MetaFilter posts tagged with news and Media

All the advertorial fit to print!

Artw — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:05:55 -0800

The Dallas News has a bold new strategy for "becoming the most comprehensive and trusted partner for local businesses in attracting and retaining customers and continuing to generate important, relevant content for our consumers": Making it's editors report directly to advertising sales managers

Fox "upset-the-White-House-won't-call-it" News

ADoubtfulTrout — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:34:57 -0800

Fox News's bent on the news is well known, but recently the White House has begun actively excluding the network, including skipping Fox's Chris Wallace on a recent round of Sunday morning news shows. “We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction ... that Fox is a traditional news organization.” says White House Depty Communications Director Pfeiffer (as has Press Secretary Gibbs and others). The responses range from concern about an attempt to control the media to a feeling that it's about time. Is it just about Fox's anti-Obama pundits, or is it also about Fox's consistent errors and misinformed viewership? Or is the White House attempting containment so that Fox's ratings-gold style and ideas don't take over the rest of the press?

A front pages post

fatllama — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:54:33 -0800

Google Fast Flip: Newspaper Stand 2.0

Meet the new type

msalt — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:38:42 -0800

A new type of newspaper for a new type of world One story from it previously. About us: "The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields."

"Oh Dear"-ism

homunculus — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:18:52 -0800

Adam Curtis on the rise of "Oh Dearism" in television news. [SLYT, Via]

Frozen Scandal

homunculus — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:37:57 -0800

"Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal." [Via]

Cursor.org RIP?

jammy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:41:45 -0800

As of today, the truly excellent media filter & news digest Cursor.org is suspending publication. For almost a decade, the Cursor crew have done a truly admirable job of providing an antidote to the corporate media. Through a daily round-up of news stories & commentary, they helped to provide critical context to the flurry of media stories that deluges us every day. Unfortunately, they lost their main source of funding in 2007. They've been trying to make a go of it through reader contributions but this has apparently not proved to be sustainable. They are also behind the excellent Media Transparency, an organization that documents & explores the connections between conservative philanthropy & the media.

"Comments on Comments"

Miko — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:58:28 -0800

NPR's On The Media presents a short set of pieces about comments on news websites and the challenges of "digital democracy," with discussion from Ira Glass about responses to a show about teenage runaways, and New Republic editor and critic Lee Siegel, who posted anonymously to respond insultingly to comments on his own blog. And a Roanoke newspaper editor discusses how one paper sees the integration of comments into online news sites and whether it's a valuable reader service. The This American Life show that sparked the show's decision to disable commenting on their website.

The Saddam Sessions

kliuless — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:33:50 -0800

Saddam's Confessions - Given Saddam Hussein's central place in the American Consciousness over the last couple decades and particularly in recent years, I found 60 minutes' interview with FBI interrogator George Piro pretty fascinating.

...GE had long done business with the bin Ladens. In a misguided attempt at corporate synergy, I called GE headquarters...

amberglow — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:31:03 -0800

"You Don't Understand Our Audience" --what John Hockenberry (formerly of NBC, now at MIT Media Lab) learned about network news--good guys and bad guys, the "emotional center", synergy, facts, and why fewer and fewer watch nowadays.

We regret the following:

gingerbeer — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:45:58 -0800

Once again, The Year in Media Errors and Corrections. Correction of the year: "Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.” Previously. Also.

The irony of being a patsy to tyrrants

petrilli — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:19:12 -0800

The media begins to awaken. Recently, Tom Curley, the President and CEO of Associated Press lashed out at the absurd conditions surrounding the detention of Bilal Hussein. After being detained for over 18 months, the US Military has finally decided to charge him, but nobody can say for what, or when, or why, or what evidence might be brought forth. Strangely, Mr. Curley writes this without a hint of the irony present in being caught in the net of lies, deception and constructed memory hole that the media has participated in the creation of. Playing patsy comes back to bite. AP hosts a timeline of articles.

"If the news goes down too easily, it can't be good for you."

amyms — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:58:01 -0800

Amusing Ourselves to Depth: Is The Onion our most intelligent newspaper?: "While other newspapers desperately add gardening sections, ask readers to share their favorite bratwurst recipes, or throw their staffers to ravenous packs of bloggers for online question-and-answer sessions, The Onion has focused on reporting the news. The fake news, sure, but still the news. It doesn’t ask readers to post their comments at the end of stories, allow them to rate stories on a scale of one to five, or encourage citizen-satire. It makes no effort to convince readers that it really does understand their needs and exists only to serve them. The Onion’s journalists concentrate on writing stories and then getting them out there in a variety of formats, and this relatively old-fashioned approach to newspapering has been tremendously successful." The article is based on the premises of the late media critic Neil Postman, especially from his book "Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse In The Age Of Show Business."

