Mediascape update

Catch up on MSM highlights in 100 seconds, via Talking Points Memo.

• Talk of war is kicking up again, this time concerning North Korea. What was left of diplomatic relations between North Korea and South Korea appear to have completely broken down in recent days. In the meantime, media reports say the country's military has been given the go-ahead to strike the United States with nuclear missiles. Ever since then, North Korea's military have been super busy moving their missiles around in exceedingly menacing ways. What's behind the aggression?

Carmen Electra's ex and new "best friend for life," North Korea's Kim "the Jong" Un

Well, depending upon the source, Dennis Rodman either saved us with his "Renaissance Man" touch, or damned us with his previously untested skills as an occasional totalitarian-state über tourist and unofficial diplomat during last month's visit.

• In other news, the Associated Press will now drop the term "illegal" when referring to immigrants. Journalism ethics groups, particularly the Society of Professional Journalists, have been calling for this change for several years. However, the AP style sets the industry standards and has a direct influence on how journalism is taught. Having a current copy of the AP style handbook is an absolute must for J-schools students. Via the SPJ's diversity blog:

The AP is now changing how it will describe people as journalists report stories involving the current immigration issue. According to Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, here is what is behind the decision:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

“Journalists and others can argue that the new style recommendation is less precise than ‘illegal alien’ or ‘illegal immigrant,’ but it’s important to note that a significant portion of country’s population regards those terms as offensive.  It wasn’t that long ago that keepers of journalism style, including The AP, fought dropping ‘Negro’ as a term for black or African-American people,” says SPJ President Sonny Albarado.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists also says these terms can be dehumanizing  and demeaning.

“AP is right to note that the English language evolves and that our everyday usage contributes to that evolution. I hope journalists and others continue this conversation about immigration and people who come here legally or illegally until we arrive at terminology most of us can agree on,” Albarado says.

We on the SPJ Diversity Committee agree and hope journalists will eliminate these types of terms from their copy as immigration is a huge issue we will be reporting on this year.

• Over in the United Kingdom, many were upset over the Daily Mail's Wednesday issue, which dedicated its entire front page to blaming the deaths of six children on Britain's "vile" welfare state. 

But, after the tabloids set the tone, anyone who was anyone (Yes, Minister) pretty much did the same thing. By Thursday, the BBC News Channel joined the chorus, also harping the "welfare state as culprit" angle ALL day, every hour on the hour in one form or another.

Included in the BBC's April 4th coverage of the sensational story were obligatory shots of people booing at the transport van carrying Mick Philpott after his sentencing in court, a 7-minute debate during the 5 O'clock program about the welfare state's culpability, and the same repeating 2-minute story about how men with bald heads are one-third more likely to have heart disease.

By Friday, the BBC's website had busted out the body-language experts to give more insights into the arson revenge plot gone tragically wrong.

• Media Matters for America confirms in a letter to the nightly news producers of CBS, ABC and NBC, that 2012 was the year the media forgot about climate change, despite a year of wacky weather:

Dear Mr. Corn, Ms. Shelvin, and Mr. Burkey,

Every night, tens of millions of people tune into the news on the major broadcasting networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC, expecting to learn about our nation's most pressing issues. Given the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, we urge you to give global warming the coverage that it warrants.

After experiencing the hottest year ever recorded in the United States and a series of devastating extreme weather events including wildfires, droughts, and storms like Hurricane Sandy, the American people need to know how changing climate is fueling this extreme weather and what we can do about it.

That can only happen if you devote more coverage to climate change, report on future extreme weather in a climate context, and interview more climate scientists who will be able to accurately connect the dots between human activity, climate change, and the weather we have been experiencing. Yet, a recent study by Media Matters for America found that throughout all of 2012, climate change was only featured in 12 segments on your nightly news programs combined.

The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters also partnered with Media Matters in asking the three nightly news programs to put more efforts towards covering climate change.

• Finally, it seems that Bill O'Reilly's "killing" spree will unfortunately continue. After being largely responsible for bringing the at times, historically challenged, Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy dramas to life for the audiences of National Geographic Channel (some minor Murdoch Empire incest there), ratings were high enough to create a bidding war for the Conservative pundit's latest venture: Killing Jesus. 

Totally went there.

        Via Mediabistro:

Following the ratings success of “Killing Lincoln” on Nat Geo, the News Corp.-owned cable channel quickly acquired the rights to “Killing Kennedy,” the second book in the series from Fox News hostBill O’Reilly. O’Reilly recently announced that the next book will be “Killing Jesus,” about the life–and death–of Christianity’s most important figure.

