Some good points made here: 

Chicago Tribune Labels Very Liberal Congressman ‘Mainstream Democrat’
Posted by Michael M. Bates on January 1, 2006 – 13:28.
In today’s front page story on Bobby Rush, “Pastor Rush stirs hope, skeptics in Englewood,” the Chicago Tribune describes the Illinois Democrat as a “former militant Black Panther turned mainstream Democratic congressman.” One wonders what the Tribune considers mainstream.

Rush’s voting record in Congress, as measured by assorted special interest groups, reflects little in the way of moderation. In their most recent evaluations, for example, the National Abortion Reproductive Rights Action League awarded him a 100 percent rating. The National Taxpayers Union gave him a puny 11 percent while Americans for Tax Reform ranked him at 10 percent. Getting a 100 percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, Americans for Democratic Action, and the National Education Association, Rush received a zero percent rating from the American Conservative Union and the National Rifle Association, and 10 percent rankings from both the American Security Council and Citizens Against Government Waste.

All in all, Bobby Rush can hardly be designated mainstream. Then again, among Democrats and the Chicago Tribune, perhaps his record is considered fairly moderate.

Chicago Tribune Labels Very Liberal Congressman ‘Mainstream Democrat’ | NewsBusters.org

Pajamas Media was formed after a TV News macher dismissed bloggers’ reporting as just something from a lot of guys “in their pajamas,” meaning they weren’t showing up at a news room or assignment desk or even calling in to say where they were, for gosh sakes.  He should never have said that.  Now he has this to contend with, complete with a call to arms against the establishment:

“The core of the American people has manifested itself most purely in blogs because elites for so long controlled all avenues of communication.  Those days are over now.”

— Tammy Bruce, Editorial Board

It’s slick, it’s sharp, it looks to bloggers for news and commentary, pulling together what they say on a given breaking topic.  Yes, Virginia, there is something new under the sun.

 

“So yes on the evidence this is FUD,” says L’Ombre de l’Olivier, meaning the “fear uncertainty and doubt” that attacks a “large incumbent company . . . when it sees a threat on the radar screen from a start up.”  He refers to the WaPo “hit job” on embedded blogger-journalist Bill Roggio — Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage, which Roggio rebutted in Disinformation Operations: Flaws in The Washington Post’s article on Information Operations.

L’Ombre calls the WaPo story

fascinating stuff because the production of FUD is a sign of an organization whose product is facing a competitive threat that it can’t beat head to head. I would say that Bill and Michael Yon, Michael Totten and, for that matter the Iraqi bloggers at Pajamas Media, are indeed a threat to the MSM [MainStreamMedia] foreign reporters. The reason they are a threat is that they are providing a better quality story. They don’t make the elementary mistakes that MSM journos do such as calling a Bradley a tank or failing to note such inconsistencies from their sources. One could go on, but the fact is that Bill & co, as well other Citizen Journalist efforts are making it clear that journalism is not something that has, in the jargon, a moat or high barriers of entry. In fact thanks to the web it has about the lowest barrier of entry of any profession. All that is required is a story and an ability to write and the web then helps that story and writing ability, if either or both are attractive, to get wider coverage.

You don’t need a master’s from Columbia or Medill, you don’t need apprenticeship at City News.  No wonder the officially accredited take umbrage.

ARE PHONE COMPANIES HELPING THE GOVERNMENT SPY?

One question arising from the revelation that the government monitored phone calls without court approval is whether phone companies cooperated

is online (email) head for Chi Trib page-one, top left one-column story by telecom writer Jon Van.  It’s punchy and gets right to it.  The hard-copy head is something else, vague and indirect:

Phone giants mum on spying
In past, industry has cooperated with U.S.

It’s as if you play it vague and indirect with breakfasters and Metra riders because Trib is comfy waking-up fare, but you don’t really get serious until you’re online.

Meanwhile, it’s the civil liberties angle again, not defense.  Is it ever defense?  Trib editors — news editors, that is — just don’t get it: a) we’re at war and b) there are other news-deciders to follow besides NY Times, whose sloppiness in reporting the NSA concoction has been amply debunked by Power Line, where you can find a really serious treatment of the subject.

Later:

Reader Bob asked, “Where  would Cynthia get such info?” 

I noted that as for cooperation with the Chinese, Drudge had it months ago, quoting a mainstream source.

Reader Cynthia:

Funny you should mention the Drudge Report. I was just in Japan, visiting some missionary friends, and another missionary I met while I was there loved having someone to talk politics with, and told me he really relied on Drudge to keep him informed of what was really happening in the U.S.

