Just Like I Learned in Journalism School: Dog Bites Man Equals No Story BUT When Woman Bites Pit Bull, There's a Story!

And it's here: the story of the little woman who bit a pit bull defending her dog.

They also used to tell us, besides that if it bleeds, it ledes, that we should never estimate the great interest in the people - especially, if always seemed, American people - to like to get themselves on the news. Sometimes, in anyway possible.

Rich Blogger, Poor Blogger: Where The (Critical) Differences Are More Than (Blog)Skin Deep

A piece at Media Matters on MSNBC’s Chris Matthews reminds me of a subject often acknowledged too seldomly among bloggers themselves. Namely, those who believe the only key difference between Democrat vs. Republican-leaning bloggers is party affiliation are not only politically naïve; they also may not appreciate how skewed the additional differences can color (in more shades than red, blue, and purple) what gets posted.

Obviously, there are no hard and fast rules that apply here and that just about everywhere, you’ll find exceptions to any simplistic generalization I’ll post here or you read elsewhere. Still, understand that my information is mined from years of communications with fellow bloggers of all political stripes (or completely stripe-less) and professional experience with online media that dates back to before most of you ever knew the Internet exists. Data here also comes from general publishing and marketing studies, and from statistics and anecdotal evidence compiled by others I respect and/or have a good track record of accuracy including professional news services.

With this said typed – and my very vocal caveat that this information is not an exhaustive, scientific analysis and may be subject to error - here’s a short list of some of the most interesting of the red vs. blue blogger differences:

GOP-oriented bloggers are far more frequently subsidized, if not outright paid a full salary/hourly wage (which many are), by Republican candidates or Republican-centric organizations

Among politically-affiliated bloggers who are paid, the Republican types tend to make appreciably more money for their work (example: a “right” blogger is more apt to earn a living wage for his or her work rather than the more modest honorariums offered to a smaller percentage of “lefty” bloggers

”Lefty” bloggers, by and large, tend to voice more criticism about so-called “left” candidates and policies than “righty” bloggers do with candidates, elected officials, and policies of their own party/affiliation

Democratic-linked bloggers seem far more inclined to than GOP-leaning ones to openly identify their party affiliation or political bent/philosophy (conservative vs. libertarian, for example), which candidates/policies they support (financially, philosophically, free advertising, etc.) or that they are funded, in part or in whole, by a political group

”Red” bloggers often display far more consistency in “staying on message” (examples: repeating phrase-by-phrase, often ad infinitum, a particular party “talking point” such as that Barack Obama was trained as a Muslim fascist at a madrassah OR that there is actual conclusive proof that candidate John McCain sired a black child out of wedlock and/or deliberately left other American PoWs behind in a Vietnamese prison camp OR that a leading psychiatric expert insists Hillary is not just gay but a self-hating lesbian at that) even when that talking point conflicts with beliefs or reports those same bloggers earlier presented

Dem or independent bloggers appear more inclined to report a different point of view/pick apart a “talking point” even if it comes from their own party/preferred candidate/lawmaker

The same “right” bloggers often fail to provide a link directly to a news piece or another blogger’s post when, conveniently, the blogger’s “paraphrasing” of details from that report/post significantly differs from the context or content of the original source

By and large, “left” blogs are more apt to provide comment/feedback options, and with the blogger more likely to participate in such a discussion for their readers

Lefties more frequently write using all or part of their real names compared with righties who use only a first name, a fictitious full name, or an online “handle”

Small studies have noted that left-leaning bloggers who make an error in posting are as much as 5x more likely to post a correction or otherwise acknowledge such a mistake than counterparts on the right - or 5 million times more likely in the rightwing post-er is Bill O’Reilly ::choke::

There’s more, but I’m trying to share major points rather than summarize “War and Peace.” ::uh-hum::

[Feel free to share your own observations/comments, etc. here (as a left-leaner, I'm not just statistically more likely to invite feedback, I actually encourage it).]

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Telling The Truthiness: News From The Gut

Free Press? So Why "Fear Is In Every Newsroom In The Country"?

