x News Media Incompetence, Sensationalism and Dishonesty
News Media Incompetence,
Sensationalism and Dishonesty

It pays to be skeptical when watching television news programs.  The people who put together television news programs sometimes display shameless political bias, by their selection of what is reported and what isn't.  You may have noticed that TV news reporters often pass along press releases from government agencies (at all levels) without ever questioning the wisdom of anything the government does, or the cost, or the truthfulness of what the government says.  When television news producers and reporters lack healthy skepticism, it's up to you to be on guard and ask questions of your own.  That's what a large portion of this web site is about.

To a great extent, the "news" people on television don't know very much that you don't know already, if you've spent more than five minutes on the internet before turning on the TV.  Beyond morbid curiosity, do you really care if there was a fire last night at an apartment complex across town?  Do you care if there was an eight-car wreck on the freeway, or if a bunch of drunken teenagers had a wreck while drag racing at 3:00 a.m., or the police chased a guy all over town until he ran off the road?  How is your life made any better by knowing about all that?

And then there's the weather.  Television weather forecasts are notoriously inaccurate beyond the next 48 hours, yet most stations have "extended" forecasts covering the next seven days.  I can assure you, they're just guessing (or repeating someone else's guess) about everything beyond three or four days from now.  On tonight's weather segment, the predicted high and low temperatures for six or seven days from now are just the normal high and low for this time of year.  Anybody with a real interest in tomorrow's weather (or today's) can make educated guesses that are every bit as good as the ones on television.  If you'll make notes about the weather forecast you see today, versus the weather that actually develops five or six days later – sometimes as little as one day later – you'll see what I mean.

The only thing the TV weather "personality" has – that an amateur forecaster doesn't – is really good radar.  But even that is available to Joe Average over the internet.  And you don't have to wait until 6:15 p.m. to see it.

And there's hardly ever any good news about the weather.  TV weathermen complain that we desperately need rain, and then when it finally starts raining, you'll hear them wonder if the rain will ever end.  They never mention lake levels or UV intensity or pollution or pollen counts unless there is bad news to report.  That's bias.  That's calculated pessimism — the consultants know bad news makes people watch again tomorrow, but good news does not.

Similarly, the local news is sometimes padded with stock market news.  But anybody with a serious interest in the stock market will learn nothing new from the superficial two-sentence financial report.

An event is newsworthy in direct proportion to its unlikeliness.  That's why "this day in history" is not news.  That's one of several reasons why celebrity birthdays are not news.  They're inevitable.  Stories about Hollywood divorces (or "breakups", since actual marriages are the exception in Hollywood), and stories about professional athletes being arrested are not news; they are nothing more than idle gossip.

On the other hand, what appears to be incompetence is often just expedience.  The producers of local news shows aren't dumb, they're just under pressure to fill half-hour blocks of time with something, even if they don't have a lot of fresh material.  The news segments in a local news show are often just spacers between commercial breaks.  On light news days, the "news" segments are sometimes shorter than the commercial breaks with which they alternate.  When serious news is in short supply, you're likely to see stories about animals, babies, baby animals, time-critical rescues, and anything else that has some kind of emotional appeal.  (That's why we heard about "Baby Jessica in the well" for months after the story was over.)

If my opinion is really of any value, please see my "Sidebar discussion about TV news in general" on this page.

This page is not about political bias, necessarily.  Examples of flat-out political bias are shown on this page.

Analysis and criticism of the New York Times can be found on this page.

News media bias and sensationalism in the coverage of Hurricane Katrina are outlined on this page.

The Oklahoma City Bombing case is a prime example of news media laziness.  The government's official "one man, one bomb" explanation was reported at face value, unchallenged, even though people have shown that a truck bomb was not enough to cause that kind of destruction.  ("For six weeks, John Doe No. 2 is the most hunted man in the world until, without explanation, he just kind of goes away.")*

The crash of TWA 800 is a prime example of news media gullibility in the face of an impossible official explanation.  Numerous aviation experts have tackled this story and have shown the government's version to be a fabrication and a cover-up.

Even more suspicious, if you ask me, was the crash of American 587, just a couple of months after the 9/11 attacks.  The plane was still smoldering on the ground when the government (with the passive assistance of the hapless press) began making bold pronouncements that the crash had nothing to do with terrorism.

The Vince Foster case is an example of the national news media's unwillingness to confront the Clinton administration when the evidence doesn't add up to the official explanation.  Even so, I can see how reporters would rather leave the story alone than suddenly end up dead like Mr. Foster.

To be fair, TV reporters are powerless to investigate questionable stories in cases where the U.S. government is in possession of all the evidence.  Especially when people at the highest levels of government want to keep things quiet.  In addition, the average reporter depends heavily on government officials for information, and that same average reporter doesn't want his or her sources to dry up overnight because he or she dared to question the officials' candor or honesty.

Dan Rather's Memo-gate is a good example of unmitigated political bias in TV news reporting.  The story was released close enough to the 2004 election so that the outcome of the election would be affected, even if the "facts" were later disproven.  But as CBS found out, the internet moves information quickly, and skeptics abound.

The Fox News Channel has figured this out, and they at least try to present both sides of controversial subjects, even though such discussions are too short to be conclusive and they often degenerate into shouting matches.



It's no wonder that the public hates journalists.  I'm ashamed to be a journalist.  Yes, again.  Like little kids who continually put their hands in a flame and get burned every time, my profession just never learns from its mistakes.  We have an unfortunate habit of hyping the wrong stories.  Over and over.  And when it comes to assessing the effect that our foolishness has on our craft's reputation, it's practically a fatal flaw.

Media Rubes:  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a "rube" as a "naïve or inexperienced person," or "an awkward unsophisticated person."  Clearly, no better set of adjectives can be found to describe a great many American journalists, who together have managed to provide Obama with an 86 percent favorable report rating, at least through March of this year.

It's not News Unless it's Reported by a Mainstream Journalist.  The Leftist "Media Matters" is scandalized because Fox News reported an anti-Greenie story that was originally put on the net via a blog rather than by one of the mainstream news organizations. … They couldn't question the truth of the story — because it is true.  The only thing to criticize that they could find was who reported the event.

Spitzer's Media Enablers:  The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will surely be examining them in coming months.  But don't expect the press corps to delve into the biggest lesson of all — its own role as his enabler. … What makes this more embarrassing for any self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. … He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance.  News organizations that dared to criticize him were cut off.  After a time, few criticized anymore.

Network TV News:  Evil or Incompetent?  In the complex and intense world of the 21st Century, an informed and aware public is more essential than ever.  Citizens are asked to make judgments on issues and candidates where the decision could literally mean life or death for millions.  And yet, what is the public fed nightly by those over-paid "news" organizations at what is called the Networks?  The public is force fed a steady diet of propaganda, distortions and outright pap.

Media Malpractice:  Now I am not a scientist, but the idea that a few alleged degrees of warming — with none apparently in the last decade — could cause an increase in earthquakes seemed pure quackery to me.  So, I decided to perform Google and Yahoo searches of the "scientist" who had issued the finding, one Thomas Chalko, MSc, Ph.D.  In less than five minutes I found that Chalko was perhaps the last person who should be quoted on the purported impact of allegedly man-caused global warming.

CBS Pulls Unvetted Story Blaming Earthquakes on Global Warming.  CBS News and the Associated Press were quick to regurgitate claims that global warming has increased the intensity of earthquakes fivefold in the past 20 years.  But had either taken the time to investigate, they would have discovered that both the source's facts and credentials were, if you'll pardon the expression, on very tremorous ground.

The Editor says...
I am amazed that a story like this got on the CBS web site, and may have aired on CBS stations.  Anyone with a milligram of critical thinking skills should be able to conclude that a one-half degree temperature change is not enough to cause an earthquake, without having someone else point it out.

Has Big Media Global Warming Bias Begun to Endanger the Public?  Why did the AP and the [Boston] Globe de-emphasize Maine officials' snowpack warning, especially when doing so endangered the property and safety of the public they are supposed to serve?  The Globe is owned by the New York Times Company. Both the Times and the Associated Press are heavily invested in the myth of Global Warming….

This is what passes for journalism these days:
ABC Fakes Muslim Prejudice, Unsurprisingly Finds 'Islamophobia' in America.  Apparently to prove that the US is filled with Muslim hating yahoos, ABC went on the hunt to find "Islamophobia" in America and the result is "Witness to Discrimination:  What Would You Do?"  Since they didn't really know where to find any, ABC News decided to create their own prejudice against Muslims by hiring an actress to put on Muslim dress and get "confronted" by a Muslim hating coffee store server — also an actor hired by ABC.

