In 1988, he was TIME’s man of the year and in 1990—for his role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the Man of the Decade. In 1990, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s weighing in on the current crisis. I was curious to see what he had to say.
Before doing so, I thought it would be interesting to start with a ride on the Wayback Pony. It’s instructive to recall how the elder statesmen who emerge to school us in a current crisis were viewed in their glory days. Some younger readers might not remember. Furthermore, the past is not always quite the way we remember it. It was interesting to see how the mainstream media—and is any more mainstream than TIME?—viewed him in the day. (To give further context to what follows, I recommend reading William Kern’s post here.)
In one of his blogs this week, Jack Cafferty of CNN asked the ominous question, “What happened to the Clintons?” Well, I for one can’t wait for the fireworks to start at the Democratic National Convention. For those of you who think Hillary and Bill Clinton are going to peacefully surrender to Obama, I’ve got some Eskimos who are looking to buy some ice.
For the first time in over three decades, I will be glued in front of the television for the first three days of the convention. The first ballot is sure to be a made-for-television moment. I talked to a Clinton delegate here in Maryland and he told me that they have been instructed to vote for Hillary on the first ballot. To make things more interesting, there is a movement to swing 160 delegates from Obama to Clinton. If that occurs, Clinton could re-establish her campaign and face John McCain in the fall.
The group, P.U.M.A (Party Unity My A**) claims that 15 delegates have switched from Obama to Clinton in July. There is still the possibility of a floor convention vote to fully-seat the delegates of Michigan and Florida which would benefit Senator Clinton. Finally, the Obama flip-flop on the FISA bill has not been well received by the more liberal segments of the Democratic faithful.
The Democratic Convention may be shaping up as the O.K. Corral, Part Two. The weapons will be delegate votes instead of Colt Peacemakers. Where are the Clintons? They are patiently waiting for Denver. The only question is: will it be an easy nomination for Obama or one of the grandest political ambushes ever pulled off…on the voting floor of the Convention.
Although I sometimes see a story that makes me wonder, I have not generally been one to obsess over media biases against Republicans or the political right.
I recognize that the news media today is a business and that the basic rule is to go after any juicy scandal. My basic view has been that perhaps personal biases sometimes cause the reporter to lean to a Republican scandal versus a Democratic one but that if its a juicy story they will go after anyone.
However in the past couple of weeks I have seen some things that make me want to reexamine this position. The news media has taken some steps that seem to really step beyond just some minor slipups to some fairly serious bias against Senator McCain and the Republicans in general.
One of the biggest examples of this has been the reaction to Senator Obama’s trip to Iraq. All three network anchors (NBC/CBS/ABC) are along for the trip along with over 200 other reporters. They are covering every step of the trip as if it were a major Presidential summit.
Now I certainly understand that you need to cover this story, he is likely to be the next President and this is a major foreign policy trip. But do you really need to send all of the anchors ? The only times I’ve seen all of the anchors travel together in the past has been during events like 9/11, Katrina and the like. It doesn’t seem like this quite rises to that level.
In addition, we can look at what the media did when Senator McCain took a trip to Iraq (in fact he has taken several trips recently). The media reaction there was considerably understated. No anchors went with him, the stories didn’t even lead the news that night. In fact there was less coverage on all three networks combined than there has been on one network for Obama.
As I said above, I certainly understand the desire to cover Obama since he is the presumptive Democratic nominee. I even understand that perhaps he is a newer story. But the level of difference between the McCain coverage and the Obama coverage is well beyond what would seem reasonable.
For example, the New York Times recently carried an editorial on Iraq written by Senator Obama. Senator McCain wrote one in response and the Times refused to publish it. They contend it is because they don’t like the content of the article.
Now as far as I know they did not impose similar requirements on Obama and do we really believe that if the situation was reversed that they would reject Obama’s response editorial ?
Outside the election campaign there has also been some interesting content to the reporting on oil prices and the stock market.
Needless to say both issues are very important and I certainly understand that when oil prices surge or stock prices sag that it is very significant to the viewers. Perhaps all of the special reports and breaking news were a bit of overkill but I chalk that up to media hype rather than bias.
But when the trend was in the favor of the public (IE Oil prices dropping or Stock prices surging) then the media did not simply tone things down they reversed them drastically.
Oil price increases were reported by CNN as ‘Oil prices spike drastically’ while equal drops in prices were reported as ‘Slight reductions in price’ or by MSNBC as ‘Drops that are probably temporary’.
The same thing happened when the stock market prices improved. When the stocks slumped we had special reports about the plunging markets and the horrible effects it would have on retirement plans.
