DAYLEE PICTURE: The Karte Sakhe Cemetary in Kabul, Afghanistan. From National Geographic.
UP-FRONT MEDIA FACT-CHECK NUGGET!!
Fact Check: Did Obama and Sebelius Only Meet in Person Once? (Kate Pickert) from Time Magazine
"The problem with Schweizer’s analysis is his data set: Cabinet Secretaries who regularly come to the White House are not always recorded in the White House visitors log or listed on the president’s public schedule. But Schweizer, a former foreign policy adviser to Sarah Palin and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, based the column on an analysis of the official presidential schedule and a presidential calendar published by Politico."
Normally, I ignore this type of daily political fizz. I'm showcasing it today, however, because it is SUCH a demonstration of what is wrong with MSM reporting and commentary. Let's start with the publication (Politico) that would hire someone as a columnist with this work history and then trust what they say and treat it as reporting -- which was how this landed in the MSM. Based on his resume, it's obvious Sweitzer's commitment would be to his conservative point-of-view, not accurate journalism. Second, Politico's editors who (normally) would vet a story before running with it. What's worse? Either they didn't know enough about how cabinet secretaries and presidents interact to spot the obvious flaws with the numbers here or (the more likely explanation) the editors simply didn't care. I will assert that, for them, their job is to pump out product, to get readers' attention, and, in the process, to make a lot of money. This story/column scored on all counts. Having made such an obvious partisan hash out of this story, will the columnist/reporter face any consequences? We'll see. But don't hold your breath. Sweitzer's non-response is here. The common meme one hears today is that there is a political crisis. When combined with CBS's Lara Logan debacle on Benghazi, NBC's Chuck Todd's declaration that checking the facts on Obamacare is not his job, and this column's cross-over into "news," I'm beginning to suspect that, along with a political crisis, what we're also seeing is a crisis in journalism. Remember: a free press is an essential ingredient for a true functioning democracy. In the last election, we saw news organizations and operatives "unskewing" their polling data, thus turning ostensibly decent poll data into partisan garbage. Here, we're seeing news organizations (some of the BIGGEST names in the business) essentially doing a version of the same thing with their reporting. For the sake of producing a satisfying "product" for right-wing "consumers", the editorial and reporting procedures have been inextricably mingled with op-ed punditizing. I suspect that this crisis in journalism, however, runs deeper. Look to the basic incentive structures for producing good reporting verses ... something else. What we now see on almost a daily basis is basically a mix of eye-opening partisan spin and poorly resourced reportage. And increasingly the way to REALLY succeed as a reporter is to become a partisan talking head -- rather than to produce a rock-solid story that tells citizens something they need to know as informed voters.
"What Jimmy Carter began, Barack Obama is ending. Washington is bringing down the curtain on its 30-plus-year military effort to pull the Islamic world into conformity with American interests and expectations. It’s about time."
Ukraine Protest: Hundreds Of Thousands Take To The Streets In Kiev from Reuters
"Sunday's rally marks a further escalation in a weeks-long confrontation between authorities and protesters that has raised fears for political and economic stability in the former Soviet republic of 46 million people. "This is a decisive moment when all Ukrainians have gathered here because they do not want to live in a country where corruption rules and where there is no justice," said world heavyweight boxing champion-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko."
John Kerry's High-Wire Diplomacy Has the New Secretary of State Eclipsed Hillary Clinton on the World Stage? (Doyle McManus) from the Los Angeles Times
"Has John F. Kerry turned into the unexpected star of President Obama's second term? ... in 10 months, Kerry has embarked on a whirlwind of diplomacy. He helped conclude an interim deal with Iran that puts a ceiling on Tehran's nuclear enrichment. He launched new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with the goal of producing a deal next year. And he secured a date for negotiations to end the war in Syria, although it's still not certain who will show up."
A Fresh Approach to Looking at Foreign Threats (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"The crackup ahead lies in the mismatch between the challenges facing America and the public’s willingness to support activist foreign policy to deal with them. Simply put: There is a splintering of the traditional consensus for global engagement at the very time that some big new problems are emerging."
Pope’s Critique Of Capitalism Raises Ire On The Right (Cynthia Tucker) from the National Memo
"The decades-long idolization of an amoral system helps explain the outrage on the right to the recent apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, whose 200-odd page “Joy of the Gospel” includes a stinging critique of capitalism. ... But the Pope’s analysis — and he did not mince words — still rings true."
Obama Gets Real (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"With a big inequality speech, the president is finally sounding like the progressive many of his supporters thought they were backing in 2008."
Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions (Derek Thompson) from the Atlantic
"And why their "bad" decisions might be more rational than you'd think."