Happy Birthday, Monicagate!  The press loves anniversaries of big public events because they're predictable, a quality seldom found in the news.  Coverage can be planned in advance.  Stories can be written, laid out, and put to bed without any worry that later developments will compel revisions.  Sputnik is turning 50?  Let's cover it.  The only thing it can possibly do while we're not looking is turn 51.  Given this predisposition, I find it worth studying the rare instances when the press accords a significant anniversary little attention.

Citizen journalist 1, MSM 0.  Is there anything that moves slower than a government bureaucracy?  Actually, it seems that there is:  the mainstream media.  Back on March 17, [2006,] I posted a story about FEMA going after people who received duplicate or fraudulent Hurricane Katrina disaster payments.  It was a followup to a February 13 story on the Government Accountability Office's report on people defrauding FEMA.  And despite their having access to the same sources I do — and a whole lot more — it's taken the mainstream media until today [4/21/2006] to get a story out.

So Much More Than Just the New York Times.  Over the weekend NBC offered up their latest versions of Tim Russert's Meet the Press and the Chris Matthews Show — the latter being political television's answer to Jerry Springer.  In them we were treated to two more glittering examples of all that is wrong with the Jurassic Press.

Highway Robbery:  Rick Perry's vision for Texas, the Trans Texas Corridor, made it through the State Legislature in 2003.  H.B. 3588, the enabling bill for the Trans Texas Corridor and, hence, the largest spending bill in the state's history, became law in large part because Texas' mainstream press, used as a watchdog, was inexplicably asleep.

Ship collision with San Francisco Bay Bridge:  Despite many reports calling it a tanker, the Cosco Busan was actually a container ship, and the fuel on board was solely for the purpose of running the ship.

Norman Hsu Who?  Radio personality Rush Limbaugh has coined the term "Drive-By Media" to refer to those in the MSM who shot up a story and then leave others to clean up the mess, or not.  First the WSJ broke the Norman Hsu story.  Then, last October the LATimes broke the story of the vanishing NYC Chinatown donors.  Neither story was completed.  The "Drive-By's" just shot them up and drove on down the road.  Meanwhile, where's Hsu and what's his story?

It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp.  Scott Beauchamp was the last straw.  I realized that I need a scorecard to keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major and minor screw-ups in the media. … Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias.  Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier.  Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV.  Some are more serious.

It's Not Just Scott Beauchamp — Part Two.  Without too much extra effort, it was fairly easy to add 21 more names to the "Media Hall of Shame" list, bringing the total to 83.  With more effort, I'm sure the total list could easily double.

In part three, the list grows to 101.
Media Dishonesty Matters.  Did you know that Time magazine and other news organizations had a Vietnamese communist on full-time staff in Vietnam during that war?  Do you remember that ABC, CBS and NBC have all rigged cars or trucks with explosives or other devices to make them look dangerous on TV, or that Consumer Reports lied about the Suzuki Samurai enough to put it out of business?

Treason, Plagiarism and The Washington Post:  Winning a Pulitzer Prize for a story about CIA "secret prisons" has been quite lucrative for Dana Priest of the Washington Post. … But the article for which she won the prize not only damaged the security of the United States and endangered the safety of American citizens but appears to have been largely based on the work of London-based journalist Stephen Grey.

More Americans turning to Web for news.  Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey. … Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago.  Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.

The End of America As We Know It:  [Scroll down] Add to that a heavily partisan, politicized environment where different political parties can't even agree on the most basic facts, much less the issues — and an incompetent mainstream media that cries wolf on an almost daily basis about something that's going to kill us — and we're producing a society riddled with people who have extreme difficulty coping with or even recognizing basic threats.

Journalism's Hoax on Duke:  As the late commentator and editor Michael Kelly wrote, "most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates into which they plug each day's events."  The most obvious templates concern race — whites are oppressing blacks, gender — men are oppressing women, and class — the privileged are oppressing the poor.  Since all three of these templates were in play during the Duke race case, how surprising is it that this triple high tide resulted in some of the worst journalism of the decade?

Don't know much about voting.  Two-thirds of those surveyed in NYU's Foundations of Journalism course would trade their vote for a year's tuition, department chair Brooke Kroeger found.  Twenty percent would trade it for an iPod, and 90 percent would give up their franchise forever for $1 million.  At the same time, it is claimed, the students "value" their votes.  About 70 percent still believe that one vote can make a difference.  This result is strange for a profession which counts "government watchdog" among its roles.

Journalism School Probes Possible Cheating on Ethics Exam.  It was an ethics exam in a journalism class, and someone may have cheated.  Ironic?  Yes.  Unfortunate?  Certainly.  But what made the incident particularly notable was where and when it took place:  at Columbia University, one of the premier journalism schools in the country, at a time when media ethics are much in question.

The Iowa Scam:  It is quite astonishing to see with what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption — and the flagrantly anti-democratic character — of the Iowa caucuses.

Scooping the mainstream media:  The Associated Press reached a new level of incompetence, and the "news" industry they serve doesn't seem to care.  If you want political opinion, you'll find it in Associated Press dispatches.  If you want news, you might have to read conservative opinion columns.

The Media is the Politics.  The "debates" between the current crop of presidential wannabes bear little resemblance to the stirring intellectual drama of Lincoln and Douglas, but they accurately reflect our times.  Short answers to trivial questions for short attention spans.  There's little opportunity for eloquence in a sound bite and it's not likely that television audiences would stay tuned if there were.

PC Diversity In Newsrooms Elects Obama.  The national media – especially when it comes to the Democratic candidates – has hijacked much of the process by pompously and prematurely dictating to the voters who was "top-tier" and who was "bottom-tier."  Then, based on those prejudiced pronouncements, the focus is on who got coverage and questions, and who was unceremoniously deposited on top of the slag heap.

Yes, She Can.  Voters don't like to be told for whom to vote by the press.  Over the past two weeks, "Saturday Night Live" has spoofed the media's fawning coverage of Obama. … Those "SNL" skits had an effect:  the press doesn't enjoy being made fun of, particularly with regard to how they do their jobs.  The "SNL" skits pressured them to question Obama more aggressively, and they did.  He did not respond well.

A Culture of Corruption:  The News Media.  What's Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground bomber William Ayers?  Over the years, Ayers has raised enormous sums of money for the Illinois senator.  What was Obama's relationship with indicted moneyman Tony Rezko?  Over the years, it's been reported that Rezko raised over $14 million for Obama's campaigns.  When Rezko was indicted, Obama returned $85,000.00 to him.  What happened to the other $13,015,000.00?  What's Obama's relationship with terrorist sympathizer Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University?  Did Obama funnel money to his pal Rashid — money that eventually ended up in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah terrorists?  There are other questions that these intellectual giants in the news media could at least ask, but don't hold your breath for them to actually do their jobs.

Is 'Journalistic Ethics' an Oxymoron?  The Founding Fathers thought a free and skeptical press was essential to the preservation of our political and economic liberties.  The First Amendment is first for just that reason.  What would they think of today's generation of reporters who hide from the truth, parrot the slogans of left-wing advocacy groups, fail to do their own research, and routinely give politicians a free ride?  My guess is they would be stunned.

Is news just the facts?  Not anymore.  When I entered the field the ideal was to "... tell it like it is."  Not what I would like it to be, but simply lay out the facts.  If one fact strongly supports a point of view we were obligated to seek other facts that would dispute it.  Unfortunately, many of today's instructors teach what is called, "advocacy journalism."

The national news media provide publicity for every crazed gunman who goes out with a bang.
Dial CNN for Murder.  The same dangerous pattern has been repeated again and again.  The disturbed man who took hostages at Sen. Clinton's headquarters in New Hampshire told loved ones to "watch the news tonight."  The shooter who terrorized an Omaha shopping mall by mowing down total strangers has achieved his goal (and I will not add to the problem by publishing his name).  He left a suicide note in which he predicted "at least now I'll be famous."  His picture is featured in every newspaper and is flashed on television hourly.  His miseries are being dissected and analyzed. ... And other disturbed people are watching and taking note.

Media madness:  The Virginia Tech story.  There seems to be just one template for the media in covering tragedies like that which just occurred at Virginia Tech:  Discussion of further regulation of guns and so much coverage of the perpetrator that copycats are sure to be impressed. … Seeing the glorification of the latest mass murderer, the next Cho may be already getting some ideas about how to take follow in his footsteps.