So much for the First Amendment, folks. From Adbusters (with deep thanks to Buzzflash for the link):

When Australia’s Rupert Murdoch threw his support behind the Iraq War, so did the 175 media outlets he owns as part of News Corp. When Canada’s CanWest Global Communications justified the Afghanistan invasion, so did its eleven daily newspapers and 16 television stations. And when the major US media conglomerates signed off on the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, American journalists lined up right behind them. In a recent interview on PBS’s Bill Moyers Report, former CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather explained why journalists were so afraid to question the war.

“Fear is in every newsroom in the country . . . particularly in [the] networks,” said Rather. “They’ve become huge international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, regulatory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that’s the case – you know. And that puts a seed in your mind of well, ‘If you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting, is anybody going to back you up?’”

Although the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have shown that media conglomerates limit the diversity of views, subvert democracy and stymie journalistic integrity, Canada, America and Australia’s media regulators continue to let them expand. In fact, over the past decade, media regulators have gone out of their way to help facilitate consolidation or have refused to speak up against it – all to the detriment of the public’s interest. As each of these three countries enters another round of media convergence, their federal media watchdogs appear to be looking the other way.

An Aside: "But He Didn't Look Black!"

The Times' obit article on Steve Gilliard I referenced earlier has a bit near the bottom that I was rather surprised to read: specifically, that almost no one knew he was black/African American.

Uh, I've been working online since '87, long before the Internet was available to almost everyone, and even before the subscription-only online services (then CompuServe, AOL which started its life as an Apple service, GEnie, Delphi, and Prodigy) became big deals. Although others seem to engage in the practice, I don't think I've ever been able to distinguish caucasian v. negroid v. Asian, etc. in text alone.

What I have seen - but thankfully, I've usually successfully avoided - is that people can make such assumptions about others online that, once they actually meet someone face-to-face, they seem to suffer culture shock.

I've always seen online as the great equalizer (except that many poorer or less technology-minded people often miss out) in which you can work and play very effectively without getting hung up by issues of race, ability vs. "dis"ability, gender, creed, sexual orientation, religion, along with a host of others. In these twenty some years, I've met some truly extraordinary people who, without I believe any exception (oops, wait, there was ONE ---eeeeeh!) have never disappointed me once I got to meet them.

Today, we're incredibly fortunate with the great diversity of people who blog or otherwise maintance a regular Web-based presence. What was so extraordinary about Steve isn't that he was black (anymore than I would like to be remembered as only caucasian/WASP), but his commitment to dessimination of important information to the public.

Elsewhere, someone took the politically correct route by calling Steve a "person of color". Yes, he was a person of color, but I believe that to call him a person of conscience is far more apt.

Good Night And Thank You, Steve Gilliard

It is with great sorrow that I report Steve Gilliard has died, details available in a New York Times article today.

Steve was one of the early proponents and innovators in political blogging, starting with The Daily Kos and then on his own, "The News Blog." I know several readers who visit here were regular visitors at Steve's blog. I also visited regularly.

Janice Karpinski Calls Republican Senator Lindsay Graham a Coward, Donald Like Rumsfeld

Senator Lindsay Graham (R-Spineless, SC) shot off his mouth at a screening of HBO's upcoming, "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib", including dumping on former General Janice Karpinski, whom the Bush Administration used as their favorite scapegoat in the prison abuse scandal, making her pay when Rummy and Rick Sanchez and company did not.

But unknown to Edwards, now Colonel Karpinski was in the audience, and she let him have it (and good!); from Crooks & Liars:

"Sen. Graham…I consider you as cowardly as Rumsfeld, as Sanchez, and Miller and all of them," said Karpinski, who has long claimed to be a scapegoat for superiors including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

Bush's Blustering Press Conference Today

Since I couldn't catch anything useful on TV today, I saw the president's press conference which sums up as:

"Are you people stupid? I haven't said we're gonna attack Iran and, since I'm the big cheese and the deciderer and I got the massive cojones
(and you don't or you wouldn't let me skate on a tenth of the crap I pull),

I get to say when and where.
And where do you get off questioning ME?
What the fuck do you think this is, a friggin' democracy or somethin'?
You should damned well know better than that by now.
Oh yeah, and remember - address me as Your Royal Highness!

Failure to do that's gonna get your ass disappeared into Gitmo!

And, oh yeah, God bless me 'cos you can't spell America without me."

