Jim Naureckas on Secret Alito Tape, Kennedy Smith on Dollar Store Invasion
Will elite news media now suggest we just go back to considering the Supreme Court a neutral body, deserving of life terms because they’re above the fray of politics?
Why Jon Chait Can’t Read
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait calls it an “absurdly lax standard” to count pundits as being pro–regime change if they endorse regime change.
FAIR TV: US Victimology, Equal Time for Torturers and Hypocritical Factchecking Lectures
This week: ABC World News prepared viewers for the Senate report on CIA torture…by warning that its publication could harm Americans. Plus TV news covers the torture report by giving a platform to torture advocates. And a pundit who was dead wrong about the Iraq War shares his thoughts about the need for Rolling Stone to […]
Wrong-on-Iraq Pundit Gives Lessons in Media Accountability
There are reporters at outlets like the Washington Post who raised real questions about Rolling Stone’s story about rape at the University of Virginia. And then are also those like National Review editor Rich Lowry,
The Rolling Stone Cover and the ‘New Ideological Threat’
The cover of Rolling Stone (8/13), featuring a self-portrait of Dzhokhar Tsaernav taken weeks before the Boston bombing, has fueled a strong backlash. Discussing the cover, Fox News‘ Lisa Daftari (7/18/13) said: In the aftermath of 9/11, if you look back over a decade ago, this country had an awakening, an understanding, that we have […]
NYT Pays Tribute to Hastings by Attacking Him After Death
When a journalist dies, how can you tell if they’ve had a career that’s upheld the proudest journalistic traditions of challenging the powerful and fearlessly exposing the truth? The New York Times will attempt to piss on that career in the journalist’s obituary.
Michael Hastings, Bridge-Burning Journalist (1980-2013)
What Tim Dickinson called Hastings’ “enthusiastic breaches of the conventions of access journalism” were what enabled him to report the unguarded assessments of the officers running the occupation of Afghanistan.
The Things That Roger Ailes Fears…
According to Tim Dickinson’s new piece in Rolling Stone, Fox honcho Roger Ailes lives in fear of “those gays”: Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox‘s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that […]
NYT’s John Burns Calls for All the News That’s ‘Necessary to Report’
New York Times London bureau chief John Burns has joined other high-profile reporters (e.g., CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan) in denouncing fellow journalist Michael Hastings. Hastings’ Rolling Stone expose prompted the dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was relieved of his Afghanistan command following Hastings’ revelations that he and some of his aides had […]
McChrystal’s Media Soldiers Strike Back
It’s not that surprising that some in the corporate media, driven either by admiration for ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal or disdain for Rolling Stone‘s scoop, have rushed in to defend or explain away his behavior. In Saturday’s Washington Post (6/26/10), anonymous military sources tell the newspaper that the comments from McChrystal and his staff were […]
Media, Access and McChrystal
There’s been a discussion (some of it neatly summarized on the Daily Show) of elite journalists’ reaction to the explosive comments made by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staffers to Rolling Stone freelancer Michael Hastings. One admission came via a Politico story, captured by NYU’s Jay Rosen (6/24/10): And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would […]
