPundit managed to swing an interview with Eric Alterman. Here are some highlights.

Alterman spends a lot of time talking about the rise of conservative think tanks. Conservatives have certainly been successful there, but once again, there is no mention of the vast network of huge, taxpayer-funded liberal think tanks that influence the debate on social issues far more successfully than the Heritage Foundation.

I'm talking, of course, about the universities. After all, whose quote sounds more authoritative in a story on, say, welfare reform -- a (unlabeled Marxist) sociology professor from Harvard or a GOP apparatchik from the "conservative Heritage Foundation"?

And here is a revealing -- and surprising -- admission from Alterman:

In the media world in which I live, everybody has basically the same views on social issues, everybody supports gay marriage, everybody supports abortion rights, everybody I know supports gun control.

So I think they’re right that in the liberal elites everybody basically has these views on social issues. But I think that because they’ve been beating up the liberal elites for so long, the media have grown particularly cowardly on these issues and have bent over backwards to try and give the conservatives what they want, so that it no longer matters that much that they happen to be right about journalists’ views on these social issues. I think that the journalists’ views aren’t very important in terms of how the news is reported.

Well, that's Eric's opinion, and he's entitled to it. My personal experience after 13 years in the newspaper business is rather different. As I've written over and over and over again, certain social issues, especially ones touching on race, crime, abortion, immigration, religion, AIDS and homosexuality, are invariably reported from what I call the American Liberal perspective. (I call it the American Liberal perspective to differentiate it from the European Leftist perspective, because I'm sure that from the viewpoint of The Guardian, there is NO liberal media in the USA, except maybe for The Nation.)

In my opinion, the indirect result of left-leaning coverage of these social issues is to subtly cast Republicans as evil and Democrats as good. (This happens even though I believe that the horse-race coverage of political races is much fairer than most conservatives are willing to admit.) Then again, it must also be admitted that conservatives have a tougher case to make. I'll return to a quote from Martin Malia to highlight what I mean:

In American usage, the shorthand contrast for Left-Right difference is "compassionate" versus "mean-spirited." ... In modern political rhetoric, therefore, it has always been easier to make a vibrant plea for equality and fraternity than for hierarchy, distinction and privilege, or even for individual liberty. So the moral economy of modern politics gives the Left a permanent, built-in advantage.

Yes, conservatives do have a tougher task. Despite that, it appears they've had some success. After all, the country is roughly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Is the fact that those on the right side of the aisle are finally making some headway in the mainstream media really so dangerous? (I suppose so, if you consider conservatives as deluded as Palestinian shahids -- see below.) Fox News and other conservative media have found a niche and are serving it. Liberals have their niches that are being served as well. To me, that's the very essence of what debate in a free society should look like.

Let's continue:

CALPUNDIT: Do ordinary reporters still believe all this stuff? You say they’re cowed by charges of liberal bias, but do they still believe it, do they react to it, or do you think they’re catching on?

ALTERMAN: Do they believe it? Yeah, they believe it because they don’t think about it. The conservatives have invested so much money in this notion of liberal bias in the media that they buy into it even though there’s very little evidence to support it.

Well, most of the reporters I work with, who are invariably American Liberals, seem to regard the "media bias" argument put forward by conservatives as a joke. But they are at least thinking about it. I've been in "budget meetings" (that's where what goes in the paper gets hashed out) and seen the idea of "getting the other side" begrudgingly acknowledged as necessary "so we don't get letters from the nutbags and yahoos." So why is this a problem? If Alterman believes that basic journalistic fairness (or what he calls "bending over backwards to try and give the conservatives what they want") only serves to further the agenda of reactionaries, he should just say so. Even though I see precious little bending over on some issues, especially ones touching on race, which has always been the most vexing social problem in America. (See here for more.)

Just go check out CalPundit's interview and see what you think. Some points I agreed with; some I didn't.

