Tag: Media
Now Is Not the Time to Tune Out
“We are a country that stands on the precipice, just six weeks away from swearing in, for the second time, a wannabe ‘dictator’ with ambitions to wildly reshape our democracy. There is a desire to tune out. … I get it. And while, as a member of the media, I feel a little sheepish making the case to keep reading columns (like this one!), watching the news, and listening to podcasts, it’s a perilous moment for America, and it only serves Donald Trump and his allies to look the other way.”
— Molly Jong-Fast
White Supremacy Euphemism Generator for Journalists
Reading recent coverage of Donald Trump’s friends on the far right, it struck me that even when people pander to the idea Western culture’s wellbeing is inseparable from European ethnicity, they somehow avoid being called white nationalists or supremacists by journalists.
Generate some creative headlines here.
Hillary Stuck in a Bubble
For all the public grind of this campaign, for all her public presence on the world stage over the past two decades, Clinton herself has increasingly spent her days in a kind of purdah, suppressing spontaneous utterances and surrounded by loyalists whose chief role is her care and feeding. She communicates only through a veil of unyielding self-protection, surrounded by a curtain of defensiveness. … So nowadays, almost no one outside Clinton’s innermost circle ever sees the tender side that loyal aides and friends insist is such a palpable part of her personality, but I can attest that it is there.
— Todd Purdum
Axelrod: The Media Is a Necessary Filter
The media may be a dirty filter at times, but it’s the filter through which you communicate to the American people. It impedes your effectiveness if you view this as a relentlessly adversarial relationship.
— David Axelrod, in an interview with NPR.
HuffPo to Treat Trump as Entertainment, Not Politics
After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of The Huffington Post‘s political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section… Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.
— The Huffington Post, announcing it would no longer cover the candidate as a political story.
Who Needs Political Reporters?
The 2016 election may be the first one in which the political press is totally sidelined. Politicians now have a professional grasp of social media — Barack Obama just got his third Twitter account — and they don’t need media middlemen to communicate with voters. … What’s more, no journalist has the kind of celebrity and cultural credibility (as Tim Russert used to have) that once made interviews mandatory for aspiring presidents.
— Ryan Cooper, in the Week.
‘Mad Men’ Finale Affected the Stock Market
0.15%
Amount the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell the day after the series finale of “Mad Men.” A study of 165 TV series finales shows that the wave of negative mood caused by the end of a popular and beloved show reduces the net demand for risky assets and decreases aggregate stock returns, says Gabriele M. Lepori of Copenhagen Business School. Specifically, if the number of viewers of a finale is 1 standard deviation above Lepori’s sample average, stock returns fall approximately 25 basis points the next day, all else constant. The finale of the drama “Mad Men” drew 3.3 million live and same-day viewers.
Williams Blames Brokaw
Chalk one up for Brokaw.
— NBC News anchor Brian Williams, quoted by Vanity Fair, talking to a friend about why he was suspended from his anchor chair.
That Lying O’Reilly
O’Reilly was there with John Wilkes Booth.
He watched them kill George Patton, forsooth!
Bill can tell a story
That covers him in glory,
But what he can’t do is simply tell the truth.
