Category: Journalism

And People Pile on Berlusconi

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With Members of the European Parliament calling for sanctions against Italy over media consolidation in Italy:

Mr Berlusconi owns three commercial broadcasters, has indirect control over three public channels and owns a series of magazines, newspapers and radio stations as well as the country’s largest publishing house. His advertising firm controls much of the advertising sales in Italy, allowing his reach to extend to media beyond his direct control.

The MEPs say this has created a climate of media intimidation where journalists are fired for stepping out of line while others self-censor to hold onto their jobs. Key posts in the media are based on an individual being sufficiently deferential to the current administration, critics allege.

It would be nice if some action comes from this.

As bad as the MSM is in the United States, the idea of a political candidate controlling all the TV and cable outlets in a country is a scary thing.

The vote, which passed 268 – 284, is merely to start an inquiry, but it’s a good thing.

I think that what is going on with Berlusconi here is very similar to what was done with Pablo Escobar: You peel away at layers of protection, and eventually, pretty much all at once, the house of cards collapses, and you take the crook down.

Unfortunate Headline

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OK, I get it Ken Lewis is gone in a few months, and the race is on to replace him, but the use of this phrase also implies an unsavory, and illegal practice, front-running.

I would not be surprised if, “Chief Risk Officer Greg Curl and Head of Retail Operations Brian Moynihan,” or for that matter if another widely reported contestant for the position, Sallie Krawcheck, head of BoA’s global wealth and investment management division, had engaged in, or are engaging in, such behavior, but the headline is…How to put it…Odd.

Well, I was Experience of Schadenfreude

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But Senator Ensign (R-NV, and many bedrooms) just keeps on delivering.

So, the New York Times has done some journalism, and discovered that, in addition to boinking his chief of staff’s wife, stalking her, and getting mommy and daddy to pay hush money, reporters Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton have now discovered that Senator Ensign arranged for Douglas Hampton to get a cushy lobbying job, and then had Hampton lobby one…Senator John Ensign, in a direct violation of Senate ethics rules and federal laws, which require a 1 year cooling off period:

Mr. Hampton said he and Mr. Ensign were aware of the lobbying restriction but chose to ignore it. He recounted how the senator helped him find clients and ticked off several steps Mr. Ensign took to assist them with their agendas in Washington, activities confirmed by federal officials and executives with the businesses.

“The only way the clients could get what John was essentially promising them — which was access — was if I still had a way to work with his office,” Mr. Hampton said. “And John knew that.”

Gee….Who’d a thunk it?

Needless to say, the folks at Leno and The Daily Show are chortling about this, though David Letterman might be too busy boinking his staffers on his show.

Is the Daily Telegraph for Real?

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The Daily Telegraph (UK) wringing its hands over a worrisome drop in the money supply, with bank loans falling at a 14% annual rate, and that M3 is falling at a 5% annual rate.

Anyone know the reliability of the Telegraph, because I’m a bit dubious of this assessment, because the Federal Reserve stopped reporting M3 in 2006., see the graph pr0n courtesy of Shadowstats.com.

The estimated figure looks like a significant drop off in M3, or at least the folks at Shadowstats best estimate of M3, but M2 is stable, and M1 is through the roof, so I’m not sure if all this gloom and doom reporting is warranted.

British financial journalism tends to be a bit more alarmist than that of the US, particularly in The Grauniad*, so I’m wondering how real this is.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel

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There are two questions raised by the kidnapping, and rescue of, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell in Afghanistan.

The first, and the one I don’t know enough about to come to a decision is whether it was worth the lives lost to rescue him, particularly since it appears to have been a series of spectacularly ill-advised decisions by Mr. Farrell precipitated this.

However, I am disgusted at the people who say something to the effect of, “It’s the New York Times, and they hurt the military, and so should be given no security consideration whatsoever.”

Here’s a thing, if you sound like Ann Coulter, it means that you are an asshole.

