a small item of news about Iran:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/09/news/iran.php

note the last paragraph. I do hope the Democrats get their act together before that March meeting.

oops, sorry. I didn't mean to hijack the thread right up top.

C'mon, Kevin, this story is a Roger Ailes exclusive. Give the man a link.

Ok already! My parents didn't know I was going to run for President when they named me! I have now officially changed my name.

McCain is a saint, though -- so very honest and straight-talking!

Last week, as I read the many posts about the Edwards Blogger saga, it seemed that the story with in the story was how the voices of the Right get play so quickly and thoroughly in the MSM. While others are quick to ascribe fell motives to the press, I tend to think it’s more about convenience and possibly inexcusable laziness.

Bill Donohue and his ilk no doubt have the Blackberry numbers of key reporters, producers and editors. When it is time to move on a story, they do effectively. I have not seen evidence of a liberal analog to this.

Until we get opinion leaders whose outreach is as persistent and omnipresent as folks like Donohue, our story will always be under reported.

Kevin...Do ya want to be our Bill Donohue?

Kevin - Come on man I can't believe you continue to give this dog crap air. The Pubbies have nothing, just as they had nothing in the 90's. You allow them to perpetuate this turd of a story with these kind of posts. STOP.

With all respect to Avedon Carol, what did Roger Ailes not return your phone call?

In my work and in my everyday I always give credit to the people or things that inspire me. It seems fundamental to any claim of intellectual honesty and places my ideas in the continuity of discourse from where they originated.

That these people don't seem to share the same sense of community that I take for granted is chilling, to say the least.

-

Ahab: Ailes is linked in the excerpt from Avedon. This is definitely his story, but it was Avedon's post that spurred my broader comment, so that's what I excerpted. Certainly no slight intended to Roger.

Well, it's because Democrat politicians are naturally corrupt. How can you tell they're lying, deceitful fascists? Because they exist.

It's safer to just assume something is wrong with them, even if it isn't, because if it isn't true now, it probably will be anyway. There's no such thing as an undeserved smear of a Democrat politician.

In fact, to keep our country safe, if you don't know something bad about a Democrat, make something up.

Because if you give a Democrat any power, the next thing you know, they'll start unnecessary wars, deplete the whole treasury, wreck the functioning of government, and politicize every bureacracy in sight.

Actually, don't you need to be transparent and explain why you linked to Carol and not Ailes?

mhr, what the hell are you blabbing on about?

Here we have the latest wrinkle in astroturfing: now it's online! You need to take the pulse of the populace? With a couple of instant blogs you can have immediate documentation of what the people are thinking. Sort of. It's like reporting -- but without any of the tedious effort.

And here I thought newspaper people were supposed to have standards while bloggers were irresponsible gossip-mongers. Hard to see a distinction right now.

The Allen piece was sheer idiocy. In it, he trots out 4 items that will supposedly be Obama's undoing. The first two? "Inexperience" & an "anemic policy record."

I distinctly remember him saying the same thing about Bush in '99/'00.

No, wait a minute... that was someone else.

Where do these fucking morons come from?

Actually, don't you need to be transparent and explain how you answered my question before I even asked it?

chaunceyatrest - Because George W. Bush came from a good family, that's why. Some people just make better decisions than others...

Jerry: Actually, no. That's part of my point. Blogs have a natural tendency to be better about attribution because we link to our sources, and you can normally assume that the main link is where the idea came from. In this case, I was reading Avedon's blog and then followed it back to Roger. It was Avedon who prompted me to write my comments. However, credit where it's due, and I've added a line to the post to make sure Roger gets his props.

Now, obviously this is different from a reporter writing a news story rather than responding to something that someone else wrote. Still, more transparency would be helpful in all cases. Bloggers could stand to be better on this, and news reporters could stand to be a lot better.

"Transparency" = attribution = citation = showing your work.

For the record, Obama has nearly twice as many years of experience in government -- at both the state & national level -- as did Bush during his first run for the presidency.

Unless they were loud & proud about it during Bush's initial run, I call bullshit on any sorry-ass pundit/journalist who mentions inexperience as a strike against Obama.

Kevin:

Thank you so much for this post in which you mentioned what you would be in favor of as well as the incidences of non-transparency that you were opposed to.

As for most of the rest of y'all ... irony is totally awesome, keep up the good work!!

Peace,
Micah

Why don't reporters tell us these things? Because it would reveal that most of them are unbelievably lazy and rather than digging for stories simply take what they are spoon fed by PR machines. Hence the shadow puppet nature of our public discourse.

Thanks for the explanation, Kevin. Just so you're not trying to start a "kerfuffle" with Roger.

