Tag: Media Watch

The truth hurts. Rightwingers are such whiners. They always blame the messenger rather than dealing with the real problem:

Comedian Bill Maher’s mouth has landed him in hot water–again.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) says Maher’s comment on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” May 13, that the U.S. military has already recruited all the “low-lying fruit,” is possibly treasonous and at least grounds to cancel the show.

“More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club,” Maher said of the Army’s low recruitment numbers for April. “We’ve done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies.”

England was accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“I think it borders on treason,” Bachus said. “In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country.”

In a statement released Monday, Maher defended his support for the U.S. armed forces.

I agree with the proposal that has been floating around that we should call on leaders like Rep. Bacchus – as well as the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle et al families – to “volunteer” their own children and grandchildren to fight in Iraq. They won’t, of course, because their patriotism and its attendant love for the Iraqi war stops at the point where they would have to make anything remotely resembling a sacrifice.

A study released today by the University of Connecticut Department on Public Policy found (surprise!) a significant gap between the public and the press on details like freedom of speech and the government’s right to censor the press. Editor & Publisher offers an executive summary of the study, which found that 43% of the public says the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree (who are those guys?). Shockingly (or not), only 14% of the public respondents could name “freedom of the press” as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

While many of the other findings are as predictably depressing as those, the study did mine some interesting data on blogs, and since this is a blog, we’ll concentrate on those data. The widest gap between the 1,000 regular folks and the 300 journalists polled opened between the 8 in 10 journalists who said they read blogs and the less than 1 in 10 others who read blogs. A majority of the news pros polled do not believe bloggers deserve to be called journalists (editor’s note: because they fear the POWER). But, of course, the journos’ greatest fear is irrelevance — the study found that 61% of non-journalist average Americans get most of their news from television (Thanks, Bill O’Reilly!), while only 20% read newspapers (Thanks, Wall Street Journal!).

A full 83% of journalists reported using blogs, with four in 10 claiming to use them at least once a week. Fifty-five percent of blog-using journalists said they use blogs when gathering news. And while 85% of the Fourth Estaters believe bloggers should enjoy First Amendment protections, three-quarters say bloggers are not journalists because they don’t adhere to “commonly held ethical standards” (whatever those are).

Finally, in what can only be seen as the triumph of technology over truth, “61% of the news pros say that the emergence of the Internet has made journalism better.”

We here at Pensito Review, unburdened as we are by commonly held or uncommonly held ethical standards, and blessedly protected as we are by the First Amendment, will continue to do our part to make journalism better, or, more to the point — make better journalism.

Submitted by Pensito Review contributor Amilee Brul, Red State and Blue

Bill Maher’s Real Time aired Friday, May 13, the season’s finale, with Al Franken as one of the panel. Mr. Franken admitted that he is seriously considering a run for the Senate chair now occupied by Norm Coleman of Minnesota.

Coleman, formerly from the Bronx, formerly a Democrat and still (?) Jewish, was selected over Fritz Mondale to the Senate. The tragic deaths of Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter, three staffers and two pilots during his 2002 re-election campaign against Coleman threw the election into turmoil, and Coleman came out a Senator.

Franken, who earns a living as a comedian and satirist, is liberal, smart and well-spoken. When he isn’t doing shtick, he is impressive as a thoughtful spokesman for the bleeding hearts. As a matter of fact, he is impressive when he is doing his shtick.

Mahr’s reaction to the possible Franken candidacy was that it opened up a new job possiblities for underemployed comedians. He seemed unsurprised by the announcement, but enthusiastic.

I made a point of catching Jeff Gannon on Bill Maher’s HBO show last night. In fact, I’ve seen quite a few of the interviews this guy has done, and he is a piece of work.

In case you just woke up under a rock after many months and then tuned into Pensito Review to find out what’s going on in the world, “Jeff Gannon” is the nom de plume of a prostitute named James Guckert who worked out of the DC area using the nom de ho, “Bulldog.” Guckert invented his Jeff Gannon persona when he suddenly, with no prior journalism experience, started covering White House press briefings for a website called GOPUS.com, which subsequently changed its name to Talon News.

The story of how Gannon got access to the White House has yet to be revealed. The shameless libertines who run the White House and GOP Congress have no interest in getting to the root of this White House sex story. (So if Monica had been paid for sex with the president, there would have been no Starr investigation?) The powers that be are equally uninterested in knowing how a $200 per hour prostitute cleared a security check – or how he knew in advance when the bombing of Baghdad was going to start, or how he got inside information on the leaking of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

If you want to know just about everything there is to know about Bulldog, go to AmericaBlog. The site’s editor, John Aravosis, broke much of this story, and he has posted a list of links to his Gannon coverage in the left hand column of the homepage. (Scroll down.)

Gannon did have one funny line last night:

“Usually the way it works,” Gannon said, “is people prostitute themselves AFTER they become reporters.”

Gannon has been openly begging to be invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight but as of yesterday he’d received no offers. It’ll be interesting tonight to see if he shows up.