Newspaper Endorsements for President 2012

Many newspapers tend to endorse the same party’s candidate election after election – so it is instructive to see where editorial boards have moved from one party to another. It’s even more enlightening during a reelection campaign if a paper endorsed the current president in the last election, but is making the case for his [...]

“Game Change”, by the Liberal Filmmakers Jay Roach and Tom Hanks

Game Change The Movie, as opposed to Game Change The Book, focuses only on Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign, ignoring the juicy drama of Hillary and Bill playing the race card or John Edwards’ fathering a child with a woman not his dying wife. OK, fine. There’s only so much you can cram into [...]

Politifact: The Selective Ignorance of Meaning

Create a website purporting to “fact check” politicians, win a Pulitzer Prize. That’s a short history of Politifact, an operation of the St. Petersburg Times. Complete with fun little “Truth-o-meter” graphics that range from True to Pants-on-Fire, illustrated with, you guessed it. Flames. I’ve been reading this for some time and have always come away [...]

Happy Everybody Draw Mohammad Day!

People can submit their entries for possible publication over at the Reason website. Meanwhile, Fox reports that Facebook is blaming “”small technical issue” for denying users access to the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!’” page earlier today, while Pakistan has shut down both Facebook and YouTube over the event. Related Posts:Newspaper Endorsements for President 2012Editorializing while [...]

Editorializing while Stupid

Linda Greenhouse, who draws a paycheck for public blathering in The New York Times, is boycotting Arizona. Now, there are some good reasons to boycott that state. It’s too damn hot, much of it’s desert, and it is oddly devoid of real personality. But Linda Casaverde, who I suspect is the type to rail against [...]

Brian Williams Needs the World’s Smallest Violin

Over at his blog, the NBC anchor is claiming the mid-Atlantic storms this weekend were worse than Hurricane Katrina, apparently because….his power went out: I’ve covered a lot of storms in a lot of places: Category 5 tornados, Category 5 hurricanes — but nothing was quite like what happened this weekend from New Jersey north [...]

A Sample of the Cable News Channels

Bill O’Reilly on Fox News is talking about the elections today. Campbell Brown on CNN is talking about the elections today. Keith Olbermann on MSNBC is talking about how evil Lieberman is for opposing the public option. His astute and thoughtful analysis, “Like he understands (dramatic pause) anything.” Related Posts:Newspaper Endorsements for President 2012Is the [...]

Sometimes It’s Not what is Reported, but What Isn’t

From the Corner: The AP story in The New York Times . . . on the Census Bureau’s decision to drop its association with ACORN. The story doesn’t mention the prostitution videos from last week (and more are coming). How does a reporter and/or editor do that? Read the whole thing, the silences are staggering. It’s Pravdaesque. [...]