Reducing the risk of copycat killers:  The way the media cover an event influences whether there will be repetitions.  For example, if a fan runs onto the field during a baseball game, the broadcast cameras usually avoid showing pictures of the fan.  The TV producers know that the fan on the field is seeking attention, and that, presumably, getting his picture on television will reward him.  Moreover, broadcasting the man's antics would encourage copycats.

Five Questions about Shootings at Universities.  The day after the mass murder of students at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the headline in the closest major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, was:  "6 Dead in NIU Shooting."  "6 dead" included the murderer.  Why wasn't the headline "5 killed at NIU"?  It is nothing less than moronic that the media routinely lump murderers and their victims in the same tally.  This is something entirely new.  Until the morally confused took over the universities and the news media, murderers were never counted along with their victims.

In time of tragedy, media are at their worst.  The press, particularly television news networks … [are] competing with each other like starving dogs for the slightest new morsel of information they can then put on a permanent loop on cable TV, until the next fragmentary detail is pried loose by a reporter desperate to be first, for 15 minutes.  Because there isn't enough new information to fill the infinite void allotted to these stories, the press quickly succumbs to a kind of emotional vampirism, feeding off the grief, fear and anguish of victims clearly incapable of understanding their own feelings….

Murder by media?  Did the non-stop playing of the Virginia Tech killer's twisted thoughts help to push a fragile mind in Houston to walk the same grisly path?  Has the airing of that video set in motion other killers and imitators who may not carry out their copy-cat crimes for months or years?

The News Media Vs. the Innocent.  Years ago, Ray Donovan, Ronald Reagan's Labor Secretary, was prosecuted for corruption, only to be acquitted.  After the verdict, Donovan asked plaintively, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"  Steven Hatfill knows where to go to get his reputation back.  But upon arriving there, he finds the door blocked by someone who says her privileges are more important than his good name.  That someone, of course, is a journalist.  And, not surprisingly, she enjoys the broad support of other journalists, who have proved to be slow learners about the obligations they share with their fellow citizens.

Hooked on trivia.  We try to hear and see no evil, but it's not far-fetched to suggest that future world events could quickly change the lives of millions.  So why then fixate on Anna Nicole, Rosie, Imus and Alec?  Simple — they are the modern equivalents of grotesque carnival freak shows that used to provide a perverse sense of escapism from what people dare not face.  Yet as our dependency on such tabloid distraction grows, so, too, do the real dangers that we ignore.

AFP Takes Lessons from TNR.  The caption that accompanied the photo read:  "An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she said hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City." … The only way these "bullets" could have hit the woman's house was if they'd been thrown at it.  They'd obviously never been fired.

Haditha Massacre:  Media and Terrorist Hoax?  As charges against U.S. Marines — regarding an apparent fabrication of the "Haditha massacre" — continue to be proved false and based upon unsubstantiated "evidence," only some of the leftist media appear to be standing by their original spin on the story.

The Liberal media are living in cocoons.  Whenever you read the headline, "some say," you know you are reading the opinions of the reporter.  Some say the moon is made of green cheese, but what's the difference?  The story is only worth telling when "some say" what the reporter wants them to say.

A press storm over secrets.  The media may not be the most detested institution in America, but it is surely a contender for the title.  A Harris poll in March found that only 14 percent of American adults express a "great deal" of confidence in the press, while 34 percent — one American in three — have "hardly any" confidence in it.

Scalia rips judges on abortion, suicide.  [Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia expressed disdain for the news media and the general reading public and suggested that together they condone inaccurate portrayals of federal judges and courts.  "The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately," he said.  "They're just going to report, who is the plaintiff?  Was that a nice little old lady?  And who is the defendant?  Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy?  And who won?  Was it the good guy that won or the bad guy?

Media Should Have 'Outed' Foley.  The finger-pointing in the Mark Foley scandal has curiously not focused on one particularly powerful player complicit in allowing the Florida Republican to continue his detrimental behavior for years:  the American media.

Update:
After election, Foley story fizzles.  If ever a news story bolstered Rush Limbaugh's low opinion of the "drive-by media," it is the tawdry saga of former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla.  When the story about Foley's e-mails to former House pages first broke, cable news was All Foley/All the Time. … When the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct report came out this month finding no violations by GOP leadership of House rules or standards, the once-big story devolved into news briefs and tepid editorials.  No big scandal, no big story.

Hillary and the Ghost of LBJ:  Much complained about every four years is the tendency of the media to play elections for the presidency as a horse race.  There is reason for this. Exciting, colorful, horse races never fail to capture an audience.  They have a winner and a batch of losers.  But horse races always end. What the horse racing model of media coverage never does is illuminate the long-term success or failure of the underlying ideas at stake in the ever fluid, always forward-moving history of the American experience.  But those ideas do win — and they do lose.  One of the most continually defeated ideas that has appeared in American politics is that of weakness and appeasement in foreign policy.

Big Media are Repeatedly Wrong Claiming 'Record-High' Gas Prices.  Since Hurricane Katrina swept ashore on the Gulf Coast, we've heard seemingly countless reports of "record high" gas or oil prices.  From the beginning of September last year, the big three networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — have told us about record high gas or oil prices close to 100 times.  They've been wrong each and every time.

The media's shabbiest moments.  The year 2005 is ending as it began, with another successful election in Iraq and a liberal media still flapping around trying to find other controversies to submerge it.  It does not matter to them that a Gallup poll found that 74 percent of Americans express confidence in their military, but only 28 percent express confidence in their newspapers or TV news outlets.

Jellyfish of the Year:  The intellectual flubber of Time's decision is manifest on many levels.  Though some argue that Time was patting the American people on the head for voting the way they wanted in the last election, the more obvious explanation is that Time's editors didn't want to offend anybody.  "If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," Richard Stengel, Time's newly vintaged managing editor, told the Associated Press.  "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."

The KGB's Useful Idiots:  There are numerous examples of leftists unwittingly serving the Soviet cause in the 1980s, which today sit in Communist government and media archives, some of which have been translated and are easily accessible in the United States.  There they gather dust, as liberal historians and journalists ignore them, failing to do their jobs, never reporting the real history that exists.

Anchors AweighAccording to a Pew Research Center survey of 552 journalists and news media executives from November 20, 1998 to February 11, 1999: "40% of journalists working for national news organizations and 55% of those working for local outlets said that news reports were increasingly marred by factual errors and sloppy reporting.  About 60% said the boundary between reporting and commentary had eroded."

Funniest Media Gaffes of 2006:  In the dubious sources category:  "Don Spille — A man who told the Tallahassee Democrat that he lost everything in Katrina — including his father.  Ed Spille Sr., his father, later contacted the newspaper to disagree."

Media Report of Raids on Tulsa Illegals Draws Outrage.  A series of raids in Oklahoma last week led to the arrests of 127 criminal aliens, fugitives and other immigration violators despite a TV station's news report that not only exposed the operation to the public, but also described the people and the vehicles being used in the effort.

This Ain't Nightline.  It's not Ted Koppel's fault that the New York Times has made him a Times contributing columnist. … [T]he fault belongs to whomever assigned, accepted, and edited or rewrote Koppel's self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, late-to-the-party, and punishingly obvious 1,500-word piece about the state of television news.  (It's bad.)

The Press And the Rush To Judgment.  Remember those January newspaper headlines heralding the survival of all 12 trapped miners in West Virginia?  Even the august New York Times reported "12 Found Alive 41 Hours After Explosion," but only one miner had actually survived.  In the frenzy to scoop competitors, reporters failed their journalistic responsibility, and this penchant to rush to judgment before all the facts are verified is again occurring on two recent hot button issues — homeland security funding cuts to New York City and the Haditha civilian deaths.

Life after Ted Koppel:  Koppel's debut as a New York Times columnist has been widely panned, but it is a revealing column, for Koppel confirms what many of us had figured out as he and his broadcast became increasingly irrelevant.  He writes that journalists "should be telling their viewers what is important, not the other way around."  Finally, all of his cards are on the table and he's revealed the contempt that he had for his audience all along.

The Worst of Times.  The New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days.  The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board.  That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history.

Whatever happened to news as information?  Most hurricane reporters aren't exactly war reporters, so once they've proved how hard the wind is blowing, they pack it in. … And have you noticed where most of these reporters were "reporting" from?  More often than not, it's either just outside their station's office building or on the patio of some hotel.  There's nothing seriously wrong with reporting from your hotel, but it's awfully lazy.

