Looks like the DC-based media can’t get their narratives straight this morning…
“Gulf Oil Spill Could Fuel Interest in Climate Bill,” Politico, July 12, 2010.
“Historic Oil Spill Fails to Produce Gains for U.S. Environmentalists,” Washington Post, July 12, 2010.
As you’ve probably heard by now, Delaware Attorney General (and son of the Vice President) Beau Biden suffered a mild stroke today.
I first heard about it when somebody I follow on Twitter posted the breaking news at 10:10 am. Curious to learn more, I immediately added a search column on my Tweetdeck for “Beau Biden.” I then scrolled through the earlier entries and found this one to be the first that mentioned the news on Twitter. It was posted 21 minutes earlier – at 9:49 am – by a freelance writer in Wilmington, Del., who had simply heard a rumor.
Shortly after I saw the news on Twitter, I also checked Google News, but the most recent result mentioning Beau Biden was six hours old and obviously had nothing to do with a medical emergency. A few minutes later, cable news outlets began to report that Biden had been hospitalized, but they didn’t report the reason until approximately 3:25 pm.
Of course, since random Twitter entries don’t need to be confirmed as actual facts, they’re often not as reliable as reports from the established media. But then again, as we saw today, often they are.
In the meantime, best wishes to the Biden family.
Remember the runaway Prius in San Diego that resulted in breathless, blanket national media coverage a few days ago? Well, it looks like it’s a big hoax.
And now Megan McArdle at the Atlantic crunches some numbers and finds that the vast majority of “runaway” Toyotas happen with older drivers behind the wheel – a demographic trend that could lead one to believe they’re more likely to be caused by driver error rather than mechanical or electrical flaws.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t a problem with some Toyotas. But the establishment media needs to start asking more probing questions when these incidents occur, instead of just inserting them into the over-hyped narrative they’ve helped establish over the past few weeks. Then again, that’s what they almost always do, and it’s another reason why so few people trust them.
Filed under: MSM, Online Video | Tags: brian williams, chuck todd, david gregory, dylan ratigan, msnbc, nbc news
As the dinosaur media continue to wring their hands over crashing ratings and sinking subscription numbers, they might want to take a look at this video from MSNBC. In the clip, host Dylan Ratigan assaults Tea Party leader Mark Williams with completely unsubstantiated charges of racism and anti-Semitism, barely gives Williams a chance to respond to the outlandish charges, then calls him “offensive,” and demands that his microphone be turned off.
In political journalism, there’s something known as the “When did you stop beating your wife?” question, in which a reporter asks a loaded, accusatory question to which there’s no good answer. Do you respond, “I’ve never beaten my wife,” in which case the screaming headline is “CONGRESSMAN X DENIES BEATING HIS WIFE,” or do you respond, “I stopped beating her last week,” which obviously isn’t a good answer, either.
That’s essentially what Ratigan does in this clip, but he doesn’t even give Williams an opportunity to respond to the absurd line of questioning. This is literally one of the most unprofessional displays of “journalism” I’ve ever seen. It’s long past time for the real, respectable journalists at NBC News – Brian Williams, Chuck Todd, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Mike Viqueira – to put an end to this kind of thing on their network. Because if they don’t, their hard-earned credibility is only going to continue to slide because of their association with this crap.
Hmmmm…
“Republicans may opt out of health summit,” page A2, The Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2010
“GOP Welcomes Plan for Health Summit,” page A8, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 9, 2010
Headline: “Lashing out at the Capitol”
“Tens of thousands of conservative protesters, many complaining that the nation is racing toward socialism, massed outside the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, angrily denouncing President Obama’s health-care plan and other initiatives as threats to the Constitution.” — The Washington Post, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009
Headline: “Thousands Protest Bush Policy”
“A raucous and colorful multitude of protesters, led by some of the aging activists of the past, staged a series of rallies and a march on the Capitol yesterday to demand that the United States end its war in Iraq.
“Under a blue sky with a pale midday moon, tens of thousands of people angry about the war and other policies of the Bush administration danced, sang, shouted and chanted their opposition.” – The Washington Post, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007
Got that?