Fruitful Bailout: Bush and Obama were Right About GM from the Editorial Board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"When the U.S. Treasury announced last month that it plans to sell the last of its General Motors stock by the end of the year, it didn’t just mean an end to sneering at “Government Motors.” It marked a triumphant milestone in one of the most successful government programs in modern history."
Catholic Church was Always Pro-Social Justice, this Pope Just Makes it Explicit (Markos Moulitsas) from Daily Kos
"Conservatives considered the Catholic Church an ally in their socially regressive cause, so long as they could ignore the Church's teachings on economics, war, and other inconvenient topics. That's become impossible in the current climate."
Health Care Law Providing Relief and Frustration from the New York Times
"Many will end up with better coverage than they had, and may get help paying for it. Others will see their costs rise and are wondering if the change is worth it. And some, like the Horrigans, may find themselves falling into both camps."
A Group of People the Size of Hawaii Just Got Health Care (Thanks, Obama) (Matthew OBrien) from the Atlantic
"Obamacare's website has been a loud failure. Its Medicaid expansion has been a quiet success."
Georgia State Commissioner Compares Having Pre-existing Conditions to Cheating Insurance Companies (Hunter) from Daily Kos
"... you say, "Well I just had a wreck, it was my fault, and I want the insurance company to pay for the repairs to my car." And that's the exact same thing on pre-existing insurance. ... It takes a lets-call-it-special person to presume, then, that my daughter being born with that particular condition was her "fault", or that as a 15-minute-old child she was already a huckster trying to cheat the gentle insurance companies out of their hard-earned money."
First Thoughts: What do Republicans Do Next? (Chuck Todd et al.,) from MSNBC
"it does seem as we’ve entered a new stage in the health-care battle, with Democrats regrouping (and dare we say unified), and with Republicans running out of new attacks. It’s almost as if we’ve returned to 2012..."
Ted Cruz Commenters Hate Mandela (Jamelle Bouie) from the Daily Beast
"Rising party stars like Ted Cruz might be trying to pay tribute to the South African leader, but their conservative elders hated him as a dangerous ideologue—and their base still does."
Those Media Hysterics Who Said Obama's Presidency Was Dead Were Wrong. Again. (Alex Seitz-Wald) from the New Republic
"... this has been an especially inglorious stretch for Beltway
hyperventilators. ... What explains for this even-worse-than-usual excitability?
Book Club: Fox News’ Election Night Fail from Talking Points Memo
Adapted from the book Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires by David Folkenflik.
"At the start of the night, the Fox News chairman warned commentators participating in his channel’s election coverage: “If things don’t go your way tonight, don’t go out there looking like someone ran over your dog.” Yet the coverage on Fox proved largely dour and depressive."
HOLIDAY TV NUGGET!!
Everlasting Holiday Television Classics with Joe Wos from the WESA program, Essential Pittsburgh
"A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas are holiday television staples. They are aired every single year despite being filmed several decades ago. So why do they still endure?"
RELATIONSHIPS NUGGET!
Why People Stay in Bad Relationships: They're So Scared of Being Alone from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Psychologists carried out studies on students to test the theory. Almost 20 percent harboured genuine fears of being single."
LIBRARY HISTORY NUGGET!!
The Evolution of the College Library from the Atlantic
The pictures here are quite interesting.
"Books were once so scarce, they were chained to the desks. Now libraries can barely hold all the volumes they have."
CRIME NUGGET!!
The Vigilante of Clallam County (Lexi Pandell) from the Atlantic
"Patrick Drum was tired of seeing sex offenders hurt children. So he decided to kill them. ... Between 15 to 20 percent of convicted sex offenders report vigilantism or harassment; According to Professor Jill Levenson of Lynn University in Florida, about one-third of offenders lose their jobs or homes, are harassed, or have property damaged because of their status. In some cases, children grow up to attack those who hurt them when they were young. ... While many people assume sex offenders are incurable, Justice Department statistics show that the overall recidivism rates for sex offenders, including pedophiles, are actually lower than those for other violent crimes. Still, sex offenders are four times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime..."
AIR POLLUTION NUGGET [of a sort]!!
The Toxic Smog Cloud Hanging Over Shanghai Looks Just As Bad As It Sounds from the Huffington Post
This story has (rightly) been getting a lot of attention this last week. "Shanghai is notorious for its terrible air quality, but the smog in this Chinese metropolis just hit absurd levels. The government's air pollution monitoring site records the level of PM2.5, particulate matter hazardous to health, at 477 as of this writing, one of the highest pollution levels ever recorded. The World Health Organization recommends an average PM2.5 level of 20 or below. ... It makes the city a dangerous place to be a living, breathing human right now."
No comments:
Post a Comment