By the same token, if people routinely do amazingly stupid things, and expect to be rescued because they work for the New York Times, making it clear that neither the public purse, nor the blood of our military will be spent in such an endeavor makes sense.

The second question, is one that I do feel qualified to discuss, is whether news of kidnappings of journalists should be suppressed.

Bill Roggio reported the kidnapping on the Threat Matrix blog, and has been widely criticized by many in the media (here, and a few of the comments in response to his story) for reporting on this despite the request by the New York Times that he sit on the story.

I think that Mr. Roggio nailed the issue in a response in the comments on this post:

I speak as someone who has reported from both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005. To me, this is simple. Either a kidnapping is news, or it isn’t. When soldiers, contractors, etc. are kidnapped, it is news. When a reporter is kidnapped, it is also news.

(emphasis mine)

Bill Ardolino, also of Threat Matrix, adds a useful data point:

A partial list of reports by the The New York Times on kidnappings:

November 15, 2002: NYT: Red Cross workers kidnapped in Chechnya

September 17, 2004, NYT: Insurgents kidnap American and British civilians in Iraq

January 18, 2005: NYT: Catholic Archbishop of Mosul kidnapped in Iraq

May 17, 2005: NYT: CARE worker kidnapped in Kabul

December 29, 2005: NYT: German Family Kidnapped by Yemeni Tribe

January 27, 2008: NYT: NGO worker kidnapped in Afghanistan

August 29, 2009, Reuters in the NYT: Foreign Aid Workers kidnapped in Darfur

20 hours ago: NYT: Greek national kidnapped in Pakistan

It is clear that the demands for news suppression are self serving and dishonest.

People Who Should Not Be Reporters

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Monica Hesse of the Washington Post, who went whining to their ombudsman.

You see, she wrote a puff piece about homophobic bigot Brian Brown, a major lobbyist against gay civil rights, and “The day before returning [from her vacation], she logged on to check e-mails — and wept.“

She wrote a puff piece, in the best tradition of Post writers being played by right wing blow-hards, and she crossed a line, and real people, as opposed to the right wing rent-a-crowd, took offense.

She was assigned the piece, and wrote it in order to ensure that she would not get irate email, and was crushed when she got irate email.

Notwithstanding her professed bisexuality, at least as related to the ombudsman, her problem is not her position on gay marriage, nor is it that she wrote a puff piece.

Her problem is that she clearly wrote this article to avoid confrontation, and when she got confrontation anyway, “she wept.”

She is in the wrong line of work. A journalist has to believe that irate letters are a mark of honor.

H/t Atrios.

Whoever Did This Should Be Fired

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While it is completely appropriate for the Pentagon to lay out rules regarding the press and tactically sensitive information, what should not be done, but has been done anyway, is to have their work screened by a public relations firm in order to determine if they are sufficiently “friendly” to the military, as the has been done.

What’s more, it’s not just any whore house public relations firm, it’s the Rendon Group, who manufactured the Iraqi National Congress and provided part of the excuse for the invasion of Iraq, as well as being a CIA front for ginning up the invasion of Panama.

It should noted that similar “rating” of journalists resulted in a Stars and Stripes reporter being denied an embed:

U.S. Army officials in Iraq engaged in a similar vetting practice two months ago, when they barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division because the reporter “refused to highlight” good news that military commanders wanted to emphasize.

The contract has now been canceled, but anyone associated with this program should be fired, and to the degree that this violates the law, or military regulations, they should be prosecuted.

The Very Modern Model of a Modern Republican Candidate

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Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonald mentioned in an interview with the Washington Post that he did a masters thesis on “welfare policy,” and the Post went and did some real journalism: they went to the library at Regent University, Pat Robertson’s diploma mill, which was called Christian Broadcasting Network University at the time that he filed his papers.

