Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, real journalism, security theatre

...when I watched this again, after so many years, I couldn't help but think that maybe someone has recently stolen this segment, stripped it of its sincerity, and turned it into self-serving schtick. Maybe someone should go and steal it back.

Labels: Jon Stewart, real journalism, Stephen Colbert

Labels: Barack Obama, Jon Stewart, real journalism

the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.

Labels: Afghanistan, hack journalism, real journalism, wikileaks

The openly lesbian host of MSNBC’s "The Rachel Maddow Show" will receive the 2010 Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award from the Interfaith Alliance in honor of her work covering religion and politics, The Huffington Post reported Tuesday, Aug. 17.

The award "recognizes individuals who courageously promote democratic values, defend religious freedom, and reinvigorate informed civic participation," according to an announcement from the Alliance. Cronkite served as Honorary Chairman of the organization until his death last year.

Maddow will receive the award at a gala dinner held in New York in October.

Labels: Rachel Maddow, real journalism

In addition to having taken a break recently in order to work on his book, it is no secret that he has been grappling with PTSD, brought on from the hellish years he worked in Baghdad. I was told that, unfortunately, when he needed more time off in order to deal with things, his request was denied. So he will not be returning.

While it is a huge loss for us (and for CNN) I am extremely relieved that he chose to take care of his own needs first. And while I sincerely hope that he will return to US television someday on another network, it is far more important that he gets the care he needs.

His work for CNN over the past four years has been an astonishing and brutally honest look at the causes and results of war. Not easy subject matter to watch… but he made us care. His urgency and passion burst through our television sets and made us pay attention, made us want to understand.

Personally, I will never forget the first time I heard him, speaking with Anderson Cooper via telephone to discuss Saddam Hussein’s trial as well as an article he had just written about an embed he had been on in Ramadi. It wasn’t even five minutes of airtime, but it was riveting. When it was announced that he would be joining CNN, I was delighted, because it meant we would be getting even more insight from him. And that we did — he worked like a stevedore, appearing on CNN at all hours of the day and night to make sure that we knew what was really going on in Iraq. As a viewer, you could tell that it mattered to him that the American people understood the issues in this far-away war of ours. He didn’t give a damn about the politics; he cared about what the grunts were going through and what the innocent Iraqi citizens (whose blood, he had to keep reminding us, is no less valuable than ours) were suffering.

His work was always insightful and informative, and on the too-rare occasions when he was able to do longer-format programs for them, it was like being in a classroom. He knew the material cold and presented it in a way that made it easy to comprehend. He is far from the average buffed-and-polished pretty boy posing for the camera. He’s real. He’s a guy — sorry; a bloke — you’d want to sit down and have a beer with, to ask how he’s doing and how he copes with all the craziness he reports on. And want to ask more about what he knows, what he’s seen, what he’s witnessed … no matter how unpleasant the answers would be to hear.

And exactly how does a news organization justify (to themselves, even!) not giving their war correspondents whatever they need in order to deal with their wounds, whether they are visible ones or not? If ABC had treated Bob Woodruff so callously, there would have been hell to pay. I don’t doubt they wanted him back in the field ASAP — doubly so after losing Christiane Amanpour — but don’t force him to make a choice between getting better and getting paid. That just sucks. Surely it would be better to have him off the air but still yours once he is ready to come back than to have him off the air and someone else’s upon his return? So not only has CNN made a callous move here, they have made a stupid one, as well.

Labels: CNN, Morning Sedition, real journalism, This. Just. Sucks.

Most newspaper and broadcast news editors think American journalism is in decline, and about half believe that their employers will go out of business if they do not find new sources of revenue, according to a survey to be released on Monday.

Among print editors, 18 percent said their papers were actively pursuing the idea of charging readers for access to their Web sites, while 58 percent said it was under consideration. Twenty-three percent said they believed that in three years, such subscription fees would be their primary source of online revenue, having overtaken advertising.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism polled members of two industry groups, the American Society of News Editors and the Radio Television Digital News Association. It received 353 sets of responses to the survey, conducted in December and January.

In addition, 48 percent of the editors who participated said that without a significant new income stream, their organizations could not remain solvent for more than 10 years; 31 percent gave them five years or less.

Despite that pessimism, about three-quarters of the editors who took part said they would have serious objections to accepting direct support from either the government or interest groups, and a similar number said their organizations had not seriously thought about taking donations from nonprofit groups.

In an era of shrinking newsrooms, 58 percent of the editors said journalism was headed in the wrong direction. Sixty-two percent said the Internet had changed the profession’s fundamental values, with most citing a loosening of standards.

Labels: Glenn Beck, hack journalism, Rachel Maddow, real journalism

Labels: ACORN, Rachel Maddow, real journalism

Labels: real journalism, scams, wingnuttia

NOTE FROM DAVID WESTIN:

I am delighted to announce that Christiane Amanpour will join ABC News as the new anchor of “This Week.” A highly respected journalist recognized around the world for her reporting, she brings to her new position a wealth of experience and knowledge, as well as a deep commitment to bringing news of the world to the American people. She will also appear on all other ABC News programs and platforms to provide international analysis of the important issues of the day. And, she will be anchoring primetime documentaries on international subjects.

