news media
mikethemadbiologist | April 13, 2010Colin Schultz has an interesting post on science reporting, in which he bemoans how science journalism has become a small niche and is not consumed by a wider audience:
The issue of recognizing and confronting the fact that not everyone is interested in science is where niche journalism programs like the one at NYU can falter. Jabr remembers the awkward, glazed-over eyes he used to find staring back at him when he tried to share his enthusiasm about science. But when you are surrounded by a tight-knit group of like minded people, it is easy to forget how wildly interests can vary....
The big…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2010A couple of weeks ago, The Washington Post ran a piece by Gerard Alexander about how liberals are condescending towards conservative ideas, because those ideas suck ass. With that, by way of Digby, I give you a speaker from CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference):
At CPAC this morning, Young America's Foundation spokesman Jason Mattera kicked off his speech by suggesting progressives are ugly, rambling, druggies:
MATTERA: It's always a delight to participate in CPAC. This is like our Woodstock. Except, unlike the left gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences…
mikethemadbiologist | January 27, 2010Because I simply can't handle any more Democratic clusterfucks or depressing thoughts about science funding, I want to vent my spleen on bad political reporting. Take this story about two tax-related ballot items in Oregon. One might think that a story about two proposed tax-related measures in a national paper (i.e., one that doesn't follow Oregon politics) would actually explain what those two items were.
You would be wrong.
In fact, if you read the whole article (I don't really recommend it), these are the only descriptions of the ballot measures:
On Tuesday, voters here and across…
mikethemadbiologist | January 6, 2010For those who haven't read the Judge Dredd stories (I'm not referring to the movie), they take place in a dystopian future (other than Star Trek, do sci-fi stories occur in any other kind of future...) where the predominant theme is that, due to technological advances, very few people have jobs, creating huge urban megalopolises (megalopolae?) where crime is rampant.
With that cheery introduction, we note Matthew Yglesias' assessment of the news bidness:
You hear a lot of talk about different kinds of ideas to bolster revenue models or get people to read more. But the reality is that the web…
mikethemadbiologist | January 2, 2010At this point, no one should be surprised that Dick Cheney, along with other movement conservatives, are spouting ridiculous accusations about the Obama Administration's response to the Underpants Bomber. Rachel Maddow (video below) knocks down each false accusation, demonstrating that the Bush Administration did the same or worse. But the only reason these political sociopaths do this is because they can get away with it. The traditional media, despite its saving grace that it isn't composed of bloggers[/snark], is actually providing misinformation by conveying to its consumers that Obama…
mikethemadbiologist | November 5, 2009Over at BoingBoing, we read about the leaked version of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a copyright treaty (so much for the Obama Administration's commitment to transparency. Maybe it's something in the White House water?). Two items caught my eye:
â¢That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement…
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2009The Washington Post editors have been gloriously harrumphing about increased need for objectivity. Ken Houghton at The Angry Bear notes:
But when your Ombudsman claims that your readers "typically demand coverage that is unfailingly neutral," and cites as an example of "crossing the line" one of your reporters making a statement of fact:
"We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not," Raju Narisetti wrote on his Twitter feed. "But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad."
There is no purpose for your organization to even claim it publishes…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2009And I don't mean that as a compliment. Leon Wieseltier has an excellent response to the NY Times Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati who described the magazine's ideology as:
Call it Urban Modern. That is, I think it reflects not a left-or-right POLITICAL ideology but a geographical one, the mentality of the place it is created: 21st Century Manhattan. So: the Magazine reflects a place where women have professional ambition, where immigrants are welcome, and where gays and lesbians can be themselves (if not marry, yet). The Magazine also reflects a place where being rich is not a bad thing,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 4, 2009Part of me sympathizes with ScienceBlogling Bora when he writes about the publishing bidness:
I am excited about the way the Web is transforming society and all they care is how to save their jobs! I get it - they should care. The new media ecosystem can support a much smaller number of professional journalists than the old one. So many (though not all) will lose their jobs. I don't have an interest in that aspect of the media business at all. If they have any other expertise besides scribbling, they will find other jobs once their media houses lock the doors. If not, tough. But I am really…
mikethemadbiologist | September 2, 2009I'll have more to say about the first part of the post header tomorrow (hopefully), but this exchange between Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, a proponent of a Medicare-for-All public option, and CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo is mind-boggling:
At one point, Bartiromo was critical of the government-managed health care system in the United Kingdom. "How do I know the quality [of health care in the United States] is not going to suffer" with a public option? she asked.