When they improved the reports focused on the fact that in the long term the market was ‘bound to’ slump (CNN) or on ABC we were told that the ’slight gains’ did not erase the losses.
What ABC didn’t tell you is they were comparing one day worth of gains to one month worth of losses (unless you read the fine print at the bottom of the screen).
Now I can accept that some of this is simply the result of the media liking to report bad news because they think it is better for ratings. But when you combine all of the reports on all of the networks it becomes a question mark.
Although I am still not sold on a vast media conspiracy (either left or right), when you look specifically to the Obama/McCain race I think it is pretty hard at this point to deny that Saturday Night Live got it right. The media is ‘in the tank’ for Obama. I would like to see them prove me wrong but I doubt that they will.
When Barack Obama pointed out recently that Americans should - in their own interest - teach their children Spanish or some other second language, many were quick to pounce.
But, not surprisingly, people in South America wholeheartedly agree with him.
“The percentage of people in the United States who master a foreign-language is pathetic compared to other wealthy countries. … Obama is right, although it would’ve been nice if he himself spoke Spanish or some other language. … a recent survey taken in 27 countries of the European Union revealed that 56 percent of Europeans speak at least one language apart from their native tongue, which is an increase of 53 percent over five years ago.”
After a long, candid and public battle with colon cancer, former White House press secretary and radio talk-show host Tony Snow died early this morning.
Immediate details were sketchy. But the news bulletin moved shortly after 7 a.m. Eastern time. Snow was 53.
He previously served as chief speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and as a frequent host on the Fox News Channel on Fox News Sunday, Weekend Live and The O’Reilly Factor.
He also guest-hosted for Rush Limbaugh and had his own radio talk-show.
Last September after 17 months in the White House job Snow retired as President George W. Bush’s third press secretary, saying with his cancer he needed to earn more for his family than the job’s $168,000 salary. He was succeeded by Dana Perino.
Tributes are likely going to pour in about Snow, but not just from Republicans.
Snow was a public figure who truly seemed to have fun at his job and did it well. He was the quintessential broadcasting pro who put a professional TV face on the White House point of view. Not all people who leave the job as press secretary do so with their integrity intact — particularly not those who’ve left administrations suffering Grand Canyon-like credibility gaps. But if Snow didn’t leave with his reputation as pure as snow, he left it unbattered unbruised and unbowed.
He took over the job and immediately got rave reviews from both the press and Republican partisans and begrudging comments from many Democrats. The reason: he took over from the hapless Scott McClellan who often looked like he was undergoing a root canal while answering press questions. Snow seemed to be either having fun or setting the record straight (even when it was spin).
Fox News, the impressively-successful answer to years of charges from conservatives that the “liberal media” didn’t give Republicans in general and conservatives in particular a fair shake, has ridden high during the Bush years. But now there are signs that, as goes George Bush, so does Fox News‘ hold on seemingly-easy news ratings dominance.
When prime-time cable news ratings for the second quarter of 2008 are officially released next week, they will show that Fox News reclaimed the top spot among viewers in their mid-20s through mid-50s, those of greatest interest to news advertisers, according to estimates from Nielsen Media Research.
During the first three months of the year, by contrast, CNN drew so many viewers on big Democratic primary nights and for several presidential debates that it vaulted over Fox News for the first time in six years.
But the back-and-forth these last few months masks a more ominous trend for Fox News, particularly as its gears up to cover the general election campaign. The most dominant cable news channel for nearly a decade and a political force in its own right, Fox has seen its once formidable advantage over CNN erode in this presidential election year, as both CNN and MSNBC have added viewers at far more dramatic rates.
Growth and demographics are the name of the game in the TV biz. One of the most (in)famous examples was in the early 1970s when CBS axed a batch of high-rated programs including those of then-top comedians and popular rural comedies because demographics showed their audiences were older and their ratings on borrowed time.
The Times notes that the other cable news networks — CNN (which is now portraying itself as the news network that reports both sides) and MSNBC (which is now getting the reputation of being the anti-Fox, offering mostly progressively-inclined political talk and mostly NBC news) — are showing growth that Fox is not.
In the first five-and-a-half months of 2004, the last presidential election year, Fox’s prime-time audience among viewers aged 25 to 54 was more than double that of CNN’s — 530,000 to 248,000, according to estimates from Nielsen Media Research. This year, through mid-June, CNN erased the gap and drew nearly as many viewers in that demographic category as Fox — about 420,000 for CNN to 440,000 for Fox.