Americans Cared More About Baby Jessica Than About Chernobyl

amyms — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:40:55 -0800

NewsFilterFilter: What Kind Of News Do People Really Want? A recent study by the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press analyzes 165 separate surveys of Americans' news preferences (conducted over a period of 20 years). One of the findings would have been obvious to most Mefites: "Polarizing social issues involving family, sexuality, patriotism and God engender the highest levels of attention." Crime, health and politics have consistently received mid-level attention. Tabloid and entertainment news (Paris and Britney, this means you), science and technology, and "foreign" news? Meh, not so much.

Fox in Print

destro — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:31:55 -0800

Newsfilter: Murdoch Buys The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones After some protests from editors about what sort of control News Corp. would have over the paper, a deal has been reached with the Bancroft family that runs the paper to sell for $5 billion. Murdoch gave up some demands for editorial control but still has the ability to hire and fire editors at will, making this the same sort of fig leaf agreement he made with the Times of London.

The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it.

panoptican — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:03:24 -0800

I'd like you to meet Africa. It's a continent. You probably don't hear about it a lot in the news. That's because there's only like a billion people who live there. Global Voices has some further background on one news organization's quest to inform the masses about this little-known land.

Perverted Justice & Dateline NBC: Repsonsbile for Conradt's death? Yea/Nay/Otherwise.

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:09:55 -0800

The Shame Game. Perverted Justice (prev.) and Dateline NBC's series of To Catch A Predator specials are of questionable-at-best morality and have received much fl ak, particularly on the part of the former party. At the Columbia Journalism review, Douglas McCollum shares the case of Louis Conradt Jr., who killed himself upon being pounced upon by police and Dateline's cameras. McCollum also takes issue with NBC's paying of Perverted Justice for their services. And, for the other side, PJ's rebuttal.

Al Jazeera English

homunculus — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:43:06 -0800

Al Jazeera English, the English-language sister network to Al Jazeera, launched worldwide this week. Familiar faces include Lt. Josh Rushing, who figured prominently in the documentary Control Room. Unfortunately, no cable system or satellite broadcaster in the U.S. is carrying the channel, but you can watch it online.

Track Changes

gsb — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 05:12:19 -0800

News Sniffer. It's a site dedicated to monitoring news articles and discussion threads at the BBC. For censored comments from BBC news threads: Watch Your Mouth. And now it has implementation that tracks changes in news articles, to see how things are edited: Revisionista. Here's a couple of examples.

911 redux: would you watch?

CunningLinguist — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:32:22 -0800

On Sept. 11, CNN will replay its coverage from 2001 in real time, online. They will make their little-noticed Pipeline service free for the day.

"I hate America even more this week."

brain_drain — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 12:50:37 -0800

How a Right-Winger Sees the New York Times.

an ever-widening gulf between official language and the reality of the actual situation in Baghdad

amberglow — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:18:30 -0800

Prisoners of their Bureaus--the Besieged Press of Baghdad What it's like to be a journalist in Iraq now--and especially relevant given the current attacks on the media for not reporting all the good that's happening in Iraq-- ... an ever-widening gulf between official language and the reality of the actual situation in Baghdad. While official language is relentlessly upbeat, the already nightmarish reality has been getting worse with each passing day. ... the insurgent attacks on the US forces and Iraqi government and the sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shiites have become destructive beyond what most journalists have been able to convey ... (NY Review of Books)

Is the News Media in Iraq practicing "compensatory criticism"?

Skygazer — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:10:57 -0800

The big payback in Iraq. Last night on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, ROBERT LICHTER, President, Center for Media and Public Affairs put forth the following: You know, Charlie Peter, a great Washington journalist, once said, "The message of Watergate was dig, dig, dig, but journalists thought the message was act tough." And so I think you're getting negative coverage that may be kind of compensatory criticism.

Should the news focus more on the optimistic elements or is it reflecting public opinion. Is "compensatory criticism" justified for what it might wrongly perceive as possible White House manipulation during the run up to the war?

Project Censored 2005: Top Ten News Stories You Didn't Hear About

mk1gti — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 18:10:20 -0800

The news you knew, yet didn't really know Project Censored has become more and more relevant in our self-censored and compliant media. These are the top ten stories that received very little airplay or no air play at all. It makes the Baby Jesus cry. . .

Shock and gore, online.

ascullion — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 07:22:14 -0800

Shock and gore. The people behind "the world's goriest website", why they do it, and what it says about us.