Rep. Weiner reminded her that there already is government-managed health care in the United States -- namely, Medicare,…
mikethemadbiologist | August 16, 2009Following on yesterday's post, we read that Rick Perlstein has similar thoughts:
Conservatives have become adept at playing the media for suckers, getting inside the heads of editors and reporters, haunting them with the thought that maybe they are out-of-touch cosmopolitans and that their duty as tribunes of the people's voices means they should treat Obama's creation of "death panels" as just another justiciable political claim. If 1963 were 2009, the woman who assaulted Adlai Stevenson would be getting time on cable news to explain herself. That, not the paranoia itself, makes our present…
mikethemadbiologist | August 15, 2009One of the things that has enabled the mainstreaming of various idiocies, from altie woo, to creationism, to global warming denialism is mainstream corporate media's inability to accurately describe lunacy. For obvious reasons, 'family-friendly' newspapers and teevee can't call creationists, birthers, or deathers batshit lunatic or fucking morons. This is where 'civility' (beyond the basic norms of decency when dealing with the mentally ill) and pretensions of 'balance' utterly fail.
In Idiot America, Charles Pierce provides a good example of how this works:
How does it work? This is how it…
mikethemadbiologist | July 21, 2009A while ago, I argued that The Boston Globe is basically useless, and should go out of business. Some people took exception to that, including readers I know from the 'meat world.' And then The Globe published an op-ed by a creationist.
Fortunately, ScienceBlogling Jason Rosenhouse blasts the op-edo, so I don't have to (seriously, they're not even trying to come up with novel yet still stupid ideas. It's just the same old shit).
Since the op-ed was published, I've received several emails from people who thought I was wrong, but, now, have cancelled their subscriptions. I'll write this…
mikethemadbiologist | July 21, 2009One of the parts I liked about Unscientific America was the recognition that many scientists need to be trained in communication--and as importantly, this training requires funding, so universities have a financial incentive to reward scientific communication and outreach. Mooney and Kirshenbaum also think that non-profit organizations should and will play a critical role in communicating science: not only do we have to train people, we need to actually pay them to communicate. So that's all good (TEH RELIGIONISMZ!! AAAIIEEE!!!).
One example of the non-profit model is Rick Weiss, who is an…
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2009I haven't had time to comment on it until now, but one of the local issues rattling around Boston and Massachusetts has been the potential demise of The Boston Globe. Since the NY Times Corporation will receive bids for The Boston Globe tomorrow, it seemed like a good time to reflect on how The Globe wound up losing $50 million last year. The general consensus is that, as a business, The Globe is failing. To the extent people have tried to figure out why The Globe is failing, the usual suspects have been trotted out: labor costs, the recession, the across the board decline in newspaper…
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2009ScienceBlogling Ed Yong asks a good question about scientific embargoes--the practice of giving reporters press releases about to-be-published research on the condition that they don't publish before a certain date: "Does science journalism falter or flourish under embargo?"
Opponents of embargoes believe that the practice, to use Ed's phrase, leads to shoddy 'churnalism.' But it's not clear to me how one investigates published research.
First, most science journalists lack the expertise to criticize much of what they cover--it's not that they're stupid, but they're not going to know more (…
mikethemadbiologist | June 30, 2009It's simple--as long as one doesn't criticize the press corps from the left (doing it from the right is ok and accepted--you get to be the house liberal. Bob Somerby:
For starters: We of course have no way of knowing why the Post has dumped Dan Froomkin. Let's repeat that: We simply don't know.
But if we were going to write a novel, as Rosen did--if we wanted to pretend that we knew--our novel would look like this:
Dan Froomkin criticizes the press corps. In the press corps, if you're a liberal, that just isn't done.
Duh. We've explained this bone-simple point for years. If there's one…
nisbetmc | June 7, 2009[Contributed by guest blogger Katherine Broendel]
Before I begin writing about what my research has found regarding the framing of sexual violence in the media, I'd like to take a moment to define some of the parameters of my research. I focused my attention on sexual violence committed against women. I recognize that approximately 10% of sexual violence victims and survivors are male, and I do not discount their experiences. However, considering the vast majority of the violence is aimed at women and girls, I chose to focus my study on women. In addition, I'd like to note that I did not…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2009...which were formerly known as newspapers. A recent column by Frank Rich makes me think that news organizations can be viable using a paid subscription model--in fact, I think they can be very successful. The problem is that they might not be very widely read. Rich, discussing the looming demise of many newspapers, writes (italics mine):
But opinions, however insightful or provocative and whether expressed online or in print or in prime time, are cheap. Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it -- monitoring the local school board, say -- can and is being done by voluntary "citizen…
mikethemadbiologist | April 27, 2009ScienceBlogling PalMD does a good job of eviscerating the false claims of expertise by woo practioner 'Dr.' Patricia Fitzgerald and the rest of the witch doctors over at The Huffington Post, so I thankfully don't have to (so many fucking morons, so little Mad Biologist...). But PalMD neglected to mention one thing about 'Dr.' Patricia Fitzgerald:
She is the "Wellness" editor of The Huffington Post.
That's right: a full-blown woomeister is the equivalent of The Huffington Post's medicine and health section. Is she an M.D.? Nope. Is she a Pharm.D.? Uh-uh. Maybe a Ph.D.? Guess what? No…