Republican propagandists made John Kerry out as a flip flopper but now barely mention the term.

Why?

Because each of the leading Republican candidates are vigorously flip-flopping on previous strongly-held positions.

Kerry, of course, is no flip-flopper; at his worst, he occasionally puts his foot in his mouth, but what politician who actually takes positions and openly talks about them does not once in a while mispeak. Kerry has one of the most consistent voting records in Congress.

The flip flopping smear still gets a hearing from time to time on Fox News and MSNBC, but both networks stay far, far away from use of the term in describing the current crop of Republican Party politicians. Both networks, of course, grossly favor the Republican Party and its candidates and the actors and actresses pretending to be news reporters on those respective networks have sneering and ridicule down pat when it comes to leaders like Kerry and Gore and Hillary Clinton.

By the by, is it only me who may have noticed that the dolled up women actresses/cum news reporters on MSNBC seem actually jealous of Mrs. Clinton? So jealous, in fact, that they find it difficult to speak about her? Is the Green Eyed Monster alive and well at MSNBC?

A good part of the problem with the U.S. media today is that its news divisions are seriously, seriously understaffed and seriously, seriously undertalented, with well paid folks being sacrificed for those who must accept lower pay to get hired. Thus we have a bunch of no talents carrying on such libels as the now discredited story on invention of the internet by Al Gore -- a story, incidentally, that first surfaced in a report by an undertalented New York Times reporter who came on board not because she knew anything but because she fit the publisher's newsroom deomographics.

Another story that refuses to die, though discredited many times over, is that Hillary Clinton has so many negatives that she cannot win the election as president. Fox News panelists, who are fine at sneer and ridicule but awfully short on facts, just laugh and laugh and sneer and snort when someone they've invited on dares to make the point that Mrs. Clinton's negatives reside in the solid 33 percent Republican base that also express the same negatives for any Democratic candidate. Yet the story persists, pushed at one time by Mrs. Clinton's No. 1 enemy, Dick Morris, who now seems to have changed his mind and predicts her victory because of all her positives.

So, there you have it. A lot of what you hear today on behalf of the Republican side is a result of spin and ineptness, pure and simple, with perhaps a tinge of jealousy thrown in at spots like MSNBC.

Unless they were loud & proud about it during Bush's initial run, I call bullshit on any sorry-ass pundit/journalist who mentions inexperience as a strike against Obama.

The inexperience narrative their pushing needs to be squashed now before it gets ingrained into the minds of the non political junkie

Let me add that Hillary and Edwards has served less time in office than Barak has.

LARRY BIRNBAUM: Why don't reporters tell us these things? Because it would reveal that most of them are unbelievably lazy and rather than digging for stories simply take what they are spoon fed by PR machines.

This isn't about laziness; it's about self-interest. Reporters are perfectly aware that being accused of liberal bias (which is what they are accused of when they are unbiased) is damaging to their careers. And they are just as aware that no such damage occurs in the case of conservative bias--quite the contrary, in fact.

You allow them to perpetuate this turd of a story with these kind of posts. STOP.

This is the sort of head-in-the-sand mentality that lets things like the Swift Boat episode derail Presidential runs. This is the death of a thousand cuts philosophy that the current Republican party uses to degrade their opponents. The initial allegations get big play, but because it is so stupid the Dems refuse to respond. For several days then only one side is given and the damage inflicted. By the time the victim gets around to trying to fight back the press has moved on and the response is posted on page B11 in the Style section.

Pssst...
Pass it on:

Pelosi invented invented the internet.

Doesn't Kurtz have a tv show called reliable sources. Maybe somebody should ask how reliable his sources really are? Maybe a lot of someones. Maybe thousands. What is his email address.

Shorter mhr: "I don't care for truth in reporting - I just like it when right-wing lies are propagated."

I have just sent an email to Howard Kurtz. I suggest everybody do the same. Before writing the email I followed the links back to the original sources. When I read the Radiant Times site I found that 276 people had visited the site since it came on line on February 1, 2007. When I read Political Retch, I discovered it had only one post and zero comments. It started Thursday. It might not last past Monday. Ailes reporting was entirely accurate.

Like I said Howard Kurtz's TV show is ironically called Reliable Sources. Maybe others need to remind him that the internet is the most powerful communications tool ever invented. It makes some kinds of fact checking mind numbingly simple.

What we should ask mainstream reporters is why don't they report fake stories as 'fake story put out by Republicans'?

In fact we should ask mainstream reporters about nothing else, it's all they really have to talk about, it's what they do, it's the first point of their employment. They must have some opinion about it.

