November 20th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Our famous linkfest taking you to websites of many different viewpoints, all over the world.
There’s Huge Interest In Obama In Europe and The Brussels Journal has some thoughts on why.
How Far Have Newspapers Fallen In How Much Do They Really Value Reporters in a time of (limited) buyouts and (increasingly bigger) budget slashing? JUST READ THIS.
President Elect Barack Obama Wants Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano To Be Head Of Homeland Security and it seems to be a serious, workmanlike pick. Prairie Weather notes:”Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano’s name is in headlines this morning in connection with that unwieldy bureaucracy. Napolitano is said to be very knowledgeable about border issues. Is she sufficiently “robust” — another annoying piece of Bush-speak — for the job? She certainly appears to be more intelligent and knowledgeable than anyone the current administration has come up with. Time designated her one of the five top governors.”
President George Bush Is Seemingly Trying To Perpetuate His Administration for years by putting in a series of very hard to remove “midnight rules.” But there is apparently a way for a new administration elected by a public that wants change and not years of embedded Bush policies to dis-embed them.
Concern About The Economy Grows: The economy is a hot topical over the world, including in India.
November 19th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s, and his family’s, adventures and victories in the field of journalism have won him admirers and critics. His detractors claim that he has trashed serious/traditional journalism. But journalism is neither static, nor a charitable activity. It has become a highly competitive business.
It would be unfair to single out media owners for blame. The editors too must be held accountable for the present mess. Murdoch recently “tore into the ‘doom and gloomers’ predicting the demise of newspapers, but admitted this involved ‘moving beyond dead trees’,” reports The Independent.
“This comes at a time when media groups have come under severe pressure, closing titles and slashing jobs, in the wake of the global credit crunch.
“Mr Murdoch, whose global media empire owns titles including The Wall Street Journal as well as The Times and The Sun, conceded that it was a ‘challenging’ time for the sector, as traditional sources of revenue dry up and competition increases.
“Mr Murdoch issued a rallying cry to the industry, saying: ‘I believe that newspapers will reach new heights. In the 21st century, people are hungrier for information than ever before. And they have more sources of information than ever before’. As readers become swamped by the fierce competition, they ‘want what they’ve always wanted: a source they can trust. This has always been the role of great newspapers in the past.”
Murdock took a potshot at the editors when he said that the future of newspapers “has a relevance far beyond the feverish, sometimes insecure collections of egos and energy that is the journalistic profession”. More here…
I have always believed that real/best journalism thrives only when there is intrinsic trust between the media owners and the journalists. The ego/power struggle between the two has created a sort of crisis.
Editors need to be sensitive to the needs of the owners without sacrificing basic journalistic values. And the media owners should stop treating their editors as mere domestic help or handmaidens. Apart from trust the two must also respect the other’s professional status/needs.
An AP file photograph of the legendary media baron Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi Deng.
As President Bush prepares to leave the stage, one of his staunchest political friends and allies, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar - who was kicked out of office for supporting the Iraq invasion after an al-Qaeda terrorist attack in Madrid - has issued this defense of George W. Bush in the pages of France’s Le Figaro.
“History will give him his due. Even if at present, his work isn’t recognized, and will not be, he has greatly contributed to defending the cause of freedom. His determination and vision were fundamental to the survival of liberty in countries that have been able to benefit from it, and have extended freedom to countries that for too long have lived under tyranny and barbarism.”
“The fact that George W. Bush, who was President during this tragedy, will within weeks be able to cede power to his successor without the United States having undergone a similar attack, is proof of his success. … Freedom triumphs when we show the courage and determination to defend it. Freedom also wins when there are more nations capable to choosing their leaders freely. That is precisely the legacy that George W. Bush has preserved, allowed to prosper and is leaving to his successor.”
November 17th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
It still wasn’t as big an attraction as football, but CBS’ 60 Minutes interview with President Elect Barack Obama got monster ratings and was the best audience the usually high-rated show has gotten in 9 years:
Barack Obama’s first televised post-election interview gave Sunday night’s “60 Minutes” its biggest audience in at least nine years.