Not surprisingly, a bidding war broke out for the TV rights, and according to the New York Post‘s Michael Shain, and confirmed by one of my sources familiar with the plans, CNN nearly won the rights to the TV movie.

Jeff Zucker, the new head of the news channel, bid as much as $2.5 million for rights to the book. The Jesus movie will be produced — as the other O’Reilly movies are — by Ridley Scott, the director of “Blade Runner.” Zucker learned of the Jesus movie through Scott, who is also making a series called “Crimes of the Century” for CNN, according to the sources.

Like the Lincoln and Kennedy movies, director Ridley Scott and his production company will be producing the film.

Ultimately, however, Nat Geo Channel won out, and will likely air “Killing Jesus” in 2015. 

Worst Segueway of the Week Award: Fox & Friends links the Emancipation Proclamation Anniversary to Obama's 'Government Plantations'

Its almost laughable that "Are you using the term slavery too loosely?" was even asked in this segment of FNC's Fox & Friends Weekend Sept. 22 edition. No matter what vaguely cogent argument may have come out of 'Blacklash' author and FNC contributor, Deneen Borelli's mouth, all the while she spoke, the lower third of the screen was littered with terms that specifically refer to black slavery: Indentured to Government Borelli: Americans being enslaved by debt, The Government 'Plantation' US enslaving citizens with debt. 

Clearly, no one at Fox & Friends Weekend thought it was a bit much to link the two for the sake of taking a dig at the Obama administration on what is usually such a Fair and Balanced® Saturday morning news show.

As long as this show is on the air seven days a week, The Daily Show will never run out of material. Or Saturday Night Live for that matter. At best, Fox & Friends is a self-spoofing show. At worst, and sadly to boot, the show is a popular and power platform for launching attacks on leftist or progressive causes and the Obama administration with facts full of 'truthiness' and octopus-like conspiracy theories. Fox & Friend also experiences frequent visits from Republican nominee Mitt Romney, as the NYT notes.

And finally, to eliminate some of the noise about the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation draft as a result of FNC's hullabaloo, some video via the US National Archives youtube channel, which is an excellent and interesting panel discussion by academics and local community leaders. The panel was held as part of a Documented Rights civil rights eight-month exhibition in St. Louis which recently closed.

Hitler Watch: The "H" bomb's been dropped ... by Democrats!

In a move usually associated with Glenn Beck or Karl Rove, (ok, and FOX News in general), the always classy Hitler comparison was dropped. Three times. In three days. By three different Democrats.

You will all KNOCK THIS SHIT OFF!

According to HNN:

Within the space of a single week, California Democratic Party chief John Burton -- no stranger to strong language -- compared GOP campaign tactics to Joseph Goebbels's "big lie" at a state delegation breakfast on Monday; Pat Lehman, the president of the Kansas Democratic Labor Committee, also compared GOP voter fraud allegations with the "big lie" of the Nazis on Tuesday: "It's like Hitler said, if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and if you tell it often enough and say it in a loud enough voice, some people are going to believe you"; finally, on Wednesday, South Carolina Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian joked that Republican governor Nikki Haley, who was conducting news conferences during the Democratic National Convention from a TV studio at the basement in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, was "down in the bunker a la Eva Braun."

Comparing your political opponents to Hitler/things Hitlerly is always a bad move, even if those opponents are doing some pretty un-Democratic things.  Besides squelching debate, dropping the H bomb is political discourse at it's dumbest and most hyperbolic, and unfortunately, as these examples show, members of both parties have and will drop a Hitler analogy to score political points.

Moreover, as Michael C. Moynihan, writer for the Jewish magazine Tablet, points out: Burton and Lehman's (amongst others) usage of the "Big Lie" analogy is actually wrong.

Back in January, Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen decried Republican attacks on President Obama’s health-care legislation, saying his critics were advancing the “‘big lie’ just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it.” (Glenn Beck, annoyed that Cohen was competing in the illiterate historical comparison business, blasted the congressman—while invoking Mao, Hitler, and Stalin, and adding that “Nazi tactics are progressive tactics first.”)

The modest backlash against such rhetoric framed the debate as yet another example of the triumph of crudity in American political discourse. But while the squadron of fact-checkers parse the claims of the Obama and Romney campaigns, no one bothered to explore the origins of the “Big Lie” theory, which is regularly conjured on Twitter, blogs, talk radio, and cable news.