Posted 6:52 AM by Peter Fallow
DID ALTERMAN SAY THAT? I caught the tail end of Eric (What Liberal Media?) Alterman's appearance on Bill O'Reilly's rant-fest Tuesday night, and then turned on the microphone for the repeat broadcast because I wanted to catch something Alterman said at the end. After a free-wheeling conversation in which Alterman conceded that the current popularity of conservative views is "market-driven" and not a conspiracy, we get this:

O'REILLY: Perhaps we're right because we have the highest ratings in the country

ALTERMAN: Well, a lot of people in Arab countries think that if they blow themselves up in Tel Aviv they'll be visited by 72 virgins. ... It doesn't make them right.

You read that right. Alterman apparently thinks that Americans with conservative views are as tragically deluded as religious fanatics who strap bombs onto their bodies to murder innocent civilians. If he's trying to say that the majority isn't always right, he certainly should have put more thought behind his words.

But wait! It gets better! Here's what Alterman had to say about Rush Limbaugh in a brief Q&A in the recent issue of Esquire:

"No question it's Limbaugh. He has an army. O'Reilly and Matthews are entertainers. I don't think anybody would follow the other two into a fire, but Limbaugh is different. The lack of civility that he demonstrates toward liberal politicians is really dangerous to our political public. I hate to say it, but I wish the guy would have gone deaf. I shouldn't say that, but on behalf of the country, it would be better without Rush Limbaugh and his 20 million listeners."

Now, according to Instapundit, Alterman plans to apologize for his Limbaugh comments. I wonder if he'll apologize for his slander against roughly half the country.

Posted 6:13 AM by Peter Fallow
RETHINKING KEN LAY: The ever-resourceful Henry Hanks has some links to blog posts about a New York Times story revising the image of Enron executive Ken Lay. It turns out that, contrary to the picture of a greedy corporate stooge painted by the Times and others in the media, Lay was a "true believer" who only sold off his Enron stock at the bitter end. Check it out. Also, Andrew Sullivan offers his thoughts.

Posted 10:20 AM by Peter Fallow
J-SCHOOL BLUES: Andrew Cline of Rhetorica is reporting that Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice columnist who also teaches journalism at NYU, is catching flak from the National Association of Black Journalists for assigning William McGowan's Coloring The News to his graduate students. I think Cline says it best:

No matter what you may think of McGowan's argument, the use of his book in a class does not equal acceptance or promotion of that argument. Especially in a graduate seminar, the book will get a critical examination.

Oh, and then there's the whole freedom of thought thing. These students have every right to consider this book and be persuaded by its argument if they so choose. It's called academic freedom. It's called freedom of association. It's called freedom of speech.

Amen to that.

Posted 7:21 AM by Peter Fallow
CHECKING FOR ASTROTURF: Editor & Publisher is reporting on efforts to sniff out "astroturf," fake letters to the editor. It seems a lot of newspapers are beginning to call letter senders to verify if they actually wrote what they sent in.

This is how we did it at my last newspaper. All letters to the editor had to include name, address and phone number, and the person responsible for screening the letters had to call every person who wrote in. It seems like a pain in the ass, but it weeded out the rare prank letter.

Posted 7:06 AM by Peter Fallow
SMOKING-HOT HARVARD GRADS WANT YOU! I'm just linking to this because I think it's funny. According to this article in the Washington Post, some of the hottest singles ads in America can be found in the pages of Harvard Magazine, a publication for alumni of the prestigious university. A sample:

"Grace Kelly type looks with a dash of the down to earth girl next door. Stunning blonde with athletic fresh appeal. Leggy and model slim."

"Stunning blonde with cover girl looks, model's cheekbones, blue eyes. Financially secure professional with ample leisure time."

"Sophistication and high cheekbones of Renee Russo plus personality of the young Katharine Hepburn."

"Head-turning good looks evocative of Diana Rigg from 'The Avengers.' "

"A younger dark-haired more radiant Jane Fonda."

"Anne Archer-Holly Hunter combo -- slim, petite, divorced."

"A cross between Susan Sarandon and Donna from 'Mind of the Married Man' . . . Personable, articulate, sits on non-profit boards."

"An electric beauty: a cross between Meg Ryan and younger Hayley Mills."

Hubba-hubba!

However, it turns out that most of the ads are ghost-written by a professional writer, who gets her celebrity analogies by asking her clients which stars they "identify with."

In short, it's another Ivy League scam.

