AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers
Chavez squandered his nation’s oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world’s tallest building.
Jim Naureckas
CNN’s Recipe for Italy: Austerity—No Matter What
CNN.com had an odd piece of analysis of the Italian election results, arguing that austerity “is necessary by any calculation to actually start moving Italy out of the recession.” That’s not the calculation of Paul Krugman, who for what its worth is a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Forget Objectivity—Can We Have a Fact-Based Media?
There is no objective evidence that allowing two people of the same gender to marry will harm mixed-gender marriages. So you might think objective reporting would treat that assertion as a dubious claim.
When You’re Cutting Social Security, ‘Wealthy’ Begins at $25K
Here’s a proposal for Social Security that was on the New York Times‘ op-ed page yesterday (2/20/13): The top third of beneficiaries (by lifetime income) [would] receive no annual cost-of-living adjustment in retirement. The middle third would get half of today’s adjustment, and the bottom third would receive the same annual increase they do now. […]
Why Does a Climatologist Need to Explain Economics to Joe Nocera?
NASA climatologist James Hansen has tried to explain to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera why he’s so wrong about the tar sands, but Nocera’s account of their argument makes it seem like explaining anything to him would be an uphill battle.
If There’s a ‘War Against Boys,’ Why Are Men Still Winning?
Christina Hoff Sommers, who played a starring role in the anti-feminist backlash of the 1990s, is back again with a new edition of her book The War Against Boys. Originally subtitled How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men, it’s now relabeled How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men; she now stresses–in a major […]
Milbank Looks Forward to ‘Bleak Times’ Ahead
Why do we need “serious spending cuts”? Milbank assumes the answer is so obvious that it need not be explained–everyone knows the more cuts, the better. All the serious people, anyway.
AP Decides Your Husband or Wife Might Not Be
AP’s intention was presumably to remain neutral on the issue of marriage equality–but its initial policy did take a position, indicating that no matter what their state government says, AP was not going to consider legally married same-sex couples to be really married.
At Beliefnet, ‘Everyone’ Doesn’t Include Feminists
The religious-themed website Beliefnet bills itself as offering “something for everyone” with a “broad editorial point of view.” Unfortunately, as playwright and pastor Kristine Holmgren found when she was offered a chance to blog there, in Beliefnet’s eyes, “everyone” does not include feminists.
Why Do Poor People Living in an Abandoned Skyscraper So Outrage the New Yorker?
It seems like for the New Yorker, rising standards of living for the poor don’t matter much when weighed against the fact that rich people lost some property they weren’t using.
NYT Leaves Readers High and Dry on Causes of Mississippi Drought
Nowhere in the New York Times’ discussion of the reaction to what an accompanying graphic calls the “historic drought in 2012” is there any mention of what is changing our history: the climate change caused by global warming brought on by human alteration of Earth’s atmosphere.
Copyright for People, Not for Publishers
“Misinterpreting Copyright: A Series of Errors,” an essay by Richard Stallman, is one of the best explanations I’ve seen for what’s wrong with the way we think about copyright. The main idea is that the when the U.S. Constitution authorized copyright laws, it did so on the basis that it is “not a natural right of authors, but an artificial concession made to them for the sake of progress.”
Ignoring Climate Change When It Stares You in the Face
NBC Nightly News asked a serious question the other night–and then gave a not-so-serious answer: Why it is so cold where it should be warm, and so warm where it should be cold? What is going on with all this extreme weather?” Its answer was true as far as it went–but it didn’t go any farther.
Brennan’s Support for Torture Is Not an ‘Accusation’
Reporting on the news that President Barack Obama plans to nominate his terrorism adviser John Brennan to be head of the CIA, the New York Times writes that critics had been “claiming that…Brennan had supported, or at least had failed to stop, the use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding.”
That Brennan was a torture supporter is not a claim, though–it’s a matter of public record.
Journalists Back on the Chained Gang
Don’t expect much help from corporate media on understanding the “Chained CPI,” because selling the “grand bargain” requires citizens not really knowing what this part of the deal entails.
Meet the Press’s Uncharacteristic Enthusiasm for Balance
Meet the Press’s David Gregory (12/16/12) seemed really proud of how hard his show worked to try to get a pro-gun viewpoint on the air to talk about the Newtown massacre. Funny, Gregory doesn’t always make that much of an effort to balance his panels.
You Think You’re Getting Social Security But You’re Not, Says Multimillionaire Banker
What should the U.S. do about the so-called “fiscal cliff”? Who better to ask than Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, “one of the world’s most influential bankers”? That’s what CBS Evening News must have been thinking, anyway, when they did a segment last night (11/19/12) all about Blankfein’s opinions. CBS‘s Scott Pelley began: “When we […]
The People Have Spoken: Benghazi, Not Afghanistan
At the end of ABC‘s This Week (11/18/12), Martha Raddatz presented a brief viewer-mail segment: And finally, “Your Voice This Week.” Today’s question comes from Cheryl Robinson, who writes, “What happened in Benghazi was terribly tragic, and now we’re hearing of another Middle Eastern war on the brick. Let us and you, the media, not […]
NYT Reports: In Wyoming, Tradition of White People Complaining About Black People Alive and Well
“In Wyoming, Conservatives Feeling Left Behind” is the headline on a report by the New York Times‘ Jack Healy (11/19/12) on how “since the election, a blanket of baffled worry has descended on conservatives here like early snow across the plains, deepening a sense that traditional, rural and overwhelmingly white states in the center of […]
Fox’s ‘Best Journalistic Instincts’ Are Nothing to Write Home About
New York Times media reporter David Carr (11/12/12) had some kind words for Fox News Channel‘s Election Night coverage: On Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or […]
