Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The idea was to grab a location 'that screamed New York.' And said politics," PressThink's Jay Rosen writes of his meeting with Sam Feist, CNN senior executive producer for political programming, at the Tick Tock Diner, a "real" New York City diner catty corner from Madison Square Garden that is being used as a TV set for CNN's convention coverage.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Daily Kos recently uncovered an astroturf (fake grassroots) initiative by the George W. Bush campaign, which generated ghostwritten letters to the editor that found their way into at least 60 newspapers. This isn't the first time that the Bush administration has tried this trick, as we've reported in the past.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"I don't know what the news is from the rest of Iraq or even what's going on with the governor of Najaf," writes Chris Albritton, a freelance journalist who has been covering the fighting in Iraq. "I do know what's happening with the police department, however. They're raiding the Sea of Najaf hotel and rounding the 100 or so journalists at gunpoint and subjecting them to mass arrest." Albritton describes his recent experience, when police "raided the hotel and forced all the journalists out onto the street. We were terrified. The cops yelled at us and pointed their weapons toward us.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
While the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth may have a questionable grasp of the facts, it has been extraordinarily sophisticated in its manipulation of the media," observes the Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk weblog. "To understand why this campaign has been hijacked by a small group of veterans bearing a thirty-year old grudge, it's worth examining the institutional susceptibilities of a campaign press corps that allowed the SBVFT's accusations to take on a life of their own.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Continuing a twenty-year trend that has seen advertising expenses skyrocket as traditional political party organizing has fallen by the wayside, the total for political ads this election year is estimated by most industry analysts at over $1.5 billion, $400 million of which will be spent by the presidential campaigns," report Sakura Saunders and Ben Clarke. "Over the last 24 years, broadcast TV advertising alone has increased from $90 million to over a $1 billion.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Among the professions "less popular than journalism," notes Bill Hagerty, the "furtive world of public relations" is considered by many people to be "a black art, inferior only to child slave-trading or body-snatching." He cites a recent survey showing that British journalists hold PR people in especially low esteem. Nevertheless, he notes, "indications are that PR and publicists are becoming increasingly more influential and powerful."
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Although we're not yet through the national conventions, 2004 is emerging as a snakebitten election for America's media 'Bigfeet' - our news organizations and TV's non-stop talking heads," writes Joel Connelly. "They've been wrong so much of the time already." During the Democratic primaries, the punditocracy erroneously anointed Howard Dean the frontrunner; more recently, they've largely ignored the worsening mess in Iraq while declaring that Iraq is putting Kerry on the defensive. Why are the big media doing such a poor job?
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"The ascendancy of 'news' with an attitude - a spin, a bias - is undeniable," reports Newsweek, which cites Fox News Channel, Air America Radio, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the Drudge Report as examples.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The far right's decades-long campaign to falsely brand PBS a leftist conspiracy - one that apparently included giving shows to such commies as William F. Buckley, Louis Rukeyser, Ben Wattenberg and Fortune magazine - has really hit pay dirt this year, first in creating a show around CNN's conservative talking head Tucker Carlson, and now, far more egregiously, in creating a program for the extremist editorial board of the Wall Street Journal," the Nation's Eric Alterman writes.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
An internal Washington Post review found that, before the invasion of Iraq, "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" - in the words of the paper's Pentagon correspondent.
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