Meanwhile, CNN has added 170,000 viewers a night, on average, when compared with the last presidential year, while Fox has shed about 90,000, according to Nielsen. (MSNBC, which added 181,000 viewers in that audience, much of it courtesy of gains by “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” still lagged in third place, with 303,000.)
And here’s the bottom line:
While Fox News remains the most-watched cable news channel over all — it has been attracting an average of nearly 2 million viewers each weeknight this year, compared to 1.3 million for CNN and 805,000 for MSNBC — its momentum has effectively stalled, at least when measured over years past. The overall prime-time audiences watching CNN and MSNBC, by contrast, have each grown by more than 50 percent this year, when measured against the same period last year, while Fox’s has increased by 10 percent, according to Nielsen. (The New York Times and NBC News, the parent of MSNBC, share some resources in covering political news.)
There are several ways of looking at this.
If the mood of the electorate and audiences truly sour on Republican presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain, and with gas prices soaring (and predicted to reach $7 a gallon within the next two years), CNN could keep adding viewers turned off by Fox’s inclination and MSNBC could keep making modest gains.
But, even so, all is not lost for Fox. Think of how Fox viewership could soar in the wake of an Obama victory if Obama doesn’t deliver on promises (and proves to be another Jimmy Carter) or DOES deliver on promises (and proves to be an effective center or center-left Democratic politician) and upsets conservative Republicans.
All three networks have turned into compelling networks to watch in terms of how they package news, pace political discussion, and promote their programs. So the race is on — but with an increasingly large number of Americans souring on Bush and the party that as administered the federal government for some 8 years, it may be that Fox News will have more trouble building its audience as viewers are less interested in watching overt and covert cheerleaders for Republicans.
“In light of what has happened since 2003, it’s easy to say today that some examples of the always admired American press (The New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, and others) could have been more critical … But in this debate, it’s just as easy to lose sight of the kind of ‘collective psychological moment’ so detectable in the United States in the months that followed the attacks of September 11. In this very complex field of the relationship between means of communication and the public - in which only those without their thinking caps on would claim is a one-way street - one can also say that today, some of the main organs of the American press mirror rather than mold behavior.”
Did CNN host Jack Cafferty overstep his bounds as a TV commentator when he called Chinese-made products “junk” and referred to China’s un-elected rulers as “goons and things?’ As this report from China’s tightly-controlled Xinhua news service makes clear, Beijing’s rulers decreed that he had, and have ultimately brought CNN - that supposed bastion of the modern Western media - to heel …
May 15, 2008
People’s Republic of China- Xinhua - Original Article (English)
CNN President Jim Walton has apologized for insulting remarks made by CNN commentator Jack Cafferty on China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said here on Thursday.
“On behalf of CNN I’d like to apologize to the Chinese people for that,” said Walton in a letter to the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzhong, according to Qin.
Walton also said, “CNN has the highest respect for Chinese people around the world and we have no doubt that there was genuine offense felt by them over the Jack Cafferty commentary.”
In early April, Cafferty said during a live broadcast that Chinese products were “junk” and that the Chinese were “basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.”
As a result of complaints from China, CNN in April issued a statement saying “it was not Mr. Cafferty’s nor CNN’s intent to cause offense to the Chinese people, and CNN would apologize to anyone who has interpreted the comments in this way.”
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of Beijing’s campaign against the Western media.
This was quite a week — and not just because of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. It was a week when there were two TV moments when you could seemingly watch and hear the Democratic party starting to split.
First, brace yourself for Clinton supporter and strategist Paul Begala clashing with uncommitted superdelegate and former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile. In her devastating recent Wall Street Journal column on Hillary Clinton titled Damsel of Distress, Peggy Noonan wrote of this piece of video:
The Democratic Party can’t celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown. You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender.
Here’s the first place an outsider could see the tensions that have taken hold: on CNN Tuesday night, in the famous Brazile-Begala smackdown. Paul Begala wore the smile of the 1990s, the one in which there is no connection between the shape of the mouth and what the mouth says. All is mask. Donna Brazile was having none of it.
Next, there was Clinton backer (and occasional Huffington Post contributor) Lanny Davis, who felt he was treated shabbily by a CNN panel that he felt was stacked with people who favored Obama (you’ll see Brazile again). Details about his side of the behind-the-scenes story are HERE.
But you could again hear the riiiiiiiiiip. Watch this TPM montage and judge for yourself:
My take on it? I think Noonan’s piece, which contains some original reporting, sounds right on the dime.
