Seattle has two major daily newspapers: the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI. Both are left of center and the Times is the more moderate. I can only imagine what the reaction was at the PI:
August 14, 2007
A newsroom reprimand at The Times
Posted by David Postman at 03:26 PM
Seattle Times Executive Editor Dave Boardman wrote today in one of his morning notes to staff that there had been "an awkward moment at yesterday's news meeting." That's the meeting where editors and other staff from throughout the newsroom talk about the stories planned for the next day's paper. Boardman wrote in "Dave's Raves (and the occasional rant)"
When word came in of Karl Rove's resignation, several people in the meeting started cheering. That sort of expression is simply not appropriate for a newsroom.
It sounds like a conservative's parody of how a news meeting would be run. I wasn't there, but I've talked to several people who were. It was only a couple of people who cheered and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play. But obviously news staff shouldn't be cheering or jeering the day's news, particularly as Boardman points out, "when we have an outside guest in the room."
Jokes get made in newsrooms, of course — even what you would call gallows humor. And Boardman wrote that he was "all for equal-opportunity joking at both parties' expense." But he was clearly ticked off by yesterday's display.
As we head into a major political year, now's a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
The Meltdown of Katie Couric and the Network News....
From Jane Genova:
Well, it's out. Here's that 6,000 word article by Joe Hagan in NEW YORK Magazine that cites the Katie Couric "slap" incident. What the article clearly demonstrates is that Katie is jinxed, at least in the media, and probably by the media. For example, of that 6,000 words, only about 140 of them recount the time during the June TB story, news editor Jerry Cipriano used the word "sputum" in his copy for Katie. Katie, Hagan reports, "began slapping him [Cipriano] 'over and over and over again' on the arm, according to a source familiar with the scene." Yet last night the web, including the popular Drudge Report, treated this as high buzz.
Amazing that 140-something words would be a key developing story, particularly with so much else happening on planet earth. And, that's exactly it: The jinx. The rest of the article, though, doesn't do Katie any service either. You can't help but shake your head as you read it and exclaim: That lady is, yeah, under a dark spell.
For example, throughout the piece, Hagan captures Katie as vacillating from denial to subterfuge about everything from how she got into this situation to how it's going to why it's going that way to how she really does feel about it.
Case in point: From the article, it seems that Katie perceives the backstage backbiting and leaking as something the old guard at CBS shouldn't be doing and should be above even considering. On this Katie sounds downright shoolgirlish. She's been in the work world for years. Moreover, she's been in the ultra cut-throat world of TV. In addition, that world has become a dying medium and in such environments, expect people to be on their very worst behavior. Katie would have come across as more credible and less stupid if she said, "Of course in TV you expect undercutting, blaming, even sabotage. But this turned out, at least as I saw it, as over-the-top."
But maybe that's it: Maybe Katie is stupid. Or maybe that's part of the jinx: It rendered her stupid. Any reasonably bright person would have to know that this interview would be over-the-top harsh. Or, put another way, any person not jinxed would have laughed at Hagan for even asking as she said NO.
From Jane Genova:
Well, it's out. Here's that 6,000 word article by Joe Hagan in NEW YORK Magazine that cites the Katie Couric "slap" incident. What the article clearly demonstrates is that Katie is jinxed, at least in the media, and probably by the media. For example, of that 6,000 words, only about 140 of them recount the time during the June TB story, news editor Jerry Cipriano used the word "sputum" in his copy for Katie. Katie, Hagan reports, "began slapping him [Cipriano] 'over and over and over again' on the arm, according to a source familiar with the scene." Yet last night the web, including the popular Drudge Report, treated this as high buzz.
Amazing that 140-something words would be a key developing story, particularly with so much else happening on planet earth. And, that's exactly it: The jinx. The rest of the article, though, doesn't do Katie any service either. You can't help but shake your head as you read it and exclaim: That lady is, yeah, under a dark spell.
For example, throughout the piece, Hagan captures Katie as vacillating from denial to subterfuge about everything from how she got into this situation to how it's going to why it's going that way to how she really does feel about it.
