7/25/05 Media News Monday: Stephen Colbert, Plame, Novak, etc.
Before the news, some thoughts...
Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are my two favorite news shows. Why? The shows are hosted by two guys who don't take themselves too seriously. For them, the story is the story and what is relevant. It's not about them or their network. Neither is self-involved, and both show some humility. They don't act like infallible blowhards. They don't act as though their sole purpose is to scare me or badger me. They ask pertinent questions. They'll call BS when they see it. In short, they come across like two people who want to learn more and to inform their viewers.
Now for the news from the past week posted today, July 25, 2005:
Note: I'm going to put a %%% next to things that are more interesting or go into things more in-depth. Those links/stories that get singled out before the media personalities section are obviously must-reads, so I don't bother with the %%%.
A Quick Thought About Treason-gate Media Coverage
The major dailies and wire services are ultra-competitive on Treason-gate. Each paper wants to be the first to figure out exactly who leaked the name of a CIA agent. It's a juicy story, too. Very Watergate-ish. I'm cynical enough to believe that a couple of reporters are vain enough to be going after this story so hard, in hopes that they'll be immortalized in a blockbuster movie.
Hello, Bloomberg News!
Bloomberg has really been on top of things (well, in comparison to the other wire services) re: Treason-gate and SCOTUS nomination. Their reporting has really started to put them on the map and get more linkage from various blogs and websites (political and non-political). Getting linkage is a kind of free advertising for news orgs. Some might click through. More hits, more internet ad dollars. Plus, Bloomberg is trying to compete with other wire services, and one way to do that is to do stories that are a little more in depth than what the AP usually churns out.
You rock, Colbert!
"It'll be like O'Reilly segueing into Hannity, Hannity into Greta, Larry King into Aaron Brown," he said. "I love that Aaron Brown, the way he sucks the flavor out of every word, and I love the way he mulls. No one mulls the news like Aaron Brown." If "The Daily Show" is faux evening news, "The Colbert Report" will be faux Bill O'Reilly.
[...]
"My ambition is to have Stone Phillips's neck and Geraldo Rivera's sense of mission."
[...]
Colbert is forty-one, a native of South Carolina, one of eleven children, the father of three, a suburban guy, and deaf in one ear. "I had this weird tumor as a kid, and they scooped it out with a melon baller."
Cue the Darth Vader entrance music
* News Corp. acquires MySpace
With the acquisition, expected to close in the fourth quarter, News Corp. expects to triple its Web traffic, vaulting it into the ranks of the Internet's five most visited sites from its current place in the 40s, said company President Peter Chernin.
MySpace, which lets its users watch videos and listen to music on their computers, also would give News Corp. a new young audience for clips from its Fox news, sports and entertainment programs.
Take that, Bitch!
Is it really that bad in Iraq? It's hard to say because the international media cannot adequately cover the war and Iraq's reconstruction because it's simply too dangerous. I would love to write about new schools being built and local village leaders learning about democracy, but I can't go out to see such things. Maybe that's why American friends who've never even been to Iraq--or read a book about the country for that matter--tell me I don't know what I'm talking about when I say things are so bad.
Don't be a scandal girlie man!
* American media gave Arnold a pass. %%% Remember that contract he had with fitness companies? The corporate parent agreed to lay off Arnold scandal stories as a part of that contract.
Damn straight!
* Kevin Drum on anonymous sources. Yup, at least make it clear which side the anonymous source is on.
Plame, Cooper, Miller, Rove
Many in the press are talking as though the Cooper-Miller mess destroys their ability to recruit and exploit confidential sources, but plainly they're not talking about confidential sources the way we think about them in the investigative journalism biz. Investigative reporters strive never to hang a story directly on quotes or commentary from confidential sources; they use the sources to guide them to privileged material such as documents, in black and white. That protects the story, and in all but the rare case, it protects the source, too.
Washington confidentiality in the modern era is all about maintaining access, even if that access yields scarcely anything worth publishing. If you have a confidential chat with Karl Rove, and he leads you down the garden path, do you end up with anything worthwhile other than DC cocktail party chatter about your last conversation with Karl Rove? And should we be appalled and surprised that Rove used the occasion to mislead? To paraphrase George Orwell, you can't blame Rove for taking such an opportunity to further his own interests, any more than you can blame a skunk for stinking.
This episode is part and parcel of the debasement of the confidential source's role in American journalism. Taking sources at their own level of self-interest is what has given us Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, and Iraqi WMDs. In Washington, they're used as social currency; when anonymous "senior administration officials" give their briefings, their identities are known to everyone in the system except the reader. It's another expression of the elitism that has opened a yawning gap between the practitioners of journalism and the public.
People in the Media
RWCM Watch
Notes & News on Programming & Specials
State of the Media, Trends, Research Reports, Innovations
- Singin' the News Blues. %%% Why don't more execs get the blame for the decline of broadcast and cable news? Also, ABCNews is apparently the most stable place to work.
- Emotionally Rich Media %%% Emotion trumps reason in politics, so we should see more emotionally rich media ads in the future.
- General Community Web Sites Attract Viewers and Advertisers More info and research is needed to see if these are sites that would be attractive for political advertising, but could we see more political ads at these sites?
- NYT: Bill to Shield Journalists Gets Senate Panel Hearing
- Safire warns courts of fostering "chilling" US media climate. Hmm... maybe Safire should warn his pals in the White House, too.
- "It's the difference between catering to the masses and to the individual, advertising a product and actually selling it, randomly browsing rather than searching for specifics and delivering what you think consumers want versus what they know they want." %%% Media personalization is changing the landscape.
- Please make it stop: Newsie does a quickie rant about TV news reading opinions off of websites.
- As the public views the media more unfavorably, the movies will also be more likely to cast them as antagonists in films. %%%
- For Every Deep Throat, by teacherken %%%
- DOJ opposes federal shield law for journalists
- The Next Hurrah: Kurtz on the Media: I Get Why Liberals Are Pissed At Us
- David Brooks quote Interesting article, but I picked out this quote because it raised eyebrows. I'd do the same thing, too.
Brooks went off the record when asked if he would have gone to jail in Miller's situation, but later said, a little shockingly, "If I thought my source was putting a CIA agent's life at risk, I'd burn him."
Laurel, Md.: With the proliferation of things like blogs, is a definition of "journalist" even possible?
Geneva Overholser: This is definitely one of the stickiest questions in this whole subject. There has never been any kind of certification for journalists, as you know. Unlike professions like medicine or law, there is no required degree. So it's never been easy to say who is a journalist. Now, as you suggest, it's becoming even harder. I've been told that the best way to go about this is not to attempt to define who is a journalist, but rather to consider (in any given instance) whether the material at hand is journalism. Easier to see, for example, whether the information was gathered in the interest of the public, whether it conforms to journalistic norms, etc., than whether the one gathering it is a journalist.
Ratings, Circulation, & Ad Revenue Strength
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Media News Monday is a compilation of media news from the past week posted on Monday. Media is an integral part of politics, and I think that it's important to get to know media and media innovation in order to forecast future ways of campaigning, targeting voters, and disseminating information. If any of you are interested in campaigning, this weekly diary may help you with ideas. It is also important to keep up with right wing corporate media (RWCM) news. If you have any media news to add, please do so.
Previous edition: July 18, 2005 For more previous editions, search my blog, Penndit.
For more RWCM watch & Media News: Penndit's News, Media News, and RWCM Watch Links. I get the advertising, public relations, targetting voters information, and media research from a variety of sources other than the links listed there.
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Cross-posted at Penndit.