I will say, on behalf of Ms, that at least they just developed software that warns people when they are saying something unacceptable: putting in the wrong words prompts the error message “This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item.” Forbidden speech includes the Chinese for “democracy,” “demonstration”, “democratic movement” and “Taiwan independence.”

A friend of mine who is very involved in the Libertarian party (started the Illinois chapter, in fact, and has been their candidate for Senator at least a couple of times) got rid of SBC as her ISP, she was so upset about their participation in Chinese censorship. While I confirmed the Microsoft story myself before saying anything (I do know that rule), my friend has such good contacts that it didn’t seem necessary to check on the SBC story — and having traveled quite a bit in China myself, I can’t imagine anyone being allowed to operate any business there if they didn’t cooperate. China’s government knows we’re drooling over China as a market, and they don’t feel any pressure to alter their humans rights position.

Chi Trib big page one head with beaucoups de pix, 30 head shots of the kind they run of U.S. military casualities hits the breakfast-table and strap-hanger reader this morning smack dab in the eyeballs— hot, HOT news about World War I (One!) civil liberties violations in MONTANA!  “JAILED FOR THEIR WORDS: A law passed during World War I pitched Montanans into prison for critical remarks; law students are seeking clemency for them”  Wuxtry, wuxtry is right.  Wow.

Go to page 18 for rest of hard-copy story and see new head, “SPEECH; Patriot Act is like sedition laws, some say,” and it all becomes clear: agenda alert! agenda alert! Left-wing, pseudo-liberal, anti-war bias!  Left-wing, pseudo-liberal, anti-war bias!  (The Trib web site buries this story, by the way.)

But wait.  Maurice Possley, writer of all 1,493 words of this story, not counting generous captions under nine page-18 pix, helped edit a book on the subject during a sabbatical-teaching stint two years ago at U. of Montana.  And he had this in the bottom drawer for a while, and many are on vacation during these CHRISTMAS holidays, so what the hay, goose this story.

The really grand thing is, it fit the zeitgeist embraced by apparently most Chi Trib editors and writers perfectly, namely left-wing, pseudo-liberal, antiwar . . .  But wait.  Said that already, didn’t I?

Same day’s hard-copy Trib has Charles M. Madigan trying to get something going on “national health care”! Yes, but we call it Hillary-care where we come from, and recall it bombing a few years back for lack of political support.  We expect the Madigan treatment to be even-handed, of course, like his Sunday Perspective section.  And that last calls, I fear, for Irony Alert!  Irony Alert!

* Late entry for lead of the year just in, page 2 of Chi Trib, AP story from Alaska by Rachel d’Oro about animal researcher checking out reindeer meat as tasty and good for you, with view to steaks and chops:

 FAIRBANKS, Alaska — He has a long beard, wears a red parka and hangs out with reindeer just a short sleigh ride from an interior Alaska town called North Pole.

That’s where the resemblance ends.

* Ditto for positive-news story out of Iraq, at least for Trib, on page one, by Aamer Madhani, “Among Iraqi army units, 1 really earns its stripes: Tiger Battalion has grown from shabby militia to role model for building the fledgling force,” with this lead:

MUQDADIYAH, Iraq — As Iraqi army Capt. Saddam Ismail Abid commanded a vehicle checkpoint in this northeastern city one recent day, he was more like the sheriff of Mayberry than a member of Iraq’s most hunted fraternity.

Drivers shook his hand, acquaintances peeked out of their cars to offer him kisses on the cheek and a few neighbors even pulled over to chat with him about his recent wedding. Abid was so relaxed that he said he didn’t believe it was necessary to wear his body armor.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” Abid explained. “Muqdadiyah’s people love the Tiger Battalion.”

* But yesterday Sun-Times Controversy section ran a Salon-dot-calm counterstrike vs. “Neocon” pre-emptive strike on Spielberg’s “Munich” without running the pre-emptive strike.  We heard the rebuttal but not the original, which had not been reported by S-T.  Why not both together?

* Robin Williams “mostly tries to keep politics out of the show after he did a few jokes about Bush’s brainpower at a base in 2003 and got a chilly reception,” says a UK Guardian story out of Washington about stars’ unwillingness to perform for troops in Iraq.  Once there were Bob Hope, Duke Ellington, The Marx Brothers, Judy Garland, and the like.  Now there are Williams, 50 Cent, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, and their like.

Note the antiwar Williams as a regular.  Ditto Al Franken.  But it’s dangerous to be there and unpopular as a cause among Hollywood-ites.  Some or many don’t want to seem to seem to be endorsing the war, says Wayne Newton, who took over from Bob Hope as chief USO recruiter.

Sun-Times and NYTimes circulation drops recently reported — 21 percent drop in average weekday circulation for six months ended in March 2005 for S-T, “sharp” 4th-quarter earnings drop for NYT [see: http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/7670.asp] — relate to online competition.

