Needlenose finds
a doozy:
Speaking of the Iowa presidential debate, here's the lead paragraph of a news article that just came off the
Associated Presswires:
For a brief time in their debate Sunday, Democrats seemed to be hewing to a New Year's resolution to stick more carefully to the facts on taxes, the budget and more. But old habits die hard.
To repeat, that's the lead paragraph of a news article. From the Associated Press, the most mainstream source of news in the United States -- where, apparently, it's now accepted newsroom policy to "objectively" label all Democrats as liars.
There's more so check it out.
Atrios adds:
You may contact the AP National desk at 212-621-1600 and ask them, ever so politely, "what the fuck?"
You may also email the author at cwoodward@ap.org and ask him how what he wrote makes any goddamn sense at all.
This all leads nicely into
this post from Not Geniuses:
Recently, I've noticed some dissatisfaction in the blogosphere with the state of the media. Most recently, Kos has noted the dangers of having TNR recognized as a Democratic magazine, much lessthe Democratic magazine.
I read somewhere that some people think that something like DeanDefense.org would be useful for the left.
Having played a small role in that little internet start-up, I can only say that such a move would be simultaneously beneficial and probably more work than people think. DeanDefense was an amazing time drain. And DeanDefense was, basically, an email list that eventually expanded to include a blog and a FAQ that was, unfortunately, not used as well as it could have been.
Regardless, the technology aspects of putting together such a site would not be difficult. Movable Type can be manipulated easily enough to do virtually everything necessary. More complicated systems, like those used by Kos and others would allow for even more action, as well as for individual diaries, where people could create their own specialized watch systems, including local or regionally focused teams.
Matt Singer (who penned the Not Geniuses piece) seems to think we need a 527 to do this. I don't think so, at least not initially. It can be done Kuro5hin-style. A community-run, professional-looking Scoop site, with diarists providing the media analysis, and the community voting the best to the front page.
There has to be an enterprising group of people out there willing to make this happen. If so, I'll happily take the finished site (HTML), build it in Scoop, and host it.