Posted 7:47 AM by Peter Fallow
DARTS & LAURELS: The Columbia Journalism Review has its "Darts & Laurels" feature posted for January/February. It's a look at the good and the bad in American journalism. This edition aims a lot of darts at coverage of anti-war protests.

Posted 7:28 AM by Peter Fallow
WHAT'S MY HEADLINE: John Rosenberg at the excellent Discriminations discovers some deceptive headlines in the Los Angeles Times for a story about public support for an Iraq war. Check it out here, and stop by Discriminations every day for the latest on affirmative action and the other follies that pass for the current agenda of the so-called civil rights establishment.

Posted 7:21 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA ON A WAR FOOTING: The New York Times is reporting that many in the news media are worried about the impact of a war on ad revenues.

Posted 7:55 PM by //page
NEW MEDIA SITE ALERT: I was checking hits and referrers tonight, like bloggers do on snowy Saturday nights, and found Rewrite!, a blog published by a couple of journos with ties to Medill's Newspaper Management Program. It's a good read, so check it out.

Posted 8:10 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS FIGHT TO THE DEATH: That debate between Brent Bozell and Eric Alterman has continued. Here's Part II, which I didn't have time to post Thursday, and here's Part III.

UPDATE: Here's Eric Alterman's introduction to What Liberal Media as reprinted in The Nation. A quick note: Alterman suggests Howard Kurtz's gig with CNN could be a conflict of interest with the reporting he does for the Washington Post. Fair enough. What, then, are we to make of Alterman's double duty for The Nation and MSNBC. Co-opting the language of the left, one could describe MSNBC as an unholy alliance between GE (NBC's parent company and a big Defense Department contractor) and Microsoft in an attempt to dominate the media through television and the Internet. What the hell is Alterman doing working for them?

Posted 7:13 AM by Peter Fallow
JACK'S BACK: And thank God for that. Jack Shafer, Slate's excellent media critic, has posted the first installment of what he promises will be a multi-part series on media bias. Check this out:

The crude symmetry of the left and right media critiques suggest that 1) having over-tuned their radars, partisan press critics sometimes detect media bias even where it ain't; 2) if both liberals and conservatives are partly right about the media, as I suspect they are, bias of an ideological nature should cancel itself out in the long run, nudging the press toward rough balance if not absolute fairness on the political spectrum; 3) when the left and right talk about systemic, chronic media bias, they're not talking the same language; and 4) it's hard to put much stock in what left and right press critics say because their views are so patently motivated by ideology. In other words, the intense and public biases of the press critics make them unreliable readers of press bias.

And this:

Just because you can excavate a political component from any accusation of press bias doesn't mean all press criticism is partisan or motivated by self-interest. Clearly, unadulterated bias contaminates many stories and can even infect the entire Washington press corps from time to time. But because most charges of bias are never distant from somebody's active political agenda, no discussion about press bias—specific or general—should begin without this extended throat clearing.

The whole piece is excellent. Go read it now.

Posted 6:59 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA NEWS CHANGES NAME: It'll just be called Romenesko, which is pretty much what everyone I know calls it, because the muckety-mucks in the MediaNews Group (Denver Post, Los Angeles Daily News) threatened legal action. That prompted this funny letter from Poynter president James N. Naughton:

The gist of the law firm’s concern seems to be that eliminating the space between the words Media and News might prompt the unsophisticated, raffish crowd who tune in to Poynter Online to think it was Dean Singleton in his pajamas pecking away at the keyboard in Romenesko’s Evanston apartment.

For the record (and to appease the folks at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP), it is not Dean Singleton whose work you read on our website. Neither Jim Romenesko nor his MediaNews has any association with MediaNews Group, Inc. (We’re still working on how to say that in French.)

This is a perfect example of the so-called "power" of the "corporate media"; pestering a blog to change its name on the outside chance that people might confuse it with a multimillion-dollar media company.

Posted 6:50 AM by Peter Fallow
FISK SPEAKS! And he's STILL telling the story that made his name a verb. Speaking to students at Harvard Law School, the great journalist shared his famous anecdote:

Fisk told the audience about a time when he was nearly beaten to death by locals when his car broke down in rural Afghanistan.

