Campaign Desk
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February 09, 2010 11:32 AM
Unforced Error at Salon
"O'Keefe's race problem" story goes astray on key detail
It’s not often that, barely a week after sparking a mini media circus by being arrested on federal property in the course of an undercover operation, an individual can be at the center of another press controversy. But in James O’Keefe’s world, it seems, anything is possible.
Last Wednesday, Salon published an article by Max Blumenthal, titled “James...
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February 08, 2010 11:01 AM
Is Health Reform Dead or Alive?
Wanted: a newsmaker to give us the word
Last week, one Washington insider asked a Washington journalist why she had not written that health reform was dead. The journalist replied that she couldn’t do that until someone in power said so. Then she would have her story—with, of course, the headline declaring once and for all that health reform was dead or alive. Her comment is hardly surprising....
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February 05, 2010 04:56 PM
O’Keefe, Etc.
A closer look at a couple more issues surrounding the conservative videographer
James O’Keefe is a hell of a problem for the press. Whatever else he is, O’Keefe is an instigator par excellence, and wherever he goes accusations of “journalistic malpractice”—to borrow a phrase—fly in all directions. Addressing them all would be logistically impossible, and CJR has already written plenty on O’Keefe (see here, here, and Continue reading
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February 05, 2010 02:21 PM
The Press After Citizens United
Campaign finance experts chime in on a new era
Over the last two weeks, reporters covering campaign finance have ably chronicled the scope and effects of the bitterly divided Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
They’ve filed stories reporting that decades, perhaps a century, of regulations governing campaign finance have been rolled back, and that corporations would now be entitled to spend unlimited amounts of...
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February 05, 2010 09:41 AM
The Cost of Living
How cardiologists used the press
Containing the runaway cost of medical care is the thorniest of all the thorny issues in the health-reform debate. There’s been tons of talk from politicians, advocates, and even health-care stakeholders about the need to reduce the nation’s rate of spending on medical treatment and keep a lid on price increases. Yet many policy experts say that the “acceptable” cost-containment...
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February 04, 2010 06:27 PM
Audit Notes: Bloomberg on Why It’s Hard Being Green; K Street Roll Call; Reuters on AIG’s latest, etc.
--Bloomberg has a smart take on the problem of subsidizing green jobs: a lot of them are created in China.
President Barack Obama is spending $2.1 million to help Suntech Power Holdings Co. build a solar- panel plant in Arizona. It will hire 70 Americans to assemble components made by Suntech’s 11,000 Chinese workers.
Continue readingThat gap shows the...
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February 04, 2010 02:57 PM
The Ethics of Undercover Journalism
Why journalists get squeamish over James O'Keefe's tactics
When news broke in late January that James O’Keefe and three other men, two of whom were costumed as telephone repairmen, had been arrested by federal authorities and charged with “interfering” with the phone system at the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, observers of all sorts shared a similar response: What were they thinking?
Thanks to a
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February 04, 2010 01:17 PM
Landrieu on the Line
Two Louisiana political reporters on why James O'Keefe's Landrieu story wasn't news to them
When ACORN provocateur James O’Keefe and three accomplices were arrested at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office last week in the course of “maliciously interfering with a telephone system operated and controlled by the United States of America,” according to an FBI affidavit, a lot of people wondered what it was about Mary Landrieu and her telephones that merited O’Keefe’s...
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February 04, 2010 11:01 AM
Hearts, Minds, and the Satellite Dish
America's televised message in the Arab world is dull and poorly managed
CAIRO—The United States government has on occasion distressed over the nature of TV news in the Arab world and its perceived negative effect on public attitudes toward America.
During the Bush years, American officials repeatedly criticized Al-Jazeera for inciting anti-Americanism, and for its alleged flirtations with Al-Qaeda. In 2004, the United States launched its own Arabic news channel, Al-Hurra, to...
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February 04, 2010 08:16 AM
Questions for Question Time
Presidential Q&As may not be the key to better politics
The widespread media enthusiasm that greeted President Obama’s televised Q&A last Friday with Republican congressmen now has an official outlet. On Wednesday, an open letter signed by an ideologically diverse selection of worthies from the journalism and media worlds, and hailing the exchange as “one of the best national political debates in many years,” was published at DemandQuestionTime.com....
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February 02, 2010 02:34 PM
Target-Rich Environment
We’re all for flood-the-zone coverage of the budget, so a tip of The Audit’s green eyeshade to The Wall Street Journal, which unfurls the story in full glory, with charts, breakdowns, analysis for individual federal departments and agencies, plus, for no extra charge, a handy Q & A on what it all means for taxpayers.
The package is here.
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February 01, 2010 10:19 AM
Reality Check at the NewsHour
Obama nationalizing health care? Hardly
Republicans may have succeeded in stalling health care reform, at least for now. But that doesn’t mean the press should give them a pass when they lie about where and how the plan falls short. That’s what Judy Woodruff did Friday night on the NewsHour. The program featured a clip of the president’s meeting with Republicans, and then...
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January 28, 2010 12:14 PM
A Path out of the Health Care Mess?
Still no guidance from the president
As readers of Campaign Desk know, we have long questioned the president’s leadership on health care, his number one domestic priority last year. Those questions remain relevant in 2010, especially since it appears that his domestic priority has now shifted to jobs and economic help for the middle class. Health care surfaced some thirty minutes into Wednesday night’s...
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January 28, 2010 09:21 AM
A Tale of Two Jonathans
Overusing sources and full disclosure--some lessons for the press
Jonathan Gruber is an economist from MIT. Jonathan Oberlander is a political scientist from the University of North Carolina. Both are health policy experts—and, from what we can tell, both know their stuff. But the press has counted on Gruber rather than Oberlander to give gravitas to their stories. A Factiva search on Monday showed that from January 1, 2009...
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Campaign Desk Feature
Q & A: The New York Times’s Damon Winter
The Pulitzer-winning photographer on covering contentious town halls
Splashed across the front page of the August 12 New York Times was a four-column photo of a man shouting at Sen. Arlen Specter at a town hall held earlier that morning in Lebanon, Pa., taken by photojournalist Damon Winter, who won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The photograph neatly illustrated the recent trend of angry voters—usually white and usually seniors—confronting their senators and congressmen with practically apoplectic rage over health reform and other matters.
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Campaign Desk critiques media coverage of politics and policy each weekday, separating spin from substance through close reading, original reporting, and serious analysis.
Desks
The Audit Business
- New Financial Sheriff in Town, Part III Times highlights SEC’s latest crackdown—on an Estonian brokerage
- Audit Notes: Bloomberg Backs the Buck; WSJ on Future State Taxes; Big Money vs. Student Loansharks; Mortgage Banker Schadenfreude, etc.
The Observatory Science
- “Waves in a Shallow Pan” Has climate coverage in the MSM lost its authority?
- Dumb Blonde Story Sunday Times botches the science in piece on the “princess effect”
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Unforced Error at Salon “O’Keefe’s race problem” story goes astray on key detail
- Is Health Reform Dead or Alive? Wanted: a newsmaker to give us the word
