Covering Weiner
“We shouldn’t even be wasting our time talking about Anthony Weiner,” the pundits say– and then they continue to talk about him anyway.
FAIR TV: Misremembering Thatcher, Cutting Social Security, Hillary Clinton’s Hair
Media remember Margaret Thatcher for turning around Britain’s economy. But do the numbers tell a different story? Also: Barack Obama’s plan to cut Social Security and Medicare is inexplicably deemed a move to the “center,” and pundits are monitoring the 2016 election by paying close attention to… Hillary Clinton’s haircut?
FAIR TV: Big Papers Withhold News, Curious ‘Confirmation’ of Israeli Gov’t Claims, 60 Minutes Plays Softball
This week on FAIR TV we take a look at the the “informal arrangement” between several media outlets–including the New York Times and the Washington Post– to not report news about a CIA drone base.
We also talk about the curious standard for “confirming” news from Israeli government officials, and we take a look at the 60 Minutes softball interview with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
60 Minutes Plays Softball With Obama and Clinton
At the top of his 60 Minutes interview with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Steve Kroft declares, “The White House offered us 30 minutes, barely enough time to scratch the surface of their complicated personal and professional relationship, let alone discuss their policies.” Apparently what that meant was, “So I didn’t bother to ask them about that policy stuff.”
This Just In: Hillary Clinton’s Scrunchie
Take my word for it. Diane Sawyer, ABC World News (6/21/12): And now to the ongoing master class in letting your hair down, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.These past few months, we’ve been watching her swig a beer, brandish a scrunchie without apology, and makeup free and telling everybody she doesn’t care what they […]
Hillary Clinton’s Iran Weapons Lie Is ‘Tough Talk’
Covering Hillary Clinton’s trip to India, USA Today‘s Richard Wolf writes (5/8/12): Fielding rapid-fire questions at a town-hall-style event in Kolkata, she denounced Iran’s nuclear arms program and urged India to reduce its Iranian oil imports further. “We appreciate what has been done, and of course we want to keep the pressure on Iran,” she […]
Inevitable Presidential Nominees, Then and Now
With all the chatter about the inevitability of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination, it might be useful to recall the last time the media were sending the same message about an early favorite, at least according to the national polls: Democratic Nomination Preferences Oct. 4-7, 2007 Gallup Poll Candidate % Support Hillary Clinton 47 […]
June 2007 Flashback: The Clinton/Giuliani Election
I noticed a few stories in today’s USA Today (6/13/11) about supposed Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. There will be plenty more of this to come–horserace commentary based on polling that’s being done in order to give journalists a reason to talk about one candidate more than another, which candidate has “momentum” and so on. It’s […]
Hillary in Cambodia
It’s probably better for American political leaders that we forget the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves,” was how Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it in 1970 (NY Times, 5/27/04), reflecting Richard Nixon’s concern that the large-scale aerial bombing wasn’t doing enough damage. […]
WSJ ‘Scumbag’ Columnist Gets Predictably Slimy
Noticing that Democratic strategist Mark Penn “is the Wall Street Journal‘s ‘Microtrend’-spotting columnist” and “also CEO of PR giant Burson-Marsteller,” Gawker blogger Hamilton Nolan (8/26/09) posits that “only a scumbag would abuse the former to drum up business for the latter.” Alas, “Scumbag spotted!” is Nolan’s cry when writing that Penn’s latest (old, and none […]
Hillary Clinton and ‘Celebrity Coverage’
The dominant story from Hillary Clinton’s trip to Africa was not her comments about combating rape and sexual violence in Congo. No, the top story was Clinton’s testy response to a question about what her husband thought of Chinese business interests in Kenya Congo. That exchange prompted a whole story in today’s New York Times […]
WaPo ‘Screw-You’ Video Follows ‘Mad Bitch’ Offense
Guest Women In Media & News blogger Adele M. Stan (8/5/09) has some more to say about the WashingtonPost.com‘s “now-infamous ‘Mad Bitch’ video”: Last Friday, Talking Points Memo‘s Brian Beutler shone a light on a video produced by the Washington Post that featured one of the two columnists hosting the piece suggesting that, at a […]
Snarky WaPo-er ‘Surprised by the Ferocity out There’
Howard Kurtz recently offered fellow Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza a chance to apologize for having, in an online Post feature, “implied Hillary Clinton was a ‘bitch.’” But American Prospect‘s Tapped blogger Adam Serwer (8/5/09) has a question regarding Milbank’s aside that “it’s a brutal world out there in the blogosphere…. I’m […]
DNI Contradicts Obama Iran Claims: Where Is the Press?
Corporate media outlets treat U.S. intelligence agencies with solemn reverence when those agencies are reinforcing official views about American enemies and friends. This is true even when the same media outlets are duped by intelligence agencies time and again. But stray from the nationalist straight and narrow, and these otherwise respected sources risk becoming invisible, […]
Beyond Clinton & Palin
With Sen. Hillary Clinton’s historic bid for the presidency and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s subsequent VP nomination on the GOP ticket, women were in the national spotlight in the 2008 election as never before. But while Clinton and Palin generated a good deal of media discussion around the problems facing female candidates, coverage of women […]
USA Today Sees Obama Cabinet Diversity
The headline (and subhead) in today’s print edition: National Security Team Would Be Diverse Mix Obama Picks Span Eras; Some Espouse More Centrist Views And what, exactly, makes for a “diverse mix?” Holding “moderate” views against a troop withdrawal from Iraq, apparently: Obama’s latest picks would give him a foreign policy team with a moderate […]
Hawks and ‘Naive’ Doves
On Fox News Sunday (11/16/08), NPR reporter Mara Liasson offered her take (which was essentially the same as neo-con co-panelist Bill Kristol) on why picking Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State would be good for Barack Obama: In terms of Obama, I think he wants–it would send a lot of important signals. Number one, she […]
Palin and the Misquoted Coffee Cup
Here’s Sarah Palin misquoting her coffee cup: I’m reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, okay? The quote of the day…. It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador…. Now she said it, I didn’t. She said, “There’s a place in Hell reserved for women who don’t support other women.” It’s […]
Obama, Clinton and Anger to Burn
In politics, as in so many other aspects of life, anger is a combustible fuel. Affirmed and titrated, it helps us move forward. Suppressed or self-indulged, it’s likely to blow up in our faces. With the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination coming to a close, there’s plenty of anger in the air. And […]
Misogyny’s Greatest Hits
It may have been the first time an audience heckler yelled “Iron my shirt!” at a United States senator (AP, 1/7/08), as well as the first time a presidential candidate has had a pair of nutcrackers fashioned in her likeness (New York Post, 9/7/07). Sen. Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic nomination has been fraught […]
