Media

I noticed a general message giving birth today – that we should have started focusing on Yemen back in the beginning of the whole war on terror. I can’t say I entirely disagree with that, but what makes it post-worthy is that I am hearing this argument from a lot of GOPers, the same ones who were cheerleading for us to go to war in Iraq.

Given the fact that fighting Iraq stripped our resources from Afghanistan, a fact that is extremely obvious, wouldn’t it have been better for these former Iraq cheerleaders to speak up back in 2002? Instead they took to backing the Bush administration, no matter what. I can only assume that is because “you don’t question the commander in chief at a time of war”, yet that is exactly what they are doing now.

So would someone in the media please ask these people when they spin this whole “we should have been in Yemen for years” mantra, why didn’t they push for this instead of Iraq? Also ask them if they think we could have fought Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq all at once.

We are talking about terrorism and people’s lives, so it’s time to stop the bullshit talking points game and actually address the situation. The best people to do that is the media and after they were accomplice number 1 in lying this nation into war with Iraq, they sure as hell better stand up now and do their jobs.

According to a new study just released, 80% of consumers would not be willing to pay for access to online content:

A similar study was done by the Boston Consulting Group and found only 48% of the respondents would pay for online access to news, and the average monthly price they would be willing to pay is only $3 per month.

So is “pay for content” the silver bullet the media is looking for? Going by these numbers, no it isn’t. A better cure for the media would be more openness – a willingness to work with bloggers to drive traffic to their sites.

Sounds simple enough – doesn’t it? Well apparently not, and this is where we go to the latest escapades of one Liz Cheney:

"I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around...It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this."

Catch the lie in there? If not then read what I posted yesterday:

The dramatic image of a president on the tarmac was a portrait not witnessed in years. Former President George W. Bush spent lots of time with grieving military families but never went to Dover to meet the remains coming off the cargo plane. Obama did so with the weight of knowing he may soon send more troops off to war.

And as Rachel Maddow just reported, a spokesperson for George Bush confirmed that he never once went to Dover.

Let’s face it – Liz Cheney is a liar. Almost every time she has appeared on the TV or in some interview she has been caught lying. So why does the media keep turning to such an unreliable source? Once can only conclude that they must hope her lies won’t be caught by those dirty Cheeto eating, PJ wearing bloggers, but they are. So I no longer blame Liz Cheney for lying. Let’s face – that’s what she is. Who I do blame is the brains in the media that choose to let her air her lies. They are like the dealers on the corner saying “come on – you can go ahead and take some of this crack. Just remember where you got it”.

Good luck with that:

Media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch told analysts in a conference call after News Corp released its full-year results that the traditional newspaper business model has to change.

Just because you charge for access doesn’t mean you own the news. The big stories people worry about will also be covered by other news outlet, and probably even better.

This seems rather odd:

For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.

It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to help bring it to at least a temporary end.

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in mid-May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).

I don’t blame Keith for this, who actually said “I am party to no deal” when asked about this. Rather it is a systematic failure of our media. No longer is delivering the news considered a public service. Instead it is now a profit getter. That taints the forth estate to a point that detrimental to our democracy. When we talk about saving the media, then we really need to examine what needs saved. Profits should be the last thing, if anything to honor the memories of people like Cronkite.

Growing up in the 70s I have fond memories of Walter Cronkite. I remember hearing his voice fill our living room every evening. With his passing we also lose what greatness in journalism really was. In 15 minutes Cronkite could give you the news that was important to our nation. Could you imagine someone doing that today?

And how does the media remember Cronkite? They do it by giving us nonstop coverage of his life. Sure on the surface it seems fitting, but is it really? Are we honoring the man who could give us the news in 15 minutes by taking hours to talk about one story?

Perhaps a way to remember and honor Cronkite would be to actually report on the news. Just this month alone 52 coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan, but they aren’t even worthy of a mention on the news crawl. If you only listened to the news you would quickly forget we are a nation at war. No one even wants to talk about it.