What they found was shocking, though not surprising:

  • Called working women “detrimental to the family”.
  • Opposition to birth control.
  • Absolute ban on abortions, including where rape, incest, and the health of the mother are issues.
  • Covenant marriage (basically making divorces much more difficult).
  • Support for religious school vouchers.
  • Opposed tax breaks for child care expenses.

I am so not shocked that he is a right wing medieval nut job, but I think that some Virginia voters might be.

I’m shocked though that the Washington Post actually allowed real journalism to reach its pages. This article is positively brutal, and deservedly so.

Judge Orders Federal Reserve to Release Documents under FOIA.

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District Judge Loretta Preska has ordered the Federal Reserve to turn over loan and collateral data for their emergency loans under the Freedom of Information Act.

This is very important news for a number of reasons:

  • It means that the public will get to review what was actually in this part of the Fed’s “sh$%pile for cash” program.
  • It will spawn other FOIA suits.

And most importantly:

  • Is an unequivocal ruling by the courts that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency and has to abide by federal rules how they do business.

I’m fairly certain that the Fed will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if it can, because those folks really believe that seeing the man behind the curtain would destroy the United States of America.

They are wrong, of course, but it is clear that this is what they believe.

A Bit of Meta, and Philosophy

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Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Aardvark

I post in my own name, with my own face, albeit a face* from 30 years ago.

I came to the decision not to use pseudonyms when I was at school, and I realized that everyone was calling me by my computer ID, Cerebus, as in Dave Sim’s comic book Aardvark, so I spent 2-3 years getting people to call me “Matthew” again.

So, now I stick with my name. It is a matter of personal aesthetics, not integrity, and no level of truth or integrity is intended by my use of my own name.

If you think that I am right, follow the links, and confirm.

If you think that I am wrong, follow the links, and confirm.

In any case, one of the writers (probably multiple writers, according to Felix Salmon) who posts as “Tyler Durden” at the blog financial zero hedge, got outed by the New York Post.

I figure an anonymous blogger who generates enough buzz to have someone hunt them down and out them deserves a look by me.

Zero hedge is now on my blogroll. They have an attitude, and I like attitude.

*And hair, which I miss.

Economics Update

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Housing Starts, Courtesy Calculated Risk

I guess that it’s time to rejoice, because the IMF’s chief economist is saying that the global recession is over…Seeing as how they handled things like the Asian Financial Crisis of the 1990s, I’m inclined to believe that they are not a reliable source.

I would also note that he has a huge caveat in this, “we may not go back to the old growth path … potential output may be lower than it was before the crisis,” which to my mind sounds like a permanent decline in economic activity, and thus the recession might be over because normalcy is being redefined.

That being said, we are seeing signs of either a recovery, or a pause in the path downward, with credit card defaults moderating somewhat, so, for example, BoA’s charge-off rate dropped to 13.81% last month, down 0.05% from the level in June.

Basically, the numbers are still pretty horrible, but they aren’t getting any worse…yet.

We also have a stronger consumer confidence level in August, with the Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence (IBD/TIPP) Economic Optimism Index rising to 50.3 in August from 46.3 last month, and this is a real positive number as 50 is the dividing line between optimism and pessimism.

In inflation, producer prices fell by -0.9% from the previous month, and the year over year price decline was -6.8%, beating the predictions of -0.3% and -5.9% respectively.

Meanwhile, in the UK, consumer inflation remained steady at 1.8%, but it had been predicted to drop to 1.5%.

Real estate is confusing, or at least the reporting of it is.

The data came out today, and the coverage is interesting, with Bloomberg noting that single-family housing starts rose for the 5th straight month, but CNN noting that housing starts and building permits declined with only single family housing starts showing an improvement, and that the year over year numbers are way down.

