Live by the bubble, die by the bubble
The monocultural discipline which the conservative media offered made for a relentlessly on-message electoral fighting force in 2000 and 2004. But the same monoculturalism now makes for a movement...
View ArticleSpread the wealth around!
An odd feature about the last presidential debate were McCain's dismissive references to how Obama wants to "spread the wealth around". He wants you to see this as "code words for socialism". Now,...
View ArticleThe fear and loathing of campaign reporting, and its impact on the news you see
TNR published a report on "what covering a two-year campaign does to the soul of a journalist," highlighting the media mercenaries who trail the candidates across the country. Ezra Klein reflected on...
View ArticleRiding the red lands: field reports from the media
Field reports are a ubiquitous election-time genre of its own, with the roving reporter interviewing some voters, sampling local opinion and sketching the political geography. A lot of it is...
View ArticleDigital native is digital. (At least he is now.)
At a media expert meeting a month or two ago, one participant simply observed that "the broadcasting era is over". His bright vision of the online future also belatedly acquainted me with the notion of...
View ArticleBlogs –“hitting the mainstream” or the new “old media”?
The world of blogging in Europe and Asia lags behind its US counterpart, Technorati's overview showed: it's more overwhelmingly male; younger; and less often professional. On the flipside, blogging in...
View ArticleIs it that the media pundits are simply too rich to understand?
NBC News' Mark Whitaker was particularly vacuous on Obama's big economy speech. Is it just that people like him make extraordinary amounts of money, and the scale and urgency of the economic crisis...
View ArticleChris Mathews, not a liberal pundit*
Apparently, Chris Matthews got all bold and went a-ripping into George W. Bush's farewell speech. But does this mean that he gets it? No, it just means that he will always try to pinpoint the dominant...
View ArticleAnastasia Baburova was just 25 – and the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist to...
Most news reports on the double political murder in Moscow focused on Stanislav Markelov, the intended target and a prolific human rights lawyer. But who was Baburova, the opposition journalist who was...
View ArticleWhat liberal media?
During the Bush administration, Think Progress notes, the media allowed conservatives to dominate their shows because Republicans were "in power." Now they no longer are. Same difference, TP finds,...
View ArticleAnnals of Fox News reporting, Rahmbo edition
Media bias isn't usually as jaw-droppingly stupid as when Fox News reproduced a Republican Party briefing verbatim as news item, typo included. Though it's still not altogether subtle in the Fox report...
View ArticleKnowing What I Don’t Know
Something interesting happened over the course of the 2008 presidential campaign. I have always been interested in current events and politics, and have always read the New York Times daily and The New...
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