All My Children, that soap opera you consumed for twelve hours of when you were stuck at home post-yanking of your wisdom teeth, launched an open casting call for a real-life Iraq war veteran. Well, that sounds like it might actually be a good idea, in that it may bring the reality of war home for a demographic that prefers its stories fictionalized. Like on Army Wives. Oh wait, no.
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Know what American troops in Fallujah are not there to do? Cut down on intellectual property hijacking. Otherwise they might've taken action against whoever is behind the KFC that opened up in the Iraqi city, which last week caused Fox News to report on the progress being made, thanks to the troop surge or something. And this fast food franchise is even said to have a drive-thru, because thanks to "improved security" there, driving cars is completely safe. Except anyone buying Colonel's Crispy Strips at the Fallujah is doing so at an unauthorized KFC. CONTINUED »
Government scientist Bruce Ivins killed himself last week, amidst reports federal officials were going to arrest him as a suspect in the anthrax-in-envelopes scares following 9/11. Ivins, who worked with scary molecules like Cholera before turning his attention to anthrax full time, basically went off the deep end as he was closed in on, and even his shrink was scared of him. With Ivins' death, though, comes new questions about Sept. 11's aftermath and the anthrax scare — namely, how ABC News might have contributed to government-planted misinformation about the situation. What type of misinformation? Say, for instance, that Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program was behind the anthrax scare. You remember Mr. Hussein, don't you? He's the late former Iraqi leader who was so evil the United States spent billions of dollars on a casualty-laden war, all based on various pieces of wrong information, like non-existent WMDs and now, perhaps, a non-existent link between Hussein and the anthrax. CONTINUED »
Chris Matthews did a fine job infuriating the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now colleague Andrea Mitchell is doing her part to stink things up with Barack Obama. Not that there's anything wrong with a reporter actually, um, reporting.
Mitchell, who booted Lee Cowan out of the way to trail Obama to the Middle East and Europe this week, made a satellite stop by Hardball last night — and in soundbite-able brevity, slammed Obama for engaging in reporter-free public relations stunts as he makes his way through Iraq and Afghanistan. (And then Matthews had to ask about black people.) CONTINUED »
Once again using her late stepbrother as justification for her ridiculous actions, Heidi Montag announced she and boyfriend Spencer Pratt are planning a trip to the Middle East to perform for the troops. Haven’t the troops suffered enough?
Andrea Mitchell won't be the only one tagging along with Barack Obama's convoy to the Middle East. Name any brand name media personality, and she'll be on that plane too. Supposedly, the clamoring for a seat on Obama's plane by the nation's top political reporters is a foil to the virtual ambivalence about John McCain's own trip to the Middle East last spring, where his stop garnered barely a mention on the evening news broadcasts. So how come Obama's visit is being treated like the second coming of the messiah? Because dude is a rock star, y'all! CONTINUED »
That's what Washington City Paper Angela Valdez is asking to mostly deaf ears. The National Enquirer ran with a story about CBS star Lara Logan having Baghdad romances with CNN's Michael Ware and U.S. State Department contractor Joe Burkett, and the New York Post picked it up from there. The story even made it to Howard Kurtz's CNN show Reliable Sources (video here), where he played Jossip's favorite game: Cover the gossip by reporting on the coverage of the gossip, and asking whether we should be reporting on this at all. Well, perhaps somebody like Kurtz shouldn't be wasting air time with it, but the Enquirer has a history of reporting on our news men and women; it just so happens that Logan's story involves sex, with multiple partners, and she's a pretty lady. So should we be upset by it? Maybe — it's likely Logan got heavier treatment because she's a woman, while plenty of male on-air sex trysts go unreported. But also: She's a high-paid attractive public figure who brought together the words "sex" and "Iraq" for the first time since this war began, and shouldn't the gossip industry be celebrated for that?
"According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
"CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed." [NYT]
"The people I work with–all my bosses–seem to be for Hillary. I just sense it. They don't actually say it, but there's no sense from the top I can tell you that it's pro-Obama.. by any means. That's not what I get. And it was basically pro-war during the war.. the bosses were. And I was up against that." [FBDC, earlier]
David Gregory, the NBC News White House correspondent and MSNBC show host, has ample reason to have it in for Scott McClellan: The former White House press secretary regularly misled the press and Gregory, including in this famous example at left, and this awesome confrontation, and followed Bush administration's orders to play rough with 30 Rock's news operations.
But now it's McClellan who's fighting back against Gregory. It his book proposal for What Happened, McClellan promised to take a look at the liberal media, with special attention to Gregory: "I came to know and respect those who were assigned to the White House beat. They are solid professionals, but rarely scrutinized or put under the microscope. I will take a look at notable personalities in the White House Briefing Room, including David Gregory and Helen Thomas. I anticipate an entire chapter about the former."
And with McClellan's manuscript hitting bookstores, and his making the rounds on all the talk shows, including NBC's (and tonight, Bill O'Reilly's), it's time for Gregory to lash back at his foe. CONTINUED »
Uh, yes. And anyone who works in television news already knew this. So far, there are on-the-record guilty pleas from top people who were, at the time, working at NBC (Katie Couric) and MSNBC (Jessica Yellin, though she sort of backtracked). [NYT] Who's next? And don't look so shocked when they come forward.
CNN's Jessica Yellin, who on Anderson Cooper's show last night revealed she had felt pressure from above to "patriotize" her news reports when covering the Bush White House and the Iraq war, has now clarified her remarks as promised. For one, she clears up that she was talking about ABC, where she used to work, but MSNBC, of all places, where she "worked as a segment producer, overnight anchor, field reporter, and briefly covered the White House, the Pentagon, and general Washington stories." And also: It wasn't like Jeff Immelt was ringing her extension to tell her to draw hearts around Bush's photos. CONTINUED »
4,500 That's the number of times the military analysts connected to the Dept. of Defense, who were exposed by the New York Times, have appeared across various media, including ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR. [MM]
The New York Times enterprise story on how media networks have been exploited by military analysts currying favor with the government received, um, no attention from the media.
Well, okay, a analysis of media coverage found two mentions of the story, and both were during the April 24 edition of PBS' NewsHour.
So how come nobody has picked up what was arguably one of the biggest exposes of White House blunders? CONTINUED »
Based on the New York Times revelations that many military experts, stumping as television talking heads and newspaper guest op-ed columnists, are paid (with cash, trips, or access) agents of the Bush administration, producers and editors might begin taking a more cynical eye to booking these men in uniform. Because they were so apt to be neutral pundits in the first place. [E&P]
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