TPM Photo selection

I clicked on a link to Talking Points Memo posted on Twitter to see how they will be reporting the Senate race in Mass. I noticed they had a few pictures of Coakley and Brown on their main page. Every picture of Brown was pale, washed out looking. Every picture of Coakley appeared to benefit from some post processing. Photoshop for the Democrat, but not even a Picasa "I'm feeling lucky" click for the Republican?

A couple of examples:

No Bias at all

From the "We're not in the tank" file, comes another bit of iconography from AP via Yahoo news

Terror in Mumbai

Crap. Terrorists have used small arms and grenades to attack a train station, hotels frequented by westerners. Hostages are being held at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels. At least 80 dead, 200 injured.

And Not a Sheep reports that the BBC are calling the murders radicals. Breath deep the nuance. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc. are at least calling them gunmen. Fox News is the only one I have found so far willing to state the obvious. These guys are terrorists.

Good lord on high, even Obama can say the "T" word. From The One's change.gov outpost:

"President-elect Obama strongly condemns today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the people of India. These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism. The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks. We stand with the people of India, whose democracy will prove far more resilient than the hateful ideology that led to these attacks," said Brooke Anderson, Chief National Security Spokesperson.

Why are the sandal lickers in the media so loathe to call a terrorist a terrorist? I guess I may have answered my own question.

Update: Either I missed it, or CBS has updated their website. They still call them "gunmen", but call the events "Terror attacks". At least CBS has it half right.

Michael Crichton, RIP

At 6 feet, 9 inches tall, Michael Crichton may have been a giant to some people. Even if future AmLit profs don't consider him a literary giant, they will be forced to admit that he was a commercial one. He died on November 4th, from cancer.

Most people know and remember that he was a physician as well as a writer. The long running ER on NBC was his creation. The list of his books and movies is long, may favorites being The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Disclosure and The Lost World.

Techdirt reminds us that he wrote for Wired magazine. In 1993 he wrote a column based on a speech he had given called Mediasaurus. As you might infer from the title, long before the blogosphere derided the MSM, Chrichton forecasted their demise.

Instead of me regurgitating Techdirt's precis of Chrichton's column, read the bit a Techdirt, than read the man's words from 1993.

But I will rip-off Techdirt's last two paragraphs:

He goes on to decry the way news becomes polarized -- he refers to it as the Crossfire Syndrome -- noting that it uses soundbites and extreme positions to ignore the real issues, and basically does the viewer or reader a disservice. And his premise is that the consumer of media recognizes this and would jump to alternatives. Ten years after he wrote this piece, Jack Shafer checked in with him to get his reaction to the fact that his prediction of the death of such media organizations appeared wrong. Crichton replied that: "I doubt I'm wrong, it's just too early."

And, indeed, earlier this year, Shafer checked back in with Crichton, admitting that many of his predictions did seem to now be on target. One of the statements Crichton made towards the end of that interview should be the mantra for the modern newsroom if it wants to be successful: "I want a news service that tells me what no one knows, but is true nonetheless. That's what I would value." He's not the only one.

A Brit explains himself

I saw this over at Not a sheep, and had to post it as well... It's not plagiarism if I say where I got it, is it?

So you're a young English reporter... from Birmingham...and you've come to the US to cover campaign for Obama. Where do you go? Well, a swing state like Florida... Miami, to be precise. And when The One wins, you go back to your room and write about it, right? No... you celebrate on the street, then plop down with your drink and start plagiarizing other people's work. Here's a compendium of some of his "work" at the Birmingham Mail. Something tells me we'll need to Wayback machine to read this pretty soon... Telling moments - he refers to the European volunteers as The International Brigade... And if only BO can do what JFK should have done (?) America will be the greatest country on earth...

Part 1:


Part 2:


Hmmm... no wonder why the media all sound the same. Apparently there is only one original writer, all others copy and paste...

Writers Block

From ABC's website (!?!) comes a piece by Michael S. Malone (he of the silicon valley writings).

He is now officially ashamed of the media.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks,I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

Think about that. Here's the "about the author" bit from the end of this piece at ABC:

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.

Malone may not be the ultimate insider, but he's clearly a card-carrying member of the MSM.

Here is his key point:

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

While I do hold BO responsible for some of this (see the strong arm tactics against dissenters, Joe the Plumber, etc), Malone hits this one right on the money. There is no way BO would have stood up to a tenth of the scrutiny that McCain, and especially Palin, have endured. Can you imagine the wails from the media if John McCain had simply issued a one page letter from his doctor? But it's OK for The One.

As the saying goes, read the whole thing.

The lapdog media

Via RedState: Orson Scott Card schools the media in "Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?"

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

As they say in the blogosphere - RTWT

I didn't know I was a Palinista

According to Maureen Dowd, I'm a Palinista:

I think you can get the gist of her Op-Ed (Op-Ed, really?) piece:

This chick flick, naturally, features a wild stroke of fate, when the two-year governor of an oversized igloo becomes commander in chief after the president-elect chokes on a pretzel on day one.

The Bravest Reporter... ever

By way of Hot Air comes this video of a Georgian reporter shot by a Russian or (more likely) an "irregular" of some sort. She's doing the familiar reporter on the scene standup bit, until she get's shot and receives a light wound.

I, for one, would be looking for a fresh pair of underwear - assuming I would even be coherent.