I’d go with CNN here, because:

  • We know that more than a third of single family home sales are distressed.
    • As an aside, we know that people are coming out of the woodwork looking for distressed sales, and prices are still falling, driven by foreclosures and short sales, as evidenced by the latest data out of California.
  • The month to month numbers are seasonally adjusted, but I think that the current market is so out of whack that the seasonal adjustments do not serve their intended purpose.
  • The drop in multi-residential buildings indicates that fewer people are moving into condos/townhouses, from which they would trade up to single family structures.

Then again, YMMV, and I always see the economic glass as half empty.

Oil was briefly back above $70/bbl before settling at $69.19, largely on a report that US crude inventories have dropped, and the dollar and Yen both fell against the Euro, largely on more optimistic business sentiment in Germany.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?!?!?!? Journalism on CNN!?!?!?!?

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CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez interviews medical tea-bagger* in chief Rick Scott, currently director of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, and went Mr. Sanchez actually did his homework:

  • He notes that Scott was fired as CEO of Columbia HCA for the largest case of Medicare fraud uncovered ever , with fines and restitution in excess of $1.7 billion.
  • He called Scott a “poster child for everything that is wrong with the greed that has hurt our healthcare system”.
  • Calls out Scott on his argument that that “everyone was doing it,” which argues for a public option.
  • Did his homework: When Scott claimed that the fines paid were after his tenure at Columbia HCA, Sanchez notes that the fines were for when Scott ran the firm.
  • Noted his history of shutting down hospitals in the area.

When TV media folks do their homework this way, they are either Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, or Journalists.

Somehow, it appears that CNN allowed a journalist to infiltrate their network. My congratulations to Rick Sanchez.

H/T Talking Points Memo.

*I mean that in the political sense, not the sexual act sense, and no offense toward people who engage in the sex act is intended.

The Ezra Klein Dead Pool

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Bummer of a birth mark, Ezra

WaPo blogger Ezra Klein tore Sarah Palin, and the Washington Post editorial page, a new one with regards to her editorial.

It’s well deserved, but he works for the Washington Post, and the only people who get to criticize the paper are conservatives and people like Howard Kurtz, whose right-wing consultant wife has, over the years, literally received a paycheck from the Republican party, and then only because the paper does not give conservatives a fair shake.

I figure that he will be out by the beginning of November.

The model here is Dan Froomkin, who was, IMNSHO, fired because he called out the most egregious of the Washington Post editorial page hacks, his exchange with the dishonest and insane Charles Krauthammer comes to mind, on their dishonesty and hacktacular behavior.

Eric Boehlert and Bill Kristol Are Both Wrong

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Eric Boehlert agrees with William Kristol when he says that Todd Purdum’s piece must be wrong when he says that it’s simply not possible that multiple individuals would have concluded that she had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

First, my background: I lived in Alaska from 1963 to 1969, I was 7 when I left, and my father worked at various levels in the state and local government, being the head of planning for Governor Bill Egan, and head of the State Charter Commission.

He maintains the friendships that he made there, and as such, he is in touch with many people who are very much a part of the political scene there, particularly on the Democratic Party side.

The other thing to realize is just how tiny the political scene is there. Everyone knows, and meets, everyone else on an almost daily basis when the legislature is in session, so if one person made a comment, like “I was looking through the DSM IV, and ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’ matched Palin to a ‘T,” it could rapidly become a talking point.

This makes this story likely, but the email that I got forwarded to me by my dad pretty much makes it a almost certainly true.

I would note that my dad quoted this individual to me in October saying essentially the same thing.

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: ——-
To: Mr Ron Saroff <——–>
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2009 8:31:38 AM
Subject: FW: Politico.com:

Further amusement –this time amongst the R’s. Lots of bad substantive stuff to say about Palin, but frankly I think the sexism is disgusting from both parties and elsewhere.

Check out this page:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24392.html

I was one of the people who told TP [Todd Purdum] Sarah had a narcissistic personality disorder! And he told me I wasn’t the first to say it.

Thank you,
THE POLITICO
Politico.com

This once again shows that you cannot go wrong betting against William Kristol.