journalism

Local stations have a sometimes well-deserved reputation for not delivering hard news, but they are producing some fine journalism on fracking.

Cross posted from Pruning Shears. Read below the fold...

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Last week an Oregon blogger named Crystal Cox had a $2.5 million defamation judgment issued against her. It was for posts she had written about investment firm Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick; the case hinged on whether her allegations were factual or not. Padrick said they were defamatory, while Cox said they were factual but that because said facts had been leaked to her by an inside source she could not provide details. She then claimed she was protected by journalism shield laws allowing her to not name the source. Read below the fold...

David Dayen gets in wrong twice today (here and here). Read below the fold...

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Read below the fold...

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Read below the fold...

There are days when I really pity my friend Matt, who has done so much unheralded work behind the scenes as well as out in front, and who sometimes gets sucked into to soon-forgotten but potentially damaging controversies when what he really deserves is a leadership role in the party hierarchy. Read below the fold...

I was in a tiny minority back in 2001, believing as I did then that a bombing and strafing campaign that sent Talib leaders running for the safety of the hills of Warzistan was not the right response to 9/11. And even if it was, there's this thing called "follow through." Something most Repubicans no nothing about. Read below the fold...

(MSNBC) Facebook chooses Huckabee, so far

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El Gato is right to make fun of this guy's combover as well as his pathetic 'reasoning.' Christ, just look at the title:

Unfettered 'citizen journalism' too risky

My God! Somebody think of the children!!
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I have no idea how I ran across this today but it's kinda cute. Actually it would be very cute if it weren't so damn depressingly accurate. Dude was channelling Royko when he put this one together. From Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press, an excerpt (so as not to violate Rule 10):
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You know that gesture wherein you put your forefinger sideways in your mouth, puff up your cheeks, push the finger out sharply to make a "pop" noise, then wave finger in the air? Signifies "big whoopin' do" in a rude and vulgar way. I was all ready to do that when I saw this headline...Times Names Public Editor, and since I couldn't click the mouse and raise that finger to the mouth at the same time I clicked first. Good move: Read below the fold...

The depressing future of "news."

Which brings me back to sex with horses. The story last summer about the man who died from a perforated colon while having sex with a horse in Enumclaw was by far the year's most read article.

What's more, four more of the year's 20 most clicked-upon local news stories were about the same horse-sex incident. We don't publish our Web-traffic numbers, but take it from me — the total readership on these stories was huge.

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So I have a friend who is a Real, Live MSM Journalist. He gets to be part of the White House Gaggle, and is also a long time blog reader. He and I have had many conversations about the press, the era of Bush, and blogs, and one thing we agree upon is that there should be more of a two way conversation between bloggers/citizen journalists and the paid members of the mainstream press. In that spirit, here is the first of what I hope be to be series of conversations between bloggers and journalists. Obviously, he speaks for himself and I don't agree with everything he says. Read below the fold...

Once again, the doom and gloom types look to have yet another reason to say, "I told you so," as the warmongers' whores do their part to scare America silly and the warmongers themselves enter Phase Two and make serious preparations for the "inevitable" war with Iran. Glenn asks some good questions about the whores, and their willingness to cheerlead us all into the unthinkable:

One of the critical issues which that disgraceful Michael Gordon article in yesterday's New York Times raises is the extent to which so many national journalists are so eager to prove to right-wing fanatics that they are sympathetic to their agenda. Years of being attacked by the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys as being part of the dreaded "liberal media" has created an obsequious need among many journalists to curry favor -- through reporting which echoes right-wing narratives and/or by attacking the "liberal bias" of their fellow journalists -- all in order to avoid being criticized by the right-wing noise machine.That is the defining symptom of The Mark Halperin Syndrome.

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Manifestly, Moran -- just like Halperin -- is eager to show that he is pro-military and was desperate to convince Hewitt that he is not one of those dirty anti-American subversive liberals. To achieve that goal, Moran paraded in front of Hewitt and smeared his fellow journalists as being "deep[ly] anti-military" and claimed that they have a "dangerous" hostility to "American projection of power around the world." Identically, Halperin begged Hewitt not to"lump [him] in with people in [his] business who are liberally biased and don’t seem to care about it." 

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The influence of The Mark Halperin Syndrome on our media cannot be overstated. There is a pervasive desire on the part of many national journalists to prove to the right-wing noise machine that they are not like their horrible, leftist, America-hating, anti-military journalistic colleagues which the Right has so successfully demonized.

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WaPo stenographer Dan Eggen's front page "story" on Bush's illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program--Bush agrees to obey the law! Film at 11!--is the most appalling insult to what remains of the good name of American journalism since The Newspaper of Record (not!) suppressed its own scoop on the program to help Bush win the 2004 election. Read below the fold...