Myths of rich and poor:  There is a fundamental difference between seeking the truth and scoring points.  In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.

The end of civilization was a joke.  Potentially more dangerous than short-fused fanatics is our own cowardice in declining to treat this madness as anything but inexcusably barbaric.  Instead, we kneel in apology for our own hard-won principles.  Newspapers especially deserve contempt for their spineless refusal to deal honestly with this controversy.

Journalists have become ambitious courtiers.  Gone are the days of the cheerfully humble reporter sticking to the facts and keeping his opinions to himself.  Today's media forget how much they don't know. … You may have noticed, for example, how thoroughly the media omit any religious perspective on the news — which means that they miss the actual significance of the news for countless Americans.  They utter self-assured pronouncements about the Constitution from depths of confusion.

How the CIA Uses the Press:  One of the fascinating aspects of coverage of the Joseph Wilson affair is the tendency of the media to go to the defense of the CIA, which arranged for Wilson's dubious Africa trip.

When accountability is compromised:  The disgraceful affair of Wen Ho Lee, the onetime Los Alamos scientist defamed but never tried for supposedly stealing nuclear secrets for China, is over.  The U.S. government and five news organizations will pay Lee $1.64 million for sliming him by publishing private information from his personnel files to support espionage allegations that nobody could ever prove and that apparently were unfounded.

Hiding Barrett.  In a very clever year-end column the venerable William Safire writing in the New York Times asks whether "special prosecutor David Barrett's 400-page expose of political influence within the Internal Revenue Service and the Clinton Justice Department" will be the government report "most likely to resist investigative reporting" this year.  I certainly hope not.

Media Report Miracle Mine Rescue — Then Carry the Tragic Truth.  In one of the most disturbing media performances of its kind in recent years, TV news and many newspapers carried the tragically wrong news late Tuesday and early Wednesday [1/4/2006] that 12 of 13 trapped coal miners in West Virginia had been found alive and safe.  Hours later they had to reverse course. … It was "Dewey Defeats Truman" all over again.

United Flight Diverted Because of Unruly Passenger.  Boston's Channel 7, an NBC affiliate, reported that the woman had a screwdriver, Vaseline and a note referencing the al-Qaeda terrorist group.  [George Naccara, federal security director for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration at Logan Airport] said she was not in fact carrying any of these items.

Judith Miller, TWA 800 and the Death of Press Freedom.  All those wonderful federal sources who spoon-fed you, the dominant media journalist, story after story for which you were praised and rewarded with even better stories — as long as you did not demand that officially sanctioned stories be backed up with actual documents and other provable facts.  These "sources" would never again be available to you if you ever crossed the Beast, the National Security State.  You'd actually have to push away from your desk, get out of your chair, go out into the cold, cruel world, walk past your favorite pub and find sources.

And now, a touching, fake story of bogus courage and false hope.  Who can really blame student journalist Michael Brenner, editor of The Daily Egyptian at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill., for grabbing onto what seemed to be a really good story when it dropped into his lap?  How was he to know that it wasn't true at all?

The Lines Between News and Entertainment are Blurring.  An on-screen NBC News identifier for a fictional debate on "The West Wing" and a "news conference" by a fake Boston Red Sox executive on ESPN show how fuzzy the lines between news and entertainment have become.

Conventionally Ignorant:  Washington is an echo chamber.  One pundit, one senator, one reporter proclaim a snazzy "truth" and almost immediately it reverberates as gospel.  Conventional wisdom about Iraq is rarely questioned.  A notion seems to find validity not on its logic or through empirical evidence, but simply by the degree to which it is repeated and felt to resonate.

Why the media passes off bunk as news.  I like oddball news as much as anyone.  In fact, I make a decent living showcasing a daily collection of silly news, offbeat items, and real news with amusing headlines on my website, Fark.com, which attracts 3.5 million unique visitors each month.  What's scary, though, is that the ratio of filler news to real news is now so high that the content of Fark and major news websites is often nearly identical.  That should never happen because, in theory, mass media outlets are staffed by full-time, serious journalists who have better things to do.

Too much TV drama over storms.  We are now celebrating the anniversary of the Katrina hurricane and if one did not know better, one would think it was a fantastic event. … The hurricane season started a couple of months ago, and when watching TV, reading the papers or listening to the radio, it was obvious that the media was waiting with bated breath for the next disaster.  The season is half over and we can report no disasters.  They really are disappointed.

Like the wind, hurricane predictions keep shifting.  Hurricane forecaster William Gray's team downgraded its predictions again for the 2006 Atlantic storm season Friday [9/1/2006], saying 13 named storms are likely to form this year instead of 15. … Before hurricane season began June 1, Gray's team called for 17 named storms.  He trimmed that to 15 early last month.

Weather has become bogeyman, news staple.  It began as a mass e-mail in a certain Seattle office building on December's first day.  A cold front was arriving!  Snow!  Ice!  Untold inches for the city and surrounding area! … The cautious drove home after lunch.  The brave stayed behind.  And the snow never came.  Not even an inch.

Global Warming to Blame for Hot Weather Hyperbole.  A heat index of more than 100 degrees for days on end not only drains the body and spirit, but it also takes its toll on the thesaurus.  There is a limit to the number of ways to describe the heat and still sound relatively intelligent.

Silly Talk:  How many times have you heard a weatherman say that the sun will try to come out later in the day?  Sometimes their prediction turns out to be false and I wonder whether they would explain it by saying the sun didn't try hard enough.  But it's not just weathermen who use teleological explanations, ascribing purposeful behavior to inanimate objects.

The Media Rush to Duke's Defense.  Usually, reporters breathlessly take everything prosecutors and the police say at face value, often to devastating effect upon criminal defendants.  The "perp walk," in which a suspect is paraded publicly in handcuffs from place to place, often after officials have told television producers where to place their cameras, is only the most visible example of this practice.  The reporters get their shot.  The police get to portray the defendant, innocent or not, as dangerous (i.e. guilty) in the eyes of potential jurors.

All the news is a stage.  As they spin the Saddam trial and deride our soldiers in Iraq, the lesson is clear:  These media masters of theater are incapable of delivering real drama and good news unless they control the script.  Fortunately, you control the remote.

Clinton's Mythical FEMA.  While making the rounds of the network morning shows, [Senator Hillary Clinton has] been very hard on the Federal Emergency Management Administration and, of course, the Bush Administration.  She went as far as complaining that Bush damaged "Bill's FEMA."  Naturally, the mainstream media are too lazy to investigate her politically-charged exploitation of Katrina to not only revise her hubby's legacy, but also to score brownie points as she eyes a 2008 presidential run.

Media Mind Control in the War on Terror.  By using graphic images, focusing only on what they want you to see and hear, shaping events by reporting only on those that fit the media's political agenda, ignoring anything that is counterproductive to their goals, they control an empire that is actually a fourth arm of government.

Preserving the public trust:  Most of the truly profitable newspapers in the country today are essentially shopping circulars with some cheap journalism printed on those pages not devoted to shopping mall sales.  The great newspaper chains take over local papers, fire journalists, and set out to fill their pages with still more advertisements.

Major Journalism Scandal at Sacramento Paper.  As more comes to light about Diane Griego Erwin, the former Sacramento Bee columnist, the more revealing and instructive the story becomes.  It is a story we mentioned in a recent Media Monitor, but much more has come to light.  In one sense, it is another validation for the New Media, specifically the blogs; and for another, it shines a light on problems related to diversity in the newsrooms, when diversity strictly refers to skin color.

USA Today's Reporting Scandals:  USA Today recently acted correctly to remove a reporter guilty of fabricating facts and sources for several articles.  Too bad they weren't so responsive several years when Michael Fumento reported major errors in reporting on the Gulf War Syndrome story by a reporter named John Hanchette.

What's Right About America!  Last Sunday when I returned from church services I opened my hometown newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and settled in with a cup of coffee to review the day's news.  It was a good thing I had already received my inspiration at church, or I could have easily become downright depressed over the negative headlines in nearly every section of the paper.  The majority of headlines on the front page of each section promised a story that would focus on the negative aspect of an event or issue, rather than the positive contributions people are making to fix the biggest problems we face.

Fake News from CBS.  In 2002 the Guerilla News Network published a piece written by staffers from a group called PR Watch.  They said that "For years CBS (and all the other networks) have run fake news stories in the form of video news releases."  What's more, the article, "CBS sells fake news," went on to announce that CBS also had gone into the business of creating, producing and distributing so-called "fake news."

