This morning’s Superficial top story: Kevin Federline hits on Lindsay Lohan. Oy.
So what will be the new shorthand – Federhan or Lohderline?
Read more: Celebrity gossip, Triviality
Media
Don’t Let The Door Hit Your Ass On Your Way Out…
Deborah Howell, Washington Post, you’re next…
NYT May Drop Public Editor Position
By E&P Staff
Published: January 03, 2007 10:45 AM ETNEW YORK The New York Times may do away with its public editor position when the two-year term of Byron Calame — only the second person to hold the independent slot — concludes in May, according to a report in today’s New York Observer.
“Over the next couple of months,” Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote in an e-mail to the Observer’s Michael Calderone, “as Barney’s term enters the home stretch, I’ll be taking soundings from the staff, talking it over with the masthead, and consulting with Arthur” — Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
Keller added that “some of my colleagues believe the greater accessibility afforded by features like ‘Talk to the Newsroom’ has diminished the need for an autonomous ombudsman, or at least has opened the way for a somewhat different definition of the job.”
Calame told the Observer, “I have been critical of the newsroom. I’ve also praised the newsroom, and I think that Bill Keller has been—quite obviously—unhappy with some of the things I’ve written….It seems to me that the high degree of independence that has been given to the public editor at The New York Times makes it a situation that inevitably causes criticism.”
Nuh-uh – it’s being Byron Calame that does that.
Read more: US media, Newspapers, NYT, Ombudsmen, Byron Calame. WaPo, Deborah Howell
Freeping The Beeb
Looks like that troop of earnest, twittering Tory ladies from the shires who visited their Republican counterparts at Concerned Women For America last year learnt something about using ‘process’:
Row as ‘Today’ programme’s poll is won by fox-hunting alliance
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 02 January 2007
It should have been a bit of festive fun with a slightly serious political edge. But the Radio 4 Today programme’s annual Christmas survey instead led to a row after listeners voted to repeal the ban on fox-hunting.
The poll, which has a long history of producing questionable results, caused more controversy this year, with claims that the Countryside Alliance had orchestrated calls to abolish the 2004 Hunting Act.
The Alliance dismissed the claims as “sour grapes”.
[…]
Anti-hunt Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, a member of the panel which chose the shortlist of Acts for the “Christmas Repeal”, also suggested organised forces may have been at work. “We did hesitate on the panel to put this one forward because there was already evidence of links from the Countryside Alliance – encouragement etc – and of course we had the Boxing Day meets, when just about everybody who actively supports hunting would have been out and could have been reminded.”
The League Against Cruel Sports even urged its members to write to the BBC to complain and accused the Alliance of running a “strategic campaign” to get the Act top of the BBC poll. A spokesman for the league said: “This continues the Today tradition of orchestrated polls.”[…]
In 1996 the programme’s vote for a man or woman of the year voting had to be stopped early after it emerged that Labour was trying to organise a mass vote for Tony Blair.
Let’s hope this means no more dumbassed novelty phone-ins on the Today programme: using something so easily subverted as a phone poll to divine the will of the listeners is a completely pointless exercise. And while we’re at it, can we get rid of Today’s bloody annoying guest editors as well? I really do not give a rat’s ass about what Yoko Ono or some bloody bishop thinks newsworthy. Enough.
Read more: UK Media,Radio BBC, Radio 4, News, Today, Polls, Guest Editors
Grownups debating politics
Digby on how the kewl kids are sharpening their claws on Hilary and Obama:
Maureen Dowd does a spectacular Queen Bee Kill today of both Clinton and Obama, basically calling her a sexless schlub and him a metrosexual cipher. With her usual original insight she notes that Clinton is a woman and Obama is black and then ends the piece with this darling little observation:
So there is a second question, perhaps one that will trump race and gender. It’s about whether he’s tough and she’s human.
Told yah. Democrats are a bunch of bitches and girly-men — the kewl kidz are sharpening their claws to do the GOP’s dirty work for them again.
Washington press insider makes snide, childish critiques of Democratic politicians; so what else is new? Well…
The thing about these hitpieces is not that a Hilary Clinton or a Barack Obama is cut down based on their policies, or what they’ve done in their political career, it’s all based on superficialities, on the way they dress or something stupid like that. Again, not a novel observation, but what I haven’t heard anywhere yet is that this makes it more difficult for them to be criticised from the left as well.
After all, the first impulse of a great many Democrats and leftists will be to defend Obama or Clinton against these sneers and so clearly this isn’t the moment to criticise them for e.g. their record on the War on Iraq. Worse, the more the debate is driven by these superficialities the less room there is to actually, you know, talk about the issues, something which suits the Democratic Party establishment fine.
These hitpieces then may be intended to cut down and make ridiculous prominent Democratic politicians like Hilary or Barack, but the first thing they do is help shutdown leftwing critiques of these politicians…
Read more about:
Hilary Clinton,Barack Obama,US media,US politics
Which Is It, Fish Or Fowl?
While we’re at the WaPo, lets compare and contrast two of their articles, one from yesterday and one from today. Note the byline on both. One journalist, two articles, two contradicting stories.
one:
Joint Chiefs Advise Change In War Strategy
Leaders Seek No Major Troop Increase, Urge Shift in Focus to Support of Iraqi Army
By Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson,
Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, D
ecember 14, 2006; Page A01The nation’s top uniformed leaders are recommending that the United States change its main military mission in Iraq from combating insurgents to supporting Iraqi troops and hunting terrorists, said sources familiar with the White House’s ongoing Iraq policy review.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney met with the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday at the Pentagon for more than an hour, and the president engaged his top military advisers on different options. The chiefs made no dramatic proposals but, at a time of intensifying national debate about how to solve the Iraq crisis, offered a pragmatic assessment of what can and cannot be done by the military, the sources said.
The chiefs do not favor adding significant numbers of troops to Iraq, said sources familiar with their thinking, but see strengthening the Iraqi army as pivotal to achieving some degree of stability. They also are pressing for a much greater U.S. effort on economic reconstruction and political reconciliation.
Then take a look at article two:
General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 15, 2006; Page A01Warning that the active-duty Army “will break” under the strain of today’s war-zone rotations, the nation’s top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation’s main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today’s Pentagon policies is “not right.”
So Ms. Anne Tyson, ace reporter, which is it? Does the Pentagon want more troops or doesn’t it?
And did you not notice that you’d written two contradictory reports for the same paper less than than 24 hours apart? Or is the festive beltway cocktail whirl getting a little too dizzily disorientating?
Read more: US Media,Iraq War, Bush, Washington Post