‘Media’ Archives
Matt Drudge Rocks
There have been reasons for blasting Matt Drudge, but one has to hand it to him. More than a decade ago, his Drudge Report brilliantly pointed the way to the vitality of the Internet as a news medium. And personally, he stood tall against his critics -- largely in the mainstream news media who found his early years a threat to their pipeline of [...]
It Ain’t Like the Clinton Years: Fawning over Chris Matthews
Friday's DC edition of the Examiner opens with what sounds like an explosive lead: Chris Matthews had barely finished praising his colleagues at the 10th anniversary party for his "Hardball" show Thursday night in Washington, D.C. when his remarks turned political and pointed, even suggesting that the Bush administration had "finally been caught [...]
Private Security Companies in the News Media
Researchers with the Project for Excellence in Journalism tackle news coverage over the past four years of private security companies and they suggests that it is very much on the slim side: Coverage of events inside Iraq, which includes the actions of U.S. troops there, was the third=biggest news story in the American media for the first quarter [...]
The Contractor’s Fight at Home
War for Hire: Dan Rather explores the "invisible army" in Iraq and the combat contractors face. In an extended online report for HD.net scheduled for June 4, Rather portrays the 100,000 or more civilian contract workers as being caught in the "crosshairs," whose uncounted casualties and injuries go overlooked in daily Pentagon briefings and the [...]
Corporate Branding is Everything in the News Biz
The soul searching was apparently wrenching and airing the video sparked an agonizing debate at the highest executive levels of NBC. "It's not every day we get a story like this. We went over it for seven and a half hours. We didn't rush it on the air. We weren't promoting it. We weren't trumpeting it all day. It was extraordinary, and that's how [...]
Boo Hoo for Bohos in Washington’s Press Corps
"The passing of the Bohemian is certainly in many ways a great loss," he lamented. The newer generation was just as smart, he admitted, "but the personal side of journalism, with its ample sentiment and color, is gone, and the men who make newspapers what they are have been swallowed up in the general impersonal waste-basket of modern [...]
It’s in the Mail (Yeah, Sure)
When posed with a question that's off the daily script or unrelated to a planned press event, government public affairs people sometimes put reporters on the "slow roll." Frequently that means that they don't have a clue about how to answer a question or that the person who knows the answer would prefer not share it. (The real payoff for a [...]
Taking a Leak in Washington
Talking about the Scooter Libby trial this week on Fox News, American University communications professor Jane Hall offered: "This is the dirty little secret, I think, of this story.... You get to a certain level and the White House press secretary is trying to leak to the reporter from the network or from The New York Times. People are using each [...]
Tim Hates Chris and Other Nasty Business
Kiss, kiss in the Beltway. Tales of media favors, backstabbing and manipulation. This morning's Los Angeles Times reports on the Libby trial: As they talked by phone, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby scribbled down a series of Machiavellian suggestions from Cheney's then-communications guru, Mary Matalin: What to do about MSNBC talk show host Chris [...]
(Huh?) ‘Increasingly Sexy’ Global Warming (?)
Global warming is making people hot around the collar, perhaps, but sexy? Maybe The Washington Post's new blogger, Paul Kane, is just being "cute" by calling it "sexy." After all, a newly-hired columnist can't be too careful about giving credibility to an issue once advanced exclusively by lefties (readers might think you have a liberal bias or [...]