Explaining the motivations of the civilians, Fisk said that if he had been an Afghani, he also would have wanted to assault a European. Animosity arises from a history of self-interested Western intervention in Arab nations, Fisk said.

Tim Blair, call your office!

Posted 8:15 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS FIGHT TO THE DEATH: Eric Alterman vs. Brent Bozell in a cage match! Loser leaves town! Read it here!

In other National Review media criticism, Dave Kopel rips into TAPPED. The money line:

"Tapped" doesn't show much evidence of being interested in serious and constructive dialogue. It's poor manners to attack someone, complain that they are dishonest for not responding, solicit a response, and then excise almost all the substance from that response.

Check it out.

Posted 7:50 AM by Peter Fallow
'WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA': Well. Eric Alterman's new book, What Liberal Media?, is now out in print. He's even got a Web site to promote it.

I guess I'll have to buy it (unless it shows up in the "free pile" at work) and see what he has to say. I don't like Alterman's rhetorical style, but I respect the guy. That being said, I can almost predict some of the arguments he's going to make:

The media can't be liberal, because it's a slave to the huge corporations that own it; really "progressive" (i.e. far left) views don't get much ink in the mainstream press; the "liberal" media sure didn't protect Bill Clinton, and they were "relentlessly" anti-Gore in the 2000 election; right-wing pundits (emphasis on the word pundits) dominate the airwaves; members of the media aren't really that liberal (if, by "liberal," you mean Green Party politics).

I notice on the cover that Alterman seems to have written the book as a response to Bernard Goldberg's Bias. Well, Bias is an easy book to refute, because it's fairly light on hard facts, and Goldberg levels some charges that he doesn't empirically defend. (For example, his argument that the label "conservative" is used far more often than "liberal" has had holes punched in it.)

As I've written before, I believe that the horse-race coverage of political races is a lot more balanced than many conservatives will admit. But I also believe that media coverage of certain important social issues -- touching on race, crime, immigration, homosexuality, AIDS, abortion, feminism, religion and others -- almost invariably is reported from what I would label an "American liberal" (as opposed to European leftist) position. If there's any indirect political fallout from this slanted coverage of hot-button social issues, it's that Democrats tend to be portrayed as defenders of the weak and powerless (women, minorities) and Republicans tend to be portrayed as defenders of the powerful. As Martin Malia wrote in "Judging Nazism and Communism" in the Fall 2002 issue of The National Interest:

In American usage, the shorthand contrast for Left-Right difference is "compassionate" versus "mean-spirited." ... In modern political rhetoric, therefore, it has always been easier to make a vibrant plea for equality and fraternity than for hierarchy, distinction and privilege, or even for individual liberty. So the moral economy of modern politics gives the Left a permanent, built-in advantage.

If Alterman can disprove any of that, I'll be impressed.

UPDATE: Andrew Cline at Rhetorica weighs in on Alterman's book. He's a little fairer than I am.

Posted 9:27 PM by Peter Fallow
JUST MINDIN' THE MEDIA: I get home from work Tuesday night, and the March issue of The Atlantic is sitting in the mailbox.

That's always a pleasure, but between the covers is an even bigger one: Bloggers, bloggers everywhere!

In his lead-off "Agenda" column, Michael Kelly issues a dead-wood Fisking of that ridiculous John le Carre column about "America going mad." When he takes on le Carre's claim that debate about a possible war against Iraq has been silenced in America, Kelly mentions the following blogs and/or blog-like Web sites:

Mark Steyn, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, John Ellis, InstaPundit, Virginia Postrel, Josh Marshall, Armed Liberal, Big Arm Woman, Bitch Pundit, Cato the Youngest, Cold Fury, CounterRevolutionary, Nikita Demosthenes, The Fat Guy, Flit, FuturePundit, Gut Rumbles, Horsefeathers, The Inde-Pundit, Pundit Watch, Rantburg, RealClearPolitics, Right Wing News, War Liberal, Dr. Weevil, PejmanPundit, The American Times, Michael Barone, Romenesko, Microcontent News, The Note, Political Wire, Slashdot, NewsMax, Rich Galen, the Volokh Conspiracy, James Lileks, GeekPress, Eve Tushnet, Max Power, Man Without Qualities, The Corner, and Junk Yard Blog.

