Recently in Writing, Media & Blogs Category

"Fact checks" are the journalistic equivalent of the cheating spouse who promises that this time they're really telling you the truth.

Mark Hemingway illustrates how the "Fact Check"-style column is generally just thinly veiled opinion that completely distorts the meaning of the word "fact".

But it seems the most outspoken fans of media fact-checking operations come from within the media themselves. "Has anyone else noticed that the Associated Press has been doing some strong fact-checking work lately, aggressively debunking all kinds of nonsense, in an authoritative way, without any of the usual he-said-she-said crap that often mars political reporting?" Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent wrote last year.

Sargent was conducting a fawning interview with the AP's Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier about the outlet's fact-checking operation. "The AP, for instance, definitively knocked down claims that [Supreme Court Justice] Elena Kagan is an 'ivory tower peacenik,' " Sargent wrote.

Not surprisingly, Fournier agreed with Sargent. "What we tend to forget in journalism is that we got in the business to check facts," Fournier says. "Not just to tell people what Obama said and what Gingrich said. It is groundless to say that Kagan is antimilitary. So why not call it groundless? This is badly needed when people are being flooded with information."

Sargent and Fournier's ouroboros of self-congratulation inadvertently revealed a problem: When it comes to fact checking, the media seem oblivious to the distinction between verifying facts and passing judgment on opinions they personally find disagreeable.

The blogosphere hasn't taken "fact check" columns serious for a long time... or ever. Personally, I find the whole practice to be absurdly desperate on the part of the mainstream media. People used to listen to them and just assume they were hearing facts all the time. Now the media has to create specially-labeled "fact check" zones to let us know where the facts are (supposedly) kept amidst all the leftist clap-trap.

The reason "he-said-she-said crap" is part of most news stories is that most people give their opinions, and the reporter isn't supposed to inject himself into matters of opinion. The readers are supposed to decide which opinion-giver they find most reliable. When the readers don't line up behind the "right" opinions, the journalists get upset.

Yes, Time Magazine (they still exist?) has finally gotten around to recognizing the impact of the Tea Party!

In each place, discontent that had been simmering for years got turned up to a boil. There were foreshadowings. In the U.S., the Obama campaign was in part a feel-good protest movement that galvanized young people, and then its shocking success and the Wall Street bailout produced an angry and shockingly successful populist protest movement in the Tea Party, which has far outlasted its expected shelf life. In 2009, after the regime in Tehran denied the antiregime election results, millions of Iranians, especially young ones, protested for weeks. The Web and social media were key tactical tools in all three instances. But they seemed at the time to be one-offs, not prefaces to an epochal turn of history's wheel.

Wait a minute. Obama's campaign was a "feel-good protest" and the Tea Partiers were just "angry"? Well, at least they were "populist" I guess. However, despite having "far outlasted its expected shelf life" the Tea Party is a "one-off". Oh well.

It'll be very interesting to see which of these various movements have the longest-lasting beneficial effects. I'm guessing that the "Arab Spring" protests will leave us with a bunch of radical Islamist governments, and the Obama "protest" will leave us with a zillion dollars of debt.

Young adults may enjoy scary movies because they let us them indulge our "traditional gender roles".

With regard to age, there's a suggestion that enjoyment rises through childhood, peaks in adolescence and then gradually fades with age. Related to this is the 'snuggle theory' - the idea that viewing horror films may be a rite of passage for young people, providing them with an opportunity to fulfil their traditional gender roles. A paper from the late 1980s by Dolf Zillmann, Norbert Mundorf and others found that male undergrads paired with a female partner (unbeknown to them, a research assistant), enjoyed a 14-minute clip from Friday the 13th Part III almost twice as much if she showed distress during the film. Female undergrads, by contrast, said they enjoyed the film more if their male companion appeared calm and unmoved. Moreover, men who were initially considered unattractive were later judged more appealing if they displayed courage during the film viewing. 'Scary movies and monsters are just the ticket for girls to scream and hold on to a date for dear life and for the date (male or female) to be there to reassure, protect, defend and, if need be, destroy the monster,' says Fischoff. 'Both are playing gender roles prescribed by a culture.'

