Archive for June, 2010
Sunday, June 27th, 2010
Advisory says mainstream news media missed major point of the Rolling Stone profile by Michael Hasting, that is, the damning portrait of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And, according to the Advisory, Hastings concluded that the media have mostly “given McChrystal a pass” on several controversies and scandals in the recent past.
Entire article follows.
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Tags:FAIR, General, General David Petraeus, General Stanley McChrystal, mainstream news media
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
If this writer had been thinking clearly, he would have known that there would have to be a Part 2. And maybe even a 3. Braggadocio definitely on center stage but there is more. Tomorrow, Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources, will feature some pundits talking about the McChrystal affair. I can’ wait to see it.
However, I still like what I wrote in Part 1, that the General’s mooning of the Obama administration was contempt expressed in act of desperation. Regardless of what others have, might or will say. And I especially like this excerpt from Frank Rich of the New York Times:
There were few laughs in the 36 hours of tumult, but Jon Stewart captured them with a montage of cable-news talking heads expressing repeated shock that an interloper from a rock ’n’ roll magazine could gain access to the war command and induce it to speak with self-immolating candor. Politico theorized that Hastings had pulled off his impertinent coup because he was a freelance journalist rather than a beat reporter, and so could risk “burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”
That sentence was edited out of the article — in a routine updating, said Politico — after the blogger Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as a devastating indictment of a Washington media elite too cozy with and protective of its sources to report the unvarnished news.
Love it.
Full Rich Op Ed – The 36 Hours That Shook Washington – here.
Tags:Frank Rich, General Stanley McChrystal, President Obama, Rolling Stone Magazine
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Friday, June 25th, 2010
General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), described in several news accounts as being a fearless if not hedonis snake eater, did not cut-off-his-nose-to-spite-his-face. Rather, what he did (and I believe I understand why the pundits offering sycophantic explanations about his aggressive posturing missed this occurring faux pas) was moon the administration and he did it because …
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Tags:Afghanistan war, General Stanley McChrystal, ISAF, Paskistan, President Barack Obama, U.S. Military, USFOR-A
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Sunday, June 13th, 2010
By Andrew Kaplan
Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, Delivers 2010 Commencement Speech on Future of Media, Excerpt:
The media reform movement, as always, is mainly focused on limiting the power of big media companies and on improving public access. Therefore, its main causes regarding the Internet are universal broadband access, so that everybody everywhere can have fast service, and net neutrality, so that Internet service providers have to continue giving every user equal access to every Web site.
Internet service providers, as always, are pushing back against the media reform movement—and journalists are almost nowhere to be found in the debate. Read entire blog here.
Reboot.FCC.gov is the Federal Communication Commission’s website for discussion on how to transform the FCC into a model of excellence in government.
Tags:Columbia School of Journalism, future of journalism, Nicholas Lemann
Posted in Journalism, Journalism Education, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
By Marian Wang and Sasha Chavki
Containment domes, top hats and top kills. By now BP and the government have tried to stop the growing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with a series of different techniques, each with an odder name than the next.
But where are all these ideas coming from, we’ve wondered. Did BP or the government have plan in place in the event of a blowout?
The answer, so far as we can see: No. None of the documents and plans we’ve been able to find have details on how to deal with a blowout.
Read entire blog here.
Tags:containment domes, Gulf Oil Crisis, PB, U.S. Coast Guard
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig.com
The media tirade against Helen Thomas is as illogical as it is hysterical. The few sentences uttered by her were, as she quickly acknowledged, wrong—deeply so, I would add. But they cannot justify the road-rage destruction of the dean of the Washington press corps. Suddenly this heroic woman who broke so many gender barriers and dared to challenge presidential arrogance was reduced to nothing more than the stereotypical anti-Israel Arab that it is so fashionable to hate.
Read entire column here.
Tags:helen thomas, Israeli- Palestinian crisis, Robert Scheer, truthdig, White House Press Corps
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
By Michael Fauntroy
Professor, Author, Columnist
and Commentator at MichaelFauntroy.com
“Helen Thomas recently set off a firestorm with her comment that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Germany or Poland. The comments resulted first, and predictably, with her apology. Over the weekend, with the heat turned up considerably, she decided to retire immediately (before she was fired).”
If Helen can be forced out, writes M. Fauntroy, why not the nativistic Pat Buchanan?
Read entire blog here.
Other articles:
New York Times
Politico
Notes From a Grumpy Old Man
Tags:associated press, helen thomas, nativism in journalism, nativists, pat buchanan, racism in journalism
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed
Monday, June 7th, 2010

By Marian Wang
Estimating oil flow from BP’s ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico has consistently been a subject of contention among the oil company, the government and the skeptics who believe that official estimates significantly low-ball the scale of the disaster.
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Tags:BP Oil Crisis, Gulf of Mexico, oil spills
Posted in Journalism | Comments Closed
Monday, June 7th, 2010

By Marian Wang
At the time, it was the worst oil spill the United States had ever seen.
It was 1989, and Merle Savage, then a healthy 50-year-old, had heard the news about Exxon Valdez. Compelled to help, she spent four months cleaning up Alaska’s oil-contaminated waters and shores.
She has never been the same since. Now 71, Savage still feels the toll that summer took on her health, but as she watches the reports coming out of the Gulf, she’s felt something else: Déjà vu.
After all, the reported symptoms seem to line up.
Read entire blog here.
Tags:2010 Gulf Crisis, BP Oil Crisis, Exxon Valdez, Latouche Island, Prince William Sound, ProPublica, Propublica Blog
Posted in Journalism | Comments Closed
Saturday, June 5th, 2010

O’Reilly’s Hypocrisy on Sarah Palin & Joe McGinniss
06/04/2010 by Steve Rendall
Witless commentary and breathtaking hypocrisy are no strangers to Fox News, but Bill O’Reilly was in rare form on June 1.
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Posted in Journalism | Comments Closed
Friday, June 4th, 2010
This story was co-produced by Feet in Two Worlds and El Diario/La Prensa.
NEW ORLEANS — Federal immigration officials have been visiting command centers on the Gulf Coast to check the immigration status of response workers hired by BP and its contractors to clean up the immense oil spill.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana confirmed that its agents had visited two large command centers—which are staging areas for the response efforts and are sealed off to the public—to verify that the workers there were legal residents.
“We visited just to ensure that people who are legally here can compete for those jobs—those people who are having so many problems,” said Temple H. Black, a spokesman for ICE in Louisiana.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, thousands of Hispanic workers, many of them undocumented, flocked to the region to help in the reconstruction of Louisiana’s coastal towns. Many stayed, building communities on the outskirts of New Orleans or finding employment outside the city in oil refineries and in the fishing industry.
Read full story here.
Tags:BP Oil Crisis, Feet in 2 World, Hurricane Katrina, ICE, immigrants
Posted in Ethnic News, Journalism | Comments Closed
FAIR Media Advisory: News Media Missing the McChrystal Point
Sunday, June 27th, 2010Advisory says mainstream news media missed major point of the Rolling Stone profile by Michael Hasting, that is, the damning portrait of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And, according to the Advisory, Hastings concluded that the media have mostly “given McChrystal a pass” on several controversies and scandals in the recent past.
Entire article follows.
(more…)
Tags:FAIR, General, General David Petraeus, General Stanley McChrystal, mainstream news media
Posted in Journalism, News/Commentary/Opinion | Comments Closed