[cross posted at NPR Check]
Part I - School Daze

Mara Liasson - on Tuesday (September 8, 2009) ATC, tries to normalize the wingnut stupidity, insanity and virulence of the Republican-led attacks on Obama's live address to schools. Of his speech she says,

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Fox News makes no bones about endorsing the extreme-right, proud-to-be-stupid Tea Party Express, but NPR is a bit more subtle in its pro-Tea Bagger coverage. Over the last three days it has provided this reactionary tour frequent, uncritical broadcasting time:

On Sunday's Weekend Edition Liane Hansen introduces NPR's Jay Brady who is traveling with this road show. In a completely uncritical report Brady makes these statements:

Chattanoogan.com Opinion

I can also tell it’s an election year because once again because the notion of universal health insurance is in the news – along with the constant drumbeating and cheerleading by the mainstream media in support of it.

Put aside the ridiculous suggestion that our CCCP press has in anyway supported meaningful action, and ask yourself why the article was written at all. Clearly the VRWC is worried that something might happen. They are trying to stop it before it starts.

This is a good sign and we should be pleased. When the TV hairdos start bleating about socialized medicine we will know they are really scared.

We already know that "bestselling" authors like Le Coulter and Rush "Dominican Boys" Limbaugh aren't really as popular as their sales numbers claim. The NYT list of top selling books has to denote "bulk buying" next to certain books, indicating that some books are in fact bought up by institutions and not individuals, Scaife-esque front groups are probably responsible. But this tech piece about Drudge suggests that there is an internet form of crotch-stuffing that distorts winger web traffic as well:

The Drudge Report may be the most successful independent news site on the web. Matt Drudge's decade-old site sets the news agenda, and not only for conservative platforms such as Fox News. The fedora-wearing eccentric's property, considering it's largely put together by just two people, has an impressive audience: more than 1.2m unique visitors from the US in February, according to Comscore. But those devotees may not check the site quite as often as Matt Drudge would claim.
A site's 'meta refresh' setting is a web page's meta tag used to specify a time-interval after which a web browser will automatically refresh the page. Most sites leave it to readers to call for the latest version of a page; but popular news sites often assume that visitors will leave their pages open, and ensure the page is reloaded so that the latest headlines show.

Nothing wrong with that -- except that the Drudge Report is automatically refreshed way more often than the frequency of new stories would justify. At 20 times an hour, Drudge is twice as aggressive in his use of this tactic as the next news site we checked.