Christiane will join us from CNN where, for two decades she has reported from the world’s major conflicts, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans. She has received every major broadcast journalism award. A formidable interviewer, she has sat down in global exclusives with many of the world’s leaders and military chiefs from the Middle East, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan to Africa, Europe and the United States.

More than once over the years we’ve talked with Christiane about her joining us in one position or another. Until now, it wasn’t the right time or the right fit. We are fortunate that this time it worked for Christiane and for us.

With Christiane we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings. We will continue to provide the best in interviews and analysis about domestic politics and policies. But now we will add to that an international perspective. All of us know how much the international and the domestic have come to affect one another – whether it’s global conflict, terrorism, humanitarian crises, or the economy. And our international reporting has long been a hallmark of ABC News, part of the legacy Peter Jennings left for us. Christiane will bring the international and the domestic together, in the interviews she does and in the roundtable over which she presides. Our audience has come to us for years to see differing points of views expressed in intelligent and compelling ways; now the different points of view will be expanded beyond partisan politics alone.

Labels: real journalism

Labels: Comedians, Jon Stewart, real journalism, wingnuttia

Labels: Bush Administration crimes, Rachel Maddow, real journalism

Labels: Chuck Todd, hack journalism, Jeremy Scahill, real journalism

Labels: obituaries, real journalism, Walter Cronkite

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

“Our family is new in terms of the White House, but I don’t think it’s new in terms of the country,” Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president’s younger half-sister, said last week. “I don’t think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country.”

Though the world is recognizing the inauguration of the first African-American president, the story is a more complex narrative, about immigration, social mobility and the desegregation of one of the last divided institutions in American life: the family. It is a tale of self-determination, full of refusals to follow the tracks laid by history or religion or parentage.

Mr. Obama follows the second President Bush, who had a presidential son’s self-assured grip on power. Aside from a top-quality education, the new president came to politics with none of his predecessor’s advantages: no famous last name, no deep-pocketed parents to finance early forays into politics and, in fact, not much of a father at all. So Mr. Obama built his political career from scratch, with best-selling books and long-shot runs for office, leaving his relatives astonished at where he has brought them.

“It is so mind-boggling that there is a black president,” Craig Robinson, Mrs. Obama’s brother, said in an interview. “Then you layer on top of it that I am related to him? And then you layer on top of that that it’s my brother-in-law? That is so overwhelming, I can’t hardly think about it.”

Though Mr. Obama is the son of a black Kenyan, he has some conventionally presidential roots on his white mother’s side: abolitionists who, according to family legend, were chased out of Missouri, a slave state; Midwesterners who weathered the Depression; even a handful of distant ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. (Ever since he became a United States senator, the Sons of the American Revolution has tried to recruit him. )

[snip]

Only five generations ago, the first lady’s great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson, was born a slave on Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, S.C., where he almost certainly drained swamps, harvested rice and was buried in an unmarked grave. As a child, Mrs. Obama used to visit her Georgetown relatives, but she only learned during the campaign that her forebears had been enslaved in the same town where she and her cousins had played.

Labels: President Barack Obama, real journalism

Labels: America's Future, cute things, Joe Biden, real journalism

Labels: comedy, real journalism

Now you know why I feel so strongly about this issue. Because I've lived it and because my entire adult life has forced this issue to the forefront. Life is messy and people get caught up in situations that are not of their own making far too often. We never asked for an ectopic pregnancy, but we got one nonetheless. Pro-life folks want you to think that abortion is the only facet of being pro-choice but they could not be more wrong or dishonest.

Being pro-choice is to be compassionate and honest about the world around us, and to value the life of the mother just as much as the life within her -- and to trust the women and others involved in each circumstance to weigh all of the issues involved. Because that is what they already do. Most of the women that I have ever known who faced unenviable difficulties in these decisions chose to have their child where it was medically possible. Which is...a choice.

Pretending otherwise is simply to lie.

Anti-abortion activists promote a policy of official meddling — yes, by government bureaucrats — into the private lives of millions of American women, and the lives of their husbands and boyfriends.

Their pleas to now give the Palin family privacy in one of its most difficult moments are easily understood and no doubt supported by every American who has ever had a family crisis. That is, by all of us.

No one who supports abortion rights would wish for any unmarried, 17-year-old girl to become pregnant. No advocate of abortion rights would even suggest that a teenager in Bristol's situation should terminate the pregnancy without weighing her own conscience and deciding, with her family, on her own course.

And yes, we believe she should make her decisions in a private cocoon, embraced by loving family and friends. We just wish that anti-abortion crusaders would afford every family the same respect for privacy they now demand for one of their own.

Labels: bloggers, real journalism, reproductive rights

Labels: bloggers, hack journalism, real journalism

Labels: real journalism, Sam Seder