Liberal protestors are “colorful” and “dance” and “sing” “under a blue sky with a pale midday moon.”
And conservative/libertarian protestors “lash out at the Capitol,” “complain” and “angrily denounce” the President.
Nope. No bias here – just move along, please.
Meanwhile, my quick video from the scene has been viewed more than 121,000 times in less than 48 hours. Of course, everybody who’s viewed the video is an astroturf operative paid by the health-insurance industry to do so.
Yesterday we got a glimpse at the future – or maybe the current state – of investigative journalism when Andrew Breitbart’s new blog, Big Government, posted undercover video of Baltimore ACORN staffers helping two conservative activists set up a brothel that would have supposedly featured underage prostitutes. Or “dependents” as the ACORN tax advisor helpfully counseled.
Within hours of the posting of the video, it was prominently featured on Glenn Beck’s popular Fox News Channel show, and the two ACORN employees had been fired and may be facing criminal charges.
With mainstream media outlets slashing investigative reporting budgets, online video shot by political activists is quickly becoming the way to expose corruption and hypocrisy to the world. And while many in the mainstream media decry this development, I welcome it.
The notion that the New York Times or the Washington Post ever stood up as impartial watchdogs looking out for the public good is laughable. These publications and other MSM outlets have always had a left-leaning political agenda, and their story selection – including what institutions to investigate or “expose” – has always been skewed to fit their agendas.
One needs to look no further than the Post’s recent series of front-page non-stories about Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial nominee – and the near-complete absence of articles about an avowed communist and 9-11 Truther in a senior White House position, ACORN corruption, union corruption, etc. – to see that. The Post’s coverage, quite literally, has become a public joke.
So now we’re all investigative journalists. Yes, we’re biased. But so is every MSM reporter and editor, at least to some degree. So let’s get the facts out there and make it impossible for the mainstream media to ignore them.
Embedded below is the undercover ACORN video shot by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, as well as a hilarious video that O’Keefe shot a few years ago, which brilliantly exposes the absurdity of political correctness on college campuses. In the second video, O’Keefe and a few friends pretend to be distraught Irish Americans who petition to have Lucky Charms cereal removed from the cafeteria on the grounds that it promotes negative stereotypes and creates a hostile environment for them. Incredibly, they were apparently successful in getting Lucky Charms removed from cafeterias at Rutgers University.
Word comes this morning that the Washington Post has killed its Mouthpiece Theater video series after last Friday’s clip sparked outrage when the two hosts essentially called Hillary Clinton a “mad bitch.” In case you missed it, here’s a summary of the controversy from Politico, as well as an absolutely brilliant and devastating online video that helped bring the Post to its knees.
In the “Ménage à Stella Artois” episode — panned by the Columbia Journalism Review’s blog — the Post reporters discuss the “beer summit,” offering comical suggestions on what beers leading political figures would drink.
While Milbank and Cillizza mock figures on both sides of the aisle, and themselves — they’d take Jackass Oatmeal Stout — their beer suggestion for the Secretary of State could prompt charges of sexism.
Both Talking Points Memo and Media Matters have seized upon the part where Hillary Clinton’s face is on the screen, while Milbank says, “we won’t tell you who’s getting a bottle of ‘Mad Bitch’ beer.”
Hopefully at some point soon, Washington Post reporters will, you know, start actually reporting the news — instead of acting like buffoons auditioning to be the next Jon Stewart or Bill Maher. Because we already have too many of those.
This piece in this morning’s Washington Post is nothing short of breathtaking. In other words, it fairly, accurately and honestly reports the regret that many people are now feeling about casting their votes for Obama last fall.
Read the whole thing, but just check out some of the language – this kind of stuff has never appeared in the mainstream media before this morning:
“The coffee was still brewing when Chris Ann Cleland got her first reminder of the day that voting for Barack Obama might have been a mistake.”
“For Cleland, it was another example – one of many this day – of the broken promises of a president who she thought would be different.”
“He’s just not as advertised… I feel like I’ve been punked.”
“I haven’t come across one person who’s been helped.”
“The most stark evidence of Obama’s failure…”