Case in point: From the article, it seems that Katie perceives the backstage backbiting and leaking as something the old guard at CBS shouldn't be doing and should be above even considering. On this Katie sounds downright shoolgirlish. She's been in the work world for years. Moreover, she's been in the ultra cut-throat world of TV. In addition, that world has become a dying medium and in such environments, expect people to be on their very worst behavior. Katie would have come across as more credible and less stupid if she said, "Of course in TV you expect undercutting, blaming, even sabotage. But this turned out, at least as I saw it, as over-the-top."
But maybe that's it: Maybe Katie is stupid. Or maybe that's part of the jinx: It rendered her stupid. Any reasonably bright person would have to know that this interview would be over-the-top harsh. Or, put another way, any person not jinxed would have laughed at Hagan for even asking as she said NO.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
MSNBC: Most "journalists"support Democrats and liberal causes
Not really a suprise...
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 2:33 p.m. PT June 22, 2007
BOSTON - A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry's campaign the same month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog listing "people I don't like," starting with George Bush, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America ("these are the people who are really in charge").
Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.BOSTON - A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry's campaign the same month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog listing "people I don't like," starting with George Bush, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America ("these are the people who are really in charge").
Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 2:33 p.m. PT June 22, 2007
BOSTON - A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry's campaign the same month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog listing "people I don't like," starting with George Bush, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America ("these are the people who are really in charge").
Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.BOSTON - A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry's campaign the same month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog listing "people I don't like," starting with George Bush, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America ("these are the people who are really in charge").
Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Clueless MSM on Iraq and Fox News
War takes up less time on Fox News
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer Mon Jun 11, 9:52 AM ET
NEW YORK - On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the
United Nations' estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.
Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.
That wasn't unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN's daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC's. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.
The MSM's "coverage" of Iraq is virutally all just updates about body counts and little else. To the AP and CNN just "reporting" how many died is sufficient.
Fox News doesn't air meaningless reports about body counts without any context. To the MSM, this is a crime.
If we had today's media on June 6, 1944, the only thing they would have told us is that thousands of Allied troops were dead or wounded.
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer Mon Jun 11, 9:52 AM ET
NEW YORK - On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the
United Nations' estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.
Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.
That wasn't unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN's daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC's. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.
The MSM's "coverage" of Iraq is virutally all just updates about body counts and little else. To the AP and CNN just "reporting" how many died is sufficient.
Fox News doesn't air meaningless reports about body counts without any context. To the MSM, this is a crime.
If we had today's media on June 6, 1944, the only thing they would have told us is that thousands of Allied troops were dead or wounded.
Tony Blair on the media
Tony Blair gave an absolutely great speech today on the media. He gets it exactly right:
"The result, however, is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is often secondary to impact.
It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.
Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly the same pressure as broadsheets. The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged. Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked.
The consequences of this are acute. First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light.
Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial. Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own to examine the consequences for journalism of standing one conspiracy up. What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct. But misconduct is what has impact.
Third, the fear of missing out means that today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.
Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself. So - for example - there will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken to mean. This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.
In turn, this leads to a fifth point which is the confusion of news and commentary. Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course. In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine."
Here's more: Full transcript of Blair speech
"The result, however, is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is often secondary to impact.
It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.
Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly the same pressure as broadsheets. The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged. Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked.
The consequences of this are acute. First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light.
Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial. Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own to examine the consequences for journalism of standing one conspiracy up. What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct. But misconduct is what has impact.
Third, the fear of missing out means that today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.
Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself. So - for example - there will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken to mean. This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.
In turn, this leads to a fifth point which is the confusion of news and commentary. Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course. In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine."
Here's more: Full transcript of Blair speech
Here's a good laugh: CBS blames sexism for bad ratings
And the scary thing is, they are serious:
CBS blames sexism for bad ratings
By Joshua Chaffin in New York
Published: June 12 2007 22:27 Last updated: June 12 2007 22:27
Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package.
“I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.
He reiterated, however, that he was committed to Ms Couric and that he believed her programme would succeed in spite of its last place standing behind rivals ABC and NBC.
Ms Couric’s gender has been a central issue since CBS poached her from NBC’s Today show a year ago and made her the first woman to solo anchor a network newscast, filling the seat of such legends as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.
CBS was hoping to draw younger, female viewers to a US television institution whose audience has halved in the past 25 years.
