tag:www.cjr.org,2008://1 2007-10-16T14:55:10Z Movable Type 3.2 tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14772 2007-10-10T19:00:00Z 2007-10-16T14:55:10Z

Bloggers portray a different "reality"

Paul McLeary The fight over a bill calling for a $35 billion increase in funding for the SCHIP program, (passed by both houses of Congress and vetoed by the president last week), which helps states insure uninsured children in need, has been ugly, but over the past few days, it got a whole lot uglier. The kickoff to the latest... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14759 2007-10-03T16:54:00Z 2007-10-10T21:43:14Z

How WaPo columnist distinguished himself

Paul McLeary It's hard to find anything new under the sun when cracking open the morning papers to read the accounts of Congressional hearings. Reporters dutifully quote the Congressmen and women asking questions, the witnesses giving answers, and toss in a few words from various outside "experts" to spice things up a bit. That's why Dana Milbank's story... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14748 2007-09-26T18:12:00Z 2007-10-02T18:42:03Z

Who cares?

Paul McLeary On Monday afternoon, I was asked to do a radio interview reacting to the visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University earlier in the day. The host asked if I thought that the Iranian media--in the face of evidence to the contrary--would simply splice together clips of Ahmadinejad's applause lines and claim victory in the debate. I though... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14731 2007-09-17T18:28:06Z 2007-10-11T20:56:17Z

The blogs on the case

Paul McLeary Remember the good old days of the 2004 election season, when the Bush campaign would hold "public" events that were stocked with rabid Bush supporters, and anyone who didn't unflinchingly back the president was escorted out of the event, or denied entry? Well, something akin to those good old days went down last week when the White... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14696 2007-08-31T17:11:00Z 2007-09-20T16:54:57Z

PBS runs into the FCC's nanny-state regulations

Paul McLeary It's official, we've become a nation of children. And like children, we can't be trusted to hear nasty swear words--even while watching violent, televised images from a war zone. Got that? Violence, OK. Bad language, verboten! On September 23, PBS begins airing Ken Burns' fourteen-hour World War II documentary "The War," and in interviews with former... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14643 2007-08-10T20:06:48Z 2007-09-04T22:39:42Z

Getting the TNR mess wrong on purpose

Paul McLeary In the continuing story of Private Scott Beauchamp and the disputed, and partially discredited, "Baghdad Diarist" stories he wrote for The New Republic, there's yet another wrinkle. I'm not talking about the debates over the anonymous source who told The Weekly Standard that Beauchamp signed documents stating that he made everything up--something that no one, not even the... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14638 2007-08-07T20:27:23Z 2007-09-04T22:39:42Z

The senator wasn’t clear on Pakistan, and so he smacks an easy scapegoat

Gal Beckerman As Ben Smith at Politico points out today, Barack Obama has been blaming the media for misrepresenting his position on Pakistan, articulated in his big foreign policy speech last week. "The misreporting that was done needs to be cleared up," Obama told a Sioux City, Iowa, audience yesterday. "I never called for an invasion of Pakistan." The original speech... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14632 2007-08-03T19:15:01Z 2007-09-04T15:13:04Z

This time, though, he wuz robbed

Adrianne Jeffries Barack Obama is being pummeled again for his public statements about foreign policy. The candidate told the Associated Press yesterday that he would not use nuclear weapons against Al Qaeda "under any circumstances," drawing criticism from Hillary Clinton, among others. "Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons," Clinton said. "Presidents... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14619 2007-07-30T19:15:45Z 2007-08-27T21:15:36Z

The campaign’s first throw-down is thin stuff

Gal Beckerman Looks like we have ourselves a fight. All three major dailies today have accounts of the rhetorical rumble between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the answers each gave to a question at the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this week. The initial argument, over what value each candidate would place on diplomacy in a future administration, has now been almost... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14618 2007-07-27T18:20:52Z 2007-08-28T00:08:15Z

Incredibly weak ones

Adrianne Jeffries Newspapers and bloggers continue to pick over Monday's YouTube debate, arguably the most sensational story thus far of the campaign season. Unfortunately, much of this afterlife of the debate has centered on an insubstantial back-and-forth between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps. "For Clinton and Obama, A Debate Point Won't Die," reads the Washington Post headline, referring to... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14610 2007-07-24T20:03:00Z 2007-08-23T17:53:11Z

Someone needs to step up with some proof

Paul McLeary By now you're probably familiar with the flap over whether or not a soldier reportedly serving in Iraq, who has been writing for The New Republic under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas," has been telling the truth in a series of articles he has produced for the magazine since February. Thomas' latest "Baghdad Diaries" missive, in which he... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14609 2007-07-24T18:18:46Z 2007-08-23T17:53:11Z

After all the hype, coverage is sober, possibly boring

Adrianne Jeffries The arc of the YouTube debate phenomenon is a classic case of what the press does almost reflexively--help build something up (even if just implicitly) only to then tear it down, or at the very least undercut it. After weeks of anticipatory coverage (it wasn't all on CNN) that kicked around the titillating question, "Is the YouTube-CNN... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14605 2007-07-20T19:23:28Z 2007-08-14T18:23:56Z

In very different ways

Alexander Heffner Today's New York Times/CBS poll on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was reported, as expected, by both outlets. But despite identical data, the stories' ledes drew a stark contrast. (The national poll was conducted between July 9-17 with 1,554 randomly selected adults across party lines.) The Times headline read "Women Supportive but Skeptical of Clinton, Poll Says." The... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14604 2007-07-20T18:18:00Z 2007-08-14T18:23:56Z

Misreported

Paul McLeary It being summer and all, we realize that a lot of people are basically phoning it in at work, but when it comes to the press, doing half a job can be worse than not doing anything at all. Take the furor that has arisen in the blogosphere and the mainstream media over Defense Undersecretary Eric Edelman's pathetic response to... tag:www.cjr.org,2007://1.14449 2007-05-22T18:37:55Z 2007-05-29T16:48:15Z

Blogging confabs bring out the smart guys, but few new ideas are ever aired.

Paul McLeary If you're anything like us, when you get an invitation to attend a day-long event that promises to bring bloggers, Internet activists, journalists, and political activists together under one roof, you think hard about it. But in the end, you go. So it was that I found myself at Pace University in lower Manhattan last Friday for the "Personal Democracy...