It's not mere "culture" that leads men to defend women, but you get the idea.

(P.S., Am I no longer a "young adult"?)

(HT: Alex Tabarrok.)

I bought my daughter "Meanwhile: Pick Any Path. 3,856 Story Possibilities" several months ago, and it has become her favorite book. She doesn't quite get everything that's going on inside, but she loves tracing the paths through the story and finding new avenues to explore. She also likes the secret giant squid. I highly recommend this book for parents with kids of any age... even if they can't read it themselves, they'll love going through it with you.

I just ordered Vernor Vinge's new novel, "The Children of the Sky"! Completely by coincidence I just finished reading "A Fire Upon The Deep" and his new book is a sequel! I am extremely excited.

The mainstream media continues to ignore Fast and Furious. Recap:

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice's previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a "botched" operation where agents simply "lost track" of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.

Hundreds of people were murdered with these guns, and the Left has been attempting to argue for more restrictions on gun ownership based on anecdotes about American weapons making their way south.

The American media has been ignoring this atrocity for too long, but I don't think they'll be able to muffle it forever.

Man bites dog? Tweeters bite twit.

Regardless of what President Obama and his political advisers had hoped for, the three-state Midwest bus tour last week prompted far more criticism and ridicule than support in Twitter comments, according to this week's Hill Hexagon.

An analysis of Twitter traffic by Crimson Hexagon over the days of the tour showed that 72 percent of the opinions expressed were negative, while 22 percent were neutral and only 6 percent were favorable.

Among the negative comments, 21 percent were generally negative toward Obama, 17 percent called it a campaign stunt, 15 percent complained about taxpayers picking up the tab, 12 percent offered derisive names for the tour -- similar to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's "Magical Misery Tour" -- and 6 percent complained that he was not in Washington working.

I wonder what the political skew of the Twitter demographic is?

(HT: PowerLine.)

Jonathan Chait is absolutely right in his assessment that "mainstream"/liberal journalists tend to obscure the substance of political disagreements.

Meanwhile, Tom Friedman writes a column today envisioning a world in which both parties come together. Republicans agree to endorse Obama's policy agenda, and Obama agrees to admit that he could have explained his agenda more clearly. I share Friedman's enthusiasm for such an outcome, but I fail to see how this relates to the current impasse.

This is one way in which conservative journalism is actually far more sophisticated than mainstream news journalism. Conservative pundits, while usually slanting their account in highly partisan and often misleading terms, do a fairly good job of grasping and explaining the fact that the two parties fundamentally disagree on the causes of and solutions to the economic crisis and the long-term deficit. In this sense, a Rush Limbaugh listener may well be better informed about the causes of the impasse than listener of NPR or other mainstream organs. The former will have in his mind a wildly slanted version of the basic political landscape, while the latter's head will be filled with magical thinking.

I disagree that conservative outlets slant their opinions in a "highly partisan and misleading" manner, but sure, conservative pundits have a conservative slant. However, I am a daily listener to NPR, and I definitely agree that the leftist commentators on that show frequently avoid addressing the substantial issues at hand and instead expend their time and energy on straw men.

(HT: James Taranto.)

Hey, Jonathan Rauch, you're already a master-blogger! Despite your idiotic disdain for the medium you have written a post so insipid, pretentious, and provocative that it's sure to get a zillion hits.

Well, I'm blogging. Those who know me will know I have a pretty bad attitude about the blogosphere.

Well, seeing as how I'd never heard of you, I've only just now learned about your bad attitude. Blogs are so informative!