Right. He told us right up to the launch of the Iraq war that he wasn't necessarily going to war there either (and four deadly years later...).

Read Cernig's Newshog summary of Bush's words.

Now They Call It Treason To Debate Iraq

Frank Gaffney, one of the loudest of the neocons, has called Congress' efforts to debate the Iraq War - close to four years after we pushed into Baghdad - an act of treason. He wrote this in a Washington Post editorial discussed by Glenn Greenwald at Salon (I got right in, no ad first).

Hey, buddy, if you want to talk about treason, I'm serious that Bush, Cheney, and the neocons are certainly guilty of it! In fact, I'm investigating what it takes to have charges of treason filed. If a mere mortal can do it, I just may.

Speaking of Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell

Greg's latest Pressing Issues column brings us a hell of a story from a former U.S. interrogator in Iraq, one you really must read:

A former U.S. interrogator in Iraq confesses his sins in a dramatic Washington Post opinion column. Just three months ago, he wasn't quite willing to take that step. Who will now join him?

We need to know this stuff. We just do. What is done in our name makes us all culpable and when it's this egregious, we must take steps to make it s-t-o-p.

Thanks, Greg, for bringing it to us.

Carl Bernstein on Nixon Vs. Bush (Nixon Was Bad, Bush Is Orders of Magnitude Worse)

The excellent Editor & Publisher magazine (with a wave to the every-bit-as-excellent E&P editor, Greg Mitchell) brings us nuggets of gold from the PBS Frontline program's series of interviews with Watergate-era journalist Carl Bernstein (infinitely more a journalist than his corporate-polished former cohort, Bob Woodward) on the differences/similarities between Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush:

Q. Finally, I just want to get your reflections on the [famously contentious] relationship of Richard Nixon and the press. ... How does that compare to George W. Bush and the press?

BERNSTEIN: First, Nixon's relationship to the press was consistent with his relationship to many institutions and people. He saw himself as a victim. We now understand the psyche of Richard Nixon, that his was a self-destructive act and presidency.

I think what we're talking about with the Bush administration is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth -- a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself -- is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale.

The lying in the Nixon White House had most often to do with covering up Watergate, with the Nixon administration's illegal activities. Here, in this presidency, there is an unwillingness to be truthful, both contextually and in terms of basic facts that ought to be of great concern to people of all ideologies. ...

This president has a record of dishonesty and obfuscation that is Nixonian in character in its willingness to manipulate the press, to manipulate the truth. We have gone to war on the basis of misinformation, disinformation and knowing lies from top to bottom.

That is an astonishing fact. That's what this story is about: the willingness of the president and the vice president and the people around them to try to undermine people who have effectively opposed them by telling the truth. It happened with [Sen.] John McCain in South Carolina. It happened with [Sen.] John Kerry. It's happened with [Sen.] Max Cleland in Georgia. It's happened with many other people. That's the real story, and that's the story that [the press] should have been writing. ...

It's very difficult, as a reporter, to get across that when you say, "This is a presidency of great dishonesty," that this is not a matter of opinion. This is demonstrable fact. If you go back and look at the president's statements, you look at the statements of the vice president, you look at the statements of Condoleezza Rice, you go through the record, you look at what [counterterrorism expert] Richard Clarke has written, you look at what we know -- it's demonstrable.

It's fact. Now, how do you quantify it? That's a different question.

But to me, if there is a great failure by the so-called mainstream press in this presidency, it's the unwillingness to look at the lies and disinformation and misinformation and add them up and say clearly, "Here's what they said; here's what the known facts were," because when that is done, you then see this isn't a partisan matter. This is a matter of the truth, particularly about this war. This is a presidency that is not willing to tell the truth very often if it is contrary to its interests. It's not about ideology from whence I say this.

It's about being a reporter and saying: "That's what the story is. Let's see what they said; let's see what the facts are." ...

Emphasis mine. Read it all here.

Most Apt Headline: Bush's War Is With Reality"

This headline at Buzzflash, promoting this article in the Times Union, is the best, most honest goddamned headline I've seen in a very, very (pathetically, even) long time.

Bush's most pressing war IS with reality. And it's one he clearly is unprepared ever to win.