Tag Archives: media

Legitimizing bullshit

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Matt Taibbi is disgusted by a media that cares nothing about the substance and meaning of what candidates say, but instead always chooses to report on the superficial nonsense:

“I read the transcript of the debate and all I got from Romney was either outright factual lies, or total rhetorical dishonesty.

“[...] Romney’s entire debate performance was like this. He said absolutely nothing, but got lots of credit for style points. Here’s Romney’s answer on what budget cuts he would make, addressing perhaps-soon-to-be-ex-PBS employee, Jim Lehrer:

I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. That’s number one.

Number two, I’ll take programs that are currently good programs but I think could be run more efficiently at the state level and send them to state.

Number three, I’ll make government more efficient, and to cut back the number of employees, combine some agencies and departments. My cutbacks will be done through attrition, by the way.

“So the answer to the question, “What will you do to rein in the biggest budget deficit in history?” comes down to, “I’ll cut PBS, which is about one millionth of the federal budget, and some other stuff.”

“For God’s sake – “I’ll take programs that could be run more efficiently at state and send them to state”? Is that a joke? That’s worse than a Bill Belichick answer: “What’s our plan against the Broncos? We’re going to watch the film and do what’s best for our football team.”

“Reporters should have instantly pelted Romney with bags of dogshit for insulting the American people with this ridiculous non-answer, but he was instead praised for the canny “strategy” hidden in the response. Despite the fact that Romney is running as a budget hawk and yet has refused to name any actual programs (except Obamacare and PBS) he will cut, reporters gave him credit in the debate for being willing to be the bearer of bad budgetary news, because he essentially advance-fired Jim Lehrer on TV.”

Bob Cesca has the same gripe:

“The cynicism of some political media writers and pundits is astonishing. Our discourse is poisoned by analysts who evaluate politics strictly based on superficial style instead of a realistic evaluation of whether Middle Class Policy will work. We know that conservative policies have been crushing the middle class for 30+ years. It doesn’t matter what a guilty Republican candidate says in a debate — what matters is whether the policy statement makes sense and works.”

Romney going “Palin” with the lamestream media

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Because Mitt interacts so naturally with the unwashed masses, this should surprise no one:

“Romney campaign and Secret Service attempted to keep press off ropeline so no q’s to candidate on Bain,” tweeted CNN’s Jim Acosta.

The AP’s Kasie Hunt tweeted that “campaign staff and volunteers trying to physically prevent reporters from approaching the rope line to ask questions of Romney.”

“Romney campaign aide trying to block reporters from rope line now,” tweeted The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro. “Reporters refuse to leave.”

“This was an error on the part of the campaign staff and volunteers,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told The Huffington Post. “We have reminded them that press is allowed on the rope line to record the governor’s interactions with voters.”

The error, if I’d have to take a guess, was that staff and volunteers weren’t covert enough with getting the reporters off the rope line. Next time maybe they won’t be so explicit.

President Obama didn’t have a SINGLE WEEK when positive coverage exceeded negative coverage in 2012

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According to the report, President Barack Obama “did not have a single week in 2012 when positive coverage exceeded negative coverage.” The media’s overwhelming focus on “strategy” and Obama’s consistently negative coverage indicate that a preoccupation with public policy and an unwillingness to criticize the president are two afflictions the mainstream press is not suffering from. – Mother Jones

via: think-progress

inothernews: THE LIBERAL MEDIA. Another fun/sad fact from this: Trivial news on campaign “strategy” has dominated the media coverage over actual policies by 6:1.

If only ‘the media’ reported actual facts instead of trying to be ‘fair,’ maybe they wouldn’t have to try to overcompensate for what the Republican Party really stands for: the greed of the plutocracy and their desire to eventually herd us all into corporate-sponsored work camps where we’ll exist on Soylent Green — and like it.

“Who cares? Who cares that she wasn’t invited into the club? She’s a woman! Women aren’t allowed!”

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CNN contributor and rightwing shithead Erick Erickson offered his opinion on the recent debate about Augusta Nation Golf Club’s policy of not allowing women:

For years, the exclusive club has made a practice of offering an invitation to IBM’s CEO, which sponsors the Masters tournament. But on Tuesday, Augusta chairman Billy Payne refused to say if they would break from nearly 80 years of tradition to invite Ginni Rometty, IBM’s first female CEO.