A little detective work reveals the Big Lie to be a rather big lie.

Romney plays to Tea Party base with latest attacks over Diplomat deaths

In a press conference held yesterday, Mitt Romney, again reiterated a point made by his camp in a statement released to the press Tuesday night (Sept. 11) which claimed the Obama administration had failed to condemn the attacks on US Embassies in Egypt and Libya that resulted in the deaths of four diplomats. Romney also said that Obama sympathized with the attackers.




The talking point that Obama either sympathizes with or apologizes for our attackers (and is therefore, further indication of his being un-American or unpatriotic), is currently being parroted by the Republican party's opinion makers and leaders. 

RNC Chairman hops on the bandwagon

This sort of rhetoric is part of a nationalistic thread that dominates Tea Party speeches and literature and also ties into the movement's paranoia about a sort of foreign invasion, as it is perceived that America is being infiltrated by foreigners who conspire to destroy the country. The movement's views about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers are ideological and fundamentalist and their highly restrictive understanding of both leaves little or no room for debate. As a result, those who disagree with the Tea Party's interpretation of the Constitution and National Values are routinely labeled un-American: 

Tea Party supporters couple a deep belief in America's greatness with a narrow understanding of what makes America great.  As reflected in Santelli's rant and countless other Tea Party declarations, the Tea Party's constitutional vision consists of a small set of familiar conservative and libertarian principles—individual liberty, free markets, low taxes, limited federal power, and states' rights—that Tea Party supporters identify as the fundamental constitutional principles laid down by the founding fathers.[38]  The Tea Party movement articulates all of its policy positions in terms of these basic principles.  The Tea Party opposes the recent health care reform law, financial sector bailout, and proposed cap-and-trade legislation because they curtail liberty.  These initiatives interfere with the free market, violate the principle of limited government, increase federal taxes, and decrease the states' power.[39]  To the Tea Party movement, these basic principles represent the fundamental values that underlie the American way of life.[40] 

The Tea Party movement perceives these foundational American principles to be under attack by foreign and un-American forces variously denominated "progressives," "globalists," "socialists," and "collectivists," who threaten America's very existence.[41]  Rhetoric of foreign invasion and foreign infiltration dominates Tea Party speeches and literature.[42]>  Tea Party supporters perceive that foreign forces are succeeding in taking over the United States, transforming the country they love into an unrecognizable and alien land.[43]  Employing militantly nationalist rhetoric, the Tea Party movement seeks to combat the supposed foreign takeover by re-establishing true American values.[44]

Tea Party supporters routinely demonize as un-American anyone who supports policies that conflict with what they perceive to be fundamental American values.[45]  They describe President Obama, in particular, as foreign.[46]  He is sometimes described as literally foreign by so-called "birthers," who assert that he was not born in the United States.[47]  He is sometimes described as religiously foreign by those who believe he is secretly a Muslim living in a Christian nation.[48]  He is sometimes described as racially foreign by those who consciously or unconsciously hold race-based ideas of what it means to be a true American.[49]  But perhaps most often, he is described as ideologically foreign because he does not adhere to the Tea Party movement's notions of small government, low taxes, and free markets.[50]  All of these points of view share the core Tea Party message: President Obama and his liberal supporters are foreign usurpers, not real Americans, and all true patriots must rise up to defeat them before they destroy everything that is great about America.[51]

 The "Team Romney" press debacle has been widely seen as just that. However, the move was a bit more calculated. In reality, Romney was singing volumes to the Tea Party.

The Twitterverse: ABC's 'Nightline' host pwnd

Terry Moran, host of ABC's Nightline, misquotes a NYT article in order to bash Chicago teachers getting a "pay increase."

I know we all get up to saying something stupid on the internet, but come on! Sometimes those 120 characters really count, especially when you are the face of a major network hard news program. Using that platform to bash teachers might not be the best use of Moran's time. Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind, sets the record straight: 

New Koch Brothers funded ad targets independents, sort of.

There has been much political fodder over the role that independents play in determining the outcome of Presidential elections. However, most wise big party political strategists realize that they must at some point try to catch the attentions of this group. As NTQ! blogger, Nathan Rothwell, pointed out, this may be more difficult for the Republicans to do than they realize. How does a party that plays on identity politics sway independent voters who feel they have been let down by the Obama administration? Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers funded SuperPAC, takes the "he's a nice guy, but ... " something vague about hope, something vague about change ... approach.