Whew. In short, that's about half of Insty's Big List 'o' Links!

Kelly also mentions a site he spotted on Instapundit called Media Life. (Well, that's the context of the graph in which it appeared.) I can't seem to locate it on Glenn's blogroll; I'm not sure if he means Media Minded or this journal. Hmmm.

Later, in the "Primary Sources" section, the excellent Lying In Ponds gets a plug, along with an extended excerpt. (Well done there.)

I'll resist the urge to lapse into "blogger triumphalism" and just say the column is a nice bit of blog plugola from one of the nation's most respected magazines.

Besides, I'm wiped out after doing all those link thingees.

Posted 8:32 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON COLUMBIA: Howard Kurtz has an interesting column today on the disconnect between the public's reaction to the shuttle tragedy and the media's coverage:

Those over a certain age, who grew up with the space program, see it the way most of the media see it, as a huge, gripping national calamity.

Those who grew up in an era when the space shuttle was as common as the Delta shuttle don't quite get it. They see what happened as more like a plane crash that happened to involve a very big plane.

This group sees the media going totally overboard. They watch the saturation coverage and wonder why the death of seven people is so much more important than, say, Iraq or other world events.

There was a good discussion of these issues Saturday in the comments to this post. Personally, I think Sept. 11 has significantly raised the bar on national tragedies, and I feel the media may have gone overboard on this one.

And, in case anyone wonders, I don't think the generation gap Kurtz describes really applies to me. I'm nearly 37 years old. I remember some of the later Apollo moon landings quite well (and was a total space geek through childhood), and, prior to Sept. 11, considered the Challenger disaster the worst national tragedy I had ever witnessed.

UPDATE: Dave Copeland takes an, ahem, contrarian view of the disaster.

Posted 8:09 AM by Peter Fallow
SOMEBODY'S HAVIN' A BLOG BIRTHDAY.....: It's Page! Yay! Stop by and wish her well.

You really should be checking her site out every day. It's funny and smart, just like she is.

Posted 7:57 AM by Peter Fallow
SPEAKING OF LETTERS: The Boston Globe has worked out a system to sniff out "astroturf," canned e-mails or letters to the editor that are generated by computer.

If you've been following this story, you know the background. A GOP Web site managed to get dozens, maybe even hundreds, of letters with identical wording published in newspapers across the country. A lot of lefty commentators were on this story early, and their pressure to end this practice should be commended.

However, I'm sure there are left-leaning political organizations that might have had similar "astroturf" plans in place, and now they're going to have to come up with a new -- and more expensive -- strategy.

Posted 7:49 AM by Peter Fallow
LETTERS, WE GET LETTERS: The editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle is shocked by the tone of the letters the paper has received regarding the space shuttle disaster:

Why were so many of the letters tinged with gratuitous bitterness toward President Bush or otherwise infused with cynicism or conspiracy theories?

The volume of letters was surprisingly light for such a major disaster, but the tone was unrelentingly negative:

Even more startling was the cynical, even hateful, tone of many of the letters. The outtakes were considerably harsher and more jaded than the selection we printed.

One letter writer flat-out accused the government of a secret plot to "sabotage the mission to direct future finances away from NASA to further the military industrial complex." A recurring theme was resentment that Bush would somehow exploit the tragedy for political gain.

One letter speculated that Palestinians would be "dancing in the streets" upon hearing of the deaths of the U.S. and Israeli astronauts. Another wondered why television was showing "so much empathy" for the deaths of agents of two countries who were responsible for "uncounted Palestinian deaths, every day" in the occupied territories.

Ah, yes. The loonier elements of the left came out of the closet on this one. But so did some of the loonier elements of the right:

A Livermore man actually questioned whether the accident was the result of a shuttle crew that "looks like America." He suggested the women and minority astronauts were given "bonus points" in the selection process. Never mind the advanced degrees, the years of public service, the uncommon bravery that distinguished these seven astronauts. And never mind that there has been absolutely no suspicion of pilot error.