Ms Couric has managed a 2 per cent increase in women age 18 to 49 since her September debut. However, that has been more than offset by an 11 per cent decline among men over 55, who still constitute the bulk of the evening news’ audience.
Mr Moonves has previously chided critics for scrutinising Ms Couric’s wardrobe and personal life. However, his latest remarks, made during a breakfast sponsored by Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications, were his most explicit about gender bias.
They come at a time when New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is testing whether Americans are willing to accept a woman in another authority position – as president.
Linda Mason, head of standards at CBS News, last month told the network’s Public Eye blog: “I had no idea that a woman delivering the news would be a handicap,” and that the public seemed to “prefer the news from white guys”.
In the absence of specific research, some analysts took issue with that argument. “People get news from women all the time – on local news, on morning shows. I’m sceptical of his discovery of sexism,” said Andrew Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report monitors newscasts. He and others have criticised the style of Ms Couric’s newscast, which emphasised soft features over hard news – something CBS seemed to acknowledge this year when it replaced the producer.
“Some of our changes didn’t work,” Mr Moonves said on Tuesday. But he added: “If TV news doesn’t want to go the way of the newspapers, which are declining rapidly, then we have to try change.”
Leslie Moonves is a perfect example of the media elite living in a bubble. He's "surprised by the vitriol" against Couric. I'm sure he would be since he probably does not know anyone at CBS who's voted for a Republican, who has served in the military or who goes to church.
Katic Couric is a bitter liberal partisan. She's also not a journalist. That's why her ratings are low, not her gender.
CBS blames sexism for bad ratings
By Joshua Chaffin in New York
Published: June 12 2007 22:27 Last updated: June 12 2007 22:27
Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package.
“I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.
He reiterated, however, that he was committed to Ms Couric and that he believed her programme would succeed in spite of its last place standing behind rivals ABC and NBC.
Ms Couric’s gender has been a central issue since CBS poached her from NBC’s Today show a year ago and made her the first woman to solo anchor a network newscast, filling the seat of such legends as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.
CBS was hoping to draw younger, female viewers to a US television institution whose audience has halved in the past 25 years.
Ms Couric has managed a 2 per cent increase in women age 18 to 49 since her September debut. However, that has been more than offset by an 11 per cent decline among men over 55, who still constitute the bulk of the evening news’ audience.
Mr Moonves has previously chided critics for scrutinising Ms Couric’s wardrobe and personal life. However, his latest remarks, made during a breakfast sponsored by Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications, were his most explicit about gender bias.
They come at a time when New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is testing whether Americans are willing to accept a woman in another authority position – as president.
Linda Mason, head of standards at CBS News, last month told the network’s Public Eye blog: “I had no idea that a woman delivering the news would be a handicap,” and that the public seemed to “prefer the news from white guys”.
In the absence of specific research, some analysts took issue with that argument. “People get news from women all the time – on local news, on morning shows. I’m sceptical of his discovery of sexism,” said Andrew Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report monitors newscasts. He and others have criticised the style of Ms Couric’s newscast, which emphasised soft features over hard news – something CBS seemed to acknowledge this year when it replaced the producer.
“Some of our changes didn’t work,” Mr Moonves said on Tuesday. But he added: “If TV news doesn’t want to go the way of the newspapers, which are declining rapidly, then we have to try change.”
Leslie Moonves is a perfect example of the media elite living in a bubble. He's "surprised by the vitriol" against Couric. I'm sure he would be since he probably does not know anyone at CBS who's voted for a Republican, who has served in the military or who goes to church.
Katic Couric is a bitter liberal partisan. She's also not a journalist. That's why her ratings are low, not her gender.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Mitt Romney and the annoying Mormon question by the MSM
Mitt Romney is doing very well in the Republican debates and he appears more and more to be the man to beat for the Republican nomination.
Will the MSM continue to ask bigoted and idiotic questions about his faith if he wins the nomination?
Sadly they probably will but so far Romney has shown nothing but grace and dignity on this matter.
Will the MSM continue to ask bigoted and idiotic questions about his faith if he wins the nomination?
Sadly they probably will but so far Romney has shown nothing but grace and dignity on this matter.
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