The CBS News program was seen by 24.5 million viewers and earned a 6.4 preliminary adults 18-49 rating. That marks the show’s largest viewership since 1999.
Veteran correspondent Steve Kroft interviewed Obama about a range of domestic and foreign policy issues in the show’s opening 15-minute segment, then he spoke to Obama alongside his wife, Michelle, for two more segments covering how the election has impacted their family. Obama said the government should help the U.S. auto industry and reiterated his plan to pull troops out of Iraq, though the president-elect largely refused to answer questions about his cabinet choices, saying only that announcements would be made “soon.”
“60 Minutes” has been on a ratings roll this season. Last week’s episode interviewing Obama’s top four advisers gave the program its highest audience in a year. Even with Sunday’s record-setting numbers, CBS expects the “Minutes” numbers might get even higher tomorrow when the national ratings are released since some time zones aired the lower-rated “The Amazing Race” during part of the “Minutes” hour.
The most notable characteristics of this interview: (1) Obama was interested in talking about substantive issues rather than indulging in any partisan triumphalism and he stressed how labels such as liberal and conservative won’t matter to him in seeking solutions, (2) the great chemistry between him and his wife Michelle Obama, (3) how different the TONE was in this versus other interviews with many politicians. Obama showed an engaging coolness, quick smile and an at-times playful wit. These three factors could serve him well in the White House.
In the late 20th century acting moved from a theatrical, melodramatic style that didn’t really sound like real people talking to a more natural “method” style that dominates acting today. Is our often pompous politics and the way politicians talk now making a shift, too? Communication is not a small matter. And Obama clearly has the skills.
The independent Russian media is certainly not dead. That is the only conclusion one can draw of this editorial comparison of the leadership styles of President-elect Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, from the Russian newspaper, Gazeta.
The Gazeta editorial not only praises the stake that average Americans have in the political life of the U.S., it frontally attacks recent electoral reforms in Russia that are designed to have the completely opposite effect in their country.
Pointing out that the two young leaders gave major speeches on the same day - Obama his electoral victory speech and Medvedev his first ’state of the union’ address, The Gazeta editorial says in part:
“Except that Obama addressed fifty million supporters who voted for him, while Medvedev spoke to a thousand legislators, governors, and bureaucrats.”
“When Obama repeated time and again, ‘we,’ ‘us,’ ‘our climb,’ ‘our goals,’ regardless of how sincere these words were, his listeners believed them: “we” - this is the people, the citizens of the United States. It is the citizens, the regular people that the new leader appeals to. They’re the ones who now have “the chance to make change.” And the words that “it can’t happen without you” seemed quite obvious to them.
“But Dmitriy Medvedev couldn’t have said in the Kremlin ‘It will not happen without you,’ even to his select audience. Because after all, even this narrow circle would have been too wide for such comments. Decisions here are made by a far smaller number of people. … The individual opinion of an ordinary person (unlike his abstract “rights and freedoms”) is definitely not about to be taken into account by those at the ‘top.’”
A truly extraordinary editorial from what many Westerners consider a completely tamed Russian press.
One of the more rewarding things about showing Americans what the rest of the world thinks about our nation, is to introduce people to newspapers that they would never ordinarily be able to read. For example, how many Americans have ever read a newspaper from the civil-war stricken Portuguese-speaking country of Angola?
This article by Altino Matos of the Jornal de Angola has an interesting take on the election of Barack Obama. While it suggests that the ‘American Media Machine’ chose Obama to alter our global image - it doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that.
“The American communication system, one of the largest in existence, was quick to realize that it had to do something substantial and consistent to save the United States, considering the erosion of its image, which began primarily with wars in Afghanistan Iraq and the Middle East.
“The strategy for recovery had to come from the Democrats, but it couldn’t be based solely on words. It was essential to find a face that could incorporate these words and breathe life into a comprehensive program. In this way, the technocrats found in Barack Obama a man of the multitudes.”