I've done my share of blogging over at the Independent Gay Forum,

A link to your blog right at the top of your first paragraph? How gauche! And congrats on being gay. Although I don't mention it often, I'm straight.

but my mild, moderate, think-it-through-and-get-it-right style doesn't mesh well with blogosphere culture,

Which explains your bad attitude. It must be frustrating to be so unappreciated despite your obvious mildness, moderateness, and rightness.

with blogosphere culture, which seems more to resemble, say, Roman gladiatorial entertainment, only without the subtlety.

Wait, was that subtlety right there? Were you being subtle?! Wow, I almost missed it. How autological of you.

Plus...I'm not getting paid. That's good for you, but it's not so good for me.

My blog is pretty paltry, but I get paid from ads. You can bet that Andrew Sullivan, where you're guest-blogging, is making a ton of money from his blog. And hey, you managed to include a link to your gay forum right up at the top, so dare I infer that you make money from it somehow? If not, that's not a flaw with the medium, it sounds like a personal problem.

Or for reporting. Or for journalism. And don't even get me started on commenters.

Ok, so, maybe we should prevent technology and culture from changing so as to protect what you think is good for "reporting" and "journalism"? Let's do it!

And is that just sloppy writing, or are you suggesting that commenters should be getting paid?

(HT: Megan McArdle.)

I was listening to the Diane Rehm Show on the way to work and there was a guest hostess moderating a ridiculous discussion ostensibly about the recent attempt to cut Planned Parenthood off from federal funding. According to the hostess and the guests (all women*) there were two sides to this debate: A) people who support "women's health issues" and B) people who don't really understand what Planned Parenthood does.

The purpose of the show seemed to be to explain Planned Parenthood to Group B. To this end, the hostess and two of the three guests spent the first 15 minutes of the show repeating that abortion was only a tiny sliver of what Planned Parenthood is about; the third guest pointed out that Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the country, and that a substantial portion of their budget goes towards performing abortions (one-third, she said?). The other guests promptly ganged up on her and argued that if someone was really against abortions then she would support Planned Parenthood because of all the contraception etc. they distribute to prevent unintended pregnancies.

At this point, the hostess brought on the president of Planned Parenthood and threw softball questions at her for a while. I could only take this for so long before I had to get out of my car into the fresh air.

The group never approached the real motivations behind the group pushing for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. This group consists of two subsets: B1) thinks that abortion should be legal but that taxpayer money shouldn't be used to pay for it, and B2) thinks that abortion is basically murder and should be entirely illegal.

Neither B1 nor B2 cares that Planned Parenthood does lots of stuff besides abortions, and both groups would (mostly) get along just fine with Planned Parenthood if they kept doing everything else but performed zero abortions. Group B1 might prefer that none of Planned Parenthood's activities be federally funded, but they'd be a lot less vociferous if abortion weren't in the mix. Group B2 mostly doesn't care about the other activities or the funding, but they view people that perform any abortions as having dirty hands -- killing even a single baby is very bad, even if you do lots of other good things.

An actual discussion of these perspectives and how they affect modern politics would have been very interesting to hear. Too bad such a discussion is almost unthinkable on National Public Radio.

* Why does it matter that all the guests were women? Because it was certainly on purpose and due to the prevailing view that only women are allowed to have opinions about abortion. The idea that possessing ovaries gives anyone's opinions greater moral weight is offensive. Women aren't banished from discussions of e.g., war and finance just because these domains are dominated by men. Besides, it's a uterus, not a uteryou.

Instapundit commenter Dave Gamble highlights the difference between how the media treats the threat of global warming vs. how the media treats the threat of crushing debt.

Reader Dave Gamble notes an inconsistency in terms of how the politico/media establishment deals with the budget crisis — certain to come — versus global warming — a possibility: “Somehow protecting future generations from possibly having to endure the hardship of an extra tenth of a degree over the next century is a high moral calling, while fighting against the certainty of mortgaging their financial future with trillions in government debt is the work of the devil. Odd.” Not so odd when you realize that “climate change” measures increase the power of the political class, while budget cuts reduce it.