'48 Hours' apologizes for altered image.  The executive producer of CBS's "48 Hours Mystery" has apologized for airing an altered image of the front page of the Tribune in an episode about the murder trial of Ryan Ferguson that aired Saturday night [2/18/2006].

Playing with the numbers:  A UPI story a few months back reported that nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.  If so, as blogger Megan McArdle pointed out a few weeks ago on Asymmetrical Information, that would mean that every single homeless person in America must have served in the armed forces, since 300,000 is about the total number of the homeless.

The News Business Is in Decline.  The evidence is the current emphasis on individual crime stories and stories about the entertainment industry. … Today's newsroom resembles a Prudential Insurance office.  Smoking is forbidden, and there is only the faint clatter of computer-keyboard keys.  I knew the business was doomed when they put a salad bar in the lunchroom.  Today's journalists tend to be salad-eaters and joggers, and those who smoke don't smoke tobacco.

Tony Snow and the deteriorating media:  President Bush's new White House Press Secretary is all the rage.  But unfortunately, Tony Snow's appointment will only feed the media's craving for personal recognition and attention.  One of the major problems with the media today is too much focus on the "personality" delivering the news, while any actual substance of the news takes second stage.

Don't put much stock in the TV experts.  Stocks go up and down, but eventually, most go up.  So if you invest and hold on, odds are you'll do quite well.

Schools for Scribblers:  On the education of young journalists, there has been much recent debate.  There is one argument over whether or not journalists should aspire to objectivity and another about the liberal bias that permeates journalism programs.  But the problem isn't that journalists are being taught improperly; it's that the foundations of journalistic education are faulty.

Soft on the stars' scientology.  Many people believe, as I do, that Scientology is a cult, an oppressive organization that splits families and milks believers for every cent they can muster.  But to entertainment journalists, Scientology is about as harmless as scuba diving.

Believing the worst:  There is an unspoken but real impulse in today's media to see themselves as "independent" of America, even above America, not so much because they are superior to America but because America is so egregiously flawed.  It is their role to shed light on America's failings.  They're not keen at being seen as Americans.  They choke at the idea of wearing flag pins.

Fannie Mae's bailout tab:  Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year.  It has accounting errors of about $11 billion.  [That's Enron × 19.]  This is news — $30 billion worth of news — but only print reporters are out there covering it regularly.  TV news is out to lunch.

The hardest numbers:  Polls on unfamiliar issues are notoriously volatile, and results can shift wildly when questions are worded slightly differently.

Poor reflections in the media mirror.  The mainstream public does not perceive that the "mainstream media" takes the time to check facts and eschews opinion in its "reporting."  According to the Pew Center for the People and the Press, only 35 percent of Americans think the media get the facts right.

The Collapse of Big Media:  Starting Over.  They've seen their audiences shrink, they've had to worry about vigorous new competitors, and they've suffered more than a few self-inflicted wounds — scandals of their own making.  They know that more and more people have lost confidence in what they do.  To many Americans, today's newspaper is irrelevant, and network news is as compelling as whatever is being offered over on the Home Shopping Network.  Maybe less.

Ending a losing streak:  The left is on another losing streak today, and so their intellectual leaders in the liberal media have gone back to the old playbook for an easy win that will get their team out of its slump.  This time, it is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, which has been working for them since the days of Karl Marx.

Fred Barnes Calls Sheehan a "Crackpot," Rues Media Focus on Her.  Barnes criticized both her and the media's treatment of her:  "This woman wants to go in and tell the President that the war is about oil because the President wants to pay off his buddies.  She's a crackpot, and yet the press treats her as some important protestor."

The Brawley Case of the South:  [Scroll down] Reluctance to change a popular story line helps account for the strange press coverage of Cindy Sheehan.  That line pitted moral mom versus stone-hearted president.  When Ms. Sheehan's outbursts grew stranger, the press stayed with the soft line about a mother's grief and simply omitted her increasingly bizarre comments that American troops were "being sent to kill innocent people" in Iraq and that President Bush was "a filth spewer" and "an evil maniac" guilty of "blatant genocide."  The insurgents who killed her son Casey, on the other hand, were "freedom fighters."

Did someone mention Cindy Sheehan?

Self-indulgence:  The enraged speeches and street disorders across the country that accompanied the inauguration of President Bush may tell us more than we want to know about what is happening to this country.  Elections are supposed to be an alternative to other ways of settling political differences, including riots, military coups and dictatorships.  But riots have been re-christened "demonstrations" by the mealy-mouth media.

Tainted media:  Who in the major media has asked why John Kerry would need to be issued an honorable discharge during the Carter administration, years after leaving the navy, unless his original discharge was less than honorable?  One of Jimmy Carter's first acts as President was to issue an order granting amnesties to draft dodgers who had fled the country during the Vietnam war and also allowing an upgrading of military discharges that had been less than honorable.

The Desperate Mainstream Media Go Racist.  Imagine that when far-left California Rep. Maxine Waters was running for office, a number of Republicans didn't like her platform and so they called her "Aunt Jemima" or depicted her as a slave girl who took her marching orders from her "massa," Terry McAuliffe.  This is exactly what happened — in articles and political cartoons — during the confirmation hearings of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.  And how did the Mainstream Media cover this rank racism?  Not by calling it by its name and not by condemning Sen. Robert Byrd, the former Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, who led the Democratic pack in delaying Rice's ascendance to this august position.  Instead, they were uniformly mute about the racist assaults and slavishly echoed Rice's critics.

How to skew the news without really trying.  As columnist Jill Stewart notes, "disingenuous reporters hate … term limits because reporters must woo new legislators every eight years, working their butts off for leaks and cell phone numbers."  Journalism depends on access.  Term limits, by making old cultivated sources of access irrelevant every few terms, make reporters work harder.  Why would they want that?

Be Doubly Afraid Of Cell Phones Lost In Airports.  Earlier this week, a scare story about the supposed dangers of hidden data left on used cell phones did the rounds, spurred on by a self-serving vendor's "research". … Somehow, stories like this would be a lot more believable if they didn't originate from vendors who just happen to have a solution to these invented problems for sale.

News 4 sale:  Local newscasts are passing off corporate press releases as news, according to a new report.

The Editor says...
Manufacturers and marketers of new products know how local TV news works.  The stations have time to fill, and one of the highest priorities is getting video on the air other than a studio camera pointed at the happy team of news anchors.  Pre-packaged "news" stories, called Video News Releases (VNR's) are fed via satellite, sometimes two or three times a week.  In some cases, the items are syndicated and available only to subscribing stations, and in other cases they're made available to any station that wants them.  Someone at the station looks them over, and decides if the donated items are interesting enough to use as filler.  Naturally, the "news" in each story is about some problem that a new product — a drug or gadget or software package — will fix, and that's the point of the story.  Sometimes, the satellite feed contains footage of the product, along with "suggested anchor lead-in" scripts, and sometimes it is a complete pre-produced "package," essentially a 90-second infomercial, ready for air.  Small market stations probably put the stories on the air exactly as they were received.  In larger markets, if it's interesting enough, the story is given to a reporter, who then re-records the announcer track in his or her own voice, often without even rephrasing it (except to remove verbs!), making it look like (s)he went out and dug up the story.  Thus the station gives the appearance of providing "local news" coverage, without spending any money, and without mentioning that the footage was shot a thousand miles away by somebody else.  There has apparently been some backlash to the story above, because the news managers at many stations are now being careful not to run VNR's.

Rumsfeld gets pranked.  Young students in journalism school ought to be taught that "by their stories, you shall know them."  The media reveal their opinions about the world not only in their endless pontificating verbiage, but in the topics they choose.  The "news" becomes whatever floats their boat, whatever they urgently want the people to know.

There is much more about this incident in News media issues related to the war.

Reporter behind Rumsfeld grilling.  An embedded reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press is claiming credit for the blunt questioning yesterday [10/8/2004] of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by American soldiers in Kuwait.

 Editor's Note:   There is a difference between a journalist and an activist.  A journalist tells the reader what's happening.  An activist makes things happen (and then reports it).  The reporter who supplied this question is evidently an anti-war activist and a troublemaker who was only there to make a name for himself.

Simpletons in the press.  Can we have a serious political debate in this country any more?  Why is it that when a politician, addressing an important national issue — articulating the position held by an overwhelming majority of Americans — is ridiculed, his words distorted, twisted, caricaturized?