Oh dear. It seems that some of the global media have shifted from being overawed to stating the blindingly obvious - which is not to say, of course, that sometimes the blindingly obvious doesn’t include some very good points.
Papers around the world are picking up on a new “kind” of politics in the election of Obama - something to do with charisma, heightened belief in the importance and possibilities of national government, reduced distance between the theoretically possible and the practically realizable. Many are still trying to draw a lesson for their own nations from America’s choice. It makes for a refreshing change, this shift from eight years of “America shouldn’t be doing this” to “How could we do over here what they just did over there?”
Robert Burns’ most famous quote never gets old: “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursel’s as others see us!”
Below, the latest Obamoid roundup from the translators and aggregators extraordinaires at Watching America
November 10th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
NOTE: Now that the election is over our famous Around The Sphere linkfest reverts to its original form — offering you links from a variety of weblogs, not all of them to political posts. Linked posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
A MUST READ ON OBAMA’S ELECTION:Taylor Owen at Oxblog (one of TMV’s favorite sites.)
The Controversy Among Democrats Over Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Future in the Senate pecking order goes on. But if feelers are any indication, Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to defuse it. Feelings are running high among some Democrats who feel Lieberman really crossed the line.
The Republicans Have A Tiny Problem, Too which is called “losing an election in which the other party’s candidate got more votes than any candidate in history.” And how are they faring? Pajamas Media’s Jennifer Rubin doesn’t think they reacted too well:
Well, in the days following the election they engaged in the same petty, irrelevant. and ultimately self-destructive behavior which got them into the political ditch to begin with.
Let’s start with the petty. The RNC spent its time sending out “oppo” memos as word of President-elect Obama’s White House staff picks (e.g., Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod) came out. “Too partisan!” screamed the press releases. “He’s hiring political people!” Oh, the horror! Not many people in the country, other than staffers at the RNC with too little to do, begrudge the new president selecting competent political advisers, especially ones which proved discreet and capable during the campaign. And even the Wall Street Journal editors were not buying the hysteria — correctly noting that Emanuel was a free trader and economic moderate.
Next, we were treated to the sight of a group of old Washington insiders meeting at a Virginia estate to discuss the future of the GOP. This hardly seemed the way to refreshen, revive, and enliven the party. And by shutting out young conservative bloggers, they ensured that the most significant impact of the confab was to start another intra-party fight.
But much of the week was taken up by former McCain staffers, snooty columnists, and unnamed sources continuing the vendetta against Sarah Palin.
What Do Britney Spears And Sarah Palin Have In Common?This (given the McCain campaign commercial and talk radio hosts’ riffs on celebrity=vapidness, does this means those talk show hosts will oppose her if she runs in 2012 on the grounds that she’s a celebrity?).
Should Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi Keep His Day Job? When is a joke racist?
A Call To Boycott Fox News is now coming from some conservatives. (This MUST be a new era: conservatives and liberals now seem to agree on something.)
November 10th, 2008 By SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
To be an American (unlike being English or French) is precisely to image a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history. — LESLIE FIEDLER
The tears of joy have dried. The stage in Grant Park has been taken down. The celebrations are history. As the dust settles from Election Day 2008 the biggest message is that the 1960s are now officially over. The Baby Boomers have passed the torch. We are finally moving on.
And not a day too soon.
Born in 1947, I am a card-carrying Boomer and very much a product of the 1960s and the dirty little war and enormous social upheaval that decade brought. I am also aware that having been given the wheel a few elections ago, we have blown it bigtime.
To riff on a familiar campaign phrase, are we better off today than we were in 1968? Of course not.
The gap between rich and poor has become a yawning gulf. Main Street is in crisis and now Wall Street, as well. Nearly one in six Americans have no health insurance and access to decent care is becoming more difficult. There has been an erosion of civil liberties at home and rampant saber rattling abroad. The 9/11 attacks could have been a teaching moment, but instead unleashed deep-seated hatreds.
And the failure of old-style liberalism has been as complete as new-style neoconservatism.