I don't envy the folks who have to wade through this garbage every day. It's made even more thankless at papers where they actually verify the veracity of letters by calling the writers. You end up talking to every variety of nutbag under the sun.

No thanks.

Posted 8:48 AM by Peter Fallow
GOOGLE RULES ALL: Here is a long but fascinating article from the Boston Globe Magazine on the ever-increasing -- and occasionally frightening -- power of Google. Check it out

Posted 8:02 AM by Peter Fallow
ABOUT THAT LETTER: Remember that letter from eight European leaders expressing support for U.S. military action against Iraq? Well, the Los Angeles Times has a piece that questions the journalistic ethics of how it all came to pass.

It seems the Wall Street Journal's editorial page solicited the piece, and also reported on it in the news section. That did not please Orville Schell, dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism:

"It's a little funny that it's such a Bushy paper and this turned out to be such a nice little coup for the Bush administration. The Journal's editorial page, which is so demonstrably pro-Bush, must be highly gratified by their own instrumentality in this matter."

As you continue reading the article, you get the feeling that something sinister has happened. That damned right-wing media has reached its tentacles into the very capitals of Europe, and tricked the leaders into actually expressing their views on a matter of grave importance!

But then, in the 16th graph of a 21-graph story, you find this out:

Other newspapers face the same issue: Last Saturday, for example, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page news story about the Pentagon quietly considering the use of nuclear weapons in Iraq that was based on a piece by analyst William Arkin that was published the next day in the Opinion section.

Former Times editor Michael Parks, who now directs the journalism program at USC's Annenberg School of Communications, said many analogous situations immediately come to mind.

"If somebody from the administration gets on one of those invited Sunday-morning chat shows on the networks, what they say is fair game for news reporting, including by the network that hosts the show," Parks said. "Did the person go on intending to make news? Yes, but the person hosting the show was hoping to get news and not just to illuminate their audience. It just gets a little messy when they make more news than you expect, as happened here."

But the Times lets Dr. Schell speak again:

Even with disclosure, Berkeley's Schell said, "you wish they'd commissioned the piece and let somebody else report it. It's a bit odd to call a press conference and then write about it. Still, there is a value in a catalytic question that galvanizes a collective answer. More than anything else, this signals the new power of a globalized media."

So let me get this straight: A right-leaning editorial section scores a major news coup that is factually correct, and a leading light of the academic wing of journalism suddenly questions what has been standard operating procedure in the news business for decades. And then he suggests that this ancient practice somehow signals the "new power of a globalized media." Pfft.

After all, nearly two hundred years ago, Napoleon wrote these words:

"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets."

It was nice to see the Journal's Paul Gigot get the last word:

"If any media critics want to give us credit for orchestrating the views of eight different European leaders," he said, "we'll take it."

I love it.

UPDATE: Susanna Cornett of Cut on the Bias fame has a post that includes links to WSJ stories about the controversy. I wonder why Romenesko, where I found the LAT story above, hasn't included them in its coverage?

Posted 7:31 AM by Peter Fallow
ONLINE NEWS IS TAKING OVER: Here's another article on how the Internet is killing newspapers, especially among younger readers.

Well, as I've written before, the Web still has a long way to go before it completely wipes out newsprint. As of right now, it's still impractical and expensive to carry your computer into a diner and read the news, and I really don't want to spill coffee or syrup on mine, anyway. (I wouldn't feel as bad for a 50-cent newspaper.)

Posted 7:20 AM by Peter Fallow
SHUTTLE COVERAGE WRAP-UP: Romenesko has a nice roundup of what media critics had to say about the past weekend's coverage of the Columbia disaster. I would provide a link to the item with all the stories, but Poynter's recent redesign doesn't seem to allow that. So, go here, then scroll down to Sunday, February 2, 2003.

Posted 10:29 AM by Peter Fallow
A SAD DAY: The space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated on re-entry today, killing all the astronauts on board. This is a monumental tragedy.

I've cruised around the blogs today, and there are wonderful posts everywhere. But Andrew Cline of Rhetorica has one of the better tributes I've seen.

Check it out, and remember those words.