(While anything from a Democrat gets pinned with 'Democrats are trying to say', or something.)

Barack Obama had a noteworthy speech in Springfield mentioning the Katrina Hurricane, sounded intense and compelling. Born in Hawaii, struggling with his sense of self as a youth, he helped his case by writing a book about his closet skeletons. He's smart. Favors universal health care and civil unions. Has eight years in state politics, the last two nationally. I thought the speech seemed powerful.
Don't worry about Howie Kurtz. He is a known conservative, a detractor of liberals.
I usually have to change the channel Sundays, waiting for This Week with George Stephanopolos, having watched Tim Russert's Meet the Press. There is a half hour gap--so I put on Kurtz's Reliable Sources. He invariably makes me cringe.

Kevin et al:

This is a good point. I suggest that we should make the distinction between a source that provides accurate information (the few whistle blowers and deep throats) and a source that feeds disinformation. Reporters who print disinformation should be criticized for being naive; those who continue to do so should be labeled as the shills that they are. That is the first matter of importance in this discussion.

The second issue involves providing the proper citation for your source if you got the story idea from another newspaper or magazine or television program. It is the standard, expected behavior in science, but it seems to have fallen into disuse among some newspapers.

To come full circle, the standard practice in science is to retract statements that you later come to realize are false, and never, ever to repeat a statement that you have come to know is false. It's long since time that we brand the shills who continue to repeat lies for what they are.

Wait until they learn that Giuliani means soft or squishy.

Gee the bigger question should be WHY does the Washington Post allow this Judith Miller kind reporting to be done by Howie Kurtz? It's false information, just like those factless WMD front page reports done by Judith Miller in the run up to war in Iraq.

why did he represent them as "typical" of the blogosphere's reaction to the fake flap.

Howie Kurtz is just making shit up?

The Washington Post is actively helping Bush and the GOP just make shit up. The question is WHY is the Washington Post helping this administration lie?

Why are facts completely irrelevant anymore?

The Washington Post merely reports on hearsay, and getting the facts is something they NEVER spend even one moment trying to invest in anymore, and THAN want to sell us than damn rag. People, it isn't worth the money its printed on since anybody can just make shit up. It's pretty sad when you have to depend a lawyer like Patrick Fitzgerald to get the facts, cause the newspaper reporters are too afraid they won't get the latest scoop on the next victim the Bushie want to scapegoat. The press has becomes an active member in harming individuals based on lies and then call it journalism.

If the Washington Post wants to deny there is Civil War in Iraq, fine, but sell that damn rag to radical members of the GOP, because why would anyone be interested in a newspaper that won't give you the truth, the fact in issue nor even try too, simply based on access to irrelevant administration comments. Who is the Washington Post selling too, the Bush administion because it's not selling to the general public, it not a service I care to pay for, basely news issues. It's like they just want to shit on you so they can keep their little elitist private club going, all the neat little kick backs and perks without any serious work. This is why Judith Miller went to jail and NOBODY cared. She may have had access but she was meaningless to the public at large. Journalism did use to be about elitist access but about about getting facts and providing a service to the public other than entertainment, it used to require hard work but that's is too far for people like Howie Kurtz appearently. If Howie doesn't care about facts, why then isn't he fired?

Cheryl

Why don't you asked the Post why they don't fire Howard Kurtz, or at least put him on notice that a reporter is supposed to try to get the facts right?

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi's demand for a bigger plane, there is a hysterical photo-shop picture of Nancy in her plane at Michelle Malkin's site.

I count four misstatements in that sentence alone. Good work!

Kevin: "This prompts me to revive one of my pet suggestions for improving political reporting: transparency."

I have a better suggestion: rotation.

If anything, the Plame CIA scandal and resultant trial of "Scooter" Libby shows a D.C. press corps that has become far too cozy with those persons they are supposed to be reporting on, and not collaborating with.

Consider the comment by Mary Matalin (from the Libby trial) that NBC's Meet the Press was Vice President Dick Cheney's favorite mainstream outlet to "get the word out" -- and no, F.K. and Al, FOX News is not considered mainstream -- because host Tim Russert was considered a friendly interviewer. How can any editor or news director seriously believe that journalists like Russert, Judy Miller or Mike Allen can remain in place as objective reporters or dispassionate analysts, when they've readily allowed themselves to become enmeshed as players within their own storylines?

The major media should seriously consider capping the period their reporters are posted at a given assignment, and regularly rotating their press corps, to prevent these potentially compromising and ultimately corrosive relationships from developing.

