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Articles Archive for December 2009

Are You Serious?, Media Watch »

[22 Dec 2009 | One Comment | ]
Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Screed

It’s almost too easy to take apart “reporters” and “newspapers” that claim to be practicing journalism. But when they go after actual journalists doing actual journalism it’s worth a note.
Tuesday’s review of Diane Sawyer’s debut in Tuesday’s NY Post is a case in point. Kyle Smith goes on a spleen dump and gets almost everything comically wrong. He’s one the the paper’s TV writers but you wouldn’t know it from his lack of knowledge, writing ability, or research acumen.
First let me say for the record that I don’t have strong …

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Media Watch, Skeptical Eye »

[7 Dec 2009 | 4 Comments | ]
Is NBC the New AOL?

In all the coverage about Comcast’s purchase of NBC there’s been tons of talk about how NBC Universal has done very badly in the traditional broadcast television world but succeeded handily in cable. True enough if your horizon stretches no further than, say, next summer.
The obits for broadcast have been written before and with $600 billion in ad revenues sloshing around I’d bet the reports of broadcast television’s death are still very premature. But there’s no denying cable networks have a better economic model — at this moment.
The potentially fatal …

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Are You Serious? »

[3 Dec 2009 | One Comment | ]
Marriage Advice from an Expert

If you want some advice about marriage — same-sex or otherwise — I can’t think of anyone better to ask than convicted girlfriend-batterer, ex-cop, and current New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate. Monserrate was one of eight Democrats in the state’s “upper” chamber who voted against allowing people of the same gender to marry yesterday.
(Irony alert! Four of the eight ‘no’ votes came from members who represent Queens — but apparently not queens.)
Although I’m sure he had very good reasons for his decision (the word in Albany and his Elmhurst …

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Media Watch, Skeptical Eye »

[2 Dec 2009 | One Comment | ]
All Bad Choices

You didn’t even need to pick up a copy of the New York Post this morning to know the paper’s oh-so-predictable verdict on President Obama’s speech at West Point. In fact you didn’t even have to watch the paper’s stable mates at Fox last night to know what was coming. Because it’s been coming for months. For his legion of well-heeled and widely-distributed critics, the bottom line is simply, if it’s coming out of Obama’s mouth or Obama’s White House it is, by definition, bad, misguided, and probably un-American. Their …

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