She explains a lot of what is going on, and what is NOT going on and why. What seems clear from this is that the same attitude George Bush has shown in trying to impose his will on the legislative and executive branches, is what the Clinton campaign is now showing in its attitude towards the Democratic party and its long range goals — not just of winning an election but of burnishing its Big Tent, keeping that Big Tent stable, and opening it up, so more more people can pour in.
Davis? He tried making his case and clearly felt outnumbered.
And Begala? He talked about inclusion at the end, but his words meshed with the controversy later in the week centering on Clinton’s comments about her getting more white votes.
Begala was old-school divide and rule politics delivered with a pasted-on smile.
One must hand it to the Beijing authorities. It takes tremendous gall for a regime that outlaws press freedom or open criticism of any kind, to liken the failure of Western reporters to parrot the Communist Party line to a lapse of journalistic ethics.
Yet another study finds Democrats and Republicans going to our separate media corners. This one from University of Georgia associate professor of journalism Barry Hollander as reported by the AJC’s Political Insider:
What he documented was a quiet stampede.
In 1998, 27 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats tuned in regularly to Atlanta-based CNN. Eight years later, the number of Democrats had risen to 29 percent.
But the number of Republicans who tuned in to CNN had shrunk to 19 percent. Gosh, where do you think they went?
Over the same period, Fox News’ share of Republican viewers jumped from 14 to 36 percent.
Hollander documented a media shift among Democrats to friendly sources, too, but the most dramatic change has occurred among Republicans. And, possibly, among more casual consumers of news.
“Republicans have dramatically dropped news sources that they perceive as being biased against their position. They’ve completely fled into Fox and have left CNN, broadcast news and all the others,” Hollander said.
Outrage over alleged liberalism could explain this, except for one inconvenient fact. Republicans, Hollander said, have even dropped C-SPAN, which — because of its verbatim approach — is widely considered neutral in content.
Something larger is happening, the University of Georgia professor asserts. “People have always hung out with people like themselves,” Hollander said. The water-cooler world that most people live in is a huge echo chamber of attitudes and ideas.
“It was always thought that the media was the savior in this,” Hollander said.
Of course, “always” is a relative term. And some of us don’t want or need a big media “savior.”
Hollander comes from a very particular media biastradition. His concerns are clear and sincere, this from the university press release for the study:
Television news audiences are divided along party lines like never before, according to a new University of Georgia study that warns the trend may have damaging consequences for political discourse and democracy in America.
“Ideology and partisanship used to be completely unrelated to the television news people consumed,” said study author Barry Hollander, associate professor of journalism in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. “But they’ve become significant factors in the last five years.”
Hollander sounds certain that ideology and partisanship are bad and that certainty is the received wisdom of the day. But if we go back in history, say, to a time before journalism schools… Read the rest of this entry »
“The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect Read the rest of this entry »
Does a dictatorship that has outlawed freedom of the press have the standing to criticize the ‘journalistic ethics’ of American reporters? That is the question one must grapple with when reading through Beijing’s latest blistering attack against CNN host Jack Cafferty ‘and his ilk’ for referring to the Chinese regime as ‘goons and thugs’ and calling Chinese goods ‘junk.’ Paradoxically, now the Chinese authorities appear to be criticizing Washington Read the rest of this entry »
Dang writes, “Harboring hatred for China’s development, the Caffertys of the world have assaulted, slandered, framed and spread rumors over recent years, and now they have finally - nakedly - come to the fore.” Beijing’s assault on the Western media shows no sign of abating.
By Ding Gang*
April 17, 2008
People’s Republic of China - People’s Daily - Original Article (English)
On April 9, when CNN broadcast the news on the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, its host Jack Catterty remarked that Chinese products are “junk” Read the rest of this entry »
CNN has been running a series called “Empowered Patient”. The latest installment is entitled How to find the best ER for your child. I feel that this article is seriously out of touch with the way most Americans interact with the health care system in general, let alone the Emergency Department of a hospital.
Most of us choose a hospital based on one of two criteria: it is the hospital our insurance will pay for; or it is the hospital closest to the scene of the accident. Even those of us who have thought about choice of hospital before needing the Emergency Department — it’s not just a “room” anymore — realize that in a real emergency, the kind that could actually result in death, the closest care is usually the best care. In a “sort of” emergency, we have the luxury of considering other factors, such as “how am I going to pay for this” or “what is the hospital’s reputation” or even “do they have a pediatrician on call”.