“Who cares?” Erickson, who founded the blog Redstate.com, asserted on his Friday radio show. “Who cares that she wasn’t invited into the club? She’s a woman! Women aren’t allowed!”

“See, the president is trying to make everything political. President wants to have it both ways. He wants to go play at the Masters. Oh, you’re darn right the president wants to go play at the Masters, but he thinks women should be allowed, they should be members. Why must women be members of Augusta National? Why? Because it’s the last bastion of sexism. I thought the Republican Party was the last bastion of sexism and misogyny in America. Oh, wait. They nominated Sarah Palin to be vice presidential nominee.”

Erickson added: “And of course, Mitt Romney, ‘Well, I think women should be allowed too.’ At least, he’s smart enough to know that we don’t want to wade in to the war on women with Augusta. It is striking to me just how political the president wants to make everything. The war on women coming home to the Masters. Who freaking cares?”

“I would love to be a member of Augusta National one day after I get my private jet, but at the same time I don’t really care. And I don’t care that the Masters is a male-dominated event. I don’t care that women aren’t members of the Masters. Frankly, I kind of like the idea that women aren’t members of the Masters. Good lord, I don’t want to hang out at some women’s event.”

I’ll just add: WTF, CNN? Seriously.

Attention media: don’t even TRY to blame both sides for supercommittee failure

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“Putting aside whether the supercommittee failure matters at all, it’s plainly true that one side was willing to concede far more than the other to make a deal possible. And anyone who pretends otherwise is just part of the problem.” — shorter Greg Sargent

No, `both sides’ aren’t equally to blame for supercommittee failure

Here’s why the supercommittee is failing, in one sentence: Democrats wanted the rich to pay more in taxes towards deficit reduction, and Republicans wanted the rich to pay less in taxes towards deficit reduction.

Any news outlet that doesn’t convey this basic fact to readers and viewers with total clarity is obscuring, rather than illuminating, what actually happened here.

[...] And so: Any news outlet that doesn’t leave readers and viewers with an absolutely clear sense that the primary sticking point was over whether the rich should see their contribution to deficit reduction increase or decrease is letting down its customers.

Recent:

PHOTOS: Teaparty vs. #OccupyWallStreet — WHY have the media taken one group more seriously?

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Why?

Photo credits:

Jon Stewart calls out Fox News for editing his interview with Chris Wallace — shows clip

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“Fox News isn’t fair and balanced — it’s balancing the system, man! Don’t you get it? The system’s unfair and unbalanced!” — Jon Stewart

thedailywhat:

In Case You Missed It of the Day: Jon Stewart calls out Fox News Sunday for editing his interview, shows unaired clip of host Chris Wallace [admitting] a conservative bias on the part of his news network.

The network media’s accidental (or not) mix-up of the words “Obama” and “Osama”

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Bob Cesca has some pretty simple suggestions for our media on this ongoing ‘problem’ (emphasis mine):

[I]t’s somewhat understandable when average people make that mistake, but when professional broadcasters do it over and over, you have to wonder about either their motives or their professionalism.

[...]

For example, try calling the president “The President” or “President Obama.” It’s respectful and correct. And try calling “Osama” by the second two words in the westernized version of his name: “Bin Laden.” Problem solved.

This is mandatory. Stop it.

Who’s at fault: the Dipshit or the Media?

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So if this dipshit goes ahead with his attention-seeking plan and causes more deaths overseas, will the media take the blame? The media isn’t required to cover sideshow freaks. It’s a personal choice made by the individual news stations and reporters.

Zero attention is the only solution for these people and the problems they cause others. The media needs to quit failing and use some discretion.

Japan Thursday

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BBC: 1351: Andrew Dickinson, in Hiroshima, writes: “Today a shopkeeper who overcharged me for some fruit cycled to the bus station on the off chance of finding me to pay me back. Japanese spirit and kindness remains strong.”

BBC: Some US military personnel in Japan have received potassium iodide tablets to help counter any radiation exposure and the US has urged American citizens living within 80km (50 miles) of the Fukushima complex to leave; Japan’s own exclusion zone is only 20km.

NPR: Update at 7:20 a.m. ET: Crews Focus On Danger From Reactor Cooling Ponds: NPR’s Chris Joyce tells Morning Edition workers are trying to refill the ponds that hold old nuclear rods at Fukushima Daiishi Reactors Three and Four. The water is gone. Chris says the exposed rods are dangerous and create a lot of heat, so they must be submerged again. Four helicopter drops and two attempts with water cannon have failed to fill the pools.