Well said, Donald from Hawaii

... diversity in news sources is a positive good. mhr at 2:09 PM

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi's demand for a bigger plane... F K at 4:17 PM

a: "Because George W. Bush came from a good family, that's why. Some people just make better decisions than others ..."

well, that certainly explains the early 1942 decison of Dubya's grandfathers Prescott Bush and George Walker to allow their Union Bank to continue doing business with Nazi Germany via their shell company in neutral Sweden, and thus ignore the Dec. '41 declaration by Congress that a state of war existed with that nation.

Of course, when the government found out about it one year later, that idea didn't quite work out as they had originally planned.

Perhaps people who appear in public forums could get credibility ratings. Like on ebay, when you get feedback? "Prompt service, package arrived quickly, item as described?" After a couple hundred positive feedbacks, you have a virtual character reference.

So, when, say, Bill Donahue appears on a TV program, it would be nice to have a record of 1) where that story came emerged, and 2) some character reference on the Bill Donahue(conservative catholic, the organization he represents is small, funding comes from X. He has appeared on these occasions in these places:1, 2, 3).

The newsreporters and news media could also recieve this feedback trail. So & so lied about such and such.

It is the sort of thing the Josh Marshall does for members of Congress on key legislation. It is something the blogosphere does well.

btw, Ron Byers, nice work!

Something Froomkins writes about but completely misses in his latest column.

On Bush and Rove

I had always assumed that the Bush White House's secret weapon to stave off irrelevancy in its waning years would be political guru Karl Rove. I imagined that as the Republican kingmaker, he would give the White House continued leverage with GOP presidential hopefuls, and that those hopefuls would be highly motivated to please Rove, which would presumably mean championing Bush.

But ever since the Democratic victory in the midterm elections, Rove has been in retrograde. And furthermore, he and Bush may not be entirely eye to eye any more on political strategy.

Yes, Bush is Rove's greatest work. But even more important to Rove is the creation of a permanent Republican majority. And Bush's increasing focus on his personal legacy may be engendering a conflict between the two men.

Bush's continued attempt to salvage some sort of victory in Iraq -- rather than begin a withdrawal -- could very well doom the GOP in 2008. Republican candidates may suffer greatly if they are still encumbered with a disastrous Republican war. And Rove's got to know that.

I get the feeling that Bush is mad as hell at Rove for losing control of both the Senate and the House, and that really the power behind this whole administration is one of corporate control, rather than Rove control or even Cheney control per say. Bush didn't get all that campaign money for nothing. Bush can't leave Iraq because EXXONMobil, BP Petroleum, and other Western oil contrators wouldn't get those prime contracts if the US simple leaves Iraq short of some kin fo military victory. It wouldn't be long before Prime Mininster Maliki was assassinated as a Bush/US apparatus, an pawn of the infidel. You can't control "our interest in region" if you can't control the government of Iraq.

This is why Bush can't leave, can't do anything but what big oil says he can do, it matters not what the American people think, or what Iraqis think. Bush never really wanted a democracy in Iraq but control of Iraq.

AND NOW!

Bush is thinking of bombing Iran all the while declaring the Dems are embolding the enemy but if Bush bombs Iran than indeed the president emboldens the enemy, not the Dems and not debate.

Its more of Bush's old projectionist physiology whereby Bush is actually the one that emboldens the enemy, but declaring that Dems are doing it via debate on the war.

Bush WILL bomb Iran, it is just a question of when, the Dems better do something about it and they better hurry up too.

In a February 5 OpEd in the Los Angeles Times, Leon Weiss and Larry Diamond explained this as John Dean writes it too:

--if the President's intention is indeed warlike, to take preventive action so that the President does not launch a war in Iran - given his performance in Iraq. They suggest sending the President what is, in effect, a veto-proof measure -- by placing the measure in an appropriations bill - advising the President that "Congress will not support a U.S. military strike on that country" unless authorized by Congress. If Bush were to violate such a law, they urged, Congress should file a lawsuit against him, and begin impeachment proceedings.

The president will start a war with Iran, so will the Dems do anything about it OR just sit on their duff and talk big about what they do if they were president? I don't care that Hillary would never have started a war in Iraq, a war that she voted for, BUT what is she going to do now? Hillary's talk is completely irrelevant since we’re already in a war with Iraq. How about placing a measure against Iran in an appropriations bill? Talk is cheap, where is the action?

Howie Kurtz does owe the readers a response. You can't pull up quotes basically out of thin air like this without it being questionable.

If a blogger has a history, like Digby on the one hand, then you can quote a pseudonym. Tossing quotes from day old blogs is quite another.

Bill Donohue and his ilk no doubt have the Blackberry numbers of key reporters, producers and editors. When it is time to move on a story, they do effectively. I have not seen evidence of a liberal analog to this.