That being said, the author does have a few good tips for dealing with any medical emergency, not just those involving children: keep a list of current medications (better yet, throw it all in a bag and take it with you); bring something to entertain yourself and anyone who will be stuck waiting with you if you have the time to do so; if you have a chronically ill family member, it is a good idea to keep a “hospital bag” of stuff including the patient’s medical history; if you are leaving a child in someone else’s care, make sure they have a “consent to treatment” form or letter with your signature on it; if you suspect poisoning, bring the poison with you; and finally, call your regular physician on the way to the hospital. Assuming, of course, that you have one.
March 9th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Set your recorder, or watch in person: Joe Gandelman, our Editor in Chief of The Moderate Voice, will be on television at approximately 6:30 PM EST today, Sunday March 9, 2008.
That’s 6:30 PM Eastern Time
5:30 PM Central Time
4:30 PM Mountain Standard Time
3:30 PM Pacific Time
CNN is doing a segment called Blog Buzz, and they’ve selected a blogger on the right, on the left, and in the center… which is where Joe will be as he is formally an Independent, like Dr. E and a few others here at TMV are also.
The CNN segment will last about 4 or 5 minutes. Joe makes no bones about being fed up with negative campaigning and has done posts on that — and that’s said to be one of CNN’s main topics for this evening.
If someone knows how to make a video of Joe on CNN (old tech, old school person please apply), please let us know, and we will post it at TMV.
Last week’s Chelsea Clinton furor marks a low point in cable network competition for eyeballs and ears during the 24/7 news cycle and raises broader questions about their prime-time “journalism,” which has degenerated into a babble of idiot ids vying for attention.
David Shuster’s “pimped out” remark exemplifies a trend reported almost a year ago by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, that “cable news channels…are moving more toward personalities, often opinionated ones, to win audiences.
“The most strident voices, such as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, are among the biggest successes in winning viewers, as is CNN’s new crusader, Lou Dobbs. How much those individual shows affect a channel’s overall audience is harder to gauge. Their growth in 2006 was substantial, particularly among 25-to-54-year-olds, but those gains were not enough to stanch the overall declines.
“The shifts toward even edgier opinion are also probably a response to another change. Cable is beginning to lose its claim as the primary destination for what was once its main appeal: news on demand. That is something the Internet can now provide more efficiently.”
The Partnership and the Sierra Club Foundation have long planned to hold a presidential debate at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Feb. 28, just five days before the March 4 Texas primary.
MSNBC has promised to air the event, with NBC News Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert as moderator.
The plan calls for the remaining Democratic candidates to face off in one session, with the Republicans going at it in a separate debate that same evening — assuming no candidate has clinched a party nomination by then.
…
The organizers of the Houston forum already changed their date once, after failing to to lure the candidates to the Bayou City as originally planned on Nov. 13.
Then on Thursday, CNN announced plans to hold a Democratic debate in Ohio on Feb. 27, followed by a GOP forum on Feb. 28. Like Texas, Ohio holds its primary on March 4.
CNN plans to team up with the Ohio Democratic and Republican parties to host the events. CNN did not say where in Ohio its debates would be held.
As of late Friday, nobody had agreed to reschedule, setting the stage for dueling debates.
Hmm - who will cry uncle? Who will make whom cry uncle?
France and the United States could be characterized as two nations separated by their definition of the word ‘liberal.’ This, among other things, can be gleaned by reading this op-ed article from France’s Le Monde newspaper on the this week’s Florida primary.
By Dominique Dhombres
Translated By Kate Davis
January 30, 2008
France - Le Monde - Original Article (French)
The adjective “liberal” is an extremely grave insult on the French left. The same is true among Republican candidates in the race for the White House. This is what one could have learned by watching the Republican primary from Florida on CNN, on Tuesday, January 29. “You’re a liberal,” said Mitt Romney of his rival, John McCain. “No, you’re the liberal!” McCain responded. In fact, in France the word has a nearly the opposite meaning that it has in the United States.
Here [in France] it means being a staunch supporter of the market economy. There [in the U.S.], it means being a defender of a certain amount of government intervention to protect the poorest. Mitt Romney accuses John McCain of not being firm enough in confronting illegal immigration. John McCain tirelessly repeats that Mitt Romney raised taxes when he was governor of Massachusetts. On Tuesday, Republican voters in Florida decisively chose McCain, the former Vietnam soldier, who clearly savored his victory. His was often written off for dead during the primary campaign, but is more present now than ever, he has said. The big loser in Florida was Rudolf Giuliani, Read the rest of this entry »
![[Het Parool, The Netherlands]](http://www.parool.nl/columnisten/joep_bertrams/beeld/041608-doodstraf.jpg)
![[Le Temps, Switzerland]](http://worldmeets.us/images/supergiuliani_letemps.gif)
