Home » Archive

Skeptical Eye

Headline, Latest, Media Watch, Skeptical Eye »

[16 Nov 2010 | One Comment | ]
Give It A Rest Keith

Somebody should call a doctor. Keith Olbermann is off his meds — again.
Last night Olby went Kujo on Ted Koppel. Koppel? That nice old news man who once did that dry and somber news show called Nightline? Yep. That Ted Koppel.
In case you missed it, this past Sunday the Washington Post gave the former ABC News anchor a chunk of its Op-Ed page to get something off his chest. Koppel wrote about what’s happened to television news in the last decade or so and what he thinks it means for the …

Share

Latest, Media Watch, Skeptical Eye »

[4 Oct 2010 | Comments Off | ]
New Video: Spitzer on CNN — Hookers Aren’t the Issue

Check it out! After a verrrrry long dry spell I decided to plant my face in front of a camera in honor of a guy who has inexplicably become the host of a national cable “news” show.
The problem with Eliot Spitzer being given the seat at CNN in prime time is not that he hired a hooker. Or liked to have sex with his long black dress socks on. It’s that he basically abused his authority as Governor the same way Richard Nixon did as President.
Remember Troopergate? Spitzer’s Administration directed …

Share

Latest, Skeptical Eye »

[15 Sep 2010 | Comments Off | ]
Taste the Crazy! (or Stupid Angry Voters)

It’s nights like last that make me miss covering politics full time. Election nights when voters get their crazy on and act like kids.
I’m mad! I want lower taxes! I’m not doing what the adults tell me to do! I want cookies for breakfast! And I don’t wanna get fat. And of course, I HATE YOU ALL!
The American press loves to place the voter on the highest pedestal. After all our little experiment in (sort of) direct democracy has, on balance, worked out pretty well over the last 230 odd …

Share

Media Watch, Skeptical Eye »

[24 Aug 2010 | One Comment | ]
Fox and Fiends

While I’m an equal opportunity critic of cable “news” I can’t pass up this opportunity to share a clip that offers compelling evidence that Fox is, at times, in the business of completely and utterly lying for the sake of pushing a partisan agenda. Journalism by any standard other than that of Chairman Mao, Josef Stalin, or Big Brother is simply not practiced much of the time at Fox “News”. As I wrote last week, the Not-at-Ground-Zero-not-a-Mosque pseudo controversy  is yet another case of cable “news” and its taboid breathren …

Share

Media Watch, Skeptical Eye »

[20 Aug 2010 | 5 Comments | ]
It’s not Mosque, It’s not at Ground Zero and It’s August

First off sorry about the verrrrry long lapse in postings. As I recently explained to a follower of Get Real, the whole point of this blog was not just to spout off but to bring facts to bear on the issues and arguments we often are drowning in. That means it can take a few hours to write each post and frankly, I haven’t had the time lately. I gotta make a living and running a media production company is more than a full-time job. (Obvious plug opportunity: Please visit …

Share

Skeptical Eye »

[10 May 2010 | Comments Off | ]
Back to the Future: Kagan the Non-Judge

The one thing supporters and opponents of Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court should agree on is this: it’s about time we had some non-judges on the high court…again.
The history of the Supreme Court is one filled with brilliant (and some not-so-brilliant) members who had never been judges before being confirmed. That was once considered not only normal, but a good thing. The non-judges have been some of the most remarkable names in the Court’s long history: Marshall, Brandeis, Frankfurter, Rehnquist, Warren. Thirty-seven other justices were part of the …

Share

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 …

Share

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 …

Share

Are You Serious?, Skeptical Eye »

[20 Sep 2009 | Comments Off | ]
Paterson Punked? Not Likely

So the cat is out of the bag and now the even the White House is worried about New York Governor David Paterson’s incredible deflating poll problem. But the way it’s playing out is not how the President, nor the people who put him up to this, expected.
Back up to this past winter when Paterson’s amateur-hour handling of his pick to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate left just about everyone slack-jawed. He managed to piss of anyone connected to the Kennedys (not an insignificant body of people especially in …

Share