A few items on my reading list this week. I don’t necessarily fault the journalists, but the corporate pressures they are under.
SOME things to watch and discourage in 2008:
Obsequious pandering
Media consolidation
Entertainment-journalism
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Is TIME’s Putin “Person of the Year” Cover Story a Fraudulent Cover Up?
A glaring factual error was apparently edited out of the transcript in an attempt to spare top executives embarrassment over an exchange at the beginning of the recent chat between the Russian leader and Time.Inc editor in chief John Huey, Time managing editor Richard Stengel and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius. [MORE...]
Unfortunately, with all the bad news, phony news, faux news and Fox News out there, it’s all too easy to create a Top Ten Worst Journalism list-maybe even a Top Thousand! But in the spirit of the season, let’s try to be a bit more positive, shall we? In this age of media scams and scandals, of paid opinion and information warfare, of partisan power plays and the corrupt nexus of Big Media and Big Politics, how and where can we find quality news and information we can trust?
Enter NewsTrust.net, a new, not-for-profit social news network dedicated to helping citizens find and share quality news and information online. Guess what? It turns out that there’s lots of good journalism being practiced out there… [MORE...]
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Bill Clinton Is Right [About Campaign Coverage]
“No wonder people think experience is irrelevant. A lot of people covering the race think it is.”– Bill Clinton, December 4, 2007.
He might be the former president of the United States, but when Bill Clinton dared critique the press for the vacuous way it covers campaigns, he got smacked down by the media elites who unleashed their contempt and, fittingly, misstated what Clinton had said.
Such is the state of affairs where, as Clinton noted, campaign issues have faded so far in the rearview mirror for the press that they’ve dipped below the horizon. [MORE...]
Glenn Greenwald, posting on Salon.com wrote on Tuesday:
It is absolutely true that yesterday’s victory in forcing Harry Reid to pull the FISA bill from the Senate floor is temporary. Allies of the administration and lawbreaking telecoms will spend the next several weeks plotting to overcome the obstacles thrown in their path yesterday and, like a weed that has been cut but not uprooted, will return in January to try again…
…The most important value of victories of this sort is that they ought to serve as a potent tonic against defeatism, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And successes like this can and should provide a template for how to continue to strengthen these efforts. Yesterday’s victory, temporary as it is, shouldn’t be over-stated, but it also shouldn’t be minimized. All of it stemmed from the spontaneous passion and anger of hundreds of thousands of individuals demanding that telecoms be subject to the rule of law like everyone else. And this effort could have been — and, with this additional time, still can be — much bigger and stronger still.
Glenn Greenwald, posting on Salon.com wrote on Tuesday:
It is absolutely true that yesterday’s victory in forcing Harry Reid to pull the FISA bill from the Senate floor is temporary. Allies of the administration and lawbreaking telecoms will spend the next several weeks plotting to overcome the obstacles thrown in their path yesterday and, like a weed that has been cut but not uprooted, will return in January to try again…
…The most important value of victories of this sort is that they ought to serve as a potent tonic against defeatism, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And successes like this can and should provide a template for how to continue to strengthen these efforts. Yesterday’s victory, temporary as it is, shouldn’t be over-stated, but it also shouldn’t be minimized. All of it stemmed from the spontaneous passion and anger of hundreds of thousands of individuals demanding that telecoms be subject to the rule of law like everyone else. And this effort could have been — and, with this additional time, still can be — much bigger and stronger still.
It is bewildering to me that a lawyer, and a person of normally good judgment would vote to pass a measure that grants immunity to law breaking telecom companies.
You should have supported Senators Dodd and Finegold in their efforts to bring forward the FISA bill without retroactive immunity.
It seems clear that this is nothing more than another presidential power grab. There is no logic to it otherwise.
Have you actually viewed Dodd’s speach or read the transcript? I suggest you do so:
KEITH OLBERMANN:
“I would like nothing better than to go back and do maybe a sportscast every night. But I think the stuff that I’m talking about is so obvious and will be viewed in such terms of certainty by history that this era will be looked at the way we look now at the — at the presidents and the — the leaders of this country who rolled back reconstruction. I think it’s that obvious. And I think only under those circumstances would I go this far out on a limb and be this vociferous about it.”
(Text courtesy AlterNet) In a revealing interview with Bill Moyers, Keith Olbermann talks about the genesis of his Countdown special comments, how he almost quit his current show in 2003 when MSNBC tried to force him to air and commentary by Mike Savage and also how he has transferred his considerable skills as a sports journalist to covering the world of politics. Part of the trick for Keith was maintaining the same sense of skepticism he did about the star athletes he covered, when covering politicians in Washington.
ChessGames.com has been improving steadily. I recently became a Premium Member and this just showed up in their nifty weekly quasi-random newsletter:     РMP The Chessgames.com Top Ten List
After years of Chessgames.com members filing games away in their game collections, we’ve compiled detailed statistics on which games are considered the most important.
Here are the ten most important chess games of all time, according to our members.
![Vladimir Putin [Photo: TIME Inc.]](http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2007/poy/putin_qa_alt_1231.jpg)
A few items on my reading list this week. I don’t necessarily fault the journalists, but the corporate pressures they are under.
