Media

O'Reilly Loses It Again

"When he appeared on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Channel show last week, Georgetown law professor David Cole was impressed that the hard-charging host played, as part of his opening commentary, 'a balanced sound bite' from the chairman of the 9/11 commission," reports Howard Kurtz. "Cole was less impressed when an aggravated O'Reilly stopped the taping of 'The O'Reilly Factor' and killed the sound bite. And when Cole brought up the incident during his interview, he says, O'Reilly 'exploded,' called him an SOB and declared he would never be invited back."

No

Fact-checking Michael Moore

Michael Moore's previous films have generated a cottage industry of conservative commentators eager to find examples of sloppiness and exaggeration, but as New York Times reporter Philip Shenon observes, "if 'Fahrenheit 9/11' attracts the audience Mr. Moore and his distributors are predicting, Mr. Moore may face an onslaught of fact-checking unlike anything he - or any other documentary filmmaker - has ever experienced.

No

'NRA News' Seeks to Pistol-Whip McCain/Feingold Law

"In a direct challenge to federal
limits on political advocacy, the National Rifle
Association plans to begin broadcasting a daily radio
program on Thursday to provide news and pro-gun commentary
to 400,000 listeners. The group says its jump into broadcasting with its program,
'NRANews,' means that it should be viewed as a media
organization that does not have to abide by provisions of a
sweeping campaign finance law from 2002. That law stops
organizations from using unregulated 'soft' money to buy

No

What Advertisers Want

In its "first large-scale change since 2001," Fox News is launching a major redesign of its website. Fox News vice-president of national ad sales Roger Domal said, "In addition to just freshening up the site and making it easier to navigate ... it's a reaction to what advertisers want." Fox News hopes the site "will enable it to become a significant competitor in the online news space. This month, the site doubled its advertising sales staff in New York and San Francisco ...

No

Reagan and the Cold War: Myth vs. Reality

Investigative journalist Robert Parry writes that "the U.S. news media's reaction to Ronald Reagan's death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan's political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level. Across the U.S. television dial and in major American newspapers, the commentary is fawning almost in a Pravda-like way, far beyond the normal reticence against speaking ill of the dead. ...

No

A Big, Right-Wing Bird?

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded two new right-leaning shows - "one hosted by Tucker Carlson, who speaks for conservatives on CNN's 'Crossfire'" and "one moderated by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal" - while cutting "NOW with Bill Moyers" from an hour to 30 minutes.

No

The O'Franken Factor

"Despite ongoing financial woes, Air America Radio appears to have garnered a significant audience during its first month on the air, particularly among the younger listeners sought by advertisers," reports John Cook. "An analysis of recently released figures from Arbitron, the radio ratings service, showed that in New York Air America beat Rush Limbaugh's station among 25-to-54-year-olds during the period that Limbaugh and Al Franken, the host of the flagship show 'The O'Franken Factor,' go head-to-head.

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