http://www.cjr.org/ en Copyright 2009 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:45:03 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Greg Marx It’s been just over twenty-four hours since Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood—more than enough time, clearly, for our pundits to begin opining on what it all means. And though those interpretations are varied, there is one headline that could apply to nearly all of them: Tragic Massacre Vindicates My Pre-existing Political Convictions.... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/jumping_to_confusion.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/jumping_to_confusion.php Campaign Desk Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:45:03 -0500 Trudy Lieberman http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_price_of_medical_services.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_price_of_medical_services.php Campaign Desk Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:58:27 -0500 Greg Marx The coalition of media outlets pushing back against over-interpretation of the national significance of off-year elections lost a key ally today. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal offered a worthwhile reality check on the hype surrounding the voting, but, via Brendan Nyhan, here is the lede of a front-page story in today’s WSJ: A Republican sweep... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tea_leaves_tarot_cards_and_bal.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tea_leaves_tarot_cards_and_bal.php Campaign Desk Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:20:06 -0500 Trudy Lieberman Three years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts enacted a far-reaching health reform law that politicians and the media hailed as a model for other states and the federal government. That law has become the blueprint for health system change on a national scale, and its advocates have aggressively marketed some variation of the Massachusetts plan as the reform of choice.... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/health_reform_lessons_from_mas_8.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/health_reform_lessons_from_mas_8.php Campaign Desk Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:13:08 -0500 Greg Marx With the off-year Election Day now upon us, press outlets as diverse as Fox News and The New York Times are continuing to overemphasize the broader significance of today’s contests. (The lead headline at NYTimes.com all day has read, “3 Contests on Election Day Could Signal Political Winds”--with, of course, a caution deep in the text... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/pushback_on_polls_portents.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/pushback_on_polls_portents.php Campaign Desk Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:23:56 -0500 Greg Marx On Tuesday, November 3, voters around the country will go to the polls to elect officials in a variety of races. These campaigns, known as the “off-year elections” because of the absence of regularly scheduled federal contests, are mostly obscure. But a few of them—the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and (especially) Virginia, and the House race in New York’s... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/press_to_cliche_we_just_cant_q.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/press_to_cliche_we_just_cant_q.php Campaign Desk Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:31:02 -0500 Trudy Lieberman Every lobbyist swarming Capitol Hill these days knows that, when it comes to legislation, the devil is always lurking in the details, not lounging in the concepts. Yet it is concepts, not details, which are drifting down to the public--who will be in for a surprise when they realize that reform is not what they think it is. How these... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_devil_in_the_details_part_1.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_devil_in_the_details_part_1.php Campaign Desk Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:51:05 -0500 Clint Hendler Today the prime Senate sponsors of the Free Flow of Information Act—or, as it’s commonly known, the shield bill—announced that they’d reached a compromise with the White House on the bill’s most contentious issues: who would be considered a journalist, and just how much protection journalists would get from subpoenas demanding testimony. The compromise bill’s definition of... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/compromise_reached_on_senate_s.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/compromise_reached_on_senate_s.php Campaign Desk Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:38:56 -0500 Greg Marx When I compiled my round-up of responses to the New York Times’s story on the CIA-Ahmed Wali Karzai connections, I hadn’t yet seen Jeff Stein’s interesting contrarian take, given the following subhed by Foreign Policy: “Is the United States paying off Kandahar's first sibling? Maybe, but who cares?” Stein has previously written... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/more_on_the_karzai_connection.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/more_on_the_karzai_connection.php Campaign Desk Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:01:01 -0500 Greg Marx The front page of today’s New York Times features a profile of Tom Coburn, the proudly obstructionist Republican senator from Oklahoma. Though Coburn is a staunch social conservative (according to the story, he favors the death penalty for abortion doctors), he seems to be less an ideologue than a crank, a stance that has a long tradition in... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/dr_no_gets_a_pass.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/dr_no_gets_a_pass.php Campaign Desk Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:24:59 -0500 Trudy Lieberman What could The New York Times have been thinking when it fronted a piece the other day serving up some personal tidbits about two major health care lobbyists—Billy Tauzin for the pharmaceutical manufacturers and Karen Ignagni for the insurance companies. Was it a health care celebrity piece a la People, or just another horse-race story? Whatever it was... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_times_misses_the_mark.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_times_misses_the_mark.php Campaign Desk Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:28:56 -0500 Clint Hendler Yesterday, The Washington Times reported some none-too-flattering revelations suggesting a pay-to-play scheme inside the Obama White House. According to documents acquired by the Times, donors who raise more than $300,000 for Democratic campaigns are rewarded with participation in bimonthly phone calls with senior administration officials, along with occasional face to face meetings and briefings. Matthew Mosk, the article’s... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/guess_who.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/guess_who.php Campaign Desk Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:17:33 -0500 Megan Garber It seemed too strange to be true—and, in the end, it was. A story posted to The Huffington Post yesterday announced rather shocking news: “Scalia on Brown v. Board of Education: I Would Have Dissented.” On the site's homepage--where the story spent much of the day--the headline was even more provocative: The story, it... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/correction_fluid.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/correction_fluid.php Campaign Desk Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:48:02 -0500 Greg Marx Today’s New York Times leads with an extraordinary article reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai—the brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, suspected of being a significant player in that country’s lucrative drug trade—has been on the CIA payroll for much of the past eight years “for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_karzai_connection.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_karzai_connection.php Campaign Desk Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:09:45 -0500 Trudy Lieberman One thing you have to say about the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is that it is consistently on the side of the consumer, pointing out how corporate interests too often collide with public health. So it was hardly surprising to see another CSPI press release last week, calling for the American Academy of Family... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/dr_cocacola_on_call.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/dr_cocacola_on_call.php Campaign Desk Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:08:54 -0500