news media
mikethemadbiologist | April 25, 2009http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/23/prosecutions/index.ht…
It's one thing to be a stenographer--and a bad one at that. But, as Glenn Greenwald notes, our celebrity press corps goes beyond that:
...the favorite mantra of media stars and Beltway mavens everywhere -- Look Forward, Not Backwards -- is nothing but a plea that extreme government crimes remain concealed and unexamined.
This remains the single most notable and revealing fact of American political life: that (with some very important exceptions) those most devoted to maintaining and advocating government secrecy is our…
mikethemadbiologist | April 2, 2009ScienceBlogling Jessica Palmer notes that editors are an overlooked, but critical component of science reporting (italics original):
...the recent debate about scientists vs. science journalists as communicators obscures the fact that many mistakes don't originate with either the scientist or the journalist, but with editors and others involved in the publication process.
....It all comes back to the editors, doesn't it? Regrettably, in discussions of the mainstream media process and how to improve science journalism, editors and other staff are often overlooked. But although it's necessary…
mikethemadbiologist | March 18, 2009While there's a compelling argument to be made that newspapers are doomed regardless of what they try, I think Ezra Klein is wrong when he argues that there's no market for local news. Atrios writes:
This is the reason I'm so often pretty unsympathetic about the way many journalists whine about their declining industry. I don't actually care if the Philadelphia Inquirer has somebody covering Washington (though they should have somebody covering local races for federal office, etc.). I have no idea why 3 million journalists showed up in Denver for the Democratic convention. I don't know why…
mikethemadbiologist | March 17, 2009In the midst of all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the death and cooptation of business journalism inspired by John Stewart's skewering of Jim Cramer, it's important to remember one thing: that's the business model. Or to put it another way, the customer is always right.
If you ever read the biotech press, which is a subset of the larger business press, there is an obvious, inherent structural bias. The biotech press will never critique the fundamentals of the biotech industry as a whole. It will criticize individual approaches or companies. But it will almost never ask…
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2009There has been a lot of commentary about George Will attacking the observed phenomenon of global warming by referring to a poor analysis of research findings--an analysis that has been refuted by the study's authors. This has been followed by discussions of the future of journalism and other such rending of garments. For me, what L'affair Will highlights is the conflict within the newspaper business about how to remain viable.
There seem to be two models (and these are admittedly caricatures):
Have a diversity of opinion even if some opinions are nothing more than misinformation or…
mikethemadbiologist | March 9, 2009Currently, I'm working on a post about funding and how it's led to employment problem in science....
Meanwhile, this bit about illegal short selling is jaw dropping. I have no idea of this very long article (pdf) is in tinfoil helmet territory or not, but, if it's at all accurate, it looks like Jim Cramer of CNBC is using his media perch to help friends profit from short selling stocks:
The story begins when a very highly respected journalist and business editor for the Columbia Journalism Review, Mark Mitchell, decides to look into allegations made by the CEO of Overstock.com, that some…
mikethemadbiologist | March 5, 2009Who knew Warren Buffett had his own special tax bracket? With reporting like this, who needs Republicans? From a NY Times story about limiting the tax break for charitable donations by the rich (italics mine):
"If you're a teacher making $50,000 a year and decide to donate $1,000 to the Red Cross or United Way, you enjoy a tax break of $150," Mr. Orszag wrote. "If you are Warren Buffett or Bill Gates and you make that same donation, you get a $350 deduction, more than twice the teacher."
(Actually, Mr. Buffett's overall tax rate was somewhere around 17 percent, according to his testimony…
mikethemadbiologist | February 11, 2009...does it make a sound? On Sept. 18, 2008, the banking system almost collapsed--no, really. A while back, I noted that there are at least two classes of media bias: one involves the interpretation of a set of agreed upon facts, while the other involves decisions as to what those facts are, or, even if something happened (an aside: while this was not controversial to the science-oriented commenters, this distinction is apparently beyond the ken of at least one journalism professor).
Anyway, this story, unearthed by C-SPAN, falls into the latter category (in the video, go to the 2:05 mark…
mikethemadbiologist | January 23, 2009A few days ago, I discussed the 'doughnut model' of journalistic bias that Jay Rosen described. Thinking about it some more, both Rosen and I got it wrong. Ultimately, the problem isn't that certain views and policies are ruled out of the political discourse (although that is a real problem). The problem is that the type of bias Rosen mentions leads to bad journalism.
Before I get to that, if we're attempting to convince journalists that they need to be more responsible regarding the public discourse, well, good luck with that. Appealing to the national political press corps for better…
mikethemadbiologist | January 18, 2009If you haven't heard by now, some theopolitical conservatives are angry at the Krispy Kreme doughnut chain because they used "doughnut of choice" in an ad campaign. I think Amanda's take on why these wackaloons fear TEH DONUTZ is right on target:
What made reading this move from the "merely hilarious" column to the "fucking scary" column for me, though, is that I'm currently reading Matt Taibbi's latest book The Great Derangement, and he spends a good deal of his time in the book pretending to be a Christian attending James Hagee's church in San Antonio....what Taibbi explains is something…
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2009http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/node/15061
http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/01/bonos_welcome_to_the_pun…
I had to laugh when, by way of ScienceBlogling Joseph, I read Daniel Drezner's snarky description of Bono's first outing as a NY Times op-editorialist. But leaving high-quality snark aside, I think Bono's inclusion highlights a problem with most regular op-ed columnists: the dearth of analysts.
