Politics
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October 10, 2007 02:00 PM
The Frost Story
Bloggers portray a different "reality"
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.
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The kickoff to the latest... -
October 03, 2007 11:54 AM
Milbank on Blackwater
How WaPo columnist distinguished himself
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.
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That's why Dana Milbank's story... -
September 26, 2007 01:12 PM
Iranian Media Claims Victory
Who cares?
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...
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September 17, 2007 01:28 PM
President blogger panel gets mixed results
The blogs on the case
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?
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Well, something akin to those good old days went down last week when the White... -
August 31, 2007 12:11 PM
FUBAR
PBS runs into the FCC's nanny-state regulations
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!
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On September 23, PBS begins airing Ken Burns' fourteen-hour World War II documentary "The War," and in interviews with former... -
August 10, 2007 03:06 PM
Krauthammer, Goldfarb, and Emanuel
Getting the TNR mess wrong on purpose
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.
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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... -
August 07, 2007 03:27 PM
Obama blames the press
The senator wasn’t clear on Pakistan, and so he smacks an easy scapegoat
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...
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August 03, 2007 02:15 PM
Obama Flamed Again
This time, though, he wuz robbed
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...
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July 30, 2007 02:15 PM
Clinton v. Obama
The campaign’s first throw-down is thin stuff
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...
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July 27, 2007 01:20 PM
YouTube Debate Has Legs
Incredibly weak ones
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...
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July 24, 2007 03:03 PM
TNR And 'Scott Thomas'
Someone needs to step up with some proof
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.
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Thomas' latest "Baghdad Diaries" missive, in which he... -
July 24, 2007 01:18 PM
The YouTube Debate
After all the hype, coverage is sober, possibly boring
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.
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After weeks of anticipatory coverage (it wasn't all on CNN) that kicked around the titillating question, "Is the YouTube-CNN... -
July 20, 2007 02:23 PM
NYT, CBS parse new Clinton poll
In very different ways
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.)
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The Times headline read "Women Supportive but Skeptical of Clinton, Poll Says." The... -
July 20, 2007 01:18 PM
Clinton's Letter to the Pentagon...
Misreported
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...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Amplifying the Drumbeat on the “Overdraft Protection” Racket The issue picks up momentum in the financial press
- Journal: Wall Street Pay Could Set Records
The Observatory Science
- Some Optimism for the Future of Science Journalism And especially for international collaboration
- NSF “Underwriting” Coverage… And other controversies from the World Conference of Science Journalists
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- More PitneyGate Fallout? Press focused on who asked questions at Obama town hall
- The Economy Today: School’s Out With Money Tight, Classes Are Slashed