The New State of the News Media Report is Here!
Iam not a big fan of the movie “The Jerk,” a movie that is even below my sophomoric taste in films (my wife JoAnna may be stunned to know that there ARE movies that fall below my acceptability bar). But I recently thought of the scene from “The Jerk” when the new phone books arrive [...]
Your Most Trusted Source (?): Fox News
It has come to this. It used to be that Americans turned to the three network anchors for their news and information. Walter Cronkite was regarded not only as the most trusted anchor but also as the most trusted man in America. Cronkite earned that lofty distinction because Americans believed that when he spoke, he presented [...]
Leach, Tech Shanghaied by the Media
My wife and I were sitting at Dallas Love Field airport waiting for our flight back to Lubbock when I read the news on my Blackberry: Coach Mike Leach had been suspended from the Alamo Bowl while the school investigates complaints from a player and his family about treatment of a player after an injury. [...]
Laying off the techies
I nodded in recognition when I read Regina McCombs’ latest blog entry on Poynter (“Power Struggles over Converged Newsrooms May Diminish Value of Web Sites”) about the layoffs of online staff at the Washington Post. She suggests that the targeting of multimedia folks in the latest rounds of cuts at news organizations is an indication [...]
Obama? Pakistan? I want my balloon boy!
President Obama’s town hall event in New Orleans was pre-empted. News about the Pakistan’s army offensive had to be put on hold. Questions about our strategy in Afghanistan had to go unanswered. All other news had to be ignored while we stood transfixed (well, those of us who weren’t tweeting or Googling) as a silver [...]
Smoking and other bad habits: Media and coverage of the economy
Totally unscientific polls on worst personal habits identify items such as drinking too much, smoking, belching, nose picking, poor personal hygiene, chewing your nails or clipping them in public, flatulence and eating with your mouth open. I have made a conscious effort to avoid most of these bad habits (my wife JoAnna has been a [...]
Media Health: Bad News and Worse News
Stop me if you have heard this one: A doctor says to his patient, “I have bad news and worse news.” “Oh dear, what’s the bad news?” asks the patient. The doctor replies, “You only have 24 hours to live.” “That’s terrible”, said the patient. “How can the news possibly be worse?” The doctor replies, [...]
Journalists, Saddam, health care and cognitive dissonance
The moon landing was a hoax. The Holocaust never happened. Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery. The information environment is not responsible for the perception that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. The first three are popular conspiracy theories that have been thoroughly debunked, but still believe believed by a core of [...]
Health care coverage flatlining?
I admit. I drank the kool-aid. I believed the hype that when Barack Obama was able to employ social media to identify supporters and get them to volunteer and donate money that we were entering a new political era. The Obama administration would be able to use social media to bring public opinion to bear [...]
Is Jon Stewart the most trusted journalist? Are you insane? Probably
When Time.com announced the results of its click poll that Jon Stewart handily won as America’s most trusted journalist the week after Walter Cronkite’s death, it led to an outpouring of reporters and bloggers deciphering what these results meant. Some wrung their hands about what it says as a society that a comedian was named [...]