CNN: [9:19 a.m. ET Thursday, 10:19 p.m. Thursday in Tokyo] Aftershocks of magnitudes 5.6 and 5.9 shook the east coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu on Thursday night, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

CNN: [9:12 a.m. ET Thursday, 10:12 p.m. Thursday in Tokyo] A worker from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been blogging about those workers now battling to prevent a meltdown at the facility, according to The Straits Times in Singapore. On its website, The Straits Times says it has translated the worker’s blog. The nuclear plant staff “continue to work even at the peril of their own lives,” the worker writes.


Guardian.uk: 9.59am (6.59pm JST): My colleague, Ian Sample, has passed me the International Atomic Energy Association’s round-up of reported injuries at the Fukushima complex, released earlier this morning. It says that two people are missing while 23 suffered injuries. More than 20 people are believed to have been exposed to radiation:

Injuries
2 TEPCO employees have minor injuries
2 subcontractor employees are injured, one person suffered broken legs and one person whose condition is unknown was transported to the hospital
2 people are missing
2 people were ‘suddenly taken ill’
2 TEPCO employees were transported to hospital during the time of donning respiratory protection in the control centre
4 people (2 TEPCO employees, 2 subcontractor employees) sustained minor injuries due to the explosion at unit 1 on 11 March and were transported to the hospital
11 people (4 TEPCO employees, 3 subcontractor employees and 4 Japanese civil defense workers) were injured due to the explosion at unit 3 on 14 March

Radiological Contamination
17 people (9 TEPCO employees, 8 subcontractor employees) suffered from deposition of radioactive material to their faces, but were not taken to the hospital because of low levels of exposure
One worker suffered from significant exposure during ‘vent work,’ and was transported to an offsite center
2 policemen who were exposed to radiation were decontaminated
Firemen who were exposed to radiation are under investigation

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh is telling his brain dead Dittoheads that the media is exaggerating the nuclear disaster in Japan. Makes you wonder just how many shares in nuclear power plants must be in Rush’s stock portfolio. But the RWNJs will tell you that NPR is the problem…

Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: Al Jazeera is real news — American news is not particularly informative

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“In fact viewership of al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”

– Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: Al Jazeera is ‘Real News’, U.S. Losing ‘Information War’

Final Countdown: Olbermann’s choice?

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Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher React To Olbermann Leaving MSNBC (VIDEO)

“I know very little about it,” Maddow said. “All I know is that it was between Keith and the company, it didn’t involve any of the rest of us, and he was really gracious and nice when he left.”

Maher said that, in his opinion, the show went “downhill” when Olbermann started retooling his “Worst Persons In The World” segment. “Stop organizing life around the people who don’t get the joke,” he said. “Fuck them if they don’t get a joke.”

Video:

It was Keith Olbermann’s decision to leave his high-profile perch at MSNBC

The outspoken host abruptly announced his departure on Friday evening, sending shock waves through the cable news world.

But the sudden departure has a history, and the timing does not rule out a preemptive MSNBC move. The gadfly commentator first told the network last April that he wanted to leave and began negotiating his exit then, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.

Olbermann abandoned the notion of leaving at that time but revived his plans in recent weeks with new representation from the talent agency ICM.

With two years left on his $7 million a year contract, Olbermann was seeking a full exit package but he really has his eye on creating his own media empire in the style of Huffington Post, according to the individual. That way, Olbermann would control his own brand and, in his view, potentially earn far more as an owner.

John Cole:

By the way, it doesn’t have to be as simple as “Comcast In, KO Out.” While we all harbor our suspicions and the feuding with his bosses had been ongoing and public, and the reporting structure in the organization was being changed with the new merger, and all that stuff.

But there is another element that I think is worth thinking about. In basically the last year, he lost his mom and his dad, and he really didn’t even take a break. He’s been doing this for eight years straight, and that kind of thing, in the poisonous work atmosphere that existed with his bosses, it just takes a toll on you. I’d wager that in the end, he just had enough and they agreed to part ways.

Sometimes you’ve just had enough of a situation, and you have to say to hell with it.

That’s exactly what I’d wager too.

FILE - In this May 3, 2007 file photo, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC poses at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Keith Olbermann is leaving MSNBC and has announced that Friday's

(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File) (Mark J. Terrill - AP)