As the Prof points out, no matter what the crisis is the media always seems to come down on the side of increasing government power.

I've always liked Juan Williams, even though I often don't agree with him on many issues. I am also a regular NPR listener despite the fact that NPR's analysis and commentary is generally left-wing. I quite enjoy their international coverage, including human interest stories (fluff, I know) and travel journals. All that said, I think the decision to fire Juan Williams was a huge mistake and a great loss for NPR. Williams is an insightful analyst who often brings an unorthodox but solid viewpoint to otherwise mundane news and debates.

And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.

I certainly won't be contributing to NPR's ongoing pledge drive.

If you need any further proof of just how scared the left-wing media is of the blogosphere then consider the May 3rd, 2010, edition of Newsweek.

Let's glance through the table of contents for something interesting to read about.... Hm, a story about "coffee parties"? I think I remember hearing something about 12 hippies meeting in a Starbucks six months ago but I wasn't aware that it merited serious coverage. The article (below) casts the "Tea Party people" as a bunch of paranoid racists but manages to avoid any overtly offensive language.

But wait a second, let's go back to the table of contents! This bit of the magazine is fairly unusual in that it is only available to Newsweek's print readers. Here, in the safety of the table of contents, Newsweek's editors are among fellow travelers and can really tell us what they think without fear of recrimination. So what about those "Tea Party people" from the article?

The point: Newsweek is too cowardly to let its columnists write what they really think in the main body of their magazine because they might face criticism; hence, "teabaggers" became "Tea Party people". But in the safety and security of the internet-inaccessible table of contents the editors let their hair down treat their left-wing print readers to a little fan service.

Despite my strong support for eating, wearing, using, and experimenting on animals, I quite enjoyed The MOUSE's PETITION,* To Doctor PRIESTLEY, written in 1773. Excerpt:

OH ! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs ; And never let thine heart be shut Against the prisoner's cries.

For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate ;
And tremble at th' approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.

If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain. ...

The chearful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given ;
Let nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of heaven.

The well taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives ;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.

See here for the story behind Anna Barbauld's poem and the scientist Joseph Priestley.

New polling data shows that Fox is now the most trusted name is news.

A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network.

Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t trust Fox, also the lowest level of distrust that any of the networks recorded.

I guess CNN will need to change their slogan.

Also interesting is the spin that PPP puts on the results of their own poll.

“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said PPP President Dean Debnam in his analysis of the poll. “But the media landscape has really changed, and now they’re turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”

Maybe they asked such a question, but if so it wasn't reported in this story. It sounds to me that Debnam is projecting his own biases onto his poll data and inferring accordingly.

My wife loves dogs so we've watched a lot of Cesar Millan, and one of our favorite episodes of South Park is the episode "Tsst", in which:

When Cartman's mom realizes she can't control her son anymore, she gets help from an expert. The "Dog Whisperer" may have what it takes but Eric Cartman's not going down without a fight.

And now, three years later, life imitates South Park.

It’s little wonder, then, that some parents, and even a few child therapists, have found themselves taking mental notes from a television personality known for inspiring discipline, order and devotion: Cesar Millan, otherwise known as the Dog Whisperer.

The suggestion that the Dog Whisperer is also a Child Whisperer of sorts has popped up — sometimes couched as a joke, but, well, not really — in parents’ forums like blogs, online discussion boards, magazines, Twitter feeds and podcasts. Some parents are starting to take notice.

“When we started watching his shows, we had intended to apply his advice toward our dogs,” said Amy Twomey, a blogger on parenthood for The Dallas Morning News who is raising three children under 10 with her husband, Matt. “But we realized a lot of ideas can be used on our kids.”

Yep! Our thoughts were on that same track way before we had an almost-one-year-old. Thanks to Cesar's techniques, Violet quickly learned not to touch the television or video equipment that's right at her head level in the living room.