Until we get opinion leaders whose outreach is as persistent and omnipresent as folks like Donohue, our story will always be under reported.

Kevin...Do ya want to be our Bill Donohue?

The problem isn't our side needing "our Bill Donohue," it's that our story will always be under reported until we somehow replace those key reporters, producers and editors that welcome Donohue and his ilk.

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi's demand for a bigger plane...

I heard she also asked for a leather chair and a new iPod.

hat's a very good question. As the Roger Ailes post Avedon links to points out, Kurtz wasn't likely to have found these blogs via a Google search, so somebody must have brought them to his attention. Who?

The answer is probably pretty easy to figure out in this case. Kurtz's wife is a Republican Party consultant. (A blatant conflict of interest that often seems to get swept under the rug and that his superiors at the Post don't seem to be concerned about.) Occam's Razor would lead one to conclude that she is the one who feeds him these lines.

Kurtz doesn't view himself as a truth teller. He sees himself as a score keeper. It doesn't matter if the charges one side makes are true in Howie's world - it only matters if they damaged the intended target. To the extent he examines the underlying truth, it's just to cover the rebuttal and counter-point.

For example, if Howie said what he really thought about the Pelosi story, it would sound like this: "Republicans fabricated a story about Nancy Pelosi this week, effectively smearing the speaker with the false charge that she wants to waste public dollars on a fancy plane. CNN's Lou Dobbs proved particularly resistent to the truth and Fox News had a field day chatting about the fabrications for at least three days. For her part, Pelosi fought back and explained that the charges were false almost immediately, but she was unable to get traction anywhere that mattered. Overall, it was an effective attack by Republicans that took advantage of the media's appetite for pointless, made up scandals. Pelosi failed to strike the right chord in defending herself, sticking to the merits when something more exotic was in order. Her inability to defend herself from false stories and fabricated GOP attacks suggests she may be weaker than previous speakers and is quickly becoming a theme."

Breslin says todays "reporters" suck because they are characterless drones who want to be invited to good parties. He partially blames this on the fact they did not work their way up the ranks but instead are wealthy kids who came out of journalism school.

Kevin, if there were truly transparency in reporting, Fox News, Drudge, NewsMax, WorldNetDaily and virtually every other right-wing media outlet would be out of business.

They thrive on gossip, innuendo, half-truth and outright lies to peddle their wares. They are the 21st century equivalent of snake oil salesmen...

Re the plane for Pelosi, it seems she went home this weekend on a twelve seat C-37A, Gulfstream V, just as I suggested might happen. The right aircraft for the mission, though it means stretching the fleet elsewhere. I would expect to see a Congressional earmark for one or two more such aircraft in the next DOD appropriations bill.

on the whole, this was a bigger mistake by WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802387.html

on the whole, this was a bigger mistake by WaPo

Frankly I can't see a thing wrong with that article.

Kevin: I don't know about Howard Kurtz's sources, but he once was the source for an obscure blogger reference by Peggy Noonan. Here are two posts by Dymaxion World talking about the situation. http://dymaxionworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/level-of-accuracy-weve-come-to-expect.html
http://dymaxionworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/whoo-big-media-me-indeed.html

As the blogger says,
"Weird. I usually get a few dozen hits a day, tops. How did I become the poster boy for left-wing criticism of CBS? Or, to put it another way, what made Kurtz put this blogger in the national press? I've emailed Kurtz to ask how he found me, and emailed Noonan to confirm that I'm the blogger she's quoting. There's been no appreciable spike in my traffic, btw."

Kevin, it not only IS going to happen...it already HAS happened.

Using the Internet, of all things.

A few years ago PBS's Frontline began putting up web sites for each report they did outlining all the background material they didn't put in the actual TV show. So, if they excerpted an interview and people thought the intent of the person being interviewed may have been distorted by the choice of excerpts actually on the report, those doubters could go and look at a transcript of the entire interview.

The future of journalism?

Perhaps...

Could we have at least some truth in stating that "Today Archie Bunker said..." instead of "Today Bill Donohue said...".

Why does Kurtz's column not have a comments? You would think that the media reporter, reporting on transparency, would be the first column/blog on the post website to invite comments.

No sirree Bob, err Howie. Those troglodytes out in those tubes may say mean things to him.

What a sham of a reporter? Kurtz, Allen, Vandehei, Harris...peas in a pod...

Jesus, Kevin - do you actually expect him to commit career suicide? Admit that the just writes down and reports what annon sources tell him. Hell I can buy a tape recorder that does that job for $9.99 at Wall-mart.

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