On the CNN’s Reliable Sources this morning, new host David Folkenflik hosted three female journalists, including Judy Woodruff and Candy Crowley in considering the career and legacy of Helen Thomas. The entire discussion addressed Thomas’s groundbreaking career and generous influence on young women journalists like Woodruff and Crowley. Just before the end of the discussion, […]
Preventing Romney: Mediating the Laughter and the Lies
. The challenge for supporters of Barack Obama, tonight and after, is to mediate the media’s mediation of reality. Mediating the mediation: in politics that’s called “spin.” Spin is a conceptually sexy, pop-cultural term for influence. It is a method of persuasion. But as the nature of the expression suggests in its physical metaphor, it […]
Razing Cain
. American public life is an embarrassment. This is not a relative judgment. The fact that it’s better than Nigeria’s should not be a comfort. Russia? Well, we’re not killing journalists yet, but that may begin with their not doing any work that would merit it by powers threatened by them. Why bother? Far from […]
Occupy Wall Street vs The Tea Parties
. There is enough oversimplification in MSM political commentary about American political movements and tendencies – their origins, motives, and acts – to swirl perpetually down a drain of ignorance, but I don’t have quite that much time today. The opposition of the title above is certainly a current, favored topic of pundits. As it […]
The GOP’s Media-Manufactured Messiahs
They might have learned something from the original breakfast flake of modern times Ross Perot. But the news media do not learn. They speculate, they trumpet, they pander, they shill – “It’s news! How can we not cover news?!” And who made it news? You’d think certainly they would have learned from Rudy and […]