I'll get to Bono in a moment, but op-ed pages are usually populated by journalists--that is, ex-reporters--and not people with analytical training (I realize that the last few years of…
mikethemadbiologist | January 1, 2009A loyal reader forwarded to me a link of an imaginary July 4, 2009 edition of The New York Times. My favorite was the fake op-ed (not) by columnist Thomas Friedman:
The sudden outbreak of peace in Iraq has made me realize, among other things, one incontestable fact: I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write.
I know, you're thinking I'm going too far. I haven't always been wrong about everything. I recently made some sense on global warming and what we needed to do about it, for instance.
But to have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as…
mikethemadbiologist | December 24, 2008I go away for vacation, and the most interesting arguments always seem to break out (at least, no one can claim it's my fault). Lost in the entire kerfuffle over whether or not science journalists are wackaloon idiot fucknozzles is the question of why did Johnson bash ERV in the first place.
Looking over ERV's original post about Jablonski's epigenetics SEED article, I can't figure out what Johnson's problem with it is: I had the exact same reaction when I received my copy of SEED. Birdsong is epigenetic? Huh?
Admittedly, ERV uses a lot of LOLspeak, but I'm actually parshull to lolspeak…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2008You don't see this every day: Charles Blow, the NY Times visual Op-Ed columnist, takes a dig at the Times' Public Editor:
And now the final paragraphs from my May column:
So, when she stops casting the nomination as a standoff between the Dukes of Hazzard and the Huxtables and accepts the outcome as a fait accompli, the party can unite, and there will be a better sense as to which states are in play.
Obama has proclaimed "change" his mantra. That change may well be evident in the electoral map come fall. Appalachia is all American, but America is not all Appalachian.
There is no doubt that…
mikethemadbiologist | November 9, 2008Glenn Greenwald describes how a noxious combo of thin skin and blogger criticism can send smart reporters and pundits down the path of obstinancy:
Everything changed when he turned himself into the chief defender of the original Paulson plan and thus became the target of substantial criticism from bloggers and their readers. Once that happened, the comment sections to his columns and his weekly chats became filled with negative feedback -- most of it substantive, some of it pure invective -- while Google searches of his name now produce conspicuous and aggressive critiques of his work.…
mikethemadbiologist | October 23, 2008Brad DeLong puts it very eloquently:
I would advise every reporter covering the McCain campaign that their only road to having a career in journalism in the future is to write something that gets them thrown off the plane.
Given the outright, serial lying the McCain campaign has engaged in, I think this is about right.
mikethemadbiologist | October 22, 2008McClatchy Washington bureau chief John Walcott recently received the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. While doing so, he called out Compulsive Centrist Disorder. Walcott's remarks:
Relying on The Times, or McClatchy or any other news source, for all the truth is dumb, but it's infinitely preferable to the pernicious philosophical notions that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is relative, or that, as some journalists seem to believe, it can be found midway between the two opposing poles of any argument.....
Does the truth lie halfway between say, slavery and…
mikethemadbiologist | September 14, 2008While discussing the difference between spin and lying, I noted how the mainstream media is unequipped to deal with flat out lies. Jamison Foser has a suggestion (boldface mine; italics original):
When a candidate makes a false claim, reporters can respond one of three ways:
* They can ignore it, on the basis that a false claim is unworthy of attention.
* They can adopt the false claim as the basis of their report, as they did with this week's stories about whether or not Barack Obama had made a sexist comment about Sarah Palin.
* They can produce a report centered on the fact that the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2008...they would have talked through the whole thing and nobody would have ever actually seen it. From Jesse Taylor (italics mine):
CNN's been talking since Obama was officially nominated about how Obama is the first black major-party candidate, yadda yadda yadda.
So, the highest ranking African American elected official in the country steps on stage...and CNN cuts away.
Then they come back to cover a seven-minute musical number by Melissa Etheridge replete with shots of teary-eyed delegates.
I don't think it even occurs to them that people would want to watch the convention and not their…
mikethemadbiologist | August 23, 2008Recently, I wrote about the staggering stupidity of the national political press corps. Eric Alterman provides another example, the LA Times "chief innovation officer" (italics mine):
Take the example of the Tribune Company's new owner, Sam Zell. Leaving aside his penchant for potty-mouth rejoinders for those who question his judgment, Zell has done nothing to slow the slide in the company's fortunes and much to accelerate it. Scrambling like mad for cash to service the company's debt, Zell sold off the profitable Newsday and borrowed $300 million against future earnings, a clear sign of…