The Malkin Media Diversity Test:  The diversity they seek is, by definition, skin-deep.  They call themselves "journalists of color."  Not journalists of substance.  Or journalists of integrity.  Or journalists of independent thought.

When diversity is only skin-deep:  What the convention should have been told is that it is neither moral nor progressive to view the world through a racial prism.  Unity's "journalists of color" should have heard the blunt message that journalism does not need more reporters and editors of color.  It doesn't need more white journalists, either.  What it needs are men and women of talent and integrity — adults who have no interest in a "diversity" that is merely skin-deep.

"Partial truth" abortion:  Many in the media resent any suggestion that they are either politically biased or that journalists' personal views stop them from doing a good professional job of accurately reporting the news.  The way the issue of partial birth abortion has been reported — or not reported — gives the lie to such protests.

Use and Abuse of Euphemism:  Whatever you think of the practice of partial-birth abortion, surely no one can truly be pleased with the media convention of describing it as "a certain abortion procedure" or "a controversial abortion method." … Even the practice of referring to it on the second, third, or fourth mention as "what opponents call 'partial birth' abortion" is questionable.  What do supporters call it?

Let's keep arguing.  It's true that we have more semistructured "Crossfire"-style debates than ever before.  But much of this is rigidly preprogrammed sniping (I was once chastised by a TV producer for not interrupting other speakers more.  What a failure!)  Even when the sniping is downplayed, TV demands sharp sound bites, which pushes all talking heads toward more vehemence and simplemindedness.  Instant certainty becomes mandatory, a delivery style many talking heads start to regret before they're even out of the studio.  Where is the real debate?

Blame uninformed voters.  Whether you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, if your only news source is the boob tube you are simply underinformed, though not necessarily misinformed.  Unfortunately, most Americans are underinformed.

None Dare Call It Fascism.  After Johnson's War on Poverty, Nixon's War on Drugs, and Carter's Energy Crisis, then came the premier liberal crisis of modern times, the Environmental Crisis.  The media predictably plays an enthusiastic accomplice in these schemes, not just because its members are mostly liberal, but more importantly, crises generate more readers, viewers, and listeners.  This is why the principal product American media sells to its customers is crisis, not information.

Paper Uses Global Warming Activist's Press Release as News Story.  The Palm Beach Post was caught in a bit of deception by one of its readers over the weekend. ... Unfortunately for the reputation of Dara Kam and that of the paper, this "article" was merely a rewording of the press release of an environmentalist group calling themselves, Environment Florida.  An alert reader who wrote in calling them on it also exposed several other papers across the country that did the very same thing.

Climate Reality Bites.  Thankfully, the American system makes it hard for colossal tax and regulatory burdens to foxtrot into law without scrutiny.  So we hope our politicians will take responsibility for the global-warming policies they say they favor.  Or even begin to understand what they say they favor.  For a bill as grandly ambitious as Warner-Lieberman, very few staff, much less Senators, even know what's in it.  The press corps mainly cheerleads this political fad, without examining how it would work or what it would cost.

Media ignorance:  Many media people have been journalism and/or communication majors.  Most of these programs have little analytical rigor.  Along with departments of education, they are a dumping ground for the most ill-prepared students.  That might explain a lot.

Von Hoffman:  TV Media Biased and Inept.  "Left, right and center, people by the tens of millions have stopped watching network news," columnist Nicholas von Hoffman concludes.  "And that may be a healthy thing if it betokens skepticism, disbelief and an effort to find out for one's self."

Bias, Witting and Unwitting, Among the Gods of Journalism

All the News We Get From the ACLUIn case you aren't able to read ACLU press releases for yourself, The Associated Press and The New York Times will helpfully restate them for you as important, breaking "news."

CNN called Castro's "megaphone":  After analyzing every Cuba-based story that has appeared on CNN since it established a Havana bureau five years ago, the Media Research Center is calling the network a "propaganda tool for Fidel Castro's government" and a "megaphone for a dictator."



Sensationalism vs Journalism

Just reporting the news (if there is any) won't generate ratings as effectively as reporting news items with an emotional twist.  For example, shootings, fires, train derailments, and police standoffs always seem to be "dangerously close" to a school.  With schools only a quarter of a mile apart in the big cities, there's always one near enough to make that connection.

I recall an occasion a couple of years ago when there was a gang-related shooting in east Dallas just after midnight one night, right next to an elementary school, and the next morning there was a reporter on the scene fretting about how the shooting took place "dangerously close" to the school.  But logically, that was the best possible place for a shooting in the middle of the night — when nobody's at school!

Reporters often use meaningless one-dimensional statistics; for example, "Texas leads the nation in big-rig accidents."  (That's a quote from a recent story designed to drum up support for some new state law.)  That makes it sound like the truck drivers on Texas highways are more dangerous than anywhere else.  But Texas has more highway mileage than most other states, and lots of really bad drivers on the road.

But there are more subtle components of media sensationalism that the average viewer hardly notices, at least consciously.  Major market stations spend millions of dollars every year on futuristic news sets, lighting, catchy music, sound effects, visual effects, character generators and various kinds of electronic graphics.  TV newscasts are staged and choreographed as thoroughly as a small-town play.  In the old days, a middle-aged white man sat behind a plain old desk and reported the news.  That's not enough, in today's TV market.  The happy news team — representing all race and gender combinations — sits behind a Star Trek desk and reads whatever comes up on the TelePrompter.  They rarely use words that are longer than three syllables.  The high-priced news readers are really good at putting on a phony "concerned" look at just the right time, if Botox permits.  And if you'll notice, they are usually just stating the obvious, and only rarely does anyone speak on a single subject for more than five seconds.



Yellowcake and Yellow Journalism:  On MSNBC they're covering the [Scooter Libby] trial like it's the Normandy Invasion, starring Elvis Presley, as told by Joseph Goebbels.  MSNBC's "reportage" consists of endless repetition of arbitrary assertions, half-truths and thoroughly debunked canards.  No one else cares about the trial — except presumably Scooter Libby — so the passionate left is allowed to invent a liberal fable without correction.

Yellow Science:  Man has always had a healthy desire for knowledge, and it is the feeding of this hunger that ennobles journalism.  Hearst and Pulitzer were acutely aware that man has a less healthy but no less voracious desire to believe that he has knowledge, particularly knowledge of something sensational.  It is the feeding of this hunger that irreparably disgraced journalism, and a century later now threatens to do the same to science.

Paris, Lindsay and A-Rod?  We Don't Care!  Apparently, the causal relationship between the media's supply of celebrity gossip and the public's demand for it is a two-way street.  America's seemingly insatiable appetite for celebrity scandal is a troubling sign, but here's an even more alarming truth:  Our enemy — facing the most powerful military force in history — has never concealed its belief that its ultimate triumph, as well as our ultimate demise, will come about because Americans are too fat, lazy and decadent to care enough to fight for their civilization and their values.

Movie shows photo fraud involved in wartime journalism.  Numerous examples of Photoshop embellishment and throw-down toys carefully arranged by news photographers to evoke emotion.

Amped-up storm coverage may become the norm.  Nearly a year later, hurricanes Katrina and Rita are still fresh on Gulf Coast minds, and Houston's television stations are trending toward more aggressive storm coverage.

The Editor continues to rant...
How can someone report current events aggressively without dishonest hype?  What does "aggressive coverage" really mean anyway?  It means the poorly educated masses in Houston will be drenched, if you will, with sensational, pessimistically speculative, tabloid television.  This style of "journalism" benefits only the TV stations and their advertisers, not the viewers.

How a New York Times reporter's passion for Castro led him astray:  Aha!  Finally we've discovered the missing ingredient in American journalism, the vitamin deficiency that's been shrinking newspaper circulation and TV newscast audiences all these years.  What Americans clamor for is not information but passion.  The heroes of the coverage of Katrina were not the reporters who got the most accurate stories but the ones who shouted the loudest or cried the hardest.

TV News Meets the Vast Wasteland:  Those amusing, though sadly depressing man-in-the-street interviews are an indication that the American hoi-polloi get whatever knowledge they may have only from TV newscasts, not printed material.  For this reason, national TV news has become increasingly more dependent on the sensationalism that their entertainment brethren can provide to attract viewers.  It's sometimes hard to determine where news coverage leaves off and entertainment begins, but the signs have been around for a long time.  The O.J. Simpson day-by-day trial was the most egregious example, but John Kennedy Jr.'s fatal flight coverage was a close second in televised excess.  Aging stalwarts like Barbara Walters think they can alternate between slobbering celebrity interviews and interrogating prominent political figures without suffering a lack of credibility.