We are not honoring Cronkite this week, instead we are insulting the very profession he helped mold. I would love to see one network take the time to honor Cronkite by actually reporting the news.

I know first hand that one of the biggest costs associated with the traditional media and their online presence is the platform they currently have their websites in. These are high dollar systems that require countless hours developing.

One way the media can curb some costs, yet keep up with an ever changing world in online presence is to drop these old systems. Instead they should look at open source platforms, and the one I highly recommend is Drupal. That’s what powers this blog, as well as Crooks and Liars. You can also add the biggest name in satire news to the list of Drupal powered sites – The Onion.

Recently one of Europe’s largest media organizations just made the switch:

Pierre-Jean Duvivier, Head of WebFactory at Edipresse, shared some remarkable data points with me. Edipresse is one of Europe's biggest media and communications companies. It is a traditional print company that publishes more than 200 titles, including some leading European newspapers (i.e. Le Matin, Le Temps, and 24 heures).

Pierre-Jean told me that they converted 11 newspaper and magazine websites to Drupal in 18 months. The reason for adopting Drupal was that it is cheaper, faster, and more stable than their old content management system.

Today, some of Edipresse's biggest media properties are on a shared Drupal platform that delivers 30 million pages a month. Since they switched to Drupal, they cut their global IT cost by 75% and grew their online traffic by 220%. On average, it takes their internal Drupal team 40 days to migrate an existing newspaper site to Drupal, so I think we can expect to see more Edipress sites moving to Drupal.

With a minimal amount of work and hardly no programming one can transform a vanilla Drupal install into a robust community oriented site offering things like comments, user ratings, post sharing, image galleries, blogs and video sharing.  And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Given the power and extreme effectiveness in which Drupal operates, these companies would end up saving tons in terms of staff and infrastructure. They would also benefit from the much desired features of user interaction that the web is built on today.

It makes good business sense for these companies to look at such a switch. In turn they could contribute back some work to the project(s) they are using and then everyone benefits. Think of it as a partnership for the future.

Watching Meet the Press I can’t help but think that these news organizations go out and hire the biggest flunkies from basic government classes. It’s that or they think that their viewers are total idiots.

Let me explain. They are talking about Nancy Pelosi’s approval rating dropping, so that means she might not be reelected. All the polls have been on a national sample. Those don’t matter. What does her constituents think of her? That’s who reelects her – not the nation.

For proof of this let’s look at John Boehner. Going into last November’s election Boehner’s approval was around 15%. However, Boehner won his district by over 60%. Wow he was really sunk – wasn’t he?

So will the talking heads start acting like they know what they are talking about. This is stuff people learn by the third grade. If you can’t comprehend something taught to young children then its no wonder the news industry is in shambles.

Times are tough for poor Rupert, so he has decided the time is coming to charge people to read his news:

Rupert ­Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­"malfunctioning" business model.

Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said.

Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: "We're absolutely looking at that." Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin "within the next 12 months‚" adding: "The current days of the internet will soon be over."

(emphasis added)

We have heard about the demise of free information on the internet for years. Does Murdoch think he can really change it? How many “exclusives” does any News Corp site have that people are interested in?

I have addressed this before and given my glimpse into what will happen. If a story is big enough, some blogger will pay to subscribe to that site. After that every other blogger will link to that one blogger. So the story will get out and with only one subscription.

Of course if a story is that big then you can bet some other news source will pick it up. Murdoch thinks he can change the internet, but the internet might just end up breaking him.

(photo credit: Reuters)

Finally Americans get to bear witness to some of the costs of war:

The arrival of remains of Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers, a 30-year-old supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, at Dover Air Force Base at 11 p.m. today marked the first time that the transfer of any of the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan was open to the media.

Last night I heard some right winger on CNN saying how this was so disrespectful to the family, and that will be their talking point. They forget that the family has to approve this. For some families its a mechanism to cope, while others feel it helps show the country what war really is. It doesn’t matter the reason, it only matters that the family gets to decide, and some right winger who champions for war but never fights has no right to tell them otherwise.