“Advertisers are following consumers online,” says Shawn Riegsecker, president, Centro, a local advertising buying service specializing in online advertising with “over 1,300 local sites encompassing online newspapers, TV and radio sites, alternative weeklies and business publications,” says Imedia Connection — http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/7379.asp.

“That’s why,” says Riegsecker, “this is less about . . . bad news [about] newspapers, and more about which newspapers will begin to assert [put] their premium brands online – and how quickly and strategically they’ll do it.”

In other words, they should get on-line or get lost.

* See here http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/22/181923.shtml for more on DePaul U. as stifler of freedom. 

* And consider this about Maureen Dowd, of Are Men Necessary? and NYT fame:

IS MAUREEN DOWD NECESSARY?   J. Peder Zane has her number :

American journalism has a proud tradition of balloon-busters, but Dowd is H.L. Mencken without the piercing observations, Dorothy Parker without the brilliant wit. Her prose is filled with moral indignation, yet her cheap shots lower the level of discourse that she wishes were higher, and her focus on personal peccadilloes trivializes the pressing matters of state she pretends to care about.

This is my problem, not Dowd’s. I’m expecting too much from her. Think of her not as a leading pundit but a stand-up comic with the best gig in America and her work can hold your interest for a few minutes twice a week. She might even make you laugh before you reach the end of her column and all memory of her words vanishes. Poof!

Posted by Don [Luskin] at 11:57 AM | link  

* One of the other James Bowmans, this one of the East Coast, remembers the movie “Elvira Madigan” as what caught raw, young fancy in days gone by.  This Bowman’s a kid, but the Bowman whom you know from these pages worked with kids in those days and imbibed their enthusiasms.  See here: http://www.nysun.com/article/24896

* Meanwhile, the other Journal, Wall Street (as opposed to our esteemed Wednesday J. of OP&RF), is glad the judges called the White House on the Padilla matter.  Key judge in this, btw, is Michael Luttig, who was on the short list for recent US Supreme Ct nominations.  He’s one of them, in other words, but spoke sharply to WH.  See here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110007720

more more more before the creeks run again . . .

A couple of Chi Trib stories today, encountered by page 11 of front section, demonstrate or at least illustrate something or other about editors’ and others’ mindset.  Page 3 has, top left, two-column head, “Hussein: U.S. jailers beat, tortured me,” with subhead “3 describe brutality of ex-dictator’s regime.”  Aamer Madhani’s lead justifies that: he subordinates “terror dispensed by Sadaam Hussein’s intelligence apparatus” to “the former Iraqi president said that he and his co-defendants have been beaten and tortured by their U.S. military jailers.”

Which is a laugh, right?  Or am I not attuned to the mainstream-media zeitgeist? 

Point: Reverse head and subhead and you have something closer to reality, ditto with lead.

Story two, on page 11, is by Trib-owned Baltimore Sun writer out of Burlington, Vermont: “The high toll on small state,” with subhead “Vermont, where war sentiments run hot and cold, has the most GI deaths per capita” and takeout quote above the head: “’All of this news of dying . . . now we’ve reached the tipping point.’  — Nancy Brown, Vermont coordinator of the national anti-war organization Military Families Speak Out.”

It’s stories like this that show why TribCo bought this Baltimore paper — so it could get Vermont stories that fit the above-mentioned zeitgeist.  How about all this news of dying on mean streets of Chicago, tied in with breakdown of family life and denigration leading to loss of traditional values? 

Nope.  This writer and these editors want to puff the antiwar movement, or so it appears.  Coming up (not): a Vermont story about military families that support the war.

Power Line has an exchange between John Hinderaker and NY Timesman Eric Lichtblau, co-author of NSA-surveillance stories, that is a textbook-quality example of how to question a questionable story.  Hinderaker cites legal chapter and verse:

The November 2002 decision of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, in Sealed Case No. 02-001, where the court said:

“The Truong court [United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 4th Cir. 1980], as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. *** We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.”

After several exchanges in which Lichtblau cited “the end of our original story last Friday [which] quotes from the FISA appellate decision that you cite” and the story’s discussion of “the debate over whether the program was legal.”

Hinderaker effectively asks why the Times hangs its story’s “scoop” quality on blind quotes from unnamed officials who had it wrong “while not pointing [that] out.”  

I don’t think that a partial sentence from one of the controlling decisions, buried at the end of a long article and not repeated in subsequent articles, removes the incorrect impression you convey that the NSA program is, in all likelihood, illegal.

As the uber-blogger Instapundit would say, there’s more.  It’s textbook example, I say of how a newspaper overreaches.