Barbara Walters is not a role model.  She's written a tell-all autobiography.  And she's promoting it on ABC, which continues to employ her.  Once upon a time, legitimate news organizations would not have allowed a conflict of interest like this.

ABC Even Complains About Charity.  No good deed goes unpunished — that was the theme of an ABC Christmas day segment about donating clothing to charity.  "World News Tonight with Charles Gibson," took "A Closer Look" at charities and gave the appearance of dishonesty.

RIP:  protest films, e-porn and bimbos.  Year's end is a time of many media traditions.  For example, the tearing away of the last page of the calendar is all the excuse TV producers need to recycle hours of sensational video footage of dubious news value on the pretense that viewers need to relive the last 365 days. ... And then there's the practice of "spotting trends" from the year.  Trend-spotting has become something of an obsession with today's journalists, particularly at newspapers coping with the fact that they don't "break" news the way they did in the past.

Long Winter for the Media.  It is an unsettling time to be a journalist.  You are either on the edge of extinction or in charge of the universe.  The newspaper industry is condemned to write piecemeal its own obituary without knowing when or how — or, truth be told, if — the end will come.  Broadcast media now possess a self-inflated importance that they rarely bother to deny.

The L.A. Times's Human Wrecking Ball.  Great newspapers take decades to build.  We are discovering that they can be dismantled in relatively short order.

Fence fiasco:  Or Feliz ano nuevo.  The decline of American sovereignty would typically be a big story in any year, but with all the news coming out of Hollywood this year, maybe it was a bit overshadowed by more significant events.  I mean, how can the virtual surrender of a 231-year-old nation to the Pollyanna-ish forces of political correctness possibly compete with the dramatic real-life struggles of Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, and the nation's hot new nymphet, Britney's baby sister, Jamie Lynn Spears?

Summertime, and the news is so cheesy.  Last year's Great August Story was left-wing activist Cindy Sheehan's absurd campout near the president's Texas ranch, which, much to the dismay of Mrs. Sheehan, was interrupted only after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.  Remember the Summer of the Shark?  That was 2001, when the media hyped shark attacks, despite the widely acknowledged fact that the season's attacks were no higher than previous seasons'.

Bigotry and Sports:  Although not too many years ago, sports-writing was considered the "toy department" of journalism, the boys and girls in the press box have been eager to catch up to their counterparts in the "real" world.  And so, they are also no longer content with merely reporting the scores, trades and what have you; they must now generate the news.  And, similar to the mainstream media, they need divisive issues in order to push the agenda of all J-school graduates:  to change the world.

Hurricane Hype Clouds Warming Debate.  ABC's Jeffrey Kofman sounded the alarm about storms so bad scientists "are now considering adding a fearsome category 6.  That's hurricanes of more than 175 miles an hour.  Something no one would want to meet head-on."  No one did.  Category 6 wasn't even added, and the chorus of media hype about another deadly season of storms turned into so much hot air.  That's right -- forecasts for the 2006 hurricane season, which ends November 30, have proven entirely wrong.  Instead of 17 tropical storms and hurricanes, we got only nine.

Frivolous politics:  In these grim and foreboding times, our media have this year spent incredible amounts of time on a hunting accident involving Vice President Cheney, a bogus claim that the administration revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a C.I.A. "agent" — actually a desk job in Virginia — and is now going ballistic over a Congressman who sent raunchy e-mails to Congressional pages.  This is the frivolous media — and the biased media.

9/11 Myths, Debunked.  Trust that conspiracy theorists will attempt to exploit the fifth anniversary of 9/11 to spread sensational claims and sensational lies.  Moreover, it's a fair bet sensationalist media will collaborate, not because the squawk show host or headline scribbler believes the poisoned foolishness, but because anger, fear and trembling sell.

Shepard Smith Smears Swift Boat Vets.  While some press attention has been focused on the seeming odd-couple of Rupert Murdoch raising money for Hillary Clinton, another fascinating relationship has apparently been developed between Fox News and Hugh Hefner's Playboy.  Fox News' Neil Cavuto aired an interview with Hugh Hefner on May 4, on the grounds that the announcement of his "Playmate of the Year" was "business news," and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is interviewed in the June issue of Playboy magazine.

Al Gore and the Global Warming Scare.  People are naturally prone to worry about dangers that are invisible: radioactivity, for one spectacular example.  The media know this, and are forever trumpeting the discovery of new perils to scare us with.  Hardly a week passes without someone announcing that some familiar food or other useful substance has just been discovered to cause cancer (though usually only when administered in huge doses to mice).  Dangers associated with weather are special favorites because they are usually so difficult to cope with.  In recent decades, we have been treated to alarmist reports about impending disasters to be caused by nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole.  But the Big Daddy of all such scare stories is "global warming."

Did someone mention Global Warming?

TV Jumps on Stale NSA Database Story.  Like the TV coverage, USA Today's story insinuated that the existence of the database was a major violation of Americans' privacy rights and evidence that the President was lying last December when he described the NSA's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist communications as limited and targeted.

Simply Put, the US Mainstream Media Provides an Inferior Product.  They may have the most advanced technology for delivering the news and the flashiest sets, graphics and promotional tactics; they may have scoured the earth for the "prettiest" people who can read Teleprompters and those with the most important sounding voices, but they have sacrificed their credibility at the altar of the almighty advertising dollar and because of that the public's trust in the mainstream media is shattered.

Drivin' and Not Cryin'?  When it comes to gas prices, the media too often know the price of everything and the value of nothing.  Flip open a paper and turn on the TV and you'll learn that gas prices are rising again.  "Stormy 6 Weeks Ahead" says CBSNews and warns consumers to expect "pain at the pump."

Digging for the truth:  Too many journalists fail to dig deeply enough to get to the real story.  They breathless hype the latest scare about everything from pesticides and "road rage" to cell phones and irradiated food.  Deadly dangers lurk everywhere, and your Intrepid Reporter is all that stands between you and certain disaster.

Media eat up absurd rape story.  I called it back in April.  When a black stripper claimed three white Duke University lacrosse players gang-raped her at a party, I knew instinctively it was a lie.  The tale reeked of Tawana Brawley-like fabrications.

Movie shows photo fraud involved in wartime journalism.  Numerous examples of Photoshop embellishment and throw-down toys carefully arranged by news photographers to evoke emotion.

Hold that opinion.  Opinion journalism — the business not of reporting what happened, but of commenting on it — tends to place a premium on speed.  When that story breaks on Tuesday, members of the pundits' guild spring into action as well.  Editorial writers and columnists tell their readers what the news means.  TV talking heads and radio pontificators pass judgment.  Internet bloggers — the commentariat's newest, increasingly influential players — scramble to weigh in.

CBS Whips Up Worry about Hurricane Season:  The first day of spring [2006] proved perfect timing for the CBS's Jim Acosta to resurrect global warming as the villain behind last year's hurricane season, downplaying how hotly debated the matter is in the scientific community.

NASCAR Furious With NBC Over 'Dateline' Segment.  "It is outrageous that a news organization of NBC's stature would stoop to the level of going out to create news instead of reporting news," [NASCAR spokesman Ramsey] Poston said [4/5/2006].  "Any legitimate journalist in America should be embarrassed by this stunt.  The obvious intent by NBC was to evoke reaction, and we are confident our fans won't take the bait," he said.

ABC Hatches Weeklong Series on Bird Flu:  In 2003, ABC questioned government's bioterrorism warnings, but now emphasizes the latest concerns on bird flu.

Are You Satisfied With Your TV News?  Sound bites!  They may be the death of Western civilization!  The triviality of our network and local TV news is well known.  Locally, so much of the local channels give us a steady diet of blood and guts that is debilitating.  All the accidents, the murders, the court appearances of sordid criminals, the crimes of all descriptions seem to be their main focus.

The propaganda broadcasting network:  The definition of propaganda describes ABC News' decision to enlist the services of actor and teenage heartthrob, Leonardo DiCaprio, to interview President Clinton about the environment:  "the spreading of ideas, information or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause or a person."