Addicting Info's Jack Watkins gives a breakdown of the ad:

Slick and potent in it’s non-vitriolic tone and, I think, likely to have the effect of reaching a lot of voters and give them reasons to just stay home, rather than actually motivating people to vote for Romney/Ryan. If it succeeds, it may cause people of that mindset to not pay much close attention to the rancor and debate going on in the campaign as it heats up and, just as the Obama team tries to focus the public’s attention on the devastating repercussions of a Romney presidency to all things that matter to these people. In short, I think its goal is yet a further form of voter disenfranchisement. I think the Republicans are playing a very cynical game here. Despite what every politician says (especially when they’re losing on message), they all pay attention to the polls.

A recent poll showing Obama being favored 2-1 by the 90 million eligible voters who are expected to NOT VOTE has got to scare the hell out of the Romney/Ryan team. Heavy turnout means certain defeat. Short of an economic meltdown on the order of 2008 or some other catastrophic world event, the Romney campaign is just not capable of swaying a majority of ALL Americans – even with 8% unemployment – to dump the president. He’s just too nice a guy. Too many Americans still remember the Bush/Cheney years and, it’s no accident that those two miscreants will be nowhere near the upcoming Republican Convention in Florida.

Fox's top five most misleading charts

Just keep telling yourself that ...

Your eyes can play tricks on you, and so can charts and graphs ... especially if viewed on Fox News.

The most common FNC tactics are using scales with an irregular interval and starting a bar graph without a zero point. Both tactics visually distorts the graph to exaggerate the gaps between data points that actually have little variance. However, even then, there is a good chance the chart you are looking at includes data that is just plain wrong. Below are five of the most misleading Fox News Channel charts, all of which fail on some level to present information in an unbiased way. Can you spot what's wrong?

Battle of the Super PAC ads: will Obama Campaign bite?

The latest buzz in the world of presidential campaign ads and a short guide to analyzing the political discourse of campaign ads. 



Spending on political ads is at its highest, with the Karl Rove-backed super-PAC American Crossroads GPS coughing up the most cash for TV spots. The super-PAC spent nearly $42 million to air ads nationwide and in local markets. A good chunk of that money has been spent within the last two months alone. The group's latest ad aims to create an Obama vs Pro-Obama super-PAC gaffe, in the hopes the Obama administration will take the bait and bite.

Priorities USA Action PAC spending on tv spots by market

The Crossroads ad accuses the Obama campaign of coordinating with a super-PAC called Priorities USA Action. The ad in question never aired on any television station, yet is drawing the ire of Karl Rove's super-PAC as well as Mitt Romney and his aides, who also demand Obama denounce the ad. Although Priorities USA Action PAC is the top spender out of the Pro-Obama super-PACs, it ranks 4th overall. The group's spending ($7.2 mil this year) is dwarfed by the top Republican super-PACs and runs ads in fewer markets than its competitors.

So why bother? Because it is a really horrible thing to accuse anyone of causing someone else's cancer. Naturally, the claim has an icky feel about it, one that any candidate would rather avoid having stick around. If Obama's campaign doesn't respond to the claims that a group it "coordinates" with accused Romney of killing a woman via cancer, then Fox News and Rush Limbaugh can turn this into the message that they relentlessly hammer for a week straight. And, equally as bad, if the Obama campaign does respond in some way to the ad or the super-PAC, this too can be twisted into a character attack against Obama because "guilt by association" can still apply.

Check out the "controversial" ad in question, which once again, never aired on television.

Nailing Murdoch: media mogul's influence in UK gov leading up to Iraq War revealed

Getty Images via  The Telegraph

With no signs of the Conservative FOX behemoth slowing in the midst of the election cycle, here in the UK, the man behind the curtain appears to be increasingly vulnerable to scrutiny (and maybe even the law). Thanks to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Communications Director, Alastair Campbell, detailed diary entries describing conversations between Rupert Murdoch and Blair have become public. The diary reveals that Murdoch did indeed put pressure on the Blair Administration to speed up British involvement in the Iraq war. Murdoch had previously testified before the Leveson Inquiry that he had never used his position to influence the actions of Prime Ministers. However, the new evidence, detailed extensively by the Guardian, shows that Murdoch made a series of calls to Tony Blair in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war.