Media
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CNN and Bias in Journalism
Journalism can never be unbiased because human beings can never be unbiased. The best we can expect from journalists, as is the best we can expect from human beings, is that they give a reasonable account in defense for their more controversial stories. So what constitutes a reasonable account? Well first of all a firm
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Miscellaneous Thoughts on Impeachment, Culture, and the Surveillance State
It's important that the U.S. have a post-Trump reckoning about how much damage has been done, not just by him but by his enablers. Will the impeachment play some role in that? I doubt it, since the whole point of it is simply to focus on what is already known about what Trump did before
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The Failure of Democracy is the Failure of Elites
For all our talk of democracy, it's pretty obvious that the country is run by elites in business, media, and politics. The rest of us get to ratify the general leftish or rightish direction they seem to be going, but the actual power of the people is pretty crude and is in effect plebiscitary. Elite
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Quote of the Day: Andrew O’Hehir
Beltway politics are dominated by passionate and often outrageous partisan rhetoric, which cannot quite conceal the fact that Congress has become a useless, paralytic institution that can’t get anything done. Power lies elsewhere, and remains inaccessible. In a similar fashion, angry wars of words between and among self-styled progressives on the Internet do not entirely
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Josh Marshall & Historical Vacuum Syndrome
Josh Marshall has created a firestorm among his liberal readership by coming out pretty strongly against the Manning and Snowden leaks. I think he gives a thoughtful, honest justification for his views, and the key to it is explained in these three paragraphs: If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor
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What Makes a Hack?
Alex Parene at Salon has an interesting top-ten count down of the biggest hacks on the American media scene today, and I have to agree with him right down the line–from Arianna Huffington, Bill Keller, Ed Schultz, David Gregory, Tom Friedman, Nick Kristoff, not to mention the Atlantic Monthly, Drudge, CNN, and the Aspen Institute
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How the Beltway Media Thinks
From Dan Froomkin's article on Ornstein and Mann: Most reporters, however — including many widely admired for their intelligence and aggressive reporting — simply refused to blame one side more than the other. Mann said he was struck in conversations with journalists by how influenced they were by the heavily funded movement to promote a
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Traditional White America
I don't know if the real Bill O'Reilly is more of a sendup on himself than his mocking imitator: The Colbert ReportGet More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
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Elite Media Stupidity: It’s Not a Bug . . .
Dougl at Balloon Juice thinks that maybe a big part of the problem lies in that elites in the MSM aren't very smart: Maybe it’s time to admit that the people at the top of our political/media heap just aren’t very bright. Politics and media are both areas where there isn’t a lot of good