(HT: James Taranto.)

The Associated Press is fabricating reality by labeling a health care takeover bill as "middle-of-the-road" while acknowledging that it only garnered one Republican vote in committee.

With support from a lone Republican, a key Senate committee Tuesday approved a middle-of-the-road health care plan that moves President Barack Obama's goal of wider and affordable coverage a giant step closer to becoming law.

Maine Republican Olympia Snowe said she was laying aside misgivings for now and voting to advance the bill, a sweeping $829-billon, 10-year health care remake that would help most Americans get coverage without creating a new government insurance plan. "When history calls, history calls," said Snowe.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., called his bill "a commonsense, balanced solution." A distance runner, Baucus has endured months of marathon meetings to get this far. It's not the finish line.

Well if the bill's author, Max Baucus, calls his bill "a commonsense, balanced solution" then how dare the Associated Press be skeptical? I suppose "reporter" Erica Werner couldn't be bothered to notice that Republican Olymbia Snowe is the most leftist Republican in the Senate and tends to vote with the Democrats on controversial issues. Her support is hardly enough to qualify any left-wing proposal as "middle-of-the-road".

The bill will never get to the floor of the Senate, but the AP and the rest of the leftist media is desperate to portray it as "middle-of-the-road" and the Republicans as obstructionists who oppose "commonsense, balanced solution[s]". Unfortunately for the AP, we're not all idiots.

Dalton Chiscolm has upped the ante for frivolous lawsuits by suing Bank of America for "1,784 billion, trillion dollars". Thanks for covering this, Reuters. This is important news!

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America's customer service -- really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

"He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a 'Spanish womn,'" the judge wrote. "He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers."

Who cares. This isn't news. The meta-story (which I'm writing about) is sorta news I guess. Eh, who knows.

(HT: RD.)

This "Beware of the Doghouse" ad is one of the most insulting pieces of trash that I've seen in a long time. It's very sad that anyone would think so little of their wife that they'd find it amusing to humiliate women as a gender in this manner.

Of course, I assume that the men in the ad were the intended butts of the joke, but that implicit intention really makes women look even worse.

Thankfully my wife is nothing like the ungrateful shrews that seem so prevalent in pop culture.

Jack Cashill makes a compelling circumstantial case that Willian Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams From My Father for Barack Obama. Maybe Obama should release some more of his writing so he can put these silly issues to rest.

(HT: Someone I can't remember.)

Update:

Oops. I accidentally posted this entry twice, and then deleted the copy that had two comments on it instead of this one without any comments. Here's are the two comments I deleted:

October 9, 2008 5:25 PM, jwilliamson08.myopenid.com wrote:
Michael, I've been reading your blog for quite some time now. Its one of my favorites. I think the articles you write about, especially the ones on technology, are interesting and exciting.

Frankly, I'm very taken aback by how much political spewing I've read so far. I'd like this place to be one of the few places that just avoid this political controversy. The facts remain:

Obama is most probably going to win this election. The polls couldn't be stronger for him. There are distinct reasons for this, despite how much you may think him to be not genuine. While all presidential candidates may have different outlooks and plans for a change in government, I've learned that a core responsible and morally sound person will always do a good job.

You and I both know McCain's ethics are questionable. We both know his ties to the Bush regime. We both know his pick for Palin was based on PURELY political stunted reasons, and frankly we both know that Palin is VERY unfit to be president. Heart attacks are rare, but the fact that McCain would gamble our leadership with someone as poorly sound in mind as that women, I find it insulting.

Now I know that this is simply just political spewing of my own, but lets just face some facts before we nitpick each candidate for more subtle reasons. Subtle reasons are always different. I wish this would be a place for news that combos of entries aren't for or against political candidates, as emotions are running high this election... big time.

October 9, 2008 6:25 PM, DeoDuce wrote:
*sigh* Yet another Kool-Aid drinker.