Cool Britannia:  Sometimes, during what are called "slow news periods," newspapers and magazines struggle to fill pages.  In America at least, they solve this problem several ways:  by printing what are generously called "puff pieces", by covering tabloid trash stories, or by recycling old items to try to get more mileage out of them.  We seem to be in one of those times nationally, even with the so-called "war on terrorism."  When George W. Bush choking on a pretzel is the big story of the week, you know it is a slow news time.

How CNN Creates The News:  CNN's "Compound" Interest:  Their interest is in ratings and sensationalism, not in accuracy or justice.

Soft News Erodes Audience The rise in "soft news" and "critical journalism" could be turning off traditional news audiences, according to a Harvard University study.  Soft news was defined as being typically more sensational, more personality-centered, more entertainment-oriented and more incident-based than traditional public affairs news.

Christmas with Hef:  They claim that she gets "the big stories."  But MSNBC's Rita Cosby continues to dig in the bottom of the barrel to attract an audience.

Our most destructive kind of racism.  Paula Zahn devoted two of her hour-long CNN shows this week to the topic "Skin Deep: Racism in America."  After taking the time to watch, the question I walked away with was:  "What was the point?"  In my view, the shows told us little that most of us don't already know — strong racist sentiments exist in the country — and really never asked the deeper and more important questions about what this means and why we should care.

O.J., "Kramer" and limits:  This "If I Did It" book and TV interview monstrosity was deliberately planned for the last week of the November sweeps, and Simpson reportedly was to be paid a cool $3.5 million for his efforts.  It was a disaster.  Fox News Channel discussed the story relentlessly, obviously promoting both the book and the upcoming interview, but it backfired and open revolt ensued.



Newsroom Clichés

Why do reporters and news anchors constantly refer to ordinary people as "folks"?  When will they stop using "absolutely" as an expletive?  Why are politicians called "lawmakers" in the press when nobody uses that term in person?  When was the last time you went somewhere and then "fled the scene?"  The Medical Examiner probably doesn't actually say, "I pronounce you dead at the scene", but that's the way it's often reported when someone dies on the highway.  What are these news writers thinking?

The most overworked cliché in the field is the ubiquitous "How do you feel?" to which every reporter resorts when he or she runs out of ideas during an interview.  Of course, many reporters start out with that question because it makes the other guy talk a lot, and because it adds emotional appeal to the story.  (If they start to cry, zoom in!)

I'm sure to face stiff opposition from some of you, but you owe it to yourself to keep reading.

Lake Superior State University Banished Words List.  This "breaking news" just in:  Lake Superior State University releases its 31st annual List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.

And then there's this…
Lake Superior State University 2005 List of Banished Words.

Groaners!  You know 'em.  You love 'em.  But can't we live without 'em?  Groaners are those horrible, overused, hackneyed phrases that turn news copy into boring, "same old, same old" stuff.  This is a list of some of the worst offenders.

[But they left out "every parent's worst nightmare", "an emotional roller coaster" and "a mile-long path of destruction."]

Sports Clichés:  The Sports Cliché List was assembled from a detailed survey of numerous player and coach interviews, pre-game, post-game, and halftime analyses, sports radio commentaries, television sportscasts, and printed sports reports. … For the purpose of this website, we define a sports cliché as an expression that has been used in and around sports with sufficient frequency over a protracted period such that it is "tired" at best and meaningless at worst.

At the end of the day, do an about-face on clichés.  Chris Pash is an executive with Factiva, the database company that loads news articles from 10,000 sources, including 1,600 American newspapers.  [He took] the leading 55 clichés and developed a detailed index which charted how often each cliché was used and which publications used that cliché the most.

More Clichés Than You Can Shake a Stick At.  Some of these are classics.  Others might more accurately be called newspaper or media jargon because you'll never see or hear these phrases anywhere else.  What normal person says "densely wooded area" or "blueprint for growth" in everyday — or any — conversation?

Inspiring 'overcomer' stories are newsroom cliches.  "Supercrips are everywhere in the media," Wolfe went on.  "The person with no use of her arms who paints masterpieces with her feet, the guy with Tourette's syndrome who becomes a radio announcer, Stephen Hawking explaining the universe from his wheelchair.  And, of course, that blind mountain climber."

Banned For Life:  This page is devoted to those expressions so hackneyed and insufferable that they should be forever banned from the nation's news reports.

rising tide of clichés, The.  Periodically an old (or hoary old) question is raised.  Is the standard of writing at the BBC declining (or plummeting or plunging or even in free-fall)?  Or is it improving (or soaring or rocketing)? ... It is lucky for the BBC that the only people who continue to be worried about such matters are the Radio Four audience, and the smattering of news snobs who insist in a superior fashion that they much prefer the World Service bulletins.  Listeners to other networks give no sign of knowing or caring about good English.  The same applies to the television news, in which words count for almost nothing.

The Cliché Community:  But let's turn the page! Paul[ McCartney]'s right that the times are ever-changing, but I wish they'd change a little more quickly, so we could get a new set of insta-clichés and cant phrases for everybody to start using all at once — or better, so we could all return to using the perfectly fine words we were using before we popped these new verbal pacifiers into our mouths.



Obsolescent Media

All over the country, newspapers are going into financial decline.  Newspapers are rapidly becoming obsolete because kids in public schools are not being taught how to read a newspaper.  Not only do the kids not have the patience to leaf through the paper, after cruising the internet or watching TV, they also have not been trained to approach the news media with cautious skepticism.  As the kids become adults, they don't look through the newspaper for anything more than coupons, bargains and freebies.

At the same time, TV viewership is declining because the internet is becoming the sensible place to go for national news and local weather.  You can find out what you want to know at any time of day, and you can read all about every substantial news story in the country in five minutes on the internet.  The viewing public is tiring of television news because it is dumbed down, sensationalized, and heavily commercialized.  The news is reported in such a manner that any simpleton with a 3,000-word vocabulary can easily understand it.  Commercial breaks are getting longer, and there is apparently some competition to see who can make the most insipid, vulgar and crass advertisements.  The stations' self-promotions are sometimes just as objectionable -- you can't watch just one TV show without being pelted with bits and pieces from every other show on that channel.

Of course the news is dispensed only at the TV stations' scheduled times, so unless you watch cable news channels, you have to wait until the TV station is good and ready before you can hear what's new.  Listen carefully and you'll notice that a large percentage of local "news" is really just a series of statements from the state and local government.  I'd hesitate to say it's propaganda, most of the time, but TV reporters rarely question anything they are told by politicians and cops.

Steep Decline at 'NYT' While 'WSJ' Gains.  The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday.  Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400.  The paper's daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256. … At The Washington Post, daily circulation decreased 3.5% to 673,180 and Sunday dropped 4.3% to 890,163.  Meanwhile, daily circulation at The Wall Street Journal grew a fraction of a percent, up 0.3% to 2,069,463 copies.

Pressed for Cash.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune, reeling under a heavy debt load and plummeting advertising sales, is on the brink of bankruptcy, The Post has learned.  One of the nation's top dailies, "The Strib," as it is known to readers in the Twin Cities, recently hired the Wall Street powerhouse Blackstone Group to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet its debt obligations, according to people familiar with the company.

Newspapers likely to be free in the future:  survey.  Newspapers seeking to compete with the Internet are likely to become free and place greater emphasis on comment and opinion in the future, a survey of the world's editors showed on Tuesday [5/6/2008].  The report, conducted by Zogby International for the World Editors Forum and Reuters, revealed that newspaper editors were still optimistic about the future of their publications but believed they would have to adapt further for the digital age.

Now the bad news.  CNN's 11 p.m. show NewsNight summed up the theme: "Killer hurricanes, massive earthquakes, monstrous fires:  Are these unpredictable acts of nature signs the end of days is near?" it asked on October 12. … "The end" may not be near, but the end of television news ought to be, if such vague scare tactics are all it has left to offer.  Unfortunately, even though viewership is going down — deservedly so — the old mainstream liberal media remains influential.

Katie Couric — Death throes of a media dinosaur.  It was recently announced that CBS will be losing millions on the Evening News and that the lost revenue will be made up by draining dough from other parts of its vast antediluvian broadcasting swamp. … But as costs balloon and viewers continue to disappear, how long can the network continue to pour increasing amounts of money and all that jazz into a support network for a mashed potato soft non-journalist like Ms. Couric?

Can CBS Be Saved?  People abandoned network news because network news abandoned them.  Sure, the networks can try gimmicks to lure viewers back — such as solo female anchors, letting viewers vote for the stories they want to see, and hiring heartthrobs as national correspondents.  But that's all just window-dressing.

Papers Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue.  For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse.  This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

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