The AP’s Ron Fournier is at it again, and with the help of the main headline on Drudge. In a piece entitled “Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution”, Fournier makes it sound like Obama relied totally on a teleprompter during last night’s presser:

What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?

A careful one.

President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience.

So Fournier leaves you with this feeling that the entire thing was staged, maybe even the actual Q&A section. He does clarify a little bit more later on:

The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don't signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.

Obama’s opening remarks were really short, only taking about 10 minutes out of the hour long event. So Ron Fournier decides to focus only on that first ten minutes, and leave the quick skimming readers with the impression that’s how the whole thing went.

And since Obama had the teleprompter and played it safe, it left the wingnuts with nothing. Here’s how Drudge is pushing this story:

I would much rather have a President play it safe with a teleprompter and be boring, than a dangerous idiot who goes out there and says things like “bring ‘em on” when talking about the Iraq war, and those people listening and doing just that – at the cost of a lot of lives.

The Republicans have been going ape shit over a post of Judicial Watch showing that Nancy Pelosi uses military aircraft to fly around the country. Coming to the defense of Pelosi, out of all places, is ABC:

The treasure trove of documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Department of Defense regarding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's use of military aircraft doesn't seem to prove the organization's allegation that Pelosi has made "unprecedented demands" for the flights.

In fact, it appears that Pelosi uses military aircraft less often than her predecessor, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

The documents cover the period from January 2007 to November 2008 and show that Pelosi made the equivalent of 20 round-trips between Washington (Andrews Air Force Base) and San Francisco. That's an average of less than one round-trip per month. In contrast, former Speaker Hastert traveled home to his Illinois district virtually every weekend and, his former aides tell ABC News, he would almost always travel on military aircraft. Like Hastert, Pelosi also occasionally leads Congressional delegations on foreign trips (the documents show six foreign trips: one to Asia, three to the Middle East and two to Europe).

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also disprove another frequently repeated rumor about Pelosi's travel: that she regularly flies home to San Francisco in an Air Force C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737. According to the documents, Pelosi did not make any domestic trips on a C-40 during the 23-month period from January 2007 to November 2008. Her trips to San Francisco have all been on smaller executive aircraft, usually an Air Force C-20 (the equivalent of a Gulfstream G-3) or a more plush C-37 (a Gulfstream G-5).

So the Republicans have been out there blowing this whole story up, and even lying about it. Remember, Pelosi is right behind Biden when it comes to being inline for the Presidency. The use of military jets for the Speaker was put in place right after 9/11 by none other than George Bush.

It’s really nice to see the media finally look at the facts on these stories instead of relying on right-wing lies, but I am sure the wingnuts will start bitching about the “liberal media” any minute now.

Drudge has broken out the big bold font:

What’s the big warning? This:

MURDOCH WARNS: NATIONS WILL BE REDEFINED, FUTURES ALTERED
Tue Feb 24 2009 08:36:39 ET
Media baron Rupert Murdoch issued an urgent internal communication late Monday, warning his staff: "We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered."
MORE
The dramatic call comes as markets continue their plunge and the future of media becomes increasingly muddled.
"Many people will be under extreme pressure and many companies mortally wounded," Murdoch declared.
"Our competitors will be sorely tempted to take the easy beat, to reduce quality in the search for immediate dividends."
He continued: "Let me be very clear about our company: where others might step back from their commitment to their viewers, their users, readers and customers – we will renew ours.
"The direction of the business now and over the next few years will define the character of our company for decades."
Developing...

Remember – this is the same guy who owns the FOX news, which is the same FOX news that kept telling us the economy was perfectly fine last year, even when TARP was already being discussed.

I also wonder what “commitment” Murdoch is talking about. Maybe a commitment to push more racist cartoons that promote the killing of our leaders?

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not.

Because the American networks fuck it up. Right when Obama was talking about the stimulus and House Republicans with Matt Lauer, NBC loses audio. Great work there guys!