Conservative Enemies

January 10, 2009 at 11:08 pm

Conservatives will tell you that it is clear that they are victims of a vast conspiracy and are under attack! To find out who all these groups and people are, I started compiling a list while listening to conservative talk radio and reading conservative blogs. Here is the list of […]

$700 Billion of Political Will

January 4, 2009 at 9:36 am

This is a story about 3 numbers and what these numbers tell us: $700 billion, $30 billion, and $1 million. The $700 billion is of course the infamous financial bailout figure. $30 billion is the amount the auto industry was asking for. And $1 million is the amount of a contract […]

Bruce Ivins, Credibility, and our Financial Markets

August 9, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Something kept bothering me the other day as I listened to an interview on NPR discussing the evidence in the Bruce Ivins anthrax case. I thought about it and thought about it and then it hit me what it was: I didn’t believe the story. Now bear with me for […]

The Real News from Scott McClellan’s “What Happened”

June 1, 2008 at 11:26 am

To learn the most from Scott McClellan’s new book What Happened you don’t even need to buy the book. All you have to do is look at the coverage from the administration, the mainstream media, and the blogosphere. The blogosphere The general reaction from the blogosphere could be summed up […]

Separating the Big Stories From the Little

May 28, 2008 at 10:01 pm

In an interesting piece of candid self admittance, John Harris from the Politico, provides an interesting glimpse of how the media operates. Politico’s editors are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build this traffic is to get links from other websites. The way to get links from other […]

Breaking the Progressive Comment Response Addiction

April 19, 2008 at 3:57 pm

This week’s Democratic debate caused a fury on the Internet. During the first 45 minutes, the moderators (Stephanopoulos and Gibson) covered Obama’s “bitter” comments, the Reverend Wright, flag pins on lapels, Hillary’s lying about Bosnia sniper fire, and Obama’s relationship to William Ayers. You would hardly know we were a […]

A Local WEBN Advertisement and Our Political Debate

April 14, 2008 at 9:59 pm

WEBN is a classic rock station here in Cincinnati that has decorated our town with a lovely series of billboards. The billboards are easily spotted by single black quotes on an otherwise all-white billboard. Here are a few samples: “102.7 WEBN stinks,” Maya Buttreeks from Kenwood “102.7 WEBN is immature,” […]

Truth Versus “Fair and Balanced” Part II

January 4, 2008 at 4:02 am

Don Lichter from the CMPA returned my e-mail: Dear Mr Akadjian, Thank you for your thoughtful note. For us the choice of outlets is a matter of resources and logistics – we simply can’t do more in real time. For several elections we did the 3 broadcast nets; we added […]

Truth Versus “Fair and Balanced”

January 1, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Dear Donald Rieck and the Center for Media and Public Affairs, While interesting, I’m worried that your election study showing FOX to be the most “fair and balanced” in election coverage uses a conservative definition of the media. Conservatives and FOX News would argue that to be “fair and balanced” […]

In Search of an Objective Media

June 24, 2007 at 3:33 pm

You know you’ve heard it. The dreaded “liberal media” label that has sent scores of journalists scurrying to defend themselves against accusations of bias. Conservatives love the liberal media frame because it has been tremendously effective for them. Rather than deal directly with an argument, just dismiss it as liberal. […]